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TOP STORIES

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National

Democrats Forge Single Voice on Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802309.html
The new Senate Iraq resolution, unveiled yesterday afternoon, is the latest handiwork yet of Congress's newest "it club": the Senate Democratic war council. The inaugural meeting was called last June by Harry M. Reid (Nev.), then the minority leader. The midterm elections were nearing, and Democrats wanted to answer voters' growing concerns about the war. The result was a nonbinding resolution offered by Sens. Jack Reed (R.I.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.) that called for troop reductions to begin by the end of the year. It failed 60 to 39 but represented the Democrats' first major challenge to President Bush's Iraq policy since the war began.
RELATED: Democrats shift debate to Iraq endgame
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess9mar09,0,7718717.story?coll=la-home-headlines
RELATED: Democrats Rally Behind a Pullout From Iraq in ’08
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/washington/09cong.html?ref=washington

More Iraq war news in NATIONAL/ELECTION, NATIONAL/GOVERNMENT, NATIONAL/FOREIGN POLICY, NATIONAL/WORKER’S RIGHTS, NATIONAL/MILITARY, COLORADO/TOP STORIES, COLORADO/GOVERNMENT, COLORADO/MILITARY

Frequent Errors In FBI's Secret Records Requests
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802356.html
A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday. The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases. Officials said they could not be sure of the scope of the violations but suggested they could be more widespread, though not deliberate. In nearly a quarter of the case files Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reviewed, he found previously unreported potential violations.
RELATED: FBI underreported use of Patriot Act, Justice says
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-patriot-act_N.htm
RELATED: U.S. Report to Fault F.B.I. on Subpoenas
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/washington/09attorneys.html

Inmates could trade an organ for an early out
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-organs9mar09,1,1200679.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Prison inmates in South Carolina could get up to six months shaved off their sentences if they donated a kidney or their bone marrow, under a proposed bill before the state Senate. "We have a lot of people dying as they wait for organs, so I thought about the prison population," said state Sen. Ralph Anderson, the bill's main sponsor. "I believe we have to do something to motivate them. If they get some good time off, if they get out early, that's motivation." The proposal was approved Thursday by the Senate Corrections and Penology Subcommittee. But it is almost certain to prompt fierce opposition from legal experts and prisoner rights advocates about whether inmates are able to make such a decision freely.

Top

Colorado

AFL-CIO may ask Dems to move convention
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ON_THE_2008_TRAIL?SITE=CODEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Stung by Gov. Bill Ritter's veto of a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize, the AFL-CIO threatened to recommend the Democratic Party move its 2008 convention from Denver. In an unsigned letter first reported in The Denver Post on Friday, the AFL-CIO's executive council said it planned to seek reintroduction of a bill that would make it easier to set up all-union workplaces and seek a commitment from Ritter that he would sign it. "Union members and working people will make up more than a quarter of the delegates to the Denver convention," a statement from the union said. "Unless we can be assured that the governor will support our values and priorities, we will strongly urge the Democratic Party to relocate the convention."
RELATED: Labor threatens Dem convention
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5390404
RELATED: DNC committees will talk "first next steps"
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389760

GOP vows 'ugly turn' if Dems push Iraq debate
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405837,00.html
Republicans and Democrats took shots at each other Thursday over a legislative debate set next week on the troop buildup in Iraq. Republican leaders vowed that the second half of the session, which starts next week, will take "a very ugly turn" if Democrats decide to debate a resolution that supports the troops but says the war has hurt the nation on several fronts. It also calls for troops to be phased out of Iraq. Rep. Mike May, of Parker, and Sen. Andy McElhany, of Colorado Springs, called the resolution and the rare scheduling of a committee hearing to consider it a "shameful political stunt." "That resolution isn't going to bring the troops home, nor is it going to solve transportation, health care, education or alternative energy," May said. "What is the point of it?" But House Majority Leader Alice Madden countered that if lawmakers can make time to debate Republican resolutions honoring economist Milton Freidman and President Reagan, they should be able to discuss the "No. 1 issue in our country."
RELATED: GOP ready to fight over resolution on Iraq
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389763
RELATED: State to oppose surge?
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/03/08/news/c_u_and_boulder/news3.txt
RELATED: Colorado House battle brewing over Iraq vote
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/2

Activists call for statewide boycott
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405841,00.html
A coalition of immigrants' rights activists, church leaders and community leaders announced plans Thursday for a statewide boycott March 25 through April 1 to bring attention to what they say are the economic contributions of illegal immigrants. David Falcon, owner of a south Denver satellite dish service, said he supports the boycott of Colorado businesses, even though his sales are down by more than 20 percent because of what he says is apprehension among his customers about making major purchases because they fear getting deported at a moment's notice. "I might lose a little business for a week, but in the long run, it's worth it to support something that will hopefully bring relief to many businesses such as mine," he said. "We cannot survive if we continue serving a clientele that is afraid to even leave their homes." The boycott, led by members of the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition, is part of campaign to drum up support for pending immigration reform legislation in the U.S. Senate. It is similar to a boycott called for during last year's pro-immigrant demonstration, which drew more than 100,000 participants.
RELATED: Immigrant groups announce boycott
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390527

More immigration policy news in NATIONAL/IMMIGRATION, COLORADO/CIVIL LIBERTIES

COLORADO NEWS

Top

Election

Gingrich Rejects Accusation of Hypocrisy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030900086.html
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Bill Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group. "The honest answer is 'Yes,' " Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson to be aired today, according to a transcript. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards." Gingrich asserted in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

Bill to toss electoral system dies in committee
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405867,00.html
Two college professors ripped a bill that would change how Colorado elects a president, but it turns out that lawmakers don't like the proposal any better. The House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee voted 10-1 Thursday to kill Senate Bill 46. The measure would have make Colorado part of an interstate agreement to elect the president by popular vote, instead of the electoral system currently in place. "This proposal has a goal that is misguided, potentially disastrous and uses a method to achieve its passage that is devious and disrespectful of the U.S. Constitution," said Jim Riley, a professor of politics at Regis University. "Its effects would be potentially catastrophic for the nation. I say this intending no exaggeration." Law professor Robert Hardaway of the University of Denver was equally critical.
RELATED: House kills popular vote election plan
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/legislature-2007/
RELATED: Panel nixes bill to elect president by popular vote
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/7

Political committees head to court
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/NEWS01/703090322/1002/NEWS01
A state court will hear arguments Tuesday in a complaint against two political committees that targeted Democratic Rep. John Kefalas last fall. Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government filed the complaint last month alleging the Northern Colorado Victory Fund and the Committee for the American Dream did not file required reports with the Secretary of State's office last year after spending nearly $30,000 each on television ads against Kefalas. Kefalas ultimately beat incumbent Republican Bob McCluskey in State House District 52, which covers east Fort Collins. Fort Collins resident and conservative political strategist Andrew Boucher created the Northern Colorado Victory Fund last fall to campaign against Kefalas. The group raised $47,000 and spent about $30,000 on television ads against Kefalas. The Committee for the American Dream, a Denver-based group, also spent nearly $30,000 on TV ads attacking Kefalas.

Home Rule could get a second chance
http://vaildaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/70308014
A revised version of the home rule charter — which its authors Thursday called jokingly “the best charter in the history of the world,” — is just one week away from either going to a vote of the people or dying once and for all. In what was described as a “gut check,” the Home Rule Commission decided Thursday to make some changes to the home rule charter that was rejected by voters in November and try to put it back on the ballot. “What we don’t want is to say, ‘Here it is, again, read it over more carefully this time,” said Don Cohen chairman of the citizens’ commission that wrote the charter. “We need to focus on what the public has said they want changed and on the direction we would like to see this document go.”

On the Denver ballot
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390534
The Denver Election Commission verified the following candidates for the May 1 municipal election. Voters will also be asked whether to increase the term limit for Denver district attorney from two terms to three.

Council hopefuls spar over economy
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/NEWS01/703090338/1002
Fort Collins can rely on its parks and open space or it can knock down regulations for business development to create a strong economy, City Council candidates said Thursday night as they tried to distinguish themselves from their opponents. All 10 candidates for the four offices, including mayor, attended the forum at City Hall, which was sponsored by Larimer County's League of Women Voters. About 70 people attended the forum.

Candidates declare strengths, ideas at forum
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19972&template=article.html
Incumbents are getting a run for their money in this year’s Colorado Springs City Council election. Challengers flaunted qualifications, ideas and promises at a candidates forum Thursday night sponsored by the Organization of Westside Neighbors at West Middle School. Retired Air Force officer Bob Null, who has served on 10 citizen committees, vowed to “build our future.” Lifelong Springs resident and businesswoman Jan Martin, a civic volunteer too, said she’s a “champion for arts and culture.” Springs native Tom Harold also is active on city boards, and he pledged to work toward “progress, not politics” and make the city a place his two young daughters will want to live out their lives. Harold, 40, added a note of levity, saying, “If you elect me to City Council, I’ll bring the average age of the City Council quite a bit lower.”
RELATED: $170,000 invested in city election so far
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19871&template=article.html

GJ native sets target on growth
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_1b_Baughman_profile.html
As a fifth-generation native, Kent Baughman and his family have had as historic and informed a perspective as anyone on the growth of the Grand Valley. And while some may view with disdain the transformation of Grand Junction from a dusty dot on the map to an emerging metropolitan area reaping the benefits of a frenetic energy industry, Baughman approves of it — as long as it is in a controlled, managed fashion. “Growth is hard because it’s change, and change is hard, but the alternative is you die,” he said. Growth is a key issue for Baughman as he runs for the Grand Junction City Council District B seat against Realtor Linda Romer Todd.
RELATED: Realtor supports local businesses
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_1B_Todd_profile.html
RELATED: Candidates against policy favoring local bidders
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_1b_candidate_forum.html

TV and politics: Do they mix?
http://aspentimes.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103090056
Three of Aspen's political candidates in the upcoming municipal election - Bonnie Behrend, Andrew Kole and Torre - have been broadcast personalities for local television stations. At least two of them, Behrend and Torre, now have lost those ties and, in Torre's case, the split was clearly due to political considerations. Kole, however, will soon be starting up an entirely new live show on GrassRoots TV - a political talk show focusing on the spring election, which will air whether or not he decides to become a candidate himself.

Tom Howley looks at attracting primary-care physicians to area
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070309_3.htm
City Councilor and council candidate Tom Howley wants to bring six primary-care physicians to Durango, stop the city's creep toward Bayfield and double-check the city's investments in basic infrastructure. The 81-year-old retired naval aviator laid out his plans in a Thursday morning conversation with The Durango Herald 's editorial board. Howley has served on the council since November 2005, when he was appointed upon the resignation of Virginia Castro.
RELATED: Candidate Tregillus would make affordable housing a priority
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070309_4.htm

More activities, less government
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/25674
More free activities for youth and less government involvement with businesses. That is what David D. VanWagner seeks to do if he's elected to the Craig City Council. "If we're going to keep kids off drugs and alcohol and Nintendo, we need extra curricular activities," VanWagner said. "Paying for sports is not right. I'm big on parks and recreation, and making the programs free for children."

Top

Effective and Ethical Government

Split on splitting from Iraq
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405961,00.html
Colorado lawmakers are divided over a proposed new deadline for removing U.S. combat troops from Iraq, and that includes a possible split in the Democratic ranks. So far, only one member of the state's congressional delegation — newly elected Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden — has publicly embraced a plan outlined by Democratic leaders Thursday to force the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of next year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., outlined the proposal Thursday as part of an emergency war-spending bill. It would increase funds for wounded veterans and other needs, while attempting to enforce benchmarks for Iraq's government to take over security responsibilities. The proposal drew an immediate veto threat from President Bush because it would impose a deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops by March 2008 — earlier if benchmarks aren't met. Presidential counselor Dan -Bartlett called the bill a "non- starter" and "an artificial, precipitous withdrawal."
RELATED: Dems want to use budget bill to withdraw troops
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/1

Bill to reduce public record costs moves forward
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/NEWS01/703090321/1002/NEWS01
A bill to save citizens money when requesting public documents from government agencies came one step closer to becoming law Thursday. The House State Veterans and Military Affairs committee voted 11-0 to approve Senate Bill 45, which reduces the maximum charge for copying public records from $1.25 per page to 25 cents per page.
RELATED: 25-cent public records (Legislative briefs)
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/20

Roll Call, March 9
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405871,00.html
Amendment 41, which limits lawmakers to gifts under $50, would prevent search-and- rescue teams from rescuing lawmakers stranded on the top of a mountain, maintains Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany. Not that that's a bad thing. "There are a few of my esteemed colleagues I wouldn't mind leaving stuck on a mountain," the Colorado Springs Republican said, with a laugh. McElhany didn't name names.

Council members take issues to Washington
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/13
Five of the seven Pueblo City Council members have made their way to Washington this week to meet with the state's congressional delegation and lobby for issues important to city business. The meetings are part of the annual League of Cities and Towns conference. Council will lobby for nine projects specific to Pueblo's needs and three others that are universal for most cities and towns across the nation.

Ethics experts divided on case
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405436,00.html
Some legal ethics experts say it's not hard to find fault with a lawyer buying a laptop computer from a stranger in a parking lot, as former Denver City Attorney Larry Manzanares claims he did. But these same scholars say the ethics issues posed by the state court administrator requesting that no charges be filed over the stolen state-owned computer that wound up in Manzanares' possession is a tougher call. Manzanares, a former Denver District Court judge, resigned on Feb. 27, less than two months after he was sworn in as city attorney, after an anti- theft device on the computer led to its discovery in his possession.
RELATED: Officials deny preferential treatment in laptop theft
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5404010,00.html
RELATED: Court officials say ex-judge got no special treatment
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389868

Top

Civil Liberties and Equality

Teens testify in favor of changing flag law
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405877,00.html
Johnny Valencia said he was anxious entering his new classroom until he saw a colorful display of foreign flags on the wall. "I enjoy living in a country that embraces the diversity of culture, school and society," he said. Valencia was among a half- dozen students from Gateway and Littleton high schools who testified for a measure Thursday meant to clear up confusion about a state law banning the permanent display of foreign flags in public buildings. In August, Jeffco school officials briefly suspended a Carmody Middle School geography teacher for displaying the flags of China, Mexico and the United Nations in class. Soon after, officials determined foreign flags are exempt from the ban under a provision that allows "temporary display" of foreign flags for educational purposes.
RELATED: Panel OKs flags in schools
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19963&template=article.html

Minorities uncomfortable at UNC
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389870
A group of minority students and faculty claims the racial climate at the University of Northern Colorado is deteriorating, and they blame the school's president, Kay Norton. Norton, who began her tenure in July 2002, has either ignored or barely responded to complaints from minority staff and students, according to retired UNC professor Roberto Cordova, a member of the Black-Latino Coalition of UNC. This has helped lead to an unfriendly environment for people of color at the school, he said. Norton said she agreed more needs to be done to help racial minorities at UNC succeed but the school has begun several programs aimed at breaking down racial walls. The effort won't be helped by leveling accusations, Norton said.

Lafayette women discuss their Hispanic experience
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/lafayette-women-discuss-their-hispanic/
The Latino population in Lafayette is now the second-largest in Boulder County behind Longmont. But growing up Hispanic in Lafayette used to be much harder. Thursday, three Hispanic women talked at an event — organized by the Lafayette Historical Society — about their experiences growing up in the city.

Italian heritage license tag proposed
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405380,00.html
Members of the Sons of Italy want their own license plate to celebrate their heritage, but the measure is expected to spark a battle when it gets to the Senate floor. Opponents say that the state has no business promoting one ethnic group over another, and the Sons of Italy is a frequent target of Columbus Day protesters. Supporters say the license plate is simply intended to honor Italian-Americans' contributions to Colorado. "The Italian community here is strong," said Sam Johnson, of Wheat Ridge, who spent three years collecting 3,000 signatures to petition for a bill. "I figured this would only help get the Italian community closer. This is a way of displaying our pride." The Senate Transportation Committee voted 4-2 on Thursday to send House Bill 1120 to Appropriations with little debate.
RELATED: Can we quote you on that? (On the side, 3/9)
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389764

Top

Marriage and Family Issues

Bill expands adoption
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405832,00.html
The sponsor of the bill says it's a common-sense measure to help children of single parents. Focus on the Family says the bill is a back-door effort to legalize adoption by gay couples. On Thursday, a House panel sided with sponsor Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder. House Bill 1330, dubbed the "Second Parent Adoption Bill," swiftly advanced on an 8-3 vote in the Health and Human Services Committee. "More than half of children in the United States are in nontraditional homes, like a single mom or single parent or with a grandparent," Madden, House majority leader, said Thursday. "This bill would allow more Colorado children to have two parents," she said. "Children don't choose their parents, and society shouldn't put up obstacles to two-parent homes." Under current state law, only single people (gay or straight)or married couples can adopt, Madden said. That bars cohabitating couples (gay or straight) from adopting. HB 1330 would allow a child's adopted or birth parent to support adoption by a second parent.
RELATED: Mothers illustrate legal obstacles
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405838,00.html
RELATED: Same-sex adoptions bill clears first hearing (Under the dome, 3/9)
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389762

Top

Health Care and Public Safety

Insurers may foot vaccine bill
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405858,00.html
Health insurance companies would have to pay for cervical cancer vaccinations under a measure tentatively approved Thursday following testimony from doctors that the vaccine works. Dr. Ned Colange, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, told lawmakers a vaccine made by Merck & Co. is cost effective, at a cost of $300, and it could prevent many of the 40 deaths a year in Colorado from cervical cancer. The House Health & Human Services Committee unanimously approved House Bill 1301 and sent it to the House Appropriations Committee. Another measure in the Senate would promote the vaccination of young girls.

National Jewish to boost research
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/health_care/article/0,2808,DRMN_25396_5404987,00.html
National Jewish Medical and Research Center announced an ambitious plan Thursday to hire more doctors and scientists and boost its research funds by more than $20 million a year. Under CEO Michael Salem, National Jewish hopes that by expanding its research and treatment programs it can serve more patients and continue to bolster its national reputation as a pre-eminent hospital. The long-term strategy, recently approved by the hospital's board, involves a sweeping new approach: encouraging researchers and doctors to exchange information and work together to devise treatment plans. Salem, in a statement, said the hospital hopes to provide "proactive and personalized" care for patients so it can "detect disease and intervene early to keep people healthy before illness interrupts their lives."

Drug court implementation ‘progressing'
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/25675
The drug court is Moffat County's proposed response to the meth problem. The drug court is a rigid treatment program that gives convicted users an alternative to a prison sentence. It is a collaborative effort between the court, law enforcement and treatment providers. Although the tentative March 1 date for implementing the drug court has passed, Judge O'Hara said a committee of officials working on the drug court has not wavered in its intention to implement the program in Moffat County.

The toll of heroin: 'This series (of deaths) is over the top'
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/this-series-of-deaths-is-over-the-top/
Austin Myers was the eighth person in Boulder County to die from heroin use in 2006, but he wasn't the last. Five days after he succumbed to the drug, 34-year-old Boulder resident Eric Glitz died from a mix of cocaine and heroin. The nine people who died from the drug last year continues an upward trend in lethal heroin overdoses in the county. There were seven heroin-related deaths in 2005, and four deaths each in 2004 and 2003, according to the Boulder County Coroner's Office. More alarming is that the pace of heroin-related deaths since October has picked up to nearly one a month.

Top

Crime and Penal Reform

Senators say roads, not judges
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389867
An effort to add 62 judges to the backlogged Colorado court system could be derailed by a partisan battle in the state Senate. Senate Republicans are attacking the bill's price tag - $105.2 million over the next five years - saying that it would siphon money away from roads. The fight exposes one of the biggest budget issues in this year's legislative session. Republicans are trying to protect as much money as possible for roads, while Democrats are pushing an array of programs including a rainy-day fund, health care and public safety. "They're going to have to make some tough choices," said Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Larimer County. "I don't think they can find all their funding out of transportation." Road funding is projected to be a big pot of money over the next five years, but it gets there by a circuitous route.
RELATED: Judicial bill gets gavel in Senate
http://www.cortezjournal.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070308_7.htm

Aurora police unions divided on warning letter
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405884,00.html
The city's main police union wants a criminal investigation of the chief and his bosses, much to the disgust of some officers who are switching to a rival union. "It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy," Capt. Jack DaLuz said of the latest move by his union, the Aurora Police Association. "I'm so disgusted with what they are doing because it reflects badly on our organization and it reflects badly on them." Union President Don James says lodging the complaints was a necessary response to recent unforgivable actions within the department. His union alleges that Chief Daniel Oates, Assistant City Attorney Rob Werking, City Manager Ron Miller and Deputy City Manager Frank Ragan committed crimes when they warned the Civil Service Commission in January not to undermine their authority on a disciplinary matter. Ragan has said his decision to send the warning letter was only equivalent to a basketball coach giving a referee some grief after a couple of bad calls.

Accused teenager upset at police tactics
http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=15069
Jared Guy regrets speaking with police without an attorney present and wouldn’t have done it if he knew the interview would lead him to the Boulder County Jail, the 18-year-old said Wednesday. Police believe Guy helped his longtime friend Bryan Grove, 17, try to dispose of 52-year-old Linda Damm’s body about a week after she was stabbed to death in her Lafayette home. He was charged Wednesday as an accessory to first-degree murder and for tampering with evidence. “I had told (the police) the truth and everything, and the next thing I know, I am in handcuffs,” he said.

Top

Economy

Ergen is richest of state's rich
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_business/article/0,2777,DRMN_23916_5405038,00.html
Satellite-TV mogul Charlie Ergen's $10 billion personal fortune placed him in the No. 1 orbit among Colorado's billionaires for the sixth straight year. Qwest Communications founder Phil Anschutz once again ranked second among Colorado's eight billionaires, with a $7.9 billion fortune, according to Forbes magazine's 2007 list of billionaires. His wealth has been rebounding since it was in the $18 billion range at the height of the Qwest years. Liberty Media Chairman John Malone snagged the No. 3 spot in the state, with an estimated $2 billion fortune. They were followed, in order, by: medical device heiress Pat Stryker; mozzarella cheese magnate James Leprino (photo unavailable); cable-TV heir Gary Magness; Janus mutual fund founder Thomas Bailey; and TeleTech Holdings CEO Kenneth Tuchman.
RELATED: Tally of billionaires a new high
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5390281

Telluride passes hat for open space
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390406
Even dogs are collecting money to save the Valley Floor. In the frenzied effort to raise the remainder of the $50 million needed to acquire the meadows at the entrance to town by March 15, a husky with a collection bucket raised $70 over the weekend. A dog parade Saturday is expected to bring in more from fans of the four-legged. The entire town has been gripped by Save the Valley Floor fever since a Delta County jury nearly two weeks ago awarded the owner of the 580 acres at the entrance to this historic mining town a top-value price tag for property the town of Telluride is trying to acquire through condemnation.
RELATED: SMVC: ‘This town may never have enough’
http://telluridegateway.com/articles/2007/03/09/news/news01.txt
RELATED: Shop locally and profits go to the Valley Floor effort
http://telluridegateway.com/articles/2007/03/09/news/news04.txt

SEC ices shares of DC Brands
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_business/article/0,2777,DRMN_23916_5405039,00.html
Regulators froze the shares of Wheat Ridge-based energy drink provider DC Brands International and more than 30 other penny-stock companies as they seek to crack down on e-mail promoters who engage in pump-and-dump scams. The Securities and Exchange Commission, calling its probe "Operation Spamalot," said the trading suspensions unveiled Thursday will help protect investors from getting burned by e-mail hype. DC Brands, whose Dickens Energy Cider includes the special ingredient "horny goat weed," has denied that it took part in any effort to fraudulently tout its stock.

Ag Expo attracts thousands to Cortez
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070309_7.htm
The four-day event, now in its 25th year, began Thursday and features more than 150 exhibitors of agricultural products and services as well as concerts, family entertainment and educational seminars. Dennis Hillyer, whose family owns Southwest Ag Inc. in Bayfield, is a board member of the expo and has been a vendor every year since its inception. He said unexpected rain Thursday affected the crowds, but organizers still anticipate more than 10,000 people will visit the expo throughout the weekend.

Top

Worker's Rights and Corporate Accountability

State adds 52,800 jobs in '06
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5389742
Colorado's economy added more than 52,800 new nonfarm jobs in 2006, its strongest showing in six years, according to revised job counts released Thursday from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. After several years of modest growth in the labor pool, the number of available workers grew last year by 83,617, Colorado's biggest annual increase since 1995. Noting that Colorado's unemployment rate is lower than the national average and job growth stronger in the state, University of Colorado at Boulder economist Richard Wobbekind said, "I wasn't surprised to see labor- force growth pick up."
RELATED: Colorado's jobless rate inches up to 4.1 percent
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5387145

IBM to provide free financial planning for workers
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5389741
International Business Machines announced this week it will provide free financial planning for its U.S. workers, including more than 5,500 in Colorado. The $50 million initiative is meant to help the company's 127,000 U.S. workers save for retirement and better manage investments. IBM announced last year it would shift from traditional pension benefits to employee-supervised 401(k) retirement plans. That move, along with several other pension-related changes, is expected to save the technology giant up to $3 billion between 2006 and 2010, IBM has said. The new program, called IBM MoneySmart, combines in-person educational seminars, online tools and one-on-one planning sessions. IBM will work with Fidelity Investments and the Ayco Co., a Goldman Sachs company, to develop and deliver the services.

Investigation begins into industrial fatality
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5403613,00.html
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating an industrial accident in Loveland that killed a 44-year- old tow truck driver Thursday.

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Housing and Homelessness

Owners of shoddy homes seek county action
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19974&template=article.html
Two Florissant residents are calling for an investigation of the Teller County Building Department after county inspectors approved shoddy work by a contractor, leaving their houses with numerous code violations. County officials called the situation an isolated incident.

Habitat director leaving Greeley to head group in New Mexico city
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103080108
Tom Chagolla, the executive director of the Greeley Area Habitat for Humanity, is leaving his post in Greeley to become the chief executive officer of the Mesilla Valley Habitat for Humanity in Las Cruces, N.M. Chagolla ran for Greeley City Council in last year's special election against recalled councilman LeRoy Johnson. Among Chagolla's reasons for leaving Greeley is that Las Cruces has a much wamer climate. Chagolla, who has also worked for the Colorado division of youth corrections, also says he couldn't pass up the opportunity and would have wondered "What if?" for the rest of his life.

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Media

DirecTV's deal with baseball gives Dish Network, cable firms ultimatum
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5390274
EchoStar's Dish Network and cable companies could be shut out of airing out-of-market baseball games this season if they don't match a deal made Thursday between Major League Baseball and DirecTV. DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite-TV provider, and MLB inked a seven-year deal to air games. DirecTV also took a minority stake in a new network - the Baseball Channel - set to debut in 2009. The channel will debut on DirecTV's basic programming tier. The deal would not affect viewers' ability to watch local games and select out-of-market games that air on networks such as ESPN, WGN, Fox and TBS. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although industry experts have valued it at $700 million. El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV has more than 15 million subscribers.

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Education

Guv prefers panel in school reform
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405860,00.html
Gov. Bill Ritter isn't slamming the door on bills to tweak high school graduation standards, but he prefers a more comprehensive look at school reform, his spokesman said Thursday. A bill awaiting action by a House committee would require four years of math and three years of science for graduation - more than required now by any major school district. Ritter has said he wants a committee to look at everything from preschool through graduate school. The committee could be formed within four to six weeks, said Evan Dreyer, Ritter's spokesman. Sponsors of the bill to increase the math and science requirements appealed to Ritter in a letter Thursday.

Report: Clarify Web school rules
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_5405870,00.html
A report released Thursday recommends that the Colorado Board of Education clarify rules for online schools, including the Hope Co-op Online Learning Academy. Hope, which is chartered by a school district in southeast Colorado, operates 79 learning centers around the state. Some local school boards think they should control learning centers in their jurisdictions. Students at the learning centers study from an online curriculum. They are under the supervision of adults but not state-licensed teachers.
RELATED: Panel: Bolster online schools
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390528

CSAP measure withdrawn
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405349,00.html
Statewide student achievement tests will continue to be a Colorado rite of spring. An Adams County lawmaker withdrew a bill Thursday that would have allowed parents to yank their children from the annual exams administered under the Colorado Student Assessment Program. The tests are unpopular among teachers and some parents, who say they take time from educational activities. But making the exams optional could jeopardize federal funds, said Rep. Edward Casso, D-Thornton. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Law, states must demonstrate learning through achievement tests. Schools must show 95 percent participation.
RELATED: Don't mess with CSAP, panel says
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389761

Ex-military are deploying to Aurora's public schools
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390530
Navy Chief Petty Officer David Olsen was onboard a ship in the Red Sea that fired a Tomahawk missile that bombed Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War. Army Col. Thomas Duffy dodged bullets in the Middle East as he taught Afghanistan officers there how to execute plans and strategies. Come the fall semester of 2008, the two will be in the classroom, teaching students in Aurora Public Schools. The two are taking part in the Troops to Teachers program, in which retired military personnel become teachers. Duffy and Olsen haven't retired yet. But they have committed to joining Aurora schools, through the hire-in-advance program, a first for districts in the Denver area, officials said.

Regents budget $150,000 for president search
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_5404196,00.html
The University of Colorado Board of Regents announced a $150,000 budget today for the search for a new university president. In January, Hank Brown announced he will step down as CU president in a year. The former U.S. senator became president in August 2005 and led the school through several scandals. The search committee will be chaired by Regent Steve Bosley and will be composed of members from the school system such as a dean and an alumni from CU. Bosley led the search for Brown’s hiring. The committee will conduct a local and nationwide search for up to three nominations. The salary of the next president was not set.
RELATED: CU begins presidential search
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/cu-begins-presidential-search/

UCSU hears budget requests
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/03/08/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt
A controversial proposal to shut down CU's student, health and recreation centers wasn't voted on during Thursday night's student government meeting. But a passionate crowd gathered to speak against the Fair and Equal Access bill, which if passed would close the three CU Student Union (UCSU)-funded buildings unless the building administrators agree to charge fraternities the same room-rental prices as other student groups. Meanwhile, leaders of the programs administered in those buildings pleaded with UCSU for funding.

CSU-Pueblo chief addresses plans to boost enrollment
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/3
Colorado State University-Pueblo President Joseph Garcia met with faculty, staff and students Thursday to discuss projects and plans currently under way to help boost student enrollment. Garcia hosted the meeting, attended by approximately 75 people, to discuss items from adding new sports programs and creating scholarship programs to developing a graduation incentive plan and building-renovation plans. A major point of discussion was Garcia's plan to resurrect football, wrestling and women's track and field. Garcia told the group the proposal to add the three sports is just one ingredient in the mix to help boost student enrollment at the university.
RELATED: CSU-Pueblo provost may be named soon
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/10

School board members deny illegal actions
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070309_1.htm
Durango school board members Thursday addressed allegations that they had gathered illegally without calling a public meeting. Mike Matheson, the school board president who resigned Wednesday and accused his fellow board members of meeting illegally, said he did not know whether board members had actually met. "I was told that at least phone conversations have occurred," and that a majority of the school board had decided to fire Superintendent Mary Barter, said Matheson. It is illegal for three or more school-board members to meet privately to discuss public business. Board members denied they had met, but said they had recent phone conversations.

Candidate for top BVSD post quizzed
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/candidate-for-top-bvsd-post-quizzed/
James Hammond, one of three finalists vying for the Boulder Valley superintendent job, acknowledged that leading this 28,000-student district would be a challenge. But it's one he said he's prepared to meet. In his third year as superintendent of a small, urban school district in Washington, the 36-year-old said he moved quickly through the education ranks because of his strong work ethic and drive.

Pueblo West parents offer their input at D70 forum
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/6
Concerns were raised about changing the start and dismissal times, overcrowded classrooms, and the potential growth from Fort Carson troop expansion. But the major topic of discussion centered on the district's budget woes, including the recent decision by the school board to eliminate 30 positions as a new staffing formula is implemented.

Redistricting process marches on
http://www2.steamboatpilot.com/news/2007/mar/09/redistricting_process_marches/?local_news
The South Routt School Board has spent countless hours reworking its district boundaries, and that process soon will come to a close. On Wednesday, board members Tim Corrigan, Gena Hange, Willie Smith, Linda Long and Janette Manke held a special work session to redistrict a portion of the county that has experienced population changes throughout the school system’s seven director districts.

Teachers can get money for loans
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19914&template=article.html
Teachers who take hard-to-fill jobs in poor rural schools or in-demand subject areas may be eligible for money to pay back their student loans under a state program. Last year, the program paid $39,420 to two dozen teachers in the Pikes Peak region. Called Loan Incentive for Teachers, or LIFT, it is managed by CollegeInvest, a nonprofit and independently funded division of the Colorado Department of Higher Education. Teachers can earn as much as $2,000 a year for four years in student-loan payments for teaching math, science, special education or linguistically diverse education.

The early years — a crucial time in determining future success
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/103080060
By age 4, the brain is 80 percent developed. However, public dollars to support children don't really kick in until age 5. "We want to bring those lines together," said Laurie Beckel, staff director for Colorado Early Childhood and School Readiness Commission. "It's putting dollars into quality programs during a time in early childhood, making sure all families get support. ... We want quality programs to stimulate babies' brains and not just park them in front of a television." This week, Beckel presented information about Smart Start Colorado to educators, parents, early child care advocates and health officials from about 10 counties at a meeting at the Summit County Community and Senior Center near Frisco.

Criminal justice leaders discuss sexual assault
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103090101
A handful of students attended a panel discussion to learn about sexual assault awareness at the University of Northern Colorado Thursday night. The meeting focused on teaching students the disciplinary system on campus and how the justice system in Weld County responds to sexual assaults.

Superintendent says Re-2 schools don't have a problem with violence
http://postindependent.com/article/20070309/VALLEYNEWS/103090051
Between Feb. 20 and 23, two acts of violence and a verbal altercation at Rifle High School were reported to police. One incident was an assault on a 14-year-old student resulting in hospitalization. But school administrators insist that the Re-2 schools are safe. Garfield County School District Re-2 Superintendent Dr. Gary Pack said that there is not a problem with violence at RHS or in any other of the district's schools. He said that in his six years with the district there are no documented long-standing incidents indicating that any of the schools have a record of violent behavior.
RELATED: Fight prompts concern
http://postindependent.com/article/20070309/VALLEYNEWS/103090049

Evergreen student charged in school fire
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5403921,00.html
A 17-year-old former student at Evergreen High School faces arson and criminal mischief charges in a fire at the school earlier this week. The fire, set in the boys’ locker room, was confined to three lockers but forced the temporary evacuation of the school, said Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County sheriff’s office.

Cops track cell pictures of nude kids
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405888,00.html
Police are trying to determine how many nude photos of Castle Rock Middle School students were taken by students and distributed by cell phones to other students this week. "Our main concern is to educate the kids and stop it from going further out," said Castle Rock police Lt. Douglas Ernst. "We have tracked one image that went out over the Internet to California." So far, investigators have determined that four female and two male Castle Rock Middle School students, between the ages of 13 and 14, have taken nude or partially clothed photos of themselves using cell phones. At least 20 students either have knowledge of, or have seen, the photos.
RELATED: Middle-school kids forwarded girls' nude pics
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389869

Top

Military

Army hospital assailed in Carson soldier's death
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405833,00.html
Failed equipment, staff negligence and command arrogance plagued a wounded Fort Carson soldier's unsuccessful fight for life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a congressman said at a hearing this week. Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., said he only went public with the information after the parents of Staff Sgt. William Latham, from Fort Carson's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, asked him to. He spoke during a subcommittee hearing of the House Appropriations Committee, which is looking into treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and other Army hospitals. Latham, 29, of Kingman, Ariz., was in the first Fort Carson unit to deploy to Iraq in April 2003.
RELATED: Fallen GI had lived in Northglenn
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5392447

Ex-Coloradan dies as hero in Iraq war
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405879,00.html
Andrew C. Perkins was running through flames with a blanket trying to rescue a fellow soldier in a burning Humvee Sunday when a second roadside bomb blast killed the 27-year-old Army paratrooper who once lived in Northglenn. Army officials have told the family that Perkins' actions will likely result in his being nominated for a distinguished service medal, his father, Weldon Perkins, said Thursday from the family home in Belen, N.M. "You should be proud of him too," Perkins said. "What he did was just absolutely incredible."

Civilian case against Army recruiter is dropped
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405872,00.html
The civilian case against an Army recruiter accused of using the rape drug in an alleged attack on a woman he was helping to recruit has been dropped and Sgt. Louis Chapa has been reassigned to Denver, according to a CBS 4 News report. Chapa, 27, was arrested on Valentine's Day. Authorities believe that the alleged rape occurred in the woman's home in unincorporated Morgan County on Feb. 3. According to documents in the case, investigators said that Chapa was wearing his Army recruiting uniform and driving a marked Army car when he picked up the alleged victim at her home and took her to Cable's Pub in Fort Morgan.

Bagpiper wails away in war zone
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405500,00.html
Over hill, over dale, over the desert of Iraq, a soldier's got to have tunes. For Spc. Joel Wilkinson, 28, who grew up in Westminster and Parker, the top tunes are bagpipe favorites, such as Amazing Grace, Happy Birthday and the hymn Lead, Kindly Light. Getting into the spirit, fellow soldiers stitched up a camouflage kilt out of an Army uniform to show their appreciation for his music, said Tobi Wilkinson, 28, the soldier's wife. "I think he tried it on once," she said, "But, he's proud of it." Assigned to a vast Air Force base in northern Iraq that he and other soldiers never leave, Wilkinson goes into the desert to wail out his music, his loneliness and his frustrations, said his mother, Sylvia Wilkinson, 55, of Parker.

Top

Religion

Top attorneys square off in case of embattled priest
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5405878,00.html
A fight between the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and one of its priests is shaping up into a battle of the mega-lawyers. The diocese has hired the law firm of Hal Haddon - known for defending such high-profile figures as basketball star Kobe Bryant - to pursue an allegation of "misapplied funds" against the Rev. Don Armstrong, of Colorado Springs. Meanwhile, Armstrong's first lawyer, prominent Denver criminal defense attorney Dan Sears, said Thursday he has withdrawn from the case because there aren't the financial resources to adequately fight the diocese. "The funds are not available to provide the kind of defense that I believe Father Armstrong needs and requires," Sears said. He declined to discuss details except to say he and Armstrong parted amicably several weeks ago. Armstrong is paying his own legal fees but parishioners have started a defense fund, said church member Ken Emery.

Church skit involving fake gun goes awry
http://www2.steamboatpilot.com/news/2007/mar/08/church_skit_involving_fake_gun_goes_awry/?local_news
A church skit involving a fake gun went awry Wednesday night at Steamboat Christian Center leading youth and adults to duck under chairs and call 911. Steamboat Springs police Capt. Det. Bob Del Valle said officers began receiving calls around 9 p.m. Wednesday from people who had witnessed or heard about the incident. “Apparently the youth group was putting on a skit using an actor with a fake gun,” he said. “Somehow the skit was overdone and the kids began hiding under chairs thinking the situation was real.”

Top

Energy Policy

PUC looks to renewable energy
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5389740
Less coal and natural gas, less carbon, less telecom regulation. More renewables, more energy efficiency, more high-speed Internet access. And an occasional glass of fine wine. In a nutshell, that's the agenda for Ron Binz, the part-time winery owner and newly appointed full-time chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. But before he elaborates, he is quick to state a caveat: "I am only one of three commissioners; I have only one vote," he said. "I don't speak for the commissioners." Nonetheless, the 57-year-old Binz expects to be the utility-regulation point man for his appointer, Gov. Bill Ritter, and the renewable-energy platform embraced by Ritter and this year's Colorado General Assembly. "There's an expectation that the (PUC) chair will carry a banner for the new administration," Binz said.

Ritter’s energy chief lauds Montrose co-op’s attempts at efficiency
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_3a_DMEA_meeting.html
Tom Plant, who heads up of Gov. Bill Ritter’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation, told members of the Delta-Montrose Electric Cooperative on Thursday they are leaders in the state. The co-op recently mounted a massive information campaign to help its customers save more energy and recently challenged its supplier, Tri-State Utilities, to put more emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency instead of building more new coal-fired power plants. Plant didn’t talk about coal, but told a story of how Paul Bony, DMEA’s manager of management and members services, helped change the lighting at the state Capitol.

Overhaul of oil, gas group to aid health
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_1b_Sherman_bill.html
Major changes could be on the horizon for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. A bill, backed by Colorado Department of Natural Resources Director Harris Sherman, is poised to change the commission’s composition and realign its mission to better protect wildlife and public health. Sherman’s bill, introduced Thursday afternoon, would expand the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from seven to nine members. The bill also would decrease the number of industry members from five to three and add a mineral royalty owner and representatives from the wildlife, land reclamation and local government spheres.

Royalty owners want records
http://www.cortezjournal.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070308_8.htm
A House panel approved a bill Tuesday to help royalty owners who suspect gas companies are shortchanging them. House Bill 1142 would open some gas company records that are now kept secret at county assessor's offices. Royalty owners say they need those records to see if they're getting their fair share. Several royalty owners testified in favor of the bill, including Mary Lou Brophy of Wray. "I can't find out what they actually got for my gas. And it is our gas, guys. I live in Colorado, and it's our gas," Brophy said.

Ethanol plant in Yuma takes step forward
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5403586,00.html
Texas company Panda Ethanol Inc. on Thursday said it has signed a construction agreement with Lurgi Inc. to build a 105-million ethanol plant in Yuma.
The agreement would help Panda in arranging financing for the project, the company said. Although the project cost is not clear, industry experts peg it at about $120 million. Upon financial close, Lurgi will be asked to complete the plant in 18 months. "This agreement demonstrates our ability to meet the challenges facing a rapidly growing industry," said Todd Carter, chief executive officer of Panda Ethanol. When completed, the Yuma plant will annually refine an estimated 38 million bushels of corn into ethanol — displacing about 2.5 million barrels of imported oil a year. Ethanol is blended with gasoline before it can be used in flexible fuel vehicles.

Wind farm on track for Huerfano County
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/17
Plans to harness the wind will become a reality in Huerfano County as early as next year, if one local business owner has his way. Ed Johnson, owner of Sunrise Enterprises, said he is negotiating with Iberdrola Renewable Energies USA to install a 2 to 3 megawatt wind farm within the county. The plan is to have the farm operational by 2008. Iberdrola, a company based in Spain, would sell the generated energy to Xcel Energy, according to Johnson. Xcel Energy currently offers wind energy under the trademark name,Windsource, to more than 46,000 customers in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota. Huerfano County Renewable Energies LLC, a spinoff of Johnson’s company, would oversee operations on the wind farm, creating 10 jobs for local workers at more than $15 per hour.

Cleanup not expected for spill
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Top-Story.asp?ID=6341
No cleanup is expected at Cotter Corp. for a minute concentration of contaminated water that spilled early Tuesday morning from a blown pipe. About 50,000 gallons of slightly contaminated water escaped and traveled about 50 yards down a ditch next to a road on Cotter land but not within the impoundment itself, said mill manager John Hamrick. “It was a lot of gallons of water but such low concentration, it is not a danger to anybody or any part of the environment,” Hamrick said Wednesday. As required by the state, Hamrick said the spill was reported to Steve Tarlton, radiation management unit leader for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, on Wednesday.

Seventh-grader hopes to help improve renewable energy
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103080110
As engineers around the world struggle to find alternative energy sources, Alex Nickell, 12, of Loveland hopes his science project will contribute to the search. For now, it earned him first place in the Junior Division at the 37th Annual Longs Peak Regional Science Fair on Thursday.

Top

Transportation and Infrastructure

Toll road measure headed to Senate
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5405864,00.html
The House gave final passage Thursday to a bill that would make it more difficult for private developers to build toll roads. House Bill 1068 now goes to the Senate. The bill would require a developer to notify property owners that they live in a toll road corridor and to notify the state transportation department before the developer can express interest in land.

Fastracks costs running into the red
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390405
A detailed financial analysis of RTD's FasTracks plan shows that the six new train lines and other transit improvements could cost $2.5 billion more than originally forecast. The draft analysis obtained by The Denver Post shows FasTracks trains and other improvements could cost $6.5 billion, almost 65 percent higher than the price sold to metro Denver voters in 2004. The above-budget items identified in the analysis include almost $1 billion in design and engineering, $345 million in construction materials, $56 million in the price of rail cars and nearly $600 million in unexplained "contingency" costs, among other elements.

CDOT may add another $1.3 million to improve chain-up areas
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/70308013
The Colorado Department of Transportation might double the amount of money it’s already pledged to improve safety in semi truck chain-up areas on Interstate 70. “What we’re proposing is to add a little less than $1.3 million to the project, which would get us up to $2.5 million to the issue, pending transportation commission approval,” CDOT Region 1 director Jeff Kullman said Thursday.

Eagle County purchases Toyota Priuses
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5403605,00.html
Eagle County is purchasing 20 hybrid Toyota Priuses for its vehicle fleet. The Prius is at least 50 percent more fuel-efficient compared to the vehicles they are replacing, and they produce significantly less emissions, according to Justin Finestone, the county’s director of communications. The current vehicles average about 18 miles per gallon, while a Prius averages about 50 mpg. The fuel savings to the county is estimated at more than $21,000 a year.

Oil, gas toll on roads may bring toll on trucks
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5390529
[Silt] Mayor Dave Moore was out checking road damage recently when he felt the earth move and his temper rise. As he watched workers repair a section of road that had caved in under the pressure of heavy oil-and-gas and gravel trucks, dozens of big rigs rumbled past him, "and the road was just moving up and down." "We need to get a message out to oil and gas and gravel," Moore thought to himself at the time. "They are beating our roads to hell." Moore is proposing to get that message out in a unique way: He wants Silt to set up tollbooths.

Snow removal up to owners
http://www2.steamboatpilot.com/news/2007/mar/09/snow_removal_owners/?local_news
Removing snow from sidewalks, parking areas and curbs on or along any commercial or residential property within city limits is the job of the property owner, according to the city’s municipal code. Steamboat’s snow removal law has been on the books for years, but the issue was highlighted this week during a bit of “housekeeping” by the Steamboat Springs City Council. The council clarified the law Tuesday night after a request from city staff.

Top

Environment and Conservation

Optimism for hunting in Rocky Mountain National Park
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5403916,00.html
Colorado Division of Wildlife Director Bruce McCloskey said today he’s optimistic about Congress changing the law so hunters will be allowed to hunt elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, the Associated Press reports. The law currently prohibits killing elk by selling licenses to hunters. Park officials say there are more than 3,000 elk that frequent the park and they are destroying the vegetation. So the Park wants to pare the number back to around 1,700. "I think we’ve jiggled loose some positions that were previously pretty well entrenched," McCloskey told the state Wildlife Commission at its monthly meeting today.
RELATED: Officials press for hunting in parks
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/NEWS01/703090320/1002/NEWS01

City’s deer hunt was a success, Alamosa official reports
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1173457685/18
Archers culled 11 deer from a herd of as many as 300 plaguing the city and officials are considering whether to conduct another managed hunt. City Manager Nathan Cherpeski said Monday that the hunt, which was held Jan. 31 to Feb. 28 on a city-owned ranch at the north edge of town, came about because the deer have become fearless pests in the city. The deer munch on grass and shrubs in front yards, run into traffic and attack small pets. The goal of the hunt was to cull up to 30 does from the herd but only 11 were actually harvested, Cherpeski said.

Green lawyers get together at Keystone
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/70308014
Once again this year, environmental attorneys from around the country are gathering at Keystone for the American Bar Association’s environmental law conference, March 8-11. One of the highlights this year is a keynote dinner speech this evening by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who will share his perspective on environmental, energy and other resource issues. Other sessions of interest include a panel discussion on a long-term vision for the EPA, with a focus on the ever-evolving mission, priorities and strategy for the agency. The session on the EPA is set for 8-10 a.m. today, with the panelists including James Martin, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Warming signs add up, experts say
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/70308015
Rising global temperatures could play out in significant ways in the Colorado High Country, with the effects ranging from earlier snowmelt and a less reliable water supply to a loss of the spectacular alpine scenery that is fundamental to the state's tourism economy, a panel of experts said Thursday evening in Frisco. The climate change forum, presented by Our Future Summit, included a presentation from Denver Water resource manager Marc Waage, who said that even a moderate two- degree rise in temperatures could result in a six percent drop in water supplies and a 12 percent increase in demand.

4 questions for Michael Potts, Rocky Mountain Institute
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/energy/article/0,2777,DRMN_23914_5404854,00.html
Michael Potts on Thursday was appointed CEO of think tank Rocky Mountain Institute. A high-tech industry veteran, Potts succeeds Amory Lovins, 59, who becomes the institute's chairman and chief scientist. Both changes take effect immediately, as Chairman John Fox changes his role to lead trustee. A Denver resident, the 50-year-old Potts will split his time between the institute's office in Boulder and headquarters in Old Snowmass. The institute says its technical experts have redesigned $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors for dramatic energy and resource efficiency. Potts told the Rocky Mountain News he "got so excited about what the institute was doing" that he dropped off other stuff he was doing to join it.
RELATED: Rocky Mountain Institute think tank names new CEO
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5389776
RELATED: RMI selects new CEO
http://aspentimes.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103090055

Most of county wells are safe
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19915&template=article.html
Tests on a sampling of El Paso County wells show most rural residents have safe drinking water, state officials said Wednesday. Last fall, the Colorado Department of Agriculture tested 49 wells across the county, finding a slight problem in just one well, located south of Calhan. “Everything came out pretty clean. We didn’t have any issues to look at,” said Karl Mauch of the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s groundwater protection program. The results will be presented at a public meeting Monday night.

BIOTA seeks a white knight
http://telluridegateway.com/articles/2007/03/09/news/news02.txt
At his office in Telluride, David Zutler has a souvenir from last month’s Academy Awards ceremony. It is a poster, inscribed by awards staff. It reads, “To David at BIOTA — Thank you for helping us go green.” For BIOTA, it is a bright spot in what has largely been a gray sky. As the official water of the Oscars, BIOTA could be seen in some famous hands — including those of Al Gore, the premiere of whose Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was also sponsored by the Ouray-based bottled water company. "Hollywood supports BIOTA,” Zutler said sadly, reflecting on the chain of events that led to his company being placed in receivership on Feb. 15. Today, the business that was once touted as Ouray’s first non-seasonal, manufacturing business — and which boasted the world’s first biodegradable bottle — faces an uncertain future.

NRCS holds second sign-up period for salinity control program
http://montrosepress.com/articles/2007/03/08/local_news/6.txt
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is holding a second sign-up in the Delta, Montrose and Cortez Field Offices in Colorado for the 2007 Colorado River Salinity Control Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The application period for this second sign-up period will be March 1 through March 30. Only areas in the Lower Gunnison, Mancos Valley, and McElmo Creek are affected. NRCS provides financial cost-share assistance to agriculture producers who voluntarily implement land management and irrigation practices that reduce salt loading. Agriculture producers participating in these efforts are provided incentive payments but are required to contribute at least 25 percent of the cost of the measures installed to reduce salt loading.

BLM seeking major change to travel plan
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_1a_BLM_Off_Road.html
The Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to confine motorized vehicles to designated routes within a 578,000-acre area around Montrose is eliciting mixed reviews from off-roaders, some of whom are afraid the federal government is trying to shut them out of public land.

McStain finishes LEED home
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/real_estate/article/0,1299,DRMN_414_5403685,00.html
McStain Neighborhoods, a Louisville-based homebuilder, has completed its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, home in Stapleton. McStain was one of four Stapleton builders selected to participate in the program, also known as the LEED-H pilot program. The LEED program, launched by the United States Green Building Council, encourages environmentally friendly and sustainable building techniques. The home has 2,872 square feet and is priced at $621,562.

Smelly situation
http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=15071
Little Gaynor Lake’s solar-powered water circulator, a device intended to prevent or at least reduce pungent emissions of hydrogen sulfide gas, is back in its proper place. Boulder County’s Sasha Charney said Wednesday that she’s hesitant to predict how long it’ll take Little Gaynor’s neighbors to get relief from the stench that’s been emanating from the lake for the past week or so.

Time to buy your new trash can
http://vaildaily.com/article/20070308/NEWS/103080070
Sally Jackle didn't waste any time getting a new "bear resistant" trash can. She bought one last fall, right after Vail passed a law that required everyone who puts their garbage out to get the special containers. "Same size, same weight," said Jackle, a West Vail resident. "It's not different at all in how it operates except the lid is fastened differently." April 15 is the deadline for Vail residents to get the special trash cans.

Drivers, watch out for elk and deer
http://postindependent.com/article/20070309/VALLEYNEWS/103090057
The Colorado State Patrol would like to remind motorists to beware of deer and elk herds migrating across roads. With spring approaching, the majority of the migration is expected to begin in the next few weeks and continue until May. During this time, drivers may see increased numbers of animals in or near the roadways.

Taking a walk with wildlife
http://aspentimes.com/article/20070309/NEWS/103090058
The life-and-death struggle was one of several examples that wildlife abounds in a two-mile section of the Rio Grande Trail between Rock Bottom Ranch and the Catherine Bridge. The trail opened in late October to a fair amount of criticism from the environmental community. Critics said it would drive wildlife out of the old railroad corridor they had taken over in the decades since trains stopped passing by. RFTA responded by hiring Lowsky to devise a wildlife management plan. His recommendations to close the trail to humans from Dec. 1 until May 1 and to ban dogs year-round. The plan was adopted by RFTA's board of directors.

Top

Opinion

Merritt: Scooter Libby takes one for the team
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/speakout/2007/03/scooter_libby_takes_one_for_th.html
As a political liberal, I wanted prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to win. I wanted to see Libby, Dick Cheney and other administration officials held publicly accountable for leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters, ruining her career and smearing her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the guts to go public with his charge that the administration had misled the country on the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. As a criminal defense attorney, I wanted Libby’s lawyers to win. This was a case dependent on memory and every witness’s memory was flawed as to some aspects of events. I was hoping the inconsistencies in their testimony would leave jurors with a reasonable doubt. The jury deliberated 10 days. They were told they could not consider whether Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent or whether her employment status was classified.

Spencer: Freeloaders still frothing over 41
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5389874
The truth is that the House bill won't get through the two Senate committee votes and two Senate floor votes required to forward it to the justices. Meanwhile, Fitz-Gerald's claim that the legislature lacks the power to clarify the language of 41 flies in the face of an opinion by the assembly's legislative counsel, which has told Romanoff that the House bill - with definitions - is constitutional. Romanoff and Fitz-Gerald need to meet and work this out. It's also time to shovel the horse hockey about illegal scholarships and injury funds in a toxic waste bin marked "stinking hyperbole." Romanoff's House bill would specifically take care of these problems. He wants to take the mystery out of the game. Fitz-Gerald only favors empaneling the state ethics commission, but even she doesn't think the commission would find a violation of 41 merely because a government employee, an elected official or their families got a scholarship. Romanoff and Fitz-Gerald both understand that this amendment was meant to keep folks from violating the public trust for private gain. They can find common ground. But they'll never till it as long as guys like Senate President pro tem Peter Groff waste time berating Common Cause and millionaire Jared Polis, the sponsors who put 41 on the ballot. At Wednesday's Senate committee hearing, Groff accused Common Cause executive director Jenny Flanagan of turning the General Assembly into a "legislative janitorial service for this mess you wrote and Jared Polis paid for." Groff would sound less hypocritical if he wasn't among the legislature's top takers of free tickets from lobbyists and others. Guys like Groff are the reason Amendment 41 passed. Every time he opens his mouth to complain, the room reeks of sour grapes.

High court ends a political power grab
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=opin&article_path=/opinion/opin070308_1.htm
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that four Coloradans could not sue to replace the state's current congressional districts with ones created by a mid-decade redistricting undertaken by the state Legislature in 2003. It was a victory for common sense, good government and the Colorado Constitution. The U.S. Constitution requires a census every 10 years to reapportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the states as population increases or shifts. After the 2000 census, Colorado gained a seat. At that point the state Legislature was supposed to draw up new districts to reflect population changes and ensure that each district includes about the same number of people. It is, of course, always the occasion of a political fight.

Inmates on the farm
http://pueblochieftain.com/editorial/1173457685/1
COLORADO HAS probably the toughest state laws against illegal immigration. As a result, many farmers, particularly those who depend on hand labor, are facing a labor shortage as the growing season nears. It’s not just illegal immigrants who are staying away this year. Legal immigrants also fear being hassled in this state. Some farmers fear they will be in dire straits.

Zalaznick: It’s worse than we think
http://vaildaily.com/article/20070308/EDITS/70308016
Withdraw, pull out, call toppling Saddam victory — let’s just bring all of the troops home from Iraq. A civil war is likely to break out there whether we stay the rest of the month or the rest of the decade — even if our current troop surge and security crackdown stifle the violence, though that isn’t happening. There is no point in losing any more troops to W.’s scam of a war. There is no point to any more Iraqi civilians dying while the U.S. military is in the country. And no more troops deserve to be seriously injured and sent into the apparent administrative and hygienic nightmare of stateside military medicine.

Neglect of wounded warriors can’t be tolerated
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19978&template=article.html
The second scandal is that it took a hard-hitting expose in the federal government’s hometown newspaper to bring what might actually be some effective attention to the deplorable conditions faced by wounded military personnel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The first scandals are the conditions that exist there. As the Washington Post revealed in a follow-up story, the attention paid to Walter Reed sparked a torrent of e-mails and phone calls from wounded warriors and veterans who have tried for years to call attention to equally deplorable conditions at military and Veterans Administration hospitals all over the country.

Johnson: Marine mom protests as son trains for Iraq
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_5405869,00.html
It has been nearly a year since Pamela Osborne's only child, Daniel, now 20, enlisted in the Marines, only days after graduating from high school. She respected her son's decision, given his reasons for wanting to join - the honor, discipline and dignity that comes with being a Marine, the money he would be eligible to receive for college after he completed his service. "He just always wanted to be a Marine," Pamela Osborne, 52, said. It is a curious thing to her still, she said, given her background and the way she had raised him. After all, she, for years, had carried him on her back during multiple protest rallies against everything from apartheid to you-name-it. "I guess I raised him not very well to be a peace activist," she said.

Elections need oversight
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/09/elections-need-oversight/
State Sen. Ron Tupa sometimes supports government transparency. Sometimes, however, he rises to defend censorship. By sponsoring a bill that would remove ballots from public scrutiny, he has taken the latter, lower path. That is distressing, because the integrity of elections should be his paramount concern. Reducing the transparency — and verifiability — of election results is a sure way to engender more public cynicism and apathy. Is that what Tupa wants? Say it isn't so, senator. In previous years, the Boulder Democrat has sponsored legislation that subjected government e-mail and the University of Colorado Foundation to the state public-records law.

The Manzanares muddle
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/editorials/article/0,2777,DRMN_23964_5404556,00.html
As far as we knew, the Office of the State Court Administrator devoted itself entirely to administering state courts. It handles payroll, budget, computer coordination, long-range planning, probation services, lobbying the legislature for money - the boring basics. We had no idea that it might also try to directly intervene in the pursuit - or is it obstruction? - of justice. At least when one of its own is under suspicion. It turns out that Carol Haller, the office's legal counsel, asked police not to prosecute former Denver District Judge Larry Manzanares after she and State Court Administrator Gerald Marroney had been told that a missing court laptop had turned up in Manzanares' home.

Springing forward and saving energy
http://aspentimes.com/article/20070309/DAILYCOMMENT/103090046
Will the Energy Policy Act of 2005 really make a difference? We'll begin to answer that question this at 2 a.m. Sunday when daylight savings begins, three weeks earlier than it typically does.

Kudos to Allard for Anvil Points concern
http://www.gjsentinel.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2007/03/09/3_9_07_Allard_edit.html
Revenue from mineral development on the former Naval Oil Shale Reserve at Anvil Points west of Rifle now exceeds $70 million and is increasing at the rate of approximately $1 million a month, Colorado officials believe. They haven’t been sure because until this week, federal authorities hadn’t provided them an accurate accounting of how much money is in the fund and how much revenue it receives from natural-resource exploitation like natural gas development. Federal officials say they can’t release any of those funds to the state and area communities to assist in dealing with the impacts caused by energy development on the old reserve, which includes virtually all of the Roan Plateau. The 1998 legislation that transferred the tens of thousands of acres land making up the old oil shale reserve to the Bureau of Land Management requires the money to be used first to clean up an old oil-shale retort at Anvil Points, they say. Well, $70 million-plus is a hefty chunk of change to clean up the very small demonstration retort that was there. That kind of cash could go a long way in helping communities deal with energy impacts.

Spehar: We must keep better eye on the candy jar
http://www.denverpost.com/opinionheadlines/ci_5388220
Gov. Bill Ritter is the latest in a long line of folks looking longingly at energy revenues, but he's not the only one. At last count, there were more than a dozen bills moving through the Colorado legislature with some portion of those monies in the bull's-eye. Proposals that look to the state's severance tax or the federal leasing monies returned to Colorado as salvation for statewide financial needs ranging from transportation to education universally ignore three things: The reason the pot of money is increasing is increasing activity in the field. That flurry of new activity brings with it escalating impacts. The intent in creating those severance taxes and leasing revenues was to provide a means of addressing and mitigating those impacts where they happen. Many of the proposals would cap the amount of money flowing to communities to address those direct impacts and retain at the state level some or all of the funds above the ceiling to address other needs. That would work out just fine if proponents of that new spending could also figure out a way to cap the impacts the funds are supposed to mitigate. That ain't gonna happen. One of the disadvantages those of us in the energy patch are facing is that many of those other needs, education and transportation being good examples, are well documented while we've done a poor job of adding up all the unmet needs prompted by energy development.

McCandless: NASA acted hastily
http://www.denverpost.com/opinionheadlines/ci_5388219
Wednesday's actions by NASA to terminate the status of Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak, USN, as an astronaut, effective the next day, raise questions of fairness and of due process, which is the heart of our legal system. This unprecedented quest for speed was emphasized by the fact that Nowak's official biography was simultaneously, overnight, moved from the "Active Astronauts" category to the "Former Astronauts" category with a bland notation that she "returned to navy duty effective March 8, 2007." A month ago, Capt. Nowak was charged with trying to kidnap a woman she regarded as her romantic rival for the affections of a Navy Cmdr. Bill Oefelein, a space shuttle pilot.

NATIONAL NEWS

Top

Election

Speculation About Hagel Announcement Begins
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801479.html
Speculation ran rampant today about just what Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) will announce during a planned news conference early next week. Hagel's options include a bid for the 2008 presidential nomination as either a Republican or an independent, a re-election race to the seat he has held since 1996 or retirement from elected office. Most Republican observers believe that Hagel will announce a bid for the Republican presidential nomination on Monday in Omaha, but warn that he largely keeps his own counsel, making it difficult to predict his plans. Mike Buttry, a spokesman for Hagel, was tight-lipped about the senator's forthcoming announcement, saying only, "He will hold a news conference Monday regarding his future plans."

Giuliani leads GOP pack, doing it his way
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-giuliani9mar09,1,7166786.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Rudy for president? For months, it seemed unfathomable. A liberal on social issues with a scandal-ridden personal life, Rudolph W. Giuliani was viewed as such a black sheep by many conservatives in the GOP family that he continually was confronted by the question: "Are you really going to run?" Now such doubts have been silenced. He's running hard, and the former mayor of New York is a political hot property. He's pulled far ahead of the man long presumed to be the party's front-runner for the 2008 presidential nomination — Sen. John McCain of Arizona — and undercut other hopefuls, most prominently Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. In survey after survey of Republicans, Giuliani is leaving his rivals in the dust with double-digit leads. And in key swing states, pollsters have found he would beat the Democratic front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Even some leading social conservatives are putting aside their differences over abortion and gay rights to join Team Giuliani.
RELATED: Giuliani avoids firefighters' gathering
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-08-giuliani-firefighters_N.htm
RELATED: Giuliani Courts Former Partner and Antagonist
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/us/politics/09rudy.html

Questions stalk Obama's portfolio
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090126mar09,1,6181031.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama began the news conference with a promise to "stick around" to answer reporters' questions about $100,000 he invested in two companies backed by some of his top donors. And stick around he did, following up on his answers Wednesday with a release later of one of the documents related to the investments. But the Illinois senator's explanations and the supporting document leave lingering issues about the selection of the stocks and the timing of their purchase. Controversy over Obama's financial dealings could be particularly troubling to the senator because of his advocacy of high ethical standards, both in the state legislature and Congress. He also has benefited from a reformist image.

Clinton slams White House, calls for GI bill
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hillary9mar09,1,5332920.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a wide-ranging attack on the Bush administration's treatment of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday, saying the White House was so inept it couldn't run a "two-car parade." Clinton, a New York Democrat who is running for president, joined a chorus of politicians decrying conditions at the Army's Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She called for a new GI bill of rights modeled on the broad array of benefits offered to World War II veterans. Her proposal, which came with no cost estimate, aims at improving health facilities, increasing physical and mental health screenings for soldiers, speeding up payments to the families of the dead, and clarifying guardianship rules for orphaned children.

Top

Effective and Ethical Government

Bush Threatens to Veto Democrats' Iraq Plan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030800206.html
Bush administration officials escalated the fight over a new spending package for the Iraq war yesterday, saying for the first time that the president will veto a House Democratic plan because it includes a timetable to start bringing troops home within a year and would undermine military efforts. The veto threat came as House and Senate Democrats announced aggressive new measures to narrow U.S. involvement in Iraq, although party leaders acknowledged that their members are far from united on the efforts. Liberals want to start troop withdrawals immediately, but more conservative members worry that they are micromanaging the war, and House leaders have been struggling to come up with a compromise.
RELATED: Bush creeps up from all-time low in poll
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-09-bush-poll_N.htm

Rove Doing His Part to Help Shape a Positive Legacy for Bush
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802184.html
In an interview this week in his windowless West Wing office, Karl Rove said that there is "very little" discussion about President Bush's legacy at the White House these days, only a focus on developing good policy that might have a long-term impact. "The president's attitude is, 'History is going to write the legacy long after we are all dead or in no position to affect it -- so why worry about it?' " Rove said. Yet history is never far from Rove's mind. While he has kept a low profile in Washington since the midterm election losses took some of the edge off his reputation as a political genius, Rove, a Bush senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, has begun trying to put his own distinctive spin on current events and the longer historical view.

CIA operative to testify before Congress
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-plame-testimony_N.htm
Valerie Plame, the CIA operative exposed after her husband criticized President Bush's march to war, will testify next week before lawmakers probing how the White House dealt with her identity, the chairman of the panel said Thursday. Also invited to testify March 16 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is Patrick Fitzgerald, who this week won conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of obstruction and perjury in the case, said Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman said Plame has accepted the invitation and Fitzgerald has not responded. In a letter to the prosecutor, Waxman proposed a meeting with ranking Republican Tom Davis of Virginia to discuss the terms of any testimony.

Gonzales Yields On Hiring Interim U.S. Attorneys
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801087.html
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales agreed yesterday to change the way U.S. attorneys can be replaced, a reversal in administration policy that came after he was browbeaten by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee still angry over the controversial firings of eight federal prosecutors. Gonzales told Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and other senior members of the committee that the administration will no longer oppose legislation limiting the attorney general's power to appoint interim prosecutors. Gonzales also agreed to allow the committee to interview five top-level Justice Department officials as part of an ongoing Democratic-led probe into the firings, senators said after a tense, hour-long meeting in Leahy's office suite.
RELATED: Border politics may have cost U.S. attorney her job
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lam9mar09,1,1795099.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Does urban U.S. need new Moses to lead?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090122mar09,1,4608163.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Huge swaths of New Orleans are still devastated a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina. The effort to rebuild the World Trade Center site has sputtered for more than five years. Across the country, projects remain on the drawing board for years while studies, hearings and court cases play out in the bureaucratic equivalent of super-slow-motion. Does America need another Robert Moses? Moses, an unelected official who ran a bewildering array of New York public agencies for 44 years, built bridges, expressways, parks, playgrounds and housing developments that continue to define the way people move around and live in the nation's largest urban area. He is commonly reckoned to be America's greatest builder.

Top

Civil Liberties and Equality

War protesters target lawmakers' offices
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-war-protestors_N.htm
Some opponents of the Iraq war are taking their protests straight to Congress — staging "occupations" in lawmakers' offices on Capitol Hill and in their home communities. Rep. Rahm Emanuel's office in Chicago was targeted on Thursday. A day earlier protesters were stopped before getting into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco. In Washington, peace activists dressed in pink showed up recently at the Senate offices of presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The protesters haven't abandoned the larger, more familiar gatherings at college campuses, major cities and monuments in Washington. But in recent weeks, they have been turning up at congressional offices, vowing to stay until they get pledges that lawmakers will vote against more war funding — or until they are forcibly removed.

Top

Foreign Policy

Bush Embarks on Longest Trip to Latin America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030800887.html
President Bush embarked today on his longest trip ever to Latin America in an effort to reassure a region that has felt neglected for years and to offer a fresh U.S. commitment to what he calls "social justice" for the impoverished neighbors of the United States. Accompanied by first lady Laura Bush, the president took off from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington this morning for a daylong flight here, where he will begin his tour with a series of events tomorrow. After his stop here, the president will travel to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico before returning to Washington next Wednesday.
RELATED: Bush Theme of Doubling Latin Aid Is Seen as Misleading
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802176.html
RELATED: Thousands protest Bush's Brazil visit
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bushbrazil9mar09,1,5246732.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Beijing Hits Back at U.S. for Raising Rights Concerns
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030800747.html
Responding to U.S. complaints, China charged Thursday that the Bush administration has no standing to criticize other countries on human rights because its own record is full of blemishes at home and abroad. The Chinese accusation, in a retort to the State Department's annual human rights report issued Tuesday, called particular attention to what it said were abuses committed by U.S. soldiers and intelligence agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Chinese also underlined what they described as increased willingness by Washington to spy on its own citizens by monitoring telephone calls, computer connections and travels. "As in previous years, the State Department pointed the finger at human rights conditions in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but avoided touching on the human rights situation in the United States," the government said in a report issued by Premier Wen Jiabao's office. "We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human rights problems and stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of human rights."

U.S. says it can't protect every Iraqi
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq9mar09,1,2970162.story?coll=la-headlines-world
The new U.S. commander in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that U.S.-led forces cannot protect all Iraqis from "thugs with no soul" who are bent on reigniting sectarian warfare and derailing a major security crackdown. In his first news conference since taking over last month, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said he shared "the horror and the sorrow and the sadness" at seeing more than 100 Shiite Muslim pilgrims killed Tuesday by two suicide bombers who mingled in the town of Hillah with throngs heading for a religious commemoration in the nearby holy city of Karbala. What he did not offer was a strategy for dealing with such attacks, underscoring a major dilemma facing U.S. and Iraqi forces as they carry out what has been described as a last-ditch effort to curb the deadly civil war.

In Iraq, whispers of soft coup arise
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090138mar09,1,7426218.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Secular former prime minister and U.S. favorite Ayad Allawi is leading a new push to replace the Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with a broad-based government that would focus on restoring order. Amid deepening concerns among Sunnis and secularists about al-Maliki's performance, Allawi has emerged at the center of an initiative to create a "national salvation front," which his supporters say would be able to secure the backing of Iraqi insurgents, reunite the country and end the sectarian conflict that has prevailed for more than a year.

U.S. Open to Talking About Iraq With Iran and Syria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802013.html
The Bush administration opened the door yesterday to one-on-one discussions with both Iran and Syria at this weekend's Baghdad conference, as long as the talks are limited to the subject of peace and stability in Iraq. "If a discussion emerges which is focused upon these goals in Iraq, they are discussions which, as diplomats, we will proceed with," said David M. Satterfield, State Department coordinator for Iraq and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "We are not going to turn and walk away."
RELATED: U.S. and Iran have been talking, quietly
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-irantalks9mar09,1,4732772.story?coll=la-headlines-world
RELATED: Iraq to seek neighbor nations' help
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-08-iraq-summit_N.htm

U.N. Nuclear Agency Curtails Technical Assistance to Iran
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801108.html
The United Nations' atomic monitoring agency on Thursday curtailed nearly two dozen nuclear technical aid programs to Iran as part of an international effort to pressure the country to halt its uranium enrichment program. Members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna agreed to suspend or reduce 22 of the 55 technical aid projects it funds for improving Iran's civilian use of nuclear technology.

Afghan anti-corruption chief sold heroin in Vegas
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090111mar09,1,3756193.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
When the deal went down in Las Vegas, the seller was introduced only as "Mr. E." In a room at Caesars Palace hotel, Mr. E exchanged a pound-and-a-half bag of heroin for $65,000 cash--unaware that the buyer was an undercover detective. The sting landed him in a Nevada state prison for nearly four years. Twenty years later and Mr. E, whose real name is Izzatullah Wasifi, has a new job. He is the government of Afghanistan's anti-corruption chief.

Israeli troops reportedly used child as shield
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel9mar09,1,37187.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian girl as a "human shield" during an operation against militants in the West Bank city of Nablus last week, an Israeli human rights group said Thursday. The Israeli army said it was checking the report from the B'Tselem group, which monitors Israeli actions in the occupied territory. Israeli law bans the military from using human shields. B'Tselem said the girl, Jihan Daadush, told the group's representatives that Israeli soldiers had entered her family's home and questioned her and her relatives about the whereabouts of gunmen who had fired at the troops. The soldiers, she said, threatened to arrest her unless she led them to a nearby house. A soldier "ordered me to go toward the house," B'Tselem quoted the girl as saying. "Three soldiers walked behind me."
RELATED: Chaos turns fatal at rare opening of Gaza border
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090115mar09,1,5329061.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

U.N.: Rape widespread in Darfur conflict
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-09-darfur_N.htm
Women in Darfur continue to be subjected to rape by all sides in the brutal conflict in western Sudanese region, the U.N. human rights chief said Thursday — International Women's Day. Louise Arbour said she has about 75 human rights officers monitoring abuses in Darfur, and that many women were being attacked as soon they ventured out of refugee camps to carry out essential chores. "Women are forced to go out of the camp to collect firewood," Arbour said at a meeting in The Hague of female leaders in international law. "They believe, they tell us, that if the men went out they would be killed, and that's why it's the women who expose themselves and they get raped." She said another problem now arising for rape victims was having to bring up children that are the product of sexual attacks.

10 Civilians Killed in Somalia
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/africa/09somalia.html
A rocket-propelled grenade attack on African Union peacekeepers and an ensuing gun battle on Wednesday killed at least 10 civilians and wounded two peacekeepers here in the capital of Somalia, witnesses and hospital officials said Thursday. The Ugandan peacekeepers, the first to arrive in Mogadishu in more than a decade, were attacked Wednesday at a main intersection.

Japan-N. Korea Talks Conclude in Acrimony
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801859.html
The prickly atmosphere in Hanoi contrasted sharply with negotiations in New York earlier this week between U.S. and North Korean officials. They ended on an optimistic note. The Hanoi discussions also ended abruptly on their first day, Wednesday, when North Korean negotiators reacted angrily to Japan's insistence that they must resolve outstanding issues regarding the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and '80s before ties could improve. Heading into the talks early Thursday, Haraguchi said the discord a day earlier would not stop his side from pressing the abduction issue. Japan was prepared to address any war reparation issues in return, he said.
RELATED: Japan to re-examine military's sex slavery in WW II
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090117mar09,1,6115495.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Hard-Liners Triumph in N Ireland Election
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030900424.html
The polar extremes of Northern Ireland politics have strengthened their grip on the province's legislature, ensuring they will control any future Catholic-Protestant administration, substantial election results showed Friday. The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, publicly welcomed the triumph of the Protestants of the Democratic Unionist Party and the Catholics of Sinn Fein in Wednesday's election for the Northern Ireland Assembly _ and argued that voters expect them to cooperate immediately. "After so many years of frustration and disappointment, they want Northern Ireland to move on to build a better future together through the devolved (power) institutions," the premiers said in a joint statement. "Restoration of the devolved institutions represents an opportunity of historic proportions. It must not be missed."

Presidential race heats up in France
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/03/09/presidential_race_heats_up_in_france/
Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, the front-runners in France's presidential race, rushed to beef up their campaigns yesterday against the rise of a centrist candidate.

Ecuadoran Lawmakers Barred From Chamber
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802014.html
Police surrounded Ecuador's National Congress on Thursday to keep out dozens of lawmakers who were fired a day earlier by four electoral judges the lawmakers had sought to impeach, in the latest constitutional crisis in the small Andean nation. The four judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal accused 57 legislators of interfering with a referendum on whether to rewrite the constitution. Ecuador's new president, Rafael Correa, an admirer of Venezuela's firebrand leader, Hugo Chávez, sided with the court and was pressing ahead with the referendum, a step the legislators have called illegal.

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Immigration

Mayor criticizes raid for disrupting families
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-raid9mar09,1,2528665.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Before heading off to jobs stitching safety vests for U.S. soldiers, the mothers kissed their babies goodbye, leaving them at nurseries or with sitters. The factory employees — mostly women from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador thought to be in the U.S. illegally — had just started their workday earlier this week when the immigration officials arrived. Tiodora Tejada, 37, sat at a sewing machine in the back while Vilma Inestroza, 22, cleaned military backpacks nearby. Tejada recalled hearing someone shout: "Turn off the machines…. Don't run!" At first, she said in an interview, she thought it was a fire drill. Then she saw hundreds of workers running toward her — along with dozens of immigration officers with guns and barking dogs. The raid was the latest in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown on illegal workers nationwide. In all, 327 employees were detained for possible deportation.
RELATED: DSS to check on detainees sent to Texas
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/09/dss_to_check_on_detainees_sent_to_texas/

Florida makes sure it knows drill on mass migration
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-refugees9mar09,1,1460557.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
An offshore drill Thursday capped a two-day exercise called Operation Vigilant Sentry, designed to stem a possible mass migration to Florida from the Caribbean.

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Crime and Penal Reform

Big cities see jump in murders
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090124mar09,1,5394597.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent among dozens of large U.S. cities since 2004, a study shows. Robberies also spiked during the two-year period, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns, according to the report to be released Friday by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based law-enforcement think tank funded in part by the Justice Department, as well as corporations and private foundations.
RELATED: Violent crimes up again in big cities
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-09-city-violent-crimes_N.htm

Suit urges state to overhaul prisons
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/09/suit_urges_state_to_overhaul_prisons/
Hundreds of seriously mentally ill prisoners are held in [Massachusetts] cells 23 hours a day in inhumane conditions that have led to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and at least seven suicides since November 2004, an advocacy group alleged yesterday in a federal lawsuit demanding that the inmates be housed in special treatment units. The Disability Law Center, a nonprofit organization that provides legal help for the disabled, sued the state Department of Correction in US District Court in Boston after a yearlong investigation during which the advocates questioned more than 220 inmates in segregation units at two maximum-security prisons, Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center and MCI-Cedar Junction.
RELATED: Mentally Ill Inmates at Risk in Isolation, Lawsuit Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/us/09prison.html?ref=us

Well is dry for Georgia public defenders
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/legis07/stories/2007/03/09/0309metdefend.html
Legislative support is eroding for Georgia's 2-year-old public defender system, already facing a funding crisis that imperils thousands of criminal prosecutions across the state. The flash point is the case of Brian Nichols, accused of killing a judge and three other people in a 2005 rampage that started at the Fulton County Courthouse. After news reports of the cost of Nichols' defense, which has reached $1.4 million, powerful lawmakers are calling for overhauling funding and oversight of the public defender system. "The General Assembly, if I didn't put a stabilizing hand on this, would vote to abolish the system and start over," House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) said Thursday. The uproar is a stark change from four years ago, when legislators heralded the creation of a new state-funded system of lawyers for indigent criminal defendants. It replaced a hodgepodge of uneven local programs that often fell short of constitutional standards.

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Economy

Justice, SEC questioned on pace of probes
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2007-03-09-backdating-usat_N.htm
As the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigate more than 100 stock-option backdating cases, they face criticism on the pace of the probes and hard choices about which ones to pursue charges on. In the year-long crackdown against improper backdating, there have been a handful of cases brought, and a smaller number of settlements. Lawmakers on a House subcommittee that oversees the SEC recently criticized regulators for what they believe to be a slow investigative pace.

I.R.S. Letting Tax Lawyers Write Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09tax.html?ref=business
The Internal Revenue Service is asking tax lawyers and accountants who create tax shelters and exploit loopholes to take the lead in writing some of its new tax rules. The pilot project represents a further expansion of the increasingly common federal government practice of asking outsiders to do more of its work, prompting academics and other critics to complain that the government is going too far. They worry that having private lawyers and accountants draft tax rules could allow them to subtly skew them in favor of their clients. “It’s not the fox guarding the hen house; it’s the fox designing the hen house,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of political science at New York University, who studies the federal work force.

Trading Halted For 35 Firms Over E-Mails
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802092.html
Securities regulators yesterday halted trading in nearly three dozen companies -- the initial salvo in "Operation Spamalot," a campaign to block e-mails promoting stocks to unsuspecting investors. The crackdown against investment spam amounts to the biggest such action in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Shareholders lost tens of millions of dollars in the past year by biting on fraudulent Internet offers to "ride the bull" or win "fast money" by buying thinly traded stocks, agency officials said. They continue to investigate whether the spam emanated from third-party stock promoters, corporate insiders or both. Some of the hyped messages found their way to the e-mail accounts of SEC enforcement lawyers as they spent weeks tracing the alleged scams and their origins. Authorities said the decision to halt trading at 35 penny-stock companies, including a California business that provides computer security services, is merely the first step in a systematic effort to root out the people who sent misleading stock promotions and others who profited from them.
RELATED: SEC suspends trading for 35 companies, cites spam activity
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007-03-08-cyber-scam_N.htm
RELATED: S.E.C. Moves Against Spam That Pushes Hot Stocks
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09pump.html?ref=business

Companies oppose any say-on-pay vote moves
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2007-03-08-say-on-pay-usat_N.htm
A representative for large U.S. companies objected Thursday to proposed legislation that would give shareholders the opportunity to vote on executive compensation packages. John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, told the House Financial Services Committee, "Corporations were never designed to be democracies. … While shareholders own a corporation, they don't run it." Castellani testified at a hearing focused on legislation introduced March 1 by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the committee, that would let shareholders express approval or disapproval of executive pay plans through a non-binding advisory vote.

U.S. and South Korea Restart Talks on Free-Trade Pact
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09trade.html?ref=business
United States and South Korean trade negotiators began a hurried round of talks today as Seoul agreed to resume American beef imports in a concession aimed at smoothing the path toward what would be Washington’s most ambitious free-trade agreement in 15 years.

Vonage Ordered To Pay Verizon In Patent Case
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801199.html
A federal jury in Alexandria yesterday ordered Vonage Holdings, an Internet telephone company, to pay $58 million to Verizon Communications for infringing its patents in a case that raised the possibility that Vonage could be barred from conducting much of its business. Verizon asked the court yesterday to issue a permanent injunction preventing Vonage from using the technology for connecting its Internet network to the public telephone system. If the order is granted, Vonage's 2.2 million customers could be limited to using the service to communicate only with one another. A federal judge has scheduled a March 23 hearing on Verizon's request.
RELATED: Court Orders Vonage to Pay $58 Million in Patent Case
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/technology/09phone.html?ref=business

Top

Worker's Rights and Corporate Accountability

House Bill Pins Wage Increase To Iraq Funding
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802094.html
House leaders have added legislation raising the federal minimum wage to an emergency spending bill for the Iraq war. They hope to break a logjam with the Senate over the wage bill, a top Democratic priority that was once seen on Capitol Hill as a relatively easy compromise. House leaders also hope the addition of the wage provisions will induce House liberals to vote for the $105 billion war package, which authorizes funds for Iraq while setting a timeline for withdrawal that would require combat operations to end by August 2008. House Democrats unveiled the plan yesterday but did not release a draft of the legislation, saying that details were being worked out. According to Democratic aides, the proposal would increase the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years and grant $1.3 billion in tax breaks for restaurants and other affected businesses.

Top

Housing and Homelessness

With Housing in a Slump, Mortgages Rose Anyway
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09debt.html
Americans continued to load up on mortgage debt last year, even though the housing market was stalling, according to data released on Thursday by the Federal Reserve. Homeowners increased their mortgage borrowing by almost $600 billion in the last quarter of 2006, an annual pace of 6.4 percent, significantly faster than the rise in housing prices, according to the Fed’s newest estimate of household and business balance sheets. Mortgage debt climbed more slowly in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter, though, reflecting the slowdown in home sales.

Lender Stops Accepting Mortgage Applications
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09lend.html?ref=business
New Century Financial, the troubled mortgage company, said yesterday it had stopped accepting new loan applications as it tried to negotiate terms with banks that had cut off its access to billions of dollars in funds. But in an indication that at least one of its lenders continues to have confidence in the company, New Century said it had received $265 million to finance loans and cover other obligations and $710 million to replace a credit line.

Top

Education

In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/education/09reading.html?ref=washington
Call it the $2 million reading lesson. By sticking to its teaching approach, that is the amount Madison passed up under Reading First, the Bush administration’s ambitious effort to turn the nation’s poor children into skilled readers by the third grade. The program, which gives $1 billion a year in grants to states, was supposed to end the so-called reading wars — the battle over the best method of teaching reading — but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight. According to interviews with school officials and a string of federal audits and e-mail messages made public in recent months, federal officials and contractors used the program to pressure schools to adopt approaches that emphasize phonics, focusing on the mechanics of sounding out syllables, and to discard methods drawn from whole language that play down these mechanics and use cues like pictures or context to teach. Federal officials who ran Reading First maintain that only curriculums including regular, systematic phonics lessons had the backing of “scientifically based reading research” required by the program. But in a string of blistering reports, the Education Department’s inspector general has found that federal officials may have violated prohibitions in the law against mandating, or even endorsing, specific curriculums.

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Science and Technology

'Planet Killer' Not in the Stars, Asteroid Research Indicates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802019.html
The risk that an asteroid capable of wiping out humanity will crash into Earth is minuscule, new calculations suggest, but the chances of a smaller one destroying a city or setting off a catastrophic tsunami remain unclear and may be higher than previous estimates. The calculations were presented at a four-day meeting in Washington this week, leading scores of scientists present to conclude that NASA needs to move aggressively to meet a congressional deadline for identifying most of the potentially hazardous smaller asteroids and to develop ways to deflect them if they home in on Earth.

Top

Military

General With Combat Experience to Become Walter Reed Deputy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801889.html
A combat-arms brigadier general from Fort Knox will take over as deputy commanding general of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a move that Army officials said yesterday will allow medical commanders to focus on health care while battle-hardened field officers work to regain the trust of wounded soldiers. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, announced that Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker will come to Washington as part of a leadership restructuring at Walter Reed that will include the creation of a brigade focused on helping wounded outpatients navigate a treacherous bureaucracy. Cody, speaking to reporters at Walter Reed, said the changes are designed to attack problems and lapses exposed in a series of Washington Post articles and to ensure that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive the care and respect they deserve.

Petraeus Says Boost in Troops May Be Needed Past Summer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802015.html
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday that he would examine "some months" from now whether to seek an extension of the administration's troop increase and that he had no plans "right now" to request additional forces. "If you're going to achieve the kinds of effects that we probably need," Petraeus said during his first news conference since taking command a month ago, the increased troop level "would need to be sustained certainly for some time well beyond the summer."
RELATED: New U.S. Commander in Iraq Won’t Rule Out Need for Added Troops
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html

Veterans Face Vast Inequities Over Disability
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/washington/09veterans.html?ref=washington
Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found. Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures. “The V.A. is supposed to provide uniform and fair treatment to all,” said Steve Robinson, the director of veteran affairs for Veterans for America. “Instead, the places and services giving the most are getting the least.” The agency said it was trying to ease the backlog and address disparities by hiring more claims workers, authorizing more overtime and adding claims development centers.

Superintendent's Comments on Assault Could Play Role in Misconduct Trial
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702170.html
A military judge ruled yesterday that attorneys for a former Navy football player accused of sexual misconduct with two female midshipmen may argue that the U.S. Naval Academy superintendent's campaign against sexual harassment and assault has tainted the jury pool. The ruling by Marine Col. Steven F. Day means that the April 2 trial of Kenny Ray Morrison, 24, could examine the same issues raised by attorneys for former Navy star quarterback Lamar S. Owens Jr., who was cleared of rape but convicted of related misconduct.

Top

Energy Policy

Russia pursues gas cartel
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703090113mar09,1,4542627.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Russia is revving up talks aimed at exploring the formation of an OPEC-like natural gas cartel, a prospect most experts call unrealistic but one that nevertheless worries European nations reliant on Russian gas. During his recent swing through the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the prospects of a gas cartel with leaders in Qatar, holder of the world's third-largest natural gas reserves and the world leader in the production of liquefied natural gas. Putin said he would dispatch a team of experts to the Qatari capital, Doha, in April to further explore a possible gas alliance. In January, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested that Iran and Russia team up to form a gas cartel. At his annual news conference Feb. 1, Putin reacted warmly to the Iranian's remarks, calling the notion of a gas OPEC an "interesting idea."

Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Gets the Blame
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/worldbusiness/09pemex.html?ref=business
The KU-S oil production platform off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, with its 10,000-ton tangle of yellow and red tanks and pipes, would seem the natural product of three years of soaring energy prices. The newly installed platform certainly is the face that Mexico’s state oil monopoly, Pemex, would like to show off. But Pemex is in trouble. Its production and proven reserves are falling, and it has no money to reverse the slide. Mexico is the second-largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, after Canada, but its total exports are slipping. If the company continues on its current course, Mexico may one day have trouble just keeping up with rising demand at home.

Gasoline prices getting pumped up again
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2007-03-08-gas-prices_N.htm
Gasoline prices are climbing across the USA, particularly in California, where they're topping $3 a gallon in some areas, as strong demand and lower supplies have helped boost prices. The nationwide retail average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.507 Thursday. That's up a dime from just a week ago and 33 cents, or 15%, higher than a month earlier, according to motor club AAA. The average price at the pump is 17 cents higher than a year ago.

Top

Environment and Conservation

EU leaders agree on ambitious plan to battle global warming
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-09-eu_N.htm
The European Union reached a deal on "ambitious and credible" targets to tackle climate change and energy needs, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday after a summit of EU leaders. The agreement commits Europe to take the lead in fighting global warming by setting binding targets to cut greenhouse gases and ensure a fifth of the bloc's energy comes from green power sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels. Controversially, the draft, which was expected to be endorsed by the leaders by the end of Friday's summit, also notes the role nuclear power could play in tackling greenhouse gas emissions.
RELATED: Europe Divided on How to Fight Global Warming
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/europe/09union.html

Protocol Is Cited in Limiting Scientists’ Talks on Climate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/us/09polar.html?ref=washington
The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service defended the agency requirement that two employees going to international meetings on the Arctic not discuss climate change, saying diplomatic protocol limited employees to an agreed-on agenda. Two memorandums written about a week ago and reported by The New York Times and the Web site of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Thursday set strict parameters for what the two employees could and could not discuss at meetings in Norway and Russia. The stipulations that the employees “will not be speaking on or responding to” questions about climate change, polar bears and sea ice are “consistent with staying with our commitment to the other countries to talk about only what’s on the agenda,” said the director of the agency, H. Dale Hall.

Markey in line to head new global warming committee
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/03/09/markey_in_line_to_head_new_global_warming_committee/
US Representative Edward J. Markey of Malden is in line to lead a new congressional committee on global warming, after the House of Representatives broke a weeks long logjam yesterday and voted to establish the new panel. The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created at the behest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is intended to explore legislative solutions to global climate change and make recommendations to Congress, with an eye on completing an initial round of legislation by this summer.

U.S. struggles to build green homes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030900448.html
Change a light bulb and stop a war. Build smarter homes and keep the seas from rising. These are the kinds of arguments U.S. environmentalists use to promote their cause. Others say forget "save the planet," Americans respond better to "save some money." Regardless of the sales pitch, energy efficiency is an opportunity that Americans shun, as less than 5 percent of the world's population consumes almost 25 percent of global oil production. While gas-guzzling vehicles draw the most criticism, homes and businesses consume even more energy -- 40 percent of the U.S. total in 2005 versus 28 percent for transportation -- and provide the biggest potential for savings. The U.S. Green Building Council says structures built to its standards can cut energy usage 20 to 80 percent using available technologies such as compact fluorescent lighting and high-efficiency building shells and water heating.

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Opinion

Editor’s note: the New York Times has converted to a subscription-based editorial section. We are no longer clipping their op-ed columnists.

Dionne: Who's Hyperpartisan?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801501.html
Hand-wringing over extreme partisanship has become a popular cause among learned analysts. They operate from Olympian heights and strain for evenhandedness by issuing tut-tuts to all sides, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. But the evidence of recent days should settle the case: This administration has operated on the basis of a hyperpartisanship not seen in decades. Worse, the destroy-the-opposition, our-team-vs.-their-team approach has infected large parts of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. That's a shame, since there are plenty of good people in both. Still, the tendency to subordinate principles to win short-term victories and cover up for the administration is, alas, rampant on the right. Take the rush of conservative organs demanding an immediate pardon of Scooter Libby after his conviction on four counts related to lying and obstruction of justice. Last I checked, conservatives were deeply committed to the rule of law. They said so frequently during the Clinton impeachment saga.
RELATED: Robinson: In the Wheelbarrow With Libby
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801503.html
RELATED: Froomkin: Did Libby Make a Deal?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/08/BL2007030801046.html

Brooks: Our human rights hypocrisy
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks9mar09,0,7011285.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
ON TUESDAY — to ritualized hoots of derision from around the globe — the U.S. Department of State released its 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The annual reports detail "the status of internationally recognized human rights" in virtually every country in the world — except, of course, the U.S. itself.

Fournier: Public faith in leaders may be ebbing
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-leadership_N.htm
Lies from the White House. Incompetence in treating wounded veterans. Irrelevance in Congress. Can't anybody do anything right? It's days like these that turn Americans sour on government, stoking a desire for leaders who actually lead. Exhibit A is the perjury conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whose trial cast unflattering light on the Bush White House and the mainstream media. Exhibit B is the shameful treatment of wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Medical Center, and the likelihood that veterans care problems are systemic — a national disgrace. And let's not forget Iraq and Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike sometimes seem too busy posturing on the war to help win it — or at least help get out of it. The lack of leadership is a bipartisan pox.

No hiding from history
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0703090214mar09,0,6170505.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed
Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wants his country to shake off that hangdog, defeated-nation mind-set and take its rightful place as a world power--with a real military, better relations with its neighbors and a seat on the United Nations Security Council. But Abe, who campaigned on a promise to rewrite Japan's pacifist constitution, must first break away from the crowd that wants to rewrite its past. Fourteen years after Japan issued a halfhearted apology for the sexual enslavement of 200,000 women, some noodges in the U.S. House are working on a non-binding resolution urging Japan to apologize better. Abe says no. There's no proof the "comfort women" were coerced into providing sex for the emperor's soldiers, he says. And they were recruited by private contractors, he insists, not the military. The surviving women, most now in their 70s and 80s, remember it differently.

Allen: Caste Out At Walter Reed
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801500.html
I'd guess that most veterans were as angry as I was on learning that combat-maimed soldiers have been warehoused and forgotten among roaches, rodents and mold at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I'd also guess they weren't entirely surprised. That's because most veterans are enlisted. So was every one of the maltreated Building 18 soldiers and Marines quoted in The Post's revelations of the Walter Reed mess. When you're enlisted you get used to being treated certain ways by certain officers. Every outfit has them. A little more than 80 percent of the military is enlisted. The enlisted are the privates, corporals, specialists, airmen, seamen and sergeants who have to salute and say "sir" to an elite called officers: lieutenants, commanders, captains, majors, colonels, generals and admirals. The officers wear the white collars, the enlisted wear blue. The two classes live on different sides of the tracks.

Greenberg: The military's Gitmo script
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-greenberg9mar09,0,7421846.story?coll=la-opinion-center
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, I took the media tour at Guantanamo. From the moment I arrived on a frayed Air Sunshine prop-jet to the time I boarded the same plane to head home, I had no doubt that I was on an alien planet. Along with two European colleagues, I was treated to two-plus days packed with site visits and interviews (none with prisoners) designed to "make transparent" Guantanamo and its manifold contributions to our country's national security. Thanks to our military handlers, I learned a great deal about Gitmo decorum, as the military would like us to practice it. My escorts told me how best to describe the goings-on at Guantanamo, regardless of what my own eyes and prior knowledge told me.

Legalized loan sharks?
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/03/08/0309edbankers.html
It's amazing how quickly an unfair business practice can evaporate once the hot spotlight of publicity hits. A public shaming, in fact, is often more effective than official government action in curtailing such practices. Cases in point: Credit card fees and so-called subprime loans. This week, with consumers scheduled to relate horror stories to Congress about onerous and unfair credit card fees and other penalties, some major banks announced they would end the practices suddenly under scrutiny. One bank, for example, announced it would stop piling financial penalties onto customers already having problems paying their credit card bills. Another agreed to stop the indefensible policy of hiking interest rates on a customer's credit card account if the individual falls behind on a debt to another lender. If those practices are now deemed unacceptable — and they obviously are, even to bankers — then Congress or industry regulators should have prohibited them previously.

Rangel: Refocus on immigration
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0703090286mar09,0,2168217.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
Last year, I joined hundreds of thousands of Hispanic immigrants who marched in cities across the country under the generic banner of "immigration reform." However, their faces told a more profound story: America's newest immigrants also yearn for America's promise. Unfortunately, today's immigration debate has been led--or better, misled--by extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. Immigrants are depicted as vulnerable victims who suffer from American greed and abuse, or as foreign opportunists who demand and take America's generosity and benefits, but refuse to commit to her future. Both sides have it wrong.
RELATED: Needed: immigration policy
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/09/needed_immigration_policy/
RELATED: Noorani: US immigration system at its worst
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/09/us_immigration_system_at_its_worst/

Shutting Out Terrorism’s Victims
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/opinion/09fri1.html
Terrorists terrorize people. That’s no surprise. What is shocking, and scandalous, is that American law currently bars the entry to the United States of some of terrorism’s most abused victims: refugees who have been forced, often at gunpoint, to provide so-called material assistance.

Ignatius: Higher-Ed Superpower
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801502.html
When people think about American power in the world, they usually list the country's forbidding arsenal of bombers, aircraft carriers and troops. Yet America's greatest strategic asset these days might not be its guns but its universities.

Healthy Cattle and Healthy Humans
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/opinion/09fri3.html
Medical experts have long worried that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animal feed is yielding resistant strains of bacteria that may be ingested by humans and cause diseases that can’t be cured. The main concern has been large-scale dosing of big herds or flocks. But an application now before the Food and Drug Administration raises the issue of whether injecting even individual animals may interfere with human medical treatments.

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