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Report: CPB chief violated law, ethical standards

WASHINGTON - The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting broke federal law by interfering with PBS programming and appearing to use political tests in recruiting the corporation's new president, internal investigators said Tuesday.

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a Republican, also sought to withhold funding from PBS unless the taxpayer-supported network brought in more conservative voices to balance its programming, said the report by CPB inspector general Kenneth A. Konz.

Tomlinson was chairman of the corporation until September and resigned as a board member earlier this month after Konz privately shared his findings with the board. The report was released Tuesday.

The corporation - which funnels hundreds of millions of federal dollars to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service and noncommercial radio and television stations - was created by Congress in the late 1960s to shield public broadcasting from political influence.

WASHINGTON - The Samuel Alito who argued against abortion rights in 1985 was "an advocate seeking a job" with the conservative Reagan administration, the Alito who is now a Supreme Court nominee told Democrats Tuesday.

The current version "thinks he's a wiser person" with "a better grasp and understanding about constitutional rights and liberties," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said as Alito tried to play down a 20-year-old document in which he asserted "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Meanwhile, some antiabortion groups warned Alito not to go too far if he hopes to retain their support.

"A nominee who is willing to take the seemingly mandated Roe oath, whereby they testify that it is settled law, never to be overturned, is not the type of justice worthy of pro-life support," said Stephen G. Peroutka of the National Pro-Life Action Center.

President Bush nominated Alito last month as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a crucial swing vote on contentious issues including abortion during her 24-year high court career.

WASHINGTON - Republicans labored to advance their tax cut plans Tuesday, failing to muster enough GOP support in the Senate to extend tax cuts for capital gains and dividends beyond their 2008 expiration.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 14-6 to endorse a package that would cut taxes by $60-billion over five years.

The House's top tax writer pushed to keep alive the 15 percent maximum rate on capital gains and dividend income for two more years but dropped many other extensions of expiring tax breaks from a bill that would cut taxes by $32-billion over five years.

The two tax measures working through the House and Senate tax-writing committees represent different versions of a tax cut outlined in the budget Republicans passed this winter.

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court decided Tuesday that it was unreasonable to require a detailed historical accounting of money the government has been managing for American Indians, saying the bookkeeping chore would "take 200 years."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with the government and the American Indians in their effort to block a lower court's order for the tally of money owed them.

The accounting had been ordered by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who is overseeing a class-action lawsuit in which thousands of American Indians claim they were cheated out of more than $100-billion in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.