In a rare gesture of transparency, a majority of the eight commissioners on the United States Commission on Civil Rights voted in 2002 to put the agency's staff reports on the Internet as soon as they are completed. That way, the public can read them before the commissioners hold public hearings to discuss the staff's findings. The latest report - an assessment of President Bush's civil rights record - was put on the agency's Web site last September. But at the commission's October meeting, less than a month before the election, the commissioners declined to discuss it. Objecting to the...