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January 11, 2006
Democratic Senators Are More Aggressive at Alito Hearings
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, said today he did not believe that American judges should be guided by the laws of other countries in coming to their decisions.

"I don't think it's appropriate or useful to look to foreign law in interpreting the provisions of our Constitution," Judge Alito said in response to questions from Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, in the third day of the judge's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"I think the Framers would be stunned by the idea that the Bill of Rights is to be interpreted by taking a poll of the countries of the world," Judge Alito said. "The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to give Americans rights that were recognized practically nowhere else in the world at the time. The Framers did not want Americans to have the rights of people in France or the rights of people in Russia or any of the other countries on the continent of Europe at the time; they wanted them to have the rights of Americans."

The nominee was, at least implicitly, finding fault with the Supreme Court's ruling on March 1 that outlawed the execution of killers who were under 18 at the time of their crimes. That opinion, decided by a 5-4 majority, relied in part on the trend of international opinion against the death penalty, especially for youthful offenders.

But Judge Alito said he saw "a host of practical problems" if American jurists are to look overseas.

"You have to decide which countries you're going to survey," he said. "And then it's often difficult to understand exactly what you are to make of foreign court decisions. All countries don't set up their court systems the same way." Foreign courts may have greater authority, or have policy-making roles, he said.

In voicing strong disapproval of relying on foreign jurisprudence, Judge Alito was more explicit than he has been on other issues, including abortion. On that issue, he insisted again today, in the face of Democratic skepticism, that he would keep an open mind and be guided by precedent in considering abortion-related cases.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said a 1985 memorandum that the young Samuel Alito wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan administration, and which the nominee has declined to explicitly disavow, "does not show an open mind" about abortion rights.

In that memo, Judge Alito disagreed with the high court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which established a woman's right to choose abortion, and discussed ways that it might be overturned.

"I'm troubled by that," Mr. Durbin said.

Judge Alito said, as he has repeatedly, that the first step in considering a legal issue is case-law precedent and that, indeed, the numerous unsuccessful challenges to Roe v. Wade have reinforced it. As for his 1985 memo, he said, "That was 20 years ago, and a great deal has happened in the case law since then."

When Senator Durbin said he was still not satisfied with the judge's answers, the nominee said, "I've explained, senator, as best I can how I see it."

Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, and Mr. Coburn approached the concept of precedence from the other direction, using their questions to express their strong opposition to abortion.

First, Mr. Brownback cited several comments from legal scholars, some of whom could be at least loosely categorized as "liberal," in which the Roe v. Wade decision was derided as judicial activism. Then Mr. Brownback got Judge Alito to say, as he has before, that while precedent deserves respect, it is not all-powerful.

Most notably, Judge Alito said under questioning from Mr. Brownback, the Supreme Court's 1896 ruling that upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine in racial segregation was wrong, even though it endured until it was swept aside by the 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that struck down public-school segregation.

"Spectacularly wrong," Judge Alito said of the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which involved railroad cars and held that separate accommodations did not deprive blacks of their rights as long as those accommodations were equal.

That exchange soon led Mr. Brownback to suggest that Roe v. Wade might one day be similarly overturned - a prospect that alarms abortion-rights supporters, who fear that Judge Alito would be far less sympathetic to their cause than the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been. Judge Alito, now on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, has been nominated to take her place.

"Settled law?" Mr. Brownback asked rhetorically, and scornfully, referring to Roe v. Wade.

Mr. Coburn, too, said that decision should be overturned because it is "pro-abortion, pro the destruction of human life."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

An e-mail trail of money and influence
Investigations of Jack Abramoff's dealings have given a pointillistic
view of his daily political activities. By Peter Grier
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0112/p01s02-uspo.html?s=hns

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January 11, 2006
U.S. Says No Choice but to Consider Sanctions on Iran
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:33 p.m. ET

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) - The White House said Wednesday that Iran has made a "serious miscalculation" by clearing the way to resume uranium enrichment and that intensive diplomacy was under way with European allies and others about what to do now.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush on a brief trip to Kentucky, told reporters that if the European-led negotiations had run their course, then there was no other option but to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was now "more likely than ever" that Iran would be hauled before the Security Council.

Iran removed U.N. seals at uranium enrichment research facilities on Tuesday and announced it would resume "research and development" on producing uranium fuel, prompting angry reactions from Washington, the European Union and Russia.

"I think that the Iranian regime has made another serious miscalculation by their latest actions, and we are engaged in some intensive diplomacy right now. We are talking with our European friends and others about how to move ahead and those discussions continue," McClellan said.

He said the international community had given Iran a chance to negotiate in good faith, but instead Tehran "is showing yet again that they are going to ignore the demands of the international community, and I think that's a serious miscalculation."

"We believe that if the negotiations have run their course and Iran is not going to negotiate in good faith, then there's no other option but to refer the matter to the Security Council," McClellan said. "If that happens then we would talk about what actions need to be taken at that time."

Asked by reporters about Washington's aims in seeking to get Iran referred to the Security Council, the State Department's McCormack said "we still seek to change Iranian behavior through diplomatic channels."

Washington has long said it maintains all options on the table in the stand-off with Iran.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the U.N. Security Council to consider action against Iran.

Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has found no firm proof to the contrary.



Copyright 2006 Reuters Ltd. Home

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January 11, 2006
Senators Resume Questioning of Judge Alito
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:01 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito calmly turned aside Democratic attacks on his judicial record at confirmation hearings Wednesday, declaring his impartiality and saying, ''If I'm confirmed I'll be myself.''

He joined Senate Democrats in denouncing the positions of a controversial Princeton alumni group he once highlighted.

''I am who I am and I am my own person'' said the 55-year-old appeals court judge, who would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in what has been a swing seat on the Supreme Court.

Under persistent questioning, Alito declined for a second straight day to say whether believes, as he did in 1985, that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion. ''I don't think it's appropriate for me to speak about issues that could realistically come up'' before the courts, he said.

Alito commands the support of all 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and while Democrats can delay his approval by the panel they cannot block it. His prospects for confirmation by the full Senate are also strong, although Democrats have not ruled out the possibility of a filibuster that could require supporters to post 60 votes.

Still, unlike Chief Justice John Roberts last fall, Alito may draw the opposition of all eight Democrats on the panel, and partisan maneuvering was evident on Wednesday.

Abortion triggered one incident. Sen. Richard Durbin, who supports abortion rights, told Alito that his 1985 written view on abortion ''does not evidence an open mind. It evidences a mind that sadly is closed in some areas.''

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, saying he wanted to ''razz'' Durbin, soon noted that the Illinois Democrat had himself changed his mind on abortion. ''For 45 years, Senator Durbin was adamantly pro-life, and he wrote multiple, multiple letters expressing that up until 1989,'' said Republican Coburn.

Later, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy pressed the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to subpoena records at the Library of Congress that might shed light on Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

''If I'm going to be denied that, I'd want to give notice to the chair that you're going to hear it again and again and again and we're going to have votes of this committee again and again and again until we have a resolution,'' said the Massachusetts Democrat.

Specter, bristling, said, ''I'm not concerned about your threats to have votes again, again and again. And I'm the chairman of this committee. ... And I'm not going to have you run this committee.''

The tempest proved short-lived. Specter later announced the committee would have access to the records.

Earlier, Kennedy questioned Alito sharply about the organization, which drew notice for opposing admission practices that resulted in rising numbers of women and minority students at the Ivy League school.

''If I had received any information at any point regarding any of the matters you referred to ... I would never have had anything to do with it,'' said Alito, who listed his membership in the group on a 1985 job application for the Reagan administration but now says he does not recall anything about it.

Outside the committee room, Kennedy was scathing.

''He can remember all 67 dissents ... in great details,'' he said of Alito and his judicial record. ''But he can't remember anything about this organization.''

Those judicial dissents drew the attention of several Democrats, as did other rulings over the course of Alito's 15-year tenure on the appeals court.

Durbin cited rulings in cases involving a black man accused of murder, a retarded man who had been sexually molested and an injury at a coal worksite.

He said that in each case, Alito had made rulings that favored the powerful at the expense of the powerless. ''I find this as a recurring pattern, and it raises the question in my mind whether the average person, the dispossessed person, the poor person who finally has their day in court ... are going to be subject to the crushing hand of fate when it comes to your decisions.''

Alito defended his rulings one by one, then was offered a chance for a general reply.

He cited a case in which a ''high school student had been bullied unmercifully by other students in his school because of their perception of his sexual orientation, been bullied to the point of attempting to commit suicide.''

The school board refused a request from the parents to move their child to a different school, but Alito said, ''I wrote an opinion upholding their right to have him placed in a safe school in an adjacent municipality.''

Underscoring the political significance of the nomination, Durbin had scarcely completed his 20 minutes of questioning when the nominee's supporters circulated written material titled, ''A sampling of cases where Alito rules for the `Little Guy.'''

Democrats countered with a document of their own. It accused Republicans of distorting Alito's record by ''citing uncontroversial cases with obvious outcomes or by distorting the facts or outcomes of the cases they cite.''

Alito's views on abortion were a recurring theme for Democrats.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., picking up where Durbin had left off, asked Alito why he felt comfortable renouncing 20-year-old statements he had made questioning the principle of one person, one vote, when he wouldn't do the same on Roe v. Wade.

Alito said once again there are cases making their way through the courts on abortion.

Feinstein noted four voting rights cases currently pending that raise questions of whether the principle of one person, one vote has been violated.

''If you're willing to say that you believe one man, one vote is well settled and you agree with it, I have a hard time understanding how you separate out Roe,'' she said.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony
Amnesty International | Press Release

Tuesday 10 January 2006

Washington - Marking the fourth anniversary of the first transfers of detainees to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, January 11, 2006, Amnesty International released new testimonies alleging the use of torture and ill treatment against prisoners in the U.S. detention center and additional details on several detainee cases.

The testimonies include that of one of the first detainees to be transferred to Guantánamo, Jumah al-Dossari, a 32-year-old Bahraini national who was taken to the U.S. Naval Base in January 2002 after being held by U.S. forces in the Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan.

Al-Dossari's testimony, corroborated by people who have now been released from Guantánamo, includes several allegations of physical and psychological torture and ill treatment inflicted by U.S. personnel both on him and on other inmates in Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

"Anniversaries usually represent milestones. Today's milestone is a frightening and disheartening one. The situation at Guantánamo is not getting better - in fact, it may be worse. First, the Bush Administration wants all 186 pending habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of the detainees to be dismissed based on a new law that was not meant to apply to cases filed before the law went into effect. And now, after Congress overwhelming passed the historic Anti-Torture Amendment, President Bush is asserting that he can waive the restrictions on the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against detainees. When does the hypocrisy of defending democracy around the world while continuing to curtail fundamental due process end?" said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.

"There are approximately 500 men who have been treated with complete and utter disdain - the antipathy of the American value of recognizing the basic human dignity of all people. It isn't surprising that after years of uncertainty about their fate, some of these men have expressed their intention to die rather than remain in Guantánamo indefinitely," added Schulz.

Amnesty International also revealed further details on the cases of Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al Hajj, transferred to Guantánamo in June 2002 after spending time in detention in Bagram and Kandahar, and Abdulsalam al-Hela, a Yemeni businessman, subjected to rendition and secret detention before being transferred to Guantánamo. Amnesty International is urging Congress to create an independent commission to investigate all aspects of U.S. detention and interrogation policies including the dozens of reports of torture and ill treatment that have taken place since 2002 and to take measures to prevent torture from recurring in the future.



Testimony Highlights of Jumah al-Dossari

Below are highlights from testimony of Jumah al-Dossari, which he wrote in July 2005 in the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay naval base, Cuba. The hand written testimony was given to Amnesty International by Jumah al-Dossari's civilian lawyer. At the date of publication Jumah al-Dossari remains detained in Guantánamo Bay. This testimony is Jumah al-Dossari's personal account of his experiences in Pakistani and US custody, and the views expressed in it are his own.

From here, from the depths of the degradation that debase a person's dignity, attack his religion, his person, his honour, his dignity and his humanity, all in the name of fighting terror. I am writing for those who will read my words. I am writing the story of what I have suffered from the day I was kidnapped on the Pakistani border and sold to American troops until now and my being in Guantánamo, Cuba. What I will write here is not a flight of fancy or a moment of madness; what I will write here are the established facts and events agreed upon by detainees who were eye witnesses to them, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as well as soldiers, investigators and interpreters.

Arrest and Treatment by Pakistani Authorities


I passed through several small jails where there was a lot of abuse. I had previously met several people when I was on the border, they were of different nationalities. They had left Afghanistan and the Pakistani army abused us and gave us the worst and most nasty kind of food. They put me in a cell which was 4m x 4m in which there were 59 prisoners without mattresses, blankets or a bathroom; there was only one bucket in the cell for everyone to relieve themselves in without a screen.


They stole many passports from the prisoners who were of many nationalities and we were abused. They abused me personally and beat me several times during investigations. The worst tribulation for us was when they transported us from one place to another: they would tie us up in the most savage way, so much so that some of us got gangrenous fingers and our hands and feet swelled and turned blue. They would tie us up for long periods of time in military trucks, sometimes from daybreak until night, in addition to the hours that they spent transporting us in trucks.


When we reached the airport, an American military plane, American soldiers and an American interpreter who spoke Arabic were waiting for us. They took one by one and handed us over to the American soldiers. The deal was done and they sold us for a few dollars and they were not interested in us. US custody in Afghanistan


When we were all in the plane - there were approximately 30 of us - they closed the plane door which from behind said "designed to carry machinery". After they closed the door, the soldiers started shouting, screaming and insulting us with the most vulgar insults and nasty curses. They started beating us and took pictures of us on a camera; I could see the flash. I had a violent pain in my stomach - I had had an operation on my stomach and there was a piece of metal in it; when I complained about the severity of the pain, a soldier came and started kicking me in my stomach with his military boot until I vomited blood. I do not know how many hours I was in that state as we went from the base in Kohat to Kandahar Airport where there is an American military base.


We arrived at Kandahar airport after midnight. It was a Friday night at the beginning of January 2002. They started to wrap a very strong wire around our right arms; each of us was tied at a distance of about two metres from the person in front of him. After they pulled this wire, they started making us run towards the unknown. When we approached the tents which had previously been an instalment, they started to insult us savagely. The prisoners started shouting and crying because of their severe pain - there were many young people with us - and the soldiers increased their insults and beatings and those of us who fell started to drag themselves on the grounds on the asphalt of the airfield and the others continued to jog. As I have already mentioned, I still had the Pakistani shackle which made it hard for me to walk, so I was one of those who fell and was dragging himself along on the asphalt.


When they wanted to take one of us, they would order us to lie on our stomachs on the floor, and then they would tie our hands behind our backs. When it was my turn, two soldiers took me. I was barefoot and they beat me before I met the investigator. They banged my head against the metal building and made me walk on the barbed wire. They raised my hands from behind my back so high that my shoulders were almost dislocated. When I entered the investigation tent, I found that there were two Americans among the investigators, one of whom was white and the other was black. I said to them, "why are you torturing me and you haven't even started questioning me? What do you want from me? Give me a piece of paper and I will sign anything you want". He said to me, "there is no torture here and there are no beatings".


During that time, I was moved to the camp clinic because of the terrible state of my health. They would take me for investigations which were mostly held at night; they would beat me severely and tell me to confess that I was a terrorist!! Once, from the excessive and severe beatings, one of my foot shackles broke. Once, they poured boiling hot liquid on my head and the investigator stubbed his cigarette out on my foot. I said to him, "why are you treating me like this?" He then took a cigarette and stubbed it out on my right wrist and said, "in the name of Christ and the Cross I am doing this". Once, they had beaten me so severely that my clothes were ripped and my genitals were exposed. I tried to cover myself up but they started kicking me with their boots.


They started preparing to move us to Cuba. When it was my turn and I was in approximately the third group to be moved to Guantánamo, I was moved to another tent with several people. We were next to an empty tent in which they put Afghans from the northern states and Shabarghan. Transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba


The third stage started on the day the plane landed us in Guantánamo in Cuba; we did not know where we were. The soldiers put us on a military bus that had no seats in it. They made us sit on the floor of the bus. A translator who was Lebanese came and said, "you are at an American base and you mustn't talk or move. You have to keep your heads down.


When I was put in the cage, a soldier told me, "you mustn't talk, you mustn't touch the mesh, you mustn't cover your head and your hands when you sleep and you have to stay in the middle of the cage". He also me that there was a toilet outside the cage; if I needed to relieve myself, I would have to ask one of the soldiers. In the cage, there were two buckets, one had water in it and the other was empty. The soldier said that the empty bucket was for urine.


It was then that my suffering started. If we wanted to go to the outside toilet, a portaloo, the soldiers would take us violently and would look at our genitals; even the female soldiers did that. They would stand outside the door which was open while we relieved ourselves. Torture and Ill-Treatment in Guantánamo Bay


During investigations, I was threatened with rape, attacks on my family in Saudi Arabia, my daughter being kidnapped, and my murder - assassination - by their spies in the Middle East if I went back to Saudi Arabia.


They went to a detainee and put his head in the toilet. The toilets in Camp Delta are iron, Turkish-style toilets and then they flushed his head down the toilet until he almost died. They went to a detainee and started beating his head against the toilet rim until he lost consciousness and he could not see for more than 10 hours.


One detainee, called Abdul Aziz Al-Masri, was ill and was asleep in the hospital. These soldiers went and beat him very badly in the hospital in front of the doctors and nurses. His injuries were excessive and caused his spine to break. He is now hemiplegic. They are now trying to operate on him but he is refusing out of fear that they will play with his back and make it worse rather than make it better as their operations often do. These kinds of incidents happen often. They would make sending them to the detainees an excuse for incidents in which we would suffer extensive injuries, severe disfiguration and fractures as there was no one monitoring or following up their actions. Rather, their officers and officials gave them the orders.


At the end of 2003, a major incident happened to me in the investigation room. The soldiers took me to the investigation room and the investigator - who I only ever saw on this one occasion - had a Koran in his hand when he entered the room. He put it on the table and started talking and raving. Then he asked some soldiers to come in so some soldiers came. This investigator had brought the American and Israeli flags in with him. He then ordered the soldiers to wrap the flags around me tightly and then he took the Koran, threw it on the floor and damaged it with his shoe. Then he exposed his penis and urinated on it. He said a lot of things to me, such as, "this is a holy war between the star of David and the cross against the crescent" and "the whole world will submit to us and if any one doesn't submit to us. Camp 5


This stage finished when they finished building Camp 5 which was opened on 25 May 2004. I went into this new camp to start a new stage of misery, privation, humiliation and distress. There was an order to move me to Camp 5 for me to finish off the rest of my days in solitary isolation there. All the cells in Camp 5 were isolation cells and the whole building was made entirely of pre-cast concrete.


I return now to my story. In March 2005, I met the lawyer who had taken on my case. I was telling him about the torture, violations and assaults I had faced and I do not know if they were spying on us. When the lawyer left, a soldier came and he had put on the military [illegible] and he was angry. He said, "it's best that you forget everything that's happened to you and don't mention it again to anyone if you want to stay safe."


My state of health has become very poor recently. I fall and faint nearly every day. On 12 June 2005, in the evening, when my evening meal was brought to me, there was a dead scorpion on the plate. When I ate a little and saw the scorpion, I gave the food back to the soldier and showed him the scorpion. On that same night, in the same meal, a Tunisian brother called Hecham was also given a plate of food with a dead scorpion on it. Since the day that they threatened until now, I have been removing insects and dung beetles from the food and showing it to the soldier who then says, do you want another plate?


Today is the end of the second week and the strike is still continuing. We have been in Cuba for nearly four years, during which time we have not faced any trial or charges. We are also on hunger strike because of the medical abuse and neglect we face and because they prevent us from learning about our religion and about religious issues. Two days ago, while I was writing these memoirs, I became really ill; I fell and was taken to the hospital. I spent two days there and then they brought me back here. Here I am now; as I try to write the last page of my memoirs, I am in a terrible state.


I would thus like to point out that NOT all of the soldiers in Guantánamo tortured and oppressed us. There were some soldiers who treated us humanely, some of them would cry because of what was happening to us and were embarrassed by the style of management at the camp and even by the American government, their lack of justice and oppression of us. To give an example, when I was in Camp India in Camp Delta and I was being tortured, an Afro-American came to me. He said sorry to me and gave me a cup of hot chocolate and some sweet biscuits. When I thanked him, he said, "I don't want your thanks. I want you to know that we are not all bad and we think differently". When I was talking to a soldier and I told him what happened to me, he cried and had tears in his eyes. He was clearly moved. He said sorry to me about what had happened to me and he also offered me some food. These are examples to show the reader that there are some soldiers who have humanity, irrespective of their race, gender or faith.

January 12, 2006
Texas Redistricting Is One More Hurdle for DeLay
By RICK LYMAN
HOUSTON, Jan. 11 - Representative Tom DeLay is in the toughest re-election campaign of his 11-term House career, a battle that might be decided not only by his legal problems, but also by the Congressional redistricting plan he spearheaded in 2003.

The redistricting led to the loss of six Democratic seats in Texas in 2004, but it also shifted thousands of Democratic voters to strong Republican districts. Among those, Mr. DeLay's 22nd District added several Democratic-leaning parts of Galveston County; several political analysts estimate they may have raised the district's Democratic vote around 5 percentage points.

"There is huge irony here," said Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist. "Six Democrats in Congress were eliminated, but the seventh victim may turn out to be the author of the plan."

Should Mr. DeLay survive, as expected, a March 7 primary challenge by three Republican opponents, in November he will face a former Democratic congressman, Nick Lampson, whose district once included those parts of Galveston County now in Mr. DeLay's district.

Mr. Lampson lost his seat in 2004 when his district, the Second, was reconfigured into a Republican-dominated one. He moved into the 22nd District last April, he said, with the intention of taking on Mr. DeLay.

"I'm not running against him because he took my district," Mr. Lampson said, seated in a two-room suite of campaign offices in Clear Lake. "I'm running against him because I think I was a better member of Congress than he was, and I can be again."

Mr. DeLay, who has been a regular presence in the district in recent weeks, paused on his way out of a speech to the Rotary Club of Pasadena South to reflect on the race ahead.

"Of course, it's going to be a tough race," he said, spinning in his right palm a silver dollar a constituent had just given him as a good-luck piece. "The entire Democratic machine has come down here from all over the country after me."

Local Republican leaders play down the chances that Mr. DeLay will be defeated in a district that remains predominantly Republican.

"The only people who consider this possible are clearly delusional," said Eric Thode, Republican chairman in Mr. DeLay's home county of Fort Bend. "It's not a competitive district. It's not even an issue."

Without question, Mr. DeLay has had a rough patch.

Indicted by a Travis County grand jury in September for state campaign finance law violations, he was forced to step down from his post as House majority leader temporarily. Next, a longtime political associate, Jack Abramoff, was indicted, then pleaded guilty last week to public corruption charges under an agreement to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Mr. DeLay, who failed to have his own case expedited, permanently resigned as majority leader on Saturday, saying he did not want his travails to become a distraction for the party.

Now, he will be running for re-election while standing trial in Austin on money laundering charges in a case over campaign financing that Mr. DeLay paints as politically motivated. Meanwhile, Washington waits to see what other indictments might flow from the Abramoff scandal.

"I think there is a 50-50 chance DeLay won't even be in the race in November," said Calvin C. Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

If he does stay in the race - and Mr. DeLay insists he will - he has the demographics of the 22nd District to bolster him.

"Despite everything, it's extremely difficult to dislodge Tom DeLay in a district with such a strong Republican base and a strong, straight-ticket Republican voting trend," said Ted Delisi, a Republican strategist in Austin.

Yet the district has changed since 2003, and not in Mr. DeLay's favor. Running in the reconfigured district for the first time in 2004, Mr. DeLay won handily, but with a smaller margin than in previous elections: 55 percent compared with his Democratic opponent's 41 percent.

The district spreads across the southern rim of the Houston metroplex, from Galveston through the southern Houston suburbs of Harris County and into more rural Brazoria County and Fort Bend County, which includes Mr. DeLay's hometown of Sugar Land.

"I am sure the Democrats are going to pour money into this race," said Jared Woodfill, the Harris County Republican chairman. "But I think the congressman is going to be successful in March and in November. What is different this cycle is that people on both sides have started working harder and earlier."

Mr. DeLay is opposed in the Republican primary by Michael Fjetland, who has run against him before; Pat Baig, a former teacher and political novice; and Tom Campbell, a Houston lawyer who lives in Sugar Land and served in Washington as general counsel to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the administration of the first President Bush.

Supporters of Mr. DeLay portray Mr. Fjetland and Ms. Baig as mischief-makers with little financing. Mr. Campbell, the latest entrant, appears to have solid credentials as a conservative Republican and promises to raise $400,000 to fight Mr. DeLay over the next two months.

"He seems like a decent enough guy," Mr. Woodfill said of Mr. Campbell, "but the fact is he has not been active in the party. And he hasn't got much time to mount a serious campaign."

Mr. Campbell said that his outsider status would help him with voters weary of Mr. DeLay's hard-knuckled politics.

"Congressman DeLay has employed an 'ends justified the means' approach and, somewhere along the way, has cut corners and engaged in ethical lapses," Mr. Campbell said before a campaign event at a Houston law firm Wednesday. "This is an uphill battle, but Tom DeLay has been kind enough to come partway down the hill."

The general election in November is further complicated by the emergence of another former congressman, Steve Stockman, an ardently conservative Republican who also once represented a part of what is now the 22nd District. Mr. Stockman has said he may run as an independent, a move Republican leaders fear might cost Mr. DeLay votes.

Wade Webster, a Republican precinct chairman in Clear Lake, said he thought the party would stand behind Mr. DeLay, for now.

"It's going to be tougher, yes, with all the bad publicity and the innuendos and what-not," he said. "Until something more definitive comes out, I'm supporting him. But I retain the option to change my mind."

Democrats, meanwhile, happily cite polls suggesting that Mr. DeLay is in jeopardy and insist that his problems will undermine him in the district, even if it is Republican.

In a poll for The Houston Chronicle last March, for instance, 40 percent of the respondents in Mr. DeLay's district said their opinion of him had dropped in the previous year. And a USA Today/Gallup poll in early December showed Mr. DeLay with a favorability rating of just 37 percent, and had him losing to an unnamed Democratic opponent 49 percent to 36 percent.

Mr. DeLay and his supporters question the polls' methodologies and say his support is significantly stronger. "We have our own internal polls showing us doing much better," Mr. DeLay said, flipping that silver dollar.

He paused and held up the dollar between his thumb and index finger.

"Am I allowed to keep this?" he asked. "What do you think? Am I allowed to keep this?"



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Lawbreaker in the Oval Office
By BOB HERBERT
The country has set the bar so low for the performance of George W. Bush as president that it is effectively on the ground.

No one expects very much from Mr. Bush. He's currently breaking the law by spying on Americans in America without getting warrants, but for a lot of people that's just George being George. Forget the complexities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or even the Fourth Amendment's safeguards against unwarranted (pun intended) government intrusion into matters that we have a right to keep private.

On his frequent trips home to his ranch in Texas, the president likes to ride his bicycle. He's not studying the Constitution.

"People are changing phone numbers and phone calls, and they're moving quick," said Mr. Bush, as he defended his authorization of warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on phone calls and e-mail into and out of the U.S.

As the president put it, "If somebody from Al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why."

Well, that's true, Mr. President. But Congress and the Constitution have spoken as clearly as a bright sun on a cloudless afternoon about these matters: if you're going to eavesdrop on Americans in the U.S., you'd better run out and get a warrant.

You have to act fast? O.K., do what you have to do - but you then have to apply for a warrant within 72 hours. If, after three days, you can't explain to a court - a secret court, at that - why you need to be spying on somebody, then you need to stop that spying.

It has become fashionable to say that this controversy is about the always difficult problem of balancing civil liberties and national security. But I think the issue is starker than that. The real issue is President Bush's apparent belief - stoked at every opportunity by that zealot of zealots, Dick Cheney - that he can do just about anything he wants (mistreat prisoners, lock people up forever without charge), and justify it in the name of fighting terror.

"There's an enemy out there," said Mr. Bush.

That's also true. But this is not China or the old Soviet Union. The United States should be the one place on the planet where even a devastating terror strike by Al Qaeda is unable to shake the foundations of the government, which is grounded in the rule of law, the separation of powers and a constitution that guarantees the fundamental rights of the citizenry.

A group of former government officials and law professors from some of the nation's most distinguished universities sent a letter to Congressional leaders on Monday expressing their deep concern about the president's domestic spying program. They said:

"Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly, the program appears on its face to violate existing law."

Among those who signed the letter were William Sessions, the former F.B.I. director, and Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general who is now a professor at Harvard Law School.

The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, also took issue with the administration's defense of the warrantless eavesdropping. Its analysts searched diligently but apparently in vain for a legal justification of the spying authorized by the president. Their detailed report on the constitutional and statutory issues raised by the program said, "It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the N.S.A. electronic-surveillance operations here under discussion."

The administration's attempt to justify the program, the analysts said, "does not seem to be as well grounded" as the administration seems to believe.

President Bush and others in the administration have repeatedly argued that the president's wartime powers trump some of the important constitutional guarantees and civil liberties that Americans had previously taken for granted. They don't seem to see the irony of fighting on behalf of liberty in Afghanistan and Iraq while curtailing precious liberties here at home.

The administration should not be allowed to use war as an excuse. The U.S. is a very special place in large part because no one, not even the president, is above the law.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying

Former Employee Admits to Being a Source for The New York Times

By BRIAN ROSS

01/10/26 "ABC" — Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.

For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world.

"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."

But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.

"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.

Tracking Calls

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."

According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.

Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.

"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."

The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."

ABC News' Vic Walter and Avni Patel contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

Senators Seize on Hearing as Sounding Board Los Angeles Times
The line of questioning for Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. retreads ground but few lawmakers pass up the chance to get their agenda on camera. With typical Midwestern bluntness, Sen. Charles E. Grassley seemed to say it all when he summed up the state of play on Day 3 of the Senate committee hearing on the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. "We've gone over the same ground many times," the Iowa Republican said. "The horse is dead. Quit beating it." Since Alito first sat down in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, it has become clear that the process is as much about the senators and their own agendas as it is about the nominee. Several lawmakers have spent more time delivering their own stemwinders than they have asking questions of Alito. Nary a mind appears to have been changed. The result has been a hearing regarded by many Capitol Hill veterans of past confirmation battles as one of the most colorless in modern memory. ("It's like the first half of 'The Wizard of Oz,' " one Democratic staff member said.) Democrats tried to step up the drama Wednesday with more confrontational questioning, but the room remained heavy with a sense of inevitability. The hearing "really isn't a forum for senators making up their minds as it is for advertising their views and trying to expose Alito's," said Elliot E. Slotnick, an expert on judicial nominations at Ohio State University. Although Democrats largely have failed to fluster the nominee, let alone derail his confirmation, they have tried to use the hearing to depict him as an ideologue who probably would tip the balance of the Supreme Court sharply to the right. Republicans have used their time before the television cameras to counter the Democrats' criticism, lob softball questions and shower Alito with praise. Lacking were the fireworks that marked the confirmation hearings of two previous Supreme Court nominees: Robert H. Bork, whose 1987 nomination was rejected after he constantly haggled with Democratic senators over his conservative views, and Clarence Thomas, who in 1991 overcame bombshell accusations of sexual harassment to win a high-court seat. Even without fireworks, a high-profile hearing such as this one — held before a sea of cameras — is hog heaven for publicity-conscious senators. Rare is the legislator who passes up the chance to question the nominee on national television, even if the question has already been asked. "Since the politicians seem to have made up their mind, and the rest of this is simply playing out, I suspect that if there weren't TV cameras, this part of the hearing would be over by now," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who is thinking about running for president in 2008, found a sure-fire gimmick to get the cameras turned on him. Discussing a controversial Princeton University alumni group of which Alito was once a member, Biden clapped on a Princeton baseball cap. Every camera in the room swung to him, and the sound of shutters clicking was deafening. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also understood the value of props in a hearing as dry and legalistic as this one. He pulled out and waved a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Again, cameras clicked. Republicans had props of their own. Responding to Democrats' claim that Alito was being evasive and refusing to answer key questions, Kyl displayed a poster with quotes from the day's newspaper articles describing him as a forthcoming witness. For his part, the nominee sat patiently at the witness table Wednesday morning, having already endured 7 1/2 hours of questioning. "I admire the stamina both of the nominee and his family," who sat behind him throughout the proceedings, said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's top Democrat. Many issues were revisited as Democrats returned to the dais battered by overnight criticism from liberal activists that they were going too easy on Alito. "They forgot that part of their role is to educate the American people" about Alito's record, said one activist who asked not to be identified while criticizing Democratic senators. "Some of them didn't go the additional step of thinking about how to reach other Americans whose minds haven't been made up." Taking a more confrontational tack Wednesday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) demanded a committee subpoena to obtain documents about the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative group that had opposed affirmative action and admission of women at the university. When Kennedy proposed a closed-door meeting to vote on the subpoena, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the committee chairman, snapped at the challenge to his power to call the shots. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," he said with a crack of the gavel. That was just one of several instances in which Senate power-brokers clashed over the chamber's internal rituals, leaving the nominee — the reason for the hearing — a mere bystander. At one point, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) broke an unwritten Senate rule by criticizing a colleague when he was not present to respond: He pointed out that Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) had switched his position on abortion many years ago, and so was poorly positioned to criticize Alito for recanting past statements. Durbin later wanted to respond and explain his switch on the issue, but insisted on waiting until Coburn was in the room to do so. After Democrats spent the day trying to portray Alito as evasive, a friend of corporations, a foe of abortion rights and a potential rubber stamp for presidential power, even they admitted that it was a tough message to get across in simple terms. "That's a problem with this battle," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "These are serious issues that go to the core of what this country is all about. Sometimes it's tough to put it on a bumper sticker."
Alito Turns Aside Democrats' Criticism Forbes
Sam I Am CBS News
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Military says armor has mixed benefits Boston Globe
Insurgents in Iraq now commonly use explosives that ''overmatch" American armor, the Army and Marine Corps warned yesterday in response to a recent study showing greater use of body armor might have saved the lives of some troops. The two branches also warned that expanding the use of armor, as some members of Congress have demanded, could deprive troops of the mobility needed to avoid other threats. In a set of talking points prepared for a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, senior officers sought to rebut the impression that they are not addressing lingering shortages of armor. They maintained that every soldier in harm's way has ''the best body armor in the world" and that ''no soldier leaves a US base in Iraq unless they are in at least an armored vehicle."
US troops in Iraq get heavier body armor Xinhua
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Dems doomed without solid reform plan Yale University Daily News
Have you ever had a moment when it suddenly, finally and tragically dawned on you that, however much you may love your significant other, he or she is simply never going to change enough for you to stay together? I'm afraid I may be reaching that point with the Democrats. To root for the Democrats is generally to suffer from sustained bouts of exasperation, but lately the liberal idealists on this campus have been subjected to new levels of pain. Here we stand at what should be a moment of unparalleled opportunity for blue America, a perfect chance to retake the Congress in 2006 as the Republican war machine drowns in a swamp of corruption. Just in the last few months, criminal indictments have forced Tom Delay to at last vacate his leadership position so that a less evil party hack can fill it. The Jack Abramoff scandal has exploded across front pages around the country -- the demise of the powerful Republican lobbyist has tainted innumerable lawmakers and political figures, overwhelmingly conservative, who chose to do business with him. And other prominent Republican ethical woes, like the indictment of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, have added fuel to the fire. And yet what is the Democratic response to this ethical implosion? Of course, minority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are making the predictable rounds on the morning talk shows to piously condemn the "culture of corruption in Republican Washington." But as is usually the problem for the party these days, Democrats must do more than criticize the Republicans in power. They must actually articulate what they would do differently. In recent clashes between the parties, the Democratic failure to do this has been, though inept, not bone-crushingly stupid. For instance, the party's refusal to articulate an alternative vision for Iraq probably has something to do with the fact that Democrats can't agree on what they would do differently in Iraq. But when it comes to the cloud of corruption hovering over Washington today, which the Abramoff/Delay/Cunningham scandals have highlighted so starkly, there is a blindingly obvious path to salvation available to the Democrats, which, for reasons passing understanding, they have chosen to ignore. Why hasn't the party already taken a page from Newt Gingrich's book, assembled all its members from both chambers on the steps of Congress, held a massive press conference, and signed onto a new "Contract with America"? Smiling for the cameras, ranking Democrats could hold hands, seize the moment and announce a bold new package of real meaningful reforms that actually have a hope of changing the much-discussed Washington "culture of corruption." They could propose a completely overhauled federal system of campaign finance, with robust matching funds for House, Senate and presidential candidates who raised lots of small contributions instead of a few large ones. They could suggest a battery of new restrictions on lobbyists, including financial penalties for senators, representatives and staffers who elect to become lobbyists as soon as they leave the government. They could pledge an overhauled system of congressional appropriations, designed to cut down on pork and earmarks. And so on. It should be noted that some attempts along these lines have been made. Democratic Representatives Allen, Frank, Obey and Price have introduced a modest but significant package of desperately needed changes to the Washington system, and a host of House Democrats have signed onto their bill. Yet little attention has been paid to the proposed law, and Democratic leaders have not moved to make it a significant centerpiece of their agenda. Columnist Josh Eidelson wrote on this page two days ago that the Abramoff affair is "a right-wing scandal," at the heart of which is "the politics of rewarding power with money and money with power." I certainly agree that in general this is not a bipartisan scandal -- the vast majority of the corrupt lobbying, ear-marking and secretive influence-buying going on in Washington today is taking place on the Republican side of the aisle. But I suspect the primary reason for this is more pragmatic than ideological. Depressingly enough, at the present, Republicans control all the organs of the federal government. In general, the Democrats in Washington aren't powerful enough to be worth bribing. I suspect Eidelson is onto something in writing about a conservative "alliance between businessmen, politicians and lobbyists." Certainly, the Abramoff scandal evinces a darkly elegant synergy between corporate power and political power that only a right-winger like Grover Norquist could exploit to its fullest potential. But let us not pretend that Washington Democrats are not capable of trying to at least imitate these Republican masterminds. Throughout the 1990s, Democrats happily raked in tens of millions of dollars from CEOs and labor PACs and liberal lobbyists. Today, countless Democratic members of Congress court large donations with the same enthusiasm, if not the same success, as their Republican colleagues. Abramoff and Delay may be Republican problems at the moment, but in the long run there is plenty of corruption to go around in Washington. Liberal Yalies who urgently believe in reforming our system of government, and indeed liberal reformers across the country, must at some point ask themselves whether the Democratic Party still deserves their allegiance. Is the right-wing nexus of money and power, which Eidelson identified, really going to be broken up by an ineffectual opposition party which seems both unwilling and unable to seize the initiative on this important issue? Or might our best hope for change actually lie elsewhere -- with a high-profile national politician who has an enormous base of support on both sides of the aisle, who has thrown himself at the cause of reform for over a decade, and who has ironically proved far more effective at taking on the right-wing than any single Democrat. John McCain in 2008, anyone? Roger Low is a junior in Branford College. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
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A New Orleans For All
by Wade Rathke, TomPaine.com
When Bush visits today, he'll find a city in desperate need for more funding and fighting a pitched battle over how to rebuild.
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The Unkindest Cuts
by Anya Kamenetz, TomPaine.com
Congress' most recent budget cuts put the biggest burden on those who can least afford it -- college students.
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NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying On Millions Of Americans

Former Employee Admits to Being a Source for The New York Times

By BRIAN ROSS

He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11529.htm

White House sees 2006 budget gap over $400 billion 1 hour, 18 minutes ago

The White House projected a 2006 budget deficit of more than $400 billion on Thursday, a sharp increase over a July forecast, and blamed the surge largely on costs of recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

The new deficit projection was likely to further intensify an election-year debate about whether to renew President George W. Bush's tax cuts that he says are essential for maintaining economic growth but which Democrats say are a drain on federal coffers.

The deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Joel Kaplan, said White House officials believed that by sticking to Bush's economic policies and spending restraint "we will return to our downward trajectory and remain on path to cut the deficit in half by 2009."

A July forecast had projected the 2006 budget deficit at $341 billion. Kaplan said preliminary calculations indicate the deficit will exceed $400 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product.

Kaplan said the costs of recovering from Katrina and a second hurricane, Rita, represented a "temporary event."




Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

January 12, 2006
In Shift, Bush Says He Welcomes Inquiry on Secret Wiretaps
By DAVID E. SANGER
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Jan. 11 - President Bush said Wednesday that he would welcome a Congressional investigation of whether he had the authority to order the National Security Agency to monitor communications in the United States without warrants.

Until now, the White House had opposed public hearings, which are scheduled to begin next month in the Senate. But on Wednesday, answering questions from a friendly crowd in Louisville in a conference center decorated with signs that said "Winning the War on Terror," Mr. Bush appeared ready to make the best of a political necessity.

In his campaign-style meeting, he was repeatedly applauded for authorizing the wiretaps, a decision that some of his political aides said they believed would ultimately help rebuild his approval ratings by demonstrating the lengths to which he would go to prevent another terrorist attack inside the United States.

Asked whether his administration was going to "go after the media" for revealing operations like the domestic wiretapping, Mr. Bush instead defended his decision to authorize the surveillance. "I did so because the enemy still wants to hurt us," he said. "And it seems like to me that if somebody is talking to Al Qaeda, we want to know why."

His order enabled the National Security Agency to monitor the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States suspected of links to Al Qaeda.

Singling out Americans and others in the United States for such surveillance would normally require a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, although the act also allows the attorney general to authorize a wiretap if it is reported to the court within 72 hours.

"Now, I - look, I understand people's concerns about government eavesdropping," Mr. Bush said. "And I share those concerns, as well. So obviously I had to make the difficult decision between balancing civil liberties and, on a limited basis - and I mean limited basis - try to find out the intention of the enemy."

The president never directly addressed the question of why he avoided the existing system, although his legal advisers and intelligence aides have said it was too cumbersome.

"There will be a lot of hearings to talk about that, but that's good for democracy," Mr. Bush said. "Just so long as the hearings, as they explore whether or not I had the prerogative to make the decision I made, doesn't tell the enemy what we're doing. See, that's the danger."

Mr. Bush said some key members of Congress had been briefed on the program several years ago and "we gave them a chance to express their disapproval or approval," brushing past the claims of some Democrats that their questions about the program's legality were never resolved.

The president's statement that he was willing to see public hearings go forward was a change from his stance at a news conference at the White House just before Christmas. At the time, he said, "Any public hearings on programs will say to the enemy, 'Here's what they do - adjust.' "

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has scheduled open hearings, and the Senate Intelligence Committee has said it plans closed hearings.

The president's legal justification for the N.S.A. program has gotten mixed reviews, ranging from enthusiastic to skeptical to scathing.

This week, Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, released a 14-page legal analysis she had requested from a former C.I.A. general counsel, Jeffrey H. Smith, now a Washington lawyer.

Although recognizing the president's assertion that his power as commander in chief justifies warrantless surveillance, Mr. Smith called that case "weak" in light of the language and documented purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires warrants.

Mr. Smith also wrote that the Congressional resolution authorizing military force against those who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "does not, in my view, justify warrantless electronic surveillance of United States persons in the United States."

"The president was correct in concluding that many of our laws were not adequate to deal with this new threat," Mr. Smith wrote. "He was wrong, however, to conclude that he is therefore free to follow the laws he agrees with and ignore those with which he disagrees."

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 12, 2006
S.E.C. Opens Formal Investigation of I.B.M.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:09 p.m. ET

BOSTON (AP) -- Federal investigators have racheted up their probe of how International Business Machines Corp. advised Wall Street about stock option expenses in the first quarter of 2005, the technology giant disclosed Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission opened an informal investigation of the matter last June, but Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM said the agency had informed the company Wednesday that the probe is now formal.

That means the SEC can issue subpoenas for documents rather than just requesting them. The step often occurs in the course of an agency investigation.

The investigation surrounds the guidance IBM gave before its first-quarter earnings, which were released last April 14.

At the time, the company said stock options cut into earnings by 10 cents per share. But analysts had been expecting 14 cents a share, a figure that Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge gave in a chart accompanying an April 5 conference call. Loughridge was disclosing what options costs would have been a year earlier if IBM had been expensing stock compensation at the time. He indicated that the first quarter of 2005 would yield a similar result.

IBM went on to post a disappointing first quarter, missing analysts' expectations by six cents per share. Some analysts complained that IBM led them to believe the options-expensing costs would be higher so as to keep analysts' overall expectations down and thus cushion the poor results.

IBM spokesman Ed Barbini would not comment on that claim. But he said IBM is cooperating with the SEC, and noted that the agency has informed the company that the investigation should not be construed as an indication the law was broken.

IBM shares fell 60 cents Thursday to close at $83.57 on the New York Stock Exchange before the formal investigation was announced. The stock was at $82.50 in after-hours trading.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home

January 12, 2006
Maryland Bill on Wal-Mart Health Care Spending Advances
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:23 p.m. ET

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) -- Maryland's Senate voted Thursday to enact a first-in-the-nation requirement that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spend more on employee health care despite the governor's veto of the legislation. The measure, touted as a money-saver for Medicaid, now goes to the House for a vote.

At least 30 state legislatures are considering similar bills.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 30-17 to overturn a veto of the so-called Wal-Mart bill last summer by Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. The measure now heads to the House, where the prospects of a three-fifths vote required to overturn vetoes was less certain, though Democrats control that chamber as well.

Supporters of the bill said Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, unfairly costs taxpayers money by spending less than 8 percent of payroll on health care. The bill requires all companies with more than 10,000 employees to spend that much or give the state the difference. Currently, only Wal-Mart would meet the criteria in Maryland.

Critics called it a dangerous precedent that ultimately would cost Maryland jobs.

The veto override has been one of the session's most intensely lobbied, with business groups taking out print ads supporting a veto and labor groups rallying and taking out their own ads siding with supporters.

The decision is being closely watched by labor unions and legislatures around the country, with unions pursuing similar legislation this year in more than 30 states.

The unions contend that some large, profitable companies shift health insurance costs to workers, taxpayers and other businesses. They are proposing legislation, like the Maryland bill, that would require big employers to dedicate a percentage of their payroll to health care benefits. The unions have said the states they will focus on include Colorado, Connecticut and Washington.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home

January 12, 2006
Federated to Sell Lord & Taylor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:02 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lord & Taylor -- which once defined American classic designer styling but lost its cachet amid fierce competition -- is on the block.

Federated Department Stores Inc., which purchased Lord & Taylor when it acquired May Department Stores Inc. last year, said Thursday it will sell the New York-based department store chain because it no longer fits with an expansion strategy for its larger Macy's and Bloomingdale's chains.

The most likely buyer would be a private-equity group, said Phil Zahn, a retail analyst at Fitch Ratings, as ''there are not many major department stores chains that are looking to make acquisitions'' at this point. Other analysts believe that upscale retailers like Saks Inc. or Neiman Marcus Group Inc. may be interested.

The news sent shares of Federated up almost 2 percent.

''Lord & Taylor is a niche specialty retailer with a great name, many outstanding locations, an experienced management team and a strong customer following that makes it a desirable business,'' said Federated Chief Executive Terry J. Lundgren in a statement. The transaction is slated to be completed by year-end.

The decision to sell Lord & Taylor did not come as a surprise to Wall Street analysts. In September, Federated, which is converting most of May's nameplates to the Macy's brand, said that it was studying what to do with Lord & Taylor.

Its sale would be the latest in a flurry of deals in the retail sector. The latest involved Saks Inc., which said Monday it was considering selling its Parisian department store chain.

The move would continue a sell-off of stores by Saks, which announced in late October that it is selling roughly 140 stores in its Northern department store group to Bon-Ton Stores Inc. Belk Inc. purchased its Proffitt's and McRae's stores in July.

Jim Sluzewski, a spokesman for Federated, said the intention is to sell Lord & Taylor as a ''whole'' chain with 55 stores mostly in the Northeast, but analysts speculated Thursday on a number of scenarios, including the chain being sold piecemeal. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase is advising Federated on the transaction.

The retailer's most coveted asset is its real estate, particularly its 10-story, 611,000-square-foot flagship on Fifth Avenue, according to Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail leasing sales division. Consolo believes that a big-box retailer like Target Corp. may want to buy some of its mall sites, but the New York site would be likely sold to a commercial developer, who could convert it into a ''class A development.''

Consolo and others believe that Federated may not want to sell the New York location to a department store competitor given its proximity to Federated's Macy's store.

Whoever buys the overall chain, which Federated said generated sales of $1.56 billion in 2004, needs to do a lot of work, analysts say.

Lord & Taylor, founded in 1826, established a reputation for showcasing top American design talent and was the first to pioneer the concept of personal shopping, according to its company Web site. But about a decade ago, it began to lose upscale customers to competitors such as Nordstrom Inc. with a switch to cheaper brands, according to C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, in Charleston, S.C.

The retailer's problems worsened with increased competition from specialty stores like Chico's FAS Inc., which developed a strong following for the over 35-year-old female customer.

In 2003, Lord & Taylor, under the leadership of CEO Jane Elfers, decided to close 32 underperforming stores in 15 states and spearheaded a makeover aimed to bring back its luster. The retailer eliminated moderate-price labels that were overly distributed elsewhere and brought in trendier brands such as Kate Spade.

But analysts said efforts to bring back the more well-heeled customer hasn't been that successful. ''The perception has been mid-range at best,'' said Consolo.

Federated said it would account for Lord & Taylor as a discontinued operation in its monthly and quarterly financial statements, which will cut last year's fourth-quarter profit from continuing operations by about 10 cents per share.

Federated shares rose $1.32 to close at $72.95 on the New York Stock Exchange.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

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January 12, 2006
Europe Increases Its Efforts to Stop Bird Flu
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
International Herald Tribune
ROME, Jan. 12 - As Turkish officials shifted into high gear to control the outbreaks of avian influenza that have spread across their country, neighboring countries and nations across the European Union enhanced their surveillance efforts so the virus would be detected quickly if it crossed the border.

"The European Union and the world will see Turkey puts its signature on a great success," said the Turkish health minister, Recep Akdag, expressing confidence that the outbreaks would be controlled in the near future.

But officials with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome have expressed worries that the outbreaks in Turkey are so widespread that it may now be impossible to eradicate the A(H5N1) virus. If Turkish measures are unsuccessful and the virus become endemic in Turkey - as it is in parts of southeast Asia - that would create a constant reservoir of the disease at the edge of Europe, which would inevitably cross over from time to time.

Turkish officials took weeks to detect the problem in the remote eastern part of the country, allowing the virus to spread nationwide in birds. The World Health Organization today said that the number of people who have become infected there has risen to 18, from the 15 reported previously, according to The Associated Press.

The F.A.O. urged countries near Turkey to maintain a "high alert" for the virus and to inform the public about the need to report all sick birds and to warn about the dangers of contact. The organization specifically mentioned Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

"The surveillance is generally weak," in the border regions of those countries, said Joseph Domenech, chief veterinarian at the Food and Agriculture Organization.

More worrisome, it is possible - if not probable - that avian influenza is already present in at least some of these neighboring countries, officials said, since the wild migratory birds that are thought to have brought the virus to Turkey presumably would have seeded other countries as well.

The largest outbreak in Turkey, which has resulted in the deaths of three children, is in the border town of Dogubayazit, which is about 25 miles from Iran. Normally, there is extensive commercial traffic running through, but Iranian authorities have now closed the border.

Noting that the F.A.O. is sending a team of experts to surrounding countries next week, Dr. Domenech said, "We are the first to admit that there could be outbreaks there, although there are currently not indications."

On Wednesday, the European Commission announced that it was upgrading its surveillance requirements for all member states, which must submit proposals for national early detection programs by Feb. 7.

The commission stipulated new requirements for laboratory testing and sampling of both poultry and wild birds; it will provide more than $2 million to support laboratory tests to detect the virus.

So far, the commission noted, no birds in the European Union have tested positive for the virus, although another candidate country, Romania, has had outbreaks.

Britain and Russia have warned their citizens not to travel to Turkey. But today, , Marc Danzon, the World Health Organization's regional director for Europe, said that such restrictions were unnecessary.

Within the last few days, Turkish health officials have culled hundreds of thousands of birds to prevent spread of the disease. and started a massive broadcast campaign to alert its citizens to the dangers of bird flu.

All 15 human cases of avian influenza in Turkey have occurred after close contact with sick birds. As of now, the A(H5N1) virus does not spread easily to humans from birds and does not spread at all between people. But international health officials worry that it will acquire that ability through natural processes, setting off a worldwide pandemic.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 12, 2006
White House Asks High Court to Toss Appeal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:57 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to dismiss an appeal by a terror suspect held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Solicitor General Paul Clement based the request on a new law the Bush administration says sharply limits challenges to the detention of hundreds of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban operatives.

In November, the high court agreed to hear Salim Ahmed Hamdan's constitutional challenge to the administration's plan to try him and others by military commission for war crimes. In doing so, the justices agreed to test the president's wartime powers.

In late December, the president signed legislation requiring detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to appeal their detention status and punishments to a federal appeals court in Washington and not through lower federal courts.

''By establishing an exclusive review procedure for military commission challenges, Congress has made plain its judgment that judicial review of military commission proceedings should occur only after those proceedings have been completed,'' Clement told the justices in the filing.

The Supreme Court's intervention -- before Hamdan's trial by a military commission -- was a blow to the White House, which has been repeatedly criticized for its treatment of detainees. In 2004, the high court rebuked the administration for holding ''enemy combatants'' in legal limbo.

The Justice Department also cited the Detainee Treatment Act when it sought dismissal last week of nearly 200 lawsuits filed on behalf of more than 300 detainees in U.S. District Court in Washington. The act also deals with interrogation standards for captives in the administration's war on terrorism.

The law's chief Democratic sponsor, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said it had been altered so it would not apply to pending cases.

Hamdan is among about 500 foreigners who were designated ''enemy combatants'' and imprisoned at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

Initially, the Bush administration refused to let the men see attorneys or challenge their imprisonment in courts. The Supreme Court in 2004 said U.S. courts were open to filings from the detainees, although justices may be called on to clarify the legal rights of the detainees in a separate appeal.

Clement, in Thursday's filing with the high court, argued that the lawsuits filed on behalf of the foreign detainees ''have consumed enormous resources and disrupted the operation of Guantanamo during time of war.''

Hamdan's lawyers want the justices to decide if Bush overstepped his authority with plans for a military trial for Hamdan, who has admitted serving as Osama bin Laden's former driver. Hamdan is one of nine Guantanamo prisoners who face trial by military commission.

Human rights activists and civil libertarians have criticized the military commissions established by the Pentagon, saying they are flawed because they lack basic protections and rights for defendants.

In November 2004, Hamdan's case was halted when a federal judge in Washington ruled that the administration's military commissions were legally inadequate.

Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, denies conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism and denies he was a member of al-Qaida. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, murder and terrorism.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home

Republican Senator Criticizes Bush Administration Over Iraq
By Mike O'Sullivan
Los Angeles
12 January 2006

U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel
One vocal critic of the Bush administration is a member of the president's own party. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska says he worries about the United States getting bogged down in Iraq, and about what he sees as an unhealthy concentration of power in the presidency. The outspoken senator shared his views at a town hall meeting in Los Angeles.

Senator Hagel says he sometimes gets e-mails calling him a traitor. "One of the comments that I received lately was a very straightforward piece of advice, that is, 'Senator, shut your mouth. Do what the president tells you to do. That's why we elected you.'"

The senator reminded his listeners that the U.S. government has three equal partners, the legislature and the judiciary, in addition to the president and his administration.

The blunt words, he adds, are not what he hears from his fellow senators, but he admits that some Republican colleagues think he is out of line in his public statements. He repeated some of his criticisms in a meeting sponsored by the group Town Hall Los Angeles, held in the newly opened National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. He says progress in Iraq is up to the Iraqis.

"The United States represents the most significant stabilizing factor in Iraq and has for the last three years, but at the same time, we are probably the most destabilizing factor in Iraq. And that has to be sorted out, and that will be sorted out," he said. "And it goes back, it seems to me, to the Iraqi people, and will reside within the Iraqi government's decisions as to where they want to go."

Last month, Iraqis voted for members of their 275-member national assembly, which will select a president and two deputy presidents, who in turn will appoint a prime minister to run the government.

The debates over Iraq and U.S. presidential powers in the war on terrorism have highlighted tensions between the president and some members of Congress, most often Democrats. But on some issues, the critics also include Republicans. Senator Hagel sees this administration, like some before it, as asserting greater powers in its relations with Congress than the constitution grants it.

The most recent dispute concerns news leaks that the president authorized wiretapping of telephone calls between suspected terrorists and U.S. citizens without court approval. The White House says the president has the authority to authorize the wiretaps, and that they are necessary to protect American lives. Critics say the president does not have that power, and Mr. Hagel says he wants a hearing on the issue.

Recent opinion polls show some 58 percent of Americans are unhappy with the president's handling of Iraq, and some Democrats in Congress have seized upon the issue. Mr. Bush in turn has criticized Democrats for statements he says harm the morale of US troops, embolden insurgents and work against the Iraqis who are struggling to achieve democracy.

Among those in the audience was senior high school student Curtis Williams, who is more concerned with domestic than international matters. He asked about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, and left inner city residents without help for days.

"Why is there so much more help going on in Iraq than people needing it more in the US?" he asked. " Why is there more help going to them in Iraq?"

Senator Hagel agreed the government has failed to provide adequate help to the victims of hurricane Katrina, but said Congress and the president are cooperating in the effort to rebuild New Orleans.

U.S. Seeks to Avoid Detainee Ruling

By Dan Eggen and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 13, 2006; A07



The Bush administration took the unusual step yesterday of asking the Supreme Court to call off a landmark confrontation over the legality of military trials for terrorism suspects, arguing that a law enacted last month eliminates the court's ability to consider the issue.

In a 23-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said the justices should throw out an appeal by Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, an alleged driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, because a new statute governing the treatment of U.S. detainees "removes the court's jurisdiction to hear this action."

The brief represents the latest escalation in the showdown between the Bush administration and critics of the government over the legal rights of military detainees captured overseas. Hamdan's case is one of several high-stakes legal battles working their way through the courts, and the Supreme Court's November decision to consider his appeal was a blow to the government.

Hamdan is among approximately 500 inmates held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; nine are scheduled to be tried by "military commissions" created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hamdan's lawyers and many civil liberties groups have decried the commissions as unconstitutional and unfairly stacked against defendants.

Separately, the administration is trying to eliminate habeas corpus lawsuits filed on behalf of nearly every detainee, saying they have clogged federal courts with frivolous actions. The Supreme Court gave Guantanamo Bay detainees access to federal courts in a 2004 ruling.

The Detainee Treatment Act, principally written by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and signed into law Dec. 30, is intended to prevent detainees from having access to U.S. courts except in specific circumstances. It outlines a limited system for legal challenges by inmates, allowing them only to appeal the determination that they are enemy combatants to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then, potentially, to the Supreme Court. It also allows anyone convicted in a military commission to appeal that decision.

The two lawmakers and their colleagues have disagreed sharply in recent days over whether the legislation is meant to apply to cases such as Hamdan's that were filed before Bush signed the legislation into law.

Clement's brief argues that the statute must be given "immediate effect" -- meaning that previous legal challenges should be dismissed, and that Hamdan and other inmates should proceed under the new rules.

"Congress made clear that the federal courts no longer have jurisdiction over actions filed on behalf of Guantanamo detainees," Clement wrote.

Levin, in a statement issued yesterday, said that "the Justice Department is in error. Far from deciding that the relevant statutory language applies to pending cases, Congress specifically considered and rejected language that would have stripped the courts of jurisdiction in cases that they had before them."

Neal Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who represents Hamdan, declined to comment on the government's filing.

Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in the Hamdan case, said the government's brief ignores the fact that if Hamdan's case is dismissed, he and other detainees will have no avenue to challenge the legality of Bush's power to detain enemy combatants and create military trials.

"The government's basic argument is: You can't hear it now, but you can hear it later," Neuborne said. "What they don't say is that the other route doesn't let Hamdan raise the question of the president's authority in these cases. . . . They're not telling the Supreme Court the real consequences of their motion."

Justice Department officials believe cases filed on behalf of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay should now be pulled from all U.S. courts. They filed notice within days of the law's passage asking for the dismissal of cases in the U.S. District Court and the appeals court in the District of Columbia. The cases range from legal challenges of the military commissions process to complaints about treatment at the facility in Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton denied yesterday all motions in 15 pending detainee cases before him and indefinitely stayed the cases, noting that the new law "raises serious questions concerning whether this Court retains jurisdiction" to hear them. Walton wrote that he will wait for the appeals court to resolve the jurisdictional issues before removing the stays.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, who represents a Guantanamo Bay detainee named Jumah Dossari, said yesterday that the stay in his case leaves his client with few options for improving his conditions at the prison. Dossari has tried to kill himself at least 10 times, according to his lawyers, who have been asking the court for independent mental health experts and better living conditions.

"He may have been placed in a legal limbo that may last months or years," Colangelo-Bryan said. "This means that he is utterly and entirely at the mercy of the military, which chose to place him in isolation despite knowing that he was suicidal. Our hands are tied in terms of seeking relief."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Backdoor Draft, Back Again
Despite signaling that it would no longer tap the Individual Ready Reserve, the Army calls up more troops just in time for the holidays.
By Christopher Hayes



For more than 800 members of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), the most memorable part of the holiday season was a surprise stocking-stuffer from the United States Army. It came in the form of a blue and white Western Union Mailgram that ordered them to report for active duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Eric, a second year law student, who completed four years of active duty in 2002, was at his parents' house on Christmas Eve when they handed him what looked like an innocuous piece of mail from the Secretary of the Army. "I was pretty shocked," Eric (not his real name) says. "I went up to my room and hyperventilated for a bit and then came back down and didn't tell anyone for two days. I didn't want to ruin Christmas."

You might remember this practice by the name critics gave it during the 2004 presidential election: the "backdoor draft." In June of that year, the Pentagon announced the initial call-ups of the IRR--a rarely-deployed group of about 114,000 soldiers who have completed their active duty requirements and returned to civilian life. This raised the specter of unwilling combatants being pulled back into military service against their will, generating headlines, controversy and uncomfortable memories of Vietnam. It also proved to be such a headache to administer that in November 2005 the Army appeared to capitulate to pressure by suspending the program. But as In These Times has learned, the program has not been suspended. In exclusive interviews, six soldiers who received mobilization orders expressed anger and frustration about what they say is a bad-faith effort by the Army to wring extra service out those who are about to complete their service commitment. Nearly all asked that their names be changed in this article for fear of reprisal as they negotiate their responses to these orders.

"Back when people started using the phrase 'backdoor draft,' I was really skeptical," says one ex-ROTC cadet, who strongly opposes the Iraq war. "Now that I've been served papers, it really does feel like that."

All of the officers interviewed who received orders to deploy in late December share one thing in common: They all started active duty in 1998, which means their full 8-year contract with the Army--or Mandatory Service Obligation (MSO)--will expire in May. "We're all coming up on our MSO dates," says Jason, who along with about 40 other members of West Point's Class of 1998 received a call-up. "I get the impression that they did a check to see who they were coming close to losing and went ahead and sent out the orders." Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart denied this, insisting that "no population was singled out."

With only four months left before being officially discharged, Jason and others now face an 18-month tour of active duty in Iraq. "The Army is using two different rules for their benefit," says Paul Trotter, an ex-ROTC cadet who has already served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "They've got one rule that says we can call you up from the IRR at any point before your obligation is done. They've got another rule that says once you're on active duty, we can Stop-Loss you so you have to stay." The Army's Stop-Loss program, initiated in November 2002, allows it to indefinitely extend the term of active duty soldiers past their scheduled release date.

That means that for thousands of soldiers, the contract they signed pledging 8 years of service no longer holds any weight. In January 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed an authorization for involuntary mobilization. The IRR was last called up was during the first Gulf War. But then, soldiers were deployed to backfill Army positions in Germany and other bases rather than deployed directly into the combat theater. "When I was in the army, it was clear that if you're in the IRR, the only time you're going to go off to war is World War III," says Kevin O'Meara, a 43-year-old former Army human resources officer. O'Meara received a mobilization order in 2004 from which he was subsequently exempted. "The IRR was not designed for what was supposed to be this little jaunt in the desert."

"When I signed my contract, the impression was that the IRR was rarely used, only in a national emergency," says Jason. "I didn't think it would be used as a manpower tool to support an occupation."

From the moment the IRR call-up was announced in the summer of 2004, the Army had a difficult time enforcing its order. The Army was forced to abandon attempts to mobilize thousands of officers who had completed their 8-year commitment but hadn't sent in the paperwork to remove their names from the IRR rolls. As of December 11, 2005, of the 7,380 soldiers who received orders to mobilize, 3,521 have filed for exemptions or delays and nearly 500 have simply not shown up.

On November 18 the Washington Post reported that the Army was throwing in the towel. The Army has "suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty," the Post reported, "after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up."

For many soldiers, this meant they were off the hook. "I felt relieved after that Washington Post article," says Jason, the West Point grad. "Then on the 20th of December, I get the mailgram."

Lt. Col. Hart says that the December mobilization orders are all part of the original involuntary mobilization authorized in 2004 and that the Army will continue to issue such orders until it has successfully deployed 5,600 active-duty soldiers from the ranks of the IRR. So far, nearly 4,000 have deployed.

"We have 114,000 soldiers in the IRR and we're only looking at 7,000 who've received orders," Hart says. "Now mind you, it can be traumatic for the individual solider, but looking at the big picture it's understandable."

The news of the orders quickly spread among soldiers, as many scrambled to figure out their options. O'Meara, who has covered the issue on his blog, the Command T.O.C. , says nearly two dozen soldiers have contacted him, seeking advice on how to file for exemptions. Most exemptions, he says, are initially denied, but many succeed on appeal. So far, the Army has issued 1,616 of them. Every soldier interviewed for this article said they intend to file for an exemption based on health, family or schooling circumstances.

What frustrates these soldiers the most is a sense that the Army isn't being straight with them. "Back in July in '04 when I left active duty, if they'd said 'You can't leave, you have to do another tour,' I wouldn't have been happy about it," says Paul Trotter, who is seeking an exemption so he can continue to help home-school his autistic, seven-year-old son. "But I'd have much rather done that than have a life set up and a job and moved and all that stuff and then be told pull chalks out of that and go back to Iraq."

More confounding, each soldier had received phone calls and/or emails shortly before their mailgrams asking if they'd like to volunteer for the same deployment to which they've since been ordered. "I want to emphasize that we are only establishing a volunteer roster at this time," wrote an Army Career Management officer in an email to Jason two weeks before he received his mailgram.

The day after receiving his orders, Jason called the Career officer thinking there had been some mistake. "She said she was kind of upset with the way it had been handled," he says. "It turns out they had intended all along to call up everyone they contacted. It was never going to be voluntary."

The Army's effort to pull soldiers into active duty service just a few months before their contracts expire suggests that despite talk of draw-downs, military leaders anticipate that Operation Iraqi Freedom will need every last body they can get for the foreseeable future.

"There's this lack of courage on the part of politicians to admit that they need more bodies to do this," Eric says. "If the Army started a general draft there'd be public outcry, but because they're targeting people in the military who fear reprisal, people stay quiet about it and try to deal with it on their own."

"The basis of this is not a national emergency," says one officer, who echoed the sentiments of the group. "What this is is poor personnel planning."


Christopher Hayes is a Senior Editor of In These Times.

More information about Christopher Hayes

U.S. creates 'managers' for Iran and North Korea
By Douglas Jehl The New York Times

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2006


WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

WASHINGTON The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has created new "mission managers" for Iran and North Korea, adding those two countries to a short list of top-priority challenges for American intelligence agencies.

Iran and North Korea join counterterrorism and nuclear counterproliferation as areas of focus for senior management posts that were recommended last year by a high-level presidential commission.

The new managers for Iran and North Korea will be responsible, among other things, for identifying and filling gaps in intelligence on those two countries, Negroponte's office said Wednesday in announcing the appointments. Joseph DeTrani, who has served most recently as the American special envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, has been given the rank of ambassador and is taking on the North Korea portfolio; S. Leslie Ireland, a career intelligence officer and Middle East specialist, is to become mission manager for Iran.

DeTrani and Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies' work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate. The other two mission managers appointed by Negroponte to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation have already assumed their roles .

Negroponte has said that the mission managers have his full proxy and should be expected to play the same role that he would if he could devote his full attention to a single issue.

DeTrani spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the CIA, his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center and director of East Asia operations.

Ireland was most recently the executive assistant to Porter Goss, the CIA director. According to her official biography, she has, over a 20-year career, served as deputy chief for Arab-Israeli issues and special adviser for Iranian issues. She was also country director for Iran and Kuwait in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

January 13, 2006
Americans Split Over Immediate Iraq Withdrawal

(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Adults in the United States are evenly divided on whether their federal administration should end the coalition effort, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 48 per cent of respondents think the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, while 48 per cent believe all troops should be brought home as soon as possible.

The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,211 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 16,400 troops have been injured.

On Jan. 11 in Kentucky, U.S. president George W. Bush discussed the war, declaring, "I’d just like to give you my thinking on troop levels. I know a lot of people want our troops to come home—I do, too. But I don’t want us to come home without achieving the victory. We owe that to the mothers and fathers and husbands and wives who have lost a loved one. That’s what I feel. I feel strongly that we cannot let their sacrifice go in vain." 50 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. should set a timetable for when troops will be withdrawn from Iraq.

This week, U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney explained the White House’s position on the conflict, declaring, "(The president) has made a series of speeches now over the last two months. I think they’ve been very important in terms of reminding everybody what’s at stake in Iraq, giving the American people progress reports so they know what’s happening both in the political realm, as well as the security and military realm over there. And I think we’ve had a lot of good news out of Iraq over the course of the last year." 47 per cent of respondents think the U.S. made the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq.

Polling Data

Do you think the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, or do you think the U.S. should bring its troops home as soon as possible?

Jan. 2006
Dec. 2005
Oct. 2005

Keep troops in Iraq
48%
49%
47%

Bring troops home
48%
46%
48%

Don’t know / Refused
4%
5%
5%



Do you think the U.S. should or should not set a timetable for when troops will be withdrawn from Iraq?

Jan. 2006
Dec. 2005
Oct. 2005

Should set a timetable
50%
56%
52%

Should not set a timetable
42%
38%
43%

Should get out now
2%
1%
1%

Don’t know / Refused
6%
5%
4%



Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq?

Jan. 2006
Dec. 2005
Oct. 2005

Right decision
45%
47%
48%

Wrong decision
47%
48%
45%

Don’t know / Refused
8%
5%
7%



Source: Princeton Survey Research Associates / Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,503 American adults, conducted from Jan. 4 to Jan. 8, 2006. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 13, 2006
News Analysis
Few Glimmers of How Conservative Judge Alito Is
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - In over 18 hours responding to some 700 questions at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. mostly described a methodical and incremental approach to the law rooted in no particular theory.

But to the extent Judge Alito claimed a judicial philosophy, it aligned him with the court's two most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Judge Alito completed his testimony Thursday amid substantial opposition from Democrats, who indicated they would not support him, but saw little chance of blocking his confirmation.

On one of the few occasions Judge Alito spoke about his general approach to the law, he embraced a mode of constitutional interpretation, originalism, often associated with Justices Scalia and Thomas.

"In interpreting the Constitution," Judge Alito said Wednesday, "I think we should look to the text of the Constitution, and we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., by contrast, described a more eclectic and dynamic approach to constitutional interpretation at his confirmation hearings in September. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Judge Alito will replace if he is confirmed, has also embraced a variety of approaches.

"Judge Alito sounded less amenable to constitutional evolution than Roberts," said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who studied Judge Alito's dissenting opinions at the request of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, but has taken no position on the nomination. "He is someone who is more likely to vote with Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas than Justice O'Connor."

On more specific constitutional issues, Judge Alito affirmed what Jack M. Balkin, a law professor at Yale, calls the modern catechism necessary for confirmation. Judge Alito said that Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 school desegregation case, was correctly decided. He said the Constitution protected privacy in at least some aspects of procreation, endorsing two decisions giving constitutional protection to the use of contraceptives. And he said the principle of one person one vote is required by the Constitution.

Having agreed with those cases and propositions, though, Judge Alito largely drew the line at saying more, notably about abortion. He justified his approach by saying the first set of cases were unlikely to come before the Supreme Court and that other cases might well be revisited by it.

But he did provide some hints on an array of other issues. He rejected, for instance, the use of foreign legal materials in interpreting the Constitution. He said he had favored allowing cameras in the courtroom in his own court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.

On Thursday, he said he "can't think of a reason why" Congress could not outlaw employment discrimination against gay men and lesbians. And he said that a diverse student body was an important value in education.

It was the topics Judge Alito failed to discuss that concerned some scholars the most. Some questioned whether he had really drawn a principled line between the cases he viewed as finally settled, and so could discuss, and those he considered still to be in play.

Some of the cases and principles Judge Alito would discuss, said Vikram Amar, a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, could "very easily come up over the next decade in the court, let alone the next three decades." Among the examples Mr. Amar gave were the use of foreign legal materials, a 1952 opinion on presidential power and diversity in education.

What Judge Alito would and would not discuss was telling, said Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Georgetown.

"You can infer from the areas in which he is willing to talk and not willing to talk," said Mr. Tushnet, who opposes Judge Alito's confirmation. "The only inference you can draw is that he doesn't agree with the abortion decisions."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, asked Judge Alito on Thursday whether he shared the aggressive views of executive power discussed in a recent book by John Yoo, an architect and forceful advocate of the Bush administration's legal strategy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Judge Alito said he had not read the book, "The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11." But some of Judge Alito's answers suggested that he would not take as hard a line as Professor Yoo, who now teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Notably, Judge Alito endorsed a 1952 concurring opinion by Justice Robert H. Jackson rejecting President Harry S. Truman's assertion that he had the inherent constitutional authority to seize steel mills during the Korean War. The opinion, in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, set out a three-part sliding scale for considering clashes between presidential power and Congressional authority.

The president's power is at its "lowest ebb," Justice Jackson wrote, when Congress has forbidden a particular action. The administration has conceded that its domestic surveillance program violated the terms of a 1978 law requiring court approval for some intelligence gathering, arguing that it had authority to conduct the surveillance without warrants under both the Constitution and a Sept. 18, 2001, Congressional authorization to use military force.

In an interview Thursday, Professor Yoo said the balancing called for by the Jackson concurrence did not apply to the surveillance program.

"The Jackson concurrence applies to domestic matters which are outside the theater of combat," he said. The surveillance program, by contrast, is partly international, he said, and the theater of combat after the Sept. 11 attacks encompasses the United States.

Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University, said the differing interpretations of the applicability of the Jackson concurrence were significant.

"It's very striking," Professor Feldman said, "that both Judge Alito and Chief Justice Roberts said they would apply Justice Jackson's concurrence in the steel seizure case, because it reflects a view of presidential power that is not unbounded and is not the strongest version of the unitary executive theory. If you were truly to follow Youngstown, you can't embrace the strongest version of the unitary executive theory."

Judge Alito endorsed a version of the unitary executive theory in a 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. The theory can mean, in its weaker form, that the president has full authority over the executive branch. In its stronger form, the theory means that there are areas of executive power into which Congress and the courts are powerless to intrude.

Professor Yoo said that what he called "the robust version" of the theory could conclusively answer the legal controversy over the surveillance program. "If gathering intelligence about the enemy is executive, then it can't be taken away" by Congress or the courts, he said.

At the hearings, Judge Alito embraced the weaker version. For Judge Alito, said Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine who served in the Justice Department in the Reagan administration, the unitary executive theory "goes more to the direction of fully executive subordinates than any type of claim of executive supremacy, which Alito has rightly denied."

If anything, Professor Kmiec continued, Judge Alito "has an understanding of executive power that is so well within the mainstream that Alexander Hamilton might think it timid."

Judith Resnik, a law professor at Yale, disagreed.

"He's fabulous at tautology," Professor Resnik said of Judge Alito. "He says the president is not above the law. He says the president can only do what the Constitution allows him to do. But he doesn't say what the Constitution allows."

"One of the absolutely essential questions of American law at the moment is the ability of any human being to call the executive branch to account before the courts," she added, noting that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had affirmed that principle in a 2004 opinion allowing an American citizen to challenge his detention by the military. "That possibility must be available. What we have not heard from Judge Alito is a commitment to that point of view."

Judge Alito did indicate that he would take a relatively deferential view of Congressional power. "I would certainly approach the question of determining whether an act of Congress is constitutional with a heavy presumption in favor of the constitutionality of what Congress has done," he said on Thursday.

In the end, Judge Alito drew the line in what he would discuss almost exactly where Chief Justice Roberts had in his confirmation hearings in September. The similarity of the two men's positions should not be surprising, Professor Yoo said, as they were both government lawyers when Edwin Meese III served in the White House and the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.

"It shows the fruition," Professor Yoo said, "of the Reagan-Meese approach of grooming young lawyers in the 1980's who could do well at hearings 20 years later."



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January 13, 2006
Maryland Sets a Health Cost for Wal-Mart
By MICHAEL BARBARO
ANNAPOLIS, Md., Jan. 12 - The Maryland legislature passed a law Thursday that would require Wal-Mart Stores to increase spending on employee health insurance, a measure that is expected to be a model for other states.

The legislature's move, which overrode a veto by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, was a response to growing criticism that Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, has skimped on benefits and shifted health costs to state governments.

The vote came after a furious lobbying battle by Wal-Mart and by labor and liberal groups, and is likely to encourage lawmakers in dozens of other states who are considering similar legislation.

Many state legislatures have looked to Maryland as a test case, as they face fast-rising Medicaid costs, and Wal-Mart's critics say that too many of its employees have been forced to turn to Medicaid.

Under the Maryland law, employers with 10,000 or more workers in the state must spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on health insurance, or else pay the difference into a state Medicaid fund.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company was "weighing its options," including a lawsuit to challenge the law because it is close to that 8 percent threshold already.

It is unclear how much the new law will cost Wal-Mart in Maryland - or around the country, if similar laws are adopted, because Wal-Mart has not publicly divulged what it spends on health care.

But it was concerned enough about the bill to hire four firms to lobby the legislature intensely over the last two months, and contributed at least $4,000 to the re-election campaign of Governor Ehrlich.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, Mia Masten, said that "everyone should have access to affordable health insurance, but this legislation does nothing to accomplish this goal."

"This is about partisan politics," she said, "and this is poor public policy driven by special-interest groups."

There are four employers in Maryland with more than 10,000 workers - among them, Johns Hopkins University, the grocery chain Giant Food and the military contractor Northrop Grumman, but only Wal-Mart falls below the 8 percent threshold on health care spending.

A Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, State Senator Gloria G. Lawlah , maintained: "This is not a Wal-Mart bill, it's a Medicaid bill." This bill says to the conglomerates, 'Don't dump the employees that you refuse to insure into our Medicaid systems.' "

Opponents said the law would open the door for broader state regulation of health care spending by private companies and would send the message that Maryland is antibusiness.

"The message is, 'Don't come here,' " said Senator E. J. Pipkin, a Republican. "This is an anti-jobs bill."

Several lawmakers said that in the end, the law would require Wal-Mart to spend only slightly more than it does now on health insurance. But with Wal-Mart refusing to disclose what it pays for health costs, it was unclear how much more it would be required to pay.

This is the second time that the Maryland legislature, which is dominated by Democrats, has passed the Wal-Mart bill. Governor Ehrlich vetoed it late last year, inviting a senior Wal-Mart executive to sit by his side as he did so.

Indeed, the bill is shaping up as an issue in the fall campaign, with Republicans and their business allies lining up against it, and Democrats and their labor union supporters backing it. Wal-Mart has 53 stores and employs about 17,000 people in Maryland.

Debate was particularly emotional among representatives from Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Wal-Mart recently announced plans to build a distribution center that would employ up to 1,000.

Wal-Mart executives have strongly suggested that they might build the center elsewhere if lawmakers passed the health care bill.

In a passionate speech in the State Senate, J. Lowell Stoltzfus, a Republican, warned that the bill "jeopardizes good employment for my people."

"It's going to hurt us very bad," he added,

The bill's passage underscored the success of the union campaign to turn Wal-Mart into a symbol of what is wrong in the American health care system.

Wal-Mart has come under severe criticism because it insures less than half its United States work force and because its employees routinely show up, in larger numbers than employees of other retailers, on state Medicaid rolls.

In response to the complaints, the company introduced a new health care plan late last year, with premiums as low as $11 a month.

Consumer advocates specializing in health care are hoping that the Maryland law will be the first of many.

"You're going to see similar legislation being introduced," said Ronald Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a nonprofit health advocacy organization, "and debated in at least three dozen more states, and at least some of those states will end up also requiring large employers to provide health care coverage."

Mr. Pollack suggested that he did not expect any groundswell of opposition from corporate America. Most companies, he said, provide insurance and know that the costs of medical treatment for uninsured people are reflected in their insurance premiums. Mr. Pollack said that, by his organization's calculations, the cost of such treatment drove up employer premiums by $922 a family last year. In 2006, he said, the added cost could reach $1,000 a family.

"Those employers should welcome the fact that the companies that do not offer coverage now will be forced to step up to the plate," he said.

State lawmakers here in Annapolis took repeated swipes at Wal-Mart during debate over the bill on Thursday. It appeared that the company's intensive lobbying campaign in Maryland, including advertisements arguing that the requirement would hurt small businesses, might have soured some lawmakers.

Senator Lawlah called the lobbying "horrendous" and adding, "I have never seen anything like it."

Frank D. Boston III, the chief lobbyist for Wal-Mart on the health care bill, stood in the main corridor of the Capitol building on Thursday wearing a look of resignation. Referring to unions in the state, he said, "They have a power we can't match, and we worked this bill extremely hard."

Class-Action Case in Pennsylvania

By Bloomberg News

A Pennsylvania judge granted class-action status yesterday to a lawsuit contending that Wal-Mart employees had been pressed to work through breaks and after hours.

The suit could include as many as 150,000 current or former employees in Pennsylvania who have worked at a Wal-Mart store or at the company's Sam's Club warehouse chain since March 1998, Michael Donovan, the lead plaintiff's lawyer, said.

The latest class-action filing against Wal-Mart came after a California jury last month awarded workers $172.3 million in another off-the-clock case.

Wal-Mart is appealing. The company settled a similar case in Colorado for $50 million.

Wal-Mart has given "every indication" that it will go to trial rather than settle, Mr. Donovan said. A Wal-Mart spokesman, Kevin Thornton, said the company was considering appealing the decision.

Claudia H. Deutsch contributed reporting from New York for this article.



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January 13, 2006
In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."

Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.

Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

The federal government has so far authorized $85 billion in relief to the Gulf Coast, with $25 billion spent.

"We're not going to weigh in," Donald E. Powell, the president's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday morning. "It will be their plan."

In the meeting at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mr. Bush sat between Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitchell J. Landrieu. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democrat with whom Mr. Bush has a chilly relationship, was in The Netherlands looking at the country's flood-control system.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said that the president had not deliberately timed his visit on a day when Ms. Blanco was not in town, and that the White House had reached out to her but she had a scheduling conflict.

Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, said that Ms. Blanco would be returning to New Orleans on Thursday night, just hours after the president left the city, and that she was "disappointed" she had missed his visit.

From New Orleans, Mr. Bush traveled to Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where he viewed destruction along the Gulf Coast. He then headed for Palm Beach, Fla., for a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins.



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January 13, 2006
U.S. Reverses Accord and Opens 389,000 Acres in Alaska to Explore for Oil
By FELICITY BARRINGER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - The Interior Department has decided to open 389,000 acres of Alaskan lakes, tundra and shoreline to oil exploration, reversing an eight-year-old compromise intended to protect the habitat of hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and the hunting grounds of Inupiat natives who live near the Beaufort Sea.

Henri Bisson, the state director of the federal Bureau of Land Management in Alaska, said Thursday that the new plan would increase by as much as two billion barrels the oil that could be recovered from the northeastern section of the National Petroleum Reserve while providing protection for birds in the summer when they shed their flight feathers and hatch chicks.

Critics, including Alaska Natives and groups like the Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society, said the protection would not prevent fragmenting the birds' habitat or the disturbance when pipelines were built.

There will be airplane and helicopter traffic, the critics said, and industrial activity will be a fixture of the collection of lakes and damp tundra that is now empty 150 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The fight over the area where wild fowl from California, Japan, Mexico and Russia congregate every summer has been largely overshadowed by the controversy over the Arctic refuge, which remains closed to oil and gas exploration after a Democratic filibuster last month.

The two disputes center on protecting caribou, wild fowl and Alaska Natives' interests, but it is generally agreed that the Teshekpuk Lake area has a particularly important role in the annual migration of tens of thousands of birds like geese and tundra swans, providing them with relative safety from predators and ample food for the flightless weeks of summer.

"We are not persuaded that this provides the protection needed," said Stan Senner, the Audubon Society Alaska director. "I think our answer, our view, is that waterfowl biologists who know the area have essentially all said that a core goose molting area needs to be protected without fragmentation."

Though 242,000 acres of the 389,000 can have no surface structures except pipelines, Mr. Senner said, the lines and the human monitoring they require will intrude in areas the birds have had to themselves.

The final decision, which the Interior Department released on Wednesday, opens seven tracts, of 45,000 to 60,000 acres each, that were previously off limits to energy development.

"We believe that we have put forward the best environmentally sensitive approach we could take in terms of conducting a viable oil and gas leasing and development opportunity," Mr. Bisson said in an interview. "I can't think of anything else we could do to make it more environmentally protective than we have."

He added that for the areas north of Teshekpuk Lake, the department would not allow exceptions to its restrictions except for aircraft that have to deviate from agreed-on flight patterns for passengers' safety .

Dora Nukapigak, one of 450 residents of Nuiqsut, an Inupiat village near the affected area, said she was certain that the policy reversal would have a significant impact.

"Where there's industry, there's going to be traffic, work and construction," Ms. Nukapigak said,

The 200 or so hunters in the village, she added, pursue whales and caribou, as well as fish, and she expressed concern that taking water from Teshekpuk and other lakes to build ice roads for winter construction could affect all the animals involved.

Mr. Bisson said his estimates of the commercially retrievable oil and the 3.2 trillion cubic feet of retrievable natural gas were based on federal and company data. The estimates, he said, indicate that a compromise reached by Bruce Babbitt, interior secretary in the Clinton administration, that opened all but 13 percent of the reserve to energy production left as much as three-quarters of the recoverable oil in the reserve off limits to drilling.

Mr. Bisson said there would be no more than 300 acres with improvements like roads, drilling pads or airstrips in each lease tract. Mr. Senner said the resulting spider web would be intrusive.

"We don't think the basic geometry of the areas makes sense," Mr. Senner said, referring to the 242,000 acres where surface development other than pipelines is off limits. "This will not result in fewer facilities or reduced disturbance."



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http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Former_CIA_g...House_0112.html


Former CIA general counsel tells House Intelligence Bush didn't have wiretap authority
RAW STORY
Published: January 12, 2006

Former CIA general counsel Jeff Smith has issued a memo to the House Intelligence Committee concluding that Authority for Use of Military Force did not give President George W. Bush the right to order domestic wiretaps without a court order.

In the memo, Smith discusses court precedent, as well as civil liberties outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Smith further concludes that Bush's secondary argument, that he has authority under the constitution to order such wiretaps, is "seriously undermined" by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which allows for similar surveillance only with a warrant. He further characterizes a president's constitutional power while acting against an existing statute as being at its "lowest ebb".


The 14-page memo can be read in its entirety here.http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/nsaspymemo.pdf


Smith is scheduled to attend Democrat-led hearings on NSA warrantless surveillance hearings later this month.

Copyright © 2004-06 Raw Story Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | Site map |Privacy policy

Proof Bush Deceived America
by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
New reporting from The New York Times' James Risen puts to rest the only challenge to the Downing Street memos.
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=eifq8rbab.0.m64p8r...ved_america.php

Capitalizing On Corruption
by Greg Sargent, The American Prospect
Dems should argue the GOP scandals show the Republican Party's fealty to industry over individuals.
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=eifq8rbab.0.s4yy8c...tompaine.com%2F

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January 13, 2006
Tyco to Split Into 3 Companies at Cost of $1 Billion
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:52 p.m. ET

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Tyco International Ltd., still recovering from scandals that saw its longtime former chief executive sentenced to prison, said Friday it plans to split into three public companies.

It is separating its electronics and health care businesses from its remaining operations, which include security and fire-protection services.

The company, which may be best known for its ADT home alarm systems, also warned its first quarter and full-year 2006 earnings from continuing operations would be lower than expected. It estimated the cost of the breakup, planned for early next year, at $1 billion.

Its shares tumbled $2.84, or 9.4 percent, to $27.47 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Tyco, which has its operational offices in West Windsor, said the breakup followed an extensive strategic review and will strengthen the businesses.

''We believe that separation is a logical next step in Tyco's evolution,'' said Chairman and Chief Executive Ed Breen in a morning conference call. He said the board concluded the current structure was inhibiting growth possibilities of the health care and electronics businesses, both leaders in their respective fields.

In a move expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2007, Tyco will separate the companies through issuing tax-free stock dividends to shareholders, who will own dividend-producing stock in all three companies.

Each of the new companies, still based in Bermuda, will be governed by an independent board of directors who will continue to refine those portfolios with possible selloffs or acquisitions, Breen said.

Tyco has been recovering from accounting scandals first revealed in 2002. Its former CEO and longtime leader, L. Dennis Kozlowski, and former Chief Financial Officer Mark H. Swartz were sentenced to prison last year for grand larceny, conspiracy, securities fraud and falsifying business records, and are appealing their convictions.

''Over the past three years, Tyco has come a long way,'' Breen said. ''We have a strong and independent board, a rebuilt management team, outstanding corporate governance rankings and an operational culture that puts growth and operating excellence at the top of the management agenda.''

In November, the company said it might split up its businesses to boost the value of the stock, and there had been reports this week that it was close to a decision. It also considered a breakup four years ago.

Breen said Friday the board considered a range of options, including selling certain businesses, and separating only one of the operations.

Tyco now expects first-quarter earnings, excluding one-time items, to be about 38 cents per share from continuing operations, down from its prior outlook of 40 cents to 42 cents per share.

The firm lowered its full-year 2006 earnings forecast to a range of $1.85 to $1.92 per share from continuing operations. It previously expected earnings to increase by about 10 percent over 2005 results.

The $1 billion in anticipated costs are mainly for tax and debt refinancing, the company said.

Analysts expect a profit of 42 cents per share for the quarter, and $2.01 per share for the year, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

Ravi Chanmugam, a lead partner at management consulting firm Accenture, said in a recent interview that splits such as Tyco was considering were ''hangover breakups'' of conglomerates put together during the stock market's bubble years.

''There's still some tricklings that are taking place now, because finally those companies have a new CEO who's been put in place, accounting problems have been fixed, the market is generally receptive now to spinning them off and the stock market is healthy again, so that's why those things are happening now,'' Chanmugam said.

The company said revenue and margins in its fire and security business were hurt by weakness in its commercial security and worldwide fire services operations, but business improved in residential security. Revenue and operating profit growth in its international health care business were offset by shortfalls from product recalls and compliance issues in its imaging and respiratory businesses, and capacity problems in its pharmaceuticals business.

Tyco Healthcare, which provides health care products and services, booked nearly $10 billion in revenue during 2005, and has more than 40,000 employees. After the breakup, the business will still be led by President Rich Meelia, who also will become CEO. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Gould and CFO Chuck Dockendorff will remain in their positions.

The company said Tyco Electronics is a $12 billion business with about 88,000 employees. Juergen Gromer, who has led the electronic components supplier since 1999, will continue as president and will become vice chairman, while Jacki Heisse will continue as CFO.

Tyco's fire and security operations, along with its engineered products and services business, will be led by Tyco International CEO Breen and CFO Chris Coughlin, the company said. The $18 billion electronic security business employs more than 118,000 people.

The company said Dave Robinson will continue as president of Tyco Fire & Security, while Naren Gursahaney will succeed Tom Lynch as president of Engineered Products & Services.

------

AP Business Writer Lisa Del Greco in New York contributed to this report.



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January 13, 2006


Feinstein demands Rumsfeld explain UCSC spying

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, wants an explanation about reports of Pentagon spying at UC Santa Cruz as well as other surveillance of U.S. citizens.

Feinstein wrote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a letter dated Tuesday asking him to explain the practices and authority of the Counter Intelligence Field Activity in collecting information in the course of its domestic investigations.

In December, NBS news aired a string of reports based on Pentagon documents that listed 1,500 "suspicious" activities during a 10-month period. NBC interviewed experts who said the Pentagon had overstepped its bounds in collecting information in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One of the incidents that caught the eyes and ears of the agency was an April 5 protest against military recruiters at a job fair at UC Santa Cruz.

That protest led to the job fair getting shut down temporarily and the injury of a UC Santa Cruz staffer.

The military recruiters left the fair.

"What Department of Defense components are authorized to collect or maintain information on U.S. Persons on U.S. territory without court approval?" Feinstein wrote. "Under what circumstances are Department of Defense components authorized to collect, report, maintain, database, analyze, fuse or otherwise handle information concerning U.S. Persons engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment?"

Feinstein asked Rumsfeld to respond to her letter by Jan. 31.

About 200 students showed up at the military recruitment protest last spring. The incident was one of many anti-war protests listed in the document and posted on the NBC news Web site.

UC Santa Cruz student Josh Sonnenfeld, a member of the group Students Against the War that organized the protest, said Feinstein was on the right track.

"It's nice to hear Feinstein is asking some important questions to Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense," he said.

Feinstein's letter said her staff had met with Pentagon personnel who confirmed that a report on student protests had been written.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, said he was "shocked" and "appalled" by the matter and would be looking for answers about it from the Department of Defense when its budget comes up for review.

You can find this story online at:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2...ies/12local.htm

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Copyright © Santa Cruz Sentinel. All rights reserved.

As a retired general and strategic intelligence officer, I am deeply concerned about the White House's commitment to upholding Senator John McCain's ban on torture. And because you helped fight for this important amendment, I wanted to let you know how it has been threatened.

The day Congress passed Senator McCain's anti-torture amendment - December 22 - was a momentous one. Congress reaffirmed that it is illegal for U.S. personnel - whether it's the military, the CIA, or anyone else - to engage in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees. Your hard work and the work of Human Rights First was key to making this happen.

However, in a disturbing statement issued by the White House when the bill was signed, the President essentially claimed the right to bypass the law and authorize illegal interrogation tactics - torture - when he sees fit. The statement asserts that "[t]he executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief."

This is code language. It means the President can override laws passed by Congress if he thinks they impede his power as Commander in Chief. It is exactly the same argument that was used in the infamous "torture memo" from the Justice Department. That's what led to the abuse of detainees in the first place.

This "signing statement" by the President undermines the law that Congress overwhelmingly supported. There should be no exceptions to this law. If Sen. McCain's torture ban is not fully enforced in practice, we will not be able to prevent further abuses or repair our reputation abroad.

Today, I joined 20 other retired generals and admirals in a letter to the President, urging him to forcefully implement this new law. I've pasted a copy below. You can read Human Rights First's own letter to the President by clicking here:

http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/06112...letter-bush.pdf

I taught prisoner interrogation and military law for the Army Intelligence School for 18 years. I can tell you that prior to the war in Iraq, torture has never been allowed by the Army, and as an interrogation tool it is never the answer. There is no evidence that it produces reliable information. It only serves to undermine our nation's values and our national security.

The U.S. has paid a heavy price for its misdirected torture policies - we cannot allow our government to make excuses and make a mockery of Sen. McCain's ban on torture.

Thank you for joining me in support of Human Rights First's efforts to end all torture and abuse in America’s name.

Sincerely,

Brigadier General David R. Irvine (USA, Ret.)


January 12, 2006

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Bush:

We write to thank you for publicly endorsing Senator McCain's amendment on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, and for signing it into law. The new law, implemented and enforced in accordance with Congressional intent, will ensure that the United States has a single standard for interrogating enemy prisoners that is effective, lawful, and humane. The primary reason we strongly supported Senator McCain's effort is that we believe this law, if effectively and forcefully implemented, will help protect our troops in Iraq and elsewhere, now and in the future.

Past abuses have damaged military discipline, put American military personnel at greater risk, undermined U.S. intelligence gathering efforts, and greatly harmed America's image around the world. It is incumbent on you as President and Commander-in-Chief to ensure that all senior members of your administration speak with a consistent voice to make clear that the United States now has a single standard of conduct specified in law that governs all interrogations, regardless of the legal status or the location of the detainee being interrogated. Accountability and deterrence have never been more important to end all torture and abuse in America's name, and thereby restore America' reputation in the world. This long overdue corrective action will require strong leadership from you and others in positions of authority.

Mr. President, we welcome your attention to this issue and stand ready to assist in any way we can to ensure the effective implementation of this new law. Clear and unambiguous implementation will help ensure that our brave men and women in uniform will never again feel that to prevail against the enemy they must risk their honor or the values they fight to protect.


Sincerely,

GENERAL JOSEPH HOAR, USMC (RET.)
LIEUTENANT GENERAL ROBERT G. GARD, JR., USA (RET.)
LIEUTENANT GENERAL CLAUDIA J. KENNEDY, USA (RET.)
VICE ADMIRAL AL KONETZNI, USN (RET.)
LIEUTENANT GENERAL CHARLES OTSTOTT, USA (RET.)
VICE ADMIRAL JACK SHANAHAN, USN (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL EUGENE FOX, USA (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN L. FUGH, USA (RET.)
REAR ADMIRAL DONALD J. GUTER, USN (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL FRED E. HAYNES, USMC (RET.)
REAR ADMIRAL JOHN D. HUTSON, USN (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL MELVYN MONTANO, ANG (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL GERALD T. SAJER, USA (RET.)
MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL J. SCOTTI, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL DAVID M. BRAHMS, USMC (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL JAMES CULLEN, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL EVELYN P. FOOTE, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL DAVID R. IRVINE, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL RICHARD O’MEARA, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN K. SCHMITT, USA (RET.)
BRIGADIER GENERAL STEPHEN N. XENAKIS, USA (RET.)

Democrats Probably Will Delay Alito Vote, Leahy Says Bloomberg
Democrats probably will exercise their right to force a week's delay in the confirmation of US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat said today. As the committee concluded five days of hearings today, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy said a delay from the planned Jan. 17 panel vote is needed because most lawmakers will be traveling in the next three days to events to commemorate the birthday of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he would be open to a delay until Jan. 19. The hearings ended on their fifth day with a series of witnesses, including attorneys, civil rights leaders and former Alito law clerks who offered conflicting views on whether he should be confirmed to the high court and on issues such as abortion. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said after the testimony ended that he would vote to confirm Alito, 55, nominated to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. "My expectation is, regretfully, that it's going to turn out to be a party line vote'' in the committee, Specter said. The Judiciary Committee has 10 Republicans and eight Democrats. Specter said he thought some Democrats in the full Senate would vote to confirm Alito. A one-week delay in the committee vote to Jan. 24 would postpone Senate floor debate until Jan. 25. Under committee rules, any senator may request a week's delay in the panel's vote on a nominee. Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said Reid and Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, were discussing the timing of a vote.

Ways of Deciding
During his four days of testimony, Alito offered words of support for various ways of deciding cases and for a variety of past and present justices. He spoke in favor of looking "to the text of the Constitution,'' an approach that sounded similar to Justice Antonin Scalia's. He also praised O'Connor and said he looks at his job case by case without any ideological mindset, following her model. Among today's witnesses was Harvard law professor Charles Fried, who supervised Alito when Fried was U.S. solicitor general during President Ronald Reagan's administration. He said he didn't think Alito would "move toward a frontal over-ruling'' of the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide. Alito "is in the mainstream,'' Fried told the committee. "He tends toward the right bank of the mainstream.'' Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said that if Alito joined the high court he would be likely to chip away in his rulings until abortion law was a "shell'' of what it is today.

NARAL
Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said Alito's 15 years of appellate court rulings show he can't be trusted to uphold Roe. She urged senators to consider that Alito is slated to replace O'Connor, the first female justice and a pivotal vote on abortion issues. "It is very clear that he will move the court in a very different and dangerous direction for women's legal rights,'' Michelman said. Former Alito law clerks endorsed his nomination. "Judge Alito treats everyone, everyone the same,'' said former clerk Jack White, a lawyer at the Kirkland & Ellis LLP law firm in San Francisco. "He looks at every case as a brand-new case.'' Theodore Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York, said the group opposed Alito's confirmation, saying his "cramped'' view of discrimination law would make it "very difficult for African American plaintiffs in civil rights cases to prevail.''
Flavia Monteiro Colgan | ALITO HEARINGS DROWNING IN WORDS Centre Daily Times
Alito Day 5: Senate Hearings Conclude NPR (audio)
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January 13, 2006
Gonzales to Testify on Domestic Spying
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:04 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday he will testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the Bush administration's domestic spying program, in the face of questions from lawmakers and legal analysts about whether it is lawful.

Gonzales said he reached an agreement with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to answer questions about the legal basis for the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations between suspected terrorists and people in the United States.

''We believe the legal authorities are there,'' Gonzales said at a news conference at the Justice Department. ''The president acted consistent with his legal authority in a manner that he thought was necessary and appropriate to protect the country against this new kind of threat.''

The attorney general said he will not discuss operational aspects of the program at the hearing, which is expected to occur next month. Specter said Sunday that he had asked Gonzales to testify publicly.

The attorney general was White House counsel when Bush initiated the program, but he refused to say Friday what role he played in developing the legal case to support it.

Administration officials also have not said how many people have been targeted for eavesdropping.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress, legal scholars and analysts at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service have questioned whether the NSA program is within the law.

The program's existence was first reported in The New York Times last month. Soon after, Bush acknowledged he had authorized the NSA eavesdropping in the months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said his legal authority rested on his constitutional powers and the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force following Sept. 11.

The NSA program bypassed the special court Congress established in 1978 to approve or reject secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.

Gonzales previously has defended the program, saying last month that the NSA did not seek warrants from the secretive Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act court because ''we don't have the speed and the agility that we need in all circumstances to deal with this new kind of enemy.''

------

On the Net:

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



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Democrats delaying panel vote on Alito Seattle Times
Senate Democrats decided Friday to delay for a few days a Judiciary Committee vote set for early next week on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The Democrats asked for more time for debate among themselves, a move that will give Alito's opponents more time to make their case inside and outside Washington. Still, the federal appellate-court judge is expected to win confirmation when the full Senate votes on him. Democrats have the right to postpone the committee vote — which had been scheduled for Tuesday — for up to a week. But aides to Senate Democrats said the delay would probably be less than that. The committee on Friday heard testimony from its final witnesses on Alito and adjourned, as interest groups conducted news conferences and stepped up advertising campaigns to support or oppose the nominee. Liberal activists oppose Alito, fearing he will tip the court to the right and provide a key vote for rulings that, in their view, will endanger personal liberties. Conservatives support Alito because they believe he will help the court curb — and perhaps overturn — decisions on various social issues, such as the right to an abortion. Democrats peppered Alito with questions during his three days of testimony before the judiciary panel this week, and several expressed chagrin that the judge refused to say that he accepted as "settled law" the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide. Republican committee members, most of whom oppose abortion rights, praised Alito for his answers on this and other subjects. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Friday he and other Democrats on the committee wanted to delay the vote on sending Alito's nomination to the full Senate so that more party members could discuss the matter. He said many Democratic senators won't be back in Washington until Wednesday. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has been under pressure from the White House to complete the confirmation as rapidly as possible, expressed irritation at the postponement. "I do not know what reason there is for any delay," he said. "I think we know how the vote in committee is going to come out. And we ought to go to the floor and debate it on the floor." The committee vote is expected to break along party lines, with its 10 Republicans backing Alito and its eight Democrats opposing him. Specter, a moderate who supports abortion rights, officially announced Friday he would vote for Alito. A final floor vote had been planned for next Friday. Now, it may occur as much as a week later. As the vote nears, both sides have intensified campaigns targeted at moderate senators who are regarded as swing votes, such as Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Both lawmakers support abortion rights. It appears the only way Senate Democrats could block Alito's confirmation would be to mount a filibuster. But while some party activists are calling for one, Senate Democratic leaders have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, in part because it could create political problems for party members facing re-election in Republican-leaning states. "The fact is that a filibuster would put moderate Democrats from 'red' states and others up for re-election in a difficult position," said a senior Democratic aide, who requested anonymity. In addition, more members of the "Gang of 14," an informal group of moderate Republicans and Democrats who formed earlier this year to oppose filibusters of judicial nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances," indicated Friday they were unlikely to support one in Alito's case. A spokeswoman for Collins said the lawmaker did not think a filibuster was justified, even though she has yet to say how she would vote on Alito. Another Gang of 14 member, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., "does not see any extraordinary circumstances" that would warrant a filibuster, according to a spokeswoman.
Senate Panel's Vote on Alito Is Put Off Los Angeles Times
Key US Senator Announces Support for Supreme Court Nominee Voice of America
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As justice, Alito may have swift impact Monsters and Critics.com
The expected confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court will make him a decisive vote in several upcoming cases. The Los Angeles Times says Alito will have an immediate impact in the areas of abortion, religion and the death penalty. Alito`s arrival on the court would also set the stage for far-reaching changes in election campaigns and the environment, the newspaper said. President Bush`s nominee could tip the balance to the right on about half a dozen issues on which the justices have been closely split. While Justice Sandra Day O`Connor voted in favor of a ruling that government officials may not prominently display the Ten Commandments, Alito has favored a greater accommodation for religion in public life. And, in a discussion about abortion last week, Alito refused to pledge to uphold Roe vs. Wade, saying only that he values precedent and that it would take a 'special justification' to reverse the ruling. While the court is not likely to face a question of overturning Roe vs. Wade in the next few years, the justices are likely to decide soon on whether to allow more government restrictions on abortion.
See Washington Gum the Scenery New York Times
For Alito, shift by court seen as certain Newsday
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Laura Bush backs domestic spying program:

First lady Laura Bush said Sunday that the U.S. government is right to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists,
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/115...Laura_Bush.html

===
The Imperial Presidency at Work :

You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11575.htm

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January 16, 2006
Washington Memo
Alito Hearings Unsettle Some Prevailing Wisdom About the Politics of Abortion
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Just a little over a year ago, senators of both parties said publicly that it would be almost impossible for a Supreme Court nominee who disagreed openly with the major abortion rights precedents to win confirmation.

But partisans on either side now say that last week's confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. cast doubt on such assumptions.

All eight Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee have indicated they believe that Judge Alito would threaten abortion rights. All are expected to vote against him, although the parties are still disputing the date of the committee's vote. But many concede that his confirmation is all but assured and that their party is unlikely to try to stop it through a filibuster.

"I do not see the likelihood of a filibuster, to be very candid with you," Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and one of the most prominent abortion rights supporters on the Judiciary Committee, said Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

Ms. Feinstein said she would vote against Judge Alito, in part because of the abortion rights issue. "If you asked me who would Alito most be like, it would probably be, I'd have to say, Scalia," she said, referring to Justice Antonin Scalia, leader of the court's conservative faction, which opposes abortion rights.

But she added: "I mean, this is a man I might disagree with. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

Some abortion rights advocates reacted with alarm.

"Dianne Feinstein's comment is very disturbing," said Kate Michelman, the former president of Naral Pro-Choice America and a witness against Mr. Alito at the confirmation hearings.

"Since the last election there seems to be less comfort, if you will, or less willingness to be very forthright or strong on a woman's right to choose," Ms. Michelman said in a telephone interview on Sunday. "It is worrisome that there wasn't more strength behind their questioning" of Judge Alito's views on abortion.

The Democrats' response to the Alito nomination is especially significant because he would succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had been the court's swing vote on many abortion rights cases.

Judge Alito, in particular, aroused the ire of abortion rights supporters because of two memorandums he had written as a lawyer for the Reagan administration displaying deeply held disagreement with the abortion rights decisions. Abortion rights groups called the memorandums the most extensive written record of a Supreme Court nominee's opposition to the abortion rights precedents since 1987, when the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork.

At the hearings, Judge Alito said he would keep an open mind about the weight of precedents in such cases, while confirming that his past writings represented his views at the time.

But Democratic strategists and officials of liberal groups opposed to confirmation said privately throughout the hearings that they did not believe that demonstrating Judge Alito's opposition to abortion rights would be enough to defeat his nomination. The handful of Democrats from socially conservative states were reluctant to be perceived as voting against him on those grounds.

The shift in the politics of the abortion rights issue was clear early in the hearings. On the first day of questioning, when the parties laid out their arguments and public opinion began to form, only two Democratic senators, Ms. Feinstein and Charles E. Schumer of New York, made abortion rights a central focus.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the senior member and liberal stalwart, aimed their questions primarily at other issues like presidential and executive power. And when they later returned more fully to abortion rights, they often talked more euphemistically of a right to privacy.

Republicans, in contrast, appeared to relish bringing up the subject. In the first round, the chairman of the committee, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and a supporter of abortion rights, called abortion the "dominant issue" of the hearings. Several Republican opponents of abortion rights - Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mike DeWine of Ohio - dwelled on the prospect of overturning abortion rights decisions.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Brownback said he was heartened by the hearings. He argued that in the 2004 elections, Republicans had showed Democrats that "we can run on abortion rights and win the public," adding, "they are trimming their sails some on it."

The apparent outcome of the Alito nomination may call into question a political assessment that Mr. Specter made after those elections. Mr. Specter said at the time that it was highly unlikely that a Supreme Court nominee who would change abortion rights precedents could be confirmed, in part because of the determined opposition of the Democrats. Some leading Democratic senators publicly agreed.

Conservatives, upset at Mr. Specter's comment, almost unseated him from the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.

After the hearings ended on Friday, Mr. Specter said he would vote for confirmation and declined to revisit his earlier comments. But he said it was impossible to know how Judge Alito might vote as a Supreme Court justice. He said abortion rights groups had also opposed Justice David Souter, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - all Republican nominees who have voted from the bench to uphold the core abortion rights precedents.

"There are weighty considerations involved in changing Roe v. Wade, very weighty considerations in modifying that principle and a woman's right to choose," Mr. Specter said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

GOP Hopes Ney Removal Will Aid Reform Forbes
The House Republican leadership has achieved its goal of separating Rep. Bob Ney, the committee chairman implicated in a burgeoning scandal, from GOP efforts to change how Congress interacts with lobbyists and their clients. With Ney's decision - under pressure - to temporarily step down from chairing the powerful House Administration Committee, the six-term Ohio Republican won't have any control over his party's efforts to stem the damage caused by disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. As administration committee chairman, Ney would have overseen those reforms. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., wanted to make sure that didn't happen and asked Ney last week to step aside as chairman of the panel. In pleading guilty to three felonies here this month, Abramoff put Ney at the center of the investigation. Abramoff swore that he and associates plied Ney with campaign donations, lavish free travel, entertainment and meals in exchange for official acts. Ney has denied any wrongdoing. Some of Ney's alleged ties to Abramoff involved his chairmanship of the committee, such as the lucrative contract he gave to an Abramoff client in 2003 to improve wireless telephone reception in House buildings. Ney said Sunday the allegations against him had become a distraction from the Republican reform effort. "There's a lot of people that are having some heartburn with all the publicity and if they have heartburn I can be the Rolaids," Ney said in an interview with The Associated Press Radio Network from his home in Heath, Ohio. "I'll just step aside and someone can run the committee and then I feel once I'm cleared, I'll be able to come back," he said. Spokesmen for Hastert and House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., did not return calls Sunday night seeking comment on Ney's decision. Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., is the next highest-ranking Republican on the administration committee. The moderate Republican from the Grand Rapids area may be best known for spearheading legislation to clean up sediment in the Great Lakes. He's been in the House since 1993. The administration committee doles out House contracts, and oversees federal elections, the budgets of other committees and even members parking spaces. Ney had been known as the "Mayor of Capitol Hill" for the control he had. Ney tried to get ahead of the allegations last summer by directing the House clerk to set up an electronic system for House members to disclose privately paid travel. The system still isn't in place and trips are still filed on paper, in binders only available in the basement of a House office building. "I pushed about nine months ago to have lobby reform, but nobody really would listen to me," Ney said Sunday. "I wanted to do it then because that way it's made much more clear so members don't get into positions like I have." But Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, has told the AP better disclosure won't stop members from breaking the rules and Ney's plan was an effort to blame the system for unethical behavior. Democrats are offering their own plan this week to stamp out improper travel and unethical relationships with lobbyists. Ney's decision comes as three House Republicans are waging a spirited campaign to replace Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas as majority leader. DeLay was forced by party rules to step aside after he was indicted by a state grand jury in Texas for alleged violation of campaign finance laws. DeLay also is a longtime friend of Abramoff and some of DeLay's former aides have been charged in the Abramoff investigation. A GOP leadership aide said Friday that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was pressuring Ney to step aside because he believes it would be inappropriate for him to head the committee with jurisdiction over the Republican reform agenda. A statement by Ney on Sunday said he had notified Hastert earlier in the day of his decision. "I want to assure my colleagues and my constituents that I have done absolutely nothing wrong, and I am convinced that I will be vindicated completely at the end of this difficult process," Ney said. Ney will maintain his chairmanship of a housing subcommittee, said his spokesman, Brian Walsh. The GOP leadership aide who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of private talks between Ney and Hastert, said the speaker himself could not fire Ney. If Ney had not agreed to step aside, it would have been at least three weeks until the GOP caucus could consider removing him.
Ney to Temporarily Cede House Panel Chair ABC News
Chairman steps aside during probe CNN
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Family, Friends Mourn Teen Shot by Police Forbes
A 15-year-old student mortally wounded by police in a school bathroom while brandishing a pellet gun was remembered as an emotionally troubled but friendly teen. "Everyone was his best friend," said 18-year-old Steven Lewis after a private candlelight vigil Sunday for his friend Christopher Penley. "He's still with me in my heart." Penley was pronounced dead early Sunday, two days after a deputy gunned him down as the middle school boy held a pellet gun that closely resembled a 9 mm handgun.
Mourners hold vigil for student shot by deputies St. Petersburg Times
Student told cops gun may not have been real The News-Press
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Specter Vows a Close Look at Spy Program New York Times
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Sunday that Republicans would not grant President Bush "a blank check" in seeking to determine whether the domestic eavesdropping program that Mr. Bush authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks violated the law. "Just because we're of the same party doesn't mean we're not going to look at this closely," Mr. Specter said in an appearance on "This Week" on ABC. Mr. Specter is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plans to hold hearings on the matter next month, with witnesses to include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. The program authorized by Mr. Bush bypassed a special federal court whose approval is required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for domestic eavesdropping operations. Mr. Specter has said he does not agree with the White House view that Congress effectively authorized the surveillance, which was carried out by the National Security Agency, in a resolution passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Specter said Sunday that he was still considering the question of whether a president might possess special powers under wartime that would have allowed Mr. Bush to circumvent the surveillance act. He said that if Mr. Bush were found to have acted illegally, he would most likely face "a political price" rather than a more severe sanction, in part because of broad support of the administration's antiterrorism efforts. "I don't see any talk about impeachment here," Mr. Specter said. "I don't think anybody doubts that the president is making a good faith effort here, that he sees a real problem, as we all do, and he's acting in a way that he feels he must." The timing and scope for any Congressional inquiry into the eavesdropping remains unclear. Mr. Specter is the only chairman who has publicly promised to hold hearings, but he has said his panel will focus on legal questions, not the more highly classified details of the operation. A date for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings has not yet been set. In both the Senate and House, the Intelligence Committees are also considering whether to call witnesses to talk about the eavesdropping program.
Specter skeptical of administration's defense of domestic spying San Jose Mercury News
Specter Questions Legality of Secret Eavesdropping Program Bloomberg
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January 17, 2006
Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
By LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU, SCOTT SHANE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
This article is by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane and Don Van Natta Jr.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Intelligence officials disagree with any characterization of the program's results as modest, said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence. Ms. Emmel cited a statement at a briefing last month by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the program was started.

"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results.

The differing views of the value of the N.S.A.'s foray into intelligence-gathering in the United States may reflect both bureaucratic rivalry and a culture clash. The N.S.A., an intelligence agency, routinely collects huge amounts of data from across the globe that may yield only tiny nuggets of useful information; the F.B.I., while charged with fighting terrorism, retains the traditions of a law enforcement agency more focused on solving crimes.

"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"

Several of the law enforcement officials acknowledged that they might not know of arrests or intelligence activities overseas that grew out of the domestic spying program. And because the program was a closely guarded secret, its role in specific cases may have been disguised or hidden even from key investigators.

Still, the comments on the N.S.A. program from the law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, many of them high level, are the first indication that the program was viewed with skepticism by key figures at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency responsible for disrupting plots and investigating terrorism on American soil.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions about the legality of the warrantless eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December by The New York Times.

The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.

Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.

But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through prisoner interrogations or other means.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration pressed the nation's intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. to move urgently to thwart any more plots. The N.S.A., whose mission is to spy overseas, began monitoring the international e-mail messages and phone calls of people inside the United States who were linked, even indirectly, to suspected Qaeda figures.

Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. The administration has defended the legality of the program, pointing to what it says is the president's inherent constitutional power to defend the country and to legislation passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Administration officials told Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, of the eavesdropping program, and his agency was enlisted to run down leads from it, several current and former officials said.

While he and some bureau officials discussed the fact that the program bypassed the intelligence surveillance court, Mr. Mueller expressed no concerns about that to them, those officials said. But another government official said Mr. Mueller had questioned the administration about the legal authority for the program.

Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."

In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.

The views of some bureau officials about the value of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance offers a revealing glimpse of the difficulties law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had cooperating since Sept. 11.

The N.S.A., criticized by the national Sept. 11 commission for its "avoidance of anything domestic" before the attacks, moved aggressively into the domestic realm after them. But the legal debate over its warrantless eavesdropping has embroiled the agency in just the kind of controversy its secretive managers abhor. The F.B.I., meanwhile, has struggled over the last four years to expand its traditional mission of criminal investigation to meet the larger menace of terrorism.

Admiral Inman, the former N.S.A. director and deputy director of C.I.A., said the F.B.I. complaints about thousands of dead-end leads revealed a chasm between very different disciplines. Signals intelligence, the technical term for N.S.A.'s communications intercepts, rarely produces "the complete information you're going to get from a document or a witness" in a traditional F.B.I. investigation, he said.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.

That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."

The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.

"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."

By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.

By contrast, different officials agree that the N.S.A.'s domestic operations played a role in the arrest in Albany of an imam and another man who were taken into custody in August 2004 as part of an F.B.I. counterterrorism sting investigation. The men, Yassin Aref, 35, and Mohammed Hossain, 49, are awaiting trial on charges that they attempted to engineer the sale of missile launchers to an F.B.I. undercover informant.

In addition, government officials said the N.S.A. eavesdropping program might have assisted in the investigations of people with suspected Qaeda ties in Portland and Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis case, charges of supporting terrorism were filed in 2004 against Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a Canadian citizen. Six people in the Portland case were convicted of crimes that included money laundering and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.

Even senior administration officials with access to classified operations suggest that drawing a clear link between a particular source and the unmasking of a potential terrorist is not always possible.

When Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was asked last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" whether the N.S.A. wiretapping program was important in deterring terrorism, he said, "I don't know that it's ever possible to attribute one strand of intelligence from a particular program."

But Mr. Chertoff added, "I can tell you in general, the process of doing whatever you can do technologically to find out what is being said by a known terrorist to other people, and who that person is communicating with, that is without a doubt one of the critical tools we've used time and again."

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting from New York for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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January 17, 2006
Spotlight on Lobbying Swings to Little-Known Congressman
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - Until recently, Representative Bob Ney was little more than an obscure, sometimes eccentric, lawmaker from Ohio.

He had made his biggest public splash in 2003, when he ordered the House cafeteria to start calling French fries "freedom fries" because France had opposed the war in Iraq. Fluent in Farsi - an interest that grew out of having an exchange student live with his family - Mr. Ney lived for a time in Iran as a teacher, and later taught in Saudi Arabia.

In Congress, where the language of money and power is spoken, he is known as the Mayor of Capitol Hill, a nickname derived from his position as chairman of the House Administration Committee, which controls aspects of daily Congressional life like the allotment of parking spots.

Now, Mr. Ney has a new title: Representative No. 1, in court documents filed in connection with the Jack Abramoff case. And the modest glory he has achieved as a lawmaker appears to be rapidly eroding.

Even more than Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, Mr. Ney has become the most visible elected target of the broad Justice Department inquiry into corruption and influence-peddling in Washington.

He is under increasing attack from Democrats over allegations that he assisted Mr. Abramoff in exchange for gifts and travel. Over the weekend, Mr. Ney relinquished his chairmanship of the administration committee temporarily, acknowledging that his association with Mr. Abramoff was becoming a distraction for the Republican Party. As chairman of that committee, he would also be at the center of efforts to revise Congressional ethics rules, which members of both parties are proposing.

Mr. Ney's legal problems may loom even larger than his political ones because he is in serious jeopardy of being indicted, people directly involved in the legal case have said. As a result, Mr. Ney is working intensely to convince Justice Department prosecutors that he was tricked by Mr. Abramoff into doing favors for the lobbyist's clients.

He and his lawyers are presenting evidence they hope will counter allegations by Mr. Abramoff, who agreed to testify in the corruption case in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Mr. Ney has shown credit card receipts to prosecutors to demonstrate that he paid for his own meals at Signatures, the restaurant that Mr. Abramoff once owned, participants in the case have said.

His lawyers have gone through thousands of Mr. Ney's e-mail messages in an effort to determine that he did not put his involvement in any bribery scheme, if there was any, into writing.

"Any action taken by Congressman Ney was done in good faith and consistent with the rules of the House and his ethical obligations," his lawyer, Mark H. Tuohey, said Friday. "He has done nothing wrong."

Colleagues describe Mr. Ney as simple and down-to-earth, a reflection of the mainly blue-collar district in eastern Ohio that he represents. He helped lead the fight against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul bill, a battle important for many House Republican leaders, and has overseen some modernizations of the House building.

Even his political opponents say that Mr. Ney has worked hard for his constituents, and that they would not have picked him as a high roller or someone likely to be caught up in a corruption scheme.

"I've had Democrats say to me that they feel badly for Bob," said Representative Ted Strickland, Democrat of Ohio.

While Democrats have celebrated Mr. DeLay's fall - he is under indictment in Texas and under investigation in Washington - they have been somewhat baffled by Mr. Ney's role in the Abramoff case, Mr. Strickland said. "An indictment could be forthcoming, and I don't think anyone is taking any particular pleasure in that," he said.

The portrait of Mr. Ney as he is depicted in Mr. Abramoff's plea agreement is quite different.

The former lobbyist acknowledged about a dozen criminal transactions with Representative No. 1, confirmed to be Mr. Ney by participants in the case, stating that he repeatedly lavished gifts and campaign donations on the congressman in return for help with legislation. Some of the allegations in the plea deal are corroborated by Michael Scanlon, a former Abramoff business partner who is also cooperating with government lawyers in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Among the most damaging assertions by Mr. Abramoff is that Mr. Ney knew that an expensive golfing trip to Scotland in 2002 was being financed by the lobbyist around the time that Mr. Ney was pushing a measure in Congress beneficial to one of Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. That, some participants in the case believe, may have amounted to bribery.

Participants in the case were granted anonymity because the Justice Department has asked people not to talk about the case.

Although it is a violation of House ethics rules for a lawmaker to take a trip paid for by a lobbyist, it is the appearance of a possible quid pro quo in Mr. Ney's case that is of interest to prosecutors.

Although Mr. Ney has said that he believed the trip was paid for by a public policy center - and that he was duped by the lobbyist - it may be much more difficult for him to convince prosecutors of his innocence now that they have reached a plea agreement with Mr. Abramoff and appear to trust the lobbyist's version of events.

Another example of how Mr. Ney sought to assist Mr. Abramoff comes from the lawmaker's entries into the Congressional Record at the time the lobbyist was trying to buy the SunCruz casino boat line in Florida. The comments heaped praise on Adam Kidan, Mr. Abramoff's business partner in the SunCruz deal, who has since pleaded guilty in the Florida case.

In a statement entered into the record on Oct. 26, 2000, Mr. Ney described Mr. Kidan as having "a renowned reputation for honesty and integrity."

Within weeks, Mr. Kidan and others were hosts of a fund-raiser for Mr. Ney in an MCI Center skybox in Washington rented by Mr. Abramoff. Prosecutors are examining how the Congressional Record comments came about. While rarely read by the public, such comments are often circulated by grass-roots organizers or turned into advertisements to support a given cause, as proof of official support in Washington.

Mr. Scanlon has told investigators that he had a conversation with Mr. Ney about arranging the October remarks, and also dealt with Neil G. Volz, then Mr. Ney's chief of staff, participants in the case have said. Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff have said they believed Mr. Ney was acting in exchange for the flow of campaign donations and favors they arranged.

Mr. Volz, who joined Mr. Abramoff at the firm Greenberg Traurig in 2002 after working for Mr. Ney, is facing his own set of legal problems, including allegations set forth in the Abramoff plea deal that he violated the rule barring Congressional staff members from lobbying their former bosses for one year after leaving Capitol Hill. Mr. Volz resigned from his most recent job, at the law firm Barnes & Thornburg, this month.

Republicans are scrambling to contain the political fallout from the lobbying scandal, while some Democrats hope to capitalize on it. Congressional Democrats plan to unveil a lobbying overhaul plan on Wednesday, and House Republicans are working to assemble one as well, with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois proposing a ban on the type of private travel that Mr. Abramoff provided.

According to Mr. Abramoff's plea agreement, Mr. Ney provided a stream of official favors to Mr. Abramoff and his associates. In one case, the court papers say, Mr. Ney helped an Israeli company win a contract in 2001 to provide wireless service to Congress.

The next year, Mr. Ney made an "agreement," as the plea deal calls it, with Mr. Abramoff that he would introduce legislation benefiting Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. At the same time, Mr. Abramoff directed tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Mr. Ney, including $10,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, at Mr. Ney's request, the plea agreement states.

Mr. Ney has since given away thousands in donations that Mr. Abramoff directed to him, and has distanced himself from the Republican lobbyist. "He keeps saying to me, 'As a friend, I didn't do it,' " said Neil S. Clark, a Republican lobbyist in Ohio who said he talked to Mr. Ney several times a week.

"Bobby has been a friend of mine for 26 years," Mr. Clark said. "He and I, when we were younger, we partied together, we lived in the same apartment complex. And I've never known Bobby to ever want to ruin his career."

But it may now be Mr. Ney's word against that of Mr. Abramoff, who has publicly ridiculed Mr. Ney's claim of having been victimized. In an interview in The New York Times Magazine last year, Mr. Abramoff said: "Ney told the press, 'I was duped'? It's crazy!" Mr. Abramoff has given similar accounts to prosecutors.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 17, 2006
Accord on Scheduling Alito Vote Next Week
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
By The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - Senate Republicans and Democrats agreed on Monday to schedule votes on the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. in the Judiciary Committee on Jan. 24 and on the Senate floor by Jan. 31.

The agreement ends a spat between the parties over the timing. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the committee, said at the time the hearings were scheduled that the two parties had reached a good-faith understanding that the panel would vote on Jan. 17.

Democrats said last week that they intended to exercise their right to delay the vote until Jan. 24. Both sides say confirmation is all but assured.

Liberal groups and leading Senate Democrats are pushing for additional time to lobby to hold down the votes in support of Judge Alito, hoping to send a tough message about future nominees. Republicans want to hold the votes as quickly as possible to maintain momentum and to prevent potential last-minute missteps.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Gore Assails Domestic Wiretapping Program By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jan 16, 5:13 PM ET



Former Vice President Al Gore called Monday for an independent investigation of President Bush's domestic spying program, contending the president "repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr.'s national holiday, the man who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush was interrupted repeatedly by applause as he called the anti-terrorism program "a threat to the very structure of our government."

Gore charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a special federal court that authorizes requests to eavesdrop on Americans. One judge on the court resigned last month, voicing concerns about the National Security Agency's surveillance of e-mails and phone calls.

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Tracey Schmitt, attacked Gore's comments shortly after address.

"Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Schmitt said. "While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger. "

Gore's speech was sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and The Liberty Coalition, two organizations that have expressed concern about the policy.

The former vice president said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should name a special counsel to investigate the program, citing the attorney general's "obvious conflict of interest" as a member of the Bush Cabinet as well as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Gonzales has agreed to testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the program, and he told a news conference recently that the president acted "consistent with his legal authority" to protect Americans from a terrorist threat.

Gore, speaking at DAR Constitution Hall, said the concerns are especially important on the King holiday because the slain civil rights leader was among thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government.

King, as a foremost civil rights activist in the 1950s and 60s, had his telephone conversations wiretapped by the FBI, which kept a file on him and thousands of other civil rights and anti-Vietnam war activists.

Gore said there is still much to learn about the domestic surveillance program, but he already has drawn a conclusion about its legality.

"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," the Democrat maintained.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore had a different view, contending that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

He said the spying program must be considered along with other administration actions as a constitutional power grab by the president. Gore cited imprisoning American citizens without charges in terrorism cases, mistreatment of prisoners — including torture — and seizure of individuals in foreign countries and delivering them to autocratic regimes "infamous for the cruelty of their techniques."

Gore didn't only criticize government officials. Referring to news reports that private telecommunications companies have provided the Bush administration with access to private information on Americans, Gore said any company that did so should immediately end its complicity in the program.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Gore accuses Bush of breaking law Houston Chronicle
Former Vice President Al Gore accused President Bush of breaking the law by authorizing wiretaps on US citizens without court warrants and called on Congress Monday to reassert its oversight responsibilities on a "shameful exercise of power" by the White House. "The president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Gore said in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington. "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government." To restore a system of checks and balances to government, Gore proposed appointing a special counsel to look into the domestic surveillance program, developing new whistle-blower protections and not extending the Patriot Act. He urged members of Congress, only one of whom — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. — was present, to "start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be." On the holiday marking the 77th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gore drew a parallel between the FBI's eavesdropping on the civil rights leader and the current eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on communications between Americans and what Bush has said are suspected terrorists.

'Part of a larger pattern'
He also sought to cast the domestic surveillance program as simply the latest extension of a "truly breathtaking expansion of executive power" by the Bush administration. Gore said this began when the White House used incorrect intelligence about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to justify invading it and has continued through the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and the debate over whether torture may be used to extract information from detainees. "The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to Americans in both political parties," Gore said. The Bush administration's actions have "brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution," he said. While Gore's denunciation of the administration's domestic surveillance program drew cheers from the crowd at the event, sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society, national public polling shows that Americans remain divided on the issue. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 percent said that "wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval" was an acceptable tool for the federal government to use when investigating terrorism. Forty-seven percent said it was an unacceptable for the government to use those methods.

Called to testify
Senate Judiciary Committee Chariman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has called Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to testify about the eavesdropping program. Specter said Sunday that if Bush broke the law in authorizing wiretaps without going through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to get warrants, he could face impeachment. "I'm not suggesting remotely that there's any basis" for impeachment, Specter told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week. "After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price." Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Gore's speech. "Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Schmitt said.
Gore calls for special counsel on eavesdropping Reuters
Gore Says Bush Wiretapping Could be Impeachable Offense ABC News
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