Senate Groups From Both Parties Drop Regular Meetings with Lobbyists

From the Washington Post:

Republican and Democratic lawmakers are canceling their regularly scheduled meetings with lobbyists as the fallout from the Jack Abramoff scandal continues to roil Capitol Hill.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it has ended its biweekly meeting between congressional chiefs of staff and lobbyists, and the Senate Republican Conference suspended one of its regular lobbyist cattle calls as well. The changes come as leaders of both parties are stepping up their attacks on each other for being too close to lobbyists, and as they prepare tough legislation to rein in lobbyists' activities. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe lawmakers and staff members, is cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation of congressional corruption.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

How and Where Inmates are Counted

From the Washington Post, an article about how prisoners, while not allowed to vote, are counted in the census where they are held, thus giving uneven electoral power to rural areas that have built large prisons. What is most disturbing to me is the fact that the majority of politicans will debate how and where to count prisoners, but few will debate whether they should have the right to vote or not. From the article:


Since the first U.S. census in 1790, there has been a rule for keeping track of the convicts sitting in prisons: They are counted in the state and region where they are serving their time, not necessarily the place they did their crime or will call home once they are out of the joint.
How to count inmates historically has not been a big issue. But the fast-expanding prison population -- now about 1.5 million -- is prompting a debate because government spending and electoral district boundaries are in part decided by population. Opponents say the practice unfairly rewards rural, often sparsely populated regions where many prisons are built, at the expense of the cities where many prisoners had resided. "For people in prison, their bodies count but their voices don't," said Kirsten Levingston, director of the criminal justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Their presence in the tabulation column expands the influence of those who have an incentive to keep them in prison, not those who need the resources to help keep them out." Now, after a congressional directive, the Census Bureau is studying what it would take to change the policy, and the National Academy of Sciences will also report on the question. The issue pits the bureau, resistant to change its long-standing procedure, against activists who say that the practice results in misleading demographic data and large distortions in the size of electoral districts. It also pits rural lawmakers against urban ones.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Domestic Spying in Colorado

William Arkin, in his online blog for the Washington Post writes that, "Colorado is now the epicenter for national domestic spying." To find out why, click here and read his post. He links to two articles that may be of interest to some:

NSA moving some workers, operations to Denver area from the Denver Post

CIA Plans to Shift Work to Denver from the Washington Post


--Tom Hayes

U.S. Policy in Haiti

From the New York Times, an article questioning the effectiveness of the Bush administration's policy in Haiti. From the article:

Yet even as Haiti prepares to pick its first elected president since the rebellion two years ago, questions linger about the circumstances of Mr. Aristide's ouster — and especially why the Bush administration, which has made building democracy a centerpiece of its foreign policy in Iraq and around the world, did not do more to preserve it so close to its shores.
The Bush administration has said that while Mr. Aristide was deeply flawed, its policy was always to work with him as Haiti's democratically elected leader.
But the administration's actions in Haiti did not always match its words. Interviews and a review of government documents show that a democracy-building group close to the White House, and financed by American taxpayers, undercut the official United States policy and the ambassador assigned to carry it out.
As a result, the United States spoke with two sometimes contradictory voices in a country where its words carry enormous weight. That mixed message, the former American ambassador said, made efforts to foster political peace "immeasurably more difficult." Without a political agreement, a weak government was destabilized further, leaving it vulnerable to the rebels.



Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Some Poor Nations Question Whether Charity is Reaching Those Who Need It

From the New York Times:


Some foreign governments have begun to criticize international aid agencies for the way they raise and spend money, echoing the demands of many American donors that a larger part of their charitable gifts be used for the purposes for which they were originally intended. The health minister of Niger fired the opening salvo at the end of the year, charging that some international aid groups had overstated the extent of the hunger crisis in his drought- and locust-ravaged country as part of a strategy to raise money for their own purposes...An official in Sri Lanka said his government had quietly complained to the French government about Doctors Without Borders after the group contacted donors following the tsunami in December 2004 and asked if it could use more than three-quarters of the money it had raised for that disaster to address other crises.
Indonesia, too, is vexed that aid agencies have scaled back their commitments to build housing in Banda Aceh after raising money for that purpose and other projects to aid tsunami victims.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change

From the Washington Post, an article about how the global warming debate is now shifting to whether the Earth will reach a "tipping point" at which nothing will be able to be done by humans to stop the warming trend. From the article:


This "tipping point" scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible. There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.
The debate has been intensifying because Earth is warming much faster than some researchers had predicted. James E. Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, last week confirmed that 2005 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 1998. Earth's average temperature has risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, he noted, and another increase of about 4 degrees over the next century would "imply changes that constitute practically a different planet."


Click here to read the article.

Also check out the article originally published in the New York Times, "Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him."

--Tom Hayes

Groups Talk at UN about 'Suicide Seeds'

From the Common Dreams website, an article about groups fighting on behalf of indigenous communities around the world and other activists urging governments to adopt strict laws prohibiting the use of 'suicide seeds.' Not surprisingly, this issue has not made major headlines in the mainstream media. I first learned about the issue from the excellent documentary film "The Corporation." From the article:

Groups fighting for the rights of peasant communities are stepping up pressure on governments to ban the use of genetically modified ''suicide seeds'' at UN-sponsored talks on biodiversity in Spain this week.
''This technology is an assault on the traditional knowledge, innovation, and practices of local and indigenous communities,'' said Debra Harry, executive director of the U.S.-based Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism.
The group is among organizations urging United Nations experts to recommend that governments adopt tough laws against field testing and selling Terminator technology, which refers to plants that have had their genes altered so that they render sterile seeds at harvest. Because of this trait, some activists call Terminator products ''suicide seeds.''
Developed by multinational agribusinesses and the U.S. government, Terminator has the effect of preventing farmers from saving or replanting seeds from one growing season to the next.
The product is being tested in greenhouses throughout the United States. Opponents fear it is likely to be marketed soon unless governments impose a ban.
''Terminator seeds will become a commercial reality unless governments take action to prevent it,'' said Hope Shand of the Canada-based Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC Group).
If commercialized, activists said, Terminator would force farmers to return to the market for seeds every year, adding to their annual costs. This also would spell the end of locally adapted agriculture through seed selection, because most farmers in the world today routinely save seeds from their harvest for replanting.
''This seed technology is a fundamental violation of the human rights of indigenous people,'' Harry said of Terminator. ''It is a breach of the right of self-determination.''

Click here to access the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Kurd sentenced to 30 years for Dissent

An interesting article from the New York Times about a Kurd dissenter in Iraq sentenced last month to 30 years for defaming the Parastin and Kurdish political leaders after a trial that he said had lasted 15 minutes. From the article:

His case, while extraordinary, is by no means unique. Two journalists from Wasit Province in east central Iraq face 10 years in prison for suggesting that Iraqi judges kowtow to the American authorities just as Saddam Hussein's courts rubber-stamped edicts of the Baath Party. The journalists, Ayad Mahmoud al-Tamimi and Ahmed Mutair Abbas, had also accused the then-governor of Wasit of corruption and labeled him a bastard, a grave insult here.
Taken together, the prosecutions indicate how much remains at play in newly democratic Iraq. The nation has made remarkable steps away from totalitarian rule: the overthrow and prosecution of a genocidal dictator, two national elections and the adoption of a Constitution. But it remains to be seen how far Iraq will ultimately travel toward true Western-style democracy.

Click here to read the article.

--Tom Hayes

Rift Between Parties Over NSA Wiretapping Grows

From the Washington Post, an interesting article about how the two major political parties are framing the issue of the NSA Wiretapping story and how both parties have a fundamental disagreement on the issue. This issue has been a major focus for Bush over the past week, and many expect it to be a major focus of his upcoming State of the Union address. Recently, the administration has been framing the issue to show that it is solely about national security and no laws were broken. However, many Democrats have attempted to frame the issue (correctly in my opinion) as one about the Executive branch over-reaching.

Click here to read the article.

*Note: the above picture was taken when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the administration at a speech at Georgetown law and students turned their backs to him and held up the Franklin quote.

--Tom Hayes

Supreme Court to Hear Lethal-Injection Case

From the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide when death row inmates may challenge lethal injection as a method of capital punishment, in a surprise decision issued after the justices dramatically stopped the execution of a Florida prisoner who was already strapped to a gurney preparing to die.
Clarence E. Hill, 48, convicted of murdering a Pensacola police officer in 1982, had refused a final meal and needles had punctured his arm when the Supreme Court stayed his execution. The court said it would hear his claim that he should have an opportunity to argue that his civil rights would be violated because the chemicals used to execute him would cause excessive pain.
It is a claim that has been pressed with growing frequency by capital defense lawyers around the country in recent years -- but that has generally not yet succeeded, either in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.
Thirty-seven of the 38 death penalty states use lethal injection, as do the U.S. military and the federal government. Since the chemical mixtures in all jurisdictions are similar to those used in Florida, a victory for Hill at the Supreme Court could tie up the death penalty across the county in litigation, at least temporarily, legal analysts said.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Hamas Wins Majority in Palestinian Elections

A major development in Middle East politics, from the Washington Post:

The radical Islamic group Hamas won 76 seats in voting for the first Palestinian parliament in a decade, election officials announced Thursday evening, giving it a huge majority in the 132-member body and the right to form the next government. The long-ruling Fatah movement won 43 seats.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and the rest of his Cabinet resigned, effectively acknowledging Hamas claims of a legislative majority before election officials released the results in a news conference...The Hamas victory ends end the governing Fatah party's decade-long control of the Palestinian Authority. It also severely complicates Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' policy of pursuing negotiations with Israel under a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the roadmap, which conflicts with Hamas' platform in several key respects. Hamas officials in Gaza City, where their victory was greatest, said the group has no plans to negotiate with Israel or recognize Israel's right to exist. Europe, Israel and the United States classify Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, as a terrorist organization.


Click here to read the full article.


--Tom Hayes

Group Seeks Souter Eviction As Protest

In response to a recent Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London a group of protesters are attempting to seize one of the Justice's homes and build an inn. I thought this was an interesting article, which was brought to my attention by one of my professors. The article is all over, but here is a portion from YahooNews:

Angered by a Supreme Court ruling that gave local governments more power to seize people's homes for economic development, a group of activists is trying to get one of the court's justices evicted from his own home. The group, led by a California man, wants Justice David Souter's home seized to build an inn called the "Lost Liberty Hotel."They submitted enough petition signatures — only 25 were needed — to bring the matter before voters in March. This weekend, they're descending on Souter's hometown, the central New Hampshire town of Weare, population 8,500, to rally for support...The court said New London, Conn., could seize homeowners' property to develop a hotel, convention center, office space and condominiums next to Pfizer Inc.'s new research headquarters.The city argued that tax revenues and new jobs from the development would benefit the public. The Pfizer complex was built, but seven homeowners challenged the rest of the development in court. The Supreme Court's ruling against them prompted many states, including New Hampshire, to examine their eminent domain laws.

Click here to read the full article.

For more information on this case click here.

--Tom Hayes

Leading Publication Shut Down In China

From the Washington Post, an article about the Chinese government shutting down one of the country's main publications. From the article:


China's ruling Communist Party on Tuesday suspended one of the premier publications in Chinese journalism, escalating a campaign to rein in the state media, part of the government's toughest crackdown on freedom of expression here in more than a decade.
The decision to shut down Freezing Point, a four-page weekly feature section of the state-run China Youth Daily that often tested the censors and challenged the party line, came less than a month after the authorities replaced the top editors of another daring newspaper, the Beijing News. The China Youth Daily is the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League, a power base for President Hu Jintao. Because any move to punish it would almost certainly require his approval, the decision to close Freezing Point was seen as further evidence of Hu's personal support for a tightening of controls on the media that began two years ago, about a year after Hu took office.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Sex Trafficking and Slavery in Our Time

In two recent columns in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof has written about the need for the international community, and especially the United States to work to stop sex trafficking. Kristof argues that this issue is the "slavery of our time" due to the fact that millions of children are captive to this system. In his latest article he writes the following:

To have a more immediate impact, we need to reduce the economic incentives for traffickers. Here are my suggestions:
Pick our battles. Look, prostitution will always be around. But progress is possible by targeting the very worst abuses, like the brothels that imprison girls (some boys are also trafficked for sex, but not as many).
Emphasize criminal sanctions. Effective law enforcement may not rescue many individual children (those numbers are tiny), but it deters all brothel owners from forced prostitution and from pimping minors. If brothel owners see that they risk jail for imprisoning and peddling 13-year-olds, they instead employ semivoluntary 17-year-olds who claim that they are 18 (few people in poor countries have good documentation of age). In this world, that's real progress.
Focus on virginity sales. In some areas, like Southeast Asia, the business model of sex trafficking depends on selling virgins for $500 or more apiece. That's where traffickers reap their biggest profits. So let's encourage sting operations that arrest both buyers and sellers of virgins. Buyers are usually wealthy foreigners, often Arabs or ethnic Chinese, and a few heavily publicized arrests would help dry up sales of virgins.
Inspect brothels regularly for prisoners. Frequent inspections make the brothel owners more likely to employ willing prostitutes rather than unwilling ones. During inspections, girls should also undergo mandatory testing for diseases, including H.I.V.

Click here to read this column and others by Kristof.

If anyone knows of good information and/or websites about this topic, please post in the comments section or send me an email with suggestions so that more information can be available to people who visit this blog, as it is one of the most horrific, yet little known issues facing us today.

--Tom Hayes

Google and Privacy

From the New York Times, an article about the how the Justice Department's request that online search engines turn over records of searches in a bid to aid investigations has led some to think twice about what they search for. From the article:

...the Justice Department had asked a federal judge to compel Google to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries. Google is resisting the request, but three of its competitors - Yahoo, MSN and America Online - have turned over similar information.
The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government's move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.
The government has been more aggressive recently in its efforts to obtain data on Internet activity, invoking the fight against terrorism and the prosecution of online crime. A surveillance program in which the National Security Agency intercepted certain international phone calls and e-mail in the United States without court-approved warrants prompted an outcry among civil libertarians. And under the antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.
Those actions have put some Internet users on edge, as they confront the complications and contradictions of online life.

Click here to read the full article.

For more information on this issue, read Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests from the Washington Post.

--Tom Hayes

States Work to Change Lobbying Laws

An interesting article from the New York Times about states outpacing the Congress in enacting lobbying reform laws. From the article:

Stung by their own scandals, lawmakers in many states have outpaced Washington in enacting new laws intended to curb the cozy and at times corrupt relationships between lobbyists and politicians.
Measures are under consideration in state legislatures from New England to California, designed to eliminate privately financed junkets, require the disclosure of spending on lobbying, ban gift-giving by private interests and curb the hiring of lawmakers' relatives as an under-the-table kickback scheme.
Tennessee lawmakers, still reeling from an F.B.I. investigation that snared four of them with bribery and corruption charges last year, are in special session to consider tough new restrictions on lobbying and campaign finance.
State officials and lawmakers in Georgia began operating this month under new ethics guidelines signed into law last year by Gov. Sonny Perdue. The governor, a Republican, said the measures were needed because of the relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers that had developed over 130 years of Democratic control of the statehouse.
In Florida, there are new laws banning gifts from lobbyists and requiring extensive reports on lobbyists' spending, rules the Legislature enacted after revelations that three lawmakers flew to a golf outing on a corporate jet owned by a company seeking slot machine licenses.


Click here to read the article.

--Tom Hayes

U.N. Involvement in Haiti

From the New York Times, an article about the caos in Haiti as the U.N. struggles to bring stability to the country. From the article:

Nearly 20 months after the United Nations arrived to stabilize the hemisphere's poorest country and avert a civil war, there is still no cease-fire in this violent city on the sea.
Blasts from tanks and machine guns go on for hours almost every day around Cité Soleil, a steamy slum of concrete hovels and canals of raw sewage at the capital's northern edge. No one knows for sure how many civilians have been killed inside because the bodies of the slum-dwellers and local gangsters rarely make it to morgues.
But last Tuesday, two Jordanian soldiers were shot to death in skirmishes with local gangs, and another was seriously wounded. It was the third fatal strike against United Nations personnel since December, a month when relations between the international peacekeeping mission and local people worsened.
The violence has raised demands in capitals from Brasília to Washington to Ottawa for an explanation of what has gone wrong with Haiti's transition to democracy. What is clear is that the $584 million a year mission has failed to bring peace to Haiti, and the caretaker government has failed to bring elections.


Click here to read the full article.

For more information on Haiti click here.
--Tom Hayes

Kofi Annan on Darfur

The Washington Post has an op-ed from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about the situation in Darfur. In the article, Annan argues that unless international action is taken soon in Darfur, the situation will devolve into a much worse situation.




Click here to read the op-ed.

--Tom Hayes

American Auto-Makers Cut Jobs

With the recent announcement by Ford Motor Company that it will cut 30,000 jobs and close many plants in the U.S., Newsweek has an interesting column about how the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 allowed the company to get tax breaks, while at the same time laying off workers. The article, entitled "Tax Holiday" can be accessed by clicking here. Ford is not the first American auto-maker to cut jobs recently as DaimlerChrysler will also eliminate 6,000 jobs and GM announced in November that it will cut 30,000 jobs and close 12 North American plants by 2008.

--Tom Hayes

Newly Elected Female Presidents in Chile and Liberia

From the New York Times Week in Review Section on Sunday January 22nd, an interesting story profiling Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, who are both newly elected female presidents.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

New Study Ranks U.S. 28th on Environment

From the New York Times:

A pilot nation-by-nation study of environmental performance shows that just six nations - led by New Zealand, followed by five from Northern Europe - have achieved 85 percent or better success in meeting a set of critical environmental goals ranging from clean drinking water and low ozone levels to sustainable fisheries and low greenhouse gas emissions.
The study, jointly produced by Yale and Columbia Universities, ranked the United States 28th over all, behind most of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile, but ahead of Russia and South Korea.
The bottom half of the rankings is largely filled with the countries of Africa and Central and South Asia. Pakistan and India both rank among the 20 lowest-scoring countries, with overall success rates of 41.1 percent and 47.7 percent, respectively.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Accusations of Political Influence at the Justice Department's Voting Section

From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department's voting section, a small and usually obscure unit that enforces the Voting Rights Act and other federal election laws, has been thrust into the center of a growing debate over recent departures and controversial decisions in the Civil Rights Division as a whole.
Many current and former lawyers in the section charge that senior officials have exerted undue political influence in many of the sensitive voting-rights cases the unit handles. Most of the department's major voting-related actions over the past five years have been beneficial to the GOP, they say, including two in Georgia, one in Mississippi and a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) in 2003. The section also has lost about a third of its three dozen lawyers over the past nine months. Those who remain have been barred from offering recommendations in major voting-rights cases and have little input in the section's decisions on hiring and policy.



Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Will Lobbying Limits Stop Corruption?

From the New York Times, an article about how new ethics legislation could leave out many ways in which lobbyists can influence politicians with perks.

Click here to read the article.

--Tom Hayes

Broad Survey of Day Laborers Finds High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations

From the New YorkTimes, an article about a survey on day laborers. From the article:

The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day.
The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months.
The study found that 49 percent of day laborers were employed by homeowners and 43 percent by construction contractors. They were found to be employed most frequently as construction laborers, landscapers, painters, roofers and drywall installers.
The study, based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia, found that day laborers earned a median of $10 an hour and $700 month. The study said that only a small number earned more than $15,000 a year.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Can U.S. Voting Systems be Tampered With?

From the Washington Post, an article about the vulnerablility of electronic voting in the U.S. and how, "17 of 43 states that responded [to Washington Post requests] said they expected to miss a congressionally imposed Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to upgrade voting systems." The evidence in this article underlines the fact that there should be a verifiable paper trail when using electronic voting, yet many states and politicians resist such efforts.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Bush Administration Offers Legal Defense of Spying Effort

From the New York Times:

The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities." In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

East Timor Atrocities Detailed by the UN

From the Washington Post:

Indonesian security forces and militias they supported killed at least 100,000 East Timorese people -- and perhaps as many as 180,000 -- over 24 years through torture, starvation, arbitrary execution and massacres, according to a report presented to the United Nations by Timorese President Xanana Gusmao on Friday.
The 2,005-page report, which Gusmao delivered to Secretary General Kofi Annan, provided the most detailed account to date of Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation of the island nation, a former Portuguese colony. It also charged the country's armed resistance movement with committing "serious human rights violations" after Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, including the torture and execution of pro-Indonesian prisoners, the convening of mock trials and the violent purging of dissenters within its own ranks.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps

From the Washington Post, an article about the Congressional Research Service concluding that the Bush administration, "violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders." From the article:

The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort. The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law.

Click here to read the article.

--Tom Hayes

Is the Democrats Plan to Fight Corruption Any Better?

From the Washington Post, an article about how the Democrats are now proposing ethics legislation that goes a little bit further than the current Republican plan. While I think that it is good that both parties are competing to have the best set of legislation aimed at getting to the roots of corruption, I still think there are measures that both parties don't want to touch that could do a better job (for an example, read an earlier post). From the article:

Rather than limiting the value of a gift to $20, as House Republicans are considering, the Democrats would prohibit all gifts from lobbyists. And the Democrats take direct aim at some of the legislative practices that have taken root in the last 10 years of Republican rule in Congress. They vowed to end the K Street Project, under which Republicans in Congress pressure lobbying organizations to hire only Republican staff and contribute only to Republican candidates.
Lawmakers would have to publicly disclose negotiations over private-sector jobs, a proposal inspired by then-House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin's job talks in 2003 that led to his hiring as president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Executive branch officials who are negotiating private-sector jobs would need approval from the independent Office of Governmental Ethics.
Under the Democrats' plan, House and Senate negotiators working out final versions of legislation would have to meet in open session, with all members of the conference committee -- not just Republicans -- having the opportunity to vote on all amendments. Legislation would have to be posted publicly 24 hours before congressional consideration. The Democrats also proposed to crack down on no-bid contracting and to require that any person appointed to a position involving public safety "possess proven credentials."

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Rights for Same Sex Couples on November Ballot?

The Rocky Mountain News has a story about a plan by two Colorado Democratic lawmakers who want to put a referendum on the November ballot which would extend some legal rights to same sex couples. I'm not sure that enough Democrats will be willing to take the political risk of voting for this referendum, but it is an important issue that needs to be put to the voters. From the article:

Two Democratic lawmakers want voters to decide in November whether to legalize domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.
Supporters say the measure - which was denounced by some Republicans - is intended to "remedy a number of legal disparities" between married and same-sex couples, including the right to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner...The proposal will be introduced as a referendum, which means if the Democratic-controlled legislature approves, the measure will be on the November ballot. Republican Gov. Bill Owens has no veto power over referred measures.

As the article points out, under the proposal, same-sex couples would enjoy:

• Visitation and the right to be involved in the care of hospital patients and nursing home residents;
• Protection of property rights, inheritance and pension benefits;
• The right to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner;
• Access to a partner's health-care benefits;
• Access to family-leave benefits to care for an ill partner;
• The right to take possession of a deceased partner's remains.

The proposal seems reasonable to me, but I would welcome comments that argue why this would be an unreasonable measure.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Loopholes Remain in Proposed Congressional Legislation

From the Washington Post, an article that shows there are still many loopholes for lobbyists in the proposed legislation currently pending in Congress. From the article:

Lawmakers are about to bombard the American public with proposals that would crack down on lobbyists. Several prominent plans, including one outlined yesterday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would specifically ban meals and privately paid travel for lawmakers.
Or would they? According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world on an interest group's expense and eat steak on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington.
The only requirement would be that whenever a lobbyist pays the bill, he or she must also hand the lawmaker a campaign contribution. Then the transaction would be perfectly okay.
"That's a big hole if they don't address campaign finance," said Joel Jankowsky, the lobbying chief of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, one of the capital's largest lobbying outfits. The plans offered by Republican leaders yesterday would change two of the three areas of law or regulation that govern lobbyists' behavior: the congressional rules that limit gifts to lawmakers and the laws that dictate the amount of disclosure that lobbyists must give the public.
A third major area -- campaign finance laws -- would go untouched, an omission that amounts to a gaping loophole in efforts to distance lobbyists from the people they are paid to influence.
Anything that members of Congress can now do in the pursuit of money for their reelections will still be permitted in the future -- including accepting lobbyist-paid travel and in-town meals -- unless campaign finance laws are altered.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Law

From the Washington Post, the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Oregon's assisted suicide law. From the article:


The Supreme Court delivered a rebuff to the Bush administration over physician-assisted suicide today, rejecting a Justice Department effort to bar doctors in Oregon from helping terminally ill patients end their lives under a 1994 state law.
In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft overstepped his authority in 2001 by trying to use a federal drug law to prosecute doctors who prescribed lethal overdoses under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, the only law in the nation that allows physician-assisted suicide. The measure has been approved twice by Oregon voters and upheld by lower court rulings...At issue was whether the federal Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970 to combat drug abuse and trafficking, allowed the attorney general unilaterally to prohibit doctors in Oregon from prescribing regulated drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide, despite state law permitting them to do so.


Click here to read the article.

--Tom Hayes

Chinese Detainees' Lawyers Will Take Case to Supreme Court

From the Washington Post:

Lawyers for a group of Chinese nationals held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with no hope of release are taking the rare step of asking the Supreme Court to intervene immediately, saying only the high court can resolve the constitutional crisis their case presents.
Attorneys for the detained Uighurs, Muslim natives of western China who oppose their country's Communist rule, are scheduled to petition the court as early as today. They seek a break in the impasse created when U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled last month that the Bush administration's "Kafka-esque" detention of the Uighurs was illegal but he simultaneously determined that the court lacked the power to overrule the president and free them. "That ruling doesn't simply hit innocent men now in their fifth year of imprisonment," said Sabin Willett, one of the Uighurs' attorneys. "It goes to whether we have a judicial branch at all. This is that rare question so vital that the Supreme Court should immediately intervene to answer."
Lawyers for the nine Chinese detainees plan to urge the Supreme Court to step into the void, arguing in draft legal documents they provided to The Washington Post that the high court and the public have a major stake when the federal judiciary decides it cannot stop the president from continuing to break the law.



Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Suggestions to Help Stop Political Corruption

In an earlier post about whether Congress would go "far enough" in tightening lobbying rules, the comment was made questioning what steps would be necessary to attempt to quell corruption. While I responded with a short comment with some recommendations set out by Common Cause, I thought that a recent editorial by the New York Times also contained some good recommendations to help stop corruption and have pasted the article below, if anyone else has other recommendations, please feel free to leave them in the comments section under this post:

Abramoff Effect: Leaping Out of Bed With the Lobbyists

It took a scandal on the scale of the Jack Abramoff case, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert is scrambling aboard the Lobby Reform Express. Laboring to clean Republicans' skirts for the November elections, Mr. Hastert has outflanked most Democratic critics by broaching the possibility of a ban on privately financed Congressional junkets.
This proposal - a true shocker by the shabby mores of Washington - would dry up one of the more noxious sumps in the lobbyist-incumbent complex. Special interests have spent $18 million to run more than 6,000 trips by more than 600 lawmakers from both parties in the last five years.
Mr. Hastert senses he must do something credible to mop up the Abramoff mess and its connections to the fallen majority leader, Tom DeLay, who demanded years of financial tribute from the K Street lobbying industry. It's far from certain that Mr. Hastert can sell lobby reform. But his panicky New Year conversion is a good start toward galvanizing support on both sides of the aisle. Other needed reforms include these:
¶ A far more detailed disclosure of lobbyists' expenditures and business contacts on Capitol Hill and in the growth business of spending big in lawmakers' home districts. This sunlight approach must include timely electronic disclosure accessible to the general public.
¶ A ban on lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers, including an end to such thinly disguised shakedowns as donations to incumbents' personal foundations and charities. The garish special-interest "salutes" at political conventions, check-writing binges benefiting ranking incumbents, should also be ended.
¶ A tightening of the rules by which lawmakers and their aides cross over to platinum careers as lobbyists. Since 1998, half of the 36 retired senators and two-fifths of the 162 House alumni have registered to lobby. They should be stripped of insiders' access to the House floor, gym and restaurants. They should wait two years, not one, before lobbying, and disclose any job-seeking while in office.
¶ A ban on lobbyists' soliciting and bundling big-check donations to lawmakers from business clients. Dozens of lawmakers now blithely use lobbyists as their fund-raising treasurers.
¶ Creation of a truly independent office within Congress with the power and personnel to monitor lobbying practices and investigate abuses by lawmaker or lobbyist.
Of course, thousands of lobbyists undoubtedly are ready to lobby against an end to business as usual. But what a perfect moment for this tarred and anxious Congress to reform its culture.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


--Tom Hayes

Chile Elects First Female President

From the Washington Post, an article about Chile electing its first female president. Her story is pretty amazing and worth reading about. From the article:

A socialist doctor and former political prisoner was elected Sunday as the country's first female president, defeating a conservative multimillionaire opponent in a race that reflected Latin America's increasingly leftward tilt.
The victory of Michelle Bachelet _ a political prisoner during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and defense minister in the current administration _ extends the rule of the market-friendly, center-left coalition that has governed since the end of Pinochet's 1973-90 rule.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Denver Non-Profit Faces Protests

The Rocky Mountain News has a good article about El Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores, which operates in downtown Denver. The center aims to help day laborers, but many groups against immigration have been protesting the center recently. From the article:

The agency found a home in June 2002, when Fred Pasternack began renting his 6,000-square-foot former car wash to the group. Last year, he donated the building to the nonprofit.
Today, the group operates with a $263,000 budget, funded mostly by private foundations. The agency gets $50,000 a year from government agencies, including the city of Denver.
El Centro has 11 donated computers that workers use to look for jobs. Denver University law students volunteer once a week to help workers collect back pay from scofflaw employers - some $40,000 last year.
Workers registered at the center are picked for jobs through a lottery system. The agency does not get any of the workers' pay and does not charge a fee to the employers.
Most jobs involve construction, landscaping, cleaning, moving and other low-skilled labor.
About a dozen women meet each week to make crafts, including jewelry, cushions and piñatas, many of which hang from the ceiling inside the center's main room.
For many workers, El Centro is their ticket to survival, a way to earn money to pay for food, transportation and housing. Some of the illegal immigrants send their earnings back to their families in Mexico and South America.
Other workers have recently lost jobs or plunged into depression or substance abuse because of a family trauma.
The common thread among them is the desire to earn a living.
Ji said she is not overly concerned about the Minutemen protests or the stream of nasty anti-immigrant phone messages her agency receives.
She said she's most worried about House Resolution 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 that passed the House last month.
Among other things, the 137-page bill would allow a citizen to sue an agency such as hers and also sue law enforcement agencies to force prosecution of places like El Centro that help illegal immigrants.
"This is the worst law you can even think of," Ji said. "It makes it criminal for El Centro to exist."
By 9 a.m. last Tuesday, almost 70 workers have registered at the center. So far, only one man has gotten work.



Click here to read the full article from the Rocky Mountain News.

--Tom Hayes

After Judge Serves Time in Prison, He Rethinks Current Criminal Justice System

In the January 13th edition of the New York Times, an extremely interesting story appeared about a former appellate judge who is finishing a prison sentence titled "A Fallen Judge Rethinks Crime and Punishment." I have pasted the article below for those interested:


GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. - His last night behind bars, Roland Amundson was sitting in the prison library when he felt the large shadow of someone standing over him. He looked up to see the inmate others feared the most, a former motorcycle gang leader who had been convicted of killing a man in a bar fight - a murder so violent the court doubled the standard sentence.
The man wanted to talk.
Mr. Amundson had been the appellate judge who upheld that unusually strict sentence. Now, he was just a fellow prisoner, inmate No. 209383. "He asked if I remembered him," Mr. Amundson recalled in an interview in December. "He wanted me to know he didn't hold any hard feelings against me."
The encounter in October, Mr. Amundson said, was one of a dozen times in his three and a half years in prison that he was confronted by inmates whose sentences he had ordered or upheld in 15 years as a judge. Those experiences and Mr. Amundson's other dealings as a convicted felon - at his sentencing, prosecutors turned the words of his rulings against him to justify a longer term - have shaken the world view of a man who, from the bench, thought he knew all there was to know about crime and punishment.
Until 2001, Mr. Amundson, who is 56, was a highly regarded judge who sat on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the state's second-highest court. Mentioned in legal circles as a likely nominee to the State Supreme Court, he was a popular public speaker, served on charitable boards in Minneapolis, and seemed to know everyone. Colleagues described him as brilliant and charming.
Then he was caught taking $400,000 from a trust fund he oversaw for a woman with the mental capacity of a 3-year-old, money he spent on marble floors and a piano for his house as well as model trains, sculpture and china service for 80, all bought on eBay.
Now, serving the last months of his sentence in a halfway house here, Mr. Amundson is engaged in an uneasy and humbling round of self-reflection, examining the criminal justice system from a rare two-sided perspective while busying himself with a menial vocation: shoveling snow and taking orders to the printer for a sewing machine company he represented long ago as a lawyer.
"Judges can say they have no idea what's going on in prison," Mr. Amundson said from a worn couch in the halfway house. "But if you know what's going on and you are still callous, God help you. If you are part of the system that does the things the system can do, God help you."
Like Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals who pleaded guilty in a harassment case and spent 13 months in federal prison in the early 1990's, Mr. Amundson belongs to a small group of distinguished jurists undone by the laws they had been sworn to uphold, who later came to claim redemption in their undoing.
In Mr. Amundson's case, it is a transformation that some people he hurt find unconvincing. "I don't think he feels like he did anything wrong," said Karen Dove, a guardian for Mr. Amundson's victim.
Prosecutors say they are skeptical that Mr. Amundson has learned much in prison; he has continued, they say, to expect special treatment. At one point, he tried to get into a boot camp program that would have halved his sentence; prosecutors blocked the move, saying it was intended for inmates with drug problems or illiteracy.
More recently, Mr. Amundson raised eyebrows with a Christmas card featuring an unshackled ball and chain. It included quotes from Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn about the redemptive value of prison, as well as a picture of Mr. Amundson with his four young sons - reminding some of his critics of how many lives he has hurt.
"It was another indication that he hasn't seen the light," Ms. Dove said.
But relentlessly cheerful - "Come into my chambers," he greeted a visitor, his arm surveying his small cubicle with a leather chair jammed into the corner at the sewing company in nearby Eden Prairie - Mr. Amundson said he wants to use his experience to promote the importance of rehabilitation in prison.
After a boom in prison populations, there are now a record number of ex-felons getting out of prison each year - about 640,000 a year, up about 40 percent over the last decade - and more than half of them end up back there. Across the country, officials are experimenting with ways to smooth re-entry and prevent recidivism, with drug treatment or job training.
Mr. Amundson could get out 23 months early, in April, because of good behavior. He has surrendered his law license, and with few prospects for the future, says he wants to create homes for men coming out of prison, giving them a place to live and help with other hurdles to successful re-entry.
As a judge, Mr. Amundson says he had not thought about sentencing beyond his court; he has come to see its consequences from fellow inmates.
"I knew the era of rehabilitation was over, but I had no idea we had reduced it to just warehousing, and I don't think most judges do," he said.
Mr. Amundson recalled one man he met in prison who had been convicted of killing his parents after they abused him. At 18, he was sentenced to 18 years.
"At 34, he is completely incapable of living in society," Mr. Amundson said. "He's been raised by corrections officers."
Mr. Amundson, who is openly gay, continues to struggle with the court system in a custody battle with his former partner over their four adopted sons from Russia. He grew bitter about prison restrictions on communicating with the boys. What determines successful re-entry into society, he said, is family support.
"If there is any collection of men who need fathers more than the men in prison, I don't know it," he said. "You're dealing with men who need fathers and yet you're decimating their relationships with their children."
By the time he began adopting children in 1998, Mr. Amundson had been stealing for at least three years. He had set up a trust in the early 1990's for the mentally retarded daughter of a wealthy beer distributor he knew from his days representing the state's beer wholesalers. When the man died, Mr. Amundson became sole trustee.
He recalls putting his hand in his desk drawer and pulling out the first of 85 checks he forged. "It was like somebody else was doing it," he said.
Ms. Dove and another woman who worked for the retarded woman, now in her 30's, became suspicious in 2001 when they asked Mr. Amundson for money for a new roof on the woman's house, and he said the trust was empty. It had been worth more than $600,000 when the father's estate was settled seven years earlier.
In retrospect, Mr. Amundson says he wanted to be caught.
"I was tired of being Rolly Amundson, tired of being at everybody's beck and call, just tired," he said. "This was my vehicle to end it all."
Amy Klobuchar, the Hennepin County attorney, saw it in simpler terms. "I believe he was greedy and wanted to live a lifestyle that he didn't have the money to live," she said in December.
Mr. Amundson resigned as a judge and agreed to plead guilty, but he haggled over sentencing, she said, trying to avoid prison time. He sought to mitigate his sentence in 2002 by arguing that he suffered from bipolar disorder, but prosecutors pointed out that he had written an opinion rejecting psychological factors as mitigating. They sought a sentence 12 months longer than the guidelines recommended; Judge Amundson himself, they noted, had written opinions upholding extended sentences in cases where the victim was particularly vulnerable.
The judge sentenced Mr. Amundson to 69 months, as prosecutors requested, saying he had been drunk on power, and had acted not out of depression but out of a sense of entitlement. Mr. Amundson called in a long line of prominent witnesses - his pastor, a former Miss America, a former ambassador - to argue against a harsh sentence.
For her part, Ms. Klobuchar had what she recalled as "her guardian angels," two black defendants who happened onto the courtroom after they appeared in court on drug charges, and sat in the front row expressing their outrage as Mr. Amundson's friends testified.
"I don't think he should be treated any differently than the people that have walked through his own courtroom," she said.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


Click here to access the electronic article from the New York Times.

--Tom Hayes

Checks and Balances in Wartime

Jonathan Alter has a good article in Newsweek about the debate over Constitutional authority for the President with the recent NSA eavesdropping news story. Alter argues the United States is facing a major constitutional crisis, but not enough people in and out of Congress are doing enough to confront it. Alter also goes after the Democrats, who he argues have not been coherent on the issue and need to work with the Republicans to resolve the issue. He also writes about the Alito hearings and how he believes Alito is too deferential to executive power as he writes:

Alito embodies the inherent contradiction of the conservative movement. The nominee is an "originalist," which means, as he said last week, that "we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption." But at that time, the 18th century, the Founders could not have been clearer about the role of Congress in wartime. As James Madison put it, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislative and not to the executive branch."

Click here to read the entire article.

For more on this issue, click here.

Also check out two New York Times op-eds entitled The Bugs in Our System and Back When Spies Played by the Rules

--Tom Hayes

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. With A Fair Vote

The Washington Post has a great op-ed by Nick Kotz, who is the author of "Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America." In the op-ed, Kotz argues that America is still struggling with guaranteeing everyone a fair vote. The piece is pasted below for those interested:

Forty-one years ago, on Jan. 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson placed a phone call to congratulate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 36th birthday -- but mainly to strategize about how they could win a monumental victory for equal rights. King was in Selma, Ala., where he had just launched a dramatic campaign to show how African Americans in the Deep South were being denied the right to vote. He had chosen Selma because of that city's notorious success in blocking its black residents from the polls. Those who dared to attempt to register risked their lives. They endured bloody beatings, lost their jobs, saw their homes and churches bombed. Some were brutally murdered.
"There is not going to be anything, Doctor, as effective as all [black citizens] voting," the president told King in that birthday call. "That will give you a message that all the eloquence in the world won't bring, because the candidate or elected official will be coming to you then, instead of you calling him."
"You're exactly right about that," King replied. "It is so important to get Negroes registered to vote in large numbers. It would be this coalition of the Negro vote and the moderate white vote that would really make the New South."
After a brilliant political campaign orchestrated by the president and the preacher, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law swept away the most brazen tactics used to keep minorities from the polls. Millions of black citizens surged onto voter registration rolls throughout the South. The ballot power of those new voters -- combined with the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition against segregation and employment discrimination -- ushered in the hopeful beginnings of the kind of New South that King and Johnson had envisioned.
Civility replaced official repression and terrorism. Hundreds of blacks won public office at all levels, including in Congress, where Artur Davis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, now represents the Alabama district that includes Selma. A growing black and Hispanic middle class has prospered in the South and Southwest.
But despite the enormous gains, old problems persist. The winds of Hurricane Katrina blew away the veil shielding complacent eyes from the desperate poverty of the blacks in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward. And a Texas congressional redistricting dispute now before the Supreme Court has cast a spotlight on the lengths to which politicians will go for narrow partisan advantage -- even disenfranchising minority voters.
Masterminding the controversial redistricting plan approved in 2003, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay shuffled thousands of African American and Hispanic voters between Texas congressional districts like pawns on a chessboard. With mathematical efficiency, DeLay redrew voting district boundaries to ensure that Republicans would gain five additional House seats. His goal: to further cement his own power and Republican control of the House of Representatives.
In Dallas and Austin, Republicans won new congressional seats after the DeLay map broke up large concentrations of urban black and Hispanic Democratic voters, then scattered them thinly throughout other Republican-dominated districts -- many extending into rural areas far from the voters' homes. These maneuvers violated standard redistricting principles, such as trying to maintain geographically compact districts and respecting county and city boundaries.
Gerrymandering for partisan advantage is almost as old as the nation itself. But the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, forbids state and local governments from creating districts that clearly reduce the ability of minority voters to elect "candidates of their choice." Civil rights organizations that have appealed the Texas redistricting contend that it violates the 1965 law, stripping away the ability of tens of thousands of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.
A large majority of black and Hispanic voters regularly favor Democratic candidates. Therefore, Republican politicians, particularly in Southern and Southwestern states, have used redistricting to break the minorities' power to help elect Democrats. Democrats, in turn, have sought to manipulate the minority voter pool to elect as many from their party as possible -- both minority and white candidates. Caught in this crossfire, black and Hispanic Democrats at times have made tacit "devil's bargains" with their Republican foes, in which they ensure at least some victories for themselves in districts with heavy minority populations. These "pragmatic" Democrats also ensure Republican victories in heavily white districts.
The Supreme Court has the opportunity to reaffirm and clarify the central purposes of the Voting Rights Act. And Congress can and should honor King's memory by renewing important parts of the voting rights law that otherwise will expire next year, thus advancing his ideal of a more representative democracy.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Click here to view the original opinion piece from the Washington Post website.

--Tom Hayes

Top Envoy to Sudan Pushes for U.N. Force

From the Washington Post, an article about The United Nations' top envoy to Sudan stressing the need for peacekeepers to help quell the violence in Darfur. From the article:


The United Nations' top envoy to Sudan said Friday that three years of diplomatic and African peacekeeping efforts have failed to restore calm to that country's Darfur region, and that a larger Western-backed peacekeeping force is urgently required to stem the bloodshed.
Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, presented the gloomiest assessment to date by a senior U.N. official of the international peace efforts in Darfur since government-backed Arab militia began driving millions of black African tribal communities from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of civilians may have been killed in a wave of violence in Darfur, U.N. officials and diplomats said, a catastrophe the Bush administration has characterized as genocide. The United Nations feeds about 3 million people displaced by violence in Darfur.

Click here to read the article.

For more information on the situation in Darfur, click here.

--Tom Hayes

States Step In After Problems With the New Medicare Program

From the Washington Post, an article about how many states have had to step in and fill the void after failures in the new Medicare program. From the article:

Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation's sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines.
Computer glitches, overloaded telephone lines and poorly trained pharmacists are being blamed for mix-ups that have resulted in the worst of unintended consequences: As many as 6.4 million low-income seniors, who until Dec. 31 received their medications free, suddenly find themselves navigating an insurance maze of large deductibles, co-payments and outright denial of coverage. Yesterday, Ohio and Wisconsin announced that they will cover the drug costs of low-income seniors who would otherwise go without, joining every state in New England as well as California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Jersey...Hailed as President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the program, which began Jan. 1, offers drug coverage for the first time to 43 million elderly and disabled Americans eligible for Medicare. At the same time, 6.4 million low-income beneficiaries who were receiving their medications through state Medicaid plans were switched into Medicare for their drug benefits and told they would not be charged the standard $250 deductible or co-payments.



Click here to read the full article.

Update 1-16-06: Click here to read an article from the New York Times titled, "President Tells Insurers to Aid New Drug Plan."

--Tom Hayes

Who Should Pay for Healthcare for Veteran's?

Newsweek has an interesting article about a new rehab center for injured U.S. soldiers that has sparked a controversy over healthcare for veterans. From the article:

To be built on site at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, the 60,000-foot marble and granite Intrepid Center needs $10 million more before it can be completed. Once it's finished--tentatively in January, 2007--the Veterans Administration will take over. The facility will be able to work with as many as 100 returning soldiers and veterans at any given time. But should such an institution really be funded by private sources? Inevitably, organizations like Intrepid have raised questions about whether the Bush administration--committed to two wars--is too stretched to properly take care of returning veterans. "It’s surprising to us that there needs to be a facility that’s privately funded, and we hope that the Congress and the Bush administration will recognize that we need to meet these goals of the severely injured," says Peter Gayton, director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation at the American Legion. “The fact that the Intrepid Center needs to exist shows that the VA is not receiving enough funding."
The debate is being fueled by syndicated radio host Don Imus, who has donated $250,000 and has made raising money for the fund a regular feature on his morning show. On Friday he told listeners he doesn't know why "the government wouldn't just simply pay for [the center], considering the extraordinary amount of money they spend on ... this idiotic war." And later said "We have a tradition in this country, well, going back to the Civil War, in which we send off young people to fight these wars. Stuff happens to them. They lose their arms and legs. And we just discard them. You know, like they are iPods of old telephones or something."

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Jose Padilla Pleads Not Guilty

Click here to read the full article from the Washington Post.

To read more about this case, click here.

--Tom Hayes

Bush Administration Asks Supreme Court to throw out Hamdan Appeal

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration took the unusual step yesterday of asking the Supreme Court to call off a landmark confrontation over the legality of military trials for terrorism suspects, arguing that a law enacted last month eliminates the court's ability to consider the issue.
In a 23-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said the justices should throw out an appeal by Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, an alleged driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, because a new statute governing the treatment of U.S. detainees "removes the court's jurisdiction to hear this action." The brief represents the latest escalation in the showdown between the Bush administration and critics of the government over the legal rights of military detainees captured overseas. Hamdan's case is one of several high-stakes legal battles working their way through the courts, and the Supreme Court's November decision to consider his appeal was a blow to the government.
Hamdan is among approximately 500 inmates held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; nine are scheduled to be tried by "military commissions" created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hamdan's lawyers and many civil liberties groups have decried the commissions as unconstitutional and unfairly stacked against defendants. Separately, the administration is trying to eliminate habeas corpus lawsuits filed on behalf of nearly every detainee, saying they have clogged federal courts with frivolous actions. The Supreme Court gave Guantanamo Bay detainees access to federal courts in a 2004 ruling.
The Detainee Treatment Act, principally written by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and signed into law Dec. 30, is intended to prevent detainees from having access to U.S. courts except in specific circumstances. It outlines a limited system for legal challenges by inmates, allowing them only to appeal the determination that they are enemy combatants to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then, potentially, to the Supreme Court. It also allows anyone convicted in a military commission to appeal that decision.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Congress to Tighten Lobbying Rules

From the Washington Post, an article about Congress moving to change the rules involving lobbying of politicians. While this is a good step, I doubt they will go far enough to really get at the root of the problem. From the article:

With Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) formally removed from congressional leadership, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) took the next step yesterday in Republican efforts to distance the party from a growing corruption scandal, saying the House will move soon to tighten the rules governing lobbyists' access to lawmakers.
Hastert tasked House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) to head the GOP's effort to draft new lobbying rules. The move comes months after House Democrats, led by Reps. Martin T. Meehan (Mass.) and Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), and Republican Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.), unveiled proposals to mandate more disclosure of lobbying contacts, ban most lobbyist-sponsored trips and lengthen the time former House members and staff must wait before taking up lobbying.

Click here to read the full article.

For more information on the Abramoff scandal, click here.

--Tom Hayes

Congress Checking Presidential Power

The New York Times Magazine has a good article about what Congress can do to check Presidential power. The article is by Noah Feldmen and has some good information.

Click here to read the full article.

Also check out an article from the New York Times, that talks about war powers of the President coming up at the Alito Hearings by clicking here.

--Tom Hayes

Congressional Report Challenges White House on Domestic Spying

From the Washington Post:

A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.
The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad. The 44-page report said that Bush probably cannot claim the broad presidential powers he has relied upon as authority to order the secret monitoring of calls made by U.S. citizens since the fall of 2001. Congress expressly intended for the government to seek warrants from a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before engaging in such surveillance when it passed legislation creating the court in 1978, the CRS report said.
The report also concluded that Bush's assertion that Congress authorized such eavesdropping to detect and fight terrorists does not appear to be supported by the special resolution that Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which focused on authorizing the president to use military force.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Teacher Beheaded in Afghanistan

From the Washington Post:

Extremists broke into the home of a headmaster of an Afghan school and beheaded him while forcing his wife and eight children to watch, the latest in a spate of attacks blamed on the Taliban that have forced many schools to close.
The insurgents contend that educating girls defies the tenets of Islam, and they oppose government-funded schools for boys because they teach subjects besides religion. The Taliban militia was ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Four armed men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib, 45, eight times before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in the town of Qalat late Tuesday, according to a provincial government spokesman and a cousin of the victim.
Habib was headmaster and a teacher at a high school attended by 1,300 boys and girls in Zabol province, which borders Pakistan and is a hotbed of Taliban militancy.

Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

Chinese Court Sentences Investor Who Led Protest

From the Washington Post:

A businessman who led thousands of investors in a campaign against the government seizure of valuable oil fields in northern China was convicted Thursday of organizing illegal protests and sentenced to three years in prison, his relatives said.
The ruling against Feng Bingxian, 59, was the culmination of a prolonged and closely watched battle in Shaanxi province that had emerged as a test of President Hu Jintao's willingness to protect private property rights -- a principle the Communist Party recently enshrined in its constitution as part of its drive to build a market economy. Feng was one of about 60,000 private investors who developed oil wells in Shaanxi with the blessing of local officials in the mid-1990s. But the officials confiscated the wells in 2003 after they began showing steady profits, and the investors filed a landmark lawsuit against the government last year.
The fight over the wells, said to be worth as much as $850 million, attracted widespread coverage in state media, and Feng became known as an unofficial spokesman for the investors and one of the country's leading advocates of private property rights.

Click here to read the full article.

Click here to read more about the protests for property rights in China.

--Tom Hayes

States Push For Higher Minimum Wage

From the New York Times, an interesting article about action at the state level to raise the minimum wage above the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour. Due to a lack of action by Congress, many states are now pushing to raise the minimum wage as 17 states and the District of Columbia already have a higher rate than the federal level.


Click here to read the full article.

--Tom Hayes

China Releases Investigative Reporter

From the Washington Post:

The Chinese government released a prominent investigative reporter from prison Tuesday, even as it has been intensifying a crackdown on the press. The early release appeared intended to mollify the Bush administration, which had included the journalist on a short list of political prisoners whose cases it raises regularly with Chinese officials.
Jiang Weiping, 50, who spent the last five years in prison after writing a series of hard-hitting articles on government corruption for a magazine in Hong Kong, was granted a sentence reduction for good behavior and released one year before his term was set to end, according to his wife, Li Yanling. Several human rights groups had campaigned for Jiang's release, including the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which honored him with its international press freedom award in 2001.

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--Tom Hayes

Supreme Court Permits Padilla Move

From the Washington Post, the Supreme Court will allow the United States military to transfer Jose Padilla to Miami for to face criminal charges. The Court said it would decide later whether to consider the Padilla's argument that President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering Padilla's indefinite detention in 2002.


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--Tom Hayes

United Nations Ends Mission in Sierra Leone

From Reuters:

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, which at one time was the biggest in the world with 17,500 troops, is pulling out six years after the blue helmets were dispatched to the West African country to help end a brutal civil war.

The force got off to a disastrous start when it first deployed, with hundreds of ill-equipped troops taken hostage by rebels accused of hacking off civilians' hands and feet.

But with considerable help from Sierra Leone's former colonial power Britain, UNAMSIL became recognized as a model for peacekeeping and reconstruction of police, army and public institutions ruined by years of war.

The departing U.N. troops leave behind new or renovated bridges, hospitals, mosques and churches as monuments to the rebuilding of a shattered nation, but analysts said the country must overcome serious challenges in the years ahead.

"No. 1 is youth unemployment. This is one of the major causes of the war in 1991, and there are more unemployed people in Sierra Leone today," said Mike McGovern, West Africa project director for think tank International Crisis Group.
Economic inertia and corruption are blamed for fueling a Liberian-backed rebellion whose young, drug-taking fighters seized the eastern diamond fields, terrorized civilians and smuggled precious stones out through Liberia to buy more guns.

That was a trigger for the world diamond industry's Kimberley Process initiative to certify all rough stones as free of the taint of war to end trade in "blood diamonds."

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--JB

Chinese Activists Targeted by Violence

From the Washington Post:

Two assailants wearing black leather jackets repeatedly slammed him with lead pipes, Zhao Xin recalled, while a third swiped at his groin with a switchblade. Soon they were joined by four more toughs, also armed with pipes, and all seven pounded away. By the time they stopped, Zhao said, they had opened four head wounds, broken two ribs, ripped his calf muscles and shattered his right knee.
Zhao, a veteran political activist based in Beijing, was paying the price for advising Chinese farmers on how to fight back against local officials seizing their fields for economic development, according to his assessment and those of other activists. Increasingly, they said, China's provincial, city and county governments are turning to small-time hoodlums to carry out violent repression without directly involving uniformed policemen or agents of the Public Security Ministry.


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--Tom Hayes