Watch your wallet ... domestic surveillance

Scripps Howard News Service ^ | May 31, 2002 | Editorial Staff

[vannrox]

WASHINGTON

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Watch your wallet ... domestic surveillance

Scripps Howard News Service
May 31, 2002

WASHINGTON - Watch your wallets as Congress comes back from its Memorial Day break: What happens between now and the fall campaign will hit Americans where they live.

Pension and accounting reforms to prevent future Enrons have stalled. Also treading water: a crackdown on personal bankruptcies, supported by credit card companies, that would stick it to debtors.

President Bush's effort to make his $1.35 trillion tax cut permanent looks dead, too. Must-pass money bills to run government are about all that moves. Policy stalemates let lawmakers address campaign issues, then tell contributors, "We tried."

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Bans on domestic surveillance aren't all that's falling by the wayside in the wake of Sept. 11: Look for cuffs to come off spy satellites tracking homeland behavior.

Satellites are now used stateside to support military exercises and for general mapping, but congressional intelligence overseers are poised to bless wider use of spy birds. Commercial images are available, experts note, but only the National Imagery and Mapping Agency can quickly zoom in on suspicious activities.

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Don't look for the military to scour its chaplain ranks looking for sexual abuse by wearers of the camouflage cloth despite scandals rocking the U.S. Catholic church: The chaplain corps says it will move only if substantiated allegations arise. In all, there are 5,500 chaplains, including 850 Catholic priests.

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NASA is nervous about the July 19 launch of the Columbia space shuttle because an Israeli astronaut will be aboard. Despite no specific threats, NASA asks for warships and air cover, fearing that terrorists might fly a small plane into the shuttle as it sits on its Cape Canaveral launch pad.

Israeli army Col. Ilan Ramon is slated to be a payload specialist who will collect desert atmospheric data with a high-tech camera.

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Bang, bang, it's dead: Democrats dump gun control in the 2002 elections in the belief that it cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg counsels clients to forget the issue, and Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, predicts all you'll hear about guns between now and November is silence.

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Too bad Florida Gov. Jeb Bush can't be California governor, too. Then he might be able to win oil and gas drilling buyouts for California like his brother, the president, just promised Florida.

Californians have battled drilling leases offshore without a peep of sympathy, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., reminded George W. Bush, "since a devastating oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. ... You said that 'my administration will take seriously the views of local communities.' If you truly mean this, then you must support retiring all of the California leases immediately."

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An e-mail scam featuring a phony U.S. special forces commando in Afghanistan tries duping the unsuspecting by playing to recipients' greed, the Secret Service says. The "commando" - one "Bradon Curtis" - writes that he found $36 million in drug money on combat patrol and needs help moving the cash out of Afghanistan. If recipients help pay lawyers' fees, shipping costs and bribes, they get a cut. Of course, the dupe is asked to send money first. And, of course, that's the last heard from pseudo-commando Curtis.

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Pilots aren't giving up plans to pack pistols in cockpits even though federal aviation officials oppose it. The Coalition of Airline Pilots Association woos congressional support by warning, "A hijacker will probably be more at risk for a lightning strike than finding his particular flight has an air marshal aboard."

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A sign that high-tech times haven't bounced back: Hardware giants Sun Microsystems and HP - the merged Hewlett-Packard and Compaq - tell employees to take the week of July 4 as unpaid leave or vacation so the companies can save cash.

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The Supreme Court has two dozen decisions to make by July, ranging from the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded to subjecting all public school students to drug tests. Other cases ask:

- Can states give parents vouchers to send children to parochial schools, or does this subsidy violate the Constitution's ban on taxpayer aid to religion? If vouchers are OK, states facing $40 billion budget shortfalls will face new fiscal pressures.

- Can states order independent medical reviews of HMO patients' claims?

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Philip Morris and other cigarette firms make inroads in recruiting the hospitality industry with claims that smoke-free bars and restaurants spell lower profits, a new study finds. The report in the journal Tobacco Control concludes that Big Tobacco gave money to hospitality-industry trade groups in hopes of involving them in a worldwide fight against smoke-free areas.

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Legislation to allow Segway Human Transporters on federally funded trails, bike paths and sidewalks is derailed by the bicycle lobby. But Dick Cheney Segways around the Naval Observatory, the home of the vice president. Segway inventor Dean Kamen, who also invented Cheney's heart stent, gave him one to test-drive, but Cheney concedes that the Secret Service dislikes the 25 mph machine.

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"For the first time ever, if I'm not mistaken, the president of the United States will not be in the United States on Memorial Day, "President Bush said, since he was making his May 27 trip to the Normandy beaches and gravesites.

Bush was mistaken: Bush the Elder was out of the United States on Memorial Day 1989, delivering an emotional salute over 8,000 graves at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.

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Reformers flay the Federal Election Commission for undermining new campaign reforms passed by Congress. Congressional sponsors and watchdog groups say the agency is allowing many fundraising committees to escape the law's "soft money" ban.

QUOTABLE

"His economic plan could fit on the back of a shampoo bottle: 'Cut taxes, increase spending, borrow, repeat.' " - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., on President Bush.

"Speaking from experience, failing stinks ... but don't be undone by it; move on. Failure is no more a permanent condition than success." - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaking to Wake Forest University's Class of 2002.

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[afuturegovernor]

I'm glad to see many Democrats have given up on the issue of gun control. The efforts of the NRA and its members and other smaller gun-rights groups have truly paid off.

[vannrox]

Bump for index.

[in the Arena]

Bang, bang, it's dead: Democrats dump gun control in the 2002 elections in the belief that it cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg counsels clients to forget the issue, and Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, predicts all you'll hear about guns between now and November is silence.

Good to know the democrats don't abandon their principles when the going gets tough. < / sarcasm >