ShareThisWASHINGTON - Its technical name is the "S visa," but in colloquial terms the "S" has come to stand for "snitch."
One of the least-known and most exclusive legal entrees to the United States, the S visa is used by law enforcement to bring foreigners with "critical information on criminal or terrorist organizations" to the U.S. to help in investigations or prosecutions.
Created in 1994, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the visa can be granted annually to up to 200 criminal informants and 50 with information on terrorism. Family members can also be granted S visas, and no cap exists on the number allowed in.
The visas are supposed to be temporary and come with a three-year time limit. But those who have been particularly helpful can become permanent residents, as can their families. Critics say this beneficence could open the country's doors to decidedly unsavory characters who could have ulterior motives.
While acknowledging the value the S visa program can have in fighting crime and terrorism, the advocacy group Judicial Watch contends that more congressional, governmental and public oversight is needed to avoid abuses. The group filed suit this past Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to pry out more details about who is getting the visas and where they are now.
Nearly a decade after awakening to the threat of terrorists sneaking radioactive materials into the country to use in an attack, all vehicle cargo crossing into the United States over the borders with Canada and Mexico is now being scanned for radioactivity emanating from nuclear devices, "dirty" bombs, contaminated recycled metal and any other sources, the U.S. Department of Energy says.
There now are a total of more than 850 radiation portal monitoring systems deployed at customs stations and ports of entry on the northern and southern borders. The final one was installed last fall at Trout River, N.Y. The project began in 2002.
But the Obama administration has decided not to continue a $1 billion program to develop the next-generation sensors that were intended to replace the current system with even more sophisticated technology. Congressional auditors had noted that the new devices, which were under development for four years, were prone to setting off false alarms and other glitches, and the Department of Homeland Security says the new monitors failed to live up to expectations.
Neo-Assyrian gold earrings dating to at least the seventh century B.C., a 4,000-year-old clay cone from Babylonia and a Sumerian stone tablet dating to as long ago as 2,500 B.C. have been returned to Iraq, from where they each were stolen.
These priceless items are just the most recent of more than 1,000 cultural artifacts that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has repatriated to Iraq since 2003.
Some of the pieces -- such as the earrings -- were purloined from the Baghdad Museum, which was set upon by looters and others in the chaos that followed the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. They eventually surfaced at a New York City auction house.
Another piece of returned memorabilia -- an AK-47 assault rifle bearing Saddam's likeness, a memento of the sort the dictator personally handed out to his closest supporters -- was seized after a U.S. Army soldier brought it home as a war trophy.
The last time members of Congress took a pay cut was April 1, 1933, during the Great Depression. Now, with the country struggling through another grim economic era of high unemployment, Arizona GOP Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick says it's high time that senators and representatives did so again.
A sharp-edged government-spending hawk, Kirkpatrick has introduced a bill to trim all lawmakers' pay by 5 percent, starting in January 2011. She says she is putting her own money where her mouth is by vowing to return 5 percent of her own pay for this year.
The salary for rank-and-file representatives and senators currently is $174,000. House and Senate majority and minority leaders each get $193,400, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's paycheck is $223,500. All Capitol Hill lawmakers also get annual automatic pay raises. There is no law requiring them to accept the raise or even the salary itself.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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