WASHINGTON

BASES IN EIGHT STATES, D.C. ADDED TO LIST FOR CLOSURE OR TRIMMING

The base-closing commission voted yesterday to add a handful of military facilities in eight states and the nation’s capital to the hundreds that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld wants to close or shrink.

The Navy Broadway Complex in San Diego and the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, now are on the list of installations to be closed. Under the commission’s actions, the Naval Master Jet Base at the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina could see even more force reductions than the Pentagon proposed or would be shut down. The commission also voted to include several small installations in Colorado, Ohio, Indiana, California, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., for consideration.

In an afternoon of votes, the panel declined to add four other facilities.

The votes showed the independent commission’s willingness to diverge – at least somewhat – from the plan Mr. Rumsfeld submitted in May, when he proposed closing or reducing forces at 62 major domestic bases and hundreds of smaller installations from coast to coast.

“This commission knows what it is talking about and is not a rubber stamp. We are an independent check on the power of the secretary to close and realign military bases,” commission chairman Anthony Principi said after the vote. Some in Congress had feared the panel would simply sign off on Mr. Rumsfeld’s plans.

– Associated Press

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OPPOSES SHIELD FOR REPORTERS

The Justice Department is opposing a bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill to protect journalists from having to reveal confidential sources, calling the legislation “bad public policy” that would impair the administration’s ability “to effectively enforce the law and fight terrorism.” In testimony prepared for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Deputy Attorney General James Comey Jr. says that “imposing inflexible, mandatory standards” would hurt the department on prosecutions involving public health, safety, and national security.

The department’s stance is a disappointment to lawmakers and press advocates who have been negotiating with Justice officials and this week scaled back the bill to meet administration objections. Senate sponsors Richard Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, and Christopher Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut, altered the measure to allow prosecutors to compel journalists to testify about sources if that would prevent “imminent and actual harm to national security” and the potential harm outweighed the public interest in unfettered reporting.

Mr. Dodd said Justice officials “are making a judgment that this is good politics for them to be opposed.” While the legislation faces “a hard mountain to climb,” he said, it is aimed not at journalists but at “consumers of information.”

Scheduled witnesses at today’s hearing include Time reporter Matthew Cooper, who narrowly avoided jail by testifying last week in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, and Time Incorporated editor in chief Norman Pearlstine, who surrendered Mr. Cooper’s notes in the case after losing in the courts.

– The Washington Post

MIDWEST

STATES MOVE TO BLUNT EMINENT-DOMAIN RULING

CHICAGO – Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain.

In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota, and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government’s ability to condemn land.

Even in states like Illinois – one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight – lawmakers are proposing to make it even tougher to use the procedure.

“People I’ve never heard from before came out of the woodwork and were just so agitated,” a Democratic state senator from Illinois, Susan Garrett, said. “People feel that it’s a threat to their personal property, and that has hit a chord.”

The Institute for Justice, which represented homeowners in the Connecticut case that was decided by the Supreme Court, said at least 25 states are considering changes to eminent-domain laws.

– Associated Press