Category: Spring 2004
States Riddled With Waste
WASHINGTON—One person’s pork is another’s bacon. Either way, New Hampshire is getting a lot of it this year.
New Hampshire ranked fourth among the states and the District of Columbia in the amount of money it received per person for what one watchdog group derisively calls “pork.” The state catapulted from 21 st place last year, according to the latest Congressional Pig Book Summary released Wednesday by Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-profit group that monitors what it considers to be wasteful federal spending.
While states received an average $31.17 pork per person nationwide, New Hampshire took in $216.34 a person, the report said. Only Alaska, Hawaii and District of Columbia ranked higher. Alaska topped the list at $808.13 of pork per person.
Citizens Against Government Waste defines pork as expenditures added to the president’s proposed budget by members of Congress hoping to do favors for their constituents. In Washington parlance, they are called earmarks.
New Hampshire Congress members took full credit for their successes.
“I am very proud of my work on the Senate Appropriations Committee to secure needed funds for the preservation of Great Bay, keeping our lakes clean and our air pure, as well as keeping Granite State communities safe and law enforcement personnel well-trained and properly protected,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said in a statement.
But, Citizens Against Government Waste blamed the 10,656 projects that Congress earmarked for fiscal 2004 for adding to the record federal deficit, projected to be $521 billion, and the $7.1 trillion national debt. Wasteful spending, the group said, cost taxpayers $22.9 billion in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, up 1.6 percent, or $4 million, from last year.
In the Pig Book, the group itemized 630 projects, which cost $3.1 billion, as “the most egregious and blatant examples” of pork.
New Hampshire Congress members agreed that the deficit must be brought under control, but added that the programs they inserted into appropriations bills were important to their constituency.
“The better we control total federal spending, the fewer earmarks there will be in our appropriations bills. I have voted against budget-busting bills for agriculture subsidies, energy and transportation, and will continue to work to protect taxpayers’ pockets while advocating for New Hampshire citizens,” said Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H.
Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., said he had not seen the report yet, but that “a number of projects have been secured for New Hampshire this year that will go a long way towards providing for the defense of our nation, protecting our environment and helping to defray the costs of education for local property taxpayers.”
Mark Carpenter, spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste, said the group is not critical of every individual project it labels “pork.”
“Our objection is how they were added into the budget,” he said. “It circumvents the normal budget process with no regard to how money can be better spent.”
But the group’s president, Thomas A. Schatz, suggested this was not just an issue of process, but of priorities, particularly during wartime. He spoke at a press conference featuring two live pigs and a person wearing a bright-pink pig costume. Along with the Pig Book and accompanying press releases, reporters were offered toy snouts.
“I would like to ask every member of Congress – representatives and senators – to take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves if any of these projects are really more important than protecting the United States of America,” Schatz said.
To make it into the Pig Book, an appropriation must meet one of seven criteria:– it was requested by only one Congress member; it wasn’t specifically authorized; it wasn’t competitively awarded; President Bush didn’t request it; it greatly exceeded Bush’s budget request or the previous year’s funding; it wasn’t the subject of a congressional hearing; or it serves only a local or special interest.
As the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations Subcommittee, Gregg secured more than $37 million for the Granite State in fiscal 2004. Some of the items included $6 million for the Great Bay Partnership, a nature conservatory; $3 million for the J-One Information System, intended to improve the criminal justice system; $1 million for the Mount Washington Observatory; $590,000 to reduce milfoil in the state’s lakes; $500,000 for the New England Weather Technology Initiative; and $500,000 to establish the Belknap Regional Special Operations Program.
But New Hampshire’s largest bit of “pork” was $200 million used to refuel the U.S.S. Jacksonville, a submarine docked in Portsmouth.
J-One is an initiative linking various branches of the criminal justice system so they can easily share information, said New Hampshire State Police Col. Frederick Booth.
“I don’t see it as a government waste. I see it as just the opposite,” said Booth. “If anything, this is going to improve efficiency.”
Gregg, who has been particularly critical of increased spending in the face of the ballooning deficit, also has defended the J-One expenditure. “This system will ensure that whether it be an officer on the street or a judge in a courtroom, the information they have is up-to-date and available, and will save valuable time and resources,” he said in a statement last fall.
The observatory, a non-profit organization in North Conway, will use its money to improve research, upgrade equipment and digitalize its information system, said executive director Will Abbott. For 72 years, the observatory has recorded temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure and other meteorological indicators, but much of its equipment is 30 to 50 years old, Abbott said.
“Anybody who would criticize Sen. Gregg as too much of a spender in Congress doesn’t know him very well,” said Abbott. “My experience is that he puts a very high standard on any project that he considers supporting.”
Plymouth State University received $500,000 for the weather initiative. The money is “seed money” to add another faculty and staff member to its meteorology institute, said meteorology professor James Koermer.
Similarly, New Hampshire defends its milfoil project. According to Harry Stewart, the director of the Water Division at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, the plant milfoil is carried by boats from lake to lake, clogging the water as it grows 30 to 40 feet tall. Since there is no way to permanently destroy the exotic species, more research is needed on how to control it. So far, New Hampshire has 53 infested lakes, said Joel Harrington, environmental policy director at the New Hampshire Lakes Association.
The state submitted a letter to Gregg requesting $500,000 for research and $90,000 for the Lakes Association to deal with milfoil. The association inspected 26,000 boats last year, saving five lakes from becoming infested with milfoil, said Harrington.
A U.S. Commerce Department spokesperson, who asked not to be quoted by name, said the administration supports a number of the New Hampshire projects listed in the Pig Book.
Congress Asks for H-2B Visas Cap to be Restored
WASHINGTON—The tourism industry in New Hampshire and Maine may be in trouble this summer if the government does not act swiftly to raise the ceiling on the number of temporary work visas for non-U.S. residents and New Hampshire and Maine’s senators have called on the Bush Administration to take action.
Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu, both R-NH, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both R-ME, have joined other Senators in sponsoring legislation to increase the number of so-called H-2B visas and in urging the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services to continue processing applications for those visas while the legislation moves through Congress.
The bureau, part of the Homeland Security Department, stopped accepting petitions on March 10, when the statutory ceiling of 66,000 for fiscal 2004 was reached. The bureau also announced that it would return all applications received after that date and would accept new applications only from those who plan to start work on or after Oct. 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year.
The H-2B visa program allows temporary admission of foreign workers to perform non-agricultural work for which American workers cannot be found and the current limit on these visas is affecting many businesses in New Hampshire and Maine that heavily rely on foreign summer workers.
In a letter to President Bush Tuesday, the New Hampshire and Maine Senators, along with some of their Senate colleagues, said they were “deeply concerned” that legislation to address the problem won’t become law in time for the summer season unless the visa applications are processed in the meantime. Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., also signed the letter.
The four Senators are sponsors of a bill that would allow 106,000 H-2B visas for this fiscal year only. Several Democrats are co-sponsors of the legislation. The four have also signed on to a Republican-sponsored measure that would attempt to increase the number of H-2B visas this year without altering the 66,000 cap by allowing employers to rehire the same H-2B workers they hired in previous years.
“We were all surprised and not prepared when we read the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) press release on March 10,” said Allyson Cavaretta, marketing and sales director of the Meadowmere Resort in Ogunquit, on the coast of Maine. “We need the workers, and now we have no backup plan,”
The region has the lowest unemployment level in Maine, Cavaretta said in an interview, and the visa workers receive the same wages and bonuses American workers would get. “It is not cheap labor,” she said. “In contrast, these are jobs that Americans do not want to do, and therefore we need to look for workers overseas.”
Collins, in a statement, said, “Enabling Maine businesses to hire temporary, seasonal workers is crucial to our tourism industry and our state’s economy as a whole.”
Snowe agreed, saying that according to the Maine Department of Labor, the state’s hospitality industry will be paralyzed this summer if something isn’t done soon.
Companies in New Hampshire’s tourism business share those views. The seasonal worker program “is crucial to our success as a business and the success of our state economy,” J. Patrick McNally, human resources director of the Mt. Washington Hotel and Resort, said in a press release.
In a statement, Sununu warned that “without this short-term help, companies would be severely restricted during their busiest season.” An increase in the number of visas, he added, “will help to ensure these businesses have an adequate access to seasonal employees to keep operating and contributing to our state’s economy.”
Wetherfield to Receive Grants for School Security
WASHINGTON—Wethersfield and three other Connecticut towns will receive a total of $500,000 in new grants to hire and train police officers to protect local public schools, Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph I. Lieberman announced recently.
The grants, for the Wethersfield, Meriden, Suffield and East Windsor police departments, will allow law enforcement officers to work on school campuses as student resource officers, or SROs. The officers work with students and school administrators to curb crime and violence on campus and instruct students on state and local laws.
“Children today are faced with so many responsibilities and tough choices,” Dodd said in a statement. “At the very least, we must provide them with a safe school environment that fosters their academic and social development and give their families the peace of mind in knowing that their kids are safe.”
Thomas R. Moore, principal of Wethersfield High School, said his school currently has a part-time police officer who handles criminal matters on campus. With the new grants, Moore said, he hopes the officer will work full time. He said several area schools already have full-time officers.
Moore said Wethersfield, which has 1,200 students, has not had significant problems with crime. But in an era in which school-based crime and violence has increased in districts throughout the country, he said a full-time officer could work to prevent problems from developing.
The program is part of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office, launched in 1994 by the Clinton Justice Department to increase the number of officers on the streets in communities throughout the country. Community policing focuses on crime prevention and assigns officers to beats to allow them to get to know residents or, in the case of schools, students.
In 1999, COPS began to train community police officers in Connecticut to work on local campuses. So far, Connecticut communities have received more than $9 million and have placed 74 police officers in public schools, said COPS spokesman David Buchanan.
The officers “become positive role models and improve the relationship between students and law enforcement,” Buchanan said.
Moore agreed that the officers were “much more than a security guard.” In addition to handling criminal matters, SRO officers work closely with students as counselors and instructors on issues relating to crime and the law. Moore said they take a “preventative and proactive” approach to school violence.
“In many schools the officers take on roles as teachers, mentors, coaches and instructors,” Buchanan said. “A lot of times they teach anti-bullying courses and criminal justice classes. Sometimes they are the coaches of sports teams or advisers to school clubs.
“Informally,” Buchanan continued, “they become friends and mentors for the students.”
Campus officers also receive training on school emergency response plans and school safety assessments. The grants pay each new officer up to $125,000 over three years.
Wethersfield applied for the SRO grants for the first time last January, Moore said. He said the school hopes to receive the grant money later in April.
Bi-Partisan Support for Child Care
WASHINGTON—The Senate Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an amendment by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., to add $6 billion for child care over the next five years to the proposed reauthorization of the landmark 1996 welfare reform law.
Snowe’s amendment was adopted, 78-20, with 46 Democrats, 31 Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., and one independent voting for it. New Hampshire’s two Republican senators voted no. It would bring to $11.8 billion the amount the federal government spends on child care under the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
“The quality of affordable child care will make welfare reform worthwhile,” Snowe told reporters after the vote. “I am very pleased we were able to secure a broad bipartisan effort.”
“Something stunning just happened,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. “We have reached an important milestone in reauthorizing welfare legislation.”
The goal is to “move from welfare to workforce, not temporarily, but permanently if we can,” he said before the vote. “Without this amendment, that goal is unachievable,” he said after the vote.
The added $6 billion would come from user fees on imports and so would not contribute to the federal deficit, Snowe said in a press release.
The House-passed version of the welfare reauthorization bill, which the White House supports, includes $1 billion in child-care funds.
With states running budget deficits and a decline in funds for welfare, many child care programs have been cut, according to the National Women’s Law Center in Washington. Currently, 1,800 children are on waiting lists in Maine. New Hampshire has frozen reimbursement rates for child care for the past four years and eliminated after-school program grants.
“Working-poor families need this help, and these mothers need child care assistance,” Dodd said. “They don’t have anyone else.”
A 2002 Economic Policy Institute study found that former welfare recipients with young children are 60 percent more likely to be employed after two years if they receive child-care assistance.
Senators who co-sponsored Snowe’s amendment agreed that child care is an essential step toward full-time employment for former welfare recipients and low-income households.
“Often a parent’s salary is almost completely offset by the cost of child care, and this burden is particularly heavy on low-income families,” Collins said in a statement. “This funding will ensure that more parents get the support they need to keep their children safe and make a living.”
New Hampshire’s senators cited different reasons for their votes against Snowe’s amendment.
“This welfare reform reauthorization maintains the TANF block grant at $16.5 billion per year – even though caseloads have fallen 58 percent since 1996,” Sen. John Sununu said in a statement. He added that the bill also called for increases in child-care spending of $1 billion over the next five years, and that “given the incredible success of welfare reform, I think this funding is quite sufficient to help millions more Americans make the transition from welfare to independence.”
Sen. Judd Gregg, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he was prepared to offer his own amendment to double the increase in child-care spending to $2 billion over five years from the $1 billion in the House bill. He express concern that Snowe’s $6 billion was not paid for.
“The real effect of the bill was to go way outside the budget and add a huge new tranche of dollars beyond the budget, which would be fine had it been realistically offset, but it wasn’t realistically offset,” Gregg said on the Senate floor. A press release from his office added that Snowe’s amendment “relied on fees from the U.S. Customs Department, and these fees, as stated by Sen. Gregg, are continuously used to pay for different functions and initiatives.”
Shays and Rowland Bicker Over Train Seats
By Brian Dolan
WASHINGTON— Gov. John Rowland and Connecticut House Speaker Moira Lyons have rejected a proposal by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4 th, to increase the state gasoline tax to pay for 20 new rail cars for the Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven Line.
According to Shays, they have suggested that instead of focusing on the rail line, he turn his attention to getting more federal highway money for the state.
Rowland and Lyons decided Monday that the state should issue $25 million in bonds, which, pooled with the $35 million the state already set aside, would be enough to begin purchasing the new rail cars.
Under their plan, the state legislature would authorize the director of the Connecticut Department of Transportation to begin purchasing the rail cars immediately. Otherwise, the state would have to wait 18 months to buy them.
Last winter, the Connecticut Department of Transportation had to remove 35 percent of the New Haven Line’s rail cars from service because they broke down.
“The cold weather did not cause these cars to break down,” Shays said in a statement last week. “The age of the rail cars and lack of adequate maintenance facilities did.”
Shays proposed then that the state issue bonds to purchase 20 new rail cars and begin building a new maintenance facility, with the bonds paid back through a hike in the gasoline tax.
“When Connecticut reduced the gas tax from $0.39 to $0.25 [per gallon] between 1997 and 2000, the state gave up more than $500 million in revenue that would have gone directly to transportation,” Shays said.
Rowland and Lyons, however, told Shays Tuesday that they were seeking other ways to pay back the bonds.
“The governor and speaker reject the need to raise taxes on the people of Connecticut,” said Lyons’ spokesman, Todd Murphy. “There is no need to raise taxes any more in Connecticut because they are already too high—some of the highest in the country. The representatives of the legislature, the governor and all the people of Connecticut who use this metro system everyday are against a raise in the gas tax.”
Murphy said the state legislature is seeking ways to pay back the bonds that would result in a “win-win situation” for Connecticut residents. But Shays said an increase in the gasoline tax is the best solution.
“A gas tax is not something my constituents want to have, but they don’t want their roads, bridges or railroads falling apart either,” Shays said in an interview Tuesday. “This is a conflict of interest but they need rail cars so we need to take action. I’m willing to take action and willing to raise the gas tax.
“The governor was saying I shouldn’t get involved with this issue, but it’s a huge issue that affects my district,” Shays said. “We have a huge issue with transportation in the state of Connecticut, but if the state wants to raise money somehow instead of raising taxes, that’s their problem.”
Shays said the current political scandal involving Rowland has affected his working relationship with the governor. Rowland accepted gifts for his Litchfield cottage from friends, employees and a state contractor and later lied about it. A special state House committee is investigating his conduct to determine if he has committed any impeachable offenses.
“It could be better—I mean these are awkward times,” Shays said. “I asked him to resign, but I think John and I can be professional.”
Murphy said Shays should focus on increasing Connecticut’s share of federal highway money. If the pending $318 billion highway spending bill passes, Connecticut would get the smallest increase in highway funds of any state.
“We are happy with any involvement Shays has in the [rail car] process,” Murphy said. “But it would be really helpful for us if he was working on getting highway funding. We need a bigger slice of that pie.”
New Hampshire Pledges Allegiance to the Flag
WASHINGTON- New Hampshire’s Congress members unanimously favor keeping the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
They expressed their views as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether to uphold a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9 th Circuit, which said the two words should not be in the pledge recited for a half century by millions of schoolchildren.
Two years ago a California atheist, Michael A. Newdow, sued the federal and state governments and his daughter's local school board over the use of “under God” in the pledge. The appeals court agreed that the inclusion of the words constituted state-sponsored affirmation of monotheism, and therefore violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Every morning, teachers and students across America voluntarily recite these words: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The Pledge was originally written more than a century ago, but the controversial words have been part of the Pledge only since 1954, when they were added during the height of the Cold War as a way of distinguishing the United States from the officially atheistic Soviet Union.
The all-Republican New Hampshire delegation wants those words to stay.
Sen. John Sununu, called the appellate court decision “a bizarre ruling, squarely out of touch with the views of millions of men and women across America.” In his statement, he praised the values and freedoms that are “embodied in the very pledge we recite” and said they are what “American soldiers are fighting for.”
Sen. Judd Gregg said in a statement: “The American flag is the symbol of the strength and character of our nation. We must stand together united in our support for the men and women of our armed forces who are in the front lines protecting our liberties.”
Reps. Jeb Bradley and Charles Bass agreed.
In an interview, Bradley said that “the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t establish a religion” and that he hopes the Supreme Court will uphold its constitutionality.
Bass, according to press secretary Lee Ross, “supports the notion that the pledge symbolizes our nation that is united by the ideals of liberty, equality, opportunity and justice for all” and believes the establishment clause “was designed to prevent the establishment of a national religion--not to remove any reference to God from our society.”
Planned Parenthood Steamed Over Bush Budget’s Irresponsible Choice
By Brian Dolan
WASHINGTON—Buried deep in President Bush’s fiscal 2005 budget proposal are two italicized words that sharp-eyed critics at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America spotted and cried foul.
“Responsible Choices” is the description the White House used to introduce three paragraphs outlining its sexual abstinence education program.
“Responsible Choices” is also the 1999 trademarked title of Planned Parenthood’s sex education and reproductive health care programs, which include family planning services, emergency contraception and abortions.
The official title of the White House’s abstinence program is the “Adolescent Family Life” program, according to Patrick J. Sheeran, the director of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Planned Parenthood formally requested in a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson earlier this month that the administration “cease and desist” from using its trademarked title.
“Your use of Responsible Choices as the title of your so-called ‘abstinence-only’ initiative is extremely confusing and troubling, considering the fact that your program not only denies choice but also deliberately censors medically accurate information on sexuality, contraception and the importance of condoms in reducing the risk of sexually transmitted infections,” Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, wrote in the letter.
Sheeran said “Responsible Choices” is a label that accurately describes the abstinence education program, though it is not the program’s title, as Feldt suggested. But Sheeran said he didn’t know how the administration settled on the phrase.
“Our program has and does offer responsible choices,” Sheeran said. “Let me put it this way: maybe we don’t offer as vast an array of choices as Planned Parenthood, and I can’t say what choices they offer because I can’t speak for them, but our program deserves a lot of merit.”
The White House’s budget proposal says abstinence education is the way to combat sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
“Each year, there are 15 million new sexually transmitted disease cases in the United States, and one-quarter of them are teenagers,” the proposed budget states. “Abstinence Education grants provide support to communities and states to develop, implement and evaluate programs for 12 to 18 year olds that promote abstinence and encourage youth to make responsible and healthy choices…. To provide parents with the tools they need to talk to their children about responsible choices, the budget doubles the President’s financial commitment to $270 million.”
Feldt’s letter holds that only a wide range of contraceptive options will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and abortions.
The National Institutes of Health, another HHS agency, financed a study of a nationwide abstinence program in which students 12 to18 years old pledged not to have sex until they were married. Such pledges reduced premarital sex and led to earlier marriages, but they did not cut the rate of sexually transmitted diseases, according to the study published earlier this month.
About 15,000 youths participated in the study. Eighty-eight percent of those who pledged to remain virgins until they were married went back on their word. Adolescents who pledged abstinence were much less likely than others to use contraceptives the first time they had sex, and consequently their risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases and becoming pregnant was as high as among non-pledgers, the study found.
Shays Questions Clarke’s Motives
By Brian Dolan
WASHINGTON—Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th, lashed out Wednesday at Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief who told a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the Bush administration failed to adequately address the threat to America.
Clarke “was part of the problem before Sept. 11 because he took too narrow a view of the terrorism threat. His approach was reactive and limited to swatting at the visible elements of al Qaeda,” Shays wrote in a letter to the commission, which spent the last two days questioning high-ranking members of the Bush and Clinton administrations.
“The blind spots and vulnerabilities that contributed to the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy were apparent to many throughout the years Mr. Clarke was in a position to do something about them,” Shays wrote. “Yet no truly national strategy to combat terrorism was ever produced during Mr. Clarke’s tenure.”
Clarke created a stir in the capital this week with the publication of his book, “Against All Enemies,” in which he wrote that President Bush did not do enough to protect America before al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and that Bush then tried to pin blame on Iraq.
The White House has launched a counterattack in an effort to discredit Clarke, who left the administration a little more than a year ago. Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, disclosed Wednesday that Clarke was the anonymous “senior administration official” who defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies during a briefing with reporters in August 2002.
Clarke explained to the commission that he "put the best face" on Bush's policies while on staff.
"I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration," Clarke said.
Clarke, who was an anti-terrorism adviser to four presidents, said Wednesday that in its first eight months in office, the Bush administration treated fighting al Qaeda as “important” but not “urgent.”
Shays, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, said Clarke was unhelpful during some of the 20 hearings the panel conducted on terrorism before Sept. 11. “Mr. Clarke was of little help in our oversight. When he briefed the subcommittee, his answers were both evasive and derisive,” Shays wrote in his letter.
In a statement, Shays went into more detail. “Clarke told the subcommittee in June 2000that there was ‘no need for an assessment’ of the terrorist threat,” Shays said. “Mr. Clarke is engaging in revisionist history, apparently for personal partisan reasons. The fact is, when he had the authority and responsibility to craft U.S. counterterrorism policies, he consistently failed to articulate a cogent strategy or plan to Congress.”
Shays also said that at a briefing on June 28, 2000, he asked Clarke, then serving as President Clinton's counterterrorism chief, when a threat assessment and strategy would be completed.
“No assessment has been done, and there is no need for an assessment, I know the threat,” Clarke replied, according to Shays.
Shays accused Clarke of taking the low ground nowfor political reasons.
”The task of responding to the terrorist threat is too important to be lowered to partisan bickering,” Shays said. “The bottom line is the failure to respond to the terrorist threat was systemic, not political. It spanned several administrations and pervaded the intelligence community.”
Some critics have accused Clarke of working for the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is his party’s presumptive nominee, while others have suggested he is simply trying to peddle a book. Clarke has denied the allegations, telling the commission he last voted as a Republican.
John Lehman, the former Navy secretary who serves on the 9-11 Commission, gave voice to many of Clarke’s critics when he questioned Clarke’s motivations.
"I hope you resolve that credibility problem, because I’d hate to see you shoved aside in the presidential campaign as an active partisan trying to shove out a book," Lehman said during the hearing.
“I will not accept any position in the Kerry administration should there be one," Clarke responded.
Clarke began his testimony Wednesday afternoon with a rare apology for the deaths that occurred on his watch.
“I welcome this hearing because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the victims of the loved ones of 9-11,” Clarke said. “Your government failed you—those entrusted to care for you failed you—I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we still failed you.”
Mother of Fallen Soldier Wants Questions Answered
WASHINGTON – Nearly one year after Mathew Boule died fighting in Iraq, the only personal possessions the Army has given his parents are the 22-year-old soldier’s socks and underwear, a wallet and part of his wristwatch.
But Sue and Leo Boule, of Dracut, Mass., never received the one item that meant the most to them.
“They didn’t give us his uniform. Nothing. Which I would have liked to have had because at least it was something. We would have liked something,” Sue Boule said in a recent interview. “I mean, they even sterilized his wallet.”
Mathew Boule, an Army specialist, died April 2, 2003 – two weeks after the U.S. invaded Iraq -- when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a firefight. He was the first Massachusetts resident to die in the war.
As the anniversary of his death approaches, his parents are grappling not only with their grief, but with what Sue Boule describes as an Army so bogged down in bureaucracy it doesn’t respond to her questions. She said in a telephone interview that she is frustrated to still be waiting for the Army to pay her son’s death benefits.
Boule said she still has questions the Army failed to address, namely why it never returned Mathew’s clothes or allowed an autopsy to be performed. “People don’t answer questions,” she said.
She said she has still not received all the items Mathew brought with him to Iraq, including a digital camera.
Since the war began last March 19, 570 American service members have been killed and 3,273 injured, according to the Pentagon’s tally on Tuesday.
Approximately four American service members have been killed each week since the beginning of January. In November alone, 92 service members died.
“My own feeling is I hope it stops,” Boule said. “I just hope we don’t lose any more.”
Boule said she has been given the runaround from the Army as she worked to retrieve her son’s missing things. “I’m sure they have other things that are more important to them, but they have to realize that there are things that are more important to us, too,” she said.
The Defense Department gives a $12,000 death gratuity to survivors of service members killed in action, and reimburses burial expenses up to $6,900. Survivors are also reimbursed for any leave time their relative left unused and for up to $250,000 in life insurance. Other benefits are available only to a service member’s spouse or children, but Mathew Boule had none.
Shari Lawrence, spokeswoman for Army Human Resource Command, said that because Mathew Boule’s rank was “very junior, some of the other benefits don’t kick in.” She would not say how much the Pentagon has paid the Boule family.
Boule said the Army helped pay for her son’s funeral, though she declined to say how much. But she said she is still waiting for additional payments she was promised.
Boule said despite her frustrations, she has some positive feelings about the Army, which her son joined when he graduated from high school. “They did good with Mathew,” she said. “They taught him. He liked it.”
She said she and her husband find comfort in sharing experiences with others who have lost loved ones in the war. “The families stick together. That’s where we’re getting help,” she said. “From each other.”
Boule said she feels torn between supporting the soldiers still in Iraq and wanting the war to end. “Most of the soldiers we’ve been in touch with say they are there for a reason. They all say the same thing, that Mathew’s death was not in vain and that he died for a reason,” Boule said.
“But as a mother, I’d love them all to come home right now. People out there can’t imagine what you go through,” Boule said, “even a year later.”
Supreme Court Could Find Pledge of Allegiance Phrasing Unconstitutional
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next Wednesday on whether the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance violate the Constitution by breaching the separation of church and state.
In Keene’s elementary schools, like most public schools in the country, the pledge is said at least once a week—usually every day. Students are not required to participate, although most do, school officials said.
Symonds Elementary School Principal Dick Cate said parents and administrators “spent some time discussing it” about 10 years ago, but the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer an issue.
In a panel discussion on Tuesday hosted by the Federalist Society in Washington, professors sparred over the expected outcome of the court case.
Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge and the independent counsel on the Whitewater and Lewinsky probes, said he thinks “the court will embrace a great compromise” by upholding schools’ right to lead the Pledge of Allegiance but acknowledging students’ right not to participate.
Students already have the court’s blessing to abstain from saluting the flag or reciting the pledge.
Based on prior Supreme Court cases, it could still be constitutional for students to voluntarily decide to recite the pledge, even if the court decides teachers could not lead it.
The current case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, centers on a father’s objection to public school teachers leading the pledge in his daughter’s California classroom. The father, an atheist, contends his daughter is injured by having to listen to other students’ school-sponsored religious speech when they recite the phrase “under God.”
According to Starr, the Pledge of Allegiance is not religious, but traditional. “The nation is entitled to acknowledge its traditions, including those with religious roots,” he said.
“The court well understands that trying to excise all references to religion is… unconstitutional,” Starr said.
The original pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, a socialist former minister, in 1892 as a patriotic exercise and caught on quickly across the country. It contained no religious reference until 1954, when Congress added the phrase “under God” during the Cold War.
In Concord , Charlie Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, agreed with Starr that the court should not get involved.
“I can’t imagine that any reasonable person thinks that saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day in third grade is somehow an infringement on people’s freedom,” he said. “Unfortunately, somehow our courts get so caught up in their own little world that they forget about common sense.”
Because public opinion is so strong on this issue, a controversial court opinion would lead to an outcry against the court, Arlinghaus said. “If, in theory, the court actually struck down [the pledge], it would hold the court up to ridicule,” he said.
Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.), along with 210 other Republican House members and 11 Democrats, is a co-sponsor of a bill that would prevent courts from even hearing challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Spokesman Lee Ross said Bass supports the phrase “under God” in the pledge. “The separation of church and state clause was designed to prevent the establishment of a national religion - not to remove any reference to God from our society,” Ross said in an e-mail.
National polls have shown that a clear majority of Americans support keeping “under God” in the pledge, and Congress has responded in kind. But the federal courts are not subject to popular opinion.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who last heard the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, wrote, “Our service is accomplished not through channeling popular sentiment but through strict adherence to established constitutional principles.” That court ruled that the phrase “under God” in the pledge violated the Constitution. The U.S. government appealed to the Supreme Court.
Another judge on that court wrote, “A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for [constitutional] purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.”
If the Supreme Court allows the pledge to stand untouched, it is likely to say the reference to God in the pledge is mere “ceremonial deism,” like coins’ “In God We Trust,” which the court said has been invoked enough to lose religious meaning, according to several members of the Federalist Society panel. If so, it would not endanger the First Amendment’s Establishment clause, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that was appealed to the Supreme Court would apply only to the states in its jurisdiction: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. A Supreme Court decision would apply in every state.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia excused himself from the case because he had made earlier public statements that the pledge decision was best addressed by state legislatures.
