A2
Politics & The Nation
Company officials worried about mine violations before explosion ..A4
National Digest
Video may show terror suspect in training ...........................................A3
The World
U.S. ambassador: Iraq must act faster in establishing government ...A6
Foreign Digest
Sudan’s multiparty elections don’t change the status quo ..................A6
Economy & Business
Presidential commission to address rising national debt..................A10
Business Digest
U.S. plans massive stock sale to reduce Citigroup holdings...............A10
Market Summary....................................................................................A14
Opinion
Editorial:Maryland leaves Metro on a slippery slope........................A16 Eugene Robinson: An act of vengeance in Arizona .............................A17
CORRECTIONS
In some editions, an April 26 Style article about an Earth Day concert on the Mall misidentified the “Avatar” characters that some attendees wore costumes to re- semble. The blue creatures are called N’avi, not Avi.
A photo caption with an April 23 Weekend article about the Na- tional Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum misstated the first name of one of the women pictured. She is Smitha Uthaman, not Saman- tha Uthaman.
An April 15 Metro article about anew law in Maryland incorrectly said that students can opt to with- hold from military recruiters in- formation from a military and vo- cational exam. Although parents can separately ask that schools withhold their child’s name, ad- dress and phone number from
·· E-mail
corrections@washpost.com.
military recruiters, students do not have a direct option on the test to withhold information from it, which includes, among other things, their Social Security num- bers and test results. The new law requires schools to withhold the test information from recruiters.
A Jan. 26 Metro article on the opening of the AeroTrain, a $1.5 billion light-rail line that takes passengers from the termi- nal to many gates at Dulles Inter- national Airport, said the Federal Aviation Administration predicts that 26 million passenger flights a year will land at or take off from Dulles within 20 years, more than double the 11 million in 2009. Both the 26 million and 11 million figures referred to passengers, not flights, and only to passengers de- parting from Dulles, not those ar- riving.
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resident Obama won the unstinting support Monday of one of the world’s most prominent leaders. And he is not going to be happy about it. The dilemma becomes apparent upon revealing the name of this enthusiastic admirer: His Excellency Brother Leader Moammar Gaddafi, Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. His 40 years on the world stage have included such highlights as the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. More recently, the man Ronald Reagan dubbed the “mad dog of the Middle East” showed up in New York, where he attempted to live in a tent during the annual U.N. meeting, at which he spoke 85 minutes beyond his 15-minute allotment, ripped up a copy of the world body’s charter, mused about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and suggested that the U.S. military created the swine flu. And now he is professing Obama love. “I really endorse and support the policies that he has adopted so far,” Brother Leader said Monday afternoon in a video teleconference arranged by the World Affairs Councils of America. Gaddafi referred affectionately to the president as “our son Barack Obama,” helpfully translating Obama’s name from the Arabic: “Barakah —blessing.” “We would like to greet the American people who voted for their son, Mr. Barack Obama,” Gaddafi, resplendent in a burnt orange cape, informed the audience watching from the National Press Club. Speaking through an interpreter, the colonel continued: “He is from Africa, from an African descent.” From Africa? Birther alert! Gaddafi was not done stirring up conspiracy theorists. “The Muslim world welcomed very much the arrival of Obama to the presidency, because the ordinary
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Washington Sketch
citizen knows that President Obama is a youth of an African descent,” the Guide of the Revolution added. “He comes from, originally from a Muslim family, maybe even of an Arab origin. . . . And at least psychologically, it was very useful.”
So, on the same day Obama’s
national security adviser apologizes for telling a Jewish joke, Gaddafi declares that Obama has a Muslim family and is “very useful” to Libya. Thanks for your support, Brother Leader. Still, by Gaddafi standards, it could have been worse. Just two months ago, he declared a holy war against Switzerland, of all places. What would he do next — a fatwa against “South Park”? Instead, he answered some questions before ending abruptly. “I think we’ve taken up enough time, and besides, I waited half an hour before you started,” he protested. “Today I’m fasting, so I should break my fast.” Still, he gave occasional glimpses of the wacky Gaddafi, calling the execution of Saddam Hussein “really sad” and defending his view that women should be “reproducers” and avoid “male vocations.” Those arriving at the National
Press Club on Monday were given copies of “The Green Book,” Gaddafi musings on democracy and socialism published by “the Public Establishment for Publishing” in Tripoli. Soon after the appointed time, televisions in the room showed a live image of Gaddafi, with thin chin beard and mustache, squinting so much
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Man’s worst friend?
that his eyes were slits. “Relations are really excellent” with the United States, Brother Leader reported. This assessment may come as news to the State Department, where spokesman P.J. Crowley earlier this year characterized Gaddafi’s U.N. speech as “lots of papers flying all over the place, not necessarily a lot of sense.” Gaddafi said he wants a permanent Arab seat, with veto power, on the U.N. Security Council. He likened the Palestinian plight to what the Jews “suffered under Hitler.” He offered a plan under which Israel, stripped of nuclear weapons, would become a majority-Arab state called Isratine. “I think this is a historical — a final solution,” the colonel declared. A few in the audience chuckled at Gaddafi’s use of the Nazi phrase for the Holocaust. Still, he saw fit to add, “I am really very keen on the safety of the Jews.” He was even more keen on the
U.S. president. “I’m sure that he will work for the good of America as an American president, but at the same time, he’ll be gaining
the friendship of the Arabs and the friendship of Libya for the common interests of those peoples and United States,” the Guide of the Great Revolution judged. Further, Gaddafi called Obama’s statements on the Muslim world “popular” and praised his Iraq policy. He also was pleased that Obama “condemned the war in Vietnam” —though that war ended when Obama was 13. “This is being applauded in the Arab and the Muslim world,” Gaddafi reported. True, he isn’t happy that Libya
wasn’t invited to attend the recent nuclear summit (“it was a political blunder”). And he thinks Iran doesn’t deserve sanctions over its nuclear program (“maybe they are using it for peaceful purposes”). But Gaddafi was even willing to defend his “son” Obama’s escalation of the Afghan war. “As a military person myself, I can understand the military aspect of this,” he said, calling the troop increase “irrelevant” because withdrawal will follow. Just what Obama needed: The mad dog of the Middle East is his new best friend.
danamilbank@washpost.com
TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010
ZOHRA BENSEMRA/REUTERS
The Mad Dog of the Middle East apparently has nothing but love for the U.S. president.
High court to enter fight over violent video games
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
by Robert Barnes
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Fresh from deciding one major free-speech challenge last week, the Supreme Court said Monday that it will take up another: whether states may forbid the sale of violent video games to minors. California says the court’s 1968 decision that states may restrict the sale of sexually explicit ma- terials to minors should be ex- tended to the violent images in video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Other states have passed similar laws, but all have been shot down by federal courts that say the Supreme Court has never authorized such an expansion.
Your
the 9th Circuit said the same thing about California’s law. The state “is asking us to boldly go where no court has gone before,” Judge Consuelo M. Callahan wrote for a unanimous three- member panel. “We decline the state’s entreaty” to “redefine the concept of obscenity under the First Amendment,” it added. That the Supreme Court will
take on the task — its first look at the First Amendment protections afforded computer and video games — came as something of a surprise after last week’s action. The court voted 8 to 1 to strike down a federal law that outlawed the sale of videos depicting acts of
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illegal animal cruelty, saying it was unprepared to carve out an- other area of speech from First Amendment protection. California’s case raises the ad- ditional issue of how far legisla- tion may go to protect minors from the harm its says results from exposure to extremely vio- lent video games. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
(R) praised the court for accept-
ing Schwarzenegger v. Entertain- ment Merchants Association,
which will be argued during the court term that begins in October. “We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to pro- tect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions, just as we already do with mov- ies,” Schwarzenegger said. The video-game industry had
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urged the high court to let the ap- pellate court decisions stand. “In over fifty years of obscenity jurisprudence, this court has nev- er applied the obscenity doctrine outside the context of sexual speech,” said a brief filed by game producers. “What the state pro- poses in this case would effect a sea change in the permissible reg- ulation of all media — including books, movies, and television pro- grams — that contain violent con- tent and are accessible to minors.” Michael D. Gallagher, president and chief executive of the Enter- tainment Software Association, which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers, issued a statement pointing to the court’s decision last week in U.S. v. Stevens that “the First Amend- ment protects all speech other than just a few ‘historic and tradi- tional categories’ that are ‘well- defined and narrowly limited.’ We are hopeful that the Court will re- ject California’s invitation to break from these settled princi-
ples.”
California’s law, passed in 2005, prohibited the sale or rental of vi- olent games to anyone younger than 18. It defined such a game as one that includes “killing, maim- ing, dismembering or sexually as- saulting an image of a human be- ing” in a way that a reasonable person would find appeals to a “deviant or morbid interest,” is patently offensive, and lacks “seri- ous literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.” Retailers could have been fined as much as $1,000 for each vio- lation.
But judges never allowed the
law to go into effect. The appellate court was un- willing to extend the obscenity standard and said California had not proved that the restrictions were necessary to prevent harm to minors. None of the research relied upon by the legislature, the court said, “establishes or sug- gests a causal link between mi- nors playing violent video games and actual psychological or neu- rological harm.” In other words, it said, the stud- ies showed that violent youths have played violent video games, but they did not prove that it was the video games that made the youths violent. Video-game dealers said Cali- fornia and other states that have enacted similar laws are asking the court to change a standard that has worked in protecting children from obscenity. “Sex, unlike violence, is a sub-
ject uniquely considered to be outside children’s purview,” the group said in its brief. “Violence, on the other hand, is a regular part of children’s literature and stories . . . as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales” is aware.
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