Planet Better
The Washington Post leads with the Clinton administration's
announcement that it plans to play a role in the numerous city lawsuits against
the gun industry. Federal officials, says the Post , will begin pressing
gun makers to make concessions to settle the various city lawsuits and if the
companies don't, HUD will bring a class action suit of its own against them on
behalf of the nation's public housing authorities. The story is fronted at the
New York Times and Los Angeles
Times . The LAT leads with the first official bureaucratic
reaction to the almost certain loss of the Mars Polar Lander: NASA's vow to
completely reassess its interplanetary exploration program, a story everybody
else fronts but the NYT . USA Today goes with a story everybody else stuffs:
the decision by a federal judge to block a web news service's attempt to post
the annual financial disclosure forms submitted by all federal judges. Paper
versions of the forms are already available to the general public. The
NYT leads with a local story: The claim of public school investigators
that dozens of New York City teachers and two principals supplied answers to
students for the standardized tests that determine how city schools are ranked
and also whether or not students are promoted. The paper's top non-local story,
which nobody else fronts, is Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak's call for a moratorium on
further Jewish settlement of the West Bank, an apparent reversal of the policy
Israel had been following since Barak came into power last summer.
The WP lead observes that the new federal gun strategy could realize through the
courts gun control measures that have failed in Congress. Measures like
controlling sales at gun shows, limiting the volume of gun purchases at any one
time, and cutting off dealers whose sold guns are disproportionately involved
in crimes. The NYT story adds a White House-supplied stat that fleshes
out the public housing angle: Typically, more than 70 percent of the 500
murders occurring annually in the nation's 100 largest housing projects are
committed with a handgun. The papers point out that the federal government's
move is patterned after its lawsuit against the cigarette manufacturers. But
the LAT notes an important difference: the tobacco companies have many
times the size and staying power of the gun companies.
The LAT NASA story goes high with the agency's administrator saying,
"Clearly something is wrong, and we have to understand it." The coverage makes
it clear that understanding might require postponement or even scrapping of
already-scheduled space missions. A main object of NASA's reassessment, says
the LAT , will be the "faster, better, cheaper," mandate the unmanned
missions have been operating under, including the entire $356.8 million Mars
two-mission package that failed this year. The LAT lead breaks a
baffling silence that has marked the papers' NASA coverage in recent days: it
finally identifies the Mars program's prime contractor--Lockheed Martin
(although not until the 10th paragraph). In this, the paper's hand was somewhat
forced, since it's now apparent that the company's performance will be a focus
of the NASA re-look. The Wall Street Journal story also mentions Lockheed, but the
NYT story doesn't, nor does USAT 's, nor does the WP 's
front-pager, (although an inside Post NASA effort does).
The central issue of the federal bench financial data case--whether
dissemination via the Web poses some sort of extra danger not posed by
paper--is also raised in a front-page WSJ feature about a recently
discovered scam in which someone applied for and got and used credit cards in
the names of the top U.S. military officers, including more than 75 generals and
admirals. This was possible because the officers' service numbers, which are
just their Social Security numbers, were made available to Congress as part of
the promotion process, and have since appeared on a Web site maintained to
protest the use of the SSN as a national ID. But, the story points out, nobody
can prove that the brass' SSNs weren't gotten directly from the
Congressional Record . None of the brass are on the hook for the money
cadged but the story points out a more serious angle: Since service numbers are
now just SSNs, if a soldier is captured, as things stand now, he is required to
provide his SSN to his captors, which they could use to find out all about his
family, finances and personal background. The Pentagon is therefore, says the
Journal , seriously considering going back to its old practice of issuing
separate service numbers unrelated to SSNs.
An inside WP story reports that the tense situation between Cuba and
the U.S. over custody of that six-year-old boy was compounded when Cuba
demanded that the U.S. return the crew of a fishing boat it says was hijacked
out of Cuba Monday, and is now in Coast Guard custody.
About Face! On Nov. 12., Today's Papers wrote that Bill Bradley
joined the National Guard during the Vietnam War. In fact, he joined the Air
Force Reserve. TP regrets the error and has fixed it in the online text.
The WSJ reports that Discover, American Express and MasterCard can
now be used to pay income tax bills. But not Visa. The paper doesn't explain
why. You'd think the company would want its piece of what's sure to be a record
volume of tax payments, no?
