Finally - an UpStanding Lady

Published on Friday, August 18, 2006 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington)

Bush Tampers with War Prisoner Rights
by Helen Thomas

Why does the Bush administration insist on tinkering with the long-established laws on military conduct and treaties of this land?

Bush administration officials are drafting amendments to the 1996 War Crimes Act to immunize political appointees, CIA officials and former military personnel from criminal prosecution for humiliating or degrading treatment of prisoners of war.

The War Crimes Act makes it a felony to violate the Geneva Conventions. Those treaties govern military conduct in wartime and were ratified in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II.

The administration's proposed amendments would reduce the number of acts against detainees subject to criminal prosecution.

The administration seems most concerned about Common Article 3 of the Conventions that bars "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Officials are concerned that revelations about U.S. use of leashed dogs lunging at detainees during interrogation, forcing male prisoners to wear feminine underwear, and nakedness might fall into the category of "outrages upon personal dignity" and give rise to prosecution in the aftermath of the scandals at Abu Ghraib prisons.

Perhaps they fear future accountability.

Since his administration has been tainted by accusations of torture and reports of CIA-run secret prisons abroad, Bush should be thinking of ways to resurrect America's damaged worldwide reputation for compassion and humanity rather than designing end runs around our legal commitments.

The accords are a two-way street because they also determine how other nations treat American prisoners. This explains why top U.S. military officials get anxious whenever Bush administration civilian officials start tinkering with the rights of prisoners of war.

The administration ignored the Geneva Conventions after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales concluded they were "obsolete" and "quaint" when he was the chief lawyer in the White House. President Bush went along with those descriptions.

That stance has changed after the Supreme Court in June rebuked the administration for failing to abide by the Geneva Conventions. The justices said prisoners captured in the struggle against al-Qaida terrorism were entitled to protections.

And that has led to the proposed changes in the law.

Gonzales recently testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the phrase "outrages upon personal dignity" is ambiguous and handicaps those fighting terrorism.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was a POW during the Vietnam War, disagreed, telling the Senate hearing that top military lawyers see no problem in complying with Common Article 3 and did not think it would impede their work.

We don't know how much -- if any -- information has been extracted under coercive interrogations from terrorist suspects picked up after 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. We may never know.

The draft amendments have not been officially released but are part of the administration's planned response to the Supreme Court's decision that threw out Bush's plan to put detainees on trial before special commissions that had never been authorized by Congress.

The justices ruled that detainees must be tried by a "regularly constituted court affording all judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

It's good to see the court challenge the we-can-do-whatever-we-want attitude that imbues this administration.

Commonly referred to as "The First Lady of the Press," former White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas is a trailblazer, breaking through barriers for women reporters while covering every President since John F. Kennedy. For 57 years, she also served as White House correspondent for United Press International. She recently left this post and joined Hearst Newspapers as a syndicated columnist.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Dirty Money - Our Government Permits it !

Published on Saturday, June 24, 2006 by The Nation
Dirty Money
by William Greider

The New York Times devoted a lot of ink to the Bush Administration's practice of secretly rummaging through international banking transactions in pursuit of terrorists. But, frankly, I had a hard time grasping the scandal.

After all, the Treasury announced it was going to do something like this after 9/ll -- a legitimate, legal method of discovering the networks financing terrorist cells.

So I called an old friend and source for elucidation. Jack Blum is a legendary investigator and lawyer in Washington, who for decades has tenaciously uncovered the global flows of dirty money. Jack confirmed my hunch. He was outraged, but not by the Times revelations.

The scandal here is not government over-reach, he tells me. The scandal is the pitiful reluctance of this administration (and others before it) to get serious about the problem.

Bankers, Blum explained, "have fended off every conceivable rule that would really be effective. Why are we pandering to them if we say we are in such a desperate situation?"

The political influence of bankers tops all other sectors, I learned as a young reporter. Regardless of party or ideology, politicians seek their friendship. So the United States has created a truly bizarre banking code that legalizes--and keeps secret--vast flows of ill-gotten gains. For what purpose? Terrorist financing, yes, but that business is dwarfed by the drug trade profits, insider looting of corporations, offshore tax evasion, securities fraud, plain-vanilla fraud, and other uses.

The American dollar is lingua fria for illegal commerce and Congress protects the sanctity of its privacy, even allows it the criminal proceeds to flow freely through government-chartered and regulated financial institutions. This shady business is not an inconsequential profit center for banks (a bit like pornography for Microsoft).

The monitoring system described by the Times seems unexceptional to Blum. Indeed, his complaint is that it's so narrowly focused that it mostly harvests empty information. "Meanwhile, the biggest purveyor of terrorist money, as everyone knows, are accounts in Saudi Arabia," Blum observes. "Nobody will deal with it because the Saudis own half of America." An exaggeration, but you get his point.

Blum knows the offshore outposts where US corporations and wealthy Americans dodge taxes or US regulatory laws. Congress could shut them tomorrow if it chose. Instead, it keeps elaborating new loopholes that enable the invention of exotic new tax shelters for tainted fortunes. The latest to flourish, he says, are shell corporations-- freely chartered by states.

"The GAO says this device is being used for money laundering by everyone else in the world," Blum says. "Congress ought to start there." He is not holding his breath.

My point is, individual privacy deserves vigorous defense against the government. But who is the victim when the government itself shields the criminals and their bankerly accomplices from exposure?

William Greider, a prominent political journalist and author, has been a reporter for more than 35 years for newspapers, magazines and television. Over the past two decades, he has persistently challenged mainstream thinking on economics.

© 2006 The Nation

Police enjoy " Breaking the Law"

Police Got Phone Data from Brokers
by Ted Bridis and John Solomon

Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.
These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.

The law enforcement agencies include offices in the Homeland Security Department and Justice Department — including the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.

"We are requesting any and all information you have regarding the above cell phone account and the account holder ... including account activity and the account holder's address," Ana Bueno, a police investigator in Redwood City, Calif., wrote in October to PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.

An agent in Denver for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anna Wells, sent a similar request on March 31 on Homeland Security stationery: "I am looking for all available subscriber information for the following phone number," Wells wrote to a corporate alias used by PDJ.

Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies any price.

PDJ said it always provided help to police for free. "Agencies from all across the country took advantage of it," said PDJ's lawyer, Larry Slade of Los Angeles.

A lawmaker who has investigated the industry said Monday he was concerned by the practices of data brokers.

"We know law enforcement has used this because it is easily obtained and you can gather a lot of information very quickly," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., head of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee. The panel expects to conduct hearings this week.

Whitfield said data companies will relentlessly pursue a target's personal information. "They will impersonate and use everything available that they have to convince the person who has the information to share it with them, and it's shocking how successful they are," Whitfield said. "They can basically obtain any information about anybody on any subject."

The congressman said laws on the subject are vague: "There's a good chance there are some laws being broken, but it's not really clear precisely which laws."

James Bearden, a Texas lawyer who represents four such data brokers, compared the companies' activities to the National Security Agency, which reportedly compiles the phone records of ordinary Americans.

"The government is doing exactly what these people are accused of doing," Bearden said. "These people are being demonized. These are people who are partners with law enforcement on a regular basis."

The police agencies told AP they used the data brokers because it was quicker and easier than subpoenas, and their lawyers believe their actions were lawful. Some agencies, such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, instructed agents to stop the practice after congressional inquiries.

The U.S. Marshal's Service told AP it was examining its policies but compared services offered by data brokers to Web sites providing public telephone numbers nationally.

None of the police agencies interviewed by AP said they researched these data brokers to determine how they secretly gather sensitive information like names associated with unlisted numbers, records of phone calls, e-mail aliases — even tracing a person's location using their cellular phone signal.

"If it's on the Internet and it's been commended to us, we wouldn't do a full-scale investigation," Marshal's Service spokesman David Turner said. "We don't knowingly go into any source that would be illegal. We were not aware, I'm fairly certain, what technique was used by these subscriber services."

At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spokesman Dean Boyd said agents did not pay for phone records and sought approval from U.S. prosecutors before making requests. Their goal was "to more quickly identify and filter out phone numbers that were unrelated to their investigations," Boyd said.

Targets of the police interest include alleged marijuana smugglers, car thieves, armed thugs and others. The data services also are enormously popular among banks and other lenders, private detectives and suspicious spouses. Customers included:

_A U.S. Labor Department employee who used her government e-mail address and phone number to buy two months of personal cellular phone records of a woman in New Jersey.

_A buyer who received credit card information about the father of murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey.

_A buyer who obtained 20 printed pages of phone calls by pro basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The athlete was "shocked to learn somebody had obtained this information," said Mark Termini, his lawyer and agent in Cleveland. "When a person or agency is able to obtain by fraudulent means a person's personal information, that is something that should be prohibited by law."

PDJ's lawyer said no one at the company violated laws, but he acknowledged, "I'm not sure that every law enforcement agency in the country would agree with that analysis."

Many of the executives summoned to testify before Congress this week were expected to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and to decline to answer questions.

Slade said no one at PDJ impersonated customers to steal personal information, a practice known within the industry as pretexting.

"This was farmed out to private investigators," Slade said. "They had written agreements with their vendors, making sure the vendors were acquiring the information in legal ways."

Privacy advocates bristled over data brokers gathering records for police without subpoenas.

"This is pernicious, an end run around the Fourth Amendment," said Marc Rotenberg, head of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading privacy group that has sought tougher federal regulation of data brokers. "The government is encouraging unlawful conduct; it's not smart on the law enforcement side to be making use of information obtained improperly."

A federal agent who ordered phone records without subpoenas about a half-dozen times recently said he learned about the service from FBI investigators and was told this was a method to obtain phone subscriber information quicker than with a subpoena.

The agent, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with reporters, said he and colleagues use data brokers "when he have the need to act fairly quickly" because getting a subpoena can involve lengthy waits.

Waiting for a phone company's response to a subpoena can take several days or up to 45 days, said police supervisor Eric Stasiak of Redwood City, Calif. In some cases, a request to a data broker yields answers in just a few hours, Stasiak said.

Legal experts said law enforcement agencies would be permitted to use illegally obtained information from private parties without violating the Fourth Amendment's protection against unlawful search and seizure, as long as police did not encourage any crimes to be committed.

"If law enforcement is encouraging people in the private sector to commit a crime in getting these records that would be problematic," said Mark Levin, a former top Justice Department official under President Reagan. "If, on the other hand, they are asking data brokers if they have any public information on any given phone numbers that should be fine."

Levin said he nonetheless would have advised federal agents to use the practice only when it was a matter of urgency or national security and otherwise to stick to a legally bulletproof method like subpoenas for everyday cases.

Congress subpoenaed thousands of documents from data brokers describing how they collected telephone records by impersonating customers.

"I was shot down four times," Michele Yontef complained in an e-mail in July 2005 to a colleague. "I keep getting northwestern call center and they just must have had an operator meeting about pretext as every operator is clued in."

Yontef, who relayed another request for phone call records as early as February, was among those ordered to appear at this week's hearing.

Another company years ago even acknowledged breaking the law.

"We must break various rules of law in acquiring all the information we achieve for you," Touch Tone Information Inc. of Denver wrote to a law firm in 1998 that was seeking records of calls made on a calling card.

The FBI's top lawyers told agents as early as 2001 they can gather private information about Americans from data brokers, even information gleaned from mortgage applications and credit reports, which normally would be off-limits to the government under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act.

FBI lawyers rationalized that even though data brokers may have obtained financial information, agents could still use the information because brokers were not acting as a consumer-reporting agency but rather as a data warehouse.

The FBI said it relies only on well-respected data brokers and expects agents to abide by the law. "The FBI can only collect and retain data available from commercial databases in strict compliance with applicable federal law," spokesman Mike Kortan said Monday.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

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Republicans can't Face the Truth about Malpactice !

My name is Heather Lewinski. I am a 17-year-old high school senior from Pittsburgh, PA. I recently saw President Bush on television saying that Congress should pass a law saying that people who are injured by medical mistakes should never receive more than $250,000 for their pain and suffering. Unfortunately, I know this from personal experience a patient's pain and suffering can be way more than $250,000.

When I was 8 years old, a doctor performed a surgery on my face that I later learned was unnecessary. He told my parents that he had completed this surgery successfully on many other patients with my condition and that he would be able to take care of my problem with two easy surgeries with no visible scars.

To our horror, my parents and I later found out that he had never done the surgery before and that no doctor in the whole United States had ever recommended it.

The first time I took the bandages off my face and looked in the mirror I just cried. He tried to do another surgery to fix it, but that only made things worse. The corner of my mouth was all pulled down. I looked like I had a stroke.

Since then, I have been forced to undergo 14 major surgeries on my face to try to correct what he did. I live with horrible scars all over my face. I have had so much pain over the past ten years, I can't even begin to tell you about all of it.

After each surgery my mouth would be wired shut. My face would be swollen; my entire head would be wrapped in bandages. Sometimes the pain was so bad it would feel like my whole face was going to explode. It was like someone had a hammer and kept hitting me and hitting me.

Even though I was a good student, I missed so much school from all of the surgeries that they had to label me as “special ed.” I hated that label!

By far the worst part about everything that has happened to me is the way my face looks and how people treat me. I wish people could see the inside of me and know the kind of person I really am, but all they see is those scars on my face, and they stare and glare at me.

Every time I walk in the halls, into class or in the cafeteria, people are staring and I hate it! The kids in school have constantly teased me and called me names like “Two Face,” the character from the Batman movie. I hated to eat in the cafeteria because I could not close my mouth, and I would drool profusely. Because of the way the corner of my mouth looked, the kids would walk around school and pull down their lip and mock me.

I really like people, but I have only one close friend, my girlfriend Angela who I grew up with. It is so hard for me to meet new people and make friends because they just stare. I quit riding the bus from school a long time ago because it was torture. My mom has to take me to school and pick me up.

I remember one time sitting in the cafeteria a few years ago, and a boy came up to me and asked me if I was doing anything on Friday. I was so excited that I almost fell over, but then he went back to his table with his other friends, and they all started laughing and pointing at me, and I then realized it was just a big joke. I heard him say something like “Why would I go out with an ugly two-face loser?”

The only activity that I really am involved in is training and showing dogs. I have been real lucky and have been able to win several awards competing against adults at these shows. I think one of the reasons that I like dog training so much is that animals can't stare or laugh at you.

I am now a high school senior and I have never had a boy ask me on a date. I will be 18 in a few months, and I have never kissed a boy. My biggest wish is that someday I will find a boy who will look and see me for what is on the inside my heart and in my mind and not my appearance.

I would love to get married and have a family some day, but if I am honest with myself, I do not know if that will ever happen.


For additional information go to: http://action.peopleoverprofits.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=29871

http://action.peopleoverprofits.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=29871

Rumsfeld Likes Whips and Chains ?

Published on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 by OneWorld.net
Rumsfeld Linked to Guantanamo Torture
by Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - A leading international human rights group is calling for the Bush administration to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged involvement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials in the torture of a prisoner at Guanatanamo Bay some three years ago.


Documents Link Rumsfeld to Prisoner's Interrogation



Rumsfeld could be criminally liable under federal or military law for the abuse and torture of detainee Mohammad al-Qahtani in late 2002 and early 2003, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said this week as some Democratic lawmakers demanded that Rumsfeld step down as Pentagon chief.

The rights group's demand comes in light of findings by a major Internet publication that indicate Rumsfeld might have been fully aware of the abuses inflicted on al-Qahtani, a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges.

Last week, a military report obtained by Salon.com included a statement by Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt that raises serious questions about the conduct of the Pentagon chief and other officials concerning al-Qahtani's interrogation. In the report, Gen. Schmidt says Rumsfeld was "talking weekly" with Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a senior commander at Guantanamo in early 2003, about the al-Qahtani interrogation, and that he was "personally involved in the interrogation of (this) one person."

Schmidt's statement also signals that Rumsfeld maintained a high level of knowledge of and supervision over al-Qahtani's treatment, although he did not specifically order more abusive methods used in the interrogation.

Al-Qahtani, who is suspected of being a "20th hijacker" in connection with the September 11 attacks, was denied entry to the United States in August 2001. He is seen by the military as an "al-Qaeda terrorist," who provided a "treasure trove" of information during his interrogation.

The Pentagon admits that al-Qahtani's interrogation was systematic and well-planned. "(His) interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Jeffery Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon.com in an e-mail.

"Nothing was done randomly," he said about al-Qahtani's interrogation.

Human Rights Watch says it has obtained an unedited copy of al-Qahtani's interrogation log, which suggests that the techniques used on him during the interrogation were "so abusive that they amounted to torture."

The log reveals that al-Qahtani was subjected to various methods of physical and mental mistreatment from mid-November 2002 to early January 2003. For six weeks, he was deprived of sleep, forced into painful physical positions, and subjected to forced exercises, standing, and sexual humiliation.

Al-Qahtani was forced to accept an intravenous drip for hydration and on several occasions was refused trips to the latrine so that he urinated on himself at least twice, according to the log, which also reveals that the prisoner was forced to undergo an enema.

"A six-week regime of sleep deprivation, forced exercises, stress positions, white noise, and sexual humiliation amounts to acts that were specifically intended to cause severe physical pain and suffering and mental pain," said Joanne Mariner, HRW's director of terrorism and counter terrorism.

"That's the legal definition of torture," she added.

Last year, the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps also made similar observations on the al-Qahtani case. He told the Senate Committee on Armed Services that the interrogation techniques used on al-Qahtani violated the U.S. Army Field Manuel on Intelligence Interrogation.

For its part, the U.S. State Department considers such techniques to be torture and has condemned their use in other countries such as Iran and North Korea in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights.

In a February report, United Nations investigators on torture called on the U.S. government to close down Guantanamo and "refrain from any practice amounting to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

In response, Washington slammed the UN report, noting that the UN experts had declined an invitation to visit Guantanamo because they would not be allowed to interview prisoners.

Independent legal experts say Rumsfeld could be liable under the doctrine of "command responsibility," the legal principle that holds a superior responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates when he knew or should have known that they were being committed but failed to take responsible steps to stop them.

Human Rights Watch's Mariner says a special prosecutor is needed because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was himself "deeply involved" in the policies leading to the abuse of prisoners, a conflict of interest that is likely to prevent a proper investigation

"The question at this point is not whether Rumsfeld should resign," said Joanne Mariner, "it's whether he should be indicted. A special prosecutor should look carefully at what abuses Rumsfeld either knew of or condoned."

The Pentagon admits that in December 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 interrogation techniques for al-Qahtani and other prisoners, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions, and "using detainees' individual phobia (such as using dogs)."

However, the military has refused to release the full version of Gen. Schmidt's report on abuses, according to Mariner and others who note with dismay that in July last year Gen. Bantz Craddock dismissed claims that the al-Qahtani interrogation violated military laws.

Copyright © 2006 OneWorld.net.

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Ease Drop for Votes - GOP Jamming ?

Published on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 by the Associated Press
Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House
by Larry Margasak

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls — mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office — between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.

There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.

Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors "tried a very narrow case," said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.

The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices "at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day."

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

"As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

"On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington," Kelner said.

"If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day," he said.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

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Gay GOP Chair Mehlman - Don't Ask, I Won't Tell ?

March 25, 2005

GOP national chair avoids question about his sexuality

by Eric Resnick

Akron--"[You] have asked a question people shouldn't have to answer," said Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman to a reporter asking if he is gay.

Mehlman was interviewed after he spoke to the Summit County Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day dinner March 19 at Quaker Station.

"I'm here to say thank you," Mehlman told the gathering, "because Summit County increased its votes for George W. Bush from 2000 to 2004 more than any other county."

Mehlman managed the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and, according to the campaign's Ohio co-chair, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, directed Ohio anti-gay activists to mount the campaign to put the Issue 1 marriage ban amendment on the ballot.

Internet bloggers have pointed out that if Mehlman, 38, unmarried and never with female companionship, is gay, he is a hypocrite.

Activist and blogger John Arovosis says Mehlman should be outed if he is gay because "Mehlman has already said publicly that the gay issue is fair game for politics. If it is fair game, then the same rules apply to him."

Arovosis opines that in addition to Mehlman defending George W. Bush’s anti-gay policies, "the Republican National Committee makes no bones about using gaybashing to help Republican candidates."

"The GOP has made it perfectly clear that gays and lesbians and their relationships are a threat to the fabric of American society. As American citizens and voters, we have the right to know if Ken Mehlman’s so-far-undisclosed relationships are posing such a threat or not," wrote Arovosis.

As RNC chair, Mehlman organized a campaign to discredit Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Among the reasons he said Reid is unfit to hold the position is the senator's longstanding positive relationship with the Human Rights Campaign and his 100 percent LGBT voting record. Also included was Reid’s opposition to a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Doesn't think amendment is anti-gay

During his Akron remarks, Mehlman put forth political and policy statements often viewed as anti-gay.

"Republicans are for government that stands on the side of marriage," he said, "and on the side of strong families."

After the dinner, he was asked by a reporter about the GOP's support for the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment, introduced in the House last week by Rep. Dan Lundgren of California.

Mehlman made it clear that he supports the amendment.

"I don't think it's anti-gay," said Mehlman. "I don't think the intent is to be anti-anything."

Mehlman also promoted the "culture of life," which is seen as code for anti-choice, anti-sex and reproductive privacy laws.

"We have to appoint strict constructionists to the bench who know the difference between their job and [that of] legislators," said Mehlman.

"Strict constructionists" generally hold to the literal meaning of the Constitution at the time of its writing. They are not likely to rule favorably on the side of plaintiffs who bring civil rights actions.

Mehlman told the party faithful that the way to achieve a "durable Republican majority" at all levels of government is "to make GOP stand for Grow Our Party."

To do so, Mehlman said, "We must get more African-Americans and Latinos." Both groups have significant elements of social conservatism opposed to LGBT equality on religious grounds.

"If you believe in government that respects your faith and your values, then our party is your party," Mehlman said.

Asked if growing the GOP means embracing LGBT equality and including gays and lesbians, Mehlman avoided the question again, saying, "The Republican Party is based on ideas. Anyone who shares those ideas is welcome."

Mehlman added that his sexual orientation, whatever it is, "changes nothing" as to how the party will operate under his leadership.

Steve Schmidt, a senior official of the Bush campaign, is the only person near Mehlman to answer a question about his sexuality.

"Ken Mehlman is not gay," he flatly told reporter Jake Tapper for a story in this month’s GQ.

Local party chair was outed

The dinner's sponsor, the Summit County Republican Party, is headed by Alex R. Arshinkoff, who was outed by the Cleveland weekly Scene in June, 2003.

The paper reported accounts of Arshinkoff’s presence at Cleveland area gay bars, including the Leather Stallion and the Grid.

Arshinkoff's vanity license plate ARA‑1 has been seen in Akron gay bar parking lots and cruising areas for years.

According to a December 27, 2002 Akron police report, Arshinkoff picked up a 21-year-old male Kent State student who was stranded and needed to get home.

The report says Arshinkoff asked the student if he was gay or bi, then began rubbing his thigh and grabbing his crotch, asking the young man if he wanted to make some money.

An officer saw the student jump out of the car, but let Arshinkoff go and police never investigated further.

A second incident concerned a sexual harassment complaint reported to a deputy clerk of the Summit County Board of Elections by a former Municipal Court employee, also male. No charges were filed.

Arshinkoff, in addition to recruiting and promoting anti-gay candidates, some of them also believed to be closeted gays, authorized a letter to be sent on behalf of the Summit County Republican Party thanking voters who signed petitions to put Issue 1 on the ballot.

"We need voters like you," the letter said.

Jim King, the owner of Angel Falls, a mostly gay coffee shop in Akron’s Highland Square neighborhood, said he sent a letter to Arshinkoff, who used to come in the store twice a day, asking if it was true that the party paid for that letter.

"I just wanted to know the truth," said King, "and I never heard from him again.'

Arshnikoff, who is married, has never publicly come out.

Another county GOP chair, Franklin County’s Doug Preisse, came out quietly last year in a September 12 Columbus Dispatch story on the city's openly lesbian councilmember Mary Jo Hudson.

‘He almost said it’

Four members of the Cleveland Log Cabin Republican group attended the dinner to hear Mehlman.

“He almost said it,” said Parker Bosley, in reference to what he wished would have been Mehlman’s full embrace of LGBT Republicans.

“I think it was because he said reach out to everyone,” said Bosley. “But not including gays is not a reason not to join.”

Bosley said conservative gays and lesbians who don’t want to be “the lap dog of Democrats” can contribute to the Republican Party “just like black people.”

Fred Bachhuber said he expected not to hear a GLBT welcome from Mehlman.

“He just can’t do it yet,” said Bachhuber, “but as long as he’s sleeping with men behind the scenes, that’s all I care about.”