Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Lynn Jenkins, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, et al.

After last Saturday's passage of the Democratic health care bill, we congresswomen want to state strongly why we feel women should oppose the plan.

In American families, women make most health care decisions, whether helping a parent, caring for a child or nudging along a spouse. We spend two of three health care dollars.

In fact, women are the overwhelming majority of professional health care providers: 98 percent of home care aides, 90 percent of nurses, the majority of first-year medical students and a third of doctors. The time when medicine was predominately a man's field is receding into history, no more relevant to health care today than bloodletting or leeches. Yet, in all the debate about legislative changes to health care, few politicians have bothered to ask women what they want.

As congresswomen, we think we should be listening to and speaking out for women.

If Democrats in Congress and the administration had been listening to women, they would not have drafted and passed a reform bill that takes power away from women and gives it to federal bureaucrats. Today, we, women - working with a trusted medical professional - guide which treatments are best for our family, from flu shots and hormones to heart stents and long-term care facilities. If H.R. 3962 ultimately becomes law, these decisions will increasingly be made by bureaucrats, statisticians and actuaries.

The Pelosi health care plan aims to have an impartial, all-knowing federal government make decisions that cannot be trusted to mere housewives (and their greedy, small town doctors).

Yet, is there any evidence that the federal government can make good medical decisions? The administration is having trouble administering the H1N1 vaccine program; what makes the White House think the government will be able to administer the nation's health care system? H1N1 vaccine is being delivered late; there's not enough available; and doctors are rationing shots - it's a preview of what a national health insurance program will look like.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act is nearly 2,000 pages, longer than Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." It creates 118 new federal bureaucracies.

The bill uses the word "shall" 3,425 times. These "Father Knows Best" passages are government mandates that force doctors, consumers and others in the health care profession to do what Congress orders. The word "penalty" is used 113 times for those who don't follow orders. "Tax" is referred to 97 times.

A survey in mid-October of women voters by a nonpartisan research group showed that most women are satisfied with their own health care insurance (66 percent) and with their current medical providers (74 percent).

The survey respondents (32 percent Republican, 40 percent Democratic and the rest independents), had grim news for those that want to see a "public option" and more aggressive role by the federal government:

c Seventy-seven percent of women said making cuts to Medicare was a bad idea.

c Seventy-five percent want few to no changes to their own health care.

c By 2 to 1 margins, women said federal administration of health care would increase costs and lower quality.

c Sixty-four percent of women said they personally would rather have private health insurance than a government-run plan.

While we recognize that health care reform is necessary, the plan passed out of the House runs counter to the wishes of most women in America.

There are better ways to reduce health care costs and provide more affordable options for the uninsured. The Republicans in Congress have proposed a number of improvements that would have reduced medical costs, increased options and empowered families to make their own choices about health care.

But our common sense steps to improve health care were not adopted by the majority. Now the legislation moves to the Senate, where the debate will continue.

Should we trust the federal bureaucrats or women across the country to make health care decisions? Ask your mother, your daughter, your wife or your sister.

Listen to what she has to say.

SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, Fla. (WSVN) -- The family of a World War II veteran received a touching tribute. Veterans' medals of honor returned to family

Some medals of honor, which were destroyed in a fire have now been replaced. The original medals belonged to an Air Force captain.

Butch Hinton could walk out of prison as early as 2011

By HANK TESTER

Updated 5:41 AM EST, Fri, Nov 13, 2009

The Shannon Melendi case rocked Miami in 1994.

But 15 years later the vibrations are still rattling the college student's family as her killer readies for a parole hearing that could see him walk out of prison in a year.

Butch Hinton is currently serving a life sentence in Georgia but is up for parole in 2011.

"He is an animal," said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is working with the Melendi family to block Hinton's release. The family and Southwest High School have put together a petition to try and keep Hinton in prison for life.

On the Melendi's family website, the family asks for people to join the cause.

Shannon Melendi was a beautiful, bright, 19-year-old scholar-athlete who was attending Atlanta's Emory University when she suddenly disappeared March 26, 1994. Her mistake? She went to lunch with Hinton.

There was a massive search. A body was never found, but Hinton was always a suspect. It took years but an Atlanta detective team put the case together and a jury did the rest.

As the case unfolded, the Miami community rallied behind Yvonne and Luis Melendi. Funds were raised, rewards offered, press conferences were held, and the family members were in Atlanta on the investigation's front lines.

And then there were the pictures. Luis Melendi is a professional photographer.

As a proud father he had shot hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of his eldest daughter. Those photos, no portraits, aired every night for weeks on local TV stations. Shannon's face became one of the most recognizable images in recent memory. Mention her name today and people will instantly respond. The images kept the story alive, on the air and on the front pages.

And because of the photographs they remember Butch Hinton, the airline mechanic, Sunday school teacher and softball umpire who finally confessed that he killed Shannon and burned her body.

Students at Southwest High School, where Shannon was a stand out soccer team member, have a petition drive going to urge the State of Georgia Board of Pardons-Parole to deny Hinton parole. They have solid backing Ros-Lehtinen.

Miami-Dade Police detectives who aided in the Shannon Melendi case warn that if no effort is mounted to oppose Hinton's parole he could walk.

Shannon's family hopes the community will rally again and slam the door on Hinton for good.

BY ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN Ileana.Ros-Lehtinen@mail.house.gov

Five years after Congress declared that genocide was taking place in Sudan, the victims in Darfur and throughout the nation are still waiting for decisive U.S. leadership to help bring an end to their suffering and justice to their assailants.

After delaying for months, the Obama administration has unveiled a troubling new approach toward Sudan premised on the hope that the perpetrators of the genocide will now act as partners for peace. The new policy offers U.S. incentives for the Sudanese regime if it makes undefined ``progress.''

While the administration's desire to help the victims in Darfur is without doubt, its consideration of a policy that will count on Sudanese President Gen. Omar al-Bashir and his thugs to work with the United States is deeply troubling.

Bashir is a war criminal responsible for the deaths of more than 2.3 million people. The regime, rooted in radical ideology, is responsible for the ongoing genocide, which has claimed 300,000 lives and displaced three million more.

This cabal will never be part of a real solution to the crisis in Darfur and must not be viewed, much less treated, by the United States as a legitimate partner.

Engagement with and incentives to the Sudanese regime illustrate a stark reversal for the president, who called this type of approach ``reckless and cynical'' during his campaign for the White House.

It is disconcerting that the United States would make such an enormous policy reversal when it is clear that the Sudanese regime has done nothing to merit any sort of overture or rapprochement.

To be sure, a new comprehensive approach is the only way to bring an end to the crisis in Darfur. But enormous challenges remain, and they are only amplified by the involvement of the Bashir regime.

We need to help improve humanitarian access and support the deployment of a fully equipped peacekeeping mission with a clear mandate and robust rules of engagement to ensure civilian protection. We need to bring warring factions in Darfur to a political solution so that the people languishing in camps can go home.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) must be fully implemented so that the people in Southern Sudan can finally enjoy the freedom and development they deserve. We need to see the Abyei road map implemented, outstanding issues in the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states resolved and the North-South border demarcated.

We need to see free, fair and transparent elections in April 2010, a referendum in 2011 and the results of each respected.

We also need to balance our efforts in Darfur with those in Southern Sudan, so that we do not sacrifice one region for the other. The conflicts in Darfur and Southern Sudan are inextricably linked and need to be treated that way.

But we cannot accomplish any of these goals without assuring the people of Sudan that our nation's strong stance against the Bashir regime will not wilt.

Last month, the administration's special envoy to Sudan, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, touted engagement with the regime by saying: ``We've got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.''

But believing that somehow ``cookies'' and ``gold stars'' will win concessions from Bashir ignores the terrible lessons of the past. Bashir is not a partner for peace and never will be.

U.S. policy toward Sudan must maintain strong sanctions, and U.S. leaders must refuse to be duped or appeased by empty gestures and window dressing designed to make us forget about the horror that has taken place in Darfur and beyond.

While relief has not reached the victims of this terrible tragedy as quickly as we had hoped, now is not the time to give up.

Now is the time for us to redouble our efforts and ratchet up pressure on those responsible for these atrocities, rather than capitulate in the face of their obstinacy.

Five years ago, we labeled the atrocities in Darfur genocide. We vowed to move quickly to end the suffering. We are again being called upon to uphold that vow. But we will not succeed in that task if we label this enemy a partner.

Nicole Maristany

MIAMI (CBS4) - October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and there's a group of South Florida teenagers who are reaching out to help break the cycle of domestic abuse.

"I hope that people realize that this is a topic we can talk about and something we can actually do something about," said Emily Martinez-Lanza, a member of Teens Against Domestic Abuse.

Emily is only 18-years-old but already an advocate for victims of domestic abuse.

"Basically it was the death of a very close family friend. She was actually murdered by her husband; we saw them suffer through it," explained Emily.

Emily started a club at her high school, Gulliver Prep. It's the first organization of its kind created and led by South Florida teens.

Through education, community service and legislative reform, Emily and the group, "Teens Against Domestic Abuse", or TADA", has tried to put a stop to the cycle of abuse in our community.

"I decided why not do something about this, it's just a big an issue as drug and alcohol abuse that our schools address every day," said Emily.

Her friends and TADA club members agree.

"This club is different from all the other clubs I'm in seeing as it focuses on one specific topic of domestic violence, I mean our school has never had something like this before," said Shaan Patel.

By bringing domestic abuse awareness education to the school and local women's shelters, this team of teens has already made waves not only here in South Florida, but also on Capitol Hill, where just last week Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recognized the group.

In video posted on YouTube, Ros-Lehtinen says, "I commend 'TADA' for their efforts in promoting domestic violence education in our schools; I also commend the Women's Fund of Miami-Dade County for its outstanding contribution to helping stop domestic violence in our South Florida community."

Emily feels her journey as an activist has just begun, and plans to expand the club to high schools across the nation.

"Hopefully others who see the progression of this organization will be able to do the same and follow their own passions."

If you'd like to join these teens in their mission to put a stop to domestic abuse and violence, call Neighbors 4 Neighbors at 305-597-4404.

TADA will hold a panel discussion on November 5th, 2009, "Break the Silence: Break the Cycle." It's aimed to shed light on domestic violence and how it transcends age, social and ethnic groups. It'll include a panel of experts in the field of domestic abuse.

The event will be held at the Holiday Inn (1350 S Dixie Hwy., Coral Gables, FL, 33146), across from University of Miami.

The event is also an opportunity for TADA to raise funds, so they can continue to:

* Educate the public about the truth of domestic abuse * Provide victims with necessities and financial support while in transition * Create teen-driven TADA chapters in more schools * Push legislative efforts to make education on domestic abuse part of high schools' curricula nationwide

BY BRITON ALONSO

ALLISON DIAZ / FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

Nearly 1,000 of Miami's most philanthropic women gathered Friday at the University of Miami to celebrate their work with United Way Women's Leadership, a group that has raised $6 billion to help the needy in South Florida.

Doctors, teachers, bankers, lawyers, full-time mothers and community service volunteers attended the ninth annual Women's Leadership Breakfast, whose keynote speaker was Ann Compton, ABC News correspondent.

Leslie Saiontz, who co-chaired the event with her mother, Sue Miller, paid homage to the ``challenges of balancing careers, family and our community . . . and these women who embrace the challenge each and every day with such grace and success.''

The women heard a touching story from a recipient of their largess.

Xenia Cotarelo, 19, dropped out of high school at 14 and became pregnant at 15. With help from the Center for Excellence in Early Education, a United Way group, she graduated from high school and is pursuing an associate's degree in science at Miami Dade College. She wants to be a forensic pathologist.

She takes classes on raising children while her daughter, Xenia, attends preschool there.

``The center is not only a place that empowers us parents to be better parents, but a place for our kids to grow and learn, too,'' Cotarelo said.

She was clearly honored to speak, telling the audience she hopes to be sitting among them in the near future.

One of those women was Compton, who regaled the crowd with stories of covering seven presidents, in between having four children.

She traveled extensively, including taking a memorable trip to India, Pakistan and other South Asian countries with then-first lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea. The trip illustrated the plight of girls and women in the developing world.

``We visited Mother Teresa's orphanage . . . and every single baby was a baby girl, '' said Compton, noting they were abandoned babies. ``And these were the lucky ones.''

The next day, they visited a hospital in Bangladesh. They found only baby boys.

``The staff said, `Well, women aren't going to walk a day and a half . . for a sick daughter, but they will for a son.' ''

September 29, 7:42

On South Beach we are all used to the lack of parking but we hope as we leave the island that the problem stays at home. It doesn't for a section of the population which deserves better treatment than they are currently getting. Veterans. A lack of available parking in modern times with the ADA act is unacceptable and it has garnered the attention of our Washington DC representation.

Ros-Lehtinen contacts the Miami Veteran's Affairs Medical Ctr regarding their lack of available parking for patients and visitors.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a senior member of the Florida Congressional Delegation, today Thursday contacted the Miami Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center regarding a lack of available parking at the Bruce W. Carter Department of Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center. The Congresswoman was contacted by a constituent from her Congressional District who has encountered many difficulties trying to find a suitable parking space at this Center.

Ros-Lehtinen’s missive to the Miami VA’s Director, Mary Berrocal, states that, although she is aware of the construction of a new Fisher House as well as a new security perimeter, she is troubled by the lack of parking spaces surrounding the hospital. The Congresswoman asks the VA to do everything within their reach to provide adequate parking for patients and visitors to the facility noting that the Miami VA is the primary point of care for veterans living in South Florida as well as a specialty treatment center for veterans from across the State of Florida.

By Dan Robinson Capitol Hill 30 September 2009

The U.S. Congress has approved legislation to triple non-military assistance to Pakistan during the next five years. A voice vote by the House of Representatives sent a compromise measure approved last week by the U.S. Senate to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature.

Congressional approval comes at an important moment for the Obama administration, as it wrestles with how to move forward in Afghanistan, which is facing a growing Taliban insurgency based in and supplied from neighboring Pakistan.

Under the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, aid would increase to $1.5 billion a year between 2010 and 2014 for various development projects, including efforts to improve education, democratic institutions, human rights, and conditions for women and children.

But while focused on development, the legislation comes with strict conditions regarding security aid that were the subject of intense negotiations with the White House and the Pentagon.

Democrat Howard Berman heads the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"Beginning in fiscal year 2011, military assistance may only be provided to Pakistan, if the president determines that the government of Pakistan is continuing to cooperate with the U.S. in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and has both demonstrated a sustained commitment to combating terrorist groups and has made significant efforts towards that end," said Howard Berman.

The bill prohibits security-related aid and arms transfers, unless Pakistan demonstrates continuing cooperation in dismantling nuclear supplier networks, makes significant efforts to fight terrorist groups and ensures that Pakistani security forces do not subvert political or judicial processes.

The bill requires Pakistan to act against extremist groups on its soil, and specifically mentions Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the latter of which is blamed for the 2008 terrorist attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

The legislation says Pakistan must prevent groups from carrying out cross-border attacks into neighboring countries, close terrorist camps in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area, and dismantle terrorist bases in other areas including Quetta and Muridke.

Not included is a provision that would have created economic opportunity zones in border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan from which goods could be imported to the United States duty-free.

Supporters of that provision, which originated in the House of Representatives, hoped that such a step would improve economic opportunities for people subject to Taliban and other extremist influences, and said they hope it will re-emerge as part of other legislation.

Republicans, who earlier had asserted that conditions in the House version of the bill amounted to micromanaging U.S. support for Pakistan, eventually supported the legislation.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, pointed to more balanced language supported by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, on subjects ranging from nonproliferation issues to counter-terrorism, and strong accountability standards.

"The new text requires [that] before any economic assistance to Pakistan can be released that the administration submit a Pakistan Assistance Strategy Report, including a description of the principle objectives of U.S. assistance, a detailed spending plan and a plan for program monitoring," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Some Democrats and Republicans voiced skepticism that additional assistance would bring about any change in Pakistan's domestic situation or its willingness to confront extremist groups.

Here are Democrat Gary Ackerman, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, and Republican Ed Royce:

ACKERMAN: "I fear again we are choosing to be Pakistan's patron rather than its partner. In the end, Pakistan will absorb what we offer and remain the same Pakistan and worst of all they will claim once again that we have failed them. But we have no choice but to pass this bill."

ROYCE: "I have concerns about establishing too big a footprint in Pakistan, in other words, the so-called 'diplomatic surge'. The fact is that if the U.S isn't welcomed in much of Pakistan, it may not be the case that this addition of personnel on the ground is helpful."

The Obama administration strongly supports the legislation, which contains waiver authorities empowering the president to ignore provisions in the interest of national security.

The expanded aid comes on top of at least $12 billion in economic and security assistance the United States has given Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Monday , September 21, 2009 Ben Evansky

It seems that even before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives for the U.N. General Assembly, New York businesses are giving him the cold shoulder.

Last week, the Helmsley hotel cancelled Ahmadinejad's speech and banquet. Now, Gotham Hall has decided to act on public pressure and cancel his proposed speech for Sept. 25.

The group which is spearheading the successful campaign to stop Ahmadinejad's speeches in New York, UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com (UANI), said the Essex House will now be hosting the Iranian President as a substitute for Gotham House.

UANI has called upon the owners of the Essex House, Jumeirah Group of the Arab Emirates, to immediately cancel Ahmadinejad's speech on their property.

Mark Wallace, the President of UANI said in a letter sent to the general manager of the Essex House that it should "clarify and reconsider its decision to host the banquet and address and instead decline to provide such a venue for President Ahmadinejad. By doing business with the Iranian government the Essex House is accepting blood money from a regime that brutally suppresses its own people and that is a danger to global security."

Nile Gardiner, a senior fellow who specialises in the U.N. and foreign affairs at the Heritage Foundation, agreed.

"Essex House should say no to the Iranian President," Gardiner told FOX News. "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of the most brutal tyrants in the world and a massive sponsor of terrorism and anti-Semitism, with American blood on his hands. No Hotel in New York should be providing him with a venue from which to spread his viscious message of hatred for the free world."

The United Arab Emirates is one of Iran's largest trading partners and just recently signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. that is expected to go into force in October. The ranking Republican member on the House Foreign Affairs committe, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recently criticised the deal saying that the agreement set a dangerous precedent.

By Nile Gardiner

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the feisty ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee has written to the Secretary of State calling on her to cancel $2.5 million in State Department Economic Support Funds for Libya, of which $400,000 is earmarked for foundations run by the Gaddafi family. Ros-Lehtinen’s memo to Clinton follows a letter last week by Congressman Mark Steven Kirk (a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee) to the White House urging the president to intervene.

Here is her statement in full:

“Although this money was provided by Congress to promote democracy and human rights in Libya, the Administration has chosen to funnel the resources through the Qadhafi family. How could this assistance effectively promote democracy when entrusted to the dictator’s family?”

“This waste of taxpayer dollars is particularly outrageous following the hero’s welcome given to the Lockerbie bomber organized by Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi and his son Saif al-Islam al Qadhafi.”

“This windfall to the Qadhafis will only work to further entrench a dictatorial regime whose extremist dogma was most recently demonstrated just yesterday, with Muammar Qadhafi’s bizarre diatribe against freedom-loving nations at the UN.”

The Florida Congresswoman is absolutely right. No U.S. funds should be going to Gaddafi or his barbaric regime. If Clinton approves the disbursement of the money to Libya, $200,000 will be given to the Gaddafi Development Foundation, run by Gaddafi’s son Saif, and $200,000 is due to go to the Wa’ettasemon organization, run by his daughter Aisha in conjunction with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). For further details on how Gaddafi’s family charities spend their money, see Greg Pollowitz’s post at the Media Blog over at NRO.

The US Congress should also investigate whether American funds have been used in the past by the Libyan regime to enrich Gaddafi or his family, or to strengthen his hold on power, and block any future government funds from being sent.

It simply beggars belief that just weeks after Muammar Gaddafi welcomed home the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as a returning hero, the Obama administration is still planning to send U.S. taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the Libyan dictator. Colonel Gaddafi does not need another stimulus package from Washington.

By TIMOTHY O'HARA Citizen Staff

A program that uses buoys to monitor weather and sea conditions in the Florida Keys and South Florida may be saved from the chopping block.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) proposed cutting the program, called SEAKEYS for Sustained Ecological Research Related to the Management of the Florida Keys Seascape, because of its tight budget. Cutting the program spawned a lobbying effort by Keys boaters, harbor pilots, commercial boat captains and local politicians. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sent a letter to Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA, asking to con.tinue the funding.

Since then, NOAA has located money not earmarked for anything that can be used for the buoy program, SEAKEYS program director John Ogden said.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is currently working to facilitate the transfer of money from a NOAA coral reef conservation program to the funding of the SEAKEYS program. Sanctuary officials have identified funding for the SEAKEYS program as its top priority management activity for the coral conservation program in 2009-10 fiscal year, sanctuary spokeswoman Carrie Karnes said.

NOAA had planned to cut $170,000 from the program, effectively killing it, but Ogden estimated that between $50,000 to $100,000 has been found in the agency's budget, which would be "sufficient" to carry the program halfway through the fiscal year, which starts in October, he said.

"The dust hasn't completely settled yet, but we are very optimistic that the SEAKEYS program will get bridge funding to mid-2010, at which time our continuation proposal will be reviewed and funded," he said.

The stations provide real-time weather data that harbor pilots use to guide cruise ships and other large commercial vessels in and out of the Key West port, said Robert McGuire, local harbor pilot. The Sand Key station is just a few miles to the west of the main ship channel entrance.

The harbor pilots are not the only large-vessel operators who rely on the data from SEAKEYS buoys. The captains of large Coast Guard cutters also acquire information from those buoys, Coast Guard spokesman Matthew Meinhold said.

SEAKEYS is also widely used by local commercial and sport fishermen and the operators of large snorkel charter boats, McGuire said.

Established in 1991, SEAKEYS tracks marine environmental conditions along the Florida Keys and Florida Bay. The seven monitoring stations run from the Dry Tortugas north to Key Biscayne on the ocean side and into northwest Florida Bay on the Gulf of Mexico side. Since construction, the stations have been continuously upgraded to keep pace with changing technologies and needs. The stations also have been used as a test bed for new technology, Ogden said.

House To Vote On Resolution To Honor Virginia Key Beach Park

POSTED: Tuesday, September 8, 2009

UPDATED: 7:39 am EDT September 8, 2009

MIAMI -- The House of Representatives will vote on a resolution honoring Virginia Key Beach Park Tuesday.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's sponsored the bill that recognizes the national significance of the historic park.

A segregated beach during the 1900s, the beach played a prominent role in South Florida’s efforts to desegregate during the civil rights movement

“The passage of this Resolution will serve as a tribute to all local activists, including the late Athalie Range, who fought to have this beach preserved for future generations so that they might learn about the African-American community's struggle during the civil rights movement,” said Ros-Lehtinen.

By ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff

A little-known company based in Long Island, N.Y., with a facility in Marathon, is making waves in the military special operations community, especially after receiving millions from a defense appropriations bill.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen requested $9.3 million and last month received $4.5 million in funds for Stidd Systems to develop a new underwater combat vehicle with increased payload capacity that could be developed and built in the Middle Keys.

"[She] has a long-standing history of support for this project," said her spokeswoman, Christine DelPortillo.

Stidd Systems builds what it calls the Diver Propulsion Device (DPD), which looks like a small submarine, but requires the user to wear scuba gear.

The device allows Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Marines and other Special Operations Forces to traverse greater distances under water without having to exert all their energy swimming. Green Berets, who train at the Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School on Fleming Key, are familiar with DPDs, as are the Navy SEAL teams that take advantage of the clear Florida Keys waters to train.

Stidd Systems' DPDs also are used by many other allied nations' special operations forces, making Stidd Systems one of the few companies in the world developing such technology.

The $4.5 million will go toward the development of another DPD that can hold more gear and go farther, said company Vice President Dave Wilberding.

"Special Operations Command asked us to look at new ways of doing things with an increased payload," Wilberding said. That new system most likely will be developed and tested in Marathon, where Stidd Systems has been operating since 2000, he said. The company also trains soldiers how to use their boats in waters near Marathon, he added.

"There are recreational products you may have seen that are similar to our DPD," Wilberding said, referring to "scooters" that divers use to get far fast. "We use an extremely high-tech lithium ion battery that provides better endurance beyond anything available commercially."

The company plans to expand its Marathon site, for which Wilberding credited the local community and Ros-Lehtinen.

Downtown land owned by the Federal Bureau of Prisons will be transferred to Miami Dade College for classroom space.

By LUISA YANEZ lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law a bill clearing the way for downtown land owned by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to be transferred to Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus.

The 47,500-square-foot parcel valued at $6 million in 2008 will be the future home of a new MDC classroom building. The building's lower floors will become secured parking for federal employees of the nearby prison.

The L-shaped lot is adjacent to Wolfson Campus' New World School of the Arts, between North Miami Avenue and First Avenue.

The joint agreement will be beneficial for the federal agency and the college: MDC needs more classroom, and prisons employees need parking.

No money will change hands, and no date for construction to begin has been set.

MDC President Eduardo J. Padrón said students would be the real winners of the partnership.

``In collaboration with the Bureau of Prisons, we are taking steps to increase opportunities for Miami Dade College students. In the future, we will be able to expand with additional classrooms and space in order to advance our critical mission,'' he said.

The bill sealing the deal was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in March; its Senate companion bill won approval in July.

Ruth Shafer Fleisher knew she wanted to fly planes as soon as she ``was old enough to walk.''

Frances Rorher Sargent caught the flying bug when she was in her early 20s.

The two South Florida women are among the more than 1,100 who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, from 1942 to 1943 during World War II. Their primary mission: to protect U.S. coasts, freeing up America's men to fight in combat missions abroad.

This wasn't make-work. It was deadly. Thirty-eight women pilots died in service to their country.

Fleisher, who tested AT-6 warbirds, recalls losing ''a couple of buddies who were in my class'' in plane crashes.

Sargent flew North Carolina's shores, looking for enemy intrusion from ships, submarines and planes. ''We went up and down, every day'' she told me. ``We made sure we didn't have anybody come into our country.''

Yet these patriotic women's contributions went largely unrecognized for decades. They weren't even eligible for U.S. veterans' status until 1977. They were never awarded full military status nor eligible for officer status during the war.

The women's selflessness was finally honored Wednesday when President Barack Obama signed a law awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to about 300 WASPs still living, mostly in their 80s -- and to the families whose mothers, aunts and sisters didn't live long enough to have their service acknowledged.

''It's wonderful that they're doing this after all these years,'' Sargent said.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attended the White House ceremony. The Miami Republican was among a bipartisan cadre of women lawmakers who pushed for the medal. ''Though they never sought this attention and focus. If anyone has ever earned the Congressional Gold Medal, it is this group of women who served their nation in a time of war expecting nothing in return,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``What heroines they all turned out to be.''

60 MILLION MILES

Humble heroines, at that.

WASPs logged 60 million miles flying missions from coast to coast. They were to new generations of women what the Tuskegee Airmen, who exhibited their skill and courage during World War II, have been to African Americans.

As then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt noted in 1942 about the need to tap into women's valuable contributions in defense of this country: ``This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used.''

Both Fleisher, 87, and Sargent, 89, went on to serve in the Air Force reserves. Both moved to South Florida about four decades ago, married and were widowed. Fleisher never had children; Sargent has two sons and a daughter in Florida.

Time and distance has muddled some of their memories, but Fleisher and Sargent haven't forgotten the pride they felt. After all, this was a time when women were expected to stay home and have babies. Career opportunities were narrowly defined: mostly, as secretaries, nurses and teachers.

''Damn impressive,'' Fleisher chuckled when asked about the WASP's work during the war.

IN HER BLOOD

Fleisher has flying in her blood. She grew up in Rochester, N.Y., where her father was a pilot who later managed an airport. After the war, she would get a commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force and retired in the reserves as a major. She met her husband, Maurice T. Fleisher, an Air Force major, in Philadelphia, where she worked in the control tower and he was a reserve pilot.

Today Fleisher manages an avocado grove on her three acres near Homestead. She still drives her car and shares stories with a ''nice neighbor,'' a younger woman who retired as an Air Force colonel.

Fleisher quit flying just a couple years ago: ``I'm not as speedy as I used to be.''

Sargent grew up in Little Rock, moved to Atlanta and later settled in Miami. After the war she married Floyd Sargent, an Air Force mechanic. Just shy of her 90th birthday, she stopped driving only recently, though ``it's only been about seven years since I last flew a plane.''

Sargent, who keeps busy in a retirement community in Cutler Bay, spent 30 years at Miami-Dade Community College, speaking to students about her pilot years and the war.

``I still hear from them.''

Fleisher's military service in Alabama carried its own culture shock for a gal from New York. 'I can remember the bus driver getting up and saying, `Lady, you can't sit there. You gotta move up.' I didn't realize that down south you didn't sit at the back of the bus.''

The House Republican who famously hung up on President Barack Obama after his election, is still welcome in the Oval Office.

By Juana Summers - Austin (Texas) American-Statesman Posted : Sunday Jun 28, 2009 10:10:03 EDT

AUSTIN, Texas — Susie Bain found her place in the sky when she was 21.

The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and Bain had left college because it was too expensive. She enrolled in clerical school, but when a friend told her about a chance to fly as one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, she signed up.

She’d ridden in a plane only once before.

“It was just absolutely gorgeous just being up there,” said Bain, 86. “We had what we thought was so much power behind us.”

Bain, who lives in North Austin, is one of 300 living WASP members soon to be honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.

The bill to recognize the women was introduced by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and the Senate passed it in May. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., brought it up in the House, which approved the honor last week. It now awaits President Obama’s signature.

If the measure is approved, the U.S. Mint will design and create individual gold medals to honor the accomplishments of the WASP. The medals will be given to all the pilots and to the families of those who have died.

“I think it’s about time people learned about us,” said 86-year-old Dorothy Lucas of San Antonio, a former WASP. Of more than 1,000 women in the group, which started in Houston in 1942, more than three-quarters have died.

The women held stateside flying assignments left vacant by men who were on combat duty, according to Air Force records. The WASP towed targets for Air Force pilots’ shooting practice, transported cargo and flew planes from hangar to hangar for the Air Force. They also trained men who would later fly combat missions.

Deanie Parish, a Waco resident originally from Avon Park, Fla., said she became a WASP because she wanted to feel like she was contributing to the war effort.

“Everybody was doing something. I knew girls who were driving firetrucks and working in factories because the men were going off to war. At that point, I felt that [flying] was what I could do best.”

About 25,000 women applied for the program, and 1,830 were accepted. Women were required to be at least 21 years old and 5 feet 1 inch tall.

Lucas said she planned to become a WASP with a close friend. But at the last minute, her friend backed out, and Lucas ended up traveling alone from her hometown of Washington to the West Texas town of Sweetwater, where the training was held.

While she was training for her wings, Lucas said, her brother died in a plane crash.

“My mother thought I should come home because she was afraid for me. I said, ‘Mama, I just can’t,’ ” Lucas said.

Lucas remembers flying a pilot from Randolph Field in Universal City, outside San Antonio, to Moore Field in the South Texas town of Mission, where he was stationed. She said he was scared to fly with a woman pilot, but they made the commute without incident.

Though the WASP were not in combat roles, they often faced danger: 38 women died while serving.

Bain said the WASP lost some of its best pilots — and others, herself included, had close calls.

She made an emergency landing in a Shreveport, La., rice field while flying from Texas to New York in a storm that she said “just came blistering through.”

The program was disbanded in December 1944 as men returned from the war and the need for female pilots decreased.

“When they disbanded, it was all of a sudden because the guys started coming home from Europe,” Bain said. “We didn’t think it was fair at the time because we even had to pay our way back home.”

When they returned home, they worked to re-establish their lives. But the reality they faced on the ground was much different than the life they knew in the skies. Few could get pilot jobs.

“Back then, women were supposed to only change diapers and cook for the men and not think about flying airplanes,” Bain said. “I never thought about it even being that unusual a situation. I had always done what I thought I could do.”

In 1977, Congress passed a bill that made the women pilots eligible for veterans benefits.

Waco resident Nancy Parrish started Wings Across America — an interactive project that preserves the stories of the WASP through video, pictures and other records — based on mother Deanie Parrish’s experience.

Nancy Parrish helped create the National WASP World War II Museum in Sweetwater. Parrish said she lobbied for years for a bill to recognize WASP contributions but had little success until this year.

When she made calls to congressional offices, few people knew who the WASP were or what they’d accomplished, Parrish said.

“The fact that people don’t know means we’re doing the right thing,” she said.

Some of the other women said that while the recognition is nice, their concern isn’t the medal. It’s promoting the WASP story, which had gone unnoticed.

By JACQUELINE CHARLES jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

While progress is being made in a hurricane-ravaged Haiti, the country remains in need of assistance, including temporary relief from deportation for thousands of undocumented Haitians living in the United States, a South Florida congressional delegation said Monday after a day-long visit to the Caribbean nation.

Led by Miami Democrat Kendrick Meek, the group met with President René Préval, key Haitian business leaders, U.S. embassy personnel and U.S. Coast Guard officials. It included Weston Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, along with Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

''There are so many wonderful things that are happening in Haiti,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, who highlighted the University of Miami's Project Medishare Program that is training Haitian doctors and health professionals in the country.

''There's a lot that we can do. There's a lot that we can do together. Haiti's problems must be paid attention to. We can be part of that solution,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, ranking minority member of the foreign affairs committee.

REVISING WARNINGS

Lincoln Diaz-Balart said in addition to granting an estimated 30,000 Haitians Temporary Protected Status, the Obama administration can further help Haiti by revising the State Department's travel warning to American citizens.

Haitians and U.S. business owners have long complained that the travel warning is an impediment to attracting critical investments to the country.

''It's a beautiful country, Haiti, with an extraordinary history and one of the ways in which they are going to lift themselves up from poverty is with tourism,'' he said. ``I would urge and I will, the Obama administration, the State Department to review that policy because security -- the lack of security that has been at the cause of the warning to U.S. tourists -- has been improved. The [Haitian] government has made tremendous strides in improving security.''

The brief, but historic visit from the South Florida delegation came a day after Haiti held runoff elections for 11 out of 12 vacant Senate seats. It also came two days after Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis ended her first official visit to South Florida where she called on Haitians in the Diaspora to invest in their homeland despite its difficulties.

Delegation members said they discussed a myriad of issues during their visit, including the need for TPS, the 11,000 jobs created under a U.S.-congressional back HOPE II legislation and the efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard in curtailing illegal smuggling operations.

Wasserman Schultz said after visiting the U.S. Embassy, she wants to assure Haitians that there is a legal way to migrate and that the waiting time has now been seriously reduced. The one disappointment, Wasserman Schultz said, was Sunday's low voter turnout for the elections.

''The political strife that seems to have existed in Haiti for quite some time, still seems to exist. That appears to be a major obstacle to Haiti's progress. It's one thing for us to be able to provide aid and to pass wonderful legislation like the HOPE legislation . . . but if Haiti isn't able to get their political act together, then it's sort of gotta get out of its own way first before others around the world will be able to effectively help them,'' she said. ``That is the message we brought to President Préval and the leadership.''

Meek, who shares the concerns, said at the same time he was happy Haiti's long-delayed senate elections took place.

They are critical, he said, for the country to move forward and get the international assistance it needs.

CALL FOR INQUIRY

Meek also said he plans to ask for the appropriate Haitian authorities to look into the death of a mourner attending Haitian community activist Gérard Jean-Juste's funeral last week in Port-au-Prince. Peacekeepers with the U.N. Stabilization mission in Haiti, known by the French acronym MINUSTAH, are accused of firing into the crowd and killing a mourner. South Florida activists have asked Meek to demand answers.

A bipartisan group of South Florida legislators makes a one-day visit to Haiti Monday, meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis.

The trip -- headed by Kendrick Meek and Mario Diaz-Balart -- comes as the impoverished country calls on its foreign donors to make good on more than $353 million in pledges.

A highly-hyphenated Florida delegation including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R), Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R), Kendrick Meek (D) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) are heading to Haiti tomorrow -- it's a short flight -- to talk about the country's appalling poverty and environmental issues.

MIAMI (CBS4) ― A contingent of U.S. lawmakers from South Florida will travel to Haiti on Monday to talk about hurricane preparations, immigration and drug interdictions.

The bi-partisan group which includes Democratic U.S. Representatives Kendrick Meek and Debbie Wasserman Schultz along with Republican Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart will meet with Haitian President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis.

"One thing that we hope to get out of this is an assessment of what the needs are, what is their priority," Ros-Lehtinen told CBS4 reporter Marybel Rodriguez. "Are they worried about this hurricane season, they don't have any trees to protect them from the mudslides and from all the pounding rain. Do they need more Red Cross volunteers there, more first aid, is it health care, is it training for teachers, training for lawyers. How can we help? It's not always about sending money. Sometimes people to people is the best help they can get."

Last year, Haiti was slammed with a series of storms and hurricanes which caused catastrophic damage and killed more than 800 people. Still struggling to recover Haiti has called on foreign donors to make good on their pledges of help of more than $353 million.

By ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff

In late summer 1985 a treasure hunter laid claim to an alleged wreck near theNuestra Señora de Atocha, the famous Spanish galleon that Mel Fisher found and mined for untold riches.

Richard Lightner fought Fisher all the way to the U.S. District Court in Miami over the treasure found on "his" wreck site. Fisher claimed the treasure was from the Atocha.

The man who resolved the issue, U.S. Judge Sidney Aronovitz, should be honored by having his name on the federal courthouse in Key West, according to a Florida Keys congresswoman who is pushing the issue.

A native Key Wester, Aronovitz on Aug. 1, 1985, ruled that Lightner was "doing nothing but attempting to come in on the Atocha wreck site" and that all treasure recovered "within a reasonable distance" of the Atocha belongs to Fisher and his company, Treasure Salvors.

It was a landfall victory for Fisher, but it wasn't the first time Aronovitz found himself ruling on a big case centered in the Keys. Five years before the Fisher case, Aronovitz ordered the U.S. government to return all commercial fishing boats seized during the Mariel Boatlift and lifted some $4 million in fines on those boat owners.

"Mr. Aronovitz, a man who never forgot his Conch roots, said, 'No, that's an unfair fine and you're going to kill the commercial fishing business by doing this,' " said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "It was a huge decision for the Keys and it really saved the Keys fishing industry."

Ros-Lehtinen is among a group of congressional leaders who want to name the federal courthouse on Simonton Street in Key West the Sidney M. Aronovitz United States Courthouse.

The bill still must be vetted by the judiciary committee, but Ros-Lehtinen said she is pushing to get the bill heard as quickly as possible and hopes it will pass by September.

A proud Conch

Aronovitz was born in Key West on June 20, 1920, to Charles and Ethel Aronovitz, who ran a fabric store on Duval Street. He graduated from Key West High School as valedictorian in 1937 before receiving his law degree from the University of Florida in 1943.

Immediately after his graduation, he enlisted in the Army as a field artillery officer, where he served as a lieutenant. He served more than a year in the European theater during World War II. By the time he left the Army in 1946, he had risen to the rank of captain.

After the Army, Aronovitz moved to Miami, where he lived for most of his life. He set up a law practice in the office of his uncle, the late Abe Aronovitz, a powerful Miami political figure and former mayor.

As his uncle, Aronovitz also became a political figure and served from 1962 to 1966 as a Miami vice mayor and commissioner. President Gerald Ford nominated Aronovitz to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Aug. 4, 1976, where he served until his death on Jan. 8, 1997, at age 76.

When Key West attorney Hugh Morgan, a fellow Conch, was a U.S. magistrate, he worked for Aronovitz.

"He was my boss," Morgan said. "And he was one of the most respected federal judges in South Florida. He was one of the great legal minds from Key West and the only federal judge born in Key West that I know of."

Morgan said Aronovitz was immensely proud of his hometown.

"He always, always spoke of how much he loved Key West and how much he missed it," Morgan said.

"I'm not surprised the federal judges came up with this idea."

Ros-Lehtinen said it didn't take long for her to back the idea after all the federal judges in South Florida pitched it.

The group, a nondenominational, non-profitable and nonpolitical group, was named after the Gold Star that families hung in their windows in honor of deceased veterans.

Lehtine's husband, Dexter Lehtinen, is a decorated Vietnam Veteran who was seriously wounded in conflict and her step-son Dougie Lehtinen served in Iraq while his wife, Lindsay, served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BY RODOLFO R. ROMAN Special to The Miami Herald

Under the South Florida sun, Miami Beach resident Lorianne Kerserman walked on South Beach's sand with a cat litter scoop attached to a mop handle with a goal: collecting as many cigarette butts as possible.

''I was appalled,'' said Kerserman, who is a smoker. ``When we were walking [on the beach] it was completely filled with soda bottles, cans, and potato chip bags.''

Kerserman was one of hundreds who volunteered on Sunday for the Environmental Coalition of Miami Beach's second Miami Beach Big Sweep, a trash-collecting competition.

Teams of volunteers started at two stations -- South Pointe Drive and Ocean Drive, and 15th Street and Ocean Drive -- and converged at Seventh Street.

Volunteers combed the beach for garbage, especially cigarette butts, which are not biodegradable because the filters contain plastics.

The beach clean-up concept was a creation of ECOMB Executive Director Luiz Rodrigues, who has been passionate about the environment since he was 13.

''I think it's enlightening and exciting that we see people care and are concerned about our beaches,'' he said.

The event was a success: about 500 volunteers registered compared to last year's 250.

Organizers didn't have an official number on how much trash was collected. But after the event hundreds of bags of thrash and cigarette butts were on display on plastic tarps.

Rodrigues praised the city of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County's effort to keep the beach clean but said everyone needs to lend a hand to make the effort work.

''They [the city of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County] are better than they have ever been before,'' he said.'' But they alone can't solve the problem. They need the support of our residents and visitors.''

Susan Lewis, a Miami Dade College North professor who teaches energy and the natural environment, offered extra credit to students who attended the sweep.

''It's a win-win situation for everyone,'' she said. ``It helps them learn and help the beach.''

Eight students joined Lewis. Her group collected the most trash and won the Can It! Award. She said the event was helpful to her students as they had a chance to see what they learn in the classroom in ``real life terms.''

Perpetual trophies, which are passed on from last year's winners, were awarded to the groups that had the most volunteers, picked up the most trash and collected the most cigarette butts. Trophies were made of recycled airplane parts made to look like rakes, garbage cans and other cleaning tools.

Individuals were also awarded prizes such as a dolphin encounter at Miami Seaquarium.

Public officials, such as U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Miami Beach Commissioner Jerry Libbin, also were on hand to help.

''It's amazing how little concern some folks have about the beach, but what's really amazing is the people who are really concerned and volunteered,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.

Kerserman's trusty creation, the cat litter scoop attached to a mop handle, came in handy because it helped her team, Advantaged Yacht Charters and Sales, win the Beach Master award, which is awarded to the team which collects the most cigarette butts.

Her team does more than pick up butts, though. It also does a little preaching.

''We carry a beach ash tray with us,'' she said. ``We've showed them to enough people and hopefully they'll order some for themselves to take to the beach.''

BY RODOLFO R. ROMAN

Special to The Miami Herald Beachgoers in Bal Harbour and other areas are getting a first-hand look at efforts to beef up shorelines.

On Monday, one of many Caterpillar trucks tasked with hauling sand from Orlando to Miami-Dade dumped it's cargo on Bal Harbour's beach.

On hand to watch the unloading: Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman, DERM officials and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- who took a playful roll in the piles of sand to celebrate.

The truckloads of sand began barreling into town last month. The first truckloads appeared in Sunny Isles Beach on May 20. Six days later they began dumping their haul at Bal Harbour and a stretch of Miami Beach near 65th Street, said Luis Espinoza, communications program manager for the Department of Environmental Resources Management.

''We saw the flooding that took place here in Miami Beach because of the rain,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``Just think if we were to have a severe storm blow here, all of the saltwater will be in the residential area.''

Approximately 30,000 cubic yards of sand is being placed at the northern end of Bal Harbour, DERM's Brian Flynn said.

Beaches will remain open, except for the immediate areas where the crews are unloading sand.

The sand is being trucked in from Orlando to add height and width to beaches in Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles Beach and Miami Beach. State and county funds will be used for the truck-haul renourishment project, which will cost an estimated $10 million and expected to last six weeks.

The project will serve as a Band-Aid until a more extensive beach renourishment project begins in 2011.

Bal Harbour residents have long advocated for improvements to their beach, which has shrunk to small dunes in some places thanks to natural erosion and several active hurricane seasons.

''These beaches provide a buffer instead of the storm waves and surge coming in,'' Flynn said.

About $13 million worth of property along the coast of Miami-Dade, east of Collins Avenue, could be at risk due to shrinking shorelines.

Ros-Lehtinen credited efforts for making the beach project a reality, including a lobbying campaign by members of the Bal Harbour Coalition.

''This is a real grass-roots movement,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.

``It's about people here on the ground putting their feet on the fire and saying we have a real emergency, and let's try to mitigate this before it gets serious.'' Resident Brian Mulheren said the project was urgently needed, especially in an area that relies on its beachfront appeal to lure visitors.

Says Closure of Profitable Dealers "Doesn't Make Sense"

MIAMI (CBS4) ― A South Florida congresswoman says Chrysler's behavior as it moves through bankruptcy is one reason the American public is "fed up" with bailouts.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is among a bipartisan group of eight South Florida members of congress and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, who have written Chrysler voicing their objection to the closure of Tamiami Chrysler in West Miami-Dade. The Tamiami dealership is being closed as part of Chrysler's bankruptcy reorganization plan, even though it lays claim to being one of the best performing Chrysler dealerships in the country.

"Yes, close the ones that aren't producing, but the ones that are selling cars? It doesn't make any sense," Ros-Lehtinen told CBS4 reporter Gary Nelson. "They're very successful; they've been selling a lot of cars."

Ros-Lehtinen says she and other members of congress have not been able to get straight answers from Chrysler about why it has targeted dealers that she says "don't meet the company's own criteria for those that should be closed."

The Miami-Dade Republican says Chrysler, which has received billions of taxpayer dollars, has done itself no favors by ignoring inquiries from congress and the community. "They got their money and now say they don't have to answer to anybody. That kind of attitude has soured the American public against bailouts. People are fed up, and rightfully so."

As for a reprieve for Tamiami Chrysler or any of the nearly 800 dealers slated for closure, a company spokesman said 'no chance.' Chrysler executive Steve Landry told the Associated Press, "We won't be changing any dealers on the list and we won't be changing the date." The dealers have been ordered to stop operating by the end of business Tuesday.

At Tamiami Chrysler, Alex Planas, whose family has operated the dealership for two decades, said Monday that Chrysler has treated a loyal business partner shabbily through the closure process. "They gave us 26 days notice. After all we've done for them, all the cars we've sold, at the end of the day there's not even a thank you card."

Planas says the family will continue to operate, selling used cars, and possibly hook up with another manufacturer sometime in the future. In the meantime, many employees will have to be let go, assuming a court doesn't intervene in the closure order.

The family's patriarch, Carlos Planas, said it will be difficult having to lay off workers, some of whom have been with him since he opened it 20 years ago. "It is sad to have to say to so many good people, good workers, that someone in Detroit has decided that you no longer exist."

BAL HARBOUR (CBS4) ― It's makeover Monday for a South Florida beach as the sandy shores of Bal Harbour gets a much needed facelift with the delivery of truckloads of sand.

South Florida has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world but some of them are in bad shape; reduced to nothing more than some small dunes after several active hurricane seasons. That's especially true in Bal Harbour where little by the little, the beach, which is the protective barrier between the ocean and residents homes, has been eaten away by erosion. Over the years, residents say they've seen fifty to seventy feet of beach washed away and during high tide the water comes up to the dunes and sometimes over it.

However, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has made it a priority to restore and replenish the sand on badly eroded beaches in South Florida. After years of fighting bureaucratic red tape, Ros-Lehtinen helped finalize the deal that is allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to start work on the project that will restore thirty feet of beach in Bal Harbour.

"Look at what happened in Katrina when we don't stop water. Look at what happened in Miami Beach these last few days with all of the flooding, so if we were to have a storm surge, if we were to have a hurricane, it would be a disaster," Ros-Lehtinen told CBS4's Gwen Belton

Bal Harbour resident Brian Mulhern agrees. "As a homeowner I feel this is very important to protect my property and all of our property in Bal Harbour and all along the coast, it's very important to have this."

South Florida beaches bring in about $4 billion a year in tourist dollars and elected officials say that's enough incentive to repair the beaches.

This is the beginning of a decade long project that will stretch all the way from Bal Harbour to Key West.

By LISA ORKIN EMMANUEL – 36 minutes ago

MIAMI (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs must do better job of finding and testing veterans who may have been exposed to contaminated medical equipment at the Miami VA hospital, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday.

The Miami Republican spoke to The Associated Press after a briefing by VA officials in Washington that she requested for members of Congress and their staff.

More than 10,400 former patients have been getting follow-up blood tests because of VA mistakes with equipment used in colonoscopies at Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Miami and at the agency's Augusta, Ga., ear, nose and throat clinic. The equipment is used for colonoscopies and ear, nose and throat procedures.

The VA has said that five former patients at the three hospitals had tested positive for HIV, three of them are in Miami. A total of 34 have tested positive for hepatitis. It's not clear if the infections came from VA treatment.

Ros-Lehtinen said the number of people of potentially affected in Miami has decreased from 3,348 to 2,609. The number went down because some patients scheduled for a colonoscopy may not have shown up for appointments or were not given an examination. Out of that risk pool, all but 332 have been notified, VA officials said at the briefing.

But Ros-Lehtinen said the number yet to be notified remains "too high."

She said the VA has sent each person two letters and called multiple times, but they may have moved or changed telephone numbers. And she said the VA needs to try harder.

"We just can't say, 'Oh well we tried our best...,'" Ros-Lehtinen said.

She added, "It's shameful and it sounds like a bad movie plot."

VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts did not immediately comment on Ros-Lehtinen's statements, but said there was no new information given during the briefing.

Ros-Lehtinen said the VA is reaching out to homeless shelters around the country to see if they can find these veterans. She also said 66 people in Miami have declined testing.

"I encourage the VA Miami folks to be more aggressive in trying to encourage these veterans to be tested, for the veterans' own health as well as the health of the community," she said.

Ros-Lehtinen said the problem was discovered Dec. 1, 2008 in Murfreesboro and the VA contacted other facilities about three weeks later, but it wasn't until March 4 that the Miami hospital found a problem.

She said Congress must "make sure that this scandal will never unfold again because the veterans deserve the very best of care."

A staff member from South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office was also at the meeting.

The U.S. government is experimenting with a new weapon in its quest for more accurate hurricane tracking and predictions: unmanned airplanes.

Like the U.S. military, which uses unmanned Predator drone aircraft to track terror suspects and even attack targets, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is sending remote control planes where it's too dangerous for even the bravest pilots to fly -- into the guts of some of nature's most powerful storms.

Their Mark 3 model planes have proved rugged in early test flights, and NOAA has high hopes riding on them.

"This is one of the pioneering new technologies to improve hurricane predictions, " said Robert Atlas, director of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab on Virginia Key.

In a test flight last summer, one of the Mark 3 planes flew a 17-hour one-way mission into the heart of Hurricane Noel, going lower and longer inside a storm than any airplane ever had, said NOAA research scientist Joseph Cione.

Researchers decided to sacrifice the small craft for the sake of science, monitoring its readings until it disappeared somewhere over the stormy Atlantic.

One of the robot aircraft, built by Australia-based manufacturer Aerosonde, was set up in NOAA's lobby Monday. Cione and Atlas explained the benefits of the airplane to Miami U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was on an educational tour.

With a nine-foot wingspan and weighing in at under 30 pounds, the mostly carbon-fiber airplane can get 700 miles per gallon fuel efficiency from unleaded gasoline. NOAA now leases the airplanes, which cost less than $100,000 each, Cione said.

NOAA and NASA, which is jointly running the project, have flown into two storms, including an inaugural flight into Tropical Storm Ofelia in 2005. NOAA didn't use the planes in 2006 because of funding difficulties, but researchers plan to fly one out of Barbados this summer. Cione wants to test it in winds of up to 150 miles an hour. The remote pilot has to belly-flop the plane to land it, as it lacks landing gear.

Manned flights that plunge into hurricanes usually stay above 10,000 feet, as conditions become increasingly dangerous for pilots as altitude decreases. The Aerosonde plane has flown as low as 300 feet, where violent storm conditions are seldom studied.

NOAA is researching the changes in intensity within hurricanes, as is the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

"The energy that feeds the storms comes out of the ocean, and we don't understand that energy transfer very well, " Cione said. "Observations near the surface are key to that."

Ros-Lehtinen's tour of NOAA was part of a visit that also included a stop at the Rosenstiel School. In a conversation with Atlas, Ros-Lehtinen prodded him on the need to bridge the gap between the advanced hurricane research being done at Rosenstiel, and what's used in field operations at NOAA.

Ros-Lehtinen said increasing funding for the lab was the "highest priority" for South Florida because of the important hurricane research.

By LISA ORKIN EMMANUEL Associated Press Writer U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to do better job of locating and testing patients who might have been exposed to contaminated medical equipment at the Miami VA hospital.

Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday after she and other members of Congress were briefed by VA officials in Washington about the situation.

BY RODOLFO R. ROMAN Special to The Miami Herald

Bal Harbour's beach renourishment project is about to get under way.

The project, which could last about three months, will start after Memorial Day.

Approximately 30,000 cubic yards of sand will be placed at the northern end of Bal Harbour, according to Brian Flynn, a representative for the county's Department of Environmental Resource Management.

Buffering the beach is essential because natural erosion, along with several active hurricane seasons, has shrunk Bal Harbour's beach to small dunes, leaving residents and tourists with little space to enjoy the ocean.

Mayor Jean Rosenfield said she is glad the project is moving forward.

''The council is excited we were able to able to help the residents at the north end of Bal Harbor beach who desperately need their beach,'' Rosenfield said in a phone interview.

The sand will be trucked in from Orlando to add height and width to beaches in Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles Beach and Miami Beach. State and county funds will be used for the truck-haul renourishment project, which could cost about $10 million. Marina Blanco-Pape, DERM's chief of Water Management Division, says trucks will be driving through Bal Harbour, but streets will not be closed.

''Two articulated trucks are planned for the beach,'' Blanco-Pape wrote in an e-mail. ``Approximately 10 trucks are anticipated to be needed to bring the sand in through the access area in 96th Street.''

Workers with flags will be directing the trucks and maintaining clear areas around the work place. Bal Harbour police will also be helping out to ensure safety.

Two contractors hired by the county will be working on the project Mondays through Thursdays during daylight hours.

Despite the project, beachgoers should still be able to enjoy the beach.

''The beach will remain open during the project, except for the actual area where the machines are working each day, which will be roped off,'' said Alfred Treppeda, village manager.

Treppeda also said building managers near the beach have been asked to move their beach chairs off the sand during the project, so the path is clear.

The issue has also caught the eye of Congress: U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recently took a tour of the beach, meeting with residents and pledging to fight for funds allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers for beach renourishment, which could be used for future projects.

By JOHN L. GUERRA Citizen Staff

Florida Keys veterans who had a colonoscopy at the Miami Veterans Hospital between May 2004 and March could be infected with HIV or hepatitis because hospital technicians didn't properly clean instruments between tests, according to Veterans Affairs officials.

Three Miami veterans have tested positive for HIV, seven for hepatitis C and one for hepatitis B, according to a report from the federal Veterans Affairs (VA) Office. At least one Key Largo vet may have contracted HIV, Monroe County's top VA official said Friday.

The Miami VA in recent weeks sent letters to patients who underwent a colonoscopy, telling them of the improperly cleaned instruments and urging them to get blood tests for the viruses.

Because many of the Florida Keys' estimated 14,000 veterans are homeless or change addresses often, the letters may have not reached them, said Gary Johnson, executive administrator for the VA in Monroe County.

"If they've had a colonoscopy, they should go to the nearest VA clinic -- whether they've received a notice or not," Johnson said Friday. "The problem is, people move and don't give a forwarding address and it limits the ability of the VA to get hold of them."

Johnson, who was tested for HIV and hepatitis after undergoing a colonoscopy in Miami, said he wasn't worried as he awaited his results, which showed he did not have either disease.

"No, I wasn't nervous," he said. "I'm a kind of wait-and-see guy; I had the results in about 30 hours."

The Key Largo veteran who tested positive for HIV has been retested to ensure the result wasn't a false positive, Johnson said.

"We're waiting to see those results," he added.

George Bretnall, a veterans counselor at the Key West VA clinic on Roosevelt Boulevard, said veterans who have come in for the simple blood test were upset at the prospect of contracting HIV and/or hepatitis after seeking a test that would keep them healthy.

"Most of them are more concerned about how this could happen," Bretnall said, "but as you talk to them about these things, they understand better.

"The tough part is waiting for the results."

No Lower Keys veterans so far have tested positive for the viruses, Bretnall said.

"We told any vets that come in here that if they've had the work done at the Miami clinic, they should have the full blood series," Bretnall said.

"So far, so good; we haven't had any one infected."

Veterans weren't willing to talk about such a private matter, but Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3911 commander Terry Tribou said his members are aware of the situation and understandably worried. Most, if not all, have been tested, he said.

By FRED TASKER ftasker@MiamiHerald.com

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, on Thursday wrote to U.S. Secretary of Veterans' Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki expressing alarm that almost one-third of veterans who may have been exposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV by improperly cleaned colonoscopy equipment at the VA's Miami hospital have not responded for testing.

''Previously, I have expressed to you my serious concerns regarding the exposure of over 3,348 veterans to several potentially deadly infections,'' her letter states. ``Though this was a catastrophe in and of itself, an even greater disaster is brewing if the VA continues to be unable to reach almost a third of the risk pool for testing and treatment.''

A VA report on May 8 said that of 3,348 Miami veterans potentially infected between May 2004 and March 2009, 1,053 had not responded to the disclosure.

It means 28 percent of the veterans in Miami who were notified that they might be infected had not responded for testing, compared with only 6 percent in Augusta, Ga., and 5 percent in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where similar problems with equipment were reported.

The VA report said that, so far, three Miami veterans have been found with HIV, seven with hepatitis C and one with hepatitis B.

By RYAN McCARTHY Posted - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:00 AM EDT

The city of Layton is finally set to receive roughly $800,000 in sewer funding, thanks to an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arranged by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Monday, Layton officials signed what's known as a project cooperation agreement with the Army Corps -- roughly five years after the city installed its $5.2 million central sewer system. The agreement is essentially a mechanism by which stakeholders submit invoices for payment to the Army Corps, but it's meant to be established before any work gets done.

That's where Ros-Lehtinen came in. The congresswoman had language included in the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 so Layton could be paid after the fact.

Ros-Lehtinen was in Layton Monday with Army Corps Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Works Rock Salt and Col. Paul Grosskruger, commander of the Army Corps' Jacksonville district, for the signing of the agreement. A phone message to a Ros-Lehtinen aide was not returned at press time.

"It required an act of Congress for Layton to get this because we started work before this" agreement, says Skip Haring, administrative assistant to Mayor Norman Anderson. He said the city was initially awarded the funding four years ago.

"When we elected to do our [sewer system], the [Florida Keys] Aqueduct Authority agreed to design, build and operate a sewer plant. But our side was to provide the money to do it," the same deal the Aqueduct Authority has with Monroe County, Haring said.

Haring said Layton ended up borrowing money from the Aqueduct Authority to complete the project, with the intention of using the $800,000 in Army Corps funding, among other grants, to reimburse them.

Key West, Marathon, Islamorada, Key Colony Beach and the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District all have separate agreements with the Army Corps approved in 2008.

In 2001, Congress authorized -- but didn't allocate -- $100 million in federal money for sewers in the Keys.

BY LESLEY CLARK

The secrecy over congressional pet projects may be eroding, as House members are being required for the first time to publicly disclose them, but the appetite to bring home the bacon has apparently not slackened.

House members were required by Saturday to post online their formal requests for earmarks, and the results show South Florida lawmakers seeking millions of dollars for local projects -- from $500,000 for a Miami agency that provides services for children rescued from slavery in West Africa to $2.4 million to install solar-powered street lights in Dania Beach.

The postings on the official congressional websites come as President Obama has said he wants more transparency in earmarks -- and fewer of them. But Democratic and Republican congressmen defend the practice, saying they know the needs of their communities better than federal budget writers in Washington.

''There's certainly still a huge demand out there. We'll have to see what happens to that irresistible urge when it meets the immovable force of the president,'' said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group critical of earmarks. Obama last month signed a $410 billion spending bill that contained 9,000 earmarks but said it ''must mark an end to the old way of doing business and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability.'' Congress has cut back earmark spending since 2005.

Ellis noted that some members of Congress have embraced transparency, easily showcasing their requests on their websites; others force viewers to hunt for them.

For some, the disclosure is nothing new. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, have voluntarily posted their requests on their websites for at least two years.

Wasserman Schultz's requests this year include the street lighting in Dania Beach; Ros-Lehtinen's requests include $1 million to help the city of Homestead build a new ``energy-efficient, environmentally friendly City Hall.''

Others, including Reps. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, have resisted, saying that releasing their requests would compromise their ability to secure money for hometown projects because of the competition for dollars.

Florida's two senators, Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson, have also resisted disclosure, but senators next month will also be required to make their requests public.

Meek's requests this year top more than $242 million, including $500,000 for Sanctuary of Moses, which provides services to children rescued from traffickers in West Africa. As part of the request, he noted the organization provides ``after-care services, education, homes, schools and supportive services to children in Benin.''

Meek also requested $2 million for the city of Miramar to buy eight hybrid electric vehicles ``to replace aging unreliable diesel buses.''

Diaz-Balart's requests include $12 million to reinforce the Ryder Trauma Center to withstand a Category 4 hurricane.

''Given the anticipated demands placed on the Ryder Trauma Center in the event of a direct hit of a high-category storm,'' his site says, ``it is imperative that the building be structurally safe, adequately secured and operationally functional.''

Diaz-Balart is also seeking $1 million to upgrade the city of Hialeah's police radios.

BY LAURA MORALES

Where once there was a half-collapsed fence, long-haired women with wings or fins swim and soar along busy West Flagler Street.

Where drab chain links once sagged toward the ground, a silver woman cuts through the ocean's waves, alone in a small rowboat.

''Throughout art history, women have been represented as symbols of fantasy and virtue or bearers of cosmic forces,'' said artist Lydia Rubio at the dedication of the sculptural fences and gates she created for the Women's Park, 10251 W. Flagler St.

Several local politicians, county officials and women's rights activists, including ''Mother of the Park'' Roxcy O'Neal Bolton, gathered to wax rhapsodic about the park and its new gates.

Silvia Unzueta, a member of the park's Founders' Committee, praised Rubio: ``Lydia, te la comiste. You really did it!''

The artist conceived of the curlicued ornamental gates to convey concepts of courage, love and wisdom, which correspond to each gate on the fence as it runs east to west.

''To me a well-designed public art piece rejuvenates public spaces and makes them more interesting and inviting,'' Rubio said. ``This work will do this for this neighborhood. It's unique both in concept and in execution.''

According to Michael Spring, director of county cultural affairs, Rubio's workhad a budget of about $537,000.

It replaces the entire ugly, sagging cyclone fence that used to enclose the park.

The work was commissioned and financed through the county's 36-year-old Art in Public Places program.

Mythological female images adorn the 15-acre park's three entrances.

In front of the central ''Gate of Love,'' a bird-woman flies across the sun in a 12-foot by 12-foot floor mosaic, which is inscribed with Spanish verse by the late Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz:

``What would I do with this spark that thought it was the sun? With this sigh that thought it was the wind?''

The park, which opened in December 1992, was the brainchild of Bolton, the founder of Miami-Dade's chapter of the National Organization for Women. She and a roster of pioneering women worked to make her idea a reality.

U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen asked for a moment of silence to honor three park founders who have died: former Opa-locka Mayor Helen Miller and Dade Women's Political Caucus founder Monna Lighte, who both died in 1996, and former state Rep. Elaine Gordon, who died in 2000.

Unzueta, a former superintendent of arts and community affairs for county Parks and Recreation, pointed out a big chunk of coral rock beneath which sits a time capsule, buried when the park opened.

Its contents include taped interviews with Bolton and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, copies of local newspapers from 1992 and a copy of the proclamation of ''Women's Equality Day,'' signed by then-county Mayor Stephen P. Clark. It will be dug up in 2020.

Unzueta said the founders are working to get a lighted fountain installed in the park's lake. ''I challenge you to help us build the women's museum on the north wall of this property,'' she told attendees.

It would be the nation's third women's history museum.

By BILL POOVEY – 2 hours ago

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Viral infections, including hepatitis, have been found in 16 patients exposed to contaminated equipment at Veterans Affairs medical facilities, a department spokeswoman said Friday. So far, 10 colonoscopy patients from the VA medical center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., have tested positive for hepatitis, VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts told The Associated Press.

In a later e-mail, she reported six patients at the VA's ear, nose and throat clinic in Augusta, Ga, tested positive for unspecified viral infections.

The number of reported infections could rise.

More than 10,000 veterans were warned to get blood tests because they could have been exposed to contamination at those two facilities plus a medical center in Miami. All three sites failed to properly sterilize equipment between treatments, and the problems dated back for more than five years at the Murfreesboro and Miami hospitals.

Roberts said the department doesn't yet have results from most of the veterans it warned.

A VA alert to patients said they "could have been exposed to body fluids from a previous patient."

Roberts said four Tennessee patients have tested positive for hepatitis B and six have tested positive for hepatitis C. No one has tested positive for HIV, she said.

Hepatitis is a viral infection of the liver. The most common form, hepatitis C, is potentially life-threatening and can cause permanent liver damage. Both the B and C forms are spread by contact with the blood or other body fluid of an infected person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Roberts stressed that the source of the infections isn't known and may never be identified.

"There's no way to scientifically, conclusively prove they contracted this due to treatment at our facility," Roberts said.

But the VA will make sure those who tested positive "get the best possible treatment," she said.

The VA's inspector general office has started a review, spokeswoman Joanne Moffett said Friday.

According to a VA e-mail, only about half of the Murfreesboro and Augusta patients notified by letter of a mistake that exposed them to "potentially infectious fluids" have requested department blood tests.

Some veterans said they decided to seek tests from their private physicians, rather than the VA.

The public first became aware of problems in February, when the agency announced it had sent letters to about 6,400 patients who had colonoscopies between April 23, 2003, and Dec. 1, 2008, at Murfreesboro and to about 1,800 patients treated over 11 months last year at Augusta.

Roberts said the problem in Tennessee was discovered in December and an internal alert was issued.

This week the VA announced it sent letters advising 3,260 patients who had colonoscopies between May 2004 and March 12 at the Miami Veterans Affairs Healthcare System that they also should get tests for HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases.

"We feel that the risk of cross-contamination among patients is small, and many patients are at no risk whatsoever," Dr. William E. Duncan of the VA Health Administration said in an e-mail. "Since we cannot know which patients are at risk, we are notifying everyone we feel may possibly have been placed at risk."

Two weeks after a review of procedures and training at VA facilities nationwide, Roberts said the VA cannot yet say if patients at other locations were exposed to equipment that was not properly sterilized.

U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said VA officials told her and other members of Congress on Thursday that the Miami facility initially reported it was free from problems only to later backtrack.

Ros-Lehtinen said the details were disclosed by the VA in a closed-door meeting convened by U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., the top Republican on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington, said he has notified his 20,000 newsletter subscribers about the situation.

"We are obviously very concerned anytime anybody's health is at risk from going to see the doctor," he said Friday. "We believe the VA has done an adequate job in quickly notifying those veterans who might be affected."

WASHINGTON, DC — March 25, 2009— The Nature Conservancy applauds the passage of Omnibus Public Lands Act. This historic and bipartisan act supports many crucial efforts at the local, state and national levels to protect and conserve natural places and wildlife.

“From our great coasts of Florida, to the mountains of Idaho, to the scenic rivers of Utah, the Public Lands Act offers great hope for the future of our natural areas,” said Robert Bendick, Director of US Government Relations for The Nature Conservancy. “I am especially heartened by the bipartisan support the Act received. There is great commitment from both sides of the aisle to protect our lands and waters while continuing to provide for recreational and economic opportunity on our public lands.”

Key elements of the legislation included:

The Forest Landscape Restoration Program (FLRP) will provide new authority to manage treatment of fire at greater scales across lands managed by the Forest Service and Department of Interior. This important shift in scale and approach will reduce costs by focusing funding on large-scale, collaborative, science-based projects where wildfire risks are high.

The Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program (CELCP) along with Title XII (Subtitle e) of the Omnibus Bill will protect coastal areas with high conservation, recreation, historic and aesthetic value while also providing important support for coastal/marine mapping and climate change adaptation.

The Owyhee Lands Management Act, supported by Senator Crapo, will designate more than half a million acres of Idaho’s Owyhee-Bruneau Canyonlands as wilderness along with 315 miles of National Wild and Scenic Rivers and other environmental protection.

The Washington County Utah Bill will designate more than 260,000 acres of land in Utah as Wilderness and 166 miles of Virgin River and its tributaries and National Wild and Scenic Rivers. This legislation, championed by Senator Bennett, also creates two national conservation Areas in Washington County, creating protections for the desert tortoise and recreational opportunities on 140,000 acres.

Kendrick Meek and Bill Nelson have already called for a federal investigation into how the VA ended up potentially exposing thousands of patients in Miami to infectious diseases. And now a ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is asking for answers.

From Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen:

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met in Washington, DC with Brandon Macsata of the ADAP Advocacy Association (aaa+) to discuss the Early Treatment of HIV Act (ETHA )which was introduced this week in the House by Representatives Eliot Engel, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ETHA would allow states to extend Medicaid coverage to low income individuals with the HIV virus before it advances to full blown AIDS. Currently, lower income persons must first become disabled by AIDS before receiving Medicaid provided care and treatment, which could have prevented them from becoming seriously ill, and at which point treatment is far more expensive.

Brandon first visited with the Congresswoman in 2003, after he had moved to South Florida and became one of her constituents. In 2003, ETHA was first being considered in the House and at that time Brandon met with Ros-Lehtinen to express his support of the legislation as a person living with HIV/AIDS. During that meeting, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen “challenged” him to get more involved at the national level on HIV, and that is when he began talking to others about forming a national group to advocate for the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs).

Bi-partisanship indeed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working with Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on a bill calling for early treatment for HIV.

Though drug treatments have improved the health and quality of life for people with HIV/AIDS, Pelosi notes many uninsured, low-income people with HIV do not have access to medication because they generally do not meet Medicaid requirements until becoming disabled by full-blown AIDS.

The bill would eliminate what Pelosi called a "harmful gap in the safety net" by giving states the option to extend Medicaid coverage to low income persons so that they can treat HIV before it becomes AIDS.

Ros-Lehtinen said it would "correct this cruel and nonsensical system.”

BAL HARBOUR (CBS4) ―

After several active hurricane seasons some South Florida beaches have been reduced to nothing more than some small dunes that separate the shore's crashing waves from condominiums, leaving beach lovers to walk the distance and find a spot to put down their towels and enjoy their visit.

Little by little, the beach, the protective barrier between the ocean and residents homes in Bal Harbour is being eaten away.

"The beach is gone and without the beach, the dunes are gone and without the dunes it will be the buildings next, " said Brian Mulheren.

Mulheren told CBS4's Gwen Belton that this is a concern by him and his neighbors.

"This is a problem throughout the beach, the entire coastline of Florida is slowly eroding", says U.S. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

But, now there is news to celebrate in Bal Harbour. After years of fighting bureaucratic red tape, Congresswomen Ros-Lehtinen says help is on the way. In May, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start work on a project to restore thirty feet of beach. Over the years, residents say they've seen fifty to seventy feet of beach washed away and during high tide the water comes up to the dunes and sometimes over it.

"If during hurricane season you have a storm surge, it could wipe out condominiums and start a domino effect, impacting people's lives, people's businesses and their homes here on the beach.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen says beach erosion also impacts tourism-- no beach, no tourists and Florida's economy suffers.

It is a problem that plagues our neighbors to the North in Broward County: Beaches from Hollywood to Fort Lauderdale are also battling erosion. And, the competition among South Florida communities for federal funds to stop it is fierce.

"We're competing with other cities, other states for a piece of that pie and it's important for us to keep very vigilant and fight for federal dollars to come down here Ros-Lehtinen.

Seems President Obama and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen agree on something.

Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, yesterday called out the UN Sec Gen for calling the US a "deadbeat nation" for being behind in paying its UN dues.

Asked today about Ban Ki-Moon's remarks, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he'd "note for the Secretary General that his word choice was unfortunate given the fact that the American taxpayer is the largest contributor to the United Nations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is calling out UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for describing the U.S. as the "biggest deadbeat” donor.

The Associated Press reports that Ban said after a closed door hearing with House members that he had wanted to draw attention to the fact that the U.S. agrees to pay 22 percent of the U.N.'s $4.86 billion operating budget, but is perennially late with its dues — and now is about $1 billion behind on its payments.

That figure is "soon to be $1.6 billion," Ban emphasized. Asked if he'd used the word 'deadbeat' during the meeting, he replied, "Yes, I did — I did," then laughed mischievously.

But Ros-Lehtinen was not amused: "Last year, American taxpayers ponied up nearly $5 billion for the UN system," the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said. "The U.S. is by far the world’s largest donor to the UN. The U.S. provides other assistance for peacekeeping operations. The U.S. responds to emergency appeals. We are always on deck.

Former President Bill Clinton left Haiti on Tuesday with a promise to encourage foreign donors and corporations to respond to the country's urgent needs for jobs and development while prodding government leaders to seize the "limited window of opportunity."

"I've been following this country for more than three decades. I fell in love with it 35 years ago when Hillary and I came here," Clinton told The Miami Herald.

By JOHN HEILPRIN – 43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after his White House meeting with President Barack Obama, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the United States a "deadbeat" donor to the world body while making the made the rounds on Capitol Hill.

Ban's criticism Wednesday of the U.N.'s single biggest backer irked some members of the House Foreign Relations Committee. They were generally supportive of his leadership but voiced concern about U.N. efforts in areas from Sudan to Somalia.

"He used the word 'deadbeat' when it came to characterizing the United States. I take great umbrage (over) that," Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the panel's senior Republican, said after an hour-long, closed-door meeting. "We certainly contribute a whole lot of U.S. taxpayer dollars to that organization. We do not deserve such a phrase.

Interviewed after the session, Ban said he had wanted to draw attention to the fact that the U.S. agrees to pay 22 percent of the U.N.'s $4.86 billion operating budget, but is perennially late with its dues — and now is about $1 billion behind on its payments.

That figure is "soon to be $1.6 billion," Ban emphasized. Asked if he'd used the word 'deadbeat' during the meeting, he replied, "Yes, I did — I did," then laughed mischievously.

Ban also urged Congress to adopt climate change legislation to boost chances for his top goal this year: clinching a global climate deal. The hope is for accord at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Copenhagen in December.

"I believe for the United States it's a necessity. It will have a very politically important impact on the ongoing negotiation," he said. "We need the U.S. leadership at this time. Whole world is looking at U.S. leadership."

Ban generally got a "very respectful" reception from the House committee, said Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., who chairs a subcommittee that oversees U.S. participation in the United Nations.

"Clearly they have an interest in the United States meeting its responsibility. In terms of peacekeeping, we're about $670 million behind, and I think the argument is well-stated," Delahunt said.

He noted America backs U.N. peacekeeping operations — and said it loses credibility if it doesn't provide financial support. "And at the same time, we have to recognize that there are no American troops involved in the 17 different venues where there are peacekeeping operations," Delahunt said.

Ban was also meeting with Sen. John Kerry, D-Calif., the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, and other committee members.

During an Oval Office session Tuesday, Obama pledged to work to help bring peace to Darfur and called it "not acceptable" that Sudan's president has been kicking out humanitarian aid workers from the region of western Sudan. President Omar al-Bashir was charged in an International Criminal Court arrest warrant with war crimes and crimes against humanity for targeting civilians.

Ban told Obama his support for climate legislation is "encouraging", but said 2009 is a "make-or-break" year for the U.N. and its member countries on global warming, Darfur and other prominent conflicts.

"It's the beginning of the establishment of a close relationship between the two," said Peter Yeo, a vice president for the U.N. Foundation, launched by media mogul Ted Turner's $1 billion donation in 1997.

Yeo, a former House Democratic staffer and foreign policy adviser to both the Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigns last year, said Obama's budget proposal also is a hopeful sign for the U.S.-U.N. relationship.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The United States dealing with Hamas once was laughable, then illegal. Will it become inevitable?

Hamas continues to dominate the Gaza Strip, even after its forces were decimated in the recent war that the terrorist group launched against Israel.

That has led some lawmakers -- even among those in the pro-Israel camp -- to contemplate, behind the scenes, a formula under which Hamas would be part of a Palestinian government with which the West could deal.

Under consideration, these lawmakers say off the record, is what role Hamas would have in a Palestinian unity government. If it would defer to the moderates in the Fatah-led West Bank-based Palestinian Authority on foreign policy and security, then it could happen. Were Hamas to have a say in such matters, it would not work.

Other pro-Israel insiders discount the national unity talks between Fatah and Hamas now under way in Cairo as unlikely to produce results, meaning that the prospect of having to deal with Hamas is remote and not worth considering at this stage.

Sallai Meridor, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Washington, said that even if Hamas were nominally running sanitation, it would be seeking control of the Palestinian Authority -- and that was unacceptable.

"They want to take over Palestinian society," he said recently at an Israel Project luncheon. Any other conclusion was "wishful thinking."

The last time Hamas and Fatah tried coexistence, after Hamas won legislative elections in the beginning of 2006, Congress held up funding for the Palestinian Authority. In those days, such aid counted in the mere tens of millions of dollars; with the Obama administration now pledging close to $1 billion, congressional oversight could throw a wrench into the works.

The State Department maintains, as it did under President George W. Bush, that Hamas is unacceptable as long as it does not recognize Israel, end terrorism and adhere to previous peace agreements.

Leading lawmakers already are making clear that those conditions are unassailable.

“The U.S. Congress will find it impossible to work constructively with any Palestinian national unity government that fails unequivocally to recognize Israel, to reject terrorism and all forms of violence, and to accept all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements," Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "In addition, it should be a government of unquestioned integrity, and fully committed to fiscal responsibility and transparency."

The committee's top GOP member, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), echoed Berman's sentiments.

"Diluting the existing preconditions for engagement with Hamas would elevate Hamas’ stature and pollute any negotiations with a hateful ideology which sabotages the search for regional peace and security," she said.

Significantly, though, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), a leading pro-Israel congressman who chairs the House's Middle East subcommittee, recently convened a subcommittee on what's next in Gaza after the recent war -- and emphasized the conundrum of how to deal with a split Palestinian polity.

"Hamas is the odd man out," he said. "I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t know how you make peace with half of a want-to-be country. I don’t know how you sign an agreement with an entity whose legal, political and administrative bona fides are all in question."

The three preconditions, laid down by the Quartet -- the grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that guides the peace process -- were honored more in the breach, Ackerman said.

"Start with Hamas, a terrorist organization, an entity beyond the pale," Ackerman said at the Feb. 12 hearing. "They are the enemy and no one can talk to them until they accept the Quartet’s conditions of recognizing Israel, repudiating violence and accepting the PLO’s agreements with Israel.

3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Congress was pressing ahead Tuesday with a call on Beijing to end "repression" in Tibet as China's foreign minister headed here in hopes of easing a spike in tensions.

The Pacific powers traded blame after a near clash in the South China Sea, with Washington accusing China of harassing a US surveillance ship in international waters and Beijing hitting back by saying the ship was engaged in illegal activities.

The incident underscored the fragility of US-China relations just as US President Barack Obama's administration has pledged a cooperative relationship with the rising Asian giant on the global economic crisis and other issues.

China protested the naval incident and called on the US Congress to drop its plans for a resolution on Tibet, which is marking 50 years since a bloody crackdown on an uprising that forced the Dalai Lama to go into exile.

But the House of Representatives placed on its voting agenda the resolution urging Beijing to "cease its repression of the Tibetan people, and to lift immediately the harsh policies imposed on Tibetans."

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the United States "stood shoulder to shoulder with the Dalai Lama," who now lives in exile in India from where he has developed a global following and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"How fitting it is that the foreign minister of China should be here in the United States this very week on an official visit," Ros-Lehtinen said.

She quoted a past statement by foreign minister Yang Jiechi accusing the Dalai Lama of being a separatist trying to divide China.

By passing the resolution, "the United States Congress will have an answer to the foreign minister of China," she told Tibetan supporters to thunderous applause.

Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American and a Republican with outspoken anti-communist views, is backing the resolution along with leading members of Obama's Democratic Party, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu called on US lawmakers to halt the Tibet bill.

"We express serious concern over this ... we believe the US Congress resolution proposed by a few anti-China representatives disregards the history and reality of Tibet," Ma told reporters.

He also said Beijing had "made solemn representations to the United States," calling it to stop its "illegal" naval activities near China.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman rejected the call, telling reporters: "We are going to continue as we have to operate in international waters."

Yang was due to hold talks in Washington on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited China last month as part of her first foreign trip since taking office.

Clinton unnerved human rights activists during her trip by saying that US concerns over Tibet and other rights issues would not impede the countries' cooperation on the economy, climate change and other issues.

Amnesty International USA executive director Larry Cox appealed to Clinton in an open letter to press Yang on China's "staggering" human rights abuses.

"Failure to discuss human rights abuses in a meaningful way would send the wrong signal about the seriousness with which the United States views the human rights situation in China and would diminish the experiences of those affected in the country," Cox said.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano met today with several Florida Reps. to discuss help for Haitian immigrants in the US -- the first Cabinet level meeting on Haiti in 8 years, said Rep. Kendrick Meek.

"She was glad we had the meeting and she's going to take the request under consideration," Meek said of the delegation's plea that Haitian immigrants here in the U.S. be able to stay until Haiti has better stabilized. "That's what we've heard before, but only through a letter. The fact we had a meeting is a good thing."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has boosted her celeb count, meeting this week with Richard Gere to mark the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama being forced into exile.

Ros-Lehtinen is the co-author of a resolution that recognizes the plight of the people of Tibet.Gere

With one in 5 Florida homeowners behind on their payments, several Florida lawmakers crossed party lines to vote for a Democratic-backed House bill aimed at preventing people from losing their homes.

Miami Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart were three of only 7 Republicans to cast votes in favor of the legislation.

"I've been studying the bill and I still have some concerns with it, but I think overall it will do more good than harm," Lincoln Diaz-Balart said of the bill that House Republican Leader John Boehner said would "reward scam artists, speculators and those who made irresponsible decisions."

But Ros-Lehtinen noted a "housing forclosure crisis in South Florida" and said she voted "to provide an economic lifeline to families in distress."

The bill also contains a provision backed by Rep. Kendrick Meek to create a mortgage fraud task force at the Department of Justice to help local task forces -- like the one in Miami-Dade -- work with other groups across the country.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the original co-sponsors of the legislation, called it the first key piece of President Obama’s plan to aid struggling homeowners.

"Mortgage foreclosures lay at the very heart of our financial crisis,” she said. "Until we stop this bleeding, we cannot hope to stabilize the housing market and truly rescue our economy.”

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

Donning hard hats and wielding shovels, federal, state and county officials on Monday picked up piles of soil and threw them to the ground -- a symbolic groundbreaking for construction of an automated people mover, part of a $1.7 billion rental car and transit hub near Miami International Airport.

Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart joined Florida Department of Transportation district head Gus Pego and Miami-Dade County Aviation Department chief José Abreu in the shovel line marking the start of MIA Mover.

The ceremony marked one of the most significant milestones in the history of the 20-year-old project that was first conceived in 1989. The 1.27-mile-long MIA Mover, expected to carry an average of 3,000 passengers per hour when it opens in 2011, will link MIA with a hub planned to connect all major modes of transportation in the county.

Aircraft, buses, cars and trains would be linked through the Miami Intermodal Center now going up just east of MIA -- where passengers will arrive either aboard rental cars, local buses or Metrorail and Tri-Rail. Then they will board the automated people mover and travel to their planes at MIA.

CLOGGED ROADS

Operation of the MIA Mover is expected to thin out perennial congestion on airport roads now clogged with rental car shuttle buses, taxis and civilian passenger vehicles dropping off or picking up travelers.

Groundbreaking came one day before the Miami-Dade County Commission is asked to ratify a $34 million increase in the overall state transportation department project contribution.

Abreu told The Miami Herald after Monday's ceremony that the $34 million is not an unanticipated increase, but one that had been expected for some time.

''We always knew there had to be an increase,'' said Abreu soon after the ceremony held between MIA's Dolphin and Flamingo parking garages. ``It's a reflection that the original budget was adjusted later.''

The item on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting recommends that county commissioners approve a resolution ratifying the additional $34 million kicked in by the Florida Department of Transportation.

The amount would bring total agency share to $100.5 million. Total project cost is now estimated at $342 million, including $259 million for construction alone.

MIA Mover is being built by Odebrecht construction and joint venture partner Parsons. Automated trains will be supplied through a partnership between Mitsubishi and Sumitomo.

Formally known as Crystal Movers, the system has become a standard for airport and light rail networks in several countries. Cars will travel at about 40 miles per hour and stop and start smoothly on rubber tires.

Once operational, the Miami Intermodal Center, or MIC, as the facility is known, will be one of the largest transportation projects in Miami-Dade County.

Originally envisaged as a vast car-bus-rail hub, the MIC has been reduced in scope over the years.

PLAN CHANGED

It was once expected to handle all MIA baggage check-in and pick-up, but that service is now off the table.

Officials also initially envisaged expressways linking the hub to State Roads 112 to the north and 836 to the south -- major high-speed roads linking MIA to Interstate 95 to the east and Florida's Turnpike to the west.

WASHINGTON -- Several U.S. House lawmakers have asked the Energy secretary to review and potentially cancel oil contracts with a Netherlands trading firm to fill the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of the company's involvement in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal and its dealings in Iran, according to a letter viewed by Dow Jones Newswires Monday.

The bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking the review of contracts with Vitol Holding BV includes Rep. Howard Berman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, and ranking member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.).

The legislators also question the company's dealings with Iran. The Energy Department's response to the request could give a signal on whether the Obama Administration will prosecute oil companies that deal with Tehran under its Iran Sanctions Act powers.

Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, said the department is reviewing the issues raised by the legislators.

Closely held Vitol -- one of the largest energy traders in the world -- pleaded guilty in late 2007 to grand larceny in connection with kickbacks paid to the Iraqi government in 2001-2002 and agreed to pay a fine of $17.5 million.

On Jan. 16, the Department of Energy awarded contracts to Vitol and Royal Dutch Shell's trading unit to purchase 10.7 million barrels of crude oil at a cost of $553 million for the DOE's emergency oil stocks.

"In the (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) bidding process, Vitol Inc. vigilantly complied with regulations and revealed its affiliates and business relationships to the Federal government," Matt Lauer, a spokesman for Vitol, said in an email. He said no Vitol affiliate has ever been disqualified from doing business with the U.S. government.

Mr. Lauer said the company had settled the the Iraq Oil-For-Food case, acknowledging the company paid "surcharges demanded by the state" that were "outside the scope of the U.N. oil-for-food program to the account of the National Oil Co." for oil infrastructure development.

Estes was unhappy because Ros-Lehtinen's "no" vote could have sidelined a few million dollars of taxpayer money from coming here. This is a national crisis. Imagine what is coming. With TARP, the $700 billion Troubled Assets Recovery Plan that passed in September, we doubled the number of dollars potentially in circulation with no added value to support the total. Unless the government has come up with some magic bullet no one has ever tried before, we are in for one heck of a fall.

Swell the $450 billion that was in circulation before October to 1.5 trillion or so dollars in circulation and you get hyperinflation. We can't show that we have the assets and production capacity to generate enough money to pay that debt. We as a nation are in the same position as the homeowners who took on loans they could not handle. Those homeowners are losing their homes. Hopefully they can find a place to rent and rebuild. We are in danger of losing our country.

When someone waves a trillion dollars in your face, it's very hard to say no. In the short term, your constituents will thank you, but when the bill for that spending spree comes due, they will eventually curse you.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen did the hard thing by voting no on a bill that no one even read in its entirety before the vote, a bill that could have been broken into pieces with the most critical measures enacted quickly and the rest put through some cost benefit analysis. It is so much easier to just take your share of the money, grab what adulation you can and hope to disappear before it all goes terribly wrong.

I voted for a responsible representative of not just us, but the next generation of Keys citizens who will ultimately pay the price for this bill. I voted for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and, in my view, she did the right thing by voting against the bill.

Susan Davis reports on politics.

Tonight marked President Barack Obama’s first address before Congress but many well-worn traditions remain intact in this era of change. Namely: the members of Congress who scope the prime aisle seats for hugs, kisses, and back-slaps with the president for two seconds of primetime.

As in recent years past, Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel of New York, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois remain fixtures of the Aisle Seat Caucus. Joining them were fellow Democratic Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee of California, and Dale Kildee of Michigan.

Democrats also crossed the aisle to score seats on the side where traditionally Republicans sit including California Reps. Joe Baca, Mike Honda, and Adam Schiff. Republicans who hustled for an aisle seat include Reps. Jean Schmidt of Ohio, Robert Aderholt of Alabama, Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Todd Platts of Pennsylvania.

Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen shared a hug, a kiss and a laugh with the president as well. The Floridian had a funny exchange with Obama late last year when he tried to reach her by phone and she hung up on him—twice—thinking it was a prank.

While the two parties have found bipartisanship elusive on economic policy lately, there was overwhelming cheers and a standing ovation for US Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger who was in attendance and recognized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Another notable appearance included Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is recovering from surgery to treat pancreatic cancer. The justice did not have any run-in’s on the House floor with Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, who had to apologize Monday for insensitive remarks he made over the weekend about her prognosis.

BY ROBERT SAMUELS AND EVAN BENN

President Barack Obama's prime-time speech was greeted with a wait-and-see attitude in South Florida, where the economy has been battered by the housing crisis and growing unemployment.

From the man on the street to members of Congress, South Floridians were cautiously optimistic about the Obama administration's plan to lift the economy out of its current malaise.

At the Riverside Hotel on Fort Lauderdale's Las Olas Boulevard, Rocco Norman watched Obama address the nation on television and said he was pleased to hear the president say he would fight corporate greed.

''I'm a worker. Most everyone I know is a worker. And we're scared for our jobs, while the CEOs keep getting bonuses? That isn't right,'' said Norman, 42, a law office assistant.

Others watching Obama said they were anxious to see the effects of the $787 billion stimulus package that was recently approved by Congress.

''I'm glad he mentioned that website,'' Sharon Tomes said about the recovery.gov site where Americans can track how stimulus dollars are being spent.

``I'm going to be checking that every day.''

Obama's remarks about the economy drew the attention of several Barry University students, who took time off from their studies to watch the address.

''It rejuvenated the hope for me that our education system will be able to compete with the Chinese,'' said Michael Whorley, an 18-year old freshman.

''Usually, in economic turmoil, education is the first thing to go,'' he said.

South Florida lawmakers in Congress shared similar feelings but were mostly divided along party lines. Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose district stretches from Miami Beach and Key Biscayne to Monroe County and Key West, said she remains concerned about the billions of dollars being appropriated to boost the nation's economy.

''I look forward to working with President Obama on positive solutions to our nation's economic difficulties, but we cannot continue to borrow and spend our way out of this hole,'' she said.

Like her House Republican colleagues, Ros-Lehtinen voted against the stimulus legislation, saying it would ``sadly saddle future generations with massive debt.''

Despite her reservations, she struck a bipartisan tone. ''South Floridians are bipartisan pragmatists,'' she said. ``We want solutions, not arguments. And I think Obama feels the same way.''

Democratic Rep. Ron Klein, whose district runs along the coastline of Palm Beach and Broward counties, said Obama's message and his administration's plans to fix the country's ailing economy were on target.

''President Obama was right to point out tonight that the economic challenges we face as a nation are interrelated, and that we cannot solve any one of them without a comprehensive approach,'' he said.

He also shared Obama's view about America's ``fundamental optimism.''

''There is no doubt that as Americans, we have risen time and time again to meet and exceed every challenge presented by history, and I have no doubt that we will do so once again,'' he added.

It took a bit of coaxing, but Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s taking full advantage of the 21st century.

The Florida Republican told Politico that she was really reluctant to get into the new-age techie stuff, but she realized she was behind in the times, particularly when her kids started calling her congressional Web site "lame." But now, her kids can be proud of their mother’s virtual digs! Last month, Ros-Lehtinen launched her own YouTube channel, "to better reach out to you and share the things I am working on both in Washington and in South Florida and the Keys," and she Twitters, and keeps a congressional blog.

"My staff dragged me into the new century whether I wanted them to or not," she told Politico. "I’m not technologically savvy in the least … [now] we’re YouTubing and we’re Twittering and doing all the new technology one needs to do."

Ros-Lehtinen years ago was forced to flee Cuba with her family. She became the first Hispanic woman and first Cuban-American elected to Congress. She previously was the first woman elected to the Florida State House of Representatives. She’s married and has two children and two step-children. She has worked to clean up environmental hazards in her state, opposes off-shore drilling near Florida, supports more help for homeowners in this economic crisis, and more cargo security in the nation’s ports.

The students at George Washington Carver Middle School heard harrowing stories of death marches, beatings and forced separations from families.??

What added to the poignancy in the hushed room: The three victims retelling their stories were about the same age as the Carver students when the Nazis took them.??

Indeed, Joe Sachs, David Mermelstein and Alex Gross were all middle-school age when forced to endure what millions of adults couldn't -- life in World War II German ghettos and labor and concentration camps.??

The three recently joined U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at Carver to talk of surviving the Nazi nightmare.??

For many children at Carver, ''this was the first time that they had been in contact with a Holocaust survivor,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.??

Nearly 64 years after World War II ended, the men still force themselves to relive the Nazi nightmare by talking about their experiences in hopes it will bring more tolerance.??

''I will speak to anybody who will listen,'' said Sachs, 83.??

He was only 12 years when he was forced to live in a ghetto the Nazis created in southwest Poland.??

''[The end of World War II] was supposed to be the end of genocide in the world, but we still have it. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach tolerance, to tell young people that we have to combat evil in the world,'' Sachs said.??

Another survivor, Gross spoke about the casualties of the Holocaust.??

''It was not just the Jews that were persecuted,'' said Gross, who was at Buchenwald with Nobel laureate Elie Weisel, who has written extensively about the Holocaust.??

Gross also has penned a book, Yankele: A Holocaust Survivor's Bittersweet Memories.??

''We came to tell the students what happened and why it happened,'' added the third survivor, David Mermelstein.??

At 80, he is one of the youngest remaining survivors.??Mermelstein still participates in the March of the Living that goes to some of the actual sites of the concentration camps in Europe.??

Mermelstein still participates in the March of the Living that goes to some of the actual sites of the concentration camps in Europe.??

The three survivors' stories affected children and adults alike at Carver.??

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is taking issue with Forbes Magazine for listing Miami in its Top 10 "Most Miserable Cities" in the US.

Forbes says the city made the list (No. 9) because it's "been crushed by the housing collapse. Moody's Economy.com estimates that 26% of mortgages in Miami are delinquent or are likely to be written off as bad debt that can not be collected. Violent crime and corruption are also off the charts."

Au contraire, begs Ros-Lehtinen: "I I welcome the editors and reporters of Forbes to a tour of South Florida so that they can experience the real Miami, with our honest, hard working residents; our rich cultural diversity; our one of a kind tropical metropolitan ambience; our unique Everglades; white sandy beaches; our pristine coral reefs; our many art festivals; the great boating and fishing opportunities that the Atlantic provides and the vibrant and colorful community that continues to attract people from around the world.

"That is the Miami that I have lived in for more than 40 years and which I love returning to every week from my work in Washington. Sadly, the editors once again accept confusing statistics as opposed to actually visiting and getting a feel of our tropical paradise."

Forbes says it compiled the rankings by looking at the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S., which meant those with a population of at least 378,000. "We ranked those metros on nine factors: commute times, corruption, pro sports teams, Superfund sites, taxes (both income and sales), unemployment, violent crime and weather."

As Congress scrambles to pass a federal stimulus package, government leaders across South Florida are keeping a watchful eye -- after all, billions of dollars in local infrastructure projects are at stake.

Yet beyond the question of which projects win funding, another looms: Do the communities affected really need some of the projects being pushed by mayors? Do they even want them all?

South Florida projects being pitched include swimming pools, new city halls and a $2.3 million ''fortified bunker.'' The ideas, put on a mayoral wish list compiled with rapid speed and little input, have sometimes taken even community leaders by surprise.

Nationally, Las Vegas has been ridiculed for wanting stimulus money to help fund a mob museum, while Providence went on the defensive for a proposal to spend $4.8 million for a polar bear exhibit at the local zoo.

All of those potential stimulus projects were included in a list assembled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Though appearing on the list does not guarantee funding -- the formal application process will come after the stimulus bill is passed -- the list's 18,750 projects represent the fullest blueprint of what cities and counties are seeking.

Supporters of the stimulus package -- President Obama among them -- say infrastructure spending can play a key role in reviving the economy. The building of new roads and bridges will create jobs in construction and other related industries, while many projects, once complete, will need permanent employees.

While the pluses of such nuts-and-bolts projects are clear, the fine print of the mayors' list has sparked something of a backlash in Washington, with Congress taking steps to ensure that items such as swimming pools, golf courses and zoos are disqualified.

Thus far, the stimulus bill has garnered little Republican support. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Pinecrest Republican, said the inclusion of more infrastructure projects -- and the removal of other, unnecessary spending -- could turn her ''no'' vote into a ``yes.''

But Ros-Lehtinen has concerns about relying too much on the mayors' list.

''We should also have a little bit of community input to find out what the people of South Florida want,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``I'm not sure that a lot of those projects would pass the test of a referendum. . . . I think that the community could come up with a better list.''

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Weston Democrat, said the stimulus package will save or create 330,000 Florida jobs -- and that a website will be created for citizens to track where the money goes.

''We're going to have unprecedented accountability,'' she said.

SURPRISE PROJECTS

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, president of the mayors' conference, has been a leader on the stimulus issue, traveling to Washington this week to head a delegation of mayors in meetings with White House advisors and members of Congress. Diaz said any package approved by Congress must invest in America's cities.

But in Diaz's own city, two park-improvement projects described as ''ready to go'' on the list came as a surprise to community leaders.

A $20 million plan to add a building and upgraded kayak launch to Legion Park was news to the city commissioner representing the area.

''The first I'm hearing of it is with you, right now,'' Commissioner Marc Sarnoff told a reporter recently.

Residents in Miami's Morningside neighborhood were equally caught off-guard when the ''ready to go'' list included a new $10 million aquatic center.

''I would have thought that there would have been some kind of meeting somewhere where people would have input into what was the most pressing concerns in their communities,'' said resident Bill Hopper. ``But apparently that's not how it works.''

Miami has scheduled its first-ever community meeting on the aquatic center for later this month. That meeting, however, could prove to be pointless if congressional leaders follow through on their plans to ax swimming pools.

Without the federal money, Miami's proposed aquatic center will likely disappear just as suddenly as it arrived.

A RACE FOR FUNDS

Leaders in Miami and elsewhere acknowledge that some wish-list items were not completely vetted before being sent to Washington. They say the list was only meant to show Congress the types of things that could be built -- not to determine exactly what would be.

'When the talk started about getting infrastructure projects off the ground and creating jobs, what mayors did is we all came together and we said, `OK, here are all the different types of projects that we could start,' '' Diaz said.

Cities raced to get their needs included on the list, leaving little time for thoughtful debate or review.

''There's been no public input,'' said Dan Keefe, assistant to Plantation Mayor Rae Carole Armstrong. ``We did the best we could on what we know from the staff level.''

The West Broward city came up with a variety of projects, including roughly $2.3 million to ''construct a fortified bunker'' that would store the city's computer servers and hardware.

Keefe said the bunker would be built with hurricane protection in mind, so Plantation could continue to operate following a Category 4 or 5 storm. Broward County has done something similar, Keefe said, saying the word ''infrastructure'' today has a different meaning than before.

''We have electronic infrastructure now, which is very vital,'' Keefe said.

Another question posed by the mayors' wish list: Will residents appreciate paying their city bills in the comfort of a new city hall? Several South Florida cities want to find out -- and they want the federal government to pay.

Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis offers no apologies for his city's $14.5 million city hall request -- even though Pembroke Pines will have $14.5 million of its own money available from the sale of its old city hall property.

Should Washington pick up the tab, Ortis said, the city's money could be spent on other pressing needs. For example, Ortis said Pembroke Pines has postponed buying new fire trucks and police cars.

''Most cities are pretty much in trouble,'' Ortis said. ``We're laying off people.''

DOWNTOWN MIAMI

One long-shot proposal -- a $150 million expansion of downtown Miami's Metromover system that would extend it to the site of a proposed new Florida Marlins stadium -- arrived seemingly out of nowhere.

When asked about the rail extension, Miami Chief Financial Officer Larry Spring -- who helped assemble the list -- suggested that it was county leaders who pushed for it.

Yet county transit director Harpal Kapoor said the Metromover plan came from the city, and that county transit's stimulus request included no such item. While the rail extension was pitched to Washington as ''ready to go,'' Kapoor said an in-depth analysis is still needed.

Mayor Diaz said he couldn't remember where the proposal came from. ''It was just an idea that we've been talking about,'' he said.

Government leaders stress that just because something appears on the list doesn't mean it will get built. For one, the mayors' voluminous list far exceeds the amount of money Congress has for cities' needs. And once a federal stimulus package is approved, local projects will be scrutinized much more thoroughly.

WYNWOOD, Fla. (CBS4) ― On a recent Saturday morning, more than a hundred South Florida union leaders gathered for breakfast at the electrical workers union hall in Wynwood. Amid American flags and pro-labor banners, were two long buffets filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and assorted pastries and fruits. As the union folk lined up for the food, politicians circled the room – shaking hands and making small talk.

Among those working the crowd were Congressman Kendrick Meek, fresh off his announcement to run for the United State Senate; State Sen. Dan Gelber, another Senate hopeful; and Miami City Commissioner Joe Sanchez, who is running for mayor.

One of the few politicians present without their proverbial hand out was Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the newly re-elected Congresswoman from the 18th Congressional District.

As everyone settled in to eat, the head of the South Florida AFL-CIO welcomed the crowd and asked them to enjoy a short video they had produced showing the political efforts they had made during the past year. Not surprising, there were lots of pictures of union folks waving Obama signs, but almost as prominent were the pictures and video of union workers campaigning for Annette Taddeo in her bid to unseat Ros-Lehtinen.

To say the moment was surreal would be an understatement. As the video played, Ros-Lehtinen was enjoying a plate full of bacon and eggs. She was also undoubtedly enjoying her electoral victory that came despite the efforts of those sitting all around her.

During the campaign, union officials were not shy about their support of Taddeo. They pumped time, money and resources into the fight; blasting Ros-Lehtinen for being out of step with the needs of working men and women.

That Ros-Lehtinen even came to this breakfast showed just how smart she is as a politician. Her appearance at the annual labor political breakfast was followed by a private meeting Friday morning with the leaders of more than a dozen local unions.

In an interview after the meeting, Ros-Lehtinen told me she was reaching out to labor because she felt she had lost touch with them. "You just get so busy with your work," she says. "It was nothing that was a conscious effort. They didn't call me. I didn't call them. You know how relationships go; you have to work on them."

I asked her about the breakfast and the video showing the unions' vocal support for Taddeo. "I'm glad to live in a democracy," she said with a laugh. "I did that to myself by not keeping in touch with them. If I had been better about it maybe they would have supported me. Or maybe not. You never know."

She said at the meeting Friday, several of the union leaders wore Taddeo t-shirts under their jackets. "I guess they think I am supposed to be horrified," she said.

Frost, the local AFL-CIO leader, said he appreciated Ros-Lehtinen's willingness to come to their breakfast and to the labor council meeting this morning.

"She was the first member of congress to respond to our invitation," he said.

Added Deborah Dion, the AFL-CIO's political director: "I think people walked out of there saying we can work with her."

According to the AFL-CIO, Ros-Lehtinen votes in support of labor 44 percent of the time, which is actually fairly high among Republican members of Congress.

"We don't agree on some issues and on others we do," Ros-Lehtinen said. "I just vote my conscience."

The hottest topic discussed Friday morning was the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check. This is the highest priority of the labor movement and would allow workers a much easier time organizing unions in their workplace. Ros-Lehtinen has already voted against it once, and Friday she received an earful from union members who argue it is essential to protecting workers.

"This is about building the middle class," Frost said.

Critics argue the proposal would do away with secret ballots on votes creating a union and would therefore be ripe for abuse. Frost said he believed his members did a good job of addressing those concerns with Ros-Lehtinen and that he was hopeful she might reconsider her opposition.

Frost's hope, however, may be unrealistic.

In my interview with Ros-Lehtinen after the meeting, she seemed to still be opposed to the bill, describing herself as a "leaning no."

"I voted against the bill before," she said. "I don't know if it has changed much since that time. The biggest obstacle for me is the non-secret ballot. I just don't think that is the right way to run a railroad."

Both Ros-Lehtinen and the union leaders, however, said they would continue talking and hoped to get together again in the coming months.

A coalition of immigrant advocates is demanding that the U.S. attorney's office in Miami investigate the arrests of dozens of Mexicans and Guatemalans taken into custody as undocumented immigrants last month during a raid targeting a separate group of alleged sex-trade traffickers in Homestead.

The advocates, along with local community leaders, say the 42 Mexicans and 35 Guatemalans -- who were not involved in sex-trade trafficking -- were rounded up Nov. 19 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They accused ICE agents of using excessive force when they took the foreign nationals into custody.

Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman, denied allegations of agent misconduct. ''As is routine protocol, all allegations have been forwarded to the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility for their independent review,'' Navas wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald.

She said agents conducting the raids also came across undocumented immigrants and, under the law, were obligated to arrest them.

''This is a mandate we take seriously and cannot and will not turn a blind eye to illegal activity,'' Navas added.

A spokeswoman from the U.S. attorney's office said the allegations were forwarded to the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.

INVESTIGATION

The accusations came at a news conference held Tuesday in Homestead, where immigration advocates called for a high-level investigation into the Nov. 19 raids carried out by ICE, a federal agency charged with enforcing immigration and customs laws and arresting undocumented immigrants.

Jonathan Fried, executive director of WeCount!, said a Guatemalan woman saw agents beat her husband and throw him on the floor in front of their 4-year-old daughter. ''She's been traumatized by the whole situation,'' Fried said.

ICE conducted an investigation into more than a dozen brothels and stash houses in Palm Beach and Broward counties where immigrant women were forced into prostitution. ICE agents reported arresting four suspected sex traffickers and rescuing nine trafficking victims who had been forced into prostitution in brothels.

On a separate issue, immigrant advocates pressed the Bush administration to reverse its decision to resume the deportation of Haitian immigrants. They called the move ``supremely inhumane and damaging.''

Reps. Alcee Hastings, Kendrick Meek and Robert Wexler -- all Democrats from South Florda -- wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security expressing anger and frustration about the decision.

STORM RECOVERY

They say Haiti is ill-equipped to receive Haitian nationals at a time when the island nation is struggling to recover from a string of storms from this summer.

''This decision only complicates the Haitian government's ongoing recovery effort,'' Meek said in a statement.

''It is outright despicable that ICE, without prior warning or adequate explanation, has chosen to resume deportations to Haiti, a country still struggling to recover from the compounding national crises it suffered over the course of this past year,'' Hastings said.

Republican lawmakers Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, along with Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also sent a letter last Friday to the White House expressing their opposition to the deportation of Haitian immigrants.

Ileana repeatedly has helped with Keys issues

This election, I'm voting for both a Democrat and a Republican.

Democrat Barack Obama is my unequivocal choice for president, and Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for Congress.

In deciding to vote for Ros-Lehtinen, I carefully considered the benefits of handing Obama a Democratic Congress to work with by voting for Ros-Lehtinen's opponent, but ultimately decided against doing so.

My reasoning is simple, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen has repeatedly performed on our behalf, often bucking the White House her party has occupied. She's consistently done the job her constituents sent her to Washington to do.

I've had to call upon her office twice for assistance, neither time on my behalf, but on behalf of our community. Ileana and her staff have always been receptive, helpful and effective.

When it comes to matters of equality and human rights, Ileana has been there for us, often at a personal political cost from her more conservative constituents in lower Miami-Dade County and high-placed members of her own party in both Congress and the White House.

Ileana has always made frequent efforts to keep in-touch with us here in the Keys. Constantly visiting and sending staff members to ensure our needs are attended to.

When someone does the job they were elected to do, and does it as well as Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen has, I don't care which party they belong to, they deserve to be re-elected.

Scott G. Fraser

Keys voters may not be accustomed to much of a campaign in the 18th Congressional District. That's because incumbent Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, 56, has drawn only token opposition for most of her previous campaigns.

But this year is different. Her Democratic opponent Annette Taddeo, 41, is an energized campaigner who brings a strong business background and key ties to Miami-Dade's Hispanic community.

Keys residents have seen more of both Ros-Lehtinen and Taddeo this summer than anyone can ever remember from previous campaigns. And Taddeo has advanced clear-cut differences on issues and criticized Ros-Lehtinen's mostly party-line voting record.

Party histrionics aside, we think Ros-Lehtinen deserves another term because she's been far more engaged in Florida Keys issues than any of her recent predecessors representing us in Congress. And while we quibble with her on some Republican party-line votes, her overall record is one that any moderate would and should embrace.

We particularly single out her vote against President Bush's stand on the hotly debated issue of lifting the ban on offshore drilling. This summer, Bush made that a litmus test for members of Congress and a direct challenge to the House and Senate's Democratic leaders.

Florida's own Senate delegation was split along party lines on the issue, with Republican Mel Martinez toeing the GOP position and Democrat Bill Nelson voting against his own leadership in a vain effort to preserve the ban off Florida's coast.

On the House side, Ros-Lehtinen voted with Democrats who thought the environmental risks of greatly expanded offshore wells did little to solve this nation's energy crisis. And, worse, failed to recognize the thousands of offshore leases that oil industry giants have failed to exercise in the western Gulf of Mexico, where drilling has long been permitted.

Ros-Lehtinen has also championed the fight to restore federal funds for Everglades restoration and sewer construction funds for the Keys. She even gets applause at environmental conferences for her stand in support of clean energy initiatives and legislation that would curb global warming.

Upstart Democrat Taddeo takes on veteran Republican Ros-Lehtinen

By SEAN KINNEY skinney@keynoter.com

Posted - Saturday, October 25, 2008 07:01 AM EDT

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, there's a real race on in the 18th Congressional District, which includes all of the Keys, Miami Beach, Homestead and many southern Miami suburbs.

Voters will choose between 19-year incumbent U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Annette Taddeo, a businesswoman.

Taddeo has never run for election before but has a lot of experience in the mainland business world. For Ros-Lehtinen, politics has been her business for 26 years, the first seven in the state Legislature and the rest in Congress.

Taddeo is in the national Democratic Party's Red to Blue Program, which provides financial and strategic support to candidates they think have a real shot at unseating a Republican. So this race is on the national radar.

The job pays $169,300 annually.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

The 56-year-old Ros-Lehtinen was born in Havana to Enrique Ros and Amanda Adato. After the family moved to South Florida, and received bachelor's and master's degrees in education from Florida International University and a doctorate from the University of Miami.

Ros-Lehtinen served in the state House from 1982 until 1986, when she jumped to the state Senate and married legislator Dexter Lehtinen, who went on to serve as U.S. attorney for South Florida. She has two daughters and two stepchildren.

With the passing of U.S. Rep. Claude Pepper in 1989, Ros-Lehtinen ran a successful bid for a spot in the U.S. House and has been serving ever since.

Ros-Lehtinen is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has chaired the Africa Subcommittee, the International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee and the International Economic Policy and Trade subcommittee. She is co-chairwoman of the House National Marine Sanctuary Caucus.

The Ros-Lehtinen campaign is betting that a loyal constituency and a solid reputation for face-to-face service will see the incumbent through voter reservations caused by an unpopular president and the challenge posed by Taddeo.

Former Monroe County Commissioner Glenn Patton knows Ros-Lehtinen in both a professional and personal capacity. He says he appreciates Ros-Lehtinen's efforts to try to send federal dollars into various Keys projects.

"It's very difficult to get Washington's attention on local wastewater improvements," he said, but "she has really stepped up to the plate."

POSTED: 6:07 pm EDT October 23, 2008 UPDATED: 6:17 pm EDT October 23, 2008

By KEVIN WADLOW kwadlow@keynoter.com Posted - Saturday, October 18, 2008 07:01 AM EDT

Three Florida Keys fishermen took their appeal on a grouper ban to the highest level Friday.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez spent about 35 minutes on a telephone conference call with charter captains Bill Kelly and Andy Griffiths and commercial fishing representative Scott Zimmerman, along with U.S. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Reporters were not permitted to listen to the conference call. "I told the secretary that with the stroke of pen, he can do things that nobody else can right now," Kelly said.

Gutierrez closed the call by saying he wouldn't take immediate action on information he heard Friday "but there will be follow-through," Kelly said. "He thanked us for taking the time to express our interests."

Kelly said Ros-Lehtinen took an active role. "Ileana pressed our exceptionally well," he said. "She knew the positions and was very clear."

Ros-Lehtinen seconded the point that the pending Jan. 1-April 30 closure on red and black grouper in federal Atlantic waters could have grave financial repercussions since it occurs at the height of South Florida's tourism season, Kelly said.

Gutierrez was asked to remove red and black grouper from the four-month closure that was forwarded originally to protect gag grouper.

Gag grouper are considered overfished, but are species seldom caught in the Florida Keys.

Red and black grouper, by contrast, rank among the most coveted food fish in South Florida.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service extended to closure to red and black grouper because the "best science available" indicates they also are overfished.

Kelly told Gutierrez that the reports cited for red and black grouper are preliminary estimates made seven years ago.

A full assessment report would be about 400 pages he said. "These are reports are 13 pages," Kelly said.

The Keys fishermen urged Gutierrez to make sure the black grouper study begins and ends during 2009, so appropriate action may be taken.

On Wednesday, about a dozen fishermen -- most from the charter industry -- met with National Marine Fisheries Service regional manager Roy Crabtree in Islamorada.

"It was a great discussion but nothing definite came out of it," Kelly said.

July 7, 2008

Benidixen & Assoiciates Poll

Ros-Lehtinen: 58

Opponent: 31%

Undecided: 11%

September 25, 2008

DailyKos poll done by Research 2000 (English only)

Ros-Lehtinen: 53%

Opponent: 36%

Undecided: 11%

October 6, 2008

Telemundo/NBC6/Carlos McDonald poll

Ros-Lehtinen: 48%

Opponent: 35%

Undecided: 17%

October 8, 2008

Univision 23/FIU poll

Ros-Lehtinen: 52%

Opponent: 27%

By JENNIFER LEBOVICH

Joan Lefkowitz knows her parents and two of her sisters perished in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. She and other family members were lucky. They survived.

But the fate of her older brother, Alexander Braun, has gnawed at her for a large part of her 86 years.

The Miami Beach resident has been told her brother was taken from a labor camp in Hungary and marched toward Russia, but beyond that she's heard only speculation.

''He disappeared,'' said Lefkowitz, who was born in Czechoslovakia. ``I would like to know what happened.''

On Sunday, her daughter-in-law, Terry Lefkowitz, filled out a request for any available information about her brother from the International Tracing Service archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany -- a repository of more than 100 million documents collected by the Allies after the war.

The documents, mostly from Western and Central Europe, had been open to the public for some years after the war and then sealed until last November.

Representatives from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., along with survivors and others, gathered in an auditorium at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital at Douglas Gardens to talk about the information available in the archives and how to request it.

''Survivors are dying, and so many, for the last 62 years, haven't been able to get answers about themselves or their family,'' said Arthur Berger, senior advisor for external affairs at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

SPREADING THE WORD

He and others from the museum have traveled to large ''survivor communities'' in the United States, making similar presentations in other parts of South Florida, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

The struggle to get the International Tracing Service archive open took several years and the agreement of 11 governments.

Also lobbying to get the archives opened were members of Congress, among them South Florida Reps. Alcee Hastings, Robert Wexler and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who spoke at Sunday's event.

''These records we hope will provide many Holocaust survivors . . . with critical data, information about their loved ones,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican. ``They want to know who from my family was in what camp, what happened, what was their fate.''

Currently under way is the process of photocopying the documents and putting them in a digital format. The archives contained information about 17.5 million victims of the Nazis.

Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to victims of the Holocaust, and the Polish government also have copies of the documents, Berger said.

At the museum in Washington, volunteers and museum staff comb through the paperwork -- from concentration camps to arrest and transport records -- answering requests from people trying to find out more about their relatives.

Since January, the museum has answered about 7,000 requests -- though the response sometimes is that there is no information.

Documents from the archives meant answers for David Mermelstein, 79, of Kendall.

Mermelstein sent in his request form about six months ago, and on Sunday he held a bunch of color photocopies of cards bearing the name of his brother, Samuel Mermelstein.

The cards follow his brother's journey from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen, where the two were separated.

''He went to Dachau, then to Flossenbürg,'' said Mermelstein, who lived with his family in Czechoslovakia before the war. ''On the 26th of March, 1945, that's where it ends,'' he said, his voice trailing off.

''I didn't know what happened to him at all after May of '44,'' said Mermelstein, one of the co-founders in Florida of Cafe Europa, which sponsors events that bring Holocaust survivors together.

HUNT FOR A BROTHER

Mermelstein is already prepared with his next request -- finding more about another brother, Frank, whom he last saw in February 1945.

She wants meeting with Commerce head

By KEVIN WADLOW

kwadlow@keynoter.com

Posted - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 04:01 PM EDT

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says federal officials should "reconsider" a grouper-fishing closure in South Florida scheduled to begin Jan. 1.

Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who represents Monroe County and parts of Miami-Dade, contacted U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez to seek a meeting to discuss the impact of the four-month closure "during the height of South Florida's tourist season."

"Ros-Lehtinen rightly pointed out to the secretary the undue financial burden that this would have on countless individuals in her congressional district and throughout South Florida," according to a statement from her office.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council last week approved an emergency rule to close harvests of gag grouper, red grouper and black grouper from Jan. 1 to May 1.

The measure primarily is seen as a way to safeguard overfished gag grouper stocks during spawning season. Council staff said sufficient scientific studies exist to show black and red grouper also qualify for the closure because of ongoing pressure on the species population.

However, gag grouper are not often landed in Florida Keys waters, while red grouper and black grouper are a popular and plentiful food-fish target for South Florida anglers.

Imposing a ban on grouper during the peak of tourism season threatens to destroy the charter-fishing industry in the Keys and South Florida, captains and crewmen have testified.

Posted September 17, 2008 at 4:10 pm By Edward Fishman // Assistant News Editor

Rather than answer the attacks of opponent and Democrat Annette Taddeo, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen plans to run on her congressional record to get re-elected on Nov. 4 as the representative of Florida's 18th district.

Ros-Lehtinen believes her record has shown she has an interest in helping many college students face a harsh, post-graduate situation.

"This image of the lazy college student that is at a toga party is something of the past," Ros-Lehtinen said. "College classes are very demanding on student's time and there is a lot of pressure to succeed. It's not an easy time. Then, after all that, students face a tough job market and student loans. "

To help graduating students find jobs out of college, Ros-Lehtinen has been working with committees to collect and organize information about job opportunities for recent college graduates. She hopes this collection of data will facilitate the job search.

Ros-Lehtinen also wants to give students additional job search assistance by providing more funds to public and private colleges so they can hire college counselors with real-world experience.

"We cannot say our responsibility ends when the student receives the diploma," Ros-Lehtinen said. "We need to help students get a satisfying job… This is the missing ingredient in many college educations."

Simplified federal aid applications and more scholarships for transfer or summer students are also part of her plan to help college students.

This attention to education has been part of her political career since its inception in 1982, when she became the first Hispanic woman elected to be a state senator in Florida. As a state senator, she created the Pre-Paid College Tuition Program.

"That was one of my most successful programs, many college students could not afford college if I would have not passed this legislation," she said.

By Viola Gienger and Francois de Beaupuy

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- European Union leaders probably won't penalize Russia with sanctions over its invasion of Georgia when they hold a Sept. 1 summit on the crisis, a French official said, a result that might signal the West's limited ability to respond.

France doesn't foresee imposing barriers or restrictions at the meeting being convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss relations with Russia in light of the Georgian conflict, a presidential aide said. The aide briefed reporters at the Elysee Palace in Paris today on condition he not be further identified. France holds the EU's rotating presidency.

``The Europeans are sort of trying to find a formula for their message which makes them look tough but without being too provocative,'' said Reginald Dale, a senior fellow in the Europe program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``They're bound to do something pretty cautious and rather feeble.''

EU inaction would reflect a response from the U.S. and Europe built largely on public condemnations. Relations with Russia, the world's largest energy supplier, reached a post-Cold War low after the military conflict started in Georgia on Aug. 7. Russia three days ago recognized two breakaway Georgian regions as independent states, ignoring U.S. and European objections.

The EU wants to maintain its dialogue with Russia, though it intends to be firm, the French presidential aide said. Officials might discuss later, possibly before an EU-Russia summit in Nice on Nov. 14, whether to slow talks with Russia on closer economic ties or delay loosening their visa policies, the aide said.

Coordinating With EU

The U.S. is coordinating with the EU on a response to Russia's actions, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. While U.S. officials have issued statements condemning Russia's recognition of the Georgian breakaway regions and its handling of the cease-fire, the Bush administration hasn't announced any concrete measures other than humanitarian aid delivered to Georgia under military supervision.

The U.S. is ``re-evaluating'' its relationship with Russia, including a planned nuclear energy cooperation agreement, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday. Diplomats signed the accord in Moscow in May to enable joint projects on supplying and reprocessing nuclear fuel, and President George W. Bush submitted it to Congress later that month.

``We continue to be dismayed that Russia has not fulfilled all its requirements in the peace agreement that it signed,'' Perino told reporters at the White House today. ``Russia is increasingly isolated and will bear the consequences of that isolation unless they fulfill that agreement and make amends.''

Tougher Measures

The Republican administration got a push for tougher measures today from its party's top member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen urged U.S. officials to take steps including withdrawing the nuclear agreement from Congress and imposing a ban on visas for Russian officials and businessmen. The U.S. also should start security talks with Russia's neighbors, transfer assistance funding for Russia to Georgia and call for Moscow's ``immediate expulsion'' from the Group of Eight industrial nations, she said.

``Russia's invasion of Georgia must be met with a strong response by the United States and our allies,'' Ros-Lehtinen wrote in a letter to Bush.

May Sever Ties

In other developments, Georgia said today that it might recall its diplomats and sever ties with Russia; Moscow criticized a statement yesterday by foreign ministers in the Group of Seven industrial nations condemning Russia's recognition of the two separatist Georgian regions; and Georgia said any Russian military bases placed in South Ossetia would be ``illegal.''

In formulating a response to Russia's assault, the U.S. has more leeway to take forceful steps against Moscow than Europe in part due to the distance and because it isn't as dependent on Russia for financial ties and energy supplies, Dale said.

Russia supplies about a quarter of the EU's natural gas.

``There's very little leverage over Russia,'' Dale said. ``Once you've accepted that Georgia is a bridge too far in geographical terms, that it's not an ally you protect militarily, then what can you do?''

The EU also is divided between a group led by Germany, France and Italy that wants to maintain communication and more hard-line thinkers in Eastern Europe who have experienced Soviet occupation.

`Escalate the Dispute'

``Anything that had teeth would really escalate the dispute further than most West Europeans want to, because they want to keep their economic links with Russia,'' Dale said. ``Russia has shown it will turn off the faucets for political reasons.''

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called his decision on the breakaway regions an ``obvious'' move to protect his country's borders. Russia's acceptance of the independence of the pro- Moscow autonomous regions, years after they first requested recognition, followed its military drubbing of Georgia this month after leaders in Tbilisi tried to retake South Ossetia by force.

An EU-brokered cease-fire that ended fighting called for Georgia's forces to return to their bases and for Russian troops to withdraw to the positions they had before the conflict began.

The Sarkozy aide said all EU leaders should say in a joint statement that Russia's decision is unacceptable and remind Russia and Georgia that they must respect the cease-fire agreement. That would mean Russia must lift four check points in Abkhazia immediately, he said.

Russian patrols near the borders of the breakaway regions must be replaced by unarmed observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as soon as possible, the aide also said. The EU may announce at the Sept. 1 summit that it's ready to send tens, if not hundreds, of observers, the aide said.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in close cooperation with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, sponsored legislation that will allocate $ 10.8 million dollars to two projects in Miami-Dade County. $10.3 million will go to the Miami River Dredging Project, which will aid the completion of the river’s navigation channel to its predetermined depth and width. Completion of the project is set for April 2009.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen is in favor of reducing U.S. dependency on foreign crude oil supplies by investing in alternative fuels, nuclear power, drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, and oil shale exploration in the American West. However, when it comes to Florida's shores, she believes that states should have a say in this decision, noting that "what works in Texas may not work in Florida."

On Saturday, June 21, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a senior member of the Florida Congressional Delegation, spoke before the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce's Annual Goals Conference. Here, small business leaders, and staff and officials from the University of Miami and Baptist Hospital, listened to her address the challenges facing the economy due to tighter credit, deflating home prices, and rising energy and food costs. Ros-Lehtinen also discussed several legislative projects she has supported to help working families during these trying times.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met Girl Scouts from South Florida during their Girl Scout Leadership Patch meeting and spoke about her experiences as a public servant and emphasized the importance of education and community activism. As part of her commitment to this important organization, Ros-Lehtinen recently submitted an appropriations request for the Girl Scouts of America to expand the Scout's outreach efforts to the Hispanic community.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen then had the distinct honor of serving as the Keynote Speaker during the annual meeting of the Helen B. Bentley Family Health Center, where she addressed leading health and community officials who advocate healthcare for the poor and for low income individuals and who support this Center because of the countless lives it helps day in and day out.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, having secured $738,000 in vital federal funds for scientific investigations, displays and educational offerings, visited the Miami Science Museum to attend a check presentation.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen addressed audiences at the annual national conference of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) on the topic of education and youth.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen applauds today's passage of H.R. 6081, the "Heroes Earnings Assistance & Relief Tax Act of 2008," which grants tax benefits to veterans, active duty servicemen and certain volunteers. She is also pleased with passage of H.R. 6074, the "Gas Price Relief for Consumer Act," which safeguards the market, supply, price and distribution of oil, natural gas or other petroleum products and thus protects the American consumer.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met with senior citizens residing in the Stella Maris senior center in Miami Beach and another group living at the Carroll Manor in Miami. The Congresswoman addressed a wide range of pressing issues, from rising food prices to high gas prices.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen applauds House votes on two important housing bills that will offer real remedies for American's suffering from a brutal housing situation that has millions of people experiencing difficult and tough economic times. The congresswoman was one of 39 Republicans supporting the legislation.

The FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008 and the Neighborhood Stabilization Act of 2008 will both confront our housing crisis by allowing hard working American families to stay in their homes, and will protect neighborhoods and help stabilize the housing market.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen spoke to gathered teenagers at the Annual Celebration of the Monroe Youth Challenge Program, urging them to seek academic excellence and demonstrate civic responsibility.

The congresswoman then took part in the First Annual Green Living Awards given out by the Green Living & Energy Education organization (GLEE)., where she was honored along side Governor Crist and Representative Ron Saunders for their dedication to protecting our lands and waters.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was awarded the 2008 Capitol Award from the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA). Ros-Lehtinen joined other Hispanic members of Congress in being selected for this award and was chosen because of her significant contributions to the Hispanic community and her key co-sponsorship of the Latino Museum Bill.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with the House vote that amends the "Higher Education Act of 2005" to extend the educational programs under the "Higher Education Act of 1965" through May 31, 2008.

This important educational legislation includes expanding need-based financial aid, strengthening college preparation for low-income and first-generation college students, expands the capacity of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), simplifies student aid, helps to aggressively tackle college costs and is committed to teacher excellence at HISs and all schools and universities.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attended the University of Miami-Nova Southeastern University's Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (UM-NSU CARD) "Tropical Nights" Gala that benefits autism research and treatment. Ros-Lehtinen has been a strong advocate for UM-NSU CARD's mission of researching and eventually finding cures for autism, spina bifida and other related diseases.

Fifteen hostages, most notably French Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, were rescued on July 2, 2008 in a military coup over the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called the operation, “a testament to the incredible progress Colombia has made against those who wish to undermine its democratic and peaceful aspirations.”

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, hosted a South Florida Hurricane Preparedness Summit in Key Largo, Florida on June 2nd. Participants included community activists, local elected officials, and top hurricane forecasters, including the National Hurricane Center Director, Bill Read and Dr. Robert Atlas, Director of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory AOML. The event, which took place at the Key Largo Library facility, honest discussion of hurricane preparedness efforts for the 2008 Hurricane season, which begins on that day, June 2nd. The discussion, held at the Key Largo Library facility, focused on hurricane preparedness for the 2008 season and featured a presentation by Peter Jones of Weather-on-Demand on exciting new technology capable of controlling and diverting weather systems.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met Girl Scouts from South Florida during their Girl Scout Leadership Patch meeting and spoke about her experiences as a public servant and emphasized the importance of education and community activism. As part of her commitment to this important organization, Ros-Lehtinen recently submitted an appropriations request for the Girl Scouts of America to expand the Scout’s outreach efforts to the Hispanic community.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen then had the distinct honor of serving as the Keynote Speaker during the annual meeting of the Helen B. Bentley Family Health Center, where she addressed leading health and community officials who advocate healthcare for the poor and for low income individuals and who support this Center because of the countless lives it helps day in and day out.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, having secured $738,000 in vital federal funds for scientific investigations, displays and educational offerings, visited the Miami Science Museum to attend a check presentation.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen addressed the topic of education and youth at the annual national conference of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) on the topic of education and youth.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinenis applauds today’s passage of H.R. 6081, the “Heroes Earnings Assistance & Relief Tax Act of 2008,” which grants tax benefits to veterans, active duty servicemen and certain volunteers. She is also pleased with passage of H.R. 6074, the “Gas Price Relief for Consumer Act,” which safeguards the market, supply, price and distribution of oil, natural gas or other petroleum products and thus protects the American consumer.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met with senior citizens residing in the Stella Maris senior center in Miami Beach and another group living at the Carroll Manor in Miami. The Congresswoman addressed a wide range of pressing issues, from rising food prices to high gas prices.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen applauds House votes on two important housing bills that will offer real remedies for American’s suffering from a brutal housing situation that has millions of people experiencing difficult and tough economic times. The Congresswoman was 1 of 39 Republicans supporting the legislation.

The FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008 and the Neighborhood Stabilization Act of 2008 will both confront our housing crisis by allowing hard working American families to stay in their homes, as well as protect neighborhood and help stabilize the housing market.

Said Ros-Lehtinen, “These two legislative projects will allow for our hard working families to have some respite from the constant threat of foreclosure and evictions that many of them are facing. This legislation is a great first step in addressing the mortgage crisis as it will not reward speculators, irresponsible borrowers or those who engaged in out right mortgage fraud.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen spoke to gathered teenagers at the Annual Celebration of the Monroe Youth Challenge Program, urging them to seek academic excellence and demonstrate civic responsibility.

The Congresswoman then took part in the 1st Annual Green Living Awards given out by the Green Living & Energy Education organization (GLEE)., where she was honored along side Governor Crist and Representative Ron Saunders for their dedication to protecting our lands and waters.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was awarded the 2008 Capitol Award from the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA). Ros-Lehtinen joined other Hispanic members of Congress in being selected for this award and was chosen because of her significant contributions to the Hispanic community and her key co-sponsorship of the Latino Museum Bill.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with the House vote that amends the “Higher Education Act of 2005” to extend the educational programs under the “Higher Education Act of 1965” through May 31, 2008..

This important educational legislation includes expanding need based financial aid, strengthening college preparation for low income and first generation college students, expands the capacity of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI’s), simplifies student aid, helps to aggressively tackle college costs and is committed to teacher excellence at HIS’s and all schools and universities.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attended the University of Miami-Nova Southeastern University’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (UM-NSU CARD) “Tropical Nights” Gala that benefits autism research and treatment. Ros-Lehtinen has been a strong advocate for UM-NSU CARD’s mission of researching and eventually finding cures for Autism, Spina Bifida and other related diseases.

Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen applauded the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) for awarding grants to the Archdiocese of Miami and the Miami Beach Community Development Corporation for the construction of housing units for the elderly. The grants, which total $800,000, will be used in the predevelopment phase of the Supportive Housing for the Elderly program at both the Archdiocese’s program as well as at the Development Corporation’s site. Said

Washington, DC –Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen co-sponsored bipartisan legislation that offers federal funds to assist in Holocaust studies in school. The legislation “Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Act” allows federal funds in public schools to be used for the specific intent of Holocaust studies, with in-depth research into specific areas of studies.

Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was eager to support two essential small business bills in the House of Representatives. These two pieces of legislation work in concert with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to secure our small business interests both domestically and abroad. H.R. 2992, the SBA Trade Programs Act, requires that the Office of International Trade within the SBA formulate policies and recommendations benefiting small businesses in both domestic and foreign markets

In an initiative to remedy the erosion of Miami Beach sands, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is seeking to have foreign sand hauled with barges to the beaches of her district.

In 1999, Congress barred any federal funds designated for beach replenishment in Miami-Dade County to be used “for the acquisition of foreign source materials,” unless the secretary of the army certifies to both the House and Senate appropriations committees that domestic sources of sand are not available.

As hurricane season approaches, sand handlers must act with speed so that beaches can withstand any major storms. Because other Florida beaches need local sand for their own coastal replenishment projects, using foreign sources of sand in the Caribbean or Bahamas is the only financially feasible option.

Because of this, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen sent a letter last month to John Paul Woodley Jr., the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works, writing that “the safety of all coastal residents is too important to handle this matter as business as usual.”

A multi-million dollar cleanup initiative, already having dredged nearly half of the Miami River, will be continued due to a $20 million boost intended to keep the project moving. Holding the $20.5 million check, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen assured that the remainder of the river will be cleaned in the next few months, restoring the river's one time luster. The funding includes $7 million from Congress; $5.8 million from the state; $5.4 million from the Florida Inland Navigational District; and $2.3 million from the county and city of Miami. The addition of federal funding means that Miami-Dade County will save millions of dollars and that the project may be completed by the end of 2008.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen expressed disappointment at Delta Airlines’ temporary decision to suspend flight air service to Marathon Airport, stating that the community of Marathon’s well-being is affected by this decision. She and her staff played a key role in having the airline reinstate Marathon flights, suggesting that Delta appeared interested in resuming service once the peak winter travel begins.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen expressed her support for The South Florida Breast Cancer Coalition Research Foundation by attending their event “DRIVING HOME THE CURE,” held to raise awareness of the new "End Cancer Now" Florida automobile license plates. Revenues from the license plates will support breast cancer research, education, and advocacy.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen joined other Florida Representatives in sending a letter to Senator Chris Dodd asking him to reconsider his support of a bill which would establish a study commission on the homeowner’s insurance crisis. The letter expresses the disappointment that the Senator’s only action has been to form a study commission. Further, the letter asks Senator Dodd to support a bill which would implement tangible proposals which would real savings to Floridians on their homeowner’s insurance. The letter was signed by Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, Ginny Brown-Waite, Vern Buchanan, and Gus Bilirakis.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased that the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (WRDA) was passed today with an overwhelming majority. The WRDA contains language which will allow the City of Layton to seek reimbursement from the Army Corps of Engineers for work done prior to signing of project agreements. The City of Layton has spent millions on a project which was to be funded by the Army Corps of Engineers but the funds were not distributed to the City. With its small municipal budget, Layton needs the money to use in other areas of its municipal budget. Ros-Lehtinen has worked closely with the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee to ensure that the language needed for this reimbursement makes it into the final draft of the bill.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been officially informed that $3.5 million will be received by the Army Corps of Engineers in order to recommence work on the Miami River Dredging Project in June and July. The Congresswoman has been a tireless advocate of the project and has worked hard toward ensuring it is properly funded.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced the National Hurricane Research Initiative Act of 2007, a bill that seeks to improve the prediction, preparedness, and research of hurricanes. The bill is vital to Florida, the Gulf Coast, and the Eastern Seaboard because these areas have been pounded by hurricanes throughout the years. The bill seeks to exploit the expertise of government scientists by coordinating their efforts in order to build a stronger foundation to our understanding of these massive storms. The bill was cosponsored by Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ric Keller, Gus Bilirakis, Vern Buchanan, Connie Mack, and Allen Boyd. Senator Mel Martinez introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen joined her House colleague, Patrick Kennedy, in introducing the Positive Aging Act of 2007; a bill that will integrate mental health services into primary care facilities for seniors. The bill was also introduced in the Senate by Senators Clinton & Collins. If enacted, the bill would establish the Office of Older Adult Mental Health Services within the Administration on Aging. It would also make grants available to public and non-profit organizations which provide mental health services to seniors. The legislation has been endorsed by several prominent organizations which deal with the mental health of our senior citizens.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted for the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007, H.R. 1227, which will restore funding for Section 8 in communities affected by Hurricane Wilma. South Florida recently lost millions in Section 8 funding due to a new formula adopted for fiscal year 2007. Today’s bill will help rectify the recent cuts. Ros-Lehtinen worked with her South Florida colleagues to urge House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank to include the provision in the bill.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased that the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee approved the reimbursement funds for the City of Layton in a vote today. The provision, included in the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (WRDA), will reimburse Layton for work done on its wastewater project. Ros-Lehtinen worked closely with the Chairman and Ranking Member to have the provision inserted in the final draft of the bill. The full House will take up the WRDA in the near future.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced companion legislation that would impose a 2-year moratorium on cuts by Medicare and Medicaid. A similar bill was introduced by Senator Mel Martinez a few days ago. The recently proposed cuts will affect over 57 million Americans who rely on the programs for their health.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, will introduce legislation to prevent the Castro regime from drilling a mere 45 miles from Key West, Florida. The legislation, which will be introduced next week, seeks to protect the largest coral reef in the continental United States.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen contacted the relevant committees to express her strong objection to proposed payment cuts to hospitals by Medicare and Medicaid. The letter, sent to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Ways and Means Committee and the Committee on Energy and Commerce, stated the proposed cuts will affect over 57 million Americans who depend on the program for their healthcare. According to Medicaid, the estimated impact of the proposed changes could reach $3.8 billion over five years.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, along with Raymond Santiago, Director of the Miami-Dade Public Library System, will be at the Shenandoah Branch Public Library promoting our local public library system. At the event, the Congresswoman will be presented with a READ Poster, a poster which promotes literacy. It will be held on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 11:300 a.m.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen cosponsored to bills which, if enacted, will greatly improve the treatment given to both minorities suffering from Diabetes and Americans who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. The Minority Diabetes Initiative Act would provide grants to physicians, community based organizations, and other health care providers for care and treatment programs for people with diabetes in minority communities. The Alzheimer’s Treatment & Caregiver Support Act would provide grants to public and non-profit organizations in order to improve treatment for Alzheimer’s patients and expand training and support for families and caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients.

Congresswomen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rosa L. DeLauro introduced the Safe Babies Act of 2007, a bill that seeks to protect infants and toddlers in foster care. Infants and toddlers are the fastest growing category of children entering foster care and are the most vulnerable as well. From the events that lead to being placed in foster care to the separation from parents, the trauma these children suffer often dramatically impair their physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen contacted Governor Charlie Crist and the Miami-Dade Legislative Delegation urging them to continue supporting the hot meals program in Miami-Dade County. The program serves hot meals to over 1,400 low income, at risk, senior citizens at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Centers (LHANC) and is supported by federal, state, county, and municipal funds. But, FY2007 appropriations are forcing the LHANC to deny hot meals to over 240 seniors. Ros-Lehtinen’s letter states her support of the State Legislature’s idea of forming a funding project which will provide the funds necessary for the LHANC to continue serving all the senior citizens currently receiving hot meals.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted NO on the FY2007 Continuing Resolution Appropriations Bill because her Congressional District stands to lose over $12 million in housing funds. If the new formula for distributing Section 8 housing funds is enacted, the State of Florida stands to lose $28.6 million in housing funds and District 18 stands to lose $12.8 million.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen met with John Paul Woodley, Assistant Secretary of the Army, over the weekend to discuss funding issues with the funding of the Florida Keys Wastewater Project. Ros-Lehtinen raised the issue of reimbursing the City of Layton for work it had done on the wastewater project while under the impression it would be reimbursed. The Secretary responded by saying that language had to be inserted into the proper legislation in order for Layton to be reimbursed. The Congresswoman stated she will work with her colleagues in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to get such language inserted in legislation.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted in favor of reforming the pension program for Members of Congress. The Pension Forfeiture Act amends existing laws so that Members of Congress are prohibited from obtaining their Congressional pension if convicted of felonious acts in connection with their official duties.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has cosponsored a bill which would prevent employers, insurance companies, and others from discriminating against persons based on genetic testing. The legislation seeks to modernize existing laws so that people may obtain the benefits of genetic testing without the fear of having that information used against them later. Genetic testing is vital to preventative medicine and helps find genetic defects early and thus making treatment easier and cheaper.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted for passage of legislation which takes away billions in oil company subsidies and redirects them toward finding alternative sources of energy. The Congresswoman was 1of 36 GOP Members to vote against the oil companies. The Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act (CLEAN) was passed by a vote of 264 – 123. The legislation also prohibits oil companies from leasing in the Gulf of Mexico unless they renegotiate their royalty agreements.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted for H.R. 5-The College Student Relief Act which cuts the interest rate students pay on their student loans.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is very pleased that Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) was ranked, by Child magazine, 26th nationally among hospitals delivering premier pediatric health care. MCH was the only South Florida hospital in the top rankings. MCH’s Emergency Department was ranked 10th on the list of best performing emergency rooms and, again, was the only South Florida emergency care facility to make the list. Child magazine is one of the most respected publications dealing with children’s issues.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen has been a fierce voice for the hospital in the Congress. She secured $2.7 million for MCH’s Pediatric Brain Tumor Institute during the last Congres.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has invited Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is a new member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, to tour the Miami River Dredging Project and discuss the Florida Keys Wastewater Project on a separate visit. Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz has already confirmed that she will help Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen in her quest to secure federal funds for both projects.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will cosponsor the Annie Fox Act, a bill which is geared toward the fight against breast cancer in young women. The bill is named after a young woman from Marin County, California who passed away from the disease. Marin County has the highest rate of breast cancer in the country. The bill seeks to improve diagnostic tools and screening devices to help prevent and treat the disease in younger victims. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen was a cosponsor of this bill during the last Congress.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. The increase will take effect during a 26 month period. The bill passed with a final vote of 315 – 116 in the House.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has requested that the Army Corps of Engineers immediately provide local governments with federal funds appropriated for the Florida Keys wastewater project. As of now, $2.93 million has been re-allocated by the Army Corps of Engineers to other priorities. Ros-Lehtinen contacted Colonel Paul L. Grosskruger, Jacksonville District Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for this pressing request. Since FY2002, the Congresswoman has obtained $7.5 million in funding for the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Program.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is very pleased that her efforts to obtain federal screeners for Marathon Airport have proven successful. The respective applications of Key West International Airport and the Florida Keys Marathon Airport have been chosen as participants in the Transportation Security Administration’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP). The Congresswoman was just notified of the acceptance and that TSA Officers will perform screening services until a qualified contractor can assume the duties.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been lobbying for the clearing of a 40 acre parcel of land adjacent to Homestead Air Reserve Base. The land, which has not been in use since Hurricane Andrew, is overrun with brush and poses a possible security risk to the base and its hard-working employees. The Congresswoman’s efforts are now bearing fruit when crews began clearing the land yesterday under direction of Miami-Dade County Manager, George Burgess.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen applauds the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the $5.1 million grant awarded to the Miami Beach Community Development Corporation (MBCDC). The grant will fund the construction of 36 low-income apartment units for elderly tenants. The development will be located on 28th Street and Collins Avenue, adjacent to the Villa Maria Apartments which already have been purchased by the MBCDC for this very purpose.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen congratulates the NEA for choosing Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to participate in their Big Read Program. NEA will provide a grant of $30,000 to the Florida Center for Literary Arts at Miami-Dade Community College. The Big Read Program is geared toward spreading literacy across all age groups.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s staff continues to work on the issue of obtaining federal screeners for Marathon Airport. During a conference call, TSA was informed Marathon Airport will submit its application to SPP.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is continuing her effort toward obtaining federal screeners for Marathon Airport by seeking the assistance of the Chairmen of important and powerful House Committees. The Congresswoman received a letter from TSA stating they have not yet decided on the issue of federal screeners in Marathon Airport.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased to announce a $1.2 million FEMA grant geared toward repairing Miami-Dade County public buildings and facilities adversely impacted by Hurricane Wilma. The FEMA grant assists in covering damage caused by hurricane force winds and inclement weather. Many Miami-Dade County public buildings were damaged in the storm including the Port of Miami.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen is hopeful after yesterday’s meeting with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) over the issue of federal screeners at Marathon Airport. Last month, the TSA had decided not to provide federal screeners at the airport. With Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen’s involvement, meetings have opened up with representatives of the Marathon Airport, Senator Bill Nelson’s Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the Aviation Subcommittee of the House, TSA, and Ros-Lehtinen’s staffer on the issue, Eddy Acevedo, meeting to determine the status of the issue. After yesterday’s meeting, TSA let all parties involved that they were close to making a decision and appreciated the feedback we have provided them.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has organized a meeting between the Coast Guard and the residents of Sombrero Beach to discuss the Guard’s housing development affecting Sombrero Beach. On Tuesday, September 19, residents of the City of Marathon and Sombrero Beach will be allowed to voice all concerns related to the housing development before construction commences.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased that Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarthy will be announcing a decrease in windstorm rates for Monroe residents. The Congresswoman was informed of the decision by a phone call from the Insurance Commissioner who said that the decision was based on, among other things, Monroe’s strict building codes. Windstorm rates for Monroe residents will be 25% lower than in 2005.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is asking the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to reassess its decision to provide the Marathon Airport with federal screeners. Ros-Lehtinen sent a letter to the TSA detailing the security and economic implications of this decision.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with a Citizens Property Insurance analysis finding that insurance rates for Monroe County can be decreased by up to 44%. The Congresswoman has tirelessly fought for decreasing insurance rates in Monroe County. In her efforts, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has worked alongside Fair Insurance Rates in Monroe (FIRM) and the Florida Insurance Commissioner on this vexing issue.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen commends the passage of H.R. 889 – The Coast Guard Maritime Transportation Act of 2006. This legislation authorizes $1.6 billion for the Integrated Deepwater Systems Program which seeks to improve the equipment and vessels used by the Coast Guard in its deepwater missions. The program has provided upgrades to Coast Guard cutters Thetis and Mohawk and has delivered eight cutters to the Coast Guard based out of Key West.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has secured over $2.6 million for South Florida in the FY2007 Labor, Health, and Human Service, Education & Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. The funding will help projects in Miami-Dade County and Monroe County. Programs such as the University of Miami’s Center for Patient Safety, Jackson Memorial Mobile Health Van, Mercy Hospital Emergency Room Facilities and Equipment, Kids Hope United’s WINGS Program, and Monroe County Public Schools Technology Program will benefit from the Congresswoman’s work in the appropriations bill.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has secured over $2.6 million for South Florida in the FY2007 Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, and the Judiciary Appropriations Bill. The $2.6 million will provide funding for the Miami Beach Atlantic Corridor Greenway Network, Miami Dade County 7th Avenue Transit Hub, the Miami Lakes Transit Program, the SFRTA Smart Card, and the Marathon Municipal Boot Key Harbor. The Boot Key Harbor funds will help construct facilities that will serve marina users.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen praised FEMA’s grant to the University of Miami to retrofit four buildings against hurricane damage. This grant is part of the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program’s national competition. UM is part of FEMA’s Disaster Resistant Universities, a pilot program which began in 1999. The program seeks to protect America’s institutions of higher learning from hazardous conditions such as hurricanes. The grant will fund such projects as securing windows and the anchoring of air conditioning equipment, exterior doors with perforated steel panels, and structural reinforcements.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with the Department of Homeland Security’s allocation of $15.9 million in funding for the Urban Areas Securities Initiative (UASI) for fiscal year 2006. The initiative, which includes Miami, Florida, provides assistance to high density areas so that they may prevent, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, along with Members of the Florida Congressional Delegation, passed the Putnam Amendment to the FY2007 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill which would restore the Congressional Moratorium on gas lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf. The amendment stripped the language from a proposed provision which would have allowed offshore drilling as near as three miles off the coast of Florida and other coastal states. The amendment passed with a close vote of 217 – 203.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased to announce FEMA is allocating $9 million to Miami-Dade County for the repair of road signs damaged by Hurricane Wilma. The FEMA Public Assistance funding will provide 75% of the total cost for the new street lights, signs, posts, and mounting hardware.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was informed that $4.1 million was included as part of the FY2007 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill for the dredging of the Miami River. The funding provides the Army Corps of Engineers with the resources needed to continue dredging the Miami River, an important South Florida waterway. The Congresswoman has been a tireless advocate of the Miami River in Congress and has secured tens of millions of dollars for the waterway.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been advised that $1.3 million has been included in the FY2007 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill for the Florida Keys Wastewater Project. The money will help the Army Corps of Engineers complete the project. Overall, Representative Ros-Lehtinen has been able to obtain more than $8 million for this important project.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased by the passage of legislation providing $1.085 billion to the hard-hit commercial fishing industry, adversely impacted by last year’s hurricane season. The FY2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery passed in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 77 – 21. The funding package, which provides $100 million in direct assistance for facilities repair and $200 million for replacement of unusable fishing gear, has the full support of the Florida Department of Agriculture and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is trying to gain support for making windstorm insurance premiums tax deductible. She is working to ensure provision is a part of the Tax Relief Act, which is to be negotiated in Conference Committee. Windstorm insurance premiums have skyrocketed following the 2005 hurricane season which is forcing life-long residents and retirees from the community. Ros-Lehtinen is trying to gain support from her colleague Bill Thomas, who chairs the powerful Ways & Means Committee, and from the Florida Congressional Delegation.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased to announce a $1 million FEMA grant to reimburse the Village of Key Biscayne for repairs to its beaches caused by Hurricane Wilma. The grant covers approximately 75% of the total cost of the repairs. Hurricane Wilma’s strong winds and rain flattened much of the engineered beach. The grant will help cover the cost of pumping sand from an offshore source to restore the beach to its pre-Wilma condition.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced the approval of $242 million in disaster loans for Florida businesses and homeowners who were victims of last year’s hurricane season. The funds were approved by the Small Business Administration (SBA) who assists individuals and businesses recovering from natural disasters by offering financial assistance to homeowners, renters, and businesses. Of the funding for Florida, Miami-Dade and Monroe have received $68 million and $44 million, respectively, in disaster assistance.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen co-introduced an amendment to the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005, along with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (RI), adding child and adolescent mental health professionals to the professions qualifying for loan forgiveness. The amendment passed by an overwhelming vote of 380 – 38.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is confident following the House passage of legislation which will increase appropriations for the Small Business Association’s disaster loan program. The appropriations will provide much needed relief to South Florida’s business community from last year’s devastating hurricane season.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is very pleased with the Department of Transportation’s award of $7.55 million for runway improvements at Miami International Airport (MIA). The funds will be used to extend the capacity of the runways which, in turn, will reduce delays at the airport. With over 31 million passengers in 2005, efforts to reduce congestion and wait times are crucial to MIA’s continued success.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with the federal grant of $1.3 million to reimburse the Village of Key Biscayne for debris removal following Hurricane Wilma. The FEMA grant will cover 75% of the total project cost, over $1.8 million, while the State of Florida will provide the other 25%.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is optimistic following today’s declaration of federal disaster assistance to Monroe County businesses for the destructive effects of the 2005 hurricane season. The Congresswoman was informed by the Small Business Administration that it approved over $22 million in disaster loan assistance to Monroe County business owners. The program has two options for businesses; there is an economic injury disaster loan for small businesses and loans to finance physical reconstruction for businesses of any size.

Though still unconfirmed, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was informed that $3.5 million has been requested for the Miami River Dredging Project by the Army Corps of Engineers for fiscal year 2007. The project is 40% complete and the $3.5 million is intended to bring the project to completion.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pleased with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s $36,000 grant to the Nature Conservancy’s Florida Keys program. With massive declines in staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), a reef-building coral, the project is geared toward the restoration of degraded reefs in the Upper Keys by transplanting staghorn colonies currently sitting in a private nursery. In May, the colonies will be transplanted at various restoration sites where they will be monitored by staff and volunteers. The restoration program is a collaboration of the NOAA, The Nature Conservancy, and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen co-signed a letter strongly objecting to the redrawing of the Federal Outer Continental Shelf. If the plan is enacted, Florida’s pristine coastline may be endangered and, moreover, Florida may lose its ability to control activities off its own coast. Specifically, the plan would allow Alabama and Louisiana to have a greater say over energy related activities in Lease Sale Area 181.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is leading efforts requesting disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assist commercial fisheries in dealing with the effects of the 2005 hurricane season. Recently, the Secretary of Agriculture has used considerable amounts from the Section 32 Program to provide assistance for farm disasters. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, joined by Reps. Katherine Harris, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Mario Diaz-Balart, sent a letter to USDA Secretary Mike Johanns requesting the inclusion of species such as spiny lobster, stone crabs, oysters, and clams as crops eligible for Section 32 funding.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is delighted with the federal funds The Allapattah Community Center will be receiving, this organization which provides housing for over 6,000 members of South Florida’s elderly community. The Center, known for its service and professionalism, has served South Florida for more than 25 years. The funding will be allocated toward the construction of 80 additional units and a five year rental subsidy.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee overseeing Medicare has demanded a ''full accounting'' of how the agency underestimated the extent of fraud, abuse and waste in a 2006 audit of the medical equipment industry.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Tuesday that a new inspector general's report spotlighting flaws in Medicare's audit raises disturbing doubts about the health insurance program's efforts to identify and reduce waste.

''I'm asking questions to try to get to the bottom of why Congress and, in turn, the public, was misled about the rate of improper payments by Medicare,'' Grassley said, adding, ``There needs to be accountability.''

On Monday, a federal inspector general denounced Medicare for its failure to follow policies for auditing medical equipment suppliers' claims -- a blunder that has likely cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered fixes to help reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the giant government health insurance program. Among them: Confirm that doctors actually prescribed equipment, providers delivered it and patients received it.

The inspector general's report was issued weeks after a Miami Herald series exposed rampant corruption in two regional healthcare fields -- medical equipment providers and HIV drug-infusion clinics. They fuel South Florida's reputation as the nation's capital of Medicare fraud.

The series underscored Medicare's failure to root out fraudulent claims submitted to the health insurance program, leading to the annual loss of at least $2.5 billion in South Florida and an estimated $60 billion or more nationwide.

Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson took Medicare to task for ordering its private auditors to check on equipment providers' paperwork in 2006 -- but to skip looking at medical and patient records for further verification -- violations of government policies.

Some members of Congress accused Medicare officials of manipulating their 2006 audit to mislead lawmakers about the agency's effectiveness in fighting fraud in the medical equipment industry, which has been a longtime problem in South Florida.

In a letter to the agency on Tuesday, Grassley said he wants the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a follow-up review of Medicare's 2007 payment error rate because of irregularities in the previous year's audit.

He also asked the inspector general to find out which Medicare officials told their outside auditors to ''deviate'' from government policies in the 2006 audit -- including a failure to contact physicians and patients to see if equipment was actually prescribed and delivered.

''This is unconscionable and an affront to every American taxpayer who is footing the bill, especially because we are not talking about millions of dollars,'' Grassley said in the letter to Medicare's acting administrator, Kerry Weems. ``Instead, we are talking billions of dollars lost to fraud, waste and/or abuse in 2006.''

Lawmakers said Congress needs honest answers from Medicare, which is sharply criticized in the report for advising outside auditors to ignore federal policies that would have accurately measured waste, abuse and fraud -- such as contacting doctors and patients to verify equipment suppliers' claims.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, sent a letter on Monday urging the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by California Democrat Henry Waxman, to call for hearings this fall.

''I highly urge that the appropriate hearings be held in order to determine the cause of this alleged misreporting,'' Ros-Lehtinen wrote to Waxman and the committee's ranking Republican, Tom Davis of Virginia.

Her longtime colleague, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said he, too, will contact Waxman's committee. ''It goes to the trust in government,'' he said, adding that the fraud plaguing Medicare ``is a big issue.''

Although neither the inspector general nor Medicare put a dollar figure on the higher error rate, experts have estimated the additional losses due to fraud, waste and abuse in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

''Unfortunately, it's the taxpayer who ends up paying for all of this,'' said Elizabeth Wright, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit group Citizens Against Government Waste. ``It has been a continuing problem with Medicare since its inception. It's always wasting money, and no one is held to account for it.''

Medicare's acting administrator, Kerry Weems, agreed with almost all of the inspector general's findings and recommendations -- saying some fixes, such as checking on doctors' patient records, have been in place since last year.

''Given its centrality to [Medicare's] financial oversight mission, we are eager to adopt any meaningful changes to the program that will help enhance measurement efforts in particular and our overall program integrity efforts in general,'' Weems said.

Medicare officials originally boasted they were gaining control over fraud, waste and abuse in the health insurance program, when in fact the agency's payment error rate was about four times higher than it was touting for medical equipment reimbursements in 2006, according to the report.

In 2006, Medicare said that its overall payment error rate for medical equipment and other healthcare services was 4.4 percent -- a significant decrease from the 5.2 percent reported in 2005 and drastically lower than the 10.1 percent rate reported the previous year.

BY JAY WEAVER

A federal inspector general denounced Medicare on Monday for its failure to follow policies and laws for auditing medical equipment suppliers's claims -- a blunder that has likely cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars since 2003.

The inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered fixes to help assuage fraud, waste and abuse: among them to confirm in its audits that doctors actually prescribed equipment, providers delivered it and patients received it.

Some members of Congress accused Medicare officials of manipulating their 2006 audit to mislead lawmakers about the agency's effectiveness in fighting fraud in the medical equipment industry, which has been a longtime problem in South Florida.

Lawmakers said they felt deceived by the agency managing the huge entitlement program for the elderly and predicted Congress would hold oversight hearings in the fall to grill Medicare officials.

Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson took Medicare to task for ordering its auditors to check on equipment providers' paperwork in 2006 -- but to skip verifying medical and patient records -- violating policies that had been adopted by Congress in 2002.

Medicare officials ''orally instructed [auditors] to deviate from written policies by making determinations based primarily on the limited medical records available from [equipment] suppliers, not the full medical records available from physicians,'' Levinson wrote.

The inspector general's report was issued just weeks after a Miami Herald series exposed rampant corruption in two regional healthcare fields -- medical equipment suppliers and HIV drug-infusion clinics. They fuel South Florida's reputation as the nation's capital of Medicare fraud.

The Miami Herald series underscored Medicare's failure to root out fraudulent claims submitted to the health insurance program, leading to the annual loss of at least $2.5 billion in South Florida and an estimated $60 billion or more nationwide.

Levinson told Medicare officials to strive to ensure accurate audits; the inspector general's report found Medicare's error rate for reviews of medical equipment claims was 28.9 percent, not 7.5 percent, as the agency boasted in 2006. That year, Medicare said its total losses from improper payments for medical equipment claims such as powered wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and prosthetics was $700 million.

Although neither the inspector general, nor Medicare, put a dollar figure on the higher error rate, experts have put the losses due to fraud, waste and abuse in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Medicare's acting administrator agreed with almost all of the inspector general's findings and recommendations, saying some fixes, such as checking on doctor's patient records, are in place.

''Given its centrality to [Medicare's] financial oversight mission, we are eager to adopt any meaningful changes to the program that will help enhance measurement efforts in particular and our overall program integrity efforts in general,'' said Kerry Weems.

Medicare officials originally boasted they were gaining control over fraud, waste and abuse in the health insurance program, when in fact the agency's payment error rate was about four times higher than it was touting for medical equipment reimbursements, according to the report.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, criticized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for irregularities cited in the report.

''I want to know what happened, who's responsible, who will be held accountable and what the [Human Services] secretary will do about it,'' said the senator, who had requested and was briefed on the report. ``If people cooked the books, manipulated the methodology or told the contractor to ignore the rules, those individuals need to take the heat.''

South Florida lawmakers said Congress needs honest answers from Medicare, which is sharply criticized in the report for advising outside auditors to ignore federal policies that would have accurately measured waste, abuse and fraud.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, predicted that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by California Democrat Henry Waxman, would call for hearings on the issue this fall. Other congressional panels could also have hearings. ''Congress is not going to be fooled,'' she said. ``We've been trying to get at these fraudulent claims for a long time.''

Her colleague, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, agreed.

''If true, this is an outrageous and unforgivable stunt,'' Diaz-Balart said in a statement Friday. ``Cracking down on fraud should be a top priority for Medicare, not fixing numbers to make an agency look better.

``This is taxpayer money and must be treated with integrity and reverence. I expect hearings and I expect answers -- truthful answers -- from Medicare about this report."

Medicare officials denied the allegations.

''While we agree with the inspector general that the [medical equipment] error rate we reported should have been higher, allegations of manipulation of this error rate are preposterous,'' said Jeff Nelligan, Medicare's director of media affairs.

Among other things, the report says that Medicare officials told private auditors not to compare medical equipment companies' invoices with doctors' records to verify patients received such services.

But Nelligan said Medicare, working with private auditor AdvanceMed, has aggressively targeted fraud and improper payments in the medical equipment field, which accounts for about two to three percent of Medicare's $456 billion annual budget.

In 2006, Medicare said that its overall payment error rate for medical equipment and other healthcare services was 4.4 percent -- a significant decrease from the 5.2 percent reported in 2005 and drastically lower than the 10.1 percent rate reported the previous year.

But the reality is, Medicare officials told The Miami Herald, they don't have a specific amount for the cost of corruption nationwide. Internal audits focus mainly on billing mistakes, excessive payments and other waste with only a fractional measure of fraud. Therefore, the agency estimates its combined loss is $11 billion annually, about half the 2004 amount.

The root of the problem is that Medicare contractors review claims before authorizing payments, but they focus mainly on errors and not outright false bills.

The biggest medical equipment corruption case in South Florida revolved around a pair of Medicare billing experts. Mabel and Abner Diaz, owners of All-Med Billing Corp., submitted a staggering $420 million in false Medicare claims on behalf of 85 medical equipment companies in South Florida.

They collected a 5 percent commission on $148.5 million paid to those businesses by the government's healthcare program between 1998 and 2004.

BY JAY WEAVER

A federal inspector general denounced Medicare on Monday for its failure to follow policies for auditing medical equipment suppliers' claims -- a blunder that has likely cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ordered fixes to help reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the giant government health insurance program. Among them: confirm that doctors actually prescribed equipment, providers delivered it and patients received it.

Some members of Congress accused Medicare officials of manipulating their 2006 audit to mislead lawmakers about the agency's effectiveness in fighting fraud in the medical equipment industry, which has been a longtime problem in South Florida.

They said Congress needs honest answers from Medicare, which is sharply criticized in the report for advising outside auditors to ignore federal policies that would have accurately measured waste, abuse and fraud -- like contacting doctors and patients to verify equipment suppliers' claims.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, sent a letter on Monday urging the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by California Democrat Henry Waxman, to call for hearings this fall.

''I highly urge that the appropriate hearings be held in order to determine the cause of this alleged misreporting,'' Ros-Lehtinen wrote to Waxman and the committee's ranking Republican, Tom Davis of Virginia.

Her longtime colleague, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said he, too, will contact Waxman's committee. ''It goes to the trust in government,'' he said, adding that the fraud plaguing Medicare ``is a big issue.''

The inspector general's report was issued weeks after a Miami Herald series exposed rampant corruption in two regional healthcare fields -- medical equipment providers and HIV drug-infusion clinics. They fuel South Florida's reputation as the nation's Medicare fraud capital.

$60 BILLION LOSS

The series underscored Medicare's failure to root out fraudulent claims submitted to the health insurance program, leading to the annual loss of at least $2.5 billion in South Florida and an estimated $60 billion or more nationwide.

Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson took Medicare to task for ordering its private auditors to check on equipment providers' paperwork in 2006 -- but to skip looking at medical and patient records for further verification -- violations of government policies.

He noted, for example, that Medicare officials told auditors not to count ``lack of proof of delivery as an error if that was the only issue with a claim.''

Levinson told Medicare officials to strive to ensure accurate audits: The inspector general's report found Medicare's payment error rate for medical equipment claims was 28.9 percent, not 7.5 percent, as the agency said in 2006.

That year, Medicare said losses from improper payments for equipment claims like powered wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and prosthetics totaled $700 million nationally.

Experts have estimated the additional annual losses due to fraud, waste and abuse in the hundreds of millions.

TAXPAYER PAYS

''Unfortunately, it's the taxpayer who ends up paying for all of this,'' said Elizabeth Wright, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit group Citizens Against Government Waste.

``It has been a continuing problem with Medicare since its inception. It's always wasting money, and no one is held to account for it.''

Medicare's acting administrator, Kerry Weems, agreed with almost all of the inspector general's findings and recommendations -- saying some fixes, like checking on doctors' patient records, have been in place since last year.

''Given its centrality to [Medicare's] financial oversight mission, we are eager to adopt any meaningful changes to the program that will help enhance measurement efforts in particular and our overall program integrity efforts in general,'' Weems said.

Medicare officials originally boasted they were gaining control over fraud, waste and abuse in the health insurance program, when, in fact, the agency's payment error rate was about four times higher than it was touting for medical equipment reimbursements in 2006, according to the report.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, lambasted the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages the program, for irregularities cited in the report.

''I want to know what happened, who's responsible, who will be held accountable and what the [Human Services] secretary will do about it,'' said the senator, who had requested the report.

Medicare officials denied allegations of manipulating their internal audits.

Medicare's director of media affairs, Jeff Nelligan, said the agency, working with private auditor AdvanceMed, has aggressively targeted fraud and improper payments in the medical equipment field. It accounts for about 2 to 3 percent of Medicare's $456 billion annual budget.

In 2006, Medicare said its overall payment error rate for equipment and other healthcare services was 4.4 percent -- a significant drop from the 5.2 percent reported in 2005 and drastically lower than the 10.1 percent rate reported the previous year.

ROOT OF PROBLEM

But the reality is, Medicare officials told The Miami Herald, they don't have a specific estimate of the cost of corruption nationwide.

The root of the problem is that Medicare contractors review claims before authorizing payments, but they focus mainly on errors and not outright false bills.

The biggest equipment corruption case in South Florida involved two Medicare billing experts.

Mabel and Abner Diaz, owners of All-Med Billing, submitted a staggering $420 million in false Medicare claims on behalf of 85 equipment companies in South Florida.

They collected a 5 percent commission on $148.5 million paid to those businesses by the government between 1998 and 2004.

The Diazes, 37 and 36, respectively, pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this summer and face up to 20 years in prison at their sentencings on Friday.

August 5th, 2008 at 2:12 pm | posted by Field

On Sunday Miami ONE Members in Miami, met with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to thank her for her leadership in the passage of PEPFAR (The President's Emergency Plan For AIDS RElief) and for her continued support of policies to fight global disease and extreme poverty around the world.

The congresswoman expressed tremendous appreciation for our efforts on the ground and commended ONE and our partner organizations for working together to engage the community and raise awareness about extreme poverty. She was especially happy to hear about the involvement of young people who are working to engage their peers to become educated and involved as the next generation in the fight against extreme global poverty and health diseases.

One of the highlights of the meeting was when the congresswoman asked if she could have a ONE T-shirt so she could show her support at future events. All in all, the meeting helped demonstrate to Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen her constituents' support for alleviating the suffering of those living in extreme poverty and dying from preventable disease. We look forward to working with her in the future on these issues.

-Sara Paterni, Southern Florida Field Organizer

BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

A ground-breaking ceremony will be Thursday for an innovative long-term housing complex in the Homestead area where the homeless will be able to live and work.

The proposed complex will have 145 units and will include a landscape/produce nursery and a fresh market retail complex, which will serve as a micro-enterprise for residents who can receive vocational training.

But the complex almost didn't get approved -- except that Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book ran into U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen three years ago when she was filming a message on homelessness and mental health.

She told him to call her if the trust needed help.

Book did just that.

The trust was facing a roadblock from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in its efforts to build the longer-term housing complex on 52 acres in the Homestead area.

'I said, `Hey, count me in.' Little did I know he'd put me to work so fast,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.

The complex was proposed to be built on land in the 84 acres the trust acquired in 1996 that was once part of the old Homestead Air Force Base, closed after 1992's Hurricane Andrew.

The site already houses the trust's 300-bed shorter-term residency homeless assistance center and Camillus veteran transitional housing that together house more than 500 people.

But the government has strict regulations on how to use the federal property and HHS had advised the trust that permanent housing was not permitted.

The congresswoman and her staff advocated on the trust's behalf for the federal agency to change its policy and allow for the creative, outside-the-box use of the land. Approval finally came in May.

''Federal law says you need to do this and that. It's hard to get through the no's,'' Lehtinen said. ``We were not going to let go and [we] finally got an exemption.''

She added she was glad to help struggling families who ``have problems like everyone else and just want a roof over their heads and normal lives.''

At Thursday's ground-breaking ceremony, the trust will honor Ros-Lehtinen with the Homeless Pioneer Award at the future site of the Homeless Trust Air Force Base Complex.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez and Homestead city officials are expected to attend the ceremony.

Book, a founding board member of the trust, which was established in 1993, said the congresswoman and her staffers were ``our agents for change.''

''It was a commitment by her and her staff to follow through and make things happen,'' Book said. ``We've not had another public official ever jump to the forefront on our behalf the way Congresswoman Lehtinen did.''

This ''is probably one of the most exciting aspects of the project,'' Book said.

The new complex will take the lifestyle of live, work and play in the same neighborhood to South Miami-Dade, he said.

The trust is now in a bid process for the project.

After plans are finalized construction will begin, Book said.

''We hope that some time in the next 12, 15, 18 months from now,'' the complex will be open, he added.

The Trust has set aside $15 million for the construction thanks to Better Communities General Obligation Bond and Homeless Trust funds.

Book said the trust has supported permanent housing facilities around the county but that this is the first permanent housing that it will operate entirely. It is probably the trust's biggest project, he said.

He emphasized that helping people find affordable housing is a critical component of the trust's mission to help the homeless stabilize their lives long-term.

And he's proud of the trust's progress.

When it first started there were 8,400 homeless on the streets in the county. Now there are 1,347 -- a much lower number than in many other cities, Book said.

''Others come to replicate because of the commitment we have,'' Book said. ``It's about providing services as well as a mechanism for permanent housing for people who have been homeless.

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen hears grievances of frustrated property owners

BY ROB BUSWEILER

The Citizen

Property owners in the Florida Keys trapped on "the FEMA list" got a chance to sound off to their federal representative Saturday.

More than 50 people showed up at the Marathon Government Center Saturday afternoon to meet with U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami. The topic was the court case currently preventing thousands of property owners in the Keys from getting federally subsidized flood insurance.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is in charge of administering that flood insurance, which is required by many financial lenders prior to loaning money to build or buy a home. Due to a lawsuit filed by the National and Florida wildlife federations, FEMA has been barred by federal courts from issuing that insurance to a list of properties in the Keys that are considered to have suitable habitat for endangered species.

The lawsuit has been bouncing around federal courthouses for years, and many in the Keys are growing increasingly frustrated. Further complicating matters is the fact that the only parties privy to filing claims directly related to the lawsuit are FEMA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the plaintiffs.

"No one who has any direct stake in this issue is allowed to petition the court," said Peter Rosasco. An affordable housing project Rosasco has been attempting to finish in Key Largo has been held up by the court ruling. "I've been held hostage."

Environmental groups first started the case in the '90s, after they successfully argued to the court that FEMA and the Fish and Wildlife Service were not doing enough to ensure the properties for which they were issuing flood insurance were not habitats for endangered species.

"The injunction does not reduce the overall amount of development, but merely shifts development away from flood plains that contain endangered species habitat," said Manley Fuller, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation, in a statement issued on Saturday.

Part of the problem property owners have run into is getting off the list if they feel their property is listed by mistake. Because local property owners cannot directly petition the court, they must file an objection through the environmental group's law firm. The cost is $100.

"I won't spend one more dime," said Marathon resident Colleen Repetto. She said she has four properties on the list, all of which were cleared by a city of Marathon biologist and U.S. Fish and Wildlife prior to the injunction.

"It is my sincere belief that litigation is not the way to deal with what we have before us," said Paul Souza, a field supervisor for Fish and Wildlife.

Souza said his agency has worked to narrow down the list — which at its height had about 50,000 properties — and hopes to have the matter settled. For those still on the list, however, there are few options beyond filing the request with the law firm to be taken off.

"All of this is tied to the court's decision," Ros-Lehtinen said.

A rundown of the properties on the FEMA list can be found online at www.monroecounty-fl.gov, under the hot topics section.

We in South Florida – and the Brickell community in particular – have been hit harder by this recent housing downturn than most across the United States. Foreclosures are rampant; prices for the average family home are still high; and rental prices are becoming an unfair burden on young professionals. This, coupled with the economic downturn we are all feeling, will leave us in South Florida with many challenges.

Luckily, as the Gateway to the Americas, our local economy is both resilient and comparatively hedged against strictly national downturns. We have a thriving tourist industry that more Americans will seek to take greater advantage of as travel abroad becomes more costly and air travel becomes increasingly unpredictable. I know that if we are able to control our housing crisis and stay focused on our robust local business community, we will continue to be the powerful player in the global economy.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will host a meeting regarding thousands of Keys properties that can't be developed because they are included on a federal endangered species map.

At issue is a 2005 federal judge's decision to not allow FEMA to issue flood insurance for about 50,000 properties because they contain endangered species habitat. The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed by three environmental groups.

Without flood insurance, banks are not likely to issues mortgages. Property owners have been trying get their lands off the disputed "FEMA list" ever since.

Accompanying Ros-Lehtinen at the Marathon meeting will be officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The meeting is at the Marathon Government Center on Saturday, Aug. 2, from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Interested property owners and residents are invited to attend.

Alex Cruz, Ros-Lehtinen's director of communications, wrote in an e-mail that Paul Souza, field supervisor of the service's South Florida Ecological Services Office, will be representing FWS. FEMA's representative has yet to be named.

"The congresswoman will be attending the event and will introduce all federal officials attending," Cruz wrote. "Attendees are welcome to ask questions of her, however, she is not a party to the litigation so we expect that a bulk of the questions will be to FEMA and Fish and Wildlife."

"She wants to make sure that her constituents have an up-to-date understanding of what the federal entities are doing on this case."

Also invited are the National Wildlife Federation, Florida Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife, which all sued the federal agencies for violating the Endangered Species Act and threatening the habitat of eight Keys species.

But the environmental groups' attorney, Henry Morgenstern, also said in a previous interview that his clients wouldn't likely attend.

The case began in 1990, when environmental groups filed a lawsuit seeking to compel FEMA to consult with the FWS over where flood insurance can be issued. Flood insurance can only be issued in Florida by FEMA and is required for most new construction loans.

The groups claimed issuing flood insurance, and thereby allowing development, on certain properties jeopardized habitat of endangered and threatened species.

In 2005, the court granted the plaintiffs' motion for an injunction to stop FEMA from issuing flood insurance for any new development in the suitable habitat of the listed species based on FWS maps. At first, 50,000 properties were affected, but now about 15,000 remain on the list.

"The congresswoman hopes to maintain a strong dialogue between the local governments and Monroe residents," Cruz wrote. "She understands the effects of this case on thousands of homeowners and wants to make sure that their concerns are addressed properly."

By JIM ABRAMS – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone.

The 303-115 vote sends the global AIDS bill to President Bush for his signature. Bush, who first floated the idea of a campaign against the scourge of AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union speech, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan.

Passage of the bill culminated a rare instance of cooperation between the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress. It was "born out of a willingness to work together and put the United States on the right side of history when it comes to this global pandemic," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a leader on the issue.

The current $15 billion act, which expires at the end of September, has helped bring lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to some 1.7 million people and supported care for nearly 7 million. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, has won plaudits from some of Bush's harshest critics both in Congress and around the world. Both Democrats and Republicans hailed it as one of the most significant accomplishments of the Bush presidency.

The United States, said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "has given hope to millions infected with the HIV virus, which just a few years ago was tantamount to a death sentence."

According to a study by UNAIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation, the United States provided one-fifth of AIDS funding from all sources — governments, international aid groups and the private sector — in 2007. About 40 percent of the $4.9 billion disbursed in 2007 from the G-8 countries, Europe and other donor governments came from the United States.

The legislation approves spending of $5 billion for malaria and $4 billion for tuberculosis, the leading cause of death for people with AIDS. It authorizes spending of up to $2 billion next year for the international Global Fund to Fight AIDS. The measure also provides $2 billion, on top of the $48 billion, for American Indian water, health and law enforcement programs.

While some GOP conservatives questioned the sharp spending increase, others said the U.S. aid had important security as well as moral implications and gave a needed boost to America's reputation abroad.

The pandemic, said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, "is leaving a trail of poverty, despondency and death which has destabilized societies and undermined the security of entire regions." The program has enhanced the U.S. image around the world, she said. "Even in the most remote areas of Kenya or Haiti, for example, people know about the PEPFAR program."

PEPFAR has focused on nations in sub-Saharan Africa that have been devastated by AIDS, but it has also provided assistance in the Caribbean and other areas hit by the pandemic now affecting some 33 million worldwide. Even with advances in treating the disease, there are still about 7,000 new HIV infections every day around the world.

The new bill, like the current law, states that 10 percent of funds should be allocated for orphans and vulnerable children. It sets as a goal preventing 12 million new HIV infections, treating more than 2 million with anti-retroviral drugs, supporting care for 12 million people infected with HIV/AIDS and training at least 140,000 new health care workers and paraprofessionals.

It increases attention on women and girls, including stressing the importance of preventing gender-based violence.

Pamela W. Barnes, president and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, applauded the bill's target of reaching 80 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women with services needed to prevent transmission to their children. "We are still only reaching 34 percent of pregnant, HIV-positive mothers with the medicine they need to keep their babies HIV-free," she said.

The final product took months of compromise: Democrats took out a provision in the existing act requiring that one-third of prevention funds be spent on abstinence education but allowed for reports to Congress if abstinence and fidelity spending falls below certain levels. Conservatives won "conscience clause" assurances that religious groups would not be forced to participate in programs to which they morally object.

Bush, who originally proposed doubling the program to $30 billion, first balked at but later accepted the $50 billion bill that passed the House in April. The Senate diverted $2 billion of the $50 billion to Indian programs and inserted a provision that more than half of funds for AIDS programs go for treatment and care.

The Senate also attached a measure, welcomed by AIDS advocacy groups, that ends a two-decade-old U.S. policy that has made it nearly impossible for HIV-positive people to get visas to this country as immigrants, students or tourists.

MIAMI (CBS4) ―

It's a device CBS4 showed you just last year. It's used to kill all cell phone calls in an area, but some worry the little device could cause big trouble during a disaster, and it's even attracted attention from at least one Congresswoman.

"There's not a sexual predator in anybody's neighborhood who wouldn't want to have this around," said Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Technically, cell phone jammers are banned by the Federal Communications Commission. The law says the technology can't be sold, bought, or imported.

The CBS4 I-Team started investigating cell phone jammers a few years ago. The I-Team wanted to know if it was possible to buy one. It was easy to purchase, and even just recently the same one was being sold on the Internet, along with others that are more powerful.

Some of the devices not only reach a few yards away from you, but also can knock out cell phone signals within 100 yards, the size of a football field.

"Look it's a big thing. It's out of control you can buy those. They shouldn't be able to buy them. We should all, as citizens concerned about our safety, have the ability to dial 911 on cell phones," security expert Wayne Black said.

One local company, Cell Antenna based in Coral Springs makes the cell phone jammers. Howard Melamed argues the devices should be sold, but on a limited basis.

"We want police departments, prison authorities, bomb squads to be able to use the jamming equipment," Melamed said. "We give them bullets to put into the guns; the FCC says we can't give them jamming equipment. It's absolutely ridiculous."

Still, lawmakers like Ros-Lehtinen worry the jammers, even if only sold to government agencies, may fall into the wrong hands.

"I just think if you start making exceptions for state government, for local government, we have so many small cities here that pretty soon it would be in the general public," the Congresswoman said.

After finding several of the devices being sold on Amazon.com, the I-Team called Amazon to see why it was selling the jammers. A spokesman told CBS4 a third party seller had listed the product on their website for sale. Hours after the call, Amazon took the device sale off-line. But, the devices are still for sale online from other websites, including those in foreign countries.

BY LESLEY CLARK

Miami Beach's angst over a state plan that could temporarily close ramps connecting the city to Interstate 95 during next year's tourist season spilled over to Congress Tuesday.

Anxious city officials huddled with Florida Department of Transportation representatives, summoned by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who met with the group, along with representatives of Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

''We might be debating Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, but when you're talking about traffic in South Florida, that really impacts people,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican whose district includes part of the Beach. ``As important as all those issues are, traffic congestion in South Florida . . . is very important.''

Miami Beach officials had fretted that part of the state's new 95 Express program aimed at alleviating South Florida's legendary traffic tie-ups could end up disrupting the Beach's tourist season, because it involves raising two bridges to create more lane space on I-95. State officials say they've already agreed to push back the construction schedule so as not to disrupt events like the annual boat show.

But Beach officials told Ros-Lehtinen they're still concerned that the plan doesn't provide access between the new I-95 express lanes and the Julia Tuttle Causeway, cutting off use for employees at Mount Sinai Medical Center and some of the large hotels. To jump on the northbound express lane, for example, drivers on the Beach would have to motor down to the MacArthur Causeway.

EXPRESS LANES

The Beach is asking FDOT to place a northbound entrance to one of the I-95 express lanes north of the Julia Tuttle -- a modification City Manager Jorge Gonzalez suggested could be done through ``modest tweaking.''

State officials, though, said it could create confusion for drivers, and force causeway drivers to navigate across several lanes of traffic to jump into the new express lane.

And they suggested that starting a lane in Miami Beach would also reduce the number of users because most of the congestion is created by drivers south of Miami Beach.

They said their estimates suggest there wouldn't be enough takers in Miami Beach to justify starting the express lane there.

''I think we forget the concept of the original project is to try to move a lot of people north to south and south to north,'' said Gus Pego, director of construction and maintenance for the FDOT office that serves Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

City officials, however, pointed out that the original plans for the project included an access point for the Julia Tuttle.

''We're trying to say how do we go back to that, and how do we go back to that safely, efficiently, quickly and cheaply,'' Gonzalez said.

He acknowledged that he and Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower, who attended the meeting, were ''skeptical about the value'' of convincing drivers to pay to ride in the express lane.

''But we've said, we're not going to stop this train. Let's make it the best we can,'' he said.

ENGINEERS

FDOT Assistant Secretary Kevin Thibault offered to have his agency engineers meet again with city engineers to see if a resolution can be reached.

He noted the agency would be able to monitor Beach commuters.

''Let's get the minds back together and let's see if there is a solution,'' he said.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Another hurricane has confounded the experts. How long will Florida and other states in the storms' path have to wait until Congress gives the experts more help?

Hurricane Bertha blew up unexpectedly to a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds on Monday, and then, just as unexpectedly, shrunk on Tuesday to a Category 1. Forecasters and residents want to know two things about storms: strength and direction. As numerous press reports have confirmed, forecasters have mixed records on both, but they are especially inaccurate when it comes to intensity. The most notable recent case in Florida was Charlie, which in August 2004 went from a Category 2 aiming at Tampa to a Category 4 aiming 90 miles south at Port Charlotte - all in just several hours.

Most scientists agree that Congress could throw money at this problem and get results. Last month, the House Science and Technology Committee held a hearings on the Hurricane Research Initiative Act of 2007, as bipartisan a bill as you'll find. Reps. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, testified in favor of the legislation, which they sponsored. It would provide $4.5 billion over the next decade toward research into predicting hurricane strength. Better information could make for earlier warnings and earlier preparation, which would reduce damage and save lives.

National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes testified on behalf of the Bush administration. Of course, Dr. Hayes said, we need more research. Just not that much research. The funding levels, he said, "are significantly higher than current funding levels and are therefore inconsistent with the administration's priorities." Of course, President Bush did pass out water four years ago in Fort Pierce after Hurricane Frances. He was running for reelection.

Jul. 3, 2008 Herb Keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should spend more time and energy focusing on stopping the Iranian nuclear march than pushing the Annapolis process. The Palestinians should stop using Israel as scapegoat for all their problems. The world should stop thinking that all would be well in the Middle East if Israel just stopped construction in east Jerusalem and the settlements.

It is obviously no big deal when sentiments like these are voiced by Israelis. When they are voiced by certain American Jews, it is considered routine, natural, part of the community's support for Israel. But when these thoughts are articulated by the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful bodies shaping US foreign policy, then the eyebrow is raised.

And the eyebrow is raised even higher when the speaker is neither Jewish nor an Evangelical Christian, but rather an influential member of America's Hispanic community who is listed in a book entitled The Hispanic 100: A Ranking of the Latino Men and Women Who Have Most Influenced American Thought and Culture.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a Cuban-Finnish name, extremely difficult to pronounce, which over the years has emerged as belonging to one of Israel's strongest and most consistent supporters in Congress. The Ros half of her name attests to her birth in Cuba - she moved in 1960 to the US with her family when she was eight, a year after Fidel Castro's revolution. The Lehtinen part of her name comes from her husband, Dexter, who has Finnish ancestry.

Ros-Lehtinen was in Jerusalem this week as part of a mission that brought to the country a number of current and former politicians, as well as businessmen, and she sat down with The Jerusalem Post to discuss the root of her support for Israel. She represents Florida 's 18th congressional district, a heavily Hispanic and Jewish area that takes in Miami Beach all the way down to Key West, and includes areas like Coral Gables, Little Havana, Coconut Grove and Key Biscayne.

"It's tough, right," she says with a characteristic ready laugh, referring to the physical attributes of her district. "I represent paradise."

By contrast, she recognizes that Israel is not paradise, at least not politically and strategically, and she started off by saying that she had no intention on divulging her opinion on Israel's current hot button issues: Is the Gaza Strip cease-fire agreement wise; was the week's prisoner exchange deal a good move; are the indirect talks with Syria for real.

Ros-Lehtinen said she would not presume to know what is best for Israel, "because you are in the neighborhood, you have to deal with these bad actors all the time. I can afford to be pious and say, 'Don't negotiate, don't make deals and don't have conversations,' but you are the ones who have to live with the situation."

Rather than advise Israel, Ros-Lehtinen - who is both the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban elected to Congress - felt more comfortable discussing US policy in the region, which she feels is misguided in certain respects. For instance, she was not impressed that Rice has made 21 trips here over the last three years, many of them in the last year to push forward the Annapolis process.

"I have a warm working relationship with Secretary Rice, and I congratulate her for her leadership role in this process, but I believe that there is so much to be done, and so little time left for this administration, that the time could well be spent better in other areas," she said.

Ros-Lehtinen said that part of the problem was that Israel's "supposed partners for peace are not really there." The US and the international community have tried "very hard to prop up the government of Mahmoud Abbas, and it hasn't gotten us very far," she said, adding that Rice could make "20 more visits" from now until late January and it wouldn't make much difference.

"There is just too little time left to do such a monumental task, no matter how many Annapolis conferences we convene," she said.

As to why the US was pushing ahead anyway, Ros-Lehtinen said both because it was a "worthy mission," and also because "I think the president wants to have a legacy that is not just Iraq, but many other things, many other aspects of international and domestic policy. And, by the way, who does not want Middle East peace, except for the terrorists and the zealots who love blood and want to destroy nonbelievers?"

She came squarely out and said what many both in the government here and in Washington think, but won't articulate: that it is not realistic to think that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement will be hammered out before Bush leaves office in January. "I don't think it is feasible at the moment to broker an agreement and a peace deal," she said.

The informally dressed congresswoman, who with her green Lacoste shirt and informal pants looked unassumingly like an average tourist in the King David Hotel, where this interview was held, dismissed the argument that the Annapolis process was important because it set into motion a process that would outlast the transition period the region has now entered - with Bush on his way out, and question marks over the futures of both Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"I don't know if building the process is enough of a goal to have," Ros-Lehtinen said. "When you get a framework that is good for this set of leaders, it might not work for the next set of leaders."

Asked about Rice's stepped up public criticism of late of Israeli construction in east Jerusalem and some of the settlements, Ros-Lehtinen challenged the theory that the settlement issue was what was holding up peace.

"I just think it's a fabricated issue," she said. "To nitpick about a hamlet of a few houses and say that it is up to Israel to remove those because those are an impediment to peace, I think that gives a free pass to Abbas and Fatah and Hamas and the whole crew." Ros-Lehtinen said that were all the settlements razed to the ground tomorrow, "there would be another issue that Abbas would bring up, or Hamas, because I don't think Israel has a true partner for peace."

Which, she explained, is why this is such a tough nut to crack. But there are other areas that needed attention, and she felt that Rice should be more intensely involved with them - such as Iran .

Ros-Lehtinen said she did not believe the Bush administration would take military action to stop Teheran's nuclear program in the waning months of the Bush presidency. "That is not a view shared by everyone," she said. "Some people truly believe there is a buildup now toward a war in Iran. I don't see it, but [that perception] is why it is becoming a little bit harder for us in Congress to pass legislation having tougher sanctions on Iran, because there is an element in Congress that says, 'You can hear the war drums beating, this will be a build up toward war in Iran,' and they don't want that."

Ros-Lehtinen said the available tools to use against Iran were very limited - diplomacy, war and sanctions.

Diplomacy is out of the question, she said, because the US did not want diplomatic relations with "a terrorist state like Iran, because they are not to be trusted.

"We don't want to go to war, so one of the things we can do is apply more economic pressure, because without money these countries can't survive, and we have already seen the positive impact our sanctions policy has had against Iran."

She said that rather than pushing the Annapolis process so hard, a better use of Rice's and the administration's time would be spent getting "our European partners, Russia and China to not be economic life lines to Iran." While Ros-Lehtinen acknowledged that the US could not force those countries into action, she said it did have a great deal of unused leverage.

"The US is still a powerful country, we have a lot for trade with these countries, and can make it very clear that this issue [ Iran ] is important to us," she said.

"Just as Secretary Rice has made it very clear to everyone living in this neighborhood that the Middle East process is important to her - 21 visits - how many times have high officials talked to China and Russia and really told them, 21 times, that this is our goal, this is what we want."

Beyond that, she said, the US has not even implemented its own sanctions legislation inside the US.

"Not one US company, or any other company, has been fined on charges of violating the Iran sanctions," she said. And that, she maintained, is not because those companies were not doing business with Iran, but rather because they were using subsidiaries to bypass the sanctions, and the US was not actively pursuing the issue.

"We do very little with the legislation that we passed," she said. "There is a lot more pressure we can apply. All you have to do is present one case against one company, and even if that is thrown out of court it shines the light on that practice.

Ros-Lehtinen, who was a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq and whose stepson and daughter-in-law served there as US Marine Corps officers, skirted the question of whether she would support US military action on Iran by saying that she did not "deal with hypotheticals."

Nevertheless, asked if she felt the world expected Israel to take military action, she said, "I think the international community hopes that Israel takes action if they are convince that Iran is a true danger."

She, for one, said she didn't believe Israel would have to stand alone against Iran. "On the Iranian issue I believe the US will stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel. We may need to verbally castigate a country like Israel every once in a while if they take out a facility like in Syria, but we are a better world because you did that, and Israel has done it before."

Comments such as these, from a leading legislator, would obviously be enough to have Ros-Lehtinen placed on the side of the column that people such as anti-Israel-lobby lobbyists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer would say are hijacking US foreign policy to serve Israeli interests.

Ros-Lehtinen brushed aside those criticisms. "The US backs Israel because Israel is a free society, and we want to help all free, open, democratic pluralistic societies," she said. "America is out to safeguard America 's interest and we believe that safeguarding Israel is in America's interests. We do not believe Hamas is in our interest, or that helping Hizbullah or any other proxy of Iran and Syria are in the interests of the US."

By contrast, she characterized Israel as "one of the freest civil societies we have in the world, and certainly in the neighborhood. You have a flourishing free media here that skewers politicians on a whim. You have a multiparty system where people are free to start their own party with just a handful of people. That you can dissent from the government without a fear of retaliation is a sign of free society. You go just a few miles from Israel's borders and you won't find that true. We want to help free democratic, pluralistic societies, and certainly Israel is one of the best examples in the world of those goals."

As to those who argue that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians indicates that is not as free a society as it portrays itself, Ros-Lehtinen countered that the Palestinian leadership has "done a good job of suppressing its own people. When Israel has given the opportunity to the Palestinians to rule themselves, what we have seen is that it has become a breeding ground for terrorists. It is the Palestinian leadership that should be held to a higher standard by the Palestinian people themselves, and not give the Palestinian leadership a free pass, and keep blaming Israel for its own problems. How long will they use Israel as a scapegoat?"

Ros-Lehtinen, who is supporting John McCain in the next election, diplomatically bypassed the question as to whether Israel had anything to worry about with the departure of the Bush administration and the arrival of a new one. The US Congress "stands with Israel and will do what we can to help it defend itself no matter who the US president will be."

Pressed, however, if there were any reasons for Israel to worry about an Obama presidency, she replied, "I prefer John McCain. I think his record on supporting Israel is clear for many years. He understands this area, understands the problems, and I don't think he will try to force Israel to make concessions that Israel is unwilling to make, unless we see that it is in our best interest."

But Ros-Lehtinen is not only watching the presidential race. She, like all other US congressmen, is involved in a congressional race of her own this year, one in which the Democratic candidate, Annette Taddeo, is both Hispanic and a convert to Judaism, something that some pundits are saying could siphon off some Jewish voters and make this race closer than expected.

South Florida Business Journal

Two projects in Miami-Dade County are to receive $10.8 million under legislation passed by the U.S. House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

The funding will be brought to the House floor next, and then to the House/Senate Conference.

Of the $10.8 million, $10.3 million was allocated for the Miami River Dredging Project, which will allow the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management, along with federal, state and local partners, to complete the restoration of the navigation channel's authorized depth and width.

The project, primarily funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with local sponsors led by Miami-Dade County, removes contaminated sediments that have made the federal channel narrower and shallower. No comprehensive maintenance dredging has been performed since the river was improved for navigation in the 1930s. Miami-Dade said the contractor has dredged slightly more than 50 percent of the river, and completion of the project is scheduled for April 2009 at a total estimated cost of $88 million.

The other $500,000 is to go to the completion of the Biscayne Bay Water Quality Model. The county said the project represents the second phase of an ongoing partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the effects of the Central and Southern Florida water canals on Biscayne Bay. Funding will help develop a series of predictive numerical models designed to assist resource managers by mimicking the hydrodynamics, water quality and ecology in Biscayne Bay in response to proposed changes to land use and freshwater distribution.

BY DAVID SMILEY

For months there has been no visible action when it comes to the Coconut Grove post office's plans to renovate its parking lot.

The site, which became the focus of residents' wrath after the United States Postal Service razed a number of mature trees last September without telling the community, has only accumulated a mound of rubble.

But behind the scenes, e-mails are flying, the Grove is grumbling, and a member of the United States Congress and Miami's Postmaster have made plans to discuss the issue.

And even as plans for a new post office parking lot linger in the city permitting stages, the Miami Parking Authority is drafting a study that could lead to the development of a parking garage on the lot.

''Of all the possibilities, the parking garage site adjacent to the post office is a dream site,'' said David Collins, executive director of the Coconut Grove Business Improvement Committee, which has worked with the Miami Parking Authority to examine potential parking in the Grove.

Art Noriega, executive director of the Miami Parking Authority, said the $40,000-study is still in its preliminary stages and is being done to determine whether a garage would be feasible and necessary.

''I'm not leaning either way yet,'' Noriega said.

Noriega said the post office knows about the study and has said it is interested in what it finds.

Debra Fetterly, spokeswoman for the United States Postal Service Southern Region, would not comment on the parking study, which details a possible $9.8 million, 278 parking space-garage, or a $13.7 million, 405-space garage.

Both would include retail space.

But while the city dreams of potential parking garages, and the Postal Service and city go back and forth on renovation plans, customers are fuming over its deteriorating condition -- inside and outside.

''It's disgusting,'' Carol Garvin said as she left the post office.

Garvin, a Grove artist, said a trip to the post office now means hunting and paying for a parking spot.

And Garvin also wonders, after seeing the trees razed and debris left to sit in the torn-up lot for months, if there aren't plans to scrap the post office altogether.

''I think they're trying to eliminate the post office,'' she said.

City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who is also chairman of the Business Improvement Committee, said there isn't a secret plan to delay the renovation of the post office and move forward the parking garage study.

''That just isn't the truth,'' Sarnoff said when reached by phone Friday. ``It's not even close to the truth.''

Sarnoff said that if the parking garage is a good option, he would like to see, as plans show, the garage built on the site next to the post office.

However, in a May 30 e-mail Sarnoff sent to an aid of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Sarnoff wrote: ``In this election year, we do look for Ileana's leadership on either bringing forth a new post office or in the alternative, closing this post office and making the land available to the city so that we can act in the best interest of the Grove residents.''

Fetterly said there are no plans to sell the property to the city or tear down the building.

''It's going to remain there,'' she said. ``That's definite.''

While Sarnoff's letter may not generate a sale, it did prompt action from Ros-Lehtinen, who requested a meeting with Jesus Galvez, Miami's Postmaster on Wednesday.

Galvez has said he will call Monday, said Alex Cruz, Ros-Lehtinen's director of communications.

By that time, there may be another person weighing in on the debate, one with a personal stake in what happens to the property.

Melodie Rolle-Mitchell, whose father, William ''Billy'' Rolle, was honored by the state legislature in 1998 by having his name placed atop the post office, plans to begin asking for improvements.

Mitchell, who has had her hands full with the Miami/Bahamas Goombay Festival, which wraps up Sunday, said the post office isn't honoring anybody in its current condition.

BY HILLARY GREY

At 17, Marc Milani became one of the youngest paid employees of the U.S. federal government.

For five months, he, along with 50 other high school juniors from across the country, served as pages to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington.

The page program has been in existence for more than 200 years. Pages are students who come to Washington to live, work and study for a semester.

''When Marc was chosen for this program, I felt like he had won the lottery,'' said Linda Milani, Marc's mother. ``It was such an honor.''

Marc, a student at Christopher Columbus High School in the Mas Scholars program, first went to Washington in the summer of 2006 as an intern for U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

After keeping in touch with her through the year, she asked him to apply for the page program.

''It's a testament to Marc because Ileana had about 50 interns the previous summer, but she approached him first,'' said Rodolfo Milani, Marc's father.

Marc admitted that when she called, he did not know anything about the program, but after looking it up he decided it was an opportunity he couldn't refuse.

So on Sept. 1, Marc, who lives in unincorporated Miami-Dade just north of Pinecrest, began his job as a government employee.

He started his day at 5:30 a.m. From there, he would head to the attic of the Library of Congress for school.

''There wasn't really an exact schedule,'' Marc said. ``We had to base everything around when Congress was in session.''

His classes, he said, were the same that he would have been taking at Christopher Columbus, but the teachers were a little more lenient with the time to complete assignments.

From school, the pages would walk across the street to start their day in Congress.

Ros-Lehtinen, who nominated Marc for this position, said that she thought he learned a lot about responsibility and how to budget his time.

''I mean, these kids get up at the crack of dawn to start their schooling and then they get to work at the same time as us,'' she said.

Pages completed a lot of different tasks and would rotate, so everyone did everything, Marc said.

Marc said his favorite task was working on the House floor.

''It was my favorite because we could just sit and listen to what they're talking about,'' he said. ``Sometimes they got into really heated debates.''

He also said that he enjoyed hearing what all the congressmen were talking about off the floor.

''It could be anything from politics to college football,'' he added.

One of the hardest things, Marc said, was understanding all of the political procedures that happened on the floor. Most of the time, the pages didn't comprehend what the congressmen were actually voting on because of the long and convoluted jargon, Marc said.

Marc also enjoyed working with Ros-Lehtinen. He said that when famous people were in the area she would always come and make sure he got to meet them.

''People were jealous that I had a congresswoman like her,'' Marc said.

Ros-Lehtinen said that this was the first time she had the opportunity to select a page to come for part of the academic year.

''It was a thrill for me to work with him every day,'' she said.

In Marc's page class, there were originally 54 kids. Only 50 finished the entire semester.

''It was tough at first to not be home, but I'm really glad that I did it,'' Marc said.

``Even though you do leave all of your best friends and family, it is only for a few months.''

Marc's family did come to visit him in Washington while he was living there, and he also got to see his brother , who was a freshman at Georgetown University.

Now, after experiencing Washington, the natural question is whether Marc might want to pursue a career in politics.

Several prominent House Republicans blasted the White House Thursday for removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some of President Bush’s staunchest supporters in the war on terror publicly lambasted him for engaging the country once famously branded as part of the "axis of evil."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed her “profound disappointment” over the decision, while Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed his outrage.

“Lifting sanctions and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism flies in the face of history and rewards its brutal dictator for shallow gestures,” said Hoekstra, who has not shied away from criticizing the White House in recent years.

“Just as the Clinton administration was fooled by the Kim Jong-Il regime, time will soon tell if the Bush administration will fall for the same bait,” he added.

The Clinton comparison is an especially sharp twist of the knife, as many Republicans have often accused the 42nd president of not doing enough to combat terrorism while in office.

After famously declaring North Korea part of the “axis of evil” in 2002, the administration abruptly reversed course on Thursday and announced it was lifting trade sanctions and removing the nation from the terrorism blacklist, after North Korea turned over an account of its nuclear work to the Chinese.

By Howard Schneider and Blaine Harden Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, June 26, 2008; 9:58 AM

President Bush today lifted some trade sanctions against North Korea and acted to remove the country from a list of states that sponsor terrorism, after the isolated Stalinist regime turned over a key document detailing its rogue nuclear program.

Nearly seven years after Bush described North Korea as part of "an axis of evil" and less than two years after Pyongyang stunned the world by exploding a small nuclear device, Bush said the receipt of the nuclear disclosure marked the start of an "action for action" process meant to end with the full dismantling of the country's nuclear facilities and weapons.

The document was handed over to Chinese officials in Beijing, one of the most substantial developments to date in the often fitful six-party talks among North Korea, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. It detailed aspects of North Korea's plutonium production and other parts of its nuclear program.

While excluding some important points -- such as a full accounting of weapons and the country's efforts to enrich uranium -- today's disclosure was enough to warrant relaxing the rules that have helped isolate the regime of Korean strongman Kim Jong Il, Bush said.

Provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act were lifted today by proclamation. In addition, North Korea's name will be removed from the list of state terrorism sponsors in 45 days, following Congressional notification, Bush said.

"The U.S. has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang. We remain deeply concerned about human rights abuses . . . nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic missile program, and the threat it continues to pose," Bush said, adding that the U.S. will continue to demand full verification that all aspects of North Korea's nuclear program have been shut down.

Still, "we welcome today's development as one step," the president said.

Another is expected tomorrow when North Korea demolishes the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant -- an illustration, expected to be done in the presence of U.S. television networks, of work accomplished over the last year to dismantle a facility where the country's weapons grade plutonium was reprocessed.

By handing over the disclosure document today, North Korea clears the way for an increase in international fuel and food shipments.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said the document would be subject to verification and that "a set of principles" to guide that verification had been agreed upon.

Bush, in his Rose Garden remarks, praised the Chinese for being "robustly involved" in the tedious negotiations with Pyongyang, a process the president said could not succeed without countries that have "leverage" over Kim. China is a key source of fuel and other resources to North Korea, with closer ties to Kim's communist government than other countries in the region.

Among the omissions in the declaration: North Korea says it does not include a list of its nuclear weapons, only an outline of its nuclear program and facilities. The weapons are to be detailed in further negotiations, according to U.S. officials.

The Bush administration has also agreed not to demand historical details, in this declaration, about North Korea's suspected program for making highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs or about its suspected efforts to sell nuclear technology to other countries, including Syria.

The United States has 45 days before North Korea's removal from the terrorist list becomes final -- a period when the declaration will be examined by U.S. experts. It is supposed to include a complete accounting of how much plutonium North Korea has manufactured.

The country's actions will be watched closely during that period.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, D-CA, said the onus is now on Pyongyang to continue cooperating in order to get off the State Sponsors of Terrorism List.

"The Administration has wisely chosen to assess Pyongyang's sincerity in moving forward with the verification process during the Congressionally-mandated 45-day waiting period before North Korea can be removed officially from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. You can be sure Congress will also closely monitor North Korea's actions. For now, the ball is squarely in Pyongyang's court," he said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL, expressed "profound disappointment" with the plan to remove North Korea from the State Department's terrorism list, given suspicion that the country was helping Syria acquire nuclear technology.

"Even while negotiating the agreement announced today, Pyongyang continued to brazenly assist another state sponsor of terrorism, Syria, in the development of an illicit nuclear program until an Israeli air strike destroyed the facility in the Syrian desert last September," she said. The facility destroyed in the Israeli raid is being inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Japan there was still much to be done to verify that North Korea has ended its nuclear weapons program.

"Obviously, the weapons and all programs are going to have to be dealt with and dismantled if we're going to have denuclearization, and it's going to have to be done so verifiably," she said after arriving in Kyoto for a meeting with foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

If the United States can verify how much plutonium the North Koreans have made, Rice said that "we then have an upper hand in understanding what may have happened in terms of weaponization."

Among the verification steps, inspectors are to have access to the reactor core at Yongbyon and be provided with copies of records that will help determine how much plutonium North Korea produced.

Nuclear weapons experts had mixed reactions to today's events, welcoming the steps North Korea has taken but expressing concern about how much information the regime of Kim Jong Il will provide on other critical issues such as uranium enrichment and weapons proliferation to other nations.

"It's what comes next that is key. What the U.S. will be looking for is access to facilities for samples and to talk to nuclear specialists in plutonium production and separation," said David Albright, former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

The United States has so far paid a limited price for North Korea's cooperation, Albright said.

"They're pretty cheap to buy off -- sanctions and the terrorism list is not a huge thing to give upso the U.S. hasn't paid a lot for thousands of operating records, the disablement of nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, and access to aluminum tubes that help ease concerns about an ongoing enrichment program."

When the United States removes North Korea from the list of terrorist states, Kim's impoverished government, which faces a severe food shortage this summer, will receive large shipments of fuel. The United States has already promised to send a half million tons of food.

The easing of trade restrictions may allow North Korea to borrow money from the World Bank and international institutions, and will lift some of the current rules preventing U.S. citizens and companies from importing North Korean goods or exporting goods and material to the country.

Bush noted that even with the lifting of some U.S. sanctions, the country will still face United Nations and other restrictions, and remain "one of the most sanctioned in the world."

The steps taken today will have "little impact on North Korea's financial and diplomatic isolation," Bush said.

A former Clinton administration official said past experience indicates there will be little rush to do business with Pyongyang.

When Clinton lifted some restrictions on trading with North Korea, "there was not a rush to do business because North Korea is still a very difficult environment," said Wendy Sherman, former Clinton administration official who handled diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang.

The lifting of sanctions, however, deeply worries Japan, the closest ally of the United States in Asia.

Japan has strongly argued that North Korea should be classified as a terrorist state until it comes clean on its abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 80s.

The fate of eight still-missing Japanese whom North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping has become an obsession in Japan. Politicians here cannot afford to be perceived as neglecting the issue. Tokyo has imposed tough economic sanctions and cut off all food and energy aid to the North.

Bush said today that the issue will not be dropped. "We will never forget the abduction of Japanese citizens," Bush said.

Earlier this month, at the apparent urging of U.S. officials, North Korea promised to reinvestigate the abductions. But it gave no dates for when it would come forward with information. The vague promise has been denounced by families of the abductees and Japanese officials have since expressed skepticism about the sincerity of the Kim government on the issue.

"No one in Japan is satisfied, but the Bush administration can say we have pressured North Korea to reopen negotiations with Japan about the abductees," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu.

Cossa said that the principal regional losers, if North Korea is removed from the terrorist list, will be "Japan and the image of the United States in Japan. The U.S. is now seen as less reliable than it has been for years."

President Bush telephoned Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Wednesday to tell him that the United States remains concerned about the abduction issue, a point that Rice emphasized here again on Thursday.

But Fukuda, who is already unpopular and whose ruling party could lose control of the government in an election in 2009, may have to be pay a high political price for the Bush administration's deal with North Korea, political analysts in Tokyo say.

"Japanese sentiment has made this such an emotional issue," said Pyong Jin-il, an expert on North Korea issues. "The Japanese people will be looking coldly at the United States and its moves."

Japan's leaders have been backed into a corner, several analysts said, where they are being pressured by an angry public to complain about the behavior of their most important ally, the United States. So far, official complaining has been muted.

"If America decides for itself there is nothing we can do," said Minoru Morita, a political analyst in Tokyo. "This move by the U.S. will probably light a small fire to Japanese nationalism and anti-Americanism. But it will not be a huge wave, nor a mainstream sentiment."

If there is a clear winner from Thursday's diplomatic maneuvering, it is North Korea, said Cossa at the Pacific Forum. He noted that North Korea is delivering its declaration six months late and that the Bush administration is not demanding details about the North's suspected proliferation of nuclear technology to Syria or its suspected program for enriching uranium.

"Even though the North Koreans don't keep their promises very well, they demand that everybody else keep theirs," said Cossa.

Analysts who study the North Korea's unpredictable leader say that Kim may have made a deal with the Bush administration because he knows that unless he did so this year, he would have to negotiate with a new president.

"It looks like Kim regards this to be his last chance to stay on the right course and he wants resolution not aggravation of the dispute," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies, Dongguk University in Seoul.

"Kim is not getting younger and that means diminishing power of leadership control," added Koh. "If he fails to clean up the messes with the Bush administration now, he will loose a couple of years before the new U.S. government gets back on track. That could invite challenge to his regime stability, especially given the serious food shortage and the subsequent rise in the domestic discontent."

By Janine Zacharia and Holly Rosenkrantz

June 26 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. began removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after the communist regime released an inventory of nuclear plants and materials, removing an obstacle to future ties between the two countries.

The declaration was required under a September 2005 agreement by the government in Pyongyang and the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia to rid the Korean peninsula of atomic weapons. North Korea's refusal to submit information on its programs had stalled the negotiations for months.

``The United States has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang,'' President George W. Bush said in the White House Rose Garden, citing concerns about human rights and nuclear proliferation. ``Yet we welcome today's development.''

The twin moves -- formally declaring North Korea no longer an enemy by lifting the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act, and announcing that North Korea will be removed from the terrorism list -- are largely symbolic.

``The two actions America is taking will have little impact on North Korea's financial and diplomatic isolation,'' Bush said. ``North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world.''

Today's declaration of nuclear activities totaled 60 pages, a U.S. State Department official told reporters in Kyoto, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is meeting with foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrial powers. A separate two-page statement delivered earlier by North Korea to China acknowledged U.S. concerns about highly enriched uranium and nuclear assistance to Syria.

Other Nuclear Issues

The North Koreans had insisted on keeping those two issues separate from today's formal declaration to the six parties about its plutonium activities.

``The North Koreans will link these other nuclear issues to a number of other political and economic incentives that they want to receive,'' said Gary Samore , a former adviser to President Bill Clinton on nuclear proliferation and an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. ``They're not going to do it for free.''

The U.S. and other nations involved in the disarmament talks will review today's declaration to see how much plutonium North Korea has produced and try to gain insight into the extent of North Korea's weapons' program, Rice said in Kyoto.

``This is a good step forward,'' Rice said. ``The United States and its partners are expecting over the next 45 days to have North Korean cooperation as we move forward to nail down the elements of verification.''

Congressional Skepticism

Bush's decision was met with some skepticism in Congress. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen , a House Republican on the Foreign Affairs committee, said in a statement that it is ``cause for profound concern'' because ``serious verification questions linger.''

John Bolton , Bush's former United Nations ambassador, called the deal ``shameful.''

``It gives North Korea enormous political legitimacy, and we get almost nothing in return,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, his party's presumptive presidential nominee, said questions remain about North Korea's nuclear activities, ``so my overall impression is we should be very cautious.''

North Korea was placed on the State Department terrorism list 20 years ago after its agents were implicated in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 155 people on board. The designation resulted in sanctions, including curbs on aid and a ban on sales of weapons.

Mostly Symbolic

While the sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act restrict North Korea's trade and financial transactions with the U.S., lifting them is mostly symbolic.

``U.S. persons are still prohibited from dealing with North Korean vessels, and North Korean assets in the United States remain frozen,'' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Washington.

Sanctions on arms sales and nuclear proliferation transfers remain under U.S. legislation and executive orders punishing North Korea for proliferation and violating human rights.

``The sanctions that North Korea faces for its human rights violations, its nuclear test in 2006, and its weapons proliferation will all stay in effect,'' Bush said. ``And all United Nations Security Council sanctions will stay in effect.''

All U.S. goods for export to North Korea continue to require a license, according to a State Department fact sheet.

Remaining Issues

``We remain deeply concerned about North Korea's human- rights abuses, uranium enrichment activities, nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic missile programs, and the threat it continues to pose to South Korea and its neighbors,'' Bush said.

Analyst Samore said ``it's pretty clear none of the really difficult issues are likely to be resolved'' during the remainder of the Bush administration.

North Korea agreed in February 2007 to disable its nuclear programs in return for normal diplomatic ties with the U.S. and Japan and economic aid equivalent to 1 million metric tons of heavy fuel oil.

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