after-words.org

Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.

Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters or the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.

But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide "uniform and nondiscriminatory" voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls. [...] Saturday's decision in that case, and in other recent cases from Michigan and Florida, gave the department a partial victory. On the one hand, the courts agreed with state officials who said voters may not obtain a provisional ballot if they go to the wrong polling place.

However, all three courts that ruled on the matter rejected the administration's broader view that voters may not sue state election officials in federal court.

Still, the issue may resurface and prove significant next week if disputes arise over voter qualifications. Some election-law experts believe the administration has set the stage for arguing that the federal courts may not second-guess decisions of state election officials in Ohio, Florida or elsewhere.

INTERPOL had informed the World Anti-Doping Agency that trafficking in steroids across Europe was now more profitable than dealing in recreational drugs, the Australian lawyer who heads the body said in Sydney yesterday.

Displaying a bladder-and-tube device the agency suspects some athletes at the Athens Olympics used to give bogus urine samples, David Howman said there appeared to be no swift end to the battle against sporting cheats. Mr Howman said the urine-filled bulb of the device was inserted in the anus and the tube, which had a pressure-sensitive on-off valve, was run under the athlete's penis so a genuine-looking sample could be given to watching drug testers.

He said it was an advance on the artificial rubber penises, available in eight skin shades, which would-be cheaters had previously used.

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. The officials outlined the opinion on Monday in response to a report in The Washington Post over the weekend that the Central Intelligence Agency had secretly transferred a dozen non-Iraqi prisoners out of Iraq in the past 18 months, despite a provision in the conventions that bars civilians protected under the accords from being deported from occupied territories. [...] government officials said the new ruling could open the way for additional transfers on a broader scale, because the status of prisoners being held in Iraq is reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Under the administration opinion, the non-Iraqis who could be deemed exempt from Geneva Conventions would include suspected members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations as well as other non-Iraqis believed to have traveled to the country after the invasion of March 2003 for the purpose of engaging in terrorism or joining in the insurgency. [...] It is possible that some of the prisoners transferred out of Iraq may have been handed over to friendly governments, like those of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, in a procedure known as rendition. Another possibility is that they were transferred to the secret American-run sites around the world that have been used since the Sept. 11 terror attacks to house the highest ranking Qaeda detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks.

Such transfers have been used by American officials in the past three years in part to subject suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to interrogation practices harsher than those permitted under the Geneva Conventions or under American law. American officials have defended such practices, including a technique in which a prisoner is made to believe that he will drown, as essential to extract information that may be useful in preventing terrorist attacks.

As recently as May 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reiterated in public testimony the administration's view that "everyone in Iraq who was a military person" as well as "the civilians or criminal elements" who were detained by the American authorities would be "treated subject to the Geneva Conventions."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he warned President Bush before U.S. troops invaded Iraq that the United States would sustain casualties but that Bush responded, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

White House and campaign advisers denied Bush made the comment, with adviser Karen Hughes saying, "I don't believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it."

Robertson's comments came to light on a day when Bush portrayed himself as an aggressive leader who understands the costs of the war on terrorism, while depicting opponent John Kerry as out of touch about the risks.

"The next commander in chief must lead us to victory in this war and you cannot win a war when you don't believe you're fighting one," Bush told hundreds of supporters in a farming community in Iowa, where he and Kerry are in a close race.

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

Traveling with Bush in the Midwest, Hughes said political adviser Karl Rove was in the Feb. 10, 2003, meeting with the president and Robertson in Nashville, but Bush never said there wouldn't be casualties in Iraq.

"Obviously, we already had casualties in Afghanistan at the time. If you look at that, that (the comment) was not consistent with what was going on," she said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."

Robertson released a statement about Bush late Wednesday in which he said, "I emphatically stated that I believe 'the blessing of heaven is upon him' and I am persuaded that he will win this election and prevail on the war against terror in order to keep America safe from her avowed enemies."

U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes told a rally Saturday that incest was "inevitable" for children raised by gay couples because the children might not know both biological parents. "If we do not know who the mother is, who the father is, without knowing all the brothers and sisters, incest becomes inevitable," Keyes told the Marquette Park rally held to oppose same-sex marriages. "Whether they mean it or not, that is what will happen. If you are masked from your knowing your biological parents, you are in danger of encountering brothers and sisters you have no knowledge of."

A pro-gay Republican group plans to file a lawsuit asking a federal court to overturn the U.S. government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy covering gays in the military. Log Cabin Republican leaders said the suit would be filed Tuesday in federal district court in Los Angeles. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, put into place in 1993 during the Clinton administration, allows gays and lesbians to serve so long as they do not disclose their sexual orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

Log Cabin members serving in the military asked the group's leaders over the last four months to take legal action, the group's attorney, Marty Meekins, said Tuesday. They did not come forward because of a specific incident, but simply because "of fear of the military finding out their sexual orientation if they are gay and lesbian," Meekins said. "This case is fundamentally about correcting a misguided governmental policy based on prejudice toward gay and lesbian Americans," he added. [...] The lawsuit against the government and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would have been filed sooner had the group and its lawyers been prepared, Meekins said.

"The decision to file the lawsuit doesn't have anything to do with any election," added Log Cabin political director Christopher Barron. "We are a nation fighting a war on terror and we need a policy that protects our national security."

The lawyer for a gay New Hope couple sued by a group of lawmakers after telling reporters they planned to challenge the state marriage laws, said the suit could have implications for everyone who is quoted in the press about controversial issues.

Attorney Peter Greenberg, who represents Stephen Stahl and Robert Seneca, also said he's confident that a Bucks County judge will throw the suit out. "If this type of lawsuit is permitted, to be allowed to sue people, to drag them into court, to require them to hire lawyers, merely because they might do something ... it certainly could have a chilling effect on people's right to express themselves," he said.

Greenberg spoke Friday following a hearing in Doylestown over a lawsuit filed in Bucks County Court against Stahl and Seneca by a dozen state lawmakers and a Bedford County fiberglass company that doesn't want to pay benefits to same-sex couples.

Judge Mitchell Goldberg, who noted that he has "serious doubts" about the legality of the suit, said he will hand down a ruling very soon on Seneca and Stahl's motion to have it dismissed. Goldberg said he had planned to issue a decision following oral arguments Friday, but that he now needs more time to wade through volumes of legal briefs submitted by lawyers on both sides.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Glen Lavy of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, said his clients have a right to launch a pre-emptive strike against Stahl and Seneca because the men have said repeatedly that they want to challenge the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids same-sex couple from getting married.

UNITED States defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was trying desperately to backtrack yesterday, after declaring that he knew of no clear link between the al-Qaeda terror network and Saddam Hussein. Mr Rumsfeld's admission to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Monday night came only 24 hours before the US vice-president Dick Cheney was due to go head to head with his Democratic rival, senator John Edwards. Mr Rumsfeld had at first refused to answer when he was asked to describe the connection between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda. But he then added: "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Mr Rumsfeld's comments are a further embarrassment for the White House, which repeatedly claimed the existence of a link as justification for the Iraq war. Despite increasing evidence that no such relationship ever existed, Mr Cheney has continued during the US presidential election to give the impression of direct Iraqi involvement with al-Qaeda.

Mr Rumsfeld yesterday tried to cover up his gaffe, issuing a statement from the Pentagon saying his comment "regrettably was misunderstood" by some.

While Democrats seized on the new report by Charles Duelfer to bolster their case that invading Iraq was a mistake, Cheney focused on portions of the report that were more favorable to the administration's case. While saying that Saddam's weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War and did not pose a threat to the world in 2003, the report did say that Saddam's main goal was to get international sanctions lifted. "As soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.

SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.

Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war. [...] To keep America at bay, he focusing [sic] on Russia, France and China - three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights. Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign. They even assessed the chances for "supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election." Chirac is not mentioned by name. A memo sent to Saddam dated in May last year from his intelligence corps said they met with a "French parliamentarian" who "assured Iraq that France would use its veto in the UN Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq."