Bush signs bill easing access to federal data
CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush signed a bill Monday aimed at giving the public and the media greater access to information about what the government is doing.
The law toughens the Freedom of Information Act. Bush signed it without comment.
The legislation creates a system for the media and public to track the status of their FOIA requests, sets a deadline for responses and restores a presumption of a standard that orders government agencies to release information on request unless there is a finding that disclosure could do harm.
Passport cards stir privacy concerns
WASHINGTON — Passport cards for Americans who travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean will be equipped with technology that allows information on the card to be read from up to 20 feet away. The technology was approved Monday by the State Department despite criticism from privacy advocates.
It is “inherently insecure and poses threats to personal privacy, including identity theft,” Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology said.
The State Department said privacy protections will be built into the card, and it will not contain biographical information.
Medical school is last to stop operating on dogs
By next month, all U.S. medical schools will have abandoned a time-honored method of teaching cardiology: operating on dogs to examine their beating hearts, then disposing of them.
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland was the last to use the method, but dean Pamela Davis said it would no longer do so after this month.
Among the 126 American medical schools, 11 still sacrifice animals — but not dogs — for teaching, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy group that tracks the practice. None of them are in Colorado.
Francis Belloni, a dean at New York Medical College, said his students now use echocardiograms to study heart function, and the subjects are medical students.
Chief justice urges Congress to raise judges’ pay
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts urged Congress to raise the pay of federal judges in a year-end report that emphasized improving communications with Capitol Hill and the White House.
“The separate branches may not always agree,” the chief justice wrote, but each should strive “to know and appreciate where the others stand.”
In Roberts’ report on the federal judiciary, he struck a conciliatory tone with Congress, where legislation to raise judges’ pay is under consideration.
U.S. District Court judges earn $165,200 a year, the same as members of Congress and about the same as first-year lawyers at firms in major cities.
New law allows cutting investment ties to Sudan
CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush signed legislation Monday to allow states and local governments to cut investment ties with Sudan because of the violence in Darfur.
The bill permits state, county and municipal officials to adopt measures to withdraw investments from companies involved in the four sectors that provide vital revenue for Sudan’s government — oil, power production, mining and military equipment.
Bush said the legislation risks being interpreted in such as way that “could interfere with implementation of national foreign policy.” He emphasized that the Constitution gives the federal government the authority handle foreign relations and that the “executive branch shall construe and enforce this legislation in a manner that does not conflict with that authority.”
