'Barefoot Bandit' arrested in Bahamas

After two years of eluding the FBI and police in four states, a 19-year-old fugitive's luck runs out at a vacation resort.

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

July 12, 2010

Reporting from Seattle

The tall young man was carrying a knapsack and a gun, and by the time the security guard at the marina caught up with him, he was at a dead run.

"They're after me. They're after me. They're going to kill me," the teen yelled as he disappeared up a staircase.

Kenneth Strachan, the Bahamian security guard at Romora Bay Resort and Marina on the Bahamas' Harbour Island, knew instantly that a very big fish had just chewed its way off his line.

There could be no doubt that it was Colton Harris-Moore, the teenage fugitive who had led the FBI and police in four states and the Bahamas on a two-year pursuit. He is accused of burglarizing homes, offices and businesses and leaving in his wake a $3-million trail of stolen boats and crash-landed planes.

At close to 4 a.m. Sunday, authorities said Harris-Moore came back down the stairs, jumped into a 30-foot boat belonging to a marina visitor and roared away, but he quickly ran aground in shallow water. Police moved in and shot at the engine, bringing the boat to a halt and, finally, leaving the 19-year-old with nowhere to run.

Harris-Moore threw his laptop and iPhone into the water and briefly held the gun to his head, said Anne Ward, manager of the resort, who was nearby. "He was saying he was going to kill himself," she said. "But they talked him out of it, subdued him and brought him back to our marina."

There have been more serious crime sprees — authorities said Harris-Moore, when he wasn't snatching an expensive getaway vehicle, stole mainly Gatorade, potato chips, hot dogs and showers from unoccupied homes and corner groceries — but few in recent years have been as widely watched.

Known as the "Barefoot Bandit," Harris-Moore is accused of burglarizing his way across rural western Washington state for much of his young life. His first conviction, for possession of stolen property, came at age 12. Police said his latest spree began in 2008, after he escaped from a group home in Renton, Wash.

Harris-Moore has often eluded sheriff's deputies by mere moments, disappearing into the thick forests of the Pacific Northwest before they could clinch his capture. He catapulted to international fame in recent months after apparently teaching himself to fly and expanding his range into Nebraska, South Dakota and Indiana.

On June 18, a couple in Yankton, S.D., said they returned home late one night to find a tall, naked young man — later identified as Harris-Moore — just finishing a meal and a shower.

"He chased the burglar into the basement, when the subject pointed a laser at him and threatened to shoot him if he did not leave the house," said Sgt. Scott Silvernail of the Yankton Police Department. A few miles east of town, Silvernail said, Harris-Moore stole a 2008 Toyota Sequoia and abandoned it in North Fork, Neb.

On July 5, a 2009 Cessna 400 Corvalis, stolen in Bloomington, Ind., crash-landed about 1,200 miles away, six miles off the coast of Abaco Island in the Bahamas, in water about 3 feet deep. A little over 11 hours later, police there say, a nearby home was burglarized and a car stolen. Six other homes and businesses have been burglarized in the days since, police told local news reporters.

The latest theft was a 44-foot-long power boat stolen from a marina.

Reports of Harris-Moore sightings swirled across the island and nearby Harbour Island, where the Romora Bay resort is a favorite playground for celebrities and mega-yacht owners.

"The suspect, in an effort to evade capture, engaged police in a high-speed chase by boat," Ellison Greenslade, commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, told reporters in the Bahamian capital, Nassau. "After a brief chase, the suspect was taken into custody without incident."

Officials for the FBI, which had offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Harris-Moore's capture, said it was not clear how quickly he could be extradited to the U.S.

"My understanding is they want first crack at him for the charges they have there in the Bahamas," said Steven Dean, assistant special agent in charge of the bureau's office in Seattle.

On Camano Island, a densely forested, rural retreat in Puget Sound north of Seattle, where Harris-Moore grew up with his single mother and is accused of committing most of his crimes, there was palpable relief.

"We're all very glad he's been caught," said Laurie Flickner, owner of Elger Bay Grocery & Cafe, which has frequently served as a Harris-Moore crime scene.

"He was a thief. A thief who violated all of our senses of security in our homes, our businesses," she said. "I've come out of the front door of my home late at night to sheriff's deputies in my yard, telling me to get back in my house; they were trying to track him down. Well, that's a little unnerving to live like that….

"He's victimized numerous people who came into our store daily. Many of them repeatedly," she added. "They would no sooner replenish whatever he stole, and he would strike again."

But outside the Northwest, the 6-foot, 5-inch teen's renown grew, expanding with each stolen boat or plane abandoned in a field. His fans on Facebook grew to more than 68,570.

"Wish I could live a life so free," said one of many mournful comments posted after his capture.

"This cat has done more at age 20 than most of us ever will, love him or hate him, he has had quite the adventure and I wish him well!!!" said another.

Ward said she got the call from Strachan about 1:30 a.m. that a young man who appeared to be Harris-Moore had just pulled up in a skiff at the marina. She and the dockmaster rushed to the scene and disconnected electrical wires on the skiff so it couldn't be used for an escape.

That's when she said Harris-Moore returned to the marina and fled in the 30-foot powerboat, with the dockmaster and police in hot pursuit.

"Our boats roared up on either side of him, and he was captured," she said. By 7 a.m., he was flown to Nassau, and Harbour Island settled back into the normal summer tourist hubbub.

"It's definitely sad," she said. "There ought to be a lot more to life. The poor young man."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0712-barefoot-bandit-20100712,0,6846719,print.story

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Arizona immigration law could lead to a second suit, Holder says

The attorney general says that if the state's tough law goes into effect, another suit could result if the U.S. believes racial profiling is taking place. The suit filed last week on constitutional issues could delay the law's implementation.

By Katherine Skiba, Tribune Washington Bureau

July 11, 2010

Washington

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement officer, said Sunday he might sue Arizona a second time if he finds its tough-on-illegal-immigrants law leads to racial profiling.

Holder, speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," said the federal government's lawsuit against Arizona, filed last week, makes scant mention of racial profiling because a stronger argument against the law is that it preempts the federal government's responsibility in deciding immigration policies.

The law requires law enforcement officers with a suspicion that a person is not a legal resident to ask questions and take the person into custody if the person cannot prove he or she is a legal resident.

The measure was to take effect July 29, but the legal challenge casts that in doubt.

Holder said the federal government has to take a variety of factors, including international relations and national security, into account when drawing up immigration laws.

"And it is the responsibility of the federal government, as opposed to states doing it on a patchwork basis," he said.

"It doesn't mean that if the law, for whatever reason, happened to go into effect that six months from now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has had" and determine if there had been racial profiling, Holder said. "And if that was the case, we would have the tools and we would bring suit on that basis."

Holder, in answer to a question, denied suing Arizona for political reasons so as to brand Republicans as "anti-immigrant" or "anti-Hispanic."

"Not true at all," he replied.

Holder said the basis for the suit was a legal determination that the law was "inconsistent with the Constitution."

In other news, Holder said a decision was pending on where -- and how -- to put alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others on trial. Opposition to Holder's plan to try them in New York City has officials searching for a new venue.

Holder said a military base in Virginia was one of "any number of possibilities," but there are "real questions" as to whether a defendant who pleads guilty in a military tribunal may be sentenced to death.

He also said the Obama administration still wants to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility -- as it pledged to do within a year, but did not -- but that it needed congressional support for the money needed to buy an underutilized prison in Thomson, Ill., and use a portion of that facility to house the detainees.

Holder, asked if other places wanted the detainees, said there was interest from "a couple of other states" but refused to name them.

"I don't want to necessarily talk about them now because I think we have a very firm commitment from the people in Thomson and from state officials in Illinois" to accept the terrorism suspects from Guantanamo, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-holder-arizona-20100712,0,1835134,print.story

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Canada's economy can teach the U.S. a thing or two

The United States will probably take years to recover from the global recession and credit crunch, economists say, but its northern neighbor is back in fine shape.

By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times

July 11, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

Whatever else they've thought about their much smaller neighbor to the north, Americans have almost never looked to Canada as a role model.

Indeed, during the long, bitter push to revamp the U.S. healthcare system, opponents repeatedly warned that, if we weren't careful, we could end up with a medical system like Canada's.

But on healthcare, as well as on such critical issues as the deficit, unemployment, immigration and prospering in the global economy, Canada seems to be outperforming the United States. And in doing so, it is offering examples of successful strategies that Americans might consider.

While the United States, Japan and much of Europe are struggling with massive fiscal deficits, Canada's financial house is tidy and secure. Most economists say it will take years for the United States to make up the 8 million-plus jobs lost during the recession, but Canada — despite its historic role as a major supplier for the still-troubled U.S. auto industry — already has recovered essentially all of the jobs it lost.

Meanwhile, as Americans continue their grueling battle over immigration, Canadians have united behind a policy that emphasizes opening the door to tens of thousands of skilled professionals, entrepreneurs and other productive workers who have played an important role in strengthening the Canadian economy.

Granted, Canada's problem with illegal immigration is smaller, and its economy does not match the scale and dynamic productivity of the world's largest. But on the most troubling issues of the day, the U.S. is locked in near-paralyzing political and ideological debates, while those same issues are hardly raising eyebrows in Canada.

"We did a lot of things right going into the financial crisis," said Glen Hodgson, senior vice president at the Conference Board of Canada, a business-membership and research group in Ottawa.

One of the most important, he said: Back in the 1990s, it cleaned up the fiscal mess that most every developed nation is now facing.

Earlier that decade, Canada too was straining from years of excessive government spending that bloated the nation's total debts, to 70% of annual economic output — a figure the U.S. is projected to approach in two years.

As with Greece, Portugal and Spain this year, Canada's credit rating was downgraded in the early 1990s, sharply raising its borrowing costs. With its economy suffering and pressure mounting from international investors — Wall Street bankers in particular — Canadian officials slashed spending for social programs and shifted more of the cost burden to provincial governments, which almost everyone in Canada felt.

"I had to share a phone line with another professor. Can you believe it?" recalled Wenran Jiang, who joined the University of Alberta's political science faculty in 1993. Professors there and elsewhere also took salary cuts.

It would take several years of such tough medicine, but as Canada headed into the new millennium, the government's total debts were shaved nearly in half, and then whittled down to a little more than 20% of gross domestic product just before the global recession began in 2008 — by far the lowest ratio among major developed countries.

With the economic downturn, Canada pumped up public spending to stimulate growth, as other nations did. Even so, its fiscal shortfall this year is projected at $33 billion, comfortably below the 3%-of-GDP threshold that economists consider a manageable level of debt.

Washington's deficit this fiscal year is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $1.35 trillion — or 9.2% of projected GDP.

The United States' larger size — its population and economy are roughly 10 times those of Canada — makes direct comparisons difficult. And many Canadians readily acknowledge that American entrepreneurship and productivity are enviably stronger.

But having learned to tighten their belts in the 1990s, Canadians such as Michael Gregory have little sympathy for U.S. consumers who pile debt onto their credit cards and homes.

"We've been taught: You don't buy what you can't afford," said Gregory, a senior economist at the Bank of Montreal.

Similarly, Canadian banks have been more conservative than American ones. So they made few subprime loans, and home equity lines are relatively recent offerings in Canada.

Yet their solid if unexciting product lines and financial results mean Canadian firms can now expand lending. This as U.S. banks continue to refrain from extending credit, thus restraining spending, investment and job growth.

Canada's stricter banking regulations and bankruptcy rules certainly have played a role too, but Gregory attributes part of the difference to cultural factors. When he worked for now-defunct Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. in New York in the late 1990s, Gregory drove a Ford minivan or a Toyota Camry, while many of his colleagues tooled around in BMWs and other luxury brands.

"It was consumerism. People spent more money, ate out more, bought more stuff," Gregory said. "I felt awkward."

Canadian firms weren't unscathed by the credit debacle and the global economic retreat. And Canada's strong currency — the loonie is worth just a few cents less than the U.S. dollar — is sure to pinch Canadian exports, much of which head south.

But unlike the United States, where the financial crisis turned into the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, the hit to Canada was fairly mild.

In the final quarter of last year, Canada's GDP surged nearly 5%, rising even higher in this year's first quarter. Growth in the U.S. slowed sharply early this year, heightening fears of a double-dip recession.

"U.S. businesses are certainly looking at lessons learned from Canada," said Bart van Ark, chief economist at the Conference Board in New York. "In a nutshell, Canada has been very pragmatic in dealing with the economy."

Its approach to immigration is one example. With one of the highest immigration rates in the world, Canada has been receiving about 250,000 permanent residents annually. About one-fourth of the new arrivals gain entry through family relations, but more than 60% are admitted as "economic immigrants" — that is, skilled workers, entrepreneurs and investors.

In the U.S., it's basically the reverse: Most of the 1 million-plus permanent residents received annually have been family-sponsored; only about one in seven are admitted on the basis of employment preferences.

That is, Washington emphasizes bringing in family members of immigrants already in the United States. Ottawa put the emphasis on admitting those who can contribute to the economy.

Many Americans, of course, don't see that as the key difference. The estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are what dominate public discussions of immigration policy.

"The thing about the U.S. is you have a border with Mexico, which Canada doesn't," said Jeffrey Reitz, a sociologist and immigration expert at the University of Toronto.

He figures that as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants reside in Canada, not a small number for a country of its size. But there's no really good estimate, which Reitz views as a reflection of just how little the subject weighs on the nation.

"The big issue is how immigrants, though highly skilled, aren't getting jobs as easily," Reitz said.

As for most Canadians' attitude toward immigration, he said, they seem to know that their country needs new arrivals because of Canada's small population and a birth rate that is lower than in the U.S.

"The vast majority of Canadians accept that immigration is essential to the economic and demographic future of the country, and that openness is a Canadian value," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "I know that sounds terribly crazy to us."

Even as some economists in the U.S. have pushed for a Canadian-style system that gives points for higher education, work skills and experience, the policy discussion almost always seems to hinge on illegal immigrants.

"That sucks all the oxygen from the debate," Papademetriou said. As a result, he said, not much policy attention is given to important concerns — increasing visas for skilled workers, enabling people with advanced degrees to obtain residency, adding greater flexibility to the system to better compete in a global economy.

Over the years, Canada in fact has adapted some of the strengths of the U.S. immigration policy, such as the H1B work visa program, to shore up its weaknesses, he said. The H1B program allows employers to bring in foreign workers in specialty occupations on a temporary basis. The U.S., on the other hand, has dealt with its immigration policy like a political hot potato.

"Canada has really outshone the United States," he said. "That's a reality."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-econ-canada-20100711,0,5048660,print.story

The New START treaty deserves to be ratified

Obama's critics are wrong; the arms control treaty enhances our security.

By Jacob Heilbrunn

July 12, 2010

Here we go again.

President Obama signed a nuclear arms control agreement — the New START treaty — with Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in April to much fanfare. Senate hearings on the treaty are taking place. But in a reprise of Cold War debates, hard-liners are seeking to block Senate ratification of the treaty, where it needs a two-thirds majority, by depicting the deal as a dangerous sellout to Moscow. The treaty deserves careful scrutiny, but it is in danger of becoming the victim of a hazing campaign.

The Heritage Foundation announces on its website that it "has been leading the charge against New START treaty, as we do with all threats to American sovereignty and independence. And our message is getting through to our target audience in Congress." Indeed it is. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is citing the foundation's studies. Other Republican senators expressing doubts include Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. The most inflammatory attack, however, has come from former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, he claimed the treaty represented Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake yet."

It's not a mistake. The treaty would not eviscerate American national security. It would enhance it, which is why it enjoys the bipartisan support of the Foreign Relations Committee leaders, Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana. It's also why GOP foreign policy eminences such as Henry Kissinger, George P. Shultz and Richard Burt endorse the treaty.

By capping each side's deployed warheads at 1,550, the New START treaty would cut Russia's and America's arsenals by about 30%. It would also restore verification procedures that lapsed with the expiration of the START I treaty. Each Russian missile would be given a unique serial number, and onsite inspections would take place. Tracking nuclear weapons and materials safeguards U.S. security. And the more concerned conservatives are about Russian intentions, the more they should welcome the verification procedures contained in the New START treaty.

But its opponents are not about to let facts stand in their way. They never have. As J. Peter Scoblic shows in his valuable book, "U.S. Versus Them," the right has a long, misguided history of fulminating against nuclear arms control. Richard Nixon and Kissinger were labeled as appeasers for the 1972 strategic arms limitation talks with Moscow. Jimmy Carter was attacked for his efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan, who entered office denouncing arms control efforts but ended up signing sweeping agreements, was accused by his more overheated followers of being a "useful idiot" and committing "nuclear suicide." Instead, Reagan's readiness to reach out to Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

Obama's critics are intent on portraying him as bent on nuclear suicide as well. To derail the New START treaty, they are advancing a welter of objections, many related to missile defense. Never mind that after decades of research, there is no such system in sight, or that Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, has testified that he sees no constraints on missile defense in the treaty.

In its preamble, the treaty states that offensive and defensive weapons are related — a truism akin to acknowledging that water is wet. Treaty foes, however, combine this statement with the fact that the treaty is designed to control offensive weapons and charge that the preamble wording potentially disallows the construction of a missile defense system. A related criticism holds that the treaty would give Moscow a unilateral veto over missile defense by allowing it to exit the agreement if it chose to — but that right applies to both sides and is a customary part of any treaty.

The opponents also point to the fact that Russia will continue to possess tactical — limited flying range — nuclear weapons that threaten Europe. Repeating the Heritage Foundation's talking points almost verbatim, Romney declared that Obama, in pushing for the treaty, "fails to mention that Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States." But if there is no agreement on long-range strategic nuclear weapons, why would Russia even consider entering separate treaty negotiations on the much more difficult issue of reducing tactical nuclear weapons?

And so it goes with other objections relating to bombers, multiple warheads and other details, where these opponents contort the text and the weapons totals in order to reach the most alarming conclusions. Just about the only thing the critics aren't accusing Obama of is handing over his nuclear briefcase to the Kremlin.

What's at the bottom of conservative objections has far less to do with the New START treaty's provisions than its spirit. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Kyl made it clear he finds the idea of a nuclear-free world abhorrent. He warns that Obama will not spend enough to modernize America's nuclear force.

Kyl and his brethren are living in the past. Russia is no longer an implacable Cold War foe, although treating it as one could reverse that. In furthering arms reductions, Obama is wisely improving relations with Russia and helping to fulfill Reagan's vision of a nuclear-free world, a goal shared by Kissinger and Shultz who advocate a move toward "global zero." Instead of dithering over the New START treaty, the Senate should approve it this fall.

Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at the National Interest.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-heilbrunn-start-20100712,0,4517533,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Governors Voice Grave Concerns on Immigration

BOSTON — In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration's suit against Arizona's new immigration law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections.

While the weak economy dominated the official agenda at the summer meeting here of the National Governors Association , concern over immigration policy pervaded the closed-door session between Democratic governors and White House officials and simmered throughout the three-day event.

At the Democrats' meeting on Saturday, some governors bemoaned the timing of the Justice Department lawsuit, according to two governors who spoke anonymously because the discussion was private.

“Universally the governors are saying, ‘We've got to talk about jobs,' ” Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, said in an interview. “And all of a sudden we have immigration going on.”

He added, “It is such a toxic subject, such an important time for Democrats.”

The administration seemed to be taking a carrot-and-stick approach on Sunday. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano , in town to give the governors a classified national security briefing, met one-on-one with Jan Brewer , the Republican who succeeded her as governor of Arizona and ardently supports the immigration law.

About the same time as that meeting, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on a taped Sunday talk show that the Justice Department could bring yet another lawsuit against Arizona if there is evidence that the immigration law leads to racial profiling.

Ms. Brewer said she and Ms. Napolitano did not discuss the current lawsuit. Instead, in a conversation she described as cordial, they discussed Arizona's request for more National Guard troops along the border with Mexico, as well as other resources.

The Democrats' meeting provided a window on tensions between the White House and states over the suit, which the Justice Department filed last week in federal court in Phoenix. Nineteen Democratic governors are either leaving office or seeking re-election this year, and Republicans see those seats as crucial to swaying the 2012 presidential race.

The Arizona law — which Ms. Brewer signed in April and which, barring an injunction, takes effect July 29 — makes it a crime to be an illegal immigrant there. It also requires police officers to determine the immigration status of people they stop for other offenses if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that they might be illegal immigrants.

The lawsuit contends that controlling immigration is a federal responsibility, but polls suggest that a majority of Americans support the Arizona law, or at least the concept of a state having a strong role in immigration enforcement.

Republican governors at the Boston meeting were also critical of the lawsuit, saying it infringed on states' rights and rallying around Ms. Brewer, whose presence spurred a raucous protest around the downtown hotel where the governors gathered.

“I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that almost every state in America next January is going to see a bill similar to Arizona's,” said Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican seeking re-election.

But the unease of Democratic governors, seven of whom are seeking re-election this year, was more striking.

“I might have chosen both a different tack and a different time,” said Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado, a Democrat who was facing a tough fight for re-election and pulled out of the race earlier this year. “This is an issue that divides us politically, and I'm hopeful that their strategy doesn't do that in a way that makes it more difficult for candidates to get elected, particularly in the West.”

The White House would not directly respond to reports of complaints from some Democratic governors.

But David Axelrod , the president's senior adviser, said on Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union” that the president remained committed to passing an immigration overhaul, and that addressing the issue did not mean he was ignoring the economy.

“That doesn't mean we can't have a good, healthy debate about the economy and other issues,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Mr. Obama addressed the economy last week during stops in Kansas City and Las Vegas, and has been calling on Congress to offer additional tax relief to small businesses.

And the heads of Mr. Obama's national debt commission — Alan K. Simpson and Erskine B. Bowles — were on hand here on Sunday to press the economic issue.

The nation's total federal debt next year is expected to exceed $14 trillion, and Mr. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Mr. Bowles, a Democrat and the White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton , offered a gloomy assessment if spending is not brought under control even more.

“This debt is like a cancer,” Mr. Bowles said. “It is truly going to destroy the country from within.”

Still, the issue of immigration commanded as much attention as anything here this weekend.

Ms. Brewer, who was trailed by television cameras all weekend, called the lawsuit “outrageous” and said the state was receiving donations from around the country to help fight it.

“I think Arizona will win,” she said, “and we will take a position for all of America.”

Immigration was not the only topic at the Saturday meeting between Democratic governors and two White House officials — Patrick Gaspard, Mr. Obama's political director, and Cecilia Munoz, director of intergovernmental affairs. But several governors, including Christine Gregoire of Washington, said it was a particularly heated issue.

Ms. Gregoire, who does not face an election this year, said the White House was doing a poor job of showing the American public that it was working on the problem of illegal immigration.

“They described for me a list of things that they are doing to try and help on that border,” Ms. Gregoire said of the White House officials at the closed-door meeting. “And I said, ‘The public doesn't know that.' ”

She added, “We've got a message void, and the only thing we're hearing is that they're filing a lawsuit.”

Some Democrats also joined Republicans in calling for Congress to pass an immigration policy overhaul this year.

“There are 535 members of Congress,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a Democrat. “Certainly somebody back there can chew gum and hold the basketball at the same time. This is not an either-or.”

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico praised the Justice Department's lawsuit, saying his fellow Democrats' concerns were “misguided.”

“Policy-wise it makes sense,” said Mr. Richardson, who is Hispanic and who leaves office this year on term limits, “and Obama is popular with Hispanic voters and this is going to be a popular move with them nationally.”

Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland — a Democrat who voiced apprehension about the lawsuit in the private meeting, according to the two governors who requested anonymity — said in an interview that he supported it.

“The president doesn't have control over some of the timing of things that happen,” Mr. O'Malley said. “When those things arise, you can't be too precious about what's in it for your own personal political timing or even your party's timing. When matters like this arise, I think the president has to take a principled stand.”

But Mr. Bredesen said that in Tennessee, where the governor's race will be tight this year, Democratic candidates were already on the defensive about the federal health care overhaul, and the suit against Arizona further weakened them. In Tennessee, he said, Democratic candidates are already “disavowing” the immigration lawsuit.

“Maybe you do that when you're strong,” he said of the suit, “and not when there's an election looming out there.”

Mr. Ritter of Colorado said he wished the Justice Department had waited to sue Arizona until after the law went into effect, to give the public a chance to see how difficult it would be to enforce.

“It's just an easier case to make,” he said. “I just think that law enforcement officers are going to have a terribly difficult time applying this law in a constitutional way.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/us/politics/12governors.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops

When night falls, police officers blanket some eight odd blocks of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Squad cars with flashing lights cruise along the main avenues: Livonia to Powell to Sutter to Rockaway. And again.

On the inner streets, dozens of officers, many fresh out of the police academy, walk in pairs or linger on corners. Others, deeper within the urban grid, navigate a maze of public housing complexes, patrolling the stairwells and hallways.

This small army of officers, night after night, spends much of its energy pursuing the controversial Police Department tactic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk,” and it does so at a rate unmatched anywhere else in the city.

The officers stop people they think might be carrying guns; they stop and question people who merely enter the public housing project buildings without a key; they ask for identification from, and run warrant checks on, young people halted for riding bicycles on the sidewalk.

One night, 20 officers surrounded a man outside the Brownsville Houses after he would not let an officer smell the contents of his orange juice container.

Between January 2006 and March 2010, the police made nearly 52,000 stops on these blocks and in these buildings, according to a New York Times analysis of data provided by the Police Department and two organizations, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union. In each of those encounters, officers logged the names of those stopped — whether they were arrested or not — into a police database that the police say is valuable in helping solve future crimes.

These encounters amounted to nearly one stop a year for every one of the 14,000 residents of these blocks. In some instances, people were stopped because the police said they fit the description of a suspect. But the data show that fewer than 9 percent of stops were made based on “fit description.” Far more — nearly 26,000 times — the police listed either “furtive movement,” a catch-all category that critics say can mean anything, or “other” as the only reason for the stop. Many of the stops, the data show, were driven by the police's ability to enforce seemingly minor violations of rules governing who can come and go in the city's public housing.

The encounters — most urgently meant to get guns off the streets — yield few arrests. Across the city, 6 percent of stops result in arrests. In these roughly eight square blocks of Brownsville, the arrest rate is less than 1 percent. The 13,200 stops the police made in this neighborhood last year resulted in arrests of 109 people. In the more than 50,000 stops since 2006, the police recovered 25 guns.

Greg Jackson, 58, a former professional basketball player who runs the Brownsville Recreation Center, said the rising tide of stops had left many who wanted a strong police presence here feeling conflicted.

“Do we welcome the police?” he said, “Of course I do. Ninety-nine percent of the people in the area do. But they also fear the police because you can get stopped at any time.”

New York is among several major cities across the country that rely heavily on the stop-and-frisk tactic, but few cities, according to law enforcement experts, employ it with such intensity. In 2002, the police citywide documented 97,000 of these stops; last year, the department registered a record: 580,000.

There are, to be sure, plenty of reasons for the police to be out in force in this section of Brooklyn, and plenty of reasons for residents to want them there. Murders, shootings and drug dealing have historically made this one of the worst crime corridors in the city.

But now, in an era of lower crime rates, both in this part of Brooklyn and across the city, questions are swirling over what is emerging as a central tool in the crime fight, one intended to give officers the power to engage anyone they reasonably suspect has committed a crime or is about to.

The practice has come under intense scrutiny. Lawmakers are monitoring the situation. Civil libertarians are challenging it. The Police Department is studying it. And police officials, from Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly to local precinct commanders, are defending it.

“I don't know what too many stops are,” said Deputy Inspector Juanita Holmes, who until recently was in charge of the department's officers specifically assigned to protect the housing projects that largely make up these blocks of Brownsville. “The stops conducted by us are to address the crime, or the quality-of-life issues.”

A Troubled Neighborhood

In a dank stairwell inside 340 Dumont Avenue, a dim light flickers and the stench of urine fills the air. It was here in 1988 in the Samuel J. Tilden Houses that Officer Anthony O. McLean took a bullet to the chest. He had been searching for a missing 10-year-old girl when he stumbled into a drug deal.

Crime here — a rectangle of housing developments and faded commercial strips — is hardly what it was in those bloody days. But the labyrinth of stairwells, hallways, courtyards, lobbies and roofs of the complexes — 65 buildings ranging from 6-story apartment buildings to 20-story towers — still presents a dangerous challenge for police.

Lobby mailboxes are used for drug transactions. Locks and intercoms meant to allow in only residents and their visitors are routinely broken. Officers say they often find bullet casings on the roofs, where people take target practice or fire in the air in celebration.

In November 2008, a man delivering meals for charity was shot dead in a lobby of the Brownsville Houses after delivering food to two elderly women. Five months later, a 43-year-old woman was stabbed to death trying to break up a fight outside her apartment in the Tilden Houses.

“It's tough,” said Deputy Inspector Holmes, who took over command of these housing projects in 2008. “A lot of our kids in the area carry guns. Whether they carry them for protection, ‘because I'm trying to get to school without being victimized,' or they carry them ‘because I'm going to rob somebody today,' there are a lot of guns out there. And it creates a challenge.”

In 2007, the year before she took command, shootings in the five developments had reached a five-year high. During her first six months on the job, her officers increased stops by 23 percent from the previous six months, the data show. The next year, her officers made more than 10,000 stops.

Deputy Inspector Holmes said she studied the number of stop-and-frisks in her area closely, and credited them with making the houses safer for law-abiding residents. She said over the first six months of this year violent crime was down in almost every category in the five complexes.

But that same success has not been seen outside the developments. Shootings are up 39 percent in the 73rd Precinct this year. In 2008 the precinct, which includes these blocks of public housing, led the city in murders, and it consistently has one of the city's highest rates of violent crime.

Still, Deputy Inspector Samuel Wright, who took over command of the precinct in January 2009, says stop-and-frisks have “had a significant impact” on crime reduction.

“In 2008 there were a lot of murders in the 73rd Precinct,” he said. “We were able to reduce homicides by 32 percent in 2009, and I think that was attributed to the stop, question and frisk policy. We had a reduction in robberies. We had a reduction in grand larcenies.”

Law enforcement experts say that it is very hard, perhaps even impossible, to draw direct connections between the stop-and-frisk tactic and significant long-term crime reduction.

Certainly, some say that the New York Police Department has so far failed to convincingly link the explosion in the numbers of stops with crime suppression.

And some, from academics to the residents of these streets in Brooklyn, believe the stops could have a corrosive effect, alienating young and old alike in a community that has long had a tenuous relationship with the police.

“This is an important issue, right now, that the N.Y.P.D. must get out in front of as soon as they can,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. “And the best way they can do that is to provide credible evidence that the stop-and-frisk campaign actually is responsible for the crime reductions the city has enjoyed.”

Without that evidence, he said, the stop-and-frisks that do not result in arrests could “reduce the perceived legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public.”

One researcher who has studied the impact of stop-and-frisk on crime insists it is effective. In a 2008 study presented to the City Council, Dennis C. Smith, a professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, wrote that the strategy was effective across the city for robbery, murder, burglary and auto theft. But it found no citywide impact on assault, rape or grand larceny. The study also suggested the tool's success varies over time and often loses effectiveness as the volume of stops increases.

“One important implication is that effective crime fighting requires continuous innovation,” wrote Professor Smith, who is an expert witness for the Police Department in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights over allegations of racial profiling in stop-and-frisk. “Another is the interventions are blunt instruments that need to be used with care.”

Calls for Sensitivity

To many residents here, care is exactly what is not being used. To them, the flood of young officers who roam the community each day are not equipped to make the subtle judgments required to tell one young man in low-hanging jeans concealing a weapon from another young man wearing similar clothes on his way to school.

The United States Supreme Court established the legal basis for stops and frisks — reasonable suspicion of a crime — in the 1968 case of Terry v. Ohio. But the officer in that case had a far different level of experience than many of the officers walking the streets of Brownsville. He had patrolled the same streets of downtown Cleveland for 30 years looking for pickpockets and shoplifters.

By comparison, the nearly 200 officers who operate in the neighborhood as part of Mr. Kelly's “Impact Zone” program — flooding problematic crime pockets with a battery of police — are largely on their first assignment out of the academy.

The data show the initiative is conducted aggressively, sometimes in what can seem like a frenzy. During one month — January 2007 — the police executed an average of 61 stops a day.

The high number of stops in this part of Brooklyn can be explained in part by the fact that police can use violations of city Housing Authority rules to justify stops. For instance, the Housing Authority, which oversees public housing developments, forbids people from being in their buildings unless they live there or are visiting someone.

And so on a single Friday in January 2009, the police stopped 109 people in this area, 55 of them inside the project buildings, almost half for suspicion of trespassing. The show of force resulted in two arrests for misdemeanor possession of marijuana and misdemeanor possession of a weapon.

Inside the project buildings and out, males 15 to 34 years of age, who make up about 11 percent of the area's population, accounted for 68 percent of the stops over the years. That amounted to about five stops a year each, though it was impossible to tell how often someone was stopped or if that person lived in the neighborhood, because the data did not include the names or addresses of those stopped. Police officials say the age figures sound right, since most crime suspects fit that description.

Young black men get stopped so often that a few years ago, Gus Cyrus, coach of the football team at nearby Thomas Jefferson High School, started letting his players leave practice with their bright orange helmets so the police would not confuse them with gang members.

“My players were always calling me saying ‘Coach, the police have me,' ” Mr. Cyrus said.

At an entrance to 305 Livonia Avenue, a 16-story building in Tilden Houses, the door lock has been broken for weeks. It is the same at 360 Dumont Avenue, negating anyone's need for a key to get inside. At 363 Dumont Avenue, in the Brownsville Houses, another metal lock is broken to another door.

Young men cluster around the doorways on hot summer evenings. Mothers sit on benches outside them as they guard children in the courtyard playgrounds.

And officers are watching. If someone enters without a key, it is reason to stop them, check for identification and, if necessary, take out handcuffs.

Many residents say they philosophically embrace the police presence. They say they know too well how the violence around them — the drugs and gangs — can swallow up young people.

Yet the day-to-day interactions with officers can seem so arbitrary that many residents say they often come away from encounters with officers feeling violated, degraded and resentful.

Almost everyone in the projects has a story. There is Jonathan Guity, a 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record, who, when asked how many times he had been stopped in the neighborhood where he grew up, said, “Honestly, I'd say 30 to 40 times. I'm serious.”

The most recent stop, he said, was about three months ago after he had dropped his girlfriend off at the subway. As he walked home listening to his iPod, he noticed a dark blue Chevrolet following him. Suddenly, the car pulled up on the sidewalk, and two men jumped out. One put his hand on Mr. Guity's pants pocket, he said.

“I slapped his hand away and I'm like, ‘What are you doing?' ” Mr. Guity said. “He was like, ‘Oh,' and he pulled out his badge, so he was like, it was like, ‘There was a shooting around here five minutes ago and you fit the description.' ”

Oddly, years ago when crime was higher, relations with the police seemed better, several residents said. The officers seemed to show a greater sense of who was law abiding and who was not, they said. Now, many residents say, the newer crop of officers seem to be more interested in small offenses than engaging with residents.

“Rookies,” said Sandra Carter, 60, as she sat on a bench outside 372 Blake Avenue.

Several residents painted a portrait of officers moving in only to enforce rules that seemed to always be changing. Once, officers suddenly began telling people they could not congregate around the metal hand rails surrounding an entrance to the building, residents said.

At the local recreation center in Brownsville, Darryl Glenn, 49, stood in the gym with his son, Darryl Jr., and spoke of the need for officers to be there — but also of the equal need for them to improve their performance.

“If anything, there needs to be more police around,” said the teenager, who is headed to college. But, he said, the officers could better handle some stop situations, particularly by working to get better descriptions of suspects and by communicating more effectively the reason for the stop.

“When they give a description, it's, ‘Young black man, black pants, blue shirt, black hat,' ” he said. ‘That's mostly everybody. A better description would be better, so they can know who they're looking for, rather than just everyone walking around.”

High Number of Stops

The Times, for this article, interviewed 12 current or former officers who had worked in this part of Brooklyn in the last five years, and all defended the necessity of the stop-and-frisks.

But some former officers who worked the area say the stops seem less geared to bringing down crime than feeding the department's appetite for numbers — a charge police officials steadfastly deny. Though none said they were ever given quotas to hit, all but two said that certain performance measures were implicitly expected in their monthly activity reports. Lots of stop-and-frisk reports suggested a vigilant officer.

“When I was there the floor number was 10 a month,” one officer said. Like many of the officers interviewed for this article, he asked not to be identified because he was still in law enforcement and worried that being seen as critical of the New York department could hurt his future employment opportunities.

He said if you produced 10 stops — known as a UF-250 for the standardized departmental reports the stops generate — you were not likely to draw the attention of a supervisor. “And in all fairness,” he said, “if you're working in that area, 10 a month is very low. All you have to do is open your eyes.”

Another former officer who worked in the 73rd Precinct said the pressure was felt more overtly to get an arrest or a criminal summons, but in lieu of those, extra 250s would compensate.

“A lot of us didn't want to bang everyone,” the officer said. “These people have a hard enough time in the situation they're living in without making it worse by hitting them with a summons, having them travel to Manhattan for criminal court, and the bosses would get upset and say, ‘Well, give us some UF-250s.' It's an easy number.”

While each 250 is required to be approved and signed by a supervisor, one former housing officer said getting them was easy: “Just go to the well.”

The well, said this officer, is the lobby of any of the many housing buildings. Ryan Sheridan, one of the former officers who said he had never heard supervisors emphasize numbers, nonetheless acknowledged that the lobby and hallways were a legitimate source of 250s.

“Once they walk into the building, every UF-250 can come from a do-not-enter, meaning entering without a key,” he said. “But once you ask them for an ID, 90 percent of the people live in the building. That's why the arrest rate is so low. They're not acting suspiciously, but like I said, they don't have a key to enter.”

Deputy Inspector Holmes said she never emphasized numbers and scoffed at the notion that her officers were using broken locks to initiate 250s.

“I think that was bad information,” she said.

One recent evening, the police stopped a 19-year-old man for spitting on the sidewalk, a health code violation, and entering Langston Hughes Apartments without using a key or being buzzed in, even though the doors were unlocked. “I've lived here for 19 years,” the young man, who lived in a neighboring building, protested. “You see me coming into these buildings every day, and now you're going to stop me.”

The reaction was natural. “People don't enjoy being stopped going to and from where they're going,” one of the officers, Robert McNamara, said later. But the officers also had another rationale, he said. They had spotted the same man near the scene of a dropped gun some days earlier, and hoped to use the stop to check for outstanding warrants. None found, they let him go without citing him, using the kind of discretion necessary in these situations, Officer McNamara said.

Stop-and-frisk is a “valuable tool,” he said, “but there needs to be some common sense when using the tool.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/nyregion/12frisk.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Police: 27 officers injured in clashes in N. Ireland

• At least 27 police injured in two different locations, including three hit by shotgun blast
• About 200 people rushed into streets, police say
• People throw objects and explosives
• Disruption began on eve of Orangeman's Day

(CNN) -- At least 27 police officers were injured in clashes overnight in Belfast, Northern Ireland, including three hit by shotgun pellets, police said Monday.

About 200 people rushed into the streets around 11:45 p.m. Sunday (7:45 p.m. ET), with some throwing objects and explosives, police said.

The injuries are not thought to be serious, police spokesman John Anderson said.

The violence took place in two different parts of the city on the eve of a holiday often marked by tension between Catholics and Protestants.

The disruption began minutes before the start of "Orangeman's Day."

The holiday -- also called "The Twelfth" -- is celebrated by Protestants in Northern Ireland to commemorate the Battle of Boyne in 1690, when the Protestant William of Orange defeated the Catholic James in a struggle over the British throne.

Because of the sectarian nature of the holiday, celebrations have sometimes been marred by violence in the past.

"This is utterly wrong and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," police district Chief Superintendent Mark Hamilton said in a statement. "Those involved in tonight's violence were intent on causing mayhem and destruction."

Hamilton said police were investigating the incident.

"We have appealed for calm in the run up to the Twelfth of July and we continue to do so," he said. "We would appeal to anyone with influence in the community to exert it to ensure that the next few days pass off without incident."

On Saturday, police in Northern Ireland said a roadside bomb that exploded in a border caused significant damage to both a road and a nearby bridge.

District Cmdr. Chief Alasdair Robinson said he believed that police officers were the target, and that the bomb was placed in the area in an attempt to injure or kill them.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/12/northern.ireland.police.shot/?hpt=T2&fbid=6TiwOuKX6pm

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Yemen Court Upholds al-Qaida Death Sentences

VOA News

July 11, 2010

An appeals court in Yemen has upheld death sentences against four members of an al-Qaida cell convicted of attacks on government and Western targets.

The attacks in 2008 included a mortar assault on the U.S. embassy that caused casualties at an adjacent girls' school, the killing of two female Belgian tourists, and assaults on oil facilities and a military camp.

Yemen says the condemned men were part of a 16-member al-Qaida cell convicted last July.

The appeals court on Sunday commuted the death sentences of two other members of the cell and gave them 12-year prison terms instead.  The court reduced the prison sentences of at least five cell members to eight-year terms but upheld the original jail terms of two others.

The rulings came the same day that the al-Qaida branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for a deadly attack against an intelligence headquarters last month in the southern city of Aden.  That assault killed at least 11 people.

Meanwhile, Yemen's Defense Ministry on Sunday announced the arrest of eight al-Qaida suspects during the last week in the south of the country.  The ministry alleged the men were planning attacks on the security forces and vital installations.

Yemen intensified its campaign against al-Qaida after the group's local branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of a U.S.-bound passenger jet on December 25.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Yemen-Court-Upholds-al-Qaida-Death-Sentences--98202804.html

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By LOLITA C. BALDOR (AP) –

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's recent move to drop rhetorical references to Islamic radicalism is drawing fire in a new report warning the decision ignores the role religion can play in motivating terrorists.

Several prominent counterterror experts are challenging the administration's shift in its recently unveiled National Security Strategy, saying the terror threat should be defined in order to fight it.

The question of how to frame the conflict against al-Qaida and other terrorists poses a knotty problem. The U.S. is trying to mend fences with Muslim communities while toughening its strikes against militant groups.

In the report, scheduled to be released this week, counterterrorism experts from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argue that the U.S. could clearly articulate the threat from radical Islamic extremists "without denigrating the Islamic religion in any way."

President Barack Obama has argued that words matter, and administration officials have said that the use of inflammatory descriptions linking Islam to the terror threat feed the enemy's propaganda and may alienate moderate Muslims in the U.S.

In the report, which was obtained by The Associated Press, the analysts warn that U.S. diplomacy must sharpen the distinction between the Muslim faith and violent Islamist extremism, identify radicalizers within Islamic communities and empower voices that can contest the radical teachings.

Militant Islamic propaganda has reportedly been a factor in a spate of recent terror attacks and foiled attempts within the U.S. Maj. Nidal Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood, Texas, mass shootings last year, is believed to have been inspired by the Internet postings of violent Islamic extremists, as was Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty to terrorism and weapons charges in the May 1 attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square.

The report acknowledges that the Obama administration has beefed up efforts to work with the Muslim community in the U.S. and abroad and has also expanded counterterrorism operations and tried to erode and divide al-Qaida and its affiliated groups.

As it unveiled its new National Security Strategy last May, administration officials said the shift in emphasis was critical in undercutting al-Qaida's efforts to portray its attacks on the U.S. and the west as a justified holy war.

Terror leaders "play into the false perception that they are religious leaders defending a holy cause, when in fact they are nothing more than murderers, including the murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims," said top administration counterterror deputy John Brennan during a May 24 speech explaining the shift. He added that "describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie — propagated by al-Qaida and its affiliates to justify terrorism — that the United States is somehow at war against Islam."

But the administration's two-pronged approach of stepping up counterterror operations while tamping down its rhetoric, the critics argue, needs to also include an ideological counteratteck with policies and programs that empower moderate Islamic voices and contest extremist narratives.

"There is an ideology that is driving al-Qaida and its affiliates," said Matt Levitt, one of the authors of the study on countering violent extremism.

The administration, Levitt said, has to separate discussion of Islam as a religion from the radical Islamic ideology that is producing and fueling global insurgencies. The study is due out next week, but the authors, Levitt, a former FBI and Treasury official, and co-author J. Scott Carpenter, were to preview it Monday.

Juan Zarate, a former top counterterror official in the Bush administration, added that the U.S. government has always been uncomfortable dealing with ideological battles. Zarate, who also participated in the report, said there are a number of non-governmental groups already speaking out against violent preachings.

The report follows the public disclosure of an exchange earlier this year between Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Brennan over the effort to scale back the Bush administration's portrayal of Islamic extremism as a root cause of terrorism.

Lieberman raised the issue in a letter to the White House, saying that "the failure to identify our enemy for what it is — violent Islamist extremism — is offensive and contradicts thousands of years of accepted military and intelligence doctrine to 'know your enemy.'"

In a response to Lieberman, Brennan said the administration hasn't specifically issued any directive barring the use of specific words or phrases. But he said it is important to accurately define the enemy and assess the threat.

"In my view, using 'Islamic extremist' and other variations of that phrase does not bring us closer to this objective," Brennan said in a letter to Lieberman. "Rather, the phrase lumps a diverse set of organizations, with different motivations, goals, capabilities and justifications for their actions, into a single group in a way that may actually be counterproductive."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmaKsSfPsbleEB-Hs16JlU2JCnVwD9GTFHLG0

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Chicago thumbs its nose at Supreme Court over gun case

by Bob Barr

July 12, 2010

Who says a city council cannot act quickly to address an emergency?  Less than one week after the United States Supreme Court ruled Chicago's 28-year old gun ban unconstitutional, the city's mayor and compliant council rushed through a new firearms ordinance designed to address what they apparently viewed as a crisis, if not a catastrophe – that crime-beleaguered citizens of the Windy City might actually decide to lawfully possess firearms for self-protection.  The City's rapid response to such a situation is nothing short of blatant civil disobedience; a local government thumbing its nose at the nation's highest Court. 

The lightening speed with which Daley and his cohorts, including the city's top lawyer, Mara Georges, acted to thwart the Supreme Court's June 28 th opinion in McDonald v. Chicago , was swifter even than that by the District of Columbia following the high Court's 2008 Heller decision striking down the three-decades old gun ban in the nation's capitol.  While not identical in the particular steps each of these two local governments took to avoid complying with the Court's rulings, the results are the same.  The regulations instituted by the city councils make it virtually impossible for the citizens of their respective cities to exercise their recently-revived Second Amendment rights in any realistic or meaningful way.

Let's take the Daley anti-firearm ordinance (the “Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance,” as he labeled it).  Here's just a sampling of what a Chicagoan now must do in order to take advantage of the Supreme Court's recent ruling:

• He or she cannot purchase a firearm anywhere within the Chicago city limits; Daley's law prohibits any gun sales anywhere in the city, whether by a retailer or a private citizen.
  
  
• The citizen can have only a single firearm within their home; at least only one gun that is actually operable.
  
  
• That single, functioning firearm cannot lawfully be taken anywhere outside the four walls of the home itself.  That means, literally, a citizen facing an armed assailant on the porch, in their yard, or in their garage, cannot defend themselves with their one lawfully-possessed firearm, without being in violation of Daley's edict.
  
  
• Even before the city resident can possess that one, operable firearm inside their home, they will have to successfully complete a city-mandated training program in order to obtain a city-issued firearm permit.  Of course, there will be no place within the city that the applicant might obtain such training, because no firing ranges can be operated lawfully inside city limits.

Lest there be any doubt what the true intent of Daley and his colleagues was in passing this ridiculously restrictive ordinance, Hizzoner and other city aldermen made their intent crystal clear in remarks following passage.  Alderman Dan Solis said the city's action was made necessary because the Supreme Court's decision simply “was not in the best interests of our citizens.”  Another alderman, Sharon Denise Dixon, exhibiting her obvious Supreme Court-level legal ability, denounced the court's “blatant misreading of the law.”  The “poor judgment” exhibited by the five members of the high Court who ruled against the City in the opinion, would now be rectified by what I am sure the city leaders consider their own “superior judgment” and their “correct reading” of the Constitution.

Beyond the particulars of the case, Daley's obstinacy sets a great example for the citizenry – if you disagree with a court ruling, don't comply; just exercise your power as a government “leader” and circumvent the decision.

The city's latest anti-firearms ordinance already has been challenged in a lawsuit.  Those of us who believe in the rule of law can but hope that the judges who will ultimately decide the issue, will slap down this blatant government disobedience in the clearest and harshest terms.

http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/2010/07/12/chicago-thumbs-its-nose-at-supreme-court-over-gun-case/?cxntfid=blogs_bob_barr_blog

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