With a budget of $3 million, the campaign is consuming much of the $4.5 million the civil liberties union typically spends on advertising in a year.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the group, said the decision to spend so much on one effort reflected a belief that disaffection with the Bush administration and its policies was growing, and that opportunities to gain new support and members were growing along with it.

"It's essential to talk to the American people now," Mr. Romero said, "because there is a beginning of a debate and a dialogue at the grass roots."

Riley's display includes a plaque of the commandments that the Spirit of Montgomery, a group of Montgomery pastors, presented to him, along with a series of other historic documents.

The state Historical Commission installed the panel display in the old Supreme Court library room in the Capitol. Riley said it is similar to displays in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol and it has the blessing of Attorney General Bill Pryor.

"Visitors to Montgomery can now read and learn about those historical documents upon which our system of laws rests. I invite everyone to come and visit the Foundation of Our Laws exhibit," Riley said.

The display includes not only the Ten Commandments but also the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence, all part of the foundations of American law.

"To put things around the Ten Commandments and secularize it is to deny the greatness of God."

National Review Online recently invited Timothy Lynch, who directs Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, to write a column about Attorney General John Ashcroft's speaking tour in defense of the Patriot Act. That article can be found here. One week later, National Review Online published an article in response to Lynch, which was authored by Barbara Comstock, who serves as the director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. Tim Lynch submitted the following response to the editors of National Review Online, but they declined to publish it. To help further discussion and debate over the important issues involved, we publish it here.

What a miserable performance. They didn't even MENTION illegal immigration, which is having a devastating effect on wages down at the low end of the job market, as documented in this UCLA study. Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone mentioned 9/11, either. It certainly wasn't a prominent topic. "Universal health care." Uh-huh. The most left-wing U.S. administration in living memory, securely in power for 8 years, with all the revenues of the post-Cold War "peace dividend" and the internet boom to spend, couldn't give us universal health care. How are you going to do it, bucko? "Internationalize Iraq." Ah, yes, let those wonderfully capable and willing French, Chinese, Pakistanis and Irish take over the task of hunting down America's enemies. We'll be safe all right then! What a crock. Why on earth would anyone vote for any of these creeps?

One of the problems with the media coverage of this Administration is that it requires bad manners. I don't mean the kind of bad manners usually associated with reporters: shouting over one another, elbowing a colleague to get closer to one's interview subject or even quoting an anonymous source reporting that so-and-so really isn't up to the job. Rather, to be an honest, objective and fair-minded reporter of the Bush Administration's policies requires pointing out repeatedly and without sentimentality that just about all the men and women responsible for the conduct of this nation's foreign (and many of its domestic) affairs are entirely without personal honor when it comes to the affairs of state. This simply isn't done in respectable journalism, and the Bush people understand that. Arthur Miller, speaking at a Nation Institute dinner last year, termed the willingness to use this kind of knowledge "the power of audacity."

There are downsides to making public policy in light of this research, too. While walking in Pittsburgh one afternoon, Loewenstein tells me that he doesn't see how anybody could study happiness and not find himself leaning left politically; the data make it all too clear that boosting the living standards of those already comfortable, such as through lower taxes, does little to improve their levels of well-being, whereas raising the living standards of the impoverished makes an enormous difference. Nevertheless, he and Gilbert (who once declared in an academic paper, ''Windfalls are better than pratfalls, A's are better than C's, December 25 is better than April 15, and everything is better than a Republican administration'') seem to lean libertarian in regard to pushing any kind of prescriptive agenda. ''We're very, very nervous about overapplying the research,'' Loewenstein says. ''Just because we figure out that X makes people happy and they're choosing Y, we don't want to impose X on them. I have a discomfort with paternalism and with using the results coming out of our field to impose decisions on people.''

President Bush has proposed spending $87 billion next year on fighting and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nation has written big checks before to underwrite activities abroad. Some comparisons, all in current dollars:

• One year of the Marshall Plan, 1949: $41 billion.

• Cost of the Vietnam War in 1969: $99 billion.

• U.S. share of the $82.5 billion cost of the 1991 Persian Gulf War: $9 billion.

• U.S. contribution to the United Nations in 2002: $3 billion.

• U.S. aid to Israel and Egypt in 2003: $4.6 billion.

• Total Pentagon spending in 2003: $426.7 billion.

[A]kin to Larry Flynt taking offense at pornography; Donald Trump being aghast at wretched excess; Keith Richards just saying no.

In short, the ICI conducted its investigation at full speed in two weeks in difficult conditions, in a manner and in circumstances that did not lend themselves to determining individual responsibility. In this connection it is important to distinguish the general conclusions it was able to draw regarding that was happening in Rwanda at the time – and I make no comment on the validity of those conclusions – from the specific conclusions it drew regarding Mr. Mugesera.

The ICI based its conclusions about Mr. Mugesera's speech on passages which it selected carefully and which it in fact manipulated, and on a translation the source of which is unknown and which is substantially different from that accepted for use in these proceedings.

[edit]

In these circumstances it is clear that the ICI report, at least in its conclusions regarding Mr. Mugesera, is absolutely not reliable. Whatever may be the value, usefulness and credibility of this report for the international purposes of prevention and denunciation of crimes against humanity, the Appeal Division acted in a patently unreasonable way by relying on the findings of fact made by the International Commission of Inquiry regarding Mr. Mugesera and the latter's speech.

Recently, I made these comments to someone who was not ashamed to disclose that he had joined the PL. I told him that the fatal mistake we made in '59, when I was still a boy, was that we let them leave. I asked him if he knew of the Falachas, who had gone back to their home in Israel from Ethiopia, their country of refuge. He told me he did not know about that affair. I replied that he did not know how to listen or read. I went on to explain that his home was in Ethiopia but we were going to find them a shortcut, namely the Nyabarongo River. I would like to emphasize this point. We must react!

The fatal mistake we made in 1959 . . . was that we let them [the Tutsis] leave [the country]. [Their home] was in Ethiopia, but we are going to find them a shortcut, namely the Nyabarongo River. I would like to emphasize this point. We must react!

Editor's Note: We're pleased to announce the latest addition to TNR Online, a weblog written by TNR Senior Editor Gregg Easterbrook. Readers are invited to help name the blog--please submit suggestions to namethatblog@tnr.com. After that, check back daily for Easterbrook's musings on everything from energy policy to military strategy to presidential politics.

Why is Bush falling so badly? The superficial reasons are the Iraq casualties, the failure to find WMDs and the continuing inability to round up Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the real reason is that terror is receding as an issue, largely due to Bush's success.

The solution for Bush is to put terrorism back on the front burner by high profile and aggressive action against Iran and/or North Korea. It's not necessary to wag the dog, but Bush should wag his tongue and raise the profile of these two remaining threats to our security.

In the minds of many, marriage is a covenant blessed by God. But that is separate from its legal status.

Although, constitutionally, marriage falls into the category of liberties to be free from government intrusion, its legal definition is a creature of statute to be adopted by the states, not hitched onto the Constitution.

It doesn't take a constitutional scholar to understand the lesson of Congress' most infamous attempt at statutory grafting -- the 18th Amendment, which the states ratified in 1919. Prohibition didn't work, and it was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

William Kristol, a conservative publisher with close ties to the administration, said today that Mr. Rumsfeld's standing had fallen with some White House aides.

"Rumsfeld assured them he knew what he was doing in the run-up to the war, and he was utterly vindicated," Mr. Kristol said in an interview. "Then he assured them he had the postwar under control, knew what he was doing, and wanted to run it. Now the White House feels they've been falsely reassured by Rumsfeld."

Whew! What a week the Bush White House has had!
Since coming back from the Labor Day weekend and the August vacation, the White House has gone into full reversal on a number of issues:

1) Beginning with last Tuesday, Team Bush completely reversed itself and virtually begged the United Nations to help us out in Iraq.

2) At the same time, the same Bush foreign policy team also completely reversed itself on the nuclear problem in North Korea. Now – instead of refusing to negotiate with Pyongyang – the Bush foreign policy team is happy to enter into talks.

3) A day later, the Bush White House threw Judge Miguel Estrada over the side and withdrew his nomination for the U.S. District Court of Appeals.

4) Then the Bush White House – in recognition of the declining number of manufacturing jobs – created a new position in the Commerce Department: an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing.

5) The whirlwind week ended with last night's presidential address to the nation about Iraq and the future of the War on Terrorism.

The backdrop of all these reversals/announcements/appointments was simple: new polling shows the president is now on the verge of repeating his father's crash and burn in a run for re-election.

The new Zogby poll now shows this President Bush is actually less popular than he was before his inauguration!

In other words, all the high poll ratings after 9/11 and at the end of 'Major Combat Operations' in Iraq have been frittered away in an eerie sequel of his father's similar fall from grace.

Like Bush 41, Bush 43 now has a terrible 're-elect number' – that number of voters who say they will definitely vote to re-elect someone. (The rule in politics is that any incumbent with a re-elect number under 50 percent is in Big Trouble.) This President Bush's re-elect number is a paltry 40 percent.

Conclusion: He is in real trouble for next year – and thus all of last week's moves.

Lost in all those reversals and stunning policy shifts are a few 'unmentionables':

1) Osama bin Laden. Why do the president and his team never even mention this mastermind of the 9/11 attacks? Why 150,000 wonderful, brave and heroic American troops inside Iraq but not the same level of commitment to capture Osama bin Laden?

2) Why can last week's Newsweek have a cover story detailing a mountaintop terror conference inside Afghanistan chaired by Osama - yet U.S. intelligence cannot find him?

3) And why does the U.S. government downplay the importance of killing bin Laden? The American military spokesman in Afghanistan told Newsweek: "We don't know where he is. And frankly, it is not about him." An American diplomat chimed in, "Bin Laden's operational role is not as important as it was to Al Qaeda and the Taliban."

4) Domestically, the economy is killing Bush's popularity – just as it did his father's. Fifty-two percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And that was before Friday's disappointing jobs report was issued.

True, there are still 14 months before the next presidential election. That gives Team Bush time to weather the storm and get re-elected.

But, in the process, are they going to keep reversing everything they said they stood for, increase government spending, and shamelessly 'play politics' in an effort to win next November?

A Canadian appeals court ruled Monday that a former Rwandan government official accused of inciting genocide can remain in Canada, saying no evidence suggests his speech caused the 1994 massacres.

Leon Mugesera was accused of encouraging attacks on Rwanda's Tutsi minority in a speech in 1992. At the time, he was an adviser to President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in a plane crash in April 1994 sparked the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Mugesera, who moved to Spain and then Canada before the genocide began, has been accused by human-rights groups of facilitating war crimes and inciting the Hutu-sponsored killings in the tiny central African nation.

On Monday, a three-member Federal Appeals Court panel unanimously rejected the accusation.

''There is nothing in the evidence to indicate that Mr. Mugesera, under the cover of anecdotes or imagery, deliberately incited to murder, hatred or genocide,'' Justice Robert Decary wrote.

Saying that the enemy’s objective is extermination, Mugesera exhorts his audience to “rise up...really rise up” in self-defense. He cites the Bible several times and declares that the MRND has a new version of the Biblical adage to turn the other cheek: “If you are struck once on one cheek, you should strike back twice...” He says that the law provides the death penalty for both politicians inside the country and “Inyenzi” [cockroaches] who have betrayed the national interest. If the judicial system is not going to act to execute this punishment, then the people have the right to do so themselves and “to exterminate this scum.” In referring to the “Inyenzi,” he says that it was a mistake that some of them were allowed to get away in 1959. He recounts a conversation in which he warned a member of the PL, “I am telling you that your home is in Ethiopia, that we are going to send you back there quickly, by the Nyabarongo [River].”

For the audience, “member of the PL” could not have meant anything other than Tutsi, and the mention of transportation by the Nyabarongo had to be understood as killing the people in question and dumping the bodies in the river, a usual practice in past massacres of Tutsi. [The Nyabarongo feeds into the rivers of the Nile watershed and hence is supposed to permit passage to Ethiopia.] Mugesera directs the faithful to keep careful track of all the people who come into their neighborhoods and to “crush” any accomplice so that “he will not be able to get away.”

Speaking before Rwandans, who ordinarily value sophisticated, allusive rhetoric, Mugesera chose unusually blunt words to convey his message. Using a coarse term not often heard in a public address, he talks of members of other parties coming to MRND territory to defecate. He depicts the opponent as dying, in the agony of death, knocked down, and under ground. He calls them “vermin” that must be “liquidated.” And at the end, he gives a final warning, “Know that the person whose throat you do not cut now will be the one who will cut yours.”

U.S. analysts are also taking more seriously stories detained Iraqi leaders are telling about what happened to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. U.S. sources say that captured Iraqis insist Saddam’s top strategic objective was to persuade the United Nations to relax sanctions on his regime.

So, after Saddam’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, head of his unconventional weapons programs, defected to Jordan in 1995, Saddam ordered intensified efforts to hide or destroy blueprints, “dual use” technology and any remaining germs or chemicals. Not only was material stashed or obliterated, but records showing what had been destroyed were also pulped. Some U.S. and British intel officials still say stockpiles of chemical or biological agents will turn up.

But U.S. Defense analysts are paying more attention to a “working hypothesis,” based on stories told by Iraqi captives, that no live WMD may ever be found. Some U.S. officials even think Iraqi defectors who surfaced before the war saying Saddam was still making WMD were double agents dispatched by Saddam to spread disinformation to deter his enemies. Others say this would have undermined his effort to have U.N. sanctions lifted.

I know this is hardly news, but it is worth noting that these reports -- while an embarrassment for the intelligence community -- do not undermine the case for war. It appears that if the intelligence communities of the Western world -- including our anti-war allies -- were duped, it was thanks to a very sophisticated effort by Saddam. If that's the case, Saddam certainly got what he deserved. If I pull out an unloaded gun on a cop, the cop has every right -- and perhaps obligation -- to shoot me. Liberal indignation after the fact doesn't change that.

With costs and casualties rising in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld struck back today at the administration's widening circle of critics, saying they were complicating an already difficult task.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not mention any of the domestic critics by name. But he suggested that those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

"We know for a fact that terrorists studied Somalia, and they studied instances that the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"The United States is not going to do that; President Bush is not going to do that," he said.

But, he went on: "To the extent that terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or, if he is not going to, that the opponents might prevail in some way, and they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities, or that leads to more recruits, or that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power, obviously that does make our task more difficult."

White Racist Endorses Bustamante in California Recall

A self-described racist has endorsed California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante in the California recall election, praising the candidate for being what he calls "a separatist," based on Bustamante's past association with a racist Hispanic organization. The unusual endorsement by Tom Metzger, former Grand Wizard of the California Ku Klux Klan and director of the White Aryan Resistance, was accompanied by a call for all like-minded Californians to vote for Bustamante in the Oct. 7 election.

Insisting his endorsement is legitimate, Metzger said he hopes that if Bustamante is elected, the issue of immigration and border control will reach a boiling point. "Worse is better, to bring it to a head," Metzger said. "Either we're going to solve this by realistic negotiation or there will be blood on the border. One of the two ways is the only thing that's going to solve this problem."

As a student at Fresno State College in the 1970s, Bustamante was active in an organization, called Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, more widely known as MEChA. MEChA is a racist Hispanic separatist organization that seeks to "liberate" and "re-conquer" the southwestern United States for Mexico. The organization has received unusual attention recently following Bustamante's refusal to renounce his former membership in it.

Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. These months have been a time of new responsibilities and sacrifice and national resolve and great progress.

America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan, by destroying the training camps of terror and removing the regime that harbored al Qaeda. In a series of raids and actions around the world, nearly two-thirds of al Qaeda's known leaders have been captured or killed, and we continue on al Qaeda's trail.

We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland and uncovered sleeper cells inside the United States. And we acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and for 12 years defied the clear demands of the United Nations Security Council. Our coalition enforced these international demands in one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.