Obama Hails Judge as ‘Inspiring’

By PETER BAKER and JEFF ZELENY
Published: May 26, 2009 (New York Times)


WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Tuesday that he would nominate Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals judge in New York, to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.

In making his first pick for the court, Mr. Obama emphasized Judge Sotomayor’s “extraordinary journey” from modest beginnings to the Ivy League and now the pinnacle of the judicial system. Casting her as the embodiment of the American dream, he touched off a confirmation battle that he hopes to wage over biography more than ideology.

Judge Sotomayor’s past comments about how her sex and ethnicity shaped her decisions, and the role of appeals courts in making policy, generated instant conservative complaints that she is a judicial activist. Senate Republicans vowed to scrutinize her record. But with Democrats in reach of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, the White House appeared eager to dare Republicans to stand against a history-making nomination at a time when both parties are courting the growing Hispanic vote.

“When Sonia Sotomayor ascends those marble steps to assume her seat on the highest court of the land,” Mr. Obama said as he introduced her in the East Room of the White House, “America will have taken another important step towards realizing the ideal that is etched above its entrance: Equal justice under the law.”

Ms. Sotomayor, 54, a graduate of Princeton and Yale who served as a prosecutor, corporate litigator and federal district judge before joining the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, a decade ago, would become the nation’s 111th justice.

She would be the third woman to hold a seat on the court and the sixth person on the current nine-member panel with a Roman Catholic background.

If confirmed to succeed Justice David H. Souter, a mainstay of the liberal wing who is retiring, Judge Sotomayor would probably not change the court’s broad philosophical balance. But her views on same-sex marriage, gun rights, financial and environmental regulation, executive power and other polarizing issues could help shape judicial rulings for years, if not decades, to come.

At the heart of the fight over her nomination will be a debate over the role that a judge’s experience should play in rendering decisions. Although Mr. Obama said on Tuesday that “a judge’s job is to interpret, not make law,” his emphasis on a nominee with “empathy” has generated criticism from Republicans, who saw that as code for legislating personal views from the bench.

Judge Sotomayor has said that “our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.” In a lecture in 2001 on the role her background played in her jurisprudence, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

She also said at a conference in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made,” a statement she seemed to understand at the time would be controversial, because she added, “I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t make law.” The White House said she meant that appeals courts play a greater role in interpreting laws than district courts, but Republicans pointed to the comment as another sign that she would try to impose her values in rendering decisions.

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

Other conservatives said they would focus on her ruling in a New Haven affirmative action case or on how she might rule on same-sex marriage. “Abortion is in some sense a stale issue that has been fought over many times, but gay marriage is very much up for grabs,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a legal group. “Gay marriage will be bigger than abortion.”

As she was nominated on Tuesday, Judge Sotomayor did not retreat from her view that judges ought to look at the impact of their rulings. “I strive never to forget the real-world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government,” she said.

While conservative groups took aim, Republican senators responded more cautiously, weighing how aggressively they want to fight her confirmation. Twenty-nine Senate Republicans voted against her confirmation to the appellate bench in 1998, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, now the party’s Senate leader, while 25 voted for her. Of those still in the Senate, 11 voted against her and 9 for her.

Mr. McConnell said on Tuesday that the Senate would not be a “rubber stamp” and promised that Republicans would “examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.”

Texting May Be Taking a Toll

By KATIE HAFNER (New York Times)
Published: May 25, 2009

They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., recently surveyed students at two local high schools and said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

“That’s one every few minutes,” he said. “Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

As for peace and quiet, she said, “if something next to you is vibrating every couple of minutes, it makes it very difficult to be in that state of mind.

“If you’re being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to answer immediately is quite high,” she added. “So if you’re in the middle of a thought, forget it.”

Michael Hausauer, a psychotherapist in Oakland, Calif., said teenagers had a “terrific interest in knowing what’s going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop.” For that reason, he said, the rapid rise in texting has potential for great benefit and great harm.

“Texting can be an enormous tool,” he said. “It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed.”

Texting may also be taking a toll on teenagers’ thumbs. Annie Wagner, 15, a ninth-grade honor student in Bethesda, Md., used to text on her tiny LG phone as fast as she typed on a regular keyboard. A few months ago, she noticed a painful cramping in her thumbs. (Lately, she has been using the iPhone she got for her 15th birthday, and she says texting is slower and less painful.)

Peter W. Johnson, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, said it was too early to tell whether this kind of stress is damaging. But he added,

“Based on our experiences with computer users, we know intensive repetitive use of the upper extremities can lead to musculoskeletal disorders, so we have some reason to be concerned that too much texting could lead to temporary or permanent damage to the thumbs.”

Annie said that although her school, like most, forbids cellphone use in class, with the LG phone she could text by putting it under her coat or desk.

Her classmate Ari Kapner said, “You pretend you’re getting something out of your backpack.”

Teachers are often oblivious. “It’s a huge issue, and it’s rampant,” said Deborah Yager, a high school chemistry teacher in Castro Valley, Calif. Ms. Yager recently gave an anonymous survey to 50 of her students; most said they texted during class.

“I can’t tell when it’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” she said. “And I’m not going to take the time every day to try to police it.”

Dr. Joffe says parents tend to be far less aware of texting than of, say, video game playing or general computer use, and the unlimited plans often mean that parents stop paying attention to billing details. “I talk to parents in the office now,” he said. “I’m quizzing them, and no one is thinking about this.”

Still, some parents are starting to take measures. Greg Hardesty, a reporter in Lake Forest, Calif., said that late last year his 13-year-old daughter, Reina, racked up 14,528 texts in one month. She would keep the phone on after going to bed, switching it to vibrate and waiting for it to light up and signal an incoming message.

Mr. Hardesty wrote a column about Reina’s texting in his newspaper, The Orange County Register, and in the flurry of attention that followed, her volume soared to about 24,000 messages. Finally, when her grades fell precipitously, her parents confiscated the phone.

Reina’s grades have since improved, and the phone is back in her hands, but her text messages are limited to 5,000 per month — and none between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. on weekdays.

Yet she said there was an element of hypocrisy in all this: her mother, too, is hooked on the cellphone she carries in her purse.

“She should understand a little better, because she’s always on her iPhone,” Reina said. “But she’s all like, ‘Oh well, I don’t want you texting.’ ” (Her mother, Manako Ihaya, said she saw Reina’s point.) Professor Turkle can sympathize. “Teens feel they are being punished for behavior in which their parents indulge,” she said. And in what she calls a poignant twist, teenagers still need their parents’ undivided attention.

“Even though they text 3,500 messages a week, when they walk out of their ballet lesson, they’re upset to see their dad in the car on the BlackBerry,” she said. “The fantasy of every adolescent is that the parent is there, waiting, expectant, completely there for them.”

Thailand's countdown coup

Last Updated: Tuesday, 19 September 2006, 16:46 GMT 17:46 UK

Thailand's latest political crisis traces its roots back to January when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sold his family's stake in the telecoms firm Shin Corp.

The move angered many, mainly urban Thais, who complained that the family avoided paying tax and had passed control of an important national asset to Singaporean investors.

It led to mass protests and calls for the resignation of the prime minister, who was already under pressure over his handling of a Muslim insurgency in the south and his extensive control over the media.

In a bid to tackle the crisis, and to show he still had widespread public support despite regular massive street protests in Bangkok, Mr Thaksin dissolved parliament in February and called a snap election for April.

Mr Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party won 57% of the vote in the April election, but millions of Thais cast protest votes and the opposition refused to take part.

After weeks of limbo, Thailand's highly-revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej called the situation a "mess" and ordered the courts to sort it out.

'Military plot'

The election result was ruled invalid by the Constitutional Court and a new date was set for later this year.

Mr Thaksin took a seven-week break from politics following the election, but came back to work in May.

The atmosphere has remained tense ever since.

The Thai media has speculated about dissatisfaction towards Mr Thaksin within the military, which is traditionally very loyal to the king.

There has also been talk of a split within some parts of the army, following an annual reshuffle which saw some officers with links to Mr Thaksin moved.

The rumours took on a new urgency last month when police intercepted a car driven by a military officer and carrying a large bomb, near the prime minister's house.

Mr Thaksin accused several military officers of plotting to assassinate him.

His opponents accused him of fabricating a story to win him support in the forthcoming election.

Schwarzenegger missed his golden opportunity to give Californians the truth

He promised to make it work by cutting 'waste, fraud and abuse.' It was never that easy. The real solutions are obvious, though.

Michael Hiltzik
May 21, 2009

Marx Brothers fans will recall that the political philosophy of Rufus T. Firefly in "Duck Soup" boiled down to this:

"If you think this country's bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it."

I've often considered that to be the secret slogan of Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration. (Just substitute "this state" for "this country.") After Tuesday's election, it's no longer a secret.

Schwarzenegger had the kind of voter support in 2003 that would have allowed him to tell the voters the harsh but necessary truths about California governance and force real reforms down their throats.

Instead, he uttered the same lies about state government and proposed the same nostrums as many of his predecessors: Californians are overtaxed and underserved, the budget can be balanced by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, etc. Like everyone else who has made these claims, he never delivered on his promise.

His cut in the car tax cost the state $3.6 billion per year, making him directly responsible for pretty much all of today's $21-billion budget deficit.

He hoped he could avoid reaping the whirlwind sown by these cliches. Unfortunately, Tuesday was Harvest Day.

Let's list a few of the lies he and our other political leaders have peddled about California's government and examine how they contributed to this week's debacle at the ballot box.

The most onerous lie is that Californians are burdened by the highest state taxes in the nation. The truth, according to 2006 figures derived from the U.S. Census, is that as a percentage of all personal income, California's tax and fee schedule ranks 18th in the country.

Then there's the canard that we unfairly soak our rich. This is supposedly a no-no, because the rich might flee, taking with them their sterling job-creating potential.

The dirty little secret, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit group, is that California's wealthiest residents shoulder the lightest burden of any income group in the state. The top 1% of California income-earners (average 2007 income: $2.3 million) paid 7.4% of their income in various state taxes last year, counting the federal deduction for state taxes. The highest rate was paid by the poorest residents. Those earning $20,000 or less, with average income of $12,600, forked over 10.2% of their earnings in sales, excise, property and other levies.

This year's budget deal increased the disparity, raising the effective rate on the rich to 7.8%, but that on the poor to 11.1%.

The theme of the ballot campaign was that the state's chronic budget gridlock could be solved by more gridlock and more borrowing. All lies.

By no means does the governor deserve all the blame for the budget fiasco. Democrats and Republicans alike have abandoned any claim to statesmanship in Sacramento.

And what of the business community? Big corporations, entrepreneurs and mom-and-pop stores all have a huge stake in functional state government.

Yet the state Chamber of Commerce traditionally has offered one nostrum for California's budget ills: Cut taxes. But since it also claims to support better education and improved infrastructure, its approach has simply amounted to throwing the hard challenges back into the laps of a nonfunctional political establishment.

The truth is that real solutions to the budget crisis are obvious.

One: Eliminate, or at least loosen substantially, the two-thirds legislative requirement to pass a budget or raise taxes.

This rule has allowed a small Republican minority to hold up all budget progress unless its reactionary program is incorporated in the deal. If the supermajority were pared back even to 60%, the minority lawmakers would be unable to block a budget unless they could enlist at least a few moderates in their cause. The improvement in the tone of legislating would be immediate.

Two: Remove legislative term limits. This ridiculous provision has reduced the Capitol to a nursery full of would-be legislators needing afternoon naps. Worse, it has sapped legislative leadership of its vigor.

Since mid-1995, there have been nine speakers of the Assembly. Over the previous 20 years, there were two, including Willie Brown, the original target of the term-limit movement. You want to tell me that government in Sacramento has improved since then? As long as term limits exist, we'll never have a 21st-century state government.

Three is the Big One: Revise Proposition 13. Prop 13 is often described as a tax-cutting measure, but that scarcely does justice to the damage it has caused.

By rendering the property tax useless as a revenue device, Prop 13 hit local governments especially hard. Key budgeting authority devolved from cities and counties up to Sacramento, where they have to compete with the state government for money. You want your streets paved or more teachers for your third grade? Stand in line behind the health department, or the corrections department, or Caltrans.

So city streets deteriorate and local schools get worse. Police and firefighters are laid off. All the places where the voters come into face-to-face contact with their governments crumble.

The result? Voters get more cynical, more convinced that government is expensive and useless. It's a vicious circle -- the more government is unable to do the things voters want it to do, the less faith the voters have in government and the less they're willing to spend on it. Which leaves it with less money to do the things voters want. And on and on.

Reversing the worst effects of Proposition 13 doesn't take rocket science. Commercial property should be subject to regular reassessment -- the "split roll" that, inexplicably, can't gain traction in Sacramento. Cash-strapped homeowners can be provisionally protected from the burden of higher residential assessments -- say by allowing some assessments to be deferred until the home is sold.

Plainly, local government needs to recover its authority to collect revenue directly. That would help our political leadership make the case that, considering the quality of the services and institutions state and local government provide, Californians aren't overtaxed but undertaxed -- and the wealthy are the most undertaxed of all.

If Tuesday's election proves anything, it's that California's political sacred cows all need to be herded into the abattoir and dismembered, once and for all.

Breaking the cycle that has brought us to this pass will take political courage and real statesmanship. California's voters have been trained for too long to think they can have roads, schools, universities, clean air and other amenities without paying their true cost. The task of our next generation of leaders will be to show that California is not ungovernable -- it's just been ungoverned.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at michael.hiltzik@latimes.com, read his previous columns at www.latimes.com/hiltzik, and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu May 21, 7:10 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.

However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."

— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."

The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .

There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .

— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."

However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."

— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.

The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.

— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.

Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.

A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.

— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.

"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."

However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.

— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .

Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .

In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.

— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.

The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .

"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."

— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.

The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.

The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."

A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .

Specter defends Pelosi, questions CIA's honesty

By Reid Wilson
Posted: 05/20/09 03:10 PM [ET]

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say 'candid'; that's too mild — to honesty," Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency's involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

"Director [Leon] Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn't mean that they're all giving out the information."

Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said, he understands the agency's hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate, in my opinion, because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from ... how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

Specter and Pelosi have worked together on health and human services legislation, and the senator characterized the Speaker as "reliable and very able." He said he agrees with mounting calls that notes about the meetings should be publicly disclosed.

"Speaker Pelosi wants the notes disclosed. I think they ought to be, in the interest of transparency," Specter said. "The Speaker's entitled to have as much light shed on this as possible, and so [is] the public. The public is entitled to know what went on there."

The new Democrat also said Wednesday that he will ask the eventual nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter what sort of cases he or she would allow to be heard.

"You can't ask the nominee how the nominee is going to decide a case. We all know that. But I think it's a fair question to say, 'What cases will you hear? What cases will you take?' " Specter said.

Four of the nine Supreme Court justices must agree to grant a writ of certiorari to hear a case. Specter said he was troubled by the current court's refusal to hear several cases dealing with executive authority, which he worried has been expanded too greatly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Specter, who served as the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings for Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, has been relegated to the most junior perch on the committee after switching to the Democratic Party.

But as a centrist Democrat, Specter will remain one of the key votes in the Senate as interest groups on both sides pressure him to support or oppose the eventual nominee. Specter has said he will remain an independent voice in the Senate, and in announcing his party switch affirmed that he still will oppose Dawn Johnsen's nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel.

Only one other Democrat — Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) — has taken the same position opposing Johnsen.

Specter has been involved in every Supreme Court nomination fight since being elected to the Senate in 1980. His questioning of Robert Bork is credited with helping take down President Reagan's nominee in 1987, and he played a key role in questioning Anita Hill during Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings in 1991.

Specter said aggressive questioning at confirmation hearings, which did not become standard procedure until the 1950s, is warranted.

"I'd let the process take its course. I don't think we have strayed too far. But then I participated in the Bork hearings," Specter said. "There are many in the Senate who take the position that there's not a whole lot of deference given to the president."

Since Bork's nomination collapsed, court nominations have become flashpoints between conservatives and liberals, with groups instantly mobilizing when a vacancy comes about.

"When the hearings are politicized, the whole process is political," Specter said. He said nominees, who routinely meet with key senators before their confirmation hearings, campaign aggressively to win their seats on the court.

Iraqi militiamen frustrated that promised jobs haven't materialized

By Jack Dolan and Sahar Issa | McClatchy Newspapers

RAMADI, Iraq — Al Qaida in Iraq fighters are returning to this dusty desert town and attacking the Sunni Muslim militias that once subdued them, and they may have infiltrated the makeshift police force.

However, Raad Sabah al Alwani, a local Sunni leader who helped the U.S. military overcome the extremists in embattled Anbar province in 2007, said his pleas to the Shiite Muslim-dominated Iraqi government for reinforcements and support had fallen on deaf ears.

In another Sunni enclave, south of Baghdad, Mustafa Kamil al Juboori, a local Sunni militia leader who helped oust Sunni militants from his Doura neighborhood, said that U.S. forces had guaranteed jobs in the Iraqi government for his men if they turned against al Qaida in Iraq. Nearly two years later, he said, only 20 of his 2,000 fighters have the jobs they were promised.

Juboori and Alwani are among tens of thousands of Sunni militiamen — loosely known as the Sons of Iraq — who fought for the Americans but now complain that the U.S.-backed national government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has abandoned them.

For nearly a year, U.S. commanders have offered the Sons of Iraq reassurance that they'll be rewarded with permanent jobs in the Iraqi security forces and other government ministries. So far, however, the Sunni fighters say, Maliki's government has been slow to act.

"I believe the government does not want to help Sunnis," said Alwani, who commands nearly 5,000 men in Anbar province, where the Sons of Iraq movement was born. "Maybe they are afraid of us."

Only 17,000 of the more than 94,000 Sons of Iraq who were on the American payroll have been absorbed into the Iraqi army and police forces, said U.S. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer, who until last week oversaw the American military's reconciliation effort.

"The jobs are coming," Kulmayer said. The rest of the Sons of Iraq will start getting hired in July at 18 other government ministries, including trade, education, culture and human rights, he said.

More than 300 Sons of Iraq leaders met at the al Rashid hotel in Baghdad on Tuesday to vent their frustration at Muhammad Salman, the director of the Maliki government's "reconciliation" program.

"All of these problems are technical, not political," Salman said after the meeting. Starting Wednesday, he said, three people from his office would be assigned to answer questions from Sons of Iraq leaders.

Violence raged between Sunnis and majority Shiites in 2006 and 2007. Iraq is calmer now, thanks in part to Juboori, Alwani and others who helped hunt down and kill extremist members of their own sect.

The truce is fragile, however. A recent spasm of bombings made April the bloodiest month in a year, and it isn't clear how the relative peace can last if Maliki's government doesn't keep the American promises to the Sons of Iraq.

U.S. combat forces are set to pull out of Iraqi cities by June 30 and to leave the country by 2011, and many Sunni militia leaders fear that when that happens they'll be shut out of power and walking around with targets on their backs.

Shiite-led Iraqi forces already have arrested hundreds of Sunni militiamen, some of them for attacks that the Sunnis say they carried out against al Qaida in Iraq while they were on the U.S. payroll.

Kulmayer said that 217 Sunni militiamen had been arrested in the last year, all for "misconduct" not sanctioned by their American allies. "Only (Sons of Iraq) who do nefarious activities will be arrested. No one is above the law," he said.

Iraqi security forces arrested another Sons of Iraq leader Monday in Diyala province on charges of committing "crimes against civilians."

An undetermined number of other militia leaders have been assassinated or forced into exile. As Alwani sat for an interview May 13 in Ramadi, another Sunni militia leader in nearby Abu Ghraib vanished in a ball of flame when a "sticky" bomb attached to the underside of his car exploded.

Alwani has had repeated warnings from the central government of planned attempts on his life by al Qaida in Iraq, and he suspects that the group was behind two recent attacks.

He said that al Qaida in Iraq had sent two suicide bombers after him. His men shot and killed one before he could detonate his explosive vest; the other set off a car bomb outside Alwani's house, killing 18 people. "Two bodies we could not find; they vanished completely," he said.

Men whom Alwani recruited to fight al Qaida in Iraq now make up Ramadi's police force. Some have been put on the central government's payroll, but Alwani said he paid others from his own pocket.

What started as a small tribal band grew quickly during the fight for the city. Alwani said he didn't know everyone whom he commanded anymore, and close aides have warned him that members of a resurgent al Qaida in Iraq are infiltrating the force.

Alwani said that many of his men were uneducated and inexperienced at police work, so he's asked the Interior Ministry in Baghdad to send professional police commanders to take control of the force and weed out potential terrorists. The central government, however, has offered no help, he said.

Last month, Alwani said, he gathered the other tribal sheiks in Ramadi to ask for an order warning young men not to commit terrorist acts in the name of al Qaida or their fathers would be held accountable.

The sheiks refused to issue the order. "They're too scared," Alwani said. "That's why we need professional police to come here from Baghdad."

Across the country, some rank-and-file Sunni militia members have returned to their former occupations as farmers or taxi drivers, but many held government jobs when the minority Sunnis dominated the country under Saddam Hussein.

Most of those men are still well armed and guarding checkpoints in Sunni neighborhoods. Experts worry that they might start attacking U.S. and Iraqi patrols if the promised jobs don't come through, triggering another sectarian bloodbath.

"Those promises had a direct effect on our lives, and the lives of all the Americans in Iraq," Juboori said, sipping tea on his lawn with a Smith & Wesson revolver in a holster slung across his chest. "And broken promises would also have a direct effect."

Juboori, too, has been targeted recently. He presents guests with an al Qaida in Iraq video of its last attempt. It shows a car slamming into the driver's side of Juboori's Nissan pickup and then exploding. The suicide bomber died instantly, but the video shows Juboori opening his passenger door and walking away.

"We caught the man responsible for sending the bomber within 10 minutes," Juboori said. When he was asked what happened next, he said he hadn't fired a single shot in the war on terrorism. "My weapon is my mind," he said. "My fighters shoot the bullets."

(Dolan reports for The Miami Herald. Issa is a McClatchy special correspondent. Special correspondent Laith Hammoudi contributed to this report.)

Defeat is sharp rebuke to governor, Legislature

Matthew Yi,Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

(05-20) 04:00 PDT Sacramento --

California voters soundly rejected a package of ballot measures Tuesday that would have reduced the state's projected budget deficit of $21.3 billion to something slightly less overwhelming: $15.4 billion.
Images
A voter has an entire row of booths to choose from in the...A lone voter marks his ballot in the basement of City Hal...Monique Koller uses a voting machine at Get the Funk Out ... View More Images
May 19 special election

* Defeat is sharp rebuke to governor, Legislature 05.20.09
* Governor exits state as ballot measures falter 05.19.09
* Legislators jump back into budget mess 05.19.09
* Santa Clara mulls 49ers deal 05.19.09
* Bay Area tax measures show mixed returns 05.19.09
* M&R: Pocketbook pain gets personal for state leaders 05.19.09
* Bottom Line: Where state budget cuts will come from 05.20.09
* Handful trudge to polls 05.19.09
* Proposition 1A
* Proposition 1B
* Proposition 1C
* Proposition 1D
* Proposition 1E
* Proposition 1F
* Twitter election feed 05.20.09
* Share Election Day photos
* Major newspaper endorsements

More News

* Defeat is sharp rebuke to governor, Legislature 05.20.09
* White House eyes broad consumer commission 05.20.09
* Under fire, Pelosi gets backing from fellow Democrats 05.20.09
* Senate passes credit card overhaul bill 05.20.09

The defeat of the measures means that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature will have to consider deeper cuts to education, public safety, and health and human services, officials have said.

Propositions 1A through 1E - which would have changed the state's budgeting system, ensured money to schools in future years and generated billions of dollars of revenue for the state's general fund - fell well behind in early returns and never recovered.

The only measure that voters approved was Proposition 1F, which will freeze salaries of top state officials, including lawmakers and the governor, during tough budget years.

In a written statement Tuesday night, Schwarzenegger said that he believes Californians are simply frustrated with the state's dysfunctional budget system.

"Now we must move forward from this point to begin to address our fiscal crisis with constructive solutions," the governor said.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said voter rejection of the propositions reflects the fact that people are facing difficult economic times and he is prepared to return to the budget negotiating table today.

"We're going to get right to work ... and finish by June 30," before the new fiscal year begins, he said. "It's not going to be a long, hot summer."

Opponents of the measures on Tuesday labeled the package as "flawed proposals."

"The governor and the Legislature must develop budget solutions that put California on a real path to fiscal stability," said Lillian Taiz, president of California Faculty Association.

The six ballot measures stemmed from a budget deal Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders brokered in February to close a nearly $42 billion budget shortfall through June 2010.

Budget fixes included $17 billion in cuts, more than $12 billion in temporary tax increases, reliance on billions of dollars in federal economic stimulus funds - and asking voters to approve ballot measures to generate more revenue for the cash-strapped state.

Despite all that, California's budget fell deeper into deficit as a result of plummeting revenue and rising costs. With the ballot measures trailing in polls, Schwarzenegger last week announced the state's shortfall could grow to $21.3 billion this summer if voters reject the measures.

His critics accused Schwarzenegger of using scare tactics on the eve of the special election, but the governor argued that Californians had to know what the consequences would be before they voted.

Three of the propositions - 1C, 1D and 1E - would have had immediate impact on the state's budget by raising nearly $6 billion in the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

Prop. 1B would have ensured that schools would get more than $9 billion beginning in the 2011-12 fiscal year, but it would have become valid only if voters also approved Prop. 1A, which Schwarzenegger promoted the most.

Prop. 1A represented the elusive budget reform Schwarzenegger has sought since he was elected more than five years ago. It would have limited spending and created a rainy-day fund while extending the recently enacted tax increases from two years to four.

The measure's spending limit was aimed at getting Republican backing for the budget compromise, which included temporarily increasing vehicle license fees and taxes on sales and income.

But even that wasn't enough to get the plan through the state Senate, resulting in the addition of Prop. 1F, the pay freeze.

Last week, while unveiling the grim prospects for the state budget, Schwarzenegger insisted that the ballot measures are not about him but about the future of the Golden State.

"It's about California's future and California's legacy. It's not about me or any legislator," he said Thursday, adding that the combination of the ballot measures' passage and his budget solutions would put California back on track for a "slow and steady march back to prosperity."

Schwarzenegger tried to build a broad coalition of proponents of the measures, but he did much of the heavy lifting, helping to raise more than $15 million for the "yes" campaign. The proponents of the measures together raised a total of about $29 million.

The opposition, made up mostly of anti-tax groups and some labor unions, raised about $5 million.

The complexity of the ballot package created unlikely allies for both sides. Schwarzenegger was on the same side as the California Teachers Association. The measures' opponents included anti-tax groups, unions and advocates for the poor who often are at odds over state budget priorities and policies.

E-mail the writers at myi@sfchronicle.com and wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush

Op-Ed Columnist

By FRANK RICH
Published: May 16, 2009

TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

That’s why the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come.

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

The GQ article isn’t the only revelation of previously unknown Bush Defense Department misbehavior to emerge this month. Just two weeks ago, the Obama Pentagon revealed that a major cover-up of corruption had taken place at the Bush Pentagon on Jan. 14 of this year — just six days before Bush left office. This strange incident — reported in The Times but largely ignored by Washington correspondents preparing for their annual dinner — deserves far more attention and follow-up.

What happened on Jan. 14 was the release of a report from the Pentagon’s internal watchdog, the inspector general. It had been ordered up in response to a scandal uncovered last year by David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times. Barstow had found that the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.” Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these “analysts” appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

When Barstow’s story broke, more than 45 members of Congress demanded an inquiry. The Pentagon’s inspector general went to work, and its Jan. 14 report was the result. It found no wrongdoing by the Pentagon. Indeed, when Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize last month, Rumsfeld’s current spokesman cited the inspector general’s “exoneration” to attack the Times articles as fiction.

But the Pentagon took another look at this exoneration, and announced on May 5 that the inspector general’s report, not The Times’s reporting, was fiction. The report, it turns out, was riddled with factual errors and included little actual investigation of Barstow’s charges. The inspector general’s office had barely glanced at the 8,000 pages of e-mail that Barstow had used as evidence, and interviewed only seven of the 70 disputed analysts. In other words, the report was a whitewash. The Obama Pentagon officially rescinded it — an almost unprecedented step — and even removed it from its Web site.

Network news operations ignored the unmasking of this last-minute Bush Pentagon cover-up, as they had the original Barstow articles — surely not because they had been patsies for the Bush P.R. machine. But the story is actually far larger than this one particular incident. If the Pentagon inspector general’s office could whitewash this scandal, what else did it whitewash?

In 2005, to take just one example, the same office released a report on how Boeing colluded with low-level Pentagon bad apples on an inflated (and ultimately canceled) $30 billion air-tanker deal. At the time, even John Warner, then the go-to Republican senator on military affairs, didn’t buy the heavily redacted report’s claim that Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were ignorant of what Warner called “the most significant defense procurement mismanagement in contemporary history.” The Pentagon inspector general who presided over that exoneration soon fled to become an executive at the parent company of another Pentagon contractor, Blackwater.

But the new administration doesn’t want to revisit this history any more than it wants to dwell on torture. Once the inspector general’s report on the military analysts was rescinded, the Obama Pentagon declared the matter closed. The White House seems to be taking its cues from the Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan. “Sometimes I think just keep walking,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” as the torture memos surfaced. “Some of life has to be mysterious.” Imagine if she’d been at Nuremberg!

The administration can’t “just keep walking” because it is losing control of the story. The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the cliché that only the A.C.L.U. and the president’s “left-wing base” want accountability, but that’s not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month’s Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees — that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into “confirming” a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war — is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become.

And I do mean bipartisan. Both Dick Cheney, hoping to prove that torture “worked,” and Nancy Pelosi, fending off accusations of hypocrisy on torture, have now asked for classified C.I.A. documents to be made public. When a duo this unlikely, however inadvertently, is on the same side of an issue, the wave is rising too fast for any White House to control. Court cases, including appeals by the “bad apples” made scapegoats for Abu Ghraib, will yank more secrets into the daylight and enlist more anxious past and present officials into the Cheney-Pelosi demands for disclosure.

It will soon be every man for himself. “Did President Bush know everything you knew?” Bob Schieffer asked Cheney on “Face the Nation” last Sunday. The former vice president’s uncharacteristically stumbling and qualified answer — “I certainly, yeah, have every reason to believe he knew...” — suggests that the Bush White House’s once-united front is starting to crack under pressure.

I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.

Republican lawmakers back carbon tax (yes, that's right)

Featured Topics:

By James Rosen, McClatchy Newspapers James Rosen, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Wed May 13, 7:06 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Reps. Bob Inglis of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona on Wednesday became the first Republican lawmakers to introduce legislation imposing a carbon tax on producers and distributors of fossil fuels.

The bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois , would set a tax of $15 a ton of carbon dioxide produced in its first year in effect, with the tax rising to $100 a ton over three decades.

"The first axiom of economics is if you want less of something, you tax it," said Flake, a leading fiscal conservative, in an interview. "Obviously, we want less carbon, so we tax it."

Inglis noted that several prominent conservatives support a direct carbon tax: Arthur Laffer , a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan , and Gregory Mankiw , who advised President George W. Bush and is now a Harvard University economics professor.

The three lawmakers offer their measure as an alternative to a massive climate change bill backed by President Barack Obama and now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee .

That cap-and-trade legislation would set a national limit on total carbon dioxide emissions and attempt to lower them over time through the sale and trading of carbon "allowances," or credits, among the government, factories, utilities, automakers and other sources of pollution.

Inglis and Flake call their measure "tax neutral" because it would reduce payroll taxes by however much revenue the carbon tax raises, with employers and employees splitting the payroll tax cut equally.

The impact of such a direct carbon tax, however, would vary widely in different regions of the country.

Businesses and homeowners who rely heavily on coal for electric power — such as those in Kentucky and Missouri — would face significantly steeper price increases because coal produces much more carbon dioxide.

Such disparities, Flake said, would be an unavoidable outcome of trying to reduce global warming and wean the nation's dependence on foreign oil, some of it from unfriendly governments.

"There's no way you can compensate or have a perfect outcome in which everyone pays the same rates," Flake said. "If you try to do that, then you take away the incentive to change."

The bill puts the two lawmakers at odds with Republican congressional leaders, who've criticized the Democrats' cap-and-trade plans as carbon taxes in disguise.

"Cap and trade is code for increasing taxes, killing American jobs and raising energy costs for consumers," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said. "The so-called 'cap and trade' proposal amounts to a carbon tax, plain and simple."

Tom Williams , corporate vice president for federal issues with Duke Energy , said his Charlotte, N.C. , utility is the nation's third-largest carbon emitter.

A cap-and-trade system is better than a direct carbon tax, Williams said, because it enables Duke Energy and other large polluters to transition away from fossil fuel gradually.

"A carbon tax is effective in many respects, but we consider it more of a blunt instrument," he said. "Cap and trade is designed to be more surgical."

Inglis, whose district around Greenville, S.C. , is among the most conservative in the country, acknowledged that it's a huge political risk for him, as a Republican, to propose a new tax.

Inglis said some of his GOP colleagues have pointed out the risk to him.

"They say, 'Inglis, why are you doing this?'" he said. "My answer is because the reward for the country is huge. If you're not here to do courageous things, then go home."

Inglis and Flake oppose the cap-and-trade measure, saying it would create a huge federal bureaucracy to regulate the sale and trade of carbon credits — on the heels of catastrophic financial services failures because of lax government oversight.

"We stand a chance of being a significant possible replacement of cap and trade when cap and trade fails," Inglis said. "It's a carbon-credit trading scheme similar to the Wall Street fiasco we've just seen, complete with a Federal Reserve Board of Carbon Credits."

The cap-and-trade measure would establish an oversight agency, but it doesn't name it.

WHO'S AFFECTED

The new carbon tax bill by Reps. Bob Inglis , Jeff Flake and Dan Lipinski would raise the cost of fossil fuels for consumers.

The measure would initially impose a tax of $15 a ton of carbon dioxide on the producers and distributors of gasoline, natural gas and coal, with the tax rising to $100 a ton over three decades.

The tax increases would be offset by equivalent cuts in payroll taxes, with employers and employees sharing the reductions equally.

The lawmakers acknowledge that users of coal-fueled power would see much bigger cost increases — 83.5 percent in the first year — than the 6 percent price increases for drivers buying gasoline, or consumers of power from natural gas, or the 14.3 percent price increase for users of oil-based power.

The payroll tax cuts would be distributed equally around the country. That means the carbon tax would hit people especially hard in states that rely heavily on coal-based power:

Top 10 states most reliant on coal power

State ........... % of power from coal

West Virginia .......... 97 percent

Indiana ........... 95 percent

Wyoming ............ 95 percent

North Dakota ......... 94 percent

Kentucky ........... 92 percent

Utah ................. 89 percent

Ohio ................ 86 percent

Missouri ............... 85 percent

New Mexico ........ 80 percent

Iowa ................ 76 percent

Other states

Kansas ............... 73 percent

Georgia ............... 63 percent

North Carolina ............... 60 percent

Pennsylvania ............... 56 percent

Illinois ............... 48 percent

South Carolina .............. 40 percent

Mississippi ............... 39 percent

Texas ............... 37 percent

Florida ............... 29 percent

Alaska ...............9 percent

Washington ............... 6 percent

California ...............1 percent

Idaho ............... 1 percent

Source: American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

Obama seeks to block release of abuse photos

By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent – 1 hr 38 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama declared Wednesday he would try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners, abruptly reversing his position out of concern the pictures would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama's turnabout set off immediate reactions from bloggers, both liberals who decried that he was buckling to political pressure and conservatives who agreed with the decision but said it proved the president was a flip-flopper.

The White House had said last month it would not oppose the release of dozens of photos from military investigations of alleged misconduct. But American commanders in the war zones expressed deep concern about fresh damage the photos might do, especially as the U.S. tries to wind down the Iraq war and step up operations against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

When photos emerged in 2004 from the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, showing grinning American soldiers posing with detainees — some of the prisoners naked, some being held on leashes — the pictures caused a huge anti-American backlash around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.

Obama, realizing how high emotions run on detainee treatment during the Bush administration and now, made it a point to personally explain his change of heart, stopping to address TV cameras late in the day as he left the White House for a flight to Arizona.

He said the photos had already served their purpose in investigations of "a small number of individuals." Those cases were all concluded by 2004, and the president said "the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken."

The Pentagon conducted 200 investigations into alleged abuse connected with the photos that are now in question. The administration did not provide an immediate accounting of how they turned out.

"This is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action," Obama said of the photos. "In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

The Justice Department immediately filed a notice with the court of its new position on the release, including that it was considering an appeal with the Supreme Court. The government has until June 9 to do so.

Obama said, "I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

Still, he said he had made it newly clear: "Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable. It is against our values. It endangers our security. It will not be tolerated."

The effort to keep the photos from becoming public represented for many a sharp reversal from Obama's repeated pledges for open government, and in particular from his promise to be forthcoming with information that courts have ruled should be publicly available.

As such, it invited criticism from the more liberal segments of the Democratic Party, which want a full accounting — and even redress — for what they see as the misdeeds of the Bush administration.

"The decision to not release the photographs makes a mockery of President Obama's promise of transparency and accountability," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh, who had argued and won the case in question before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. "It is essential that these photographs be released so that the public can examine for itself the full scale and scope of prisoner abuse that was conducted in its name."

Human Rights Watch called the decision a blow to transparency and accountability.

One Huffington Post blogger called the decision "a terrible mistake" and declared that Obama had buckled under pressure from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans welcomed the change, however. A military group also said it was relieved.

"These photos represent isolated incidents where the offending servicemen and women have already been prosecuted," said Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United.

The reactions were a reverse of what happened after Obama's decision last month to voluntarily release documents that detailed brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA against terror suspects. Those also came out in response to an ACLU lawsuit, and his decision then brought harsh and still-continuing criticism from Republicans.

This time he's kicking the decision back into court, where his administration still may be forced into releasing the photos.

Indeed, there is some evidence that the administration has little case left.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president instructed administration lawyers to challenge the photos' release based on national security implications. He said the argument was not used before in "the most effective" way.

But the Bush administration already argued against the release on national security grounds — and lost.

"It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces, and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan," the three-judge appeals panel wrote in September 2008.

The Justice Department concluded after that that further appeal would probably be fruitless, and last month, Gibbs said the administration felt "compelled" to act on that conclusion. Thus, the administration assured a federal judge that it would turn over the material by May 28, including one batch of 21 photos and another of 23 images. The government also told the judge it was "processing for release a substantial number of other images," for a total expected to be in the hundreds.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that Obama always felt uncomfortable with that outcome and pressed his team to find other recourse. After first believing all avenues were shut, they concluded there were other options — both in the amount of time left and the legal arguments — and that led to the decision the White House announced, Emanuel said.

But the lower court also has already rejected another argument the president and his spokesman made, that the photos add little of value to the public's understanding of the issue. "This contention disregards FOIA's central purpose of furthering governmental accountability," the appeals court panel concluded in the same decision.

Obama's own Jan. 21 memorandum on honoring the Freedom of Information Act also takes a different line. "The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears," it said.

The president informed Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, of his decision during a White House meeting on Tuesday.

Gen. David Petraeus, the senior commander for both wars, had also weighed in against the release, as had Gen. David McKiernan, the outgoing top general in Afghanistan.

Military commanders' concerns were most intense with respect to Afghanistan. The release would coincide with the spring thaw that usually heralds the year's toughest fighting there — and as thousands of new U.S. troops head into Afghanistan's volatile south.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he had once held the view that it might be best to "go through the pain once" and release a large batch of images now, since so many are at issue in multiple lawsuits. But he — and the president — changed their minds when Odierno and McKiernan expressed "very great worry that release of these photographs will cost American lives," Gates said before the House Armed Services Committee.

"That's all it took for me," Gates said.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Gearan, Devlin Barrett, Lara Jakes and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

Ideological Manipulation

By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: May 9, 2009

AMMAN, Jordan — Visiting a mosque on the second day of his closely watched first visit to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday denounced the “ideological manipulation of religion” and called for greater understanding between the Christian and Muslim faiths.


Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful during mass at St. George Victorious Cathedral in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday.

Speaking outside Al-Hussein bin-Talal mosque in Amman, Benedict said that because of “the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding,” Christians and Muslims alike should “strive to be seen” as faithful worshipers of God.

In a speech that also touched on a central theme of his papacy and thought, the tension between faith and reason, Benedict said that “the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends,” was often “the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society.”

Relations between the Vatican and Muslims were strained in 2006 when, in a speech in Regensburg, Germany, Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor who said Islam had brought things “evil and inhuman.”

After violence erupted in some parts of the Muslim world, Benedict said the remarks did not represent his own thinking.

Welcoming the pope at the mosque on Saturday, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, a cousin and the principal religious adviser of King Abdullah II, thanked Benedict for having expressed “regret” over the remarks and for clarifying that they had been a citation in an academic speech.

Islamist groups in Jordan have protested the pope’s visit, saying he has not apologized for the 2006 speech.

In a news conference on Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that the pope had not prayed inside the mosque but offered “a respectful reflection.”

He also said the pope had not been asked to remove his shoes upon entering the mosque, as is customary. Benedict had visited mosques twice before as pope.

Prince Ghazi, a Western-educated scholar who has helped foster a Vatican-Muslim dialogue called the Common Word initiative, praised Benedict for “a reign marked by the moral courage to do and speak your conscience, no matter what the vogue of the day.”

He also singled out the pope’s efforts to “refacilitate” the use of the traditional Tridentine Mass, sometimes called the Latin Mass, which has been optional since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

That rite includes a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of the Jews.

Benedict is expected to travel to Israel on Monday.

In Jerusalem, he is expected to visit the Western Wall, holy to Jews, as well as the religious compound in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

On Saturday, on a visit to Mount Nebo, the hill in Jordan from which Moses is believed to have looked out on the Promised Land, Benedict spoke of “the inseparable bond between the church and the Jewish people.”

Gentlemen Cows in Prime Time

By ADAM FREEDMAN
Published: May 2, 2009

LAST Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s crackdown on the use of dirty words on the airwaves.

That the justices managed to do this without actually uttering either of the words at issue — one refers to a sexual act, the other to a bodily function — exemplifies both the court’s tact and its lack of connection with contemporary English usage.

The case, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, was a test of the commission’s zero-tolerance policy toward isolated curses, or “fleeting expletives,” as the F.C.C. calls them. The commission put in place the so-called Bono Rule, named for the U2 singer (and contributing columnist for this page) who used an expletive during an NBC broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards in 2003. That same year, Fox Television broadcast a routine by Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in which both the vulgarities considered by the court were used.

In response to these incidents, in which children of tender years were doubtless exposed to salty language, the F.C.C. decided that prime-time TV must be sodium-free, as it were. Departing from a 30-year policy of going after only repetitive usage of swear words, the Bono Rule gave the F.C.C. the power to punish a single utterance of a vulgarity.

In 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, struck down the Bono Rule, holding that it had no rational basis. But the Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for the majority last week, Justice Antonin Scalia stated that it was “entirely rational” for the F.C.C. to conclude, as it did, that one particular curse “invariably invokes a coarse sexual image.”

Does it? The evidence is mixed. Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and the author of a book on swearing, described the F.C.C.’s argument as “rubbish.” Although the word in question originally referred to a sexual act, Mr. Sheidlower argued, it has now taken on an independent “emotional” sense. The nonsexual use of the word can be seen in countless contemporary examples, as when Vice President Dick Cheney used it in 2004 to recommend that Senator Patrick Leahy do something that is, strictly speaking, anatomically impossible.

The counterargument is that the very power of the word as a nonliteral intensifier derives from its underlying sexual meaning. Or, as Ruth Wajnryb, an Australian linguist, explained in her book “Expletive Deleted,” the word is taboo “because of its referential function.”

Ultimately, the Fox Television case raises a dichotomy well known to linguists: descriptivism versus prescriptivism — that is, whether to yield to the reality of how language is actually used (descriptivism) or fight to maintain objective standards (prescriptivism). Descriptivists happily accept “impact” as a verb and “my bad” as a form of apology; prescriptivists resist such innovations.

At oral argument, Fox’s lawyer urged a descriptivist approach, arguing that the common slang term for sexual intercourse is no longer indecent because Americans “are significantly more tolerant” of the word than they were when the high court first upheld the F.C.C.’s multiple-expletive rule in a 1978 case involving the comedian George Carlin’s “filthy words” monologue (F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation). After all, we live in an age, for better or worse, when children are exposed to profanity on cable and satellite TV and the Internet. Justice Scalia, however, insisted that the proliferation of swear words made the prescriptivist case all the more urgent: parents should be able to consider broadcast TV a “relatively safe haven” for children.

As much as one sympathizes with language prescriptivism in general (please, let us all resist “c u l8r”), censorship is necessarily a descriptivist endeavor. Indecency laws are tied to evolving community standards. In 1623, the English Parliament passed legislation to prohibit “profane swearing and cursing.” Under that law, people could be fined for uttering oaths like “upon my life” or “on my troth.” In the Victorian era, the word “bull” was considered too strong for mixed company; instead, one referred to “gentlemen cows.” Times change, notwithstanding the fervent wishes of prescriptivists to keep dirty words dirty.

The F.C.C. may have won this round, but the bluenoses can’t declare victory just yet. The next test of the F.C.C.’s regime will come soon enough, as the Supreme Court has agreed to review the commission’s $550,000 fine against CBS for a nine-sixteenths-of-a-second exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Perhaps the F.C.C.’s disproportionate response to that incident will be recognized for what it was: a regulatory malfunction.

Adam Freedman, a lawyer, is the author of “The Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese.”