Author: lapin

U.S. Democratic Party chief Howard Dean predicted on Saturday that Republicans would make illegal immigrants their new scapegoats during the 2006 elections, and said splintered Democrats were starting to find common ground on the Iraq war.

He said Republicans exploited the topic of gay marriage in the 2004 elections with a series of state referendums on the issue, and were at it again with another hot-button social issue in immigration.

“In 2006, it’s going to be immigrants — that’s who he is going to scapegoat next,” Dean said of Bush. “Once again, the Republicans create a problem so they can think to come in and solve it.”

President Bush has urged Congress to let illegal immigrants get three-year work visas that could be extended for an additional three years. Then, they would have to return home for a year to apply for a new work permit.

Dean said the government should have an “earned legalization” program in which immigrants who contribute to society and pay taxes should be able to earn the right to become citizens.

The DNC chairman also criticized Bush for not working with Mexico to confront America’s immigration problems. “Work with Mexico to improve economies in rural America and rural Mexico, and you will stop the flood of people wanting to come to America,” Dean said.

Republican National Committee spokesman Tucker Bounds said Democrats are out of touch with voters on border security.

“Dean’s blatant mischaracterization of Bush’s agenda is his best effort to mask the Democrats’ unmistakable lack of a plan and any connection with voters on issues that matter,” Bounds said.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean offered a preview of the 2006 elections Saturday with a critique of President Bush’s policies on Iraq and immigration and the Republicans’ ethics scandals. But he warned Democrats they cannot expect to win next year without offering an agenda of their own.

Speaking to the fall meeting of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Dean pledged Democrats would offer tax policies aimed at middle-class voters, a plan to provide health insurance to all Americans, immigration proposals that offer a path to legalization for illegal immigrants and defense policies that would protect the nation and expose the “hollow promises” of the Bush administration.

—
The Democratic meeting came at a time of growing confidence within the party that 2006 could bring significant gains in Congress and the statehouses because of Bush’s low approval ratings and public anxiety about Iraq.

But Dean said those conditions alone are not sufficient to produce Democratic victories. “The collapse of confidence in the Republican leadership is not enough to elect Democratic leadership. We have to stand up for what we believe.”

On Oct. 16 at an Army airfield in Indiana, Suzette Boler wrapped her arms around her husband and through tears wished him the best. Army Spc. Jerry Boler, 45, was bound for Fort Dix, N.J., and duty in Iraq. He expects to put his life on the line guarding convoys from insurgent attacks.

Suzette Boler, of Caledonia, returned home that Sunday night and prepared the next day to return to her receptionist job at a small Caledonia employee benefits firm. She had taken four unpaid days off to see her husband of 22 years off to war.

Late Monday afternoon, Boler, 40, answered the phone. She was told to come in the next day and pick up her things.

She was fired.

Officials at Benefit Management Administrators Inc. confirmed Boler was fired for failing to show up for work the day after she bid goodbye to her husband.

“We gave her sufficient time to get back to work,” said Clark Galloway, vice president of operations for Benefit Management.

“We are totally supportive of our troops and anything that is necessary to equip them and to encourage them as a company.”

Mr. Northern:

I am a Veteran of the Iraq war, having served with the 4th Infantry Division on the initial invasion with Force Package One.

While I was in Iraq,a very good friend of mine, Christopher Cutchall,was killed in an unarmoredHMMWV outside of Baghdad. He was a cavalry scout serving with the 3d ID.Once he had declined the award of a medal because Soldiers assigned to him did not receive similar awards that he had recommended. He left two sons and awonderful wife. On Monday night, August 16, you ran down the memorial cross erected for him by Arlington West.

One of my Soldiers in Iraq was Roger Turner. We gave him a hard time because he always wore all of his protective equipment, including three pairs of glasses or goggles. He did this because he wanted to make sure that he returned home to his family. He rode a bicycle to work every day to make sure that he was able to save enough money on his Army salary to send his son to college. At Camp Anaconda, where the squadron briefly stayed, a rocket landed inside a tent, sending a piece of debris or fragment into him and killed him. On Monday night, August 16, you ran down the memorial cross erected for him by Arlington West.

One of my Soldiers was Henry Bacon. He was one of the finest men I ever met. He was in perfect shape for a man over forty, working hard at night. He told me that he did that because he didn’t have much money to buy nice things for his wife, who he loved so much, so he had to be in good shape for her. He was like a father to many young men in his section of maintenance mechanics. They fixed our vehicles with almost no support and fabricated parts and made repairs that kept our squadron rolling on the longest, fastest armor advance ever made under fire. He was so very proud of his son-in-law that married the beautiful daughter so well raised by Henry. His son-in-law was a helicopter pilot with the 1st Cavalry Division, who died last year. Henry stopped to rescue a vehicle belonging to another unit on what was to be his last day in Iraq. He could have kept rolling – he was headed to Kuwait after a year’s tour. But he stopped. He could have sent others to do the work, but he was on the ground, leading by example, when he was killed. On Monday night, August 16, you took it upon yourself to go out in the country, where a peaceful group was exercising their constitutional rights, and harming no one, and you ran down the memorial cross erected for Henry and for his son-in-law by Arlington West.

Mr. Northern – I know little about Cindy Sheehan except that she is a grieving mother, a gentle soul, and wants to bring harm to no one. I know little about you except that you found your way to Crawford on Monday night in August with chains and a pipe attached to your truck for the sole purpose of dishonoring a memorial erected for my friends and lost Soldiers and hundreds of others that served this nation when they were called. I find it disheartening that good men like these have died so that people like you can threaten a mother who lost a child with your actions. I hope that you are ashamed of yourself.

Perry Jefferies, First Sergeant, USA (retired)

Implementing recently passed legislation designed to secure, streamline and standardize the identification granting process among states is likely to be an expensive proposition for citizens and state governments. That is what several governors told colleagues and federal officials behind closed doors at the annual meeting of the National Governors Association this weekend, according to press reports.

States expect the costs of complying with the Real ID Act to top $500 million, the Financial Times reports.

—

Republican Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, chairman of the Governors Association, did not hide his criticism of the measure. “They have created a national nightmare and they’ll probably be driving up the cost of the driver’s licenses by three- or four-fold,” the AP quoted Huckabee saying.

The Real ID Act’s identity cards will be required not only if one wants to drive, but also if one seeks to visit a federal government building, collect Social Security, access a federal government service, or use the services of a private entity (such as a bank or an airline) that is required under federal law to verify customer identity.

In other words, it will be well nigh impossible to live without such an ID. That creates not only a huge incentive for citizens and residents to procure IDs, but also a huge incentive for states to comply with this unfunded mandate: If they didn’t, their citizens and residents wouldn’t be able to get access to any of the services or benefits listed above.

In order to get a new approved license – or conform an old one to Real ID — individuals will have to produce several types of documentation. These must prove their name, date of birth, Social Security number, their principal residence (verified by, for instance, a utility bill or lease), and that they are lawfully in the U.S.

—

States will be responsible for verifying these documents. That means that, when it comes to birth certificates and other documents, they probably will have to make numerous, onerous confirming calls to state and municipal officials or companies to verify the documents authenticity. (Paperwork can easily be faked.) In addition, they will have to cross-check Social Security numbers, birthdates, and more against federal databases.

—

Once Real ID is in effect, all fifty states’ DMVs will share their information in a common database – and may also verify information given to them against various federal databases. In addition, it’s very possible that such data will be sold to commercial entities: Some states already allow driver’s license data to be sold to third parties.

—

Finally, the IDs must include a “common machine-readable technology” that must meet requirements set out by the Department of Homeland Security. And, somewhat ominously, Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements–which could include “biometric identifiers” such as our fingerprints or a retinal scan.

Washington state officials estimate it will cost $50 million to comply with a new federal law that requires states to turn their driver’s licenses into a national identification card.

The good news is the state has a bit of a head start.

That’s because the Department of Licensing switched to digital licenses several years ago, and in January will start collecting a unique “biometric identifier” – a facial scan converted into a mathematical formula – from some drivers.

Under provisions of a law passed by the Legislature in 2004, collecting that scan will be voluntary. However, the new federal law will make that mandatory in 2008.

Many commentators predict that believe radio frequency identification (RFID) tags will be placed in our licenses. (Other alternatives include a magnetic strip or enhanced bar code). In the past, the Department of Homeland Security has indicated it likes the concept of RFID chips.

RFID tags emit radio frequency signals. Significantly, those signals would allow the government to track the movement of our cards (and hence, of us as well).

And not only the government: Private businesses may be able to use remote scanners to read RFID tags too, and add to the digital dossiers they may already be compiling. If different merchants combine their data – you can imagine the sorts of profiles that will develop. And unlike with a grocery store checkout, we may have no idea the scan is even occurring; no telltale beep will alert us.

The State Department – which is going to be use RFID devices in our passports – is including some safeguards, but the Real ID Act requires none.

Federal law will make County Treasurer Paula Schneider do something that would be plain rude on the streets of this little town: treat friends as strangers.

Never mind that she knows practically everyone who walks into her office and wants a driver’s license. Under the REAL ID Act meant to deter terrorists, Schneider will have to make neighbors prove who they are.

A soldier home from Iraq remained jailed Tuesday in the slaying of a woman and the wounding of a man in a weekend shootout in an alley.

Army Spc. Matthew Sepi, 20, was carrying an assault rifle on his way to buy beer at a downtown Las Vegas convenience store early Sunday when he and a man exchanged gunfire, according to court records cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Sepi told officers he fired four shots. He said he had been trained in the military that in an ambush he should engage his targets and retreat.

“He felt that the situation in the alley was an ambush, and he reacted the way he had been trained,” the police report said.

Las Vegas homicide Lt. Tom Monahan identified Jackson as Ratcliff’s girlfriend and said some evidence suggested the shooting was self-defense.
—
Sepi’s mother, Nora Sepi, told the Review-Journal her son served in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas. She said he seldom spoke of combat but mentioned that he participated in gunbattles.

Nora Sepi said Matthew Sepi had been in contact with the Veterans Affairs Administration for help with post-traumatic stress disorder since returning home.

Matthew Sepi, 20, who says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, is charged with murder and attempted murder, but attorneys say the charges may be reduced because of self-defense claims that the wounded man shot at Sepi first.

“It appears as though this is a legitimate self-defense case,” said Sepi’s attorney, Nancy Lemcke. “We will be exploring that together with some possible mental health issues largely related to his service in the military.”
—
According to an arrest report by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Sepi, who has been living in Las Vegas, carried his assault rifle inside a long black coat as he walked from his apartment to a 7-Eleven to buy beer about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

He told police he took the weapon because he had been threatened by a man with a knife in the alley the night before.

According to the report, Sepi said that as he walked through the alley, he was confronted by a man and woman who said something to him that he couldn’t remember.

On his way back, after buying beer, he said the couple yelled at him to get out of their alley.

Sepi said that he saw the man holding what appeared to be a gun and that the man shot at him. Police recovered a 9mm pistol and spent casings at the scene.

Sepi said he shot back with his rifle and left.

When police arrested Sepi in his car, he asked, “Who did I take fire from?”

The report states that Sepi referred to his actions in the alley as “breaking contact.”

“He explained that he had been trained in the military that in a situation in which he was ambushed, he was to engage the targets, and retreat from the area,” the report states. “He felt that the situation in the alley was an ambush, and he reacted the way he had been trained.”

A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran’s new president-elect.

Watching coverage of Iran’s presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion — the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

“This is the guy. There’s no question about it,” said former hostage Chuck Scott, a retired Army colonel who lives in Jonesboro, Ga. “You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I’d still spot him.”

Scott and former hostages David Roeder, William J. Daugherty and Don A. Sharer told The Associated Press on Wednesday they have no doubt Ahmadinejad, 49, was one of the hostage-takers. A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos.

Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project is a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world.

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating – as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

What the tower evokes, by comparison, are ancient obelisks, blown up to a preposterous scale and clad in heavy sheaths of reinforced glass – an ideal symbol for an empire enthralled with its own power, and unaware that it is fading.

This bumper sticker was spotted by Left in SF over the weekend — disturbingly, on an SUV parked among a crowd of cars out for a gay-pride rally.

These “permits” have been around for awhile now, mostly circulating on the fringes of the far right, but they’ve been increasingly making their way into broader circulation. One of the Minutemen described in Andy Isaacson’s mash letter to that extremist phenomenon sported just such a sticker on his rig.

The people sporting such stickers, no doubt, will contend that it’s just a joke — as though such a fig leaf could disguise the violent attitudes and beliefs required to find it humorous. Next they’ll argue that stickers saying “Hitler Needed to Finish the Job” are just meant to be funny.

This is, of course, just another permutation of the rising tide of eliminationist rhetoric directed at liberals. It’s everywhere — including now, thanks to Karl Rove, the highest echelons of the Bush administration.

I can’t say I was terribly surprised by Rove’s remarks, but they are well worth noting for their precise content:

Rather predictably, the right, from Michelle Malkin to Tom DeLay, has closed ranks and defended Rove’s remarks as “the truth.” (Malkin says Rove distilled “the fundamental difference between the left and the right’s approaches to terrorism in the wake of 9/11.”)

This man is simply a piece of excrement, a piece of waste that needs to be scraped off the sidewalk and eliminated.

— KVI’s John Carlson, discussing Sen. Dick Durbin, on his Seattle-based talk show Thursday

   Dick Durbin has just identified who the Democrats are in the year 2005, particularly when it comes to American national security and when it comes to the US military. These are the same people they say they support the troops. This is how they do it, huh? They give aid and comfort to the enemy. They make it possible for Mullah Omar and bin Laden, whoever else is out there still alive, to laugh themselves silly at us. Mogadishu all over. Remember what bin Laden said after we cut and run out of Mogadishu? “That’s when I knew the US was a paper tiger, that’s when I knew they didn’t have the guts, that’s when I knew they couldn’t take casualties,” and that’s what fueled his planning for 9/11. He has said so. So, bammo! Here you go, Dick Durbin. Thanks once again for telling our enemies just what a bunch of soft patty cakes we are and how we’ll back away from our own treatment of people much less back away from dishing it out to people like our enemies.

Senior Justice Department officials, under fire for a 90% reduction in sanctions sought in the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, had pushed for even deeper cuts, people close to the situation say.

Government lawyers, who were ordered to slash their demand for a $130-billion industry-funded smoking cessation program, had been planning to propose a $16-billion campaign as closing arguments in the marathon case got underway last week, according to people close to the trial team, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But on the morning of June 7, the day of the government’s summation, the trial team was told to cut the demand still further, to $6 billion, the sources said. After a heated lunch-hour meeting — at which lawyers told senior staff that they couldn’t credibly propose $6 billion — they were cleared to ask federal Judge Gladys Kessler for a $10-billion program, the sources said.

Justice Department lawyers gave the New York Times a copy of a memo they wrote to an agency head complaining of his slashing penalties in a major tobacco suit.
The May 30 memo was sent from Sharon Eubanks and Stephen Brody to Justice’s No. 3 officer, Robert D. McCallum, the newspaper reported Thursday.

In the seven-page memo the pair stated that cutting the penalty from $130 billion to $10 billion would look political and weaken the department’s ability to negotiate future settlements with industry defendants.

Their objections were overruled by McCallum, associate attorney general of the department.

Before his appointment in the Justice Department in 2001, McCallum had been a partner at Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based firm that has done trademark and patent work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. In 2002, McCallum signed a friend-of-the-court brief by the administration urging the Supreme Court not to consider an appeal by the government of Canada to reinstate a cigarette smuggling case against R.J. Reynolds that had been dismissed. The department’s ethics office had cleared McCallum to take part in that case.

Acting on a request from 50 Democratic lawmakers, the Justice Department’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office has launched an investigation into whether political interference tainted the case.

A group of senators has also asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to remove Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. from involvement in the case.

The judge presiding over the government’s troubled racketeering case against the tobacco industry summoned cigarette companies’ chief executives, their lawyers and Justice Department attorneys for a closed-door meeting yesterday and urged both sides to settle the case.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler explained in a court order late in the day that she closed the meeting to the public because she considered it “a routine, informal discussion with the parties urging them, once again, to consider the advantages of settling the case rather than the risks of litigating it.”

Philip Morris Chief Executive Michael Szymanczyk and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco CEO Susan Ivey and their lawyers were ushered into the private meeting yesterday through a secured entrance at the back of the federal courthouse. Both executives left the courthouse through a back entrance 2-½ hours later and declined to comment, as did their lawyers and spokesmen.

“The judge put this meeting under seal,” Dan Webb, lead attorney for Philip Morris, said as he left the session. “We’ve been instructed by the judge not to talk about our meeting. We’re just not going to discuss it, period.”

In sworn testimony that contrasts with their promises to the public, the FBI managers who crafted the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorism say expertise about the Mideast or terrorism was not important in choosing the agents they promoted to top jobs.

Some could not even explain the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, the two primary groups of Muslims. And they still do not believe such experience is necessary today, even as terrorist acts occur across the globe.

In a development that has escaped public attention, FBI agent Bassem Youssef has questioned under oath many of the FBI’s top leaders in an effort to show he was passed over for top terrorism jobs despite his expertise. Testimony from his lawsuit recently was sent to Congress.

The hundreds of pages of testimony obtained by The Associated Press contrast with assurances Director Robert Mueller repeatedly has given Congress that he was building a new FBI, from top to bottom, with experts able to stop terrorist attacks before they occurred, not solve them afterward.

But those who have held the bureau’s top terrorism-fighting jobs since Sept. 11 often said in their testimony that they — and many they have promoted since — had no significant terrorism or Middle East experience.

“Probably the strongest leader I know in counterterrorism has no counterterrorism in his background,” said Executive Assistant Director Gary Bald, the FBI’s current terror-fighting chief.

He said his first terrorism training came “on the job” when he moved to headquarters to oversee anti-terrorism strategy two years ago.

Asked about his grasp of Middle Eastern culture and history, Bald responded: “I wish that I had it. It would be nice.”

“You need leadership. You don’t need subject-matter expertise,” Bald testified. “It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in a counterterrorism position.”