Choice America Network

HOW WOULD you like to be paid $39 million for four months of work?  That’s the situation for Alan Mulally, the president and chief executive of Ford Motor Co.

According to recent news reports, when Mulally took over as CEO of Ford on September 1 of last year, he immediately started raking in the big bucks. For just the four months he worked last year--September 1 until December 31, a total of 122 days in all--Mulally received total compensation valued at $39.1 million. That’s $320,491 a day--including weekends.

In addition to his $666,667 in straight salary--a prorated amount based on his $2 million annual “earnings”--Mulally also got a $7.5 million hiring bonus and $11 million to offset performance and stock option awards he forfeited when he left his previous company. He received other compensation totaling $334,433, including $172,974 for use of corporate aircraft and $55,469 for “relocation costs” and “temporary housing.”

And to top it off, Ford gave Mulally stock and option awards worth an estimated $19.6 million when they were granted to him on his first day on the job, according to the Associated Press.

No wonder Mulally praised his fellow Ford executives when he opened the recent New York International Auto Show. “Look at the smiles on their faces,” he said, pointing at them.

Ford workers have less reason to smile these days. Last year, the country’s second-largest automaker lost $12.7 billion, the largest loss in its history. Management, led now by Mulally, has undertaken a massive restructuring program aimed at cutting costs through cutting jobs. Chrysler is cutting 9,000 jobs in the US and 4,000 in Canada.

The company announced last year that it would seek to close 16 plants and slash at least 30,000 jobs by 2012. Additionally, Ford and other automakers have squeezed workers’ health care and pension benefits.

In the past year and a half, the United Auto Workers has agreed to concessions in retiree health care at Ford worth $850 million, as well as lower pay scales for new workers and buyout programs that have prompted tens of thousands of workers to retire early or take a lump sum in cash and give up their jobs and benefits.

If, on the other hand, Mulally ever decides to leave, he’ll have a golden parachute to break his fall. According to the Detroit Free Press, his severance package will be worth $27.5 million if he’s terminated “not for cause” or for “good reason,” such as a change in control at the company.

OF COURSE, Alan Mulally isn’t alone.  There are many other corporate CEO's involved in such absurdity.

Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg earned more than $109 million in the past five years--despite the company losing money while he was in charge. Former Home Deport chief Robert Nardelli was given approximately $210 million to clean out his desk--including $20 million in cash severance and $77 million in deferred stocks--on top of the $240 million in compensation he received during the six years that he was in charge of the company.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration announced with much fanfare last week that the unemployment rate had dropped to 4.4 percent in March, matching a five-year low.  But for factory workers--including in auto, furniture, clothing and textiles--the number of jobs declined for the ninth straight month. Residential construction jobs, a casualty of the housing slump, also fell.

Furhermore,  as you may have heard,  Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer after Best Buy Co., fired 3,400 of its highest-paid hourly workers and will hire replacements willing to work for less. 

The company said its eliminating jobs that paid "well above''  ($10 to $11 an hour) market rates.  Those who were fired can apply for the lower pay, company spokesman Bill Cimino said according to Bloomberg.  He declined to give the wages of the fired workers or the new hires.   "Firing 3,400 of arguably the most successful sales people in the company could prove terrible for morale,'' said Colin McGranahan, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co.

However, despite the massive firings, Circut City Chief Executive Officer Philip Schoonover was paid $8.52 million in fiscal 2006, including a salary of $975,000 and  Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson received $3.85 million, including a $1.17 million salary.

The job cuts are  "one of the most brazen examples of corporate America run amuck,'' said Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, which represents seven unions and about 6 million workers. ``It's workers as disposable commodities, put in and put out based on whatever happens to the stock price.''

Circuit City said it will also eliminate another 130 jobs after agreeing to outsource some computer jobs to International Business Machines Corp. IBM got a seven-year contract valued at $775 million to manage some technology operations.

Circuit City is also studying the  sale of its 900 Canadian stores.

Corporate America is  Fubar.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

U.S., India to try again to salvage Nuclear Deal

By Carol Giacomo
Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and India next week will make another attempt at salvaging their controversial nuclear cooperation agreement but U.S. officials, with little room to maneuver, are cautious about the likelihood of progress.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who will hold talks on Monday and Tuesday in Washington with Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, told Reuters, "We think the Indian government wants to achieve the agreement," but the two sides had not found a way to bridge serious differences.

Recent technical-level negotiations did not make substantial progress, so "our intention is to make progress during these talks and accelerate our joint efforts towards a full agreement," Burns said of next week's talks.

The much-heralded deal would give India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors for the first time in 30 years, despite the fact that New Delhi tested nuclear weapons and has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But disputes over India's intentions on nuclear testing and reprocessing have not been resolved and both U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are under political constraints that limit their ability to compromise.

The Indian ambassador in Washington has told U.S. congressional aides that "nothing is insurmountable." But some U.S. experts say differences are so profound, it is increasingly unlikely the deal can be done before Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Philip Zelikow, a former State Department official who helped craft the deal first announced in 2005, said the agreement has "veered toward the precipice at every stage" and is again unraveling because of ambivalence in both countries' bureaucracies.

TIME FOR LEADERS TO STEP IN

"At every stage, it's only been rescued when the leaders grab the steering wheel (and this time) it's not good enough just to repeat the pieties" of why the agreement is important, he said.

"The leaders have to roll up their sleeves and get involved in settling the details," said Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor and adviser to the Washington-based Barbour Griffith & Rogers LLC lobbying firm that represents India.

The pact was approved by the U.S. Congress in December in a new law called the Hyde Act but the countries have since struggled to negotiate a bilateral agreement that lays down the detailed terms of nuclear trade.

India says Congress imposed new conditions in the law but U.S. experts say the Hyde Act reflects U.S. obligations under other U.S. law, the NPT and the 2005 U.S.-India announcement that set broad political parameters for nuclear cooperation.

One major obstacle is the mandate that Washington halt nuclear cooperation if India tests a nuclear weapon as it did in 1998. U.S. nuclear agreements with Japan and other countries contain similar mandates.

Other disputed points are the U.S. refusal to give India prior approval to allow reprocessing of spent fuel with U.S. components and to assure permanent fuel supplies.

U.S. experts say India floated the idea of redefining any future nuclear test as a "peaceful nuclear explosion" so it would not trigger an end to cooperation but these experts dismiss that as an absurd solution.

U.S. negotiators have been "extremely creative" in offering alternative phrases that might accommodate India's objections, one congressional aide said.

But the Democratic-led Congress that took office in January is unlikely to approve a weaker deal than the one the Republican-led Congress passed in December, experts said.

Singh is under strong pressure from communist allies and the opposition Hindu nationalists who do not want him to succumb to U.S. pressure. Americans say India's nuclear scientists have also wielded strong opposition.

Bush is badly weakened in public opinion polls and preoccupied with Iraq.  

© Reuters 2006

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Testimony of Gary Milhollin
Director
Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and
Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School

Before the Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate

April 26, 2006
1 Year Ago Today

Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today on the administration’s plan for nuclear cooperation with India, and particularly on the plan’s strategic impact.

The Committee is right to emphasize the strategic nature of the plan. The legislation to implement it goes to the heart of our national security. The bill now before Congress would change our export control laws – laws that have been in effect for almost thirty years, and that were adopted in response to India’s nuclear test in 1974. It is worth remembering that India achieved that test by diverting plutonium made with a peaceful U.S. nuclear export, which is why India had to call the test a “peaceful nuclear explosion.”

The broad question before us is this: Why, after 9/11, when we should be doing all we can to fight terrorism, and when we talk almost every day about states or terrorists getting their hands on an atomic bomb, should we weaken the controls on the export of nuclear material? Is this the right time to do that? And if we do it, will it make us safer?

These are the questions that Congress should ask. So far, the debate has emphasized diplomacy and trade. The most important questions, however, are strategic. The answers, I’m afraid, are that the legislation will not make us safer. Instead, it will put us more at risk.

Why? Because it is impossible to weaken export controls for India without weakening them for everyone else. The “everyone else” includes Iran, Pakistan, and even terrorist groups – working through a national government or not – who might want to buy the means to make mass destruction weapons. And if we do weaken export controls for everyone, which is bound to happen if we weaken them for India, we may hasten the day when a nuclear explosion destroys an American city.

The great flaw in the administration’s proposal is that it considers India an isolated case. This is simply impossible. To do so contradicts the fundamental principle upon which export controls are based. The controls today are administered through international regimes. The regimes include the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime. The first tries to stop the spread of nuclear arms, the second the missiles to deliver them.

A cardinal principle of both regimes is that they are “country neutral.” That is, they do not make exceptions for specific countries. The MTCR uses objective criteria to target “projects of concern” for missile proliferation. The NSG requires all non-nuclear weapon states that import items designed or prepared for nuclear use to accept comprehensive inspections. Under such inspections, all critical nuclear material must be accounted for, regardless of the country. In this way, the regimes have avoided making politically motivated decisions.

There is good reason for this practice. If the United States decides to drop controls to help one of its friends – in this case India – other supplier countries will do the same for their friends. China will drop controls on its friend Pakistan, and Russia will drop controls on its friend Iran. There will be no way to convince either China or Russia not to do that. They will say that what is good for your friend is good for mine. If you want to develop your market in India, I want just as much to develop my market in Pakistan or Iran. No country will give up a market unless other countries do the same. That is the way international regimes work.

The regimes also rely on coordination, and on consensus. The United States acted unilaterally when it made its deal with India. There was no reported notification or coordination with the NSG or MTCR before the deal was concluded. By violating the consensus norm of these regimes, the United States has invited other members to act the same way. If they do, they may make unilateral deals with Iran or Pakistan without informing the United States. This risk has been created by our own action, and certainly does not make us safer.

The regimes also require enforcement. The member countries are required to investigate and shut down unauthorized exports by their own companies. Since the attacks on 9/11, we have been asking the other countries to do more of this. But can we really ask them to crack down on companies that are exporting the same kind of goods to Pakistan or Iran that we are exporting to India? The same kind of technology will be going to the same kind of projects. What sense will there be in trying to interdict the one and not the other? Even if we can convince the other supplier countries to give lip service to an exception for India, it is unrealistic to expect them to follow through with enforcement against their own companies.

Once we start tinkering with the regimes, they could unravel quickly. As one expert in the Pentagon told me, they are like a spring-loaded box. If you raise the lid, you may never get it closed again. What he meant was that the United States has always set the standard for export controls, and other countries have often taken a long time to follow the U.S. lead in strengthening them. But if the United States decides to loosen controls, it will take only an instant for other countries to follow. The lid will fly off, and we may never be able to get it back on.

I would also like to add a personal note to this point. I have just returned from trips to Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, where I helped provide training and information to assist these countries in improving their export controls. I hope to go to Turkey next. These are all Muslim countries in which the U.S. government is trying to improve export control performance. The export control officials in these countries are now the front-line troops in the fight against terrorism. They must do their jobs well in order to keep terrorists from getting their hands on dangerous technology.

In Jordan, one of the first questions I was asked was: “What about India? Why has the United States decided to export to India?” There is no way I, or any other American, can answer that question in a credible way in a Muslim country. India, Pakistan and Iran all decided to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of peaceful nuclear cooperation. From this standpoint, they are indistinguishable. Why punish Pakistan and Iran but not India? They are all guilty. There is no persuasive reason for treating them differently. India is no different today than it was in 1998, when it tested a nuclear weapon. So, the second question, hiding behind the first, is “what is the ground for the discrimination?” None of us wants to think of the word religion, but it is a word that is in the mind of Muslim countries. If the United States is only against proliferation by countries it does not like, which now appears to be the case after the deal with India, why does it like some countries but not others?

Congress should look deeply into these questions before approving the legislation. So far, it does not appear that anyone has done so, including the administration. The administration’s plan was arrived at hastily, with no consultation with other regime members, and virtually none with Congress. If the press is to be believed, there was even little consultation with arms control experts within the administration itself. The proponents of the deal have presented it as if it were simply a matter of trade and diplomacy. Congress should insist upon a full review of the strategic impact.

If one looks at the strategic side, it is hard to see why we should be helping India. Only three countries have refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: India, Israel and Pakistan. Of the three, India is the least important strategically.

Under any calculation of America’s strategic relations, Pakistan ranks higher than India. Pakistan is essential to our ongoing military and political efforts in Afghanistan. Pakistan is also essential to our campaign against Al Qaeda. Without the aid of General Musharraf, we would have a much harder time accomplishing our goals in either of these endeavors. Pakistan is also a leading power in the Muslim world, a world with which the United States needs better relations. Yet, our deal with India is a blow to General Musharraf’s prestige at best, and at worst a public humiliation. We should not give General Musharraf more trouble than he already has.

Israel, of course, has always been a close U.S. ally, and will continue to be. Israel would like to have U.S. nuclear cooperation. In addition, Israel is located in a part of the world that is of the highest importance to U.S. foreign policy interests.

In any competition for strategic favor from the United States, India finishes a distant third.

Is India nevertheless important because it will become a counterweight to China? Proponents of the deal so argue. But the notion that India might assist the United States diplomatically or militarily in some future conflict is pure speculation. India’s long history as the leader of the “non-aligned” movement points in the opposite direction. India will follow its own interests as it always has. An example is India’s decision to train Iranian sailors and import Iranian gas. In addition, India shares a border with China, is keen to have good relations with China, and does have good relations with China. It will not sour such relations simply from a vague desire to please the United States.

This India-as-counterweight-to-China theory reminds one of the argument made by the first Bush administration in the 1980's, when it contended that the United States should export sensitive dual-use equipment to Saddam Hussein in order to build up Iraq as a counterweight to Iran. U.S. pilots were later killed in Iraq trying to bomb things that U.S. companies had provided. History shows that such predictions can be dangerous.

Then why choose India for preferential treatment? If it is not because of our need to fight terrorism, and not because of our desire to reward a faithful ally, what is it? There seems to be only one answer: India is the biggest market. Secretary of State Rice readily admits the commercial interest. On April 5 she testified to this Committee that the agreement with India was “crafted with the private sector firmly in mind.” She cited a 13 billion dollar deal by Boeing; she cited the hope of reactor sales by our nuclear industry; she cited the opportunity for “U.S. companies to enter the lucrative and growing Indian market.”

She might also have mentioned India’s defense market. That market seems to be the one that is really motivating the deal. India is shopping for billions of dollars worth of military aircraft, and the administration is hoping it will buy both the F-16 and the F-18. According to the American press, officials in the defense industry and the Pentagon are saying that the main effect of the nuclear deal will be to remove India from the ranks of violators of international norms. And once this change in India’s status occurs, there will be no impediment to arms exports. The Russian press is even more explicit. It complains that in addition to “recognition of India’s nuclear status by the United States,” the nuclear deal “opened the door to the Indian market for American arms merchants,” with the result that Russia may be squeezed out.

Boiled down to the essentials, the message is clear: Export controls are less important to the United States than money. They are a messy hindrance, ready to be swept aside for trade. But, a decision to put money above export controls is precisely what we don’t want China and Russia to do when they sell to Iran. We don’t want China and Russia to tell us that money in their pockets is more important than stopping Iran’s march toward the bomb. But China and Russia are now hearing the new commercial message coming from America, and they are not stupid. If they see that we are willing to put money above security, and willing to take the risk that dangerous exports won’t come back to bite us, they will do the same. Everyone’s security will diminish as a result.

Thus, this legislation has clear costs to our security. Are these outweighed by the benefits? What are the benefits?

The principal benefit cited by the administration is that India will place 14 of its 22 power reactors under inspection. But, as others have pointed out, this leaves a great number of reactors off-limits. In fact, the reactors that are off-limits will be sufficient to produce enough plutonium for dozens of nuclear weapons per year. This is more than India will ever need. India is not restricting its nuclear weapon production in any way. Therefore, there is no “non-proliferation benefit” from such a step.

In effect, India’s offer is like that of a counterfeiter with a 22 room house, who offers to let the police look into 14 rooms as long as they stay out of all the others. Why would any policeman in his right mind accept such an offer, or want to inspect one of the 14 rooms? It would be the only place where he was sure not to find anything. It would waste his time, just as it will waste the time of international inspectors to look at India’s 14 declared reactors. Everyone knows that it will be the eight undeclared ones that make the bombs. India, in fact, appears to have calculated the number of reactors to put off-limits according to how much plutonium they will make. India has assured itself that the resulting amount of plutonium will be enough to allow it to continue making bombs at an unfettered pace.

This point about wasting inspection time may seem minor, but it isn’t. The International Atomic Energy Agency has a limited number of inspectors. They are already having trouble meeting their responsibilities. To send them to India on a fool’s errand will mean that they won’t be going to places like Iran, where something may really be amiss. Unless the Agency’s budget is increased to meet the new burden in India, the inspection of India’s declared reactors will produce a net loss for the world’s non-proliferation effort.

The other major benefit that the administration cites is that India may buy American reactors. Such a possibility exists, but is remote. The precedent is our experience with China. Some members of the Committee may remember the intense debate in Congress over the U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement with China in the 1980's. At the time, our industry was citing the large number of reactors that China was planning to buy, and predicting that many of the orders would come to us. How many American reactors did China actually buy? The answer is: none. Exactly zero. The main effect of China’s agreement with us was to increase the number of vendors who were in competition. The result was to drive the price down for the Chinese reactor buyers. That was good for China, but did nothing for us. The Chinese import orders went to France, Russia and Canada.

We are not likely to fare any better this time. New Delhi is already building a string of reactors on its own that are less expensive to put up than ours. And if India wants to import reactors, it can turn to the Russians, who will charge less money and attach fewer conditions, and who are already ahead of us in the Indian market. It can also turn to the French or even perhaps the Canadians. All of these countries will compete with us if we sell to India. The chance that we will defeat this competition is slim.

The administration also argues that India has a great need for nuclear power to meet its electricity demand. This too is far-fetched. India has been generating electricity with nuclear reactors for more than 40 years. Yet, reactors supply only about 2% to 3% of its electricity today. If reactors are so vital to India’s energy needs, why hasn’t India built more? The answer is that reactors have not turned out to be as safe, or as clean, or – most important – as economical as originally thought. Nuclear power has been virtually insignificant in India’s energy mix in the past, and will be no more important in the future. It is worth noting that the United States hasn’t ordered a new reactor for about thirty years. Why do we expect India to buy American reactors when even we aren’t buying them?

I would also like to comment on the effect that the administration’s new policy will have on missile proliferation. President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to cooperate in “space exploration,” including “satellite navigation and launch.” This language is broad enough to allow missile-useable components and technology to be exported. The United States seem entirely ready to permit such sales. The U.S. Commerce Department recently dropped restraints on American exports of missile-related equipment to three subsidiaries of the Indian Space Research Organization, despite the fact that all three are active in Indian missile development. This appears to be only a first step in a general loosening of U.S. missile export controls for India.

It is difficult to predict where this will lead. One cannot help a country like India build better space launchers without helping it build better missiles. Our experience with China is again the precedent. In the 1990's China got crucial American help in rocket design, guidance, launch operation, and payload integration, all of which were directly useable in making intercontinental ballistic missiles. The help came from American companies that were supposed to be engaged only in a peaceful space effort.

India will be no different. India, in fact, is the first country to develop a long-range nuclear missile from a civilian space-launch program. India’s Agni missile, tested in 1989, was built by using the design of the American “Scout” space rocket. India imported the blueprints from NASA under the cover of peaceful space cooperation.

India has every intention of building nuclear missiles that will reach the United States. For some years, India has been working to develop a nuclear submarine, which will be able to threaten every coastal city in the world with a nuclear payload. India has also been working on an intercontinental ballistic missile, known as the Surya, which will fly much farther than any target in China. Two questions come to mind. Why should India want to reach such targets? And does the United States really want to make it easier for India to succeed?

The final point I would like to make has to do with the power of Congress. That power will be greatly reduced if the administration’s legislation passes.

The important question to ask about the power of Congress is this: Why is this bill necessary? What is wrong with present U.S. law?

Under the present Atomic Energy Act, the president could make an agreement tomorrow for nuclear cooperation with India. All the president has to do is submit to Congress what is known as an “exempt” agreement – that is, an agreement that does not satisfy the Act’s present criteria for nuclear cooperation.

India does not satisfy the criteria because it has refused to put all of its nuclear material under international inspection and is, in fact, running a secret nuclear weapon program. That is why the president must “exempt” the agreement before submitting it to Congress. After such a submission, Congress must adopt a joint resolution saying that it favors the agreement. If Congress disagrees, or does not act, the agreement does not go into effect.

The president must meet a high standard to justify the exemption. He must find that holding India to the present criteria “would be seriously prejudicial to the achievement of United States non-proliferation objectives” or that it would “otherwise jeopardize the common defense and security.” He must also persuade Congress that he is right, because Congress must take action for the agreement to operate.

Why hasn’t the president taken this course of action? Apparently, because he cannot meet the standard. He cannot find that it “would be seriously prejudicial to the achievement of United States non-proliferation objectives” to make India meet the existing criteria. To the contrary, it would advance U.S. non-proliferation objectives if India met the criteria, because India would be giving up its bomb program and putting its fissile material under international inspection. That would be a clear gain for non-proliferation instead of a loss.

Because the administration cannot meet the present standard, the administration has asked Congress to lower it. India would only have to meet a list of weaker criteria that the administration is already confident India can comply with.

But the administration has not been content to stop there. It also wants to shift the burden of proof. Under the new legislation, the burden of proof would shift to Congress. Instead of having to convince Congress to act after submitting an “exempt” agreement, the agreement would take effect automatically after 90 days unless Congress voted affirmatively to block it. Any such vote could be vetoed, so Congress would have to muster a 2/3 majority in both houses in order to have its view prevail. That is in direct contradiction to present law, under which an exempted agreement would have to be affirmatively agreed to by a joint resolution.

Thus, the effect of the bill is twofold: it makes it easier for the president to exempt an agreement, and it makes it harder for Congress to prevent an exempted agreement from taking effect. If Congress wishes to preserve its existing power, it could require that an exempted agreement still be reviewed under the present process. The administration has not advanced any persuasive reason why the process of Congressional review should be changed.

Preserving the existing process would have several advantages. Congress would have more than 90 days to study the agreement; Congress would not have to muster a veto-proof majority to block the agreement, or attach conditions to it; and Congress would be able to see the actual agreement before taking a vote.

Under the new legislation, Congress is being asked to lower the standards for nuclear cooperation and to shift the burden of proof before any agreement with India has been reached. Congress is being asked to vote without knowing what kind of inspections India will eventually agree to, without knowing whether India will really improve its own export controls, and without knowing whether India’s plan for separating its civilian from its military nuclear facilities is “credible,” as the new criteria require. Congress would be buying a pig in a poke. It would be giving the administration carte blanche authority to make an agreement that, because of Congress’ reduced power of review, there would be little opportunity to change.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

By Naomi Wolf

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state program to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

US car-makers are due to unveil April sales figures on 1 May, and Mr Lutz said he expected an industry-wide drop.

His comments come at a time of record repossessions in the so-called sub-prime mortgage sector.

These offer higher-interest mortgages to people on low incomes or with poor credit ratings.

A growing number of people with sub-prime mortgages have failed to meet their monthly payments in recent years as US interest rates have risen.

Mortgage 'meltdown'

"The [car] market as a whole has been a little weakish," said Mr Lutz.

"That has come as a result of the housing market problems and the mortgage industry meltdown.

"A lot of people are finding themselves in a position of reduced affordability and that has had an impact, not just on us, but across the industry."

A number of economists have already warned that the weakness in the US mortgage market, which is part of a general slowdown in the housing sector, could hit the wider American economy.

General Motors (GM), which is continuing with an ongoing turnaround plan, returned to profit for the final three months of 2006, but made a loss of $2bn (£1bn) for the year as a whole.

Like fellow "big-three" US car firms Ford and Chrysler, GM has struggled against falling sales in the face of higher petrol prices and increased competition from Japanese rivals.

Hired Gun at the Helm:

Justice Unhinged

By William A. Cohn 

As US attorney general (AG) Alberto Gonzales testified before Congress this week, let’s understand the reasons why the dismissal of 8 well-respected US attorneys is a matter of grave public concern. The facts revealed thus far certainly suggest that the executive branch has intruded on the independence of the federal judiciary, partisan politics has subverted the rule of law at the Department of Justice, and, as a result, the legitimacy of the enforcement of federal law has been soiled.  

The 93 US attorneys wield enormous power – to subpoena, indict, imprison, prosecute and possibly convict any person. They are indeed political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President. But once in office impartiality is their core legal and ethical duty. A prosecutor must always address a case on its merits, and never with a political agenda. The facts which have come to light in recent weeks suggest that the 8 US attorneys were fired for being loyal to their oath of office rather than the White House, which raises obvious concerns about the 85 US attorneys still serving. 

The AG is the chief law enforcement official of the country and head of the Dept. of Justice where the US attorneys work. An AG should embody the values of truth, integrity and justice, and serve as the gatekeeper of propriety, setting clear standards of conduct for the politicians as well as ordinary people. But Mr. Gonzales has utterly failed his duty and must now surely take the fall for the travesty of justice he hath wrought.  

Why has this AG so violated the duties of his office? Because he’s acted as a hired gun, not a public servant. Mr. Gonzales’ public career has developed through his loyal service to G.W. Bush. When he became AG after serving as special counsel to the President, his client changed but his mindset and loyalties haven’t. The AG’s client is the people of the country and their Constitution and laws, not the president or his political party. Mr. Gonzales has had a clear conflict of interest because his loyalties to serving his former client, G.W. Bush, have absolutely interfered with fulfilling his duties as AG. 

It seems the US attorneys faced political pressures to prosecute high-profile Democrats, not to bring charges against Republicans, to charge immigration violations and to bring indictments and win convictions on charges of voter fraud based on evidence which one appellate judge described as “beyond thin.” Such misconduct both destroys the lives of innocent people and lets criminality go unpunished. These intrusions on the independence of the federal prosecutors were made in order to hold on to power by gaining a partisan edge in national elections by means of an electoral strategy aimed at keeping Blacks and Hispanics away from the polls.  

Although we do not yet know exactly what role, if any, the AG played, such no holds barred results-oriented conduct is wholly consistent with the record of Mr. Gonzales’ service as White House Counsel, where he provided legal cover for wrongheaded administration policies including torture, abductions, secret prisons and warrantless spying on US citizens. The patently pretextual reasons proffered for the firings suggest that the real reason is indeed impermissible. Here, the power grab by the executive branch involved using a little-noticed provision inserted into the renewed Patriot Act, allowing US attorneys to be appointed without need for Senate confirmation, which it intended to use to replace the respected US attorney in Arkansas, Bud Cummins, with Timothy Griffen, aide to Bush chief strategist Karl Rove, who lacks ample prosecutorial experience. Fortunately, the Senate woke up recently and revoked this provision which fundamentally altered the constitutional separation of powers.    

A hired gun diminishes the law to a tool rather than a guide, something providing a plausible defense for the politicians to do what they want, not standards of what is permissible and what is not. And the Bush administration has shown itself to be ruthless in attacking those who question its tactics and assertions, as evinced in the recent trial and conviction of Scooter Libby, the former chief aide of vice-president Cheney. In the present matter, the essential lawlessness of those responsible to enforce the law includes the seeming cover-up of their wrongful actions – the violation of federal Presidential record-keeping laws by doing official business on private email accounts and the effort to destroy incriminating evidence by erasing emails relevant to the firings. A politicized Dept. of Justice may now be obstructing rather than upholding justice. 

Thankfully, Congress is now demanding greater accountability of those holding power. Bush’s ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ offer to make officials available only for private, off-the-record interviews with Congress has rightfully been rejected.  Public trust in government and the fundamentals of justice has been shaken. The mere appearance of a conflict of interest undermines public confidence in government. The investigation of the firing of the US attorneys thus demands transparency -- testimony must be public and under oath. The US is a nation ruled by laws, not by men. Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant.    

More than ever, a strong protector of the virtues of American justice is needed. Over the weekend Mr. Gonzales wrote that he looks forward to putting this matter to rest and using his energies to fulfill the mission of the Department of Justice – to combat terrorism, child pornography and illicit drugs. I respectfully suggest that Mr. Gonzales has overlooked much of Justice’s proud history and mission. That Mr. Gonzales has offered nothing but lies and evasions thus far in response to Congressional queries about the firings of the US attorneys shows that he is clearly not fit to serve as AG.  

William A. Cohn, a member of the California and International Bar Associations, is lecturer on law, ethics and logic at University of New York in Prague, and author, most recently, of “Heating-up: Confronting global climate change,” The New Presence, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2007

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A congressional Republican leader on Friday joined bipartisan calls for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign but the White House reaffirmed its confidence in President George W. Bush's long-time friend.

Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida, chairman of the Republican conference in the House of Representatives, said it was important for the head of the U.S. Justice Department to have "unwavering" credibility.

"For the good of the nation, I think it is time for fresh leadership at the Department of Justice," Putnam said in a brief telephone interview. He said a lack of credibility by the Justice Department chief puts in jeopardy the president's legislative agenda.

Putnam is joining a growing list of U.S. lawmakers expressing a lack of confidence in Gonzales a day after he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the firing of eight U.S. prosecutors last year. The dismissals raised concerns among Democrats that they were politically motivated.

The White House of Friday reiterated Bush's support for Gonzales.

Spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush talked with Gonzales after Thursday's hearing and believes he answered lawmakers' questions "honestly and forthrightly."

Perino added: "Hopefully people will be able to take a step back, realize that there is no credible evidence of wrongdoing, that the attorney general has apologized for how it was handled, that he has a job to do and he's been doing it very well and the president has full confidence in him."

Bush and Gonzales have been friends since their days together in Texas where Gonzales served as counsel to then-Texas Gov. Bush. Gonzales was Bush's White House counsel before becoming attorney general in 2005.

At Thursday's Senate hearing, Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, told Gonzales he should resign, while Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the nation's top law enforcement official had lost his credibility.

Democrats have vowed to keep pushing their investigation into the firing, regardless if Gonzales resigns.

But Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told CNN that Gonzales should stay.

"I think he should because, frankly, I don't think the Democrats are going to be satisfied with resignation by Al Gonzales," Cornyn said.

(additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro)

What Goes UP,....Will Come DOWN

And Countrywide Financial, the biggest US mortgage company, has warned that the current problems would hurt profit in the short-term and added that it would cut 108 jobs.

© BBC MMVII


CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK