According to a recent report by Amnesty International, as many as 1,000 human-rights violators from around the world live in the United States. Like the former Nazis who made headlines in the 1970s and '80s, most of them lead quiet lives on suburban culs-de-sac and in gated retirement communities. One Haitian general implicated in the murder of hundreds of opposition members got a job at Disney World.

But unlike former Nazis -- who for decades have been subject to a concerted federal effort to find and deport them -- most retired torturers have little to fear from the U.S. government. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has stepped up efforts to deport those who violate immigration law, but the agency says it cannot expel people on human-rights grounds alone. And while the Justice Department is charged by law with prosecuting human-rights violators in the criminal courts, the department has not filed a single such case. Which means that as long as they keep their heads down and their visas current, most former torturers can live in the United States, comfortably, for as long as they choose.

An exhibit of Christian art in a U.S. Senate office building sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has drawn criticism that the display creates the impression of government-supported advocacy of one religion over another.

President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary justification for going to war.

In remarks to Polish television at a time of mounting criticism at home and abroad that the more than two-month-old weapons hunt is turning up nothing, Bush said that claims of failure were "wrong." The remarks were released today.

"You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons," Bush said in an interview before leaving today on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East. "They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two.

"And we'll find more weapons as time goes on," Bush said. "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

"Can anyone imagine a State Department more out of sync with [President] Bush's views and objectives? The president should demand a complete overhaul of the State Department so it is capable of executing his policy goals effectively and of redefining peace on his own terms."

During one of the 2000 Presidential debates, the moderator, Jim Lehrer, raised the issue of Rwanda. “There was no U.S. intervention,” he said. Then he asked George W. Bush, “Was that a mistake?” In a rare show of solidarity with the Clinton White House, Bush answered, “I think the Administration did the right thing in that case. I do. It was a horrible situation. No one liked to see it on our—you know, on our TV screens. But . . . they made the right decision not to send U.S. troops into Rwanda.” In the run-up to the Iraq war, it appeared that Bush had changed his mind. Speaking on Al Jazeera television, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice dismissed the U.N.’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq by reminding her interviewer, “The U.N. Security Council could not act when in Rwanda there was a genocide that cost almost a million lives. There was a very poignant statement by the President of Rwanda recently when he said sometimes the Security Council is not right when it does not act. President Bush believes that, too.” And, lest the mantle of the memory of Rwanda’s dead be wasted on only Arab audiences, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, struck the same note: “From a moral point of view, as the world witnessed in Rwanda . . . the U.N. Security Council will have failed to act once again.” The disingenuousness of these remarks lies, of course, in the fact that it was the United States that prevented the Security Council from acting during the Rwandan genocide, even though no American troops were ever involved or required for the U.N. force there.

In a chilling reminder of how Rwandans were incited to commit genocide in 1994, an ethnic militia group in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo began broadcasting hate messages yesterday.

Candip Radio said Hema militia will use force to dislodge civilians seeking refuge in the UN mission in the regional centre of Bunia, where fighting between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups has left hundreds dead and driven thousands from their homes.

The broadcast recalled how Hutu extremists in Rwanda used Radio Mille Collines to urge the slaughter of the country's minority Tutsis, resulting in 800,000 mainly Tutsi deaths.

International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

The Bush administration is pushing to limit the ability of foreign nationals to obtain judgments against despots and multinational corporations in U.S. courts, arguing that such lawsuits have become a threat to U.S. foreign policy and could undermine the war on terrorism.

For the past 23 years, federal courts have allowed victims of torture and other abuse to file claims under an obscure 1789 statute for violations of human rights norms, commonly known as the Alien Tort Claims Act....But the Justice Department, reflecting an emerging view among conservative legal scholars, argues in a 30-page brief filed this month that such lawsuits frequently have no connection to the United States and may complicate foreign policy objectives by targeting allies, including nations helping in the war on terrorism....

Supporters of the law said that it enables people to enforce rights guaranteed them under international agreements such as the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party. Ending or severely limiting such lawsuits would deprive victims of political torture and murder of one of the few legal remedies they have, advocates say.

"This is a craven attempt to protect human rights abusers at the expense of victims," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "The Bush administration is trying to overturn a longstanding judicial precedent that has been very important in the protection of human rights."

"When an officer looked around outside via the periscope, he noted that his sub was being stalked by a hostile polar bear," the Navy reported on its news Web site.

President Bush has seen more of his appeals court nominees confirmed by the Senate at this point in his term than any other president since at least the 1970s, despite Democratic filibusters against two nominees.

The Senate has confirmed 24 of Mr. Bush's appellate nominees in his first 29 months in office.

By comparison, the first President Bush saw 23 confirmed, and President Clinton saw 22 confirmed, at the same point in their presidencies.

Republicans say those numbers are misleading because Mr. Bush has nominated so many more judges than his predecessors because of both existing vacancies and recent expansion of the federal courts.

The U.S.-led "war on terror" has made the world more dangerous and left people feeling less secure, Amnesty International said Wednesday. In its annual report, the international human rights organization said that human rights have been threatened, international laws have been undermined and governments have been shielded from scrutiny — all in the cause of fighting terrorism.

Q: I have two questions for you, Ari. It has to do with Amnesty International had a press conference today in Washington. And it's accusing the United States of many things specifically. It says, while the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has brought greater freedom for the Iraqi people, the politics and destruction within Iraq have unintended negative consequences for millions of people worldwide. Regardless of how much greater liberty Iraqis may eventually realize, the Bush's administration war in Iraq has contributed to diminishing human rights for millions of others worldwide. While billions were spent to dethrone Saddam Hussein, dictators and rebels elsewhere wreaked havoc on millions of people across the globe, with little attention and even less condemnation from the U.S. government or the international community. That's a charge --

MR. FLEISCHER: I think that as the world increasingly sees the brutality, the horrors that Saddam Hussein carried out against his own people, the unearthing of mass graves, that Amnesty International can invest considerable portions of its time and its reputation to discussing Saddam Hussein's tortures and what he has done to the Iraqi people. And I think the world is rejoicing in the fact that thanks to the efforts of the coalition, millions of people who were previously imprisoned are now free.

Q: And the second charge. It says that the United States continued to breach fundamental human rights of more than 600 detainees held in the U.S. navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It also speaks of the continuing legal limbo in which all Guantanamo detainees have been held, who have neither been recognized by the U.S. as prisoners of war, nor allowed any means of challenging the legality of their detention before a court.

MR. FLEISCHER: I just dismiss that as without merit. The prisoners in Guantanamo are being treated humanely. They're receiving medical care, they're receiving food. They're receiving far better treatment than they received in the life that they were living previously. And it's a reminder, also, that these people are terrorists who still want to wreak harm and havoc on the United States and our people. They are very dangerous people.

The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the US Treasury that shows America faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totalling at least $44 trillion in current US dollars.

The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the US government is threatened with being overwhelmed by the future healthcare and retirement costs of the "baby boomer" generation, was commissioned by Paul O'Neill, then Treasury secretary.

But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for the 2004 fiscal year, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim sets the US on course for bigger deficits.

The study's chief conclusion is that sharp and permanent tax increases or massive spending cuts - or a combination of both - are unavoidable if the US is to meet the healthcare and retirement benefits promised to future generations.

[An] agreement has been reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency to send its experts to secure the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, a nuclear storage site 30 miles south of Baghdad that had been under IAEA seal for years. The site has been looted by Iraqis, and U.S. military teams found high levels of radiation there.

But the agreement restricts the IAEA to a small area within the facility, and specifically prohibits the agency's emergency teams from investigating reports that some of the material has been removed and may be causing radiation sickness in some local communities.

The administration has also rejected the readmission into Iraq of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which had responsibility for finding chemical and biological weapons, as well as production facilities.

U.S. troops have found no sign of bodies or even a bunker at the site where intelligence had said Saddam Hussein was sleeping on the war's opening night, a senior officer said Thursday.

Quote of the Month: "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape," says Grover Norquist, GOP strategist and head of Americans for Tax Reform, according to an article yesterday in the Denver Post. "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."

Rep. Charlie Stenholm, a conservative Democrat best known for siding with President Reagan against the liberals of the Democratic caucus in the 1980s, was left sputtering last week at DeLay's tactics. Complaining about a breakdown of trust and civility in the House, he asked, "Who is causing it in the House of Representatives? The same person or persons who are causing it in the Texas Legislature."

Stenholm's ire is explainable. The GOP can live with urban liberals such as Waters, Norquist said; it's moderates such as Stenholm who are its prime targets. If the Texas redistricting plan is adopted, Norquist said, "it is exactly the Stenholms of the world who will disappear, ... the moderate Democrats. They will go so that no Texan need grow up thinking that being a Democrat is acceptable behavior."

Earlier climate models looked at a limited set of factors and often measured changes in the ocean and on land separately. The new approach, developed at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, UK, accounts for as many influences as possible, including volcanoes belching out millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, fluctuations in the Sun's activity as well as changing levels of greenhouse gas and ozone. It also allows oceans to affect the land, and vice versa.

Of all the big lies out there, the one that corporate executives' pay is linked to the performance of their companies takes the prize. No matter how much of the shareholders' wealth goes down the drain, the hired hands in the executive suite keep pocketing preposterous pay and insisting that it is based on results.

They have a reason for keeping the myth alive. If an executive's pay exceeds $1 million, companies receive a tax deduction only if the pay is performance-based.

Abdulkhalil was arrested in the fields of Uzbekistan's Ferghana valley in August last year. The 28-year-old farmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison for "trying to overthrow the constitutional structures".

Last week his father saw him for the first time since that day on a stretcher in a prison hospital. His head was battered and his tongue was so swollen that he could only say that he had "been kept in water for a long time".

Abdulkhalil was a victim of Uzbekistan's security service, the SNB. His detention and torture were part of a crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamist group.

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique" received $79m of this sum.

Fighting for Federalism - Pryor's 2001 remarks to the Atlanta chapter of the Federalist Society, and

The Demand for Clarity: Federalism, Statutory Construction, and the 2000 Term - written in 2001 for the Federalism Project of the American Enterprise Institute

For months, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security have advocated increasing the number of visa interviews. The Homeland Security Department now has jurisdiction over visa policy.

But many in U.S. diplomatic circles strongly opposed the new rules, in part because applicants already must wait three months or more for visas in many locations. The cable announcing the policy change warned that the additional interviews must be handled "using existing resources" and without offering overtime hours to employees.

Foreign posts "should develop appointment systems and public-relations strategies to mitigate as much as possible the impact of these changes," the cable read.

Business and tourism leaders said that while they applaud the goal of improved security, the State Department could cause serious economic damage if it does not provide sufficient staff to handle demand. Higher education groups have expressed alarm that the rules could reduce travel by instructors and students from overseas.

Jack Connors, executive vice president for public policy at the American Hotel & Lodging Association, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that "if the proposed requirement is implemented without significant increases in staffing at our consulates, there will be severe backlogs causing a sharp decrease in business and tourist travel to the United States."

The group said in a statement yesterday that "unfortunately, it appears that the State Department is moving ahead in implementing the regulation without devoting the necessary resources."

It is time for Congress to consider amending the Judiciary Act to provide once more for just a single category of judges below the Supreme Court. Call all these jurists simply "Article III judges" or U.S. judges. Most of the time they would sit as trial judges, but for, say, three months a year they would be assigned to appellate panels. Congress could require a minimum of five years' trial court experience before an Article III judge became eligible to hear appeals.

The payoff, for Congress, for the judiciary and for the American people, would be the virtual elimination of partisan politics from the judicial appointment process -- or at least the dispersion of political fire across a broad field of nominees, none of whom could be assigned to an appellate case until after five years (and then only periodically). The concerns that have given rise to the political obstruction of judicial appointments in recent years would melt away.

The president should invite Senate Democrats to pull back from the brink. The best way to do that might be an informal compromise along these lines: Bush would promise to consult seriously with Democratic senators before making any judicial nomination, as the Constitution's "advice and consent" clause contemplates. In addition, in light of the Senate's slim Republican majority, he would pledge not to try to swing the [Supreme] Court's ideological balance by naming a strong conservative to replace any of the four liberal or two centrist justices who may retire during this Congress.

These Bush pledges would be conditioned on a commitment by Democratic leaders to end their current filibusters and not to filibuster any other judicial nominees on ideological grounds as long as Bush keeps his part of the bargain. Bush could make the deal more palatable by giving a bit of ground to the Democrats who seek access to Miguel Estrada's internal memos from when he worked in the solicitor general's office.

Nearly a quarter-century after the revolution, economic failure and a bankrupt ideology have discredited the Islamic Republic. Despite the attention paid to a clash between "reformers" and "conservatives" in the government, the real story in Iran is the growing discontent among the generation born after 1979. This "Third Force" will eventually topple the regime, and the United States should just watch and wait.