Lott Rebuked for Delaying Campaign Finance Bill Senator John McCain pushed through the Senate a rebuke of the Republican leader today for acting to "thwart the will of the majority" by failing to send to the House the overhaul of the campaign finance law that was handily approved by the Senate last month. The resolution, which was attached as an amendment to education legislation, did not mention Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader from Mississippi. Because the education bill is still being debated, the resolution has no immediate effect. But Mr. McCain made quite clear in debate that it was directed straight at Mr. Lott and was a repudiation of his quiet delay of campaign finance legislation. "What we are seeing here is a minority of one stopping the will of this body," Mr. McCain said. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/politics/16DONA.html?pagewanted=all

Bush Task Force on Energy Worked in Mysterious Ways

"It's an incredible insult to the consumers of this country that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the consumer organizations were invited to the meetings or otherwise participated."

Among those who said they felt shut out was the Consumer Federation of America, the nation's largest consumer-advocacy group. Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat and former senator from Ohio who is now chairman of the group, said, "The energy crisis is first and foremost a price crisis affecting consumers." Juleanna Glover Weiss, Mr. Cheney's spokeswoman, said no invitations were issued and groups had to request meetings. "We didn't invite anybody to meet with us," she said. The leaders of about two dozen environmental groups had asked to see Mr. Cheney, whose office turned down their requests. Instead, midlevel staff members from the groups met with Mr. Lundquist and Ms. Knutson. Alys Campaigne, legislative director of the National Resources Defense Council, said that that meeting lasted about 40 minutes but that the size of the group inhibited substantive policy discussion. "We asked who the deputies were on different issues so we could have more in-depth conversations, and they wouldn't tell us," she said. "They said, `Just send us paper, we'll take a look at it.' The meeting felt like window dressing for us, but they got to check off the box that they consulted with stake-holders." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/politics/16LOBB.html?pagewanted=all

The Fine Print: Senate Tax Bill Isn't All That It Seems Under the tax bill the Senate Finance Committee will take up on Tuesday, the federal estate tax would be repealed in 2011. Yet most people with estates large enough to owe taxes before the repeal date would owe more in taxes after the repeal. That is one of several anomalies in a bill that was jury-rigged to include all the different tax cuts President Bush campaigned for, more tax relief for low- and moderate-income taxpayers than the president proposed and a total cost of no more than the $1.35 trillion over 11 years that Congress allotted in the budget plan adopted last week. Another oddity relates to how the bill would increase the amount of income exempt from the alternative minimum tax. The purpose is to make sure that millions more people do not have to pay this alternative tax and thus be worse off than they would have been without the bill's cut in income-tax rates. But the increased exemption would only be in effect from 2002 through 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/politics/15TAX.html?pagewanted=all

Far From Dead, Subsidies Fuel Big Farms Surveying the farm that he carved out in the Panhandle landscape of dry mesquite and sagebrush, Mr. Bezner says the key to his family's prosperity is federal farm subsidies. "We're successful primarily because of government help," said Mr. Bezner, 59, an entomologist who grew up on a farm outside Amarillo. Although Mr. Bezner hesitated to discuss the size of those subsidies (and refused to divulge how much he makes without federal help, or what his expenses are), government documents show that in the last four years of the 1990's, he received $1.38 million in direct federal payments. Most remarkably, Mr. Bezner and the other big farmers here in Hartley County and across the country received those record-breaking payments in an era when farm subsidies were slated for extinction. Far From Dead, Subsidies Fuel Big Farms

White House Is Denying Pulling In Welcome Mat "Up until this administration, we normally got 8 to 10 busloads of tourists into the White House four, five times a week," Mr. Patterson said. "Now we're lucky if we get one in once a week. Today we needed 80 tickets; we got 10. I got drivers who have been here 30, 35 years and all they talk about is how the White House is letting fewer people in. It's just not right; we are the people and that is our house." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/politics/13TOUR.html?pagewanted=all

Blacks and Hispanics in House Balk on Campaign Finance Bill Many blacks in Florida complained that they were prevented from voting because their names had been removed or omitted from voter rolls and that poll workers and election officials were ill-prepared to help them. "Florida made all of us aware of what goes on at the street level, the need for voter registration for example," said Representative Albert R. Wynn, a Maryland Democrat who is heading a committee created by the Congressional Black Caucus to study the issue. Soft money was often used by the parties for get-out-the vote efforts, Mr. Wynn said, adding, "I'm concerned about the adverse effects on voter registration, voter mobilization." After the study group met tonight, he said it had not come to a decision and wanted to "look at some options." The Senate version of campaign finance legislation would not only ban soft money, but also raise the limits on regulated donations given by individuals to federal candidates to $2,000 per election from $1,000. Some black lawmakers say they will go along with that increase only if political action committees are allowed to give more money to candidates. Historically, minority candidates have a more difficult time competing for individual contributions, while they have drawn support from political action committees connected to labor unions, minority political organizations and liberal ideological groups. Some black and Hispanic lawmakers say they are deeply disturbed that changes in the campaign finance law are being taken up in Congress while legislation to overhaul the electoral system, like making investments in new voting machines, has languished. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/politics/09DONA.html?pagewanted=all

Gains Found for the Poor in Rigorous Preschool But the study also sounds an early warning about the Bush plan. The Chicago preschool program, which is operated by the public school system in 23 centers across the city, requires parents to participate in their children's homework assignments and also helps families arrange medical care and social services. In setting priorities for Head Start, the Bush administration has thus far ranked those aspects of the program � traditionally its cornerstones � below reading, much to the concern of Head Start advocates. "It's more than just providing basic literacy skills," said Arthur J. Reynolds, a professor of social work at Wisconsin, who was the lead author of the study. "You've got to put parents in classrooms, as well as kids." The study being released today tracked 989 children, all born in 1980, who enrolled in the Chicago Child Parent Center Program no later than age 4, and were taught an average of 2.5 hours a day for 18 months. Nearly all children were living at or below the poverty level, and many of the children and the parents had to be recruited and cajoled to attend by the centers' staff, who canvassed for students door to door. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/national/09SCHO.html?pagewanted=all

InternetNews - Web Developer News -- OASIS Begins Work on Election Markup Language If this works out, open-source fans would have a worthy achievement to cheer after the 2000 election recount debacle in Florida. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a non-profit XML interoperability consortium, this week put the finishing touches on a technical committee to standardize the exchange of election and voter services information using XML. Succinctly titled Election Markup Language, the standard, when hashed out by the new OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee, would guide such data as voter registration and ballots safely among hardware, software and vendors. http://www.internetnews.com/wd-news/article/0,,10_759241,00.html

News Analysis: To European Eyes, It's America the Ugly Before becoming president, George W. Bush seemed acutely aware of the need for a country as powerful as the United States to show restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us." The words appear to have been forgotten. A torrent of hostile articles in Europe has greeted Mr. Bush's first three months in office. Their chief theme has been the arrogance of what the German weekly Der Spiegel recently called "the snarling, ugly Americans." On its Web site, the respected Munich daily S�ddeutsche Zeitung lists seven articles summing up the themes of Mr. Bush's first 100 days. They are not unrepresentative of widespread European views. The titles include: "Selling Weapons to Taiwan: Bush Throws His Weight Around in the Pacific"; "North Korea: Bush Irritates the Asians"; "World Court: No Support From United States"; "Iraq: Bombing Instead of Diplomacy"; and "Climate Agreement: The United States Abandons the Kyoto Protocol." There can be little doubt that it was irritation over those and other issues that lay behind the vote last week that ousted the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time, while leaving countries like Algeria and Libya as elected members. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07EURO.html?pagewanted=all

U.S. Scientists See Big Power Savings From Conservation Their studies, completed just before the Bush administration took office, are at odds with the administration's repeated assertions in recent weeks that the nation needs to build a big new power plant every week for the next 20 years to keep up with the demand for electricity, and that big increases in production of coal and natural gas are needed to fuel those plants. A lengthy and detailed report based on three years of work by five national laboratories said that a government-led efficiency program emphasizing research and incentives to adopt new technologies could reduce the growth in electricity demand by 20 percent to 47 percent. That would be the equivalent of between 265 and 610 big 300-megawatt power plants, a steep reduction from the 1,300 new plants that the administration predicts will be needed. The range depends on how aggressively the government encourages efficiency in buildings, factories and appliances, as well as on the price of energy, which affects whether new technologies are economically attractive. Another laboratory study found that government office buildings could cut their own use of power by one-fifth at no net cost to the taxpayers by adopting widespread energy conservation measures, paying for the estimated $5 billion investment with the energy savings. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/national/06CONS.html?pagewanted=all

Punching Holes in Internet Walls On one side are the governments that have restricted Web access. In some countries, like Singapore, most of the banned sites are pornographic. Many of these countries also block the sites of political dissidents, but the censorship may be much broader than that. In the Middle East, for example, anti- Islamic sites and gay sites are often off- limits. In China, the prohibition includes the sites of Western publications, human rights organizations and Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement. And Saudi Arabia also blocks sites for financial reasons: its ban on Internet telephony favors its own state-run telephone monopoly. Countering such government restrictions are services, some free, that are provided by companies like SafeWeb (www.safeweb.com), Anonymizer (www.anonymizer.com), SilentSurf.com (www.silentsurf.com) and the Cloak (www.the-cloak.com). During the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, for example, Anonymizer, based in San Diego, set up free services so that Kosovo residents could communicate with less fear. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/26/technology/26SAFE.html?pagewanted=all

Supreme Court Limits Scope of a Main Civil Rights Law The Supreme Court today substantially limited the effectiveness of one of the most important civil rights laws as a weapon against discrimination in the way federal grant money is used. The case before the court was a class-action lawsuit contending that the State of Alabama violated federal law by requiring applicants for drivers' licenses to take the written examination in English. Alabama, which like all states receives federal law enforcement and highway money, is the only state to limit its drivers' license exams to English. Two lower federal courts ruled that the policy had the prohibited effect of discriminating on the basis of national origin. But the Supreme Court said today that private lawsuits were not authorized under the law at issue, Title VI, which itself prohibits only intentional discrimination. The law authorizes federal agencies to issue regulations that bring their own programs into compliance with Title VI, and many regulations go beyond intentional discrimination to also bar the use of federal money in programs with discriminatory effects. The court said today that the "private right of action," the ability of private plaintiffs to go to court to enforce Title VI, extended no further than the law itself and did not apply to the regulations. The decision reflected a major battle on the court, and the hard feelings were evident in the courtroom today. In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said "it makes no sense" to differentiate for the purposes of private Title VI lawsuits between intentional discrimination and discriminatory impact. "There is but one private action to enforce Title VI, and we already know that such an action exists," he said. Justice Stevens read portions of his dissent from the bench, a step justices take only rarely to call attention to developments they regard as particularly wrongheaded. He criticized the majority not only for its decision, but also for reaching out to take the case in the first place in the absence of any conflict among the lower federal courts on the issue. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/national/25DISC.html?pagewanted=all

Back in Texas, Bush's Legacy Comes Under Fire �George W. Bush is having an unusually tough time with the Texas Legislature. Many of the same lawmakers who passed tax cuts championed by Mr. Bush are now talking about future tax increases. Legislators in both parties agree that the state's charter schools, one of Mr. Bush's pet programs, need to be fixed. His signature environmental initiative is regarded as weak, and legislators are debating how much it should be toughened. Lawmakers also are considering easing enrollment requirements in Medicaid � a move resisted during Mr. Bush's tenure � so more poor children can be covered. And lawmakers are moving forward on several death penalty fronts, including a bill similar to one Mr. Bush vetoed two years ago that sponsors say would help provide better lawyers for indigent defendants. Just today, the Texas House of Representatives gave preliminary approval to a bill that would ban the execution of mentally retarded inmates, a measure that failed in the House two years ago after Mr. Bush spoke out against it. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/politics/24TEXA.html?pagewanted=all

U.S. Crew Says It Tried to Block Attack in Peru The unarmed American tracking plane � a Cessna Citation jet owned by the Air Force � was flown by a crew of three Americans under a C.I.A. contract; they were a pilot, a co-pilot and a technician, officials said. Also on board was the Peruvian officer, whose job was to direct Peru's military interceptors to suspicious planes. The tracking aircraft, one of many United States planes that are used in a longstanding program to help Peru and Colombia choke off the cocaine trade, played a crucial role in spotting the missionaries' plane and raising suspicions about its flight, according to the American officials. But they insisted that Peru's military was in command and control of drug interceptions, despite considerable support from the American military, anti-drug and intelligence agencies. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/23/world/23PLAN.html?pagewanted=all

Despite Sub Inquiry, Navy Still Sees Need for Guests on Ships Two targets of the inquiry � the Greeneville's captain and a sailor who failed to manually plot the location of the Japanese ship � have reversed their accounts on whether the presence of civilians in the control room was a factor in the crash. "In my opinion the investigation is not complete," said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, in Washington. "Never to summon 16 witnesses jammed into that control room is bizarre. "The Navy, I think, is collectively desperately concerned not to give up the distinguished visitor program," Mr. Fidell added. "They don't even want to talk about this. This is a real big deal to the Navy. To some people here, it seemed an implied threat that, if Commander Waddle were to go to a court-martial, Mr. Gittins would raise the presence of civilians as part of his defense and might produce embarrassing material about the visitor program. Commander Waddle, in his testimony � given voluntarily after he had been denied immunity � said the 16 civilians crowded into the control room did not interfere with operations. Asked twice by different admirals if the civilians were a factor in the accident, Commander Waddle each time replied, "No, sir." But last Monday, the main article on the front page of The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Mr. Gittins as saying that Commander Waddle had changed his mind and now believed that the presence of the civilians broke the crew's concentration at a crucial time. The article also noted that the visitors program "could figure prominently in the unlikely event of a court-martial and prove an embarrassment for the Navy." That same day, Time magazine published an interview with Commander Waddle that said the skipper had "reversed his previously benign view of the presence of civilians on board." Time quoted Commander Waddle as saying, "Having them in the control room at least interfered with our concentration." But Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest changed his account in the opposite way. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/23/national/23VISI.html?pagewanted=all

U.S. Identified Baptists' Plane as Drug Carrier The United States Customs Service flies surveillance planes into what it calls the "source zone" for drugs, but a spokesman, Dennis Murphy, said today that his agency's planes were not involved in tracking the missionaries' plane on Friday. A Customs Service radar plane based in the Caribbean was flying in Colombia on Friday, but it was far north of the path taken by the Cessna 185 and did not observe it, Mr. Murphy said. The Customs Service has a P-3, a four-engine turboprop, the same kind of plane that the Navy uses to track enemy submarines, based in the Caribbean. Normal practice for the Customs Service is that once a radar plane locates a suspicious plane in flight, it radios for a Citation, a smaller plane that can fly at low speeds, to observe the target visually. Both the radar plane and the observation plane carry a representative from the host country, said Mr. Murphy, who communicates directly with the air force of the country involved. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/world/22PLAN.html?pagewanted=all

Opposition Builds to Spending Cuts in Bush's Budget The White House says the cuts are needed to put federal spending on a more sustainable path after several years of rapid growth. But some members of Congress from both parties have objected that the cuts are compelled mainly to pay for the large tax cuts Mr. Bush has been seeking. Mr. Bush says he can save billions of dollars by reducing "corporate subsidies," eliminating "duplicative and ineffective programs" and wiping out pork barrel projects approved at the behest of individual lawmakers. But the reality is often more complex than the White House suggests. The National Association of Children's Hospitals and the American Academy of Pediatrics have joined members of Congress trying to prevent cuts in children's programs. The administration wants to trim $35 million from a $235 million program for training doctors at children's hospitals. The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials is fighting other proposed cuts, including one to slice $700 million from a program for construction and repair of public housing. Congress provided $3 billion for the public housing capital fund last year. Likewise, a wide range of businesses are scrambling to protect the Export-Import Bank from cuts that will be proposed by Mr. Bush. Defenders of the bank include the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and exporters of all sizes. Mr. Bush is expected to propose a 24 percent reduction in the bank's budget, below the current level of $927 million. Representative Jim Kolbe, the Arizona Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the bank, said, "We need to be expanding, not reducing, the amount the bank gets." Mr. Bush will also propose eliminating federal subsidies for loans made under the main lending program of the Small Business Administration. He would raise fees charged to borrowers and to lenders. Mr. Bush also plans to reduce the budget for one of President Bill Clinton's favorite programs, Community Oriented Policing Services, to $855 million next year, from $1 billion this year, administration officials said. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said this would be a serious mistake, "a misguided retreat from our commitment to keep crime down." Mr. Bush wants to save $25 million by eliminating a disaster preparedness program known as Project Impact. He said the program, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "has not proved effective." Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, has won support from the Senate for her efforts to save the program, which shores up buildings to minimize damage. The project, Ms. Murray said, saved lives in the earthquake that jolted the Pacific Northwest on Feb. 28. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/09/politics/09BUDG.html?pagewanted=all

Fears on Privacy Law Spur Warning by Armey � to help business evade regulation and to prevent House Republicans from trying to bring new privacy bills forward. Few issues have risen to prominence as quickly as privacy. As Americans have gone online by the millions, they have become increasingly concerned over ways that their digital footprints can be traced, especially by companies that use personal data for marketing. The Federal Trade Commission recommended that Congress legislate privacy standards for Web sites, and a number of lawmakers have filed bills intended to fill in the patchwork of privacy laws on the books. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/09/technology/09PRIV.html?pagewanted=all

Focus on Farms Masks Estate Tax Confusion Harlyn Riekena worried that his success would cost him when he died. Thirty-seven years ago he quit teaching to farm and over the years bought more and more of the rich black soil here in central Iowa. Now he and his wife, Karen, own 950 gently rolling acres planted in soybeans and corn. The farmland alone is worth more than $2.5 million, and so Mr. Riekena, 61, fretted that estate taxes would take a big chunk of his three grown daughters' inheritance.

Almost no working farmers do, according to data from an Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet been published.

That might seem a reasonable assumption, what with all the talk in Washington about the need to repeal the estate tax to save the family farm. "To keep farms in the family, we are going to get rid of the death tax," President Bush vowed a month ago; he and many others have made the point repeatedly. But in fact the Riekenas will owe nothing in estate taxes. Almost no working farmers do, according to data from an Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet been published. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/business/08ESTA.html?pagewanted=all

Bush Budget on Health Care Would Cut Aid to Uninsured Budget documents from the Department of Health and Human Services show that these programs, providing "health care access for the uninsured," would be reduced 86 percent, to $20 million, from $140 million in the current fiscal year. The programs received $40 million in 2000. So far the White House has not disclosed many details of Mr. Bush's budget, which would cut taxes by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. But today's disclosure provides the second example of significant cuts in domestic programs. Earlier, administration officials acknowledged that the budget would include cuts in some programs for children and children's hospitals. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/04/politics/04HEAL.html?pagewanted=all