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Prosecutor flagged by US terror watch list The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them. Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year. "I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it." He added: "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced."....
Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents. Production of the first capsule -- consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft -- has already begun. Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money. Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror....
Gun Debate Is Hardly Over The Supreme Court may have confirmed that Americans have the right to own guns for protection, but the gun debate is hardly over. The District of Columbia, whose handgun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court, is still planning on banning most handguns. And the court decision has spurred the media into overdrive to paint guns as dangerous to their owners. No one who has taken even a quick glance at the crime data can seriously argue that the D.C. gun ban lowered murder or violent crime rates. The concerns being raised are not the threat from criminals, but that guns pose a risk to their owners. In particular, buying a gun and having it in your home is said to increase the likelihood of suicide. Mike Stobbe for the Associated Press emphasized the problem by pointing out that the majority of gun deaths are suicides. He also noticed that Supreme Court Justice Breyer mentioned his concerns about gun suicides 14 times in his dissent. By contrast, he mentioned accidental gun deaths only three times. That is not surprising, given that the accidental death rate from guns is so low not only absolutely but in comparison to other common household items. A nationally syndicated article by Shankar Vedantam, a Washington Post columnist, has a similar concern. Vedantam points to a 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that claims that after examining data from 1968 to 1987, “the gun ban correlated with an abrupt 25 percent decline in suicides in the city” and that the “decline was entirely driven by a decline in firearm-related suicide.” Yes, suicides did indeed decline after the ban. However, it is unlikely to have much to do with banning guns as non-gun suicides fell even slightly faster than gun suicides (see the graph) (pdf). If the gun ban caused the drop in suicides, why would the non-gun suicide rate fall at least as much as the gun suicide rate? A far more likely explanation is that something else was changing and causing people to not want to commit suicide, no matter what method they might consider. Yet, the D.C. experience isn’t unique. The National Academy of Sciences released a 2004 report that comprehensively reviewed academic research studying guns and suicide. The panel set up under the Clinton administration surveyed the extensive literature from public health, economics and criminology. The Academy concluded that "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.”....
DC Rejects Heller's Handgun Application District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected. Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit. But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns....
Opponents promise challenge of new D.C. gun law The doors opened Thursday to post-handgun ban era here, with gun rights advocates vowing another legal challenge to the city's newly approved gun control law. Less than a month after the Supreme Court overturned the city's 32-year-old handgun ban — the most restrictive in the nation — the same litigant in the landmark case appeared at police headquarters and said he likely would wage a new fight. Dick Heller, whose legal challenge prompted the Supreme Court ruling, said he would challenge new city regulations that continue to ban District residents from owning semi-automatic weapons. "The city still does not yet understand the decision of the Supreme Court," Heller said from the steps of police headquarters. "We have been denied again." Dane von Breichenruchardt, president of the Bill of Rights Foundation, said the city was attempting to make gun ownership as "difficult and restrictive as possible." "We're going to be back in court. There is no doubt about that," he said. The permits require every gun owner to pass a written test and vision exam, submit the weapons for ballistic testing and offer proof of residency. The provisions still rank as some of the toughest in the nation. But perhaps the most controversial aspect of the law, gun rights advocates say, mandates that gun owners keep their weapons unloaded, disassembled or secured with trigger locks, unless they face a "threat of immediate harm." The National Rifle Association has signaled it also will challenge the new D.C. regulation, describing the law as extreme and in "complete defiance of the Supreme Court's decision."....
Take Your Paws off the Presidency! Suppose the worst happens, and the next terrorist attack hits Washington hard, taking out the president and the vice president. What happens next? New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president "established a means of re-creating the executive branch." Reagan's order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes. Does a similar order exist today? We aren't told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret "doomsday" exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out. Congress last considered the problem of a dual vacancy in the presidency and the vice presidency when Harry Truman was in the White House. In the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, lawmakers stipulated that if both positions are empty, power passes first to the Speaker of the House or, if she, too, does not survive, to the president pro tem of the Senate. But relying on James Mann's earlier book Rise of the Vulcans, Mayer reports that Reagan "amended the process for speed and clarity … without informing Congress that it had been sidestepped." We don't know how. But if the order bypasses the speaker and the Senate president pro tempore in favor of an official in the executive branch, we have a recipe for a constitutional crisis....
Congress, Bush clash on control of spy secrets The House on Wednesday passed legislation governing next year's intelligence budget that demands lawmakers be given greater access to the nation's most closely held secrets. The bill is the latest attempt by Democrats, struggling to challenge President Bush on major national security issues, to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray. Lawmakers complain that the Bush administration left most of them out of the loop on highly classified — and controversial — matters, including creation and destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The bill, which passed on a voice vote, would block two-thirds of the federal covert operations budget until each member of the congressional intelligence committees is briefed on all secret operations underway. Panel members also would be granted access to any other details necessary to assess the value of intelligence operations. The White House has threatened to veto the bill because it says it would go too far and infringe upon the president's right to protect intelligence....
More border states plan to ease travel with enhanced licenses A growing number of states on the borders with Canada and Mexico are establishing or considering enhanced driver's licenses designed to give residents a more convenient identification option for border crossings. In February, Washington became the first state to establish the new licenses. To receive a license labeled "enhanced," applicants are required to show proof of U.S. citizenship in addition to the other identification documents required for obtaining traditional licenses. Since then, 21,000 Washington residents have received the licenses, which allow them to get back into the USA through any border crossing or seaport without a passport, according to Department of Licensing spokeswoman Gigi Zenk. New York and Vermont will follow in coming months. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed the idea for residents there, and Michigan is working toward a plan. The move toward enhanced driver's licenses in states bordering Canada and Mexico is being driven by the federal Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. In June 2009, the initiative will begin requiring U.S. citizens to have a proof-of-citizenship document, passport or some other federally approved identification for getting into the country through land or sea ports, said Kathy Kraninger, the Department of Homeland Security's deputy assistant secretary for policy.
TSA launches leak investigation Federal officers charged with keeping terrorists off planes are now searching their own ranks for staff who told CNN that few flights were protected by air marshals. The Transportation Security Administration rejected as a "myth" CNN's report that less than 1 percent of the nation's daily flights carry armed federal air marshals. Now the agency is conducting an investigation into who talked to CNN and who encouraged other agents to do the same. A spokesman for the TSA confirmed the investigation. Spokesman Christopher White said a TSA investigator is looking into the "possible unauthorized release of sensitive and classified information to the news media by covered parties." "As part of this ongoing investigation, several individuals, both current and former employees, have been contacted as is typical in any investigation," he said in an e-mail to CNN. CNN spoke to more than a dozen current and former air marshals, pilots and federal law enforcement officials for the report, which aired in March on "Anderson Cooper 360º." Repeatedly, the sources told CNN that as few as 280 of an estimated 28,000 daily flights had armed federal air marshals aboard. That amounts to less than 1 percent....
Mexico drug traffickers make car bombs Mexican drug traffickers have built makeshift car bombs to attack police, troops and rival smugglers as the country's drugs war turns increasingly violent, police said. Soldiers found two car bombs in a safe house in the city of Culiacan in western Mexico on Monday. One car was packed with cans of gasoline and another stuffed with canisters of gas, police said. Both devices were wired to be detonated by cell phones, said a police official in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is home to one of Mexico's biggest trafficking cartels. "We believe these two car bombs were being designed to harm the military, the police and rivals," the official said on Wednesday. He declined to be named. Any use of car bombs would be an escalation of Mexico's brutal drug war that has killed more than 4,200 people since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military-backed assault on drug cartels....
Court seeks to stay US executions The US has been advised not to execute five Mexican nationals on death row by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ - the UN's highest court - had previously ruled that the men had been denied the right to help from their consulate after their arrests. A 2005 ruling by President George W Bush that the cases should be reviewed was overturned by the US Supreme Court. But the Hague-based court told the US it should not execute the men before it made its final judgement. In a majority ruling, the ICJ said the US should "take all measures necessary to ensure (they) are not executed pending judgment... unless and until these five Mexican nationals receive review and reconsideration (of their sentences)". Mexico welcomed the ruling. Jorge Lomonaco Tonda, representing Mexico at the court, said: "The Mexican government is satisfied with the ruling of the court... we have full confidence that the ruling will be applied."....
New Camera Issues Tire Tread Tickets Now that speed cameras use is established in Europe and parts of the US, the concept of automated ticketing is beginning to expand far beyond moving violations. Already, automated ticketing machines are deployed in the US to hit vehicles that overstay in a parking spot by a minute or that have excessive tailpipe emissions. The newest addition to this growing list is camera that scans the tires of passing cars and mails tickets if the depth of the tire tread is deficient by a fraction of an inch. Although not currently deployed, the German company ProContour hopes to sell this system to state and local governments looking for a way out of tight budget situations with a positive, pro-safety message. "Car tires are technically, the number one cause of car accidents in Germany," ProContour states on its website. "An average of four car accidents occur daily with personal injuries as the result of smooth or defective tires."....