Makers of "Syriana" deny plagiarism in French court

The makers of the US geopolitical thriller movie "Syriana" denied in a Paris court a claim that they had stolen the idea from a French writer.

Warner Brothers and actor George Clooney's production company Section Eight are being sued by Stephanie Vergniault who claims "Syriana" is based on a script which she wrote in 2004.

She is claiming two million euros (2.55 million dollars) and 35 percent of receipts.

But lawyers for the film-makers told the court that the two works bore no similarity, and that filming of "Syriana" was already well advanced by the time they supposedly became aware of Vergniault's script.

Directed by Stephen Gaghan, "Syriana" is about Middle Eastern oil, US politics and international finance. It opened in the United States in November.

The court is to rule in the plagiarism suit on June 19.

Is GOP losing grip on power?

By Salena Zito

For the Republican Party, 1994 is the year that was.

The "Republican Revolution" that year gave the GOP its first taste in more than 40 years of being the majority party in both houses of Congress. On that one election day, Republicans gained 54 seats in the House, 8 in the Senate and 12 in governors' mansions around the country.

Now, 12 years later, Republican power -- majorities of 10 seats in the Senate and 20 in the House -- could unravel, or at least begin to, with this year's elections. Already, Pennsylvania's primary showed an anti-Republican incumbent mood. Of 17 incumbent state legislators who lost, 13 were Republicans, including the party's two top state senators.

Polls show that for the first time since 1994, Americans have more faith in Democrats than in Republicans to govern and to guarantee national security. If that attitude persists through the November general elections, Republican power could decline.

"If everything goes bad, Republicans could lose three or four Senate seats and 10 to 20 House seats," said former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, a native Pennsylvanian from a small town near Harrisburg who later served as a House member from Georgia, was the principal architect of the "Contract with America," a policy declaration that propelled Republicans to victory in 1994. Eight years after retiring from the House, he has become the conservative movement's surrogate spokesman for the party.

Is it possible for Democrats to win control of the House?

"Barely," Gingrich said. "They might win a very narrow majority. It is more likely that the Democrats will gain some seats, but Republicans will retain control of both the House and Senate."

He believes Democrats will "focus on being negative and obstructionist, and then they will try to wear a mask of being moderate, even though their leadership is the most left-wing in history."

The Democrats' Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, says his party offers a lot more than negativity.

"The American people are tired of Republican incompetence, they're tired of a Congress that just rubber-stamps President Bush's failed policies," Reid said.

Long-time Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, of Delaware, says Democrats must "come forward with real ideas -- but it is up to the individual candidate to do that, not the party."

Biden says his party must send an affirmative message, and spell out "who is going to protect you better, who is going to solve the energy crisis and who is better to handle escalating health care costs.

"They are the big national issues."

It's important for Democrats to make clear where the party stands on Iraq, Biden said.

"People don't want to hear what went wrong (in Iraq); they already know that things are not going well," he said. "They want to hear, what we are going to do about it?"

Dick Morris, a Fox News political analyst and former Clinton strategist who created campaign messages for Democrats, believes the party that delivers a message and gets out the vote will win the mid-term elections. Republicans kept control in the 2004 elections, Morris said, because of concern about terrorism.

"As that fear fades, which it shouldn't, voters turn to issues which are primarily Democratic historically -- energy, climate change, environment, health care and Social Security," he said.

"Republicans need to take over some of these issues with bold presidential leadership. Look how Bush took away the education issue in 2000, and Clinton used gun control and 100,000 extra cops to take the crime issue" in 1996.

Morris says Republicans have been weakened by the immigration debate, giving an impression that they are confused and divided, much like the Democrats in 1994.

"The Republican Party has worked itself out of a job -- terrorism is at bay, taxes are cut, crime is way down, communism is gone -- all of the GOP issues have gone away because of their own success," he said. "I think that the Democratic trend will continue."

He ticks off a list of possibly vulnerable Republican senators -- Rick Santorum of Penn Hills, Ohio's Mike DeWine, Missouri's Jim Talent and Montana's Conrad Burns.

If those Republicans fall in November, he said, Democrats will "most likely win" Congress and the White House in 2008.

Democratic strategist Steve McMahon sees potential gains for Democrats if they stick to concerns that hit home.

"The domestic gas price issue eclipses every issue," said McMahon, a regular political commentator on Fox News and CNN. "It is going to drown out everything else; there is no relief in sight for the GOP on this issue."

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said his party is "making progress on our goals" to reverse the decline.

In February, fellow Republicans elected Boehner -- an original member of the "Gang of Seven" conservative, first-term Republicans who preceded the 1994 sweeps -- as House majority leader, replacing the king of gerrymandering, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

"November's a long way away," Boehner said, and "our job between now and then is to act on the issues Americans want us to act on."

What voters should remember is that "replacing one party with the other only changes the priority of programs on which the government spends money," said John McIntyre, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, a political Web site that condenses Beltway commentary.

McIntyre believes one problem Republicans have is the "inability to control spending, undercutting their tax-cut message. That gives the Democrats leverage to claim that increased spending is tied to power."

GOP strategists David Carney, in Washington, and Kent Gates, a former Pennsylvanian now in San Diego, said Republicans have the upper hand on one crucial factor in November: a comprehensive, get-out-the-vote machine that traditionally has done a superior job to the Democratic machine. The party's challenge is to excite its base enough so that those voters show up.

The best way to do that is to "remind voters what will happen if Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy are running Congress," Gates said.

"Republicans need to promote a more populist agenda and appeal to the middle-class angst about high gas prices and stagnant-to-declining disposable income. High gas prices, in a peculiar way, are a great opportunity for Republicans to win back a populist message."

If GOP icon Teddy Roosevelt were alive, he "would go after big-oil profits, eliminate the gas tax and promote alternative fuels -- a lesson for today's Republican leaders," Gates said.

Carney agrees, but takes that a step further: "From fiscal restraint to values, to security issues, we could easily retake the offensive -- but we need the national party leaders to begin to communicate their intent on these important middle-class issues."

Yet Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., makes clear his party understands the importance of those efforts, too. The former Clinton policy point-man, now chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said "much is at stake for both parties."

Both parties are going to concentrate on raising money, tightening their agendas and energizing their base to get out the vote, he said.

Schwarzenegger: 'No' to Gay Textbook Bill

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto legislation that would require California textbooks to contain information about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in American history, according to a spokesman.

The bill, which has already been passed by the Senate and awaits a vote in the Assembly, seeks to recognize "the contributions of the LGBT community in the social science curriculum in the same way the state has come to recognize the achievements of women and minorities,” the Sacramento Bee reports.

But Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn told the Bee: "The governor believes that school curriculum should include all important historical figures, regardless of orientation. However, he does not support the legislature micromanaging curriculum.”

Schwarzenegger earlier angered gay activists by vetoing a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.

The textbook bill was introduced by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat from Los Angeles, who argued: "Silence and biased messages about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people only promotes negative stereotypes and this, in turn, can lead to discrimination, harassment and violence.”

But Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, says the legislation is "a deceptively written bill that would do tremendous harm to our children.

"The core of the bill is an absolute mandate requiring all textbooks, all instructional materials and all school-sponsored activities to positively portray transsexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals as role models for children as young as kindergarten.”

Despite the statement from Schwarzenegger’s spokesman, Kuehl said she is not prepared to accept that the governor intends to veto the legislation if it passes the Assembly.

"He hasn’t made up his mind,” she told the Bee. "I don’t care what some underling might have said.”

Kuehl, 61, played Zelda on the 1959-1963 TV show "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and is the first openly gay lawmaker elected in California.

Legal immigrants show other side of system

Working with illegal immigrants every day in a suburban Atlanta bank, Carlos Carbonell knows exactly where to go to buy a fake green card for his wife. Sometimes he thinks it would be much easier.

His wife, Valentina, has been stuck in their native Caracas, Venezuela, for four years because of backlogs in processing her green card application.

Carbonell believes in reforming U.S. immigration policy, but he and other legal immigrants who have been playing by the rules feel forgotten in the debate over possible amnesty for most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally.

"They are putting as a priority illegal immigration, and legal immigrants are left out of the loop. It's the curse of doing things right," he said. "They think that the legal ones can wait — hey!"

Even though they have loyalty to their immigrant origins, many legal immigrants also feel a twinge of resentment toward others who have broken the law, and they fear illegal migrants could complicate their own quest for citizenship.

Will the already backlogged system gridlock because of a surge in applications from illegal immigrants? Will those who jumped the Rio Grande jump in the line ahead of those who have spent an average of $10,000 and five years waiting to be granted permanent residency? Will legal immigrants feel the backlash from those who resent immigration without making status distinctions?

Commuting to his home in suburban Bethesda, Md., Francisco Gonzalez passes scores of busy Latino construction workers, most likely illegal immigrants from his native Mexico. To the 36-year-old Latin American studies professor at John Hopkins University in Washington, those immigrants' presence is at once a humanitarian crisis to solve and a real threat to his own ability to stay in the country.

"Our morals are on the side of the illegals. The paradox is that if they're legalized, the line of 8 millions will become 20 millions, and the green card, they're going to give it to me when I'm ready to retire," Gonzalez said.

Depending on where applicants are from and whether they seek green cards based on employment, family or asylum, the wait can last more than a decade for the document, which allows an immigrant to stay in the U.S. permanently.

As of March, more than 754,000 green card applications were pending, including more than 180,000 that had been in process for more than six months and others that have been "shelved" because no visas are available for that category, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Chris Bentley.

Despite President Bush's reassurance that illegal immigrants applying for citizenship would "have to wait in line behind" the legal ones, many immigrants worry that lawmakers will favor those who have more political clout.

Gonzalez and his British wife, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, are expecting their first child in September. Both want green cards. Gonzalez has to renew his temporary visa every year and is always terrified he will not be allowed to stay.

Many immigrants, knowing firsthand how difficult and expensive the immigration process is, see it as unrealistic for unskilled, uneducated workers. This "class bias" pushes many unskilled workers to come illegally, said Louis DeSipio, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

But the expense and uncertainty of the system also threaten many highly qualified professionals, spurring high-tech companies, universities and attorneys to lobby for a cheaper, quicker legal immigration system, lest the U.S. lose its global competitive edge.

"Every CEO needs to contact their elected representatives and say we need more visas or a workable guest-worker program," said Anton Mertens, an Atlanta immigration attorney who immigrated from Belgium and represents employers from across the country.

A small but vocal group of Latin American and other immigrants want to restrict all immigration, including many of the provisions that allowed them or their parents to move to the U.S.

"We should reduce legal immigration to the level so it's not a strain on energy and the infrastructure. Why shouldn't China take care of the Chinese?" said Ling-Ling Yeh, a Chinese woman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1980 and later founded the Oakland, Calif.-based Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America.

Lupe Moreno's father came from Mexico during a World War II guest-worker program, but she now resents being surrounded by Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants in her Santa Ana, Calif., neighborhood. She founded a group called Latino-Americans for Immigration Reform.

"We've been more than generous with everybody. Now we need to take control," she said.

Technology Has Uneven Record on Securing Border

By Spencer S. Hsu and John Pomfret

Applying lessons the U.S. military has learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration is embarking on a multibillion-dollar bid to help secure the U.S.-Mexican border with surveillance technology -- a strategy that veterans of conflicts abroad say will be more difficult than it appears.

One component of the Strategic Border Initiative provides the technological underpinning for the bold prediction by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that the United States will gain control of the Mexican border and the Canadian border in as little as three years.

The plan envisions satellites, manned and unmanned aircraft, ground sensors and cameras tied to a computerized dispatch system that would alert Border Patrol units. "We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history," President Bush said in his address to the nation Monday.

Skeptics contend that the Department of Homeland Security's record of applying technology is abysmal. Industry analysts say that an initial $2 billion private-sector estimate is low. And by allowing the winning bidder to determine the technology and personnel needed to detect, catch, process and remove illegal immigrants, experts say, the plan ensures a big payday for contractors, whatever the outcome.

"If the military could seal a 6,000-mile border for $2 billion, Iraq's borders would have been sealed two years ago," said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank.

SBInet, part of the border initiative, will dictate the government's long-term presence. Bush's push for a guest-worker program is grounded in the premise that conventional "enforcement alone will not do the job."

By reducing demand for immigrant labor, beefing up the Border Patrol and deploying next-generation technology to catch illegal border crossers, the administration plan "assumes operational control within . . . three to five years," Chertoff told Congress last month.

To supporters such as Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds homeland security, the Pentagon already possesses the necessary technology.

"It's complex, but it doesn't have to be invented. It hardly even has to be modified," Gregg said. "It's really just a question of will -- and dollars."

On the ground, early results of the government's multibillion-dollar wager to plug the porous border already are on display.

In far southwestern Arizona, U.S. Customs agents, the Border Patrol and the National Guard patrol 120 miles of forbidding desert from a communications room filled with computer workstations and lined with 25 flat-screen televisions on the wall.

The Border Patrol installed 25 fixed cameras over favored smuggling routes in the sector in recent years. More than 100 sensors lie buried in the ground. Seismic sensors alert at the movement of large numbers of people. Infrared sensors pick up heat signatures of people and objects, and magnetic sensors detect vehicles.

Agents also point to what they call the "skybox" -- a 25-square-foot room 30 feet above the border on a hydraulic jack, with top-of-the-line night-vision equipment. Agents say it's claustrophobic but has one redeeming virtue -- air conditioning.

Overhead, the border agencies use blimps, unmanned aircraft, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

"We are starting to see substantial improvements," said Chris Van Wagenen, a senior patrol agent assigned to Yuma, Ariz. "Now we've got sensors, cameras. We've doubled our manpower in a year, but we still need more."

Bush has budgeted $100 million this year for SBInet. But Chertoff's department declined to estimate how much the three-to-six-year contract ultimately will cost. Industry analysts expect at least $2 billion in spending -- and possibly much more over a longer period, based on the history of overruns in major Homeland Security technology programs.

By turning to contractors such as Boeing, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to design the workings of the system, SBInet also marks a government reliance on private-sector partners to carry out missions without a clear idea of what the network will look like, according to experts and immigration officials.

"SBInet represents a potential bonanza" for tens if not hundreds of companies, said John Slye, senior analyst of federal opportunities for Input, a Reston-based federal contracting consulting firm. The project is the most anticipated single civilian information technology contract since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said.

Skeptics in Congress cite a decade of frustration at the border.

Because of poor management, two failed border technology programs have cost taxpayers $429 million since 1998, the Homeland Security inspector general reported in December. Nearly half of 489 remote video surveillance sites planned for the border in the past eight years were never installed. Sixty percent of sensor alerts are never investigated, 90 percent of the rest are false alarms and only 1 percent overall result in arrests.

A 10-year, $10 billion system to automate border entry and exit data, US-VISIT, has yet to test security and privacy controls in its seventh year, congressional auditors reported.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), top Democrat on the homeland security committee, called the plan to solicit bids by May 30, pick a single winner and start to deploy by September "unrealistic" and filled with "too many questions."

"How is 'SBI' not just another three-letter acronym for failure?" Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee, asked at a hearing last month.

Chertoff deputy Michael P. Jackson said government is not the best judge of innovation in rapidly evolving technology and will benefit from the nimbleness of the private sector while conducting disciplined oversight.

"We are not buying a pig in a poke. . . . We don't have to buy everything they sell," said Jackson, former head of a division at Lockheed Martin.

In Arizona, agents say cameras are mainly limited to populated areas because other parts of the border, where most illegal crossings occur, do not have electricity, and solar-powered cameras don't work. Sand, insects and moisture play havoc with the sensors, causing them to shut down or fire repeatedly. Agents and support staff are too busy to respond to each alarm.

On April 25, the Border Patrol's first and only Predator 2 unmanned aerial vehicle crashed outside Tubac, Ariz., just seven months after the $6.5 million craft began its flights.

To military experts, the goal of erecting a "virtual fence" recalls attempts four decades ago to shut down the 1,700-square-mile area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail used to infiltrate South Vietnam, and more recently, to halt incursions along 1,200 miles of Iraq's border with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

"It's always harder than you think," said Robert Martinage, Krepinevich's senior defense analyst. "The record is mixed."

Technology has, of course, advanced rapidly over the decades. The Southwest's climate and foliage pose fewer challenges, and U.S. law enforcement has advantages of mobility, security and infrastructure on its side, said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen D. Shaffer, a former director for intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Shaffer, now president and chief operating officer of dNovus RDI, a Texas firm that may bid on SBInet, said the project is reasonable but not foolproof. "Where the military historically has fallen short is putting all investments in sensors and not enough in the people that exploit the sensors. I would hope that DHS can get this right."

But smugglers of drugs and immigrants also are highly adaptable and willing to escalate the border "arms race," said Deborah W. Meyers, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank.

"Coyotes" are regularly caught with night-vision goggles, military-issue binoculars, hand-held global positioning systems, a treasure trove of cellphones and police scanners that allow them to listen to border agents.

Border Patrol agents said that smugglers dispatch scouts every five minutes to check enforcement through the border crossing at San Luis, due south of Yuma on the Mexican border.

"They even know the names of our drug dogs, and which are better at which drugs," one agent said. "It's unbelievable how much we are being watched."

Officials say they don't need to seal the borders. They just need to catch enough illegal border crossers to deter others from attempting the trip.

Robert C. Bonner, head of Customs and Border Protection from 2003 to 2005, said that at current staffing, the Border Patrol can handle only 10 percent of the illegal immigrant problem.

"But if you can reduce the flow even by half," he said, "with moderate increases for Border Patrol and technology, we actually can control our border in a way we haven't been able to in 20 or 30 years."

Loose Lips Sink Ships

By Salena Zito

When is it OK to sacrifice national security for personal gain or political one-upmanship?

For the common-sense-challenged, the answer is: "Never."

In the years since Sept. 11, an odd assembly of Capitol Hill-types, their staffers and disgruntled federal employees from myriad intelligence agencies have played the "gotcha game" with the White House's methods of protecting the citizenry.

Enabled by the media (which, by the way, have Ph.D.s in "gotcha"), they have become desensitized to the reasons some things must remain secret.

They're making secret-revealing an extreme sport.

Intentional, or even unintentional, leaks dry up productive intelligence-gathering techniques; Americans are placed at risk.

The National Security Agency doesn't confirm, deny, justify or clarify public discussions of its operations. To do so would give insight to those wishing to harm the United States -- insight that would allow our enemies to adjust and change their own tradecraft.

"Given the nature of our work, it would be irresponsible for us to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," Don Weber, NSA spokesman, said in response to one question. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

Have we as a nation forgotten the basics of the art of war? Are we so misguided as to believe that the ACLU will protect us better than the NSA in this era of terrorism?

Intel techniques -- which never should be made available for public consumption -- provide an essential means for preventing new attacks on Americans' lives. That's "prevent attacks on Americans' lives," not "intrude on Americans' lives."

Some people, in their lust to be dethroners of all things Bush, seem to forget why intel leaks from any government entity hold the potential for harm.

Our enemies do learn things from leaks. Thanks to that little thing called the Internet, stories about the NSA can be read in some cave in Afghanistan. It is almost shameful to think that we're providing great amusement to our enemies by systematically handing them every methodology we've developed.

To the extent that our spying techniques are known, it can alter the behavior of the people we need to know about. Or, based on what they know of what we're doing, they can feed us false information.

In some cases, the information we have depends on entities or people giving it to us or cooperating with us. To the extent that information is compromised, it can determine what people decide to give (or not give) our intel community.

Think of it in these terms: If you're an analyst and you have information that is important and sensitive, you may be reluctant to circulate it if you're afraid it will leak. Thus, important information can remain in a "stovepipe," unshared.

As one senior government official told me, "If there is a perceived breakdown in discipline, the danger becomes (that) we will see an open season on secrets. Leaking may beget leaking."

After the next attack, the next second-guessing commission undoubtedly will excoriate the government.

It's pretty much the only time that doves become hawks -- or, should I say, vultures.

The Big Sleep

By David Brooks

There once was a British aristocrat who had a nightmare that he was giving an extremely boring speech in the House of Lords. Then he awoke and discovered that indeed he was giving an extremely boring speech in the House of Lords.

If that dull aristocrat had proceeded to perish; if his corporeal remains had been reduced to ash; if these remains had been entombed in an impermeable case and placed in an empty, changeless landscape, he still could not have approached the tedium achieved by the Michael Hayden hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.

These hearings were the dullest event in the history of the universe since the creation of sedimentary rock. They were the sort of hearings doctors prescribe to patients who have developed nervous disorders from watching paint dry. If God does not exist, then the afterlife will be like an eternal watching of the Hayden hearings.

In fact, in terms of sheer soporificity, they achieved a certain narcoleptic greatness. An interaction among human beings — whose hearts were presumably beating and whose brain waves were presumably functioning — so lacking in normal human arousal deserves a show of respect.

And for this reason, the hearings must be investigated, for their dullness derived from three catatonic streams. It was, to twist the metaphor of a recent book, a perfect calm.

The first element in this calm was the rapid fizzling of the N.S.A. scandal. We have been treated in the past year to a panoply of anticlimactic frenzies. For example, we have seen the periodic flaring and the inevitable noneruption of the Valerie Plame affair. Every few weeks, perhaps coinciding with the full moon, the left half of the blogosphere will arise from its habitual state of paranoid rage and soar into a collective paroxysm of anticipatory glee over the thought of Karl Rove's imminent indictment. Alas, the indictment never comes.

But even by that standard, the fizzling of the N.S.A. scandal is remarkable. Most Americans seem to have looked at the facts and concluded that having to open your suitcase in the airport security line is a far bigger invasion of privacy than having your phone records in a list of four trillion numbers on a computer somewhere in an agency trying to fight terror.

Then at the hearing, General Hayden gave a sober and apparently thorough description of the safeguards in place to keep the information from being misused — of the checklists that career professionals must fill in before each investigative targeting, of the documentation that is kept, of the inspector general supervision and oversight. No Democrat challenged this procedure or showed much passion about the program at all.

The second cause of the dullness was General Hayden's obvious competence. The 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot noted that the best government is dull. It consists of the regular implementation of minute decisions and requires no lofty appeals to emotion nor deep contentions of mind. By this standard, General Hayden is a public official par excellence.

He brings to the role of senior intelligence official a reassuring relish for epistemology, the ability to talk for seconds that seem like hours on inductive versus deductive reasoning and how an information bureaucracy should be organized. This is surely the cast of mind required atop the C.I.A.

Finally, there was a third tributary contributing to the hearing's catatonic calm, this one more troubling. You would never have known, as the epochs dragged by and the viewers fantasized about spontaneously combusting, that the United States had just suffered cataclysmic intelligence failures, that the C.I.A. was in crisis, that Americans' lives were at risk.

The committee members are supposed to oversee the intelligence agencies, but they sound as if they are part of the same culture. They speak in the same technical abstractions and engage in the same unreal thought.

"I would also work to more tightly integrate the C.I.A.'s S. & T. into broader community efforts to increase payoffs from cooperative and integrated research and development," General Hayden declared, setting the linguistic tone for the hearings. And the members nodded sagely along.

The one crack came toward the end of the event, when Senator Barbara Mikulski broke in and used normal words like "klutzy" to describe the crisis of management afflicting the agency. For an instant, eyes opened. Neurons nearly fired. But the intrusion of concrete thought did not last. The blanket of abstract dullness was deliciously restored.

Fence or No Fence, What’s All the Fuss About?

Immigration is still an economics thing.
By Larry Kudlow

It may well be that good fences make good neighbors, as the poet Robert Frost wrote. President Bush, in his excellent speech from the Oval Office this week, signaled acceptance of fencing as part of his plan to deal with the hot-button issue of illegal immigration, and the Senate has complied with an 83-16 vote to construct a 370-mile fence along the Mexican border. History has shown that immigrants in search of freedom and prosperity will climb over, tunnel under, or circumvent any fence. But if fencing helps pass a broad-based reform bill, so be it.

Fencing, of course, is but one part of the president’s renewed emphasis on immigration security measures. He would also end the “catch-and-release” sham, institute biometric ID cards, and beef-up military security on the border. This is all wise policy, although stupidity on the issue still runs rampant on Capitol Hill.

Amazingly, the Senate has passed another amendment to limit temporary workers to a mere 200,000 per-year, even though numerous studies say we need at least twice that amount. The Upper Chamber is also limiting the volume of skilled H1B workers, primarily engineers and scientists. These workers are crucial to American competitiveness, and if allowed into the country at much higher levels they would throw off more than enough tax revenue to finance public services for unskilled H2B immigrants.

Why legislators fail to understand the economics of this problem is beyond me.

Wage differentials between Mexico and the U.S. are huge — largely because of Mexico’s failure to liberalize its economy. So, as long as American job opportunities and higher wages beckon, immigrants in search of a better life will stream northward into the U.S. — fence or no fence. This has always been the heart of the problem.

The anti-immigration crowd also gets it wrong when it points out that the Senate compromise bill would increase the number of immigrant workers in the U.S. by roughly 61 million over the next two decades. This Heritage Foundation analysis has the fear-mongerers predicting a Mexican takeover of the United States. But we need these workers.

Due to the demographic shift being caused by the baby boomers, the ratio of working-age persons in the U.S. to retirees aged 65 and over will drop like a stone from the current 4.7:1 ratio to 3.5:1 by 2030, and 2.6:1 by 2040. With the Social Security and Medicare trust funds going bankrupt, how will we manage with so few workers per retiree? Will we let our whole economy stagnate like France, Germany, Italy, or even Japan? All of these countries suffer from shrinking workforces and top-heavy government taxation.

Well, the U.S. could maintain a 4:1 ratio of workers to retirees by admitting an additional 57.5 million workers over the next nineteen years, according to analyst William Kucewicz. This would result in an average annual population increase of less than 1 percent and a total of only 16.4 percent more than the 350 million projected by the Census Bureau for 2025.

Let’s also not forget that immigrants come here to work, raise families, and assimilate. They would in effect become a much-needed churchgoing blue-collar middle class — an all but forgotten demographic that is crucial to a healthy America.

And yes — they must speak English. President Bush was eloquent on the Melting Pot model of immigration, borrowing from Ronald Reagan’s City on the Hill vision: “Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language. English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. . . . [Immigrants] renew our spirit . . . and they add to the unity of America.”

Hotheaded conservative populists who equate temporary workers and a long-term path to citizenship with amnesty are dead wrong, and their calls for deportation are lunacy. Imagine U.S. security forces somehow putting immigrants and their families onto armed busses and shipping them back to Mexico. What would that say about our country?

Dead-of-night deportation raids smack of totalitarianism, not Americanism.

Bush addressed this very well: “There are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently — and, someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record.” His point is that henceforth, in the future, temporary workers will finish their jobs and go home before applying for permanent status.

As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial points out, Reagan wondered aloud about “the illegal alien fuss.” He signed a bill in the mid-1980s that legalized immigrants, and in the next twenty years the U.S. prospered as never before.

Bush now has a sensible new plan to solve the problem. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Anti-Anti-Americanism

Dealing with the crazy world after Iraq.
By Victor Davis Hanson

How does the United States deal with a corrupt world in which we are blamed even for the good we do, while others are praised when they do wrong or remain indifferent to suffering?

We are accused of unilateral and preemptory bullying of the madman Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose reactors that will be used to “wipe out” the “one-bomb” state of Israel were supplied by Swiss, German, and Russian profit-minded businessmen. No one thinks to chastise those who sold Iran the capability of destroying Israel.

Here in the United States we worry whether we are tough enough with the Gulf sheikdoms in promoting human rights and democratic reform. Meanwhile China simply offers them cash for oil, no questions asked. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez pose as anti-Western zealots to Western naifs. The one has never held an election; the other tries his best to end the democracy that brought him to power. Meanwhile our fretting elites, back from Europe or South America, write ever more books on why George Bush and the Americans are not liked.

Hamas screams that we are mean for our logical suggestion that free American taxpayers will not subsidize such killers and terrorists. Those in the Middle East whine about Islamophobia, but keep silent that there is not allowed a Sunni mosque in Iran or a Christian church in Saudi Arabia. An entire book could be written about the imams and theocrats—in Iran, Egypt, the West Bank, Pakistan, and the Gulf States—who in safety issue fatwas and death pronouncements against Americans in Iraq and any who deal with the “infidel,” and yet send their spoiled children to private schools in Britain and the United States, paid for by their own blackmail money from corrupt governments.

You get the overall roundup: the Europeans have simply absorbed as their own the key elements of ossified French foreign policy—utopian rhetoric and anti-Americanism can pretty much give you a global pass to sell anything you wish to anyone at anytime.

China is more savvy. It discards every disastrous economic policy Mao ever enacted, but keeps two cornerstones of Maoist dogma: imply force to bully, and keep the veneer of revolutionary egalitarianism to mask cutthroat capitalism and diplomacy, from copyright theft and intellectual piracy to smiling at rogue clients like North Korea and disputing the territorial claims of almost every neighbor in sight.

Oil cuts a lot of idealism in the Middle East. The cynicism is summed up simply as “Those who sell lecture, and those who buy listen.” American efforts in Iraq—the largest aid program since the Marshall Plan, where American blood and treasure go to birth democracy—are libeled as “no blood for oil.” Yet a profiteering Saudi Arabia or Kuwait does more to impoverish poor oil-importing African and Asian nations than any regime on earth. But this sick, corrupt world keeps mum.

And why not ask Saudi Arabia about its now lionized and well-off al-Ghamdi clan? Aside from the various Ghamdi terrorists and bin-Laden hangers-on, remember young Ahmad, the 20-year-old medical student who packed his suicide vest with ball bearings and headed for Mosul, where he blew up 18 Americans? Or how about dear Ahmad and Hamza, the Ghamdis who helped crash Flight 175 into the South Tower on September 11? And please do not forget either the Saudi icon Said Ghamdi, who, had he not met Todd Beamer and Co. on Flight 93, would have incinerated the White House or the Capitol.

So we know the symptoms of this one-sided anti-Americanism and its strange combination of hatred, envy, and yearning—but, so far, not its remedy. In the meantime, the global caricature of the United States, in the aftermath of Iraq, is proving near fatal to the Bush administration, whose idealism and sharp break with past cynical realpolitik have earned it outright disdain. Indeed, the more al Qaeda is scattered, and the more Iraq looks like it will eventually emerge as a constitutional government, the angrier the world seems to become at the United States. American success, it seems, is even worse than failure.

Some of the criticism is inevitable. America is in an unpopular reconstruction of Iraq that has cost lives and treasure. Observers looked only at the explosions, never what the sacrifice was for—especially when it is rare for an Afghan or Iraqi ever to visit the United States to express thanks for giving their peoples a reprieve from the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

We should also accept that the United States, as the world’s policeman, always suffers the easy hatred of the cops, who are as ankle-bitten when things are calm as they are desperately sought when danger looms. America is the genitor and largest donor to the United Nations. Its military is the ultimate guarantor of free commerce by land and sea, and its wide-open market proves the catalyst of international trade. More immigrants seek its shores than all other designations combined—especially from countries of Latin America, whose criticism of the United States is the loudest.

Nevertheless, while we cannot stop anti-Americanism, here (a consequence, in part, of a deep-seeded, irrational sense of inferiority) and abroad, we can adopt a wiser stance that puts the onus of responsibility more on our critics.

We have a window of 1 to 3 years in Iran before it deploys nuclear weapons. Let Ahmadinejad talk and write—the loonier and longer, the better, as we smile and ignore him and his monstrous ilk.

Let also the Europeans and Arabs come to us to ask our help, as sphinx-like we express “concern” for their security needs. Meanwhile we should continue to try to appeal to Iranian dissidents, stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, and resolve that at the eleventh hour this nut with his head in a well will not obtain the methods to destroy what we once knew as the West.

Ditto with Hamas. Don’t demonize it—just don’t give it any money. Praise democracy, but not what was elected.

We should curtail money to Mr. Mubarak as well. No need for any more sermons on democracy—been there, done that. Now we should accept with quiet resignation that if an aggregate $50 billion in give-aways have earned us the most anti-American voices in the Middle East, then a big fat zero for Egypt might be an improvement. After all, there must be something wrong with a country that gave us both Mohammad Atta and Dr. Zawahiri.

The international Left loves to champion humanitarian causes that do not involve the immediate security needs of the United States, damning us for inaction even as they are the first to slander us for being military interventionists. We know the script of Haiti, Mogadishu, and the Balkans, where Americans are invited in, and then harped at both for using and not using force. Where successful, the credit goes elsewhere; failure is always ours alone. Still, we should organize multinational efforts to save those in Darfur—but only after privately insisting that every American soldier must be matched by a European, Chinese, and Russian peacekeeper.

There are other ways to curb our exposure to irrational hatred that seems so to demoralize the American public. First, we should cease our Olympian indifference to hypocrisy, instead pointing out politely inconsistencies in European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese morality. Why not express more concern about the inexplicable death of Balkan kingpin prisoners at The Hague or European sales of nuclear technology to madmen or institutionalized Chinese theft of intellectual property?

We need to reexamine the nature of our overseas American bases, elevating the political to the strategic, which, it turns out, are inseparable after all. To take one small example: When Greeks pour out on their streets to rage at a visiting American secretary of State, we should ask ourselves, do we really need a base in Crete that is so costly in rent and yet ensures Greeks security without responsibility or maturity? Surely once we leave, those brave opportunistic souls in the streets of Athens can talk peace with the newly Islamist Turkish government, solve Cyprus on their own, or fend off terrorists from across the Mediterranean.

The point is not to be gratuitously punitive or devolve into isolationism, but to continue to apply to Europe the model that was so successful in the Philippines and now South Korea—ongoing redeployment of Americans to where we can still strike in emergencies, but without empowering hypocritical hosts in time of peace.

We must also sound in international fora as friendly and cooperative as possible with the Russians, Chinese, and the lunatic Latin American populists—even as we firm up our contingency plans and strengthen military ties of convenience with concerned states like Australia, Japan, India, and Brazil.

The United States must control our borders, for reasons that transcend even terrorism and national security. One way to cool the populist hatred emanating from Latin America is to ensure that it becomes a privilege, not a birthright, to enter the United States. In traveling the Middle East, I notice the greatest private complaint is not Israel or even Iraq, but the inability to enter the United States as freely as in the past. And that, oddly, is not necessarily a bad thing, as those who damn us are slowly learning that their cheap hatred has had real consequences.

Then there is, of course, oil. It is the great distorter, one that punishes the hard-working poor states who need fuel to power their reforming economies while rewarding failed regimes for their mischief, by the simple accident that someone else discovered it, developed it, and then must purchase it from under their dictatorial feet. We must drill, conserve, invent, and substitute our way out of this crisis to ensure the integrity of our foreign policy, to stop the subsidy of crazies like Chavez and Ahmadinejad, and to lower the world price of petroleum that taxes those who can least afford it. There is a reason, after all, why the al-Ghamdis are popular icons in Saudi Arabia rather than on the receiving end of a cruise missile.

So we need more firm explanation, less loud assertion, more quiet with our enemies, more lectures to neutrals and friends—and always the very subtle message that cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.

Color-coded cronyism at DHS

By Michelle Malkin

Who needs the government to tell us the status of homeland security? If you're not seeing five-alarm red over the perpetual chaos at DHS, you need to call the eye doctor.

The Ontario (Calif. ) Daily Bulletin reported Tuesday that Border Patrol agents are now ratting out Minutemen, immigration enforcement volunteers who have broken no laws, to Mexico. Yes, we are paying our federal immigration officers to gather intelligence on our own citizens — and then turn it over to a foreign government intent on sabotaging our sovereignty.

Deportation officers across the country continue to report that "catch and release" of illegal aliens remains the order of the day. A memo I obtained last week outlined desperate deck-chair shuffling by Border Patrol supervisors who are pulling dozens of detention and transport officers from around the country to assist in the border enforcement charade. President Bush is leading the amnesty bandwagon.

And inside Department of Homeland Security headquarters, it's color-coded cronyism as usual.

The latest fiasco involves Shirlington Limouisine and Transport Service, a shady limousine company with millions of dollars in DHS contracts to shuttle its workers around the Beltway. That's right. When your tax dollars aren't subsidizing Border Patrol spies for Mexico, they're being used to foot the bill for "12 minibuses and 16 drivers to shuttle Homeland Security employees between the department's various offices in the Washington area" and "10 additional drivers to chauffeur department executive staffers in Homeland Security-owned sedans," according to the Associated Press. Shirlington's latest contract with DHS totals $21.2 million for a maximum of five years.

Shirlington, certified as a minority-owned business, is run by one Christopher Baker, who has a reported 62-page rap sheet including convictions on several misdemeanor charges, including drug possession and attempted petty larceny, plus two felony charges for attempted robbery and car theft, according to D.C. Superior Court records cited by the AP and others.

Homeland Security bureaucrats may not be the only ones getting free rides from Shirlington. Liberal blogs — the Project on Government Oversight, Talking Points Muckraker, and Harper's Online — first exposed the firm's shady history while digging into the alleged "Hookergate" scandal involving disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, defense contractors, and CIA officials. Lawyers for Shirlington deny transporting prostitutes to longstanding poker parties held at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels in D.C. But the FBI is now investigating, and the CIA's third-highest-ranking official (an old friend of the party-thrower, defense contractor Brent Wilkes) abruptly resigned this week — following on the heels of CIA chief Porter Goss's stepdown.

Ironically and amusingly enough, Democrats — those always reliable, pro-affirmative action zealots — are crying foul over Shirlington Limo's minority preferential treatment and raising questions about the company being used as a minority-owned front in a "historically underutilized business zone." Glad they are finally on board with those of us who have long raised questions about the government's small business diversity scam. These racial and ethnic bean-counting programs are among the most corrupt government vehicles in the bureaucracy — and in post-September 11 America, the most potentially dangerous to boot.

Cronyism — rainbow-flavored and plain vanilla — has corroded our safety. One example: We've wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a no-bid contract for a broken U.S.-Canadian border camera system run by a firm that employed Texas Democrat Rep. Silvestre Reyes' daughter as vice president of government contracts. Hardly a peep heard from the Democrat congressman's colleagues about that. And as I've pointed out many times over the years, the immigration enforcement top management is filled with people with zero immigration enforcement experience. Or commitment.

For their part, House Republicans are not looking the other way. "The information we've obtained raises a number of serious questions, from the contracting process to possible security concerns," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the subcommittee on management, integration and oversight, told the press. "The appearance of a lack of background checks on contractors is another troubling personnel issue at DHS that we are examining."

DHS can't police its own contractors. Yet, Washington persists in moving forward with a massive "guest-worker" program that will entrust the department to process potentially millions of new background checks for illegal aliens from around the world whom no one ever plans to deport.

Homeland security? What homeland security?

Report: Suspect Arrested in Holloway Case

Dutch police have arrested a new suspect in last year's disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, the Netherlands' national broadcaster reported Sunday.

NOS said police in Utrecht had arrested the suspect, but it was unclear where and when. The new suspect was said to be of Aruban nationality and an acquaintance of Joran van der Sloot, another suspect in the case.

Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala., was 18 when she disappeared in May 2005 during a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with three young men on May 30.

Utrecht police spokeswoman Danielle Friedman said she could not confirm any arrests in the case.

"If there was an arrest, it was on the orders of the Aruban prosecutors and all information will be transmitted through them," she said.

Authorities have arrested eight people — including two last month — in connection with Holloway's disappearance but released them all for lack of evidence.

Van der Sloot is the last person known to have seen Holloway alive. He says he left her alone on a beach after the pair kissed.

Holloway's parents are attempting to sue Van der Sloot, 18, in a New York court. Their suit alleges he imprisoned and sexually assaulted Holloway and caused her disappearance.

Dutch marines, the Aruban Coast Guard, the FBI and hundreds of volunteers have searched the island and coastal areas of Aruba for Holloway.

U.N.: No Such Thing as Illegal Immigration

The United Nations doesn't recognize the concept of illegal immigration - and refuses to use that term when referring to foreigners who flout U.S. immigration laws by crossing the border without documentation.

So says Eric Shawn, whose new book "The U.N. Exposed," blows the lid off the corrpution, double-dealing and anti-U.S. resentment that permeates the world body.

"In U.N. world there's no such thing as an illegal alien or illegal immigrant," Shawn told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly Wednesday night. "They call it an irregular migrant."

Legal immigrants, on the other hand, are referred to as "regular migrants," Shawn said.

"Basically they want them to have the same rights as the documented immigrants," the one-time Fox street reporter explained. "They say that in [their] convention."

"[It] protects the human rights, they say, of the migrants. It's been signed by Mexico, not by us."

Shawn went on to note that the head of the U.N.'s immigration agency is a Mexican official. "It's ironic," he told O'Reilly, "because Mexico has some of the toughest laws against illegal immigration."

Asked if official U.N. policy was to encourage open borders, Shawn told O'Reilly: "Basically, as long as it's legal. They're not for illegal immigration, but they try to encourage migration as much as possible."

Bill Clinton Signs New Book Deal

After writing an autobiography that sold millions of copies and earned him a hefty advance, former President Clinton has struck a deal to write another book.

Alfred A. Knopf will publish the new work, in which Clinton will focus on public service and individual citizen activism, telling a story that he hopes will "lift spirits" and "touch hearts," the former president said in a statement Wednesday.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clinton is said to have received a staggering advance of $10 million to $12 million for writing "My Life," the 957-page memoir that Knopf published in 2004.

His inspiration for the second book, expected for release late next year or early 2008, sprang from the experiences he has had during his work and travel in the six years since he left the White House, Clinton said. It does not yet have a title.

Clinton, 59, plans to tell the stories of those he has met — and in some cases he will go back and interview them — to make the point that ordinary people can set forth change.

Clinton's path around the world has introduced him to tsunami aid organizations in Southeast Asia, doctors fighting to treat HIV/AIDS in Africa, neighborhoods trying to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, and many more people that he believes are examples of what one person can do.

"We all have the capacity to do great things like this, and I am writing this book to encourage others to join their ranks," Clinton said. "My hope is that the people and stories in this book will lift spirits, touch hearts and demonstrate that citizen activism and service can be a powerful agent of change in the world."

Clinton's "My Life" sold more than 2 million copies, despite its mixed reviews. Some critics found it meandering and surprisingly dull.

In the new book, Clinton will tell the stories of ordinary people, and draw on his own memories of what he has accomplished through the Clinton Foundation, a multimillion-dollar nonprofit that has driven his post-White House life.

Knopf Chairman Sonny Mehta said Clinton will discuss "the most substantive issues of our time."

"He is writing about people who are using their time and expertise to solve problems and save lives," Mehta said. "This book will offer a blueprint for companies and individuals to make meaningful contributions to the world."

Robert Gottlieb, Clinton's editor for "My Life," will also work with him on the sophomore book project.

According to attorney Robert Barnett, Clinton's literary representative in Washington, D.C., the former president, who lives in a New York City suburb, did not shop the new book proposal to other publishers.

"He has a wonderful relationship with his editor and publisher at Knopf and looks forward to writing many others books with them," Barnett said.

Barnett would not comment on whether he expects Clinton's new book to attract as many readers as "My Life" but said he anticipated a great deal of interest both in this country and around the world.

Clinton has received numerous offers from other publishers to write books, including a biography of Abraham Lincoln, Barnett said. But he said Clinton never seriously considered any of them.

Alfred A. Knopf is a unit of Random House, which is owned by the German media company Bertelsmann AG.

Senate Votes English U.S. National Language

The Senate voted Thursday to make English the national language of the United States. Sort of.

Moments after the 63-34 vote, it decided to call the mother tongue a "common and unifying language."

"You can't have it both ways," warned Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a fan of "national" but not "common and unifying." Two dozen senators disagreed and voted for both as the Senate lumbered toward an expected vote next week on a controversial immigration bill.

The debate occurred as President Bush traveled to Yuma, Ariz., to dramatize his commitment to curbing illegal immigration. At the same time, the White House sent Congress a formal request for $1.9 billion to cover the costs of steps he announced earlier in the week, including the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops to states along the Mexican border.

Bush generally favors the outlines of the Senate measure, a bill that calls for great enforcement, a new guest worker program and an eventual opportunity at citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country illegally.

Inhofe led the attempt to declare English the national language, a campaign he said began more than a century ago. The Oklahoma Republican quoted President Theodore Roosevelt as having said that among other things, those living in the United States "must also learn one language and that language is English."

"If you've got any rights now you've still got them under this amendment" added Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

Democrats disputed that, and said the proposal would curtail rights established by an executive order President Clinton issued to extend language assistance to individuals not proficient in English.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada went further. "I really believe this amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish."

"It's ridiculous," Inhofe replied. "I don't think people will buy into it."

The Senate didn't, including 11 Democrats who joined 53 Republicans to support the proposal.

Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., advanced the alternative that declared English to be a "common and unifying language."

It passed, 58-39, leaving the outcome of the symbolic debate uncertain.

For the third straight day, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers supporting the immigration measure demonstrated overall command of the Senate floor.

Conservatives failed in their attempt to ban guest workers, who all have temporary visas, from gaining permanent resident status. The vote was 58-35.

After a stumble on Wednesday night — when the Senate voted to deny temporary workers the ability to petition for citizenship on their own — the bill's supporters won a reversal that said they could, as long as the federal government certifies American workers are unavailable to fill their jobs. The provision applies to workers with temporary visas in the country for four years. The vote was 56-43.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the original provision was designed to protect American workers and the replacement would "put American workers in the back seat and foreign workers ... in the front seat."

But Sen. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, "I think there is a higher value in not having the immigrant subject to the control of the employer where there may be coercion and pressure."

The Senate also voted 64-32 to levy a $750 fee on illegal immigrants who apply for citizenship and $100 for each dependent. Cornyn, who sponsored the proposal, said the proceeds would be used to reimburse state and local governments, hospitals and other institutions that provide health, education and other services to illegal immigrants.

Susan Sarandon Endorses Hillary's Challenger

Left-wing actress and Iraq war critic Susan Sarandon has endorsed Hillary Clinton's opponent in the New York Senate race, after accusing the former first lady of "crumbl[ing] under the pressure of the moment."

Sarandon confirmed on Wednesday that she's backing Jonathan Tasini, a labor advocate who complained earlier this year: "Senator Clinton has repeatedly voiced her support for a war that continues to accumulate unacceptable costs, in terms of American and Iraqi lives and our own government spending."

Tasini's comments mirrored Sarandon's recent criticisms about the former first lady, with the Hollywood actress declaring in March: "I find Hillary Clinton to be a great disappointment."

"She's lost her progressive following because of her caution and centrist approach. It bothers me when she voted for the war," Sarandon said.

Tasini praised Sarandon while announcing her endorsement.

"She has never wavered when the call has come for people to stand on the front lines in support of progressive principles that affect the lives of so many people in our country," he said, in quotes picked up by NBC News.

Sarandon did not offer a statement of her own but an aide confirmed she was backing Tasini, the network said.

Bill Clinton Calls U.S. Health Care 'Insane'

Speaking in Canada, former President Bill Clinton called America’s health-care system "insane” and urged Canadians to resist calls for a move toward privatization.

"It’s a good thing, your health-care system, with all of its problems,” he said Monday night at a $3,000-a-plate dinner in Toronto marking the launch of the World Leaders Forum.

When health care came up in a question-and-answer session, Clinton said the last thing Canada should do is let the "health-care finance tail wag the health-care dog,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Web site reports.

That’s what the U.S. did, according to Clinton, and the result is "a colossal waste of money.”

He said the U.S. spends 34 percent of its health-care costs on administration, a total of $280 billion, "to pay two million people to go to work every day for all the providers and insurers and play tug-of-war.

"It’s insane. Don’t go down that road. Don’t do anything that will lead to increased administrative costs.”

Canada spends only 19 percent on administration, Clinton said. He suggested that would-be health-care reformers should investigate other advanced health-care programs to "see who solved the problem best.”

Kissinger: World Faces Nightmarish Prospect

"The world is faced with the nightmarish prospect that nuclear weapons will become a standard part of national armament and wind up in terrorist hands," warns former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Writing in Tuesday's Washington Post, Kissinger insisted that the current standoff about nuclear weapons between the United States and Iran and the United States and North Korea "is a nuclear test for diplomacy."

Observing that the negotiations on Korean and Iranian nuclear proliferation "mark a watershed," Kissinger wrote that a "failed diplomacy would leave us with a choice between the use of force or a world where restraint has been eroded by the inability or unwillingness of countries that have the most to lose to restrain defiant fanatics. One need only imagine what would have happened had any of the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, London, Madrid, Istanbul or Bali involved even the crudest nuclear weapon."

Speaking of Iran, Kissinger wondered if the recent letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush shouln't be looked at on "several levels" suggesting that it can be viewed as merely a ruse to obstruct U.N. Security Council deliberations on Iran's disregard of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or a clever ploy to "get the radical part of the Iranian public used to dialogue with the United States."


"America's challenge" he wrote " is to define its own strategy and purposes regarding the most fateful issue confronting us today."

While the negotiations concerning North Korea seem more advanced, Kissinger wrote that in the case of Iran "there isn't even a formal agreement on what the objective is. Iran has refused to agree to international control over its uranium enrichment program, in the absence of which no control over a weapons program is meaningful."

The former Nixon secretary of state noted that formal negotiations up until now have been prevented by the memory of the hostage crisis, Iranian support of terrorist groups and the aggressive rhetoric of the Iranian president, writing that the Iranian president's letter fails to "remove these inhibitions."

Kissinger argued that if the United States is content to negotiate with North Korea as a member of a six-party forum, and with Iran in Baghdad over Iraqi security, it should be willing to work out an arrangement for a multilateral venue for nuclear talks with Tehran that would permit the United States to be a participant - "especially in light of what is at stake."

Failure to work out a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's development of nuclear weapons would have ominous consequences, he wrote, warning that "An indefinite continuation of the stalemate would amount to a de facto acquiescence by the international community in letting new entrants" into the nuclear club.


In Asia, he wrote it would spell the near-certain addition of South Korea and Japan to the club and in the Middle East, countries such as Turkey, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia could enter the field.

In such a world, he predicts, nuclear weapons would become "an indispensable status symbol" among "all significant industrial countries. Radical elements throughout the Islamic world and elsewhere would gain strength from the successful defiance of the major nuclear powers."

Kissinger wrote "Diplomacy needs a new impetus," and that "the United States and its negotiating partners need to agree on how much time is available for negotiations as a first step."

Noting that while it's agreed that North Korea is producing enough plutonium to make several nuclear weapons a year, estimates on how close Tehran is to producing its first nuclear weapon range from two to 10 years.

"Given the risks and stakes, this gap, he said, "needs to be narrowed.

The difference between multiparty negotiations and a preferred strategy of regime change, he wrote, "needs to be recognized. There are no governments in the world whose replacement by responsible regimes would contribute more to international peace and security than those governing Pyongyang and Tehran."

However, he warns that none of the current participants in negotiations or in future ones will support a policy "explicitly aiming for regime change."

Moreover, he explained that negotiations on nuclear disarmament will inevitably involve a quid pro quo of compensation in security and economic benefits in return for giving up nuclear weapons capabilities and is thus, incompatible with the concept of regime change, which he warns confuses the issue.

The United States, he insists, should oppose nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran no matter what government of the two nations builds them.

Kissinger compared what he called "The diplomacy appropriate to 'denuclearization,'" to the containment policy that helped win the Cold War. "No preemptive challenge [should be made] to the external security of the adversary, but firm resistance to attempts to project its power abroad and reliance on domestic forces to bring about internal change [is essential]," he said.

It was, he recalled, "precisely such a nuanced policy that allowed President Reagan to invite Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to a dialogue within weeks of labeling the Soviet Union as the evil empire.

"The issue before the nations involved is similar to what the world faced in 1938 and at the beginning of the Cold War: Whether to overcome fears and hesitancy about undertaking the difficult path demanded by necessity," he concluded, warning that "The failure of that test in 1938 produced a catastrophic war; the ability to master it in the immediate aftermath of World War II led to victory without war."

Hillary Clinton: Right Wingers to Blame for Abortion

2008 White House hopeful Hillary Clinton is blaming right wing "ideologues" for denying women access to contraceptives - leaving them no choice but to end their unwanted pregnancies with abortion.

The move to withhold contraceptives "was started by a small group of extreme ideologues who claim the right to impose their personal beliefs on the overwhelming majority of the American people," Clinton declared in an e-mail to supporters on Wednesday.

"They're waging this silent war on contraception by using the power of the White House and their right-wing allies in Congress," she complains, adding, "and so far, they're getting away with it."

So just how are these right wing ideologues driving up the abortion rate? Clinton explains:

"Low-income women, denied access to contraception, are having more unwanted pregnancies - four times as many as those for higher income women. And almost half of all unwanted pregnancies end in abortions."

The former first lady didn't explain, however, why - in places like New York City, where high school nurses' offices distribute candy-flavored condoms - the abortion rate continues to soar.

In January, for instance, the New York Daily News reported:

"For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in 2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the abortion capital of the country ... That means 40 out of 100 pregnancies in the city ended in a planned abortion - almost double the national average of 24 of 100 pregnancies in 2002."

Schwarzenegger: Troops a 'Band-Aid' Solution

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says President Bush's proposal to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border leaves many questions unanswered.

In a statement after Bush outlined his plan Monday, Schwarzenegger said governors in border states had not been consulted about the plan.

He said, "It remains unclear what impact only 6,000 National Guard troops will have on securing the border." Schwarzenegger says he's concerned the plan is "a Band-Aid solution and not the permanent solution we need."

Earlier Monday, Schwarzenegger said the war in Iraq had already put the Guard under "tremendous stress" and that California may need troops in case of fire, earthquake or flood.

Bruce Willis Announces Media Boycott

Bruce Willis has been outspoken about his opinion that the news coverage of the Iraq war has been biased and selective.

Now Willis, who plays a raccoon in the upcoming animated feature "Over the Hedge," has decided he's had enough of the news media.

Willis told the World Entertainment News Network that the press deliberately ignores serious news in favor of racy stories.

Evidently the actor is disgusted with the frivolous and superficial nature of current news reports, so he has banned the news from his home.

"We go for the sensational now in the news. If it's not sensational or tantalizing or making fun of someone, it seldom gets into the news," Willis said. "I don't watch the news anyway. I have it turned off, and I feel so much better for it. That's why I have that youthful glow about me. I don't look worried."

The Left Coast Report notes that when you boycott the mainstream media you get a youthful glow and a bonus - the truth.

Alec Baldwin Has GOP Girlfriend

Actor and die-hard liberal activist Alec Baldwin has been seen lately with that telltale romantic look in his eye when he's with Chinese/German girlfriend Nicole Seidel.

As reported by the New York Post, Baldwin met Seidel over four years ago while he was discussing biz with an associate using his playground voice.

Seidel, an attorney was working on a document at another table.

"She wondered why he was so loud, and she was getting annoyed," a source said. "He came over and said, 'Am I bothering you?' And she said 'Yes!'"

Apparently Baldwin liked her in-your-face candor and asked her for her phone number.

But get this. Siedel doesn't like publicity. Baldwin craves it. Siedel lives downtown. Baldwin lives uptown. Siedel eats meat. Baldwin doesn't. She isn't into animal rights and is crazy about Rudy Giuliani. He ... well, you already know.

"They don't speak about politics," a friend revealed.

The Left Coast Report guesses sometimes opposites do attract.

Patrick Kennedy Wore Black-Face, Imitated Michael Jackson

Long before he was ramming his car into barricades and taking up residence at the Mayo Clinic, Congressman Patrick Kennedy was doing his best to impersonate Michael Jackson. So reports the National Enquirer.

Pictures of the then-22-year-old Rhode Island legislator have surfaced, which show him in a Jacko costume at a party held at the Virginia home of his father, Massachusetts Senator-for-Life Teddy Kennedy.

The image of a Democrat in an outfit complete with black-face, Jheri Curls and a white glove is enough to spur his political advisors to seek out his dad's wet bar.

The young Kennedy was apparently so proud of his ability to imitate Jackson that he wanted to show it off outside the confines of his father's house.

"The party wasn't crazy enough for Patrick - and he went to Georgetown in Washington to carry on drinking," a source told the National Enquirer.

First Lady: 'I Don't Believe George's Low Ratings'

First lady Laura Bush isn't worrying much about President Bush's low poll ratings - she says they're wrong.

"I don't really believe those polls," said Bush, who added that the news media seem to have "a lot of fun" writing front-page stories when ratings are low but ignoring the numbers when they are high.

"As I travel around in the United States, I see a lot of appreciation for him. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Stay the course,'" she said on "Fox News Sunday."

"The Same Problem"

http://media.putfile.com/solution91

In the lack of a better word, amazing. I can't believe someone would ever say this something like this.

Liberal Film Bashes Rudy Giuliani

As a 2008 presidential bid by Rudy Giuliani looks increasing likely, liberal media groups are lining up to take pot shots at the popular Republican.

The first major attack comes from a new documentary that seeks to debunk former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as "America's Mayor" - and has opened in Manhattan. Even its director admits the film is anything but fair and balanced.

"I'm not claiming there's anything approaching objectivity in this film," director Kevin Keating says about "Giuliani Time," which is playing in one Big Apple theater.

Publicity materials for the film say it is "certain to bust open the myth of Giuliani" as America's Mayor that developed after 9/11 and reveal his inner "totalitarian" impulses.

But a review in the City Journal calls it a "silly documentary" that "tries - and fails - to tar the record of America's Mayor."

Writing in the Journal, Charles Upton Sahm notes that the movie's main indictment charges Giuliani with ushering in police tactics that led to widespread brutality against minorities.

The film delves into the tragic death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo, who in 1999 was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by four detectives who mistakenly thought the innocent Diallo had drawn a gun - an act the movie suggests was an intentional racist outrage.

But the film fails to point out that complaints of police brutality and incidents of police shooting declined dramatically during the Giuliani administration, Sahm discloses.

Keating's documentary tries to portray the dramatic drop in the crime rate in New York during Giuliani's tenure - including a 70 percent reduction in murder - as merely part of a nationwide trend.

"But crime in New York fell farther and faster than crime nationwide, and continues to drop while many other cities have experienced a reversal," Sahm writes.

"Giuliani Time" also attacks his "mean-spirited" welfare policies - which in fact led 650,000 people from a life of dependency to gainful employment.

Even more outrageously, the movie gives screen time to a local reporter who discusses Giuliani's father's possible links to organized crime - while acknowledging that as U.S. attorney and later as mayor, "almost no one in history has done more to combat the Mafia than Giuliani," the City Journal article states.

As NewsMax disclosed before the movie opened, some analysts think its criticisms of Giuliani might actually help him among Republicans - many of whom are skeptical of his moderate views on abortion, gay rights and gun control - by demonstrating that he's not a liberal.

And Sahm concludes: "New Yorkers know the real story of the Giuliani era; it's all around them every time they walk out their front door. And no left-wing documentary will convince them otherwise, especially one as silly and patently ideological as this."

Activist: Pentagon Violates Rules for Women in Combat

The Center for Military Readiness is calling on President George Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to address the improper assignment of women soldiers that has contributed to the deaths of 59 female GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a memo sent to "Interested Parties," Elaine Donnelly, president of the Washington, D.C.-based organization, calls attention to an article she has written for the Washington Times in which she charges that Army officials "continue to violate policy and law on women in land combat."

Fighting units and support units that "collocate" or embed with them are required by Defense Department regulations to be all male, states Donnelly, a former member of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

To change this rule, the defense secretary must approve and report the change to Congress approximately three months in advance.

This requirement has not been met, "even though the Army has placed female soldiers in formerly all male support units that collocate with infantry/armor battalions," Donnelly writes in the Times.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey has claimed that female soldiers will be removed when units begin conducting combat operations. But "even if the Army had the resources to evacuate women on the eve of battle, the disruption could cause missions to fail and lives to be lost," according to Donnelly.

In her memo dated May 8, Donnelly notes that she has met numerous times with White House, Pentagon and congressional leaders to express the Center for Military Readiness' concerns about the issue.

"I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for what is going on," she disclosed.

Several legislators on both sides of the aisle have submitted questions about the issue to Rumsfeld, she notes, adding:

"We appreciate the efforts of these lawmakers, but regret that the Senate has not had a hearing on this issue in more than 15 years, and the House in 27 years.

"Issues of concern to women in the military deserve timely and objective consideration, not evasion, excuses and embarrassment for the armed forces whenever something goes wrong.

"The Center for Military Readiness calls upon President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to act immediately to bring the Army back into line with current regulations."

Failure to deal with the issue could have a troubling corollary, Donnelly writes in the Times.

She points out that the American Civil Liberties Union will file a lawsuit challenging male-only Selective Service registration. Until now the Supreme Court has upheld the exemption of women because female soldiers are not ordered into direct ground combat.

If women are in fact engaging in combat, the ACLU will probably win, says Donnelly, and "voters will notice when their daughters are denied college loans for not registering with Selective Service."

Gore Can 'Buy' 2008 Election

Al Gore has such a fortune in Google stock that he could easily fund his own campaign for the White House, Democratic insiders say.

Gore became a senior adviser to the Internet search engine back in February 2001, and is a close friend of CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt. Google shares went public in 2004, and the stock has soared from $85 a share to more than $400. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are worth an estimated $11 billion each.

Gore "owns a ton of Google and he's made enough money that he could wait until a month before and just drop $50 million in to launch a [2008] race," a well-placed Democrat told Deborah Orin of the New York Post.

"He's got way more than enough money to buy this thing at any point in the process."

Gore spokesman Mike Feldman said the former vice president "is not running for president" and is focused on global warming.

Gore stars in a documentary about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth,” which premieres next week.

But a Gore friend told Orin: "He's doing what he should do if he wants to run. When you run and get the most votes as he did in 2000, I don't think psychologically you ever move on.”

Dean: We Oppose Gay Marriage Too

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has angered supporters in the gay and lesbian community by stating that his party opposes gay marriage.

Appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s program "The 700 Club” on Wednesday, Dean declared: "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says. I think where we may take exception with some religious leaders is that we believe in inclusion, that everybody deserves to live with dignity and respect, and that equal rights under the law are important.”

Dean, however, "misrepresented” the party platform, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which has returned a $5,000 contribution from the Democratic Party in a protest over Dean’s remarks.

According to the blog PageOneQ, the Democratic Party’s actual platform reads: "We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits and protection for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. We repudiate President Bush’s divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a ‘Federal Marriage Amendment.’”

The Task Force’s executive director Matt Foreman said in a statement: "Governor Dean is wrong about what the Democratic platform says about marriage equality. Disturbingly, this is not the first time he has misrepresented this important and affirming plank, and he has been asked before to correct the record and to cease making these misleading statements.”

In an effort to drum up support in the Christian community before the 2006 midterm elections, Dean also stated on the show: "One of the misconceptions about the Democratic Party is that we're godless and that we don't have any values.

"The truth is, we have an enormous amount in common with the Christian community, and particularly with the evangelical Christian community.

"One of the biggest things that Democrats worry about is the materialism of our country, what's on television that our kids are seeing, and the lack of spirituality. And that's something we have in common."

Dean even tried to downplay the Democratic Party’s traditional strong pro-choice stance, saying: "I think what we have in common with the evangelical community is that we ought to have a lot fewer abortions than we do. The abortions have actually gone up in the last few years. We should have far fewer abortions ... we ought to make sure that there's not just abstinence, but family planning used to get rid of abortion, and that is something that we share.”

Asked if it is important for Democrats to tap into the evangelical community to win in 2006, he responded: "I think it's important, and I think it's a good idea for the Democratic Party.” But if Dean’s comments were designed to garner support from evangelicals, they no doubt alienated many in the gay and lesbian community.

In his statement, Foreman said: "Governor Dean’s record on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues since becoming DNC chair has been sorely and sadly lacking.

"In light of Governor Dean’s pandering and insulting interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, we have decided to return the DNC’s recent $5,000 contribution to us.”

Andy Garcia Clobbers Castro With 'The Lost City'

Actor Andy Garcia felt driven to make his new film, "The Lost City."

"It's a great story, but selling a Cuban story to Hollywood wasn't easy," Garcia told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I had the first draft of this film in 1991. I had the support of Paramount back then, but the head of the studio was ousted. Then for years, I couldn't get any support."

"Not telling this story wasn't an option," Garcia added.

Many of the critics have not been kind to the film. But to really appreciate this movie you have to understand the dearth of Hollywood product portraying communism with the evil that inevitably accompanies its introduction to a country.

"There's such a lack of understanding or knowledge of what happened, in that time period," Garcia told the Film Stew Web site. "Most people think the Cuban Revolution was a Marxist Revolution, but it was not. It turned into that, but that's not what people were fighting for. In fact, that was not what Fidel Castro's own manifesto stated."

The script written by recently deceased Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante contains dialogue with the phrase "Darkness at Noon," a reference to the famous novel by Arthur Koestler about the notorious show trials in Stalin's Soviet Union during the 1930s.

Garcia produced, directed, starred in and scored much of the film. He even included three of his four children as cast members in the movie.

"My eldest daughter plays Enrique Murciano's wife; my little boy plays their son," Garcia said. "An actress that was supposed to play the waitress in the Cuban-Chinese restaurant couldn't leave America, so my middle daughter stepped in and played the waitress."

The movie is a European inspired period piece, which begins during the last brutal days of Fulgencio Batista, the fascist dictator that ultimately led to the revolution that installed Castro as a communist dictator.

Garcia cast himself as a Havana nightclub owner named Fico, who is one of three brothers.

Fico's brothers, Luis (Nestor Carbonell) and Ricardo (Enrique Murciano), become involved in the revolution. During the tumult, Fico has a romantic relationship with a woman named Aurora (played by the cinema-genic Ines Sastre) who eventually becomes a symbol for the revolutionary government.

Fico and Aurora are the classic star-crossed lovers, but in this case the star is red.

Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman have supporting roles in the film. Murray appears as a scene-stealing comedian and Hoffman as real-life mobster Meyer Lansky.

The morally degenerate reality of Batista, Che Guevara and Castro is conveyed through the tale, much to the discomfort of many Hollywood purveyors of red chic.

As one form of beast leads to another, the audience experiences the false sigh of relief that Cubans let out between the departure of Batista and the beginning of Castro's reign of terror.

Through Fico, the audience is able to encounter the thousands of little demeaning abuses of dignity that descended on Cuba as the revolutionary government took over every aspect of life.

The movie illustrates a point that we all need to be reminded of, that power corrupts even those who claim to abhor it.

Garcia has delivered a poignant, personal and organic work that demonstrates why people will risk shark-infested waters to escape from Castro's "paradise." That's also the reason why 1,600 people gave Garcia a standing ovation when the film began in Miami.

Seeing the movie makes me want to raise my glass and shout out the film's oft-made toast: "To free Cuba!"

The Left Coast Report drinks to that.

Sen. John McCain Faces Commencement Protests

Republican Sen. John McCain, tapped to deliver commencement speeches at two major New York universities, is getting the equivalent of a Bronx cheer from activists on both campuses who oppose his conservative views and support for the Iraq war.

The potential 2008 presidential candidate is scheduled to address Columbia College's "Class Day" on May 16 and will speak at the commencement ceremonies of the New School three days later.

Known for his maverick streak, McCain has been burnishing his conservative credentials in recent months as he readies a likely White House run. As part of that effort, he'll deliver the commencement address at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University on Saturday - an opportunity he described Tuesday as "an honor."

All of this, in turn, has served to roil liberal activists who populate many of New York's campuses.

At the New School, a proudly left-leaning university of some 8,000 students now headed by former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., organizers announced Tuesday that they had collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition asking Kerrey to uninvite the Arizona Republican from the May 19 commencement ceremony.

Gregory Tewksbury, a part-time instructor and a leader of the anti-McCain protests, said the senator's stand on abortion and gay rights did not reflect the values of the New School. But he insisted McCain would be welcome to speak in a different setting - one that allowed students and faculty to engage him.

"If Sen. McCain wants to come and debate his views on his conservative support for the South Dakota ban on abortion or war in Iraq or opposition to gay marriage, we are happy to have a debate with him," Tewksbury said. "But as a commencement speaker where there is no give and take, we feel the speaker should represent the views of the university."

Other speakers went further, suggesting McCain's views were so out of the mainstream that he had no business appearing at the New School at all.

"Civility is not in order at a time like this. The moral position is outrage, protest and revolt against the right-wing oligarchy that is currently running this country," said literature professor Ann Snitow, adding that she believed McCain's opposition to abortion rights is tantamount to support for female sexual slavery.

For his part, Kerrey said he stood by his decision to invite McCain - a fellow Vietnam war veteran and former Senate colleague - to deliver the commencement address.

"As a university president, you try to get speakers who are leaders. I think he's one of a handful of world leaders," Kerrey said in a telephone interview.

He added that he fully supports the rights of students and faculty to protest McCain's visit, but hopes there will be minimal disruption for students and their families "who are there simply to celebrate graduation."

At Columbia, protesters have launched a Web site and discussion board titled "John McCain Does Not Speak for Us." Ticking through his positions on abortion, gay rights, the Iraq war and touching on his speech at Liberty, organizers say McCain's views are incompatible with those of the community he's been asked to address.

To be sure, not all students are supporting the McCain protests.

"What about freedom of ideas?" asked Morgan Huntley, a New School senior who said he looked forward to hearing McCain speak.

A self-described libertarian, Huntley said the New School did not respect divergent viewpoints.

"The New School only has one side of the coin," he said. "If you explore the other side, you're nuts."

Last week, some 100 faculty members at Boston College signed a letter objecting to the school's plans to award Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice an honorary degree at graduation on May 22. Rice also is scheduled to deliver the commencement address.

Border Patrol Tips Mexico to Minuteman Sites

The U.S. Border Patrol has been tipping off Mexican authorities about the whereabouts of Minuteman civilian patrols that are seeking to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

According to documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government about the location of Minuteman and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegals crossing the border.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

"It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

"They just basically endangered the lives of American people." U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Mario Martinez confirmed the notification process, saying it is meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed, according to the Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Martinez said.

He added that Mexico's official perception of the Minutemen and other civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, and the Border Patrol hoped to allay that concern by entering into the cooperative agreement with Mexican authorities.

But Minutemen members say that reporting their location to Mexico nullifies their efforts to intercept illegal aliens.

And T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council – a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents – told the Daily Bulletin that agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate's influence over the agency.

"It worries me [that the Mexican government] seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That's not a legitimate role for any foreign nation."

What Ails Mexico’s Economy?

A lack of capital to finance business startups, for one.
By William P. Kucewicz
Mexicans illegally cross into the U.S. in the knowledge that there’s a ready market for their labor at wages that represent a premium over what they can earn in their homeland. But why is it that Mexico can’t generate sufficient jobs at high enough wages to stave off this massive flight of labor capital?

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has evolved into two economies, in effect: an externally oriented one, where wages and job opportunities have risen, and the domestically oriented one, which suffers, inter alia, from a lack of capital availability to finance business startups and thus create new jobs.

The lack of adequate financing is especially galling because Mexicans are tremendously enterprising. Mexico consistently ranks among the top of various lists of countries with the most self-employment and entrepreneurship. This proclivity indeed seems to carry over into Mexican self-employment rates in the U.S. for those migrants who are here legally, according to a University of California study.

The economic improvements of the past decade have been largely confined to border states adjoining the U.S. or to areas around major shipping centers. While NAFTA, which took effect in January 1994, has boosted trade, GDP, and foreign direct investment, Mexico’s more isolated inner and southern regions haven’t kept pace. Hindrances include longer distances to international markets, low education and skill levels, limited access to credit, and less foreign direct investment.
“Not all regions within Mexico seem to be equally linked to the international economy,” Daniel Chiquiar of Banco de México stated at a recent Dallas Federal Reserve conference. “Overall wages in general and unskilled wages in particular increased in regions that exhibited stronger links with the U.S. market.” As a result, he said, regional wage differentials have widened as “workers with similar characteristics fared differently in response to Mexico’s trade liberalization, depending on their geographical location.”

Near the U.S. border, a new industry has prospered — namely, maquiladora assembly plants, which account for roughly half of Mexico’s exports to the United States. In fact, studies show the more maquila-intensive a region is, the more connected it becomes to the U.S. economy and the less tied it is to Mexico’s domestic economy. Maquiladoras and similar operations in other countries are said to be “chronically volatile” because they “act as shock absorbers for manufacturing operations in industrial countries,” according to a Dallas Fed report. Perhaps more accurately, such operations resemble “peaking” plants in the electric power industry — plants that come online to supply power at times of peak demand. Either way, maquiladoras operate on the margin, meaning swings in U.S. economic activity, up or down, have disproportionately large effects.

Then there’s the China factor. In terms of comparative advantage in manufacturing and other labor-intensive sectors, Mexico has discovered that even its low wages are high compared with those of China and some other Asian nations. In 1999, for example, Mexico made about 70 percent of all U.S. television-set imports; five years later, the figure had dropped to 45 percent, with China and other Asian exporters making up the difference. Mexico has also lost export market share to Asian competitors in such labor-intensive areas as textiles, apparel, and leather goods.

Labor capital flight from agrarian areas has seen the percentage of male Mexicans aged 25 to 65 employed in agriculture drop from 22 percent to 13 percent. Most of this migration has gone into the service sector, where the percentage of male workers employed has risen from 45 percent to 52 percent, while manufacturing employment overall has been flat at between 21 and 22 percent, according to Bank of Mexico data.

In skill-scarce Mexico, education is as critical as geography. “Wage gains [under NAFTA] were largest for more educated workers living close to the United States and were smallest for less educated workers living in southern Mexico,” according to Gordon Hanson of the National Bureau of Economic Research of Cambridge, Mass.

Low education levels characterize the vast majority of Mexican migrants to the U.S., according to a recent Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México study. In the period 1992-2002, 79 percent of all Mexican migrants and 78 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico had eight years or less of formal schooling, with 11 percent of both groups having no education and 33 to 34 percent having only one to four years of schooling.

Wages are generally lower in poor countries than in richer ones for a simple reason: the availability of financial capital. It’s the ratio of financial capital — spent on technology, plant, and equipment — to labor capital that determines labor productivity, and labor productivity in turn determines a nation’s overall wage and salary structure and its standard of living. Indeed, capital equipment and technology can even help to offset a country’s inferior educational levels by allowing minimally trained workers to perform relatively complicated tasks. The availability of financial capital thus becomes the key to rising economic growth, labor productivity, personal incomes, and living standards.

Financial capital can be generated internally within a country, borrowed from abroad, repatriated from abroad, or invested from abroad. Other than foreign aid and criminal proceeds, those are about the only sources of financing available to a developing economy. U.S. direct investment in Mexico (on a historical cost basis) has risen fivefold under NAFTA from $13.7 billion in 1992 to $66.6 billion in 2004 (the latest available data). As a percentage of all U.S. direct investment abroad, Mexico’s share has expanded from 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent over the same period.

Government indebtedness to commercial banks has been on the decline in the past two years or more, thanks to heftier oil-related revenue. Reduced government reliance on bank loans, as well as the phasing out of a contingency fund dating back to 1990, means that commercial banks in Mexico have more capital to lend to the private sector — and most of this freed-up capital has gone toward increased consumer lending.

Commercial bank lending in the 2005 fourth quarter increased by 42.9 billion pesos, or about $4 billion, from the third quarter, a 3.7 percent gain. Compared with year-earlier levels, total fourth-quarter lending was up 76.3 billion pesos, or $7.2 billion, a 7.1 percent increase. Consumer credit has been on a tear, up 32.1 billion pesos (or $3 billion) in the fourth quarter, a gain of 12.4 percent from the prior quarter and a 52.9 percent increase from a year earlier. However, lending to businesses was up 23.2 billion pesos (or $2.2 billion), a quarterly gain of 5.6 percent and a year-on-year rise of 8.9 percent.

Soaring oil prices have boosted fiscal revenues, with income from the state oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) reaching 21.1 billion pesos in February, up a whopping 236.3 percent from a year earlier, and all oil-related revenue (including royalties) adding up to 67.1 billion pesos, a year-on-year gain of 41.4 percent. Total public-sector tax revenue in February was 65.2 billion pesos, 7.4 percent above a year earlier. Income taxes were 29.2 billion pesos, up 3.9 percent, while the national value-added tax (VAT) brought in nearly as much at 27.7 billion pesos, representing a gain of 30.1 percent from a year before. As a percentage of GDP, Mexico’s total public-sector income was equivalent to 24 percent of GDP at the end of 2005, although federal tax revenue equaled just 9.3 percent of GDP.

Besides low education levels and poor skill sets, a number of additional factors account for Mexico’s inability to reap the full benefits of free trade: Its legal system is slow and unreliable; contract law requires fixing, as does contract enforceability; Mexico’s corporate structures lack adequate financial transparency and accountability; the country’s low-paid judiciary is open to charges of inefficiency, incompetence, and corruption; and vital institutions, such as property rights, need considerable improvement.

Inadequate infrastructure, including transportation, power, and communications, plagues the nation. Supply-chain gaps in areas like freight and repair services are a major problem. The banking system, though expanded and improved, still needs more modernization, and pension and insurance reforms are also lacking. As for the cost of credit, unnecessarily strict banking regulations add significantly to borrowing expenses. It’s estimated, for instance, that if Mexico’s restrictions on banking activities were on a par with those of South Korea, its interest-rate margins would be a full percentage point lower than they are today. And Mexico is still insufficiently hospitable to venture capital.

Crime and corruption, which act like a tax, present serious impediments to new investment, both direct and portfolio. One study estimated that corruption, a lack of financial transparency, an inferior legal system, and other institutional inadequacies add 5 percent to the cost of doing business with Mexico versus the United States. Another analysis found Mexico’s level of government corruption has the same negative effect on inward foreign direct investment as raising the marginal tax rate by 42 percentage points.