QUES: On Monday, departing Gov. Roy Barnes will spend his first day as a private citizen by starting his new job as a full-time, pro-bono (unpaid) lawyer at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. The decision by Barnes, the most improbable casualty of Election Day 2002, to go to work for legal aid was almost as unexpected as his November defeat. As a legal services attorney, Barnes will help women escape domestic violence, Mauricio Vivero is vice president seniors fight predatory lending scams and parents obtain child support for their kids. of Legal In doing so, he will take his place on the front line of the U.S. legal community's Services Corporation, the uphill and underpublicized struggle to achieve equal access to justice for millions of Washington-Americans too poor to afford legal representation. based nonprofit corporation chartered by The inaccessibility of the U.S. civil justice system is hardly a new development, but it Congress in took Barnes' decision to put the national media spotlight on our country's ongoing 1974 to promote equal access to access-to-justice crisis. civil justice. The 2000 U.S. census reports that more than 43 million Americans qualify for free federally funded legal assistance, yet fewer than 20 percent of eligible clients (annual income: $11,075 or less) are able to obtain legal help when they need it, according to the American Bar Association. In Georgia, there is just one legal aid lawyer for every 10,500 eligible poor people. Barnes understood this problem long before he became governor. While in private practice, he handled many pro-bono cases and was a frequent volunteer in the Cobb County office of the federally funded Atlanta Legal Aid Society. Most memorably, he secured a $115 million judgment in 1993 against Fleet Finance for victimizing 18,000 homeowners -- many of them senior citizens -- with its widespread predatory lending mortgage practices. His long-standing commitment to the underserved is certainly admirable, but it should not be viewed as a rare and laudable act of civic virtue. To be admitted to practice law, every attorney must take a professional oath to promote justice -- and every state's ethical rules include language indicating lawyers' responsibility to be guardians of fair play for those living in poverty. In Georgia, many law firms, corporations and private attorneys are working pro bono to serve the neediest clients. Yet only 23 percent of the state's 23,598 active lawyers reported meeting the Georgia State Bar's goal of 50 hours of pro-bono service in 2002. The need for volunteers is most severe outside the five-county Atlanta metropolitan area, where 70 percent of the state's poor people are served by only 24 percent of the state's lawyers. National pro-bono participation is even worse. Only 23 percent of the roughly 1 million attorneys in America volunteer even one hour of pro-bono service annually, according to the ABA.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What problem did Barnes understand before becoming governor?

QUES: In chapters 3 and 4 we described how the U.S. government adjusted its existing agencies and capacities to address the emerging threat from Usama Bin Laden and his associates. After the August 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton and his chief aides explored ways of getting Bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan or possibly capturing or even killing him. Although disruption efforts around the world had achieved some successes, the core of Bin Laden's organization remained intact. President Clinton was deeply concerned about Bin Laden. He and his national security advisor, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, ensured they had a special daily pipeline of reports feeding them the latest updates on Bin Laden's reported location. In public, President Clinton spoke repeatedly about the threat of terrorism, referring to terrorist training camps but saying little about Bin Laden and nothing about al Qaeda. He explained to us that this was deliberate-intended to avoid enhancing Bin Laden's stature by giving him unnecessary publicity. His speeches focused especially on the danger of nonstate actors and of chemical and biological weapons. As the millennium approached, the most publicized worries were not about terrorism but about computer breakdowns-the Y2K scare. Some government officials were concerned that terrorists would take advantage of such breakdowns. On November 30, 1999, Jordanian intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Abu Zubaydah, a longtime ally of Bin Laden, and Khadr Abu Hoshar, a Palestinian extremist. Abu Zubaydah said, "The time for training is over." Suspecting that this was a signal for Abu Hoshar to commence a terrorist operation, Jordanian police arrested Abu Hoshar and 15 others and informed Washington. One of the 16, Raed Hijazi, had been born in California to Palestinian parents; after spending his childhood in the Middle East, he had returned to northern California, taken refuge in extremist Islamist beliefs, and then made his way to Abu Zubaydah's Khaldan camp in Afghanistan, where he learned the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare. He and his younger brother had been recruited by Abu Hoshar into a loosely knit plot to attack Jewish and American targets in Jordan. After late 1996, when Abu Hoshar was arrested and jailed, Hijazi moved back to the United States, worked as a cabdriver in Boston, and sent money back to his fellow plotters. After Abu Hoshar's release, Hijazi shuttled between Boston and Jordan gathering money and supplies. With Abu Hoshar, he recruited inTurkey and Syria as well as Jordan; with Abu Zubaydah's assistance, Abu Hoshar sent these recruits to Afghanistan for training.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: Who assisted Abu Hashner in recruiting in Turkey, Syria and Jordan?

QUES: Captured Moments by Will Shetterly I remember Papa's stopbox, a teal blue Tiempo Capturado that Mama brought home for his birthday. It was huge and inefficient, and she should never have spent so many pesos on a toy, but Papa would not let her return it. He used it to preserve baby tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries in translucent cubes that he stored in the pantry for spring-time meals in the middle of winter. Mama kept her mink jacket, a family hand-me-down, safe from time in a stopbox, and lent the capturador to my uncle for his stamp collection. Sometimes they would let us little ones to seal a treasured toy or a last piece of birthday cake until we begged them for its release, usually a few hours after enclosing it. When my father died, a year after my mother, my sisters and I cleaned out their apartment. We found our baby shoes protected in stopboxes. I took mine home, where they sat above my computer while I worked on my first play. One night when I did not believe love had ever existed for anyone, I used my own capturador, a sleek titanium Sanyo Tardar Ahora, to undo the stopbox. Bringing my face close to the shoes, I breathed deeply of air that my parents had trapped while closing up that symbol of their love for me. The instant would have been improved had my baby shoes been cleaned before they were encased. But as soon as I coughed, I laughed, and I did not try to kill myself that night.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What item would Papa not let Mama return?

QUES: Electric charge is a physical property. It occurs between particles or objects. It causes them to attract or repel each other. They do not even have to touch. This is unlike the typical push or pull you may be familiar with. All electric charge is based on the protons and electrons in atoms. A proton has a positive electric charge. An electron has a negative electric charge. Forces on Charged Objects Most atoms are balanced electrically. They have the same number of positive and negative charges. Therefore, the number of protons equals the number of electrons. Neutrons do not matter as they have no charge. When an object loses some electrons, it becomes positively charged. There are now more protons than electrons inside the atom. The lost electrons may remain free. Or, they may attach to another object. The new object now has more electrons than protons. It then becomes negatively charged.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
What kind of charge does an atom with more electrons than protons have?