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FGHIJ Hugo Cha´vez’s muzzle
an independent newspaper EDITORIALS
NE OF the principal goals of Ven- ezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s for- eign policy is preventing governments or international organizations from telling the truth about him. Over the past couple of years, captured documents and other evidence have established beyond any rea- sonable doubt that Mr. Chávez’s regime has pro- vided haven and material support to the FARC movement in neighboring Colombia — a group that is known for massacres of civilians, hostage taking and drug trafficking, and that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. That places Mr. Chávez in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and, at least in theory, ex- poses him to U.S. and international sanctions. Luckily for Mr. Chávez, the Obama adminis-
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tration and other Security Council members have shown little interest in recognizing what, in terms of state sponsorship of terrorism, amounts to a smoking gun. But discussion and debate about the evidence — such as Colombia’s recent presentation to a meeting of the Organization of American States — makes this ostrich act diffi- cult to continue. So Mr. Chávez has dedicated
No more
‘libel tourists’ Congress steps in to protect
ferred to him as “fruit-flavoured” — and won. (“I cried,” he said, “all the way to the bank.”) In many countries, libel suits can chill speech or bankrupt independent authors and small publications — including American writers and publishers who fall victim to “libel tourism.” When Rachel Ehrenfeld published a book al- leging that Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz had funded terrorist activity, he sued her under British libel law, even though only 23 copies of her book had been sold there — and won a judg- ment for more than $200,000. After New York Times writer Joe Sharkey’s airplane crashed in Brazil, he returned and wrote a piece exposing the air traffic control failures that had resulted in the accident. Now he is being sued for libel by a woman who claims he injured her by insulting the honor of Brazil. To end the threat of such foreign cases, Con- gress unanimously passed the Securing the Pro- tection of our Enduring and Established Consti- tutional Heritage Act, or Speech Act. On Tues- day, President Obama signed the bill into law, preventing courts from enforcing foreign judg- ments in libel cases that would not pass muster by U.S. standards. Even when the plaintiff does not seek to enforce a foreign court’s ruling, the law makes it possible for the defendant to ask for a ruling that labels the libel judgment “repug- nant to the Constitution or laws of the United States,” offering protection to reputations as well
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writers. Now Britain must do its part.
CCORDING TO the libel laws of some na- tions, even the truth is no defense. In 1959, Liberace sued London’s Daily Mir- ror for libel after one of its columnists re-
The Venezuelan strongman bars a U.S. envoy for speaking the truth.
himself to bullying and intimidating those who dare to speak publicly about what everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows to be true. His most conspicuous recent target was for- mer Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, who or- dered the report to the OAS shortly before leav- ing office. Mr. Chávez’s response to the maps, photographs, videos and other documentary evi- dence laid out by Colombia’s ambassador was to immediately break diplomatic relations and to threaten war. When Mr. Uribe’s successor, Juan Manuel Santos, signaled that he was ready to ad- dress the FARC problem through private dis- cussions, the Venezuelan caudillo instantly re- versed himself. On Tuesday he traveled to Co- lombia to meet Mr. Santos and agreed to restore relations. Mr. Chávez also focused his attention on Larry
Leon Palmer, the veteran diplomat nominated by the Obama administration as its next ambas- sador to Venezuela. Some Republicans question whether the United States should retain ambas- sadorial relations with Mr. Chávez’s government, and the nominee received a searching set of “questions for the record” from the Senate For- eign Relations Committee’s senior GOP member,
Richard G. Lugar (Ind.). To his credit and that of the State Department,
Mr. Palmer answered truthfully. He said that he was “keenly aware of the clear ties between members of the Venezuelan government and Co- lombian guerrillas.” He said that he was “con- cerned” that two individuals designated as inter- national drug traffickers by the Treasury Depart- ment “are high-ranking officials of the Venezuelan government.” He reported “growing Cuban-Venezuelan cooperation in the fields of intelligence services and the military” and “mo- rale and equipment problems” in the Venezuelan army. Mr. Chávez once again was quick to respond. On his weekly television show on Sunday, he an- nounced that Mr. Palmer would not be allowed to take up his post in Caracas because “he has disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy, by prejudging us.” He said that the Obama administration would have to “look for another candidate.” The State Department re- sponded that it was sticking with Mr. Palmer. It should. If ignoring the facts about Mr. Chávez is a requirement for sending an ambassador to Ca- racas, then it would be better not to have one.
TOM TOLES
FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
Hey, Pepco! Trees are not the problem.
Regarding the Aug. 7 Metro article “Bigger they are, harder they fall”: I find it a bit rich for Pepco to blame mature trees for its troubles in restoring power after severe thun- derstorms. While the property damage done by fall- en trees is highly regrettable, blaming trees for the outages is fatuous and remarkably blinkered. Resi- dential power cables should not be threaded through trees in the first place. They should, as they are in almost all other developed countries, be put underground. Trees are part of the solution. Urban trees provide shade in summer (dramatically cutting power bills for those residences in their vicinity); help mitigate the violence in storms by absorbing wind energy and reducing the impact of torrential rains; and do their bit against climate change by absorbing car- bon dioxide. Power companies that are straining to keep costs down should be lauding trees as allies in promoting energy efficiency, not treating them as a nuisance for their outmoded power grids. STEVEN BELLER, Washington
Sen. Ted Stevens, remembered
Growing up in Alaska, you knew who Ted Stevens was long before you knew the ins and outs of elec- toral politics or even the reasons for this familiarity [“Fierce and canny legislator showered federal funds on his beloved Alaska,” front page, Aug. 11]. He was the uncle who you knew — even as a kid, and without knowing why — was an icon. I worked with Sen. Ted Stevens off and on from 2000 to 2004, as an intern and then as a full-time staffer. And while I’m sure it was insignificant to him, it was time that was beyond meaning for an Alaskan kid, straight out of college, deeply inter- ested in politics, who had grown up witnessing the touch of “Ted” across every inch of the state. While I learned the vagaries of the appropriations process and parliamentary procedure from him and his staff, more important, I witnessed the power of us- ing the political process to champion your beliefs. Mr. Stevens honestly felt that politics stopped at the Senate exit. Hard-fought arguments on the floor didn’t need to turn into personal grudges. When Washington became more divided and politics more personal, it was a change Mr. Stevens refused to em- brace. He took the shift in tone as a personal attack, longing for the day when you could argue without being argumentative. Much will be written about the impact and life of
Ted Stevens. But between the mention of earmarks and his legendary flashes of anger, and the compari- sons of Mr. Stevens to the Incredible Hulk, I hope it is remembered that he loved his state, his family and his staff beyond all else.
ELLIOTT BUNDY, New York
Sen. Ted Stevens’s reputation for directing federal funds to Alaska masked a virtue to which I can at- test: his fierce commitment to fairness. I remember being a staff liaison for the Energy
as finances. The fact that such a law was required at all is a
poor reflection on the status of libel law abroad — especially in the United Kingdom. Libel tourists flock to London, where suits can result in judg- ments of millions of pounds, effectively placing some wealthy figures outside the reach of jour- nalism because writing about them might prove
too costly. Britain needs to reform a system under which noncitizens can sue publications with only tangential connections to the United Kingdom. Fortunately, all three major parties have declared libel reform a priority, and the British Ministry of Justice has announced it will move forward with legislation in the coming year. The Speech Act should serve as a goad to action.
Worth a second look in D.C. A lottery contract needs an independent review.
Peter Nickles and criticism about his request for an independent investigation into the awarding of a lottery contract. We don’t discount the pos- sible influence of politics, but there are so many questions surrounding the District’s tortured ef- fort to get a new lottery operator that it is pru- dent that an outside review be conducted. In a July 20 letter to the city’s inspector gener-
I
al, Mr. Nickles, joined by D.C. Chief Procurement Officer David P. Gragan, requested a probe into the handling of the $38 million contract, ap- proved by the D.C. Council in December to the Greek company Intralot. Of particular interest, as The Post’s Mike DeBonis reported, is Intralot’s partnership with a local business that did not un- dergo a full vetting. Intralot first bid on the con-
T IS INEVITABLE: As the District gets closer to the hotly contested primary for mayor, any word and every action is seen through a po- litical prism. So it is with Attorney General
tract without having a local, minority partner, but on the eve of the council’s vote it entered into an agreement with Veterans Services Corp., giv- ing it 51 percent of the equity in the joint venture running day-to-day operations of the lottery. None of this was known to the contracting officer who evaluated the proposals or to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Recent articles in the Washington Times have raised questions, disputed by the firm’s president, about the company’s qualifica- tions. The need for an outside review extends beyond
the events of last year to the entire three-year his- tory of the lottery contract. Why did D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and the council re- peatedly refuse to act on the 2008 recom- mendation to award the contract to Intralot, which had submitted the winning bid? Why was that award ultimately rejected? Was there misuse of the process to certify local, minority busi-
nesses? And is there any truth to the allegations by the city’s former contracting officer that he was subjected to undue political pressure? That officer, Eric Payne, has filed a federal lawsuit, contested by the District, that contends he was wrongly terminated for what he characterized as his efforts to resist and report political pressure. Some unsubstantiated charges have been made. Mr. Nickles, for example, suggested (un- wisely to our minds) a connection between Mr. Gray, now challenging Mr. Fenty’s bid for reelec- tion, and the mother of the president of Veterans Services Corp. In fact, Mr. Gray abstained from voting on the contract award, partly because he was friendly with people involved in a rival part- nership. He also thought there were flaws in the contract process. Mr. Gray told us he, too, thinks it’s a good idea for the inspector general to under- take a dispassionate review of events. We hope the inspector general agrees.
TAKING EXCEPTION Social Security is all right
The Aug. 11 editorial “Social Security’s tough truths” painted the Economic Policy Institute as a Social Security “denier” with ill intentions toward President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. This is simply not true. While we have differ- ences with some of the views expressed by indi- vidual members of the commission, we have been broadly supportive of the commission’s efforts. We do not deny that there are long-term imbal- ances. However, our analysis is consistent with other nonpartisan views that Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall is quite modest and could as easily be closed with revenue increases as with benefit cuts. Social Security is not the driver of long-term deficits, since it is prohibited from borrowing and must pay all benefits out of current tax revenue and savings in its trust funds.
Even The Post editorial conceded that “Social Se- curity is not a cause of the current or future debt.” Like The Post, we know that most seniors rely on Social Security for much of their income and that benefits are modest — on average, less than minimum wage. Raising the retirement age, which The Post supports, is a benefit cut that low- income workers can ill afford. While we reserve the right to differ with the commission’s conclusions and recommenda- tions, we too believe that there is a serious long- term problem that should be addressed. It does not, however, require, and should not include, cuts to already-inadequate Social Security ben- efits.
LAWRENCEMISHEL, Washington
The writer is president of the Economic Policy Institute.
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Department at a conference committee markup of the Interior and related agencies appropriations bill in the 1990s. All issues between the Senate and House versions of the bill had been settled except for one obscure provision relating to a dispute over wa- ter rights in New Mexico. The dispute pitted a group of Navajo farmers against some Mexican Americans who farmed the same land. The Navajos were poor, but because they enjoyed special status under U.S. law, their legal bills would be paid by the U.S. government, and they were able to hire the state’s largest law firm to repre- sent them. The Mexican American farmers had to pay for their representation. All they could afford was a single attorney fresh out of law school. Mr. Ste- vens thought this was terribly unjust, and he single- handedly held up agreement on the conference re- port until a solution was found that satisfied his sense of fairness. He didn’t have to fight for these people he didn’t represent, but he did so because his sense of right and wrong was too strong to permit him to remain silent.
THOMAS CALHOUN, Bethesda
Easy ways to save at the Pentagon As a former military officer who served in the Pen-
tagon, I salute Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s efforts to cut unnecessary or marginally useful ex- penditures in favor of funding higher-priority pro- grams [“Thousands of defense jobs to be eliminat- ed,” front page, Aug. 10]. There’s low-hanging fruit right in front of Mr.
Gates in his own Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the 1960s, the senior staff of the defense secretary consisted of a deputy secretary, seven assistant sec- retaries and a director of defense research and engi- neering. Most observers agree that Secretary Robert Mc-
Namara was able to exercise effective control over the Pentagon with that level of staffing. Since then, a supervisory layer of undersecretar- ies, with all their trappings, has been added over the assistant secretaries. Coupled with the addition of some 1,000 staff members over the past decade, this has bloated an already overly large bureaucracy. Freezing the number of employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the next three years is not enough. Why not streamline the operation, at least somewhat, by returning to the model of the mid-’60s?
ROBERT G. GARD JR., Rockville Lavish vacations: Compared to what?
I was mystified to read Kathleen Parker’s Aug. 10 op-ed column, “Tone deaf on the beach?,” in which Ms. Parker compared George Bush’s Spartan vaca- tions with Michelle and Sasha Obama’s trip to Spain. The focus should not be on the type of vaca- tion that Mr. Bush took but on the record number of days he spent on his vacations. Maybe a better comparison with Ms. Obama’s trip would be the billions in bonus dollars given out by banks and Wall Street in the middle of the worst fi- nancial crisis since 1929. One wonders what those recipients spent the money on. I bet it would make Ms. Obama’s trip seem trivial. PERRY LEVIN, Rockville
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