Succeeding in Business �George W. Bush is scheduled to give a speech intended to put him in front of the growing national outrage over corporate malfeasance. He will sternly lecture Wall Street executives about ethics and will doubtless portray himself as a believer in old-fashioned business probity. Yet this pose is surreal, given the way top officials like Secretary of the Army Thomas White, Dick Cheney and Mr. Bush himself acquired their wealth. As Joshua Green says in The Washington Monthly, in a must-read article written just before the administration suddenly became such an exponent of corporate ethics: "The `new tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness. . . . In this administration, enriching oneself while one's business goes bust isn't necessarily frowned upon." Unfortunately, the administration has so far gotten the press to focus on the least important question about Mr. Bush's business dealings: his failure to obey the law by promptly reporting his insider stock sales. It's true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed, from "the dog ate my homework" to "my lawyer ate my homework � four times." But the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the nation. In 1986, one would have had to consider Mr. Bush a failed businessman. He had run through millions of dollars of other people's money, with nothing to show for it but a company losing money and heavily burdened with debt. But he was rescued from failure when Harken Energy bought his company at an astonishingly high price. There is no question that Harken was basically paying for Mr. Bush's connections. Despite these connections, Harken did badly. But for a time it concealed its failure � sustaining its stock price, as it turned out, just long enough for Mr. Bush to sell most of his stake at a large profit � with an accounting trick identical to one of the main ploys used by Enron a decade later. (Yes, Arthur Andersen was the accountant.) � http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/opinion/07KRUG.html

The Competing Visions of the Role of the Court For Justice Scalia, constitutional principles are fixed, not evolving � "The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead," he declared at a conference earlier this year � and Congress needs to be held to the words it wrote, not to interpretations written by committee aides or judges. "Our first responsibility is to not to make sense of the law � our first responsibility is to follow the text of the law," he said from the bench. In his view, the Supreme Court's job is to give lower court judges not factors to weigh, but rules to apply. �Justice Breyer presented an integrated theory of the role he sees for the court in society and for himself as a justice. Delivering New York University Law School's James Madison Lecture last October, he said three principles should guide the court's decision-making. First was the purpose (as opposed to text) of the constitutional provision or law under review. Second was the likely consequence of a decision, which he contrasted to "a more `legalistic' approach that places too much weight upon language, history, tradition and precedent alone." Without mentioning Justice Scalia by name, he said the "literalist" approach leads to a result "no less subjective but which is far less transparent than a decision that directly addresses consequences in constitutional terms." Third, Justice Breyer said, the court should bear in mind the Constitution's overall objective, that of fostering "participatory democratic self-government." The court should be wary, he said, about preempting a "national conversation" in which new legal understanding "bubbles up from below." JUSTICE BREYER'S lecture did more than clarify his own approach. It meant that Justice Scalia was no longer the solitary voice framing the debate on the role of the court. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/weekinreview/07GREE.html

Study Faults U.S. Regulators in Aftermath of Power Crisis More than a year after California endured power shortages and soaring energy prices, the nation's energy regulators are still not up to the task of protecting consumers and ensuring that electricity is sold at reasonable rates, a Congressional study to be made public on Tuesday has concluded. The study by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, says the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is hobbled by antiquated procedures, legislation and perhaps a mind-set more suited to the old days when energy producers were regulated monopolies. "FERC has not yet adequately revised its regulatory and oversight approach to respond to the transition to competitive energy markets," the report states. While the energy agency recognizes that it must "fundamentally change how it does business," it has been unable to transform itself, partly because of leadership changes and high staff turnover created by higher salaries in private business, the report said. Moreover, the study found, the agency "lacks adequate enforcement `bite' to deter anticompetitive behavior or other violations of market rules" because it is simply unable to impose meaningful civil penalties. Without stronger enforcement power, the report says, the agency will not be able to deter anticompetitive behavior or outright violations of market rules. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/business/18FERC.html

G.O.P. Is Moving to Slow Action on Tax Loophole Republican leaders in Congress are using procedural tactics like walking out of committee hearings to keep Congress from voting on measures to close the so-called Bermuda loophole in the federal tax code, measures that would almost certainly pass overwhelmingly if given the chance. The loophole allows big companies to pretend legally that they are based offshore (Bermuda has been the country of choice) and then filter profits through a third country (most often Barbados), avoiding American income taxes. The administration and the Republican leaders have said the loophole should be closed but have emphasized that flawed tax laws are forcing companies to make the Bermuda move. Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, will try to change the law again today with a measure that would forbid companies to use the loophole unless their shares actually trade on an exchange in the tax haven country or most of their stock is owned by people living there. The proposal would close the loophole for companies like Tyco International, nominally a conglomerate based in Bermuda but which manages its operations from Exeter, N.H. There would be no effect on legitimate multinational corporations, like DaimlerChrysler, that have not used a haven to avoid American taxes. "It seems eminently fair to require that people in your own country be the ones to benefit from the tax treaty," Mr. Doggett said. "We did not negotiate these treaties so that American companies could stop paying taxes on profits earned in the United States, but to benefit commerce between our country and the tax treaty countries." "We cannot let these fair-weather friends choose when to wrap themselves in the flag and when, renouncing the flag, they will wrap themselves in a tax treaty," Mr. Doggett said. "Enjoying the rights means sharing the responsibility." The determination of Republicans to not allow a vote on closing the Bermuda loophole has been seen in both the Senate and House in recent weeks. Republicans left a Senate Finance Committee meeting last Thursday, ending the meeting for lack of a quorum, shortly before a vote on a bill by Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the two senior members of the committee, to close the loophole for new companies. Aides to both senators said that they were confident that the bill would pass by a wide margin if brought up for a vote on the Senate floor. The committee is to take up the bill again tomorrow. Three weeks ago, Republican leaders in the House cut off a vote on making permanent partial relief from the so-called marriage penalty to avoid allowing Democrats to bring up an amendment closing the Bermuda deals. The marriage penalty occurs when a working married couple pays more in taxes than if they lived together without being married. The Bermuda deals, according to the Treasury, reveal deep flaws in the system for taxing multinational companies. The administration has warned that a quick remedy, like the moratoriums proposed in the House or the denial of tax benefits in the bill by Mr. Baucus and Mr. Grassley, might make American multinational corporations vulnerable to takeovers by foreign companies or could damage their global competitiveness. Still, were a bill creating a moratorium on the Bermuda deals to come up for a vote in the House while a study was under way, it would easily win 300 votes, far more than needed for passage, said Representatives Jim McCrery, a Republican from Louisiana, who is on the House Ways and Means Committee. Mr. McCrery said that he favored a comprehensive review of the tax regime for international companies. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/business/18TAX.html

White House Gets 24 Hours to Turn Over Enron Papers White House officials were given 24 more hours today to turn over information about their contacts with Enron, as the administration and Democrats on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee debated how thousands of pages of documents covered by subpoenas would be handled by investigators on the panel. Even so, both Democratic and Republican staff members from the panel began reviewing the documents this afternoon in the Eisenhower executive office building. In another development today, Texas utility regulators recommended fining Enron $7.1 million because they say that the company manipulated the state's wholesale power market last August. The White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, said officials had already gathered 1,745 pages of documents detailing the White House's Enron-related contacts that were subpoenaed two weeks ago by the governmental affairs panel, which is led by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. Other documents are still being gathered by the White House, Mr. Gonzales said. The White House, which faced a deadline of noon today to hand over the materials to the committee, received a one-day extension after the committee's ranking Republican, Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, asked Mr. Lieberman for the delay. But the White House agreed that committee staff members could begin reviewing the materials immediately. The committee voted along party lines on May 22 to issue two subpoenas to the White House, seeking all information about communications between Enron and the White House since 1992 that in any way dealt with eight federal agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the subpoenas seek information about contacts between White House officials and officials at the eight agencies regarding Enron. They also seek contacts between Enron and the White House over the formulation of the national energy policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/business/04ENRO.html

Halliburton and Inquiry by the S.E.C. Whether the S.E.C. inquiry will reach Mr. Cheney, who as chief executive had final responsibility for Halliburton's books, is unclear. In a memo in 2000 to his colleagues at Arthur Andersen, which was Halliburton's auditor, the partner who managed the Halliburton account boasted of his close relationship with Mr. Cheney. The partner, Terry Hatchett, said the relationship was so close that Mr. Hatchett had remained lead partner on the Halliburton account even after he moved from Dallas to Tokyo to oversee Andersen's Asian operations. In addition, while he was an executive at Halliburton, Mr. Cheney appeared in a marketing video extolling Andersen's services. Current and former executives at Halliburton have described Mr. Cheney as a hands-off executive who left daily management to David Lesar, a former Andersen partner who at the time was Mr. Cheney's second-in-command. Mr. Foshee said last week that he could not imagine that Mr. Cheney had specifically approved the 1998 change, though he said he was certain that it was approved by Mr. Lesar, who became chief executive in 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/business/30HALL.html?todaysheadlines

The True Purpose of Welfare Reform How have Americans been doing under the 1996 law? Federal welfare money is given to states as a block grant, so each state is different. Nonetheless, the broad story of families who left welfare has two major variants. One story is of the women who found jobs � the great majority of welfare payments go to single mothers � and the other is about those who are worse off. The latter are a remarkably large group; on any given day, something like 40 percent of former welfare recipients, or well over a million women, have no job, an indication of the 1996 law's failure as policy. The women who found work are the basis for the claim that the 1996 law is a huge success, but even there, one has to ask whether their families have escaped from poverty and what will happen to them if the current recession lasts. The 1996 law got some women to look for work who might otherwise not have done so, and it got the numbers down by pushing people off the welfare rolls or not letting them on. But the big post-1996 fact was the increase in the number of jobs � many areas had unemployment rates below 3 percent. Employment of never-married mothers shot up, although that did not necessarily mean they escaped from poverty. (Today they make an average of just under $8 an hour working about 35 hours a week, which would add up to around $14,000 annually.) The earned-income tax credit helped a lot, adding about $4,000 to the income of a minimum-wage worker with two children. But averages are deceiving. If your job was, for example, a 20-hour position as a school crossing guard for $107 a week, or if you kept cycling in and out of jobs, you and your children were still threatened with homelessness and hunger. The main lesson of the 1996 law is that having a job and earning a livable income are two different things. The Bush administration and its Congressional allies chose to ignore this fact and instead are going the get-tough route. Perhaps hoping to create a wedge issue by making the Democrats appear soft on the work issue, they looked at the fewer than two million parents still on welfare (down from nearly five million in the early 90's) and said, in effect: "These loafers are still on the rolls. We have to get after them." They proposed even tougher work requirements that had nothing to do with actually helping people find a job. Sad to say, they were abetted by a few Senate Democrats, led by Senators Evan Bayh and Thomas Carper, who have made a similar proposal the centerpiece of their own bill. Who are the two million adults still on the rolls? Many are there temporarily while they look for work and need no push to do anything. The remainder are the hard cases � the ones who have less education, less work experience and more personal problems. Rigid requirements are the exact opposite of the individualized approach they need. The House bill would effectively require states to spend large amounts of precious welfare funds on make-work jobs programs. (Such programs were not adopted by a single state on a statewide basis, as was possible under the 1996 law � probably because workfare is expensive and does not prepare people to find real jobs.) The pittance added for child care by the House is laughable � $2 billion over five years. If the Bush work proposals become law, states will be able to comply only by dismantling child care and other supports now in place. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/opinion/29EDEL.html?todaysheadlines

Florida Counties Seek to Avoid Suit Over Election But the Florida action has Democrats and civil rights groups accusing the Bush administration of dodging the most egregious charges of discrimination in the 2000 presidential race. Those critics also say that Duval County is conspicuously absent. Duval County, in and around Jacksonville, had among the highest numbers of complaints after the election, including charges county elections officials purged voters wrongly accused of being felons. Civil rights groups are also asking why the Justice Department did not address politically charged complaints from predominantly black districts in Florida, like those from thousands of voters that they were unjustly turned away from their precincts for not having multiple forms of identification. Several groups also denounced the Justice Department's failure to file suits against Florida state agencies. The department's actions do not address, for example, charges that the office of the secretary of state, Katherine Harris, wrongfully purged thousands of blacks from voter rolls. Figures from a report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, examining possible improprieties in the election, estimated that at least 8,000 voters were incorrectly cited as having criminal records, resulting in their being barred from voting. The purging, civil rights advocates claimed, disproportionately affected black voters. Critics said they agreed with the Justice Department that language assistance to voters who have difficulties speaking English is a high priority in election reform. A lawsuit by a coalition of liberal civil rights groups, including the People for the American Way Foundation, the N.A.A.C.P. and the American Civil Liberties Union, also accused multiple counties in Florida of failing to provide bilingual voter information and translation services at the polls. But these critics said that the language issue is the easiest for the Bush administration to use to make political gains among immigrants. "They are actively courting Hispanics, and they are also trying to make inroads in the Haitian community," said Bob Poe, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "But the failure to address the disenfranchisement of African-Americans makes their whole case a sham." The Justice Department refused to comment, either on its cases or the charges from its critics, saying it would be "inappropriate to discuss matters further while the department is in presuit negotiations." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/politics/25CIVI.html?todaysheadlines

Rights Panel Plans Fight The United States Commission on Civil Rights announced today that it planned to ask the Supreme Court to overturn a court decision seating a Bush administration appointee on the panel. In a letter to the Justice Department, the commission's chairwoman, Mary Frances Berry, said that the commission would not try to block seating the appointee, Peter N. Kirsanow, while its application to the Supreme Court was pending and that Mr. Kirsanow would be recognized as a commissioner at the meeting scheduled for Friday. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/politics/14RIGH.html?todaysheadlines

Many on Medicaid Lack Drugs, Study Says The study was based on a survey of 39,000 adults, including nearly 1,800 on Medicaid. By most measures, it said, Medicaid recipients and people with private insurance have similar access to medical care. But, it said, prescription drugs appear to be an exception; some Medicaid recipients have almost as much difficulty as the uninsured in obtaining medications. Twenty-six percent of Medicaid beneficiaries ages 18 to 64 reported that they could not afford to get all their prescriptions filled in the last year, the report said. That was just slightly less than the 29 percent of uninsured people who reported similar difficulty. By contrast, 8 percent of people with employer-sponsored health coverage and 8 percent of elderly people with Medicare said costs prevented them from obtaining medicines. (Medicare generally does not cover prescription drugs outside the hospital, but about two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have drug coverage from other sources.) Len M. Nichols, vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, said, "The findings are surprising because Medicaid is expected to ensure access to affordable care for the poorest and sickest Americans." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/health/09DRUG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Many on Medicaid Lack Drugs, Study Says States have become so aggressive in trying to control Medicaid spending on prescription drugs that many Medicaid recipients do not get all the drugs prescribed for them, researchers said today. Although Medicaid covers prescription medicines in every state, one-fourth of patients enrolled in the program reported that they could not afford to fill some of their prescriptions in the last year, the researchers said. In an environment of rapidly rising drug prices, they said, states' cost-control efforts were the leading factor. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/health/09DRUG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Affluent Avoid Scrutiny on Taxes Even as I.R.S. Warns of Cheating The government looks for tax cheating by wage earners far more carefully than it looks for cheating by people whose money comes from their own businesses, investments, partnerships and trusts. This is true despite many warnings by federal tax officials that cheating is becoming far more common among affluent Americans. Even as Congress finances a crackdown on tax cheating by the working poor, it is appropriating little money to detect abuses by people, usually among the wealthiest Americans, who do not rely entirely on wages for their income. Executives at the Internal Revenue Service have mentioned this discrepancy in several reports to Congress. They have not focused attention on how little they can do about it. But an examination by The New York Times of I.R.S. statistics including audit rates and staff deployment figures, as well as interviews with current and former I.R.S. officials, shows that the agency can identify at best only a tiny percentage of the cheats and pursue even fewer of them. That the I.R.S. audits the working poor more frequently than wealthy people is well known. What has not been discussed is that the agency does not track nonwage income as closely as wage income � and in some cases does not verify it at all, even as the I.R.S. says that cheating on nonwage income is rising. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/business/07TAX.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Energy Industry's Recommendations to Bush Became National Policy In one example cited by the natural resources council, the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group that represents the country's largest oil companies, submitted a proposed draft executive order on energy policy to the Energy Department on March 20, 2001. Two months later, Mr. Bush signed an executive order that the council's lawyers said was nearly identical in structure and language to the trade group's proposal. The executive order concerned government regulations that affect energy supply and distribution. "Big energy companies all but held the pencil for the White House task force as government officials wrote a plan calling for billions of dollars in corporate subsidies, and the wholesale elimination of key health and environmental safeguards," John H. Adams, the president of the council, said at a news conference today. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/politics/28ENER.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Lockbox or Not, Social Security's Ills Grow Democrats are casting this year's budget fight in Congress as a test of which party can do more to wean the government off of using excess Social Security revenue to pay for general programs. As one way of making their point, Democrats are preparing to assail the administration for having to request an increase in the legal limit on the national debt, a step they say proves that the tax cut last year was fiscally irresponsible. In the wake of the Enron (news/quote) collapse � and looking for an issue to carry into the Congressional elections this fall � Democrats are trying to focus attention again on the push by Mr. Bush and many conservatives to let workers invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in the stock market. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/24/business/yourmoney/24VIEW.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Doctors Shunning Patients With Medicare Medicare cut payments to doctors by 5.4 percent this year. The government estimates that under current law, the fees paid for each medical service will be reduced in each of the next three years, for a total decrease of 17 percent from 2002 to 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/health/policy/17HEAL.html

Oil Industry Hesitates Over Moving Into Arctic Refuge Publicly, the biggest multinational petroleum companies, like Exxon Mobil (news/quote), Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco, back the Bush administration's assertion that developing the oil in the Arctic refuge is critical to the American economy. But privately, many large companies say the prospect, solely on business terms, is not terribly attractive. "Big oil companies go where there are substantial fields and where they can produce oil economically," said Ronald W. Chappell, a spokesman for BP Alaska, which officially supports opening the area to drilling. Using the acronym for the refuge, he continued, "Does ANWR have that? Who knows?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/business/10ALAS.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel Critics of the Bush administration's energy policy have long suspected that many of the corporations that were invited to advise the White House were large energy concerns that had contributed heavily to President Bush's campaign and the Republican Party in 2000. The White House has refused to release the names of the companies and individuals consulted during the formulation of the administration's energy policy last spring. It has been sued for the information. But interviews and task force correspondence demonstrate an apparent correlation between large campaign contributions and access to Mr. Cheney's task force. Of the top 25 energy industry donors to the Republican Party before the November 2000 election, 18 corporations sent executives or representatives to meet with Mr. Cheney, the task force chairman, or members of the task force and its staff. The companies include the Enron Corporation (news/quote), the Southern Company, the Exelon Corporation (news/quote), BP, the TXU Corporation (news/quote), FirstEnergy (news/quote) and Anadarko Petroleum (news/quote). http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/business/01ENER.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Stuffing the Pillowcase With Soft Money With companies like AT&T, SBC Communications and Philip Morris leading the way, corporations provided the bulk of the $11,450,673 raised by 24 soft-money political committees run by Congressional leaders, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, in the 12 months that ended June 30, according to Public Citizen, a group founded by Ralph Nader. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/politics/26DONA.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow Fuzzy math Alert reader John Hart sends this link. Apparently the Pentagon--that model of fiscal responsibility which has, of late, taken to tossing hundred dollar bills out of planes over the skies of southern Afghanistan, and to whom taxpayers will be giving an additional $48 billion this year--has misplaced 2.3 trillion dollars, which amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse. http://thismodernworld.com/

Web Site Helped Change Farm Policy It is www.ewg.org, operated by the Environmental Working Group, a small nonprofit organization with the simple idea that the taxpayers who underwrite $20 billion a year in farm subsidies have the right to know who gets the money. Conceived by Ken Cook, 50, director of the group, the Web site has become unusual in the crowded world of special-interest politics, where it is hard to get noticed in Washington, much less heard. It not only caught the attention of lawmakers, it also helped transform the farm bill into a question about equity and whether the country's wealthiest farmers should be paid to grow commodity crops while many smaller family farms receive nothing and are going out of business. In farm circles, where neighbors now know who is receiving the biggest checks from the government, the Web site has name recognition roughly equal to that of Heinz ketchup. Web Site Helped Change Farm Policy

America and Anti-Americans It would be easy for America, in the present climate of hostility, to fail to respond to constructive criticism, or worse: to start acting like the overwhelming superpower it is, making decisions and throwing its weight around without regard for the concerns of what it perceives as an already hostile world. The treatment of the Camp X-Ray detainees is a worrying sign. Secretary of State Colin Powell's reported desire to determine whether, under the Geneva Convention, these persons should be considered prisoners of war was a statesmanlike response to global pressure � but Mr. Powell has apparently failed to persuade President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/04/opinion/04RUSH.html

When Government Doesn't Tell Last year, to the dismay of historians, Mr. Bush signed an executive order restricting public access to the papers of former presidents. Attorney General John Ashcroft also established more restrictive rules governing what agencies release under the Freedom of Information Act. The government is even refusing to give Congress the results of a survey taken after the 2000 census to calculate how many people were either missed or double-counted by the census takers � data that has nothing to do with national security, law enforcement, confidential communications or any other normal grounds for keeping data from Congress. The Commerce Department says it is not confident the figures are accurate. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/weekinreview/03ROSE.html

Bush Budget to Seek Job Training Cut Even though unemployment has increased sharply in recent months, President Bush's budget will seek cuts in several job-training programs for laid- off workers and young adults most affected by the rise in unemployment, budget documents and federal officials say. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/politics/31BUDG.html

Voting Rights in Peril America has tried leaving election decisions to each state. We have no minimum federal voting rights standards for voting machines. The result: In the 2000 presidential election, 1.5 million ballots were discarded due to defective voting equipment. We have no minimum federal standards guaranteeing the right of a voter with a disability to cast a private and independent vote. The result: In 2000, 47 percent of voters with disabilities encountered physical barriers or had trouble getting to the polling place. State and local officials say they will eventually make necessary changes on their own. History teaches us, however, that states have been slow in outlawing discrimination. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was adopted, guaranteeing black citizens the rights and privileges of citizenship. In the name of states' rights, implementation was left to local control. This model failed, and federal legislation became necessary: Without the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination in public establishments and in hiring might still be legal in some parts of the country. Without the Voting Rights Act of 1965, poll taxes might still be prevalent. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/30/opinion/30CONY.html

The United States of Enron Wasn't that the best?" said a laughing Ann Richards this week, when I asked her reaction to President Bush's effort to hide behind her skirt when questioned about Enron. "It was so silly. Why didn't he just say Ken Lay was a strong supporter and gave him a half-million dollars and is a good friend, and he's really sorry Ken's in these terrible circumstances?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/19/opinion/19RICH.html

News: E-snoop bill runs aground A bill that would give California law-enforcement officials unprecedented power to monitor the e-mail and phone conversations of suspected criminals has hit a roadblock. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5101818,00.html

Mr. T., Mr. G. and Mr. H. Senators Helms, Gramm and Thurmond have in common the fact that they harnessed their collective century of seniority to the Taliban wing of the American right. Point to an act of cultural division, bullying unilateralism or anti-government populism committed in the Senate during their decades there and you will usually find these three men among the sponsors. But there are others in the Senate who have voted for egregious causes, right and left, and still others who have never stood for much of anything. What sets these three apart is that each has made his own special contribution to the cynicism of our public life. It is tempting to excuse them, in their twilight, for at least having made the place more colorful. Mr. Helms affected a theatrically courtly demeanor, sirring and ma'aming witnesses he regarded as infidels. (His manners were selective; it was the courtly Mr. Helms who once remarked that if President Clinton visited North Carolina he'd "better have a bodyguard.") Mr. Gramm pokes witty fun at his own orneriness. "People say I don't have a heart," he once joked. "I do. I keep it in a quart jar on my desk." As David Plotz wrote in Slate, Senator Gramm is a mean, bitter pessimist, but "he has benefited from one of the strangest prejudices of politics: that meanness is a synonym for integrity." Mr. Thurmond benefits from another prejudice, our instinctive American admiration for those who correct themselves. He abandoned his ardent segregationist views when the demographics of his state made that expedient, and even hired actual black people to work on his Senate staff, a fact sometimes reported with such awe that you'd think he'd marched with Dr. King in Selma. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/opinion/12KELL.html

The Quiet Man � The Bush administration operates on the principle of "no enemies on the right"; it also operates on the principle that Mr. Bush is infallible. Whatever policies he may have proposed in the past, his aides always insist that they are perfectly suited to the present � indeed, were devised with the present situation in mind. It's actually quite funny, though nobody dares say so. Last month, for example, Karl Rove explained that the tax cut, although originally proposed amid an economic boom, was designed to cope with the current recession. "All the signs were there in the second, if not the second, the third quarter of 2000," Mr. Rove said. When a questioner gently pointed out that Mr. Bush had laid out his tax plan way back in 1999, Mr. Rove brushed him aside. And since Mr. Bush is infallible, why should he ever reconsider his decisions? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/08/opinion/08KRUG.html

Executive Privilege Again Six years ago the Rifleman claimed that the F.B.I. had promised him immunity from prosecution for his killings � allegedly including a couple of his girlfriends � but Federal Judge Mark Wolf, in a landmark decision, ruled that nobody in law enforcement had the power to sanction murder. The New England F.B.I.'s long-running abuse of power is "the greatest failing in federal law enforcement history," according to James Wilson, chief counsel to the House Government Reform Committee. Evidence of this sustained miscarriage of justice was the 30-year imprisonment of Joe Salvati, whom F.B.I. officials are said to have known to be innocent of the crime for which he was convicted � but they remained silent to protect Mafia sources. John Ashcroft's Department of Justice does not want Congress to air out this long, shameful story. At the time J. Edgar Hoover belatedly began his war on the Mafia, civil liberty was set aside to meet the perceived emergency � abuses that lasted through three decades. The current F.B.I. chief, Robert Mueller, was U.S. attorney in Boston during the mid-80's and presumably did not have an inkling about the unlawful law enforcement going on around him. Accordingly, the Bush Justice Department induced the president to sign an order asserting executive privilege over its "deliberative documents" that would inform the public of answers to questions like: Why did Justice decline to indict an F.B.I. supervisor who admitted taking money from Flemmi's gang? Why did Justice help defend a hit man in California who killed a man while in the witness protection program? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/opinion/03SAFI.html

AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AND FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL JOHN DEAN Today the entire federal judiciary has become politicized. Both parties want to place judges on the courts that reflect their political views. This is a serious problem, for Americans are fast losing faith in the impartiality of the Judicial Branch � and not without good reason. The primary function of our federal courts is to resolve disputes between citizens and the political branches of government. But partisans on both sides of the political divide want to use the courts � from the Supreme Court on down � as another political branch, a means to impose a political solution while resolving the dispute. If anyone doubts this is the case, I suggest they look at Bush v. Gore. A few more cases like that and the Courts will lose all credibility. The reason the Senate should look at a nominee's philosophy is that it is time to reject nominees who are political ideologues, men or women who hold such fixed views that their votes on the high Court are predictable, whether they lean left or right. It is time to get all courts out of politics. Let the political branches make the political decisions. Given the rules of the Senate, if a few members of the Senate insisted that all judicial nominees be non-political or else vowed to block the nomination with a filibuster, thus requiring a super-majority to place any political nominee on the Court, it would end the practice of selecting Justices for their ideology rather than their legal acumen and wisdom. But this not likely to happen. There are not a lot of profiles in political courage in the Senate today. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20011101.html

The Rehnquist Choice

FindLaw's Writ - Lazarus:2 Dean's indictment of the Chief Justice focuses on his confirmation testimony about a memo that Rehnquist had written while a law clerk to Justice Jackson during the Court's consideration of Brown v. Board of Education. In the memo, entitled "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases," Rehnquist wrote, in part: "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think Plessy v. Ferguson [establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal"] was right and should be affirmed." For obvious reasons, this memo's opposition to the result reached in Brown presented Rehnquist with a confirmation problem. But he came up with a fairly ingenious solution. Rehnquist claimed that the memo did not embody his own views. Instead, Rehnquist claimed to have prepared the memo at Jackson's request "as a rough draft of a statement of his [Jackson's] views." As Dean parses with great care, this explanation does not hold water. The Rehnquist memo's reference to having "been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues" makes no sense in the context of a statement of Jackson's views to be delivered to his colleagues. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense in the context of an expression of Rehnquist's views � as Rehnquist, by his own admission, saw himself as a lonely conservative clerk isolated in a sea of liberals. In light of Dean's analysis of Rehnquist's veracity, one is led in "The Rehnquist Choice" to a devastating conclusion. In the end, Rehnquist embodies Nixon's legacy in at least two respects. Strict constructionist as he himself defined it, Rehnquist alone among Nixon's four appointees stayed true to Nixon's politically conservative hopes for the Court. And, like the man who appointed him, Rehnquist's conduct has tragically advanced the steady erosion of the integrity of our institutions of government. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20011102_lazarus.html

Taking on Republicans, but Not Their Leader When he arrived in Texas for a respite at his ranch last week, Mr. Bush proclaimed 2002 as "a war year." (Translation: Democrats better not attack me because I'm staying above politics for as long as I can.) http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/weekinreview/30BERK.html

Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers Black precincts had more than three times as many rejected ballots as white precincts in last fall's presidential race in Florida, a disparity that persists even after accounting for the effects of income, education and bad ballot design, The New York Times found in a new statistical analysis of the Florida vote. The analysis of 6,000 precincts uses far more definitive data than previous studies and shows a strong pattern of ballot rejection in black precincts that is not explained by socioeconomic differences or voting technology. Similar patterns were found in Hispanic precincts and places with large elderly populations. It did not matter whether the precinct used punch cards or paper ballots, whether the neighborhoods were rich or poor or the ballot was straight or butterflied. Precincts with more black, Hispanic and elderly voters had substantially more spoiled ballots, The Times found. The analysis did not suggest why blacks' ballots were more likely to have been rejected, but critics of Florida's voting system have suggested that black precincts were more likely to have older, unreliable voting machines and poorly trained poll workers. Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers

Cheney, Shrinking From View, Still Looms Large Did he spend his Thanksgiving in his "secure and undisclosed location" or in the sleekly redecorated Naval Observatory, the vice president's official residence that has taken on the characteristics of an armed camp? His staff did not want to say. But one thing is certain: In a nation where vice presidents have always complained about being invisible, Mr. Cheney really is. And yet, he has turned his disappearing act on its head. The more invisible he becomes, the more powerful he seems. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/politics/26LETT.html

The Vanishing Act Seldom in the last half-century has the U.S. been so poorly prepared to assist individuals and families struggling with the effects of a recession. Example: the unemployment insurance system, which was established to ease the pain of temporary joblessness, covers less than 40 percent of the people who are out of work. Example: the food stamp program, which was supposed to slam the door on hunger in the world's greatest nation (and which once served 90 percent of eligible families), now serves just 60 percent of the poverty- stricken folks who qualify for help. And then there's welfare. In the summer of 1996 Bill Clinton signed the so-called reform bill ending "welfare as we know it." Among other things, it imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance to needy families. The potentially tragic consequences of that legislation were concealed for a while by the extraordinary economic boom in the last half of the decade. But Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others had warned all along of the dire implications of ending the guarantee of federal help to the nation's poorest families. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund noted that supporters of the welfare bill assumed there would be "no recession in the next decade, which is unprecedented." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/opinion/19HERB.html?todaysheadlines

Small Vote for Universal Care Is Seen as Carrying a Lot of Weight The state's primary health insurer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars � more than some Congressional candidates here spend � to try to defeat the referendum, even though it was purely advisory. Opponents of the measure broadcast a battery of television commercials contending that government-run health care would mean long waits, rationed medical care, prohibitively high taxes and bureaucratic nightmares. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16MAIN.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Ideology As Usual George W. Bush has focused effectively on the need for an international alliance against terrorism. But he has not yet understood what a wartime president has to do at home: Put aside ideological politics so he can be president of all the people. With his evident approval, the ideologues in his administration are riding their conservative hobbyhorses as if the country did not have a higher purpose now. They, and the president, seem oblivious to the way those actions threaten national unity. A striking example is the decision by Attorney General John Ashcroft this week to try to overrule the voters of Oregon and undo that state's assisted-suicide law. He said he would move to revoke the drug prescription license of any Oregon doctor who used drugs to help someone who wanted to die. In another strange example of his priorities, Mr. Ashcroft last month sent federal agents to raid a Los Angeles center that supplied marijuana to desperately ill people under a state law allowing medical use. Does a wartime Justice Department really have nothing better to do than deprive cancer and AIDS patients of relief from their pain? Two weeks ago the British government decided to stop arresting marijuana users, adopting the policy now followed by most European governments. The U.S. law against users has not changed, but Mr. Ashcroft has discretion to use Justice Department resources where they are most urgently needed � especially in a war situation. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/opinion/10LEWI.html?todaysheadlines

Secret C.I.A. Site in New York Was Destroyed on Sept. 11 The Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine New York station was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting United States intelligence operations while bringing the war on terrorism dangerously close to home for America's spy agency, government officials say. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/national/04INTE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

G.O.P. Moderates See Dangers in Bush's Stance on Aviation Security "I simply do not understand it," said Representative Marge Roukema, a moderate New Jersey Republican who did not vote the president's way. "I just have to shake my head. The Democrats will beat us up and down on it, no question about that. But besides the politics, we'll be inviting more airline disasters and putting more lives at risk." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/03/national/03BUSH.html

Stalemate in Congress Irks Security Experts Meanwhile, some improvements that experts consider fundamental remain uncertain. The airlines oppose universal matching of checked bags with the passengers who actually board flights, arguing it would be costly but provide no protection against suicide bombers. Congress wants all checked bags screened for explosives but has not appropriated the $2 billion that officials say bomb- detection machines will cost. And though the House and Senate plans are in agreement on measures that experts say would bolster security � adding armed marshals to more flights, transferring oversight of airport workers from the airlines to the federal government and fortifying cockpit doors � action on those fronts has been held up by thetug of war in Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/03/business/03AIR.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Opponents' and Supporters' Portrayals of Detentions Prove Inaccurate "Public access to information is crucial," said Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil rights group in Washington. "If the attorney general says there's been more than a thousand people arrested or detained, they need to then say what that means." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/03/national/03DETA.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Court Rejects 3-Strikes Term for Shoplifter In a 2-to-1 ruling, the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the sentence of the shoplifter, Leonardo Andrade, violated the Bill of Rights' prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Mr. Andrade was sentenced to 50 years in prison for stealing nine videotapes, valued at $153, from a Kmart store. The court noted that kidnappers and murderers could receive less time than Mr. Andrade, who had a record of nonviolent, petty crimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/03/national/03STRI.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

An Economic Stimulus Bill With Corporations in Mind Late last winter, when President Bush was shaping his $1.35 trillion tax cut, corporate lobbyists were told to wait, their turn would come. And now, their turn is here. Just 30 percent of the proposed tax relief would go to individuals, with the rest helping corporations, including large, prosperous ones like I.B.M. (news/quote) and General Electric (news/quote), which have done well even in the economic downturn. And though one of the bill's costliest provisions is intended to produce a rebound in capital spending by businesses, such a recovery is far from certain. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/business/27HAND.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

A Mass of Newly Laid-Off Workers Will Put Social Safety Net to the Test As former welfare recipients lose their jobs, a big unknown is how many will qualify for unemployment insurance. In the past, most failed to work long enough or earn enough to qualify. In Nevada, for instance, a jobless person has to earn $5,600 in a three-month period to qualify for the average unemployment benefit. That is more than twice what a woman leaving welfare typically earns. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/08/national/08LAYO.html

How Patients' Rights Became a Fight The Norwood amendment gutted our bipartisan legislation, and this is why: First, our original bill started with the premise that a health insurance company should be treated just like any other person or institution in the health profession. That is, if it makes a decision that results in harm to a patient, it should be held accountable for that action. The Norwood amendment creates a whole new category for H.M.O.'s. It gives them special protections that no other industry has � like new federal limits on damages in cases where a patient is hurt by the actions of an H.M.O. Second, the amendment may pre-empt most state laws, so that already existing patients' rights laws in places like Texas, California and New Jersey could be rendered void. And in states where case law has been building in favor of patients' rights, the Norwood amendment would basically kill years of legal progress. Third, the amendment calls for a legal device called "rebuttable presumption." Few people could tell you what this means, but we've figured out that it increases the presumption of innocence for H.M.O.'s, making it harder for a plaintiff to prove liability. The big question for all of us as Americans has to be: Why is this happening? Why did the White House oppose a real patients' bill of rights at every turn, even when a majority of Americans support one, and even when a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress had united behind one? And why are we sitting here today without a law that holds health insurance companies accountable, when the health and livelihood of millions of Americans depend on such a law? http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/01/opinion/01BERR.html

Treaties Don't Belong to Presidents Alone Presidents don't have the power to enter into treaties unilaterally. This requires the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and once a treaty enters into force, the Constitution makes it part of the "supreme law of the land" � just like a statute. Presidents can't terminate statutes they don't like. They must persuade both houses of Congress to join in a repeal. Should the termination of treaties operate any differently? The question first came up in 1798. As war intensified in Europe, America found itself in an entangling alliance with the French under treaties made during our own revolution. But President John Adams did not terminate these treaties unilaterally. He signed an act of Congress to "Declare the Treaties Heretofore Concluded with France No Longer Obligatory on the United States." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/opinion/29ACKE.html

Social Security (as We Know It) Is Here to Stay What matters about the trust fund is that its existence expresses the fact that Social Security is a liability of the government. The assets in the trust fund are Treasury bonds. And bonds, of course, are claims on general revenues, including money from taxes on capital gains and corporate income as well as the payroll tax. When Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says the bonds in the Social Security trust fund are not "real economic assets," he is denying that the full faith and credit of the United States stands behind the financing of Social Security benefits � at least as long as the Social Security system holds bonds. This rhetoric is dangerous because it could undermine confidence in the Treasury's bonds. As a matter of economics, the bonds in the trust fund are indeed irrelevant. When revenues from Social Security taxes no longer cover the benefits being paid out � which will happen somewhere around 2015 � the government will presumably sell bonds to make up the difference. The effect on the national economy will be the same whether the bonds are drawn from a stash at the Social Security Administration or printed fresh. Turning Social Security into a matter of individual private accounts, by contrast, would tear up the contract that Americans who paid Social Security taxes thought they had with their government. A government that promised justice for all would suddenly leave many of its older people at the mercy of the state of the market on the day they retire � or of the prevailing interest rate on the day they receive their annuities. No change in American society in the last half-century has been so dramatic as the reduction of the proportion of the elderly who are poor, and most of this change is the benign shadow of Social Security. That's a lot to put at risk. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/opinion/28MAYE.html

Report Says Lower Surplus Will Affect Social Security President Bush's tax cut and the nation's economic downturn will force the government to take $9 billion out of Social Security this year to pay for other operations, breaking a bipartisan commitment in Congress, congressional analysts reported Monday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, offering a more pessimistic view of the government's finances than the Bush administration did last week, estimating the total budget surplus for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 at $153 billion -- down $122 billion from its May estimate. CBO says Social Security will be tapped for $9 billion in fiscal 2001. After a small non-Social Security surplus of $2 billion in fiscal 2002, CBO projects the government will use $18 billion out of the retirement program in 2003 and $3 billion in 2004.

Bush Projections Show Sharp Drop in Budget Surplus Largely because of the tax cut passed by Congress this year and the economic slowdown, the surpluses outside Social Security will remain tiny for the next three or four years before beginning to grow again, the White House said. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/politics/23BUDG.html

Global Arms Sales Rise Again, and the U.S. Leads the Pack American manufacturers signed contracts for just under $18.6 billion, or about half of all weapons sold on the world market during 2000, with 68 percent of the American weapons bought by developing countries. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/international/20ARMS.html

For a fleeting moment, it seemed as if he might propose federal subsidies for garlic and holy water.

At Night, Bush-Speak Goes Into Overdrive Nighttime is when the vampires come out. They haunted Mr. Bush in Denver on Tuesday when he spoke at a fund- raising dinner for Colorado Republicans and suddenly, in the middle of his remarks, began talking about his interest in "vampire-busting devices." For a fleeting moment, it seemed as if he might propose federal subsidies for garlic and holy water. He was at it again the next evening in Albuquerque, N.M., where he talked, in slightly revised terms, about "vampire-defeating devices." Stakes? Crucifixes? Buffy? Alas, Mr. Bush was simply trying to prove how committed to energy conservation he was. And the vampires in question were cell-phone chargers that continue to drain electricity even when the phone is not in the cradle. Mr. Bush has ordered that federal agencies correct the problem with new energy-saving gadgets. But his slightly herky-jerky introduction and explanation of the topic demonstrated again something that was more apparent during his presidential campaign, when his days were longer and his evening events more frequent. Bush at night is entirely different from Bush in the day. Bush at night is more likely to indulge odd digressions and unleash twisty, stuttering, imprecise sentences. "A vampire is a � a � cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone," he said in Denver. It was an inauspicious first step toward technological Transylvania. Bush at night hatches quizzical new phrases. In Denver and Albuquerque, he talked about the "so- called surplus," making it sound as if he doubted the existence of the very money he deemed so bountiful that a tax cut was necessary. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/national/19BUSH.html

Bush Rolls Back Clinton's Medicaid Rules Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said, "The Bush administration has taken every opportunity to side with the H.M.O. industry and against Medicaid patients in these regulations." A Medicaid patient who needs a life-saving treatment on Friday might have to wait until the next Wednesday because the "emergency protections don't apply over the weekend," Mr. Waxman said. About half of the 40 million Medicaid recipients are in managed care. Many are heavy users of medical care. They generally do not have the money to go outside the network of doctors and hospitals selected by their health plans. William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said he was unaware of specific differences between the Clinton and Bush rules. But Congressional aides expressed concern about several differences when they met today with federal Medicaid officials. Under the Clinton rules, H.M.O.'s had to do a comprehensive assessment of Medicaid patients with "special health care needs," including pregnant women, foster children and people over 65. Most of those requirements have been dropped. The Bush rules would allow patients to appeal an overt reduction, suspension, termination or denial of services. The new rules drop a provision that would, in addition, have allowed appeals if an H.M.O. simply "delayed access to services to the point where there is a substantial risk" of harm to the patients' health. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/politics/17MEDI.html

Social Security Budget Revised Social Security Budget Revised The Bush administration says a change in budget accounting methods will make $4.3 billion in Social Security funds available for general spending or tax cuts. The change, which involves the manner in which payroll-tax revenues are calculated, would technically allow the White House and Congress to spend the money while maintaining their commitment to only use Social Security surplus funds to pay retirees and reduce the national debt. The accounting change comes at a time when officials in Washington are predicting the surplus for the entire federal budget will be much lower than expected because of the slowing economy. http://www.publicagenda.org/headlines/headline.htm

Pentagon Harbors Antimissile Skepticism The head of the Pentagon's missile defense programs said today that he was not fully confident in the "basic functionality" of the antimissile system that successfully intercepted a mock warhead in space last month. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/national/16MISS.html

Administration Reconfigures the Budget Pie The Bush administration is making an accounting change involving Social Security that will free $4.3 billion for Congress to use, officials said today. The increase could be important as the White House and its Republican allies in Congress try to fend off Democratic assertions that President Bush's tax cuts have drained too much of the surplus to meet government spending priorities. Even with the change, the revised surplus projections for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 will be much lower than the administration and Congressional Budget Office projected earlier this year. The $275 billion surplus, including Social Security, that was forecast by the budget office in May could fall to roughly $160 billion because of the tax cut and slowing economy. Administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the accounting change more correctly describes revenue from payroll taxes, those dedicated to Social Security and Medicare. "There's a general consensus that the Social Security surplus should be used for debt reduction," one official said. Democrats described the change as an unprecedented accounting gimmick intended to mask the impact of Mr. Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut on the budget. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/national/16BUDG.html

States Dismayed by Federal Bills on Patient Rights "The House bill appears to pre- empt all state internal and external review laws," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "If that becomes law, I would have real concern about the ability of people to get an appropriate and adequate review of adverse decisions by H.M.O.'s. In regulating insurance and health care, it's critical to strike an appropriate balance between the rights of states and the role of the federal government." Democrats agree. In an interview, Gov. Gray Davis of California said: "The federal government is diminishing the health care rights of Californians. Congress should adopt minimum standards and allow states to exceed them. But instead, it's rolling back rights that we accorded to patients in a package of 20 separate bills that I signed in 1999." Under a federal bill passed by the Senate on June 29 and the companion bill passed by the House on Aug. 2, insurance companies could charge a filing fee of $25 for the external review of a health plan's decision. "Those fees are really a patients' rights tax, which I find wholly unacceptable," Mr. Davis said. California allows patients to sue health plans for any harm caused by the insurer's negligence, but the state does not limit the amount of damages. By contrast, the bill passed by the United States House of Representatives would set limits in state and federal court: $1.5 million for pain and suffering, plus $1.5 million in punitive damages. President Bush and many Republicans in Congress said the limits were needed to discourage the filing of frivolous lawsuits and to hold down insurance costs. Mr. Bush has said he will sign the version that passed the House, but not the one the Senate passed. Daniel Zingale, the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care, said the potentially unlimited liability of health plans in California had been "an incentive for good corporate behavior" by H.M.O.'s. "We have not had a single lawsuit under the 1999 law," Mr. Zingale said. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/13/politics/13PATI.html

A New Threat to the President's Agenda: The Tax Cut Democrats are indeed gasping. They are already warning that Congress will face painful tradeoffs when it returns from its summer recess next month and begins wrangling in earnest with Mr. Bush over next year's spending bills and the array of policy choices within them. But Mr. Bush cannot breathe freely, either. Just two months after he signed it into law, the tax cut that once seemed an unalloyed triumph now threatens to complicate the rest of his agenda and expose him to political peril. From his plans for modernizing the military and developing a national missile defense to his aspirations of becoming the education president and tackling long-term issues like Social Security, Mr. Bush might have trouble paying the tab. At the same time, he has left himself open to accusations from Democrats that the tax cut will plunge the government back into budget deficits of a sort. The buffer left in the surplus following his tax cut appears to be eroding rapidly because of the flagging economy. Both Congress and the White House will update their surplus projections by the end of the month. It is possible the new figures will show the budget in the current fiscal year dipping into money that Democrats and most Republicans had considered off limits � the excess revenues being generated by Medicare. Raiding Medicare, as the Democrats put it, would be a tricky enough charge for the White House to deal with. But it could get worse. Within a year or two, the government may again start spending the Social Security surplus, breaching a bulwark against fiscal irresponsibility agreed to by both parties and the administration. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/weekinreview/12STEV.html

Data Permanently Erased From Florida Computers The examination, paid for by a group of news organizations including The New York Times, also found that some information had probably been permanently erased earlier this year after new operating systems were installed on three of the four computers, experts from Ontrack Data International Inc., a firm based in Minneapolis, said yesterday. While finding "bits and pieces" of hundreds of partly deleted files, they said there was no way to know the full extent of the destruction. But they also said they had found no evidence that records had been systematically purged as part of an intentional effort to destroy election documents. "If somebody did that, then it was a pretty poor attempt to cover their tracks," said Mike Rands, manager of operations for DataTrail, a division of Ontrack Data that specializes in data recovery and forensic computer examinations. Indeed, the company's examination unearthed dozens of election- related documents that had never been released by Ms. Harris's office. Among other things, the examination showed that Ms. Harris's lawyers and aides used the machines to send and retrieve e-mail messages, conduct legal research via the Internet, prepare Ms. Harris for potential questions from reporters and even to hunt for snappy quotations for her speeches. For months, Ms. Harris's lawyers have insisted that the computers had been used solely to write news releases. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/08/politics/08FLOR.htm

Reform and an Evolving Electorate Although we don't like to acknowledge it, there have always been strong antidemocratic forces in the United States. Large numbers of Americans, throughout our history, have not believed in universal suffrage and have acted accordingly. Their presence delayed the achievement of a fully enfranchised population until roughly 1970 and produced many episodes in which the right to vote contracted. The most extreme and well-known examples involve African-Americans in the South who were deprived of their constitutionally protected right to vote for more than 70 years. But antidemocratic Southerners have had plenty of company, and not just in the early days of the republic when voting was limited to men of property. National women's suffrage was not finally adopted until 1920. Rhode Island imposed a property qualification on all foreign-born citizens for much of the 19th century; California went to great lengths to prevent Asians from voting; New York adopted an English language literacy test in 1921 that was still disfranchising hundreds of thousands of people in the 1960's. In the 1930's, an organization headed by George Wickersham, a former United States attorney general, actively sought to disfranchise unemployed workers who were receiving federal relief. The resistance to democracy affected voting procedures as well as the right to vote itself; indeed, the erection of procedural obstacles to voting was often a strategic response to the formal enfranchisement of people considered undesirable. The registration systems that emerged in the late 19th century, for example, were not simply good government reforms designed to eliminate corruption (which is how the Carter-Ford commission describes them); they were also efforts to keep immigrants and the poor from voting by interposing layers of paperwork and deadlines between potential voters and the ballot box. The decline in turnout in American elections, which began at the end of the 19th century, was not an accident or the symptom of a mysterious malady. Both in the North and in the South, turnout was reduced, in good part, by laws designed to keep citizens from the polls and to prevent popular dissident parties from effectively contesting elections. Alabama's disfranchisement of men convicted of crimes like vagrancy and adultery � even after time had been served � was expressly crafted at the turn of the century to limit black participation in politics. (Similar laws limit black Alabaman voting today. Such permanent disfranchisement would be eliminated by the Carter-Ford recommendations.) In 1907, Pittsburgh's newly created voter registration board crowed about the "good results obtained" under a recently passed Pennsylvania registration law: in two years, the number of registrants was nearly halved. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/opinion/05KEYS.html

Is There No Choice? But the Israeli government view ignores facts that loom large among Palestinians. Israel has repeatedly failed to carry out promises and negotiated agreements � to make further redeployments from occupied territory, for example. Israel has made a two-state solution to the conflict less and less attractive by continuously building and enlarging settlements on land that would be part of the Palestinian state. The Palestinian view at the time of the Camp David conference last year was well described in The New York Review of Books by Robert Malley, a special assistant to President Clinton who was at Camp David, and Hussein Agha. "Seen from Gaza and the West Bank," they wrote, "Oslo's legacy read like a litany of promises deferred or unfulfilled. Six years after the agreement, there were more Israeli settlements, less freedom of movement and worse economic conditions. Powerful Palestinian constituencies � the intellectuals, security establishment, media, business community . . . � whose support was vital for any peace effort were disillusioned . . ., doubtful of Israel's willingness to implement signed agreements." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/04/opinion/04LEWI.html?todaysheadlines

Senate Republicans Boycott Vote on Election Reform "The message is unfortunate. This ought not be a partisan issue. There ought to be discussions on both sides.'' McConnell is angry that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who chairs the committee, is pushing through his own election overhaul bill. McConnell wanted the committee also to consider a bill he and several other senators prepared. Dodd's bill would provide $3.5 billion to help states adopt uniform standards for voting machines by 2004. It would also take steps to improve voter education and ensure that people who are properly registered aren't deprived of the right to vote. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has prepared a House version. Thursday's session "mocks the bipartisan promise of election reform,'' McConnell said in a letter to Dodd. Dodd said he was saddened by McConnell's comments. He said he asked McConnell in November, when Republicans still controlled the Senate, to work with him on an election reform bill. ``I never did receive a reply,'' Dodd said in a letter to McConnell Wednesday. Thursday, Dodd said Republicans could have come to the hearing and tried to offer amendments. "The idea that you do not show up to a vote is not exactly what I call a good civics lesson,'' Dodd said. Congress is considering election improvements to avoid problems such as those that plagued last fall's presidential elections. President Bush was declared the winner over Al Gore 36 days after the voting, enabled by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively halted a partial recount in Florida. "You get the impression they (Democrats) sort of want to stick their thumb in President Bush's eye,'' McConnell said Wednesday. Just Tuesday, a commission chaired by former Presidents Ford and Carter offered a number of broad changes to improve the nation's voting system. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Electoral-Changes.htm

Oregon Democrats Seek to Oust Justices The Oregon Democratic Party endorsed a drive today to impeach five United States Supreme Court justices for the decision that effectively gave George W. Bush the presidency last year. The party's central committee voted overwhelmingly to begin a campaign it hoped would take the issue to the House of Representatives, which has the authority to impeach justices. The resolution passed today by Oregon party leaders called for the "immediate investigation of the behavior" of the five justices who voted to stop hand recounts of Florida ballots. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/politics/23OREG.html

Figures About Recent Global Summits Facts, figures about recent global summits: Genoa, Italy: Summit of wealthy industrial nations, July 2001 --One protester killed. --About 500 people injured. --Nearly 180 arrested. --About 20,000 police officers, paramilitary police and soldiers deployed. --Cost: about $145 million, including $25 million for security and $120 million for refurbishing the city. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summits-Numbers-Box.html

Hamas Threatens Suicide Bombers After Child's Death The militant Islamic group Hamas threatened to unleash 10 suicide bombers against Israel in revenge for the killing of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy who was buried in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. ``There are 10 martyrs waiting inside Israel. They are ready at any moment to get revenge on the Israeli killers,'' shouted members of Hamas's military wing during Khalil Mughrabi's funeral. He was killed by Israeli troops on Saturday. ``If the Israelis have big bombs, we have human bombs,'' they chanted through loudspeakers during the funeral at Rafah, along Gaza's border with Egypt, near where the child was shot dead. Mughrabi became the 17th Palestinian killed since a cease-fire drawn up by U.S. CIA Director George Tenet was supposed to have taken effect on June 13. Nine Israelis have also been killed since the truce was brokered. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html

Arafat Criticizes U.S., Saying It Should Do More As evidence of what he contends is his "100 percent effort" to clamp down on terrorism, Mr. Arafat pulled from his jacket pocket, which seemed to contain a wealth of documents, a typed report in Arabic from the Palestinian intelligence service. The report, he said, held detailed information that was provided to the Israelis a day after the June 1 suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv discoth�que that killed 21 young people. It said the Palestinians had learned that the man who drove the suicide bomber to the beachside disco was a longtime informant for Israeli intelligence, Mr. Arafat said, a Palestinian who had been granted Israeli citizenship and resettled in Israel like many "collaborators." The bomber himself was a Palestinian with a Jordanian passport. Mr. Arafat appeared to be trying to make the point that the Tel Aviv bomber and his driver had no connection to the Palestinian Authority while they had at least indirect links with Israel. He also made reference to another deadly terrorist attack, years ago, in which he said Palestinian collaborators also played a key role. Asked to spell out what he was suggesting, he said, "I'm giving you facts and leaving it for everyone to arrive to realities." Nabil Shaath, a senior minister who has objected repeatedly to Israeli demands for a Palestinian roundup of Islamist militants, added, "At the very least, this means that looking for the usual suspects will not work in these cases." Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/world/08ARAF.html?pagewanted=all

The E.E.O.C. Is Short of Will and Cash Throughout corporate America, complaints of discrimination and harassment remain stubbornly high, despite the decade-long economic boom that forced many employers to scramble for workers. Some 80,000 individual complaints are made annually to the commission, a number that has held steady in recent years. A growing proportion are accusations of harassment of women and minorities: factory floors where some men feel free to expose themselves and work places where supervisors don Ku Klux Klan hoods or fellow employees hang nooses. Claims of retaliation by employers against workers who have complained of discrimination have nearly tripled in the last decade, to about 22,000 a year. "There are thousands of establishments that appear to be discriminating," said Alfred W. Blumrosen, a professor at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark, who was an official at the agency in its early years and has maintained ties there. With a Ford Foundation grant, Mr. Blumrosen is analyzing the agency's own data, without identifying specific companies, to determine the breadth of discrimination in the United States. He plans to release his results this fall. Through much of its history, the E.E.O.C. has been plagued by a lack of resources and a combination of internal politics and inefficiencies that have prevented it from accomplishing much more than isolated victories. While it has recently taken stands on some controversial issues � it has sought to prohibit employers from using genetic testing on employees and to force companies to cover the cost of prescription contraceptives � its critics say it is too cognizant of how the political winds are blowing to pursue its mission aggressively. "There is not a huge national will to have the agency be more effective," said John Rowe, a district office director in Chicago who has worked for the E.E.O.C. for nearly 30 years. "It shows itself not only in the want of resources and want of political appetite for radical change but also down in the trenches. It's unwise to upset anybody too much." http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/07/01/business/01EEOC.html?pagewanted=all

U.S. Report Finds Flaws in Study of California Power Companies An investigative arm of Congress faulted federal regulators today for claiming that there was no evidence to support accusations that power companies manipulated California's electricity market. The General Accounting Office reviewed a study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued in February. The energy agency found no evidence that companies withheld power to drive up prices. Politicians in California and some economists have been asserting for months that power companies withheld available electrical generating capacity to create or worsen shortages. Generating companies had cited the energy agency's report to rebut those accusations. The accounting office said the agency's work looked only at physical reasons for outages and did not explore the possibility that generating companies used bidding strategies to withhold supplies. Moreover, the office found that the study did not prove that cutoffs had occurred for unavoidable physical reasons. "FERC's study was not thorough enough to support its overall conclusion that audited companies were not physically withholding electricity supply to influence prices," the accounting office said. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/30/national/30POWE.html?pagewanted=all

Senators Hear Bitter Words on Florida Vote One of the dissenting members, Abigail Thernstrom, presented her rebuttal to the report today. Relying on a statistical analysis by John Lott, an economist at Yale Law School, Ms. Thernstrom said that "voter error was the central problem in Florida, not disenfranchisement" and that the committee report was flawed and prejudicial. "One of the dissenting members, Abigail Thernstrom, presented her rebuttal to the report today. Relying on a statistical analysis by John Lott, an economist at Yale Law School, Ms. Thernstrom said that "voter error was the central problem in Florida, not disenfranchisement" and that the committee report was flawed and prejudicial. In another tense exchange, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, took on the credibility of Mr. Lott, Ms. Thernstrom's statistician. Mr. Schumer, a proponent of gun control, first belittled Mr. Lott in passing as the person who had found, in Mr. Schumer's words, "The more guns, the less violence." In prosecutorial tones, Mr. Schumer then wrung out of Mr. Lott a defeated "yeah" to the question of whether "a greater percentage of black and Hispanic people are turned away than, or don't get to vote, than white people?" The packed hearing room broke into applause at Mr. Lott's concession, prompting Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, to gavel the room to order, saying, "It's not a rally; it's a hearing." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/politics/28VOTE.html

Senators Hear Bitter Words on Florida Vote Ms. Berry affirmed the findings of the report and said she was "surprised that people are so exercised" about it. She said it was clear that black voters had higher rates of problems than others, regardless of whether they were intentional. "If I ran over you at 90 miles an hour and killed you, it doesn't matter whether I intended to or not, I still killed you," Ms. Berry said. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html?todaysheadline

2 Judges Do Battle in an Immigration Case �something extraordinary has happened in the case of a 46-year-old man from Trinidad, detained since last summer in a county jail here, whose wife seeks such a visa for him. First an immigration judge here, William Van Wyke, suspended an effort by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport the man, and pressured officials to act quickly on the visa application. Then, in an even more unusual twist, Judge Van Wyke's decision was overruled by the nation's chief immigration judge, Michael J. Creppy, after what Judge Van Wyke and his supporters call a series of improper contacts between I.N.S. lawyers and Judge Creppy's office. The reversal, and Judge Van Wyke's denunciation of his boss, are the talk of the immigration circuit, whose union of administrative judges has filed a formal protest against Judge Creppy and a top aide, accusing them of unethical behavior. "The actions of the office of the chief immigration judge raise profoundly troubling questions about the integrity of the deportation process and the independence of the chief immigration judge from the I.N.S.," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrants' rights project. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/21/national/21JUDG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

How Do You Consider Someone Spending Decades In Prison, Sentenced to Death, Then Released Minus Years of His Life Proof That the System Is Working?

Death Penalty Falls From Favor as Some Lose Confidence in Its Fairness Some said that what persuaded them was the news that 13 prisoners on death row in Illinois were discovered to be innocent � a revelation that led Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, to declare a statewide moratorium on the death penalty last year. Others said they were troubled by reports that the death penalty may be disproportionately imposed on blacks and Hispanics. "I've slowly been changing my mind about the death penalty," said Fredrica Hicks, a mother of three who works in a Social Security office in Chicago, where the exonerations of prisoners in her state gave her pause. "What would happen if something went wrong and someone accused me of something and there was no way for me to prove my innocence, or evidence was lost and I was sitting on death row? If it has happened to someone else, it could happen to anyone. It could be me." But Charlotte Stout, a retired nurse in Greenfield, Tenn., rebutted that, saying: "To me, that is the system working. If it hadn't been working, the innocent people wouldn't have been released." "Today to be raising questions about capital punishment is to be in the company of the pope, Governor Ryan, the Legislatures of Nebraska and New Hampshire, the columnist George Will, Pat Robertson and William Sessions, the former director of the F.B.I., all of whom have come out in favor of a moratorium, said Mr. Sarat, the author of "When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition" (Princeton University Press, 2001). "Go down to the police department and look at the police blotter and you'll be convinced it's not deterring anything," said Jerry Jones, an election worker in Chicago. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/national/17VOIC.html?pagewanted=all