Four lawyers are seeking class-action status to protect the pension credits they earned while working as consultants to schools. But the rules about who qualifies as an employee -- and therefore has a right to a pension -- are pretty simple. Especially if you went to law school.

The law states that individuals are independent contractors if they are free from control and direction in their performance; if the service is performed outside the usual course of the employer's business; and if the individual is engaged in an independently established occupation or business of the same nature as the service.

Les commented yesterday on China's response to parents who lost children in the Sichuan earthquake. The other, perhaps more devastating side to the quake’s human toll is the thousands of children left orphaned—the official count is now about 4,000 but is sure to rise. For children suddenly hit with the loss of their caregivers, there might be even less that the government can do to salve the damage. Even in richer countries, any state-led effort to place disconnected children in stable homes brings ethical challenges and safety issues. When you add cataclysmic natural disaster to the mix—further complicated by China’s massive bureaucracy, political opacity, and tumultuous economic landscape—a total reconfiguration of the social welfare infrastructure may be in order.

A worldwide outpouring of sympathy for the orphans is a hopeful sign, yet it raises some interesting questions about who will be called upon to care for them.

In Dublin this week, advocates for a ban on cluster bombs achieved a much stronger treaty than they had anticipated. It basically stigmatizes these nasty weapons, which leave hundreds of unexploded cluster bomblets spread across an area as big as a football field, where children too often pick them up and get killed or maimed. Once the treaty gets signed and ratified by 30 nations, it will go into effect, banning the manufacture, use, trade or stockpiling of these weapons.

Sadly, our own government not only stayed away from the negotiations, but worked behind the scenes to block any efforts to curb our own use of the weapons. The cluster bombs create far more enemies than they kill. There's no excuse for using them in civilian areas. And our government's stubborn resistance to the treaty can only reinforce the go-it-alone image that the current administration has created for the nation.

There will be no profiles-in-corporate-courage award for Dunkin' Donuts this year.

This week, the coffee behemoth indulged in a little pre-emptive capitulation (cave early and avoid the rush), when a few rabid conservative bloggers took issue with the scarf that TV chef Rachael Ray wore in an online ad for iced latte. After one look at the scarf that a stylist chose for Ray to wear in the ad, the terrorist-under-every-bed crowd decided it looked suspiciously like a kaffiyeh, headwear common in the Arab world. Jumping off from that paranoid observation, they took an astonishing leap of logic: Some of the people who wear the kaffiyeh are terrorists, and this scarf reminds us of a kaffiyeh, and therefore, Rachael Ray somehow supports terrorism. (Actually, the only thing terrifying about Ray is her preternatural energy level.)

Rather than stand up for Ray, who has become the cheery face of Dunkin' Donuts, its corporate leaders quickly pulled the ad, knuckling under to the knuckleheads in the blogosphere.

If your only child was killed or mangled in China’s earthquake, the government will now grant you a certificate to have another. They’re "clarifying" the one-offspring-only law.

Morally speaking, that’s the least they could do, since most of the children were crushed inside substandard school
buildings that the government had permitted to go up.

Can't get enough news on pension padding, double-dipping and other public workforce issues? The right-leaning Empire Center for New York State Policy has launched a new blog, NY Public Payroll Watch.

Empire Center Director E.J. McMahon says the site will shine a stronger spotlight on an area with important financial and managerial implications for government. The blog is being written by Lise Bang-Jensen, a senior policy analyst with the center and the former co-host of the public affairs television show Inside Albany.

Thank you, WLIW/21, for giving some serious airtime over the next three nights to asking why young professionals are leaving Long Island in droves. Newsday’s TV critic Verne Gay says it’s well worth watching. It’s fortunate that he thinks so, because the local community needs to support this locally based TV station whenever it goes local, which is a fairly rare event.

The Framers of our Constitution had this quaint idea for resolving differences between Congress and the president over legislation: If the president didn't like a bill that Congress had passed and sent to the White House, the president could veto the bill. If Congress didn't like the presidential veto, it could override it and make the bill law anyway, if it mustered a two-thirds majority in each house.

But presidents invented a new solution of their own: presidential signing statements, issued when a president signs bills. Sometimes, the signing statements were little more than happy rhetoric to accompany the distribution of pens used to sign the legislation. On other occasions, though, the president would sign the bill, but use a signing statement to say he had no intention of enforcing some objectionable section of the law. As The Constitution Project points out, this is a really bad idea. One big question is what impact the statements have on the executive agencies that are supposed to be carrying out the intent of Congress, but answer to the president. Nobody really knows, but the Congressional Research Service did a study of that and other aspects of the issue.

Other presidents before George W. Bush have used signing statements to take issue with sections of laws they were signing. Bush's father was one example. So was Bill Clinton. But no one has used this device more than Bush. He used it so often that Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for writing about signing-statement abuse.

Now a Republican congressman from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Walter Jones, is sponsoring legislation designed to ride herd on the statements.

Do soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan deserve fewer educational opportunities than previous generations of military members? In a lonely chorus of opposition to a new GI Bill, Sen. John McCain and the White House employ some fuzzy logic to argue that too many benefits would discourage young soldiers from staying in the service.

According to the bill's critics, soldiers would be driven out of the service by... well, by the incentive the military used to get them to sign up in the first place: the prospect of earning a college degree with federal support. For those fortunate enough to return alive from a war zone, educational benefits may be a modest redemption of the promises touted by military recruiters.

Decisiveness is not Brookhaven Supervisor Brian X. Foley's strongest character trait. But even for Foley, the decision about making a State Senate race brings glorious new meaning to the word "agonizing." He didn't finally make up his mind until hours before the Democratic county nominating convention.

Speaking of agonizing, that's what life is like for Foley these days as supervisor. He's in a constant cobra-and-mongoose struggle with the new 4-to-3 Republican majority on the Town Board, which takes some of the zest out his job. Besides, everyone knows that he's more of a legislator than an administrator by temperament. So the opportunity to run for the Senate is tempting. He's a known brand name in southern Brookhaven, which Democratic strategists believe could offset the strength there of the incumbent, Sen. Caesar Trunzo (R-Brentwood), especially if this turns out to be a strong Democratic year, as many expect.

On the other side of the argument, there's no indication that two other potential Democratic opponents for Trunzo, Jimmy Dahroug and Legis. Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), will gently disappear from the scene without a whimper. So Foley will almost certainly have to win a Democratic primary before facing Trunzo.

And, if he gets as far as the general election, Foley will face a multimillion-dollar onslaught from the Senate Republican leadership and the state Republican Party. Continued control of the Senate is at stake, and the Republicans will go after Foley with everything they have.

Finally, if Foley should win a seat in the Senate, and if Democrats take control there, he'll be greeted as a conquering hero in Albany. But Brookhaven Democrats will have to find someone to run in a special election for supervisor. One strong contender would be Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, who has done an outstanding job of redeveloping his downtown and setting an example for other Long Island communities. But would Pontieri be willing to leave a job where he is really getting something done, in harmony with the village board, to seek one that would put him in frequent conflict with the opposite party--even though he has a good relationship with Councilman Tim Mazzei, the leader of the GOP majority?

When you take a look at all the uncertainties, maybe it isn't so surprising that it took Foley so long to make up his mind.

One school superintendent said that his contract prohibits the school board from meeting unless he is present in the room, according to Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman, who told the story at a hearing on Thursday. Weitzman's point was that the contract provision greatly reduced any chance that independent auditors could alert school board members about financial problems.

"I was told this was a common practice," Weitzman said of the contract provision. "This is a cultural issue that needs to be looked at and discussed openly."

He said the schools need a culture change, to which hearing convener Attorney General Andrew Cuomo responded, "Prosecute the violations of law, and then you'll see the culture change."

This scene could have played out in the private sector in the days before Sarbanes-Oxley reform.

On our Opinion page in Tuesday's paper, we're going to be publishing an essay by Kansas City Star columnist Mary Sanchez about the controversy over a massive statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that's being planned for the National Mall in D.C.

The artist, Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, is being criticized by some for designing the statue in a "confrontational" way that recalls Lenin and other historical bad guys. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts believes that "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." Hmmm. But Sanchez cautions that "to erect a likeness of King devoid of any air of defiance is inaccurate, even ludicrous."

Read more about it on Tuesday, but in the meantime, here's a Getty Images photo of the statue, so you can decide for yourself...

As the political chatter focuses on possible running mates for Barack Obama and John McCain (don't miss today's New York Post wedding cake front page) here's a name to throw into the hoop---Bill Bradley. The former New Jersey senator and New York Knicks star, who lost to Al Gore for the 2000 Democratic nomination, is still around and being heard on Satellite radio.

So far there have only been a few mentions on the blogosphere but little talk elsewhere of what Bradley could bring to the ticket. So let's add a new possiblity to the veeps parlor game.

Here's what Bradley has going for him: To begin with, there's loyalty. Bradley came out early for Obama, right after the Iowa primary, when it counted most. Both men are policy wonks, have compatible temperaments and love basketball. Bradley himself was the anti-establishment candidate against Gore, and he did well with the blue collar voters and the independent swing voters. Bradley also brings key economic experience, with his extensive Senate work on tax and budget policies and his post-election role as an investment banker involved with green energy businesses. And you could no longer say that New Jersey is in play.

The downside is that both men are lefties, and that's not just which hand is dominant. Both have very liberal views. While Obama may need to make a more middle-of-the-road choice, Bradley could cement the deal for those uncomfortable about Obama's youth and experience, and let's admit it, race.

Bradley is a bit of a dud as a campaigner, but Obama doesn't need an orator. And Bradley still has some "rock star" quality, which may be limited to my generation. While Obama can draw astounding crowds of young people, there are those who still get a thrill recalling #24 taking his signature jump shot at Madison Square Garden. At least the ad-makers would have some material. A commercial with Bradley and Obama running down court, executing a pass and a layup, would have some powerful symbolism.

Hey, it's something to chew on over the holiday weekend.

Testimony at this morning's hearing, convened by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, seemed to change the tune of Thomas Rogers, executive director of the state Council of School Superintendents. In an op-ed column that Newsday published on Tuesday, Rogers defended the re-hiring of retired school administrators. (The op-ed was co-written by Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards.)

However, at the hearing, Rogers set aside his prepared notes and condemned anyone who has exploited the system's loopholes. "We're taking this very seriously," he told legislators who presided at the hearing with Cuomo. Rogers even provided a list of possible reforms.

Could it be that the level of anger at the hearing convinced him that schools stand to lose the option of hiring retired superintendents altogether? That's possible. Rogers urged lawmakers to be "deliberate" with any proposed changes, and other school officials said the option should not be closed off.

Update: A spokesman for the New York State Council of School Superintendents says that Rogers did not set aside his prepared remarks, he simply summarized them because time was running short.

The public tongue-lashing that oil executives got from Senators this week won’t do a thing to reduce the price of gasoline. Still, you had to love that somebody took the industry to task.

The companies are raking in record profits while the price of gasoline is rocketing out of sight.Here’s a taste of the rhetoric members of the Senate Judiciary Committee fired at honchos from Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Shell Oil Co, Chevron Corp. and BP America Inc.

“Where is the corporate conscience,” asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” said Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).

“Is there anybody here that has any concerns about what you’re doing to this country with the prices that you’re charging and the profits you’re taking,” Durbin asked.

Noting that Exxon’s profits had quadrupled since 2002, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he had heard nothing that would explain, “why profits have gone up so high when the consumer is suffering so much.”

The oilmen said it was all about supply and demand. Congress should clear the way for more domestic drilling, they said. And while industry profits have been huge, in absolute terms, they are not unreasonable given the massive investment the industry demands and their relatively thin profit margins.

But Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) cut to the chase in a separate hearing on Tuesday. “The American people are about to take out pitchforks.”

You know the race is tight when Appalachia ranks as the hottest battleground on the electoral map. But can well-heeled mainstream politicians learn anything about themselves from the tussle over the votes of just plain folk?

This campaign has spawned some gingerly worded overtures toward talking about race (or talking about talking about race, or talking about ignoring race). But class issues apparently lack this elliptical media-porn magnetism, and the struggles of rural working-class people seem stubbornly locked in a black-and-white context.

Dee Davis at Salon analyzes the Democrats’ tendency to both downplay and denigrate alienated white voters in Kentucky and West Virginia. This could take the form writing them off as inbred, Bible-thumping bigots—a caricature that conservatives may ultimately throw back at “elitist" liberals. Or those snobby Dems might simply ignore “mountain people” as a constituency—driving a self-fulfilling prophecy of voters gravitating toward conservatives who seem marginally more interested in shaking their hands and kissing their babies—for a few pivotal weeks, anyway. He writes:

Nationally prominent Democrats have often come into the mountains of eastern Kentucky, where I live, to see and to be seen. Perhaps that's because the idea that government should keep an eye on people who were not prospering was once part of the essence of the Democratic Party. Or perhaps it's because they know there are votes here. …

But lately, other than Edwards, we haven't had many visitors. Maybe the party that once welcomed Appalachian coal miners and hillside farmers has moved on. The national Democratic Party has become younger, richer, hipper and far less interested in preserving an identity forged in the Great Depression.

In the end, Davis argues, it’s not about stooping to rednecks versus taking the high road; politicians can campaign effectively without condemning certain groups to political insignificance for their seeming backwardness. The question is whether political leaders are mature enough to reach, and understand, politically isolated communities in the right context—race, class or otherwise—and recognize their relevance in the broader discussion on where the nation is headed. The prospects for a Democratic White House, and the general vitality of the country’s political arena, may hinge on that challenge.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and a number of Long Island's Albany contingent will be on hand tomorrow at 10 a.m. in Roosevelt Hall at Farmingdale State College. They want to hear what we Long Islanders have to say about two investigations (double-dipping and lawyers receiving pensions) that the AG has launched relating to school spending.

Cuomo is taking the temperature of voter outrage here, and also throwing some elbows around the stronghold of a key rival, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi. They are two of the state's brightest Democratic lights at the moment. Either could run for governor (again), depending on Gov. David Paterson's political fortunes between now and 2010.

Did the sun rise in the west?
Did autumn follow winter?
Did Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va) endorse Barack Obama for president? No, no and, quite remarkably, yes.

Byrd is now the venerable old man of the Senate. But in an earlier life, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and filibustered to block the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Byrd, and the nation, have come a long way since then.

He long ago sincerely denounced his previous affiliation with the Klan — which, after all, is a terrorist organization. And he’s become the Senate’s leading champion of the U.S. Constitution.

And, just days after Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Obama in the W. Virginia primary, Byrd stepped up in the face of his history and his state’s rejection of Obama and endorsed a black man for president.

Clearly Byrd has changed. So has the nation — just how much, we’ll see as this historic race for the White House moves into the next phase. It would have been better if Byrd had endorsed before his state’s primary, although it probably wouldn’t have much affected the overwhelming outcome. Still, it’s good to see it affirmed that both personally and politically, evolution is real, redemption possible. Maybe one day the nation will follow suit and get past its twisted obsession with skin color.

No matter what it does, the Bush administration has not been able to get on the right side of the polar bears and their friends.

On May 14, prodded by litigation by environmentalists, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that he would list ursus maritimus as a threatened species. Just two days later, three environmental groups filed legal papers claiming that Kempthorne had gotten it wrong.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that Kempthorne should have listed the polar bear as an "endangered" species, a more serious classification of danger than "threatened." They also say he failed to designate critical habitat for the bears. And they really don't like the "special rule" that the secretary is adopting, which waives a lot of the protections that the Endangered Species Act provides.

It's too bad that this administration can't do the right thing for this species without having to be sued.

Word is that Gov. David Paterson is planning a summit meeting of state agency chiefs tomorrow, to read them the riot act on saving money. In April, after the budget passed, Paterson called on each agency to submit a detailed plan on how they would cut spending by 3.35 percent. The plans were due Friday.

Now there's a question on whether Paterson will be able to attend. He was taken to the hospital this morning with migraine-like symptoms. Preliminary tests were normal, but he will have more tests later today.

The prospect of calling on New York's agency heads to cut costs and freeze hiring could give anyone a headache.

Update: The governor has been diagnosed with acute glaucoma in his left eye and is undergoing an outpatient laser procedure to relieve pressure on the eye. He is at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and the governor's spokeswoman says the operation is not expected to have any long-term impact on his health.

In addition to the editorial about a permanent home for the Hauppauge library, which Bob blogged about, we've got one on Gov. David Paterson's tough talk about pension sweeteners. He's saying the right things, and we hope he backs them up as the legislative session comes to a close -- since that's when unions typically lobby for pension enhancements.

Just in case overweight folks don’t already get enough grief, now researchers are blaming them for an outsized contribution to global warming! Here’s the logic, as presented in the British medical journal, The Lancet by Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts.

Motor transport is 95 percent oil dependent and is also a critical component in growing and moving food around the planet. So demand for food pushes up fuel prices — and the demand for fuel pushes up food prices.

Compounding the problem, overweight people walk less and drive more, which contributes to obesity, which increases the global demand for food, since the obese population consumes about 18 percent more than an equivalent number of the more svelt among us.

To sum up: People who are overweight drive up demand for food and fuel, both of which result in increased greenhouse gas emissions, which speeds global warming.

Makes me want a donut.

The Hauppauge Public Library is seeking a permanent home, after seven years in rented space. So, following a fruitless search for suitable and affordable private sites, the library's leaders turned to the Town of Islip. The goal is for the library to buy one acre of land at Hidden Pond Park. The town would use those funds to fix up existing parks or buy better parkland elsewhere. But some environmentalists oppose this deal and the state legislation that would allow it. You can read our editorial about it in the paper on Tuesday.

This editorial page prides itself on being green, and we agree in principle that municipalities ought not to sell parkland frivolously for non-park purposes. That's why the local community and the State Legislature both have to approve whenever a transfer is proposed. But this one acre is not exactly pristine forest land. It's a thin band of trees, with a road right down the middle, a sump on one side and the parking lot for an ice rink on the other.

But don't take our word for it. Look at this aerial photo of the site. The parcel in question, a tad less than an acre, is framed in black. Judge for yourself whether a library here would really hurt the park.

Observers say that Christopher Ward, the new executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, could be very good for Long Island.

Gov. David Paterson named Ward to the post early this month, replacing Spitzer appointee Anthony Shorris. You have to give Paterson credit for knowing where the money is -- the Port Authority spends $3 billion a year -- and putting his own person in place quickly.

Ward could direct significant resources to the Long Island Rail Road's East Side Access project, connecting Island commuters directly to Grand Central Station. The project is underway but needs an additional $3 billion to be completed. Insiders say that Ward's experience in transportation and construction will make him a strong ally for the agenda of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority -- and therefore the LIRR.

The absence of a state development "czar," since Pat Foye resigned in March, has created a void that is causing a lot of political trouble for Gov. David Paterson.

First, there is the upstate cry-out against Paterson's decision to eliminate the two-chairman system -- one each for upstate and downstate. Paterson wants to put just one person in charge of the Empire State Development Corp, but upstate advocates and editorial writers fret that he will re-create the Manhattan-centric agency that Charles Gargano chaired for the Pataki administration.

Paterson is undoubtedly right in wanting a single person in charge. Downstate co-chairman Foye, who resigned after Gov. Eliot Spitzer blew himself up, was a solid leader, but he had to compete for the agency staff's attention with Dan Gundersen, the upstate co-chairman, and Avi Schick, who has many titles -- downstate chief operating officer, president of ESDC, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., acting downstate chair. The titles are a symptom of the strange organizational structure -- Schick, who is close to Spitzer, never accepted the role of Foye's second-in-command.

There have been stories about how Gov. David Paterson, the first legally blind person to reach the executive post in New York, does his job -- aides recite to him information that other governors would read in briefing books, for example. But as the saying goes, a picture can often communicate much more. Take this one, by photojournalist Nathaniel Brooks:

When I saw the photo in the New York Times this morning, it stopped me. What was I looking at? Then I read the caption: "Gov. David A. Paterson signed a bill on Wednesday at the State Capitol ..."

What a moving image of a man who has refused to be held back by the tough hand life dealt him.

A jeer to Suffolk Legis. Brian Beedenbender, a rookie Democratic legislator from Centereach, whose bogus immigration bill passed the county legislature on Tuesday. Another jeer to County Executive Steve Levy, who seems certain to sign the bill, even though (as we predicted) he has zero intention of hiring extra employees to enforce it. The law purportedly cracks down on undocumented workers by requiring all 17,000 county licensees to verify the immigration status of their workers and pay all the applicable taxes. But existing law covers these requirements already, and without additional enforcement, the new law will accomplish nothing.

A cheer to Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor), who tried a little bit of everything to derail the Beedenbender bill. He knew that, once it got to the floor of the legislature, there was little doubt that most legislators would not have the stomach to vote against it. That's exactly what happened. Now he's fielding nasty calls and other harassment from the anti-immigration extremist crowd. And a cheer to Legis. Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), who brought a court action to try to stop the vote, and to the two legislators who joined Cooper in voting no: Thomas Barraga (R-West Islip) and Vivian Viloria-Fisher (D-Setauket).