Supreme Court to rule on Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court set the stage Friday for a historic decision on gay rights, announcing it would hear appeals of rulings striking down California's Proposition 8 and the federal law denying benefits for legally married same-sex couples.

The court could decide in the Proposition 8 case whether the Constitution's promise of equal treatment gives gays and lesbians a right to marry. But the justices also left themselves the option to rule narrowly or even to duck a decision.

In 2008, California voters approved the measure limiting marriage to a man and a woman. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the proposition had illegally taken away a right to marry that gays had won in the state courts.

MAP: How gay marriage has progressed in the U.S.

This 9th Circuit decision, though limited to California, was the first by federal judges to reject a state's marriage law.

Ted Olson and David Boies, two nationally prominent attorneys who launched the legal attack on Proposition 8, served notice they would seek a broad ruling national in scope at a time when public opinion has turned in favor of gay marriage rights.

"We are going to address all the issues, focused on the fundamental constitutional right to marry of all citizens," Olson said Friday.

"We ought to have marriage equality as a constitutional right everywhere," Boies added.

Q&A: Prop. 8, gay marriage and the Supreme Court

They maintained they were not concerned that the decision to hear the case puts in jeopardy their court victory for California gays who wish to marry. If the justices had simply turned down the appeal, gay marriage would have once again been legal in the state.

John Eastman, a California law professor and chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, which supports traditional marriage, saw the court's announcement as a sign that Proposition 8 would be upheld. If so, gay marriage would remain illegal in California, barring another voter initiative.

"It's a strong signal that the justices are concerned with the rogue rulings that have come out of San Francisco. We believe the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn this exercise in judicial activism," said Eastman, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.

TIMELINE: Gay marriage since 2000

In a second case, the justices will review the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and its provision denying federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married. Judges in New York, New England states and California have ruled this law denies gays and lesbians the equal protection of the laws.

The court agreed to hear the case of Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old widow who was given a $363,000 tax bill by the Internal Revenue Service after her female spouse died in 2009. The two had lived together for 44 years and were married in Canada in 2007. The U.S. government said Windsor did not qualify as a "surviving spouse" under the federal law. A married heterosexual couple would not have had to pay any tax.

A ruling on this issue could affect more than 100,000 gays and lesbians who are married in the United States.

The justices will have at least four options before them in the California case.

First, they could reverse the 9th Circuit and uphold Prop. 8, thereby making clear that the definition of marriage will be left to the discretion of each state and its voters. The defenders of Prop. 8 argue that federal courts should allow this divisive social issue to be resolved over time by voters and state legislatures.

A second possibility would be for the justices to agree with Olson and Boies and rule broadly that denying gays and lesbians the fundamental right to marry violates the Constitution. This would be a historic pronouncement, akin to the 1967 ruling in Loving vs. Virginia, which struck down the laws against interracial marriages.

A third option would be to follow the approach set by the 9th Circuit and strike down Proposition 8 in a way that limits the ruling to California.

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Feds Charge Anonymous Spokesperson for Sharing Hacked Stratfor Credit Cards

A Dallas grand jury has brought charges against Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown stemming from the 2011 hack of intelligence vendor Stratfor Global Intelligence.

Brown isn’t charged with committing the hack; just with possessing and transmitting credit card numbers that were stolen in the incident.

He has been in prison since he was arrested in dramatic and public fashion three months ago after posting a threatening video to YouTube. Brown was talking with acquaintances during a Sept. 12 TinyChat session when the feds burst in and took him away. The chat session was later posted to the internet.

The Anonymous spokesman was charged the next day with threatening a federal officer.

This time the charges are are related to a different incident: the 2011 Stratfor hack where credit card numbers and internal e-mail messages were stolen.

According to the grand jury indictment, dated Tuesday, Brown posted a link to a zipped version of the documents stolen in the Stratfor hack on Christmas day 2011 — that counts as trafficking in “stolen authentication features,” the indictment claims. He’s also charged with possessing stolen credit card numbers, Card Verification Values, and other information related to those credit card numbers.

Brown, 31, has been in custody since his Sept. 12 arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a press release announcing the 12-count indictment. He could face a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on the most serious of these charges.

The self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman said he was expecting to face fraud charges after his apartment was raided back in March. He mentioned them in a long, rambling video posted to YouTube the day on the same day he was arrested in September. “I bring in no money. I have $25,000 I brought in the last year from this fucking book deal. that’s it.” he said. “A fucking fraud charge for a fucking writer activist who has no fucking money.”

Later in the video, Brown railed against FBI Agent Robert Smith, saying that he was going to “ruin” Smith’s life “and look into his fucking kids.” The Anonymous activist said he was angry that feds were contemplating obstruction of justice charges against his mother.

The indictment is below.

Gov.uscourts.txnd.226354.1.0

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Viral rapper PSY apologizes for anti-US protests

South Korean rapper and Internet sensation PSY is apologizing to Americans for participating in anti-U.S. protests several years ago.

Park Jae-sang, who performs as PSY, issued a statement Friday after reports surfaced that he had participated in concerts protesting the U.S. military presence in South Korea during the early stages of the Iraq war.

At a 2004 concert, the “Gangnam Style” rapper performs a song with lyrics about killing “Yankees” who have been torturing Iraqi captives and their families “slowly and painfully.” In another protest, he smashed a model of a U.S. tank on stage.

“While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted,” he wrote in the statement. “I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words.”

The 34-year-old rapper says the protests were part of a “deeply emotional” reaction to the war and the death of two Korean school girls, who were killed when a U.S. military vehicle hit them as they walked alongside the road. He noted antiwar sentiment was high around the world at the time.

PSY attended college in the U.S. and says he understands the sacrifices U.S. military members have made to protect South Korea and other nations. He has recently performed in front of servicemen and women.

“And I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology,” he wrote. “While it’s important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology.”

His participation in the protests was no secret in South Korea, where the U.S. has had a large military presence since the Korean War, but was not generally known in America until recent news reports.

PSY did not write “Dear American,” a song by The N.E.X.T., but he does perform it. The song exhorts the listener to kill the Yankees who are torturing Iraqi captives, their superiors who ordered the torture and their families. At one point he raps: “Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

PSY launched to international acclaim based on the viral nature of his “Gangnam Style” video. It became YouTube’s most watched video, making him a millionaire who freely crossed cultural boundaries around the world. Much of that success has happened in the U.S., where the rapper has managed to weave himself into pop culture.

He recently appeared on the American Music Awards, dancing alongside MC Hammer in a melding of memorable dance moves that book-end the last two decades. And the Internet is awash with copycat versions of the song. Even former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, the 81-year-old co-chairman of President Barack Obama‘s deficit commission, got in on the fun, recently using the song in a video to urge young Americans to avoid credit card debt.

It remains to be seen how PSY’s American fans will react. Obama, the father of two pop music fans, wasn’t letting the news change his plans, though.

Earlier Friday, the White House confirmed Obama and his family will attend a Dec. 21 charity concert where PSY is among the performers. A spokesman says it’s customary for the president to attend the “Christmas in Washington” concert, which will be broadcast on TNT. The White House has no role in choosing performers for the event, which benefits the National Children’s Medical Center.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

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Your Money: Deciding How to Slice Your Charitable Pie

Each year at this time, out of some combination of generosity and procrastination, millions of Americans rush to make donations to the causes and institutions important to them.

It is a beautiful thing, but it is also something of a scramble. The solicitations pile up. The holiday to-do list is already long. There are last-minute tax moves to make. And somewhere along the way, people find a few minutes to make a series of hasty decisions and dash off a bunch of checks.

This year, I was determined that my family would be a bit more deliberate. We already automatically give modest amounts each month, via credit card, to institutions and causes that we have a personal connection to and educational or religious institutions that shaped us or shape us still.

But I wanted us to have a true charitable asset allocation — an actual pie chart so that we could be more deliberate about how we split things up. We also had a goal of giving more to people who are lacking in basic needs.

Our historical pie chart shows us to be a lot like other Americans, with a heavy tilt toward houses of worship and secondary or higher education. According to the annual Giving USA study of how Americans give, just 8 percent of donations go to international organizations, and not all of them work on basic issues like hunger and health.

Any serious discussion of this issue ought to include a careful consideration of “The Life You Can Save,” a brief and provocative book by Peter Singer, a Princeton University professor of bioethics. To lead a truly ethical life, he writes, we should be doing much more to help poor people in faraway places. Our money can go farther there, too, giving us more bang for our charitable buck.

It is hard to argue that there is anything more important than saving one additional child’s life. But where does that leave those of us who still have a strong affinity for causes and places closer to home?

EDUCATION Many of us would not be where we are were it not for the educational institutions that picked up the bill when we could not pay full freight. To my mind, that creates not just a debt of gratitude but a running tab that I hope to clear long before I die.

Mr. Singer sees no need for people like me to repay in full, though. “I think it’s open to you to say that the marginal difference my dollar can make to an organization that already has a large endowment is not as great as one given to an organization that helps people who have almost nothing,” he said.

Even some fund-raising professionals were willing to absolve me here. “If you think about what motivates the people who fund scholarships, their intention is not necessarily for you to pay it back,” said Melissa A. Berman, the president and chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. “The intention is for you to have a set of opportunities and to fulfill your potential without any strings attached.”

Strings or no, it would simply feel selfish not to give generously in this category. The one excuse Mr. Singer was willing to allow me was this one: The only way to justify giving something to educational institutions that are relatively well off (or to pay the $50,000-plus in costs for universities like his) is if they produce people and knowledge that will help solve the world’s problems.

It is hard to prove conclusively that any one institution has or will make a measurable difference. And what does he give to Princeton? “Not one cent,” he said, adding that he believes that he has talked many alumni into giving less than they might have otherwise.

HOUSES OF WORSHIP Many religious communities depend on their members for much or all of their annual budget. They would not exist but for our (still tax-deductible, for now) donations.

Mr. Singer, who is an atheist, doesn’t have much patience for this. “Maybe they could scale down a bit,” he said. “They don’t need such a comfortable place to worship while other people don’t have shelter from the elements.”

But many communities have inherited ornate buildings, which can feel like both blessings and curses from God when they start falling to pieces. Letting them rot isn’t really an option. Once they’re fixed up, however, Mr. Singer does offer a nod to the fact that people who pray there tend also to give a bit more to charity than non-God-fearing types.

If you offer financial support to your own house of worship, at the very least you have a duty to make sure that your religious community is making fellow members aware of the need to help people who have much less than you do.

CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS Here, Mr. Singer is perhaps at his most blunt. “Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious,” he writes in his book.

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Retail sales rise a weak 1.6% in November

Despite robust sales on Black Friday, the nation's retailers reported weak sales in November, raising concerns about whether merchants can make up enough ground in the coming weeks of the crucial holiday season.

Hit hard by Superstorm Sandy and its aftermath, major retailers such as Macy's Inc., Kohl's Corp. and Target Corp. reported sales declines. Luxury retailers saw troubles as well. Tiffany & Co. said Thursday that its third-quarter profit plunged 30%, and department store chain Nordstrom Inc. saw sales drop 1.1% in November.

At the Target store in West Hollywood, some shoppers said that despite improvements in the economy, they had learned to rein in Christmas spending over the last few years and had no plans to change.

"Lots of people are getting hugs," said Brooke Seguin, 31, of Los Feliz, who recently spent $40 on a knife set and two necklaces for herself and friends. "I'm going to make some gifts this year."

Quiz: Do you know your premium jeans?

The theater producer said there was no longer pressure among friends to give everyone presents that cost a certain amount. Therefore she planned to spend "way below" what was once her typical holiday budget of $1,000.

Although Black Friday set records for sales and shopper traffic, analysts said that doesn't necessarily guarantee a great holiday season, when retailers can rake in as much as 40% of their annual sales. There were signs that shoppers who splurged over the Thanksgiving weekend went for the best bargains, industry watchers said, and now may be done with their Christmas spending.

"A lot of retailers are using Sandy as a very convenient excuse to dismiss their poor sales performance. Not all these retailers have all their stores situated in just the Northeast," said Britt Beemer, a retail expert at America's Research Group. "A lot of retailers are going to have to admit that Black Friday, as incredible as it was," favored merchants offering enormous discounts.

Thursday's tally of 17 retailers showed that major chains posted a 1.6% increase in retail sales in November compared with the same month a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters. That was below analyst expectations of a 3.3% rise.

There was a broad mix of stores among the month's top performers. Discount retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. reported a 6% jump in sales. Limited Brands Inc., the parent company of Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, said sales rose 5%. And Gap Inc., which has been showing signs of a turnaround, posted a 3% gain.

Other retailers posted weak results. Kohl's saw sales decline 5.6%. Struggling teen clothier Wet Seal Inc., which recently went through a board shake-up after more than a year of falling sales, reported that its sales slipped 5.4%.

Macy's, which reported a 0.7% decline, blamed Sandy for its poor performance. The retailer had previously said it was forced to close about 200 of its stores during and after the storm.

"We were not able to overcome the weak start to the month," Chief Executive Terry J. Lundgren said in a statement, adding that Macy's remained "on track to deliver a very strong sales performance in the fourth quarter."

Tiffany, which does not report monthly sales figures, said Thursday that its third-quarter revenue rose 4%. However, its profit dropped nearly 30% because of high material costs and greater-than-expected taxes. Shares of the jewelry company fell $3.93, or 6.2%, to $59.80.

Results in the Thomson Reuters survey are based on sales at stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales. These are considered an important measure of a retailer's health because they exclude the effect of store openings and closings.

Some industry watchers were optimistic about the remaining holiday season, pointing to rising home prices and a rallying stock market as reasons that shoppers would open their wallets in the coming weeks. The Conference Board reported this week that consumer confidence jumped to its highest level in almost five years.

"We had a month that was not typical given Sandy and how it impacted quite an extreme part of our country," said Matthew Rahn, a principal in the retail practice at A.T. Kearney. "But overall, given what we saw over the holiday weekend, it's going to be quite a positive holiday season this year."

Analysts also noted that the November results failed to show the effect of Cyber Monday, the first workday after Thanksgiving weekend, when online merchants offer a variety of bargains and saw record sales.

Robust sales on Cyber Monday will give December a boost instead, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. He also said purchases made through layaway, which is available at many retailers this holiday season, will be included in the December tally.

Retailers may get a boost from shoppers like Early Cursell, 35, who said she is ready to splurge this Christmas because her husband, who works as a security guard, has been getting a lot of overtime lately. Browsing at the West Hollywood Target, the homemaker said she planned to spend $2,000, double last year's budget, on gifts for her children and extended family.

"I'm just feeling more confident about our finances," said Cursell, a Los Angeles resident. "With four kids — you want to get them nice things for the holidays."

shan.li@latimes.com

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New Camera Snaps All-Sky Auroras in Full Color

Capturing a multicolored, all-sky image of the auroras that decorate Earth’s polar skies is now possible.

Normally, studying these shimmering phenomena means taking multiple images of an aurora, using different filters that block or image different wavelengths. Now, a camera with tunable liquid crystal filters can capture many colors at once, a team of space-weather researchers reports Nov. 29 in Optics Express.

Called NORUSCA II, the camera also takes pictures of the entire sky. Scientists are hoping that such precision aurora-imaging will help them better understand and classify the celestial light shows.

The team tested the sky-gazing camera at the Kjell Henriksen Observatory in Svalbard, Norway, during the auroral season of 2011 and 2012. On Jan. 24, 2012, an enormous solar flare flung a blob of charged particles in Earth’s direction. The skies over Svalbard lit up as the particles struck Earth’s atmosphere, producing a bright green aurora and intense geomagnetic storm.

Charged particles colliding with different gases in Earth’s atmosphere produce the multicolored auroras. For example, oxygen atoms can glow green or red, depending on their altitude. Hydrogen and helium high in the ionosphere can produce shimmering blue or purple. Nitrogen? Red, violet, or blue.

The new camera captured these swirling lights using many different wavelength channels; individual frames from the Jan. 24 event have been stitched together in the video above. And the camera is sensitive enough to see daytime auroras, like the reddish lights flickering across the sky on Dec. 29, 2011 (video below).

Videos: Optics Express, Vol. 20, Issue 25.

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Actor who apparently killed landlady not on drugs

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An autopsy report shows no drugs were detected in the body of a former “Sons of Anarchy” actor who police say killed his landlady and then fell to his death.

Toxicology results on Johnny Lewis found no traces of cocaine, alcohol, marijuana or any other types of drugs in the actor’s system. Officials checked for anti-psychotic drugs as well as psychedelic drugs.

Lewis was found dead in September in the driveway of a Los Angeles residence, and police found his landlady and a cat dead inside the home. Officials believe Lewis fell while trying to flee the home after killing 81-year-old Catherine Davis.

The killing occurred just days after Lewis was released from jail. Records show he had pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon and attempted burglary in separate cases.

Authorities expressed concern about his mental health in court hearings before his release.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about a federal report critical of Medicare’s performance in assuring accuracy as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical records misstated, in some copies, the timing of a statement from a Medicare spokesman in response to the report. The statement was released late Wednesday, not late Thursday.

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DealBook: Vinod Khosla Keeps Long-Term Bet on Clean Technology

Vinod Khosla crowed about the clean energy industry last year. Three of the biofuel start-ups in his venture capital portfolio had just gone public, and the stocks had risen considerably after their debuts. “I challenge anybody to claim that clean tech done right is a disaster,” Mr. Khosla said at a conference, rebuffing recent criticism. “We’ve generated more profits there than anybody has.”

Since then, Mr. Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, has watched much of those paper gains evaporate. As the clean energy industry broadly has taken a hit, shares of the biofuel companies — Amyris, Gevo and KiOR — have slumped 70 percent to 90 percent from their peaks. His stakes, once worth as much as $1.3 billion, are now valued at roughly $378 million.

The billionaire investor has been caught in the cyclical downdraft.

The public stocks of solar, wind and biofuel companies are suffering amid industrywide pressures. The price of natural gas remains low. Europe has pulled back on incentives. American subsidies are in question after the bankruptcy of the solar panel maker Solyndra. And China is providing formidable low-cost competition.

“The whole clean tech sector has been out of favor,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates, a brokerage firm. “I’d be hard pressed to name one trading above its I.P.O. price.”

Despite the crosscurrents, Mr. Khosla seems unwavering in his commitment. He is pouring money into start-ups. Khosla Ventures recently invested more in LightSail Energy, a three-year-old start-up working to develop low-cost energy storage. He is also sticking with his public companies. His firm, for example, still owns 54 percent of KiOR.

“He’s a visionary who likes to make big bets on ideas that can really change the world,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, who co-founded Sun Microsystems with Mr. Khosla 30 years ago and shares a house with him at Big Sur on the California coast. “I would think he’s made a larger personal bet on green tech than anybody else.”

While the public markets are raising short-term doubts, the long-term investment thinking remains unchanged. Governments around the globe are pushing to find alternative sources of energy in an effort to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels that may hurt the environment. In a television interview in 2007, Mr. Khosla said “mainstream solutions” could replace up to 80 percent of oil-based power. Without them, he said, “this planet is history the way we know it today.” After Hurricane Sandy, the subject of global warming — and changing climate conditions — has again come to the forefront.

In a recent blog post on the Forbes Web site, Mr. Khosla acknowledged the shift in market sentiment. “Clean tech went through a time when it was in vogue and now it is not,” he wrote. “The financing environment for clean tech companies is tough today,” he added. But he said he still expected “to do better than industry averages by keeping our losing companies to a minority.”

Since founding his venture capital firm in 2004, Mr. Khosla has become one of the most vocal advocates for clean tech innovation, buying stakes in about 60 industry start-ups. Ausra, a solar thermal start-up that had drawn $130 million in venture backing, was sold in 2010 to the French nuclear plant builder Areva for about $250 million, according to one industry estimate. And SeaMicro, a low-power server maker, was bought this year by Advanced Micro Devices for $334 million, more than five times the amount invested by its venture backers, according to a SeaMicro co-founder, Andrew Feldman.

It’s unclear how the broader clean tech portfolio has performed at Khosla Ventures. Mr. Khosla declined to disclose the firm’s returns or to comment for the article.

But one of his funds, which raised $1 billion to invest in clean tech and other start-ups, shows gain of 30 percent since its inception in 2009, according to filings by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest state pension fund. In his Forbes blog post, Mr. Khosla said a recent fund, which raised $1.05 billion in October 2011, was oversubscribed, and his firm’s broader performance since 2006 had “well exceeded typical venture funds.” In that period, venture funds over all have returned 7.25 percent annually after fees, according to industry data.

Mr. Khosla’s commitment is an outgrowth of his three decades at the cutting edge of technology.

A native of India, Mr. Khosla, 57, earned a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon and an M.B.A. from Stanford in 1980. After starting the design automation company Daisy Systems in 1982, he co-founded Sun Microsystems, then a growing technology company.

At Sun, he supplied drive and vision. But Mr. Khosla, who is known for his blunt talk and intense manner, was replaced as chief executive two years later and left the company shortly thereafter.

In 1986, he joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Over the next two decades, Mr. Khosla scored sizable returns betting on the growth of fiber optic networks. Two companies, Cerent and Siara Systems, were sold for a combined $15 billion-plus at the height of the late-1990s dot-com bubble.

Mr. Khosla was looking into alternative fuel technologies at Kleiner Perkins when a business plan for an ethanol start-up crossed his desk in 2003. The plan “sat on a corner of my desk for nearly 18 months while I read everything I could about petroleum and its alternatives,” he wrote in an article for Wired magazine in 2006.

When he branched out on his own in 2004, Mr. Khosla invested millions in the ethanol start-up, Celunol. He soon established himself as a top venture capitalist in clean tech, attracting prominent outside investors like Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain joined the firm as a senior adviser.

Over the years, Mr. Khosla has experienced his share of blowups.

In September 2011, Khosla-backed Range Fuels, a wood-chips-to-ethanol company, went bankrupt after receiving a $44 million grant from the Department of Energy and $33 million under a Department of Agriculture loan guarantee. When The Wall Street Journal editorial page criticized Range Fuels as an “exercise in corporate welfare,” Mr. Khosla lashed back, saying the authors inhabited an “ivory tower” that was “full of people who don’t understand technology.”

Sometimes, Mr. Khosla’s companies had to pivot from their original plans and focus on new markets. For example, Calera was founded in 2007 with plans to use power plant exhaust to make cement. Mr. Khosla called its technology “game changing” in 2008.

But the company encountered some setbacks. It postponed plans for commercial-scale production in 2010 pending further research and later cut its 145-employee work force by two-thirds. Since then, Calera has broadened its focus, developing other products like fillers for paper and plastics.

Like many venture capital investors, Mr. Khosla will risk a few strikeouts for the chance to hit home runs. “My willingness to fail is what gives me the ability to succeed,” the investor has said frequently.

The odds can be especially brutal in clean technology. The projects are often capital-intensive — like $200 million or more for a biofuels plant — and they can take years to pay out, said Sam Shelton, a research engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology. By comparison, social media start-ups often require little upfront money and few employees. “The economics are totally different,” Mr. Shelton said.

In part, Mr. Khosla aims to take stakes when the companies are still getting off the ground, rather than waiting until they’re more mature and more expensive. He first bought a stake in KiOR, which aims to convert wood chips to gas and diesel fuel, in 2007. The company is now completing the first of five planned plants in Mississippi with the help of a $75 million interest-free loan from the state.

Mr. Khosla is “always thinking at a very high level about the potential of an idea,” KiOR’s chief executive, Fred Cannon, said. “He has a very good feel for when to step on the gas.”

After jumping in early, Mr. Khosla appears willing to ride out the swings, in both directions. Over the years, public filings indicate he has plowed roughly $80 million into KiOR, amassing a 54 percent stake in the company. Although the stock is off its peak levels and I.P.O. investors are still underwater, his holdings are worth $356 million — a threefold gain.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized Mr. Khosla's return on his investment in KiOR. He invested roughly $80 million and his holdings are worth $356 million — a threefold gain, not a fourfold gain.

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