[littlemar]

OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK
Child Care Refunds Cut for Struggling Families

(WOMENSENEWS)--Many struggling families will not be receiving the increased child credit in the tax bill that President George W. Bush signed this week due to a last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders, reports The New York Times.

Most taxpaying parents will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit to $1,000 from $600. It had been clear from the beginning that the wealthiest families would not receive the credit that is intended to phase out at high incomes.

But after studying the bill approved on Friday, liberal and child advocacy groups discovered that a different group of families would also be excluded--those making just above the minimum wage. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in Washington, D.C., said that most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 will not benefit. The organization indicated that the
parents of 11.9 million children, or one of every six children under 17, will not receive the $400 check.

The checks will bypass many female-headed households. The median income of those households, according to the Census Bureau, is $25,794. The median income of two-parent families is $59,184.

The provision was dropped in the House-Senate conference, where tax writers spent days trying to cram in many cuts, including cuts in the taxes on stock dividends and capital gains. An important swing vote in the Senate, George V.
Voinovich, a zealous anti-choice Republican from Ohio, said he could not approve any bill that exceeded $350 billion. To satisfy him and the Senate, the child-credit provision was dropped, along with other items.

"I don't know why they would cut that out of the bill," Senator Blanche Lincoln was quoted as saying. The Arkansas Democrat had persuaded the full Senate to send the credit to many more low-income families before the provision was dropped in conference. "These are the people who need it the most and who will spend it the most. These are the people who buy the blue jeans and the detergent and who will stimulate the economy with their spending."

Another excluded group will be families with incomes lower than $10,500, because they do not pay federal taxes. Proposals to give them the credits failed on the Republican-dominated House and Senate floors on party-line votes.

[Wino]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by littlemar:
[B]OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK
Child Care Refunds Cut for Struggling Families.....

Is anyone surprised?

[eggplant43]

Dislike Of America Deepens

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2003


The war in Iraq has sent support for the United States to new lows in Muslim countries and significantly damaged the standing of the United Nations in those nations and elsewhere, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project poll also found al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden still gets favorable marks in some Muslim countries, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan instill more confidence than President Bush in non-Muslim countries.

Even in the United States, Blair comes out ahead of Mr. Bush.

Asked about their confidence in world leaders to do the right thing, Palestinians ranked bin Laden first. He came in second in Jordan, Morocco and Pakistan.

Blair was the top-rated world leader in the United States with 83 percent saying they have "a lot" or "some" confidence in him to do the right thing, though U.N. Secretary General Annan came in first among the British with 72 percent. Canadians and Australians also ranked Blair at the top of world leaders, while Annan finished first in Italy and Spain.

In many countries with generally favorable attitudes about the United States such as Brazil, Russia, Spain, France and Germany only modest percentages have confidence in President Bush. A majority expresses confidence in Mr. Bush in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia. He led in Israel, with 83 percent expressing confidence in him.

The poll was conducted April 28 to May 15 in 20 countries and among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Some 16,000 interviews in 31 languages were conducted. Margins of error ranged from plus or minus 3 to 4 percentage points.

U.S. foreign policy got generally unfavorable ratings.

Majorities in seven of the eight Muslim countries surveyed said they think their nation will be attacked by the United States. In Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan, more than 70 percent of those questioned had this concern.

Even in Kuwait, where people have a generally favorable view of the United States, 53 percent voice at least some concern that the United States could someday pose a threat, the survey found.

In a previous Pew survey, negative feelings about the United States were confined to the Middle East and Pakistan but now they have expanded to Africa and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. There, 83 percent had an unfavorable view of America, compared to 36 percent a year ago.

"Dislike of the United States has really deepened and spread throughout the Muslim world," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center that oversaw polling.

In another significant finding, the survey said that public confidence in the United Nations is a major victim of the war in Iraq.

The idea that the United Nations is less relevant is shared by people in the United States and Britain as well as in nations that opposed the war, such as France and Germany.

U.S.-French relations are another war casualty. Only 29 percent of Americans surveyed said they have very or somewhat favorable views of France, while twice as many feel negatively. French opinion on Americans ranged from 58 percent very or somewhat favorable to 42 percent somewhat unfavorable to very unfavorable.

There also is widespread disappointment among Muslims that Iraq did not put up more of a fight against the United States and its allies. Overwhelming majorities in Morocco (93 percent), Jordan (91 percent) and Lebanon (82 percent) say they expected more resistance from the Iraqis.

The poll was released together with a broader survey of 44 nations conducted in 2002 which covers attitudes on globalization, democratization and the role of Islam in governance and society.

Kohut said the anti-globalization forces that have protested in America and overseas don't seem to be making inroads. He said the survey found there is "great acceptance of a connected world with most people saying trade and growing business ties are good for them and their countries."

Among other findings: Muslims favor a prominent — in many cases expanded — role for Islam and religious leaders in the political life of their countries. Yet that opinion does not diminish Muslim support for the same civil liberties and political rights enjoyed by democracies.

"In fact, in a number of countries," according to the survey analysis, "Muslims who support a greater role for Islam in politics place the highest regard on freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the importance of free and contested elections."



By Harry Dunphy

[littlemar]

The Internet: A Law Unto Itself
Mark Kastleman

An Internet Tidal Wave

The introduction and subsequent massive growth of the Internet has generated a serious problem with regard to the distribution of illegal pornography. Laws that do exist, designed to prevent pornographers from distributing illegal materials "over the counter," do not apply to the Internet. Through the Internet, obscenity, material harmful to minors, and indecent material-all under the heading of "illegal pornography"-can easily and instantly be distributed by pornographers from anywhere around the world to anyone with a computer. There currently are no statutes in the U.S. regarding the display of any and all forms of illegal pornography on the Internet, with the exception of child pornography.

And even with child pornography, there is so much of it on the Internet that law enforcement can only keep tabs on a fraction of the violators. Unfortunately, when an arrest is made for child pornography violations, there is no guarantee that the charges will hold up in court. For example, recently a high-profile business executive was arrested and charged for the possession of child pornography and soliciting sex with a 13-year-old over the Internet. It appears, though, that the courts will dismiss the child porn possession charges due to a technicality in the law. The dismissal of these cases will increase dramatically now that the Supreme Court has stuck down the "Virtual Child Porn Law" proposed by Congress. The Supreme Court voted in April against banning virtual child pornography, which uses young adults or computer-generated images to depict children in sexually explicit acts. Now prosecutors will have to prove that a pedophile's child porn photos are "real" as oppose! d to "virtual!" Heaven help our children!

In addition to the horror of children being displayed in pornography, no laws are on the books to protect children from being exposed to Internet pornography. Amazingly, anyone can freely and deliberately show explicit, degrading and violent pornographic images to children via the Internet without fear of legal recourse!

Internet Pornographers Can Legally Provide Pornography to Children

If a pornographer sells his wares to a child over the counter, he or she can be prosecuted and punished under the law. But that same pornographer can provide the very same pornographic images (or worse) to a child on the Internet using "teaser photos" and face no legal consequences of any kind.
What sort of images can be displayed on the computers of children, teens and adults? The simple answer is, "Anything goes!"

The Internet was first developed as a fast and inexpensive way for scientists and other researchers at one location to communicate via the computer with colleagues at another location. No one could accurately predict what far-reaching effects this technology would have.

For years it was assumed that the Internet was merely a toy for computer whizzes and would never really catch on with the general public. No one really paid much attention to it. But, as the features and benefits of the Internet grew, it became very clear that it had enormous potential and that its use and appeal were not limited to a small group of computer technicians.

Almost over night use of the Internet exploded. A wide range of organizations "logged on." Powerful entrepreneurs and prestigious corporations began to recognize the Internet's tremendous value as a source of new sales and revenue. Simply put, everyone was taken by surprise. Suddenly, there it was-Cyberspace. No controls, no laws, no guidelines. All brand new! And still the Internet is a law unto itself in essence-it has no laws.

Attempting to Regulate the Internet

Once people realized the true power of the Internet, including the ability of pornographers to use it without rules or restrictions, a movement began to try and bring law and order to the Internet environment.

On February 8, 1996 the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was signed into law. The provisions of the Act were designed to punish those who distributed pornographic materials to minors over the Internet. Violators would face fines and imprisonment.

Immediately there arose an uproar from pornographers and other groups: "This is a violation of the First Amendment!" On June 12, 1996, a three-judge panel in Philadelphia federal district court agreed and declared the CDA unconstitutional.

On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court of the United States subsequently affirmed the lower court's ruling that the CDA was unconstitutional.

It's interesting to note that Penthouse magazine posted the following statement on its Internet site shortly after the Court struck down the CDA legislation intended to protect children on the Internet: The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Penthouse to build the Ultimate Empire of Sex on the Internet. . . . You will see a new, hotter, harder Penthouse.

In striking down the CDA, the Supreme Court ruled that the language in the Act was "too broad." So, taking into account the Court's opinion, a few members of the Senate and Congress tailored a new act with a much "narrower" approach. Called the "Child Online Protection Act" or COPA, it was passed in October of 1998 as part of the Omnibus Spending Bill.

COPA contains major revisions that attempt to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling regarding CDA.

These revisions include:

Specifically exempting material with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific merit;

Addressing only commercial pornographers, not amateur postings;

Addressing only the World Wide Web, not News groups, e-mail or chat rooms; and

Defining minors as those 16 or under.
This Act nearly died on a number of occasions, but a flood of calls from citizens prompted Congress to pass it. However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, crying "censorship," immediately filed a lawsuit against the measure. In February of 1999, U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed imposed an injunction against the law, thus preventing its enactment and tying it up in the infamous appeals process.

On June 23, 2000, CNET News reported the following: In a unanimous decision yesterday, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reluctantly upheld an earlier ruling by a lower court judge, who found that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) violated the First Amendment right to free speech. Appeals court Judge Leonard Garth stated: "Sometimes we must make decisions that we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result."

As mentioned earlier in this article, in April, the Supreme Court struck down the "Virtual Child Porn" law. And now, in another blow to the safety and protection of our children, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the ban on the enforcement of COPA should remain in place. The Supreme Court has sent COPA back to the lower courts for further review. It is expected that after the endless appeals process, COPA will ultimately be defeated.

Once again, pornography on the Internet is without rules, regulations or restrictions and the pornographers, together with those who support their cause, will do everything in their power to keep it that way. It should be clear by now that you cannot rely on laws to protect you and your family when it comes to pornography on the Internet. Once you enter the unbridled prairie of cyberspace, be prepared to ride a wild pony. Mavericks are the rule. "Anything goes."

Don't Give Up-You Can Make a Difference

Observing the unconscionable actions of the ACLU, the courts, pornographers and others in relation to the protection of children and families, it's easy to throw your hands in the air and simply give up. Take courage-you're not alone in this fight. There are a number of national organizations providing tremendous support and resources for the protection of children and families from the devastation of pornography. I urge you to contact these organizations and obtain their information and materials. They will show you, step-by-step, how to make a powerful difference in your own family and community.

[eggplant43]

Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysts' Views


By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 7, 2003; Page A01


During the weeks last fall before critical votes in Congress and the United Nations on going to war in Iraq, senior administration officials, including President Bush, expressed certainty in public that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, even though U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting they had no direct evidence that such weapons existed.

In an example of the tenor of the administration's statements at the time, the president said in the Rose Garden on Sept. 26 that "the Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi regime is building the facilities necessary to make more biological and chemical weapons."

But a Defense Intelligence Agency report on chemical weapons, widely distributed to administration policymakers around the time of the president's speech, stated there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has or will establish its chemical agent production facilities."

The disparities between the conviction with which administration officials portrayed the threat posed by Iraq in their public statements and documents, and the more qualified reporting on the issue by intelligence agencies in classified reports, are at the heart of a burgeoning controversy in Congress and within the intelligence community over the U.S. rationale for going to war. The failure of the United States to uncover any proscribed weapons eight weeks after the end of the war is fueling sentiment among some Democrats on Capitol Hill and some intelligence analysts that the administration may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq.

The White House yesterday defended the administration's prewar claims. "We continue to have confidence in our statements about Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons," spokesman Ari Fleischer said. He added that "the precise location of where Iraq had chemical and biological weapons was never clear, but the fact they had it was never in doubt, based on a reading of the intelligence."

The controversy over the administration's handling of the Iraq intelligence continued, however, as two senior defense intelligence officials discussed the issue behind closed doors with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The officials, Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, were asked by reporters afterward about the classified Defense Intelligence Agency report on Iraq's chemical weapons.

"What we're saying is that as of 2002 in September, we could not reliably pin down, for somebody who was doing contingency planning, specific facilities, locations or production that was underway at a specific location at that point in time," Jacoby said.

The existence of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document was reported in this week's U.S. News and World Report. The administration declassified a summary page of the document last night.

The report said that "although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical agent in chemical munitions" and "probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and VX," a deadly nerve agent.

As the administration built its case for war last fall, some policymakers used caveats in describing Iraq's weapons holdings that mirrored the caution built into the DIA and other intelligence reports. In early September, for example, Bush used words such as "likely" or "suggests" in making the case that Iraq had a covert weapons program. But many of the president's speeches, as well as statements by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, went without caveats.

Among those concerned by the discrepancy is Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who routinely asked at committee meetings on Iraq whether officials were certain they would find weapons of mass destruction if the United States toppled the Iraqi government. Warner's committee and the Senate and House intelligence committees are deciding whether to launch an independent investigation of the administration's handling of Iraqi intelligence by their staffs. The CIA is already conducting an internal probe.

Cheney kicked off the administration's campaign to win congressional and U.N. support for military action in a speech on Aug. 26 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville. "Simply stated," Cheney said, "there's no doubt that [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

Before his Rose Garden statement in late September, Bush had used more measured language about Iraq's chemical weapons program, in line with the Defense Intelligence Agency conclusion.

At the United Nations on Sept. 12, when he urged the world body to join the United States in confronting Iraq, Bush said that previous U.N. inspections revealed "that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents."

But on Sept. 26, as the campaign to win congressional and U.N. Security Council approval for military action intensified, the president told congressional leaders Iraq "possesses" such weapons. On the same day, Rumsfeld told reporters that Iraq has "active development programs for those weapons, and has weaponized chemical and biological weapons."

On Oct. 1, the CIA released a "white paper" on Iraq's weapons programs derived from a broader, classified National Intelligence Estimate that had been sent to the White House and shared with members of Congress in briefings.

Among the "Key Judgments" in the first two pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that were meant to summarize the details that followed were statements in the white paper that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons," and "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX."

However, the more detailed backup material later in the document did not support those assessments. The intelligence paper contained more qualified language, stating, for example, that "gaps in Iraqi accounting and current production capabilities strongly suggest Iraq has the ability to produce chemical warfare agents within its chemical industry." It also said Iraq "has the ability to produce chemical warfare agents" -- a softer formulation than the summary section of the document, which said that Iraq "has begun" producing the agents.

On Oct. 7, Bush echoed without qualification the white paper's "key judgment" conclusion when he said that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." He went on to say, "Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world."

Asked about the president's comments on the Iraq intelligence yesterday, Fleischer said: "Intelligence comes in the form of a mosaic. The president's description of the complete picture resulted from an interagency process in which every statement was vetted and approved by each agency."

A senior administration official, who consulted with analysts familiar with the white paper, said the document's judgments "were a bit more categorical" than later statements "but the overall burden of the evidence pointed to that conclusion." He added that the president's statements were "based on the preponderance of the evidence" as he and policymakers saw it.

Throughout the run-up to war, according to senior intelligence officials, intelligence agencies had no direct evidence such as photographs or stolen Iraqi documents to support a firm conclusion about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They said the case was circumstantial, largely because U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, shutting off the last bit of direct knowledge available to the United States. Inspectors returned last November and remained in Iraq until March.

Some officials have said privately that, while they could influence the content of intelligence documents, they had no control over what administration policymakers said in interpreting the material.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[eggplant43]

Atlantic Unbound | May 29, 2003

Interviews

Addicted to Oil

Robert Baer, a former CIA agent and the author of "The Fall of the House of Saud" (May Atlantic), discusses the perils of our dependence on Saudi Arabia and its precious supply of fuel

.....

dependence that's so strong it's almost like a narcotic. You don't question the pusher." It may sound like the language of drug addiction, but in fact Robert Baer, a former CIA agent in the Middle East, is describing American dependence on Saudi Arabia and its oil. In "The Fall of the House of Saud" (May Atlantic), Baer details the United States's absolute reliance on oil from a country that is deeply, dangerously unstable.

The history of U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia goes back nearly to that nation's birth. In 1933, a year after the kingdom was declared, the first American oil concession was granted. Over time, U.S. interest in Saudi oil evolved into a company called Aramco, which controlled all of the oil in Saudi Arabia—25 percent of the world's total. Aramco was a private company held by four large U.S. oil companies, with immense influence on the U.S. government. (It is now wholly owned by the Saudi government.) Moreover, the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia extends beyond this private interest—as early as 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt asserted that protecting the kingdom, and its oil, was of vital economic importance to the United States as a whole. The precedent of maintaining a friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia, for both public and private reasons, has remained unchanged in the intervening years.

The United States' policies on Saudi Arabia, Baer argues, are built upon the delusion that Saudi Arabia is stable—that both the country and the flow of its most precious commodity can continue on indefinitely. Sustaining that delusion is the immense amount of money (estimated at $19.3 billion in 2000) exchanged between the two partners: the U.S. buys oil and sells weapons, Saudi Arabia buys weapons and sells oil. Oil and the defense contracts underpinning its protection bind these two countries together in such a way that when Saudi Arabia falls—a fate Baer feels is absolutely certain—the U.S. falls too. Perhaps not all the way down, but, if we don't curtail our dependence, he argues, a failure in Saudi Arabia could have catastrophic consequences for the United States.

Our relationship, however, continues unabated—even as the corrupt royal family bleeds the Saudi treasury, Wahhabist extremism heats up, and Saudi Arabian citizens kill American citizens in acts of terror. Baer maintains that we must look at Saudi Arabia with a more objective lens and examine the foundations of that country, since they are, in some sense, the foundations of our own.

Robert Baer was part of the Central Intelligence Agency for twenty-one years; for most of that time, he worked for the Directorate of Operations in the Middle East as a field officer. He is the author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. His article for The Atlantic is adapted from his new book, Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Its Soul for Saudi Crude, to be released in July.

[Rollin' Rog]

Trust is a precious commodity in our government's key institutions. We treat as 'traitors' those who sell out best interests of our nation. Perhaps we should do the same with those who continue to damage the underlying credibility of institutions we rely on.

==============================================

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions

COMMENTARY

_

Crooked Arm of the Law

By Jonathan Turley

June 9, 2003On Aug. 21, 1995, Jesse Trentadue was found hanging from a bed sheet in his prison cell in Oklahoma. Federal prison officials and investigators immediately declared his death a suicide and sought to cremate his remains. His family, however, was suspicious and stopped the cremation for a privately funded autopsy. What they found may be a case of murder followed by an extraordinary cover-up by federal officials.

This month, the Senate is considering calling a hearing into the case ? a hearing that should address a growing number of recent scandals involving perjury and obstruction of justice by federal officials.

From the outset, Trentadue's suicide seemed unbelievable to his family. Trentadue, a convicted bank robber, was arrested two days before on a simple parole violation.

The family's autopsy disclosed that Trentadue had bruises and blood on his face and that his throat had been slit. The local coroner strongly questioned the finding of suicide by federal prison officials.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and others called for hearings in 1998. However, the Justice Department launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to scuttle the hearings.

In memorandums detailing meetings with senators released last week, it now appears that federal officials may have misrepresented the evidence in the case to avoid a congressional investigation. For example, officials assured the senators that all of the blood in the cell was Trentadue's when actually they had found blood from a second individual.

Under pressure from Congress, an internal investigation was conducted and concluded that federal officials lied about the evidence. Hatch sent a letter to then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno stating that "it looks as though somebody in the Bureau of Prisons murdered the man."

A federal district judge was equally scathing in a recent decision awarding $1.1 million to the Trentadue family, finding among other things that FBI officials may have committed perjury in his court.

The Trentadue case is particularly disturbing because it follows a growing number of cases of alleged perjury and obstruction of justice by federal officials. For example, new allegations were raised recently concerning the Timothy McVeigh case. A critical letter was discovered that was never turned over to the defense or the court ? the contents of which would have probably halted McVeigh's execution. The letter from an FBI whistle-blower strongly supported the defense contention that evidence offered by the FBI was unreliable.

The letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was sent 11 days before McVeigh's execution but never given to the court, as required by law.

Marked as "urgent," the letter indicated that Stephen Burmeister, now the FBI's chief of scientific analysis, may have given "false, misleading, and potentially fabricated" evidence to the court. Specifically, critical ammonium nitrate crystals reportedly found on a piece of McVeigh's truck may have been from cleaning crews at the FBI lab and not explosives.

Notably, the judge in the case, Richard Matsch, had already delayed the execution after it was disclosed that the Justice Department had failed to hand over thousands of pages of evidence in the case. Moreover, Burmeister had testified that his lab was the very model of professionalism in taking precautions against contamination ? an assertion later found to be untrue in the so-called FBI lab scandal.

In all of these matters, the Justice Department has insisted that these were merely mishandling or administrative problems. These cases, however, suggest something far more serious, including criminal acts of perjury and obstruction.

Currently, dozens of federal convictions are being reevaluated after the disclosure of false testimony by federal experts in DNA cases. Likewise, it was recently disclosed that the Justice Department and FBI officials allowed an innocent man to be sentenced to death and remain incarcerated for 30 years for a murder that they knew was ordered by one of their own informants. In the ongoing scandal involving Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, one former FBI agent has already been sent to jail for perjury and obstruction of justice. In the Ruby Ridge and Wen Ho Lee scandals, senior FBI agents admitted to giving false testimony.

Prosecutions for such criminal acts have been limited, and many of these violations came to light largely because they involved high-profile cases. It is widely believed that the occurrence of false testimony and obstructions by federal officials is much higher.
Though the Justice Department does not hesitate to prosecute people like Martha Stewart and others for any allegedly false statement given to federal investigators, they are far more circumspect in dealing with their own ranks. There is a culture of toleration, if not admiration, for agents who "work with prosecutors" to craft testimony to guarantee convictions. What is often dismissed as an excess of enthusiasm within Justice is regularly charged as a crime for citizens.

Congress needs to hold hearings, but only if it is prepared to force real changes at the Justice Department and the FBI. We need real reform and individual accountability so that the public can better distinguish between our law enforcement officials and the subjects of their work.

Jonathan Turley is a professor at George Washington Law School and has testified in Congress on perjury and misconduct by federal investigators.

[eggplant43]

40 Years Of Darkness And Light
June 11, 2003


Under the hot Southern sun one afternoon 40 years ago today, Alabama's segregationist Governor George Wallace stood alongside highway patrolmen in hardhats as he bitterly fought, but ultimately failed, to block the admission of two black students at the doors of the all-white state university.

Blacks have been enrolled at the school ever since.

Hours later in Mississippi, in the quiet dark after midnight, the family of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers heard his car pull up their gravel driveway, and then a gunshot, bringing to an end the life of a civil rights icon.

President Kennedy had only just gone off the air after making his most impassioned stand on civil rights to date, a speech to the nation explaining the federal government's intervention on behalf of the black students that day, in which he spoke of a "moral crisis" now facing the nation. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called the president's address "a hallmark in the annals of American history."

Coming just two months before King's own landmark "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, it was a 24-hour period that stood out, in a year that stood out, in the modern fight for civil rights. It also changed American politics, launching Wallace onto the national political scene and marking the Democratic Party's definitive move into the corner of civil rights.

This week, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, the two students who faced the governor during the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door," were honored during an anniversary observance at the university. And on Tuesday, a crowd of about 800 gathered in Evers' hometown of Decatur to remember him and his work, part of a "Week of Remembrance" which concludes with a graveside vigil at Arlington Cemetery on June 16.

During the keynote address at the University of Alabama Tuesday, Robert Kennedy Jr. recalled the confrontation between Wallace and his father, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

After his father was assassinated, and during Wallace's 1972 presidential campaign, Kennedy said, "It struck me then that every nation, like every human being, has a darker side and a lighter side."

Some people, he said, implying Wallace, appeal to ignorance and hatred, while others, like the civil rights pioneers who've gathered during this week of anniversaries, represent enlightenment and acceptance.

Wallace's stand, mostly an act of political stagecraft, came during a time of racial turmoil across the South, and it helped earn his re-election to three more terms as governor. A Democratic populist at the time, he was elevated as a champion of conservative whites who helped launch the Reagan revolution in 1980. By the time of his death in 1998, the man who once proclaimed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," was a Republican who'd renounced his segregationist views.

Evers' death, rather than snuffing out a fledgling civil rights movement, focused national attention on the plight of blacks in the South.

Evers became an NAACP leader in 1954, after the University of Mississippi, then all-white, rejected his law school application. During those turbulent times, even joining the NAACP could bring death threats from whites who felt their way of life was under attack.

Through the NAACP, Evers pushed to increase black voter registration, led business boycotts and helped bring attention to murders like the 1955 slaying of black teenager Emmett Till.

Immediately after Evers' murder, for which segregationist Byron de la Beckwith was ultimately convicted 30 years later, Charles Evers left his life in Chicago behind to take up his younger brother's post at the NAACP.

Charles Evers became mayor of the tiny town of Fayette in 1969, and in 1971 he became the first black candidate in modern times to make a serious, but unsuccessful, run for governor. Now a prominent Republican, he said Mississippi has changed "almost 100 percent" since his brother's slaying.

"The attitudes of whites in this state have changed tremendously toward blacks," said Charles Evers. "I have white friends now who wouldn't have had anything to do with me 40 years ago."

Segregated bus stations and water fountains are long gone. Universities and public schools are desegregated. In Jackson, the main U.S. Post Office and one of the busiest streets are named for Medgar Evers.

In Alabama, the state university's student body is now about 13 percent black. Jones, who entered the school as a junior after attending a historically black college, became the first black graduate of Alabama in 1965. Hood left after a few months, but returned to receive his doctorate in 1997.

This week's observance is welcomed by black students, said Laborian Jones, who said he didn't know much about the events of 1963 when he enrolled at Alabama.

Like other places, Alabama still has racial problems. Jesse Jackson visited the state recently in opposition to the hiring of a white football coach over a black candidate, and fraternities and sororities are still mostly segregated.

"There's very little mingling going on in the dining area, and that's very frustrating," Hood said. "The fight that I fought was for us to be able to mingle with other students."

But on campus, interracial friendships have been forged just around the corner from where Wallace made his stand. Courtney Tooson, a black student from Birmingham, said he wishes there was more emphasis on remembering what happened in '63.

"If you don't teach someone their past, how can they dictate their future?" he asked.

[Stoner]

http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/12/comm...dask/index.htm

Crude awakening


The rise in oil prices could pose a significant headwind for the economy.
June 12, 2003: 8:38 AM EDT
By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Senior Writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Quick, which widely-watched asset has risen most over the past month?

Nope, it's not stocks and it ain't bonds. Not gold or pork bellies, for that matter. No, it's oil, which has risen 18.3 percent and now trades for $32.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The black stuff has traded higher during only three periods over the past 15 years -- before the recent war in Iraq, in the mini-energy crisis that hit the country in late 2000 and during the lead up to the first Gulf War.

This isn't the way it's supposed to go. As it became clear that the war in Iraq was not going to go as badly as some traders feared, and that Saddam Hussein lacked the will or, more likely, the ability to scorch his country's oil fields, the market was enthusiastic that oil prices would come scuttling down.


And for a while they did -- but then they bounced back up as it became clear that, thanks to continued looting and 12 years of neglect, Iraq's oil fields would not come on line as quickly as U.S. officials had led the market to believe. Meanwhile, inventory levels remain low after being depleted by the harsh winter, unrest in Venezuela and Nigeria and the conservative stance many buyers took during the lead-up to the Gulf War on the worry that the government might release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Officials are promising that more Iraqi oil will be flowing soon -- at present the country is pumping about 700,000 barrels a day, but they say output could come to a daily 1.5 million barrels by the end of the month. But given the too-optimistic forecasts of the past, said Fimat USA energy analyst Mike Fitzpatrick, the industry is skeptical.

For the economy, the way oil prices keep sticking higher is not a good thing. Higher energy prices act as a tax on both consumers and businesses, drawing money away that might be spent elsewhere. With the summer driving season upon us and gasoline going, on average, for $1.50 a gallon, much of the money from the big tax cut Washington just passed may go straight to the gas tank. The rule of thumb, according to Deutsche Bank chief U.S. economist Carey Leahey, is that each dollar rise in oil saps cuts $5 billion out of consumer spending.

The only posititve you can possibly draw from the higher oil prices, said Leahey, is that they may reflect better demand, suggesting a better economy. But this is just a faint ray in an otherwise gloomy story.

[eggplant43]

Friday 13th - unlucky for some
People who see themselves as unlucky should stay indoors on Friday the 13th, according to new research.
A study suggests those who consider themselves unlucky are more likely to believe in superstitions associated with bad luck, such as the number 13.

What is more, the researchers say, this belief alone can actually lead to "bad luck".

Psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman, who carried out the research, said: "Unlucky people tend to buy into negative superstitions, like having seven years bad luck after smashing a mirror.

"If you're one of these people, the fact that it's Friday the 13th could make you anxious and that will make you more likely to have accidents, drive less well, and perhaps find it harder to relate to other people.

"So your bad luck could be your own doing."


'Copping out'

More controversially, Dr Wiseman believes some people actually want to be unlucky because it helps them to avoid taking responsibility for their own failings.

"It's a way of copping out," he said.


Dr Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, said a quarter of those surveyed thought the number 13 was unlucky.

A total of 4,000 people were asked if they considered themselves lucky or unlucky, and whether they engaged in any superstitious behaviour.

The survey found that "lucky" people tended to believe in superstitions designed to bring good luck, such as touching wood, crossing fingers and carrying a lucky charm.


"Unlucky" people were drawn to bad luck superstitions, such as breaking a mirror, walking under a ladder, or having anything to do with the number 13.

The results showed that 49% of lucky people regularly crossed their fingers compared with 30% of unlucky people.

In contrast, just 18% of lucky people became anxious if they broke a mirror, compared with 40% of unlucky people.

But the number 13 brought out the biggest difference between the lucky and unlucky, with more than half of people who considered themselves unlucky dreading the number, as opposed to just 22% of lucky people.


Crossing fingers

The most widely held superstitious belief was touching wood, which 86% said they did.

That was followed by crossing fingers (64%), not walking under ladders (49%), fear of breaking a mirror (34%), being worried about the number 13 (25%), and carrying a lucky charm (24%).

Dr Wiseman said: "These are surprisingly high figures, and indicate that superstition is alive and well in modern Britain.

"Indeed, amazingly, 86% of Brits said that they carried out at least one of these superstitious behaviours.

"Even scientists are not immune from superstition. For example, 15% of people with a background in science said that they feared the number 13."

Dr Wiseman has set up a website to continue his Luck Project, where anyone can contribute to the research.

[JewisHeritage]

So Eggy ... Did you buy a Black Cat yesterday?

Nice to see you my friend!

[eggplant43]

Nice to see you. I never even gave it a thought.

[Tuppence2]

Hello there - interesting article, thanks.

I am not superstitious and will walk under ladders, etc. I often say to people who are, that if they had never been told that a certain action was bad luck, they would not think of it in a superstitious way (obviously - but you see what I am getting at). If you don't know the number 13 is unlucky, there is no problem. Some people seem to burden themselves with unnecessary fears more than others.

Bye,
Penny

[eggplant43]

June 14, 2003
The Boys Who Cried Wolfowitz
By BILL KELLER


e're now up to Day 87 of the largely fruitless hunt for Iraq's unconventional weapons. Allegations keep piling up that the Bush administration tried to scam the world into war by exaggerating evidence of the Iraqi threat. One critic has pronounced it "arguably the worst scandal in American political history." So you might reasonably ask a supporter of the war, How do you feel about that war now?

Thanks for asking.

One easy answer is that between the excavation of mass graves, which confirms that we have rid the world of a horror, and President Bush's new willingness to engage the thankless tangle of Middle East diplomacy, which raises the hope that Iraq was more than a hit-and-run exercise, the war seems to have changed some important things for the better. This is true, but not quite enough.

Another easy answer is that it's not over yet. Just as we have yet to prove that we can transform a military conquest into a real Mission Accomplished, we have yet to complete our search of a country that, as Californians must be very tired of hearing, is the size of California. This is also true, but likewise inadequate.

I supported the war, with misgivings about the haste, the America-knows-best attitude and our ability to win the peace. The deciding factor for me was not the monstrosity of the regime (routing tyrants is a noble cause, but where do you stop?), nor the opportunity to detoxify the Middle East (another noble cause, but dubious justification for a war when hardly anyone else in the world supports you). No, I supported it mainly because of the convergence of a real threat and a real opportunity.

The threat was a dictator with a proven, insatiable desire for dreadful weapons that would eventually have made him, or perhaps one of his sadistic sons, a god in the region. The fact that he gave aid and at least occasional sanctuary to practitioners of terror added to his menace. And at the end his brazen defiance made us seem weak and vulnerable, an impression we can ill afford. The opportunity was a moment of awareness and political will created by Sept. 11, combined with the legal sanction reaffirmed by U.N. Resolution 1441. The important thing to me was never that Saddam Hussein's threat was "imminent" — although Sept. 11 taught us that is not such an easy thing to know — but that the opportunity to do something about him was finite. In a year or two, we would be distracted and Iraq would be back in the nuke-building business.

Even if you throw out all the tainted evidence, there was still what prosecutors call probable cause to believe that Saddam was harboring frightful weapons, and was bent on acquiring the most frightful weapons of all. The Clinton administration believed so. Two generations of U.N. inspectors believed so. It was not a Bush administration fabrication that Iraq had, and failed to account for, massive quantities of anthrax and VX nerve gas and other biological and chemical weapons. Saddam was under an international obligation to say where the poisons went, but did not.

What the Bush administration did was gild the lily — disseminating information that ranged from selective to preposterous. The president himself gave credence to the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa, a story that (as Seymour Hersh's investigations leave little doubt) was based on transparently fraudulent information. Colin Powell in his February performance at the U.N. insisted that those famous aluminum tubes Iraq bought were intended for bomb-making, although the technical experts at the Department of Energy had made an awfully strong case that the tubes were for conventional rocket launchers. And as James Risen disclosed in The Times this week, two top Qaeda planners in custody told American interrogators — one of them well before the war was set in motion — that Osama bin Laden had rejected the idea of working with Saddam. That inconclusive but potent evidence was kept quiet in the administration's zeal to establish a meaningful Iraqi connection to the fanatical war on America.

The motives for the dissembling varied. The hawks hyped the case (profusely) to prove we were justified in going to war, with or without allies. Mr. Powell hyped it (modestly) in the hope that the war, which he knew the president had already decided to wage, would not be a divisive, unilateral exercise. The president either believed what he wanted to believe or was given a stacked deck of information, and it's a close call which of those possibilities is scarier.

Those who say flimflam intelligence drove us to war, though, have got things backward. It seems much more likely that the decision to make war drove the intelligence.

The origins of this may be well intentioned. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the most dogged proponent of war against Iraq, is also a longtime skeptic of American institutional intelligence-gathering. He has argued over the years, from within the government and from outside, that the C.I.A. and its sister agencies often fail to place adequate emphasis on what they don't know, and that they "mirror-image" — make assumptions about what foreign regimes will do based on what we would do.

One tempting solution has been to deputize smart thinkers from outside the intelligence fraternity — a Team B — to second-guess the analysis of the A Team professionals. Mr. Wolfowitz was part of a famous 1976 Team B that attacked the C.I.A. for underestimating the Soviet threat. These days the top leadership of the Defense Department is Team B. Mr. Wolfowitz and his associates have assembled their own trusted analysts to help them challenge the established intelligence consensus.

Who would argue that the spooks' work should not stand up to rigorous cross-examination? But in practice, B-Teaming is often less a form of intellectual discipline than of ideological martial arts.

Here's how it might have worked in the Bush administration:

The A Team (actually, given the number of spy agencies that pool intelligence on major problems, it's more like the A-through-M team) prepares its analysis of, let's say, the Iraqi nuclear program. The report is cautious, equivocal and — particularly since U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 — based on close calls about defector reports, commercial transactions and other flimsy evidence.

The B Team comes in with fresh eyes, and fresh assumptions. One assumption, another Wolfowitz mantra, is that more weight should be given to the character of the regime — in Saddam's case, his transcendent evil and megalomania. While the C.I.A. may say that we have insufficient evidence to conclude that Saddam has reconstituted his nuclear program, Team B starts from the premise that it is just the kind of thing Saddam would do, and it is dangerous to assume he didn't.

Then Team B dips into the raw intelligence and fishes out information that supports its case, tidbits that the A Team may have rejected as unreliable. The Pentagon takes this ammo to an interagency review, where it is used to beat the A Team (the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency) into submission. Maybe the agencies put up a fight, but (1) much of their own evidence is too soft to defend with great conviction, and (2) by this time the president has announced his version of the facts, and the political tide is all running in one direction.


When Team B seems to have the blessing of the boss, it goes from being a source of useful dissent to being an implement of intimidation. As formidable a figure as Mr. Powell, who resisted pressure to include the most arrant nonsense in his U.N. briefing, still ended up arguing a case he told confidants he did not entirely believe, specifically on the questions of Iraq's nuclear program and connections with Al Qaeda.

By the time a Team B version of events has been debunked, it has already served its purpose. That 1976 Team B, by assuming the most dire of Soviet intentions and overlooking the slow collapse of the Soviet economy, came up with estimates of Soviet military strength that we later learned to be ridiculously inflated. But the cold warriors who ran it succeeded in setting back détente and helped to elect Ronald Reagan. The 2003 Team B seems to have convinced most Americans that Saddam had nuclear arms and was in bed with Osama bin Laden.

But the consequences of crying wolf — and the belief is widespread among the dispirited spies of the A Team that the administration did exactly that — are grave. Honest, careful intelligence is our single most important weapon in the global effort against terrorism. It is also critical to winning the support of allies against nuclear proliferation, most urgently in North Korea and Iran. Already rather compelling evidence of Iran's development of nuclear weaponry is being dismissed as just more smoke from the Bush propaganda machine.

So far, the passion to investigate the integrity of American intelligence-gathering belongs mostly to the doves, whose motives are subject to suspicion and who, in any case, do not set the agenda. The pro-war Democrats are dying to change the subject to the economy. The Republicans are in no mood to second-guess a victory. Just when we really need some of that Team B spirit, the hawks have chickened out.

The truth is that the information-gathering machine designed to guide our leaders in matters of war and peace shows signs of being corrupted. To my mind, this is a worrisome problem, but not because it invalidates the war we won. It is a problem because it weakens us for the wars we still face.

[plschwartz]

Devil's Highway is no more

[ SUNDAY, JUNE 15, 2003 12:04:43 AM ]

Politicians in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah have forced the government to change the number of Route 666 to Route 491. The reason? The numbers “666” are supposedly tied to devil worship, and these legislators argue that some people are afraid to travel the road.



About 15 years ago, June Merrett, who owned Anasazi Restaurant & Lounge — a single-story roadhouse in Cortez, Colorado — decided that the address of her establishment was unacceptable.



As though it wasn’t inauspicious enough to be stuck squarely on US Route 666, the building’s number was also 666. So along with adopting the local name of the road as it crosses through town —Broadway —she convinced officials at City Hall to switch the address of the Anasazi to 640.



“She said, ‘Why should we have the double devil?’” Ruth E Russell, the Anasazi’s lounge manager, recalled. “She said three sixes is enough.”



Now, it seems even three sixes are too many.

For 77 years, Route 666, christened as the sixth tributary off Route 66, has woven its way through three states. But this spring, politicians in those three states petitioned the federal agency that handles such things to change the highway’s number, arguing that the New Testament’s association of 666 with Satan was impairing the economic vitality of the towns along its route.



This humble highway is hardly the first to have an identity crisis. South Korea added seven soldiers to its original Iraq contingent to bring the total to a non-controversial 673.



Moscow’s bus route 666 became 616 in 1999. Even the US government, which has a policy against switching Social Security numbers for religious reasons, agreed in 1996 to issue a new one for a 1-year-old girl in Orange County, California, whose parents refused to list her 666 on their income taxes.



All this even though the relevant Biblical passage — from Revelations, Chapter 13 —does not even explicitly mention the Devil. “Here is wisdom,” says Verse 18. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”



Whatever the validity of the fears, Route 666 is no more. On May 31, it was changed to 491. It will take up to a year, and untold sums, for the three states to change their signs and maps to reflect the sanitized moniker, and the cowboys who live along the road will probably keep calling it Triple Six long afterward.



NYT News Service