Bush Misuses Science Data, Report Says The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says. The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment. On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said. "The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added. Some of the examples from the report's 21 subject areas have already been reported in the media. They include the Environmental Protection Agency's decision last year to delete a section on global warming in its comprehensive report on the state of the environment and President Bush's overstatement of the number of stem cell lines available for research under controls imposed by the administration. The report's authors say federal agencies have jeopardized scientific integrity in many ways, including stacking scientific advisory committees with unqualified officials or industry representatives, blocking publication of findings that could harm corporate interests and defending controversial decisions with misleading information. With respect to sex education, the report said, the Bush administration has advanced what the report described as an unproven "abstinence only" agenda and abolished an initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that listed scientifically validated safe-sex techniques that included using condoms. On agricultural pollution, the Agriculture Department has issued tight controls on government scientists seeking to publish information that could have an adverse impact on industry, the report said. It cited the case of a microbiologist, James Zahn, who was denied permission to publish findings on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria near hog farms in the Midwest. On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the report said that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a firm advocate of drilling for oil in the region, misrepresented to Congress her agency's scientific opinion on how drilling would affect the region's caribou population. She told lawmakers most of the caribou calving occurred outside the refuge; her scientists said the opposite was true. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/politics/08REPO.html

Justice Dept. to Monitor Judges for Sentences Shorter Than Guidelines Suggest The Justice Department told a federal court administrator today that it would begin compiling data on judges who give lighter sentences than federal guidelines prescribe, a move that critics see as an effort to limit judicial independence by creating a "blacklist" of judges. The new policy will require prosecutors to notify Justice Department officials in Washington whenever a federal judge issues a sentence that falls below sentencing guidelines. The notification will set in motion a review of whether an appeal of the judge's sentence should be filed. The policy, first reported on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, is part of a bill signed into law by President Bush in April that seeks to make it tougher for federal judges to depart from sentencing guidelines. The Justice Department, in a letter today to the head of the administrative office of the United States Courts, said it developed the policy as part of the new law's requirements rather than accept a more "onerous" option allowed by Congress. That option would have required the Justice Department to go to Congress with a detailed report each time a judge broke from the sentencing guidelines. In 2001, federal judges handed out sentences below guidelines in 35 percent of the 54,851 cases examined, the United States Sentencing Commission found. But more than half the departures resulted from plea agreements, and prosecutors appealed the sentences in only a tiny fraction of cases, officials said. Mary Beth Buchanan, the United States attorney for the Pittsburgh area and the leader of a Justice Department advisory committee that helped develop the policy, said in an interview that there would probably be some increase in appeals by the Justice Department over sentences as a result of the new policy. But she added: "I don't think it will be a dramatic increase. Unless we get a tremendous increase in our resources, we wouldn't have the capability to do a lot more." Some lawmakers, judges and legal observers, however, said they were deeply troubled by the shift. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, accused Mr. Ashcroft of requiring prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges." He called the policy "the latest salvo in the Ashcroft Justice Department's ongoing attack on judicial independence and fairness" in sentencing. John S. Martin, a federal district judge in Manhattan who announced in June that he would retire in part because he saw the judiciary's independence as threatened, said the Justice Department policy was "based on the erroneous premise that a lot of judges around the county are just going off the reservation." He added: "The problem is that a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington looking at the statistics won't know the facts of these cases. They're taking a very mechanistic approach to the whole process." Nicholas M. Gess, a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration, said the policy fit a pattern in the Ashcroft Justice Department of centralizing decision-making in Washington, a trend also seen in death penalty cases. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/politics/08JUDG.html

President puts himself in rare company--Hoover's July 29, 2003 BY JESSE JACKSON In upcoming weeks, President Bush and his Cabinet members will fan out across the country to tout the administration's economic plan. Republican legislators will make the economy the centerpiece of their ''message'' in the August recess. They want credit for the tax rebate checks that people will start receiving in the mail, will point to the uptick in the stock market, and predict that a ''robust recovery'' is just around the corner. And in chorus, they'll praise President Bush's tax cuts for turning the economy around. Great song and dance, but where are the jobs? This administration is the first since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression to lose jobs rather than create them. Since Bush came to office, the economy has shed more than 3 million private-sector jobs. And even with the added employment that came from huge increases in military and homeland security spending, the country has still lost more than 2.5 million jobs since Bush took office.� http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse29.html

After the war, American soldiers referred to Iraqi looters as "Ali Babas." Now, the name is more commonly used by Iraqis to describe the soldiers. Iraqis Struggle to Retrieve Goods From G.I.'s After the war, American soldiers referred to Iraqi looters as "Ali Babas." Now, the name is more commonly used by Iraqis to describe the soldiers. This notion is flickering through the capital, propelled by word of mouth and amplified by anti-Western elements ready to exploit any hint of American misbehavior. Many Iraqis are convinced that the soldiers are here to rob them of money, jewelry and cars. American military officials refused to discuss specific charges of theft by soldiers and disciplinary actions, but said that in most instances property believed stolen was more likely to have been confiscated during raids or at checkpoints. That distinction matters little to Iraqis trying to recover their property. Sgt. Thad Farlow, a civil affairs officer whose unit runs a civilian assistance center, said the complaints he heard stemmed from a mixture of negligence and actual misconduct. "It's kind of hard to win the hearts and minds when soldiers are taking $650 Thuraya phones," he said, referring to a type of satellite telephone. Iraqi community leaders warn that the perception is poisoning Iraqi attitudes, buttressing a sense of powerlessness and creating opposition to the American-led occupation, even among Iraqis who welcomed the ouster of Saddam Hussein. But the American forces have done little to refute the rumors of theft. Nor is there a centralized system to help Iraqis recover their property or to answer Iraqi complaints. On any given day, Iraqis can be found pleading at the gates of military bases or in civil affairs offices: an old woman who laments that her savings were taken from her son on the road to Baghdad; a young man who says he gave a Thuraya phone to a soldier for a call and did not get it back; a cigarette merchant who says he returned to a checkpoint to recover his car the day after it was confiscated, only to find that both car and checkpoint had vanished. "I always used to have the radio by my ear just waiting for when the Americans come here," said Ruslia Rumdhan Niima, who was on her fifth trip to Baghdad from the countryside to search for the 7 million dinars she claims Americans took from her son. "Now that they came, this is what happens." Part of the problem is a cultural misunderstanding. In Iraq's cash-based society, it is not unusual for people to carry stacks of dinars and a gun to protect them. But soldiers who discovered piles of cash (a million dinars equals only $700) and an AK-47 often assumed the owner was up to no good. Even now, some soldiers seem not to realize that many Iraqis are carrying on their business � buying houses, selling cars and livestock � often in cash. "Where would an Iraqi get $3,000?" one sergeant asked when the question of confiscation was raised. "I can't even get $3,000." Assad Ibrahim Mehdi, a vegetable seller, is one of the few complainants who can muster a witness. That person, a military translator, has signed an affidavit attesting that during a raid in April, soldiers took the family's savings � about $2,000 in dinars � and an old tin chocolate box containing the deed to his family's house, their citizenship papers and their ration card. The soldiers left no receipt, and Mr. Mehdi considers his property stolen. "What else would you call it?" he said on a recent day, after waiting three hours in the sun to see a soldier about his complaint. "I don't know what they'll do to the people who've been looted who haven't got witnesses," said Elizabeth Hodgkin, a representative of Amnesty International who is helping Mr. Mehdi. "I've heard many people say, `They took $30,000, but I don't think I'll ever see it again.' " http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/international/worldspecial/03THEF.html

Betting on Terror: What Markets Can Reveal Anyone looking for a good bet last week was offered one by an online futures exchange: Would John M. Poindexter, who heads the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the Pentagon known as Darpa, be able to keep his job after the furor over the aborted plan to start a market that would trade terrorism futures? Within days, the answer appeared to be that he would not, as Defense Department officials said Mr. Poindexter would resign within a few weeks. Assuming he does leave by the end of August, some lucky traders stand to make more than 10 times their investment. If that bet was not to your taste, there were plenty of others available. Would weapons of mass destruction be found in Iraq by the end of September? Would Saddam Hussein be captured? How about Osama bin Laden? Would the terrorism alert level in the United States be raised or lowered? Will Kobe Bryant be convicted? The existence of such contracts raises perhaps the most overlooked question of the debate on the proposed Defense Department project, the Policy Analysis Market, which would have allowed people to speculate on such issues as whether there would be an increase in terrorism or a collapse of the Jordanian economy. Why was the government needed to get this market going? The answer is that Uncle Sam had been picked to play the role of designated loser in the gambling. The existing place to make such bets, www.tradesports.com, is an Irish market that can be traded by anyone with a credit card and an Internet connection. There are no market makers, just traders online around the world. Tradesports dreams up contracts based on what it thinks might be interesting, and puts them up for trading. But it does not guarantee that you can find someone to take the other side of your bet. The Policy Analyst Market was going to do just that. The market maker was to be a computer, financed by the government, that was willing to offer a price for any wager on a subject within its bailiwick. If bettors wanted to wager a lot of money on something, the computer would steadily raise the price. One possible wager that was mentioned by Charles Polk, the president of NetExchange, a San Diego company that proposed the idea to the government, was on whether Hamas would join the Palestinian Authority government, a move that he took for granted would indicate it had renounced terrorism. The market-making computer was supposed to be willing not only to take bets on that, but on such related topics as whether the Jordanian economy would boom if that happened. One risk to the market maker would be insider trading. Somebody within Hamas could make some money by placing bets before the decision was made public. That would be all to the good, as Mr. Polk saw it. "We welcome insider trading," he said last week, since it would move prices and send a signal to the Defense Department, and anyone else watching the market, that conditions were changing. By being willing to lose money on the market maker, the Defense Department would be able to get information. One reason some people thought the whole idea stupid was that betting on an increase in terrorism might be a losing bet even if it turned out to be a winner. "Isn't that going to guarantee a knock on the door by the Feds?" asked James Chanos of Kynikos Associates, a money manager who specializes in selling stocks short � that is, betting that a stock price will decline. He recalled the search for evidence � ultimately unsuccessful � that terrorists might have shorted stocks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The people who designed that market thought of that possibility, and proposed that the names of traders be kept secret from the Defense Department. Want to bet whether that secrecy would have been maintained if there was a new terrorist attack? And anyway, said Robin Hanson, the assistant professor of economics at George Mason University who dreamed up this idea and persuaded NetExchange to propose it to the Defense Department, there were plenty of bets that would not offend the government. "The F.B.I. would not knock on my door," he said, "if I bet that if we invade Iraq there will be more terrorist deaths in the United States." For now, the idea is dead, with the Defense Department having abandoned it quickly once the public ridicule began. But Professor Hanson has not lost hope. "I think sometime in the next 10 years, this technology will be applied somewhere," he said. It would not, he said, have to be a public market. Perhaps, Professor Hanson mused, it could be open only to employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, who would place their bets and, in the process, let the government know what consensus there was among intelligence professionals. That, he said, could sometimes be different from what the top of the agency was saying. For example, it would be interesting to see how likely the lower-level intelligence analysts think it is that biological, chemical or nuclear weapons will be found in Iraq anytime soon. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/weekinreview/03NORR.html

Bush's Tax Cuts Have Been the Best Job Program China and India Have Ever Had Job Losses in July Add to Mixed Economic Signs The economy shed 44,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported yesterday, though the overall unemployment rate edged down. The rate fell, to 6.2 percent from 6.4 percent in June, only because the number of people looking for jobs declined faster than the number of people holding them. People have been withdrawing from the labor market in greater numbers because of their poor prospects. The latest data on job losses, which came a day after the Commerce Department's mildly encouraging report on economic growth last quarter, left economists wondering what to believe.� The lack of improvement in the labor market despite some economic progress has added fuel to the battle fires in Washington and has frustrated job seekers across the country. Since the most recent recession ended in November 2001, the nation's payrolls have shrunk by more than a million workers. In a telephone interview yesterday, Elaine L. Chao, the secretary of labor, called the latest figures "confusing" and attributed the dwindling of the labor force to unusual seasonal factors. She said the tax credit checks recently mailed to families with children would help to stimulate demand; she also said she hoped Congress would approve $3,000 grants to help the long-term unemployed with training and relocation. Democrats in Washington charged that the three waves of tax cuts advocated by the White House had done little to ensure that new jobs accompanied the economic recovery. "This is the almost predictable consequence of a policy of tax cuts that have not strengthened the country but weakened it," said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. "We sent checks out, but we neglected millions who have family and are struggling. If we're serious about getting the economy going, we've got to start targeting tax relief to middle- and low-income families who will go out and create demand." The labor force thinned by 556,000 people last month, with the number of employed workers dipping by 260,000. These declines followed gains of comparable size in June. The unemployment rate dropped for almost every demographic group except whites for the second month in a row. Among whites, the rate remained at 5.5 percent, its highest level since April 1994. Payrolls contracted for the sixth straight month. Along with the July decline, the Labor Department revised its June report to reflect a decrease of 72,000 jobs rather than 30,000. Jobs in the manufacturing of long-lasting goods like motorcycles and microwave ovens slipped by 54,000, according to the survey of payrolls, which provides more reliable estimates of employment month to month. Wholesale and retail trade combined lost about 29,000 positions. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/business/02ECON.html

Congressional Republicans call it their "winning ugly" strategy. Even when controlling both chambers, Republican leaders have discovered that advancing their social and economic agenda is much easier when they punt contentious legislation into House and Senate negotiations, where Republicans are firmly in command. The latest example came this week when Senate Republicans, flummoxed in their push to pass an energy bill before leaving town, resorted to resurrecting and passing last year's Democratic energy proposal just to get into talks with their House brethren. That same path has been followed all year on difficult bills: get a budget, tax cut or Medicare bill off the floor and out of the line of fire � even if it has flaws that make lawmakers cringe � and force it into conference for a thorough massaging. "An obvious advantage to being in the majority, even if it is a tiny majority like ours, is that you control the conference," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said today as the Senate adjourned until Sept. 2. "It is elementary that if you can get a bill to conference, you have a wide latitude to produce a bill the majority is comfortable with and the president is comfortable with." It may be elementary, but it is not exactly the textbook version of how a bill becomes law. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/politics/02CONG.html

Suit Challenges Constitutionality of Powers in Antiterrorism Law The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups today brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping antiterrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Michigan, seeks to have a major section of the law, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the privacy, due process and free speech rights of Americans. "We think the Constitution is really on our side," Ann Beeson, the civil liberties union's chief lawyer in the suit, said in an interview. "There are basically no limits to the amount of information the F.B.I. can get now � library book records, medical records, hotel records, charitable contributions � the list goes on and on, and it's the secrecy of the whole operation that is really troublesome." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/national/31PATR.html

Mideast Peace Process Hits More Bumps In a move that drew fierce Palestinian opposition and ran counter to the language of the ``road map,'' Israel issued a tender on Thursday to expand a Gaza Strip settlement. The tender, by the Israel Lands Authority, offers the rights to build 22 new housing units in the Neve Dekalim settlement, the largest in Gaza. Israel says that a certain amount of building is necessary to accommodate natural growth within the settlements. Palestinians, however, see the settlements as illegal occupation of their land and have long pushed for their dismantlement, and the road map specifically precludes expansion for ``natural growth.'' ``This is a very dangerous step taken by the Israeli government,'' said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Early Thursday, overnight negotiations between Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian minister in charge of security, ended with no agreement on a promised Israeli withdrawal from two Palestinian towns. Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mofaz offered to turn over Qalqiliya and another West Bank town, Jericho, to Palestinian security control. Israeli forces have already withdrawn from parts of Gaza and the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The Palestinian side, however, insisted at the talks that any withdrawal from the Palestinian cities also be accompanied by steps to allow Palestinians to move around the West Bank more freely. ``We wanted the withdrawal to be a genuine one that would allow the Palestinian cities to connect with each other and would give people free ways to move,'' Dahlan said Thursday. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

All Bets Are Off The so-called terrorism futures market sounded like a hoax: investors would have been able to make money from attacks and strife. Now that the red-faced Pentagon has closed down the project, it's appropriate to ask, "What were they thinking?" The Department of Defense argued that markets "are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information . . . often better than expert opinions." That's true. The University of Iowa has a neat system allowing bettors to establish the odds for candidates in races in America and overseas. The Iowa markets have generally done a better job than pollsters at predicting the outcomes of elections. Markets also do a great job at more traditional tasks, like matching buyers and sellers and setting prices for everything from chickens to semiconductor chips. Still, the Pentagon's concept is flawed. Markets are not very good at setting prices for rare events. Those who trade in the Iowa political exchange have the benefit of historical election results and daily polls; property insurance companies know full well when the Florida hurricane season starts. But could markets have given us a price for the odds of a shooting in the balcony of City Hall in New York? Sure, markets learn from experience. It's been a long time, though, since Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton � and that was across the river in New Jersey. Before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, I directed a White House study on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Should we add to the reserve? What were the chances of a war in the gulf or an OPEC boycott like the one in 1973? These events take place intermittently and are hard to predict. But we had to make some estimates. Likewise, in order to allocate our domestic defense resources, we have to estimate the odds of terrorist events on the ground, in the sky or at sea. Here again, markets work better when they are deep and liquid � that is, with many participants and lots of transactions. This raises reliability and reduces the risk of manipulation. How deep and liquid could the market for terrorism futures be? This was the problem faced by the Pentagon. To attract "investors," the Pentagon needed to offer a significant payoff. But with big payoffs, the incentive for market manipulation rises. And in the case of terrorism futures, market manipulation can show up not as a forged buy order but as a bullet. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/opinion/31BUCH.html

Privacy pendulum swings back In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the worry in Washington, D.C., was more about national security than about individual privacy. A couple days after the terror attacks, the U.S. Senate voted to grant the Federal Bureau of Investigation sweeping Internet surveillance powers that, in some cases, would not require a judge's approval. Huge portions of that bill, self-importantly titled the Combating Terrorism Act, eventually became part of the even more grandly named law called the USA Patriot Act. Soon after the law's enactment, Attorney General John Ashcroft began likening criticism of such dubious legislation to the treasonous offense of "aiding terrorists." Noted civil libertarians such as Alan Dershowitz began to suggest that entrepreneurial judges could issue "torture warrants" against suspected terrorists, while automated face recognition cameras began popping up in airports and politicians began scheming about how to ban encryption products without backdoors for government snoops. Suffice it to say that privacy was not exactly paramount on everyone's mind. But as the two-year anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, there are signs that Congress realizes it went too far in allowing electronic surveillance and other invasions of personal privacy. Consider some recent evidence: � By a 309 to 118 vote last Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that would essentially block part of the USA Patriot Act that permitted police to seek a court order that let them surreptitiously enter a home or business. The amendment to the Commerce, Justice and State spending bill would not repeal the "secret search" law but instead would deny federal agencies any funds that could be used in order to take advantage of it. � During the floor debate, Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, the amendment's sponsor, offered this impassioned defense of liberty: "Sneak-and-peek searches give the government the power to repeatedly search a private residence without informing the residents that he or she is the target of an investigation. Not only does this provision allow the seizure of personal property and business records without notification, but it also opens the door to nationwide search warrants and allows the CIA and the NSA to operate domestically." � Also last week, some House members tried to nix the part of the USA Patriot Act that handed the FBI broad powers to search library or bookstore records without the usual need for search warrants or judicial oversight. Offered by Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the amendment was ruled to be out of order--but it enjoys the support of 129 members of Congress and advocacy groups like the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. � On July 17, the U.S. Senate yanked funding for the Pentagon's creepy Total Information Awareness plan (TIA), which aims to weave together strands of data from various sources--such as travel, credit card, bank, electronic toll and driver's license databases--with the stated purpose of identifying terrorists before they strike. (Earlier, the Pentagon had responded to public outcry by changing the project's name to Terrorist Information Awareness.) � Last Tuesday, at a meeting of a U.S. Department of Defense advisory committee, top intelligence officers said TIA wasn't really all that spectacular an idea, anyway. "They need to work on the underlying business model before it is implemented," said Maureen Baginski, the FBI's executive assistant director for intelligence, according to Federal Computer Week. Alan Wade, chief information officer at the CIA, warned that "the scope may be too big." Ouch. And this is from the cadre of spooks who supposedly wanted TIA in the first place? Ashcroft and his aides at the U.S. Department of Justice are hardly delighted by this privacy backlash-backlash. Not only are they intent on keeping the USA Patriot Act intact, but they're not happy at finding themselves suddenly on the defensive. Secret searches Last week, while touring Alaska, Ashcroft employed a venerable Washingtonian tactic: Blame the press. It was understandable that Americans are worried about privacy invasions, Ashcroft informed reporters, "but when the so-called invasion is one that's falsely reported and nonexistent, and they don't hear about the fact that it's falsely reported and nonexistent, it's not helpful." On Friday, Ashcroft's deputy, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, went even further. Moschella sent a letter to the speaker of the House warning that the "secret search" amendment would have a "devastating effect on the United States' ongoing efforts to detect and prevent terrorism, as well as to combat other serious crimes...The terrorist would likely destroy computer equipment containing information about which targets he plans to strike." The letter, which urged the House to reconsider its decision, cited procedural irregularities, complaining that the House's vote was a "hasty" one. But you never saw the Justice Department demanding a careful, reasoned process when the USA Patriot Act was being rushed into law in October 2001. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said after that memorable vote: "What we have today is an outrageous procedure. A bill, drafted by a handful of people in secret, comes to us without a committee review and immune to amendment." What the Justice Department also didn't mention last week is that it had been lobbying for the power to conduct "secret searches" for at least four years, long before the Sept. 11 attacks took place and terrorism became a convenient justification for it. As far back as 1999, the FBI had used a secret search warrant when installing a keystroke logger in the office computer of alleged mobster Nicodemo Scarfo. He had used Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software to encode confidential business data--but with the keystroke logger, the FBI was able to glean his pass phrase. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5055885.html

FBI wants to tap Net phones Internet telephone calls are fast becoming a national security threat that must be countered with new police wiretap rules, according to an FBI proposal presented quietly to regulators this month. Representatives of the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., have met at least twice in the past three weeks with senior officials of the Federal Communications Commission to lobby for proposed new Internet eavesdropping rules. The FBI-drafted plan seeks to force broadband providers to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities and could substantially change the way that cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) companies operate. The new rules are necessary, because terrorists could otherwise frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls over the Internet, warns a summary of a July 10 meeting with the FCC that the FBI prepared. "Broadband networks may ultimately replace narrowband networks," the summary says. "This trend offers increasing opportunities for terrorists, spies and criminals to evade lawful electronic surveillance." According to the proposal that the FCC is considering, any company offering cable modem or DSL service to residences or businesses would be required to comply with a thicket of federal regulations that would establish a central hub for police surveillance of their customers. The proposal has alarmed civil libertarians who fear that it might jeopardize privacy and warn that the existence of such hubs could facilitate broad surveillance of other Internet communications such as e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging. Under existing federal wiretapping laws, the FBI already has the ability to seek a court order to conduct surveillance of any broadband user though its DCS1000 system, previously called Carnivore. But the bureau worries that unless Internet providers offer surveillance hubs based on common standards, lawbreakers can evade or, at the very least, complicate surveillance by using VOIP providers such as Vonage, Time Warner Cable, Net2Phone, 8X8, deltathree and DigitalVoice. Digital wiretapping The origins of this debate date back nine years, to when the FBI persuaded Congress to enact a controversial law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Louis Freeh, FBI director at the time, testified in 1994 that emerging technologies such as call forwarding, call waiting and cellular phones had frustrated surveillance efforts. Congress responded to the FBI's concern by requiring that telecommunications services rewire their networks to provide police with guaranteed access for wiretaps. Legislators also granted the FCC substantial leeway in defining what types of companies must comply. So far, the FCC has interpreted CALEA's wiretap-ready requirements to cover only traditional analog and wireless telephone service. "I think the FCC has a lot of room here," said Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson who represents Internet service providers. "CALEA was written knowing that there would be new technologies for telecommunications." Baker, the former general counsel of the National Security Agency, said it was not clear whether the FBI had yet been frustrated by problems when wiretapping VOIP calls. Derek Khlopin, regulatory counsel at the Telecommunications Industry Association, whose members include Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Motorola and Nortel Networks, said what the FBI is "worried about is, when you have voice over DSL, if there's a way someone could say they're not subject to CALEA." In a letter to the FCC, the FBI wrote: "CALEA applies to telecommunications carriers providing DSL and other types of wire line broadband access." Some members of Khlopin's trade association, such as Cisco, already manufacture products that follow CALEA guidelines. Khlopin said his group did not have a position on the FBI's request, but suggested that "CALEA is not the only way that law enforcement can get the bad guys." The FBI's proposal has drawn criticism in regard to privacy issues. A representative of DSL provider Speakeasy said the company "does not support the extension of CALEA to ISPs, because the proposal appears to run counter to our commitment to protect our subscribers' privacy first and foremost. We certainly will be closely monitoring the progression of this particular proposal." Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)'s technology and liberty program, said the FCC could not legally extend CALEA to cover the Internet without additional action by Congress. "CALEA does not apply to 'information services,' which was the then term of art for the Internet," Steinhardt said. "Voice over IP is just that, a voice service over the Net. CALEA should not, and so far has not, applied to VOIP." http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5056424.html

Afghanistan: Warlords Implicated in New Abuses Report Details Threats to Women's Rights, Freedom of Expression "Human rights abuses in Afghanistan are being committed by gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the United States and its coalition partners after the Taliban fell in 2001," said Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. "These men and others have essentially hijacked the country outside of Kabul. With less than a year to go before national elections, Afghanistan's human rights situation appears to be worsening." The 101-page report, "Killing You Is a Very Easy Thing for Us": Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan, documents army and police troops kidnapping Afghans and holding them for ransom in unofficial prisons; breaking into households and robbing families; raping women, girls and boys; and extorting shopkeepers and bus, truck and taxi drivers. The report also describes political organizers, journalists and media editors being threatened with death, arrested and harassed by army, police and intelligence agents. The subject area of the report, the southeast of Afghanistan and Kabul city, is one of the most densely populated areas of Afghanistan. Because soldiers are targeting women and girls, many are staying indoors, especially in rural areas, making it impossible for them to attend school, go to work, or actively participate in the country's reconstruction. In many places, human rights abuses are driving many Afghan families to keep their girls out of school. The atmosphere of violence, along with resurgent religious fundamentalism in parts of the country, is endangering the most important human rights improvement since the end of the Taliban--the ability of girls to go back to school. "The fact is that most girls in Afghanistan are still not in school," said Adams. "In many cases, returning refugee families who sent their girls to school in Pakistan or Iran are afraid to do the same in Afghanistan." The testimony of victims and witnesses implicates soldiers and police under the command of many high-level military and political officials in Afghanistan. These include Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the Minister of Defense; Hazrat Ali, the military leader of the Eastern Region; Younis Qanooni, the Minister of Education; Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president of Afghanistan; and Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful former mujahidin leader to whom many of the officials involved in the documented abuses in Kabul city and province remain loyal. The report urges the Afghan government to sideline and pressure abusive leaders and to seek more international assistance in its efforts. Human Rights Watch called on the United States, the United Kingdom, Iran, Russia and other external powers to end their support for local strongmen and commanders involved in human rights abuses. "External support for warlords is destabilizing Afghanistan," said Adams. "The United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, need to decide whether they are with President Karzai and other reformers in Kabul or with the warlords. The longer they wait, the more difficult it will be to loosen the warlords' grip on power." http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/07/afghan072903.htm

In March of two thousand three, John Ashcroft set the Bureau free, from its resposibility to even try for accuracy (in the name, of course, of security) Since now there is no penalty or legal culpability near five percent of our population are terrorists in the Bureau's estimation. To the rest of us it's obvious without accountability we lose our hard won liberty and even set the guilty free by reason of inanity.

Roots of Distrust: Betrayal, Real or Feared For all the hand-wringing over the decision to release photographs of the bloodied corpses of Uday and Qusay Hussein, it had to be done, to hear many Iraqis tell it � not just because of their fear that the old regime could return, but because of their memories of American duplicity in Iraq. When American officials describe the difficulties they face in Iraq, the failure to capture Saddam Hussein continues to be cited as a principal reason that insurgents feel emboldened to strike American soldiers. But in the view of many Iraqis � Sunni as well as Shiite, Baghdadis and rural folk � that is just half the picture. To them, the fear of Mr. Hussein, his henchmen and his loyalists is compounded enormously by the dishonesty and disloyalty they feel Americans showed to Mr. Hussein's antagonists during the gulf war in 1991, when American troops pulled back even as Iraqis were rising up to challenge his rule.� Given the depth of the United States' military commitment to Iraq, and its obvious importance to President Bush, Americans may be tempted to dismiss such sentiments as improbable paranoia. But consider the experience of a population that has had very little reliable information during the past 35 years, and has had far too much of rumor, conspiracy theories and propaganda. And, more to the point, terror. In such an environment, even good information becomes difficult to believe. Who can say for sure that it, too, isn't some form of calculated lie? What's more, distrust of Americans is a lesson many Iraqis learned the hard way. On Feb. 15, 1991, during the Persian Gulf war, President George H. W. Bush publicly encouraged "the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside." American land forces soon thrust across southern Iraq to oust Mr. Hussein's forces from Kuwait, but when that goal had been accomplished, the Americans suspended offensive operations and offered Iraq a cease-fire. Days later, they stood by as Mr. Hussein sent his helicopters to quash uprisings, or intifadas, that were spreading quickly from Basra across southern Iraq. Mr. Hussein's forces also lashed out furiously at rebellious Kurds in the north. At the time, American policy was heavily influenced by fears that such rebellions could splinter Iraq and lead to Iranian influence in the south. During the uprisings, southern Iraqis killed Mr. Hussein's local henchmen and Baath officials in large cities like Kerbala and Najaf. Once the rebellions had been quelled, thousands of young men � and often whole families � who were suspected of disloyalty to Mr. Hussein were driven to mass grave sites, where they were machine-gunned or buried alive. Memories of the slaughter of 1991 are now being reinforced by excavations across the country of mass graves. News of them plays in a particularly corrosive way into news of the failure of the coalition forces to account for Saddam Hussein. Even as Americans try to bring everyday Iraqis into the coalition fold, the excavations remind the Iraqis of what could happen if the Americans don't fully uproot the old regime. Indeed, Baathists in hiding have already begun murdering some Iraqis who go to work for the Americans, even as taped messages of defiance from Saddam Hussein continue to surface. In Mosul, Nasser Hazim, no relation to the shopkeeper, walked with his children on Thursday morning in front of his home, near the site of the shootout, and said few Iraqis were bothered by the outcome. "Maybe one percent of the people liked Uday and Qusay," he said. "People aren't sorry. But they want some proof they have been killed. They don't want words and they don't want media. People aren't ready to help the Americans because they are always promising, always promising." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/weekinreview/27OPPE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Amnesty International Report 2003 Human rights activists continue to face new challenges. The war on Iraq has dominated the international agenda, diverting attention from other vital human rights issues. "Forgotten" conflicts have taken a heavy toll on human rights and human lives � in C�te d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya and Nepal. "Iraq and Israel and the Occupied Territories are in the news � Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo is not, despite the imminent threat of genocide, said Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General. "Drawing attention to 'hidden' crises, protecting the rights of the 'forgotten victims' is the biggest challenge we face today." Governments have spent billions to strengthen national security and the "war on terror". Yet for millions of people, the real sources of insecurity are corruption, repression, discrimination, extreme poverty and preventable diseases. Human rights defenders also celebrated some successes during 2002, such as the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which marked a breakthrough in the struggle against impunity for the worst crimes known to humanity. The Amnesty International Report 2003 documents human rights abuses in 151 countries and territories during 2002. It is a contribution to the work of human rights defenders struggling to achieve a safer world, a world where human rights take priority over political, military or economic interests. http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/index-eng

Thousands Move to Jewish Settlements This Year The Jewish settler population grew by more than 5,000 in the first half of 2003, despite U.S.-backed peace moves requiring Israel to halt construction in Jewish settlements, Israel said on Thursday. Palestinians seek an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the peace plan calls on Israel to dismantle unauthorized settler outposts and stop expansion of established settlements there. Advertisement The number of new settlers in the first half of 2003 showed a constant rate of population growth in the settlements that the international community says are illegal; a statement Israel disputes. Some 5,000 newcomers moved to the settlements in the second half of 2001 and in first half of 2002, while some 7,200 moved there in the second half of 2002, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said 5,415 Israelis had moved to the settlements since January, with the ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit seeing the largest jump of more than 1,000 newcomers. Betzalel Kahn, a Beitar Illit spokesman, said the draw for the ultra-Orthodox community was the cheap housing close to Jerusalem and not a bid to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-settlers.html

Deal Offered on Child Tax Credit Senate Republicans offered a compromise to the House today intended to end the stalemate blocking an expansion of the child tax credit to low-income families, but Democrats said the proposal's benefits for wealthier families were too expensive to pass. The offer came with an increase in political activity just four days before the government will begin mailing $400-per-child checks to 25 million middle-income families eligible to receive the tax credit. On Thursday, President Bush is scheduled to visit a federal office in Philadelphia that is printing the checks, using the opportunity to remind voters that the checks are to stimulate the economy. Democrats plan a series of protests on and off the floors of Congress this week to demonstrate their anger that 6.5 million low-income families were left out of the economic stimulus package and will not be receiving the checks. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said members of her party would make this "the week from hell" for Republicans. On Wednesday, as part of one protest, 700 children are scheduled to descend on the Capitol to make a similar point. Today's compromise proposal, made by the three Republican senators who are negotiating with the House on the credits, would give the $400-per-child credits to the 6.5 million minimum-wage families, a provision that would cost $3.5 billion. But the plan would also spend $20 billion to give increased credits to 25 million middle- and upper-income families from 2005 to 2007. The increase, to $1,000 from $600, is now scheduled to expire in 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/23/national/23TAX.html

The Great Catfish War For Tran Vu Long, who lives atop his floating catfish trap on the Mekong River near the border with Cambodia, the recent biannual harvest day was not the joyous payday it usually is. Mr. Long, a 35-year-old Vietnamese catfish farmer, sold his flapping fish � 40 tons' worth, all painstakingly weighed and carried in bamboo buckets onto the trading company's launch � at a loss of some $2,000, a small fortune here. Mr. Long, who stood sullenly to the side as his hired hands scooped out seemingly endless gaggles of fish from underneath the space that doubles as his living room, has Washington politicians to blame. "The United States preaches free trade, but as soon as we start benefiting from it, they change their tune," he said. His misfortunes are just another part of the tale of how wealthy countries that preach the gospel of free trade when it comes to finding markets for their manufactured goods can become wildly protectionist when their farmers face competition. The fate of Vietnam's catfish offers a warning to poorer nations short on leverage in the world trading system: beware of what may happen if you actually succeed at playing by the big boys' rules.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/opinion/22TUE1.html

Unjust, unwise, unAmerican America's plan to set up military commissions for the trials of terrorist suspects is a big mistake YOU are taken prisoner in Afghanistan, bound and gagged, flown to the other side of the world and then imprisoned for months in solitary confinement punctuated by interrogations during which you have no legal advice. Finally, you are told what is to be your fate: a trial before a panel of military officers. Your defence lawyer will also be a military officer, and anything you say to him can be recorded. Your trial might be held in secret. You might not be told all the evidence against you. You might be sentenced to death. If you are convicted, you can appeal, but only to yet another panel of military officers. Your ultimate right of appeal is not to a judge but to politicians who have already called everyone in the prison where you are held �killers� and the �worst of the worst�. Even if you are acquitted, or if your appeal against conviction succeeds, you might not go free. Instead you could be returned to your cell and held indefinitely as an �enemy combatant�. Sad to say, that is America's latest innovation in its war against terrorism: justice by �military commission�. Over-reaction to the scourge of terrorism is nothing new, even in established democracies. The British �interned� Catholics in Northern Ireland without trial; Israel still bulldozes the homes of families of suicide bombers. Given the barbarism of September 11th, it is not surprising that America should demand retribution�particularly against people caught fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. American officials insist that the commissions will provide fair trials. The regulations published by the Pentagon stipulate that the accused will be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that he cannot be compelled to testify against himself, and that the trials should be open to the press and public if possible. The problem is that every procedural privilege the defendant is awarded in the regulations is provisional, a gift of the panel which is judging him. The regulations explicitly deny him any enforceable rights of the sort that criminal defendants won as long ago as the Middle Ages. Moreover, the planned commissions lack the one element indispensable to any genuinely fair proceeding�an independent judiciary, both for the trial itself and for any appeal against a conviction. The military officers sitting as judges belong to a single chain of command reporting to the secretary of defence and the president, who will designate any accused for trial before the commissions and will also hear any final appeals. For years, America has rightly condemned the use of similar military courts in other countries for denying due process. Why dispense with such basic rules of justice? Mr Bush's officials say they must balance the demand for fair trials with the need to gather intelligence to fend off further terrorist attacks. Nobody denies that fighting terrorism puts justice systems under extraordinary strain. But this dilemma has frequently been faced by others without resorting to military trials. The established procedure is to pass special anti-terrorism laws, altering trial rules somewhat to handle terrorist cases, but not abandoning established court systems, and trying to retain the basic rights of those accused as far as possible. Britain and Spain have done this. There is no reason why America's own civilian courts, which have successfully tried plenty of domestic and foreign terrorists (including Mr Lindh), could not be adapted to this purpose. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1908281

Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations �in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten. The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers. The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/politics/21JUST.html?pagewanted=all&position=

450 Settlers Hold 30,000 Palestinians Hostage Hebron, where about 450 Jewish settlers live in a few small enclaves among some 150,000 Palestinians, illustrates how complicated it will be to move forward with the peace plan when mutual suspicion runs so deep. Under a previous agreement, Israel is permitted to keep troops in the center of Hebron to guard the settlers, even if the soldiers leave other parts of town. This allows the military to maintain strict control over 30,000 Palestinians, including the Karakis, who live in central Hebron. The army pulled back in the outlying parts of Hebron last fall. But since then, 27 Israeli civilians and security force members have been killed in the area, according to David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers. "Any withdrawal of troops is a recipe for disaster," Mr. Wilder said. "Every time the soldiers pull out, Israelis get killed. There's much more Israeli security here today than three years ago. It's unfortunate, but it's absolutely necessary." Hebron has long stirred Jewish-Arab tensions. Arab rioters killed 67 Jews here in 1929. A Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, shot dead 29 Muslim worshipers in 1994 at the town's most important shrine, the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Soldiers now keep the Israeli and Palestinian sides completely separate. Mr. Karaki estimates his neighborhood has been under curfew for close to half of the past 33 months. The men have been able to work only sporadically. Schooling has been disrupted. The market has been closed. Even when the curfew is lifted, as has been the case for the past three weeks, soldiers still block most roads. The holy site is just a block away, but requires a roundabout journey of several miles to reach. The family acknowledges a powerful dependency on a satellite dish delivering 347 television channels. "If we didn't have this, we would explode," said Mr. Karaki, adding that it is usually tuned to Al Jazeera and other Arab news channels. "We have all become expert political analysts, but we are sick of the news." Eight babies have been born to the clan since the fighting began, and three more are expected by the end of the month. Three weddings have brought young brides into the family. "We have no work, no entertainment," said Fahmi Karaki, 52, another of the brothers. "There's nothing to do but make babies." The population boomlet has strained the limits of the compound. "We have reached the point where some people need to live outside," said Abdel Wahab Karaki, a father of 10 and grandfather of 14. "If someone wants to marry, we say, `Look for a house elsewhere.' " The two homes are spacious, well appointed and shockingly neat considering all the youngsters. The children have few toys and dart around in clusters, entertaining themselves on the blacktop between the homes, each with three levels. Small gardening plots just inside the walls have grapes, figs and lemons. School is out now, and a curfew is in effect only on Fridays and Saturdays. Still, the children have nowhere to go because soldiers block most streets. Ayman Karaki, 19, who works part time at a metal factory, rolled his eyes when asked if there was anywhere to go in the evenings. "I spend my life here with my cousins," he said. "I used to have friends in other parts of Hebron, and we played soccer or watched matches. Now I can't do anything like that." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/middleeast/21HEBR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

In Najaf, a Sudden Anti-U.S. Storm Until now, interactions between the Americans and the Iraqis in Najaf have been calm, free of the random violence rampant in the country's Sunni heartland. But a sudden storm erupted on Saturday after Moktada al-Sadr, the scion of a clan of beloved clerics and the most vocal supporter of Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq, asserted that American forces were encircling his home. They were bent on arresting him, his aides announced, after an incendiary sermon on Friday in which he rejected the American-appointed Governing Council and called for the formation of an Islamic army. It was, said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Conlin, the commanding officer here, a deliberate misunderstanding. There had indeed been Apache helicopters clattering overhead and extra troops on the streets, but that was to provide security for a visit by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Colonel Conlin said. The temporary ramping up of the United States presence could not be explained in advance for security reasons, and afterward the American officer relied on members of Najaf's City Council to pass the word. He wished the demonstrators would take their complaints to the new City Council. The abrupt storm this weekend underscored a point made by a review of the Iraq reconstruction effort released last week by a panel from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The lack of Iraqis involved in the reconstruction at all levels, widespread unemployment and woefully inadequate means of communicating what is happening to the country's 24 million people have combined to fuel an ever-higher level of frustration and anger about the American presence. Men like Mr. Sadr and his followers, determined to harness that frustration to wrest a greater say in Iraq's future, are stepping into the void. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/worldspecial/21NAJA.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Tense Meeting of Sharon and Abbas Ends in Stalemate On June 29, Israel withdrew from parts of the Gaza Strip and on July 2 from most of Bethlehem in the West Bank, pulling back in accordance with the peace plan from areas that, under the 1993 Oslo accords, it had previously ceded to Palestinian control. Palestinian forces resumed responsibility for policing in those areas. Israel has refused to withdraw from other areas, which it seized last year in response to a series of suicide bombings, until it determines that Mr. Abbas is dismantling militant groups. Israeli officials acknowledged that a result of that position was that most West Bank Palestinians had seen little tangible change as yet. They said Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, would consider easing some checkpoints and other restrictions on Palestinian travel through the West Bank. In a statement, Mr. Sharon's office said he had told Mr. Abbas "that Israel cannot ignore that terror and incitement have decreased of late, and it is noticeable that the Palestinians are making an effort regarding this." But he said terrorists had been rearming during the lull since late June, when the three main Palestinian factions announced that they were suspending attacks on Israelis. Mr. Sharon said Mr. Abbas needed to "take immediate and definite action to dismantle the terror organizations." Once that happened, he said, "Israel's ability to answer the needs of the Palestinians will be significantly increased." For now, Israelis are taking advantage of the Palestinian groups' declared cease-fire. Downtown Jerusalem was crowded late Saturday night with young people thronging to bars and restaurants. Mr. Abbas said in the interview that the governing Palestinian Authority was also using the cease-fire to rebuild. He said that it would strictly enforce the cease-fire and collect weapons from people carrying them in the streets, but that it would not provoke a civil conflict with Hamas or Islamic Jihad by, for example, searching homes for guns, as Israel demands. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How Powerful Can 16 Words Be? "We did not go to war because of mustard gas or Scuds," said Joseph Cirincione, senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We went to war because President Bush told the nation that Saddam had, or might already have, a nuclear bomb, and we could not afford to wait. Now it's obvious that's not true and there was no solid evidence it was true at the time." "Would we have gone to war if the president hadn't uttered those 16 words?" he asked. "Clearly, the answer is yes." But, he added: "We wouldn't have gone to war without the nuclear threat. The president's case for war was centered on the nuclear threat." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/weekinreview/20MARQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Why Liberals Are No Fun by FRANK RICH It wasn't in prime time, and the ratings weren't even on the charts. But in the 24/7 broadcasting arena of political talk, where liberals are on the losing side at least 22/7, they must take whatever scraps they can get. For them, it was a rare red-letter day when Al Franken, appearing on Book TV on C-Span 2, landed a rhetorical uppercut to the jaw of Liberal Nemesis No. 1, Bill O'Reilly, and left him even more senseless than usual. How can Democrats be so ineffectual in the media in which they would seem to have a home-court cultural advantage? The talk-show playing field is littered with liberal casualties: Mario Cuomo, Alan Dershowitz, Phil Donahue. Why waste money on more broadcasting flops? The conventional wisdom has it that liberals will never make it in this arena because they are humorless, their positions are too complicated to explain, and some powerful media companies (whether Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation or the radio giant Clear Channel) want to put up roadblocks. Others argue that liberals are so down and out that they don't even know what they believe any more. "The reason conservative media outlets work is that they have a mass audience united by a discrete ideology," says Tucker Carlson, who affably represents the right on CNN's "Crossfire" and is one of those I've queried about this topic in recent months. "They believe in nine things. They all know the catechism." In Mr. Carlson's view, Democrats are all over the ideological map in the post-Clinton era, and there can be no effective media without a coherent message. But the case against liberal talk success isn't a slam-dunk. After all, conservatives have their talk-show fiascos too, as evidenced by MSNBC, the lame would-be Fox clone that, as the comedian Jon Stewart has said, doesn't "deserve all those letters" in its name. MSNBC's just-canceled right-wing star, Michael Savage, drew smaller audiences on the channel than Mr. Donahue did. What's more, there actually are liberals who retain a sense of humor (witness Mr. Franken, Mr. Stewart and Michael Moore), while conservative stars are not infrequently humor-free (witness Mr. O'Reilly). Norman Lear goes so far as to argue that liberals are intrinsically funnier than conservatives. "Most comedy comes from those who see humor in the human condition," he says. "Most who traffic in the stuff could be called humanists. The far-right talk hosts spew a kind of venom and ridicule that passes for funnybone material with the program executives that hire them." If humor doesn't bring liberals talk-show success, is the problem that they lack rage? Cal Thomas, the conservative columnist and Fox host, speaks for many when he argues that "liberals don't have the anger" that conservatives have stored up from their years in the political and media wilderness. But this, too, is changing: Pinch most Democrats these days, and they'll vomit vituperation about President Bush as crazed as that of some Clinton haters of a decade ago.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/arts/20RICH.html

The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link In all the debate over the disputed claims in President Bush's State of the Union address, we must not forget to scrutinize an equally important, and equally suspect, reason given by the administration for toppling Saddam Hussein: Iraq's supposed links to terrorists. The invasion of Iraq, after all, was billed as Phase II in the war on terror that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But was there ever a credible basis for carrying that battle to Iraq? Don't misunderstand � we should all be glad to see the Iraqi people freed from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and the defeat of Iraq did spell the demise of the world's No. 4 state sponsor of international terrorism (Iran, Syria and Sudan all have more blood on their hands in the last decade). But the connection the administration asserted between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the organization that made catastrophic terrorism a reality, seems more uncertain than ever. In making its case for war, the administration dismissed the arguments of experts who noted that despite some contacts between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's followers over the years, there was no strong evidence of a substantive relationship. As members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999, we closely examined nearly a decade's worth of intelligence and we became convinced, like many of our colleagues in the intelligence community, that the religious radicals of Al Qaeda and the secularists of Baathist Iraq simply did not trust one another or share sufficiently compelling interests to work together. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised that the Bush administration had "bulletproof evidence" of a Qaeda-Iraq link, and Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar case to the United Nations. Such claims now look as questionable as the allegation that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/opinion/20BENJ.html

A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons On paper, the Pentagon's plan for finding Iraq's unconventional weapons was bold and original. Four mobile exploitation teams, or MET's, each composed of about 25 soldiers, scientists and weapons experts from several Pentagon agencies, would fan out to chase tips from survey units and combat forces in the field. They would search 578 "suspect sites" in Iraq for the chemical, biological and nuclear components that the Bush administration had cited time and again to justify the war. The Pentagon said the weapons hunters would have whatever they needed � helicopters, Humvees in case weather grounded the choppers, and secure telecommunications. But the "ground truth," as soldiers say, was this: chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap plagued the postwar search for evidence of Iraq's supposed unconventional weapons. To this day, whether Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons when the war began remains unknown. It is the biggest mystery of the war and a thorny political problem for President Bush. His administration has expanded the hunt and has urged patience, expressing the belief that some weapons may still be found. Others believe that to be increasingly unlikely. If only they'd had more patience wit the UN inspectors. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20SEAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Annan Asks for Timetable on U.S. Withdrawal United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on the American-led forces in Iraq to set out a "clear timetable" for a staged withdrawal, noting that numerous Iraqis had told United Nations officials that "democracy should not be imposed from the outside." While welcoming the formation last weekend of the 25-member Governing Council for Iraq, Mr. Annan said in a report distributed to Security Council members on Friday that "there is a pressing need to set out a clear and specific sequence of events leading to the end of the military occupation." The report comes at a delicate moment, less than a week after India declined to provide military assistance in Iraq unless it could be done with United Nations authorization. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has indicated a willingness to explore a new resolution, but, simultaneously, United States military officials are predicting a prolonged guerrilla war that could keep high levels of troops in Iraq for months. The issue of a new resolution was not addressed in the report, though it did conclude by noting that "the legitimacy and impartiality of the United Nations is a considerable asset in promoting the interests of the Iraqi people." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20NATI.html

Title II Reports on the Quality of Teacher Preparation Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality Under Title II of the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the Secretary of Education is required to issue annual reports to Congress on the quality of teacher preparation nationwide. Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality is the Secretary's newest report on this important issue (PDF file, 1.8 MB). This report presents key findings from the Title II reporting system. It also addresses how we might move forward to meet the teacher quality requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and highlights promising practices from all across the country. For additional data and information from the Title II accountability system on meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge, go to www.title2.org. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/esea/index.html http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/Title-II-Report.pdf http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/

Counterintelligent -- How the GOP keeps the FBI stupid. In March, 2003, the FBI arrested a Chinese-American businesswoman and Republican fundraiser, alleging that she had passed a frighteningly broad range of American intelligence secrets to the People's Republic of China (PRC). For two decades, Katrina Leung had been a paid bureau informant, supplying information on Chinese intelligence operations in America. She'd also been sleeping with two senior FBI agents--one of whom was her so-called "handler"--for the better part of those two decades. It was alleged that she had transmitted what she learned about American counterintelligence from her lovers to Beijing and sent Beijing's disinformation back through the FBI. The story was sordid, embarrassing, and, worse than that, quite grave: Intelligence sources told The Washington Post that Leung had single-handedly compromised 20 years of American counter-intelligence work against the PRC. Democrats, who in 1997 weathered endless--and ultimately unproven--accusations of selling political favors or national security secrets for PRC money, can take a measure of satisfaction from this unlikely coda: The only bonafide Chinese spy so far turns out to have been not only a Republican, but a well-connected GOP fundraiser. And not just any Republican fundraiser, but one who happened to be sleeping with one of the lead FBI agents investigating Democratic fundraising. t's bad enough that Leung was able to seduce two FBI agents. But her longtime handler and lover, James Smith, was in possession of information covering a wide range of investigations and operations aimed at the PRC. Since Smith had access to so much, and Leung had access to what Smith had (copying and returning documents from his briefcase before he noticed their absence), her treachery touched everything: the 1997 campaign finance scandal, the investigation of Wen Ho Lee (the Chinese scientist at Los Alamos who was once suspected of selling nuclear secrets to Beijing), investigations of spies at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and much more. "They lost everything," one hawkish D.C.-based China watcher told me. "It's not how big a fish she is; it's how much damage did she do to the system over 20 years. She totally wrecked it." The real lesson that the Katrina Leung case teaches is one that the FBI and the Republicans, who became its most aggressive patrons during the 1990s, have spent almost two decades ignoring: The repeated failure of the FBI to adopt basic counterintelligence tactics has left it wide open to moles and spies. From time to time, every spy agency falls victim to a mole, a traitor, or a double agent. It's in the nature of the enterprise, since each such institution constantly attempts to penetrate the secrets of almost every other intelligence service. But because intelligence professionals know that it is extremely difficult to guard against every compromise of an agency's secrets, they are supposed to structure their outfits in such a way as to minimize the damage when the inevitable breach occurs. The best way to do that is through what intelligence professionals call "compartmentation"--designing the organization like a honeycomb, with individual parts sealed off from the rest as much as possible, and distributing information within the organization only on a "need to know" basis. There's always a tension between the needs for compartmentation and information sharing. But without effective compartmentation, a single, well-placed mole can trigger an intelligence leak of catastrophic proportions. Poor compartmentation also makes finding the culprit almost impossible. If the Leung scandal were a one-time goof, it might not be so outrageous. But it's not. The problems it exposed bear striking similarities to those revealed in the investigations into the Soviet-controlled American spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen--problems of information security about which the bureau had been repeatedly warned, but had just as often failed to address. This is no insignificant bureaucratic rigidity. Some of the country's most important national security secrets over the last 20 years have been exposed to our two biggest adversaries, and finding the culprits has been long delayed because of the bureau's failure to effectively implement this most basic principle of intelligence work. Despite no fewer than five very public warnings, Washington has been chronically unwilling to fix it. These repeated, dangerous failures at the FBI have both administrative and political sources. Bureaucratically, the agency is being asked to undertake two incompatible responsibilities: law enforcement and intelligence work. Though the two activities are related and overlapping, the skills, strategies, and tactics needed for each are profoundly different. The skills needed for law enforcement--a clubby culture of sharing information among agents--often means disaster in intelligence work. The latest debacle is proof that the bureau has never, and can never, overcome this built-in conflict in its mission. Only changing the FBI's mission can solve the problem. But only politicians can change the bureau's mission, and that's the second, more disturbing source of the problem. For the bureau's serial failures have been revealed at a time when Republicans have been tightening their hold on power in Washington--including on the congressional committees that oversee the FBI. Equally important, it has been during this period that the GOP has chosen to act as the FBI's protector, encouraging its investigations of the Buddhist-temple affair and other "scandals" which hurt the Democrats, while shielding the FBI from tough but necessary reforms that might have stopped the real damage done by spies like Leung. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0307.marshall.html

Tens of Thousands Will Lose College Aid, Report Says The first report to document the impact of the government's new formula for financial aid has found that it will reduce the nation's largest grant program by $270 million and bar 84,000 college students from receiving any award at all. The report, by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress, does not calculate the full effect of the changes, since it does not consider the further cuts in student awards that will probably occur once the new formula is applied to billions of dollars in state awards and university grants. But it does settle some uncertainty over the initial consequences of altering the intricate federal formula that governs the vast majority of the nation's financial aid. Word of the changes has kindled a small storm in Washington in the last month. Members of Congress have put forward legislation in hopes of either gauging the toll of the new formula or stopping it; they have characterized the change as a way to cut education spending without facing the public. "The department is wrong to turn its back on students and families," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "They need more financial aid for college, not less." The Department of Education has cited its obligation under federal law to revise the formula and played down the impact. Sally L. Stroup, its assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told The Washington Post last month that "the changes will have a minimal impact on a handful of students." The figures cited in the report made clear, however, that the new formula would trim the government's primary award program, the Pell grant, by $270 million once it takes effect in the 2004-5 academic year. That amount, financial aid experts said, probably means that hundreds of thousands of students will end up getting smaller Pell grants, not counting the 84,000 who it is estimated will no longer qualify. "It's pretty hard to call several hundred thousand students a handful," said Brian K. Fitzgerald, director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which was created by Congress to advise it on higher education. He estimated that more than one million students could receive smaller Pell grants because of the new formula. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/national/18GRAN.html

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly �want to send an e-mail message to the White House? Good luck. In the past, to tell President Bush � or at least those assigned to read his mail � what was on your mind it was necessary only to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off a note to president@whitehouse.gov. But this week, Tom Matzzie, an online organizer with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., discovered that communicating with the White House had become a bit more daunting. When Mr. Matzzie sent an e-mail protest against a Bush administration policy, the message was bounced back with an automated reply, saying he had to send it again in a new way. Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it. Completing a message to the president also requires choosing a subject from the provided list, then entering a full name, organization, address and e-mail address. Once the message is sent, the writer must wait for an automated response to the e-mail address listed, asking whether the addressee intended to send the message. The message is delivered to the White House only after the person using that e-mail address confirms it. Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications. He called it a "work in progress," and advised members of the public who had sensitive or personal matters to bring up with President Bush to use traditional methods of communications, like a letter on paper, a fax or a phone call. He said the White House, which gets about 15,000 electronic messages each day, had designed the new system during the last nine months in partnership with a private firm that he would not identify. "It provides an additional means for individuals to inquire about policy issues at the White House and get a personalized response in 24 to 48 hours," said Mr. Orr, the Internet news director at the White House. It is still possible to send a traditional e-mail message, he said, but the sender will receive the automated reply and there is no guarantee it will be read or responded to. Some experts in Internet usability think the new method for sending messages is not doing much to enhance communications between the White House and the public. "Over all, it's a very cumbersome process," said Jakob Nielsen, an authority on Web design who helps run a consulting group, Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif. "It's probably designed deliberately to cut down on their e-mail." Chart: Dear (Click) President (Click) Bush (Click)http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2003/07/17/technology/18MAIL.chart.jpg.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/technology/18MAIL.html

Passing It Along Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations." Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books. The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of $334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 � that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 � it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next. There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all. And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/opinion/18KRUG.html

Glimpses of a Leader, Through Chosen Eyes Only The official White House photograph of President Bush, splashed across the front pages of the nation's newspapers last summer, showed him striding vigorously on a Camp David trail, just hours after he had been sedated for a colonoscopy. It was a flattering portrait of a fit chief executive, ready to take up the nation's business once again. And no wonder, say photojournalists: the president had selected and approved the photograph's release to the news media. Eric Draper, the chief White House photographer and the only photographer allowed at Camp David that weekend, had shown Mr. Bush the small image of the picture in the back of his digital camera. "I said, `What do you think about this?"' Mr. Draper recalled in an interview in his West Wing basement office last week. "And he said, `O.K., that's good.' " All recent presidents have had official photographers, and all have distributed White House photographs that they hoped put the president and his administration in the best light. But photographers, picture editors and even administration officials say that no other administration has moved as forcefully as the Bush White House to limit the access of outside news photographers to the president. There are two reasons, they say: the administration's desire for secrecy, and new technology, like the ability to send digital photos by e-mail, that makes immediate dissemination of images possible.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/national/13IMAG.html

Israel Calls Arafat Obstacle to Peace Effort While Mr. Abbas has strong international support and Mr. Arafat is shunned by the United States and others, Mr. Arafat has strong support among Palestinians, and Mr. Abbas risks being seen by them as an Israeli and American agent. Further isolating Mr. Arafat would only enhance that image, said Hisham Ahmed, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. "If Sharon tightens the siege and the isolation of Arafat, people will point the finger at Abu Mazen and his government," Mr. Ahmed said. Already, he said, "People constantly mock Abu Mazen and his government on the street." He said that "the only one who could enable Abu Mazen to succeed is Sharon," listing steps like releasing Palestinian prisoners and removing Israeli military roadblocks. Under the peace plan, Israel has withdrawn from parts of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. It has said it will not pull back from other Palestinian areas until Mr. Abbas acts to suppress militant groups and collect their weapons. After a series of suicide bombings last year, Israel reoccupied Palestinian cities in the West Bank that it had ceded to Palestinian control. Israel has also released about 280 Palestinian prisoners, and it says it is preparing to release some 300 more. Israel is not required by the peace plan to take that step, which is politically sensitive within Israel, but Mr. Sharon says he believes it will strengthen Mr. Abbas. Muhammad Dahlan, Mr. Abbas's minister of security, told Israeli officials on Thursday that to help Mr. Abbas and the peace plan they must release many more of the roughly 5,800 prisoners they hold. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html

Supremely Blocked: Libraries and Filters When the Supreme Court ruled last month that public libraries must install anti-pornography filtering software on their computers as a condition of federal funding, child safety advocates called it a landmark decision for the rights of children. The decision also applies to public schools although that portion of the law wasn't challenged. For Congress, it was a breakthrough decision after two previous attempts to protect children from online smut were rejected by the courts as unconstitutional. For free speech advocates, it was a historic decision of another sort: the Supreme Court has never previously upheld an effort to regulate content on the Internet. Even worse, according to the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the decision was based on the faulty premise that filters work. The Supreme Court ruling overturned a federal appeals decision that rejected the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)as a violation of the First Amendment. The lower court ruled that the use of filtering software in public libraries blocked access to Web sites that contained substantial amounts of protected speech. In other words, filters don't always work. Although CIPA specifically stipulates adults can request a librarian to turn off the anti-porn filters, the lower court said library patrons might be too embarrassed or lose their right to be anonymous. The Supreme Court, though, ultimately ruled the government's interest in protecting children from exposure to sexually inappropriate material outweighed the rights of adult library patrons. The Court did agree with the lower court that filtering software, at best, is problematic. "Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of 'harmful to minors' and 'obscenity,'" the ALA said in statement following the Supreme Court ruling. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "the immense size and variablity of the Internet raises concerns as to whether it is possible to limit Internet blocking only to Web pages containing legally 'blockable' content." A recent study by the EFF and the Online Policy Group examined the effects of N2H2 and SurfControl's filtering software, two of the popular products on the market. The study involved Internet searches of text taken directly from the state-mandated curriculums of California, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Testing nearly a million Web pages, the study found that for every page blocked as advertised, the software blocked one or more pages inappropriately either because the pages were miscategorized or because the pages, while correctly categorized, did not merit blocking. In case of block codes used in compliance with CIPA, the blocking software miscategorized 78-85 percent of the sample. The study concluded that blocking software either overblocks or underblocks. The software either blocks access to many pages protected by the First Amendment or does not block pages likely to be prohibited under CIPA. A Kaiser Family Foundation study conducted last year said that Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries can effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to online health information, but only if the filters are set at the lowest, least restrictive levels. As filters are set at higher levels they block access to a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in blocked pornographic content, the report stated. The ALA is dealing with the filtering issue by calling for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. The group hopes to obtain this information and then evaluate and share the data with the libraries now being forced to forego funds or choose faulty filters. The ALA believes library users must be able to see what sites are being blocked and, if needed, be able to request the filter be disabled with the least intrusion into their privacy and the least burden on library service. http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2234181