Plans for Terror Inquiries Still Fall Short, Report Says The Justice Department, criticized for its treatment of hundreds of illegal immigrants jailed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has not done enough to avoid a repeat by spelling out clear criteria for determining who is considered a terrorist suspect, an internal report concluded today. In its report, the Justice Department inspector general's office said federal authorities had not developed adequate plans for classifying illegal immigrants arrested in terror investigations to ensure that those with no ties to terrorism would be cleared quickly and adequate F.B.I. resources would be devoted to such investigations. The inspector general's report offered a mixed verdict on the progress the authorities had made in avoiding the pitfalls surrounding the arrests of more than 700 illegal immigrants after the 9/11 attacks. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/politics/09DETA.html

Another Friday Outrage By PAUL KRUGMAN When the E.P.A. makes our air dirtier, or the Interior Department opens a wilderness to mining companies, or the Labor Department strips workers of some more rights, the announcement always comes late on Friday � when the news is most likely to be ignored on TV and nearly ignored by major newspapers. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, announced settlements with energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis. Why on Friday? Because the settlements were a joke: the companies got away with only token payments. It was yet another demonstration of how electricity deregulation has gone wrong. Most independent experts now believe that during 2000-2001, price manipulation by energy companies, mainly taking the form of "economic withholding" � keeping capacity offline to drive up prices � added billions of dollars to California's electricity bills. A March FERC report concluded that there had been extensive manipulation of prices in both the natural gas and electricity markets. Using methods widely accepted among economists, the California Independent System Operator � which operates the power grid � estimated that withholding by electricity companies had cost the state $8.9 billion. This estimate doesn't include the continuing cost of long-term contracts the state signed, at inflated prices, to keep the lights on during the crisis. Yet the charges energy companies agreed to added up to only a bit more than $1 million. That is, the average Californian was bilked of more than $250, but the state will receive compensation of about 3 cents.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

Taking Arabs Seriously Marc Lynch From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003 RIGHT GOAL, WRONG APPROACH For the hawks in the Bush administration, one of the keys to understanding the Middle East is Osama bin Laden's observation that people flock to the "strong horse." Bush officials think U.S. problems in the region stem in part from "weak" responses offered by previous administrations to terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, and they came into office determined to reestablish respect for U.S. power abroad. After nearly two years of aggressive military actions, however, the United States' regional standing has never been lower. As the recent Pew Global Attitudes survey put it, "the bottom has fallen out of Arab and Muslim support for the United States." The failure to find dramatic evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has spurred widespread debate in the Middle East about the real purpose of the recent war, which most Arab commentators now see as a bid by the United States to consolidate its regional and global hegemony. U.S. threats against Iran and Syria play into this fear, increasing a general determination to resist. And the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad, the escalating Iraqi anger at what is always described as an American occupation, and the seemingly ambivalent U.S. attitude toward Iraqi democracy have reinforced deep preexisting skepticism about Washington's intentions. Because of the speed with which intense anti-Americanism has recently emerged across all social groups in the region -- including educated, Westernized Arab liberals -- the problem cannot be attributed to enduring cultural differences, nor to long-standing U.S. policies such as support for Israel or local authoritarian leaders. Arabs themselves clearly and nearly unanimously blame specific Bush administration moves, such as the invasion of Iraq and what they see as a desultory and one-sided approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations. But perhaps even more important than the substance of the administration's policies is the crude, tone-deaf style in which those policies have been pursued. The first step toward improving the United States' image, therefore, must be figuring out how to address Arabs and Muslims effectively. Ironically, for this administration above all others, taking Arab public opinion seriously cannot be considered either a luxury or a concession to "Arabists" lurking in the bureaucracy. It is instead crucial to the success of the administration's own strategy, which links U.S. security to a democratic and liberal transformation of the region. The Bush team's practice, however, has worked against its stated goals, largely because it has been based on misguided assumptions about the Arab world.� http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030901faessay82506/marc-lynch/taking-arabs-seriously.html

Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster? Madeleine K. Albright From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003 Summary: Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has pressured every country in the world to make a simple choice: Are you with the United States or with the terrorists? But by casting the choice so starkly--and expanding the war on terror to include its campaign in Iraq--Washington has alienated many natural and potential allies and made the fight against al Qaeda more difficult. It didn't have to be this way. The White House has acted as if it doesn't care what others think, and the country is paying the price for its mistake. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030901faessay82501/madeleine-k-albright/bridges-bombs-or-bluster.html

DON'T TREAD ON ME Is the war on terror really a war on rights? The Declaration of Independence heralded the values of freedom, justice and equality in a country whose government was accountable to the people. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrined these and other principles, which became the hallmark of this country. We extolled the virtues of our legal system and held it as a model to others. Across 200 years, the progress has been steady in affirming constitutional rights and embedding the rule of law in our society. Among the memorable road hazards of that historic trip are: Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans, Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt for Communists or their sympathizers among Americans of all walks of life but particularly among intellectuals and the movie industry. But the nation has never before seen a more systematic erosion of civil rights than after 9/11. This has taken the form of undermining the legal system, coupled with egregious governmental abuses of power, all in the name of combating terrorism. The targets of these measures have been Arabs and Muslims, but the effects extend to everyone. The erosion actually started in 1996 with anti-terrorism and immigration legislation. Permanent residents who were recognized by the Constitution's equal-protection clause as having most of the rights enjoyed by citizens were stripped of them. Non-citizens could be arrested and deported on "secret evidence," which revoked the constitutional right to confront and cross-examine evidence presented against them. This was precisely the practice used by dictatorial regimes the U.S. has repeatedly denounced since the Cold War. After Sept. 11, 2001, the administration embarked on a series of measures that started with a wave of arrests of aliens whose status was irregular. But the administration's campaign only focused on people of Arab origin and others who were Muslims. Their numbers were not confirmed, their status undisclosed, and their cases' outcomes have not been revealed. The Justice Department's inspector general reported that many cases were unjustified and many individuals were harshly treated, something heretofore deemed shocking by our legal standards. Two years later the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a 2-1 decision, reversed an earlier federal court ruling ordering the government to release the names of hundreds of people detained after Sept. 11. One of the concurring judges wrote that "America faces an enemy just as real as its former Cold War Foes, with capabilities beyond the capacity of the judiciary to explore." Judge refuses to cave in The government contended that the disclosure of even one name would compromise national security. In a courageous dissent, however, Judge David Tatel wrote that the majority's "uncritical deference" to the government's vague assertions not only contravened the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act but prevented the American people from discovering whether the present administration "is violating the constitutional rights of hundreds of persons whom it has detained in connection with the terrorism investigation." The war in Afghanistan brought about another type of violation, the placing of enemy war prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their detention without due process is in clear violation of our international legal obligation under the Third Geneva Convention. The convention requires the U.S. to properly adjudicate their status as prisoners of war and to treat them well. It also provides for their release after the conflict ends. The conflict is over, but they are still detained. Moreover, they were treated in a manner that may fall in the category of torture: sensory deprivation, prolonged hooding and solitary confinement, degrading and humiliating treatment. All of that was glossed over and no one from the U.S. media or human rights organizations was allowed to go inside, view the conditions of detention and talk to the detainees. Among the detainees are people ages 15 to 95, including some who were sick. Secretly, some of them were released to avoid embarrassment, and soon the remaining ones will be released or tried by military commission before which their rights to a fair and impartial defense will not be guaranteed. U.S. courts have shockingly refused to review this situation on the fictitious grounds that Guantanamo Bay, a territory leased from Cuba by the U.S., is not part of the U.S. Our courts found that they are not competent to examine what our troops are doing to their prisoners. That is simply absurd, and judges with moral courage must reverse this position. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0308240431aug24,1,3363007.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-hed

Special: California Recall Stateline.org--a site for journalists, policy makers and engaged citizens--has produced a special issue page for the latest developments on the Oct. 7 recall election of California Gov. Gray Davis. The issue page contains links to updated news stories, candidate profiles, political cartoons and Web blogs. California's Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election is likely to dominate political and entertainment news prior to the voting because of its mixture of political intrigue and Hollywood celebrity. On the first Tuesday in October, California voters will be asked whether or not they want to oust Gov. Gray Davis from office, and if so, who his successor should be. Altogether, 247 Californians submitted the required $3,500 and 65 signatures to qualify for the recall ballot, and 135 were certified as candidates by the secretary of state's office. Davis was elected to a second term in November 2002. His unpopularity stems, among other things, from the state's $38 billion deficit as well as its energy problems. Davis' campaign to stay in office was jolted by the surprise decision of movie super-star and political novice Arnold Schwarzenegger to enter the race. Now, with several prominent Republicans running against him, and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante�s name also on the ballot, Davis faces the political battle of his career. To stay in office, Davis must get more than 50 percent of the vote. If Davis is recalled, the candidate with the most votes will replace him. (Kavan Peterson, 8/14/03) http://www.stateline.org/issue.do?issueId=320354

Who's Minding Your Data? Thus far, the government appears unconcerned about regulating its sources of personal data. The FBI's use of commercial databases has grown 9,600 percent over the last decade, according to EPIC. The bureau uses credit records, property records, professional licenses, driver's licenses and other data purchased from companies such as ChoicePoint Inc., of Alpharetta, Ga., and LexisNexis, of Dayton, Ohio, as well as credit reporting agencies such as Atlanta-based Equifax Inc., Experian Information Solutions Inc., of Costa Mesa, Calif., and Trans Union LLC, of Chicago. But none of these companies is held accountable for the truth or accuracy of the information it sells. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1219661,00.asp

U.S. May Fine Some Who Shielded Iraq Sites yan Clancy arrived in Iraq in February in a double-decker bus filled with opponents of the war, after a rocky journey in it all the way from Milan. He had used frequent flier miles to get to Italy from Wisconsin. "There weren't a lot of Milwaukee-Baghdad flights," he explained. Mr. Clancy is 26 and owns a record store. He went to Iraq, he said, to observe, to learn and "to protect the civilian infrastructure." He spent weeks as a human shield at a grain silo that he feared would be the target of American bombing. The government is not happy with Mr. Clancy and several others like him. Not long after they returned home this spring, they received letters from the Treasury Department seeking information about their activities in Iraq and noting that spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000. Mr. Clancy and other opponents of the war say the inquiries are part of an effort to suppress dissent, but the government says they are a routine enforcement of regulations. And a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated. "Of course not," the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. "Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein � where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse � the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone." Several hundred people calling themselves human shields camped at oil refineries, water treatment plants, electricity generating stations and similar sites during the war. Many were from Europe; about 20 were American. Several people involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while human shields were present. "That tells me we were successful," said Judith Karpova, a 58-year-old writer in Hoboken, N.J., who placed herself at an oil refinery near Baghdad. "We went there to protect innocent civilians, and I went there to protect my own country against further crimes against humanity and war crimes." The government seeks to punish Ms. Karpova and others not for hurting the war effort but for financial transactions in Iraq. The transactions were not large. Mr. Clancy said he took $1,500 with him, gave much of it away and spent the rest on necessities. Ms. Karpova said her expenses were paid by her hosts. She did admit, in a recent letter to the Treasury Department, to importing "eight sets of coloring books and eight sets of color markers, which I left at the children's hospital in Baghdad." Faith Fippinger, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher in Sarasota, Fla., wrote to the government that she bought rice, eggs and dates in Iraq. "I purchased an occasional glass of delicious, sweet Iraqi tea at tea stalls and tasty kebobs or chicken at food stalls," Ms. Fippinger added. "I have no receipts." Others said the travel restrictions had been misused in the past. "The main problem has been selective prosecution," said Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale and a State Department official in the Clinton administration. "Presumably others went to Iraq who did not disapprove of the war, and that gets into tricky constitutional ground." Mr. Griffin, the Treasury spokesman, rejected the premise of Professor Koh's comment. "We're going to enforce U.S. law without regard to the person's motivation for breaking it," he said. Mr. Clancy said the main point was a simple one. "I'm being prosecuted for dissenting and for going to meet the people we were supposedly going to liberate," he said. In July, the government sued Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago group that has delivered medicine to Iraq since 1996 in violation of the regulations, which allow humanitarian aid but only by those granted a license. The suit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. The government seeks to collect $20,000 in fines, which were imposed last year for conduct in 1998. "The timing of it is very questionable," said the group's lawyer, William P. Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. "If it's not just bureaucratic, it's a very serious effort by the government to punish people for following their convictions." I'll believe the government position when they fine reporters for spending money on hotels in Baghdad. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/politics/14SHIE.html

"There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad."

The pattern is as depressing as it is familiar: the savings run out, the rent doesn't get paid, the eviction notice arrives.

No Work, No Homes President Bush and his clueless team of economic advisers held a summit at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the rich. Their voodoo fantasies were safe in Crawford. There was no one at the ranch to chastise them for bequeathing backbreaking budget deficits to generations yet unborn. And no one was there to confront them with evidence of the intense suffering that so many poor, working-class and middle-class families are experiencing right now because of job losses on Mr. Bush's watch. After the meeting, Mr. Bush said, "This administration is optimistic about job creation." It's too bad George Akerlof wasn't at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that "the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years." Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, "Within 10 years, we're going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility." Also participating in the institute's press conference was Robert Solow, an economist and professor emeritus at M.I.T. who is also a Nobel laureate. He assailed the Bush tax cuts as "redistributive in intent and redistributive in effect." "There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad." The president and his advisers could have learned something about the real world if, instead of hanging out at the ranch, they had visited a city like Los Angeles (or almost any other hard-hit American venue) and spent time talking to folks who have been thrown out of work and, in some cases, out of their homes in this treacherous Bush economy. The job market in California worsened in July. More than a million people are out of work statewide, and there are few signs of the optimism that Mr. Bush is feeling. Officials at homeless shelters in Los Angeles, as in other large American cities, are seeing big increases in the number of families seeking shelter because of extended periods of joblessness. The pattern is as depressing as it is familiar: the savings run out, the rent doesn't get paid, the eviction notice arrives. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/opinion/14HERB.html

U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq and Occupation Is Defended An American soldier was killed today and one was wounded, compounding one of the worst weeks of the four-month-long occupation of Iraq and after an impassioned defense of the occupation by the top American administrator here, L. Paul Bremer III. In his remarks on Tuesday, however, Mr. Bremer acknowledged that "mistakes" had led to the deaths of innocent civilians and that finding the money to repair Iraq's crumbling infrastructure was a "substantial problem."� Paradoxically, one of the biggest challenges facing the American-led civilian authority is proving to be providing fuel for citizens of a country that boasts the world's second-largest oil reserves. Two days of riots in Basra, spurred by miles-long gasoline lines and electricity failures, were quelled Monday after British troops distributed gasoline from their own reserves. But fuel shortages may prove common, according to estimates by United Nations officials. They say the country is almost certain to endure shortages this winter of kerosene, a critical fuel for heating homes in northern Iraq, and liquefied petroleum gas, a common cooking fuel that has already seen a sixteen-fold price spike in some regions. In addition to the killings over the weekend of the two Iraqi policemen, Baghdad residents have been angered by recent American attacks that killed members of two families riding in their cars. "Look, it's a regrettable thing anytime there is the loss of innocent life," Mr. Bremer said in response to a question about civilian deaths. "There are, in combat operations, always going to be mistakes." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/worldspecial/13CND-IRAQ.html

How Ben-Gurion Did It: Is Everyone Listening? The official offered his prisoners a deal: he might let them go if they agreed to halt their "terrorist activities" and to use only political means to pursue their dream of statehood. It was a proposal similar to the one Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, is making now to Hamas and other Palestinian factions that advocate terrorism. But this particular offer was made by a British officer to a group of Jews, at the time that the British uneasily governed Palestine, before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Among those who heard the proposal out, and rejected it, was a young extremist who went by a nom de guerre, Michael. Michael later escaped and returned to the underground, to a campaign of assassination, bombing and arms smuggling, with bank robbery thrown in to finance the effort. "Nothing would be permitted to stand in the way of Jewish independence in the Land of Israel," Michael wrote 50 years later in his autobiography. "Nothing and No One." By then, Michael was himself testimony to Israel's success at integrating militants into mainstream society. His violent life in the pre-state period had become the stuff of romantic national narrative and broad political appeal, and under a different name, Yitzhak Shamir, he had been one of Israel's longest-serving prime ministers, one who cracked down on Jewish terrorism in the West Bank. In the view of many historians, it was in no small part the leadership of one man, David Ben-Gurion, that transformed Zionist militants into Israeli politicians and even peacemakers. "Ben-Gurion was a state-builder," said Shmuel Sandler, the Lainer Professsor of Democracy and Civility at Bar Ilan University. "State-building means that at one point you understand there can't be any more violence or illegal operations in your camp." Times, terrorist tactics and international realities change; historical comparisons between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements can be easily strained. Yet there are echoes in Mr. Abbas's oratory now of the message of Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. "On this land and for this people, there is only one authority, one law, and one democratic and national decision that applies to us all," Mr. Abbas said on assuming his post this spring. His meaning was that Hamas and other groups could no longer, in effect, conduct their own wars with Israel. In 1944, a representative of Ben-Gurion delivered a similar message to a militant leader: "There must be one Jewish military force in Eretz Israel," that is, in the land of Israel. The militant leader, Menachem Begin, recalled the episode in his account of those years, "The Revolt." Unlike Mr. Abbas, Hamas, which took responsibility for a suicide bombing in the West Bank today, officially rejects any two-state solution with Israel. Unlike the pragmatic Ben-Gurion, Begin in those days rejected any partition. His printed declaration in 1944 of "war to the end" against the British appeared under a map of Palestine that extended to the border of Iraq, enclosing the image of a rifle by the words "Only Thus." Eventually, of course, Prime Minister Begin would give up the Sinai Peninsula. Although Mr. Abbas has said Hamas must give up its illegal weapons, he has also repeatedly said he will not risk civil conflict to enforce his national vision, and the governing Palestinian Authority has yet to take action against terrorists. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/middleeast/13LETT.html

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Signs Grow of Innocent People Being Executed, Judge Says A federal judge in Boston said yesterday that there was mounting evidence innocent people were being executed. But he declined to rule the death penalty unconstitutional. "In the past decade, substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understood," the judge, Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court in Boston, wrote in a decision allowing a capital case to proceed to trial. He cited the exonerations of more than 100 people on death row based on DNA and other evidence. "The day may come," the judge said, "when a court properly can and should declare the ultimate sanction to be unconstitutional in all cases. However, that day has not yet come." Judge Wolf wrote that the crucial question for courts was "how large a fraction of the executed must be innocent to offend contemporary standards of decency." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/national/12DEAT.html

The Art of the False Impression In the superamplified media din created by the likes of Arnold and Kobe and Ben and Jen, it's very difficult for the former vice president, a certified square, to break into the national conversation. That says a lot about us and the direction we're headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore's politics or not, but some of the points he's raising, especially with regard to President Bush's credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention. "Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country, and that some important American values are being placed at risk," said Mr. Gore. Keeping his language polite, the former vice president asserted that the Bush administration had allowed "false impressions" to somehow make their way into the public's mind. Enormous numbers of Americans thus came to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and was actively supporting Al Qaeda; that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat, and Iraq was on the verge of building nuclear weapons; that U.S. troops would be welcomed with open arms, and there was little danger of continued casualties in a prolonged guerrilla war. The essence of Mr. Gore's speech was that these corrosive false impressions were part of a strategic pattern of distortion that the Bush administration used to create support not just for the war, but for an entire ideologically driven agenda that overwhelmingly favors the president's wealthy supporters and is driving the federal government toward a long-term fiscal catastrophe. What if Mr. Gore is right? There's something at least a little crazy about an environment in which people are literally stumbling over one another to hear what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about the budget crisis in California (short answer: nothing), while ignoring what a thoughtful former vice president has to say about the budget and the economy of the U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/11/opinion/11HERB.html

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

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

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

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

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

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