In an editorial for The Wall Street Journal and two nationally televised interviews, the mayor reiterated his long-standing belief that the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States should be given the opportunity for citizenship, saying that deporting them is impossible and would devastate the economy.

Aides said Bloomberg believes his views are relevant because he has a rare perspective as a former businessman who ran a company for two decades before he became mayor, in charge of enforcing the laws in a city with an estimated half-million illegal immigrants. They said that the editorial was his idea and that CNN and Fox News approached him to discuss his views on the air.

In the article and on air, Bloomberg slammed lawmakers who want to deport all illegal immigrants, saying on Fox News that "they are living in a fantasy world."

Asked in that interview whether his opinions put him at odds with his political party, the mayor, a former Democrat, shot back: "With which party?

"I'm not a partisan guy," Bloomberg said. "I am a mayor who has to deal with 500,000 people who are integral to our economy but are undocumented."

Bloomberg compared his proposed federal identification database to the Social Security card, insisting that such a system would not violate citizens' privacy and was not a civil liberties issue.

"You don't have to work _ but if you want to work for a company you have to have a Social Security card," he said. "The difference is, in the day and age when everybody's got a PC on their desk with Photoshop that can replicate anything, it's become a joke."

The mayor said DNA and fingerprint technology could be used to create a worker ID database that will "uniquely identify the person" applying for a job, ensuring that cards are not illegally transferred or forged.

Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said a DNA or fingerprint database "doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in."

"It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector," she said.

The council will work through the National Governors Association, with each governor appointing a top security official, the governors' group expected to announce Thursday. The council plans to meet at least twice a year to share best practices and improve interstate communications.

The formation of the council comes a month after a survey of state homeland security directors found widespread dissatisfaction with the way the federal government works with states.

Among the top complaints: limited sharing of intelligence on possible terrorist threats; multiple burdens placed on National Guard troops; and, insufficient preparations for natural disasters and other emergencies.

The council will help inform governors, and will stress to the federal government that states want to be included in planning efforts, said Maj. Gen. Tim Lowenberg, head of the Washington National Guard and director of the state's emergency management division.

Currently, there's no consistent, in-depth communication between the federal DHS and its state counterparts, said Lowenberg, like Campion a member of the council.

"We do have periodic conference calls hosted by the Department of Homeland Security," he said. "Those conference calls rarely last more than 30, 45 minutes."

DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen said coordination with states has been improving, and that the agency has especially stepped up those efforts in advance of hurricane season.

The top challenges facing the states are the same ones that officials were talking about in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks: improving communications so all agencies responding to a disaster can talk to each other; sharing intelligence information quickly and effectively; building medical capacity to respond to a mass catastrophe.

"People are still feeling their way through this," Campion said. "We don't have the same history as we do in fighting fires, or fighting organized crime. We've got decades of experience with that (while) we've only got five years of this whole terrorism, homeland security thing."

"There's some real challenge to this," he said. "That's why it's important to get these people together."

"This outcome was not, of course, the one most desired by the government," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. "However, what is for certain is that our region is safer today than it was one year ago."

Hayat likely would have faced only a few additional months behind bars if convicted of the two lying charges, Scott said.

Hayat smiled as he left the federal courthouse, but would not comment.

"He's happy. It's over. Obviously he wants to move on with his life at this point," said defense lawyer Johnny Griffin III. "From day one we've maintained that Umer Hayat is not a terrorist, he had no involvement with terrorist related conduct or activities."

Hayat's son, Hamid Hayat, 23, faces at least 30 years in prison for supporting terrorism by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan in 2003 and lying to the FBI. His sentencing was postponed indefinitely.

Umer Hayat's first trial ended in April in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked in his case. He remains under house arrest until his Aug. 18 sentencing.

The government's investigation into Lodi's 2,500-member Pakistani community began after agents received a tip in 2001 that local businesses were sending money to terrorist groups abroad.

That probe produced no results, but it eventually led to the Hayats after an informant who had targeted a pair of local imams befriended Hamid Hayat.

In recorded phone calls from the younger Hayat in Pakistan, the informant urged him to attend a terrorist camp, though defense lawyers claimed there was no evidence he ever went to such a camp.

The government presented no evidence of a terrorism network during the nine-week trial, but centered its case on videotaped confessions the two Hayats gave to FBI agents.

Their lawyers claimed the confessions came after hours of leading questioning, and that their clients merely told the FBI what they thought the agents wanted to hear.

The investigation became public a year ago when authorities arrested the Hayats and detained two local clerics. The religious leaders and one of their sons were later deported for immigration violations.

Hayat admitted in court that he lied in April 2003 when he denied his family was carrying more than $10,000 in cash when he was detained on a jetway at Washington-Dulles International Airport.

Federal agents found two white envelopes containing $5,000 each in his pants, two similar envelopes in his son's pockets and $8,053 being carried by Umer Hayat's wife, Oma Salma Hayat.

Most of the money was eventually returned, minus a penalty for the legal violation of failing to declare the cash. Umer Hayat gave several explanations, including that his family was bringing cash from several families to relatives and that he planned to give cash as wedding gifts for his son and daughter.

Prosecutors said it was on that trip to Pakistan that Hamid Hayat attended the terrorist training camp, though Scott said there is no indication the money was to be used for any terrorist activity.

The Hayats were the only people criminally charged in the terror probe, though Scott would not rule out the possibility of additional charges against other Lodi residents.

Asked if the investigation was important in the so-called war on terror, Scott said it had disrupted a potential problem in Lodi.

"Do I think defeating the insurgency in Iraq was on the same scale? Obviously, those are of two different magnitudes," he said.

Among concerns raised by the GAO, the Department of Homeland Security has not decided what documents will be acceptable as an alternative to a passport and what technologies might be used, such as an electronic "pass card."

The GAO also tells the agencies to complete a cost-benefit analysis of their final plan, including an examination of how tourism and commerce might be discouraged by the new law.

The release of the study comes as Canada's premiers wrapped up a meeting in Manitoba, attended by some U.S. governors and ambassadors.

The premiers are calling for a delay of the border-crossing legislation and warned that the new law will hurt Canadian-American relations.

The western premiers say the cost of obtaining passports for every family member will be prohibitive and will affect the numbers of people crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

On Thursday, New York Congresswoman Louise Slaugher will announce she's introducing a bill in the House of Representatives that would include delaying the travel-law deadline to 2009. Slaughter has concerns about how the law will affect travel and commerce in her border state.

Legislation that would delay the deadline to June 2009 has already been passed in the US Senate.

In what was meant to be a moving personal account of his fifth trip to Israel, Al From, the founding father and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), defined Zionism as, "a good idea filled with hope." On his journey, Mr. From visited the summit of Mount Hadar where he experienced a moving vision of Israeli 'hope' locked in conflict with Palestinian 'anger.'

Inspired by this romanticized contrast of a black and white rendering of good versus evil, Mr. From witnessed what he described as the, "booms of Palestinian rockets and the Israeli retaliation." From his lofty summit, Mr. From failed to see the mounds of corpses mounting upwards in Israel and Palestine, where four Palestinians are killed for every one Israeli.

Mr. From's account is nothing more nor less than a paean to the Zionist faith that he sees as the force driving the engine of politics and shaping the culture of Israel. Nowhere does Mr. From pretend to deliver a balanced or objective analysis of the state of Israel or its lengthy and violent conflict with the Palestinian people. Quite the contrary, his account is dripping with disdain for Palestine and its people whom he describes as motivated by anger, dispirited and habitually driven to horrific acts of terror and suicide bombing.

Mr. From's reverie on his faith in Zionism occurs against a stark backdrop. The organization that Mr. From leads, the DLC, is clearly on the wane, and the current issue of their magazine carries an appeal for an "entry level Development Assistant" to help them raise much needed funds. That said, to borrow a phrase from cricket, the DLC did have one long and grotesque inning characterized by the consistent loss of elections by its major patron: the Democratic Party ­ which kept following Mr. From's advice to move relentlessly to the right to conform to the demands of his blatantly Zionist agenda: security for Israel as a means of providing security for America or conversely security for America predicated on security for Israel.

For a decade and a half, the DLC dominated the Democratic Party more thoroughly than any pressure group had ever controlled any political party in American history. After ten years of failure to regain the majority in Congress and abject failures in the two previous presidential elections, Governor Howard Dean led a grassroots movement of party activists to reclaim the levers of power for traditional Democratic policies: constitutional democracy, the open society, multilateralism, social welfare, a national health service, national security and homeland security realized through diplomacy rather than by military confrontation and many more substantive and socially progressive policies besides.

While Governor Dean faced a broad field of DLC-backed opponents parroting Mr. From's mantras redolent of neoconservative cant, each one crumbled like a rag doll before him. Today, Governor Dean is leading a through-going reorganization of the Democratic Party that relies on the energy provided by grassroots activists. At the same time, Governor Dean has de-emphasized the right-leaning consultancies and pressure groups preferred by the DLC.

In order to succeed with his plan for the reform of the Democratic Party, Governor Dean faces the stalwart opposition of Mr. From and his neoconservative cronies at the DLC and many powerful Democratic office holders as well, who are still under their sway. These neoconservative Democrats include: Governor Tom Vilsack, Senator Evan Bayh, Senator Joe Biden and Senator Hillary Clinton. These Democrats are committed to the DLC vision of America's future as defined by Mr. From, most recently in his glowing account of Zionism and its Manichean conflict with Islam.

Inspired by Mr. From's Zionist reverie and Prime Minister Olmert's visit to the Bush White House, the DLC is in the midst of heralding and hyping the publication of a book titled, With All Our Might, which is little more than a collection of essays advocating a radically Zionist agenda. In their vision of America and its role in the world, it is ironic that Mr. From and his DLC differ very little if at all from the neoconservatives propping up the sinking framework the Bush White House.

For example, With All Our Might, advocates a plan of action that seriously proposes that the Democratic Party should support a swift and decisive increase in the militarization of American society. Another policy objective advocated by the authors of With All Our Might is the long-term, ongoing and open-ended continuance of the counterproductive US occupation of Iraq. Even though the latest polls indicate that the American people and most especially the Democratic grassroots would prefer a timely exit from Iraq, the authors of With All Our Might advocate that the Democratic Party, "should rally the American people for an extended and robust security and reconstruction presence (in Iraq)."

The timing of this proposal for extending the US occupation of Iraq could not be worse. Last week, Tony Blair went to Baghdad where he informed the Iraqis that he and George Bush will commence the withdrawal of 35,000 troops from Iraq by the end of this year. If the policy outlined in With All Our Might were adopted, Democrats would be far to the right of the Republicans. That is correct. Mr. From and his staff are actually advocating that the Democrats move to a more hawkish, more right-wing, more neoconservative position on Iraq than that occupied by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice. Is that any way to run a political opposition? Is that anyway to win an election in 2006?

Throughout the DLC's massive list of publications, there is no serious deconstruction of Bush's failed policy in Iraq. Neither is there any substantive critique of Bush's appalling conduct of his war in Iraq to be found in the pages of With All Our Might. What is provided is an explanation of how Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney could have waged a more intelligent occupation by sending more troops and charging them to be more brutal and more aggressive in their attacks, but there is no critical and sustained argument decrying the casus belli itself ­ no lament for the fact that America went to pre-emptive war because we were led to believe that we were on the verge of a sneak nuclear attack. Nothing, nil, less than zero about the launch of the war for one simple reason: the DLC endorsed it wholeheartedly, and so did their obedient membership.

However, With All Our Might is saturated with prolific references to the dangers of Islam, its people and its culture as the sole and unique fountainhead of America's problems with terrorism. No critique of Israel's policy of targeted assassinations, military attacks on civilian populations or the killing of innocent civilians can be found in its pages. Do not look for any criticism of the Israeli policy that led to the tragic death of Rachel Corrie, an American aid worker who was crushed to death under the fearsome treads of a John Deere bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. Like a protester in Tiananmen Square, Rachel Corrie placed herself between oppression and the oppressed, and she suffered the consequences when the bulldozer rolled over her. You simply will not find anything about Rachel Corrie on the DLC website. Not one syllable. Neither is there any reference to Tom Hurndall, a young British volunteer who was assassinated by an Israeli sniper. These atrocious events and others equally horrifying occur in a half-lit parallel universe, and the DLC appears to be blissfully unaware of their existence.

Worse. With All Our Might staunchly advocates the neoconservative doctrine of unilateralism ­ the central policy of the Bush administration. At the same time, the DLC textbook repudiates multilateralism, the leading foreign policy doctrine of every previous Democratic administration up to and including those of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. "We must have no illusions that multilateralism can be a substitute for vigorous U.S. leadership," we are assured by the DLC textbook.

Worse still, there is a frontal assault on the United Nations. The DLC is blatantly adopting the policies of the neocons populating the right-wing think tanks in Washington that produce such human anomalies as John Bolton, Richard Perle and Daniel Pipes, all rabidly Zionist neoconservatives who advocate a much more aggressive US military agenda aimed directly at Islamic nations and peoples everywhere.

It is obvious that the DLC offers not a dime's worth of difference from the right-wing neoconservatives in the Bush White House. In defining America's foreign policy objectives solely by its commitment to eradicate Islamist terror, the DLC and its Zionist collaborators would commit America to an endless cycle of war and terror, repression and suicide bombings ad nauseum and ad infinitum all predicated on Islamophobia.

As of today with the publication of his essay "Hope beats anger," the political agenda of the DLC and its founder, Mr. From, are perfectly clear. Mr. From wishes to transform America into a unilateral system of government with both political parties equally committed to a radical Zionist interpretation of neoconservativism, i.e. holy war against Islam and Arabic peoples everywhere. This tactic is well known to many people in Israel and a growing number in the United States.

Noam Chomsky has recently drawn attention to the fact that the people of both Israel and the United States are far ahead of their leadership in coming to terms for a peace agreement in the Middle East. Chomsky states that 70% of Americans and Israelis are in favor of a two state settlement and direct negotiations to achieve that end. In contrast to Chomsky's diagnosis, From's vision would transform America into an Israeli-style battle zone of barriers, barricades, ramparts, roadblocks and checkpoints littered with tanks and jeeps, manned by machine-gun wielding flack-jacketed soldiers who would dominate our landscape.

An Israeli nuclear physicist was recently interviewed by The Hindustan Times. Professor Zeev Alfassi stated, "If the Iranians fire even one bomb, the United States will annihilate them. If we don't create panic, the Americans won't deal with it."

Mr. From's ringing testament to Zionism straight from the hinterlands of Israel confirms that the DLC is deeply and intimately involved in the manufacture of panic in America - a parallel project to that of the so-called Israel Lobby that curiously panders to and supports the policies and the political campaigns of George Bush and the right-wing Republicans.

While the Zionist ideals of the DLC will appeal to a narrowly limited band of followers, progressive Democrats who are seriously committed to regime change in Washington should oppose the DLC with all their might.

Michael Carmichael has been a professional public affairs consultant, author and broadcaster since 1968. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today Programme, Hardtalk, PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and many European broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org

Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting.

It imposes fines of $250 for every voter registration form that a group files more than 10 days after it is collected, and $5,000 for every form that is not submitted - even if it is because of events beyond anyone's control, like a hurricane. The Florida League of Women Voters, which is suing to block the new rules, has decided it cannot afford to keep registering new voters in the state as it has done for 67 years. If a volunteer lost just 16 forms in a flood, or handed in a stack of forms a day late, the group's entire annual budget could be put at risk.

In Washington, a new law prevents people from voting if the secretary of state fails to match the information on their registration form with government databases. There are many reasons that names, Social Security numbers and other data may not match, including typing mistakes. The state is supposed to contact people whose data does not match, but the process is too tilted against voters.

Congress is considering a terrible voter ID requirement as part of the immigration reform bill. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, introduced an amendment to require all voters to present a federally mandated photo ID. Even people who have been voting for years would need to get a new ID to vote in 2008. Millions of people without drivers' licenses, including many elderly people and city residents, might fail to do so, and be ineligible to vote. The amendment has been blocked so far, but voting-rights advocates worry that it could reappear.

These three techniques - discouraging registration drives, purging eligible voters and imposing unreasonable ID requirements - keep showing up. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives. Georgia, one of several states to adopt harsh new voter ID laws, had its law struck down by a federal court.

Protecting the integrity of voting is important, but many of these rules seem motivated by a partisan desire to suppress the vote, and particular kinds of voters, rather than to make sure that those who are entitled to vote - and only those who are entitled - do so. The right to vote is fundamental, and Congress and state legislatures should not pass laws that put an unnecessary burden on it. If they do, courts should strike them down.

In an age when professionally planned lobbying campaigns have long since overwhelmed spontaneous grass-roots pressure, organizers of the brick brigade said they also saw an opportunity to deliver a missive not easily discarded.

"E-mails are so common now," said Kirsten Heffron, a Virginian who is helping coordinate the effort. "It is really easy for the office to say duly noted, hit delete and never think about it again."

If the impact was notable, so were the logistical difficulties, particularly given the mail screening and other protective measures put into effect at the Capitol after the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Initially, organizers of the Send-a-Brick Project encouraged people to send bricks on their own, and Ms. Heffron said things had gone relatively smoothly.

But many people, she said, preferred that the organization itself send the bricks and an accompanying letter to selected lawmakers.

The project will do it for an $11.95 fee. So when 2,000 individually boxed bricks showed up at once, Senate officials balked, threatening to force the group to pay postage to have each delivered to its intended recipient. The dispute left the bricks stacked up until an agreement to distribute them was worked out.

"We received them and we delivered them to all the addressees," said a spokeswoman for the office of the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

As the bricks landed in Congressional mailrooms and cramped offices, the effort was applauded in some offices but drew a bemused response elsewhere.

"Given the approval ratings of Congress these days, I guess we should all be grateful the bricks are coming through the mail, not the window," said Dan Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana.

The senders of the bricks were encouraged to add a letter telling lawmakers that the brick represented a start on building a border wall.

Many could not resist putting their own message on the bricks. "No Amnesty," said a typical one, referring to a contested Senate plan to allow some illegal immigrants to qualify eventually for citizenship. "Stop the Invasion, Build a Wall," said another brick painted like a flag and shown on the group's Web site at www.send-a-brick.com.

Besides the border fence, the group supports technology improvements for border security, added money and personnel for the Border Patrol and an enhanced security presence in general on the southern border.

The brick effort was scheduled to wind down this week, though the organization encouraged people to continue if they desired.

On Tuesday, representatives of the architect of the Capitol collected bricks from lawmakers' offices and stacked them on loading docks with plans to donate them to a nonprofit group.

In a letter he circulated on Tuesday, Representative Scott Garrett, Republican of New Jersey, encouraged his colleagues to donate their bricks to a Habitat for Humanity resale store in Virginia, so the proceeds could go to that organization's projects.

"Through the Send-a-Brick Project, our constituents have found a solid way to communicate their feelings about illegal immigration," Mr. Garrett wrote in a draft of his letter. "Whether you agree with their message or not, we think that this campaign has given Capitol Hill a positive opportunity to turn bricks into buildings."

Ms. Heffron, who has been active in political campaigns and public affairs, said her organization was comfortable with the bricks being put to other uses after they had made their point.

She said the campaign had grown out of frustration expressed in an online forum on immigration issues over resistance by some lawmakers to erecting a wall. Another impetus was a desire for a counterpoint to large rallies by advocates of immigrants' rights.

Given the success of the initiative, she said, the group may turn its attention to lobbying lawmakers in their home districts this summer and may have a role in a demonstration in Washington. She said she hoped that the brick barrage showed lawmakers that when it comes to immigration, the weight of public opinion is on the side of border security.

"I think they don't realize the passion of it," she said of some lawmakers. "Maybe it is going to take a little protest in the streets to get our voices heard as well."

Damon, 33, claims that Moore never asked for his consent to use a clip from an interview Damon did with NBC's "Nightly News."

He lost his arms when a tire on a Black Hawk helicopter exploded while he and another reservist were servicing the aircraft on the ground. Another reservist was killed in the explosion.

In his interview with NBC, Damon was asked about a new painkiller the military was using on wounded veterans. He claims in his lawsuit that the way Moore used the film clip in "Fahrenheit 9/11" - Moore's scathing 2004 documentary criticizing the Bush administration and the war in Iraq - makes him appear to "voice a complaint about the war effort" when he was actually complaining about "the excruciating type of pain" that comes with the injury he suffered.

In the movie, Damon is shown lying on a gurney, with his wounds bandaged. He says he feels likes he's "being crushed in a vise."

"But they (the painkillers) do a lot to help it," he says. "And they take a lot of the edge off of it."

Damon is shown shortly after U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is speaking about the Bush administration and says, "You know, they say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind."

Damon contends that Moore's positioning of the clip just after the congressman's comments makes him appear as if he feels like he was "left behind" by the Bush administration and the military.

In his lawsuit, Damon says he "agrees with and supports the President and the United States' war effort, and he was not left behind."

He said that, while at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center recovering from his wounds, he had surgery and physical therapy, learned to use prosthetics and live independently. He also said that Homes For Our Troops, a not-for-profit group, built him a house with handicapped accessibility.

"The work creates a substantially fictionalized and falsified implication as a wounded serviceman who was left behind when Plaintiff was not left behind but supported, financially and emotionally, by the active assistance of the President, the United States and his family, friends, acquaintances and community," Damon says in his lawsuit.

Moore did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday. A message was left for Moore at a personal number in New York and with HarperCollins, publisher of Moore's 2002 book, "Stupid White Men...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!"

A spokesman for Miramax Film Corp., also named as a defendant, did not immediately return a call.

Damon did not immediately respond to a request for an interview.

"It's upsetting to him because he's lived his life supportive of his government, he's been a patriot, he's been a soldier, and he's now being portrayed in a movie that is the antithesis of all of that," Damon's lawyer, Dennis Lynch, said.

Damon is seeking $75 million in damages for emotional distress and loss of reputation. His wife is suing for an additional $10 million in damages because of the mental distress caused to her husband, Lynch said.