News: E-Voting Reform in the U.S. - Aug 30 2004 04:00AM: "These ten steps, while no replacement for the voter-verified paper trail, will, if implemented help reduce real and perceived paperless e-voting risks. 1) 'Paper or Plastic?' option Give voters in electronic voting jurisdictions the choice of casting a paper ballot in their polling place if they prefer to do so. Every polling place should have an ample supply of paper ballots available in case the voting equipment fails. An 'ample supply' would be a supply of paper ballots equivalent to at least 25 percent of a jurisdiction's registered voters. 2) Paper, not electronic provisional voting Federal law now requires pollworkers to allow voters whose names don't appear on the voter list to cast a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are counted after the polls close. To protect a voter's ballot secrecy, a paper provisional ballot is placed inside an envelope that bears the provisional voter's name on the outside of the envelope. After election officials determine whether the voter's ballot should be counted, the paper ballot is separated from the envelope and is counted. In this way, a provisional voter's status can be verified without violating that voter's right to cast a secret ballot." Electronic provisional balloting, which has already been implemented in some jurisdictions, places the voter's right to ballot secrecy at risk, since adequate privacy or security measures typically have not yet been developed to ensure that the voter's right to cast a secret ballot is protected in an electronic environment. For both security and voter privacy reasons, electronic provisional balloting should be prohibited. 3) Access to source code by election officials Election officials should have the right to inspect any source code being used in their voting system. This reform has been endorsed by DeForest Soaries, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission. 4) Paper audit trail summary results Many voting machines can print a paper summary at the close of polls of all the votes cast throughout the voting day. These paper audit trails should be used to verify that the results reported at polling places are accurately reflected in the final election results. These audit trails should also be posted outside of polling places at the close of polls. In places using machines that cannot produce a printed report, pollworkers should be given charts of the races and measures on the ballot in that precinct to be filled in, with one returned to the election office and another posted outside the polling place at the close of polls. 5) Public reconciliation of results The verification process described above should be performed in public. The number of voters checking in at each polling place should also be publicly compared to the number of ballots recorded and counted from each polling place. Such proceedings should be open to videotaping and properly noticed to the public. 6) Public posting of equipment and procedures The security procedures that will be followed before, during and after the election should be publicly posted, on the Internet and/or in local election offices. Procedures should be set and published no less than 45 days in advance of Election Day. All jurisdictions should disclose the vendor, equipment name and model number, and all software and firmware version numbers of their voting equipment to the public online and/or in election offices and at polling places. Contracts with voting equipment vendors should also be made readily accessible to the public. 7) Federal and state equipment approval All voting equipment used should be fully tested and certified by state and federal authorities. All states should conduct an inventory of their equipment hardware and software to verify that what they are using has been approved by the proper oversight authorities. All equipment should be approved at least 45 days prior to Election Day. In addition, as recommended in the EAC's Best Practices, last-minute changes and software patches that have not been tested, qualified and certified should be prohibited. 8) Chain of custody of equipment and software It is up to states and local jurisdictions to ensure that the versions of software and firmware used in electronic voting machines, peripheral devices (such as smart card encoders) and vote tabulation servers are the versions that have been state certified and/or federally qualified. Election officials must also ensure that any voting equipment or device that stores electronic ballots is protected at all times. Voting equipment left in insecure locations before and after the election undermines voter confidence in election security. Voting equipment should be sealed in a secure manner before and after the election. The seal used for this purpose should be one that is less easily tampered with than the typical plastic "seals" used on voting machines. Election officials must develop procedures that describe how equipment will be securely delivered and retrieved from polling places in a timely fashion, as well as how machines will be warehoused and protected before and after the election. 9) Security plan for every jurisdiction Security plans for all aspects of the voting process should be drawn up and published at least 45 days prior to the election. These security plans should include a communications plan for polling places to ensure pollworkers have access to a phone, and an environmental plan to ensure polling places are equipped with ample electricity and lighting and are wheelchair-accessible. All tasks associated with administering electronic voting equipment should be overseen by election officials. Critical tasks such as training pollworkers, programming machines, delivering equipment, and tabulating results on Election Night should be managed by the elections department and not outsourced to the vendor. 10) Truly "stand-alone" systems Any electronic voting equipment that is used in polling places or at the local election office to tabulate results must truly be "stand-alone" devices. No modems, modem ports, wireless devices, or wireless ports should be available for use with any electronic voting equipment. Any communication ports on voting devices should be disabled. Computer equipment used to tabulate results should not be connected to the Internet.… http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=91298

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Bush Takes On Direct Role in Shaping Election Tactics: "President Bush will accept his party's nomination in New York this week on the crest of a campaign that aides say reflects an unusual level of involvement from the president himself, particularly in driving attacks on Senator John Kerry that have characterized his re-election effort since the spring. Several aides said Mr. Bush viewed this as the campaign of his life and had intervened on matters as large as the themes it should strike and as small as particular shots of him in his television advertisements. While making sure Mr. Kerry is challenged at every opening, they said, the single most consuming concern for Mr. Bush is that there is an elaborate get-out-the-vote operation in November in anticipation of a contest as tight as the one in 2000. " Mr. Bush, in an interview in New Mexico last week, was careful to present himself as above his campaign, saying he was busy dealing with the problems of the country.… Still, aides say that while Karl Rove continues to dominate the campaign as the top White House political adviser, the president's involvement and interest is far deeper than is widely known. [Page 24.] Mixed in with the updates on national security by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney that Mr. Bush receives in his daily Oval Office morning briefings is a quick campaign overview from Mr. Rove. Mr. Bush's role in his own campaign was described in extensive interviews with aides and party leaders as Republicans gathered in New York to nominate Mr. Bush for a second term. They arrived buoyed by three new polls suggesting Mr. Bush's standing had improved at least somewhat against Mr. Kerry. Democrats contend that any damage to Mr. Kerry's popularity was caused by unsubstantiated claims by veterans disputing his Vietnam combat medals and that Mr. Bush will ultimately be hurt by their accusation that his campaign was secretly orchestrating the veterans' attacks. Beyond the involvement of the president himself, aides say the strategy that has brought Mr. Bush to this point is quietly being directed not from the Oval Office, or even his campaign headquarters, but by what his inner circle privately calls the Breakfast Club: a small group of advisers who gather on weekends at Mr. Rove's home in northwest Washington, where, over eggs and bacon cooked by Mr. Rove, they measure the campaign's progress against a detailed plan devised 18 months ago.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/politics/campaign/29elect.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Definitions of politics on the Web:

social relations involving authority or power www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

the study of government of states and other political units www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

the profession devoted to governing and to political affairs www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

the opinion you hold with respect to political questions www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

Sites providing political information. These may include campaign or candidate sites, political resources, or political news sites promoting a political cause or action. www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/cat_defs.html

, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. richardgingras.com/devilsdictionary/p.html

The science and methods of government. Derived from the Greek word "Polis" which means community. www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/hancock/pol204/definitions.htm

Competition for power and leadership between competing interests or groups. May be characterized by artful and sometimes dishonest practices. www.projectauditors.com/Dictionary/P.html

activity within the current political party in power that may have conservative or liberal social views based on current economic, military and social activities. imet.csus.edu/imet2/herzj/websites/fashion/resources/glossary.htm

politics: 1: ~ the sum of political actions; www.nephridium.org/features/anarchy/dissertation/glossary.html

Understading of government and manipulation of others. Politics is a prerequisite for starting a player alliance. Each level gives you the possibility to gain 10 members to your alliance. So each player alliance must find a bureaucrat to act as political advisor in order to be officially recognized. (Bureaucrat only.) Level 1- Cost: 750XP 10 members allowed Level 2- Cost: 1,000XP 20 members allowed Level 3- Cost: 1,500XP 30 members allowed (Allows you to also run for Senate.) Level 4- Cost: 2,000XP 40 members allowed Level 5- Cost: 2,500XP 50 members allowed coolboar.com/d6/classes/skillsglossary.html

(POL-i-tics) the practice of government. www.ipl.org.ar/inksub/Vol1No3/lograph/glossary.html

In Harold D. Lasswell's words, "who gets what, when, and how." (See 356) highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072435569/student_view0/glossary.html

noun. from Greek; "poli"-many; "tics"-ugly, bloodsucking parasites. www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/3550/diction.htm

Transcripts and Video: View All by Speaker - 2004 Democratic National Convention Official Site: "Roberta Achtenberg David Alston Rep. Tammy Baldwin Senator Barbara Boxer Marcia Bristo Tom Carper President Jimmy Carter Elizabeth Cavendish President Bill Clinton Senator Hillary Clinton Senator John Corzine Howard Dean Dianna DeGette Rep. Rosa DeLauro Rep. John Dingell Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood Shirley Franklin Rep. Richard Gephardt Vice-President Al Gore Teresa Heinz Kerry" http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter3.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=130840

Podium Videos - Tuesday - 2004 Democratic National Convention Official Site: "Day 3: A Stronger More Secure America State Senator Barack Obama" … Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—or at least, most of the time. This year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers, and the promise of future generations. And fellow Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Independents—I say to you tonight: we have more work to do.… http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=125925&ct=158769

The New York Times > Washington > Scientists Say White House Questioned Their Politics: "In a report released yesterday, a scientific advocacy group cited more instances of what it called the Bush administration's manipulation of science to fit its policy goals, including the questioning of nominees to scientific advisory panels about whether they had voted for President Bush.…" Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and the chairman of the scientists group, said that the administration's actions could cause researchers to leave the government. "You can destroy that in a matter of years and then it can take another generation or two to get back to where you were in the first place," Dr. Gottfried said during a conference call with reporters yesterday. Dr. Gerald T. Keusch said that frustration led him to resign last year from the directorship of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Keusch said the procedure for appointing members of advisory panels changed markedly with the change of administrations in 2001. Dr. Keusch, who became director in 1998, said that before Mr. Bush took office, he proposed candidates and if the director of the National Institutes of Heath approved, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration invariably signed off on the nomination. But under the Bush administration, he said, Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's office rejected 19 of 26 candidates, including Dr. Torsten Wiesel, a Nobel laureate. Dr. Keusch said that when he questioned the rejection, he was told that Dr. Wiesel had signed too many statements critical of Mr. Bush.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics/09data.html

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Bad Iraq Intelligence Cost Lives, Kerry and Edwards Say: "Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards declared on Friday that slipshod intelligence invoked by President Bush to invade Iraq had cost the nation lives, billions of dollars and international prestige, signaling that the Iraq war would be a central issue in their White House campaign. The presumptive Democratic candidates for president and vice president, in a 30-minute joint interview given after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report challenging the prewar Iraq intelligence, said Mr. Bush's policies abroad had probably increased, rather than decreased, the prospects of domestic terrorist attacks. " And they said the discrediting of much of Mr. Bush's case for going to war had fed cynicism toward government by young Americans, reminiscent of the mistrust of authority that swept the country when Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry came of age during the Vietnam War. "They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong," Mr. Kerry said as Mr. Edwards, in an adjacent seat in the front of their chartered Boeing 757 jet, nodded in agreement. "And America's paying billions of dollars because they were wrong. And allies are not with us because they were wrong.…" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/campaign/11TICKET.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Noonday in the Shade: "In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building. Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened. Incidentally, if Mr. Ashcroft's intention was to keep the case low-profile, the media have been highly cooperative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage. At this point, I have the usual problem. Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill." In this case, it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist? More important, is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases? Mr. Krar's arrest was the result not of a determined law enforcement effort against domestic terrorists, but of a fluke: when he sent a package containing counterfeit U.N. and Defense Intelligence Agency credentials to an associate in New Jersey, it was delivered to the wrong address. Luckily, the recipient opened the package and contacted the F.B.I. But for that fluke, we might well have found ourselves facing another Oklahoma City-type atrocity. The discovery of the Texas cyanide bomb should have served as a wake-up call: 9/11 has focused our attention on the threat from Islamic radicals, but murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhere. Two weeks ago a representative of the F.B.I. appealed to an industry group for help in combating what, he told the audience, the F.B.I. regards as the country's leading domestic terrorist threat: ecological and animal rights extremists.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/22/opinion/22KRUG.html

How did we get from September 12th , 2001,-- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.: "George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. He promised to 'restore honor and integrity to the White House.' Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon. Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as 'a decent respect for the opinion of mankind.' He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins. How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words 'We Are All Americans Now' and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.… " http://www.moveonpac.org/goreremarks052604.html

Chalabi's Seat of Honor Lost to Open Political Warfare With U.S.: "By all appearances, Ahmad Chalabi reached the pinnacle of influence in Washington four months ago, when he took a seat of honor right behind Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address. To all the world, he looked like the Iraqi exile who had returned home victorious, a favorite of the Pentagon who might run the country once the American occupation ended. " In fact, as Mr. Chalabi applauded President Bush, his influence in Washington had already eroded. The intelligence about unconventional weapons that his Iraqi National Congress helped feed to senior Bush administration officials and data-starved intelligence analysts — evidence that created the urgency behind the march toward war — was already crumbling. Intelligence officials now argue some of it was fabricated. The much-discussed, much-denied effort by Pentagon officials to install him as Iraq's leader had already faded. By Thursday morning, when his home and office were raided by the Iraqi police and American troops seeking evidence of fraud, embezzlement and kidnapping by members of his Iraqi National Congress — and perhaps an explanation of his dealings with Iranian intelligence — Mr. Chalabi was already engaged in open political warfare with the Bush administration.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21EXIL.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The New York Times > Washington > White House's Medicare Videos Are Ruled Illegal: "The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly. The agency said the videos were a form of 'covert propaganda' because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure." The consequences of the ruling were not immediately clear. The accounting office does not have law enforcement powers, but its decisions on federal spending are usually considered authoritative and are taken seriously by officials in the executive branch of the government. The decision fuels a raging political debate over the new Medicare law. President Bush and many Republicans in Congress say the law will provide immense assistance to millions of elderly and disabled people. But Democrats say the law will do little for the elderly and is so seriously flawed that the government had to resort to an illegal public relations campaign to sell it to voters. The General Accounting Office said that a specific part of the videos, a made-for-television "story package," violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda. People seeing the videos in a newscast would "believe that the information came from a nongovernment source or neutral party," it said.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/politics/20medicare.html

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut: "The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination. Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years. The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million. Whether they involve programs Mr. Bush supported or not, the grant announcements illustrate how the administration blends politics and policy, blurring the distinction between official business and campaign-related activities.…" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/politics/campaign/19GRAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The New York Times > Washington > Commission to Allow Insurance Cuts for Retired Employees: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted Thursday to allow employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they become eligible for Medicare at age 65. The agency approved a final rule saying that such cuts do not violate the civil rights law banning age discrimination. The vote was 3 to 1, with Republicans lining up in favor of the rule and a Democrat opposing it." Employers and some labor unions supported the change, saying it would help preserve coverage for early retirees. But AARP, which represents millions of Americans age 50 and older, strenuously objected. The new rule creates a potentially explosive political issue, because it will create anxiety for many of the 12 million Medicare beneficiaries who also receive health benefits from their former employers.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/politics/23RETI.html

The New York Times > Washington > Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent: "Early this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. The power of her call could not have been plainer: in a calm voice, Ms. Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats. At first, however, Ms. Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, `Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air-rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking." For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after three weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by Al Qaeda had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government." The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than was previously known. Some focused on Al Qaeda's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on United States soil. Many were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration. While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings — including one that Al Qaeda seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country — had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001, just a month before the attacks. The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission." While the commission was created to diagnose mistakes and to recommend reforms, its examination has powerful political resonance. The panel has reviewed the records of two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Mr. Bush, who is in the midst of a campaign for re-election, said last Sunday that none of the warnings gave any hint of the time, place or date of an assault. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," he said. In an intense stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information given to two presidents and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials. The inquiry has gone beyond the report of a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committee in 2002, which chronicled missteps at the mid-level of bureaucracies. Urged on by a number of families of people killed in the attacks, the Kean commission has used a mix of moral and political leverage to extract presidential communications and testimony. Among the new themes that have fundamentally reshaped the story of the Sept. 11 attacks are: ¶Al Qaeda and its leader, Mr. bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for nearly five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts. ¶Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of Al Qaeda and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection from terrorists. By the end of his second term, Mr. Clinton and the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, were barely speaking. ¶Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Mr. Kean said that he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, learned that the F.B.I. had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Mr. Tenet was given a memorandum titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he testified that he took no action and did not tell President Bush about the case. During the Clinton years, particularly at the National Security Council, the commission has found, there was uncertainty about whether the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden justified military action. Much of the debate was provoked by Richard A. Clarke, who led antiterrorism efforts under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush and argued for aggressive action. "Former officials, including an N.S.C. staffer working for Mr. Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands," according to one interim commission report. "Such differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to war. Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act upon such beliefs at great cost or at high risk." In the first eight months of the Bush administration, the commission found, the president and his advisers received far more information, much of it dire in tone and detailed in content, than had been generally understood. The most striking came in the Aug. 6 memorandum presented in an intelligence briefing the White House says Mr. Bush requested. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the memorandum was declassified this month under pressure from the commission. After referring to a British tip in 1998 that Islamic fundamentalists wanted to hijack a plane, it went on to warn: "Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." Mr. Bush has said the briefing did not provide specific details of when and where an attack might take place.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/politics/18SEPT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The New York Times > Washington > Expert Kept From Speaking at Antidepressant Hearing: "Top Food and Drug Administration officials admitted yesterday that they barred the agency's top expert from testifying at a public hearing about his conclusion that antidepressants cause children to become suicidal because they viewed his findings as alarmist and premature"… Recent studies have shown that children given antidepressants are more likely to become suicidal than those given placebos. But the studies have lead to different interpretations by psychiatrists. The refusal by drug companies to publish the studies has worsened the confusion. Internal agency documents obtained by The New York Times show that federal health officials are divided, too. Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, an agency epidemiologist, was the man charged with analyzing 22 studies involving 4,250 children and seven drugs. In a carefully argued, 33-page memorandum, he concluded that children given antidepressants were almost twice as likely as those given placebos to become suicidal. He urged the agency to discourage doctors from prescribing to children all antidepressants except Prozac. Prozac is the only antidepressant proven effective in treating depressed children, and its studies showed no link with suicide, Dr. Mosholder wrote. Dr. Mosholder's conclusions mirrored those made by British health authorities. But Dr. Mosholder's supervisors, Drs. Mark Avigan and Anne Trontell, wrote memorandums disagreeing, according to the documents. "In particular, we disagree that the data are sufficiently robust to advocate preferential use" of Prozac in children, Dr. Trontell wrote. Health officials convened a special advisory committee on Feb. 2 to offer guidance on how the agency should respond to the studies. As the agency's principal reviewer, Dr. Mosholder was scheduled to speak. He was removed from the agenda, Dr. Temple said. Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he was investigating whether the agency inappropriately suppressed crucial findings. Representative Joe L. Barton, a Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he was also investigating. "It would have been very wrong for the F.D.A. to withhold any information it had about unintended consequences that might result from the use of antidepressants, especially for children and adolescents," Mr. Grassley said.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/16/politics/16DEPR.html

I.R.S. Request for More Terrorism Investigators Is Denied: "The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday." The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year. The disclosure, to a House Ways and Means subcommittee, came near the end of a routine hearing into the I.R.S. budget after most of the audience, including reporters, had left the hearing room. It comes as the White House is fighting to maintain its image as a vigorous and uncompromising foe of global terrorism in the face of questions about its commitment and competence raised by the administration's former terrorism czar, Richard A. Clarke, and its first Treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill. Representative Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat whose question to a witness about one line on the last page of a routine report to Congress prompted the disclosure, said he was dumbfounded at the budget decision. "The zeroing out of resources here made my jaw drop open," Mr. Pomeroy said. "It just leaps out at you." "There are some very tough questions that have to be answered about why the decision was made to eliminate these positions because going after the financial underpinnings of terrorist activity is crucial to rooting terrorism out and defeating it," Mr. Pomeroy said.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/business/31irs.html

Q&A: Lindsay on Bush vs. Clarke: "James M. Lindsay, who worked at the National Security Council (NSC) in 1996-97 where he was a colleague of Richard A. Clarke, says the Bush administration overemphasized the role of 'rogue' states in promoting terrorism. The argument Clarke made in testimony last week before the 9/11 commission and in his new book, 'Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror,' is that al Qaeda is not connected to any state. Lindsay shares that view: 'The administration's diagnosis on the war on terrorism is mistaken,' he says. 'And I think, using Clarke's argument, that the way the administration has approached it has actually made our battle against al Qaeda more difficult.' Lindsay is vice president, Maurice R. Greenberg chair, and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the co-author of 'America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy,' which received the 2003 Lionel Gelber Prize. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 29, 2004. There have been charges back and forth in the 9/11 commission last week, in the new book by Richard A. Clarke, and from the White House. What should the public think about all this? " There are two separate questions. One is the question of what was new that we learned last week. The answer is, not much. Most of what Dick Clarke attested to before the 9/11 commission was already in the public domain. It had been reported, among other places, in The New York Times and The Washington Post and, interestingly enough, in the Bob Woodward book, "Bush at War." In that book, Bush confirms much of what Dick Clarke said, particularly on the question of the relative priority his administration gave to al Qaeda before September 11. Bush's own statement was that he knew it was an issue, he knew they were a menace, but it wasn't "boiling in his blood." The second question is, what should Americans take away from the work of the 9/11 commission at this point? I think the broadest lesson is that before September 11, there wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm in the American political system for taking aggressive actions against al Qaeda. In the Clinton administration, for which al Qaeda was a priority--there is ample evidence that the administration mobilized at various times when it feared that an attack was about to be mounted--there was an inhibition as to how much it could do. There was only so much that the political environment would tolerate, in terms of what the president could do. And indeed, Sandy Berger [Clinton's national security adviser] was accused of being too aggressive on terrorism issues.… http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot2_032904.html

Defying Bush, Senate Increases Child Care Funds for the Poor: "Over strenuous objections from the White House, the Senate voted on Tuesday for a significant increase in money to provide child care to welfare recipients and other low-income families. The vote, 78 to 20, expressed broad bipartisan support for a proposal to add $6 billion to child care programs over the next five years, on top of a $1 billion increase that was already included in a sweeping welfare bill. The federal government now earmarks $4.8 billion a year for such child care assistance." The Bush administration objected to the increase in child care money, saying it was not needed.… Despite the White House objections, 31 Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, joined 46 Democrats and one independent in voting for the child care proposal, offered by Senators Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, and Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, as part of a bill to update the 1996 law. Members of both parties said they voted for the increase because Congress could not require welfare recipients to work longer hours without more child care. "If the aim of welfare reform is to move people off the welfare rolls and onto payrolls, if we want families to leave welfare and to stay off welfare, we have to provide them with affordable child care," Ms. Snowe said. "Only one in 7, or 15 percent, of eligible children are now receiving assistance with the cost of day care." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/31WELF.html?pagewanted=all&position=

When Goals Meet Reality: Bush's Reversal on 9/11 Testimony: "When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office three years ago, they made no secret of their intention to restore presidential powers and prerogatives that they believed had withered under the onslaught of Washington's cycle of televised, all-consuming investigations. But time and again, that effort by the Bush White House has fallen victim to political reality. It did so once more on Tuesday, when the president made a four-minute appearance in the White House press room to announce that he was giving in to demands from the 9/11 commission that he had resisted for months." His decision to reverse course, dropping his claim of executive privilege preventing public, sworn testimony by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was part of a distinct pattern that has emerged inside this highly secretive White House.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/31ASSE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The On-Line Conference On Community Organizing and Development: Web advice: "Using the Internet for Activism " The Activist Toolkit by ONE/Northwest (ONLINE NETWORKING for the ENVIRONMENT) will help with all kinds of technical advice for using the Internet in activism. Benton's Best Practices Toolkit, designed to help nonprofits make effective use of communications and information technologies. Contentbank, an online resource for information, tools and people dedicated to building Internet content that works for low-income and underserved communities by the Children's Partnership. Designing Effective Action Alerts for the Internet by Phil Agre, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles On-Line Advocacy provides a variety of resources for those thinking about an on-line advocacy program. The Institute for Global Communications maintains EcoNet, PeaceNet, ConflictNet, LaborNet, and WomensNet, with lots of on-line resources. NetAction shows ways that the Internet can support grass-roots activism, with a great deal of information resources and an on-line cyberactivism training course Organizers' Collaborative, harnessing the collaborative potential of the Internet and working to making computers accessible as a tool in support of community-based, social change organizing. Organizing on the Internet, a COMM-ORG list-serv message from Larry Yates with insights and links about Internet activism. Progressive Technology Project Resources for Organizers has technology assessment and planning tools. Technology Resources for Non-Profit Organizations provides web hosting, Internet Service Provide, hardware, and technology assistance links. Using the Internet for Organizing and Advocacy, by Dirk Slater of the LINC Project. The Virtual Volunteering Project, with advice, links, and resources supporting Internet activism.… http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/cboweb.htm#inetactivism

Deficit Study Disputes Role of Economy: "When President Bush and his advisers talk about the widening federal budget deficit, they usually place part of the blame on economic shocks ranging from the recession of 2001 to the terrorist attacks that year. But a report released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that economic weakness would account for only 6 percent of a budget shortfall that could reach a record $500 billion this year." Next year, the agency predicted, faster economic growth will actually increase tax revenues even as the deficit remains at a relatively high level of $374 billion. The new numbers confirm what many analysts have predicted for some time: that budget deficits in the decade ahead will stem less from the lingering effects of the downturn and much more from rising government spending and progressively deeper tax cuts.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/politics/16BUDG.html

Op-Ed Columnist: The Politics of Self-Pity: "Republicans relished their philosophy of personal responsibility last week with John Belushi's famous mantra: Cheeseburgercheeseburgercheeseburger. When the House passed the 'cheeseburger bill' to bar people from suing fast food joints for making them obese, Republican backers of the legislation scolded Americans, saying the fault lies not in their fries, but in themselves. 'Look in the mirror, because you're the one to blame,' said F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, home of brats and beer bellies." So it comes as something of a disappointment that the leader of the Republican Party, the man who epitomizes the conservative ideal, is playing the victim. President Bush has made the theme of his re-election campaign a whiny "not my fault." His ads, pilloried for the crass use of the images of a flag-draped body carried from ground zero and an Arab-looking everyman with the message, "We can fight against terrorists," actually have a more fundamental problem. They try to push off blame for anything that's gone wrong during Mr. Bush's tenure on bigger forces, supposedly beyond his control. One ad cites "an economy in recession. A stock market in decline. A dot-com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy. A test for all Americans." Mr. Bush's subtext is clear: If it weren't for all these awful things that happened, most of them hangovers from the Clinton era, I definitely could have fulfilled all my promises. I'm still great, but none of my programs worked because, well, stuff happens." It's as if his inner fat boy is complaining that a classic triple cheeseburger from Wendy's (940 calories and 56 grams of fat, 25 of them saturated, and 2,140 milligrams of sodium) jumped out of its wrapper and forced its way down his unwilling throat, topped off by a pushy Frosty (540 calories and 13 grams of fat, 8 of them saturated).… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/opinion/14DOWD.html

Democrats Demand Inquiry Into Charge by Medicare Officer: "Democrats called Saturday for an investigation of charges that the Bush administration threatened to fire a top Medicare official if he gave data to Congress showing the high costs of hotly contested Medicare legislation. The official, Richard S. Foster, chief actuary of the Medicare program, said he had been formally told not to provide the information to Congress. Moreover, he said, he was told that 'the consequences of insubordination would be very severe.'" Senior officials at the Medicare agency made it clear that "they would try and fire me" for responding directly to inquiries from Congress, Mr. Foster said in an interview on Saturday. Mr. Foster said he had received that message from Thomas A. Scully, who was then administrator of the Medicare program. Mr. Scully denies threatening Mr. Foster but confirms having told him to withhold certain information from Congress.… The Senate and the House approved different Medicare bills on June 27, after being assured that the cost would not exceed $400 billion over 10 years, the amount proposed by President Bush. Just two weeks earlier, Mr. Foster estimated that the drug benefits in a bill very similar to the Senate measure would cost $551.5 billion. Mr. Foster said he prepared "dozens and dozens of analyses and estimates" of the cost of the legislation last year. "All our estimates showed that the cost of the drug benefit, through 2013, would be in the range of $500 billion to $600 billion," he said. The cost estimates were all provided to Mr. Scully, and some were also sent to the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and top officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Foster said. For example, he said, "some cost estimates were sent directly to Doug Badger," the White House official who coordinates health policy for the administration. Mr. Duffy confirmed that the White House had received the actuary's cost estimates for parts of the bill. But he said the administration had relied on the Congressional Budget Office as "the primary authority" on the overall cost. "For many years," Mr. Foster said, "my office has provided technical assistance to the administration and Congress on a nonpartisan basis. "But in June 2003, the Medicare administrator, Tom Scully, decided to restrict the practice of our responding directly to Congressional requests and ordered us to provide responses to him so he could decide what to do with them. There was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes, which I thought was inappropriate." Mr. Foster, 55, was an actuary at the Social Security Administration from 1973 to 1995, when he became chief Medicare actuary.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/politics/14MEDI.html?pagewanted=all&position=

U.S. Set to Ease Some Provisions of School Law: "Education Secretary Rod Paige says the Bush administration is working to soften the impact of important provisions of its centerpiece school improvement law that local educators and state lawmakers have attacked as arbitrary and unfair. Tomorrow, the Education Department will announce policies relaxing a requirement that says teachers must have a degree or otherwise certify themselves in every subject they teach, Dr. Paige said in an interview on Friday. Officials are also preparing to offer new flexibility on regulations governing required participation rates on standardized tests, he said." Those changes would follow the recent relaxation of regulations governing the testing of special education students and those who speak limited English. They appear devised to defuse an outcry against the law, known as No Child Left Behind, in thousands of local districts, especially in Western states where powerful Republican lawmakers have called the law unworkable for tiny rural schools. Legislatures in Utah, Virginia and a dozen other states, many controlled by Republicans, are up in arms about what they see as the law's intrusion on states' rights. They have approved resolutions in recent weeks protesting or challenging the law.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/education/14CHIL.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Op-Ed Columnist: No More Excuses on Jobs: "It's true that there are two employment surveys, which have been diverging lately. The establishment survey, which asks businesses how many workers they employ, says that 2.4 million jobs have vanished in the last three years. The household survey, which asks individuals whether they have jobs, says that employment has actually risen by 450,000. The administration's supporters, understandably, prefer the second number." But the experts disagree. According to Alan Greenspan: "I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate. Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow." You may have heard that the establishment survey doesn't count jobs created by new businesses; not so. The bureau knows what it's doing — conservative commentators are raising objections only because they don't like the facts. And even the less reliable household survey paints a bleak picture of an economy in which jobs have lagged far behind population growth. The fraction of adults who say they are employed fell steeply between early 2001 and the summer of 2003, and has stagnated since then. But wait — hasn't the unemployment rate fallen since last summer? Yes, but that's entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force. Even if you're out of work, you're not counted as unemployed unless you're actively looking for a job. We don't know why so many people have stopped looking for jobs, but it probably has something to do with the fact that jobs are so hard to find: 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work more than 15 weeks, a 20-year record. In any case, the administration should feel grateful that so many people have dropped out. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, if they hadn't dropped out, the official unemployment rate would be an eye-popping 7.4 percent, not a politically spinnable 5.6 percent. In short, things aren't as bad as they seem; they're worse. But should we blame the Bush administration? Yes — because it refuses to learn from experience.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/opinion/12KRUG.html

C.I.A. Chief Says He's Corrected Cheney Privately: "George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again.…" Mr. Tenet identified three instances in which he had already corrected public statements by President Bush or Mr. Cheney or would do so, but he left the impression that there had been more. His comments, in testimony before the Armed Services Committee, came under sharp questioning from some Democrats on the panel, who have criticized him and the White House over prewar intelligence on Iraq. He insisted that he had honored his obligation to play a neutral role as the top intelligence adviser. In response to a question, he said he did not think the administration had misrepresented facts to justify going to war. Mr. Tenet said he planned to call Mr. Cheney's attention to a recent misstatement, in a Jan. 9 interview, when the vice president recommended as "your best source of information" on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda the contents of a disputed memorandum by a senior Pentagon official, Douglas J. Feith. That memorandum, sent last October to the Senate Intelligence Committee, portrayed what was presented as conclusive evidence of collaboration between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda, but it was never endorsed by intelligence agencies, who objected to Mr. Feith's findings. Mr. Tenet said he was not aware of Mr. Cheney's comments in that interview, published in The Rocky Mountain News, until Monday night.… According to government officials who have seen copies of the briefing documents, the information was presented to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, and included slides that were strongly disparaging of C.I.A. analyses. The other two instances in which Mr. Tenet said he had acted to correct administration statements involved the State of the Union address in January 2002, when he objected after the fact to Mr. Bush's inclusion of disputed intelligence about Iraq's seeking to obtain uranium from Africa, and a Jan. 22 radio interview in which Mr. Cheney portrayed trailers found in Iraq as being for biological weapons, and thus "conclusive evidence" that Iraq "did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction." That was the conclusion initially reached by American intelligence agencies last spring, and it is still on the C.I.A.'s Web site. But it has been disputed since last summer within intelligence agencies, and Mr. Tenet said he had told Mr. Cheney there was "no consensus" among American analysts, with those at the Defense Intelligence Agency in particular arguing that the trailers were for producing hydrogen.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/politics/10INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Kerry Condemns Bush for Failing to Back Aristide: "'I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period,' Mr. Kerry said on Friday, expressing astonishment that President Bush, who talks of supporting democratically elected leaders, withheld any aid and then helped spirit Mr. Aristide into exile after saying the United States could not protect him. 'Look, Aristide was no picnic, and did a lot of things wrong,' Mr. Kerry said. But Washington 'had understandings in the region about the right of a democratic regime to ask for help. And we contravened all of that. I think it's a terrible message to the region, democracies, and it's shortsighted.'…" In his first in-depth interview on foreign affairs since effectively winning the Democratic nomination, Mr. Kerry hop-scotched around the world in the course of an hour. He took issue with Mr. Bush's judgment beyond their well-aired differences on Iraq, questioning his handling of North Korea, the Mideast peace process and the spread of nuclear weapons and arguing that he would rewrite the Bush strategy that makes pre-emption a declared, central tenet of American policy.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/politics/campaign/07KERR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Public Agenda: First Choice 2004: "First Choice 2004 Know What You Want Before You Choose Who You Want" Most voters' guides compare the candidates. That's useful, but how can you decide who you want in office until you're sure about what you want that politician to do? And these days that's harder to figure out than it should be, particularly for young or first-time voters. When politicians present their plans, they naturally play up the quick, easy, cheap part of their program and downplay the messy, expensive, risky parts. In reality, however, many problems don't get solved without facing harsh choices; the government can't avoid pleasing some people and offending others. First Choice 2004 is designed to help you make the most of your vote by having strong, informed opinions about what those choices might be. With these guides, you can find out more about the problems facing the nation and be better armed when considering the plans politicians put forward.… http://www.publicagenda.org/firstchoice2004/index.cfm

Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy: "Writers often grumble about the criminal things editors do to their prose. The federal government has recently weighed in on the same issue — literally. It has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy. Anyone who publishes material from a country under a trade embargo is forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, or replace "inappropriate words," according to several advisory letters from the Treasury Department in recent months. Adding illustrations is prohibited, too. To the baffled dismay of publishers, editors and translators who have been briefed about the policy, only publication of "camera-ready copies of manuscripts" is allowed. The Treasury letters concerned Iran. But the logic, experts said, would seem to extend to Cuba, Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is banned without a government license. Laws and regulations prohibiting trade with various nations have been enforced for decades, generally applied to items like oil, wheat, nuclear reactors and, sometimes, tourism. Applying them to grammar, spelling and punctuation is an infuriating interpretation, several people in the publishing industry said. "It is against the principles of scholarship and freedom of expression, as well as the interests of science, to require publishers to get U.S. government permission to publish the works of scholars and researchers who happen to live in countries with oppressive regimes," said Eric A. Swanson, a senior vice president at John Wiley & Sons, which publishes scientific, technical and medical books and journals.…" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/national/28PUBL.html

Intelligence: Senator Rebuts Times Article on Panel Vote Over Subpoenas The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that the panel had not reached agreement on any specific plan to compel the release of documents from any source as part of its inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq. The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, disputed as inaccurate a report in The New York Times that the panel voted Thursday in closed session to move toward a possible subpoena unless the Bush administration produced certain documents within three weeks. Mr. Roberts and Democratic Congressional officials said Friday that there had been no vote on the issue and no agreement to any specific timetable during Thursday's meeting.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/politics/28INTE.html

Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan: "Faced with a refusal by the Bush administration to provide certain documents related to prewar intelligence on Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee voted in a closed session on Thursday to move toward a possible subpoena, according to senior Congressional officials. The bipartisan vote on the Republican-led panel sets a three-week deadline for a voluntary handover by the administration, after which the committee would employ unspecified 'further action,' which could only mean a subpoena, the officials said.…" The panel requested the information as part of its inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence about Iraq, including the disputed intelligence about Iraq's illicit weapons and ties to terrorism, the officials said. The White House has said publicly that it is complying with the panel's requests. But Congressional officials say the administration is continuing to withhold important information, including copies of the president's detailed daily written intelligence digest. After the independent commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks issued its own subpoena threat, the White House and the commission agreed earlier this year on a plan that is to allow representatives of that panel to review some copies of the presidential briefings, which are highly classified. But in discussions with the Senate committee, the White House has so far insisted that the documents be kept away from Congress, on the ground that they are covered by executive privilege.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27INTE.html

C.I.A. Admits It Didn't Give Weapon Data to the U.N.a>: "The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons. The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. " Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt. The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion. The White House, bolstered by Mr. Tenet, insisted that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings the White House issued assurances that the administration was providing the inspectors with the best information possible. In a telephone interview on Friday, Senator Levin said he now believed that Mr. Tenet had misled Congress, which he described as "totally unacceptable." Senior administration officials said Friday night that Ms. Rice had relied on information provided by intelligence agencies when she assured Senator Levin, in a letter on March 6, 2003, that "United Nations inspectors have been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction, missile and U.A.V.-related site the U.S. intelligence community has identified." Mr. Tenet said much the same thing in testimony on Feb. 12, 2003. U.A.V.'s are unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones. Asked about the contradiction between the C.I.A.'s current account and Ms. Rice's letter, the spokesman for the national security council, Sean McCormack, said, "Dr. Rice provided a good-faith answer to Senator Levin based on the best information that was made available to her." This is not the first time the White House and the C.I.A. have engaged in finger-pointing about the quality of the intelligence that formed the basis of administration statements. Last summer, Dr. Rice noted that Mr. Tenet had not read over the State of the Union address in which Mr. Bush said Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Africa, a statement the White House later acknowledged was based on faulty intelligence. That began a prolonged period of tension between the agency and the White House that has never fully abated, and may be inflamed by the C.I.A.'s acknowledgment to Senator Levin. The letter to Senator Levin, from Stanley M. Moskowitz, the agency's director of Congressional affairs, disclosed that the agency had shared information on only 84 of the 105 suspected priority weapons sites.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/politics/21WEAP.html

Schneier.com: Crypto-Gram: February 15, 2004: "The Politicization of Security Since 9/11, security has become an important political issue. The Bush administration has seized on terrorism as a means to justify its policies. Bush is running for re-election on a 'strong on security' platform. The Democrats are attacking the administration's record on security. Congress has voted on, and will continue to vote on, security countermeasures. And the FBI and the Justice Department are implementing others, even without Congressional approval. " …the Bush administration is using the fear of terrorism as a political tool. That being said, I'm not sure a Democrat would do anything different in Bush's place. Fear is a powerful motivator, and it takes strong ethics to resist the temptation to abuse it. I believe the real problem with America's national security policy is that the police are in charge; that's far more important than which party is in office. Some of the Democratic presidential candidates for president have been more rational about security, but none have discussed security in terms of trade-offs. On the Republican side, I've read some criticisms of Bush's heavy-handed security policies. Certainly the traditional Republican ideals of personal liberty and less government intervention are in line with smart security. And have the people who accuse me of hating Republicans forgotten that the Clipper Chip initiative was spearheaded by the Clinton administration? The Republicans don't have a monopoly on reducing civil liberties in the United States. Rational security is not the sole purview of any political party. Fighting stupid security does not have to be partisan. Bush's White House has done more to damage American national security than they have done to improve it. That's not an indictment of the entire Republican party; it's a statement about the current President, his Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It's a statement about the current political climate, where the police -- and I use this term to encompass the FBI, the Justice Department, the military, and everyone else involved in enforcing order -- and their interests are put ahead of the interests of the people.… http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0402.html#2

In Haze of Guard Records, a Bit of Clarity: "Until this month, the Republican defense of Mr. Bush's military record, sticking to the bare essentials, had successfully neutralized a succession of newspaper articles that raised questions about Mr. Bush's service. But now, with Iraq casualties mounting, with angry Democrats coalescing behind a decorated Vietnam veteran and with credibility questions dogging Mr. Bush, the broad-brush defense has been abandoned. Still, even through the fog of political combat it is possible from an examination of Mr. Bush's military records to get a firm fix on several important points along the path of his National Guard service. It is also possible to identify the areas that remain in dispute and the questions that have yet to be fully answered.… " http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/politics/campaign/15GUAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How America Doesn't Vote: "One outcome of this year's presidential election is already certain: people will show up to vote and find they have been wrongly taken off the rolls. The lists of eligible voters kept by localities around the country are the gateway to democracy, and they are also a national scandal. In 2000, the American public saw, in Katherine Harris's massive purge of eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat. Missouri's voting-list problems received far less attention, but may have disenfranchised more eligible voters." It's hard to judge where voting lists are being mishandled, since the procedures by which they are kept and corrected are shrouded in secrecy. That's the beginning of the problem. The public has a right to know that the rolls are being properly maintained — and to know it before the election. As became clear in 2000, after the fact is too late. Federal law provides some general guidelines about keeping voting rolls, but the basic decisions about who is eligible to vote are largely left to local officials. City and county election offices are responsible for adding new registrants to the voting rolls, and purging voters who die, move away or are convicted of felonies. If election offices had adequate resources and precise rules, voting lists might accurately reflect who is entitled to vote. But the reality is far more chaotic, and errors abound. Ms. Harris's 2000 purge in Florida is a classic case. Before it began, Ms. Harris cast a cloud of suspicion over the process by signing on as co-chairwoman of the Florida Bush campaign while she also served as the state's top election official. The purge itself required sensitive judgment calls, notably when to regard a name on a list of convicted felons as a valid match with a name on the voting rolls. According to post-election testimony before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Ms. Harris's office overruled the advice of the private firm that compiled the felon list and called for removing not just names that were an exact match, but ones that were highly inexact. Thousands of Florida voters ended up being wrongly purged. After a federal lawsuit that followed the infamous 2000 election, Florida restored some voters to the rolls, and agreed to start using more precise identification methods. But there is still no reliable system, and Florida voting rights advocates are bracing for a rerun of the mistakes of 2000.… The sad state of voting rolls may be due to underfunding and mismanagement, but it can create an appearance of ulterior motives. The voters wrongly removed by Ms. Harris's purge were disproportionately black — African-Americans make up one of the strongest Democratic voting groups in the state — as were the voters on the St. Louis inactive voters list. For years, partisan "ballot security" programs in the South singled out tens of thousands of black voters for removal from the voting rolls. Just this month, civil rights groups sued a Texas district attorney who threatened, in violation of the law, to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M University, a predominantly black school, if they register using their school addresses. Election officials have a duty to remove voters from the rolls when they have become ineligible, and to guard against voter fraud. But it must be done in a manner that takes great care to avoid preventing eligible voters from casting a ballot. Officials cannot allow vague rumors or reckless allegations about voter fraud to stampede them into overkill. In Missouri, elected officials have charged for years that large numbers of St. Louis residents were casting votes from vacant lots. A study conducted by The Post-Dispatch in 2001 found that in the vast majority of cases, the voters lived in homes that had been wrongly classified by the city. The Help America Vote Act, passed after the 2000 election, will eventually computerize voting rolls at the state level. Most of the decisions about who is eligible to vote, however, will still be made by the officials who are making them now. The new law also requires that when there is a dispute about whether someone is eligible to vote, he or she must be given a "provisional" ballot, whose status will be determined later. But the ultimate decision about whether to count the ballot will remain with local election officials.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15SUN1.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Stung by Exiles' Role, C.I.A. Orders a Shift in Procedures: "American intelligence officials who before the war were sifting through claims that Iraq had illicit weapons were generally not told that much of the information came from defectors linked to exile organizations that were promoting an American invasion, according to senior United States intelligence officials. The claims, which have largely proved to be unsubstantiated, included those from a defector who was identified as early as May 2002 as a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, reports based on his debriefings arranged by the Iraqi National Congress found their way into documents and speeches used by the Bush administration to justify the war. The nondisclosure of the source's connection to an exile organization was 'standard practice' under the procedures in place at the time, intelligence officials said on Thursday. But that episode and others have prompted the Central Intelligence Agency to order a major change in its procedures. Operations officers will now be required to tell analysts more about sources' identities and possible motivations.…" So deeply held was the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons — within the intelligence community and beyond — that it took American interrogators several months to concede that Iraqi prisoners who repeatedly said Iraq did not have such arsenals might be telling the truth, current and former intelligence officials said in recent interviews. "They denied that there were weapons, and so we polygraphed them," a senior intelligence official said. "And even when they passed, our first response was to say, wow, they really are good at deception." As early as May of last year, the month that major combat operations ceased, senior Iraqi officials and scientists in American custody were uniformly denying knowledge of any chemical or biological weapons production or reconstituted nuclear program, senior intelligence officials said. But the administration gave its first public hint that the suspected weapons stockpiles might not exist only in October, in an interim report by David A. Kay.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Bush's Duty, and Privilege: "Mr. Bush has been nothing if not consistent. He has always been about the privileged few. And that's an attitude that flies in the face of the basic precepts of an egalitarian society. It's an attitude that fosters, that celebrates, unfairness and injustice. More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, another war of choice that was marketed deceitfully to the American people. Mr. Bush's experience in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam years is especially relevant today because it throws a brighter spotlight on who he really is. He has walked a charmed road, with others paying the price of his journey, every step of the way." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13HERB.html

Op-Ed Columnist: The Real Man: "To understand why questions about George Bush's time in the National Guard are legitimate, all you have to do is look at the federal budget published last week. No, not the lies, damned lies and statistics — the pictures. By my count, this year's budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming across the Yangtze River." It was not ever thus. Bill Clinton's budgets were illustrated with tables and charts, not with worshipful photos of the president being presidential. The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that office. Operation Flight Suit was only slightly more over the top than other Bush photo-ops, like the carefully staged picture that placed Mr. Bush's head in line with the stone faces on Mount Rushmore. The goal is to suggest that it's unpatriotic to criticize the president, and to use his heroic image to block any substantive discussion of his policies. In fact, those 27 photos grace one of the four most dishonest budgets in the nation's history — the other three are the budgets released in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Just to give you a taste: remember how last year's budget contained no money for postwar Iraq — and how administration officials waited until after the tax cut had been passed to mention the small matter of $87 billion in extra costs? Well, they've done it again: earlier this week the Army's chief of staff testified that the Iraq funds in the budget would cover expenses only through September. But when administration officials are challenged about the blatant deceptions in their budgets — or, for that matter, about the use of prewar intelligence — their response, almost always, is to fall back on the president's character. How dare you question Mr. Bush's honesty, they ask, when he is a man of such unimpeachable integrity? And that leaves critics with no choice: they must point out that the man inside the flight suit bears little resemblance to the official image.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13KRUG.html

Trippi's Two Americas: "In this political season, technology keeps cutting both ways. Productivity is up, keeping the market moving forward, corporate profits up and interest rates down. But that same efficiency also maintains the jobless recovery. So too does broadband, virtualization and outsourcing. Where Edwards' Two Americas are classic Democratic haves and have-nots, Trippi's are The Onlines and The Offlines. And the same dynamics that brought Dean to prominence also served to accelerate his decline. The transparency of the network that allowed rapid fundraising and bubble-up communications within the campaign also allowed Kerry, Edwards and Clark to cherry-pick voter lists and redirect them to their own volunteer corps of handwritten letter authors.… " Trippi didn't have the luxury of waiting out the down cycle. The Dean campaign was primed to counter the front-loaded primary schedule designed by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe to wrap up the nomination by early spring. If anything, Trippi was too successful, peaking too soon. Though an experienced operative, he violated the fundamental rule of salesmanship: Once you've closed the sale, shut up. We all know how quickly things fell apart once the campaign went off the rails. But Trippi made it clear he understood from the beginning the fundamental disconnect between the Internet and political crowds. "The Internet community doesn't understand the hard realities of American politics," he said, and the political press doesn't get the Internet. Of course, Trippi then tarred the mainstream media with the "broadcast-politics" brush, charging the networks with purveying entertainment, not information, with 933 replays of Dean's infamous scream speech. To Trippi, what the media did in taking the speech out of context was damaging—"not what the Governor did.…" http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3048,a=118842,00.asp

The President's Guard Service: "The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him. Investigative reporting by The Boston Globe, our sibling newspaper, revealed in 2000 that Mr. Bush had reported for duty and flown regularly in his first four Texas Guard years but dropped off the Guard's radar screen when he went to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. The payroll records show that he was paid for many days of duty in the first four months of 1972, when he was in Texas, but then went more than six months without being paid, virtually the entire time he was working on the Senate campaign in Alabama. That presumably means he never reported for duty during that period" Mr. Bush was credited with 14 days of service at unspecified locations between Oct. 28, 1972, and the end of April 1973. The commanding officer of the Alabama unit to which Mr. Bush was supposed to report long ago said that he had never seen him appear for duty, and Mr. Bush's superiors at the Texas unit to which he returned wrote in May 1973 that they could not write an annual evaluation of him because he had not been seen there during that year. Those statements are so jarringly at odds with the payroll data that they demand further elaboration..… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/opinion/11WED1.html

Chicago Tribune | Bush releases military records: "But the documents also show gaps of weeks and months in Bush's service record that the White House could not explain, making it unlikely that these records will resolve a heated election-year debate over whether Bush fulfilled his commitment to the Guard or received special treatment from military officials.…" No records prove Bush showed up for duty in Alabama, and the commanding officer of that unit, retired Gen. William Turnipseed, maintains that he never saw Bush. The documents released Tuesday included pay records that spelled out which days Bush reported for duty in 1972 and 1973. But they do not indicate where Bush worked on those days. The White House said it has not been able to find anyone who served with Bush who could verify that he worked at the Alabama unit.… http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0402110328feb11,1,3170943.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

An Antiwar Forum in Iowa Brings Federal Subpoenas: "To hear the antiwar protesters describe it, their forum at a local university last fall was like so many others they had held over the years. They talked about the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to convey their feelings about Iraq into acts of civil disobedience." But last week, subpoenas began arriving seeking details about the forum's sponsor — its leadership list, its annual reports, its office location — and the event itself. On Monday, lawyers for the sponsor, the Drake University chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, went to court in an effort to block the federal prosecutors' demands. Those who attended the forum, at least four of whom said they had received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury on Tuesday, said that they did not know what to make of the inquiry and that they feared it was intended to quash protest. Late on Monday, prosecutors in the United States attorney's office for the southern district of Iowa took the unusual step of issuing a confirmation of the investigation, stressing that its scope was limited to learning more about one person who had tried to scale a security fence at an Iowa National Guard base in a protest a day after the forum. "The United States attorney's office does not prosecute persons peacefully and lawfully engaged in rallies which are conducted under the protection of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," a written statement issued by the prosecutor here, Stephen Patrick O'Meara, said. Prosecutors also delayed the grand jury appearances by a month, a move local civil liberties officials interpreted as a sign that the government might be backing away from the investigation. "I'd say the prosecutors are recognizing the groundswell of reaction that has happened in the face of this extraordinary thing they've done," said R. Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union. Still, the protesters, their lawyers and some national civil liberties advocates described the investigation into the attendance rolls and leadership lists of the lawyers' group as highly unusual in recent years. Some said it could send a chilling message far beyond Iowa, leaving those who consider voicing disapproval of the administration's policy in Iraq, or anywhere else, wondering whether they too might receive added scrutiny.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Op-Ed Columnist: Lost in Credibility Gulch: "Samuel Butler said, 'I care about truth not for truth's sake but for my own.' Mr. Bush presented himself in 2000 as an honest, straight-shooting Texan, an aw-shucks kind of guy whose word, unlike that of the sitting president ('I did not have sexual relations . . .'), could always be trusted." The credibility that he enjoyed during that campaign, and which reached a peak in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, has steadily eroded since then. He said he was a compassionate conservative, but he has hammered programs designed to assist the poorest and most vulnerable among us. His administration has taken a blowtorch to the environment. And his fiscal policies are so outlandish that liberals, moderates and conservatives are asking if he's taken leave of his senses. During the run-up to war, the public heard ominous references to mushroom clouds and was encouraged to believe there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. It's time to put an end to the fantasies and the deceit, which have landed us in a quagmire overseas and the equivalent of fiscal quicksand at home. It's not too much to ask that the president of the United States speak the clear truth about his policies and their implications.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/09/opinion/09HERB.html