The Fukuoka Municipal Government urged the court Friday to reject a damages suit filed against the city and a male elementary school teacher who allegedly tormented a 9-year-old student.

The boy and his parents are seeking some 13 million yen from the city and the 46-year-old teacher. The teacher repeatedly hurled verbal abuse at the pupil between May and June, telling him his blood was "filthy" because his great-grandfather was an American, the lawsuit said.

The teacher also physically abused the boy, including pulling his ears and nose, and told him to commit suicide, it said.

During the first court session in the case, the municipal government admitted the teacher did commit some of the alleged acts. But it nevertheless called on the Fukuoka District Court to reject the case, a move that is expected to prompt the court to get to the bottom of the allegations. The teacher has been suspended for six months.

The teacher did not enter a plea Friday, saying he had not found a lawyer.

"State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers validation of laws based on moral
choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today's decision."

The 2003 fiscal year mercifully concluded on September 30. Reckless spending by Congress and the President made it a year in which:

Government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II,

The federal budget expanded by $353 billion over its 1998 level,

Defense and the attacks on September 11, 2001, accounted for less than half of all new spending since 2001,

Mandatory spending reached its highest level in history, and

Spending increased despite net interest costs plummeting by $110 billion.

This paper examines the colossal expansion of the federal government since 1998. That year, a temporary tax revenue boom brought the first budget surplus in over a quarter-century. Abolishing the budget deficit also eliminated one of the most effective arguments for spending restraint, and the spending floodgates swung wide open. By 2001, the budget surplus was quickly evaporating because tax revenues, back to their historical levels, could no longer keep pace with runaway spending. The 9/11 terrorist attacks then necessitated new spending on national security. But by that point fiscal responsibility was a distant memory, and lawmakers steadfastly refused to balance these new high-priority security costs with savings elsewhere in the budget. As 2003 closes, the nation finds itself burdened by runaway federal spending and massive looming structural budget deficits.

U.S. Rep. Mark Souder wants to put former President Ronald Reagan in everyone's pocket.

The Indiana Republican is drumming up support in Congress for a bill to replace Franklin D. Roosevelt's profile on the dime with Reagan's.

Souder said it's particularly fitting to honor Reagan on the dime because "Reagan was wounded . . . by a bullet that had ricocheted and flattened to the size of a dime," he wrote his colleagues.

A peace activist accused the U.S. military on Friday of depriving her of the chance to visit her soldier daughter, telling her that the truck driver was on a mission.

But Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald, spokesman for the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division in Tikrit, said he was trying to organize a meeting for Saturday.

Anabel Valencia said she had informed U.S. military officials that she would be at the gates of the base at noon to see 24-year-old Giselle. She arrived only to discover that her daughter had been sent on a mission to Baghdad.

"I have not seen her in three years, I don't know why they are doing this," said Valencia, standing outside a sprawling U.S. military base in Saddam Hussein's hometown.

Now, this safeguard definitely provided the industry and workers with needed breathing space. And to its credit, much of the industry has used this time well. The bulk of the reconstructing that was necessary to make the industry more competitive has now taken place.

[edit]

[T]he President has concluded that the safeguard has done its job and can now be lifted.

The world's trade court Monday dealt a blow to President Bush's efforts to help ailing steelmakers, forcing him to choose between them and other sensitive industries, including food and textiles.

A World Trade Organization appeals panel upheld an earlier ruling that Bush violated trade rules in March 2002 with three-year tariffs on imported steel.

The ruling sets the clock ticking on retaliation by the 15-nation European Union. Unless Bush lifts the steel tariffs, the EU says it will impose its own penalties on $2.2 billion in U.S. goods, likely in December.

Tokyo says it is ready to retaliate by the end of the month unless Washington backs down, and China says it will consider sanctions.

Q: Ambassador, the retaliatory tariffs that the European crafted were meant to inflict maximum political pain on the President's reelection. How did that factor into your decision?

AMBASSADOR ZOELLICK: This decision was independent of that, in that what we did and what we did from the start of this process was to ask for this ITC review, and we were always going to measure the benefits and costs, to try to get a sense of whether the industry was coming back [blah, blah, blah]

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

This official said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics. "Iraq was big. AIDS is big," the official said. "Big works. Big grabs attention."

At first glance, it looked like a significant victory for US troops in Iraq. Insurgents launched a surprise attack Sunday against a heavily armed US convoy delivering new Iraqi currency to banks in Samarra, north of Baghdad. After a wild firefight, the largest since US President George Bush declared "major combat" over last May, the US said its soldiers had killed 54 Iraqis, most of them insurgents, and had dealt a major blow to those trying to undermine the occupation coalition.

But in the days that have followed these initial reports, the US military's version of events in Samarra has been heavily challenged. Local civilians, and even some US soldiers, now say that only eight people were killed, and most of them were civilians, including an elderly Iranian woman and a child who were on a pilgrimage.

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

Even as he chided the leaders of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia for their human-rights records during his quick trek through Northern Africa, Secretary of State Colin Powell found much to praise

[edit]

He declined to dwell on Algeria's bloody history of political repression and civil war, saying he preferred to look to the future. Relations between the U.S. and Algeria, which will join the UN Security Council for a 2-year term next year and is in line to become a member of the World Trade Organization, have never been stronger, he said.

There are also economic considerations in Washington's dealings with Algeria. It is a major supplier of oil to the U.S. and also has been a major recipient of U.S. investment.

[edit]

He blended the positive with the negative, but there was not much negative in his public remarks. His approach was to encourage democratic governance and stay away from past sins, such as torture and repression of political opposition.

Mr. Powell announced a fourfold increase in economic aid to Morocco, a close partner among Muslim nations, which has received $42.1 million since 2000. He invited the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine ben Ali, to visit President Bush at the White House in February, and he expressed support for free trade agreements.

''Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better.''

"If you can finish (your campaign) before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.

"On economics, we have Harkin. We will do our utmost not to apply it to Argentina unless the situation gets out of control."

"Our primary objective in Latin America is to aid, wherever necessary, the continual growth of the military and paramilitary forces, so that together with the police and other security forces, they may provide the necessary internal security."

"I can't believe in this day and age that there's a sports team in our nation's capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks."

"It doesn't really matter in what context this word was used."

Robert L. Bartley, who oversaw The Wall Street Journal's editorial page for 30 years, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, the White House said.

[edit]

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said President Bush called Mr. Bartley on Tuesday to tell him of the honor. "I am grateful and humbled to receive this recognition from the president," Mr. Bartley said.

In rejecting the teacher's request, presiding Judge Yukio Yamaguchi said, "Public servants' freedom of thought and conscience are subject to restraint when working" due to their official status and related responsibilities.

"Even if there are various opinions about the school principal's official order to play the piano, the order should be accepted," Yamaguchi said, rejecting a claim that the teacher was mistreated.

In response to the alleged remark, the Staff Union at U.Va. is sponsoring a Protest Against Racism at U.Va. and the U.Va. Medical Center After a Recent Racial Incident" today at noon.

"It doesn't really matter in what context this word was used," Staff Union President Jan Cornell said in a statement, adding that employees have reported other similar incidents.

"I will continue to inform the U.Va. administration about racism, discrimination, mistreatment of employees by managers and retaliation issues until U.Va. is a safe place to work for everyone of every race," she said.
...
"We felt it was important to let the University community know what had transpired," [University spokesperson Carol] Wood said. "We were trying to reaffirm that something like this is serious and deserves attention."
...
In an e-mail sent to a black faculty e-mail list, History Prof. Julian Bond, national chair of the NAACP, called for the employee to make a public apology and take sensitivity training.

"My first impulse is that this should be a dismissible infraction -- but free speech protections I hold dear tell me that shouldn't be so," Bond wrote, adding that the administration "ought to disavow such language."

"Well-placed sources said Bush hung up on freshman Rep. Tom Feeney after Feeney said he couldn’t support the Medicare bill. The House passed it by only two votes after Hastert kept the roll-call vote open for an unprecedented stretch of nearly three hours in the middle of the night.

"Feeney, a former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives whom many see as a rising star in the party, reportedly told Bush: 'I came here to cut entitlements, not grow them.'

"Sources said Bush shot back, 'Me too, pal,' and hung up the phone."

"At the same time, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) castigated former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) after he wrote an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal opposing the bill. Armey wrote that he opposed the bill even though he had voted for two similar bills as a member of Congress."

U.N. troops freed dozens of young girls and women used as sex slaves during raids on camps run by ethnic militiamen in northeastern Congo, officials said on Wednesday.

United Nations troops, deployed to bring peace to a region where rival ethnic militias regularly kill civilians, also seized munitions including antipersonnel mines and electronic detonators in the raids on Tuesday.

[edit]

''Three prisoners were freed from underground prison cells. Thirty-four women used as sexual slaves in the camp were freed as well,'' Salmeron said.

According to Salmeron, who is based in Bunia, local witnesses said the women and girls were aged between 12 and 23 and had been held for four months.

Two of the defendants, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, were founders of RTLM radio station, which prosecutors said had a huge influence in a country where people primarily rely on the radio for news. The case against the two turned on the question of whether they intended to create a frenzy of violence, or simply failed to control the station.

The judges found that both men, as well as Ngeze, the newspaper editor, had to know that the broadcasts and articles would unleash violence given the political climate in Rwanda at the time. They cited the words of one witness who testified: "What RTLM did was almost to pour petrol, to spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country."

Dallaire pleaded with New York, and Bushnell and her team recommended in Washington, that something be done to "neutralize" Radio Mille Collines.

The country best equipped to prevent the genocide planners from broadcasting murderous instructions directly to the population was the United States. Marley offered three possibilities. The United States could destroy the antenna. It could transmit "counter-broadcasts" urging perpetrators to stop the genocide. Or it could jam the hate radio station's broadcasts. This could have been done from an airborne platform such as the Air Force's Commando Solo airplane. Anthony Lake raised the matter with Secretary of Defense William Perry at the end of April. Pentagon officials considered all the proposals non-starters. On May 5 Frank Wisner, the undersecretary of defense for policy, prepared a memo for Sandy Berger, then the deputy national-security adviser. Wisner's memo testifies to the unwillingness of the U.S. government to make even financial sacrifices to diminish the killing.

We have looked at options to stop the broadcasts within the Pentagon, discussed them interagency and concluded jamming is an ineffective and expensive mechanism that will not accomplish the objective the NSC Advisor seeks.

International legal conventions complicate airborne or ground based jamming and the mountainous terrain reduces the effectiveness of either option. Commando Solo, an Air National Guard asset, is the only suitable DOD jamming platform. It costs approximately $8500 per flight hour and requires a semi-secure area of operations due to its vulnerability and limited self-protection.

I believe it would be wiser to use air to assist in Rwanda in the [food] relief effort ...

The plane would have needed to remain in Rwandan airspace while it waited for radio transmissions to begin. "First we would have had to figure out whether it made sense to use Commando Solo," Wisner recalls. "Then we had to get it from where it was already and be sure it could be moved. Then we would have needed flight clearance from all the countries nearby. And then we would need the political go-ahead. By the time we got all this, weeks would have passed. And it was not going to solve the fundamental problem, which was one that needed to be addressed militarily." Pentagon planners understood that stopping the genocide required a military solution. Neither they nor the White House wanted any part in a military solution. Yet instead of undertaking other forms of intervention that might have at least saved some lives, they justified inaction by arguing that a military solution was required.

Whatever the limitations of radio jamming, which clearly would have been no panacea, most of the delays Wisner cites could have been avoided if senior Administration officials had followed through. But Rwanda was not their problem. Instead justifications for standing by abounded. In early May the State Department Legal Advisor's Office issued a finding against radio jamming, citing international broadcasting agreements and the American commitment to free speech. When Bushnell raised radio jamming yet again at a meeting, one Pentagon official chided her for naiveté: "Pru, radios don't kill people. People kill people!"

You may think that some of the President's best nominees are being treated unfairly. I can understand that. In that case, you may want to exercise your right to dissent. The future of freedom and the rule of law depend on citizens informed by fact and directed toward truth. To be sure, the law depends on the integrity of those who make it, of those who enforce it, and those who apply it. It also depends on the moral courage of citizens, and of lawyers like you, to insist on being heard, whether in town hall meetings, in county council meetings, or in the United States Senate.

"More than a quarter of of the labor force, about 34 million workers, is trapped in low-wage, often dead-end jobs ...

"In fact, according to a study by two Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists that analyzed families' incomes over three decades, the number of people who stayed stuck in the same income bracket ... actually increased in the 1990s. So, though the boom lifted pay rates for janitors and clerks by as much as 5% to 10% in the late 1990s, more of them remained janitors or clerks; fewer worked their way into better-paying positions."

The hearing for a Muslim Army chaplain charged with mishandling classified materials was delayed because others in the military accidentally mishandled classified materials in his case, defense officials said Wednesday.

There's a time and a place for political criticism and spirited debate and Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, seems not to understand either where nor when to voice such thoughts. Miss Maines and her cohorts ran afoul of the American public last spring when, just before the war in Iraq, she said she was "ashamed" President Bush was from Texas. The comment was bad enough, but it really upset people that she made it on the eve of war and in a foreign land.

Last week Miss Maines was at it again. Heading into the holiday season, when it is especially difficult for young Americans in uniform to be so far from the ones they love, Miss Maines protested on the "Today" show, "I think people were misled and I think people are fighting a war that they didn't know they were going to be fighting."

The young Americans fighting this war here in Iraq don't believe they were misled. Their morale is high, their spirits are strong. They are doing a magnificent job and would like to know they have the support of their fellow Americans for what they're doing.

"Jesse Helms is back! And this time, he's black." That's what The Winston-Salem Journal (the largest and most liberal newspaper in the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina) had to say about my campaign for Congress. The radical homosexuals printed the same thing in their publication, which they call "Queer Notes". They scornfully called me, "Helms redux."

Of course, they meant the comparison to Helms to be taken as an insult, but I wear it as a badge of honor.

For 30 years, Jesse Helms was the number one flag carrier for the conservative movement in Washington, and with him gone, someone needs to step in and fill that void.
...
Some of you may remember all those lonely years, particularly before Ronald Reagan was elected President, when Jesse Helms would be the only vote against some outrageous piece of liberal legislation, only because nobody else in Congress had the courage to stand with him against the Left.

Sometimes it was Teddy Kennedy and the welfare lobby coming after Jesse, or the gun grabbers, or the Jesse Jackson crowd, or the environmental extremists, or the lesbian feminists, or the union bosses, or the pro-abortion zealots, or the tax and spend junkies.

And sometimes it was just good, old-fashioned communist sympathizers who were mad because Jesse wanted to get us out of the United Nations.

But you knew ol' Jesse wasn't going to run from them. He didn't run when the homosexual terrorists erected a giant, 40-foot, inflated, condom-shaped balloon on the roof of his home.

And Jesse didn't run when National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg wished death upon him and his grandkids by telling millions of Americans, "If there is retributive justice, Jesse Helms will get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it . . .." This from the woman who says it is Jesse who is intolerant.
...
At one time or another I have been endorsed by Jesse Helms, Jeb Bush, Alan Keyes, Elizabeth Dole, Dick Armey, Gary Bauer, the NRA, Right-to-Life, the Immigration Reform PAC, the Republican Liberty Caucus, Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, Pat Buchanan, Pete du Pont, Richard Petty, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Gary Aldrich, Morton Blackwell, Tom Tancredo, and Bob Barr.

If my name sounds familiar, it may be because The Fox News Channel recently called me "a rising star", "the next J.C. Watts", and "the new face of the Republican Party."

The Wall Street Journal wrote, "He's the next black GOP Congressman." and "When elected, Vernon Robinson will be the first black GOP Congressman elected from a Confederate state since Reconstruction."

On October 25, 1918, Wilson's statement went out to the nation. Republicans had "unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti-administration." To elect Republicans, Wilson said, would be seen "on the other side of the war as a repudiation of my leadership." The statement, with its implication that the GOP had been less then helpful in the war effort, evoked Republican outrage.

[edit]

When Republicans attacked Wilson and his party, they did so as part of what they conceived to be their patriotic duty in a nation at war because they disagreed with the way the president was conducting the war. But for the Democratic president to defend his party and seek its electoral success while the fighting took place seemed to many Republicans an assault on their patriotism.

Charlie Cook, a respected campaign handicapper, has called this issue "frivolous and insignificant" when compared with casualties in Iraq and unemployment in America. Not in the opinion of Bush's social conservatives, who over the past two weeks have made clear to the White House that this -- even more than abortion -- is their great concern about the nation's social fabric.

Charlie Cook, a respected campaign handicapper, has called this issue ''frivolous and insignificant'' when compared with casualties in Iraq and unemployment in America. Not in the opinion of Bush's social conservatives, who over the last two weeks have made clear to the White House that this is their great concern.

Mr. DeLay, of Texas, has proposed chartering the 2,240-passenger luxury cruise liner for the convention, docking it in the Hudson River, so that Republican members of Congress and their guests can all stay at one place. The deal has not been sealed, but Mr. DeLay has given no indication that he plans to back down.

[edit]

The Republicans may be able to shake off the partisan sniping, but they risk running into trouble with city labor unions, a prospect that could undermine the operation of the convention. Labor leaders said yesterday that to help bring the convention to New York, they had agreed to guarantee they would not strike during the convention, which is scheduled for Aug. 30 to Sept 2. They would still be bound by their negotiated labor contracts, a union official said.

But leaders of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, representing about 100,000 workers, and the Hotel Trades Council, representing 25,000 members, said that if the cruise liner is used, it will mean that the Republicans negotiated in bad faith.

[edit]

Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel Trades Council, representing virtually all hotel workers, said he was furious about the DeLay plan.

"Everything that every union leader did, every civic leader did, every government leader did to bring the convention here was done for one reason: to bring business into the city to stimulate jobs and raise the tax base," Mr. Ward said. "And for these guys to rent a boat to stay out in the river, and not pay hotel occupancy tax, is just an outrage."

"CO2 injection would be detrimental to a great many organisms," said the URI biologist. "It would kill everything that can't swim fast enough to get out of the way, because in concentrated form it's highly toxic, even to humans. But the Department of Energy seems willing to sacrifice the animals of the deep sea if it will stop global warming. That's not entirely unreasonable considering that if we keep stalling on taking serious measures to reduce global warming, we won't be able to do anything about it. But I'd still like to see that we're doing everything else possible to reduce emissions before we begin polluting the deep-sea."

We request that the recently submitted Texas redistricting plan be reviewed by professionals from the staff of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights section free from political interference or influence.

Any impartial review would deny Texas’ map pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act because it clearly dilutes the strength of African American and Hispanic voters. The proposed Texas plan illegally shifts nearly one-million African Americans and Hispanics from competitive districts where their votes have determined the outcome of elections, into noncompetitive districts where their votes are essentially meaningless.

If allowed to take effect, the Texas redistricting plan would be the greatest weakening of minority voters’ political power since the Voting Rights Act was enacted.

The Justice Department is entrusted to preserve the voting rights of every American – not protect the parochial interests of any political party.

We urge you to ensure that the review of Texas’ redistricting map is conducted without political influence from your appointees at the Justice Department or other Bush Administration officials.

The United States has ended its requirement men from 25 mostly Muslim countries register with the authorities every year they are in the country.

The program has yielded no terror leads, U.S. Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson announced Monday.

The Department for Homeland Security first required registration for male visitors over age 16 from five countries identified as state sponsors of terrorism -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria -- in November last year. Later the program was expanded to include male nationals of 19 other Muslim nations and North Korea. Registering visitors were interviewed, photographed and fingerprinted.

The 177,260 foreign men who have registered under the program were required to re-register 30 days later and again one year after their initial registration.

The past few years have seen a bold if flawed attempt to resurrect the reputation of Sen. Joe McCarthy, whose Senate investigations into communism in the 1950s produced the opprobrium "McCarthyism" -- to refer to those who smeared opponents falsely, ruined their careers and practiced guilt by association. Writing in the pages of this paper in 1996, liberal columnist Nicholas von Hoffman began the revision, claiming that "point by point Joe McCarthy got it all wrong and yet was still closer to the truth than those who ridiculed him." In 2000, historian Arthur Herman offered a biography of the senator from Wisconsin that attempted to vindicate him. Most recently, the writer Ann Coulter has made McCarthy the hero of her screed Treason, in which she asserts that the portrayal of the senator "as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism." Indeed, Coulter argues that "what the country needed was Joe McCarthy," whom she calls a "brave man" from whom "the American people heard the truth."

Those believing such balderdash will do themselves a great service by reading Ted Morgan's Reds.

[edit]

Scrutinizing McCarthy's work with a careful lens, Morgan shows how from the start the senator was a rank opportunist, a man who defended Nazi SS murderers and attacked the U.S. Army in his first Senate investigation, showing himself at his "posturing, blustering, wrongheaded worst." A latecomer to the anticommunist cause, McCarthy used a lag in perception about communists in government to engage in the kind of scattershot and irresponsible charges that made him headline news. He sometimes had a valid case about people who presented serious security risks still holding places in government, but he ruined it by overstating and by changing the numbers of those who supposedly still were implanted. His facts were wrong, but his timing -- coming after the exposure of Alger Hiss's treachery and the fall of Nationalist China -- was perfect. Rather than really being concerned with improving security, McCarthy was more interested in discrediting the Truman administration and using his investigations to gain political influence and power. There were no spies left in the State Department by February of 1950, although security could have been tightened. But McCarthy did not study carefully what files he had obtained, nor did he cull his list. Instead, as Morgan writes, he concealed sources and sought to overwhelm the Senate "with the bogus momentousness of his findings."

"Well, the point the President makes about 9/11 is that prior to 9/11 it was much easier for the American people to sit back and think that terrorism was something that affected maybe our embassies abroad or people in other countries in faraway lands. After 9/11 it became very clear that there are people who have a clear desire, and they will do it again if they can, to attack the United States ... And what we do worry about is them getting their weapons from the Iraqis, and then coming to the United States to commit more crimes."
Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, press briefing, Feb. 25, 2003

"The assassination of the heir to the [Austro-Hungarian] throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in June 1914 in Sarajevo ... gave the government in Vienna the pretext to crush Serbia."
Dragnich, "Serbs and Croats," 1992, p. 15

"The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq."
President Bush, weekly radio address, Sept. 28, 2002

"[Archduke Ferdinand's] assassin was a Serb, and to Austro-Hungarian leaders this was proof that agents from Serbia had directed the assassination with the connivance of officials in Serbia."
Dragnich, "Serbs and Croats," 1992, p. 15

"In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation. ... American investigators determined Atta was probably in the United States at the time of the meeting ..."
"Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney," The Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2003

"Neither the Austrians nor the Germans had been able to find any evidence of official Serbian complicity in the assassination of the archduke. The most that Vienna could do was demonstrate that the Serbian cabinet had tolerated the existence of anti-Austrian organizations in Serbia."
Dragnich, "Serbs and Croats," 1992, pp. 16-17

"Tony Blair has 'tremendous concerns' about the prospect of war with Iraq, King Abdullah of Jordan has claimed. The monarch said the British Prime Minister agrees with most international leaders that America's determination to topple Saddam Hussein at all costs is a mistake. His comments were made to an American newspaper following a meeting with Mr Blair ..."
"Blair's 'concerns' over Iraq war," BBC News online, August 1, 2002

"... there are signs of the first cracks in that united (Anglo-American) front with senior officials in both the British government and armed forces expressing reluctance to disarm any further rogue nations such as Syria, Iran or North Korea."
Richard Evans, writing on TheInquistor.com, May 4, 2003

"... Germany was satisfied with the Serbian answer to the (Austrian) ultimatum. Austria-Hungary, however, was not. It declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, acting hastily on the assumption that Berlin would approve. Although this was not what Berlin wanted, Berlin proceeded to declare war against Serbia."
Dragnich, "Serbs and Croats," 1992, p. 17

There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress. The level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.

Voters no longer choose members of the House; the people who draw the lines do.

At stake in this case is control of Congress—nothing more, nothing less.

"The United States government did extensive, detailed contingency planning for post-Saddam Iraq," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

In fact, the Army's Third Infantry Division said in an after-action report that when it arrived in Baghdad it had no instructions, no mission statement.

"Despite the virtual certainty that the military would accomplish the regime change, there was no plan for oversight and reconstruction, even after the division arrived in Baghdad," the report said.

Attorney: "You have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors, do you?"

Bush: "That's correct."

Attorney: "And you have absolutely over the last 10, 15, 20 years not a lot of demonstrable business experience that would bring about a company investing $2 million in you?"

Bush: "I personally would object to the assumption that they're investing $2 million in me."

If ever there were a time for these people, who I've admired for years, this is it. There was Tom Paine, there were the abolitionists. In the '60s there were the African-Americans who fought for civil rights, the kids against the war. Who were a minority, remember; the jocks beat the shit out of them at first and then joined them later. That's what I mean by a prophetic minority.

It's not a Pollyanna book. I am optimistic, but the word is "guardedly." Guardedly so. I mean, three of the bestselling books are Al Franken and Michael Moore and Molly Ivins, all at the same time. That's not bad. It's an indication to me that there's something underneath, that the people are way, way ahead of the political leaders and the pundits.

You say you hope I'm right. You hope. I hope too. I hope I'm right. I'm not saying I'm right.

I see now that this is the most personal of my books. And people are really affected by it. I'm also a ham actor, so I do this in bookstores all over the country. Like last night in Barnes & Noble [in New York]. And it was fantastic! The Bay Area cities: OK, I knew Berkeley was gonna be OK. But I didn't expect San Jose State to be the way it was. It was students, and it was astounding O -- I'm just saying that, because it was.

They're ready for something, provided it's said directly to them. If the Democratic Party loses this one to Bush, with wars and a forthcoming depression -- Hoover just had a depression -- if he wins and the Democratic Party, to use an old Poe phrase, deliquesces like fungi, then that's it. That's enough.
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To me, history is those who shed those other tears. Those whose brains and whose brawn made the wheels go around. I hate to use the word "the people." The anonymous many. But they're it. I know that the Internet has all sorts of democratic possibilities: That's how Howard Dean came up so fast, isn't it? At the same time, there's a fear of so much in the hands of so few.

I was also going to talk about the perversion of our language: To go more "moderate" means to go more toward the center, and to go toward the center means to go toward the right. If you could see me now, I could do a demonstration: If our physical posture followed our political posture and the perversion of our language -- I'd have to act this out -- we'd walk around leaning to the right. That's the normal way of walking. And then, the guy who's walking straight: "Look at that leftist!" Or if the guy who's walking straight leans a little bit to the left: "He's a goddamn terrorist!"

A Japanese battle flag that spent two decades tucked between some jars in an American family's shed set the family on a search for the soldier who once carried it.

Moore said she realizes some veterans might not be pleased with her decision to return the flag, but believes it will be a tribute to her father [the American soldier who brought the flag home], who died in 1975.

"This might have been my father's at one time," she said, "but now it belongs to someone else."

Miwako Sato, a public elementary school teacher in the western Tokyo suburb of Kunitachi, may file a lawsuit early next year over the use of the controversial national flag and anthem in schools.

The city board of education served her and several colleagues a written warning three years ago when they wore tiny plain blue ribbons at the March 2000 school commencement to express their opposition to displaying the Hinomaru flag at the ceremony.

"Many people in other Asian countries do not want to look at the flag, the symbol of Japanese occupation of their lands, even 60 years after World War II, and I believe its coercive display at school ceremonies is against our Constitution," she said.

In 1999, the government enacted laws officially designating Hinomaru and "Kimigayo" -- unofficially translated as "His Majesty's Reign" -- as Japan's official national flag and anthem. But the question of granting them official status remains sensitive because of their symbolic links to Japan's Imperial system and past militarism.

It is highly likely that Sato will face another reprimand after the next graduation ceremony in March, as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's board of education, under nationalist Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, decided in October to punish public school teachers who refuse to show respect for the flag or sing the anthem at school ceremonies.

Despite a fear of punishment, Sato said, "I will never play 'Kimigayo.' I hope my students remember the existence of a teacher who did not play it."