6-7 May 2006

Administration Abuses Congress and the Constitution
LA Times, 5 May 2006
...The Constitution requires the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." If a president can't live with a bill, he's supposed to veto it, so everyone knows where he stands. But when a president quietly eviscerates legislation through signing statements — something Bush has done to an eye-popping 750 statutes — he evades accountability. It's the political equivalent of the abusive spouse who takes care never to leave bruises that show.
But the harm to democracy is just as real as the bruises left by a batterer's fist. Through signing statements, the president has repeatedly signaled his contempt for Congress and his intention to flout the law on matters ranging from torture to the protection of executive-branch whistle-blowers.
And let's not blame the victim. Victims stay in abusive relationships because their abusers isolate and manipulate them, cutting them off from those who might offer perspective and assistance. "Battered Congress syndrome" is no exception. Through its bullying foreign policy and its domestic incompetence, the administration has driven away practically everyone, at home and abroad, who might have been able to lend the Republican-controlled Congress a helping hand. And with the administration's penchant for Orwellian "doublespeak" (it's not "torture," it's "enhanced interrogation"), how can Congress keep any perspective on reality?
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) finally made a courageous breakthrough: He acknowledged that Congress is caught in a potentially lethal cycle of abuse. Calling for hearings on the administration's pattern of evading the law through signing statements, Specter acknowledged that if the White House's "blatant encroachment" on congressional authority can't be stopped, "there may as well soon not be a Congress."

Latest From the 'Military Wing' of the GOP
Air Force to Examine Fundraising E-Mail Sent by a General
Message Praised Candidate's Christianity
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post, 7 May 2006
The Air Force is investigating whether a two-star general violated military regulations by urging fellow Air Force Academy graduates to make campaign contributions to a Republican candidate for Congress in Colorado, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr., who is on active duty at Langley Air Force Base, sent the fundraising appeal on Thursday from his official e-mail account to more than 200 fellow members of the academy's class of 1976, many of whom are also on active duty.
...Catton's e-mail was provided to The Washington Post by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group founded last year by Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, White House counsel in the Reagan administration.
"This is not just a small thing," said Weinstein, who is suing the Air Force to halt what he contends is pervasive proselytizing in the armed forces. "It's evidence of a continuing attack on separation of church and state by evangelicals in the military."
Catton urged his classmates to support Bentley Rayburn, a recently retired Air Force general seeking the Republican nomination for a House seat being vacated this year by Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.). Hefley's district around Colorado Springs includes the Air Force Academy, several military bases and the headquarters of Focus on the Family, James Dobson's Christian broadcasting organization.
Both Catton's e-mail and an accompanying note from Rayburn portrayed him as a candidate who would represent the military and conservative Christians.

Car Bombs Kill 30 in Iraq
Reuters via NYT, 7 May 2006
Car bombs killed 30 people in Iraq on Sunday and wounded more than 70 in one of the bloodiest spasms of violence of recent weeks as political leaders closed in on a deal to form a national unity government.
The southern city of Basra was largely calm as British military engineers examined the wreck of a helicopter whose apparent shooting down was followed by clashes between troops and youths chanting triumphal Shi'ite militia slogans.
Twenty-one people were killed and 52 wounded when a car bomb went off close to the main central bus station in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. Around the same time, two cars exploded in the capital.
A suicide car bomber hit an Iraqi army patrol in the mainly Sunni northern district of Aadhamiya, killing eight people and wounding 15. Soldiers and civilians were among the casualties.
Iraqi and U.S. forces conducted a sweep for rebels in Aadhamiya on Saturday, the U.S. military said. The area is a stronghold of Sunni Arab insurgents.
A second car bomb exploded at a busy traffic intersection in northern Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding five. The target was not clear.
Interior Ministry sources said 42 bodies had been found in the last 24 hours in the capital alone, including eight found dumped near Kindi hospital in central Baghdad. The figure is in line with levels of violence seen in recent months.
Sectarian violence sparked by the February 22 bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra has led to the discoveries of bodies -- many showing signs of torture -- on a frequent basis.
Sunni leaders blame pro-government Shi'ite militias and the Shi'ite-dominated police for some of the killing. Militia leaders speak of a need to respond to three years of violence by insurgents from the once dominant Sunni minority.
Sectarian bloodshed has prompted warnings Iraq is sliding toward civil war and added urgency to efforts by political leaders to form a unity government that can reverse the trend.

Iraq's Shiites Now Chafe at American Presence
Perceived U.S. missteps, a torrent of angry propaganda and the sect's new political sway have fused to turn welcomers into foes.
By Borzou Daragahi
LA Times, 6 May 2006
A visitor need not go far or search hard to hear and see the anti-American venom that bubbles through this ancient shrine city, which once welcomed U.S. forces as liberators.
"The American ambassador is the gate through which terrorism enters Iraq," says a banner hanging from the fence surrounding the tombs of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, among the most revered martyrs of the Shiite Muslim faith.
A song screeches from a boombox at a nearby CD shop: "If the occupiers come at us, we will plant a bomb underneath them."
For three years, most of Iraq's Shiites welcomed — or at least tolerated — the U.S. presence here. In the weeks immediately after the American-led invasion, the mothers and sisters of Saddam Hussein's Shiite victims clutched clumps of dried earth as they wept over mass graves and thanked God for ending their oppression.
The Shiite acceptance of an American presence allowed troops to concentrate on putting down the insurgency in western Iraq, which is led by Sunni Muslim Arabs. With the exception of an uprising in mid-2004 by followers of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, the south has been relatively quiet and peaceful under the sway of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
But now the mood has shifted. Perceived American missteps, a torrent of anti-U.S. propaganda and a recently emboldened Shiite sense of political prowess have coalesced to make the south a fertile breeding ground for antagonism toward America's presence.
The change has weakened the Bush administration's position and dimmed its hopes that Iraq's Shiites would counter the vehement anti-Americanism of their coreligionists across the border in Iran.
"There is an anger," said Jaffar Mohammed Asadi, spokesman for Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi Modaressi, a moderate and well-regarded cleric known more for his attempts to boost business in Karbala than for fiery anti-American speeches.
"You can hear it in the slogans at Friday prayers: 'Death to America,' " he said. "They're burning American flags. They're saying, 'The Americans won't leave except by the funerals of their sons.' "

Iraq: Get Out Now
By William E. Odom
LA Times, 4 May 2006
WITHDRAW immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today.
American public opinion is decidedly against the war; even in the "red states," more than half of Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.
The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, President Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let's consider his administration's most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.
•  If we leave, there will be a civil war. In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein. Even Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war.
•  Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists. True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers — precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with a choice: Surrender, or ally with Al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups' turning against Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq.
•  Before U.S. forces stand down, Iraqi security forces must stand up. The problem in Iraq is not military competence. The problem is loyalty. To whom can Iraqi officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. Political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism.
•  Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale of U.S. troops. Hiding behind the argument of troop morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if soldiers had the choice of whether to continue. This is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger; second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops. The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders, including the president.
•  Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world's only superpower, it's patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then, and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world's opinion of the United States has plummeted. The U.S. now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. We do.
Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the U.S. It was in the interests of Iran and Al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Hussein for his invasion of the country in 1980. For Al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the U.S. in the world, diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the transatlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror.

Spreading Democracy?
By Peter Baker
Washington Post, 7 May 2006
A day after scolding Russia for retreating on democracy, Vice President Cheney flew to oil-rich Kazakhstan yesterday and lavished praise on the autocratic leader of a former Soviet republic where opposition parties have been banned, newspapers shut down and advocacy groups intimidated.
Cheney stood next to Kazakhstan's longtime president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in a marble hall of the presidential palace in Astana and congratulated him on his country's vibrant economy. His tone was markedly different from the tenor of his remarks about Russia a day earlier during a stop in Lithuania, when he accused Moscow of violating its citizens' rights and using "intimidation or blackmail" against neighbors.

10 U.S. Troops Die in Afghan Copter Crash
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AP via NYT, 6 May 2006
A U.S.-led coalition military transport helicopter crashed while conducting combat operations in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan, killing all 10 American soldiers on board, a U.S. military spokeswoman said Saturday.

U.K. Copter Crashes in Iraq; Iraqis Cheer
AP via NYT, 6 May 2006
A British military helicopter crashed in the southern city of Basra on Saturday, and a crowd of Iraqis cheered and threw stones at British forces who raced to the scene to seal off the area.
Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter crashed into a two-story house in a residential area of the city, apparently after being hit by a missile or a rocket. He said the four-member crew had died but that no Iraqis were hurt on the ground.
The British military confirmed the crash, and said that casualties had resulted, but it provided no other details.
As British forces and armored vehicles arrived at the scene, some people in the crowd threw stones, jumped up and down and raised their fists. The chaotic scene was widely shown on state-run al-Iraqiya TV.
''We can confirm that there has been a helicopter crash in Basra,'' said Scott Green, spokesman at the British military center in Basra. He said no other information was available, including the type of aircraft, the number of crew members aboard or the cause of the crash.
In London, Britain's defense ministry issued a brief statement confirming the helicopter crash and saying it had caused casualties. But the ministry would provide no other details, including whether the casualties were British or Iraqi.

Negroponte Still Faces Uphill Battle to Change System
By Doyle McManus and Peter Spiegel
LA Times, 5 May 2006
After a little more than a year in his newly created job, John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, has won an initial battle to establish authority over the vast U.S. intelligence community -- Porter J. Goss, who resisted Negroponte's moves to limit the autonomy of the CIA, is gone.
But Negroponte faces a larger and much more difficult challenge: a struggle with Donald H. Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, which runs more than 80 percent of the nation's intelligence budget and is busy expanding its role even further.
Negroponte's job is to coordinate the work of 16 different intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the giant National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on international communications, as well as the Energy Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The post was created in 2005 in response to charges -- made most tellingly by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- that the federal government's intelligence effort was uncoordinated and needed central direction.
When he took office in April 2005, Negroponte, a veteran diplomat, moved quickly to exert his authority over the CIA. He took over the job of giving President Bush his daily intelligence briefing, a task that once allowed CIA directors to bond with the presidents they served. He took a central role in briefing Congress on intelligence issues. He transferred some CIA officers to new joint intelligence centers. And when it appeared that Goss was not fully on board, officials said, Negroponte and his deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, quietly complained to the White House -- apparently contributing to Goss' decision to resign Friday.
But Negroponte, who once worked as an aide to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, has been much more cautious in confronting the Pentagon, officials and members of Congress have said. (Kissinger once complained that Rumsfeld was the toughest bureaucratic warrior he ever met.)
When Negroponte has sought to push through changes at the Defense Department, "They told him to take a flying leap," said one U.S. intelligence official who said he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "If you get the shove from DOD, where else can you go?"
The Pentagon has said it is cooperating with Negroponte. But even before the intelligence director's job was created, Rumsfeld made it clear he thought its power should be limited, and he lobbied successfully in Congress to curtail much of Negroponte's clout over personnel and budgets.
Rumsfeld explained at the time that he did not want to weaken the Pentagon's ability to deliver tactical military intelligence to soldiers in the field by involving a new authority outside the military.
...But in recent months, the Pentagon has asserted its authority to expand its own intelligence operations far beyond tactical support for soldiers. The move that has drawn criticism from some members of Congress, who say they worry about an effort to create parallel intelligence-gathering capabilities -- including reportedly setting up covert special operations teams to spy in foreign countries.
The Pentagon is in the middle of a wide-reaching restructuring of its own intelligence gathering and analysis abilities, run by Stephen A. Cambone, a close Rumsfeld aide who is the department's intelligence chief, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin. Some critics have warned that the effort is turning into a bid for even more control over national intelligence assets.
"They started from an advantageous position because, even 10 years, ago they had about 85 percent of the intelligence budget," said Steven Aftergood, a civilian analyst who tracks intelligence issues for the Federation of American Scientists. "But with the onset of war in Iraqi, intel (intelligence) support for military operations has only increased, and the Pentagon has been increasingly assertive about its role as an intelligence gatherer and analyst."
Last month, Rumsfeld approved a new Defense Joint Intelligence Operations Center, which officials have described as an effort to centralize all military intelligence to better serve commanders in the field.
In a briefing to reporters, Boykin said military officials were in talks with the CIA to allow the new center to win access to the agency's raw intelligence, a move he characterized as an effort to get analysts in combat zones all the information they might need about potential threats.
"We want access to databases from other agencies, where appropriate," Boykin said.
SEE ALSO:
Goss in the Cold: A Scandal Skedaddle?
A bolt out of the blue? Or a bolt?
David Corn.com, 5 May 2006
Porter Goss's sudden announcement of his departure from the CIA is puzzling. The former Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee and ex-CIA case officer offered no reason for vacating the CIA directorship, and there was no successor ready to go. News of his resignation came during a brief joint appearance at the White House by George W. Bush and Goss on Friday afternoon (the traditional time slot for putting out bad news). And--whaddayaknow--no pesky questions from journalists. This has led to the obvious speculation: was it the hookers?
SEE ALSO:
Goss Departure Raises Questions About CIA Health
Reuters via NYT, 6 May 2006
The abrupt resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss raises disturbing questions about the U.S. flagship intelligence agency's health, amid growing concerns about a nuclear Iran, turmoil in Iraq and the al Qaeda threat.
More than four years after the September 11 attacks, critics of the Bush administration, including Democrats in Congress, also warned that problems at the CIA had parallels elsewhere in the 16-agency U.S. intelligence community including at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
Goss' departure capped months of unhappiness over his leadership of the CIA and efforts to rebuild the agency's key clandestine and analytical operations for the war on terrorism, analysts and former intelligence officers said.
``The real problem is that Goss has laid out his vision, but what he hasn't been able to do -- this because of his management style and his weak leadership -- is to build allies within the ranks who can be agents for change,'' said former CIA agent and author Melissa Boyle Mahle.
Added another former CIA officer who spoke on condition of anonymity: ``The agency's gone down hill since he arrived. There's been an exodus of senior people, and the guy he appointed to head the clandestine service has proved mediocre.''

Top C.I.A. Pick Has Credentials and Skeptics
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
NYT, 6 May 2006
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who senior administration officials said Friday was the likely choice of President Bush to head the Central Intelligence Agency, has a stellar résumé for a spy and has long been admired at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
But General Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, would also face serious questions about the controversy over the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program, which he oversaw and has vigorously defended.
His Senate nomination hearing, if he is chosen to succeed Director Porter J. Goss, is likely to reignite debate over what civil libertarians say is the program's violation of Americans' privacy.
Mr. Bush has often reserved decisions about top-level appointments until just before they are announced, but senior administration officials said Friday that General Hayden was the clear leading candidate.
Confirmation hearings would give the administration's opponents a highly visible forum for questioning not only the eavesdropping program but President Bush's overall handling of national security.
And while he might bring to the beleaguered C.I.A. the power of his ties to the White House and to his current boss, John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, General Hayden could find his background as an Air Force officer and specialist in technical intelligence systems does not suit some at the C.I.A., which specializes in traditional espionage.
The C.I.A. has long resented the expenditure of billions of dollars on technical systems, like spy satellites, while complaining that the budget for human spies has been too low.
Even though General Hayden has not been closely associated with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, his pedigree as a military officer could reinforce concerns at the spy agency that the Pentagon is intruding into its traditional bailiwick.
While General Hayden has extensive administrative experience, he would face daunting challenges at the C.I.A., an agency that has been demoralized and has endured turbulence since the mid-1990's. As N.S.A. director until last year, General Hayden oversaw the program to intercept international phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans and others in the United States believed to have links to Al Qaeda.
General Hayden, 61, has been the program's most public defender, repeatedly asserting that it is legal and constitutional even though the eavesdropping is done without warrants from a special court set up in 1978 to authorize such surveillance.

Our Sick Society
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 5 May 2006
Is being an American bad for your health? That's the apparent implication of a study just published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
It's not news that something is very wrong with the state of America's health. International comparisons show that the United States has achieved a sort of inverse miracle: we spend much more per person on health care than any other nation, yet we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, Japan and most of Europe.
...In the end, the study's authors seem baffled by the poor health of even relatively well-off Americans. But let me suggest a couple of possible explanations.
One is that having health insurance doesn't ensure good health care. For example, a New York Times report on diabetes pointed out that insurance companies are generally unwilling to pay for care that might head off the disease, even though they are willing to pay for the extreme measures, like amputations, that become necessary when prevention fails. It's possible that Britain's National Health Service, in spite of its limited budget, actually provides better all-around medical care than our system because it takes a broader, longer-term view than private insurance companies.
The other possibility is that Americans work too hard and experience too much stress. Full-time American workers work, on average, about 46 weeks per year; full-time British, French and German workers work only 41 weeks a year. I've pointed out in the past that our workaholic economy is actually more destructive of the "family values" we claim to honor than the European economies in which regulations and union power have led to shorter working hours.
Maybe overwork, together with the stress of living in an economy with a minimal social safety net, damages our health as well as our families. These are just suggestions. What we know for sure is that although the American way of life may be, as Ari Fleischer famously proclaimed back in 2001, "a blessed one," there's something about that way of life that is seriously bad for our health.

Libby Defense Seems to Meet a Setback on Evidence
By NEIL A. LEWIS
NYT, 6 June 2006
The judge in the perjury and obstruction of justice case against I. Lewis Libby Jr. said Friday that he was skeptical that the defense needed additional documents about the trip a former ambassador took to Africa to check reports of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.
Lawyers for Mr. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, have claimed a need for government accounts of the trip, taken by Joseph C. Wilson IV, who, contrary to the Bush administration's claims, later declared that there was no evidence of such efforts.

4 May 2006

Iraq, Afghanistan on 'Failed States' Index
AP via USA Today, 4 May 2006
Despite large-scale U.S. support, Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the world's 10 most vulnerable states, according to a private survey being released Tuesday.
In its second annual "failed states" index, Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace concluded that Sudan is the country under the most severe stress because of violent internal conflict.
Eleven of the 20 most vulnerable countries of the 148 examined in the survey are in Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ivory Coast, both chronically volatile in recent years, ranked second and third.
Each country was given a score based on data from numerous available sources. A "failing state" was described as one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens and lacks a monopoly on the use of force.
Sudan received low grades in virtually all areas

16 Police Recruits Killed in Iraq; 34 Other Bodies Found
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NYT, 4 May 2006
More than 50 Iraqis were killed or found dead on Wednesday, as Iraqi leaders struggled to fashion a unified government that they hope can diminish the insurgency and ease violence between Sunnis and Shiites.
One day after the governor of restive Anbar Province escaped an assassination attempt that killed 10 people, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked a police recruiting depot on Wednesday morning in Falluja, the province's second largest city, killing at least 16 young men waiting to be interviewed, Iraqi officials said.
In Baghdad, Iraqi officials said that the bodies of 34 men who all appeared to have been tortured before being killed were discovered strewn about Baghdad, apparently the latest victims of the sectarian violence that has flared in Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of the hallowed Askariya Shrine in Samarra.
The bloodshed came as Iraqi legislators in Baghdad, in their first action since selecting the country's top leadership last month, formed a committee to set the rules and procedures for Iraq's first full-term Council of Representatives, as the national Parliament is now called.
But legislators delayed debating the most divisive issue facing them: changes to the constitution sought by Sunni Arab leaders who want, among other things, to make it harder to strip Anbar and other Sunni-dominated, oil-poor regions of a sizable share of Iraq's petroleum revenues.
Sunnis fear the new charter could allow that to happen by allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the northeast — regions where most of the oil is — to form autonomous confederacies that control much of their natural resources. Mahmoud Mashhadani, the Parliament speaker, said the 275-member council would wait to argue those issues until after a new government is completed.

Cheney Exempts His Own Office From Reporting On Classified Material
BY MARK SILVA
Chicago Tribune, 29 April 2006
As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as "top secret" or "confidential," one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and "any other entity within the executive branch" to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt.
Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when such offices as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is "not under any duty" to provide it.

House Committee Approves Military Bill
AP via NYT, 4 May 2006
A House military bill increases by thousands the maximum number of ground troops the military can maintain -- and sends a message to the Pentagon about lawmakers' concerns of adequate force levels in wartime.
On a 60-1 vote, the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved the bill that includes the provision on troop levels and sets spending levels of $512.9 billion for the military for next year. That includes $50 billion to cover the first portion of next year's costs for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Overall, the House bill ''reflects our committee's strong and continuing support for the brave men and women of the United States armed services,'' said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the committee's chairman.
''We've done good work. This is an excellent bill. It does a real service for those in uniform,'' said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, lead Democrat on the House committee.
...Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., cast the only vote against the bill.

An Ugly Side of Free Trade: Sweatshops in Jordan
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO
NYT, 4 May 2006
Propelled by a free trade agreement with the United States, apparel manufacturing is booming in Jordan, its exports to America soaring twentyfold in the last five years.
But some foreign workers in Jordanian factories that produce garments for Target, Wal-Mart and other American retailers are complaining of dismal conditions — of 20-hour days, of not being paid for months and of being hit by supervisors and jailed when they complain.
An advocacy group for workers contends that some apparel makers in Jordan, and some contractors that supply foreign workers to them, have engaged in human trafficking. Workers from Bangladesh said they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan, but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated, restricting their ability to leave and tying them to jobs that often pay far less than promised and far less than the country's minimum wage.

Agreement to Extend Dividend, AMT Tax Cuts May Bolster Bush
Bloomberg, 3 May 2006
Congressional Republicans agreed to a $70 billion package of tax cuts that, if enacted, would hand President George W. Bush a political victory to tout before the November mid-term elections.
The agreement in principle reached yesterday would extend low tax rates on dividends and most capital gains until 2010 and prevent a $31 billion tax increase for more than 15 million U.S. households from the alternative minimum tax this year, congressional aides familiar with the matter said.
The president and administration officials have spent the last week calling for an extension of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, saying they are the reason the economy grew at a 4.8 percent annualized rate in the first quarter. Extending the 15 percent rate on dividends and most capital gains is a top domestic priority for Bush this year; the investment tax breaks currently are scheduled to expire at the end of 2008.
``This rapid growth is another sign that our economy is on the fast track,'' Bush said last week. ``This good news cannot be taken for granted.'' A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Bush approved of the agreement.
The congressional aides said the tentative accord won't be signed until Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, a California Republican, agree to details of a second tax measure that will include provisions removed from the first, including a research tax credit that would be worth $10 billion a year to companies such as Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. and Chicago-based Boeing Co.

Lobbying Bill Passes Narrowly in House
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 4 May 2006
The House narrowly passed a bill on Wednesday intended to restore public trust in Congress by reshaping the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists. But Democrats denounced the measure as a sham, and 20 Republicans voted against it.
The measure, which passed 217 to 213, is the first lobbying and ethics legislation since 1995, the year after Republicans took control of the House. Republicans have been promising to pass lobbying legislation since January. But the measure proved extremely divisive, so much so that the bill nearly died last week in a Republican feud over earmarks, the pet projects that are often slipped into bills at lobbyists' behest.
The new bill would require lobbyists to disclose more of their activities, increase financial penalties for violations and require lawmakers and their aides to attend ethics training.
It also aims to discourage earmarks by requiring House members who write spending bills to disclose them, a move lauded by fiscal conservatives who complain that earmarks waste taxpayer money and drive up the cost of legislation.
But the measure falls short of what Republican leaders promised after the scandal involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff rocked the Capitol in January. The chief Republican architect of the bill, Representative David Dreier of California, the House Rules Committee chairman, conceded that he wished that the measure "were stronger than it is."

Report Raps Medicare's Advice Line
By Ceci Connolly
The Washington Post, 4 May 2006
With less than two weeks remaining for seniors to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, an independent review released Wednesday found that Medicare's telephone operators frequently give callers false or incomplete information.
Posing as seniors or as individuals helping a senior, investigators for the Government Accountability Office placed 500 calls to 1-800-MEDICARE and found that about one-third resulted in faulty information or none at all.
The quality of service varied. On a question relating to which seniors qualified for discounted plans, customer service representatives gave correct information 90 percent of the time.
When asked which drug plans were most appropriate and least expensive for an individual, however, the accuracy rate fell to 41 percent. Often, Medicare representatives incorrectly told callers that they required personal data such as a Social Security number. In fact, they can provide general information but would be able to get more sophisticated guidance with the personal data.
Though Bush administration officials have acknowledged glitches, they said the GAO study did not take into account recent improvements or recognize that seniors can use multiple sources of information.

Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data
By STEPHANIE SAUL
NYT, 4 May 2006
Although virtually unknown to consumers, the information has long been considered the most potent weapon in pharmaceutical sales — computerized dossiers showing which physicians are prescribing what drugs. Armed with such data, a drug sales representative can pressure a doctor to write more prescriptions for a name-brand medicine or fewer orders for a competitor's drug.
But now a rebellion is under way by some doctors, who consider the data-gathering an intrusion that feeds overzealous sales practices among the nation's estimated 90,000 drug company representatives. Public officials are also weighing in. A vote on a state bill to clamp down on the practice is scheduled for today in New Hampshire, and similar bills have been introduced in other states, including Arizona and West Virginia.
To appease the doctors and try to stave off the state restrictions, the American Medical Association will soon give individual physicians the choice of declaring their prescription records off limits to drug sales representatives. The new measure is viewed as a self-policing move that the drug industry and the A.M.A., which has lucrative contracts with data-mining companies, hope will keep states from banning sales of prescription data altogether.
If the A.M.A effort succeeds, "legislators will turn their attention elsewhere, and the industry can hang on to one of its most valuable data sources," according to an article this week in the industry trade magazine Pharmaceutical Executive, which was co-written by an A.M.A. official and an executive with the leading vendor of prescription data. Even many critics concede that patients' privacy is apparently not an issue, because the tracking systems identify only the prescribing doctors, not patients. But many doctors find the use of the data by sales representatives an intrusion into the way they practice medicine.
"These doctors were outraged that people came into their office and talked to them about how many times they prescribed a particular drug," said Dr. John C. Lewin, the chief executive of the state medical association in California, one of the states where complaints about the current system arose.
The California group is beginning its own program under which doctors who do not opt out under the A.M.A. system will get comparisons of their prescribing patterns in 17 classes of drugs from the data companies, said Dr. Lewin, who added that the program was being started as a pilot effort that he hoped would be extended statewide.
Among the doctors who raised an early complaint about the system was Dr. Brad Drexler, an obstetrician in Healdsburg, Calif., who said he was surprised four years ago when pharmaceutical representatives began thanking him for writing prescriptions — the first time he realized that the drug representatives had information he assumed was private.

Bottlers Agree to a School Ban on Sweet Drinks
By MARIAN BURROS and MELANIE WARNER
NYT, 4 May 2006
The country's top three soft-drink companies announced yesterday that beginning this fall they would start removing sweetened drinks like Coke, Pepsi and iced teas from school cafeterias and vending machines in response to the growing threat of lawsuits and state legislation.
Under an agreement between beverage makers and health advocates, students in elementary school would be served only bottled water, low-fat and nonfat milk, and 100 percent fruit juice in servings no bigger than eight ounces. Serving sizes would increase to 10 ounces in middle school. In high school, low-calorie juice drinks, sports drinks and diet sodas would be permitted; serving sizes would be limited to 12 ounces.
The agreement, which includes parochial and private schools contracts, is voluntary, and the beverage industry said its school sales would not be affected because it expected to replace sugary drinks with other ones.

Pardon Unlikely for Civil Rights Advocate
By ADAM LIPTAK
NYT, 4 May 2006
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi acknowledges that Clyde Kennard suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of state officials more than 45 years ago. But he says he will not grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Kennard, a black man who was falsely imprisoned after trying to desegregate a Mississippi college.
Mr. Kennard moved home to Hattiesburg, Miss., after seven years in the Army in Germany and Korea and three years as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He wanted to finish his education at the local college.
But because that college, Mississippi Southern, was reserved for whites, state officials not only rejected Mr. Kennard's repeated applications but also plotted to kill him.
They kept him out of college by convicting him of helping to steal $25 of chicken feed based on what the sole witness now says was perjury. The 1960 conviction drew a seven-year prison term, and Mr. Kennard died of cancer in 1963.
Last month, Mr. Kennard's supporters asked Governor Barbour, a Republican, for a pardon. The state parole board must first make a recommendation, but Mr. Barbour has already said he will not consider granting one.
"The governor hasn't pardoned anyone, be it alive or deceased," said Mr. Barbour's spokesman
...Mr. Lucas said pardoning Mr. Kennard might cost Mr. Barbour a few votes.

3 May 2006

Suicide Bomber Slams Into Convoy in Iraq
By Borzou Daragahi
LA Times via Informed Comment, 2 May 2006
A suicide car bomber rammed into a convoy of U.S. and Iraqi vehicles accompanying the governor of the volatile Anbar province through the city of Ramadi today, leaving a number of casualties, police and hospital officials in the provincial capital said.
Gov. Mamoun Sami Rasheed's condition was unknown.
Meanwhile, violence took the lives of at least 30 others in Iraq, including at least one American soldier reported killed after a roadside bomb struck his vehicle south of Baghdad on Monday night.
The day's violence came as Iraq's squabbling Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions prepared to convene parliament tomorrow, in part to reopen potentially divisive talks on the constitution.
Iraq's disparate groups disagree starkly on the powers of the central government, and on the country's identity. The tensions sometimes play out in bullets and bombs on the country's streets.

Taliban Threat Is Said to Grow in Afghan South
By CARLOTTA GALL
NYT, 3 May 2006
Building on a winter campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations and the knowledge that American troops are leaving, the Taliban appear to be moving their insurgency into a new phase, flooding the rural areas of southern Afghanistan with weapons and men.
Each spring with the arrival of warmer weather, the fighting season here starts up, but the scale of the militants' presence and their sheer brazenness have alarmed Afghans and foreign officials far more than in previous years.
"The Taliban and Al Qaeda are everywhere," a shopkeeper, Haji Saifullah, told the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, as the general strolled through the bazaar of this town to talk to people. "It is all right in the city, but if you go outside the city, they are everywhere, and the people have to support them. They have no choice."
The fact that American troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan in the coming months, and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers, who have repeatedly stated that they are not going to fight terrorists, has given a lift to the insurgents, and increased the fears of Afghans.

The Captors Become the Captives
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 3 May 2006
The invasion of Iraq has turned into "The Ransom of Red Chief."
The famous short story by O. Henry, published in 1910, begins, "It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you."
The tale is about a couple of guys who have a bold, illicit scheme they assume will be easy, but it ends up backfiring. The idea, one confesses afterward, must have struck them "during a moment of temporary mental apparition."
...Now we see this classic plotline in the Middle East. The inept captors have become the captives. The country the administration precipitously grabbed and overconfidently took over has ended up trapping, draining, flummoxing and alarming the administration, which is more and more desperate to hand it off and escape.
President Bush said Saturday, "As Iraqis continue to make progress toward a democracy that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, more of our troops can come home."
And in an interview in the new Vanity Fair, Todd Purdum asks Dick Cheney whether in his "darkest night" he has even "a little doubt" about the administration's course. "No," Vice says. "I think what we've done has been what needed to be done."
But even if they and their 33 percent unshakeable base are still in denial, there's a growing consensus that their plot was hatched, as O. Henry put it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition" and that we're the Middle East hostages now, to war and oil.
The Sunday graduation ceremony for nearly a thousand new Iraqi soldiers at a base near Baghdad turned into an ugly melee when dozens of Sunnis declared they would fight only in their home areas, another reflection of growing internecine bitterness.
The Washington Post reported last weekend that American troops in Hawija are growing more distrustful of their Iraqi counterparts, fearing that many soldiers they are training are cooperating with the enemy.
Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb wrote an Op-Ed in The Times on Monday promoting the idea of "decentralizing" Iraq into three "ethno-religious" groups, even though critics argue that this could make it more likely that the Sunni section would become a haven for Al Qaeda and the Shiite sector an Iranian satellite.
Another respected retired lieutenant general, William Odom, has joined the toil-and-trouble chorus with a piece in Foreign Policy magazine headlined "Cut and Run? You Bet." He writes that withdrawing from "the big sandy" will encourage the terrorists, but argues that "our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers — precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them."
He says: "Invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and Al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For Al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans." He concludes that "the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically."
The U.S. may be paralyzed, but its leader is pedaling. The commander in chief, who could learn something about wily and resilient ways to adapt a war plan from Red Chief, spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon biking and savoring the beautiful spring weather. When you're on the hook, play hooky.

Oil Prices Rise Toward $75 a Barrel
AP via NYT, 3 May 2006
Oil prices tested levels near $75 a barrel Wednesday amid nagging concern that Iran, a key exporter, could cut supplies because of international pressure to modify its nuclear program.
Also contributing to the upward trend were an expected decline in gasoline stocks when U.S. weekly energy data is released later Wednesday, bullish buying by investors, a refinery outage in Italy and supply disruptions in Africa.
Unrest in Nigeria and the approach of the summer driving season are likely to exert additional upward pressure on prices.
SEE ALSO:
Let's (Third) Party
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT, 3 May 2006
What would OPEC do if it wanted to keep America addicted to oil? That's easy. OPEC would urge the U.S. Congress to deal with the current spike in gasoline prices either by adopting the Republican proposal to give American drivers $100 each, so they could continue driving gas-guzzling cars and buy gasoline at the current $3.50 a gallon, or by adopting the Democrats' proposal for a 60-day lifting of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon. Either one would be fine with OPEC.
So, to summarize, we now have a Congress proposing to do exactly what our worst enemies would like us to do — subsidize our addiction to gasoline by breaking into our kids' piggybanks to make it easier for us to pay the prices demanded by our oil pushers, so that we will remain addicted and they will remain awash in dollars.
With a Congress like this, who needs Al Qaeda?

Serving Up Social Security and Medicare, Without the Fixings
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 2 May 2006
"The job of a president," George W. Bush used to say almost daily during the 2004 campaign, "is to confront problems, not to pass them on to future presidents and future generations."
Astute observers may have noticed he's been saying that a bit less frequently these days. Yesterday showed why.
The president was over at the Washington Hilton, speaking to the American Hospital Association about his Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. "When I came into office I found a Medicare program that was outdated," he announced. Seeing this "not very cost-effective" program, he continued, "I decided to do something about it. And I worked with the Congress, and we passed critical legislation that modernizes Medicare."
An hour after Bush finished his speech, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow kicked off a news conference announcing the latest on Medicare's financial standing. The "modernized," cost-effective program is forecast to go belly-up in 2018 -- two years earlier than previously forecast.
Somebody stop us before we reform again.

Federal Study Finds Accord on Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT, 3 May 2006
A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."
The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.
But White House officials noted that this was just the first of 21 assessments planned by the federal Climate Change Science Program, which was created by the administration in 2002 to address what it called unresolved questions. The officials said that while the new finding was important, the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.
The focus of the new federal study was conflicting records of atmospheric temperature trends.
For more than a decade, scientists using different methods had come up with differing rates of warming at Earth's surface and in the midsection of the atmosphere, called the troposphere. These disparities had been cited by a small group of scientists, and by the administration and its allies, to question a growing consensus among climatologists that warming from heat-trapping gases could dangerously heat Earth.
The new study found that "there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere," in the words of a news release issued by the Commerce Department and approved by the White House. The report was published yesterday online at climatescience.gov.
The report's authors all agreed that their review of the data showed that the atmosphere was, in fact, warming in ways that generally meshed with computer simulations. The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature over the last 50 years was the buildup heat-trapping gases, which are mainly emitted by burning coal and oil.

As C-Note Falls Flat, GOP Looks for Plan B on Gas
By Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post, 3 May 2006
Some Republicans thought they were being clever indeed with their plan to respond to soaring gasoline prices by giving most drivers a $100 rebate. At a news conference last week to unveil the idea, Sen. James M. Talent (R-Mo.) declared, "It will show people that Washington gets it."
Many voters, however, concluded that Washington does not get it. Besieged with complaints about political pandering, GOP lawmakers now say the rebate idea is a non-starter. As Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) explained yesterday, "When my own daughter harasses me, you know you're in trouble."

After Protests, Backlash Grows
Opponents of Illegal Immigration Are Increasingly Vocal
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post, 3 May 2006
While a series of marches focused much of the nation's attention on the plight of illegal immigrants, scores of other Americans quietly seethed. Now, with the same full-throated cry expressed by those in the country illegally, they are shouting back.
Congressional leaders in Washington have gotten bricks in the mail from a group that advocates building a border fence, states in the West and South have drawn up tough anti-immigrant laws, and ordinary citizens, such as Janis McDonald of Pennsylvania, who considers herself a liberal, are not mincing words in expressing their displeasure.
"Send them back," McDonald said. "Build a damn wall and be done with it."

Pardons Granted 88 Years After Crimes of Sedition
By JIM ROBBINS
NYT, 2 May 2006
HELENA, Mont. — When Steve Milch found out recently that his great-grandfather, an immigrant from Bavaria, had been convicted of sedition in Montana during World War I, he was taken aback. It was something no one in the family had ever talked about.
For the past 88 years, a lot of secrets have been kept in Montana families, especially those of German descent, about a flurry of wartime sedition prosecutions in 1918, when public sentiment against Germany was at a feverish pitch.
Seventy-nine Montanans were convicted under the state law, considered among the harshest in the country, for speaking out in ways deemed critical of the United States. In one instance, a traveling wine and brandy salesman was sentenced to 7 to 20 years in prison for calling wartime food regulations a "big joke."
But the silence — and for some families, the shame — has ended. The convictions will be undone on Wednesday when Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a descendant of ethnic Germans who migrated here from Russia in 1909, posthumously pardons 75 men and three women. One man was pardoned shortly after the war.
Forty-one of those convicted, including one woman, went to prison on sentences from 1 to 20 years and paid fines from $200 to $20,000.
"I'm going to say what Gov. Sam Stewart should have said," Mr. Schweitzer said, referring to the man who signed the sedition legislation into law in 1918. "I'm sorry, forgive me, and God bless America, because we can criticize our government."

An Unqualified Judicial Nominee
NYT, 3 May 2006
Senate Republicans have announced plans to push for a quick vote on Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination for a powerful appeals court judgeship has languished since 2003. There are good reasons the nomination has been kept on hold. Mr. Kavanaugh was unqualified then, and he is unqualified now. Moreover, since his Senate hearing in 2004, new issues have been raised that he should be questioned about, including what role, if any, he played in Bush administration policies like the National Security Agency's domestic spying program.
Mr. Kavanaugh has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the nation's second most important court. A young lawyer with paltry courtroom experience, Mr. Kavanaugh does not have the legal background appropriate for such a lofty appointment. What he does have is a résumé that screams political partisanship.
He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor, and helped draft possible grounds of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He became a partisan in the impeachment battles that followed, co-writing an op-ed article in 1999 that presented Mr. Starr as an "American hero," while railing against a "presidentially approved smear campaign against him." Mr. Kavanaugh has spent much of his legal career since then in the Bush White House, where he helped select many of the administration's far-right judicial nominees.
Since Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination was first considered, information has come to light about a number of troubling policies that he could have had a hand in, including domestic spying, torture and rendition of detainees to other countries. Senate Democrats would like to question Mr. Kavanaugh about these programs, and about what connection he had, if any, to the Jack Abramoff scandal.
It is not clear, however, that they will get the chance. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has so far resisted calls for another hearing before Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination is brought to a vote. The Republicans have long used judicial nominations as a way of placating the far right of their party, and it appears that with President Bush sinking in the polls, they now want to offer up some new appeals court judges to their conservative base. But a lifetime appointment to the D.C. Circuit is too important to be treated as a political reward.

Kill This Bill
The House pretends to reform itself.
Washington Post, 3 May 2006
"BOLD, RESPONSIBLE, common-sense reform of our current lobbying and ethics laws is clearly needed," House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) told his colleagues on the House floor last week. "We owe it to our constituents. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to this institution."
Very true -- which is why House members should reject the diluted snake oil that Mr. Dreier and the GOP leadership are peddling as bold reform. Their bill, which is expected to come before the House for a vote today, is an insult to voters who the GOP apparently believes are dumb enough to be snookered by this feint. The procedures under which it is to be debated, allowing only meaningless amendments to be considered, are an insult also -- to the democratic process.
At best the bill would marginally improve the existing arrangement of minimal disclosure, laxly enforced. Reporting by lobbyists would be quarterly instead of twice yearly and slightly more detailed (with listings of lobbyists' campaign contributions -- already available elsewhere -- along with gifts to lawmakers and contributions to their charities). Nothing would crimp lawmakers' lifestyles: Still allowed would be meals, gifts (skybox seats at sporting events, say) and cut-rate flights on corporate jets. Privately sponsored travel would be suspended, but only until just after the election.
The provisions on earmarks are similarly feeble. Lawmakers who insert pet projects in spending bills would have to attach their names to them -- but that's all. If that happens, these provisions wouldn't be subject to challenge. Earmark reform that wouldn't allow a vote to stop future "Bridges to Nowhere" isn't real reform.
Matching the anemic measure is the undemocratic procedure under which it will be "debated" on the House floor. Nine amendments are to be considered, including such tough-love provisions as "voluntary ethics training" for members and holding lobbyists liable for knowingly offering gifts whose value exceeds the gift limit. (Not to worry: Legislators wouldn't be liable for accepting them.) The Rules Committee refused to permit votes on amendments to strengthen the measure, including proposals to establish an independent ethics office; to require lawmakers to pay full freight for chartered flights; or to double the waiting period for lawmakers to lobby their former colleagues from one year to two. Neither would the majority risk an up-or-down vote on the much more robust Democratic alternative.
Democrats tempted to vote for this sham because they're scared of 30-second ads that accuse them of opposing lobbying reform ought to ask themselves whether they really think so little of their constituents. As for Republicans willing to settle for this legislative fig leaf, they ought to listen to Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.). "I happen to believe we are losing our moral authority to lead this place," Mr. Shays said on the House floor last week. He was generous not to have put that in the past tense.

2 May 2006

Iraqis Begin Duty With Refusal
Some Sunni Soldiers Say They Won't Serve Outside Home Areas
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post, 2 May 2006
The graduation of nearly 1,000 new Iraqi army soldiers in restive Anbar province took a disorderly turn Sunday when dozens of the men declared that they would refuse to serve outside their home areas, according to U.S. and Iraqi military authorities.
The graduation ceremony at Camp Habbaniyah, a base about 45 miles west of Baghdad, had been going well. The 978 soldiers, most of them Sunni Muslims, had just finished nearly five weeks of military training and were parading before a review stand to the sounds of martial music. They took an oath of service while U.S. and Iraqi officials delivered speeches hailing the event as an important step toward the formation of a national army.
Then some soldiers started tearing their clothes off to demonstrate their rage.
The protest was triggered by an announcement that the new soldiers, all residents of Anbar province -- widely considered the heartland of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgent movement -- would be required to serve outside their home towns and outside the province as well.
Recruiting Sunnis into the army has been a key goal of U.S. policies to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces. Sunday's ceremony for the first group out of a total of 5,000 men recruited from Anbar represented major progress in that effort. But army commanders worry that if the men serve in their own home towns, they could be co-opted by insurgents.

The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal
NYT, 30 April 2006
[Democrats] have no shortage of worthwhile foreign-policy proposals. Even so, they cannot tell a coherent story about the post-9/11 world. And they cannot do so, in large part, because they have not found their usable past. Such stories, after all, are not born in focus groups; they are less invented than inherited. Before Democrats can conquer their ideological weakness, they must first conquer their ideological amnesia.
Consider George W. Bush's story: America represents good in an epic struggle against evil. Liberals, this story goes, try to undermine that moral clarity, reining in American power and sapping our faith in ourselves. But a visionary president will not be constrained, and he wields American might with relentless force, until the walls of oppression crumble and the darkest region on earth is set free.
If this sounds familiar, it should. It was Ronald Reagan's story as well. To a remarkable degree, the right's post-9/11 vision relies on a grand analogy: Bush is Reagan, Tony Blair is Margaret Thatcher, the "axis of evil" is the "evil empire," the truculent French are the truculent French. The most influential conservative foreign-policy essay of the 1990's, written by the Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment, was titled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy." And since 9/11, most conservatives have seen Bush as Reaganesque. His adherence to a script conservatives know by heart helps explain their devotion, which held fast through the 2004 election, and has only recently begun to flag, as that script veers more and more disastrously from the real world.
Liberals don't have a script because they don't have a Reagan. Since Vietnam, they've produced two presidents: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Carter's foreign policy is widely considered a failure. Clinton's foreign policy is not widely considered at all, because he governed at a time when foreign policy was for the most part peripheral to American politics. Ask liberals to describe a Carteresque foreign policy, and they tend to wince. Ask them to describe a Clintonesque one, and you'll most likely get a blank stare.
But before Vietnam, and the disappointment and confusion it spawned, liberals did have a clear story of their own. In the late 1940's and 1950's, intellectuals like Reinhold Niebuhr and policymakers like George F. Kennan described America's cold-war struggle differently from their conservative counterparts: as a struggle not merely for democracy but for economic opportunity as well, in the belief that the former required the latter to survive. Even more important, they described America itself differently. Americans may fight evil, they argued, but that does not make us inherently good. And paradoxically, that very recognition makes national greatness possible. Knowing that we, too, can be corrupted by power, we seek the constraints that empires refuse. And knowing that democracy is something we pursue rather than something we embody, we advance it not merely by exhorting others but by battling the evil in ourselves. The irony of American exceptionalism is that by acknowledging our common fallibility, we inspire the world.

Bolivian President Seizes Gas Industry
Troops Deployed In Move to Block Foreign Influence
By Monte Reel and Steven Mufson
Washington Post, 2 May 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela, May 1 -- Bolivian President Evo Morales seized control of the country's natural gas industry Monday, sending soldiers to occupy fields that he contends private companies have plundered for years.
Morales said that unless foreign energy firms agreed to give Bolivia's state oil company oversight of production and a majority of their revenue generated in Bolivia, the government would evict them from the fields.
"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources," Morales said during a televised speech from a gas field near the country's southern border. "The looting by foreign companies has ended."
Morales's announcement was expected, but his deployment of troops to gas fields was a strong statement in a region where governments are moving to block outside influence, particularly from the United States, and exert more control over the energy industry. Venezuela recently voided drilling contracts with private companies at 32 oil fields, demanding new contracts that give the state oil company a 60 percent stake. Ecuador is finalizing a law that could limit excessive profits by foreign crude producers.
..."I think it was a symbolic move to send the military to the oil fields to show that Bolivians are now in charge of taking care of their own property," said Gonzalo Chavez, a political analyst with the Catholic University in La Paz, the Bolivian capital. "It's an extremely popular move. There's a lot of nationalism in the country right now, and this is something that a lot of people are going to like."

FBI Sought Data on Thousands in '05
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 2 May 2006
The FBI sought personal information on thousands of Americans last year from banks, Internet service providers and other companies without having to seek approval from a court, according to new data released by the Justice Department.
In a report to the top leaders of both parties in the House, the department disclosed that the FBI had issued more than 9,200 "national security letters," or NSLs, seeking detailed information about more than 3,500 U.S. citizens or legal residents in 2005.
The report, released late Friday, represents the first official count of NSL use. It was required under legislation that extended the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law.
The count does not include other such letters that are issued by the FBI to obtain more limited subscriber information from companies, such as a person's name, address or other identifying data, according to the report. Sources have said that would include thousands of additional letters and may be the largest category of NSLs issued. The Washington Post reported in November that the FBI now issues more than 30,000 NSLs each year, including subscriber requests.
The Justice Department report also outlined a continued increase in the use of secret warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The secret court that oversees the law approved a record 2,072 orders for clandestine searches or surveillance in 2005 -- an 18 percent increase from the year before.
The new statistics provide the latest measure of the government's rapidly expanding anti-terrorism activities, which include a wide range of secret warrants and powers aimed at monitoring suspicious behavior and preventing attacks.

19 Months More in Prison for Professor in Terror Case
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
NYT, 2 May 2006
Although the United States government lost most of its case last year against Sami Al-Arian, the former computer science professor it once identified as the linchpin in a terrorist organization, a federal judge sentenced him on Monday to an additional 19 months in prison before he is deported.
The case against Mr. Al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait, stemmed from a decade-long investigation that resulted in a 2003 indictment, charging him with being the leader of a domestic cell of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that claims responsibility for terrorist acts. He has remained in jail since his indictment.
Mr. Al-Arian, who had been under surveillance by American intelligence officials since 1991, was accused of raising money for suicide bombings in and around Israel.
The six-month trial, a centerpiece of the Bush administration's antiterrorism efforts that attracted the intense interest of legal experts, ended in December when the anonymous jury acquitted Mr. Al-Arian of 8 of the 17 federal charges against him, deadlocking on the rest.
Rather than face a retrial, the two sides agreed last month to a plea bargain in which Mr. Al-Arian pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aiding members of the militant Palestinian group and agreed to be deported.
But any hope Mr. Al-Arian might have had of being deported quickly evaporated on Monday in the courtroom of Judge James S. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court. In a surprise move, Judge Moody sentenced Mr. Al-Arian to the maximum allowed under the sentencing guidelines, more than even the prosecution requested, and chided him for acts even the jury had rejected as Mr. Al-Arian's. The government had asked for the low end of the guidelines.
The judge continued to upbraid Mr. Al-Arian, whom he called a "master manipulator" for his connections to the Palestinian group, leading Mr. Al-Arian's wife to leave in tears.
Describing horrific bombings in Israel, Judge Moody said: "Anyone with even the slightest bit of human compassion would be sickened. Not you. You saw it as an opportunity to solicit more money to carry out more bombings."
He added, "The only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them."
Paul Perez, the United States attorney for the Middle District of Florida, called Mr. Al-Arian a "dangerous human being" and said he had no regrets about the way the case was prosecuted.
Mr. Perez's court appearance on Monday was his first in the case in four years. He painted the outcome as a victory for the government because it "identified and dismantled a cell that Al-Arian helped establish."
Nonetheless, the jury verdict, which embarrassed prosecutors who had devoted considerable resources to the case, underscored the complexities of obtaining convictions under the USA Patriot Act and other recent laws that criminalized aiding organizations that the United States has deemed to be based on terror.
For example, in the 30 previous efforts to convict a defendant of conspiring to contribute money to a terrorist organization — one of the charges against Mr. Al-Arian — 28 were dismissed, according to the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas.
"This case almost reached the level of seditious conspiracy," Brent Smith, director of the center, said. "And historically, we have been very unsuccessful at trying those cases."
Indeed the outcome of the case against Mr. Al-Arian did little to resolve the conflicting portraits of his life. His supporters described Mr. Al-Arian, 48, as a political scapegoat who merely aided women and children who had been harmed in the Middle East. They said he was a thoughtful advocate for Palestinians who were unaware of or unwilling to accept the violent acts of organizations he assumed were simply providing aid to countrymen.

Republicans Drop a Tax Plan After Businesses Protest
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 2 May 2006
Senate Republicans on Monday hurriedly abandoned a broad tax proposal opposed by the oil industry and business leaders, another sign of their struggle to come up with an acceptable political and legislative answer to high gasoline prices.
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said he had decided to jettison the provision, which would have generated billions of dollars by changing the way businesses treat inventories for tax purposes. Instead, he said the Senate Finance Committee would hold hearings on the plan "later this year, so the pluses and minuses of the provision can become well known."
The retreat came after a torrent of objections from business leaders and their advocates, who typically view Republicans in Congress as allies. They said they had been blindsided by the inclusion of the proposal as a central element of the Republican leadership's energy package late last week.
The centerpiece of the leadership proposal, a $100 rebate check to compensate taxpayers for higher gasoline prices, continued to receive a rough reception. Members of the public have telephoned and written to ridicule the idea, and even Republican lawmakers are finding fault.
"Political anxiety in an election year is to blame for a lot of the bad bills Congress passes," said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who on Monday called the rebate a "knee-jerk populist idea" that voters would see through.
Democrats are trying to rally voters against Republicans, pointing to the rising fuel costs as evidence of how consumers were hurt by the opposition's ties to the oil industry.

What 'I' Means
NYT, 30 April 2006
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, James M. Breslow reports on a paper published in The Journal of Research in Personality, which suggests that one advantage President Bush had over Senator John F. Kerry in the 2004 election was that he sounded older and less depressed.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, President Bush was often described as coming across like a cowboy, while his challenger, Senator John F. Kerry, was labeled a flip-flopper. An analysis of the candidates' linguistic styles, however, shows the president spoke more like an older person, while Senator Kerry spoke like a depressed person, says Richard B. Slatcher, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
Aided by three other researchers, Mr. Slatcher used a computerized text-analysis program to measure how the candidates for president and vice president differed in the linguistic patterns associated with cognitive complexity, femininity, depression, age, presidentiality and honesty.
Mr. Slatcher says the president's language was most like that of an older person, because, as people do when they age, he used fewer first-person singular words, more positive-emotion words, and had "a greater focus on the future." ...
Mr. Kerry's style was more like someone suffering from depression, Mr. Slatcher says, because of his high use of first-person singular words, physical words like "ache" and negative-emotion words like "hate," along with low use of positive-emotion words, like "happy."

1 May 2006

Settling Iraq before it Blows Up
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 1 May 2006
A renewed debate on the possible partition of Iraq is emerging.
Let's get one thing out of the way. As for letting a civil war rage, deliberately, I don't understand. Everyone is (rightly) complaining about world inaction on the genocide in the Sudan. But here you want to provoke a genocide (maybe a million dead and 5 million displaced) and have troops in the region and not intervene? Doesn't that make you worse than Khartoum? It is despicable. And, remember that such a war a) would not stay inside Iraq--it would become regional; and b) a full-scale war in the Persian Gulf region will lead to a big increase in your gasoline prices (as in, you ain't seen nuttin' yet).

Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq
By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. and LESLIE H. GELB
NYT, 1 May 2006
A decade ago, Bosnia was torn apart by ethnic cleansing and facing its demise as a single country. After much hesitation, the United States stepped in decisively with the Dayton Accords,which kept the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations, even allowing Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. With the help of American and other forces, Bosnians have lived a decade in relative peace and are now slowly strengthening their common central government, including disbanding those separate armies last year.
Now the Bush administration, despite its profound strategic misjudgments in Iraq, has a similar opportunity. To seize it, however, America must get beyond the present false choice between "staying the course" and "bringing the troops home now" and choose a third way that would wind down our military presence responsibly while preventing chaos and preserving our key security goals.
The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact.
It is increasingly clear that President Bush does not have a strategy for victory in Iraq. Rather, he hopes to prevent defeat and pass the problem along to his successor. Meanwhile, the frustration of Americans is mounting so fast that Congress might end up mandating a rapid pullout, even at the risk of precipitating chaos and a civil war that becomes a regional war.
As long as American troops are in Iraq in significant numbers, the insurgents can't win and we can't lose. But intercommunal violence has surpassed the insurgency as the main security threat. Militias rule swathes of Iraq and death squads kill dozens daily. Sectarian cleansing has recently forced tens of thousands from their homes. On top of this, President Bush did not request additional reconstruction assistance and is slashing funds for groups promoting democracy.
Iraq's new government of national unity will not stop the deterioration. Iraqis have had three such governments in the last three years, each with Sunnis in key posts, without noticeable effect. The alternative path out of this terrible trap has five elements...
The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad.
...The second element would be to entice the Sunnis into joining the federal system with an offer they couldn't refuse. To begin with, running their own region should be far preferable to the alternatives: being dominated by Kurds and Shiites in a central government or being the main victims of a civil war. But they also have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20 percent (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues.
...The third component would be to ensure the protection of the rights of women and ethno-religious minorities by increasing American aid to Iraq but tying it to respect for those rights. Such protections will be difficult, especially in the Shiite-controlled south, but Washington has to be clear that widespread violations will stop the cash flow.
Fourth, the president must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008 (while providing for a small but effective residual force to combat terrorists and keep the neighbors honest). We must avoid a precipitous withdrawal that would lead to a national meltdown , but we also can't have a substantial long-term American military presence. That would do terrible damage to our armed forces, break American and Iraqi public support for the mission and leave Iraqis without any incentive to shape up.
Fifth, under an international or United Nations umbrella, we should convene a regional conference to pledge respect for Iraq's borders and its federal system. For all that Iraq's neighbors might gain by picking at its pieces, each faces the greater danger of a regional war. A "contact group" of major powers would be set up to lean on neighbors to comply with the deal.

Rumsfeld Learns to Curb His Enthusiasm
NYT, 30 April 2006
THERE were Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld last week, standing before the cameras in the heavily fortified American headquarters on the Tigris River, proclaiming that another little-known former Iraqi exile, the third in two years, had just had greatness thrust upon him. Only Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, seemed able to summon enthusiasm.
"Our message here was that the United States wants to be a supportive partner in this work," Ms. Rice said, speaking of the new prime minister designate, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who became the nominee of the Shiite political bloc after a long and bitter stalemate. At the news conference, Mr. Rumsfeld made plain his eagerness to hand off the task of nation-building to Ms. Rice, and his lack of interest in the process. He was, for example, seen doodling at a news conference while Ms. Rice went on at length about her hopes and dreams for Iraq's future.
The scenes were a stark contrast to 2003, when the Pentagon eagerly seized the reins in Iraq, sidelined State Department experts and took control of the political and economic reconstruction. Now Mr. Rumsfeld seemed content to focus on training Iraqi forces so he can get American troops out.

Warfare as It Really Is
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 1 May 2006
In the first few moments of the documentary film "Baghdad ER," we see a man dressed in hospital scrubs carrying a bloodied arm that has been amputated above the elbow. He deposits it in a large red plastic bag.
This HBO production is reality television with a vengeance — warfare as it really is. And while it is frightening, harrowing and deeply painful to watch, it should be required viewing for all but the youngest Americans. It will premiere May 21.
For two months in 2005, the directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill were given unprecedented access by the Army to the 86th Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Working 12-hour shifts, they watched — and taped — the heroic struggle of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to salvage as many lives as possible from what amounted to a nonstop conveyor belt of bloodied, broken and burned G.I.'s.
At one point in the film, a specialist who survived a roadside bomb attack murmurs from a stretcher, "It was the worst thing I ever saw in my life, sir."
"What was that?" he is asked.
Recalling his last view of a buddy who was killed in the attack, he says, "My friend didn't have a face."
The movie is neither pro-war nor anti-war. It is simply a searing record of the ferocious toll that combat takes on real human beings.

Saddam Hussein, Misunderstood
NYT, 30 April 2006
In the months leading up to the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein did try to cooperate with United Nations inspectors, a decision that, paradoxically, helped convince the West that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction. That is one conclusion in "Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside," by Kevin Woods, James Lacey and Williamson Murray, an article in Foreign Affairs (www.foreignaffairs.org) based on material from the Iraqi Perspectives Project, a postwar examination by the American armed forces into the character of Mr. Hussein's regime.
By late 2002, Saddam finally tilted toward trying to persuade the international community that Iraq was cooperating with the inspectors of Unscom (the United Nations Special Commission) and that it no longer had W.M.D. programs. Saddam was insistent that Iraq would give full access to United Nations inspectors "in order not to give President Bush any excuses to start a war."
Ironically, it now appears that some of the actions resulting from Saddam's new policy of cooperation actually helped solidify the coalition's case for war. Over the years, Western intelligence services had obtained many internal Iraqi communications, among them a 1996 memorandum from the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service directing all subordinates to "insure that there is no equipment, materials, research, studies or books related to manufacturing of the prohibited weapons (chemical, biological, nuclear and missiles) in your site." And when United Nations inspectors went to these research and storage locations, they inevitably discovered lingering evidence of W.M.D.-related programs.
In 2002, therefore, when the United States intercepted a message between two Iraqi Republican Guard corps commanders discussing the removal of the words "nerve agents" from "the wireless instructions," or learned of instructions to "search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and [the unit] for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers, and write a report on it," United States analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit. They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with United Nations resolutions.
What was meant to prevent suspicion thus ended up heightening it. The tidbit about removing the term "nerve agents" from radio instructions was prominently cited as an example of Iraqi bad faith by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his Feb. 5, 2003, statement to the United Nations.

Death By Insurance
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 1 May 2006
For lower-income working Americans, lack of health insurance is quickly becoming the new normal. That's the implication of survey results just released by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that studies health care. The survey found that 41 percent of nonelderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were without health insurance for all or part of 2005. That's up from 28 percent as recently as 2001.
Many of the uninsured reported spending their entire savings on health care and/or that they were having difficulty paying for basic necessities. And most uninsured adults reported cutting corners on medical care to save money — failing to fill prescriptions, skipping medications, going without preventive care.
Here's the other side of the same coin: health insurers' business is lagging, reports The Wall Street Journal, as "rising premiums and medical costs push more of their traditional-employer customers to shun or curtail company health benefits." And some investors are feeling the pain. Aetna's stock price fell sharply last week, on news that its "medical cost ratio" — a term I'll explain in a minute — rose from 77.9 to 79.4.
Taken together, these stories tell the tale of a health care system that's driving a growing number of Americans into financial ruin, and in many cases kills them through lack of basic care. (The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that lack of health insurance leads to 18,000 unnecessary American deaths — the equivalent of six 9/11's — each year.) Yet this system actually costs more to run than we would spend if we guaranteed health insurance to everyone.

Oil Climbs Back Above $72
REUTERS via NYT, 1 May 2006
Oil edged back above $72 a barrel on Monday, drawing renewed support from Iran's defiant stance in the face of possible U.N. sanctions and a car bombing aimed at the oil industry in Nigeria.
U.S. light, sweet crude reversed light early losses to trade up 25 cents at $72.13 a barrel by 0417 GMT, pausing after a rebound on Friday that helped limit last week's losses to 4.4 percent. IPE Brent crude was up 8 cents at $72.10.
Trading was thin due to holidays in much of Asia and Europe.
Oil has tumbled from a record peak $75.35 a barrel a week ago as dealers took profits and grew more confident about summer gasoline supplies, partly thanks to U.S. President George W. Bush's call to temporarily ease fuel standards.
But geopolitical jitters provided a solid base, analysts said, preventing prices from retracing much of the nearly $11 gains they have registered this year.
SEE ALSO:
As Gas Prices Go Up, Impact Trickles Down
NYT, 30 April 2006
It is hard to watch the numbers flutter ever upward on the gas pump these days. A look at the ripple effect of rising gas prices across the country...
SEE ALSO:
Sharp Reaction to G.O.P. Plan on Gas Rebate
By CARL HULSE and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 1 May 2006
The Senate Republican plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help.
Aides for several Republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents ridiculing the rebate as a paltry and transparent effort to pander to voters before the midterm elections in November.
"The conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, pointing out that the criticism was coming from across the ideological spectrum.
Angry constituents have asked, "Do you think we are prostitutes? Do you think you can buy us?" said another Republican senator's aide, who was granted anonymity to openly discuss the feedback because the senator had supported the plan.
Conservative talk radio hosts have been particularly vocal. "What kind of insult is this?" Rush Limbaugh asked on his radio program on Friday. "Instead of buying us off and treating us like we're a bunch of whores, just solve the problem." In commentary on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume called the idea "silly."
The reaction comes as the rising price of gasoline has put the public in a volatile mood and as polls show that cynicism about Congress is at its highest level since 1994.
Still, Eric Ueland, chief of staff to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, whose office played a main role in pulling the proposal together, said the rebate was an important short-term step in a broader array of measures that began with last year's energy bill. Constituents "believe government ought to step up to the plate rather than loll around in the dugout," Mr. Ueland wrote in an e-mail message on Sunday.

Lobby Reform -- Now You See It, Now You Don't
NYT, 30 April 2006
The inclusion of something termed "ethics training" in the House Republican majority's pending lobbying reform bill is the ultimate touch of drollery. It is a public relations kiss-off acknowledging growing concern about the appearance of scandalous money ties between Congressional campaigners and their claques of loyal lobbyists. At the same time, it is clear notice that this ethically challenged Congress has no intention of doing anything serious about reform. The House majority leader, John Boehner, conceded as much in observing, "The status quo is a powerful force."
As it is, Mr. Boehner has had to drag his members kicking and screaming to a vote this week on the cut-and-paste figments of reform that the House G.O.P. will be peddling to the voters this fall. The bill is even weaker than the Senate's half-hearted measure. Rather than banning gifts and campaign money from lobbyists, the bill embraces disclosure — the equivalent of price lists for the cost of doing business with a given lawmaker. A bipartisan attempt at true reform was squelched as non-germane, as if the need to create an independent ethics enforcement body is not obvious by now after the lobbyist corruption story of Jack Abramoff and his back-door power over lawmakers.
The Democrats are right to oppose the measure. Some Republicans, worried that it will be properly perceived as the Bill to Nowhere, did point out loopholes in the proposal to rein in the pork-barrel earmark gimmickry dear to lawmakers and lobbyists. But no credible fix was made.