Daily Press Review/Atlantic-Pacific Alliance

At any hour of the day, Monday to Friday, you can check additions to our news & commentary database here:

http://www.atlanticpacificalliance.com/news.html

Statement on the Terrorist Surveillance Program / Iranian Police Destroying Satellite Dishes in Tehran / True Face of the Blood-Sucking Hebrew Entity / Another Signing Statement / Dynamic Analysis of President Bush’s Tax Relief Plan / Welfare Caseload Fluctuations, 1996–2002 / The Problem of Accuracy of Economic Data / Australia Leads the World on Water / Mugged by Reality / Weapons from Iran discovered in Iraq’s port city / Lenin would be impressed with terror's new abettors / The 'Profiling' Debate: Tiptoeing around the obvious in airline screening / Tobacco: All Justice got was this lousy Pyrrhic victory / A 'Special' Relationship 7 Tom Monaghan's crusade for heavenly education / An obscure wiretap case could ensnare the press / Thomas Ricks comments on Israeli Defense Forces / Is IPCC AR4 an Advocacy Document? / Article entitled “Climatology Between Science and Politics” / Plant diversity- Another Climate Metric / Near-normal Atlantic hurricane season / Politicized Science Produces Bad Public Policy / On WHO’s call to have all clinical trials registered / Potential adoption and management of insect-resistant potato in Peru / Articles in Spanish

To receive any of the following, free of charge, ask or send your request to Jorge Mata:

Any US State Dept., US Defense Dept., or any other US Government agency article, transcript, press release, briefing report, etc.

Any article, roundtable, etc., of Frontpage Magazine (index in http://www.frontpagemag.com), National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com), The National Interest (http://www.nationalinterest.org), Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/current/), The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/current), etc.

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Today's articles (free of charge, sometimes registration needed):

Politics/Economy/Society

- Statement on the Terrorist Surveillance Program. White House, Office of the Press Secretary

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060817-2.html

Where’s the Beef? By Paul Mirengoff

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015041.php

Judge Not, by Mark Levin

http://levin.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGJiNjI3ZGFiMzk5NTQ1MjQ4MmRhMDgyNzhjNjVhYTU=

Amateur Hour? By Bryan Cunningham

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWVlOGNiZmIyMmZkYTg2OGFiYzM3ZGU4Nzc0MjFjNzQ=

A judge’s first-year failing-grade opinion

- Iranian Police Destroying Satellite Dishes in Tehran

http://web.peykeiran.com/new/iran/iran_news_body.aspx?ID=32931

- The Mufti of Egypt: The True Face of the Blood-Sucking Hebrew Entity has Been Exposed.

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD125506

- Another Signing Statement. By Ed Whelan

http://bench.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTY5ZTEzMjY5YWZmYmJmYTFlMTEwYzRhNGE1Yzc1MTY=

- The Treasury Department’s Dynamic Analysis of President Bush’s Tax Relief Plan: A Summary and Evaluation by Tracy L. Foertsch, Ph.D., and Ralph A. Rector, Ph.D.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/cda06-06.cfm

The Office of Tax Analysis’s July 25 summary of its dynamic analysis of the President’s proposal to make permanent certain expiring provisions

- Welfare Reform at 10: Analyzing Welfare Caseload Fluctuations, 1996–2002 by Michael J. New, Ph.D.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/cda06-07.cfm

Since 1996, the number of welfare recipients has fallen by nearly 60 percent, poverty and hunger have declined, and states have enjoyed more leeway

- The Problem of Accuracy of Economic Data, by Philipp Bagus

http://www.mises.org/story/2280

In his classic book On the Accuracy of Economic Observation Oskar Morgenstern deals with a common, yet widely neglected problem with which economic historians are faced, namely the quality of economic data. For the economic historian in the Austrian tradition, the quality of economic data is of utmost importance, since false data or belief in inaccurate data can lead the economic historian to faulty interpretations of the past.

- Australia Leads the World on Water. By Roger Bate

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24794,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

- Mugged by Reality. By Daniel Freedman

http://www.nysun.com/article/38058

- Weapons from Iran discovered in Iraq’s port city

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8259

- Useful Idiots: Islam’s Best Soldiers. By Amil Imani

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23947

Even Lenin would be impressed with terror's new abettors

Education/Culture/Media

- On Washington Post's Thomas Ricks comments on Israeli Defense Forces

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2YxMjZmOGMwYWE1Zjc4NGU5ZWMxZTU1ZjdmYzIzNjA=

Science/Health

- Is IPCC AR4 an Advocacy Document? By Roger Pielke Jr

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000903is_ipcc_ar4_an_advoc.html

The IPCC claims that it is "policy relevant, but policy neutral." What this phrase actually means is clear as mud. According to various statements by its chairman Rajendra Pachauri over the past few years (e.g., link), one might be excused for thinking that the IPCC is really an advocacy document clothed in the language of science. Mr. Pachauri’s most recent comments about the report in a Reuters news report today do nothing to dispel that view.

- Article entitled “Climatology Between Science and Politics,” Roger Pielke Sr

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/18/article-entitled-climatology-between-science-and-politics/

- Plant diversity- Another Climate Metric, by Roger Pielke Sr

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/17/plant-diversity-another-climate-metric/

- 'Cane Mutiny, by Roy Spencer

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081806F

What a difference one year makes. With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren't the global warming pundits' predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad -- maybe even worse! -- than last year?

- Politicized Science Produces Bad Public Policy. By Steven Milloy

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,209078,00.html

- Keeping sight of the goal. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 5, 525 (July 2006)

http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v5/n7/full/nrd2102.html

The call by the World Health Organization for all clinical trials to be registered, and for information to be fully disclosed at the time of registration, has antagonized the pharmaceutical industry. More pragmatism could be needed if the important initiative to improve the transparency of clinical research is to maintain momentum.

- Potential adoption and management of insect-resistant potato in Peru, and implications for genetically engineered potato. By Jasper Buijs, Marianne Martinet, Felipe de Mendiburu and Marc Ghislain

http://www.edpsciences.org/10.1051/ebr:2006002

Based on these findings, and considering the difficulties implementing existing biosafety regulatory systems such as those in place in the U.S. and E.U., we propose to develop a variety-based segregation system to separate GE from conventionally bred potatoes. In such a system, which would embrace the spread of GE potatoes through informal seed systems, only a limited number of sterile varieties would be introduced that are easily distinguishable from conventional varieties.

Technology

ECHOSTAR SUFFERED legal setbacks that could force the satellite-TV firm to pay big damages and deactivate digital video recorders.

* * *

Microsoft fell far short of its goal to buy back up to $20 billion of its shares, but analysts attributed the results to investors' belief that the stock will climb higher.

* * *

Quattrone's attorneys and prosecutors reached a tentative pact that would let the former investment banker avoid a third trial. (Timeline)

* * *

McAfee received a grand jury subpoena regarding the company's firing of its top lawyer, his activities related to options and the company's internal probe of option grants. (Complete Coverage)

• Options scorecard: Companies under scrutiny

* * *

Dell shares fell Friday after the PC maker posted a 51% profit decline, but the Nasdaq edged up, gaining 5.2% for the week.

• Dell Posts Profit Slide, Faces Accounting Issues

* * *

Apple's investigation into claims of poor conditions at a Chinese iPod factory found no forced labor but revealed that laborers were exceeding the company's limits on hours and days worked. (Read Apple's report)

* * *

Time Warner disclosed that it is restating $584 million in online advertising revenue that its AOL unit improperly booked, according to a filing with the SEC.

* * *

Research reports on the Lucent-Alcatel merger raised concerns about pension liabilities and the combined company handling sensitive U.S. data, just three weeks before shareholders vote.

* * *

• Judge Rules on Warrantless Wiretapping

• Comverse Cancels Trio's Job Pacts

>>>>>>>>>>> You can request these articles at no charge. Call Jorge Mata at any time to ask.

In Spanish: Las esperanzas y los temores del Líbano, por Amir Taheri

http://gees.org/articulo/2862/

Está claro que ni Israel ni Hezbolá tienen capacidad para prolongar esta guerra a cualquier nivel significativo sin continuo apoyo económico y militar de sus respectivos respaldos. La derrota del bando proamericano reforzará al bando radical no solamente como para reclamar el dominio del Líbano, sino como para presionar a Irak con el fin de que cambie de bando una vez que la coalición de liderazgo norteamericano se vaya.

- El Islam y la identidad, en Gran Bretaña y el Líbano. Por Mark Steyn

http://gees.org/articulo/2861/

Los pan-islamistas sí actúan. Cuando se cogen de la mano y cantan "We Are The World", lo dicen en serio. Y si creemos que se van a quedar con las migajas de "estados fallidos" como Afganistán, Somalia o el Líbano, es que estamos siendo muy complacientes. Los islamistas son muy buenos utilizando los principales rasgos de la democracia multicultural moderna -- legalismos, victimología -- en su propio beneficio.

- Las sucias manos de las organizaciones saudíes de caridad, por Stephen Schwartz

http://gees.org/articulo/2863/

Arabia Saudí continúa acallando el tema vital de reorganizar sus organizaciones de caridad de cara a poner punto final a su apoyo al terror. Los millonarios saudíes que crearon al Qaeda caminan aún libres por el reino. Arabia Saudí carece de comisión del 11 de Septiembre y no ha dado ninguna señal de que vaya a establecer una alguna vez. Sus gobernantes parecen creer poder posponer indefinidamente la necesidad americana de rendir cuentas por los crímenes de ese día.

- Cómo es la vida realmente en la Cuba de Fidel, por Bill Steigerwald

http://gees.org/articulo/2860/

Desafortunadamente, la caída de Fidel puede no ser suficiente. Lo que el precioso pueblo de Cuba necesita desesperadamente es que le liberen y lo metan en el siglo XXI -- libertad económica y política, miles de millones en capitales de inversión americanos, fábricas de Nike, Wal-Marts, una oficina de la Liga de Béisbol en La Habana -- aún pueden tardar décadas en llegar.

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Wall Street Journal (excerpts)

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The 'Profiling' Debate

Tiptoeing around the obvious in airline screening.

What Were They Smoking?

All Justice got was this lousy Pyrrhic victory.

COMMENTARY

MATTHEW D'ANCONA

A 'Special' Relationship

Au revoir, George. Bonjour, Jacques!

COLUMNS

THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW

Domino's Illuminatio Mea

Tom Monaghan's crusade for heavenly education.

By Naomi Schaefer Riley

RULE OF LAW

First Amendment on Trial

An obscure wiretap case could ensnare the press.

By Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr.

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The 'Profiling' Debate
August 19, 2006; Page A10

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress rushed to mandate that 100% of checked airline baggage in the U.S. be screened for explosives. But the recently foiled plot to bring down 10 U.S.-bound airliners highlights what has remained a major concern in international aviation security: bombs carried into the cabin by passengers themselves.

The initial response this past week has been to sharply curtail the size and number of allowable carry-on items. But the inconvenience from keeping things like laptops and overnight bags out of the cabin is great enough that it could deter air travel and do long-term economic harm. Subjecting all of what used to pass for normal carry-on baggage to exhaustive searches has a similar effect, assuming it is even practical in the long run.

All of which means a return to any kind of normalcy in travel is going to require that airport security do a better job of separating high-risk passengers from unlikely threats. However, the fact that we may have come within a whisker of losing 3,000 lives over the Atlantic still isn't preventing political correctness from getting in the way of smarter security.

In Britain, a report in the Times of London this week that ethnic and religious background may become one allowable factor in screening decisions touched off preposterous cries that it would make a crime of "flying while Asian." Here in the U.S., Bush Administration officials seem afraid to even discuss the topic, despite the fact that President Bush himself has said that the threat comes primarily from "Islamic" terrorists.

So U.S. policy remains much the same as the one instituted after 9/11 by former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, who refused to consider the use of religious or ethnic background as even minor factors in screening decisions. The result -- with which all air travelers are well familiar -- is a policy of random searches that focuses scarce screening resources as much on eight-year-old girls as on 22-year-old men with Pakistani passports. Mr. Mineta's department also undermined another important layer of security -- the discretion of air crews themselves -- by harassing a number of major carriers on civil-rights grounds after suspicious passengers were removed from flights.

Mr. Mineta is gone now. But on Fox News Sunday last week Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defended this policy of random searches on grounds that "if we become too focused on a particular profile, we're likely to be dropping our guard precisely where the terrorists are going to be acting next." Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley made the same case to us this week. So did House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John Mica of Florida.

We think they're attacking a straw man. Nobody is suggesting using ethnicity or religion as the only -- or even the primary -- factors in profiling possible terrorists. But it also makes no sense to take zero account of the fact that every suicide attack against U.S. aviation to date has been perpetrated by men of Muslim origin. While al Qaeda is no doubt seeking recruits who don't obviously display such characteristics, that doesn't mean we should ignore the likeliest candidates.

Mr. Hawley has improved things at TSA. His move last year to scrap the nail-clipper ban so that screeners could focus on real threats like bombs was welcome and important. So too has been the initiative to have more airport-security personnel paying attention to passengers who exhibit suspicious behavior. This is a technique that has worked for the Israelis.

On the other hand, Mr. Hawley goes too far when he asserts that "behavior will give you away regardless of what you look like." That's what cops like to say about lie detectors, too, but liars sometimes fool them. Worse, Mr. Hawley hides behind the screen of political correctness himself when he says that taking background into account would be somehow contrary to "American" and "Constitutional" values.

The law on this is settled, and in the other direction. On multiple occasions the federal courts have upheld programs that treat groups differently when a "compelling" public interest can be identified: affirmative action, minority set-asides, composition of Congressional districts, and the all-male draft have all met that legal test. Yet the same people who would allocate jobs, federal contracts and college admissions by race or ethnicity object to using them merely as one factor in deciding whom to inconvenience for a few minutes at an airline checkpoint. Surely aviation security is a far more compelling public interest than the allocation of federal set-asides.

For those who put civil liberties above all else, even the TSA's behavior observation technique is too much. In 2004 the ACLU sued the Massachusetts Port Authority and the Massachusetts state police after one of its employees was identified by a similar program in Boston, with a spokesman claiming there was "a significant prospect this security method is going to be applied in a discriminatory manner." Amid this sort of demagoguery, we can see why the Bush Administration would want to dodge a profiling debate.

But someone needs to explain that one point of a smarter profiling program is to forestall what would be far more onerous racial screening if terrorists succeed again. At stake here is also the future of public support for adequate antiterror measures. If Americans conclude that their inconvenience has less to do with terrorism than it does with political correctness, the Administration will find that it has that much less support for the overall war on terror.

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What Were They Smoking?
August 19, 2006; Page A10

After seven years of litigation, $140 million of taxpayer money and a 1,700-page decision, the government could finally claim this week to have won its racketeering case against the tobacco industry. But then why were tobacco stocks up by some 3% yesterday, with Altria, parent company of Philip Morris and the Marlboro Man, hitting new multi-year highs?

Investors know a loser when they see one, and in this case it's the Justice Department. Federal Judge Gladys Kessler ruled for the government on the civil racketeering charges, claiming that the tobacco companies had done what everyone already knew they'd done for decades, which is aggressively market a dangerous but legal product. But she also awarded no damages, instead requiring a series of "remedial" measures from the cigarette makers. These include a requirement to publish mea culpas in the form of paid advertisements in newspapers, the elimination of the words "light" and "low tar" on cigarette packs and additional warning labels. For whatever that's worth.

The government will also be allowed to apply for reimbursement of its costs in the case, which were estimated last year at $140 million. But that's a far cry from the $280 billion that government lawyers were seeking before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled out going after 50 years worth of industry profits, plus interest.

This misbegotten case goes back to the Clinton Administration, which looked at the $250 billion settlement between the industry and the state Attorneys General and decided it wanted its own quarter-trillion-dollar chunk of Big Tobacco's profit stream. The cynicism here is remarkable, since the government was essentially claiming that the industry was unconscionable precisely so it could lay claim to the cash flow from its unconscionable behavior.

So Janet Reno launched a lawsuit, using a law designed to prosecute mobsters to attack an entirely legal industry. The Bush Administration slogged ahead with the suit, not wanting to take any political heat for appearing to give Joe Camel a pass. When former Attorney General John Ashcroft floated the idea of settling the case, career attorneys at Justice sabotaged the effort by leaking word to the press and stirring up liberal opposition. The Bushies backed down, though any settlement then might well have been better for the anti-smoking cause than what Justice has now "won."

Justice may take some consolation because its novel use of the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against legitimate, if unhealthful, businesses was given credence by Judge Kessler. But Justice seems to have used RICO primarily because it carried the prospect of crippling damages. Once the D.C. Circuit put the kibosh on backward-looking remedies in the case, any RICO victory began to look like Israel's recent triumph against Hezbollah.

Philip Morris has already pledged to appeal both the unfavorable ruling and the remedial measures, and legal experts give it some chance of success. Judge Kessler seems to have inserted herself into all manner of minutiae in how cigarettes are sold and marketed. Given how heavily regulated tobacco marketing already is, it's an open question whether the judiciary is stepping on executive branch toes with the ruling.

For the tobacco companies, there's also the matter of the proliferating lawsuits over whether the marketing of "light" cigarettes was misleading. Judge Kessler ruled that it was, since it implied health benefits that may not exist. If her ruling stands, it's possible that it will be used in other civil tort claims currently on the docket around the country.

But we suspect investors know the real score here, and their verdict on Friday was to bid up tobacco stocks. No doubt many state politicians around the country were also cheering the verdict because it means the feds won't be able to horn in on their long-term tobacco income stream. The war against cigarettes long ago stopped being about public health; today it's all about public revenue.

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A 'Special' Relationship

By MATTHEW D'ANCONA
August 19, 2006; Page A10

LONDON -- Hours before the arrest of 23 suspects in the plot to bomb airliners bound for America, John Reid, the British home secretary, gave a speech on security and terrorism. "I sometimes feel," he said with exasperation, "that so many people who should be foremost in recognizing the serious nature of the threat just don't get it."

The good news, according to a poll in this week's Spectator magazine, is that the British people most certainly do "get it." Of the 1,696 respondents, 73% agree that "we are in a world war against Islamic terrorists who threaten the West's way of life." Only 8% believe that "Islamic terrorism is a regional problem that holds no real threat to the West." A truth that eludes so many senior politicians is blindingly obvious to those they represent.

Since the alleged plot was revealed on Aug. 10, it has been routinely claimed that the true fault lies with British "foreign policy" -- code for the Iraq war and Tony Blair's refusal to condemn Israel's bombardment of Hezbollah. According to this analysis, British Islamist cells are essentially a single issue protest movement, bold pimpernels fighting against the wicked West to stop its supposedly neocolonial activities in the Muslim world.

Fortunately, the British people do not buy this nonsense. On the contrary: The Spectator poll shows that more than 50% believe that the proper response to the terrorist threat is a "more aggressive foreign policy." A similar proportion supports the introduction of "passenger profiling" at Britain's airports, while 69% want the police to have powers to hold terror suspects without trial for 90 days (a government proposal that was thrown out by the House of Commons last November).

That's the good news: For all the hand-wringing by the political and media elite since the plot was foiled, the response of the British people themselves to this emergency has been robust and clearsighted. The bad news -- if you are an Atlanticist like me, at any rate -- is that only 14% of those surveyed said that "Britain should continue to align herself closely with the U.S.," compared to 45% who want "a foreign policy closer to that of the rest of the European Union." Au revoir, George: Bonjour, Jacques!

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There is, of course, a glaring contradiction here. It is true that the EU still has theoretical aspirations to build an 80,000-strong European army to enforce a common foreign policy. At a seminar in Brussels last month hosted by the European Parliament's Committee on Security and Defense, it was even suggested that a prospective Euro-army might one day be sent into battle by qualified majority voting (that is, with no national veto). Laurent Fabius, the former French prime minister, wrote recently that "it is at the European level that we will have more and more to determine the number of planes, tanks, aircraft carrier or warships necessary to our safety."

To which all one can say is: Dream on, Monsieur Fabius. The European Rapid Reaction Force established in 1999 is in its infancy, and -- more importantly -- the acrimonious prelude to the Iraq war showed that the very notion of a common European foreign and defense policy remains farfetched. The American hyperpower may one day withdraw from the world stage in a fit of isolationist pique. But the U.S. will not be neatly replaced as a global policeman by the EU.

What the poll shows is Britons' present disillusionment with the U.S.-U.K. special relationship, rather than a surge of EU-philia (the British have long been implacably opposed to further European integration, and particularly to Britain's membership in the euro). The scene in Richard Curtis's romantic comedy, "Love Actually," in which Hugh Grant's Blairesque prime minister stands up to a bullying U.S. president has become iconic -- so much so that Mr. Blair himself referred to it in his Labour conference speech last year. The extradition to the U.S. of the businessmen known as the "NatWest Three" -- in spite of the U.S. Senate's failure to ratify the 2003 U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty -- has caused huge ill-feeling in Britain. John Prescott spoke for many in the Labour Party and outside it when (allegedly) he described the president as "just a cowboy with his Stetson" and Mr. Bush's approach to the Middle East road map as "crap." Fifty years after the Suez crisis, the people of this country still get prickly when they think that America is taking them for granted. Fairly or unfairly, the belief that the prime minister has become the president's poodle -- "Yo Blair!" -- has taken root and spawned resentment.

So even those of us who treasure the special relationship must concede that it is at a low ebb. Yet there is no reason to believe that this is irreversible. America has a fine ambassador to the Court of St. James, Bob Tuttle, who is already beginning the repair work. The British do not like President Bush much. That is not to say they will dislike his successors. The Iraq war and its bloody aftermath have been a huge rupture in the geopolitical order. But the wounds, if properly tended, will heal with time. The commercial, cultural, defense and intelligence ties that bind the U.S. and Britain have survived worse tensions, and shall again.

Sulks between friends come and go. In this case, what counts is that the British people seem to grasp intuitively how much is at stake in the war on terror, how much remains to be done at home and abroad, and how long a haul they are in for. The objective of terrorism is not only to cause bloodshed but to spray psychological shrapnel across a society. Amid all the chaos, confusion and anxiety spread by this emergency, it would have been so easy for the British to stick their heads in the sand and turn their backs to the world. That they have not done so shows, once more, that it is people, rather than politicians, who truly decide the fate of nations.

Mr. d'Ancona is editor of the Spectator.

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Tom Monaghan
Domino's Illuminatio Mea

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
August 19, 2006; Page A10

NEW YORK -- "To get as many people into heaven as possible." That is Tom Monaghan's (arguably immodest) goal. I sat down last week with Mr. Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, to find out how he planned to accomplish it. Since selling his delivery empire in 1998 for an estimated $1 billion, he has given over his life to philanthropy. A trim man with a soft voice, he explains his "philosophy of giving."

"So how do you get people into heaven?" Mr. Monaghan asks, rhetorically. "Help the Catholic Church. And what's the best way of doing that? Higher education." This kind of talk makes a lot of people -- even a lot of Catholics -- uncomfortable. Whether it's the notion that one person can steer another's ultimate fate, or that temporal education should be used explicitly for such a purpose, Mr. Monaghan's philosophy -- and his giving -- have brought him a lot of attention.

The pizza magnate grew up in an orphanage in Jackson, Mich., and he credits the nuns of the St. Joseph Home for Boys with inspiring his devotion to Catholicism. He even went to seminary briefly before joining the Marine Corps. In 1959, he returned to Michigan, attending the University of Michigan. He never graduated, but during his time there he and his brother bought a small pizza store called DomiNick's in Ypsilanti. (He eventually gave his brother a VW Beetle in return for his share of the company.)

Over the years, Mr. Monaghan has indulged in his share of vanity projects -- such as purchasing the Detroit Tigers. But he also consistently gave to the church. Well, not directly. Rather than simply supporting existing institutions, he has made a habit of starting his own. He began with two Catholic elementary schools in the Ann Arbor area in the late '90s, and he thinks these schools are very effective at getting people to heaven. "You give kids the faith and they'll keep it for life." But "the problem is you can only build so many grade schools and you're out of money." On the other hand, he continues, "if I can train a principal I can impact a whole school. I can do that at a university. I can train thousands of school administrators, thousands of catechism teachers, provide thousands of vocations to the priesthood and religious life."

* * *

Thus was born the idea for the Ave Maria University. But there are 200 Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S., so why yet another? Even kids from strong Catholic families, Mr. Monaghan argues, tend to lose their faith when they go to college, and Catholic schools may be worse, here, than secular ones. He cites data from a UCLA survey showing that after attending a Catholic college for four years, Catholic students tended to be more approving of abortion, gay marriage and premarital sex and spent less time praying than when they entered.

Mr. Monaghan began his university project with a liberal arts college in Ypsilanti in 1998. There has been a steep learning curve. But he says he's been "reading the Chronicle of Higher Education cover to cover." "Once I realized I was going to be in the pizza business, I learned everything I could learn about the pizza business. I'm a hound for knowledge about the area I'm in."

The idea of the university was "to have a combination of the highest academic standards and the highest spiritual standards in one school." It would, he hoped, "prepare someone not only for this world but the next world." This is the kind of language more generally associated with Protestant fundamentalists. But Mr. Monaghan is not the first person to start a new Catholic school with this idea in mind. In the past 25 years, a number of more traditional colleges, including Christendom in Virginia and Magdalen in New Hampshire, were founded for similar reasons. And unlike many of the older Catholic schools (e.g., Notre Dame) these are run by laypeople, not by religious orders.

Mr. Monaghan thinks the more nettlesome liberal trends in Catholic theology and behavior have started to turn around, and he credits the revelations about sexual abuse by priests with this development: "It cleaned up the seminaries and some of the hierarchy. I thought the press did a great service to the Catholic Church -- even though that wasn't their intention."

The next phase of Mr. Monaghan's pedagogical crusade began in 2000, when the Ave Maria School of Law opened its doors in Ann Arbor. Big-time conservative Catholics signed up. Clarence Thomas gave a lecture. Robert Bork co-taught a class. Princeton professor Robert George joined the board; so did Henry Hyde and Cardinal O'Connor. Everyone involved, particularly the students and faculty, was vetted with care. They had to buy into the mission: "a legal education in fidelity to the Catholic Faith as expressed through Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church." Mr. Monaghan estimates that he has put $69 million into the law school and he has seen some outstanding results. The first class had the highest bar passage rate in the state, and the school earned full ABA accreditation in the shortest possible time.

Mr. Monaghan's real dream was to build a whole university on Domino's Farms, the 270 acres of land he owns in Ann Arbor. In 2002, though, the town decided it would not change zoning laws to allow this. From his vocal support of pro-life causes to his proposal to build a 250-foot crucifix right off a major highway in town, Mr. Monaghan has not always been well-received by the Cambridge of the Midwest. So he moved on. In the fall of 2002, he struck a deal to build his 5,000-student university on 900 acres of land in Immokalee, Fla., just east of Naples. With an additional $50 million investment from Mr. Monaghan, there would also be built an entire conurbation -- called Ave Maria Town.

Set to open in the fall of 2007, Ave Maria Town will be unincorporated and governed by county officials. There are 8,000 homes scheduled to be built, and Mr. Monaghan already has one (though he laments that his wife refuses to live there full time). The town's Web site describes the community as one where "students and faculty of a new, major university will mix with young families and retirees in a real hometown, where they can live, work and play in a beautiful and safe neighborhood." Just how safe remains to be seen. Mr. Monaghan announced in 2004 that "you won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town."

The ACLU threatened a lawsuit, and Mr. Monaghan backed down. He tells me he consulted his lawyers and realized "that some of the things I'm talking about we may not be able to prevent. We never ever intended to break the law." (But Mr. Monaghan seems to tailor his message to his audience. In June, he told a Catholic gathering in Denver that "our plan is that no adult material will appear on the town's cable system and the pharmacy will not sell contraceptives.")

Ave Maria University, which will move to its permanent home in the town next year, now has about 400 students. About a third of the 150 men are contemplating priesthood. Ultimately Mr. Monaghan would like the school to produce 10% of the country's clergy -- a very committed 10%, too. "I was in seminary," he says. "I knew what seminarians were like; they were there because of their mother . . . because of the prestige." But Mr. Monaghan admonishes, "That's the wrong reason to become a priest. They ought to be willing to make sacrifices. Just like I'm making sacrifices doing what I'm doing."

Some law school faculty have fought the move away from Ann Arbor, saying that the school is not just a plaything that Mr. Monaghan can move at will. He says he is often accused of being "too much driven by numbers, that I'm a hard-nosed, insensitive, results-oriented person." But he adds that the people who know him tell him, "You're not that way." The Ave Maria Foundation is responsible for the bulk of the school's revenue and Mr. Monaghan is head of the foundation. "I'm in favor of the law school moving to Florida, and I think it would be a good thing for the university to have a law school on its campus." He adds, as if to counter the charge of capriciousness: "If I vote for the law school to move to Florida, it's because I believe the law school is better off in Florida."

The law school faculty, students and alumni disagree. Most of them are unhappy with the process by which the board has undertaken the decision, such as commissioning a second feasibility study when the first one suggested moving was a bad idea. But mostly the students, faculty and alums just don't want the school to go South. They like Ann Arbor, and being surrounded by people of all stripes. One professor, Stephen Safranek, echoed the sentiments of faculty members: "We have a very robust notion of Catholicism and we're out to show its value not only for Catholics, but society in general. Having the law school in Ann Arbor captures what we're all about."

Mr. Monaghan decries the "campaign by faculty members to make Ave Maria Town out to be some kind of theocracy." He also says he is "tapped out" financially, and will soon stop giving money to the law school. The only way it would have access to his fortune would be to go to Florida, where it would be entitled to a portion of the profits that the university gets from the sale of the land. The school's board assured me (as well as the ABA accreditors) that the school could still survive without Mr. Monaghan's contributions ($2 million a year). When I ask him about this, he shrugs, and notes skeptically, "If they feel that they can raise the money elsewhere, I'll take them for their word."

The battles between Mr. Monaghan and the Ave Maria faculties have become vitriolic. Some have even tried to unionize. When I ask if he sees a contradiction in trying to block such a move, even though unionization is supported by the Catholic Church, he says, "I think that [the church] hierarchy doesn't know as much about those things as they do about their theology."

A number of professors have resigned; some have launched lawsuits; the contract of a prominent emeritus professor from Notre Dame was not renewed. Faculty members reported the college's administration to the Department of Education for fraud involving financial aid in 2002. The school denied any wrongdoing but paid back about $300,000. An investigation by the education department's inspector general hasn't been concluded.

Mr. Monaghan takes all this in stride. In Ann Arbor, he played racquetball with some academics and determined they liked to "complain about the most meaningless things." Board members of his schools have rushed to agree with him, suggesting, as theologian Michael Novak did recently, that "if it weren't Monaghan, it would be dissatisfaction with whomever."

Given how carefully the faculty for Ave Maria were chosen, and how fully they had to agree with the Monaghan vision, this seems unfair. Henry Kissinger once said that the battles in academia are so bitter because the stakes are so low. But at religious universities, the stakes are higher. After all, your mission is getting people to heaven.

Still, Mr. Monaghan does not see much difference between this venture and his previous ones: Higher education is "90% like business." To deal with the 10% that is unique to higher education, he has enlisted the help of administrators and board members. "I've always believed in hiring people smarter than I am. I should be the dumbest one in the room." He's not.

Ms. Riley is deputy editor of the Journal's Taste page and the author of "God on the Quad" (St. Martin's Press, 2004).

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First Amendment on Trial

By THEODORE J. BOUTROUS, Jr.
August 19, 2006; Page A11

While the subpoenas and contempt orders that came out of the Valerie Plame leak investigation sent a shiver through journalists and other champions of a free press, an equally chilling lawsuit between two congressmen slowly plodded through the courts, barely noticed. No longer. Now, the D.C. Circuit has made a ruling in this dispute that, if it stands, will blow a hole through the First Amendment.

The strange case of Boehner v. McDermott began with a conference call between GOP leaders in December 1996, to decide how to deal with the ethics charges against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Rep. (now House Majority Leader) John Boehner participated by cell phone.

A Florida couple intercepted the call on a police scanner and taped it, in violation of federal wiretapping laws. They gave a copy of the tape to Jim McDermott, a Democratic member of the House ethics committee, who gave it to the press, which widely reported on it. Mr. Boehner sued, claiming that Mr. McDermott had invaded his right to privacy and violated federal wiretapping laws.

A few years later, as Mr. Boehner's lawsuit progressed, the Supreme Court decided in Bartnicki v. Vopper that it would violate "the core purposes of the First Amendment" to use the wiretapping statute to punish defendants who had "lawfully" obtained and broadcast a tape of a telephone call that had been illegally recorded by someone else. Such punishment, it said, would impose "sanctions on the publication of truthful information of public concern."

Nevertheless, in March of this year a panel of the D.C. Circuit upheld a $60,000 judgment for statutory and punitive damages against Mr. McDermott. (Mr. Boehner is now claiming an additional $500,000 in attorney's fees.) Since Mr. McDermott supposedly knew that the tape had been illegally recorded when he received it, the court ruled that he got it "unlawfully" and could be punished, like someone who "is guilty of receiving stolen property."

Judge David Sentelle dissented, emphasizing the rule's potentially sweeping ramifications: "No one in the United States could communicate on this topic of public interest" because -- just like Mr. McDermott -- everyone, including the journalists who wrote about the tape and "every reader of the information in the newspapers," knew that it had been illegally recorded.

The full en banc D.C. Circuit has now agreed to rehear the case, and it is imperative that the court reject the panel's ruling. While Mr. Boehner claimed that his right to privacy trumped Mr. McDermott's First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court in Bartnicki declared: "Privacy concerns give way when balanced against the interest in publishing matters of public importance. . . . The risk of this exposure is an essential incident of life in a society which places a primary value on freedom of speech and of press."

The high court has made clear over and over again -- usually in cases involving the press -- that, absent the most extraordinary and compelling circumstances, as long as a citizen breaks no law in obtaining truthful information of public concern, he cannot be punished for publishing it, even if he knew that his source broke the law. A "receipt of stolen property" exception would overturn this important First Amendment doctrine, threatening the ability of the press to obtain and disseminate news.

As a matter of history, tradition and ordinary newsgathering, the press sometimes obtains vital, highly newsworthy information from sources who may have broken the law, or some legal duty while providing it. Indeed, many of the most significant news stories have been based on information that the source may have acquired or communicated illegally, including the Pentagon Papers case, Watergate, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, stories about the health hazards of tobacco and, more recently, articles about CIA secret prisons in Europe and the NSA surveillance program.

Nevertheless, under Boehner, a reporter who obtains important information could be subjected to punishment, simply because he knew or suspected that the source had broken the law in giving it to him. Such a doctrine would severely hamper traditional newsgathering and reporting activities, and it would inject significant uncertainty into the reporting process.

Unless overturned, Boehner v. McDermott will embolden the government and private citizens to be even more aggressive in taking legal actions that aim to punish and deter truthful speech. This is already happening: The Department of Justice has cited Boehner as "especially instructive" in justifying its prosecution of two former lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for receiving and then discussing with reporters national defense information, in alleged violation of the Espionage Act. Those same prosecutors, as well as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have refused to rule out the possibility that the government could launch similar criminal charges against journalists who receive and publish classified information.

It can be extremely tempting to scale back on traditional First Amendment freedoms in the area of national security during war time. The government does have the right to protect information in the name of national security and other compelling interests, and to impose secrecy obligations on government officials to avoid harmful disclosures. But the First Amendment, as a check on government power and an instrument of self-government, tasks the press with ferreting out information that the government wants to keep secret.

That information, after all, really belongs to the people, who have delegated the power to govern to elected officials. Sometimes the only way the public can learn about government wrongdoing, or questionable government policies, is through leaks. The late Yale law professor Alexander Bickel famously called this built-in constitutional tension the "unruly contest" between the press and the government. Boehner v. McDermott would stack the deck in this contest between government secrecy and free speech. It should be rejected. The interests at stake involve all Americans -- not just two feuding congressmen.

Mr. Boutrous has filed a friend-of-the court brief in the Boehner case for 18 news organizations, including Dow Jones, publisher of this newspaper.