The Khmer Rouge openly admired the North Korean model, which was considered correct in Democratic Kampuchea. Despite Cambodia's utter dependence on China at this point, the leaders in Phnom Penh preferred to see North Korea as its inspiration, another relatively small, rigid communist country preaching self-sufficiency and practicing a strict totalitarian control over its population.

At the same time the Khmer Rouge withdrew voluntarily from the international community - in fact from the twentieth century - as had few revolutionaries before them. They cut off international telephone, telegram, and cable connections. There was no international mail service. All regular services, save occasional flights to Beijing and Hanoi, halted. The borders were closed and mined, the maritime boundaries were patrolled. No one entered or left the country without permission under penalty of death.

Cambodians would be required to make a supreme effort; there would be no time for anything but work. Within one year the people were scattered across the country in semiautonomous fortresses that were begun in 1973. They slept in barracks, ate in canteens, gave up their young children, and worked. All else was banned: markets, money, schools, books, religion, prayer, idle hours of conversation and laughter, music. The people worked every day with rare days off for "political education." The workday began about six in the morning and could last until eight or ten in the evening. The workday, like the amount of food and quality of shelter, varied dramatically, but the common condition for the city people that first year was fatigue mixed with fear.

From the beginning the Khmer Rouge ruled by terror. They killed the leading "enemies of the revolution" in the first weeks - the former police and military figures of Lon Nol's regime and the political and bureaucratic elite of the old society. Certain professionals such as teachers, engineers, and doctors were executed in the first wave because they too were classified as dangerous counterrevolutionaries. These first executions combined with the evacuation were sufficient to fill the city people with dread and foreboding. Many had been separated from family and friends and were at the mercy of strangers who barely had adequate food for themselves. Everyone had to depend on the authorities to provide for all needs - food, clothing, medicine, dry goods, and tools. No one could afford to challenge an order or protest conditions. Anyone who did might disappear.

"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services."


"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely."

"And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. That's what I asked — 4,000 hours."

"Bring them on!"

"Rick Santorum in an inclusive man."

"Prime Minister Sharon is a man of peace."

"I'm the master of low expectations."

"You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order — order out of chaos. But we will."

"I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will."

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

"I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here."

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."

"Do you have blacks, too?"

The despotic president, indicted by a U.N. tribunal for crimes against humanity, came to power by forcibly recruiting young boys and turning them into killers. His troops manned checkpoints lined with human skulls, where the roadblocks were made out of human intestines, the disemboweled victims left by the roadside. For a decade the despot has systematically pocketed the wealth of his country, leaving his people in abject poverty. He has done millions of dollars' worth of business with al Qaeda and Hezbollah. His son is a brutal thug, feared for his executions and proclivity for kidnapping young women and raping them.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein? No, Liberia under Charles Taylor.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which drew bipartisan support and was passed unanimously by Congress yesterday, establishes a system of grants and reforms that will cost $60 million a year. The centerpiece is an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Justice that will be the most sweeping study ever made of sexual assault in prisons, congressional sponsors and criminal justice experts said.

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Unemployment Rate Drops to 6.2 Percent
Unemployment Rate Declines to 6.2 Percent in July As Competition for Jobs Recedes

Although the jobless rate dipped to a two-month low of 6.2 percent from a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June, much of decline's July represented the exodus of 470,000 discouraged people who abandoned job searches because they believed no jobs were available.

"I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. Therefore, my gambling days are over."

"So, in this case, the excessive [emphasis mine] gambling is over," he pledged....He stressed that he wasn't swearing off all wagering, telling [Sean] Hannity: "Since there will be people doing the micrometer on me, I just want to be clear. I do want to be able to bet the [Buffalo] Bills in the Super Bowl."

Bush is not folksy, folks. He's a boarding school under-achiever with a serious communication problem.

Reporters Without Borders suspended for one year from UN commission on human rights

The organisation publishes a report on the commission's accelerating decline, entitled Wheeling and dealing, incompetence and "non-action," in which it recommends a radical overhaul

Reporters Without Borders's consultative status with the United Nations commission on human rights was suspended on July 24 for one year at the request of Libya and Cuba because activists with the organisation staged a protest during the inauguration of the commission's last session in March against the decision to let Libya chair the commission.

Reporters Without Borders insists that granting the chair to Col. Gaddafi's regime has been a disgrace to the commission.

The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the body that took this decision, never invited Reporters Without Borders to explain its action. The failure to respect sanction procedures has been criticised by the French government, which lodged a request for a postponement of any decision to suspend the organisation. This suspension of one of the few press freedom organisations to have consultative status with ECOSOC is farce of the kind that increasingly characterizes the commission on human rights.

Reporters Without Borders today publishes a report which details the excesses, shortcomings and accelerating decline of this commission, which dictatorships such as Cuba and China have taken over in order to strip it of all substance.

The reports proposes a series of reforms that are essential if the commission is to be rescued : limiting the right to vote to those states that have ratified the main international human rights covenants, naming an independent human rights expert to chair the commission, and abolishing the so-called "non-action" motions that have repeatedly been used to block debates.

The results of the vote on the suspension of the consultative status of Reporters without borders :

In favour (27) : Azerbaijan, Benin, Bhutan, Brazil, Burundi, China, Congo, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Against (23) : Andorra, Australia, Chile, El Salvador, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Peru, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States.

Abstentions (4) : Argentina, Ecuador, Japan, and Senegal

Are computerized voting machines a wide-open back door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has moved from the Internet to CNN, to UK newspapers, and the pages of The New York Times. People are cautiously beginning to connect the dots, and the picture that seems to be emerging is troubling.

[edit]

This is just the tip of the iceberg of '00 and '02 election irregularities, as reported by www.votewatch.us. Either the system by which democracy exists broke that November evening, or was hacked, or American voters became suddenly more fickle than at any time since Truman beat Dewey.

Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran, was, as Republican TV ads suggested, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate, even though his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, had sat out the Vietnam war with a medical deferment.

Maybe, in the final two days of the race, those voters who'd pledged themselves to Georgia's popular incumbent Governor Roy Barnes suddenly and inexplicably decided to switch to Republican challenger Sonny Perdue.

Maybe George W. and Jeb Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates around the country really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles, but computer controlled voting or ballot-reading machines showed them winning.

Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now used to verify if elections are clean in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past few years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it.

You'd think in an open democracy that the government – answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders – would program, repair and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the actual hand-cast vote, which could be followed and audited if there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts.

You'd be wrong.

Poindexter to Leave Pentagon
In Wake of Terror-Futures Plan
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON -- The head of a Pentagon research agency is stepping down following an uproar over his efforts to help set up a futures-trading market for predicting assassinations, terrorist strikes and other upheavals in the Middle East.

John Poindexter, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, is expected to resign in a matter of weeks, a senior Defense Department official said. The office sought $8 million from Congress to help a private group set up a Policy Analysis Market as a way to provide the Defense Department with "market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events."

Lawmakers of both parties blasted the idea as ghoulish and a waste of tax money.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quickly canceled government support for it, saying "it was clear that even if it happened to have been a brilliant idea, which I doubt, it would not have been able to function in the environment that was created." The Net Exchange, the San Diego group that would have operated the market, announced that without government support, its prospects are unclear.

The flap follows another Darpa firestorm. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency proposed setting up a "Total Information Awareness" program that would have tried to identify terrorists by compiling dossiers on millions of U.S. citizens. The program since has been renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness," and its developers have pledged it won't be used to snoop on citizens.

Mr. Poindexter, a retired Navy rear admiral, served as national-security adviser during the Reagan administration and was sentenced to prison stemming from the Iran-Contra affair. His conviction was reversed on appeal. Mr. Poindexter couldn't be reached Wednesday night.

The Vatican launched a global campaign against gay marriages Thursday, warning Catholic politicians that support of same-sex unions was "gravely immoral'' and urging non-Catholics to join the offensive.

Question: Thank you, sir. Mr. President, many of your supporters believe that homosexuality is immoral. They believe that it's been given too much acceptance in policy terms and culturally. As someone who's spoken out in strongly moral terms, what's your view on homosexuality?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own. I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country. On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage. And that's really where the issue is heading here in Washington, and that is the definition of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think we ought to codify that one way or the other. And we've got lawyers looking at the best way to do that.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.

Q Mr. President, you often speak about the need for accountability in many areas. I wonder then, why is Dr. Condoleezza Rice not being held accountable for the statement that your own White House has acknowledged was a mistake in your State of the Union address regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium? And also, do you take personal responsibility for that inaccuracy?

THE PRESIDENT: I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely. I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace. And I analyzed a thorough body of intelligence -- good, solid, sound intelligence -- that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

We gave the world a chance to do it. We had -- remember there's -- again, I don't want to get repetitive here, but it's important to remind everybody that there was 12 resolutions that came out of the United Nations because others recognized the threat of Saddam Hussein. Twelve times the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions in recognition of the threat that he posed. And the difference was, is that some were not willing to act on those resolutions. We were -- along with a lot of other countries -- because he posed a threat.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person. And America is lucky to have her service. Period.

Why can't the Democrats figure out that unless it WINS one big judicial battle now, it will only embolden the conservative Republicans when a Supreme Court nomination comes up? Letting the "base" fire itself up as a way to keep them behind the Democrats is a cynical political ploy unless they are prepared to use their power to actually deliver a victory every once in a while. It's time for people who care to demand results -- and for the airwave and cable media, especially those who lean left, to stop letting the Right define the issues (Pryor's opponents are anti-Catholic bigots, etc) that the Democrats then must defend, and instead start choosing our own issues and going on the offensive with the facts. Judges are important. And the public tends to dislike the result of right-wing jurisprudence. It's an issue Democrats can win on. Why don't the highest profile Democrats understand that???????

Charles Krauthammer seeks a secretary/office manager to run his DuPont Circle office (and his life). Send resume to: KrauthammerAssoc@aol.com or call: 202/872-8109

Senate Republicans, joined by Democrats from auto-producing states, yesterday rejected a proposal to mandate a 40-mile-per-gallon fuel-economy standard for passenger cars by 2015 and then voted to direct the Transportation Department to set a new standard.

[edit]

In the debate over fuel-economy standards, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) urged senators to move the fuel-economy target up to 40 mpg to make a dent in U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The current corporate average fuel-economy standard, or CAFE, of 27.5 mpg has not been raised in 18 years.

[edit]

But Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), whose state is a major auto producer, said Durbin's amendment would trample auto-company profits, wipe out auto workers' jobs and compel consumers to buy smaller, less-safe vehicles.

Bond's proposal would require the Transportation Department to consider the impact of new fuel-economy standards on U.S. automakers and industry jobs and on consumer safety. Democrats argued that these conditions would invite lawsuits that would block any increase in the standards.

Durbin's proposal was defeated 65 to 32. Bond's measure passed 66 to 30.

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bond (R-MO)
Breaux (D-LA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Byrd (D-WV)
Campbell (R-CO)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Conrad (D-ND)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Breaux (D-LA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Byrd (D-WV)
Campbell (R-CO)
Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Conrad (D-ND)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

"According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor," he said. "According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor," he said. "It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax."
(snip)
Two of the governor's cabinet members who resigned after Riley made the proposal. One of them, Labor Commissioner Charles Bishop, now leads opposition to the tax plan, saying Alabama voters thought they were getting one kind of governor last year, but instead have another.

The package would boost the income tax threshold for a family of four to $17,000 next year. It also would offer property tax breaks to small family farms of less than 200 acres -- a category that covers most of Alabama's farms -- while mandating big increases for the 500 or so farms and timber tracts with more than 2,000 acres each. The plan is opposed by agriculture and timber groups that supported Riley's campaign, the state Republican party chairman and party steering committee, and the conservative Christian Coalition. "To give tax relief to the less fortunate is something we can all agree upon, but all families deserve tax relief," said the coalition's state president, John Giles.

The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'"

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.

[edit]

The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood.

So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January: "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.

The Congressional Record for Oct. 1, 1968, shows that 45 senators voted for cloture, 43 voted against. However, if the senators who did not vote are taken into account, we find that 48 were on record as opposing cloture, 47 as favoring it. Indeed, at least one of the senators who voted for cloture, Republican John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, said that he would vote against the Fortas nomination if it came to a vote. Another who voted for cloture proposed immediately after the vote that the president withdraw the nomination and submit a name that could be quickly confirmed. This evidence alone shows that of the 47 on record for cloture, at least one, if not more, was actually opposed to the Fortas nomination.

Perhaps that is the reason why Justice Fortas decided to ask that his nomination be withdrawn, and why President Johnson promptly complied on Oct. 4. The point is, at least 49 senators -- a majority of the 95 senators whose positions were identified in the Congressional Record -- either opposed allowing a confirmation vote or opposed confirmation on the merits. This evidence -- which suggests that, if anything, Justice Fortas might have had a majority opposed to his confirmation -- casts doubt on the likelihood that a committed plurality of 50 senators (who, with Vice President Humphrey, would have constituted a majority) would have voted for Justice Fortas's confirmation had the filibuster not prevented it.

Gray’s waltz through the historical record leaves out information that undermines his theory. In particular, we know that two of the senators who did not vote on cloture, Edward V. Long (D. Mo.) and George Smathers (D. FL), had in fact supported the Fortas nomination in the Judiciary Committee. Another senator, Thomas Dodd (D. CT), voted in favor of the nomination in the Judiciary Committee; the fact that he voted against cloture and in favor of continuing debate is no indication that he had changed his mind on the nomination itself. (See 1968 CQ Almanac, page 536.) The Dodd example alone raises questions about Gray’s apparent assumption that all senators voting against cloture would have voted against Fortas.

These three votes bring the total in support of the Fortas nomination to 49 (3 plus the 47 who either voted for or announced in support of cloture, less the vote of Senator Cooper). Add to that Senator George McGovern (D. SD) who was absent for the October 1st cloture vote, but who most certainly supported the Fortas nomination, and the tally becomes 50 votes in favor of the nomination. Even with no other votes in favor of Fortas, Vice President Hubert Humphrey would have cast the tie-breaking vote and Fortas would have been confirmed.

Pentagon terror market draws criticism
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Ken Guggenheim

July 29, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon views it as a potentially innovative way to get clues about terrorists' plans: a public, stock market-style exchange where traders can profit by correctly predicting terror attacks or assassinations in the Middle East.

Two Democratic senators say the program is useless, offensive and immoral. They are demanding that the program be stopped before investors start signing up Friday.

"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Monday.

The program is called the Policy Analysis Market. The Pentagon office overseeing it, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."

Traders would buy and sell futures contracts -- just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would be based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks.

Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.

The House took a rare swipe at two federal appeals court decisions last week, voting to stop enforcement of rulings that public schools may not recite the Pledge of Allegiance and that a courthouse may not post the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Marshals Service would not be allowed to enforce those two decisions, under amendments that were passed as part of the House's spending bill for the Commerce, Justice and State departments.

[edit]

The first Hostettler amendment, which passed 307-119, prohibits enforcement of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling last summer on the Pledge. The second amendment, adopted 260-161, prohibits enforcement of the 11th Circuit's fall ruling that the Alabama Supreme Court's chief justice may not post the Ten Commandments at the state courthouse.

Americans have become significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme Court decision that was hailed as clearing the way for new gay civil rights, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found. After several years of growing tolerance, the survey shows a return to a level of more traditional attitudes last seen in the mid-1990s. Asked whether same-sex relations between consenting adults should be legal, 48% said yes; 46% said no. Before this month, support hadn't been that low since 1996.
(snip)
Those making the biggest shifts included African-Americans. On whether homosexual relations should be legal, their support fell from 58% in May to 36% in July. Among people who attend church almost every week, support fell from 61% to 49%.

Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004.

Tribunal officials contended that Rwanda wanted her replaced to try to block several pending indictments of members of the government. Both the United States and Britain insist that they want all investigations to end by next year, and British diplomats have said that will mean dropping the Tutsi investigations. The United States, apparently concerned about stability in troubled central Africa, has privately pressed Ms. Del Ponte in recent months to drop these investigations and let the Rwandan government itself deal with them, court officials said.

"How am I a closet Democrat? I'm racist, I love guns and I hate welfare."

"I'm racist against anybody who doesn't work for a living," said Chen, whose family comes from Taiwan. "We're in Washington D.C. You can guess who that is." He's no fan of religion, but says he's less bothered about paying tax dollars to faith-based programs than to "crack whores who have eight kids because it's easier than working."

"The number one reason there's racial inequality is because of hip-hop. For young black men, it glorifies something they try to live up to, and they end up dead or in jail"

"Black people have been given a lot of chances ... And they always screw it up."

In the wake of allegations that White House officials sought to discredit an ABC News reporter to cybergossip Matt Drudge, Rep. Richard Gephardt’s (D-Mo.) presidential campaign received an intriguing phone call Friday afternoon.

A man identifying himself as “Mr. Delgado” called the Gephardt campaign’s New Hampshire office. The caller asked whether the Democrat would be attending this week’s National Urban League conference in Pittsburgh, giving the impression that he was with the league.

Given the fact that the caller’s phone number had a “703” area code, the Gephardt aide grew a bit suspicious and decided to pass the phone number on to campaign advisers in D.C.

HOH later dialed the number and quickly found out that the caller was actually Tony Delgado, an aide on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, who was trying to dig up information on Gephardt’s travel plans.

“I kind of messed up and gave them a call,” Delgado said. He acknowledged failing to reveal his affiliation to Gephardt’s camp, but insisted that he had not suggested that he was with the league.

When asked whether he was instructed by higher-ups in the Bush campaign to dig up information on various candidates, he answered, “I was doing something and I need to ...”

His voice trailed off, saying he would have to call back. He never did.

“Rule one in the opposition researcher’s handbook is, ‘Don’t use your direct line,’” cracked Gephardt spokesman Erik Smith.

But Smith was cheered by the fact that the Bushie fessed up. “Two and a half years into the Bush presidency, maybe the Responsibility Era has begun.”