MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

PRI candidate Rodolfo Torre slain in Tamaulipas

Gunmen ambush the gubernatorial candidate on a highway to Matamoros just days before an election he was expected to win.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

June 29, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Gunmen on Monday killed a gubernatorial candidate in a highway ambush, just days before an election in violence-stained northern Mexico that he was expected to win.

The killing of Rodolfo Torre, running in the state of Tamaulipas under the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, further shook Mexico amid wide concern that drug-trafficking groups are increasingly flexing their muscle in politics through money and intimidation.

Torre is the highest-ranking candidate assassinated in Mexico since presidential hopeful Luis Donaldo Colosio was slain in Tijuana in 1994. Colosio also belonged to the PRI, which at that time ruled Mexico.

Torre's killing appeared to be a brazen new challenge to authorities as the federal government carries out a nearly 4-year-old crackdown against drug cartels. In a sign of the high stakes, President Felipe Calderon was flanked by the nation's top security officials when he went before cameras to condemn the assassination, labeling it the work of organized crime.

"This is a crime not only against a candidate of a political party but against democratic institutions, and therefore it demands a united and firm response from all of us who believe in democracy," Calderon said. "We cannot and should not allow crime to impose its will and its perverse rules."

State officials said elections in Tamaulipas would go forward Sunday as scheduled.

Torre's slaying came a month after the disappearance in the central state of Queretaro of Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a power broker in Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, who once ran for president. One theory is that Fernandez was seized by an organized crime group.

"The cartels want to show they can reach anyone at any time and in any place," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. "Now they've really increased the ante by killing Torre."

The PRI's national president, Beatriz Paredes, said the killing clouded Sunday's vote. But, she declared, "nothing is going to intimidate us." It was not yet known who will run in Torre's place.

The PAN said it was suspending campaigning in Tamaulipas.

One of the PRI's most reliable strongholds, Tamaulipas is a crucial drug-smuggling corridor where governors have long been suspected of cozy relations with traffickers. It is one of 12 states that will be picking new governors.

Torre and four members of his campaign team came under fire as they traveled in a convoy to the airport outside the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. Mexican television showed bodies covered by sheets and strewn on a rural road next to SUVs festooned with Torre campaign ads.

Tamaulipas, on Texas' southeastern border, has in recent months been rocked by fighting between the Gulf cartel and former allies known as the Zetas. It has also seen violence directed at candidates; in May, a PAN mayoral candidate in the town of Valle Hermoso was fatally shot after receiving threats.

Fears that traffickers might manipulate races in Tamaulipas prompted the PAN's steering committee in Mexico City to pick the party's candidates there rather than leave choices to local members.

Polls gave Torre, a 46-year-old congressman, a huge lead over Jose Julian Sacramento Garza of the PAN.

The silver-haired Torre appeared Sunday at party gatherings in Ciudad Victoria and the town of Altamira to mark the final leg of the campaign. He was headed to the border city of Matamoros for a separate event Monday when he and aides were intercepted.

Torre, a physician, ran atop a three-party coalition led by the PRI. He had also held top state health posts in Tamaulipas.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-governor-20100629,0,1152209,print.story

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U.S. charges 11 as Russian agents

An FBI investigation turns up a vast spy operation on the East Coast with 'deep cover' assignments, including transmitting U.S. nuclear weapons research to Moscow, authorities say.

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

June 28, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Federal officials charged 11 people on the East Coast as secret agents of Russia on Monday in an multiyear investigation that turned up allegations of a vast undercover network designed to collect fresh information for Moscow, including new U.S. nuclear weapons research.

The alleged spy ring's members were given the single, primary goal of becoming "sufficiently 'Americanized'" to gain access to the U.S. government's planning and policy apparatus, the FBI said in documents supporting the charges.

To dramatize that point, U.S. officials said they decrypted a 2009 message sent to two of the suspected co-conspirators.

"You were sent to USA for long-term service trip," the intercepted message read. "Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in U.S. and send intels [intelligence reports] to C."

"C" was identified as the Russian foreign intelligence headquarters in Moscow, also known as Moscow Center.

Some of the material collected and transmitted by the accused spies dealt with U.S. research on nuclear "bunker buster" bombs, according to the federal document charging the suspects. The George W. Bush administration once proposed a nuclear bunker buster bomb, but only a non-nuclear version of the weapon has been pursued.

They also sought information on Pentagon planning, U.S. policy toward Central Asia and research on terrorists gaining access to the Internet, according to the documents. The charges also allege that one of the defendants had "established contact" with a former high-ranking U.S. national security official who was unnamed.

Authorities said the suspected conspiracy began as far back as the 1990s and ended Saturday when FBI agents and Justice Department counterespionage officials closed in on the suspects.

Unlike Soviet Union spy cases broken up in the United States, this one appears more remarkable in that so many suspected operatives were arrested in one fell swoop, and so long after the end of the Cold War.

The high-profile arrests come at a crucial point in U.S.-Russian ties. President Obama has been trying to "reset" the relationship after a rocky period in which the two governments drifted apart. Obama recently won Russia's support for a major U.S. priority, imposing United Nations sanctions against Iran, and hosted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week in an effort to strengthen ties.

In a lengthy affidavit, FBI Special Agent Amit Kachhia-Patel said the spy operation was a "deep cover" assignment filled with false identities, secret rendezvous, such old-school spy craft techniques as "invisible writing" and a "cover profession" to blend into American society.

Authorities said the defendants also set up a special covert communication system to report back to Russia, using a private wireless network through linked laptop computers. It enabled them to exchange data with one another and with Moscow Center, much of it encrypted, authorities say.

Ten of the suspects were arrested in Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Boston, and they were charged with federal offenses including conspiring to act as unlawful foreign agents and conspiracy to commit money laundering. An 11 t h suspect remained at large Monday.

Some of the defendants, such as the ones identified as Richard and Cynthia Murphy of Montclair, N.J., seemed to live ordinary suburban lives. Others were more noticeable. One defendant, identified as Vicky Pelaez of Yonkers, N.Y., is a reporter and editor at a well-known Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario/La Prensa, according to Spanish-language media reports from New York.

Appearing in federal courts along the East Coast, the defendants face prison sentences from five to 20 years, if convicted.

Two of the suspects, Mikhail Semenko and Anna Chapman, were confronted by U.S. undercover operatives who posed as Russian government handlers.

On 10 separate Wednesdays since January, Chapman was trailed by U.S. agents as she met with an individual who they said was known to visit the Russian Mission at the United Nations in Manhattan, authorities say.

On Jan. 20, Chapman stopped at a coffee shop just off Times Square in New York, sat near a window and slipped a tote bag off her shoulder, officials said. A minivan driven by the Russian Mission contact allegedly passed by the window. Officials said the vehicle was equipped with a computer that enabled Chapman to freely send material from her laptop to his without using commercial networks and leaving a trail.

On March 10, she chose a bookstore near Greenwich Village and stayed there for half an hour before the van passed by, officials said.

Authorities said Semenko was involved in the same sort of clandestine operations in Washington. On June 5, Semenko entered a restaurant shortly before lunch hour carrying his own bag, official say. Ten minutes later, a car with Russian diplomatic plates drove through the restaurant parking lot and stopped for about 20 minutes, officials say.

Inside the car was an individual identified as the second secretary of the Russian Mission, U.S. officials said. After he drove away, Semenko abruptly left the restaurant, authorities say.

The endgame in the case came when U.S. officials used undercover operatives in a sting on both Chapman and Semenko.

In Chapman's case, they said, an FBI agent posed as a Russian consulate employee and met with her at yet another Manhattan coffee shop. There, the FBI said, they discussed her "Wednesday covert laptop communications sessions."

"This is not like the Wednesdays with the notebooks, this is different. It is, it is the next step," the undercover agent told her, according to wiretaps of their conversation. "You are ready for the next step. OK?"

According to the FBI, Chapman replied, "OK."

The undercover agent told her that from now on, communications would not be "laptop to laptop," but rather "person to person."

"Are you ready for this step?" the agent asked.

"Of course," she replied, according to the wiretap.

U.S. officials said Semenko was tripped up in a similar fashion. He met with an undercover agent in a Washington park.

The agent handed Semenko a folded newspaper. Concealed inside was an envelope with $5,000 in cash. He told Semenko to take it to a park in Arlington, Va., and hide it.

U.S. officials said they later videotaped Semenko hiding the cash rolled up in the paper at the drop site.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-russian-agents-20100629,0,6137533,print.story

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Supreme Court extends rights of gun owners

The court's 5-4 decision in the 2nd Amendment case paves the way for challenges to laws restricting gun ownership, but Justice Samuel Alito says it will not 'imperil every law regulating firearms.'

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

June 29, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening courthouse doors nationwide for gun rights advocates to argue that restrictions on firearms are unconstitutional.

In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the right to have a handgun for self-defense is "fundamental from an American perspective [and] applies equally to the federal government and the states."

The high court overturned 19th century rulings that said the 2nd Amendment restricted only federal gun laws, not local or state measures. The decision will almost certainly void ordinances in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill., that forbid residents to have handguns at home. The justices ruled in favor of the Chicago residents who wish to have guns and sent the case back to Chicago for a lower court to issue a final ruling.

Legal experts on both sides of the gun-control debate predicted the ruling would trigger more lawsuits. They disagreed, however, about whether it would lead to gun laws being struck down, beyond a city's total ban on handguns.

"This case is only the beginning of the debate. Gun ownership rights — like free-speech rights — are not absolute, and state and local governments retain the authority to enact reasonable gun-control laws," said Rick Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Typically, residents can have a rifle or shotgun in any state without a permit. The main exceptions are for people with a felony record or who are mentally ill, and the Supreme Court has already said those "reasonable regulations" can stand.

Seven states, including California, forbid assault weapons or semiautomatic weapons, the court noted. Those restrictions will face a legal challenge, gun rights advocates said.

The National Rifle Assn. also said it planned to focus on how some laws were enforced. For example, California authorizes residents to carry concealed weapons in public with permits. But NRA lawyers say that police in Los Angeles and San Francisco rarely issue permits, and they want to sue to challenge that practice.

"You will see lots of lawsuits, but the vast majority of laws are likely to be upheld," said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on the 2nd Amendment. "The only thing we know for sure is that it's unconstitutional to prohibit possession of a handgun at home."

Though the high court split along ideological lines, the ruling won bipartisan praise in Washington, where Democrats have increasingly shied away from advocating gun control. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) joined Republicans in support of the outcome.

For their part, the justices are deeply split on both the meaning of the 2nd Amendment and wisdom of gun-control measures.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion for the majority, said crime data from the Chicago Police Department "reveal that the city's handgun murder rate has actually increased since the ban was enacted and that Chicago residents now face one of the highest murder rates in the country."

In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said firearms "cause well over 60,000 deaths and injuries in the United States each year. Gun regulation may save lives. Some experts have calculated, for example, that Chicago's handgun ban has saved several hundred lives, perhaps close to 1,000, since it was enacted in 1983."

Two years ago, in a case from Washington, D.C., the court declared for the first time that the 2nd Amendment protects the gun rights of individuals. But the district is a federal city and not a state, and the ruling did not make clear whether state laws or city ordinances were affected.

In Monday's McDonald vs. Chicago decision, Alito explained that in the 20th century, the Bill of Rights was extended to apply to states and cities. There is no reason to leave out the 2nd Amendment, he said. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined to form the majority.

Alito repeated the court's earlier assurance that "reasonable regulations" of firearms can stand: "Despite the doomsday predictions" of the city's lawyers, extending the 2nd Amendment "does not imperil every law regulating firearms."

The dissenters said they feared the ruling would have a severe and dangerous effect across the country. On his final day as a justice, John Paul Stevens said he continued to believe the 2nd Amendment was "adopted to protect the states from federal encroachment," not to undercut their gun laws. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined Breyer's even longer dissent.

The court did not explain why it stopped short of striking the Chicago ordinance. But in the last two years, a federal judge and the U.S. court of appeals said that high court precedents barred them from striking down the Chicago ordinance. Now that those precedents have been set aside, the high court may have thought the judges in Chicago deserved the chance to rule directly on the constitutionality of the city's handgun ban.

Outside the court, NRA head Wayne LaPierre said it was a "monumental day." He said the NRA "will not declare victory until any law-abiding citizen can go out, buy a firearm, own a firearm, protect themselves with it and use it for any other lawful purpose."

But Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told reporters the ruling was not a surprise and set a "very narrow" definition of protected gun rights.

Alan Gura, the attorney for lead plaintiff Otis McDonald in the case, said, "People very, very soon in Chicago will be able to buy and lawfully possess handguns."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-guns-20100629,0,3387409,print.story

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Deaths of 5 CHP officers prompt plea from Schwarzenegger for motorists to be careful

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-guns-20100629,0,5980064,print.story

One man is dead, shot in the mouth by a gunman in El Salvador , presumably for speaking ill of a gang. Another man lives in hiding in the Salvadoran countryside, hoping his former gang will not mete out a similar punishment to him.

Both men had once fled to the United States, where they sought asylum, saying they faced mortal threats from street gangs in El Salvador. In recent years the immigration courts have seen a surge of thousands of such gang-related claims from Central Americans. They have rarely been granted.

But the cases of the two Salvadorans, Benito Zaldívar, who was killed, and Nelson Benítez Ramos, have added new credibility to those claims. They have increased the pressure on the courts and the Obama administration to clarify the terms of asylum law so that foreigners facing life-threatening dangers from gangs would have a chance at refuge in this country.

Immigration judges have rejected asylum for people running from Central American gangs on the grounds that the threats were vague and that the petitioners' lives did not appear to be truly at risk.

In Mr. Zaldívar's case, the Board of Immigration Appeals found that he had failed to show that the gang he feared, Mara-18, was specifically coming after him. Mr. Zaldívar “indicated that the gang members threatened to hurt his family if he did not join,” the judges wrote, “but neither the respondent nor anyone in his family has ever been harmed.”

Mr. Zaldívar was deported to El Salvador in December after his asylum petition failed. His murder just two months later was the proof he foretold that his fears of the gang were not exaggerated.

“I've done about a hundred cases of Salvadoran males who refused to join gangs,” said Roy Petty, an immigration lawyer in Missouri who represented Mr. Zaldívar. “I have to tell them you are probably going to lose. The immigration system did not believe these people were really in danger.”

As a boy, Mr. Zaldívar said in an immigration court statement, he was left with grandparents in La Libertad, a town on the coast of El Salvador, when his parents came in 1994 to work in the United States. Mr. Zaldívar said the Mara-18 gang had started trying to recruit him when he was not yet a teenager.

The gang was more aggressive with him than with his friends, Mr. Zaldívar declared in the statement. “I think it was because the gang members knew I didn't have a big family to take care of me,” he said.

Then his grandmother died. In 2003, when he was 15, Mr. Zaldívar decided he could no longer safely resist the gang, and he fled El Salvador to join his parents, legal immigrants living in Carthage, Mo. Their temporary immigration status did not allow them to bring their son through legal channels, and Mr. Zaldívar was caught by border agents when he crossed into the United States illegally. He applied for asylum, saying that if he returned to El Salvador, the Mara-18 would exact revenge for his refusal to join.

As the case proceeded, he was permitted to rejoin his parents. “I'm going to high school in Carthage,” he informed the court at one point, “and I feel safe for the first time in my life.”

On Feb. 28, eight weeks after he was deported, a white van pulled alongside Mr. Zaldívar as he rode his bicycle through La Libertad. According to sworn statements in court documents, several witnesses saw a Mara-18 gunman shoot him in the face, which they understood as revenge for speaking against the gang.

Mr. Zaldívar's father, Carlos, said in an interview that entreaties from a daughter still living in El Salvador had persuaded him not to return for his son's funeral. “It left me with an empty place,” Carlos Zaldívar said in anguish. “But she said the gangs could blow me away, too.”

In general, legal standards for asylum in the United States are not easy to meet. Asylum seekers must show they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.” Congress keeps a tight lid on the number of refugees admitted, with the limit currently set at 80,000 a year. As the immigration debate becomes increasingly polarized, there is little interest among politicians or the public in raising that limit.

While the civil wars of Central America subsided by the 1990s, the number of people seeking refuge from criminal gangs there has soared in the last decade as the maras, as they are known in Spanish, have extended their violent networks across the region. In many cities the gangs have become more powerful than the police.

“To put it bluntly, Central America is the most violent region of the world, with the exception of those regions where some countries are at war or are experiencing severe political violence,” the United Nations Development Program concluded in a report in October that studied homicide rates across the globe. The bloodshed in Central American came primarily from criminal gangs.

At the same time, American immigration judges, always careful not to open the asylum door to any flood, have made it more difficult for Central Americans running from gangs. In a landmark ruling in 2008, the Board of Immigration Appeals denied a petition by three Salvadoran teenagers who fled recruitment by a gang called the MS-13, saying they had not shown that they were in more peril than Salvadorans in general.

“Gang violence and crime in El Salvador appear to be widespread, and the risk of harm is not limited to young males who have resisted recruitment,” the board found. The judges created several legal hurdles for asylum seekers fleeing gangs, requiring them to prove that they are part of a “particular social group” that is widely recognized in their home society as being under attack, something like a persecuted ethnic minority.

“The law has been kind of ripped apart,” said Deborah Anker, a law professor and director of the Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program at Harvard . “Requirements have been imposed that make no sense in terms of prior jurisprudence and are impossible to interpret.”

Some federal appeals courts have taken the same view. Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has repeatedly rejected the new standards as “illogical” and “perverse.”

In March, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. formally declined to step in to clarify the administration's position. Senator Patrick J. Leahy , a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, offered a refugee bill in March that would erase the recent court decisions and return to a less complicated standard that some people escaping gangs could hope to meet. But the bill is not advancing, with Congress focused on other issues.

So Mr. Benítez waits in El Salvador, after being deported last year. Recruited by the MS-18 gang when he was 14, Mr. Benítez quit after nine years when he became an evangelical Christian, and he fled to join other Christian relatives in the United States.

In December, the Seventh Circuit Court, in a decision written by Judge Posner, rejected the immigration court's finding that Mr. Benítez's fears did not meet the asylum test and granted his request.

But he remains in El Salvador, while his lawyer, Mr. Petty, negotiates with immigration authorities to allow him to come back to the United States. With an indigo MS-13 tattoo still etched on his forehead, he is literally a marked man. In a telephone interview last week, he said he was staying with relatives, skipping from house to house, rarely venturing outside.

“There are gangs everywhere here,” Mr. Benítez said. “When you leave the gangs, even your best friend will murder you.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29asylum.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Officer Accused of Torture Is Guilty of Perjury

CHICAGO — Three decades after criminal suspects interrogated at a South Side police station began complaining that they were being tortured into making confessions, a jury on Monday found a former police commander who led the unit guilty of crimes related to the abuse.

The former commander, Jon Burge, was not convicted of abusing prisoners — crimes for which the statute of limitations had passed — but of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse in a civil case.

Yet the message for this city's South Side — where relations between the police and black residents, especially, have been scarred by stories of suspects burned, suffocated with typewriter covers and shocked with electrical devices — was the same: Mr. Burge, whose name had become a symbol of police brutality, will face punishment.

“We are elated that finally, 25 years after this evidence came to light, there is some modicum of justice in this case,” said Flint Taylor , a lawyer who has represented men who reported abuse.

Still, any joy was tempered by the fact that the prosecution had taken so long, that the conviction was not for torture itself, and that some 20 men here, according to Mr. Taylor, remain behind bars because of confessions that grew from abuse.

Outside court, Mark Clements sobbed and said he had spent almost 30 years in prison after being tortured into confessing to four murders. “I sat in a prison cell, and I prayed for this day,” he said.

Mr. Clements then asked, “What are we going to do about other people who are sitting in those prisons?”

Mr. Burge, who is 62 and in ill health, was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993. He faces up to 45 years in prison.

His effect on this city had many chapters. In 2003, George Ryan , then the governor of Illinois, pardoned four death row inmates who long said they had been abused by Mr. Burge and his officers. Then, four years ago, special prosecutors issued a report supporting the accusations that dozens of suspects had made.

At his monthlong trial, Mr. Burge vehemently denied wrongdoing, and his lawyers described him as a hero whom the city's South Side would be better off to still have on the force.

The lawyers presented the jury's decision as a choice between whether to believe the accounts of police officers or the tales of five men the defense team described as a “murderer's row.”

Prosecutors portrayed Mr. Burge as a brash, boastful officer who attached shock devices to suspects, played Russian roulette by pointing guns at them and expected detectives to adhere to a “code of silence.”

Though prosecutors had focused on five men, it was clear more was at stake.

“Today,” David Weisman, an assistant United States attorney told jurors in closing remarks, “Chicago police officers are working hard to regain the trust that the defendant took away 20 years ago.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29burge.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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The Court: Ignoring the Reality of Guns

OPINION

About 10,000 Americans died by handgun violence, according to federal statistics, in the four months that the Supreme Court debated which clause of the Constitution it would use to subvert Chicago's entirely sensible ban on handgun ownership. The arguments that led to Monday's decision undermining Chicago's law were infuriatingly abstract, but the results will be all too real and bloody.

This began two years ago, when the Supreme Court disregarded the plain words of the Second Amendment and overturned the District of Columbia's handgun ban, deciding that the amendment gave individuals in the district, not just militias, the right to bear arms. Proceeding from that flawed logic, the court has now said the amendment applies to all states and cities, rendering Chicago's ban on handgun ownership unenforceable.

Once again, the court's conservative majority imposed its selective reading of American history, citing the country's violent separation from Britain and the battles over slavery as proof that the authors of the Constitution and its later amendments considered gun ownership a fundamental right. The court's members ignored the present-day reality of Chicago, where 258 public school students were shot last school year — 32 fatally.

Rather than acknowledging Chicago's — and the nation's — need to end an epidemic of gun violence, the justices spent scores of pages in the decision analyzing which legal theory should bind the Second Amendment to the states. Should it be the due process clause of the 14th Amendment , or the amendment's immunities clause? The argument was not completely settled because there was not a five-vote majority for either path.

The issue is not trivial; had the court backed the immunity-clause path championed by Justice Clarence Thomas, it might have had the beneficial effect of applying more aspects of the Bill of Rights to the states. That could make it easier to require that states, like the federal government, have unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials, for example, or ban excessive fines.

While the court has now twice attacked complete bans on handgun ownership, the decision left plenty of room for restrictions on who can buy and sell arms.

The court acknowledged, as it did in the District of Columbia case, that the amendment did not confer “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” It cited a few examples of what it considered acceptable: limits on gun ownership by felons or the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in sensitive places like schools or government buildings and conditions on gun sales.

Mayors and state lawmakers will have to use all of that room and keep adopting the most restrictive possible gun laws — to protect the lives of Americans and aid the work of law enforcement officials. They should continue to impose background checks, limit bulk gun purchases, regulate dealers, close gun-show loopholes.

They should not be intimidated by the theoretical debate that has now concluded at the court or the relentless stream of lawsuits sure to follow from the gun lobby that will undoubtedly keep pressing to overturn any and all restrictions. Officials will have to press back even harder. Too many lives are at stake.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29tue1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Wrong Track Distress

It's getting harder and harder for most Americans, looking honestly at the state of the nation, to see the glass as half full. And that's why the public opinion polls contain nothing but bad news for Barack Obama and the Democrats.

The oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the war in Afghanistan and, above all, the continuing epidemic of joblessness have pushed the nation into a funk. All the crowing in the world about the administration's legislative accomplishments — last year's stimulus package, this year's health care reform, etc. — is not enough to lift the gloom.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats have wasted the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity handed to them in the 2008 election. They did not focus on jobs, jobs, jobs as their primary mission, and they did not call on Americans to join in a bold national effort (which would have required a great deal of shared sacrifice) to solve a wide range of very serious problems, from our over-reliance on fossil fuels to the sorry state of public education to the need to rebuild the nation's rotting infrastructure.

All of that could have been pulled together under the umbrella of job creation — short-term and long-term. In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Obama's historic victory, and with the trauma of the economic collapse still upon us, it would have been very difficult for Republicans on Capitol Hill to stand in the way of a rebuild-America campaign aimed at putting millions of men and women back to work.

Mr. Obama had campaigned on the mantra of change, and that would have been the kind of change that working people could have gotten behind. But it never happened. Job creation was the trump card in the hand held by Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but they never played it. And now we're paying a fearful price.

Fifteen million Americans are unemployed, according to the official count, which wildly understates the reality. Assuming no future economic setbacks and job creation at a rate of 200,000 or so a month, it would take more than a decade to get us back to where we were when the Great Recession began in December 2007. But we're nowhere near that kind of sustained job growth. Last month, a measly 41,000 private-sector jobs were created.

We are in deep, deep gumbo.

The Obama administration feels it should get a great deal of credit for its economic stimulus efforts, its health care initiative, its financial reform legislation, its vastly increased aid to education and so forth. And maybe if we were grading papers, there would be a fair number of decent marks to be handed out.

But Americans struggling in a down economy are worried about the survival of their families. Destitution is beckoning for those whose unemployment benefits are running out, and that crowd of long-term jobless men and women is expanding rapidly.

There is a widespread feeling that only the rich and well-placed can count on Washington's help, and that toxic sentiment is spreading like the oil stain in the gulf, with ominous implications for President Obama and his party. It's in this atmosphere that support for the president and his agenda is sinking like a stone.

Employment is the No. 1 issue for most ordinary Americans. Their anxiety on this front only grows as they watch teachers, firefighters and police officers lining up to walk the unemployment plank as state and local governments wrestle with horrendous budget deficits.

And what do these worried Americans see the Obama administration doing? It's doubling down on the war in Afghanistan, trying somehow to build a nation from scratch in the chaos of a combat zone.

By nearly 2 to 1, respondents to the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll believed the United States is on the wrong track. Despite the yelping and destructive machinations of the deficit hawks, employment and the economy are by far the public's biggest concern. Mr. Obama is paying dearly for his tin ear on this topic. Fifty-four percent of respondents believed he does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. Only 45 percent approved of his overall handling of the economy, compared with 48 percent who disapproved.

It's not too late for the president to turn things around, but there is no indication that he has any plan or strategy for doing it. And the political environment right now, with confidence in the administration waning and budgetary fears unnecessarily heightened by the deficit hawks, is not good.

It would take an extraordinary exercise in leadership to rally the country behind a full-bore jobs-creation campaign — nothing short of large-scale nation-building on the home front. Maybe that's impossible in the current environment. But that's what the country needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Missing Oregon Boy's Father Files for Divorce

Kaine Hormon's wife, Terri Hormon, Kyron Hormon's Stepmother, Is Last Person Known to Have Seen Kyron before He Vanished

(CBS/ AP)  The father of Kyron Hormon, the 7-year-old Oregon boy missing for more than three weeks, filed for divorce from the boy's stepmother Monday, court documents show.

Terri Hormon was served with the divorce papers and a restraining order late Monday night, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker .

Kaine Hormon is said to have moved out of the house he shared with Terri. He reportedly took the couple's 18-month-old daughter with him.

Earlier Monday, Terri denied there were any problems with the marriage.

Police haven't officially named Terri a suspect or a person of interest, but say they gave her a second polygraph, reviewed her cell phone records, and examined her Ford truck.

Investigators say she's the last known person to have seen Kyron alive before he disappeared from his Portland school June 4. After a massive search, the Multnomah County sheriff's office recently described the case as a criminal investigation.

Police say Terri told them she took Kyron to school that morning. There was a science fair before classes began, and Terri took a photo of Kyron in front of his project.

She has told police she last saw him walking down a hallway toward his second-grade classroom, wearing a "CSI" T-shirt and dark cargo pants.

"The police are really keying in on her ; they think she is the heart of the investigation," observes former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson.

All along, the family had appeared united, supporting Terri in an interview on "The Early Show" Friday. "I believe she's committed as the rest of our family is to finding Kyron," Kaine said at the time.

Kyron's biological parents also issued a new statement Monday - excluding Terri - saying they've been fully briefed on the criminal investigation and support the authorities, adding, "Any actions taken by the investigation, or by us, are based on the best interests of Kyron."

But, says Whitaker, their actions have many wondering whether an arrest might be imminent.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/29/earlyshow/main6629305.shtml

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From the Department of Justice

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WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced that a federal jury in Chicago today convicted former Chicago Police Department (CPD) Commander Jon Burge, 60, of Apollo Beach, Fla., on perjury and obstruction charges related to his denials that he participated in the torture of suspects in police custody decades ago. The jury found that Burge lied and impeded court proceedings in November 2003 when he provided false statements in a civil lawsuit that alleged that he and others tortured and abused people in their custody.

During the trial, several victims testified that they had been tortured by Burge and other officers who worked for him in area two of the CPD. Various witnesses testified that the officers administered electric shocks to their genitals, suffocated them with typewriter covers, threatened them with loaded guns and burned them on radiators. The jury found that Burge had lied under oath when he claimed that he did not participate in any of these acts of torture, and that he was unaware of any other officers having done so.

"For decades, Jon Burge's horrific actions ran contrary to all that our justice system stands for. Burge betrayed the public trust, first by abusing suspects in his custody, and then by lying under oath to cover up what he and other officers had done. The jury's verdict allows those harmed by his actions to finally start the healing process, " said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The Civil Rights Division will aggressively prosecute any officer who violates the Constitution."

"At long last, a measure of justice was delivered today when a jury returned a verdict of guilty against Jon Burge on obstruction of justice and perjury.  The verdict necessarily found that torture and abuse occurred in police districts in the city of Chicago in the 1980s.  It's disgraceful that torture happened and sad that it took so long to bring Burge to justice, and the only thing that would have been worse is if this measure of justice never happened," said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Burge faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each count of obstruction of justice and five years in prison for perjury.

This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Weisman and April Perry and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Betsy Biffl.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/June/10-crt-754.html

Eight individuals were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, "deep-cover" assignments in the United States on behalf of the Russian Federation, the Justice Department announced today. Two additional defendants were also arrested Sunday for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States.

In total, 11 defendants, including the 10 arrested, are charged in two separate criminal complaints with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation within the United States. Federal law prohibits individuals from acting as agents of foreign governments within the United States without prior notification to the U.S. Attorney General. Nine of the defendants are also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The defendants known as "Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy" were arrested yesterday by FBI agents at their residence in Montclair, N.J., and are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today. Vicky Pelaez and the defendant known as "Juan Lazaro" were arrested yesterday at their residence in Yonkers, N.Y., and are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today. Anna Chapman was arrested in Manhattan yesterday and is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan today.

The defendants known as "Michael Zottoli" and "Patricia Mills" were arrested yesterday at their residence in Arlington, Va., and are appearing in federal court in Alexandria, Va., today. Defendant Mikhail Semenko was arrested yesterday at his residence in Arlington and is appearing in federal court in Alexandria today. In addition, the defendants known as "Donald Howard Heathfield" and "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" were arrested at their residence in Boston yesterday and are appearing in federal court in Boston today. The defendant known as "Christopher R. Metsos" remains at large.

The charges are filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The charge of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. All the defendants are charged with this violation. The charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. All the defendants except Chapman and Semenko are charged with this violation.

This case is the result of a multi-year investigation conducted by the FBI; the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York; and the Counterespionage Section and the Office of Intelligence within the Justice Department's National Security Division.

The prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Farbiarz, Glen Kopp and Jason Smith of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Trial Attorneys Kathleen Kedian and Richard Scott of the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

The charges and allegations contained in the criminal complaints are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Download the documents:

Complaint #1 (PDF)
Complaint #2 (PDF)

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/June/10-nsd-753.htm

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