Asked by Mr. Lauer why, then, the White House did not favor an outside inquiry, she said: "I think we simply believe that there is work still to be done. The Iraq Survey Group is trying to complete its work. In fact, the intelligence community has its own investigation, inquiry, going on into a kind of audit of what was known going in and what was found when they got there."

Kansas can punish someone more harshly for having sex with a minor if the minor is of the same sex, the state Court of Appeals ruled today.

A three-judge panel, splitting 2-1, rejected the appeal of Matthew R. Limon, sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for having sex with an underage boy in 2000.

Had Limon engaged in sex with an underage girl, he could have been sentenced to one year and three months in prison.

Additionally, sexual contact between minors and young adults can lead to unwanted pregnancies. Rearing children is not an overnight occurrence. Parents have a common law, as well as a statutory, duty to furnish support to their minor child. This duty applies equally to parents of a child born out of wedlock.

When a child is born from a relationship between a minor and a young adult, the minor is often unable to financially support the newborn child. In many cases, the minor is still a dependent. As a result, the financial burden to support the newborn child properly falls to the young adult. Obviously, the young adult cannot furnish adequate financial support for the newborn child while he or she is incarcerated. The legislature could well have concluded that incarcerating the young adult parent for a long period would be counterproductive to the requirement that a parent has a duty to provide support to his or her minor child.

On the other hand, same-sex relationships do not generally lead to unwanted pregnancies. As a result, the need to release the same-sex offender from incarceration is absent.

In this appeal, we decide the states’ rights issue of whether Florida Statute § 63.042(3), which prevents adoption by practicing homosexuals, is constitutional as enacted by the Florida legislature and as subsequently enforced.

You can read the memos for yourself here on the website of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, a "loose coalition of 75 center-right grassroots organizations" which, presumably, are totally different from the insidious "interest groups" the [Wall Street] Journal is so worried about."

Among political independents, Bush's approval ratings are almost all net negative: overall (45 percent approval/50 percent disapproval), foreign policy (40 percent approval/50 percent disapproval), Iraq (44 percent approval/49 percent disapproval), and the economy (37 percent approval/58 percent disapproval).

Bush's favorability rating is also net negative among independents: 33 percent favorable/39 percent unfavorable. And by nine points (46 percent to 37 percent), independents say they probably will support the Democratic candidate rather than Bush in the November election. Note that Bush actually carried independents by two points in 2000, an election in which he lost the popular vote, so a deficit of this magnitude—or even half that size—would probably sink him in 2004.

44 percent say they want to see him re-elected, compared to 52 percent who say they don't, also the worst "re-elect" performance of his presidency. Finally, John Kerry actually beats Bush in a head-to-head matchup among registered voters, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Pollsters asked voters who selected a given issue as "very important" whether they thought a Democratic president would do a better job than Bush on that issue. Here are the [issues most frequently identified as "very important"] with the percentage point lead or deficit for a Democratic president among these voters: economy and jobs (+22), health care (+34), education (+22), terrorism and homeland security (-18), the situation in Iraq (dead even), and Social Security/Medicare (+32).

It's also worth noting that a Democratic president leads Bush on every other issue tested in this poll: the environment (+46), the federal budget deficit (+40), U.S. relations with major European allies (+20), appointing new Supreme Court and federal judges (+12), foreign policy (+10), and even taxes (+8).

They ought to just nominate as their presidential candidate George W. Bush.

[edit]

Seconding the nomination of President Bush would be seen as a much-needed gesture to unify the country during wartime, the rejection of politics as usual, a selfless patriotic act of nonpartisan statesmanship that would command respect and that would force the public to take the Democrats seriously again.

[edit]

It is true that the current Democratic Party establishment hates President Bush with a passion and a paranoia that borders on mental illness. If their party were to nominate him, the most virulent Bush-haters would suffer a nervous breakdown, whereupon they could receive the help they need. More importantly, they would leave the party, probably to join the Green Party, which is where, given their ideology, they belong anyway. With them gone, the Democratic Party could have credibility again.

[edit]

What would help the Democrats the most is that Mr. Bush, as the party's presidential candidate, would become, by custom, the leader of the party, selecting the national chairman and other party officials. Mr. Bush could rid the party of the rabid abortionists, the radical feminists, the gay mafia, and the nostalgic '60s peaceniks who hold the current Democratic Party in thrall.

Few things have done more to injure the witness of the Church than attacks on the deity of Christ, the reliability of Scripture, and the rise of feminist ideology. This demonic trinity has counterfeited the truth, ruined countless lives, and resulted in the eternal damnation of many a soul. Now these three have been brilliantly combined into one profoundly evil witness in Dan Brown's latest best-seller book, The Da Vinci Code.

I am not one for advocating book burning, but I will say that The Da Vinci Code is not worth the ashes burning it would create. It is as Sandra Miesel contends: "Blasphemy delivered in a soft voice." What is more, I unapologetically contend that those who embrace its seemingly intellectual revisions of the Lord Jesus, the Scriptures, and the Church will ultimately reside where all blasphemy is destroyed forever and forever -- the fires of hell!!!

I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.

The White House sent at least three letters to the Congress in 2003 which insisted that the amount of funding the President requested, while a billion dollars less than what Congress had authorized, was perfectly adequate. Fortunately, members from both sides of the aisle rejected this contention and approved $2.4 billion for global AIDS, TB and malaria programs, a 16% increase over the White House proposal. Moderating the highly unilateralist direction of the President’s AIDS plan, they increased the amount for the Global Fund by 175% (from $200 million to $550 million in 2004). These increases are important, though they still far short of what programs could effectively utilize and what the US promised in AIDS spending legislation.

President Bush plans to scale back requests for money to fight AIDS and poverty in the third world, putting off for several years the fulfillment of his pledges to eventually spend more than $20 billion on these programs.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know," Bush said. "We know that he was a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world."

They describe in Iraq that was really spinning into a vortex of corruption from the very top in which people were lying to Saddam, lying to each other for money; the graft and how much you could get out of the system rather than how much you could produce was a dominant issue.

I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.

Some companies are interpreting language in new national overtime pay rules as possibly allowing them to exempt workers who have received military training.

[edit]

Under federal law, workers who are "learned professionals" are presumed to have control of their own time and are exempt from receiving overtime pay. Historically, that category included workers such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, theologians and others with advanced degrees.

In proposing changes in the rules last spring, the Labor Department said in the Federal Register that "the exemption is also available to employees in such professions who have substantially the same knowledge as the degreed employees, but who have attained such knowledge through a combination of work experience, training in the armed forces, attending a technical school, attending a community college or other intellectual instruction."

Boeing, the nation's largest aircraft manufacturer, wrote the Labor Department in June, saying it "strongly supports" the revisions, particularly one that would classify employees who had received military training as "learned experts." An air ambulance service from New Mexico and a helicopter company in Portland also wrote the department saying that military, technical school or community college training should exempt pilots and mechanics.

Should a presidential candidate have moral standards based upon the Bible?

Should a presidential candidate support traditional marriage as a union of one man and one woman?

Should a presidential candidate oppose legalized abortion?

Should a presidential candidate work to shut down the pornography industry?

Should a presidential candidate appoint judges who believe in interpreting the Constitution rather than legislating from the bench?

President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation's moral standards.

Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration's commitment to the arts, aides said.

Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

"... came weeks after [Tauzin] helped to negotiate a sweeping Medicare bill that established a prescription drug benefit for America's seniors. .... The job would pay him more than $1 million a year, according to sources.

" 'Seniors who are wondering why the pharmaceutical companies made out so well in this bill at their expense, need only to look at this example of abuse of power and conflict of interest,' Pelosi said at a news conference.

"Tauzin won't announce his decision on whether to accept the offer for several weeks, his spokesman, Ken Johnson, has said. Privately, some GOP aides say the job offer presents a public relations problem for the party."

"As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Tauzin oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry. He was one of a handful of lawmakers who hammered out an agreement on the contentious Medicare legislation."

"The United Nations is, after all, one of the terrorists' most important allies ... What if the U.N. building were blown up? What would happen? ... if no innocents were hurt, the destruction of the U.N. building in New York City would actually increase goodness on earth."

[McKay] said it now appeared that Iraq had abandoned the production of illicit weapons and largely eliminated its stockpiles in the 1990's in large part because of Baghdad's concerns about the United Nations weapons inspection process. He said Iraqi scientists and documents show that Baghdad was far more concerned about United Nations inspections than Washington had ever realized.

"The Iraqis say that they believed that Unscom was more effective, and they didn't want to get caught," Dr. Kay said, using an acronym for the inspection program, the United Nations Special Commission.

"... in (the town of) Leer, where government troops and rebels have dug in for battle not far from each other, there are similarly optimistic signs. Between them a small team of international monitors have carved out a neutral zone. The monitors watched with amazement recently as a government commander entered the area, strode past rebels he has long been trying to kill and sat down to get his hair cut.

"Peace is still not a word that captures present-day Sudan, despite a string of accords signed in recent months between the government and the main rebel movement, known as the S.P.L.A. There are too many guns, too much ill will and too many people still dying.

"... negotiators have agreed to let southerners decide in a referendum in six years whether they want to separate altogether from the north. They have agreed to form a joint military force in the south, and pull back forces from the web of front lines that crisscross the country. They have also decided to divide the nation's oil wealth evenly.

"But reaching a final deal has proved difficult, with various deadlines -- first the end of 2003, then the end of January -- slipping. Pushing hard from the sidelines has been the Bush administration, which has made resolving Sudan's war a top priority.

"... Displaced people ... have begun returning to their homes from other parts of Sudan and from neighboring Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia."

This Thursday sees the downgrading of cannabis from a class B to a class C drug in Britain, putting it on a par with tranquillizers and steroids.

[edit]

In Britain, drugs are grouped into three categories. Class A drugs include heroin and morphine, class B drugs include amphetamines and barbiturates, and those in class C, now including cannabis, are judged to be the least damaging.

Under the reclassification, the possession, production and supply of marijuana are still illegal, but the penalties are different. Adults found carrying the drug are now more likely to receive a warning than a prison sentence. And the maximum prison sentence for possession has dropped from five to two years. Legally, this brings Britain in line with some European countries such as the Netherlands, although in practice these laws are likely to be more strictly enforced in Britain.

Ehrlich, who last year became the first Republican governor in the country to sign a medical marijuana bill, is asking the (Maryland) General Assembly to pass legislation establishing guidelines for prosecutors who want to keep nonviolent drug offenders out of jail or off probation.

While the first phase of the program would be limited, Ehrlich said he hopes the approach, commonly known as diversion, would be the first step toward revamping the state's attitudes toward drug abuse.

... The measure is winning bipartisan support in the General Assembly. States across the country are turning to drug treatment as a cheaper and more effective way of dealing with substance abuse.

It's a grim, bleak time for working Americans.

Two and one-half million jobs have disappeared under this Administration's economic stewardship -- most of them in our once powerful manufacturing sector, which has lost jobs for 41 consecutive months.

One million jobs have been lost overseas. Eight million workers are unemployed. Half-a-million discouraged workers have dropped out of the labor pool.

Three and one-half million workers are collecting unemployment benefits, with an average 350,000 workers signing up for benefits each week. At the same time, 80,000 jobless workers are exhausting their unemployment benefits each week, forcing them to cut back on health care and food purchases.

Workers are losing their health insurance. Two and one-half million more people joined the ranks of the uninsured last year, the largest single increase in a decade. With health care costs spiraling out of control, forty-four million people must do without health insurance. Retired workers are forced to do without life-saving drugs.

For those workers with health insurance, out-of-pocket costs are soaring, more than doubling for employees of large companies since 1998. Costs are up sharply, too, for workers who pay monthly premiums but rarely see a doctor.

Worker pensions are in danger, with the federal pension insurer taking over 152 plans last year, slashing the pension benefit promised to over 200,000 workers.

Two million additional Americans fell into poverty in 2002. Not coincidentally, almost two million workers earn wages at the statutory minimum -- $5.15 per hour. Their wages are eroded every year by inflation, with the real value of the minimum wage dropping. While the wealthiest taxpayers receive tens of thousands of dollars in tax cuts, the Administration denies a meager $1.50 per hour raise to our most impoverished workers.

To quote President Franklin Roosevelt, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

After three colossal tax cuts, this Administration has denied much to those who have little in order to provide more to those who have much.

The American worker, once again, has become the forgotten man. While the Administration is offering only vague promises of hope, the American workforce is forced to endure the most hostile assault in decades.

The Bush Administration has tried to repeal the 40-hour work week and strip workers of their right to overtime pay. It has attacked the civil service system. It has repealed safety rules necessary for the protection of America's workers. It has neglected their health and safety in the workplace.

Now the Administration is blocking an increase in the federal minimum wage. It is blocking efforts to provide unemployment benefits to jobless workers. It is trying to push through a rule to strip 8 million workers of their hard-earned overtime pay ? and, it does so, always with the promise, that these benefits for businesses and the corporate elite will one day trickle down to the middle-class.

This is not the record of an Administration that understands the needs of working families. American workers are sinking on the Titantic and this Administration can only promise workers to send back the life boats once the first-class passengers have been taken to safety.

Americans would have to look back to the Hoover Administration, during the nadir of the Great Depression, to find an Administration that has treated workers more shabbily.

In 1932, Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt blasted the Hoover Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for ignoring the plight of American workers, who he claimed had become the "forgotten man" under the Hoover Administration's top-down economic policies. The "present condition of our nation's affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes," the future President charged. "These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans...that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

I urge Senators to heed those words and to offer workers more than just ideologically based promises that would have us view the plight of America's workers from the top down, rather than the bottom up.

This year, the Congress must extend unemployment benefits. It must protect workers' pensions. It must increase the minimum wage. It must protect the overtime pay of our nation's workforce.

The Administration has invested its energies, it resources, and its political fortunes in those at the top of the economic pyramid, and it has abandoned the workers at the bottom. The representatives of the people must not do the same.

The worst drought in more than a decade is sweeping through southern Africa, destroying crops, driving up food prices and leaving millions hungry — even as foreign assistance dries up, governments and humanitarian agencies say.

[edit]

"The current drought could be disastrous for southern Africa," Richard Lee, regional spokesman for the World Food Program, said Tuesday. "Parts of the region, which have now experienced two years of crisis, will have another year of massive shortages, if this continues."

[edit]

Despite recent contributions by the European Union and United States, WFP is still short $127 million — 29 percent of its emergency appeal to feed 6.5 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe for the year finishing in June 2004.

Millions of people in Zimbabwe have already had their rations reduced due to lack of funds.

Presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday rejected any notion of sharing the Democratic ticket with front-running rival John Kerry -- unless he is at the top.

Asked on NBC's "Today" show if he would accept second place on the Democratic slate to face President Bush in the fall election, Edwards said: "I think you've got the order reversed. I intend to be the nominee."

Edwards said he would not be willing to be No. 2. "No, no. Final. I don't want to be vice president. I'm running for president," he said.

The president has turned out to be the biggest-spending chief executive in the past four decades. As compiled by the Club for Growth, here's the list of recent presidents and the average annual percentage that domestic discretionary spending went up while they were in office, with the biggest spenders first:

n 8.2 percent: George W. Bush, Republican (fiscal years 2002-04).

n 8 percent: Gerald Ford, Republican (1976-77).

n 6.8 percent: Richard Nixon, Republican (1970-75).

n 4.3 percent: Lyndon Johnson, Democrat (1965-69).

n 4 percent: George H.W. Bush, Republican (1990-93).

n 2.5 percent: Bill Clinton, Democrat (1994-2001).

n 2 percent: Jimmy Carter, Democrat (1978-1981).

n minus 1.3 percent: Ronald Reagan, Republican (1982-89).

White criminal offenders in Florida are nearly 50 percent more likely than blacks to get a ''withhold of adjudication,'' a plea deal that blocks their felony convictions even though they plead to the crime. White Hispanics are 31 percent more likely than blacks to get a withhold.

The disparity in outcomes has cost thousands of black offenders their civil rights, including the right to vote, serve on juries, hold public office, own a firearm.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, unruffled by a court ruling that he illegally took out a $4.5-million bank loan to support his election campaign, said Tuesday that he would pay back the money himself, rather than seek the funds from political donors.

In a lunchtime appearance before the Sacramento Press Club, Schwarzenegger said he agreed with the ruling, calling it "great" and "fantastic." He added: "We never wanted to raise the money to pay it back. I myself [will] pay for that."

At that rate, the federal government is spending close to $900,000 more than it takes in every minute of the year.

Sen. John F. Kerry ------------ 83,564 - 38%
Howard Dean ----------------- 57,137 - 26%
Gen. Wesley K. Clark ---------26,966 - 12%
Sen. John Edwards -----------26,175 - 12%
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman ---18,660 - 9%
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich -------3,064 1%
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt ----389 - 0%
Al Sharpton ---------------------345 - 0%

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.”

"But what a stellar crowd," Bush continued. "It looks like the index of Paul O'Neill's book. Let me say something about that book. Paul said I was disengaged because he talked to me for 45 minutes and I didn't say a word. I wasn't disengaged. I was bored as hell and my mother told me never to interrupt.

This is a sham. The article notes that by far the biggest spending increases have come in defense and homeland security appropriations, including the war on Iraq -- the exact areas which these supposed fiscal conservatives have promised to exempt from spending cuts. (In a different time, responsible conservatives and Republicans who had authorized an expensive war abroad would have countenanced raising taxes to pay for it. Not these guys.) And of course, a still greater chunk of the deficit comes, or will soon come, from the irresponsible tax cuts that they also refuse to consider letting expire, let alone repealing early.

So by insisting on across-the-board cuts, what they're actually proposing is to roll back spending in areas that, by pre-Bush standards, were budgeted at levels that did not put the government in deficit, while leaving in place the very policies which we know for a fact have created most of that deficit.

"If productivity grows 1 percent per year, your standard of living doubles every 72 years."

"Moving jobs to lower-cost countries is part of that (strategy), Mr. Chambers said."

"Intel has its headquarters in Silicon Valley. A (San Jose) Mercury News interviewer asked [Intel's Craig] Barrett what the Valley will look like in three years. Mr. Barrett said the prospects for job growth were not good. "Companies can still form in Silicon Valley and be competitive around the world," he said. "It's just that they are not going to create jobs in Silicon Valley."

"The spot opens with the now-famous shot of a Hussein statue crashing to the ground in Baghdad ... The next image is of Mr. Lieberman speaking to voters from a podium, an American flag behind him."

SCRIPT: "... Only one candidate was clear we are safer with Saddam Hussein in prison, not in power. Joe Lieberman -- a national leader in the fight against terrorism and tyranny."

"Mr. Lieberman has featured supporters of Mr. McCain's 2000 campaign in his television advertisements ..."

"Mr. McCain, a symbol of political independence, popped up so frequently in Mr. Lieberman's comments that at one point [Lieberman] asked, chuckling, 'Have I mentioned him too many times today?' .... 'You know I love John McCain,' Mr. Lieberman said in an interview on the bus ..."

Q: Given the comments by Dr. Kay, does the administration continue to believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

"the decision to remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power was the right decision. Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and gathering threat"

"it's important for the Iraq Survey Group to complete its work so that we have as complete and accurate picture as possible"

"let the Iraq Survey Group finish their work"

"let them continue their work"

"it's important that they complete their work"

"We need to let them complete their work"

"But make no mistake about it, the decision that the President made was the right decision. Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and gathering threat"

"the President made was the right decision"

"it's important first for the Iraq Survey Group to complete their mission"

"the first step is for the Iraq Survey Group to complete their work"

"it's important to let the Iraq Survey Group complete their work"

"But the first step is to let the Iraq Survey Group complete their work"

"it's important for the Iraq Survey Group to continue their work"

"the first step is for the Iraq Survey Group to complete their work"

"the decision that we made was the right decision. And what we know today only reconfirms that it was the right decision"

"the decision was the right decision. We knew before the war and what we've learned today only reconfirms that it was the right decision"

"I think his interest in letting the Iraq Survey Group complete their work"

"the Iraq Survey Group obviously will continue to do their work"

"reconfirms that we made the right decision"

"And we are going to have as complete a picture as possible from the Iraq Survey Group once they finish their work"

"we believe is important for the Iraq Survey Group to complete their work"

Did it ever occur to you that when President Bush says, "Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations," he's talking about your money -- and every other American's money?

Just about everyone with a 401(k) pension plan or mutual fund has money invested in companies that are doing business in so-called rogue states.

In other words, there are U.S. companies that are helping drive the economies of countries like Iran, Syria and Libya

In fact, U.S. law does ban virtually all commerce with the rogue nations, but there's a loophole that G.E., Conoco-Phillips and Halliburton have exploited: The law does not apply to any foreign or offshore subsidiary so long as it is run by non-Americans.

“These three companies, as far as we were concerned, appear to have violated the spirit of the law,” says Thompson. “In the case of Halliburton, as an example, they have an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. That subsidiary is doing business with Iran.”

That subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., is wholly owned by the U.S.-based Halliburton and is registered in a building in the capital of the Cayman Islands – a building owned by the local Calidonian Bank. Halliburton and other companies set up in this Caribbean Island, because of tax and secrecy laws that are corporate friendly.

Halliburton is the company that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. He was CEO in 1995 to 2000, during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran. Today, it sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian Government.

In the case of Iran, Thompson says they earn most of their revenues through their oil industry. So what is the connection between that oil business and terrorism and weapons of mass destruction?

“The Iranian Government is receiving dollars from it. And then turning around and exporting terrorism around the world. It benefits terrorism. At least that's our belief,” says Thompson.

[W]hile Halliburton Products and Services was registered at this address, it was in name only. There is no actual office here or anywhere else in the Caymans. And there are no employees on site.

We were told that if mail for the Halliburton subsidiary comes to this address, they re-route it to Halliburton headquarters in Houston.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyasa reported Saturday that the initiative, led by Saudi Arabia, would include "declarations of peace agreements between all Arab states," which will bring an end to the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. The states would declare a normalization in their ties with Israel, including the appointment of ambassadors.

The Arab states will demand that Israel withdraw to its borders prior to the June 1967 war, in other words, to leave the Palestinian territories and withdraw from the Golan Heights.

The initiative also includes a "creative solution" for the problem of Palestinian refugees, which is one of the most serious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to the plan, some two million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to the new Palestinian state that would be established. More than two million others would be absorbed by other Arab states, and will be compensated for the suffering they had endured.

Under the deal, Iraq will also accept Palestinian refugees. Israel will not be required to absorb any Palestinian refugees.

After news reports about Justice Antonin Scalia's recent hunting trip to Louisiana with Vice President Cheney, who is a named party in a case pending before the court, Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), a Democratic presidential candidate, wrote to Rehnquist on Jan. 22, asking him to explain how justices decide whether they have a conflict of interest in a given case.

In his response, which was released by the court yesterday afternoon, Rehnquist said the senators' suggestions that Scalia should have recused from the Cheney case have "no precedent."

"A Justice must examine the question of recusal on his own even without a motion, and any party to a case may file a motion to recuse," Rehnquist wrote. "And anyone at all is free to criticize the action of a Justice -- as to recusal or as to the merits -- after the case has been decided. But I think that any suggestion by you . . . as to why a Justice should recuse himself in a pending case is ill considered."

The invasion of Iraq ended the reign of a brutal government, but coalition leaders are wrong to characterize it as a humanitarian intervention, Human Rights Watch said in the keynote essay of its annual global survey released today.

[edit]

In the keynote essay, Roth notes that removing Saddam Hussein from power brought about the end of one of the world’s most abusive governments. But intervening militarily on the territory of a sovereign state, without its permission, is inherently dangerous and must be undertaken for humanitarian purposes in only the most extreme cases. While Saddam Hussein had an atrocious human rights record, his worst atrocities were committed long before the intervention. At the time coalition forces invaded Iraq, there was no ongoing or imminent mass killing of the sort that would require the kind of preventive military action that should characterize true humanitarian interventions.

For a military action to be characterized as “humanitarian,” Roth argues that the motive for intervening should be primarily humanitarian; the danger of slaughter should be imminent and the scale of the killings massive; and all other options for preventing the slaughter should have been exhausted.

“The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, and neither can Tony Blair,” said Roth. “Saddam Hussein’s atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst atrocities, such as the 1988 genocide against the Kurds, would have justified humanitarian intervention then. But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter. They shouldn’t be used belatedly to address atrocities that were ignored in the past.”

Addressing the U.N. Security Council last week, former U.N. Special Representative in Afghanistan Lakdhar Brahimi said the deteriorating security environment was hurting voter registration.

''Naturally, the national electoral registration and, later, polling exercises cannot be conducted from behind a hardened compound wall,'' he told delegates.

In a report released last month, Annan said the security situation was ''a major concern'' throughout the country, ''with criminality, factional fighting and the illegal narcotics trade all having a negative impact.''

''Credible elections that advance the peace process will require an environment that allows the exercise of political rights, including freedoms of expression and association,'' he said.

''Lacking this, the outcome of elections risks merely legitimising through the ballot box political figures whose current authority stems from the use of force,'' Annan warned.

''The challenges of timely funding and security will be the most difficult to overcome,'' he added.

In August 2003, the Karzai government presented to donors a budget of some 78 million dollars to complete the voter registration process. But the lack of early donor response caused the start of the exercise to be delayed from October to December.

"I like him," Miller explained. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends."