Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 152             Today’s News and Views         Monday, May 29, 2006

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Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2464

Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 296

Figures provided by

the Iraq Coalition Causality website

For Immediate Release                                                                                                May 25, 2006

2500 American Deaths in Iraq are Near:

We say, “Not one more.” Call for Peace Now.

Press Contacts:

Harold P. Donle, Veterans for Peace, Inc. #49, hdonle@insightbb.com 317/698-2450.

Heather Allen-Garde, Hoosiers for Peace, heather@hoosiersforpeace.org, 317/202-9302.

Jim Wolfe, Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center, jwolfe@butler.edu, 317/255-3857.

Members of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 49, Hoosiers for Peace and the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center are asking Indiana citizens to assemble on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis on the day that the 2500^th American is reported killed to mark this tragic occurrence. The target date at the current rate of KIAs is on or about Sunday, June 11^th, seventeen (17) days from today.

This action is to honor the soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq and their families, and to give our fellow Indiana citizens a visual representation of what 2500 looks like. We are against war because it kills our family members, wreaks havoc on our national treasury, makes the world a more dangerous place, and psychically damages our humanity.

Hundreds of Hoosiers have been invited to participate in this event that will combine an installation of 2500 flags to honor the dead and a memorial ceremony to call for an end to war. If the number is reached on a weekday (Mon.- Fri.) the group will gather at 6 P.M and if the number is reached on a weekend the group will gather at 4 P.M. at Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis. At that time, the assembled will move north along Meridian Street, planting a flag every two to four feet until they reach Veterans Memorial Plaza. They will continue to North St., turning east and continuing to plant flags, they will turn south on Pennsylvania St. and continue with the planting of the flags until they reach Michigan St., then they will turn west planting flags until they reach Meridian St. again, thereby encircling the entire Plaza.  Then the group will gather at the center of the Plaza and plant 64 flags around the base of the obelisk in memory of the 64 Hoosiers who have lost their lives in Iraq. There will be a period of brief remarks and a memorial ceremony in closing.

For more information contact Harold Donle at (317)698-2450.

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Today's News and Views

Sunday May 28, 2006
Meanwhile, back at the White House ...

"Oh, dear, George, they convicted Ken."

"Ken who?"

"Ken Lay. It's all over today's papers."

"You know I don't read newspapers."

"I know, but Ken was your friend. You used to call him Kenny Boy, remember?

"Never heard of him."

"What do you mean you never heard of him? He raised all that money for you when you were running for governor and in 2000 when you ran for president. And he flew us to Washington in his company plane for the inauguration."

"That's not the way I remember it. As I recall, he supported Ann Richards for governor."

"But surely you remember Enron and what happened."

"Enron? Isn't that a refinery?

"You're thinking of Exxon. Enron is or rather was the company that made tons of money off the California energy crisis and then collapsed when it turned out Ken and Skilling and Fastow got caught cooking the books. Thousands of people lost their jobs, their savings, their pensions."

"I don't remember any of that. I must have been busy with 9/11. I've been busy with 9/11 ever since 9/11."

"But don't you remember him coming to the White House to help Dick develop a new national energy policy?"

"Dick didn't invite me to those meetings. So why should I care who was there? Besides, they always seemed to hold them when I was out riding my bicycle."

"Surely you must remember Pat Wood."

"Who?"

"Pat Wood. He was Ken's buddy, the man you made head of the Federal Regulatory Commission at Ken's request because Ken didn't like Curtis Herbert. You don't remember forcing Herbert to resign?"

"I don't remember that or any of those people you're talking about."

"You must remember Ralph Reed."

"Ralph who?"

"Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff's pal."

"Why would I know anyone connected to Jack Abramoff, whoever he is?"

"Because back in '97, you had Karl Rove persuade Ken Lay to put Reed on his payroll at $10,000 a month."

"There you go with that Ken Lay business again. How many times do I have to tell you I've never heard of him."

"Well, I'm sure you've heard of Alberto Gonzales."

" Of course. I think he will make a fine head of Central Intelligence. He is the right man to head the agency at this critical time."

"No, George. Alberto is attorney general."

"I thought Ashcroft was attorney general."

"He was, but he quit to go write songs."

"I like songs. I've got a whole bunch of them on my iPod. I listen to them while I'm riding my bike."

"Maybe that's why you keep running into trees."

"Don't change the subject. What's this Gonzales guy got to do with this Lay person you keep talking about?"

"Gonzales worked at Vinson and Elkins, a Houston law firm before you brought him to the White House."

"Was he a guest worker?"

"He was a lawyer, you dimwit. And now he's the country's top lawyer."

"So what's that got to do with Enron?"

"When he was at Vinson and Elkins, which represented Enron, he signed off on a lot of Enron's shady accounting practices."

"Well, I'm sure he wouldn't do anything questionable as attorney general."

"You'd better hope not. But back to poor Ken. He said after the verdict that God is in control of the situation and he 'works all things for good for those who love the Lord.'"

"Well, I hope so for his sake, but I have to say God has never mentioned him to me. Maybe he's never heard of this Lay person, either."

"You'd better hope so, George because some people are saying that Lay/Skilling is a precursor of Bush/ Blair."

"Who?"

Rossie is associate editor; his column is published on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

© 2005 Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

White House Letter: Like it or not, Bush III is being primed to run

Elisabeth Bumiller International Herald Tribune

SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2006

WASHINGTON Bush III? Or has the dynasty run its course? Those are the questions some Republicans are asking themselves as political talk bubbles up yet again about President George W. Bush's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, and his interest in the White House. The chief driver of the mini-buzz is the current occupant of the White House, who has said twice this month that his younger brother would make "a great president."

No one is suggesting, the president included, that the younger Bush will run in 2008, and Governor Bush, whose second term is up at the end of this year, has adamantly ruled it out.

But Republican party leaders continue to talk seriously about a continuation of the dynasty, a Bush III administration, with Jeb as a candidate in 2012 or 2016, when the memory of the current president's dismal poll ratings will be less of a factor. That, at least, is what happened the last time around, when the first President Bush's unpopularity at the end of his term in 1992 did not hurt his eldest son when he ran for president eight years later.

"Look, I think he'd be a great president," the current President Bush said in response to a question about Jeb's intentions at a restaurant industry trade show in Chicago last week. "But he said he's not going to run in 2008, and I think you've got to take him for his word. He's been in public life now for eight years, and I think he wants a breather."

Less than two weeks before, the president was more expansive in an interview with a group of Florida newspaper reporters. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Bush said he had "pushed" his brother "fairly hard about what he intends to do" and that his political future "is very bright, if he chooses to have a political future."

The president also said that "I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that's his intention or not."

Later the same day, Jeb Bush responded, with 14 television cameras trained on him, that "I'm not running for president, I'm not running for United States Senate, I'm not going to run." For good measure he added, "Why doesn't everyone believe me on this?"

One reason is that Jeb, who was always considered the political comer compared to his brother, the black sheep, was the original family favorite to run for president. But in a turn of events that has become a political parable, George surprised even his mother by upsetting Governor Ann Richards of Texas in 1994, the same year that Jeb lost by two percentage points to Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida. Although Jeb came back to easily beat Buddy McKay in 1998, by then his brother was in line for the White House.

People close to the Bushes say there are two major factors, political and personal, driving the governor's thinking.

First, Republicans say that running on the heels of what has shaped up to be a dismal second term for his brother would be difficult, if not impossible. Even if the current President Bush's approval ratings were better, Republicans say that Jeb, for all his political popularity in Florida, would still have to define himself in the shadow of his brother's White House.

"The first question would be, 'What would you do differently than your brother?'" said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican who is close to the Bush family. "And that's a pretty tough race to run."

Others say that for all the prevalence of political dynasties in America - the Adams, the Kennedys, the Clintons - Bush III would still be a hard sell.

"After two generations of this, I can't imagine what it would take to make the American people sail again with another Bush," said Kevin Phillips, the author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," a book that is sharply critical of the Bush family.

Second, friends of the Bushes say that Jeb does not want the intense focus of a presidential campaign just now on his wife and daughter, and that his mother, for one, is opposed to a 2008 race.

"It's very clear that he knows what he has to do for himself and his family in the immediate future," said Ron Kaufman, a political adviser to the first President Bush.

In 2002, Jeb's daughter Noelle, then 24, was arrested on charges of prescription fraud after she illegally tried to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax from a drugstore in the small hours of the morning. In 1999 Jeb's wife, Columba, was fined $4,100 by customs officials in Atlanta for failing to declare $19,000 in clothing and jewelry she bought on a trip to Paris.

In the meantime, the current president keeps talking up his younger, larger brother - up to a point. When a member of the audience in Chicago last week told the president that "we love your brother" and that "he's been very good to the restaurant industry," Bush, not missing a beat, responded to laughter that "he has been eating a lot, I noticed."

This is the last White House Letter by Elisabeth Bumiller, who is going on book leave.

E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com

Tomorrow: Alan Cowell on the ethics of high-altitude climbing.

Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Neocons in the Democratic Party

Like Kennedy and Truman, Democratic neocons want to beef up the military and won't run from a fight.

By Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn, a former Times editorial writer, is writing a book on neoconservatism.

May 28, 2006

DON'T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback — and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party.

A host of pundits and young national security experts associated with the party are calling for a return to the Cold War precepts of President Truman to wage a war against terror that New Republic Editor Peter Beinart, in the title of his provocative new book, calls "The Good Fight."

The fledgling neocons of the left are based at places such as the Progressive Policy Institute, whose president, Will Marshall, has just released a volume of doctrine called "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty." Beinart's book is subtitled "Why Liberals — and Only Liberals — Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." Their political champions include Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and such likely presidential candidates as former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

This new crop of liberal hawks calls for expanding the existing war against terrorism, beefing up the military and promoting democracy around the globe while avoiding the anti-civil liberties excesses of the Bush administration. They support a U.S. government that would seek multilateral consensus before acting abroad, but one that is not scared to use force when necessary.

These Democrats want to be seen as anything but the squishes who have led the party to defeat in the past. Interestingly, that's how the early neocons saw themselves too: as liberals fighting to reclaim their party's true heritage — before they decamped to the GOP in the 1980s.

Indeed, the credo of the new Democratic hawks is eerily reminiscent of the neocons of the 1970s, who ran a full-page ad in the New York Times called "Come Home, Democrats" after George McGovern's crushing defeat, in a play on his campaign slogan "Come Home, America." In it, early neocons such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Norman Podhoretz called for a return to the principles of — you guessed it — Truman and President Kennedy.

They lamented the fact that their party had been taken over by the forces backing McGovern's run for the presidency in 1972 and wanted to purge the party of the McGovernites. They didn't want self-abasement about U.S. sins abroad but a vigorous fighting faith that promoted the American creed of liberty and human rights abroad and at home.

Now, a generation later, as the crusading Republican neoconservatism espoused by Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and others lies in the smoking rubble of Baghdad, a new generation of Democrats wants to dust off and rehabilitate those traditional Democratic principles, which they believe were hijacked by the Bush administration.

They want, in essence, to return to the beliefs that originally brought the neocons to prominence, the beliefs that motivated old-fashioned Cold War liberals such as Democratic Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson.

Where will all this lead? To an internecine Democratic war, of course. Just as Republicans are being riven by debates between realists and Bush administration idealists, so the Democratic Party is about to witness its own battle.

Just as the old neocons wanted to expel the McGovernites, so the new ones want to rid the party of the Moveon.org types and move it to the right. As Beinart puts it, "whatever its failings, the right at least knows that America's enemies need to be fought."

In "With All Our Might," scholars Larry Diamond and Michael McFaul — both Democrats — outline a comprehensive democracy-promotion program. For example, they imaginatively call for transplanting the 1975 Helsinki accords, which insisted upon human rights monitoring in the former Warsaw Pact nations, to the Middle East. "Freedom," they exhort, "is the fundamental antidote to all forms of tyranny, terror and oppression."

Other Democrats, who call themselves the "Sept. 11 generation," have formed what is known as the Truman National Security Project, whose avowed aim is to revive the "strong security, strong values of the Democratic Party — for Democrats of all ages."

Does this simply sound like Bush-lite? To the right and the left, it probably will, but the main opposition facing the would-be Truman successors will come from the latter. The battle will come from the generation of Democrats who came of age during the 1960s and who were instrumental in finishing off "Cold War liberalism" because of its failures in the jungles of Vietnam.

Vietnam, remember, was a liberal, not a conservative, war, undertaken by warrior intellectuals who were liberal at home but saw falling dominoes everywhere around the world. (The same lack of nuance plagues the Bush administration, which has been trying to depict a global kind of Islamic totalitarianism, when the foe, as in the Cold War, is really more diffuse and less of a monolith than American leaders are prepared to believe.)

The Moveon.org types are hardly prepared to go down without a fight. At the moment, with no end to the imbroglio in Iraq in sight, they — the populist left — are poised for their greatest influence in the party since the McGovern era.

The new Democratic hawks, like the old neoconservatives of the 1970s, represent an insurgency, a direct challenge to the establishment. And if they are to revamp the party, they will have to do a lot more than simply evoke the ghost of Truman and Co.

Still, it is amusing to see that at the very moment when hawkish realists are trying to extirpate the neocon credo in the Republican Party, it's being revived in the Democratic Party that first brought it to life.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Lay and Skilling were both convicted on May 25 of various charges, including securities and wire fraud and conspiracy, related to the collapse of Houston-based energy giant Enron Inc. Lay, whom Bush reportedly nicknamed "Kenny Boy," has been a longtime supporter and friend of Bush and his family. Additionally, Lay is believed to have been part of Vice President Dick Cheney's secret energy task force in 2001, which helped set U.S. energy policy.

From the May 25 edition of Fox News Live:

BILL HEMMER (host): Mike Allen's with me now from Time magazine. Mike Gallagher is a Fox News contributor. Mike and Mike, welcome, here.

ALLEN AND GALLAGHER: Hi, Bill.

HEMMER: First to Mike Allen, is there a political impact; is there a political fallout in any way on, as a result of this trial? Mike, do you believe?

ALLEN: Well, sure there is. This is going to be very helpful to the president because it shows that even friends of the president, even big business, longtime supporters of the president are prosecuted, and there is justice even for big fish. Bill, you can remember a couple years ago, there was a frenzy of coverage about how close the president was to Ken Lay when the president was governor, and going into running for president. It was often stated that Ken Lay was the president's largest lifetime contributor, which was true. The president -- there were a lot of connections to this company both in the governor's office and the administration, so people wondered what would happen with this.

— J.M.

Posted to the web on Thursday May 25, 2006 at 4:05 PM EST

© 2006 Media Matters for America

Immigration Deal at Risk as House GOP Looks to Voters

By Jim VandeHei and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 28, 2006; A01

Republican House members facing the toughest races this fall are overwhelmingly opposed to any deal that provides illegal immigrants a path to citizenship -- an election-year dynamic that significantly dims the prospects that President Bush will win the immigration compromise he is seeking, according to Republican lawmakers and leadership aides.

The opposition spreads across the geographical and ideological boundaries that often divide House Republicans, according to interviews with about half of the 40 or so lawmakers whom political handicappers consider most vulnerable to defeat this November. At-risk Republicans -- from moderates such as Christopher Shays in suburban Connecticut and Steve Chabot in Cincinnati to conservative J.D. Hayworth in Arizona -- said they are adamant that Congress not take any action that might be perceived as rewarding illegal behavior.

Shays, one of the few vulnerable House Republicans open to a broad compromise with the Senate, said strong protests from his constituents this month prompted him to speak out for the first time against citizenship for undocumented workers. "It would be a huge mistake to give people a path to citizenship that came here illegally," he said.

The nearly united front of Republicans from the most competitive districts against Bush's approach to immigration underscores the difficulties the president is facing as he tries to coax his partisans in the House to embrace what he calls a "rational middle ground," along the lines of a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate by 62 to 36 Thursday. GOP leaders in the House are basing their legislative strategy in large part on how it will affect members in the most jeopardy this fall.

Several Republicans said they are getting more bricks in the mail -- as part of a new grass-roots campaign promoting a fence between the United States and Mexico -- than letters or calls supporting Bush and the Senate bill. Most said 80 to 90 percent of feedback coming from constituents last week was in opposition to Bush and the Senate on the citizenship question.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will not allow a vote on a House-Senate compromise that does not have the support of most GOP lawmakers or one that would undermine the reelection chances of his at-risk members, aides said. According to GOP lawmakers and strategists, about 75 percent of the 231 House Republicans are steadfastly opposed to the Senate bill or even a watered-down version of it.

Despite some national polls showing strong support for a comprehensive solution of the sort favored by Bush, nearly every GOP lawmaker interviewed for this article said the House plan to secure the borders and enforce existing immigration laws is unquestionably the safer political stand in his or her district. Many Democrats from vulnerable districts say the same thing, although the Democratic Caucus as a whole is more sympathetic to a Senate-style compromise.

Rep. Chris Chocola (R-Ind.) said he told White House officials, who keep citing polls showing wide support for the Bush approach, that "they must not be polling anyone in the 2nd District."

The House GOP lawmakers reject the argument made by the White House and Senate Republicans such as John McCain (Ariz.) that the best long-term political strategy is to craft a compromise that is appealing to many Latinos, the fastest-growing minority group in America. McCain, in an interview, cautioned his House colleagues to more closely examine "voting patterns" and understand the "detrimental" consequences of alienating Hispanics, who make up about 12.5 percent of the U.S. population.

Rep. Ric Keller, who analysts said could lose his Orlando district if there is a powerful anti-Republican wave in November, said that "there has never been more intensity on any issue in the last six years than illegal immigration." In town hall meetings, he said, about 90 percent of voters are opposed to a guest-worker program and in favor of the House approach. The House bill focuses solely on border security and law enforcement -- and makes it a felony for people to assist illegal immigrants.

Keller said Bush's proposal to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border did little to quiet criticism that the White House has failed to sufficiently crack down on illegal immigration. "There is not a lot of credibility right now with the administration on securing the border and enforcing the law," he said.

Keller, like most House Republicans in tough races this year, has a small percentage of Hispanics living in his district, which strategists said makes it easier to reject a broad compromise. Many senators, by contrast, represent more diverse populations and are therefore more sensitive to the concerns of Hispanics. Moreover, only one-third of senators face reelection this fall, so it is easier for them to ignore the short-term Republican politics, which are dominated by concerns about any program that resembles amnesty for illegal immigrants.

"House members' elections are not periods with us, they're just commas," said Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.). "We keep our finger on the public pulse all the time, not just every six years."

Gutknecht, who represents a southern Minnesota district that is 93 percent white, rejected claims by McCain and others that it would be disastrous if Republicans, who control the White House and Congress, failed to strike a compromise this year. "It would give the administration time to demonstrate they are serious that they can defend the law," he said.

Rep. Heather A. Wilson, who represents a majority-minority district in New Mexico, is an exception among House Republicans. She voted against an earlier House GOP bill that made illegal immigration a felony and cracked down on illegal border crossings. Wilson, one of the top Democratic targets this fall, said she is torn over how to handle the illegal immigrants living here. She said she is open to a compromise that treats families with children born in the United States differently. These children, who are citizens, she said, "should not be held accountable for bad decisions their parents made." Her district is more than 40 percent Hispanic.

Shays, who represents an upscale, largely white swing district in Connecticut, said he informed GOP leaders of his opposition to Bush's path to citizenship after talking to local voters in a recent 18-stop tour. If anything, voters are growing more "adamant" in their opposition, he said. In an interview, he proposed allowing illegal immigrants a chance to stay and work but not become citizens, which many senators said would be a deal-killer.

This highlights the hurdles to a compromise. House Republicans appear inalterably opposed to any bill that paves the way for citizenship. They plan to name representatives to the House-Senate conference committee who share this view. They will fight for the security-only approach and are prepared to walk away from the conference if they don't get their way, according to GOP leadership aides.

On the other side, the fragile Senate coalition that passed a more comprehensive bill is held together by a common belief that it would be unwise and unworkable to deal with the borders only and not solve the problem of what to do with the 11 million illegal immigrants living here today. The coalition will crumble if the House Republicans prevail, according to senators and aides.

The White House, led by Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, has been lobbying House members to soften their position and expects that more moderate lawmakers would eventually side with Bush.

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (Fla.), who is not known as an immigration hard-liner but is one of the party's most vulnerable incumbents, said there is virtually no chance of a compromise this year that includes a guest-worker program or a pathway to citizenship. Shaw said the politics of the issue are more mixed in his Fort Lauderdale district, which includes a large number of hospitality firms and other companies that rely on low-cost labor from illegal immigrants.

But he emphasized that Congress needs months, and perhaps years, of public hearings to determine the economic effects of legalizing millions of immigrants.

Another moderate, Chabot, said immigration was the only issue that came up during a tour of church festivals in his Cincinnati district a week ago, deepening his opposition to the Bush approach. "If you allow the folks here to stay, you're just encouraging more to come," Chabot said.

Some Democrats are feeling similar pressure. When the House voted on its get-tough bill that also made illegal immigration a felony, 13 of the 17 Democratic incumbents who face tough races sided with Republicans. "The folks I represent in Georgia are sick and tired of the fact that nothing's been done to stem the tide of illegal immigration," said Rep. John Barrow, who dismissed the Senate bill as "amnesty-light -- no matter what they try to call it." Still, many House Democrats are open to a Senate-style settlement.

Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.), a top Democratic target who represents a district so competitive it is known as the "bloody 8th," warned that if House Republicans do not oppose guest workers, temporary workers and anything "that looks like amnesty," they could very well lose the House.

"There are lot of people on Capitol Hill that have no clue what November is going to bring them on immigration," he said. "It could be something like a tidal wave that could benefit the Democrats simply because Republicans don't do the right thing. To survive through November, the folks up here [on Capitol Hill] are really going to have to understand the passion behind this."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Pressure turned up in the war on water

Towns push to make service public again

By E.A. Torriero
Tribune staff reporter

May 28, 2006

For many towns across the country, it once seemed like a good idea to have municipal water utilities in the hands of private companies.

Now, bristling against skyrocketing rates, spotty service and foreign ownership, a number of towns across Illinois and the U.S. are waging fierce battles to regain control of their drinking water. A host of them are fighting a German conglomerate that has snapped up more than 1,800 American water utilities.

The battle is intensifying in Illinois, where the German company RWE and subsidiary Illinois American Water own the water supplies for more than 1 million people in 125 areas of the state.

Responding to complaints, American Water held meetings last week in Homer Glen, Orland Park and Bolingbrook hoping to mollify angry customers. Instead, they tapped into a deep vein of frustration.

"Everything we hear is double-talk," said Debbie Litoborski of Homer Glen, who is fighting the company over an $800 water bill. "Should we call Germany to get the answers we need?"

In most of the country, including Chicago and many suburbs, water service remains a public utility. About 15 percent of America's water business, however, is in private ownership. Those ranks have tripled in the last decade as cash-strapped cities seek ways to upgrade aging water systems by turning to private firms.

Nevertheless, a showdown is brewing in Illinois as a half-dozen communities are plotting to take over water systems. If they succeed, Illinois American could lose as many as one-third of its customers.

Grass-roots groups are forming statewide to exchange battle plans, hold rallies and plot strategies. Busloads of angry suburban residents descended on Springfield this spring, demanding legislative help. In April, Urbana's Mayor Laurel Prussing flew 4,327 miles to chastise RWE executives and shareholders in Essen, Germany.

"I fired a diplomatic shot across the bow," she said. "I was there to show the flag and to let them know that Americans are offended by foreign intervention and corporate bullying. After all, it's our water, not theirs."

Nationally, government and community takeover attempts against the subsidiaries of Germany's RWE have lasted years and cost taxpayers and consumers millions of dollars for legal challenges, referendums and public relations campaigns.

In most instances, American Water--RWE's U.S. arm and the largest private water company in the country--has won. In the last 15 years, it has sold only three operations because of hostile challenges.

Bought by RWE for $7.5 billion in 2001, American Water has 1,800 operations in 29 states and three Canadian provinces, serving 18 million and generating $2.2 billion in revenues.

To the company, the threats are government piracy to thwart free enterprise. The backlash has split towns, torn apart councils and spawned court fights that landed in state supreme courts.

"The communities lose and the company loses," said Joe Conner, a Tennessee attorney who has litigated the company's battles against several communities.

In Monterey, Calif., last year, the company went on a blitzkrieg advertising rush to defeat soundly a ballot issue calling for a public water utility purchase. In Chattanooga, Tenn., the company spent more than $5 million before fending off a city takeover in 2000. In Lexington, Ky., a bitter battle is now headed toward a November referendum.

In Illinois, in a blow to the company, state legislators passed a bill this session that would make it easier for communities to seize local water operations. The legislation is awaiting the governor's signature.

The Illinois challenges come at an especially delicate juncture for the company. Although American Water officials say none of the firm's individual units is for sale, RWE is pursuing a public stock offering for the whole of American Water.

If communities succeed in taking over even a few of its subsidiaries, the value of the public offering could be seriously eroded, company officials say.

In Illinois, the company defends its record despite two pending cases before the Illinois Commerce Commission and an aggregate complaint from the state attorney general over allegations of bad service and rate gouging in three Chicago suburbs.

In the last decade, water wars in Illinois have taken psychological and economic tolls. Seven years into its battle, Peoria decided last year against a water takeover after an appraiser put the price tag at a hefty $220 million. A few miles away, in Pekin, a takeover attempt was squashed when the Illinois Commerce Commission ruled in 2004 that Pekin was not capable of running the utility better.

Now, a half-dozen Illinois communities--Pekin, Champaign, Urbana, Homer Glen, Orland Park and Bolingbrook--are bent on forcing Illinois American to the bargaining table.

Consumers became riled in Champaign-Urbana last summer, when failed pumps led to impure water on five occasions. Then, firefighters arrived at a blaze in Champaign to find two of three hydrant covers stuck shut. Illinois American describes them as isolated incidents, but a backlash had begun.

On May Day, activists in Urbana staged a mock birthday party complete with cake and balloons for Donald Correll, American Water's chief executive. They sent Correll "greeting cards" demanding the company sell local operations at a reasonable price.

The company has been firing back with letters to consumers in Champaign-Urbana and telephone polls asking whether city officials' attentions should be elsewhere. They gathered central Illinois business leaders recently to warn that local officials were embarking on a costly fight.

"I'm sort of perplexed why we would want to go through this," said John Stewart, who runs an advertising business in Urbana and lives in Champaign. "It seems likely it would be a laborious process that could split the community, and nothing in the end would get accomplished."

etorriero@tribune.com

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

He also did not mention the controversy over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII, who some say did not do all in his power to prevent Jews from being deported to concentration camps. The Vatican rejects that accusation.

Typically, Benedict did not mention his own personal experiences during the war. Raised by his anti-Nazi father, Benedict was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager against his will and then was drafted into the German army in the last months of the war.

He wrote in his memoirs that he decided to desert in the war's last days in 1945 and returned to his home in Traunstein in Bavaria, risking summary execution if caught. In the book, he recounted his terror at being briefly stopped by two soldiers.

He was then held for several weeks as a prisoner of war by U.S. forces who occupied his hometown.

Earlier, the white-clad Benedict walked alone under the camp gate containing the notorious words: "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Sets You Free."

He stopped for a full minute before the Wall of Death, where the Nazis killed thousands of prisoners. He was handed a lighted candle, which he placed before the wall.

At the Wall of Death, a line of 32 elderly camp survivors awaited Benedict, most of them Catholic. He moved slowly down the line, stopping to talk with each, taking one woman's face in his hands and kissing one of the men on both cheeks.

Benedict then visited the dark cell in the basement of one of the buildings, the place where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was executed after voluntarily taking the place of a condemned prisoner with a large family in 1941. Kolbe was canonized by John Paul II in 1982.

Benedict stopped to pray again in the cell, standing before a candle placed there by John Paul during his 1979 visit.

The visit is heavy with significance for Roman Catholic-Jewish relations, a favorite theme for Benedict and John Paul.

This was the third time Benedict has visited Auschwitz and the neighboring camp at Birkenau. The first was in 1979, when he accompanied John Paul, and in 1980, when he came with a group of German bishops while he was archbishop of Munich.

Benedict's stop at Auschwitz — his last before he left for Rome — was a somber close to a four-day trip that was otherwise upbeat, with some 900,000 people turning out for his Sunday mass in a meadow in Krakow, the city where John Paul II once served as archbishop.

Earlier, he urged 900,000 singing, clapping Poles gathered in a rain-soaked field to share their faith with other countries, saying it was the best way to honor their beloved John Paul.

The enormous, exuberant crowd chanted "Benedetto! Benedetto!" and sang "Sto Lat," or "A Hundred Years," wishing him a long life.

"I ask you, finally, to share with the other peoples of Europe and the world the treasure of your faith, not least as a way of honoring the memory of your countryman, who, as the successor of St. Peter, did this with extraordinary power and effectiveness," Benedict said as he concluded his homily during the Mass in the Blonia meadow.

"I ask you to stand firm in your faith! Stand firm in your hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!" he concluded, speaking in Polish on the last day of his trip.

Predominantly Roman Catholic Poland joined the European Union only two years ago, 15 years after the collapse of communist rule.

"He told us that we should remain ourselves, that we should stay as we were before, attached to our traditions and Christian values," said Jacek Radon, 37, a Krakow businessman. "We should carry into the European Union our attachment to faith and to Christ."

A shadow was cast over the papal visit by Saturday's attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who was to say Kaddish, or the Jewish prayer for the dead, during the ceremony led by the pope.

Schudrich told The Associated Press he was attacked in central Warsaw after confronting a man who shouted at him, "Poland for Poles!" The rabbi said the unidentified man punched him in the chest and sprayed him with what appeared to be pepper spray. He was not injured.

Police said they were treating the incident as a possible anti-Semitic attack.

Schudrich, said the most important part of Benedict's message "was his physical presence at Auschwitz" but that some Jews wished he had gone further by directly addressing anti-Semitism.

"It was a very powerful statement and the words that we heard were powerful, but I'm sure some felt a glaring omission ... on the question of anti-Semitism. Jews are very sensitive to that and we are used to hearing the words of John Paul II."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press that Benedict's presence at the camp and his remarks were firm reminders that Holocaust deniers were not speaking the truth.

"He wore the uniform of the Hitler Youth. For him to now go there as the pope and acknowledge the horrors the Holocaust visited on the Jewish people and all mankind is important," he said.

Benedict, 79, has reached out to Poles by delivering parts of his speeches and homilies in Polish and by retracing beloved native son John Paul II's steps. He visited John Paul's birthplace, Wadowice, and Sunday's Mass was held on the same spot where John Paul also drew large crowds on his return trips to Krakow.

Benedict has been applauded during his visit to Poland for encouraging prayers for John Paul's canonization as a saint and for saying he hopes it will happen "in the near future."

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc.

HOUSE APPROVES AMNESTY BILL … FOR HOUSE MEMBERS

By Don Davis

Although they remain staunchly opposed to the so-called “amnesty” provisions in the Senate immigration bill, GOP House Conservatives have signed off on a wide-ranging amnesty plan for their own members.

Under the proposed legislation, Republican Congressmen who have received bribes for five or more years will be entitled to retain their seats if they supplement their government positions with actual productive employment, and learn to speak English instead of “Beltway-ese.”

GOP House members who have been taking bribes for only between two and five years would be treated less generously. They would be forced to take a leave of absence from their posts and receive a temporary “lobbying visa,” where they would have to pay bribes for a specified period before being reinstated as “Guest Congressmen.”  

Over time, if they receive recommendations from Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, they can reapply for permanent House membership.

Finally, for those unfortunate souls who have been taking handouts and free vacations for less than two years, they will be permanently banned from Congress as a disgrace to the House Code of Ethics.

House Speaker Denny Hastert praised this proposal, and also promised further legislation, pursuant to the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution, that would insulate all acts of bribery from criminal prosecution, as long as they were done in connection with official House business.

In other news relating to Mr. Hastert, the Speaker continued to denounce the reports from ABC News that he is now part of the Jack Abramoff investigation.  However, Mr. Hastert was forced to admit, based on his appearance alone, that he is guilty of eating two House pages.

A more bipartisan approach to bribery.  

Disclaimer: Pursuant to the UCC (Uniform Comedy Code), all depictions of events and persons on this site are more real than reality itself, and therefore any resemblance to reality is not really real.

Summary:

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives in wildly different ways -- and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of conservatives.

Consider the last two presidents. Bill Clinton faced near-constant media obsession with his "scandals," while George W. Bush has gotten off comparatively easy.

Even many members of the media have stopped contesting this painfully obvious point, instead offering dubious justifications. Bill Clinton's "scandals" made for better stories than George Bush's, we are told, because they were simpler and easier for readers and viewers to understand. "Sex sells," while George Bush's false claims about Iraq are much harder to explain.

This excuse is simply nonsense.

First, what's so hard to understand about this? George Bush and his administration systematically distorted available intelligence to lead the nation to war on false pretenses. His administration has been marked by corruption, incompetence, lies, secrecy, and flagrant disregard for bedrock constitutional principles. None of that can be too complicated: Polls suggest that the majority of Americans believe all of those things.

Second, even if it were true that Clinton's "scandals" were easier for consumers of news to understand, the ease of explaining an affair would, if we had a serious and functional news media, be more than offset by the far greater importance of Bush's misdeeds.

Finally, this is such a grotesque distortion of the media's treatment of Clinton that it is difficult to explain by anything other than outright dishonesty. Reporters who offer the excuse that they and their colleagues covered Clinton "scandals" so much because sex sells, and is easily explained and understood, are cherry-picking. They are ignoring the obsessive coverage they gave to Clinton "scandals" that had nothing to do with sex, and that were not widely understood.

They are ignoring, for example, years of coverage of Whitewater, an obscure land deal in which the Clintons lost money and that was investigated by multiple independent counsels, congressional committees, federal agencies, and every news organization in the country -- none of which found any wrongdoing by the Clintons. Whitewater had nothing to do with sex, and nobody understood it -- probably because there was nothing to understand. And that's not even going into Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster's suicide, or the myriad other "scandals" the media covered that did not involve sex.

Eric Boehlert, author of the excellent new book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, May 2006), has offered one example of the obsessive coverage the media gave Whitewater:

In the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1996, long before Monica Lewinsky entered the picture and back when Whitewater was about an alleged crooked land deal, Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding scandal and investigation, for which no Clinton White House official was ever indicted.

And that's how it was for eight years: obsessive media coverage and hype of made-up Clinton "scandals" that never went anywhere because they never existed anywhere other than the fevered imaginations of a few far-right Clinton-haters and the credulous news media that took them seriously.

How bad did it get? As we're fond of pointing out, the Washington Post editorial board called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Whitewater "even though -- and this should be stressed -- there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong." That's right: The Post called for an independent counsel to investigate "no credible charge."

Boehlert offered a comparison to the Bush era:

But during the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, Nightline set aside just three programs to the unfolding CIA leak investigation, for which Libby, an assistant to the president, was indicted. On the night of the Libby indictments, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic.

And that's pretty much how things have been for the past five years: Clear, conclusive evidence exists that Bush and his administration have committed countless transgressions far more serious than whatever it is reporters thought Bill Clinton might have done. And it has received far less coverage than Clinton's non-scandals.

To be clear, this isn't simply about the CIA leak investigation, or the Downing Street memos, or Tyler Drumheller, or any other individual matter. It's about a clear and consistent pattern of under-reporting stories that would be damaging to Bush -- a pattern that began before Bush even took office.

Exactly one year ago, we referred to "the most obvious example" of this:

The same news organizations that pursued the Whitewater "scandal" as though it were Watergate, Teapot Dome, and the Lindbergh Baby all wrapped into one virtually ignored Bush's controversial sale of Harken Energy stock. The basic information about that sale -- that Bush, while serving as a Harken director and member of the company's audit committee, dumped more than 200,000 shares of the company's stock shortly before Harken publicly announced massive losses -- was publicly available long before Bush ran for president. Yet The Washington Post, to name one news outlet, gave the matter a total of 26 words of attention during the 2000 presidential campaign. The July 30, 1999, edition of the Post reported:

Even now, questions linger about a 1990 sale of Harken stock by Bush that was the subject of a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That's it. Twenty-six words.

Two major news organizations, the Associated Press and Bloomberg news, ran substantive articles about Bush's stock sale, based on documents that were released by the Securities and Exchange Commission during the 2000 campaign. The AP reported in September 2000:

George W. Bush, before he sold his stock in a Texas oil company, was fully aware that the firm was suffering from a severe cash crisis and was poised to lose millions, according to newly released records of a closed insider trading investigation of the sale.

"The full capacity of the company is dedicated toward resolving this liquidity crisis," Harken Energy Corp. President Mikel Faulkner told Bush and the other members of the board of directors two months before the $850,000 stock sale in June 1990.

[...]

The Harken documents released under FOIA detail Bush's knowledge of the company's problems.

As a Harken director, he received memos in spring 1990 that referred in stark terms to the company's cash-strapped condition as banks demanded it pay down its debts. One document said the company was in the midst of a "liquidity crisis" and another told Bush the company was "in a state of noncompliance" with its lenders.

Bush also was informed that a company plan to make a public stock offering to generate cash was being abandoned because one of its lenders objected.

"On the eve of filing this offering, the Bank of Boston refused to grant waivers and consents necessary to allow the offering to proceed," Harken said in a letter to the SEC in 1991. "Bank of Boston refused to alter its position and instead made demands that it be removed from the company's credit." The company solved the crisis when two of its biggest stockholders loaned it the $43 million it needed.

[...]

The SEC investigators never interviewed Bush about what else he might have known about the company's financial situation before selling the stock.

To sum up: In the months before the 2000 election, newly disclosed documents revealed that shortly before he dumped his Harken stock, George W. Bush had been told that the company faced a "liquidity crisis" and was "in a state of noncompliance" with lenders and that its plan to raise money was being abandoned. The documents revealed that the SEC -- which, at the time, was run by a close ally of Bush's father, then-President George H. W. Bush -- never bothered to interview Bush about his stock sale during its investigation of the matter.

And The New York Times completely ignored it. Completely. The Washington Post completely ignored it. USA Today completely ignored it. ABC, CBS and NBC? Ignored, ignored, ignored. CNN? CNN is an all-news channel; it has a whole day to fill with news every single day. Surely CNN managed to squeeze in a mention or two of new evidence that a major-party presidential candidate may have made a fortune in an insider-trading scheme that was covered up by cronies of his father the president? No, CNN didn't even mention it. Not a word.

We can hear the apologists already: The media ignored these revelations because insider trading is too complicated. To which we say: So was Whitewater. Or maybe the apologists will argue that there was no story because the transaction had already been investigated by the SEC, with no finding of wrongdoing by Bush. To which we say: Whitewater had been investigated, too. Repeatedly.

Why do we insist on revisiting ancient history? Because the same garbage keeps happening over and over again. Because too many people -- journalists, activists, progressive leaders -- downplay the media's fai