History > 2006 > USA > Congress (II-III)

Earmarks Find Way Into Spending Bill

September 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 — Less than a year after two bribery scandals produced bipartisan calls for Congress to overhaul the way it finances lawmakers’ pet projects, the $436.6 billion military spending bill passed Friday is packed with them.

The bill, which accounts for about half of federal discretionary spending, includes only a small part of the expected costs of next year’s military operations in Iraq. After the fall elections, President Bush is expected to request another supplemental spending measure to pay for the war, just as the administration has for the last three years.

Lawmakers nonetheless found room in the bill to pay for thousands of requests never sought by the Defense Department. These projects, or earmarks, included $2.1 billion for 10 additional C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets, which the Pentagon is trying to discontinue. They are made by Boeing in the home state of Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri, who is locked in a tight race for re-election.

Lawmakers say earmarks can result in contributions to national security as well as to their districts’ economies. The Defense Department complains that such projects divert billions of dollars from programs the Pentagon considers vital. But both sides agree that earmarks’ merits are hard for Congress and the public to assess.

The number of earmarks has tripled over the last 12 years, straining the ability of Congressional staff members to vet each one. The opaque language of spending bills makes it hard for outsiders to know where the money for each project goes. And it is often impossible to know which lawmaker requested a specific project.

The total cost of earmarks is subject to debate. The House Appropriations Committee said the value of the “member projects” in the spending bill this time was $6.7 billion, down from $7.7 billion in the bill approved last year. The Congressional Research Service estimated the total cost of earmarks in last year’s bill at more than $9 billion. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group, has identified well over 2,000 earmarks in this year’s bill, roughly on par with last year’s.

Among the earmarks identified by Taxpayers for Common Sense were $1.7 million for photon research in upstate New York, care of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, both Democrats, and $1.2 million for prostate cancer research involving DNA, a pet cause of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who is chairman of the military spending subcommittee and once suffered from the disease.

Lawmakers’ projects have drawn new attention in the past year because they abetted the misdeeds of former Representative Randy Cunningham, a California Republican who accepted bribes in exchange for earmarking money for military contractors, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who bribed lawmakers to insert earmarks into spending bills.

But as lawmakers head home for the fall campaign season, Congress has done little to alter the earmarking process.

“The appetite is undiminished,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and a frequent critic of earmarks.

Congressional leaders said they were proud of several broader elements of the spending bill related to the war in Iraq. It includes $70 billion as a bridge until the next supplemental spending request. It provides $22.9 billion to replenish and refurbish equipment for the Army and the Marines. And it pays for a 2.2 percent increase in military pay.

In a shift from previous years, no new items were added — “airdropped,” in the parlance of Capitol Hill — in the conference held to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. If the conferees had added items, an internal rule passed by the House earlier this month would have required the sponsors to take responsibility publicly.

That did not stop the conference from adding $2.1 billion to pay for the additional C-17 Globemaster transport planes. Boeing, which makes the planes in Long Beach, Calif., and St. Louis, has lobbied for months to keep the military buying more. The Pentagon asked for a final 8 planes; the House and Senate bills added 4 more; and in closed conference, the leaders of the two appropriations committees decided to add 10, bringing the total to 22. Each costs about $200 million.

Senator Talent heralded the earmark on Friday with a statement declaring, “Senate approves Talent’s request to keep the C-17 line open” for “our highly skilled workers in Missouri.”

Earmarks Find Way Into Spending Bill, NYT, 30.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/washington/30defense.html

Congress Is Told of Failures

of Rebuilding Work in Iraq

September 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — In a sweeping new assessment of reconstruction failures in Iraq, a federal inspector told Congress on Thursday that 13 of 14 major projects built by the American contractor Parsons that were examined by his agency were substandard, with construction deficiencies and other serious problems.

The final project, a prison near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, was terminated for other reasons, said the inspector, Stuart Bowen, who heads the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Delays and cost overruns led to its cancellation.

Whether because the political stakes in Iraq have risen with the approach of the November elections, or simply because of the scope of the problems, Mr. Bowen’s testimony set off outrage on both sides of the political aisle on a topic — reconstruction failures — that previously was mostly in the sights of Congressional Democrats.

“So when they get the construction right, something else goes wrong?” said Representative John M. McHugh, Republican of New York, referring to cost and schedule problems that had plagued many projects.

“Wow — thank you,” Mr. McHugh said, seemingly speechless for a moment after Mr. Bowen answered in the affirmative.

Work by two of the other largest contractors in Iraq — Bechtel and KBR, which was formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root and is a subsidiary of Halliburton — also came in for severe criticism during the lengthy hearing.

The problems with Iraq reconstruction have become notorious enough that protesters engulfed Cliff Mumm, president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, as he emerged onto the street and tried to hail a taxi after his testimony before the House Government Reform Committee.

“Eviction notice for Bechtel and its subsidiaries!” a protester shouted through a megaphone.

Democrats and Republicans on the panel posed some of the most scathing questions yet to executives from Parsons, a company that has received little but criticism in the last year for projects including prisons, border forts, clinics and hospitals.

Before his testimony, Mr. Bowen made available copies of an inspection report on one of the 13 substandard projects, a $72 million police college in Baghdad where plumbing work was so poor that the pipes burst, dumping urine and fecal matter throughout the college’s buildings. The Washington Post reported on some of those problems on Thursday.

Earnest O. Robbins II, a Parsons vice president, struggled to explain how tests could have missed such fundamental problems, in which the pipes were often not joined by proper fixtures but simply set end to end and fastened with concrete.

How could the tests “not reveal these massive, massive problems?” asked Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland.

“I have some conjectures and that’s all it would be,” Mr. Robbins said, “and that is, it took a while of use for this to manifest itself, for the fittings to come loose or whatever.”

The industry witnesses also fired back at their Congressional questioners, pointing out that their work generally met with the approval of government entities that were supposed to be overseeing the work. Mr. Mumm, of Bechtel, brought a hush to the room when he listed 24 Iraqi employees on the hospital project who had been killed by local militias or insurgents, greatly slowing the work. The Iraqi site manager was murdered, the site engineer’s daughter was kidnapped and “they summarily marched out our mechanical contractor and murdered 12 of them,” Mr. Mumm said.

Democrats spent much of the day connecting the reconstruction effort, which has cost an estimated $30 billion to $45 billion in Iraqi and American financing, to the wider effort in Iraq.

“This debacle is not just a waste of taxpayers’ funds, and it doesn’t just impact the reconstruction,” Representative Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said of one of the failed projects. “It impedes the entire effort in Iraq. This is the lens in which the Iraqis will view America.”

Representative Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who is the committee’s chairman, began his own remarks by charging that critics of the reconstruction “oversimplify, distort and prejudge the outcome of a complex contracting process to fit the preordained conclusion that everything goes wrong in Iraq.”

But then even Mr. Davis concluded that when it came to reconstruction, “original plans were wildly optimistic,” and that only a fraction of originally planned water and electricity projects had been completed. As the hearing wore on, Mr. Davis expressed shock at statistics like the 13 of 14 projects that Mr. Bowen had found were substandard.

“What is going on here?” Mr. Davis asked. The question was never fully answered.

The 14 Parsons projects included three border forts in the north with undersize and inadequate structural beams and incomplete security measures; five health clinics around Kirkuk with crumbling concrete; and a hospital in Babil Province that also had structural problems.

    Congress Is Told of Failures of Rebuilding Work in Iraq, NYT, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/world/middleeast/29contracts.html

H.P. Before a Skeptical Congress

September 29, 2006
The New York Times
By DAMON DARLIN and MIGUEL HELFT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — Hewlett-Packard’s former chairwoman and its current leader faced an admonishing and sometimes incredulous House subcommittee on Thursday as they tried to explain why they never questioned the legal foundation of an internal spying operation.

The former chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn, who authorized the operation but said repeatedly that she was not its supervisor, came under especially harsh scrutiny because she refused to express contrition when invited to do so.

“I get the sense that you still don’t believe that you did anything wrong,” said Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida. After trying to answer obliquely, Ms. Dunn finally said, “I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened.”

On the other hand, an apologetic Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive and Ms. Dunn’s successor, encountered gentler questioning when he accepted blame for the “mess,” as he put it. “There is no excuse for this aberration,” Mr. Hurd said. “It happened, and it will never happen again.”

The hearing shed little new light into the aggressive methods used by Hewlett-Packard to plug leaks to the news media from its board. But it provided a fresh expression of outrage over the investigation, which included the use of deception to obtain private phone records of board members, journalists and others.

“I have to ask our witnesses, what were you thinking?” said Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who called the effort “a plumbers’ operation that would make Richard Nixon blush were he still alive.”

In a hearing that stretched from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with only a half-hour break, the legislators grilled Ms. Dunn over her responsibility for the investigation and her awareness of the methods, with only a few questions aimed at her fellow panel members. Mr. Hurd later testified alone.

The scene was remarkable for the gathering of so many officials of one company in a Congressional hearing room — at the behest of the Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee, which once looked into quite different corporate scandals at Enron and WorldCom.

Before lawmakers got any answers, they had to dispense with a group of 10 recalcitrant witnesses, including three officials who have left the company and several of the investigators they employed. One by one, they declined to answer the committee’s questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

They included the company’s general counsel, Ann O. Baskins, whose lawyers announced early Thursday that she had resigned, while insisting that she had been repeatedly assured by subordinates that the operation was legal.

But the committee also released handwritten notes Ms. Baskins took in a meeting on June 15, 2005, that showed she was aware of the use of “pretexts to extract info.”

It is the use of pretexting — obtaining another person’s phone records through a ruse — that was the ostensible interest of the panel, which put forward legislation earlier this year to outlaw the practice. But as the day’s hearing went on, the lawmakers’ indignation extended to the investigators’ whole bag of tricks.

Ms. Dunn provoked the most disbelief with her insistence that she did not supervise the investigation and that she believed that private phone records could be obtained legally. At one point, she said she believed until six months ago that one could simply call the phone company and obtain another person’s records.

“You really believe that? You honestly believed that it was that simple?” asked Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon.

Ms. Dunn was also questioned about her blessing of a plan to send a misleading e-mail message to a reporter, along with tracer software that would let H.P. detectives know to whom the document was forwarded.

Reading from a document, Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, noted that Ms. Dunn had said the plan was “clever” and should be sent to Mr. Hurd for approval.

“I regret the use of the word ‘clever,’ ” Ms. Dunn said.

“I’m sure,” Ms. DeGette replied.

By way of defending her actions — or rather, inaction — Ms. Dunn responded that it was not her role to approve investigative techniques.

“This is a very serious problem,” Ms. DeGette said. “You can’t say, ‘I’m just a board member, but I’m not responsible for things that happen because I am not in the chain of command.’ ”

Ms. Dunn was repeatedly confronted with documents showing that Ronald R. DeLia, the outside investigator employed by H.P. and one of the witnesses who refused to testify, contended that she was aware of pretexting early in the investigation.

“I have no recollection of a conversation with Mr. DeLia that included the word ‘pretexting,’ ” Ms. Dunn replied at one point. She later added, “I don’t agree with Mr. DeLia’s testimony.”

Her main expression of remorse was in her opening statement when she said, “I deeply regret that so many people, including me, were badly let down by this reliance” on the expertise of others.

Questions for Mr. Hurd were rarely as tough. Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas, asked him if he could restore integrity to Hewlett-Packard. Mr. Hurd pointedly removed his glasses and said, “I will.”

It was an artful performance by Mr. Hurd, who acknowledged, as he had previously, that he was at two meetings where the operation was discussed. He said he did not pay attention because the investigation was not as high a priority as running the company. “I pick my spots where I dive into details,” he said.

He also said he had approved sending an e-mail message with bogus information intended to smoke out a leaker, but said he had not approved adding tracer software.

Mr. Hurd was asked several times about the software’s use. He did not say that the company would stop using it, only that it would investigate whether it should. Fred Adler, an investigator also called as a witness, said Hewlett-Packard had used it recently at least two dozen times.

Several members acknowledged that the panel had gone easier on Mr. Hurd than on Ms. Dunn. “We didn’t have the documents on him that we had on her,” Edward Whitfield, the subcommittee chairman, said later.

He said that Mr. Hurd’s acceptance of responsibility also played a part in the way they questioned the two executives. Mr. Whitfield said with Ms. Dunn’s extensive background in business and finance, he expected more sophisticated answers. “She portrayed herself as so far removed,” he said.

And few people think Mr. Hurd is in any trouble with H.P.’s shareholders or its board. On Wednesday, Robert Ryan, a board member, was calling reporters — with the company’s authorization — to express his and the board’s support for Mr. Hurd, who has presided over a resurgence of Hewlett-Packard’s business.

Investors appeared to agree, with Hewlett-Packard’s stock rising 1.6 percent in regular trading and 1.5 percent more after hours, when Mr. Hurd made his appearance.

Charles R. Wolf, a computer industry analyst with Needham & Company, said the strong stock performance and Mr. Hurd’s popularity among employees would make it difficult for the board to remove him.

“I’d say the likelihood of his being forced to resign over this is close to zero,” he said. “He’s done such a terrific job managing this company for the past year and a half, it would take a bulldozer to get rid of him.”

Before Mr. Hurd’s appearance, the company’s outside counsel, Larry W. Sonsini, whom many consider the most influential lawyer in Silicon Valley, appeared on the panel with Ms. Dunn.

He, too, was able to deflect much of the lawmakers’ ire.

Mr. Sonsini said several times that a statement he had made in an e-mail message in June that the investigation appeared to be “within legal limits” had been misinterpreted. He said it did not amount to a legal opinion, but rather a statement reflecting what he was told by Kevin T. Hunsaker, the senior lawyer who led the investigation, and Ms. Baskins.

It was only later, after Hewlett-Packard asked his firm to investigate the investigation, that he fully understood the methods employed by Hewlett-Packard and concluded that “they are totally improper.”

Lawmakers convened the hearing, in part, to emphasize the need for legislation that explicitly bans the use of pretexting to obtain phone records.

The committee approved a bill to that effect earlier this year, but it has yet to be taken up by the full House of Representatives.

In one of the few lighthearted exchanges, Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas and chairman of the full committee, told Ms. Dunn, “If I called you up, Ms. Dunn, and asked you for your phone records for the last six months, would you give me that?”

“In your position,” Ms. Dunn said, then added after a pause, “I would give you my phone records.”

The room exploded with laughter, and Mr. Barton replied, “Well, praise the Lord, I wouldn’t give you mine.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from New York.

    H.P. Before a Skeptical Congress, NYT, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/technology/29hewlett.html

Report Links White House and Lobbyist

September 29, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president’s chief political strategist.

The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove’s office.

The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday.

The authors of the report said it was generally unclear from available records whether the aides reimbursed Mr. Abramoff for the meals or tickets. Ethics rules bar White House officials from accepting lobbyists’ gifts worth more than $20.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Thursday that while White House officials had not seen the report, earlier evidence showed that Mr. Abramoff had exaggerated his ties to the administration and was “ineffective in terms of getting government officials to take actions.”

Ms. Perino added, “It’s a real shame that so many of his clients were taken advantage of, lied to and ripped off.”

The report describes several instances in which Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to bribe public officials, failed to get the action he desired from the White House, and described his overall record in lobbying the White House as “mixed.” But it also suggests that Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying resulted in Bush administration actions that benefited Abramoff clients, including decisions to distribute millions of dollars in federal money to Indian tribes with large gambling operations.

After an especially aggressive lobbying campaign in 2001 and 2002 involving 73 contacts with White House officials, Mr. Abramoff claimed credit for an administration decision to release $16.3 million to a Mississippi tribe for jail construction despite opposition from the Justice Department, the report found.

A copy of the bipartisan report was provided to The New York Times by Congressional officials who were granted anonymity because the document had not been released publicly.

Mr. Rove has described Mr. Abramoff as a “casual acquaintance,” but the records obtained by the House committee show that Mr. Rove and his aides sought Mr. Abramoff’s help in obtaining seats at sporting events, and that Mr. Rove sat with Mr. Abramoff in the lobbyist’s box seats for an N.C.A.A. basketball playoff game in 2002.

After that game, Mr. Abramoff described Mr. Rove in an e-mail message to a colleague: “He’s a great guy. Told me anytime we need something just let him know through Susan.” The message was referring to Susan Ralson, Mr. Abramoff’s former secretary, who joined the White House in February 2001 as Mr. Rove’s executive assistant.

Ms. Ralston, who did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday, was lobbied scores of times by Mr. Abramoff and his partners, the report found, and was instrumental in passing messages between Mr. Abramoff and senior officials at the White House, including Mr. Rove and Ken Mehlman.

Mr. Mehlman, now chairman of the Republican National Committee, was then a senior White House political strategist. A national committee spokeswoman, Tracey Schmitt, said Thursday that in Mr. Mehlman’s White House job, “it was not unusual” that he “would be in contact with supporters who had interest in administration policy.”

In October 2001, the report said, Mr. Abramoff asked the White House to withhold an endorsement from a Republican candidate for governor of the Northern Marianas Islands, an American commonwealth in the western Pacific where Mr. Abramoff had clients; Mr. Abramoff was backing another candidate.

On Oct. 31, 2001, the report said, Ms. Ralson sent an e-mail message to Mr. Abramoff that read: “You win :) KR said no endorsement.”

In March 2002, the report said, Mr. Abramoff contacted Ms. Ralson to offer tickets to Mr. Rove and his family for use of a skybox during the N.C.A.A. tournament at the MCI Center in Washington.

“Hi Susan,” Mr. Abramoff wrote in an e-mail message.” I just saw Karl and mentioned the N.C.A.A. opportunity, which he was really jazzed about. If he wants to join us in the Pollin box, please let me know as soon as you can.”

Ms. Ralston replied: “Karl is interested in Fri. and Sun. 3 tickets for his family?”

Mr. Abramoff responded: “Done. Does he want to go Friday night or Friday afternoon or both?” The report said that Mr. Rove offered to pay for the tickets, prompting Mr. Abramoff to propose that Mr. Rove pay $50 per ticket “payable to me personally.”

The report cited numerous e-mail messages in which Mr. Abramoff referred to Mr. Rove and his visits to Signatures, a Washington restaurant owned by Mr. Abramoff.

On learning in July 2002 that Mr. Rove planned to dine at Signatures with a party of 8 to 10 people, Mr. Abramoff wrote to a colleague: “I want him to be given a very nice bottle of wine and have Joseph whisper in his ear (only he should hear) that Abramoff wanted him to have this wine on the house.” In another e-mail message, Mr. Abramoff directed his restaurant staff to “please put Karl Rove in his usual table.”

Ms. Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said the offer of a free bottle of wine was actually proof of how little acquainted Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Rove were because “Karl doesn’t drink alcohol.”

Disclosure of the report’s findings came as a federal judge in Miami agreed on Thursday to delay Mr. Abramoff’s imprisonment, but not for as long as the Justice Department wanted.

In court papers this week, the department asked that Mr. Abramoff, who has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison, not have to surrender for three months because of the need for his continued cooperation in the influence-peddling investigation in Washington that is said to involve several members of Congress.

But the judge, Paul C. Huck, agreed to allow Mr. Abramoff to remain free only until Nov. 15, saying “there comes a time when people have to pay the piper.” Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty in Miami as part of an agreement with the Justice Department in which he confessed to corruption charges in Washington, and to fraud charges in Florida involving his purchase of a casino-boat fleet there.

    Report Links White House and Lobbyist, NYT, 29.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29abramoff.html?hp&ex=1159588800&en=48a1a693318d9fe3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Travels to Hill to Push Detainee Bill

September 28, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JOHN O’NEIL

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The Senate today rejected an amendment to a bill creating a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects that would have guaranteed such suspects access to the courts to challenge their imprisonment.

The vote was 51 to 48 against the amendment, which was offered by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. The action set the stage for final passage of the bill, which was approved on Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

The bill’s ultimate passage was assured on Wednesday when Democrats agreed to forgo a filibuster in return for consideration of the amendment. Any changes in the Senate bill, however, would have made it impossible for Republican leaders to meet their goal of sending the bill to the White House before adjourning on Friday to hit the campaign trail.

Underscoring the political stakes involved, White House spokesman Tony Snow said today that President Bush will emphasize Democratic opposition to the bill in campaign appearances.

“He’ll be citing some of the comments that members of the Democratic leadership have made in recent days about what they think is necessary for winning the war on terror,” Mr. Snow told reporters en route to a fundraiser in Alabama, according to a transcript provided by the White House.

This afternoon, the Senate was due to vote on two remaining amendments, but the one defeated this morning was the only one that had any Republican support.

The amendment introduced by Mr. Specter would have guaranteed to non-American citizens who are held as unlawful enemy combatants the right to appeal their detention in federal court. The bill now contains no such guarantee.

“What this bill would do is take our civilization back 900 years,” to before the adoption of the writ of habeus corpus in medieval England, Senator Specter said.

Mr. Leahy said the bill as written would allow the executive branch to hold any lawful immigrant in the United States indefinitely without charge. “We are about to put the darkest blot on the conscience of the nation,” he said, charging that the push for quick passage was purely for political gain.

“There is no new national security crisis,” he said. “There’s only a Republican political crisis.”

But Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who was one of the bill’s authors, stated flatly that allowing habeus corpus appeals “impedes the war effort” by allowing for “irresponsible” litigation that undermines the military.

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said the amendment would “divert our soldiers from the battlefield and tie their hands” by providing unnecessarily generous rights to terrorists.

Mr. Cornyn said that detainees such as those held at Guantánamo Bay would still retain the right to appeal decisions of special tribunals set up to consider their status. Mr. Specter responded that those tribunals were certain to be rejected by the Supreme Court.

In general, Republicans opposed to the amendment spoke of the need to limit the legal privileges of “terrorists” or “unlawful combatants,” while supporters of the change spoke about the need to give suspects a way to show whether they had been captured in error.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, cited the experience of one detainee who had not been involved with Al Qaeda, but who was sold to American forces in Afghanistan by Pakistani bounty hunters for $5,000. That mistake was only corrected because of habeus corpus, she said.

Before the session began this morning, President Bush traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican Senators and urge passage of the bill.

“The American people need to know that we’re working together to win this war on terror,” he said. “Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people from further attack. And we cannot be able to tell the American people we’re doing our full job unless we have the tools to do so.”

The legislation is a response to a Supreme Court ruling in June that threw out the system of military tribunals set up by the Bush administration.

The House, in a politically charged decision, voted 253 to 168 in favor of the bill, which contains extensive new rules governing the questioning of terror suspects and bringing them before military tribunals. If the Senate follows suit today, as is expected, it would yield for the Republicans a major national-security victory before the elections.

In the House, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats, many in highly competitive districts, supported the bill; 160 Democrats and 7 Republicans opposed it. The opponents included the Democratic leadership and its major voices on military and intelligence issues.

Republicans immediately sought to portray the vote as a defining one between the two parties. “It is outrageous that House Democrats, at the urging of their leaders, continue to oppose giving President Bush the tools he needs to protect our country,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

But House Democrats said the legislation would reverse fundamental American values by allowing seizure of evidence in this country without a search warrant, allowing evidence obtained through cruel and inhuman treatment, and denying relief or appeal to people like Maher Arar, whom the United States sent to Syria for interrogation that included torture even after the Canadian government told American officials he was not a terrorist.

Backers of the measure said the legislation would guarantee terror suspects adequate rights while not hindering interrogations.

“We are dealing with the enemy in war, not defendants in our criminal justice system,” said Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “In time of war it is not practical to apply the same rules of evidence that we apply in civil trials or courts martial for our troops.”

Leading Democrats said the approach would result in government-sanctioned mistreatment of detainees. They predicted it would be again thrown out by the Supreme Court, leaving the United States remaining without a system to try terrorists after a wait that has already extended five years beyond Sept. 11, 2001.

“If you want to be tough on terrorists, let’s not pass something that rushes to judgment and has legal loopholes that will reverse a conviction,” said Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Fellow Democrats said the measure could be interpreted by other nations as reducing America’s commitment to the rights of prisoners of war.

“When our moral standing is eroded, our international credibility is diminished as well,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

But Republicans argued repeatedly that the nation is facing a faceless and brutal enemy that lurks in the shadows, requiring a new way of thinking on the part of the United States and giving new importance to the ability to freely interrogate them.

“Information is the key weapon we have to prevent them from killing us and prevent them from attacking others in the future,” said Representative Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas, who said he worried the measure might go too far in tying the hands of American operatives.

The House debate was interrupted repeatedly by protesters in the gallery, who were removed by security workers.

The bill was a compromise worked out between the White House and three Senate Republicans who for weeks had resisted the administration’s approach. They contended the White House’s initial bill would violate the Constitution and redefine the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, signaling to other nations that they too could rewrite the rules on dealing with combatants seized in wartime.

The intraparty rift had threatened to derail Republican hopes to champion theirs as the party of national security, but before the debate began, Mr. Frist smilingly declared, “Republicans united.” Democrats had stayed mainly on the sidelines during the fight among Republicans, but the pending votes in the House and Senate have forced them to take firm positions on the bill. Senate Democrats did allow a vote to go forward, escaping criticism that they were obstructing the measure, and thus denying Republicans a potential political hammer.

House Democrats were prevented from offering any amendments. Under the Senate agreement, Democrats were allowed four proposed amendments, including the one co-sponsored by Mr. Specter. One, by Mr. Levin, would have adopted the approach endorsed by the Armed Services Committee and the three Republicans who resisted the Bush administration: Senators John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It failed Wednesday on a 54-to-43 vote, with two Democrats, Senators Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, crossing party lines.

Concerned the legislation was being rushed through before an election without most senators understanding what was in the final version, Democratic Senators Robert C. Byrd of Virginia and Barack Obama of Illinois planned to offer a sunset provision that would require Congress to review the military commissions, as the trials are known, in five years.

While Republicans were nearing success on a key element of their agenda with the terrorism bill, disputes among top Republicans in the House and Senate were threatening other measures they hoped to pass, particularly a domestic security spending bill and a Pentagon policy bill. Lawmakers were scrambling to resolve the differences to avoid leaving the bills on the shelf. They have already abandoned efforts to strike a final agreement on a measure governing a National Security Agency surveillance program, though the House is scheduled to consider the bill on Thursday.

Carl Hulse reported from Washington and John O’Neil from New York. Kate Zernike contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bush Travels to Hill to Push Detainee Bill, NYT, 28.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/29detaincnd.html?hp&ex=1159502400&en=f804341525b03650&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Air Force Jet Wins Battle in Congress

September 28, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE

The F-22 Raptor fighter jet, the United States Air Force’s most expensive weapon, is designed for global air dominance. But its biggest battles have not been in the skies, but in the corridors of power in Washington, where it has just taken on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Washington budget-cutters — and won.

Since coming into office, Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration have tried to rein in the costs of the $65 billion fighter jet program, which has been two decades in the making and has suffered one cost overrun after another.

But their efforts were rebuffed this week by the powerful F-22 lobby, a combination of the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, which makes the fighter jet, and their allies in Congress.

The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on the $447 billion Pentagon budget for 2007, which contains a measure promoted by backers of the F-22 that could extend the jet’s production run beyond its 2011 termination date and reduce Congressional oversight of the program.

On Monday, after negotiations in a Senate-House conference committee, the F-22 measure was put into the final Pentagon budget, which the full House passed on Tuesday.

The measure could open the door to additional F-22 purchases above the 183 budgeted by the administration and could extend the life of the program a few years by using a multiyear procurement contract rather than subjecting the F-22 to annual Congressional review.

The Air Force thus far has taken possession of 74 F-22’s, which are being sent to bases across the country. The plane has not been used in combat yet. Six more are in production. Lockheed plans to make 20 to 25 a year between now and 2011.

The plane’s “fly-away” cost, equivalent to the sticker price in a car, is $130 million. But if development costs are included and spread over the 183 planes in the program, the total cost to the government rises to $350 million per plane.

Critics say the F-22 represents technological overkill at a time when United States air superiority is unquestioned and the nature of warfare has changed. It was originally designed for aerial combat against the Soviets. Today, one of its biggest critics is the Government Accountability Office, which in July issued a report saying, “The F-22 acquisition history is a case study in increased cost and schedule inefficiencies.”

Still, even these critics concede that the plane is an engineering marvel, a Maserati of the skies. It can fly at 60,000 feet, twice as high as any other plane. Its cruising speed is Mach 2 and its top speed is a Pentagon secret. And its radar-eluding stealth technology allows it to fly at supersonic speeds — invisibly.

The plane, however, has suffered embarrassing glitches. This year, an F-22 pilot became trapped in his jet and had to be rescued from the cockpit with chainsaws. The landing gear failed in another instance, causing the aircraft to fall on its nose. Structural cracks have also been reported.

Even as strong a critic of wasteful Pentagon spending as Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who will become the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as the committee’s current chairman, Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican, could not defeat the F-22 lobby.

The two senators were able to extract some concessions in the closed-door House-Senate conference committee. But they could not muster the support to defeat the multiyear contract, in which F-22’s would be acquired in a series of three-year contracts rather than annually.

“The F-22 lobby is an extraordinary juggernaut and they fought to the death on this one,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington research group. “It is astonishing in that the lobby can take on the most powerful in Washington, including the president, and win.”

Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group, added that “the Air Force is dominated by fighter pilots and they would give up anything to keep the F-22.”

The Air Force would like to see scores more F-22’s than the 183 it has been promised — it says it needs at least 381.

Originally, the Air Force wanted 750 planes. Even though that number has been cut sharply, the Air Force has continue to push for more, aided by what Washington insiders call the Iron Triangle — a politically powerful combination of military contractors and their allies inside the Pentagon and Congress.

For instance, the multiyear contract was passed by the Senate in the summer, 70 to 28, before being sent to conference committee. The language in the Senate measure was identical to a draft proposal written by a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and given to members of Congress.

Before the Senate considered the issue, an e-mail message was circulated by Lockheed to Senate members, saying, “Please vote ‘yes’ on the proposed Chambliss Amendment” to permit the multiyear contract. After the e-mail message was sent, the amendment was introduced by Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, whose district includes an F-22 assembly plant.

“What happened was predictable,” said Christopher Bolkcom, a military specialist at the Congressional Research Service. “Everyone could see the opponents of the measure were swimming upstream. The Air Force is still chipping away, trying to get more planes.”

In fact, Senator Warner accused Senator Chambliss and Lockheed of doing an end-run around his committee, where such important measures are typically decided. The Armed Services Committee opposed the measure.

“We are facing here a rather interesting chapter of a very significant and important defense contractor trying to get through this body a decision, which is in violation of statute and overrides the judgment of the majority of the members of the Armed Services Committee,” Senator Warner said on the Senate floor.

Senator Warner said the multiyear contract would take away Congress’s annual oversight. The G.A.O. estimated that the multiyear contract would increase total F-22 program costs by $1.7 billion over the president’s 2006 budget.

F-22 supporters point instead to a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally financed research group, which said a multiyear contract would save $225 million.

Yet even that report has fallen victim to controversy. The president of the institute, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, resigned from it this month amid conflict-of-interest accusations. In July, Mr. Blair was criticized by Senator Warner and Senator McCain for his role in drafting the F-22 report while also holding a seat on the board of the EDO Corporation, an F-22 contractor.

The institute’s trustees asked him last month to resign from his corporate boards. He chose instead to leave the institute. Mr. Blair’s dual role is also being investigated by the Pentagon’s inspector general in an inquiry initiated by Senator Warner and Senator McCain.

Another measure sought by F-22 supporters, the lifting of a ban on sales to foreign countries, easily passed the House in July on a voice vote but failed to make it out of a House-Senate conference committee. Backers of the measure said that overseas sales would help reduce the overall costs of the F-22 program.

Opponents fear that it would permit other nations to gain access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry and technologies.

That measure was offered by Representative Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican whose district includes the Lockheed factory that makes the F-22 midsection and employs 2,640. A spokesman for Ms. Granger, Caitlin Carroll, said it was too early to tell whether Ms. Granger would resubmit it in another Congress.

But Ms. Brian of the Project on Government Oversight has no doubt this issue will come back. “This was a short-term win for the opponents of overseas sales,” said Ms. Brian, who puts herself in that camp. “But this issue will live to fight another day.”

    Air Force Jet Wins Battle in Congress, NYT, 28.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/business/28plane.html

Editorial

Rushing Off a Cliff

September 28, 2006
The New York Times
 

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

    Rushing Off a Cliff, NYT, 28.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html

House Passes Detainee Bill as It Clears Senate Hurdle

September 28, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — Congress took major steps on Wednesday toward establishing a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects as the House approved legislation sought by President Bush and the Senate defeated efforts to alter the measure.

The House, in a politically charged decision, voted 253 to 168 in favor of extensive new rules governing the questioning of terror suspects and bringing them before military tribunals. The Senate was expected to follow suit on Thursday, which would deliver Republicans a major national security victory before the elections.

“The time to act is now,” said Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, as he opened Senate debate after reaching a deal with Democrats who agreed not to stand in the way of a final vote on the bill in exchange for consideration of amendments.

In the House, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats, many in more competitive districts, supported the bill; 160 Democrats and 7 Republicans opposed it; the opponents included the Democratic leadership and major party voices on the military and intelligence issues.

Republicans immediately sought to portray the vote as a defining one between the two parties. “It is outrageous that House Democrats, at the urging of their leaders, continue to oppose giving President Bush the tools he needs to protect our country,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

But Democrats said the legislation would reverse fundamental American values by allowing seizure of evidence in this country without a search warrant, allowing evidence obtained through cruel and inhuman treatment, and denying relief or appeal to people like Maher Arar, whom the United States sent to Syria for interrogation that included torture even after the Canadian government told American officials he was not a terrorist.

“This is un-American, this is unconstitutional, this is contrary to American interests, this is not what a great and good and powerful nation should be doing,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

Backers of the measure said the legislation, which was sought by Mr. Bush after the Supreme Court in June struck down the administration’s system for trying detainees, would guarantee terror suspects adequate rights while not hindering interrogations.

“We are dealing with the enemy in war, not defendants in our criminal justice system,” said Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “In time of war it is not practical to apply the same rules of evidence that we apply in civil trials or courts martial for our troops.”

Leading Democrats said the approach would result in government-sanctioned mistreatment of detainees. They predicted it would be again thrown out by the Supreme Court, leaving the United States remaining without a system to try terrorists after a wait that has already extended five years beyond Sept. 11, 2001.

“If you want to be tough on terrorists, let’s not pass something that rushes to judgment and has legal loopholes that will reverse a conviction,” said Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Fellow Democrats said the measure could be interpreted by other nations as reducing America’s commitment to the rights of prisoners of war.

“When our moral standing is eroded, our international credibility is diminished as well,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, characterized the bill as the product of an administration that “has been relentless in its determination to legitimize the abuse of detainees.”

But Republicans argued repeatedly that the nation is facing a faceless and brutal enemy that lurks in the shadows, requiring a new way of thinking on the part of the United States and giving new importance to the ability to freely interrogate them.

“Information is the key weapon we have to prevent them from killing us and prevent them from attacking others in the future,” said Representative Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas, who said he worried the measure might go too far in tying the hands of American operatives.

The House debate was interrupted repeatedly by protesters in the gallery, who were removed by security workers.

The bill was a compromise worked out between the White House and three Senate Republicans who for weeks had resisted the administration’s approach. They contended the White House’s initial bill would violate the Constitution and redefine the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, signaling to other nations that they too could rewrite the rules on dealing with combatants seized in wartime.

The intraparty rift had threatened to derail Republican hopes to champion theirs as the party of national security, but before the debate began, Mr. Frist smilingly declared, “Republicans united.” Mr. Bush accepted Mr. Frist’s invitation to meet with Republican senators on Thursday morning as they prepared to vote to rally their support and build their spirits before Republicans hit the campaign trail.

Democrats had stayed mainly on the sidelines during the fight among Republicans, but the pending votes in the House and Senate have forced them to take firm positions on the bill. Senate Democrats did allow a vote to go forward, escaping criticism that they were obstructing the measure, and thus denying Republicans a potential political hammer.

House Democrats were prevented from offering any amendments. Under the Senate agreement, Democrats were allowed four proposed amendments. One, by Mr. Levin, would have adopted the approach endorsed by the Armed Services Committee and the three Republicans who resisted the Bush administration: Senators John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It failed on a 54-to-43 vote, with two Democrats, Senators Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, crossing party lines.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, pressed an amendment that would strike a provision from the bill that prohibits terror suspects from challenging their detention in the courts. “What the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years,” said Mr. Specter, who traced the ability to challenge one’s detention to the Magna Carta.

Concerned the legislation was being rushed through before an election without most senators understanding what was in the final version, Democratic Senators Robert C. Byrd of Virginia and Barack Obama of Illinois planned to offer a sunset provision that would require Congress to review the military commissions, as the trials are known, in five years.

Republicans said they were confident they could hold off any changes when the remaining amendments come up for a vote on Thursday.

While Republicans were nearing success on a key element of their agenda with the terrorism bill, disputes among top Republicans in the House and Senate were threatening other measures they hoped to pass, particularly a domestic security spending bill and a Pentagon policy bill. Lawmakers were scrambling to resolve the differences to avoid leaving the bills on the shelf. They have already abandoned efforts to strike a final agreement on a measure governing a National Security Agency surveillance program, though the House is scheduled to consider the bill on Thursday.

    House Passes Detainee Bill as It Clears Senate Hurdle, NYT, 28.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/28detain.html?hp&ex=1159502400&en=cb7a7b07a401df33&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Chemical Plants, Still Unprotected

September 25, 2006
The New York Times

Congress still has done nothing to protect Americans from a terrorist attack on chemical plants. Republican leaders want to give the impression that that has changed. But voters should not fall for the spin. If the leadership goes through with the strategy it seems to have adopted last week to secure these highly vulnerable targets, national security will be the loser.

The federal government is spending extraordinary amounts of money and time protecting air travel from terrorist attacks. But Congress has not yet passed a law to secure the nation’s chemical plants, even though an attack on just one plant could kill or injure as many as 100,000 people. The sticking point has been the chemical industry, a heavy contributor to political campaigns, which does not want to pay the cost of reasonable safety measures.

The Senate and the House spent many months carefully developing bipartisan chemical plant security bills. Both measures were far too weak, but they would have finally imposed real safety requirements on the chemical industry. The Republican leadership in Congress blocked both bills from moving forward. Instead, whatever gets done about chemical plant security will apparently be decided behind closed doors, and inserted as a rider to a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

It is outrageous that something as important as chemical plant security is being decided in a back-room deal. It is regrettable that Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, the chairwoman of the committee that produced the Senate bill, does not carry enough influence with her own party’s leadership to get a strong chemical plant security bill passed. The deal itself, the likely details of which have emerged in recent days, is a near-complete cave-in to industry, and yet more proof that when it comes to a choice between homeland security and the desires of corporate America, the Republican leadership always goes with big business.

Any federal chemical plant law should make it clear that states have the right to impose stricter requirements to protect their citizens from harm. The Senate and House bills said this, but the rider apparently will not. A reasonable law would make it clear that the secretary of homeland security can order chemical plants to adopt specific safety measures, like replacing highly dangerous chemicals with ones that pose less of a danger to people in the surrounding area. The House bill did this, but the rider apparently will not give the secretary this basic power.

It is likely that the backroom deal will also exempt water treatment and drinking water facilities from regulation, meaning that millions of Americans could needlessly be put at risk of an attack on a chlorine tank, and that it will make the rules about when and how chemical plants must submit safety plans hopelessly vague.

It is not too late to abandon this bad deal and pass a strong law. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, just 25 percent of those asked approved of the job Congress is doing. Its handling of the chemical plant security issue gives a good indication why.

    Chemical Plants, Still Unprotected, NYT, 25.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/opinion/25mon1.html

Congress Is Winding Down, but Much Is Left Undone

September 25, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — A Congress derided as do-nothing has a week to do something, and the prospects are cloudy.

Procrastination, power struggles and partisanship have left Congress with substantial work to finish before breaking for the elections. The fast-approaching recess and the Republican focus on national security legislation make it inevitable that much of the remainder will fall by the wayside.

At best, it appears that just 2 of the 11 required spending bills will pass, and not one has been approved so far, forcing a stopgap measure to keep the federal government open. No budget was enacted. A popular package of business and education tax credits is teetering. A lobbying overhaul, once a top priority in view of corruption scandals, is dead. The drive for broad immigration changes has derailed.

An offshore oil drilling bill painted as an answer to high gas prices is stalled. Plans to cut the estate tax and raise the minimum wage have floundered, and an important nuclear pact with India sought by the White House is not on track to clear Congress. New problems surfaced over the weekend for the annual military authorization bill. And numerous other initiatives await a planned lame-duck session in mid-November or a future Congress.

“It is disappointing where we are, and I think Republicans need to be upfront about this,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia and a member of the House leadership. “We have not accomplished what we need to accomplish.”

Given the practical and political realities, Republicans have chosen to concentrate on legislation emphasizing their security credentials, like the bill governing interrogations and trials of terrorism detainees, a National Security Agency surveillance program, and spending on the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

“With obstruction from the Democrats at an all-time high, we have focused on four security issues in an effort to enact some solid, substantive accomplishments,” said Eric M. Ueland, chief of staff to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, who is stepping down at the end of this session.

While Republicans prefer to blame Democrats for the backlog, intramural fights and sharp differences between House and Senate Republicans have been chief impediments to major legislation. The recent fissures over terrorism detainees and how far to go in changing immigration law are just the latest and most public examples of serious policy differences among Republicans.

“I’ve seen some of that lately,” Mr. Frist said recently as he pondered whether Republican opposition would block a proposal for a 700-mile border fence — the chief piece of immigration-related legislation still standing after a broader measure fell victim to Republican disputes. Because of reservations from Democrats and Republicans who favor the broader bill, Mr. Frist is having trouble rounding up enough votes for a showdown over the fence this week.

Circumstances have changed in Washington from the days when Republicans were famous for party discipline. President Bush, weakened by his sliding popularity, has been unable to hold sway over Congress. The Republican leadership in the House and the Senate is in transition and lacks the muscle of Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader. Republican lawmakers, many facing their most serious electoral opposition in years, are fending for themselves.

“We have no central core of political authority driving things in Washington,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “Individuals and expressions of individual will by committees, and also by strong people like John McCain, have dominated, and the result is internal fighting.”

Democrats have made no secret of their intention to try to brand this Congress as worse than lackluster. They said their case was made for them last week as the Senate, despite time running out, did next to nothing on the floor for three days in order to clear procedural obstacles to debating the fence legislation.

“When we say this is the most do-nothing Congress in the history of our country, this isn’t just flippant,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “This is true.” Besides denouncing the legislative output, Democrats are mounting an effort to chastise Republicans as failing to conduct sufficient oversight of the war in Iraq.

Republican leaders dispute the notion that this has been an unproductive session, pointing to legislation on bankruptcy, class action, highway spending, energy policy and pensions, as well as to two Supreme Court confirmations. And they say they already plan to be back on Nov. 13 to finish whatever remains at the end of the week.

“This session of Congress is not over,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said Friday. “We are not finished with our work, and some of these issues are still in progress. What we are going to do Friday or Saturday is to take a timeout.”

Democrats have been happy throughout the year to stand almost united in both the House and the Senate against many of the Republican initiatives, forcing the majority to find enough votes to pass legislation from its own membership. That has often forced major concessions from the leadership. In other cases, Republicans in the House and the Senate have simply been unable to find common ground.

“In the 26 years I have been here,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, “I don’t think I have ever seen so much tension between the House and the Senate, and it is all among Republicans.”

The immigration measure was a notable example as House Republicans refused to entertain the bipartisan Senate bill that took a comprehensive approach to the flood of illegal immigrants. Earlier, a push for a formal budget plan collapsed because of irreconcilable differences over spending between House and Senate Republicans.

A House-Senate Republican feud over the handling of a pension measure, which ultimately passed, left a collection of tax breaks in limbo despite nearly unanimous support in Congress. Those tax benefits included a deduction for college tuition costs and a research and development tax credit for businesses. The leadership has been reluctant to bring the benefits to a vote independently because they could be used to help advance more contentious legislation, like the cut in the estate tax sought by Republicans.

A new struggle between rank-and-file Republicans and the leadership was threatening to engulf the must-pass spending measure for domestic security. Lawmakers were insisting that a provision allowing Americans to bring back cheaper prescription drugs from Canada be added to the bill even though House leaders and the pharmaceutical industry oppose the plan.

And on Sunday, a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois said that Mr. Hastert was insisting that provisions increasing security at the federal courts and allowing for the deportation of gang members be added to a pending Pentagon policy bill despite Senate objections.

“The speaker is not going to let the bill move until these critical security items get in,” said the spokesman, Ron Bonjean.

    Congress Is Winding Down, but Much Is Left Undone, NYT, 25.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/washington/25cong.html?hp&ex=1159243200&en=aa09e125a8f31c7e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Republicans Reach Deal on Detainee Bill

September 22, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIK

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans reached agreement Thursday on legislation governing the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects after weeks of debate that divided Republicans heading into the midterm elections.

Under the deal, President Bush dropped his demand that Congress redefine the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, handing a victory to a group of Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose opposition had created a showdown over a fundamental aspect of the rules for battling terrorism.

The administration’s original stance had run into fierce resistance from former and current military lawyers and Mr. Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They argued, as did Mr. McCain and the other two senators leading the resistance, that any redefinition would invite other nations to alter their obligations and endanger American troops captured abroad.

“There is no doubt that the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved,” said Mr. McCain, who was tortured during more than five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam.

Members of Congress and administration officials announced the deal after emerging from a tense and intricate all-day meeting in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in a Senate building. They said they would try to push the measure through in the five days Congress is scheduled to meet before lawmakers leave to go out and campaign.

The White House moved quickly to assert that it had not surrendered. Administration officials characterized the negotiations as cooperative and the result as a victory for all sides.

“The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do: to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them,” Mr. Bush said in Orlando, Fla., where he was attending fund-raisers for several Republican candidates.

The dispute revolved around how to define the rules governing the interrogations of terrorism suspects and providing legal protection to C.I.A. officers conducting interrogations. Under the deal, Congress would seek to codify the limits by outlining in the War Crimes Act, a domestic law, several “grave breaches” of the relevant provision of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3. The deal would eliminate a legislative provision in the original White House proposal saying that compliance with the Detainee Treatment Act, which Congress passed last year and which bans “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” would by itself satisfy the obligations of the United States under the conventions.

“Everybody agreed we ought to try and do it in a way that did not involve modifying or amending our international obligations,” said Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser. “That was the objective we all came to here in the last week. The goal was whether we could find language mutually agreed between the Senate and the White House that would achieve those objectives.”

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said: “We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there.”

The agreement says the executive branch is responsible for upholding the nations’ commitment to the Geneva Conventions, leaving it to the president to establish through executive rule any violations for the handling of terrorism suspects that fall short of a “grave breach.” Significantly, Senate aides said, those rules would have to be published in the Federal Register.

The agreement provides several pages describing “grave breaches” that would not be allowed, starting with torture and including other forms of assault and mental stress. But it does not lay out specific interrogation techniques that would be prohibited.

The adjustment to the War Crimes Act, “will put the C.I.A. on notice of what they can and can’t do,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who, along with Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, joined Mr. McCain in leading resistance to the White House approach. “It would take off the table things that are not within American values.”

Asked about one of the most controversial interrogation techniques, a simulated drowning known as water-boarding, Mr. Graham said, “It is a technique that we need to let the world know we are no longer engaging in.”

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, issued a statement to employees, saying, “If this language becomes law, the Congress will have given us the clarity and the support that we need to move forward with a detention and interrogation program that allows us to continue to defend the homeland, attack Al Qaeda and protect American and allied lives.”

The senators were careful not to characterize winners and losers. “This was a give-and-take,” Mr. Graham said.

The senators agreed to a White House proposal to make the standard on interrogation treatment retroactive to 1997, so C.I.A. and military personnel could not be prosecuted for past treatment under standards the administration considers vague.

Senators Graham McCain and Warner said the agreement met the three goals they set from the beginning: to preserve the Geneva Conventions, to allow the C.I.A. to continue interrogations and to set up a program that would pass court review.

On another point of contention, the use of classified evidence in prosecutions of terror suspects, the senators won agreement that suspects would be allowed to see any evidence the jury sees, which the senators say is in keeping with 200 years of American judicial tradition. But the agreement includes procedures that would strip the evidence of the most sensitive details that lawmakers have worried could be used to plan more attacks.

The agreement would not allow any evidence obtained by techniques that violate the Detainee Treatment Act, and would not allow hearsay evidence that the defense successfully argues is not reliable or probative.

The Supreme Court had thrown the issue to Congress in June, when it struck down the tribunals the president established shortly after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying they violated constitutional and international law.

After weeks of standoff over proposed legislation, the two sides had begun to negotiate in earnest in the last few days, after Mr. Hadley said on the Sunday morning news programs that he believed they could reach consensus without modifying international agreements.

Thursday morning, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, who has supported the president’s approach, told Mr. Warner that with just a week left before the Senate is to adjourn, they needed a deal by evening.

Mr. Frist said he would send the bill to the floor. In the House, Representative Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had some concerns about the use of classified evidence, but added, “I think we’re very close.”

Democrats have put their trust in Senators Graham, McCain and Warner to push back against the White House, and Thursday they signaled that they intended to continue cooperating. “Five years after Sept. 11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve,” said the Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

Still, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he would press to change a provision in the proposal that would deny detainees a right to challenge their captivity in court.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    Republicans Reach Deal on Detainee Bill, NYT, 22.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/washington/22detain.html?hp&ex=1158984000&en=aee43ae197a95cb4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Only 25% in Poll Approve of the Congress        NYT        21.9.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/us/politics/21poll.html?hp&ex=
1158897600&en=ef00c357f1e7980c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Only 25% in Poll Approve of the Congress
 

September 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

With barely seven weeks until the midterm elections, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve re-election, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The disdain for Congress is as intense as it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end 40 years of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold on to power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.

By broad margins, respondents said that members of Congress were too tied to special interests and that they did not understand the needs and problems of average Americans. Two-thirds said Congress had accomplished less than it typically did in a two-year session; most said they could not name a single major piece of legislation that cleared this Congress. Just 25 percent said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job.

But for all the clear dissatisfaction with the 109th Congress, 39 percent of respondents said their own representative deserved re-election, compared with 48 percent who said it was time for someone new.

What is more, it seems highly unlikely Democrats will experience a sweep similar to the one Republicans experienced in 1994. Most analysts judge only about 40 House seats to be in play at the moment, compared with over 100 seats in play at this point 12 years ago, in large part because redistricting has created more safe seats for both parties.

The poll also found that President Bush had not improved his own or his party’s standing through his intense campaign of speeches and events surrounding the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating was 37 percent in the poll, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, in August. On the issue that has been a bulwark for Mr. Bush, 54 percent said they approved of the way he was managing the effort to combat terrorists, again unchanged from last month, though up from this spring.

Republicans continued to hold a slight edge over Democrats on which party was better at dealing with terrorism, though that edge did not grow since last month despite Mr. Bush’s flurry of speeches on national security, including one from the Oval Office on the night of Sept. 11.

But the Times/CBS News poll found a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who said they approved of the way Mr. Bush had handled the war in Iraq, to 36 percent from 30 percent. The results also suggest that after bottoming out this spring, Mr. Bush’s approval ratings on the economy and foreign policy have returned to their levels of about a year ago, both at 37 percent. The number of people who called terrorism the most important issue facing the country doubled to 14 percent, from 7 percent in July; 22 percent named the war in Iraq as their top concern, little changed from July.

Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of a Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush’s tenure.

In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents — including 65 percent of Republicans — said most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give a new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters saying it is “time for new people” since the fall of 1994.

“You get some people in there, and they’re in there forever,” said Jan Weaver, of Aberdeen, S.D., who described herself as a Republican voter, in a follow-up interview. “They’re so out of touch with reality.”

In the poll, 50 percent said they would support a Democrat in the fall Congressional elections, compared with 35 percent who said they would support a Republican. But the poll found that Democrats continued to struggle to offer a strong case for turning government control over to them; only 38 percent said the Democrats had a clear plan for how they would run the country, compared with 45 percent who said the Republicans had offered a clear plan.

Overall discontent with Congress or Washington does not necessarily signify how people will vote when they see the familiar name of their member of Congress on the ballot, however. Democrats face substantial institutional obstacles in trying to repeat what Republicans accomplished in 1994, including a Republican financial advantage and the fact that far fewer seats are in play.

Thus, while 61 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job, just 29 percent said they disapproved of the way their own “representative is handling his or her job.”

The New York Times/CBS News poll began last Friday, four days after the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and two weeks after the White House began its offensive on security issues. A USA Today-Gallup Poll published Tuesday reported that Mr. Bush’s job approval rating had jumped to 44 percent from 39 percent. The questioning in that poll went through Sunday; The Times and CBS completed questioning Tuesday night. Presidential addresses often produce shifts in public opinion that tend to be transitory.

The nationwide poll was conducted by telephone Friday through Tuesday. It included 1,131 adults, of whom 1,007 said they were registered to vote, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

As part of the Republican effort to gain advantage on the war in Iraq, Republicans have accused Democrats who want to set a timetable for leaving Iraq of wanting to “cut and run.” But 52 percent of respondents said they would not think the United States had lost the war if it withdrew its troops from Iraq today.

The poll also found indications that voters were unusually intrigued by this midterm election: 43 percent said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting. However, with turnout promising to be a critical factor in many of the closer Senate and House races, there was no sign that either party had an edge in terms of voter enthusiasm.

Evidence of the antipathy toward Congress in particular — and Washington in general — was abundant: 71 percent said they did not trust the government to do what is right.

“If they had new blood, then the people that influence them — the lobbyists — would maybe not be so influential,” said Norma Scranton, a Republican from Thedford, Neb., in a follow-up interview after the poll. “They don’t have our interest at heart because they’re influenced by these lobbyists. If they were new, maybe they would try to please their constituents a little better.”

Lois Thurber, a Republican from Axtell, Neb., said in a follow-up interview: “There’s so much bickering, so much disagreement — they just can’t get together on certain issues.

“They’re kind of more worried about themselves than they are about the country.”

Incumbents and challengers nationwide are trying to accommodate this sour mood. Democrats are presenting themselves as a fresh start — “Isn’t it time for a change?” asked an advertisement by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee directed against Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri.

And Republican incumbents are seeking to distance themselves from fellow Republicans in Washington. “I’ve gone against the president and the Republican leadership when I think they are wrong,” Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican locked in a tough re-election battle, said in a television advertisement broadcast this week.

The Republicans continue to be seen as the better party to deal with terrorism, but by nowhere near the margin they once enjoyed: it is now 42 percent to 37 percent. When asked which party took the threat of terrorism more seriously, 69 percent said they both did; 22 percent named Republicans, compared with 6 percent who said Democrats.

Voters said Democrats were more likely to tell the truth than Republicans when discussing the war in Iraq and about the actual threat of terrorism. And 59 percent of respondents said Mr. Bush was hiding something when he talked about how things were going in Iraq; an additional 25 percent said he was mostly lying when talking about the war.

Not that Democrats should draw any solace from that: 71 percent of respondents said Democrats in Congress were hiding something when they talked about how well things were going in Iraq, while 13 percent said they were mostly lying.

Robert Allen, a Democrat from Ventura, Calif., said: “We’re in a stalemate right now. They’re not getting hardly anything done.” He added, “It’s time to elect a whole new bunch so they can do something.”

Megan C. Thee, Marjorie Connelly and Marina Stefan contributed reporting.

    Only 25% in Poll Approve of the Congress, NYT, 21.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/us/politics/21poll.html?hp&ex=1158897600&en=ef00c357f1e7980c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Stampeding Congress

September 15, 2006
The New York Times

We’ll find out in November how well the White House’s be-very-afraid campaign has been working with voters. We already know how it’s working in Congress. Stampeded by the fear of looking weak on terrorism, lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill demanded by the president that would have minimal impact on antiterrorist operations but could cause profound damage to justice and the American way.

Yesterday, the president himself went to Capitol Hill to lobby for his bill, which would give Congressional approval to the same sort of ad hoc military commissions that Mr. Bush created on his own authority after 9/11 and that the Supreme Court has already ruled unconstitutional. It would permit the use of coerced evidence, secret hearings and other horrific violations of American justice.

Legal experts within the military have been deeply opposed to the president’s plan from the beginning, and have formed one of the most influential bulwarks against the administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules to make its recent behavior retroactively legal. This week, the White House sank so low as to strong-arm the chief prosecutors for the four armed services into writing a letter to the House that seemed to endorse the president’s position on two key issues. Congressional officials say those officers later told lawmakers that they did not want to sign the letter, which contradicts everything the prosecutors, dozens of their colleagues, former top commanders of the military and a series of federal judges have said in public.

The idea that the nation’s chief executive is pressing so hard to undermine basic standards of justice is shocking. And any argument that these extreme methods would be used only against the most dangerous of international terrorists has been destroyed by the handling of hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, many of whom appear to have been scooped up in Afghanistan years ago with little attempt to verify any connection to terrorism, and now are in danger of lingering behind bars forever without a day in court.

To lend his lobbying an utterly false sense of urgency, President Bush announced last week that he had taken 14 dangerous terrorists from the secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons where he had been holding them for years and sent them to Guantánamo to stand trial. But none of the prisoners is going anywhere, and the current high-pressure timetable is related only to the election calendar.

The Geneva Conventions

One section of the administration bill would put American soldiers in grave jeopardy by rewriting the Geneva Conventions, condoning the practice of hiding prisoners in secret cells, and permitting the continued use of interrogation methods that violate the Geneva Conventions at the C.I.A. prisons.

Mr. Bush has made it clear that he plans to continue operating the C.I.A. camps. And he wants Congress to collaborate by exempting the United States from a provision in the Geneva Conventions that prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” Mr. Bush says this wording is too vague, but that’s a dodge. What he really wants is Congressional authority to go on doing things to prisoners in C.I.A. jails that are clear violations of international rules.

He also wants Congress to rewrite the War Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions. The administration’s goal here is to avoid having C.I.A. interrogators, private contractors or the men who gave them their orders called to account for the immoral way the administration has run its terrorist detention centers.

The opposition to these provisions by legal scholars, military lawyers and a host of former top commanders of the armed forces has been overwhelming. In recent days, two former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin L. Powell, and John W. Vessey, wrote to Senator John McCain urging him to go on fighting the White House. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” General Powell wrote.

More than two dozen former military leaders and top Pentagon officials, from both parties, wrote to Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, expressing “profound concern” about undermining the Geneva Conventions. Their objections involve a simple equation: The Conventions protect captured American soldiers. If America mistreats its prisoners, American soldiers are in danger of the same, or worse.

Defining the Enemy

Senators Warner, McCain and Lindsey Graham have formed a principled spine of resistance against their party’s attempt to steamroller the White House legislation through Congress. But their own bill — the only competing proposal to emerge so far — shares some big problems with the president’s. One is its scope. Both bills draw the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” so broadly that it could cover almost anyone that a particular administration decides is a threat, remove him from the judicial system and subject him to a military trial.

The law should cover actual terrorists and those who engage in hostilities against American forces outside an army or organized resistance group. But the White House bill also includes anyone who gives “material support” to a terrorist group or anyone affiliated with a terrorist group. Legal experts fear this definition could cover people who, for example, contribute to charities without knowing they support terrorist groups, or that are not identified as terrorist fronts until later. It could be used to arrest a legal resident of the United States and put him before a military commission.

It also could be used to capture foreign citizens in their native countries, or anywhere else, a concern that America’s allies have raised repeatedly. This is not just a theoretical problem. This sort of thing has already happened.

Stripping the Courts of Power

The White House wants to strip the federal courts of any power to review the detentions of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. This provision has no real bearing on the handful of genuine terrorists who were recently shipped there from abroad. Their cases are likely to be brought before military commissions, whose judgments could be appealed to higher courts, including the Supreme Court. But it has a profound impact on the hundreds of others at Guantánamo Bay. Many of them, perhaps the majority, committed minor offenses, if any. The administration has no intention of trying them, and wants to prevent them from appealing for help in court.

This week, nine current and former federal judges, including a former F.B.I. director appointed by Ronald Reagan, begged Congress not to give in to White House pressure on this point. “For 200 years, the federal judiciary has maintained Chief Justice Marshall’s solemn admonition that ours is a government of laws, and not of men,” their letter said. “The proposed legislation imperils this proud history.”

The nation is in this hideous mess because Mr. Bush ignored the advice of people like this when he tried to set up prison camps beyond the reach of the law. It’s hard to believe their warnings will be ignored again, but the signs are ominous. Last week, the military’s top lawyers told the House Armed Services Committee that they strongly opposed the rules of evidence and other due-process clauses in the White House’s bill. The committee just went ahead and passed it anyway. Only eight of the 28 Democratic members had the courage to vote “no.”

Bill Frist, the majority leader, has already introduced the horrible White House bill on the Senate floor. Senators Warner, McCain and Graham have come up with a serious alternative, and they deserve enormous credit for standing up to Mr. Bush’s fearmongering — something many Democrats seem too frightened to do. (It was good to see the Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats join them in rejecting the president’s bill yesterday.)

But their bill still has serious shortcomings, and should not be rushed through Congress in the current atmosphere, which has very little to do with stopping terrorists and everything to do with winning seats in November.

There is no urgency. Mr. Bush could have tried the 14 new inmates of Guantánamo Bay at any time if he had just done it legally. It’s hard to imagine that anyone in the White House is really worried about a swift resolution of their cases. Many members of Congress who succumb to the strong-arming will know, in their hearts, that they were doing the wrong thing out of fear for their political futures. Perhaps the voters will not judge them harshly this fall. But history will.

    Stampeding Congress, NYT, 15.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/opinion/15fri1.html

News Analysis

An Unexpected Collision Over Detainees

September 15, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — President Bush and Congressional Republicans spent the last 10 days laying the foundation for a titanic pre-election struggle over national security, and now they have one. But the fight playing out this week on Capitol Hill is not what they had in mind.

Instead of drawing contrasts with Democrats, the president’s call for creating military tribunals to try terror suspects — a key substantive and political component of his fall agenda — has erupted into a remarkably intense clash pitting some of the best-known warriors in the Republican Party against Mr. Bush and the Congressional leadership.

At issue are definitions of what is permissible in trials and interrogations that both sides view as central to the character of the nation, the way the United States is perceived abroad and the rules of the game for what Mr. Bush has said will be a multigenerational battle against Islamic terrorists.

Democrats have so far remained on the sidelines, sidestepping Republican efforts to draw them into a fight over Mr. Bush’s leadership on national security heading toward the midterm election. Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s approach.

It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as monumental as the politics.

On one side are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the president’s proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and leaving United States military without adequate protection against torture and mistreatment.

On the other are the Bush administration and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate who say new tools are urgently needed to pursue and interrogate terror suspects and to protect the covert operatives who play an increasingly important role in chasing them.

Republicans concede that the fight among themselves is a major political distraction, particularly given the credentials of the Republican opposition, led by Mr. McCain, the former prisoner of war in Vietnam who was tortured in captivity.

“It is a big problem,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, a senior House Republican. “These guys have a lot of weight and a lot of standing. McCain is a tough guy to beat on this.”

But Mr. Bush, who visited the Capitol on Thursday to rally House Republicans behind his approach, is also tough. He will no doubt do everything possible to get a deal, if not on the floor of the Senate then in conference between the House and the Senate. But the immediate result in political terms has been to create a battle among Republicans about core principles less than eight weeks before Election Day.

“This whole issue is going to send a signal about who America is in 2006,” Mr. Graham said.

Brushing aside the objections of Mr. Bush and most of his Republican colleagues in Congress, Mr. Warner led the Senate Armed Services Committee to produce legislation on Thursday that would provide detainees with protections beyond those sought by Mr. Bush, setting up a collision with the House, where a measure approved by the administration is advancing.

House Republicans say the Senate plan is misguided and will hobble the American military. Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said it would lead to “the lawyer brigade” being attached to combat troops to counsel detainees.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said: “I just think John McCain is wrong on this. If we capture bin Laden tomorrow and we have to hold his head under water to find out when the next attack is going to happen, we ought to be able to do it.”

Mr. McCain’s opponents acknowledge that, given his experiences, he is a powerful advocate on this subject, but that the shadow war against terrorists has new legal complexities.

“I have never led in combat, but I do have some experience with the law,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a former State Supreme Court justice who has jousted with Mr. McCain over the legislation.

There is no doubt that Mr. Cornyn and his fellow Republicans would much rather be dueling with the Democrats over this issue, which they see as their chief election-year advantage.

After their meeting with the president, House Republicans sought to play up their differences with House Democrats on the detainee legislation although the bill passed the Armed Services Committee on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.

Republicans will also continue try to continue to pound Democrats on other security measures, like legislation to authorize the administration’s eavesdropping program. But the political power of that issue gets muddied as well because some House and Senate Republicans want to impose more restrictions on the program than the administration finds acceptable.

Recent polls continue to show Republicans with an advantage on security issues, but they are mixed as to whether the president’s most recent push is raising his popularity. In addition, widespread public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq is clouding election prospects for Republicans.

But with the focus on the treatment of detainees there is a potential benefit for Republicans since it does at least temporarily change the subject from Iraq.

Democrats say that no matter how bipartisan the opposition to the administration’s tribunal plan, they expect that Republicans will try to blame Democrats for any delay. They note that House Republicans have taken to referring to bipartisan Senate legislation on immigration, a measure most House Republicans abhor, as the Reid-Kennedy bill, named for the Democrats Harry Reid of Nevada and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, despite the substantial participation of Mr. McCain.

“At the end of the day, they will forget John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner and say it is all about the Democrats holding up President Bush’s plan to make American safer,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

But Mr. Durbin said, “We are not going to take it sitting down.”

    An Unexpected Collision Over Detainees, NYT, 15.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/us/politics/15assess.html?hp&ex=1158379200&en=98da997176bcf3b5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Congress Passes Major Security Measures

September 15, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Congress is scrambling to pass long-delayed domestic and border security bills, as Republicans and the Democrats try to control the issues ahead of the midterm elections — and to blame each other for blocking progress.

The most far-reaching action on Thursday was in the Senate, which voted, 98 to 0, to approve a six-year port security package costing more than $5 billion that includes deadlines to install radiation detectors at the largest ports and encourages shippers and ports worldwide to improve guarding containers against stowaway weapons.

Earlier, the House approved, 283 to 138, a bill that calls for a two-layer fence along 700 miles of the border with Mexico, a measure advertised as an immigration enforcement and antiterror initiative.

Negotiations were under way on measures to tighten security at chemical plants and revamp the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The Senate port bill included language for mass transit and rail security programs, including random passenger and baggage screening at certain stations and fire-safety improvements for Amtrak tunnels in the Northeast corridor.

With just two weeks before Congress plans to begin its election recess, the debate has been intensely partisan. Democrats have tried to force Republicans to consider expansions that could add billions of dollars in costs in the port security bill by adopting, for example, all the outstanding recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission.

“Let’s see if they vote against this,” Senator Henry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader, said this week.

Republicans have generally succeeded in blocking such last-minute amendments, after condemning them as not-so-subtle efforts to kill or delay the bills.

“This is politics at its very worst,” Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said on the floor Thursday. “If Democrats spend half as much time fighting terrorists as they do this administration, America would win this war a lot faster.”

Democrats say it is the Republicans who are to blame for the delay.

“It is not about us,’’ Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said. “It is about the president of the United States and this Republican Congress, and is our country as safe as it could be. Republicans are in charge of everything.”

The Senate port bill, which the Bush administration supports and which is similar to a measure that the House has passed, would require installing radiation detection equipment by the end of 2007 at 22 ports that receive 98 percent of the incoming cargo, a goal that the Homeland Security Department has set.

It also writes into law two programs to give accelerated clearance to cargo from ports that pre-screen containers for weapons or containers shipped on behalf of companies that have agreed to assure their security from the factory until they being loaded onto ships.

The bill would authorize $5.5 billion for port security over six years, including adding 1,000 customs and border officers and $400 million in port security grants. It would also authorize $1.2 billion for rail security and $2.4 billion in grants for security on mass transit.

The bill would extend some port user fees to pay some of the costs, but it remains unclear whether Congress will appropriate enough money to finance the rest or whether the fees will be set aside for security.

The fence proposal represents a last-minute push by Republicans for at least part of their border security agenda. A similar requirement was included in December in broader immigration measures in the House. That bill stalled after a dispute with the Senate over a temporary-worker program to let some illegal immigrants remain here.

House Republicans also promised on Thursday to increase the number of Border Patrol agents, increase prosecutions of smugglers of immigrants and criminalize the building of tunnels under the border.

More than 60 Democrats joined with Republican House members to vote for the fence bill. Other Democrats in the House and Senate ridiculed it, saying that the fence alone would not solve the border problem and that the bill did not provide the more that $2 billion that it would cost to build.

Republican leaders are hoping to insert language into the larger budget bill for domestic security that is in a conference committee to address chemical plant security, FEMA restructuring and, perhaps, additional provisions.

The rules on chemical plants have support of the administration as well as Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The negotiations are trying to compromise on how demanding they should be.

A proposal backed by Republicans and opposed by environmentalists would let the owners of chemical plants decide what safety measures to adopt. It would prohibit the federal government from mandating that they consider using inherently safer chemicals.

    Congress Passes Major Security Measures, NYT, 15.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/us/politics/15secure.html

Congress Criticizes Federal Response to Illnesses After 9/11 and Seeks More Spending

September 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

After listening to recovery workers at ground zero and downtown residents emotionally describe how they had been ignored and insulted as they sought help for health problems after 9/11, members of a Congressional subcommittee roundly criticized the federal response yesterday and called for sharply increased medical spending.

Subcommittee members, joined by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, accused the Bush administration of ignoring the health problems that arose among workers who toiled at ground zero and the claims of downtown residents who say they were also sickened by the dust. The administration has done little to prepare for a similar disaster in the future, they said.

“Today it appears the public health approach to lingering environmental hazards remains unfocused and halting,” said Representative Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, and chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, which held the hearing in Lower Manhattan, a block from ground zero. “The unquestionable need for long-term monitoring has been met with only short term commitments.”

The subcommittee hearing, the fourth to be held since the Sept. 11 attack, came amidst rising concern about the long-term health effects on about 40,000 workers and volunteers who were exposed to toxic smoke and dust on the debris pile. The subcommittee is examining the way the limited federal funding has been used to address the health problems and is to look for ways to better coordinate those efforts.

Representative Vito Fossella, a Republican from Staten Island, criticized the government for not having done even basic work to record how many people participated in the cleanup and recovery operations.

Senator Schumer said the $55 million in federal funds set aside for medical treatment of rescue and recovery workers was inadequate. “We need a federal commitment that everyone who needs help will get it,” Senator Schumer said.

Steven M. Centore, of Flanders, N.Y., was a team leader at ground zero for the Department of Energy’s radiological assistance program. He said that he is now suffering from respiratory, circulatory and gastrointestinal problems. .

Mr. Centore, 49, said he struggled with the federal workers’ compensation system and had received no financial help from the system. “I feel like it’s a contest to see if they’re going to give in first or I’m going to die first,” he said.

The federal government, and especially the Environmental Protection Agency and its former administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, were accused by Representatives Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes Lower Manhattan, and Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat from Brooklyn, of having falsely stated in the first days after the attack that the air downtown was safe to breathe. At an appearance yesterday in Harlem, Senator Clinton said that she felt that Mrs. Whitman and her agency “deliberately misled people” into thinking that it was safe to return to Lower Manhattan.

A report by the Inspector General’s office in 2003 found that the E.P.A. went beyond what it knew in making general statements about the safety of the air downtown after the attack. It also found that the White House had at least indirectly influenced the wording of some statements by removing cautionary language. Mrs. Whitman strongly defended herself shortly after the release of that report, saying that her statements reflected what was known at the time and applied to areas outside ground zero.

Lea Geronimo, a resident of the Lower East Side, said it was the assurance from the E.P.A. that led her to return to her home and office three blocks from ground zero a week after the towers collapsed. She said she developed bronchitis and severe rashes a few months later.

“Our lives will never be the same, and we will not tolerate half-measures and the whisper of a promise,” she testified. “We need a comprehensive long-term treatment and study program to provide immediate care for residents and workers in Lower Manhattan.”

The health of downtown residents has not been as well studied as that of ground zero workers, but limited medical surveys have indicated that many residents developed respiratory problems after 9/11, though the extent to which those problems have persisted is not known.

More than 100 residents gathered Thursday night at St. Paul’s Chapel to demand screening and treatment.

Mr. Nadler, who attended the Thursday meeting and yesterday’s hearing, said he had introduced a bill that would make rescue and recovery workers, downtown residents and schoolchildren who are sick eligible for treatment under Medicare.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of Manhattan and Queens, introduced a bill that would reopen the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund to make assistance available to those who are ill.

And Senator Clinton said at the hearing yesterday that she would push for an additional federal appropriation to cover the rising costs of medical treatment. “We cannot rest until we put into place a system to care for every single person who was affected by 9/11,” she said.

Dr. John Howard, the federal 9/11 health care coordinator, told the committee that the $75 million appropriated for screening and treatment will be available next month and should be considered “a down payment,” that will be supplemented as officials prepare estimates of the number of people who need help, the cost of caring for them and the types of programs they will need.

On Thursday, Dr. John O. Agwunobi, the assistant secretary for health of the Department of Health and Human Services, was named by Michael O. Leavitt, the department secretary, to lead a policy task force to develop programs for dealing with the 9/11 health issues.

Dr. Howard said he would continue in his current position as coordinator with groups in New York while also helping to shape new policies.

    Congress Criticizes Federal Response to Illnesses After 9/11 and Seeks More Spending, NYT, 9.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/nyregion/09health.html

News Analysis

A Challenge From Bush to Congress

September 7, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 — In calling for public war-crime trials at Guantánamo Bay, President Bush is calculating that with a critical election just nine weeks away, neither angry Democrats nor nervous Republicans will dare deny him the power to detain, interrogate and try suspects his way.

For years now, Guantánamo has been a political liability, regarded primarily as a way station for outcasts. By transforming Guantánamo instead into the new home of 14 Qaeda leaders who rank among the most notorious terror suspects, Mr. Bush is challenging Congress to restore to him the authority to put the United States’ worst enemies on trial on terms he has defined.

But the gambit carries with it a potential downside by identifying Mr. Bush even more closely with a detention system whose history has been marked by widespread accusations of mistreatment.

Mr. Bush had more than one agenda at work when he announced on Wednesday that the country should “wait no longer’’ to bring to trial those seized by the C.I.A. and accused of planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

He is trying to rebuff a Supreme Court that visibly angered him in June when it ruled that his procedures for interrogation and trials violated both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

And he is trying to divert voters from the morass of Iraq and to revive the emotionally potent question of what powers the president should be able to use to defend the country.

Mr. Bush must have known that his call for trials would prompt a standing ovation from the relatives of the Sept. 11 victims who were invited to the East Room for the announcement. It did. What he doesn’t know for sure is whether the transfer of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terror suspects will create the pressure on Capitol Hill to give him the legal latitude he says he needs.

“It’s one thing for Congress to argue over abstract rules’’ about approved interrogation techniques and the rules of evidence at military commissions, said one senior administration official who sat in on the debates over how to respond to the Supreme Court ruling in the Hamdan case last June. “But it’s another to say, ‘Once you approve the rules, we put these guys on trial — but it only happens if Congress acts.’ ’’

In this case, the White House needs Congress to write the rules in a way that would satisfy the Supreme Court while allowing the military to introduce its evidence at trial — even though Mr. Muhammed and his fellow defendants will almost certainly assert that their own accounts of their roles in terror plots were extracted by coercion.

That is a balancing act Mr. Bush tried for years to avoid, as he and Vice President Dick Cheney, the chief architect of Mr. Bush’s assertions of broad executive powers, argued that it was the commander in chief — not Congress — who had the power to set rules for unconventional trials in an unconventional war.

Besides trying to shape what happens in Congress, Mr. Bush is also trying to ignite a new debate around the country, one that tries to rekindle memories of the days just after the Sept. 11 attacks. On Wednesday, he recalled those days as a moment when the country “wondered if there was a second wave of attacks still to come.’’

That was also a time when the president seemed to have carte blanche to fight terrorists in any way he saw fit, and when the country seemed unified in a way that is hard to remember today.

So in the week leading up to the announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Bush and his aides again cast themselves as the country’s last line of defense. First came Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who used a speech to veterans to accuse critics of the war in Iraq of being appeasers, ideological descendants of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain, whose effort to accommodate Hitler in 1938 has gone down in history as an act of cowardice.

Then came Mr. Bush, who used a speech to the same audience to lump disparate groups together as “Islamo-fascists,’’ and then, this week, to warn explicitly that the world had averted its eyes to the rise of Lenin and then of Hitler, propelling the United States into a century of hot and cold wars.

But perhaps more significantly, a president who had rarely mentioned Osama bin Laden — who, of course, remains at large five years after Sept 11 — quoted Mr. bin Laden at length, describing his visions of a “caliphate’’ that circles the globe.

On Wednesday, in the East Room, Mr. Bush’s words were more moderate, but he made clear that he intended to use his pulpit over the next few days to redefine the enemy as a living threat that will occupy generations of Americans — and to argue that he needs every tool available to fight them. “We’re fighting for our way of life, and our ability to live in freedom,’’ he argued. “We’re fighting for the cause of humanity, against those who seek to impose the darkness of tyranny and terror upon the entire world.’’

It was a move that did not surprise Democrats.

“Look, they have won two elections on the basis of terrorism, and that’s the president’s strongest position,’’ said Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman who is now co-chairman of a study group making recommendations to Mr. Bush about how to develop a new Iraq strategy. “And he’s playing to his strength.’’

But it may also force members of Mr. Bush’s party — many of whom have been creating as much strategic distance from the president as possible — to nationalize the midterm elections, making them a referendum on Mr. Bush and his tactics.

Democrats have been trying to do that for months, betting that the chaos in Iraq is their ticket to regaining a majority in the House, and perhaps the longer shot of the Senate. Now Mr. Bush is betting that once again Americans will look at the faces of the terrorists the C.I.A. has captured, and give the president one last shot at fighting the war on his terms.

    A Challenge From Bush to Congress, NYT, 7.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/washington/07terror.html?hp&ex=1157688000&en=4232fc565b4e597b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Reagan Wins Another Vote, to a Place in Congress

September 5, 2006
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4 — No one would ever have mistaken Thomas Starr King for a Democrat. A fiery Republican clergyman with an oratorical flair, King stood shoulder to shoulder with Lincoln during the Civil War, barnstorming California to preach the gospel of unity when the nation had split apart and secessionist feeling here was high as well.

Politicians, however, are nothing if not fickle in their affections. So it was that last week the California Legislature, at the behest of a Republican lawmaker, decided that a statue of King should be replaced in the National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol by one of a more modern Republican with a similar gift for public speaking: Ronald Reagan.

The measure, which passed nearly unanimously just before the end of the legislative session on Thursday night, was hailed by State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, its Republican author, as a fitting nod to the Great Communicator.

“We have a lot of tributes that are existing and to come for Ronald Reagan,” said Mr. Hollingsworth, from Murrieta, between Los Angeles and San Diego. “But this is California’s contribution.”

Yet among those who remember King’s deeds — admittedly a select lot — there were hurt feelings.

“I find it very sad,” said Glenna Matthews, a King biographer and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. “The whole idea of patriotic Republicans’ wanting to bump a patriotic Republican is trashing what history’s all about.”

A field trip mainstay, the statuary hall was founded by Congress in 1864 — the year King died of diphtheria at 39 — with a simple plan: invite each state to place statues of two of its notable citizens at the Capitol. For decades the states did just that, gradually building a collection of Americans both nationally famous (like Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, the Texas twosome) and less so (Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, an educator from Alabama).

Then, in 2000, Congress enacted a little-noticed law allowing legislatures to replace statues from their states. Three years later, Kansas became the first to junk one, replacing a marble depiction of George Washington Glick, a former governor known, according to the hall’s Web site, for his “reassessment of tax laws, and the establishment of a livestock sanitary commission,” with a more sporty bronze of Dwight D. Eisenhower. (All sculptures must be either bronze or marble.)

Mr. Hollingsworth said that when he visited the hall last year, during the events surrounding President Bush’s second inauguration, he was surprised to learn that King was representing his state, along with the missionary Junipero Serra.

“To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure who Thomas Starr King was,” he said. “And I think there’s probably a lot of Californians like me.”

For King’s successor, of course, there is no problem with name recognition — or, in many cases, rename recognition. Owing in part to the conservative strategist Grover Norquist’s effort to have a project in every state named for Reagan, there is a Ronald Reagan Trail in Illinois, his native state, as well as a Ronald Reagan Highway in Ohio, the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and Ronald Reagan National Airport outside Washington.

But Mr. Hollingsworth said those tributes did not sufficiently address his state’s role in the story of the only California governor to become president.

“I think it’s obvious from his accomplishments that he’s not just one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had,” Mr. Hollingsworth said, “but one of the greatest governors.”

Ms. Matthews, however, points out that King had a few things to be proud of, too, including a cadre of famous friends, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and an impassioned spirit that helped him raise more than $1 million for pro-Union causes and the Sanitary Commission, a Red Cross precursor that cared for wounded soldiers.

King’s statue, a bronze, will not just be tossed, however. Mr. Hollingsworth said the plan was to take it to the State Capitol in Sacramento, a move that he thinks may raise King’s profile.

“I think it’s time Thomas Starr King be learned about and be able to be a part of the history lessons of kids that come to Sacramento,” he said. “And this provides more opportunity to do that.”

    Reagan Wins Another Vote, to a Place in Congress, NYT, 5.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/us/05statue.html

Sen. Clinton calls for Rumsfeld's resignation

Fri Aug 4, 2006 1:54 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, after accusing him of "presiding over a failed policy in Iraq."

Clinton's spokesman confirmed the senator said President George W. Bush should accept Rumsfeld's resignation.

Clinton, a possible 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier in the day, ripped into Rumsfeld for his handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"We hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration's strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy," Clinton said.

"Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?" she asked him in a tense exchange.

Iraq is caught in the worst sectarian violence yet seen and faces the threat of civil war, two of the United States' senior generals said on Thursday, three years after the invasion.

"Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," Army Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate hearing. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the most senior U.S. military officer, also said there was a "possibility" of civil war in Iraq, where the violence has claimed about 100 lives a day.

While a number of Democrats have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, Clinton until now had stopped short of that.

Rumsfeld had planned to skip the committee hearing and instead hold a closed briefing with the full Senate, until Clinton publicly called on him to testify in the open forum.

She argued that senators and the American people "should hear directly from the top civilian leader at the Pentagon, the person most responsible for implementing the president's military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In his opening statement, Rumsfeld thanked the committee for inviting him to testify, and added, "Senator Clinton, thank you for seconding the motion."

    Sen. Clinton calls for Rumsfeld's resignation, R, 4.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-08-04T055421Z_01_N03285395_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RUMSFELD-CLINTON.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Politics+NewsNews-2

Senate Bill Lifts Hopes of Big Oil Offshore

August 3, 2006
The New York Times
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Big oil has been pressing Congress for years to expand its rights to drill for domestic offshore oil and gas, with little to show for its efforts. But with tensions in the Middle East and gasoline prices at home rising, the industry’s fortunes on Capitol Hill may be changing.

Both houses of Congress have now passed legislation on new exploration, and though the bills differ, any final version is expected to liberalize offshore drilling for the oil companies.

There is a sense around the industry that a break may be coming from a quarter-century of federal policy that put a higher priority on environmental concerns than on opportunities to produce energy supplies offshore.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted to open for bidding 8.3 million acres of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, thought to hold 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.3 billion barrels of crude oil. That would be enough gas to heat and cool six million homes for 15 years, and enough oil to satisfy two months’ demand in the United States.

The House passed a far more ambitious bill in June that would effectively end a federal moratorium since 1982 on offshore drilling on most of the outer continental shelf in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Because it has been so long since exploration has been done , industry officials say it is anyone’s guess just how much oil and gas are out there, especially in deep waters 50 miles or more from the coast. But industry officials say the potential could be enormous.

As the energy companies see it, either version of the legislation would be a step in the right direction, although they prefer the broader House bill.

But with drilling still in disrepute among some senators, the companies say they will be delighted to see virtually any compromise worked out in conference and enacted after the summer recess.

“We’re making real headway, there is no question about that,” Shell’s vice president for exploration in the Americas, Annell R. Bay, said, attributing the advances in the House and the Senate in large part to a shift in popular opinion in favor of exploiting more domestic oil and gas resources.

She said that Shell would still concentrate its efforts in the gulf and the Alaska coast, but that “future opportunities off the eastern and western coasts are going to be worthwhile to look at as well.”

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil, Russ Roberts, said, “We very much appreciate that both of the houses are now taking steps, legitimate steps, to expand our nation’s access to the oil and gas resources that we have offshore of the U.S.A.”

The most important part of the Senate bill would require the Interior Department within a year to open bidding on leases in and around an area known as Lease Area 181, a section about the size of Vermont situated 125 miles south of the Florida Panhandle and 235 miles west of Tampa.

The water there is relatively shallow and close to pipelines and other infrastructure built for previous development, so it would be economically attractive to explore at a time of mounting project costs. Industry lobbyists said they expected Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and less-known independents to make bids.

“It’s an extremely promising area,” said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. “I would think everybody would be taking a look at this acreage.”

But there is much in the Senate bill the industry does not like. While the House version would prohibit drilling within 100 miles of the Florida gulf coast, the Senate version would prohibit drilling over a far greater area, to 125 miles off most of the state’s west coast and farther out in some places.

Moreover, the Senate measure extends a drilling moratorium to the year 2022, from 2012, in some areas off the Florida coast, a provision the oil companies strongly oppose.

“We don’t think its prudent if you’re truly worried about improving our energy security and increasing domestic supplies of oil and gas,” said Robert L. Greco III, group director for upstream and industry operations at the American Petroleum Institute. “Each bill has its strengths and weaknesses.”

The House bill would give the coastal states the power to override the current federal moratorium and decide whether they wanted drilling conducted off their coasts. State legislatures would have to explicitly vote for drilling within 50 miles of the shore. Drilling would be allowed 50 to 100 miles out, unless legislatures voted to forbid it.

Beyond 100 miles, drilling would be authorized and states would have no authority to stop it. But energy industry officials noted that they would need the cooperation of state governments for the installation of pipelines and other infrastructure.

Some states, particularly Florida and California, have long opposed offshore drilling. But the House bill offers an inducement by allowing the states to share in the revenue from offshore leases and royalties, and energy industry officials say they hope that Virginia and the Carolinas will become interested in drilling off their coasts.

According to government estimates, there are reserves of 21 trillion cubic feet of gas and 13 billion barrels of oil off the Pacific coast and 37 trillion cubic feet of gas and 3.8 billion barrels of oil off the Atlantic coast.

Those figures pale in comparison with known reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska. And industry officials say that the government estimates were obtained in an era when exploration technology was relatively primitive compared with what is available today.

“What has typically been the case,” Mr. Greco of the American Petroleum Institute said, “is the more we study an area, the more oil and gas we find. Right now, we are prohibited from even assessing those reserves.”

Still, at the end of the legislative process, it is unlikely that the Senate will accept anything close to the House version, and the oil and gas industry will probably have to accept a partial victory.

“We look forward to having those differences being ironed out in conference,” Mr. Greco said.

    Senate Bill Lifts Hopes of Big Oil Offshore, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/business/03offshore.html

Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Four years ago, the military’s most senior uniformed lawyers found their objections brushed aside when the Bush administration formulated plans for military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This week, their concerns will get a public hearing as Congress takes up the question of whether to resurrect the tribunals struck down by the Supreme Court.

“We’re at a crossroads now,” said John D. Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the top uniformed lawyer in the Navy until 2000 and who has been part of a cadre of retired senior military lawyers who have filed briefs challenging the administration’s legal approach. “We can finally get on the right side of the law and have a system that will pass Supreme Court and international scrutiny.”

Admiral Hutson, one of several current and former senior military lawyers who will testify this week before one of the three Congressional committees looking into the matter, plans to urge Congress to avoid trying to get around last month’s Supreme Court ruling.

Beginning shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the military lawyers warned that the administration’s plan for military commissions put the United States on the wrong side of the law and of international standards. Most important, they warned, the arrangements could endanger members of the American military who might someday be captured by an enemy and treated like the detainees at Guantánamo.

But the lawyers’ sense of vindication at the Supreme Court’s 5-to-3 decision is tempered by growing anxiety over what may happen next. Several military lawyers, most of them retired, have said they are troubled by the possibility that Congress may restore the kind of system they have long argued against.

Donald J. Guter, another retired admiral who succeeded Admiral Hutson as the Navy’s top uniformed lawyer, said it would be a mistake for Congress to try to undo the Supreme Court ruling. Admiral Guter was one of several senior military judge advocates general, known as JAG’s, who after objecting to the planned military commissions found their advice pointedly unheeded.

“This was the concern all along of the JAG’s,” Admiral Guter said. “It’s a matter of defending what we always thought was the rule of law and proper behavior for civilized nations.”

One of the more intriguing hearings will be held Thursday as the current top military lawyers in the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The main issue at stake will be whether they express the same concerns of those out of uniform who have been critical of the administration’s approach.

Longstanding custom allows serving officers to give their own views at Congressional hearings if specifically asked, and some in the Senate expect the current uniformed lawyers to generally urge that Congress not stray far from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the system that details court-martial proceedings.

Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader, told reporters on Monday that he did not expect the Senate to take up any legislation on the issue until at least after the August recess of Congress.

The opportunity to rewrite the laws lies in the structure of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which emphasized that Congress had not explicitly approved deviations from ordinary court-martial proceedings or the Geneva Conventions.

The court majority said the military commissions as currently constituted were illegal because they did not have the same protections for the accused as do the military’s own justice system and court-martial proceedings. In addition, the court ruled that the commissions violated a part of the Geneva Conventions that provides for what it said was a minimum standard of due process in a civilized society.

In response, some legislators have said they will consider rewriting the law to make that part of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3, no longer applicable.

“We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops,” Admiral Hutson said. “They can’t try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same.”

He said it was “unbecoming for America to have people say, ‘We’re going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.’ ”

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”

Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, a retired officer who was the chief uniformed lawyer for the Marine Corps, said he expected experienced military lawyers to try to persuade Congress that the law should not be changed to allow the military commissions to go forward with the procedures that the court found unlawful.

“Our central theme in all this has always been our great concern about reciprocity,” General Brahms said in an interview. “We don’t want someone saying they’ve got our folks as captives and we’re going to do to them exactly what you’ve done because we no longer hold any moral high ground.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold its hearing on Tuesday, said: “The first people we should listen to are the military officers who have decades of experience with these issues. Their insights can help build a system that protects our citizens without sacrificing America’s ideals.”

Underlying the debate over how and whether to change the law on military commissions is a battle over the president’s authority to unilaterally prescribe procedures in a time of war. The Supreme Court’s decision was a rebuke to the administration’s assertions that President Bush’s powers should remain mostly unrestricted in a time of war.

Most military lawyers say they believe that few, if any, of the Guantánamo detainees could be convicted in a regular court-martial.

Lt. Col. Sharon A. Shaffer of the Air Force, the lawyer for a Sudanese detainee who has been charged before a military commission, said she was confident that she would win an acquittal for her client, who is suspected of being an accountant for Al Qaeda, under court-martial rules.

“For me it was awesome to see the court’s views on key issues I’ve been arguing for years,” Colonel Shaffer said.

The majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the two biggest problems with the commissions were that the military authorities could bar defendants from being present at their own trial, citing security concerns, and that the procedures contained looser rules of evidence, even allowing hearsay and evidence obtained by torture, if the judge thought it helpful.

Colonel Shaffer said she was restrained under the rules from calling as a witness a Qaeda informant whose information had been used to charge her client. “I’m going to want for my client to face his accuser,” she said, “and for me to have an opportunity to impeach his testimony.”

    Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/washington/11jags.html

Detainee Rights Create a Divide on Capitol Hill

July 10, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 9 — The Supreme Court decision striking down the use of military commissions to bring terrorism detainees to trial has set off sharp differences among Republicans in Congress over what kind of rights detainees should be granted and how much deference should be shown the president in deciding the issue.

The debate is expected to consume the rest of the summer in Congress as lawmakers head into an election season expected to be dominated by issues of national security. The issue reflects the difficult legal, diplomatic and political choices the government faces in dealing with terrorism suspects.

The divisions do not fall strictly along traditional partisan lines and are as much within the parties as between them, particularly for Republicans. On one side of the debate are Republicans who believe Congress should give the president the authority to set up the kind of military commissions that were struck down by the court. Such commissions would sharply curtail defendants' rights.

On the other side are those who say the trials should be modeled on the military system of courts-martial, an approach that would give detainees more due-process rights than would the commissions. In between, many Republicans and Democrats alike argue for starting with the military judicial system and tweaking it to reflect the differences of trying terrorism suspects.

The debate will play out in a series of Congressional hearings quickly scheduled for this week, as lawmakers return to Washington after their weeklong Fourth of July recess.

Aides to President Bush said they had not yet reached any conclusions about what legislation should look like. Dan Bartlett, counselor to Mr. Bush, said lawyers for the White House, State Department and Justice Department were still reviewing the court's decision in the case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is expected to take a leading role on the issue as a member of the Armed Services Committee, argued that the administration's version of the military commissions had to be "reined in" to make clear, for instance, that evidence gathered by coercive interrogation techniques could not be introduced as evidence.

"I'm trying to get my colleagues to think about the international community's reception to what we do," said Mr. Graham, a former military lawyer. "We've got a chance to improve our image."

In its decision, the Supreme Court said, on a 5-to-3 vote, that the planned commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.

Administration officials, who have been consulting with Mr. Graham, are looking to him to play a central part in drafting legislation. Senators John W. Warner of Virginia, who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain of Arizona also are expected to be at the forefront for the Republicans, while Senator Carl Levin of Michigan is quite likely to emerge as a point man for the Democrats.

On the Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman, and Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, who first proposed Congressional action on military tribunals in 2001, are also expected to play central roles.

The Supreme Court decision left lawmakers with the challenge of resolving a complicated legal issue under the pressure of a heated election season and a limited amount of time left on their calendar.

While both parties are united in saying they want to act quickly, they face fights over what form of trial to use and whether the protections of the Geneva Conventions apply to terrorism suspects.

In hearings on Capitol Hill this week, the House Armed Services Committee will take testimony from lawyers, including several sympathetic to the administration. Two Senate committees, Judiciary and Armed Services, will take testimony from constitutional lawyers and top military lawyers, who some Republican senators believe were ignored in the White House discussions that led to the establishment of commissions. The only administration officials scheduled to testify are lawyers from the Justice Department and the Pentagon.

While Republicans are divided on central issues, Democrats have their own challenge. They see the court's decision as a rare rebuke to Mr. Bush, and they hope to turn the debate into a broader one over presidential power. But they said they also recognized that they must cooperate on legislation or risk being portrayed as weak on terrorism.

Some Republicans and many Democrats say that the administration may have hurt itself by rebuffing efforts as early as 2001 by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to set up some kind of military commission. "Congress is going to want to be a full partner, and not a rubber stamp for this process," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a close ally of the White House.

The central question is what kind of forum to set up. Commissions allow the government wide berth in introducing evidence, including hearsay, which is banned in military courts, and restrict the rights of the accused to be present in the court and to see the evidence against them. Military courts-martial, while not as strict as civilian courts, restrict the kind of evidence that can be introduced and allow the accused to interview witnesses and see even classified evidence.

The White House has long resisted anything like courts-martial, saying they could require the government to choose between dropping the charges and disclosing more than it wants to about the sources and nature of the intelligence used to develop a case against the detainees.

Senator Warner, who will direct the hearings as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he wanted a system that relied "as much as possible" on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which the court decision said governed the treatment of detainees.

Many lawmakers said they supported an approach based on some tweaking of the military system. Senators Graham and Specter, along with Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, advocate allowing hearsay, as well as a procedure to deal with classified evidence. The rules would be looser than in a court-martial but stricter than in a commission.

"We have to have a system that operates in the war on terror and one that doesn't tie us into knots trying to prosecute the people who have killed Americans in large numbers," Mr. Hunter said.

John C. Yoo, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on orders expanding presidential power in the treatment of detainees as a former lawyer for the Justice Department, said, "The debate that people are having is whether it's going to be a short bill that just overrules Hamdan completely, which you could do in one sentence, or whether it's going to be a much more comprehensive law that tries to set out essentially a code of procedure for the military commission."

But any effort simply to codify the president's order establishing commissions would be fiercely resisted by influential Democrats.

"The Supreme Court said the president cannot continue to break the law," said Mr. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat. "The worst thing to do would be to simply paper that over and say we'll make it possible for him to break the law."

An effort by Mr. Leahy in 2001 to introduce legislation establishing tribunals was rebuffed by the White House. "They said no, they knew what they were doing, they would do it alone," Mr. Leahy said. "What's happened? Five years, there have been no trials, no convictions, nothing has happened, we've had our reputation severely hurt throughout the rest of the world."

Mr. Graham similarly called it "a mistake" to give Congressional blessing to the military commissions as envisioned in Mr. Bush's presidential order. "We have a chance to start over," he said.

Another central question is whether the Geneva Conventions extend to accused terrorists. Mr. Graham and Mr. Cornyn say no, and Mr. Graham wants Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's finding that Common Article 3 of the conventions applies to detainees. The article's provisions outlawing degrading treatments, he believes, could mean that American soldiers would be subject to prosecution in the war on terror.

But Mr. Cornyn, a former judge, said that the reference to Article 3 meant simply that any court must be established within the military justice system.

"Congress should not, and the court did not hold that, they are entitled to the whole panoply of rights that the prisoner of war would be entitled to under circumstances where the Geneva Conventions apply," Mr. Cornyn said.

Other Republicans, though, fear that any system that does not pay heed to the court's mentioning of the Geneva Conventions risks being rejected by the court again.

"We've got to structure this law in such a way that if it ever came back up through the Supreme Court, it will not be struck down," Mr. Warner said. "It's important for the credibility of the United States to put this issue at rest and let the world realize we're affording them the protections as the Supreme Court outlined."

Democrats will argue that harsh conditions at Guantánamo have made the prison a rallying cry for new terrorist recruits.

"The issue we believe is most prescient is not the balance between security and liberty, where on issues like this the parties are relatively close, but on competence," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. "They just don't do it right, wherever they go. By their stubbornness and refusal to work with Congress, they've made us worse off in Guantánamo today."

Congress has rearranged its schedule to debate the issue this month, and those leading the debate say that they want to vote on new legislation, if any is needed, by September.

    Detainee Rights Create a Divide on Capitol Hill, NYT, 10.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/washington/10gitmo.html

House and Senate Hold Immigration Hearings

July 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

PHILADELPHIA, July 5 — At odds over immigration, lawmakers from the Senate and the House held rival hearings on Wednesday on opposite coasts, competing for public support for their sharply differing proposals and moving no closer to compromise.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, sponsors of a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in May, chose the day after the Fourth of July to hold a hearing wrapped in patriotic themes at the National Constitution Center here.

Most of the speakers embraced the Senate's approach, which calls for a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants and a guest worker program, as well as enhanced border security and punishment for employers who hire illegal workers.

In San Diego, Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California and chairman of the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation, was chosen to lead a meeting in a Border Patrol station that featured agents and local sheriffs.

Mr. Royce framed the hearing with a warning that the United States was "losing ground" on securing the borders against terrorists. One of the main speakers, Darryl Griffen, the San Diego Border Patrol chief, said his agents continued to be swamped by illegal immigrants.

Democrats at the hearing accused Republicans of fanning sentiment against immigrants while delaying action on reform. "The leadership wants us to start here with hearings that are really a dog and pony show," said Representative Brad Sherman of California.

A Republican bill adopted by the House in December focuses on border security and makes it a crime to be in the United States illegally. House Republicans have rejected Senate proposals for a route to citizenship for a majority of illegal immigrants, calling it amnesty.

Mr. Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led the hearing here, shaping the session to feature employers and politicians who spoke of critical labor shortages in local businesses and an urgent need for immigrant labor.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said his city's economy would be "a shell of itself" without the city's immigrants, 40 percent of the population, and would "collapse" if illegal immigrants were deported en masse. Mr. Bloomberg called for a national fraud-proof employee identification card that would allow employers to determine easily the legal status of immigrants.

Carol Green Rossi, representing the Pennsylvania Tourism and Lodging Association, said hotels in her state were "constantly in the recruitment mode" for immigrant labor but faced troubling and costly problems with inefficient guest worker programs and systems to verify immigration status.

Mayor Louis Barletta of Hazelton, Pa., which has adopted strict measures to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants and landlords who rent to them. said a recent wave of killings by illegal immigrants had "terrorized" the city. In addition, Mayor Barletta said, municipal services are "buckling under the strain" of illegal immigration.

In San Diego, a group of immigrants' rights activists held a vigil while more than 100 protesters who want to reduce illegal immigration packed the hearing room and an area outside.

"We want our borders secure," said Don Schenck, 69, a retired postal worker from Corona, Calif., who was one of the protesters. "We want no amnesty for people who broke our laws."

In Alexandria, Va., President Bush paid a surprise morning visit to a Dunkin' Donuts owned by two Iranian-American brothers to emphasize his support for comprehensive immigration reform, a catchword for the Senate approach. Mr. Bush said he opposed amnesty and wanted not only enhanced border enforcement but also a "rational plan" that would not lead to mass deportations.

"I'm also realistic to tell you that we're not going to be able to deport people who have been here, working hard and raising their families," Mr. Bush said.

White House officials said Mr. Bush was not stepping back from a compromise he has floated in recent days, in which border security measures would be put in place as much as two years before guest worker and immigrant legalization programs. But the president restated that he did not want the security measures in a separate bill, as House Republicans insist.

"What this White House has been clear about is you don't do borders only," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.

Senators said Mr. Bush was moving toward their position, but House Republicans said he was moving toward theirs. "I think things have moved remarkably in the direction of border security in the past few weeks," Mr. Royce said.

Mr. Specter acknowledged the political duel with the House.

"We don't have to match them, we have to exceed them," he said of his House counterparts, adding that the Senate could not sit by "like a potted plant" while the House held hearings across the country.

The Senate announced Wednesday that Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would hold a hearing in Miami on Monday. The topic is "Contributions of Immigrants to the U. S. Armed Forces."

Cindy Chang contributed reporting from San Diego for this article.

    House and Senate Hold Immigration Hearings, NYT, 6.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/washington/06immigration.html

Lawmakers Seek Action After Ruling on Detainees

By ROBIN TONER
The New York Times
July 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, July 2 — Democratic leaders argued on Sunday that the Supreme Court's rebuke of the Bush administration last week underscored the costs of President Bush's "unilateral" approach to the fight against terrorism.

They called for closer consultation with Congress and a broad review of the administration's use of executive power to combat terrorism.

Republican leaders, also making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, called for a more limited response. They said Congress should pass legislation in a matter of months to comply with the court and give the president explicit authority to put detainees at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on trial before military commissions.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the military commissions the administration had planned were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.

Republican leaders also expressed alarm on Sunday over the court's application of a provision of the Geneva Conventions to the detainees, which they said they would seek to counter legislatively.

Both parties were treading carefully in a political and legislative terrain suddenly reconfigured by the Supreme Court. Most leaders on Sunday pledged bipartisan cooperation, but some fault lines were clear.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on "Meet the Press" on NBC that "this White House has felt it could just change things unilaterally." Mr. Schumer added, "Had they come to Congress a few years ago on this issue, my guess is they would have gotten most of what they wanted."

But in light of the court ruling, Mr. Schumer called on Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to create an independent commission to conduct "a top-to-bottom legal review of all of the administration's ongoing antiterror measures."

Mr. Schumer added, "The administration has not only largely ignored the Congress, but has also badly miscalculated how its efforts would be evaluated by the Supreme Court." Efforts to "marginalize the other two branches of government threaten to undermine, rather than promote, counterterrorism efforts," he said.

Republicans focused much of their fire on the court's ruling that a provision of the Geneva Conventions dealing with the treatment and trials of captured combatants applied to the Guantánamo detainees. Senator Mitch McConnell, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, called it a "very disturbing aspect" of the decision that meant "that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes."

Mr. McConnell, appearing on "Meet the Press," said Congress must quickly address that issue, along with creating military commissions. "There's nothing more important than the war on terror," he said, "and I think we will have to act on this very soon."

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on "Fox News Sunday" that he was also deeply troubled by the court's application of the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Graham said that terrorists should be "humanely treated" but that the question was whether "Al Qaeda members who do not sign up to the Geneva Convention, who show disdain for it, who butcher our troops, be given the protections of a treaty they're not part of." He added, "My opinion — no." Mr. Graham said Congress had the ability to restrict the conventions' application to terrorism, "and I think we should."

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, one of the Democratic Party's point men on national security, suggested that the court ruling was a broad rebuke to the Bush administration's expansive use of executive power in the fight against terrorism. The "most significant aspect of the case," Mr. Reed said, was "the declaration by the court that the president has to seek Congressional authority."

He added, "The president declared that he was operating in his own capacity as commander in chief, and I think the court reined him back, and I think it's appropriate."

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war, said on "This Week" on ABC that he was confident that "using the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, we can make sure that bad guys — and there are bad guys — are not released, and that those who deserve to be released will be."

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, also called for a measured response. "It can't be handled on a sound bite on Sunday morning," Mr. Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on "Face the Nation" on CBS. "We have to get the details as to what the administration thinks they can do. We've got to look at the Supreme Court decision. And we have to reconcile it. But it has to be Congress because it's our constitutional responsibility."

He added, "It's not up to the president alone."

    Lawmakers Seek Action After Ruling on Detainees, NYT, 3.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/washington/03gitmo.html

President to Press for Line-Item Veto Power

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 27 — With his proposed overhaul of the nation's immigration laws now in legislative limbo, President Bush focused on another priority on Tuesday, to secure Congressional approval of a presidential line-item veto.

Speaking to a conservative group here in the morning, Mr. Bush said he would use a line-item veto to eliminate spending on the pet projects called earmarks that lawmakers attach to spending bills.

"A line-item veto would be a vital tool that a president could use to target spending that lawmakers tack on to the large spending bills," Mr. Bush said before a gathering held by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative group that advocates fiscal restraint.

The president said he very much needed the power to control spending. The number of earmarks each year has grown to 13,000 per budget from 3,000 over the last decade, he said.

Mr. Bush also met on Tuesday at the White House with senators to discuss his proposal, including the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, and the president's 2000 Republican primary rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona. In his address, Mr. Bush also cited a more recent rival from the other side of the aisle, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, as a supporter of a line-item veto.

"I remember campaigning against him in 2004, and I remember him talking about the line-item veto," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Kerry, "and I appreciate the fact that he's living up to the political promises he made."

Mr. Bush urged Mr. Kerry's Democratic colleagues to approve the veto just as they had done in 1996 for the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's success in obtaining line-item veto power, delivered with help from Congressional Republicans, was a victory in a decades-long struggle by the executive branch to gain a stronger hand in budget negotiations with Congress.

But the Supreme Court struck that line-item veto down in 1998, ruling that it allowed a president "to effect the repeal of laws, for his own policy reasons."

Administration officials say the form of the veto sought by Mr. Bush would stand up to constitutional scrutiny by creating a process in which the president proposes items to strike but Congress ultimately decides whether to go along with him in a fast-tracked vote. The House passed a version of the veto with such a process last week.

Mr. Frist has told administration officials he will try to bring a similar version of the bill to a vote in mid-July. But even White House officials acknowledged that the proposal would face a tough fight. Democrats have been reluctant to give the president any sort of victory, and lawmakers in charge of the Senate Appropriations Committee are not eager to cede any control.

Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is pushing a version of the bill that would allow the president to strike no more than four items in a year. In addition, a core group of lawmakers is highly protective of Congressional power in general, but especially with Mr. Bush in the White House. His office has been open in its efforts to build executive power.

Winning a line-item veto would give Mr. Bush a much-needed Congressional victory. He had been trying to push through new immigration laws, but last week the House decided to have a series of national hearings before taking action. Mr. Bush said Tuesday that he was not giving up on that fight.

But he said that in the meantime he had asked his new budget director, Rob Portman, to make securing the line-item veto a top priority. Mr. Portman, a former Republican congressman with strong ties on Capitol Hill, has discussed the veto with lawmakers in the last week. "It's important that the Republican Party continue to let people know that the Republicans are the party of fiscal discipline," Mr. Portman said, adding that he was also trying to bring along Democrats.

But Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said his boss was working to gather enough votes to defeat the line-item veto. "It's a significant shift in authority to the executive branch," Mr. Manley said.

    President to Press for Line-Item Veto Power, NYT, 28.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/washington/28bush.html

Safavian Is Found Guilty in Lobbyist Trial

June 20, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A jury found former Bush administration official David Safavian guilty Tuesday of covering up his dealings with Republican influence-peddler Jack Abramoff.

Safavian was convicted on four of five felony counts of lying and obstruction. He had resigned from his White House post last year as the federal government's chief procurement officer.

The verdict gave a boost to the wide-ranging influence peddling probe that focuses on Abramoff's dealings with Congress.

In the Safavian case, prosecutors highlighted the name of Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. They introduced a photograph of the congressman and Abramoff standing in front of a private jet that whisked them and other members of a golfing party for a five-day trip to the storied St Andrews Old Course in Scotland, and a second leg of the journey to London.

The trial consumed eight days of testimony about Safavian's assistance to Abramoff regarding government-owned real estate and the weeklong golfing excursion to Scotland that the lobbyist organized.

Safavian went on the trans-Atlantic trip while he was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, and other participants besides Ney included two of the congressman's aides and Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed.

The verdict came on the fifth day of jury deliberations.

Safavian sat impassively as the judge read the verdict and showed no expression when the judge announced the guilty verdicts on each of four counts. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 12.

''The task force will say how this was a great day in the war on corruption,'' said Barbara van Gelder, Safavian's lawyer, referring to the Justice Department task force investigating the Abramoff scandal. ''I find they made a mountain out of a molehill and now they're going to plant the flag on top of the molehill.''

Safavian was charged with two counts of obstructing justice during investigations into the Scotland trip by the GSA inspector general and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He also was charged with three counts of making false statements or concealing information from GSA ethics officials, a GSA inspector general investigator and a Senate investigator.

The jury found Safavian guilty of obstructing the work of the GSA inspector general and of lying to a GSA ethics official. It also convicted him of lying to the GSA's Office of Inspector General and of making a false statement to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He was acquitted of a charge of obstructing the committee's investigation.

This was the first trial to emerge from the scandal surrounding Abramoff, who is a former business partner of Safavian. Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to federal crimes here and in Miami, would likely be a witness if the Justice Department assembles criminal cases against any members of Congress.

The government made its case without ever putting Abramoff on the witness stand. It relied on the testimony of the officials Safavian was accused of deceiving.

A key witness in the case was Neil Volz, a convicted partner of Abramoff's and ex-chief of staff to Ney. Prosecutors introduced hundreds of e-mails exchanged among Safavian, Abramoff, Volz and others in 2002.

The Justice Department made a case that Safavian provided Abramoff advice and some inside information about two government properties including the Old Post Office in downtown Washington.

Prosecutors said Abramoff wanted to buy or lease part of the GSA's White Oak property in the Maryland suburbs for use by a Jewish school he had established. They also said he wanted to give an Indian tribe client a leg up on obtaining the contract to redevelop the Old Post Office in as a luxury hotel, near two restaurants Abramoff owned.

Volz testified the Abramoff team referred to Safavian as one of their ''champions'' inside government, who could give them insider information they couldn't get elsewhere. He said Safavian was the mastermind of some of the strategy for developing congressional pressure or action to sway GSA.

Volz said they tried to keep this maneuvering secret.

Prosecutors showed that Safavian's advice began right after he went to work at GSA and was intensely pursued in the weeks before Safavian went on the weeklong golfing expedition to Scotland in August 2002. Abramoff had arranged the trip for members of Congress and invited Safavian to come along when one of them dropped out.

Safavian took the stand for two days in his own defense. He acknowledged some misjudgments and forwarding Abramoff some insider information, such as the position of other government officials on the GSA properties, but attributed these errors to his inexperience.

Basically he maintained he simply gave generally available information to an old friend who was inquiring about government property that the GSA had not even decided what to do with yet.

He said he answered all investigators' questions. Safavian said he didn't volunteer information about his advice on the two properties. Safavian said he didn't consider Abramoff was doing or seeking business with GSA because the agency wasn't letting contracts at the time.

Safavian claimed he thought he paid all of his costs with a $3,100 check to Abramoff on takeoff, though he acknowledged that trial testimony had shown him some elements were more expensive than he thought.

Prosecutors said the trip of nine participants cost more than $130,000. They scoffed at the notion anyone could think $3,100 would cover his share of chartered jet travel, $400 and $500-a-night hotels, $400 rounds of golf and $100 rounds of drinks.

    Safavian Is Found Guilty in Lobbyist Trial, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Lobbyist-Probe.html?hp&ex=1150862400&en=92410b51df1c441d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Congress Erupts in Partisan Fight Over War in Iraq

June 16, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, June 15 — The House and the Senate engaged in angry, intensely partisan debate on Thursday over the war in Iraq, as Republicans sought to rally support for the Bush administration's policies and exploit Democratic divisions in an election year shadowed by unease over the war.

It was one of the sharpest legislative clashes yet over the three-year-old conflict, and it came after three days in which President Bush and his aides had sought to portray Iraq as moving gradually toward a stable, functioning democracy, and to portray Democrats as lacking the will to see the conflict through to victory.

In the House, lawmakers moved toward a vote on a Republican resolution promising to "complete the mission" in Iraq, prevail in the global fight against terrorism and oppose any "arbitrary date for withdrawal." In the Senate, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to shelve an amendment calling on the United States to withdraw most troops by the end of this year, although Democrats vowed to revisit the debate next week.

Both actions were carefully engineered by the Republicans in charge, and for the moment put both chambers on a path to rejecting Congressional timetables for withdrawal .

House Republicans asserted that their resolution was essential to assure American troops and the world that the United States was behind the war in Iraq and the broader struggle against terrorism.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois opened the formal debate on a war that, the government announced Thursday, had claimed the lives of 2,500 American troops. "It is a battle we must endure and one in which we can and will be victorious," he said of the fight in Iraq and beyond. "The alternative would be to cut and run and wait for them to regroup and bring the terror back to our shores."

He said the American troops in Iraq knew their cause was noble. "It is time for this House of Representatives to tell the world that we know it, too, that we know our cause is right and that we are proud of it." Democrats, divided over the wisdom of the war but more or less united in condemning Mr. Bush's management of it, countered that the Republican resolution was a political ploy, "a press release for staying the course in Iraq," as Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, put it.

At the start of the debate, Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, asked for a moment of silence to recognize the 2,500 American military deaths in Iraq. Many lawmakers talked about visiting the troops, in Iraq and in hospitals, and about the toll in death and suffering.

Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam War veteran whose call for a speedy withdrawal of troops transformed the debate last year, rose repeatedly to tell Republicans, "Rhetoric does not solve the problem." He added: "We need a plan. It's not enough to say stay the course."

Referring to the sectarian violence cleaving Iraq, Mr. Murtha said, "They're fighting each other, and our troops are caught in between." The House, which debated the resolution for more than 11 hours on Thursday, is scheduled to vote on it on Friday. The Senate debate will continue into next week.

Five months before the November elections, partisan passions ran high. Republicans argued repeatedly that their Democratic opponents lacked the toughness to confront terrorism, returning to themes that they used successfully in 2004. "Many, but not all, on the other side of the aisle lack the will to win," said Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia. "The American people need to know precisely who they are." He said: "It is time to stand up and vote. Is it Al Qaeda, or is it America?"

Democrats countered, at times with barely controlled fury. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, described the war "as a grotesque mistake." She and others said Congressional Republicans were simply trying to "trap" Democrats, not engage them in a true debate. The resolution Republicans offered could not be amended, but only voted up or down.

Democrats in the Senate cried foul when Republicans forced a vote on a withdrawal amendment originally developed by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry had held off from seeking a vote on it, while working with other Democrats to seek a broader consensus. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican whip, simply scratched out Mr. Kerry's name, replaced it with his own and offered it for debate. Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, characterized the amendment as "cutting and running."

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, one of many Senate Democrats who oppose Mr. Kerry's amendment, rose to declare, "There are two things that don't exist in Iraq: cutting and running, and weapons of mass destruction." Mr. Reid moved to remove the amendment from consideration, and his motion was approved by a vote of 93 to 6. Senate Democrats promised to return next week with additional amendments on an exit strategy for American troops.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, portrayed the vote to table the amendment as a declaration of support for the fledgling Iraqi government. "This sends a good message that the United States government opposes, overwhelmingly, a cut-and-run strategy."

But Democrats said the vote was just a political game. "It's just kind of a jump-ball, stick-it-to-them kind of thing," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat.

Democrats have been divided over a deadline for the withdrawal of American troops. Last November, they rallied around legislation, which passed in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, that declared 2006 should be a "year of significant transition" in Iraq. In both chambers, Democrats have been trying to arrive at language that goes beyond that, but stops short of a firm deadline.

In a highly unusual attempt to influence the debate, the Pentagon sent a 74-page "prep book" to several members of Congress, outlining what it called "rapid response" talking points to rebut criticism of Mr. Bush's handling of the war and prewar intelligence. The Pentagon sent the book to Democratic leaders on Wednesday night, apparently in error, then sent an e-mail message two hours later asking to recall it.

The resolution under debate in the House declares that the United States and its allies are "engaged in a global war on terror, a long and demanding struggle against an adversary that is driven by hatred of American values and that is committed to imposing, by the use of terror, its repressive ideology throughout the world." It also declares that "the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology."

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, asserted that "the war in Afghanistan was the response to the terrorist attacks" — not the war in Iraq.

The combination of the popular and unpopular in this resolution — support for the troops, combined with an endorsement of the administration's policy and a rejection of any withdrawal deadline — left many Democrats in a bind as they headed toward Friday's vote. But some Democrats argued that it left Republicans in a bind, too, committed to an open-ended presence in Iraq.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.

    Congress Erupts in Partisan Fight Over War in Iraq, NYT, 16.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16cong.html?hp&ex=1150516800&en=32cb688fdc46e41a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Excerpts From the Debate in Congress About the War in Iraq

June 16, 2006
The New York Times

Excerpts of remarks made by the House Speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, at the beginning of the debate Thursday on a resolution about the Iraq war:

"This resolution is about more than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is about a global war to protect American ideals, and the democracy and values on which this great nation was founded. This resolution, Mr. Speaker, like this war itself, is about freedom.

"Just 12 days ago I returned from Iraq. I can tell this House that the morale of our fighting men and women there is sky high. They are not suffering from doubt and 'second guessing.' And they certainly are not interested in the political posturing about the war that often goes on in this city. They know why they are there. They know they are liberators doing good and they believe passionately in their mission. It is not possible to talk to these men and women without being inspired by their courage, their determination, their professionalism, and their patriotism.

"I came home from Iraq believing even more strongly, that it is not enough for this House to say, 'We Support Our Troops.' To the men and women in the field, in harms way, that statement rings hollow if we don't also say we support their mission...

"While I was in Iraq, I met with Prime Minister al-Maliki as well as my counterpart, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament. We talked about the birth of democracy in Iraq.

"I looked the Speaker in the eye and I said, 'Mr. Speaker, I admire you. The Iraqi people represent an ancient civilization, but your democracy is just beginning. Your challenges are great but so too are your opportunities.'

"I urged the Iraqi people to look forward and not back; to listen to the voices of reconciliation, not division; I urged them to choose unity. They told me that they were succeeding in putting together a Unity Cabinet, and shortly after my return they announced the names of the last three ministers that deal with critical security issues.

"Each Iraqi official I met with, even the Iraqi Speaker, who originally viewed the US presence in Iraq negatively, thanked me for the help America has given their country. He went further and urged us to stay with them while they build up the capacity to take over the task of providing security for their people.

"Today in Iraq we are working together with Iraqi patriots, men and women elected by their fellow citizens. Along with brave Iraqi soldiers and police, we are moving toward the day when the Iraqi government on its own has the strength to protect their people; a day when our men and women and their coalition partners, can come home. The 'stand up' of this new Iraqi government, which is the fruit of three elections where Iraqi citizens held up their ink stained fingers and resisted intimidation, brings us closer to that day.

"President Bush told us from the beginning that this road would not be easy. We have lost many American lives and each one is precious to us. Our fighting men and women remain committed to the effort. Active duty retention and recruiting is meeting or exceeding all objectives. We are making progress toward our goal but the battle is not over. It is a battle we must endure and one in which we can and will be victorious. The alternative would be to cut and run and wait for them to regroup and bring the terror back to our shores.

"When our freedom is challenged, Americans do not run. 'Freedom is the very essence of our nation,' President Reagan said in 1990 when a section of the Berlin Wall was presented to his Presidential Library. He continued, 'But even with our troubles we remain a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples everywhere.' President Reagan also observed that freedom is not passed on at birth. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on and that is happening. Freedom is being handed on. Our soldiers, sailors, coastguardsmen, airmen and marines are serving proudly and bravely in harsh conditions, far from their families.

"When I was there, I told them their task was important and how proud we all were of their service. But frankly, our men and women in uniform did not need to be told. In fact, it is we who should listen to them.

"They know their sacrifices on foreign shores are keeping the battle against the terrorists out of our cities. They know that by going into harms way, they are keeping American freedoms safe. They know they are helping a proud but brutalized people to throw off tyranny and stand tall once again. They know they are liberators not occupiers. Our men and women in uniform know all this and they are proud of it. It is time for this House of Representatives to tell the world that we know it too, that we know our cause is right and that we are proud of it.

"Stand up for Freedom, adopt this resolution."

Excerpts of the prepared text of a statement by Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic Whip, in opposition to the Republicans' Iraq resolution:

"This year — 2006 — should be a year of transition in Iraq. And, it is my expectation that the United States will be able to reduce the American troop deployment over the ensuing months and transfer the risks and responsibilities to the duly-elected government of Iraq.

"Today, it is regrettable that this Republican majority seeks to exploit the critical issue of national security for political advantage. The resolution before us — like the Hunter Resolution that was debated last December — was drafted solely for political reasons. As Majority Leader Boehner explained, its purpose is an opportunity to create 'a portrait of contrasts between Republicans and Democrats.' For our country's sake and for our troops' sake, the majority should have offered a resolution that sought unity, rather than division.

"There are provisions in this resolution, of course, with which all of us agree. I, for one, strongly share the resolve to prevail in the war on terror. However, this resolution misstates the facts about why the Bush Administration instigated our military action against the Hussein regime in 2003. It paints a picture of Iraq today that does not comport with the reality on the ground. And, it ignores the fundamental responsibility of this Congress to conduct meaningful oversight of the Administration's conduct of this war.

"The political motivations underlying this Resolution have been laid bare, and thus I will be forced to vote 'no.' The American people will not be deceived by this exercise today..."

    Excerpts From the Debate in Congress About the War in Iraq, NYT, 16.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16cong-text.html

As Agenda Falters, Bush Tries a More Personal Approach in Dealing With Congress

June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Senator John W. Warner and his wife were at the White House for a Memorial Day photo session with veterans when they received an unexpected invitation from President Bush. "Come on," the president said suddenly. "Let's go back to the Oval Office."

What followed, said Mr. Warner, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a rare 15 minutes alone with the president, no aides or staff in sight.

Mr. Bush escorted the couple to a private garden that President Ronald Reagan had built — "I never knew it was back there," said Mr. Warner, whose public service dates to the Eisenhower administration — and, just as important, solicited Mr. Warner's views on Iraq.

"It was a nice way of doing things," Mr. Warner said.

It was also a new way of doing things for a president who Republicans in Congress say has for years treated them like pesky younger siblings, ignoring their ideas and calling on them only to promote his legislation on Capitol Hill.

Now, with Mr. Bush's poll numbers sinking and his agenda faltering, the White House needs Republicans in Congress more than ever. Without necessarily taking the advice he is seeking from Capitol Hill, Mr. Bush is adding a more personal touch to his presidency in an effort to put himself in the good graces of lawmakers.

The effort, choreographed by senior advisers to Mr. Bush, began late last year and intensified in April after Joshua B. Bolten became chief of staff, said two officials involved. So the president, a man not given to Washington schmoozing, now holds intimate cocktail parties on the Truman Balcony, overlooking the South Lawn, for lawmakers and their spouses, complete with tours of the Lincoln Bedroom led by him and the first lady.

For the first time in his presidency, Mr. Bush is also inviting lawmakers to the White House in small groups not to discuss specific issues, but simply to ask what is on their minds. These informal brainstorming sessions occur not in the Oval Office, but over iced tea and lemonade in the cozy Yellow Oval room of the private residence.

But courting lawmakers only goes so far in bridging serious policy and political differences, and it is hard to find evidence that Mr. Bush's new open-ear policy has led to any substantive change in direction by the White House.

The administration has also stumbled frequently in its intensified efforts to reach out to Congress, raising questions about how much it has accomplished in mollifying Republican lawmakers, some of whom are heading into re-election campaigns concerned that Mr. Bush could be a political liability.

The depth of the strain was evident this week when Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained publicly that Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration's primary liaison to members of Congress, had meddled in committee business behind his back.

The Specter-Cheney imbroglio followed a string of Congressional relations debacles this year. Congress fought Mr. Bush over port security, and some House Republicans, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, were furious about the ouster of Porter J. Goss, a former congressman, as C.I.A. director. The president was also forced to step in to mediate a separation of powers dispute when the House leadership, in a rare show of bipartisanship, expressed outrage over the F.B.I. search of a Congressional office.

"I don't think this turns on romance; it turns on policy," Mr. Specter said, asked to assess the state of Mr. Bush's relationship with Congress. "He needs to recognize that government functions with Congress exercising its own constitutional prerogatives, like oversight."

Some Republicans, including the Senate whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, said relations were improving. But Ms. Snowe, who attended a recent informal session in the private residence, also said White House officials "continue to hit rough patches" and should have sought "the collective wisdom" of senior lawmakers long ago.

"We all cited chapter and verse our views," Ms. Snowe said. "But I think some of the problems, like the controversy over port security, could have been avoided if there had been more of a track record of seeking various views of people who are in key positions. A lot more groundwork should have been laid."

Two senior administration officials, who were granted anonymity to publicly discuss internal deliberations, said Mr. Bush and his advisers recognized late last year that with the midterm elections coming up, they needed to reach out. Relations had become especially strained, one official said, when Congress rebuffed the president on his plan to overhaul Social Security.

"The Social Security debate was a tough one," the official said. "They didn't want to do it, and he wanted to."

Presidents have historically used the social powers of the office to build goodwill at the Capitol. Lyndon B. Johnson was a master at it; Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were especially good. But Mr. Bush, with his early-to-bed, early-to-rise habits, has shown little interest in the social networking that characterizes so much of Washington political life, said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

"If you had to evaluate presidents, 1 to 10, and Johnson is a 10, this president is a 1," Professor Thurber said. "The state of his presidency vis-à-vis the Congress is bad not only because he's down in the polls. It's not only bad because of the war and the Katrina mess. It's bad because he never reaches out. He's not that kind of guy. He goes bicycle riding with the Secret Service rather than bringing people together."

But White House officials insist that the president supported their plan to expand his social schedule, particularly with the informal settings he is most comfortable in. "He definitely understood the importance of having good relations and improving upon it," one of the senior officials said, "and he has been willing to give the time necessary to make sure that happens."

Some presidents, like Johnson, have been creatures of Congress, and others, like Reagan, have worked to cultivate relationships. Senator Warner recalled the close friendship between Reagan and Paul Laxalt, the former senator from Nevada who was sometimes referred to as the "first friend."

"Many times, I've seen Laxalt get up in a heated caucus, where it gets explosive, and say, 'Come on guys, I talked to the president today,' " Mr. Warner said. "And we knew when Paul spoke, he'd just been with Reagan."

No one speaks quite that way for Mr. Bush, although he does have friends on Capitol Hill. One of the closest is Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican whose father, Hugh, was a former governor and ran the New Hampshire presidential campaign for Mr. Bush's father. Mr. Gregg and his wife spent a recent weekend with the Bushes at Camp David. But Mr. Bush also portrays himself as an outsider to Washington.

"You can't continue to bash Washington and Congress and have good relations with them," Professor Thurber said.

But the president does seem to be seizing on spontaneous moments, as he did with Mr. Warner. When Mr. Hastert complained during an Air Force One flight about Mr. Goss's departure from the C.I.A., the president promptly invited Mr. Hastert to join him on Marine One, the presidential helicopter, from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House for a visit to the Oval Office.

Mr. Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, said the speaker had never been aboard before. "He was honored," Mr. Bonjean said.

Senator John E. Sununu, another New Hampshire Republican whose father was chief of staff to Mr. Bush's father, said the president should do more of that.

The White House has not used "the personal power of the presidency to the effect that they could," said Mr. Sununu, who, along with his wife, was a guest at one of the recent Truman Balcony cocktail parties. The reception took place shortly after Mr. Bolten was named chief of staff; Candi Wolff, the administration's chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill, was also there.

"I left having a pretty good sense of what Josh hoped to do in the next couple of weeks as he stepped into his role; I talked to Candi at some length about some of the relationship issues," Mr. Sununu said. "I probably even said, 'This is really good, this is the kind of thing you need to do more of.' "

    As Agenda Falters, Bush Tries a More Personal Approach in Dealing With Congress, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/washington/11bush.html

Iraq war, hurricane aid agreement reached

Updated 6/8/2006 8:39 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — House and Senate Republican leaders Thursday finalized agreement on a long-sought $94.5 billion bill to pay for the war in Iraq and deliver a much-needed infusion of relief to Louisiana and other hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast states.

The bill won't clear Congress for President Bush's desk until next week, but the official submission of the deal would ease Pentagon worries of a money crunch caused by weeks of delays in creating a compromise bill.

GOP leaders overcame the last snag to agreement — insistence by two Senate GOP moderates that the bill include a promise to increase future spending on education and health programs — by winning endorsement from Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.

The bill includes $65.8 billion for military operations and maintenance in Afghanistan and Iraq; personnel and energy costs; new weapons and ammunition; and an initiative to locate and disarm roadside bombs.

The bill also contains $19.8 billion in new money for hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast.

The agreement caps weeks of mostly behind-the-scenes talks on Capitol Hill over how to balance lawmakers' hopes for additional hurricane relief with Bush's demand that the bill stick to his original $92.2 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan and hurricanes, with an additional $2.3 billion to combat bird flu.

The Senate-passed version of the bill had exceeded Bush's request by more than $14 billion, adding large sums for farm disasters, fisheries aid, veterans medical care, port security and to compensate Texas for taking on evacuees of Katrina.

Most of that extra money was dropped, as was $289 million to create a fund to compensate people if they were to be injured by a pandemic flu vaccine.

The last snag involved a demand by Senate leaders to use the must-pass war funding bill to get around a House-Senate impasse over the annual budget blueprint Congress is supposed to produce each year.

The measure endorses Bush's $873 billion "cap" on the annual appropriations bills Congress passes each year. Under Congress' arcane budget rules, setting a cap on appropriations bills makes them much easier to pass through the freewheeling Senate.

But GOP Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio sided with Democrats on a House-Senate negotiating committee to insist on $7 billion in additional money on top of Bush's $873 billion cap for the upcoming annual spending bills. The pair refused to endorse the war spending bill without the additional promises for the future bills.

They wanted to dedicate the $7 billion to health and education programs; the White House and House GOP leaders were dead set against the idea.

"Period," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

"These are things I care very much about, education and children's health issues," DeWine said.

The $19.8 billion included in the bill for hurricane relief includes:

•$5.2 billion for grants to state, with $4.2 billion expected to go to meet Louisiana's housing recovery needs.

•$3.7 billion for federal flood control projects in the New Orleans area.

•$6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster fund. That includes $400 million for temporary housing sturdier than FEMA trailers.

•$500 million in farm disaster aid for Gulf states.

•$550 million to rebuild a veterans hospital in New Orleans.

The compromise bill includes Bush's plan to provide 1,000 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border, deploy about 6,000 National Guard troops and build detention space for 4,000 illegal immigrants.

The bill also contains $4 billion in military and foreign aid for Iraq and other allies, and to combat famine in Africa and Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sudan.

    Iraq war, hurricane aid agreement reached, UT, 8.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-08-congress-iraq-katrina_x.htm

Congress Increases Indecency Fines Tenfold

June 8, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vowing to clear the public airwaves of prurient and vulgar material, Congress has overwhelmingly approved legislation to increase by tenfold the fines that broadcasters could face for indecent programming.

President Bush welcomed passage of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act and promised to sign it into law. ''I believe that government has a responsibility to help strengthen families,'' he said in a statement. ''This legislation will make television and radio more family friendly by allowing the FCC to impose stiffer fines on broadcasters who air obscene or indecent programming.''

The bill would increase the maximum fines the Federal Communications Commission may levy for indecent content from the current $32,500 to $325,000 per incident. The legislation passed the House 379-35 on Wednesday after moving through the Senate last month on a voice vote.

Approval of the bill culminates a two-year effort to get tough on sexually explicit material and offensive language on radio and television following Janet Jackson's 2004 Super Bowl ''wardrobe malfunction.''

The FCC recently denied a petition of reconsideration from CBS Corp.-owned stations facing $550,000 in fines over the Jackson incident, in which she briefly revealed a breast during a halftime concert.

The bill was important to conservative groups and its passage came on the same day that another conservative priority -- a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage -- failed in the Senate.

''The FCC will now have the authority to impose meaningful, punitive fines when the indecency law is broken,'' said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, a group that has actively pursued cases of indecent material on the public airways. ''We hope that the hefty fines will cause the multibillion-dollar broadcast networks finally to take the law seriously.''

''This is a victory for children and families,'' said Senate sponsor Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. The higher fines were needed, he said, ''in a world saturated with violent and explicit media.''

The bill does not apply to cable or satellite broadcasts, and does not try to define what is indecent.

Under FCC rules and federal law, radio and over-the-air television stations may not air obscene material at any time, and may not air indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. when children are more likely to be in the audience.

The FCC says indecent material is that which contains sexual or excretory material that does not rise to the level of obscenity.

The legislation, while facing little resistance in Congress, had detractors warning of problems in defining what is indecent and of the erosion of First Amendment rights.

''What is at stake here is freedom of speech and whether it will be nibbled to death by election-minded politicians and self-righteous pietists,'' Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., said in a statement. He recalled how after the Super Bowl incident, numerous ABC affiliates refused to air the acclaimed war movie ''Saving Private Ryan'' because of its rough language.

The National Association of Broadcasters said it would prefer to see the nation's 13,000 radio stations and 1,700 TV stations police themselves.

The FCC has also actively responded to the increase in complaints about lewd material over the airwaves, with total fines jumping from $440,000 in 2003 to almost $8 million in 2004.

The agency recently handed down its biggest fine, $3.3 million, against more than 100 CBS affiliates that aired an episode of the series ''Without a Trace'' that simulated an orgy scene. That fine is now under review.

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The bill is S. 193

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On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/

Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov/

Parents Television Council: http://www.parentstv.org/
 
National Association of Broadcasters: http://www.nab.org

    Congress Increases Indecency Fines Tenfold, NYT, 8.6.006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-TV-Indecency.html