Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H050111      High court lets stand ban on gay adoption
H050112      ILLINOIS   State House passes gay-rights bill
H050114Va Gays fight ban on civil unions
H050115     Attorney seeks permits for same-sex couples

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R050111      Bush team brushes off atheist's lawsuit
R050111     Christians face hearing in felonies at gay rights event
R050111C  Debasing judicial debate
R050111E   Abuse of power
R050111L   Swearing on the Bible
R050112     CBS fails to escape cloud of news bias
R050112      Episcopal bishops see chance to avoid schism
R050112      MICHIGAN    School board decides not to offer Bible class
R050112      President outlines role of his faith
R050112      Homosexuality debate
R050114      '10th brother'
R050114      Atheist lawsuit awaits ruling
R050114      Episcopal bishops 'regret,' dissent over gay issues
R050114      Lutheran decision splits on gay clergy
R050114      Tea for Ten
R050114E    Walk, don't run
R050115      Black clergy voice opposition to slots
R050115      Judge denies injunction to halt prayer
R050115      Pledge to refile
R050115L   Trial lawyers should be dancing
R050115L   Free free speech
R050115L   Free Free Speech (2nd)
R050115Va Top court voids fornication law
R050116     Groups gather to fight Bush's faith initiatives
R050116L   Censoring scientific thought

EDUCATION
E050116E    'Prisons for children'
MEDIA
M050111     Philosopher needed
M050111     CBS fires 4; Rather stays on
M050111     Election scandal
M050111E   CBS ducks political motives
M050112C   Bill of 'myopic' particulars
M050112E   Damage control at Black Rock
M050112L   CBS done in by bias
M050113     Media crash
M050113E   Defending the indefensible
M050114     CBS' black eye
M050114E   We 'don't understand'
M050114     End of a monopoly
M050115     Another scandal?
M050115C  Rather tangled web of CBS
M050115C  What they knew they really didn't

OTHER
O050111Va Virginia considers requiring library computer filters
O050112     2 Belarusians extradited in child-porn case
O050112     Threat to Hillary?
O050112E   'Daddy, where's our conscience?'
O050113C  Right questions in right order
O050115     Most unmarried women voted for Kerry
O050115E  The jading of America
O050116E   Hillary, the liberal
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By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Unmarried women turned out in record numbers in last year's election and voted overwhelmingly for Sen. John Kerry, while President Bush captured the majority of married women's votes, including a group that Kerry supporters had hoped to attract — married women without college degrees.
    Single women were one of the few demographic groups to increase their share of the electorate last election, according to a report by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
    "Unmarried women played an important part in this election," said Democratic strategist and pollster Stanley Greenberg, who helped compile and analyze the report data. "I think they're the future."
    This group increased its proportion of the electorate by three percentage points — from 19 percent in 2000 to 22.4 percent in 2004. The difference of about 7 million unmarried women voters can largely be attributed to grassroots groups such as the nonpartisan Women's Voices Women Vote, which targeted unmarried women with get-out-the-vote phone calls, mailings and public service announcements, the report found.
    Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, received most of the single-woman vote — 62 percent to 37 percent for Mr. Bush. But married women voted predominantly for Mr. Bush — 55 percent to 44 percent, according to the report, which cited National Election Pool's exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.
    The report also cited erosion among blue collar voters as one of the main factors in Mr. Bush's victory. In 2000, Al Gore lost this group by only 2 percent. In 2004, Mr. Kerry lost it by 6 percent, 47 percent to 53 percent.
    Mr. Kerry's supporters expected their candidate to do well at least among married women without college degrees, but this group voted 58 percent for Mr. Bush, 42 percent for Mr. Kerry.
    "Values is the heart of why we lost," Mr. Greenberg said. Mr. Bush won largely because values-related issues such as same-sex "marriage" eclipsed other issues in the election, and many were concerned that Mr. Kerry is a social liberal, he added
    "Democrats have to be ... more expressive in their values," Mr. Greenberg said.
    Both married and unmarried women voiced concerns about Iraq, the report found, but the Bush campaign effectively harnessed the support of married women when it interjected cultural issues such as abortion and same-sex "marriage" into the debate.
    "Driven by concerns of John Kerry's resolve and character, married women, along with many others, voted for safety and values," the report said. In contrast, however: "Unmarried women held a set of progressive values that stood in clear contrast to the Bush campaign. Instead of being swayed by the culture wars and issues such as abortion and gay 'marriage,' unmarried women were polarized by them."
    Most unmarried women opposed the war in Iraq and supported abortion rights, same-sex "marriage" and an increased role for government in health care and education, the report found.
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R050114   Lutheran decision splits on gay clergy
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Lutheran task force handed a victory to homosexual rights groups yesterday by recommending that although the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America should not change its policy against ordaining homosexual clergy, it should not censure churches that break the rule.
    But "those who feel conscience-bound to call people [as pastors] in committed same-sex unions should refrain from making the call a media event either as an act of defiance or with the presumption of being prophetic," the task force warned.
    The 14-member task force pronounced itself conflicted and unable to agree about how the ELCA should proceed.
    What emerged in their report — released at church headquarters in Chicago — was a compromise in which congregations could hire homosexual clergy without making this the official policy in the 4.9-million-member denomination.
    The compromise came as three recommendations:
    •That Lutherans "learn to live together faithfully," while disagreeing, thus avoiding the splits over homosexuality that have dominated the Episcopal Church, which has shared sacraments, clergy and ministry with the ELCA since 2001.
    •That the ELCA continue to have no official policy on same-sex unions, but "respect" a 1993 ELCA bishops' statement that does not approve such ceremonies as official church acts;
    •That the denomination not discipline churches that hire homosexual clergy, nor the clergy themselves. At least 14 openly homosexual seminarians or clergy serve in ELCA churches, according to the San Francisco-based Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries.
    Several ELCA bishops raised red flags about the report, which will be debated and voted on in August at the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly in Orlando, Fla.
    Bishop H. Gerard Knoche of the Delaware-Maryland Synod called it "a policy change even though it claims not to be" from current ELCA policy that allows people with homosexual attractions to be ordained, but expects that they remain celibate.
    Bishop James Mauney of ELCA's Virginia Synod said he did not see "a basis for affirming homosexual behavior within Scripture or our Lutheran confessions."
    He added, "Nowhere do I see in the Scriptures where Jesus condones the practice of the tax collectors or the woman caught in adultery or the life of the rich young ruler, though we are told he loves him in the Gospel of Mark."
    The report follows the general drift of other mainline Protestant denominations to loosen their policies on homosexual clergy and same-sex unions.
    The Episcopal Church already has ordained a practicing homosexual bishop and allows same-sex ceremonies in several dioceses, and the Presbyterian Church USA is deferring a final decision on such issues until 2006.
    Those two churches have lost more than 1.5 million members combined in recent decades. The ELCA has lost 300,000 members since 1999.
    Among Lutherans, "we found no consensus in the church on this matter," said New England Synod Bishop Margaret Payne, chairman of the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality.
    She cited a 2004 poll of 28,000 Lutherans, in which 38 percent opposed the blessing of same-sex unions and hiring homosexual clergy; 18 percent approved it; 14 percent said homosexuals should be welcomed as parishioners, but not hired as clergy nor should their unions be blessed; 12 percent were undecided; and the others gave mixed responses.
    Thus, she added, the task force decided to treat ordination of homosexual pastors as valid dissent.
    "It acknowledges the validity of conscientious objection and honors that," she said. "Because of that, discipline will not be enforced. It's a new dimension of respect ... based on individual conscience."
    The task force cited Martin Luther, the founder of the denomination, as the paragon of individual conscience because of his statement at the Diet of Worms in 1521. The church reformer told the Diet — a church court — that he was bound in conscience to the Bible and that "it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience."
    However, yesterday's report did not go far enough for the Lutheran Alliance for Full Participation, a consortium of six homosexual groups.
    Although one spokesman for the alliance privately conceded that the report "leaves a lot of wiggle room," its official statement expressed "dismay and deep sadness" at remaining strictures within the 32-page report.
    "We remain committed to the removal of discriminatory policies that violate our calls to ministry and marginalize our relationships," spokeswoman Emily Eastwood said.
    Bishop Theodore F. Schneider of the ELCA's Metropolitan Washington Synod said the report "raises many more questions and problems than it answers.
    "I am not quite sure how the churchwide assembly can be asked to affirm the constitution, bylaws, policies and practices of this church and not expect that they be applied fairly and evenly," he added.
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R050114   Episcopal bishops 'regret,' dissent over gay issues
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Episcopal House of Bishops agreed to express "regret" yesterday for the church's 2003 consecration of a homosexual bishop but refused to set a moratorium on either such consecrations or church-sanctioned blessings of same-sex unions.
    Instead, 140 bishops meeting in Salt Lake City asked for more time to debate the matter at their meeting in March.
    Twenty-one bishops immediately dissented, led by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, who approached the microphone to note that "the Episcopal Church USA often uses graceful language but our behavior ['the politics of power'] contradicts the words."
    In response, he said, the 21 bishops would sign a statement of "submission," promising to make only decisions with which the rest of the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is one part, agrees.
    "The response of the House of Bishops did not rise to level expected by the Communion," said South Carolina Bishop Edward Salmon, one of the signers. "We heard a call for submission, and we who are unequivocally prepared to submit have responded accordingly."
    No local bishops in the dioceses of Washington, Maryland or Virginia immediately signed the dissenting statement.
    The 2.2 million-member Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire was heavily criticized last fall in a "Windsor Report" issued in London. The denomination was instructed to cease performing the blessing ceremonies and consecrations until "some consensus" was reached with other Anglicans.
    A statement released by the House of Bishops did express "our sincere regret for the pain, the hurt, and the damage caused to our Anglican bonds of affection by certain actions of our church."
    However, it added, the decision to elect Bishop Robinson was made by the entire Episcopal denomination at its triennial meeting in Minneapolis in August 2003, a decision the House of Bishops cannot undo.
    Moreover, the statement said, Presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold had already established a committee to offer a theological explanation of how "a person living in a same-gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ."
    Next month in Ireland, more than 30 Anglican archbishops will meet to discuss the Windsor Report and yesterday's response from Episcopal bishops.
    Dissenting bishops included Harry Scriven of Pittsburgh; David Bena of Albany, N.Y.; Gethin Hughes of San Diego, Calif.; Keith Ackerman of Quincy, Mass.; John Howe of central Florida; William Skilton of South Carolina; James Adams of western Kansas; Stephen Jecko and James Stanton of Dallas; Daniel Herzog of Albany, N.Y.; and Bertram Herlong of Tennessee.
    Also signing were Jack Iker of Fort Worth, Texas; James Folts and Gary Lillibridge of western Texas; Don Wimberly of Texas; John David Schofield of San Joaquin, Calif.; Bruce MacPherson of western Louisiana; Peter Beckwith of Springfield, Mo.; and William Frey, the retired bishop of Colorado.
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R050114   Tea for Ten
    Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who gained national prominence by refusing to obey an order to remove the 5,300-pound Ten Commandments monument that he had placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building — and ultimately was removed from the bench — is to share tea with first lady Laura Bush.
    Actually, Mr. Moore will address the First Ladies' Inaugural Tea honoring Mrs. Bush on Jan. 22, two days after the inauguration, at the Mayflower Hotel.
    "I consider it an honor and a privilege," says Mr. Moore, author of the book "So Help Me God."

    Show your faces
    Forget about the next four years, Democratic strategist James Carville says the coming year is the most crucial for President Bush and Democrats alike.
    "You and I both know how important a year 2005 is going to be," says Mr. Carville, who, because he's wedlocked to former top Bush aide Mary Matalin, probably will be partying alongside her fellow Republicans this coming inaugural week.
    "George Bush and the Republicans are going for broke," he says. "They know that a second-term president has no more than eighteen months to force his agenda through — and they won't waste a minute."
    In the meantime, Mr. Carville cautions Democrats not to "swallow all of the Republicans' malarkey about 'the people have spoken' and go hide in a corner somewhere."
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R050114   '10th brother'
    Steve Gardner, a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is getting legal and financial assistance from retired FBI agent and Clinton whistleblower Gary Aldrich, president of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty.
    Known as the "10th brother," Mr. Gardner was one of two men who refused to stand with Sen. John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention. After stressing his strong opposition to the Kerry candidacy, he reportedly suffered threats and insults and was mysteriously fired from his management job.
    "I contacted Steve Gardner and offered my help," Mr. Aldrich tells us. "It's very important that when a whistleblower has the courage to reveal significant truth bearing on important decisions made by our countrymen, that that whistleblower is not punished and, at the end of the day, is no worse off for doing the right thing."
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M050114   End of a monopoly
    "The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over," Peggy Noonan writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.
    "That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half-dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard," Mrs. Noonan said.
    "Is it annoying that the panel that issued the report did not find liberal bias in the preparation and airing of the Bush National Guard story? Yes, but only that. It's not as if anyone has to be told. I hate to be cynical, and this is cynical, but the panel that produced the report was not being paid by CBS to find liberal bias. It was being paid to do the anatomy of a failure with emphasis on who did what wrong.
    "It found fault with the anchorman, the producer and their overseers, a conclusion CBS likely welcomed because CBS has wanted to remove Dan Rather for a long time because of low ratings. Rathergate weakened his position, and CBS moved. Firing the producers and overseers allows them to say: We've turned the page, paid a price and put the story behind us. Also, if the report was to be taken seriously by the rest of the mainstream media, it could not allege liberal bias. The MSM [mainstream media] were not going to do headlines saying, 'We've been busted!'
    "Finally, one somehow gets the impression the writers of the report thought proof of bias would be found in memos saying, 'Comrades, we move against the imperialistic Bush Regime at 0800.' Which is not exactly how it works. In any case those memos were not found. But maybe the writers of the report thought someone else would write about the whole sticky issue of bias. Like bloggers, who the report tells us have 'a conservative agenda.' That will surprise Duncan 'Atrios' Black and Josh Marshall, but let it go."

M050114    CBS' black eye
    "What's the big problem at CBS News?" asks Van Gordon Sauter, former president of CBS News.
    "Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix," Mr. Sauter said in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times.
    "Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management.
    "But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.
    "This week, when CBS News announced that four employees would lose their jobs in connection with the George Bush National Guard story, I was struck by how the network had become representative of a far larger, far more troubling problem: A large swath of the society doesn't trust the news media. And for many, it's even stronger than that: They abhor the media and perceive it as an escalating threat to the society.
    "If it's not stopped, the erosion of a centrist organizing principle for the media will soon become a commercial issue. Partisans will increasingly seek their news from blogs and Web sites and advocacy publications. And the majority — those readers and viewers most comfortable in the center — will try to find something ... in the center."
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H050115   Attorney seeks permits for same-sex couples
    ELMIRA, N.Y. — An attorney for 25 same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses told a judge yesterday that New York's opposition to same-sex "marriage" is similar to discrimination against women or minorities.
    Mariette Geldenhuys, an attorney for the couples who sued the city of Ithaca in June, told state Judge Robert Mulvey that the state's position contradicts a 2002 New York law outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
    Jim McGowan, an attorney for the state, argued that the court must follow previous court decisions upholding New York's prohibition against same-sex "marriages." The state has prevailed in two similar cases.
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M050113   Media crash
    "A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don't mean the Democrats," Howard Fineman writes at the MSNBC Web site (msnbc.msn.com).
    "I'm talking about the 'mainstream media,' which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the Internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history," Mr. Fineman said.
    "Now the AMMP is reeling, and not just from the humiliation of CBS News. We have a president who feels it's almost a point of honor not to hold more press conferences — he's held far fewer than any modern predecessor — and doesn't seem to agree that the media has any 'right' to know what's really going in inside his administration. The AMMP, meanwhile, is regarded with ever-growing suspicion by American voters, viewers and readers, who increasingly turn for information and analysis only to non-AMMP outlets that tend to reinforce the sectarian views of discrete slices of the electorate."
    The notion of a neutral, nonpartisan mainstream press is, he said, "pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things."
    "The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS's star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon's fate as the first president to resign.
    "The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press, but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born."
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M050115   Another scandal?
    USA Today is engaged in an active cover-up concerning its own publication of a phony Bush National Guard story using the same bogus documents used by CBS, the group Accuracy in Media (AIM) charges.
    The story was printed on Sept. 9, the day after the fraudulent story was reported by Dan Rather, the group said.
    AIM said it has been demanding action for months, asking for USA Today Editor Ken Paulson to apologize.
    "It is a scandal on top of another journalistic scandal," AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid said.
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R050115   Pledge to refile
    A congressman whose Pledge Protection Act passed the House in the final days of the 108th Congress, yet never got a Senate vote, will refile the legislation in the wake of atheist Michael Newdow's renewed "assault" on the Pledge of Allegiance.
    Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri Republican, says Mr. Newdow's latest federal lawsuit seeking to outlaw the recitation of the Pledge phrase "under God" is another effort to prevent freedom of speech by an "activist judiciary."
    The original act sought to protect the Pledge by removing jurisdiction of the federal courts in questioning its constitutionality.
    "This is a disturbing effort to stifle the right of the children of our country to echo a commitment to what the Declaration of Independence calls 'a firm reliance on Divine Providence,' and must not be allowed to stand," Mr. Akin says.
    Mr. Newdow — who won his case in federal court in 2002, arguing it was unconstitutional to recite the Pledge in public schools — saw it dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court because he did not have custody of his young daughter, whom he purported to represent.
    Now, he's joined in a new lawsuit with eight others — parents and children — who claim to be damaged by reciting the Pledge.
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R050112   President outlines role of his faith
 

By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush said yesterday that he doesn't "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord," but that he is always mindful to protect the right of others to worship or not worship.
    Mr. Bush told editors and reporters of The Washington Times yesterday in an interview in the Oval Office that many in the public misunderstand the role of faith in his life and his view of the proper relationship between religion and the government.
    "I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is.
    "On the other hand, I think more and more people understand the importance of faith in their life," he said. "America is a remarkable place when it comes to religion and faith. We had people come to our rallies who were there specifically to say, 'I'm here to pray for you, let you know I'm praying for you.' And I was very grateful about that."
    Liberals have challenged his faith-based initiative, which allows religious organizations to apply for government funds to administer social services such as drug rehabilitation and food banks.
    The president said there is no reason to fear his conspicuous practice of his Methodist faith or his approval of religious expression in the public square.
    Mr. Bush said he leans heavily on his religion every day that he is in the Oval Office and cannot imagine any man handling the pressures of the job without leaning on God.
    "I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit," Mr. Bush said. "That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit.
    "On the other hand, I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord," he said.
    Michael Newdow, the California atheist who famously failed to get the words "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, is now attempting to get a D.C. District Court to prevent clergy from participating in Mr. Bush's inauguration.
    "I will have my hand on the Bible," Mr. Bush said, expressing a tone of amusement and exasperation that one day, even the 216-year-old centerpiece of the inaugural ceremony might be challenged.
    However, Mr. Bush said that unlike many Christians, he does not think that faith is under attack by culture at large and points to the "backlash" against attempts to further secularize the public square as proof.
    "The great thing about our country is somebody can stand up and say, 'We should try to take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance,'" Mr. Bush said. "On the other hand, the backlash was pretty darn significant.
    "This is a country that is a value-based country," he said. "Whether they voted for you or not, there's a lot of values in this country, for which I'm real proud."
    Mr. Bush said he has "still got a rigorous agenda" for his faith-based initiative.
    The federal government has funneled "about $1.2 billion" to religious groups so far, the president said, and he hopes to improve on that in the next four years.
    "What we are going to do in the second term is to make sure that the grant money is available for faith communities to bid on, to make sure these faith-based offices are staffed and open," Mr. Bush said. "But the key thing is, is that we do have the capacity to allow faith programs to access enormous sums of social service money, which I think is important."
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O050112   2 Belarusians extradited in child-porn case
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The president and the marketing director of a Belarus-based Internet billing company linked to more than 1,000 child-pornography arrests worldwide have been extradited from France to the United States to face conspiracy, money-laundering and child-pornography charges, federal authorities said yesterday.
    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman Dean Boyd said Yahor Zalatarou, 26, and Alexei Buchnev, 27, both of Minsk, Belarus, were arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., after their arrival from France.
    Mr. Boyd said Mr. Zalatarou, president of Regpay Co. Ltd., and Mr. Buchnev, the firm's marketing director, were ordered held pending trial, tentatively scheduled for March 1.
    Both are charged with conspiracy to transport by computer visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to engage in illegal financial transactions. Mr. Zalatarou also is charged with conspiracy to advertise child pornography.
    Mr. Boyd said the July 2003 arrest of the two men in France was part of the first phase of an ICE investigation known as "Falcon," which focused on Regpay's billing services for 50 child-pornography Web sites and a number of suspected child-pornography Web sites it operated on its own.
    The investigation, he said, also focused on Connections USA Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., another credit-card processing company. Two of its officers have pleaded guilty in agreements with the government. The president of the company, Arthur Levinson, was charged with money-laundering offenses and will be tried in March.
    Mr. Boyd said the second phase of the investigation is ongoing and focuses on thousands of people worldwide who purchased child-pornography subscriptions from the Regpay sites.
    ICE agents have arrested 190 persons in the United States in connection with the case, he said. The agency also has provided leads to foreign law-enforcement members that have resulted in approximately 860 arrests in Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, China, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, he said.
    Mr. Boyd said some of the subscribers arrested included a California seventh-grade teacher, the chief of pediatric medicine at a New York hospital, a minister at a girls school in New Jersey, a Louisiana Catholic priest and a Nevada camp counselor. Most recently, an award-winning firefighter in California was charged with 56 counts of possessing child pornography purchased from Regpay-affiliated sites, he said.
    Mr. Zalatarou and Mr. Buchnev were arrested at a Paris restaurant after they had been persuaded to travel to France in a ruse arranged by ICE agents. The two had been in custody in Paris since their arrest and had been fighting extradition until a French court ruled in favor of sending them to the United States.
    Aliaksandr Boika, 29, Regpay's technical administrator, was arrested in Spain on July 31, 2003. He was extradited to New Jersey in June and is charged with conspiracy to advertise child pornography, conspiracy to transport and ship by computer visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to engage in financial transactions involving more than $10,000.
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R050112   CBS fails to escape cloud of news bias
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Was political bias at work at CBS News?
    The network devoted six pages to the question in its 224-page investigative report on the journalistic failures of a "60 Minutes" story attacking President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. The report denied a "political agenda" had been at work.
    The conclusion left some incredulous.
    "It's all just bizarre. The least credible part of the CBS report is the network's insistence there was no evidence of political bias. Most viewers could see the bias all over the story," said Tim Graham of the Alexandria-based Media Research Center yesterday.
    "There was no conservative or Republican viewpoint represented either," he added. "Besides that, '60 Minutes' has a history of producing anti-Bush stories."
    The report's inconclusive language could indicate CBS is adopting a defensive posture against potential lawsuits, according to Minneapolis-based lawyer John H. Hinderaker, who writes for Power Line, the conservative Web log that originally questioned the credibility of documents used in the Sept. 8 CBS story.
    "The report lays out facts, reaches no conclusion and finally leaves political bias as an open question — which is how it gets reported in the press," said Mr. Hinderaker, who said that e-mails from fired CBS producer Mary Mapes contained in the report are the "smoking gun" that could confirm the presence of a political agenda.
    "By not slamming the door on the bias issue, they could be preparing for potential legal action. It's relevant to their public relations, but also to charges of malice, in the event they are sued," Mr. Hinderaker said, though he would not identify any potential litigants. "The CBS report states their people 'believed' what they were reporting, and that's almost a legal standard when the threat of malice comes up in litigation."
    CBS News fired three news executives and a producer Monday after an independent investigation found "60 Minutes Wednesday" violated basic journalistic standards when it used forged documents and failed to investigate sources that claimed Mr. Bush compromised his National Guard service 30 years ago.
    Miss Mapes denied Monday she had a political agenda in producing the "60 Minutes" segment. Rumors already circulate about the Dallas-based producer, including one that claimed she had been hired by PBS "at taxpayer's expense," according to one source.
    "That is absolutely untrue," a PBS spokeswoman said yesterday.
    In the meantime, the refusal of CBS to confirm or deny the presence of political bias is a cultural moment for some observers.
    "At the end of the day, the one mistake that smacks of anything beyond zeal or procedural error is CBS arranging the conversation with John Kerry's adviser, Joe Lockhart. Depending on your point of view, that's either the smoking gun of bias or an unprofessional mistake of a competitive soul," noted Matthew Felling of the District-based Center for Media and Public Affairs.
    "The guys who wrote the report seem to think there was bias. Throughout their findings, they laid out examples of bias, but then said were not quite sure how they got there. This is starting to get metaphysical," said Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard, who categorized the investigation as a "whitewash."
    But he is optimistic, he said. The report, for all its elusiveness, can be useful to the press.
    "This is a good way to out the problem people," Mr. Last said. "I just hope it doesn't tarnish the daily beat reporters who do get their stories right. We need to remember that most journalists are not Mary Mapes."
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R050112   Episcopal bishops see chance to avoid schism
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Episcopal Church has one last chance to back down from its consecration of an openly homosexual bishop, thereby sparing the worldwide Anglican Communion from a potential split, say conservatives at an Episcopal bishops' conclave this week in Salt Lake City.
    The meeting today and tomorrow will deal with the "Windsor Report," a lengthy document issued last fall blaming the nation's 2.2-million-member Episcopal Church for potentially splitting the 70-million-member Anglican Communion over the consecration of V. Gene Robinson.
    Unless the Americans show some willingness to suspend homosexual ordinations and same-sex blessings, conservative bishops say a showdown is expected next month at a gathering of the world's Anglican archbishops in Ulster, Northern Ireland.
    In a letter dated Jan. 4, Central Florida Bishop John Howe told fellow bishops there would be a "pastoral disaster" in the church if bishops come up with "an unclear or ambiguous response" to the report.
    "Even worse would be for us to create the perception that we are dodging the report altogether or trying to 'buy time' by employing delaying tactics," he wrote.
    Ten Episcopal bishops have aligned themselves with the Network of Anglican Dioceses and Parishes, which represents about 10 percent of the denomination, to oppose the November 2003 consecration of Bishop Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.
    The letter suggests Episcopal bishops collectively express "regret" for their actions and agree to a moratorium on consecrating more homosexual bishops and allowing same-sex blessing ceremonies in their dioceses until the entire Anglican Communion agrees both are legitimate.
    Those bishops who believe these actions are legitimate must also present their case to the rest of the Communion, he wrote, and the several dozen bishops who took part in the Robinson consecration ceremony should refrain from representing the church at international gatherings.
    Bishop Howe's letter may have little effect because among the bishops who took part in the consecration is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Frank Griswold.
    The Robinson consecration appears to have spurred defections from the denomination. Statistics released by the church in November show a drop of 35,988 members from the denomination in 2003 — more than four times the 8,000 Episcopalians who departed in 2002.
    Episcopal Church attendance on Sundays also was down nationally to 823,017 in 2003 from 846,640 in 2002, and 85 churches closed in 2003.
    However, the three largest parishes — all in Texas — saw an increase in members. St. Martin's in Houston, with 7,365 members, increased by 228 in 2003; St. Michael's & All Angels in Dallas, with 7,243 members, increased by 77; and the evangelical/charismatic Christ Church in Plano had 1,975 members in 2003, up from 1,933 the year before.
    The average financial pledge from parishioners also rose from $1,723 in 2002 to $1,791 in 2003.
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O050112   Threat to Hillary?
    "The indictment of Hillary Clinton's 2000 campaign-finance director, David Rosen, may pose a threat to the senator's presidential bid," New York Post columnist Dick Morris writes.
    "For now, the federal indictment is focused only on Rosen, but it is not hard to see the process creeping up the campaign food chain to the senator herself," Mr. Morris said.
    "At issue are the expenses the campaign incurred in an August 2000 fund-raiser for Hollywood glitterati. Rosen was indicted for claiming that the event cost $400,000 when, federal prosecutors allege, he knew the actual cost to be $1.1 million. Under federal campaign-finance rules, the Clinton campaign was obliged to pay for 40 percent of the cost of the fund-raiser. So, if the gala cost $400,000, the campaign had to pay only $160,000, but if the price tag was actually $1.1 million, the campaign would have been on the hook for $440,000.
    "By understating the cost of the party, Rosen was, in effect, giving Hillary's campaign an extra $280,000.
    "While there is no indication that the Senate candidate knew of the understating of the cost of the event, is it credible that she would not be aware of a decision that gave her campaign more than a quarter of a million dollars as it entered the final three months before the election?"
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H050112    ILLINOIS   State House passes gay-rights bill
    SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois House yesterday passed a bill that bans discrimination against homosexuals and sent it to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who has said he supports the measure.
    If the Democratic governor signs it, Illinois will join 14 states that bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. The measure adds "sexual orientation" to the state law that protects people from bias based on race, religion and similar traits. The law applies to discrimination in such areas as jobs and housing.
    The House's 65-51 vote came on the last possible day; the bill would have died had it not been approved before the new legislature is sworn in today. The Senate approved the measure Monday 30-27.
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R050112   MICHIGAN    School board decides not to offer Bible class
    FRANKENMUTH — A rural school district will not offer a religious group's Bible class as an elective high-school course, ending a yearlong debate.
    The school board in Frankenmuth, about 75 miles north of Detroit, decided with one dissenting vote Monday not to offer the "Bible As Literature and History" class at Frankenmuth High School, after the recommendation of school Superintendent Michael Murphy.
    Mr. Murphy said the class was not academically rigorous enough and that classes in English, art and history already include studies on how the Bible affects American society.
    "It goes beyond talking about religion and becomes faith-based," he said.
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M050111   CBS fires 4; Rather stays on
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

CBS News yesterday fired three news executives and a producer after an independent investigation found "60 Minutes Wednesday" violated 10 journalistic standards when it used forged documents to attack President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. Investigators said CBS failed to authenticate the documents and to investigate the background of their source. They also determined that the story was not politically motivated. "There were lapses every step of the way," CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves said yesterday. "The bottom line is that much of the September 8 broadcast was wrong, incomplete or unfair." But it was not enough to get CBS News anchor Dan Rather or CBS News President Andrew Heyward fired. Both were involved with airing the story. Mr. Rather, who already has announced he would leave the anchor desk on March 9, personally delivered it. He will remain on staff as an investigative correspondent. "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken personal responsibility," Mr. Moonves said. "He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down. ... We believe any further action would be inappropriate." Mr. Rather did not anchor last night's evening news, which led with a four-minute segment on the investigation. The investigation — ordered by CBS executives on Sept. 22 and supervised by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press President Louis Boccardi — denied partisan interests but criticized CBS' failure to question the credibility of the documents. "The panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at '60 Minutes Wednesday' drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content," they noted in the 224-page investigation. They concluded a "competitive rush" led to the mistakes. The story was broadcast two months before President Bush was re-elected, prompting some Republican lawmakers to say it was a hatchet job on Mr. Bush meant to sway voters in the close presidential race. Based on six documents, the story claimed Mr. Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard and later disobeyed a direct order to appear for service in 1972. The authenticity of the documents was disputed by Internet-based writers and then by the mainstream press, many of whom concluded that the story had been rushed to broadcast at a critical time during the 2004 presidential election. After the investigation was complete, CBS fired Mary Mapes, the story's producer; Josh Howard, executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday"; Mr. Howard's top deputy, Mary Murphy; and CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West. The probe found that Miss Mapes claimed that the documents were authenticated when in fact she had found only one expert to vouch for a single signature. They said she also failed to question the background of her source, retired Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who had a history of criticizing both Mr. Bush and the National Guard. The panel also said they were unable to establish the authenticity of the documents, which independent analysts at several news organizations, including The Washington Times, said were forged. The CBS investigation drew critics. "An independent group has underscored what we already knew: CBS failed to uphold its most basic responsibility to its viewers when it aired a false and scurrilous story that deceived the American people and impugned their president," House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said yesterday. "Now it is time for CBS to take the responsible step and formally retract the story. Certainly President Bush, after four months, deserves an on-air retraction," Mr. Blunt said. White House spokesman Scott McClellan was not as critical. "CBS has taken steps to hold people accountable, and we appreciate those steps. We also hope that CBS will take steps to prevent something like this from happening again," Mr. McClellan said. The network has adopted a set of seven new journalistic rules to ensure its credibility, and hired a new vice president of "news standards" to oversee them. But the problems are deeper, some say. "CBS News hasn't gone far enough in addressing the institutional problem of liberal bias within its ranks," said Brent Bozell of the Alexandria-based Media Research Center. "Both CBS News President Andrew Heyward and Dan Rather had to sign off on the anti-Bush story that CBS' own panel has concluded was inaccurate and unfair —and yet neither man has been held accountable." Mr. Bozell called Miss Mapes "a scapegoat," adding that CBS fully intended to destroy Mr. Bush and that "Mr. Rather and Mr. Heyward were complicit in this action." But some think CBS has suffered enough. "Everybody's been punished here — punished by firing, or by demotion. It's a public disgrace for Dan Rather and Andrew Heyward. They've been put through the ringer," said Alex Jones of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy. "This is a cautionary tale, mostly about the destructive nature and competitive environment of getting a scoop on the air to attract viewers, regardless of whether it is a worthy story or not," Mr. Jones added. Indeed, CBS admitted "myopic zeal" to get the story out first and to later offer "rigid and blind defense of the segment." Michael Paranzino, who organized a Maryland-based viewer boycott of CBS, called for Mr. Rather to be fired, adding that the investigation did not solve the "fundamental problem — CBS News is dominated from page boy to president with Manhattan liberals who are out of touch with mainstream America." Greg Sheffield, editor of Ratherbiased.com — one of several Web bloggers who initially faulted Mr. Rather's story — thinks the case isn't closed until CBS fires Mr. Heyward for his approval of a "public relations strategy of stonewalling and lying." Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie praised CBS for its investigation, then applauded "a vigilant public" and journalists who "are hardworking professionals who practice their craft with honesty and integrity."
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H050111   High court lets stand ban on gay adoption
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined without comment to hear a challenge to a 1977 Florida law that prevents homosexuals from adopting children.
    The rejection means that Florida's uniquely worded law — "no person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual" — will stand.
    It dashes hopes by homosexual rights groups that the high court would review the state law, which clearly discriminates against homosexuals.
    "This case deserved to be heard," said Patricia Logue, senior counsel at the homosexual rights organization Lambda Legal. "No other state in the country has a law that completely bans lesbian and gay people from adopting children."
    "The Supreme Court, sadly, has allowed the lives of thousands of children adrift in Florida's scandal-ridden foster care system to be governed by the ugly prejudices of legislators — not even our current legislators, but the prejudices of Florida lawmakers of a generation ago," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which represented the plaintiffs.
    However, Mat Staver, president of the conservative Liberty Counsel legal defense organization, said the Supreme Court's rejection supports other states that might choose to add or strengthen laws against homosexuals' adopting.
    Utah, for example, doesn't allow any unmarried, cohabiting couples to adopt, and Mississippi forbids "couples of the same gender" to adopt. However, both of these states allow single-parent adoptions, which presumably could include homosexuals.
    Ironically, Florida law allows homosexuals to be foster parents. The three Florida cases involve homosexual men who are foster parents or guardians and are seeking the right to adopt the children in their care.
    Adoption by homosexual couples or persons is not uncommon in the United States, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights advocacy group. Many child-welfare groups, adoption advocates and children's health organizations support homosexual adoption, saying a parent's homosexual orientation doesn't harm children.
    Traditional-values groups and their allies say that research overwhelmingly finds that married, two-parent homes are best for children and that neglected, abused and abandoned children in foster care are especially in need of such intact homes.
    The Florida adoption lawsuit was filed in 1999. A federal judge in Miami upheld Florida's law in 2001.
    Last year, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta also upheld the law, saying, "We have found nothing in the Constitution that forbids this policy judgment."
    Florida's Legislature is the "proper forum" for this debate, and "we do not sit as a superlegislature to award by judicial decree what was not achievable by political consensus," the appellate court added.
    The full appellate court, in a 6-6 decision, later declined to reconsider the case.
    In their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, ACLU lawyers argued that the federal government had a right to intervene in their case because the Florida adoption law violated equal-protection rights for homosexuals who seek to adopt and for children who are being raised by homosexuals who cannot adopt them.
    In their defense, lawyers for the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) said the law should be upheld because Florida's interest in placing children with married mothers and fathers has been recognized as legitimate by Florida state courts.
    "Florida law is clear on this issue, and [the department] will continue to act in accordance with that law," said DCF spokesman Tim Bottcher.
    In other action yesterday, the Supreme Court:
    •Refused to consider former Ohio Rep. James A. Traficant's challenge to his bribery and racketeering conviction.
    •Let stand a lower court ruling that allowed Missouri's Ku Klux Klan chapter into the state highway litter cleanup program. The state had not wished to partner with the group because it discriminates based on race.
    •Declined to consider whether Pennsylvania officials were wrong to keep independent Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot in November.
    •Let stand a lower ruling that Major League Baseball did not have to rehire 10 umpires who were still out of work after a 1999 mass resignation.
    •Said it would not speed up a decision on whether to consider a challenge to President Bush's authority to name Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to a federal appeals court while the Senate was on a holiday break.
    •Asked for the Bush administration's views in a case that questions whether Utah can keep thousands of tons of radioactive waste out of the state or whether the federal government has exclusive control over the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.
    •Rejected an appeal from Indian tribes in Milwaukee who sought to acquire a western Wisconsin dog track and turn it into a casino. Then-Gov. Scott McCallum vetoed the idea in 2001, because he opposed any expansion of gambling.

     This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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R050111   Bush team brushes off atheist's lawsuit
 

By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A California atheist's lawsuit to prevent Christian clergy from praying in the presidential inauguration should be dismissed because it is a recycled case about an issue that does not violate the U.S. Constitution, attorneys for President Bush said.
    "There is no reason to 'reverse course' and abandon a widely accepted, noncontroversial aspect of the inaugural ceremony after over 200 years of this proper solemnization of a national event," the president's attorneys said in a 65-page response to the suit.
    Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, who filed the response Friday, wrote that atheist Michael Newdow, a Sacramento, Calif., doctor and lawyer, filed a similar lawsuit in 2002 that was rejected by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco.
    Mr. Newdow's "current action should be dismissed for this reason alone," Mr. Keisler said.
    A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for Thursday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Mr. Newdow filed his complaint last month.
    In his lawsuit, Mr. Newdow said a benediction and convocation by Christian ministers at the inauguration violates the establishment and exercise clauses of the First Amendment, which state that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
    Even if the court were to rule in Mr. Newdow's favor, the president could still place his hand on a Bible when sworn in, and Christian songs could still be played.
    During Mr. Bush's inauguration in 2001, the Rev. Franklin Graham and the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell uttered Christian prayers, which Mr. Newdow has called "constitutionally offensive."
    Inauguration organizers have yet to announce who will pray during next week's ceremony, but they confirmed an invocation and a benediction will be held by ministers chosen by the president.
    Mr. Newdow has asked the court for injunctive relief, a ruling that would take effect in time to be enforced at the inauguration.
    In his response, Mr. Keisler said that even though Mr. Newdow is "personally offended by such prayers," his objections have no standing for a federal lawsuit, citing a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the establishment of chaplains and the utterance of prayers in state legislatures.
    However, Mr. Newdow argued in his lawsuit that there is a distinction between prayer in government chambers and prayer at a presidential inauguration.
    "This is the most important public ceremony we have in our public existence, the inauguration," he wrote. "This is public, not just for [lawmakers]."
    The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a D.C.-based public-interest law firm, has filed a 24-page amicus brief in support of Mr. Bush.
    "The expression of prayer at the presidential inauguration is not only constitutional, but an important part of the history and heritage of this nation," said Jay Sekulow, the ACLJ's chief counsel.
    Mr. Newdow became a national figure when he argued before the Supreme Court last March for the removal of the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The court dismissed his case on the grounds that Mr. Newdow could not represent his 10-year-old daughter, who is in the custody of his ex-wife and who believes in God.
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R050111   Christians face hearing in felonies at gay rights event
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Four Christian activists face arraignment tomorrow in Philadelphia on felony charges in what they describe as their "peaceful protest" of a homosexual rights event last fall.
    The defendants, all members of an evangelical Christian group called Repent America, "exercised their First Amendment rights by preaching the Gospel, and they did it peacefully," said Brian Fahling, an attorney for the American Family Association, who is representing them.
    Each has been charged with three felonies — criminal conspiracy, inciting to riot and ethnic intimidation — charges that Mr. Fahling called "the most profound abuse of power I've ever seen."
     The ethnic intimidation charge was filed under Pennsylvania's hate-crimes law. A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said sexual orientation is one of the protected categories covered by the ethnic intimidation statute.
    The defendants, known to their supporters as the "Philadelphia Four," have become a cause celebre for Christian conservatives and commentators.
    Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of the Concerned Women for America, said it was "frightening to see religious persecution on American soil, especially in the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence."
    "Even if Repent America infringed on the law, they don't deserve three felony counts totaling 47 years in jail."
    Led by 25-year-old Michael Marcavage of the suburb of Lansdowne, Pa., the four were among 11 protesters initially arrested Oct. 10 during an annual homosexual block party in Philadelphia known as OutFest.
    Mr. Fahling said the city of Philadelphia contributed about $22,000 to fund last year's OutFest, a celebration of National Coming Out Day, which encourages homosexuals to publicly proclaim their orientation.
    A Philadelphia Police Department arrest report said the protesters were "carrying extremely large signs and using bullhorns to try to disrupt the event." The reports also said the protesters "began preaching anti-gay/lesbian messages" and that the area in which they protested was directly in front of tables where vendors were trying to sell merchandise.
    The protesters at three times ignored police commands to move, according to the report, before moving toward the event's main stage — opposite to the direction of the commands.
    "They continued using the bullhorns to shout their anti-gay/lesbian message to the crowd which surrounded the protesters," the report said. By this time, the crowd was in excess of 500 people, according to police.
    The report went on to say the crowd "had to be restrained by uniformed and plainclothes police to ensure the safety of the protesters." Told he would be arrested, Mr. Marcavage lay down in the street.
    In an interview last week on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor," Chuck Volz, a legal adviser to the OutFest event, said the protesters, with their signs and bullhorns, were telling attendees: " 'You're a sinner. You're going to hell. You're an abomination' — that sort of stuff."
    District Attorney Lynne Abraham "believes everyone's rights must be protected," said spokeswoman Cathie Abookire, but another official in the District Attorney's Office, who asked not to be named, said, "The protesters don't have unlimited rights to protest wherever they want."
    In addition to the felony charges, the four Repent America members who will be arraigned today are charged with several misdemeanors, including failing to disperse, disorderly conduct, obstructing the highway, recklessly endangering another person and possessing an instrument of crime — presumably the bullhorn.
    On Fox, Mr. Volz said he had formed a group, the Pink Angels, which confronted the Philadelphia protesters "with our own signage and whistles to drown out their bullhorns."
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M050111   Election scandal
    "The new media — talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups — have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather's use of phony memos by showcasing another scandal: Washington state's bizarre race for governor, which features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Florida to retire the crown for electoral incompetence," John Fund writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.
    "If Democrat Christine Gregoire, who leads by 129 votes and is scheduled to take the office Wednesday, eventually has to face a new election, it will have been in large part because of the new media's ability to give the story altitude before it reached the courts," Mr. Fund said. ...
    "In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individual voters who can be accounted for. ... More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for [Republican candidate Dino Rossi.] Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were 'enhanced' with Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated.
    "Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines."
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M050111    Philosopher needed
    "In a document shot through with agnosticism, perhaps the most agnostic section of the CBS Report is a six-page segment toward the end titled, 'Whether There Was a Political Agenda Driving the September 8 Segment,' " Jonathan V. Last writes at the Weekly Standard Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).
    "The panel acknowledges that some sectors of the media had imputed political bias to Rathergate. So diligence required that the panel ask both Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, directly, whether or not they had been politically motivated: 'Both strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the segment.'
    "Surprising? Not really. It seems unlikely that either Rather or Mapes would even perceive their own political bias — and even more unlikely that they would cop to it if they did perceive it. Yet for [panel co-chairmen former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press President Louis D. Boccardi], their denial is enough, since 'The panel will not level allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof.' ...
    "The report tells us that Mapes and Rather had pursued the story for five years; that they used a number of anti-Bush sources as key components of the story; that they tried to use a 'gratuitous' and 'inflammatory' interview with [retired Army Col. David Hackworth]; and that Mapes attempted to put [former Texas National Guard member] Bill Burkett in contact with the Kerry campaign.
    "Thornburgh and Boccardi view all of these facts and then turn away, saying that there is no 'persuasive evidence of a political agenda.' ...
    "The CBS report can find evidence of political bias — they admit and document as much; they just can't reach any metaphysical conclusions about why that evidence exists. The esteemed panel has a journalist and an attorney general. Perhaps they should have included a philosopher, too."
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M050115C   Rather tangled web of CBS
 

By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

The new year dawns dank and melancholy, at least for me. Shuffling off the nation's center stage are my favorite sanctimonious hinds, Dan Rather and Bill Moyers. Both have been burning incense before their own graven mugs for years. Soon both will exalt themselves in solitude.
    Mr. Moyers was a gifted understudy of his old boss, Lyndon Johnson, and though he affected piety wherever he went, there was always a whiff of the thug about his person.
    How well I recall the revelations of the journalist Andrew Ferguson, demonstrating that while an independent contractor of PBS the Rev. Moyers made a fortune. Well, his old boss, made a fortune too while working for the government. Why should the Rev. Moyers not do equally well while working for an organization that at least had a parasite's attachment to the federal milch cow? After Mr. Ferguson's revelations appeared in The New Republic, Mr. Moyers harassed him — another page torn from Lyndon's playbook.
    Yet, Mr. Moyers is going quietly into the good night. Mr. Rather is leaving indignantly and beclouded by scandal — another scandal, I might add, that would not exist if the liberals of the dominant media culture would simply admit they are liberals, that they have a liberal bias, and that having a bias is normal for journalists and need not cause them to practice deceit.
    Of course, in practice many of these liberals do practice deceit. In the case of Mr. Rather, he and his associates at CBS aired a phony story about President Bush's National Guard service.
    Whether they knew it was a deceit or not I cannot say, but surely in their cover-up they recognized their deceitfulness. Surely they knew they were stretching the truth when they claimed the phony documents they relied on to support their phony story were provided by "unimpeachable sources."
    Those "sources" ended up being but one source, Bill Burckett. And who is he? Mr. Burckett is a well-known anti-Bush obsessive. Yet maybe Mr. Rather and his colleagues considered Mr. Burckett more than one person, and maybe his very obsessiveness rendered him unimpeachable in their eyes.
    Now in unveiling its 224-page report of Mr. Rather's faulty work, CBS admits the Rather story was unfair and inaccurate, but there is a new deceit. The report claims there is no "basis" for adjudging the existence of "political bias" in Mr. Rather's shabby journalism. Well, as the shrinks are given to saying, "If it's true for you, it's true for you."
    The fact, long established by media pollsters, is that major media are as dominated by the so-called liberal viewpoint as are our universities. I say "so-called liberal point of view" because the modern liberal is not very liberal after all. Neither tolerance nor love of liberty characterizes the point of view of the contemporary liberal, merely conformity. The liberal point of view is a conformist point of view. What it conforms to changes year in and year out, but one thing it always stands by is the demand for rank-and-file conformity. Oh yes, and it demands one more thing: deceit.
    The conformists at CBS have since Mr. Rather's embarrassing report on the president demonstrated they are entoiled to the ethical standards of the liberals' leading ethicist of the last half of the 20th century, Alger Hiss — the master who first demonstrated that the moral high ground could be attained merely by lying, imperturbably lying, sempiternally lying.
    Through every revelation against you, lie. As the evidence against you mounts, lie. Even if the DNA analysis — say the DNA found on a dress purchased from the GAP — discredits your testimony, lie.
    So it appears Mr. Rather continues to deceive. It appears CBS continues to deceive. Nonetheless, it really does not matter all that much. Rather is leaving. CBS has slipped so far in the polls it seems its news reports are only watched by liberals and ignoramuses. And cable provides increasingly the kind of diversity that intelligent viewers seek.

    R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His most recent book is "Hillary Clinton The Dark Road to the White House."
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M050115C   What they knew they really didn't
 

By William Murchison

In life, we all discover, there are things we just, y'know, know. The next pull of the slot-machine lever will produce a cascade of coins. Never mind stopping for directions; the house we're looking for is two streets to the right.
    There is something of this unconscious certainty at the heart of the Dan Rather/"60 Minutes"/George Bush/phony documents scandal — the scandal that at the start of the week led to a high-profile house cleaning at CBS' news division.
    This same certainty is of a different cut, nevertheless. It is ideological. The CBS people just knew George W. Bush had sloughed off in the National Guard during Vietnam, as newly discovered documents seemed to prove.
    They were wrong. Or, to put it as kindly as possible, such proof as they adduced fell short. Accordingly, they not only are wrong but, now, shamed and out of work. And it's too bad, I think a journalist has to say, because executing a header as they fled from grace and authority, they showered mud over a profession already well bemired.
    The special committee investigating the Rather flap of last fall found the CBSers had been afflicted with "myopic zeal." They couldn't have seen an exculpatory explanation for Mr. Bush's National Guard record had it bitten them. Their "zealous belief in the truth of the segment seems to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles." In their "credulity and overenthusiasm," the CBSers failed to run all their traps or even to cock a quizzical eyebrow at this story, which — courtesy of a Bush-despising ex-National Guard commander in Texas — had landed at their feet. The people who mattered knew the story was true.
    Why, though? Why did they just know? Evidently for reasons such as misled dopey Michael Moore last year: The president was a bad guy, and a conservative, if that wasn't merely a synonym for "bad guy."
    Liberals have this way of believing the worst about conservatives, few of whose beliefs they share or even appear to understand.
    The worst effects of this sanguine attitude ("We're just telling the truth, aren't we?") undermine their effectiveness in reporting the news. The news media today are top-heavy with liberals and liberal notions.
    The kind of news that gets reported in terms of "World to end Friday" is, often enough, the kind liberals like. The kind of news that gets reported with finger over lips, if reported at all, is, often enough, the kind liberals dislike.
    Liberals in the media, especially the East and West Coast media, have over the last 40 years shown repeatedly how they just know nonliberals and nonliberal ideas make no sense. Let the quibbles go, they seem to breathe reassuringly. Trust us.
    And get another National Guard documents story rammed down innocent throats? Fat chance.
    The liberal problem, in media terms, is that media liberals can't get away with what they once got away with. There's too much competition — hooray, hooray. Technology affords some hitherto impossible checks and balances. The Weblog, a k a the "blog" — the online diary/commentary that literally millions of Americans now operate — undercuts pretensions to exclusive custody of the news. It helped undercut the CBS story — as did, it is fair to note, the skepticism, perhaps the competitive instinct, of "old media" outlets like The Washington Post.
    CBS almost immediately lost custody of its own story. The news marketplace performed like a true marketplace, with hordes of purveyors scrambling for advantage. CBS' "myopic zeal" convinced few outside the circle of the already convinced.
    One may hate to see Dan Rather, who solemnly vouched for the documents story, go out this way, or the other careless specimens at CBS lose careers. On the other hand, they saw no hand other than the one pointing to what they just knew was true. They got carried away. It couldn't go on. Happily, for the sake of the glorious old First Amendment, it didn't.

    William Murchison is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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O050113C   Right questions in right order
 

By Richard W. Rahn

Knowing what we now know, would you design our tax system, Social Security system, the United Nations and the World Bank as they are designed and now operate? Unless you are brain dead, you would have answered no to all the above.
    International organizations and government programs were all established to solve a perceived problem at the time of their creation. So before recommending how the organization or program can be "reformed," should we not first ask if the original problem still exists and, if so, is the organization or program the right vehicle for solving it?
    Let's start off with the easy one — the World Bank was set up after World War II as a tool in the Cold War. The idea was to provide loans to governments and their projects that would assist in economic development. The World Bank was predicated on the belief there were worthy projects the private sector would not fund. More than a half-century later, we know there were good reasons the private sector would not lend for many of these projects: They made no economic sense.
    The World Bank was created when many believed socialism and big government were the solutions. It is now recognized by most knowledgeable and thinking people that big government is more often a problem than a solution. There is considerable evidence the World Bank has made matters worse rather than better, by misallocating resources to irresponsible governments. These often use World Bank loans to impede more efficient private competition, while saddling their citizens with enormous liabilities. The people are then stuck with the need to repay loans for which they received little or no benefit.
    We now know the necessities for sustained economic development and growth are: the rule of law; private property protections; free markets; free trade, low rates of government spending, taxation and regulation; and stable money.
    Without the above, World Bank money is poured into a rat hole. With the above, World Bank money is not needed.
    There is close to a zero chance Congress would approve creation of the World Bank today, given what we now know about economic development. Thus, if we would not start it now, why should we just not abolish the World Bank rather than try to reform something we don't need?
    Social Security was set up when Americans had large families and on average did not live all that long — so its Ponzi scheme structure looked almost reasonable in the 1930s.
    Now people have very small families, and average life spans are increasing far beyond what was thought possible. It is obvious to all who have looked at and understood the data (which excludes many liberal Democrats) that "reform" is necessary or, more correctly, a different type of program is needed.
    But before we debate whether we should have "private accounts" or cut benefits, perhaps we should begin by agreeing what kind of Social Security system we want and then figure out how to pay for it and work out the transition.
    I would prefer a system that allowed people to choose their retirement age (recognizing that the earlier one retires the less one would receive, so one might have the right to choose to retire anytime between age 50 and 90, for example) rather than have the government mandate when we should each retire. Individuals have very different risk, health and work interest profiles. And in this day we can accommodate these differences by giving people various options to suit their own needs and desires, rather than put everyone in the old one?size-fits-all model. Is this not where we should begin?
    The president has just named a commission to develop a tax-reform plan. We have learned from past experience that meaningful tax reform can only occur when coupled with major tax cuts. The vested interests that shaped our existing tax system have not withered and blown away. A static, revenue-neutral, major tax reform plan will mean there are likely to be as many, if not more, losers than winners. Hence, chances of passage are slight. The real problem is that our social welfare is lessened because we have such a large and stifling government.
    Dan Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation has compiled an extensive list of studies that try to determine the optimum size of government, and, in virtually all cases, researchers find government is too large — often very substantially so.
    Given this knowledge, should we not begin by developing a plan to reduce the size of government to maximize social welfare?
    Let's assume a careful review determines government is at least 25 percent too large. The next step should be development of a plan to reduce government to something close to its optimum size over a reasonable time.
    The third step would be to figure out the least destructive way to finance this optimum-size government and the appropriate tax system to do so.
    The U.N. was designed when most of the world's people did not live under democratic regimes, and the world was moving toward socialism and away from market economies. Today, most of the world's peoples live under at least partially democratic regimes, and market economies are on the rise.
    Rather than try to reform the U.N., which is probably almost impossible, why not just let the U.N. wither by defunding it?
    In its place, a global organization could be set up to solve the collective problems of the 21st century. Voting power would be correlated with the degree of liberty and protection of free markets member states accorded their citizens.
    Would this not be better than trying to reform a dysfunctional institution that dealt rather poorly with the last century's problems and certainly is not equipped for the future?
    Before trying to "reform" any existing institution or program, it is important to ask, "What are the problems we face today, and what are today's constraints"? Efforts to reform programs and institutions by trying to make them better at yesterday's tasks is unlikely to lead to improvement. Institutions and programs, like wine, should not be kept beyond their time.

    Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.
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M050112C   Bill of 'myopic' particulars
 

By Cal Thomas

An independent commission has found CBS News guilty of "myopic zeal" in its airing of possibly forged documents that suggested President Bush lied about his service in the National Guard.
    A 224-page report, whose chief authors were former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press Chief Executive Officer Louis D. Boccardi, claimed the pressure of getting the story before competitors, and not political bias, was responsible for the lapse in journalistic judgment.
    And Watergate was a "third-rate burglary."
    CBS fired the report's producer, Mary Mapes and asked three other staffers to resign. Dan Rather, who is leaving his anchor post in March (but will stay on the payroll and report in other capacities), was not disciplined. CBS News President Andrew Heyward will stay.
    This is the Watergate equivalent of locking up the men who broke into Democratic headquarters while ignoring Attorney General John Mitchell, Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Nixon, which CBS News and Dan Rather famously did not do.
    On Page 206, the report indicts "60 Minutes Wednesday," saying it "never carried out basic reporting to attempt to confirm Lt. Col. Burkett's original story that Chief Warrant Officer [George] Conn provided him with the documents. Thus, from the outset, it was the deficient reporting by '60 Minutes Wednesday' that was at the heart of the failures that plagued the segment."
    But it was more than that. Only those who believe the big media are unbiased and lack an agenda will accept the explanation this was a failure solely in journalistic judgment brought on by CBS' desire to beat its partner in the story, the New York Times, which first published it.
    In Section X (Page 211) headlined "Whether there was a political agenda driving the Sept. 8 segment," the report says this is "one of the most subjective, and most difficult [questions], that the panel has sought to answer. The political agenda question was posed by the panel directly to Dan Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest attention in terms of possible agendas. Both strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the segment."
    I guess that settles it, then. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook, but that didn't stop Mr. Rather and CBS News from trying to prove he was. How serious can one take a report that relies strictly on the testimony of the chief "suspects" that they had no political agenda?
    Mr. Burkett certainly had a history of anti-Bush activities and statements, and Mr. Rather's anti-Republican pronouncements are legion and well-chronicled. The Wall Street Journal's John Fund wrote a piece for Opinion Journal.com Oct. 4 in which he quoted a former colleague of Ms. Mapes at KIRO-TV in Seattle, Susan Hutchison, as saying Ms. Mapes "went into journalism to change society. She always was very, very cause-oriented."
    Mr. Fund also quoted Lou Guzzo, a former KIRO news commentator who was counselor to the late Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, a liberal Democrat. Mr. Guzzo said he has no problem with advocates in journalism, "but if you're as liberal and activist as Mary and work on the news rather than the opinion side, it creates problems."
    It certainly does and has for Ms. Mapes, for CBS News and for all of journalism, which continues to be distrusted by a significant percentage of the public precisely because many believe the media do have an agenda and that it mostly favors Democrats and liberal political and social ideology.
    The Thornburgh-Boccardi report says, "It should be noted that '60 Minutes Wednesday' was hardly alone in pursuing this story. Other mainstream media, including USA Today, the New York Times and the Associated Press, were pursuing the same story in what was clearly a competitive race to be first."
    What is this, a doctrine of "innocent by association"? That other media organs were pursuing the same story — a story that had been worked on for years by Mary Mapes, who suddenly thought she had enough to justify going with it just before a national election — is not an excuse, or even a satisfactory explanation for CBS' decision to broadcast it.
    Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (now there's a worthy, but probably unattainable goal), had it right when he commented the report doesn't say what CBS will do to change the climate that led to this outrage.
    While the report recommends certain structural changes within the news division, such as naming a standards and practices executive, reducing competitive pressure, telling senior management the names of confidential sources and appointing a separate team to look into disputed news reports, there were no recommendations about changing the ideological biases inherent at CBS News.
    CBS won't say if it will act on those recommendations, because CBS sees no bias, hears no bias and speaks no bias. End of story. But the public sees it, which is one reason CBS News remains dead last in the ratings.

    Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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R050111C   Debasing judicial debate
 

By Bruce Fein

Slated to lead Senate Democrats in the 109th Congress, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada epitomizes Democratic Party descent from debate to deceit in criticizing conservative Supreme Court justices and distorting court rulings.
    That vertical plunge in intellectual honesty thwarts constructive exchanges over the Constitution and Supreme Court appointments. Mr. Reid and colleagues should either do their judicial homework or remain silent. Nothing is as dangerous as ignorance or propaganda in action.
    James Taranto ( Opinion Journal, Jan. 3) has highlighted Mr. Reid's continued assault on Justice Clarence Thomas' credentials in Mr. Reid's Dec. 26 interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He owlishly pointed to the Hillside Dairy case as exemplary of Justice Thomas' unfitness. According to Mr. Reid, Justice Antonin Scalia had penned a "well reasoned" dissent in Hillside Dairy dazzling with the earmarks of a Harvard graduate, as contrasted with Justice Thomas' "poorly written" counterpart smacking of an "eighth-grade" composition.
    Moreover, the senator sermonized, Justice Thomas' dissent had sinned by questioning the Supreme Court's use of the Commerce Clause to invalidate state laws that burdened interstate commerce, whereas Justice Scalia had respected constitutional precedents.
    The facts discredit Mr. Reid. In Hillside Dairy vs. Lyons (2003), the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to hold California's milk pricing and pooling regulations subject to constitutional attack under the Commerce Clause. Justice Scalia joined the majority opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens. He neither dissented nor wrote a "well reasoned" dissent. Justice Thomas concurred and dissented in part with a one-paragraph opinion relying on his earlier exhaustive dissent, joined by Justice Scalia, in Camps Newfound/Owatonna Inc. vs. Town of Harrison (1997).
    Both Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia would deny that the Commerce Clause, alone, generally empowers the Supreme Court to void state laws it finds obnoxious to free trade among the states. Justice Scalia had come to question that doctrine before Justice Thomas' appointment in Tyler Pipe Industries Inc. vs. Washington State Department of Revenue (1987), Bendix Autolite Corp. vs. Midwesco Enterprises Inc. (1988).
    Mr. Reid's staggering errors in comparing Justice Thomas to Justice Scalia and relying on Hillside Dairy suggests malice and scorn for reasoned debate. It characterizes the majority of Democrat opposition to reshaping constitutional doctrines through the time-honored custom of appointing new judges.
    As Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist recently reminded in his state of the federal judiciary address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt "eventually won the war to change the judicial philosophy of the Supreme Court ... by the gradual process of changing the federal judiciary through the appointment process. ... In this way, our Constitution has struck a balance between judicial independence and accountability, giving individual judges secure tenure but making the federal judiciary ultimately subject to the popular will because judges are appointed and confirmed by elected officials. ... [F]or over 200 years it has served our democracy well and ensured a commitment to the rule of law."
    Democrats and their ideological allies falsely insist the Supreme Court under the stewardships of Chief Justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist have been regularly hostile to racial justice, civil rights, freedom of speech, separation of church and state and privacy. To the contrary, the Burger and Rehnquist courts have sustained racial and gender preferences in education and employment and outlawed all-male military academies in such landmark precedents as Griggs vs. Duke Power (1971), Steelworkers vs. Weber (1979), Fullilove vs. Klutznick (1980), Johnson vs. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County (1987), Virginia vs. United States (1996), and Grutter vs. Bollinger (2004). Further, the court has interpreted the Voting Rights Act to authorize, de facto, racial gerrymandering to promote election of minority candidates.
    Freedoms of speech and of the press have flourished under the Burger and Rehnquist stewardships. Flag desecration laws have been held unconstitutional. And every manner of salacious or sexually explicit expression, including child pornography, has been held protected by the First Amendment. Repeated congressional efforts to shield minors from indecency have been frustrated, most recently in Ashcroft vs. American Civil Liberties Union (2004).
    The separation of church and state has reached an oceanic divide since the beginning of the Burger court in 1969. Chief Justice Burger himself in Lemon vs. Kurtzman (1971) fashioned a three-part test that casts suspicion over any government acknowledgment of religion in public life.
    Thus, a moment-of-silence law was held unconstitutional in Wallace vs. Jaffrey (1982). Ditto for posting the Ten Commandments in Stone vs. Graham (1980). And a court majority shied from upholding the expression "under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance in Elk Grove United School District vs. Newdow (2004).
    On constitutional privacy, the Burger Court voted 7-2 to create a virtually unlimited right to an abortion in Roe vs. Wade (1973) and Doe vs. Bolton (1973). Those core holdings have been undisturbed for 32 years, and have been sustained by Reagan appointees Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Their reversal is unlikely despite new court appointments because of prudence and the force of stare decisis. A constitutional right to homosexual sodomy was ordained by the Rehnquist court in Lawrence vs. Texas (2003).
    In sum, the Democrats' characterization of the Supreme Court since President Richard Nixon as a bulwark of fringe or right-wing conservatism is counterfactual in the extreme.
    Enlightened debate pivots on matters of degree and on balance among competing values and objectives. But that prized goal as regards the Supreme Court is frustrated by egregious and shameless Democrat skewing of the facts and the law.

    Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant at Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.
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M050112E   Damage control at Black Rock
 

By Tony Blankley

Let's start with the title of the CBS Panel: "Report of the Independent Review Panel Dick Thornburgh and Lewis D. Boccardi; Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, Counsel to the Independent Review Panel." My first question is from whom is the review panel and its hired lawyers independent? Who paid the law firm for its hundreds, probably thousands of hours of research? I assume CBS paid them.
    Keep in mind, it was the law firm which did the actual investigation. I have already communicated with one person who was contacted by a lawyer for the firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart who was told that they were carrying out the investigation's research. And, of course, Mr. Thornburgh is a senior member of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP.
    So the lawyers hired to independently investigate CBS have a lawyer/client relationship with CBS. Presumably, as a senior member of that firm, Independent Review Panel Member Richard Thornburgh also has CBS as a fiduciary client. Thus, unlike similarly named government independent investigations — this one is paid for by, and carried out on behalf of, the target of the investigation.
    The foregoing is not meant to impugn the integrity of Mr. Thornburgh. He is a man of proven integrity. But it is meant to try to determine what his ethical obligations required of him. If CBS is his legal client, then he has an ethical obligation to represent CBS's best interests — and certainly to minimize any exposure CBS might have to legal liability for their conduct.
    I would assume that as a former attorney general and public man, he would also feel an ethical obligation not to report facts to the public other than those he believed to be correct and in fair context. While those two sets of ethical imperatives may sometimes be hard to manage simultaneously, from a first reading of the report it appears to me that he has upheld both of those ethical obligations.
    Thus, the report issued this week appears to be a very thorough and accurate rendition of facts that demonstrate the bad journalism practiced by CBS.
    This fulfills both his ethical obligations. He has been honest with his factual report, and, by being so, he has helped CBS appear to be coming clean with the public.
    But where he has boldly sought and reported the objective facts, he has been cautious and inconclusive regarding the subjective characterizing of those facts.
    So, for example, if CBS's own hired lawyer, Mr. Thornburgh had found that the document in question was actually a fraudulent Department of Defense document, or that anyone at CBS subjectively believed the document was fraudulent before they used devices of interstate commerce to broadcast it, he might have exposed CBS to criminal and civil liability on both forging government documents and wire fraud charges. The Thornburgh/Boccardi Report makes no such conclusion, although it does present facts that might lead a reasonable person to reach such a conclusion.
    Neither did the report conclude that political motivations may have played a role in the bad journalism. Although, once again, the report had a whole section meticulously itemizing evidence of political or anti-Bush motivation. (This section, however, while accurate, was very far from exhaustive. For instance, no mention was made of the fact that Dan Rather had, in the past, spoken at a Texas Democratic Party fundraiser. No effort was made to do content analysis of Mr. Rather's news casts over the years to measure party bias — an established technique used in academe on exactly such research projects.)
    The two greatest dangers to CBS coming out of the September 8 broadcast were that it would be found that they: 1) knowingly broadcast fraudulent Defense Department documents, and 2) were motivated to do so because they are biased against George Bush and the Republican Party.
    And it was on those two vital points that the Thornburgh Report failed to come to a conclusion. The report's concession of bad journalism merely conceded the undeniable. That fact had been apparent to most of the public and virtually all of the major news outlets by about September 10. Conceding bad journalism was merely a belated bow to undeniable reality. They couldn't possibly have conceded less than they did.
    But the "Independent Panel" provided one more service to CBS. It showed the report to CBS executives before it released it to the public. Thus CBS was given a public-relations crises management expert's dream — the extraordinarily valuable opportunity of simultaneously announcing the report's findings and CBS's corporate response to the findings — which was to fire key executives and producers below Mr. Rather.
    Thus, there was no headline this week stating that CBS admits documents were a fraud or caused by partisan bias. Instead, the headlines in papers as diverse as The New York Times, The Washington Times and The Washington Post were all the same: CBS fires 4. That headline was followed by the finding that CBS's journalistic standards had been deficient. As they say — that's old news.
    The crisis has been defused. The damage has been limited. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP have earned every last penny of the undoubtedly huge legal/PR bill that is now, presumably, in the mail to CBS.
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O050112E   'Daddy, where's our conscience?'
 

By Suzanne Fields
 
 

    How low can the culture sink? Pretty low, as it turns out, with the exploitation of the question, "Who's Your Daddy?" This is one of the most evocative questions in literature and life, because the answer rests on affection and genes, and reflects the emotions of the one who, for better and for worse, answers. The question elicits pride and prejudice, fear and shame, understanding and ignorance, flowing from the relationship we all have (or have not) with that first man in our lives.

    "Who's Your Daddy?" is a question fraught with such seriousness and potential for trauma that it struck me as impossible that anyone would be so cynical, so vulgar, so heartless as to create a television reality show around the question and answer. Silly me. The Fox Network, with the usual pretensions of seeking to "understand" pop culture, devoted 90 minutes to answering the question for one woman, descending to new depths of degradation.
     Contemporary society is particularly vulnerable to the exploitation of this question when large numbers of single-parent families are headed by women. Adopted children now seek their "birth parents" with the assistance of researchers who read DNA, the ultimate proof of paternity. Reunited children and parents speak poignantly of complicated feelings about abandonment and identity. They can spend years trying to sort things out.
    T.J. Meyers, a girl adopted at six weeks who has grown up to be a beautiful curvaceous blonde ? this is what makes her suitable for television — was put before the cameras to interview eight strange men, asking each one if he is her father. Only one, which Fox verified beforehand through DNA sampling, is the real thing. But each one answers, "I am your father," accompanied by appropriate and extravagant gestures of biting the lower lip, wiping at watery eyes and manipulating tortured frowns. If the daughter chooses the correct suspect she wins $100,000; an imposter gets the $100,000 if she chooses him.
    There's actually more (or less) here than meets the prurient eye. Reality TV magazine discovered that T.J. is actually a soft-porn movie star and Playboy magazine playmate. She describes herself on her Internet website as the "hot chick next door." Thus "Who's Your Daddy?" has more than a touch of the leer. The would-be fathers could be taken for dirty old men, eager to be a hot chick's daddy, if not her father.
    When I first heard of this show, televised last week, I figured it must be satire inspired by a Terry Southern novel, like the author's hilarious quiz show called "What's My Disease," in which panelists try to diagnosis a guest's illness and the audience applauds wildly when