"Patients and their families need to be able to communicate with medical providers for proper diagnosis and treatment," said Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "This agreement should serve as a model for other hospitals to make certain that individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing have equal access to medical care and treatment as required by the ADA."

The settlement agreement resolves allegations that the hospital did not appropriately respond to requests to provide a qualified sign language interpreter for the deaf mother of a pregnant patient who had been involved in a car accident. Approximately 30 minutes after arrival, while still in the ER, the patient expressly requested a sign language interpreter for her mother; however, Inova failed to call for an interpreter until 5 ½ hours after the initial request. This forced the patient to act as the interpreter for her mother at the same time that the patient was receiving distressing news about her own condition.

Under the agreement, the hospital will provide auxiliary aids, when needed, to family members and companions as well as to patients; assess the communication needs of individuals with speech or hearing impairments upon their arrival or at the time an appointment is scheduled; and provide qualified interpreters (on-site or video interpreting) as soon as possible (and within specified time limits) when necessary for effective communication, especially in circumstances involving lengthy or complex interactions such as admissions and detailed discussions of symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. The hospital has also agreed to pay the patient and her mother a total of $55,000 in damages.

"Effective communication is particularly critical in the health care setting," said Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. "We are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities and their families are not subjected to unequal treatment because of poor communication with medical personnel about their symptoms, diagnoses and treatment."

Title III of the ADA applies to private entities such as hospitals and other medical care facilities and, among other things, requires that private entities such as hospitals ensure effective communication with persons with speech, hearing and vision impairments. People interested in finding out more about the ADA or the agreement can call the Justice Department's toll-free ADA Information Line at 1-800-514-0301 or 1-800-514-0383 (TTY), or access its ADA Web site at http://www.ada.gov.

He will also make calls to "resolve without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now," according to White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

On the immigration issue Bush is facing a new congressional leadership that is friendlier to his views but is also facing the same dynamics that scuttled his last attempt: a cooperative Senate but bipartisan opposition in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has told the White House she cannot pass a bill with Democratic votes alone, nor will she seek to enforce party discipline on the issue.

Bush will have to produce at least 70 Republican votes before Pelosi considers a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation, a task that might be difficult for a president with low approval ratings.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's conservatives, particularly freshmen who seized their seats from Republicans, had to weather a barrage of attacks on the issue before their victories in November last year, and are not eager to relive the experience.

A recently leaked White House presentation devised after weeks of closed meetings with Republican senators suggests some hardening of Bush's positions.

The new proposals will suggest that illegal alien workers apply for three-year work visas, renewable indefinitely at a cost of 3,500 U.S. dollars each time.

In order to obtain a green card that would make them legal permanent residents, they would have to return to their home countries, apply for re-entry at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and pay a fine of 10,000 dollars.

More green cards would be made available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens.

Temporary workers would not be able to bring their families into the country.

Key Democrats have said the plan would unacceptably split families while creating a permanent underclass of temporary workers with no prospects of fully participating in U.S. society.

In an interview, Iglesias said he was given no reason for his firing when he was notified Dec. 7. But he later found out from a Senate staff member that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty had said Iglesias and six of the other seven were fired for performance reasons.

And in Iglesias' case, a document released by the Justice Department referred to him as an "absentee landlord."

But Iglesias said his absences from his civilian job were taken to fulfill his military obligations as a reservist. As a drilling reservist, he said, he is required to do 36 days of duty each year, and probably did a little extra, 40 to 45 days total for each year that he served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico.

Each time before he left for military duty, he notified the Washington, D.C., Justice Department office, which is the clearinghouse for such matters, he said. And his Navy Reserve information was on his résumé when he was hired for the U.S. Attorney's job in October 2001.

Iglesias confirmed that he has authorized an investigation into whether his firing might constitute a violation of USERRA. A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel confirmed that the office is investigating the case but declined to provide further details. The office, which often investigates employment and re-employment rights cases on behalf of military reservists, is an independent agency and is not connected to the Justice Department.

If his firing is even partly related to his reserve duty, it could be a violation of the law.

Iglesias said he has had a number of Guard or Reserve members working for him and had six who were mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001. As part of his reserve duties, he also has conducted training for virtually every drilling Navy reserve attorney.

The subject of USERRA is "something near and dear to my heart," he said. He is scheduled to conduct training soon with Navy Reserve attorneys about how the Justice Department enforces USERRA with private employers.

If his status as a reservist did, in fact, have anything to do with his firing as U.S. Attorney, he said, "it would be a violation of federal law — and I'd be horribly disappointed with the Justice Department tasked with enforcing it, that they would not honor the letter of the law with one of their own people.

"There are so many ironies in this scandal," Iglesias said. "I've authorized the OSC to look into whether there is an issue. There may be. The stories keep changing from the Department of Justice."

Performance evaluations and statements by officials indicated Iglesias' job performance was excellent, according to congressional testimony.

In a joint statement when four of the fired attorneys were subpoenaed to testify before the House and Senate judiciary committees March 6, the attorneys, who are political appointees, said they were aware that they served at the pleasure of the president and could be removed for any or no reason.

Iglesias' situation is more complicated than the USERRA issue. He testified about phone calls he received before the November 2006 midterm elections from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and as a result felt pressured related to a corruption investigation involving Democrats in New Mexico.

Later, he testified, "I just started to put the dots together" in connection with his firing.

As such, the OSC investigation into Iglesias' firing is moving on three parallel tracks: the Justice Department's violation of Iglesias' rights under the Whistleblower Protection Act and USERRA, and the government's violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts partisan political activity by government employees.

John M. "Mike" McConnell, who succeeded John Negroponte as US Director of National Intelligence in February, delivered a policy address to the 2007 Excellence in Government Conference Wednesday criticizing federal surveillance laws as outdated and unresponsive to terrorist threats. McConnell, who previously served as the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) from 1992 to 1996 before working for private consulting firm Booz Allen until February, said:

The laws that we had coming out of Vietnam, Watergate, Church-Pike hearings of the '70s served us well. But it also set up barriers and cultures and processes that did not make us well suited to combat a new "ism," in this case terrorism.

What do I mean by that? When someone enters this country, they are considered a US person. They have all the rights and privileges – let me restate that – most of the rights and privileges of a US citizen. So if the intelligence community is tracking someone of suspected terrorism and they arrive in this country in a legal status, they're now off limits to the intelligence community. Switch to law enforcement. The rules and regulations on law enforcement are much more stringent with regard to conducting surveillance of either US citizens or US persons. So the terrorists that came here and operated here prior to 9/11, so long as they were here legally and so long as they did not break the law, they were mostly invisible to us.

First of all, the decision of the Supreme Court we take very seriously. It's the new law of the land. And secondly, we're taking some time to fully understand the details of the decision... My attitude is, is that we have laid out a plan that will affect greenhouse gases that come from automobiles by having a mandatory fuel standard that insists upon using 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017, which will reduce our gasoline usage by 20 percent and halt the growth in greenhouse gases that emanate from automobiles. In other words, there is a remedy available for Congress. And I strongly hope that they pass this remedy quickly.

Bush, who opposes mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, also reiterated his belief that rapidly developing countries such as China and India must do more to control pollution. Scientific research suggests that man-made greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

Efforts to establish national emissions limits have gained traction in Congress since the Democrats became the majority party. Last month, former CIA director John Deutch recommended in a report to international civic leaders that the United States enact an EU-style cap-and-trade program among other measures to control greenhouse gas emissions. In January, a coalition of US businesses and environmental groups called for federal legislation to limit emissions. Overseas, the British government last month introduced a draft environmental bill that could control greenhouse gas emissions through 2050.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted new privacy rules for telephone and wireless companies on Tuesday aimed at strengthening safeguards against pretexting, the disclosure of personal telephone records to unauthorized individuals. The new rules include carrier authentication requirements, additional notice requirements, and annual certification requirements. Commenting on the new rules, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a prepared statement that the regulations significantly strengthen existing safeguards by requiring express consent before a carrier can give a customer’s phone records to other parties for marketing purposes.

In January, President Bush signed into law new federal legislation to protect telephone consumers from pretexting. The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006 was approved by the US Senate in December in response to the Hewlett-Packard corporate spying scandal that broke last summer.