To avoid being a footnote, make footnotes...
Statement may allow gov't to open mail

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer 51 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A signing statement attached to postal legislation by
President Bush last month may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant. The White House denies any change in policy.

The law requires government agents to get warrants to open first-class letters. But when he signed the postal reform act, Bush added a statement saying that his administration would construe that provision "in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

"The signing statement raises serious questions whether he is authorizing opening of mail contrary to the Constitution and to laws enacted by Congress," said Ann Beeson, an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union. "What is the purpose of the signing statement if it isn't that?"

Beeson said the group is planning to file a request for information on how this exception will be used and to ask whether it has already been used to open mail.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said there was nothing new in the signing statement.

In his daily briefing Snow said: "All this is saying is that there are provisions at law for — in exigent circumstances — for such inspections. It has been thus. This is not a change in law, this is not new."

Postal Vice President Tom Day added: "As has been the long-standing practice, first-class mail is protected from unreasonable search and seizure when in postal custody. Nothing in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act changes this protection. The president is not exerting any new authority."

Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, who guided the measure through the Senate, called on Bush to clarify his intent.

The bill, Collins said, "does nothing to alter the protections of privacy and civil liberties provided by the Constitution and other federal laws."

"The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and our federal criminal rules require prior judicial approval before domestic sealed mail can be searched," she said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., criticized Bush's action.

"Every American wants foolproof protection against terrorism. But history has shown it can and should be done within the confines of the Constitution. This last-minute, irregular and unauthorized reinterpretation of a duly passed law is the exact type of maneuver that voters so resoundingly rejected in November," Schumer said.

The ACLU's Beeson noted that there has been an exception allowing postal inspectors to open items they believe might contain a bomb.

"His signing statement uses language that's broader than that exception," she said, and noted that Bush used the phrase "exigent circumstances."

"The question is what does that mean and why has he suddenly put this in writing if this isn't a change in policy," she said.

In addition to suspecting a bomb or getting a warrant, postal officials are allowed by law to open letters that can't be delivered as addressed — but only to determine if they can find a correct address or a return address.

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, more than all other presidents combined, according to the American Bar Association.

Typically, presidents have used signing statements for such purposes as instructing executive agencies how to carry out new laws.

Bush's statements often reserve the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds.

"That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement," ABA President Michael Greco has said. The practice, he has added, "is harming the separation of powers."

The president's action was first reported by the New York Daily News.

The full signing statement said:

"The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.

New Broom Sweeps Clean
New U.N. chief speeds plans to reshape bureaucracy

By Irwin Arieff Thu Jan 4, 10:34 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday asked more than 30 top officials to offer their resignation so he can move quickly to take control of the world body's bureaucracy, aides said.

Letters were sent out asking all officials at the assistant secretary-general level and up to submit their resignations, the aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Most of the officials at the most senior levels work under contracts that expire at the end of February.

But the letters signal that Ban wants to replace some of these even sooner, the aides said.

Most of the officials affected by the request would be replaced in coming weeks but some would be asked to stay on, they said.

"I can't really say this is normal," said one senior official when asked about the letters.

"We all have contracts until the end of February, and most secretaries-general have kept on most of the top staff," said this official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jean-Marie Guehenno of France, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, is expected to be among those spared, at least for the coming months.

One idea under consideration, U.N. sources said, is dividing the peacekeeping department in two, with perhaps an American heading one part of it and France the other. Another possible reorganization would combine the existing disarmament and political affairs departments and put them under one undersecretary-general who would also be responsible for leading anti-terrorism programs, the sources said.

Ban, a South Korean who succeeded
Kofi Annan on January 1, has been trying to ensure balance in his choice of top aides among permanent Security Council members instrumental in his election and key developing nations.

He has also promised to include women among his top appointees, including the key post of deputy secretary-general, which is expected to go to a woman from sub-Saharan Africa and be named next week.

Ban to date has named only a handful of appointees, choosing veteran Indian diplomat Vijay Nambiar as his chief of staff, award-winning Haitian broadcast journalist Michele Montas as his spokeswoman, Mexican environmentalist Alicia Barcena Ibarra as undersecretary-general for administration and management, and senior British diplomat John Holmes as undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

All but Holmes had been U.N. staff members. Nambiar was an adviser to Annan, Barcena was Annan's chief of staff and Montas worked in the U.N. broadcasting division.

McCain bids for Neo-Con Vote! Schmok!
Edwards terms Iraq surge "McCain doctrine"

By Jim Wolf Sun Dec 31, 2:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful
John Edwards, targeting a potential Republican rival in 2008, dubbed plans for a short-term U.S. troop increase in
Iraq "the McCain doctrine," in an interview aired on Sunday.

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, considered likely to be a Republican candidate for president, has been "the most prominent spokesperson for this for some time," Edwards said in an early salvo of the 2008 campaign.

Edwards, a former senator who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, made his remarks in an interview on the ABC News program "This Week."

"I actually, myself, believe that this idea of surging troops, escalating the war -- what Senator McCain has been talking about -- what I would call now the McCain doctrine ... (is) dead wrong," said Edwards.

The former senator from North Carolina launched his run for the White House on Thursday with a call to withdraw 40,000 to 50,000 troops from Iraq, about one-third of the current force, to spur Iraqis to quell their own mounting communal violence.

Edwards is the third candidate to jump formally into a Democratic race in which he may have to compete for funds and support with leading prospective contenders, Sens.
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

McCain, a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in public opinion polls, long has urged sending more U.S. troops to or else face "sooner or later, our defeat in Iraq."

Such an increase should not be characterized as "short-term," he said in a December 6 statement marking the release of the final report by the Iraqi Study Group, a bipartisan panel that recommended changes in U.S. strategy in and around Iraq.

"Our troops should be sent to Baghdad -- or anywhere else in Iraq -- in order to complete a defined mission, not to serve until some predetermined date passes," McCain said at the time.

A McCain spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment on Edwards' remarks.

President George W. Bush is expected to announce a strategy shift in Iraq in a matter of days, possibly including an increase of 15,000 to 30,000 combat troops, chiefly to try to end sectarian fighting and stop death squads in Baghdad.

Another Democrat seeking his party's presidential nomination, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, said a surge of U.S. troops would "make a big mistake even bigger."

"I believe that the generals are right. We've got to put responsibility where it belongs, in the Iraqis," he added in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Brown's partner: locked out of home


By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 26, 10:42 PM ET

ATLANTA -
James Brown's lawyer says the late singer and his partner weren't legally married and that she was locked out of his South Carolina home for estate legal reasons. The partner, one of Brown's backup singers, says the couple was married and she can prove it.

The back and forth continued for most of Tuesday, as Tomi Rae Hynie, Brown's partner and the mother of his 5-year-old son, camped out at an Augusta hotel with no change of clothes and no money.

"It's not a reflection on her as an individual," lawyer Buddy Dallas told The Associated Press on Tuesday of the decision to bar Hynie from Brown's home in Beech Island, S.C. "I have not even been in the house, nor will I until appropriate protocol is followed."

Hynie was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to the "Godfather of Soul" null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.

"I suppose it would mean she was, from time to time, a guest in Mr. Brown's home," Dallas said.

Brown, 73, died at an Atlanta hospital Monday. After his death, Hynie, 36, found the gates to the singer's home padlocked and said she was denied access.

Hynie argued that she has a legal right to live in the home with the couple's 5-year-old son. "This is my home," she told a reporter outside the house. "I don't have any money. I don't have anywhere to go."

In a phone interview with The Associated Press from an Augusta hotel Tuesday, Hynie said she had documentation to prove she was legally married to Brown.

Hynie said the couple had planned to renew their vows but not remarry. She indicated that while annulment papers relating to her previous marriage initially may not have been filed properly, a judge had told her she was legally married to Brown.

"I just want this resolved," Hynie said.

Dallas said legal formalities needed to be followed, adding that Brown's estate was left in trust for his children. He declined to elaborate on Brown's final instructions.

"Ms. Hynie has a home a few blocks away from Mr. Brown's home where she resides periodically when she is not with Mr. Brown," Dallas said. "She is not without housing or home."

Dallas said Brown and Hynie hadn't seen each other for several weeks before his death.

Hynie said Brown had sent her to California for a few weeks to relax on the beach after a recent concert tour.

"I was taking antidepressants," she said. "My job, marriage was difficult. So he sent me to the beach. He paid $24,000 for me to go."

"He was a difficult man to live with, but he was a great man," she said. "I was the only one who could handle James."

Hynie said she believes Brown's representatives were trying to discredit her so that his estate wouldn't have to be shared with her. She acknowledged that the bulk of the estate was left to Brown's children, but said Brown had told her she could live in his home with their child as long as she wanted.

"That was James Brown's wishes," Hynie said as she broke down in tears.

Hynie and Brown had a sometimes tumultuous relationship. Brown pleaded guilty in 2004 to a domestic violence charge stemming from an argument with Hynie and paid a $1,087 fine. He was accused of pushing Hynie to the floor at the home and threatening to kill her.

Brown is survived by at least four children, said his agent, Frank Copsidas.

At least there might be some really funky Blues come out of this!
New York Times
U.S.

In New Orleans, Ex-Tenants Fight for Projects
Lee Celano for The New York Times

“I’m a young man who grew up in the projects,” Alvin Richardson told housing authority officials last month at a stormy public meeting on plans to raze and redevelop four large housing complexes.

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By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: December 26, 2006

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 25 — The heritage of suspicion and misery separating this city’s poorest residents from its comfortable classes is playing out in a fierce battle over the future of the public housing projects here, a fight in which the shelter of as many as 20,000 people is at stake.

Hurricane Katrina


It has raged ever since the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans last June to demolish four of the largest projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and no amount of assurances that the agency wants to replace the crime-haunted, aging brick structures with something better has calmed the anger of former tenants.

This month, under pressure, HUD restated that it might allow some tenants to return while proceeding with redevelopment; a face-off in Federal District Court here Friday between tenant advocates and department lawyers could be decisive.

The struggle over housing in New Orleans raises the larger issue of how to reintegrate the most vulnerable residents after the hurricane, the ones most disrupted by the storm and still displaced 16 months later.

And it has brought sharply into focus how much the New Orleans housing projects were places apart, vast islands of poverty in an already impoverished city. HUD has already chosen two nonprofit developers to replace the Lafitte project, a forbidding complex of 1940s reddish brick dormitories near Interstate 10, with a mix of houses and apartments, some subsidized and some not. The new housing will “dramatically improve living conditions” for the former tenants, a legal brief by the department says.

The agency’s plans and the resistance of the tenants has become a cause celebre for advocates of many stripes. They shouted down hapless housing officials at a tumultuous public meeting here last month; they demonstrated angrily outside Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s home two weekends ago; and the courtroom vituperation, in the lawsuit against HUD, has been unusually bitter.

Still, the advocates’ talk of ethnic cleansing, social engineering and HUD’s purported “violation” of international law has partly obscured the reality of what the projects were and what even some who question the planned demolition fear they could become again if the redevelopment project falls through.

“I think the romanticism that goes with the ‘good old days of public housing’ belies the harsh realities of crime and social malaise that had been created as a result of a concentration of low, low income folks,” said Michael P. Kelly, who directed the troubled Housing Authority of New Orleans from 1995 to 2000 and now runs its counterpart in Washington, D.C. “Women that would put their babies in bathtubs at the sound of gunfire, that was a reality; coming home from your job and having to walk through young people participating in drug trades.”

Working women trying to raise children, many of whom staff the low-wage tourist hotels here, often made that walk, as they do in public housing in other cities. But here the journey had a particularly tough edge, in keeping with the often violent city surrounding the projects.

The toughness was underscored in striking fashion at last month’s public meeting, notably by one of the many enraged former tenants who rose to criticize the federal housing department and the city housing authority.

“I’m a young man who grew up in the projects,” said that critic, Alvin Richardson. “I grew up in the Iberville project, the Desire, the Calliope, the St. Thomas, St. Bernard, and I survived them all. You can’t do nothing to me because I survived the ghetto.”

The peculiar physical environment of the projects, a confluence of their isolation, their dilapidation and the large numbers of vacant apartments, combined to create difficulties, some veteran police officers say. It was not the tenants who created problems, but nonresidents taking advantage of the dense clustering of small, low-ceilinged apartments.

“The way they were constructed, it’s not law-enforcement friendly,” said Lt. Bruce Adams, a veteran police officer who grew up in the Desire project. “All those entrances and exists. The fact that it’s so condensed is causing the problem.”

Don Everard, director of a social service agency that worked for years in one of the projects, said that with all the vacancies, “you didn’t know what was up the stairwell.”

“You didn’t know who was using an abandoned apartment,” Mr. Everard said.

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Former Black Panther on Death Row for a crime he says he did not commit...like it wouldn't be an oddity!
Condemned killer claims innocence 25 years later

By Jon Hurdle Sat Dec 23, 9:14 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Condemned killer Mumia Abu-Jamal isn't getting his hopes up. The former radio reporter who was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981 is appealing his death sentence on grounds that his lawyer Robert Bryan says offer his best chance yet of a new trial.

But the former Black Panther who has spent almost a quarter-century on Death Row for a crime he says he did not commit -- and become an international cause celebre for the anti-death penalty movement -- says he knows better than to pin his hopes on the latest twist in a long legal saga.

"I have learned over the years to not get into the prediction business, and I have learned that the hard way," he said in an exclusive interview with Reuters from a state prison near Waynesburg in western Pennsylvania.

His earlier hopes were dashed in 1989 when his attorneys went before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and returned full of optimism.

"They came back and reported to me, 'You got it, you won,' and of course I believed them. Obviously, that was not the case," the 52-year-old said.

Abu-Jamal, who is black, was convicted and sentenced to death in July 1982 for killing Daniel Faulkner, a white policeman, in Philadelphia on December 9, 1981.

He has maintained his innocence, saying he was framed in a city that had a reputation for police brutality and where he had antagonized officials with his reporting on alleged police corruption.

Critics including the Fraternal Order of Police argue that several eyewitnesses identified Abu-Jamal as the killer, that the bullet that killed the policeman was of the same type used in Abu-Jamal's gun and that Abu-Jamal confessed to the killing while recovering from his wounds, according to testimony of a hospital security guard.

"What more do you need?" said Peter Wirs, a Philadelphia Republican whose local party branch recently filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Paris for making Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen of the city. "It's an open-and-shut case."

RACIST JUDGE?

The city council in Paris made Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen, while Paris suburb St. Denis has named a street after him.

Abu-Jamal also has attracted support from Amnesty International, the European Parliament and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who say they believe he was a victim of police and judicial racism and deserves at least a new trial.

Among other evidence, his backers cite a statement by the now-deceased trial Judge Albert Sabo, who sentenced Abu-Jamal to death and who, according to court documents, was overheard saying, "Yeah, and I'm going to help 'em fry the nigger."

Wirs denied Sabo's statement indicates the trial was racially biased. "He was just expressing the general sentiment of most Philadelphians. He was biased and prejudiced against criminals," he said.

Faulkner's widow, Maureen, could not be reached for comment. The Philadelphia District Attorney, whose office prosecuted Abu-Jamal, declined to comment because the case is under appeal.

In Abu-Jamal's latest appeal, expected to be heard in early 2007, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will decide whether his trial was tainted by racial discrimination and whether he is entitled to a new trial.

For now, Abu-Jamal remains on Death Row because of appeals against another judge's lifting of the death sentence in 2001.

In a telephone interview lasting 15 minutes, the most allowed by prison authorities, Abu-Jamal said he lives a largely solitary life.

"The day can be encapsulated in the word 'isolation,"' he said. "For 22 hours a day, you are in a cell by yourself. That's where you eat, that's where you sleep, that's where you do your ... bodily functions."

The only possibility of contact with others is a two-hour exercise period at the maximum-security prison. But even that is often solitary during the winter because many inmates avoid the cold, he said.

In his cell, Abu-Jamal said he reads, writes columns on topics such as politics, the death penalty and the war in
Iraq for a Web site run by his supporters and makes radio broadcasts for a San Francisco-based organization called Prison Radio.

Contact with his family is largely limited to phone calls because they live some 300 miles away in Philadelphia.

"My people are poor," he said. "I don't see them often, maybe once or twice a year if we can manage it but sometimes not even that."

Mythical or merely Elusive?
Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists

Fri Dec 22, 3:40 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Its mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists on Friday.

Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 3.5 meters (11 ft 6 in) long and weighing 50 kg (110 lb) -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.

"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview on Friday. "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid."

Little was known until recently about the creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken," a tentacled monster that was blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

Unconfirmed reports say giant squid can grow up to 20 meters long, but according to scientists they are unlikely to pose a threat to ships because they spend their lives hundreds of meters under the sea.

The Japanese research team tracked giant squid by following their biggest predators -- sperm whales -- as they gathered to feed near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo between September and December.

They succeeded in taking the first still photographs of a living giant squid in 2005, observing that it moved around in the water more actively than previously thought, and captured food by entangling prey in its powerful tentacles.

The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 650 meters (2,150 ft) under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.

A squid about 55 cm (21.65 inches) in length had been attracted by the bait and the giant squid was hooked when it tried to eat the smaller squid, the scientists said.

...the Freedom Bush says Islam wants to take away...
A look at euthanasia, assisted death

By The Associated Press Thu Dec 21, 2:32 PM ET

A look at legislation covering euthanasia and assisted suicide in the industrialized world:

ITALY — Euthanasia is illegal in the heavily Roman Catholic nation. Assisted suicide can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

NETHERLANDS — Euthanasia was legalized in 2001, but the practice was common for at least a decade before that. Under the law, patients must be terminally ill, in unbearable pain and two doctors must agree there is no prospect for recovery.

BELGIUM — Legalized euthanasia under similar conditions as the Netherlands in 2002.

SWITZERLAND — Allows passive assistance to terminally ill people who have expressed a wish to die.

BRITAIN — Passed a law in 2004 allowing living wills or documents that set out what medical treatment patients want if they become seriously ill and lose the capacity to make a decision. In May, the House of Lords rejected legislation that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal drug doses to terminally ill patients.

FRANCE — Enables the terminally ill or those with no hope of recovery to refuse treatment in favor of death. Doctors are allowed to administer painkillers, even if their secondary effects include shortening patients' lives. But the law stops short of allowing euthanasia.

SPAIN — Euthanasia is illegal in Spain and people who help someone else die can be punished with at least six months in prison. But Spain's Socialist government wants to legalize it as part of a wave of liberal reforms that have largely transformed this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

UNITED STATES — U.S. law generally permits patients to ask that medical treatment be withheld or withdrawn, even if it raises their risk of dying. Voters in Oregon went further and approved the first physician-assisted suicide law in the U.S. in 1994, but it is now under legal challenge.

AUSTRALIA — Australia's Northern Territory province legalized mercy killing in 1996 and pro-euthanasia physician Dr. Philip Nitschke helped four people die before federal lawmakers overturned the provincial legislation.

OTHER — The U.N. Human Rights Committee criticized Dutch legalization in 2001. The Council of Europe — Europe's top human rights body — rejected euthanasia as a legitimate means to end life in April 2005.