A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at U.S. military headquarters just north of Kabul that the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants was not focusing on individuals.

"He (bin Laden) has taken himself out of the picture," Pace told reporters after visiting U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan.

"It is not an individual that is as important as is the ongoing campaign of the coalition against terrorists," he said.

President Bush pledged anew Friday that Osama bin Laden will be taken "dead or alive," no matter how long it takes, amid indications that the suspected terrorist may be bottled up in a rugged Afghan canyon. The president, in an Oval Office meeting with Thailand's prime minister, would not predict the timing of bin Laden's capture but said he doesn't care how the suspect is brought to justice. "I don't care, dead or alive — either way," Bush said. "It doesn't matter to me."

Army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza said at the Cabinet's weekly media briefing at Nakasero that the UPDF has gained a lot of ground against the rebels since June 1.

The army has been fighting the LRA, led by Mr Joseph Kony, since 1988, although the initial insurgency in northern Uganda started in August 1986.

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Bantariza said that in three months 462 rebels were killed, 275 surrendered, 147 were captured and 2,481 kidnap victims were rescued.

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He said the army also recovered 249 rifles, 143 empty magazines, 48 landmines, 220 bombs, 1,773 rounds of live ammunition, one box of machine gun ammunition (10,000 bullets) and one box of anti-aircraft ammunition.

Do you regret your vote last fall in favor of the resolution authorizing war?

I do. Because I sensed it was a political ploy rather than a ploy to genuinely protect the United States. It was just an attempt to get any resolution passed so the administration could say, just like Lyndon Johnson [with Vietnam], 'We got the approval of Congress.' And then, just like Lyndon Johnson, they went ahead and did whatever they wanted to do; massive buildup, putting the military on thin political ice, getting a bunch of kids killed.

You were up for reelection at the time and you felt a pressure to vote yes?

Yes. They did this purposefully. I will say to you that I did think that it was worth a shot to give the president of the United States the authority to go to the United Nations and try to put together a coalition to try to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction. And if there were weapons of mass destruction, to destroy them.
Of course what I did not know was that the White House had the 1992 Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan on the front burner. I knew they wanted regime change. But I did not know that the Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan was what they were going to do with and that they hadn't figured out a plan B.

I know you're a supporter of Sen. John Kerry.

I am yes, a big supporter.

Do you think his vote last fall in favor of war has hurt him?

Yes, it's cost him. But he and I were trying to do the right thing and give the president of the United State the benefit of the doubt. After all, the vice president stood up at the VFW convention and said Iraq is building nuclear weapons. It was all part of cherry-picking the intelligence and boosting the case for war in Iraq, which they'd already decided to do. They were just looking for reasons. They kept saying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. And the president said it's all about terrorism and the war on terrorism. Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we've got a lemon. Looking back, yeah, I regret that vote. I gave the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt. He took it as a blank check. I feel like I have been duped, I don't mind telling you.

Bush's predatory Market Society
By Paul Heise, Lebanon (PA) Times
Thursday, November 20, 2003

The fights over judges, over Medicare, over the national parks, over defense, over school vouchers and all the rest of the acrimony in Washington, D.C., are pieces of a puzzle. Those pieces together form the picture of a revolution that has no name. If it had a name, it would be easier to understand and support or fight.

So, let's name it. President George W. Bush is, piece by piece, implementing "The Market Society."

Administration officials have been very careful not to name it -- the way Franklin Roosevelt named the New Deal, John Kennedy the New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson the Great Society -- because they fear the American people would not accept it.

This Market Society they are setting up so stealthily conceives of a place where there would be, at most, a night-watchman government and where all spending and all income would occur in the market for private goods.

Markets are not, by their nature, bad. In fact, they are very good. When consumers trade labor for money and then money for food and housing, both consumers and businesses gain. It is called a "plus sum game." Competition between providers and between businesses leads to an astounding efficiency as well as maximization of profits. Markets are what have made us the richest people in history.

But! In our complex and congested economy, many things cannot be privately owned and cannot be provided by markets. Adam Smith, the founder of economics and one of the great advocates of markets, was explicit that the government had to do what it would not pay any single man or a small group of men to do. That's a lot of things.

We cannot expect private parties to protect the air or water or open spaces, or provide any of what economists call public goods. Private individuals could not give us an honest stock market, clean air, national defense or a highway traffic system even if they wanted to. Markets punish the slightest weakness, like the orphan, the widow, the ill and the unwise, and they can be manipulated.

To see what this means, consider the present proposals for Medicare and prescription drugs. The proposal presently being pushed by House Republicans and the administration has a provision known as "premium support." This provision would require the traditional version of the Medicare program to compete with, and even encourage, private plans operating on the basis of price and benefits.

This is intended to provide an alternative private insurance service that would drive down costs. In a perfect world, this competition would force the government to be more efficient and provide insurance, drugs and medical services at the best possible price to the elderly.

The problem is this market would operate the way all marketplace solutions are supposed to. Those with the purchasing power get the service, while the poor, the unfortunate and the unwise either do not get the service or they pay more than their share. It is what is called "cherry-picking." It would have to demand that higher costs be imposed on most of the 40 million elderly and disabled.

Under a market option, the insurance companies will move to what is called an experience-based system. The actuaries can, by looking at the experience of individuals, tell the insurance companies who the low-risk, healthy people are. The insurers will offer those people a low rate and good service.

The high-risk people, the elderly, will be left to the government system, which will have to charge much higher premiums because they are the high-risk, high-cost population. And, of course, the government will be accused of inefficiency and waste.

The truly sick would be uninsurable. The poor would be uninsured. The unfortunate would have their policies canceled. Our national health would suffer. The whole can of worms that is genetic testing would, under a market regime, lead to loathsome results.

This thwarts the very idea of insurance, public goods and community values. In a complete market society such as the administration seems to be seeking, perfect price discrimination would have every person paying a premium commensurate with his or her place on the actuarial table. Such a system would destroy Medicare, but that may be just what they want.

It is not just Medicare. The Market Society is being foisted on us from every direction. The idea of replacing Social Security with personal savings accounts would subject your retirement income to the test of the market.
School vouchers are the first step. We would eventually be paying private companies for the only available grade schools and high schools. The U.S., under guise of the International Monetary Fund, is already demanding that less-developed countries make people pay for elementary and high school, or the countries are denied needed loan guarantees.

We used to hear about this kind of privatizing, but we don't any more. It wasn't popular. The revolution now un

der way is a stealth revolution that the administration obviously believes it could not sell to the American people.
In a normal political time, an administration would trumpet its goals and package them to garner wide support among the people. This administration does not appear to want the people to know.

In these extraordinary times, the administration keeps a low profile on the picture emerging from this puzzle because it does not add up to a picture that the American people would buy.

When we are talking about markets, I suggest we remember the old Latin proverb: Caveat emptor-- Let the buyer beware!
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A resident of Mt. Gretna, Heise holds a Ph.D. in economics and is professor of economics at Lebanon Valley College. His column appears every other Thursday.

"As criticism of his authority appeared in Iraqi media, occupying authority chief L. Paul Bremer III placed controls on Iraqi Media Network content and clamped down on the independent media in Iraq, closing down some Iraqi-run newspapers and radio and television stations."
American Prospect, Oct. 1, 2003

"American soldiers handcuffed and firmly wrapped masking tape around an Iraqi man's mouth after they arrested him for speaking out against occupation troops. Asked why the man had been arrested ... the commanding officer told Reuters at the scene: 'This man has been detained for making anti-coalition statements.' He refused to say what the man said."
Reuters News Service, Nov. 11, 2003

"The pseudo-legal gang rape of Justice Roy Moore is an example of creeping Liebermanism," said Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Jews for Morality.

"What do you say to people who today conclude that British people have died and been maimed as a result of you appearing here today, shoulder-to-shoulder, with a controversial American president; and Mr. President, if I could ask you, with thousands on the street...marching today here in London, a free nation, what is your conclusion as to why apparently so many free citizens fear you and even hate you?"

Bush: "I'd say freedom is beautiful. It's a fantastic thing to come to a country where people are able to express their views."

Pressed on the question of why people hate him "in such numbers," Bush said he doesn't know that they do hate him.

"I fully understand that people don't agree with war. I hope they agree with peace and freedom and liberty. I hope they care deeply about the fact that when we find suffering and torture and mass graves, we weep for the citizens that are being brutalized by tyrants.

And finally, the prime minister and I have a solemn duty to protect our people. And that's exactly what I intend to do - as the president of the United States, protect the people of my country."

The judge found Interior Solicitor William Myers III "misconstrued" federal law, ignoring the department's obligation to prevent environmental harm, when he advised the department it lacked authority to ban a company from doing anything "necessary" to mining.

Myers resigned his position after being nominated by President Bush on May 15 as a federal appeals court judge.

A set of five development projects financed by tax-exempt bonds that could cost taxpayers $350 million over 10 years is one of the provisions that has held up the bill. Included among the five projects is a billion dollar mall, to be built in Syracuse, New York at three times the cost of the Mall of America. Another, the Louisiana Riverwalk, is a $180 million urban renewal project to bring shops and restaurants to downtown Shreveport. Already confirmed for the Riverwalk is a Bass Pro store and Shreveport's first ever Hooter's restaurant.

The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $128 million to help tackle a humanitarian crisis in Uganda, where an escalating civil war and drought have displaced more than a million people.

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In Uganda, mounting attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have nearly doubled the number of internally displaced people since March 2002, officials said. A drought in the northeast is also aggravating the humanitarian crisis.

''It is estimated that over 1,239,682 persons are displaced in 12 districts either affected by conflict or by drought,'' said a UN report released in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

The battered survivors of Uganda's latest bloodletting lay moaning or unconscious in a hospital overflowing with wounded on Wednesday after being chopped, bludgeoned or shot by northern rebels.

[edit]

'''We did not come for money, we came for killing,''' Owing quoted one of the attackers as saying.

The raiders belonged to the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), notorious for slicing off the lips and limbs of their victims. They killed 17 people in the attack by bludgeoning their heads with wooden sticks, government officials said. But witnesses said up to 53 villagers had been killed in the raid on several villages.

For 17 years the LRA has waged war against the government, snatching tens of thousands of children from villages and forcing them to work as frontline soldiers, cooks and sex slaves.

"Both (sides) read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ..."

The coming year is going to be all "about gay marriage," former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland told Salon Tuesday. Cleland, a war hero who lost his seat in the Senate to a Republican smear campaign that painted him soft on terrorism, predicted that Republicans will use the gay marriage issue to "trash" the Democrats running for president. "It'll be slime and defend, as it always is," he said. "And it will be the ugliest political campaign, aboveboard and below board, in the history of the country."

If given a choice between a landslide re-election of the President - or Texas finally being able to beat OU in the Red River Shoot-OUt - which do you pick?

I'd like to welcome POTUS and his staff to the UK, my question is a simple one - as an avid British viewer of The West Wing, how closely does this resemble real life in the White House?

[W]ho is your favorite press secretary of all time?

I just wanted to know, how much time do you actually get to spend with the President, and how important is this, if at all, to your work?

How stressful is it to be the White House Press Secretary?

As a native Southerner, I enjoy hearing your Southern accent when you are addressing the media. Where are you from originally?

I am currently serving in the U.S. Army here in Texas but was curious about having a job such as yours. What would be a good preparation one would need to become either a political speech writer or press secty?

What kind of preparations do you go through before a press conference begins?

Do you get to watch the Turkey Pardoning?

The bill does include funds for energy conservation, including some incentives for "green" construction, but some sound suspicious. Some $180 million will pay for a development in Shreveport, La. That project will use federal tax money to subsidize that city's first-ever Hooters restaurant. What a new Hooters has to do with America's energy situation may be best known to U.S. Rep. Bill Tauzin, a Louisiana congressman and key player in the secret conference committee talks.

The Senate is blocking another of President Bush’s judicial nominees — but this time it’s Republicans and not Democrats playing the role of obstructionists.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) last week sought unanimous consent to take up the nomination of Leon Holmes to a seat on the U.S. District Court in Arkansas.

Pryor made the request after the Judiciary Committee reported Holmes’s nomination without recommendation on a party-line vote, meaning the panel took no position on whether he should be confirmed by the full Senate.

But at least four centrist Republicans expressed doubts about Holmes, based on statements culled from some of his writings. The four are Arlen Specter (Pa.), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas).

I believe we need to encourage personal responsibility so people are accountable for their actions.

Home Secretary David Blunkett has refused to grant diplomatic immunity to armed American special agents and snipers travelling to Britain as part of President Bush's entourage this week.

In the case of the accidental shooting of a protester, the Americans in Bush's protection squad will face justice in a British court as would any other visitor, the Home Office has confirmed.

Guy Hunter is a patriot. He's defended the United States government in the jungles of Vietnam, the skies of Iraq, and the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein.

And he defends it today. Even as his lawyers fight to get this 1991 Gulf War POW compensation for his suffering, Mr. Hunter can sympathize with his government's choice to spend $1 billion in seized Iraqi funds rebuilding that shattered nation, rather than paying him and 16 fellow servicemen for the brutality they suffered in its prisons.

What he can't countenance is the message that decision sends to future US enemies: that those who torture American POWs won't have to pay.

This summer, a federal district court awarded substantial damages to 17 prisoners of war tortured in Iraq: Hunter was to receive $32 million. When lawyers filed the case in April 2002, Iraq was the heart of the "axis of evil," its assets frozen in US banks. By the time the judge's decision came down in July 2003, Iraq was a land of faltering hopes and ruined power plants. It was also, as it remains, a fledgling democracy the US wished to rebuild - much like Germany after World War II.

To that end, President Bush had in March seized $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets and deposited them in the US Treasury to help with Iraq's rebuilding. When Hunter and his fellow plaintiffs came to claim their awards in July, the money had already been spent. Taking no chances on their claim, the Justice Department is now suing to nullify the POWs' award.

"Among the best potential witnesses on the subject of Iraq's actual nuclear capabilities are the men and women who worked in the Iraqi weapons industry and for the National Monitoring Directorate, the agency set up by Saddam to work with the United Nations and I.A.E.A. inspectors.

"... Jafar Dhia Jafar, a British-educated physicist who coordinated Iraq's efforts to make the bomb in the 1980s, and who had direct access to Saddam Hussein, fled Iraq in early April, before Baghdad fell, and ... agreed to be debriefed by C.I.A. and British intelligence agents. There were some twenty meetings, involving as many as fifteen American and British experts. The first meeting, on April 11th, began with an urgent question from a C.I.A. officer: 'Does Iraq have a nuclear device?' .... Jafar's response, according to the notes of an eyewitness, was to laugh. The notes continued:

"Jafar insisted that there was not only no bomb, but no W.M.D., period. 'The answer was none.' "

"... The notes said that Jafar was then asked, 'But this doesn't mean all W.M.D.? How can you be certain?' His answer was clear: 'I know all the scientists involved, and they chat. There is no W.M.D.' … a strong endorsement of Jafar's integrity came from an unusual source -- Jacques Baute, of the I.A.E.A., who spent much of the past decade locked in a struggle with Jafar and the other W.M.D. scientists and technicians of Iraq. 'I don't believe anybody,' Baute told me, 'but, by and large, what he told us after 1995 was pretty accurate.' "

Section 11. No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.

Section 12. Before issuing a license to marry a person who resides and intends to continue to reside in another state, the officer having authority to issue the license shall satisfy himself, by requiring affidavits or otherwise, that such person is not prohibited from intermarrying by the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she resides.

Section 50. Any official issuing a certificate of notice of intention of marriage knowing that the parties are prohibited by section eleven from intermarrying, and any person authorized to solemnize marriage who shall solemnize a marriage knowing that the parties are so prohibited, shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred or more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.

"Men are analogous to the beast. All men are basically predators, and in every man, there is a little beast. And this beast can only be tamed and civilized and brought into civility by a princess. And that princess has to do that in the bond of marriage in the marriage bed."

Connie Mackey of the conservative Family Research Council criticized the ruling, saying it was "a clear case of the courts overruling the majority opinion of the people."

"... the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the [white] schools."

POT, KETTLE, ETC. Here's Robert Novak denouncing the Democrats for corrupting the Senate Intelligence Committee with rank partisanship and other assorted sins.

He's a little late to this game, isn't he? I mean, I knew pundits had short memories, but this is ridiculous.

Pots and Kettles

Robert Novak's high dudgeon over Democratic partisanship having "laid waste the Senate Intelligence Committee" would be decidedly more convincing if Novak himself hadn't have damaged U.S. security and intelligence by gratuitously outing a CIA agent.

• By a 59% to 35% margin, Massachusetts voters say gay or lesbian couples should have the right to enter into civil marriage. Support levels include 55% of Catholic voters, 62% of women, 57% of men, and at least 56% in every region of the state. Voters see a ban on gay marriage as discrimination.

• If civil marriage between gay or lesbian couples were legal, 77% of Massachusetts voters would find it acceptable, and only 22% would not.

• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of voters would agree, and only 34% would disagree with a court ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts if the court ruled that couples of the same sex have a constitutional right to marry.

•By an overwhelming 3-to-1 margin, voters would oppose passing an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution prohibiting civil marriage for gay and lesbian couples, viewing it as undesirable and unnecessary. Voters agree by a margin of 58% to 38% that civil rights, such as the right to marry, should not be dependent on the approval of voters.

•Clearly voters do not want their government spending time fighting the right to marry; by a margin of 79% to 20%, voters say there are more important priorities for government to focus on than passing a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. Fully 83% of the voters expect civil marriage between two gay or lesbian people to become legal in their lifetime.

• Massachusetts voters, whether married or single, do not see expanding marriage rights as threatening their marriages, agreeing by a margin of 62% to 35% that allowing gay or lesbian couples to marry just opens up marriage to more people, rather than redefining marriage in our society.

Connie Mackey of the conservative Family Research Council criticized the ruling, saying it was "a clear case of the courts overruling the majority opinion of the people. If the will of the people has anything to do with it ... the people will throw out any legislator that upholds this ruling."

Since 1997, anyone deemed to be a small-business owner for tax purposes could write off some amount of equipment purchases each year -- up to $18,000 worth that first year, up to $25,000 in 2003. Since 1984, the Internal Revenue Service, thinking more about Chevy Silverado pickups than Cadillac Escalades, has considered vehicles that weigh more than 6,000 pounds to be deductible business equipment.

When lawmakers began writing this year's $350 billion tax-cut plan, they looked for ways to help the economy by encouraging small businesses to invest in new equipment, which could include computers, rotary saws or photocopiers. Congress raised the maximum annual value of the deduction to $100,000, through 2005. At the time, environmentalists implored tax writers to disqualify SUVs, but lawmakers declined. With the top business tax rate at 35 percent, Washington effectively cut $18,900 from the price of a $54,000 Escalade, bringing its cost more in line with an Oldsmobile Aurora sedan.

House Republicans Monday beat back Senate Democratic changes in comprehensive energy legislation en route to a conference report and a possible House floor vote today on the bill.

Republicans rejected amendments requiring utilities to use more renewable energy sources, repeal of a so-called SUV tax loophole, changes in the federal ethanol subsidy and the creation of a new federal electricity consumer advocate.

Here, the plaintiffs seek only to be married, not to undermine the institution of civil marriage. They do not want marriage abolished. They do not attack the binary nature of marriage, the consanguinity provisions, or any of the other gate-keeping provisions of the marriage licensing law. Recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of the same sex will not diminish the validity or dignity of opposite-sex marriage, any more than recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of a different race devalues the marriage of a person who marries someone of her own race. If anything, extending civil marriage to same-sex couples reinforces the importance of marriage to individuals and communities. That same-sex couples are willing to embrace marriage's solemn obligations of exclusivity, mutual support, and commitment to one another is a testament to the enduring place of marriage in our laws and in the human spirit.

Before the war, Pipes was a proponent of the democracy domino theory. In February, he published a column titled "Why Stop in Iraq: Here's a Chance to Reform the Entire Arab World." In it, he argued with those who suggested that democracy wouldn't work in Iraq, saying, "Japan had about as much affinity for democracy in 1945 as the Arabs do today, yet democracy took hold there ... A US victory in Iraq and the successful rehabilitation of that country will bring liberals out of the woodwork and generally move the region towards democracy."

Now, though, he's contemptuous of the idealistic case for war, the case that wooed some liberals to Bush's side in the first place. "We have no, no moral responsibility to the Iraqi people," he said. "Our moral responsibility is to ourselves. I very much disagree with the name 'Operation Iraqi Freedom.' It should have been 'Operation American Security.'" This met with applause.

"Our goal is not a free Iraq," Pipes continued. "Our goal is an Iraq that does not endanger us." What we need, he says, is a "democratic-minded strongman."

"Watching what has happened with Iraq over the past several months has been like watching your daughter being raped."

"... is an indication of the extraordinary depth of feeling within the US intelligence community as the Bush administration's basis for the war in Iraq -- the weapons of mass destruction, the dark hint of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida -- has been shown to have been built on air.

"Mr. McGovern worked near the very top of his profession .... Now he is co-founder of a group of former CIA employees called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or Vips for short. What the Bush White House has done, he believes, is far worse than the false premise that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War -- a reported second attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place.

" 'The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant."

"Mr. McGovern accuses Mr. Bush of an extraordinary act of chutzpah -- taking advantage of his authority as President of the United States ... 'Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything.'

"It will, Mr McGovern believes, take a change of president and a change of CIA director to even begin to repair the damage done by what he sees as an overt politicisation of the intelligence business. But even that may not be enough."

Allen H. Brill, founder of "The Right Christians", is a private citizen and Christian who wanted to see viewpoints of progressive Christians better represented in the public forum. He provides a Weblog on issues involving Christianity and politics that is updated five times a week.

Rev. Brill is an ordained Lutheran minister educated at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. He is also a member of the South Carolina Bar with a B.A. degree in Government from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School.

* "Three children are apparently being detained, including a 13-year-old, several of the detainees are aged over 70, and one claims to be over 100."

* A sense of desperation among the incarcerated is growing, judged by the 32 reported suicide attempts by detainees.

America's anti-terrorist activities have given cover to many foreign governments who want to use 'anti-terrorism' to justify their own crackdowns on human rights .... In China, Wang Bingzhang, the founder of the pro-democracy magazine China Spring, was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for 'organizing and leading a terrorist group,' the first time, apparently, that the Chinese government has charged a democracy activist with terrorism ....

"In Egypt, the government extended for another three years its emergency law, which allows it to detain suspected national-security threats almost indefinitely without charge, to ban public demonstrations, and to try citizens before military tribunals."

"President Hosni Mubarak announced that America's parallel policies proved that 'we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism.'

"The emerging (Bush) doctrine has placed startling pressure upon the structure of human-rights and international law that the United States itself designed and supported since 1948 ... America's human-rights policy has visibly softened, subsumed under the all-encompassing banner of the 'war against terrorism.' "

The new method is a step towards a bigger goal, claim Venter and members of the US Department of Energy, which is funding the work - namely, building designer bacteria that can pump out hydrogen fuel or gobble up greenhouse gases.

They want to mix and match genes from various organisms to make cellular genomes at least 300,000 bases long. The technique will need some refining first. For example, a cell might be unable to turn more complicated DNA into a working organism without the addition of key proteins.

The study may revive concerns that such techniques could one day be hijacked to make pathogens such as polio or even smallpox for bioweapons. This was widely discussed following the publication of Wimmer's work. The prospect of synthetic viruses or bacteria also raises fears about their possible environmental impact.

"It reminds us that we'll continue to confront these issues in an accelerating way," says public-health expert Stephen Morse of Columbia University, New York City. Now, as then, Morse and others argue that the benefits of the new technique outweigh the risks and that the method should be made public.

The details of the manufacture of virus phi-X174 will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in three weeks.

Lest you be tempted to think this is one isolated instance, let me assure you it is not. It is the norm for government schools. In a recent Ann Coulter column it was noted that: "In a public school in St. Louis, a teacher spotted the suspect, fourth grader Raymond Barnes, bowing his head in prayer before lunch. The teacher stormed Raymond's table, ordering him to stop immediately and sent him to the principal's office. The principal informed the young malefactor that praying was not allowed in school."

In the interview, DeLay made clear that he is keenly aware that Democrats are always ready to pounce on him. "I wear their attacks as a badge of honor," he said. "It's a concerted effort. They are trying to demonize me just like they did with Newt Gingrich." Yet, DeLay said, he has tried to minimize his lightning-rod status of late.

To be sure, suggesting that DeLay has undergone an evolution doesn't in any way mean that "The Hammer" has gone soft. He is still highly effective, steely, and determined. And he is fully capable of employing hardball, partisan tactics, particularly behind the scenes, to accomplish his party's conservative goals. But at 56, DeLay shows more savvy and maturity than before. Some insiders believe it is all part of DeLay's carefully calculated effort to groom himself for the speakership.

[edit]

While DeLay has raised his profile as a party spokesman on Capitol Hill, he has done it mostly on his own terms. He has carefully sought to avoid appearing on national TV or taking a prime legislative role that would open him up to Democratic attacks. In his weekly half-hour meetings with reporters in his office, DeLay bans television cameras, and his office does not issue a transcript afterward, as other congressional leaders usually do.

[edit]

On many issues, DeLay's goal has been for the House to pass the most-conservative bill possible, sometimes even adding its own imprint to proposals from Bush. When the president used his State of the Union message to propose a $15 billion initiative to fight AIDS in Africa, for example, DeLay immediately praised the plan. But he moved to add a conservative flourish by requiring that one-third of the funds be allocated to sexual "abstinence" programs

[edit]

"He knows what conservatives need, and he's making sure that it happens," said Brady, a Ways and Means Committee member. At the same time, according to a DeLay aide, the majority leader has deliberately refrained from public meetings or statements about the issue that would permit Democrats to make him the "face" of Medicare reform.

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"Tom has represented conservative interests," said Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., who chairs the House Republican Study Committee, a powerful 90-member bloc of conservatives. "He's toned down his rhetoric a bit because his job has changed. Now, he has to take the big picture into consideration. But it hasn't changed him. We work together closely with him and with Speaker Hastert."

As leader of the conservatives, DeLay has quietly pursued a broad agenda, and in the interview with National Journal, he said that more is to come. "This is just the start," he said. "Hopefully, we come back after 2004 with a larger majority in the Senate and in the House. We will start talking next year about doubling the size of the economy in 15 years.... You start with Republican values: a major overhaul of the tax code, regulatory reform, redesigning the government, redesigning the Congress."

National Journal: What changes do you have in mind for Congress?

DeLay: [House Republicans] did a lot of reforms when we first took over [after the 1994 elections] and have done some since then. But we have not fundamentally redesigned the House or the Senate to reflect Republican values. We are still basically operating under the rules designed for Democratic control in the past 40 or 50 years.

For example, the committees. Those Appropriations subcommittees were designed to spend more money on Democratic priorities. So we ought to redesign them to, first, save money and spend money only on Republican priorities.

REPORTER: "One general question?"

RICE: "Yes."

REPORTER: "But what's the source of the President's commitment to Africa? It surprises some people that a conservative Republican from Texas has committed a humanitarian, economic, and now, perhaps, security level to Africa. Where does that come from?"

RICE: "The President is -- as President, understands that America is a country that really does have to be committed to values and to making life better for people around the world. But that's what the world looks to America to do. It's not just the sword. It's also the olive branch that speaks to those intentions. And the President, from the day he was elected, has had a real interest in people and leaders and countries that have a struggle, that have difficulties in front of them ..."

"America alone looks set to send $20 billion (to Iraq) next year -- more than the whole world spends on aid to Africa and more than America has spent so fast before on any other country."

[Senator Frist's] Web site asked visitors to vote "yes" or "no" on whether the nominees deserved "an up or down vote on confirmation as specified in the Constitution."

To the embarrassment of Dr. Frist's staff, the vote was 60 percent "no," 40 percent "yes," with 9,224 people weighing in by Wednesday afternoon. Undaunted, his office tried again, rephrasing the question to read: "Should the Senate exercise its Constitutional duty to provide the president's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?"

The reply came back as an even more emphatic no, with 86 percent of 1,874 respondents voting no.

Despite nine months of assaults on Democratic filibusters, Senate Republicans are admitting they still don’t have the support within their own Conference to pass a leadership-backed proposal to change the chamber’s rule on nominations.

Even more troubling for those behind the effort to bring an end to filibusters, Republicans are far from securing the 50 votes they would eventually need to execute what has become know as the “nuclear” option, the controversial parliamentary route that would require only a simple majority to end filibusters on nominations.

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and several other leading Republicans conceded Friday, after a nearly 40-hour marathon of debate on the nomination process, that Republican resistance to rules changes is the main obstacle to preventing any attempt to move to either of the options on the floor.

“I think that’s not likely to happen,” McConnell said of either of the proposed changes prevailing. “There is reluctance within our Conference to change the rules.”

U.S. renews ties with repressive Equatorial Guinea - rich in oil, poor in human rights

Equatorial Guinea's president had his opponents imprisoned and tortured, had his presidential predecessor executed by firing squad, helped himself to the state treasury at will. State radio recently declared him ''like God.''

Teodoro Obiang might seem an unlikely candidate for warmer relations with Washington, except for one thing — his tiny West African country's got a tremendous amount of oil.

With America looking increasingly for alternatives to oil from the Middle East, West Africa — and dictators like Obiang — aren't looking so bad.

To the dismay of human rights activists, Washington reopened its embassy on the tropical country's island capital of Malabo last month after an eight-year shutdown.

In an effort to counter the influence of conservative Christian organizations, a coalition of moderate and liberal religious leaders is starting a political advocacy organization to mobilize voters in opposition to Bush administration policies.

The nonprofit organization, the Clergy Leadership Network, plans to formally announce its formation on Friday and will operate from an expressly religious, expressly partisan point of view. The group cannot, under Internal Revenue Service guidelines, endorse political candidates, and it will have no official ties to the Democratic Party.

[edit]

Several of the political group's founders are from Midwestern and Southern states, including Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, which Mr. Pennybacker called "battleground areas" in which moderate and progressive Christians have been losing their "political voice" to Christian conservatives.

Like many other religious organizations with political agendas, the group is legally bound to focus on issues, not candidates. The group's tax status as a Section 527 political organization exempts it from rules that affect many other nonprofit religious organizations and political action committees. It can raise unlimited money from an unrestricted pool of donors, provided it discloses its expenditures and income to the Internal Revenue Service.

Personally, I'd like to see the two sides work this out. A solution that makes sense to me is a new Senate rule that would actually require a supermajority -- a two-thirds vote -- to pass any judicial nominee. Why? It would become not just difficult, but nearly impossible to force through nominees without wide consensus in the Senate. The two parties would either only be able to pass moderate judges or, at best, horse-trade liberal and conservative nominees in pairs. This would be a more-than-fair deal for the GOP. Republican nominees already have majorities on 10 out of the 13 circuit courts. The 168 judges already put in place by Bush will serve for life. Eventually, the new system would introduce ideological parity and balance, but in the short term, it would preserve the conservative status quo on the federal bench. And all these senators could finally get some sleep.

As we know, exit polling showed a 2.6% intentional undervote rate on question 1 [should Davis be recalled?--APC] of the California recall. The average state final figures show an average undervote rate of 4.6%. I had been using the preliminary figures from the state to argue that the ACLU was right in challenging the punch card voting in six California counties, because of their much higher than average vote count. The final statistics vindicate the ACLU. Los Angeles, the largest county, had an 8.9% undervote figure. (Disclosure: I filed a brief supporting the ACLU in this case.)

Anthony Argyriou and Eugene Volokh point out an equally disturbing trend: an underrate [I think he means "undervote"--APC] of 0 in three counties (Alameda, Kern, and Plumas), all of which used Diebold-made voting machines.

What does this tell us? First, an investigation is absolutely essential.