The mail corps haven't completely ignored the Internet before now. Three services are already in place. PosteCS sends secure electronic documents. Ebillbay, an electronic payment service similar to the private company Paypal, was launched a few months ago. And then there's Shipping Online, an electronic postage service. Last September, the post office launched another service, allowing customers to send electronic documents to be printed, stuffed into envelopes, and delivered to a mailing list for 41 cents per letter.
Meanwhile, private electronic commerce firms and hundreds of free e-mail providers already have services on the Web identical to those running or in the works at the post office. Rick Merritt, executive director of the Web site postalwatch.com, wonders, "What makes the postal service think they're going to be more attractive than a private concern like Paypal?"
Drug War Doctors
By Michael W. Lynch
While Congress frets about how insurance companies use medical information, the Supreme Court is considering a case with far more worrisome implications. Ferguson v. City of Charleston asks not just whether some people have the right to take secret peeks at your health but whether they can compel you to provide medical evidence against yourself.
At issue is a drug abuse intervention program hatched in 1989 by the Charleston cops and the Medical University of South Carolina. Under it, pregnant women seeking prenatal care were tested for cocaine with neither warrants nor the women's consent. Originally, if women tested positive, they were arrested for child neglect or for distributing drugs to a minor, sometimes just hours after giving birth. In 1990 the program was changed to offer drug rehabilitation before sending new or expectant mothers to the slammer.
Ten women are challenging the program on the grounds that, by neglecting to establish probable cause and secure a warrant before searching them, the health care workers who cooperated with the police violated their Fourth Amendment right to privacy. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit found the searches constitutional under a "special needs" exemption that the women's attorneys say leaves pregnant women with less constitutional protection than other Americans-a situation they asked the Supreme Court to correct in October.
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, the public interest firm that is representing the women, points out that the program is not just bad law: It's counterproductive policy. Once word gets around that going to the doctor can mean going to jail, some pregnant women will shy away from important prenatal care. "I will never trust a doctor again," says Lori Griffin, who was arrested in 1989 during such a visit and spent the last three weeks of her pregnancy in jail. "They tormented me."
Child Proof
By Sara Rimensnyder
Employees of a Head Start program in Cleveland found a surefire way to recruit the most well-behaved youngsters: They invented make-believe kids. Faced with flagging enrollment, employees of the Ministerial Day Care Association, a non-profit provider, padded 1997 class rosters with more than 60 fake names-enough extra toddlers to bring the program an additional $250,000 in state and federal funding, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported last fall. Former employees informed state and federal officials that the ruse was encouraged by the association's board of trustees, all of whom were local ministers. (The ministers responded by suing eight workers for character defamation.)
As of press time, the association still hadn't produced records documenting the services it insists it provided to approximately 1,600 children in 1997. In a letter, association officials informed investigators that the files were lost, destroyed, or stolen.
Head Start fraud certainly isn't unheard-of. But rarely is it so creative. The Cleveland scandal may be matched only by the industrious director in New York who embezzled a quarter million in Head Start funds in 1999, to subsidize a film studio, a record company, and a clothing business.
Saving Indianapolis
By Charles Paul Freund
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