Cindy Sheehan is about to start another anti-war camp. This one will be in Washington, and it could conceivably last for months. The problem?

“I’m kind of over the whole camping thing,” she admits.

It’s a fair enough statement for Sheehan, who gained international attention in 2005 for “Camp Casey,” a five-week protest outside of then-President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch during which she demanded a meeting with the commander in chief to hear an explanation for her son Casey’s death in Iraq. She spent most of that time in a ditch on the side of a road leading to the president’s grounds.

Five years and a new president later, however, Sheehan will be sleeping under the stars again, and for the same cause. Her new coalition, Peace of the Action, is launching the Camp OUT NOW! tent city at the base of the Washington Monument next week in an effort to get President Barack Obama to pull troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan immediately. (Sheehan concedes that this time around, she will rent a bedroom in which to store her belongings, take showers and occasionally sleep.)

Sheehan could also be over the whole camping thing for another reason: After shutting down Camp Casey, she went places, did things and had experiences previously unthinkable to her. She ran against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the 2008 congressional election. In 2009, she went on a 40-city tour for her book Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution! And just this month, she flew with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his official plane to conduct an interview for her radio show, “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.”

So it’s no wonder there’s a flatness in her voice when she describes her newest push to end America’s wars in the Middle East. Not only has she soared to places far beyond a tent city in Texas, but despite her efforts, she feels her cries have so far gone unheard.

“I’ve [protested] outside the system, I’ve tried to do this inside the system … it’s time to get together and organize things. That’s how you get something done,” she says during a phone interview from Philadelphia, where she is preparing to speak at a conference about how the anti-war movement can work with the 9/11 Truth movement. A day earlier she had returned from a whirlwind trip to Venezuela, where she accompanied Chavez on his trip to Uruguay for new President Jose Mujica’s inauguration.

“It wasn’t closure at all for George Bush to leave office,” she says.

Detours Pelosi, Chavez

Sheehan decided to ride the wave of celebrity when she announced her 2008 bid to challenge Pelosi for her San Francisco House seat.

“I decided to run against Pelosi because she refused to end the wars and impeach Bush,” she explains. “I didn’t think I was going to win, but I thought it would be a real challenge to bring up these issues.”

Sheehan, who ran as an Independent, achieved ballot status after four months — a major victory unto itself, she says — and raised more than $700,000 for the bid, but she came in a distant second.

“The one thing I learned, I think, was that it’s practically impossible to get our voices heard that way,” she says. “The electoral system is stacked against challengers in the first place.”

Sheehan says she came away from the experience realizing that directing her protests at just one public official — Bush or Pelosi, for instance — wasn’t fruitful.

“I know I came to this really late in life, but I realized it was the system that we should fight against, not just a certain politician,” she says.

Sheehan expanded her breadth of work to include America’s military presence around the world and what she calls the U.S. efforts at imperialism. She put in a request to interview Chavez for her radio show and also began planning to film a documentary on Venezuela. Her interview request was granted in six weeks — lightning speed compared to the months she heard it can normally take.

“I think this is really important to get this out,” she says. “[In the U.S.] there’s just one way that Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution are portrayed, and that’s in a very negative way.”

She says her radio interview is scheduled to air on the Pacific networks later this month, and the documentary’s release is planned for June.

A lonely year

Meanwhile, Sheehan didn’t think the anti-war movement could get much worse than during the George W. Bush administration, but then Obama was elected, and it all but died, she says.

“It was very lonely at the beginning when Barack Obama was elected because I lost a lot of friends and contacts who worked for him and supported him,” she says. Sheehan voted for Green Party candidate and former House member Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 presidential election. “How could I support somebody who said he was going to send more troops to Afghanistan?”

Sheehan’s book came out in March 2009 and her tour kept her busy until September. She says during that time she saw many of her comrades in the anti-war movement give Obama “a free pass.”

“I felt like I was one of the lone ones out there saying, ‘C’mon, people, people are still dying,’ ” she says.

That brought her to her latest idea, Peace of the Action. She decided the anti-war movement needed to be a broader coalition — “When George Bush was president, I’m sorry to say, but it was basically a bunch of older white people” — and be based on a clear list of demands.

Her new organization has reached out to groups like Students for a Democratic Society, The World Can’t Wait!, the Campus Anti-War Network and the Black is Back Coalition. Its demands are: removal of American and allied troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; stoppage of drone bombings; and closure of permanent bases and military prisons. Sheehan also wants the president to convene a peace council composed of grassroots members of the anti-war movement.

The coalition is planning to set up camp on the lawn of the Washington Monument on Monday, and its first act of civil resistance is scheduled for March 22 somewhere around the White House, she says. The group plans to concentrate its efforts around Congress later this spring when legislators are expected to consider the president’s request for supplemental war funding.

This strategy, Sheehan says, is a result of what she characterized as politicians’ empty promises and dead-end meetings in her previous push for peace.

“I’m not about meetings; I’m not about signing petitions,” she says. “I’m about direct action, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Michael Heaney, a University of Michigan political science professor who studies the anti-war movement, says Sheehan felt alone after Obama was elected because she was. His research shows that the number of Democrats publicly turning out to protest the wars dropped after Obama took office because their partisan loyalty trumped their alliance to the peace movement. Sheehan’s top priority, on the other hand, is an issue rather than a political party, he says, adding that she may be able to breathe life back into the cause with this new effort.

“She’s got attention, and she’s got resources, and you know what? Nobody else does,” he says.

Sheehan contends that she continues to operate on a “shoestring” budget. Her book sales have provided cash, she says, and she often gets funded for special appearances. (In December, for instance, she went to Oslo to protest Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize at the invitation and expense of an independent group.) She says her radio show also brings in donations.

The question now is whether she has the stamina. She says she’s physically tired — her voice confirms that — but not emotionally. Her two grandchildren “give me more inspiration to work every day,” Sheehan claims, and she still feels the sense of urgency that inspired her to start Camp Casey.

“I love doing what I’m doing. I wish I didn’t have to,” she says after expressing optimism for her latest effort. “I think it might happen like it happened in 2005: If we build it, they will come.”

CHICAGO - A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened.

Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."

Andersen did throw out two of the lawsuit's three counts but gave former contractors Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel the green light to go forward with a third count alleging they were unconstitutionally tortured under procedures personally approved by Rumsfeld.

In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said by telephone only that the department, which is representing Rumsfeld in the suit, "is reviewing the court's decision."

Vance and Ertel were described by their attorney, Mike Kanovitz of Chicago, as being in their early thirties. He said the two Americans went to Iraq in the fall of 2005 to work for the Iraqi-owned contracting firm of Shield Group Security.

The suit filed in 2006 alleges that while working for the company they saw fellow employees making payments to "certain Iraqi sheikhs" and dealing in armaments in a way they believed would not be approved by the U.S. military.

According to the suit, Vance contacted an FBI official in Chicago with his suspicions and the two men eventually shared their concerns with three U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad.

The suit said their actions provoked suspicion at the company and on April 14, 2006, fellow employees confiscated the identity cards that allowed them to enter the safe area known as the Green Zone.

The two men said they locked themselves in a room, called the Embassy for help and were extricated by "United States forces" who took them to the Embassy where they were taken into custody.

They were taken to two military camps in the Baghdad vicinity in the weeks that followed, the suit said. It said Ertel was released after a month and Vance after two months.

While in custody, they were subjected to sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation, blasting music, threats, hunger and a practice known as "walling" in which subjects are blindfolded and walked into walls, according to the suit.

The suit describes such practices as forms of torture and alleges Rumsfeld personally took part in determining such methods were acceptable for use by the military in Iraq.

The two men are seeking unspecified damages. The next hearing is set for March 25.

The first full debate on ending the war in Afghanistan since it began in 2001 ended with Congress voting overwhelmingly to keep the war going.

Lawmakers voted 65-356 to defeat a measure calling for an immediate withdrawal from the region, with 189 Democrats joining 167 Republicans to sink it. Five Republicans voted with 60 Democrats to call for an immediate end to the war.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s (D-Ohio) resolution was never expected to pass, but it did give the White House an early view of support for the surge within Democratic ranks. The vote helps clear the way for a looming war supplemental spending bill that Congress will take up this spring.

The debate, meanwhile, brought fiery speeches from liberals and conservatives alike. Kucinich and other liberals argued the mission had gone on far too long and was draining money from the Treasury that could be going to rebuilding America and helping the economy.

Republican leaders ripped the resolution as hurting the troops and their mission. And Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who called President Barack Obama’s troop increase in Afghanistan his only success to date, questioned why Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) allowed a floor debate on the issue.

Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.), however, defended the debate as part of Congress’ constitutional duty — regardless of which side Members are on.

Retiring Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) ripped the strategy in Afghanistan as unnecessary, and Members for saying that they don’t want to go to a funeral and tell a mother that her son died in vain.

“So what is it, we’re going to double down on a bad policy in order to protect the honor of those who have died? I don’t think so.”

Kennedy also ripped the press corps as “despicable” for covering former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) “24-7” but not reporting the debate on Afghanistan.

INDIANAPOLIS — Health insurer Humana Inc. paid CEO Michael B. McCallister 26 percent more last year than in 2008, largely because of a $1.8 million performance-related bonus.

McCallister, 57, received compensation valued at $6.5 million for 2009, according to an Associated Press analysis of a proxy statement filed Tuesday.

That included a salary of about $1 million, the bonus and stock and options valued at $3.4 million when they were granted.

McCallister's compensation also included $164,380 for retirement savings, matching charitable contributions, insurance and other perquisites plus $132,848 worth of personal use of company aircraft. McCallister, who also serves as president, has been CEO since 2000. Humana is based in Louisville, Ky.

Humana's profit grew 61 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, when the company's performance investment income fell and claim expenses from its stand-alone Medicare prescription drug plans rose.

In 2009, Humana earned $1.04 billion, or $6.15 per share, on $30.96 billion in revenue. Humana's earnings goal was $6 per share. When it fell short of a similar goal in 2008, McCallister and other top executives did not receive a bonus.

For 2009, Humana's commercial enrollment fell, but Medicare Advantage enrollment rose 5 percent. Premiums from that part of the business jumped 12 percent in the fourth quarter.

Medicare Advantage plans are government-sponsored, privately run health insurance plans for seniors. Humana also administers Medicaid coverage and provides coverage through the military's Tricare program.

The health insurer's stock climbed 18 percent last year, to close 2009 at $43.89. That fell short of the Standard and Poor's 500 index 23 percent hike.

Humana, like other health insurers, saw its stock price bottom out in early March 2009 as the broader market tanked. The shares slowly recovered the rest of the year, buffeted by the evolving health care overhaul debate in Congress.

Investors and analysts have worried that proposed new taxes and regulations could hurt the industry. Insurers also have taken heat from President Obama for imposing large hikes recently in individual premiums while remaining highly profitable.

Humana is the first of the five largest health insurers to report its 2009 executive compensation.

The Associated Press calculations of total pay include an executive's salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year.

The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals that companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The AP's calculation also excludes money realized when options are exercised. So the $11 million McCallister realized when he exercised options on more than 400,000 shares is not reflected in AP's tally of his pay.

Humana shares fell 4 cents to $47.91 in Tuesday afternoon trading.

Congressman Alan Grayson, (D-Orlando), today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

Congressman Grayson said, “Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative.”

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program. Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

In keeping with the “Grayson style,” the bill is clear and concise. It is only four pages. You can read the bill here.

See video of Congressman Alan Grayson introducing the Public Option Act below.

CONCORD, N.H. — Doris "Granny D" Haddock, a New Hampshire woman who walked across the country at age 89 to promote campaign finance reform and later waged a quixotic campaign for U.S. Senate, has died. She was 100.

Haddock died Tuesday night of chronic respiratory illness at her home in Dublin, N.H., said spokeswoman and family friend Maude Salinger. She was surrounded by her son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

In 2000, Haddock walked 3,200 miles to draw attention to campaign finance reform. In 2004, at age 94, she ran for U.S. Senate against Republican Judd Gregg. The subtitle of her autobiography, written with Dennis Burke, was "You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell."

"Her age wasn't a factor in what she did," Salinger said. "She never gave up. Until the end, she advocated for public funding. She would wanted people to know that democracy and government belongs to us."

Haddock was born Jan. 24, 1910, in Laconia and attended Emerson College before marrying James Haddock. She later worked at a shoe company for 20 years.

After retiring in 1972, Haddock became more active in community affairs. She became interested in campaign finance reform after the defeat of the first attempt of Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold to remove unregulated "soft" money from campaigns in 1995. Inspiration for her cross-country trek came from the Tuesday Morning Academy, a group of women in Dublin who met every Tuesday at 8 a.m. to do ballet exercises and discuss world affairs.

"Sometimes I think it was a fool's errand, but I think there are more people in this country who know what campaign finance reform means since I started," she told The Associated Press in February 2000.

Covering about 10 miles a day, Haddock walked through more than 1,000 miles of desert, climbed the Appalachian Range in blizzard conditions and even skied 100 miles after snowfall made roadside walking impossible. She started in near-obscurity, but soon was discovered by local and national media.

Burke, who co-wrote Haddock's memoir, met Haddock as she walked through Arizona on her way to Washington.

"Doris was one of the youngest people I have ever known. She was a little kid about her country — so in love she was with it and so excited for it always," he said early Wednesday.

In 2004, Haddock jumped into the Senate race on the last day to file after the presumptive Democratic nominee dropped out when his campaign manager was accused of financial fraud. A few months before the election, she officially changed her name to "Granny D," but stressed that the "D" stood for "Doris," not her party affiliation. She lost to Gregg 66 to 34 percent.

"It comes down to this — if you want something done right today, you have to run for Congress yourself — or at least send your grandmother," said.

In recent years, she founded a group that pushed the state Legislature to create the Citizen Funded Election Task Force and attended the task force's weekly meetings. She was honored at a Statehouse ceremony in January to mark her 100th birthday.

She was working on a new book, "My Bohemian Century," which focuses on her college days and her Senate campaign and is expected to be published this spring. Haddock had stayed with Burke's family in Phoenix last month to complete work on it, he said.

Both Democrats and Republicans offered condolences Tuesday night.

"Her commitment to fair and open democracy should inspire us all to work even harder for reform," state Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley.

"We are always saddened when someone with a genuine commitment to their values and principles passes away," said Republican Party Chairman John H. Sununu. "Granny D was an unwavering advocate for her beliefs, and her tireless efforts inspired many Granite Staters to participate in our political process," he said.

In her new book's dedication, Haddock offers readers advice: "You have to keep the young adventurer inside your heart alive long enough for it to someday re-emerge. It may take some coaxing and some courage, but that person is in you always — never growing old."

A public memorial service is planned.

Amid a sea of brightly colored T-shirts and wave after wave of protest signs, Regina Holliday's homemade banner still stuck out as she marched Tuesday in support of health-care reform.

Clad in a painter's smock, Holliday, whose uninsured husband died of cancer in the summer of 2009, waved an image of him and her two sons.

"We want a foot in the door. That's what this bill is," Holliday, 37, said about the current health-care reform legislation.

Holliday was one of thousands of protesters who marched through downtown Washington on Tuesday to criticize the health insurance industry and attempt to draw support for the Democratic proposal to overhaul the system.

Organizers with Health Care for America Now, a coalition of labor and other liberal groups, targeted insurance company leaders attending a policy conference held by industry advocates at the Ritz-Carlton hotel at 22nd and M streets NW. Reinforcing the Obama administration's recent criticism of increasing health premiums, the demonstrators marched to the hotel to make a mock "citizen's arrest" of insurance executives, who were demonized on demonstration posters and over the loudspeaker.

"We're declaring this a crime scene!" bellowed Richard Trumka, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, to the roar of the crowd. AFL-CIO is a federation of about 60 labor unions.

Organizers of the protest said they brought about 5,000 people from across the United States to downtown Washington. They began their march in Dupont Circle, where they heard speeches from politicians and activists.

Former Vermont governor and physician Howard Dean cheered on demonstrators earlier in the morning. "We deserve a vote. . . . This is a vote about one thing -- are you for the insurance companies or for the American people?"

Other marchers joined the main group as it reached the hotel. Police had set up barriers blocking access to the entrance. As protesters chanted and beat on drums, men and women in business suits took photos on their cellphones from behind the barricades.

The protest comes as President Obama makes a final push for passage of the health-care reform package, which critics say would not control health-care costs, among other failings.

"We will continue to send the message to Congress that they need to listen to us, not the health insurance companies, and that they needed to get reform done now," said David Elliot, communications director for USAction, a nonprofit that helped co-found the Health Care for America campaign in 2008.

Insurers say they are being vilified.

"All health plans are in the same situation in trying to deal with the steadily increasing medical costs in the delivery system, which are not sustainable," a spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross of California said last month when the firm agreed to a request by California regulators to postpone a premium increase of 39 percent for people who buy individual policies.

Like other insurers, Anthem also said rates are going up for individual insurance policies because, in the poor economy, healthy people are dropping coverage, leaving a pool of customers who are sicker and more expensive to cover.

The administration contends that the rate increases reflect excessive profits; insurance lobbyists counter that their rates mirror underlying increases in prices charged by doctors, hospitals and drug firms.

No one was arrested during Tuesday's demonstration, Elliot said. But there was a minor skirmish between police and protesters when some tried to gain access to a parking tunnel next to the hotel. After a small group was allowed to deliver "citizen's arrest warrants" to America's Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying group hosting the conference, the crowd began to disperse.

The lobby plans to spend more than $1 million on a nationwide advertising campaign this week to, as one official with the group said, "set the record straight about rising health-care costs."

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc was sued on Monday by a large union pension fund that accused the Wall Street investment bank of overpaying its executives.

The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers fund filed the lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to recover money for the company on behalf of other shareholders.

It seeks to stop Goldman from allocating roughly 47 percent of 2009 net revenue as compensation, saying such allocations "vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste."

The lawsuit also wants Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and others in management, rather than shareholders, to be responsible for charitable contributions that Goldman is making as a an apology for its activities.

Goldman has been at the center of a public debate over how much banks should pay out in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, after taking billions of dollars of federal bailout money.

Last week, Goldman said it would cap 2009 compensation expense at $16.2 billion, for a 36 percent compensation ratio, despite posting a record profit.

The bank also said its board rejected several shareholder demands to investigate recent pay awards and recoup excessive pay, while admitting it could face "negative publicity" from media portrayals.

Goldman spokesman Ed Canaday said: "We believe the lawsuit is completely without merit." A lawyer for the plaintiff did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The lawsuit is similar to one filed in the same court in January by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, which oversees public transit in the Philadelphia area.

The case is International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 Pension Fund v. Blankfein et al, Delaware Chancery Court, No. 5315,

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Steve Eder; Editing by Steve Orlofsky.)

Utah's Hill Air Force Base has hired a psychologist and others to deal with a rash of suicides, mostly among civilians complaining of harsh working conditions.

Ogden Air Logistics Center commander Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch says two civilians and an airman have committed suicide this year.

A Hill spokesman says that brings to at least 25 confirmed suicides since 2006 that were mostly committed off the base.

Bonnie Carroll, a military widow who founded the advocacy group Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, says suicides also have been a problem at Fort Campbell, an Army base in Kentucky and Tennessee.

She says the Defense Department has added thousands of mental health professionals to the ranks of the military because of a greater awareness of the problem.

Bill Kristol just launched a pre-emptive assault on a statement criticizing his and Liz Cheney's group, Keep America Safe, which bears the signature of a prominent lawyer who's typically a Cheney ally.

I've obtained a copy of the statement drafted by Brookings' Ben Wittes, which labels "shameful" Keep America Safe's focus on the Justice Department for hiring, and temporarily concealing the names of lawyers who did work for detainees. Its signatories, according to Human Rights Watch's Tom Malinowski, who circulated the draft, will be former government officials and legal experts, "mostly conservatives." The signatories are well-known lawyers, if largely people whose criticism of Cheney won't come as a surprise. They include including the Bush Administration Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler, Condoleeza Rice legal adviser John Bellinger, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Matthew Waxman, and the right-leaning legal scholars Philip Bobbitt and Robert Chesney.

The most surprising name, however, is that of David Rivkin, an official in the first Bush administration who has emerged as a leading defender of the interrogation policies advocated by the Cheneys.

"The past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in previous legal practice," says the statement. "We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications."

The statement doesn't mention Cheney or Keep America Safe, but says the "attacks undermine the Justice system more broadly. "

Kristol responds that his group's video didn't represent "attacks" on the lawyers -- labeled the "Al Qaeda Seven" in the video -- and says that his group's claim isn't that the lawyers shouldn't be allowed to work in Justice, but that their names should be public, a question on which Justice caved last week. The other question, Kristol writes, is "whether former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy for the Justice Department."

The issue has served as a proxy, however, for broader conservative complaints about Obama's tone and policy toward terror prosecutions, and if the call for the lawyers to be drummed out of government isn't stated, it's pretty clearly implied.

The full statement is after the jump.

The past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in previous legal practice, either represented Guantanamo detainees or advocated for changes to detention policy. As attorneys, former officials, and policy specialists who have worked on detention issues, we consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.

The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre. People come to serve in the Justice Department with a diverse array of prior private clients; that is one of the department's strengths. The War on Terror raised any number of novel legal questions, which collectively created a significant role in judicial, executive and legislative forums alike for honorable advocacy on behalf of detainees. In several key cases, detainee advocates prevailed before the Supreme Court. To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit.

Such attacks also undermine the Justice system more broadly. In terrorism detentions and trials alike, defense lawyers are playing, and will continue to play, a key role. Whether one believes in trial by military commission or in federal court, detainees will have access to counsel. Guantanamo detainees likewise have access to lawyers for purposes of habeas review, and the reach of that habeas corpus could eventually extend beyond this population. Good defense counsel is thus key to ensuring that military commissions, federal juries, and federal judges have access to the best arguments and most rigorous factual presentations before making crucial decisions that affect both national security and paramount liberty interests. To delegitimize the role detainee counsel play is to demand adjudications and policymaking stripped of a full record. Whatever systems America develops to handle difficult detention questions will rely, at least some of the time, on an aggressive defense bar; those who take up that function do a service to the system.

* *

* *

*Benjamin Wittes*

· Senior Fellow and Research Director in Public Law, The Brookings Institution

*Robert Chesney*

· Charles I. Francis Professor in Law, University of Texas School of Law

· Nonresident, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution

*Matthew Waxman*

· Associate Professor, Columbia Law School

· Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs

* *

*David Rivkin*

· Partner, Washington, D.C. Office, Baker Hostetler, L.L.P.

· Former Deputy Director, Office of Policy Development, Department of Justice, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations

· Former Associate General Counsel, Department of Energy

* *

*Philip Bobbitt*

· Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for National Security, Columbia Law School

* *

*Peter Keisler*

· Former Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division

· Former Acting Attorney General, Department of Justice

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 8 (Reuters) - Haitian President Rene Preval plans to tell U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday that food aid to the earthquake-devastated Caribbean nation should be stopped because of the risk of damaging its economy.

The two men will meet at the White House in the wake of a Jan. 12 quake that killed 230,000 people, according to Haitian government estimates, crippled the economy and devastated much of the capital Port-au-Prince and other cities.

Donations of food and water have proved a lifeline for more than 1.2 million people displaced by the quake, but Preval told a news conference on Monday the aid could in the long term hurt the economy of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

"I will tell him (Obama) that this first phase of assistance is finished," said Preval, standing in front of the ruined presidential palace in Port-au-Prince.

"If they continue to send us aid from abroad -- water and food -- it will be in competition with the national Haitian production and Haitian commerce," he said.

Preval said the priority should instead be to create employment in Haiti, a country where a high percentage of the population lacked work even before the quake.

The Haitian government, working with the international community, is preparing a master plan for reconstruction that would have ambitious goals, Preval said after a meeting with Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean.

A trust fund with voting and nonvoting board members would manage donor funds, Preval said.

RECONSTRUCTION

Priorities for reconstruction include strengthening buildings to withstand future earthquakes and rehabilitating the environment, much of which is denuded, to protect against flooding from tropical storms and hurricanes, which last battered Haiti in 2008.

Some $38 million was needed for storm protection, Preval said.

Reopening the country's schools was also key, Preval said, though he gave no date for when that would happen. Education is considered critical to development in Haiti, where 38 percent of the population is under age 15 and nearly half of those 15 and older are illiterate.

"I will also tell him (Obama) that our vision is to rebuild Haiti and if we don't take advantage of this historic event to reinvent Haiti, to reinvent Port-au-Prince, we will be making a mistake of historical proportions," Preval said.

"Our generation has the obligation to shoulder this responsibility," he said.

Many Haitians have criticized the government's performance since the earthquake and argued that Preval has not done enough to communicate with the people or to marshal government aid, instead leaving international aid groups to fill the gap.

Jean's two-day visit is significant because she was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, arriving in Canada as a refugee, and has worked to promote Haiti's needs since the quake.

"We are here ... to say to Haitians that they are not alone ... We have suffered with you," she said in an impassioned speech after her meeting with Preval.

As Canada's governor general, Jean represents Britain's Queen Elizabeth, who is Canada's head of state.

FORT DRUM — A Fort Drum soldier was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb while serving in Afghanistan, according to the Buffalo News.

Spc. Alan N. Dikcis, 21, Wheatfield, Niagara County, apparently was riding in a vehicle near the Taliban stronghold of Marjah when it hit an improvised explosive device, the newspaper reported. A member of the 630th Engineer Company in the 10th Mountain Division, he had been slated for a two-week leave in April.

Spc. Dikcis's older brother, Stanley, 23, suffered wounds and head trauma as the result of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan a year and a half ago while serving in the Army, according to the report.

The U.S. Department of Defense on Sunday evening had yet to confirm the death of Spc. Dikcis.

A California-based reservist recently died in Afghanistan, the Defense Department announced Friday.

Lance Cpl. Nigel K. Olsen, 21, of Orem, Utah, was killed March 4 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, a volatile area where Marines continue to battle against Taliban fighters for control of Marjah.

Olsen was assigned to the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion from Camp Pendleton.

Another reservist with 4th LAR — Lance Cpl. Carlos A. Aragon, 19 — was killed March 1. Aragon was also from Orem, Utah.

No additional information was immediately available.

The Department of Defense says a Maryland soldier has died in Afghanistan. Spc. Anthony A. Paci, 30, of Rockville died Thursday from injuries suffered during a vehicle rollover.

Paci was assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. Paci enlisted in October 2004. He deployed to Iraq from December 2005 to November 2006. Afghanistan was his second deployment.