Appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, recently announced that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the Boeing Co.

Now, then: why does Boeing need an expert in constitutional law as their general counsel? Or is Luttig being hired (hold your laughter, please) because of his high-level Bush administration connections? (He was actually short-listed for the USSC twice by Bush.) And if so, just when did the revolving door between the Executive Branch and big defense contractors like Boeing expand to include sitting federal judges, and isn't that a tad, uh, unethical? (The message to every judge who hears a case involving Boeing: "If we like you, we can hire you and you'll make a pile of money.") And hasn't Boeing (or the Beltway in general) learned anything yet about the impropriety of hiring away government officials just because of who they know?

OK, so that last question was rhetorical...

--Geov Parrish

Last year the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Office of Management and Budget and the Small Business Administration, introduced plans to roll back reporting requirements for commercial facilities that release toxic chemicals into the environment. The Toxic Release Inventory program, which requires companies to report pollution, would be severely restricted.

According to Sean Moulton, OMB Watch's Director for Federal Policy, the EPA's plans would limit the people's right to know what toxins are being released into communities all across the country.

"The Toxic release Inventory tracks 650 chemicals and anything over 500lbs, either released into the atmosphere, water or even disposed of in a landfill has to be reported. What EPA has proposed is to raise that limit tenfold to 5,000 lbs. That's an enormous loophole and that means that if the company down the street from you is releasing 4,900 lbs of benzene or arsenic, you're not going to know about it."

The EPA, OMB and Small Business Administration claim that the changes are needed for cost savings but Moulton says the savings would be minimal. Moulton says that EPA's recent plans to do away with the Toxic Release Inventory is part of a long pattern of reducing accountability at that agency under the Bush Administration.

"Unfortunately, this fits directly into a trend we've seen at the EPA over the last few years where the interests of corporations are given priority over the safety and health concerns of local communities. The changes being proposed are going to provide a shroud of secrecy for companies allowing them to avoid any kind of public attention for their pollution, and the people who will pay for it will be the communities around the country who will no longer have the right to know what's in the air they breathe or the water they drink."

--Mark Taylor-Canfield

The Seattle City Council has approved a new Cable franchise agreement that was negotiated with the cable provider Comcast.

The Cable Act of 1984 allows municipalities to require cable providers to fund public education and government access channels, in exchange for monopoly control of a city's cable T.V. system. Seattle's previous cable franchise agreement did just that, creating the popular Seattle Community Access Network, known as SCAN TV.

Media activist Daniel Hannah, the chair of the board of directors for SCAN, has been directly involved in the negotiations and he is speaking out about the implications of the new Comcast agreement on SCAN TV--King County's only community-based television channel. Hannah says that Seattle missed a great opportunity when city negotiators decided not to require Comcast to fully fund the Seattle Community Access Network TV channel.

"Public access is a resource which is very valuable for the community. It's one of the few opportunities where people have actual access to the tools of communication to speak directly to their communities.... Comcast is a huge corporation out of Philadelphia and it makes a lot of money from this community and a lot of that profit is leaving our community. One thing they can provide as a cost of doing business is to support local community broadcasting. In the long run, this latest franchise agreement lets them off the hook for that."

When the Telecommunications Act was considered by Congress in 1996 Major media corporations attempted to strip legislation of the requirement to fund public access channels. The bill is up for renewal again this year and media democracy activists are worried that funding for community access channels may once again be threatened.

--M.T.-C.

The folks at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action threw their annual Mother's Day protest at Bangor Nuclear Subase (home of Trident submarines that can make everything go BOOM) on Sunday, and starting on Monday morning at 5 AM some of them began blocking morning commute traffic onto the base.

Thirteen people were arrested. Jody Tiller of Olympia, Carol Ann Barrows of Tacoma, the indefatigable Brian Watson of Bremerton, and Karen Jones, the equally indefatigable Rev. Anne Hall, and Raging Granny Shirley Morrison of Seattle all face county charges. Federal charges await Lynne Greenwald of Bremerton, Jan Prichard-Cohen of Tacoma, Bryce Brown of Olympia, Rev. Gilberto Perez of Bainbridge Island, Bryan Edmark of Lynnwood, and protest vets Rose Betz-Zall and Mary Hanson of Seattle.

Thanks to all of you. When you get home, speak clearly into the lighting fixture... --G.P.

A few years ago, popular spy novelist John Le Carre wrote a blistering novel, entitled The Constant Gardener, whose plot revolved around a major transnational pharmaceutical company's efforts to test new drugs on unsuspecting Africans, far from the eye of the probing West. (Le Carre then publicly and vociferously opposed the proposed US/UK invasion of Iraq, and his next novel following Gardener was a blistering attack on post-9-11 American chicanery. It was the sort of thing only a man who had been a bestselling author for over 40 years could get away with.) More recently, The Constant Gardener was made into an acclaimed movie, further popularizing its plot.

It appears Le Carre was on to something.

This month, it was revealed that a Nigerian investigative panel has concluded that the world's largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, engaged in just such a plot. Here's a description, courtesy the Washington Post, the only major US media outlet that bothered to carry the story:

"A panel of Nigerian medical experts has concluded that Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital. That finding is detailed in a lengthy Nigerian government report that has remained unreleased."

Pfizer's experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug," the Nigerian panel concluded, and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant." The meningitis epidemic that was the basis for the experiments killed 15,000 Africans; five died after Pfizer's drug treatment.

An approval letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, which Pfizer used to justify its actions, had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in the remote Nigerian town of Kano, where the experiments were conducted. No clear word as to why the Nigerian panel's report remains officially unreleased, but you can guess. Pfizer's experimental drug, Trovan, was later banned in the EU and severely restricted by the FDA after reports emerged of liver damage and deaths associated with Trovan's use.

Fortunately, here in the US we have courageous Democrats who won't stand for such a thing. Here's Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the sole congressperson quoted in the Post story: "I think it borders on the criminal that the large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe, are using these poor, illiterate, and uninformed people as guinea pigs."

Borders on the criminal? One wonders what Le Carre would say about that. --G.P.

Last year, the Seattle School District's proposal to close 10 schools as part of its effort to address a massive budget deficit met enormous public opposition, and the proposal was withdrawn. Now, a community panel has come back with an entirely new set of recommendations, involving the closing of 12 Seattle schools, and the proposal is actually worse than last year's.

Why? Because this year's panel emphasized an entirely different set of closure criteria, centering primarily on school size and test scores, with predictable results. Eleven of the 16 schools affected overall are south of the Ship Canal; more affluent schools north of the Ship Canal that were targeted last year are off the hook this time. Eight of the nine schools that would be closed entirely (as opposed to being moved) have majority non-white populations. The schools with the poorest test scores, of course, tend to be the schools with the highest population of students that have a hard time taking tests: non-native English speakers, for example, or students with difficult home lives. It's not necessarily a function of poor schooling at all.

Using school size as a major criteria can be problematic, too. A number of affected schools are ones with specialized, alternative programs, programs that don't attract the most enrollees but that service students less likely to thrive in a "traditional" (i.e., non-WASL-oriented) environment. Graham Hill Elementary is one of only two schools in the district (Bagley Elementary is the other) with Montessori programs; it would be closed, despite enthusiastic parental involvement. Summit K-12 would be moved, as would John Marshall Alternative High School (to an undecided location). MLK Elementary and T.T. Minor Elementary would be merged. And so it goes; alternative programs in Seattle seem to be subjected to regular attacks over the years, and this looks no different.

The community panel finalizes its recommendations May 30; parents and teachers at each of the affected schools are already mobilizing, and in many cases they could use the public's support. The school board itself is expected to make a final decision July 26. -G.P.