Blackwater still swirling in aftermath of Iraq invasion

Word from Washington that the Justice Department decided Monday not to charge a Blackwater Worldwide employee with murder for a killing in Baghdad that he admitted appears to spell the end of U.S. efforts to address the some of the excesses that have come, sadly, to characterize the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The decision followed a line of failures in high-profile cases brought against employees of companies that were armed contractors for the U.S. State Department in Iraq, a still-questionable arrangement with dire constitutional implications that still have not been adequately examined. The most notable prosecution that failed, of course, resulted in the acquittal of five former Blackwater guards who opened fire on civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, killing 17, according to the New York Times. The Justice Department decision came in a case involving Andrew Moonen of Seattle, who killed a guard protecting Iraq's vice president on Christmas Eve in 2006. The case was complicated by a blanket grant of immunity to State Department contractors, like Blackwater, but not to Defense Department contractors, immunity granted to Andrew Moonen, the Blackwater employee, by a U.S. Embassy official and by Moonen's claim of self-defense. The Justice Department has investigated the case for four years, and already paid damages to Moonen's family. But the murky legal environment that finally prompted Justice to drop the case is no accident. The government of George W. Bush went to war on dubious evidence and corrupted longstanding legal and constitutional principles along the way. The only real surprises here are that is has taken so long for these cases to be dismissed and the subsequent Obama administration's refusal to investigate misconduct by his predecessor. It will take decades to repair the damage to the legal system of the United States, and may take even longer for the country to regain its moral footing unless such an investigation is undertaken. The issue is not whether anyone will have to prison, although it may come to that. The future of the United States is on the line here -- the sooner the reckoning begins, the better for everyone.

Iran's first nuclear reactor caps decades of living dangerously

What in the world is the West going to do about Iran? News that Iran had started loading fuel into its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr is a reminder of the limits of muscular foreign policy. Decades of confrontation with Tehran, including economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, have served only to get us where we are now: less control over events combined with deepening mistrust and growing animosity. "Despite all the pressures, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi told a news conference on Iranian television as technicians prepared a fuel rod assembly at the plant, according to the Reuters international news service. Iran completed the plant with the help of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, over the objections of the United States. But a U.S. State Department spokesman said Washington did not consider the Bushehr reactor to be a proliferation threat because Russia would be providing fuel and taking back spent fuel rods for reprocessing. "Russia's support for Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," spokesman Darby Holladay told Reuters. Russia backed a U.N. Security Council resolution in June that imposed a fourth round of economic sanctions on Iran to discourage Tehran from trying to develop nuclear weaponry. Construction of the reactor at Bushehr was started in the 1970s, before the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and started what has now been more than 30 years of animosity between Tehran and Washington.

Florida church announces Quran burning event

Maybe the tea partiers have found a new hero. News that a Florida pastor was planning a Quran-burning event to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is typical of the kind of ignorant thinking that characterizes the tea party movement and its over-publicized icon, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The announcement of the Islamic good book burning that Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, says is to remember the victims of attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and to express outrage against that religion, has sparked cries of outrage from leaders of U.S. religious denominations, according to Cable News Network (CNN). As we all know, the 19 9-11 hijackers were Muslim and the United States blames the attack on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, also a Muslim. "We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Jones said on CNN this week. Jones is the author of a book entitled "Islam is of the Devil" and his church sells T-shirts and coffee mugs bearing the phrase. But many Muslim and Christian leaders urged Jones to call off his event because it would just aggravate tensions, Reuters said. "American Muslims and other people of conscience should support positive educational efforts to prevent the spread of Islamophobia," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islam Relations. The CAIR called on Muslims and others to hold 'Share the Quran" dinners to educate the public during Ramadan, the month-long fast that begins in August, and began a campaign to distribute copies of the Quran to U.S. leaders, Reuters said. An evangelical Christian group issued a statement promoting "relationships of trust and respect" with members of other religions. "God created human beings in his image, and therefore all should be treated with dignity and respect," the statement said. But "dignity and respect" for others is not what the Dove World Outreach Center is selling. Tellingly, the group also said it was promoting a rally on Monday to protest as "godless" Gainesville's openly gay mayor, Craig Lowe. At least we know this group has nothing to offer. The planet seems always to have been overpopulated with people who claim to know precisely what god is thinking.

Big surprise -- no prosecutions in U.S. attorney firings

News out of Washington that the U.S. Justice Department has decided not to prosecute former Bush administration officials for improperly firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 is disheartening to Americans who believe the country needs to understand what went so terribly wrong when George W. Bush was president, but it is no shocker. The timidity with which the Obama administration has approached the question has not inspired any confidence in the new president's leadership -- in fact, the contrary is true. The breathtaking damage done to the basic law of the United States by the last administration and the acquiescence by the very officials who had taken solemn oaths to defend the Constitution demands action, not further timidity. The people of the United States have the right to have confidence in their government, not the persistent sense that their leaders are willing to sacrifice the country's founding principles to preserve their own lives of privilege. At the very least, the people should demand to know why civil liberties were curtailed, why the country's treasure was compromised by wars without end, why the White House was allowed to amass virtually unlimited power and why almost no one in office is talking about how to start putting things back to the way they should be. The legal system is a very good place to start this re-examination, especially if the White House is not willing or able to lead a process that will surely lead to limitations on presidential authority. President Obama should reject the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder not to prosecute former Bush administration officials in the U.S. attorneys case, as Cable News Network (CNN) reported, and rethink his earlier reluctance to pursue other officials. Obama seems destined to be a one-term president no matter what he does at this point; at least he can leave a legacy we will always remember and be proud of.

Troubled border with Mexico gets White House attention

News that hundreds of U.S. National Guard soldiers and border protection agents have been sent to the Mexico border to prevent illegal immigrants and illicit cargo from crossing into the United States is both welcome and unwelcome at the same time. While a stronger U.S. response to rising reports of drug-related violence in border regions is long overdue, excessive reliance on the military to resolve the nation's problems is extraordinarily ill-advised. Nobody can seriously oppose using soldiers to stop violence from heavily armed drug gangs that is spilling over into U.S. border cities, as the Reuters international news service is reporting, but using soldiers to do what diplomats should have been doing in talks with the Mexican government should be prevented. The United States has plenty of leverage with Mexico City to pressure that government to better its border enforcement and to direct more of its oil wealth to better the lives of its citizens so they won't be forced by economics to flee. That people are forced to leave their country and live second-class lives in another place to provide food for their families should be an issue of paramount importance to countries around the world. But excessive reliance on the military has taken an unacceptable toll on the United States both economically and philosophically. This country has compromised some of its most basic principles in pursuit of military dominance in other parts of the world. The historic changes in Washington have so far been unable to reverse that trend, and we will all be a lot worse for it.

Use of military contractors continuing in Afghanistan

How quickly they forget! News from Washington that a subsidiary of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide had been awarded a contract worth as much as $120 million to protect U.S. diplomats in two cities in Afghanistan should be a cause of alarm to people of principle everywhere. A U.S. State Department official confirmed Saturday that U.S. Training Center had won the 18-month contract, according to Cable News Network (CNN). It could very well be that, on some level, U.S. Training Center was the most qualified bidder, like the official said. But it doesn't take a genius to realize that hiring the former Blackwater to do anything else in U.S. war zones overseas raises the specter of the horrific 2007 shooting of 17 civilians by company guards in Baghdad. Military prosecutors are still pursuing criminal charges against five guards in connection with the shooting, which forced the military to reconsider the use of private contractors in Iraq. But, apparently, not seriously enough, if the military is using them in Afghanistan, too. Why the guards are even necessary has not adequately been explained, not with tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers on the ground, and soldiers of many other nations, in both countries for years. Americans who had hoped for more accountability from their government after the dangerously secretive Bush administration are surely disappointed by the new Obama administration's lack of candor about the continuing troop deployments. Employing another subsidiary of Blackwater, even though it changed its name to Xe Services. It's time for the U.S. government to come clean with the American people about how many contractors are operating in both countries and how much more money it is costing to use them instead of U.S. soldiers.

Indefinite detentions overseas become Obama administration's dilemma

U.S. citizens who thought last year's change at the top meant a return to the days before al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington got another reality check Friday when a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that terror suspects captured overseas may not challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel means that three detainees held for years without trial at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan did not have the same right of appeal that suspects being held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, won in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2008, according to the New York Times. The ruling reversed a trial judge's decision that the Bagram detainees -- in this case, two men from Yemen and one from Tunisia who claimed they were captured outside Afghanistan and brought to the U.S. base -- had the same rights as prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Critics and supporters of the Bush administration's aggressive post-9/11 detention policies, which Obama criticized while campaigning but has defended in court, reacted to the ruling with expected vehemence. A lawyer for the detainees, Tina Foster of the New York-based International Justice Network, said the appeals court ruling would allow U.S. presidents to “kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives” without ever having to prove that they were guilty of anything, the Times said. “The thing that is most disappointing for those of us who have been in the fight for this long is all of the people who used to be opposed to the idea of unlimited executive power during the Bush administration but now seem to have embraced it during this administration,” she said. “We have to remember that Obama is not the last president of the United States.” But U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), a backer of the Bush-era detentions, told the Times that the ruling was a "big win" for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. “Allowing a noncitizen enemy combatant detained in a combat zone access to American courts would have been a change of historic proportions,” he said. “There is a reason we have never allowed enemy prisoners detained overseas in an active war zone to sue in federal court for their release. It simply makes no sense and would be the ultimate act of turning the war into a crime.” A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, Dean Boyd, declined to comment on the decision, the Times said. The three prisoners say they are not terrorists and are being held by mistake.

Obama administration resorts to Bush path on detainees

News from Washington that the Obama administration is proposing exempting terrorism suspects from constitutional protections guaranteed to U.S. citizens raises troubling questions about the president's commitment to undoing the worst abuses of the last administration. There is nothing in the Bill of Rights to suggest that it is negotiable, or that it only was intended to apply to some of the people some of the time. Yet that is undeniably the basis of Attorney General Eric Holder's proposal that terrorism suspects -- in this case, the Pakistani immigrant who stands accused of trying to set off a bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1 -- no longer be allowed the protection of the so-called Miranda rule, according to the New York Times. The Miranda rule, which bars authorities from questioning suspects until they are advised of their right against self-incrimination -- comes from a landmark 1966 U.S. Supreme Court decision interpreting the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from forcing citizens to testify against themselves, and the Supreme Court held in Miranda that police must advise suspects of this right before questioning begins to give full effect to its protection. But the Fifth Amendment is not the government's protection to give: it was made part of the basic law of the United States to prevent the government from accumulating too much power. As we well recall, Obama was elected in 2008 because the Bush administration developed the nasty habit of selectively enforcing rights that the United States previously knew to apply to everybody. Yet there was Holder on the NBC-TV show Meet the Press on Sunday, touting "big news" and recommending new limits on people's constitutional rights. “We’re now dealing with international terrorists,” Holder said, “and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face.” Holder also indicated for the first time that the United States now believes that bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested as he boarded a plane to leave the United States, had been trained by the Pakistani Taliban. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Times that Congress did not have the authority to limit the Miranda ruling since it merely interprets the U.S. Constitution. “What’s troubling is that this is coming from the Obama administration,” Romero said. “The irony is that this administration supposedly stands for the rule of law and the restoration of America’s legal standing, and now they are trying to negotiate away fundamental Fifth Amendment rights that have been the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Former top Bush administration official charged with contempt

Word from Washington that a former top Bush administration official has been charged with contempt of Congress for allegedly mistreating employees and deleting files from an office computer in 2006 is reassuring to those of us still waiting for the Obama government to fix the worst excesses of the previous administration. Federal prosecutors filed the criminal charge against Scott Bloch, the former head of the Office of Special Council, which ironically is responsible for protecting federal employees who report improper activities from retaliation, according to the Reuters international news service. Bloch had been under investigation for five years, and FBI agents seized his office computers and subpoenaed all 17 employees in a 2008 raid. Bloch resigned later that year. The charges apparently stem from Bloch's decision in 2006 to hire an outside contractor to purge a virus from his computer instead of using in-house technicians, and files mysteriously were deleted from his and other computers. The U.S. House of Representatives has been conducting its own investigation of that and of reports that Bloch had set up a separate office in Detroit to exile employees who displeased him. Bloch told the House Oversight Committee that he engaged the contractor to remove the virus. But documents filed by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court on Thursday allege that Bloch "unlawfully and willfully withheld pertinent information from the committee" about the erasure. during an interview with the panel in March 2008, according to a criminal information filing by prosecutors in U.S. District Court. Such filings are typically used in plea agreements in which a defendant pleads guilty, Reuters said. Block's attorney, William Sullivan, would not confirm that a plea agreement was in place but told Reuters that was glad the investigation was over. Bloch had been appointed to a five-year term with the Office of Special Counsel in 2004 but ran into friction with the White House when he opened investigations into allegations that Bush adviser Karl Rove and other officials had used federal agencies for political activities, and whether laws were violated in the White House's firing of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006, Reuters said. Bloch had been a personnel lawyer at the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office of the U.S. Justice Department before the appointment, Reuters said.

Elections in Sudan don't live up to Western standards

The United States and other Western nations didn't wait until the votes were completely counted in Sudan to begin questioning the validity of the results of the first multiparty election in the East African nation in 24 years. The U.S. State Department said Monday that the weekend balloting was "not a free and fair election," given wide reports of alleged fraud and boycotts by various groups. "It did not, broadly speaking, meet international standards," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington, according to the Reuters international news service. Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and his National Congress Party are expected to easily win re-election and continue to dominate politics, at least in the northern portion of the insurgency-torn oil-producing nation still under the control of the government in Khartoum. But given that the election occurred at all, even flawed, was seen as a positive development by the West. The balloting fulfilled another portion of the 2005 peace deal that interrupted a 22-year civil war between Sudan's Muslim-dominated north and Christian and Animist groups in the south led by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. The third and, perhaps, most important condition of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is a vote on whether to permanently separate the northern and southern regions of Sudan by 2011, Reuters said. "I think we recognize that the election is a very important step" in carrying out the 2005 peace deal, Crowley said. "The United States will continue to work with the government in the north, the government in the south, as we move forward with ... the vitally important referenda that'll happen in January of next year." Initial polls indicate Bashir's party would receive as much as 90 percent of the vote in northern Sudan, Reuters said. In a separate statement, delegations from the United States, Britain and Norway -- guarantors of the peace deal, said the election suffered from poor preparation and other irregularities and called on the Khartoum government to fix these problems before the next round of voting. "We note initial assessments of the electoral process from independent observers, including the judgment that the elections failed to meet international standards," the three countries said in a statement. "We are reassured that voting passed reasonably peacefully, reportedly with significant participation, but share their serious concerns about weak logistical and technical preparations and reported irregularities in many parts of Sudan. Observers from the European Union and the Carter Center also said the elections did not meet international standards. Bashir still faces genocide charges filed last year by the International Criminal Court in The Hague over hundreds of thousands of killings in the Darfur region of eastern Sudan, where millions were displaced by conflict between the Khartoum government and ethnic rebel groups that was not related to the 22-year war between north and south.

Currency deal could be near between China and United States

Word comes from New York that negotiators for China and the United States are closing in on an agreement to raise the value of China's currency, a point of contention between the two world economic giants. China's president, Hu Jintao, is scheduled to visit Washington this week, days after a surprise visit to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, according to the Cable News Network (CNN). The United States has been pressing China to allow its currency to float against other world currencies, at least temporarily, to help rebalance the value of trade between the two countries. Analysts say an increase in the value of China's currency, the yuan, will help cut a huge surplus in its balance of trade. "It basically seems like it's a done deal," Ashraf Laidi, chief market strategist for CMC Markets, told CNN. In addition to diplomatic friction, the undervalued yuan is hampering economic recovery in the United States, said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland. "Unemployment would be falling rapidly and the U.S. economy recovering more rapidly but for the trade deficit with China and Beijing's currency policies." China has been keeping its currency undervalued by buying billions of dollars in U.S. currency and notes, CNN said. Most economists now think the yuan is undervalued by up to 40 percent, but raising its value precipitously could cause more problems than it would solve by overheating China's economy. In that scenario, a gradual increase would be more desirable, CNN said. "The movement from managed currency to freely floating currency is not easy to pull off," Mark Vitner, a senior economy with Wells Fargo Securities, told CNN. "If we have a boom and then a bust in China, that could lead to another global recession." In the short run, raising the value of China's currency will raise the price of Chinese goods sold in the United States while cutting the price of China's imports of natural resources like oil. Hu is expected in Washington next week for U.S. President Barack Obama's worldwide nuclear security summit.

U.S., Russia agree to cut nuclear weapons arsenals

It's remarkable to see how much the world has changed in the past few decades. Not so long ago, an agreement to reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia would have been greeted by celebrations, especially across Europe. Yet this week, a treaty signing that would do precisely that barely was noticed in the United States. Yes, it's true, it took some personal diplomacy involving U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, but a deal between the world's most nuclear-armed nations to cut weapons stockpiles by a third was signed Thursday in Prague, according to Cable News Network (CNN). Obama called the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) an indication of the two countries' commitment to "responsible global leadership" while Medvedev called it a "win-win situation" for both countries. "This day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia -- the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons -- to pursue responsible global leadership," Obama said Thursday. "Together, we are keeping our commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which must be the foundation for global nonproliferation." Medvedev, too, acknowledged the potentially historic impacts of the new treaty. "This agreement enhances strategic ability and, at the same time, allows us to rise to a higher level of cooperation between Russia and the United States," Medvedev said. For U.S. residents who remember the days when public buildings had fallout shelters and schoolchildren participated in fallout shelter drills, the agreement is a welcome sign of real progress since the Cold War between the United States and the old Soviet Union. Of course, the new agreement is merely a continuation of the previous START deal that expired in December, and still leaves both countries with more than 1,000 nuclear warheads. Just as important in the short term, perhaps, Obama and Medvedev also discussed other related issues, such as developing nuclear power Iran, before the signing ceremony, CNN said. The weapons reduction agreement is still subject to ratification by each country's legislature. Obama and Medvedev wrapped up the new agreement shortly before the scheduled start of a global nuclear security summit in Washington on Monday.

Progressive nuclear policies sound good but mean nothing

While it'll been fun hearing right-wing blowhards blow a little harder this week, the most important thing about the new nuclear weapons policy unveiled Tuesday by U.S. President Barack Obama is that it doesn't mean anything. Rhetoric about when and where a country will or will not use nuclear arms is meaningless because neither situations nor temptations can be accurately predicted in advance. So, the Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review, a document required from all U.S. governments by the Congress, can be full of lofty anti-nuclear sentiment yet not reflect what the country will actually do in the event of nuclear conflict. If another country launches a nuclear attack on the United States, sentiment loses all value. Critics of the administration must realize this, even as they launch what are sure to be bombastic attacks on the new policy. The Obama policy, which replaces the Bush administration's threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of chemical or biological attack, commits the United States to refrain from the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries that comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, according to the Reuters international news service. The new policy also declares that the United States will not develop any new nuclear weapons. "We are taking specific and concrete steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons while preserving our military superiority, deterring aggression and safeguarding the security of the American people," Obama said in a statement released by the White House, Reuters said. The policy was released in time for Thursday's scheduled signing of a new arms reduction treaty with Russia and appears designed to enhance next week's 47-nation nuclear summit in Washington. Iran and North Korea, emerging nuclear powers that have not signed the treaty, were deliberately left out of the non-use guarantee, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "If there is a message for Iran and North Korea here, it is ... if you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you," Gates told reporters, Reuters said. The document also expressed concern about China, which has a nuclear arsenal and has signed the treaty, but has not been forthcoming about its program. "China's nuclear arsenal remains much smaller than the arsenals of Russia and the United States," the document said. "But the lack of transparency surrounding its nuclear programs -- their pace and scope, as well as the strategy and doctrine that guides them -- raises questions about China's future strategic intentions." Obama is expected to hold talks with Chinese leader Hu Jintao on the sidelines of next week's summit that will possibly include China's nuclear program as well as the value of its currency, Reuters said.

Quiet signing of abortion bill fulfills deal on new healthcare law

In the aftermath of the frantic dealmaking that consumed Washington the past few weeks, U.S. President Barack Obama quietly signed an executive order barring federal funding for elective abortions in a concession to anti-abortion Democrats who voted for the health-care overhaul. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), leader of an anti-abortion bloc in the House of Representatives whose support was crucial for the approval of the sweeping health-care proposal, according to the New York Times. Obama signed the bill into law on Tuesday in an elaborate White House ceremony. In contrast, Wednesday's signing of the executive order was done in the Oval Office with no fanfare in front of a few invited lawmakers, with no media present. Pro-choice lawmakers did not object to the order because it merely complied with existing federal law, the Times said. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats rejected a host of amendments and moved toward passage of a companion health-care reform bill that would raise subsidies for senior and low-income citizens and take the nation's banks out of the student loan business. The bill would turn the federal government into the direct lender for student loans, instead of the guarantor as it is now, and increase the maximum dollar amount students can receive in federal Pell grants. The move is expected to cost the banking industry -- including federal lending giant Sallie Mae -- billions of dollars in revenue. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, banking giants that received billions of dollars in assistance from the government as part of the financial system bailout, have traditionally been the largest beneficiaries of the student loan program, the Times said.

U.S. and Russia appear on verge of nuclear arms reduction deal

With Western nations focused on emerging nuclear powers North Korea and Iran, word from Washington on Wednesday that the United States and Russia are on the verge of reaching a new agreement to reduce the world's largest nuclear arsenals comes as quite a surprise. But it's a good surprise for a change. Officials from both countries say U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev have managed a way around the last remaining obstacle to a deal to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 that expired in December, according to the New York Times. The two leaders reportedly need one more meeting to finalize the new agreement, which would require their countries to reduce warheads and launchers by more than 25 percent, the Times said. The White House and the Kremlin declined to comment on the reports, but officials on both sides confirmed the breakthrough on the condition of anonymity, the newspaper said. A signing ceremony is planned in Prague early next month. The deal caps a year of sometimes problematic negotiations that was originally intended to wrap up a new deal by the end of 2009. But the talks got hung up on verification, sharing information and limits on missile defense systems, the Times said, even though Obama agreed not to construct a planned European-based missile shield authorized by his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. The planned Prague ceremony would help jump-start an international summit on nuclear nonproliferation that Obama has scheduled for April 12 and 13 in Washington, the Times said.

Obama signs national healthcare overhaul law

The news from Washington that President Barack Obama had signed into law the hard-fought healthcare reform bill set off cheers in the White House and cries of outrage from Republican statehouses across the country. The months of partisan sniping over the bill that seemed to threaten the very foundation of the political system of the United States were on hold Tuesday, at least temporarily, for a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House, according to the Reuters international news agency. "We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare," Obama said. But as expected in the partisan-divided atmosphere that permeates federal policymaking, 14 states filed suit minutes after the bill-signing to try to block the sweeping $940 billion overhaul of the nation's healthcare system and Republicans in Congress vowed to continue to resist the measure. Democrats said they had the votes to pass a package of changes needed to implement the bill. Among the changes approved by Congress are provisions that extend coverage to $32 million people who do not have health insurance now, bar insurers from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, expand Medicaid and raise taxes on the wealthy. Obama said he thought most U.S. residents will be happy with the changes, even though everyone will be required to purchase health insurance with the help of government subsidies. "I'm confident you'll like what you see," Obama said. But Republicans do not. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican whose department is one of the states that filed suit, said the bill was unconstitutional because it required all residents to have insurance. "It forces people to do something -- in the sense of buying a health care policy or paying a penalty, a tax or a fine -- that simply the Constitution does not allow Congress to do," he said. Other Republican critics of the legislation vowed to make opposition to the legislation a focal point of midterm congressional elections scheduled for November, Reuters said.

Coalition of states claims climate change is still up in the air

Well, if U.S. President Barack Obama has learned anything in his first year in office, it's that there's no way to please everybody, no matter what. So, news from Washington today that 12 states had joined lawsuits seeking to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions shouldn't surprise anyone. Lawsuits are one of the major ways that public policy gets done, especially when business interests are involved. Florida, Indiana, South Carolina and nine other states asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to block the EPA from issuing rules to control such emissions, according to the Reuters international news service. Their petitions join three filed earlier this year by Virginia, Texas and Alabama, Reuters said. The suits ask the EPA to reopen hearings on an "endangerment finding" it issued last year that greenhouse emissions are dangerous to people. The April finding, which became final in June, enabled the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse emissions under the Clean Air Act. Regulations expected to be issued shortly would require cars and light trucks to increase their energy efficiency. "If EPA doesn't reopen the hearings we will move forward to try to stop them from regulating greenhouse gases," said Brian Gottstein of the Virginia Attorney General's office, Reuters said. The states complain that the new rules are too heavily based on climate change reports from the United Nations that have been criticized for exaggerating some data. But 16 other states have petitioned to join the case in support of the EPA. The new rules are consistent with an Obama administration pledge to use regulations to curtail emissions if Congress does not pass a climate bill, which has been stalled in the legislature, Reuters said.

A change in succession is known to be extreme

From Washington comes word that President Barack Obama has restored the traditional order of succession at the Pentagon in the event of a catastrophe that takes the lives of or incapacitates top defense department officials. In an executive order published quietly on March 1, Obama has done away with a system set up by former President George W. Bush, which had elevated a close adviser of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ahead of the secretaries of the Army and Navy. The current defense secretary, Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, supported the old system, according to the New York Times. “After reviewing the issue, the secretary determined that the historical pattern of precedence made the most sense and recommended the president restore the traditional line of succession,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, told the Times. The change means that the Army and Navy secretaries return to third and fourth in the line of succession, after the deputy Pentagon secretary. Bush had elevated the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a longtime Rumsfeld confidante, to the third position on the succession list. Top Pentagon officials said at the time that the change was to ensure that someone with a wide range of expertise, not just with a single military service, would take over if necessary. But other officials said the change was made because of a running dispute between Rumsfeld and Army leadership, the Times said. It sounds reasonable so far. But it would be a lot better than merely reasonable if Obama's decision signals that the White House was preparing to roll back the Bush administration's more serious seizures of power -- such as the evisceration of the separation of powers doctrine -- that were formerly considered unthinkable.

U.S. government starts making sense on Blackwater

Why it took a change in administrations in Washington to get top congressional officials to start thinking again is a little hard to understand, yet there we are. We're discussing, of course, letters sent to top Obama administration officials by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a fellow Democrat, asking whether controversial military contractor Xe Services, the former Blackwater Worldwide, should be barred from bidding on future Iraq contracts, according to the Washington Post. Blackwater, you recall, is the Myock, N.C., company that has been paid billions of dollars over the past 7 years to provide support services for U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But several well-publicized shooting incidents in Baghdad, including one that resulted in the deaths of 17 civilians, made the company the object of scorn in Iraq and nearly brought down the newly restored Iraqi government. So, wouldn't you expect past performance to be at least one major factor in the selection of bidders for a new $1 billion contract to train a new national police force in Afghanistan? That's the context in which Levin (D-Michigan) wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Bush administration holdover in new President Barack Obama's cabinet. "The inadequacies in Blackwater's performance appear to have contributed to a shooting incident that has undermined our mission in Afghanistan," Levin told the Post in an e-mailed statement. It's been a long time since we've heard U.S. officials speak so honestly about the company. Last May's incident, in which two Blackwater contractors allegedly killed two Afghani civilians and wounded a third, damaged relations between the local population and U.S. forces. The military sees strong relations between troops and Afghani citizens as vital for securing the country and putting down a stubborn al-Qaida insurgency. A Xe Services spokesman said Levin's query was appropriate and welcome. "We are confident that Xe's record of service in training thousands of security personnel in Afghanistan demonstrates the company's strong record of supporting critical U.S. government initiatives in Afghanistan, which are essential in advancing the United States national interest," said the spokesman, Mark Corallo, in an e-mailed statement. The Pentagon's Bryan Whitman said there was no effort within the military to ban Xe Services, as far as he knew, and it would be legally allowed to submit a bid on the Afghanistan contract. Levin's second letter, to Attorney General Eric Holder, called for an investigation into whether Blackwater tricked the Army into awarded it a separate $25 million contract to train police in Afghanistan by creating a shell company named Paravant. Corallo said military officials knew Paravant was a Blackwater subsidiary when the contract was awarded.

Guantanamo Bay cases leave constitutional doctrine in tatters

Word that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to decide the fate of a group of Chinese Muslims held without charges for eight years at Guantanamo Bay again demonstrates the collapse of the separation of powers doctrine of the U.S. Constitution. Monday's three-paragraph ruling, which vacated a federal appeals court decision and asked the trial court to reconsider releasing eight Uighurs from the military prison into the United States, according to the New York Times, illustrates just how disoriented the legal system has gotten since the 9/11 attacks and the start of the war on terror. That fundamental constitutional precepts have had to be ignored or openly violated to promulgate the government's response to the attacks is indicative of Washington's fundamental -- and potentially dangerous -- mistakes. But how little attention is being paid to reorienting the constitutional government and undoing the worst of those errors should be raising alarm bells all across the United States, and in the dozens of countries who modeled their own constitutional systems on the U.S. examples. Long the object of admiration by constitutional scholars and students across the country and the world, the concepts of separation of powers and of checks and balances -- under which the three U.S. branches of government maintain a kind of symbiotic relationship -- have been largely eviscerated by the concentration of power in the executive. That there is already a constitutional theory to explain this phenomenon -- the unitary executive doctrine -- contradicts the oft-repeated justification that the growth of executive power during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2008) was a reaction to the extraordinary circumstances of the war on terror. Under the separation of powers doctrine, the legislative and judicial branches are supposed to share complementary powers and protect their exclusive domains. But under the George W. Bush presidency, the executive decided what portions of what acts of Congress to follow, decided what if any rights it would afford criminal suspects, imprisoned suspects indefinitely without charge, set up a system of secret prisons, gave itself the authority to kidnap citizens of other countries and to ignore treaty obligations approved by the U.S. Senate. The judicial branch of the U.S. government has failed to defend its constitutional duties and, instead, has issued rulings that, in large part, permitted the executive to do precisely as it wished. In the Uighur ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court again avoided ruling directly on the issues and sent the case back to the trial judge in light of recent developments in the case -- among them, agreement by other countries to accept some or all of the detainees. The underlying appeals court decision that was vacated by the Supreme Court had overruled a trial judge's decision that the seemingly indefinite incarceration of the Muslims was impermissible under the U.S. Constitution.