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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 5:36:14 PM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Huh? There are far too many elected...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 6:01:19 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Senate Approves Judicial Nominee as Filibuster Deal Holds By DAVID STOUT WASHINGTON, June 9 - Judge William H. Pryor Jr., one of President Bush's embattled judicial nominees, was confirmed by the Senate today for a seat on the federal appeals court that covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The Senate voted, 53-45, to confirm Judge Pryor for a lifetime appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta. He has been sitting on the tribunal since early 2004 under a temporary presidential appointment that would have expired late this year without the Senate confirmation. Three Republicans voted against confirmation - Senator Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. Two Democrats voted in favor - Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Two senators did not vote - James Jeffords, Independent of Vermont, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. Judge Pryor, 43, is the last of three controversial Bush court nominees to win confirmation after many months of filibusters, or threats of filibusters, by Senate Democrats. The other two, Judges Priscilla R. Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, have already been confirmed, for seats on the Fifth Circuit and District of Columbia Circuit, respectively. Judges Pryor, Brown and Owen finally able get their "yes or no" votes in the Senate after enough Democrats and Republicans reached a deal last month that forestalled further filibusters on their nominations. But there is little doubt that there will be more battles over appeals court nominees, and almost certainly over nominees to the Supreme Court. Judge Pryor's elevation was virtually assured on Wednesday, when the Senate voted, 67 to 32, to curtail debate on his nomination. The 67 votes were 7 more than needed to close debate. Judge Pryor, as the other two judges were, has long been described by Republicans as an intellectually acute person of integrity - but by Democrats as a far-right, intolerant ideologue. Those characterizations were expressed one last time as the debate tailed off this afternoon. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Judge Pryor had built "a very distinguished record" as a private lawyer and attorney general of Alabama. Mr. Specter noted that Judge Pryor had graduated magna cum laude from Northeast Louisiana University and magna cum laude from Tulane University Law School and had been a clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The senator said Judge Pryor would uphold the law with an even hand, regardless of his personal beliefs. But Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader, said Judge Pryor espoused views "far outside the mainstream of legal thought" on civil rights, age-related job discrimination, women's rights and other important issues.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 6:03:44 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Democrats can't get elected: if they are, they are mute, pork carrier

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 6:10:27 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Eliot Spitzer Tastes Defeat in Court With Broker's Acquittal By RIVA D. ATLAS and JENNIFER BAYOT A former broker with Bank of America was acquitted today of most charges that he aided in the improper trading of mutual funds, handing Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, his first major legal defeat in his crackdown on Wall Street. The broker, Theodore C. Sihpol III, had been accused of enabling a hedge fund manager, Edward J. Stern of Canary Capital Partners, to trade in mutual funds after hours, pocketing tens of millions of dollars illegally. It was a tip about those trades that in 2003 initiated a broad investigation of the mutual fund industry by the New York attorney general and the Securities and Exchange Commission. That investigation has led to a dozen settlements with executives and fund companies, extracting nearly $3 billion in fines, restitution to investors and fee reductions. Mr. Sihpol, while a relatively low-level figure among those investigated, was the first executive to be brought to trial. His case was the first major test of Mr. Spitzer's office in a courtroom; the attorney general has made his name largely on big, groundbreaking settlements over abuses in financial services, positioning himself as a candidate for governor. His critics seized on the defeat today. "This jury of New Yorkers exposes Spitzer as a politician whose ambition has steamrolled too many hardworking men and women of our state," Stephen Minarik, New York State Republican chairman, said in a statement today. "Looks like the so called 'Sheriff of Wall Street' had a gun full of blanks." Darren Dopp, Mr. Spitzer's communications director, said the verdict needed to be put in perspective. "Yes, we lost this case, and it's disappointing," he said. "But you have to see it in the context of sweeping reforms, more than $3 billion in restitution and six guilty pleas." A New York Supreme Court jury in Manhattan found Mr. Sihpol not guilty on 29 of the 33 counts against him, including larceny and securities fraud. Jurors were deadlocked on the four remaining counts, including conspiracy to defraud, and Justice James Yates declared a mistrial on those charges. Mr. Sihpol and prosecutors will convene on June 23 to discuss whether to retry him on the remaining charges, to dismiss them or to reach a settlement. During Mr. Sihpol's six-week trial, the focus was not on whether he arranged for Mr. Stern to trade after hours, but whether he was in fact aware that those trades were wrong. "You must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Sihpol actually engaged in conduct which intentionally aided that other person, Stern, Canary, Lerner, to perform the acts which constitute the crime charged," Judge Yates said.Harold Wilson, the lead prosecutor, said in his closing argument on June 2 that "Most of the evidence is undisputed" and told jurors: "Your focus is on what the defendant intended." Mr. Sihpol, 37, began working at Bank of America in December 2000 as a broker in its New York private client services group. A month later, he cold-called Mr. Stern, and by May 2001 he was arranging for Mr. Stern to make after-hours trades in and out of mutual funds. Mr. Stern ended his trading with Bank of America in July 2003, and Canary Capital Partners has gone out of business. Throughout the trial, Mr. Sihpol's lawyers portrayed him as an inexperienced, junior employee of the bank, and argued that other executives at Bank of America were aware of Mr. Stern's trading arrangements. "There is no trickery by Mr. Sihpol," his lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said in his closing arguments.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 6:11:53 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Fed Chief Sees 'Reasonably Firm' Economy With 'Imbalances' By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON, June 9 -The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, warned today that the American economy was facing significant "imbalances" and he made clear that he was not yet finished with ratcheting up interest rates. In testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Mr. Greenspan said the economy was on "reasonably firm footing," but he expressed concern about the "negligible" rate of personal savings, the huge trade deficit and growing evidence of risky speculative behavior in the housing market. Mr. Greenspan dodged questions about his plans for interest rates, but his emphasis on the United States' relatively strong growth and on "imbalances" left little doubt that the Fed chairman was more worried about cooling off inflationary pressures than about choking off economic growth. Mr. Greenspan repeated the central bank's previous statements about raising short-term rates at a "measured" pace, which virtually guaranteed that it would raise them by an additional quarter-point at its next policy meeting on June 30 and would probably follow with additional rate increases in the fall. The Fed has raised the federal funds rate on overnight loans eight times in the past year, to 3 percent from 1 percent, and some investors have been predicting that it may pause when the rate hits 3.5 percent. Fed officials are keeping their options open, and Mr. Greenspan and most other officials have given no hint that they are close to the end of the process. One big reason is the baffling behavior of bond investors, who have pushed down interest rates on long-term Treasury bonds and actually reduced mortgage rates for homebuyers and borrowing costs for corporations. Mr. Greenspan said the unexpected decline in long-term interest rates, despite the Fed's increases on short-term lending rates, was "unprecedented" and even more exaggerated on close scrutiny than it appeared at first blush. Though he did not say so explicitly, his clear implication was that the Federal Reserve had, if anything, more reason than before to keep raising short-term rates. "It's a profoundly important phenomenon and really quite different than one would expect," Mr. Greenspan said, adding that mortgages rates were "lower than they would ordinarily be" after a year of trying to ratchet up borrowing costs. But the most striking part of Mr. Greenspan's testimony was his increased emphasis on the United States' growing foreign indebtedness, its low savings rate and slowing growth of productivity. Until recently, he and other top Fed officials have persistently downplayed the significance of the United States' huge trade deficit, which hit a record $617 billion last year and appears to still be climbing. Likewise, Mr. Greenspan had until a few weeks ago rebuffed a growing chorus of analysts warning that the nation faced a speculative bubble in housing prices. Today, Mr. Greenspan appeared to pay homage to those who have worried about the rising levels of debt and speculative behavior that are in part a result of the Fed's decision to slash interest rates from 2001 through June 2004. Though he repeated his longstanding view that there was no nationwide bubble in housing prices, he acknowledged that there was "froth" in the market and that speculative buying, based on the assumption of ever-higher real estate prices, had increased. He noted that the number of people buying second homes has climbed sharply and that "speculative activity may have had a greater role in generating the recent price increases than it has customarily had in the past." Mr. Greenspan noted that "our household saving rate remains negligible" and he warned that productivity is now climbing about half as rapidly as in 2003. Even though wages have climbed slowly, he continued, the slower rise in productivity has pushed up the cost of labor for any given volume of output, which may feed inflationary pressures in the future.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 9:06:28 PM
From: Wayners	Respond to of 769667

If you have a case where a criminal statue is ruled unconstitutional as applied to felons, but not non-felons, does this raise the possibility of an equal protection claim on the part of non-felons? It seems to me such a decision leads to the illogical result that felons cannot be prosecuted while non-felons can be prosecuted for doing the exact same thing. I'm describing this in broad details to avoid a long explanation of the facts.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (685236)	6/9/2005 11:36:27 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Dollar Keeps Gains After Greenspan By REUTERS Filed at 11:15 p.m. ET TOKYO (Reuters) - The dollar stayed bouyant on Friday, keeping modest gains made after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy was on a ``firm footing'' and that interest rates still had room to rise. Some in the market were relieved that Greenspan was upbeat, though cautious, in his remarks to Congress on Thursday, given recent comments by other Fed officials that suggested the central bank might be nearing the end of its rate-raising cycle. Other traders said his outlook was not unexpected as the Fed chief doesn't want to rock the boat in the waning months of his 18 years at the Fed's helm. ``He's not the type to do anything dramatic toward the end of his career,'' said a dealer at a European brokerage in Tokyo. ``He doesn't want the market and the (market) environment to be too drastic while he's in office.'' Greenspan is due to step down in January. At 0245 GMT, the euro fetched around $1.2235 That was almost flat from late trade in New York, where the euro fell as far as around $1.2176, just off last week's eight-month low of $1.2158. The dollar was little changed at 107.45 yen Dealers said its advance was stemmed as Japanese exporters had sell orders lined up around 108 yen. The euro zone currency was around 131.50 yen up from 131.38 yen. Greenspan told a congressional committee: ``Despite some of the risks that I have highlighted, the U.S. economy seems to be on a reasonably firm footing, and underlying inflation remains contained. ``Accordingly, the Federal Open Market Committee in its May meeting reaffirmed that it '... believes that policy accommodation can be removed at a pace that is likely to be measured,''' he added. The Fed has raised short-term borrowing costs eight times since last June to 3 percent in a bid to head off inflation. DATE WITH TRADE DATA Greenspan's comments helped to dispel worries prompted by Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher's suggestion last week that the central bank was in the final stages of its tightening cycle. ``Expectations that (the Fed) might stop interest rate hikes by the end of the year have retreated,'' said Tohru Sasaki, chief forex strategist at JPMorgan Chase in Tokyo. The widening interest rate advantage the dollar enjoys over its major rivals has been a key to the currency's rise of around 10 percent against the euro and nearly 5 percent versus the yen this year. It has helped divert attention from concerns about whether the United States can keep financing its trade and budget deficits. Such concerns helped to push the dollar index down 30 percent over the three years to the end of 2004. The market was waiting on the U.S. trade report for April, due at 1230 GMT, which is expected to show the deficit widening to $58 billion from $55 billion in March. Also in focus was a London meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations plus Russia that starts on Friday. China's economy and its yuan policy are expected to be on the agenda. However, dealers said the market has become jaded after long and intense speculation about when Beijing will loosen the yuan peg to the dollar, saying the meeting would likely pass without any impact on currencies. ``The market is not going to be interested if they are not going to give any specific timing (for a revaluing),'' said the trader at the European brokerage.