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EDITORIALS
Modest fixes, important gains
The Obama administration’s move for flexibility in terrorism cases
suspects. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said that existing ground rules — established for run-of-the-mill criminal matters — may not work well in all terrorism cases. The search for more flexibility extends beyond the Miranda warning is- sue that has gotten most attention, administration officials tell us. That’s good. The administration intends to seek congressional approval for any changes, to maintain a strong role for judicial oversight and to keep changes as modest as pos- sible. All that is good, too. In the U.S. war against terrorist organizations, there may be times when national security de- mands extended interrogations of suspects cap- tured on U.S. soil. Two aspects of criminal law may work against this: informing a suspect of his Mi- randa rights and presenting him in a timely way
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on what new taxes can be imposed, with proposals targeting soft drinks, yoga classes and the in- vestment portfolios of wealthy residents. These shortsighted measures would place new burdens on Washingtonians while placing the District at a competitive disadvantage with its suburban neigh- bors. Instead of rushing to impose yet more taxes on residents who already pay more in most taxes than their counterparts in Maryland or Virginia, the council should impose some spending discipline on a government that has seen its expenditures in- crease by nearly 40 percent over the past five years. In the weeks since Mayor Adrian M. Fenty sub-
Hard choices
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Time to get real about the District’s budget.
HIS WEEK, D.C. Council Members begin final deliberations on the city’s fiscal 2011 budget. To date, much of the discussion has centered
mitted his proposed budget of $5.3 billion, the council’s committees have met to make their own changes. Some have sought to restore cuts made by the mayor and, as they work to meet the May 27 budget deadline, ideas are being pushed to gener- ate “new revenue.” The proposals are in addition to the litany of tax, fee and fine increases contained in the mayor’s budget that prompted Council Chair- man Vincent C. Gray (D) to decry residents being “nickel-and-dimed with everything they try to do in this city.” Mr. Fenty should have taken more of a lead in cut- ting spending. He has, since taking office, cut hun- dreds of positions and tightened some spending, but he also has dipped generously into city reserves. From a high of $1.58 billion in 2005, the balance has declined to $920 million, with Mr. Fenty proposing further withdrawals that could bring it to $607 mil- lion in fiscal 2012. Some spending from the rainy day fund made sense during a recession. But deple- tion at this rate makes Wall Street nervous — and that could have serious consequences for the city’s credit rating. Then too, there is the possibility that
HE ADMINISTRATION IS gingerly explor- ing ways to give law enforcement officers more latitude when interrogating terrorism
for arraignment. Both of these could be tweaked without undermining the Constitution if the changes are undertaken carefully. Currently, criminal suspects may be questioned
before being read their Miranda rights to allow of- ficers to glean information about an imminent threat. But neither Congress nor the courts have articulated how long this questioning may last nor how imminent the threat must be. Administration officials argue that this non-Mirandized question- ing may last for only a few hours. They fear that if it goes on much longer they could damage their ability to prosecute and expose law enforcement officials to civil liability for violating the suspect’s rights. So they would like to extend the “public safety” exception to define imminent threats more broadly in terrorism cases. Federal rules also require that a suspect be brought before a judge “without unnecessary de- lay” — usually within 24 to 48 hours. Officials are
considering seeking a change that would allow them to question a suspect for days, rather than hours, if he was providing essential information about, say, ter- rorist networks in Pakistan. The flexibility would come with a requirement that a federal judge be in- formed that the suspect was being questioned to en- sure that the more flexible standards are not abused. We believe U.S. law gives the government a separate option: for the military in certain cases to hold a sus- pect, even a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil, as an en- emy combatant, again with appropriate judicial over- sight. The administration is reluctant to go that way for both pragmatic and philosophical reasons. That is a legitimate subject for separate debate. But for those who would like to see more involvement of military or intelligence officials in interrogations there is no rea- son to oppose the modest reforms the administration is considering; and those who favor a response con- fined to civilian criminal law should favor the effort to make that law work better in these difficult cases.
TOM TOLES
SUNDAY,MAY 16, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
Metro’s escalator failure
Reading about Metro’s latest planned fare hikes
[Metro, May 13] reminded me that it is, after all, a public utility — leading me to wonder what utility Metro finds in the intolerable escalator situation at the Bethesda stop on the Red Line. Send out a photographer! Forget the original planning idiocy of having no mezzanine stairway at this busy station. Today, we have one (of only two) mezzanine escalators out of service for repair — for three months. The predictable result is near chaos as hundreds of commuters wait in long and disorga- nized lines to squeeze up (or down) past each other on the remaining, immobile escalator. It took 10 minutes to get off the platform at 6 p.m. one day re- cently. Forget about catching those Ride-On buses. And, of course, nobody is working on the blocked-
off escalator. Is no mitigation possible? How about a temporary ramp for rush hours when nobody is working on repairs? How about overtime for the re- pair crew? Why three months in the first place? How about some rope lines for pedestrian traffic control? How about some managerial competence?
ROBERT J. MCMANUS, Bethesda
Pay and process at the Pentagon
Regarding the May 8 front-page article “Pentagon:
Troop pay raises too generous”: I retired from the Air Force in 2005, so I served dur- ing the 1990s, when troops were being “whittled down” (a nice phrase for what happened at promo- tion boards); when it felt as if everything was being contracted out; when we were “partnering” with the world, so it seemed, the clear message being that everyone else could do our job better than we could. I recall reading the yearly Air Force Times articles about how our pay compared with that of the private sector. And I felt every bit of the 13 percent less that we were being paid. Then I read the comment by Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment that the slightly bigger military pay raise that Congress fa- vors would be “a huge burden on the defense budget in the long term.” I thought, “Wow, so paying our serv- ice members for their sacrifice is becoming a ‘burden’ to the Defense Department.” Well, consider the burden on service members who
leave their families for repeated deployments from which they risk coming back badly wounded or not coming back at all. Or the burden borne by people who spend their working lives in the service of their country. Or the burden of never being able to set down roots, of moving their families every few years, finding new places of worship, developing relation- ships with new doctors, subjecting their children to new schools, having to make new friends. The Defense Department is buying more for the
pay than a private-sector employer would get. The money most certainly should be better.
TELINW. OZIER,Washington
As a veteran, I can say from personal experience
that concerns about military wages have been vastly overstated for years. I took a drastic pay cut when I left the military. This
pay decrease did not come in the form of my base pay, which dramatically increased after I left, but in over- all compensation, which dropped significantly. While in the military, I had no medical co-pays or
the District will have to make further cuts if, as oc- curred last year, updated revenue projects are be- low expectations.
Council members should listen to Jack Evans (D-
Ward 2), chair of the finance and revenue commit- tee, who remembers the District’s profligate spend- ing of the mid-1990s that forced Congress to take control. He’s proposing an across-the-board cut of 3
percent. Even exempting police and schools, this would save at least $50 million. We’re not fans of across-the-board cuts. We would prefer a more careful look at expenditures to gauge what’s really needed as opposed to what’s de- sirable. But Mr. Evans is right to press the mayor and his colleagues to make the hard choices they were elected to make.
Excusing child molesters
A Montgomery County judge is too forgiving.
UDGE ERIC M. JOHNSON of the Montgomery County Circuit Court, whose long career in- cludes a stint as a prosecutor, would probably re- coil at the suggestion that he is soft on child mo- lesters. But what other conclusion to draw after his latest act of charity toward this especially repulsive class of criminal — his second in three years — this one directed at a man convicted of abusing a 4-year- old girl?
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On scant evidence, Judge Johnson concluded on
May 7 that Jason Lay, now 26 years old, had become a different person in the five years since he was con- victed of forcing the girl to perform sexual acts while she was in his care. “I find your remorse to be genuine,” the judge told Mr. Lay — the same Mr. Lay who made faces at witnesses during his trial in 2005.The judge knocked 14 years off Mr. Lay’s origi- nal 30-year sentence. Rather than remaining be- hind bars until 2035, Mr. Lay will be eligible for pa- role in 2013, after just eight years in prison — and before his 30th birthday. Judge Johnson’s decision was disturbing on a
number of levels. It raises questions about whether, when it comes to child molesters, he hands down sentences with a nod and a wink. Owing to a quirk in Maryland law that allows courts to revisit and re- duce sentences at the defense’s request, two years ago the judge cut an 18-year sentence for another child molester, Stanley D. Schwartz, to just 18 months. Mr. Schwartz, whose own children testi- fied against him and urged the judge to impose the longest prison term possible, had been convicted of abusing three youngsters. It was that same provision of state law that en- abled the judge to halve Mr. Lay’s sentence based on the testimony of a single social worker who exam- ined Mr. Lay and found him remorseful. (What else would Mr. Lay say — that he reveled in the memory of abusing a pre-schooler?) Almost as disturbing was the judge’s apparently
cavalier attitude toward the dangers faced by con- victed child molesters; Mr. Lay has been attacked by gang members in prison and was once stabbed 13 times, according to his lawyer. “Those are collateral
consequences,which come about as a result of hav- ing been convicted,” said Judge Johnson. Does he mean that assault in prison is no big deal, so let’s talk about the convict’s deep remorse instead? No one — and particularly no judge — should accept rapes, assaults or other criminal behavior in prison as “collateral consequences” of a sentence. Only in Maryland do trial courts have unchecked power to reduce sentences even for violent crimes. Serious questions have been raised about that pow- er in the past, following instances in which former inmates committed murder, rapes and other crimes after their terms were trimmed. There is conflicting research about the rate at which convicted child molesters offend after serving prison sentences, but one thing is not in doubt: their crimes are extraor- dinarily damaging and their victims generally de- fenseless. That should have been more in Judge Johnson’s mind when Mr. Lay and Mr. Schwartz came before him seeking leniency. This week Judge Johnson sentenced another child molester, Virgilio Nunez, to 37 years. We’ll see if that sentence sticks.
insurance premiums, I got extra money for going out to sea and for my specialized skills, I got bonuses for enlisting, and I got compensation for both food and housing. These last two were tax-free, and as long as my ship spent at least one day a year in a “war zone,” all of my pay was tax-free. On top of this, I also re- ceived $42,000 toward college and a special mort- gage reserved for veterans, and my state did not tax any of my income. With all this, I made about $10,000 more in take-home pay than I received as a civilian. This was before the very generous post-Sept. 11 GI Bill was passed, before spousal college benefits began and before six annual pay increases, all of which far out- paced both civilian pay increases and inflation. I have many friends who are financially forced to
stay in the military. They’re so accustomed to the high pay, great benefits and huge tax breaks that they can- not afford to leave. The compensation comparisons with the civilian sector have always been like compar- ing apples to tractor trailers.
CLIFTONRICHARDHAMILTON, Philadelphia
Regarding the May 9 news story “Gates vows to shrink Pentagon bureaucracy”: To illustrate how bureaucratic Defense Depart- ment management has become, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates cited the lengthy process for getting a dog-handling team to Afghanistan and asked, “Can you believe it takes five four-star headquarters to get a decision on a guy and a dog up to me?” My answer would be yes — it seems reasonable to expect high- level military review before recommended actions are sent to his level. The question Mr. Gates should be asking is: “Why in the world does the secretary of defense need to make decisions about a guy and his dog in the first place?”
KENNETH A. BOYD, La Plata
Who gets to define ‘mainstream’?
I have a simple question for Kathleen Parker about
her May 12 op-ed column on Supreme Court nomi- nee Elena Kagan, “Miles from mainstream America.” Given that the four most populous states are New
TAKING EXCEPTION
The right way to create a credit rating
The May 5 editorial “A standard and poor rem-
edy” faulted Congress for not considering two al- ternatives to the current approach for producing credit ratings: “requiring institutional investors to rely on market signals about creditworthiness, such as a periodically updated average of prices for default insurance,” and “grading on a curve.” Nei- ther is practical or appropriate. Prices for default insurance provide a view of the
market. Ratings reflect an independent and funda- mental analysis of the relevant factors that could influence a security’s credit risk — whether the is- suer will be repaid in full and on time. Standard & Poor’s issues a million ratings a year, across differ- ent asset classes and geographies. The market of- fers insurance on only about 3,500 securities. In addition, S&P’s goal, particularly on highly
rated securities, is to provide a rating that is rela- tively stable through an economic cycle, while credit default insurance costs can change daily, if not hourly, as market sentiment changes. The bond markets can overestimate or underestimate
ABCDE
default risk depending on the ebb and flow of sen- timent. Ratings take a longer term view of funda- mental credit risk. “Grading on a curve” means that every upgrade would have to be offset by a downgrade. There is no logical basis for this. At best, it would be arbi- trary, and at worst it would distort risks in the mar- ket, which expects rating agencies to act only after reviewing the fundamental factors of an issuer’s or security’s credit risk. We have emphatically supported ending reg-
ulations that require investors to use credit ratings — indeed, the Securities and Exchange Commis- sion has begun to do just that. We believe that rat- ings agencies should compete based on the quality of their analysis and the strength of their staff. Finally, we support many of the regulatory pro- posals being discussed, particularly those that will promote healthy competition and help restore confidence in the ratings industry.
DEVENSHARMA,New York
The writer is president of Standard & Poor’s.
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York, California, Florida and Texas, how does Ms. Parker define “mainstream America”? Regardless of whether America is segmented by population, geog- raphy or political philosophy, our nation is incredibly diverse. No one person from any single region can represent or link himself or herself to whatever the mainstream is. That is the point of this nation — we are all singular human beings with many different experiences, and we must all work together to find common ground. Attempting to make an outcast of someone who wasn’t brought up in select segments of the country is not constructive. Besides, any nominee to the Supreme Court should be an exceptional human being.
DAVID C. ZWEIG, Los Angeles
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