On Nov. 4 voters in Legislative District 10 on Phoenix’s Northwest Side elected Doug Quelland to the Arizona House of Representatives.

On May 15, an unelected state commission overruled them and ordered Quelland out of the House for violating rules governing publicly financed campaigns.

Quelland is appealing and can remain in the House until that’s resolved but judging from the evidence gathered by the commission, it’s likely he’ll be forced out.

It’s the second time in two years the state’s Clean Elections Commission has overturned voters’ wishes because a candidate agreed to take public money for his campaign then broke the incredibly complex rules governing that money’s use.

Clean Elections and its cousin, term limits, were supposed to put the citizen back in citizen government. Neither has happened.

The Democrats elected to the Legislature are more liberal and the Republicans more conservative than ever before. The gulf that lies between them has prevented compromise and progress on a whole host of issues.

Candidates who had to put their hand out to numerous constituencies to raise money pre-Clean Elections need now only put their hands out to their parties’ true believers. Because of another good idea gone bad – the state’s redistricting commission, which botched the gerrymandering of state legislative districts – there are few competitive districts in the state. Most candidates need only win their party’s primary to get elected and primary voters tend to be the most strident of party faithful.

Meanwhile, party operatives have figured out how to game the system, turning Clean Elections into more of an oxymoron than a supposed field leveler.

While public financing was supposed to take the corruption out of politics by making candidates beholden more to voters than donors, term limits was supposed to refresh the state house every few years with new candidates bringing fresh ideas to state government.

Instead, candidates have likewise made term limits an oxymoron. Candidates termed out of the House after eight years simply run for the Senate, or vice versa, and almost always get elected.

Quelland’s seatmate from District 10, Jim Weiers, has been in the Legislature for 15 years. He did his eight in the House, including a term as Speaker, got termed out, got elected to the Senate for one term, then jumped back to the House where he was Speaker for two terms. He’s in the middle of his eighth two-year term in the Legislature.

It was this kind of career politician that term limits was supposed to limit.

The great irony is that term limits was unnecessary, there already were term limits every two years.

Voters should be able to give money to whomever they want and elect whomever they want however many times they want.

It’s time for voters to jettison both these laws and re-take responsibility for whom they elect.

From the political notebook:

• The always gloomy report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees was released last week. The news focus was that the date for the Social Security trust fund to go broke had been moved up to 2037.

That, however, isn’t the relevant economic date. The relevant date is when annual income begins to fall short of annual expenses.

It is true that both Social Security and Medicare have IOUs from the federal treasury for the surpluses that have been being used for other purposes. But the government will have to raise the money to make good on the IOUs. That means higher taxes, more borrowing, or cuts in other programs.

The Medicare hospitalization fund is already running an annual deficit. For Social Security, annual expenses are expected to exceed annual income in 2016, just seven years from now.

Very shortly, the Social Security surpluses the government is currently using for other purposes will start to decline, beginning the pressure on the general fisc.

After they have come to an end in 2016, the amount the government will have to pump into Social Security and Medicare from sources other than payroll taxes will be small at first.

But it grows pretty quickly. By 2025, it is expected to reach over $500 billion a year.

The day of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare reform is fast approaching.

• Given the circumstances, the fix Legislative Republicans adopted as, they hope, the final tourniquet for this fiscal year, which ends in June, is excusable.

Primarily, they pushed bills due this year into next. Ordinarily, that would be outrageous. But the fall in state revenues has been so deep that it’s hard to work up a lather over any temporizing measures.

Democrats voted almost unanimously against the fix, even though they have recommended postponing payments as a strategy as well.

They objected to a provision requiring school districts to first use excess cash balances to cover their costs in lieu of actually getting their deferred payment next year. But the Democratic argument makes no sense.

School districts have been banking reserves beyond what they can legally spend. These excesses are supposed to be used to reduce property taxes the following year.

So, Democrats complained that using them to reduce what the state actually ends up forking out for its deferred payment to the schools amounted to a property tax increase.

However, the evidence is overwhelming that the districts have not been using excess cash balances to reduce property taxes.

According to the Arizona Tax Research Association, districts have more than doubled their cash balances over the last five years, from $219 million to $443 million.

Moreover, Democrats support reimposing a property tax at the state level. Why cavil at an increase at the local level?

• The lone exception to Democratic opposition came from Sen. Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia. He pointed out that using the excess cash balances now reserved more federal stimulus money to offset potential education cuts later. And he’s exactly right.

Independent thinking and actions are rare in politics. Garcia is to be commended for his.

• I attended President Obama’s commencement address at Arizona State University, not as a journalist but as a parent of a graduating student.

A few years ago, I also attended a graduation ceremony at Wells Fargo Arena. The latter was significantly less of a pain in the patoot, but I was struck by the same conclusion: This was a ceremony for the university, not the students.

Yes, my son will remember that Obama spoke at his graduation. And Obama gave a fine commencement address.

But my son petitioned us to get out of there even before his degree was officially conferred by having his college stand up and have a few words of incantation recited by ASU’s president.

There is only one moment that really matters to students and family at these things. That’s when the student’s name is called and he gets to tread across the stage while his clan hoots and hollers. At ASU, there are simply too many graduates to provide the main moment.

This big mega-ritual should be done away with at ASU. Have graduation ceremonies at the school level. Eliminate all the academic folderol and get right to the name-calling, treading and hooting and hollering.

Done right, the thing shouldn’t take more than an hour. And it would be much easier on aging patoots.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Francisco Peña contemplates a math problem at an AIMS workshop at Pueblo High Magnet School.

After many years as a political observer and erstwhile practitioner, I usually understand why what I think is sensible policy doesn’t get enacted.

Often, there is some interest group opposed. In our political system, intensity matters. An organized group that cares a lot can usually carry the day against policies whose benefits are diffuse.

Our political system also is set up to make big reforms difficult. Incremental change at the margins is more the norm. And usually, that’s a good thing.

And not at all infrequently, my views are in the minority, and not infrequently a very small minority at that.

Nevertheless, the failure of policy to move in the direction I think sensible about a high school graduation test in Arizona perplexes me. It doesn’t disadvantage any organized interest group. It’s not that big of a reform. And I think most people would agree with me, although I might be wrong about that.

Nevertheless, Arizona’s high school graduation test remains stuck in a place that makes no sense, and reform efforts, to the extent they are gaining traction, move in the wrong direction.

Arizona has a high school graduation test, AIMS, that all students must pass to receive their diploma (ignoring the temporizing fudging mechanisms the Legislature has adopted and extended).

However, the test doesn’t really determine whether a student knows what a high school graduate is expected to know. Instead, it is set at a 10th grade level.

So, Arizona can be relatively confident that its high school graduates know what a sophomore in high school should know. Wouldn’t it make more sense to determine if they know what a high school graduate should know?

I think Arizona should have a high school exit exam that actually tests what high school graduates should know. If passage were made a graduation requirement, however, the failure rate would be, at least at first, politically unacceptably high.

So, I’ve proposed a two-tier diploma: a certificate of achievement, representing passage of the test; and a certificate of completion, representing passage of all other graduation requirements but failure to pass the exit exam.

No one would be denied graduation because of the test. But employers and universities could place appropriately differential value on the two diplomas.

An AIMS Task Force formed by the Legislature recently released its recommendations. It said, much to my surprise, that AIMS should remain a 10th grade test and should remain a graduation requirement. However, it should be supplemented by two “college and career readiness” tests in the freshman and junior years.

Now, that would mean that there would still be no way of knowing whether an Arizona high school graduate actually knows what a high school graduate should know.

The desire for new “college and career readiness” tests issues from two growing fallacies.

First, that all students should graduate high school ready for college. Second, that what is necessary to prepare for college is the same thing as is necessary for jobs that don’t require a college degree.

If college is to be what it should be, and not just the new high school, then it should require cognitive abilities and a keen interest in hard academic work that just isn’t universal. And the math skills that an aspiring plumber or carpenter needs just aren’t the same as for an aspiring physicist or economist.

This is an overreaction to the commendable desire not to prematurely track kids, and particularly to avoid lower expectations for low-income and minority students.

But there are plenty of college readiness tests that already exist, and the entry requirements for Arizona universities are not opaque. Avoiding low-expectations is a matter of exhortation, not new tests.

Arizona does, however, need a high school graduation test that actually tests high school graduate knowledge.

Getting one shouldn’t be this difficult.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can't say he hasn't warned you.

The Republican Party is a lot like the American auto industry these days. It’s in shambles, but something has got to survive.

The problem is that Dick Cheney, who seemingly has granted more interviews in the last eight weeks than he did in the previous eight years, is obscuring this rebuilding effort.

The former vice president’s message may be worth hearing. But Cheney is viewed so negatively that the messenger is crowding out the message. Some of Cheney’s critics seem to loathe him more than they do Osama bin Laden.

What does Cheney want? Some speculate he’s trying to polish his and George W. Bush’s legacy before it gets burned into history, especially the part about interrogation and intelligence gathering.

Cheney’s stated motive is that he is speaking out now because he is deeply worried that President Obama is replacing Bush administration policies with those that will make the country less safe.

That’s a debate worth having.

Obama last week changed his mind and decided not to release hundreds of photos of prisoner treatment in Afghanistan and Iraq after U.S. military leaders said they feared it would endanger U.S. troops.

In stark contrast to the Bush’s deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas retreat, Cheney has been highly visible and highly critical of the new administration.

If he were an automobile, he’d be the kind they had back in the 1970s when the U.S. auto industry was king, when the Japanese were a minor threat, and the Russians were building fall-apart death trap vehicles behind the Iron Curtain.

The Cheney Charger makes no apologies for the rubber it lays or the dust it leaves. It doesn’t try to appeal to everyone, but if you need to run into or over something to protect yourself, that’s the showroom you’d be in.

Liberal columnists believe this Cheney is crazy-dangerous. Comedians see a big target.

At the recent star-studded White House Correspondents’ Dinner – the Oscars for the bicoastal “Pollywood” set – comedian Wanda Sykes proclaimed: “He’s a scary man, scares me to death. I tell my kids . . . ‘If two cars pull up and one has a stranger and the other car has Dick Cheney . . . you get in the car with the stranger.’ ”

Democrats delight in making Cheney a face of the GOP’s shambled state, and the vice president keeps giving them YouTube moments.

Just last weekend, Cheney was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” explaining why he had been so visible.

“If I don’t speak out,” Cheney said, “then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody on the other side to tell the truth.”

So what if Cheney is right? What if, as he says, the tactics the Bush administration used to extract information from suspected terrorists saved hundreds of thousands of American lives?

A former FBI interrogator who questioned terrorist suspects testified this week at a Senate hearing that extreme techniques were unreliable and counter-productive.

Cheney says unreleased CIA memos would back up his claim. Let’s see them.

His critics point to already released CIA memos that say there is no way of knowing whether the same information couldn’t have been gotten with milder tactics. But what if they are wrong?

What if, heaven forbid, terrorists pull off another mass-casualty attack on an American city? Who gets the blame?

Will it be the Bush-Cheney crowd for fuzzying the definition of torture and engaging in waterboarding and other interrogation methods that may or may not have been legal, thereby incubating more anti-Americanism in the jihadist sphere?

Or will it be the Obama crowd for peeling back those policies and leaving the public impression that detention got easier for anyone caught trying to do mass-scale harm?

No matter what you think of Dick Cheney, you can’t say he hasn’t warned you.

Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com

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Raasch’s blog

Get more behind-the-scenes reports, context and analysis about politicians and the political process in Raasch’s Furthermore blog. Look for it here.

Bishop John Tong smiles in front of Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong. The new head of Hong Kong's Catholic church is promising to help unite China's Catholics and work toward religious freedom. Tong assumed his role as head of Hong Kong's diocese in April. He replaced the long-serving Joseph Zen, an outspoken champion of religious liberty who was mistrusted by Beijing.

At a time when religious persecution is at the heart of the world’s most violent conflicts, religious freedom matters.

That’s why the 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom should be required reading for policymakers in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

The report, released May 1, documents in chilling detail the global assault on freedom of religion and belief, making a powerful case for the need to take religious freedom more seriously in U.S. foreign policy.

The report doesn’t come from the left or the right. It comes from a federal commission that is independent and bipartisan under the leadership of 10 commissioners who did their homework.

This year, the commission names 13 “countries of particular concern” – Burma, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

Another 11 countries are on the commission’s watch list: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

The worst of the worst include China, where unregistered Protestants are frequently arrested, Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned and tortured, Catholics are detained and harassed, and Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists are repressed in growing numbers.

Conditions are less severe, but still serious, in “watch list” countries. Venezuela, for example, is now a hotbed of anti-Semitism fomented by the anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of the government under President Hugo Chavez. As a consequence, many Jews have fled the country.

Religious freedom is practically nonexistent in Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States with a long history of promising, but failing, to do better.

Members of minority Muslim groups – including Shiites, who make up 10 percent to 15 percent of the population – are frequently detained and harassed.

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others among the nearly three million expatriate workers must conform to Saudi religious customs.

Although non-Muslim workers are supposed to be permitted to worship in private, their services are often subject to surveillance and raids by Saudi authorities.

Just about every religious group, it seems, suffers persecution somewhere in the world today. Christians are targeted in Iraq, Baha’is are arrested in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned in Tajikistan, Muslims suffer discrimination in Russia, and the list goes on.

Beyond delivering bad news, the commission also makes extensive policy recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress, including asking the secretary of state to designate “countries of particular concern.”

Under the International Religious Freedom Act, the president is required to take action opposing violations of religious freedom in countries so designated.

Given the complex economic and political realities of American ties with some of the worst offenders, religious freedom and other human rights issues often take a back seat in U.S. foreign policy. Saudi Arabia, for example, has been a CPC since 2004 – but a State Department waiver lets the Saudis off the hook.

Even in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the U.S. is deeply involved in nation-building, conditions for freedom of religion and belief continue to deteriorate.

A strong case can be made that the lack of religious freedom is one of the greatest barriers to peace and security in both societies.

We ignore this global crisis at our peril. Consider the hard reality behind the idealism that animates the commission’s report: International religious freedom is both an issue of national security for the United States and an essential condition for building societies that are free and democratic.

Assaults on freedom of religion and belief aren’t side issues; they are urgent matters of conscience that must be at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org

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FULL REPORT

To read the full 2009 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom go to: www.uscirf.gov

The clock is ticking on the Obama administration’s promises to speed development of the next generation of biofuels.

There isn’t a commercial-scale plant making ethanol from crop residue and other types of plant cellulose, the stuff that’s supposed to replace corn as the feedstock of the future for biofuels.

Biomass fuel isn’t economical yet, and there are obstacles to overcome, including how to harvest, transport and store the huge amounts of biomass required.

But biorefineries will have to be built at a relatively fast rate in the coming decade if there will be sufficient quantities to meet congressional-imposed mandates, according to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.

By 2013, 10 plants, each capable of producing 40 million gallons a year, would need to be built.

By 2018, the industry needs 20 such plants a year, each with an average annual production capacity of 100 million gallons.

That’s the pace needed to produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel by 2022, the consumption level Congress required in the 2007 energy bill.

It can’t be done, given the lack of available capital and relatively low oil prices that the industry faces, said Robert Brown, director of Iowa State University’s Bioeconomy Institute.

The mandate “was ambitious even when petroleum was selling for $150 a barrel and money was available for new technologies,” he said.

The environmental agency analysis provides a look at where cellulosic plants would be, based on where the cornfield residue, forestry waste and other feedstocks are likely to be.

Iowa, with its expanse of corn production, is likely to be the No. 1 producer in cellulosic ethanol in 2022, according to the agency’s forecast.

The agency sees Iowa producing 1.7 billion gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol, ahead of Illinois, Indiana and Louisiana. (Iowa’s corn ethanol plants can now produce about 3.3 billion gallons a year, and the environmental agency sees that capacity rising to 3.8 billion gallons by 2022.)

For now, the question isn’t so much where they will be built, but when, or even whether they’ll be built.

Getting the industry started will require heavy federal financing in the form of loan guarantees, said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the New Fuels Alliance, an advocacy group for next-generation biofuels.

A cellulosic ethanol plant would cost an estimated $5 to $7 per gallon of capacity to build, compared with $1 to $2 a gallon for a corn ethanol facility.

“If the government wants to do this, they’re going to have to stand back and say, ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll help you out,’ ” Coleman said.

The Obama administration last week pledged to accelerate the use of loan guarantees to refinance existing plants and build cellulosic facilities.

One reason investors don’t want to finance plants is the lack of cars capable of running on ethanol and the lack of pumps for dispensing the fuel.

“The Obama administration has to realize that they’re running their (biofuels) train into what is a wall in the marketplace,” Coleman said.

Coleman said the attention that policymakers are giving to problems in the corn ethanol industry are deflecting attention from advanced biofuels and delaying their introduction.

There’s one way around some of these obstacles: Burn the biomass in power plants and use the electricity to run plug-in hybrid cars rather than turning the biomass into ethanol.

A recent study published in the journal Science says cars would get 80 percent more mileage per acre of biomass when it’s used to generate electricity than making ethanol. And greenhouse gas emissions are lower because electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines (Iowa) Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano distinguished herself in Arizona as a topnotch attorney general and as a wise and prudent governor.

So it comes as no surprise that President Obama reportedly is considering Napolitano among his potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fellow Arizonan Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. She was appointed by President Reagan in 1981 and retired in 2005.

O’Connor gained renown for her diligence, integrity and penchant for constructive compromise. She did Arizona proud.

Napolitano would make us proud, too.

While we’re pleased that she now is heading Homeland Security, we believe her lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court would provide an even greater service to our nation.

As the National Rifle Association was en route to Phoenix, the state House showed its support by passing a bill to let Arizonans stash concealed guns in their parked cars.

But while HB 2474 may please some gun owners, it’s an outrage for property owners, employers and businesses, which no longer could prohibit gun storage in vehicles parked in their lots and garages.

In addition to infringing on private property rights, this legislation raises serious safety concerns.

Supporters say the bill, sponsored by Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, would provide convenience for people who may be planning to hunt or shoot before or after work.

Alas, it also would make workplace shootings far more convenient by allowing workers to keep loaded guns stashed just outside in the parking lot – whether the employer likes it or not.

Workplace violence already affects more than 2 million workers in the U.S. each year, accounting for about 20 percent of violent crime, according to a 2008 study commissioned by the ASIS Foundation.

About 500 workplace homicides occur each year, the report found.

The legislation, which has yet to be heard by the Senate, also could imperil homeland security because power plants and military contractors no longer could ban guns in their parking lots.

The bill does provide exemptions for nuclear-generating stations, businesses that run a gated and controlled parking lot, and facilities that search vehicles and passengers as they enter a secure parking facility.

But legislators cannot possibly predetermine what institutions have a legitimate need to bar guns from their parking areas.

We also find little solace in another argument by the bill supporters, that security would be enhanced for people who drive through dangerous neighborhoods.

Those who cannot avoid such dangerous areas and tote guns as a result still shouldn’t have the right to store their loaded gun in a private parking lot if the owner doesn’t want it there.

We agree with Rep. Chad Campbell, a Phoenix Democrat, that property owners should have the right to determine whether to allow guns in their parking lots.

Six other Democrats joined with House Republicans to pass this bill Thursday, just days before the NRA’s 50,000 members descend on Phoenix.

We would like to remind those Democrats, and the Republicans they joined, that in today’s world, national security and personal safety are paramount.

While HB 2474 purports to enhance personal safety, it in fact does just the opposite.

These are factors the Senate would be well-advised to consider before voting on this ill-conceived gun bill.

A 2004 photo taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows a female American soldier holding a dog leash fastened around a naked prisoner's neck.

If there was one incident that led to the decline in support for the Iraq war at home and abroad, it was the 2004 publication of pictures of U.S. soldiers taunting and abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Those photos, broadcast endlessly into homes around the globe, depicted grinning American soldiers – male and female – next to naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in piles on the floor.

Others showed snarling dogs intimidating prisoners. And perhaps the most infamous revealed a female soldier leading a naked prisoner by a dog collar around his neck.

The soldiers who engaged in this rogue, illegal conduct were tried, convicted and went to prison. But the damage they did can never be fully expiated.

Now, a freedom of information filing by the American Civil Liberties Union threatens to open this old wound.

The ACLU filed suit in 2003 to obtain the release of all photos related to military detention, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found in its favor last September. The Bush administration sought to reverse the ruling, but the Obama administration said in April it would not fight the release of the photos.

Then, President Obama reversed course this week, instructing the Justice Department to challenge the release in court on the grounds of national security.

President Obama now says that the publication of these photos “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.”

He added that the most direct consequence of releasing them “would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”

He did not come to this conclusion without help – namely from Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq; and Gen. David McKiernan, outgoing American commander in Afghanistan, who pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to urge the administration to fight the release of the photos.

Better late than never. Obama’s reversal comes after weeks of controversy over his Justice Department’s decision to release Bush administration memos giving legal justifications for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on enemy combatants.

While the two actions strike some left-wing critics as contradictory, in fact they demonstrate the fine line Obama is trying to walk on Bush-era decisions.

On the one hand, Obama seems eager to punish Bush political appointees for aggressively prosecuting the war on terror.

On the other hand, he’s nervous about doing anything that might provoke more violence against American troops, especially if it might redound to the detriment of his own reputation and that of his administration.

If Obama acquiesces in the release of the photos and terrorist acts against American soldiers or civilians abroad follow, he knows he’ll be blamed.

But the Obama decision also reflects the larger shift on the left from blaming soldiers for their involvement in a sometimes unpopular war to trying to show some respect for military personnel while still attacking the political leaders who sent them to war.

Although Obama is not old enough to remember the Vietnam War personally, he’s nonetheless learned some of the lessons from that era.

Vietnam War protesters spat on American soldiers, literally and figuratively. Many burned the American flag, urged the victory of the communist guerrillas and ignored the torture of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

Some, such as Obama friend and political ally William Ayers, went further, engaging in grotesque acts of violence against military installations in the U.S. and later against the police.

The American people overwhelmingly rejected the excesses of these protesters, electing Richard M. Nixon twice.

With some exceptions – notably Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who accused American troops of committing atrocities in Haditha before investigations and courts martial cleared them; and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who accused American troops of terrorizing Iraqi children – most Democrats have tried to sound supportive of American soldiers.

I’d like to think this support is sincere, that they appreciate the sacrifice of the men and women who serve this country so the rest of us can be safe.

But even if President Obama’s decision not to release the photos was simply a cold, political calculation, we should be glad he made it.

Linda Chavez is chair of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.” E-mail: lchavez@ceousa.org

Protesters against torture gather Thursday near the U.S. Capitol.

In reversing itself and blocking the release of photos of U.S. military personnel abusing detainees, the Obama administration claims to have found a new legal argument. It hasn’t.

What the administration has found is a way to pass the buck to the courts.

President Barack Obama was criticized for last month’s release of memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. If the photos are now made public over White House objections, the inevitable outrage might be deflected toward the courts and away from the president.

The administration has also found a way to avoid distribution of the photographs just before Obama travels to Egypt to speak directly to Muslims. Government lawyers had promised a federal judge that they would turn over the photos by May 28 – a week before the president’s trip.

Wednesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president will try to block the court-ordered release of hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners, reversing his position after military commanders warned that the images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger soldiers.

Those same arguments were made last month against releasing so-called torture memos, Bush-era documents outlining often-harsh methods CIA agents could use when interrogating terror suspects. Obama released the memos anyway.

The pictures, said to show mistreatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The government recently had agreed to release 44 photographs and said in court papers it was “processing for release a substantial number of other images,” for a total expected to be in the hundreds.

Gibbs said the president wants administration lawyers to challenge the photos’ release based on national security concerns. He said that argument was not used before.

“The president does not believe that the strongest case regarding the release of these photos was presented to the court,” he said.

But the Bush administration already argued against the release on national security grounds – and lost. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said that argument “has been made by the government multiple times, and has been rejected unequivocally every time.”

In September 2008, a three-judge federal appeals panel in New York wrote, “It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces, and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The court also rejected another argument Obama wants to revive. The White House says releasing the photos “would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.”

The federal appeals court, in the same September ruling, found that claim “disregards FOIA’s central purpose of furthering governmental accountability.”

Pressed by top military commanders, Obama concluded that he did not feel comfortable with making the photographs public. Gibbs said the president was concerned about inflaming already tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and making the U.S. mission in those two wars more difficult.

White House concern is probably well founded, given the reaction in 2004 to publication and broadcast of photos from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison showing grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees – some of the prisoners naked and some being held on leashes. The photographs incited protests domestically and abroad, particularly in Muslim countries.

By trying to keep the most recent batch of photos secret, Obama appears to be ignoring his pledge to be more forthcoming with information that courts have ruled should be made available to the public.

Gibbs said the latest decision does not contradict Obama’s promises of transparency since details about investigations into detainee abuse are available on the Pentagon’s Web site.

Obama’s decision to fight dissemination of the photos was welcomed by Republican lawmakers and at least one military group that were among his critics when the interrogation memos were brought to light as part of another ACLU lawsuit.

This time he’s kicking the decision back into court, where his administration still may be forced to hand over the photos.

Devlin Barrett covers justice for The Associated Press.

Pope Benedict XVI leaves after his visit to the Grotto of the Annunciation in the northern Israeli town of Nazareth.

JERUSALEM – Even if he had said all the right things about the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews, the German-born Pope Benedict XVI would have had a hard time winning over Israelis on his visit to the Jewish state.

His background as a German who served under the Nazis, the Roman Catholic Church’s history of anti-Semitism, his predecessor’s extraordinary outreach to Jews and a series of public relations gaffes – not to mention a longstanding dispute over the conduct of the Holocaust-era pope – created formidable obstacles for Benedict to overcome in his relations with the Jews.

So, it was not surprising that Israelis criticized the pope for failing to apologize for Catholic wrongdoings during a speech Monday at the country’s national Holocaust memorial.

“The thorough preparations for his visit to Israel, the complex traffic and security arrangements, and the millions of shekels that were earmarked for his hospitality evaporated as if they did not exist thanks to a speech that was missing one word – ‘sorry,’ ” said Wednesday’s lead editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretzy.

Regardless of whether Benedict deserves the criticism, it’s clear he miscalculated the impact of what he chose to say and not say at the memorial.

Before he assumed the papacy, his decades of involvement in fostering Jewish-Catholic relations made him a favorite among Jewish leaders to become pope, said Rabbi David Rosen, one of Israel’s leading voices in interfaith ties.

The apology Israeli critics said was so sorely missing from Benedict’s speech Monday at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial has actually been made by the pontiff in the past.

In an audience with Jewish leaders at the Vatican earlier this year, Benedict recalled a prayer by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem asking for God’s forgiveness for the treatment of Jews and said “I now make his prayer my own.”

Benedict’s speech at Yad Vashem contained a powerful pledge to never forget the victims’ names and a poignant allusion to the “joyful expectation” of victims’ parents anxiously awaiting the births of their children.

“What name shall we give this child? What is to become of him or her? Who could have imagined that they would be condemned to such a horrible fate,” the pope said.

Shortly after he said all this, however, the top two officials at Yad Vashem said they found the speech lacking because it failed to specifically mention the words “murder” or “Nazis” and left out the exact figure of 6 million Jews killed – in addition to the absence of a John Paul-like apology.

The speaker of Israel’s Parliament, Reuven Rivlin, criticized Benedict for coming off as detached, “as somebody observing from the sidelines.” Tom Segev, a prominent columnist and Holocaust historian, characterized the pope as “restrained, almost cold.”

Even Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor and a leader in interfaith relations, saw the speech as problematic despite his overall praise for Benedict.

“We should not be focusing just on an omission that took place at Yad Vashem, as painful as it might be,” said Schneier, who joined the pope on his visit Tuesday to the Western Wall.

Benedict has been warmly welcomed at every stop in Israel and the Palestinian territories and has been praised for his unequivocal calls for unity among religions.

But the flap over his Holocaust speech had the potential to eclipse his goodwill mission. If that happens, it wouldn’t be a first for Benedict.

There were uproars over his questioning of condoms as a valid weapons against AIDS during his pilgrimage to Africa, his quoting of a medieval text three years ago that characterized some of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman,” and his decision earlier this year to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Jewish leaders have only grudgingly accepted Benedict’s explanation that he did not know that Bishop Richard Williamson was a Holocaust denier when he lifted his excommunication from the church.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi defended Benedict against criticism of his Yad Vashem speech, saying the pope “can’t mention everything every time he speaks.”

In the end, Lombardi seemed to confuse the issue as much as clarify it. At one point, the spokesman said Benedict had “never, never” been a member of the Hitler Youth movement. A short while later, he backtracked, acknowledging that Benedict had in fact joined when membership was compulsory.

Sixty-four years after the last Nazi gas chamber closed, the Holocaust remains a raw wound across Israel’s national psyche. Many Israelis were deeply moved by John Paul’s stunning gesture at the Western Wall nine years ago, giving Benedict a hard act to follow during this, only the second official papal visit to the Jewish state.

The Vatican and Jewish leaders remain at odds over the conduct of Pius XII, the pope who reigned during World War II. Jews say he failed to do enough to stop the Holocaust and Catholic leaders insist he worked diligently behind the scenes to save Jews.

After John Paul’s death four years ago, Holocaust survivor Idit Tzirir described how that pope, as a young seminary student named Karol Wojtyla in Nazi-era Poland, trudged through the snow for miles carrying her – emaciated and suffering from tuberculosis – after her release from a German labor camp.

By contrast, Benedict by his own admission was a member of Hitler Youth during the war, albeit an unwilling one.

Steven Gutkin is the AP bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Several members of the Tucson City Council this week violated the spirit – and possibly the letter – of the state’s Open Meetings Law.

The law was written to ensure that decisions by public bodies are made in public. That didn’t happen when several council members got together ahead of the meeting to reach consensus on controversial budget cuts.

It’s a practice that must not be repeated.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Councilwoman Nina Trasoff said she had met with some colleagues “in twos or in threes” to discuss funding cuts to nonprofit groups and other jurisdictions.

Trasoff said that since four council members had not been together, there never was a quorum so it didn’t violate the state Open Meetings Law.

That’s defining the law too narrowly – and flies in the face of several opinions from the state Attorney General’s Office.

The law says this: “All meetings of any public body shall be public meetings and all persons so desiring shall be permitted to attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings.”

But that’s just the beginning. Public bodies cannot circumvent the intent of the law by meeting in smaller groups ahead of time to reach consensus. That prohibition extends to the exchange of e-mails among members of a body in an attempt to reach an agreement.

A 1975 opinion by the state Attorney General’s Office said “all discussions, deliberations, considerations or consultations among a majority of the members of a governing body regarding matters which may foreseeably require final action or final decision of the governing body constitute ‘legal action’ and must be conducted in an open meeting.”

The same opinion says that discussions taking place among fewer than a majority of the members “to circumvent the purpose of the Open Meeting Act . . . would constitute a violation.”

That covers almost precisely what Trasoff did with Regina Romero, Karin Uhlich and Shirley Scott.

The discussion involved possible budget cuts so the city could avoid instituting a tax on residential rentals. That tax was the subject of lengthy and heated public hearings that drew hundreds of Tucsonans recently.

Council members should have continued that discussion in public so citizens could hear the entire messy process with all views expressed.

The talk should not have taken place in a series of private conversations and telephone calls, with the resulting consensus presented in public as a neatly packaged fait accompli.

City Council members must be educated not only on the Open Meetings Law, but also on the way it has been interpreted over the years. Public business must be conducted in public.

King Abdullah II of Jordan, shown meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office in April, has predicted war if the Palestinian side doesn't see real progress toward its own state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington next week.

If anyone wants an appropriate song to characterize the buildup to his meeting with President Obama, it should be the old Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne number “I’ve Heard That Song Before.”

It goes: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before; it’s from an old familiar score; I know it well, that melody.”

This time, there is a twist. King Abdullah II of Jordan, in an interview this week with the Times of London, raised the stakes by predicting war if the Palestinian side doesn’t see real progress toward its own state.

Abdullah said a 57-state, not a two-state solution, is what’s needed, which means all Arab and Muslim states, as part of any deal, would need to recognize Israel. Good luck with that.

Last week in London I spoke with Liam Fox, a conservative Member of Parliament and the “shadow defense secretary” in Great Britain. Fox told me, “There is a belief in some quarters that if only you can resolve the problems between Israel and Palestine, all the other problems in the Middle East, in a domino-like fashion, will fall into place. That is absolute nonsense.”

Indeed, it is.

Fox said on a recent visit to Iran that Iranian politicians told him they realize they lack an air force to fight back if they are attacked by Israel, so they would use Hezbollah and Hamas.

“They are part of our defense policy against Israel,” Fox quoted them as saying, “Hamas is not part of the Palestinian problem. Hamas is the foreign-policy wing of Iran in Israel.”

If words mean anything, consider these from the Hamas Charter:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (endowment) consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. …

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Hezbollah has its own charter. It says in part:

“Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people.

“Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

Anyone see any wiggle room there? Have the actions of these two radical Islamic organizations, and their many cousins, demonstrated that they don’t mean what they say?

As I have previously – and repeatedly – noted, the pressure from the United States ought not to be on Israel, which has mostly lived up to every agreement – from Oslo, to Madrid, to Wye River.

U.S. pressure should be directed at those bent on Israel’s destruction. Israel’s enemies lost land through military action aimed at destroying Israel.

They are winning it back through diplomacy, pressure and terrorist acts carried out by their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel’s enemies have used this newly acquired land to launch attacks.

Gaza is the latest example. Israel unilaterally ceded Gaza to the Palestinians, and it has been used as a terrorist base for firing missiles at civilians inside Israel.

Why would anyone think that additional concessions, including an autonomous Palestinian state, would deter Islamic extremists from fulfilling the mandates of their charters?

For people who regard any presence by Jews on “Muslim land” as a religious and personal affront and negotiations with “infidels” (that would be we American “crusaders” and the “Zionist entity”) as against the will of their god, why should they be expected to compromise on a matter of doctrinal “truth”?

The Palestinians will deserve a state when they and their Arab-Muslim supporters prove by their actions and a reconsideration of their religious doctrines that they are prepared to allow Israel to exist in peace and have no intention of flooding a Palestinian state with “refugees” who might very well be used to finish the job so many of them wish Hitler had completed.

The question Netanyahu should ask President Obama is this: Does the United States want to sustain the first democracy in the Middle East or does it wish to create another terrorist state?

Cal Thomas is an author and broadcast commentator. His e-mail address is calthomas@tribune.com.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, speaks to a meeting of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank Monday. Referring to the federal stimulus, Bernanke said, "You have to take away the punchbowl, as someone once said, in order to avoid the inflation risk."

The federal government has committed trillions of dollars to domestic bailouts and propping up the recessionary economy, much of it borrowed, much created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.

How much longer can all this go on? That’s the pressing question facing policymakers, and one without a clear answer.

At some point, “You have to take away the punchbowl, as someone once said, in order to avoid the inflation risk,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, paraphrasing William McChesney Martin Jr., who served as Fed chairman in the 1950s and ’60s under five presidents.

But change course too soon, and it could nip a fragile recovery in the bud. Wait too long, and runaway inflation and gargantuan federal debt could be the sequel to the worst downturn since the 1930s.

While nobody thinks the current combination of near-zero interest rates, bank and auto bailouts and trillion-dollar annual deficits is a sustainable economic model, knowing just when to take away the punchbowl is the problem.

For now, the Bernanke Fed is still filling the punchbowl. And President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are doing the same with government spending.

One reason the Fed has been so aggressive in slashing rates and taking unconventional recession-fighting steps is because “we are trying to avoid another form of price instability, which is deflation,” Bernanke told a Fed financial conference in Jekyll Island, Ga., earlier this week.

The risk of deflation – a widespread and prolonged decline in retail prices, wages and real estate and other asset values – is “receding, but it certainly needs not to be ignored,” Bernanke said.

Despite some recent glimmers of hope, evidence is mixed on whether things are getting better or still worse. Disappointing reports Wednesday on falling retail sales and a jump in foreclosures fueled continuing uncertainties and helped push stocks down.

“You’ve got to take the stimulus off at some point. I don’t think that point is this year,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. He said Wednesday’s economic reports point to a continuing recession, despite some recent signs of encouragement.

Government and most private economists expect the recession, which began in December 2007, to end later this year, although they expect high levels of joblessness to continue beyond.

In the meantime, recent developments are complicating efforts to tame the deficit once the recession does end:

• White House budget officials said this week that the deficit would widen to a record $1.8 trillion this year, $89 billion more than their estimate in February. They blamed the recession.

• With nearly 80 million baby boomers nearing retirement, the government reported that Medicare and Social Security will face insolvency sooner than previously projected because of the recession – for Medicare in 2017 and for Social Security in 2037.

• A potential $90 billion shortfall opened up in paying for Obama’s health care proposal. The gap comes from congressional reluctance to go along with his proposal to help pay for the plan by limiting high-income families’ charitable-giving and other tax deductions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the health care bill will be on the House floor before the August recess.

• The administration asked Congress on Tuesday to add $100 billion in new U.S. contributions to the International Monetary Fund as part of a war-spending bill.

Obama proposed just $17 billion in new spending cuts last week, representing savings of less than one-half of 1 percent in his $3.4 trillion budget. Republicans scoffed and even some top Democrats criticized him for targeting popular programs in recessionary times.

By some accounts, the sum of all the U.S. grants, loans, guarantees and new money created electronically by the Fed since the financial crisis began totals some $11 trillion – roughly equal to the country’s national debt.

That sum does include loan guarantees that might not be needed, money that hasn’t been spent, various revolving accounts and U.S. investments in bad mortgages and other toxic, hard-to-value securities that could someday return money to taxpayers. Still, staggering amounts are involved.

“We are creating a government debt bubble that we’re going to have to deal with in a massive way,” suggested Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

History shows the dangers of calling the end of economic downturns too soon.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this mistake in 1936 when, believing the Depression largely over, he sought to pare back public spending and to balance the federal budget. It torpedoed a fragile recovery and pushed the economy back under water in 1937.

Japanese leaders made a similar mistake in the 1990s when they prematurely – and temporarily – withdrew government stimulus spending, helping to prolong Japan’s recession to one that lasted a full decade.

At the White House, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed suggestions by some analysts, including Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist for brokerage Charles Schwab, that the recession may have already ended.

“I can report nobody has intoned that message” at daily White House economic briefings, Gibbs said. “There’s much work to be done.”

Veteran budget analyst Stanley Collender said increases in public spending are an important fiscal tool and that “a bigger deficit is justified in the current economic environment.”

Furthermore, Collender added, if Obama doesn’t push his agenda for more health care, energy and education spending now, when will he?

“He’s got a 60-percent-plus approval rating. And Democrats are willing to work with him. He should go for it now. He’s never going to get a better chance,” Collender said.

Tom Raum covers politics and the economy for The Associated Press.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is among the British cabinet ministers whose questionable expense vouchers were published.

LONDON – There are titled people in Britain and then there are people who consider themselves entitled.

The current scandal here is that the entitled are not the growing number receiving benefits from government, but the many members of Parliament whose highly questionable expenses are jaw dropping, even to the most cynical observer.

In a series of front-page stories last week in The Daily Telegraph, expense vouchers of majority Labour Party members – including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and several Cabinet ministers – were published.

The newspaper paid an unidentified source for the information, which was due to be released free this summer.

Ordinarily, one might expect those who have been identified as milking the taxpayers for dubious personal expenses to express shame, or at least embarrassment. But instead, the members are unrepentant and fighting back.

Given the nature of the expensed items, it is doubtful they will persuade the British public, which continues to struggle financially.

Barbara Follett, the minister of culture, creative industries and tourism, claimed £25,000 in expenses for security because she doesn’t feel safe living in the Soho district.

Her husband is Ken Follett, a best-selling novelist and multimillionaire. It apparently didn’t occur to her to ask him to pay for her security detail, or move from a neighborhood she regards as unsafe to one in which she feels more secure.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas expensed women’s clothing and toiletries, including tampons and diapers. Parliamentary rules allow expenses only for items that are “exclusively” for the MP’s use.

Unless the married Woolas is holding something back, it will be difficult for him to explain how tampons are for his personal use.

Members are allowed expenses for second homes. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, however, switched his second-home designation four times in four years, claiming the second-home benefit each time.

Darling recently proposed to increase the income tax to 50 percent. Perhaps he needs the money to help underwrite his expenses.

Margaret Moran, a parliamentarian from Luton South, expensed £22,500 of taxpayer money, just days after she switched her second-home designation, to repair dry rot at her and her husband’s seaside home – 200 miles from her constituency.

Dry rot seems to be a useful metaphor for the condition of Parliament.

As if the outrageous expense claims were not enough, what the Telegraph calls “begging letters” from parliamentarians whose expenses were rejected expose the grip the entitlement mentality has on many politicians.

One Labour MP appealed a ruling against him this way: “From a natural justice perspective, I feel a justifiable exception would be the fairest manner to deal with the current situation.” He wanted a £3,100 reimbursement for a 40-inch Sony TV.

Here’s another: “I object to your decision not to reimburse me for the costs of purchasing a baby’s cot for use in my London home. . . . Perhaps you might write to me explaining where my son should sleep next time he visits me in London?”

And another: “I would be very grateful if (the expenses) could be paid in the last round of the year on Friday. Otherwise, I might be in line for a divorce!”

Like relatives who overstay their welcome – consuming food and drink and soiling your home – at holiday time, politicians in Britain and America come to believe they are entitled to other people’s money simply because they win an election.

When the relatives leave, the owners usually give the place a good cleaning. That’s what Parliament (and Congress) needs to do.

The Labour Party might have handed the Conservatives a powerful issue if the latter had not also been feeding at the public trough. The Telegraph is following up its stories on Labour with similar reports on the Conservatives.

In addition to the second-home reimbursements, one Conservative, Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh secretary, claimed an expense for dog food. (She at least promised to reimburse the government.)

David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader and potential prime minister, (he leads in the polls) apparently escaped embarrassment as his claims have been called “relatively straightforward” by the Telegraph. This might allow him to take on the role of reformer in the coming election campaign.

Conservatives should bring real change to a system that allowed one Labour member to expense the cleaning of his swimming pool. That might be defensible if the member could walk on water.

Cal Thomas is an author and broadcast commentator. E-mail: calthomas@tribune.com