Court: No habeas rights for prisoners in Afghanistan

Obama wins what Bush sought: the right to hold suspects without judicial oversight at the Bagram air base.

By David G. Savage and Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington bureau

May 21, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

The Obama administration has won the legal right to hold its terrorism suspects indefinitely and without oversight by judges — not at Guantanamo or in Illinois, but rather at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. appeals court in Washington ruled for the administration Friday and said the Constitution and its right to habeas corpus does not extend to foreign prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan because it is a war zone. The judges dismissed claims from three prisoners who were taken to Bagram from Pakistan and Thailand and have been held for as long as seven years.

"It is undisputed that Bagram, indeed the entire nation of Afghanistan, remains a theater of war," said Chief Judge David Sentelle, a conservative who was appointed by President Reagan. Joining him were two Democratic appointees, Judges David Tatel and Harry Edwards.

The decision could bring an ironic end to years of legal wrangling over prisoners held by the U.S. military. The ruling, unless overturned by the Supreme Court, appears to the give the Obama administration what the George W. Bush administration had long sought: a place where foreign prisoners can be held by the military out of reach of lawyers and courts.

For months, the Obama administration has debated plans to use Bagram as an alternative to Guantanamo for a small number of prisoners caught outside Afghanistan. Currently, only a dozen or fewer of the Bagram prisoners are foreign fighters, Defense Department officials have said. But that number soon could grow.

The court decision came a day after the House Armed Services Committee voted to block the administration from retrofitting a state prison at Thomson, Ill., to hold high-value prisoners from Guantanamo.

The administration still hopes to transfer the several dozen remaining prisoners from Guantanamo, but it will need approval from Congress. At the same time, at least 645 prisoners are held at the Bagram prison, most connected to the war in Afghanistan.

Civil liberties advocates denounced Friday's ruling.

It "ratifies the dangerous principle that the U.S. government has unchecked power to capture people anywhere in the world, unilaterally declare them enemy combatants and subject them to indefinite military detention with no judicial review," said Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Just because the plane landed at Bagram instead of Guantanamo should not mean they can be held indefinitely without any court review," said Andrea Prasow, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch.

Kirk Lippold, the former commander of the U.S. warship Cole and a fellow with Military Families United, praised the ruling as a "clear vindication" of the military's authority "to fight the war on terror by preventing terrorists from having access to the American court system."

The White House and Justice Department had no comment on the ruling.

After 2001 and the launch of war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration sent hundreds of foreign prisoners from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Mideast to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, believing they could be held there and questioned out of reach of lawyers or courts.

But lawyers went to the Supreme Court arguing that long-term prisoners had a right to plead their innocence before an independent judge. They decried Guantanamo as a "law-free zone."

They won a series of victories at the Supreme Court, including a 5-4 ruling in 2008 that said the Constitution gave these prisoners a right to habeas corpus because Guantanamo was thousands of miles from a battlefield and had been occupied as sovereign U.S. territory for a century. At the same time, the justices said this right to a court hearing did not extend to battlefields or war zones.

Afterward, the Bush administration insisted the right to habeas corpus did not extend to Iraq or Afghanistan. And in 2009, the Obama administration adopted the same view.

A federal judge in Washington ruled that prisoners who were shipped to the Bagram prison from other countries had a right to challenge their detention, just like the prisoners who were sent to Guantanamo.

The Obama administration appealed and won a reversal in Friday's decision. In its opinion, the appeals court acknowledged the administration could "evade judicial review of executive detention decisions by transferring detainees into active conflict zones."

White House officials said Friday they are moving forward with a plan to purchase the vacant state prison in Illinois as a possible location for the remaining Guantanamo detainees.

They said the House committee vote this week does not affect the federal government's ability to purchase the Thomson prison. Money for the acquisition was set aside in the federal budget for next year, and the sale could take place as soon as Oct. 1.

"We have always maintained that we need increased prison facility," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that the proposed law may prevent modifications to the prison but does not prohibit the facility's purchase.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-bagram-20100522,0,6087005,print.story

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Clinton pushes for North Korea sanctions over ship's sinking

But it is unclear how receptive the North's benefactor China — or even its rival South Korea — will be to another round of penalties sought after the sinking of a warship that killed 46 crew members.

By Paul Richter and John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

May 21, 2010

Reporting from Washington and Seoul

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a U.S. campaign Friday for international measures to punish North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship, but it was unclear how receptive Pyongyang's benefactors in China — or even its rival South Korea — would be.

Clinton began an Asian tour making it clear that the Obama administration wants the United Nations to take action against North Korea for sinking the patrol boat Cheonan in March, killing 46 South Korean crew members.

South Korea said this week that a multinational investigation had concluded that North Korea fired a torpedo that sank the vessel.

"Let me be clear. This will not be, and cannot be, business as usual," Clinton said in Tokyo at an appearance with her Japanese counterpart, Katsuya Okada. "There must be an international — not just a regional, but an international — response."

Clinton did not suggest specific actions. North Korea already is under a series of U.N. sanctions, but analysts said additional steps still could make it more difficult for North Korean organizations to do business abroad and could further isolate the country's rulers.

Clinton travels to China this weekend, and it may prove difficult for her to make headway there on the North Korea issue. Beijing considers itself a protector of its isolated neighbor and is likely to resist new punitive measures. Pushing China on the question may be difficult for Clinton, who also is trying to hold on to Beijing's support for sanctions against Iran.

With China reluctant, analysts said they expect a struggle within the U.N. Security Council on the question of new measures against North Korea.

After meeting with Chinese leaders, Clinton is scheduled to travel to Seoul. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has threatened "stern" action, and North Korea has vowed "all-out war" as a response to any retaliation.

The sinking of the Cheonan has been called South Korea's Sept. 11, a national wake-up call that resulted in weeks of televised images of sobbing mothers and grim-faced generals. Officials in Seoul were considering steps including severing economic aid to the North, realigning military forces and asking the Security Council to rebuke Pyongyang.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said "the government will definitely make sure North Korea pays," and conversative commentators have called the sinking of the vessel an act of aggression.

But opinion in South Korea is far from unanimous. The opposition, which favors greater engagement with North Korea and is suspicious of the pro-U.S. leanings of the governing conservatives, has been slower to blame Pyongyang, even in some cases questioning the authenticity of the evidence.

The opposition-leaning Hankyoreh newspaper challenged the premise that a North Korean submarine would have been able to get close enough to the Cheonan undetected, fire on it and then escape. Even if the North Koreans were responsible, it said, the event shouldn't be used to mask South Korean failures that allowed the attackers to succeed.

"One cannot help wondering if this is a sorry attempt to use North Korea's actions to cover up one's own mistakes," it said.

And younger South Koreans born after the 1950s war often view the North less as an evil empire than a colony of misguided cousins with whom they will one day be reunited.

"People just doubt and doubt and doubt," Lee Ji-sook said of her government's accusation that North Korea launched a surprise submarine attack.

A 22-year-old urban planning major at Yongsei University who is spending a year abroad in the U.S., Lee says many in her generation don't believe North Korea poses a threat to the South.

"There is no common consensus on the Cheonan incident," said Kim Yong-hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

Instead, Kim said, many South Koreans believe that the government needs a convenient foil so it can sell its agenda of increased security in June 2 elections for local and regional positions.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said that even if the government of the North's Kim Jong Il is responsible for sinking the Cheonan, most South Koreans reject violence.

"There are suspicious voices looming over what the government has called the 'smoking gun' of evidence," he said. "This is an election year. Many people believe the government is using this tragedy to its advantage."

Many South Koreans insist on seeing the North as part of an overall, cohesive Korea.

"It may be just a fringe element, but people like my South Korean brother-in-law were excited last year when North Korea tested an atomic weapon," said Tom Coyner, a Seoul business consultant who posts a South Korean political blog.

"He believed the event wasn't a North Korean achievement, but a Korean achievement — that we should have all been proud if it."

War zone boredom for Marines can lead to misbehavior when they return home, study finds

It's long been assumed -- correctly -- that a Marine who experiences the psychological trauma of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan has an increased chance of getting into trouble when he comes home.

But two researchers at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego have found another deployment experience that can be an even greater precursor of future bad behavior: boredom.

A survey of 1,543 Marines at Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms and the Marine base in Okinawa, Japan, found that the Marine most likely to disobey orders, get into physical confrontations, neglect his family or run afoul of the police is the one who reports that his war zone deployment was marked by boredom.

Dr. Stephanie Booth-Kewley and Robyn Highfill-McRoy, of the research center's behavioral sciences and epidemiology department, reported on their study to the Navy and Marine Corps Combat & Operational Stress Conference this week in San Diego. Their findings may later be published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.

Of the Marines surveyed, the researchers said, fully one-quarter had had repeated instances of misconduct/misbehavior in the months after returning from deployment; 17.1% screened positive for possible post-traumatic stress disorder.

For both PTSD and misbehavior, what the researchers called "deployment-related stressors" were a greater factor that combat.

Marines who said their deployment was marked by boredom, monotony, lack of privacy and lack of days off are three times more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than those with different experiences, the researchers found. Other stressors include family worries, money problems and run-ins with deployed leadership.

The study also concluded that divorced Marines, younger Marines and those with mild traumatic-brain injury are also more likely to display such behavior when they return. The average age of the Marines in the survey was 26 years; 46% had had multiple deployments.

Military boredom has been studied since World War II by a variety of researchers. A common conclusion is that boredom leads to alienation and then resentment and anger.

The findings of the current study take on added significance given the "non-kinetic" nature of much of the Marines' counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan.

Few troops will see active combat. But nearly all will be assigned tasks -- standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores -- that, while important, are not the kind of activities that attract young men and women to enlist in the Marine Corps.

The challenge, the researchers said, is for commanders to maintain the morale of their troops by emphasizing the importance of the mission. Highfill-McRoy is a specialist in the methodology of health research; Booth-Kewley is a psychologist.

Navy Capt. Paul Hammer, director of the Naval Center for Combat & Operational Stress Control at Naval Medical Center San Diego, said the finding about boredom leading to antisocial behavior is not altogether surprising.

"What's the best way to stop being bored?" he asked rhetorically. "Get into some trouble."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An army officer and a businessman have been detained as part of a widening inquiry into a circle of Pakistanis who had some knowledge of the activities of the man charged with trying to set off a crude car bomb in Times Square, according to a Western official and an American intelligence official.

The army officer was arrested in Rawalpindi, the garrison city that serves as the headquarters of the Pakistani Army, the American intelligence official said. He appeared to have been disaffected, and his involvement with Faisal Shahzad , the Pakistani-American charged with the failed bombing in New York, did not signal the involvement of the Pakistani Army in the attack, the intelligence official said.

The arrest of the officer, who holds the rank of major and whose name was not disclosed, and of Salman Ashraf Khan, 35, an executive of a catering company that organized functions for the American Embassy here, suggested the participation of a group of Pakistanis in helping Mr. Shahzad after he returned to Pakistan from the United States last year to plan the bombing, the officials said.

Several other Pakistani men have been arrested in the Islamabad area in connection with the case, according to a Pakistani intelligence official who did not offer details about the men's backgrounds.

A senior Pakistani official said Friday that Mr. Khan and the army major were among several Pakistanis being questioned in connection with the Times Square case. Investigators were still sorting out exactly what role, if any, each individual played in helping Mr. Shahzad develop and plan the attack, the official said.

The arrest of the army major, which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times, raised questions of whether the Pakistani Army harbored some officers and soldiers sympathetic to the cause of the Pakistani Taliban, the militant group that Mr. Shahzad has told American investigators trained him for his bombing attempt. Mr. Shahzad has said he traveled to North Waziristan, a major base for the Pakistani Taliban, to prepare for the attack.

The Pakistani Army has conducted a series of offensives against the Pakistani Taliban in the past year, and the arrest of an officer for working surreptitiously against that policy would be considered an embarrassment for the army, which is the country's most powerful institution.

The spokesman for the Pakistani Army denied earlier this week that an officer had been detained in the Times Square case. He said that an officer had been arrested because he had declined to fight, for religious reasons. Pakistani officials have been reluctant to discuss the Times Square bombing case, and when they have done so they have played down any involvement of the Pakistani Taliban, choosing instead to depict Mr. Shahzad as a lone operator. The nation's premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence , is in charge of the investigation of the case, Pakistani officials have said.

Like Mr. Shahzad, the catering executive, Mr. Khan, attended college in the United States. He appears to have been part of a loose network of middle-class, educated Pakistani men here in Islamabad, the capital, who assisted Mr. Shahzad in planning the Times Square attack.

The investigation and arrests in Islamabad appeared to concentrate on this informal network, which is suspected of having helped to recruit Pakistanis living abroad who wanted to return home to train for terrorist attacks, a Western official said. They appeared to be motivated by a strong belief in jihadist causes and a hatred of the West, the official said.

The network appears to have included Mr. Khan and a close friend, Ahmed Raza Khan, who, like Mr. Khan, was arrested in Islamabad on May 10, Mr. Khan's father, Rana Ashraf Khan, said.

Mr. Shahzad is the son of a retired senior Pakistani Air Force officer, and it appeared that the arrested army major was an acquaintance of Mr. Shahzad's father, according to a British terrorism expert, Sajjan Gohel, who is familiar with the investigation into the Times Square bombing.

The major may have helped Mr. Shahzad get in touch with the Pakistani Taliban and may have helped him travel to North Waziristan, Mr. Gohel said.

Mr. Khan's arrest became public on Friday, after the United States Embassy warned American residents in Pakistan to avoid using his company, Hanif Rajput Caterers, because “terrorist groups may have established links” to it. The embassy sent an e-mail message with the warning and posted it on the embassy's Web site.

Mr. Khan disappeared May 10, when he failed to arrive at the company headquarters after leaving his house in his car, his father, who is the company's chief executive, said in an interview in Islamabad.

Mr. Khan graduated from the University of Houston in 2000, having majored in computer science, and then returned to Pakistan to work in the family's catering business, his father said. Since graduating, he had not returned to the United States and he was married three years ago, his father said.

Rana Ashraf Khan described his son as religious, but “definitely not an extremist.” Asked if his son had negative feelings toward the United States, he said: “To be honest, yes. But that is common.”

“I am shocked,” he said of the accusation that his son was connected to the Times Square bombing, saying that his son had organized 900 catering events in the last six months, some for as many as 2,000 guests. The father said his son and his son's wife lived with him in the family home in Islamabad.

Mr. Khan left the home for work at his usual time, about 11 a.m., on May 10, the father said. He never reached the office, according to the account. About noon, a man turned up outside the family's house in Mr. Khan's car, parked it and then left in a waiting taxi, the father said.

A dinner for 20 people, booked by a senior American diplomat for Saturday night, was suddenly canceled Friday by the United States Embassy, said Fahim Khan, the company's sales manager. Until several years ago, when security at the embassy was tightened, the company catered the annual ball for the United States Marines , he said.

The notice circulated by the United States Embassy came two days after the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones , and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency , Leon E. Panetta , arrived in Islamabad to share leads with the Pakistani government on the investigation into the Times Square case.

The elder Mr. Khan, who founded the catering company, said that despite frequent requests, the Pakistani authorities had refused to disclose his son's whereabouts.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

The Arkansas State Police on Friday identified the pair — killed Thursday during an exchange of gunfire with the police — as Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph T. Kane, believed to be 16.

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

Jerry Kane, who used the Internet to question federal and local government authority over him, made money holding debt-elimination seminars around the country. He had a long police record and had recently complained about being arrested at what he called a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records showed he spent three days in jail on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity before posting a $1,500 bond.

Sheriff Gene Kelly of Clark County, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he had issued a warning to officers on July 21, 2004, saying that Mr. Kane might be dangerous to law enforcement officers. Sheriff Kelly said he had based his conclusion on a conversation the two men had had about a sentence Mr. Kane had received for some traffic violations.

Sheriff Kelly said that Mr. Kane complained in 2004 about being sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt, saying that the judge had tried to “enslave” him. Mr. Kane had added that he was a “free man” and had asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver.

“I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Sheriff Kelly wrote in his warning to officers.

On an Internet radio show, Mr. Kane expressed outrage about his New Mexico arrest. “I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail,” he said. “That was the option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 hours in there.”

Mr. Kane said he planned to file a counterclaim alleging kidnapping and extortion. “I already have done a background check on him,” he said of the arresting officer. “I found out where he lives, his address, his wife's name.”

Mark Potok , who directs hate-group research at the Southern Poverty Law Center , said Mr. Kane had not been in the group's database before Thursday. But he said that was not surprising, given the “explosive growth” in the antigovernment movement in recent years. With 363 new groups in 2009, there are now 512, Mr. Potok said.

JJ MacNab , who has testified before Congress on tax and financial schemes, said that she had been tracking Mr. Kane for about two years and that his business centered on debt-avoidance swindles.

Mr. Potok said such schemes were common in the movement, whose members consider themselves sovereign citizens .

“He basically promised them they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt,” Ms. MacNab said.

DETROIT — The house where Aiyana Stanley-Jones lived on the East Side here is quiet now, a makeshift memorial of teddy bears and balloons on the porch where the police lobbed a stun grenade through the front window last Sunday. They were looking for a 34-year-old homicide suspect.

But Aiyana, 7, asleep for the night on a sofa under the window, died from a bullet to the neck.

“Soon as they hit the window, I hit the floor and went to reach for my granddaughter,” said a distraught Mertilla Jones at a news conference after Aiyana's death. “I seen the light leave out her eyes. I knew she was dead. She had blood coming out of her mouth. Lord Jesus, I ain't never seen nothing like that in my life.”

But there is a good possibility that others eventually will see it: On that chaotic night, the Detroit police were being shadowed by a camera crew from a reality television show, “The First 48,” on the A&E cable network. And even if the night's macabre events are never shown on television, they will almost certainly be viewed in a courtroom, since Aiyana's family has filed suit against the Detroit Police Department, alleging gross negligence.

Even in Detroit, where deadly violence can seem routine, Aiyana's killing has transfixed the city, leaving many questioning what they see as heavy-handed tactics by the police — particularly the use of the so-called flash-bang grenade on a Sunday night in a residence where children were known to live.

Beyond Detroit, the incident is raising a larger question in this age of reality TV: Does the presence of TV crews affect how well police officers do their jobs?

“Those cameras can influence the behavior of what's already a very dangerous and unpredictable job,” said Brian Willingham, a laid-off Flint, Mich., police officer and author of "Soul of a Black Cop.”

Laurie Ouellette , an associate professor of media studies at the University of Minnesota who specializes in reality television, says cameras even affect what type of police calls are shown. “There is evidence that they do tend to go into lower-income neighborhoods and are less likely to be shown policing affluent white suburban spaces,” she said. “They want a particular kind of drama. They want the money shot.”

The original “Cops” series made its debut more than 20 years ago, but police shows are the hottest genre in reality television, Ms. Ouellette said, mainly because they are cheap — a perfect product for a time of rapid proliferation of cable channels in need of content but ever-shrinking production budgets.

Some police departments participate because they see the shows as positive publicity and community outreach. And proponents of such reality shows say that the presence of the cameras works to police the police.

But, Ms. Ouellette said, “Just like anyone on ‘ American Idol ' or ‘Survivor' goes on and performs a role, we can imagine that police are performing a role based on what they've seen, on the endless televised representations of real police officers. It would be unrealistic to think that they don't think of themselves in terms of what the expectations are for these shows.”

In particular, Thomas Loeb, a lawyer in Farmington Hills, Mich., who specializes in police misconduct cases, said there may be a correlation between the use of stun grenades and reality shows.

According to the Detroit police the loud, disorienting devices are used on a case-by-case basis. But some criminal justice experts say their use in the routine execution of a search warrant is unusual.

“I think they're showboating for the camera,” Mr. Loeb said, referring to the police using the grenades on reality shows.

The Michigan State Police are investigating Sunday's shooting, and Representative John Conyers Jr. , a Democrat who represents Detroit, has asked the Department of Justice to intervene.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. , Mr. Conyers asked, “If entertainment cameras are present, are there particular steps that should be taken to ensure that focus remains on sound police practice and not television drama?”

A spokesman for A&E, Dan Silberman, declined to comment on the case. But the network's footage could be crucial.

The Detroit police dispute much of what Aiyana's family and their lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger , say happened on the night of the shooting. (Mr. Fieger is best known for representing Jack Kevorkian .)

The Jones family contends that the shot that killed Aiyana was fired from outside the house, and that the police eventually caught the homicide suspect, Chauncey L. Owens, at a different address within the duplex. But according to the police, a stray bullet hit Aiyana after at least one officer had entered the first-floor flat and came into contact with Ms. Jones, Aiyana's grandmother.

The police have been unclear about exactly where Mr. Owens was captured, whether it was in Aiyana's family's apartment or not. Mr. Owens was charged on Wednesday with first-degree murder in the killing of a Detroit teenager.

“This investigation should have been over Monday morning,” Mr. Fieger said. “You have videotape that you know about, which depicts what happened.”

No one knows for sure what members of the camera crew got, since they were outside and are not speaking. But their work may show whether the shot in question was fired from outside.

Television and film crews are not allowed inside suspects' home by federal law.

Robert J. Thompson , a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in television and popular culture, said: “The film will reveal certain empirical details, but the idea of ‘what happened?' is a lot more complicated. The video may not be definitive.”

Mr. Fieger said that someone — a man he would not identify — showed him some of the footage, and that the tape confirmed the family's version of events. (Mr. Fieger said he did not have the tape, and did not make a copy.)

Michigan State Police have the video .

The Detroit police chief, Warren C. Evans, said, “This case has been a human tragedy at every possible level.” He declined to comment on the possibility that officers were affected by the presence of a cable network crew.

At Maison's Fine Foods, a diner, patrons were abuzz with talk of the circumstances surrounding Aiyana's death. Larry Chatman, a retiree, took a critical view of the Police Department's actions, especially the use of the flash-bang grenade.

“Why was it necessary to throw that in there in that situation?” he said. “The cops bungled this one real bad, all the way around.”

Aiyana's funeral is Saturday, and the Rev. Al Sharpton will deliver the eulogy.

Sometime Saturday, the lifeless body of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, will be lowered into a grave in Detroit, and that beleaguered city will shed yet more sorrow into its ever-expanding pool of tears.

The circumstances surrounding Aiyana's death represent a tragedy within a tragedy, much like the story of the city itself.

Aiyana was asleep on a sofa when police raided her home. They were looking for a man suspected of shooting and killing a 17-year-old boy. A shot was fired. The bullet tore through the little girl's head and neck. Sadly, she could not be saved.

Little Aiyana is the latest victim of a city in free fall — unable to find the bottom and, therefore, unable to rebound.

Mayor David Bing said Thursday of recent killings: “It's very demoralizing, very painful. Don't know how to stop it, quite frankly.” So the hapless become the hopeless.

That's not what that city needs to hear from its mayor. Detroit is fighting real crime and the even more corrosive and debilitating perception of crime.

Last year, Forbes dubbed Detroit the most dangerous city in America . Last month, CNN upped the ante and crowned it one of the 10 most dangerous cities in the world .

But, according to data released last week by the Detroit Police Department and published by the Detroit Free Press: “Homicides are down, so far, from 138 this time last year to 108 this year.” Progress, yes. But that's hardly solace when innocents continue to be killed, and the mayor sounds as if he's throwing up his hands.

In a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University poll released in January , Detroit-area residents were asked what word came to mind when they thought about the area. The word most mentioned was “depressed/depressing” followed by “unemployment/joblessness” and “crime.” And only 13 percent of respondents said that they felt “very safe” in the city.

The combination of personal insecurity and financial insecurity has led many to give up on Detroit. Not me.

No, Detroit will never be the city it once was. It will forever be haunted by the ghosts of lost grandeur. But it needn't slip into the chasm of lawlessness and despair.

I lived in Detroit for nearly two years, and I learned this: It's filled with indomitable spirits of gritty, determined Americans. They're fierce, proud and unbreakable. They believe in that city.

In fact, the January poll found that despite all of its problems, 63 percent of people felt optimistic about the future of the Detroit area. Call me silly, but I agree, as soon as they stanch the violence and raise a new civic identity from the ashes of the old one.

You can do it, Detroit. Let the sad end of Aiyana's life spark a new beginning of the city's life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/22blow.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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SAN FRANCISCO — Starchild, a self-described sex worker and a candidate for San Francisco supervisor, says there is absolutely no reason that his beloved city needs any more rules.

“I think that with a lot of laws, half of it is leftover morality from the Puritan days,” said Starchild, a male escort who goes by only one name and declines to give his age. “And it could be your freedom that goes next.”

Starchild is one of a handful of working men and women fighting a proposed city law that would make it illegal to sit or lie on public sidewalks in San Francisco for most of the day. Backed by the city's Police Department and Mayor Gavin Newsom , the “sit-lie” law is being hailed by supporters as a weapon to combat aggressive behavior by the city's myriad sidewalk dwellers.

But advocates of the homeless and some sex workers see it as a direct attack on the city's weakest, as well as on the city's own image as a tolerant refuge for live and let live.

Advocates for men and women of the night like Starchild say the proposed law has the potential to make their difficult lives — what with the fear of arrest, disease and occasionally dangerous clients — even more arduous.

“The work that they do is just like any other job, except it's criminalized,” said Rachel West, a spokeswoman for the US Prostitutes Collective , a network of sex workers based in San Francisco that staged a small protest over the sit-lie law on Thursday afternoon. “So when you go to work, you're facing getting arrested, which makes the work much harder. And sit-lie will make that worse.”

In a city known for its open attitudes toward sex, it is hardly surprising that sex workers would be this public or involved in a political campaign. In 2008, a measure to decriminalize prostitution received nearly 41 percent of the vote, but ultimately failed.

Still, sex workers are hardly the only group upset about the sit-lie law. Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless , said that laws such as the one proposed in San Francisco, which would prohibit sitting or lying on sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., “causes noncriminals to be conducting criminal behavior.”

“It is extremely hard to stay moving your whole waking day,” he said. “I would challenge any individual to do that for one day and feel how exhausting it is.”

Tony Winnicker, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, a Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, said the law was not meant to target any specific group, but to protect residents from harassment in neighborhoods like the Haight-Ashbury, the hippie-friendly enclave where groups of youths still congregate to drink, panhandle and smoke marijuana .

“It's about unacceptable behavior,” Mr. Winnicker said, “and giving police another tool to deal with it.”

The city's Board of Supervisors has been slow to enact any sit-lie law, which Mr. Newsom proposed in March. A public safety committee is expected to take up the issue on Monday, but Mr. Newsom has also hinted that he may put the issue to a vote by the public if the board fails to pass it.

For his part, Starchild — blond and buff — said that he was not concerned about being arrested himself, but that he worries for his co-workers. “I don't look like the category of people they're going after,” he said. “But I wouldn't be surprised that sex workers working on the street get caught up in this.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unemployment rates fell in a majority of states last month as improved economic conditions spurred hiring.

The Labor Department said Friday that 34 states and the District of Columbia reported lower jobless rates in April. Six states reported higher rates, while unemployment held steady in 10.

That was an improvement from March when 16 states and the District of Columbia reported declines in unemployment, 22 states had increases and 12 had no change, according to revised figures.

South Carolina's rate fell to 11.6 percent in April, from 12.2 percent in March. That was the largest monthly drop of any state.

After cutting their work forces during the recession , companies are starting to increase hiring as their sales and profits improve.

Nationwide, employers added a net 290,000 job in April, the most in four years, the department reported earlier this month. The unemployment rate in the United States, though, rose to 9.9 percent as hundreds of thousands of job hunters — feeling more confident about their prospects — resumed or started searches.

Even as the employment picture is less bleak in many states, and the nation as a whole, many economists predict it will take years for the job market to return to normal. A normal nationwide unemployment rate typically hovers around 5.5 to 6 percent. It is going to be a long slog because economic growth is not robust enough for companies to ramp up hiring and quickly drive down the jobless rate.

Michigan, whose manufacturing base was clobbered by the recession, once again recorded the highest unemployment rate of any state — 14 percent. The rate dipped from 14.1 percent in March.

Nevada was close behind. Its rate rose to 13.7 percent last month, the highest on records dating back to 1976. California rounded out the top three with a rate of 12.6 percent, unchanged from March. Nevada and California — states at the heart of the housing boom — have been slammed by the market's bust and have been swamped by a wave of foreclosures.

North Dakota again had the lowest jobless rate — 3.8 percent. That is down from 4 percent in March. It was followed by South Dakota, whose rate dipped to 4.7 percent in April, from 4.8 percent in March, and Nebraska at 5 percent, unchanged from the previous month.

Friday's report also said that a majority of states saw employers bolster jobs in April. The top three gainers: Ohio, where payrolls grew by 37,300 in April, from March; Pennsylvania, with 34,000 net new jobs; and New York with 32,700.

Growing our Communities Sustainably

All across this country, I am continually impressed by the ways cities are working to build their own more livable, environmentally sustainable communities. Last week, I traveled to Colorado where the City of Denver has started building more than 100 miles of new light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit lanes that will link the 32 communities surrounding the city. In February, I witnessed how Portland, Oregon is working to build a 467-mile long passenger rail line that will connect the city with Eugene, Seattle, and Vancouver, Canada.

In January, President Obama told America's Mayors that “We need strategies that encourage smart development linked to quality public transportation, that bring our communities together.” Today, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand how local planners in Atlanta are doing just that by linking neighborhoods together. Through the Atlanta BeltLine project, the city will combine green space, trails, transit, and new development along 22 miles of historic rail segments that surround the urban core.

Over the past 20 years, metro Atlanta's growth has occurred in widespread and disconnected pockets of development, which strained the region's quality of life and economic growth. This has resulted in long commutes, poor air quality, auto dependency, and limited public space for residents and businesses throughout the region. The BeltLine will change this pattern of regional sprawl in the coming decades and lead to a vibrant and livable Atlanta with an enhanced quality of life. This is just the type of redevelopment our Sustainable Communities Initiative will foster across the country.

The Transit, Trails, and Transportation portion of this project will add a network of light rail transit that will connect with the existing transit system and the new, proposed Peachtree Streetcar. The multi-use trails will follow the 22-mile transit loop, and 11 miles of additional trails will extend into the surrounding neighborhoods to increase access to the BeltLine. This project will also include Atlanta's largest investment ever in affordable workforce housing which will generate an estimated 5,600 affordable units over the course of the project.

Over the next 25 years, the BeltLine will not only connect the City of Atlanta with its surrounding communities, but will create more than $20 billion of new economic development and approximately 30,000 new full-time jobs, and 48,000 year-long construction jobs.

While in Atlanta, I also joined Congressman Hank Johnson and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for a tour of the Pittsburgh Neighborhood , which has been severely impacted by foreclosures and blight. In recent years, it has had the highest foreclosure rate in the region and has been victimized by rampant mortgage fraud while suffering from high levels of vacancy and property abandonment. Many homes in the neighborhood stand vacant and boarded up. With $1.25 million in HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds, $3 million in loans from the Casey Foundation, and $145,000 in grants from Living Cities and JPMorgan Chase, the Pittsburgh Neighborhood will soon find relief and start to grow again.

While in Atlanta, I also addressed the 18th Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) about the Obama Administration's Sustainable Communities Partnership and the work HUD's Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities is doing to make communities healthier and more economically competitive. As I told the CNU, it is my hope that through this initiative we will be able to encourage the kind of smart growth Atlanta that is experiencing through the BeltLine project, in neighborhoods and communities across the country.

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