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https://web.archive.org/web/2005102319id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/21/AR2005102101625.html

Federal employees can look forward to an average pay increase of 3.1 percent next year. The Senate passed a 3.1 percent raise for the government's 1.8 million civilian workers this week when it voted 93 to 1 to approve a $141 billion spending bill for the departments of Transportation, the Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development. The House approved an identical raise in its version of the measure in June. Although the two chambers must reconcile differences in the bills, the pay provision is not expected to change. In approving the measure, lawmakers set aside President Bush's two-tiered pay proposal -- which called for a 2.3 percent raise for federal civilian employees and a 3.1 percent increase for the military -- and decided to award both groups the higher amount. "Military personnel and federal civilian employees -- both white collar and blue collar -- work for the same employers, often side by side, in defense of our nation's homeland security," Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said in a statement. The raise would take effect in January. Federal employees, on average, have received an annual pay raise of at least 2 percent in every year but two since 1969, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 1983 and 1986, there was no increase. Federal pay varies widely by profession and location, but the average salary for all occupations is $63,715, according to Office of Personnel Management data. Federal employee unions cheered the Senate vote. Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, urged "the White House to respect the action taken by Congress." John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called passage of the 3.1 percent raise "a victory for all federal employees." Because the annual pay raise varies by geographic location, federal workers in the Washington-Baltimore area can expect to see a slightly higher increase of about 3.44 percent, according to the Federal Salary Council, a government advisory panel. Senators voted to pass up their 1.9 percent pay raise -- which would have increased their salaries by $3,100, to $165,200 -- saying that doing so was symbolically important at a time of rising budget deficits and big expenditures for Hurricane Katrina rebuilding. The House has not taken that step; both chambers must agree if salaries are to be frozen. Congressional pay raises are automatically implemented every year unless lawmakers vote to block them.

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Latest politics news headlines from Washington DC. Follow 2004 elections, campaigns, Democrats, Republicans, political cartoons, opinions from The Washington Post. Features government policy, government tech, political analysis and reports.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005102119id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000760.html

KEY WEST, Fla., Oct. 20 -- Hurricane Wilma's march toward Florida slowed Thursday, giving residents an unexpected extra day to prepare for the storm, while authorities stockpiled emergency supplies. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said Wilma will likely strike Florida's western coast late Sunday, more than a day later than previously thought. Max Mayfield, the center's director, said the slowdown will likely weaken the storm from a Category 4, with sustained 150 mph winds, to a Category 3 or less before it makes landfall in the United States. "The timing is certainly working in our favor," Mayfield said. But he added that Wilma probably will still be a strong hurricane with a powerful storm surge when it reaches the state. Category 3 storms have winds of 111 mph to 130 mph. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) declared a state of emergency to ensure that necessary supplies and disaster response teams are in place. "This is the time to prepare," Bush said. The storm was predicted to make a turn to the northeast toward Florida after striking Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in the western Caribbean. Mayfield said Wilma is unusually large, with tropical storm-force winds extending about 260 miles from the center that could cause widespread damage. At 11 p.m. Eastern time, forecasters said Wilma was about 100 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico, and about 455 miles southwest of Key West. It was heading northwest at 6 mph toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where Mayfield said it could do catastrophic damage. The storm had strengthened slightly, and forecasters said it could regain Category 5-strength winds of 156 mph or more. Although Wilma was expected to approach from the west, forecasters warned that major Atlantic Coast cities including Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach could be hit by strong winds and heavy rains. Bush said the state had food, water, ice and other supplies ready, as well as disaster-response teams that include as many as 7,500 National Guard troops. "We are battle-tested, well-resourced, well-trained," he said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was positioning emergency materials in Jacksonville, Lakeland and Homestead. FEMA acting chief R. David Paulison said that the agency has 150 truckloads of ice and 150 truckloads of water, and that the American Red Cross has 200,000 meals available. "We are ready for the storm, as much as you can be," Paulison said in Washington. In the low-lying, vulnerable Keys, the normally crowded historic district in Key West was eerily quiet. Tourists and nonresidents had already been asked to leave. A mandatory evacuation of residents was expected to start Friday, although some did not seem to be hurrying.

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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina and Rita including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, news from New Orleans and more.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005102019id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902420.html

LOS ANGELES, Oct.19 -- The Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant was going off in the fourth quarter of Tuesday's preseason game in Bakersfield, Calif., when he started jawing at Washington Wizards forward Awvee Storey. Storey, who is scrapping to make an NBA roster, wasn't intimidated and stood his ground as Byrant placed an elbow in his chest and tried to shove him during a break in play. Wanting to stop a potential altercation before it took place, the referees handed out double technicals. That's when the Wizards' bench -- players and coaches -- jumped up in unison and began defending Storey, who apparently was the victim of the NBA's unwritten rule protecting its superstars. "He didn't do anything," screamed guard Gilbert Arenas, who was already done for the night after contributing 27 points and six assists in 32 minutes. In a soon-to-be forgotten preseason game, one Washington would go on to lose 111-108 in overtime, the scene said a lot about the chemistry that is starting to take hold for the Wizards. "We're going to have a good team, a deep team with guys that play well with one another," forward Jared Jeffries said. Coach Eddie Jordan has praised his team's maturity and professional approach. And veterans such as Chucky Atkins, who is on his fifth NBA team, say they like the overall vibe surrounding the team. Still, as the Wizards take the court for Thursday night's preseason game against the Charlotte Bobcats at Staples Center, they will be looking to turn that chemistry into consistency and rhythm on both ends of the court. Tuesday's game, which the Wizards led at the end of each of the first three quarters before Jordan turned the game over to reserves, provided a taste of what the Wizards have while showing that there is room for improvement. After missing two games with groin and hamstring soreness, Arenas looked like his all-star self, ripping through the Los Angeles defense at will and leading a late first-quarter charge. Other than guard Jarvis Hayes, who missed his second straight game with knee soreness, the Wizards had their full complement of players for the first time this preseason and nine players clocked at least 23 minutes. Caron Butler, who was acquired in the trade that sent Kwame Brown to the Lakers, matched the production of Brown, who scored 19 points and grabbed seven rebounds in his first game against the Wizards. In 32 minutes, Butler scored 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting with six rebounds, three steals and two assists. Still, Butler at times resembles his team: He looks unsure of himself, as if he's thinking about what to do instead of simply reacting and doing it. At other times, such as when he sprinted up the wing, caught a perfect bounce pass from Antonio Daniels and drew a foul on Chris Mihm as he converted a layup, Butler looks right at home. "Right now, I'm to the point where I'm getting the first option and the second option but I'm still learning the third option and then sometimes the fourth option," Butler said. "Say I'm at the top of the key and I flash through the lane to the wing. Then it's, okay, now I cut over here. Then, I have to cut over here. I'm learning all of the reads. It's one of those things where it will become more familiar the more I'm out there." Jordan said that such a learning curve is to be expected. "The message I sent to them at halftime was that we were getting by on our talent, not on our execution and that has to improve," Jordan said. "We were not organized on and our press offense wasn't good so those are things we worked on [in practice Wednesday]. We have to be sharper." Wizards Notes: One reason the Wizards are 1-3 is their horrendous free throw shooting: 92 of 152 (60.5 percent). Center Brendan Haywood, a career 60.9 percent shooter, has made 5 of 20. Hayes did not practice Wednesday and will miss his third straight game with knee soreness. Jordan said it's possible that Hayes could miss the remainder of the preseason, which wraps up Oct. 27 at Indiana. "The important thing is for him to be pain free, so we'll wait and give him more time," Jordan said.

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When the Wizards jumped to the defense of forward Awvee Storey after he received an unwarranted technical in Tuesday's loss to the Lakers, it provided a fledgling glimpse of a team chemistry.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005092619id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501249.html

"No Direction Home" represents a great musical-cinematic summit, as no less than the great Martin Scorsese directs -- with superb control and judgment -- what surely qualifies as the definitive documentary about Bob Dylan. "No Direction Home" will be broadcast in two parts tonight and tomorrow night on PBS's "American Masters" series, and in the bargain viewers get two masters -- one a hugely influential singer and songwriter with a canny, thoroughly American knack for self-invention and the other a filmmaker with a thumb (to recycle an encomium Dylan has dodged throughout his career) firmly on the pulse of his generation. It's a happy collaboration. "No Direction Home" offers a lively, absorbing, often deeply moving account of how Robert Zimmerman from the small mining town of Hibbing, Minn., became -- through talent, luck and calculating ambition -- the musician, icon and enigma we know as Bob Dylan. Wisely, Scorsese limits his scope to the early years, from Dylan's birth in 1941 to 1966, when he outraged fans and folk purists by going electric. The result isn't a comprehensive compendium of factoids or deep dish -- there's precious little personal information related in the 207-minute running time -- but instead a tightly focused portrait of a young artist searching for his musical and professional identity and whose search happened to bring him to the very center of the American political and cultural zeitgeist. Most of the facts of Zimmerman's journey to Dylan are well known by now, thanks to endless hagiographic deconstructions of his life and to his own well-regarded autobiography, which came out last year. So Scorsese -- who long ago earned his rock-doc bona fides with "The Last Waltz," about the Band -- wisely structures "No Direction Home" around a central tension, in this case the startlingly hostile reception Dylan received when he toured with the Band (then called the Hawks) in Britain in 1966. When those concerts were released in 1998 as part of Dylan's ongoing "Bootleg" recording series, fans heard the famous "Judas!" episode, when a fan yelled the epithet at Dylan and the appalled singer responded with, "I don't believe you!" then ripped into a blistering version of "Like a Rolling Stone." That song, with fans booing all the way through, opens "No Direction Home," and Scorsese returns to those contentious concerts throughout the film. They not only provide much-needed narrative tension but the ideal leitmotif for an artist who for so long has engaged in an ambivalent gavotte with his fans, as interested in courting them as he is in confounding them. "No Direction Home" gets to the heart of that ambivalence, with Dylan -- a famous trickster who began to mythologize his past almost as soon as he got to Greenwich Village in 1961 -- at least appearing to provide some straight answers to what has driven him all these years. Scorsese also interviews Dylan's longtime friends, collaborators and mentors, among them Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancy, Maria Muldaur and Joan Baez, who recounts her personal and professional power struggles with Dylan with tart, candid affection. (One question: Where's Robbie Robertson?) Dylan has been the subject of documentaries before, most famously in D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 "Don't Look Back." Scorsese avails himself of clips from that film, as well as Pennebaker's rarely seen "Eat the Document" and Murray Lerner's "Festival," about the Newport Folk Festival (there's footage of Dylan's notorious first electric set at the 1965 festival, but none of the legendary and probably apocryphal fistfight between folklorist Alan Lomax and Dylan manager Albert Grossman). Perhaps only a director of Scorsese's caliber could have produced not just a fascinating portrait of Dylan's meteoric rise but a vivid social history and an obliquely witty examination of the packaging and marketing of the folk craze in the 1960s (some scenes seem plucked directly from Christopher Guest's satire "A Mighty Wind"). It should be noted that the director, with editor David Tedeschi, accomplishes all of this without the crutch of narration; the only time you hear a voice-over is when Scorsese reads a speech that Dylan wrote but never delivered when he received an award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in 1963. But the most valuable material, by far, is that of Dylan's less publicized influences -- not only Woody Guthrie but Odetta, Leadbelly, Webb Pierce and John Jacob Niles -- as well as early scenes, such as a 1963 performance of "Man of Constant Sorrow," in which an impossibly green kid from Hibbing seems literally to be finding his voice and the persona that would undergo so many transformations in successive years. Then there are the occasional grace notes, such as a goosebump-inducing duet with Johnny Cash on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Throughout "No Direction Home," Dylan emerges as a cultural magpie -- he calls himself "a musical expeditionary" -- who is constantly reaching back into the canon even while he reinvents it, and his own songs, again and again. During one of several painful encounters with a clueless 1960s press corps, Dylan -- by then a reluctant mascot for the antiwar and civil rights movements -- is asked whether he considers himself the voice of his generation. "I think of myself as a song-and-dance man," he says simply. Gracefully interweaving Dylan's artistry and ambition, "No Direction Home" puts him in his rightful place, not only alongside America's greatest poets and visionaries but also its showmen; he's an heir to Guthrie and Jack Kerouac, it's true, but there's a playful tip of the hat as well to such archetypal entertainers as Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan and P.T. Barnum. "No Direction Home" ends on an electrifying note, literally and figuratively, as viewers see for the first time on-screen the famous Judas performance; the moment -- defiant, thrilling and deeply emotional -- is a triumphant conclusion to a story that, gratifyingly, hasn't ended. In a postscript, Scorsese informs viewers that after his motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966, Dylan stopped touring for eight years. What the filmmaker might have added is that then, he never stopped. No Direction Home airs at 9 p.m. on Channel 26 (90 minutes tonight; two hours tomorrow night) and on Maryland Public Television (two hours each night).

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Search Washington, DC area movie listings, reviews and locations from the Washington Post. Features DC, Virginia and Maryland entertainment listings for movies and movie guide. Visit http://eg.washingtonpost.com/section/movies today.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005092619id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501167.html

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Six miles from campus, an already shredded American flag flapped as the wind increased under a menacing sky. And just a quarter-mile from where a toppled "Show Your Tiger Pride" billboard lay, Louisiana State's football team practiced indoors Friday, shielded from the approaching Hurricane Rita. As much of this community showed signs of recovery after Hurricane Katrina, a second natural disaster this weekend threatened to disrupt lives again. But many, including the LSU football team, were determined to function as usual, even amid constant reminders of the storm that had occurred weeks ago and the one that arrived early Saturday. Herb Vincent, LSU's associate athletic director, said the community has been "begging for normalcy," some of which could be provided Monday night when LSU's football team, considered by many the lifeblood of the state, will finally play a home game. Two games already were rescheduled because of Katrina, and Monday's game against Tennessee was postponed from Saturday because of Rita. "They need it," LSU Coach Les Miles said. "This state would be miserable without football." As he walked around Free Speech Alley on campus last week, Miles saw students carrying books and heading to class -- "It felt good," he said. Gone were the sights of the previous two weeks: Black Hawk helicopters routinely flying over the practice field, and the basketball arena, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, serving as a temporary hospital for Katrina evacuees. There were other indications of life returning to normal in this football-crazed state, even as the outer bands of Rita struck Baton Rouge with heavy rain and gusts of 50-mph winds Friday evening. On Friday, dozens of students ignored torrential rain to play flag football in bathing suits. Inside a sports bar, 15 televisions simultaneously flashed a bright red screen indicating a tornado warning. No one flinched. Less than an hour later, three reporters huddled near the door of LSU's practice facility to avoid the rain. A team manager opened the door only to say that the coaches did not want them to look through the windows at practice. And during Miles's weekly radio show, one caller, Blake from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, asked the coach about this pressing issue: how two injuries would affect the team's depth chart. Another caller, Kevin, ripped into the first-year coach for not wearing the team's colors on the sideline during practice. Miles's response: "Nice talking to you, Kevin." It did not take long for typical contention between rival schools to reemerge. "If they can practice, why can't they play Saturday?" said Sharon Glass, one of the few Tennessee fans near campus Friday evening. "Our boys would play." The Southeastern Conference announced Thursday after a conference call with officials from both schools that the Tennessee game would be moved to Monday because of Rita, which was closing in on eastern Texas and western Louisiana. Tennessee Athletic Director Mike Hamilton said the Volunteers were prepared to forfeit the game if they deemed it too dangerous to fly the team to Baton Rouge the day of the game. Visiting teams usually stay in an area hotel the night before road games, but none was available.

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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005092119id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901826.html

Presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr., who is petitioning the court for more freedom, is lonely and longing for a close relationship like the one he had for many years with a former psychiatric patient, a psychologist testified yesterday. "He wants to have a girlfriend. He wants intimate contact with a female," Paul Montalbano, chief of pretrial services at St. Elizabeths, the Southeast Washington mental hospital, testified yesterday. The psychologist said such a desire is natural for a man who has ended a long relationship, as Hinckley did this year. Hinckley, 50, cut his ties to Leslie deVeau after the relationship came under scrutiny during hearings to decide whether he was ready for expanded freedoms. For a time, Hinckley was escorting a young hospital intern to her car and offering to sing to her. But after his doctors became aware of his special interest in the woman, Hinckley was told that he was crossing a line between staff and patient and had to stop, which he did, Montalbano said. The underlying question at a hearing yesterday appeared to be how Hinckley would handle courtship and respond to rejection out in the world, away from the structure and support of a hospital. Hinckley would like to eventually be released from St. Elizabeths, where the staff has found his depression and psychotic disorder to be in remission. He has been confined to the hospital in Southeast Washington since 1982, when a federal jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Ronald Reagan and three others. In the meantime, he wants the court's permission to make a series of overnight visits to his parents' residence in Williamsburg, and this week a federal judge is hearing his petition and the government's opposition to it. Hinckley's interest in women, viewed as natural by the psychologist, is disconcerting to the Justice Department's attorneys, who oppose any expansion of Hinckley's freedoms and who note that it was Hinckley's obsession with actress Jodie Foster that spurred him to open fire on Reagan in 1981. On the hearing's first day, the questions and answers centered on how Hinckley handled his breakup with deVeau and how he has acted toward women since then. Hinckley met deVeau when both were confined at St. Elizabeths. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1982 shooting death of her 10-year-old daughter and was released from the hospital eight years later. Saddened by the breakup, Hinckley did not spiral into depression, Montalbano testified. His longing for a new female companion has been obvious to those who treat him, the psychologist said. The intern was apparently not his only romantic interest. Smitten with a hospital chaplain, he scheduled an appointment with her. But when asked about it by his doctors, Hinckley admitted that the appointment was mostly a chance to see a "pretty lady" and agreed to cancel it, Montalbano said. Over the past two years, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman has allowed Hinckley to leave St. Elizabeths for excursions in the Washington area, including some with his parents. Initially the family was accompanied by hospital chaperons. But more recently, Friedman has permitted the family to go without such supervision and has allowed overnight visits in the area. Even as the hospital supervisions have fallen away, the Secret Service has continued to track Hinckley. During yesterday's hearing, Hinckley's parents sat in the first row of the gallery on the same side of the courtroom as their son, who was wearing a blue jacket, white shirt and red tie. Seated at a table with his attorneys, Hinckley seemed to follow the testimony intently, rarely focusing his gaze anywhere but the witness stand as Montalbano answered questions from Hinckley attorney Barry Wm. Levine; the government's lawyer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Zeno; and Friedman. Hinckley's parents live in a 2,900-acre gated community in Williamsburg that has golf courses, a pool, a clubhouse and a shopping center, and that is where he would stay during the proposed series of six visits -- the longest of which would last just over a week. Montalbano said that the process needs to be gradual and must be monitored but that visits with his family have been an important part of his treatment and should continue to be. He said that, just as many people rely on their partners for support, Hinckley could be well served by the sort of relationship he craves. But Montalbano also said that given the scrutiny such a partner would endure, Hinckley may face a hard road to romance: "Mr. Hinckley remains optimistic, but perhaps naively optimistic."

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Get Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia news. Includes news headlines from The Washington Post. Get info/values for Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia homes. Features schools, crime, government, traffic, lottery, religion, obituaries.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005091119id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090902448.html

The city of New Orleans is not going to be rebuilt. The tourist neighborhoods? The ancient parts from the French Quarter to the Garden District on that slim crescent of relatively high ground near the river? Yes, they will be restored. The airport and the convention center? Yes, those, too. But the far larger swath -- the real New Orleans where the tourists don't go, the part that Katrina turned into a toxic soup bowl, its population of 400,000 scattered to the waves? Not so much. When Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert said that it makes no sense to spend billions of federal dollars to rebuild a city that's below sea level, he added, "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." In the face of criticism, he hurried to "clarify" his remarks. But according to Washington lore, such a flap occurs when someone inadvertently tells the truth. New Orleans has had a good run for 287 years, but even before Katrina hit, the city was on the wane, as its steadily dropping population figures for decades have shown. All the brave rhetoric about the indomitable human spirit notwithstanding, we may want to consider some realities. As much as it causes heartache to those of us who love New Orleans -- the whole place, not just the one of myth and memory -- cities are not forever. Look at Babylon, Carthage, Pompeii. Certainly, as long as the Mississippi River stays within its manmade banks, there will be a need for the almost 200 miles of ports near its mouth. But ports no longer require legions of workers. In the 21st century, a thriving port is not the same thing as a thriving city, as demonstrated from Oakland to Norfolk. The city of New Orleans has for years resembled Venice -- a beloved tourist attraction but not a driver of global trade. Does the end of New Orleans as one of America's top 50 cities represent a dilemma of race and class in America? Of course. There are a lot of black and poor people who are not going to return to New Orleans any more than Okies did to the Dust Bowl. What the city of New Orleans is really up against, however, is the set of economic, historic, social, technological and geological forces that have shaped fixed settlements for 8,000 years. Its necessity is no longer obvious to many stakeholders with the money to rebuild it, from the oil industry, to the grain industry, to the commercial real estate industry, to the global insurance industry, to the politicians. If the impetus does not come from them, where will it come from? New Orleans, politically defined, is the 180.6 square miles making up Orleans Parish. (In Louisiana a "parish" is comparable to a county.) This place is roughly three times the size of the District of Columbia, though in 2004 it was less populated and its head count was dropping precipitously. The original reason for founding La Nouvelle-Orléans in 1718 was the thin crescent of ground French trappers found there. Hence the name "Crescent City." Elevated several feet above the Mississippi mud, it was the last semi-dry natural landing place before the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That crescent today is where you find all the stuff that attracts tourists, from the French Quarter, to the Central Business District (the "American Quarter") with the convention center and the Superdome, to the Garden District and Uptown. This area is roughly comparable to Washington from Adams Morgan through K Street to Georgetown and Foxhall Road. That tourist crescent is relatively intact. (Only two of the 1,500 animals at the Audubon Zoo died.) But it is only perhaps 10 percent of the city.

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The French Quarter, convention center and ports of New Orleans will be rebuilt, but much of the rest of city no longer makes sense economically.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005090519id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071900870.html

John G. Roberts Jr., 50, has long been considered one of the Republicans' heavyweights amid the largely Democratic Washington legal establishment. Roberts was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003 by President George W. Bush. (He was also nominated by the first President Bush, but never received a Senate vote.) Previously, he practiced law at Washington's Hogan & Hartson from 1986-1989 and 1993-2003. Between 1989 and 1993, he was the principal deputy solicitor general in the first Bush administration, helping formulate the administration's position in Supreme Court cases. During the Reagan administration, he served as an aide to Attorney General William French Smith from 1981 to 1982 and as an aide to White House counsel Fred Fielding from 1982 to 1986. With impeccable credentials -- Roberts attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, clerked for Justice William H. Rehnquist on the Supreme Court and has argued frequently before the court -- the question marks about Roberts have always been ideological. While his Republican Party loyalties are undoubted, earning him the opposition of liberal advocacy groups, he is not a "movement conservative," and some on the party's right-wing doubt his commitment to their cause. His paper record is thin: As deputy solicitor general in 1990, he argued in favor of a government regulation that banned abortion-related counseling by federally funded family-planning programs. A line in his brief noted the Bush administration's belief that Roe v. Wade should be overruled. As a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts voted with two colleagues to uphold the arrest and detention of a 12-year-old girl for eating french fries on the Metro train, though his opinion noted that "[n]o one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation." In another case, Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion that suggested Congress might lack the power under the Constitution's Commerce Clause to regulate the treatment of a certain species of wildlife. Written responses by John G. Roberts Jr. to questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Documents released Aug. 29 by the National Archives written by Roberts while working in the Reagan administration: Documents from the Reagan Library relating to Roberts' time as Associate Counsel to the President during the Reagan administration: Roberts response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire in preparation for this September confirmation hearings: Memos written by Roberts during his tenure as an assistant White House counsel and a special assistant to then-Attorney General William French Smith during the Reagan administration: Documents related to a 1990 request by the Federal Communications Commission to defend a policy aimed at encouraging more minority ownership of broadcast stations. Oral arguments Roberts made before the Supreme Court when representing private clients: Other filings and Web sites: National Archives Records Pertaining to Roberts Transcript of Senate Judiciary Committee Confirmation Hearing, Jan. 29, 2003 (PDF) Transcript of Senate Judiciary Confirmation Hearing, April 30, 2003 (PDF) Roberts Financial Disclosure Report, Fiscal Year 2003

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On September 5, President Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. Bush previously nominated Roberts to be associate justice.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005090519id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301587.html

Most of them carry their broken dreams in large black trash bags slung over the shoulder as they trudge out the door. Anything that can be gathered quickly -- cleats, socks, shorts, hope -- is scooped out of a locker and stuffed into a plastic bag as the finality of being cut from an NFL team, and the uncertainty of when their next paycheck will come, sinks in. For NFL nomads, those who bounce around the waiver wire without a guaranteed contract or fat signing bonus to fall back on, yesterday was the best and worst of times. Some will earn roster spots for the first time, but for the 17 players released by the Washington Redskins at the league deadline, this is the darkest weekend of the year. The Redskins reached their 53-man limit by cutting defensive end Ron Warner, who started twice last season; linebackers Robert McCune (a 2005 fifth-round pick) and Brandon Barnes; offensive linemen Mark Wilson (a 2004 fifth-round pick), Tyler Lenda and Jon Alston; defensive backs Garnell Wilds (who appeared in two games in 2004), Rufus Brown, Eric Joyce, and Siddeeq Shabazz; wide receivers Kevin Dyson, Jimmy Farris, Jamin Elliott and Rich Parson (Maryland); defensive lineman Aki Jones; tight end Robert Johnson; and punter Chris Mohr. "Certainly, there are players there that you wished you could have on your squad," Coach Joe Gibbs said, "and your heart goes out to them. I had some tough conversations today." Conversely, punter Andy Groom made his first NFL roster after being cut each of the last two years, and ultimate long-shot Zak Keasey, an undersized linebacker from Princeton, was the only 2005 undrafted free agent rookie to make the roster. "Nobody would have given Zak a chance," Gibbs said. Of the six players Washington drafted in April, only ninth overall pick Carlos Rogers and seventh-round selection Nehemiah Broughton can be expected to contribute this season (sixth-rounder Jared Newberry was already cut, fourth-rounder Manuel White was placed on injured reserve and first-round pick Jason Campbell is the number three quarterback and is expected to watch all season). Eight players will be thrown a lifeline by being named to the practice squad today, but the rest of these NFL casualties -- almost all in their twenties or early thirties -- have already hit a profound crossroads. "The reality is, what are you going to do next?" said Redskins starting defensive tackle Joe Salave'a, who spent 2002 out of football and thought his career might be over. "Do I have to go back and finish college? Do I have something to fall back on? Am I going to be able to pay my bills? And in a lot of cases the thing is, you're trying to sell whatever possessions you have to get by until something else comes along. "Some guys are willing to pawn all kinds of things to make ends meet, because if you're not equipped to have a second plan, then it's drastic. Some guys can do it, and for some it's a really harsh reality, because all you've done is play football. And then you couple that with relationship and kids? Man, that's tough. You've really got to be a man about it and find a way to bring that income home. It feels like the end of your world." Sweeping cuts are a natural byproduct of a sport that demands a plethora of bodies to churn through August's preseason parody before results start to matter in September, and factors like depth at their position, salary and practice-squad eligibility enter the equation. A salary structure that rewards players for experience -- increasing their minimum compensation based on seniority -- can be a blessing and a curse. "A lot of the time at the end it's not even the best man wins," Dyson, who has not played regularly since 2002, said prior to the preseason finale. "I've sort of been a part of that for the last couple of years, where I made more than a younger guy, who may not have the same talent I have, but he's cheaper. I have buddies that have been out of the league at 28 or 29 because they had to make a certain [contract] number, and there's only so much money available under the salary cap." The Redskins try to handle their cuts delicately, and Gibbs meets individually with as many of the departing players as possible, but the process can be cruel. Having to break that news to family while sorting through the remnants of a modest training camp check only deepens the anxiety. The next call is almost always to an agent to see if there might be a job in Canada or the Arena League. "You just wait for that phone call from your agent, basically," said starting linebacker Lemar Marshall, who was cut by three teams before starting for the first time last season. "And that's the worst, because they always say, 'If you're sitting there waiting on that phone call, it ain't never going to come.' It's not an easy thing to go through, especially when you have a family. You've got to be willing to jump up and move to any other city and hope you get picked up." The NFL tries to prepare players for this eventuality, through advanced education and internship programs, but the lessons do not always sink in. John Jefferson, Washington's director of player development, said his efforts to counsel the players for the future are sometimes futile. "Things change when you're no longer on the inside," said Jefferson, a former wide receiver. "Some guys come around here for help then [after being cut], and it's kind of targeted toward current players. There's so much going on when they get let go, so I call them later on to make sure they're doing all right and keep up with them." Gibbs, meantime, urges the players he let go to continue pursuing the game they love. "I tell them, 'Hey, I'd go to the bitter end, until I have no more options,' " Gibbs said. "And then you can look back for the rest of your life and not say, 'Well, I coulda, or I wish I had.' I think that's the best way to go. If you have a burning desire to play, then stay after it, and if it's taken away from you, then you have to chart the rest of your life and go on. But it's a tough thing for all of us. It's a tough day for everybody."

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Info on Washington Redskins including the 2004 NFL Preview. Get the latest game schedule and statistics for the Redskins. Follow the Washington Redskins under the direction of Coach Joe Gibbs.

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The cheering started as soon as the buses rumbled up the driveway of the District's Armed Forces Retirement Home. Military officers and enlistees mixed with civilians in a two-sided receiving line, waving small American flags and clapping for the elderly veterans who had survived World War II, Korea and, now, Katrina. "Welcome to D.C.! Welcome to your new home," said Rochelle Jones, a staffer for the U.S. Army Community and Family Support Center in Alexandria. Stepping forward, she enveloped Jim Holder in a hug. "Oh, honey, I love you," said Holder, who wore a light shirt, khaki shorts, white socks and black loafers, and clutched a plastic shopping bag stuffed with a few belongings. Jones hugged harder. "I love you, too." Holder was among 415 veterans evacuated from the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina flooded the ground floor of their quarters Monday, leaving them without electricity or running water. About 250 evacuees arrived just before noon at the leafy, landscaped campus of their sister home in Northwest Washington, exhausted from a trip that stretched across two days and several states. The most frail were flown to Washington separately, while two hardy retirees drove in a private vehicle. Dozens more were expected to trickle in soon. With their Mississippi beachfront facility uninhabitable, and much of the neighborhood around it destroyed, the retirees will stay at the D.C. home for at least several months, said Timothy C. Cox, chief operating officer of both entities. A spokeswoman for the home said the facility has about 1,000 permanent residents but can accommodate up to 1,700. Military veterans and retirees who have reservations to enter will not lose their places, officials said. News that the retirees in Gulfport needed a haven prompted a flurry of activity at the historic D.C. campus, built on 276 hilly acres between North Capitol Street and the Brightwood neighborhood. Hundreds of staffers and volunteers cleaned 400 empty rooms in a dormitory and an unused residential building; hauled in beds, nightstands and clothes lockers; hung towels; tucked in sheets and blankets; and prepared bags of donated toiletries and snacks. Melodie R. Menke, director of volunteer services at the home, said a public appeal for assistance prompted thousands of responses, including one by a mother and son from Michigan on vacation in Washington. "They jammed the phone lines, they jammed the e-mail; we had just an outpouring of people," Menke said. " 'I want to help our vets. They helped us.' Almost everybody used that line." The Gulfport facility opened in Philadelphia in 1834 for Navy retirees and relocated to Mississippi in 1976. It was merged administratively with the D.C. facility -- known at that time as the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home -- in 1991. Both homes were open to veterans who had served at least 20 years, served in a war theater or retired with a service-related injury. Cox said yesterday it is too soon to know whether the Gulfport home will be rebuilt. The evacuees clambered down from the buses looking dazed, some using canes, walkers or wheelchairs, others toting pillows or oxygen tanks. They'd been permitted to pack a single suitcase before leaving, and officials said they did not know how much of the remaining belongings could be salvaged. One man, sporting several days' growth of white whiskers, paused before a smiling young woman in Air Force fatigues. "Terrible experience. Terrible," he said, shaking his head. "It's okay," the young woman gently told him. "You're home now."

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The green C-130 carrying 22 tired, silver-haired veterans displaced by Hurrricane Katrina landed at Andrews Air Force Base where platoons of military personnel prepared to ferry them to temporary refuge at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005063019id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062800208.html

NEW YORK, June 28 -- The NBA draft had a retro theme last night, as the Milwaukee Bucks turned back the clock to a time when the top pick had played college basketball. The rest of the league looked a lot like 1999, with three point guards going in the top 10 and four first-rounders from the same college for the first time since that year. The Bucks selected 7-foot center Andrew Bogut from the University of Utah with the No. 1 pick, marking the first time in five years that the top pick played at least one year of college basketball. Bogut was the consensus national player of the year after averaging 20.4 points and 12.2 rebounds as a sophomore. He also was a member of the Australian Olympic team last summer in Greece. The Bucks chose the Aussie over North Carolina freshman Marvin Williams, who went second, to Atlanta. "I was confident, but I wasn't 100 percent. It was 50-50. Now that I'm here, it's a great honor," Bogut said. "I can't believe it at the moment. I'll wake up tomorrow and every year, I'll probably have a couple of beers to celebrate the day when I went number one." Cincinnati's Kenyon Martin was the last collegiate player to go first, to the New Jersey Nets in 2000. In subsequent years, top picks were Kwame Brown, Yao Ming, LeBron James and Dwight Howard; all but Yao were selected straight out of high school. Bogut becomes the second No. 1 pick in the past three years to be born outside of the United States. "Basketball is a global game, just like soccer is a global game," said Bogut, whose parents were Croatian immigrants. "You see the Manu Ginobilis of the world and the Yao Mings of the world. We can play the game in every country." Utah and Portland made a trade before the draft, with the Jazz acquiring the third overall pick in exchange for pick Nos. 6 27. With the third pick, the Jazz selected Illinois point guard Deron Williams, who led the Fighting Illini to the national championship game last season. Williams was followed by Wake Forest's Chris Paul, who went fourth to the New Orleans Hornets, and North Carolina's Raymond Felton, who went fifth to the Charlotte Bobcats. Williams, Paul and Felton became the first trio of point guards to go that high since 1999, when Steve Francis (No. 2), Baron Davis (No. 3), Andre Miller (No. 8) and Jason Terry (No. 10) all went in the top 10. The Jazz has needed a point guard since John Stockton retired two years ago as the NBA's all-time leader in steals and assists. Williams said he wasn't intimidated about following the legend, who has a statue outside the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. "For me, it feels like an honor to follow John Stockton, one of the 50 greatest players of all time," Williams said. "It's good to come in after him, after his legacy. I just think [I'm] who the Jazz felt more comfortable with, the big guard, the strong guard, the biggest of the three. I just think I have a good all-around game. I know how to lead people. It's something I was born with, something I'm great at." The deepest collection of talent belonged to North Carolina, college basketball's national champion, which produced four of the top 14 picks in Williams, Raymond Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants. Williams went second to Altanta. Felton (fifth) and May (13th) will be teammates on the Charlotte Bobcats. In need of a point guard, the Bobcats settled for the best remaining lead guard in Felton. May's selection was surprising considering the Bobcats already have Emeka Okafor, last season's Rookie of the Year, who plays the same position (power forward).

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Milwaukee makes it official, selecting Utah center and Australia native Andrew Bogut with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft.

https://web.archive.org/web/2005060719id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201525.html

Jonathan Coe's new novel, The Closed Circle , is an immensely satisfying sequel to The Rotter's Club (2001). That book -- frequently funny, occasionally harrowing -- followed a group of anxious teenagers in Birmingham, England, through the 1970s. The world around them was torn by labor strikes, race riots and acts of terrorism, but those calamities could only occasionally break through their real worries: forgetting a bathing suit, passing a physics exam or getting a pretty girl into bed. The Closed Circle picks up more than 20 years later, on the eve of the new millennium, when these friends and the world are all grown up. They dress better, listen to more sophisticated music and feel more concerned about wrinkles than acne, but they're still anxious, still worried about making the grade, still trying to figure out with whom they should sleep. Most of them have no better idea of who they are than they did in high school, but now they're afflicted with an aching sense of nostalgia, too. "There were some feelings that never faded," one of them realizes, "no matter how many years intervened, no matter how many friendships and marriages and relationships came and went in between." This is, in many ways, a book about the function of nostalgia, about what's remembered and misremembered, which makes it a particularly easy sequel to enter. The characters constantly remind each other (and us) of events from their past, and at the back is a brief summary of The Rotter's Club "for those who have not read it, or who perhaps -- having read it -- have inexplicably forgotten it." Coe is a witty writer with a talent for social satire that singes characters without burning away their humanity. He's particularly interested in the way people manage their personal lives in relation to the political climate, and so the plot of The Closed Circle constantly runs beyond its fictional edges into the pages of contemporary history. Too many novelists avoid this kind of topicality, as though they're creating sitcoms and desperate to avoid dating themselves in syndication. But Coe writes his characters right up to the moment, providing critical commentary -- on globalization and the war in Iraq, for instance -- that sounds almost as current as this week's op-ed pages. The novel opens with Claire Newman's return home after six years in Italy and a failed relationship that makes her feel as if she's made no progress in her life at all. The time away has also given her a fresh perspective on Birmingham, and it's not reassuring: "My first impression," she writes to her dead sister in a long-running journal, "is that there are vast numbers of people who don't work in this city any more, in the sense of making things or selling things. All that seems to be considered rather old-fashioned. Instead, people meet , and they talk . And when they're not meeting or talking in person, they're usually talking on their phones, and what they're usually talking about is an arrangement to meet ." What's more alarming to her, though, is the mental climate: "Underneath is something else altogether -- a terrible, seething frustration." As the novel moves through the interconnected stories of these old high school friends, different shades of that frustration emerge. Benjamin Trotter maintains a childless, passionless marriage while toiling away as an accountant, but he's still pining for a long-lost teenage sweetheart and pounding away on a multimedia magnum opus that will never see the light of publication. "The aura of failure, of disappointment, which he could feel clinging to him," is constantly renewed by the boundless success of his good-looking younger brother, Paul, a rising star in the Labour Party "who seems to live within an absolutely impermeable bubble of self-absorption." Media-hungry Paul is surely Coe's most brilliant satirical creation; he's the epitome of the modern conservative disguised as a liberal, publicly noncommittal and vacuous but privately devoted to dismantling government for the profit of a brave, new oligarchy. (He forms a secret think tank called "The Closed Circle" to formulate "the most radical and far-reaching ideas.") When he's not busy selling off inefficient government property or cutting bloated social services, Paul is wooing a troubled young graduate student who's also the object of his brother's futile fantasies. In addition to being gorgeous, she introduces Paul to a wildly useful principle of deconstruction: "Irony is very modern," she tells him, "Very now . You see -- you don't have to make it clear exactly what you mean any more. In fact, you don't even have to mean what you say, really. That's the beauty of it." Despite his best efforts, Paul quickly finds himself confronted with domestic and international crises that demand making his positions clear, and his old schoolmate Doug Anderton, now a successful journalist, is determined to pin him down. Choose, Doug insists, between your wife and your mistress, between saving the local auto plant and pleasing your cronies, between negotiating a rational peace and following President Bush into an inferno of retribution. Ultimately, Paul makes his choices as he always has, in a circle closed to anything but his own interests, forcing others -- his wife, his constituents, the citizens of Iraq -- to pay the awful price. At the end of the novel, as Claire looks back at the scrambled paths of her old friends and relatives, she wonders, "What would happen if you tried to explain all those deaths, all those messed-up lives, tried to trace those events back to the source? Would you go mad? I mean, is it a mad thing to try and do, or is it really the only sane thing to try and do?" In some ways, that must be the question any good novelist confronts. There is a kind of madness in Coe's relentless pursuit of causality, of the connections between our decisions and their effects. But, as Claire suggests, looking for them is really the only sane thing to do if we hope to resist the nagging temptation to draw a circle around our interests, our desires, our lives. · Ron Charles is a senior editor of Book World.

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