History > 2008 > USA > Politics > President George W. Bush (II)

Justices Rule Against Bush

on Death Penalty Case

March 25, 2008
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:40 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas and rebuked Bush by a 6-3 vote.

The president was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty.

An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country's consular officials. The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violation affected their cases.

Bush, who oversaw 152 executions as Texas governor, disagreed with the decision. But he said it must be carried out by state courts because the United States had agreed to abide by the world court's rulings in such cases. The administration argued that the president's declaration is reason enough for Texas to grant Medellin a new hearing.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed. Roberts said the international court decision cannot be forced upon the states.

The president may not ''establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law,'' Roberts said. Neither does the treaty, by itself, require individual states to take action, he said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

The international court judgment should be enforced, Breyer wrote. ''The nation may well break its word even though the president seeks to live up to that word,'' he said.

Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the outcome of the case, said nothing prevents Texas from giving Medellin another hearing even though it is not compelled to do so.

''Texas' duty in this respect is all the greater since it was Texas that -- by failing to provide consular notice in accordance with the Vienna Convention -- ensnared the United States in the current controversy,'' Stevens said.

Medellin was arrested a few days after the killings of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in Houston in June 1993. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

Medellin, who speaks, reads and writes English, gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

Texas acknowledged that Medellin was not told he could ask for help from Mexican diplomats, but argued that he forfeited the right because he never raised the issue at trial or sentencing. In any case, the state said, the diplomats' intercession would not have made any difference in the outcome of the case.

State and federal courts rejected Medellin's claim when he raised it on appeal.

Then, in 2003, Mexico sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S. who also had been denied access to their country's diplomats following their arrests.

Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney who handles capital case appeals, applauded the Supreme Court decision. ''This case has been in the court system a long time based on various issues, '' said Wilson, whose office prosecuted Medellin. ''It was a heinous murder of two young girls who were only 14 and 16. It's certainly time the case be resolved and the sentence be carried out.''

Medellin, who was 18 at the time of the slayings, turned 33 earlier this month. He's now out of appeals and Wilson said her office will ask for an execution date once the Supreme Court resolves a separate case challenging lethal injections.

Donald Donovan, who argued Medellin's case to the high court, said Congress and the president could enact a law that would force Texas to comply with the World Court decision.

Mexico has no death penalty. Mexico and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the world court to fight for foreigners facing execution in the U.S.

Forty-four Mexican prisoners affected by the decision remain on death row around the country, including 14 in Texas. One Mexican inmate formerly facing execution now is imprisoned for life because of the Supreme Court decision outlawing capital punishment for anyone under 18 at the time the crime was committed.

Bush has since said the United States will no longer allow the World Court to judge the consular access cases because of how death penalty opponents have tried to use the international tribunal.

The case is Medellin v. Texas, 06-984.

Justices Rule Against Bush on Death Penalty Case, NYT, 25.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Mexican-National.html

Bush Defends Iraq War in Speech

March 20, 2008
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

In an address Wednesday morning marking the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq, President Bush defended the conflict as one that was necessary and is succeeding.

“Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision — and this is a fight America can and must win,” President Bush said, according to a transcript of his address at the Pentagon.

The president hailed the courage of the men and women serving in Iraq and said their effort helps protect America.

“Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely that we will face this enemy here at home,” he said.

Opponents of the war, which has become deeply unpopular in recent years, planned to stage demonstrations and protests of various kinds in Washington for the Wednesday anniversary. Mr. Bush acknowledged “that there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning and whether we can win it.”

But he said the “men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors.”

Mr. Bush acknowledged that there had been difficult times: “A little over a year ago, the fight in Iraq was faltering. Extremist elements were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos.”

But he said the recent strategy of sending additional troops to the country, known as the surge, “has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.”

Mr. Bush said the reduction in violence in Iraq and the alliance of some local groups with American forces is “the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology and his murderous network.”

Noting that some political candidates are calling for an early withdrawal of troops, Mr. Bush said, “If we were to allow our enemies to prevail in Iraq, the violence that is now declining would accelerate — and Iraq would descend into chaos.”

The result, he said, would be that “the terrorist movement would emerge emboldened, with new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America.”

He says the United States is helping establish democracy in Iraq and in the heart of the Arab world. “By spreading the hope of liberty in the Middle East, we will help free societies take root — and when they do, freedom will yield the peace that we all desire.”

John Sullivan contributed reporting.

Bush Defends Iraq War in Speech, NYT, 20.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/world/middleeast/19cnd-bush.html

Bush Says Iraq War Was Worth It

March 19, 2008
Filed at 1:39 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush says he has no doubts about launching the unpopular war in Iraq despite the ''high cost in lives and treasure,'' arguing that retreat now would embolden Iran and provide al-Qaida with money for weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States.

Bush is to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on Wednesday with a speech at the Pentagon. Excerpts of his address were released Tuesday night by the White House.

At least 3,990 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in 2003. It has cost taxpayers about $500 billion and estimates of the final tab run far higher. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglizt and Harvard University public finance expert Linda Bilmes have estimated the eventual cost at $3 trillion when all the expenses, including long-term care for veterans, are calculated.

Democrats offered a different view from Bush's.

''On this grim milestone, it is worth remembering how we got into this situation, and thinking about how best we can get out,'' said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. ''The tasks that remain in Iraq -- to bring an end to sectarian conflict, to devise a way to share political power, and to create a functioning government that is capable of providing for the needs of the Iraqi people are tasks that only the Iraqis can complete.''

In his remarks, Bush repeated his oft-stated determination to prosecute the war into the unforeseen future.

''The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable, yet some in Washington still call for retreat,'' the president said. ''War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much. In recent months, we have heard exaggerated estimates of the costs of this war.

''No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq,'' Bush said.

Bush has successfully defied efforts by the Democratic-led Congress to force troop withdrawals or set deadlines for pullouts. It is widely believed he will endorse a recommendation from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, for no additional troop reductions, beyond those already planned, until at least September.

The U.S. now has about 158,000 troops in Iraq. That number is expected to drop to 140,000 by summer in drawdowns meant to erase all but about 8,000 troops from last year's buildup.

''If we were to allow our enemies to prevail in Iraq, the violence that is now declining would accelerate and Iraq could descend into chaos,'' Bush said. ''Al-Qaida would regain its lost sanctuaries and establish new ones fomenting violence and terror that could spread beyond Iraq's borders, with serious consequences to the world economy.

''Out of such chaos in Iraq, the terrorist movement could emerge emboldened with new recruits ... new resources ... and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America,'' Bush said in his remarks. ''An emboldened al-Qaida with access to Iraq's oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations. Iran could be emboldened as well with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. And our enemies would see an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and lack of resolve.''

Looking back, Bush said, ''Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting ... whether the fight is worth winning ... and whether we can win it. The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision and this is a fight America can and must win.''

Bush said the past five years have brought ''moments of triumph and moments of tragedy,'' from free elections in Iraq to acts of brutality and violence.

''The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities. Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home,'' Bush said.

Bush said anew that the war was faltering a little more than a year ago, prompting him in January 2007 to order a big troop buildup known as the ''surge.''

''The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around; it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror,'' he said.

''In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his terror network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated ,'' the president said.

''The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat. We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast -- the terrorists and extremists step in, fill the vacuum, establish safe havens and use them to spread chaos and carnage.''

    Bush Says Iraq War Was Worth It, NYT, 19.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Iraq.html

White House

Signals More Steps Are Possible

March 17, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday welcomed the Federal Reserve’s sweeping intervention in the nation’s financial markets over the weekend, while his press secretary suggested that other steps could be possible.

Meeting with his economic aides at the White House in the morning in the first of two meetings on the turmoil, Mr. Bush singled out Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson Jr., saying that he had shown “the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation.”

As he did in New York on Friday, Mr. Bush again projected an optimistic front, though his remarks and his schedule reflected a growing concern about the markets on a day that would otherwise be devoted to the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meetings and lunches.

“One thing is for certain,” Mr. Bush said in brief remarks in the Roosevelt Room. “We’re in challenging times.”

He was surrounded by, among others, Mr. Paulson; the under secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, Robert K. Steel; the director of the National Economic Council, Keith Hennessey, and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Edward P. Lazear.

It was not clear what other steps the White House might be prepared to take, but Mr. Bush’s aides seemed sensitive to the accusation that the government had bailed out Bear Stearns, or at least facilitated a bailout.

“He recognizes that there’s going to be questions in terms of the moral hazards,” the press secretary, Dana M. Perino, said, using a phrase Mr. Paulson used on Monday.

Mr. Bush, however, suggested he would support additional measures. “We obviously will continue to monitor the situation and when need be, will act decisively, in a way that continues to bring order to the financial markets,” he said.

    White House Signals More Steps Are Possible, NYT, 17.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/business/17cnd-bush.html

C.I.A. Secretly Held Qaeda Suspect, Officials Say

March 15, 2008
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday.

The suspect, Muhammad Rahim, is the first Qaeda prisoner in nearly a year who intelligence officials have acknowledged has been in C.I.A. detention. The C.I.A. emptied its secret prisons in the fall of 2006, when it moved 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but made clear that the facilities could be used in the future to house high-level terrorism suspects.

Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he signed an executive order that formally reiterated the C.I.A.’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon.

Mr. Bush used his veto power last weekend to block legislation that would have prohibited the agency from using the techniques, and this week the House of Representatives failed to override the veto.

Military and intelligence officials said that Mr. Rahim was transferred earlier this week to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. In a message to agency employees on Friday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Rahim had been put into the C.I.A. program because of “his past and the continuing threat he presented to American interests.”

Intelligence officials would not say whether the C.I.A. had used any of what it calls an approved list of “enhanced” interrogation techniques against Mr. Rahim during his months in secret detention.

“This detention, like others, was conducted in accordance with U.S. law,” said Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman. He declined to say whether the C.I.A. currently had custody of any other prisoners.

Government officials described Mr. Rahim, an Afghan who has fought battles for two decades, as a Qaeda planner and facilitator who at times in recent years had been a translator for Osama bin Laden.

They said he was captured and detained by local forces last summer in a country they would not name before being transferred to C.I.A. custody. Pakistani newspapers reported last summer that Pakistani operatives arrested Mr. Rahim in Lahore in August.

Before Mr. Rahim, the last prisoner the C.I.A. acknowledged it had detained was Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd held by the agency for six months before being transferred to Guantánamo last April.

In his message to C.I.A. employees on Friday, General Hayden called Mr. Rahim a “tough, seasoned jihadist” with “high-level contacts” who at times had served as a personal translator for Mr. bin Laden. The message said that in 2001, Mr. Rahim helped prepare the Afghan cave complex of Tora Bora as a hideout for Qaeda fighters fleeing the American-led offensive.

According to an American counterterrorism official, Mr. Rahim is in his 40s and is a native of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, a rugged mountain territory that has long been a hive of jihadi activity.

The counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Rahim had attended radical madrasas, or religious schools, in Pakistan.

The Bush administration last month formally charged six Qaeda operatives said to have been involved in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. Five of the six detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, had been in C.I.A. custody until September 2006, when they were among the 14 prisoners moved to Guantánamo.

Military prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty against the six men, government officials have said. During a speech on Friday in London, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said he hoped that the six men would not receive the death penalty. If they were to be executed, he said, “they would see themselves as martyrs.”

Also on Friday, a lawyer representing Majid Khan, who had spent more than three years in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons, briefed Senate Intelligence Committee staff members on her client’s description of his treatment there as torture. The lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the first lawyer to speak to Congress after meeting with a prisoner who was in the C.I.A. program.

The 90-minute meeting was closed, and Ms. Gutierrez said that she could not reveal what Mr. Khan had said about his treatment because the government declared prisoners’ statements to be classified.

Ms. Gutierrez said her testimony was aimed at giving Congress independent information on the C.I.A. program, which she said “is operating criminally, shamefully and dangerously.” C.I.A. officials say all of the agency’s interrogation techniques were lawful at the time they were used.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

    C.I.A. Secretly Held Qaeda Suspect, Officials Say, NYT, 15.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/washington/15detain.html

Avoid Overcorrecting Economy, Bush Warns

March 15, 2008
Filed at 2:11 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday said the government must guard against going too far in trying to fix the troubled economy, cautioning that ''one of the worst things you can do is overcorrect.'' Democrats said Bush was relying on inaction to solve the problem.

Bush, in his weekly radio address, said the recently passed program of tax rebates for families and businesses should begin to lift the economy in the second quarter of the year and have an even stronger impact in the third quarter. But he urged caution about doing more, particularly about the crisis in the housing market where prices are tumbling and home foreclosures have soared to an all-time high.

''If we were to pursue some of the sweeping government solutions that we hear about in Washington, we would make a complicated problem even worse -- and end up hurting far more homeowners than we help,'' the president said.

The economy has surpassed the Iraq war as the No. 1 concern among voters in this presidential election year amid big job losses, soaring fuel costs, a credit crisis and turmoil on Wall Street.

''In the long run, we can be confident that our economy will continue to grow, but in the short run, it is clear that growth has slowed,'' Bush said. He was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains after delivering a speech in New York about the economy and helping raise $1.4 million for the national Republican Party.

Democrats said they would try to strengthen the economy with measures dealing with housing, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

''The president continues to convince himself that inaction is the cure-all for the economic problems hurting hardworking Americans,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a written statement. ''But Democrats know that wait-and-see is not a responsible strategy for an economy that is teetering on the brink of recession.''

''Wages and home values are down,'' Reid said, ''but prices for everything from health care to tuition to energy are up. Just this week, oil and gas prices reached record highs while the value of the dollar reached historic lows. I hope the president, who has been slow to acknowledge this problem, joins us in recognizing how urgently we need a solution.''

Bush said he opposed several measures pending on Capitol Hill to deal with the housing crisis. They included proposals to allocate $400 billion to purchase foreclosed-upon and now-abandoned homes, to change the bankruptcy code to allow judges to adjust mortgage rates and to artificially prop up home prices.

''Many young couples trying to buy their first home have been priced out of the market because of inflated prices,'' the president said. ''The market now is in the process of correcting itself, and delaying that correction would only prolong the problem.''

Bush said his administration has offered steps offering flexibility for refinancing to homeowners with good credit histories yet are having trouble paying their mortgage. He cited other measures which he said would streamline the process for refinancing and modify many mortgages.

He said there were steps Congress could take, as well.

''As we take decisive action, we will keep this in mind: When you are steering a car in a rough patch, one of the worst things you can do is overcorrect,'' the president said.

''That often results in losing control and can end up with the car in a ditch,'' Bush said. ''Steering through a rough patch requires a steady hand on the wheel and your eyes up on the horizon. And that's exactly what we're going to do.''

    Avoid Overcorrecting Economy, Bush Warns, NYT, 15.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Bush Acknowledges Economic Troubles

March 14, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

President Bush made his most striking acknowledgment yet of the country’s economic troubles on Friday, even as he defended his administration’s responses so far and warned against more drastic steps by the government to intervene.

Speaking to the Economic Club of New York at a midtown Manhattan hotel, Mr. Bush said that the economy was now having “a tough time.”

At the same time, however, he compared the government’s reaction to driving through a “rough patch” of road.

“If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know it’s important not to overcorrect,” Mr. Bush said. “If you overcorrect, you end up in a ditch.”

Mr. Bush spoke only moments after the Federal Reserve intervened to help the investment bank Bear Stearns secure financing to stave off collapse. A day earlier Mr. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., announced a series of regulatory steps to tighten rules for credit agencies, mortgage brokers and banks — limited steps that Mr. Bush on Friday said were an appropriate response to the economic turmoil.

“Today’s actions are fasting moving,” he said, “but the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the treasury are on top of them and will take the appropriate steps to promote stability in our markets.”

Mr. Bush seemed more sensitive than usual to the economic news battering the country.

“Interesting moment,” he said as he opened his remarks, appearing to refer to the latest news about Bear Stearns.

Mr. Bush, who only last month said he was unaware of reports suggesting that gasoline prices could reach $4 a gallon, seemed eager both to recognize the worries many Americans face about rising prices, foreclosures, jobs lost to free-trade and investments in American companies by foreign government’s sovereign wealth funds — and to put them at ease.

In the case of the wealth funds, many of them from oil-rich nations, Mr. Bush said that the United States should be confident enough not to succumb to any temptation to block foreign investments. “It’s our money anyway,” he said, drawing laughter.

The administration’s handling of the economy has become an issue that, at least for now, has now overtaken Iraq and even terrorism, threatening to loom large during Mr. Bush’s last year in office.

Even so, he offered few legislative promises and starkly suggested that much of what was happening was part of the natural cycles of market economies. And that relief could come after broader changes that could take years. In the case of gasoline, for example, he said the country needed to find alternative sources of energy. “There’s no quick fix,” he said.

Mr. Bush cited the economic stimulus package that he and Congress adopted last month as an appropriate response to an economic slowdown, saying that the tax rebates and credits would be mailed during the second week of May.

He also cited a series of more modest steps by his administration to address the crisis in mortgage markets. In Washington, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a new one on Friday that would require lenders to make more thorough disclosures of the terms of loans.

But he also rejected more aggressive measures, including ones being considered in Congress to allow state and local governments to buy up abandoned or foreclosed homes and to allow bankruptcy judges to force changes in mortgage terms. Such moves, he said, would be counterproductive.

    Bush Acknowledges Economic Troubles, NYT, 14.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/washington/14cnd-webbush.html?hp

Bush Warns House on Surveillance

March 13, 2008
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — With the House poised to vote today on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”

In clear defiance of the White House, the proposal from House Democratic leaders would not give retroactive legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency program of warrantless wiretapping. Mr. Bush also threatened to veto any such measure, should it reach his desk.

The Senate last month passed a bill that did provide such protection and also broadened government eavesdropping powers.

Using tough language on a subject on which he has been persistent and unswerving, Mr. Bush warned House members that “they should not leave for Easter recess without getting the Senate bill to my desk.”

He argued that failure to pass the Senate language would make it harder to detect emerging terrorist threats.

“Voting for this bill would make our country less safe,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress should stop playing politics with the past and focus on helping us prevent attacks in the future.”

Democrats have accused the president of fear-mongering, saying surveillance can be monitored more carefully without losing its effectiveness.

Administration officials say that the Democrats know that the House version would face probable defeat in the Senate. Mr. Bush has threatened, in any case, to veto such language. But House Democratic leaders have shown themselves more ready than in the past for a fight on national security.

Mr. Bush also argued again that the House Democrats’ approach would unfairly expose the phone companies to lawsuits that could potentially be enormously expensive.

“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.”

Instead of giving the companies blanket immunity, as the Senate would do, the House proposal was understood to give the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable.

But the president said that this approach “could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists” and could lead, he said, to disclosure of state secrets.

“Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas,” Mr. Bush said.

In a statement yesterday, 19 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned the administration’s arguments.

“We have concluded that the administration has not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity as set forth in the Senate bill,” they said.

Some 40 lawsuits are pending in federal courts, charging that by cooperating with the eavesdropping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the phone companies violated their responsibilities to customers and federal privacy laws.

    Bush Warns House on Surveillance, NYT, 13.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/washington/13cnd-fisa.html?hp

Letters

The Torture Veto and America’s Image

March 11, 2008
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Bush Vetoes Bill on C.I.A. Tactics, Affirming Legacy” (front page, March 9):

The torture victims from all over the world whom my colleagues and I care for each day remind us of the brutal reality that is torture and its devastating physical and psychological health consequences.

Methods innocuously referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, exposure to temperature extremes, sexual and cultural humiliation, and prolonged forced standing, which would have been banned under the proposed legislation, should be seen for what they are — torture — and we should not in any way be condoning or using them. The military has already agreed to this.

The president’s veto does not make us or the world safer. To the contrary, it puts civilians living under despotic regimes at greater risk of being tortured, and sends a chilling message to humanity, including to the estimated 400,000 torture survivors now living in the United States.

Allen S. Keller
New York, March 9, 2008

The writer, a medical doctor, is director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture.

•

To the Editor:

President Bush on Saturday vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the C.I.A. from harsh interrogation methods like waterboarding, which makes bound prisoners feel as if they are drowning.

Reputation, like life itself, is a complex affair, difficult to sustain but simple to destroy. Mr. Bush has reduced the moral reputation of the presidency and the country by allowing procedures that violate basic principles upon which our Republic was founded regarding the sanctity of the individual principles that have served as the template for all subsequent elaborations of human rights around the globe.

The political and social movement for recognition of human rights began in earnest in the second half of the 18th century, particularly with the Jean Calas affair in France (1760s): he was broken on the wheel and waterboarded.

Through the emotional reaction to cruel torment and violation of the body, human rights became self-evident. This helped to define the concepts of individual and humanity for Enlightenment thinkers, including Voltaire, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, and for the natural rights in our own Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

America is currently caught in a battle between the competing rhetorics of homeland tribalism and of humanity. Given our singular military and cultural power in today’s world, no less than the future of 250 years of human rights development rests on how this internal American battle is resolved.

Americans sense that this is a fateful election for our Republic; they may not realize how important it is for the world as a whole.

Scott Atran
New York, March 9, 2008

The writer is a research scientist at the John Jay College, New York City, the University of Michigan, and the National Center for Scientific Research in France.

•

To the Editor:

In issuing his veto of the bill prohibiting extreme interrogation techniques (read: torture), President Bush said, “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks.” In fact, he does have one.

He took an oath on the Bible to protect and defend the Constitution. His presidency has been an unending demonstration of how little that pledge matters to him.

His legacy as the worst modern president is now secure. One can only hope that the voters will see through his deceit in November and elect a president who will actually adhere to the oath of office. This must be a central campaign issue for both parties.

Jason Warren
New Paltz, N.Y., March 9, 2008

    The Torture Veto and America’s Image, NYT, 11.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/opinion/l11torture.html

Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy

March 9, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.

Mr. Bush’s veto — the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress — underscored his determination to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the name of fighting terrorism, and to enshrine them into law.

Mr. Bush is fighting with Congress over the expansion of powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American security commitments to Iraq once the United Nations mandate for international forces there expires at the end of the year.

The administration has also moved ahead with the first military tribunals of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite calls to try them in civilian courts.

All are issues that turn on presidential powers. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism. “The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added. “And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army field manual on interrogation, which prohibits physical force against prisoners.

The debate has left the C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, whose officials have testified that harsh interrogation methods are either unnecessary or counterproductive. The agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement to employees after Mr. Bush’s veto defending the program as legal, saying that the Army field manual did not “exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques.”

Democrats, who supported the legislation as part of a larger bill that authorized a vast array of intelligence programs, criticized the veto sharply, but they do not have the votes to override it.

“This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good,” one of its sponsors, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said in a statement on Friday when it became clear that Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto threat. “Yet, he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future. The United States is not well served by this.”

The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.

“He has rejected the Army field manual’s recognition that such horrific tactics elicit unreliable information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine our counterinsurgency efforts,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. Democrats vowed to raise the matter again.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent of torture, often referring to his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case he supported the administration’s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did Saturday that the legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence.

Mr. Bush said the agency should not be bound by rules written for soldiers in combat, as opposed to highly trained experts dealing with hardened terrorists. The bill’s supporters countered that it would have banned only a handful of techniques whose effectiveness was in dispute in any case.

The administration has also said that waterboarding is no longer in use, though officials acknowledged last month that it had been used in three instances before the middle of 2003, including against Mr. Mohammed. Officials have left vague the question of whether it could be authorized again.

Mr. Bush said, as he had previously, that information from the C.I.A.’s interrogations had averted terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a Marine camp in Djibouti; the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; Library Tower in Los Angeles; and passenger planes from Britain. He maintained that the techniques involved — the exact nature of which remained classified — were “safe and lawful.”

“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” he said.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, disputed that assertion on Saturday. “As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack,” he said in a statement.

The handling of detainees since 2001 has dogged the administration politically, but Mr. Bush and his aides have barely conceded any ground to critics, even in the face of legal challenges, as happened with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or with federal wiretapping conducted without warrants.

At the core of the administration’s position is a conviction that the executive branch must have unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting war.

Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush’s actions were consistent with his efforts to expand executive power and to protect the results of those efforts. Some, he said, could easily be undone — with a Democratic president signing a bill like the one he vetoed Saturday, for example — but the more Mr. Bush accomplished now, the more difficult that would be. “Every administration is concerned with protecting the power of the presidency,” he said. “This president has done that with a lot more vigor.”

Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been holding hearings on the administration’s negotiations with Iraq over the legal status of American troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush’s presidency. He said the administration had rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to Congress for approval, and had largely succeeded.

“They’re excellent at manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should assert itself, members expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough enough on terrorism,” he said. “My view is history is going to judge us all.”

 

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

    Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy, NYT, 9.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html?hp

Bush Vetoes Bill That Would Limit Interrogations

March 8, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — Despite Congressional efforts to force a change in course, President Bush further cemented his legacy of establishing strong executive powers Saturday, giving the Central Intelligence Agency broad latitude to use harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists that are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using such interrogation methods, which include waterboarding, a technique that suffocates a restrained prisoner and has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad.

Mr. Bush’s veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations with Congress on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Bush announced the veto in his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. In his remarks, he unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future.

“Because the danger remains,” he said, referring to the threat from Al Qaeda, “we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists.”

Mr. Bush’s veto — only the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the last 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress — underscored his determination to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the war on terror and to cement them into law before he steps down.

Mr. Bush is now fighting with Congress over the expansion of powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American security commitments to Iraq once the United Nations mandate for the international forces there expires at the end of the year.

The administration has also moved ahead with the first military tribunals of those detained at Guantánamo, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, despite calls to try suspects in civilian courts.

All are issues that turn on presidential powers and all will define Mr. Bush’s legacy for decades to come. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism.

“The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made on Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

“We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added. “And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation, which prohibits using physical force against prisoners.

Democrats, who supported the legislation as part of a larger bill that authorized a vast array of intelligence programs, criticized the veto sharply, but they do not have the votes to override it.

“This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good,” one of its sponsors, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, said in a statement on Friday evening when it became clear Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto threat. “Yet, he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future. The United States is not well-served by this.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said it would be “one of the most shameful acts of his presidency.” And the Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.

“He has rejected the Army field manual’s recognition that such horrific tactics elicit unreliable information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine our counterinsurgency efforts,” Mr. Reid said in a statement.

Democrats vowed to raise the matter again, and the debate could spill into the presidential campaign, which some Republicans suspect was a motive for the Democrats to push the issue.

Senator John McCain, now the Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent of torture from his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case, however, he supported the administration’s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did on Saturday that legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence.

Mr. Bush said that the agency should not be bound by rules written for soldiers in combat, as opposed to highly trained experts dealing with hardened terrorists. The bill’s supporters countered that the legislation would have banned only a handful of techniques whose effective was in dispute in any case.

The administration has also said that waterboarding is no longer in use, though officials acknowledged last month that it had been used in three instances before the middle of 2003, including against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Officials, however, have left vague the question of whether it could be authorized again in extraordinary circumstances.

Mr. Bush asserted, as he has previously, that information from the C.I.A.’s interrogations had averted terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a Marine camp in Djibouti, the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Library Tower in Los Angeles and passenger planes from Britain. And he maintained that the techniques involved the exact nature of which remains classified as secret — were “safe and lawful.”

“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” Mr. Bush said.

The handling of detainees since 2001 has dogged the administration politically, but Mr. Bush and his aides have barely conceded any ground to critics, even in the face of legal challenges, as happened with the prisoners in Guantánamo or the warrant-less wiretapping.

    Bush Vetoes Bill That Would Limit Interrogations, NYT, 8.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/washington/08cnd-policy.html?hp

Text: Bush on Veto of Intelligence Bill

March 8, 2008
The New York Times
 

Following is the text of President Bush’s radio address to the nation for Saturday, as released by the White House.

Good morning. This week, I addressed the Department of Homeland Security on its fifth anniversary and thanked the men and women who work tirelessly to keep us safe. Because of their hard work, and the efforts of many across all levels of government, we have not suffered another attack on our soil since September the 11th, 2001.

This is not for a lack of effort on the part of the enemy. Al Qaeda remains determined to attack America again. Two years ago, Osama bin Laden warned the American people, “Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished.” Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists.

Unfortunately, Congress recently sent me an intelligence authorization bill that would diminish these vital tools. So today, I vetoed it. And here is why:

The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror — the C.I.A. program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us prevent a number of attacks. The program helped us stop a plot to strike a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, and a plot to crash passenger planes into Heathrow Airport or buildings in downtown London. And it has helped us understand Al Qaeda’s structure and financing and communications and logistics. Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland.

The main reason this program has been effective is that it allows the C.I.A. to use specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most dangerous terrorists under careful supervision. The bill Congress sent me would deprive the C.I.A. of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques. Instead, it would restrict the C.I.A.’s range of acceptable interrogation methods to those provided in the Army field manual. The procedures in this manual were designed for use by soldiers questioning lawful combatants captured on the battlefield. They were not intended for intelligence professionals trained to question hardened terrorists.

Limiting the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods to those in the Army field manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet. Shortly after 9/11, we learned that key Al Qaeda operatives had been trained to resist the methods outlined in the manual. And this is why we created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous Al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland. The best source of information about terrorist attacks is the terrorists themselves. If we were to shut down this program and restrict the C.I.A. to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior Al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives.

The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we’ve developed to question the world’s most dangerous and violent terrorists. This would end an effective program that Congress authorized just over a year ago.

The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance. It is the result of good policies and the determined efforts of individuals carrying them out. We owe these individuals our thanks, and we owe them the authorities they need to do their jobs effectively.

We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks. And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.

Thank you for listening.

    Text: Bush on Veto of Intelligence Bill, NYT, 8.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/washington/08cnd-ptext.html

Bush Calls Surveillance Bill an ‘Urgent Priority’

February 28, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT and BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — Using some of his toughest language in weeks, President Bush prodded Congress on Thursday to pass his preferred version of surveillance legislation, asserting that every day of delay could put the country in danger.

Mr. Bush said again that renewing the surveillance legislation is “a very urgent priority,” and that it must include controversial provisions that would shield telecommunications companies from wholesale lawsuits over their assistance in monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of suspected terrorists without warrants.

Failure to give the legal protection to the telecom companies would not only be unwise and dangerous policy but plain unfair, the president said at a White House news conference. The companies were told by government leaders after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, “that their assistance was legal and vital to national security,” the president said. “Allowing these lawsuits to proceed would be unfair.”

The Senate passed a surveillance bill to the president’s liking on Feb. 12, by a hefty margin. The chamber rejected a series of amendments that would have imposed greater civil-liberties checks on government surveillance powers, and it afforded legal protection to the telecom companies.

But the House has resisting passing that bill, prompting a heated debate over the proper balance between individual liberties and national security in the age of terrorism. If the final legislation does not include protection for the companies, a wave of lawsuits could reveal how the United States conducts surveillance “and give Al Qaeda and others a road map as to how to avoid surveillance,” Mr. Bush said.

Without the cooperation of private companies, “we cannot protect our country from terrorist attack,” the president declared, adding that the dispute was “not a partisan issue.”

Although there was nothing really new in the stance the president took, he adopted unusually robust language — saying, for instance, that it was “dangerous, just dangerous” for the legislation to be delayed, and pledging to continue speaking out about the issue until the American people understand and, by implication, the lawmakers follow the will of their constituents.

Mr. Bush also used one of his favorite themes, that of the trial lawyer who salivates at the money to be made through frivolous lawsuits. Perhaps, he said, these lawyers “see a gravy train” if they can sue the deep-pockets telecom companies.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, had a rebuttal ready while the president was still speaking.

“If the President had not rejected an extension of current law and refused to negotiate with Congress, it is very likely that the new FISA bill could already be law today,” the senator said, using the acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “It is disingenuous for the president to claim the country is less safe when he is the one responsible for holding up the legislative process.”

Mr. Bush used the news conference to reiterate several other long-held positions: The “temporary” tax cuts set to expire over the next few years, he said, should be made permanent to bolster the economy, which he said was not slowing down but was not skidding into recession. Big new taxes on the major oil companies would backfire, driving up energy costs, he said.

And the president showed no interest in getting acquainted with Raúl Castro, whom he described as just an extension of his brother Fidel, whose half-century tenure as president of Cuba has kept the island in isolation and poverty.

    Bush Calls Surveillance Bill an ‘Urgent Priority’, NYT, 28.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/washington/28cnd-bush.html?hp

Bush Sees No Recession Yet

February 28, 2008
Filed at 10:30 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Thursday that the country is not headed into a recession and, despite expressing concern about slowing economic growth, rejected for now any additional stimulus efforts.

''We've acted robustly,'' he said.

''We'll see the effects of this pro-growth package,'' Bush told reporters at a White House news conference. ''I know there's a lot of, here in Washington people are trying to -- stimulus package two -- and all that stuff. Why don't we let stimulus package one, which seemed like a good idea at the time, have a chance to kick in?''

Bush's view of the economy was decidely rosier than that of many economists, who say the country is nearing recession territory or may already be there.

The centerpiece of government efforts to brace the wobbly economy is a package Congress passed and Bush signed last month. It will rush rebates ranging from $300 to $1,200 to millions of people and give tax incentives to businesses.

Bush also used his news conference to press Congress to give telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government eavesdrop after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He continued a near-daily effort to prod lawmakers into passing his version of a law to make it easier for the government to conduct domestic eavesdropping on suspected terrorists' phone calls and e-mails. He says the country is in more danger now that a temporary surveillance law has expired.

The president and Congress are in a showdown over Bush's demand on the immunity issue.

Bush said the companies helped the government after being told ''that their assistance was legal and vital to national security.'' ''Allowing these lawsuits to proceed would be unfair,'' he said.

More important, Bush added, ''the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance and it would give al Qaida and others a roadmap as to how to avoid the surveillance.''

On another issue, Bush said that Turkey's offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq should be limited -- and should end as soon as possible. The ongoing fighting has put the United States in a touchy position, as it is close allies with both Iraq and Turkey, and a long offensive along the border could jeopardize security in Iraq just as the U.S. is trying to stabilize the war-wracked country.

''It should not be long-lasting,'' Bush said. ''The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objective and get out.''

He also said, though, that it is in no one's interest for the PKK to have safe havens.

    Bush Sees No Recession Yet, NYT, 28.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html?hp

Bush Appeals to Justices on Detainees Case

February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to review an appeals court decision that it said had created a “serious threat to national security” by requiring the government to supply extensive evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantánamo detainees as enemy combatants.

The administration asked the court to choose one of two options: either accept its appeal for expedited review, with arguments taking place in May and a decision to come in the current term, or defer action until the justices decide the case on the rights of the Guantánamo prisoners that is currently before them.

Under either option, the administration is seeking a stay of the lower court’s ruling, which it characterized as “serious legal error.”

The ruling, issued last July by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, became final on Feb. 1 when the full appeals court rejected the administration’s request for reconsideration by a vote of 5 to 5.

On Wednesday, the appeals court granted a stay until Feb. 21 to permit the administration to seek relief in the Supreme Court.

The new case, Gates v. Bismullah, and the case already pending before the Supreme Court, Boumediene v. Bush, deal with separate but intertwined aspects of the legal system Congress has created to deal with the Guantánamo prisoners. The pending case questions whether Congress had the constitutional authority to bar the federal courts from hearing petitions for habeas corpus filed on behalf of those who are challenging their open-ended confinement.

The new case deals with the method Congress established for detainees to contest their designation, by military panels called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, as enemy combatants. These designations may be appealed to the District of Columbia Circuit. The question is what evidence the government must present to the appeals court to defend the tribunal’s conclusion.

The appeals court ruled that the government must provide “all the information” that the tribunal was “authorized to obtain and consider,” regardless of whether the tribunal actually did consider the evidence. When the government argued before the appeals court that it had not preserved evidence that it did not present to the tribunals, the judges’ response was that the government in that case was obliged to convene new tribunals.

The decision will require “an enormous outlay of government resources” and “impose extraordinary compliance burdens,” the administration told the Supreme Court on Thursday. It added that it should not have to undertake this task at this point, because the pending Boumediene case “will almost certainly directly impact this case” and might “change the scope of the government’s task.”

If the Supreme Court rules in the Boumediene case that the prisoners do have a basic right to habeas corpus, the justices must then decide whether the appeals process at issue in the new case serves as a satisfactory alternative to a formal habeas corpus proceeding. The detainees’ lawyers have argued vigorously that it does not. The answer to that question, in turn, may well depend on what the appeals process actually consists of, which is the question in the new case.

    Bush Appeals to Justices on Detainees Case, NYT, 15.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/washington/15scotus.html

Bush Presses House to Approve Bill on Surveillance

February 13, 2008
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — President Bush strongly urged the House of Representatives on Wednesday to quickly approve a surveillance bill passed by the Senate Tuesday evening, saying he would not agree to a further extension of the current eavesdropping law.

The president effectively gave the House a deadline to act, since the current authority to intercept telephone conversations or electronic communications expires at midnight on Saturday.

“There is no reason why Republicans and Democrats in the House cannot pass the bill immediately,” he said in comments made at the White House, adding that the failure to do so “will jeopardize the security of our citizens.”

The president’s remarks came the morning after the Senate handed the White House a major victory by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

The immunity for the phone companies is the key difference between the Senate bill and the one passed by the House last year. The president said that without that protection, American telecommunications companies would face lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars. Without the protection, he said, “they won’t participate, they won’t help us.”

“Liability protection is critical to securing the private sector’s cooperation with our intelligence efforts,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush praised the Senate version, saying, “The Senate has passed a good bill and it has shown that protecting our nation is not a partisan issue.”

On Tuesday, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve the legislation, which the White House had been pushing for months.

The outcome in the Senate amounted, in effect, to a broader proxy vote in support of Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program. The wide-ranging debate before the final vote presaged discussion that will play out this year in the presidential and Congressional elections on other issues testing the president’s wartime authority, including secret detentions, torture and Iraq war financing.

Republicans hailed the reworking of the surveillance law as essential to protecting national security, but some Democrats and many liberal advocacy groups saw the outcome as another example of the Democrats’ fears of being branded weak on terrorism.

“Some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee and who had unsuccessfully pushed a much more restrictive set of surveillance measures.

Among the presidential contenders, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, voted in favor of the final measure, while the two Democrats, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, did not vote. Mr. Obama did oppose immunity on a key earlier motion to end debate. Mrs. Clinton, campaigning in Texas, issued a statement saying she would have voted to oppose the final measure.

The measure extends, for at least six years, many of the broad new surveillance powers that Congress hastily approved last August just before its summer recess. Intelligence officials said court rulings had left dangerous gaps in their ability to intercept terrorist communications.

The bill, allows the government to eavesdrop on large bundles of foreign-based communications on its own authority so long as Americans are not the targets. A secret intelligence court, which traditionally has issued individual warrants before wiretapping began, would review the procedures set up by the executive branch only after the fact to determine whether there were abuses involving Americans.

“This is a dramatic restructuring” of surveillance law, said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department intelligence lawyer who represents several telecommunication companies. “And the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets.”

The Senate plan also adds the provision that was considered critical by the White House: shielding phone companies from legal liability. That program allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

AT&T and other major phone companies are facing some 40 lawsuits from customers who claim their actions were illegal. The Bush administration maintains that if the suits are allowed to continue in court, they could bankrupt the companies and discourage them from cooperating in future intelligence operations.

Democratic opponents, led by Senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, have argued that the plan effectively rewarded phone companies by providing them with legal insulation for actions that violated longstanding law and their own privacy obligations to their customers. But immunity supporters said the phone carriers acted out of patriotism after the Sept. 11 attacks in complying with what they believed in good faith was a legally binding order from the president.

“This, I believe, is the right way to go for the security of the nation,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the intelligence committee. His support for the plan, after intense negotiations with the White House and his Republican colleagues, was considered critical to its passage but drew criticism from civil liberties groups because of $42,000 in contributions that Mr. Rockefeller received last year from AT&T and Verizon executives.


John Holusha contributed reporting from New York and Brian Knowlton and Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bush Presses House to Approve Bill on Surveillance, NYT, 13.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/washington/13cnd-telcom.html?hp

Bush calls nooses and lynch threats deeply offensive

Tue Feb 12, 2008
4:33pm EST
Reuters
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush condemned as "deeply offensive" on Tuesday a spate of incidents involving the display of hangman's nooses, a potent symbol of racist lynchings and hatred of blacks in the United States.

Bush said there was still a long way to go for the country to unite on the issue of race.

"As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive," Bush said at a White House celebration of African-American history month. "They are wrong. And they have no place in America today."

Bush's remarks about race came as the U.S. capital and neighboring Virginia and Maryland held primary elections in which Democrats were deciding whether Sen. Barack Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, who would be the first woman to hold the office, should be the party's nominee in the November election.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there had been more than 70 reports of incidents involving nooses since December 2006.

One high-profile incident earlier that year focused nationwide attention on Jena, Louisiana, where three nooses were found hanging from a tree at a high school.

Six black students were later charged with assaulting a white student at the school, sparking civil rights leaders to lead national protest marches and offer support for those facing the criminal charges.

A noose was found on the door of a black professor at Columbia University in New York, and two were found on the campus of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

The trend has even extended more recently into the golf world, when an anchor for the Golf Channel tried to joke that players bidding to challenge champion Tiger Woods, who is black, might have to "lynch him in a back alley." Shortly after that, Golfweek magazine fired an editor for depicting a noose on a cover last month for a story on the Woods incident.

Bush said some Americans fail to fully understand why the sight of a noose of a lynching remark sparks outrage.

"For generations of African-Americans, the noose was more than a tool of murder. It was a tool of intimidation that conveyed a sense of powerlessness to millions," he said.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

    Bush calls nooses and lynch threats deeply offensive, NYT, 12.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1227217020080212

Bush acknowledges economic uncertainty

11 February 2008
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, acknowledging that the country is suffering through a period of economic uncertainty, called on Congress Monday to do more to help people and businesses hurt by the housing slump and credit crunch.

In a brief introduction to his annual economic report, Bush said the $168 billion economic rescue package passed by Congress last week will keep "our economy growing and our people working."

Still, others steps need to be taken to strengthen the economy, he said. The president exhorted lawmakers to make his tax cut permanent and do more to help struggling homeowners at risk of losing their houses.

Bush is expected later this week to sign an economic stimulus package that includes rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most taxpayers and $300 checks to disabled veterans, the elderly and other low-income people. "Money will be going directly to American workers and families and individuals," he said.

In addition, the package includes tax breaks for businesses and would take some steps to boost the ailing housing market.

To that end, the legislation would temporarily raise to $729,750 the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans and the cap on loans that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy. Raising that cap on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should provide relief in the market for "jumbo" mortgages — those exceeding $417,000. The credit crunch hit that market hard, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for people to get those loans. And, that has plunged the housing market even deeper into turmoil.

Bush urged Congress to pass additional legislation that would revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and modernize the Depression-era Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages for low- and middle-income borrowers. The president also said Congress should approve legislation allowing state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to help squeezed homeowners refinance their mortgages.

These and other steps could help struggling homeowners "weather turbulent times in the market," Bush said.

Describing the report to reporters, Bush said that the stimulus plan is "going to help deal with the uncertainties." As for the broader economic assessment, he said that it indicates "our economy is structurally sound in the long term and that we're dealing with uncertainties in the short term." The question, Bush added, is what can be done about it.

Fallout from the housing bust and harder-to-get credit has catapulted home foreclosures to record highs, has forced financial companies to rack up multibillion-dollar losses in bad mortgage investment, has rocked Wall Street and has dealt a powerful blow to the national economy.

The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of 2007, growing at a pace of just 0.6%. The odds of a recession have grown considerably over the last year, and an increasing number of analysts believe the economy may actually be shrinking now.

"Our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty, and there are heightened risks to our near-term economic growth," Bush said in his economic report to Congress. He said the stimulus package should "insure against those risks."

The administration is hopeful the country will skirt a recession. The country's last recession was in 2001, shortly after Bush first took office.

The White House did not change its economic forecasts for this year and next, which were previewed in November. The administration is still predicting the economy will grow by 2.7% this year, as measured from the fourth quarter of this year from the fourth quarter of last year. That would mark a slight improvement from the 2.5% growth logged in 2007 but would still be considered a sluggish pace. The economy should pick up strength next year, growing by 3%.

The unemployment rate for this year and next should climb to 4.9%, according to the White House's projections. The jobless rate last year was 4.6%.

The big worry among economists is that consumers and businesses will hunker down more this year, throwing the economy into a tailspin.

The president's economic report acknowledged the danger.

"The tightening of credit standards raises the possibility that spending by businesses and consumers could be restrained in the future," according to the report. "Declines in household wealth may also limit consumer spending," it said.

Recent reports from major retailers showed that people tightened their belts. Economists say some homeowners have gotten more cautious in their spending as they have watched their single biggest asset — the value of their home — get dragged down by the housing slump. Moreover, high energy prices have also weighed on shoppers.

Bush again renewed his campaign for Congress to make his tax cuts permanent. "Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief that we have delivered over the past seven years will be taken away and 116 million American taxpayers will see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800," the president said.

And, he made a fresh call for Congress to approve pending free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Bush said those deals would expand sales opportunities for U.S. companies, thus providing "greater access for our exports and supporting good jobs for American workers."

    Bush acknowledges economic uncertainty, UT, 11.2.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-11-bush-economy_N.htm

From Bush, Foe of Earmarks, Similar Items

February 10, 2008
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — President Bush often denounces the propensity of Congress to earmark money for pet projects. But in his new budget, Mr. Bush has requested money for thousands of similar projects.

He asked for money to build fish hatcheries, eradicate agricultural pests, conduct research, pave highways, dredge harbors and perform many other specific local tasks.

The details are buried deep in the president’s budget, just as most Congressional earmarks are buried in obscure committee reports that accompany spending bills.

Thus, for example, the president requested $330 million to deal with plant pests like the emerald ash borer, the light brown apple moth and the sirex woodwasp. He sought $800,000 for the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri and $1.5 million for a waterway named in honor of former Senator J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat.

At the same time, Mr. Bush requested $894,000 for an air traffic control tower in Kalamazoo, Mich.; $12 million for a parachute repair shop at the American air base in Aviano, Italy; and $6.5 million for research in Wyoming on the “fundamental properties of asphalt.”

He sought $3 million for a forest conservation project in Minnesota, $2.1 million for a neutrino detector at the South Pole and $28 million for General Electric and Siemens to do research on hydrogen-fuel turbines.

The projects, itemized in thousands of pages of budget documents submitted last week to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, show that the debate over earmarks is much more complex than the “all or nothing” choice usually presented to the public. The president and Congress both want to direct money to specific projects, but often disagree over the merits of particular items.

The White House contends that when the president requests money for a project, it has gone through a rigorous review — by the agency, the White House or both — using objective criteria.

Congressional leaders said they would focus more closely on items requested by the president this year. “The executive branch should be held accountable for its own earmark practices,” said the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats agreed that “the large number of presidential earmarks deserve the same scrutiny and restraint” as those that originated in Congress.

Mr. Bush has often derided Congressional earmarks as “special interest items” that waste taxpayer money and undermine trust in government. Congress, he said, included more than 11,700 earmarks totaling almost $17 billion in spending bills for the current fiscal year.

But some of those earmarks were similar or identical to ones included in the 2009 budget that Mr. Bush sent Congress last week. For example, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, obtained an earmark of $1.5 million last year to deal with the emerald ash borer, a beetle that attacks trees, lawns and crops. Mr. Bush now wants more money to fight that insect.

A similar pattern is evident at the Bureau of Reclamation, an Interior Department agency that provides water and power in 17 states. Congress and the White House both support construction of a huge water project known as Mni Wiconi, which would deliver water from the Missouri River to rural South Dakota.

At the behest of South Dakota lawmakers, Congress earmarked $38 million for the project last year. In its budget justification for 2009, the bureau requests $779 million for more than 150 specific projects, including $26 million more for the one in South Dakota.

Similarly, the Bush administration is requesting money for a water project near the Nueces River in South Texas — the same project that benefited from a bipartisan Congressional earmark last year.

In effect, the president accepted some Congressional earmarks as worthy of continued federal support. But he rejected many more and sought no money for them in 2009.

The White House defines “earmarks” in a way that applies only to projects designated by Congress, not to those requested by the administration.

“Earmarks,” as defined by the White House, “are funds provided by Congress for projects or programs where the Congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the executive branch to properly manage funds.”

Sean M. Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said: “The administration’s budget proposals are available for any taxpayer to see. We submit a justification for each item. That’s very different from what happens on Capitol Hill, where items are dropped into legislation at the last minute, for no rhyme or reason other than the seniority of a member of Congress.”

Democrats sometimes say the Bush administration has approved projects to help its political allies, but such assertions are hard to prove. In the 2004 campaign, administration officials raced around the country handing out money for federal programs, including some that Mr. Bush had tried to cut or eliminate.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is winning support with a different tactic. Mr. McCain regularly receives cheers and applause when he declares, “I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it.”

It is virtually impossible to determine the dollar value of items requested by the president because they are scattered through voluminous budget documents prepared by dozens of federal offices and agencies, and the administration does not publish comprehensive lists, as Congress did last year for the first time.

Administration officials say that many projects in the president’s budget — though they may look like Congressional earmarks — were evaluated as part of a coherent program to address some national need, like pest eradication or flood control.

Mr. Bush’s budget says, for example, that the Army Corps of Engineers uses “performance-based guidelines” to set priorities for navigation and flood control projects, ensuring that benefits will outweigh costs.

But the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that the corps’s studies of proposed projects were “fraught with errors, mistakes and miscalculations” that tended to overstate the benefits and understate the costs.

When Transportation Department officials unveiled their 2009 budget this week, they boasted of more than two dozen new projects, and they said they had carefully weighed factors like “benefits per passenger mile.”

The president requested $125,000 for a new rapid bus line on Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Mo., and $11 million for bus-only lanes along parts of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

“We are putting tax dollars where they will move the greatest number of people, so taxpayers get a good return on their investment,” said James S. Simpson, administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.

Criticism of earmarks has been a constant theme in the Bush administration. Within three months of taking office, Mr. Bush asked Congress to kill many of the earmarks enacted into law at the end of the Clinton administration.

In his State of the Union address last year, Mr. Bush complained that 90 percent of Congressional earmarks were concealed in committee reports.

“You didn’t vote them into law,” Mr. Bush told Congress. “I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they’re treated as if they have the force of law.”

On Jan. 29, Mr. Bush ordered federal officials to “ignore any future earmark that is not voted on and included in a law approved by Congress.”

The president submits legislative language to Congress for every appropriations bill, but most of his project requests are not found there. They are buried in thick documents that carry titles like “Budget Estimates” or “Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees.”

    From Bush, Foe of Earmarks, Similar Items, NYT, 10.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/washington/10earmark.html?hp

Proposed Military Spending Is Highest Since WWII

February 4, 2008
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — As Congress and the public focus on more than $600 billion already approved in supplemental budgets to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for counterterrorism operations, the Bush administration has with little notice approached a landmark in military spending.

The Pentagon on Monday will unveil its proposed 2009 budget of $515.4 billion. If it is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II.

That new Defense Department budget proposal, which is to pay for the standard operations of the Pentagon and the military but does not include supplemental spending on the war efforts or on nuclear weapons, is an increase in real terms of about 5 percent over this year.

Overall since coming to office, the administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent, a figure sure to be noted in coming budget battles as the American economy seems headed downward and government social spending is strained, especially by health-care costs.

Still, the nation’s economy has grown faster than the level of military spending, and even the current colossal Pentagon budgets for regular operations and the war efforts consume a smaller portion of gross domestic product than in previous conflicts.

About 14 percent of the national economy was spent on the military during the Korean War, and about 9 percent during the war in Vietnam. By comparison, when the current base Pentagon budget, nuclear weapons and supplemental war costs are combined, they total just over 4 percent of the current economy, according to budget experts. The base Pentagon spending alone is about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product.

“The Bush administration’s 2009 defense request follows the continuously ascending path of military outlays the president embraced at the beginning of his tenure,” said Loren Thompson, a budget and procurement expert at the Lexington Institute, a policy research center. “However, the 2009 request may be the peak for defense spending.”

Pentagon and military officials acknowledge the considerable commitment of money that will be required for continuing the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as efforts to increase the size of the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations forces, to replace weapons worn out in the desert and to assure “quality of life” for those in uniform so they will remain in the military.

Yet those demands for money do not even include the price of refocusing the military’s attention beyond the current wars to prepare for other challenges.

Senior Pentagon civilians and the top generals and admirals do not deny the challenge of sustaining military spending, and they acknowledge that Congress and the American people may turn inward after Iraq.

“I believe that we need to have a broad public discussion about what we should spend on defense,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Admiral Mullen have said military spending should not drop below 4 percent of the national economy. “I really do believe this 4 percent floor is important,” Admiral Mullen said. “It’s really important, given the world we’re living in, given the threats that we see out there, the risks that are, in fact, global, not just in the Middle East.”

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Gates and the senior Pentagon leadership were well aware that the large emergency spending bills for the war, over and above the Pentagon base budget, would at some point come to an end.

“The secretary believes that whenever we transition away from war supplementals, the Congress should dedicate 4 percent of our G.D.P. to funding national security,” Mr. Morrell said. “That is what he believes to be a reasonable price to stay free and protect our interests around the world.”

No weapons programs are canceled in the new Pentagon budget, officials said; in fact, steadily increasing base defense budgets and the large war-fighting supplemental spending packages have made it easier for the Pentagon to avoid some tough calls on where to trim.

“But I think it’s doubtful the nation will sustain this level of defense spending,” said Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The 2009 military spending proposal will be the 11th year of continuous increases in the base military budget, he added.

War-fighting supplement spending measures are outside the base Pentagon budget, an issue that has angered some in Congress. Pentagon officials have proposed a $70 billion special war budget just to carry on operations from Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, into the early months of the next presidency.

Another supplemental spending proposal is expected before October, but after Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, reports to Congress on his recommendations for troop levels through the end of 2008.

Any budget proposal is more than just a list of personnel costs and weapons to be purchased, as it lays out the building blocks of military strategy. Democrats vow to scrutinize the budget, the last by this president.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who visited Iraq again last month, said that expanding the ground force as proposed in the new budget was an important step to relieve pressure on the Army and Marine Corps — one he would support even though he said it came too late.

Mr. Reed, a Democrat and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, said demands of the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raised questions on whether troops were receiving sufficient training, and were instead surrendering skills across a broader range of combat missions.

“It’s going to require a rebalancing,” he said. “It’s going to require budget decisions that’ll be very difficult.”

    Proposed Military Spending Is Highest Since WWII, NYT, 4.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/washington/04military.html?ref=washington

Bush Unveils $3.1 Trillion Spending Plan

February 4, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON — President Bush submitted a federal budget of $3.1 trillion on Monday, declaring that the spending plan would keep the United States safe and prosperous and, despite the astronomical numbers, adhere to his principle of letting Americans keep as much of their own money as possible.

“Thanks to the hard work of the American people and spending discipline in Washington, we are now on a path to balance the budget by 2012,” the president said in an introductory message. “Our formula for achieving a balanced budget is simple: Create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low, and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all.”

The spending package for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 contained no big surprises, especially since its key elements had already been reported in detail in recent days. The Pentagon’s proposed budget, for instance, is $515.4 billion, meaning that military spending would be the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. And the White House’s plans for trimming Medicare and Medicaid have also been previewed.

Whether the president’s vision will become reality is by no means clear, given the Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress and Mr. Bush’s lame-duck status as the country looks toward the election of the next president in November. Democrats are likely to push for increased spending on social programs, and fewer tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals.

Mr. Bush’s proposed budget, the first in the nation’s history to exceed $3 trillion, foresees near-record deficits just ahead — $410 billion in the current fiscal year, on spending of $2.9 trillion, and $407 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 — before the budget would come into balance in 2012.

But the total federal debt held by the public — that is, the accumulated total of all federal borrowing — has grown substantially in recent years. It was $3.3 trillion in 2001, when President Bush took office, and is expected to climb to $5.4 trillion this year and $5.9 trillion in 2009, according to budget documents issued by the White House on Monday. As a share of the economy, federal debt held by the public is expected to reach 39 percent of the gross domestic product in 2009, up from 33 percent in 2001.

Democrats reacted so vehemently to the president’s proposals and predictions that it seemed as if they and the president were talking about two different documents. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, issued a statement saying that the budget was “fiscally irresponsible and highly deceptive, hiding the costs of the war in Iraq while increasing our skyrocketing debt.”

“President Bush’s fiscal policies are the worst in our nation’s history — he has turned record surpluses into record deficits — and this budget is more of the same,” Mr. Reid said.

And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the budget calls for “more deficit-financed war spending, more deficit-financed tax cuts tilted to the benefit the wealthiest,” the Associated Press reported.

“Today’s budget bears all the hallmarks of the Bush legacy,” Representative John Spratt, the South Carolina Democrat who heads the House Budget Committee, told the A.P.

At first glance, the outlines of the budget debate appeared to mirror the situation in 2000, when President Clinton was a lame duck, the country was focused on the presidential election and the proposed budget for the next fiscal year was labeled a non-starter before the telephone book-sized budget documents even arrived at the Capitol.

But things were really much different in 2000. There was talk then about what the country would do with all its surplus money, given the booming economy and the demise of the Soviet Union, which was supposed to reduce military spending in the long run.

Then the dot-com bubble burst, heralding a recession. The Sept. 11 attacks touched off new spending for a new kind of war, and the campaigns in Afghanistan and especially Iraq began consuming enormous amounts of money.

One other difference: back in 2000, paper copies of the budget were distributed. On Monday, to save money, the document was simply posted on line (at www.budget.gov ).
 

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

    Bush Unveils $3.1 Trillion Spending Plan, NYT, 4.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/washington/04cnd-budget.html?hp

Editorial

Secrets and Rights

February 2, 2008
The New York Times
 

President Bush’s excesses in the name of fighting terrorism are legion. To avoid accountability, his administration has repeatedly sought early dismissal of lawsuits that might finally expose government misconduct, brandishing flimsy claims that going forward would put national security secrets at risk.

The courts have been far too willing to go along. In cases involving serious allegations of kidnapping, torture and unlawful domestic eavesdropping, judges have blocked plaintiffs from pursuing their claims without taking a hard look at the government’s basis for invoking the so-called state secrets privilege: its insistence that revealing certain documents or other evidence would endanger the nation’s security.

As a result, victims of serious abuse have been denied justice, fundamental rights have been violated and the constitutional system of checks and balances has been grievously undermined.

Congress — which has allowed itself to be bullied on national security issues for far too long — may now be ready to push back. The House and Senate are developing legislation that would give victims fair access to the courts and make it harder for the government to hide illegal or embarrassing conduct behind such unsupported claims.

Last week, Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, jointly introduced the State Secrets Protection Act. The measure would require judges to examine the actual documents or other evidence for which the state secrets privilege is invoked, rather than relying on government affidavits asserting that the evidence is too sensitive to be publicly disclosed. Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and an important supporter of the reform, has scheduled a hearing on the bill for Feb. 13. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, expects to introduce a similar measure in the House.

Of course, legitimate secrets need to be protected, and the legislation contains safeguards to ensure that.

To allow cases to go forward, the bill gives judges the authority to order the government to provide unclassified or redacted substitutes. It also gives those making claims against the government a chance to make a preliminary case using evidence that they have gathered on their own.

In October, the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to rein in the administration’s abuse of state secrets claims and establish new procedures for dealing with potentially sensitive evidence.

The justices declined to take up the case of Khaled el-Masri, an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the administration’s extraordinary rendition program. Lower federal courts had dismissed Mr. Masri’s civil lawsuit, reflexively bowing to the administration’s claim that proceeding would compromise national security.

Since the Supreme Court has abdicated its responsibility, Congress must now act. Too many laws have been violated, and too many Americans and others have been harmed under a phony claim of national security.

    Secrets and Rights, NYT, 2.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/opinion/02sat1.html