Boston.com / News / Nation / Infiltration of files seen as extensive: "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.…" http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/22/infiltration_of_files_seen_as_extensive/#

Easing of Internet Regulations Challenges Surveillance Efforts: "In a series of unpublicized meetings and heated correspondence in recent weeks, officials from the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration have repeatedly complained about the commission's decision in 2002 to classify high-speed Internet cable services under a looser regulatory regime than the phone system. The Justice Department recently tried to block the commission from appealing a decision by a federal appeals court two months ago that struck down major parts of its 2002 deregulatory order. Justice Department officials fear that the deregulatory order impedes its ability to enforce wiretapping orders. " The department ultimately decided to permit the F.C.C. to appeal, but took the highly unusual step of withdrawing from the lawsuit, officials involved in the case said. As a result of the commission's actions, said John G. Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general who has played a lead role for the Justice Department, some telecommunications carriers have taken the position in court proceedings that they do not need to make their networks available to federal agents for court-approved wiretapping. "I am aware of instances in which law enforcement authorities have not been able to execute intercept orders because of this uncertainty," Mr. Malcolm said in an interview last Friday. He declined to provide further details. The clash between the commission and officials from the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies pits two cherished policies of the Bush administration against each other. On one side stand those who support deregulation of major industries and the nurturing of emerging technologies; on the other are those who favor more aggressive law enforcement after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The outcome of the debate has far- reaching consequences.… David Fiske, the commission's chief spokesman, said that he could not respond to Mr. Malcolm's statement that the F.C.C.'s interpretation of the rules was making it more difficult to execute surveillance orders. A senior official at the F.C.C. said the commission was not unsympathetic to the concerns of the law enforcement agencies. "We're an economic regulatory agency as well as a law enforcement agency and we have to look at the interests of everyone," the official said. Some industry experts say that their biggest worry is that law enforcement demands may reshape the technical specifications of the new Internet voice services, an accusation that officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. deny. "What's most scary for industry and perhaps some people at the F.C.C. is the notion that the architecture of the Internet will depend on the permission of the F.B.I.," said Stewart A. Baker, a former general counsel of the National Security Agency, which monitors foreign communications. Mr. Baker now represents a number of telecommunications companies as a partner at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson. But law enforcement officials say they are not seeking uniform technical standards but requirements that the new companies offering so-called "voice over Internet" services build into their systems easy ways for agents to tap into conversations between suspects. In a strange-bedfellows twist, officials from the F.B.I. and other agencies have found themselves the unlikely allies of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which have also argued that the new Internet services offered by cable companies should be under a regulatory regime like the phone system — but for different reasons. The A.C.L.U. prefers that approach because it would prohibit cable companies from discriminating against Internet service providers, and as such would assure a greater diversity of voices.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/technology/22VOIC.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask for Leak Inquiry by Congress: "It is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition Congress on a matter like this. The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq. Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified himself last month from any involvement in the inquiry, and Justice Department officials have named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, as a special prosecutor in the case. Mr. Ashcroft's decision to step aside came after months of criticism from Democrats in the Senate who complained that the attorney general could not impartially lead an investigation that focused in part on his political patrons and friends at the White House. Justice Department officials have said almost nothing in public about the status of the investigation. But they have said they are focusing on conversations between White House officials and reporters that both sides might try to cast as private.…" The 10 former intelligence officers who signed the letter include respected intelligence analysts and retired case officers, including at least two, John McCavitt and William Wagner, who were C.I.A. station chiefs overseas. The former analysts include Larry C. Johnson, a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department's intelligence branch, and Ray Close and Ray McGovern, former C.I.A. analysts in the agency's Near East division. "The disclosure of Ms. Plame's name was an unprecedented and shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, has damaged U.S. national security, specifically the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering using human sources," the group wrote in the two-page letter.… "For this administration to run on a security platform and allow people in the administration to compromise the security of intelligence assets, I think is unconscionable," Mr. Johnson said. In addition to Mr. Hastert, the letter was sent to Representatives Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader; Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader; Porter J. Goss, a Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; and Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the panel. A copy was made available to The New York Times by a Congressional official who received one. Current and former intelligence officials have felt particularly bruised in recent months as the C.I.A. and other agencies have come under criticism from some in Congress and the public as having underestimated the danger of attacks on the United States like those on Sept. 11, 2001, and having overestimated the dangers posed by Iraq's alleged stockpiles of illicit weapons. In the letter, the former officers called on Congress to act "for the good of the country" and said it was time to "send an unambiguous message that the intelligence officers tasked with collecting or analyzing intelligence must never be turned into political punching bags." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/politics/22INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Chicago Tribune | Democratic response to Bush's speech: "Democrats have an unwavering commitment to ensure that America's armed forces remain the best trained, best led, best equipped force for peace the world has ever known. Never before have we been more powerful militarily. But even the most powerful nation in history must bring other nations to our side to meet common dangers. The president's policies do not reflect that. He has pursued a go-it-alone foreign policy that leaves us isolated abroad and that steals the resources we need for education and health care here at home." The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history; and he failed to build a true international coalition. Therefore, American taxpayers are bearing almost all the cost, a colossal $120 billion and rising. More importantly, American troops are enduring almost all the casualties -- tragically, 500 killed and thousands more wounded.…Instead of alienating our allies, let us work with them and international institutions so that together we can prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and keep them out of the hands of terrorists. Instead of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for politically connected firms such as Halliburton, and an insistence on American dominance in Iraq, let us share the burden and responsibility with others, so that together we can end the sense of American occupation and bring our troops home safely when their mission is completed. Instead of the diplomatic disengagement that almost destroyed the Middle East peace process and aggravated the danger posed by North Korea, let us seek to forge agreements and coalitions so that, together with others, we can address challenges before they threaten the security of the world. We must remain focused on the greatest threat to the security of the United States, the clear and present danger of terrorism. We know what we must do to protect America, but this Administration is failing to meet the challenge. Democrats have a better way to ensure our homeland security. One-hundred percent of containers coming into our ports or airports must be inspected. Today, only 3 percent are inspected. One-hundred percent of chemical and nuclear plants in the United States must have high levels of security. Today, the Bush administration has tolerated a much lower standard. One-hundred percent communication in real time is needed for our police officers, firefighters and all our first responders to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack. Today, the technology is there, but the resources are not. One-hundred percent of the enriched uranium and other material for weapons of mass destruction must be secured. Today, the Administration has refused to commit the resources necessary to prevent it from falling into the hands of terrorists. America will be far safer if we reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in one of our cities than if we diminish the civil liberties of our own people.… http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-bush-democrats-text,1,5098513.story?coll=chi-news-hed

If a hero like Max Cleland, can be made to appear unpatriotic, what will Bush do to an actual war criminal?

The Iowa Surprise:

Neither Mr. Kerry nor Mr. Edwards has yet gone through the kind of withering scrutiny that Dr. Dean endured in Iowa.

"John Kerry, who came in first last night, and John Edwards, who scored a surprising second, appeared to be the men voters thought looked most electable. That throws cold water, at least temporarily, on the long-held theory that primary voters favor candidates who are too far to the left or right to win in the fall. In this era of attack-dog politics, it's nice to have a moment of pragmatism. The fact that the two senators did so well in Iowa is, however, no proof that either would be the best Democratic nominee. Neither Mr. Kerry nor Mr. Edwards has yet gone through the kind of withering scrutiny that Dr. Dean endured in Iowa. Senator Kerry has at least demonstrated that he knows how to take some knocks and stage a comeback. The early months of his candidacy were a disaster of disorganization and a message void. But he regrouped and convinced Iowa voters that he had the military record and foreign affairs background necessary to take on President Bush. Senator Edwards, who once seemed doomed to spend the entire election season smiling sunnily and being ignored, is now going to find himself near the front of the pack, a place that Dr. Dean and Representative Gephardt found extremely uncomfortable." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/20/opinion/20TUE2.html

The Iowa Surprise: "John Kerry, who came in first last night, and John Edwards, who scored a surprising second, appeared to be the men voters thought looked most electable. That throws cold water, at least temporarily, on the long-held theory that primary voters favor candidates who are too far to the left or right to win in the fall. In this era of attack-dog politics, it's nice to have a moment of pragmatism. The fact that the two senators did so well in Iowa is, however, no proof that either would be the best Democratic nominee. Neither Mr. Kerry nor Mr. Edwards has yet gone through the kind of withering scrutiny that Dr. Dean endured in Iowa. Senator Kerry has at least demonstrated that he knows how to take some knocks and stage a comeback. The early months of his candidacy were a disaster of disorganization and a message void. But he regrouped and convinced Iowa voters that he had the military record and foreign affairs background necessary to take on President Bush. Senator Edwards, who once seemed doomed to spend the entire election season smiling sunnily and being ignored, is now going to find himself near the front of the pack, a place that Dr. Dean and Representative Gephardt found extremely uncomfortable."

O'Neill Says Bush Was Set on Cutting Taxes, Too: "Mr. O'Neill has provoked a political firestorm with his contention that President Bush tilted toward war with Iraq almost as soon as he took office; the administration has vigorously denied that. But the former Treasury secretary described a similar pattern in Mr. Bush's push to cut taxes by at least $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Mr. O'Neill was openly skeptical about the need for big tax cuts and expressed concern about frittering away what were then huge budget surpluses. In hindsight, he may have been too sanguine about the economy's prospects in early 2001 and too dismissive of the value in cutting taxes as a way to soften the downturn. But Mr. O'Neill may also prove to have been prescient about other issues that are likely to have long-lasting significance. One was the idea of building 'triggers'' into Mr. Bush's tax cuts, provisions that would prevent some of the cuts from becoming effective if budget surpluses evaporated." Behind the scenes, Mr. O'Neill described how he quietly collaborated with Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, to press for such triggers. As recounted by Mr. O'Neill, the president and his top advisers wanted no part in such precautions. Though the Treasury secretary had one-on-one meetings with Mr. Bush almost once a week, Mr. O'Neill said the president listened to him in stony silence. And when Mr. Greenspan testified in favor of making future tax cuts conditional on the government's fiscal health, the White House balked. There were questions about whether the triggers would have done any good. Congress, in theory, operated under "pay-as-you-go'' rules in the last years of the Clinton administration, under which any spending growth above the rate of inflation was supposed to be offset by budget cuts or tax increases. But tax revenue soared so quickly as a result of the stock market bubble and the booming economy that spending increased much faster than inflation. Tax-cut advocates like R. Glenn Hubbard, then chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, argued that the tax cuts had to be predictable and permanent to achieve their intended impact. If people thought the cuts would expire, he and others argued, they would have less confidence about spending their extra cash. Shortly after the tax cuts, the government's seemingly inexhaustible surpluses evaporated. Revenues plunged as the economy slid into a recession and the stock market endured a three-year plunge that wiped out investment profits. Then came the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, followed by huge increases in spending on domestic security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Projections by Congress and the Bush administration of surpluses of $5.6 trillion over 10 years, the outlook in 2001, have turned into estimated deficits of at least $1.4 trillion and possibly as much as $5 trillion. Mr. O'Neill strongly suggests that Mr. Bush worried little about budget deficits and did not want advice about them.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/business/yourmoney/18view.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Fixing Democracy: "The morning after the 2000 election, Americans woke up to a disturbing realization: our electoral system was too flawed to say with certainty who had won. Three years later, things may actually be worse. If this year's presidential election is at all close, there is every reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. This is no way to run a democracy." Americans are rightly proud of their system of government, and eager to share it with the rest of the world. But the key principle behind it, that our leaders govern with the consent of the governed, requires a process that accurately translates the people's votes into political power. Too often, the system falls short. Throughout this presidential election year, we will be taking a close look at the mechanics of our democracy and highlighting aspects that cry out for reform. Among the key issues: Voting Technology An accurate count of the votes cast is the sine qua non of a democracy, but one that continues to elude us. As now-discredited punch-card machines are being abandoned, there has been a shift to electronic voting machines with serious reliability problems of their own. Many critics, including computer scientists, have been sounding the alarm: through the efforts of a hacker on the outside or a malicious programmer on the inside, or through purely technical errors, these machines could misreport the votes cast.… …There is a fast-growing list of elections in which electronic machines have demonstrably failed, or produced dubious but uncheckable results. One of the most recent occurred, fittingly enough, in Palm Beach and Broward Counties in Florida just this month. Touch-screen machines reported 137 blank ballots in a special election for a state House seat where the margin of victory was 12 votes. The second-place finisher charged that faulty machines might have cost him the election. "People do not go to the polls in a one-issue election and not vote," he said. But since the machines produce no paper record, there was no way to check.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/opinion/18SUN1.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Op-Ed Columnist: Who Gets It?: "Wesley Clark had some strong words about the state of the nation. 'I think we're at risk with our democracy,' he said. 'I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame.' In other words, the general gets it: he understands that America is facing what Kevin Phillips, in his remarkable new book, 'American Dynasty,' calls a 'Machiavellian moment.' Among other things, this tells us that General Clark and Howard Dean, whatever they may say in the heat of the nomination fight, are on the same side of the great Democratic divide. " Most political reporting on the Democratic race, it seems to me, has gotten it wrong. Some journalists do, of course, insist on trivializing the whole thing: what I dread most, in the event of an upset in Iowa, is the return of reporting about the political significance of John Kerry's hair. But even those who refrain from turning political reporting into gossip have used the wrong categories. Again and again, one reads that it's about the left wing of the Democratic party versus the centrists; but Mr. Dean was a very centrist governor, and his policy proposals are not obviously more liberal than those of his rivals. The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/16/opinion/16KRUG.html

Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth: "Ron Suskind's new book 'The Price of Loyalty' is based largely on interviews with and materials supplied by Mr. O'Neill. It portrays an administration in which political considerations — satisfying "the base" — trump policy analysis on every issue, from tax cuts to international trade policy and global warming. The money quote may be Dick Cheney's blithe declaration that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." But there are many other revelations. One is that Mr. O'Neill and Alan Greenspan knew that it was a mistake to lock in huge tax cuts based on questionable projections of future surpluses. In May 2001 Mr. Greenspan gloomily told Mr. O'Neill that because the first Bush tax cut didn't include triggers — it went forward regardless of how the budget turned out — it was "irresponsible fiscal policy." This was a time when critics of the tax cut were ridiculed for saying exactly the same thing." Another is that Mr. Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" Most startling of all, Donald Rumsfeld pushed the idea of regime change in Iraq as a way to transform the Middle East at a National Security Council meeting in February 2001. There's much more in Mr. Suskind's book. All of it will dismay those who still want to believe that our leaders are wise and good. The question is whether this book will open the eyes of those who think that anyone who criticizes the tax cuts is a wild-eyed leftist, and that anyone who says the administration hyped the threat from Iraq is a conspiracy theorist. The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn't made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O'Neill's revelations? So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/opinion/13KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=

By accepting the government's vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the government's case with its own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquiescence.

Justices Refuse to Review Case on Secrecy and 9/11 Detentions: "The justices let stand a ruling by a federal appeals court, which concluded last June that the Justice Department was within its rights when it refused to release the names of more than 700 people, most of them Arabs or Muslims, arrested for immigration violations in connection with the attacks. Many of those arrested have been deported. Some were charged with crimes and others were held as witnesses. But so far only one person, Zacarias Moussaoui, is being prosecuted in connection with the attacks, and he was detained before Sept. 11." The case that the justices declined today to review, Center for National Security Studies v. Justice Department, 03-472, pitted two fundamental values against each other — the right of the public to know details of how its government operates versus the government's need to keep some information secret to protect national security. With today's refusal by the justices, the last word in the case apparently belongs to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his opinion for the 2-to-1 majority on June 17, he noted that courts had always shown deference to executive branch officials in the field of national security. Judge David S. Tatel offered a blistering dissent last June. "By accepting the government's vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the government's case with its own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquiescence," he asserted.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/politics/12CND-SCOT.html

News Analysis: Bush Seeks Ways to Create Jobs, and Fast: "With a phalanx of women entrepreneurs at his side and a billboard covered with the word 'Jobs!' behind him, President Bush proclaimed his confidence about the economy here on Friday. But he made only passing reference to the latest news about employment. The reason was clear: Friday's report on unemployment in December was much weaker than either the administration or most independent economists had predicted. Job creation was virtually nil, and the unemployment rate declined only because the labor force shrank by 309,000 workers. Many of those were people who had simply become too discouraged to keep looking for work." The problem confronting Mr. Bush is that there is little he can do between now and the elections except wait and hope that the employment picture improves. And the administration is not likely to get much more help from the Federal Reserve, which has already reduced short-term interest rates to just 1 percent. "In terms of big levers to pull, they don't have anything," said Pierre Ellis, a senior economist at Decision Economics, a forecasting company.… Both the White House and the Fed are confronted by a recovery unlike any other in modern history. Economic growth has been soaring for months, corporate profits have shot up and the stock market has regained much of its old ebullience. Yet job creation has been slower than in almost any previous recovery, and wage growth has slowed to a crawl. That appears to reflect another big new element that lies entirely outside the president's control: the enormous increases in productivity, which have made it possible for companies to squeeze more output from each worker. "The evidence is powerful that we can have 4 or 5 percent growth without hiring much," said John Makin, a senior economist at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Makin has long been among the more pessimistic economic forecasters, but the employment and wage data on Friday came in far worse than even he had expected. "I was stunned, quite frankly," he said.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/business/10jobs.html

U.S. Reasserts Right to Declare Citizens to Be Enemy Combatants: "The Bush administration on Wednesday reasserted its broad authority to declare American citizens to be enemy combatants, and it suggested that the Supreme Court consider two prominent cases at the same time. The Justice Department, in a brief filed with the court, said it would seek an expedited appeal of a federal appeals court decision last month in the case of Jose Padilla, jailed as an enemy combatant in 2002.… " The divided Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled on Dec. 18 that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain an American citizen like Mr. Padilla who was arrested on American soil simply by declaring him an enemy combatant. Mr. Padilla has been held incommunicado at a military brig in South Carolina. American authorities say he plotted with operatives of Al Qaeda overseas to detonate a "dirty" radiological bomb in the United States. But the Justice Department said in its brief that the ruling was "fundamentally at odds" with court precedent on presidential powers. The decision "undermines the president's constitutional authority to protect the nation," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wrote. The Justice Department said it hoped the Supreme Court would consider an appeal in April.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/politics/08COMB.html

News: FBI investigates hack at e-voting software company: "Local and federal authorities including the FBI are investigating an intrusion into a computer network at an e-vote software company, which suspects the hack was politically motivated. VoteHere, a 7-year-old company in Bellevue, Wash., on Tuesday confirmed reports that its network had been breached in October. The company identified a suspect and said it turned the case over to the FBI, the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney's office for an investigation that is ongoing." "This is a crime," said VoteHere Chief Executive Jim Adler. "This is about breaking and entering and stealing." It's also, e-voting critics would say, about security. The story of VoteHere's network breach, reported Monday by MSNBC and the Associated Press, is likely to play into a lively debate over the security and reliability of electronic voting systems. That debate has risen in pitch as federal deadlines loom for states to upgrade their voting systems, and e-voting systems provider Diebold has become a lightning rod for criticism for its own series of woes relating to security, partisan comments by its CEO and other issues.… VoteHere has tentatively linked the suspect to a number of advocacy groups critical of electronic voting systems. The company declined to identify the suspect or the groups, again citing the investigation. The FBI said the case was being handled by a federal and local multi-agency group called the Northwest Cybercrime Task Force. No suspects have been charged yet in the case. VoteHere, which has posted some of its technical documents to the Web at VerifiedVoting.org, and has pledged to reveal the source code to its software when it completes an internal review within months, said no elections were compromised in the intrusion.… http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5134106.html

Keeping the Faith: In Government We Trust (as Far as We Can Throw It): "TO listen to pollsters, politicians and pundits, you might think 'the public trust' in government has been urgently threatened at every juncture since the Enron scandal broke in 2001 - or, in the view of the Democratic presidential candidates, since the inauguration of George W. Bush. The year just ended provided its own fodder for distrust. If the herbal supplement ephedra is so bad for you, why wasn't it banned years ago rather than just last week? What about mad cow disease? They said it couldn't happen here. Remember the budget surplus? Where did it go? Don't forget those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ('Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a case for war based on false claims,' Gen. Wesley K. Clark said last fall.) " In the fall it was revealed that some mutual fund hotshots, apparently immune to regulation, were favoring fat cats and not ordinary investors. And yes, Parmalat is a foreign company, but its name is on American milk cartons. Nobody knew that a $5 billion - $5 billion - account was just a figment of the company's imagination? Finally, wasn't the nation just put on Orange Alert? Tell that to the pilot of a private plane who went joy riding around the Statue of Liberty last week, or to the guy who managed to hijack a bus from the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan and drive it to Kennedy Airport. No alarm was raised for seven hours that the bus was even missing. For all of this, it might not be surprising that public faith in government, in big business and in institutions in general appears to be dwindling.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/weekinreview/04robe.html?pagewanted=all&position=

The Things They Carry: "In October, the Center for American Progress, a new liberal policy institute, held a two-day conference in Washington designed to lay out the foundations of an alternative, and politically viable, national security policy. The panels at the symposium (which was also sponsored by the Century Foundation and The American Prospect magazine) featured, in the main, nonideological figures offering sober and pragmatic counsel: reserve the right to act pre-emptively but don't make a doctrine of it; do peacekeeping right; focus on ''failed'' states like Afghanistan and Sudan; devise carrots as well as sticks to deal with state sponsors of terrorism; forge a global strategy to deal with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. " For the keynote speaker, the sponsors invited not a conventional liberal but Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's hawkish national security adviser, a fervently anti-Soviet Polish emigre reviled during the cold war by the Democratic Party's left wing. I expected Brzezinski to be at least mildly sympathetic to the Bush administration. I was wrong. ''American power worldwide is at its historic zenith,'' he told his audience, which consisted largely of technocrats and midlevel Clinton administration officials. And yet, he noted: ''American global political standing is at its nadir. Why?'' First, Brzezinski said, because of the ''paranoiac view of the world'' summed up in the expression -- a paraphrase of President Bush -- ''He who is not with us is against us.'' Second, because of ''a fear'' -- of terrorism -- ''that periodically verges on panic'' and is stoked by ''extremist demagogy.'' To Brzezinski, the Bush administration's unilateralism, and its militarism, constituted a radical break with a consensus that stretched across several generations and presumably included not only cold warriors like himself but also the liberals he once opposed, like Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state.… Brzezinski's question -- Why is so much of the world against us? -- is, in fact, the starting point for the Democratic critique of the Bush administration. The sheer velocity of the change from worldwide sympathy to worldwide antipathy is almost incredible, and while much of the new anger comes from the very nature of our superpower status, the conduct of the Bush administration has plainly had a lot to do with it as well. In an article in Newsweek on the eve of the war in Iraq, Fareed Zakaria, that magazine's foreign-policy analyst, pointed out that some nations offered America only quiet support on Iraq ''not because they fear Saddam Hussein but because they fear their own people.'' The Bush administration had asked a very great deal and offered less than nothing. Zakaria noted that ''with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it.'' And of course the United States is now paying a price for that in Iraq, where it cannot find either enough foreign troops or funds to supplement its own. Conservatives have a longstanding answer to the argument for multilateralism. As Condoleezza Rice, now Bush's national security adviser, wrote in a much discussed essay in Foreign Affairs during the 2000 campaign, ''The belief that the support of many states -- or even better, of institutions like the United Nations -- is essential to the legitimate exercise of power'' proceeds from a deep discomfort with the fact of America's power. This discomfort is, in turn, the residuum of Vietnam. There's some truth to that claim. One Democratic policy figure I spoke to said, ''If you listen to the Democrats in Iowa, you sometimes get the impression that the U.N. is going to save us from the situation.'' And yet, at least when they're not preaching to the Iowan choir, Democrats generally use hardheaded, looking-out-for-No.-1 language that Rice herself would have trouble taking exception to. They forswear ''mushy multilateralism,'' in John Kerry's phrase, for what Senator Joe Lieberman calls ''muscular multilateralism'' -- multilateralism not as a source of legitimacy but as an instrument to advance our own interests. The consequences of unilateralism in Iraq dominate the debate. Yet if you talk to Democratic policy experts, Iraq rarely appears as the country's top national security priority. In ''An American Security Policy,'' a study ordered by Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, and written by a group that included top former Clinton aides like William Perry, the former defense secretary; Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state; and Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser, Iraq appears as only the fourth of six major areas of concern. The first is ''The Loose Nukes Crisis in North Korea,'' and the second is the overall problem of weapons of mass destruction in Russia, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/magazine/04DEMOCRATS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Dean Raises $14 Million and Sets Record, Aides Say: "Howard Dean has raised at least $14.1 million in the fourth quarter, bringing his annual total to almost $40 million and setting what aides say is a one-year record for Democratic fund-raising in a presidential race. At the same time, aides to Gen. Wesley K. Clark's campaign said he had raised at least $10 million this quarter, putting him in a financial position to challenge Dr. Dean should he do well in next year's early primaries." When the books close Wednesday, the year-end deadline for reporting fund-raising, Dr. Dean and General Clark are expected to lead the quarterly list of nine Democratic candidates, all of whom have spent much of December scrambling to raise money before the start of primary voting next month. Though President Bush is expected to eclipse all the Democratic candidates, having raised at least $111 million so far this year, candidates are still making last-minute appeals to donors this week. Even Dr. Dean, with his strong final quarter, will be working until the last minute to increase his numbers. The campaign is sponsoring a nationwide conference call on Tuesday to more than 1,370 fund-raising house parties nationwide. The campaign's goal is to match its $14.8 million performance last quarter. Dr. Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, said the additional money was needed because rivals were running one- and two-state strategies that allowed them to focus their resources, while Dr. Dean was running nationwide. "Everyone is against us," Mr. Trippi said. "They are all running against us in states we'd like to win." Dr. Dean is also taking advantage of an endorsement by former Vice President Al Gore, who will join him on the conference call and who sent an e-mail letter in Dr. Dean's behalf. "Think of the sonic boom that we can create in this race if every person who supports this campaign makes a contribution," Mr. Gore wrote.… http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/politics/campaigns/30DONA.html

American Politics: A New Movement Logs on to the Democratic Party and May Reshape It: "Even if Howard Dean's own electoral ambitions are not realized, he may take credit for ushering in an era of movement politics that could have implications for the Democrats, and Republicans, for years to come. More than any Democratic politician in years, Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, has tapped into an intensifying bitterness among his party faithful toward the administration in power, and, through the Internet, has drawn a corps of citizens who had not paid heed to electoral politics. For Democrats, the payoff is that many of these new faces have views that fit the left wing of politics, the party's old-time base." At the core of the movement is an inchoate anger stirred by the war in Iraq and, more broadly, by the rightward tilt of many policies in the Bush administration. President Bush has become the personification of much of this anger, but the Dean movement also seems to be reviving some long-held Democratic Party sentiments about the role of government in the life of the nation. Through his assertive approach, or his clever tapping into the Internet, Dr. Dean has somehow put himself at the head of this parade. Democratic activists are now turning to him to answer - and remedy - all their concerns about the environment, social programs and the economy. But the more Dr. Dean is viewed as the mouthpiece for the left, the more perilous his quest could be. The party's pragmatists are fearful. The danger, they say, is that Dr. Dean's success means that the Democrats could abandon the delicate machinations of Bill Clinton that pushed the party to the middle - and helped them take the White House. It was the first time a Democrat had won two terms since Roosevelt.… Recognizing the Dean campaign's success, Republicans are already trying to compete by beefing up their own grass-roots operations and use of the Internet. But at least some of Dr. Dean's success is because he presents himself as the candidate who best embodies the "anti-Bush.'' By seizing on his opposition to the war, Dr. Dean is essentially repudiating Mr. Bush. Yet Dr. Dean is different from movement politicians of the past like Barry M. Goldwater and Ronald Reagan because they were far more ideological - and promoted an array of values and positions. By contrast, Dr. Dean resembles George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy, Democrats whose appeal was founded in their antiwar positions but could not sustain their support because they had little to say when the war ended. Dr. Dean's ideological underpinnings are less evident: many Democrats say he is the liberal in the field (the White House is certainly trying to) but politicians in Vermont say his record was middle of the road. If he does not win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, Dr. Dean could suffer the fate of Mr. McGovern and Mr. McCarthy because his appeal is so steeped in the issue of the war. On the other hand, Dr. Dean has the potential to lead an enduring movement because he is less of an establishment figure than those two former senators. There is also a practical advantage that past movement leaders did not have: the Internet could continue to be a backbone of his appeal. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/weekinreview/28dems.html

When Workers Die: U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace: "very one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive — all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws. These deaths represent the very worst in the American workplace, acts of intentional wrongdoing or plain indifference that kill about 100 workers each year. They were not accidents. They happened because a boss removed a safety device to speed up production, or because a company ignored explicit safety warnings, or because a worker was denied proper protective gear. And for years, in news releases and Congressional testimony, senior officials at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration have described these cases as intolerable outrages, "horror stories" that demanded the agency's strongest response. They have repeatedly pledged to press wherever possible for criminal charges against those responsible. These promises have not been kept. " Over a span of two decades, from 1982 to 2002, OSHA investigated 1,242 of these horror stories mdash; instances in which the agency itself concluded that workers had died because of their employer's "willful" safety violations. Yet in 93 percent of those cases, OSHA declined to seek prosecution, an eight-month examination of workplace deaths by The New York Times has found. What is more, having avoided prosecution once, at least 70 employers willfully violated safety laws again, resulting in scores of additional deaths. Even these repeat violators were rarely prosecuted. OSHA's reluctance to seek prosecution, The Times found, persisted even when employers had been cited before for the very same safety violation. It persisted even when the violations caused multiple deaths, or when the victims were teenagers. And it persisted even where reviews by administrative judges found abundant proof of willful wrongdoing. Behind that reluctance, current and former OSHA officials say, is a bureaucracy that works at every level to thwart criminal referrals. They described a bureaucracy that fails to reward, and sometimes penalizes, those who push too hard for prosecution, where aggressive enforcement is suffocated by endless layers of review, where victims' families are frozen out but companies adeptly work the rules in their favor. "A simple lack of guts and political will," said John T. Phillips, a former regional OSHA administrator in Kansas City and Boston. "You try to reason why something is criminal, and it never flies." In fact, OSHA has increasingly helped employers, particularly large corporations, avoid the threat of prosecution altogether. Since 1990, the agency has quietly downgraded 202 fatality cases from "willful" to "unclassified," a vague term favored by defense lawyers in part because it virtually forecloses the possibility of prosecution.… http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22OSHA.html?pagewanted=all&position=

On the Web, an Amateur Audience Creates Anti-Bush Ads: "When the Web-based political group MoveOn.org announced a contest in October for homemade commercials challenging the Bush administration (the winner to be shown on television during the week of the State of the Union address) grass-roots America proved a willing and eager advertising agency." Thirty-second spots poured in by the hundreds in e-mail attachments to MoveOn.org, which has already shown that the Internet can be a battering ram for political activism by organizing protests against the invasion of Iraq. Last week, the group posted 1,017 of the amateur commercials on a Web site (www.bushin30seconds.org), asking viewers to pick their favorites. In the first hour of polling on Wednesday, more than 5,700 votes were logged. So many people visited the site that MoveOn, experiencing bandwidth problems, limited the curious to 20 ads a day. Next month the top vote-getters will be shown to a panel of left-leaning celebrity judges including Moby, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho and Gus Van Sant, with one or more winning entries to be broadcast as paid advertisements in Washington, D.C., in potential swing states or perhaps nationally. What the cascade of entries demonstrates is that the home-movie revolution made possible by inexpensive digital camcorders and off-the-shelf software has elevated the United States from merely being a nation of wedding videographers.… www.bushin30seconds.org http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/fashion/21MOVE.html?pagewanted=all&position=