Editorialists Agree: Something Is Wrong in Washington, D.C.

Every editorialist on every major newspaper agrees on the toppling state of our Union, and agrees that the Bush cabal is up to no good and has the internal destruction of America at heart.

Every editorialist on every major newspaper agrees that the State of the Union speech tonight will be another occasion for lies spoon-fed to a gullible public.

The Bush administration will, once again, tell us one thing and do another while we sit like so many underprivileged infants in our own filth and complacency while these criminals rob us of the liberty and freedom and standard of living that were the envy of the world pre-George Bush and cronies.

Our American Press is stepping forward and telling us the issues as they exist, but the apathy of the American public is appallingly fierce, entrenched, and the majority of us eagerly swallow the bull that the Bush administration is intent on feeding us.

One only has to ask oneself, “Why?”, if any of these editorials are even 10% true—one only has to question and question publicly and loudly and demand answers from the Bush Cabal.

This is still a democracy and our voices raised in unison will count. The voice of the people will bring an end to the criminal conspiracy that is robbing us of our freedom and the freedom to live honorable lives without the wage enslavement that Bush and Cronies have in mind for America.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - 12:00 AM
E.J. Dionne / Syndicated columnist
Important, unfinished business

WASHINGTON — This week, the Republican Party hopes to escape its immediate past. House Republicans will elect new leaders. They hope the party's corruption scandal will be forgotten and that the names Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff will become as unmentionable in their world as Lord Voldemort's is in Harry Potter's.
President Bush hopes for a new start with his State of the Union address. The words from last year he wants to wipe out of the political lexicon include "Brownie," "Katrina," "heck of a job" and "Social Security privatization."
But there is an uncomfortable bit of business left over from the Republican disaster year of 2005 that will test the seriousness of the party's supposed commitment to change. The cut-the-poor, help-the-big-interests federal budget passed last year needs final ratification in the House. The vote could take place as soon as Wednesday.
Let's be clear: Anyone who votes for this fiscal mess will be standing for the bad old ways of doing business in Washington. They will have no claim to being "reformers."
At least one Republican, Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, has had a change of heart, thanks to laudable grass-roots pressure — which, to his credit, Simmons acknowledged.
"I voted for it in December," Simmons said in a statement released last week. But after consulting with constituency groups, Simmons decided that the bill "remains unsatisfactory" and that "the budget, as it stands, falls short." Moderate Republicans who had no business voting for this bill in the first place should be challenged to join Simmons.
What was known when the budget was last approved was bad enough: that in merging the different fiscal plans passed by the House and Senate, Republican leaders dropped Senate provisions that would have sought savings from drug companies and preferred provider organizations and instead imposed new burdens on lower-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. The theme of this budget was: Protect the well-connected, bash the poor.
But since the last vote, new information has emerged that would more than justify a change of heart by Republicans who voted "yes."
It's worth citing in full the first paragraph of an important piece of investigative reporting last week by The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman: "House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save the health-insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office."
What's wrong with this picture? First, a group of legislators who claim to want to reduce the deficit gutted a provision designed to save taxpayers money, following heavy lobbying by the health-insurance industry.
Second, a Congress saying it really, really wants to change the way it does business ratified a backroom deal in the wee hours of the morning that almost nobody who voted on it knew anything about. Many on the right have been waging war on "earmarks," those special projects that members of Congress insert into bills, often at the last minute — and have proliferated since the Republicans took over the House. But secret special-interest deals can be at least as costly, often more so, than many of those earmarks.
And on Monday, The New York Times, reporting on a Congressional Budget Office study of the impact of this budget on health coverage, found that "millions of low-income people would have to pay more for health care under a bill worked out by Congress, and some of them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because of the higher co-payments and premiums."
How strange it is that while the president claims he wants to help people get health coverage, he and his party would support a budget that could force some poor Americans to walk away from care.
It's hard these days to get the media to pay attention to budgets and their impact on the lives of citizens. Budgets are complicated and easy to spin. It's much easier to generate immense moral outrage over a memoir writer who tells lies.
But long after we've forgotten the name of that writer, a mother on Medicaid will be deciding whether she can afford to take her sick child to see the doctor. Can we please spend at least a tiny bit of our moral outrage on her behalf?
E.J. Dionne's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is postchat@aol.com
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company



January 31, 2006
Editorial
Wanted: A Wary Audience
When President Bush gives his State of the Union address tonight, expect to hear a renewed call for setting the administration's first-term tax cuts in concrete, combined with warnings that letting the cuts expire would retard economic growth. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As proof of tax cuts' ability to spur the economy, Mr. Bush generally cites productivity growth, job creation and the rise in personal income. Productivity has indeed been stellar, and supply-siders claim that is because tax cuts have led to investment, which led to higher productivity. But business investment has been flat for five years. Meanwhile, the benefits of productivity growth have been concentrated among the wealthy. So tax cuts haven't unleashed investment, but they have contributed to inequality.
Job growth during the Bush-era recovery has been worse, by far, than in any comparable economic upturn since the 1960's. It would take some 500,000 new jobs a month every month this year just to equal the second worst job-creation record in the modern era. And while working Americans are laboring harder, hourly wages and weekly salaries — the financial lifeblood of most Americans — have been flat or falling, after inflation, since the middle of 2003.
That last inconvenient fact isn't likely to stop Mr. Bush from bragging about rising "real after-tax income." Besides paychecks, that much-cited statistic includes things like bonuses, stock dividends and health insurance.
Dividends flow mainly to the top 5 percent of the income ladder, and health benefits, while valuable, are increasingly provided in lieu of salary. So the fact that personal income, writ large, is up "by 7 percent since I've been your president," as Mr. Bush boasted recently, isn't a measure of what is in most Americans' pockets. (Besides, a 7 percent gain is hardly worth bragging about, since the average from other comparable recoveries is 12.5 percent.)
Mr. Bush bristles at the oft-repeated criticism that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains mainly benefits the wealthy. That's odd, because the criticism is simply a statement of the obvious, given the facts: almost half of all dividends are earned by people making more than $200,000, and more than half of all capital gains are earned by people with incomes over $1 million.
Of late, the president has taken to saying that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains helps "workers in the automobile plant" and the other millions of Americans who own stock through their 401(k) plans. But in truth, when taxes on dividends and capital gains are cut, investing in a 401(k) plan becomes less attractive. That's because tax- deferred buildup in a 401(k) is a big part of its allure, but the lower the tax rate, the less valuable the deferral. Investors in 401(k)'s also lose out when wages and salaries are taxed at higher rates than investments, as they are now and as Mr. Bush wants to ensure they remain. That's because money that's withdrawn from a 401(k) is taxed like salary, not like investments.
In his State of the Union speech, the president will also undoubtedly return to his promise to do something about the deficit, which he often vows to halve by 2009. His audience should remember that this claim assumes minimal spending going forward for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a continuation of the voracious alternative minimum tax, which everyone in government knows must be reformed. This month Congress's budget agency forecast that if the tax cuts are made permanent and the alternative tax fixed, the United States will face large and growing deficits over the next decade, with red ink of between $3.5 trillion and $4 trillion over that time.
Tonight is Mr. Bush's night to speak. But it's the job of all of us to be critical listeners.

· Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc..

AN UNREAL ADDRESS

By GEORGE F. WILL

"Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are 'ready' for democracy — as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress."- George W. BushNov. 6, 2003
"The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are now showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure."- George W. Bush,State of the Union, 2005
"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations."- Edmund Burke
IN State of the Union addresses, the childish events in our civic calendar, presidents list numerous proposals pursuant to the supposed presidential duty to be omnipresent and omniprovident in our lives. Every 48 seconds or so — last year's address was interrupted by applause 66 times in 53 minutes — legislators of the president's party erupt with approval, while those of the other party use stolidity to signal disappointment. But if you are a glutton for punishment and tune in tonight, you will at least not hear a reprise of the passage cited above from last year's address.
The success of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Palestinian elections is but the latest proof of what happens when the forms of democracy are severed from what the president, with a cosmopolitan shrug, dismissively called "our own Western standards of progress." Now comes wishful thinking, and then cynicism.
Regarding the latter, the watery materialism of much thinking — the theory that social structures and economic incentives trump ideas as shapers of behavior — will interpret the Hamas victory in the benign light of the Garbage Collection Theory of History. On Sunday, on ABC's "This Week," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said: "My hope is that as a consequence of now being responsible for electricity and picking up garbage and basic services to the Palestinian people, that they recognize it's time to moderate their stance."
Perhaps. But their stance — Israel must die — is, they say, the will of God, who has not authorized moderation in the name of sanitation.
Regarding cynicism, Jimmy Carter, an even worse ex-president than he was a president, responded to the Hamas victory by quickly suggesting a way to evade the U.S. law against providing funds to terrorists. He suggested that the executive branch of the U.S. government could launder money destined for Hamas, passing it through the U.N.
This suggestion has a certain piquancy, coming as it does from someone who was elected president as a national penance for President Nixon's lawlessness, and coming as it does after the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, which demonstrated the U.N.'s financial aptitude.
Four days after Hamas provided redundant evidence that the United States can not anticipate, let alone control, events, The New York Times inadvertently suggested this thought: If the Times and the Bush administration each had sufficient self-awareness, they might be mutually mortified by recognizing their similar mentalities regarding America's power.
On the front page of Sunday's Times there began a 7,800-word story on Haiti's descent, not for the first time, into murderous anarchy. The story about the progress of nation-building and democracy-planting in our hemisphere carried a symptomatic headline: "Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos." The story's thesis was intimated by its subtitle: "Democracy Undone." The thesis was that if U.S. diplomacy had been more deft and single-minded, the Times might not now be reporting this about Haiti:
"Today, the capital, Port-au-Prince, is virtually paralyzed by kidnappings, spreading panic among rich and poor alike. Corrupt police officers in uniform have assassinated people on the streets in the light of day. The chaos is so extreme and the interim government so dysfunctional that voting to elect a new one has already been delayed four times."
Tonight, on the 1,050th day of the Iraq War (the 912th day of the Second World War was D-Day), the nation needs an adult hour, including a measured meditation on overreaching, from the Middle East to Medicare's new prescription-drug entitlement. But in State of the Union addresses, rarely is heard a discouraging word.
The Democrats have already been heard from. In their "pre-buttal" to the State of the Union, they promised, among much else, that, according to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, if they come to power, "every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years." Which tells you something about the state of the union.
georgewill@washpost.com

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

The world according to George W Bush

Tonight, US President delivers annual State of the Union address as world powers meet in London to discuss global flashpoints

Published: 31 January 2006

NORTH KOREA

State of the Union The regime is a bandit state that will stop at nothing to build a nuclear arsenal. There are fears it will send plutonium to Iran.

State of the Region US policy on North Korea has been a complete failure and the regime has blackmailed South Korea into sending aid.

CANADA

State of the Union President Bush sees new Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an ally on issues including abortion. Mr Harper criticised Canada for not joining Iraq war.

State of the Region Mr Harper's first move was to say he rejected the US assertion that the Arctic North-west Passage was "neutral waters".

EUROPE

State of the Union Enlargement of EU protects friends of the US: Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states. Nato shares the burden in Afghanistan.

State of the Region Merkel supplanting Blair in "special relationship". Use of European airports for "rendition flights" has damaged US.

AFGHANISTAN

State of the Union US trumpets progress, pointing to $5bn spent on the country. Afghan government committed to improving security and economic affairs.

State of the Region President Karzai confined to his palace as the insurgency spreads in the south where UK troops will be deployed.

IRAQ

State of the Union "Free elections" were held in December. Iraqis replacing American forces, raising prospect of troops' withdrawal.

State of the Region Shia majority, allied to Iran, swept to victory. Insurgent attacks dashing hopes of withdrawal. More than 2,240 US troops have been killed.

IRAN

State of the Union Adamant Iran must not be allowed nuclear weapons. Washington wants diplomatic solution but bombing an option.

State of the Region By keeping military threat alive, Mr Bush may allow mullahs to justify nuclear weapons programme for self-defence. Could invite riposte from Israel.

ARAB-ISRAEL

State of the Union After first election for a Palestinian parliament in a decade, US refusing to deal with Hamas until it drops terrorism and ambition to destroy Israel.

State of the Region Dilemma for US is whether to cut off funds to Palestinians - choking the seeds of democracy. Same problem across the Middle East.

AFRICA

State of the Union US forgave debt of the poorest countries. A key bulwark in the "war on terror''. Its mineral and oil assets make it a key strategic partner.

State of the Region Scramble for Africa between China, the US and India. US defines its value in terms of oil and access to military bases.

LATIN AMERICA

State of the Union A problem. Socialist candidates topped the poll in 11 elections in past year. But US investment in region is strong. The market economy safe. Drugs war being stepped up.

State of the Region Voters rejecting unfettered capitalism. New leaders expanding state control on the oil and mining industries.

CHINA

State of the Union An ally in the "war on terror" and a source of enormous potential profit for corporate America.

State of the Region China is poised to challenge the US global leadership and overturn international standards. Economically and militarily the Middle Kingdom is bursting outward.

NORTH KOREA

State of the Union The regime is a bandit state that will stop at nothing to build a nuclear arsenal. There are fears it will send plutonium to Iran.

State of the Region US policy on North Korea has been a complete failure and the regime has blackmailed South Korea into sending aid.

CANADA

State of the Union President Bush sees new Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an ally on issues including abortion. Mr Harper criticised Canada for not joining Iraq war.

State of the Region Mr Harper's first move was to say he rejected the US assertion that the Arctic North-west Passage was "neutral waters".

EUROPE

State of the Union Enlargement of EU protects friends of the US: Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states. Nato shares the burden in Afghanistan.

State of the Region Merkel supplanting Blair in "special relationship". Use of European airports for "rendition flights" has damaged US.

AFGHANISTAN

State of the Union US trumpets progress, pointing to $5bn spent on the country. Afghan government committed to improving security and economic affairs.

State of the Region President Karzai confined to his palace as the insurgency spreads in the south where UK troops will be deployed.

IRAQ

State of the Union "Free elections" were held in December. Iraqis replacing American forces, raising prospect of troops' withdrawal.

State of the Region Shia majority, allied to Iran, swept to victory. Insurgent attacks dashing hopes of withdrawal. More than 2,240 US troops have been killed.

IRAN

State of the Union Adamant Iran must not be allowed nuclear weapons. Washington wants diplomatic solution but bombing an option.

State of the Region By keeping military threat alive, Mr Bush may allow mullahs to justify nuclear weapons programme for self-defence. Could invite riposte from Israel.

ARAB-ISRAEL

State of the Union After first election for a Palestinian parliament in a decade, US refusing to deal with Hamas until it drops terrorism and ambition to destroy Israel.

State of the Region Dilemma for US is whether to cut off funds to Palestinians - choking the seeds of democracy. Same problem across the Middle East.

AFRICA

State of the Union US forgave debt of the poorest countries. A key bulwark in the "war on terror''. Its mineral and oil assets make it a key strategic partner.

State of the Region Scramble for Africa between China, the US and India. US defines its value in terms of oil and access to military bases.

LATIN AMERICA

State of the Union A problem. Socialist candidates topped the poll in 11 elections in past year. But US investment in region is strong. The market economy safe. Drugs war being stepped up.
State of the Region Voters rejecting unfettered capitalism. New leaders expanding state control on the oil and mining industries.

CHINA

State of the Union An ally in the "war on terror" and a source of enormous potential profit for corporate America.

State of the Region China is poised to challenge the US global leadership and overturn international standards. Economically and militarily the Middle Kingdom is bursting outward.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Religious Regime Where?

The Taliban takes many forms in many countries and among many cultures and does not necessarily have to be Muslim in nature. The Taliban mindset: a bunch of old men with beards and guns and shriveled testicles telling the rest of the world how it “has to be” has caused more anguish and pain and bloodshed than any group mindset in history.

We don’t have to listen.

These bitter old men are not the answer to the world’s problems and if any of us bother to read our Holy Books rather than believing someone else’s skewed interpretation of those books, then most of us would see (and understand) that these old men are nothing more than the false prophets that our holiest ones have warned us about throughout the centuries of human culture.

The religious right of America is every bit as narrow-minded and controlling as the Taliban, and as likely to take up followers and guns in order to enforce the philosophies of angry old men down the throats of the rest of us—especially as regards the behaviors of women.

These old men are hateful and resentful for never having enjoyed the freely given love and support of women and nothing on this earth will prevent their self-hatred from tainting this world and the young men and women in it.

Nothing on this earth will change the influence of these old men except the turning of the young and influenced away from them and the denial of respect which these old bastards deserve.

This is a new century. If we are going to carry the ideals of the old century with us into the future, then let those ideals favor freedom and liberty for all people, and a joining of the world’s people instead of the driving of wedges into the love and joy of which the human race is capable.

Down with Old Men and their control of our youth and down with any group which exists solely to deny rights to the majority of people.
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Women of Gaza fear for their freedoms under new religious regime

By Donald Macintyre

Published: 30 January 2006

Naila Ayesh, a secular married woman who frequently goes about Gaza in Western clothes, has already noticed a subtle change since Hamas's election victory last Wednesday.

"You will hear even kids saying to you, 'your head isn't covered now but it will be. You can drive now but you won't be able to later." She relates, too, how a woman friend described telling a neighbour that her child attended Gaza City's American school. "What, you send her to the crusader school?" the shocked neighbour replied. "Why don't you send her to the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin school [named after the late Hamas founder] where she can learn languages as well as the Koran?" Ms Ayesh added: "All this happened before but it's been happening more since the election."

Ms Ayesh is a staunch Palestinian nationalist - both she and her husband have served severe terms in Israeli prisons for their politics. But her worries about the rippling internal effects of Hamas's victory go further than these relatively trivial omens.

For Ms Ayesh runs the Women's Affairs Centre, a brave oasis of progressive feminism in fiercely conservative Gaza. The Islamic faction and its allies in the mosques do not warm to many of its causes; the centre has campaigned for a shelter for battered women here, but its campaign has been in vain because of fears that a shelter would encourage women to leave their husbands.

Its work ranges from an experimental programme introducing Islamic University women students to the law, human rights and job opportunities, to campaigning for a family law which would protect women from abuse and safeguard their custody rights after divorce. It fears this would notbe a priority for Hamas. "I am not worried about the laws already in place because that requires a two-thirds majority, but I am worried about the legislation which has not yet gone through," Ms Ayesh says.

Hamas is far from being the Taliban. It strongly supports women's education, is generally opposed to "honour killing", and some of its candidates supported women's shelters. Its spokesmen have also been at pains to stress that it does not intend in the foreseeable future to impose its religious ideology - including its long-term commitment to sharia (Islamic law) - on the parliament.

But Ms Ayesh is concerned that the more congenial public message sometimes conflicts with the deeply held belief of its new PLC members. For example, she notes that Mariam Farhat, the "Mother of Martyrs" whose election video showed her helping her own 17-year-old son to prepare explosives which killed him and five Israelis, said in an interview that her first parliamentary campaign would be for a law requiring all Palestinian women to wear the hejab. To Ms Ayesh, Mrs Farhat's later disavowal of the interview was unconvincing. But, in any case, she expects the change to be cultural and gradual rather than legislative. "Hamas will not do this directly but they will use other respected figures, for example in the mosques."

Ms Ayesh is the first to acknowledge that the huge vote for Hamas reflected a deep desire to "punish" Fatah for its failures over the past decade. And while she has heard accusations that Hamas deployed 200-shekel enticements to more ill-informed voters to back its candidates in what was in fact an admirably secret ballot, she says that there are at least as many reports of Fatah doing the same. But she also said that women she encountered in her work reported another potent message on the doorsteps from Hamas campaigners, who were often themselves women. "The women said they were told, 'if you do not vote Hamas, God will punish you at the end'."

Naila Ayesh, a secular married woman who frequently goes about Gaza in Western clothes, has already noticed a subtle change since Hamas's election victory last Wednesday.

"You will hear even kids saying to you, 'your head isn't covered now but it will be. You can drive now but you won't be able to later." She relates, too, how a woman friend described telling a neighbour that her child attended Gaza City's American school. "What, you send her to the crusader school?" the shocked neighbour replied. "Why don't you send her to the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin school [named after the late Hamas founder] where she can learn languages as well as the Koran?" Ms Ayesh added: "All this happened before but it's been happening more since the election."

Ms Ayesh is a staunch Palestinian nationalist - both she and her husband have served severe terms in Israeli prisons for their politics. But her worries about the rippling internal effects of Hamas's victory go further than these relatively trivial omens.

For Ms Ayesh runs the Women's Affairs Centre, a brave oasis of progressive feminism in fiercely conservative Gaza. The Islamic faction and its allies in the mosques do not warm to many of its causes; the centre has campaigned for a shelter for battered women here, but its campaign has been in vain because of fears that a shelter would encourage women to leave their husbands.

Its work ranges from an experimental programme introducing Islamic University women students to the law, human rights and job opportunities, to campaigning for a family law which would protect women from abuse and safeguard their custody rights after divorce. It fears this would notbe a priority for Hamas. "I am not worried about the laws already in place because that requires a two-thirds majority, but I am worried about the legislation which has not yet gone through," Ms Ayesh says.

Hamas is far from being the Taliban. It strongly supports women's education, is generally opposed to "honour killing", and some of its candidates supported women's shelters. Its spokesmen have also been at pains to stress that it does not intend in the foreseeable future to impose its religious ideology - including its long-term commitment to sharia (Islamic law) - on the parliament.

But Ms Ayesh is concerned that the more congenial public message sometimes conflicts with the deeply held belief of its new PLC members. For example, she notes that Mariam Farhat, the "Mother of Martyrs" whose election video showed her helping her own 17-year-old son to prepare explosives which killed him and five Israelis, said in an interview that her first parliamentary campaign would be for a law requiring all Palestinian women to wear the hejab. To Ms Ayesh, Mrs Farhat's later disavowal of the interview was unconvincing. But, in any case, she expects the change to be cultural and gradual rather than legislative. "Hamas will not do this directly but they will use other respected figures, for example in the mosques."

Ms Ayesh is the first to acknowledge that the huge vote for Hamas reflected a deep desire to "punish" Fatah for its failures over the past decade. And while she has heard accusations that Hamas deployed 200-shekel enticements to more ill-informed voters to back its candidates in what was in fact an admirably secret ballot, she says that there are at least as many reports of Fatah doing the same. But she also said that women she encountered in her work reported another potent message on the doorsteps from Hamas campaigners, who were often themselves women. "The women said they were told, 'if you do not vote Hamas, God will punish you at the end'."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
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5 States Consider Bans On Protests at Funerals
Proposals Aimed at Anti-Gay Demonstrations

By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; A09

CHICAGO -- At least five Midwestern states are considering legislation to ban protests at funerals in response to demonstrations by the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, who have been protesting at funerals of Iraq war casualties because they say the deaths are God's punishment for U.S. tolerance toward gays.

Though the soldiers were not gay, the protesters say the deaths, as well as Hurricane Katrina, recent mining disasters and other tragedies are God's signs of displeasure. They also protested at the memorial service for the 12 West Virginia miners who died in the Sago Mine.

"The families weren't able to bury their loved ones in peace," said Kansas state Sen. Jean Schodorf, who has proposed legislation. "We felt pretty strongly that we needed to do something about it."

Kansas already has a law banning demonstrations at funerals, but Schodorf said the existing law is vague and hard to enforce. The proposed bill would keep protesters 300 feet away from any funeral or memorial service and ban demonstrations within one hour before or two hours after a service.

Legislators in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Oklahoma are looking at similar bills. Proposed legislation in Indiana would keep protesters 500 feet from funerals, and make a violation a felony punishable by a three-year prison term and a $10,000 fine.

State Sen. Anita Bowser said she thinks the demonstrators are hoping to provoke a physical attack so they can file a lawsuit.

"These people are not gainfully employed, so they're waiting for someone to do battle with them so they can go to court and win," said Bowser. "They want a big liability case to pursue. I don't think they actually give a diddly wink about the arguments they're making, but they're clever individuals trying to make a fast buck."

Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps's daughter and an attorney for the church, said if legislation passes, the group will challenge it in court. "Whatever they do would be unconstitutional," she said. "These aren't private funerals; these are patriotic pep rallies. Our goal is to call America an abomination, to help the nation connect the dots. You turn this nation over to the fags and our soldiers come home in body bags."

A motorcycle group called the Patriot Guard, made up mostly of veterans, has started attending funerals to act as a buffer between the protesters and family members.

"They'll chant and make snide remarks, they have all these signs that say 'Thank God for dead soldiers,' 'Thank God for body bags,' " said Patriot Guard member Rich "Stretch" Strothman, a Wichita resident. "They'll throw the flag on the floor and wipe their feet on it. . . . We go under request from the families, we're not counter-protesters."

Ed Yohnka, communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said the bills are troubling from a free speech perspective. "We have some concerns about the vagueness of the language," Yohnka said about the proposed Illinois bill. ". . . One of the things that concerns us very much is the degree to which the bill blocks access to people engaged in political expression on public sidewalks. We think a 300-foot bubble is excessive."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
_________________________________________________________________________________

Health Workers' Choice Debated
Proposals Back Right Not to Treat

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; A01

More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights.

About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy. That might include in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, embryonic stem cells and perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians.

Because many legislatures have just convened, advocates on both sides are predicting that the number debating such proposals will increase. At least 18 states are already considering 36 bills.

"It's already a very hot issue," said Edward R. Martin Jr. of the Americans United for Life, who is advising legislators around the country pushing such bills. "I think it's going to get even hotter, for lots of reasons and in lots of places."

The flurry of political activity is being welcomed by conservative groups that consider it crucial to prevent health workers from being coerced into participating in care they find morally repugnant -- protecting their "right of conscience" or "right of refusal."

"This goes to the core of what it means to be an American," said David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. "Conscience is the most sacred of all property. Doctors, dentists, nurses and other health care workers should not be forced to violate their consciences."

The swell of propositions is raising alarm among advocates for abortion rights, family planning, AIDS prevention, the right to die, gays and lesbians, and others who see the push as the latest manifestation of the growing political power of social conservatives.

"This is a very significant threat to patients' rights in the United States," said Lois Uttley of the MergerWatch project, who is helping organize a conference in New York to plot a counterstrategy. "We need to protect the patient's right to use their own religious or ethical values to make medical decisions."

Both sides agree that the struggle between personal beliefs and professional medical responsibilities is likely to escalate as more states consider approving physician-assisted suicide, as embryonic stem cell research speeds forward and as other advances open more ethical fault lines.

"We are moving into a brave new world of cloning, cyborgs, sex selection, genetic testing of embryos," Stevens said. "The list of difficult ethical issues involving nurses, physicians, research scientists, pharmacists and other health care workers is just continuing to increase."

Most states have long had laws to protect doctors and nurses who do not want to perform abortions from being fired, disciplined or sued, or from facing other legal action. Conflicts over other health care workers emerged after the morning-after pill was approved and pharmacists began refusing to fill prescriptions for it. As a result, some lost their jobs, were reprimanded or were sanctioned by state licensing boards.

That prompted a number of states to consider laws last year that would explicitly protect pharmacists or, alternately, require them to fill such prescriptions.

The issue is gaining new prominence this year because of a confluence of factors. They include the heightened attention to pharmacists amid a host of controversial medical issues, such as the possible over-the-counter sale of the Plan B morning-after pill, embryonic research and testing, and debates over physician-assisted suicide and end-of-life care after the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.

"There's an awful lot of dry kindling in the room," Martin said.

At least seven states are considering laws that would specifically protect pharmacists or pharmacies.

"Every other day, I hear from pharmacists who are being threatened or told they have to sign something that says they are willing to go along with government mandates," said Francis J. Manion of the American Center for Law & Justice, which is fighting an Illinois regulation implemented last year requiring pharmacies to fill all prescriptions, which led to a number of pharmacists being fired. "The right to not be required to do something that violates your core beliefs is fundamental in our society."

Opponents say such laws endanger patients by denying them access to legal drugs, particularly morning-after pills, which must be taken quickly. They say women often must go from pharmacy to pharmacy to get those prescriptions filled.

"Women all over the country are being turned away from obtaining valid and legal prescriptions," said Jackie Payne of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "These kinds of laws would only make the situation worse. It's shameful." Planned Parenthood is supporting efforts in at least six states to pass laws requiring pharmacists to fill all prescriptions.

At least nine states are considering "right of refusal" bills that are far broader. Some would protect virtually any worker involved in health care; others would extend protection to hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities. Some would protect only workers who refuse to provide certain health services, but many would be far more expansive.

At least five of the broad bills would allow insurance companies to opt out of covering services they find objectionable for religious reasons. A sixth state, Pennsylvania, is considering a bill designed for insurers.
"These represent a major expansion of this notion of right of refusal," said Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that studies reproductive health issues and is tracking the legislation.

"You're seeing it broadening to many types of workers -- even into the world of social workers -- and for any service for which you have a moral or religious belief."

Supporters say the laws are necessary, given the rapidly changing nature of medical research and care.

"We live in a culture where more and more people are on opposite sides of these basic issues," said Manion, who has represented an ambulance driver who was fired after she refused to take a patient to a hospital for an abortion, a health department secretary who was not promoted after she objected to providing abortion information, and a nurse who was transferred after she refused to provide morning-after pills.

Opponents fear the laws are often so broad that they could be used to withhold health services far beyond those related to abortion and embryos.

"The so-called right-to-life movement in the United States has expanded its agenda way beyond the original focus on abortion," Uttley said. "Given the political power of religious conservatives, the impact of a whole range of patient services could be in danger."

Doctors opposed to fetal tissue research, for example, could refuse to notify parents that their child was due for a chicken pox inoculation because the vaccine was originally produced using fetal tissue cell cultures, said R. Alto Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin.

"That physician would be immunized from medical malpractice claims and state disciplinary action," Charo said.

Advocates for end-of-life care are alarmed that the laws would allow health care workers and institutions to disregard terminally ill patients' decisions to refuse resuscitation, feeding tubes and other invasive measures.
"Patients have a right to say no to CPR, to being put on a ventilator, to getting feeding tubes," said Kathryn Tucker of Compassion and Choice, which advocates better end-of-life care and physician-assisted suicide.

Others worry that health care workers could refuse to provide sex education because they believe in abstinence instead, or deny care to gays and lesbians.

"I already get calls all the time from people who have been turned away by their doctors," said Jennifer C. Pizer of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, who is representing a California lesbian whose doctor refused her artificial insemination. "This is a very grave concern."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Chronicles of a Criminal Conspiracy

Uhm…lessee now…cut $4 billion from the Army Reserve and the National Guard (potentially our last line of defense from whatever horrors the Bush administration has in mind for America), and pump up spending $200 million to “aid foreign militaries”, which will serve to give the Bush administration a mercenary force to do with as it will at the bottom line.

This idea may be far-fetched, however, none of us predicted the malfeasance and misuse of public funds and the seemingly deliberate incompetence that have occurred as the standard response from the Bush administration, and none of us really knows what the end result of this Bush takeover of America means in terms of their goal.

It is relatively easy to see that these people are up to no good, and that they do not have the best interests of America at heart. That they are traitors to American democratic principles is certainly becoming more evident with each passing day.

What is remarkable is that a vast majority of Americans cannot “connect the dots” in order to form an idea of what the Bush administration has in mind for us, although our jobs are dying and we are being forced into what amounts to slave labor as any one who has ever worked in a call center outsourced by a giant American corporation to another giant corporation can attest.

These are the lowly jobs that are available once those employees do not have the secure jobs with the secure benefits such as the jobs destroyed by GM and Delphi and other jobs once the parvenu of the American workforce and which allowed this country to have the highest standard of living in the world.

That time is over.

Anarchy is the only outcome of the Bush Putsch, when Americans can no longer feed their children and shelter their families, and it would appear that potential anarchy in America is something already under consideration by the Bush administration. They have no intentions of changing their robbery of America, as any cursory reading of the news on any given day will attest. Their obvious plan is to enslave the American workforce.

There is no other interpretation, and only a more outraged American Press living up to the historic contributions of Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and other past chroniclers of historical events can save us.
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Budget to Call for Cuts In Military Reserves
Bush to Cut $4 Billion From Jet Programs

By Lolita C. Baldor
Associated PressSunday, January 29, 2006; A11

President Bush will use his new budget to propose cutting the size of the Army Reserve to its lowest level in three decades and stripping as much as $4 billion from two fighter aircraft programs.

The proposals, likely to face opposition on Capitol Hill, come as the Defense Department struggles to trim personnel costs and other expenses to pay for the war in Iraq and a host of other pricey aircraft and high-tech programs. Bush will send his 2007 budget to Congress on Feb. 6.

The proposed Army Reserve cut is part of a broader plan to achieve a new balance of troop strength and combat power among the active Army, the National Guard and reserves to fight the global war on terrorism and to defend the homeland.

The Army sent a letter to members of Congress on Thursday outlining the plan. A copy was provided to the Associated Press.

Under the plan, the authorized troop strength of the Army Reserve would drop from 205,000 -- the current number of slots it is allowed -- to 188,000, the actual number of soldiers it had at the end of 2005.

Because of recruiting and other problems, the Army Reserve has been unable to fill its ranks to its authorized level.

Army leaders have said they are taking a similar approach to shrinking the National Guard. They are proposing to cut that force from its authorized level of 350,000 soldiers to 333,000, the actual number now on the rolls.

Some in Congress have vowed to fight the National Guard cuts. Its soldiers and resources are controlled by state governors unless Guard units are mobilized by the president for federal duty, as Bush did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I remain convinced that we do not have a large enough force," Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Proposals to cut funding in two key jet fighter programs were described by defense analysts and congressional aides, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the reductions have not been announced.

One plan would eliminate funding for an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, the military's next-generation combat plane.

The second would cut money for F-22 fighters during 2007. But it is actually a contract restructuring that would add that money back -- and more -- over the long run by stretching out the program for an additional two years and buying as many as four more planes.

The new plan calls for buying 60 aircraft through 2010, rather than 56 in the next two years.

The Joint Strike Fighter engine is being built by General Electric and England-based Rolls Royce, and the plan to dump them as suppliers has triggered intense lobbying, including a handwritten note from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Bush.

On the home front, the close to $2 billion cut would hit General Electric engine plants, and possibly jobs, in Ohio and Massachusetts and a Rolls Royce plant in Indiana. The proposal would benefit Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney, which got the original contract for the Lockheed Martin aircraft, and delivered its first engine last month.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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Pentagon Can Now Fund Foreign Militaries
Defense Secretary Pushed for New Powers to Better Deal With Emergencies

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, January 29, 2006; A10

Congress has granted unusual authority for the Pentagon to spend as much as $200 million of its own budget to aid foreign militaries, a break with the traditional practice of channeling foreign military assistance through the State Department.

The move, included in a little-noticed provision of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act passed last month, marks a legislative victory for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who pushed hard for the new powers to deal with emergency situations.

But it has drawn warnings from foreign policy specialists inside and outside the government, who say it could lead to growth of a separate military assistance effort not subject to the same constraints applied to foreign aid programs that are administered by the State Department. Such constraints are meant to ensure that aid recipients meet certain standards, including respect for human rights and protection of legitimate civilian authorities.

"It's important that diplomats remain the ones to make the decisions about U.S. foreign assistance," said George Withers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and a former staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. "They can ensure such decisions are taken in the broader context of U.S. foreign policy."

Many lawmakers, too, were initially cool to Rumsfeld's request. The Armed Services committees in both the House and Senate declined to write the provision into their original defense authorization bills, citing concerns about a lack of jurisdiction and an absence of detail about where the money would be spent.

But the Pentagon pressed its case, with senior commanders joining top officials in weighing in with reluctant members.

"This was the most heavily lobbied we've been by the Pentagon in the several years I've been here," said one Senate staff member. "They really, really wanted this."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also threw her support behind the measure, overruling lower-ranking staff members who had argued that existing laws were sufficient and who had cautioned against granting the Pentagon such flexibility, department officials said. She joined Rumsfeld last summer in a letter to Congress urging passage of the legislation.

The initiative addresses an issue that both the Pentagon and the State Department have identified as crucial in fighting terrorism and bolstering stability abroad -- namely, "building partnership capacity" in Africa and other developing regions.

Administration officials complain that attempts to provide such security assistance, especially in crisis situations, have often been hampered by a patchwork of legal restrictions and by a division of responsibilities among U.S. government departments. Improving security in a failing foreign nation, for instance, might involve drawing on the Pentagon for military training, the State Department for police training, the Department of Homeland Security for border protection and the Treasury Department for financial enforcement. Cobbling such pieces together can take many months, officials say.

After striking out with the Armed Services committees, Pentagon officials found an ally in Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has a particular interest in Africa. Inhofe agreed to propose the new authority on the Senate floor as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act. To ensure compliance with existing foreign aid rules, language was included saying that funds for the missions would be transferred from the Pentagon to the State Department before being expended and would be subject to limitations of the Foreign Assistance Act.

These conditions were dropped in a later Senate-House conference. But other conditions were added still reflecting congressional reservations.

The final version -- Section 1206 of the authorization act -- says the Pentagon can provide training, equipment and supplies "to build the capacity" of foreign militaries to conduct counterterrorist operations or join with U.S. forces in stability operations. But the section also stipulates that orders for such aid must originate with the president, and it requires the Pentagon to work closely with the State Department in formulating and implementing the assistance.

This new authority cannot be used to provide any assistance banned by other U.S. laws, the provision adds. Further, the measure grants less money than initially requested -- $200 million instead of $750 million. And it expires after two years, far short of the open-ended mandate that Rumsfeld had sought.

"We're calling it a pilot program," said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "But I think it'll prove its worth."

Defense officials say they are pleased with the outcome. "It's a very good start," said Jeffrey Nadaner, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. "For the Congress, which hasn't done this before, we think it's a bold, cooperative move."

Reaction at the upper levels of the State Department also has been positive. Under a separate provision approved with the train-and-equip measure, the department is getting $200 million from the Pentagon to bolster a new Reconstruction and Stabilization Office for coordinating civilian assistance. This provision stirred its own controversy among lawmakers, who as a matter of principle have opposed shifting Pentagon funds to the State Department.

Having gained this much, the Pentagon and State Department are now setting their sights on a more ambitious overhaul of foreign assistance rules.

"In the longer run, we need to have our assistance structured in a way that will give us even broader flexibility," said Philip Zelikow, the State Department's counselor. "The president and his advisers must be able to devise a program that can allocate money as needed among whatever agencies have the skill sets to deliver the capabilities, whether State, Defense, Justice or other government agencies."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Oh, Great: War With Canada?

Will these half-wit morons running America push issues with Canada to the point where we are at war with our closest neighbor?

Anything is possible with the Bush cabal’s definition of “globalization of democracy” in play, but one can’t help applauding the stand that Stephen Harper is taking against the Bush administration’s over-reaching grabs at any part of the world they choose to infest with their definitions which apply to other peoples and countries, but not to the Bush cabal, and not to America as they see fit to remake it in some unrecognizable image of their own devising.

Time will tell, and rallying to support the Canadian interpretation of sovereignty seems like a sensible position for the American public, and a matter which is in our best interests in order to send a message to the Bush people that Americans still know right from wrong even if Bush doesn’t.

It is supremely gratifying that although Harper is a “conservative”, he is not a puppet, nor it seems, will he be a puppet of the Bush administration.

There are more than enough puppets loose in our world in these times.
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Canada’s new leader takes on U.S. over Arctic
Harper to deploy icebreakers, build port; U.S. says waters belong to all

The Associated Press
Updated: 10:54 a.m. ET Jan. 27, 2006

TORONTO - Political pundits who declared that Stephen Harper, Canada’s next prime minister, would move quickly to patch up ties with the United States were having to regroup Friday after Harper used his first post-election press conference to tell the United States to mind its own business when it comes to territorial rights in the Arctic North.

Testing the notion that he would kowtow to the Bush administration, Harper, whose Conservative Party won general elections on Monday, said Thursday he would stand by a campaign pledge to increase Canada’s military presence in the Arctic and put three military icebreakers in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage.

U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins had criticized the plan Wednesday, describing the Arctic passage as “neutral waters.”

“There’s no reason to create a problem that doesn’t exist,” Wilkins said during a panel discussion at the University of Western Ontario, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “We don’t recognize Canada’s claims to those waters. Most other countries do not recognize their claim.”

Vow to ‘defend our sovereignty’No reporter brought up the ambassador’s views Thursday but Harper said at the end of his first formal news conference that he wanted to comment on them.

“The United States defends its sovereignty; the Canadian government will defend our sovereignty,” Harper said. “It is the Canadian people that we get our mandate from, not the ambassador of the United States.”

Harper’s surprising salvo was likely intended as a message to those in the Bush administration who might be cheering the election of a Conservative government and view Harper as a pushover when it comes to prickly U.S.-Canadian relations.

Arctic sovereignty has been a sensitive subject for decades, with U.S. Navy submarines and ships entering northern waters without asking permission. Ottawa has generally turned a blind eye to the United States’ sending ships through the area.

Canadian media reported last month that a U.S. nuclear submarine traveled secretly through Canadian Arctic waters in November on its way to the North Pole.

The Northwest Passage runs from the Atlantic through the Arctic to the Pacific.

More ships likelyGlobal warming is melting the passage — which is only navigable during a slim window in the summer — and exposing unexplored fishing stocks and an attractive shipping route. Commercial ships can shave off some 2,480 miles off the trip from Europe to Asia compared with the current routes through the Panama Canal.

Harper said during a campaign speech in December he would dramatically increase Canada’s military presence in the Arctic North. He intends to construct and deploy three new armed icebreaking ships and construct a $1.7 billion deep-water port and an underwater network of “listening posts.”

“The single most important duty of the federal government is to protect and defend our national sovereignty,” Harper said in that speech. “There are new and disturbing reports of American nuclear submarines passing though Canadian waters without obtaining the permission of, or even notifying, the Canadian government.”

Military action unclearHarper has not said whether he would order military action if the ships or port detected an unauthorized submarine in Arctic waters.

Harper, meanwhile, said he had a friendly conversation with President Bush on Wednesday but had not fixed a date for their first meeting. He said he had also received calls from other major allies, including Mexican President Vicente Fox, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

© 2006 The Associated Press.

Selling Newspapers, Staying Rich

The news today is that there is no “quotable” news in the popular press, which is not surprising, considering that the popular press in America is owned by the rich. Whose side are they on other than the side of the rich—anything else would be contrary to self-survival. How would you spin the news if you were the wealthy owner of a major newspaper? It takes a year to tell the American public that domestic spying is going on when any moderately intelligent 6th grader can read The Constitution and see that it is wrong?

Please.

Of course, those owners still have to sell newspapers and in order to do so, they have to print some articles that are ‘controversial’ in order to get the quarters plunked down by the rank and file of their readership, but in the main, the news and challenges to the Bush cabal that should be forthcoming are nothing if not lukewarm and a betrayal of the American people.

Blogging is rapidly becoming a substitute source of the news, and while this is in almost all respects, a very beneficial process, the one thing that happens when bloggers become the chief source of news is that we lose the benefits of having all the news in a few places and available to Mr. and Ms. Public in a manner which allows the public to determine fact from fiction.

Right now, there are several bloggers, such as Ariana Huffington, who publish remarkably insightful articles written by supremely knowledgeable reporters and sites such as these are certainly the future of news reporting in this nation, but with the reporting of news in flux, it is paramount that attention be paid to what the large daily newspapers are printing, and how that particular spin plays out among what can only amount to an intellectually challenged readership.

The fact that there are still millions of people in America who do not recognize the dangers of the Bush administration is frightening , indeed. The fact that our Congress has not found the spine to stand up and demand an accounting from the Bush administration becomes more frightening each day. The fact that Bush continues to ignore and tread upon American liberty is nothing less than a cause for revolt by our Congress and our People.

How many times do we have to be told that the actions of the Bush administration are illegal and liable to destroy America as we know it before this country stands up and does something to prevent a future managed by the values of the greediest bunch of criminals and despots to ever walk down any street in any city in any country in the world?

How long before the Bush administration succeeds in censoring this brand-spanking new alternative to the established press?

Not long, my friends, not long …

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Domestic Spying Debate Heats Up

Jan. 26, 2006

(CBS/AP) As President Bush defended his spying program Wednesday with a visit to the ultra-secret facility where the government monitors electronic communications, debate over the program's legality increased within the Senate and intelligence community.

Four leading Democratic senators sent Mr. Bush a letter Wednesday saying although they support efforts to do everything possible within the law to combat terrorism, the National Security Advisory program is an "apparent violation of federal law."

Also, the former head of the NSA when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred said had the president's domestic spying program been in place, some of the hijackers would have been "detected."

After a tour of the National Security Agency, Mr. Bush said employees there who are secretly monitoring phone calls and Internet traffic are learning what terrorists are plotting against America.

Mr. Bush said they are taking Osama bin Laden seriously when he says he's going to attack again.

The visit was accompanied by a new White House line, casting the program as a vital military operation, one that cannot wait for courts to consider warrants, reports CBS News correspondent John Roberts.

"Do you expect our commanders in a time of war to go to a court while they're trying to survey -- surveil the enemy? I don't think so," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters.

Referring to bin Laden, Mr. Bush said, "When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it.

"I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously," he added.

It was Mr. Bush's first comment about bin Laden since a tape was aired last week in which the al Qaeda leader warned that his fighters are preparing new attacks in the United States.

Some experts and lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether it's legal for the government to listen to conversations in the United States without a warrant, which the administration could get through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"If you or officials in your administration believe that FISA, or any law, does not give you enough authority to combat terrorism, you should propose changes in the law to Congress," wrote Sens. Harry Reid, Edward Kennedy, Richard Durbin and Russ Feingold.

"You may not simply disregard the law."

But as Roberts reports, one Republican senator told CBS News on condition of anonymity she might consider loosening the standards for approving the wiretap and allowing more officials at the Justice Department, not just Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to authorize eavesdropping, so that it could begin just as soon as the NSA needed it (video) .

And the former director of the NSA, U.S. Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, said the domestic spying program would have likely picked up communications among the 9/11 hijackers.

"Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States," Hayden said.

However, the general did not give any specific evidence for his claim, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, adding that Hayden stopped short of saying warrant-less eavesdropping would have entirely broken up the 9/11 plot (video) .

Before the attacks, head hijacker, Mohammed Atta, exchanged e-mails with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a key al Qaeda operative in Germany, using a simple code to discuss which targets to hit.

None of those communication were intercepted, not because of legal restrictions on NSA, Martin reports, but because American intelligence did not have a clue either man belonged to al Qaeda.

In addition, Martin adds, two of the hijackers were suspected members of al Qaeda, but the NSA's inability to intercept their calls had nothing to do with legal restrictions -- they simply slipped the CIA in Asia.

Mr. Bush said the NSA program is limited to communications between the United States and people overseas who are linked to al Qaeda.

He said the NSA program has helped prevent terrorist attacks and save American lives, although the government has not given any specifics.

"Officials here learn information about plotters and planners and people who would do us harm," Mr. Bush said, reading from note cards.

"Now, I understand there's some in America who say, 'Well, this can't be true there are still people willing to attack.'

All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously.

" However, no one in the political debate over the war on terror or the NSA program has suggested that terrorists no longer want to attack the United States.

Rather, Bush's critics have argued that the law requires him to get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on communications involving Americans. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., issued a blistering attack on Mr. Bush's explanations.

"Obviously, I support tracking down terrorists," she said. "I think that's our obligation. But I think it can be done in a lawful way. Their argument that it's rooted in the authority to go after al Qaeda is far-fetched. Their argument that it's rooted in the Constitution inherently is kind of strange because we have FISA and FISA operated very effectively and it wasn't that hard to get their permission."

Mr. Bush said he had the legal right to do whatever he could to prevent further attacks and that the NSA program "is fully consistent with our nation's laws and Constitution."

"I'll continue to reauthorize this program for so long as our country faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups," Mr. Bush said. "This enemy still wants to do harm to the American people. We cannot let the fact that we have not been attacked lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared."

©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Fear Is The Enemy

After reading all the editorials and articles readily available in today’s news on censorship, fear is the primary emotion reported by professional writers and bloggers alike. There is a vague dread and, consequently, a lack of personal freedom to explore by way of internet search, any subject that comes to mind. That is censorship. Fear comes first, and we gradually censor ourselves and when government censorship finally comes (and it is coming unless we fight to prevent it) we are inured to the disadvantages of being censored in a so-called “democracy”.

Fear is the enemy. The majority of us are not perverts, and we are not child molesters. We are not pornographers but we are curious beings. Readily available internet pornography is something you have to pay to see in full, generally speaking, and this grandmother, for one, has had a heck of a time looking at free internet porn. This writer has no interest whatsoever in child pornography and would shoot a child pornographer in the head in a New York minute. This writer has no patience with anyone who would exploit children in this manner. Ditto for child abusers and child killers. And rapists of any stripe.

These criminals make a good case for vigilantism, and quick, deadly reaction by our citizenry.

However, reading today’s articles and editorials on the effects of censorship leaves one thinking that being perceived as one of these perverts due to some innocent and/or curious search of the internet’s available subjects is as bad as the deed itself, and that is a correct assumption. Nobody wants to have the label of being interested in child pornography. Nobody wants to find himself (or herself) in court defending the indefensible.

Like so many of the Bush Putsch machinations, it becomes a “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” situation, and fear is an essential tool in the Bush repertoire for controlling the American masses, and one which they bring out repeatedly in order to bully Americans into conforming to the Bush expectations—meaning, “be afraid, be very afraid. And in the meantime, we will rape and rob your country to a point where it is unrecognizable as America and we will steal more money than most of you can count, and while you are tossing yet another red-herring around, we will rob you of yet another essential American freedom.”

Fear is the enemy. Fight back. Now.

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January 25, 2006

After Subpoenas, Internet Searches Give Some Pause

By KATIE HAFNER

Kathryn Hanson, a former telecommunications engineer who lives in Oakland, Calif., was looking at BBC News online last week when she came across an item about a British politician who had resigned over a reported affair with a "rent boy."

It was the first time Ms. Hanson had seen the term, so, in search of a definition, she typed it into Google. As Ms. Hanson scrolled through the results, she saw that several of the sites were available only to people over 18. She suddenly had a frightening thought. Would Google have to inform the government that she was looking for a rent boy - a young male prostitute?

Ms. Hanson, 45, immediately told her boyfriend what she had done. "I told him I'd Googled 'rent boy,' just in case I got whisked off to some Navy prison in the dead of night," she said.

Ms. Hanson's reaction arose from last week's reports that as part of its effort to uphold an online pornography law, the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.

The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.

The government has been more aggressive recently in its efforts to obtain data on Internet activity, invoking the fight against terrorism and the prosecution of online crime. A surveillance program in which the National Security Agency intercepted certain international phone calls and e-mail in the United States without court-approved warrants prompted an outcry among civil libertarians. And under the antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those actions have put some Internet users on edge, as they confront the complications and contradictions of online life.

Jim Kowats, 34, a television producer who lives in Washington, has been growing increasingly concerned about the government's data collection efforts. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I just feel like it's one step away from ... what's the next step?" Mr. Kowats said. "The government's going to start looking into all this other stuff."

Until last year, Mr. Kowats worked at the Discovery Channel, and a few years ago, in the course of putting together a documentary on circumcision, he and his colleagues were doing much of the research online. "When you're researching something like that and you look up the word 'circumcision,' you're going to end up with all kinds of pictures of naked children," he said. "And that can be misconstrued."

"There're so many things you can accidentally fall into when you're surfing on the Internet," he said. "I mean, you can type in almost anything and you're going to end up with something you didn't expect."
Privacy is an elusive concept, and when it comes to what is considered acceptable, people tend to draw the line at different points on the privacy spectrum.

Ming-Wai Farrell, 25, who works for a legal industry trade association in Washington, is one of those who draw the line somewhere in the middle. They are willing to part with personal information as long as they get something in return - the convenience of online banking, for example, or useful information from a search engine - and as long as they know what is to be done with the information.

Yet these same people are sometimes appalled when they learn of wholesale data gathering. Ms. Farrell said she would not be able to live without online banking, electronic bill paying or Google, but she would consider revising her Web activity if she had to question every search term, online donation or purchase.

"It's scary to think that it may just be a matter of time before Googling will invite an F.B.I. agent to tap your phone or interrogate you," Ms. Farrell said.

Mike Winkleman, 27, a law student who lives in Miami and, like Ms. Farrell, belongs to the generation of people who came of age with the Internet, said he would like to think that the erosion of his privacy was for "a good cause, like national security or preventing child porn," he said. "But I can't help but feel that for each inch I give, a mile will be taken."

But Josh Cohen, a financial adviser in Chicago, identifies more closely with a subset of Internet users who see the loss of at least some privacy as the price they pay for being on the Web. Mr. Cohen, 34, said he was willing to accept that tradeoff in the pursuit of national security.

"We as U.S. citizens have got to start making concessions," he said. "In order for the government to catch people that prey on children, or fight the war on terror, they are going to need the help of the search engines."
Mr. Cohen said he doubted there would be much compromising of his individual privacy because the amount of data collected by the government was so voluminous. "My rationale tells me that with close to 300 million people in the U.S., and about 45 to 50 percent of households having Internet access, that I don't need to be too concerned with my search engine behavior," he said.

Susan P. Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, agreed that the sheer volume of information obtained by the government was likely to dilute privacy threats.

"More experienced Internet users would understand that in the mountain of search-related data available in response to a subpoena, it is very unlikely that anything referring to them personally would be revealed," Professor Crawford said.

She likened one's online activity to walking down the street. "We walk down the street all the time and we can be seen there," she said. "We also move around online, and can be 'seen' to some extent there as well. But we continue to go for walks."

Nevertheless, last week's court motion is giving some people pause. Sheryl Decker, 47, an information technology manager in Seattle, said she was now thinking twice about what she said in her personal e-mail correspondence. "I have been known to send very unflattering things about our government and our president," Ms. Decker said. "I still do, but I am careful about using certain phrases that I once wouldn't have given a second thought."

Ms. Decker's caution is being echoed by others. Genny Ballard, 36, a professor of Spanish at Centre College in Danville, Ky., said she had grown more conscious about what she typed into the Google search box. "Each time I put something in, I think about how it could be reconstructed to mean that I have more than an academic curiosity," Ms. Ballard said.

To be sure, Google is citing a number of reasons for resisting the government's subpoena, including concern about trade secrets and the burden of compliance. While it does not directly assert that surrendering the data would expose personal information, it has told the government that "one can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information about a specific Google user, which is another outcome that Google cannot accept."

Ms. Hanson, who did the "rent boy" search, said that although she was aware that personal information was not being required in the Google case, she remained uneasy.

She pointed to a continuing interest she has in the Palestinian elections. "If I followed my curiosity and did some Web research, going to Web sites of the parties involved, I would honestly wonder whether someone in my government would someday see my name on a list of people who went to 'terrorist' Web sites," she said.

Mr. Kowats, the television producer, shares that fear. "Where does it stop?" he said. "What about file sharing? Scalping tickets? Or traveling to Cuba? What if you look up abortion? Who says you can't look up those things?

What are the limits? It's the little chipping away. It's a slippery slope."

David Bernstein and Michael Falcone contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
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January 25, 2006

Editorial

Secrecy as a Spoil of Victory

Never mind the golf junkets and poolside seminars. One of the rawest displays of lobbyists' power in the Capitol occurred beyond the sight of the public last month, when Republican Congressional negotiators tweaked a budget-cutting bill in order to provide the health insurance industry with a $22 billion windfall.

The circumstance of this victory by insurance lobbyists is particularly relevant now that the same Congressional leaders are feverishly vowing to enact lobbying reform. The bill change, dearly sought by the H.M.O. industry, was written by House and Senate lawmakers and staff members in closed-door, Republican-only bargaining sessions - one of the "conference committees" for settling differences in final legislation that are themselves becoming part of the Capitol's influence-peddling scandal.

The current version of this deal-setting routine entirely excludes Democratic lawmakers, who are in the minority but still represent significant numbers of Americans. Rather, the lobbyists who successfully worked for a whopping fix in the Medicare reimbursement formula were far more clued in by cooperative Republicans. This is business as usual in Congress; no one is promising hearings about secretive behavior, skulking about in a black hat or hiring defense lawyers.

The bill change might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was doing its job in parsing out the last-minute gutting of a formula that was originally intended to produce a $26 billion savings for taxpayers across 10 years. Instead, the final bargainers reduced the projected savings to $4 billion and handed the H.M.O.'s a $22 billion gift by protecting the inflated reimbursements they currently reap through Medicare.

Republican lawmakers insist that nothing nefarious was transacted, and that a minor formula change was grossly miscalculated in the budget office report. It's nice to see the lawmakers coming out of the shadows, if only to make excuses. But their credibility problem lies in the deep secrecy and partisanship that shroud the conference committees.

If the tables were reversed, Democrats might indulge the same hegemony. But right now, some are proposing that the forthcoming attempt at lobbying reform include a rules change to at least open the conference committees to the public and allow minority party lawmakers votes in committee on the final wording of legislation. It remains to be seen whether such an advance in participatory democracy can survive the inevitable assault by dissatisfied lobbyists and their allied incumbents.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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Mr. Abramoff's Meetings

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; A18

HERE ARE SOME things we know about Jack Abramoff and the White House: The disgraced lobbyist raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's reelection campaign. He had long-standing ties to Karl Rove, a key presidential adviser. He had extensive dealings with executive branch officials and departments -- one of whom, former procurement chief David H. Safavian, has been charged by federal prosecutors with lying to investigators about his involvement with Mr. Abramoff.

We also know that Mr. Abramoff is an admitted crook who was willing to bribe members of Congress and their staffs to get what he (or his clients) wanted. In addition to attending a few White House Hanukkah parties and other events at which he had his picture snapped with the president, Mr. Abramoff had, according to the White House, "a few staff-level meetings" with White House aides.

Here is what we don't know about Jack Abramoff and the White House: whom he met with and what was discussed. Nor, if the White House sticks to its current position, will we learn that anytime soon. Press secretary Scott McClellan told the White House press corps: "If you've got some specific issue that you need to bring to my attention, fine. But what we're not going to do is engage in a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with the investigation."

This is not a tenable position. It's undisputed that Mr. Abramoff tried to use his influence, and his restaurant and his skyboxes and his chartered jets, to sway lawmakers and their staffs. Information uncovered by Mr. Bush's own Justice Department shows that Mr. Abramoff tried to do the same inside the executive branch.
Under these circumstances, asking about Mr. Abramoff's White House meetings is no mere exercise in reportorial curiosity but a legitimate inquiry about what an admitted felon might have been seeking at the highest levels of government. Whatever White House officials did or didn't do, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Abramoff was up to no good and therefore every reason the public ought to know with whom he was meeting.

Mr. McClellan dismisses requests for the information as an effort to play "partisan politics," and no doubt there is more than an element of partisanship in Democrats' efforts to extract this information. But Republicans wouldn't stand for this kind of stonewalling if the situation were reversed. We can say that with confidence because history proves it. During the 1996 scandal over foreign fundraising in the Clinton White House, Republicans demanded -- and obtained, though not without a fight -- extensive information about White House coffees and other meetings, including photos and videotapes.

"Any suggestion by critics or anybody else to suggest that the president was doing something nefarious with Jack Abramoff is absolutely wrong, and it's absurd," presidential adviser Dan Bartlett said on NBC's "Today" show. The best way to refute such "absurd" suggestions is to get all of Mr. Abramoff's dealings with the Bush White House and the Bush administration out in the open -- now.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Here Come The Storm Troopers?

In retrospect, the Bush cabal has been far ahead of the American public and press in the so-called “neo-conservative” drive to hamper democracy by any means possible in order to wrest even more money from the poor in order to please the rich.

As the wife of a deceased career U.S. Army non-commissioned officer who loved the military and eagerly put his life on the line for his country whenever asked, this writer feels a certain amount of chagrin in pointing out that the Bush Putsch is gearing up to produce elite troops as discussed in the article from today’s Washington Post and written by Ann Scott Tyson.

However, with hourly and daily revelations regarding the Bush administration’s malfeasance, machination, and maladroitness which on the whole appears to be an orchestrated attack of long standing and careful planning on American freedom and democracy, and with the easy comparisons that are beginning to be made by the popular press in measuring the Bush administration with the Nazi yardstick, the creating of elitist troops must be closely inspected before it is to late to change the current direction of America.

Soldiers will follow orders, and take great pride in following orders from the ‘chain of command’. When the chain of command is rotten at the top, then we Americans must look closely at any creation of any elite troops and question whether or not those troops can be used against the citizens of this country when we finally rise up to defeat threats to the freedoms that Americans have traditionally and proudly and willingly died to protect.

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Plan Seeks More Elite Forces to Fortify Military

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 24, 2006; A01

A top-level Pentagon review of defense strategy calls for bolstering the U.S. military with thousands more elite troops skilled in fighting terrorists and insurgents and partnering with foreign forces -- as part of a decades-long plan to expand efforts to thwart terrorists worldwide, according to U.S. officials and military analysts familiar with the review.

The increase would bring the ranks of Special Operations Forces -- which include covert Delta Force operatives, Rangers, Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces -- to their highest levels since the Vietnam War while adding billions to the budget of the 52,000-strong U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, over the next five years, said the officials and analysts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the final document has not been released.

One of the largest gains would be in Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, soldiers trained in languages and navigating foreign cultures who work with indigenous forces and operate in 12-man "A-teams." Special Forces would expand by one-third -- from 15 to 20 active-duty battalions -- creating about 90 more A-teams to deploy to regions considered vulnerable to terrorist or extremist influences, the officials and analysts said. Currently, the bulk of Special Forces teams are rotating into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Increasing Special Operations Forces is one of the most significant elements of the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets U.S. defense strategy, guides plans for forces and military hardware and has a major influence on defense spending. The QDR was timed for release along with the fiscal 2007 budget on Feb. 6, according to Pentagon and congressional officials as well as military analysts familiar with it through drafts and briefings. Implementing the strategy will occur primarily through the longer-range defense spending plan for the next five years, Pentagon officials said.

The 2005 QDR -- the first comprehensive look at military strategy and requirements since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- attempts to predict the major security challenges the United States will face in the next 20 years, Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said in an address last week.
The latest review sets four major goals: defeating terrorist extremism; defending the homeland; influencing nations such as China that are at a "strategic crossroads" in their world role; and preventing hostile states or actors from acquiring nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, Henry said.

It emphasizes devoting greater resources to preparing for "irregular" "catastrophic" and "disruptive" attacks -- such as insurgencies, strikes by terrorist groups with biological weapons, or an attack on U.S. information systems by China -- as compared with traditional military threats.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss specific policy decisions contained in the QDR, but he confirmed that the emphasis on Special Operations Forces capable of conducting unconventional warfare is "a concept the QDR has identified as important." "We have talked about increasing the size of the Special Operations Forces out there. We've talked about adding Marine forces" to the ranks of Special Operations, he said. "There is no mystery to this."

One major question for the Pentagon's future strategy, military experts and officials say, is how to best fight and prevent the spread of terrorist and extremist groups over the long term in nations where the United States is not at war.

The increase in Special Forces teams, trained specifically to work with foreign militaries, is one way to gain an ongoing presence and military influence in regions where it is lacking.

"This will be the largest increase in the number of SOF since the Vietnam War," said Michael Vickers, director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, who has been involved in the QDR and was a member of a team of experts probing U.S. weaknesses.

The QDR also envisions a significant boost of several hundred civil affairs soldiers, who specialize in post-conflict rebuilding, along with smaller increases in soldiers who engage in psychological operations.

The ranks of Delta Force operatives, who work in covert "special mission units" tracking the most valued military targets such as terrorist leaders, will also grow by about one-third, officials and analysts say. Army Rangers, highly trained infantry troops, will gain three companies, or more than 400 troops.

In an effort to keep an unblinking eye on potential terrorist activities in sensitive regions of the world, Air Force special operations will create a unit of unmanned aerial drones able to maintain watch for long periods.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company