A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.
The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick (Md.) Memorial Hospital. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.
It was carried on in secret in the midst of pitched national debate about the appropriate balance between civil liberties and security, spurred by the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
The briefing charts assert that the new order maintains or improves civil liberties protections for Americans.
Interest in the rewrite inside the 16 agencies has been high because it establishes what agencies' powers and limitations will be.
The order, which has not yet been publicly released, is expected to cut into one of the CIA's traditional roles. The CIA has for 50 years set the policy and largely called the shots on relationships between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts. According to the briefing charts, the national intelligence director will now set the rules for engaging with foreign intelligence and security services. The CIA will now just "coordinate implementation," according to the briefing charts.</i>
]]>"Why don't you invite Senator (Barack) Obama to join me?" McCain suggested.
McCain noted that he has been frustrated in his attempts to have "just the two of us stand there and answer questions" in a town-hall format.
"Unfortunately, he (Obama) has refused to do so," McCain told our colleagues Debra J. Saunders and Carla Marinucci at the start of an interview at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.
Senator Obama: Consider this an official invitation for a debate with McCain before The Chronicle's editorial board.
The format would be straightforward and substantive, modeled after the five debates we hosted (and streamed live on the Web) with statewide candidates in 2006. The candidates would have sufficient time to answer questions. If they tried to duck a question, we would follow up. Voters would have a chance to see video of the editorial board meeting in its entirety.
Senator McCain gets extra points for proposing a unglossed, unscripted, groundbreaking version of the presidential debate in the bluest of states and at a newspaper that last endorsed a Republican for president in 1992.
What do you say, Senator Obama?
Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.
It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.
Businessman Mike Meehan, who paid for the ad, says he's "only trying to help Republicans." The billboard also carries a link for Meehan's website, TheRepublicanSong.com, at which he says, "I claim to be a man of God" and promotes his political song and video.
Meehan's song, which appears to have racist overtones, begins, "The Democrat secular progressive move, political correctness is killing us too. They want to take the money from the hard working man, and give it to the lazy folks that don't give a damn."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will step in if necessary to make sure the presidential nomination fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama does not reach the Democratic national convention - though she believes it could be resolved as early as next week.
Pelosi predicted Wednesday that a presidential nominee will emerge in the week after the final Democratic primaries on June 3, but she said "I will step in" if there is no resolution by late June regarding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan, the two states that defied party rules by holding early primaries.
"Because we cannot take this fight to the convention," she said. "It must be over before then."
Pelosi made the comments during a wide-ranging, hour-long session before The Chronicle's editorial board. She talked about the prospects for the election of a Democratic president this fall, the legacy of President Bush and the California Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/28/MNQE10V1UL.DTL&tsp=1