At the request of several congressional Democrats, the General Accounting Office has decided to investigate whether the Bush administration is using for political purposes a federally funded $9.5 million television advertising campaign and $10 million worth of brochures about the new Medicare prescription drug law.

The inquiry, initiated by nine Democratic lawmakers, is part of an escalating, multipronged effort by the law's critics to undermine public support for the legislation. The law, enacted three months ago, will add drug benefits to the program and create a larger role in it for private health plans.

The Bush Administration's new $12.6 million ad campaign on behalf of the forthcoming Medicare prescription drug benefit drew a swift rebuke today from the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union (NTU), which called the White House's effort a "political and fiscal insult to taxpayers."

"First it was the blimp, and now it's the blitz," said NTU President John Berthoud, referring to the federal government's use of an airship last year to advertise Medicare's information services. "Forcing Americans to pay millions for hyping a program that will eventually cost them trillions is truly a two-handed slap at taxpayers."

Berthoud noted that such a major ad buy ($9.5 million for television and $3.1 million for print, radio, and Internet) for a program that won't actually take effect until 2006 has all the timing of an election-year ploy rather than a genuine public service announcement

Worse, the ads appear deliberately designed to gloss over many taxpayers' concerns that the benefit scheme will worsen Medicare's precarious financial condition.

[edit]

"Late last year, 46 citizen groups representing millions of politically-active Americans urged Congress to reject the fiscally irresponsible Medicare prescription drug proposal," Berthoud observed. "Elected officials failed to heed our warning then, but now they at least have the chance to shut down this anti-taxpayer propaganda mill."

* SCOPE -- Evidence increasingly shows that the Bush administration overhyped the info they were receiving from the CIA. In some cases, as this Washington Post article notes, Bush officials in 2002 jumped the gun and made assertions before a final intelligence report was issued on Iraq. The commission should have a broader scope and should consider how and why the White House misinterpreted or misrepresented CIA analysts' findings.

* TIMELINE -- The American people deserve at least an interim report (if time makes a full report impossible) before the November election. Putting the delivery of the final report off until two months after the next president is inaugurated is a shameless way for the administration to significantly lessen the potential fallout.

International Criminal Court (ICC): Investigation into the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, Uganda (January 29, 2004)

The Prosecutor of the ICC has determined that there is a sufficient basis to start planning for the first investigation of the ICC into the activities of the Lord's Resistance Rebel group in Uganda for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"What we would bring is the ring and Bible which now cements that decision, giving an African child something to look at as a visible daily reminder that they have made a vow," Pattyn told the BBC Focus on Africa programme on Monday night.

Silver Ring has been holding public rallies in the United States where students vow to stay virgins until marriage in return for a Bible and a silver ring to constantly remind them of their promise.

The organisation believes that total abstinence is the only way to avoid catching sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/Aids. Pattyn said his project has received support from Ms Museveni who has been preaching sexual abstinence to the youth.

Once the US government releases the initial $1.5 million requested for, a ring-making factory is to be built in Uganda to produce rings at a low cost.

"The students themselves will be trained by American jewellers on how to make these rings," Pattyn said.

A CIA internal memo laid it out in unsparing terms

On September 16, 1970 [CIA] Director [Richard] Helms informed a group of senior agency officers that on September 15, President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him and authorized up to $10 million for this purpose .... A special task forces was established to carry out this mandate, and preliminary plans were discussed with Dr. Kissinger on 18 September 1970.

To extremists in the military, people like Manuel Contreras and other later placed in charge of security forces, Kissinger and the CIA sent an even more dangerous message that would echo later in Condor operations. The CIA "agreed with" and supported plans by military plotters to kidnap the top commander of the Chilean Armed Forces, an action considered "an essential step in any coup plan." The officer, General Rene Schneider, was shot to death in the operation. Schneider's offense, according to the CIA, was excessive devotion to democracy: "Schneider was a strong supporter of the Chilean constitution and a major stumbling block for military officers seeking to carry out a coup to prevent Allende from being inaugurated."

According to declassified documents, the CIA provided three submachine guns to one group of plotters at 2 a.m. on the day of the kidnapping. The CIA has always insisted that the weapons were never used and that a different group killed Schneider. Weapons and money were also promised to that second group but were never delivered, according to the CIA. The distinction between the two groups seems insubstantial, however, since the CIA never abandoned the tactic of kidnapping the army chief and was providing support to plotters on the same that it actually happened.

The United States thus gave its operational endorsement to acts of terrorism in furtherance of the cause of anti-Communism. It was okay to remove a moderate leader who became a "stumbling block" to the removal of a perceived Communist threat. The message could only have been reinforced when the agency a few weeks later sent $35,000 to one of the kidnappers who had escaped. The reason given: "to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the good will of the group, and for humanitarian reasons."

VFW Terms President's VA Budget Proposal Harmful to Veterans
VFW Appeals to Congress for Relief

Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2004--"The president ignored veterans in the State of the Union Address and with today's release of his 2005 budget, it is further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with this administration," said the leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., expressing dismay at the disgraceful 1.8% increase in veterans' medical care funding. "We look to Congress to reject the president's inadequate proposal and to provide a budget that fully acknowledges the debt our nation owes its veterans."

VFW Commander-in-Chief Edward S. Banas Sr., of Voluntown, Conn., said that with only a $500 million increase in medical funding, the administration's budget falls $2.6 billion short of what the Independent Budget recommends is needed to fully meet the demands for quality veterans' health care. "This funding package is a disgrace and a sham," Banas said.

"This deplorable budget will do nothing to alleviate the many thousands of veterans who are waiting six months or more for basic health care appointments with VA. Instead, the budget seeks to drive veterans from the system by realigning funding, charging enrollment fees for access and more than doubling the prescription drug copayment. This is inexcusable, especially when no member of this administration or Congress would wait this long for their health care.

"What the administration is proposing for veterans is a shell game. Veterans are being asked to pay for their own health care to make up for shortages in the budget. We are adamantly opposed to charging veterans an enrollment fee and we are opposed to increasing payments that veterans make for prescriptions and for other health care services, especially when millions of this nation's veterans are already locked out of the system," Banas said. "To ask this nation's veterans to subsidize their health care is outrageous. They have already paid for their health care with their sweat and with their blood.

"This budget indefensibly will not meet the increasing health care needs of our veterans, nor will it lessen the many months they wait for disability benefits.

"As our veteran population ages and service men and women return from Afghanistan and Iraq, we must have a system that meets the health care needs of all veterans. It is clear that, just as we fought on the battlefields, we must now bring the fight to the halls of Congress to rectify this disgraceful budget. Having traveled throughout the nation, I know that the American people will not tolerate this shoddy treatment of America's veterans, especially at a time of war," Banas said.

The President’s budget proposes much larger cuts in domestic discretionary programs than has been generally understood or been reported to date in the media ... By 2009, funding for domestic discretionary programs would be cut $50 billion below the 2004 level, adjusted for inflation ... The large majority of domestic discretionary programs throughout the government would be cut, including popular programs that the Administration claims it is increasing based on its funding request for 2005. The cuts generally would start in years after 2005 and grow wider with each passing year.

There is a good reason that these cuts have been overlooked in the initial reporting of what is in the budget. The budget tables that would normally show these cuts are missing from the budget books that OMB issued on February 2. To find these cuts, one must have access to the 1,000-page OMB computer run that covers all budget accounts and underlies the budget.

The senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist who resigned in the investigation of leaked Democratic Judiciary Committee strategy memos has filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee.

In a letter delivered to the committee Friday morning, Manuel Miranda says he has read "documents evidencing public corruption by elected officials and staff of the United States Senate."

Miranda says the evidence of wrongdoing is contained in previously undisclosed Democratic memos obtained by Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Fourteen of those memos were leaked to the press last November. Two sources familiar with the memos tell NRO there were dozens of additional memos - perhaps as many as 100 - that were downloaded by Republicans but never made public.

[edit]

Miranda says the proof of his allegation is contained in Democratic documents downloaded between 2001 and 2003 by a young GOP Judiciary Committee staffer. Those documents are on a computer hard drive which was seized by the Senate's sergeant-at-arms as part of the investigation into the leaked memos.

Former front-runner Howard Dean sat out this week's primaries, but still managed to make news by ridiculing the FCC's plan to investigate MTV's halftime show at the Super Bowl. Dean pronounced the proposed investigation "silly." He explained that, as a doctor, a naked breast is "not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me."

That's an interesting standard. Presumably a primetime exhibition of Janet Jackson having a full pelvic exam and pap smear would not be "exactly an unusual phenomenon" for Dean either. Let's just be grateful Dean's not a proctologist.

America also confronted a gathering threat in North Korea. The dictatorship of Kim Jong Il was one of the most brutal, corrupt, and dangerous regimes in the world. For years, the dictator funded terrorists and gave reward money for suicide bombings. For years, he threatened and he invaded his neighbors. For years, he murdered innocent North Koreans by the hundreds of thousands. For years, he made a mockery of United Nations' demands that he account for his weapons. For years, Kim Jong Il did all these things. But he won't be doing any of them this year. Instead, he's sitting in a prison cell. And he will be sitting in a courtroom to answer for his crimes.

[edit]

We had a choice: either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time. September the 11th, 2001 was a lesson for America, a lesson I will never forget, and a lesson this nation must never forget. We cannot wait to confront the threats of the world, the threats of terror networks and terror states, until those threats arrive in our own cities. I made a pledge to this country; I will not stand by and hope for the best while dangers gather. I will not take risks with the lives and security of the American people. I will protect and defend this country by taking the fight to the enemy

And as we began to recover from that, we discovered that some of our fellow citizens forgot what it meant to be a responsible citizen. In other words, they didn't tell the truth. They didn't tell the truth to their employees, and they didn't tell the truth to their shareholders. And that affected the confidence of our economy. By the way, we passed laws to hold those corporate criminals to account. They will understand now that there is a consequence for not telling the truth.

"I think he's run the country into the ground economically, and he comes out with these crazy ideas like going to Mars and going to the moon," said Richard Bidlack, a 78-year-old retiree from Boonton, N.J., who says he voted for Bush in 2000. "I'm so upset at Bush, I'll vote for a chimpanzee before I vote for him."

Bush's 47 percent approval rating is the same as his father's at this stage in his presidency 12 years ago before he lost to Bill Clinton.

An animated bear portrayed the portly Weicker as hibernating in the woods, skipping Senate votes and leaving the cave only for as long as it took to find some honey, or speaking fees. Lieberman characterized his opponent, essentially, as fat and lazy.

Weicker turned the other cheek, and lost. He recently declined to talk about that stinging defeat.

The spots helped Lieberman squeeze out a 10,000-vote victory in one of the year's biggest upsets and take his political career to the next level -- Washington.

Le sujet exact de cette conférence concerne le principe de la fraternité au sein des Constitutions. On s'attend à dire qu'un tel principe n'existe pas dans la Constitution américaine - jusqu'à ce que l'on commence à penser sérieusement au sujet. Alors l'on se rend compte que le principe de la fraternité se manifeste au fond de la Constitution américaine. Certes on ne peut jeter aucun coup d'oeil sur le terrain du droit américain sans le trouver partout.

Aussi trouve-t-on le principe de la fraternité au coeur de certaines matières constitutionnelles spécifiques telles que la discrimination positive, ce qu'on dénomme "affirmative action." Ma Cour est actuellement en train de décider si certains critères d'admission à l'université, critères qui procurent des avantages à des personnes appartenant à des races ou à des nationalités minoritaires enfreignent la disposition de la Constitution qui défend aux États de priver les individus d'une protection égale devant les lois. Nous avons reçu plus de cent mémoires de groupes différents exprimant des positions juridiques différentes au sujet de cette question.

"In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq posed an imminent threat."

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

"To ignore (Saddam Hussein's) threats is to encourage them -- and when they have fully materialized, it may be too late to protect ourselves and our allies. By then, the Iraqi dictator will have had the means to terrorize and dominate the region, and each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group."
President Bush, weekly radio address, Sept. 28, 2002

"Should we wait until the people inside Iraq who are ready to help us give up hope? Or should we wait until Saddam Hussein finishes preparing weapons of mass terror -- weapons that will further endanger our troops, or which he can use on the Iraqi people as he has in the past? Those very weapons are the source of our concern."
Deputy Defense Sec. Paul Wolfowitz, address to the VFW, March 11, 2003

“After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.”
—Report of International Atomic Energy Agency Director Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei to the UN Security Council, 3/7/03

“We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
—Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, nine days later

“Yeah, I did misspeak. We never had any evidence that [Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon.”
—Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, 9/14/03

With the Dred Scott case, decided four years before he took office, President Lincoln faced a judicial decision that he believed was terribly wrong and badly misinterpreted the U.S. Constitution. Here is what Lincoln said: "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." By its decision, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts circumvented the Legislature and the executive, and assumed to itself the power of legislating. That's wrong.

An overseas Internet site is shipping counterfeit versions of a popular Johnson & Johnson birth control patch, versions that won't provide any protection against pregnancy, federal health officials warned Wednesday.

Do not use Ortho Evra patches -- or any other drugs -- ordered from the Web site www.rxpharmacy.ws the Food and Drug Administration warned.

"The state which Lee and Jackson defended ... has turned its back on them.

"... Surely, if Gilmore is a 'conservative,' he must be interested in conserving the history of his state."

"Goodbye, history. Hello, 1984."

Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge

(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

"One of the things I try to do when I go into communities is herald soldiers in the armies of compassion, those souls who have heard the call to love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself ... Lucy Salazar is a retired federal government worker. She teaches reading skills to pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children -- incredibly important ... And oftentimes, citizens such as her never get the praise they deserve."

"I can start a campaign based on my non-service in the military. I fought no wars and don't plan on fighting any in the future. I use my brains to avoid conflict.

"What is this macho crap? Joining the military and shooting people is like going to the fair, they'll let anybody in and give you a gun, big deal. The reason why [Bush's and Kerry's] military service is no [sic] credible is that they both pursued the service for credentials. I respect those that joined the military because they wanted to further their education more than these two bozos. Please stop posturing with your military service so that we can think about the reality of solving problems without using the military.

"I can't believe this (Congressman Billy) Tauzin guy either, quitting right away. If I get elected I'll renegotiate that Prescription benefit right away and ban Halliburton from any future contract while I'm at it. We've got to stop these exploitive forces from looting our government."

"If I told you when you came on the road with me (to SC) that I'd double Howard Dean and triple Joe Lieberman, you'd have thought I was on crack."

Among other actions, it would eliminate $34 million spent to help pay for secondary school counselors; $30 million for a program in schools to combat alcohol abuse; $38 million for projects to provide employment services to people with disabilities; and $18 million for a national writing project.

The administration also called for reducing the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for modernization of the air traffic system by $393 million. The Internal Revenue Service, which is struggling to crack down on abusive tax shelters and outright cheating, would see its budget for modernization reduced from $388 million to $285 million.

Despite proposing a big increase in spending on domestic security, the administration is also proposing cuts in federal grants to local police, fire and emergency rescue departments. Money for so-called first responders would be cut from $4.4 billion this year to $3.5 billion next year.

Workers' wages and benefits grew by 0.7 percent in the final quarter of 2003 -- the smallest quarterly increase in a year -- as companies still uncertain about the durability of the economic recovery kept a close eye on their bottom lines.

The 0.7 percent increase marked the smallest gain since the fourth quarter of 2002 and was down from a 1 percent gain in the previous quarter, according to the Labor Department report released Thursday.

The White House, the Republican Party and the Bush-Cheney campaign mounted a choreographed defense yesterday of President Bush's attendance record in the National Guard and denounced Democrats for raising questions about his service.

[edit]

Bush's aides did not release new information to clear up questions about a one-year gap in the public record of Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Bush and his aides have said he reported to an Alabama unit during the period, from May 1972 to May 1973.

No paper record has surfaced that documents Bush's attendance. A former officer of the Alabama unit, to whom Bush was supposed to have reported, repeated on Monday to The Washington Post his assertion that he could not recall seeing Bush on the base. The officer, retired Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed, hedged from a similar statement he made to the Boston Globe in 2000, saying he could not recall if he had been on base much at that time.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe accused Bush this week of being "AWOL" -- absent without leave. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic presidential front-runner, told reporters in Tucson on Monday: "It is up to the president and the military to answer those questions."

Officials in both parties said Kerry, a Vietnam War hero, is much better positioned to exploit this issue than was Vice President Al Gore in 2000, even though Gore served in Vietnam as an Army journalist. Kerry, asked Monday whether he would try to make Bush's military record an issue, replied: "I haven't made up my mind."

[edit]

After McClellan's briefing, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot issued a statement saying Kerry is "supporting a slanderous attack" by not repudiating the McAuliffe comments. "By embracing this line of attack, Senator Kerry has made clear that he will accept and promote character assassination, innuendo and falsehood even when he doesn't have all the facts," Racicot said.

"There's now going to be an FCC investigation into the nipple."

Sleeping with the GOP
by Wayne Barrett, Village Voice

Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton. [read more...]

Candidates Duel Over Tax Cuts; Gore and Bush Trade Analytical Shots, Seeking an Imprimatur of Fiscal Responsibility

Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer

3 May 2000
The Washington Post

Copyright 2000, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

The presidential campaign veered into a dense economic thicket yesterday.

The Gore campaign, seeking to buttress its claim that George W. Bush's tax cut and spending plans are fiscally irresponsible, issued a detailed analysis that suggested the Texas governor would need to either slash government spending or increase the size of the national debt if his proposals were enacted.

The Bush campaign countered with updated budget projections that assert the rapidly expanding economy in recent months has added enough revenue to federal coffers to boost the projected size of the government surplus by 33 percent over the next 10 years--to more than $4 trillion--enough to pay for the Republican's proposals.

[edit]

The Gore campaign asserted that Bush's proposals would eat up so much of the projected surplus that he would need to cut nondefense-related programs by 20 percent for budget growth to keep pace with inflation. If Bush didn't cut these programs but merely kept spending increases even with inflation, then he would start running a deficit in 2005, Gore officials said.

A video camera captured images of a man shaking hands with a Kurdish official seconds before blowing himself up in one of the two suicide bombings during Muslim holiday celebrations that killed 67 people. Kurds blamed Ansar al-Islam, a militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaida, for the attacks.

[edit]

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Tuesday the U.S. investigation has not determined who was behind the Sunday attack, although he said it could have been carried out by Ansar al-Islam or al-Qaida.

Kimmitt also said there were an average of 23 engagements a day between U.S. soldiers and Iraqi insurgents over the past week, compared with 18 the week before.

[edit]

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, the bloodiest in Iraq in six months. But Kurdish and U.S. officials blamed Muslim extremists -- particularly Ansar al-Islam, an armed group that operates in the Kurdish enclave and is believed allied with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.

"All indications point to the involvement of Islamic terrorists with al-Qaida connections," Barham Salih, prime minister of the PUK-dominated sector of the Kurdish region, said by telephone from Washington.

Ansar al-Islam, or "Helpers of Islam," is a group of several hundred Kurdish militants who have vowed to establish an independent Islamic state in the north. It was formed in 2000 and began stepping up its activities in October 2001.

Kurdish officials say more Ansar fighters have entered Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall.

[edit]

Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, told reporters that the Irbil bombings, along with a Jan. 18 attack in the capital that killed 25 people, were "different from the sort of hit-and-run style" of Saddam loyalists thought to be behind anti-U.S. attacks in Baghdad and central Iraq.

"It concerns us that it could be another enemy, a different enemy, a foreign-influenced enemy, a terrorist network enemy," he said in Baghdad.

In the past two weeks, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), hidden away in the dusty northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, has received far more attention than it is accustomed.

The first week brought Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who commanded of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, to testify in the tribunal's most important case, known as "Military I". With Dallaire came international attention, as television crews and reporters from around the world descended to hear his testimony.

That very same week also saw a judgement delivered against Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, a former minister of education, and a news conference given by Hassan Jallow, the new chief prosecutor.

The tribunal was basking in the spotlight. "We have never had the press coverage that we have now," Roland Amoussouga, the tribunal's spokesman, told IRIN. "This is a defining moment for the tribunal in terms of reaching out to the rest of the world. It is helping the ICTR put its case to the international community."

Can we recall please that it was Colin Powell’s insistence on working through the UN process that forced the United States to base its case for action in Iraq so very largely on the WMD issue? In his address to the UN a year ago, Colin Powell could have stressed Iraq’s record as a haven for terrorists like Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal. He could have, but he did not, because the UN is full of states that also shelter and support terrorists and denunciations of terrorism might offend them. He could have stressed the tyranny and cruelty of Saddam’s rule – but again that might have discomfited Zimbabwe and Burma and of course China.

There were other arguments too that could have been made, if not at the UN, then in other forums: arguments about strategy, about the need to cut the connection between the United States and Saudi Arabia, about the need for political change in the Middle East, about the need to show that anti-American radicalism is a weak and failing force not a strong and growing one. NRO readers know all these arguments well. It was as much because of Colin Powell as because of any other single person that these arguments were not made by the government of the United States to the American people and the world.

THE demise of Howard Dean's candidacy opens the door to a Kerry/Clinton ticket in 2004. As long as Dean was favored to get the nomination, Hillary likely wasn't interested in the second slot on the ticket. With the Vermont governor almost certain to go down to a massive defeat, Hillary probably wanted no part in the ensuing carnage. But now that the Democrats have a real chance to win, it makes all kinds of sense to offer her the nomination and for her to accept it.

Meanwhile, the programs Bush seeks to eliminate will follow him on the campaign trail. Under his budget, the $247 million Even Start family literacy program would be eliminated. The Eisenhower regional math and science consortiums and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Math and Science Education would be killed. HOPE VI, a $149 million program to revitalize blighted housing projects, would go.

Also gone: dropout-prevention efforts, elementary and secondary school counseling assistance, aid to migrant and seasonal farmworkers, the Smaller Learning Communities initiative, and a bevy of local law enforcement assistance programs.

Even as the economy fails to generate significant job growth, Bush would slice federal vocational and adult education funding by 35 percent, from $2.1 billion to $1.4 billion. Assistance for workers dislocated by the North American Free Trade Agreement would be eliminated. Rural development assistance would be cut, as would housing aid for Native Americans and the elderly. The foreign aid budget would dramatically boost funding to combat the spread of AIDS, but it would also slice $404 million from child-survival and child-disease programs.

Justice Department Getting Serious About Prosecuting Pornography

Finally, the U.S. Justice Department is getting serious about prosecuting illegal pornography. This week, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced he has hired veteran obscenity and child exploitation prosecutor Bruce Taylor to oversee the Department's pornography prosecution efforts. Mr. Taylor served as a senior trial attorney during the administration of President Bush's father. In that position he successfully prosecuted the world's top pornographer at the time, Reuben Sturman, as well as several other major distributors of illegal pornography. He has prosecuted more pornography cases than any other person in history. FRC applauds this move by General Ashcroft and we trust that now, with Mr. Taylor's leadership, the Department of Justice, after a nearly 12-year hiatus, will begin vigorously prosecuting illegal pornography.

Collier County's Supervisor of Elections office began contacting 77 people on a list of felons from the state elections division this week to find out if, indeed, they belong on the list and to allow them a shot at getting back on the voter rolls.

It's a new felon list, whittled down from one in 1999 that had close to 350 names on it for Collier County. A second list that came a year later had 222 names.

In Lee County, the 1999 and 2000 lists contains 700 and 450 names, respectively, but the list for 2003 had only 66 names.

Those 66 already have been verified as felons without their rights restored or have been put back onto the rolls, said Cheryl Avitts, assistant supervisor of elections for voter registration in Lee.

Of the 66, 46 were found to be on the list erroneously, she said.

And Iraq's ties with terrorist groups in the '90s are clear. Even if one focuses only on Iraqi ties to Abu Nidal and Ansar-al-Islam, the requirements of the administration's policy would seem to be met. And in the fall of 2002, Mr. Tenet wrote to Congress outlining a decade of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in poisons, gases and explosives. There was no need to show that Iraq participated in 9/11 or even that it directed al Qaeda in any operations -- describing occasional cooperation of the sort that is well chronicled was quite sufficient.

So much of the credit for this remarkable turn around goes to my wife Judy. Though she is not a politician and actually very shy, Judy was a real trouper campaigning in New Hampshire and making television appearances.

Though I have no vested interest in Howard Dean, it was refreshing that he initially refrained from using his wife as a prop on the campaign trail ... The Deans didn't want their marriage to be a proto-feminist, anti-feminist or even "Everybody Loves Raymond" role model. They simply refused to pose for the contrived and usually fictionalized marital snapshots that the political press demands and then analyzes to death.

... When post-Iowa panic drove Howard Dean to reverse himself, it was sad, even though his wife gave her assent ... [Judy Dean] seemed genuinely ignorant of the whole media game. "I don't like watching TV that much," she told Ms. Sawyer .... Not watching TV -- and not wanting to be on TV -- has in itself become a form of virginity in America, rarer than the other kind, so rare as to be poignant. There was nothing fun about watching it being violated for public consumption, even if the Deans were wholly complicit in their own video deflowering. (So much so that the Dean campaign would soon distribute 120,000 videos of the show to New Hampshire voters.)"

Dear Mr. _________:

You have been a generous supporter to this campaign; and it would have been wonderful if you could have taken part in this past week's celebration.

So much of the credit for this remarkable turn around ...

... for this remarkable turn around goes to my wife Judy.

... the Bush administration is largely ignoring the law's requirement that states get qualified teachers into those schools that are getting extra funding to serve their large numbers of children from low-income families. Many districts try to honor the law's intent, but its mandate that districts put a "highly qualified" teacher into every classroom was always a little like King Canute commanding the waves to stop. Worse, despite pleas from some of NCLB's strongest supporters, the government isn't enforcing even those provisions of the law that require states to report on the qualifications of teachers at such schools.

... If you listen to state legislators from both parties, however, the most frequent complaint is the administration's failure to honor its funding commitments. While the White House argues that school funding is up, current year appropriations for NCLB fall $8 billion short of what was authorized by the bill. "We were all suckered into it," said Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), who voted for the measure. "It's a fraud."

The underfunding complaints are accompanied by studies indicating that the states' costs of meeting NCLB requirements are running far beyond the money that the federal government is providing. In what's probably the most frequently cited report, published last year in Phi Delta Kappan, William J. Mathis, a Vermont school administrator, concluded that in seven of the 10 states he surveyed, school spending would have to increase 24 percent to comply with all the requirements of NCLB .... "We're being asked to do more with nothing," said Bob Holmes, who chairs the Georgia House Committee on Education.

In at least three states -- Minnesota, New Hampshire and Hawaii -- legislators passed or seriously debated resolutions urging those states to withdraw from NCLB even though it means losing the federal money that's tied to it.

Halliburton Co. allegedly overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a single U.S. military base in Kuwait during the first seven months of last year, according to Pentagon investigators auditing the company's work.

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This dispute focuses on meals served at Camp Arifjan, the huge U.S. military base south of Kuwait City. The e-mail memo that went out Friday said that in July alone, a Saudi subcontractor hired by KBR billed for 42,042 meals a day on average but served only 14,053 meals a day. The difference in cost for that month exceeded $3.5 million, according to Pentagon records. The Pentagon last year paid KBR more than $30 million for meals at the camp from January through July, a tab that included charges for nearly four million meals the government asserts were never served.

1992: -$340.5 billion
1993: -$300.4 billion
1994: -$258.9 billion
1995: -$226.4 billion
1996: -$174.1 billion
1997: -$103.3 billion
1998: -$30.0 billion
1999: +$1.9 billion
2000: +$86.6 billion
2001: -$33.3 billion
2002: -$317.5 billion
2003: -$536.1 billion

Revenues
1992: $1,091 billion
1993: $1,154 billion
1994: $1,258 billion
1995: $1,351 billion
1996: $1,453 billion
1997: $1,579 billion
1998: $1,721 billion
1999: $1,827 billion
2000: $2,025 billion
2001: $1,991 billion
2002: $1,853 billion
2003: $1,782 billion

The White House, already embroiled in a public fight over the deadline for an independent commission's investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is refusing to give the panel notes on presidential briefing papers taken by some of its own members, officials said this week.

The standoff has prompted the 10-member commission to consider issuing subpoenas for the notes and has further soured relations between the Bush administration and the bipartisan panel, according to sources familiar with the issue. Lack of access to the materials would mean that the information they contain could not be included in a final report about the attacks, several officials said.


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The latest dispute stems from an agreement reached in November that allowed a four-member team from the commission to examine highly classified documents known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB), including a controversial August 2001 memo that discusses the possibility of airline hijackings by al Qaeda terrorists. The deal allowed the team -- made up of three commission members and Executive Director Philip D. Zelikow -- to take notes on the materials that would be passed along to the rest of the commission, but only after the White House gave its approval.

The team completed its work several weeks ago but has been unable to reach an agreement with the White House on how to share its summaries with the seven commission members who were not privy to the material, officials said.

But those close to the president say he is doing so while continuing to avoid any explicit public acknowledgment that the intelligence was wrong. Why the reluctance to state what appears increasingly obvious as Kay spent the past 10 days dashing prospects that significant weapons stockpiles would be found in Iraq? Although the tactic may appear to be obtuse, there is a real strategy behind the Bush response -- and one that has been used before, to great effect.

Bush aides have learned through hard experience that admitting error only projects weakness and invites more abuse. Conversely, by postponing an acknowledgment -- possibly beyond Election Day -- the White House is generating a fog of uncertainty around Kay's stark findings, and potentially softening a harsh public judgment.

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Administration officials now say it was a mistake to acknowledge that Bush should not have included in last year's State of the Union address an allegation that Iraq tried to buy nuclear material in Africa. The admission of error, they say, made Bush appear weak and encouraged more skeptical coverage than if the White House had refused to budge.