By Seth Borenstein
Inquirer Washington Bureau

Records show declines from previous administrations. The head of the EPA says his agency is getting results by working smarter.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is catching and punishing far fewer polluters than the two previous administrations, according to an analysis of 15 years of environmental-enforcement records. ...

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In a move unprecedented in U.S. history, John Ashcroft's Justice Department has indicted an entire organization – Greenpeace! -- for the peaceful protest activities of its members.

For years, we have been working to halt environmental destruction and human rights abuses by criminal enterprises in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. In April 2002, miles off the coast of Florida, two Greenpeace activists boarded a ship that was carrying wood illegally exported from the Brazilian Amazon. Their goal was to hang a banner that said "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging."

But instead of intercepting the contraband and prosecuting the smugglers, the federal government has charged Greenpeace with crimes for boarding the ship. This case poses a serious threat to citizens' right to free speech and to engage in peaceful dissent. A trial is currently scheduled for December.

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Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said yesterday that the Bush administration has gone "off a cliff" in postwar Iraq and that "the White House has to get a grip on this."

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[AP Politics]

Beginning in 2006, seniors who want the optional drug benefit will have to choose whether to enroll in a stand-alone drug plan or move from traditional Medicare to a managed care plan that offers drug and other benefits not covered by traditional Medicare.

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Stephen J. Schulhofer, a New York University law professor, countered that more than a dozen government initiatives "are demonstrably not justified as a response to 9-11." Limited resources that should be devoted to U.S. intelligence are being misspent on unnecessary new legal procedures, Schulhofer said.

"The common thread that runs through these measures," he said, "is the erosion, and in many instances the complete obliteration, of traditional checks and balances."

Philip B. Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor and deputy attorney general under former President Clinton (news - web sites), said Congress should reject several assertions of authority invoked by the Bush administration in the name of security.

They include the power to order military tribunals for U.S. residents who are not citizens and the power to collect information from an individual's associates while compelling the associates to keep the inquiry secret, Heymann said in written testimony to the commission. He was unable to travel to Washington for the hearing.

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