Washington Correspondent Kim Landers reports.

KIM LANDERS: For the Bush administration it's back to the drawing board.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the military commissions convened to try detainees like Australian David Hicks lack the power to proceed and that the Bush administration had no blank cheque to decide how to try terror suspects.

The five-three decision was triggered by the case of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni man who was Osama bin Laden's former driver.

His lawyer, Neal Katyal, says the ruling shows the Guantanamo Bay tribunals are un-American.

NEAL KATYAL: This was a system that the President controlled from top to bottom. He wrote all the rules, defined all of the offences, hand-picked the judges, and it's just, at bottom it's just fundamentally un-American.

KIM LANDERS: Not everyone agrees.

Charles Samp is from the Washington Legal Foundation, which supported the Bush administration's case.

CHARLES SAMP: The decision today is a travesty in terms of the way that the court has decided to establish itself as a super-military authority and has second-guessed the views not only of the executive branch but also of Congress.

KIM LANDERS: The question now is how, when and where the Bush administration might pursue its case against the 10 foreign terror suspects who've been charged. And that's proving difficult to decipher.

White House counsellor Dan Bartlett says it's a simple technical task. The administration has to design military tribunals that'd pass muster under today's Supreme Court ruling.

Republican leaders in Congress are scrambling to work out how to give the President the authority he needs.

This Supreme Court ruling raises broader questions about a President's wartime powers.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly worded dissent, saying the decision would sorely hamper the President's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.

Jonathan Turley is a Law Professor at George Washington University.

He says the Supreme Court is pushing back against a President who's asserted he has almost unlimited powers for how he deals with a war.

JONATHAN TURLEY: The Supreme Court is telling the President: you're not a Government unto yourself. You're not an absolute ruler.

KIM LANDERS: Eric Posner is a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on the laws of war.

He's told The World Today that the Supreme Court ruling curbs the President's powers, but it's a hurdle which can be overcome.

ERIC POSNER: It is unusual for the Supreme Court to interfere with what the President wants to do during a war. But it's not unheard of - there are precedents in the Civil War - so in that sense it's surprising, but the reason why it's not as surprising as one might think is that there is more controversy over whether we're really in a war at the moment than we were during World War II, or the Civil War, or during other wars in American history.

KIM LANDERS: What is the best way forward now? Is it simply a matter of Congress approving some other sort of system for which to try these detainees?

ERIC POSNER: Yes, it is. It is simple, I guess, at least conceptually simple, maybe not politically simple. But if the President goes back to Congress, Congress has the authority, at least as far as I can tell from this case, to pass legislation that would enable the President to set up more or less identical military commissions.

KIM LANDERS: Do you think that this is a blow to one of the arguments that the Bush administration has been using as it prosecutes the war on terror, that this President says he needs to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people?

ERIC POSNER: I think this is a blow for the administration's legal theory, which has emphasised the President's constitutional powers to act unilaterally.

But to the extent that Congress is willing to authorise the President to do what he would have done anyway, I'm not sure it matters.

And I would be surprised if the President couldn't go back to Congress and obtain authority to set up these military commissions.

KIM LANDERS: This Supreme Court ruling alone doesn't mean Guantanamo Bay will be shut down. After all, the President says he doesn't want killers back on the streets.

The detainees won't be set free. Instead many will now find themselves in a longer legal limbo.

This is Kim Landers in Washington for The World Today.

Eric Clark was 17 when he shot and killed a police officer in Flagstaff. His lawyers argued that the state's 1993 insanity defense law made it virtually impossible to prove a plea of guilty but insane, and also said the judge had unfairly limited the testimony allowed about Clark's underlying illness.

Writing for the majority, Justice David Souter said that Arizona has the right to define the insanity defense as long as it meets certain standards, which he said the current law does.

Souter also wrote that judges do not have to allow testimony from mental health experts about the characteristics of a mental illness because there is considerable disagreement within the profession, and experts often disagree in court testimony.

The restrictions on testimony are acceptable, Souter wrote, because of the "controversial character of some categories of mental disease, in the potential of mental-disease evidence to mislead, and in the danger of according greater certainty to capacity evidence than experts claim for it."

Attorneys for Clark -- who did not contest the shooting -- presented evidence that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed Flagstaff was populated by "aliens" trying to kill him. Prosecutors acknowledged Clark's illness but argued that the schizophrenia did not keep him from understanding right from wrong at the time of the shooting.

Under Arizona's law, defendants may be found "guilty except insane'' only if they prove they were so mentally ill that they did not know what they did was wrong. Before 1993, Arizona also allowed defendants to be found guilty but insane if they were found to be without the mental capacity to know what they were doing.

Clark's case was the first direct constitutional challenge to insanity defense laws to be heard since states began to restrict them after John Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan. Nine other states similarly restricted the insanity defense, and yesterday's ruling gives them additional support.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in dissent that restricting expert testimony keeps a judge or jurors from receiving information they need to make sense of a defendant's claims of mental illness.

"While defining mental illness is a difficult matter, the state seems to exclude the evidence one would think most reliable by allowing unexplained and uncategorized tendencies to be introduced while excluding relatively well-understood psychiatric testimony regarding well-documented mental illnesses," he wrote.

In 2000, Clark killed officer Jeffrey Moritz, who was responding to complaints that a pickup truck playing loud rap music was circling a residential block. The officer was in uniform and was driving a patrol car when he stopped Clark, who shot him and fled.

Clark was found to be incompetent in 2001 and was committed to a state hospital. Two years later, the same trial court found that his competence had been restored and ordered him to trial.

At the trial, Clark was sentenced to life in prison, without possibility of parole for 25 years.

Bush still gets poor marks on a range of issues, including his handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, and 63 percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. Bush's overall approval rating is among the lowest for recent two-term presidents, with only Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter slipping further in public esteem.

"He's not doing that great,'' said Susan Pinkus, the Los Angeles Times' polling director. "But he kind of stopped the slaughter.''

One bit of good news for the president is that most Americans agree with his position on immigration reform, his top domestic priority, and say they would be disappointed if Congress doesn't pass a bill addressing the issue this year.

The poll of 1,321 adults was conducted June 24-27, and has a margin of sampling error of three percentage points.

Better on Terrorism

Bush's improved ranking on terrorism is largely responsible for halting his free-fall: 51 percent of Americans now approve of the job he is doing on the issue, while 43 percent disapprove -- a reversal from April.

A U.S. air strike this month that killed Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, probably helped flip the numbers, said David Rohde, a professor of political science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

"More events like the killing of Zarqawi and the president's approval ratings could rebound further,'' said Rohde, who has written books on every national election since 1980. "Bad news would lead to further declines.''

Sentiment that Bush is strong on terrorism has formed the core of his support since the Sept. 11 attacks, even as his ratings on most other issues, such as the economy and health care, slumped.

In the April survey, Bush lost his edge on terrorism, falling to 43 percent approval on that issue, a drop that helped push his overall job approval to a record low.

Headlines Help

Headlines in the past month -- including Zarqawi's death and the completion of a new Iraqi cabinet, the arrest of seven people in Miami who allegedly planned to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and a trip to Europe during which Bush made progress with allies on a strategy for Iran -- all may have benefited the president.

"More news is getting out,'' said poll respondent Dolores Concannon, a 60-year-old Democrat from Quincy, Massachusetts, who speculated that Zarqawi's death and the Florida arrests have helped change opinions of Bush. "The troops went and pursued them and killed a lot of bad guys,'' she said of Zarqawi.

Concannon, a retired accountant, and women like her may be driving the turnaround in views of Bush's handling of the war on terror, according to the poll. In April, 34 percent of women approved of Bush's handling of the issue; in this month's poll, 45 percent did. Bush also saw a 15-point gain in approval on the issue among self-described moderates, and a 13-point lift from moderate Republicans.

No Iraq Boost

While providing a boost for Bush on terrorism, Zarqawi's death isn't helping him on the Iraq war. Bush's approval rating on Iraq, at 40 percent, was little changed from April. Most Americans, 54 percent, continue to say the war wasn't worth fighting, although 28 percent expect matters to improve in Iraq in the next year, a five-percentage-point increase from April. Twenty-nine percent say things will worsen in Iraq.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans say Iraq is the most important problem facing the country. That compares with 15 percent who say the economy, and 9 percent who say the price of gasoline. Just 7 percent name terrorism and al-Qaeda.

Partisan divisions remain deep, with 79 percent of Democrats disapproving of Bush's handling of the war and 77 percent of Republicans approving.

Loretta Deeds, a 69-year-old Republican who lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, illustrates the divide. Deeds said her opinion of Bush's handling of the war hasn't changed since U.S. troops invaded in March 2003.

'Under Attack'

"Congress gave him the go-ahead,'' said Deeds, a retired clerical worker. "Christians most definitely are under attack. This is a Muslim jihad that wants to take over the religion of the world.''

James Burnell, a 54-year-old Democrat from Wooster, Ohio, said he too hasn't changed his opinion much since the start of the war. "I've opposed it from the get-go,'' he said. "I don't think we had just cause to go in,'' said Burnell, a college economics professor.

The poll found that 68 percent of Americans are closely following reports that U.S. Marines killed unarmed civilians in Iraq. Just about the same amount, 66 percent, say the reports are unlikely to change how they feel about the war. Six in 10 believe those incidents are rare.

On Iran, 56 percent of Americans say that country will eventually acquire nuclear weapons. Just 16 percent say diplomacy can block Iran's nuclear plans, the same percentage who say military intervention can stop them.

Credibility Problem

Even if the situation in Iraq improves, Bush may face problems reversing his approval declines, said Rohde, the Duke scholar. Half of all adults say they have a lower opinion of Bush's credibility than they used to, to just 9 percent who say they have a higher opinion.

"The president's ability to use the bully pulpit and persuade people has declined substantially,'' Rhode said.

Immigration may pose a challenge for lawmakers who delay or oppose legislation addressing the problem, as 87 percent of poll respondents say it's an important problem and three-fifths say they'd be disappointed if lawmakers don't pass a bill this year.

Most Americans, 58 percent, say they would prefer an approach that focuses on tougher enforcement of immigration laws and also creates a guest-worker program that allows undocumented workers to work legally in the U.S. on temporary visas. A third say they prefer tougher enforcement of laws only.

Bush and the U.S. Senate support legislation that creates a guest-worker program while a competing House measure passed last year focuses on border security and enforcement of immigration laws.

Ethics scandals that have led to Democratic charges of a Republican "culture of corruption'' don't appear to have tainted the Bush administration any more than the previous White House.

The poll found a plurality, 43 percent, of adults say Bush has higher ethical standards than former President Bill Clinton. Twenty-nine percent say they are lower.

Today the Iraqi News Agency ran a flippant and saucy piece of news on how Creative International Associates will launch a costly program to help turn the education system in Iraq into an e-edu, so will provide comprehensive support to include information retrieving system, admin & exam systems, warehouse and school buildings etc. which will facilitate daily activities of the ministry's employees by cutting down on the amount of time 'wasted' when they look up their vacation & leave schedules online!

Our source is quite perplexed that Ms. Kruvant (origin of Bolivian Argentinean and finally American) is still offering services for the ministry or even being in Iraq for that matter. She probably could find a soft landing in South America or other chosen man-made 3rd world disasters where she can negotiate with warlords or terrorists, but on our turf we really deem it's high time for some unpaid retirement for the old lady.

Bon Voyage Ms. Kruvant. Go Home.

The university released a statement Thursday saying Morgan had the authority to remove the newspaper.

"The University of the Incarnate Word does not take an official position on the recent decision to cancel the subscription of the New York Times at the university's library," the statement said. "This decision was made by the administrator in charge of the library whose authority extends to the contents of the library, and thus it was within his purview to make this decision. The university is supportive of the First Amendment, a free press and of the presentation of diverse points of view."

Morgan was on vacation and not available for comment. UIW President Lou Agnese and board Chairman Fully Clingman also were away and couldn't be reached for comment.
Talkback

* What do you think?

The move outraged library staffers, who complained the dean was censoring information based on personal beliefs.

Staff member Jennifer Romo said she and her co-workers were shocked when they received Morgan's e-mail.

"The censorship is just unspeakable," Romo said. "There is no reason, no matter what your beliefs, to deny a source of information to students."

The removal also runs counter to the American Library Association's Bill of Rights, which states: "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."

The New York Times, followed by other papers, published the articles. The Bush administration and conservative bloggers and commentators quickly attacked the reports, lashing out at media, especially the Times. Vice President Dick Cheney singled out the newspaper during a speech in Nebraska. In a letter to the Times posted on the Treasury Department's Web site, outgoing Secretary John Snow said the paper "alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails."

U.S. Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter released Monday that the attorney general should investigate the Times for possible violation of the Espionage Act.

The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing the program, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger."

The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, didn't specifically name the Times or other news organizations that reported the story.

The Times reported Tuesday that its managing editor, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement that the decision to publish the story was "a hard call."

He noted the Bush administration has launched a number of "broad, secret programs" aimed at fighting terrorism since 9-11.

He went on to say: "I think it would be arrogant for us to pre-empt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."

In his e-mail to library staff, Dean Morgan wrote of a "change in quality and shift in coverage in what was once 'the national newspaper of record'" and said that neither average citizens nor enemy terrorists needed to know about the classified program in a time of war.

Romo, the UIW library staffer, said she respects Morgan's opinion about the newspaper's decision to publish the reports. She added, however, that using the university library is the wrong way to express his views.

"We understand that pornography and things not of an academic nature don't have a place in the library, but this is the New York Times," Romo said. "Whether it leans either way, it is still a staple and representation of views in our country."

Romo's colleague, Tom Rice, a recent graduate of the University of North Texas library sciences program, said that in pulling the Times, the library contradicted everything he learned in school.

"We felt like we were in an alternate reality when we read the e-mail," Rice said. "Then we realized how serious it was."

Andrew Herkovic, communications director for Stanford University's libraries in California, said staffers make decisions about what they collect for readers, but don't make those decisions on political grounds. Like UIW, Stanford is a private university.

"We would not withhold information from our readers as an expression of disapproval of an important news source," Herkovic said.

Two UIW students studying outside the library Thursday said they took issue with the Times reports, but did not think it was appropriate to remove the newspaper from the library because it's an academic source.

"I don't think they should have done it," said Richard Renteria, a 29-year-old senior.

This isn't the first time librarians have resisted pressure to limit patrons' freedom or access to information. This week, federal authorities dropped their demand under the U.S. Patriot Act for the identities of patrons who logged on to a Connecticut public library computer in February 2005. The decision came more than a year after local librarians resisted and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit.

At least one media-watcher said she doubts Morgan's move will have much impact.

"In the real world, it's an almost futile act on many levels," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla. "From what we know about the reading habits of college students, it will not make a difference because they read online."

E-mail sent by Mendell Morgan:

From: Morgan, Mendell D
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 1:30 PM
Subject: New York Times cancellation

I have cancelled the J. E. and L. E. Mabee Library subscription to the print version of the New York Times effective today. For some years, many have observed a change in quality and shift in coverage in what was once "the national newspaper of record". Recently they made a very deliberate decision to publish vital intelligence information on specific methods of SWIFT for tracing money transfers used to fund terrorist activities in many parts of the world.

The US government held meetings with them to discuss this sensitive information and had specifically asked them, along with other news organizations, not to make this information public on the grounds of national security interests. Despite the explanation of the serious and sensitive nature of this information, the New York Times decided to make it public, so everyone, including the sworn enemies of the United States, would be fully informed. Now we all know. In time of war-and we are in a time of war-this specific information is not something the average citizen needs and the enemy most certainly does not.

This kind of intelligence operation had been successfully used to apprehend some of the terrorists who have perpetrated crimes, and prevented some other planned actions. These methods are among those that have prevented further 9/11 attacks in our country and kept us relatively safe in our homeland so far. This recent disclosure has now neutralized a valuable method of finding information to keep us safe and placed us and our families in a more vulnerable position. It may also prolong the war effort and claim more American (and other) lives at home and abroad.

Since no one elected the New York Times to determine national security policy, the only action I know to register protest for their irresponsible action (treason?) is to withdraw support of their operations by canceling our subscription as many others are doing. If enough do perhaps they will get the point.

Mendell D. Morgan, Jr.
Dean of Library Services

While any information terrorists get about how the US is seeking them is to their advantage, any such gains from the leaks of the past six months may only be slight, Mr. Johnson and other experts say.

"Are terrorists so dumb to think that we wouldn't be doing things like this?" asks Robert Jervis, an intelligence expert at Columbia University in New York.

The issue came to a head this week when the president and administration officials lambasted The New York Times for revealing that the Treasury Department was monitoring an international database of financial wire transfers.

It was the latest in a string of media disclosures about the government's antiterror intelligence operations. In December, The New York Times revealed a National Security Agency (NSA) program that monitored international phone calls and e-mails to and from people in America suspected of being linked to terrorism. In May, USA Today reported that the NSA was also compiling a database of domestic calls.

The administration has argued that each was an effective tool in rooting out terrorist networks. Some former intelligence analysts, however, cast doubts on their importance.

"Nothing that's been revealed in the last few months has had any substantive effect on the war on terror," says Vincent Cannistraro, chief of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterterrorism operations and analysis from 1988 to 1991. "Hardened, organized groups have been aware or assumed that voice, e-mail communications, and bank transfers are monitored at least since 9/11."

The administration itself has publicly touted its efforts to track terror financing, points out Ira Winkler, an NSA analyst until the mid-1990s and now an Internet security consultant.

"It's more of a public-relations nightmare than a detriment to our operations," he says regarding revelations that financial wire transfers were being monitored by the Treasury Department.

Of course, even the most sophisticated foes can sometimes make elementary slip-ups, these analysts say. Former Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev talked about ballistic missiles on his limousine phone - which the US had tapped. Hambali, Al Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia, was tracked in part by a money transfer and eventually captured.

But the paucity of high-profile successes suggests to some that these programs were having marginal impact.

"If these systems and programs were all that effective, we would have heard a lot more about arrests," says Johnson. "The absence of those tells me that despite all this hooting and hollering, they've not been that effective."

Moreover, the leaks might not have much influence at all on the success of various programs, like the NSA's efforts to track phone calls and then connect the dots to would-be terrorists - called data mining.

"General knowledge about this social-network analysis is not something that needs to be kept secret in order to be effective," says Jon Kleinberg, a Cornell University professor whose government- sponsored work involves writing algorithms to hunt for patterns of behavior that might match terrorist activity. "Our algorithms take into account the fact that these people are already conscious of being observed and are taking active measures to avoid being spotted."

Still, for most in the intelligence community, the leaks rankle. While several analysts commend the story about NSA eavesdropping, which brought up serious legal issues, they dismiss the other stories as the needless exposure of potentially useful projects.

Of the story on wire transfers, Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, went so far as to call for investigation and prosecution of The New York Times. "There was not a whole lot of public value in publishing it," adds Paul Pillar, who was the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

Thursday, the House was expected to weigh a resolution condemning publication of the terror financing surveillance and saying it expects "cooperation" from news organizations in the future in "not disclosing classified intelligence programs."

The coverage betrays an overeagerness to publish classified material regardless of its value to intelligence operations, Mr. Pillar and others say. And leaks do hurt US intelligence, they add. "There were times in my tenure that one could track leaks right to serious losses" in sources, says retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, who was director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.

But another former senior intelligence official who asked to remain anonymous because of continuing ties to government is critical of authorized leaks from the administration as well as unauthorized leaks. "We shouldn't be touting our successes in public," the official says. "You're only sensitizing the opposition to how you're being successful against them. I think mistakes have been made on both sides" inside government and through the news media.

The official disagrees with some others' assessment that disclosure of the wire transfer surveillance was a nonevent, saying "the damage from the leak about monitoring was significant."

Among the more startling findings are the fact that voting machines with wireless components are very easily compromised by anyone with a little know-how and nearby wireless device-you don't even need a laptop; a PDA will do nicely.

The report also found that voter verified paper trails that aren't backed up by routine, random audits are good only for instilling a false sense of security in the voting process. You'd think it would be obvious to election officials that even if you get a paper receipt documenting the vote that you cast, any later meddling with that machine's vote count can go completely undetected if a sample of those receipts are never compared to the final output. But apparently a lot of things that are obvious to tech people go over the heads of election officials (e.g. the idea that you would never want to give wireless access to voting machines.)

It's worth noting that the Brennan Center task force isn't just another group of activists:

The government and private sector scientists, voting machine experts, and security professionals on the Task Force worked together for more than a year. The members of the non-partisan panel were drawn from the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST"), the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the federal Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, leading research universities, and include many of the nation's foremost security experts.

The Task Force surveyed hundreds of election officials around the country; categorized over 120 security threats; and evaluated countermeasures for repelling attacks. The study examined each of the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems: electronic machines ("DREs") with – and without – a voter verified paper trail, and precinct-counted optical scan systems ("PCOS"). The report, The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World, is the first-ever systematic analysis of security vulnerabilities in each of these systems.

The task force concluded the report with a number of recommendations for making electronic voting more tamper-proof. But given the widespread, ongoing evidence of rampant insecurity in popular electronic voting systems (Google "Diebold," for instance) and the mystifying nationwide failure to do anything about it, will another voice shouting that the house is on fire be enough?

I have this fantasy where I organize a group of computer science types who've been working for years on electronic voting problems and we write a book called, How To Steal a National Election: An Step-by-Step Handbook. The book would come complete with everything from discussions of the theory underlying how you could steal a presidential election by rigging a few key counties, to a nuts-and-bolts, "push this, pull here, type in this command" guide to how to rig specific machine models. We'd also include a CD with source code, applications, schematics, all the other tools the modern election fraudster needs. I feel that if there were some way to make clear just how real this threat is and just how easy it is to actually steal and election, maybe folks could get motivated to care. But maybe I'm just fantasizing.

Thompson's former court reporter, Lisa Foster, testified that she traced an unfamiliar "sh-sh" in the courtroom to her boss. She testified that she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times.

Thompson, who served for more than 20 on the bench in eastern Oklahoma before his retirement in 2004, denied using a penis pump and said it was a gag gift.

Thompson was ordered into custody on $75,000 bond, which his attorneys said would be posted Friday. Thompson's formal sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 14.

Officers went to the home Wednesday to serve a search warrant for building, housing and health code violations, but the woman said they couldn't come inside because her mother was sleeping. After persuading her to let them in the house, the officials pulled back the blanket on the bed and found the skeleton.

The daughter, whose name was withheld until her family was notified, was taken to St. Vincent Charity Hospital.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Elizabeth K. Balraj said Thursday she would need more information to identify the body, which showed no signs of injury.

Police Lt. Thomas Stacho said no charges were expected.