POLITICS AND NEWS:USA

Supreme Court Alert: Trouble On The Right Again!

2007-02-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

SUPREME COURT RIGHT WING ALERT: TROUBLE ON THE RIGHT AGAIN!

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. Specifically at issue is whether taxpayers can bring a legal challenge to the Bush administration’s Faith-Based Initiatives. Existing precedent in Flast v. Cohen says taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending in violation of the Establishment Clause.

It appears that argument before the Court will not be structured so much as to argue the merit or demerit of Hein v. Freedom, but to attempt to shift sufficient focus on/to the content and arguments contained in the amicus briefs is clearly a back door approach to achieving an end. The approach is not to be condoned but condemned as an act of legal subterfuge on the part of far right extremist forces.

The intent is to argue boldly that Flast v. Cohen is inconsistent with principles of federalism and power separation, the states' brief calls for the Supreme Court to explicitly overrule Flast, and to jettison the doctrine of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases. That would be a serious error!

One the problems we have the moment is that we only conjecture, as yet, at the nature and direction of “The Roberts Court”. There is insufficient extant history to do little more than pundit-like analysis and prediction. That condition will change. We do know that Chief Justice Roberts is desirous of having decisions become “more united” and more abbreviated in there length. There is potential for serious mischief here if the intent is to move the docket more rapidly at the expense of thorough deliberation and decision crafting. Should that become the case the blogosphere will come to life as well as the traditional media.

If we are correct in our appraisal of the Supreme Court's likely treatment of the issue of taxpayer standing, the case of Hein v. FFRF will break little new ground and have little effect on other Establishment Clause litigation.

If, however, a group of five Justices agrees to cut back significantly on Flast's special consideration for taxpayers in Establishment Clause litigation, Hein v. FFRF could mark the beginning of a long and deep retrenchment in such litigation, in which cases about expenditures (federal, state, and local) and cases about government religious expression become considerably more difficult for plaintiffs to bring through the courthouse door.

Such a retrenchment might embolden government entities to take steps that the current law of the Establishment Clause appears to forbid. For example, a governor might sponsor a religious revival meeting using funds appropriated to her office for general use. In that sense, the law of standing to raise Establishment Clause issues is a proxy for the underlying constraints of the Clause itself.

The stakes in Hein v. FFRF may thus be considerably larger than first appear from the seemingly technical qualities of the issue presented

“Religious Right groups are using this case as a vehicle to urge the Court to eliminate taxpayer standing, which would significantly undermine the ability of Americans to obtain access to the courts to vindicate their constitutional right to religious liberty.”

Precinct Master, Ed. Dickau concurs…

The meeting went well, was informative, concise and controlled by time constraints, which had they not existed, an all out battle royal over the broader base issue of “Separation of Church and States Issues” would have ensued.

The political content of that debate would have been handled well by only Ms. Shaeffer on the panel. A front side seat provided ample observation of the other panelist’s abilities and emotions. Mr. Bull could have easily drawn to a rousing debate. Extremists on both sides of the issue were present, itching for a good fight if the occasion permitted; some took place outside the session!

There was also positive interaction with the Press subsequent to the session.

Though there is some repetition of verbiage contained within, that is a matter of presenting documents with their full integrity as opposed to a cherry picking presentation. I have provided as full a “RIGHT WING WATCH” presentation as I feel appropriate for this post, and the Alliance Defense Fund Organization. Internal URL links will furnish about anything you could wish to explore further.

PFAW Foundation wrote:
To: "Ed. Dickau" Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:58:10 -0800Subject: Briefing on Key Supreme Court Case - You're InvitedFrom: "PFAW Foundation" alerts@pfaw.org

Dear Ed.,

You’re invited to the National Press Club this Wednesday for a special briefing on an important church-state case currently pending before the Supreme Court, Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. The event is being presented by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) and will feature, among others, PFAW Foundation’s Associate Legal Director, Judith E. Schaeffer.

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. Specifically at issue is whether taxpayers can bring a legal challenge to the Bush administration’s Faith-Based Initiatives. Existing precedent in Flast v. Cohen says taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending in violation of the Establishment Clause.

Religious Right groups are using this case as a vehicle to urge the Court to eliminate taxpayer standing, which would significantly undermine the ability of Americans to obtain access to the courts to vindicate their constitutional right to religious liberty. The speakers are experts in the field of church-state matters, including several representing amici on both sides of the litigation. The panelists will present a variety of perspectives on the case and its broader implications.The panel will feature:
Richard Katskee, Assistant Legal Director, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

Judith E. Schaeffer, Associate Legal Director, People For the American Way Foundation

Benjamin W. Bull, Chief Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund

(INSERT OF CREDENTIALS OF BENJAMIN W. BULL AND ASSOCIATES) _egd_

Benjamin W. Bull

Chief Counsel, The Alliance Defense Fund, Inc.
Senior Editor, The Community Defense Reporter
Former Board Member, Community Defense Counsel
Former Director, European Center for Law and Justice, Strasbourg, France Former Senior Trial Counsel, The American Center for Law and Justice, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Former Legal Counsel, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Inc.
Former Assistant City Attorney, City of Norfolk, Virginia
Former Senior Assistant County Attorney, Fairfax County, Virginia

Alan E. Sears

President and General Counsel, The Alliance Defense Fund, Inc.
Former Board Member, Community Defense Counsel
Former Legal Counsel, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Inc.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Section, Western District of Kentucky, U.S. Department of Justice
Former Executive Director, Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, U.S. Department of Justice
Former Assistant Corporation Counsel, City of Ashland, Kentucky

Bruce A. Taylor

Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Former President and Chief Counsel, National Law Center for Children and Families
Senior Attorney, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, U.S. Department of Justice
Former Assistant Attorney General, State of Arizona
Former General Counsel, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Inc.
Former Assistant Police Prosecutor and Assistant Director of Law, City of Cleveland, Ohio

Len L. Munsil

President and General Counsel, The Center for Arizona Policy
Former Executive Director and General Counsel, Community Defense Counsel
Former Legal Counsel, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Inc.

Moderator, Melissa Rogers, Visiting Professor of Religion and Public Policy, Wake Forest University Divinity School

When: Wednesday, February 21 12:30 - 2:00 pm
Where: First Amendment Lounge The National Press Club 13th Floor, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045
Lunch is free and will be available beginning at 12:00.

To RSVP, please click here. If you have any questions regarding this event, please call 202-393-6181 or e-mail events@acslaw.org.
-- People For the American Way Foundation

THE ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND.ORG (RIGHT WING)

Defending Religious Freedom
The Power of Alliance

Free exercise of religion is the first and most fundamental right of Americans protected in the Bill of Rights. It is the most basic and inalienable of all human rights.However, the right to freely exercise one's faith has never been more threatened in our nation than it is today. And the rights of Christians are especially vulnerable.For more than 50 years, the ACLU and other radical activist groups have attempted to eliminate public expression of our nation's faith and heritage. They have done this through fear, intimidation, disinformation, and the filing of lawsuits (or threats of lawsuits) that would:

Eliminate Christian and historic faith symbols from government documents, buildings, and monuments
Ban public prayer in schools and at school functions
Deny Christians the right to use public facilities that are open to other groups
Prevent Christians from expressing their faith in the workplace
Through attacks like these, the ACLU and its allies have sought to limit the spread and influence of the Gospel in the United States.The Alliance Defense Fund aims to keep that door open by providing case funding, strategy and coordination, attorney training, and litigation to defend religious freedom.By God's grace, we are succeeding.

We have helped win numerous court victories that:

Stopped discrimination against Christian employees
Enabled Christian groups to use public facilities on the same terms as other organizations
Preserved historic and Christian acknowledgement in public places
Despite these and many other successes, a great deal of work remains. By supporting the Alliance Defense Fund, you can help win the battle for religious liberty.
Related information

Read about victories defending religious freedom.

THEIR MINISTRY ALLIES
Campus Crusade for Christ
Christ@Work
Christian Service Missions
Coral Ridge Ministries
Crown Ministries
Exodus Faith Ministries
Focus on the Family
Generation X-cel
Institute in Basic Life Principles
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
National Religious Broadcasters
Toward Tradition

LEGAL ORGANIZATIONS
Advocates International
American Center for Law and Justice
Americans United for Life
American Liberties Institute
Amicus Law Association (Canadian)
Center for Inalienable Rights
Christian Law Association
Christian Legal Defense Fund
Christian Legal Fellowship, Canada
Christian Legal Service
Christian Legal Society, Center for Law & Religious Freedom
Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights
European Defense Fund
Federalist Society
Home School Legal Defense Association
Home School Legal Defense, Canada
Horatio Storer Foundation
Institute for Justice
James Madison Center for Free Speech
Judicial Watch
Justice Advocates
Justice Fellowship
Justice for All
Law and Liberty Institute
Liberty Legal Institute
Life Legal Defense Foundation
Marriage Law Project
National Family Legal Foundations
National Law Center for Children and Families
National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent
National Legal Foundation
National Right to Life
Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic
North Star Civil Rights Defense Association
Northstar Legal Center
Oklahoma Center for Religious Liberty
Pacific Justice Institute
Patrick Henry Christian Legal Alliance
Pro-Family Law Center of Abiding Truth Ministries
Public Justice Advocates (f.k.a. Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom)
Texas Justice Foundation
Thomas More Center for Law and Justice
United States Justice Foundation
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADF has been blessed with men and women of exceptional capacity, background, and experience, who serve on the board of directors in a completely unpaid, volunteer basis. With backgrounds ranging from high military command to national ministry leadership, media and journalism to business and entrepreneurial ventures, our board members are diverse in their background but united in their commitment to faith, religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and the preservation of marriage and the family.These servants have made themselves available to accomplish much at this time! (Esther 4:14). CHAPMAN COX(Vice Chairman)Retired attorneyFormer General Counsel, U.S. Department of DefenseALLEN GINSBORGPresidentPoudre Partners Inc.CLARK HOLLINGSWORTHRetired certified public accountantFormer Chief Operating Officer, Family Life MinistriesC. BRADLEY KEIRNES(Chairman)PrincipalKeirnes Companies, LLPMARK MADDOUX(Secretary-Treasurer)PresidentUSA Radio NetworkRICHARD MASONRetired corporate executiveFormer Chief Executive Officer, Motor Racing OutreachTOM MINNERYSenior Vice President of Government and Public PolicyFocus on the FamilyDALE NABBRetired corporate executiveFormer Chief Executive Officer, PSPATOM ROGEBERGSenior Vice President of Communications and MarketingFellowship of Christian AthletesRICHARD TESCHDirector of Corporate and Community AffairsCampus Crusade for Christ International

What is the Alliance Defense Fund, and why does Bill O'Reilly advocate donating to it?

On the October 11 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Bill O'Reilly spoke with a caller who asked "[h]ow do people like me ... fight people like" the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). O'Reilly replied: "Well, you fight them by giving money to the Alliance Defense Fund [ADF] out in Phoenix, Arizona. Alliance Defense Fund is set up to be the anecdote [sic] to the ACLU. They come in and fight them in court. So while the left wing donates to the ACLU, traditional Americans [can donate to the ADF] -- and you don't have to be conservative. You see, a lot of liberals don't like this ACLU."

Despite O'Reilly's characterization of the ADF as a group that non-conservatives might want to support, the organization was founded by influential leaders of the Christian Right to pursue a conservative political agenda.
The organization
ADF is classified as a 501(c)(3) public charity. According to the ADF website, the group is "a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation." ADF defines this "Truth" according to a conservative Christian template, characterizing itself as "a servant organization that provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values."
The founders
ADF lists as its founders several prominent leaders of the Christian Right:
James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family.
D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries.
The late William R. Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.
The late Larry Burkett, co-founder of Crown Financial Ministries, which teaches followers to "learn, apply, and teach God's financial principles so they may know Christ more intimately, be free to serve Him, and help fund the Great Commission."
The late Marlin Maddoux, former host of Point of View, which claims to be America's "most popular live Christian call-in show," and founder of the conservative USA Radio Network.

Current leadership

ADF is currently led by president, CEO, and general counsel Alan E. Sears, who held numerous positions in the Reagan administration including director of the attorney general's commission on pornography and assistant U.S. attorney in the Department of Justice. Sears is also a columnist for conservative websites Townhall.com and WorldNetDaily.com. He has co-authored two books with Craig J. Osten, the ADF's vice president of presidential communications and research: The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005) and The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today (Broadman & Holman, 2003). In The Homosexual Agenda, Sears and Osten write:

Unfortunately, if many homosexual activists have their way, Christ's message of redemptive love will be silenced and those who share it through the preaching of the uncensored words of Scripture will be punished. ...The effort of homosexual activists to convince Americans to tolerate (i.e., "affirm") homosexual behavior tramples religious freedom and leaves a trail of broken bodies in the dust.

ADF's board of directors includes several notable members of the Christian Right, including:

Tom Minnery (chairman), vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family. According to a May 2 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Minnery once stated that "[h]omosexuality is a mental disorder and can be cured. ... It's a psychological issue, rooted mostly in early childhood. ... But thousands have come out of it."

Clark Hollingsworth (vice chairman), executive vice president and chief operating officer for Family Life Ministries. Hollingsworth has in the past been affiliated with Coral Ridge Ministries, and according to the website of the National Alliance Against Christian Discrimination (NAACD), Hollingsworth issued the following statement in support of NAACD:

We agree with you that there is a serious need for the Christian equivalent of an anti-defamation league [sic]. ... Christians are the only ones that it is acceptable to criticize and ridicule in our country today. The movie industry, the television industry, the newspaper media, the anti-virtue forces in our nation, and the homosexual activists are all actively engaged in Christian bashing. May God bless your and your efforts.

Tom Rogeberg, executive vice president and chief communications officer of Coral Ridge Ministries.

Rick Tesch, director of corporate and community affairs for Campus Crusade for Christ.

Agenda

ADF focuses on three main issues:

"Guarding the Sanctity of Human Life": ADF is opposed to all forms of abortion and euthanasia.

"Protecting Family Values": ADF states that "God has defined marriage as one man married to one woman." ADF opposes same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, and "[e]xpos[ing] children to explicit sex education materials contrary to parental approval.

"Defending Religious Freedom": ADF opposes efforts by "the ACLU and other radical activist groups ... to eliminate public expression of our nation's faith and heritage." Among other goals, ADF seeks to "[preserve] historic and Christian acknowledgement in public places" and legalize prayer in public schools and at public school functions.

Those considering supporting ADF may be interested in their previous activities, which include:

Representing Stephen Williams, a Cupertino, California, schoolteacher who filed suit against the Cupertino Union School District claiming that his teaching was being restricted because he was a Christian. The ADF misleadingly claimed in a November 2004 press release, headlined "Declaration of Independence Banned from Classroom," that Williams was prohibited from issuing supplemental handouts to his students, including excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, "because the historical documents contain some references to God and religion" -- spin repeated by Fox News. In fact, parents had complained to the school that Williams's teaching "crossed the line into evangelizing," and the handouts Williams had prepared were excerpts of only religious references, not the full documents from which the excerpts came. The ADF withdrew the lawsuit in August with both sides agreeing to dismiss all claims and cover their own legal expenses; no school policies were altered. Williams resigned from the school district a few days later.

The "Christmas Project." Claiming that "[m]isconceptions and controversy about the so-called 'separation of church and state' has led many public officials to 'remove Christ from Christmas,' " the ADF has pursued legal action and other activities over perceived attempts by "government officials to censor Christmas carols, eliminate all references to Christmas, or silence those who celebrate Christ's birth." The project "includes the mobilization of a nationwide force of more than 700 allied attorneys available to combat any attempts to censor the celebration of Christmas in schools and on public property." The ADF also "contacted more than 6,700 school districts across the nation" in late 2004 with the goal of "explaining the law with regard to the celebration of Christmas in the public schools." Fox News has hyped legal actions filed by the ADF and other conservative legal groups in order to portray a widespread "attack on Christmas" by "secular progressives."

ADF is currently representing the Christian ministry Love in Action International, Inc., which counsels gays and lesbians on "leaving" homosexuality, in a lawsuit filed against the state of Tennessee. Love In Action sued the state, alleging religious discrimination after the state Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities decided that Love in Action needed a state license to offer some of the services it was providing.

From the October 11 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: You like the country. You respect the country. You think it's a good place to live, and it's done well by you, correct?

CALLER: It has.

O'REILLY: Well, then I perfectly understand, because the ACLU does not like the country and wants a dramatically new country. They push the same buttons with me, [caller]. Go ahead.

CALLER: So how do people like me -- how do we fight people like them?

O'REILLY: Well, you fight them by giving money to the Alliance Defense Fund out in Phoenix, Arizona. Alliance Defense Fund is set up to be the anecdote [sic] to the ACLU. They come in and fight them in court. So while the left wing donates to the ACLU, traditional Americans -- and you don't have to be conservative. You see, a lot of liberals don't like this ACLU.

O'Reilly has had a longtime antipathy toward the ACLU, previously describing the group as "a terrorist group" and America's "most dangerous organization ... second next to Al Qaeda" and claiming that "[n]o organization enables terrorism as much as the ACLU."

PFAW (PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY RIGHT WING WATCH ANALYSIS)

HOME LINK URL PFAW: http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general

Right Wing Organizations

EYE ON THE RIGHT: RIGHT WING WATCH ANALYSIS

Alliance Defense Fund
Founded by a group of high-profile Religious Right leaders such as D. James Kennedy and James Dobson, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) sees itself as a counter to the ACLU. As a legal group, it assists and augments the efforts of other right-wing groups to “keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel.” The ADF has been active on issues including pushing “marriage protection,” exposing the “homosexual agenda” and fighting the supposed “war on Christmas.” Alliance Defense Fund15333 N. Pima Road - Suite 165Scottsdale AZ 85260Website:

www.alliancedefensefund.orgFounders: Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ; Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts; Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries; Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media; Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association; and 25+ other ministries.Founded: 1994 President and General Counsel: Alan Sears Officers, Directors, Trustees, and Key Employees: Alan Sears, Wayne N. Swindler, Marv McCarthyOther Staff: 38 employeesFinances: $15,744,101 (2003 budget)Major Donors: Bill and Berniece Grewcock Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Bradley Foundation.
Principal Issues
Background
Alan Sears’ Background
Quotes
Principal Issues
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is a Christian legal firm established by more than 30 Christian ministries to help defend “family values” and work against the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).

ADF defines itself by its ability to strategize and coordinate with lawyers all over the United States. Lawyers who sign up for their “Blackstone Legal Institute” are expected to donate 450 pro bono hours over a three year period.

ADF has coordinated more than 750 lawyers and 125 right-wing organizations, and many conservative ministries on behalf of ADF-defined Christian legal issues.

ADF claims 25 “victories” before the Supreme Court, including: Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), which allowed the Boy Scouts to fire a Scout Leader due solely to his sexual orientation; United States v. American Library Association (2003), in which the Court voted to allow the federal government to withhold federal funds if libraries did not comply with the filtering called for by the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000; and Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), upheld Ohio’s school voucher system, which allows for parents to send their children to private or religious schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers.

ADF has linked more than 125 groups to create a combined effort to fight for their issues. They’ve brought together attorneys and allied legal groups to help develop a national strategy on controversial social issues, for example they worked with others to develop a national strategy to “protect marriage” across the United States after Vermont's decision to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.

In addition to organizing lawyers and ministries, ADF also trains and recruits and provides grants to support legal cases as well as pro-bono assistance.

ADF also defends the right of Christians to “share the gospel” in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian.

ADF has had success in anti-gay cases all over the US, from Alaska to Massachusetts.
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Background
Unique to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is their collective of high-power founders, including wealthy right-wing organizations such as Dobson’s Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries.

The ADF embodies the beliefs of its founders, harnessing the efforts of a cadre of right-wing groups with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. All of these groups are influential members of the Right; they are pro-life and anti-gay, and their ultimate goal is to see the law and U.S. government enshrined with conservative Christian principles.

The relationship between ADF and it’s founders is one of mutual self-interest; ADF has access to the resources and networking of large organizations, who in turn are equipped with an endless supply of readily-available lawyers.

ADF’s strength goes beyond their budget due to their influence with well-funded religious-right groups.

Two issues common to each of ADF’s founders are their work against the right to abortion, and against the civil rights/liberties of gays and lesbians. They are particularly persistent in attacking attempts by homosexuals to have families, establish domestic partnerships or civil unions, or to be protected from discrimination in employment or housing.
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Alan Sears’ Background

Alan Sears was the Executive Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under President Ronald Reagan. Sears was a federal prosecutor for former Secretary of Interior Don Hodel (former Christian Coalition President), and has produced several anti-gay works, such as The Homosexual Agenda in paperback, and Exposing the Homosexual Agenda on broadcast cassette.
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Quotes

“The Alliance Defense Fund is a servant organization that provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values.”– The Alliance Defense Fund website, February 2006

Supreme Court PreviewHein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation
(U.S. Supreme Court, No. 06-157, oral argument scheduled for February 28, 2007)

By: Ira C. Lupu & Robert W. Tuttle, Directors of Legal Research for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, and Professors of Law, George Washington University Law School.
Publication Date: 02/20/2007 Date Last Updated: 02/20/2007

On Wednesday, February 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Jay Hein, Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives ("WHOFBCI") v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. ("FFRF"). Paul Clement, the Solicitor General of the United States, will argue the case for the WHOFBCI. Andrew Pincus of the Washington law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw will appear for FFRF.

As originally filed by FFRF on behalf of its taxpayer-members, the case involves a broad constitutional attack on expenditures and activities sponsored by the White House and various federal agencies in support of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative ("FBCI"). The single issue that has led the case to the nation's highest court, however, is the status of taxpayers as appropriate parties to bring such a lawsuit. The question of who may mount lawsuits falls under the lawyer's rubric of "standing to sue," and this case tests the limits of the standing of taxpayers to complain that the government has spent money in ways that allegedly violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.[1] If taxpayers lack standing, they will not be able to ask courts to hear cases involving such expenditures.

The original complaint in the lawsuit alleged that the White House and other federal agencies had spent money on regional conferences to promote the FBCI. As later characterized by Judge Posner in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, the complaint asserted that these conferences amounted to "propaganda vehicles" for religion, and therefore violated the Establishment Clause. Among other things, the complaint cited speeches by then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige as evidence that the government unconstitutionally used the conferences to promote religious messages.

The government moved to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the taxpayer-plaintiffs lacked the requisite standing to sue, and the district court granted that motion. FFRF appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. In Judge Posner's opinion for a panel of that Circuit, the appeals court concluded that the district court was wrong on the question of taxpayer standing and reinstated the suit. The government petitioned the full Court of Appeals for rehearing en banc. The judges of that court voted to reject that petition, but several judges wrote separate opinions, in which they complained about the confusing state of the law of taxpayer standing and suggested that the Supreme Court should clarify the situation. The government then petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, and in December of 2006, the Court agreed to do so. The parties, and various friends of the court, have now filed written briefs, and the case will be argued on February 28.

Background on the Law of Standing

The requirement of "standing to sue" in the federal courts arises from Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which limits those courts to "cases" and "controversies." In order for a lawsuit to present a case or controversy, the plaintiff must demonstrate that he or she has been injured by the defendant in ways that the court can remedy if the defendant is found to have behaved unlawfully. The purpose of this requirement of "injury" is to ensure that there is genuine adversity between the parties. Such adversity is thought to guarantee that the strongest facts and arguments will be presented by both sides, thereby facilitating the best possible judicial resolution of the dispute. The "injury" requirement is also said to ensure that the dispute is concrete, and does not represent an abstract or generalized grievance.

Many years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that federal taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the constitutionality of federal expenditure programs, because the connection between the allegedly wrongful expenditure and their status as taxpayers is too remote.[2] Even if they win the suit, the Court then reasoned, taxpayers will not get a refund of the amount of the taxes that have been wrongfully spent. In 1968, however, the Court carved out an exception to the doctrine excluding taxpayers from standing in Flast v. Cohen,[3] which authorized taxpayer standing to challenge congressional action alleged to be in violation of the specific limitations in the First Amendment, including the Establishment Clause. The reasoning in Flast turned on the special history of the Establishment Clause, which protects taxpayers from being compelled to support any religious faith. Although the Court in Flast focused on the congressional role in appropriating money that might be spent in aid of religious institutions, the Court twenty years later in Bowen v. Kendrick [4] explicitly applied the Flast principle to Executive Branch decisions about spending legislative appropriations for programs under the Adolescent Family Life Act.

The only significant decision in the Supreme Court in the past 40 years in which the Court has rejected taxpayer status as sufficient to confer standing in Establishment Clause cases is Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc.[5] The Valley Forge case involved a transfer of government-owned land and buildings from the Executive Branch to a religious college. The Supreme Court ruled that the Executive's authority to transfer the property arose under Article IV, section 3, which authorizes Congress to dispose of property of the United States, rather than Art. I, section 8, clause 1, which authorizes the Congress to tax and spend. On that basis, the Court concluded that current taxpayers are not directly injured by transfers of property acquired earlier, with tax dollars contributed by prior taxpayers.

Narrowly framed, the question in Hein v. FFRF is whether the taxpayer plaintiffs in this case are more like those in Flast and Bowen, in which the Court recognized taxpayer standing as an exception to the general rule against such standing, or are closer to those in the Valley Forge case, in which the exclusive role of the Executive Branch in deciding to transfer the property led the Court to deny taxpayer standing.

Viewed more broadly, the Justices may see Hein v. FFRF as a case in which to reaffirm the concept that standing to sue under the Establishment Clause should be construed generously, as the Court did in Flast, or to reject that concept, as the Court did in Valley Forge. The principal reason to view standing broadly in Establishment Clause cases is not simply the historical connection with taxpayers concerned about being compelled to support state-favored religions. Rather, the key concern in today's world is whether any party will be able to bring Establishment Clause cases to the courts. Because most alleged violations of the Clause involve actions that favor religion, and coerce no one into religious experience, a narrow doctrine of standing to sue would make many government actions effectively unchallengeable. Constitutional examination of government expenditures that support religious entities, and of government expression of religious sentiments (like displays of the Ten Commandments), can only occur if the courts construe the concept of standing in a broad way, because no one would have a personal and specific injury in such matters if injury were narrowly defined.

In this respect, there is an important relationship between views on the breadth of the Establishment Clause and openness on taxpayer standing to sue. Those Justices (like Justices Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg) who tend to hold expansive conceptions of what the Clause prohibits, and who believe that courts should enforce those conceptions, are also likely to favor broad doctrines of standing to sue in these cases. By contrast, those Justices (like Justices Scalia and Thomas) who hold narrower conceptions of the Clause, and who would like to keep courts away from these sorts of questions, are also likely to favor narrower conceptions of standing to sue. Justices Kennedy and Breyer are less predictable on these questions, and neither Justice Alito nor Chief Justice Roberts have yet been involved at the Supreme Court level in cases involving the Establishment Clause.[6]

In addition to the scope of federal taxpayer standing, two very large issues are potentially lurking in the wake of Hein v. FFRF. First, the Court has for many years expressed no doubt about the scope of state and local taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases. Flast, Bowen, and Valley Forge all focused on the standing of federal taxpayers, but the Court has decided a number of cases in which standing to sue rested on the plaintiff's status as a state or local taxpayer. A decision in Hein to expand or contract federal taxpayer standing may have implications for suits by state and local taxpayers as well. Second, courts have been quite generous in recognizing the standing of those who challenge government religious expression on the basis of exposure to that expression - for example, objecting to religious messages in a courthouse because the objector is a lawyer who regularly practices in that courthouse. This sort of "exposure" standing is also unusual, and may be unique to cases brought under the Establishment Clause. If Hein limits taxpayer standing, it may do so on grounds that will eventually spill over and affect "exposure" standing as well.

Hein involves two key factual elements that distinguish this case from Flast and Bowen, in which the Court recognized taxpayer standing. First, the expenditures challenged in Hein are drawn from the general budget appropriations from Congress for operation of the White House and its offices, such as the WHOFBCI, and for the administrative operations of other federal agencies. By contrast, the expenditures in Flast and Bowen had been drawn from congressional appropriations for particular substantive spending programs - in Flast, for instructional materials and teachers' pay, and in Bowen, for services related to adolescent family life. Second, and related to the first, the expenditures challenged in Hein are internal to the Executive Branch, and do not involve grants to religiously affiliated parties outside of the government; by contrast, the schemes challenged in both Flast and Bowen involved the possibility of expenditures to religiously affiliated entities external to the government. We expect much of the oral argument in Hein to focus on these key facts.

The Arguments of the Parties to the Case

1. The government. Arguing on behalf of the WHOFBCI, the brief for the U.S. Solicitor General proceeds on relatively narrow grounds. According to the government, Flast represents "a narrow exception to the general rule against taxpayer standing to permit taxpayer challenges to congressional appropriations that took the form of legislatively directed grants in aid of religion."[7] The government thus emphasizes the necessity of an explicit congressional connection to the religious content of the challenged expenditures. From these premises, the government argues that the FFRF suit against the WHOFBCI does not fall within the terms of the exception, because: 1) the challenge is to an executive branch expenditure; 2) the expenditure is not the result of a legislative decision to spend funds in aid of religion or religious entities; and 3) the expenditure did not go outside the government to assist any religious entities.

Only at the very end of the government's brief is there a hint of a broader, more theoretical basis for the government's argument. In the brief's final section, it argues that a narrow view of taxpayer standing is required by the doctrine of separation of powers. A broad doctrine of taxpayer standing, the brief asserts, would make it too easy for taxpayers to invoke the power of courts each and very time the government does something that arguably supports religion. For example, taxpayers could challenge prayers at the inauguration of a governor or mayor, even if the government spends no money on the prayer. The brief thus links a broad doctrine of standing in Establishment Clause cases with concerns about judicial activism, and excessive judicial policing of the Executive Branch.

2. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. The FFRF brief was prepared by Andrew Pincus and others from the firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe, & Maw, with help from the Yale Law School Supreme Court advocacy clinic, and Richard Bolton, who had argued the case in the lower courts. The brief argues that FFRF's claim falls squarely within the contours of Flast v. Cohen and other prior decisions. The brief asserts that drawing lines between congressional programs that obviously contemplate aid to religious entities, on the one hand, and more general congressional appropriations that coincidentally permit Executive expenditure to promote religion, on the other, makes no sense in light of the purposes of the Establishment Clause. According to FFRF, taxpayers are injured in the same way by any expenditure that unconstitutionally advances religion, regardless of the degree of attention paid by Congress to possible religious goals or beneficiaries. In all such cases, Congress has appropriated funds, and the Executive Branch has spent them unconstitutionally.

Moreover, FFRF argues, the government's distinction between external grants, like those in Flast and Bowen, and internal expenditures, like those at issue here, is not persuasive. If the government is spending to promote religion, the distinction between internal and external expenditures is constitutionally irrelevant. For example, it would be just as questionable for the government to hire its own clergy to lead daily prayers in each federal agency as it would be for the government to enter contracts with a private clergy service to provide such prayers in the same public agencies.

FFRF asserts that a common standard ties together Flast, Bowen, and this case - that the challenged expenditure must be "fairly traceable to the alleged unconstitutional conduct."[8] If it is so traceable, courts should be able to hear the complaints about the constitutionality of the conduct. Under this approach, taxpayers would not have standing to challenge conduct that is only remotely connected to an expenditure - for example, references to God in a Presidential inaugural address - but would have standing to challenge expenditures for FBCI conferences designed to praise, favor, and promote religion.

Arguments Advanced in Amicus Briefs

As is typical in high profile litigation in the Supreme Court, a number of interest groups and governmental entities have filed briefs as amici curiae (friends of the Court) on the issues in the case. By bringing additional facts and perspectives to the Court's attention, such briefs can play a crucial role in the resolution of the dispute. For example, amicus briefs filed by major U.S. corporations and retired military officers in the litigation over affirmative action for racial minorities at the University of Michigan Law School are widely credited with helping to persuade Justice O'Connor to cast the crucial fifth vote in favor of the school's policy in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).

Several influential interest groups have filed amicus briefs in Hein. As described below, some of them - particularly on the government's side - take positions considerably more aggressive than those taken by the parties.

1. Amicus briefs on the side of the government. Five amicus briefs have been filed on the side of the WHOFBCI. One, prepared by the Office of the Indiana Attorney General on behalf of twelve states,[9] argues that a ruling in favor of FFRF would expose many states to lawsuits for their own conferences, designed to promote the FBCI, and for other executive branch activities that might be perceived as supportive of religion. Moreover, the states assert that broad doctrines of standing, in establishment clause cases as well as others, lead to excessive federal court interference with state activity. Arguing boldly that Flast v. Cohen is inconsistent with principles of federalism and power separation, the states' brief calls for the Supreme Court to explicitly overrule Flast, and to jettison the doctrine of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases.
The American Center for Law and Justice ("ACLJ") - a frequent participant in Supreme Court litigation - has also filed an amicus brief on the government side. The ACLJ often defends government entities, especially state and local, that take steps to accommodate or promote religion. The ACLJ, arguing from premises of power separation, has also argued that the Court should overrule Flast v. Cohen. Flast, claims the ACLJ, is a departure from appropriate principles of interpretation of Article III, which is designed to limit the courts to cases brought by parties who suffer concrete, personal, and identifiable personal injury from the government's actions.

Several other organizations have filed in support of the WHOFBCI in Hein v. FFRF. An amicus brief from We Care America, a group of faith-based organizations that support the FBCI, argues that such organizations are already under threat from taxpayer suits when these organizations enter into partnerships with government and that the Court should act to reduce that threat. The brief, prepared by the Alliance Defense Fund, expresses special concern about the possibility of reimbursement orders aimed at faith organizations which have contracted with government in ways later held to be unlawful. The brief calls for a cutback in both taxpayer standing and "observer" standing in cases of government religious displays. The Christian Legal Society has filed a brief arguing that Flast itself is correctly decided, because the Establishment Clause protects "structural' values, rather than individual rights, and enforcement of the Clause depends on maintaining the "legal fiction" of taxpayer injury. Nevertheless, the Society argues that extending Flast to FFRF's case goes "too far," by permitting taxpayer interference with too wide a swath of executive branch behavior. And the Foundation for Moral Law, Inc. has filed a brief arguing that the Establishment Clause should be understood as protecting the states against federal interference in matters of religion, and that taxpayer standing too often invites precisely such interference by the federal judiciary in state and local decisions pertaining to religious matters.

2. Amicus briefs on the side of FFRF. Five amicus briefs have been filed on the side of FFRF in this case. The most prominent of these is the joint product of the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, People for the American Way, and the Anti-Defamation League. These organizations are frequently involved on the plaintiffs' side in Establishment Clause litigation, so any reduction in the scope of taxpayer standing would affect the ability of these organizations to litigate effectively. This joint amicus brief focuses most of its argument on buttressing the general concept of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases. The brief asserts that the lower courts have been able to make sensible decisions under the current law of taxpayer standing, and argues that respect for precedent should lead the Supreme Court to leave undisturbed the existing legal regime of Flast v. Cohen and its progeny. Because these organizations' agenda is the preservation of Flast's general principle, rather than the ultimate success of this lawsuit, the brief spends very little time arguing that FFRF should be granted standing in this particular case.

In addition, a group of scholars and historians have filed an amicus brief, challenging the government's view that congressional -- as distinguished from executive -- action represents the unique concern of the Establishment Clause. This brief, which may be quite influential with a number of Justices, argues strenuously that the government's distinction between congressional and executive support for religion is specious and ahistorical. The brief assembles considerable evidence that the Framers were mindful of monarchical establishments as well as parliamentary ones, and that the First Amendment - though it references only "Congress" - was designed to limit the Executive Branch as well as the legislature.

An amicus brief filed on behalf of the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee also emphasizes what its authors see as illogical and unpersuasive distinctions between congressional and executive focus on religion, and between internal and external expenditures. Government expenditures designed to promote religious belief or favor certain faiths, the brief argues, represent First Amendment violations no matter which branch of government is the primary architect of such expenditure policies, and without regard to whether the monies wind up in private hands. Moreover, this amicus brief is the only one to delve deeply into the question, related to that posed in Hein, of the standing of state and local taxpayers to raise Establishment Clause questions in the courts. The brief cites a wide variety of such suits from the state courts. Although the states have a variety of technical rules to govern taxpayer standing, the brief argues that no state's policies on taxpayer suits distinguish between legislative and executive origination of the expenditure, or between internal expenses and grants to parties outside of government.

Several other groups have also filed on the side of FFRF in this case. The brief on behalf of the American Atheists, Inc. is highly supportive of the particulars of FFRF's lawsuit, both on the question of standing and on the Establishment Clause question presented by the case. The brief points out that the FBCI-promoting conferences targeted by the lawsuit involve external expenditures (e.g., renting a hotel ballroom for the conference) as well as internal ones (paying the salaries of government officers who appear at the conferences), and argues that taxpayers should be able to challenge such expenditures in the same way they can challenge grants to religious entities. And a brief filed jointly on behalf of the Center for Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism argues that Congress did indeed intend that its appropriations for the White House and various federal agencies should be spent in promotion of the FBCI. The brief assembles evidence from congressional-executive interactions over the past six years that Congress was highly aware of the FBCI, and made appropriations for administration of federal agencies knowing that the monies would be used to promote the FBCI. The brief asserts that this awareness and interaction renders the challenged expenditures for the conferences a product of congressional as well as executive decision, and brings the case well within the Court's prior rulings in Flast v. Cohen and Bowen v. Kendrick.

Our Appraisal of the Case

Although some of the government's amici have argued for overruling of Flast and repudiation of the doctrine of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases, we do not expect that sort of sweeping and dramatic decision in this case. Just a year ago, the Court expressed approval of Flast in an opinion rejecting taxpayer standing to challenge a policy that did not involve religion. Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote that opinion, is well-known to favor narrow rather than broad constitutional decisions, and his vote would appear to be necessary to accomplish any dramatic change in the law. Moreover, Justice Kennedy, who is not hospitable to broad Establishment Clause norms and who may side with the government in this case, is himself well-known for preferring to keep the judiciary actively involved in most constitutional questions, and therefore might be disinclined to favor a highly limited doctrine of standing.

We thus believe that the case will be decided on narrow grounds of the sort reflected in the government's brief - whether the size of congressional fingerprints on the expenditure is dispositive, and whether the expenditure's internal rather than external quality matters. Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens are likely to side with FFRF. Justices Scalia, Thomas, and perhaps Justice Alito are likely to side with the government, and may even be willing to severely limit the scope of Flast v. Cohen. The votes of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer (always a wild card in cases about religion and the Constitution) are likely to determine the outcome, and we do not expect that any of these three will join in an effort to dismantle the existing law of taxpayer standing. We are thus predicting a 5-4 or 6-3 decision, on narrow grounds, and that decision could easily go either way. If the decision is in favor of FFRF, the case will return to the district court for a decision on FFRF's challenge.[10]

If we are correct in our appraisal of the Supreme Court's likely treatment of the issue of taxpayer standing, the case of Hein v. FFRF will break little new ground and have little effect on other Establishment Clause litigation. If, however, a group of five Justices agrees to cut back significantly on Flast's special consideration for taxpayers in Establishment Clause litigation, Hein v. FFRF could mark the beginning of a long and deep retrenchment in such litigation, in which cases about expenditures (federal, state, and local) and cases about government religious expression become considerably more difficult for plaintiffs to bring through the courthouse door. Such a retrenchment might embolden government entities to take steps that the current law of the Establishment Clause appears to forbid. For example, a governor might sponsor a religious revival meeting using funds appropriated to her office for general use. In that sense, the law of standing to raise Establishment Clause issues is a proxy for the underlying constraints of the Clause itself. The stakes in Hein v. FFRF may thus be considerably larger than first appear from the seemingly technical qualities of the issue presented.

Notes:

[1]. The Establishment Clause - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" - prohibits the government from actively promoting religious belief.
[2]. Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923).
[3]. 392 U.S. 83 (1968).
[4]. 487 U.S. 589 (1988).
[5]. 454 U.S. 464 (1982).
[6]. Alito's record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit suggests that he may be likely to hold views on the scope of the Establishment Clause close to those of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Nevertheless, a unanimous Court joined in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion last Term in DaimlerChrysler v. Cuno, 126 S. Ct. 2961 (2006), in which the Court (while rejecting taxpayer standing to complain about state tax breaks for new businesses) had this to say about Flast v. Cohen: "Flast is consistent with the principle, underlying the Article III prohibition on taxpayer suits, that a litigant may not assume a particular disposition of government funds in establishing standing. The Flast Court discerned in the history of the Establishment Clause ‘the specific evils feared by [its drafters] that the taxing and spending power would be used to favor one religion over another or to support religion in general.' The Court therefore understood the ‘injury' alleged in Establishment Clause challenges to federal spending to be the very ‘extraction and spending' of ‘tax money' in aid of religion alleged by a plaintiff. And an injunction against the spending would of course redress that injury, regardless of whether lawmakers would dispose of the savings in a way that would benefit the taxpayer-plaintiffs personally."
[7]. Brief for Petitioner Jay Hein at 19.
[8]. Brief for Respondent FFRF at 19-21.
[9] The states joining the brief are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington State.
[10] We assess the merits of FFRF's lawsuit in our original legal update on the case, available online at: http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update_display.cfm?id=28.

Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. (and others) v. Jim Towey, Director of White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (and others)

On June 17, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (hereafter "FFRF") filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin against Jim Towey, the Director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (hereafter "OFBCI"), and other federal officials with primary responsibility in virtually every agency in the federal government that has a connection with the Initiative. The defendants include (in addition to Jim Towey) the Attorney General; the Secretaries of Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education; the Directors of the OFBCI at each of those agencies, and at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Agency for International Development, and the Corporation for National and Community Service; and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The complaint alleges that those responsible for the Initiative have unconstitutionally: 1) endorsed religion; 2) favored religious over secular organizations in the distribution of federal funds for social services; 3) directly funded services that include religious content; and 4) funded intermediary faith-based organizations (hereafter "FBOs") that prefer religious subgrantees to secular ones. All these actions, the complaint asserts, violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.[2]
The complaint is written in very general terms, and includes virtually no identified examples of the alleged wrongdoing. If the plaintiffs can overcome various procedural hurdles that the government is likely to raise, they will be entitled to begin the process of discovery and seek evidence to support their general allegations. Thereafter, if the plaintiffs are able to prove their allegations, and if the courts are persuaded that the proven conduct indeed violates the Constitution, the plaintiffs will be entitled to some form of relief against any government defendants who have been shown to have behaved unlawfully.

The lawsuit´s massive scope makes it a matter of immediate and focused concern for the architects and administrators of the Initiative. If major aspects of the suit are successful, the Faith-Based Initiative could be significantly altered or compromised, and perhaps even wind up under long-term judicial supervision. In its current bare-bones form, the complaint raises a variety of procedural, substantive, and remedial issues, all of which we analyze below.

SUMMARY OF ALLEGATIONS

The suit, filed on behalf of FFRF and its principal officers,[3] names as defendants virtually all of the federal officials, some at Cabinet rank, who are responsible for administering the President´s Faith-Based Initiative. The complaint alleges that the Initiative is being administered in ways that endorse religion, prefer FBOs to secular entities, and directly fund religious activity, all in violation of the First Amendment´s Establishment Clause. The complaint´s central allegations are as follows:

· FFRF is a non-profit corporation, with more than 5000 members, "who are opposed to government endorsement of religion" in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
· The various named defendants, including Jim Towey, each have administrative responsibility for some portion of the Faith-Based Initiative.
· The defendants have used federal taxpayer appropriations to support activities that endorse religion and give FBOs preferred positions.
· The defendants at national and regional conferences have sent messages that "adherents of religious belief" are favored members of the political community, and that non-adherents of such belief are political outsiders.
· Those defendants who direct agency Centers for FBCI oversee expenditures intended to give preferences to FBOs over other organizations, and help build capacity of FBOs. These activities are all designed to support and endorse religious service providers.
· The Departments of Labor, HHS, Education, and Justice, and the Center for Disease Control have all "directly and preferentially funded . . . . services that integrate religion as a substantive component."
· The Departments of Labor, HHS, Education, and Justice, and the Center for Disease Control have funded intermediary FBOs "that preferentially award sub-grants to other [FBOs]," without objective criteria to guide the intermediaries in making sub-awards.
· These actions violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and injure the plaintiffs by compelling taxpayer support of the "establishment, endorsement and advancement of religion."

The complaint concludes with a request that the court 1) declare that the defendants have made expenditures in violation of the First Amendment; 2) order the defendants to discontinue such expenditures, and in particular order the defunding of the various Centers for Faith-Based Initiatives; and 3) order the defendants to create policies to ensure that future appropriations are not made or used to fund providers of services that include "religion as an integral component."

The defendants, who will be represented by the Department of Justice in consultation with the affected federal agencies, now have sixty days in which to make their initial response to the complaint by FFRF.

OUR ANALYSIS OF THE LAWSUIT

The FFRF lawsuit raises a number of concerns crucial to the controversy over the Faith-based Initiative. We expect that the first set of questions to be confronted by the court will be procedural, and will focus on whether this lawsuit may go forward in its current form. If the suit survives these procedural hurdles, the focus of the next phase of the case will be evidentiary, and will involve the plaintiffs´ efforts to collect and offer proof of their allegations of religious favoritism and direct government expenditure for programs with religious content. Assuming the plaintiffs can amass such evidence, the court will be faced with the substantive question of whether the evidence demonstrates a violation of the Constitution. If the court finds such a violation, the final questions will involve matters of remedy; if these violations of the First Amendment are occurring, what steps should the court take to ensure that the violations do not continue? We examine these four layers - procedural, evidentiary, substantive, and remedial - in turn.

1. Procedural objections

The government might ask the court to dismiss the complaint on a variety of procedural grounds. One possibility for such a request would be the vague and general allegations in the complaint. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, a complaint need provide no more than a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief."[4] Ultimately, the plaintiffs will have to provide more specificity to their allegations, but for now we believe that the complaint contains sufficient notice of the grounds for the suit to satisfy the rule.

Another, perhaps more likely possibility, is that the defendants will move to dismiss the suit on the basis of the plaintiffs´ lack of standing. Despite the Supreme Court´s recent dismissal on standing grounds of Michael Newdow´s suit regarding recitals in public school of the Pledge of Allegiance, the law of standing in Establishment Clause cases tends to be very favorable to plaintiffs. Here, plaintiffs have alleged that FFRF is an organization devoted to protecting church-state separation, and that it has 5000 members devoted to that principle. In addition, the individual plaintiffs are alleged to be federal taxpayers whose tax contributions are used to support the challenged activity

Taxpayer status is legally sufficient to sustain the plaintiffs´ standing to complain about federal expenditures in support of religion, whether those expenditures involve services with religious content, conferences at which religious messages are allegedly communicated, grants for capacity-building by FBOs, or grants to FBO intermediaries. In some circumstances, government endorsement of religion may not arise out of expenditure of government funds, but virtually all of the alleged activities here do involve public expenditure. It is conceivable that the court may dismiss the allegations about preferential funding for FBOs over others, on the grounds that none of the plaintiffs have alleged that they have been the subject of a denial of funds. Even on this point, however, we expect that the court will find that taxpayer status is legally sufficient to complain about use of government monies in ways that signal preference for religious over secular providers; the taxpayer complaint is not that the plaintiffs have been discriminated against in the distribution of grants, but rather that government funds may not be spent in ways that promote religious favoritism.

Those defendants who are Directors of OFBCIs may raise an additional procedural defense. The complaint alleges, among other things, that these Directors "oversee the expenditure of federal tax appropriations that are intended to give preferences . . . . [to FBOs]." Directors of OFBCIs do not have legal authority to authorize and oversee expenditures for particular grants; their role is more promotional and advisory. Accordingly, we can foresee the possibility that Jim Towey, and the other Directors of agency-specific OFBCIs, may be dismissed as defendants with respect to the portions of the complaint that involve grants to FBOs. But the various Cabinet-level officials will remain as defendants with respect to such complaints, and the Directors of OFBCIs are likely to remain as defendants with respect to the complaints about promotion of religion at national and regional conferences to promote the Initiative.

We thus fully expect that the substance of the FFRF complaint will survive the hurdles the government may create at the outset of the case. If that is correct, the case will proceed to the stages of discovery (evidence gathering) and substantive judgment, to which we now turn.

2. Evidentiary concerns
If, as we expect, the FFRF complaint survives the various grounds on which the government will try to have it dismissed, the lawsuit will move into a new phase. In particular, the plaintiffs will be free to seek evidence to prove their allegations, through discovery of the conduct of various defendants. Such a process would likely commence with requests for documents (electronic and written) from all defendants with respect to matters related to the Initiative. Following review of such documents, the plaintiffs are likely to seek to take the depositions of Jim Towey (Director of the White House OFBCI), all of the Directors of the agency-based OFBCIs, and relevant officials in all of the agencies named in the complaint. This entire process of discovery could take a considerable period of time - indeed, given the medium-sized law firm that is currently representing the plaintiffs and the magnitude of the discovery task, we expect that discovery could take several years.[5] In addition, the plaintiffs will attempt to collect affidavits from others, outside the government, whose observations may tend to support the complaint´s allegations.

Eventually, depending upon what evidence turns up in the discovery process and what evidence the plaintiffs already possess, one or both sides may move the court for judgment in its favor. That is, based on whatever facts are not in dispute,[6] each side might assert that it is entitled to legal judgment on some or all of the issues. It is impossible to predict how the court would rule in such a situation without knowing exactly what evidence, by way of affidavits or other undisputed information, each side might have. Any such ruling, however, would turn on the interaction of the available evidence and the relevant substantive law of the Establishment Clause.

3. The Law of the Establishment Clause

The key decision to understand in the appraisal of the FFRF lawsuit is Bowen v. Kendrick, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988.[7] In that case, the plaintiffs asserted that the Adolescent Family Life Act ("AFLA") violated the Establishment Clause. AFLA required the inclusion of FBOs in any local plan seeking federal funds for efforts at educating teenagers on matters of sexuality and human reproduction.

The Supreme Court rejected the idea that the mandatory inclusion of FBOs in plans approved under AFLA violated the Constitution. The Court emphasized that AFLA was neutral between religious and secular participants, requiring the inclusion of both. It therefore rejected any attack on AFLA as a whole (or, as lawyers sometimes say, "on its face"). Instead, the Court concluded that any assertion that the administration of AFLA violated the Establishment Clause depended upon proof that particular AFLA grantees were using public monies in a constitutionally impermissible way (or, as lawyers sometimes say, proof that the Constitution had been violated by the law "as applied"). The Court remanded the complaint in Bowen v. Kendrick to the district court for an inquiry into whether the law was being unconstitutionally administered or applied. Eventually, the parties settled the case, and agreed upon an elaborate set of guidelines that define the obligations of AFLA grantees with respect to religious content of their teaching.[8]

We think that the model of Bowen v. Kendrick has already influenced the shape of FFRF v. Towey, and is likely to bear heavily on the ways in which it develops. In order for FFRF to prevail on any of its constitutional complaints, it will have to show more than the mere inclusion of FBOs in federal grant programs. FFRF must demonstrate that the Faith-Based Initiative, as administered, unconstitutionally endorses religious belief, prefers FBOs over secular providers, or permits direct government expenditure on service with religious content.
a. Endorsement of Religion.
One constitutional theory that appears with considerable frequency in the FFRF complaint is that the various defendants have unconstitutionally "endorsed" religion - that is, that the defendants have communicated with both words and actions the idea that adherents of religious belief are politically favored and that non-adherents of such belief are politically disfavored. This approach to Establishment Clause adjudication first appeared in the 1980's in decisions involving public support of religious symbols, such as Christmas Creches and Chanukah menorahs. Justice O´Connor is its principal architect and spokesperson, although it has commanded a majority of the Court in at least one major case.[9] What remains deeply unclear, however, is the extent to which the theory applies to cases in which the principal complaint involves the expenditure of government money for services rather than the government´s promotion of religious symbols. To be sure, the plaintiffs in FFRF v. Towey allege endorsement in both communication and expenditure practice, so it is possible that the district court will perceive a connection between the Faith-Based Initiative and the theory of endorsement. But FFRF will have to work hard to persuade the court that a doctrine most associated with religious symbols and holidays can be constructively deployed in a case about government financing of social service.

Moreover, even if the court is willing to apply the concept of endorsement in this context, the defendants will have a variety of responses to this theory of constitutional wrongdoing. First and foremost, the defendants will recite the core theme of the Faith-Based Initiative - that prior Administrations, acting under a misguided view of the Constitution, had systematically and wrongfully excluded FBOs from opportunities to compete for government funds in support of social service. This Administration, acting to correct that error, has asserted its desire to "level the playing field." This policy objective is not "endorsement;" this is, in the Administration´s view, nondiscrimination. Furthermore, the Administration will contend, the doctrine of endorsement obliges the court to measure the government´s policies from the perspective of a "reasonable observer," one familiar with norms and practices of government in the past as well as the present. Such a reasonable observer, the government will argue, would understand that the emphasis on recruitment of FBOs by this Administration is a corrective to past wrongful exclusions, not an announcement that religious believers have an exclusive or inside track on the truth.

We think that FFRF will have a difficult time persuading the court to accept its theory of religious endorsement in this case. The Supreme Court has never relied on the theory to invalidate a government expenditure, nor to invalidate the communicative strategy of a government agency trying to expand the organizations interested in competing for government grants or contracts. We do not expect that a court will order the WHOFBCI to stop holding national or regional conferences, designed to encourage and inform FBOs and other community organizations to apply for government support of their service activity. The theory of endorsement can be quite powerful when it is applied to publicly supported plaques recognizing the Ten Commandments, or to public recognition of the religious meaning of certain holidays, but it has not gained any sort of foothold in cases like those brought by FFRF against aspects of the Initiative. FFRF and its officers may have standing to raise this theory, but it remains to be seen whether they can persuade the court to rule in their favor based on it.
b. Preference for FBOs in Grants and Contracts.
If FFRF can find adequate proof that federal grants have been systematically routed to FBOs and away from equally qualified secular counterparts, it will have gone a long way toward proving its case of unconstitutional administration of the Initiative. The Supreme Court has many times repeated that the Constitution forbids government favoritism of some religious denominations over others or of religious entities over secular ones.

The structure of most federal programs for social service, however, may complicate this part of the lawsuit considerably. The great bulk of the programs associated with the Initiative are federal-state programs, in which the actual grant-award decisions are made at the state and local level. With respect to such programs, it is quite unlikely that federal officials will be held legally responsible for any such unconstitutional favoritism. And the lawsuit names only federal officials, rather than state or local officials, as defendants. The plaintiffs may have two partial escapes from this problem of federalism. First, the federal government does make some direct grants of its own - for example, by HHS to providers of treatment for substance abuse, and by DOJ to providers of services aimed at curbing domestic violence. Any demonstrated favoritism in grant programs directly funded by the federal government would be subject to judicial correction in this lawsuit. Here, the federal officials might assert a defense that they were attempting to remedy past discrimination against FBOs by tilting the distribution of current grants in their direction, but it is doubtful whether the court would find such a defense to have any merit.[10]

Second, the federal government has made a number of grants to private organizations to serve as intermediaries in the Initiative. Under these grant programs, the intermediaries are expected to help smaller organizations build service capacity and learn how to interact successfully with government grant programs. The plaintiffs in FFRF v. Towey have alleged that the defendants "have funded intermediary [FBOs] that preferentially award sub-grants to other [FBOs], and without utilizing objective criteria by the intermediaries for making sub-awards . . ." These allegations, if proven, have considerable potential to produce a ruling in the plaintiffs´ favor. The government cannot absolve itself of responsibility for unlawful prefences in grant-making by turning the award process over to private intermediaries. The government must maintain and enforce requirements of neutrality and even-handedness with respect to the sub-awards made by intermediaries. Accordingly, if the plaintiffs can demonstrate a pattern of religious or denominational favoritism by intermediaries, they may be entitled to appropriate relief.
c. Direct Government Expenditure for Social Service with Religious Content.
Only one allegation in the FFRF complaint does not focus on religious favoritism, or religious endorsement by word or expenditure. Instead, this allegation asserts that the federal defendants "have directly . . . funded . . . services that integrate religion as a substantive component." This allegation, if proven, has considerable potential to lead to court-ordered changes in the policies of the Initiative.

We have, in a number of prior Reports and website comments on federal policies, expressed a concern that the Administration´s concept of constitutionally forbidden expenditures is too narrow. In the President´s executive orders related to the Faith-Based Initiative, and in every agency regulation or guidance document implementing the Initiative, the Administration has announced a policy that the government may not pay for "inherently religious activities," such as "religious worship, instruction, or proselytization." This policy guidance has left many FBOs uncertain about the scope of permissible religious content in government-supported social services. The Administration´s policy is correct as far as it goes, but we believe that it does not go far enough. The Supreme Court´s rulings in this field suggest that the government may never directly finance religious indoctrination.[11] Because the Administration´s policies leave FBOs in a state of uncertainty about the permissibility of the use of religious themes as part of a service program - for example, encouragement of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in a program to combat substance abuse - those policies may be constitutionally deficient. If FFRF is able to prove that these policies have been implemented by the federal government with grants that permit, or inevitably lead to, such religious content in government-financed social service, FFRF may be entitled to relief against both the offending grants and the policies that have inadequately guided the activities under them.
4. Remedial possibilities.Any remedies that the court might order would of course be tailored to the precise constitutional wrongs that the court was trying to ameliorate. Without knowing what, if any, those wrongs might turn out to be, it is difficult to predict with any precision what the available remedial options may be. We can, however, suggest some broad categories in which remedies might fall:1) Declarations of law that the government must remain scrupulously neutral between FBOs and secular providers of service, and that the government must refrain from direct financing of social service with explicitly religious themes or content;2) Injunctions that require various agencies of the government to obey any such declaration of law, and to put in place administrative safeguards designed to ensure that such legal violations do not occur in the future.[12] In particular, we expect that the Administration´s formulation that "inherently religious activities" define the boundaries of what government may not directly finance would give way to a much broader and better defined prohibition on government support for social service with explicitly religious content.
If courts were to impose remedies of this sort on the federal administration of the Faith-Based Initiative, its conduct would fall under long-term judicial supervision, and both its rhetoric and its political character might change considerably. The FFRF suit, though it has many important and difficult steps to negotiate, thus has the potential to transform the Faith-Based Initiative. We will be watching it closely.

Notes:

[1] Ira C. Lupu is the F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School; Robert W. Tuttle is Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School. Professors Lupu and Tuttle are the Co-Directors of Legal Research for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy.[2] The complaint is available on-line at:http://www.ffrf.org/legal/faithbased_complaint.html
[3] In addition to FFRF itself, the plaintiffs include Anne Nicol Gaylor, President of FFRF; Annie Laurie Gaylor, editor of FFRF´s periodical "Freethought Today"; and Dan Barker, Public Relations Director of FFRF. Each of the individual plaintiffs is alleged to be a federal taxpayer and "a nonbeliever who is opposed to governmental establishment of religion." (FFRF Complaint, pars.7-9). FFRF and these same individuals were the plaintiffs in the highly significant litigation surrounding government financing of substance abuse programs being operated by Faithworks, Milwaukee. [For more see
http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update.cfm?id=15 ; http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update.cfm?id=9 ; and http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update.cfm?id=3]
[4] Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 8(a)(2).
[5] FFRF is represented by Richard Bolton of Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field, in Madison, Wisconsin. The firm´s website lists 46 attorneys.
[6] To the extent that crucial facts remain in dispute, the issues in the case could only be resolved with some form of trial, in which disputed testimony would be presented. In this case, in which the plaintiffs primarily seek orders against various federal officers and do not seek money damages, a judge rather than a jury would hear the testimony and decide what to credit as true.
[7] 487 U.S. 589 (1988).
[8] These guidelines remained in place through and including the 2001 guidance documents from the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs at HHS. In 2002, that Office issued a new guidance document that was far more hospitable to FBOs.
[9] Allegheny County v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989).
[10] The relevant analogy here is to the law of race-based affirmative action, in which explicit racial preferences in the award of government contracts may be justified only where a) the government has demonstrated a pattern of past discrimination, and b) the preference for prior victims of discrimination is limited in duration, and precisely tailored to the degree of past discrimination that has been shown. Here, the government has announced no policy of preference for FBOs, and so quite obviously has not tried to justify such a preference under the relevant constitutional standards.
[11] In Freedom of Religion Foundation, Inc. v. McCallum, 179 F. Supp. 2d 950 (W.D. Wisc. 2002), the district court (in the same district as this litigation, though with a different judge sitting) applied the anti-indoctrination principle to invalidate a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development to Faithworks, Milwaukee, for a program of recovery from substance abuse, on the grounds that the program involved substantial religious indoctrination, and that the state had failed to impose safeguards against such impermissible use of government funds. In a separate part of the case, the court upheld the indirect state funding, through a system of beneficiary choice, of a similar Faithworks program for men under the control of the state´s Department of Corrections. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit later affirmed that part of the District Court´s decision. 324 F.3d 880 (7th Cir. 2003).
[12] The settlement in Bowen v. Kendrick, discussed above, included such detailed safeguards, as did the settlement on the state level in ACLU of Louisiana v. Foster, the suit that grew out of the Governor´s Program on Abstinence in Louisiana [For more on this see
http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update.cfm?id=5].

Legal Analysis

Monitoring and Analyzing Legal Developments

Efforts are underway at federal, state and local levels to involve faith-based organizations in the provision of a wide variety of social services, financed in whole or in part by government. Whatever its social potential, such support raises fundamental constitutional questions about the relationship between faith-inspired institutions and the state, which remains a source of great uncertainty and heated conflict. American church-state law will not merely be implicated in the debate over charitable choice; it will inevitably be remade in ways that will affect our understanding of this part of our constitutional tradition for generations to come.

The contours of church-state law have changed dramatically in the past thirty years. In the early 1970's, the separationist vision of church and state was at its zenith; government benefits to, and burdens upon, religious enterprise were always constitutionally questionable. By the end of the 1990's, however, separationism had been challenged or repudiated in a number of court decisions, and a new vision emerged emphasizing government neutrality as between religion and nonreligion , where government-created benefits for and burdens upon religious entities are viewed as acceptable so long as they are matched by comparable treatment of secular analogues. This transformation is incomplete, however, and there remain some vital arguments as to why and how separationism and neutrality may quite properly be made to co-exist, each in its own proper place.

Questions on church-state law have considerable and immediate implications for policymakers. Federal and state administrative law and the law of government contracts depend in large measure on principles in constitutional law. As these principles change or are perceived to change, there will be momentum and opportunity to alter other bodies of law in response. A situation of this sort will produce many layers of complexity and many possibilities for confusion, honest mistake, or manipulation.

Considerations of law are also highly relevant in helping social scientists and policy analysts to frame questions about the optimum public investment in charitable choice. Programs that "work," but that courts will not tolerate, are not likely to be good options for government or religious organizations to choose. Inversely, if the programs that courts will tolerate will not produce high quality service or will rend the fabric of religious communities, charitable choice becomes a problematic path.

As a core service for government decisionmakers and others interested in these issues, The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy researches, tracks, and analyzes legal developments in government aid to faith-based social welfare organizations, involving federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The Roundtable's legal research:

interprets the significance of broader constitutional law developments, such as aid to non-public schools, for charitable choice;
identifies settled areas of constitutional law that form accepted parameters of aid to FBOs;
assesses where legislative schemes or agency rules fail to reflect such parameters - either out of reluctance or over-eagerness to include religious providers in social welfare programs;
focuses on continuing areas of uncertainty, such as religious selectivity in employment decisions.
serves as a thorough and nonpartisan clearinghouse for the broader public - including the media and legal scholars - interested in the interaction of government and religious social service providers.

The Roundtable's legal research is directed by Professor Ira C. Lupu, the F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at George Washington University School of Law. One of the nation's foremost scholars on the religion clauses of the First Amendment, Lupu has authored more than 20 law review articles on various aspects of religion and the law. Joining him as co-director is Robert Tuttle, Professor of Law at George Washington, who also holds a master's degree from the Lutheran School of Theology and a Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Virginia. Tuttle has served on the national board of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Division for Church in Society, and as legal counsel for the Lutheran Bishop of Washington, DC.

1. Amicus briefs on the side of the government. Five amicus briefs have been filed on the side of the WHOFBCI. One, prepared by the Office of the Indiana Attorney General on behalf of twelve states,[9] argues that a ruling in favor of FFRF would expose many states to lawsuits for their own conferences, designed to promote the FBCI, and for other executive branch activities that might be perceived as supportive of religion. Moreover, the states assert that broad doctrines of standing, in establishment clause cases as well as others, lead to excessive federal court interference with state activity.

Arguing boldly that Flast v. Cohen is inconsistent with principles of federalism and power separation, the states' brief calls for the Supreme Court to explicitly overrule Flast, and to jettison the doctrine of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases.

The American Center for Law and Justice ("ACLJ") - a frequent participant in Supreme Court litigation - has also filed an amicus brief on the government side. The ACLJ often defends government entities, especially state and local, that take steps to accommodate or promote religion. The ACLJ, arguing from premises of power separation, has also argued that the Court should overrule Flast v. Cohen. Flast, claims the ACLJ, is a departure from appropriate principles of interpretation of Article III, which is designed to limit the courts to cases brought by parties who suffer concrete, personal, and identifiable personal injury from the government's actions.
Several other organizations have filed in support of the WHOFBCI in Hein v. FFRF. An amicus brief from We Care America, a group of faith-based organizations that support the FBCI, argues that such organizations are already under threat from taxpayer suits when these organizations enter into partnerships with government and that the Court should act to reduce that threat. The brief, prepared by the Alliance Defense Fund, expresses special concern about the possibility of reimbursement orders aimed at faith organizations which have contracted with government in ways later held to be unlawful. The brief calls for a cutback in both taxpayer standing and "observer" standing in cases of government religious displays.

The Christian Legal Society has filed a brief arguing that Flast itself is correctly decided, because the Establishment Clause protects "structural' values, rather than individual rights, and enforcement of the Clause depends on maintaining the "legal fiction" of taxpayer injury. Nevertheless, the Society argues that extending Flast to FFRF's case goes "too far," by permitting taxpayer interference with too wide a swath of executive branch behavior. And the Foundation for Moral Law, Inc. has filed a brief arguing that the Establishment Clause should be understood as protecting the states against federal interference in matters of religion, and that taxpayer standing too often invites precisely such interference by the federal judiciary in state and local decisions pertaining to religious matters.

2. Amicus briefs on the side of FFRF. Five amicus briefs have been filed on the side of FFRF in this case. The most prominent of these is the joint product of the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, People for the American Way, and the Anti-Defamation League. These organizations are frequently involved on the plaintiffs' side in Establishment Clause litigation, so any reduction in the scope of taxpayer standing would affect the ability of these organizations to litigate effectively.

This joint amicus brief focuses most of its argument on buttressing the general concept of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases. The brief asserts that the lower courts have been able to make sensible decisions under the current law of taxpayer standing, and argues that respect for precedent should lead the Supreme Court to leave undisturbed the existing legal regime of Flast v. Cohen and its progeny. Because these organizations' agenda is the preservation of Flast's general principle, rather than the ultimate success of this lawsuit, the brief spends very little time arguing that FFRF should be granted standing in this particular case.

In addition, a group of scholars and historians have filed an amicus brief, challenging the government's view that congressional -- as distinguished from executive -- action represents the unique concern of the Establishment Clause. This brief, which may be quite influential with a number of Justices, argues strenuously that the government's distinction between congressional and executive support for religion is specious and ahistorical. The brief assembles considerable evidence that the Framers were mindful of monarchical establishments as well as parliamentary ones, and that the First Amendment - though it references only "Congress" - was designed to limit the Executive Branch as well as the legislature.

An amicus brief filed on behalf of the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee also emphasizes what its authors see as illogical and unpersuasive distinctions between congressional and executive focus on religion, and between internal and external expenditures. Government expenditures designed to promote religious belief or favor certain faiths, the brief argues, represent First Amendment violations no matter which branch of government is the primary architect of such expenditure policies, and without regard to whether the monies wind up in private hands. Moreover, this amicus brief is the only one to delve deeply into the question, related to that posed in Hein, of the standing of state and local taxpayers to raise Establishment Clause questions in the courts. The brief cites a wide variety of such suits from the state courts. Although the states have a variety of technical rules to govern taxpayer standing, the brief argues that no state's policies on taxpayer suits distinguish between legislative and executive origination of the expenditure, or between internal expenses and grants to parties outside of government.

Several other groups have also filed on the side of FFRF in this case. The brief on behalf of the American Atheists, Inc. is highly supportive of the particulars of FFRF's lawsuit, both on the question of standing and on the Establishment Clause question presented by the case. The brief points out that the FBCI-promoting conferences targeted by the lawsuit involve external expenditures (e.g., renting a hotel ballroom for the conference) as well as internal ones (paying the salaries of government officers who appear at the conferences), and argues that taxpayers should be able to challenge such expenditures in the same way they can challenge grants to religious entities. And a brief filed jointly on behalf of the Center for Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism argues that Congress did indeed intend that its appropriations for the White House and various federal agencies should be spent in promotion of the FBCI. The brief assembles evidence from congressional-executive interactions over the past six years that Congress was highly aware of the FBCI, and made appropriations for administration of federal agencies knowing that the monies would be used to promote the FBCI. The brief asserts that this awareness and interaction renders the challenged expenditures for the conferences a product of congressional as well as executive decision, and brings the case well within the Court's prior rulings in Flast v. Cohen and Bowen v. Kendrick.

Our Appraisal of the Case

Although some of the government's amici have argued for overruling of Flast and repudiation of the doctrine of taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases, we do not expect that sort of sweeping and dramatic decision in this case. Just a year ago, the Court expressed approval of Flast in an opinion rejecting taxpayer standing to challenge a policy that did not involve religion. Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote that opinion, is well-known to favor narrow rather than broad constitutional decisions, and his vote would appear to be necessary to accomplish any dramatic change in the law. Moreover, Justice Kennedy, who is not hospitable to broad Establishment Clause norms and who may side with the government in this case, is himself well-known for preferring to keep the judiciary actively involved in most constitutional questions, and therefore might be disinclined to favor a highly limited doctrine of standing.

We thus believe that the case will be decided on narrow grounds of the sort reflected in the government's brief - whether the size of congressional fingerprints on the expenditure is dispositive, and whether the expenditure's internal rather than external quality matters. Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens are likely to side with FFRF. Justices Scalia, Thomas, and perhaps Justice Alito are likely to side with the government, and may even be willing to severely limit the scope of Flast v. Cohen. The votes of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer (always a wild card in cases about religion and the Constitution) are likely to determine the outcome, and we do not expect that any of these three will join in an effort to dismantle the existing law of taxpayer standing. We are thus predicting a 5-4 or 6-3 decision, on narrow grounds, and that decision could easily go either way. If the decision is in favor of FFRF, the case will return to the district court for a decision on FFRF's challenge.[10]

If we are correct in our appraisal of the Supreme Court's likely treatment of the issue of taxpayer standing, the case of Hein v. FFRF will break little new ground and have little effect on other Establishment Clause litigation. If, however, a group of five Justices agrees to cut back significantly on Flast's special consideration for taxpayers in Establishment Clause litigation, Hein v. FFRF could mark the beginning of a long and deep retrenchment in such litigation, in which cases about expenditures (federal, state, and local) and cases about government religious expression become considerably more difficult for plaintiffs to bring through the courthouse door. Such a retrenchment might embolden government entities to take steps that the current law of the Establishment Clause appears to forbid. For example, a governor might sponsor a religious revival meeting using funds appropriated to her office for general use. In that sense, the law of standing to raise Establishment Clause issues is a proxy for the underlying constraints of the Clause itself. The stakes in Hein v. FFRF may thus be considerably larger than first appear from the seemingly technical qualities of the issue presented.

Notes:

[1]. The Establishment Clause - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" - prohibits the government from actively promoting religious belief.
[2]. Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923).
[3]. 392 U.S. 83 (1968).
[4]. 487 U.S. 589 (1988).
[5]. 454 U.S. 464 (1982).
[6]. Alito's record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit suggests that he may be likely to hold views on the scope of the Establishment Clause close to those of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Nevertheless, a unanimous Court joined in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion last Term in DaimlerChrysler v. Cuno, 126 S. Ct. 2961 (2006), in which the Court (while rejecting taxpayer standing to complain about state tax breaks for new businesses) had this to say about Flast v. Cohen: "Flast is consistent with the principle, underlying the Article III prohibition on taxpayer suits, that a litigant may not assume a particular disposition of government funds in establishing standing. The Flast Court discerned in the history of the Establishment Clause the specific evils feared by [its drafters] that the taxing and spending power would be used to favor one religion over another or to support religion in general.' The Court therefore understood the injury' alleged in Establishment Clause challenges to federal spending to be the very extraction and spending' of tax money' in aid of religion alleged by a plaintiff. And an injunction against the spending would of course redress that injury, regardless of whether lawmakers would dispose of the savings in a way that would benefit the taxpayer-plaintiffs personally."
[7]. Brief for Petitioner Jay Hein at 19.
[8]. Brief for Respondent FFRF at 19-21.
[9] The states joining the brief are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington State.
[10] We assess the merits of FFRF's lawsuit in our original legal update on the case, available online at: http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/legal/legal_update_display.cfm?id=28.

The Listening Post:: Don't Blink: New Problems In The Shadows

2007-02-20T09:48:00.000-08:00

THE LISTENING POST UPDATE

“Who will forgive us if we choose to close our eyes and wait until it’s all over?”

MARCH ON THE PENTAGON!

Protest March 17th -- the 4th Anniversary of the War!

ANSWER Coalition

202-544-3389

Local offices

March on the Pentagon!
Protest March 17th -- the 4th Anniversary of the War!

On March 17, 2007, the 4^th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around the country will descend on the Pentagon in a mass demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! 2007 is the 40^th anniversary of the historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was "From Protest to Resistance," and marked a turning point in the development of a countrywide mass movement. We will assemble at 12 noon at Constitution Gardens.

"Why I'm marching on the Pentagon"

“Common Ground has served more than half a million people without getting any government support,” said Common Ground founder Malik Rahim. “At the same time, billions of dollars have been spent on a needless war in Iraq that has drained our country’s resources which could be meeting people’s needs. We’ll be paying for this war for the next 50 years. That’s why I’ll be marching on the Pentagon on March 17.” -Malik Rahim, Founder of Common Ground

Recent updates

150+ cities organizing for March on the Pentagon, March 17!
Monday, February 19, 2007

Soldiers and veterans' sign antiwar letter for March on Pentagon
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Regarding the Vietnam Memorial
Friday, February 9, 2007

Free Speech Victory! Permits Secured for Pentagon Protest
Thursday, February 8, 2007

Youth & Student organizing for March on Pentagon
Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Time to Turn Up the Heat!
Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The "State of the Union" is Anti-War
Thursday, January 25, 2007

Common Ground to Lead Caravan from New Orleans to March on Pentagon!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

1,000 Protests against Bush's Escalation of the War
Friday, January 12, 2007

Why I'm marching on the Pentagon

Please Contact Your Congressman Re: This Matter! This Is Unacceptable!

Pentagon Red Tape Keeps Medical Records From Doctors of the Wounded (Feb. 16)
By Al Kamen
Friday, February 16, 2007; A21

Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to medical information needed to treat severely injured troops arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The VA physicians handle troops with serious brain injuries and other major health problems. They, rely on digital medical records that track the care given wounded troops from the moment of their arrival at a field hospital through their evacuation to the United States.

About 30 VA doctors in four trauma centers around the country have treated about 200 severely wounded soldiers and Marines. The docs had been receiving the complete digital records from the Pentagon until the end of January, using the Pentagon's Joint Patient Tracking Application.

But on Jan. 25, when Shane McNamee, a physician in the Richmond VA Medical Center, tried to get the full records, he couldn't. He sent an urgent e-mail to VA chief liaison officer Edward Huycke.

"My JPTA account has been disabled within last few days," McNamee wrote. "I called the hotline and was told that all VA accounts have been locked. Could not get a good answer why. Anyhow -- I have 4 [Iraq/Afghanistan] service members to arrive within the next 2 days. This information is terribly important," the doctor wrote.

Thirty-four minutes later Huycke e-mailed back: "Ok, Shane. Will get on it. Not sure what's up."

An hour or so later, a senior VA official forwarded McNamee's e-mail to Lt. Col. David Parramore at the Pentagon, saying that McNamee "needs his access back to JPTA to provide the best possible treatment for soldiers injured in [Iraq/Afghanistan] arriving there in a few days. Can you help?"

Tommy Morris, director of Deployment Health Systems, responded the next morning to Parramore's inquiry, after contacting Ellen Embry, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force health protection. "I spoke with Embry and no agreements, no data sharing via access to JPTA."

The access cutoff came after Morris, in a Jan. 23 e-mail, instructed a colleague: "If the VA currently has access I need a list of persons and I need their accounts shut off ASAP. It is illegal for them to have access without data use agreements and access controls in place by federal regulations and public law."

There have been meetings between VA and Pentagon officials. The Pentagon declined to comment yesterday. VA officials apparently thought it might have been resolved Monday. But an e-mail Monday from Morris to a co-worker said: "The leadership has not authorized the VA accounts to be turned back on, in case someone approaches you about this."

Last week, Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Larry E. Craig (Idaho) -- the chairman and ranking Republican on the Veterans' Affairs Committee -- wrote David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel, of their "deep concern" about VA trauma center doctors not having access to complete records.

"For those service members suffering from a traumatic brain injury," they wrote, "VA's access to in-theater imaging is an important and valuable tool for tracking their patient's progress since being wounded or injured." They suggested the VA doctor be given temporary access to JPTA while the data-sharing questions are worked out.

They're still awaiting an appropriate response. McNamee is still waiting for the records.

WASHINGTON — Americans overwhelmingly support congressional action to cap the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and set a timetable to bring them home by the end of next year, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — tougher action than the non-binding resolution the House of Representatives is to begin debating today.

While six in 10 oppose President Bush's plan to use more troops to try to stabilize Iraq, a nearly equal number also oppose any effort to cut off funding for those additional forces.

"They're saying the same thing they said in the 2006 elections — that they are against the current policy and they want something done about it," says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

"They want Congress to debate it; they want Congress to focus on it; they want to bring this war to a close," says Mark Blumenthal, a former Democratic pollster who is now editor of Pollster.com. "We don't want to deny our armed services what they need to do their jobs, but we'd like to bring them home."

Republicans remain supportive of the war; a majority of them oppose any congressional limits. Still, even among those who back Bush's troop increase, nearly a third endorse the timetable for pulling out.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After months of heated rhetoric slamming President Bush's Iraq policy, the Senate's top Democrat moved into new terrain by declaring the Iraq war a worse blunder than Vietnam. Senate majority leader calls Iraq war a worse mistake than Vietnam War. Harry Reid says U.S. in "very deep hole" and needs to get out of it. White House spokesman says war was needed to oust Saddam Hussein. Tony Snow says U.S. must provide troops with resources to "get the job done"

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Former New York mayor and 2008 presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani said Wednesday he is not sure the tide will turn in the war in Iraq, as President Bush has said.

"I'm not confident it's all going to turn around," Giuliani told CNN's "Larry King Live." "Who knows that? I mean, you never know that in the middle of the war.

"I'm confident that we have to try to make a turnaround, and we just can't walk out, and that it is critical to us that things get to the point in Iraq that we have some degree of stability and not the way they are now," Giuliani continued. "Because if we leave it the way it is now and we run out, then we're going to face further difficulties in the future."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.

More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.

"There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress. "Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable."

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.

American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Mr. Zawahri, the analysts said. Mr. bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.

Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.

The new warnings are different from those made in recent months by intelligence officials and terrorism experts, who have spoken about the growing abilities of Taliban forces and Pakistani militants to launch attacks into Afghanistan. American officials say that the new intelligence is focused on Al Qaeda and points to the prospect that the terrorist network is gaining in strength despite more than five years of a sustained American-led campaign to weaken it.

The intelligence and counterterrorism officials would discuss the classified intelligence only on the condition of anonymity. They would not provide some of the evidence that led them to their assessments, saying that revealing the information would disclose too much about the sources and methods of intelligence collection.

The concern about a resurgent Al Qaeda has been the subject of intensive discussion at high levels of the Bush administration, the officials said, and has reignited debate about how to address Pakistan’s role as a haven for militants without undermining the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president.

Last week, President Bush’s senior counterterrorism adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, went to Afghanistan during a Middle East trip to meet with security officials about rising concerns on Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, an administration official said.

Officials from several different American intelligence and counterterrorism agencies presented a consistent picture in describing the developments as a major setback to American efforts against Al Qaeda.

A Split Over Strategy

But debates within the administration about how best to deal with the threat have yet to yield any good solutions, officials in Washington said. One counterterrorism official said that some within the Pentagon were advocating American strikes against the camps, but that others argued that any raids could result in civilian casualties. And State Department officials say increased American pressure could undermine President Musharraf’s military-led government.

Some of the interviews with officials were granted after John D. Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, told Congress last month that “Al Qaeda’s core elements are resilient” and that the organization was “cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hide-out in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.”

As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization’s hierarchy as intact and strengthening.

“The chain of command has been re-established,” said one American government official, who said that the Qaeda “leadership command and control is robust.”

American officials and analysts said a variety of factors in Pakistan had come together to allow “core Al Qaeda” — a reference to Mr. bin Laden and his immediate circle — to regain some of its strength. The emergence of a relative haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding area has helped senior operatives communicate more effectively with the outside world via courier and the Internet.

The investigation into last summer’s failed plot to bomb airliners in London has led counterterrorism officials to what they say are “clear linkages” between the plotters and core Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. American analysts point out that the trials of terrorism suspects in Britain revealed that some of the defendants had been trained in Pakistan.

In a videotaped statement last year, Mr. Zawahri claimed responsibility for the July 2005 London suicide bombings. Included in the same tape was a statement by one of the London suicide bombers, pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda. Two of the four bombers traveled to Pakistan prior to the attack.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, told the House Armed Services Committee last week that Al Qaeda “is on the march.” He said, “Al Qaeda in fact is now functioning exactly as its founder and leader, Osama bin Laden, envisioned it,” because, he said, Qaeda leaders are planning major attacks and inspiring militants to carry out attacks around the globe.

Other experts questioned the seriousness of Pakistan’s commitment. They argued that elements of Pakistan’s military still supported the Taliban and saw them as a valuable proxy to counter the rising influence of India, Pakistan’s regional rival.

Joint Efforts by Militants

Since 2001, members of various militant groups in Pakistan have increased their cooperation with one another in the tribal areas, according to American analysts.

The analysts said that North Waziristan became a hub of militant activity last year, after President Musharraf negotiated a treaty with tribal leaders in the area. He pledged to pull troops back to barracks in the area in exchange for tribal leaders’ ending support for cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, but officials in Washington and Islamabad conceded that the agreement had been a failure.

During a news conference days before last November’s elections, President Bush said of the campaign against Al Qaeda: “Absolutely, we’re winning. Al Qaeda is on the run.”

But in a speech several days ago, Mr. Bush painted a more sober picture of Al Qaeda’s current strength, especially inside Pakistan.

“Taliban and Al Qaeda figures do hide in remote regions of Pakistan,” Mr. Bush said. “This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West. And these folks hide and recruit and launch attacks.”

Officials said that both American and foreign intelligence services had collected evidence leading them to conclude that at least one of the camps in Pakistan might be training operatives capable of striking Western targets. A particular concern is that the camps are frequented by British citizens of Pakistani descent who travel to Pakistan on British passports.

In a speech in November, the director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, said that terrorist plots in Britain “often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.” She said that “through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

Leaders Appear Secure

Officials said that the United States still had little idea where Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri had been hiding since 2001, but that the two men were not believed to be present in the camps currently operating in North Waziristan. Among the indicators that American officials cited as a sign that Qaeda leaders felt more secure was the release of 21 statements by Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri in 2006, roughly twice the number as in the previous year.

In the past, statements issued by Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri referred to events that were sometimes several weeks old, one official said, suggesting that the men had difficulty creating a secure means of distributing the tapes. Now, the statements are more current, at times referring to events that occurred days earlier.

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said that most of the men receiving training in Pakistan had been carrying out attacks inside Afghanistan, but that Al Qaeda had also strengthened its ties to groups in Iraq that had sworn allegiance to Mr. bin Laden. They said dozens of seasoned fighters were moving between Pakistan and Iraq, apparently engaging in an “exchange of best practices” for attacking American forces.

Over the past year, insurgent tactics from Iraq have migrated to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings have increased fivefold and roadside bomb attacks have doubled. In testimony to the House Armed Services Committee last week, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the departing commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said the United States could not prevail in Afghanistan and defeat global terrorism without addressing the havens in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials say that they are doing their best to gain control of the area and that military efforts to pacify it have failed, but that more reconstruction aid is needed.

Officials said that over the past year, Al Qaeda had also shown an increased international capability, citing as an example its alliance with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian-based group that has carried out a series of attacks in recent months.

Last fall, the Algerian group renamed itself Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb. Officials in Washington say they believe that the group is linked to a recent string of sophisticated car bombings and other attacks in Algeria, including a December attack on a bus carrying Halliburton contractors.

Kos at progressive blog Daily Kos faulted Bush for pressuring NATO: "Fact is, even Bush's staunches allies in Europe have given up on the failed Bush presidency. NATO nations Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Hungary have already ditched him in Iraq, with Poland and the UK eager to get out this year. Bush is toxic in those countries, and more than one government has fallen in part because of having too close a relationship with Bush. And he's going to demand troops from them?"

Mixed welcome for Baghdad surge_Though many Iraqis say they have seen positive steps, the security plan is being judged along sectarian lines.

By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Page 1 of 3

BAGHDAD - Iraqi and American forces are meeting mixed results – that often vary street by street and day by day – as they struggle to regain control of Baghdad.

Two days of relative calm in the capital prompted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to declare a "dazzling success" in the security clampdown, as officials reported an 80 percent drop in violence.

The White House: From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq

The same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq war have been using the same tactics—alliances with shady exiles, dubious intelligence on W.M.D.—to push for the bombing of Iran. As President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran, is he planning to double his Middle East bet?

Bush Threatens War Against Iran

On February 14, President George Bush claimed that elements within the Iranian government are supplying sophisticated explosive devices that are used to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. With this as a pretext, he then leveled a new military threat against the government of Iran—declaring that whoever is “moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them.”

This situation is dangerous and intensifying. The U.S. high command has already put a second aircraft carrier and naval battle group into the Persian Gulf, capable of launching air strikes against Iran. The U.S. has tightened the economic vise on Iran by pressuring international financial institutions to stop lending it money. U.S. forces have been seizing and interrogating Iranians in Iraq.

And now, at the February 14 press conference, Bush threatened to “deal with” the Iranian government—putting out the lie that this is about “protecting U.S. troops.”

These threats and preparations could erupt suddenly into an open military attack on Iran. A major attack by the U.S. (or Israel) on Iran would have terrible consequences for the people of the world for a long time. Such an attack, including the possible use of nuclear weapons, would be a horror for the people of this region, and would intensify a disastrous polarization—where two reactionary forces—U.S. imperialism on the one hand, and Islamic fundamentalism on the other—both oppose and mutually reinforce each other.

The threats by the Bush administration aimed at Iran, parallels what the U.S. did four years ago as they prepared to invade Iraq. Back then, the Bush regime claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, that were likely to be used against the U.S. or its allies. Bush and his officials claimed that they didn’t want war and were pursuing diplomacy—all while they were preparing the forces and pretexts for launching that war. In fact, key figures within the Bush regime had been planning this war for years.

Now they are using similar methods as they ratchet up war threats against Iran. “It is absolutely parallel,” says Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist. “They’re using the same dance steps—demonize the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux [“all over again”].” (quoted by Craig Unger, in “From the Wonderful folks Who Brought You Iraq,” Vanity Fair, March 2007)

Deliberately Distorting Reality: Step back and look at the larger picture:

The Bush regime has illegally and illegitimately invaded and occupied Iraq—continuing to wreck the country and kill huge numbers of people. Now Bush is claiming that because another country is allegedly interfering with that occupation, the U.S. has the right to threaten and attack that second country.

Bush claims his threats against Iran are just “the commander in chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way.” Yet the whole reason any of this is happening is due to the illegal and immoral US invasion in the first place.

This is like a rapist who, while raping and brutalizing a woman decides her sister is somehow “interfering” with him and then claiming that he now has the right to brutalize the sister…in his own ‘‘self-defense’’!

On February 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made a long list of charges against Iraq and told the United Nations: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.” The world now knows that Powell and the whole Bush regime were lying.

Almost exactly four years later, Bush now claims”with certainty” that elements in the Iranian government are behind U.S. casualties in Iraq. And he says that any skepticism over his claims is “preposterous.”

But what is truly preposterous is that this man—whose regime lied to the world in order to justify the unprovoked bombardment, invasion, occupation and systematic destruction of Iraq—is trying to do it again, this time with accusations aimed at Iran!

Remember the lies about the “weapons of mass destruction” — and all that led to? People can’t be fooled again! And we cannot remain silent and complicit in the face of Bush’s lies that are aimed at justifying an attack against Iran.

Let’s look at some basic facts: The overwhelming majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by roadside bombs (IEDs) set off by Sunni militias, not by the Shi’ite forces allegedly being supported by Iran. So the U.S. is deliberately distorting reality. They are making a big deal out of a small part of the picture—because such selective logic furthers their plans to prepare a military attack on Iran.

Bush admitted on February 14 that he had no evidence that anyone at the “top echelons” of the Iranian government had approved arms transfers to Iraq. But then he insisted this did not matter. “What we do know,” Bush said, “is that the Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. We also know that the Quds Force is part of the Iranian government.” (Quds Force is reportedly part of Iran’s “Revolutionary Guards,” which are separate from the regular military and report directly to Iran’s religious leaders.)

“What matters,” Bush added, “is that we’re responding.”

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV later explained, in Baghdad, that the “evidence” about the Quds Force involvement in Iraq came from prisoners, including Iranian citizens, who had been seized and interrogated by the U.S. in Iraq over the past 60 days.

After the revelations about Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S. torture around the world, why should anyone believe supposed “evidence” provided by U.S. interrogators?

Behind U.S. Claims about an Iranian Nuclear Threat

The U.S. claims it cannot accept an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. And it charges that a nuclear Iran might attack Israel—declaring that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad believes in “wiping Israel off the face of the earth.”

Again, there is deliberate distortion by the U.S. to serve its own aims.

First, who actually has nukes and is openly threatening another country with them? Only the United States. While U.S. leaders rant about the danger of “madmen with nukes,” it is George Bush who has ominously announced that “no options are off the table” with Iran.

Who has actually used nuclear weapons? Only the U.S. ruling class, which dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing nearly 200,000 people. And the U.S. rulers have never renounced those attacks.

Second, there is no real evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. David Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq for the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently said, “This is like prewar Iraq all over again. You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is being spun up, using bad information that’s cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.”

Third, the liars heading the U.S. government don’t actually believe it is likely that Iran would bomb Israel. Even if the Iranian regime were to develop one or two primitive weapons, they know that Israel has hundreds of nukes ready to rain down on Iran, not to mention the thousands deployed by the U.S.

Anti-semitism is real in the world and it is ugly. But in this case, it is a false issue. What’s going down here is not about Iran’s president Ahmadinejad being anti-semitic and denying the Holocaust. A ‘‘moderate’’ Iran armed with nukes (even one that accepted Israel’s right to exist and acknowledged the Holocaust) would still be unacceptable to the U.S. or Israel. This is because the real issue at stake here for the U.S. imperialists is that a nuclear Iran would threaten the ability of the U.S. to enforce its domination over the Middle East, and affect its ability to exercise such domination over much of the world. The U.S. first labeled Iran a member of the “axis of evil” when Iran’s leader was Khatami, who was a “moderate.”

A nuclear Iran would, for example, undermine Israel’s function as the enforcer of U.S. imperialist domination over the Middle East—since much of Israel’s ability to threaten and act with impunity against other states in the region rests on the reality that it is the only country in that region with a major nuclear force. The U.S. imperialists are so worried that a nuclear Iran would upset its future ability to dominate this strategic region that they are willing to consider, threaten and prepare war (including nuclear strikes) in order to prevent this.

The two sides involved in this dangerous and escalating confrontation are both reactionary forces that stand against the interests of the people. On one side, the U.S. is a brutal imperialist power waging a crusade-like offensive to establish itself as an unchallenged and unchallengeable overlord over the whole planet. It needs to be overthrown through a revolutionary struggle of the masses. Israel, the U.S.’s attack dog in the Middle East, is an illegal settler-colonial state built on stolen land that needs to be replaced with a multinational revolutionary state in Palestine where there is no discrimination and oppression against any peoples.

And Iran, ruled by a brutal theocratic state dominated by Islamic mullahs, is a reactionary state that should be cast off by the people and replaced by one going in a revolutionary direction.

But let’s be clear: It is the U.S. imperialists who are so aggressively and provocatively pressing the situation toward a clash. If we sit back and let this attack go down, we will be contributing to a horror that will harm people for decades to come and will have failed in our responsibility to people all over the planet. This is a crucial and urgent moment: the masses of people must mobilize in their millions to politically prevent the Bush regime from launching a war on Iran.

THE POLITICAL SCENE:

Rassmussen February Reports

The Contenders: Excellent Link

States race to set earlier primaries _Eager to field stumping presidential candidates, nine states are jockeying for front-of-the-pack dates.

By Daniel B. Wood Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

LOS ANGELES - California is poised to play the first card in what experts say will be a national game of "reschedule your state's primary." The stakes: which state can gain significant influence over the presidential nominating process.

California's bid to move its 2008 primary from June to Feb. 5 – already approved by the state Senate and expected to clear the Assembly this week – is intended to force presidential candidates to stump in the Golden State, addressing issues dear to voters here before the contest is all but decided by others. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has said he will sign the bill.

But already, nine states have tentatively scheduled primaries or caucuses for Feb. 5, and more may pile on as states jockey to meet notification deadlines: May for Democrats, September for Republicans. Among the delegate-rich states considering that date: Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas. Florida has a bill pending that would leapfrog them by moving its primary to Jan. 29.

The irony in all the jockeying is that, with so much change afoot, no state may achieve its aim, analysts say. The probable outcome of a front-loaded primary schedule is an early winnowing of the candidate field, with Feb. 5 becoming a do-or-die date, and a clipped-back period of time in which voters can assess presidential hopefuls at town halls and in their living rooms.

"California and other states that are trying to play calendar games are apt to find out that their plans backfire," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "We are courting disaster."

In GOP presidential race, McCain slips; Giuliani gains luster

McCain's favorability has dropped below 50 percent for the first time since 1999, presumably over his support for the Iraq war.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - In polls, the top two contenders for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination have long been Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

But pundits have tended to discount Mr. Giuliani's chances, given his liberal stands on social issues such as abortion and gay rights. Now, a combination of factors is forcing a new look at both Senator McCain's vulnerabilities, particularly over his steadfast support for an unpopular Iraq war, and Giuliani's potential to overcome weaknesses.

For the first time since October 1999, McCain's favorability rating among American voters has dropped below 50 percent. A Gallup poll taken last month showed him at 48 percent, down 6 points from November, and down from a high of 67 percent in February 2000. Giuliani, in contrast, has held above 60 percent favorability in Gallup polls, most recently at 62 percent. Now that Giuliani has signaled a serious intention to run, stating on Monday "I'm in this to win" as he filed papers with the Federal Election Commission, the comparisons grow in importance.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- On Tuesday, Mitt Romney becomes the first of the three leading Republicans to declare he's officially running for president.

The three leading Republicans -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney -- have a lot in common. All three are essentially blue state Republicans who know how to win over Democrats and moderates.

That's good, right?

In a general election, it is. But first they have to get through the Republican primaries. (Watch why conservatives are unhappy with the leading GOP candidates

Giuliani was twice elected mayor of New York, the capital of blue-state America, as a supporter of abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. (Ticker: Giuliani, Clinton lead in latest poll of New Hampshire voters)

Now he seems to be modifying his views ever so slightly. Last week, Giuliani told Sean Hannity of Fox News that he would appoint judges to the Supreme Court that were "strict constructionists."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- We have the latest New Hampshire primary polls. It's getting real interesting -- The race on the Republican side is now neck-and-neck!

The CNN/WMUR presidential primary poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, found Sen. John McCain of Arizona the choice of 28 percent of voters who plan to vote in the state's Republican presidential primary next January, compared with 27 percent for Giuliani.

The results were a statistical dead heat, given the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points. (Complete poll results -- PDF)

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. Specifically at issue is whether taxpayers can bring a legal challenge to the Bush administration’s Faith-Based Initiatives. Existing precedent in Flast v. Cohen says taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending in violation of the Establishment Clause. Religious Right groups are using this case as a vehicle to urge the Court to eliminate taxpayer standing, which would significantly undermine the ability of Americans to obtain access to the courts to vindicate their constitutional right to religious liberty.

The speakers are experts in the field of church-state matters, including several representing amici on both sides of the litigation. The panelists will present a variety of perspectives on the case and its broader implications.

The panel will feature:

Richard Katskee, Assistant Legal Director, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State
Judith E. Schaeffer, Associate Legal Director, People For the American Way Foundation
Benjamin W. Bull, Chief Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
Moderator, Melissa Rogers, Visiting Professor of Religion and Public Policy, Wake Forest University Divinity School

When: Wednesday, February 21
12:30 - 2:00 pm

Where: First Amendment Lounge
The National Press Club
13th Floor, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045

Lunch is free and will be available beginning at 12:00.

The Kansas board of education revoked its neo-creationist curriculum guidelines. Advocates of "intelligent design" controlled the board when it imposed the guidelines two years ago. Moderates ousted conservatives in last year's elections, winning enough seats to reverse the policy.

Conservatives say they'll try to take back the board next year, when half its members are up for election again. Conservatives' view: What we tell kids about the origin of life "will shape their views about religion, ethics, morals and even government." Moderates' view: Then let's start by not lying to them. (For Human Nature's takes on the evolution debate, click here, here, and here.)

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Tunisia?There's trouble brewing, and it's our fault.

By Anne Applebaum
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007, at 7:13 AM ET

Mokhtar Trifi of Tunisian Human Rights League

TUNIS, Tunisia—"If you wanted to support democracy in the Arab world, why did you begin with your enemies instead of your friends? Why Iraq and Iran? Why not us?"

It's an excellent question, and when it was posed to me a few days ago by Mokhtar Trifi, president of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, I found it hard to answer. Trifi, whose dark suit and elegant French make him seem like the statesman he ought to be, does indeed seem a far better candidate for U.S. friendship and support than, say, the current prime minister of Iraq. Because Tunisia also seems, on the surface, much closer to the West than many of its neighbors, it also makes a curious example of what might have been.

Like Turkey, Tunisia is an avowedly secular Muslim state: Women in Tunisia have the right to divorce and to marry as they please. Most do not wear headscarves, let alone veils. The average income has risen in recent decades, and the middle class is relatively well-educated. On a Friday afternoon in the suburbs of Tunis, every other street corner seems to feature a lycée, from which pour crowds of bluejeaned teenagers, boys and girls, chatting and laughing. Ask them, and they will tell you that they feel themselves to be more Mediterranean than Arab, that they have a lot more in common with Parisians than with Syrians or Saudis.

But surfaces are deceiving, as Trifi—whose office is haunted by omnipresent goons, whose visitors are sometimes harassed, and who is occasionally beaten up himself—can testify. One French analyst, Béatrice Hibou, has described how the myth of "reform" has been used in Tunisia to disguise from the outside world the deepening corruption, nepotism, and stagnation of a one-party state, dominated by what is, in effect, a president for life. While French politicians speak of the Tunisian "economic miracle," party cadres connive to keep the best jobs in their own hands. Though the United Nations held its "World Summit on the Information Society" in Tunis in 2005, Tunisia deploys an Internet filtering and control regime draconian even by Arab world standards. The goons hang about the Internet cafes, too, hands stuffed in the pockets of their windbreakers.

Tunisians have also become masters of a certain kind of recognizable, Putin-esque, postmodern political charade, supporting a whole panoply of phony political parties, phony human rights groups, and phony elections. They talk of "democracy" and "reform" and, of course, "anti-terrorism." But break the mold in Tunisia—engage in genuine opposition politics—and you might find you've lost your state health-care coverage or even your private-sector job. The tentacles of the party reach deep, though actual violence is rare. Says Trifi, "It causes too much trouble." After all, violence could damage the benevolent image that draws so many European tourists to Tunisia's beaches.

In the short term, this sort of system has suited lots of people, not merely President's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's friends and relations. Most notably, it has suited France, Tunisia's closest business partner and former colonial power. In 2003, French President Jacques Chirac proclaimed that since "the most important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be housed," Tunisia's human rights record is "very advanced." More to the point, the French believe that the authoritarian Tunisian government is the only thing preventing a massive wave of illegal immigration to France.

Unfortunately, the authoritarian government is also producing potential émigrés. For, in fact, the most notable product of the Tunisian "economic miracle" is currently a lot of well-educated but unemployed young people. Once upon a time, the educated and the frustrated might have formed the backbone of a democratic revolution, just as they once did in South America and Eastern Europe. Now, the Tunisians look at Iraq and see that "freedom" brings chaos and violence. Which leaves them with two options: emigration or radical Islam. Or perhaps both.

No one knows the true extent of radicalism in Tunisia, because it is in the government's interests to exaggerate the size of the threat. Nor does anyone know the true extent of Tunisian radicalism in the suburbs of Paris. But there have been bombs, arrests, and reports of copycat al-Qaida groups. Thus has an apparently benign authoritarianism produced in liberal Tunisia, as everywhere else in the Arab world, precisely the sort of terrorist inclinations it was supposed to prevent.

So—once again—why didn't the West interest itself in Tunisian democracy 15 years ago, back before "democracy" became a negative term, back before the not-quite-free economy went sour, back before radical Islam became chic among the bluejeaned teenagers? The answers, as Trifi knows well, are clear: because democracy promotion was an afterthought that has never been an important U.S. goal in the Middle East. Because France, which has far more influence in Tunisia than we do, has never been remotely interested. And because no one in the West has ever been very good at thinking through just what the longer-term results of the authoritarian status quo might really be.

Backlash grows against free trade

A record US trade deficit is rekindling the globalization debate. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0216/p01s02-usec.html?s=hns

By Mark Trumbull Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Worries about the dark side of free trade are surfacing in the United States in ways that could affect the course of globalization worldwide.

Don't expect an outright retreat from global commerce just yet, but it is becoming more likely that the US will act to temper and manage its impact. The reason: Free-trade brush fires have recently erupted on economic and political fronts:

This week, the Commerce Department said America's trade deficit rose to $764 billion in 2006, as imports outstripped exports by a record amount for a fifth straight year.

Democrats are in control of Congress, with new lawmakers in their ranks who are especially eager to do something about what they see as unfair trade practices by China. Bipartisan bills introduced this week could result in retaliatory tariffs or revocation of China's trade status with the US.

"There was a time 10 years ago when it seemed like globalization was consensual, and there were very few remaining questions about whether it was ... a good thing," says Jeffry Frieden, an expert on global economics at Harvard University. The reality, he says, includes a caveat: Trade "can make everyone better off, so long as you compensate the losers."

Concern about globalization is hardly limited to the US. From Europe to Latin America to China, the pattern is the same: Not everyone feels better off, and in those regions, political consequences can include riots or the rise of nationalist governments.

Al Qaeda calls for attacks on oil facilities http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0215/p99s01-duts.html?s=mesdu

A Saudi-based Al Qaeda group wants attacks in order to weaken US economy.

By Tom Regan csmonitor.com

A Saudi Arabian terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda has called for Muslims around the world to attack oil installations – including those in Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico – in order to stop the flow of oil to the United States.

NBC reports that the group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, posted the message on its online magazine Sawt al-Jihad, or Voice of the Holy War.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in its monthly magazine posted on an Islamic Web site that "cutting oil supplies to the United States, or at least curtailing it, would contribute to the ending of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan." The group said it was making the statements as part of Osama bin Laden's declared policy. It was not possible to verify independently that the posting was from the terror faction.

Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for last year's attacks on oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Yemen after bin Laden called on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West. The group also was behind the 2002 attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person in the Gulf of Aden.

NBC also reports that until 2004, Al Qaeda had refrained from calling for attacks on oil installations, seeing the money generated by oil as a boon to the Muslim world. But in a message he issued that year, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden called for attacks in order to cripple the Western economy.

"One of the main causes for our enemies' gaining hegemony over our country is their stealing our oil; therefore, you should make every effort in your power to stop the greatest theft in history of the natural resources of both present and future generations, which is being carried out through collaboration between foreigners and [native] agents," bin Laden said. "Focus your operations on [oil production], especially in Iraq and the Gulf area, since this [lack of oil] will cause them to die off [on their own]."

A Very Special RelationshipWhy do U.S. presidents go weak-kneed for their Russian counterparts? http://www.slate.com/id/2160155/fr/nl/

By Anne Applebaum
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2007, at 7:27 AM ET

"I have a difficult time explaining that speech. It doesn't accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians."—Condoleezza Rice, Feb. 15, 2007

Ten days have now passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech in Munich, Germany, accusing the United States of plunging the planet into "an abyss of permanent conflicts," of deliberately encouraging the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and (this from a country that regularly blackmails and manipulates its neighbors) of having "overstepped its national borders in every way." During that time, the U.S. secretary of state—quoted above—has not been alone in expressing surprise. With varying degrees of shock, commentators and politicians have speculated about the significance of Putin's "new" language, wondering whether it means Russia's road to democracy has reached a fork; whether President Putin was really speaking to his domestic audience; or whether, even, the speech heralds some kind of policy change.

In fact, the only thing continually surprising about President Putin is the surprise itself. For we have long known a great deal about Putin, about his biography—his youth spent as a KGB officer in East Germany, his later years in the government of St. Petersburg—and about his personal philosophy, too. We have long known, for example, that he is a great admirer of Yuri Andropov, the former Soviet leader best remembered for his belief that "order and discipline," as defined by the KGB, would revive the weakened Soviet Union of the 1980s. Way back in 1999 (as I wrote at the time), Putin went so far as to dedicate a plaque to Andropov in a corner of the Lubyanka, once the headquarters of the KGB as well as its most notorious political prison.

Since then, Putin has never ceased to emulate many of the methods of the Andropov-era KGB, including its paranoid suspicion of America. He continues to treat all Western organizations in Russia, whatever their purpose, as "spies and diversionaries." He has used Russian television—all state-owned or state-influenced—to portray the recent mysterious deaths of his critics, including one by polonium poisoning, as part of a nefarious Western plot to discredit his government. In the wake of the September 2004 Beslan massacre, he hinted that American support for Chechen terrorists was to blame. I have heard that claim repeated in Moscow more than once.

Nevertheless, we were surprised, are surprised, and apparently always will be surprised by Putin, just as we were surprised by Boris Yeltsin before him and indeed Mikhail Gorbachev before that. From the beginning of his term in office, President George W. Bush treated President Putin the same way all American presidents treat all Russian leaders: as America's new best friend. President Bush, infamously, looked deep into Putin's eyes, found him to be "straightforward and trustworthy," and invited him to his ranch.

Yet not so many years earlier, when President Yeltsin was up for re-election, President Bill Clinton told his main Soviet adviser, Strobe Talbott, "I want this guy to win so bad it hurts." Never mind that Yeltsin was already associated inside Russia with massive theft and economic chaos or that his regime was perceived internally as corrupt and nepotistic: The American president went out of his way to visit Moscow during the campaign, just to make sure Yeltsin won.

It is, if you think about it, an odd phenomenon. After all, American presidents generally don't campaign on behalf of their French counterparts or look deep into the eyes of German chancellors in order to divine their true nature. While at times very friendly, neither Clinton nor Bush appears to have felt a mystical connection to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Yet Russian politicians still seem to make American politicians grow starry-eyed and lose their bearings. Perhaps it's a secret longing for the glamour of those Cold War summits, for the days when it appeared as if the personal relations between superpower statesmen could ward off the destruction of the entire planet. Or perhaps they put something in the vodka—sorry, mineral water—at those elegant Kremlin lunches.

Either way, it's time to kick the habit. True, it is perfectly possible that whoever leads Russia after Putin steps down—if Putin steps down—will be a nicer, friendlier person. It is perfectly possible that we will find areas of mutual cooperation with him, just as we sometimes do now with Putin. But however friendly and cooperative, however much a "democrat" he appears to be, I hope we'll avoid the instant professions of eternal friendship. At the very least, we'll avoid being unpleasantly surprised, yet again, if things turn out otherwise.

Cheney's Influence Lessens in Second Term

Administration More Pragmatic in Foreign Policy, Dealing With Congress

By Michael Abramowitz, Page A05

Mistrustful of North Korea and its willingness to keep promises, Vice President Cheney worked hard in President Bush's first term to prevent talks aimed at halting that country's push to develop a nuclear bomb. At one point three years ago, he even bypassed the State Department to intervene in...

A Few Degrees of Separation From Hillary Clinton's Top Adviser

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Page A11

Mark J. Penn is a man who wears many hats: high-paid political and corporate pollster, chief executive of an international communications and lobbying company, and chief strategist to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton defends S.C. campaign hire

By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 19, 9:13 PM ET

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday denied that her campaign traded money for an endorsement from one of South Carolina's most influential black politicians.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton responded to questions about the consulting contract her campaign negotiated with state Sen. Darrell Jackson, who last week endorsed her candidacy rather than of top rivals

John Edwards or Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), D-Ill.

"Senator Jackson was someone who was involved in my husband's campaigns. He was someone we turned to for political advice and counsel and I'm proud to have him on my team," Clinton told the AP.

Soon after the endorsement, Jackson acknowledged that his media consulting firm had negotiated a $10,000 per month contract with Clinton's campaign. Jackson has said he turned down more lucrative contracts from other candidates.

Although he backed Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, Jackson said he now supports Clinton because she has the best shot of winning the White House.

Mo Elleithee, a Clinton spokesman, said Friday that Jackson's firm will advise the campaign on "political matters in South Carolina, outreach, organizing issues" and purchasing advertising.

Two 2006 House Upset Winners Pass Up Democrats’ Frontline Aid

By Rachel Kapochunas Mon Feb 19, 12:20 PM ET

Most House incumbents preparing for their 2008 campaigns won’t have to be asked twice if national party officials offer additional aid. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had no trouble lining up 29 House Democrats as this election cycle’s first enrollees in its “Frontline” program, which targets extra financial and logistical help to incumbents seen as potentially vulnerable to Republican challenges.

The list, announced last Thursday, might have been even longer but for the fact that at least two freshman Democrats said “no, thank you” to the DCCC’s offer.

What makes the Frontline opt-outs by New Hampshire’s Carol Shea-Porter and Nancy Boyda of Kansas even more interesting is that they both are regarded as among the biggest upset winners of last year’s big Democratic upsurge — and both already know they’ll be dealing with comeback bids by the Republican incumbents they defeated.

Jeb Bradley, the two-term member who lost to Shea-Porter by 51 percent to 49 percent, has told state Republican Party members and CQPolitics.com that he plans to stage a comeback bid in eastern New Hampshire’s 1st District, which includes the state’s population center of Manchester.

Former five-term Rep. Jim Ryun told Congressional Quarterly that he filed the necessary paperwork with the

Federal Election Commission on Friday to formally open his comeback campaign after losing to Boyda in Kansas’ 2nd District last November by 51 percent to 47 percent.

Yet Boyda and Shea-Porter both ran as political outsiders last year, and they aim to maintain that independent posture even as they seek re-election from inside Congress.

“I wanted to stay with the kind of campaign I ran before,” Shea-Porter told CQPolitics.com on Friday. The freshman explained her desire to continue her state’s tradition of “retail politics,” which favors local, door-to-door efforts. “It’s really about building trust and relationships.”

FROM BUDGET INSANITY TO HILLARY INTERNALS

2007-02-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

If You Can Read And Digest This Budget Stuff You Have A Stronger Stomach Than Me!

SOURCE: BUSH WANTS $100 BILLION MORE FOR WARS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

The requests Monday, to accompany President Bush's budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, would bring the total appropriations for 2007 to about $170 billion, with a slight decline the following year.

The additional request for the current year includes $93.4 billion for the Pentagon -- on top of $70 billion approved by Congress in September -- and is about $6 billion less than the Pentagon's request to the White House budget office.

Bowing to pressure from Congress, the administration will also break down the $145 billion request for next year into detailed form.
For 2009, the White House assumes spending will be down to $50 billion, with no funding planned beyond then in hopes the war in Iraq will have wound down.

Bush has said his five-year plan will bring a balanced budget by 2012, but the claim has met with some skepticism from Democrats since the White House has declined to forecast long-term war costs.

"If we're successful carrying out the president's current policy, we would hope that we'd begin to have less of a financial commitment even in this fiscal year," said the senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the budget won't be unveiled until Monday. "This is our best guess."

The spiraling increases in war spending -- up from $120 billion approved by Congress for 2006 -- are largely to replace equipment destroyed in combat or worn out in harsh conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CONGRESSMAN: WARS COULD BALLOON FEDERAL DEFICIT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Increasing costs for the war in Iraq likely will wipe out improvements in the federal deficit that have been forecast by the Congressional Budget Office, a key congressman said Wednesday.

Rep. John Spratt, D-South Carolina and chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the new projection cannot take into account the continuing costs of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Once another $100 billion is added to the tally for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget deficit for the current year promises to at least match last year's $248 billion tally, based on new figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

CBO's official deficit forecast for the ongoing 2007 budget year, which ends September 30, is $172 billion. But that assumes Congress will make no further appropriations for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush is expected to ask for more than $100 million in additional war funds when he submits his budget February 5.

The latest CBO figures, released Wednesday, also predict the budget could come back into surplus by 2012, although that would require Bush's tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010 as under current law. The surplus for 2012 would reach $170 billion.

The estimates provide a basis for majority Democrats on Capitol Hill to work to match Bush's vow to balance the federal budget in five years.

BUSH SUBMITS $2.9 TRILLION BUDGET TO CONGRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress on Monday, proposing a big increase in military spending.

While the budget includes billions more to fight the war in Iraq, the rest of government would be squeezed to meet Bush's goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. (Watch President Bush argue why the U.S. can balance the budget in 5 years )

He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- over the next five years. (View a detailed breakdown of the president's budget proposal)

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota. (Watch Conrad explain his concerns with the president's budget )

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-South Carolina, said, "I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either."

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, agreed with the bleak assessment of Bush's prospects of getting Congress to approve his budget as proposed.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs," Gregg said, contending there is a wide gulf between the two parties. "The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending," Gregg said.

The president insisted that he had made the right choices to keep the nation secure from terrorist threats and the economy growing.
"I strongly believe Congress needs to listen to a budget which says no tax increase and a budget, because of fiscal discipline, that can be balanced in five years," Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.

Just as Iraq has come to dominate Bush's presidency, military spending was a major element in the president's new spending request.
Bush was seeking a Pentagon budget of $624.6 billion for 2008, more than one-fifth of the total budget, up from $600.3 billion in 2007.

For the first time, the Pentagon included details for the upcoming budget year on how much the Iraq war would cost -- an estimated $141.7 billion for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the cost of repairing and replacing equipment lost in combat. But White House spokesman Tony Fratto cautioned that the 2008 projection was likely to change. "We're not saying the number for '08 is the final number," Fratto said. "We don't know that right now."

Bush projected a deficit in the current year of $244 billion, just slightly lower than last year's $248 billion imbalance. For 2008, the budget year that begins next October 1, Bush sees another slight decline in the deficit to $239 billion with further steady improvement over the next three years until the budget records a surplus of $61 billion in 2012, three years after Bush has left office.

Democrats, however, challenged those projections, contending that Bush only achieves a surplus by leaving out the billions of dollars Congress is expected to spend to keep the alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. His budget includes an AMT fix only for 2008.

Bush projects government spending in 2008 of $2.90 trillion, a 4.9 percent increase from the $2.78 trillion in outlays the administration is projecting for this year. However, the administration notes that the 2007 total is only an estimate, given that Congress is still working to complete a massive omnibus spending bill to cover most agencies for the rest of this fiscal year.

REPORT SAYS IRAQI-ON-IRAQI VIOLENCE MAJOR THREAT

Intelligence estimate summary: Some elements of violence fit "civil war" definition

Declassified version finds Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence the primary source of conflict

Sectarian violence seen as top threat to U.S. goals in the war-ridden nation
Congress receives 90-page classified report

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence has become the primary source of conflict in the war-ravaged nation and Iraqi leaders will be "hard-pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation" in the next 18 months, according to a summary of the National Intelligence Estimate released Friday.

The report, which was distributed to Congress on Friday and on which President Bush received a briefing Thursday, calls on all Iraqis -- Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds -- to make significant concessions to stabilize the country.

However, the summary, a nine-page declassified version of the 90-page report, makes no determination as to whether Iraq is amid a civil war.
The summary said that "civil war" is too simple a moniker to describe the situation because the violence includes "extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al Qaeda [in Iraq] and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces and widespread criminally motivated violence." (Watch why the NIE says the situation in Iraq is more than a civil war )

However, the term does accurately describe certain elements of the conflict, among them: "the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization and population displacements," according to the summary. (Watch report's dire warnings about Iraq

AUDIT: MILLIONS IN IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION AID WASTED

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tens of millions of U.S. dollars have been wasted in Iraq reconstruction aid, some of it on an Olympic-size swimming pool ordered up by Iraqi officials for a police academy that has yet to be used, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left the region near civil war.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released Wednesday.

Calling Iraq's sectarian violence the greatest challenge, Bowen said in a telephone interview that billions in U.S. aid spent on strengthening security has had limited effect. He said reconstruction now will fall largely on Iraqis to manage -- and they're nowhere ready for the task.

The audit comes as President Bush is pressing Congress to approve $1.2 billion in new reconstruction aid as part of his broader plan to stabilize Iraq by sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.

Democrats in Congress have been skeptical. Virginia Sen. Jim Webb has suggested that the U.S. is spending too much on Iraq reconstruction at the expense of Hurricane Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans, while California Rep. Henry Waxman plans in-depth hearings next week into charges of Iraq waste and fraud. (Read how critics of the plan say it won't go very far)

According to the report, the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International for the residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorized by the U.S.

U.S. officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that can't be accounted for. DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs, the report said.

Responding, the State Department said in the report that it was working to improve controls. Already, it has developed a review process that rejected a $1.1 million DynCorp bill earlier this month on a separate contract because the billed rate was incorrect.

A spokesman for DynCorp, Greg Lagana, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

Bowen, whose office was nearly eliminated last month by administration-friendly Republicans in Congress, called spending waste in Iraq a continuing problem. Corruption is high among Iraqi officials, while U.S. contract management remains somewhat weak.

With America's $21 billion rebuilding effort largely finished, it will be up to the international community and the Iraqis to step up its dollars to sustain reconstruction, Bowen said in the interview. "That will be a long-term and very expensive process," he said.

According to the report:

Major U.S. contractors in Iraq, including Bechtel National and Kellogg, Brown and Root Services Inc., said they devoted an average 12.5 percent of their total expenses for security.

Bowen's office opened 27 new criminal probes in the last quarter, bringing the total number of active cases to 78. Twenty-three are awaiting prosecutorial action by the Justice Department, most of them centering on charges of bribery and kickbacks.

Still, "fraud has not been a significant component of the U.S. experience in Iraq," Bowen said.

As of the end of 2006, contracts had been let for all of the $21 billion Congress put into the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund it created in 2003. Some 80 percent of the money has been paid out, the report said.

Since 2003, use of the reconstruction aid changed several times as U.S. officials shifted priorities to spend more on security problems or programs critical to supporting elections or developing the new government.

For example, money was cut from what had been originally planned for electricity, water, oil projects and transportation and communication so it could be used to help pay for such things as health care, elections, democracy programs and training Iraqi security forces.

Overall, the largest single expense was security. The total was spent in the following way:

34 percent for security and justice.

23 percent to try to generate and distribute electricity. Still, the report noted, output in the last quarter averaged below prewar levels.

12 percent for water.

12 percent for economic and societal development.

9 percent for oil and gas.

4 percent for transportation and communications.

4 percent for health care.

Auditors had "significant concern" about the way ahead, partly because of the Iraqi government's bad track record on budgeting for such projects, the report said. It said the Iraqi government had "billions of budgeted dollars remained unspent at the end of 2006."

Unemployment remains high, contributing to the insurgency because it sours the population and leaves idle young men to their own devices, according to the report.

The government's "most significant challenge continues to be strengthening rule-of-law institutions -- the judiciary, prisons and the police," the report said. "The United States has spent billions of dollars in this area, with limited success to date."

IN DEMOCRATIC RACE, IRAQ FRAMES DEBATE

Presidential hopefuls show their antiwar stripes, but differ on how to extricate the US from Iraq.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - In speech after speech, Democratic presidential candidates agreed on the issues of the day: Global warming must be stopped, universal healthcare is imperative, the crumbling American education system must be fixed.

And on the biggest issue – Iraq – all the prospective and declared Democratic hopefuls speaking to party activists last weekend were also in basic agreement: that the US must extricate itself from the Iraq war. Where they differed was over one question: How?

As the Senate begins debate Monday on competing resolutions on Iraq, the Democrats are fresh out of their own debate on a way forward in Iraq at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York demonstrated the challenge inherent in being the early front-runner: As she seeks to win over enough of the party faithful to win the nomination, she is also looking ahead to the general election campaign, when a position too far to the left could hurt her chances among moderates.

"There are many people who wish we could do more," Senator Clinton told the crowd, as a handful of hecklers cried out. "But let me say that if we can get a large bipartisan vote to disapprove this president's plan for escalation, that will be the first time that we will have said, 'No!' to President Bush and begin to reverse his policies."

Clinton also stated that she "wants to go further," arguing that the US needs to "threaten" Iraq's government with reduced funding for Iraqi troops if it does not start fulfilling its promises. And "if we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will!" she asserted.

But to many Democratic candidates, a nonbinding resolution rejecting Mr. Bush's plan to send more US troops to Iraq isn't enough, even as a starting point. Clinton and another top challenger for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D) of Illinois, face pressure from many of the other contenders to take a more forceful stand. Some of these other candidates have the luxury of not having to cast votes in Congress – most notably, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has carved out an Iraq position to the left of Clinton and Senator Obama.

The North Carolinian says senators should not support the bipartisan resolution rejecting Bush's surge, but rather cut off funding for the war. Mr. Edwards, who supported the war as a senator in 2002 and later repudiated his vote, is the most antiwar of the leading Democratic contenders – and commands a considerable following among Democrats affiliated with organized labor. He is also well-organized in Iowa, the first nominating state, and has the potential to stun the field next January.

"We cannot be satisfied with passing non-binding resolutions that we know this president will ignore," Edwards said. "We have the power to stop the escalation of this war."

Another candidate who still has a vote in the Senate, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, has also aligned himself with antiwar liberals by saying he will not support the nonbinding resolution. But his presidential aspirations are seen as a long shot. The question is whether his presence in the race, and ability to gain media attention for his views, will put pressure on Clinton and Obama to move leftward.

Obama took perhaps the most unusual approach in his speech to the DNC. Instead of going through the usual list of policy positions, he focused instead on the nature of public discourse – and about the need to overcome the cynicism he says has become a staple of modern politics.

"The campaigns shouldn't be about making each other look bad, they should be about figuring out how we can all do some good for this precious country of ours," Obama said. "That's our mission. And in this mission, our rivals won't be one another, and I would assert it won't even be the other party. It's going to be cynicism that we're fighting against."

Obama asserted that everyone in the race has a responsibility to put forth a plan for ending the war, but did not discuss his own proposal, released last week. Obama's legislation would begin redeployment of US forces out of Iraq by May 1, 2007, and calls for the removal of all combat brigades by March 31, 2008, a date he says is consistent with the expectation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

One candidate who did discuss his Iraq plan at length, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, first came up against the axiom, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Last Wednesday, on the day he announced his presidential campaign, he faced a maelstrom of controversy over his attempt to compliment Obama. In calling him "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden inadvertently insulted all the black presidential candidates of the past, and spent the rest of the week apologizing.

During his cattle call appearance on Saturday, Biden began with a quip: "So, how was your week?" Then he apologized again. By then, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was ready to rip into what he called "the very deep hole" the Bush administration has dug the nation into in Iraq.

THE CLINTON WATCH: (POWERFUL TEAM BEING CREATED BUT THERE ARE SERIOUS ISSUES WITHIN THE PARTY LEADERSHIP AND STRESSES WITHIN THE EMERGING TEAM)

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DOES NOT NEED TO TEAR ITSELF APART ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008. LAST NIGHT PROVED WE CAN’T EVEN PASS A MEANINGLESS RESOLUTION IN THE SENATE!

THE BUSH WALL HELD AND HIS BUDGET SHOULD CONVINCE EVERYONE THAT THINGS ARE OUT OF CONTROL!

HILLARY CLINTON TARGETS WOMEN'S VOTE

In her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she plans to stress healthcare and education.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton has a not-so-secret weapon working for her as she seeks the presidency: women.

Just 12 days into her campaign, the New York senator and former first lady has made it clear that appealing to female voters will be central to her message, and not the afterthought it has been in past presidential campaigns. Already, her campaign says, young women in particular are drawn to her candidacy and the prospect of electing America's first woman president. Officials with the Clinton campaign cite anecdotal evidence from supporters and from the turnout of women at early campaign events.

Single women, now 51 percent of the female adult population, also represent a key demographic to the Clinton campaign. Her campaign plans appeals aimed directly at their concerns – including healthcare, retirement, and education – to boost turnout among a demographic that has been less likely to vote than other groups.

Overall, "54 percent of the electorate in 2004 were women; I think potentially that could go up in 2008," says Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign.

Already, polls show higher percentages of women supporting Senator Clinton than the male candidates in both the race for the Democratic nomination and in general election matchups. But history has shown that women's votes alone, long key to Democrats' electoral chances, cannot win elections for Democrats. So the question is whether, in running a campaign highly attuned to women, Clinton can avoid alienating men.

"She has to balance it out," says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Part of the balancing act involves efforts by her campaign to warm up her image, which some voters find cold and calculating. The setting for the Jan. 20 Web video announcement of her exploratory committee was a living room, not an office. She calls her campaign a "conversation," she has "chats," she "listens." She used the same approach in her 2000 Senate campaign, successfully, but the challenge now is to carry that out on a national scale – with an electorate that has seen her in action for 15 years and feels it already knows her.

Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" served up a string of jokes this week around Clinton's campaign slogan, "Let the Conversation Begin." "Look, this might not be the most politically correct thing to say, but I don't think that slogan's gonna help you with men," he began, to big studio-audience laughter.

Another part of the calculus for Clinton is that she is running to become commander in chief during wartime. So not only does she face stereotypes about women and military matters, but she also faces her party's generation-old image as being weak on defense. During her time in the Senate, she has cultivated an expertise on defense and foreign policy, and taken high-profile trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if she wins the nomination, it remains an open question whether she can overcome those hurdles.

Though it is early in the nomination race, she looks to be in good shape against the other Democrats.

In a Gallup poll released Wednesday, among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, 47 percent said she would do the best job on Iraq, compared with 26 percent for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and 19 percent for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. On terrorism, she won with 49 percent. But on domestic issues, she had more support: 57 percent on the economy, 67 percent on healthcare, and 63 percent on education.

One of the great unknowns for Clinton, if she wins the nomination, is what percentage of voters really is willing to vote for a qualified woman for president. Recent polls show the number in the 80s. But when asked if they believe their neighbors would be willing to vote for a qualified woman as president, the number drops into the low 60s.

"I think someplace between 86 and 61 percent may be where the reality is," says Ms. Walsh, referring to polling data from last year. "I also think it's very hard now to ask this question generically. You're getting two things at the same time – you've got the theoretical question, and then you've got Hillary in there, so it's no longer abstract. It's a real person with a real record."

Another element of attitudes about Clinton is that portion of the population that viscerally dislikes her. Many are people who would never vote for a Democrat anyway, but this phenomenon could affect her ability to win independent voters – a segment of the electorate essential to any winning campaign. Some analysts question whether Clinton's gender will really inspire an outpouring of women to support her.

"I don't think Hillary can count on women coming out for her out of a sense of sisterhood," says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum. "She'll have to earn women's votes just as other Democratic candidates have really tried to court women."

ADVISER TO SENATOR CLINTON STAYS IN SHADOWS

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

As Bill Clinton embarked on his 1992 presidential run, he relied on the counsel of high-octane advisers like James Carville and Paul Begala, who embraced the spotlight and were given to hyperbole in what was a gutsy, if somewhat undisciplined and freewheeling, campaign.

Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton lays the groundwork for a similar bid, the person she is relying on to run things is a reclusive adviser who is intolerant of leaks, who demands strict loyalty from her staff and who, on those rare occasions that she speaks publicly, measures each word.

Her name is Patti Solis Doyle, and the job of mapping out the senator’s national political strategy falls to her. Indeed, as the news media buzz grows around Mrs. Clinton’s political ambitions, Ms. Solis Doyle has worked in the shadows wooing prominent donors over dinners, meeting with some of the Democratic Party’s top talent for potential campaign openings, and conferring with Mrs. Clinton on an almost daily basis.

Officially, Ms. Solis Doyle, 41, is the executive director of Hillpac, known widely as Hillary Inc., a vast political operation that has employed as many as 50 press assistants, opposition researchers, media specialists and fund-raisers at any one time. But Ms. Solis Doyle’s title does not begin to convey the singular role she has played for Mrs. Clinton since the two women crossed paths about 16 years ago.

The close association between Ms. Solis Doyle and Mrs. Clinton provides an insight into how things work in Mrs. Clinton’s tight circle of confidantes and advisers — and reflects the degree to which Mrs. Clinton prizes strict allegiance and devotion. The senator’s political operation is impermeable, highly disciplined and, as some supporters acknowledge, at times scripted to a fault.

It is Ms. Solis Doyle who keeps it running smoothly, but some Democrats outside her organization say Mrs. Clinton’s reliance on an insular cadre of loyal assistants chokes off the spontaneity needed to succeed in a national campaign.

Ms. Solis Doyle solidified her leadership in Team Clinton in 2000, when she was dispatched to New York from the White House to restore order to Mrs. Clinton’s first campaign for the Senate after it became top-heavy with strong-willed consultants with different ideas about the direction of the campaign. (Some Clinton associates have come to refer to two distinct periods in that race: “B.P. and A.P.,” or “Before Patti” and “After Patti.”)

Over the past six years, Ms. Solis Doyle has been the architect of an expensive and potentially risky strategy to build a list of hundreds of thousands of small donors who the campaign hopes would quickly provide contributions if Mrs. Clinton announced plans to run for president.
Some of her closest advisers have likened it to flicking a switch that will lead to a torrent of donations. But, skeptics say, the strategy, employing a process known as prospecting that involves mailing out millions of solicitations, has been a drain on Mrs. Clinton’s campaign treasury and may not bear fruit — though the donor list proved bountiful for her 2006 re-election effort.

Ms. Solis Doyle shuns publicity to such an extent that a search on Google for her image is futile, reflecting an aversion to attention that stands apart in the attention-grabbing world of political consultants.

In fact, people who know her say it has often been a source of frustration to her when members of Mr. Clinton’s notably garrulous inner circle in the White House have mused publicly in the news media about Mrs. Clinton’s career plans.

But in recent weeks, the focus on “Hillaryland” — the phrase Ms. Solis Doyle coined to describe the senator’s close network of advisers — has intensified with Mrs. Clinton’s discussions about a possible presidential run.

In her first in-depth interview about herself and the operation, Ms. Solis Doyle was visibly uncomfortable with the attention. “I hate this,” she said this week, after having relented to the entreaties of her staff that she grant an extended interview. “I’ve always been behind the scenes.”

Turning her attention to the 2008 presidential race, she said Mrs. Clinton would not be pressured into hastily announcing her decision about a presidential run, despite the intensifying jockeying among the other Democratic presidential contenders, most notably Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“She has her own timetable,” she said. “We won’t be rushed by the media, and we won’t be rushed by any other candidate.”

Mrs. Clinton was an obscure first lady of a small state when she met Ms. Solis Doyle, then a recent Northwestern University graduate who had considered becoming an elementary school teacher. Ms. Solis Doyle became Mrs. Clinton’s chief scheduler in Arkansas and held the same job in the White House.

She has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side through times of triumph (Mr. Clinton’s first presidential victory in 1992 and Mrs. Clinton’s Senate victory in 2000) as well as adversity (Whitewater, the universal health care debacle and the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal).

A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Ms. Solis Doyle has a playful manner that masks what associates say is her brutally competitive nature. It is her wont to cackle and then exclaim “Poor little thing!” when misfortune befalls a rival (the gaffe-prone Jeanine F. Pirro, the former Westchester County district attorney, comes to mind, for example).

As it turns out, that rough-and-tumble streak runs in her family. Her eldest brother, Daniel Solis, is the president of the notoriously unruly City Council in Chicago, where Ms. Solis Doyle grew up on the city’s mostly poor South Side.

The relationship between Ms. Solis Doyle and Mrs. Clinton transcends the office. Mrs. Clinton gave a reading at Ms. Solis Doyle’s wedding.

A few years back, Ms. Solis Doyle took a lucrative job at a prominent Washington media relations firm, only to return to the Clinton fold after a few months. Ms. Solis Doyle privately said that she did not find the work as fulfilling as working for her old boss.

“Here’s the bottom line: She is loyal,” said Peter Ragone, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a member of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

But some say that insularity closes out other voices.

“The people around Hillary are controlled, disciplined people, but all of that control can choke off the spontaneity and emotion that a winning national candidate needs to show voters,” said one New York Democratic supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s who has talked to her about her presidential aspirations, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he was not authorized to speak about the campaign apparatus.

But Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, said Mrs. Clinton has to keep a tight rein on her organization.

“If you are a person who has the exposure and the profile that Senator Clinton has, you have to control your message because there are so many people out there who want to embarrass you,” he said. “But she has a mind and a personality that is strong enough to reach out to other people.”
In a profession built on personal relationships, Ms. Solis Doyle has used her clout to help her amass plenty of i.o.u.’s — something that may help Mrs. Clinton in any national campaign.

Mr. Ragone, who later worked for Gov. Gray Davis of California, recalled that Ms. Solis Doyle was always receptive during the governor’s 2003 recall election when the Davis campaign needed Mrs. Clinton to make a personal appearance on the governor’s behalf or needed help contacting prominent fund-raisers.

“She returns phone calls and makes things happen,” Mr. Ragone recalled.
Clinton associates say that the source of Ms. Solis Doyle’s power is plain. “Patti and Hillary know and trust each other implicitly,” said Rahm Emanuel, a representative from Illinois who was Bill Clinton’s political adviser in the White House.

But Ms. Solis Doyle’s job is a grueling one, routinely forcing her to work well past midnight, as the late-night e-mail and instant messages that she sends attest. “She’s my friend,” Ms. Solis Doyle said, offering an explanation for her devotion to Mrs. Clinton. “You think I would do this for anybody else?”

CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN TEAM IS THE ENVY OF MANY IN THE POLITICAL WORLD

By GLENN BLAIN THE JOURNAL NEWS
Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her plans only yesterday, but she already has a campaign team that is the envy of many in the political world.

Fiercely loyal and disciplined, Clinton's operation is stocked with savvy political veterans, many of whom trace their ties to the senator back to her tumultuous days in the White House. It's a team that has already seen Clinton through two statewide elections in New York and made her one of the Senate's most successful fundraisers.

"They are very talented and very tight and the most important thing is that they are loyal to her," said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist. "They have been through a lot with her."

Among those at the core of Team Clinton are: Patti Solis-Doyle, a veteran political organizer whose relationship with Clinton dates to her days as first lady of Arkansas; Mandy Grunwald, a communications consultant and veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign; Mark Penn, a veteran pollster who last month co-authored a Washington Post op-ed article with James Carville that sought to debunk the theory that Clinton is too polarizing to be elected president; and Yonkers native Howard Wolfson, who served as the ever-present spokesman for Clinton's 2000 and 2006 Senate campaigns.

And, of course, Clinton has easy access to advice from one of the nation's most sought-after political figures: her husband.

"She won by 69 percent," said Westchester Democratic Chairman Reginald LaFayette, referring to Clinton's re-election victory in November. "You can't criticize a team that wins by 69 percent. ... It does set her up well."

The ready-made nature of Clinton's campaign infrastructure will likely be a huge advantage for her as she competes for the Democratic nomination and, if she is successful, the presidency itself. By contrast, the candidate most widely portrayed as her top rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barak Obama, has only recently begun to put together a presidential campaign organization.

"These are more battle-tested people," Sheinkopf said. "Remember, Barak Obama has not won a seriously contested election. On the other side, Hillary's team is battle-tested and been through serious campaigns all the way back to the White House."

Clinton's organization also stands in contrast to that of the other New York figure widely expected to seek the presidency: former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. While Giuliani has recently bolstered his team with national political strategists - including Mike DuHaime, former political director for the Republican National Committee -his inner circle is still filled with City Hall associates, including former Deputy Mayor Peter Powers and senior adviser Anthony Carbonetti.

While details about the exact makeup of Clinton's presidential campaign remained somewhat murky yesterday, it is likely to be led by Solis-Doyle. The 41-year-old was in charge of Clinton's 2006 re-election campaign and is the executive director of Hillpac, the senator's political action committee.

The most visible member of the campaign team, though, is likely to be Wolfson, who joined Clinton's operation in the early days of her 2000 Senate campaign. Wolfson, who was a member of Rep. Nita Lowey's staff during the mid-1990s, is known for his clever, often biting responses to opponents' attacks.

During Clinton's re-election battle last year, Wolfson took aim at GOP candidate and former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer's reputation for angry outbursts.

"Given John Spencer's history, he probably doesn't consider a campaign negative until he threatens to murder his opponent," Wolfson said at one point in the race. He was referring to an instance during Spencer's tenure as mayor when he jokingly threatened to kill the governor and a federal judge.

"Howard Wolfson is a talented strategist," said Lowey, D-Harrison. "He combines political savvy and communications know-how with a deep commitment to making government work."

Others likely to play key roles in a Clinton-for-president campaign include Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House who has remained a key adviser to Hillary Clinton; and Ann Lewis, who also worked in Bill Clinton's White House and became a spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton's Washington-based campaign operations.

One recent appointment was Phil Singer, a former spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer and John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. He will assist with the communications effort.

"These are serious people and they are very smart," Sheinkopf said. "They are very deliberative and they have been through battles."

This Clinton machine is a tighter ship

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent much of the last month behind closed doors, putting the final touches on a presidential campaign-in-waiting.

Her hectic schedule has been crammed with private lunches and phone conversations with elected officials and political operatives. She has sounded out Democratic Party officials from New York to Des Moines about her chances and hired a cadre of new campaign aides.

And she has made time for television interviews, re-releases of her books and delicately timed appearances with her high-wattage husband.

It is all part of a political organization that has been under construction since the turbulent Clinton White House years and was bolstered by two successful Senate campaigns. Awaiting only her go-ahead - with a decision expected in January - the machine that Hillary built has the heft and advance billing of an election-year juggernaut.

It is a high-stakes fusion of her political world and her husband's, two camps with markedly different styles and, at times, competing agendas and egos. The test, should she decide to run, will be getting the two cultures to work together.

"Her organization is much different than the old Clinton organization," said New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked on President Clinton's 1996 reelection effort. "She has a whole loyal national network of her own. They're all hard, tough people. The trick she'll have is to find a way to blend them in and keep them together."

Bill Clinton ran a loose and leaky ship during his two White House terms, and many in his old brain trust who are expected to return to the fold for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign now have careers to tend and outside interests to promote.

By contrast, "Hillaryland" is a disciplined structure of her own design, a tight-knit realm populated by discreet, fiercely devoted aides who have been with the former first lady since her East Wing days, along with newer additions who serve on her Senate staff. Some wonder if her circle is too buffered.

"The danger she faces," one longtime Clinton intimate said, "is the problem of insularity. You saw that at times in the Clinton White House. She tends to filter a lot through her most trusted people. That's an advantage when things are going well. But you can get closed off when things are falling apart."

Her machine would nonetheless be tested early. Recent polls in New Hampshire and Iowa show Clinton would have stiff competition from two potential Democratic rivals, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

"The challenge she'll have in the primaries is building something that's lean and supple, an operation that can turn on a dime," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey D. Garin.

Clinton's closest aide is, of course, her husband - "the best strategist of his generation," Sheinkopf says. But their dynamic would make for a unique campaign with its own risks and opportunities.

The former president will have to restrain the urge to grab the spotlight. "It's her campaign, not his," Sheinkopf said.

During recent appearances together, intimates say, the former president has had to work to rein in his impulse to play to the crowd. "You can see him champing at the bit," one said.

Hillary Clinton has warmed on the stump, but party leaders still worry that Bill Clinton's mastery of the stage muffles her presence by comparison. And a recent spate of news accounts of the Clintons' marriage and reversed political roles have dredged up unwelcome memories of the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and the impeachment crisis.

In her Senate run this year, the Clintons often deployed separately across New York, operating like complementary vaudeville troupers. While the senator concentrated on working-class communities upstate, pushing economic hardship issues to win over independents and suburban Republicans, the former president secured the Democratic base in New York, hobnobbing with East Side donors and barnstorming in Harlem and elsewhere in Manhattan. She easily won reelection, taking 67% of the vote.

Most Clinton loyalists insist the couple would be a magnetic duo. "He's the best campaign weapon any Democrat can have - and that includes his wife, who's superb in her own right," said John Catsimatidis, an influential New York supermarket chain owner who is a longtime Clinton donor.

After her husband, the senator depends most on her core staff. These aides dubbed their close-knit enclave Hillaryland after whimsical signs that sprouted inside the Little Rock transition office in 1992 to identify the camps working for Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and their spouses (the others were Clintonville, Goreville and Tipper Town). The self-mocking tag remained after the first lady's protectors circled the wagons during Whitewater, Travelgate and the impeachment.

Patti Solis Doyle, a Hillaryland stalwart who was Hillary Clinton's first hire as scheduler in 1992, is expected to be tapped as campaign manager. Doyle, 41, had key roles in both Senate campaigns, and most recently headed up Hillpac, the well-oiled fundraising arm that drummed up more than $50 million in donations for 2006.

Doyle has long been considered the senator's most reliable aide and confidant. She is among the few, one Hillarylander said, "who can talk tough to Hillary and get away with it." A selfless wunderkind from Chicago's hard-boiled political terrain who shuns publicity, Doyle won Clinton's lasting admiration by helping rejuvenate her flagging first election effort in 2000.

"Patti's there because she has the best working knowledge of Mrs. Clinton's history, her needs and her desires," said G. Neel Lattimore, a Children's Defense Fund communications strategist who was the first lady's press secretary. "She can get people in a room who are warring with each other to calm down and make the tough decisions."

Those skills might prove critical in blunting the sharp elbows sometimes thrown by the senator's troika of senior political strategists. Mark J. Penn, Mandy Grunwald and Harold M. Ickes all had integral stints during the Clinton administration and have since worked at close quarters in both of Hillary Clinton's Senate triumphs.

Directing overall strategy would fall to Penn, the centrist pollster who was a key player in Bill Clinton' 1996 reelection and now works as chief executive of the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm. Advertising decisions would be handled by Grunwald, who had a pivotal role shaping ads in Bill Clinton's first presidential run.

Ickes, the acerbic son of Franklin Roosevelt's Interior secretary and a Clinton White House deputy chief of staff, would probably oversee the campaign's budget and relations with party officials and affiliated "527" committees, groups that can spend money on behalf of candidates or issues but cannot give it to their campaigns. Ickes also would delve into voter profiling, an interest he developed while running Catalist, a private database targeting firm.

Communications strategy in Clinton's Senate campaigns has been overseen by Howard Wolfson, a New York public relations veteran who is already handling campaign-related media for Clinton.

During Hillary Clinton's campaigns, these four aides have dominated a daily 7:30 a.m. conference call in which her political strategy was hammered out and her daily message crafted.

"It's not for the faint of heart," one participant said. "Some of these guys hate each other's guts. But the principal finds it useful as long as it doesn't get too vicious."

There are dangers to blood-letting. Chaos within the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry toppled campaign managers and left internal scars.

"That won't happen with Patti because Hillary depends on her too much," one former trusted campaign aide said. "If there are casualties, they'd be lower down the food chain."

A slew of other Clinton familiars are expected to help out. High-profile Democratic consultant James Carville, who lauded the "power of Hillary" in a widely circulated article he and Penn wrote earlier this year, is expected to provide strategic advice.

Howard G. Paster, who was Bill Clinton's chief congressional lobbyist and works with Penn as chairman of Burson-Marsteller's executive board, is said to be primed for a senior advisory role. Former Democratic National Committee chief and Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe is slated to line up top donors along with a new hire, campaign finance director Jonathan Mantz, a Democratic Party financial expert.

Hillary Clinton's heavy spending in the 2006 campaign - too heavy, some said - left her with a less-than-bountiful $14 million in the bank. But Ann Lewis, communications director for Hillpac, noted that more than $11 million of the $37 million outlay was used to build a massive national database - essential to mining millions more in small donations and profiling likely volunteers.

"The money we spent was well worth it," Lewis said.

Catsimatidis said he and other big donors on both coasts were already being approached to replenish the coffers. In New York, the effort revolves around venture capitalist Alan J. Patricof, Sen. Clinton's campaign chair and a longtime fundraiser for the couple. In California, key money players will probably be Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, billionaire Ron Burkle and entertainment chief Haim Saban, who recently hosted the Clintons at an annual Mideast policy forum he sponsors in Washington.

"She can raise whatever she needs," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

For policy advice, Clinton would turn to John Podesta, who was her husband's White House chief of staff and now heads the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank with strong connections to his former employers. "I talk to her from time to time on policy and issues," Podesta said. "There's no formal structure at this point."

Despite the center's "nonaligned" status, Sen. Clinton played a "formative" role in discussions that led to its creation, Podesta acknowledged recently.

New hires from Democratic party ranks also have been brought in, depriving rivals of some of the party's top talent. Phil Singer, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, would run Clinton's war room. Blogging whiz and former Kerry Internet aide Peter Daou would tackle Web-based opposition research. Karen Hicks, who was Howard Dean's New Hampshire primary field director, is set to run Clinton's early primaries. Burns Strider, who spearheaded religious outreach for the House Democratic caucus, has been hired to tap into the evangelical Christian movement.

Along with the professionals, Clinton aides expect a groundswell of women - political operatives, donors, volunteers - would flock to Hillary Clinton because she is a female presidential candidate.

"She wants people who work for her to want to be there out of a sense of mission, not just simply as professionals," said Lorraine Voles, Clinton's Senate communications director.

The mission, Voles said, "would be electing the first woman president. It's not the only thing that brings people in the door, but it's what would be on everyone's minds over the long run."

Hillary Rodham Clinton's political organization, begun in the Bill Clinton White House, has been bolstered during her two successful Senate campaigns.

THE INNER CIRCLE
Old-line Bill Clinton players

TERRY McAULIFFE
"First friend" of the Clintons; key fundraiser and party conduit

JOHN PODESTA
Chief executive at Center for American Progress and former White House chief of staff

JAMES CARVILLE
Democratic campaign consultant; promoted Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential candidacy

HOWARD G. PASTER
Chairman of Burson-Marsteller; former chief White House lobbyist
Hillaryland

The senator's core staff, who gave the name to their close-knit enclave during the 1992 transition period

MARGARET "MAGGIE" WILLIAMS
Former East Wing aide; post-White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton

NEERA TANDEN
Longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton; senior vice president of Center for American Progress

TAMERA LUZZATTO
ADVERTISEMENT Senate chief of staff

LORRAINE VOLES
Senate communications director
Democratic Party veterans

ANN LEWIS
Former Democratic National Committee political
director; now communications chief at Hillpac

PHIL SINGER
Former Democratic Senate spokesman; would head "rapid response"

JONATHAN MANTZ
Former Democratic finance official; would be
national finance director

KAREN HICKS
Former Howard Dean presidential campaign aide; would head primary organizing

PETER DAOU
Internet and blogging specialist; worked on John F. Kerry presidential campaign

THE POWER OF HILLARY
By James Carville and Mark J. Penn

"Hillary Clinton really is one of the weakest . . . nominees with whom the Democrats could be saddled."

"Democrats are worried sick about her chances."

"Just give someone else a chance, so we in the Democratic Party can elect a Democrat."

"She cannot possibly, possibly win."
Yada, yada, yada.

We've heard all this "Hillary can't win stuff" before. In fact, the quotes above aren't from recent weeks but from six years ago, when many pundits -- and Democrats -- said there was no way that Hillary could get elected to the Senate. She won by 12 percentage points.

We don't know if Hillary is going to run for president, but as advisers who have worked on the only two successful Democratic presidential campaigns in the past couple of decades, we know that if she does run, she can win that race, too.

Why? First, because strength matters. Our problems as a party are less ideological than anatomical: Our candidates have been made to look like they have no backbone. But the latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 68 percent of Americans describe Hillary Clinton as a strong leader. That comes after years of her being in the national crossfire. People know that Hillary has strong convictions, even if they don't always agree with her. They also know that she's tough enough to handle the viciousness of a national campaign and the challenges of the presidency itself.

One thing we know about Clinton campaigns: Nobody gets Swift Boated.
The woman who gave the War Room its name knows how tough politics at the presidential level can be. Adversaries spent $60 million against her in 2000, and she endured press scrutiny that would have wilted most candidates. She gave as good as she got, and she triumphed.

For those who think that the politics of personal destruction might be rekindled against Hillary or her husband, we can only remind people how consistently that approach has backfired in the past. Bill Clinton would certainly be a huge asset if Hillary decided to run.

In fact, Hillary is the only nationally known Democrat (other than her husband) who has weathered the Republican assaults and emerged with a favorable rating above 50 percent (54 percent positive in the latest Post-ABC poll).

Yes, she has a 42 percent negative rating, as do other nationally known Democrats. All the nationally un known Democrats would likely wind up with high negative ratings, too, once they'd been through the Republican attack machine.

The difference with Hillary is the intensity of her support.
Pundits and fundraisers and activists may be unsure of whether Hillary can get elected president, but Democratic voters, particularly Democratic women and even independent women, are thrilled with the idea.

The X factor for 2008 -- and we do mean X -- is the power of women in the electorate. Fifty-four percent of voters are female. George Bush increased his vote with only two groups between 2000 and 2004: women and Hispanics. Bush got 49 percent of white female voters in 2000 and 55 percent in 2004. Of his 3.5-percentage-point margin over John Kerry, Bush's increase with women accounted for 2.5 percentage points.

The rest came from a nine-point increase among Hispanic voters: from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004. We believe that Hillary is uniquely capable of getting those swing voters back to the Democratic column.
Hillary's candidacy has the potential to reshape the electoral map for Democrats. Others argue they can add to John Kerry's 20 states and 252 electoral votes by adding Southern states, or Western or Midwestern, depending on their background. Hillary has the potential to mobilize people in every region of the country.

Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did. But with the pathbreaking possibility of this country's first female president, we could see an explosion of women voting -- and voting Democratic. States that were close in the past, from Arkansas to Colorado to Florida to Ohio, could well move to the Democratic column. It takes only one more state to win.
Finally, for those who believe that Hillary's electoral chances are tied to ideology, not leadership qualities, we believe that she is squarely in the mainstream of America.

Some people say she is too liberal, some that she is too conservative. We think her 35 years of advocacy for children and families and her tenacious work in the Senate to help ensure our security after Sept. 11 and to help middle-class families will serve her well. We think she represents the kind of change the country is yearning for: a smart, strong leader. She would take the country in a fundamentally different direction: closing deficits, not widening them; expanding health care coverage, not shrinking it. Fighting terrorism without isolating us from the rest of the world.

We don't know whether Hillary will run. But we do know that if she runs, she can win. (THE FIRST QUESTION IS NOW ANSWERED)

James Carville, a Democratic political consultant and commentator, was chief strategist in Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Mark J. Penn was a key strategist in Clinton's 1996 bid for re-election and in Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign.

Her camp sez Carville on his own in coup bid

BY KENNETH R. BAZINET DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - James Carville's attempt to topple Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee failed after state party officials and even a vocal critic of Dean crushed the coup, officials said. Insiders from the Clinton camp winced at Carville's untimely remarks last week calling for Dean's ouster in favor of unsuccessful Senate candidate Harold Ford of Tennessee.

"It was not coming from [Sen. Hillary Clinton] and they made a real effort to distance themselves from James' comments," said a source close to the Clintons.

The Clintonistas don't want an undeserved backlash from the activist wing of the party that overwhelmingly supports Dean, especially because some anti-Clinton Democrats have blamed Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for the attack by Carville, a longtime Clinton insider. Those forces claimed Carville's motive was to topple Dean in favor of a chairman more favorable to Sen. Clinton's bid for President.

Carville's remarks last week came as House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bungled the race for Democratic majority leader. Party operatives acknowledged the Carville and Pelosi sideshows were detracting from their election victories.

"We applaud Chairman Dean for his commitment to ensuring Democratic candidates and state Democratic parties have the resources and tools needed to compete and win, and we remain committed to the hard work of rebuilding our party for the future," said Mark Brewer, president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

Brewer's organization endorsed Dean's $30 million effort that helped win six new Democratic governorships and control of 10 more state legislatures. Dean is credited with launching a "50 state program" to rebuild the party at the grass roots, as the GOP so successfully has done for the past 25 years.

"No question Dean can survive because this is a mathematical equation: He has the votes on the DNC because he has been investing in the state parties," said party activist David Sirota.

Carville did not respond to attempts to contact him.

Even Dean-basher Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and an exadviser to former President Bill Clinton, called Dean last week to say Carville was acting alone, and one-time DNC Chairman Don Fowler referred to Carville as an "ill-advised" voice.

"Why do the Washington people think that they have a special prerogative to dictate what the Democratic Party needs?" Fowler wrote in an e-mail to the party faithful. "Why should anyone want to mess with the team that won these remarkable [election] results?"

McAuliffe to join Clinton By Alexander Bolton

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has told business associates and Democratic donors that he will chair Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign next year, according to several Democratic sources.

Together, Clinton, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and McAuliffe, the top money man in Democratic politics, have a good chance of raising $100 million before the first official contest, the Iowa caucuses in January 2008.

While Clinton and her staff insist she is focused solely on winning reelection in New York this November, the decision over who will be in charge of getting her elected to the White House is already settled.
McAuliffe told The Hill yesterday that Clinton has not made a decision on running for president and will not do so until after Nov. 7.

McAuliffe also denied telling friends that he will serve as chairman, although sources contradict him.

He acknowledged that he would play a "huge role" in her presidential campaign if it materializes and that he has recruited donors for a possible White House run.

"I would just say that I hope she runs," said McAuliffe. "She's focused on the Senate and I'm focused on helping Democrats.

"Would I have a huge role on the campaign? Of course, that's not real news. People know that I have has been around lining up people if she decides to run."

Clinton referred questions to her Senate campaign, where spokeswoman Ann Lewis said, "There is no decision, there is no [presidential] campaign; if there is no campaign there are no titles."

Clinton's camp is not the only one among presidential hopefuls lining up donors for 2008. Allies of each of the Democratic contenders are aggressively seeking commitments because of the huge amount of money that will be needed next year.

McAuliffe, who became DNC chairman in 2001, said he has had no conversations with Clinton about titles and that Democrats are merely speculating about the role he would serve in the campaign.

Since he stepped down as DNC chairman after the 2004 election, he has been involved with about a dozen private companies by his own estimate. He said he has raised money for investment funds and real estate deals, and even dabbled in the energy sector. He has also served on the advisory board of Carret Asset Management, an investment firm in New York.
But McAuliffe said he would quickly drop these commitments to help Clinton if she ran for president.

"I would take off time and go full time," he said of his expected level of commitment.

Early next year, around the time Clinton is expected to launch an exploratory campaign committee, McAuliffe's new book " What a Party!: My Life Among Democrats" is expected to be in stores. It will span McAuliffe's 25 years in politics and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of his party, including the successes of the Clinton presidency.

Although McAuliffe's specialty is raising money, he would probably not be satisfied serving only as Clinton's presidential finance chairman.
"To be finance chair would be beneath him," said one Democratic donor close to Clinton, who added that McAuliffe is "trying to make his presence felt" in moneyed Democratic circles.

No Democratic fundraiser has as high a profile as McAuliffe. Nevertheless, he may be feeling some competition from the many Clinton allies who are positioning themselves as important financial players for her presidential campaign.

"She's got a full operation," said Wade Randlett, a prominent Democratic fundraiser based in San Francisco, of the network of Democrats who are laying the financial groundwork for Clinton in the Bay Area. "There are many, many friends who are active for her."

Randlett also said Bay Area donors have been told that Clinton will not visit there again between now and Election Day so as not to compete for campaign contributions in a Democratic fundraising hub with candidates running for the House and Senate.

Democratic fundraisers report that all politicians with an eye on the White House have been vigorously recruiting donors for primary season. That's because the Democrats have front-loaded the season even more than in 2004.

With key contests crammed into the first few weeks of 2008, giving the early front-runner the chance to eliminate rivals almost in a fell swoop, there is a premium on raising primary money next year ready to hit the early races in a winter avalanche.

"People are going to have to telescope and enormous amount of fundraising in a very short period of time," said Steve Grossman, a Democratic fundraiser who served as DNC chairman under Clinton. "In my judgment, if you can't raise the better part of $50 million, you're not going to be a first tier candidate.

Given Clinton's stature and McAuliffe's stature as a fundraiser, Republicans have little doubt that she will have close to $100 million in her presidential campaign coffers at the end of next year.

Raising that amount of money in the year before an election year would not be unprecedented. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign reported $99.1 million in its account at the end of 2003.

"There's a growing consensus that the top-tier candidates of both political parties are going to opt out of the public financing for the general election as well as the primaries, which [would be] the first time in history that has occurred," said Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner.
If candidates forego public funding for the 2008 presidential primary and general elections, they will be able to collect contributions for both elections as soon as they form exploratory committees.

Said Toner: "The higher contribution limits of [the] McCain-Feingold [campaign finance law] combined with candidates raising money for general and primary combined with a polarized electorate sets the stage for record-breaking fundraising."

HILLARY CLINTON is to be presented as America's Margaret Thatcher as she tries to become the first woman to win the White House. As she entered the 2008 presidential race yesterday, a senior adviser said that her campaign would emphasise security, defence and personal strengths reminiscent of the Iron Lady.

"Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough," said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman. "She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe."

Clinton, 59, used her website to announce that she was taking the first step of her campaign by forming a presidential exploratory committee. "I'm in. And I'm in to win," she said.

It made the New York senator the instant frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. "She has the name recognition, the money, the glitz, she's got it all," McAuliffe said.

If she wins, she will return to the White House where she spent eight years as first lady during Bill Clinton's presidency from 1993-2001.
McAuliffe predicted a rough campaign. "She is going to fight for herself and she is going to have people around her who will fight," he said.
"They are going to play mean, nasty and dirty on the other side. You don't walk into a knife fight without adequate gloves."

The Clinton campaign intends to paint the Republican nominee as President George W Bush's political heir, particularly over the war in Iraq. "George Bush is going to be on the ticket whether they like it or not," McAuliffe added.

Clinton said she would talk to voters about "how to bring the right end to the war in Iraq and restore respect for America around the world". She also hopes to appeal to women voters in their twenties and thirties.
Clinton faces strong competition from Barack Obama, the charismatic but inexperienced 45-year-old Illinois senator. The race is already being billed "the magic v the machine".

November 16, 2006 Political Memo Flush of Victory Past, Democrats Revert to Finger-Pointing By ADAM NAGOURNEY WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - One would think that after their biggest electoral triumph in about a decade, Democrats would finally break their usual postelection syndrome - a November loss followed by recriminations, finger-pointing and infighting.

Well, think again.

The Democrats are celebrating their big victory of Nov. 7 with recriminations, finger-pointing and infighting, no matter that they won control of the Senate and the House for the first time since 1994.
State Democratic leaders are saying Howard Dean, the party chairman, is not receiving the credit he deserves for the triumph.

Offering a rather different view, two leading party strategists rebuked Mr. Dean on Wednesday, saying the Democrats could have captured 40 House seats rather than 29 had Mr. Dean bowed to demands by Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, leader of the effort to recapture the House, to put more money into Congressional races.

"I would describe his leadership as Rumsfeldian in its incompetence," one strategist, James Carville, said of Mr. Dean.

Liberal bloggers say they are not receiving the credit they deserve and are chafing at how what they call the mainstream media has showered too much credit on Mr. Emanuel and his Senate counterpart, Charles E. Schumer of New York, for the sweep.

"Rahm won everything" was the headline on a sarcastic post on MyDD, a liberal Web site.

On Capitol Hill, soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has waded into a leadership fight that has divided her caucus, providing the public - in its first glimpse of the incoming Congress - with a reminder of just how much Democrats like to rumble. Democrats, if grimacing, sought to put the best face on the latest episode of that familiar Washington series, Democrats in Disarray.

"We are a diverse party," said Donald Fowler, a veteran South Carolina Democratic leader. "We have different people from different backgrounds, and we see things differently both in terms of style and issues."

Mr. Fowler sighed before letting out: "We're nuts! We're all nuts!"
Larry Gates, the Democratic chairman in Kansas, where Democrats stunned Republicans by capturing a once very-red seat, said: "This is what we Democrats do. A little bit of success, and we start to fight."

So it was that Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, and Mr. Carville used the forum of a Monitor Breakfast, a gathering of newsmakers and reporters, to say Mr. Dean wasted an opportunity to make historic gains by refusing to take resources out of his effort to build up parties in all 50 states and put them into Congressional races.

Mr. Greenberg said that Republicans held 14 seats by a single percentage point and that a small investment by Mr. Dean could have put Democrats into a commanding position for the rest of the decade.

"There was a missed opportunity here," he said. "I've sat down with Republican pollsters to discuss this race: They believe we left 10 to 20 seats on the table."

Mr. Carville, whose close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have prompted speculation that he is attacking Mr. Dean on their behalf, said the Democratic National Committee had taken out a $10 million line of credit and used barely half of it.

"They left money on the table," he said.

Asked whether Mr. Dean should step down, he responded, loudly, in the affirmative. "He should be held accountable," Mr. Carville said.
In an interview later, he asked, "Do we want to go into '08 with a C minus general at the D.N.C.?"

Aides to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Carville had not cleared his attacks on Mr. Dean with them.

The attacks set off recriminations in Mr. Dean's base, state parties that have benefited from his decision to channel millions of dollars to them.
"Asking Dean to step down now, after last week, is equivalent to asking Eisenhower to resign after the Normandy invasion," Mr. Fowler said. "It's just nonsense.

"Carville and Greenberg - those people are my friends - they are just dead wrong. They wanted all that money to go to Washington consultants and speechwriters and pollsters. This kind of nonsense is destructive of the party."

The Democratic chairman in Michigan, Mark Brewer, said party money had allowed Michigan to re-elect its Democratic governor and senator.
"This is a zero-sum game," Mr. Brewer said. "That money would have had to come from somewhere. We should be looking forward to future endeavors, and not attacking at this moment of great triumph."

Mr. Dean was traveling and not available for comment, aides said.
At Democratic National Committee headquarters, the communications director, Karen Finney, insisted that Mr. Dean had spent money on House races through the final hours, notwithstanding his announcement in the campaign that his top priority was rebuilding state parties, even in longtime Republican states.

Ms. Finney expressed incredulity that Democrats would be going after Democrats in this of all weeks.

"Did he not see that we won?" she said of Mr. Carville. "Did he not read the results? If James and Stan are interested in knowing what the D.N.C. is doing and has done, they can pick up the telephone and give me a call."
Mr. Emanuel warred with Mr. Dean over his refusal to provide as much money as Mr. Emanuel said he needed.

He said Wednesday that a favored candidate, Tammy Duckworth, the severely injured Iraq war veteran running for an open Republican seat in Illinois, had lost because the Republicans had spent $1 million on negative advertisements against her in the final weekend and that he did not have the money to respond.

Mr. Carville and Mr. Greenberg have been close to Mr. Emanuel since they worked in the Clinton White House in 1992. Asked about the criticism of the two, Mr. Emanuel said he would offer precisely these two sentences: "More resources brings more seats into play. Full stop."

There was also some lesser blame passing. Mr. Emanuel suggested that Democrats had fallen just short of picking up the seat held by Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, because Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a registered Democrat, had sought re-election on an independent line after losing the Democratic primary. That brought out more Republican votes.

Mr. Greenberg fumbled when asked in a two-part question whether he agreed with some Democrats that a botched joke by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and the White House attack on it might have made the difference in very close races where Democrats lost, like the effort to defeat Representative Heather A. Wilson in New Mexico.

"Bah-bah-bah-bah, let me go to the first question," Mr. Greenberg said haltingly before returning, with prompting, to the original question, allowing that the Kerry episode might have "moved the needle a little bit."

1. Hillary vs. Dean, The Real Story

It's now generally accepted that open warfare has broken out between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean over control of the party.

But readers of NewsMax's Insider Report were the first to learn about the battle almost two years ago – soon after Dean lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in 2004.

As our loyal readers know, this is a much larger battle than Dean vs. Hillary. But the battle lines for control of the Democratic Party – and possible the White House in '08 – are becoming much clearer after the recent midterm elections.

Some insiders note that the Clinton camp has orchestrated media reports crediting Clintonista Rahm Emmanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for the Democrats' success, at the expense of Dean.

Story Continues Below

Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville went so far as to say Dean should be fired from his chairman job for not sufficiently funding competitive House races, calling his leadership "Rumsfeldian in its incompetence" – as in Donald Rumsfeld.

But way back in June 2005, the Insider Report first disclosed that Clinton was squared off against not only Dean, but also John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Al Gore – the so-called "Gang of Four" – as potential candidates jockeyed to stop Hillary in her quest for the White House.

The Clintons "control the Democratic money machine – and they absolutely despise Dean," we reported.

A few weeks later, the Insider Report divulged: "Each member of the Gang has his own motives. Kennedy is disgusted by the Clintons' moderate politics and he has already endorsed Kerry for 2008. Kerry has his own presidential ambitions. Gore blames his 2000 loss on Hillary, who he says siphoned off key resources to her Senate race. And Dean blames the Clintons for his 2004 campaign woes." And now where does this all lead with Kerry out? Look for Kennedy and Kerry to lean toward Obama and Edwards.

That same issue of the Insider Report told that Edward Klein, author of the book "The Truth About Hillary," had disclosed how Hillary undermined John Kerry, publicly promising to go all out to support his 2004 campaign, but then doing as little as possible.

An October edition of the Insider Report took the story a step further, noting that Kennedy was signaling Democratic activists and donors: Hillary is not the only candidate, so don't throw your support to her yet.
And this past July, the Insider noted that other media outlets were beginning to catch up and had begun reporting that Dean and Clinton were locked in a battle for supremacy within their party.

"Dean supporters are unhappy with Clinton's stand on Iraq and her cautious shift to the center, while at the same time they fear she is too polarizing to win a general election," we reported at the time.

"Clinton supporters question Dean's competence in managing the DNC and believe his left-wing positions will turn off middle- and working-class voters."

The stakes are high: Dean still controls the Democratic Party apparatus – and Hillary wants to wrest control in anticipation of a White House run.
The battle continues.

But once again, NewsMax's Insider Report was ahead of the media crowd – and has shown that it will cover what no one else wants to talk about.

Will Women Sweep Hillary Into the White House?

Hillary Rodham Clinton sure got it right when she announced her candidacy for president while sitting on her living room couch. Her success may very well turn on the decisions of millions of women sitting on their living room couches.

Clinton advisers James Carville and Mark Penn have said they're counting on a women's vote --the "X factor"-- to catapult their client into the White House. They're obviously hoping that a female candidate will get much more support from women and are banking on the "gender gap," the idea, trumpeted by the media and women's organizations, that women believe in liberal policies and will therefore, as rational political actors, support the Democratic Party.

But I have news for Messrs. Carville and Penn: All the gender gap talk notwithstanding, there's no guarantee that Clinton would receive enough votes from women to be elected. I've studied women and women's politics for 20 years, and if there's one thing I know, it's that, except for possibly once in 1996, female voters have not by themselves put anyone in the White House.

If Clinton is going to attract the women she needs, she's probably going to have to do something more than simply have a pair of X chromosomes herself. And much as it pains a feminist like me to say it, a lot of her campaign will have to involve putting her on the couch and analyzing her character and motivation. Again.

In every election, there's a chance that women will be the decisive force that will elect someone who embraces their views. Yet they seem never to have done so, and I've never seen a satisfactory answer as to why. My own theory is that women don't decide elections because they're not rational political actors -- they don't make firm policy commitments and back the candidates who will move society in the direction they want it to go.

Instead, they vote on impulse, and on elusive factors such as personality.
With Clinton's candidacy on the horizon, I decided to test my theory by asking a few white, married women -- the key demographic -- what they are up to this time.

If any women were going to be politically aware, I figured, it would be those in the Washington area. So I contacted half a dozen members of the Wednesday Morning Group, a D.C. area organization that provides speakers and programs mostly for stay-at-home moms. (One even told me I had caught her sitting on her living room couch.)

All the women voted in the midterm elections last year and intend to vote in 2008. But how do they decide which lever to pull? My small sampling is admittedly unscientific, but what they told me reveals a lot about why campaigning to women is so tricky.

A 49-year-old former public relations executive in suburban Maryland told me she votes the political agenda she learned from her lefty father. She reads The Washington Post, but there are no books on her bedside table. She counts on her husband to tell her what's in the Nation magazine and on the Web.

A 36-year-old former financial sales executive considers herself an independent, reads only the Style and Weekend sections of The Post and the Marketplace and Personal Journal sections of the Wall Street Journal, and also counts on her husband, a Republican, to tell her what's interesting in the rest of the paper.

A former human rights activist told me that she still reads the New York Times, skims the Economist, and gathers political information from PBS's "News Hour," a local broadcast from the BBC and from her church.
Neither the former teacher nor the retired television reporter read any newspapers at all.

There are some constants. Most of the women read People and Real Simple magazines. They all listen to news on the car radio, mostly National Public Radio. And almost all their full-time working husbands consume immeasurably more political information than they do ("He reads 10 times what I do," one told me), reading news magazines and political Web sites and bringing home political information from their jobs. The women gather little information from their almost exclusively female society of other stay-at-home moms.

They all said that after Clinton announced, they were "really excited." "She's been in politics a long time," a woman coincidentally named Hillary said. "She's tough as nails," added another gleefully. Jennifer, meanwhile, was won by Clinton's "combination of soft edges, as a mother and a nurturer and a strong person."

No one focused on any political agenda, policy or program. What seemed to matter to them all was character. Jennifer contrasted herself with her husband, who, while a Democrat, was not so sure he would support Clinton. "He doesn't look at character or personality," she said. "He's very much of an issue/policy person. I look at the whole picture."

Explaining why she did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000 even though she expressed concern over taxes, Hillary said: "I just could not get past the fact that I didn't like the man."

As inattentive as they were to Clinton's policy record, they were knowledgeable about her biography. They saw her as "smart" and determined not to be just another first lady. They were sorry that she had failed in her first foray into national policymaking with her health-care proposal. They understood her withdrawal into the East Wing and party-throwing as a necessary concession to her husband's career needs.

But they were clearly defensive about her decision to stay the course after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "She set herself up in her life," one explained, "to get wherever she wanted to go. That's what men do all the time. . . . When a woman does it, what's wrong with that?"

I had such mixed feelings listening to these women describe their political selves. They're clearly idealistic, want to be good citizens, make an effort to get the information they need. It was hard not to like them. Their delight in seeing a woman so close to real power was palpable. Yet I couldn't escape the fact that they took in little of politics, especially compared with their husbands, that their decision-making seemed impulsive and that their response to Clinton's candidacy was driven to an amazing extent by personality.

They unwittingly confirmed my theory about why women don't decide elections. But that theory is supported by a wealth of statistical information, too.

Women have voted more Democratic than men recently, but since the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, only once has the women's vote arguably been different enough from the men's vote to determine the outcome of a presidential election. In 1980, 1984 and 1988, more women, like men, favored the winning Republican candidate over the losing Democrat.

Geraldine Ferraro's presence on the Democratic ticket in 1984 apparently made little difference. In 1992, more women, like men, favored the winning Democrat over the losing Republican. The men's vote was so divided in 1996 that exit polls show Clinton one percentage point behind among men (a statistical tie), while winning the female vote. In 2004, more women, unlike men, favored the losing Democrat, but by such a small majority (51 percent) that they had no effect on the outcome of the male-driven election.

Since the '96 elections was so close among men, it's fair to say that only in 2000 did women clearly part company with men, voting for Democrat Al Gore in large enough numbers to offset the male votes for Bush -- but the female majorities were not distributed among enough states to carry the electoral college.

Any campaign that needs women to win would have to break the 88-year record of women failing to produce election results that men oppose.

To this day -- as even my D.C. area correspondents seemed to confirm -- women just aren't as interested in politics as men are. The Center for Civic Education recently reported that American women are less likely than men to discuss politics, contribute to campaigns, contact public officials or join a political organization.

About 42 percent of men told University of Michigan researchers last year that "they are 'very interested' in government and public affairs, compared with 34 percent of women."

Worse, women consistently score 10 to 20 percentage points lower than men on studies of political knowledge, regardless of their education or income level. Studies dating to 1997 have shown that fewer women than men can name their senator, or know one First Amendment right. They even know less about the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade than men do.

As a 2006 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press put it, American adults live in "A World of His and Hers." Two million more men than women read either Time or Newsweek; more men listen to radio news and talk radio, read the paper and get news online.

Only broadcast television news plays to more women than men, and a lot of that is TV news magazines and morning shows. Not only do fewer women read the newspaper, but almost half the women surveyed said they "sometimes do not follow international news because of excessive coverage of wars and violence."

So-called liberal women are the majority of swing voters -- those tantalizing independent late deciders -- in every election. While men remained committed to Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush throughout the campaigns, women polled heavily for Democrats Walter F. Mondale, Michael S. Dukakis and John F. Kerry as late as September before settling in to vote Republican or anemically Democratic in November.

So what does all this mean for Hillary Clinton, or any woman who would be president?

First, when it comes to women who vote, the political is the personal. The Wednesday Morning women spoke passionately about Clinton's public and private travails but seemed oddly indifferent to her position on the Iraq war. If the polls continue to reflect male aversion to her beyond the baseline male Republican tilt, Clinton may have to go personal to bring the women home. Maybe she could get a couch on casters.

Unlike the married suburban women she must attract in large numbers, Clinton didn't stay home from work. Remember the "baking cookies" remark? On the other hand, she has had the SOAP opera story of the century with that charismatic, faithless husband. This has made her suffer, something one of the Wednesday women specifically singled out as a reason to support a candidate.

Will she be willing to open that old wound to convince potential female supporters that her policies, such as universal child health care, arise out of her concern for women like them, rather than being just the usual liberal agenda? Worse, if she does play the wronged wife again, does she risk alienating the women who think she should have left her husband long ago?

The second lesson is that elections that turn on the female electorate bear an unfortunate resemblance to a popularity contest. The Republicans have succeeded with women at the polls when they've made Democrats look not just mistaken, but clownish or geeky.

Reagan in blue jeans beat Jimmy Carter in a cardigan.

George H.W. Bush looked like John Wayne next to Dukakis peering over the edge of a tank in a helmet.

And who knows what would have happened if Kerry hadn't donned a wetsuit to go wind-surfing? Even the devil wears Prada. And women know it.

If Clinton is going to stand a chance in 2008, her campaign may have to discredit the Republican nominee. As political scientist Dianne Bystrom has found, it doesn't hurt female candidates when they go negative, and if women are going to make their political decisions based on impulse, then anyone needing their votes is going to have to make sure no one wants to sit with the other guy in the cafeteria. It was illuminating how often the Wednesday women spoke of Clinton's toughness.

A suffering wife and mother whose campaign mysteriously unleashes attacks on her opponents? It's not the current game plan, no doubt. But I'm drawing on the lessons of history. I'd rather promote cheery stories of the gender gap -- but those stories are just a diversion from the hard work of bringing women into the world of governance. Mark my words: Those who do not study women's history are doomed to repeat its failures.

George Soros, the billionaire former hedge fund manager, met with a group of reporters over lunch on Saturday — he paid the check — and offered views on everything from markets to American politics to Bill Gates as a philanthropist.

His own spending on what he calls “civil society” projects is on the rise. “It peaked at $600 million in the mid-90’s,” he said. “I meant to cut back to 300, but I never quite got there.” After stabilizing at about $400 million a year, it will be between $450 million and $500 million this year, Mr. Soros said.

He said he is introducing new projects to promote a common European foreign policy and study the integration of Muslims in 11 European cities.
Mr. Soros commended the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for doing good work while avoiding the hostility he had encountered with his efforts to hold governments accountable for spending. “They have chosen public health, which is like apple pie,” he said.

The United States is now recognizing the errors it had made in Iraq, he said, adding, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.” Mr. Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”
As for the U.S. 2008 presidential race, Mr. Soros, who gave $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups seeking to defeat President Bush in 2004, said he supported Barack Obama. But he also said he would support Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination.

John McCain, he said, had “compromised far too much with the Bush administration” and was unlikely to win the Republican nomination. And who will win? Mr. Soros said he thinks the leading possibilities are former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

On investing, which made him rich, Mr. Soros said that “hedge funds are the market now,” which makes it much harder to beat the market than when he was a prominent hedge fund manager. He cautioned that the heavy use of debt to leverage up financial transactions — both in hedge funds and in companies bought by private equity funds — could prove damaging when and if the economy stumbles. — Floyd Norris

IMPEACH BUSH; HE WON'T BE STOPPED ANY OTHER WAY!

2007-02-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

REPUBLICANS BLOCK SENATE DEBATE ON IRAQ
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Mon Feb 5, 6:53 PM ET
WASHINGTON -

Republicans blocked a full-fledged Senate debate over Iraq on Monday.

Democrats vowed they still would find a way to force President Bush to change course in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops.

We must heed the results of the November elections and the wishes of the American people," said Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record).

Reid, D-Nev., spoke moments before a vote that sidetracked a nonbinding measure expressing disagreement with Bush's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

The vote was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate, and left the fate of the measure uncertain.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) of Kentucky described the test vote as merely a "bump in the road" and added that GOP lawmakers "welcome the debate and are happy to have it."

The political jockeying unfolded as Democrats sought passage of a measure, supported by Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., that is critical of the administration's new Iraq policy. It was the first time Democrats had scheduled a sustained debate on the war since they won control over Congress in last fall's midterm elections.

McConnell called for equal treatment for an alternative measure, backed by Sen. Judd Gregg (news, bio, voting record), R-N.H., saying Congress should neither cut nor eliminate funding for troops in the field. That measure takes no position on the war or the president's decision to deploy additional forces.

Democrats launched a withering attack on Bush's war policy in the run-up to the vote.

"The American people do not support escalation. Last November, voters made it clear they want a change of course, not more of the same," said Reid. "The president must hear from Congress, so he knows he stands in the wrong place, alone."

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, echoed Reid. "If the Republicans want to stand by their president and his policy, they shouldn't run from this debate. If they believe we should send thousands of our young soldiers into the maws of this wretched civil war, they should at least have the courage to stand and defend their position," he said.

The war has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. military personnel so far, and costs are counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The administration in recent days asked Congress for $245 billion more to cover the costs of the conflict through 2008.

In Baghdad on Monday, there were signs that the much-awaited operation to restore peace to the capital is gearing up nearly a month after it was announced. Iraqi troops manned a major new checkpoint at the northern gate to Baghdad, and Lt. Gen. Abboud Gambar, who will direct the operation, took charge of his still-unfinished command center.

But bombings and mortar attacks killed at least 74 people Monday across Iraq — all but seven of them in Baghdad. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in attacks in the past week.

Before the Senate test vote, McConnell sought to deflect charges that Republicans were hoping to block a debate. He said the roll call was meaningless, a "bump in the road" required to settle a procedural problem.

But behind the procedural quarrel lay uncertainty about the verdict the Senate would ultimately reach on Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional troops.

Democrats hoped to gain enough Republican votes to pass the measure expressing disagreement with Bush's decision, and to send the commander in chief an extraordinary wartime rebuke on a bipartisan vote.

It was an outcome that the White House and Senate Republican leadership hoped to avoid. They concentrated on a relatively small number of swing votes, many of them belonging to GOP senators expected to be on the ballot in 2008.

Gregg's alternative said Congress should not take "any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such an action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions."

The measure advanced by Democrats and Warner said the same thing, but it also says the Senate "disagrees with the `plan' to augment our forces by 21,500 and urges the president instead to consider all options and alternatives."

Republicans and Democrats carried out their clash as 10 members of "Code Pink, "an anti-war group, were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct during a protest in front of Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s office in a building across the street from the Capitol. "They were absolutely compliant, peaceful," Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said of the protesters.

McCain, a likely Republican presidential candidate, opposes the measure expressing disagreement with the increase in troops.

Text of Warner resolution:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.CON.RES.7:

The Library of Congress > THOMAS Home > Bills, Resolutions > Search Results

Expressing the sense of Congress on Iraq. (Introduced in Senate)

SCON 7 IS
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. CON. RES. 7

January 31, 2007

Mr. WARNER (for himself, Mr. NELSON of Nebraska, Ms. COLLINS, Mr. LEVIN, and Ms. SNOWE) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF CONGRESS ON IRAQ.

Whereas we respect the Constitutional authorities given a President in article II, section 2, which states that `The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States'; it is not the intent of this resolution to question or contravene such authority, but to accept the offer to Congress made by the President on January 10, 2007, that, `if members have improvements that can be made, we will make them. If circumstances change, we will adjust';

Whereas the United States strategy and operations in Iraq can only be sustained and achieved with support from the American people and with a level of bipartisanship;

Whereas over 137,000 American military personnel are currently serving in Iraq, like thousands of others since March 2003, with the bravery and professionalism consistent with the finest traditions of the United States Armed Forces, and are deserving of the support of all Americans, which they have strongly;

Whereas many American service personnel have lost their lives, and many more have been wounded, in Iraq, and the American people will always honor their sacrifices and honor their families;

Whereas the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, including their Reserve and National Guard organizations, together with components of the other branches of the military, are under enormous strain from multiple, extended deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan;

Whereas these deployments, and those that will follow, will have lasting impacts on the future recruiting, retention and readiness of our Nation's all volunteer force;

Whereas in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, the Congress stated that `calendar year 2006 should be a period of significant transition to full sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq';

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 1723, approved November 28, 2006, `determin[ed] that the situation in Iraq continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security';

Whereas Iraq is experiencing a deteriorating and ever-widening problem of sectarian and intra-sectarian violence based upon political distrust and cultural differences between some Sunni and Shia Muslims;

Whereas Iraqis must reach political settlements in order to achieve reconciliation, and the failure of the Iraqis to reach such settlements to support a truly unified government greatly contributes to the increasing violence in Iraq;

Whereas the responsibility for Iraq's internal security and halting sectarian violence must rest primarily with the Government of Iraq and Iraqi Security Forces;

Whereas U.S. Central Command Commander General John Abizaid testified to Congress on November 15, 2006, `I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps Commander, [and] General Dempsey.

We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no.

And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future';

Whereas Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated on November 27, 2006, that `The crisis is political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of innocents are the politicians';

Whereas there is growing evidence that Iraqi public sentiment opposes the continued U.S. troop presence in Iraq, much less increasing the troop level;

Whereas, in the fall of 2006, leaders in the Administration and Congress, as well as recognized experts in the private sector, began to express concern that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and required a change in strategy; and, as a consequence, the Administration began an intensive, comprehensive review by all components of the Executive Branch to devise a new strategy;

Whereas, in December 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group issued a valuable report, suggesting a comprehensive strategy that includes `new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly';

Whereas, on January 10, 2007, following consultations with the Iraqi Prime Minister, the President announced a new strategy (hereinafter referred to as the `plan'), which consists of three basic elements: diplomatic, economic, and military; the central component of the military element is an augmentation of the present level of the U.S. military forces through additional deployments of approximately 21,500 U.S. military troops to Iraq;

Whereas, on January 10, 2007, the President said that the `Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital' and that U.S. forces will `be embedded in their formations'; and in subsequent testimony before the Armed Services Committee on January 25, 2007, by the retired former Vice Chief of the Army it was learned that there will also be a comparable U.S. command in Baghdad, and that this dual chain of command may be problematic because `the Iraqis are going to be able to move their forces around at times where we will disagree with that movement', and called for clarification;

Whereas this proposed level of troop augmentation far exceeds the expectations of many of us as to the reinforcements that would be necessary to implement the various options for a new strategy, and led many members of Congress to express outright opposition to augmenting our troops by 21,500;

Whereas the Government of Iraq has promised repeatedly to assume a greater share of security responsibilities, disband militias, consider Constitutional amendments and enact laws to reconcile sectarian differences, and improve the quality of essential services for the Iraqi people; yet, despite those promises, little has been achieved;

Whereas the President said on January 10, 2007, that `I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended' so as to dispel the contrary impression that exists; and

Whereas the recommendations in this resolution should not be interpreted as precipitating any immediate reduction in, or withdrawal of, the present level of forces: Now, therefore, be it--

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that—

(1) the Senate disagrees with the `plan' to augment our forces by 21,500, and urges the President instead to consider all options and alternatives for achieving the strategic goals set forth below;

(2) the Senate believes the United States should continue vigorous operations in Anbar province, specifically for the purpose of combating an insurgency, including elements associated with the Al Qaeda movement, and denying terrorists a safe haven;

(3) the Senate believes a failed state in Iraq would present a threat to regional and world peace, and the long-term security interests of the United States are best served by an Iraq that can sustain, govern, and defend itself, and serve as an ally in the war against extremists;

(4) the Congress should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such an action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions;

(5) the primary objective of the overall U.S. strategy in Iraq should be to encourage Iraqi leaders to make political compromises that will foster reconciliation and strengthen the unity government, ultimately leading to improvements in the security situation;

(6) the military part of this strategy should focus on maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq, denying international terrorists a safe haven, conducting counterterrorism operations, promoting regional stability, supporting Iraqi efforts to bring greater security to Baghdad, and training and equipping Iraqi forces to take full responsibility for their own security;

(7) United States military operations should, as much as possible, be confined to these goals, and should charge the Iraqi military with the primary mission of combating sectarian violence;

(8) the military Rules of Engagement for this plan should reflect this delineation of responsibilities, and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should clarify the command and control arrangements in Baghdad;

(9) the United States Government should transfer to the Iraqi military, in an expeditious manner, such equipment as is necessary;

(10) the United States Government should engage selected nations in the Middle East to develop a regional, internationally sponsored peace-and-reconciliation process for Iraq;

(11) the Administration should provide regular updates to the Congress, produced by the Commander of United States Central Command and his subordinate commanders, about the progress or lack of progress the Iraqis are making toward this end; and

(12) our overall military, diplomatic, and economic strategy should not be regarded as an `open-ended' or unconditional commitment, but rather as a new strategy that hereafter should be conditioned upon the Iraqi government's meeting benchmarks that must be delineated in writing and agreed to by the Iraqi Prime Minister. Such benchmarks should include, but not be limited to, the deployment of that number of additional Iraqi security forces as specified in the plan in Baghdad, ensuring equitable distribution of the resources of the Government of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the oil resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner, and the authority of Iraqi commanders to make tactical and operational decisions without political intervention.

Republicans block Senate debate on Iraq AP, 14 minutes ago
Senate shapes its reply to Bush on Iraq at San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 05
2008 presidential candidates on Iraq AP via Yahoo! News, Feb 05
US urged to accelerate Iraq plan at BBC, Feb 05
Iraq accuses Syria of helping rebels at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Feb 05
The perils of partitioning Iraq at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Feb 05
A Bleak Assessment on Iraq at The New York Times (reg. req'd), Feb 05
Battle looms over right to unionize Reuters
Democrat Edwards offers universal health care plan Reuters

THE LISTENING POST: FROSTY CONGRESSIONAL SHOW DOWNS ON THE AGENDA THIS WEEK

2007-02-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

Return to Precinct Master Front Page

The Listening Post Washington- JUST IN!

The Audacity of Dopes

Madam Speaker,

Here is today's example of why you must immediately move to begin the impeachment process:

The new study (http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003239.html) released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that claims;

1) the 'surge' of additional troops to Iraq will actually consist of close to 50,000 troops, NOT the 21, 500 the president has claimed.

2) the cost of this surge will be for times the cost the president has been claiming publicly.

If these estimates are accurate, the president has been caught lying yet again.

One hopes that the historically unprecedented madman in the White House would not be emboldened enough to continue these assaults on the citizens of the United States if impeachment was underway, but one thing is certain--if the president were removed from office, he would no longer have the power to commit such acts.

The world is waiting for you and your fellow Democrats to wake up. Will today be the day?

Tomorrow we'll have another reason for you, as we will every day, until you accept responsibility for the public mandate that swept you into your historically unprecedented position of power.

Iran installs 328 centrifuges at atomic site: sources Reuters - 3 minutes ago

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges each in its underground nuclear plant, laying a basis for full-scale enrichment of uranium and upping the stakes in a standoff with the West, European diplomats said on Monday.

Republicans urged not to block Iraq vote

WASHINGTON - A Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee is cautioning Republicans against blocking a vote Monday on a resolution opposing President Bush's troop increase in Iraq, saying it would be a "terrible mistake."

It's obstructionism," said Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. "This is not tolerable in a situation where it's the number one topic in the nation, and the Republican party prevents the Senate of the United States from debating."

But Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), the top Republican on the
Senate Armed Services Committee, said proponents of the nonbinding, bipartisan resolution were undermining national security.

"This is a vote of no confidence in both the mission and the troops," he said.

On the eve of a possible congressional showdown on Iraq strategy, both sides maneuvered to gain support from a handful of senators who will decide the fate of a resolution criticizing Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Republican leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate are working to block a vote on the resolution by Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va. They insisted that at least two other GOP proposals be considered and that each require 60 votes — a strategy that could dilute support for Warner's measure and make it tougher for any measure to pass.

One alternate proposal would set benchmark goals for the Iraqi government, while the other seeks to maintain funding for troops in the field.

On Sunday, Feinstein called on Republicans to reconsider their procedural move.

"I think it's a terrible mistake to prevent this debate," she said. "If we can't get this done, you can be sure, a month or so down the pike, there's going to be much stronger legislation."

The Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 working majority, has tentatively set an early test vote for Monday.

In a bid to attract more GOP support, Warner added a provision pledging to protect money for troops in combat.

That compromise drew the ire of some Democrats who said it leaned too far in endorsing the status quo. They want to see binding legislation to cap troop levels, force a new vote to authorize the war or begin bringing troops home.

McCain, a 2008 White House contender, is sponsoring the resolution expressing support for a troop increase and setting benchmark goals. He sought to capitalize on some of the Democratic division by calling Warner's plan intellectually dishonest.

The measure, McCain said, offers no concrete alternatives to Bush's plan to add 21,500 troops in Iraq.

"I do believe that if you really believe that this is doomed to failure and is going to cost American lives, then you should do what's necessary to prevent it from happening rather than a vote of 'disapproval,'" he said, noting that the proposal does not seek to cut off troop funding.
A fellow Vietnam veteran, GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska, disagreed with McCain's assessment. Hagel said the resolution would make clear the Senate's belief that Bush's policy is misguided.

Hagel said Warner's resolution strikes a careful balance for a majority of senators who oppose a troop buildup but differ on the appropriate response. The plan also lays out alternatives such as moving troops away from the sectarian violence and closer to the Iraq border to provide "territorial integrity."

"We can't change the outcome of Iraq by putting American troops in the middle of a civil war," said Hagel, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008.

The resolution debate comes as the White House and congressional Democrats prepare to square off over war spending.
Bush's new budget on Monday will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year — on top of $70 billion already approved by Congress for the current year. The budget will call for $145 billion in war spending for 2008.

The spending request covers Bush's new war strategy, including the increase in troops, White House budget director Rob Portman said Sunday.
Hagel and McCain appeared on ABC's "This Week," while Feinstein and Portman spoke on "Late Edition" on CNN.

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Full Coverage: Iraq

Off the Wires

Bush offers new US budget with massive war chest AFP, 3 minutes ago

US lawmakers set for heated debate on Bush's Iraq plan AFP, 7 minutes ago

Feature Articles
Coalition phases in Iraqi sailors at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Feb 04

Doubts Run Deep on Reforms Crucial to Bush's Iraq Strategy at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Feb 04

News Stories
Iraq fire downed US helicopters at BBC, Feb 04

At Least 125 Killed in Blast at Baghdad Market at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Feb 04

Opinion & Editorials
What to Ask Before the Next War at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Feb 04

Iraq's Refugees at The New York Times (reg. req'd), Jan 31
Politics News
· Bush plan seeks billions more for Iraq AP
· Edwards' health care plan includes taxes AP
· Iraq is main issue for Iowa, N.H. voters AP
· More Schwarzenegger tapes released AP
· Judge to hear arguments on Libby tapes AP
Most Viewed - Politics
· Bush plan seeks billions more for Iraq AP
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· Nader leaves '08 door open, slams Hillary Reuters
· Bush to unveil budget dominated by military, Iraq Reuters
· U.S. military in Iraq admit airstrike error Reuters

The Washington Post

By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 5, 2007; Page A01

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.

Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq.

But there is widespread skepticism that even this unusual group, with its specialized knowledge of counterinsurgency methods, will be able to win the battle of Baghdad.

"It's too late to make a difference in Iraq," agreed Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University expert on terrorism who has advised the U.S. government on the war effort.

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq at 3,096

As of Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007, at least 3,096 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,480 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is 16 higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST.

The British military has reported 130 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 18; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, six; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, one death each.

War in Iraq Propelling A Massive Migration
Wave Creates Tension Across the Middle East

As the fourth year of war nears its end, the Middle East's largest refugee crisis since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948 is unfolding in a climate of fear, persecution and tragedy.

Nearly 2 million Iraqis -- about 8 percent of the prewar population -- have embarked on a desperate migration, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The refugees include large numbers of doctors, academics and other professionals vital for Iraq's recovery. Another 1.7 million have been forced to move to safer towns and villages inside Iraq, and as many as 50,000 Iraqis a month flee their homes, the U.N. agency said in January.

In Another CIA Abduction, Germany Has an Uneasy Role

HAMBURG -- The decision by Munich prosecutors to press charges against CIA counterterrorism operatives for kidnapping a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, won widespread applause last week from German politicians and the public.

"The great ally is not allowed to simply send its thugs out into Europe's streets," lectured the Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

But there has been an awkward silence and no prosecutions in the parallel case of another German citizen, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who was also covertly abducted in a CIA-sponsored mission after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The difference: German agents were directly involved in the Zammar case, providing crucial information to the CIA about his travels and making a secret trip to Syria to interrogate him after he landed in prison there.

German officials have said that they were not directly involved in Zammar's seizure and did not know where he had been taken until June 2002, when The Washington Post first reported that he had been arrested in Morocco and secretly transferred to Syria at the behest of the CIA.

But the legislative probes have revealed that German federal police made the abduction possible by forwarding details of Zammar's travel plans to U.S. agents.

In addition, German officials have admitted that several German intelligence operatives and investigators went on a secret mission to Damascus in November 2002 to interrogate Zammar. According to lawmakers in Berlin who are reviewing the case, the Germans gained access to Zammar only after cutting a deal with the Syrian government to drop a criminal investigation into a suspected Syrian espionage ring based in southern Germany.

A parliamentary committee is expected to review the German government's handling of Zammar's case later this month. One question is whether information obtained by German interrogators is being used against him in court by Syrian prosecutors, a particularly sensitive issue since he faces the death penalty, which is banned in Germany.

Iraq Vote Could Resonate In 2008
Resolution Against Adding Troops Is Set for a Showdown

When Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) saw reporters approaching him last week, he took off in a sprint, determined to say as little as possible about a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush's troop-escalation plan, which is expected to come before the Senate today.

"You know where I stand," the senator, who is considered politically vulnerable back home, said repeatedly as he fled down stairways at the Capitol. "I'm still looking."

The historic showdown to begin today represents the first bipartisan confrontation between Congress and the White House over the Iraq war since the invasion nearly four years ago. While the resolution will test the mettle of every member of the chamber, none will be challenged more than Sununu and the 19 other Senate Republicans facing reelection in 2008 -- many from states where voters are angry with Bush's war policy and want the troops to begin heading home.

Democrats won control of the Senate and House in November largely because of widespread opposition to the war, and the issue remains dangerous for the GOP heading into the 2008 campaign. Senate Republicans are torn between home-state voters eager for them to take a stand against a conflict that has claimed more than 3,000 U.S. troops and has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and Bush and other Republican leaders who warn that passage of the resolution would undermine chances of a successful conclusion to the war.

"It's inevitable that people want to ascribe political motives to this, but I just hope a majority of Oregonians understand when it comes to issues of war and peace, there's no issue of greater gravity on your heart and mind," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), who must stand for reelection next year in a swing state.

"Oregonians are patriots and want to fight the war on terror, but they don't like the way this war has mutated," added Smith, once a war supporter but now an anguished foe.

Even before the Senate takes up a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush's deployment of 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, four distinct camps have developed:See Post Graphic Presentation Here:

Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Rightby Robin MorganSeptember 2006 - ISBN: 1560259485[buy it now online]

Most Americans lack the tools for arguing with the religious right, especially when fundamentalist conservatives claim their positions originated with the framers of the Constitution.

Until now...

The religious right is gaining enormous power in the United States, thanks to a well-organized, media savvy movement with powerful friends in high places. Yet many Americans--observant and secular--are alarmed by this trend, especially by efforts to erase the boundary between church and state, re-making the United States into a "Christian nation."

In Fighting Words, Robin Morgan has assembled a toolkit for arguing, a verbal karate guide: a lively, accessible, eye-opening collection revealing what the framers (and other leading Americans) really believed--in their own words. She resurrects the Founders as the revolutionaries they were: "A hodgepodge of free-thinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, atheists, Freemasons--and radicals."

Robin Morgan is an award-winning writer, political analyst, journalist, feminist leader and editor of the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Global, and Sisterhood is Forever. Her latest books include A Hot January: Poems, Saturday's Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism; and a new novel, The Burning Time. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize (Poetry) and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City. Visit her website at www.robinmorgan.us.

Senators Unite On Challenge to Bush's Troop Plan

Revised Warner Language That Protects Funds Is Embraced for Bipartisan Appeal

Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush's troop-buildup plan joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing: a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced the shift, hoping to unite a large majority of the Senate and thwart efforts by the White House and GOP leaders to derail any congressional resolution of disapproval of Bush's decision to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500.

Although the original Democratic language was popular within the party, it had little appeal among Republicans. Warner's proposal drew support from both sides, and it was retooled last night to maximize both Democratic and Republican votes.

The revised resolution would express the Senate's opposition to the troop increase but would vow to protect funding for the troops. The resolution does not include the Democratic language saying the Bush plan is against the national interest, but it also drops an earlier provision by Warner suggesting Senate support for some additional troops.

"It's been a hard work in progress," Warner said of the revised resolution, which will require the support of at least 60 senators to prevent a filibuster.

After reviewing the Warner revisions, Reid decided the new text would take the place of the original resolution, by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). He said the Senate will begin debating the resolution next week, provided Democrats and Republicans can agree on a way to overcome some procedural hurdles.

House Democratic leaders reached the same decision, ordering committees to draft a resolution next week patterned on Warner's language. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went further, publicly hinting she will push binding legislation that would begin bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. "I believe that you'll see initiatives on the floor to this effect: that we have this year in which we should be able to drastically reduce the number of troops," she said in an interview broadcast on National Public Radio yesterday.

In both the House and the Senate, Democratic leaders decided to get the largest possible vote, even if it means embracing weaker language than the original Democratic resolution.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded to the announcement by saying: "The president wants to win in Iraq -- he's proposed a comprehensive plan to do so, and he's asked Congress to give the plan a chance to work. . . . These resolutions send mixed signals to our troops and our enemy."

In the House, Pelosi suggested yesterday that the chamber may consider binding legislation. In comments aired yesterday by National Public Radio, Pelosi said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had told her during her visit to Baghdad last week that, with sufficient funds, his government could stabilize Iraq in four to six months and allow 50,000 U.S. troops to be deployed out of hotbeds of sectarian violence.

Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman, said no specific decisions had been made related to binding troop withdrawals. Other House leaders said they will not rush toward a legislative confrontation. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, are holding extensive hearings on the state of the U.S. military and the impact of further deployments, in the hope of building a political case for such a confrontation. But no proposals have emerged from those efforts.
"My position is and has been, we're holding hearings now. We need to hear from Mr. Skelton, Mr. Murtha and others as to . . . their conclusions and recommendations. Until then, the answer is no," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said when asked if the House was ready for such legislation.

But Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of Murtha's subcommittee, said the parameters of the legislation are already coming together. Legislative language, to be attached to a forthcoming "supplemental" war spending bill, would stipulate that only troops deemed fully trained and ready could be deployed to Iraq, and that National Guard and reserve troops could be deployed only for about a year. Such language would initially restrict Bush's ability to fully man his planned troop increase and over time would force troops to come home.

"We need to finish these hearings and put together our recommendations, so it is a little premature to say how we're going to do this," Moran said. "But when the supplemental comes out, people are going to find the speaker has spoken consistently. I think the American people are going to feel they got exactly what they wanted when they voted in a new Congress. You're going to see some dramatic initiatives."

Many Democrats had already expressed support for Warner's effort and had intended to vote for both resolutions, in the event of a showdown on the Senate floor. "It's less important whose resolution and more important what message we send," said Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), a senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a conservative Democrat who had concerns about the Biden proposal, predicted that the Warner resolution will "receive very strong bipartisan support" in its modified form.

Although Bush would not be obliged to follow Congress's direction, should both chambers ultimately pass the Warner resolution, the White House has lobbied hard to prevent such a measure from passing. If the current drive succeeds, it will be the first formal, bipartisan affront to the administration's Iraq policy since the war began.

Not all Republicans are expected to sign on, however. Some believe that the buildup is a worthy cause that should be given a chance. "The critics stop short of offering any constructive alternatives," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). "All they have done is just criticize." Cornyn was assembling his own proposal that endorses Bush's strategy, while calling on the Iraqi government to assume responsibility for security throughout the country by November.

Author encourages impeachment vote

The Barre Montpelier Times Argus - 1 hour, 3 minutes ago

BELLOWS FALLS -- One of the leaders of the national grassroots movement to impeach President George W. Bush told a gathering Saturday afternoon that the Vermont Legislature could be a leader to the rest of the country. ... - By SUSAN SMALLHEER Herald Staff

Is Bush Over?

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff WriterMonday, February 5, 2007; 6:46 AM
These days, many in the media seem to be writing off President Bush.
"The American people basically fired George Bush in the last election," writes New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. "We're now just watching him clean out his desk."

"A lot of Americans consider this presidency over," says CNN's Bill Schneider.

"If America were a parliamentary democracy, we would have a no-confidence vote and a new prime minister by spring," writes New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin.

Are these and other pundits giving us the unvarnished truth, that we are witnessing the historic collapse of a presidency? Or is this the triumph of quick-draw, poll-driven journalism?

But the gibes keep on coming. "If we had a straight dictatorship," writes the New Republic's Jonathan Chait, "Bush would long ago have been dragged out of the White House either by an angry mob or by disgruntled generals." (Not that he's in favor of either.)

Chait agrees in an interview that the president still has power, but notes: "Psychologically, it does feel that people are starting to move past Bush. No one has changed his mind about Bush in the last two years. It's kind of boring to write about him anymore because he's so unchanging."

Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard's executive editor, says Bush will concentrate on such areas as tightening control of regulatory policy to end-run a Democratic Congress. "The Republicans learned in the '90s -- and the press should have learned as well -- that presidents have great inherent powers," he says.

But "Nancy Pelosi at the moment is a more interesting story than George Bush. She's new, she's attractive and she has an agenda."
The media, as always, are mesmerized by polls. When Bush was riding high in the "Mission Accomplished" days of 2003, some of the coverage was almost giddy.

If Bush's current approval ratings were at 50 percent, his media portrayal would look very different. With the president having sunk as low as 28 percent in a CBS News survey, it is all too easy to dismiss him, even as he mounts an escalation of the war in Iraq.

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