New York’s Missing Civil Right
Published: April 16, 2009
New York State, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg observed on Thursday, is where Susan B. Anthony began her struggle for women’s suffrage. It is the state where the N.A.A.C.P. was founded. Now New York can finally honor its historic commitment to personal freedoms by becoming the next state to end discrimination against civil marriage for same-sex couples.
On Thursday, as he reintroduced a bill that will give same-sex couples the right to marry, New York’s governor, David Paterson, issued an appeal at once personal and universal. Mr. Paterson, the state’s first black governor, compared the fight for same-sex marriage to the battle to end slavery and discrimination. “Anyone who has ever faced intolerance of any kind,” he said, “knows the solemn importance of protecting the rights of all people.” And he reminded listeners that gay couples are often denied health benefits, the right to visit loved ones in the hospital and spousal rights to inherit property.
What could be even more important was his response to New York’s new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, who said Wednesday that he would speak out against same-sex marriage. “This is a civil government,” the governor — who is Catholic — said. He is right. Religious organizations can make rules for marriage, but the state is separate and must treat people equally under the law.
Mr. Paterson had plenty of supporters lined up with him at the announcement — Mayor Bloomberg, Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and other members of Congress, union representatives and gay rights advocates. It will take hard work from all — especially Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Schumer — to get this essential legislation passed. They need to press the State Senate hard, with Mr. Schumer coaxing fellow Democrats and the mayor convincing his Republican allies.
The Assembly is expected to pass the measure easily, but some advocates of same-sex marriage have said they want Albany’s legislators to make sure they can win before the Senate votes. Knowing the outcome in advance is the way law is usually made in Albany. But, as Mr. Bloomberg argued, “that is not democracy.” It’s time for Albany’s backroom specialists to allow full debates and real votes on whether thousands of New Yorkers should be allowed this basic right.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 17, 2009, on page A28 of the New York edition.
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Roxana Saberi
Published: April 16, 2009
There is nothing resembling justice in Iran’s prosecution of Roxana Saberi. The government’s accusations against Ms. Saberi, a journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship, have fluctuated wildly — culminating only last week with charges that she spied for the United States government. Her one-day trial this week was held in secret, and state officials have not revealed any evidence against her.
Iran’s government needs to release Ms. Saberi and end this dangerous farce.
Ms. Saberi, whose father was born in Iran, grew up in North Dakota. She moved to Iran six years ago and worked as a freelance reporter, including for National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Iranian studies.
When she was arrested in January, Ms. Saberi was first accused of buying wine (illegal in Iran but hardly meriting imprisonment) and then of working without press credentials. While the government revoked those credentials three years ago, it tolerated her filing of news stories for months afterward, according to NPR.
On March 6, in comments that seemed to suggest the case had been resolved, an Iranian prosecutor told the Iranian Student News Agency that Ms. Saberi would be released from custody “in the next few days.”
Then last week, the government suddenly charged Ms. Saberi with espionage.
Iran has played this absurd game before. In recent years, other Americans, including two scholars, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent and an American democracy activist, were unjustly detained. Thankfully all were eventually released but only after enduring months of deprivation under house arrest or in prison. In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist charged with espionage, suffered an even worse fate: According to the Iranian doctor who treated her, she died after being beaten and tortured while in Evin prison, the notorious facility where Ms. Saberi is being held. A former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 while on a business trip, Robert Levinson, is also believed to be imprisoned.
We do not know why the government decided to go after Ms. Saberi. One theory is that Tehran may want to try to “trade” her for three Iranian diplomats arrested in Iraq by United States troops in 2007 and charged in connection with attacks on Iraqi and American forces. Another is that government hard-liners may be trying to sabotage President Obama’s effort to engage Tehran after 30 years of mutual isolation.
The two countries have a lot they need to talk about, including their shared interest in controlling Afghanistan’s narcotics industry and ensuring that Iraq’s civil war does not again spin out of control as American troops begin to withdraw.
They also have many difficult areas of disagreement, starting with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran has often demanded that Washington not interfere in its internal affairs. By using Ms. Saberi and many of its own citizens as political pawns, Iran is ensuring that its shockingly poor human rights record will remain a contentious issue between the two countries and make finding rapprochement even harder.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 17, 2009, on page A28 of the New York edition.
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A Clear, Clean Water Act
Published: April 16, 2009
Clean water policy is in a terrible muddle, and the country has the Supreme Court to thank for it.
The 1972 Clean Water Act was written to protect all the waters and wetlands of the United States. Two unfortunate Supreme Court decisions narrowed its scope, weakened its safeguards and thoroughly confused the federal agencies responsible for enforcing it. As a result, thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands have been exposed to development.
The remedy lies in a Senate bill called the Clean Water Restoration Act, which would reassert the broad reach of the 1972 law. Similar legislation has been languishing for years, and if this version has any hope, it will need a strong push from the White House.
The good news is that Lisa Jackson, President Obama’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cares about clean water issues and isn’t afraid of a fight. She has already moved to restrict pollution from coal mining operations in Appalachia and is promising to crack down on polluted runoff from animal feedlots.
Without endorsing any particular bill, Ms. Jackson agreed last week that the system that has long protected America’s waterways from unregulated development and pollution is paralyzed — and will remain paralyzed unless Congress fixes it. An internal E.P.A. report furnished to Congress last year revealed that the agency had dropped or delayed more than 400 cases involving suspected violations of the law — nearly half the agency’s entire docket. The reason in every instance was that regulators did not know whether the streams and wetlands in question were covered by the law.
Until the two Supreme Court rulings, the Clean Water Act had been broadly interpreted by courts and by federal regulators to shield all the waters of the United States — seasonal streams and remote wetlands as well as large navigable rivers and lakes — from pollution and unregulated development. The assumption was that even the smallest waters have some hydrological connection to larger watersheds and therefore deserve protection. The Supreme Court, however, exploiting ambiguities in the law, effectively decreed that only navigable, permanent water bodies deserve protection.
As a result, at least 20 million acres of wetlands and as much as 60 percent of the nation’s small streams have been left unprotected, while effectively shutting down enforcement actions against developers who have been disturbing or plan to disturb these waters without a permit.
The Clean Water Restoration Act would establish, once and for all, that federal protections apply to all waters, as Congress intended in 1972. Now a new Congress and a new White House must ensure that it becomes law.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 17, 2009, on page A28 of the New York edition.
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Mr. Obama’s Chance to Fix the F.E.C.
Published: April 16, 2009
President Obama will soon be able to deliver on his campaign promise to rescue the Federal Election Commission from the machinations of party hacks dedicated to foiling campaign laws. Three of the commission’s six seats come open on May 1, providing the president a not-to-be-missed opportunity to appoint independent experts truly dedicated to enforcement and reform.
The commission has never been energetic or fastidious. But in recent months it has become a model of repeated dysfunction as its three Republican members vote together to block major enforcement efforts affecting violators — from either party — producing 3-to-3 standoffs.
The tactic has scuttled important work by the commission’s staff’s experts: voiding a conciliation agreement already accepted by an accused funding group; dropping penalties on an admitted bilker of campaign donations; returning the penalty check of another violator. In the enforcement freeze, the Republican members even voted to drop a lawsuit against George Soros, the big-spending Democrat who used the guise of a book tour to attack former President Bush in the 2004 campaign. Clearly up is down at the F.E.C.
Political professionals speculate that the Republican three are determined to hobble the panel and invite free-for-all money abuses in the coming Congressional and presidential campaigns.
Of the three seats opening up, two are reserved for Democrats and one for a Republican. The Republican seat is now held by Donald McGahn, a poster boy for what has gone wrong with the F.E.C.: He is a onetime ethics adviser to Tom Delay, the former House Republican majority leader driven from Washington by campaign abuse scandals. As for the two Democrats, both are well-connected party stalwarts — unlikely to bring the “strong impartial leadership” that Mr. Obama promised to restock the agency with during the campaign.
That promise became more urgent, and dubious, when Mr. Obama decided to reject the limited public financing option for his campaign in order to reap larger private millions. To deliver now, he must stand up to congressional leaders who traditionally propose safe party loyalists, not independent nominees. The F.E.C. is foundering and with it any hope of removing tainted money from politics. Mr. Obama knows what he needs to do.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 17, 2009, on page A28 of the New York edition.