Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice claim that the CIA signed off on the 2003 State of the Union claim about Iraq's effort to obtain African uranium. Yet, oddly, the CIA claims to have told Great Britain not to use that information four months before the SOTU. Indeed, it appears the CIA knew the information was bogus because Dick Cheney had asked them to check it out, and they did -- a year before the SOTU.

George Bush did not know the information was bad, according to Colin Powell's remarks, until a few days after the SOTU, just before Powell omitted mention of it in his presentation to the UN the following week.

Therefore, the official story seems to be this

Dick Cheney asks Joseph Wilson, through the CIA, to go to Africa to verify the uranium claim in February of 2002. The CIA concludes the story to be bogus and tells Britain not to use the information later that fall. On January 29, 2003, the CIA gives a green light to Bush to make the claim in the SOTU. But within one week, the Bush Administration concludes on their own that maybe the story is flawed. Bush finally admits that the intelligence was bogus - five months and one war later.

Sounds plausible.

Looks like the new tack for defense is offense: the Bush administration is now attempting to deflect criticism directly onto CIA Director George Tenet

"The CIA cleared the speech. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," [National Security Advisor Condoleeza] Rice said, en route to Uganda.

"If the CIA -- the director of central intelligence -- had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said.

With a name like the Securities Fraud Deterrence and Investor Restitution Act of 2003, given the Orwellian labelling of bills by the conservatives in the House, you know that H.R. 2179 approved by a House panel is bad news.

See the New York Times

The federalism hypocrisy of conservatives just marches on with this bill. The core of the bill is a mandate that the Securities and Exchange Commission, rather than possessing concurrent enforcement powers with states to defend consumers from investment fraud by brokerage firms, would now have monopoly rulemaking power. Essentially, if the Bush administration wants to leave the analysts who lied to investors about Enron alone, the states would be powerless to defend against fraud. All of the work that New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer did in uncovering fraud by Wall Street investment banks would have impossible with this bill in effect.

Even worse, what the bill also says is that if Wall Street passes a rule policing itself through the New York Stock Exchange, and the federal SEC has not passed a contrary rule, no state can enforce a tougher rule on behalf of consumer protection.

Essentially, this is preemption of state power by private dealmaking among corporations.

It's Not About Federalism, It's about Protecting Corporate Crime

The president's critics are lying. Mr. Bush never claimed that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. It is not true — as USA Today reported on page one Friday morning — that "tainted evidence made it into the President's State of the Union address." For the record, here's what President Bush actually said in his SOTU: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Precisely which part of that statement isn't true? The British government did say that it believed Saddam had sought African uranium.

Every summer, the stories come. And the tiny bodies pile up. "Toddler trapped in hot van dies." "Kids die from heat in SUV." "Baby boy dies in hot van."

...in what seems an increasingly common trend, too many of these horrible deaths share a common denominator: day care.

[edit]

I believe Dakota, Nehemiah, David, Amber, Brandon, Darnecia, Dominique, Zaniyah, Chloe and Alan are not merely victims of isolated day-care accidents. They are also symptoms of a culture where parents treat children as disposable as their diapers. Some of these kids probably spent more of their brief lives in their deadly car seats than they did in their own parents' laps.

It is absolutely unfathomable to me that anyone could leave a child forgotten in a car, like an old umbrella or a fast-food wrapper. But then again, we live in an age where teens dump their newborns in toilets and junkies sell their offspring for drugs and "liberated" women pick up and drop off their kids at day care as nonchalantly as their dry cleaning.

The Pentagon's new estimate that military costs for Iraq would average $3.9 billion monthly for the first nine months of this year produced surprise and anger today among Congressional Democrats, who said the amount was not only more than they had been told, but far too large given the budget deficit.

[edit]

The Pentagon comptroller today stood by the concepts that produced the initial estimate in April that military costs would average just over $2 billion monthly, and said he had kept Congress informed of increases, testifying in early June that estimates of war costs had exceeded $3 billion monthly.

"What is now clear is that there are those in this administration that misled the president, misled the nation, and misled the world in making the case for the war in Iraq. They know who they are. And they should resign today."

In a stunning decision Thursday, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the Legislature needs only a simple majority to pass record tax increases to balance the state budget and fund education.

The decision sets aside the state constitutional amendment requiring at least two-thirds support of lawmakers to pass tax increases. The justices ruled that the need to fund public schools, another constitutional requirement, took precedence over the need to approve tax increases by a two-thirds supermajority.

U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 4 years

Iraq police tell U.S. troops to stay away

The other shoe dropped in the publishing and pontificating businesses yesterday. Not the one you talk about eating, but the one you eat.

First, it was announced that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoir, "Living History," sold one million copies in its first month, according to its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

This meant that Tucker Carlson, a co-host of the CNN program "Crossfire," would have to make good on his promise last month: "If they sell a million copies of this book, I'll eat my shoes and my tie. I will."

His co-hosts were still just warming up with the jokes on yesterday's "Crossfire." What kind of shoe, Tucker? Will you use sauce?

That's when the senator herself popped on the set, in Washington, with a giant brown shoe made of chocolate cake.

"It's a right-wing wingtip," Mrs. Clinton said to loud applause. She gave him a copy of the memoir, signed: "Tucker, you're number one million in my book."

"It was a trip," Mr. Carlson said in an interview later. "I had no idea she was coming. My producer had said: `We're changing the segment. Ignore your scripts.' I said: `Well, gee, Sam, it's live television. I'd kind of like to know.' Next thing I know, this woman who looks exactly like Hillary Clinton is standing there."

[edit]

Mr. Carlson, who called the book "kind of dopey, kind of Midwestern-fifth-grade-girl-scout-leader," said he was impressed with Mrs. Clinton in person.

"I'm easily charmed in general and I'm particularly won over by witty inscriptions, and she had a good inscription," he said. "If Pol Pot came on the show and was charming and witty and good humored and had a good inscription, I'd say, `Well, Pol Pot, charming guy.' "

"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on September 11th."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld summarily dismissed Iraq's June 9 [2002] statement that it doesn't have weapons of mass destruction and isn't developing them.

"They're lying. It's just false, not true, inaccurate and typical," Rumsfeld said of the Iraqi statement in response to a reporter's question shortly before leaving Kuwait this morning. He said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and continues to "weaponize" chemical weapons and to work to develop biological and nuclear weapons. "I don't know what other kinds of weapons would fall in the group of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "But if there are more, I suspect (the Iraqis are) working on them as well."

The state Education Department tried to cover up lax oversight of a corporate tax credit voucher program that channels $88 million to private schools, a top department official has charged in a whistle-blower complaint.

The whistle-blower, Robert Metty, was relieved of his duties as director of scholarship programs for the Department of Education's Choice Office after complaining of a "conspiracy" to falsify records concerning the financial state of some schools receiving the vouchers.

Metty's new job is updating a manual to conform to a federal law that has not been written yet.

New material emerging from secret archives opened in Moscow and Eastern bloc capitals is shedding light, mostly unfavorable, on the question of whether handing out aid to North Korea can buy any meaningful compliance.

[edit]

Reports filed by diplomats stationed in Pyongyang show how the North Koreans managed to frustrate most efforts by the Soviets or the Chinese to control and influence Kim Il Sung's behavior, both his economic policies and his attempts to start a second Korean conflict.

[edit]

"Whenever they had to be, they made some superficial reforms to please their donors and get assistance," Szalontai says.

As would happen time and again, the adjustment was only temporary.

MR. FLEISCHER: I think the American people continue to express their support for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein based on just cause, knowing that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons that were unaccounted for that we're still confident we'll find. I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are. We know he had them in the '90s, he used them. So just because they haven't yet been found doesn't mean they didn't exist. The burden is on the critics to explain where the weapons of mass destruction are. If they think they were destroyed, the burden is on them to explain when he destroyed them and where he destroyed them.

Charles Taylor, the Liberian president who has been indicted by an international court for crimes against humanity, has few remaining supporters in the United States. But one prominent American who has stuck with the West African leader is religious broadcaster and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

In recent broadcasts of his cable TV show "The 700 Club," watched by an estimated 1 million households, Robertson has defended Taylor as a fellow Baptist and Liberia's "freely elected" leader. The "horrible bloodbath" taking place in Liberia, he has repeatedly said, is the fault of the State Department.

"So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,' " Robertson said to his viewers on Monday.

What Robertson, 73, has not discussed in these broadcasts is his financial interest in Liberia. In an interview yesterday, he said he has "written off in my own mind" an $8 million investment in a gold mining venture that he made four years ago under an agreement with Taylor's government.

"During a stop [during the 1960s] in Alabama, [White] called a white operator 'baby' while phoning home. Moments later, the police pulled up next to his phone booth and threatened him with jail if he did it again."

"in mid-'60s Alabama he was nearly thrown in jail for doing over the phone the same thing that had gotten Emmett Till murdered when he did it in person just a few years before."

As Time tells it: "Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, 'Are you in charge of finding WMD?' Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. 'Who?' Bush asked."

107th - 1st Session

8 - Ashcroft Confirmation - Nay
103 - Reduce Class Size - Yea
165 - Tax Cut - Nay
313 - USA Patriot Act - Yea
359 - Protect US Personnel from International Criminal Court - Yea
360 - No Pay Raise - Yea

107th - 2nd Session
31 - Restore Felon Voting Rights - Nay
44 - Corporate Tax Breaks - Yea
48 - Prohibit Increasing Fuel Standards for SUVs - Yea
54 - Campaign Finance Reform - Yea
102 - Support of Israel - Yea
103 - Farm Subsidies Bill - Yea
108 - Paul Cassell Nomination - Yea
140 - American Servicemembers' Protection Act - Yea
163 - Pledge Support - Yea
166 - Pledge Support - Yea
192 - Sarbanes-Oxley Act - Yea
201 - Greater Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals - Yea
202 - Brooks Smith Confirmation - Yea
232 - Bryd - Termination Date on Authorization/Iraq - Nay
237 - War Powers and Iraq - Yea
242 - Table No Pay Raise Amendment - Nay
245 - Cut perks in Homeland Security Bill - Yea

President Bush made an eloquent speech but did not win many friends during his brief visit to Goree Island off Senegal on Tuesday.

"We are very angry. We didn't even see him," said Fatou N'diaye, a necklace seller watching dignitaries file past to return to the mainland at the end of Bush's tour.

N'diaye and other residents of Goree, site of a famous slave trading station, said they had been taken to a football ground on the other side of the quaint island at 6 a.m. and told to wait there until Bush had departed, around midday.

School administrators forced several eighth-grade students to undergo tests for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases after they attended a party, the New York Civil Liberties Union claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday with federal court in Manhattan.

"From the very beginning my organization and I were making the case that intervention was justified based just on the problem of human rights," May said, "and I think that argument has been strengthened by the end of the military phase of the war, as we have been finding mass graves adjacent to nearly every large town with the bodies of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who were executed for what Saddam Hussein perceived to be political crimes or opposition to him."

[edit]

"Right now I believe we are on the verge of sending troops to Liberia not because we think Charles Taylor has weapons of mass destruction but because it is a human rights situation," May said. "It is hard for me to understand how anybody who opposed our intervention in Iraq can now be in favor of it in Liberia. The only substantial difference is we had a direct national security interest in Iraq and at best only indirect national security interest in Liberia."

Q Yes, Mr. President. Do you regret that your State of the Union accusation that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa is now fueling charges that you and Prime Minister Blair misled the public? And then, secondly, following up on Zimbabwe, are you willing to have a representative meet with a representative of the Zimbabwe opposition leader, who sent a delegation here, and complained that he did not think Mr. Mbeki could be an honest broker in the process?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I think Mr. Mbeki can be an honest broker, to answer the second question.

The first question is, look, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind. And so there's going to be a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I am absolutely confident in the decision I made.

Q Do you still believe they were trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Right now?

Q No, were they? The statement you made --

PRESIDENT BUSH: One thing is for certain, he's not trying to buy anything right now. If he's alive, he's on the run. And that's to the benefit of the Iraqi people. But, look, I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program. In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon. Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence. And in 2003, after the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him. And I'm convinced the world is a much more peaceful and secure place as a result of the actions.

Thank you all very much.

GOP bucks states' rights: Evidence shows in amendment targeting gay marriage

Last week, U.S. Senate Majority Leader William Frist, R-Tenn., endorsed a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage under federal and state law. His comments received much attention, as they should have, given his fumbling attempt to explain why the Supreme Court's decision striking down anti-sodomy laws somehow "encroached upon" a "zone of privacy."

But his support for this amendment deserves attention for another reason. It illustrated the longstanding difficulty that the issue of "states' rights" has caused for political conservatives.

For decades, conservatives donning the mantle of federalism have urged respect for the sovereign rights of the states. This was the mantra of Strom Thurmond when he became the first presidential candidate of the segregationist States' Rights Party. And it was the theory of Alabama Gov. George Wallace when, 40 years ago last month, he proclaimed that the forced integration of southern schools amounted to "illegal usurpation of power by the Central Government."

In recent years, this issue has achieved renewed prominence. Under the auspices of the Contract with America, a Republican Congress pledged to reform "unfunded mandates" -- that is, federal requirements imposed on states, yet unaccompanied by federal dollars. The conservative establishment advocated the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education. President George W. Bush himself proclaimed that he would "make respect for federalism a priority," and created an "Interagency Working Group on Federalism." The conservative wing of the Supreme Court, by identical and repeated 5-4 votes, has declared that it would "affront" the states' "dignity" for a state government employee to sue a state employer for violating the employee's civil rights.

In one forum after another, whenever progressive ideals have been advanced, the response has been that an overweening federal government has taken power that rightfully belongs to the states.

The fact is, this purported respect for the states' sovereignty is bluster at best, and rank hypocrisy at worst.

The examples of Republican willingness to meddle in state affairs pile up daily, and the record is long. The Bush administration's education plan institutes a nationwide regime of standardized testing for public schools, yet fails to pay for it -- a classic unfunded mandate. Federalism be damned.

The Bush Department of Justice has aggressively prosecuted the medical use of marijuana in California, despite a state voter initiative legalizing the practice. And it has repeatedly sought to prevent physician-assisted suicide in Oregon -- Attorney General John Ashcroft went so far as to order the Drug Enforcement Administration to prosecute doctors who engage in it -- despite two state initiatives approving the practice. (Indeed, then-Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., claimed that preventing this practice was "more important" than federalism.)

Now comes the Federal Marriage Amendment. This proposed constitutional change was introduced earlier this year by U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., and has now been endorsed by Frist. In a terse 51 words it lays bare the claimed Republican concern for federalism:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

Not only would this amendment create a uniform national definition of marriage ("the union of a man and a woman"), it would also forbid the states from recognizing any other form of marriage. To be clear: This Republican-supported constitutional amendment would prevent any state from recognizing same-sex unions, even within its own borders. Indeed, it would appear to prevent states from conferring medical benefits upon same-sex spouses.

Federalism, where are you now?

Leave aside for a moment the fact that no state currently recognizes same-sex marriage, and that only Vermont even recognizes same-sex civil unions. The mere threat that Massachusetts might do so -- a case is currently pending before that state's highest court -- is enough for Republican lawmakers to cast aside the thin veil of federalism. Their hypocrisy is all the more pronounced, given that, perhaps more than any other subject, marriage has traditionally been the province of the states. As soon as states show signs of straying too far from the conservative agenda, the GOP concern over states' rights evaporates.

If the Republican leadership wishes to maintain even a trace of credibility on the issue of federalism, it should roundly denounce the Federal Marriage Amendment. The president's statement last week that he doesn't know if such an amendment "is necessary yet" simply does not remove the taint of hypocrisy.

If Massachusetts or any other state wishes to recognize gay marriage, it has every right to do so: morally, legally, and constitutionally.

Frist the Tennessean and Musgrave the Coloradan may disagree -- but that should be the end of it. If the Right wants federalism, they must embrace it for all purposes, not just when it serves their ideological goals.

The leaders of a federal commission investigating the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, complained today that they had encountered "particularly serious" problems in obtaining materials from the Defense Department and lesser delays from some other government departments that could threaten the panel's work.

The commission's chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, also said that the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security were moving too slowly to permit the panel to conclude its report by May 2004, as required by its Congressional mandate.

Mr. Kean said that commission members were unhappy that some agencies — they cited the Justice Department in particular — had insisted on having monitors present at all commission interviews with their respective officials. That can foster a chilling sense of "intimidation" among witnesses, Mr. Kean said.

The chairman also said that the Justice Department had failed to provide needed cooperation regarding the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.

The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt's New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.

The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.

Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.

NJ: Your first trip back to Washington was for a dinner last month that focused on AIDS in Africa. What does the AIDS issue mean to you?

Helms: This is a crisis we're gonna fail and we can flunk mighty easily if we don't do the right thing. We can cause a lot of distress here at home as well, because Africa is not alone in having a marked increase in AIDS cases. We've got a problem on our hands in this country as a result of a lot of homosexual activity.

NJ: What more can we be doing to prevent AIDS?

Helms: Probably the most important thing is to realize that it is an item that ought to be in the federal budget. It had better be important to everybody in every country of the world. It is a matter we cannot pass away. All of us ought to stand up and say it needs to be solved somehow. Whatever it takes.

NJ: Because so many people are dying?

Helms: The rapid spread by homosexuals and others -- and people who contract the disease completely innocently -- like wives who get it from a husband who has been cavorting around.

NJ: You mentioned twice that it's spread by homosexual activity.

Helms: Well, that's the primary cause. They don't like for that to be said, but it happens to be the truth. They cannot escape their role in the spread of AIDS. I'm not going to sit here and attack homosexuals. I don't like that lifestyle, I confess, and I don't think many people do. But it is a dangerous lifestyle, particularly at this time. It's not enough for them to go on the defensive about it, but to recognize they are the primary source for the spread of AIDS.

There was a time when conservatives fought passionately to preserve America as a limited constitutional republic. That was, in fact, the essence of conservatism. It's one reason Franklin Roosevelt's vast expansion of government through the New Deal aroused such bitter opposition on the right.

But many conservative activists seem to have lost that philosophical commitment. They now advocate autocratic executive rule, largely unconstrained by constitutional procedures or popular opinions.

This curious attitude is evident in the conservative response to the gnawing question: Where are Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? A surprising number of conservatives respond: So what?

[edit]

Conservatives' lack of interest in the WMD question takes an even more ominous turn when combined with general support for presidential warmaking. Republicans - think President Eisenhower, for instance - once took seriously the requirement that Congress declare war. These days, however, Republican presidents and legislators, backed by conservative intellectuals, routinely argue that the chief executive can unilaterally take America into war.

Thus, in their view, once someone is elected president, he or she faces no legal or political constraint. The president doesn't need congressional authority; Washington doesn't need UN authority. Allied support is irrelevant. The president needn't offer the public a justification for going to war that holds up after the conflict ends. The president may not even be questioned about the legitimacy of his professed justification. Accept his word and let him do whatever he wants, irrespective of circumstances.

This is not the government created by the Founders. This is not the government that any believer in liberty should favor.
It is foolish to turn the Iraq war, a prudential political question, into a philosophical test for conservatism. It is even worse to demand unthinking support for Bush. He should be pressed on the issue of WMD - by conservatives. Fidelity to the Constitution and republican government demands no less.

While Mr. Bush cited the British report, seemingly giving the account the credibility of coming from a non-American intelligence service, Britain itself relied in part on information provided by the C.I.A., American and British officials have said.

Ms. Coulter's work includes an admiring if brief biography of [Sen. Joe] McCarthy's political career. One that for some reason excludes the senator's remarkable efforts on behalf of the members of the SS battle group who executed 86 American POWs in the Ardennes campaign in December 1944; otherwise known as the Malmedy Massacre. In his impassioned efforts on behalf of the accused--one never to be repeated in his investigative career--the senator charged that the U.S. Army had cruelly mistreated the former SS men.

All things considered, Sen. McCarthy's reputation would be hard to refurbish, but give Ms.Coulter credit for an all-out effort. The senator--who knew something about the art of outrage merchandising--would have understood the latest of his public advocates.

...the citation borders on the subversive. If the authority of extra-national courts is held to be even partially dispositive in the United States (especially without a formal treaty yielding a specific measure of American sovereignty on a particular issue), then the same foreign authority cited in supposed defense of liberty could be cited to take an American individual's liberty away.

Rather than going down the endless road of a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, as we failed to do, in protecting the flag, Congress should re-enact the Defense of Marriage Act, restricting marriage to men and women, and add this provision: "This law is not subject to review by the U.S. Supreme Court."

As Hatch's seniority has increased, his willingness to be a reflexive ally of the Right has diminished. His shift is reflected in National Journal's annual ratings of lawmakers, which shows that in 1981 and 1982, Hatch was among the five most conservative senators, compared with 2002, when he didn't even make the list of the top-20 most conservative members.

Hatch says he hasn't changed, but the makeup of the Senate has. "Over the last, I'd say, 15 years, the conservatives have gone even further to the right than ever... but that hasn't changed me. I'm still right there on all the important conservative issues," he said.

Calling himself the most independent among the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday that his party needs a balanced, centrist candidate if it is to take back the White House.

"If we nominate a candidate who is anti-tax-cut, pro-big-spending and weak-on-defense, it's a ticket to nowhere for the Democratic party and I want to go somewhere," he said during a campaign stop at the home of Mayor Walter Hoerman.

Speaking to about 70 supporters, the Connecticut senator said his moderate position is evidenced by his backing of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of tax cuts in select cases and his support of the latest prescription drug legislation.

President Bush sets out for Africa this week to stress his conviction in the battle against AIDS, and efforts to encourage economic growth, trade and good governance where it is badly needed. The trip, which in many ways echoes the themes of predecessor Bill Clinton, represents a turnaround from 2001, when candidate George Bush made it clear that Africa was not really on his radar. Now Bush says he wants to send the message to Africa that Americans care. He also has a new motivation to make friends on the continent: oil.

US troops facing extended deployments amid the danger, heat, and uncertainty of an Iraq occupation are suffering from low morale that has in some cases hit "rock bottom."

Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq.

Wilson, whose 23-year career included senior positions in Africa and Iraq, where he was acting ambassador in 1991, said the false allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger about three years ago were used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

"It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," Wilson said yesterday. "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?"