"Runaway Train" was on. One of the first flicks I bought as a used VCR tape. Then - "Angel Heart." Good supper. . .

Always the judge placed - finding T-passes and wallets. . . right. . .

Future target spammer:

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atop

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Only one Hunter I ever knew. . . one of Thorn's buddies from the Buttery. . . saw him last between Central and Harvard. . .

I'd found and thought not to post earlier, but chenged my mind so here it is (or perhaps I did, so here it is again) - from boston.com:

Inmate, 31, commits suicide in prison cell

By Michael Naughton, Globe Correspondent | March 12, 2007

A 31-year-old inmate was found hanging in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley on Saturday night, the second suicide by an inmate at the facility in as many months.

Advocates for inmates again condemned the Department of Correction for failing to act quickly enough to make changes designed to prevent suicides in state prisons.

Russ Dagenais, formerly of Lynn, was found in the segregation unit at 7:13 p.m. by a correction officer and a nurse delivering medication during a round, said Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the Department of Correction . Dagenais had been placed in the segregation unit after a verbal altercation with an inmate in the facility's kitchen earlier that day. He had been in the cell for about six hours, Wiffin said.

Officials at the jail performed CPR and requested an ambulance, which transported Dagenais to UMass Memorial HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster, where he was pronounced dead just after 8:30 p.m.

Before he was placed in the segregation unit, Dagenais was screened for physical and mental health and cleared by UMass medical staff, which screens inmates for the department, Wiffin said.

On Jan. 29, 2006, Mark Cunningham, 37, a convicted rapist, was found hanging from an electrical cord in his cell at the Shirley facility. Cunningham had been transferred to a cell in the segregation unit days earlier.

Dagenais's suicide was the first since the release of a report by Lindsay M. Hayes, a national specialist in prison suicide prevention, that criticized the department's handling of inmates at risk for committing suicide.

Between 2005 and 2006, 10 inmates killed themselves in state prisons and another prisoner was left brain dead by a suicide attempt.

Since the report was issued last month, Wiffin said the department has made some improvements, including implementing 15-minute guard rounds instead of 30-minute rounds.

"We are moving forward and are committed to the full implement of the Hayes recommendations," Wiffin said during a telephone interview last night.

The death also followed a federal lawsuit that the Disability Law Center filed on Thursday against the Department of Correction after a yearlong investigation during which advocates questioned inmates in segregation units at Souza-Baranowski and MCI-Cedar Junction. The suit alleged that Massachusetts has ignored repeated calls from its mental health providers and consultants to stop segregating mentally ill prisoners and demanded that the state build maximum-security residential treatment units.

"These prisoners are subjected to horrific conditions, which cause them to harm themselves significantly and all too often in a fatal manner," said Stanley Eichner, the law center's executive director.

University of Massachusetts medical staff had screened Dagenais and cleared him to go to the isolation unit, according to a statement from the Department of Correction.

Members of a state inmate advocacy group said last night that the suicide was a tragic death that system could have done more to stop. "Sadly, this is yet another preventable death in segregation and in the Department of Corrections," said Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services.
------------------

So many prison experiments - a captive audience; like homeless. . . (Abt changed a lot of its HR postings - lots of prison stuff - the week before. . .

Manly's pred's back. He's a computer over now, circling (recall the sharks) about the girl the last computer down. . . sad. . .

from nytimes.com:

March 20, 2007
Medicare Pays Doctors Owing Back Taxes
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, March 19 — Thousands of doctors and other health professionals who participate in Medicare are delinquent in paying federal income and payroll taxes, owing more than $1.3 billion, but they continue to receive Medicare payments because the government does little to check their background, federal investigators said Monday.

“Many of these individuals accumulated substantial wealth and assets, including million-dollar houses and luxury vehicles, while failing to pay their federal taxes,” the investigators said. “One physician gambled millions of dollars at the same time the individual owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal taxes.”

The findings are set forth in a report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency, to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which plans to hold a hearing on the problem on Tuesday.

Medicare has no mechanism to prevent doctors who are delinquent on their taxes from receiving the payments, the report said.

Gregory D. Kutz, director of forensic audits and special investigations at the G.A.O., said more than 21,000 health care providers, mostly doctors, had tax debts totaling $1.3 billion as of last Sept. 30. That amount reflects tax liabilities that have been acknowledged by taxpayers or certified by a court. The number almost certainly understates the amount owed because it does not include the obligations of people who failed to file tax returns or understated their incomes, Mr. Kutz said.

About half the amount owed was individual income taxes and 41 percent was payroll taxes. Other taxes, including corporate income and excise taxes, accounted for the remainder.

Some doctors withheld payroll taxes from their employees and then used the money to buy new homes or to finance their businesses rather than sending it to the government, the auditors said.

“Our investigation found abusive and potentially criminal activity,” including willful failure to pay taxes, Mr. Kutz said in testimony prepared for the hearing.

When an employer withholds taxes from a worker’s wages, the employer has a duty to hold the money “in trust” for the government, and willful failure to send the money to the government is a felony under federal law, Mr. Kutz said.

Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, who requested the study, said he did not understand why Medicare continued to pay doctors who owed large amounts in back taxes. Mr. Coleman emphasized that “we are not casting aspersions on the medical profession” as a whole, and he said honest health care providers should be angry at “the 21,000 scofflaws.”

Leslie V. Norwalk, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “We are very concerned about this issue and are working hard with the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to ensure that we do not overpay providers or other entities who owe the I.R.S. money.”

Ms. Norwalk said her agency had “no explicit authority to deny physicians the right to participate in Medicare if they have tax debt.”

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the subcommittee, said Medicare officials had for more than five years chosen not to participate in a program that allows the Internal Revenue Service to satisfy tax debts by seizing some of the money paid to federal contractors.

The investigators compared files from the I.R.S. showing unpaid taxes with files from the Department of Health and Human Services showing Medicare payments to doctors, doctor-owned businesses, laboratories and ambulance operators. The audit did not scrutinize payments to hospitals, nursing homes or suppliers of medical equipment, whose tax compliance will be examined in future investigations, Mr. Kutz said.

The Government Accountability Office gave these examples of problems:

¶Medicare paid more than $100,000 to a doctor in 2005 even though the doctor owed nearly $1 million in federal taxes. The doctor was also delinquent in paying child support and had lost hospital privileges because of “substandard care.”

¶Another doctor was paid nearly $100,000 by Medicare even though the doctor owed more than $600,000 in individual income taxes and had been convicted of laundering money through offshore accounts. The doctor owes tens of thousands of dollars in child support.

¶Medicare paid more than $100,000 to a doctor who owed more than $2 million in federal taxes and had an “extensive history of not filing” tax returns.

¶Medicare paid more than $1 million to a doctor-owned business in 2005, even though the business owed more than $1 million in taxes. The doctor “owns a million-dollar house, a pleasure boat and several nightclubs while owing taxes.”

The report did not describe the range of unpaid taxes owed by doctors and other health care providers. Investigators disregarded tax debts of less than $100. The average debt was $62,000. One doctor owed more than $3 million. Another owed “nearly $3 million.”

The accountability office said it found tax problems among 5 percent of the Medicare providers it examined. The Defense Department and many civilian agencies allow the Internal Revenue Service to collect overdue taxes by imposing a levy or special assessment on payments to federal contractors.

In the first nine months of 2005, the report said, “the federal government lost opportunities to collect between $50 million and $140 million in unpaid federal taxes” because Medicare did not cooperate with the I.R.S. in making such levies.

Senator Levin said that “the vast majority of health care providers are honest,” but that 21,000 were tax delinquents.

“While stuffing taxpayer dollars in their pockets,” he said, “they are stiffing Uncle Sam by not paying their taxes.”
------------------------------

The man at FAS/OEB had said that like Al Capone, they can be gotten on back taxes. . . I owe, as I admitted. Piddling change. Today the same man said others were given "explicit instructions."

There was a woman here earlier, a student, asking the homeless for help with a "project;" guided a few out front for some picture taking. . .

nytimes.com:

March 20, 2007
Changes Sought in Naming of Prosecutors
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, March 19 — The Senate moved Monday to revoke authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors, with Democrats accusing the administration of abusing the appointment power at the center of an escalating clash over the ouster of eight United States attorneys.

The move to overturn an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation came amid growing speculation that the controversy over the prosecutors would cost Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales his job.

President Bush has said he has confidence in Mr. Gonzales, but the White House seemed to offer only tepid support for him on Monday.

“Nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold,” the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said when asked if Mr. Gonzales would remain until the end of Mr. Bush’s term. Mr. Bush has said Mr. Gonzales needs to repair his relations with Capitol Hill; asked if the attorney general had done so, Mr. Snow said, “I don’t know.”

At the Justice Department, neither Mr. Gonzales nor his staff have engaged in a major effort to reverse the erosion of his support among Republicans in Congress, associates said. Mr. Gonzales read budget briefing books over the weekend and on Monday he phoned one or two lawmakers, said one aide, who declined to identify them.

Mr. Gonzales, who publicly apologized last week for his department’s handling of the dismissals, also acknowledged mistakes in a conference call with United States attorneys over the weekend.

Despite the attorney general’s apologies, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, joined a chorus of lawmakers who are calling for Mr. Gonzales to leave the administration.

“I believe we need a new attorney general,” Ms. Pelosi told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune.

The new chief counsel to President Bush, Fred F. Fielding, spent Monday preparing a response for Democrats who are demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to Mr. Bush, including the former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Fielding is expected to go to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The Senate committee chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, has said he wants Mr. Rove and the others to testify publicly and under oath, but the White House has said that is unlikely to happen, setting up a possible clash between the two branches.

Republicans close to the White House say they expect Mr. Fielding to offer some sort of compromise rather than rule out testimony entirely.

“I think that he will extend an olive branch, but with some important caveats,” said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer for the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. “And then we shall see what the Democrats will do.”

Mr. Snow would not characterize the kind of offer Mr. Fielding might make, saying only that the counsel intended to have a “constructive conversation” with the lawmakers. But the White House is facing the prospect of subpoenas if Mr. Rove and the others do not talk voluntarily; Mr. Leahy has scheduled a vote for Thursday on whether to grant him the power to issue the subpoenas.

“I know there’s been an expectation of brinksmanship,” Mr. Snow said, adding that it was “important for both sides to behave responsibly.”

On Capitol Hill, members of both parties expressed support for repealing the Patriot Act provision, expected to be approved Tuesday. Lawmakers said the provision amounted to an end run around senators, who have long had influence in the appointment of home-state prosecutors. Some senators said the provision was used to clear the way for firing prosecutors and replacing them with candidates considered more in line with the administration.

“We can’t trust this administration to use that authority in a fair and constructive manner,” said Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, who helped begin an inquiry into the dismissals by objecting to the administration’s choice for his state. “They have proven it to us.”

Mr. Pryor and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that the way the Patriot Act revision, which was written by the Justice Department, was introduced last year with little or no consultation with senators suggested that the administration had intended all along to use it to avoid a showdown with the Senate over new prosecutors.

“Now it is becoming clear why they stuck that provision in there,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “This was a plan they had had for a long time.”

In a Sept. 13, 2006, e-mail message recently disclosed by the Justice Department, D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, strongly recommended that the administration use the new authority when making appointments. He said it would allow the agency to “give far less deference to home-state senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it far faster and more efficiently, at less political cost to the White House.”

Despite that message, Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Sampson’s plan “does not and did not represent the views or final actions of the Justice Department.”

Mr. Roehrkasse said the provision changing the appointment practices was introduced because of concerns about federal courts filling openings as well as fears that the vacancies would remain too long, given the time required for confirmation.

He said that Will Moschella, then assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, proposed the idea in 2003.

“At that time, Will Moschella did not have any knowledge of plans to remove U.S. attorneys,” Mr. Roehrkasse said in a statement.

The legislation the Senate is considering would restore the previous system for naming federal prosecutors, allowing the attorney general to name an interim attorney for up to 120 days while the administration submits a nomination. If a nominee is not confirmed in that period, the federal district court could then name a replacement.

The Justice Department said that approach had presented problems over the years, including the unusual situation in which one branch of government — the judiciary — appoints a representative of another branch. Mr. Roehrkasse said some courts had refused to appoint prosecutors for that reason while others have appointed unqualified attorneys. In addition, 120 days is a short period to win Senate confirmation.

But as the impact of the change in the handling of vacancies became clearer to senators, lawmakers in both parties expressed dismay since they consider the ability to recommend and confirm candidates for federal prosecutor a senatorial privilege they are eager to retain.

“The president can pick anyone he wants to serve on his White House staff, and he does,” Mr. Leahy said. “But when it comes to the United States Department of Justice and our home states, U.S. senators have a say in ensuring fairness and independence to prevent the federal law enforcement function from untoward political influence.”
--------------

It is a benefit to hte American people that they often neglect or forget that they can turn the tide on a rogue government or administration. It might take some time, but it can be done. . .

washingtonpost.com:

Ant Fraud Yields Death Sentence

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; D01

YINGKOU, China -- To hear Chinese authorities tell it, Wang Zhendong is a danger to society, the worst kind of person, one who took advantage of his fellow citizens' naivete and trust. Last month, a court here gave him the death penalty for his crimes.

Wang's misdeed: selling overpriced ant farms to the public.

As China moves fitfully from a planned economy to a free-market system, cracking down on fraud, embezzlement and other financial schemes has become a major priority for the government. Among the cases taken most seriously are ones that harmed common people.

In Wang's case, for instance, investors shelled out 10,000 yuan, the equivalent of about $1,300, for cardboard boxes full of black ants, purportedly rare ones sometimes used in China to make medicines and wine but actually worth about $25.

Over two years, more than 36,700 residents of 12 towns in China's northeastern Liaoning province were tricked out of nearly $400 million, resulting in many of them losing their life savings. At least one investor committed suicide.

"This crime has seriously disrupted the financial order, social environment and the interests of ordinary people," said Wang Xinquan, vice director of financial affairs for the province.

In China, where more than 60 types of crimes -- including economic ones like tax fraud and bribery -- are punishable by death, the government has been criticized for its broad application of the death penalty. Some estimates put the number of court-ordered executions at as high as 10,000 a year. In 2005, Amnesty International logged 1,770 executions, or about 80 percent of the known total worldwide.

Last year, China sought to lower the number of executions by enacting a law that requires all death sentences to be reviewed by its supreme court; last week, the country's chief justice affirmed that the court would uphold only an "extremely small" number of such sentences.

But at the same time, it defended use of the punishment for financial crimes, which the government says rose 11 percent last year as unscrupulous people sought to take advantage of the booming economy.

In recent months, two former employees of China Construction Bank -- Zhou Limin, who was a branch manager, and accountant Liu Yibing -- were put to death by lethal injection for stealing almost $52 million from customers by offering bogus accounts that they said would earn high interest rates. And Li Rongxing, an oil executive, was given the death sentence for embezzling more than $4 million and taking $620,000 in bribes.

Supreme People's Court President Xiao Yang told the audience at a criminal law conference in November: "It is necessary to use the death penalty in China to punish criminals who commit extremely serious crimes in order to safeguard state security, public interests and smooth operation of economic construction."

The case of Wang Zhendong is one of the more bizarre scams. He grew up on a farm just outside Yingkou, a port city along China's northeastern coast, as famous for its piano workmanship as for its steel industry. After graduating from high school and finishing a stint in the army, Wang founded the Yingkou Donghua Trading Group in July 2003, according to law enforcement authorities.

The company's name in Chinese -- at 20 characters -- was unusually long in a language known for brevity, and it purported to show that the company was involved in plastics, machine tools, electrical machinery, fisheries, wine, soft drinks, silk and even chicken breeding. On the surface, at least, the company thrived, with 10 subsidiaries and 800 employees.

Wang's picture was often snapped as he stood next to government officials. His company was known for its philanthropy and was the subject of a propaganda piece in the local newspapers.

Su Changhong, deputy leader of the economic investigations unit for the Liaoning police, said Wang, who was married with three children, was known for giving gifts of large sums of cash to friends and relatives. "It was a way to show off his identity as a really rich guy," Su said.

But law enforcement officials say there was a dark side to the happy family man. He kept two mistresses, they said, and more importantly, his company was a facade, built on a pyramid scheme.

The company's advertisements called out to investors with an enticing offer: Invest the equivalent of about $1,300. Get two boxes of "rare" ants. Raise them for the company, and 10 times a year get $52 for your work. In one year, a participant would make about $520, a whopping 40 percent return.

People did get paid, at first, but it turned out that those high returns were being financed not by profits from real economic activity but by money flowing in from subsequent investors. The term doesn't exist in China, but in the United States, that would be called a Ponzi scheme, after Charles Ponzi, a Boston scammer who briefly became a millionaire in 1920 by using such a fraud.

For Wang Ling, 46, who operates a fruit stand with her husband, it seemed like a sound investment. She and her husband had $13,000 they were saving for their daughter's college education, but in the bank, it was earning about 4 percent a year.

"It seemed so easy," she said. "The work was little; the interest was high."

So she put down the money and cleared out a corner of her living room for the ants. Stacked on top of each other from floor to ceiling, the ant boxes became her life for more than a year. Through the window, she watched the long ants run around the grass in the box. Twice a day, she sprayed sugar water inside, and every three days, she placed pieces of cake there.

She wasn't particularly fond of ants, and it wasn't fun work, but, she said, "I was willing because I thought I was making money."

Along with other big investors, she got a tour of the company and felt confident that the ants were being turned into wine and medicines that would be sold at a profit. The Chinese have eaten certain ants, brewed wine from their bodies and turned them into medicines for thousands of years.

Each month, someone from the company came in a car to pick up the ants and pay her.

But the truth was that while the ants weren't totally worthless (they were of a large, edible variety) they weren't as valuable as the company claimed, and at some point, investors said, the company stopped caring whether the ants were returned dead or alive -- or at all.

A Ponzi scheme is doomed to collapse because it requires ever-larger sums and an ever-larger number of victims to keep paying abnormal returns to earlier investors. Wang's ant growers learned this cold fact of life in early 2005, when the company stopped paying them.

Angry investors surrounded the company's headquarters with signs that read: "We want to eat! Return our blood and sweat money." Law enforcement swooped in.

In court, Wang Zhendong told judges that he's a simple farmer and never meant to lie to his investors. He said he just wanted to raise money to finance his other companies. He pleaded that he wasn't very good at business.

"He never meant to defraud anybody," said Sun Jingguo, an attorney hired by Wang's sisters. He said Wang invested profits from selling the ants in other projects his company was putting together and that "these projects had prospects for profitability."

In addition, Sun said, Wang "took positive steps to return the money" after he was informed that what he did was a crime. "He did not transfer the assets or run away."

Li Xuedong, 38, a wheat farmer who eventually got a third of his money back, said he didn't care whether Wang lives or dies, but he blames the government for helping build up Wang's reputation and for not acting sooner, saying the authorities must have known something was amiss.

"In Liaoning, power is bigger than law," Li said.

A spokeswoman for the province said officials who had contact with Wang before the investigation had no knowledge of his criminal operations.

Zhu Mingchen, 27, who lost nearly $65,000 and attended Wang's court hearing, which was not public, said he was shocked to see Wang waving to the officials coming into court during the February trial.

"Just like how Chinese elders wave the diplomatic wave," Zhu said. When Wang did that, Zhu said, victims in the courtroom started yelling: "Death penalty! Death penalty!" He said that when the court handed down its judgment, spectators "clapped five times."

Another investor, Zhou Ping, 54, who used to work at a glass manufacturing facility and invested about $6,500 that she had planned to use for her daughter's wedding, said she believes the government handed down the appropriate punishment.

"He should just die. He hurt so many people," she said. "Some people even sold their house, their cars. People don't have money, and they don't have work. What can they do?"

Wang has two chances to overturn his conviction in court and in the meantime is locked up in a provincial jail in Yingkou.

Fifteen of Wang's colleagues, most of them directors of the company's subsidiaries, were also found guilty in the ant-fraud scheme, receiving sentences of up to 10 years in prison.

Residents of the Yingkou area have grown wary of promotional schemes. They said they recently started seeing advertisements eerily similar to the ones Wang's company used. The new company, Ant Power Magic, is promising double-digit returns.
-------------------

washingtonpost.com:

War Bill Includes Tempting Projects
Democrats' Tactic Poses Dilemma for Some Lawmakers

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; A01

House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year.

So far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap.

But at least a handful of Republicans and conservative Democrats who otherwise would vote "no" remain undecided, as they ponder whether they can leave on the table millions of dollars for constituents by opposing the $124 billion war funding bill due for a vote on Thursday.

"She hates the games the Democrats are playing," said Guy Short, chief of staff to Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), a staunch conservative who remains undecided, thanks to billions of dollars in the bill for drought relief and agriculture assistance. "But Representative Musgrave was just down in southeastern Colorado, talking to ranchers and farmers, and they desperately need this assistance."

Democratic leaders say the domestic spending in the bill reflects the pent-up demand from lawmakers who last year could not win funding for programs that had bi-partisan support such as disaster assistance.

They have had some successes in their furious search for support. Yesterday, MoveOn.org announced that with 85 percent of its members backing the bill, the liberal activist group will begin working for its passage. That could prove to be a major boost for Democratic leaders struggling to keep in line the most liberal wing of the party, which wants to cut off funds for the war by the end of this year.

A few Republicans are at least considering a vote for the bill, including Reps. Wayne T. Gilchrest and Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland. Some conservative Democrats who had been expected to vote no on Thursday are wavering.

To get them off the fence and on the bill, Democrats have a key weapon at their disposal: cold, hard cash. The bill contains billions for agriculture and drought relief, children's health care and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

For Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), there is $25 million for spinach growers hurt by last year's E. coli scare. For three conservative Democrats in Georgia, there's $75 million for peanut storage. For lawmakers from the bone-dry West, there's $500 million for wildfire suppression. An additional $120 million is earmarked for shrimp and Atlantic menhaden fishermen.

So far, at least in public pronouncements, the $21 billion in funding beyond President Bush's request has earned Democrats nothing but scorn.

For more than a year, Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R) has tried unsuccessfully to secure federal funds to halt salt water intruding on rice fields in his lowland Louisiana district. So it came as a surprise last week when Boustany found $15 million in the House's huge war spending bill for his rice farmers. He hadn't even asked that the bill include it.

"It gives me no satisfaction to vote against measures that I have been working for since even before [Hurricane] Katrina, but I cannot in good conscience vote for a bill that does this to our troops," Boustany said yesterday, decrying what he called the "cheap politics" of using disaster aid to win votes on a measure this controversial.

House GOP leaders have accused Democratic leaders of flagrant vote-buying.

"The war supplemental legislation voted out of the Appropriations Committee last week was an exercise in arrogance that demonstrated the utter contempt the majority has for the American people and their hard-earned tax dollars," fumed Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.). "We are at war with a ruthless global terrorist network, yet the appropriators allocated hundreds of millions in funds to gratuitous pork projects."

Even some Democrats say the issue of Iraq has become far too heated to be conducive to vote-buying.

"The profile and urgency of this Iraq vote really doesn't lend itself to these kinds of side deals," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), who has pushed drought relief for more than a year.

But the success of the spending spree will not really be known until the votes are tallied. Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), who is running for his state's governorship, has conspicuously refused to say whether he can vote against $2.9 billion in Gulf Coast hurricane recovery funds, including $1.3 billion for New Orleans levee repairs.

Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), usually a reliable vote for the Republican leadership, is undecided as he ponders how he can vote against drought relief he has worked for months to secure. The same goes for Musgrave, whose district has been devastated by drought. Democrats who may well have turned solidly against the bill are still weighing their options. Last year, Rep. John Barrow (Ga.) circulated a petition trying to get Republican House leaders to schedule a vote on drought relief. This year, Barrow's advocacy has yielded $3.7 billion worth of agricultural disaster assistance in the war spending bill, which he bragged about last week in a statement to constituents. The conservative Democrat, who narrowly escaped defeat in November, is now undecided on the Iraq bill.

For the undecided, these days running up to the vote will be difficult. The vote has become a high-stakes showdown between a Democratic leadership that has staked considerable political capital on the bill and a Republican leadership demanding its members stay united in opposition.

But votes against home-state interests will not go unnoticed. When Appropriations Committee member Rodney Alexander (R-La.) voted against the bill in committee last week, Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) shot off a statement to the New Orleans Times-Picayune declaring, "When [Gulf Coast] assistance is on the fast track, Rep. Alexander chose to stand with his party rather than with the people of his region."

North Dakota's Republican lieutenant governor, Jack Dalrymple, was in Washington last week, lobbying for agriculture disaster assistance. "What it's about is the impact on the economy of an entire region," he told the Associated Press. "When you come down to the human level, there is no question that there are farmers meeting with their bankers right now, and whether or not they can farm this year is dependent on whether this program is approved."
--------

Sadly, again, the bottom line on Troop Withdrawal has now become, again, money. . . a legal bribe, as it were. . . because conscience is not enough any longer. . .

washingtonpost.com:

Fitzgerald Ranked During CIA Case
Justice Dept. Fired 2 With Same Rating

By Dan Eggen and John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; A01

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading a CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.

The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

The chart was drawn up by D. Kyle Sampson, then an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and was sent to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. The reference to Fitzgerald is in a portion of the memo that Justice has refused to turn over to Congress, officials told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Fitzgerald ranking has not been made public.

At the time, Fitzgerald was leading the independent probe into the leak of the identity of a CIA operative, which led this month to the perjury conviction of vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, also had recently brought a corruption indictment in Illinois against former Republican governor George H. Ryan.

Fitzgerald's ranking adds another dimension to the prosecutor firings, which began as a White House proposal to remove all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 elections and evolved into the coordinated dismissal of eight last year. The firings have caused an uproar on Capitol Hill amid allegations of improper political interference and have led several lawmakers in both parties to call on Gonzales to resign.

The Justice Department last night turned over hundreds of pages of new documents about the firings to the House and Senate Judiciary committees.

A Justice Department official yesterday sought to play down the importance of the Fitzgerald ranking, saying the chart was "put together by Sampson and is not an official department position on these U.S. attorneys."

Sampson resigned as Gonzales's chief of staff last week, and his attorney declined to comment yesterday.

Mary Jo White, who supervised Fitzgerald when she served as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and who has criticized the firings, said ranking Fitzgerald as a middling prosecutor "lacks total credibility across the board."

"He is probably the best prosecutor in the nation, certainly one of them," said White, who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "It casts total doubt on the whole process. It's kind of the icing on the cake."

Fitzgerald has been widely recognized for his pursuit of criminal cases against al-Qaeda's terrorist network before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he drew up the official U.S. indictment against Osama bin Laden. He was named as special counsel in the CIA leak case in December 2003 by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who had recused himself.

Fitzgerald also won the "Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service" in 2002 under Ashcroft and has been recognized with several other honors in his career.

Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said yesterday that "Pat Fitzgerald has a distinguished record as one of the most experienced and well-respected prosecutors at the Justice Department. His track record speaks for itself."

But Fitzgerald also came under sharp criticism from many Republicans and press advocates for his aggressive pursuit of the Libby case, which centered on efforts by the White House and Vice President Cheney to combat criticism of the Iraq war and featured trial testimony from reluctant journalists.

The March 2, 2005, memo from Sampson came in response to a proposal floated by Miers to remove all U.S. attorneys during President Bush's second term. Fitzgerald was placed in a middle category among his peers: "No recommendation; have not distinguished themselves either positively or negatively."

Although the ranking meant that Sampson was not recommending those prosecutors for removal at the time, two U.S. attorneys who received the same ranking were fired last Dec. 7: Daniel G. Bogden of Nevada and Paul K. Charlton of Arizona.

In addition, two other prosecutors who were listed in the top category on Sampson's chart were also fired: David C. Iglesias in New Mexico and Kevin V. Ryan in San Francisco.

Two administration officials said Fitzgerald was never included on later lists of U.S. attorneys targeted for removal by Sampson, who has been portrayed by administration officials and documents as being in charge of the firings effort.

Sampson's memo was among more than 140 pages of documents sent to congressional investigators last week, but the names of most of the prosecutors and their rankings had been deleted. Senate Judiciary Committee investigators have been demanding an unredacted version of the memo, but the administration has refused to provide it, according to a Justice official and a Democratic Senate aide.

Administration officials said they do not know why Sampson put Fitzgerald in the "not distinguished" category. Bush said last year that Fitzgerald had done "a very professional job" in the CIA leak investigation.

Gonzales acknowledged last week that "mistakes were made" in the handling of the firings. White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters yesterday that Bush maintains full confidence in Gonzales, who has served Bush for more than 12 years.

"We hope he stays," Snow said.
--------------------------

timesonline.co.uk:

From The Times
March 20, 2007
GM mosquito bred to destroy malaria
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

The fight against malaria could eventually be transformed by releasing into disease-ridden areas genetically modified mosquitoes that cannot transmit the infection.

Scientists in America have engineered a species of mosquito which is resistant to the malaria infection. Its ability to block the infection suggests that it could come to dominate mosquito populations if released into the wild.

The findings offer the strongest suggestion yet that engineering mosquitoes to resist the parasite could help to control a disease that takes up to 2.7 million lives each year, chiefly in Africa. Malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people each year. Only HIV/ Aids causes more deaths from infectious disease.

Large numbers of GM mosquitoes would be released in areas where malaria is common, where they would interbreed with wild ones. Over several generations, resistance should spread through the mosquito population, so that fewer insects carry malaria. However, this approach would prove controversial with environmental groups, as it would involve supplanting a naturally occurring species with a genetically engineered variant.

Critics have argued that it is difficult to be certain of the effects of introducing new genes. Even the scientists involved accept that further research is needed before any GM insects could be introduced into the wild.

Though the first GM mosquitoes were created seven years ago, they proved to be less fit than their wild counterparts. This would mean that they would quickly die out, and have no effect on malaria transmission.

But a new study, led by Mauro Marrelli, of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, reversed this position. The GM mosquitoes express a protein called SM1 that blocks malaria infection, and a gene that makes their eyes glow red or green, allowing them to be easily distinguished from wild insects.

The scientists found that while these modified mosquitoes have no advantage when feeding on uninfected blood, they are much better adapted when blood carries the malaria parasite. Infection with the Plasmodium organism does not kill normal mosquitoes, but it does reduce breeding efficiency.

The GM mosquitoes did not suffer from this and over nine generations (several months) they grew in number to make up 70 per cent of a laboratory population, compared with 50 per cent at the outset.

“When fed on Plasmodium-infected blood, the transgenic malaria-resistant mosquitoes had a significant fitness advantage over wild-type,” the scientists wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, the species of both mosquito and malaria parasite used in the experiment are not those that are most harmful to humans. The mosquito was the Anopheles stephensi species, the main Asian vector, but the Anopheles gambiae species is more likely to infect humans, particularly in Africa where the malaria burden is worst.

The experimental parasite was Plasmodium berghei, which does not infect humans but is considered a very good laboratory model for Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous of the four strains that do.

A further problem is that only a very small proportion of wild mosquitoes are exposed to malaria, and the transgenic insects did not have a competitive advantage when the parasite was not present. This would slow the rate at which they might have an impact on malaria transmission.

A different approach has been adopted by a British team, led by Andrea Cristiani, of Imperial College, London. His team has developed a GM mosquito in which the males have fluorescent testicles, allowing them to be easily identified and sterilised. The goal is to introduce large numbers of sterile males, which would mate with normal females, reducing the number of eggs laid, and thus of malaria mosquitoes. As the mosquitoes are sterile, they would not transmit transferred genes into wild populations.

The deadly bite

— The most severe form of malaria is caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, transmitted by the bite of the Anopheles genus, particularly Anopheles gambiae. It is spread by pregnant females

— Malaria killed people in the Fens until the 19th century

— It has been predicted that global warming may result in malaria returning to Britain

— Malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people a year, mainly in Africa

— In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria affects mostly young children, with almost 3,000 dying every day

— Symptoms include neck stiffness, convulsions, abnormal breathing and fever of up to 40C (104F)

— Distribution of the tropical disease mainly affects developing countries. About 90 per cent of cases are in Africa

— It costs £6.8 billion a year in Africa in lost GDP. Death and disability lead to the loss of 45 million years of productive life each year

— Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Oliver Cromwell, Caravaggio and David Livingstone are thought to have died of it

— Those who had it but recovered include Lord Nelson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gandhi and Hemingway
---------------------------------

I like the approach, but my gut tells me this will come back to haunt the species. . . ours. . .

thecrimson.com:

Hanged, Drawn, and Sectioned
Bored TFs and nonsensical student babbling are just part of the Harvard section experience
Published On 3/19/2007 10:43:32 PM
By DAVID L. GOLDING
None

There comes a time in the desultory career of every Harvard student when he realizes that section really, really sucks. Maybe it’s the umpteenth superfluous allusion to Nietzsche, or the teaching fellow’s (TF) apathy after five misbegotten years of grad school, or the fact that the only hot girl in the section seems to invariably—and wisely—drop the class. But whatever it is, he begins to dread that one, solitary, excruciating hour of the week as if it were a root canal.

I start with the disclaimer that I have had a few stellar TFs who even managed to run a half-decent section, usually in the English department. Not only do English TFs usually speak intelligible—even eloquent—English, they also seem to have a genuine passion for the literature they teach, much of which is pretty boring.

But more often than not, and despite efforts to improve the situation such as mandatory English language training and a TF review process, the Moral Reasoning TF stutters and stammers to explain “the hedonism,” or the Quantitative Reasoning TF is “too tired” to go over the subject material again even after a diligent student points out her mistakes. Even worse are the martinetish schoolmarms who harp on punctuality—and mark down for tardiness—but spend the rest of the hour sitting with a hand to their mouth, concealing a yawn.

Is it then any surprise if the class itself becomes equally bored and disengaged? Every section the same thought process: “If I pipe in with a comment about the Kantian a priori synthetic, I’ll look like a tool, but then again, I need my section credit.” At the risk of playing the part of the German philosopher (every section has at least one, brimming with analogues to the Hegelian dialectic and quotes from Schopenhauer about Weltschmerz and the will), I make my paltry contribution.

Sometimes, a naïve, well-meaning freshman will actually try to engage you in constructive debate, which is kind of infuriating: doesn’t she know that section is supposed to be an endless string of monologues, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? (See, that’s the kind of glib literary allusion that one might make in section.)

We should admit that the problem does not lie wholly with our TFs so much as with the sheer stupidity that students think they can get away with. I wish I had a dime for every time I saw a TF’s flaccid, feigned smile of approbation, that muttering of “good” or “interesting” every time another student weighs in with a complete non-sequitur.

Only in small seminar discussions are students sufficiently intimidated by close contact with distinguished professors, who not only have a better mastery of the material but are also not afraid to tell students they’re wrong. So when the class megalomaniac says something obtuse like, “I think we should discuss the theological implications of the eschatological, and Stephen Dedalus is the devil,” the professor will respond, “No, I don’t think that’s relevant at all. In fact, I wish you would think more before you speak.” Ah, the sweet sound of rejection.

Of course, someone will chime in that I should have gone to a Swarthmore, Williams, or Wesleyan if I wanted that kind of professor contact. But that’s ludicrous, because as they always say, where else could I meet such interesting, brilliant people as here at Harvard—people who have impressively collected a dilettante’s knowledge of quantum physics and Wittgenstein, and who aren’t afraid to bore me with it over beers?

After all, if once you try and your long-winded diatribe spins out of control and crashes embarrassingly to a halt, then try, try again. It’s the Harvard thing to do.
--------------

Note the HUMF tactic, or perhaps the bosses' only recourse (for I was selected, I was told, for my creativity): "if once you try and your long-winded diatribe spins out of control and crashes embarrassingly to a halt, then try, try again. It’s the Harvard thing to do."

timesonline.co.uk:

rom The Times
March 20, 2007
AstraZeneca stung by late-stage trial failure of heart drug
Robin Pagnamenta, Healthcare Industries Correspondent

AstraZeneca announced yesterday the failure of one of its few remaining drugs in late-stage development, raising further the pressure on the company to rebuild its weak pipeline of new pharmaceuticals.

Britain’s second-largest drugs company said that a trial of AGI-1067, its experimental drug for heart disease, had failed to reduce deaths or complications when compared with a placebo. A phase-III clinical trial involving 6,000 people indicated that the drug had failed to “meet its primary endpoint of a statistically significant relative risk reduction”.

AstraZeneca said that development of the drug had not necessarily been abandoned because niche applications could be found. The trial did identify positive findings for a few patients, such as those with diabetes.

The company said that it would work with its collaboration partner AtheroGenics, the American biotechnology company, “to fully analyse the data” and then take 45 days to plot a course of action.

In 2005 AstraZeneca paid $50 million to AtheroGenics for licensing rights to AGI-1067. The companies had hoped that, if successful, the drug could have generated billions of dollars in sales a year.

However, David Brennan, the chief executive of AstraZeneca, admitted to The Times in December that it was a “very high-risk project” for which there was “a low probability of success”.

The disappointment of AGI-1067 represents the fourth failure of a late-stage drug for AstraZeneca since the start of last year. Exanta, a blood-clot medicine, Galida, a diabetes drug, and Cerovive, an antistroke drug, were abandoned last year. Furthermore, patents on some of the company’s key products, such as Nexium, a stomach-acid drug, and Crestor, an anticholesterol agent, will expire in the next few years.

Shawn Manning, of Bridgewell Group, said that the failure of AGI-1067 would increase the pressure on AstraZeneca to buy new technology to bolster its pipeline.

“They need to bring in at least $1 billion to $1.5 billion in revenue by 2009 to replace products that are coming off patent,” he said. “If they can’t do it by buying in products, then they will have to consider large-scale mergers and acquisitions.”

However, Peter Cartwright, an analyst with Evolution Securities, said that AstraZeneca had “sufficient momentum from currently marketed products plus line extensions” to sustain top-line growth rates until 2010.

AstraZeneca and AtheroGenics will publish the full results of the AGI-1067 study at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting in New Orleans this weekend.

Shares in AstraZeneca slipped 20p to £28.61 after the news. AtheroGenics, which is listed on Nasdaq, closed down $4.74, or 61 per cent, at $3.09.

Active agents

— AstraZeneca is Britain’s second-largest drugs group, after GlaxoSmithKline

— Sales in 2006 totalled $26.5 billion, with an operating profit of $8.2 billion

— The company spends more than $16 million every working day on the research and development of medicines

— It employs more than 66,000 people worldwide

— It operates 27 manufacturing sites in 19 countries

— Its corporate headquarters are in London and its R&D headquarters are in Sodertalje, Sweden
--------------------------

Try. . . try again. . .

latimes.com:

Scientist accuses White House of 'Nazi' tactics
By Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writer

1:05 PM PDT, March 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — A government scientist, under sharp questioning by a federal panel for his outspoken views on global warming, stood by his view today that the Bush administration's information policies smacked of Nazi Germany.

James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, took particular issue with the administration's rule that a government information officer listen in on his interviews with reporters and its refusal to allow him to be interviewed by National Public Radio.

"This is the United States," Hansen told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "We do have freedom of speech here."

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) said it was reasonable for Hansen's employer to ask him not to state views publicly that contradicted administration policy.

"I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching evolution and climate change," Issa said.

Hansen said the Bush administration was not the first in U.S. history to practice information management over government scientists, but it has been the most vigorous. He deplored a "politicization of science."

"When I testify to you as a government scientist," he said, "why does my testimony have to be reviewed, edited and changed by a bureaucrat in the White House?" Sitting beside him was one of the bureaucrats Hansen was talking about: Philip Cooney, chief of staff to the White House Council on Environmental Quality from 2001 to 2005.

Cooney, an official of the American Petroleum Institute before going to the White House, acknowledged having reviewed some of Hansen's testimony as part of a long-standing practice designed to result in consistency.

Cooney was asked about changing "will" to "may" in prepared testimony describing the impact of human activity--particularly the burning of oil and coal--on the Earth's temperature. He said his edits were based not on political views but a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences.

"I offered my comments in good-faith reliance on what I understood to be authoritative and current use of the state of scientific knowledge, and for no other purpose," Cooney said.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) didn't buy that. He said the basis of Cooney's editing changes was not scientific evidence but "loyalty to a person who had appointed you to a political position."

Some of the sharpest exchanges came between Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the committee, and a Republican member, Mark Souder of Indiana. Souder said the Democrats' approach made "a mockery of the hearing process."
--------------------------------------------

Go for it Dr. Hansen - I'll back you up. . .

bbc.com:

Beetle re-emerges after 60 years
A beetle thought to be extinct in the UK since the 1940s has been rediscovered in south Devon.

The short-necked oil beetle was found by an amateur entomologist during a wildlife survey on National Trust (NT) land between Bolt Head and Bolt Tail.

The beetles were last recorded at Chailey Common, Sussex in 1948.

Up to 40 of the insects, which survive by hitching rides on miner bees as larvae and then eating the bees' eggs, were found at the Devon site.

It's great that this oil beetle has survived against all the odds
David Bullock, National Trust

The beetle, which gets its name from the highly toxic oil secretions it produces when threatened, is also known as Meloe brevicollis.

The adult beetles, which live for about three months, lay up to 1,000 eggs in a burrow in soft or sandy soil and eggs hatch in the following spring.

Once they have hatched the young larvae crawl up on to vegetation, often lying in wait in flowers, for an unsuspecting mining bee to give them a lift to the bee's nest.


SHORT-NECKED OIL BEETLE
Adult beetles are flightless, large and slow moving
The bodies (especially of females) are swollen
The wing cases are short and rudimentary
The young larvae are known as triungulins after their three claws
They then devour the bee's egg and also the protein rich pollen stores the bee intended to provide for its own larvae.

But the flightless creature's natural habitats and the populations of bees they rely on have been decimated by intensive farming practices.

The NT said the coastal strip of land where the oil beetle was discovered by Bob Beckford had been managed less intensively as farmland, creating a habitat where the beetle could survive undisturbed.

This site will now be monitored and the lifecycle of the beetle examined in more detail so the land is managed in a way that helps the insect flourish.

David Bullock, head of nature conservation at the NT, said: "The discovery of a beetle that was thought to be extinct for nearly 60 years is an amazing story of survival, particularly for a species with such an interdependent lifecycle.

"It's great that this oil beetle, with its fascinating lifestyle, has survived against all the odds and is back in business on the south Devon coast."
----------------------------------------------------------

nytimes.com:

March 20, 2007
E-Mails Related to Attorney Firings Are Released
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, March 19 — As Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales fought to keep his job, the Justice Department Monday released more than 3,000 pages of internal e-mail that agency officials said showed that the dismissal of eight United States attorneys was for performance reasons, not politics.

The new e-mail provided fresh details about the internal administration deliberations and the at times clumsy handling of the removal last year of the prosecutors.

In one case, one of the prosecutors, Margaret M. Chiara of Michigan, pleaded for a few extra weeks on the federal payroll while she looked for a job. In another case, a top Justice Department official who oversaw the dismissals said he had never even reviewed the performance of a prosecutor, Daniel K. Bogden of Nevada, who was summarily removed.

A sarcastic internal e-mail message from one top Justice department official to another appears to confirm that personal and policy differences drove the termination of Carol C. Lam, the San Diego prosecutor who initiated investigations of Randy Cunningham when he was a Republican representative from California and Representative Jerry Lewis, as well as some defense department officials.

After a colleague said in a July 8 e-mail message that he was “sad” about something, Bill Mercer, a top Justice Department official, jokingly suggested some reasons.

“That Carol Lam can’t meet a deadline,” he wrote, “or that you’ll need to interact with her in the coming weeks or that she won’t just say, ‘O.K. You got me. You’re right, I’ve ignored national priorities and obvious local needs. Shoot my production is more hideous than I realized.’ ”

The e-mail messages show Justice Department officials, who themselves had only an incomplete account of events, scrambling to prepare Mr. Gonzales and other senior officials for Congressional testimony that turned out to be inaccurate.

Lawmakers have called for the resignation of Mr. Gonzales and demanded that White House officials, including Karl Rove, the senior political adviser, testify before Congress.

While Justice officials continue to insist that the removals were performance-related, an e-mail message released Monday night showed that even top officials were not certain of the rationale for some firings. In a December 5 e-mail message, Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, admitted that he had not even reviewed the record of Mr. Bogden, and appeared to have mixed feelings about removing him.

“I’m still a little skittish about Bogden,” Mr. McNulty wrote to D. Kyle Sampson, Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, noting that Mr. Bogden had never worked outside of government and was counting on a longer tenure.

“I’ll admit [I] have not looked at his district’s performance,” Mr. McNulty added.

The documents are the second installment of e-mail messages that the Justice Department has turned over to Congressional investigators in a week. The department has already disclosed e-mail messages that showed that the White House was deeply involved in discussions, beginning early in 2005, to remove eight United States attorneys considered either weak or not aggressively enforcing administration policy.

Ms. Chiara urged Mr. McNulty to rapidly revise the explanation the department was offering for the dismissals.

“The legal community in Grand Rapids and organizations throughout Michigan are outraged that I am being labeled a ‘poor performer’ ”she wrote in a March 4th e-mail message to Mr. McNulty. “Know that I am considered a personification of ethics and productivity.”

She also wrote that she had heard she was being removed to make way for a member of Congress who was expected to lose his seat in the November election.

Last Thursday, the Justice Department released another e-mail showing that D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, proposed removing a group of “underperforming” prosecutors in January 2005 after Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, asked the White House counsel’s office about plans for replacing United States attorneys.

Contradictions between the e-mails and the congressional testimony of Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty have ratcheted up criticism from lawmakers that the Justice Department officials have yet to provide Congress with an authoritative account of what happened.

Justice Department officials have offered shifting explanations for the dismissals. At first they said provided no reason, then said the firings were performance related, and have since said that most were removed for the failures to follow policy directives on immigration, death penalty cases and other issues. In one case, the department wanted to replace an incumbent with a former aide to Mr. Rove. Congressional Democrats are seeking to determine the origin of the plan and what inspired it. The White House has said that replacing all 93 prosecutors was proposed as part of administration wide review of political appointees after the 2004 election, but Democrats have questioned whether the prosecutors were removed for either pursuing or failing to pursue politically charged cases, including ethics scandals and voter fraud investigations. One of the seven prosecutors, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, said over the weekend that that he considered his dismissal “a political hit.”

Mr. Iglesias was fired after Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, complained to Mr. Bush about what he viewed as lax prosecution of voter fraud cases in his home state.
-------------------

Enough. To bed! Be well. . .