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From the Los Angeles Times

Calabasas may aid homeowners accused of code violations

Several council members support the idea of providing low-interest loans, but the mayor objects. Some residents voice opposition to the crackdown on septic system and other violations.

by Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times

September 26, 2010

Rural Calabasas residents caught in a crackdown on alleged city code violations could get helping from city leaders in repairing property.

City Councilwoman Mary Sue Maurer has urged officials to consider giving low-interest loans to property owners, some of whom are "very elderly" and "living in fear they're going to have to leave their homes."

The proposal came as a lawyer for some of the targeted homeowners claimed that the enforcement raids were illegal.

Maurer said she was reacting to a $987,319 loan approved by the council Wednesday night for a developer struggling to complete a shopping center on the west side of the 13-square-mile city.

The "promissory note" gives the builder an extra three years to pay for improvements, mandated by his city development agreement, to the Lost Hills Road bridge over the 101 Freeway and for streets next to his project.

Several other council members indicated their support for Maurer's idea, although Mayor Barry Groveman objected.

"I'd oppose that. I don't want to help people who are violating the law," he said of those accused of septic system and other violations. Groveman insisted that any such proposal be widely publicized so "the average taxpayer is aware" that "we're giving away city money."

Maurer said the assistance would be in the form of a loan, not a giveaway. Officials said they would take up the idea next month.

Her suggestion came after a series of Calabasas residents criticized the code crackdown and a lawyer called it illegal.

Lee Renger, who has lived 42 years in Stokes Canyon, said the city's July raid at the isolated Smith ranch just inside city limits at the north end of the canyon has caused him to change his mind about wanting Calabasas to annex the canyon.

"Essentially, you sent shock troops to the Smiths," Renger said. "I do not want to become part of this evil empire."

Neither does 24-year Stokes Canyon resident Robin Martin. He told officials that enforcement raids such as those in his area and in nearby Old Topanga Canyon are "something my neighbors and I don't want to go through."

Jim Moorhead, a friend of ranch owner Lloyd Smith, read a letter from the 70-year-old, who is recuperating from a stress-related illness reportedly brought on by the raid. "How can you treat a founding family with such contempt and disrespect?" Smith asked, noting that his family has lived there 65 years.

"I am still recovering in a rehabilitation center. However, my Medicare coverage is expiring and I am facing imminent homelessness. The city said, when it cut off my water and power and made the property unlivable, that it was for my health and safety. Health and safety? When I may be evicted into the street?"

Old Topanga Canyon residents sent lawyer Nancy Schreiner to confront the council. She said the raids were improper because Calabasas failed to follow state law when it toughened its septic system rules and launched the enforcement action.

By not making "required statutory findings," the city is "now exposed to liability as a result of these enforcement activities, for state and federal civil rights violations, inverse condemnation, impairment of contract rights and potential defamation and slander," she said.

Schreiner then handed a cease-and-desist demand letter to officials.

Council members did not respond. On Thursday, Michael Colantuono, who serves as Calabasas' city attorney, disputed Schreiner's view of the crackdown.

"The city disagrees with the description of the law she describes in the letter," he said when reached as he was returning to his Northern California office.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-code-blowback-20100926,0,2013394,print.story

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The American dream: Is it slipping away?

An ABC News/Yahoo News poll revealed that today, only half of us think the American dream — which the pollsters defined as 'if you work hard you'll get ahead' — still holds true, while 43% said that it had once been true.

OPINION

by Gregory Rodriguez

September 27, 2010

For all the talk these days of porous borders and external threats to the United States, the core of our sense of security and identity as a nation has always come from within. What's surprising, perhaps, is that it derives less from our vaunted democracy or our freedoms than it does from that rather nebulous notion we call the American dream.

The dream is the glue that keeps us all together. It's the vague promise that our lot will get better over time that gives us the patience to endure whatever indignities we suffer at the moment. It's the belief that our kids will have a better chance in life than we do that keeps the many elements of this diverse, highly competitive society from ultimately tearing each other apart. More than anything else, it's the fabled dream that fuses hundreds of millions of separate, even competing individual dreams into one national collective enterprise.

But what happens when too many Americans stop believing in that dream? Last week's ABC News/Yahoo News poll revealed that today, only half of us think the American dream — which the pollsters defined as "if you work hard you'll get ahead" — still holds true, while 43% said that it had once been true. That only 4% of respondents thought that there was never such a dream testifies to the power of the phenomenon.

Not surprisingly, attitudes varied from group to group. Respondents with higher incomes tended to still believe in the dream more than those with lower incomes. Similarly, the college educated were bigger believers than the less educated. Independent voters believe less than either Democrats or Republicans, and Americans who live in the West are significantly more likely to believe than those in the Rust Belt. Reflective perhaps of varying levels of expectations — or sense of entitlement — nonwhites are more likely to believe in the dream than are whites.

This isn't the first opinion survey whose findings suggest that our social glue has begun to lose its grip. And, significantly, the signs began to arise well before the Great Recession. In 2006, a CNN poll found that over half of respondents thought the American dream was no longer attainable for most Americans. Way back in booming 1995, a Business Week/Harris poll found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the American dream had become harder to achieve in the previous decade, and three-quarters believed that achieving the dream would be harder yet in the coming decade.

The fact that belief in the achievability of the dream was slipping in good times indicates that our attitudes toward it are shaped by more than objective economic reality.

Writers such as William Greider have suggested that the notion that a family's material well-being will only get better over time is simply not sustainable. Gregg Easterbrook has written that, in recent years, the dream itself went into overdrive. At some point, it was no longer enough for people to keep up with the Joneses; they had to "call and raise" them.

Still, the latest dream data seem mostly driven by objective data. For nearly three decades, economic inequality has been widening, and some studies are suggesting that aside from the immigrant experience, the U.S. is not nearly as economically mobile — the ability of people to move up the ladder within a lifetime or from one generation to the next — as we would like to believe.

Though a certain level of income inequality is necessary for competition — without it, there'd be little incentive to strive — too much not only diminishes the size of the middle class, which is something like the nation's social rudder, it challenges the very idea of ourselves as a nation.

In the face of all this, it's gratifying to report that in most respects, the American experiment is alive and well. Yes, the strain shows — in incivility, in nativism, in howls of protest from those who have something to gain from disunity. But nothing has snapped, at least not beyond repair. (As one wag pointed out, nowadays "tarred and feathered" is just a phrase; it used to be real.)

With the glue of the dream holding at 50%, it's nothing to cheer about. And if that number falls further, it could pose as great a menace as any outside enemy. Which should lead us to believe that we must restore our inner core rather than fret about external threats.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-dream-20100927,0,3141268,print.column

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Imam: NY Muslim center aims to prevent terror attack

September 26, 2010

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The imam behind the controversial plan to build a Muslim culture center near the site of New York's Sept. 11 attack said Sunday the project is meant to prevent a similar attack.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said he feels duty bound to help protect non-Muslim Americans from such violence.

Rauf said building the center, which will include a prayer room, two blocks from the destroyed World Trade Center is "the right thing to do."

"… America needs it and the Muslim world needs it," he said.

"We have to wage peace."

Critics say the center's proximity to Ground Zero is insensitive, while supporters say politicians have wrongly commandeered the emotionally charged debate before U.S. congressional elections on Nov. 2.

Asked if it was insensitive to build the center so close to Ground Zero, Rauf said: "We wanted to prevent another 9/11 … We wanted a platform … to strengthen the voice of the moderates."

Saying that the "campaign for winning hearts and minds is an important part" of any military fight against radical extremists from his faith, Rauf said he was "ready willing and able to serve our country and serve our faith tradition."

"If 9/11 happens there again, I want to be the first to die," said Rauf, who was born in Kuwait and is an naturalized American citizen. "It's my duty as an American Muslim to stand between you, the American non-Muslim, and the radicals who are trying to attack you."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ny-mosque,0,1290637,print.story

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From the New York Times

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4 African Military Chiefs Discuss Fighting Al Qaeda Jointly

ALGIERS (Reuters) — Military chiefs from four Saharan countries met Sunday to set out a joint strategy for fighting Al Qaeda 's North African wing, which is holding seven foreigners hostage in the Sahara Desert.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb seized the expatriate workers, including five French citizens, from a uranium mining town in Niger this month in an operation that suggested it posed a growing threat to security in the resource-rich region.

A French presidential spokesman said Sunday that the seven hostages had been moved from Niger to neighboring Mali and that France would consider negotiating with the hostage takers for the captives' release.

The military chiefs of staff from Algeria , Mali, Mauritania and Niger were meeting in Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria, where earlier this year they set up a joint headquarters to coordinate the fight against Al Qaeda in the Sahara.

An Algerian Defense Ministry statement said the meeting was to exchange information and establish a joint strategy for tackling Al Qaeda and organized crime.

It was not clear if the talks touched on the seven hostages, who also include a citizen of Togo and someone from Madagascar.

But an Algerian military spokesman, Col. Mabrouk Sebaa, said the meeting came at “an opportune moment with regard to the succession of events that have taken place in the region.”

The countries sent “a clear message of their will and determination, as well as their effective capacity, to handle their security issues in an autonomous and collective way, with complete freedom and sovereignty,” Colonel Sebaa said, according to Algeria's official APS news agency.

Algeria fiercely opposes Western military forces' taking any role in the Sahara, saying that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is a problem the region's countries must tackle themselves.

Algeria is pressing its neighbors to take a more coordinated approach to tackling militants and to stop paying ransoms and releasing jailed militants in return for hostages' freedom.

French commandos and Mauritanian troops staged an unsuccessful raid in July to try to free a 78-year-old French hostage, Michel Germaneau , but did not find him. He was executed soon after, prompting France to say it was “at war” with Al Qaeda.

The lack of a unified approach among Saharan and European countries has “facilitated the business of kidnapping foreigners for ransoms,” said a security expert in Algeria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/world/africa/27sahara.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Water Drops for Migrants. Kindness, or Offense?

BUENOS AIRES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ariz. — In this remote, semidesert landscape along the United States-Mexico border, water is a precious commodity — and a contentious one, too.

Two years ago, Daniel J. Millis was ticketed for littering after he was caught by a federal Fish and Wildlife officer placing gallon jugs of water for passing immigrants in the brush of this 118,000-acre preserve.

“I do extreme sports, and I know I couldn't walk as far as they do,” said Mr. Millis, driving through the refuge recently. “It's no surprise people are dying.”

Mr. Millis, 31, was not the only one to get a ticket. Fourteen other volunteers for Tucson-based organizations that provide aid to immigrants crossing from Mexico to the United States were similarly cited. Most of the cases were later dropped, but Mr. Millis and another volunteer for a religious group called No More Deaths were convicted of defacing the refuge with their water jug drops.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit weighed in on Mr. Millis's appeal this month, ruling that it was “ambiguous as to whether purified water in a sealed bottle intended for human consumption meets the definition of ‘garbage.' ” Voting 2-to-1, a three-judge panel overturned Mr. Millis's conviction.

The issue remains far from settled, though. The court ruled that Mr. Millis probably could have been charged under a different statute, something other than littering. And the Fish and Wildlife Service continues to forbid anyone to leave gallon jugs of water in the refuge — a policy backed by this state's immigration hardliners, who say comforting immigrants will only encourage them to cross.

From 2002 to 2009, 25 illegal immigrants died while passing through the refuge's rolling hills, which are flanked by mountains and are home to pronghorns, coyotes, rattlesnakes and four different kinds of skunks. Throughout southern Arizona, the death toll totaled 1,715 from 2002 to 2009, with this year's hot temperatures putting deaths at a record-breaking pace.

The Border Patrol has installed rescue beacons in remote areas along the border, including several in the Buenos Aires refuge, to allow immigrants in distress to call for help. Those who are injured and have been left behind by their guides are often so desperate they no longer fear deportation.

Still, the federal government has acknowledged that additional steps are needed to keep deaths down on its land. In 2001, it gave another aid group, Humane Borders , a permit to keep several large water drums on the refuge, each of them marked by a blue flag and featuring a spigot to allow immigrants to fill their water bottles for the long trek north.

Last year, the government considered but ultimately decided against allowing No More Deaths to tether gallon jugs to trees to allow immigrants in more remote areas to drink without taking the jugs on their way.

Right now, even after the court decision, there is what amounts to a standoff. This month, the federal government said it was willing to allow more 55-gallon drums on main pathways in the refuge. It said it would not permit any gallon jugs.

But the water jugs continue to appear.

Last week, Gene Lefebvre, a retired minister who co-founded No More Deaths, hiked along a path popular among immigrants until he reached a clearing where volunteers for his organization had recently left some jugs.

Each bottle had markings on it noting the date it was left and the exact location on the group's GPS mapping software. There were also signs of encouragement for the immigrants: a heart and a cross on one bottle and the words, “Good luck, friends,” on another.

“We'd give water to anyone we found in the desert, even the Border Patrol,” Mr. Lefebvre said.

But opponents say the water drops are encouraging immigrants to continue to come across the border illegally. The critics say there ought to be Border Patrol agents stationed near the water stations to arrest those who are crossing illegally as soon as they finish drinking. So furious are some at the practice of aiding immigrants that they have slashed open the water jugs, crushed them with their vehicles or simply poured the water into the desert.

The Buenos Aires refuge is among the most troubled of the 551 refuge areas across the country, the federal government says. The reason is its location, adjacent to the border.

“Since its establishment in 1985, refuge staff have worked diligently to protect species such as the endangered masked bobwhite quail and pronghorn, as well as offer meaningful visitor recreational opportunities,” a recently released government report on the water controversy said. “However, over the past decade an increasing amount of refuge time and energy has been required to address the growing issue of illegal traffic entering the U.S. across refuge lands.”

In 2006 and 2007, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 illegal immigrants crossed the refuge annually, along with Border Patrol agents pursing them, federal officials say. “As a result, refuge lands have been marred by illegal trails and roads, litter and degraded habitat,” said a government report on the problem.

The numbers have dropped in recent years, to 31,500 in 2008 and about 20,000 in 2009. “This still averages approximately 50 to 60 illegal immigrants traveling through the refuge daily,” the government report said.

Mr. Millis, a former high school Spanish teacher who now works for the Sierra Club , disputes the notion that leaving out water jugs is luring more immigrants. He said it was border enforcement efforts that had pushed those seeking to cross into dangerous desert areas.

As for spoiling the environment, he said he collected as many jugs as he left behind. He also recounts how he found the dead body of a 14-year-old Salvadoran girl near the refuge days before he was ticketed.

“People are part of the environment,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27water.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey , vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

“We're talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” said Valerie E. Caproni , general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation . “We're not talking expanding authority. We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.”

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the National Security Agency , the White House and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act . It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones.

Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers — they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get unscrambled versions.

Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. While some maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served with orders to try to develop them.

The F.B.I.'s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million last year helping communication companies — including some subject to the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program” to bolster its electronic surveillance capabilities.

Beyond such costs, Ms. Caproni said, F.B.I. efforts to help retrofit services have a major shortcoming: the process can delay their ability to wiretap a suspect for months.

Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even the provider cannot unscramble them.

There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is frustrated because of a service's technical design.

But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance equipment in a suspect's office, but that tactic was “risky,” the official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent communications.”

Moreover, according to several other officials, after the failed Times Square bombing in May, investigators discovered that the suspect, Faisal Shahzad , had been communicating with a service that lacked prebuilt interception capacity. If he had aroused suspicion beforehand, there would have been a delay before he could have been wiretapped.

To counter such problems, officials are coalescing around several of the proposal's likely requirements:

Providers that failed to comply would face fines or some other penalty. But the proposal is likely to direct companies to come up with their own way to meet the mandates. Writing any statute in “technologically neutral” terms would also help prevent it from becoming obsolete, officials said.

Even with such a law, some gaps could remain. It is not clear how it could compel compliance by overseas services that do no domestic business, or from a “freeware” application developed by volunteers.

In their battle with Research in Motion, countries like Dubai have sought leverage by threatening to block BlackBerry data from their networks. But Ms. Caproni said the F.B.I. did not support filtering the Internet in the United States.

Still, even a proposal that consists only of a legal mandate is likely to be controversial, said Michael A. Sussmann , a former Justice Department lawyer who advises communications providers.

“It would be an enormous change for newly covered companies,” he said. “Implementation would be a huge technology and security headache, and the investigative burden and costs will shift to providers.”

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin , a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece : In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials' phones, including the prime minister's.

“I think it's a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

Susan Landau , a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise costly impediments to innovation by small startups.

“Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the product out faster,” she said.

Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s, encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their products in the global market.

But law enforcement officials rejected such arguments. They said including an interception capability from the start was less likely to inadvertently create security holes than retrofitting it after receiving a wiretap order.

They also noted that critics predicted that the 1994 law would impede cellphone innovation, but that technology continued to improve. And their envisioned decryption mandate is modest, they contended, because service providers — not the government — would hold the key.

“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Lax State Gun Laws Tied to Crimes in Other States

WASHINGTON — Nearly 600 mayors nationwide, led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and other city leaders, are mounting a new campaign to identify states with lax gun laws and push for tighter restrictions to prevent the trafficking of guns used in crimes.

A study due to be released this week by a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns uses previously unavailable federal gun data to identify what it says are the states that most often export guns used in crimes across state lines. It concludes that the 10 worst offenders per capita, led by Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky, supplied nearly half the 43,000 guns traced to crime scenes in other states last year.

The study also seeks to draw a link between gun trafficking and gun control laws by analyzing gun restrictions in all 50 states in areas like background checks for gun purchases, policies on concealed weapons permits and state inspections of gun dealers. It finds that, across the board, those states with less restrictive gun laws exported guns used in crimes at significantly higher rates than states with more stringent laws. An advance copy of the study was provided to The New York Times.

“There are 12,000 gun murders a year in our country, and this report makes it perfectly clear how common-sense trafficking laws can prevent many of them,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who is the co-chairman of the coalition with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston. “For mayors around the country, this isn't about gun control. It's about crime control.”

The gun trafficking issue provides Mr. Bloomberg, often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, with another national platform. He has been the face of the mayors' coalition since it was created in 2006 in opposition to a Congressional amendment that restricted the sharing of federal gun data with the local police.

Since its inception, the group, which now includes 596 mayors nationwide, has expanded into other gun-related issues, including the exporting of guns from the United States to Mexican drug cartels.

The mayors plan to use the new trafficking data to push for more stringent gun restrictions at the state and federal levels. Among the targets, coalition officials said, will be closing the so-called gun show loophole. The loophole allows people to buy firearms at gun shows without going through the usual background checks that weed out felons and other banned buyers.

Gun control advocates have fought a losing battle against the loophole for more than a decade, but neither Congress nor the Obama administration has shown any inclination to revisit the issue, particularly since the Supreme Court and lower courts have issued a series of rulings affirming Second Amendment rights.

The mayors' push to identify and crack down on states with high rates of gun trafficking is sure to face stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, who have been buoyed by the court rulings.

Chris W. Cox, the National Rifle Association 's chief lobbyist in Washington, dismissed the upcoming report as “a cute little P.R. stunt.” When told of the main findings, Mr. Cox said the report appeared to have relied on “flawed assumptions” about how guns flow across state lines and are traced back to their original purchasers.

“It's completely bogus for a group with a clear political agenda to release some study based on selective statistics,” he said. “This is not a serious discussion. But this is what we've come to expect from Mayor Bloomberg and his gun control agenda.”

Authors of the study, however, said they had conducted a careful analysis of reams of gun “trace” data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — showing the path of guns confiscated at crime scenes — in reaching their conclusions. They said the study provided the deepest look to date at how states export guns used in crimes and how that relates to gun restrictions in those states.

James Alan Fox , a criminology professor at Northeastern University who was not involved in preparing the study, said the findings were likely to attract wide interest from academics and policymakers. Of particular significance, he said, will be the study's data linking the laxity of gun laws in some states to the exporting of guns used in crimes in other states.

“What this does is help refute some of the statements that people make on the pro-gun side in saying that tougher gun laws are unconnected to reducing crime,” he said.

“A state's gun laws are only as good as the weakest link in the national chain,” Professor Fox said. “A state with weaker gun laws becomes a supplier for states with stronger laws.”

Indeed, the authors of the mayors' study, which was prepared largely out of Mr. Bloomberg's office, said the findings suggested that gun traffickers had sought out states with less restrictive gun-purchase laws.

“What this really shows is that bad laws really do equal more gun trafficking,” said John Feinblatt, Mr. Bloomberg's chief policy adviser, “and that gaps in the law really do make a difference.”

The study found that Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of crime-gun exports, supplied 50 out-of-state guns per 100,000 residents — more than three times the national average.

It also found that Mississippi, like all of the other states with the highest export rates, had relatively lax laws for bringing gun prosecutions, conducting background checks on buyers and preventing illegal purchases and transfers of guns. Officials at the Mississippi attorney general's office declined to comment on the findings.

But Mr. Cox, of the N.R.A., said that the best way to prevent illegal trafficking was for the police and prosecutors to crack down on criminals, not to enact further restrictions that, he said, serve only to make it tougher for law-abiding citizens to purchase weapons. He predicted the new data from the mayors' coalition would have no real impact on public policy.

“Do I think Mayor Bloomberg and his group are desperate for relevancy in a debate where they have no legitimate role? Sure,” Mr. Cox said. “Do I think their approach will continue to be rejected by the American people and Congress? I do.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/politics/27guns.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Report Shows Detainee's Insight Into Legal Process

It is a debate that has been dominated by Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham and Rudolph W. Giuliani , Democrats like Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and various rights groups.

But on the question of whether terrorism suspects should be tried in civilian or military courts, one man offers an especially close view: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani , a defendant accused in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa, who is about to go on trial.

He has appeared before judges at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, and in the federal court in Manhattan. And he is candid about his preference, saying the civilian system has offered him more expansive rights and is fairer. Still, he longs for the looser atmosphere at Guantánamo, where prisoners could mingle and pray together.

Last year, Mr. Ghailani became the first detainee moved from Guantánamo into the civilian system, as President Obama declared his intention to try terrorism suspects in federal court whenever feasible, fueling a debate on whether the civilian or the military system was better for such cases.

The president's effort has stalled with the controversy over moving detainees like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into civilian court. But Mr. Ghailani has now entered the discussion, expressing strong opinions on the merits of each system and his preference for the rules of civilian justice, as part of 16 hours of discussion with a psychiatrist who evaluated him last spring and quoted him extensively in a report.

“When I was at Gitmo, they were able to use hearsay evidence,” Mr. Ghailani told the doctor. “Here, they have constitutional rights.”

In addition to his own experiences, Mr. Ghailani freely credits another, surprising source for his more than working knowledge of how the legal system operates — numerous John Grisham novels he has read and one that he has seen as a movie: “A Time to Kill.”

Not every terrorist defendant gets on the couch, and such accounts are not usually made public. But a declassified summary of the psychiatrist's report suggests that he has been a model prisoner, whose journey through C.I.A. custody, where his lawyers say he was tortured, then Guantánamo and finally the federal courts seems to have left him with unusual insight into the legal process.

“I understand the charges,” he told the psychiatrist. “They make sense to me.” Later, he explained: “There will be a jury who will listen to the crime itself. The jury will make the decision, guilty or not guilty.”

Indeed, last week, a judge, Lewis A. Kaplan , began overseeing the screening of prospective jurors for Mr. Ghailani's trial, in which opening arguments are expected to be held next Monday.

For more than a year, the judge has been deciding important legal issues raised by the case, and it was while considering one such question — whether Mr. Ghailani was mentally competent for trial in light of allegations he was tortured in C.I.A. custody — that Judge Kaplan ordered him evaluated last spring.

Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff, a psychiatry professor at the University of Virginia , saw Mr. Ghailani four times in May and June at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the jail where he is being held pending trial.

They sat across from each other, separated by a plexiglass and screen divider during their sessions, Dr. Saathoff noted. He described Mr. Ghailani, a Tanzanian in his mid-30s, as generally relaxed, drinking soda and eating a Snickers bar and nachos. He said the inmate also appreciated humor, and smiled or laughed appropriately at humorous comments by a defense lawyer, Steve Zissou, who attended the sessions.

But other times, Mr. Ghailani turned somber, withdrawn, even tearful, the psychiatrist wrote.

“Mr. Ghailani was most distressed, and appeared unable to speak or show any eye contact when discussing a period when ...,” Dr. Saathoff wrote, but the rest of the sentence was blacked out, still classified.

In the sessions, Mr. Ghailani, who speaks English and Swahili, offered vivid accounts of his childhood in Zanzibar, his schooling, his family history and his life after the 1998 bombings, when the authorities say he fled to Afghanistan, trained with Al Qaeda and worked for Osama bin Laden as his bodyguard.

He told the psychiatrist that he had barely survived two United States missile attacks in Afghanistan, at least one on a Qaeda training camp. In an attack a few months after 9/11, he said, he recalled bombs falling around him.

“I knew people who died,” he said. “I saw their bodies later. I saw pieces of children's bodies.”

After he was captured in a gun battle in Pakistan in 2004, he was held for two years in the agency's so-called black sites, where prosecutors say he provided significant intelligence about terrorist plots.

In 2006, Mr. Ghailani was moved to Guantánamo, where he remained until he was brought to Manhattan last year and arraigned in June 2009 on the federal charges; he has pleaded not guilty.

He found Guantánamo “more pleasant” and “more relaxed” than the jail, known as the M.C.C., where he is now being held in solitary confinement in a high-security section, Dr. Saathoff wrote.

At Guantánamo, prisoners were not strip-searched and could join for recreational activities, even watch movies together on DVD, he told the psychiatrist.

But he did not like the military's legal process. “The rules at Gitmo favor the government,” Mr. Ghailani said. “Here they are more fair.”

Mr. Ghailani made clear that he objected strenuously to the repeated strip-searches he had to undergo in the civilian system, up to four times on a single trip to and from court, Dr. Saathoff noted.

A psychologist retained by the defense had concluded that Mr. Ghailani suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder set off by the searches , which she said stemmed from his treatment in C.I.A. custody.

Still, he spoke favorably of jail officials he encountered at the M.C.C., Dr. Saathoff wrote.

In citing Mr. Ghailani's extensive knowledge of the legal system, Dr. Saathoff quoted what he called “verbatim and unprompted statements” the prisoner made to him.

Mr. Ghailani, for example, said accurately that prospective jurors would be selected from voter lists.

“My lawyers and the prosecutor will select the ones that they don't want to be there,” he said. “Then they have to ask them questions, what do they call that — voir dire?”

He knew about alternate jurors, who were picked “in case one of the jurors gets sick.”

He repeatedly praised his lawyers. “I feel good about my attorneys,” he said. “They listen to me.” It is clear they have also educated him about the legal process.

But so has his voracious reading. “I learned this,” Mr. Ghailani said, “from Grisham's books.”

He listed half a dozen titles: “The Brethren,” “The Summons,” “The Runaway Jury,” “Playing for Pizza,” “The Street Lawyer” and “The King of Torts,” as well as the “Time to Kill” movie.

“He may be the most steadfast reader” in the jail, one M.C.C. official was quoted as saying.

Mr. Ghailani told the psychiatrist that judges at Guantánamo and in Manhattan “seemed the same.”

“The judge here is all right,” he added, saying the judge's role was “to make sure that everyone is following the law.”

Mr. Ghailani said he felt nervous when he was inside the courtroom.

“No one trusts me,” he said. “There are two marshals on my back. If I make a move, they will try to stop me.”

But he said he felt prepared for trial. The timing was fair, he said, adding, “I feel that I will be ready by September.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/nyregion/27ghailani.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Calif measure shows state's conflicted link to pot

By MARCUS WOHLSEN (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO — California has a long history of defying conventional wisdom on the issue of marijuana, including its embrace of the drug in the 1960s and its landmark medical pot law 14 years ago. So it may not be all that surprising that a November ballot measure to legalize the drug has created some odd alliances and scenarios.

Pot growers have opposed it. Some police have favored it. Polls show the public is deeply divided. Only politicians have lined up as expected: Nearly all major party candidates oppose the measure. And hanging over the whole debate is the fact that marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

As the Nov. 2 election nears, Proposition 19 has become about much more than the pros and cons of the drug itself. The campaigns have framed the vote as a referendum on everything from jobs and taxes to crime and the environment.

The measure gained ground in a Field Poll released Sunday, pulling ahead 49 percent to 42 percent among likely voters. The poll also found that Californians have become steadily more permissive toward the drug since pollsters began quizzing state residents about their attitudes 40 years ago.

Proponents say the measure is a way for the struggling state and its cities to raise badly needed funds. A legal pot industry, they say, would create jobs while undercutting violent criminals who profit off the illegal trade in the drug.

"I think it's a golden opportunity for California voters to strike a real blow against the (Mexican) drug cartels and drug gangs," said Joseph McNamara, who served as San Jose's police chief for about 15 years. "That would be a greater blow than we ever struck during my 35 years in law enforcement."

Supporters, including a group of former and current law enforcement officials, have called attention to the failure of the so-called "War on Drugs" to put a dent in pot production in California, and they say police need to pursue more dangerous crimes.

To pull ahead, opponents will have to convince voters that legalized marijuana will create a greater public safety threat than keeping it illegal.

"If the price drops, more people are going to buy it. Low-income people are going to buy marijuana instead of buying food, which happens with substance abusers," said Pleasant Hill police Chief Pete Dunbar, who also speaks for the California Police Chiefs' Association, one of many law enforcement groups against the measure.

As a result, he said, legalizing marijuana would only encourage the cycle of theft and violence driven by people who need money to buy drugs. Opponents of Proposition 19 argue that the wording of the proposed law would compromise public safety by gutting restrictions on driving and going to work while high.

The state district attorneys' group has come out publicly against Proposition 19, as have many county governments, the editorial boards of the state's biggest newspapers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said the law would make California a "laughingstock."

Under the proposed law, adults 21 and older could possess up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use and grow gardens up to 25 square feet.

The proposal would allow cities and governments to decide for themselves whether to tax and allow pot sales. Opponents say a vague, disorganized patchwork of regulations would ensue and lead to chaos for police and courts.

There's also the prospect of legal chaos, given the fact that pot will remain illegal under federal law regardless of what happens. Every former Drug Enforcement Administration boss is asking President Barack Obama to sue California if the measure passes on the grounds that federal law trumps state law — the same argument the administration used in suing Arizona over its immigration law.

Proposition 19 is the brainchild of Richard Lee, an Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur who spent more than $1 million to get the measure on the ballot. Also the founder of a trade school for aspiring marijuana growers and retailers, Lee has pushed legal marijuana as a boon to the state's economy and an important source of tax revenue to help close the state's massive budget deficit. The Service Employees International Union, the state's biggest union, has endorsed the measure as an economic booster.

But analysts have said the economic consequences of a legalized pot trade are difficult to predict. The state Board of Equalization last year said a marijuana legalization measure proposed in the state legislature could have brought California up to $1.4 billion in tax revenue. On Friday, the agency said Proposition 19, which leaves marijuana taxing decisions to local governments, contained too many unknowns for its analysts to estimate how much the measure might generate.

In July, the nonpartisan RAND Drug Policy Research Center forecast that legalizing marijuana could send prices plunging by as much as 90 percent. Lower prices could mean less tax revenue even as pot consumption rose, the group said.

The potential price drop has brought unexpected opposition, or at least suspicion, from rural pot farmers who fear the loss of their traditional, though legally risky, way of life.

Marijuana has become so crucial to rural economies along the state's North Coast that even some local government officials are working on plans for coping with a pot downturn.

The state's medical marijuana economy is thriving as hundreds of retail dispensaries across California sell pot to hundreds of thousands of qualified patients. And some medical marijuana supporters have said Proposition 19 could undermine the credibility of the drug as a medical treatment.

"I'm just against the whole concept of the recreational use of marijuana," said Dennis Peron, the San Francisco activist who was the driving force behind the 1996 ballot measure that legalized medical marijuana.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6W7KC63V4xxIsSnUT7zLcWc6upwD9IFURQ80

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