The melody of Myanmar

from the April 27, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p19s01-hfes.html

On a visit to the impoverished Asian nation, a Burmese guide lets down his hair and sings 'House of the Rising Sun' in a variation of English.

By Carolann Moisse

We were two travelers who wanted to support private initiative without supporting the Myanmar government. So my husband and I put our tourist dollars into low-end travel and roughed it on the road from Yangon to Bagan.

The best vehicle we could get for the two-day, 17-hour drive between the two cities was a 1990 van with a dubious suspension. Our Burmese driver, Ti, spoke little English, and like many people in this police state, was politely circumspect. But a day into the trip, he relaxed and started teaching us bits of his language. By the third night, he was singing Burmese hurtin' songs for us while playing, as Ti called it, his "gitter."

Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. Governed by the military, its democratically elected leader has been under house arrest for more than a decade. Guidebooks recommend that travelers spend their tourist dollars in low-end guesthouses, small restaurants, or private transportation businesses, such as the one through which we engaged Ti. The airlines and high-end hotels are little more than fronts for the government.

Our schedule allowed us only six days to stop over in Myanmar (being en route to Hong Kong at the time), so we opted to use most of them in one place – the famous temple city of Bagan. The balance we would spend on the road, driving there from Yangon. If we wanted to invest our tourist dollars in small businesses, we couldn't fly. Besides, I've always appreciated the journey as much as the destination. My husband said that what he'd appreciate most of all was a reliable, road-worthy vehicle.

There are many makeshift toll collectors along the road for communities to raise money. There's no moveable barrier, just a small hut or someone sitting on a chair at the side of the road. In fact, we wouldn't have recognized these points as tolls at all but for the fact that Ti would slow down, throw money out the window onto the ground, and then continue. No full stop. In the rear mirror, we could see someone run onto the road to pick it up.

At one place, there was a toll on one side of the river and another on the other side. At home we'd call that highway robbery! And it's not as though your money is paying for bridge maintenance – since there isn't a bridge. We drove across the sandy, rutted, dry riverbed that, months from now, will be impassable when the rainy season returns.

The narrow, chewed-up road is used by trucks and overstuffed buses hauling produce and peasants squatting on top or clinging to the side, precariously, as the vehicles lurch left and then right as they enter and emerge from potholes the size of meteorite craters.

Farmers in oxen carts claim the edges of the road. Strings of maroon-robed monks pick their way over broken sidewalks each morning to collect alms.

Villages consist of houses with thatched roofs, rattan walls, and raised floors on stilts. We stopped at one such home where I gave away 20 pictures from my Polaroid camera of proud mothers and their children, creating quite a stir in the area as word got around.

We were booked into the best of only two hotels in Pyay, a small town halfway to Bagan. We asked the attendant to tell us the location of the ubiquitous generator, since we know that nightly brownouts force all the guesthouses to equip themselves accordingly, and these machines are always noisy. We chose a room far away from it at the end of the corridor.

Oops! The hotel actually abutted the main railway line. Not only did the building shudder on the hour as tons of steel shunted across town, I was all but blown out of my bed with the blast of its whistle at midnight.

Still, the cooing and rustling of a dozen pigeons nesting in the attic above our room was welcome white noise in between trains, as was the distant purring of the generator.

The next day, it took us 11 more hours in our clanking, groaning van to reach Bagan. Exhausted, we collapsed in our room at the lovely resort found for us by Ti. For $20 a night, the teakwood room was spacious, air-conditioned, and included satellite TV. There was also an elegantly designed pool and garden.

Here we would recharge our batteries each night after a full day exploring the monuments. Bagan is considered the Angkor of Myanmar, with more than 3,000 cataloged temples spread over 42 kilometers of sun-dried red plain. The view from the top of any one of them is breathtaking, rewarding the effort to get there; red and gold stupas unfold to the horizon.

On our last night at the resort, Ti borrowed a guitar and sang for us a few numbers that sounded oddly country western.

Then he broke into "House of the Rising Sun" in some language, vaguely English, but with far too many vowels. He stretched out the last line of the song, squeezing out the words, stopped, and grinned. We clapped and cheered, acting out all the goodwill we felt but could not express in language without consonants.

My husband and I had to leave the next day to reach Yangon in time for our international flight.
A week in Myanmar is far too little, so we know we must return some day. I've made a mental note to bring new "gitter" strings for Ti. There are so many songs waiting to be sung in this country.

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In China: no map, no problem

from the April 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0430/p19s01-litr.html

They were to map an area of a park when some unexpected friends showed up.

By Eric Wagner

We first heard the Tibetan herders early in the afternoon, their cries carrying down the hillside: "Hooeeeeee! Hooeeeeee!"

We were on the second day of a four-day backcountry trek through the Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve, one of China's largest national parks.

Gus, Kimberly, and I were part of a cadre of American students who had come to work with park staff for a couple of weeks. As ecologists, our project was to map a proposed ecotourism trail in the park's northeastern region. This meant we had to walk the trail, which would take us into some of the park's wilder spaces.

We didn't expect to come across anyone. Chinese officials had told us that we were heading into unpopulated terrain. The Tibetans who used to farm and herd yaks there had been resettled, as had most of the Tibetans who had lived in the park. (Jiuzhaigou, by the way, means "Valley of Nine Villages." Those villages still exist, but now they're more like theme parks, tourist commodities.)

Apparently, though, not everyone had gotten the memo, because it wasn't long before we saw fresh yak manure, the odd soda bottle, and, of course, the Tibetans, calling to one another across the hills.

We could see 10 of them on an exposed slope far above us and then we walked around a bend to find two men digging under one of the short, scrubby rhododendrons common to the area. We didn't stare and neither did they, but our feigned lack of attention belied a keen interest in one another.

We nodded silent greetings and continued up to a ridge, reaching it by late afternoon. According to our map, we would follow it along the park boundary until it dropped to the road from which we'd started the previous day. But our map was little more than a line across some colorful polygons. These were the indistinctions we sought to specify. Through our work, we would give greater precision and authority to these dots and lines.

But first we needed a rest. We sat down and looked at the peaks of the Minxian range, which spread across the Tibetan plateau. We were trying to guess how far we could see – 50 miles? 100? – when the two Tibetans appeared. The younger one, who couldn't have been more than 15, waved and said, "Hello!"

"Ni hao (Hello)," replied Gus.

"Hello!" the young Tibetan said, pleased.

"Hi," Kimberly said. "We came from Jiuzhaigou."

"Jiuzhaigou," the Tibetan said. "Hello!"

Our shared vocabulary thus exhausted, the Tibetans gestured at the vista and gave us a thumbs up.

Yes, we agreed, it was a fine view.

A third, older Tibetan walked over. He was friendly but more cautious. Three Americans alone in the Chinese wilderness is a rare sight, after all. To explain ourselves, we said, "Jiuzhaigou," and handed him our map. The three of them pored over it, trying to match the small, arbitrary symbols with the vastness all around us.

Then they laughed and shook their heads. They thought we were lost.

They motioned for us to follow and turned up the ridge. After maybe 10 minutes, they decided we were too slow and made us take off our packs, which they shouldered with a depressing ease. (To be fair, we carried their walking sticks.)

"Let's go!" the young one said. And before we could make even the smallest cautionary gesture, over they went, off into the unmarked spaces beyond the lines on our map.

We followed them, scrambling to keep up. Eventually we arrived at a large lean-to in the middle of a stand of conifers. More Tibetans were sitting around a fire, drinking tea and chatting.

We collapsed, exhausted. The older man went to a large pot hanging over the fire and tossed in noodles, some sort of animal fat, and wild herbs. He stirred the pot's contents for a bit and then filled bowls. Everyone dug in with chopsticks carved from small branches.

Gus, Kimberly, and I could finish only half our meals, and we spent the rest of the evening basking in the warmth of the fire, wondering where we were and how we'd find the trail again.

The next morning they were gone before we woke up. They had been coming and going in this land for far longer than any park had existed and would no doubt continue to do so. They had little use for maps.

We packed our gear and started back to the ridge. We had a long day of mapping ahead of us, but we knew more of the details that had been left off the official rendering – and the details we would be forced to leave out, too.

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In imams' airline case, a clash of rights, prejudice, security

from the May 01, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0501/p01s02-usju.html



A lawsuit brought by six imams who were removed from a flight raises issues about other passengers voicing complaints.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK

In this age of global terrorism, some cherished American values – like the right to pray, and say what you think – are clashing in unprecedented ways.

Take the controversy over six imams who were removed from a US Airways flight last October, and their recent decision to sue for discrimination – not just the airline and its employees, but also some passengers who complained about their preflight behavior.

At the heart of the controversy are Americans' concern about terrorism, ignorance about Islam, and constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and speech. In the middle are the airlines, which are charged with the difficult task of sorting out legitimate complaints about unusual behavior from those based on prejudice and fear of people's appearance – and to do it in a short period when dealing with a particular flight.

The imams' lawsuit – brought in March at the federal district court in Minnesota – presents a thorny problem. On one hand, if individuals can be sued for making complaints that turn out to be false, it may discourage others from reporting suspicious activity. On the other, some people "still act out of prejudice," says Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minneapolis.

"What we need to do is to figure out ways to encourage people to make responsible complaints," she says. "Part of that is training those in the airlines to ask questions to help them sort out the basis for the complaints – whether it was a genuinely suspicious behavior, or is it simply a bias complaint motivated by somebody looking different."

The October incident sparked outrage among civil libertarians, Muslim-Americans, and others who thought it was un-American for five US citizens and a legal resident, who'd all been thoroughly screened by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to be suddenly taken off the plane as it sat at the gate because their behavior and Middle Eastern appearance frightened a few passengers.

The men were returning from a religious conference in Minneapolis that focused, among other things, on religious tolerance. After they went through the TSA screening process for passengers, they went to the gate for their 5:45 p.m. flight to Phoenix. It was time for afternoon prayers and so, according to the imams' complaint, three of them went to pray while the other three watched their bags.

One imam, a frequent-flier gold-card member, was upgraded to first class. He asked if he could also upgrade some of his colleagues, but was told first class was full. Once on board, the upgraded imam asked for a seat-belt extension to accommodate his girth, as he does every time he flies, according to the imams' complaint. A second imam also asked for a seat-belt extension, while another asked a passenger if he could change seats so that he could sit next to a colleague who is blind and may have needed help. He also went to talk briefly to his friend in first class.

A passenger watched, then sent a note to the plane's captain. According to airport-police records, it read: "6 suspicious Arabic men on plane spread out in their seats…. All were together, saying '… Allah … Allah ...,' cursing US involvement w/ Saddam Hussein before flight."

Airport police arrived shortly thereafter, and all six imams were taken off the plane, searched, and detained. After five hours of questioning, the FBI cleared them of any wrongdoing. Then US Airways refused to board them on another flight.

From the imams' perspective, their behavior was nothing unusual, and they denied making any statements about US foreign policy or Saddam Hussein. At issue, the imams' complaint says, is their right to practice their religion and travel in the United States free from the fear of being unfairly accused and detained because of unfounded allegations. The goal of their suit is not to intimidate anyone, their lawyers say, but to force the airline to train its employees to use better judgment when dealing with similar instances.

"Of course people should report suspicious activity," says Arsalan Iftikar, legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, which has worked closely with the imams. "Nobody who reported any suspicious activity in good faith is a target in this lawsuit.

However, making false and defamatory statements is not protected by law, and those are the people we want to depose."

Because the imams' suit also lists the passengers who allegedly made false reports, some conservative groups have taken up the defendant passengers' cause. They say the suit is part of a larger strategy by Islamist extremists to probe airline security and intimidate Americans from reporting suspicious activity.

They point to affidavits in the airport-police reports, in which another passenger and several crew members reported the imams changing seats and asking for seat-belt extensions. A US Airways flight attendant who was not working, but traveling on the flight, told police she thought the blind imam was "faking."

In the context of the age of terrorism, say conservative groups and others, the airline and the passengers – who are referred to as "John Does" in the suit – behaved appropriately.

"This suit is designed to harass and scare the passengers and to fire a shot across the bow for future John Doe passengers to give them serious pause before they report any suspicious behavior for fear of being dragged into a future lawsuit," says Gerry Nolting, a Minneapolis lawyer who represents one of the passengers pro bono. "My John Doe was simply performing his civic duty, and he shouldn't have this hanging over his head."

For the imams, the bottom line is that they believe that US Airways and its employees failed to make any effort to assess the validity of the complaints before taking action.

"If people are making claims that someone is chanting pro-Saddam statements, you need to authenticate the veracity of that. You shouldn't just throw them off the plane," says Mr. Iftikar of CAIR.

Some Muslim-Americans, noting the high levels of anxiety at airports, oppose the imams' decision to sue the passengers and the airline, saying the lawsuit will further inflame anti-Muslim sentiment in America.

"The political Islamist movement wants to make this about prayer, but it really isn't. They were pulled off the plane for a series of behaviors that were suspect," says M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a nonprofit group based in Phoenix. "There may have been things said about them that weren't true, but that needs to be figured out afterward.

[The suit] is going to compromise our most important anti-terrorist tool – people's observations."

As the controversy has escalated, some analysts see it as a sign that Muslim-American leaders need to educate the nation more about Muslims in the US.

"In a world of terror, there's plenty to be afraid of, but you can't be afraid of 1 billion Muslims," says John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, a polling firm based in Utica, N.Y. "We can't live in a world like that."

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The sharks of Australian suburbia

from the May 02, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0502/p20s01-lihc.html

The prime waterfront real estate on Australia's Gold Coast is not just habitat for humanity – even sharks want a piece of the action.

By Nick Squires Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

On the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Think of game fishing and what comes to mind? Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," perhaps? Or hooking a big marlin from the deck of a boat off the Bahamas?

Here in Australia's suburbia on the sea, they do it a little differently – from a lounge chair in the backyard; or off an apartment balcony while watching television or playing pool. And because the quarry is one of the world's most aggressive fish – the bull shark – the catch loses none of the rush it has on the high seas.

The bull shark has multiplied so fast in the waters of Gold Coast creeks and canals that amateur anglers have caught 10-foot-long specimens with nothing more sophisticated than a pork chop taken from the barbecue and attached to a hook.

The Gold Coast extends for 30 miles from the border with New South Wales to Brisbane, Queensland's state capital. It consists of high-rise hotels, shopping malls, and theme parks backed by a spaghetti-like tangle of artificial lakes and canals.

Apartment blocks and villas back onto the water in suburbs with names like Paradise Point, Mermaid Waters, and Isle of Capri.

It is Australia's answer to Spain's Costa del Sol or Florida's Miami Beach – it even boasts a suburb called Miami.

The region's subtropical climate, outdoor lifestyle, and upscale marina developments have made it the fastest growing region in Australia, attracting thousands of newcomers a year from overpriced Sydney and inclement Melbourne.

Just as the waterfront development is prime habitat for humans, so it is for the bull shark, which can tolerate salt and fresh water and have even been found living in rivers hundreds of miles inland. Also known as the Zambezi shark, river shark, and estuary whaler, the blunt-snouted, barrel-shaped predator can reach up to 12 feet in length. They are opportunistic hunters, preying on other sharks, stingrays, crabs, squid, turtles, and, occasionally, humans. [Editor's note: The original version had a photo that was removed.]

Though the Gold Coast has been developing since the 1960s, there are concerns that many of the new human arrivals have little idea of the dangers lurking beneath the surface of the inviting water.

"A lot of people are moving up here and many of them are unaware of the fact that we have sharks in the canals," says Paul Burt, a local fishing expert and newspaper columnist. "There are thousands upon thousands of them, and they are potential man-eaters. They're unpredictable – they'll bite your boat, chew your engine. They're a nut case of a shark. People catch them as they're cooking their snags [sausages] and prawns on the barbie. It's very Gold Coast, very Aussie."

It may rank as some of the easiest game fishing in the world, but bull sharks are not to be underestimated. Two people swimming in the Gold Coast's brackish canals were killed by the sharks in 2003 and a young woman was killed off nearby Stradbroke Island last year.

That's bad news in a place where leisure activities revolve around being on or in the water.
But for Saeed Granfar – an architecture student who has been fishing here since childhood – it's not all bad. In the past decade, he says, he's caught at least 100 sharks.

His technique? He baits his line with chopped eel and fixes the rod to a pontoon in his back garden. Then he retreats to his living room to watch DVDs and keep an ear out for the ratcheting sound of the line playing out.

"I have the sliding door to the TV room open and the remote control in my hand," he explains. "And as soon as I hear a sound, I run down to the pontoon. The reel takes off at about 100 k.m.h. – it's a huge adrenaline rush.

"My mum doesn't like it much because I keep breaking vases and things."

"It's definitely lazy man's fishing," says Mr. Granfar, who throws most of his catch back, but does eat some, tenderizing the meat with a special marinade.

***

With more than 300 miles of waterways snaking along the Gold Coast, installing nets to prevent the sharks entering from the sea is impractical. The channels that connect the canal network with the ocean are in constant use by boat traffic.

Even putting up enough signs to inform people of the perils of swimming or paddling stretches the resources of the local council.

Instead some on the Gold Coast see ways to turn a bad situation into gold.

There is a call, from fishing outfitters, for a "bull shark classic," a regular tournament in which fishermen would be invited from around Australia and abroad.

"We'd have prizes for the biggest bull shark and for the most caught in one day," says Kurt Mitchell, who runs Gold Coast Extreme Shark Fishing Safaris. "There are enough sharks to sustain a contest once a month."

Bull sharks' aggression and strength make them an excellent game fishing species, Mr. Mitchell says. "They home in on the bait and hit it like a ton of bricks. You have to fight them for up to an hour. It's like being hooked up to a freight train. The biggest we've pulled in was 7-1/2-feet long."

Queensland authorities believe the bull shark population is probably increasing because the excavation of new canals is expanding the species' habitat.

Fisheries officials say that while fishermen are free to catch and kill as many bull sharks as they wish – there is no limit and the species is considered common – they are opposed to a cull. The inhabitants of the Gold Coast must simply learn to live with the aggressive predators.

"There have been calls to eradicate the animal but they have as much right to be in the water as we do," explains Jeff Krause, district manager of the Queensland Fisheries Patrol. "A cull would be massively expensive, and, in any case, if you kill some, others will take their place."

Despite occasional fatalities, the number of attacks on humans is still minimal considering the fact that the Gold Coast is inhabited by nearly half a million people, says Mr. Krause.

"People need to be aware that sharks are in the water and not go swimming. We just have to learn to cohabit with them."

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Democrats brace for next vote on war funds

from the April 23, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0423/p02s01-uspo.html

Unable to override a probable veto of a war spending bill by President Bush, Democrats in Congress prepare vocal antiwar activists for disappointment.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Peterborough, N.H., and Washington

Four years after the fall of Baghdad, as US forces see the highest casualty levels of the war, Congress faces votes this week over the terms under which it will continue to fund the Iraq campaign.

Democrats, who won control of the House and Senate on an election-year promise to wind down America's combat role in Iraq, are scaling back expectations that they can muster enough votes to force President Bush to change course.

But a congressional debate over the matter set for this week, they say, will step up pressure on Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement that could help end the war – and show that antiwar forces are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill.

At issue is whether lawmakers will set a date for withdrawal of most US armed forces. Last month, the House voted to require Mr. Bush to end a US combat role in Iraq by the end of August 2008. The Senate set a target date five months earlier. Bush says he will veto any bill that includes any such timetable, and Republicans say they have ample votes to uphold that veto.

In Michigan on Friday, the president said that Iraqi and American forces are "making incremental gains in Baghdad" and that Congress could scuttle it by delaying funds needed by US forces. The delay in approving emergency war funding "is beginning to affect the ability of the Pentagon to fund our troops and all our missions," he said.

In response, House Democrats cite Army estimates that the Pentagon has what it needs to pay for the war through June. "Although it is the intention of Congress to send you an appropriations measure next week, should you follow through on your threat not to sign it, it is clear that there is ample time to work together to devise an alternative," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders in a letter on April 20.

"The troops will get the money they need when all is said and done," predicted Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a conference call with reporters on Friday. "There's a lot of Republicans who are very concerned about where we are [regarding progress in Iraq], and I think we can pick up some support on a veto override. which, even if we don't override, would show continuing momentum."

But for antiwar activists, it's not enough. Many Democratic lawmakers say they are flooded with calls from constituents urging them to live up to their campaign promises on the war.

Rep. James Moran (D) of Virginia met over breakfast recently with 30 constituents at the Table Talk Restaurant in Alexandria, Va. They wanted to know why he had voted to support funds for another year of war, after campaigning to end it.

"It's a shame I had to disappoint the people who voted for me, because they are the ones who count in the end. But it was the most definitive statement against this war that the Congress has yet had.... It went as far as we could possibly go and still get 218 votes [for passage]," he says.
The post-veto vote on war funds will be even harder, he predicts. "It will come back and pass as a clean supplemental, but not with my vote."

In the House, 42 Democratic freshmen – who voted unanimously with their leadership in support of the war-funding bill – are the key both to their party's continuing control of the House and to the standoff with the White House over Iraq.

"New members were instrumental in framing the legislation to hold the Bush administration and Iraq government accountable," says Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Such lawmakers are now preparing their antiwar constituents for disappointment. House freshmen Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, both of New Hampshire, swept into office on a tide of anti-GOP voting in their state, fueled by the war in Iraq. Both voted with party leaders to fund another year of war along with a mandatory withdrawal date. But they have had to work hard to explain that vote to constituents.

"I was very honest about the emotion and difficulty of the vote," says Representative Shea-Porter. "I tell them that you push as hard as you can and cut the best deal you can." She'll find it hard to back a version of the spending bill that removes a timetable for withdrawal. "I voted for this bill because of that deadline."

Representative Hodes, for his part, says that constituents grasp the inherent challenges. "New Hampshire voters are very sophisticated. My sense is that they understand where my heart is, and they know how the legislative process works in a difficult situation, like this one."

In Peterborough, N.H., antiwar activists staking out the front steps of town hall say they are disappointed, but that they understand the votes by their two freshmen lawmakers. "There's a game going on now; I can't say I understand the compromises," says Jim Giddings, a peace activist from Greenville, N.H. "I don't hold it against him," he said of Mr. Hodes, who represents this district. "He is trying his best, and his intentions are good."

Activists on both sides are targeting politically vulnerable lawmakers – moderate Republicans in blue states and conservative Democrats in red states.

"The only way this debacle is going to end is if the political pressure on members of Congress ... finally gets to the tipping point, and they have very little choice other than to represent the views of their constituents at home, rather than the views of George W. Bush," says Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War, an antiwar group.

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US Supreme Court reviews limits on political ads

from the April 25, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0425/p03s03-usju.html

Campaign-finance and free-speech issues are involved, and the case could reveal dynamics at the high court.

By Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When the US Supreme Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law in 2003, the decision sharply split the nine-member court.

The crucial swing vote was wielded by then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who sided with the court's liberal wing in a 5-to-4 decision affirming congressional limitations on certain forms of campaign speech and spending.

On Wednesday, the court revisits a key portion of that 2003 ruling – a provision that restricts issue advertisements funded by corporations and labor unions during the run-up to a federal election. But the case arrives before a different lineup of justices.

The case is being closely watched not only for the important campaign-finance and free-speech implications, but also because many court analysts are anxious to see if the same internal dynamic in last week's high-court abortion ruling will play a role in the two consolidated campaign-finance cases now before the court.

In the abortion case, the retirement of Justice O'Connor and her replacement with the more conservative Justice Samuel Alito paved the way for a conservative shift in the court's abortion jurisprudence. Election-law specialists say the same swing vote could be provided in the campaign-finance cases by either of the two newest members of the court – Justice Alito or Chief Justice John Roberts.

"All the court-watchers who paid attention to the confirmation process of John Roberts and Samuel Alito identified 'partial-birth' abortion and campaign finance as the precedents most likely to be reversed in the short term," says Nathaniel Persily, an election-law expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia.

At issue in the campaign-finance cases, set for oral argument on Wednesday, is whether the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 violated the free-speech rights of a Wisconsin-based advocacy group. The group, Wisconsin Right to Life, was barred from running three broadcast advertisements critical of US Senate incumbent Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin in the days leading up to the 2004 election.

The group says the law is being enforced in an unconstitutional manner. Lawyers for the group say its ads were a form of permissible grass-roots lobbying, not an outlawed form of electioneering communications.

Lawyers for the Federal Election Commission, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, and other supporters of BCRA are asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the case and uphold the law's broad, bright-line prohibition on corporate-funded preelection broadcast advertisements.

Specifically, the law prohibits corporations or labor unions from using general treasury funds for broadcast communications that are intended to influence, or have the effect of influencing, the outcome of federal elections. The ban applies 30 days before a primary and 60 days prior to a general election.

Supporters of the measure say it must be enforced in a broad way to capture "sham" issue advertisements that are designed to look like an issue debate rather than a campaign attack ad, but which in fact are designed to undercut a particular candidate's chances of winning an election.

Opponents of BCRA say the federal government has no business censoring discussions of issues, particularly in the days prior to an election. These opponents call BCRA an incumbent protection plan that turns the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment on their head to silence speech rather than to promote more of it. "The roots of this case ... lie in the right of the people to engage in self-government by employing their First Amendment liberties to amplify their voices," writes James Bopp in his brief to the court on behalf of Wisconsin Right to Life.

When it attempted to place radio and TV ads during the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bopp says, the group was not engaged in electioneering. It was waging a grass-roots lobbying effort to persuade a group of Democrats in the US Senate to abandon their campaign to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. "Grassroots lobbying has only a remote and speculative effect on elections," Bopp writes.

In defending the broad, bright-line prohibition in BCRA, Solicitor General Paul Clement says in his brief that corporations are free to air genuine issue ads provided they avoid mentioning any federal candidate by name. He says corporations are also free to air political ads without government restraint if the ad is paid for by political-action committee money rather than funds from the corporation's general treasury.

Mr. Clement warns the justices that if they embrace exemptions suggested by Wisconsin Right to Life, those exemptions would authorize the "vast majority" of ads that otherwise would be barred under BCRA. Such a development would "open the door for massive circumvention of BCRA's financing restrictions," Clement says.

Bopp counters that the government's position authorizes a level of censorship so sweeping that perhaps the only appropriate remedy is to declare that section of BCRA unconstitutional.
Although some scholars are urging that action, other analysts say the high court is unlikely to take such a dramatic step.

"What you may see in the campaign-finance cases is similar to abortion cases – a slow erosion of precedents without any punctuated overturning of previous cases," says Mr. Persily. He says that in last week's decision involving so-called partial-birth abortion, rather than overturning the court's existing precedent handed down seven years ago, the court drew distinctions between the two cases. That is, the action eroded the existing precedent without completely overruling it.

The majority of justices may act with similar caution in the campaign-finance cases, analysts say.

"Generally speaking, appointments to the court are not supposed to completely change the meaning of the First Amendment within four years," Persily says. "The more likely course of action is an opening up of an exception to the previous ruling, and that exception may then slowly swallow the rule."

The cases are Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life and McCain v. Wisconsin Right to Life. A decision is expected by late June.

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Bush, Congress reach for war's reins

from the April 25, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0425/p01s01-uspo.html

The showdown this week between President Bush and Congress on war funding is a constitutional issue over who controls the military.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

In a move that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have anticipated for weeks, Congress and President Bush are heading into their first direct confrontation over funding the Iraq war.

At stake is $124.2 billion in emergency spending, including more than $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without that funding, the Pentagon says it will run out of money to pay for the war by the end of June.

Congress proposes linking war funding to diplomatic and security benchmarks that trigger deadlines for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, to begin as early as July 1. If Mr. Bush certifies that these benchmarks are being met, the plan requires the withdrawal of US combat forces to begin Oct. 1, with a target date to complete the pullout by April 1, 2008. Bush says he will veto the bill.

In this heated atmosphere, Wednesday's briefing by Gen. David Petraeus on Capitol Hill could not be more timely.

At the heart of the dispute is a tension locked into the Constitution over who directs a war. As commander in chief, Bush says that he and generals on the ground determine the deployment of US forces, not members of Congress.

"I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their jobs," he said, after a meeting with Gen. Petraeus, who oversees all US forces in Iraq.

Democrats say that Congress must use its war-funding powers to force the president to change course on a war that most Americans no longer support.

In the sharpest exchange to date, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D), once a supporter of the Iraq war, said that he believed that Bush is "in a state of denial" over the "hard facts" of the war. At a critical point in the Iraq war and the Iraq debate at home, Congress is set to "put some spine in our policy," he said.

"In short, there is no evidence that the escalation is working – and it should come as no surprise, because, as General Petraeus has said, the ultimate solution in Iraq is a political one, not a military one," Senator Reid said in a speech Monday.

In closed briefings before the full House and Senate, Petraeus will have an opportunity to clarify whether such remarks justify the current impasse – or have been misconstrued. Republicans also invoke Patraeus as a reason for stripping withdrawal language from the bill. They note that it's defeatist for the Congress to mandate a pullout before the general – unanimously confirmed in the Senate on Jan. 26 – has time to carry out his new strategy. Democrats cite Petraeus as authority for mandating diplomatic and political benchmarks – with consequences.

"If anyone can pull this off, it's David Petraeus," said retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, who testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee on military readiness.

Petraeus stands for the view that "weapons are a means to an end, but the end is to shape politics," he says. "After the Rumsfeld era, we've rediscovered that the technocentric view of war – that saw human conflict as an engineering problem – is wrong."

Whether Petraeus can shift hearts and minds on Capitol Hill is not yet clear. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say that the vote count, as it stands, is not sufficient to override a presidential veto. But a veto also doesn't get the president the funding he needs to conduct the war.

In a vote to test House sentiment in a standoff with the president, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R) of California on April 19 proposed that House conferees insist on maintaining a mandatory withdrawal date in the final defense spending bill. The motion, which passed 215-199, was supported by only one Republican and lost nine Democratic votes. A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate is needed to overturn a presidential veto. But a veto also doesn't get the president the funding he needs to conduct the war.

Republican negotiators declined to offer even one amendment to the proposed emergency spending bill on Monday, citing the need to get on to post-veto negotiations.

"We are not generals. We are not the secretary of state. And we are most certainly not the commander in chief," said Representative Lewis, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. "We all know this bill is going nowhere fast. Let us quickly conclude this process."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky says that a mandate to withdraw troops no later than Oct. 1, no matter how well the Iraqi government meets its benchmarks or US troops are succeeding in the field, "sends absolutely the wrong message to al Qaeda, our allies in the region, and our forces in the field."

But many congressional experts see this week's confrontation over war funding as a critical test for a Congress that has long deferred to the White House over the conduct of the war.

"The Democrats are not micromanaging; they're macromanaging. They're not trying to direct tactical units. They're trying to influence the general direction of the war," says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information.
"Congress has a right to do what it's doing. We still have civilian supremacy in this country, which still includes Congress," says Louis Fisher, an expert on presidential war powers at the Library of Congress.

On Tuesday, Bush addressed the showdown with Congress over Iraq war funding at the White House.

"I'm disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course," Bush said.

"They chose to make a political statement," he said. "That's their right but it is wrong for our troops and it's wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders."

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Tension rises in Washington over war-funding bill standoff

from the April 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0430/p01s01-uspo.html

Congress is eyeing three strategies after an all-but-certain White House veto of the Iraq war bill.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The Democrats controlling Congress could have rushed the emergency war-funding bill they just voted to the president's desk, where a presidential veto is all but inevitable.

Instead, they're waiting until May 1 – the four-year anniversary of President Bush's "mission accomplished" speech on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

It's a signal of the drama about to unfold on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as lawmakers and the White House figure out what to do after a veto. Increasingly, the most likely scenario looks like a high-stakes game of chicken where each side waits for the other to blink.

Mr. Bush says he wants a clean bill: no extra spending, no timetables or deadlines. Democrats, citing the 2006 elections, say they have a mandate to change direction in Iraq – and that the public will back them in a standoff with the White House over the war.

On Friday, the president invited lawmakers to the White House on May 2, after his veto, to discuss the "way forward." So far, neither side is disclosing negotiating points. But, in the run-up to an expected presidential veto, consensus is building around three approaches.

For Congress, three options on Iraq

One option, favored by nearly all Republicans and some moderate Democrats, is to agree to strip out deadlines for withdrawal but to still require that the president certify that his own benchmarks for progress in Iraq are being met. These include political reconciliation, a fair distribution of Iraqi oil revenues, and a stronger Iraqi role in improving the security situation on the ground.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska, a key swing vote, says he voted for the supplemental bill, despite opposing deadlines for withdrawal, because he was certain that they would be negotiated out of the bill after a presidential veto.

"I favor the Senate bill, minus the deadlines," he said, on the eve of a return visit to Iraq last week.

Advocates for this view say they expect to find the votes to push through a deal.

"I'm quite optimistic that Congress will provide the necessary funds in a timely way for the troops," says Sen. John Warner (R) of Virginia, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He says he is developing a post-veto deal with centrists on both sides of the aisle.

"I have the elements in my pocket," he said, after the Senate voted 51-46 for the $124 billion emergency spending bill last Thursday.

Another option, favored by top House appropriators, is to pass a bill to fund the war for two months, and reevaluate after the president's "surge" is fully implemented. Bush administration officials say that a short-term fix doesn't give the Pentagon the flexibility it needs to prosecute the war.

A third option is to stand pat, pressuring the White House to yield or face a funding cutoff. This strategy could also force Republicans in Congress to vote for politically unpopular measures.
"The closer it gets to elections in 2008, the more focused the Republicans in the Senate will be on this issue," says Sen. Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois, the deputy Democratic leader. "They have to decide if they want to take the president's position as their party position into the election."

For now, Democrats still support the view that the president should just sign the bill.

"It's a great bill. The president should read it and sign it," says Rep. John Murtha (D) of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House panel that drafts defense spending bills. A longtime strong supporter of the military, his repudiation of his 2002 vote supporting the use of force in Iraq gave a congressional face to the antiwar movement.

Mr. Murtha and some other antiwar Democrats are eyeing the third option – that Congress opt to do nothing after a presidential veto and thus force a quick end to the war.

Bush has veto but needs funds

The president has the votes to sustain a veto on Capitol Hill, but that still leaves him without funding to prosecute his war, Murtha says.

"For some time, the assumption has been that eventually Democrats would have to go along with some kind of funding, absent timetables," says John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

"But it's possible that that isn't true, especially with reports that the administration is putting off its evaluation of the surge until September," he adds. "At some time, the public patience will run out."

The $124 billion spending bill, voted out of the House and Senate on near-partisan lines, sets deadlines that require the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq to begin no later than Oct. 1 and to end by a target date of April 1, 2008. It also includes more than $20 billion in spending that the White House says is not needed.

In the recent past, presidents have typically won such standoffs with Capitol Hill. Despite strong public opposition to the war in Vietnam, Congress didn't impose limits on the president's conduct of the war until the very end of that conflict, after the president had already decided to end combat operations. When President Clinton stared down insurgent House Republicans over their proposed spending and tax cuts in 1995, the public blamed Congress for the government shutdown.

Democrats say that's less likely to happen to them, because while the public wanted government services that shut down when the government ran out of money in 1995, they do not want the Iraq war, and will be less likely to punish the party that pulls the plug on it.

"If the president vetoes the emergency spending bill, he's the one who will be denying our troops funding and he's the one who will be denying the American people a path out of Iraq," says Sen. Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate.

Just two months into the 2003 war in Iraq, the president announced that "major combat operations in Iraq had ended." At the time, nearly 3 in 4 Americans approved of how the president was handling the situation in Iraq.

Reversal of poll numbers on Iraq

Four years and more than 3,300 US combat deaths later, those approval ratings are exactly reversed: Nearly 3 in 4 Americans disapprove of the president's conduct of the war, according to a poll released last week by CBS/New York Times.

Asked who should have the final say about troop levels in Iraq, 57 percent say it should be Congress; only 35 percent say it should be the president, according to the same poll. But pressed to say whether Congress should continue withholding funding after a presidential veto until the president yields, only 36 percent supported that idea and 56 percent opposed it.

Those poll numbers are giving Democrats more confidence in the showdown with the president over funding.

Senate Democratic leaders say that the president can expect it to take most of the month of May to come up with an alternative funding bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a new bill could come sooner.

"Our goal is to try to achieve this in May, but starting a bill brand new is not easy," says Senator Durbin.

In the end, the outcome "depends on the facts on the ground," he adds. "I give the president the possibility that he's right and we're wrong. The war is what's driving the nation."

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The bounty of Katmandu: books

from the April 20, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0420/p19s01-hfes.html

Katmandu is an exotic-sounding place, but what it reminds her of most is reading.

By Sue Dickman

I have always been afraid of running out of things to read. It's not rational, but even as a child, I needed a tottering stack of library books to make me feel secure, to reassure me that there would always be another book waiting. It was not until I was in my early 20s that I actually faced the prospect of a briefly bookless life.

I had arrived in Katmandu, Nepal, expecting to find my friend Annie waiting for me. Instead, I found a note telling me she was walking a Nepali friend to her village and wouldn't be back for at least a week. The timing was also not in my favor: It was April 1990, just weeks after the revolution, and the city was tense. There was a nightly curfew, sunset to sunrise. Alone in my hotel room at night, I read every book I'd brought with me in the first three days. Mild panic ensued.

I was saved from despair by my discovery of the Tantric Books Shop in Thamel, the hippie traveler neighborhood near my hotel. Immediately upon entering, I found myself transported to a familiar and beloved world – shelf after packed shelf of fiction from every English-speaking country I could name, not to mention shelves of books in Spanish, Hebrew, and Japanese.

Then everything changed for me. I may have been alone in Katmandu and nervous about the revolution, but inside the bookshop I was happily occupied and thrilled with possibilities. There were other things I might have to worry about, but books were no longer one of them.

I chose carefully that first afternoon, finding a copy of Mary McCarthy's "The Group" for 45 Nepali rupees. I passed it on to Annie to read when she finally returned, and it still sits on my shelf today, the heart-shaped stamp from the Tantric Books Shop faded but clear.

I've returned to Katmandu twice since then, and I have always made sure to save time for a leisurely survey of the bookshops. I've lived in India, which is a fabulous place to buy new books, but Katmandu wins hands down for the best used-book market I've ever encountered. So many international travelers move through Katmandu, and nearly all of them bring books, which they often sell or trade when they're done. Even in the small radius of Thamel, there is enough business for multiple stores to thrive. I've spent hours moving from the Nightingale Book Shop to the Walden Book House and the Barnes and Noble Book House (no relation to the US bookseller), saving time for the Tantric Books Shop, for old time's sake.

I love Katmandu for its wealth of books, but I also love the seeming unlikeliness of that, which is part of the charm. Outside in the streets, Nepalis, Tibetans, Indians, and Westerners all mingle. Temple bells ring, prayer flags flutter. The streets teem with men on bicycles, and when the sky is clear, hints of high Himalayan peaks are visible. You are, perhaps, as far from home as you can get without starting to come back the other way. But inside the many bookshops, the shelves are lined with paperbacks bearing familiar names, stories waiting to be discovered. And the books aren't just the new, pristine, and fashionable, but books that other travelers have left behind, books that have a history of their own. The wealth of options is so great, you can lose yourself for hours just choosing.

In my house in America, my shelves are crowded. Books pile up on the floor and teeter in stacks. If I bought no more books, I could still spend years reading everything I own that I have not yet read.

And yet, if I were to land in Katmandu tomorrow, I know what I would do. I might fortify myself first at Mike's Breakfast Place or the Fire and Ice Pizzeria; I might take an invigorating walk around the Boudhanath Stupa. But in the end, I would be back in Thamel, spending happy hours in the bookshops, books accumulating on the floor beside me, without a worry as to how I would get them home or when I might read them. If I never return to Katmandu, I will still think of it, fondly and gratefully, as a place where there will always be something new to read.

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Visiting the end of the world

from the April 20, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0420/p12s01-litr.html

Reader Rosemary Smith took a cruise to Antarctica.

Where did you go? We traveled to Antarctica, the Chilean fjords, Patagonia, and the Magellan Channel.

Where did you stay?

Aboard the MS Nordkapp, a 350-passenger Norwegian cruise ship. The vessel is a specially designed for awe-inspiring cruising of the "White Continent." Our cabin provided the best in adventure cruising thanks to its panoramic views.

What did you do?

We rounded Cape Horn and sailed across Drake's Passage. Due to rough water, many of our landings by PolarCirkel boats were, well, quite exciting. The islands were surrounded by the spectacular Andes mountains, ice cliffs, glaciers and icebergs, some as large as small cities. We observed thousands of penguins sitting on their rock nests awaiting their soon-to-be hatched offspring. We visited the Museum at the End of the World in Ushuaia, Argentina – the world's southernmost city.

What did you learn?

The Antarctica International Treaty protects the continent from commercial exploitation of resources. Seventy percent of the world's water is contained within the continent.
What did you eat? The Nordkapp culinary staff provided sumptuous buffets and four-course sitdown dinners. Our entrées included various kinds of fish, reindeer, mutton, lamb, venison, and even a whole roasted pig!

• Where have you been? What did you do? Write us at Weekend.

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Honesty about abstinence-only

from the April 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0424/p08s01-comv.html

To confront the apparent failures of these programs is not to give up on teen abstinence as a standard.

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. The abstinence-only sex-education programs on which the federal government has been spending around $176 million a year have been shown to have zero effect. That's right: zero.

"Abstinence-only" classes in public schools, funded by provisions of the 1996 federal welfare reform law, focus on the message of waiting until marriage. They do not teach about contraception or safe sex.

But a national study that tracked 2,000 young people over several years has found no evidence that such classes as currently taught actually increased rates of sexual abstinence. It found that program participants had similar numbers of sexual partners compared with peers who were not in the specialized abstinence programs.

Among teens who had sex by the end of the period of the study, the average age of their first intercourse was the same for participants as for nonparticipants: 14.9 years.

This is especially disappointing given that earlier research seemed to indicate that abstinence programs were at least changing teen attitudes, if not behavior.

The study, carried out by the nonpartisan firm Mathematica Policy Research Inc., did turn up some interesting threads for further study. It suggests that peer relationships are important predictors for abstinence – in other words, that young people will refrain from sex if their close friends do, too. The study also found no particular increase in unprotected sex.

Sex education, of course, is primarily the responsibility of parents, and shouldn't be confined solely to the classroom. Parents, along with religious communities, can impart messages of restraint, unselfishness, and commitment that shape relationships. Where these values are lacking in the home, then public schools can have a role, one with difficult policy choices, as this report points out.

Critics of abstinence-only have used the study to say, "I told you so!"

"This is social agenda masquerading as teen pregnancy prevention," said Martha Kempner of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US. "This administration has allowed ideology to trump science." Voices on the other side have called for the programs to continue. And a top federal official, commenting that the study lacked rigor, said the government has no intention of changing funding priorities in light of the study – which was conducted for the US Department of Health and Human Services.

So where do we go from here?

To confront the apparent failures of abstinence programs is not to give up on teen abstinence as a standard.

The welfare reform that led to these classes was a collaboration between President Clinton and a Republican Congress. Now the Bush administration, faced with allegations of ignoring science, has an opportunity to refute that charge by heeding these findings and retooling its efforts.

It may be that sex education that includes abstinence is more useful than abstinence-only classes. The head of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy said Mathematica's research supports what other studies show: "The most effective programs are those that say abstinence is the best choice but birth control and protection are also worth knowing about."

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Does death penalty ever apply to those found insane?

from the April 18, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0418/p03s03-usju.html

The US Supreme Court hears Wednesday the case of a killer who may not grasp the tie between his crime and his punishment.

By Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

There is universal agreement in the United States that an individual convicted of a capital crime who is mentally incompetent may not be executed. To do so would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

But just how mentally ill does a defendant have to be to trigger that broadly accepted Eighth Amendment prohibition?

That is the question the US Supreme Court takes up on Wednesday in a case involving the often bizarre legal odyssey of Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti.

Mr. Panetti, who has a long history of mental illness, was found guilty of the 1992 double slaying of his wife's parents. He shot them at close range in their kitchen as his wife and his three-year-old daughter watched. He took the child and his wife hostage, but later surrendered and confessed to police.

After being found competent to stand trial, Panetti fired his lawyer and represented himself. For the trial, he donned a Tom Mix-style cowboy outfit complete with boots, bandana, and hat.
He argued an insanity defense, advising the jury that only an insane person could prove insanity. Then he tried to subpoena 200 witnesses to testify on his behalf, including John F. Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus. As one psychiatrist put it: Mr. Panetti's mind "saddles up and rides off in all directions."

Panetti testified at his own trial. He assumed an alternate personality named "Sarge," who recounted in a barely coherent babble impressionistic details of the killings.

The jury found him guilty, and the next day sentenced him to death.

Panetti, who refuses to take any medication, has become a jailhouse preacher, perpetually studying and quoting his well-worn Bible. His lawyer says he is convinced that his religious devotion is the true reason for his death sentence.

"Mr. Panetti believes that demonic forces, in league with the State of Texas, have orchestrated his execution in a final effort to prevent him from preaching the gospels of Jesus Christ," writes Panetti's lawyer, Keith Hampton of Austin, in his brief to the court. "According to Mr. Panetti, the State of Texas is using the murder of his wife's parents as a pretext to fulfill the devil's plot to silence him."

This is the core of the issue before the Supreme Court: Whether a death row inmate whose delusions prevent him from understanding the connection between his crimes and his imminent execution is mentally competent enough to face the death penalty.

Every judge or jury in Texas that has considered his case has concluded that Panetti has a mental illness but that he is nonetheless mentally competent enough to be executed.

The test in Texas is whether Panetti is aware that he is to be executed and aware of the state's reason for meting out that punishment.

Panetti's lawyer argues that the Texas standard is too low. Rather than mere awareness, the condemned man must be capable of having a rational understanding of the connection between his crime and his punishment, Mr. Hampton says.

"There is a big difference between knowing you are in a room and knowing why you are in a room," says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

If Panetti doesn't understand why he is being executed, it undermines one of society's key goals behind the punishment – retribution, Panetti's lawyer says.

Others disagree. "Retribution is not focused on the mind of the offender," says Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, in a friend of the court brief. "The focus of retribution is on society as a whole and what makes for a just society."

A just society punishes those who are morally responsible for their crimes, he says. "Panetti knows what he did and knows that he has been sentenced to death for the crime," Mr. Scheidegger writes. "His delusional belief in a conspiracy against him does not negate his moral responsibility for the crime he chose to commit and still knows he committed."

Panetti's lawyer counters that retribution is designed to force the offender to endure suffering proportionate to his crime to pay a debt owed to society. That is why the offender's mental capacity at the time of punishment is crucial to retribution, Hampton says. "The offender must suffer for the right reason before the community can confidently conclude that he is getting his just desserts for his wrongdoing," Hampton writes.

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A revival of Argentina's Thoreau

from the April 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0424/p20s01-litr.html

The rediscovery of the work and influence of William Henry Hudson fans the flame of romantic naturalism.

By Richard O'Mara Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Buenos Aires, Argentina

If Reuben Ravera has his way, one day his museum will be a destination for culture tourists, like the Café Tortoni, jammed these days with Americans, Europeans, and Japanese eager to be in a place where the great Jorge Luis Borges hung his hat.

Mr. Ravera's task is as hard as rocks. Unlike Borges, whose fame seems brighter today than when he was alive, the name William Henry Hudson doesn't sit on the lips of the literati, local or foreign. He lived a long time ago, which is why most people know little of his contribution to Argentina's national culture, though his books are available in stores and libraries across the land.

"The fact that he wrote in English is a problem," Ravera said, as we squirmed out of the dense traffic of downtown Buenos Aires, heading out of town toward the William Henry Hudson Museum and Ecological Park. "Most Argentines think he was English."

During our drive through the suburbs we saw evidence of at least an institutional memory of Hudson's presence here so many years ago: a train station bears his name, a small town by the side of the highway, too; there are ads for a housing development called Altos de Hudson (Hudson Heights), and Hudson Avenue leads into the eponymous park.

Confusion about Hudson's nationality is understandable. He was himself confused. Argentine born, the child of Anglophile immigrants from Massachusetts, Hudson thought he was destined to be an Englishman. He would be that, and much more. Through his writings and civic efforts to create laws to protect birds and other animals, he fiercely rejected the biblically sanctioned notion that the natural world was man's to conquer and dispose of at will. His was a voice in the wilderness which, like that of Henry David Thoreau, was actually heard. Were he to be writing today, he'd surely find an audience in the green movement.

To Hudson, the natural world, the environment, was sacred and not to be abused. Even in works like "Green Mansions," a romantic fantasy, one cannot help but come away feeling that the principal character in the novel was the forest itself. John Galsworthy wrote in 1915: "Hudson, whether he knows it or not, is now the chief standard-bearer of another faith.... All Hudson's books breathe this spirit of revolt against our new enslavement by towns and machinery."

In "The Purple Land," Hudson wrote, "Ah, yes, we are all vainly seeking after happiness in the wrong way.... We are still marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad we are getting."

When he was 32, Hudson left Argentina for England, never to return. He told his brother he wanted to live in the land of his father's father, and, it is said, to write. So what did he write about? Argentina's flora, fauna, and other wonders. Hudson was a naturalist; he spent the first three decades of life exploring the pampas and the Patagonian desert, observing birds and animals, trees and other elements of the natural world, and collecting stories from the people.

His observations from The Naturalist in La Plata" have been with me for decades, non-sequiturs to glaze the eyes of my friends: The puma will never attack a human being, not even to defend itself. Birds in some flocks tend their injured or exhausted members, while cattle who are ill are often attacked by the herd. Guanaco in Patagonia have a place where they go to die. Nobody knows why.

One of his more famous books, a memoir of his youth, "Far Away and Long Ago," is rich with tales of Homeric gaucho knife-fighters, bandits, the cleverness of armadillos, the olfactory intelligence of horses, and the behaviors of spiders and serpents. The book reveals the preoccupation of Hudson's life: birds above all, birds during the time when they had no fear of men and darkened the skies in uncountable numbers.

Hudson began his memoir with a recollection of his natal house, the very building we were heading for: "The house of the Twenty-five Ombu trees ... gigantic in size and standing wide apart in a row about four hundred yards long."

The museum house blazes with white-washed brilliance as we approach through a forest. Only two 400-year-old ombus remain. "Hudson predicted it would disappear," Ravera said of the species which is actually a giant herb, "because it has no use for man." But it won't, if the park staff has its way: in the past two decades they've planted 25 ombus and thousands of other indigenous trees.

Hudson artifacts are displayed in the three-room house: his watch; a sketch for the William Rothenstein portrait of Hudson that hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery; and rustic touches that recall his naturalist activities: ostrich eggs, a puma skull, the skeleton of an armadillo, the clay nest of the peculiar oven bird.

A painting of a bird, donated by the Japanese city of Yokohama, recalls Hudson's link to Japan, established by the marriage of his grandniece, Laura Denholm Hudson, to Yoshi Shinya, the first Japanese immigrant to Buenos Aires. Their child, Violeta Shinya, became the first director of the museum, in 1964. Hudson's books reached Japan late in the 19th century, and were included in the curriculum when the study of English was instituted in the schools.

"The Japanese," a local historian wrote, "found in Hudson a defender of nature, an attitude close to the pantheistic spiritualism of Shinto, the traditional veneration of the natural world."

Japan's conservation-oriented Suntory Foundation donated the money to purchase 120 acres to establish the park, which shelters 144 species of birds, 25 species of trees, and animals such as the avestruz (Argentine ostrich) and the nutria. There are paths through the forest beneath the surging ombus, the weird palo boracho (drunkard tree), and the hackberry. There are meadows spotted with shafts of pampas grass, and the Arroyo de las Conchitas, the stream and stopover for migrating birds where, Hudson wrote, they'd gather by the thousands. Bird-watchers frequent the place; others seek its tranquility.

While I walked with Ravera, a large, blue butterfly arrived suddenly on the periphery of my vision. Then as if annoyed at my indifference, it flew directly in front of my face and seized my full attention. Surely in those millions of words he wrote, Hudson must have said something about these shimmering creatures that dance in the air. I would find it.

***

Violeta Shinya died in 1993, two years before Ravera, my guide, chauffeur, and fellow admirer of Hudson, took over. Ravera hopes for an "awakening of interest" in Hudson's books: "His writing is relevant now, owing to the preoccupation with the environment." He hopes to connect with the tourist industry in Buenos Aires, which these days is crowded with visitors from five continents and the interior. He wants to arrange transit out to the museum, only about 30-odd miles away. A taxi now will get you there and back for about $20.

Ravera is a bearded, bearish man who studied engineering before landing his job at the museum and whose principal qualities may be patience and the ability to make do with less. Though the house was officially declared a historic monument by the Province of Buenos Aires in 1970, and is visited by 20,000 people a year, he and his staff are hardly flush with government money. Seven employees earn between $270 and $600 a month, and there is little left for maintenance of the house, plantation, and three outbuildings, including a small library full of books by and about Hudson and correspondence among Hudson and his siblings.

While poring over this material I found something that alluded to the pain often imposed by the separation of loved ones back when continents were connected only by slow-moving ships. It was Hudson's dedication of his new book, "Long Ago and Far Away," to his favorite sister: "To my dear sister, Maria Elena, love and best wishes. From W.H. Hudson, New Year's Day, 1919."
He could not have known that she would never see his book, that she'd died even before he picked up his pen in London, leaving him as the last of the six children of Daniel and Caroline Hudson.

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Virginia Tech video scruples

from the April 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0424/p09s01-codc.html

How well did the news media handle the Cho material?

Washington

Disturbing images are nothing new. In the post 9/11 world we see them increasingly often.
That doesn't mean the discussion of how to handle them has gotten any easier for the news media. The way outlets dealt with the video and photos of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-hui and the uproar it created showed just how complicated the issue can be and how elusive simple right or wrong answers can be.

To recap, on Wednesday, NBC News received a package apparently mailed by the killer between his two Monday-morning shooting sprees. News staff, using gloves and masks so as not to taint potential evidence, made copies of the photos, video, and manifesto they received and then turned the contents over to the authorities.

On that evening's "Nightly News," anchor Brian Williams explained to viewers what happened that day, then warned that the network knew it was airing the words of a killer but believed there was something to be gained from airing excerpts of the material.

The reaction was exactly what one would expect with such a charged issue. Some people said they saw NBC's actions as gruesome and exploitative. Others believed that it helped shed light on the mind-set of a killer.

The network surely would have been criticized had it chosen not to air it instead.

But it's important here to consider how thoughtfully a news organization reaches its decision on such a matter. Does the material help explain the story or is it primarily eliciting a reaction? Does it do the bidding of the perpetrator, or does it inform the public? How much can be released and in what way to balance the material's value to the audience versus the wishes of the offending party?

These are questions the news media face increasingly often today as sources become more sophisticated about manipulation. Think of terrorist execution videos, martyr videos, Al Qaeda video releases, even the footage of the jets striking the twin towers. A good argument can be made for the way NBC handled the release of the Cho material, at least initially, as offering important insight into his mind-set. It's hard not to come away from the video with a sense of just how deeply disturbed the young man was. In interviews, several Virginia Tech students, who had the most reason to be upset about the video, seemed to understand its value and why people would want to see it.

The same really can't be said, however, for the way the media handled the material in the time immediately following the NBC release.

That night, and particularly the next day, the news media were flooded with Cho's images and words creating a backlash with some readers and viewers. And though much of the debate centered on the airing of the video and how TV news organizations handled it, the pictures of Cho were arguably just as troubling and abused just as much by other outlets.

On Thursday morning, several newspapers ran huge pictures from the package with Cho brandishing handguns. And on the night of the release, one cable news website ran as its primary image a large picture of Cho pointing a gun directly into the camera – at the reader.

After some protest, a number of news organizations quickly sensed they had stepped over the line and put restrictions on the use of the video. (Even before the public anger, NBC decided to limit the video's usage.)

If the initial airing by NBC News was arguably justifiable, what was wrong with the torrent of coverage that followed? It was used primarily to elicit an emotional response – a response Cho himself wanted to create. The sheer repetition went beyond informing people.

It immortalized him and let him, not the events of the shooting, dominate the news cycle. And it desensitized the audience to an extraordinary and frightening collection of material and ultimately, in some sense, to the event itself.

This won't be the last time news organizations are faced with the issue of what to do with troubling material. The question, as always, is whether media organizations, which often decry feeding frenzies after participating in them, take forward the lessons from this week.

Just rushing something to the audience because it is new or startling isn't enough. There may never be a perfect response, but there should be an explainable one.

• Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, writes a twice-monthly column on media issues. E-mail him at Dante Chinni.

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The showdown in D.C. over Iraq war funding

from the April 16, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0416/p03s02-uspo.html

In the end, Bush will get the $100-billion plus he has requested from Congress, key Democrats say.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

In the great showdown between the White House and congressional Democrats over war funding, it may be all over but the shouting.

Key Democrats – such as Senate Armed Services chair Carl Levin (D) of Michigan – have already made clear that President Bush will get his $100 billion-plus to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.

Still, the usual Kabuki theater of antagonistic congressional-presidential relations is likely to play out: This week, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate are expected to negotiate a final bill on war funding that would set a timetable for troop withdrawal. On Wednesday, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate will meet with Mr. Bush at the White House, where they will disagree on the timetable issue. Bush will veto Congress's bill. Then, lacking enough votes to override the veto, Congress will go back and pass a funding measure that the president is willing to sign.

Hard-line antiwar Democrats will be unhappy, but the party will have avoided the risk of being portrayed as harming US troops on the ground. And Democrats know that public opinion plays to their advantage; a majority of Americans favor a timetable for withdrawal. So even if the Democrats lose the current battle over the funding bill, they know the larger climate works in their favor.

"A lot of Americans would be happy if they learned that American troops would be leaving Iraq at a date certain," says Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Lurking behind the latest battle between the White House and Congress is the memory of the 21-day government shutdown of 1995, when the Republican Congress and Democratic president, Bill Clinton, reached an impasse over the budget. Republicans, newly emboldened by their 1994 takeover of Congress, took the fight to President Clinton, who refused to back down. Ultimately, the public blamed the Republicans for the shutdown, which disrupted some government services.

This time it's the Democrats who are feeling emboldened by their return to power in Congress and Bush's low job approval ratings. But they know there's a danger that they overplay their hand – as then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republicans did in 1995. Now, Bush and Vice President Cheney are using every available bully-pulpit moment to lay out what they see as the consequences of delayed funding for the war, issuing daily counts on how many days it has been since the president submitted an emergency supplemental funding request. Sunday marked Day 69.

"I look forward to hearing how members of Congress plan to meet their responsibilities and provide our troops with the funding they need," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address, referring to the meeting with congressional leaders of both parties on Wednesday.

Initially, the Democratic leaders resisted attending the meeting, saying that Bush had offered no room for compromise and thus questioned the point of talking. But after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent meeting in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Democrats realized that a refusal to meet with Bush could be a public-relations blunder.

Bush's position that the delayed funding would cause harmful extensions of soldiers' deployments was then undercut by the announcement last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that active-duty soldiers' one-year tours will be extended to 15 months. He said the move was necessary to support the ongoing troop increase in Iraq.

Ultimately, then, both sides "may be looking for ways to avoid the kind of real confrontation that would test each side's theory that they can pull a Clinton," says Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas, Austin, referring to Clinton's public-relations victory over the 1995-96 government shutdowns.

For the Democrats, keeping the Iraq funding question on the front burner has had the effect of drowning out discussion of other topics.

When the Democrats took control of Congress in January, and both parties spoke of a desire to find common ground, topping the list was immigration reform. When the Republicans controlled Congress, the president had more support for his comprehensive reform plan from Democrats than from Republicans.

Last week, in a speech from Yuma, Ariz., Bush once again laid out principles that seemed more in line with most Democrats than with his own party – despite a list of conditions for immigrant labor he and Senate Republicans had issued recently that took a more conservative turn.

"It may be Bush's effort to soften up members of his own party to help him get something done," says Mr. Buchanan, who notes that it is in both parties' interest to be seen "getting things done" before the next election. "I think both sides are better off cutting some kind of deal on a big measure like immigration than they are in coming to stalemate as they have in so many other places."

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Early voting to shake up '08 primaries

from the April 19, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p03s03-uspo.html

A presidential candidate with limited funds could find it more difficult to gain momentum in the primary process.

By Ben Arnoldy Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.

Traditionally, the path to the presidency was just that: a linear campaign trail that moved from Iowa to New Hampshire and onward through a series of state contests, each building on the momentum of the last.

The 2008 primary race, however, looks as if it will be run on parallel tracks. Candidates will still be making the classic treks to Dubuque, Iowa, and Dixville Notch, N.H. But strategists expect the well-heeled campaigns will, at the same time, be mobilizing early voting drives in California, Florida, and Texas.

The reason: California's primary comes early this election, and nearly half the voters here are expected to cast ballots days or even weeks before the polls open. While the primary calendar remains highly fluid, Florida and Texas – two other states with lots of early voters – are among those jostling to move up their election days as well.

This parallel campaigning may make it harder for less-funded candidates to gain momentum if they win early primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. "The early absentee voting is one more obstacle for insurgent candidates," says Dan Schnur, a California political strategist.
"Somebody who pulls off an upset in Iowa or New Hampshire is going to be facing an even steeper hill to climb in these states, because [some] of the votes will already be in the bank."

Those "banked" votes would be either absentee ballots, which can be turned in as soon as they are mailed out, or votes cast early at precincts that open weeks ahead of election day in some states.

Campaigns that can afford to do so will want to "lock in" their loyal voters in these states at the same time as they are focusing on the earliest races, says John Fortier, author of the book "Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils."

The logic, he says, runs like this: "Let's get the people we know are going to vote for us out there now. Let's not let chance or something affect getting them to the polls."

Those who capture large numbers of early votes will have a head start on competitors as the race moves to the big states, and an extra cushion in case of an early campaign stumble.
To be sure, a top showing in New Hampshire and Iowa is still expected to be of paramount importance. Candidates could even parlay the wins in those states to motivate supporters in California to vote early.

But the ability to build on early momentum depends on having the get-out-the-vote infrastructure in place ahead of time, says Dr. Fortier. Staff-intensive operations cannot be ginned up overnight, even with a rush of donations after wins in Iowa or New Hampshire.
For now, the Iowa caucuses are slated for Jan. 14, 2008, although they could go earlier if New Hampshire moves up its tentative Jan. 22 date as early as December. But big states are determined to go early, too:

• The Florida House and Senate have both passed bills for a Jan. 29 primary date. In 2006, 47 percent of voters cast either early or absentee ballots. Absentee ballots often are mailed five weeks in advance. And precincts open 15 days ahead of election day to allow for early voting.

• The Texas House has approved a Feb. 5 primary, with the issue now heading to the Senate. Absentee voting is not widespread in Texas, but about a third of voters cast ballots early at precincts that open two weeks before election day.

• California's primary is also set for Feb. 5, with experts predicting nearly half of all ballots cast to be absentee.

It's difficult to gauge how many voters will actually commit weeks before their election deadline, however.

"Generally, the trend that we are seeing is people turn in their ballots closer to election day," says Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum, associate director of the early voting information center at Reed College in Oregon. "So we'll see a trickle a couple days after people will receive their ballots, and it becomes a flood right before the election."

In recent California elections, roughly 15 to 20 percent of likely voters had already voted by the final week before election day, says Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

If a candidate leads significantly in early voting numbers, he or she might leak that information to drum up momentum across the country, some analysts have suggested.

"I suspect that voters would recoil from that and that there would be a lot of public relations implications: negative feedback to the organizations doing it," says Mr. DiCamillo. The Field Poll, he says, has never revealed early voting results for ethical reasons, and neither have California media outlets.

"It's a distorted read, and no one knows how distorted it is before all the votes are counted," he adds. That's partially because a pollster cannot know the total number of votes cast until polls close, meaning the sample size is in question.

Early voters also tend to be disproportionately older and white. DiCamillo notes that presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton polls very well among Hispanics in California, meaning her real strength may be obscured before election day.

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Gonzales's testimony leaves senators frustrated

from the April 20, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0420/p25s02-uspo.html

Not recalling key dates and meetings, the US attorney general says he had a 'limited' role in the controversial firing of eight federal attorneys.

By Peter Grier Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

– Key senators from both parties appear to have a message for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: You haven't regained our confidence.

At a tough April 19 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmaker after lawmaker reacted with various degrees of disbelief of or frustration with the attorney general's explanations of events surrounding the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors.

Mr. Gonzales's appearance before the committee has been widely viewed in Washington as a crucial point in his long struggle to get past the attorney firing furor.

He has already stayed in his job longer than many pundits have predicted he might, given the intensity of the political storm. But even his chief backer – President Bush – has said that Gonzales has repair work to do on his relationship with Capitol Hill.

At Thursday's hearing, many senators seemed especially frustrated with Gonzales's continued insistence that he had played a minor role in the firing process – something that's been disputed in public testimony from other current and former Department of Justice witnesses.

"I am not satisfied with his answers," said panel chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont after three hours of testimony.

Gonzales's protestations of uninvolvement are "significantly if not totally at variance with the facts," said ranking minority member and former chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R) of Pennsylvania.

Gonzales did say that he had discussions with White House political adviser Karl Rove and Mr. Bush himself that dealt with GOP complaints that voter-fraud cases weren't being pursued by a number of US attorneys, including David Iglesias in New Mexico.

In addition, the attorney general had told other Justice Department officials that US Attorney Carol Lam, in San Diego, needed to bring more immigration cases.

But these actions did not constitute involvement in the attorney dismissal process, insisted Gonzales, despite the fact that both Mr. Iglesias and Ms. Lam were among those fired.

That's because he didn't realize those discussions might have a bearing on which attorneys would eventually appear on the dismissal list, according to Gonzales. "I did not view [them] at the time as part of the review process," said Gonzales.

The discussions were just part of his overall job of managing the department, said Gonzales.
Overall, his role in the firings was "limited," said the attorney general. He did make the overall decision to go forward with the dismissals, but when he did so, he hadn't reviewed the performance records of the prosecutors who were about to lose their jobs.

Asked when he'd made the firing decision, Gonzales testified that he could not recall the specific date.

Many of the attorney general's replies were framed with the care of a veteran attorney, which of course Gonzales is. That gave some of them a disconcerting ring.

"I now understand there was a conversation with myself and the president," said Gonzales at one point.

The attorney general acknowledged that his calender listed a Nov. 27, 2006, meeting with top Justice officials at which the firings were discussed. But "I have no recollection of that meeting," said Gonzales.

Gonzales retains friends in the Senate. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah, among others, defended him during his April 19 appearance.

But many Republicans on the panel were critical of Gonzales's performance or the firings in general.

"It's clear to me that some of these [fired attorneys] just had personality conflicts with people in your office or the White House," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina.

"The Department of Justice needs a vigorous leader. I don't think we'll have a vote to remove him, but he'll have to evaluate how effective he thinks he can be," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama.

Gonzales deserves more time to show he can still do his job, said Senator Sessions. "He deserves to have the ink dry [on the hearing transcript] a little bit."

• Staff writer Gail Russell Chaddock contributed to this report. Material from wire services was also used in this report.

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Congress to revisit background checks for gun buyers

from the April 23, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0423/p02s02-ussc.html

Supporters of reform legislation hope it has a better likelihood of passing this year, with the change in congressional leadership and the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK

The Virginia Tech shooting has brought to light serious inadequacies in the nation's background-check system for gun purchases and has prompted renewed calls to fix it.

Many legal experts now agree that shooter Cho Seung-hui should not have been able to buy a gun at a federally licensed shop because in 2005 a judge had ruled that he was mentally ill and ordered him to seek treatment.

Federal law states that any person "adjudicated as a mental defective" is prohibited from buying firearms.

But Mr. Cho's name was not flagged by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) because his name wasn't in it. Virginia officials didn't report the judge's ruling on his mental illness to NICS: They were following a state law that says a person has to be committed to an institution before being prohibited from buying a gun.

Federal law-enforcement officials and gun-violence experts say such communication breakdowns, as well as a significant lack of federal resources to keep NICS current, have resulted in a background-check system that is incomplete, inaccurate, and out of date.

A bill to reform the system has stalled in Congress in the past few years. But its sponsors hope that this year, with the change in leadership and the tragedy in Virginia, the bill will have a better likelihood of passing.

"Our purpose is simply to see to it that if we have an instant background check, that it in fact works. There are significant problems with it, and not only in Virginia," says Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan, a former member of the National Rifle Association's board of directors. "We're not putting the money into it, the states aren't putting the effort into it, and there is neither the carrot nor the stick to the degree that there should be to require that the records be properly kept."

The Brady Bill, which became law in 1994, set up the NICS background-check system, which was implemented nationwide in 1998. It set up a database containing criminal histories, as well as a list of prohibited gun buyers – people like convicted felons and underage kids. States are supposed to send their criminal-history databases to the federal government regularly so they can be included in the NICS system. The Brady Bill also allows states to enact their own gun-control initiatives that expand the prohibited list and require things like waiting periods, as long as they meet the federal minimum as well.

But critics say the law is filled with loopholes. One of the biggest concerns is that the regulations apply only to federally licensed gun dealers. Individuals that sell guns privately or at gun shows don't have to do background checks. Between 40 to 50 percent of guns sold in the country annually are sold privately, according to federal estimates.

So even if Cho had been denied a gun at a licensed gun shop, he could have bought one at a nearby gun show, according to Robyn Thomas, executive director of Legal Community Against Violence, a San Francisco-based legal-services organization dedicated to ending gun violence.
Another problem with the system, according to critics, is that if a gun dealer doesn't hear back from state or federal authorities within three days, he or she can sell the gun anyway.

Another key concern of critics: State records sometime don't make it to the federal NICS database. Twenty-five states have computerized only 60 percent of their criminal records. Thirteen states do not share information about domestic-violence restraining orders, and 33 states have not automated or do not share records of mental-health adjudications, as required by the federal law. "Part of the problem is that there is no standardized, centralized way in which that mental-health data is kept," says Ms. Thomas.

The bill to reform NICS, which is co-sponsored by Representative Dingell and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D) of New York, would not address the so-called private-sale loophole or extend the three-day limit for background checks, as federal law-enforcement officials have recommended in the past. But it would require state and federal agencies to provide updated and accurate criminal background and mental-health records to the NICS system. It would also create a grant program to help states computerize records.

"While maintaining NICS records ultimately is the responsibility of the states, state budgets are already overburdened," said Representative McCarthy in a statement. "The NICS Improvement Act will give states the resources to eliminate the legal loopholes that allow prohibited individuals from legally purchasing firearms."

Some gun advocates are supporting the reform legislation. But others, like Gun Owners of America, are opposed. "Our view is that if someone is a danger to themselves or society, as apparently many people thought Cho was, then he shouldn't be on the streets," says Erich Pratt, spokesman for Gun Owners of America.

But gun-control advocates contend that if the law worked as it should have, it would have at least been more difficult for Cho to buy a firearm. Other checks would have made a gun purchase even harder.

"In most states, it's harder to get a job at McDonald's than it is a gun," says Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington. "The American people would be willing to put up with a little more red tape if it stops some of the yellow crime-scene tape."

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