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Obama Reopens Massacre Investigation Obstructed By Bush

2009-08-24T15:41:32Z

For eight years, the Bush administration obstructed investigations into a massacre carried out in the name of Americans in Dasht-e-Leili, Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, a representative from Physicians for Human Rights, the group that originally brought the incident to the attention of the Bush White House, met with officials from the new administration, which has reopened the investigation into the incident.

The massacre dates back to 2001. Two months after the September 11th attacks, in a rural corner of Northern Afghanistan, thousands of alleged Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters surrendered to a coalition of United States Special Forces and Afghan forces led by the notoriously brutal warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. They were told they would not be harmed. Soon after, they were stacked into metal shipping containers to be transported to a nearby prison. As numerous reports since 2002 have made clear, in increasingly gruesome detail, hundreds of prisoners never made it to the prison; they suffocated in the airless containers beneath the bodies of fellow prisoners -- and were interred in an unmarked mass grave.

The Bush White House thwarted inquiry into the incident on three separate occasions and terminated a Department of Justice investigation that involved survivors of the incident interned at Guantanamo Bay. By contrast, the inquiry President Obama has commissioned could result in war crimes charges.

Meanwhile, General Dostum, the warlord who by all accounts oversaw the massacre, returned to Afghanistan from an 18-month exile in Turkey last weekend, just four days before the Afghan elections took place. His return and reinstatement in the Karzai government sends a worrisome message given that any investigation into the Dasht-e-Leili incident must be authorized by the Afghan government.

"The only course of action, is to let the FBI finish the investigation they tried to begin at Guantanamo in 2002," said Nathanial Raymond, Director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture. Such an undertaking will require cooperation at many levels both in Washington and on the ground in Afghanistan.

Though the incident occurred at the beginning of the war, it is by no means ancient history. In 2002, the Guardian confirmed reports that witnesses to the events at Dasht-e-Leili were being systematically threatened, murdered and disappeared. Since then, neither the United States nor the Afghan government have intervened to protect witnesses and their families who remain in significant danger, according to PHR.

In 2006, PHR requested certain documents related to the Dasht-e-Leili case under the Freedom of Information Act. Within a month of this request, after almost five years of lying untouched, satellite imaging revealed that the site had been tampered with.

"All [we] know is that the satellite imagery shows what appears to be a hydraulic excavator and a dump truck. We don't know who was driving it we don't know what they took and we don't know where they took it."

"Dasht-e-Leili is a microcosm of the larger challenge facing the Obama administration [and the question] facing the US, are we serious about abiding by our international and domestic obligations to the rule of law?" Raymond said. "Dasht-e-Leili presents a moment for the Obama administration to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we will ensure that the law applies to everyone.".

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Obama's Science Adviser Targeted By Defamation Campaign

2009-08-21T21:05:27Z

Conservative media outlets are waging an online defamation campaign against Presidential Science Advisor Jon Holdren, using out-of-context quotes and misinformation to portray him as hell-bent on pursuing population control through the use of forced abortions and mass sterilization.

Fox News reported that Holdren was bent on adopting a "planetary regime" of population control, while blogger Michelle Malkin called him a "wackjob" who entertains policies that would mandate "forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and poisoning the water supply to control the population." On February 27, FrontPage Magazine published an article decrying Holdren's "globalist, redistributionist, Malthusian views."

The attacks are widely off the mark. The evidence generally cited by critics is a 1977 textbook entitled "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment." The authors -- Holdren is one of three -- in a chapter detailing various coercive and non-coercive policies for "population control" ultimately come out strongly against such policies. They argue that the harm caused by their adoption "would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent" of involuntary population control.

Holdren's work was also a product of its time. As the American Prospect noted in its July 21 issue, "population control" was a not particularly controversial concept at the time, and one that many scientists did support in various forms.

Shocked at the mischaracterization of their work, Holdren's coauthors, Anne and Paul Ehrlich, released this statement earlier in the summer: "We were not then, never have been, and are not now 'advocates' of the Draconian measures for population limitation described -- but not recommended -- in the book's 60-plus small-type pages cataloging the full spectrum of population policies[.]" They had merely described measures "that, at the time, had either been tried in some country or analyzed by some commentator."

Holdren is on leave from Harvard University, where he is a professor of environmental policy. Prior to that he taught at UC Berkeley for over 20 years. His work focused on causes and repercussions of global environmental change, analysis of energy technologies and policies and initiatives to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials.

At his confirmation hearings, Holdren answered extensive questions from members of Congress covering a broad range of topics, including one question about the appropriate role of government in population control.

"I think the proper role of government is to develop and deploy the policies with respect to economy, environment, security, that will ensure the well being of the citizens we have," he said.

He was unanimously confirmed.

All of this, however, has been lost on Holdren's conservative critics, many of whom continue to selectively quote his work. In recent weeks "Intelligent Design" groups have joined the cause, publishing their own screeds against Holdren. These sites have gained such traffic in recent weeks that at the time of writing this article, a Google search for "John Holdren" yielded one such attack as the second hit.

The White House has generally scoffed at alarmist and far-fetched criticisms. But from "death panels" to "mass sterilizations," the administration is facing an increasing barrage of charges that the president wants to stop your family from being born or facilitate them dying. In Holden's case, the White House felt the misrepresentations had gained enough steam to warrant a defense.

"The quotations used to suggest that Dr. Holdren supports coercive approaches to limiting population growth were taken from a 1977 college textbook on environmental science and policy, of which he was the third author," said Rick Weiss, Director of Strategic Communications at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

"The quoted material was from a section of the book that described different possible approaches to limiting population growth and then concluded that the authors' own preference was to employ the non-coercive approaches before the environmental and social impacts of overpopulation led desperate societies to employ coercive ones. Dr. Holdren has never been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive means of population limitation."

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Rosa Parks Poster Torn Up At McCaskill Town Hall (VIDEO)

2009-08-12T17:23:51Z

Among the many eyebrow-raising clips aired on major news networks yesterday from Senator Claire McCaskill's health care town hall was one of a woman being half-escorted, half-dragged from the building.

What the clip failed to catch was that the woman was provoked. She and a few other women had brought posters to the town hall, but they rolled them up after being booed and berated by the crowd. When the woman unrolled one to show to a journalist, an angry man in the crowd rushed over and tore it up. A poster of what, you ask? Rosa Parks. When the woman moved to take her poster back, the police stepped in and escorted both parties from the building. But only the woman made national news.

Watch, via Pam's House Blend:

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GI Bill Favors Some States Over Others

2009-08-10T20:30:14Z

Sen. Jim Webb's Post-9/11 GI Bill, which went into effect August 1, calls for the federal government to subsidize a veteran's tuition up to the amount it would cost to attend the most expensive public university in the veteran's home state.

The idea was to achieve fairness for those veterans who happen to live in states with higher tuition.

But it turns out that tuition at one tiny program at a Texas university is so high that veterans from that state can get subsidies big enough to cover the cost of many of the private institutions in that state, including Texas Christian, Baylor and Southern Methodist University.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Wyoming and South Dakota offer the lowest in tuition coverage -- at less than $100 per credit hour, in contrast to the $1,500 per credit hour available in Texas.

Practically speaking, the difference won't be so great, as many private institutions are signing up for the Yellow Ribbon program: the government, by way of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, will match the amount (up to 50 percent) laid out by any private institution to subsidize veterans' tuition.

John Hermansen, a representative from the Student Veterans of America, said that inequalities in the system were more likely to be determined by which private institutions chose to opt in to the Yellow Ribbon program than the different amounts available in each state.

While the GI Bill radically expands the options available to veterans, not everyone is satisfied. In an article on the site Military.com last August, a commentator noted that the different types of benefits afforded, depending on length of service, only takes into account time spent in the military after September 11th, 2001.

A spokesperson for Senator Webb's office explained:

"This bill was designed to recognize the service of those who've served since 9/11, this bill was designed as a wartime bill, the Montgomery bill was designed as a peacetime incentive to recruit service members but not for a time of war...the last 7 years in a wartime environment should be properly rewarded."

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Independent Pharmacists Battle Big Pharma On Health Care

2009-08-05T21:40:18Z

The prospect of a wholesale overhaul of the health care system is bringing a new face to the Capitol Hill lobbying scrum. The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), a network that represents independent pharmacists across the country, is spending much more money than it ever has before in an effort to make its voice heard.

But in a legislative fight that has drawn record amounts from all parties, the pharmacists could be drowned out all the same.

Until 2006, the NCPA spent from $100,000 to $300,000 on lobbying per election cycle. But during the 2008 election they laid out almost $1 million and they've spent an additional $830,300 since November.

The reason the pharmacists felt the need to spend so much will sound familiar to many of those who have been following the debate: They worry that the legislation will overly reflect the massive clout of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Their goal is to establish themselves as stakeholders in the health care debate -- and defend their revenue from better-moneyed members of the industry.

John Norton, Associate Director of Public Relations for the NCPA, said pharmacists would like to play a more active role in the reform debate. If patients have better relationships with their pharmacists they can better comprehend and adhere to their medication regimens and potentially avoid complications related to non-compliance, he said. Such changes would significantly contribute to cost reduction.

The initial impetus for NCPA to join the lobbying fray was the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which came into effect in 2006.

The legislation placed processing and payment of prescription drug claims into the hands of large third-party administrators known as Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs).

The PBMs adjusted the reimbursement schedule so that pharmacies were being reimbursed less regularly. "That created a lot of cash flow issues" said Norton. He noted that at the time of the shift about 5 percent of independent pharmacies went out of business.

"Because they're so massive, they enter into contract negotiations with us and we are given 'take it or leave it' contracts, where essentially we're told take this contract or lose access to the patients," Norton said.

The NCPA is at present seeking an antitrust exemption to be able to collectively bargain with the PBMs, and the group is lobbying on current legislation to adopt a different reimbursement mechanism on any public option plan.

When asked about their position on the prospect of a public option, Kevin Schwears, NCPA's vice president of public affairs said they were "advocating that any so-called 'public option' insurance plan doesn't disadvantage community pharmacy." But on whether or not there should be a public option at all, the group remains "agnostic."

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Reid Blames Press For August Deadline, Baucus Hedges

2009-07-30T22:44:21Z

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he is "cautiously optimistic" that a health care bill will make it out of the Senate Finance Committee before senators head home for their summer recess. But he accused the media of inflating the importance of an August finish.

"You folks have created the deadline," Reid chided, asserting that President Obama's original goal was simply to pass legislation by the end of the year.

Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was also cagey when asked about the progress of his high-profile committee. "We'll just keep working," he said, "We're ready when we're ready."

At a press conference with family physicians, Sens. Reid, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) discussed the legislation in language liberally laced with medical metaphors.

"America's had a check-up and the prognosis is not very promising," Reid opened.

"You've heard the diagnosis," warned Durbin, "the health care system is chronically ill."

The plan is supported by 450,000 doctors and medical practitioners, said Jim King, a family physician of Selma, Tennessee. "That's enough to fill Wrigley Field 11 times over -- imagine, 11 Wrigley Fields, full of doctors."

Joe Stubbs, president of the American College of Physicians, pressed for a timely resolution: "Debate must not be the excuse for delay." He ended on an emphatic note. "My patients will experience irreparable harm... if we leave it to a future Congress."

Reid seemed to ignore the growing fissures in his own party when he called the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House the only causes of obstruction in passing the legislation. However, he was quick to point to the inclusion of 161 Republican-authored amendments in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) bill and emphasized his admiration for Sens. Snowe (R-Maine), Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) for "hanging in."

Durbin was rather more critical of Republican stalling, and joked: "What you're hearing from the other side is light up, eat up, drink up and live it up -- that's not the way to get well."

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Women's Groups Split By Afghanistan Policy

2009-07-30T19:20:36Z

The Feminist Majority Foundation and the Afghan Women's Mission are locked in a bitter controversy over what's best for the women of Afghanistan.

The two groups are natural and historical allies. But the Feminist Majority has now endorsed President Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan -- arguing that the administration's new strategy is necessary to prevent the return of the brutal oppression of women by the Taliban regime.

The Afghan Women's Mission, along with an associated Afghan feminist group, contends that more troops and more fighting will only result in further casualties on both sides and fuel the already-flourishing insurgency.

Sonali Kolhatkar, founder of the Afghan Women's Mission (AWM) and Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) wrote last month on AlterNet:

[C]oalition troops are combat forces and are there to fight a war, not to preserve peace... Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté.

Kolhatkar, in a subsequent interview with the Huffington Post, added that the withdrawal of U.S. troops would actually "take away the rationale of the Taliban: the foreign occupiers."

Feminist Majority founder Ellie Smeal and board member Helen Cho responded in turn, writing that "recently these terrorists have destroyed hundreds of girls schools, killed journalists, local women's leaders and killed women teachers in front of their students."

"If the U.S. was to pull out of Afghanistan," they warned, "the United States would be once again breaking its promise to the Afghan people, and the country would likely fall under Taliban control."

A Long History With Afghanistan

The Feminist Majority boasts that they were the first American organization to call attention to the plight of women under the Taliban -- back in 1996 -- when they circulated countless images of burqa-shrouded Afghan women.

Their campaign culminated in pressuring Unocal to withdraw its support for a pipeline, slated to be run through Afghanistan, which would have furnished the Taliban regime with handsome royalties.

The group also sponsored the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), one of the Afghan feminist groups now opposed to troop escalation, to give a speaking tour in the United States.

The View From Afghanistan

When the United States invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the plight of oppressed Afghan women was one of the public justifications. But eight years later, RAWA's Kolhatkar argues, "Women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions" as they did under the Taliban, "with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war." Despite the presence of a few women in public office and the enrollment of some women and girls in schools, many argue that these changes are little more than cosmetic.

RAWA's 2,000 active members live in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. They are "totally underground, they're constantly moving around... they change their names and they don't stay in one place long," explains Kolhatkar. "They are marked women." Those caught even reading their magazine have been locked up by both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.

On their website, their main platform, they are very clear, "RAWA believes that freedom and democracy can't be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values."

So far the U.S. has not done much to help their cause.

"[W]e put some of the worst [warlords] back in power. Karzai's law [legalizing marital rape] was not an accident," said Kolhatkar. The drug war only makes things worse. "The drugs are the lifeline for the Taliban and the cash crops of the misogynists... Poor families that have gone into debt with the warlords have had to sell their daughters to pay off their debts."

And despite the Obama administration's refocusing of regional goals, the abysmal 8-year legacy in the region gives little reason to hope that a safer, less militarized day-to-day existence for Afghans with emerge anytime soon.

RAWA and the AWM call for UN peacekeepers, the initiation of a disarmament process, the building up of justice and educational institutions, a war crimes tribunal and an Afghan Human Rights commission

"The UN won't do it," warned the Feminist Majority's Smeal. Though she says that she too would like to see such changes in Afghanistan, "we made this mess and we have an obligation to do something about it."

This past June was the bloodiest month in Afghanistan since the war began.

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Strip Searches Pervasive Despite Huge Settlements

2009-07-21T16:30:25Z

One sunny fall afternoon, a mother of seven answered a knock at her door to find a cluster of policemen waiting on the step. She wore pajamas because she had been asleep before heading to her job on the night shift at a New York hospital. The officers gave her just minutes to dress before clapping her in handcuffs and escorting her to the police station.

"They didn't even explain why they were arresting me," she said.

At the station, she was shepherded into a locker room where a female police officer ordered her to strip. She was told to lift her breasts, bend at the waist and expose her genitalia to the inspecting officer. She was then forced to squat and cough, to dislodge any potential contraband.

The charge, which was subsequently dropped, was the neglect of four dogs left in her former home that her ex-husband had promised to pick up.

She was so traumatized by the incident that she was unable to talk about it for years, with even her closest friends. Eventually, she joined a class-action suit and won a settlement.

While many civil liberties experts are focusing on the recent Supreme Court decision involving the intrusive search of a 13-year-old girl, plaintiffs' lawyers nationwide have been winning huge settlements in class-action suits on behalf of women and men subjected to strip searches by local police departments.

Damages have reached into the millions in some cases. Los Angeles County recently paid $27 million to settle a class-action suit, New York City paid $22 million, and Washington, D.C. had to pay $12 million.

Despite the substantial settlements, most cases have been resolved with out-of-court agreements that limit publicity. As a result, some legal scholars believe that the invasive practice continues, sometimes even in jurisdictions where settlements have been paid.

All over the country, there are jails that carry out blanket strip-searches of anyone who is brought through their doors, whether the charge is heroin smuggling or unpaid parking tickets. Though these policies have been found unlawful time and again, many police forces continue the practice.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the strip search of then-13-year-old Savana Redding by officials at her Arizona school was unconstitutional. The case was the first of its kind to be taken on by the highest court. At the appellate level and below, however, this is familiar territory and cases filed on behalf of victims of unlawful strip searches in jails, detention centers and schools are common. In almost all cases, the plaintiffs have won.

"In this country, people are presumed innocent till found guilty," said Charles LaDuca, a partner at the Washington law firm of Cuneo, Gilbert & LaDuca, who has worked on more than 25 of these strip search cases. "When these people are arrested for non-felony offenses, they have not been tried, but they are forced to get naked...in front of the arresting officer and often a roomful of other people."

If a person is brought in on a drug or weapons charges, strip searches are lawful because they are regarded as an element of jail security. In other instances, however, plaintiffs' lawyers have found fertile ground in pursuing cases involving people subjected to the searches after arrests for misdemeanors.

The trend of prosecution of these strip search cases started slowly in the 1970s, but the number began to rise in the late 1990s. Today, nearly 100 class-action suits have been filed against counties and municipalities around the country contending that these searches are unlawful and violate the Fourth Amendment.

Though police forces often justify the use of strip searches, saying they are necessary for jail security, the Fourth Amendment and the accumulated case law specify that strip searches can only be performed if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that a person has contraband, usually drugs or weapons, hidden on their bodies.

But despite the weight of the case law, judges are often hesitant to condemn unwarranted strip searches outright.

The Supreme Court's 8-1 decision in the Redding case took some legal experts by surprise after the justices appeared not to take the episode seriously in questioning lawyers during oral arguments. "They seemed pretty cavalier about the harm of a strip search," said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about strip searches.

But Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "it does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude. This is ... a case in which clearly established law meets clearly outrageous conduct."

Yet much of the language used in oral arguments made before the Supreme Court gave little weight to the emotional disturbance caused by the experience of forced nudity in front of others, and the psychological harm caused to the young girl.

Schlanger, who has done some of the most exhaustive research into strip search cases, suggested that police officers conducting the searches might not be aware of the trauma triggered by the strip searches given that their own environments are so steeped in the practice.

"At these facilities, they're so used to strip searching people, it's so natural to them that they don't realize how traumatic it can be, they don't even think about it," said Schlanger.

Strip search policies have been found to disproportionately affect women in jails. Though women account for only 8 percent of the prison population, women are on average far more likely to be strip searched than men. While the argument that women have more orifices in which to stash contraband is one that's often used, women are not shown to be more likely than their male counterparts to be carrying any contraband.

In fact, several of the first strip search cases were filed as violations of the 14th Amendment's equal protections clause because in many counties only women - and not men - have been subjected to blanket strip searches.

Many of the larger settlements -- some as much as $50,000 to an individual -- have gone to women subjected to particularly demeaning or invasive searches. For example, no special consideration is given to menstruating women and they are often forced to stand naked in front of other women, both inmates and police officers. In other cases women asked to strip were survivors of sexual violence and the incidents triggered memories that caused further emotional trauma.

Across the country, from Los Angeles to New Jersey, the verdicts have been near unanimous: Blanket strip search policies are unconstitutional.

"What is needed is for these facilities to follow the law and employ reasonable suspicion. The laws are already on the books, and are pretty clear on this," said LaDuca.

While no one disputes the importance of jail security, no one, on either side of the issue was able to provide adequate statistics as to the effectiveness of these strip searches.

Schlanger characterized the argument that strip searches serve as a deterrent as, "elephant repellant logic."

"Current knowledge cannot prove or disprove a causal relationship between jail contraband and the use of strip searches on newly arrested prisoners," Schlanger said.

So if one is pretty much guaranteed to win when it comes to these cases, it becomes a question of compensation.

Damages to individual plaintiffs are rarely huge. But overall costs have added up to hundreds of millions of dollars for the nation's municipalities and counties, which shifts the costs to taxpayers.

Even though case law overwhelmingly suggests that police officers must have a specific individualized suspicion to strip search minor offenders, the issue of blanket strip-searching in jails -- or anywhere else for that matter -- has never been heard by the Supreme Court. If judges in the most recent strip search case were hesitant to enact measures that could be perceived as tying the hands of school administrators, it's reasonable to assume that they would be similarly wary when it comes to circumscribing the actions of corrections officers.

Battle For The Honduran Presidency Plays Out In Washington D.C.

2009-07-20T22:30:35Z

A proxy-struggle for the Honduran presidency continues to play out in Washington D.C. The most recent battle is over the ambassadorship.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's recent arrest and forced exile to Costa Rica hasn't deterred him from carrying out at least one of his presidential duties: the appointment of a new ambassador. Meanwhile, the unrecognized government of Roberto Micheletti has enlisted K Street firepower to make its case to the United States Congress.

Since being ousted by the military on June 28, Zelaya has reportedly visited the U.S. capital four or five times. Last week, he appointed Eduardo Enrique Reina, his former private secretary and Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, as the new Honduran ambassador to the United States.

Reina's predecessor, Amb. Roberto Flores Bermudez, returned to Honduras as soon as the new government took power. Upon arrival at the airport in Tegucigalpa, Bermudez made a statement to the media, saying he no longer recognized the Zelaya government and was in Honduras to receive instructions from Micheletti, who had been appointed by the Congress after Zelaya's arrest.

From his position in exile, Zelaya lost no time in sending a message to the United States State Department, which subsequently revoked Bermudez's diplomatic credentials.

For the moment, the representative of the new Honduran government in the U.S. is neither Bermudez nor Reina.

Instead, the new representative has been recruited directly from K Street. Lanny Davis, a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and former special counsel under President Bill Clinton, has been hired by the Honduran office of the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) to lobby on behalf of the Micheletti government.

In the last week there's been a flurry of activity, with emissaries from both parties scurrying between offices on Capitol Hill vying for congressional support.

On Thursday, Reina convened a press conference at the National Press Club announcing his appointment and outlining Zelaya's goals from exile in the days ahead.

Davis also made an appearance for the other side, and their respective staffs exchanged terse words before the de facto diplomat made his exit. Later, Davis held a "responsive press conference" on the sidewalk outside the National Press Club.

Reina thanked President Obama for his support and praised the United States, the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union for their continued backing of the ousted Zelaya government.

Reina also expressed concern about escalating human rights violations during "the ongoing crisis and repression back home" and warned that "the police have said they will use force" if the demonstrations persist.

When asked about his future plans, Reina said, "the president has asked people to protest with non-violence" but he was adamant before last weekend's talks that, "President Zelaya will only discuss reinstatement."

To the disappointment of the international community, the talks served only to extend the stalemate as Micheletti's delegation refused to accept the conditional reinstatement of Zelaya proposed by the session's moderator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Instead, Micheletti's representatives called for Zelaya to return to Honduras to stand trial.

Zelaya's opponents say that he was removed from office because he was seeking a constitutional referendum that could allow him to run again, which is strictly prohibited under Honduran law. His supporters, however, maintain that the constitution was drafted under the rule of a military junta in the early 1980s and that several civil society groups in Honduras had repeatedly called for its reform.

On the day of his arrest, Zelaya was about to conduct an opinion poll posing the question, "Do you approve that during the general elections of 2009, a fourth ballot box be included to decide on the convening of a National Constituent Assembly to approve a new Political Constitution?"

Even if the referendum had resulted in a reversal of the re-election prohibition, the change would not have gone into effect in time to let Zelaya run again.

The country's Washington embassy is itself is a house divided. Half of its staff remains loyal to Zelaya; the other half has returned to Honduras in support of the new government. Among those who have left the country was the employee in charge of the embassy website.

"He blocked the computers, changed passwords and deleted files," said a current embassy employee. The staff members, working with Zelaya, are unable to use their official email addresses for fear they will be monitored back in Honduras.

The official position of the Obama administration is full support for the Zelaya government. However, the State Department is reviewing Reina's credentials and their reluctance to refer to the events in Honduras as a "coup" has prompted media speculation about the legality of the takeover.

Meanwhile, protests continue on the streets of Honduras. One Honduran in attendance at the press conference explained, "Even Hondurans who did not support Zelaya were against his deportation because of the precedent it sets." Supporters of the ousted Zelaya government -- among them the country's four largest labor unions, farmers' organizations and the school teachers' union -- called for his swift reinstatement.

Though Honduras hosted the general assembly of the Organization of American States only a month ago, after June 28th they were suspended from the organization. The theme of the assembly, selected by Zelaya, was "Toward a Culture of Non-Violence."

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TARP Recipients Fighting To Keep Charging Exorbitant Credit Card Fees

2009-07-09T17:07:12Z

This story has been edited slightly since publication for clarification.

Undeterred by their sullied reputation, big banks and credit card companies are making a major play to protect a key source of profit: credit card swipe fees.

Last year, the country's largest financial institutions -- including many banks that have received bailout funds -- raked in an estimated $48 billion from credit card swipe fees. That's an average of $400 per American household.

Every time a shopper swipes his credit card, multiple fees are triggered. The most controversial is the "interchange fee," which the merchant's bank pays to the bank that issued the credit card. Rates vary, but it averages around 2 percent of the transaction. Even as technology has reduced the costs of processing the transactions substantially, the amount of money generated by credit card swipe fees has continued to rise. Since 2001, revenue from "interchange fees" has gone up 120 percent in the United States.

Industry representatives say that the purpose of the fee is to cover the costs and risks of credit card transactions, which have increased over the years.

But critics say the system isn't fair. The banks themselves, after all, are responsible for the proliferation of credit cards. And because more people than ever are using plastic as a form of payment, merchants have been forced to raise the price of goods to compensate for the rise in associated swipe fees.

"If their risks have gone up exponentially, it's because they're issuing cards to everyone," said John Emling, senior vice president of government affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. "The claim that they're somehow not responsible for the assumed risk is just a false claim."

Legislative attempts to change the system have been met by a major lobbying and advertising pushback. Spearheading that effort has been the Electronic Payments Coalition. The coalition's membership reads like a who's who of bailed-out institutions, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Barclay's and JP Morgan Chase.

The main battle has revolved around an obscure but aptly named piece of legislation called the Credit Card Fair Fee Act. The Senate version of the bill will empower retailers to negotiate interchange fees with banks and credit card companies, with disagreements to be settled by a three-person, independent arbitration panel. The House version is much the same, and both would require better transparency measures for all transactions between banks, credit card companies and retailers.

Retailers, led by the Merchants Payments Coalition, have run what one official described as a "mid-six-figure" advertising campaign in support of the reform measures on the radio, the Internet and in print.

They have been outspent by the EPC, which has paid $260,000 in lobbying already in 2009 and spent close to $500,000 dollars in 2008. The Coalition, which also includes MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc., has hired 10 former congressional staffers as lobbyists to push their legislative agenda, according to a review of public records. The EPC also has run a slew of ads in some of Washington D.C.'s most widely read websites, including Roll Call and Politico as well as on the radio. The group has been running ads on the Huffington Post as well.

One of the radio ads:

One of the print ads:

The combined effort has been to protect the status quo, with the main argument being that if the fees were changed, the merchants would merely pocket the money rather than passing the savings on to consumers.

In the context of the current economic crisis, it is an odd spectacle: The architects of the subprime mortgage crisis and the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression -- many of whom are currently dependent on taxpayer funds -- have styled themselves as champions of consumer rights, protecting unsuspecting shoppers from predatory retailers.

"If I could sum up the debate," said Trish Wexler of the EPC, "the bottom line is that merchants don't want to pay their fair share. Instead, they want to shift that cost onto their customers."

"Merchants should pay their share," echoed the ads.

According to a statement issued by Visa, the legislation "would significantly and negatively impact consumers, especially those struggling in this time of economic uncertainty."

Not everyone is buying it.

"It is a bizarre argument because it essentially says, 'let's keep ripping folks off because if we don't someone else will,'" added Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). Welch is a cosponsor of the Credit Card Interchange Fees Act of 2009, which would significantly alter the credit card swipe fee process.

As Welch sees it, the current system is unfairly tilted in favor of the bank and credit card companies. Interchange fees, he says, are unilaterally set by the credit card companies. High-end credit cards with reward programs, for instance, tend to have higher fees. Debit card and PIN transactions have lower associated rates, as do cards issued by credit unions. Under the existing system, retailers are generally unable to charge customers different rates based on the form of payment they choose. That is why retailers say they are often forced to raise the prices of all their goods in order to keep up with interchange fees.

"The person that pays cash is subsidizing the person who's getting rewards of frequent flyer miles," said Emling.

This past year, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), attempted to attach an amendment to the Credit CARD Act of 2009 that would have prohibited credit card companies from taking action against retailers who offered reduced prices to customers paying with cash, checks or debit cards instead of credit cards. It was ultimately removed from the bill.

Since then, Durbin, Welch and other lawmakers have sought to pass the measures as stand-alone legislation. The hope is that it will be considered at some point in the year ahead. In the interim, the debate is being reframed as a matter of transparency.

It's an effort to make the issue less objectionable, but many in the banking industry maintain that new legislation is not necessary.

"The banks are fighting this tooth and nail," said Welch, "It is pretty stunning. Why would the banks be against transparency? Why? What do they fear... the fear is people might know what they are going to charge and say, you know what, I don't need this credit card."

Sam Stein contributed reporting to this article.

Bush CIA Honcho: Military Option Should Be Off The Table With Iran

2009-06-18T15:30:28Z

As the fifth consecutive day of protests in Iran drew to a close, one of the chief members of President Bush's intelligence apparatus warned that the United States should forgo the military option no matter what the outcome of the contested elections.

"I would argue against any military option. I just don't think it will work, and it will have consequences that will be severe," said John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA under President George W. Bush.

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday for a panel on national security risks, McLaughlin went on to acknowledge that his statement would generate a robust argument among well-intentioned foreign policy observers. But the advice he offered on Iran did not end there.

Earlier in the event, McLaughlin, who served briefly as Acting Director at the CIA, urged the Obama White House to proceed with caution when it came to the politically embattled country. Regardless of who emerged victorious from the election, he said, the United States would have real difficulties on its hands.

"As best we know Mousavi or Ahmadinejad there's no real difference in terms of the nuclear program," he said. He asked, rhetorically, if support for nuclear weapons extends throughout the country. "I don't think anyone can prove that. There are lots of reasons to think they're heading for a weapons program. It would be prudent to assume it so."

McLaughlin's remarks reflect the acute diplomatic concerns that Iran's protests pose within U.S. foreign policy circles. Clearly, frictions have existed between the United States and the Ahmadinejad government. But President Obama himself has cautioned that having Mousavi in power would not necessarily bring about shifts in policy. In either case, McLaughlin hinted, the next government in Iran would have, at best, tenuous legitimacy.

At a same time, a growing majority of thinkers and opinion makers are urging the United States to adopt a less confrontational approach when it comes to Iran, cognizant that a popular movement exists within that country for greater international engagement.

As to a projected outcome of the protests, McLaughlin argued that Iran's own history sets a bleak precedent. As evidence he pointed to a lack of cohesion among reform groups as the reason why Iran's fifth president, Mohammad Khatami, (whom McLaughlin referred to as a "genuine reformer in Iranian terms"), was not elected to a third term. However, he added, "they didn't have that kind of technology then" which "may enable them to last longer [this time], to coalesce."

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Progressives Launch Effort To Force Obama's Hand On Health Care

2009-06-03T16:24:02Z

As a deadline for introducing a health care reform bill approaches the progressive community, which has been biting its tongue for weeks if not months, is now making calculated moves to force President Obama's hand.

Several times on the campaign trail candidate Obama called for sustained pressure from the left to enable him to make more ambitious policy decisions in the health care arena. Former DNC Chair Howard Dean echoed these sentiments at a recent panel on the future of health care reform and urged the American people to "hold their [Democratic representatives'] feet to the fire to make sure they behave like Democrats."

In anticipation of a heated ideological debate, the White House is now shifting the parameters of the discussion -- from the philosophical to pragmatic. A report released by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) on June 2, stressed the economic necessity of passing healthcare reform as a means of lowering the deficit while increasing gross domestic product.

The study weighed projected costs under the current system against a set of anticipated outcomes if healthcare reform is passed.

One such outcome is the slowing of the annual growth rate of health care costs by 1.5 percent. Accomplishing this, said Christina Romer, chair of the CEA, would generate a 2 percent increase in GDP in 2020 -- compared with a "no-reform baseline" -- and an increase of almost 8 percent by 2030. For the average family of four, these cost reductions would translate to an additional $2,600 in income in 2020 and an extra $10,000 in 2030. It's the equivalent of a "billion dollar bills lying on the sidewalk," said Romer of the existing system.

By framing the debate in terms of economic imperatives the administration seems to be seeking to ward off partisan politics for as long as possible. "You don't see anyone walking out yet,' said David Cutler, Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University and veteran of the Clinton era healthcare battle.

Maybe so. But progressives are drawing increasingly bold lines in the sand:

"We have polled [Congressional Progressive Caucus] members very carefully in recent weeks and a strong majority will only support comprehensive healthcare reform legislation that includes a public plan option on a level playing field with private health insurance plans," CPC co-chairpersons Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) wrote in a letter to the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leaders in early April.

Speaking to the America's Future NOW! conference, Dean said, "We cannot spend a trillion and half dollars of the taxpayer's money by rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic!" If there's no public option, do nothing! Don't waste our money."

Simply including the words "public option" may not be enough. One alleged compromise put forth by Republicans and some centrist Democrats to scuttle a public plan option, is the notion of a trigger that would mandate its implementation only if the private market fails to meet a certain set of criteria. This model would resemble the Medicare Part D option, which conservatives tout as evidence that there is no need for a public option because the trigger for Medicare Part D has yet to be pulled. However, upon closer inspection, the patients themselves have no control over the criteria that would lead to pulling the trigger if their needs are not met, ensuring that the option of a public plan was never really a viable one, say some health care experts.

"The trigger [under Medicare Part D] would come into play in any county where there weren't at least two private drug plans, but that has never come close to happening. It has nothing to do with containing costs or guaranteeing quality or access or anything that works for patients and consumers," said Jacki Schechner of Healthcare for America NOW.

But even if progressives hold the line and insist on a public option worthy of its name, the question remains, what would such a plan actually look like? Romer, in her final words to a room full of reporters and members of the medical community called on health care practitioners and physicians themselves to pitch in with ideas. "The people who actually know what the reforms [should be] need to stand up," she said.

She might just have an answer. One of those physicians, Dr. Salomeh Keyhani of Mount Sinai hospital in New York, who was speaking on the same panel as Dean, said that the "silent majority" of physicians who support a public plan are poised to do just that.

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A Break For Obama: Social Conservatives Hang Back On Sotomayor

2009-05-27T16:38:07Z

No one expected President Barack Obama to win over religious or cultural conservatives with his choice for the Supreme Court. But in the hours that followed the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the bench, he has received what could be the next best thing. Social conservative organizations, which have proven to be vastly influential players in Court battles over the last eight years, are largely holding their tongues. Some have even offered cautious praise for the pick.

Sotomayor "gives us some room for optimism" with respect to issues of historic importance to socially conservative groups, said Bruce Hausknecht, a judicial analyst at Focus on the Family. On issues of "abortion funding and protesting...[and] also on religious speech and religious freedom, she applied the law correctly," he added. The reference was to Sotomayor's dismissal of a claim from abortion rights group that challenged the "global gag rule" on first amendment grounds.

To be sure, the reviews aren't all glowing. Hausknecht went on to air the same critiques of Sotomayor heard from a wide swath of conservative figures. "She has said that the appellate court is where policy is made," he said, "which is another way of saying that appellate judges should be legislating from the bench."

But the early word on the nomination has lacked the expected vitriol, suggesting that social conservatives are unsure of how fiercely they should oppose the nominee.

"Right now we're just asking that the Senate Judiciary Committee take the time to review the candidate," said Mario Diaz, Policy Director for Legal Issues at Concerned Women for America.

There may be a number of reasons why religious groups are hanging back. At a moment when there is very little political capital to go round in the Republican Party, it would seem prudent to pick their battles, especially when most political commentators, including many Republicans, expect the nomination to be confirmed. Religious groups in particular may be treading carefully in hopes of healing the rift with Hispanics, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama last November.

Indeed, even some of the harshest critics seemed to grudgingly acknowledge the current political realities.

Andrea Lafferty, Executive Director of the Traditional Values Coalition, cited the number of Sotomayor's decisions that were overturned by the Supreme Court, which legal scholars have dismissed as standard for appellate rulings. Lafferty insisted that Sotomayor, who was appointed under President H.W. Bush by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was not a "bipartisan pick" or a true Bush appointee. She claimed that the judge had "empathy for the poor, gays and minorities" that would make her "likely to ignore the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law." But she also remarked that the nomination was "partially a wash with Souter," though Sotomayor would "probably be even more liberal."

"She fits the bill," Lafferty added. "I mean, we're not surprised. ... The left assumes she's going to get a pass from the Hispanic community... that's not necessarily true."