WASHINGTON

JUDGE DECLINES COUPLES’ SUITS TO INCLUDE ISRAEL IN PASSPORT

A federal judge in Washington yesterday refused to order the State Department to comply with a law requiring it to issue passports listing “Jerusalem, Israel” as the place of birth for American citizens born in that city. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler threw out lawsuits brought by two American couples who are Jewish and wanted their children’s passports to include mention of Israel.

In an 11-page opinion, the judge said the families had failed to show how they were harmed by the department’s refusal to use the “Jerusalem, Israel” wording. She also said the court could not become involved in a diplomatic issue that the Constitution entrusts solely to the executive branch.

The judge dismissed as bordering on the disingenuous arguments that adding the Israel reference amounted to nothing more than a bureaucratic formality. “The desired passport wording in this case would confer recognition in an official, diplomatic document that Israel has sovereignty over Jerusalem. To argue that this is merely a routine administrative issue ignores the last fifty to sixty years of violence in the Middle East,” the judge wrote.

An attorney for the couples, Nathan Lewin, said in an interview last night that the decision would be appealed. He faulted the judge for effectively ignoring a law Congress passed in 2002 that that requires the State Department to list “Jerusalem, Israel” in passports instead of simply “Jerusalem” upon request.

A spokeswoman for the State Department had no immediate comment on the ruling last night.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

LAWMAKERS INTRODUCE INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL

A powerful senator’s plan to break up the CIA and rearrange the Pentagon’s spy agencies under a single national intelligence director is “very bold” and wasn’t considered by the September 11 commission because members saw it as too difficult, the commission’s vice chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, said yesterday.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate announced they would push for adoption of all the September 11 commission’s recommendations for revamping the intelligence community as a means to deter terrorist attacks.

Senator Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced the 280-page legislation along with Senator Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, and Republican Senators McCain of Arizona and Specter of Pennsylvania. Reps. Chris Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, and Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat of New York, will introduce a House version.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican of Kansas, wants Congress instead to transfer the nation’s major intelligence gathering from the CIA and the Pentagon to control by a new national intelligence director.

– Associated Press

LAWSUIT PROMPTS RELEASE OF NEW BUSH GUARD RECORDS

President Bush was ranked in the middle of his Air National Guard class and flew more than 336 hours in a fighter jet before letting his pilot status lapse and missing a key readiness drill, according to his flight records belatedly uncovered yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Pentagon and Bush’s campaign have claimed for months that all records detailing his fighter pilot career have been made public, but defense officials said they found two dozen new records detailing his training and flight logs after the Associated Press filed a lawsuit and crafted new requests under the public records law.

“The Department of Defense regrets this oversight during the previous search efforts,” the Pentagon letter to the Associated Press said. The records show Mr. Bush, a lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, was ranked no. 22 in a class of 53 pilots when he finished his flight training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969.

The records show his last flight came on April 1972. Mr. Bush skipped a required medical exam that cost his pilot’s status in August 1972.

– Associated Press

CAMPAIGN 2004

BUSH: KERRY HAS ADOPTED DEAN’S LANGUAGE

GLEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. – President Bush yesterday accused rival John Kerry of changing positions on the Iraq war by adopting the language of one-time presidential candidate Howard Dean when Mr. Kerry called the conflict “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Mr. Kerry’s criticism came Monday during a campaign stop. Dr. Dean had used such phrasing in early 2003 when he was the Democratic candidate most critical of the war. At the time, Mr. Kerry took a more moderate stand, criticizing the president for failing to build a broader coalition of allies but not condemning the war altogether.

Mr. Kerry “woke up yesterday morning with yet another new position, and this one’s not even his own; it is that of his one-time rival, Howard Dean,” Mr. Bush told thousands of supporters yesterday at a rally in the Kansas City suburbs.

– Associated Press