Why does she think the franchise is too big already? Who exactly has the vote who shouldn't have? "Women," she says, laughing. "It's true. It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted."

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.—War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells (1898)."

The latest tax-cut proposal being honed by House and Senate leaders Wednesday night would reduce tax rates for most investors to 15% from the current 38.6% maximum for dividends; the typical 20% for capital gains would also shrink to 15%. A Senate plan would go further, allowing taxes on dividends to disappear, at least temporarily.

Those are juicy breaks by themselves, but some experts warned the potent changes could combine with other existing tax-law provisions -- particularly the deductibility of interest on funds borrowed for capital investments -- to give some investors very low effective tax rates or even no tax. For example, well-to-do taxpayers could borrow large sums, sheltering much of their income from personal-tax rates that would run as high as 35% under the bill, and invest the money in stocks paying dividends that would be taxed at very low rates.

Michigan's standards had been among the nation's highest, which caused problems last year when 1,513 schools there were labeled under the law as needing improvement, more than in any other state. So Michigan officials lowered the percentage of students who must pass statewide tests to certify a school as making adequate progress — to 42 percent, from 75 percent of high school students on English tests, for example. That reduced the number of schools so labeled to 216.

Security was tight when Texas State Board of Education members were given results last fall from a field trial of a new statewide achievement test. Guards stood outside their locked meeting room, and board members were asked to sign a secrecy pledge, reflecting the sensitivity of the situation.

"The results were grim," said Chase Untermeyer, a member. "Few students did well. Many students got almost no answers right."

Fearing that thousands of students would fail the new test and be held back a grade, and that hundreds of schools could face penalties under the federal No Child Left Behind law, the board voted to reduce the number of questions that students must answer correctly to pass it, to 20 out of 36, from 24, for third-grade reading.

In a report this month, the General Accounting Office estimated that states would have to spend $1.9 billion to $5.3 billion to develop and administer the new tests the law requires. State and federal officials disagree as to whether Congress has appropriated enough money to help the states meet those costs.

Richard F. Elmore, an education professor at Harvard, writing in the spring issue of the newsletter Education Next, called the law "the single largest, and the single most damaging, expansion of federal power over the nation's education system in history."

Mr. Langan, the Education Department spokesman, again disagreed. "This law appropriately identifies education as a national priority, and we believe it values and respects local control and autonomy," he said.

...[W]hat's going on is just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg that has been building up for more than 30 years. These radicals are increasingly successful at recruiting young people who have been steeped in moral relativism all their lives....

The problem goes way beyond politics. Over the last few decades, no matter who was president, no matter who held the majority in Congress, the schools kept on teaching that right and wrong were relative, that you couldn't make any moral judgements about anything, that America's sins were more important to focus on than our achievements and our heroes....

[The Heritage Foundation] has always been mindful of the cultural problems I've been telling you about.

A number of years ago they were a key factor in raising Americans' awareness of our moral decline when they sent out my "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" to hundreds of thousands of citizens.

And since then they've been a champion of the importance of marriage, parental rights, and traditional values--standing up against the liberal line that all lifestyles are equal.

Send Troops to Congo, Dallaire says
Canada Could Help to End Continuation of Rwandan clash, Retired General Says

JEFF SALLOT
21 May 2003
The Globe and Mail

All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.

OTTAWA -- Canadian troops should be sent to the war-ravaged Congo instead of Afghanistan, says retired General Romeo Dallaire, one of Canada's most highly decorated military officers.

Canada also might consider pulling its forces out of Bosnia and sending them to help handle the African crisis, Gen. Dallaire said in an interview yesterday.

The bloodshed in the Democratic Republic of Congo "rips the living hell out of me," he said.

Gen. Dallaire, who led the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994, said the crisis in neighbouring Congo is, in effect, a continuation of the genocide in which more than 500,000 people perished and millions were forced to flee.

When he sees the daily news reports of massacres and mutilations in northeastern Congo, "I can see the scenes. I can hear the screams. We have a moral responsibility to go in."

Canadian troops are uniquely qualified for peacekeeping in Congo, a former Belgian colony, because of their experience in Africa and their ability to speak French, Mr. Dallaire said.

Canada is considering a UN request to participate in a beefed-up Congo peacekeeping mission, said Frederique Tsai, a spokeswoman in the Prime Minister's Office.

"We are studying the feasibility because of our current commitments" in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere, she said.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is expected to appeal for Canadian soldiers for the proposed Congo mission when he meets Prime Minister Jean Chretien in Ottawa today and tomorrow.

"We should be ashamed that they have to ask," Gen. Dallaire said.

A French military reconnaissance party arrived in the volatile Ituri region of Congo yesterday to prepare for the possible deployment of a major UN force.

Intense fighting among rival militias in the remote region has forced up to 350,000 civilians to flee for their lives in recent weeks, raising fears of more humanitarian disasters.

Gen. Dallaire, who witnessed the slaughter of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994 as his pleas for a strengthened peacekeeping contingent went unheeded by the UN, said he fears history may be repeating in the Congo. "The similitudes are scary."

Gen. Dallaire serves as a consultant for the Canadian International Development Agency on the problem of civilians caught in war zones. He said he urged the Chretien government to send troops to Congo instead of Afghanistan just days before the Afghan mission was announced in mid-February. "I was disappointed, to say the least."

The Canadian troops -- more than 3,000 over 12 months starting in late summer -- will play only a secondary role in Afghanistan to that of the United States in the war on terrorism, Gen. Dallaire said.

Canada, however, could have a major impact in the Congo, he said. "As a Middle Power, an independent nation with an ethic of respect for human rights, Canada cannot abandon these parts of the world where people are being slaughtered."

Canadian troops have been in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia for more than a decade. About 1,200 Canadian soldiers remain there. But the Bosnian job could be taken over by European countries, freeing up troops for Africa, he said.

Gen. Dallaire said Canadian troops are burning out because of frequent overseas assignments in the past decade while the government was cutting their numbers.

Halliburton, on the other hand, can do no wrong. Yes, it has a history of ripping off the government. And, yes, it's made zillions doing business in countries that sponsor terrorism, including members of the "axis of evil" that is so despised by the president.

But the wrath of the White House has not come thundering down on Halliburton for consorting with the enemy. And there's been very little public criticism. This is not some hapless singing group we're talking about. Halliburton is a court favorite. So instead of being punished for its misdeeds, it's been handed a huge share of the riches to be reaped from the reconstruction of Iraq and U.S. control of Iraqi oil.

LIEBERMAN: I mean, the fact is that promises were made and promises were kept. I mean, has Al Gore -- did Al Gore make promises in 1992? Absolutely. Did he deliver? Big time, if I may put it that way. And that's the record.

Look at the 22 million new jobs. Look at the 4 million new businesses. Look at the lower interest rates, low rate of inflation, high rate of growth.

I think if you asked most people in America today that famous question that Ronald Reagan asked, "Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?" most people would say, "Yes."

And I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago, too.

(LAUGHTER)

CHENEY: And most of it -- and I can tell you, Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

SHAW: This question's to you, but...

LIEBERMAN: I can see my wife, and I think she's thinking, "Gee, I wish he would go out into the private sector."

CHENEY: Well, I'm going to try to help you do that, Joe.

The U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) said many of the corpses had body parts missing. Rumours of militia cannibalism have been wafting around the town, but MONUC said it was not possible to know how the bodies were mutilated.

''The official death count is now over 300,'' MONUC spokesman Hamadoun Toure told reporters in Kinshasa. ''Thirty new bodies have been found on the outskirts of Bunia, decomposing altogether. Many of the bodies have had parts ripped out but it is difficult to say whether this is cannibal-style atrocities or not, as there are a lot of dogs who have been eating the bodies.''

But Liberia gets scant international attention. That negligence is a product of Liberia's peculiar history. The British took the lead in corralling international intervention for Sierra Leone, its former colony on this patch. The French have had 4,000 soldiers planted in Ivory Coast, its former colony. Liberia does not have a conventional colonial history. It was founded by freed American slaves in 1847; "the love of liberty brought us here," the Liberian coat of arms reads.

For nearly 150 years, Liberia remained a virtual American colony, and during the cold war it ranked among Washington's most useful allies. The memory of that strategic alliance sits on the outskirts of the capital. It is called the V.O.A. refugee camp, named after the Voice of America radio transmitter that once stood there.

"The end of the cold war produced a strategic disengagement, and Liberia is Exhibit A in terms of the consequences. There isn't a sense of strategic interest or a sense of historic responsibility that makes us take a more forceful stand."

Atlantic Monthly
A key American villain, to the author, was Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker, who served in President Reagan's Administration and is now chairman of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace and a professor of strategic studies at Georgetown University. Berkeley asserts that Crocker was "indispensable to tyrannies." Crocker maintained in an interview with Berkeley in 1997 that the Cold War context of the time must be considered when analyzing U.S. decisions about Africa and whom Washington chose to support. "We are talking about a time when we were damned certain that we were not going to let Liberia fall into a hostile influence," Crocker said. "We counted 25 countries where the Libyans were trying to get in." Crocker is surprisingly straight up about his views on America's strategic interests in Africa.

NY Times
Berkeley's palate is broader than Wrong's: rather than focusing on one country, he moves around Liberia, Zaire, South Africa, Sudan and Rwanda. In each he shows how leaders like Charles Taylor, in Liberia, or Sudan's Islamic leaders and rebels (a disturbing number with Ph.D.'s), hold on to power as they disregard what their people might need. Like Wrong, he lays a good deal of the blame for Africa's problems on the West: one chapter is devoted entirely to Chester A. Crocker, the top Africa official in Ronald Reagan's State Department, casting him as a distant version of the African "Big Man," on whom many lives depend. I would never in a million years tell you I was seeking what was in the best interests of Liberia," Crocker tells the author at one point, about how the United States befriended one dismal regime after another in Liberia. I was protecting the interests of Washington."

Kant argued that in order to be morally justifiable, actions had to be universalizable -- susceptible to becoming universal laws applicable to any individuals.

By contrast, the utilitarians, in their most basic form, argued that moral decisions must be judged according to whether they maximize happiness.

Administration officials have tried to justify the war ex post facto entirely on utilitarian grounds -- that is, that the war will lead to the democratization or modernization of the Arab region.

AUSTIN - One day before Democrats ended their boycott of the Texas House last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety ordered the destruction of all records and photos gathered in the search for them, documents obtained Tuesday show.

A one-sentence order sent by e-mail on the morning of May 14 was apparently carried out, a DPS spokesman said Tuesday. The revelation comes as federal authorities are investigating how a division of the federal Homeland Security Department was dragged into the hunt for the missing Democrats -- at the request of the state police agency.

Addressed to "Captains," the order said: "Any notes, correspondence, photos, etc. that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representative members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept. Any questions please contact me."

It was signed by the commander of the DPS Special Crimes Service, L.C. "Tony" Marshall.

Several Members of Congress have recently proposed offsetting the tax cuts in the Bush Economic Growth Package with something they are referring to as "revenue raisers." Unfortunately, despite the rosy image that these Members have attempted to create, the revenue raisers are, in fact, nothing more than a list of unjustifiable and unethical tax increases. One of the intended targets of the new legislation is the practice of corporate inversion. However, few Members seem to fully comprehend the issue of inversion, and media coverage of the topic has only further skewed its understanding. The confusion could have dangerous consequences if left uncontested, so it will be critical in the weeks and months ahead to raise public awareness by clarifying the truly negative effect of the tax increase proposal for corporate inversion.

Hundreds of residents of Beit Hanoun burned tires and blocked the main road Tuesday in a rare burst of anger at extremists who have prompted Israeli incursions by firing rockets from the town at Israeli targets.

In an unusual protest, about 600 Beit Hanoun residents blocked a main thoroughfare with trash cans, rocks and burning tires to show their anger at the extremists and Palestinian Authority officials.

“They (the militants) claim they are heroes,” Mohammed Zaaneen, 30, a farmer, said as he carried rocks into the street. “They brought us only destruction and made us homeless. They used our farms, our houses and our children ... to hide.”

Ethical conduct in the workplace has become increasingly important to students at leading business schools, according to a new survey, but students are worried that their study programs might teach questionable values that may later contribute to mismanagement or corporate fraud.

Reports of cannibalism circulated in troubled northeastern Congo, with terrified witnesses on Monday describing the mutilation and eating of the dead during more than week of bloody tribal fighting.

Church leaders and residents in Bunia, the capital of the Ituri district, said Monday that Lendu tribal fighters killed civilians and combatants, cutting open their chests and ripping out hearts, livers and lungs, which they ate while they were still warm.

Thursday at midnight, at least 100 House bills died automatically because no floor debate was held before the deadline. Another estimated 300 died in the Calendar Committee before they could reach the floor.

If people stand still on escalators, then why don't they stand still on stairs?

Should you peel bananas from the bottom up?

Over the next several years, the result could well be a speeded-up expansion in gambling nationally, making betting more accessible than ever before, and states and cities more dependent on the willingness of lower-income people to gamble.

Since 1991, when the current wave of legalization began, the annual amount Americans lose on all betting, including lotteries, casinos and racetracks, has risen from $27 billion to $68 billion, according to Christiansen Capital Advisors, an investment bank specializing in gambling and entertainment.

Americans now spend more on gambling than on movies, videos and DVD's, music and books combined, and with an annual growth rate of about 9 percent since 1991, gambling is growing substantially faster than the economy as a whole.

The first settlers at the apartment complex, just a few hundred metres from the Wailing Wall, include a millionaire, Irving Moskowitz, and his son-in-law Ariel King, a far-right political activist.

A new study of the art of telling political whoppers, from the cash-for-questions scandal to Bill Clinton's sex life, concludes what cynical voters have long suspected - that it is almost impossible for modern politicians to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The catch? Apparently, it is mostly the electorate's fault for asking too many questions in the first place.

'Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game,' said author Glen Newey, reader in politics at the University of Strathclyde. 'And there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game.'