Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday September 30 2006 - (813)

Saturday September 30 2006 edition
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Rep. Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails To Teenage Page 2006-09-30 00:07:19 Six-term U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida) resigned Friday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to at least one underage male former page. Foley, who was considered likely to win reelection this fall, said in a three-sentence letter of resignation: "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent." The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley's GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it". Read The Full Story FDA Says Bayer Failed To Reveal Heart Drug Risk Study 2006-09-30 00:06:31 Bayer A.G., the German pharmaceutical giant, failed to reveal to federal drug officials the results of a large study suggesting that a widely used heart-surgery medicine might increase the risks of death and stroke, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday. Bayer scientists even appeared at a public meeting called by the F.D.A. on Sept. 21 to discuss the possibility that the drug, Trasylol, might have serious risks, but they did not mention the study or its worrisome results. In a highly unusual move, the food and drug agency released a public health advisory saying it had learned of the study's existence only on Wednesday. Preliminary results of the study demonstrate "that use of Trasylol may increase the chance for death, serious kidney damage, congestive heart failure and strokes," said the advisory. Read The Full Story Senate Vote Gives U.S.-Mexico Border Fence Final Go-Ahead 2006-09-30 00:05:13 The Senate gave final approval last night to legislation authorizing the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, shelving President Bush's vision of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in favor of a vast barrier. The measure was pushed hard by House Republican leaders, who badly wanted to pass a piece of legislation that would make good on their promises to get tough on illegal immigrants, despite warnings from critics that a multibillion-dollar fence would do little to address the underlying economic, social and law enforcement problems, or to prevent others from slipping across the border. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) surprised many advocates of a more comprehensive approach to immigration problems when he took up the House bill last week. In Congress's rush to recess last night for the fall political campaigns, the fence bill passed easily, 80 to 19, with 26 Democrats joining 54 Republicans in support. One Republican, Sen. Lincoln D. Chaffee (Rhode Island); one independent, Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vermont); and 17 Democrats opposed the bill. The president has indicated that he will sign it. Read The Full Story Hedge Fund With Big Loss Says It Will Close 2006-09-30 00:03:10 Amaranth Advisors, the $9.2 billion hedge fund that lost $6.5 billion in less than a month, is preparing to shut down. Nicholas Maounis, the founder of the hedge fund, sent a letter to investors last night informing them that the fund was suspending all redemptions for Sept. 30 and Oct. 31, to "enable the Amaranth funds to generate liquidity for investors in an orderly fashion, with the goal of maximizing the proceeds of asset dispositions." Investors have met with Amaranth throughout the week, many demanding the return of their money. "As you know, the multistrategy funds have recently received substantial redemption requests," Maounis said in the letter. Read The Full Story Woodward Book: Card Urged Bush To Replace Rumsfeld 2006-09-29 12:46:42 Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq. Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November, 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move, but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush himself to criticism. Card tried again around Thanksgiving, 2005, this time with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, who according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration last March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war. Read The Full Story Congressional Report Links Lobbyist Abramoff And White House 2006-09-29 00:17:04 A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed fromAbramoff's lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Abramoff's lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Rove's office. The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday. Read The Full Story Ashcroft Denied Immunity In Wrongful Detention Case 2006-09-29 00:16:11 A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003. Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government's use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Read The Full Story Belgian Government Rules That U.S. Sifting Of Bank Data Is Illegal 2006-09-29 00:14:32 A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said Thursday. The decision, announced by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, came as the country's Data Privacy Commission released a 20-page report finding that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators. "It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by SWIFT that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," says the report. Read The Full Story	Opinion: Legislating Violations Of The U.S. Constitution 2006-09-30 00:06:55 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Erwin Chemerinsky for the washingtonpost.com website. It addresses constitutional issues involving U.S. House Resolution  2679, primarily those issues dealing with actions by the government that are unconstitutional, including the separation of church and state. Mr. Chemerinsky is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University. The House has approved the bill. Prof. Chemerinsky's column begins here: With little public attention or even notice, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. A federal statute, 42 United States Code section 1988, provides that attorneys are entitled to recover compensation for their fees if they successfully represent a plaintiff asserting a violation of his or her constitutional or civil rights. For example, a lawyer who successfully sues on behalf of a victim of racial discrimination or police abuse is entitled to recover attorney's fees from the defendant who acted wrongfully. Any plaintiff who successfully sues to remedy a violation of the Constitution or a federal civil rights statute is entitled to have his or her attorney's fees paid. Congress adopted this statute for a simple reason: to encourage attorneys to bring cases on behalf of those whose rights have been violated. Congress was concerned that such individuals often cannot afford an attorney and vindicating constitutional rights rarely generates enough in damages to pay a lawyer on a contingency fee basis. Read The Full Story As India Uses Up Groundwater, Farming And Food Crisis Looms 2006-09-30 00:06:01 Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a cultivator of cucumber and wheat in Teja Ka Bas, India, has all but given up growing food. No more suffering through drought and the scourge of antelope that would destroy what little would survive on his fields. Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land. Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up, he sells to the local government - 13,000 gallons a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty neighbors. He reaps handsomely, and he plans to continue for as long as it lasts. "However long it runs, it runs," he said. "We know we will all be ultimately doomed." Read The Full Story Brazilian Jet With 150 Aboard Missing After Collision 2006-09-30 00:04:23 A Brazilian jetliner with more than 150 people aboard was reported missing Friday over the Amazon jungle after colliding with a smaller executive jet, according to aviation authorities. Wladamir Caze, spokesman for the Brazilian aviation authority, told the Associated Press that Gol airlines flight 1907 left the jungle city of Manaus and disappeared after a collision. The Brazilian Aviation agency said the accident occurred in midair about 470 miles south of Manaus in the remote southwestern region of Para state. News reports said the plane reportedly struck a Brazilian-made Legacy aircraft. The Legacy managed to land at the Caximbo base in southern Para, some 1,250 miles northwest of Rio, despite suffering damage. Read The Full Story U.K. Blocks U.S. Rice Because Of GM Contamination 2006-09-30 00:02:32 American rice which may have been contaminated with a controversial GM (genetically modified) strain has been effectively blocked from the U.K., it emerged Friday. The world's biggest importer of rice has said it has ceased trading in U.S.-grown rice because of fears about the GM variety, which has not been approved for human use. Ebro Puleva, the Spanish rice processing company which controls 30% of the European Union (E.U.) rice market, said it has stopped all U.S. rice imports because of the threat of contamination by a strain of GM rice grown in crop trials by the GM company Bayer between 1998 and 2001. The strain, known as LLRICE 601, was never approved for human consumption but has escaped in large quantities into the world food chain. Read The Full Story Opinion: Is Woodward Calling Bush A Liar? 2006-09-29 12:46:18 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Dan Froomkin for the washingtonpost.com website. Mr. Froomkin's column begins here: After two books that made President Bush look pretty good, Bob Woodward is out with a new one that comes awfully close to calling the president a liar. I can't imagine Woodward himself ever using the word - it's much too shrill for the poster boy for the mainstream media. But is there any other way to describe what seems like the central theme of his new book, tartly titled "State of Denial"? Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, which is scheduled to run excerpts of the book in its Sunday and Monday editions. But the news about the book first came from CBS, which yesterday uncorked a preview of Woodward's upcoming interview on "60 Minutes". The New York Times ran a long piece this morning, after somehow managing to buy a copy of the book four days before the official release date. Read The Full Story Analysis: Many Human Rights Absent In Military Trials Bill 2006-09-29 00:16:40 The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system. President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II. Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate Thursday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions. The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court. By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death. Read The Full Story Deputy Dies In Shooting Near Florida Schools 2006-09-29 00:15:39 A man who had been pulled over for a traffic violation shot two sheriff's deputies Thursday, killing one of them and prompting an intensive manhunt that forced a lockdown at three schools, said officials. Authorities told residents to lock themselves in their homes as officers swarmed the rural area. The gunman remains at large. The shooter was first approached during a traffic stop, but he fled into a wooded area when the deputy began asking him about his identity, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. That deputy and another who arrived seconds later with a police dog chased the suspect into the woods. As the officers tracked him, there was a "burst of gunfire," said Judd. The first deputy returned fire, and both deputies and the dog were shot. Read The Full Story Senior Military Tell U.K. Government To Pull Troops Out Of Iraq 2006-09-29 00:13:48 Senior U.K. military officers have been pressing the Blair government to withdraw British troops from Iraq and concentrate on what they now regard as a more worthwhile and winnable battleground in Afghanistan. They believe there is a limit to what British soldiers can achieve in southern Iraq and that it is time the Iraqis took responsibility for their own security, say defense sources. Pressure from military chiefs for an early and significant cut in the 7,500 British troops in Iraq is also motivated by extreme pressure being placed on soldiers and those responsible for training them. "What is more important, Afghanistan or Iraq?" a senior defense source asked Thursday. "There is a group within the Ministry of Defense (MoD) pushing hard to get troops out of Iraq to get more into Afghanistan." Military chiefs have been losing patience with the slow progress made in building a new Iraqi national army and security services. Significantly, they now say the level of violence in the country will not be a factor determining when British troops should leave. Read The Full Story
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