ABCDE Mostly sunny. 94/74 • Tomorrow: Partly sunny. 97/78 • details, B8 Another summer day down the tubes THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010


3 OUT OF 4 HELD FEDERAL POSTS


High numbers even by K Street standards


by Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST


A group of teens passes under the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Covered Bridge on the Potomac River near Harpers Ferry, W.Va. On the Washington end of the Potomac, temperatures are expected to be in the 90s again Thursday with diminished chances for rain.


Fired USDA official receives apologies


White House, Vilsack say excerpts of speech on race were misleading


by Karen Tumulty and Ed O’Keefe


Ousted Agriculture Depart- ment official Shirley Sherrod, who was portrayed as a racist in a selectively excerpted Internet video, on Wednesday achieved


something almost unheard of in overheated Washington: swift and utter vindication. Two days after Sherrod was


fired from her job overseeing ru- ral development in Georgia, both the White House and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized to her. Vilsack also offered her an- other unspecified position with the department. Sherrod said she would consider it. “This is a good woman,” Vil-


sack said. “She’s been put through hell. I could have done and should have done a better job. I’ll learn from that experience. I want this agency and department to learn from this experience, and I want us to be stronger for it.” He was far from alone in vow- ing to learn from the episode that began when Andrew Breitbart, a conservative activist and blogger, posted to his site the video from a March 27 speech Sherrod gave at


 Sherrod has repeatedly faced adversity. A8 Uneasy in Arizona Town shows how immigration law could play out, in ways large and small


by Stephanie McCrummen in benson, ariz.


aul Moncada, the silver- haired police chief of this highway town, spent a re- cent morning anxiously checking the TV for news about Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, set to take effect in a matter of days. He sifted through stacks of


P


state training materials, which still left him with lots of ques- tions. And he worried about the frustrated people in town who might sue him for not enforcing the new law well enough, the frustrated people in town who might accuse him of racial profil- ing and the thousands who cross the blazing desert around here and whose lives he is also duty- bound to protect. “There’s pressure from all sides, and I understand all the sides,” said Moncada, 56, who grew up here and has served on the force 34 years. “I’m just tell- ing my officers: Do your job. It’s nerve-racking.” A federal judge has scheduled a hearing Thursday on an Obama administration lawsuit, one of three challenging the Arizona law, which requires officers to check the immigration status of


JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Some illegal immigrants, such as this ranch worker in Benson, Ariz., say they might leave the state if the immigration law goes into effect.


people they arrest or cite for any violation if they have “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the United States illegally. The law has renewed the contentious na- tional debate over immigration reform, sparked huge protests in Tucson and Phoenix and spawned the possibility of similar laws in other states. Its effects have been somewhat


quieter, if no less divisive, in Ben- son, a town of about 5,000 peo- ple, a third of Hispanic descent, about an hour’s drive from the


Mexican border. It is a tourist stopover and mostly working- class community of flat-roofed adobe homes, pebbly RV parks and more upscale enclaves such as San Pedro Ranches on the edges of town. And as elsewhere, the debate here has mingled with an already trying situation. The troubled economy forced the state to clip Benson’s budget, and unemployment, foreclosures and minor crime linked mostly to


arizona continued on A8 Va. man charged in bid to join terror group by Spencer S. Hsu and


Michael Alison Chandler A 20-year-old Oakton High


graduate who played football and rowed crew at the Fairfax County school was arrested Wednesday as an alleged terrorist recruit af- ter he had been stopped on his way to join an al-Qaeda-linked group in Somalia, federal officials said.


Zachary Adam Chesser was INSIDE


LOCAL LIVING 1 Mow no more Tired of your weedy front lawn? Adrian Higgins suggests turning it into a garden oasis.


OPINIONS


Doris Meissner and James W. Ziglar: Why Arizona had to be challenged. A19


BUSINESS NEWS............A13 CLASSIFIEDS .....................F1 COMICS..............................C7


EDITORIALS/LETTERS...A18 FED PAGE.........................A17 WEATHER ..........................B8


LOTTERIES.........................B4 MOVIES..............................C5 OBITUARIES ......................B5


ECONOMY & BUSINESS A new-era Explorer


Ford’s venerable SUV will be reintroduced Monday with an environmentally conscious makeover. A13


Fed is prepared to act While expressing optimism about the recovery, Chairman Ben Bernanke leaves the door open. A15


STYLE


Heroine, addictive Angelina Jolie has redefined the female movie hero, most recently fusing acting and action in “Salt.” C1


STOCKS............................B15 TELEVISION.......................C4 WORLD NEWS.................A10


Printed using recycled fiber


DAILY CODE Details, B2


84 9 8


2 SPORTS Nationals 8, Reds 5 Stephen Strasburg records his fifth win in Cincinnati. D1


1


Mystics top the standings The team pulls out of a brief slump to find itself tied for the Eastern Conference lead. D1


The Washington Post Year 133, No. 229


CONTENTS© 2010


barred July 10 from leaving New York City for Uganda on a multi- leg journey to join al-Shabab, an Islamist insurgency that wants to topple Somalia’s weak central government, according to the FBI and papers filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. In diary entries, personal e- mails and interviews with federal agents detailed in court papers, Chesser described in haunting terms a two-year descent from a quiet and awkward suburban


teenager to a willing “foreign fighter” for a designated terrorist group, which most recently claimed responsibility for bomb- ings that killed 76 people in Ugan- da on July 11. In doing so, Chesser — who gained online notoriety in April for attacking the creators of the animated satire “South Park” for an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad — became


arrest continued on A12


an NAACP event. By the time it played out two days later, it had vividly revealed how Washing- ton’s political culture is driven by impulse and self-interest — often instead of judgment. “Members of this administra- tion, members of the media, members of different political factions on both sides of this have all made determinations and judgments without a full set of facts,” White House press secre-


sherrod continued on A8


Three out of every four lobby- ists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a propor- tion that far exceeds the usual re- volving-door standards on Capi- tol Hill, a Washington Post analy- sis shows. Key lobbying hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential ap- pointees. For other senior man- agement positions, the industry employs two former directors of the Minerals Management Serv- ice, the since-renamed agency that regulates the industry, and several top officials from the Bush White House. Federal inspectors once assigned to monitor oil dril- ling in the Gulf of Mexico have landed jobs with the companies they regulated.


With more than 600 registered lobbyists, the industry has among the biggest and most powerful contingentsin Washington. Its in- fluence has been on full display in the wake of the BP oil disaster: Proposals to enact new restric- tions or curb oil use have stalled amid concerted Republican op- position and strong objections from Democrats in oil-producing states. Even considering the generally friendly relationship between


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MD DC VA SV1V2V3V4 washingtonpost.com • 75¢


Most in oil, gas lobbies worked for government


Despite hazards, 4 firms to create


worldwide oil rush The U.S. suspension of deep-water drilling is seen as an opportunity by some nations. A6


spill response plan Companies will spend $1 billion on equipment to stop oil leaks, clean up pollution. A6


Influence Industry


A look at recent lobbying disclosure reports shows BP has revised its figures. A17


K Street and Capitol Hill, the number of well-connected oil lob- byists is remarkable. The non- partisan Center for Responsive Politics calculates that fewer than one in three registered lobbyists in 2009 had revolving-door con- nections — less than half the oil industry rate found by The Post. Officials with the Project on


Government Oversight, a non- profit group that tracks Interior Department officials who cross over to the oil sector, said they were surprised by the findings. “With these numbers, you can see how the revolving door between the Hill and industry allowed problems in the agency to happen and not be addressed,” said Man- dy Smithberger, an investigator for the group. As both the House and Senate consider limiting the influence of revolving-door lobbyists, the top- ic will be a focus of a congression- al hearing Thursday chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.),


lobbyists continued on A6


Good credit isn’t what it used to be Obama signs


With cardholders more frugal, issuers raise fees for better customers


by Ylan Q. Mui


After the recession forced cred- it card companies to purge their rosters of the riskiest loans, the industry is facing a new problem: customers who are too good. Card issuers have long found their bread and butter in penalty fees and high interest rates paid by consumers who carry a bal- ance. But that business model has been upended by the legions of consumers who were over-


regulation bill Democrats gather to celebrate the landmark law’s passage, but the regulatory work is just beginning. A13


Big business vs.


the party in power The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is making big bets against Obama and the Democrats. A3


whelmed by debt when the reces- sion hit, forcing the industry to write off billions of dollars in loans. In addition, new federal laws limit how much card compa- nies can charge risky customers.


Now, frugal-minded con- sumers are charging less on their credit cards, paying down their balances and steering clear of penalty fees — steps that are fi- nancially responsible but have the industry scrambling to find new ways to make money. “The only true deadbeat cus- tomer is someone who has a card and never uses it,” said Curtis Ar- nold, who runs the credit com- parison site CardRatings.com. “Just having good credit alone in today’s market is not enough for that customer to be profitable.” A new study by the Pew Chari-


table Trusts found that annual fees and service fees have in-


credit continued on A16


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