Gays Can’t Come to Massachusetts to Marry

Court: Gays Can’t Come to Mass. to Marry (JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press)

Same-sex couples from states where gay marriage is banned cannot legally marry in Massachusetts, the state’s highest court ruled Thursday. The Supreme Judicial Court, which three years ago made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage, upheld a 1913 state law that forbids nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state. “The laws of this commonwealth have not endowed non-residents with an unfettered right to marry,” the court wrote in its 38-page opinion. “Only non-resident couples who come to Massachusetts to marry and intend to reside in this commonwealth thereafter can be issued a marriage license without consideration of any impediments to marriage that existed in their former home states.”

Eight gay couples from surrounding states had challenged the law in a case watched closely across the country. In Thursday’s ruling, the court sent the cases involving couples from Rhode Island and New York back to a lower court, saying it was unclear whether those states prohibit same-sex marriage.

Gov. Mitt Romney applauded the ruling. “We don’t want Massachusetts to become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage,” Romney said. “It’s important that other states have the right to make their own determination of marriage and not follow the wrong course that our Supreme Judicial Court put us on.”

One plaintiff, Mark Pearsall, called Thursday’s ruling “illogical.” “It’s a statement that’s not really based around any sense of humanity, but really on a sense of politics, which is really not a fair way to treat people. It’s a hurtful thing,” said Pearsall, of Lebanon, Conn., who traded vows with Paul Trubey in Worcester in 2004.

In oral arguments before the high court in October, a lawyer for the couples argued that the 1913 law had been unused for decades, until it was “dusted off” by Romney in an attempt to discriminate against same-sex couples. Romney ordered city and town clerks to enforce that law after the first same-sex marriages were performed in Massachusetts in May 2004.

Attorneys for the state argued that Massachusetts risked a backlash if it ignored the laws of other states by letting same-sex couples marry here when their own states prohibited such unions. More than 6,000 gay couples have tied the knot in Massachusetts since the court ruled in 2003 that the state Constitution gives same-sex couples the same right to marry as heterosexual couples.

Christopher McCary and John Sullivan, among the first gay couples married in the state, said they still consider themselves married, even if Thursday’s ruling means they’re just two guys living in the same house in Alabama. “It really doesn’t change anything,” said McCary, an attorney in Anniston. “We’re like everybody else. He has two jobs, I have one and we both work all the time.” The state of Alabama does not recognize their union.

Canada Cuts Ties to Palestinian Authority

Canada cuts ties to Palestinian Authority (CANADIAN PRESS) Mar. 29, 7:40 PM

Canada has become the first country after Israel to cut funding and diplomatic ties to the Palestinian Authority over the new Hamas government’s refusal to renounce violence. The Conservatives say they will still offer humanitarian aid to Palestinians through the United Nations and other agencies. But Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday that Ottawa cannot go farther. “As you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization — listed in this country — and we cannot send any direct aid to an organization that refuses to renounce terrorist activity, refuses to renounce violence.”

The news shocked pro-Palestine groups who fear aid will be cut to those living in squalid refugee camps. A major Jewish organization welcomed the decision.

MacKay made the announcement after the Palestinian Legislative Council approved the formation of a Hamas-led government. The group won a surprise victory in the Jan. 25 Palestinian elections. Hamas has since been pressed by Canada, the European Union and other countries to change its ways. MacKay says Hamas has ignored those calls. “The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning non-violence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap for Peace. “As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority.” MacKay added that the new government must make a “clear commitment” to peace before Canada will end the diplomatic freeze.

International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner stressed that Canada supports a negotiated end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Canada also makes an important distinction between assistance to the Palestinian Authority and to Palestinians.
“Canada will continue to support and respond to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people” through the UN and other agencies, she said. “Canada will also continue to work with the voices of moderation within Palestinian society.”

That was little comfort for Faraj Nakhleh, acting president of the Canadian Arab Federation. “What is at stake is that there’s a population of about 3.5 million people in the West Bank and Gaza that is starving.” After decades of Israeli occupation, Palestinians are now effectively being punished for democratically electing a government they believe can help, he said.
“Suddenly we’re saying: `It’s okay to have a democratic vote, but if we don’t like the result then you can’t have that.’ “I’m not defending any Hamas group. All I’m saying is, they were elected.”

At the very least, Canada and other countries should be making the same peaceful demands of Israel, says Wahida Valiante, national vice-president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. “It’s a two-way street. “Canada is blindly following the lead of Washington,” and of pro-Israel lobby groups, she said. Cutting off contact will not help Palestine improve its democratic systems, Valiante says.

Ottawa has been sending $25 million a year to Palestine but the Liberals had planned hefty increases. Instead, the $25 million will now be cut by $7.3 million to $17.7 million, said Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Marie-Christine Lilkoff.

Liberal MP Keith Martin visited the West Bank in August. “It was profoundly tragic,” he said. “Palestinian people live in abhorrent conditions. Yet, they desperately want to become self-sufficient. “Unfortunately, violent radicals impede the ability of the Palestinian people to move forward with an independent state, side by side with an independent and secure Israel.”

Frank Dimant of B’Nai Brith welcomed the decision. “Canada has stood true to its principles by refusing to do business with a terrorist entity whose avowed aim continues to be the destruction of the Jewish state.”

Chaplains Group Opposes Prayer Order

Chaplains Group Opposes Prayer Order (Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, p. A4)

An association that represents more than 70 percent of the chaplains in the U.S. military, including many evangelical Christians, is opposing a demand by conservatives in Congress for a presidential order guaranteeing the right of chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus. The rising calls for an executive order are based on “confusion and misinformation,” because Christian chaplains routinely pray in the name of Jesus, in public, thousands of times a week in military chapels around the world, said the Rev. Herman Keizer Jr., chairman of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces. “This has been portrayed as though chaplains are not allowed to pray in Jesus’s name, without any distinction between what they do all the time in worship services and what they do occasionally, in ceremonial settings where attendance is mandatory,” Keizer said.

Known by the initials NCMAF, Keizer’s group is a private, 40-year-old association of more than 60 Christian, Jewish and Muslim denominations. It says it represents 5,430 of the 7,620 chaplains in the armed forces. The calls for an executive order to protect the right to pray in Jesus’s name have originated in large part from a rival association, the International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers. Formed two years ago, it says it represents about 800 chaplains, exclusively from evangelical Christian churches. The Rev. Billy Baugham, executive director of ICECE, said he was surprised by NCMAF’s stand. “It will just lead more evangelicals to leave them and join us,” he said.

Prodded by complaints from ICECE, 74 members of Congress signed a letter to President Bush last fall saying that “it has come to our attention that in all branches of the military it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christian chaplains to use the name of Jesus when praying.”

In December, Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and three other congressmen unveiled a supporting petition that has since swelled to more than 200,000 signatures. Calls for congressional hearings and an executive order have become a staple on religious radio and television broadcasts, generating protests of White House inaction by conservative Christians, who are usually strong supporters of Bush.

In a letter this month to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Keizer said NCMAF believes that an executive order is unnecessary because the military is “now effectively addressing the current religious concerns.”

Keizer, a minister in the Christian Reformed Church of North America, a conservative Protestant denomination, retired in 2002 after 34 years as an Army chaplain. He said the armed services are gradually rolling out guidelines that set a path between “those who don’t want any religion practiced in the military, and those who want religion practiced without any limits in the military.” An executive order “would just precipitate more litigation,” he said.

In a Feb. 21 instruction to commanders, the secretary of the Navy distinguished between prayers given by chaplains at “divine worship services” — on which there are no restrictions — and those delivered at “command functions” that people of many faiths are encouraged or required to attend. “Absent extraordinary circumstances,” any religious elements in a command ceremony “should be nonsectarian,” it said. Air Force guidelines issued a few weeks earlier made essentially the same distinction, calling for “non-denominational, inclusive prayer” or a moment of silence at military ceremonies.

Keizer said NCMAF sees nothing wrong with a commander asking a chaplain to offer nonsectarian prayers at such events, as long as the chaplain can decline to participate, with no repercussions. But Baugham said evangelical chaplains must represent the church that endorses them for military duty, and “they are not authorized to give nonsectarian prayers.” He also said he does not believe that chaplains are truly free to pray as they wish in worship services. “There are chaplains who get their knuckles rapped pretty hard, and we have documentation of this, for praying in Jesus’s name in chapels,” he said.

Al-Qaeda Wanted Multiple Bombing

Al-Qaeda ‘Wanted Multiple Bombing’ (Nicola Woolcock, London Times)

A senior al-Qaeda figure told Islamist terrorists to unleash a wave of multiple, simultaneous bombings in Britain, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. One associate also allegedly suggested using a remote-controlled model aeroplane packed with explosives.

Mohammed Babar, an American terrorist with links to al-Qaeda, is giving evidence against his alleged former accomplices. The seven men, all from southeast England, are charged with conspiring to attack a British target. Babar told the court that one defendant, Omar Khyam, 24, travelled with another man to a remote tribal area of Pakistan to meet Abu Munthir, who reported directly to al-Qaeda’s No 3. Babar said that Mr Khyam “wanted to discuss with him [Abu Munthir] what they were planning in the UK”. Babar alleged that the men said that Abu Munthir “wanted them to do multiple bombings . . . either simultaneously or one after the other on the same day”.

[...]

Momin Khawaja, a Canadian facing trial in his own country, acted as a mule for al-Qaeda, returning to Pakistan in October 2003, via Britain, and allegedly bringing supplies for the terror group from Mr Khyam. These included a medical kit, money and invisible-ink pens. They were for another defendant, Salahuddin Amin, 31, to give to Abu Munthir. Babar told the court that Mr Amin wanted to ask Mr Khawaja, a computer expert, “how to send a computer virus”. He added: “Momin Khawaja and his brother were working on a GPS-navigated model aeroplane which could be fitted with explosives.” David Waters, QC, for the prosecution, read out an e-mail in which Mr Khawaja said that he could obtain remote-controlled detonation devices, with a range of about 2km, for £4 each. Mr Khawaja also mentioned “Imran”, a London Underground worker allegedly asked by Mr Khyam to carry out a suicide mission.

[...]

Babar successfully tested an explosive substance in his back garden in Lahore, allegedly on the instruction of Mr Khyam. They hid behind a wall while the device was detonated. Babar also said that he met Mr Amin, who gave him detonators to transport to Europe, and asked him for equipment allegedly used by some of the defendants at a terrorist training camp, allegedly to send over the border to al-Qaeda.

Senate Approves Lobbying Limits

Senate Approves Lobbying Limits by Wide Margin (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, NYT)

The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed the first major restrictions on lobbying in more than a decade, banning lobbyists from giving gifts and meals to lawmakers and tightening rules for pet projects known as earmarks.

But critics called the bipartisan measure weak, and some lawmakers who led the effort for tighter restrictions voted against it.

The bill would require lobbyists to file more public reports about their activities in a searchable Internet database, would demand that lawmakers receive advance approval for trips paid with private money and would bar former lawmakers and senior aides from lobbying Congress for two years.

The vote, 90 to 8, was taken hours after Jack Abramoff, whose lobbying activities prompted a federal criminal investigation into corruption here and calls for a crackdown on influence peddling, was sentenced in Miami to nearly six years in prison for his role in the fraudulent purchase of a cruise line.

Mr. Abramoff, who said in a brief court appearance Wednesday that he was “profoundly remorseful,” is cooperating in a broader investigation that is scrutinizing members of Congress, among others, and has provided Democrats an opening to attack Republicans on ethics grounds.

Mr. Abramoff’s wining and dining, featuring tales of lavish meals at his restaurant here and laundered money that paid for golf trips to Scotland, have helped sour the public on Congress, driving lawmakers’ approval ratings to historic lows in this election year.

When Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to charges of corruption in January and agreed to tell what he knows to federal prosecutors, Republicans and Democrats called for broad changes in the way the thousands of registered lobbyists do business.

“There’s a sign that’s now up in front of the Capitol,” Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a chief Democratic author of the measure, said after the vote. “It says ‘Not for Sale.’ ”

But Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has long pressed for tougher laws on lobbying, called the bill “very, very weak.”

The measure would not ban private travel, as some members have urged. Nor would it rein in lawmakers’ ability to fly on corporate jets at heavily discounted rates, a practice that gives precious access to lobbyists, who often go along for the trip.

The measure would not do away with earmarks, though it would make it more difficult for lawmakers to insert the pet projects quietly into bills at lobbyists’ behest. And the Senate overwhelmingly rejected, 30 to 67, a move to create an independent ethics office to investigate accusations of abuse.

The lobbying debate now moves to the House, where Republican leaders are backing a proposal that would temporarily ban privately financed trips. Their approach would also require lobbyists to disclose meals and gifts to lawmakers, and it would require members of Congress to disclose when they earmark money for the specific projects that critics deride as pork-barrel spending.

Senate Passes Lobbying Bill (Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post, page A1)

The Senate voted yesterday to require lobbyists to provide far more information about their dealings with lawmakers, responding to the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal with a plan for more disclosure rather than tougher enforcement of ethics laws.

By a vote of 90 to 8, the Senate approved a bill that would also force the disclosure for the first time of indirect lobbying, such as grass-roots activities, and prevent registered lobbyists from paying for lawmakers’ meals or giving them gifts such as sports tickets. Congressional leaders had promised far-ranging revisions of lobbying activities after Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to bribe public officials. But the legislation that emerged yesterday is less sweeping than GOP leaders envisioned.

“This legislation contains very serious reform,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the architects of the Senate bill. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who also wrote large portions of the measure, said the bill goes a long way toward restoring “the bonds of trust with our constituents [that have been] frayed.”

However, spokesmen for government watchdog groups and several lawmakers who were active in pushing ethics rule changes expressed disappointment in the Senate’s effort. “It’s extremely weak,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose lobbying and ethics plan had been hailed by Senate Republican leaders in January as the model for future legislation. He voted against the bill yesterday.

On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a bipartisan plan to create an independent investigative office designed to help the Senate’s ethics committee enforce lobbying and ethics laws. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), one of the authors of the Democrats’ lobbying proposals, voted against the Senate bill in part because it did not contain the office of public integrity.

Senate and House leaders will have to reconcile differences before Congress can send a final bill to the president. The House’s leading ethics proposal, offered by its Republican leaders, would also broaden disclosure requirements, though not for such grass-roots activities as instigating e-mails, letters and phone calls from voters back home. The House plan would bar neither meals nor gifts.

Abramoff, the former lobbyist who bribed public officials with expensive trips, skybox fundraisers, meals and campaign donations, was sentenced yesterday to nearly six years in prison on separate fraud charges. He is cooperating with federal prosecutors, who are widely expected to pursue indictments against lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists with the help of Abramoff’s testimony.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) led the charge for ethics law revisions by recommending a ban on privately funded travel and steep limitations on meals and gifts. Other top lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), pressed to curtail lawmakers’ use of corporate jets among other lobbyist-provided perks.

But the momentum to pass lobbying legislation slowed as opposition to the most restrictive types of proposals grew among rank-and-file lawmakers. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) also argued in favor of increased disclosure requirements over adding new restrictions on lobbyists’ interaction with lawmakers. Senior Republican aides said the House bill will probably not be ready for consideration by the full body until late April at the earliest.

Asked if the measure meets the sweeping pledges of change voiced by senior members of the House and Senate early in the year, McCain laughed. “The good news is there will be more indictments, and we will be revisiting this issue,” he said.

Jill Carroll, Kidnapped U.S. Reporter, Freed

Kidnapped U.S. Reporter Jill Carroll Freed (MARIAM FAM, AP)

Kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill Carroll has been released after nearly three months in captivity, Iraq police and the leader of the Islamic Party said Thursday. She was reported in good condition.

Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad’s western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi’s office. “She was released this morning, she’s talked to her father and she’s fine,” said David Cook, Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor.

Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said was handed over to the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya, western Baghdad, by an unknown group. She was later turned over to the Americans and was believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone, he said.

Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn’t happen. The date came and went with no word about her welfare.

The United States Embassy in Baghdad said it could not confirm Carroll’s release.

On Feb. 28, Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Carroll was being held by the Islamic Army in Iraq, the insurgent group that freed two French journalists in 2004 after four months in captivity. Jabr said then that he believed the 28-year-old was still alive, although the deadline set by her captors for the U.S. to meet their demands had expired. She was last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. Her twin sister Katie issued a plea for her release on Al-Arabiya television late Wednesday night.

Carroll went to the Middle East in 2002 after being laid off from a newspaper job. She had long dreamed of covering a war. In American Journal Review last year, Carroll wrote that she moved to Jordan in late 2002, six months before the war started, “to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began.”

Journalist Jill Carroll Released in Iraq (Jonathan Finer, Washington Post Foreign Service) 6:57 AM

American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity. Carroll, 28, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was said to be unharmed. She arrived safely at the party headquarters just after 1 p.m. “She was released this morning; she’s talked to her father and she’s fine,” David Cook, an editor for the Monitor, told the Associated Press.

“Unknown people,” released Carroll to the Iraqi Islamic Party’s branch office in Amariyah in the western part of the city, Tariq al-Hashimi, the party’s secretary general, said in a telephone conversation at 12:30 p.m. local time. The party then transported her by armed convoy to its headquarters in the Yarmouk district. “She is OK. She is safe. She is more or less scared,” Hashimi said. “I told her calm down and we would take care of her.”

Carroll was kidnapped Jan. 7, after arriving for an interview with Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Adil. When she left his office after Dulaimi did not show up, her car was attacked by gunmen who took her hostage. Her translator, Allan Anwiya, 29, was killed in the ambush, while her driver escaped.

Abramoff Gets 70 Months in Prison

Abramoff Gets Almost 6 Years in Prison (CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press)

Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a business partner were sentenced Wednesday to five years and 10 months in federal prison, the minimum they faced for fraud related to their 2000 purchase of the SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet.

Abramoff and Adam Kidan both pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud, but they won’t have to report to prison immediately.

The judge postponed their reporting date for at least 90 days so the two can continue cooperating in a Washington corruption investigation and a Florida probe into the killing of former SunCruz owner Konstantinos Boulis. Both deny roles in the killing. Abramoff pleaded guilty in connection with the corruption probe but has yet to be sentenced.

In court Wednesday, Abramoff said the fraud case was “incredibly painful” for himself, his family and his friends.

“In the past two years I have started the process of becoming a new man,” he said.

Under their plea agreement, both men had faced a sentence of between five years, 10 months, and seven years, three months in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck also ordered them Wednesday to pay restitution of more than $21 million.

Abramoff and Kidan admitted concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they had made a large cash contribution to the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz Casinos. Based on that fake transfer, lenders provided the pair with $60 million in financing.

The same week Abramoff pleaded guilty to the SunCruz fraud, he entered guilty pleas to three federal charges as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe that could involve up to 20 members of Congress and aides, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

In addition to assisting in that investigation, Abramoff, 47, and Kidan, 41, are expected to give statements in the investigation into the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, who was gunned down at the wheel of his car amid a power struggle over the gambling fleet. Three men face murder charges, including one who worked for Kidan as a consultant at SunCruz and who allegedly has ties to New York’s Gambino crime family.

Both Abramoff and Kidan have repeatedly denied any role in or knowledge of the Boulis murder. But prosecutors say Kidan has not been ruled out as a suspect and defense attorneys say Abramoff could provide critical inside information about the dispute with Boulis, who also founded the Miami Subs restaurant chain.

Abdul Rahman Granted Asylum in Italy

Italy Welcomes Man Who Fled Afghanistan (MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press)

Italy granted asylum Wednesday to an Afghan who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, and Premier Silvio Berlusconi said the man was in the care of the Interior Ministry after arriving in Italy earlier in the day. Abdul Rahman “is already in Italy. I think he arrived overnight,” Berlusconi said, declining to release more details.

Rahman’s jailing in Afghanistan inspired an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and efforts by the United Nations to find a country to take him. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini had been outspoken about the case from the start, saying Italy had a duty to make clear its “indignation.”

Conversion is a crime under Afghanistan’s Islamic law. Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible. He was brought to trial last week for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Afghanistan’s parliament had demanded earlier Wednesday that the government prevent Rahman from being able to flee the country.

Germany, where Rahman once lived, praised the Italian offer. “This is a humanitarian signal and we welcome it,” German government spokesman Thomas Steg said.

Anticipating that Italy’s Cabinet would approve Rahman’s asylum, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Tuesday that such a move would bring “all the forms of protection and assistance” related to recognizing refugee status.

Italy has close ties with Afghanistan, whose former king, Mohammed Zaher Shah, was allowed to live with his family in exile in Rome for 30 years. The former royals returned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban regime a few years ago. Italian troops were sent into Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001 to help with reconstruction. Italy has about 1,775 troops in Afghanistan.

Muslim clerics in Afghanistan condemned Rahman’s release, saying it was a “betrayal of Islam,” and threatened to incite violent protests. Some 500 Muslim leaders, students and others gathered Wednesday in a mosque in southern Qalat town and criticized the government for releasing Rahman, said Abdulrahman Jan, the top cleric in Zabul province. He said the government should either force Rahman to convert back to Islam or kill him. “This is a terrible thing and a major shame for Afghanistan,” he said.

via Rusty Shackleford

Homeland Security Brain Drain

Brain drain hits Homeland Security (Mimi Hall, USA TODAY)

The Homeland Security Department is losing top managers and rank-and-file employees in a brain drain that could affect morale and the nation’s safety, according to members of Congress and labor experts. Homeland Security is “hemorrhaging on the front lines and higher up,” says New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal workforce. The turnover comes amid renewed threats of terrorism and as the department readies itself for another hurricane season. Key vacancies include top leaders in the department’s cyber-security, technology and disaster response divisions.

The latest high-level departure came last week, when management chief Janet Hale announced she was leaving. She joined an exodus of top officials who have quit recently, many in the aftermath of Homeland Security’s failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina last fall.

This month, operations chief Matthew Broderick resigned. Last month, Science and Technology Undersecretary Charles McQueary resigned. And in January, Chief Financial Officer Andy Maner quit.

Meanwhile, the job of cyber-security chief has been vacant since last summer. David Paulison has been the acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency since Michael Brown resigned the $148,000 post in September; no permanent replacement has been found. FEMA is part of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke acknowledged that the stress of top-level government security jobs can be grueling and “wear” on employees, who are expected to make “countless personal sacrifices.” Nonetheless, he said he expects a number of the top jobs to be filled soon.

The impact is difficult to gauge. But a House investigation of Hurricane Katrina response recently cited personnel shortages at FEMA as a key part of the agency’s failings during the disaster. “It can’t help morale for the rank-and-file employees when you have so much turnover,” says Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “There just appears to be a continuous brain drain out of the agency.”

[...]

Randall Larsen of the Institute for Homeland Security questions how the department will attract good people. Though many top-level jobs pay more than $100,000, “Who’s going to give up a good job in the private sector to go into an organization that is criticized by the press and Congress and the American people?” he said.

Commentary at OTB

UN Close to Deal on Iran Nuke Program

UN Said Close to Deal on Iran Nuke Program (NICK WADHAMS, The Associated Press) 4:39 AM

The U.N. Security Council was “very close” to a deal on confronting Iran over its suspect nuclear program after three weeks of difficult negotiations, diplomats said. Britain and France, backed by the United States, distributed a proposal for a Security Council statement late Tuesday that removed some language opposed by Russia and China but still demands that Iran stop uranium enrichment, the process that can lead to making a nuclear bomb. So far, Tehran has refused.

The move followed three meetings Tuesday among the five veto-wielding members of the council to discuss a unified stance. The West, which believes Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, hoped to reach a deal before the foreign ministers from the five nations and Germany meet in Berlin on Thursday to discuss strategy toward Iran. “We have reached agreement on the bulk of the text, so there was movement on all sides, and now we need to see whether we can cross this last bridge but we’re very close,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said.

Russia and China, both allies of Iran, oppose imposing sanctions, something the West does not want to rule out.

Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, remains defiant. The government released a statement through its embassy in Moscow earlier Tuesday warning that Security Council intervention would “escalate tensions, entailing negative consequences that would be of benefit to no party.” In the same statement, Iran said it had proposed setting up a nuclear fuel production facility within its borders with international help. The proposal is an alternative to Russia’s offer to host Iran’s nuclear fuel production as a way to ease concerns that enrichment conducted in Iran could be used to develop weapons.

Russia said its enrichment offer was contingent on Iran resuming a moratorium on domestic enrichment, but the Iranians rejected that measure. “In terms of satisfying its needs, Tehran cannot remain dependent on international suppliers,” the Iranian government said in the statement.

It was not clear whether the offer mentioned in Tuesday’s statement differed from one that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made before the U.N. General Assembly in September. At that time, he offered foreign countries and companies a role in uranium enrichment inside Iran.

FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law

FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law (Brian DeBose, Washington Times, p. 4)

A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president’s constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.

“If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now,” said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. “I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute.”

The judges, however, said Mr. Bush’s choice to ignore established law regarding foreign intelligence gathering was made “at his own peril,” because ultimately he will have to answer to Congress and the Supreme Court if the surveillance was found not to be in the best interests of national security.

Judge Kornblum said before the 1978 FISA law, foreign surveillance was done by executive order and the law itself was altered by the orders of Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan.

It has been three months since President Bush said publicly that the NSA was listening to phone conversations between suspected terrorists abroad and domestically. The actions raised concerns from Congress and civil liberties groups about domestic spying, but the judges said that given new threats from terrorists and new communications technologies, the FISA law should be changed to give the president more latitude.

Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and committee chairman, called the hearing to get advice on his bill that would expand FISA to codify less stringent rules on wiretapping of domestic phone conversations with suspected foreign terrorists and include new technologies like the Internet and satellite communications. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said the Congress should pass new legislation to ease existing restrictions under FISA. “However, we should not rush to give the administration new powers it has not deigned to request, based on concerns it has not articulated,” Mr. Leahy said.

The panel of judges unanimously agreed that the law should have been changed before now to deal with new threats from terrorists and new communications technologies, a point made by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat. “It is confusing that if you take something off of a satellite it is legal, but if you take it off of a wiretap it’s not,” she said. “We need to include new technology.”

Judges on Secretive Panel Speak Out on Spy Program (ERIC LICHTBLAU, NYT)

Five former judges on the nation’s most secretive court, including one who resigned in apparent protest over President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping, urged Congress on Tuesday to give the court a formal role in overseeing the surveillance program.

In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president’s constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They also suggested that the program could imperil criminal prosecutions that grew out of the wiretaps.

Judge Harold A. Baker, a sitting federal judge in Illinois who served on the intelligence court until last year, said the president was bound by the law “like everyone else.” If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, Judge Baker said, “the president ignores it at the president’s peril.”

Judge Baker and three other judges who served on the intelligence court testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in support of a proposal by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, to give the court formal oversight of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program. Committee members also heard parts of a letter in support of the proposal from a fifth judge, James Robertson, who left the court last December, days after the eavesdropping program was disclosed.

The intelligence court, created by Congress in 1978, meets in a tightly guarded, windowless office at the Justice Department. The court produces no public findings except for a single tally to Congress each year on the number of warrants it has issued — more than 1,600 in 2004. Even its roster of judges serving seven-year terms was, for a time, considered secret.

But Mr. Bush’s decision effectively to bypass the court in permitting eavesdropping without warrants has raised the court’s profile. That was underscored by the appearance on Tuesday of the four former FISA judges: Judge Baker; Judge Stanley S. Brotman, who left the panel in 2004; Judge John F. Keenan, who left in 2001; and Judge William H. Stafford Jr., who left in 2003. All four sit on the federal judiciary.

At a hearing lasting more than three hours, the former FISA judges discussed in detail their views on the standards of proof required by the court, its relations with the Justice Department, and the constitutional, balance-of-power issues at the heart of the debate over the N.S.A. program. The agency monitored the international communications of people inside the United States believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

The public broadcasting of the court’s business struck some court watchers as extraordinary. “This is unprecedented,” said Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum, who supervised Justice Department wiretap applications to the court for many years and testified alongside the four former judges.

But the most pointed testimony may have come from a man who was not at the hearing: Judge Robertson.

A sitting federal judge in Washington, Judge Robertson resigned from the intelligence court just days after the N.S.A. program was disclosed.

Colleagues say he resigned in frustration over the fact that none of the court’s 11 judges, except for the presiding judge, were briefed on the program or knew of its existence. But Judge Robertson has remained silent, declining all requests for interviews, and his comments entered into The Congressional Record on Tuesday represented his first public remarks on the controversy.

U.N. to Begin Talks on Kofi Annan’s Successor

U.N. to Begin Talks on Annan’s Successor (EDITH M. LEDERER, The Associated Press) 9:07 AM

The U.N. Security Council agreed to start formal discussions this summer to choose a successor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with Asian countries pushing candidates from their region. The 15-nation council held an informal discussion Tuesday on a replacement for Annan, whose second five-year term ends Dec. 31. Britain suggested candidates present a manifesto on why they want the job and what they would like to achieve as the world’s top diplomat. The position must be approved by the 191-member U.N. General Assembly, based on a recommendation from the Security Council, where the five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — have veto power.

Informal consultations will continue next month under China’s presidency and formal discussions are expected to start in June or July, with a decision between September and November, said Argentina’s U.N. Ambassador Cesar Mayoral, the Security Council president.

By tradition, the job of secretary-general rotates by region — and Asian and African nations, who represent the majority of U.N. members, believe it is Asia’s turn to lead the United Nations. The Asian group has been courting support from Latin America but has run into opposition from the United States and some European countries who say the best qualified candidate should be selected, regardless of his country. “We have some names, some ideas,” Mayoral said. “But formally, we need to know if there will be first, regional rotation or not. That, I think, is instrumental to decide.”

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has argued that in practice there has been no geographical rotation because three secretary-generals have come from Western Europe, two from Africa, one from Latin America, one from Asia and none from Eastern Europe.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said “quite a lot of members of the council favor rotation” and most insist on a candidate who is very highly qualified for the job. “If that person is an Asian, then those who argue that it should be an Asian’s turn, then their interest is met,” Jones Parry said. “For those who say the important thing is the quality, provided there is a candidate who actually can do the job and who comes forward from Asia, then that too meets the wishes of those who emphasize the quality.” He said Britain would like to see “that people who put themselves forward actually present a manifesto.” It should include why they want the job and “what they want to achieve for the United Nations and the secretary-general,” he said.

Mayoral said he would meet with General Assembly President Jan Eliasson later this week to discuss the election process. “We know that a key role is played by the Security Council and the permanent members,” Eliasson said. “But I’m glad there is a communication opening between the Security Council and the General Assembly.”

So far, the announced candidates are all Asian. They include South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, who is backed by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and former U.N. disarmament chief Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, who recently represented his country’s government in peace talks with the Tamil Tigers.

________

Commentary at OTB

Rices Asks Russia to Investigate Saddam Collaboration

Inquiry On Russian Role In Iraq Invasion Sought (Washington Post, p. A10)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Russia yesterday to investigate Pentagon assertions that Moscow gave Iraq intelligence on U.S. military movements shortly after the 2003 invasion there.

Russia’s defense minister called the accusations “complete rubbish.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he does not know whether the assertions made in a Pentagon report, released Friday by the military’s Joint Forces Command, are true.

Rice spoke by telephone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Thousands of Iraqis Flee to Avoid Spread Of Violence

Thousands of Iraqis Flee to Avoid Spread Of Violence - Fear, Threats Push Muslim Sects Apart (Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service, Page A01)

Sectarian violence has displaced more than 25,000 Iraqis since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine, a U.N.-affiliated agency said Tuesday, and shelters and tent cities are springing up across central and southern Iraq to house homeless Sunni and Shiite families.

The flight is continuing, according to the International Organization for Migration, which works closely with the United Nations and other groups. The result has been a population exchange as Sunni and Shiite families flee mixed communities for the safety of areas where their own sects predominate.

“I definitely wouldn’t say the displacement has peaked,” said Dana Graber, an official of the migration agency in Amman, Jordan. “It’s continuous.”

The agency’s figures were compiled from information provided by partner organizations working with displaced Iraqis. The government Ministry of Displacement and Migration puts the count higher, at more than 32,000.

“I was shocked to be threatened by people from the same place I had lived in for so many years,” said Hussein Alwan, 53, a cafe owner, who said he was driven out of Latifiyah, a mixed Shiite-Sunni city in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.

Alwan, a Shiite, traveled with his wife, four daughters and three sons this month to the almost entirely Shiite city of Najaf, where local authorities have converted a vacant hotel into a shelter for the newcomers and say they are gathering tents for an outlying camp. Iraqi newspapers on Tuesday reported tents pitched in a field outside another southern city, Nasiriyah, for Shiite families arriving there in flight from sectarian violence.

Alwan told a story that already has grown familiar since the near-destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, 65 miles north of Baghdad, touched off five weeks of Shiite-Sunni bloodletting. “They told me that I should leave within 24 hours or we will all get killed,” Alwan said in an interview in Najaf. “So we left everything there and took only the bare things we need to live.”

The mosque bombing greatly escalated steadily climbing sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq, where the Shiite majority and Sunni Arab and ethnic Kurdish minorities have been competing for a share of power and turf since the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein three years ago.

During Hussein’s rule, forced transfers of ethnic group members left close to 1 million Iraqis internally displaced, and the country has experienced large flows of displaced people since the U.S.-led invasion, said Graber, the agency official. The November 2004 U.S. offensive in Fallujah, for example, sent more than 40,000 residents fleeing the city, she said.

Since the Samarra bombing, threats or killings have spurred many families to flee their homes with nothing, not even their ration cards, Graber said. “And there’s no certainty as to when it will be safe again to return, when they can return without their sons getting killed,” she said.

Both Shiite and Sunni families make up the displaced, the immigration agency’s figures show.

Many Sunni families are leaving Shiite or mixed communities to take refuge in heavily Sunni western Iraq, and many Shiite families are heading south to the country’s Shiite heartland. In some places, the last remaining minorities have left otherwise homogenous places.

Within Baghdad, many families are moving between Sunni, Shiite and mixed neighborhoods.

Baghdad has taken in at least 220 Shiite families from Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold west of the capital, according to reports gathered by the agency. These families “represent a fairly high percentage of the total Shia community in Anbar,” the agency noted.

Liberian Warlord Charles Taylor Arrested in Nigeria

Warlord Charles Taylor Arrested in Nigeria (BASHIR ADIGUN, Associated Press)

Former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, who vanished in Nigeria after authorities reluctantly agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal, has been arrested trying to cross the border into Cameroon, Nigerian police said Wednesday.

Taylor, who went missing Monday night, was captured by security forces in the far northeastern border town of Gamboru, in Borno State, nearly 600 miles from the villa in southern Calabar where Taylor had lived in exile, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, on a visit to the United States, ordered Taylor’s “immediate repatriation” to Liberia, the statement said.

Taylor disappeared just days after Nigeria, which had granted asylum to the fast-talking, U.S.-educated economist under a 2003 agreement that helped end Liberia’s 14-year civil war, reluctantly bowed to pressure to surrender Taylor to face justice.

The admission that Taylor had slipped away came an hour before Obasanjo left Nigeria on a presidential jet headed for Washington, where he was scheduled to meet with President Bush on Wednesday.

Nigeria had announced it would hand Taylor over to a U.N.-backed Sierra Leone tribunal to be tried for alleged war crimes related to Sierra Leone’s 1991-2001 civil war, but the government had made no moves to arrest him before he disappeared.

Taylor, a one-time warlord and rebel leader, is charged with backing Sierra Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off body parts. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.

While the Sierra Leone tribunal’s charges refer only to the war there, Taylor also has been accused of starting civil war in Liberia and of harboring al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people.

Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But Saturday, after Liberia’s new President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over for trial, Obasanjo agreed.

The U.N. Security Council had expressed surprise and concern at Taylor’s disappearance and Secretary-General Kofi Annan had said he planned to talk to the Nigerian authorities about it. He urged all countries to refuse to give Taylor refuge.

Liberian Warlord Charles Taylor Arrested in Nigeria (LYDIA POLGREEN, NYT)

Nigerian police arrested former Liberian warlord and president Charles G. Taylor today as he tried to cross into Cameroon, according to Nigerian police officials.

Nigeria’s government plans to send him directly to Liberia, where government officials have said they plan to send him immediately here, to face a 17-count indictment on war crimes for his role in the bloody, decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone.

“Mr. Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was arrested this morning at the Nigeria Cameroon border,” said Haz Iwendi, a spokesman for the National Police, in a telephone interview. “He was arrested in company of a driver and a woman and they have been taken into custody.”

Alert border guards spotted Mr. Taylor, who was in a Land Rover with diplomatic plates, early Wednesday morning in the border town of Gamboru-Ngala, Mr. Iwendi said.

Mr. Tayor would be sent to Abuja later today and then transferred to Liberia, Mr. Iwendi said, though he could not say how soon Mr. Taylor would arrive in Monrovia.

His arrest was a dramatic turn in already complicated saga of the effort to bring Mr. Taylor, who ignited a series of civil wars that killed 300,000 people and engulfed much of West Africa during the 1990s.

Mr. Taylor fled Liberia as a rebel insurgency tried to remove him from power in 2003, taking refuge in Nigeria after Mr. Obasanjo brokered a peace agreement. Mr. Taylor was already under indictment for his role in Sierra Leone’s civil war, but the Nigerian government said it would turn Mr. Taylor over for prosecution only if requested by an elected Liberian government.

Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, said in an interview with The New York Times before her inauguration in January that Mr. Taylor’s fate was a relatively low priority, given the myriad problems facing Liberia and the fragility of the peace there.

But under intense political pressure on a visit to the United States earlier this month, including a threat by Congress to withhold aid to Liberia if she did not act, she asked Nigeria to hand Mr. Taylor over.

Kayode Fayemi, a Nigerian political analyst who has worked with Ms. Johnson Sirleaf to secure peace in Liberia, said the United States might have made matters worse for Liberia by pushing the country to deal with Mr. Taylor before it was ready.

“She was actually literally harassed to do what she did,” Mr. Fayemi said. “This is now going to make the situation much more complicated and so much worse.”

Writer: Galileo Was Wrong

‘Galileo Was Wrong,’ claims geocentrist writer (DRU SEFTON, NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE)

The Earth is at the center of Robert Sungenis’ universe. Literally. Yours too, he says. Sungenis is a geocentrist. He contends the sun orbits the Earth instead of vice versa. He says physics and the Bible show that the vastness of space revolves around us; that we’re at the center of everything, on a planet that does not rotate. He has just completed a 1,000-page tome, “Galileo Was Wrong,” the first in a pair of books he hopes will persuade readers to “give Scripture its due place, and show that science is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Geocentrism is a less-known cousin of the intelligent design, or anti-evolution, movement. Both question society’s trust in science, instead using religion to explain how we got here - and, in geocentrism’s case, just where “here” is.

Mention geocentrism and physicist Lawrence Krauss sighs. He is director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University and author of several books including “Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed.” “What works? Science works. Geocentrism doesn’t. End of story,” Krauss said from Cleveland. “I’ve learned over time that it’s hard to convince people who believe otherwise, independent of evidence.”

For several years the Web site of his Catholic Apologetics International (www.catholicintl.com) offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could disprove geocentrism and prove heliocentrism (a sun-centered solar system). There were numerous attempts, Sungenis said, “some serious, some caustic,” but no one did it to his satisfaction. “Most admitted it can’t be proven.” There’s also no proof that the Earth rotates, he said.

But what about Foucault’s famous pendulum? Its plane of oscillation revolves every 24 hours, showing the rotation of the planet. If the Earth didn’t rotate, it wouldn’t oscillate. Nope, Sungenis said: There just may be some other force propelling it, such as the pull of stars. What Foucault’s pendulum does prove to Sungenis is that science is full of things that cannot be proven. And in the absence of proof, the Bible has answers. “If you see the Earth as just a humdrum planet among stars circling in a vast universe, then we’re not significant, we’re just part of a crowd,” Sungenis said. “But if you believe everything revolves around Earth, it gives another picture - of purpose, a meaning of life.”

Sungenis’ background is in both theology and science. He said he was a physics major at George Washington University but received his bachelor’s degree in religious studies from GW, and a master’s in the same from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His religious studies doctorate came this year from Calamus International University, which identifies itself on its Web site as a “nontraditional institution.”

About four years ago Sungenis read “Geocentricity,” by physicist Gerardus Bouw. “That put me hot on the trail,” Sungenis said. He came to rethink the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, the 15th-century Polish astronomer who advanced heliocentrism over the Ptolemaic, or Earth-centered, system. “Einstein told us there is no center, that any point in the universe can serve as the center,” Sungenis said. “If that’s the case, Einstein has undermined Copernicus. You can’t prove either one.”

McCain to Speak at Falwell’s Liberty University

McCain to speak at Liberty graduation (Ron Brown, Lynchburg VA News & Advance)

U.S. Sen. John McCain - a likely 2008 presidential candidate who once labeled the Rev. Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance” - will be Liberty University’s graduation speaker on May 13.

“I was in Washington with him about three months ago,” Falwell said. “We dealt with every difference we have. There are no deal breakers now. But I told him, ‘You have a lot of fence mending to do.’”

Falwell, LU’s chancellor, said McCain, an Arizona Republican, is among the presidential candidates he could support in 2008.

“This is not an endorsement,” Falwell said.

McCain, 69, was out of his Washington office on Monday and could not be reached for comment.

McCain’s visit to the LU campus is, at the very least, an attempt to make peace with conservative Christians prior to the presidential campaign.

While running against then- Gov. George W. Bush in the South Carolina and Virginia primaries in 2000, McCain denounced Falwell and Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson in what was seen as a move to lure more moderate voters to his campaign.

“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right,” McCain said at the time.

McCain lost the Virginia and South Carolina primaries and Bush won the nomination.

This year, some polls show McCain as the early front-runner for the Republican nomination in the campaign to become Bush’s successor.

Falwell said McCain’s appearance at LU’s graduation is another sign that McCain is wooing evangelical Christians.

“He is in the process of healing the breech with evangelical groups,” Falwell said.

Falwell said McCain has expressed a willingness to support a Federal Marriage Amendment, an issue dear to conservative Christians.

The amendment would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Christian conservatives, including Falwell, are concerned about efforts by homosexual groups to have civil unions between same-sex partners recognized as marriages. McCain previously has said the matter of defining marriage should be handled by state legislatures, but now concedes that a federal statute may be necessary, Falwell said.

Aside from their political skirmishes, Falwell said McCain is an authentic American hero.

“On this, everybody agrees,” he said.

McCain, a 1958 Naval Academy graduate, was a Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in 1967 over Vietnam. He was captured and imprisoned for 5½-years, mostly in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

When the North Vietnamese learned his father was the admiral in charge of the Pacific Command, they offered him a chance to go home. McCain, a decorated veteran, instead followed the orders of senior POWs, who said no one would go home unless all went home.

He was finally released in 1973.

He became the Navy’s liaison to the Senate before leaving the Navy in 1981 after obtaining the rank of captain.

He successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and won a U.S. Senate seat four years later, following the retirement of U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.

After unsuccessfully challenging Bush in the presidential campaign of 2000, McCain supported Bush in his re-election bid in 2004 against fellow Vietnam veteran, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts.

Falwell said McCain could very well be the Republican Party’s best hope in 2008, particularly if Democrats nominate U.S. senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York.

“We weren’t opposed to John McCain in 2000,” Falwell said. “We were more supporters of George Bush. But I’m not going to be endorsing anyone until after November’s election.”

Labor Strike Causes Disruptions Throughout France

Strike Causes Disruptions Throughout France–Authorities Brace for More Protests Over Law on Youth Job Rights (Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service) 3:30 PM

A nationwide strike cancelled flights, curtailed trains and buses and disrupted other public services throughout France Tuesday , as hundreds of thousands of students and workers staged the largest demonstrations in three weeks of protests against a pending labor law that will remove job protections from young people.

Union organizers estimated a national turnout of 2.7 million, with 700,000 of those in Paris. Police figures were much lower.

Late in the day, as the protests were winding down, scattered skirmishes erupted here in the capital, leading police to use tear gas against youths hurling bottles and molotov cocktails. Groups of masked hoodlums darted through the crowds, snatching cellphones and purses.

Authorities had dispatched 4,000 police across Paris in preparation for the protests.

An estimated one-third of the flights at Paris area airports were cancelled and virtually all other flights were delayed because of striking air traffic controllers, airport authorities said. Half of the suburban commuter trains in Paris were not running and one-third of the national train network was shut down by strikers, rail officials said. Commuter train, bus and streetcar services were limited in most French cities, according to early reports.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s new labor law, due to take effect next month, would allow employers to fire workers under 26 during a two-year trial period, undercutting longtime job protections that are part of the country’s social safety net and have wide public support.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a rival of de Villepin, on Tuesday proposed that the government put the measure on hold to permit talks with the unions.

Student and worker unions called protest marches throughout the day Tuesday in at least 100 French cities, with unions bussing thousands of people into Paris for the largest demonstration. Police positioned at train and subway stations in Paris detained numerous youths disembarking from suburban trains, witnesses said.

Law enforcement authorities blamed youths from poor, suburban neighborhoods for inciting violence at the conclusion of protest demonstrations in Paris last week. Both sides in the conflict viewed Tuesday’s general strike and demonstrations as pivotal in the standoff, which threatens President Jacques Chirac’s government and the presidential ambitions of de Villepin. Chirac has cancelled all scheduled visits outside of Paris this week to address the mounting crisis, according to French news reports.

The U.S. State Department issued a warning to Americans in Paris to be alert to demonstrations “in areas frequented by tourists,” adding, “Some of the demonstrations may be announced, while others may be spontaneous. Police have responded by using tear gas.”

Shiites Say U.S. Is Pressuring Iraqi Leader to Step Aside

Shiites Say U.S. Is Pressuring Iraqi Leader to Step Aside (EDWARD WONG, NYT) 3:09 PM ET

Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President