her lab work sounds as if it were being conducted in Studio 54 or Andy Warhol's Factory: she painted the tibias of male wolf spiders with nail polish and tricked them into dancing suggestively for leggy nymphets not even old enough to appear in an arachnid version of Barely Legal.

[edit]

Then they were exposed to young females in plastic boxes known, for reasons that will become clear, as "arenas."

Better-behaved than male humans, male wolf spiders will not go into courtship displays in front of subadult females, but they were tricked. Dr. Hebets used boxes in which adult females had stayed, leaving their pheromone-laden webs behind.

Drunk on the Shalimar of absent femmes fatales, the male spiders danced, and the girls, who still had one molt to go before they could physically do anything about it, watched in fascination.

Now that we have all seen the group photo of Dick Gephardt with his lesbian daughter, I imagine there is a bit of a panic among the other Democratic presidential candidates to come up with a gay relative of their own. Having a gay relative, in fact, will now be de rigeur--or gay rigeur, if you like--for any Dem running for president. At the risk of trespassing on Rob Long's territory, one can imagine the sort of conversations that have been going on.

"The speech, while presenting no new policy, contained tough words for Iran, Syria and the Palestinian Authority ..."

"Former representative Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a presidential adviser who is the National Endowment for Democracy's chairman, said the speech should answer the questions of people who thought Bush did not have a plan for Iraq or the Middle East."

Nine people have died in a suspected outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in a remote forest region of Congo Republic where 120 people were killed by the disease earlier this year, officials said on Friday.

RAMADAN ANTHRAX SCARE IN DC

Since Graham's surprise Monday, Harris said, she has been swamped by telephone calls from friends: "It's been a little overwhelming. We're getting phone calls from all over the state, ringing off the hook. Everyone is telling me that I'm the only moderate, electable candidate," she said.

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion."

It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

"Miller's anger at the Democrats is ... an accurate reflection of the disaffection felt by millions of other white Southerners toward their former party. Part of the explanation lies in race. Miller lacks the honesty to admit that fact, even though he brags shamelessly to his readers about having a conscience so tough that it's 'on steroids, has a black belt and long fingernails and stomps around inside of me.' "

"In outlining the Democrats' decline, Miller does point out that while John F. Kennedy carried much of the South in 1960, by 1968 Hubert Humphrey carried none of the region except Texas. He doesn't mention that racist George Wallace carried five of those states, including Georgia. Nor does he mention that during that critical eight-year period, Democratic leaders pushed through civil-rights bills that broke the back of officially sanctioned racism, created the New South that Miller brags about, and in the process alienated at least two generations of white Southerners."

"[Dean]'s right: For too long, national leaders in the Democratic Party have indeed written off much of the white South in the mistaken belief that racial issues made their votes unattainable. Dean's point echoed that of Miller, who preaches the need to reach "Joe Six-pack in the Wal-Mart parking lot." But instead of welcoming a new ally, Miller once again reacted in abject terror that somebody might be making fun of him."

"We did not want to have planning for the post-war make the war inevitable. We did not want to do anything that would prejudge or somehow preordain that there was definitely going to be a war."

COULTER: And I’ll give you an example of one where they did it with hatred in their hearts, but unfortunately, they did it accurate to history, and that was “Patton.” That was intended to make Patton look terrible, but it was accurate to history and it made Patton look great and people loved him. And that’s why they don’t do it accurately any more.

MATTHEWS: You are dead wrong. Everybody loved “Patton” from the first day it came out.

COULTER: But that isn’t the way it was intended.

MATTHEWS: I was in the Peace Corps in Africa and everybody over there loved it when we got to see it. From the first day we loved it.

CORN: How could you not love that movie from the opening scene?

MATTHEWS: He’s God-like. Ann, where do you get this malarkey from?

Everybody loved “Patton.” How old were you, when “Patton” came out. How old were you, two?

COULTER: I think you’re misunderstanding.

MATTHEWS: No, I think you’re wrong, Ann. I think everybody loved “Patton.”

COULTER: Can I respond?

MATTHEWS: Who didn’t like it?

COULTER: That is precisely my point, because it was made accurately.
But it was made, the people making it were intending to make Patton look bad.

MATTHEWS: Who did that?

COULTER: That is why George C. Scott turned down his Academy Award for playing Patton.

MATTHEWS: Who told you that? Who told you that?

COULTER: It’s well known.

MATTHEWS: It’s well known?

COULTER: Why do you think he didn’t accept the award?

CORN: Why did he take the role? Why did he take the role, Ann, if he didn’t want to do it?

COULTER: Why do you think he turned down the award, Chris? You never looked that up? It never occurred to you? “I wonder why George C. Scott didn’t accept his award.”

MATTHEWS: Because he said he wasn’t going to a meat parade, because he didn’t believe in award ceremonies because they’re all about women wearing no clothes and showing off their bodies...

COULTER: By portraying Patton as negatively as possible, but by doing it accurately the American people loved it.

MATTHEWS: Facts mean nothing to you, Ann.

Following the show, I took Coulter's advice and did look it up. I found a 1999 obituary of Scott that noted he had stunned Hollywood in 1971 for being the first person ever to refuse an Academy Award. He had explained his action by slamming such awards as "demeaning" and he had dismissed the Oscar ceremony as a "two-hour meat parade." (Matthews receives extra points for getting this quote correct.) Coulter had twisted this well-documented episode into yet more proof that liberals--especially those in Hollywood--are conspiratorial traitors.

His opponents have been hammering him lately for saying he wants to be the candidate "for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks."

Asked about that reference to a racially polarizing symbol, Dean noted he has long been saying Democrats can win over working class Southerners concerned about access to health care.

"We have got to stop having our elections in the South based on race, guns, God and gays and start having them on jobs and health insurance and a foreign policy that's consistent with American values," he said.

The three sitting justices who are in the majority have all been applauded as practitioners of judicial restraint. As to that restraint, I am reminded of the words of the character Inigo Montoya from the movie “The Princess Bride”:

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

"... according to Hage, he and an associate were asked to come to Baghdad, when Hage says he met with Saddam Hussein's chief of intelligence, Gen. Tahir Habbush, later labeled the Jack of Diamonds in the deck of cards depicting the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Habbush is still at large.

'He was conveying a message,' said Hage. 'He was conveying an offer.' Hage said Habbush laid out terms of a negotiated peace during a four-hour session beginning at midnight at a compound in Baghdad.

Hage said Habbush repeated public denials by the regime that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction but offered to allow several thousand U.S. agents or scientists free rein in the country to carry out inspections. 'Based on my meeting with his man,' said Hage, 'I think an effort was there to avert war. They were prepared to meet with high-ranking U.S. officials.'

Hage said Habbush also offered U.N.-supervised free elections, oil concessions to U.S. companies and was prepared to turn over a top al Qaeda terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who Haboush said had been in Iraqi custody since 1994."

"may be planning to discredit the Bush administration's pre-war (Iraq-related) intelligence gathering -- with the intention of embarrassing President Bush in an election year."

“I have often said that the process in Washington is so politicized and polarized that it can’t even be put aside when we’re at war. Never has that been proved more true than the highly partisan and perhaps treasonous memo prepared for the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee.

[edit]

“If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both should be dealt with quickly and severely sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused.

“Heads should roll!”

Increase the public match [for contributions to Presidential candidates]. The fund should match the first $100 of every donation on a five-to-one basis. That would make every $100 donation worth $600 to a campaign, and help put a candidate’s focus back where it should be: on small donors, rather than wealthy contributors and special interests.

Candidates should opt into the system for both the primary and the general election to receive matching funds.

Improve incentives for candidates to accept public funding. One way to encourage participation in the public financing system is to make it less of an advantage to opt out of the system. If one candidate opts out of public financing and exceeds the spending limits, his opponents should receive additional public funds to level the playing field.

The same scramble for big money that plagues presidential elections corrupts congressional campaigns too. Therefore the same principles that govern public financing of presidential campaigns — spending limits and public funding, including the new multiple match rate I have proposed for small contributions — should apply to U.S. Senate and House elections too.

We can do still more to encourage citizen participation, and foster candidate focus on ordinary small donors. I will propose a dollar-for-dollar matching tax credit on the first $100 of every individual contribution made to a federal candidate. My plan would offer this incentive only to individuals making under $50,000 a year, or $100,000 in the case of joint filers. This proposal will empower the disempowered and draw new donors into the political marketplace.

We should reclaim the public airwaves by requiring that TV and radio broadcasters offer a few hours of civic broadcasting every week around election time. I also favor a system in which low dollar contributions will be matched with advertising vouchers. This program would provide another strong incentive for candidates to limit fundraising and focus on low-dollar donors. It could be funded entirely by a small .5% spectrum use fee — an entirely fair reclamation of the public airwaves after the great spectrum giveaway of the 1980s.

As computer technology has refined the art of redistricting to a science, the U.S. House of Representatives increasingly resembles the old Soviet Politburo — only a handful of races are competitive in each cycle. In 2000, for example, 87 percent of the House's 435 seats were decided by margins greater than 10 percent. Safe congressional districts are bad for democracy. They depress voter turnout, foster extreme partisanship and promote legislative gridlock.

Only Iowa, Arizona and a handful of other states have chosen a different path: non-partisan redistricting. An expert body draws legislative maps that disregard partisanship and incumbency to create compact and contiguous districts, consistent with the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. As President, I will work to move every state toward the important Iowa Model to redraw congressional districts.

I will also urge federal action to prevent repetition of the recent maneuvers in Texas and Colorado by limiting redistricting to once every ten years.

MILLER: "Howard Dean knows about as much about the South as a hog knows about Sunday. This must be his Southern strategy. And I can tell you right now, that that's the same kind of stereotype, that's the same kind of character trait that I write about in this book .... That's not what the South is."

"Perdue fastened his underdog campaign to the Confederate flag ..."

"The fight over the Georgia flag was one of the most significant reasons Perdue was elected Governor ... Sonny Perdue voted against [Barnes' flag] change, and early in the campaign promised a referendum on the flag if elected."

The most important Supreme Court case governing employment discrimination cases under Title VII is McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). It's a four-part test:

The complainant in a Title VII trial must carry the initial burden under the statute of establishing a prima facie case of racial discrimination. This may be done by showing (i) that he belongs to a racial minority; (ii) that he applied and was qualified for a job for which the employer was seeking applicants; (iii) that, despite his qualifications, he was rejected; and (iv) that, after his rejection, the position remained open and the employer continued to seek applicants from persons of complainant's qualifications.

Memo Indicates Democrats Mulled Plan to Politicize War Planning
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
November 05, 2003

(CNSNews.com) - A memo reportedly pulled out of the trash can of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has infuriated Republicans.

The memo, written by a Democratic staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicates that Democrats may be planning to discredit the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence gathering -- with the intention of embarrassing President Bush in an election year.
...
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he's appalled by a memo that "exposes politics in its most raw form."

In a press release, Sen. Roberts said, "The memo does not discuss efforts to strengthen our intelligence capabilities nor does it mention the need to protect our troops. Instead, it's a purely partisan document that appears to be a road map for how the Democrats intend to politicize what should be a bipartisan, objective review of pre-war intelligence."

Roberts is urging Sen. Rockefeller -- the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee -- and other Democrats on the committee to "repudiate this strategy...to put politics aside and look at the facts of the inquiry."

The memo as reported by Hannity reads as follows:

"We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

"1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.

"For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department.

"The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]

"2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.

"In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.

"The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]

"3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.

"The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:

"A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:

"B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence.

"In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter footdragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman. We have independently submitted written requests to the DOD and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

"SUMMARY: Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war.

"The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives." [End of Memo Excerpt.]

The revelation that Democrats are using the intelligence committee to conduct opposition research for the coming presidential campaign demands an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, Hannity said.

Hey Zoe,

Looking at the election results from a national perspective, I find one prevailing trend:

Republicans did well in Republican areas. Democrats did well in Democratic areas. Examples of the former, of course, are Republican gubernatorial victories in Kentucky and Mississippi. Examples of the latter are Democrats' very, very impressive gains in the New Jersey Legislature and the fact that Democrats gained a couple of seats in Virginia's General Assembly (the first time this had happened since 1975!)

Gay voters won everywhere except, oddly, San Francisco, where two leading gay politicos failed to make the runoff for mayor. (The runoff will pit kind of an odd Democrat against a Green Party candidate.) Elsewhere, a gay African American man was elected mayor of Palm Spring, California. And with the considerable help of NGLTF, which dispatched eight staff, 17 volunteers and $27,500 dollars, some city in Ohio that I have never heard of became the first city in the United States to adapt a domestic partner registry BY AFFIRMATIVE BALLOT INITIATIVE. This is huge.

In Houston, a moderate Democrat is in the lead to become the next mayor, beating back a Republican Latino and a more progressive (in some ways) African American Democrat. Houston increasingly is Democratic country!

In Philadelphia, of course, the African American Democratic incumbent mayor blew the Republican challenger away, something like 59-41. In Indianapolis Democrats elected their first mayor since the early 1900s.

All in all? Yesterday, in a sense, the red states became more red and the blue states became more blue (except one could perhaps speculate that Ohio and Indiana are not as red as is often the stereotype). And we -- possibly -- are headed for another very tight election one year from now, although a lot can change in a year.

Pardon the equivocations, but it is hard to read a whole lot into odd-number-year elections.

-Austin

Nearly 10 years after returning from a catastrophic tour of duty in Rwanda, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire has come to realize that he has two sets of eyes.

The first set -- he calls them his "outside eyes" -- act like a camera and recorded the horrific acts of the 1994 genocide.

The second set -- the "inside eyes" -- look into his soul and won't let him forget what he saw.

Lt.-Gen. Dallaire saw a great deal in Rwanda he would like to forget, and which has since led to two breakdowns and a battle with alcohol. Unable, he has recounted many of them in his new book, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.

They were horrific scenes: blood-soaked children hacked to death, their bodies thrown like rubbish on roadsides; pregnant women who had been murdered, their fetuses ripped from their stomachs; the dismembered bodies of 10 of his own soldiers.

Indeed, military analysts are divided about how soldiers should deal with the events they have witnessed in the field. One school of thought says reliving the trauma only increases the trauma.

"Bullshit," responded Lt.-Gen Dallaire, who acknowledged yesterday that in the years after he left Rwanda, he battled debilitating depression, alcoholism and tried on more than one occasion to commit suicide. The only thing that helped, he said, was recounting his experiences again and again to anyone who offered a sympathetic ear.

Enraged House Democrats say that bipartisan relations in the House — especially regarding joint House-Senate conferences — have reached an all-time low, far worse than when they controlled Congress for 40 years.

Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said, "The Democrats don’t even get an F for governing. They deserve an incomplete. Willing Democrats are always welcomed to the negotiating table. Medicare is a perfect example.

"Ask [Sen. John] Breaux [D-La.], [Sen. Max] Baucus [D-Mont.] if they are part of the negotiation. Democrats should stop carping from the sidelines and get into the game," he said.

"If they are willing to hit the same iceberg twice, we’ll let them. But when they refuse to govern, then they’re doing a disservice to the American people and could potentially be adding a very destructive element to our government," Grella said.

Several times in this book I have asked the question "Are we all human, or are some more human than others?" Certainly we in the developed world act in a way that suggests we believe that our lives are worth more than the lives of other citizens of the planet. An American officer felt no shame as he informed me that the lives of 800,000 Rwandans were only worth risking the lives of ten American troops; the Belgians, after losing ten soldiers, insisted that the lives of Rwandans were not worth risking another single Belgian soldier. The only conclusion I can reach is that we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity. If we believe that all humans are human, then how are we going to prove it? It can only be proven through our actions. Through the dollars we are prepared to expend to improve conditions in the Third World, through the time and energy we devote to solving devastating problems like AIDS, through the lives of our soldiers, which we are prepared to sacrifice for the sake of humanity.

As soldiers we have been used to moving mountains to protect our own sovereignty or risks to our way of life. In the future we must be prepared to move beyond nation self-interest to spend our resources and spill our blood for humanity. We have lived through centuries of enlightenment, reason, revolution, industrialization, and globalization. No matter how idealistic the aim sounds, this new century must become the Century of Humanity, when we as human beings rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe. For the sake of the children and of our future. Peux ce que veux. Allons-y.

[H]ere's a copy of the letter about possible voting irregularities in Mississippi today which Secretary of State Eric Clark sent today to Attorney General Mike Moore and the state's two US Attorneys.

The irregularities include reports that poll watchers are videotaping voters in predominantly black neighborhoods.

AMENDMENT XXXI.
No state shall sanction marriage between people of different races. (Biblical references: Deuteronomy 7:3; Numbers 25:6-8; kings 11:2; Ezra 9:2; and Nehemiah 13:25-27)

AMENDMENT XXXII.
No state shall sanction a marriage between a Christian and a non-Christian. (2 John 1:9-11; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17)

AMENDMENT XXXIII.
No state shall sanction a marriage involving a man who has had sexual thoughts about a woman other than the one he intends to marry. (Matthew 5:28)

AMENDMENT XXXV.
No state may sanction marriage between a man and any woman unwilling to promise in her wedding vows to obey her husband and submit to him (Ephesians 5:22-24; 1 Corinthains 11:3; Colossionas 3:18; 1 Timothy 2:11-12; Titus 2:3; Peter 3:1)

Seoul protesters slam Ishihara's slur

SEOUL (Kyodo) A group of citizens held a protest rally here Monday to denounce Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's remarks last week that the Korean people "chose" to be subject to Japanese colonial rule in 1910.
Dozens of people gathered outside the Japanese Embassy to demand an apology from Ishihara. They also requested that the South Korean government take measures to prohibit Ishihara from entering the country.

The protesters said the "rightwing" and "absurd" remarks are an incorrect perception of Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

On Oct. 28 in Tokyo, Ishihara said, "The annexation was made with an agreement of the nations worldwide, and (the Korean people) had to choose between Russia, 'Shina' or Japan, and they decided to seek help from (the Japanese), who had the same facial color as their own."

"Shina," a derogatory Japanese word for China, was often used before and during World War II.

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) Kanagawa Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa qualified his assertion Sunday that "all" foreigners are "sneaky thieves," stating instead that only "some" are.

[Howard Dean] was quoted in Saturday's Des Moines Register as saying that "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks" and appeal to "a broad cross-section of Democrats." His rivals immediately jumped on the remark as a sign that Dr. Dean was somehow soft on civil rights. "It is simply unconscionable for Howard Dean to embrace the most racially divisive symbol in America," said John Kerry.

Democrats usually smear Republicans with this kind of race-baiting politics, but it isn't any more justified when Democrats use it against one of their own. Dr. Dean is hardly sympathetic to the Confederacy, or Jim Crow, or apartheid or any other kind of racial discrimination. He was merely saying he'd like to win the support of Southerners who over the years have fled the Democratic Party represented by the Kerrys and the Dick Gephardts.

One reason those and so many other voters have left is precisely because of the kind of litmus-test, interest-group gotcha! politics that this racial pandering represents. Yet Dr. Dean's opponents continue to attack him for violating liberal taboos on guns, Medicare, trade and now civil rights. No wonder Democratic voters find him refreshing.

Mr. Dean thinks his support for capital punishment and gun-ownership rights will make him appealing to conservative Southern voters despite his liberal positions on most other issues. Other Democratic candidates took aim and fired immediately....It didn't occur to any of the Democratic candidates that their attacks on Mr. Dean came at the expense of painting all Southerners as racists.

The report, bearing Bush's signature and dated April 14 -- previously undisclosed but revealed here -- declares: "We are especially concerned that the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime will continue to use Iraqi civilian populations as a shield for its regular and irregular combat forces or may attack the Iraqi population in an effort to undermine Coalition goals." Moreover, the report goes on: "Coalition planners have prepared for these contingencies ..."

Yet, on August 25, as the violence in postwar Iraq flared, the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed that this possibility was not foreseen: "Now was -- did we -- was it possible to anticipate that the battles would take place south of Baghdad and that then there would be a collapse up north, and there would be very little killing and capturing of those folks, because they blended into the countryside and they're still fighting their war?"

Early last year, before Hans Blix, chief of the UN team to monitor Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, embarked on his mission, Wolfowitz ordered a report from the CIA to show that Blix had been soft on Iraq in the past and thus to undermine him before he even began his work. When the CIA reached an opposite conclusion, Wolfowitz was described by a former state department official in the Washington Post as having "hit the ceiling."

Following a storm of protest and threatened advertiser boycott, CBS announced Tuesday it was pulling "The Reagans" miniseries off the air.

The network said it was licensing the completed film to Showtime, a pay cable network that, like CBS, is owned by Viacom.

As Pope John Paul II enters his 26th year as pontiff, the world is stopping to reflect on the legendary funnyman's career as one of the most influential performers in modern history. Standing staunchly against contraception and women's equality right through the turn of the 21st century, the pope and his quirky, deadpan comic persona still entertain audiences around the world."

It is almost impossible for a journalist to talk to any official from the authority without getting the approval of a public information officer.

Recently, when an army major and the head of operations of an American agency here sought to take a reporter for coffee at the Rashid Hotel, where senior American personnel live and eat, a sentry told them that no reporter could enter the hotel without an escort from the press office. The American officials were more astonished than the reporter.

If civilian authorities here see reporters as ignoring good news, reporters view the coalition public information officers as determined to withhold information, out of fear that it would become "bad news." The result is gaps in information that make it harder for American readers to assess just how good or bad the news really is.

For example, American officials have said that many suicide bombings and other attacks on American soldiers have been thwarted. But they won't say how many ... It's no secret that shoulder-fired missiles have been fired at planes coming into Baghdad International Airport. How many? American officials will not say.

Judges v legislators

In Mrs Schiavo's case, however, there was a twist. The courts actually made the decision. In May 1998, Michael Schiavo petitioned a circuit court to order his wife's life-support system to be removed. In February 2000, Judge George Greer ruled in his favour. He found clear evidence that Mrs Schiavo would have chosen not to receive life-prolonging care if she could; he also ruled, as a question of fact, that her brain had indeed been destroyed. These findings are the heart of the legal case.

* * *

One by one, state and federal courts ruled in Mr Schiavo's favour. On October 14th, the Schindlers' last appeal was rejected. * * *

[T]he Florida legislature passed a remarkable law on October 21st: for 15 days, the governor could stay a court order in cases like Mrs Schiavo's. Mr Bush promptly stayed the order to remove the drip feed. * * *

This law appears to be unprecedented. In practice it applies to only one person, which would be unconstitutional. It rejects decades of legal precedent, which make one spouse the other's guardian. So it strikes at a foundation of family law—a paradox, considering that many of the law's backers are social conservatives. * * *

It also seems comprehensively to violate the separation of powers, since the legislature has appointed the governor (from the executive branch) to overrule the courts on a matter of fact. * * *

Above all, it is testimony to the hubris of politicians.

Anti-abortion leader Randall Terry said emboldened conservatives intend to carry their success in the Schiavo case to other arenas, to force executive and legislative challenges to the courts, whom conservatives consider out of balance.

Mr. Terry said, "Finally, a governor and legislature had the courage to stand up to judicial despots because of an overwhelming call by the public."

Added the veteran pro-life activist, "It's a crack in the wall, and it shows that we can return to self-government, where it is three separate and equal branches of government."

TIM RUSSERT: "... this was Zell Miller in 1996 (speaking) before the Democratic Party Training Academy: 'The real story of what happened to 'We the people' is that the Republicans sold us out, with a generation of trickle-down economics that blew the deficit sky-high, drove poverty through the roof, squeezed the middle class like a lemon at a county fair. They gave themselves the gold mine and they gave the rest of us the shaft.' And Democrats would say ... 'That's the old Zell Miller because he now voted for the Bush tax cut and that's what the Bush tax cut has done to the country, what he was telling us the Reagan tax cut did.' "

SEN. ZELL MILLER: "Here's what the Bush tax cut has done to the country, that kind of economy right now. I know The New York Times had a (hard) time printing this, but [reading headline] 'Economy records speediest growth since the mid-1980s.' That's what the tax cuts have done."

SEN. ZELL MILLER: "I have always been a tax cutter. I was a tax cutter whenever I was governor. I took the sales tax off of groceries, and I cut the income tax twice."

TIM RUSSERT: "What about the deficit ..."

SEN. ZELL MILLER: "We ..."

TIM RUSSERT: "...$500 billion?"

SEN. ZELL MILLER: "The deficit is there not because of the tax cuts. The deficit is there because we have been in a recession and we're a country at war. And you always run a deficit in those kind of times. Also, a deficit I would say is there because of a lot of wild spending by the Democrats."

TIM RUSSERT: "And the Republicans."

SEN. MILLER: "And the Republicans, of course."

Despite having nearly one hundred federal judgeships to fill, these Democrats resolved to torpedo most of President Bush's nominations.

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At least one major implication is that the dearth of federal judges (one eight of all federal judgeships still remain to be filled) will undermine the administration of justice in this country.

Iraq is not Vietnam, no matter how much Howard Dean, John Kerry, Al Sharpton and the other Democratic presidential wannabes would like to pretend it is. As despicable as Ho Chi Minh was, he did not pose a direct threat to the United States. The Vietnam War was part of the larger struggle against communism. The ultimate adversary was the Soviet Union. Despite our withdrawal from Vietnam, we won the larger war, vanquishing communism and defeating the Soviet Union without firing a direct shot. History proved we could afford to lose Vietnam no matter how ignoble or humiliating it was. However, we cannot afford to lose Iraq.

What we need is not an "exit strategy" but a commitment to win this war, no matter what sacrifice it takes. The Democrats are doing all that they can to undermine that commitment, and the polls suggest they are succeeding in persuading a growing number of Americans the war is not worth winning. It's a dangerous game — one in which all of us could end up the losers.

Miller is not alone, though some are more sanguine when it comes to evaluating the roster of contenders. Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot.

Miller is not alone, though some are more sanguine when it comes to evaluating the roster of contenders. Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and slapped."

We Democrats need to remember that talking about an aggressive agenda for America is quite different from getting it done. For us to get it done, the people we serve have to trust us.

Britain's Conservative Party, with towering figures like Margaret Thatcher, dominated that country's politics for 18 years until the Labor Party led by Tony Blair was able to reclaim power. It happened because Blair took his party kicking and screaming toward the middle. The extreme left wing was obliterated and the influence of the trade unions was greatly diminished.

If Clinton had followed through and governed as he campaigned, it would have happened here for the Democrats.

The community draft boards that became notorious for sending reluctant young men off to Vietnam have languished since the early 1970s, their membership ebbing and their purpose all but lost when the draft was ended. But a few weeks ago, on an obscure federal Web site devoted to the war on terrorism, the Bush administration quietly began a public campaign to bring the draft boards back to life.
...
Local draft board volunteers, meanwhile, report that at training sessions last summer, they were unexpectedly asked to recommend people to fill some of the estimated 16 percent of board seats that are vacant nationwide. Especially for those who were of age to fight in the Vietnam War, it is an ominous flashback of a message. Divisive military actions are ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. News accounts daily detail how the U.S. is stretched too thin there to be effective. And tensions are high with Syria and Iran and on the Korean Peninsula, with some in or close to the Bush White House suggesting that military action may someday be necessary in those spots, too.

Not since the early days of the Reagan administration in 1981 has the Defense Department made a push to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots. Recognizing that even the mention of a draft in the months before an election might be politically explosive, the Pentagon last week was adamant that the drive to staff up the draft boards is not a portent of things to come. There is "no contingency plan" to ask Congress to reinstate the draft, John Winkler, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for reserve affairs, told Salon last week.

Increasingly, however, military experts and even some influential members of Congress are suggesting that if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to consider a draft to fully staff the nation's military in a time of global instability.

"The experts are all saying we're going to have to beef up our presence in Iraq," says U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat. "We've failed to convince our allies to send troops, we've extended deployments so morale is sinking, and the president is saying we can't cut and run. So what's left? The draft is a very sensitive subject, but at some point, we're going to need more troops, and at that point the only way to get them will be a return to the draft."