House Debates Student Loan Plan

WASHINGTON—The House of Representatives on Friday took up a Republican plan to keep borrowing costs low for a certain type of college loan, but the White House quickly dismissed the proposal as political and threatened a veto.

The House began debate on keeping the interest rate at 3.4% on a loan that allows college students to borrow as much as $5,500 for the coming school year. If Congress fails to act, the rate will rise to 6.8% for money borrowed starting July 1, tacking on more than $1,000 in extra costs over the life of the loan.
Republicans, who in the past have been concerned that federal loans have driven up the cost of a college degree, came around to supporting a one-year extension of the 3.4% rate and swiftly scheduled the Friday vote. The move came after President Barack Obama began traveling around the country to press the issue, in an election-year appeal to students, who were a key part of his 2008 election.

But Republicans want to pay for the $6 billion subsidy by eliminating a prevention and public-health fund created by the 2010 health-care law—a nonstarter for both the White House and congressional Democrats. House Democrats want to cover the cost by taking away tax breaks from oil companies. The White House backed up its congressional allies on Friday and criticized the Republican plan.

"This is a politically-motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing America's college students deserves," the White House said in a statement. If the legislation is sent to Mr. Obama, "his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," the White House said.

The Democrat-controlled Senate is set to hold a vote on May 8 on extending the 3.4% rate for another year.

Cybersecurity Bill Passes

Ignoring a veto threat from the White House, the House passed legislation Thursday designed to protect communications networks from cyberattacks.
The vote was 248-168.

But even as the House bill moves forward, privacy concerns about granting government agencies access to personal information transmitted on the Internet could prove to be a major obstacle to any new cybersecurity law.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan and a former FBI agent, said he spent the last year working on the bill because the national security risk to the United States posed by cyberattacks is one, "we are just not prepared to handle."


"We needed to stop the Chinese government from stealing our stuff. We needed to stop the Russians from what they're doing to our networks and people's personal information data and resources," Rogers said on the House floor on Thursday. "We needed to prepare for countries like
Iran and North Korea so that they don't do something catastrophic to our networks here in America and cause us real harm to real people."

The House bill, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, was drafted by Rogers and the committee's top Democrat, Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger.  It sets up a voluntary system for private companies to share information about any threats or attacks on their networks with U.S. national security agencies. It also gives some liability protections to those companies in return for cooperating with the government.

While the Obama administration and many congressional Democrats agree the United States needs to respond to cyberthreats, they and many outside civil liberties advocates say the House bill fails to sufficiently guard personal information.  They worry the new rules allowing Internet companies to share information with the National Security Agency could give unfettered access by the intelligence community to data about any individual surfing the Web or sending e-mail.

In its statement opposing the bill and promising a veto, the administration on Wednesday said, "Cybersecurity and privacy are not mutually exclusive."

In a reference to the George Orwell book that described a society in which government was eavesdropping on its citizens, Rep Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, said during Thursday's debate, "I know it's 2012 but it still feels like 1984 in the House today."

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, argued the administration's insistence on specific standards and broader limitations on how much personal information can be shared goes too far.
"The White House believes the government ought to control the Internet; the government ought to set standards and the government ought to take care of everything that's needed for cybersecurity. They're in a camp all by themselves," Boehner said.

Proponents of the House bill said they addressed the concerns about privacy raised by many outside groups by adding provisions to narrow how government agencies can use any personal information, limiting it mainly to prosecuting crimes and preserving national security.

Some of those changes helped dampen an outside lobbying effort to defeat the bill. While the American Civil Liberties Union rallied against the measure, another group concerned about protecting privacy rights, the Center for Democracy and Technology, agreed the process needed to move forward.

California Democratic Rep Adam Schiff said he was disappointed his move to limit the transfer of personal information was not allowed a vote on Thursday. He said people want to be secure online, but "they have no idea their information is being collected in this cybernetwork, and that information is not necessary to protect ourselves from a cyberthreat. We want to minimize that."
Schiff said companies have the capability to limit the transfer of this information, "but they would rather not have the obligation to do it."

Ruppersberger said requiring private companies to strip out all personal information was a "nonstarter" with congressional Republicans and the Internet providers who would be the ones giving the intelligence community access to their networks.

Conceding there's a split among Democrats on the bill mainly because of the privacy concerns, Ruppersberger said the fight targeted the bipartisan House bill because "we're the only game in town."  Still, 42 Democrats voted for the measure.  Although there is a bipartisan Senate proposal offered by independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins that the White House prefers, that version has not been scheduled for a vote.

Ruppersberger said the compromise bill wasn't perfect, but said, "The most important thing is to move forward." He warned the only thing standing in the way of protecting communications networks for businesses and individuals was inaction by Congress.

Death Penalty Repealed in Connecticut

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) signed a bill into law on Wednesday that repeals the death penalty, making Connecticut the 17th state to do so. The new law does not apply to the 11 inmates currently on death row in the state.

Connecticut has been paying about $5 million a year to maintain its death penalty system, according to the state's Office of Fiscal Analysis, despite the fact it is rarely used. The only person the state has executed since 1960 is serial killer Michael Ross, who raped and murdered eight young women in the 1980s.

The repeal of the death penalty is expected to save the state $850,000 per year in the next two fiscal years, and the OFA estimates that that number will grow to $5 million in subsequent years.
"With Governor Malloy's action, Connecticut joins sixteen other states that have already concluded that the death penalty is too risky, too expensive, and too arbitrary to continue," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an advocacy group that opposes capital punishment. "By replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, Connecticut officials have reduced the risk of executing the innocent and freed up taxpayer dollars for other programs that prevent crime more effectively and better serve victims' families."

A majority of voters in Connecticut oppose the death penalty ban. Sixty-two percent of respondents to a Quinnipiac University poll said they support the death penalty in general, compared to 30 percent who oppose it and 54 percent of voters who said it was a bad idea to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole in Connecticut.

"We have tried to be consistent in not saying much about polls because ... what's there to say?" said Roy Occhiogrosso, senior adviser to the governor, in a statement on Wednesday. "Polls come and go, numbers go up and down. The governor always does what he thinks is best for the state and the right thing to do."

A number of cash-strapped states have been reevaluating their death penalty systems lately as a way to save taxpayers millions of dollars annually. Illinois got rid of capital punishment in 2011, and California has an initiative on the November 2012 ballot to replace its death penalty system, which is estimated to cost about $184 million a year, with a sentence of life without parole.

Oklahoma's "personhood" BIll Fails in Legislature

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A proposed 'personhood' law in Oklahoma that would grant embryos full rights as people from the moment of conception failed in the state's Legislature without coming to a vote in the House of Representatives, lawmakers said on Thursday.   

The bill, which backers hoped would provide a path to roll back the constitutional right to an abortion, had sailed through the Oklahoma Senate in February by a 34-8 vote. Many thought the Republican-dominated House would rubber-stamp the bill.

But Republican lawmaker Sally Kern said the measure failed before reaching the floor of the House.
Republicans have a majority in both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature, and Republican Governor Mary Fallin, who opposes abortion, had been expected to sign the bill into law.

Missouri is the only state so far with such a "personhood" law on its books establishing legal rights for embryos, although similar initiatives have been proposed in a handful of states.

They include last autumn's failed attempt in Mississippi to enact a personhood amendment to the state constitution and a similar proposal in Virginia that was put on hold by the Legislature until next year.

While the Oklahoma personhood bill did not expressly bar abortion, abortion-rights advocates have said there was nothing to stop hospital administrators or local law enforcement agencies from restricting or criminalizing abortions under such a law.

If an embryo has full legal rights, abortion would represent murder. The bill, which had been amended nearly two dozen times in committee, did not carve out exceptions for rape or incest.

"Personhood proposals are dangerous," said Martha Skeeters, president of the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice.

She said she was gratified the personhood bill was killed, saying the legislation would threaten commonly used contraceptives, fertility treatments and other medical procedures.
The bill did say that nothing in the law would bar the use of in-vitro fertilization or interfere with the disposal of unused embryos or their use in stem cell research. Nor would the bill have barred contraception measures such as the "morning-after" pill or treatment for ectopic pregnancies, in which the pregnancy occurs outside the womb.

The bill, like personhood measures in other states, has been controversial within the anti-abortion camp, with some fearing the strategy could backfire by provoking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike it down.

CHALLENGING ROE V. WADE

The initiatives were designed to provoke legal challenges from abortion-rights supporters, with the ultimate goal of giving the Supreme Court a vehicle to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, according to Keith Mason, a leader of the movement.

Oklahoma's bill sought to go further than Missouri's in challenging Roe v. Wade by not including language acknowledging that it defers to the court and Constitution.

State Representative Randy Terrill, a conservative Republican, called the announcement of the bill's failure "stunning" and complained the speaker "threw the caucus under the bus."

"There was no vote in the caucus," he complained. Instead, there was a private "whip count" in which party floor leaders polled fellow Republicans on the matter, Terrill said.

Many in the Oklahoma medical community had spoken out against the bill after it passed the Oklahoma Senate, and Terrill said there was a belief among some that business leaders disliked the personhood bill.

Your Congress At Work

America, here is what your Congress did for you this week.

They agreed to honor Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg by presenting his next of kin with a medal.

Bipartisanship reared its head when 373 lawmakers voted to give Jack Nicklaus the Congressional Gold Medal “in recognition of his service to the Nation in promoting excellence and good sportsmanship.” Cost: no more than $30,000.

Civil rights hero Lena Horne was also recognized — as was Mark Twain. And Republicans voted on a sportsmen’s bill that opens federal lands for hunting and fishing.

The House passed a highway bill that is nothing more than a vehicle to negotiate with the Senate. And a 20 percent business tax cut will come up on Thursday — it is already dead in the Senate and a nonstarter with the White House.

And the Senate? Democrats are working on a budget in a committee that won’t allow amendments and leadership won’t allow a vote until after the election.

Another piece of legislation to reform the near-bankrupt Postal Service is bogged down in the Senate in an unrelated dispute over foreign aid to Egypt.

Unemployment is still north of 8 percent and gas is above $4 a gallon. But it’s unavoidable: Congress, a body that can advance proposals only when there’s common ground, simply isn’t getting much done.

Politicians in both camps counter such cynicism about congressional inaction, insisting that they’re working hard to heal a dismal economy. Whether it’s the “Buffett rule” or small-business tax cuts — both parties think they have the answers. If only the other gang would get out of its way.

But the inaction raises more questions for Congress. Should they just pass single-chamber legislation they know has no chance at becoming law?

“November is the fight for our country,” Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks said. “And we have people who are basically socialist, bigger government, higher tax fans who have one viewpoint. And you have people who believe in a smaller government, individual liberty, lower taxes, free enterprise versus socialism. That’s the battle. What you’re seeing in the Senate and the House is messaging to help the public better understand what the options are.”

Others are peeved. Folks like Rep. Reid Ribble — a Wisconsin Republican who is a big golfer but voted against the Nicklaus resolution any way.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for the Congress of the United States, when we’re $15 trillion in debt, to be using that to fill time,” Ribble said.

He was one of four no votes. Fifty-three lawmakers didn’t even vote.

Ribble said he doesn’t blame voters for their disapproval.

“They look at it and say, ‘what’s wrong with us?’” Ribble said. “They’re cynical. I’m still cynical. I tell folks back home: I come here and vote on what’s there.”


Rep. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said most of the positive action is away from the House floor, so people should take solace.

“I think that what’s going on that isn’t necessarily voted on is as important as ever,” Scott said. “We’re still working on ways to find a way to solve the oil crisis, solve the economic crisis and solve the jobs crisis.”

Republicans are making progress on some fronts. The two parties are hashing out a deal on a cybersecurity bill that will come to the floor next week. A reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank will also come up next week. Some are holding out hope for a farm bill before the election. Plus, they think they exacted a major victory Wednesday, passing the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a highway bill that garnered a veto-proof majority — the GOP thinks President Barack Obama will now have to approve the pipeline.

And the lame-duck session — after the November elections — will be a storm of activity.

To be fair, Democrats had their moments of election-year inertia. On April 20, 2010, Congress expressed support for the “goals and ideals of National Financial Literacy Month, 2010” and honored the “life and achievements of the Rev. Benjamin Lawson Hooks.”

But the blame is full throttle ahead.

Take Speaker John Boehner’s comments on Wednesday. He criticized Obama for “campaigning from one end of the country to the other instead of working with members of both political parties here in Washington to address the serious challenges that our country faces.” But most of the bills on the floor this week are single-party bills.

Asked how he was working with the other party, Boehner blamed the other party.

“The president’s been AWOL,” Boehner said. “If the president is about helping to create jobs, where are his ideas? Why won’t he sit down and talk to us? And yes, maybe he doesn’t like this 20 percent tax cut that would help 20 million small businesses; what are his ideas? When there are no conversations, there’s no engagement, all we’re left with is moving our own ideas through the regular order, and through the regular process here in Congress.”

Do Republicans shoulder any of the blame?

“I told the president over a year ago,” Boehner said. “If there were ideas he and I could agree on, that were in the best interest of our country, I’d be there to support [them].”

So why not take a chance to try to fix the problems now, with seven months to go before the election?

“We don’t have the backbone,” Brooks said, partially referring to the Republican majority he’s a part of. “This Congress doesn’t have the backbone to deal with it.”

L.A. Times Publishes Photos Against Pentagon Wishes

The facts surrounding the bombshell published today by the Los Angeles Times are not at all in dispute:

* The Times obtained photos portraying soldiers of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division hamming it up with the remains of Afghan suicide bombers.

* It got the photos from a “soldier in the unit who was himself concerned that the photos reflected dysfunction, in discipline and a breakdown in leadership that compromised the safety of the troops,” Times editor Davan Maharaj said in a web chat about the story.

* The Times had no concerns about the photos’ authenticity. It published two of the 18 photos furnished by the source, to whom it has granted anonymity.

* The Pentagon opposed publication of the photos. A statement released today explains why:
“[Defense Secretary Leon Panetta] is also disappointed that despite our request not to publish these photographs, the Los Angeles Times went ahead. The danger is that this material could be used by the enemy to incite violence against U.S. and Afghan service members in Afghanistan.”

“Disappointed” sounds rather mild, as well it should be. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times and Pentagon officials declined to specify just how much pressure the government exerted on the newspaper to keep the pictures under wraps.

Whatever the case, the Los Angeles Times did the full sweep of due diligence here. It checked with the Pentagon on the story, it vetted the photos, and it showed restraint in publishing only “a small but representative selection” of the photos, in the words of Maharaj.

The position of Pentagon leaders isn’t hard to rationalize. Absent the publicity, they’d have no dangerous externalities to guard against, and they could proceed with appropriate disciplinary measures in any case.

Yet there’s a pivotal figure at the center of this story: $500 billion-plus. That’s what the United States has spent over more than a decade in the war in Afghanistan. The people who are footing that bill have a right to know what they’re funding. In this case, they’re funding yet another on-the-ground scandal. Public support for the war is sagging, and the Los Angeles Times photos won’t buoy it.

Once they stop their pointless scolding of the Times, military officials tend to say the right things about the episode. They are condemning the misconduct. They are deploring it, saying it doesn’t comport broadly with how the war is being prosecuted. One called it “morally repugnant.” As Lt. Col. Peggy Kageleiry told me, “This behavior doesn’t depict the Army’s values.”

Yet publishing this allegedly aberrant behavior surely does comport with American values. The more we know about these photos, the Marine corpse-urination situation and Abu Ghraib, the better.

The Pentagon is saying that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are “taking security measures to guard against” whatever reprisals may arise. If they do, don’t blame the Los Angeles Times.

Military May Have Committed Crimes in Prostitution Flap

If military personnel end up facing criminal charges in connection with the use of prostitutes prior to President Barack Obama's recent trip to Colombia, the military members may have another president to blame for their trouble: President George W. Bush.

Back in 2005, under pressure from human trafficking opponents, Bush issued an executive order making "patronizing a prostitute" a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The move was aimed at cracking down on military use of prostitutes in peacekeeping operations, but it generated some controversy in places like Germany, where prostitution is relatively well-regulated.

According to Stars & Stripes, U.S. military personnel (and even some of their family members!) complained that the ban made little sense since prostitution was legal and accepted in Germany. Some also doubted that the new provision could or would be enforced. The change in military policy Bush made in 2005 drew notice in Nevada, where the consensus seemed to be that it banned soldiers and sailors from visiting the legal brothels in that state.

Secret Service personnel aren't covered by the UCMJ. There is no similar federal statute that applies to civilians, which raises the possibility that the military folks could wind up with criminal convictions out of this, while the Secret Service agents and uniformed officers just have their jobs at risk.

"You have two different parts of the federal work force performing highly-sensitive missions committing the same conduct and it's possible they'll face substantially divergent outcomes," said Eugene Fidell, a lecturer on military law at Yale Law School.

Of course, it's possible the Secret Service personnel could face more punishment, at least administratively, because there may be fewer comparable cases for them to point to. Military personnel getting in some sort of altercation with a prostitute seems like the kind of thing certain to happen on a regular basis, given the proximity of brothels to military bases in places like Korea, the Philippines

However, Fidell noted that the UCMJ provision isn't simply a straightforward ban on paying for sex. The offense has a few more elements:

‘‘(b)(2) Patronizing a prostitute.(a) That the accused had sexual intercourse with another person notthe accused’s spouse;(b) That the accused compelled, induced, enticed, or procured such personto engage in an act of sexual intercourse in exchange for money or othercompensation; and(c) That this act was wrongful; and(d) That, under the circumstances, the conduct of the accused was tothe prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or wasof a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."

Fidell said lawyers might argue that the "wrongful" requirement excuses conduct that was legal in the country where it look place. Prostitution is legal in Colombia, but it's unclear if everything that happened last Wednesday night was entirely legal since the women involved were allegedly picked up at a nightclub/brothel and taken to a hotel.

"They can make the argument that, if it occurred in a place where it was lawful, it doesn't violate that article" in the UCMJ, Fidell said.

The military has already said that at least some of the about 10 servicemembers said to be involved violated curfew. That could amount to a separate UCMJ offense of disobeying an order. Any military officer involved could also face a "conduct unbecoming" charge, which is a separate criminal offense.

Setting criminal charges aside for the moment, both agencies have a pretty effective way of ending the careers of the personnel involved: revoking their security clearances. Many things that are no crime, like failing to pay debts or being married to a suspicious foreigner, can disqualify one from getting or keeping a security clearance. As far as I know, the provisions that bar clearances for people who've used drugs don't take account of where someone was when he or she did that. Like prostitution, drugs are legal in some parts of the world.

For agencies, one benefit of the security clearance route is that the due process due an employee is less than in a straight-up firing. The decision to strip a security clearance can't be challenged in court, even though it has the same effect as firing someone if the job requires a clearance, which both the military and Secret Service do.

The Secret Service has already suspended the clearances of those allegedly involved in the episode. The Service announced Wednesday afternoon that one supervisor involved had retired, another is in the process of being removed for cause, and a line-level employee resigned.

Fidell suggested both agencies will find a way to punish those involved because of the embarrassment and distraction the incident caused.

"At the end of the day, a major presidential exercise of several days duration [was] completely trashed," he said.