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Today’s digest archive: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/040407.htm

TOP STORIES

Top

National

Sum of Death Statistics: a Perilous Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301948.html
On a two-day visit to Iraq, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) declared after a short walk in a market that Baghdad was becoming safer under a new security plan. But after his departure, Iraqi merchants and U.S. military officials said his upbeat assessment is far from the reality they experience every day. McCain, who left Iraq on Monday but remained in the region, also said that "things are getting better in Iraq" and that he was "pleased with the progress that has been made," although he cautioned that there was still a difficult road ahead. However, new morgue statistics obtained by The Washington Post paint a more complicated picture and underscore the country's precarious security environment.
RELATED: Gunmen Kill Electricity Workers in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq.html

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

Bush faults Pelosi over her trip to Syria
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush4apr04,1,623531.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria sparked a high-profile clash with the White House on Tuesday, with President Bush criticizing her for potentially undermining U.S. foreign policy. The administration, asserting that Syria has aided terrorists and played a significant role in destabilizing the Middle East, has reined in its dealings with the country's government. Commenting on Pelosi's visit, Bush said, "We have made it clear to high-ranking [U.S.] officials, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, that going to Syria sends mixed signals." Pelosi, who arrived in Syria on Tuesday and planned to meet with President Bashar Assad today, is the most prominent U.S. official to travel there since the administration rolled back diplomatic ties in early 2005. The San Francisco Democrat shrugged off Bush's criticism, pointing out that the White House was silent over the weekend when three Republican congressmen — Reps. Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and Robert B. Aderholt of Alabama — were in Syria and met with Assad.
RELATED: Pelosi Poised to Meet Syria's Assad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300622.html
RELATED: Pelosi, Syrian president meet
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-04-pelosi-syria_N.htm
RELATED: Pelosi, Warmly Greeted in Syria, Is Criticized by White House
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/middleeast/04pelosi.html?ref=washington

Dems try to revive Equal Rights Amendment
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-womens-rights_N.htm
Democrats face long odds in their effort to revive an Equal Rights Amendment that failed three decades ago, even if unisex bathrooms are no longer much of a fear factor. Now dubbed the Women's Equality Amendment, the measure has much less support now than when it sailed through Congress in 1972. It died years later when only 35 states — three short of those needed — endorsed it. What supporters hope will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution states in its key line that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." With Democrats controlling Congress for the first time in a dozen years, "prospects are better now than they have been in a very very long time," Terry O'Neill, executive director of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said after the constitutional amendment was introduced in the Senate and House last week.

Bush agrees with greenhouse gas ruling, sort of
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warming4apr04,1,871864.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
President Bush, while acknowledging Tuesday that he took "very seriously" the Supreme Court's ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles as pollution, set up a potential conflict with Congress by attaching two conditions to comply with the decision. Bush said that any regulatory program should not slow economic growth, nor should its benefits to the atmosphere be offset by mounting emissions from China, India and other growing economies. Congress has been laying the groundwork for tougher regulation of greenhouse gases and Bush's stance appeared likely to retard EPA regulation of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat at the Earth's surface. "The president still doesn't get it," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement to The Times.
RELATED: Bush Splits With Congress and States on Emissions
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/washington/04climate.html?ref=washington

Top

Colorado

Ex-Colorado activist remains focus of Abramoff probe
http://blogs.denverpost.com/washington/2007/04/03/ex-colorado-activist-remains-a-focus-of-abramoff-probe/
A one-time Colorado political activist and ex-girlfriend of a convicted Interior Department official has been informed by the Justice Department that there is “substantial evidence” linking her to criminal activity in the Jack Abramoff scandal. In a January 2007 letter obtained by the publication Legal Times, a federal prosecutor urged Italia Federici to obtain an attorney to defend against allegations she illegally used a tax-exempt organization to lobby for Abramoff’s clients and lied about the organization’s activities to Congress. The letter also recommended Federici meet with prosecutors to negotiate a possible “pre-indictment” resolution requiring her to plead guilty to at least one felony charge. “The investigation is focused on the allegedly illegal manner in which you operated the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, commonly known as CREA,” wrote Justice Department tax division attorney Stephanie D. Evans to Federici, an ex-aide and Colorado fundraiser for former Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

Ethics-panel plan advances (Under the dome, 4/4)
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587274
A bill that would set up a five-member panel to hear alleged violations of Colorado's new ethics law advanced through a House committee Tuesday. Senate Bill 210, part of a compromise between House and Senate leaders to implement Amendment 41, passed the House state affairs committee 9-1. The legislature plans to ask the Colorado Supreme Court for guidance to help the ethics panel determine the gift ban's scope - including whether it affects inheritances, scholarships and gifts for rank-and-file government workers. Then lawmakers will work with the drafters of Amendment 41 to determine whether voters should weigh in on a clarified ethics amendment in November 2008. Senate Bill 210, which already passed the Senate, is headed for the House Appropriations Committee.
RELATED: Amendment 41 fix is close
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20870&template=article.html

Lawmakers accuse lobbyists of lying
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587357
Two state lawmakers filed ethics complaints Tuesday accusing lobbyists for Colorado homebuilders of falsely claiming the legislators were pushing a bill that would raise taxes and help trial lawyers. The allegations come amid an aggressive campaign by builders against a measure that would restore the ability of some homeowners to sue over construction defects. The complaints were filed just an hour before more than a dozen lobbyists for the builders and related interests crowded the halls outside the Senate business committee, which endorsed the bill. Reps. Alice Borodkin, D-Denver, and Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, cited automated calls to their constituents that made claims about what they presume to be House Bill 1338, although it had not been filed yet. "While this practice of hard ball politics seems to be a lobbying tactic, I find the practice of lying to my constituents completely unethical," Borodkin wrote. It is legal for groups to run ads about lawmakers, but the complaints cite a legislative rule that prohibits lobbyists from attempting to influence lawmakers "by means of deceit" or threats. The complaint names Steve Durham, lobbyist for the Colorado Association of Homebuilders, and William Mutch, lobbyist for Colorado Concern. "Neither me, nor my client, the Colorado Association of Homebuilders, approved, funded, worked on or solicited others to produce and have those calls made," Durham said.
RELATED: 2 Dems file complaints over calls against construction defects bill
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462609,00.html

More Homeowner Protection Act news in COLORADO/HOUSING

Rangely Marine’s attorney says he followed proper procedure
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_3a_Haditha_massacre.html
A former Rangely resident in charge of a Marine Corps squad that was accused of two dozen civilian killings in Iraq in 2005 followed proper procedures, according to one of his attorneys. Brian Rooney of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., said Tuesday that depositions given by eight fellow Marines who served with Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani found he “did nothing wrong, he reported and investigated everything the way he was supposed to.” Rooney served seven months in Iraq and is representing Chessani at no charge. The nonprofit center works on anti-abortion causes and defends conservative Christians. Chessani, 42, and a 1982 Rangely High School graduate, was in charge of the 1,000-troop 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton, Calif., in the city of Haditha when a roadside bomb destroyed a Humvee and killed a Marine corporal on Nov. 19, 2005. Twenty-four Iraqis died in the shooting, including women and children. Rooney said 13 Marines were injured in Haditha that day. Marine officials would not comment on Chessani’s case. Four enlisted men under Chessani’s command were charged with murder and negligent homicide. They remain on limited duty.

COLORADO NEWS

Top

Election

Scheduling snags labor, DNC talks
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_business/article/0,2777,DRMN_23916_5462288,00.html
A labor showdown over the 2008 Democratic National Convention to be held in Denver might have to wait a bit. A possible meeting next week to address a rift between labor leaders and the Democratic National Committee remained up in the air Tuesday because of scheduling challenges. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney initially planned to meet with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who will be in town April 12 on convention-related business. But Sweeney also wants to meet with Gov. Bill Ritter, who will be out of town at the time. "As of this afternoon, he (Sweeney) has not made a final decision," Esmeralda Aguilar, a spokeswoman in the AFL-CIO's national office, said about a possible Denver trip. "It sounds very tentative." While Sweeney was among the labor leaders who earlier assured Dean that labor disputes could be worked out ahead of the 2008 convention, the AFL-CIO later went on the attack after Ritter vetoed a pro-union bill. Sweeney and other leaders in the labor federation have threatened to pressure Democrats to move their convention to another city.

Fitz-Gerald setting up House race
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587266
Colorado Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald said Tuesday that she is stepping down as chairwoman of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and plans to file "very soon" for an exploratory run for the seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Udall. Udall has said he will run for the U.S. Senate seat that will be open next year when Republican Wayne Allard retires. "I expect a primary. It will be a very attractive seat," Fitz-Gerald said of the U.S. House race. Other top Democrats mentioned if the seat opens up in 2008 are state Rep. Alice Madden and state Sen. Ron Tupa, along with Colorado Conservation Trust executive director Will Shafroth and Jared Polis, a former member of the state Board of Education and a wealthy entrepreneur.

Lawmakers consider permanent mail-in ballots
http://summitdaily.com/article/20070403/NEWS/104030070
Unable to vote in November's election because of long lines at the polls, 62-year-old cancer survivor Penny Baldwin is ready to switch to voting by mail for good. "I'm at an age where I'm not sure where I'm going to be," Baldwin said Tuesday, referring to her health. Colorado voters would be able to sign up to vote by mail permanently under a bill set to be considered by state lawmakers Wednesday, a measure introduced partly in response to the problems in Denver and other counties in recent elections. Currently voters are free to request an absentee ballot without providing a reason but they have to make that request before each election. Permanent mail ballots are available in California and Washington and Oregon now conducts all of its elections by mail, said Kristen Thomson, a lobbyist pushing for the change. The measure is sponsored by former Secretary of State candidate Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, and is backed by the Oregon-based Vote By Mail Project, which includes election officials from Washington and Oregon.

Denver questions culled voter list
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587265
Denver's delegation to the state legislature met with the city's Election Commission on Tuesday out of concern that a troubled election last November could lead to disenfranchised voters May 1. And several legislators said state election laws need to be tweaked to prevent a similar situation in the future. Denver moved more than 100,000 registered voters off a list of "active" voters in preparation for next month's mail-ballot election because they did not vote in November or a special election in January. The move follows state law, but it has drawn attention because it removed more than one third of the 273,000 voters considered active in November. Only active voters will automatically be sent a ballot for the May election. "We are kind of hanging on a state law now," Democratic Rep. Rosemary Marshall said. "It's almost like double jeopardy." Marshall and seven other Denver legislators said their concern was for thousands of residents who did not vote in November when problems with the computer system used to check in voters led to long lines.
RELATED: Changes eyed on cleaning voter rolls
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/elections/article/0,2808,DRMN_24736_5462805,00.html

4 INCUMBENTS, 1 NEW FACE
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20850&template=article.html
Voters on Tuesday defeated a pay raise for Colorado Springs City Council members but generally backed incumbents, re-electing Mayor Lionel Rivera and three other city councilmen. The outcome suggests an endorsement of the status quo. “I think people are generally satisfied with the direction the city is going in,” said Rivera, who won a second term. “We’ve improved the quality of life, and not a lot of change is needed. We need to make sure we put adequate resources in public safety. We will continue to add police officers. We’re back to where we started before.” Fifty-three percent of the voters rejected the pay raise, while 59 percent voted for Rivera in an election that drew ballots from 39 percent of eligible voters. Rivera, 50, an investment adviser, defeated three novices who raised virtually no money but still grabbed a combined total of 41 percent of the vote. “I’m glad 60 percent wanted me re-elected,” Rivera said, undisturbed that two in five voters didn’t. “I’m not surprised by the results. I still will try to make this city a great place.”
RELATED: Voters approve 3rd cable TV provider in Springs
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20852&template=article.html

Vote may shift council balance
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040330/1002
A 58-vote difference determined the outcome of the Fort Collins City Council race from District 2 on Tuesday and possibly the direction of the council for the next two years. Lisa Poppaw's narrow victory over Matt Fries sets up a potential 4-3 split on the council on matters such as economic development and growth, with Poppaw as the swing vote. But Poppaw said she doesn't necessarily see it that way. "I'll take every issue as they come along, get educated and make an informed decision," she said. "That's what I've always done." She was endorsed in the race by Progressive Majority, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports liberal candidates for federal, state and local offices.
RELATED: Troxell narrowly wins District 4 seat
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040333/1002
RELATED: Mayor looking for continued consensus
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040329/1002
RELATED: Roy to focus on water, transit
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040328/1002
RELATED: Southwest Annexation will move forward
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040331/1002

Todd wins razor-thin victory over Baughman
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1b_election_council.html
In an election bereft of name-calling, finger-pointing or virtually any disagreement, the drama for one of the Grand Junction City Council races was reserved for Tuesday night’s ballot tally. Realtor Linda Romer Todd edged out Grand Valley native and former City Market manager Kent Baughman for the Council District B seat by a 25-vote margin in a race where more than 8,000 votes were cast. Todd will replace two-term Councilman Jim Spehar, who is being forced out by term limits. Meanwhile, incumbent council members Gregg Palmer and Bruce Hill were easily re-elected to their District C and at-large seats, respectively. Todd received 3,985 votes, or 49.7 percent, while Baughman received 3,960 votes, or 49.4 percent. City Clerk Stephanie Tuin said the razor-thin margin is not enough for an automatic recount.
RELATED: Voters OK debt for downtown projects
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1b_election_downtown.html
RELATED: Voters agree to pay debt on parkway 4 years early
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1a_TABOR_election_2007.html

Meigs, Rendon, Graham win
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070404_1.htm
Weeks of campaigning and speculation ended Tuesday with a statement by Durango voters. Opting for change over the status quo, the voters elected three new faces - Leigh Meigs, Michael Rendon and Scott Graham - to the City Council. The candidates will take their seats April 17. Meigs led the field of eight candidates with 2,123 votes. Rendon finished second with 1,893 votes. Meigs and Rendon will each serve a four-year term. Graham placed third with 1,697 votes. He will serve two years, completing the term of Virginia Castro, which began in 2005. "It looks like this represents a sea change in Durango," Meigs said at the winners' three-headed victory party at Carver Brewing Co. "I think people have become better informed about the importance of the issues of this election, and it's clear we're being asked to move in a different direction for Durango." Rendon also recognized the statement voters made.

The new face of Craig City Council
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/25992
Craig City Council candidate Ray Beck looked down at the sheet, holding the results of Tuesday's election. "Pretty good," he said. The statement by the victorious first-time political candidate summed up not only the victory for Beck, but also wins by Rod Compton and incumbent Joe Herod. The re-election of Don Jones to the office of mayor also was confirmed on Tuesday.
RELATED: Few citizens decide for the many
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/26008

Commerce City voters keep name the same
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587026
Voters overwhelmingly decided Tuesday to keep their city's name, rebuffing arguments the moniker was too blue-collar for a community growing in stature. A proposal on the ballot asking that the name "Commerce City" be dumped failed by better than a 2 to 1 margin. The measure would have had voters decide a new name in November. Councilwoman Kathy Teter, who also won her re-election bid, said the name change idea offended many longtime residents. "These are good people in this town," said Teter, fighting back tears. "And they have hearts and they have pride."
RELATED: It's Commerce City in a romp
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/elections/article/0,2808,DRMN_24736_5463036,00.html

Top

Effective and Ethical Government

Lamborn, Udall find plenty in common
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20860&template=article.html
Two partisan rivals representing Colorado in the nation’s capital found common ground on a range of issues Tuesday in a talk to area business leaders. Congressmen Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., are on opposite sides of a divided House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. But the two acted like friends as they recalled serving together in the Colorado Legislature. They were mostly on the same page as they discussed current issues from immigration reform to protecting the state’s military bases. Both men trumpeted their support for federal authorization to build a veterans cemetery in southern Colorado. Introducing a bill to that effect was Lamborn’s first act as he joined the House this year, he said, and Udall said he was proud to join in. Politicians have been pursuing a veterans cemetery here for years but made little progress because Fort Logan National Cemetery is less than 75 miles away in Denver.

State computer woes spread
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587264
State of Colorado officials have temporarily shut down a new computer system for motor-vehicle titles and registrations after discovering a glitch. The state Department of Revenue is putting off plans to roll out the $13.2 million Colorado State Titling and Registration System, called CSTARS, because it sometimes provides incorrect information to law enforcement officials. "When we start to hear from folks that their vehicles are being impounded, we look back at the records and say, 'Yikes,"' said Maren Rubino, operations director for the revenue department's titles and registration section. The crash of CSTARS is the latest multimillion-dollar computer bug to dog state government, and it has prompted Gov. Bill Ritter's administration to conduct a full-scale review of the state's process for updating its computer systems.

ENDANGERED SPECIES (Roll Call, April 4)
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462615,00.html
"When I came in here I said, 'Gosh, where is everybody? Then I realized that's why they call it the minority." Attorney General John Suthers talking to the Senate Republican Caucus Tuesday

Sonnenberg sets breakfast meeting
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104030108
State Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, will host his monthly "Breakfast Bash" 8-9 a.m. Monday, at the Sodbuster in Prospect Valley in southeast Weld County. The restaurant is at the intersection of Colo. 52 and Colo. 79. "This is an opportunity for me to listen to the constituents of my district about issues that affect them," Sonnenberg said. He is scheduling monthly breakfast meetings throughout his district on the second Monday of each month.

Cañon still seeks board applicants
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Top-Story.asp?id=6580
Three residents submitted letters of interest to serve on the forming Municipal Ethics Commission, but no one has expressed an interest in filling a vacancy on the Board of Adjustment. By consensus, City Council agreed to extend the application deadline for the board of adjustment on Monday. At first, council discussed adding two more weeks for letters of interest to serve on either committee. City Manager Steve Rabe, however, took exception with extending the time the city would accept applications for the ethics commission. He said accepting additional applications would be tantamount to telling the three who met the original deadline they were not acceptable for the two positions available.

Town manager candidates talk to residents
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104040096
Current interim town manager Kelly Arnold has had three "ah-has" concerning Windsor through the past 32 years. Now, Arnold hopes the Windsor Town Board is saying, "Ah-ha" when they consider him for the permanent town manager position. Arnold isn't alone. He's one of five candidates vying for the position of town manager vacated by Rod Wensing Dec. 31.

Deposits delayed for county employees
http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=15560
Some county government workers might have had temporary cash-flow problems last weekend, when Boulder County failed to electronically deposit hundreds of employees’ March paychecks into their bank accounts. After one of the county’s accounts-payable clerks got kicked off a computer transfer system by a technical glitch last week, another worker checked and thought the transaction had been completed, county finance director Bob Lamb said Monday. But neither one followed up to make sure.

Impact fee study on its way
http://montrosepress.com/articles/2007/04/03/local_news/1.txt
Montrose County Commissioners cleared the way for an impact-fee study Monday, when they signed off on a grant and awarded a bid for the study. The county was awarded $37,500 as a Smart Growth grant from the Colorado Heritage Planning Grant Program earlier in the year. The program is administered by the Office of Smart Growth within the Department of Local Affairs.

Clinton portrait to stay 1 more year
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587275
Colorado can keep the Bill Clinton portrait for another year. The Clinton Library notified state officials by mail Tuesday that the portrait can remain at the state Capitol until March 31, 2008, far longer than the two-month extension officials had requested. The portrait of the 42nd president, which has been on loan since 1996, became the subject of controversy after the Clinton Library ordered its return and state officials resisted, saying the library planned to put it in storage. The painting was due back in Little Rock, Ark., on Saturday. Colorado was notified last month that the estate of the portrait artist had denied permission to have the painting copied. That means a new artist will have to be found to paint a new portrait. The portrait is part of the Capitol's presidential portrait gallery.

Top

Marriage and Family Issues

First lady dedicates day to Safe Haven Law
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462619,00.html
Former state lawmaker Gayle Berry was ridiculed when she pushed for a "Baby Moses" law to allow mothers who might abandon their newborns to drop them off at a safe location instead. Fifteen babies have been left at so-called safe havens since the law was passed in 2000. Berry, who now lobbies at the Statehouse, stood at the foot of the west steps of the Capitol on Tuesday as first lady Jeannie Ritter read a proclamation making it Save Haven for Newborns Day in Colorado. "Today is about raising the level of awareness around this law," Ritter said. Also on Tuesday, the House unanimously supported a resolution by Rep. Jim Riesberg, D- Greeley, that encourages high schools and colleges to educate students on the Safe Haven Law and the options it provides.

Lawmakers urged to ensure foster children get their due
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462592,00.html
A House lawmaker urged legislators not to give up on a decadelong battle to protect funding for the state's foster children. At the same time, Rep. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge, reluctantly accepted a Senate amendment killing a mandated cost- of-living-increase for foster families and the private placement agencies that support them. Jahn sponsored HB 1025, which would force counties to pass along the money from cost- of-living increases to foster families. She accused counties of diverting the funding for a decade.

Top

Health Care and Public Safety

Tax-fraud case at mental hospital
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587358
The indictment alleges that those involved in the tax-fraud scheme obtained the names and Social Security numbers of patients at the institute and filed false federal tax forms. In the tax forms, those allegedly involved in the fraud falsely claimed some patients at the institute were dependents of other patients and then made claims for payment of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The credit is typically paid to low-income, working parents.

Fugitive "felt unsafe" after his reports of contraband
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587383
A violent patient at the state mental hospital in Pueblo says he escaped after the staff retaliated against him for reporting that a hospital employee was bringing "contraband" to patients. "I had a situation there where I felt unsafe," Tyrone Jones, 44, said in a phone message he left with The Denver Post. "I had a staff person that I filed a complaint against because she was bringing in contraband to patients," Jones said. "And after I filed a complaint and they brushed it under the rug, they started retaliating against me." Jones did not explain what sort of contraband he meant.

Holly landfill is resting place of heartbreaking debris
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462792,00.html
A little more than three miles outside town, on a windswept high spot in the prairie, everything that some people owned rests in great tangled piles, destined to be buried. This is where the debris of last week's tornado has been brought, in truckload after truckload. And it wasn't hard Tuesday, in those piles, to find reminders of lives torn open by the state's first deadly tornado in 47 years.
RELATED: Ritter OKs $1 million for Holly
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20848&template=article.html
RELATED: State to spend $1 million to help Holly
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/1
RELATED: Town's recovery efforts won’t hinge on federal aid
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/2

Advocates for domestic violence victims: Stand up to battery
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040334/1002
After Monday's tragic news of a former Fort Collins woman being shot to death in Seattle in what appeared to be a murder-suicide sparked by domestic violence and a similar shooting Tuesday in the CNN building in Atlanta, local advocates are reminding people to stand up against battery.

More shots for school-age children
http://montrosepress.com/articles/2007/04/03/local_news/5.txt
It's that time of the year to register your child in school or child care, which means it's time to get the required immunizations. This year, add three more shots to the list. In January, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Board of Health approved three additional vaccine requirements for children in child care and school settings.

Hospitals give the wealthy a leg up
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/health_care/article/0,2808,DRMN_25396_5462353,00.html
A balcony with a sweeping view of the Rocky Mountains, 350-thread-count linens, flat- screen TV and a PC with a broadband Internet connection. If that sounds more like accommodations at the Four Seasons than a hospital room, that's the idea. The Pavilion Suites at the University of Colorado Hospital are just the latest example of regional and national hospitals catering to the booming niche of health care for the affluent.

Suit filed in death of pedestrian
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/apr/04/suit-filed-in-death-of-pedestrian/
The husband of a Longmont pedestrian killed by a speeding motorist has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the man accused of running her down while traveling at least 75 mph in a 35-mph zone.

Study cites terror risk to Denver from chlorine gas
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462618,00.html
Denver is a potential terrorist target because the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District still uses chlorine gas as a disinfectant and receives the chemical by rail, according to a study released this week. "The only way to truly protect communities is to get the unnecessary toxic cargoes off the tracks," wrote Paul Orum, lead researcher of the study, titled "Toxic Trains and the Terrorist Threat." The good news is that Metro Wastewater plans to start using a less toxic disinfectant - liquid bleach - by the end of this year.

FedEx donates 727 jet to Denver Fire Department
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5461844,00.html
FedEx, the express transportation company, is donating a Boeing 727-100 freighter to Denver International Airport to be used by the Denver Fire Department’s aircraft rescue firefighting units for training exercises. The aircraft will give firefighters a more realistic way of entering an aircraft for its rescue course.

Pet owners cooking up their own grub
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/apr/04/pet-owners-cooking-up-their-own-grub/
Some worried pet owners nationwide, and in Boulder, are no longer cooking dinner for just their families: Many canines and felines are getting homemade meals, too. Following a dog- and cat-food contamination scare blamed for numerous animal deaths, owners are buying pet-food cookbooks and specialized ingredients and taking extra time each day to play chef for their four-legged friends.

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Crime and Penal Reform

Jurors weigh death penalty in prison slaying
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5588392
Federal jurors began deliberating Tuesday whether to execute William Sablan for killing and disemboweling a fellow prisoner in the U.S. Penitentiary at Florence. A decision to execute Sablan, 43, would mark the first death sentence for a federal defendant in Colorado since a jury in 1997 ordered Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh put to death. In closing arguments, court-appointed defense attorneys cast Sablan as a mentally impaired child-abuse victim, controllable if medicated. Prosecutors focused on Sab lan's actions, referring to his plunging a blade through a tattooed Virgin Mary on the belly of slain inmate Joey Estrella on Oct. 10, 1999.
RELATED: Life-or-death arguments made in gruesome killing
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462610,00.html

Ex-officer formally charged in crash deaths
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462614,00.html
Liane VanFeldt clutched the piece of paper charging Patrick Strawmatt with the murder of her daughter as the shackled and handcuffed former cop was led into a courtroom here Tuesday. Sitting next to her husband, Peter VanFeldt, and her daughter, Jamie Kois, she put her hand to her mouth when she saw him for the first time. Strawmatt, 42, of Westminster, was formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder in a 22-page complaint filed in Mesa County District Court. He also was charged with vehicular homicide, assault, DUI and other crimes, according to the complaint. Strawmatt's sport utility vehicle reached speeds of 120 mph on March 22 as he tried to outrun state troopers along Interstate 70. He slammed into the rear of the car carrying college sweethearts Jennifer Kois, of Brighton, and Jake Brock, of Eagle.
RELATED: Stunned drivers warn police of out-of-control motorist in 911 tapes
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1a_Strawmatt_911_recording.html
RELATED: Murder charges filed against ex-cop in crash
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1a_Strawmatt_charged.html

Briefs: Weld deputy linked to love triangle quits
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5586888
Weld County sheriff's Deputy Ken Nelson, whose wife is accused of killing her lover's spouse earlier this year, is leaving the department. On Monday, Nelson handed in his resignation, effective April 15, sheriff's spokeswoman Margie Martinez said. Nelson, who has been employed with the county since August 2000, indicated he would be moving out of state for personal reasons, Martinez said.
RELATED: Murder suspect's husband to leave sheriff's office
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104040092

County OKs GRAMNET funds
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/25994
Despite losing the support of the Routt County Sheriff's Office, the Greater Routt and Moffat Narcotics Enforcement Team received a boost in funding Tuesday after two county commissioners voted in favor of giving the drug task force $10,800 for administrative costs.

Cops train for emergency situations
http://postindependent.com/article/20070404/VALLEYNEWS/104040026
As the sun retreated last Thursday evening, four cops, casually dressed and carrying what looked like high-powered firearms, entered the Carbondale Middle School. It was only a drill, "active shooter training," organized by Carbondale Police to train police officers and the Carbondale Fire Department on how to better prepare for an emergency situation similar to the school hostage situation at Platte Canyon High School last September.

Lyons may zone out sex offenders
http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=15556
Town leaders want to keep sex offenders as far from their kids and their neighbors’ kids as possible. By turning that desire into law, Lyons may become one of the only municipalities in Colorado to zone away most of its land from future home buyers and renters who also are serious sex offenders.

Greeley City Council passes graffiti ordinance
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104040097
The Greeley City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night that makes non-removal of graffiti a code violation.

Sealed depositions may be end of Columbine study
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462616,00.html
Professor Del Elliott said Tuesday he doubts he will undertake a study into the causes behind the Columbine High School shootings now that depositions of the killers' parents have been sealed. In the meantime, the nationally recognized expert on violence prevention said he expects the ruling will translate into more lives lost. "We've not had a chance to learn much about was going on in the lives of (killers) Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold that precipitated this event," he said. "Unfortunately, it's going to be repeated," he added, "and maybe then we'll learn more about the circumstances which lead young people to commit these kinds of horrendous acts."

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Economy

Mohebbi: Qwest was slipping
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5583422
Federal prosecutors in the Joe Nacchio insider-trading trial in federal court in Denver today, for the first time, were able to solicit testimony that Qwest Communications was sliding into financial trouble when Nacchio allegedly made his insider stock trades. Nacchio is Qwest's former CEO who is charged with 42 counts of insider trading during the first five months of 2001. His trial is now in its third week. Today, former Qwest president Afshin Mohebbi testified that the company didn't hit publicly projected targets for the third quarter of 2001. In 2003, Qwest had to restate $2.5 billion in revenues for the years 2000 to 2002, erasing numbers that were inflated through one-time sales of capacity on Qwest's fiber optic network.
RELATED: Testimony hints of backdating
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5586848
RELATED: Witness: Analysts kept in dark on sales
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5462881,00.html
RELATED: Special coverage: Nacchio on trial
http://cfapp2.rockymountainnews.com/business/nacchio/

Despite ruts, track interest still revving
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5586850
International Speedway Corp. on Tuesday confirmed its continued interest in building a racetrack in Adams County, despite a downshift in first- quarter earnings and the termination of plans to build a racetrack in Washington state.

Telluride gets time on its side
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5586890
Telluride town officials decided Tuesday to extend the time fundraisers have to collect the $2.4 million in private money still needed to acquire the 570 acres of open lands at the entrance to the town. Attempts to raise the remainder of the $24.5 million in private funds needed to make the purchase fell short when a self-imposed deadline came and went March 30. Town officials Tuesday set a final deadline for May 14. But those raising the private money say they hope to have the remaining millions in hand before then to stop the clock on the $11,000 in court-decreed interest accruing each day.
RELATED: Telluride Town Council ready for VF bonding
http://telluridegateway.com/articles/2007/04/04/news/news01.txt

Nestle Waters plant coming to Denver
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5587015
Nestle Waters North America Inc., one of the world's leading bottled-water producers, is opening a plant in Denver.

Ski area exec Roger McCarthy resigns to develop Russian ski resort
http://summitdaily.com/article/20070403/NEWS/70403011
Roger McCarthy, chief operating officer of Breckenridge Ski Resort and co-president of Vail Resorts’ mountain division, announced his resignation Tuesday after seven years in Summit County. McCarthy, often the public voice of Breckenridge and Keystone resorts during most of the last decade, will be joining a private investment company to develop a new ski resort in Russia. For the record, McCarthy doesn’t speak Russian. “Nyet,” he joked, “which I think is Russian for ‘not yet’.” McCarthy’s new project — Rosa Khutor resort — is located near the city of Sochi in southwestern Russia, one of three finalists bidding on the 2014 Winter Games (cities in Austria and South Korea are also in the running).

Top

Worker's Rights and Corporate Accountability

Colorado wages on a roll
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5587356
Since moving to Denver three years ago to take a job with Canadian petroleum producer EnCana, Greg Ryan, a land negotiator, has seen his wages increase 70 percent. Ryan's story isn't an isolated one. Compensation in Colorado is up 21.8 percent the past five years and 7.4 percent over the past year, according to income statistics released last week from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. But in the mining sector, which includes petroleum producers, compensation is 81.5 percent higher over the past five years and was 20.5 percent higher in 2006 alone.

U S West retirees sue over benefits
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5462352,00.html
U S West retirees have sued Qwest Communications in an effort to reverse the telco's decision to cut life insurance benefits for some 48,000 retirees. The proposed class-action complaint, filed last week in Denver federal court, comes after Qwest slashed life insurance benefits for retirees to $10,000 each effective Jan. 1. Previously, the benefit was equal to the final year's salary, with that declining to 50 percent at age 70 for some retirees.

Top

Housing and Homelessness

Homeowner measure advances
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462611,00.html
Tom Moore, of Brighton, thought he had found his dream home four years ago. But one month after moving in, the first heavy rain turned his custom-built dream into a nightmare. So much water poured through the defective windows, you could almost "stand there and take a shower," Moore recounted. Today, the decks on the home are crumbling. The exterior walls are so moldy that he found a 4-inch mushroom growing from one. Moore was among a half-dozen homeowners who told lawmakers Tuesday that they have no way to hold shoddy builders responsible for major construction defects. "This is a living hell," he said. "No one should have to go through it. There needs to be some teeth to the law to protect homeowners." The Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee advanced the Homeowner Protection Act measure on a party-line vote, despite home builders' warnings that it would invite a flood of lawsuits, substantially increase their insurance costs and drive up costs for new home buyers.
RELATED: Bill on home builders’ responsibility advances
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20867&template=article.html
RELATED: Homebuyers' protection bill narrowly clears committee
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/13

Vail approves new housing rules
http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20070403/NEWS/104030066
Mark Gordon said it was a great night for Vail. "This is really amazing," he said. Vail was setting the stage for the reversal of the downvalley flight of residents and ensuring that the town remains a community - not simply a resort - he said. "Tonight we're going to lay the foundation for Vail's true renaissance," he said.

Top

Media

Liberty obtains DirecTV in swap
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5586960
Liberty Media Corp.'s stock-for-asset swap with News Corp. - which includes a controlling interest in DirecTV - became official Tuesday after News Corp. shareholders approved the $11 billion deal. The transaction was approved by 99.8 percent of Class B shareholders, who voted by proxy, Rupert Murdoch told investors at a special meeting in New York. The Class A shareholder vote hasn't been tallied. Under the agreement, signed in December, News Corp. will buy back the 16.3 percent stake held by Douglas County-based Liberty.

Suit by cities, counties may hinder Qwest cable TV goal
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5587013
Local governments across the country went to court Tuesday to challenge federal rules intended to spur competition in the cable television industry. Lawyers for organizations representing cities and counties asked the appeals courts to invalidate rules the Federal Communications Commission approved in December to smooth the way for new competitors who want to offer cable television service. At issue is whether the agency overstepped its authority when it voted 3-2 to require local governments to speed the approval process for new competitors, cap fees paid by new entrants to local governments and ease requirements that competitors build systems that reach every home.

Broadcaster to plead guilty in Net sex case
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587258
Veteran Colorado radio personality Scott Cortel you, accused of trying to lure a child over the Internet for sex, will plead guilty to a felony but will not be sentenced to jail under an agreement his attorney reached with prosecutors. Cortelyou, 53, was arrested in January at a radio station in Lakewood. Defense attorney Craig Silverman said Tuesday that Cortel you never attempted to meet the adolescent he thought he was conversing with in an Internet chatroom, but who actually was a police officer. Cortelyou also turned down an offer of a rendezvous, Silverman said. Silverman told Jefferson County Judge James Demlow that his client's actions "did not involve any meeting or attempted meeting with an adolescent girl. It was just conversation over the Internet." Cortelyou has been charged with Internet sexual exploitation of a child, a class 4 felony.
RELATED: No jail time for Scott Cortelyou
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5461794,00.html

Top

Education

U.S. News lauds CU stalwarts
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/04/03/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt
Three colleges at CU-Boulder ranked in the 2008 U.S. News and World Report list released Monday of top 50 graduate schools in the country. Seven CU-Boulder specialty graduate programs ranked in the magazine's top 25. CU-Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences ranked 40th in the nation. The CU Law School raised seven spots, from 43rd to 36th, and the School of Education went from 43rd to 38th. CU achieved its highest rankings in specialized graduate majors. CU-Boulder's environmental law program ranked fourth nationwide and its physical chemistry program ranked number 10.

Candidates hope to address strife in Valley Re-1
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104040090
Each candidate for the open seat on the Valley Re-1 School Board hopes to ease the strife that has gripped the board in recent months. The tension, they fear, is trickling down to the school district's primary customers -- the students. All four candidates graduated from high school in the Re-1 district and most have children in the district that covers La Salle, Gilcrest and Platteville. One will be chosen tonight to fill the vacancy on the board.

D60 hoping for more early retirements
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/10
More Pueblo City Schools employees need to decide it’s time to retire to gain a bonus that will cover much of their insurance costs for the year after they leave. District spokesman Greg Sinn said that as of Tuesday, 39 people had filed retirement papers: 28 teachers, three administrators and eight classified staff workers. The district’s board last month established an incentive program to get potential retirees’ paperwork in early, before notices have to be sent out to teachers that their contracts would not be renewed next fall.

Vision School shows model to District 51
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_3b_school_board.html
A model for a new contract school that would provide educational support for home-school students in Mesa County was presented to the Mesa County Valley School District 51 Board of Education at a meeting Tuesday night.

Howell’s status ‘up in the air’
http://www2.steamboatpilot.com/news/2007/apr/04/howells_status_air/?local_news
Steamboat Springs School Board President Denise Connelly made it clear Tuesday that Superintendent Donna Howell’s future with the district is not secure.

Flocks of birds may have taken wing with dinos
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5586946
Roadrunner-like birds skittered around under the feet of dinosaurs 125 million years ago, according to ancient tracks found in fossilized Chinese mud two years ago. Denver paleontologist Martin Lockley has now officially described the tracks, and experts say the discovery means there were many more types of birds flitting around dinosaurs than once thought. "This is remarkable, because there are zero fossil footprints of this pattern in the entire fossil record," Lockley said. "Zero." Lockley, a researcher at the Dinosaur Track Museum at the University of Colorado at Denver, has been working with Chinese researchers for years.

Top

Military

Ft. Carson soldier killed in Iraq fight
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462593,00.html
Fort Carson soldier on his second tour of duty in Iraq was killed in an insurgent attack Thursday. Sgt. Joe Polo, 24, of Opalocka, Fla., died of his wounds after his unit in Baghdad was hit by an improvised explosive device and then by insurgents using small arms fire. Polo was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson. He joined the Army on Jan. 30, 2003, and the 2nd Battalion on Sept. 1, 2003. Polo was deployed previously from August 2004 to August 2005. His most recent tour started in October.
RELATED: Carson soldier dies in attack
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20843&template=article.html

Marines come home to warm welcomes at Buckley AFB
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462807,00.html
Daddies came home from Iraq on Tuesday. Sons, brothers, cousins and colleagues also arrived home in their Marine Corps camouflage, about four days out of the Mideast. Joyous families and friends saluted them with a celebration that rocked a hangar at Buckley Air Force Base. "He's all mine," declared Cecilia Pino, a 4-year-old pixie of a child who likes being called "Princess" and doesn't want her father to leave her ever again. He's Andre Pino, 27, but Daddy to her, a Denver police officer in his civilian career and a staff sergeant in his Reserve unit. He was one of the 65 Marines who came walking down the tail ramps of the twin KC-130 transport planes that ferried them from the East Coast on Tuesday on the final leg of a journey from the war zone on the other side of the world.

New veterans hospital seems on way
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462806,00.html
The dark cloud that has hovered for three years over plans for a new veterans hospital in Aurora will clear today. Jim Nicholson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is going to Aurora to announce he has $98 million and the authority to buy the necessary land and start the final design work for the hospital on the new Fitzsimons medical campus. "This thing is going to be a reality," said Steve Wymer, spokesman for Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. Allard, who sits on the Senate's Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, worked closely with the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority, Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer and Nicholson on the hospital plans. Former Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Colo., said he made sure the $98 million hospital appropriation was included in a bill before he left Congress in January. The appropriation "primes the pump" to build the estimated $700 million hospital, Beauprez said.

Officials defend Rifle VA home
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104040038
Officials who oversee the Colorado State Veterans Nursing Home are defending its operations following media reports this week about an uninvestigated fatal fall there. The Rifle facility's administrator and a state official said the fatality in question didn't result from a fall, and the man involved received proper care. The only problem was a failure to fully report the incident to other agencies, said Viki Manley, office director of the State and Veterans Nursing Homes, a state agency. "It was only about reporting and not about care of the client," she said.

Operation Vacation gets national interest
http://postindependent.com/article/20070404/VALLEYNEWS/104040027
Bob Johnson and Operation Vacation have gone nationwide. In the April 9 issue of People magazine, Johnson is the focus of the magazine's Heroes Among Us feature. Since People hit national newsstands Friday, Johnson has received calls and e-mails from all over the United States, including California, Alabama and Illinois. "A lot of them are coming from the east coast, the Midwest, the California area," Johnson said. "I've already had seven requests about nominating soldiers to participate." The People feature highlights the Operation Vacation program, which Johnson started in August 2005 to provide all-expenses-paid vacations in Glenwood Springs for Army soldiers who have served overseas. Since launching Operation Vacation, Johnson has welcomed nearly two dozen soldiers and their families to three days of recreation and relaxation in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Supplies for soldiers
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070404/NEWS/104030110
Tozer Primary School kindergartner Claire McHenry said her daddy likes receiving pumpkin seeds to eat while in Iraq. Some of the other soldiers overseas crave Tabasco sauce, candy, sunflower seeds and beef jerky. Claire's father, Maj. David McHenry, and many other soldiers serving the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, will get the pumpkin seeds and much more because of the recent efforts by Tozer Primary School and the Windsor community

Top

Religion

Testimony begins in priest's 2nd sex-assault trial
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5586368
Prosecutors said Tuesday that a Catholic priest betrayed a devout family's trust by groping their teenage son a decade ago during counseling. Timothy Evans, 44, of Loveland is accused of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust. He was indicted on the charges last August. Evans' attorney, Joseph Gavaldon, responded that the case was about "this terrible allegation" that didn't happen.
RELATED: Parents say boy told of priest abuse
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462660,00.html

Rector could be investigated
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462448,00.html
Leaders of a conservative Episcopal organization co-founded by the Rev. Don Armstrong said Tuesday that they agree with the diocese that the embattled rector should face a church trial on allegations of financial wrongdoing. "We do not believe that charges have been trumped up and methods embraced to silence an outspoken critic of the diocese," said a statement released Monday by The Communion Laity and Clergy (CLC), an association founded about three years ago by Armstrong and other conservative priests and clergy in Colorado.

Top

Energy Policy

Sides haggle over oil-gas bill
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5462617,00.html
Various factions in the debate over a bill to revamp the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission tried to find middle ground Tuesday in advance of a committee hearing on the measure. Senate President Joan Fitz- Gerald, D-Coal Creek Canyon, said she has spoken to so many people individually - concerned with the bill or with attempts to weaken it - that she wanted a group meeting to try to reach some consensus before it is heard next week in a Senate committee. "The bill is much too important to amend on the fly," Fitz- Gerald said. House Bill 1341 would change the makeup and mission of the commission to make it more environmentally friendly. It also would allow the group to enforce rules that reduce oil and gas production to protect public health.

Biofuels bill passes first test in Senate
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070404_2.htm
Ethanol and biodiesel would be sold at gas stations across the state, if a Longmont senator has his way. Democrat Brandon Shaffer says he wants to stabilize Colorado's fledgling biofuel industry. Doing so will lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, reduce prices for drivers and give farmers and rural communities a chance at prosperity, he said. A local group plans to open a biodiesel plant in Dove Creek next year. But opponents of Shaffer's Senate Bill 238 raised a host of concerns. Even so, Democrats on the Senate State Affairs Committee voted for the bill Tuesday, and it passed on a 3-2 vote. "We really aren't going to become the Silicon Valley of clean and renewable energy unless we take a bit of risk," said Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver. The bill requires gas stations to sell biofuels once Colorado factories produce enough ethanol and biodiesel. Once biodiesel plants produce 5 million gallons a year, gas stations would have to sell diesel blended to include 2 percent biodiesel. And when ethanol production hits 115 million gallons a year, gas stations would have to sell E10 - a fuel that is 10 percent ethanol. Critics said the bill raises many questions.

Xcel boasts nation's largest voluntary "green" program
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5586955
Xcel Energy has the nation's largest voluntary "green power" program, according to rankings released Tuesday by the Golden-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Xcel's "Windsource" program has 63,028 customers spread among Xcel service territories in Colorado, Minnesota and Texas. The program enables customers to pay a surcharge to purchase wind power for a portion, or all, of their electricity consumption.

Emissions safer at city’s power source
http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?id=15557
Upgrades at the power plant supplying the city’s electricity have significantly dropped emissions at the facility while saving money for ratepayers. Platte River Power Authority on Monday reported that emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides all dropped in 2006 as a result of upgrades at the Rawhide Energy Station north of Fort Collins.

Timnath school goes green
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070404/NEWS01/704040317/1002
Plans to build a new high-performance elementary school in Timnath have been released by the Poudre School District. The school, scheduled to be completed in 2008, will be the fourth new elementary school built under the school district's Sustainable Design Guidelines. The new school also will apply for the state's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, for school certification.

School's ‘A green place to grow’
http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20070403/NEWS/70330001
That's Vail Mountain School's slogan for its plans to save energy, reduce waste and teach kids about alternative energy.

GarCo seeks information on natural-gas royalty claims
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_2b_Royalties.html
Six claims have been made for a portion of more than $235,000 in natural-gas royalties that Garfield County collected over the last two decades, county commissioners were told Monday. “Until about two years ago, the county had collected the royalties for mineral rights that are hard to tell if they’re owned by the county, or just under county roads and actually owned by the landowners,” County Treasurer Georgia Chamberlain said.

Gas outlets run on empty
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5586847
Diamond Shamrock filling stations in Colorado are experiencing gasoline outages because of a fire at a Texas oil refinery that supplies the stations. Valero Energy Corp., which owns the refinery and most of the 360 Diamond Shamrock stations in Colorado, said an unspecified number of outlets have run out of varying grades of gasoline in Denver, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque and El Paso. "The outages are spotty, so we can't determine an exact number," said Bill Day, a spokesman for San Antonio- based Valero. Analysts said the outages so far appear to be confined to Diamond Shamrock stations, even though the afflicted refinery typically supplies other stations with gasoline.
RELATED: Spot fuel shortages linked to refinery fire
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/energy/article/0,2777,DRMN_23914_5462179,00.html

Top

Transportation and Infrastructure

CDOT honors fallen workers
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462450,00.html
Colorado Department of Transportation employees paused Tuesday to honor two colleagues killed on the job last year and to remember the nearly five dozen who have perished since 1929. "This year is particularly hard for CDOT as our number of work- related fatalities has increased from 55 to 57 with the tragic loss of Charles Mather and Rodger Bell," said Pam Hutton, the agency's chief engineer.

Transit plan tax deficit forecast
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5588390
RTD officials said Tuesday the agency's FasTracks transit plan will be short about $1 billion in sales-and use-tax revenues over the next 23 years, compared with earlier projections. The sluggish tax forecast puts added pressure on the Regional Transportation District as it recalculates financing for FasTracks, which has already been hit with a surge in construction-material costs. FasTracks calls for the construction of six new train lines in metro Denver over the next nine years. The lines include ones to Lakewood/Golden, Arvada/Wheat Ridge, Boulder/Longmont, north Adams County and Denver International Airport.
RELATED: FasTracks sales tax forecasts dip
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462865,00.html

Return of the street swoopers
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587030
First came the crocus, bravely pushing up through the snow. Then the robins arrived, punctuating the warming air with their fruity chirps. And now: bright yellow envelopes with fluttering white citations for parking in an area designated for street sweeping. "You think they'd give you a warning," moaned Markus Burns, an Art Institute of Colorado student. He was so dismayed to find this rite of spring tucked snugly into his car door that he ran into the middle of Galapago Street, throwing himself on his knees to beg for mercy. Ray Younger, whose five-plus years as a vehicle control agent have taught him to remain inside his bright-white city Jeep, gave Burns a sympathetic smile. "Once the ticket's printed, it's already in the system," Younger explained to Burns, whose hopeful expression melted into resignation.

Top

Environment and Conservation

Optimistic water forecast scaled back
http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20876&template=article.html
Statewide snowpack dwindled to 76 percent of average, with no major river basin at or above average, the Natural Resources Conservation Service said.
The dip amid mild, warm weather means optimistic forecasts of water supplies for this spring and summer are being scaled back from last month, the agency said. The early snowmelt this March is similar to one in 2004, when there was a record loss of snowpack across the state, said NRCS state conservationist Allen Green.

Farmers struggle with concept of ‘Super Ditch’
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/7
A “Super Ditch” that would combine the water resources of seven canals could bring more than $9 million in payments annually, if seven ditch companies can agree to a framework. While the profit would be greater than agriculture alone, bringing together ditch companies that have battled each other for years, overcoming self-interest and convincing ditch board members of the need for a water leasing program will be more difficult than figuring out how big each share of the pie should be. “This is the only chance we’re going to get,” Lamar farmer Dale Mauch told a group of farmers Tuesday. “I don’t even want to talk dollars. When the cities realize there’s no one else to go to, the numbers will change. So why talk dollars? . . . If we blow this opportunity, every canal will sell and you’ll never see the real value.”

Public meetings on GMUG plan canceled
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/04/4_4_1b_GMUG_plan.html
The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests canceled five public meetings that had been scheduled for later this month about the forests’ proposed management plan. GMUG officials canceled the meetings because they are unsure of the ramifications of last week’s federal court decision declaring illegal the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2005 forest planning rule, under which the GMUG plan was created.

State recruits public to eye water
http://www.cortezjournal.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070403_3.htm
Public involvement is key to solving Colorado's looming water crisis, a senior Ritter administration official said Friday. Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural Resources, threw his support behind a system of roundtables that brings together people in each major river basin. The Ritter administration is committed to the new process, Sherman told members of the Interbasin Compact Committee. The committee eventually is supposed to reach an agreement among the river basins for planning Colorado's water future. "It is our unique way of solving Colorado's water issues," Sherman said. The Legislature created the roundtables and Interbasin group in 2005 through a bill by Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus.

Dumpster diving for a good cause
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/apr/04/dumpster-diving-for-a-good-cause/
It’s not every day that university students are encouraged to throw trash around on the campus. But Tuesday afternoon was a little different — as shredded paper and phone-book pages flew through the air, and plastic bottles and aluminum cans bounced around on the pavement. Between classes, University of Colorado students stopped by the University Memorial Center fountain for a chance to win a prize during the third annual Recycling X-Games. Participants had the chance to hurl hefty phone books in the phone book shot-put, Dumpster dive for recyclable products, compete in a recycled art and fashion contest or team up to play “recycle pong” — a game of tossing bags of cans into barrels. The purpose of the event, according to Dan Baril, CU’s recycling program manager, is to raise awareness about recycling in a unique way.

Meat sickens recycling center workers
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070404_4.htm
The rotten meat, wrapped in plastic, apparently with no identifying marks, was discovered after the early-morning collection. Montoya disinfected the conveyor belt and kept floor fans going full blast Tuesday afternoon. The Tuesday incident wasn't the first time dead animals or rotten meat has found its way into recycling bins, Montoya said. About eight years ago, half of a goat carcass was found in newspapers being recycled, Montoya said. Dead skunks were found in recycled material on another occasion, he said. Andrews urged the public to learn good recycling manners and report violations. "A few people can ruin it for everyone else," Andrews said.

CAP tax in effect
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/04/03/news/c_u_and_boulder/news2.txt
The topic of greenhouse gas emissions is already quite prominent in national news reports, but City of Boulder residents should expect to see a near-term local information blitz as well. City voters approved Ballot Question 202, basically a new tax on Xcel Energy electric bills to pay for city greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction programs, last November. The tax went into effect on April 1, and the city has spent some of the time since the election in hiring staff, coordinating contractors and holding stakeholder meetings to discuss the city's Climate Action Plan (CAP) implementation.

Copper water deal signed
http://summitdaily.com/article/20070403/NEWS/70403005
A long-pending water deal between Intrawest and the Copper Mountain Metro District has been completed, giving the metro district all the water it needs for watering landscaped areas at the resort.

Beulah residents protest development project
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175698183/6
The proposal is called a cluster development because the homes will be clustered on about 500 acres of the land, and the remainder will be protected by a conservation easement. A principal opponent of the plan is Yvonne Youngren, who owns ranchland just west of the development O'Brien calls Twin Buttes Estates. Her son, Justin Youngren, and John Buglewicz presented petitions signed by about 85 people to commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday. Buglewicz, who lives near the development property on Waterbarrel Road, said the developer is already doing drainage work even though the county hasn't completed the zoning action. The petition said the county's comprehensive land-use plan says that prime agricultural land should be protected from residential development. It also complains that the developer plans to build private roads rather than building them to county standards and expresses a concern about overgrazing of livestock on the vacant, easement land. But the principal concern is water. Shawn Yoxey, who grew up in Beulah and sits on the Southeastern water conservancy board, told commissioners: "How soon we forget that only five years ago, Beulah's wells and springs went dry in the worst drought in 300 years."

Tree plan prompts officials to bark
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5462451,00.html
A proposed ordinance that would require city permission before a Denver homeowner could chop down a front-yard tree met rough sledding at a City Council meeting Tuesday. Councilwoman Marcia Johnson said she is dead set against infringing on the right of property owners to do what they want with their trees. Other council members also appeared skeptical, saying more questions need to be answered before they would support the measure. The proposed ordinance would prohibit taking down trees except in instances where they pose a danger, are diseased or limit access to a property. Johnson said a homeowner, for instance, should be able to decide if a tree was blocking too much sunlight. If passed, the measure would have teeth.

Adventure envisioned: Group proposes bicycling, skiing for Valmont Park
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/apr/04/adventure-envisioned/
In the decade since Boulder bought the land for Valmont City Park, 102 of its 115 acres remain undeveloped. Now, a group of Boulder residents wants to change that by asking voters for public money for an "adventure park" that would include facilities for biking, cross-country skiing, swimming and more. "This is a piece of property that's the largest park in the city, and it's essentially unused land," said Gary Lacy, who heads up Citizens for a New Valmont Park. "It's time to take action and get something done out there."

Listen up, suckers
http://www.cortezjournal.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070403_1.htm
A silent invader lurks at the bottom of Summit Reservoir, between Mancos and Dolores. The invader - the white sucker fish - has been advancing on the placid reservoir for years, destroying habitat and the natural balance in the lake. Over the years, the bottom-feeding, non-native fish has multiplied, pushed out other fish species and managed to make the reservoir cloudy and murky, said Jim White, an aquatic biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "Most of the fish in the lake are white suckers," White said. "Just the action of these fish feeding has clouded the lake." Because the white suckers have basically taken over the reservoir, they have created what White calls a monoculture, making it difficult for any other fish or even plants to grow in the lake. So the Division of Wildlife plans to poison the reservoir in August and kill all the fish, with the goal to rid the water of the non-native white suckers. Then wildlife officials will restock the lake with fish that will thrive and restore the lake's natural balance.
RELATED: Report nets Dolores River
http://www.cortezjournal.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/07/news070403_2.htm

Top

Opinion

Travel jostles Mideast policy
http://www.denverpost.com/opinionheadlines/ci_5585004
The Iraq Study Group had urged the Bush administration to engage Syria and neighboring nations in efforts to help stabilize Iraq. Bush had rejected the advice until last month when U.S. officials joined an international conference in Baghdad with Syria and Iran in attendance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to represent the United States at a second round of talks this month in Turkey. Pelosi shrugged off White House criticism , noting that the White House made no mention of Sunday's visit by Republican Reps. Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts and Robert Aderholt with Assad in Damascus. She said she had "great hope" for reviving U.S. relations with Syria and changing its behavior.

Corn prices up and away
http://www.denverpost.com/opinionheadlines/ci_5585002
The promise of ethanol has made everyone from environmentalists to Iowa farmers to George Bush giddy. But the complicated economics of energy and agriculture should remind us that we can't grow our way out of dependence on petroleum. Achieving self-sufficiency will take conservation, efficiency and many kinds of alternative and renewable fuels.

The Tillman fiasco
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Opinion-story.asp?ID=6584
Three years after NFL-star-turned-soldier Pat Tillman’s death in a friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan, we understand why his family sees a streak of sadism in the Pentagon’s handling of the matter.

Carbon dioxide and the court
http://www.durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=opin&article_path=/opinion/opin070404_1.htm
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency - despite the Bush administration's repeated insistence otherwise - does indeed have the authority to regulate automobiles' emissions of carbon dioxide. The 5-4 decision is a landmark in the global-warming debate. Before the ruling, the EPA had maintained that it lacked the power under the Clean Air Act to regulate the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide - thought by the majority of scientists to be a leading culprit in global warming - cars can spew from their tailpipes. That argument was as shaky as it was predictable, coming from a presidential administration that has refused to recognize, and has even censored, the abundant science suggesting that not only is the Earth getting warmer, but it is doing so because of human activities - namely our hefty appetite for consuming greenhouse-gas producing fuels. The five justices in the majority were the final group not to be convinced by the logic that if carbon dioxide is not making our skies dirty, then it must not be a problem.

What’s the price for cheap gas?
http://www.montrosepress.com/articles/2007/04/03/opinion/op1.txt
Now, we’re for lower gas prices as much as the next person, but let’s call House Bill 1208 just for what it is: An illusion. HB 1208, which became known as the cheap gas bill, is at its very essence, for show — especially in the house of politics. The bill, which passed through the Legislature and made its way to the governor’s desk, would limit Colorado’s Fair Practices Act and permit grocery stores to sell gas to their customers below cost. For those proponents at the capital, it’s a chance for them to tout that they voted for “cheap” gas. Something that looks real good on a resume and to voters come election time. But it’s just window-dressing. Patrons looking to save money at the pump will likely see higher prices in the grocery stores. It’s similar to the catch-and-release philosophy of fishing: Lower the cost of something to lure the consumer in, get them to bite by paying a higher price to offset the cost, and then release them to come back some other time because, after all, we’ll need to eat and fill up our tanks again. Of course we need to remember that in order to receive that great gas discount, we must spend a fair amount in the store. So it’s a guarantee for those that want “cheap” gas to line up and pay higher prices for groceries and other things. It’s predatory pricing. But consumers, and more importantly, voters, need to realize this before praising these politicians for essentially doing nothing to benefit us. The bill isn’t pro-consumer as it was touted, but pro-retailers, who are the true beneficiaries.

Documents sealed for too long
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/editorials/article/0,2777,DRMN_23964_5462190,00.html
Not until nearly 30 years after the shootings at Columbine, in 2027, will files that could answer lingering questions finally become public. Or so ruled U.S. District Court Judge Lewis T. Babcock this week. With his ruling, Babcock ensured that many relatives of Columbine victims will never learn what the two killers' parents knew about the state of their sons' minds before that fateful day in 1999. Those relatives simply won't live long enough.

Convicts want U
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/apr/04/convicts-want-u/
Universities are increasingly likely to ask students about their criminal records, a move that has drawn some fire. The University of Colorado has long asked students about their past, and CU's reasoning is sound. Last summer, the Common Application used by about 320 colleges and universities added a question about prospective students' prior crimes. As the Camera reported on Sunday, the move has drawn mixed responses.

Spencer: Law allows readin', writin' and rifle
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5587029
According to the Jan. 23 report, the student's pickup held a 7mm rifle, a 7mm bullet, hundreds of rounds of .22-caliber ammunition and eight cans of beer. Holyoke school Superintendent Stephen Bohrer said the truck was parked 150 feet from the front door of Holyoke Junior-Senior High and 50 feet from two side doors. That, Bohrer said, was why a drug-sniffing dog from a private security firm stopped at the truck. To signal something wrong. More wrong than you might think.

Blake: Nature of 41 in the balance
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5462187,00.html
Senate leadership previously resisted any effort to change Amendment 41, which is in the state constitution, with a mere statute. Why the change of heart? Fitz-Gerald explained that they must establish the ethics commission before the session ends in five weeks. They'll have a hard time finding volunteers to serve - without compensation - on a controversial, high-profile commission and need to compromise with the House now to get it done.

NATIONAL NEWS

Top

Election

Mormon Base a Mixed Blessing for Romney
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301737.html
It is the rare presidential candidate who comes to Idaho to raise money, but there was Mitt Romney last month, packing more than 100 people, at up to $2,300 a head, into the Crystal Ballroom in Boise. "Nearly every seat was filled. Just about everybody that's anybody was there," said Grant Ipsen, a former Idaho state legislator. "I don't think I'd ever attended another fundraiser for a federal candidate in Idaho." There was no great mystery why Romney was in town. The former Massachusetts governor is a Mormon, as are about one-quarter of Idaho residents, including Ipsen and many others who turned out for the lunchtime event. The fundraiser was bracketed by two others in the Mountain West: one in Las Vegas and another outside Phoenix. At both of those events, Mormons made up at least half the crowd, organizers said. Altogether, the two-day swing brought in well over $1 million for Romney. As he vies for a place in the top tier of contenders for the Republican nomination, Romney is reaping enormous benefits from being part of a growing religion that has traditionally emphasized civic engagement and mutual support.
RELATED: Money Lead Gives Romney A Needed Jolt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301741.html
RELATED: Jackpot Won, Romney Now Works on Name Recognition
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/politics/04romney.html

Giuliani makes first Iowa campaign visit
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-apgiuliani3apr03,1,1565098.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, the consummate New Yorker, sought on Tuesday to convince conservative Iowa Republicans he has plenty in common with them. "We're all much more similar than we think, whether you're in Iowa or you're in New York, or California or somewhere else, you've got the same issues," the former New York mayor said on his first visit to the important early-voting state since becoming a presidential candidate. "This is no different than campaigning in New York," he added. "You walk around. You talk to people. You listen to what they have to say."
RELATED: Giuliani makes Iowa debut
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-giuliani-iowa_N.htm
RELATED: Giuliani surmounts expectations in N.H.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/04/giuliani_surmounts_expectations_in_nh/

McCain hires new fundraising chief
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-04-mccain-fundraising_N.htm
Republican presidential candidate John McCain takes an array of positions unpopular with various elements of his party, but GOP analysts and his campaign staff say that's not why the Arizona senator posted lackluster first-quarter fundraising results. "You raise money by asking for it. They're not doing enough asking," says Ed Rogers, a GOP consultant unaffiliated with a campaign. The numbers bear that out. McCain had 31 fundraising events in the first three months of the year and raised $12.5 million. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had 57 fundraisers, 36 of them in March, and raised $15 million. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — the Republicans' first-place finisher in the first quarter with $23 million — spent 33 days in February and March raising money. Some days his schedule had several events. Romney raised more than $6.5 million on Jan. 9, when he assembled 400 well-connected supporters to make calls from the Boston convention center.
RELATED: McCain Revamps His Fund-Raising
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/politics/04mccain.html?ref=washington

Bush Backs Richardson Trip to North Korea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301879.html
For a Democratic presidential candidate whose support in voter preference polls hovers around the margin of error, the announcement from the Bush White House yesterday was a gift: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) will co-head a private bipartisan delegation to North Korea next week to retrieve the remains of U.S. troops lost during the Korean War, receiving logistical support and technical expertise from the U.S. government. Richardson, whose support among Democratic voters in five public opinion polls last week ranged from 1 to 4 percent, has staked his presidential bid in part on his days as a global troubleshooter for President Bill Clinton.

Showing his bare knuckles
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704030881apr04,1,7164072.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot. Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens. But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer. A close examination of Obama's first campaign puts a hard edge on the image he has honed throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

Clinton Decries Veto Threat, Urges Bush Compromise on Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301611.html
As she traveled through Iowa, Clinton said she had launched a petition drive through her campaign Web site calling on Bush not to veto legislation now pending in Congress that, for the first time, would establish deadlines for the U.S. involvement in Iraq. "Mr. President," she said, "don't veto the will of the American people." Clinton took a sharp line against the administration in the current standoff over Iraq policy, accusing the president and Vice President Cheney of questioning the patriotism of Americans who call for an end to the U.S. involvement there.
RELATED: Clinton urges Dems to press Bush on Iraq
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-clinton-iowa_N.htm

Elizabeth Edwards Says Her Cancer May Be Responsive to Anti-Estrogen Drugs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040302233.html
Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that she got good news: She has a kind of cancer that is more likely to be controlled by anti-estrogen drugs. Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, expressed frustration with reports that she is likely to die within five years. She said doctors cannot give her a reliable life expectancy, and even if they could, the information would be of no comfort to her.
RELATED: Edwards' visit Iowa
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-edwards-iowa_N.htm

Biden focuses on Iraq, civil liberties
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-biden-iowa_N.htm
Joe Biden is not one of the superstars in the race for president and that's just fine for folks like John and Sharon Born. "Let's just put it this way, we're looking for a statesman, not a rock star," John Born, a West Des Moines resident, said after Biden's speech Tuesday at Drake University. Biden, a U.S. senator from Delaware, launched his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in January. The central issue of his campaign is the war in Iraq. He has outlined a plan that he touts as the most specific of any other candidate in the race and one he believes can help resolve the conflict and bring thousands of American troops home. Biden, on Tuesday, again stressed his plan but also focused his attention on America's long-held civil liberties, which he says have been compromised by President Bush in the name of fighting terror.

The 2008 candidates are running 'e-lection' campaigns
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2007-04-03-politech_N.htm
Scrambling for cash and votes, presidential and gubernatorial candidates are running 2008 election campaigns more like tech start-ups in search of investors and customers. Sen. Hillary Clinton employs a chief technology officer. Former Democratic senator John Edwards wants volunteers skilled in Ajax and other cutting-edge software. Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Billy Harper creates videos of speeches, then uploads them to the Web from a Wi-Fi-equipped campaign bus. On the horizon: text messages and video aimed at cellphones and personal digital assistants such as BlackBerrys. Politicians have leveraged tech innovations since the 19th century, when locomotives and the telegraph helped them reach remote places. But an explosion of new and inexpensive technologies since the 2004 elections is transforming campaigns into tech-driven ventures, shifting the balance of power — with surprising and unsettling results.

Top

Effective and Ethical Government

For Bush, Fighting Democrats And Doubts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040302027.html
He strode alone into the Rose Garden and complained that "it has now been 57 days" since he asked Congress for more money for the Iraq war and still has not gotten it. For President Bush, the fight over war-spending legislation has become the only talking point -- an opportunity, his strategists hope, to demonstrate strength and turn the tables on a Democratic Congress that may be overreaching. But as he answered questions yesterday before heading off for an Easter break, Bush was confronted with another narrative, this one about friends and voters losing faith in his leadership. He is not, he said in response to a question, more "isolated from his own party in Congress" than any president of the past half-century, as one conservative columnist wrote. He has not, he said, lost his "gut-level bond with the American public," as the chief strategist of his 2004 campaign wrote.
RELATED: Bush Unwilling to Compromise on Iraq Funding
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300216.html
RELATED: Both sides say other supports 'failure' in Iraq
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-bush-iraq_N.htm
RELATED: Impasse may quickly lead to military cuts, Bush says
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/04/04/impasse_may_quickly_lead_to_military_cuts_bush_says/

Unrelated Items Part of Iraq Bills Since War Began
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301736.html
To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of the conflict and exist only to buy votes. But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars, but, in almost all cases over the past four years, special-interest funding provisions have been the fruits of congressional opportunism by well-placed senators or House members grabbing what they could for their constituents on the one bill that had to be passed quickly. "Frankly, I don't see a lot of vote-buying here. And if that was what they were after in some cases, it didn't seem to work," said Scott Lilly, who was a longtime senior House Appropriations Committee aide and is now at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.
RELATED: Tussle Over Iraq Bill Reminds Many of Bitter 1995
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/washington/04memo.html

House Democrats Seek to Question Gonzales Aide About Fired Prosecutors
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301750.html
House Democrats requested yesterday an interview of an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, arguing that she must tell Congress which questions she is refusing to answer in asserting her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The request for a voluntary interview with Monica M. Goodling, Gonzales's senior counselor, signals that Democrats intend to challenge her refusal to testify about the Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Goodling, who is on indefinite leave from Justice, has said that she will refuse to answer questions from the House or Senate judiciary committees, because Democrats have already made up their minds on the matter. She said she faces "a perilous environment in which to testify."
RELATED: Justice Dept. official says she won't answer questions
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usattys4apr04,1,7416302.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Top

Civil Liberties and Equality

Katrina Evacuees Lose Ruling
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301938.html
Authorities did not violate a couple's constitutional right to travel by stopping them from crossing the Mississippi River Bridge to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a federal judge has ruled. Hundreds of people who tried to flee New Orleans for safety after the Aug. 29, 2005, storm were not allowed to cross the bridge. They said police from suburban Gretna forced them to turn around. Police later said they blocked the evacuees because there were no supplies or services for them on the other side of the river. Tracy and Dorothy Dickerson filed a lawsuit against Jefferson Parish, but U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon ruled in a decision made public Tuesday that "although the right to interstate travel is clearly established by our jurisprudence, the United States Supreme Court has not decided the question of whether the Constitution protects a right to intrastate travel." A trial on the remaining issues in the case -- including whether police used excessive force and whether the Dickersons' freedom-of-assembly and equal-protection rights were violated -- is set for early next year.

Top

Foreign Policy

Very Young Populations Contribute to Strife, Study Concludes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/04youth.html
Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Congo have all suffered horrors brought on by disastrous governance and violent conflict. But they, and many of Africa’s poorest countries, have something else in common: very young populations. While it is not clear exactly how the age of a population contributes to strife, research by Population Action International suggests that it is no simple coincidence that 80 percent of the civil conflicts that broke out in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s occurred in countries where at least 60 percent of the population was under 30, and that almost 9 of 10 such youthful countries had autocratic rulers or weak democracies.

Britain Ready To Send Team To Iran for Negotiations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300555.html
Britain urged direct talks with Iran, is willing to send a "technical delegation" to help ease the 12-day crisis over 15 British navy personnel detained in Iran, and is waiting for clarification from Tehran on the purpose and substance of such talks, according to sources familiar with the back-channel diplomacy. Prime Minister Tony Blair's office late Tuesday announced additional contacts between the two countries. "The UK has proposed direct bilateral discussions and awaits an Iranian response on when these can begin," the office said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. "Both sides share a desire for an early resolution to this issue through direct talks."
RELATED: Britain has few options in Iran standoff
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brits4apr04,1,750017.story?coll=la-headlines-world
RELATED: Seizure of Britons Underlines Iran’s Political Split
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/middleeast/04iran.html?ref=world

Man Missing in Iran Named; He Worked for DEA and FBI
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301063.html
A former FBI agent missing in Iran since early last month has been identified as Robert A. Levinson of Coral Springs, Fla., according to U.S. officials and a former colleague. Levinson was a 28-year veteran of both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, according to a biography on the Web site of Business Integrity International, a consulting firm where he worked until two years ago. The State Department has not received a response from Iran after a formal query about his whereabouts and welfare, an agency official said yesterday. It was the second message sent by Washington to Tehran through Swiss diplomatic intermediaries since Levinson was last heard from on March 8. The initial message was sent a few weeks ago, with a follow-up at a higher level on Monday, U.S. officials say. The Swiss Embassy in Tehran has represented U.S. interests in Iran since relations were cut off in 1980.

Iranian envoy abducted in Baghdad is freed
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-diplomat4apr04,1,19898.story?coll=la-headlines-world
An Iranian diplomat seized in Iraq two months ago has been freed, the Iraqi government said Tuesday. The envoy, Jalal Sharafi, was welcomed by senior Iranian officials at the airport in Tehran, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office later announced his government has held "direct contacts" with Ali Larijani, Iran's chief international negotiator, to help end the diplomatic standoff over 15 British sailors and marines being held for alleged violations of Iran's territorial waters. "The prime minister believes both sides share a desire for an early resolution of this issue through direct talks," Downing Street said in a statement released Tuesday night. "The U.K. has proposed direct bilateral discussions and awaits Iranian response on when these can begin."
RELATED: Envoy to meet 5 detained Iranians
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-04-04-envoy-iran_N.htm

German hostages repeat pleas in new video
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq4apr04,1,676395.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Iraqi insurgents Tuesday released a second video of two distraught German hostages pleading for their lives and appealing to their government to meet their captors' demands. Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities announced a shortening of the capital's overnight curfew, calling it a sign that an intensive security crackdown in Baghdad by U.S. and Iraqi troops is yielding results. The city's residents will now have to stay indoors after 10 p.m. instead of 8 p.m.

Clashes in Pakistan Kill Up to 60, Officials Say
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakistan-violence.html
Fresh clashes erupted in a Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday after a tribal force launched an offensive to expel foreign al Qaeda-linked militants from their lands, officials said. Up to 60 foreign militants, most of them Uzbeks, were believed to have been killed and about 40 had surrendered to the tribal force, Hussainzada Khan, the top administrator of the South Waziristan region and a security official, said. ``We are receiving reports that 50 to 60 Uzbeks have been killed. We are checking these reports,'' Khan told Reuters.

Arabs look askance at Olmert offer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-arabs4apr04,1,1873304.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Days after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited Arab rulers to Jerusalem for peace talks, the offer seems to have sunk without effect into the mire of regional rhetoric. None of the key Arab leaders had yet given a firm, public answer to Olmert's invitation by Tuesday night. The little that had been said, such as a pointed statement from the Saudi Cabinet, could be described as resentful. Rather than hopeful and curious, the reaction among Arab television pundits and newspaper writers ranged from tepid to cynical. Arabs complained that Olmert was too politically weak in Israel, where his standing in polls has plunged, to deliver any diplomatic breakthroughs. They even lamented the lack of an Israeli strongman in the mold of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. And they criticized the temerity of the Israeli leader for inviting Arabs to Jerusalem, the holy city whose political fate is one of the great and unresolved issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As a House Falls in China, Rights Debate Resonates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300542.html
For weeks, the little house sitting stubbornly atop an earthen pillar in the middle of a busy construction site was a symbol of individual rights in the face of China's breakneck and often heedless economic development. Reporters from across China and beyond traveled to Chongqing, a sprawling Sichuan city 900 miles southwest of Beijing, to document the campaign by Wu Ping and her husband, Yang Wu, to get more compensation for the small building where they had lived and run a restaurant for years. As they repeated tirelessly into reporters' microphones, they were the lone holdouts among the owners of 280 houses bulldozed since 2004 to make way for a shopping center -- and they vowed not to move until they got what they wanted.

Officials: Janjaweed militia kills at least 65
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-03-chad-fighting_N.htm
Janjaweed militia attacked two Chadian villages in the volatile southeastern border region close to Sudan, torching houses, randomly shooting those who fled and killing at least 65 people, officials said Tuesday. Survivors, 2,000 of whom arrived at a refugee camp about 30 miles from their villages, told aid workers that they were attacked by men on horseback, camel-back and in vehicles with heavy weaponry, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Few Honor Strike in Zimbabwe
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301885.html
A national strike fizzled in Zimbabwe on Tuesday as most of the nation's few remaining employed men and women ignored calls to skip work to express discontent with President Robert Mugabe. The opening of most businesses denied opposition leaders a symbolic victory in their struggle against Mugabe, who appears to have regained control of his volatile country in the three weeks since police arrested and beat about 50 anti-government activists on March 11.
RELATED: Zimbabwe warned over paper's threat
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704030581apr04,1,5591205.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Bush acts on Eastern Europe missile defense
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missle4apr04,0,1475517.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The Bush administration has begun to step up its efforts to build a controversial missile defense system in eastern Europe, launching a public push in recent weeks to counter bitter opposition in Russia and to overcome fears of a new arms race elsewhere on the continent. The move, coming ahead of a major NATO meeting on the project later this month, could escalate a simmering diplomatic issue into a significant international dispute, depending on Moscow's reaction and the administration's next moves in its effort to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar center in the Czech Republic, both formerly part of the Soviet Bloc. Today, the senior Pentagon official responsible for overseeing the plan said in a briefing that the administration hopes to dampen Russian opposition, but that Moscow would not be allowed to derail the project if no agreement is reached with the Kremlin.

Ex-KGB agent's widow campaigns for probe
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-03-litvinenko-campaign_N.htm
The widow and friends of a former KGB agent fatally poisoned in Britain started a campaign Tuesday to pressure investigators to bring those responsible for his death to justice. Marina Litvinenko said her husband Alexander's death following a dose of the radioactive substance, polonium-210, resulted from "state sponsored terrorism" carried out on the orders from the Kremlin.
RELATED: New Call for Justice in Poison Case
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/europe/04spy.html

Ukrainians Gather to Protest Call For Election
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300139.html
Thousands of flag-waving supporters of Ukraine's Russian-supported prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, set up a camp near the parliament building Tuesday to protest a decision by the pro-Western president to dissolve the legislature and call early elections. The two leaders, whose rivalry dates to the 2004 Orange Revolution that swept President Viktor Yushchenko to power, met in Yushchenko's office for four hours to try to resolve the standoff.
RELATED: Ukraine’s Premier Defies Order to Dissolve Parliament
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/europe/04ukraine.html?ref=world

3 Israelis accused of training hitmen
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-03-colombia-death-squads_N.htm
Interpol issued an international arrest warrant Tuesday for three Israelis accused of training private armies of Colombian drug cartels and right-wing death squads, authorities said. Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri and Tzedaka Abraham were being sought on charges of criminal conspiracy and instruction in terrorism, said Oscar Galvis, spokesman for Colombia's domestic intelligence agency. The men, who face nearly 11 years in prison if convicted, are accused of helping set up training camps to teach private armies working for drug lords about explosives and high-profile killings. The armies later grew into Colombia's right-wing death squads.

How am I driving? In Mexico City, like a jerk
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-traffic4apr04,1,3695627.story?coll=la-headlines-world
It's a matter of survival in a metropolis where traffic laws have flown out the window.
RELATED: Mexico's conservative image changing
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-03-mexico-changes_N.htm

Top

Immigration

U.S. Holds Suspects In War Crimes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040300979.html
Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro seemed to fit in well with his neighbors in Virginia's placid horse country. The quiet, genteel man from Argentina opened an art and antiques store after moving into a farmhouse last year in The Plains. From the FB Art Gallery & Antiques store attached to his home to a craft shop called Pampa's Corner on nearby Main Street, Barreiro kept a low profile, selling imported leather goods and artwork with his wife. That unassuming life imploded Sunday morning, when U.S. immigration agents bundled the retired Argentine army major into a van to face criminal charges of visa fraud and eventual deportation to his native country, where he is accused of serving as the chief interrogator at a clandestine torture facility known as La Perla during Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s and 1980s. Barreiro was among three former South American military officers suspected of war crimes whose arrests were announced yesterday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has renewed its efforts to crack down on alleged human rights violators living as fugitives in the United States.

Nashville residents push for English-first law
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nashville4apr04,1,1057009.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Immigrants have given Music City USA a new sound: foreign languages. Residents who don't like what they hear say there oughta be a law.

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Marriage and Family Issues

Head of welfare, abstinence programs resigns
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-03-horn-resignation_N.htm
Wade Horn, the Bush administration's point man for welfare reform, Head Start and abstinence education, resigned Monday as assistant secretary for children and families. In the Department of Health and Human Services, Horn oversaw a $46 billion budget and 65 programs that serve vulnerable children and families. He is best known for his work on issues embraced by social conservatives, such as more money for faith-based groups and organizations that work to help couples improve their marriage. Republicans gave some of those programs significant funding increases when they were in the majority. For example, Congress set aside for the next five years up to $100 million a year to promote marriage and $50 million a year to produce committed fathers. Similar expansions may be harder to come by with a Democratic majority.

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Health Care and Public Safety

NIH sidelines contractor in conflict inquiry
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-chemicals4apr04,1,7301304.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The National Institutes of Health has temporarily suspended a federal contractor that had been reviewing the health dangers of chemicals for the government while also working for the chemical industry.

States Revising Organ-Donation Law
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040302062.html
State legislatures are rewriting legislation governing organ donations in one of the most ambitious initiatives in at least 20 years to alleviate the chronic shortage of kidneys, livers and other body parts, an effort that some doctors and ethicists fear tilts too far toward allowing organs to be taken. Virginia, Idaho, Utah and South Dakota have already adopted a model law designed to make organ donation easier by clarifying a host of sensitive questions. An especially tricky one is how to handle unconscious patients who signed donor cards but also specified that they did not want to kept alive on life-support. Another one is what doctors should do when the family of a dying person who agreed to be a donor objects to surgeons taking their loved one's organs.

Death by no insurance?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704040052apr04,1,2642079.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Dr. Perry Klaassen lived to tell about his frightening ordeal with colon cancer. His patient did not. Same age, same state, same disease. Striking similarities, Klaassen thought when Shirley Searcy came to his clinic in Oklahoma City. It was July 2002, a year after his own diagnosis. But there was one huge difference: Klaassen had health insurance, Searcy did not. His treatment included surgery two days after diagnosis and costly new drugs. He is alive six years later despite disease that has now spread to his lungs, liver and pelvis. "I received the most efficient care possible. I was 61 years old and had good group health insurance through my workplace," he wrote in a medical journal essay that contrasts his care with that of his uninsured patient. The doctor didn't name Shirley Searcy in his March 14 article. After all he'd been through, he couldn't remember her name. But he dug for days through old medical files searching for her identity after he was interviewed by The Associated Press, hoping to shine a more powerful light on the plight of the uninsured.

Public housing kicks smoking habit
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-04-public-housing-smoking_N.htm
Tenants in some public housing complexes can no longer light up in the one place that seemed safe from smoking bans: their own homes. From California to Maine, at least 36 public housing authorities have made their apartments smoke-free, says Jim Bergman, director of the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project. Such policies are not unusual in private dwellings. The trend has accelerated in government-subsidized rentals in the past year.

Researchers try to pull the plug on biofilms
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-biofilm4apr04,1,225687.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
When he was studying for his doctorate in microbiology, Mark E. Shirtliff thought he knew a lot about bacteria. Then things got scary. He discovered that bacteria can band together into sheets called biofilms. When they do, they alter their behavior. They build complex communities, establish lines of communication and coordinate their actions. Like ants, the microbes find power in numbers. And they're nasty. "Infections that should respond to antibiotics don't," Shirtliff said. "They become 50 to 500 times more resistant." With drugs often useless against biofilms in the human body, Shirtliff is trying to turn the tables on the slippery infections. The assistant professor at the University of Maryland Dental School received $1.25 million in March from the National Institutes of Health for research into vaccines that might prevent the deadly films from forming in the first place.

Risk found by '02 hormone study challenged
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/04/risk_found_by_02_hormone_study_challenged/
A 2002 study that led millions of women to throw out their hormone pills may have overestimated the dangers of that medication to women in their 50s, new research suggests.

FDA: Ease irradiated-food rules
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704030522apr04,1,3231904.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
The government proposed Tuesday relaxing its rules on labeling of irradiated foods and suggested it may allow some products zapped with radiation to be called "pasteurized."

Nervous Owners Seek Answers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301779.html
The FDA, responsible for enforcing the safety of the food supply for pets as well as humans, has struggled with the scope of the tainted pet food issue, which began when Menu Foods reported March 16 that a number of cats and dogs that ate its foods had died and issued a recall. Since then, the FDA has been swamped with more than 10,000 complaints -- almost twice as many as it got on all topics last year. The agency, headquartered in Rockville, has assigned more than 400 employees, three field labs and 20 district offices to tracking suspect shipments, fielding phone calls and testing pet food samples, an FDA spokesman said.

Top

Economy

Stocks and Bonds: Housing Goes Up, Oil Down, Pushing Dow to Five-Week High
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301666.html
Stocks surged Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrials closing at a five-week high, as the housing market showed new-found vigor and oil prices fell to bolster investors' confidence in the economy. The Dow rose 128 points, to 12,510.30. It was the Dow's highest close since Feb. 26, the day before it plunged 416 points. The Dow is now back in positive territory for the year and 276 points below its record close of 12,786.64 on Feb. 20.

SEC Meets To Debate Accounting Provision
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301774.html
The Securities and Exchange Commission will meet today to consider easing the most contentious part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed new duties on corporate executives and accountants after a series of fraud-ridden business collapses in 2002. For five years, industry groups have complained that the law is too complex and burdensome, homing in on a provision that requires companies to assess the strength of their financial controls designed to prevent fraud and mistakes. In recent months, President Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and members of Congress have called for an overhaul that would make that provision, known as Section 404, less expensive for small and mid-size businesses.

Vermont Becomes ‘Offshore’ Insurance Haven
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04vermont.html?ref=business
At conferences of the offshore insurance industry, next to the booth for Bermuda, can often be found one promoting Vermont. While that may seem strange for a chilly, landlocked state, Vermont is an offshore haven in one very real sense: It offers American companies lucrative tax breaks through unusual insurance arrangements. “Vermont does the promotion the same way Bermuda does the promotion,” noted Andrew Barile, an insurance industry consultant.

DaimlerChrysler Confirms Chrysler Talks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040400329.html
DaimlerChrysler AG is confident a turnaround program at its Chrysler unit will return the beleaguered American brand to profitability, but Chairman Dieter Zetsche said Wednesday the automaker is in talks with unidentified potential buyers.

Fraud Suits Filed Against Tax Preparer in 4 States
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301689.html
The federal government said yesterday that it was trying to shut down more than 125 Jackson Hewitt tax-preparation stores in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina for fraud. The Justice Department accuses the franchises of bilking the government out of more than $70 million through fraudulent practices such as using phony W-2 forms, bogus deductions and fuel tax credits and false claims regarding the earned income tax credit. Jackson Hewitt Tax Services is the country's second-largest tax preparer, behind H&R Block. The franchises were either fully or partially owned by Farrukh Sohail, the Justice Department said, and involved "a pervasive and massive series of tax-fraud schemes," according to court filings.
RELATED: Tax preparation outlets targeted
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2007-04-03-tax-fraud-schemes_N.htm

Microsoft Sues Over Sales Of Student-Only Software
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301654.html
Microsoft has filed nine lawsuits since last fall against individuals and companies that it claims were involved in selling discounted Windows and Office software intended for students. Microsoft filed five of the suits Monday in federal courts in California, Nevada and Florida, alleging that the parties infringed its copyright by importing and distributing versions of Windows and Office that were not meant to be sold through the retail channel.

Russia Challenges the U.S. Monopoly on Satellite Navigation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/worldbusiness/04gps.html?ref=science
The days of their cold war may have passed, but Russia and the United States are in the midst of another battle — this one a technological fight over the United States monopoly on satellite navigation. By the end of the year, the authorities here say, the Russian space agency plans to launch eight navigation satellites that would nearly complete the country’s own system, called Glonass, for Global Navigation Satellite System. The system is expected to begin operating over Russian territory and parts of adjacent Europe and Asia, and then go global in 2009 to compete with the Global Positioning System of the United States.

Top

Worker's Rights and Corporate Accountability

One Safety Net Is Disappearing. What Will Follow?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04leonhardt.html?ref=business
Today, the United States is the only major country in the world where the private sector plays such a big role in caring for the old and the sick. But the corporate version of the welfare state is not just about retirement and health care. Another, much less obvious, piece of it is the steadily increasing pay that most workers receive over the course of their careers. All else equal, a typical worker in his early 60s makes about 50 percent more than a worker in his early 30s. This arrangement produces some enormous benefits for society. It allows Americans to enjoy ever-rising living standards over their lives and helps them pay some big expenses, like their children’s college tuition and their parents’ elder care, that start to hit in middle age. In strictly economic terms, however, paying people based on their age is a bit skewed. Sixty-year-olds are indeed more productive than 30-year-olds, studies have shown, but not 50 percent more productive. Experience isn’t quite as valuable as we might like to believe. In effect, most companies are underpaying their younger workers and overpaying their older ones. This somewhat uncomfortable fact was a big part of the extraordinary layoff announcement from Circuit City Stores last week.

India’s Edge Goes Beyond Outsourcing
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/worldbusiness/04rupee.html?ref=business
For years, most service industry jobs that were moved to countries like India were considered relatively low-skill tasks like answering customer inquiries. But that has been changing in recent years, and increasingly the jobs of Western white-collar elites in fields as diverse as investment banking, aircraft engineering and pharmaceutical research have begun flowing to India and a few other developing countries.

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Housing and Homelessness

Moderate-Income Home Buyers Hit by Predatory Lenders
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301861.html
One in 30 homeowners in Philadelphia has been hurt by predatory lenders who target people who live in moderate-income neighborhoods and whose homes are often their only asset, illustrating a problem that's captured the attention of federal and local legislators throughout the country. The study by the Reinvestment Fund, a community-development group in Philadelphia, analyzed the sales and mortgage histories of 15,500 Philadelphia properties to discern patterns of predatory lending practices, which generally impose excessive or unnecessary rates and fees, often on unwitting borrowers, many of them minorities. The study is to be released today. "The same kind of lending practices have taken place in many different parts of the country," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, who has reviewed the Philadelphia study.

Caught in the subprime lending pinch
http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2007/04/04/caught_in_the_subprime_lending_pinch/
In past booms, people with poor credit scores, large debts, or modest incomes would have been shut out of the action. But in recent years, a new breed of mortgage company, the subprime lender, exploded onto the scene. Rather than deny loans to people with less-than-stellar credit, subprime lenders charge higher interest rates to compensate for the risks associated with the loan. The subprime market -- which grew from nothing to a $600 billion-a-year business in 2006 -- brought the American Dream to a larger slice of the population than ever before. But the price, for many, was too high.

Top

Media

Congress Nudges an FCC on Hold
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301652.html
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) scolded the five members of the Federal Communications Commission when he finally got them before a powerful subcommittee last month. The FCC botched handling of cable television franchising, racked up a backlog of unanswered consumer complaints, and dallied on various disputes between industry rivals with little oversight from the previous Republican-controlled Congress in recent years, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said in the March 14 hearing.

On the future, dealmaking and bad press
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704030898apr04,1,2375351.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Sam Zell, the open-collared Chicago billionaire who is set to take control of the buttoned-down Tribune Co., surveyed the stately office of legendary Tribune figure Col. Robert R. McCormick and signaled that a new era is at hand.

Journalist freed after record time in jail
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-03-jailed-journalist_N.htm
A freelance videographer walked out of federal prison Tuesday after spending more time behind bars than any other journalist for refusing to testify to a grand jury. Joshua Wolf, 24, in a deal with prosecutors, posted online the unaired videotape that he had refused to give federal authorities, defense lawyer David Greene said. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who had jailed Wolf for 226 days, had approved his release earlier in the day. "Joshua Wolf has complied with the grand jury subpoena," prosecutor Jeffrey Finigan said in court papers filed Tuesday.

Top

Education

Some see scans for lunch as taste of Big Brother
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/04/some_see_scans_for_lunch_as_taste_of_big_brother/
Taunton [Mass.] schools this spring could become the first in Massachusetts to have students pay for lunch by scanning their fingerprints, a plan that is triggering an uproar among parents and ACLU officials worried about privacy and possible identity theft.

California: Tentative Deal at University System
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/education/04brfs-TENTATIVEDEA_BRF.html
Faculty members in the California State University system postponed strike plans after tentatively settling a two-year contract dispute. The union representing the 23,000-member faculty of the nation’s largest public university system will vote on the deal in the next few weeks, said John Travis, president of the California Faculty Association. Salaries had been the main sticking point, and the deal includes a 21 percent raise over four years, with some faculty members eligible for raises exceeding 31 percent. “This agreement strikes a realistic balance between providing deserved raises to our faculty and our limited financial resources,” said the system’s chancellor, Charles Reed. Faculty members had threatened to begin a series of two-day strikes on the system’s campuses across the state starting next week if an agreement was not reached.

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Military

5 deaths at L.A. VA facility prompt probe
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-va4apr04,0,3336421.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is looking into an unusual series of deaths — five in three months — among men in residential rehabilitation programs or emergency housing at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, officials said. The deaths include that of Iraq war veteran Justin Bailey, 27, whose apparent prescription-medicine overdose Jan. 26 was the subject of a Times story last month. "Obviously, these problems go beyond Walter Reed," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), at a hearing in Los Angeles on Monday with Rep. Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Harmon was referring to the national furor over the poor treatment and squalid conditions experienced by some outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Navy rape case stalls on jury selection
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navy4apr04,1,6063031.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The court-martial of a former Naval Academy football player accused of sexually assaulting two female midshipmen stalled before it started Tuesday after all five new prospective jurors were deemed unfit to join the four military officers who made it through the screening process Monday. Before the trial of Kenny Ray Morrison, 24, can get underway, the judge and lawyers today will have to screen a third pool of jury candidates in hopes of acquiring a fifth member. Four of the five who came to the courtroom in the Washington Navy Yard were eliminated after they told a military judge they would be inclined to kick Morrison out of the Navy if he was found guilty, even if they were given other instructions at the time of deliberations.

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Energy Policy

Oil — Venezuela's lifeblood — is also a political flashpoint
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2007-04-04-venezuela-1b-usat_N.htm
Venezuela — Hugo Chavez vs. Big Oil. Now there's a showdown without an obvious crowd favorite. The notoriously anti-American president of Venezuela started this fight by tearing up his contracts with four oil industry partnerships, demanding they convert the government's minority stakes into majority control. The oil majors developing the projects, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, fume about having their deep pockets picked, but they don't have much choice. If they can't agree on financial terms by June 26, Chavez could always order the army to seize the oil fields.

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Environment and Conservation

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?ref=us
A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.

Warming Thins Herd for Canada's Seal Hunt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301754.html
Hunters and animal rights activists face off on the ice this week as Canada's annual seal hunt begins, but a succession of unusually warm winters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence already has drowned thousands of the animals. Canadian authorities reduced the quotas on the harp seal hunt by about 20 percent after overflights showed large numbers of seal pups were lost to thin and melting ice in the lower part of the gulf, off Prince Edward Island. "We don't know if it's weather or climate. But we have seen a trend in the ice conditions in the last four or five years," said Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. "The pups can't swim for very long. They need stable ice. If the ice deteriorates underneath them, they drown."

Top

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.

Ignatius: Back to Baker-Hamilton
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301436.html
Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who is a one-man bipartisan commission, recently suggested a simple test for evaluating political leaders. The best choice, he told a Washington gathering, is the person who can build consensus around difficult policy issues. By that measure, we are seeing a long list of would-be dividers but not many leaders. The United States is losing a war in Iraq, yet instead of uniting around a policy that could reduce the damage and create a sustainable strategy for the future, Congress and the White House are on a collision course over funding for the troops.
RELATED: More Than a Feeling
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds1.html

The speaker goes to Syria
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-pelosi04apr04,0,5707436.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail
IN CRITICIZING Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) for a high-profile visit to Syria, President Bush may well have hoped to score political points against the speaker of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Instead, he only succeeded in showing his own lack of imagination when it comes to Middle East foreign policy. Bush said at a news conference Tuesday that "photo opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they're part of the mainstream of the international community when, in fact, they're a state sponsor of terror." Although a Pelosi-Assad meeting runs the risk of ratcheting up the regime's respectability, meetings between members of Congress and heads of state — even unfriendly states — are not out of the ordinary. A more savvy administration would use them to its advantage. Just last December, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) visited Assad without getting called out by the president at a news conference. Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich traveled to Bosnia amid widespread Republican opposition to Clinton administration policy there. Three Republican House members met with Assad on Sunday.

Spectacle at Guantanamo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301634.html
THE SUPREME Court's decision not to consider, for now, the denial of appeal rights for foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, when combined with the results of the first criminal case held there, vividly demonstrates the folly of the legal scheme for detainees that Congress hastily approved last year. David Hicks, the 31-year-old Australian who was the first person to be brought before the special military commissions Congress sanctioned, escaped with a plea bargain that will free him after he serves nine more months in an Australian prison. Mr. Hicks pleaded guilty last week to a terrorism charge; a prosecutor described him as "an enemy" who was "trying to kill Americans." Yet while Mr. Hicks goes home, nearly 300 Guantanamo inmates who almost certainly will never be charged with any crime continue to face indefinite detention, without the right to challenge their imprisonment under the ancient right of habeas corpus.

Britain's grace under pressure
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/04/britains_grace_under_pressure/
For its part, the British government has kept its balance in an exemplary manner while walking a diplomatic tightrope. British officials have properly refused to apologize for doing anything wrong, but have made it clear they want to avoid an escalation that might play into the hands of hard-liners in Tehran or Washington. (Although there are longstanding disputes between Iran and Iraq about their territorial rights in the Persian Gulf where the British were seized, there is no excuse for Iran to hold the British sailors as though they had committed aggression against Iran.) Thus far, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has maintained the right mix of resolve and restraint. Unlike the US, Britain maintains an embassy in Tehran, and officials there are quietly trying to negotiate the sailors' release.

Justice for our lungs
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/04/04/0404edepa.html
The U.S. Supreme Court this week issued a pair of rulings that seem banal at first glance. It is hoped, however, that both decisions will pressure our nation's leaders to address the threat of global warming and enhance enforcement of federal clean air laws. The first of those decisions dealt with a seemingly straightforward proposition: Whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to perform its mandated role to, you know, actually protect the environment.
RELATED: Jackson: One of the greatest rulings on earth
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/04/one_of_the_greatest_rulings_on_earth/

Clarke, Cressey: How the FBI failed us -- and how we can fix it
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/04/how_the_fbi_failed_us____and_how_we_can_fix_it/
NOW WE KNOW why the government failed to stop 9/11. Embattled FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee last week that what prevented his agency from halting the attack was its inability to issue warrant-less search orders with the profligacy of a parking ticket officer. If only it had the currently available unfettered "national security letter" authority to run through personal information data bases without judicial oversight, Mueller suggested, the FBI would have found 9/11 terrorist Khalid al Midhar and through him the other Al Qaeda conspirators. Really? Midhar was one of the 9/11 terrorists. When he entered the United States, the CIA knew it and knew he was an Al Qaeda terrorist. An FBI agent at the CIA knew he was in the country. Months later FBI headquarters was told, but the agents working the case never told the FBI leadership or the White House. So what does Mueller want us to believe now, that when the CIA finally told the FBI that Midhar was in the United States that it was the bureau's difficulty in getting a warrant on a known Al Qaeda terrorist that was responsible for its failure to find him?

Marcus: Fox-in-the-Henhouse Government
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301576.html
The Bush administration's House of Straw seems to be blowing apart, buffeted by alternating gusts of scandal and incompetence. The tornado of disastrous headlines -- a Pentagon that can't take proper care of its wounded, a Justice Department that can't be trusted to follow the law or tell the truth to Congress, a top White House aide who lied to a grand jury-- has been so overpowering that the day-to-day outrages of life in the Bush administration tend get overlooked.

Barber: Overselling capitalism
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-barber04apr04,0,2369682.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
THE CRISIS IN subprime mortgages betrays a deeper predicament facing consumer capitalism triumphant: The "Protestant ethos" of hard work and deferred gratification has been replaced by an infantilist ethos of easy credit and impulsive consumption that puts democracy and the market system at risk.
RELATED: It Didn’t End Well Last Time
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds2.html

Page: A 'net-roots'civil rights revolution
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704030527apr04,0,5992416.column?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
A 14-year-old black girl from tiny Paris, Texas, was sent to a youth prison by a judge for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school. That same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation for burning down her family's house. Bigger offense, lighter sentence, lighter skin: the ingredients of injustice. That's how it sounded to my friend and colleague Howard Witt, the Chicago Tribune's Houston-based southwest bureau chief. He heard about the girl from Gary Bledsoe, an Austin, Texas, attorney who is president of the Texas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated," Witt said that Bledsoe told him. Witt pursued the story. His March 12 Tribune article hit the Internet like a slap heard round the world. It was picked up by more than 300 blogs and thousands of message boards, many of them geared to black community issues. The story also prompted a nationwide letter-writing campaign to the Texas governor and expressions of outrage from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists. Saturday, the black teen, Shaquanda Cotton, walked out of juvenile prison, released early after serving a year of her sentence. The Texas Youth Commission ordered her immediate release after learning that prison authorities had extended her sentence after finding "contraband" in her cell -- an extra pair of socks.

Shackles on the AIDS Program
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds3.html
An expert committee has found that the Bush administration’s ambitious program to combat AIDS abroad is off to a good start but warns that restrictions imposed by Congress or by the administration are hampering efforts to slow the spread of the epidemic. These inflexible barriers are often imposed for ideological, not health reasons.

Meyerson: In Fear Of Chinese Democracy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301437.html
Listen to the apostles of free trade, and you'll learn that once consumer choice comes to authoritarian regimes, democracy is sure to follow. Call it the Starbucks rule: Situate enough Starbucks around Shanghai, and the Communist Party's control will crumble like dunked biscotti. As a theory of revolution, the Starbucks rule leaves a lot to be desired. Shanghai is swimming in Starbucks, yet, as James Mann notes in "The China Fantasy," his new book on the non-democratization of China, the regime soldiers on. Conversely, the American farmers who made our revolution didn't have much in the way of consumer choice, yet they managed to free themselves from the British. In New England, however, they did have town meetings, which may be a surer guide to the coming of democratic change. It's a growing civil society -- a sphere where people can deliberate and decide on more than their coffee -- that more characteristically sounds the death knell of dictatorships. Which is why the conduct of America's corporate titans in China is so disquieting.

Borwnstein: Super-sized rush to decide '08
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brownstein4apr04,0,4686650.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
WHEN John Edwards held a town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire here Monday night, the line started forming more than two hours before he was due to arrive. By the time the doors opened at 6:30, the line stretched down the hall, around a bend, past a student dining room, down a stairway and through another long hallway before finally expiring against the doorway of an exit from the building. Standing near the back, Jim Allmendinger, a lawyer from Stratford, marveled at the throng around him. The last time Allmendinger saw Edwards was days before the 2004 New Hampshire primary, at a restaurant, where maybe 75 people turned out. "You could go up and talk to him," Allmendinger recalled. Now he thought he would be lucky even to get in the same room with Edwards.

Parker: Ignore them, and be spared the drama
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704030525apr04,0,5205982.column?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
Now would seem a good time for all good Catholics to calm down. Some are making life difficult for those of us who insist that religious folks in this country are relatively sane and civilized about their beliefs and supportive of the principles, including free expression, that allow us to worship (or not) as we please. Especially problematic are those who've reportedly made death threats recently to express disapproval of the now infamous, anatomically correct chocolate Jesus. Death threats? Isn't that what outraged Muslims do when cartoons hurt their feelings? I guess all God's children got guns.

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