China last week successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.

Manual lays out rules for Guantanamo trials
POSTED: 8:16 p.m. EST, January 18, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is submitting to Congress a manual for trials of detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay that would allow the admission of hearsay evidence and coerced testimony, a Pentagon official told reporters Thursday.

The manual was drafted to comply with a law passed last year that restored the Bush administration's military commissions created to try terrorist suspects.

The Supreme Court had struck down the commissions as unconstitutional. (Watch a detainee's family tell about his letter home Video)

The procedures outlined in the manual "will ensure that unlawful enemy combatants suspected of war crimes and certain other offenses are prosecuted before regularly constituted courts affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people," said Principal Deputy General Counsel Dan Dell'Orto.

Dell'Orto called the manual "the most comprehensive legal framework for the prosecution of war criminals in U.S. history."

The rights of the accused are "very much the same" as those in a court-martial, he said.

About 400 detainees are being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Dell'Orto said the manual calls for the accused to be presumed innocent and requires that convictions be based on guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Independent counsel will "represent defendants zealously and protect against even the appearance of unlawful influence" in a jury system comparable to that used by general courts-martial, he said.

Defendants are further to be provided with evidence before its admission in court, he said.

Admission of classified evidence outside the presence of the accused is prohibited, he said.

In addition, the accused must be granted "a reasonable opportunity" to obtain evidence and witnesses," and are granted the right to protection against self-incrimination, he said.

Anyone found guilty has the right to appeal, first to a court of military commission review, then to the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia and finally to the Supreme Court of the United States, he said.

The statute provides for the admissibility of hearsay evidence, an issue of contention among defense lawyers. Dell'Orto said the admission of such evidence should not necessarily weigh against defendants, since they, too, can enter such evidence, which thereby "levels the playing field, if you will."

And both sides can attack the credibility of witnesses, he said.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, told reporters that the manual provides for a "clear prohibition of evidence obtained by torture" if it was obtained after December 30, 2005.

But if it was obtained before that time, and if the judge determines that it is reliable, it may be admitted, he said.

No evidence -- not even classified evidence -- will be admissible that the accused has not seen, but the manual lays out procedures under which the government could ask the judge to rule on whether "certain matters should be redacted," or summarized or replaced with substitute evidence, Hemingway said.

Dell'Orto predicted that, with the manual's completion, cases "will be moving forward soon."

The cases of 14 "high-value" detainees "will take some time because they are extremely complex," he said.

Of the nearly 400 detainees, 60 to 80 are facing potential charges for violations of the law of war, he added.

Crist wants touch-screen voting machines gone

By STEVE BOSQUET
Published January 31, 2007
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TALLAHASSEE — Eager to end six troublesome years of touch screen voting in Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist wants every county to switch to paper ballots by 2008.


Crist will ask the Legislature to spend more than $30-million to replace touch screens with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate’s name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader — the same way absentee ballots are cast.

The change would affect a majority of the state’s voters living in 15 mostly urban counties, including Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco.

Crist will travel today to Palm Beach County, home of the disgraced “butterfly ballot” that in 2000 became a symbol of electoral ineptitude.

Accompanied by Secretary of State Kurt Browning and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat and a vocal critic of touch screen voting, Crist will endorse the change in voting systems while offering the money to pay for it.

“I think it’s important to make sure people have confidence in our voting system,” Crist said Wednesday. “If there’s a need for a recount, I think it’s important that we have something to recount.”

Supporters of optical scan voting say it is more certain to reflect a voter’s intent because it creates a paper record of every ballot.

In a touch screen system, a voter receives a card and inserts it into an ATM-like machine and touches the screen to record choices. The card is sent to the supervisor of elections, where the choices are downloaded and counted.

No tangible record exists.

Crist’s eagerness to junk touch-screen voting comes amid a continuing furor over the high number of undervotes in a close Congressional election in Sarasota conducted with touch-screen machines.

The lack of a paper audit trail has frustrated efforts to conduct a manual recount. The trailing candidate, Democrat Christine Jennings, filed a lawsuit asking for another vote.

Reaction to the Crist plan Wednesday was cautious.

Pinellas County uses two massive optical scan machines to process absentee and provisional ballots. The bulk of the voting during a county-wide election takes place on 3,400 touch screen machines.

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock said she was reluctant to comment on Crist’s proposal before the governor makes his announcement.

But Whitlock said that if touch screens were replaced with optical scanners, vote counting would take much longer. She said that under federal election rules, each polling place must have a touch screen to serve the disabled.

In 2001, Pinellas spent $14-million to buy an electronic voting system, much of it spent toward buying touch screen machines. Whitlock said the county would have to consider selling its touch screens, perhaps to a jurisdiction in another state, to avoid a financial loss.

Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley said transparency and security are key points.

“It’s no secret Florida ... has been a lightning rod of controversy,” Corley said. “There seems to be the will of the people to move toward paper trails. If that would satisfy the people, then I would support it.”

Some voting-system watchdogs expressed skepticism about what they see as a hasty decision by the new governor.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Crist’s impulse to scrap touch screen units and replace them with optical scanners was “too quick.” The ACLU said it was concerned with the impact on voters who do not speak English or have physical disabilities.

On the other hand, the activist group People for the American Way called Crist’s plan “a strong first step” and said touch screen machines “have caused too many problems in Florida.’’

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, a fierce critic of touch screens, also hailed the move.
Sancho said Crist is following the recommendation of an elections task force made six years ago after the hanging-chad fiasco of the presidential recount. The task force urged that all 67 counties be required to switch to optical scan voting, but lawmakers left the choice up to each county.

One lobbyist wore two hats, representing counties and a voting machine vendor. The Florida Association of Counties received cash commissions in return for endorsing machines sold by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb.
The result, Sancho said, was a politically-motivated, lobbyist-influenced decisions by some counties to switch to touch screen technology.

“We dumbed down the process to accommodate technology that has limited capacity to be audited,” Sancho said. “That was simply the wrong way to go.”

The 15 touch screen counties are Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Charlotte, Collier, Duval, Indian River, Lake, Lee, Martin, Sarasota and Sumter.

     

Democrats in Congress set sights on unpaid taxes

Raw Story | February 5, 2007

According to an article in Monday's New York Times, Democrats in Congress are "hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes" by collecting part of the $300 billion estimated to be lost every year due to unreported earnings.

However, a struggle is shaping up between the Democrats, who rely on IRS statements that it would be easy to collect an additional $50 to $100 billion a year, and the Bush administration, which believes that no more than $10 billion could realistically be gained by tightening up on tax cheats.

Excerpt:

On Monday, as part of President Bush's budget proposal, the Treasury Department will unveil more than a dozen proposals to pursue tax cheats. But officials said those ideas would bring in less than $10 billion a year in extra revenue. Mark W. Everson, the IRS commissioner, has expressed far greater optimism. At a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee a year ago, he told lawmakers that the government could recover "between $50 billion and $100 billion without changing the dynamic between the IRS and the people."

The looming clash over how much can be collected and how to do it has important political implications. If estimates of the tax gap are accurate, Democrats could have a huge amount of money for new spending on energy, education and domestic security.

Democrats badly want the money, because they have adopted strict "pay as you go" budgeting rules that require Congress to pay for any new programs or tax cuts with revenue from other areas.

"The tax gap is the logical place to go," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

FULL TIMES ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK
Democrats Seek Unpaid Taxes, Setting Up Clash
New York Times | February 2, 2007
EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Congressional Democrats, hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes, are on a collision course with the Bush administration about pursuing the potentially vast amount of money that people hide from the Internal Revenue Service .

House and Senate Democrats say the government could collect as much as $100 billion more a year by whittling the tax gap — the unpaid taxes, mostly on unreported earnings, that the I.R.S. estimated was about $300 billion a year.

But the Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., says it cannot realistically recover one-tenth as much as Democrats suggest.

On Monday, as part of President Bush's budget proposal, the Treasury Department will unveil more than a dozen proposals to pursue tax cheats. But officials said those ideas would bring in less than $10 billion a year in extra revenue.

Mark W. Everson, the I.R.S. commissioner, has expressed far greater optimism. At a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee a year ago, he told lawmakers that the government could recover “between $50 billion and $100 billion without changing the dynamic between the I.R.S. and the people.”

Recouping unpaid taxes is a perennial concern in Washington. But the issue may have new urgency with the Democrats now in power and driving the considerable momentum behind it. Representative Charles B. Rangel , Democrat of New York and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has cited the tax gap as a top priority for increasing revenue, ahead of any discussion about rolling back President Bush's tax cuts.

Democrats badly want the money because they have adopted strict “pay as you go” budgeting rules that require Congress to pay for any new programs or tax cuts with revenue from other areas.

“The tax gap is the logical place to go,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “It's also the fair thing to do. When you have a number as high as $300 billion in unreported and uncollected income taxes, that puts a burden on everybody.”

Administration officials contend that Democrats have exaggerated the amount of money they can recover.

“At this point we have to do more research to understand where this money is,” said Michele Davis, a Treasury Department spokeswoman. “We are very mindful of the compliance burden on taxpayers who do follow the law.”

The Democrats have offered only a few specific proposals, and lawmakers have conspicuously refused to comment about proposals that could raise money but also provoke a political reaction from legions of self-employed people and family businesses.

Based on an analysis of audited tax returns from 2001, the I.R.S. recently estimated that the government lost $290 billion that year as a result of underreporting and underpayment of taxes.

More than 80 percent of that loss stemmed from underreporting by individuals, not corporations.

And the biggest problems were with people in business for themselves, who earned income that was not reported to the I.R.S. on W-2 forms or on the Form 1099 that businesses file when they pay independent contractors.

The I.R.S. estimated that it lost $109 billion on unreported business income, almost all of that from sole proprietors, like painters, plumbers, dry cleaners, florists, limousine drivers and restaurant owners.

Small-business lobbying groups have begun to mobilize against proposals intended to reduce the tax gap.

Two of the biggest trade associations in Washington, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, organized the Coalition for Fairness in Tax Compliance in December to address lawmakers about proposals that might burden law-abiding business owners.

“I'm focused on avoiding the wrong solutions,” said Macey Davis, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents more than 600,000 small companies, half of which have fewer than five employees. “We're not out to protect noncompliance. We're out to protect those who are compliant and whose businesses could be hurt.”

Small-business groups have provided powerful support to President Bush and to Republican lawmakers. But they are poised to fight at least one proposal by the Treasury Department, which would authorize the I.R.S. to obtain information about a business's revenues from credit card companies.

The proposal would allow the I.R.S. to compare the credit card payments made to a business with the revenues the business owner reports on his or her tax return. If the credit card payments were suspiciously high compared with what the business owner reported to the government, the I.R.S. could begin an audit.

Opponents of the proposal contend that it would catch very little wrong-doing because it would not examine payments made in cash or by check. They warn that it could have disruptive side effects on business operations. (A similar idea proposed by the Bush administration last year received virtually no attention from the Republican-led Congress.)

The Democrats' biggest obstacle is that the tax gap is in some ways as amorphous as “waste, fraud and abuse” — everyone is against it, but no one is sure how to go about dealing with it. Many tax experts agree that increasing compliance would require an array of tactics, from increased auditing to tougher reporting requirements, to address scores of different practices.

Many such efforts would probably prompt political resistance, whether from small-business lobbying groups or from the credit card companies that might be ordered to provide the I.R.S. with transaction data at no charge. And some efforts may not yield much extra revenue. Another proposal that could lead to organized political opposition is a plan to crack down on investors who understate their profits when selling stocks.

The I.R.S. estimated that it lost about $11 billion in 2001 from people who understated their capital gains after selling stock. According to the agency's review of tax returns that year, a year when the stock market was plunging and losses were more common than gains, about 38 percent of all people underreported their capital gains.

The problem, I.R.S. officials said, is that brokerage firms report only how much money a person receives from the sale of stock, not how much the person paid for it. Without an audit, the government has no way of verifying the profits that people report.

Nina Olson, the I.R.S.'s independent taxpayer advocate, has proposed that Congress require brokerage firms to report a person's purchase cost as well as sales proceeds to the government. Mr. Emanuel has introduced a bill based on the idea.

The Bush administration is also planning to ask Congress to provide more money for enforcement efforts, including money for more auditors. But the I.R.S. currently audits fewer than one out of 435 tax returns. Doubling the number of auditors would mean that the I.R.S. would still audit less than 1 percent of all returns.

Democratic lawmakers contend that the Bush administration has been dragging its feet on efforts to track down underreporting.

“I know they can't recover every dollar of the tax gap, but the I.R.S. needs to make an aggressive effort, and an honest one,” said Senator Max Baucus , Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee. “Treasury shouldn't lowball their estimate.”

But in an interview last week, Mr. Baucus declined to propose any of his own ideas for reducing cheating. “I'm leaving it up to them,” he said, referring to the Treasury Department.

Some Treasury officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because President Bush had not announced his proposals, said that Democrats had exaggerated the amount of money they could recover. But in his testimony before the Senate budget committee last February, Mr. Everson said the government could recover much more than it has been collecting.

“What we've said is, between now and 2009, we want to get the compliance rate from 83.5 percent to 85 percent,” Mr. Everson said. “That gets you about $30 billion in improved compliance.”

Ms. Olson, the I.R.S. taxpayer advocate, said it was not implausible to recover something in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year.

“There's no silver bullet,” Ms. Olson cautioned, noting that the government had to use an array of tactics to address scores of different compliance problems. But she added, “I think there's a significant amount of money that's left on the table and that's not hard to recover.”