HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. “We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.”

Bhutan's happiness formula

The remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world which puts happiness at the heart of government policy.

The government must consider every policy for its impact not only on Gross Domestic Product, but also on GNH: "Gross National Happiness".

The politics of happiness has led Bhutan to make very different decisions from countries simply searching for wealth.

The capital, Thimpu, is remarkable for its lack of advertising. In an attempt to hold back consumerism the city council recently banned hoardings promoting Coke and Pepsi.

Bhutan was the last nation in the world to introduce television in 1999. Recently they banned a number of channels including international wrestling and MTV, which they felt did little to promote happiness.

Bhutan has even banned plastic bags and tobacco on the grounds that they make the country less happy.

The one set of traffic lights Bhutan ever had was on this junction. But people found them frustrating, so they went back to a human being.

Buddhist prayer flags flutter in the wind. In Bhutan the government puts inner spiritual development on a par with material improvement.

One of the pillars of Bhutan's happiness philosophy is care for the environment. Strict conservation laws are aimed at achieving sustainable development.

Development has been moderated and people are less well off financially than they could have been.

Bhutan has been able to adopt radical policies partly because it is a remote kingdom and partly because it is an absolute monarchy.

Invalid Official Records

Steven Calderon was into his second week working as a security guard for Fry's Electronics when Anaheim, Calif., police walked in and arrested him. Fry's had requested a background check on Calderon, which was done by The Screening Network, a service of ChoicePoint. Calderon spent the next week in jail. No one stopped to question—or verify—whether the background check was accurate in the first place. It wasn't.

Among his alleged crimes: child molestation and rape.

Calderon tried to protest his innocence.

He told his captors that his Social Security number and birth certificate had been stolen nine years before. He told them that they could look up his file.

He had reported the theft to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Station in Norwalk, Calif., 15 miles up Interstate 5.

He asked the Anaheim Police Department to check his fingerprints. Instead, his hands were put in cuffs.

He was taken to a back room. The file that got checked was ... his wallet. Sure, his driver's license listed him as three inches shorter and 15 pounds lighter than the man described on the arrest warrant. But he was Hispanic, and he had the right name and birth date.

Calderon spent the next week in jail—for crimes he didn't commit.

How did he end up in this mess?

A Fry's manager, Tyra Fizel, had requested a background check when Calderon was being hired. The criminal warrants came in a report provided by The Screening Network, a service of ChoicePoint, the $1 billion-a-year data broker based in Alpharetta, Ga. When she saw the felony charges, she called the police.

But no one—not Fizel, not Fry's, not the police—stopped to ask if the data ChoicePoint supplied was accurate. If they had, they might have found out that he was, indeed, an innocent man. Calderon's identity theft report, which he made in Norwalk, Calif., in 1993, wasn't connected with the criminal files that were created in his name.

ChoicePoint, since its Feb. 15 admission that it was fooled into selling personal information on 35,000 Californians to fake businesses set up by Nigerian criminals—and its admission two days later that it really sold information on 145,000 people—has become the poster child for problems in keeping corporate data secure.

Several class-action lawsuits have been filed in the wake of the February security snafu, both by ChoicePoint shareholders and by people whose information ChoicePoint may have sold.

Government bodies—from Congress, to the Federal Trade Commission, to a group of state attorneys general—are in the midst of investigating ChoicePoint for violation of laws regarding the security of information held about consumers by for-profit companies.

In dorms, men and women now room together

BOSTON – Janet Dewar and Matt Danzig met as college freshmen and hit it off so well they now are roommates. They share two on-campus rooms with only one doorway into the hall. That they don't share a gender doesn't give them a second thought.

"At first when I told [my parents] they said, 'We're going to have to talk to you about this,' " says Ms. Dewar, a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. "I told them that there were two rooms, that there's nothing sexual going on between us, and that it wasn't really a big deal."

Some 20 universities and colleges have decided to allow undergraduates of the opposite sex to share an on-campus room. Most quietly made the move in the past five years, with Clark University in Worcester, Mass., deciding this month. It's the final frontier in the decades-long march away from gender separation in college dorms, hallways, and even bathrooms.

While sharing a room comes unnervingly close in the minds of many parents to sharing a bed, advocates for the new arrangements say sexual intimacy rarely plays a role with those who sign up. Instead, for a younger generation it is increasingly common for men and women to just be friends. And some gay and transgendered students welcome the chance to avoid same-sex roommates whom they may not be comfortable around, or who may not accept them.

"Men and women are becoming just as good friends as if they were with their same-sex friends. The dynamics have changed. I think the opposite sex is no longer really such a mystery as it was before," says Jeffrey Chang, a sophomore at Clark University, a school of about 2,800 students.

Mr. Chang led the effort to lift Clark's ban on opposite gender roommates for upperclassmen housing after he and his close friend Allison were barred from living together. As freshmen, the two did their homework together and ate together. So when it came time to choose sophomore housing, why shouldn't they live together?

Why schools change rooming policies

After close to a year of research and discussions, Clark administrators decided to allow it, primarily to accommodate gay and transgendered students, says Denise Darrigrand, dean of students. The school already had single-occupancy bathrooms, making it easier to change policy without paying for renovations.

Many schools changed their policies partly to better accommodate gay and transgendered students, and most schools make it a choice available only to upperclassmen.

The schools report few problems and little reaction to the policy. One parent of a perspective Clark student did call to express outrage over the decision, calling it immoral, according to Ms. Darrigrand.

But most parents contacted for the article didn't know their children's schools had such an option, and few students - no more than several dozen at most schools - actually avail themselves of it.

"I think it's just asking for trouble," says Collette Janson-Sand, whose son goes to the University of Southern Maine, and who was unaware that the school now allows opposite gender roommates. "Even if he said it was platonic, I know what young people are like ... [and] I would also worry how much it would take away from his studies."

Not all parents oppose students cohabitating on campus.

"At first, it did shock me a little, but it doesn't bother me now," says Leslie Duffy, in an e-mail. Her daughter attends Bennington, a college in Vermont that allows upperclassmen of opposite genders to room together.

She hears that most of the male-female roommates are strictly platonic. Those in romantic relationships, she suspects, probably want their space and wouldn't risk being stuck in a tiny room after a breakup. "If not, it's a lesson to learn."

"College-age people make their own decisions about sexual behavior, and living arrangements have never done much to enable or prevent that," Ms. Duffy adds.

Administrators at the University of Southern Maine say some parents actually requested the arrangement so that siblings and relatives could share a room.

Research finds cross-gender friendships are more common among young people. A 2002 survey by American Demographics and Synovate found that 18-to-24-year-olds are almost four times as likely as those age 55 and over to have a best friend of the opposite sex. More than 10 percent of those ages 25 to 34 reported their closest friend to be of the opposite sex.

In a study published in 2000 by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, more than a quarter of participants reported having sex with a friend of the opposite gender. Most continued to be friends.

Concerns about sex outside marriage

Few colleges have been willing to take gender integration to the room level. Harvard University has been only considering the move off and on for years, a spokesman said.

Meghan Grizzle, a Harvard student, is concerned that sexual abuse or rape may rise in these living arrangements. She also writes for Modestly Yours, a blog that argues for a return to sexual modesty. "If women aren't respecting themselves in the way they dress and the way they act, then men aren't going to necessarily feel the need to do it either," she says.

For Christian colleges, concerns about sex outside marriage have kept most from going as far as secular schools in mixing genders in dorms. While it's not unheard of for Christian colleges to have opposite genders on different floors of the same dorm, most opt for separation by wing or even building, says Greg Leeper, associate dean of students at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Ill.

"We need to provide for solid parameters and accountability, and that expresses itself through separate living spaces, while encouraging positive interaction as well," says Mr. Leeper, who cites room visitation hours and 24-hour common areas as opportunities for Trinity students to build relationships.

Most of the schools allowing men and women to room together have liberal reputations, including Swarthmore in Pennsylvania, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

In the past year, some state schools like the University of California at Riverside have joined them.

When asked if living together has brought sexual tension into their friendship, Mr. Danzig said "no" flatly, and Dewar said the same, emphatically. Neither report any awkward or indelicate moments, but when both genders use the same bathroom on the floor not much remains secret. Dating neighbors - known as "hallcest" or "dormcest" - is courting disaster given such close quarters, says Danzig.

"I have a variety of female friends - many are entirely platonic, some of them I am attracted to," says Danzig, who sees Wesleyan's rooming policy as an extension of the school's rejection of traditionally defined notions of gender. "There's less pressure to behave the way that stereotypically males and females are supposed to behave."

Fox: How can the FCC fine us when they don't publish the rules?

The FCC was in court last week, defending its recent indecency rulings before an appellate panel of judges. The case at issue was brought by Fox after the network was sanctioned (but not fined) by the agency for a pair of curse words that went "unbleeped" during two different awards shows. The FCC found the broadcast indecent and Fox sued, looking for clarity as to what constitutes indecent material.

Fox is confused because the FCC does not issue clear standards about what is and is not acceptable on TV and radio. The agency believes that doing so would amount to censorship, so they only sanction broadcasters once a show has aired. The obvious problem here is that broadcasters never know in advance if a show will be found indecent; the end result is self-censorship by networks trying to avoid the FCC's wrath.

The justices grilled both parties to a crispy golden brown (watch the video at C-SPAN) and showed tremendous skepticism toward many of the FCC's claims. Because the agency's powers to regulate indecency rarely receive a court hearing, the case could be an important one. It's too early to know how the court will rule (the decision is not expected for several more months), but the ruling could curtail the FCC's power to regulate broadcast content.

If it does so, it won't quite be the Wild West—the networks will still be accountable to their public. Groups like the Parents Television Council (which is by some accounts responsible for 99 percent of FCC indecency complaints) will shift their focus from the FCC to the networks, who will then be on the receiving end of e-mail and letter campaigns, boycotts, and punditry whenever they show material that some consider objectionable.

Given that YouTube, webcasts, and cable television all go largely unregulated by the government, is it only a matter of time before the agency loses its sanctioning power over the major broadcast networks? Or will it convince the judiciary that over-the-air broadcasters need special government oversight? Given the direction that things are moving in the industry, it may not really matter either way; unregulated distribution channels (web broadcasts, cable channels, satellite radio, BitTorrent, etc.) are exploding. The major networks will simply avoid FCC problems by censoring over-the-air broadcasts and making the unedited material available online (as NBC recently did with the SNL joke song "Dick in a Box").

The FCC will eventually need to 1) call "uncle" and devote its resources to other regulatory problems, 2) start regulating all sorts of new distribution channels, or 3) continue to regulate over-the-air broadcasters even as they lose relevance and simply post objectionable material online. We're going with option three unless the court forces the FCC's hand.

HD disk format wars are over

By Charlie Demerjian:

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).

Yes, in a year where Sony rootkitted it's customers, lied to my face about their actions (hi John, still have your number, kisses), and fell flat with anything related to Blu-Ray, things couldn't get worse right? Well, the other camp, HD-DVD is only slightly less nasty, but still unacceptable. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they both failed in the market.

MS and the media companies sold you out hoping to reap more and more profits. Let me just say I held out no hope that they would behave in anything less than a socially irresponsible fashion, but the depths of their depravity did end up shocking me.

Then came the PC makers, the dumb sheep that they are. There seems to be a race to see who can pass the buck quickest in this camp. From my dealing with them last CES where they said 'we have to screw our customers, we were asked nicely to', to the blaming of people up and down the food chain from them, it is a comic scenario. Pathetic.

Then comes the chipmakers, AMD and Intel, and the respective platforms, Live and VIIV. What laughable efforts those are. A year and a half ago, I said that Intel sold you out, and they did. The DRM infested nightmares of consumer rights removal that are the media platforms have one thing in common, the content mafia is quite adamant that they are still too insecure. The strategy from Intel was to start at a middle ground and push to the consumer side of things as time went on.

Instead, they started out as MS's bitch and were beaten into submission like a redheaded stepchild. Now they have the glorious job of jumping at the every whim of the media companies, way to hold your head high Intel! I would say the same for AMD, but to this day, I am not sure what Live does, if it really exists.

Both companies will tout absolutely huge sales figures, and MS will point to incredible Media Center sales, up thousands of percent this year alone. Let me clue you in on something, MCE used to mean that you needed a tuner, you had to meet certain requirements for power, speed and functionality. These boxes flopped so badly it was laughable, selling more restrictions for more money is not a bright marketing strategy.

Now, MCE is sold instead of XP home. The requirements? None really, so basically all sales that were home are now MCE. I defy you to find any retail customer who actually uses it in that fashion, maybe 1% do.

With the proliferation of MCE, both Live and VIIV stickers moved out into mainstream boxes. Damn those things sell like hotcakes, umm, what do they get me besides DRM infections again? No, really, I mean it, WTF do they do? Anyone? So, both Intel and AMD are jumping up and down over the 'successes' of their respective DRM for manufacturer kickback programs. Be still my beating heart.

Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers, what a laugh riot.

In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone who pulls out a credit card. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it whistling down, operators are standing by.

In the mean time, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes. If you take 10 minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on P2P networks. I haven't bothered to get one, so I can't comment on the quality, but it sure looks like availability is there. What was an underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1% market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer than the legit versions.

The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses are a lost cause. (Funny how he wasn't sued though, kind of makes you wonder...) As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels. Piracy, the better choice (tm).

If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-Ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their pirated CDs in though.

On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save the $1000 on the Blu-Ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is quite on-demand. You don't need to sign up, give them your details to be sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for (not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).

On the down side, the RIAA/MPAA/PATSY/TOOLBOY have sued probably 10,000 people now, and each 'settlement' is, well lets just use $5000 for the sake of round numbers. Now, the conservative estimates of P2P usage was around 30 million people, but I am pretty damn sure that is far lower than the actual usage. Last time I saw anything serious, it was 35M and growing fast. Lets just assume that it is now 50M users.

10,000 * $5,000 = $50,000,000. The net cost to each P2P user, assuming everyone out there settles is $1. To look at it another way, if you look at it in the worst case light, you have a 1 in 5000 chance of getting nailed. A lot of people buy lottery tickets with far far worse odds than that, and spend more than $5000 doing so every few years. To be even more cynical, hands up everyone who personally knows someone who got sued by the RIAA. Now, hands up everyone who knows someone who downloaded music or movies. Any guesses which one is bigger? Piracy, the better choice (tm).

What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled, legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory from the jaws of evil. Piracy, the better choice(tm).

Web 'safe' mark may elude new merchants

NEW YORK - As an online shopper, Claudia Race knows she must look out for scams. So as an Internet entrepreneur working out of her home in New Braunfels, Texas, Race wants to use all the tools available to assure customers they can trust the vacation-rentals service she is about to launch.

But because her small business is so new, Race said she might not qualify for the online seals of approval that Overstock.com Inc. and other larger, established companies are getting to instruct Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser to display a green address bar for "safe" when people visit her site.

"It would put me at a disadvantage," Race said. "I do not want anyone to have any questions, hesitate or have any fear factor. They have to know that I didn't just go grab a logo from somewhere and stick it on my site. I want them to know I'm a legitimate business."

What she's seeking is an extended-validation certificate, a response to the plethora of "phishing" attacks in which scam artists try to steal sensitive data by mimicking the Web site of a large bank or merchant.

Once Microsoft activates the feature in version 7 of Internet Explorer in late January, a green bar will appear when the browser sees an EV certificate, usually during a transaction or login. The tool complements a newly launched filter that displays a red warning for known phishing sites and yellow for suspicious ones.

"EV does not authenticate that your plasma TV is going to show up or that it won't have a crack through it," said Tim Callan, director of product marketing for VeriSign Inc., which issued its first EV certificate to Overstock this month.

Rather, Callan said, the EV certificate will tell consumers that the business does exist and operates at the location it says it does.

That's because VeriSign and its competitors will be required to perform extensive checks to verify that the business is legally recognized by a government agency and that the address registered for the certificate is valid, such as by matching it with a government filing or visiting the business in person.

Certificate issuers also must make sure that the company owns the domain name and that the individual requesting the certificate is authorized.

So a scammer can't register from overseas a domain name at "paypa1.com" — with a numeral "1" instead of letter "l" — and buy an EV certificate saying it is the eBay Inc. online payment service.

The certificate issuer would discover the person requesting it doesn't really work for eBay after obtaining eBay's contact information through independent means and asking directly, said Paulo Kaiser, vice president of operations for certificate vendor Comodo.

In the early days of e-commerce, merchants simply needed a standard security certificate for browsers to display a closed padlock. The makers of the Netscape browser, now owned by Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, developed the Secure Sockets Layer technology in the mid-90s, and many online shoppers over time knew to look for it.

Companies known as certification authorities used to always perform a series of checks to make sure sites were really what they said they were.

But newer authorities have tried to cut costs and corners by checking only that the site owns the domain name — not the business said to run on that domain, security experts say. Scam artists — needing only a credit card and a domain name — have exploited the loophole to obtain the certificates necessary to appear legitimate.

Enter the Certification Authority/Browser Forum, a group of certificate issuers and browser manufacturers desiring to restore trust in the certificates.

Since its formation nearly two years ago, the forum has been hashing out standards that merchants and banks must meet to obtain EV certificates.

Those that fail could get only the regular certificates, for which the IE browser's address bar would remain white — just like most other sites, good or bad. Over time, Microsoft and others hope Internet users would know to look for a green bar, just like the padlock.

But the forum has figured out how to validate only larger companies, the ones incorporated by a government agency and thus listed in its databases. General partnerships, unincorporated associations, sole proprietorships and individuals are currently excluded.

Race, the Texas businesswoman, falls in between. Although her MadLeap.com was registered as a limited liability company in Delaware, it's so new that it might not appear in enough databases, making her business difficult to verify, according to officials at Comodo.

Smaller and newer companies could lose business if consumers leave for larger, established merchants with green bars.

"It is the small merchants who really need the ability to say, `I am trusted. Come and do business with me,'" said Melih Abdulhayoglu, chief executive of Comodo. "The big guys who have the brands already have established trust because of brand awareness."

Comodo was among the companies that helped reject the draft guidelines in November, preferring to wait until the group could figure out how to validate smaller merchants.

But Microsoft announced it was moving forward anyhow, saying green bars would start to appear in late January. Comodo and other vendors responded by starting to sell the EV certificates to the larger companies — for hundreds of dollars more than regular certificates to cover the validation costs.

Markellos Diorinos, a product manager with Microsoft, said most phishing scams have mimicked the Web sites of larger banks and companies anyway.

"The current version of the EV guidelines ... probably covers most if not all of the phishing targets today," Diorinos said. "We felt we have a good technology and should get the technology out to consumers as soon as possible."

Diorinos added that smaller merchants not covered still could get EV certificates through a third-party payment processor that is verified.

Microsoft will recognize certificates only from authorities that are independently audited, details for which are spelled out in the 65-page draft guidelines.

Mozilla's Firefox and Opera Software ASA's Opera browsers also will eventually recognize EV certificates, though their makers committed to no timetable. Until then, an EV certificate would trigger a closed padlock like regular certificates, nothing more.

Window Snyder, Mozilla's chief security officer, said developers were trying to figure out the best way to highlight an EV-certified site — whether it's through a green bar or another means.

Unlike previous attempts by Microsoft to move forward with technologies before standards were ready, few criticized the Redmond, Wash., software company's moves, noting that the technical portions of the standards have largely been agreed upon. What's left deals mostly with procedures — how to validate smaller merchants.

Comodo believes it could be done within two months; VeriSign worries it could take longer and is reluctant to wait.

"It's unfortunate that it's not extended as far as it is right up front, but given the fact that identity theft is a very real thing, consumers need better tools in order to have confidence," said Greg Hughes, chief security executive with Corillian Corp., a provider of online banking technology. "This is the right thing to do and now is the right time to do it."

Ex-cop plans 'Never Get Busted Again' video

Former Texas agent teaches how to hide, stash, and fool drug officers

TYLER, Texas - A one-time Texas drug agent described by his former boss as perhaps the best narcotics officer in the country plans to market a how-to video on concealing drugs and fooling police.

Barry Cooper, who has worked for small police departments in East Texas, plans to launch a Web site next week where he will sell his video, “Never Get Busted Again,” the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported in its online edition Thursday.

A promotional video says Cooper will show viewers how to “conceal their stash,” “avoid narcotics profiling” and “fool canines every time.”

Travelers Test Rules on Flying Without Identification

Teen Fights Removal of Bullet in Head

PORT ARTHUR, Texas Dec 21, 2006 (AP)? In the middle of Joshua Bush's forehead, two inches above his eyes, lies the evidence that prosecutors say could send the teenager to prison for attempted murder: a 9 mm bullet, lodged just under the skin.

Prosecutors say it will prove that Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a used-car lot after a robbery in July. And they have obtained a search warrant to extract the slug.

But Bush and his lawyer are fighting the removal, in a legal and medical oddity that raises questions about patient privacy and how far the government can go to solve crimes without running afoul of the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

"It's unfortunate this arguably important piece of evidence is in a place where it can't be easily retrieved," said Seth Chandler, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center. "You have to balance our desire to convict the guilty against the government not poking around our bodies on a supposition."

Investigators say that Bush was part of a group of gang members who broke into a used car lot and tried to steal vehicles. According to police, Bush tried to shoot businessman Alan Olive, and when Olive returned fire, a bullet struck the teenager and borrowed into the soft, fatty tissue of his forehead.

Prosecutor Ramon Rodriguez said gang members who took part in the robbery identified Bush as one of those involved. When he was questioned about a week later, Bush admitted taking part in the robbery but not the shooting, police said.

"The officers noticed the guy looks like hell. One of his eyes is black and he has a big old knot on his forehead," Rodriguez said. "He tells police he got hurt playing basketball."

A few days later, Bush went to the hospital and told doctors he had been hit by a stray bullet as he sat on a couch in an apartment.

"Officers started putting events together," Rodriguez said.

A judge took the unusual step of issuing a search warrant to retrieve the bullet from Bush's head in October. But a Beaumont doctor determined that small pieces of bone were growing around the slug, and he did not have the proper tools in the emergency room to do it. The doctor said that removal would require surgery under general anesthesia and that no operating rooms were available.

Police then obtained a second search warrant and scheduled the operation for last week at the University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston. It was postponed again, however, after the hospital decided not to participate for reasons it would not discuss.

Prosecutors said they continue to look for a doctor or hospital willing to remove the bullet.

All sides agree that removing the bullet would not be life-threatening. But Bush's family and attorney say it would be a violation of the teenager's civil rights and set a dangerous precedent.

"When the medical profession divorces itself from its own responsibility and makes itself an arm of the state, it's a dangerous path," said Rife Kimler, Bush's lawyer.

The used car lot owner, Olive, told police that after officers had left the scene following the robbery and he began cleaning up, a man appeared in a nearby alley and threatened to kill him if he helped authorities in their investigation. The man fired at Olive and a shootout followed.

"I just can't believe I missed him at that distance," Olive, a competitive pistol shooter, said in court papers. Olive told authorities he never saw the man's face in the dark alley.

Bush is in jail on charges related to the robbery, but not the shooting.

Tammie Bush, the teen's mother, disputed allegations her son is a gang member.

"We know he's not a criminal," she said. "He's a good kid."

Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, predicted Bush's rights as a patient will trump the state's desire to get the bullet, and said authorities might have a hard time finding someone willing to extract the slug.

"It truly is a moral quandary," Caplan said. "Doctors are caught between wanting to help solve crimes and their responsibility to patients' rights to refuse a procedure."

Study: Citizen robots will want rights

LONDON, England (AP) -- Robots might one day be smart enough to demand emancipation from their human owners, raising the prospects they'll have to be treated as citizens, according to a speculative paper released by the British government.

Among the warnings: a "monumental shift" could occur if robots were developed to the point where they could reproduce, improve or think for themselves.

"Correctly managed, there is a very real possibility for increased labor output and greater intelligence to be provided by robots that will ultimatly lead to greater human prosperity and an improvement of the human condition," it said.

However, it warned that robots could sue for their rights if these were denied to them.

Should they prove successful, the paper said, "states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time."

The paper did not address the likelihood such a rights-seeking robot would be developed, and it predicted the issue would not come up for at least another 20 years.

But innovations raised in other papers issued Wednesday, including artificial retinas and drugs for dramatically lengthened lifespans, were thought to be only a decade away.

The research, commissioned by the U.K. Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Center, looks ahead to the year 2056 to identify issues "of potentially significant impact or opportunity." It was put together by British research company Ipsos-MORI, the consultancy Outsights and the American-based Institute for the Future.

"We're not in the business of predicting the future, but we do need to explore the broadest range of different possibilities to help ensure government is prepared in the long term and considers issues across the spectrum in its planning," said Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser.

The papers, he added, "are aimed at stimulating debate and critical discussion to enhance government's short and long term policy and strategy."

Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights

KEARNY, N.J. ? Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Matthew LaClair taped his history teacher talking about God in class.

David Paszkiewicz, a teacher.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah?s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

?If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,? Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. ?He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he?s saying, ?Please, accept me, believe.? If you reject that, you belong in hell.?

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz?s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew?s complaint, administrators have said they have taken ?corrective action? against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

?I think he?s an excellent teacher,? said the school principal, Al Somma. ?As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past.?

Staci Snider, the president of the local teacher?s union, said Mr. Paszkiewicz (pronounced pass-KEV-ich) had been assigned a lawyer from the union, the New Jersey Education Association. Two calls to Mr. Paszkiewicz at school and one to his home were not returned.

In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.

Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz?s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was ?ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.? Some anonymous posters on the town?s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew?s suspension.

On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, ?I?m on the teacher?s side all the way.?

While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.

?This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,? said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. ?He?s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that?s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible?s view of creation as well as evolution.?

Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.

?It?s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can?t do that,? said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. ?You can?t step across the line and proselytize, and that?s what he?s done here.?

The class started on Sept. 11, and Matthew quickly grew concerned. ?The first couple of days I had him, he had already begun discussing his religious point of view,? Matthew, a thin, articulate 16-year-old with braces and a passion for politics and the theater, recalled in an interview. ?It wasn?t even just his point of view, it went beyond that to say this is the right way, this is the only way. The way he said it, I wasn?t sure how far he was going to go.?

On the second day of taping, after the discussion veered from Moses?s education to free will, Matthew asked why a loving God would consign humans to hell, according to the recording.

Some of Matthew?s detractors say he set up his teacher by baiting him with religious questions. But Matthew, who was raised in the Ethical Culture Society, a humanist religious and educational group, said all of his comments were in response to something the teacher said.

?I didn?t start any of the topics that were discussed,? he said.

In a Sept. 25 letter to the principal, Matthew wrote: ?I care about the future generation and I do not want Mr. Paszkiewicz to continue preaching to and poisoning students.? He met with school officials and handed over the recordings.

Matthew?s family wrote four letters to the district asking for an apology and for the teacher to correct any false statements he had made in class, particularly those related to science. Matthew?s father, Paul LaClair, a lawyer, said he was now considering legal action against the district, claiming that Mr. Paszkiewicz?s teachings violated their son?s First Amendment and civil rights, and that his words misled the class and went against the curriculum.

Kenneth J. Lindenfelser, the lawyer for the Kearny school board, said he could not discuss Mr. Paszkiewicz specifically, but that when a complaint comes in about a teacher, it is investigated, and then the department leader works with the teacher to correct any inappropriate behavior.

The teacher is monitored, and his or her evaluation could be noted, Mr. Lindenfelser said, adding that if these steps did not work, the teacher could be reprimanded, suspended or, eventually, fired.

As for the request that Mr. Paszkiewicz correct his statements that conflict with the district?s science curriculum, ?Sometimes, the more you dwell on the issue, the more you continue the issue,? Mr. Lindenfelser said. ?Sometimes, it?s better to stop any inappropriate behavior and move on.?

The district?s actions have succeeded, he said, as the family has not reported any continued violations.

Bloggers around the world have called Matthew courageous. In contrast, the LaClairs said they had been surprised by the vehemence of the opposition that local residents had expressed against Matthew.

Frank Viscuso, a Kearny resident, wrote in a letter to The Observer that ?when a student is advised by his ?attorney? father to bait a teacher with questions about religion, and then records his answers and takes the story to 300 newspapers, that family isn?t ?offended? by what was said in the classroom ? they?re simply looking for a payout and to make a name for themselves.? He called the teacher one of the town?s best.

However, Andrew Lewczuk, a former student of Mr. Paszkiewicz, praised his abilities as a history teacher but said he regretted that he had not protested the religious discussions. ?In the end, the manner in which Mr. Paszkiewicz spoke with his students was careless, inconsiderate and inappropriate,? he wrote to The Observer. ?It was an abuse of power and influence, and it?s my own fault that I didn?t do anything about this.?

One teacher, who did not give his name, said he thought both Matthew and his teacher had done the right thing. ?The student had the right to do what he did,? the man said. As for Mr. Paszkiewicz, ?He had the right to say what he said, he was not preaching, and that?s something I?m very much against.?

Matthew said he missed the friends he had lost over his role in the debate, and said he could ?feel the glares? when he walked into school.

Instead of mulling Supreme Court precedents, he said with half a smile, ?I should be worrying about who I?m going to take to the prom.?

Theater of the Absurd at the T.S.A.

FOR theater on a grand scale, you can?t do better than the audience-participation dramas performed at airports, under the direction of the Transportation Security Administration.

As passengers, we tender our boarding passes and IDs when asked. We stand in lines. We empty pockets. We take off shoes. We do whatever is asked of us in these mass rites of purification. We play our assigned parts, comforted in the belief that only those whose motives are good and true will be permitted to pass through.

Of course, we never see the actual heart of the security system: the government?s computerized no-fly list, to which our names are compared when we check in for departure. The T.S.A. is much more talented, however, in the theater arts than in the design of secure systems. This becomes all too clear when we see that the agency?s security procedures are unable to withstand the playful testing of a bored computer-science student.

In late October, Christopher Soghoian, a Ph.D. student in the School of Informatics at Indiana University, found his attention wandering during a lecture in his Cryptographic Protocols class. While sitting in class, he created a Web site he called ?Chris?s Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator.?

A visitor to the site could plug in any name, and Mr. Soghoian?s software would create a page suitable for printing with a facsimile of a boarding pass, identical in appearance to one a passenger who had bought a Northwest Airlines ticket would generate when using the airline?s at-home check-in option.

The fake pass could not be used to actually board a plane ? boarding passes are checked at the gate against the roster of ticket buyers in the airline?s database ? but it could come in handy for several other purposes, Mr. Soghoian suggested, such as passing through airport security so you could meet your elderly grandparents at the gate.

Or, as he told his site?s visitors, it could ?demonstrate that the T.S.A. Boarding Pass/ID check is useless.? It worked well, indeed.

No cryptographic recipe was cracked; no airline computer system was compromised. Without visiting an airport, Mr. Soghoian needed access to nothing other than a public Web site to embarrass those responsible for airport security.

To thank Mr. Soghoian for helping the government identify security weaknesses, the T.S.A. sent him a letter warning of possible felony criminal charges and fines, and ordered him to cease operations, which he promptly did. It was too late, however, to spare his apartment from an F.B.I. raid.

Richard L. Adams, the T.S.A.?s acting federal security director, said Mr. Soghoian?s generator ?could pose a threat to aviation security.?

But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at BT Counterpane, a security consulting firm in Mountain View, Calif., emphatically disagreed. Anybody with Photoshop could create a fake boarding pass, he said. Mr. Soghoian?s Web site simply eliminated the need to use Photoshop. The T.S.A.?s profession of outrage is nothing but ?security theater,? Mr. Schneier said, using the phrase he coined in 2003 to describe some of the agency?s procedures.

Mr. Schneier is not alone in his view that the T.S.A. vilifies people who point out its flaws. Matthew Blaze, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, did not regard Mr. Soghoian?s generator as a dangerous breach of national security, either. ?If a grad student can figure it out,? he said, ?we can assume agents of Al Qaeda can do the same.?

The root problem, as some experts see it, is the T.S.A.?s reliance on IDs that are so easily obtained under false pretenses. ?It would be wonderful if Osama bin Laden carried a photo ID that listed his occupation of ?Evildoer,? ? permitting the authorities to pluck him from a line, Mr. Schneier said. ?The problem is, we try to pretend that identity maps to intentionality. But it doesn?t.?

Woe to him or her who happens to have a name identical to someone else deemed a possible menace to society and who finds, upon check-in, that the no-fly list places one?s own name by Mr. bin Laden?s. When a terror suspect?s alias using the Kennedy name appeared on the list, gate agents blocked Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts from boarding in Washington. And Boston. And Palm Beach, Fla. And New York. Each time, supervisors interceded on his behalf, but only because of his status as an elected official.

T.S.A. officials have said they think that the effectiveness of the no-fly list, as well as a ?selectee? list ? which permits flying but brings an extra round of physical screening ? will improve if the task of comparing names against the lists is taken out of the airlines? hands and given to the agency. The name of this initiative is ?Secure Flight.?

Ostensibly interested in what security specialists and legal authorities on privacy issues thought of its Secure Flight plans, the agency convened an advisory group in January 2005. (Mr. Schneier was a member.) Nine months later, when the advisers turned in their final report, it showed that the T.S.A.?s planners had given little or no thought to basic security issues, such as the problem of stolen identities.

Expressing frustration, the T.S.A.?s advisers said in their report that the T.S.A. had been so tight-lipped when talking to them that they never received the information they needed to make a single substantive recommendation.

Professor Blaze has a great deal of experience publicly discussing the most sensitive of security vulnerabilities. He acknowledged that disclosure of a security weakness prompts ?a natural and human response: ?Why should we help the bad guys?? ? The answer, he said, is that the bad guys aren?t helped ? because they almost certainly already know a system?s weak points ? and that disclosing the weaknesses brings pressure on government agencies and their suppliers to improve security for the good guys.

Last year, when Professor Blaze and his graduate students discovered a host of techniques for thwarting or deceiving government wiretapping systems, he said his group initially felt a spasm of hesitation about publishing academic papers about their findings. But they quickly returned to first principles ? criminals had undoubtedly discovered the techniques; scientific inquiry requires openness ? and prepared to publish their results.

Before proceeding, they called in the F.B.I. to explain and braced for an attempt to suppress their work. ?To their credit,? Professor Blaze said, ?they understood and did nothing to try to stop it.?

The T.S.A. shows no signs of similar enlightenment. The agency?s investigation of Mr. Soghoian?s short-lived boarding-pass experiment was continuing, a spokesman, Christopher White, said last week.

WHEN I asked Mr. Schneier of BT Counterpane what he would do if he were appointed leader of the T.S.A., he said he would return to the basic procedures for passenger screening used before the 2001 terrorist attacks, which was designed to do nothing more ambitious than ?catch the sloppy and the stupid.?

He said he would also ensure that passengers? bags fly only if the passenger does, improve emergency response capabilities and do away entirely with ID checks and secret databases and no-fly and selectee lists. He added that he would shift funds into basic investigation and intelligence work, which he believes produces results like the arrests of the London bomb suspects. ?Put smart, trained officers in plainclothes, wandering in airports ? that is by far the best thing the T.S.A. could do,? he said.

The issues raised by the discovery of security vulnerabilities are not new. A. C. Hobbs, a locksmith who in 1853 wrote the book on locks and safes (the title: ?Locks and Safes?) knew that ?many well-meaning persons? assume that public exposure of a lock?s insecure design will end up helping criminals.

His response to this concern is no less apt today than it was then:

?Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them.?

High IQ link to being vegetarian

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.

A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.

Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates.

The study of 8,179 was reported in the British Medical Journal.

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian - although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken.

Men who were vegetarian had an IQ score of 106, compared with 101 for non-vegetarians; while female vegetarians averaged 104, compared with 99 for non-vegetarians.


We've always known that vegetarianism is an intelligent, compassionate choice benefiting animals, people and the environment
Liz O'Neill, of The Vegetarian Society

There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but who reported eating fish or chicken.

Researchers said the findings were partly related to better education and higher occupational social class, but it remained statistically significant after adjusting for these factors.

Vegetarians were more likely to be female, to be of higher occupational social class and to have higher academic or vocational qualifications than non-vegetarians.

However, these differences were not reflected in their annual income, which was similar to that of non-vegetarians.

Lead researcher Catharine Gale said: "The finding that children with greater intelligence are more likely to report being vegetarian as adults, together with the evidence on the potential benefits of a vegetarian diet on heart health, may help to explain why higher IQ in childhood or adolescence is linked with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease in adult life."

Intelligence

However, she added the link may be merely an example of many other lifestyle preferences that might be expected to vary with intelligence, such as choice of newspaper, but which may or may not have implications for health.

Liz O'Neill, of the Vegetarian Society, said: "We've always known that vegetarianism is an intelligent, compassionate choice benefiting animals, people and the environment.

"Now we've got the scientific evidence to prove it. Maybe that explains why many meat-reducers are keen to call themselves vegetarians when even they must know that vegetarians don't eat chicken, turkey or fish."

But Dr Frankie Phillips, of the British Dietetic Association, said: "It is like the chicken and the egg. Do people become vegetarian because they have a very high IQ or is it just that they tend to be more aware of health issues?"

Homeland Security chief defends Real ID plan

WASHINGTON--U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday defended forthcoming national ID cards as vital for security and consistent with privacy rights.

Chertoff said one of his agency's top goals next year is to forge ahead with recommendations for the controversial documents established by a federal law called the Real ID Act in May 2005. By 2008, Americans may be required to present such federally approved cards--which must be electronically readable--to travel on an airplane, open a bank account or take advantage of myriad government services such as Social Security.

"I think this is an example (of) when security and privacy go hand in hand," the Homeland Security chief said in a half-hour speech at George Washington University here. "It is a win-win for both."

The importance of such documents was magnified by an announcement Wednesday, Chertoff said. Federal authorities reported that they had made more than 1,200 arrests related to immigration violations and unmasked criminal organizations stealing and trafficking in genuine birth certificates and Social Security cards belonging to U.S. citizens.

"Do you think your privacy is better protected if someone can walk around with phony docs with your name and your Social Security number, or is your privacy better protected if you have the confidence that the identification relied upon is in fact reliable and uniquely tied to a single individual?" Chertoff asked rhetorically.

<What if your sole concern about privacy is that you have none from the government, the most intrusive imaginable?>

The upcoming federally approved IDs are intended to be a secure, tamperproof means of protecting Americans' identities while keeping out terrorists and other wrongdoers, Chertoff said.

The Homeland Security chief, who is nearing his two-year mark with the agency, was likely trying to quell rampant skepticism about the IDs voiced by some privacy advocates, immigrants and other groups. Some have said they fear that the IDs are a stepping stone to a veritable police state, complete with ready surveillance of individuals.

Some have argued that the idea of creating more tamperproof IDs is only a marginally better way to screen out those intent on committing terrorist acts because ID cards don't even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person's unspoken intentions.

State governments have also been critical of the 2008 deadline and what they have said amounts to an unfunded mandate to switch over their systems. A September study released by the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures and American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators estimated that the overhaul of their identification systems (PDF) would cost states more than $11 billion over five years. The New Hampshire state legislature even considered passing a law earlier this year that would prohibit the state from complying with the federal

Homeland Security has yet to issue congressionally mandated recommendations for the cards, so it's unclear how, exactly, they would work. The cards must contain, at a minimum, a person's name, birth date, gender, ID number, digital portrait, address, "physical security features" to prevent tampering or counterfeiting and a "common machine-readable technology" specified by Homeland Security.

A recent draft report by a DHS advisory committee(PDF) advised against using radio frequency identification technology, or RFID, in tracking humans because of privacy concerns.

The purpose of Chertoff's Thursday morning speech was to reflect on the agency's work during the past year and to outline goals for 2007. For the past year, he focused on three major areas: immigration and border security, Hurricane Katrina recovery and a foiled terrorism plot originating from London in August.

Conspicuously absent was any mention of the department's cybersecurity plans. After more than a year of delay, Chertoff hired Gregory Garcia, who had been working as a vice president at the Information Technology Association of America lobby group, as the department's first assistant secretary for cybersecurity. That step came after the department had sustained repeated bashing of its efforts in that realm from members of Congress.

Faith-Based Charities to Be Reviewed

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to step
into a dispute over the Bush administration's promotion of
federal financing for faith-based charities.

The program has been a staple of President Bush's political
agenda since 2001, when he created the White House Office
of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The case under review grew out of a lawsuit filed by a group
called the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The group
claims the Bush administration violates a constitutional ban
on state-supported religions by singling out particular
faith-based organizations as worthy of federal funding.

The government tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, but a
federal appeals court ruled that the foundation's members
are taxpayers who are entitled to sue over a program
funded by Congress.

In written arguments filed with the Supreme Court, Solicitor
General Paul Clement said the appeals court had
transformed a narrow exception in law into a "roving license"
for citizens to challenge any action of the executive branch of
government.

The solicitor general's office says the Supreme Court should
reaffirm "fundamental limits" on taxpayer challenges.

In fiscal 2005, religious charities received $2.15 billion in
federal grants to administer a range of social service
programs for the needy, the White House says. That was
7 percent higher than the year before, and represented
10.9 percent of the total grants from the seven federal
agencies that are allowed to issue the money to faith-based
groups.

The case is Dennis Grace v. Freedom From Religion
Foundation, 06-157.

White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/

Supreme Court takes ?Bong Hits 4 Jesus? case

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court stepped into a dispute over free speech rights Friday involving a suspended high school student and his banner that proclaimed ?Bong Hits 4 Jesus.?

Justices agreed to hear the appeal by the Juneau, Alaska, school board and principal Deborah Morse of a lower court ruling that allowed the student?s civil rights lawsuit to proceed. The school board hired former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr to argue its case to the high court.

Morse suspended Frederick after he displayed the banner, with its reference to marijuana use, when the Olympic torch passed through Juneau in 2002 on its way to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Frederick, then a senior, was off school property when he hoisted the banner but was suspended for violating the school?s policy of promoting illegal substances at a school-sanctioned event.

The school board upheld the suspension and a federal judge initially dismissed Frederick?s lawsuit before the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals called the banner vague and nonsensical, but said that Frederick?s civil rights had been violated.

At that point, the school board hired Starr, who investigated President Clinton?s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He took the case free of charge.

The appeals court said that even if the banner could be construed as a positive message about marijuana use, the school could not punish or censor a student?s speech because it promotes a social message contrary to one the school favors.

Frederick said his motivation for unfurling the banner was simple: He wanted it seen on television.