http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=5996

Rep. Rush Holt today responded to the growing chorus of concern from election reform specialists and computer security experts about the integrity of future elections by introducing reform legislation, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. The measure would require all voting machines to produce an actual paper record by 2004 that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes and that election officials can use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity. Experts often refer to this paper record as a “voter-verified paper trail.”

...Last October, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), groundbreaking election reform legislation that is currently helping states throughout the country replace antiquated and unreliable punch card and butterfly ballot voting systems. HAVA, however, is having an unintended consequence. It is fueling a rush by states and localities to purchase computer-voting systems that suffer from a serious flaw; voters and election officials have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly.

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7 voting stories in the news. go to this link to read them if you want the details.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/

1. Tuesday’s election in Cape Coral [Florida] had one anomaly that elections officials and voters can’t explain... The District 7 city council seat... had about 1,500 fewer total votes than any of the other three council ballots and nearly 2,000 votes less than any of the 13 charter amendments... “Too bad, so sad. Voters have to take some responsibility,” said Philinda Young, Lee County supervisor of elections.

2. Voting machine engineer sues, alleges machine design flaws: A test engineer for DRE "touch-screen" voting machines reported over 250 errors... Lawsuit indicates that the company did not address the flaws, and that the voting system was certified by independent testing labs despite known flaws.

3. Recently, technicians and programmers for Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no-paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw.

4. On October, 10, 2002 I posted an article on the web, revealing that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has ties to the largest voting machine company, Election Systems & Software (ES&S). I reported that he was an owner, Chairman and CEO of Election Systems & Software (called American Information Systems until name change filed in 1997). ES&S was the ONLY company whose machines counted Hagel's votes when he ran for election in 1996 and 2002.

5. In Arkansas, Secretary of State Bill McCuen pleaded guilty to felony charges that he took bribes, evaded taxes and accepted kickbacks. Part of the case involved Business Records Corp. [now merged into Election Systems & Software], a Dallas company that sold Arkansas computerized systems for recording corporate and voter registration records. Arkansas officials said the scheme involved...then-BRC employee Tom Eschberger...Eschberger got immunity from prosecution for his cooperation. Today, he's a top executive of ES&S.

6. "I was the clerk of a precinct in Broward County FL. We counted exactly the number of voters who voted on the machines. The total was 713, however the machine count was 749. I reported this information to the Broward County Staff upon returning my supplies that evening after the election..."

7. A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts have any eligible voters. An earlier court case in Florida found the same discrepancy, and the reason for it was never satisfactorily explained.

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http://truthout.org/docs_03/060303J.shtml

A new Bush administration policy, disclosed recently as part of a legal settlement with Utah... calls for the Bureau of Land Management to stop assessing its land holdings for possible wilderness classification. The bureau, the largest manager of public lands in the United States, oversees 264 million acres in 12 Western states... "Essentially, what this administration is saying is `no more wilderness,'" said Michael Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness, one of several environmentalist groups that filed a lawsuit in May to stop the new policy from going into effect.

...The Interior Department's decision was made without public notice or comment. Interior spokesman John Wright said public involvement is not required in legal settlements.

...If oil and gas leases are granted or roads built before Congress acts, both sides concur that America's remaining wild lands could be marked irrevocably by human hands and could lose any ability to qualify for wilderness protection. U.S. lands marked as wilderness must be in pristine condition; in turn, they enjoy the highest level of protection against potential development or despoilment. No roads are allowed, nor any motorized transportation. No logging, mining or oil and gas exploration is permitted. The land is set aside "untrammeled by man" for future generations, as noted in the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964.

...Meanwhile, in what environmentalists are calling a "one-two punch," a separate April settlement between Utah and the Interior Department over local claims to rights-of-way on federal lands could open wilderness-quality areas to significant road development. About 15,000 rights-of-way claims are expected to be filed in the state. The road settlement could set a precedent for other states to make similar claims... With roads would come the foreclosure of any opportunity to set aside these areas as wilderness.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/opinion/02MON2.html

The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act — would revise the nation's food labeling laws to make it easier for people to identify peanuts, eggs and other allergy-provoking ingredients, called allergens. Introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy, the bill cleared the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last year with ample support from Republicans — including the present chairman, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. But now that the Republicans are in charge, Mr. Gregg seems in no hurry to revive the measure.

...Current Food and Drug Administration rules permit known allergens used in flavorings, spices and coloring to go undisclosed on product labels even though ingesting even a tiny amount can be fatal for some people. Moreover, even when labels do list allergens, they are often identified by their formal names, thereby obscuring their presence — "seminola" instead of wheat, for example.

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http://indymedia.org/

Colombia has just ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety [read it at http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/ ...and by the way 49 countries have now signed it --mrs.h] . So with just one more country, and the protocol will probably be in force by the end of the summer, allowing countries to demand proper notification and risk assessment of GM crop imports. Based on the precautionary principle, countries are also allowed to deny such imports.

...The US Senate passed a bill tying relief plan on HIV/AIDS on a country's acceptance of GM [genetically-modified, and patented] food aid... At the same time the USA and Canada filed a WTO case against the EU [demanding the EU end its moratorium on imports of genetically-modified/patented food and seed]... Egypt, the only other country backing the USA and Canada in the WTO case, now withdrew its initial support.

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no waaay!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/national/01TAX.html

A new study by groups critical of the tax law that President Bush signed on Wednesday has found that 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will not receive any benefit from the law... In combination with the children who were cut from the bill's benefits by the Congressional negotiators, the study says, there are 50 million households — 36 percent of all households in the nation — who will receive no benefit from the tax law. The figure includes people who do not earn enough to owe income tax.

...The new study found five million taxpayers in the lowest tax bracket who get no benefit from the law, and 2.5 million single parents with children who also pay taxes but get nothing. In the first category are taxpayers in the 10 percent bracket who have no children and no dividend or capital gains income. This group, which constitutes 89 percent of all single taxpayers in the lowest bracket... make $9,300 to $13,800 a year, [and] now pay up to $600 in income taxes.

The second group consists of 2.5 million taxpayers in the head-of-household filing status — mostly single parents — who have a child over 16 and who are in the two lowest tax brackets. The study found that they will not receive a tax cut, even though they pay as much as $5,200 in income taxes... The child credit is not available... because of the age of the children.

There are about a half-million additional taxpayers at all income levels who will not benefit from the new law because they fall between the cracks. They include childless married couples in the lowest tax bracket who itemize their deductions... About 12,000 taxpayers making more than $200,000 will also receive no benefit because they have no dividend or capital gains income.

...The study's authors noted that there are 40 times as many taxpayers who get no benefit from the cuts as there are millionaires who will get 44 percent of the law's tax benefits in 2005. "This group, more than 8 million taxpayers, ranked lower in the administration's priorities than the 200,000 taxpayers with incomes of a million dollars or more," said Peter Orszag, a senior fellow at Brookings who is co-director of the Tax Policy Center.

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news from on the ground at the g-8 summit in switzerland

http://uk.indymedia.org/

From the early morning hours of the main anti-G8 protest day, cheerful crowds had blockaded bridges and streets across the area, while there was also some property damage during the day. Although police made mass arrests and went in with heavy use of teargas, rubber bullets and concussion granades, the G8 summit was delayed for a couple of hours, while up to 100,000 took to the streets. Later on Sunday night, the police raided L'Usine, a social and independent media center in Geneva. 11 people were arrested and later released. The teargassing went on, when local Swiss people were attacked by German riot police. Many locals took to the streets against german riot police who appeared out of control in their city.

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http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=70466&group=webcast

The riot was largely dispersed near Place Bel Air; there was intense and massive tear gassing. About 100 people were left after the gassing, and were running from the German police. Water cannons have also been deployed around the city center. According to several sources, a column of about 40 empty German police trucks is moving up the hill from the Rhone to the International District. The protesters appeared to be mostly made up of local people... Anger was high after residents had seen the level of unwarranted violence from the authorities, and people deeply resented the deployment of German police in Switzerland.

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http://uk.indymedia.org/

Once again most of the corporate media has reported that those on the streets were just G8 protestors, but the truth on Monday night was that this was once again an insurrectionary protest by the people of Geneva.

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http://uk.indymedia.org/

Barcelona-- 21 people occupied the French consulate to protest against the police brutality in the anti-g8 protests in Switzerland and France.

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http://uk.indymedia.org/

The anti G8 protests at Lac Leman are part of larger, world wide disagreement with governments' politics. In Peru, the "Rio-Group" (a latin american equivalent of the G8) met last week. A wave of protests against the neoliberal politics of the Peruvian government has now developed into a mass insurrection. The President has declared a state of emergency.

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http://uk.indymedia.org/

Over the course of the past four days, a delegation from Ya Basta, an Italian activist organization, was repeatedly refused entry into Iraq. Timed to coincide with the G8 Summit, the delegation was sent to establish links between elements of civil society in Iraq, Palestine, and Europe, including the Baghdad Independent Media Centre. Yesterday at 3:08 UK time, we began receiving text messages from the delegation: "They are going to shoot us...need pressures...we are at the border." Despite being told that they would be shot if they didn't return to Jordan immediately, the activists courageously staged a sit-down protest. The American soldiers then violently dragged them onto the rear of a lorry, injuring nine.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967736,00.html

Attention has focused on the U.S. unit set up to make the case for war [on Iraq]. The office of special plans was created by the deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, late last year in what was seen as an effort to justify the war. Led by Abram Shulsky, the office had a small staff charged with exploring intelligence from "outside the box". The intelligence, based largely on that from Iraqi exiles, went directly to George Bush, who used some of it to justify war. Mr Wolfowitz became frustrated that the CIA and the defence intelligence agency were failing to uncover any evidence of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

...Since the office's claims have so far not been backed by facts, its credibility looks damaged. A recent report from the office suggested that military action against Syria was reportedly not taken seriously by the White House.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,968581,00.html

Fresh evidence emerged last night that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was so disturbed about questionable American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5... Much of the initial information for Mr Powell's speech to the UN was provided by the Pentagon, where Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, set up a special unit, the Office of Special Plans.

Mr Powell's team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq's banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today. At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit," according to the magazine.

...On Friday, the CIA director, George Tenet, was forced to issue a statement denying the agency doctored intelligence reports.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=247506&lang=e&dir=news

The sudden fall of Baghdad came as a shock to Arabs. The initial resistance put up by the Iraqis in the cities of Basra, Umm Qasr and Al-Nasiriyah gave an indication of a long fight ahead. Moreover, the Republican Guard was well-organized, well equipped, and had been reared only to defend Baghdad... [But] the Baghdad and Medina division of the Republican Guard fell without fighting.

The French daily Le Monde has recently claimed [that]... Maher Sufyan, Commander of the Republican Guard, reached an agreement with US forces in which he ordered his units to surrender in exchange for his transfer via an American Apache helicopter to an undisclosed safe haven... Sufyan is not included on the "deck of cards" created by US military officials to highlight the most wanted individuals from the Saddam Hussein government. Iraq's popular Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed Al Sahaf, Naji Sabri, Iraq's Foreign Minister, and Oumid Medhat Mubarak, the minister of health, are also not included on the list.

Before this French report, an Iranian news agency close to top conservative military figures attributed the fall of Baghdad to a secret tripartite agreement between Saddam, Russia and the US. According to the Baztab agency, 13 days after the start of the US-led war, Saddam and Russian intelligence allegedly pledged to hand over the capital city with minimal resistance to US forces, provided they spared the lives of Saddam and a hundred of his close relatives. The US, for its part, promised to safely send Saddam and his entourage to a third country.

Meanwhile, Walid Rabah, editor of the Arabic-language weekly Arab Voice has presented a comprehensive report on the issue. According to him... the US military and leaders of the Republican Guard and the Commanders of Saddam's Fedayeen [had been in communication for weeks]... The offer proposed by the US command to the Republican Guard and Saddam's Fedayeen was generous. The offers were run past Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who okayed them... [The offer included] transportation for the Republican Guards top echelon to secure locations outside of Iraq; transportation of the Republican Guards leaders of the second echelon to "liberated" places;... granting to the top echelon of the Republican Guards large sums of money;... granting some of the leaders of the top echelon of the Republican Guard, and to those who had not committed "war crimes," official roles in "liberated" Iraq after the end of the war;... granting American citizenship and residency in the United States to some of the first echelon commanders and their families, depending on their wishes.

Based on Rabah's information, the final task of the Republican Guard commanders was to provide the Americans with accurate information about the exact location of the Iraqi president and his leadership. This information enabled the US forces to target the place where the meeting was being held and strike it with guided missiles. Most probably the Iraqi President and his leadership, including his two sons, were killed in the bombardment, Rabah maintained.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=250887&lang=e&dir=news

A crew of American military engineers began an intensive effort Tuesday to excavate the site of a bombing on April 7... "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," Cheney said. "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe." American military officials, for their part, said their goal was to search the rubble for human remains and to conduct DNA tests on any that are discovered.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=250744&lang=e&dir=news

The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) has internal documents that make clear Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is alive and hiding in greater Baghdad, protected by an underground resistance network of tribesmen and former Baath officials, administration officials told United Press International (UPI)... "Saddam is moving around inside Iraq and he's got a lot of support," another US government official said.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=250605&lang=e&dir=news

The former Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, is alive and living in a Baghdad suburb - and still wearing his trademark uniform and beret, according to a British newspaper report... He refused to talk to the paper and friends said he may never go out in public again.

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oh by the way

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/02/1054406130502.html

A third of the bombs dropped on Iraq were old-style "dumb weapons" - despite suggestions from the Pentagon that 90 per cent of munitions used would be precision-guided. The first detailed analysis of the coalition air campaign by the commander of US air forces, Michael Moseley, also reveals a heavy emphasis on psychological operations... There were 10 authorised strikes against "media facilities"... More than 240,000 cluster bombs were dropped... Commander [Michael] Moseley's* assessment of the campaign is based on military records from March 19 to April 18. Called Operation Iraqi Freedom - By The Numbers, it has not been publicly released but is available to military experts. An unclassified version has been obtained by The Age.

*[he is commander of U.S. air forces in iraq]

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putting the crazy back in democracy

BAGHDAD, June 1 -- The U.S. occupation authority has decided to handpick between 25 and 30 Iraqis to serve on an interim political council to advise U.S. officials on day-to-day governance issues rather than convene a large assembly where Iraqi delegates would debate the form and membership of their transitional administration, a senior U.S. official said today.

Iraqis expected that an interim government would be chosen at a national conference next month attended by hundreds of representatives from the country's religious, ethnic and tribal groups. The assembly was regarded as the first and most significant step by the United States toward sharing power with Iraqis.

...Although the council will be selected by the U.S. and British governments, the official vowed that the council would be chosen "through a process of consultation" with Iraqis. "We are asking the Iraqis with whom we are in contact for their suggestions." ...U.S. and British officials said they had never promised to hold a large conference.

...U.S. forces continued to come under attack today. Two soldiers were wounded when an armored vehicle was hit by explosives outside the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad. Later, U.S. troops shot and killed an Iraqi outside the mosque.

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supporting them troops

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~27375~1429366,00.html

The Bush administration official who will run day-to-day operations of the Pentagon's investigation into Air Force Academy sex assaults is a prominent conservative who opposes coed training in the military. Anita K. Blair, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, helped found the conservative Independent Women's Forum to fend off feminist attacks on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and serve as a counterpoint to the National Organization for Women. She later opposed admitting women to Virginia Military Institute in 1997.

...The panel has already come under scrutiny because another member, Amy McCarthy, has said some of the female cadets' allegations may be suspect because some engaged in "high-risk behaviors." "Rape is wrong," McCarthy, an academy graduate who lives in Littleton, said Friday. "I'm not trying to blame the victim here. What I'm talking about is a woman who drank too much and woke up and said, 'Oh my God.' ...The panel also lacks experts from among rape-victim advocates... A Pentagon spokesman said there aren't enough panel slots to accommodate every expertise.

...Blair will have some conservative company on the panel. Dr. Sally Satel is a psychiatrist and a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. She also served on the national advisory board of Blair's Independent Women's Forum.

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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E27375%257E1427886,00.html

The Air Force Academy's new sexual- assault response strategy... [was revealed in] a May 27 academy memo, obtained by The Denver Post, [which] states: "Reports of sexual assaults are not confidential." ...Academy officials said Friday the memo was an internal document and that no officials were available to comment on it.

...Experts in sexual assault said they are deeply troubled, because the revamped policy falls short of privacy protections the civilian world normally grants victims... Previously, victims could have some confidentiality through hotline phone calls to fellow cadets working with the academy counseling center. The new memo states that psychotherapists at the academy who learn of an alleged sexual assault must report the incident.

...The memo doesn't mention amnesty provisions, previously promised by Air Force officials, for victims who may have violated school rules or the honor code during an assault against them.

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http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E27375%257E1302897,00.html

At West Point, a track star who motivated herself with Bible verses faced expulsion on honor-code violations after she reported being raped by a male classmate. At the Naval Academy, a female athlete was threatened with expulsion after she and three other women said that a midshipman commander sexually assaulted them. The accused attackers in these cases, and at least a dozen others at those academies during the last seven years, never faced criminal prosecution.

...All three elite academies [are] taxpayer-funded institutions designed to mold the nation's future military leaders.

...When Su Collier walked onto West Point's sprawling campus in 1995... men still outnumbered women at least 8-to-1... Within her first month, Collier... was raped... The next year, Kodell Jackson, an ex-boyfriend and fellow cadet, began stalking her... he raped her, despite her repeated protests... Later that day, Collier went to the hospital for tests, which supported her claim that she'd been attacked, she said... Soon, Collier was informed that she and Jackson would face administrative charges that they'd had inappropriate sexual contact in the barracks.

...In 1997, she hired a civilian lawyer and called a news conference in Manhattan to criticize the handling of her rape case. At her West Point disciplinary hearing, the judge recommended that Collier be expelled. The ex-boyfriend's punishment: probation. The decision prompted cheers among his friends at the hearing... Collier ruined her military career by publicly condemning the system.

...In her first year[at West Point], [Angela] Wilson said, she was raped. She had the kind of evidence victims needed to successfully prosecute: an e-mail from her attacker, who she knew, apologizing for the assault; and DNA verification... The woman felt honor-bound to report the incident to academy officials. Soon, she said, the focus shifted to her behavior... "Suddenly, an honor representative says, 'We're going to bring you up on honor violations,"' Wilson said.

...The academy command told her that, since her attacker had an unrelated record of misconduct, they would pursue a conduct investigation instead of bringing rape charges... Before Wilson graduated, more than 25 other rape victims, who had not reported their assaults, approached her, seeking her advice in secluded spaces in the library or barracks, she said... "Women don't report because of the surrounding regulation violations, and because they carry this guilt around with them. Many of the cadets are Type A personalities who have never done anything wrong. All the guy has to say is, 'I'll say you've been drinking,' and it can be over for them. [and so on.]

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/5993628.htm

U.S. Sen. Bob Graham... accused the Bush administration Sunday of overzealous editing of the public version of a report on the causes of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Citing proposed changes in several sections of the report -- which was based on the congressional investigation he helped oversee as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- the Florida senator said on CNN's Late Edition that the administration was trying to hide information submitted in open session and, in some cases, reported in the media.

''That's not being done for any legitimate national security reasons,'' Graham told CNN. ``It's being done because they don't want the American people to see a coherent narrative of what happened.''

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http://www.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=14289

Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz is being sued by families of the 9-11 victims for personally approving millions of dollars of Saudi government funding for terrorist front groups. Amazingly, bin Abdul Aziz arranged for his son to be flown from Florida to Kentucky on 9-13 -- a flight the Bush administration denies ever happened, on the second day when ALL civilian flights in the US were prohibited. To make matters worse, bin Abdul Aziz and his Saudi co-defendants hired James Baker's law firm to defend him against the TRILLION dollar 9-11 lawsuit -- even as Baker personally represents the Bush administration on crucial intelligence matters.

...Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez were the two Floridians who were hired to serve as private bodyguards on the flight... Both men told of what a strange feeling it was to fly in an almost empty sky, and Perez recalls asking the pilot, "We're not going to get shot down are we?" - a legitimate fear, given the fact that fighter jets were urgently patrolling the skies looking for any more terrorists. Regarding the curious fact that the flight had taken place when all other air traffic was still grounded, Dan Grossi said "he was told that clearance for the flight had come from the White House after the Prince's family pulled a favor from former President Bush."

...[Much later, Newsweek*] reported that Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz... is being sued on the behalf of the victims of 9-11... [and is defended by] Baker Botts of Houston - as in JAMES Baker, as in THE James Baker: George Herbert Walker Bush's former Secretary of State and George W. Bush's counsel during the 2000 election recounts... Mr. Baker is also serving as Counsel for Intelligence Policy to the Justice Department's Office for Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR).

...[According to http://www.usdoj.gov/oipr/,] "The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, under the direction of the Counsel for Intelligence Policy, is responsible for advising the Attorney General on all matters relating to the national security activities of the United States."

...In a scandal this potentially huge - one implicating the President's close family and family lawyer - shouldn't a Special Prosecutor be appointed? ...Pre-Watergate-style Special Prosecutors can still be appointed by the Attorney General. But the Attorney General's lawyer on such sensitive matters is none other than James Baker.

*http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/901320.asp?cp1=1

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from may 13th

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2670937,00.html

Robert Jordan... was a prominent Dallas attorney and arbitrator with close ties to President Bush before being tapped to become U.S. ambassador to Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] in September 2001. He was a founding partner in the Texas law firm Baker Botts LLP - a leading corporate donor to Bush's presidential campaign - and served as personal attorney to Bush, according to a biography posted on the U.S. embassy's web site.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-06-02-detainees_x.htm

Some of the hundreds of foreigners held after the Sept. 11 attacks were abused by guards and kept under harsh conditions, spending 23 hours a day in cells and sleeping under bright lights, according to... the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.

...Some of the Sept. 11 detainees were kept in custody up to eight months. Only one, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been charged... Government officials say 505 were deported.

...Private lawyers bristled over details of living conditions imposed for what is commonly considered a civil crime: residing in the United States in violation of immigration laws. "They shouldn't have been in maximum security, shouldn't have been in leg shackles," said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director for the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association. "In normal circumstances, they wouldn't even be imprisoned." Inspector General Glenn Fine identified a "pattern of physical and verbal abuse" by guards, especially at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., where 84 detainees were held. Guards were accused of slamming prisoners against walls and walking on their leg shackles. Three detainees reported that guards told them, "You will feel pain."

...Lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division refused to prosecute allegations by three detainees who have been deported already, the report said. A fourth has not been interviewed by the FBI nearly one year after complaining of abuse. Separately, the Bureau of Prisons ended an abuse investigation when a guard agreed to resign... The Bureau of Prisons cited an "al-Qaeda training manual" recovered during a police raid in Manchester, England, that urged terrorists to distract government officials by claiming mistreatment in prison.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/politics/02SUSP.html

The Justice Department's ability to continue prosecuting members of Al Qaeda and other important terrorist suspects in civilian courts is on the line in a landmark appeals court hearing this week in the government's case against Zacarias Moussaoui.

...The specific question before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit... is whether Mr. Moussaoui... has the right to question captured Qaeda members held overseas whose testimony may aid in his defense. The Justice Department is arguing that he has no such right and that the government cannot make captured terrorists available for testimony... But twice this year, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., has ruled that Mr. Moussaoui's right to seek out trial testimony for his defense overrides the government's claims of national security damage.

...The impact of the ruling by the Fourth Circuit, which is hearing the Justice Department's appeal of the orders by Judge Brinkema, will most likely go far beyond Mr. Moussaoui, because the issue of defense access to testimony from captured terrorists is almost certain to confront prosecutors whenever they try to bring Qaeda members to trial.

Bush administration officials acknowledge that a ruling against the government in the courts would almost certainly prompt the Justice Department to abandon its prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui in a civilian court and turn him over to the Pentagon for a military tribunal... The Pentagon has made it clear that it would never agree to make important Qaeda suspects available for testimony on behalf of Mr. Moussaoui.

...Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender in eastern Virginia, who will help argue the appeal in Richmond on behalf of Mr. Moussaoui, [said,] "If I'm not at the top of my game... I think I could do some serious harm to the Bill of Rights." The issues, Mr. Dunham said, "involve the right to a fair trial, the right to present a defense, the right to call witnesses in your own behalf, the right to force the government to produce evidence it has that is favorable to the defense — all of those things are on the table."

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white? not a 'terrorist.'

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bomber03.html

Olympic bombing suspect Eric Rudolph was put aboard a government plane Monday and flown to this southern state to face trial first in an abortion clinic attack... He is charged in four bombings, three in Atlanta and one in Alabama.

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http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7952

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3 to 2 to meet the demands of big communications corporations... The Center for Public Integrity recently revealed that over the past eight years, media companies and their associations paid for 2,500 travel junkets by FCC commissioners and staffers, at a cost of $2.8 million. The Center also revealed that FCC commissioners, their aides and top staffers hosted 71 off-the-record meetings with industry executives in the months leading up to today's vote. At the same time, only five meetings were held with organizations representing the public interest.

...Citizens across the United States are furious with FCC Chairman Powell for limiting public input by scheduling only one official hearing on the rules changes, by withholding the changes until just three weeks before the vote, by neglecting to order adequate studies of the impact of these rule changes, and by refusing a request from Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein -- as well as more than 120 members of Congress -- for a delay in the vote.

FCC Commissioners Copps and Adelstein voted against the rule changes, and highlighted the fact that more than 95 percent of comments filed by members of the public to the FCC opposed making the changes... Commissioner Adelstein said, "Of the hundreds of citizens I heard from, many extremely articulate, not one person stood up to say, 'I want to see even more concentration in our media ownership.' Not one."

...Chairman Powell has forced adoption of rules that violate the mandate from Congress contained in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That act said that media ownership rules should only be eliminated or relaxed if new communication technologies generated an increase in bona fide commercial competition that would justify eliminating or relaxing the ownership rules. Market conditions, researched extensively by the Consumers Federation of America, Consumers Union and independent scholars have not changed in such a way to justify the elimination of media ownership rules. The legal ramifications of the FCC decision will be felt for years to come.

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http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/releases/03/06/2003602626.html

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today expressed his deep disappointment in the FCC's decision to relax media ownership rules... "Further concentration in these industries will guarantee that the range of voices that Americans have come to expect – whether we open the newspaper, turn on the television or tune into the radio – will continue to fade away." Feingold has introduced legislation specifically targeting consolidation in the radio industry and is a co-sponsor of legislation to prevent further consolidation in the television industry.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vplin013309203jun01,0,6483385.story?coll=ny%2Dviewpoints%2Dheadlines

The No Child Left Behind Law, the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's educational reform agenda, is running into political trouble. The law reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which provides the largest source of federal support for schools... Now it is being attacked by onetime supporters.

...The opponents cite the fact that a number of states in recent weeks have begun to lower the passing grades on the standardized tests that the law requires. Four senators are proposing a bill that would allow waivers from the requirements. The sponsors argue, along with a number of state legislators, that without this, too many children will be left back or fail to graduate. If that happens, the law penalizes states with reductions in federal aid.

...Most states had already established performance standards... prior to the enactment of No Child Left Behind... Many states set quite high standards without any set timeline for having all, or nearly all, children achieving at the proficient level or above. Furthermore, the performance standards were often set without any specified consequences for schools if their students did not show rapid increases... The [Bush] law not only set a deadline for reaching 100 percent proficient or above, but it radically changed the stakes for failure to show adequate yearly progress. Schools that continue to fall short of yearly targets that each state must establish are subject to serous sanctions, including being restructured.

Moreover, there are many ways that a school can fall short of the adequate yearly progress target. Meeting the target in one subject is not enough. The target must be met in both reading/language arts and mathematics... not just for the student body considered as a whole, but for each racial/ethnic group, for students with limited English proficiency, for students who are economically disadvantaged, and students with disabilities.

...Given the radically different context of No Child Left Behind, several states have chosen to rethink their performance standards... [For example,] Colorado decided to collapse their four levels of achievement into three for purposes of the federal law. What is called 'unsatisfactory' for state purposes will be called 'basic' for purposes of No Child Left Behind. The 'partially proficient' and 'proficient' categories... will be collapsed into a single category called 'proficient' for purposes of the law, and 'advanced' will continue to be called 'advanced.'

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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-asecfetus31053103may31.story

A judge Friday denied a woman's request to be named guardian for the fetus of a mentally retarded rape victim in Orlando, raising the stakes in an abortion-rights showdown with Gov. Jeb Bush... Bush late Friday vowed to appeal Kirkwood's ruling, saying, "If a mom who is pregnant can't make decisions for herself, she should have a guardian, and the unborn child should have a guardian as well." ...Also Friday, the state filed a motion to intervene in the guardianship case. Bush said this was done "to preserve the state's compelling interest in the health and safety of the mother and her unborn child."

...Lisa KuhlmanTietig, an attorney with the ACLU of Florida, [said,] "...If the fetus in this case needed a guardian, then why wouldn't any fetus need a guardian? I don't see what would stop the government from appointing a guardian for a fetus for any woman that wanted an abortion."

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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1933517

AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry personally instructed state troopers to visit a neonatal intensive care unit in Galveston in their search for Rep. Craig Eiland during last month's Democratic walkout from the Texas House, a legislator said Sunday... Eiland... criticized Texas Department of Public Safety officers for showing up at the hospital, where his premature twins were then under care... "They went to the hospital after they knew we were in Ardmore, [Oklahoma,]" he added.

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http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=98198