FeleG's View

The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the heart of the radical Islamic ideology Bush has warned of repeatedly.

...the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing. But Muslims regard themselves as members of the umma , or community of believers, that forms the heart of Islam. And as earthly head of that community, the caliph is cherished both as memory and ideal, interviews indicate.

That reservoir of respect represents a risk for the Bush administration as it addresses an issue closely watched by a global Islamic population estimated at 1.2 billion. Already, many surveys show that since the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslims almost universally have seen the war against terrorism as a war on Islam.

Many taxpayers whose refunds were hung up in the process were low-income taxpayers claiming the earned-income tax credit, and in a sample examined by the Taxpayer Advocate Service nearly two-thirds of them were fully entitled to receive a refund.

"Even in cases where CI has made 'conclusive' determinations of fraud and characterized the taxpayers as 'criminals,' it has not provided the affected taxpayers with any notice or opportunity to present documentation to rebut CI's suspicion before a final 'determination' is made." Some refunds are eventually released or the taxpayers subjected to audit. But in many cases, the report said, refunds remain frozen for years.

Taxpayers mystified at the disappearance of their refunds have flooded the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) with requests for assistance. Last year TAS handled more than 28,000 such requests, up from about 16,400 a year earlier, and such complaints now represent the largest number that the advocate service gets about any IRS program.

However, IRS employees, including those of TAS, are generally forbidden to give a taxpayer any information about a missing refund until six months after the taxpayer contacts the agency, Olson's report said.

[A] 1952 opinion, a concurrence by Justice Robert H. Jackson, rejected President Harry S. Truman's assertion that he had the constitutional power to seize the nation's steel mills to aid the war effort in Korea.

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Quoting from the Jackson concurrence and referring to the surveillance program, [Senator Arlen] Specter [R-PA} said, "What is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system."

"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," Justice O'Connor wrote for herself and three other justices in 2004. She cited one case as precedent for that proposition: Youngstown.

In June 1952, in a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the various legal rationales offered by the Truman administration for the seizures. Many of those rationales have echoes in the justifications offered by the Bush administration for its detention of enemy combatants, harsh interrogations and domestic surveillance without court approval.

Writing for the court, Justice Hugo L. Black said the president's power was extensive but not unlimited.

"Even though 'theater of war' be an expanding concept," Justice Black wrote, "we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the commander in chief of the armed forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., at his confirmation hearings in September, endorsed Justice Jackson's concurrence. It has, Judge Roberts said, "set the framework for consideration of questions of executive power in times of war and with respect to foreign affairs since it was decided."

The president's authority is at its maximum, Justice Jackson wrote, when he "acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress." The [Bush] administration says a resolution authorizing the president to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks was such authorization.

"Public documents reviewed by the Associated Press tell the story: at least 48 visits to golf clubs, and resorts with lush fairways, 100 flights aboard company planes, 200 stays at hotels, many world class, and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $2,000 for a dinner for two.

"Instead of his personal expense, the meals and trips for DeLay and his associates were paid with donations collected by the campaign committees, political action committees and children's charity the Texas Republican created during his rise to the top of Congress."

How cynical does that make you? When I hear Speaker Dennis Hastert is returning his campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff or "donating it to charity," I wonder which little charmer of a Republican campaign fund masquerading as a charity he's sending it to.

The DeLay Foundation for Kids was set up 18 years ago and works on behalf of foster children. But it is also a way for companies to give unregulated and undisclosed funds: It's a way for companies to get into DeLay's good graces or, as Fred Lewis from Campaign for People says, "another way for donors to get their hooks into politicians."

Meanwhile, Abramoff was even more cavalier about "charity." He created the Capital Athletic Foundation supposedly to help inner-city children through organized sports. There is no evidence any of the money ever went to that purpose, but The Washington Post reports it went to a sniper school for Israelis on the West Bank, a golf trip to Scotland for Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and a Jewish religious academy in Columbia, Md. Abramoff's hapless Indian clients were generous contributors: I wonder if he thought it was funny that Indians would more likely identify with Palestinians than Israelis.

_House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., about $77,000 to charity.

_House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., $8,500 to charity.

_Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, $15,000 to local charities in suburban Houston.

Sharon, 77, suffered a stroke Wednesday night caused by a blood clot that went to his brain. Doctors have performed three rounds of surgery struggling to control the resulting hemorrhaging, likely caused in part by blood-thinning medication Sharon was taking for a stroke he suffered last month.

At Sago, it seems management performed the same calculations their counterparts at General Motors, Ford and Firestone, and many other corporations have used many times in the past. When money saved by flouting safety rules far outweighs the cost of minuscule fines and the occasional court settlement, corporations often will choose to endanger workers, customers or all of us.

The Bush administration reflexively blames “bad apples” rather than address a broken system and its own role in perpetuating it, but Rep. Major Owens, D-New York, was on target when he noted last year, "the federal government is itself guilty of gross negligence in efforts to deter corporate manslaughter.”

Rather than solving that problem, Bush and Congress continue to exacerbate it. The 2006 budget for MSHA cuts $5 million in real dollars, requiring further cuts to an agency that already has reduced staffing by 170 workers since 2001. And Bush’s nominee to head the MSHA, Richard Stickler, is a former mine manager with an abysmal safety record. Since Bush took office, 17 proposed MSHA standards to protect miners’ safety and health were discarded.

If the Bush administration wants its promises to mean something, replacing Stickler’s nomination with someone who has demonstrated real interest in protecting workers’ lives is crucial. The agency already has lost dedicated people due to mission drift.

groups criticized the Bush administration for trying to change existing clean air laws, which the report said would result in nearly 4,000 more annual deaths from asthma, heart attacks and other ailments linked to coal plant emissions.

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“The Bush air pollution plan represents a step backward from simply enforcing current law,” said Angela Ledford, director of Clear the Air, a coalition that includes the National Environmental Trust, the Public Interest Research Group and the Clean Air Task Force.

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2003 blackout slashed pollution
In a separate but related study, University of Maryland scientists reported Wednesday that the skies became dramatically cleaner when power plants had to shut down during the August 2003 blackout that hit the Northeast.

Measurements found a 90 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide, a gas that leads to haze and acid rain, and a 50 percent reduction in smog, or ground-level ozone. The amount of light-scattering particles in the air dropped by 70 percent and visibility increased by some 20 miles.

"In addition, skies cleared up far from some power plants. "The improvement in air quality provides evidence that transported emission from power plants hundreds of kilometers upwind play a dominant role in regional haze" and smog, the scientists write in a paper appearing in the next issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

Why would President Bush ignore the law and the FISA court? It is certainly not because the court in its three decades of existence was uncooperative. According to attorney Martin Garbus (New York Observer, 12-26-05), the secret court has issued more warrants than all federal district judges combined, only once denying a warrant.

Why, then, has the administration created another scandal for itself on top of the WMD, torture, hurricane, and illegal detention scandals?

There are two possible reasons.

One reason is that the Bush administration is being used to concentrate power in the executive. The old conservative movement, which honors the separation of powers, has been swept away. Its place has been taken by a neoconservative movement that worships executive power.

The other reason is that the Bush administration could not go to the FISA secret court for warrants because it was not spying for legitimate reasons and, therefore, had to keep the court in the dark about its activities.

What might these illegitimate reasons be? Could it be that the Bush administration used the spy apparatus of the US government in order to influence the outcome of the presidential election?

In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.

Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official -- Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.

The reintroduction of the coal dust measure came after the federal agency had abandoned a series of Clinton-era safety proposals favored by coal miners while embracing others favored by mine owners.

The agency's effort to rewrite coal regulations is part of a broader push by the Bush administration to help an industry that had been out of favor in Washington. As a candidate four years ago, Mr. Bush promised to expand energy supplies, in part by reviving coal's fortunes, particularly in Appalachia, where coal regions will also help decide how swing states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio vote this year.

The president has also made good on a 2000 campaign pledge to ease environmental restrictions that industry officials said were threatening jobs in coal country. That promise led many West Virginia miners, who traditionally voted Democratic, to join coal operators in supporting Mr. Bush. It helped him win the state's five electoral votes, ultimately the margin of victory.

Safety and environmental regulations often shift with control of the White House, but the Bush administration's approach to coal mining has been a particularly potent example of the blend of politics and policy.

In addition to Mr. Lauriski, who spent 30 years in the coal industry, Mr. Bush tapped a handful of other industry executives and lobbyists to help oversee safety and environmental regulations.

The agency investigating the West Virginia mine disaster that killed 12 people this week has been criticized for years for what critics call flawed and antiquated approaches to investigations.

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The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has appointed an eight-person team to investigate the accident at the Sago Mine. The team members are from regions other than the one where the accident occurred to prevent conflicts of interests, says Bob Friend, acting deputy assistant secretary of Labor for MSHA.

The potential for such conflicts is at the root of criticism of the agency. MSHA not only investigates mine accidents but also inspects mines for safety problems. Having the dual roles of investigator and regulator is difficult, and questions about the effectiveness of the government's inspection practices will inevitably be raised, says Peter Goelz, former executive director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

"They really ought not to have the regulator conducting safety investigations," Goelz says. "It's bad policy. There's a natural hesitance on the part of the regulator to believe that its own regulations and its own oversight would be anything other than acceptable.

Bruce Watzman, vice president for safety and health at National Mining Association, which represents mining companies, [standing in for Baghdad Bob--Fele] says MSHA investigations are "an effective process. There are no politics involved. It is driven by facts to come to conclusions that allow the industry to advance its safety and health activity."

Others complain about the process. Interviews are typically voluntary, and MSHA investigators allow witnesses to skip questions and end interviews at any time, says Tony Oppegard, an MSHA senior adviser from 1998 to 2001.

Oppegard says interviews can be "intimidating" because mine company officials watch as MSHA investigators question miners. "The only point for a coal company to sit in on an accident investigation interview is to intimidate the witnesses," says Oppegard, a former Kentucky state prosecutor on mine-safety cases.

Oppegard says MSHA should conduct a "public inquiry" in which interviews are done publicly and the agency has subpoena power.