News-Record.com

It's bad enough that the headline on this page reads, "Feds Capture Aliens Illegally Working in Roswell" -- after all, as Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog points out, extraterrestrials have to eat, too. No, when you hover your cursor over the "illegal aliens" link in the first paragraph, an ad pops up saying that you can search for illegal aliens on eBay.

My article Sunday on lawyers' efforts to help veterans get government benefits apparently struck a chord: I had a couple of e-mails waiting this morning, including one from a vet in Kentucky, and have taken several phone calls as well.

I hope to have more news to report on this front within a day or two. In the meantime, while doing more research, I ran across this tangentially related blog post, which at least has the merit of being a fairly simple analysis of a very complex subject. I do not know whether this blogger knows what he's talking about, so I pass this on with that caveat.

Marty Lederman of Balkinization, who knows more about this stuff than I do (and probably more than you do), assesses the administration's legislative response to the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision:

Although section 6 in effect says that the U.S. will "comply" with Common Article 3 of Geneva even if such techniques are used, that's wrong. These techniques are -- at least in many cases -- "cruel treatment and torture" prohibited by Common Article 3. Thus, this bill would in effect authorize the United States to breach its treaty obligations. Perhaps that's something we should do -- perhaps not.* But if so, we shouldn't pretend that we're not engaged in such cruelty and torture, and we shouldn't engage in the fiction that we are in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. The decision to authorize such horrifying techniques, and to thereby be the first nation to adopt breach of Geneva as official state policy, is a solemn one, and it should be treated with the seriousness that it deserves -- without euphemism or obfuscation. (Emphasis added.)

Hear, hear. I doubt a winning case can be made for abrogating Geneva. But I'm willing to listen, honestly and straightforwardly, to any such case that's made honestly and straightforwardly. This, however, ain't that case.

UPDATE: Oops, forgot to say why this isn't that case: The president utterly misrepresented some key facts in order to suggest that torture had benefited our anti-terrorism efforts. Here's what he said about Abu Zubaydah:

"Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence community believes he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained, and that he helped smuggle al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan after coalition forces arrived to liberate that country. Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him into custody — and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by the CIA.

"After he recovered, Zubaydah was defiant and evasive. He declared his hatred of America. During questioning, he at first disclosed what he thought was nominal information — and then stopped all cooperation. Well, in fact, the 'nominal' information he gave us turned out to be quite important. For example, Zubaydah disclosed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — or KSM — was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and used the alias 'Muktar.' This was a vital piece of the puzzle that helped our intelligence community pursue KSM. Abu Zubaydah also provided information that helped stop a terrorist attack being planned for inside the United States — an attack about which we had no previous information. Zubaydah told us that al Qaeda operatives were planning to launch an attack in the U.S., and provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location. Based on the information he provided, the operatives were detained — one while traveling to the United States."

And here's the truth:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques. […]

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

Spencer Ackerman at The New Republic puts it this way:

... most Americans don't remember--and can't be expected to remember--newspaper coverage of Al Qaeda for a seven-month stretch between the attacks and Abu Zubaydah's capture. Bush is exploiting that ignorance to tell the American people an outright lie in order to convince them that we need to torture people. As Bush once said in another context, if this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.

Lederman's footnote (asterisked in his excerpt above) explains why we don't need to torture people:

The thrust of the President's speech is that such techniques -- let's call them "torture light," since the President is so insistent that we never "torture" -- are absolutely necessary to preventing terrorist attacks. Apparently the Pentagon hasn't gotten the memo. At a briefing this [Wednesday -- Lex] morning, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence John Kimmons forcefully argued that:

I am absolutely convinced [that] no good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that. . . . Moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can't afford to go there.

Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been -- in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them, have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized humane interrogation practices in clever ways, that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of legal, moral and ethical, now as further refined by this field manual.

We don't need abusive practices in there. Nothing good will come from them.

If you're ever attacked while we're covering a story together, I will help you.

... and Congress, finally, listens: All the anonymous holds have been dropped, and the S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 passed the Senate last night by unanimous voice vote. It still must be reconciled with its House version before being sent to the president, and there's very little time left in this congressional session. But at least the bill isn't being held up by mystery senators anymore. Bloggers of all political descriptions who smoked those senators out deserve all the credit for getting us to this point.

For those interested, the Senate Intelligence Committee has posted the first two parts of what will be a five-part report comparing postwar findings on Iraq's WMD capabilities and terrorism involvement with prewar assessments (Part 2) and use by the intelligence community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (Part 3). I've only just begun to look at them, but I'd say the biggest headline so far (p. 22ff of Part 2) is that no evidence was found of any Iraqi effort to develop or obtain nuclear weapons after 1991, although scientists and others who had worked on the program before then were kept in jobs/positions where they might one day resume such work.

But read for yourself.

Part 2

Part 3

I'll be writing for tomorrow's paper about some of today's observances of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. But right now, through 7 p.m. today, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2087 is collecting blood for the benefit of wounded U.S. military personnel. You can donate at Post HQ, 2605 S. Elm-Eugene St. in Greensboro. Their goal is 70 units. As of noon, they'd had five donations. Go help 'em out.

... my friend David Allen has a wonderful (if, by "wonderful," you mean "emotionally raw") post up at his blog, Thoughtcrimes.org, a reflection on pain and loss. The occasion is 9/11, but that's not really what the post is about. And David's anti-GOP proclivities are obvious on his blog, but that's not what the post is about, either. Go check it out.

TO: CIA counterterrorism officers
FROM: Lex
DATE: 9/12/2006
RE: Lawsuit insurance

If you hadn't broken well-known, clearly established U.S. and international law, you wouldn't need lawsuit insurance.

(Aside: As a taxpayer, I'd like to know: Why, exactly, am I paying for this insurance? And what connections, if any, do the people who run this "private insurance plan" have to the administration?)

(UPDATE: I went to to try to answer my own question -- the second one, anyway. No record of any donations in 2006, 2004 or 2002 from anyone employed by Wright & Co. or its parent company, Special Agents Mutual Benefit Association.)

Much has happened since last I visited this issue. Let's recap, shall we?

• Marty Lederman at Balkinization, probably the premiere legal blog covering the administration's sub-Supreme Court legal maneuverings, says the draft Warner/Graham/McCain bill addressing treatment of detainees is better than the Administration's bill but still pretty bad -- likely to be used by administration lawyers to provide legal cover for actions otherwise clearly banned by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. He also thinks sections 6 and 8 of the bill will be relied upon to prevent the courts from having oversight of the administration's actions in this area. Read his concerns in more detail here; another good analysis can be found at Obsidian Wings (part 2 here).
• The Senate Judiciary Committee apparently reported out at least three different versions Wednesday, some of which contradict each other, of a bill addressing the administration's use of warrantless wiretapping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Glenn Greenwald directs us to this analysis, by a frequent commenter of his, on the various bills. My take remains: What part of "get a warrant" don't they understand?
• The administration's defenses of its warrantless wiretapping took another hit in court last week. The administration has argued that courts cannot hear suits challenging the program because doing so would damage national security. But the judge in this Oregon case ruled that when information about the program is already public (including a still classified phone-call log showing that calls to and from the plaintiff, a now-defunct Muslim charity, definitely were intercepted), the national-security horse is out of the barn. Judges in two other cases have ruled the same way, but this case goes beyond them. The government has argued that plaintiffs in other cases do not have legal standing to sue because they can't show that their calls actually were intercepted. And to be absolutely fair, the government has a good point here (albeit in a Catch-22 kind of way). But the plaintiffs in this case, thanks to the call log, have no such problem. All these cases are probably headed to the Supreme Court, and rightfully so.
• This article in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle by staff writer Bob Egelko on the administration's post-9/11 legal maneuvering contains this interesting bit on piece on former administration lawyer John Yoo:

  UC Berkeley law Professor John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer was one of the Bush administration's chief legal theorists, summarized its view in his forthcoming book, "War by Other Means":

  "We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch."

  I looked at the Constitution and found nothing of the sort. But you're welcome to look for yourself.

There's probably more, but that's all I know of now.

The Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party from which Bill Clinton's presidency arose and which has been led by Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, has had its tax exemption revoked by the IRS, Forbes reports. (Annoying free registration required.)

Tax-exempt organizations (of which there are many flavors) are a complicated issue, and the intermingling of such organizations with politics and politicians more complicated still. But the gist of the IRS's problem with the DLC is that it favored a specific subset of Democrats rather than society as a whole. That was basically the same argument, but with respect to Republicans, the IRS used to revoke the Christian Coalition's exemption several years ago, which makes sense inasmuch as the two groups had the same kind of tax exemption.

The DLC also owes more than $20,000 in back taxes. A quick search didn't turn up any specific info on the DLC's budget, so I don't know how big a financial problem this is for the group. (Donations to the DLC and other, similar organizations are not tax-deductible.) Its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, has an annual budget of around $3 million.

• Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has told a group of liberal bloggers on a conference call that Sen. Arlen Specter's bill legalizing the administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping will be filibustered if necessary ... but it might not be necessary, Glenn Greenwald says.
• Four Republican senators, led by John McCain of Arizona, are joining with Democrats to oppose a White House-backed bill that would, in effect, legalize some interrogation procedures that are not now legal. McCain has a different version of the bill, which is a response to the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision earlier this summer.
• A letter from the top lawyers of each of the service branches expressing support for -- or, at least, weakened opposition to -- the president's bill may have been the result of pressure from the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes II (whom I wrote about here and here). Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, himself a military lawyer in the reserves, has said he wants a hearing on that matter, and being a member of the Senate majority, he might actually be able to get it.

  Why is the president so eager to get his version of the bill through Congress? Holden at First Draft has a hypothesis. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know exactly how valid his analysis is. But if he were correct, the ramifications would be unparalleled in U.S. history.

  UPDATE: Holden might not be a lawyer (I don't know, actually), but Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, most assuredly is. And she says basically the same thing as Holden, albeit more politely:

  Congress enacted the War Crimes Act in 1996. That act defines violations of Geneva's Common Article 3 as war crimes. Those convicted face life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

  The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

  Bush defensively denied that the United States engages in torture and foreswore authorizing it. But it has been well-documented that policies set at the highest levels of our government have resulted in the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

  Indeed, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act in December, which codifies the prohibition in United States law against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in U.S. custody. In his speech, Bush took credit for working with Senator John McCain to pass the DTA.

  In fact, Bush fought the McCain "anti-torture" amendment tooth-and-nail, at times threatening to veto the entire appropriations bill to which it was appended. At one point, Bush sent Dick Cheney to convince McCain to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel treatment, but McCain refused.

  Bush signed the bill, but attached a "signing statement" where he reserved the right to violate the DTA if, as commander-in-chief, he thought it necessary.

It may not be Friday, but it's still International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrgh!

Veterans I've talked to probably complain more about delay in getting action on their benefits claims than any other problem -- even the problem of not getting benefits they think they're entitled to. So I decided to take a closer look at the process of handling a claim and what causes a delay.

Decisions on claims for pension and benefits typically take place at the regional-office level; the office for this region is in Winston-Salem. So I tried to call the director of that office to see about coming over there for a day or so, to watch how the work is done, ask questions of the people who work there about where they think any bottlenecks lie, and so forth.

That was my first bottleneck.

There's an 800 number listed for that office, but the voicemail menu isn't much help if you're not, say, a veteran seeking help with a claim. (The department's Web site was no help, either.) So that's what I pretended to be, at least while navigating the voicemail system, until I got hold of a live human being. That person, very polite and helpful, couldn't connect me directly to the regional director or anyone who handles press inquiries, but he offered to relay a message.

Someone from the office got back to me fairly soon afterward, but she ended up referring my inquiry to a press person at departmental headquarters in Washington. He, in turn, asked that I e-mail questions to him. I did that Friday afternoon, asking that he at least acknowledge getting the questions promptly even though I knew it might take a while to answer them all. I have received no acknowledgment, so I re-sent them this morning.

I'm going to list them below. If you can think of any I've missed, or have any other comments, please hit the comment link or e-mail me.

1. How many claims for benefits filed for compensation and pension are currently awaiting adjudication by rating boards and officials at the Department of Veterans' Affairs' Winston-Salem, N.C., regional office?

2. Once a Form 21-526 is filed with that office, what is the average time period until the board issues a final rating determination on the initial claim?

3. How many rating-board employees does the Winston-Salem regional office currently have authorized to handle initial claims for adjudication being filed at that office? How many of the authorized positions, if any, are currently vacant?

4. What measures have been taken at the VA central office to help the Winston-Salem regional office address issues of heavy caseload and inadequate staffing?

5. What measures have been taken by the Winston-Salem office itself during FY06 to deal with the heavy case load and inadequate staffing complaints made at the regional-office level?

6. How many employees have been hired by the Winston-Salem office in FY06?

7. What is the average age of these new employees?

8. What is the average educational level of these new employees? How many of them have college degrees (bachelor's degree or higher)?

9. How many of these new employees have served in the active-duty or reserve military?

10. If any new employees were hired to serve on ratings boards and had military backgrounds, how many had medico-legal backgrounds or medical backgrounds (e.g., nursing, physician's assistant, physical therapy, etc.), from their military service or otherwise?

11. On average, how much time are new hires given to learn the VA compensation and pension rating system before they begin handling claims?

12. What is the average salary for new employees hired to assist in adjudicating initial claims for compensation and pension filed at the Winston-Salem office?

13. How many physicians does the Winston-Salem regional office have on its staff to render medical opinions regarding VA medical claims at the regional office level? What is the average age of these physicians?

14. What are the criteria of the Winston-Salem regional office for hiring "independent medical opinions" to support its reasons and basis for rendering a rating decision?

15. In what specialties do the office's staff physicians practice?

16. Are all those physicians with specialties certified in those specialties by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS)?

17. Please describe the work process followed by rating-board employees in the Winston-Salem office in processing a typical claim.

18. In the Winston-Salem regional office, what procedures are followed to comply with the "affirmative VA duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim," under the Veterans Assistance Act of 2000 as well as under court case law? What measures are taken to obtain independent medical opinions, service medical records, buddy statements and other documentation in support of a claim? And what measures are taken to advise the veteran of what he needs to do to make his claim successful?

19. If the regional office is going to deny a claim, does the VA affirmatively inform the veteran of what evidence or procedures would be necessary to strengthen his claim to be granted the benefits sought under the VA's affirmative duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim?

20. What is the purpose of a "tiger team"? What effect has the VA's creation and assigning of tiger teams had on case load and average adjudication time of claims, in the Winston-Salem regional office and nationally? Has it cut down on backlog?

21. How is an employee selected to be on a tiger team?

22. Describe the process by which ratings-board employees are professionally evaluated. In particular, is there a quota on the number of cases in which each ratings-board employee must produce decisions regarding veterans claims on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Are the employees personally rated or graded based on the number of cases that they produce in a given time period?

23. What is the time limit, if any, by which a ratings-board employee in the Winston-Salem regional office must get an initial claim for adjudication to the point of a final rating decision?

24. What is the case load assigned to each employee who is to review initial claims for adjudication at the Winston-Salem office?

25. Are there quotas and/or incentives for production in terms of how many cases are decided by a specific individual in terms of a final rating determination on an initial claim filed by a veteran?

26. What is the percentage of full grants of benefits to veterans who have filed claims with the Winston-Salem office for compensation and pension through a VA Form 21-526?

27. In the Winston-Salem office, what is the average number and percentage of initial rating decisions being appealed through reconsideration, consideration by a decision-review officer or the filing of a reopened claim?

28. In the Winston-Salem regional office, on average, how long must a veteran wait to get a complete copy of his claims folder, upon request by the veteran for such a copy?

29. How many such copying requests are currently pending in the Winston-Salem regional office?

30. What is the average amount of time from when a veteran first files his initial application for compensation and pension with the Winston-Salem regional office to the time he must file any appeal to the Board of Veterans Appeals? This includes any time necessary to adjudicate the notice of disagreement, the statement of the case and any decision-review officer decision.

31. What measures has the Winston-Salem regional office taken to address the complaints of many veterans, particularly elderly veterans worried about dying before they can receive benefits, that claims are languishing in that office?

32. Describe the duties of a decision-review officer. What steps, if any, do decision-review officers in the Winston-Salem regional office typically take under the affirmative VA duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim?

33. If a claim is initially denied or granted at a lower disability rating than sought by the veteran, is the veteran, under the VA's duty to assist the veteran in developing his claim, given an opportunity to rebut medical statements or other evidence relied upon by the Winston-Salem office in denying the claim?

34. What percentage of claims initially denied or granted at a lower disability rating than initially sought at the Winston-Salem office are referred to a decision-review officer?

35. Among cases referred to a decision-review officer at the Winston-Salem office, what percentage are approved and what percentage are denied?

36. After a rating decision has been adjudicated and a claimant files a claim for reconsideration, what percentage are granted reconsideration by the Winston-Salem regional office's VA ratings board ?

37. Of those granted reconsideration, what percentage are granted relief?

38. After the denial of a claim for compensation and pension and the veteran files a notice of disagreement, how long, on average, does it take the Winston-Salem regional office to issue a statement of the case?

39. What is the average time from when the veteran files his initial claim for compensation and pension with the Winston-Salem regional office, through the time the statement of the case is issued and the appeal is filed to the Board of Veterans Appeals?

40. What is the average total time from when a veteran files his initial claim for benefits (with the Winston-Salem office specifically, or, if that figure is not available, with all regional office in the U.S.) to the time the Board of Veterans Appeals issues its final decision?

41. What is the average amount of time from when a veteran files VA Form 9, Appeal to Board of Veterans Appeals, appealing an adverse VA rating decision, that the VA renders a final decision then ripe for judicial review at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

42. How many claims for compensation and pension are currently pending before the Board of Veterans Appeals? On average, how long have those cases been pending before the board?

43. How many attorneys are on staff at the Board of Veterans Appeals?

44. What is the average case load of a staff attorney at the Board of Veterans Appeals?

45. How is the work of staff attorneys handling appeals at the Board of Veterans Appeals evaluated? In particular, is there any quota system or case-processing requirement over any particular time period (per day, per week, etc.)?

46. What steps, if any, do staff attorneys at the Board of Veterans Appeals typically take to fulfill their affirmative duty to assist a veteran in developing his claim?

47. What is the rationale behind the Appellate Litigation Staff Group's refusal to provide to veterans, their representatives or counsels, full and complete copies of their claims folders at the time of the filing of the notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

48. Please explain what factors contribute to the delay between the time the veteran files his notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the time he gets the first opportunity to review his claims folder (typically months later). In particular, after the Appellate Litigation Staff Group has completed its designation of record on appeal under Rule 10a of Rules of Practice and Procedure before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, please explain the rationale for sending a veteran's case folder back to the originating regional office for the sole purpose of photocopying before making the case folder available to the veteran so that he or his counsel can prepare a counterdesignation of record on appeal under Rule 10b.

49. What problems, if any, exist at the Appellate Litigation Staff Group level of the VA's Office of General Counsel which are resulting in the delay of the processing of appeals before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims?

50. What problems, if any, exist within the Appellate Litigation Staff Group relating to inadequate staffing and heavy case load?

51. If such problems exist, have ways to fix the problems at that level by transferring personnel from the central Office of the General Counsel to the Appellate Litigation Staff Group been identified?

52. How many (if any) former Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 employees, including attorneys, paralegals and support staff, are now working at either the Board of Veterans Appeals, within other staff groups in the Office of General Counsel or elsewhere in the the Department's central office?

53. If former employees of the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 are currently working in other positions within the Office of the General Counsel, the central office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Board of Veterans Appeals or regional VA offices, please explain why these employees have not been transferred back to the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027 to assist with the heavy case load and inadequate staffing, the reasons cited to the court in almost every single case in which a motion for an extension of time is filed by the Appellate Litigation Staff Group 027.

54. How many motions for extensions of time have been filed by the Department's Office of General Counsel in FY05, and in FY06, due to heavy case load and/or inadequate staffing?

55. How many motions for extensions of time, on average, are filed by each side in any case in which there is a notice of appeal filed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims? What percentage of those motions by each side are granted?

56. On average, how long does it take, after a notice of appeal has been filed with the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, for the case to be assigned to the attorney of record?

57. How many appeals are currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims? On average, how long have those appeals been pending? Upon how many appeals does that Court rule in a typical year?

(end)

UPDATE: The public-affairs specialist with whom I've been dealing just e-mailed to say he expects to have answers later today.

Jay Rosen, the New York University journalism professor who has begun a citizen/professional journalism partnership called NewAssignment.net, announced today that he has gotten a $100,000 grant from Reuters, which will make it possible for him to hire an assigning editor (or wrangler, or whatever they end up calling the position).

This is a huge deal -- someone's putting real money behind a national partnership between professional journalists and interested lay people to produce quality journalism.

As it happens, Jay Rosen is speaking here at the N&R on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 4, and that event is free and open to the public. That's particularly fortuitous in light of the fact that he won't be able to attend this year's ConvergeSouth, so if this subject interests you, please plan to attend.

On Monday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in conjunction with Elon University, will release a report called "The Future of the Internet II." (The first such report, released in January 2005, addressed likely technological developments related to the Internet within the next decade.) In it, almost 750 technology experts and futurists were asked to agree or disagree with eight statements describing situations that might exist in 2020 that are affected by, or could have ramifications for, the Internet.

I had lunch and spoke Wednesday with Lee Rainie of the Pew Center and Janna Anderson of Elon University's School of Communications, the lead author of the report. You'll find a story in Monday's N&R, and online you'll be given the text of the same statements studied by the report and have the chance to register your own agreement or disagreement with each prediction (and to explain your thinking). We'll also have a link to the full report online, so that you can review not only the survey results but also -- and this might be the most interesting part -- some participants' individual responses to questions.

The report is under embargo so I can't share any details, but I will say this: I read one part and immediately thought, "Soylent Green ... is people!" But I'm weird like that.

Look for the package on Monday.

Now that we've legalized torture, can we please start with Congress?

Today's Friday Fun: Georgia writer Gordon Lamb, guest-posting at FireDogLake, blogs about REM's induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. For many of us of a certain age, REM has been THE most influential band, full stop.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

One of the questions posed to almost 750 technology experts, executives, consultants and futurists worldwide. In the comments, please agree or disagree with whether the situation described will exist in 2020 and explain your reasoning.

You be the judge:

Nearly a year before they asked Congress for another $3 billion in funding, Veterans Affairs officials knew in late 2004 that their budget was seriously out of whack, congressional investigators said in a report released yesterday.

The Government Accountability Office also found that the VA badly underestimated how many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan might seek medical and other services, in part because of problems in getting accurate information from the Pentagon.

The VA relied on prewar data from the Defense Department in preparing its budget for fiscal 2005, even though the war was well under way, and estimated that 23,500 veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom would seek care that year. Instead, the number was four times greater, almost 100,000, the GAO study said.

The problems persisted in 2006, the current fiscal year. The GAO found that the VA will have to provide care for 87,000 more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans than anticipated this year, costing another $276 million.

In general, it says, the VA budgets for fiscal 2005 and 2006 were based on "unrealistic assumptions, errors in estimation and insufficient data."

More recently, the GAO said, the VA has been up to two months late in turning over its required quarterly budget updates to congressional committees, while providing more detailed monthly reports to the White House budget office.

So. Whaddayathink?

I didn't know Edie Jones well. But in my few dealings with her, back in the early 1990s, she impressed me as a woman unafraid to say what she thought and a woman who thought enough of Greensboro to want to make sure that everyone could enjoy its riches. We could use more people with both those traits.

Edie died Monday. She was 74. My condolences to her family and friends.

If you're in the area and planning to attend this event, please e-mail me.

And if you hadn't thought about going, check the site -- apparently, some financial grants are available to help defray travel costs.

Thanks!

Not only did President Bush sign into law the bill creating a spending database so that the public can keep an eye on federal pork, he even invited bloggers to the signing ceremony.

(Only Republican blogger Glenn Reynolds and the site Porkbusters.org are mentioned in the article, but Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo.com also played a signficant role. Marshall's site has performed similar "blogswarm" citizen journalism in the past by inviting readers to pin down their reps and senators on Social Security privatization.)

The fact is that this was a bipartisan, if not nonpartisan, effort. When everyone can keep an eye on how Congress is spending our money, even if we disagree on those priorities, everyone wins. Good job all around.

Back in the spring, when the Senate spent three days debating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, some reporter suggested that doing so (when the amendment was doomed to fail and everyone in both parties knew it) was purely a political show.

Sen. Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican, insisted, however, that gay marriage is "potentially the greatest moral issue of our time" and added, ""This is the big buzz in media now: 'This is being brought up for political purposes; this has nothing to do with the substance of the matter.' If it was purely politics, let me assure you we'd be debating this in September."

"We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well."

-- Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal in 1946. The 60th anniversary of the first verdicts in those trials is today.