December 2, 1995

In all the ways that matter for children dependent on the city for protection, Elisa Izquierdo suffered a death foretold. Warnings of danger came not only from people who knew her personally, but from those who knew and criticized the system that failed her. Yet even as Elisa's death has prompted a new investigation of that system, budget cuts appear to be compounding its chronic problems. The Child Welfare Administration is putting unprecedented pressure on its beleaguered caseworkers to close children's cases as quickly as possible -- even by a budget-driven formula.

Bowing to a seemingly unstoppable push in Congress to keep sexual material off the Internet, a coalition of commercial on-line services and some civil liberties groups agreed today to accept a number of restrictions they had opposed a few months ago. The move comes just a few days before a House-Senate conference committee is expected to debate a measure that would impose fines of up to $100,000 and prison sentences on people who knowingly transmit pornography or material deemed "filthy," "lewd" or "indecent."

For most of his 17 years on Arizona's death row, Paris Hoyt Carriger has been little known outside the state. But even as a Federal appeals court yesterday issued a stay of his Dec. 6 execution, his supporters continued mounting a communications blitz trying to save a man they are convinced is innocent. Prominent legal scholars, recruited to his cause, are calling for a new trial. Ministers are being urged to sermonize about his fate, while television and newspaper journalists are being deluged with requests that they examine the facts of the case.

When Washington's theatrics make financial markets shudder and grand political issues become reduced to baffling budgetese, this is Leon E. Panetta's moment. Across 16 years as a Congressman from the Monterey coast of California, Mr. Panetta has had a hand in virtually every deficit-cutting effort of the past decade in Washington.

For the track workers whose walkout shut down part of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad yesterday, the dispute with the railroad is less about current negotiations than about what they see as a long history of getting poorer treatment than other workers. This week, their union has tried all-night negotiations, a partial strike Tuesday and a walkout yesterday that closed the northern Harlem Line for less than four hours [page 26]. Through it all, track workers have cited decades-old grievances over having less sick leave and vacation time than other employees.