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WASHINGTON - People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas said today that the White House is releasing a relative handful of already publicly available documents written by Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts in order to hide the fact that critical documents from his tenure in the Reagan and Bush I administrations are being withheld.

Despite the fact that such documents have been provided to the Senate in previous Supreme Court nominations, the Bush White House is refusing to give the Senate Roberts' papers from his tenure as a Deputy Solicitor General during the Bush "41" Administration. And while a limited number of Roberts' papers are already available from the Reagan presidential library, the White House is slow-rolling release of the overwhelming majority of the documents so there will be insufficient time for Senators to assess the papers before Roberts' confirmation hearings.

Roberts was the top political deputy under Ken Starr in the Bush I administration Solicitor General's office, where his performance at the young age of 37 earned him a nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He was a top political and legal strategist during contentious debates over voting rights, affirmative action, reproductive choice, school desegregation the separation of church and state, environmental protection and discrimination in federally funded education programs against women, minorities, people with disabilities, and older Americans. Neas said the memos detailing Roberts' thinking as the administration attempted to roll back individual privacy rights and freedoms must be released to the Senate.

"What are they trying to hide? John Roberts was at the epicenter of debates on the most critical civil rights issues of our times. Those documents could tell the Senate and the American people whether John Roberts will be a Supreme Court justice who will protect our most fundamental rights, or roll them back," said Neas. "The White House should release all the documents to the Senate and to the public as appropriate as quickly as possible."

Neas said the White House is pursuing a dual strategy to obfuscate Roberts' record: stonewalling on the documents, while simultaneously pressing for confirmation hearings in August to push the Roberts nomination through with unprecedented speed.

"What's the rush? What questions do they want to avoid? John Roberts lacks a public record on key constitutional issues, yet the most ideological members of the radical right are wildly enthusiastic about this nomination. What do they know that we don't?" Neas asked. "This is the highest court in the land. The American people deserve a painstaking and thorough examination of this nominee."

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

A message to Karl Rove: 

 You Can Run but You Can't Hide.

And finally,..a quote that should make anyone just stop and wonder,...

"Our enemies. . .

never stop thinking about new ways

to harm our country

and our people,

and neither do we."

- George W. Bush - August 5, 2004

TALLAHASSEE -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts provided legal advice to Gov. Jeb Bush in the weeks following the November 2000 election as part of the effort to make sure the governor's brother won the disputed presidential vote.

Roberts, at the time a private attorney in Washington, D.C., came to Tallahassee to advise the state's Republican administration as it was trying to prevent a Democratic end-run that the GOP feared might give the election to Al Gore, sources told The Herald.

Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become president -- regardless of what the courts might decide. And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation's highest court.

US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida)

If the names were not forwarded to Washington in a timely fashion, Republicans feared, Gore might be declared the winner because Florida's 25 electoral votes wouldn't be counted -- and the Democrat had garnered more electoral votes than George W. Bush in the rest of the country.

Roberts, himself a noted constitutional lawyer, and an unnamed law professor spent between 30 and 40 minutes talking to Bush in the governor's conference room, sources told The Herald.

Roberts' perceived partisanship during the recount has been enough for some Democrats to suggest that his nomination should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.

A spokesman for the governor confirmed Wednesday that Bush met with Roberts during the recount.

Roberts was ''one of several experts who came to Florida to share their ideas,'' said spokesman Jacob DiPietre. Roberts came ``at his own expense and met with Gov. Bush to share what he believed the governor's responsibilities were under federal law after a presidential election and a presidential election under dispute.''

The reason that Roberts was tapped: His connection to Dean Colson, a lawyer with the Miami firm of Colson Hicks Eidson. Colson had been a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist at the same time as Roberts in 1980 and was best man at Roberts' wedding. Brian Yablonski, who was then a top aide to the governor, worked at the Colson law firm before he went to work with Bush.

Since the recount, the ties between the firm where Roberts worked at the time, Hogan & Hartson, and Florida's government has grown deeper, as Hogan & Hartson has taken on several high-profile legal jobs in the state. The firm, for which Roberts worked from 1986 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 2003, represents and lobbies the Legislature for the Scripps Research Institute, which was given $500 million by state and local governments to set up an operation in Florida.

When Roberts came to Tallahassee in November 2000, he outlined for the governor the formal process that needed to be followed once the Florida popular vote was certified for Bush. At least one book documenting the period, Too Close to Call by journalist Jeffrey Toobin, said Bush strategists feared Gore attorneys would try to block the state from sending the ''certificate of ascertainment'' -- the list of electors -- to the National Archives. That book documents the elaborate lengths to which the governor's staff went to ensure that the certificate -- which said Bush had won -- was not subpoenaed by Democrats and stopped in its tracks.

DiPietre refused to answer questions on Roberts' role during the recount or why the governor talked to the attorney after his vow to recuse himself from the dispute.

`SALT ON THE WOUNDS'

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat, seized on Roberts' participation in the 2000 recount and suggested it should be grounds for rejecting his nomination. Wexler suggested the nomination ``threw salt on the wounds of the thousands of Floridians whose voting rights were disenfranchised during the 2000 election.

''Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become president -- regardless of what the courts might decide,'' Wexler said, relying on news accounts that suggested Roberts gave the governor advice on how the state Legislature could name Bush the winner. ``And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation's highest court.''

U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, an Oviedo Republican who was state House Speaker during the tumultuous recount period, shot back that involvement in the recount effort would automatically disqualify a lot of lawyers.

That viewpoint was echoed by Benjamin Ginsberg, who was chief counsel for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign.

Roberts ''was not part of the Bush-Cheney operation,'' Ginsberg said. ``What's cool about that time in Florida is it attracted a lot of constitutional lawyers and they were brought in as fast as possible. It was Woodstock for constitutional lawyers.''

Both Feeney and one of the top lawyers for the Florida House of Representatives said Wednesday that the idea of having the GOP-controlled Legislature intervene in the recount controversy arose in the chamber itself, and that outside lawyers actually frowned on the notion.

STATE TIES

Since the recount, the ties between Hogan & Hartson have deepened with Gov. Bush's administration. Carol Licko, the governor's first general counsel, became a partner with Hogan & Hartson after her Miami firm was acquired by the bigger Washington firm.

Hogan & Hartson, which didn't open its first Florida office until 2000, has handled several high profile cases for the state of Florida in the past five years, including representing the state in a water-rights dispute against Georgia and Alabama. Hogan & Hartson also represented the state in a court fight against Coastal Petroleum, a company that held leases to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier this summer the state reached a settlement to buy back the leases from Coastal.

Herald staff writers Marc Caputo, Lesley Clark,

Carol Rosenberg and Jay Weaver contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2005 Miami Herald

ChoiceAmericaNetwork

On Sunday, George W. Bush's war against terror was turned upside down — and this time the president might even notice. That's because when "our guys" in Iraq start firmly allying with an "axis of evil" nation, its got to ring some warning bells, no?

I am referring to the joint declaration issued in Tehran by the leaders of Iraq and Iran: "Today, we need a double and common effort to confront terrorism that may spread in the region and the world," said Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, visiting Iran along with 10 of his ministers, following a similar visit from his defense minister. The statement he and his Iranian counterparts produced heralds mutual cooperation between the two neighbors, which will include a cross-border oil pipeline, joint security proposals and shared intelligence information.

Suddenly everyone's against terror!

I wish it were so. But it's not. Consider that while in Tehran, Jafari also paid tribute to the father of the Iranian theocracy, visiting the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That the fanaticism of Khomeini is very much alive in today's Iran was clear from the election last month of one of his original Revolutionary Guards to be the country's new president.

In making a pilgrimage to Shiite Iran, the Shiite Iraqi government was also paying homage to the longtime refuge and supporter of Iraqi Shiite revolutionaries, including Jafari himself, who spent 10 years in exile there. Jafari also reiterated an earlier statement in which his government apologized for Iraq's role in the long war with Iran. (How awkward for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. envoy who carried a message of support to Saddam Hussein 20 years ago, when that war was considered by President Reagan's government as a convenient, if terribly bloody, way to distract and weaken Iran.)

Now, thanks to the U.S. invasion, a new alliance is being formed between Iran and Iraq that threatens to further destabilize the politics of the Mideast. It wasn't supposed to work out this way.

Forced democratization of Iraq, according to its neocon architects, was supposed to secure oil for the U.S., protect Israel, open markets to Western corporations and, oh yeah, maybe even decrease terrorism. After the invasion, however, the U.S., faced with decidedly more hostility and fewer flowers than expected, was loath to allow elections, because their outcome would probably not produce a pliant government.

Then Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, threatened to take his followers into the streets against the foreign occupation if one-person-one-vote elections were not allowed. And when it became clear the "wrong" guys might win the elections the U.S. was forced to hold, the Bush White House, according to an investigative article by Seymour Hersh in the current New Yorker, tried to buy the vote for former CIA asset Iyad Allawi.

When Allawi's slate was soundly defeated, what was Bush to do? With absolutely nothing having gone right in Iraq between the successful military invasion and the inspiring election nearly two years later, he had no choice but to embrace the winners — mostly Shiite, mostly fundamentalists — as the saviors of a free and democratic Iraq.

Sadly, they are nothing of the sort. In Basra, where they have been in power since the U.S. invasion, religious thugs are in de facto control, applying more oppressive theocratic rules over women's behavior and other basic human rights than neighboring Iran.

Even worse, their victory has fueled fierce Sunni resentment, and the accompanying insurgency has begun targeting Shiite civilians with the clear goal of fomenting ethnic war. Over the weekend, more than 100 people were killed by suicide bombers. Sistani himself denounced what he ominously said was now a "genocidal war."

Facing that hideous possibility, is it surprising to find the Iraqi government looking for help from powerful Iran? No, but it certainly poses a problem for the White House, which now finds itself putting American soldiers' lives on the line every day to prop up an active ally of the country that we claim, with some plausibility, funds anti-Israeli and other terror groups and is bent on making its own nuclear bomb.

Somewhere a guy named Osama bin Laden must be laughing.

©2005 Los Angeles Times

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The study, by Washington polling organisation the Pew Centre for the People and the Press, found that many people in predominantly Muslim countries share concerns over Islamic extremism, with many seeing it as a threat to their own countries.

"There's declining support for terrorism in the Muslim countries and support for Osama bin Laden is declining," Pew Centre director Andrew Kohut told reporters. "There's also less support for suicide bombings."

The survey, conducted among more than 17,000 people in 17 countries in April and May, found that nearly three quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia - all predominantly Muslim nations - see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries.

There were differing opinions about the causes of radicalism, with sizeable minorities pointing to poverty, joblessness and a lack of education, while in Jordan and Lebanon more people blamed US policies as the most important factor.

In Europe and America, the poll found that fear of the growth of Islamic extremism both at home and around the world was rising. However, in Britain more people - 43% - said they were very worried about the growth of Islamic extremism abroad, with only 34% saying they were worried about it at home.

The non-profit and non-partisan Pew centre is a leading Washington polling organisation and the global attitudes survey is considered one of the most important benchmarks of cross-national attitudes.

The survey found that in Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia 15% or fewer said that suicide bombings and other acts of violence against civilian targets in defence of Islam could be justified; the figure in Morocco last year was 40%.

In Pakistan, only one in four - 25% - took the view that suicide bombings could be justified, a sharp drop from 41% last year. In Lebanon, which has been the victim of several recent bombing attacks, 39% now regard acts of terrorism as often or sometimes justified compared to 73% in 2002.

The one notable exception to the trend was Jordan, where a majority - 57% - said suicide bombings and violence were justifiable in defence of Islam.

Muslims in the surveyed countries were divided on suicide bombings in Iraq. Nearly half in Lebanon and Jordan, and 56% in Morocco, said suicide bombings against westerners in Iraq were justifiable, but substantial majorities in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia took the opposite view.

The survey showed that public confidence in Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaida, has dipped sharply since May 2003 in Indonesia, Morocco, Lebanon and Turkey.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

Despite the increase in communications, the report's survey research of House and Senate staff show they believe that the Internet and e-mail have had a positive effect on the democratic process. For example, 79 percent believe the Internet has made it easier for a citizen to get involved in the public policy process; 55 percent believe it has increased public understand of what goes on in Washington; while 48 percent (a plurality) believe it has made Members more responsive to their constituents.

The report, "Communicating with Congress: How Capitol Hill is Coping with the Surge in Citizen Advocacy," was released as Capitol Hill is bracing for what is expected to be the largest grassroots campaign in history over the upcoming Supreme Court nomination vote in the Senate. The research indicates that some communications strategies employed by grassroots organizations are not effective.

"This report suggests that grassroots groups that are preparing to bombard the Congress with messages for and against the President's nominee, as well as congressional offices, should consider modifying their standard practices," said Rick Shapiro, the executive director of CMF. "If they don't make changes, congressional offices will have a very hard time processing these messages, responding to constituents, and integrating their views into the decision-making process. And those hoping to influence the process may find that their efforts have little impact on the outcome," said Shapiro.

The staff surveys indicate that identical form communications, which represent the vast majority of messages sent to Capitol Hill, are the least influential communications vehicles. Personalized or individualized messages to Congress have more influence on Members' decision-making process than do identical form messages. Only 3 percent of staff surveyed say identical form postal mail would have "a lot" of influence on their Member of Congress if he/she had not reached a decision. In contrast, 44 percent of individualized postal letters and 34 percent of individualized e-mail messages would have "a lot" of influence. Interestingly, only 15 percent of staff surveyed said that a "visit from a lobbyist" would have "a lot" of influence -- meaning that personalized letters and e-mails from constituents have more influence than visits from lobbyists.

The report also points out weaknesses in congressional offices' ability to respond to the increase in communications. For example, only 17 percent of House offices and 38 percent of Senate offices answer all of their e-mail with e-mail. Instead, the majority still respond to some or all of their e-mails with postal letter responses.

To improve the process, the report identified a series of steps that both Congress and the grassroots community could employ. "Citizens and Congress have a shared interest in improving communications between them. Both sides want and benefit from a robust and meaningful discourse. Members and their staff would like to see communications occur in ways that are both valuable and manageable to their offices. Citizens and the grassroots community want to know that they are succeeding in making their voices heard and influencing the legislative process. Consequently, it is in the interest of both parties to consider making changes that better serve these shared interests," the report said.

The report is based on surveys of more than 350 House and Senate staff in 202 offices as well as focus groups and interviews with staff and reviews of communications volume data from the House and the Senate.

CMF is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization dedicated to improving the effectiveness of Congress. The report was funded by Capitol Advantage, BlueCross BlueShield Association and Chevron Corporation.

(FULL REPORT: http://www.cmfweb.org)