UNDERNEWS Sam Smith August 25, 1999 The Progressive Review 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INDEX: http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS: http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINE NEWS: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.com DONATIONS AND ORDER FORM: http://prorev.com/order3.htm UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. For a free subscription to our e-mail updates send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 1999, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://prorev.com/letters.htm ---------------------------------------------------------- WACO LEE HANCOCK, DALLAS MORNING NEWS: The FBI is preparing to acknowledge in a formal statement that its agents fired pyrotechnic tear gas grenades on the last day of the Branch Davidian siege, senior federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday. The statement would represent a reversal from the federal government's adamant, long-held position that the FBI used no device capable of sparking a fire on the day the Davidian compound burned near Waco. Earlier this week, former senior FBI official Danny Coulson told The Dallas Morning News that pyrotechnic grenades had been used on April 19, 1993, the day that the compound burned with David Koresh and more than 80 followers inside .... Earlier Tuesday, Texas Department of Public Safety Commission Chairman James B. Francis said the Texas Rangers have ``overwhelming evidence'' supporting Coulson's statement. LOOSE CHANGE NEW YORK TIMES: A Federal judge said the court would ask more than 12,400 current and former Justice Department lawyers whether they wanted to join a class-action lawsuit filed last year by nearly 200 lawyers against the agency. The lawsuit seeks a half-billion dollars for what the lawyers charge are millions of hours of overtime that the department owes them. Surprisingly candid internal Justice Department documents .... show that department officials knew they were in violation, but kept, in effect, two sets of books. One set, on which paychecks were based, required lawyers to state that they worked 40 hours a week, no matter how much time they actually put in. SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER: [A Children's Defense Fund] study, drawn from U.S. Census Bureau data, shows the number children living in extreme poverty jumped 27 percent one year after the reform measure was signed into law. The government pegged poverty in 1997 at a yearly income of $16,400 for a family of four, and $12,802 for a family of three. It defines extreme poverty as annual income at half those levels. According to the Children's Defense Fund analysis, 2.7 million children fell into this category in 1997 - 426,000 more than in 1996, the year Congress passed the reform measure requiring work after two years on public assistance rolls and limiting a recipient's lifetime benefit to five years. ECO NOTES GUARDIAN (LONDON): Europe's biggest bank has advised the world's largest investors to sell their shares in leading companies involved in the development of genetically modified organisms because consumers do not want to buy their products. In a report sent to several thousand of the world's large institutional investors, including British pension funds, Deutsche Bank says that "growing negative sentiment" is creating problems for the leading companies, including Monsanto and Novartis. LAND OF THE FREE REASON EXPRESS: Applying content restrictions across international borders is tricky business. German media giant Bertelsmann pulled Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" from its English and French BOL online bookstores after complaints from the U.S. accused it of violating German law .... The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles had filed a complaint with the German Justice Ministry accusing Barnesandnoble.com, Bertelsmann's U.S. online bookselling partner, of violating German law by selling such books to German consumers online. BOL said it would simply stop selling the work altogether because it couldn't guarantee it wouldn't fall into the hands of a German citizen. Bertelsmann has also pushed Barnesandnoble.com--of which it owns 40 percent--to stop selling books banned as illegal hate literature in Germany. Amazon.com still sells an English version of "Mein Kampf" in all the countries to which it delivers, but does not sell the book in German. A MUSICIAN WITH LONG HAIR driving a Porsche was stopped by Abington MA cops. Like a growing number of drivers, he taped the encounter. He received no ticket but because of his treatment by the officers went the next day to the local police station to make a complaint. After handing over the tape, the police responded by charging Michael Hyde with illegal wiretapping. The case is now before the courts. CLINTON SCANDALS ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Clinton administration and a former aide will not have to pay a $285,864 penalty for the way they described the makeup of Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found the White House and former top aide Ira Magaziner did not act in "bad faith," and should not have to pay legal bills for the opposing side. WASHINGTON TIMES: Making good on a vow to pick up where Congress leaves off, Mr. Clinton has posted 301 formal executive orders and generated a storm from opponents who say the orders push the limits of presidential power. The president has used that extraordinary power to revamp civil service rules for workers with psychiatric disabilities, ban discrimination against homosexuals in civilian federal jobs, halt dealings with federal contractors who use products made by foreign child labor, declassify vast stacks of old files, change contracting practices to give Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders a bidding edge, revise food labeling, restrict smoking in government offices, revamp encryption export rules and intervene in a Philadelphia transit strike. "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kind of cool," says former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, dismissing objections of critics who despise the process as unconstitutional lawmaking, no matter which president uses it. WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/politics/ JUST POLITICS JACK ANDERSON & DOUGLAS COHN: The discovery of one homeless congressman is an anecdote; the exposure of a dozen, as we recently reported, is a serious concern; but now our uncovering of 21 homeless congressmen is downright alarming. And the number is growing. Apparently, our esteem for elected officials has fallen so low and their compensation has become so inadequate that this highly unusual, undignified and--in most jurisdictions, illegal -- living arrangement has gone unnoticed. DRUG BUSTS ASSOCIATED PRESS: A second juror was paid in exchange for a vote to acquit two reputed drug kingpins in a 1996 federal trial, The Miami Herald reported Saturday .... Last month, jury foreman Miguel Moya was convicted of taking $400,000 in bribes for his vote. AN UNLIKELY HERO IN THE ANTI-PROHIBITION MOVEMENT is the Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, who admits to using marijuana and cocaine in college and now says the federal government should consider the decriminalization of drugs and perhaps even legalization. Says Johnson, "We are spending incredible amounts of our resources on incarceration, law enforcement and courts. As an extension of everything I've done in office, I made a cost-benefit analysis, and this one really stinks .... I would like to see a discussion on this, A to Z. The reality of what might evolve is that we get our feet wet, so that we could learn how to legalize or decriminalize. Politically, I can't ascertain if there has been a positive or negative reaction. But publicly, I've found that people overwhelmingly want to talk about it." PACIFICA CRISIS OAKLAND TRIBUNE: After more than four hours of testimony -- some under threat of reprisal -- a state legislative committee vowed Friday to make Pacifica Foundation open its books and come clean regarding the dispute at listener-sponsored KPFA radio .... The Joint Legislative Audit Committee called the hearing after 24 members of the state Legislature, -- one-fifth of the membership representing 6 million people -- called for an investigation into whether nonprofit Pacifica had violated its charter and tax exempt status. 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