WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court Monday agreed to examine whether political leaders can be individually sued for the excesses of an anti-terrorism crackdown launched in the wake of September 11.

The case has been brought by a Pakistani, who was working as a technician for cable operators in Long Island and was arrested in November 2001 on suspicion of fraud involving a bank card.

Javaid Iqbal was transfered to a high-security prison, where he was kept in solitary confinement and subjected to daily humiliations and abuse, according to his lawyers. Six months later he was expelled to Pakistan.

Believing he was subjected to such treatment purely because of his religion, he has sought to sue the prison as well as former attorney general John Ashcroft, and FBI chief Robert Mueller, accusing them of instigating his treatment.

The US administration has tried to get the suit thrown out countering that Iqbal’s arrest was perfectly legal, and even if it had not been the two officials could not be legally pursued for doing their jobs.

Over the years one Egyptian plaintiff has dropped his case against his similar treatment in return for 300,000 dollars.

But an appeals court has partially found in Iqbal’s favor, paving the way for an unprecedented trial.

On Monday the country’s top court agreed to examine in the coming months the basis of the appeal court’s decision. A hearing is not due until the fall, and a decision is not

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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for some foreigners who overstay their visas to seek to remain in the United States legally.

The court ruled 5-4 Monday that someone who is here illegally may withdraw his voluntarily agreement to depart and continue to try to get approval to remain in the United States.

The decision essentially embraced a proposed Justice Department regulation governing the treatment of similar cases in the future.

Samson Dada, a Nigerian citizen, stayed beyond the expiration of his tourist visa in 1998. He married an American the following year and soon began trying to obtain a visa as an immediate relative of a citizen. But Dada and his wife apparently failed to submit some documents, causing immigration officials to deny the visa.

Dada has been trying again to obtain the visa, but immigration authorities meanwhile have ordered him to leave the country.

He agreed to leave voluntarily, which would allow him to try sooner to re-enter the country legally than if he had been deported.

The court’s task was to decide whether he could withdraw his voluntary agreement to leave the country and continue to try to adjust his status while in the United States.

Immigration authorities recently ruled that Dada had entered a “sham” marriage in order to stay in the United States, but that finding was not part of the court’s consideration.

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by his four liberal colleagues. The four conservative justice dissented.

Justice Antonin Scalia said, “The court lacks the authority to impose its chosen remedy.”

The case is Dada v. Mukasey, 06-1181.

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By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

An analysis of cohabitation, marriage and divorce data from 13 countries, including the USA, shows that living together has become so mainstream that growing numbers of Americans view it as an alternative to marriage.

The National Marriage Project study of a sampling of Western European and Scandinavian nations, Australia, Canada and New Zealand found that cohabitation elsewhere is far more common and indeed viewed as an option to matrimony. The study found that anywhere from 15% to 30% of all couples identified themselves as living together, compared with about 10% right now in the USA.

Read Rest of the story here!

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The banner was said to have been the Navy’s idea

President Bush did not say “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on 1 May five years ago. But the banner above him did.

And the picture of those two words said more than the 1,829 words of his speech.

What the president said, among a lot of other things, was: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

But the message from the banner said it simpler – mission accomplished. It was all over.

It wasn’t. Guerrilla war followed, and this has produced more US casualties than the “major combat operations” did.

The phrase “mission accomplished” has lost that distinctive military ring of finality that it once had. It has become an irony.

Navy’s desire

It turned out that the sign was the US Navy’s idea, to celebrate the return of the Abraham Lincoln from the war on Iraq, after an operational tour of 290 days.

President Bush declares ‘mission accomplished’

Mr Bush explained this in October 2003 and was supported by Navy spokesman Commander Conrad Chun, who told CNN: “The banner was a Navy idea, the ship’s idea. The banner signified the successful completion of the ship’s deployment.”

However, it was not quite that simple. It also turned out that the banner was made, by a private contractor, with the help of White House staff.

And there can be little doubt that those White House staff ensured that the banner was correctly placed for the cameras.

So much about that visit was planned for effect – the location, the president dressed in combat gear, landing in the co-pilot’s seat of a Navy S-3 when he could have used a helicopter, the television cameras.

Rumsfeld intervention

The banner destroyed the care that the administration had taken over the speech.

The Defence Secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, told journalist Bob Woodward in an interview in 2006 that he had edited the speech’s draft, which had included the contentious phrase.

President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific

Dana Perino

White House press secretary

“I took ‘mission accomplished’ out,” he said.

“I was in Baghdad, and I was given a draft of that thing to look at. And I just died, and I said ‘my God, it’s too conclusive’. And I fixed it and sent it back… and they fixed the speech, but not the sign.”

Mr Bush did in fact use the phrase himself a month later, telling American troops in Qatar: “America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.”

Afghanistan, too

And Mr Rumsfeld himself said, on the same day as the Abraham Lincoln event, that major combat in Afghanistan had also ended.

He declared in Kabul: “We’re at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilisation and reconstruction activities. The bulk of this country today is permissive, it’s secure.”

There is not much optimism about Iraq these days

The story of the banner would have made a good episode of the US television series The West Wing.

One can imagine the excited planning and then the gradual realisation over the following months that it was not yet mission accomplished.

The face of the White House director of communications, Toby, would have turned even sourer than usual. Chief of staff Leo would have grunted.

The White House, five years on, acknowledges that it was not well thought out.

Press secretary Dana Perino said: “President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said ‘mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission. And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner.”

The speech

And the speech itself?

What is interesting about that is how much optimism (and determination) it displayed, not just about Iraq, but about other areas of combat that are still at issue.

“In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taleban… ”

“From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al-Qaeda killers.”

“The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide.”

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Larry J Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, takes a close look at Hillary Clinton’s arguments that she deserves the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Give Hillary Clinton credit. She has shown toughness, stamina, and persistence in one of the longest presidential campaigns in American history.

She has fought hard and come back time and again in the 2008 primary season, defying the pundits who insisted on writing her political obituary prematurely. She has held the charismatic phenomenon named Barack Obama almost to a draw in the fight for votes and delegates in the Democratic party’s nominating battle.

As some of Obama’s weaknesses become more apparent, her arguments are drawing new attention, and at least a few Democratic leaders are considering them.

All that being true, it’s still very unlikely she will overcome Obama’s lead. With just seven states (plus Puerto Rico and Guam) remaining on the primary schedule, Obama is ahead by close to 160 elected (or pledged) delegates and, overall, by about 130 delegates, once the super-delegates are included.

This may not sound like many in a convention that will host more than 4,000 delegates, but party rules make it difficult to gain a sizeable number of delegates quickly. (Incredibly, you can win a big state and net a mere handful of delegates. The Democrats have developed a system so fair it is unfair.)

Changing the maths

Here’s the basic dilemma for Hillary Clinton: How can she convince senior Democrats to turn their backs on the most loyal party constituency, African-Americans, who regularly give 90% of their votes to party candidates?

For the first time, one of their own has a real chance to become the presidential nominee and the occupant of the White House. The anger in the black community would be palpable and long-lasting if Obama is sent packing.

Democratic women appear unlikely to respond in the same fashion if the first serious woman candidate is turned aside.

Worry among super-delegates about Obama’s viability in the fall is not enough. The only conceivable scenarios that might change the present nominating math are:

• A campaign-ending scandal or gaffe by Obama
• a highly improbable series of victories by Hillary Clinton in primaries she is expected to lose (such as North Carolina and Oregon)
• A raft of polls showing Clinton defeating McCain handily while Obama is losing to McCain decisively (most current polls show relatively little difference in the Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain national match-ups, though the prospective contests in individual states vary considerably)

How can it be that Clinton is so unlikely to prevail, especially close on the heels of her solid, impressive 9.2% victory in Pennsylvania on 22 April?

Why wouldn’t that victory generate significant momentum for Clinton, just at the moment when the remaining super-delegates prepare to make their decisive choice? Didn’t her 214,000-vote plurality in the Keystone State vault her into the popular-vote lead nationally, as she claimed?

The size and breadth of Clinton’s triumph in Pennsylvania certainly demonstrated the emerging limitations of Obama’s appeal, not least the disaffection of many whites, blue-collar workers, and low-income Democrats.

But it almost certainly will be Obama, not Clinton, who is on the November ballot under the Democratic label.

Michigan and Florida

Take Clinton’s claim about the popular vote. On the morning after Pennsylvania, she insisted that she had taken a narrow popular-vote lead, about 15.12 million to nearly 15 million for Obama. But this is classic “new math”, where the numerical answer obtained is often less important than the agile mental gymnastics used to get there.

Clinton’s total relies on two very dubious assumptions. First, one must incorporate the primary results from Florida and Michigan, two January contests excluded by the Democratic National Committee for violating the scheduling rules set by the party. This is no minor sum of votes – 2,344,318, to be exact.

But no even-handed person would contend that Michigan, whose primary occurred on 15 January, should be part of the equation. Barack Obama’s name was not even on the ballot.

The vote total cited by Clinton conveniently excludes three caucus states won by Obama, in Iowa, Maine, and Washington. (Nevada, won by Clinton, is also left out of the tally.) No-one knows the exact number of votes cast for each candidate in these four states since the state parties, by tradition, refuse to release the data.

Eliminating Michigan, the Obama-Clinton match-up shows an Obama edge of a couple hundred thousand votes. Striking Florida brings it to about a half-million-vote Obama plurality. And the unknown caucus results would add at least 100,000 to his lead.

Comparing like with unlike

This discussion of caucus states raises another interesting subject. How can one compare primary and caucus states at all? By their very nature, primaries attract a large electorate in most states. A caucus is a very different political animal, requiring hours of commitment from each participating individual.

The caucus also is inflexible, beginning at a set, mandatory time. There are no absentee ballots and no excuses for troops abroad, medical personnel who must attend to the sick, or elderly individuals who cannot brave a lengthy, stressful outing. Caucus participation is usually just a fraction of the turnout that would have occurred had the state held a primary.

Therefore, the national vote total is heavily skewed to the states holding primaries, and this total mixes primary apples and caucus oranges in an unenlightening way.

The concept of the national popular vote is borrowed from the general election, when it makes more sense. However, in the nominating season the idea is dubious, and it is not a particularly useful measure for the undecided super-delegates. Nevertheless, it has been bandied about so much by the campaigns and news media that it has now become an inescapable yardstick of electoral validity for Clinton and Obama.

Key states

Other questions about the vote mathematics are also compelling. Should the voting results in November’s likely competitive states-the ones we often call purple – a mixture of Republican red and Democratic blue – be given special weight in the popular-vote formula? After all, the purpose of the nominating contest is to pick a candidate who can win the general election.

Hillary Clinton has pushed this interpretation, but only up to a point. She wants her wins in competitive, significant states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania to be determinants for the super-delegates, yet she ignores Barack Obama’s victories in medium-sized toss-up states such as Colorado and Virginia.

With apologies to George Orwell, all states are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Overall, though, this game is pointless since both Clinton and Obama have won states critically important to a Democratic electoral college majority in November.

Different voters

The flaw in the state-based argument is also fundamental. Party primary electorates do not resemble the November electorates in the vast majority of states, so primary results tell us surprisingly little in most states about how a party presidential nominee will fare in the general election.

Think of it this way – perhaps 35 million Americans will have voted in all the Democratic primaries and caucuses by June, but the November voter turnout could reach 135 million people-and those extra 100 million voters are different, both in ideological and partisan terms, than the 35 million early-birds.

US territories

An ancillary issue is whether the U.S. territories, none of which has electoral college votes in November, should even be included in the party nominating system.

In an extremely close race, their delegates could decide the outcome of a presidential nomination, and potentially the Presidency itself. Should Puerto Rico, voting on 1 June, have more delegates than half the American states, as the Democrats have assigned?

Neither Clinton nor Obama will raise this concern, of course, but unbiased observers ought to do so. In most conventions, the territorial votes are a harmless matter, but every now and then, the unintended consequences of their inclusion could become enormous.

The long and short of the debate over the popular vote is this – no-one is likely to agree on exactly what it is, or how it should be counted.

There are considerable flaws inherent in the concept. The popular-vote notion ought to be shelved – but naturally, in this endlessly contentious campaign season, it will not be.

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Hillary Clinton, under mounting pressure to bow out of the presidential race and avoid a floor fight at the Democratic National Convention in August, is standing firm in her determination to fight Barack Obama to the finish.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a former candidate himself, said Clinton has virtually no chance of winning, and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Friday the New York senator should just end her campaign.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the party’s uncommitted superdelegates to support the candidate who has the most votes, which to this point is Obama. And Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on Friday urged all those superdelegates to announce whom they will support by July 1.

But Clinton says she will not abide by anyone’s timetable.

“There are some people who are saying, ‘You know, we really ought to end this primary; we just ought to shut it down’,” she said Friday in South Bend, Ind. “Well, one thing you know about me, when I tell you I’ll fight for you, I’ll get up every day and that’s exactly what I will do.”

Clinton told FOX News in an interview Wednesday that the race is a “long way from being over,” and that she’ll take it to the convention if she has to.

The Clinton campaign sent a fund-raising letter Friday that argued: “Every time our campaign demonstrates its strength and resilience, people start to suggest we should end our pursuit of the Democratic nomination … and they know we are in a position to win.”

The promise of short-term reward is not lost on Clinton. Polls show her way ahead in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22 and offers an attractive 158 pledged delegates. That is roughly how many delegates separate the candidates.

“I think there’s very little chance that Hillary Clinton will drop out at all,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “I think this will go all the way through to the end of the primaries. And look, she’s poised for a very substantial victory in Pennsylvania.”

But Democratic primaries are not winner-take-all. With a proportional allotment, Clinton has little chance of gaining much ground on Obama in Pennsylvania, even if she wins handily.

And party leaders are concerned that every day the Democratic race lasts gives another opening to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.

On the day that McCain launched his first general election ad of the campaign, Obama supporter Leahy called on Clinton to withdraw, citing Obama’s endorsement by Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey as the latest sign of her undoing.

“There is no way that Sen. Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination,” Leahy told Vermont Public Radio in an earlier interview. “She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that’s a decision that only she can make. Frankly, I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate.”

Dodd, who also has endorsed Obama, told National Journal radio that party leaders need to “reach a conclusion” over the next several weeks.

“I think it’s very difficult to imagine how anyone can believe that Barack Obama can’t be the nominee of the party. I think that’s a foregone conclusion,” he said. “I think you have to make a decision, and hopefully the candidates will respect it and people will rally behind a nominee that, I think, emerges from these contests over the next month.”

The upper-level pressure is coming from Pelosi and Dean. They are both uncommitted and are not outright calling on Clinton to leave the race, but they are stonewalling part of her victory strategy.

Clinton and her supporters are banking on uncommitted superdelegates to put her over the edge, and they are looking to the convention as a final opportunity to settle the dispute over the Michigan and Florida delegations. Clinton won the primaries in both states, but they were disqualified for holding their primaries early, and none of the candidates campaigned in either of the states.

Dean’s determination to compel the superdelegates to announce their picks on July 1 could result in a candidate being chosen before the Florida and Michigan controversies are resolved.

Appearing on CBS’ “Early Show” on Friday, Dean said: “Well, I think the superdelegates have already been weighing in. I think there’s 800 of them and 450 of them have already said who they’re for. … I’d like the other 350 to say who they’re on between now and the first of July so we don’t have to take this into the convention.”

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Dean warned against “demoralizing” Democrats with a drawn-out fistfight between Clinton and Obama.

Pelosi, meanwhile, has urged superdelegates to follow the choice of the pledged delegates, more of whom favor Obama. She rejected an overture by wealthy Clinton donors Wednesday that she recant that position.

In response to Leahy, Clinton supporter Sen. Chuck Schumer in a conference call Friday urged supporters to wait and see, citing the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.

Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will work itself out before the party’s convention.

“What have we got, five months left?” he told The Associated Press in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

“I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Gore didn’t elaborate.

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