The incident that triggered the Rwandan genocide was the work of Paul Kagame, the Tutsi rebel leader now President Paul Kagame, according to the newspaper Le Monde.

It claims that the destruction of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana is blamed by a French investigating magistrate on President Kagame.

The magistrate has concluded that Mr Kagame gave direct orders to fire two rockets at the plane on April 6, 1994, the paper says.

The back story is one of intrigue and power grabbing. Tom DeLay badly wanted to redraw the state's congressional districts to add some half-dozen Republican representatives to the Texas U.S. House delegation. To do so he required a Republican majority in the Texas statehouse.

For four election cycles, Craddick had been expanding that majority. Working with an Austin political operative (one of 58 individuals subpoenaed in Austin), Craddick did it the old-fashioned way: establishing a PAC, raising huge amounts of money, and spending it where Democrats were vulnerable. He was racing against the calendar. Republicans controlled the Senate. But they needed a majority in the House by 2001, so they could redraw the state's congressional districts after the 2000 census.

They fell a few seats short. And after the Democratic House and Republican Senate failed to reach an agreement on reapportionment in 2001, congressional district lines were redrawn by a panel of three federal judges. The Democrats had held the future at bay and it appeared that the Republicans would have to wait until the next census to redraw the lines. Or so the Democrats reasonably assumed, as reapportionment must be done in the first legislative session following the census. Republicans fell short, according to a party source quoted in the Texas Observer (which has extensively covered the story), because "the Hammer had too many balls in the air."

The Hammer is Tom DeLay, who in 2001 stopped juggling and came home to Texas. DeLay and Jim Ellis, a political operative who had run DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), devised a scheme that would get DeLay the House seats he wanted in Washington by electing Republican legislators in Austin. First, they would use DeLay's Washington contacts to raise the money to get Tom Craddick his Republican majority in Texas. Then, Craddick would deliver to DeLay an off-year redistricting plan that would add as many as seven Republican members to the Texas House delegation in Washington

They were spectacularly successful. They raised and spent $1.5 million. All but three of 21 new Republican legislators elected in 2002 were supported by Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) -- the PAC DeLay and Ellis created. And after he was elected speaker Craddick delivered a redistricting plan, despite Democratic state representatives and senators fleeing the state on two separate occasions to deny the Legislature a quorum. The entire deal was done in one election and three special sessions. It was a bold and brilliant case study of DeLay's power.

But in their grab they failed to pay close attention to bookkeeping and Texas election law. One group did: Texans for Public Justice. The Austin campaign-finance advocacy group began comparing TRMPAC's Texas Ethics Commission filings with its IRS filings. "We found approximately $600,000 in contributions on their IRS filings that weren't filed in Texas," said TPJ director Craig McDonald. "It wasn't reported in Texas. It was off the books." It was also PAC money raised from corporate sources -- in almost all circumstances a violation of Texas campaign finance law. McDonald wrote a letter to the Travis County D.A., documenting what he had found and requesting a criminal investigation.

[W]e can equally hope that the democratic nations of Europe will begin to realize what Tony Blair and George Bush have been warning about for so long. The enemy is clear. The question is not whether it will strike, but whether the West can strike back and decisively defang and defeat it. It's up to Europe now. Maybe now they'll get it.

The destruction of the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana - the incident which began the Rwandan genocide - is blamed by a French investigating magistrate on the Tutsi rebel leader, now president, Paul Kagame, according to the newspaper Le Monde.

The magistrate has concluded that Mr Kagame gave direct orders to fire two rockets at the plane on April 6 1994, the paper says.

It is a grave allegation, because within hours of the plane being brought down on its approach to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, Hutu soldiers and militias began 100 days of slaughter in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.

At a press conference in Belgium, where he is making a three-day official visit, Mr Kagame denied that he or his former rebel force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), were responsible. "I keep repeating myself," he said. The RPF and myself have nothing to do with this. That information has no credibility."

A Rwandan government spokesman scorned the accusation as a rehashed rumour designed to smear Mr Kagame and justify France's involvement in Rwanda before and during the genocide.

There is no agreement on who shot down the plane but many believe it was the work of Hutu extremists who wanted rid of Habyarimana, himself a Hutu, so they could begin the slaughter they had carefully planned.

In 1998 a judge of the anti-terrorist division in Paris, Jean-Louis Bruguière, began an inquiry into the death of the plane's pilot, on an application from one of his relatives.

His findings have not been officially released but Le Monde reported that it had a leaked copy of the 220-page final report, dated June 30, and that it named Mr Kagame as the person who gave the "go ahead" for shooting down the plane.

Before the genocide he commanded a Tutsi rebel force which had occupied northern Rwanda and was engaged in power-sharing talks with the Hutu government.

The theory is that Mr Kagame wanted to provoke the slaughter which he knew had been planned by Hutu extremists because this would justify his rebels taking over the country. Since ousting the Hutu regime Mr Kagame has kept a tight grip on power and made little visible attempt to investigate the shooting down of the plane.

"... outside the House chamber (yesterday) were people for whom gay marriage is a matter of civil rights, and inside were people for whom it is a political problem. 'It's like a big poker game in there,' said Representative Daniel Bosley, Democrat of North Adams, who intended to vote no on any proposed constitutional amendment. 'Everybody is bluffing.'

Legislative floor whips were counting noses, but no one could predict the final outcome through most of the day yesterday. Many supporters of gay marriage initially voted in favor of a proposed amendment that declared marriage the exclusive province of heterosexuals but established civil unions -- with a robust list of parallel rights -- for same-sex couples. Some of those legislators intended to vote against the same amendment on a later balloting.

Similarly, some who oppose even civil unions voted for the proposed amendment just to assure that some kind of restriction on gay marriage would advance toward the 2006 ballot.

The parliamentary horse-trading shows why matters of fundamental constitutional rights are better decided by the courts than in legislative bodies. Basic civil rights cannot be parsed or compromised away.

It isn't that the legislators were insincere in their beliefs or their often eloquent arguments. But their job is politics -- the art of the possible, as many have said. The Supreme Judicial Court's declaration that the Massachusetts Constitution supports equal rights to marriage is not about what is possible or agreeable but what is right."

In what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a "first-class foul-up," the United Nations said Thursday it has discovered a black box sent from Rwanda after a 1994 plane crash that unleashed a genocide in the east African nation.

The device was found Wednesday in a locked filing cabinet in the U.N. Peacekeeping Department's Air Safety Unit. Aviation experts put it there apparently in the belief its "pristine condition" ruled out the possibility that it came from the downed Falcon 50 jet, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

The United Nations now intends to immediately send the black box - technically known as a flight data recorder - to "a qualified outside body for analysis of its contents" to determine whether it came from the plane that was carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, Eckhard said.

[edit]

The April 6, 1994 crash killed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, who had been attending a regional summit in Arusha, Tanzania.

When it became clear the plane had been shot down, Hutu extremists accused Tutsis of assassinating the Rwandan president and began attacking their longtime ethnic foes. The slaughter lasted about 100 days and claimed the lives of more than 500,000 people, most Tutsis.

The question of the black box came up during a French investigation of the crash, which also killed the French flight crew. Although the French have not released the results of their recently concluded probe, a newspaper familiar with the findings said it accuses the United Nations of obstruction of justice for failing to inspect the downed aircraft's black box.

According to Le Monde newspaper, the French investigation concludes that the chief suspect in the plane's downing is Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who was the leader of a rebel movement at the time. The newspaper said its information was based on a report dated Jan. 30, but not yet turned over to French prosecutors.

MassEquality:
No Discrimination
in the Constitution

GOD
ABHORS
YOU

President Roh Moo Hyun on Friday became South Korea's first leader in history to be impeached, losing his constitutional powers in the climax of a political struggle that left South Koreans more sharply divided than at any point since the restoration of democracy in 1987.

After a drama in the National Assembly as pro- and anti-Roh legislators came to violent blows before, during and after the vote, Roh's opponents secured 193 votes for impeachment -- above the two-thirds mark of 181 needed.

[edit]

The key legal charge against Roh is that he made statements asking voters to support the Uri Party, made up of his core group of supporters. This was considered by the National Electoral Commission to be a minor infraction of electoral laws; presidents in South Korea are not allowed to campaign for legislators.

Roh was also accused of incompetence in leadership and connections to a swirling political corruption scandal that has hit his political opponents even harder than his own administration. Analysts said that it remained unclear whether the constitutional court would uphold the impeachment.

[edit]

For Roh, the impeachment capped months of struggle to shore up his year-old administration, under fire from South Korean conservatives and business leaders for steering the nation too far away from its traditional ally, the United States, while engaging in warmer relations with North Korea and China.

The onetime human rights attorney's campaign to empower the poor has led to charges that Roh launched class warfare against the rich through tax measures and government policy. The impeachment had more to do with those societal divisions -- and political angling ahead of key April 15 legislative elections -- than with the actual charges, analysts said.

"Lowry Mays, Clear Channel's founder, has been a generous and longtime supporter of the GOP and President Bush donating tens of thousands of dollars. The media giant's vice-chair Thomas Hicks bought the Texas Rangers from President Bush and his partners for $250 million, three times the original price paid. Yet Bush's cut was $14.9 million, almost 25 times his original investment. Hicks' law firm has contributed nearly $250,000 to Bush's political campaigns."

[Phil] HENDRIE: So I mean to say that, you know, that conservatives hate the culture is like – Ann Coulter walked into my studio one day because she’s a fan of mine. [audience reacts] Anyway, she said—

[Greg] PROOPS: What an illuminating moment that must have been.
[laughter]

HENDRIE: I slept with her. [laughter]

PROOPS: Who hasn’t? [laughter]

HENDRIE: Everybody except Greg. [laughter]

PROOPS: I didn’t have the money. [laughter] [applause]

Under Lewis' measure, two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate would be able to overturn court rulings they don't like, without having to worry about the irritating burdens of amending the Constitution. What prompted Lewis to offer such a solution to a problem that doesn't exist? What else? Gay rights and church-state separation.

But legal scholars say Lewis' bill is itself unconstitutional.

"The Supreme Court would immediately say it's unconstitutional because the Supreme Court gets the last word on the constitutionality of laws," said University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

On 2/7/01 the Omaha World-Herald reported "Bush was meeting with Nebraskan Tony Raimondo and dozens of other small business executives as part of his weeklong effort to build momentum for his tax package." Raimondo was a natural ally -- he had twice given the maximum contribution to Bush's presidential campaign.

The Republican National Committee announced today that the Republican Party is changing its emblem from an elephant to a condom. The Republican committee chairman explained that the condom more clearly reflects the party's stance today, because a condom accepts inflation, halts production, precludes a next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and offers a sense of security while you're actually getting screwed.

"Far from protecting religion, the Federal Marriage Amendment would harm religion by expressing a preference for those religions that limit marriage to a man and woman and by relegating to second-class status the members of religions that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions ... the Amendment (would) thereby contravene the longstanding Establishment Clause principle that government should not endorse some religious perspectives over others ...."

The Pentagon is paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi government who has close ties to the Bush administration, for "intelligence collection" about Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.

The classified program, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency since summer 2002, continues a longstanding partnership between the Pentagon and the organization, the Iraqi National Congress, even as the group jockeys for power in a future government. Internal government reviews have found that much of the information generated by the program before the American invasion last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.

Jean Bertrand Aristide was planning on invading Canada in order to learn how to make maple syrup and therefore needed to be removed from power

Hugo Chavez is actually the infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal. And Carlos the Jackal is actually that kid who played Vinnie Delpino on "Doogie Howser." Yeah, that's right, Max Casella is an international terrorist who became the President of Venezuela.

North Korea is genuinely sorry about its pursuit of nuclear weapons and vows to stop. They also promise to give every American a personal copy of "Our Socialism Centered on the Masses Shall Not Perish" as a goodwill gesture.

The Christian Civic League of Maine is asking supporters for "tips, rumors, speculation and facts" about the sexual orientation of the state's political leaders so it can post the information on its Internet site.

[edit]

Writing under the headline "cleaning out the closet," Michael Heath, the league's executive director, said it is "only appropriate that all of us here in Maine understand the 'sexual orientation' of our leaders."

[edit]

The Web site goes on to request "tips, rumors, speculation and facts" and promises confidentiality to people who provide such information.

A lawyer for Manuel Miranda has sent Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee a lengthy, point-by-point rebuttal of a recent report by the Senate sergeant at arms detailing how GOP aides obtained internal Democratic Judiciary memorandums.

[edit]

In the letter to Republican senators, Miranda’s lawyer, Adam Augustine Carter, urged the senators to end the inquiries into how the Democratic memos became public and not to refer the matter to a prosecutor for a criminal investigation.

“I do so on behalf of Mr. Miranda, not for fear that he would not be fully vindicated, but for the sake of his family,” wrote Carter.

Miranda contends that Pickle’s report was flawed because an unnamed member of the Judiciary Committee had told Republican staffers that “anyone admitting that they knew how to access the open server would be fired.”

As a result, any staffer who had read the Democratic memos was scared into silence, ensuring that Pickle’s report would conclude that only two GOP aides had knowledge that Democratic memos were easily accessible.

Additionally, Miranda said his chief reason for reading the Democratic memos was solely to find out scheduling data, such as dates for hearings.

In a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, CIA Director George Tenet "rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program." Tenet said "that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Cheney and others, and that he would do so again."

Tenet was specifically asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) about Cheney's recent public assertion that a document previously discredited by the Pentagon was the "best source of information" proving that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had an operational relationship (the contradiction was first pointed out in the Progress Report). Tenet said the CIA "did not clear that document," that harsh criticism over Cheney's behavior was "a fair point" and that "I will talk to [Cheney] about it."

Our government is prepared to meet that (terrorism) threat. One of the most important steps we've taken is creating the Department of Homeland Security, combining under one roof, with a clear chain of command, many agencies responsible for protecting our nation ... In just 12 months, under the leadership of your President, you have made air travel safer, you've strengthened the security of our borders and infrastructure ... You faced the challenges standing up this new Department and you get a -- and a gold star for a job well done.

"The process for securing grant money is convoluted ... Money continues to be spent (by DHS) without regard to a broad national strategy for preparedness or with much attentiveness to the particular needs of high-risk areas ... Finally, the new Office of State and Local Government Coordination (OSLGC) is ... currently understaffed, (and) still ironing out its mission within DHS ..."

The legalization of homosexual marriage in Massachusetts will help destroy all legal protections of traditional marriage in every state. Homosexuals will demand that laws be passed that criminalize any criticism of homosexuality; children will be taught that homosexuality is normal, natural, and a civil right. Pastors who refuse to marry same-sex couples could be threatened with lawsuits. Organizations opposing homosexuality could be threatened as well for expressing opposition to a practice that is considered "legal" in Massachusetts.

In addition, homosexuals will freely recruit your children into a lifestyle that is rife with sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, alcoholism, and emotional problems.

[Today] Salon is running "The New Pentagon Papers," an exclusive, eyewitness account of how Bush officials inside the Defense Department twisted intelligence in the rush to the Iraq war. The author of the article, Karen Kwiatkowski, is a retired lieutenant colonel formerly assigned to the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. In her extraordinary 5,500-word account, Kwiatkowski writes: "... I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to the Congress. I observed how the distorted intelligence and sharpened political talking points were funneled to the Office of Vice President Cheney."

... And on Friday, Salon will publish an exclusive report on the Texas investigation of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his political operatives that reporter Lou Dubose (co-author of "Shrub" and "Boy Genius") believes may send some of them to prison, shaking up Texas and national politics.

Interestingly, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore -- a respected voice among many conservative and religious groups -- doesn't think a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage is the right approach. Such an amendment would not work, he says, because the real problem is renegade courts....

Moore says Congress would be wiser to pass the Constitution Restoration Act, which would stop courts from forbidding acknowledgment of God as the basis of law. He says marriage as the union of a man and a woman is a God-ordained institution. If that standard is destroyed, Moore says there is nothing to keep three men and a horse from getting married -- or an entire city.

"If I wasn't an elected official, I wouldn't vote."

Police Secretly Watching Hip-Hop Celebs

Police say they are secretly monitoring hip-hop stars P. Diddy, DMX and others in South Florida to protect them, but celebrities and critics see the surveillance as unnecessary and racist.

Officers in Miami and Miami Beach have photographed rappers and their entourages at Miami International Airport and staked out hotels, video shoots and nightclubs while consulting 6-inch-thick dossiers of rappers and associates with arrest records in New York state, The Miami Herald reported.
...
Miami Beach and Miami police did not immediately respond to calls Wednesday for additional comment.

Police began gathering intelligence on rap artists after the Memorial Day 2001 weekend, when 250,000 hip-hop fans flocked to South Beach for four days of parties hosted by their favorite rappers. More than 210 people were arrested, double usual number, most for disorderly conduct and intoxication.

Although no major rap artists were arrested, police decided to learn the nuances of hip-hop culture, Press said.

"Nobody on the beach had a handle on who the players were," Press said. "We didn't know anything. We didn't know who were the big record labels, who were the kingpins. We didn't know why there were rivalries with Ja Rule and Eminem."

Officers were sent to New York for a three-day training session in May, along with police from Los Angeles, Atlanta and other cities. That's where they received the dossiers, said Miami police Sgt. Rafael Tapanes.

"This kind of conduct shows insensitivity to constitutional limitations," said Nova Southeastern University law professor and constitutional law expert Bruce Rogow. He represented 2 Live Crew when the rap group was prosecuted for obscenity in the early '90s. "It also implicates racial stereotyping."

Only one of 97 officers in supervisory positions at the Miami Beach police department is black. Miami has 226 ranking officers and 26 are black.

"The cities should take taxpayer dollars and put them toward something else," said Luther Campbell, the former 2 Live Crew rapper.

a pledge to refrain from premarital sex, the researchers found, did tend to delay the start of sexual intercourse by 18 months. The adolescents who took virginity pledges also married earlier and had fewer sexual partners than the other teenagers surveyed, said Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University and the lead author of the study.

Of the 12,000 teenagers included in the federal study, 88 percent of those who pledged chastity reported having had sexual intercourse before they married, Dr. Bearman said at a scientific meeting in Philadelphia on preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers tested the participants for three common sexually transmitted infections -- chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis -- and found that the rates were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not.

Yet the teenagers who had taken pledges were less likely to know they had an infection, raising the risk of their transmitting it to other people, said Dr. Bearman and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University, the other author of the report.

Dr. Bearman said that telling teenagers "to `just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk" of sexually transmitted diseases.

Palo Alto High's budget is so tight that Sonia Ferrandiz-Bodoff's German teacher offers three extra credit points to any student who brings a box of tissues to class. In Cupertino, science teacher Katheryn McElwee gives her Monta Vista High students five points for a roll of paper towels.

Even English teachers at Harker, a private school in San Jose that charges up to $21,000 a year tuition, have resorted to awarding extra points for school supplies.

``The teachers are pretty desperate, and so are we,'' said Sonia, a freshman.

With school budgets shriveling across the state, teachers are enticing students to help stock the supply shelves in exchange for extra credit. In some cases, the tissue-box bonus can bump a B-plus to an A-minus, but other teachers say it has almost no impact on a student's final grade. Either way, some education leaders say any credit for Kleenex undermines the grading system.

``It's absurd,'' said Buzz Bartlett, president of the Council for Basic Education, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit group that advocates for high academic standards in public schools. It sends the message that ``grades are not a reflection of the quality of your schoolwork.''

Bush and his operatives are making a practice of mischaracterizing the voting record of the presumptive Democratic nominee. Two weeks ago, the Republican National Committee put out a "Research Brief" that flagrantly distorted Kerry's votes on weapons systems. Bush's remarks yesterday are more dishonest still.

One thing is true: Kerry did introduce a bill on Sept. 29, 1995—S. 1290—that, among many other things, would have cut the intelligence budget by $300 million per year over a five-year period, or $1.5 billion in all.

But let's look at that bill more closely.

First, would such a reduction have "gutted" the intelligence services? Intelligence budgets are classified, but private budget sleuths have estimated that the 1995 budget totaled about $28 billion. Thus, taking out $300 million would have meant a reduction of about 1 percent. This is not a gutting.

Second, and more to the point, Kerry's proposal would have not have cut a single intelligence program.

On the same day that Kerry's bill was read on the Senate floor, two of his colleagues—Democrat Bob Kerrey and Republican Arlen Specter—introduced a similar measure. Their bill would have cut the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office, the division of the U.S. intelligence community in charge of spy satellites.

According to that day's Congressional Record, Specter said he was offering an amendment "to address concerns about financial practices and management" at the NRO. Specifically, "the NRO has accumulated more than $1 billion in unspent funds without informing the Pentagon, CIA, or Congress." He called this accumulation "one more example of how intelligence agencies sometimes use their secret status to avoid accountability."

The Kerrey-Specter bill proposed to cut the NRO's budget "to reflect the availability of funds … that have accumulated in the carry-forward accounts" from previous years. Another co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Richard Bryan, D–Nev., noted that these "carry-forward accounts" amounted to "more than $1.5 billion."

This was the same $1.5 billion that John Kerry was proposing to cut—over a five-year period—in his bill. It had nothing to do with intelligence, terrorism, or anything of substance. It was a motion to rescind money that had been handed out but never spent.

In other words, it's as if Kerry had once filed for a personal tax refund—and Bush accused him of raiding the Treasury.

The Senate appears ready to adopt strict new budget rules this week that would make it more difficult to permanently extend President Bush's tax cuts, a potential blow to the centerpiece of the president's election-year economic agenda.

[edit]

A bipartisan bill written by Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) would allow those cuts to be extended only if they are offset by equivalent spending cuts or other tax increases. That mandate could be overridden only by a 60-vote majority. The measure would exempt three tax cuts aimed at moderate-income households that expire this year: the expanded 10 percent income tax bracket, the $1,000-per-child tax credit and the "marriage penalty" cut.

[edit]

Domenici and Feingold will offer their plan as an amendment to a fiscal 2005 budget resolution the Senate is expected to approve later this week. If the amendment is adopted, it will effectively pave the way for $79 billion in tax cuts over the next five years. Already, a half-dozen Senate Republicans say they are inclined to vote for the amendment, which would assure passage unless GOP leaders succeed in a parliamentary maneuver that would make approval contingent on a 60-vote majority.

"What we need to do is take a deep breath," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "You write bad checks at home, they put you in jail."

Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) expressed their support, and Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) appears to be leaning in favor of it.

In a dramatic break with President Bush, a prominent group of gay Republicans that supported him four years ago is launching a $1 million advertising campaign today attacking the administration for trying to ban same-sex marriage.

The ad, by the Log Cabin Republicans, uses grainy footage of Vice President Cheney saying during the 2000 campaign that the matter should be left to the states.

[edit]

The group's move, which shatters the fragile alliance between the president and his strongest backers in the gay community, could undermine efforts to renew the "compassionate conservative" appeal he used four years ago.

[Bush] is tolerant of different points of view: YES - 47 NO - 51

[Kerry] is tolerant of different points of view YES - 73 NO- 17

Some GOP strategists have been dismissive of this early polling data, suggesting that incumbents often lag behind their challengers for extended periods of time. And that argument is somewhat appealing right about now -- after an opponents' primary campaign has run, but before the incumbent's reelection campaign has started up.

The problem is, it's not true. The Economist magazine cites the pollster Gallup, which reviewed the historical correlation between polling data and presidential electoral success:

"According to Gallup, every incumbent since Truman has been ahead of his eventual challenger at this point in the cycle -- all except Gerald Ford, who lost."

Given that your choice in November is between two hereditary members of the industrial aristocracy, remember to vote for the one who is prepared, as FDR was, to betray his class rather than his country.

David Knight, son of the state senator who was the author of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, defied his father's law and wed his partner of 10 years Tuesday in a quiet ceremony attended by just two friends in San Francisco City Hall.

Atop the grand staircase of City Hall's rotunda, Knight and Joe Lazzaro of Baltimore exchanged rings and were pronounced spouses for life one month after Sen. William "Pete" Knight, R-Palmdale, proclaimed San Francisco's same- sex marriages "nothing more than a sideshow."

[edit]

Knight's father did not attend either ceremony in Vermont or San Francisco. He did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Benjamin Lopez, legislative director and lobbyist for the Traditional Values Coalition, a gay rights foe based in Orange County, said both civil unions and same-sex marriages cheapened the institution of marriage between a man and a woman.

"David Knight isn't just thumbing his nose at Pete Knight," Lopez said. "David Knight is thumbing his nose at all of California. California said Pete Knight is right in 2000."

A funny thing happened on the way to the polling place today. I was out all day working the precincts, getting signatures on petitions to get my name on the ballot for US Congress in Florida. I returned to a polling place, where I had a volunteer working, and came upon an acquaintance I met a few weeks ago at a Dean Meet-up.

He was gathering signatures to get on the ballot to run for Supervisor of Elections. When I met the guy, I was very impressed by his knowledge of computers, both hardware and software, and voting machines in particular. He's a registered Democrat, but is running as an Independent, as he believes strongly that the Supervisor should be non-partisan. I liked the guy and have spent 2 weeks trying to get him to run as a Democrat, but he won't budge.

It seems his wife went to church (a polling place) Sunday night, in the neighboring county. She made a pit stop in the ladies room and saw at least 20 unsecured touch screen voting machines stacked against the wall in the ladies room!!!

I thought these things were supposed to be under lock and key!!! I called the Chair of the County DEC, and he's starting an investigation. More to come as I learn.

I made a small mistake in my letter about the voting machines in the ladies room. I assumed since she was at church, it was a Sunday. After talking with her husband again today, it seems she was at the church on THURSDAY!!! Which means that the machines were in there at least 3 days longer than we thought. Anyone familiar with these machines knows that with the top closed, you can fit one, and possibly two in the average sized briefcase.

More Florida election shenanigans.... In one county a pollworker was verbally reprimanded several times for giving more than one ballot to voters (This county uses optical scanners). In another county, the printer for the results didn't work so they had to go into the hard drive to retrieve the results. The outcome was too close to call between Dick Gephardt and John Kerry. I love politics.

Thank God - I think. Mel Gibson has granted me absolution for my sins. As "The Passion of the Christ" approached the $100 million mark, the star appeared on "The Tonight Show," where Jay Leno asked if he would forgive me. "Absolutely," he responded, adding that his dispute with me was "not personal." Then he waxed philosophical: "You try to perform an act of love even for those who persecute you, and I think that's the message of the film."

Thus we see the gospel according to Mel. If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him - all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines "on a stick" and he wants to kill your dog ? such was his fatwa against me in September - not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. "The Passion" is far more in love with putting Jesus' intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.

With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."

If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own - in America anyway.

Indeed, the charge of judicial activism has become a "ubiquitous epithet" and unhelpful "scare phrase," Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman recently noted in The Washington Post. Constitutional law scholars across the political spectrum tend to cringe at the way the phrase is used in public debate.

"It's almost embarrassing for anyone who is a serious thinker about the Constitution to bandy it about," says Harvard University constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who has spoken out in defense of the SJC ruling.

"Most people who use the term don't provide a coherent definition of it. It typically means judicial opinions with which they disagree," says Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Boston University who considers himself a libertarian and a defender of "original intent" in Constitutional matters.

Still, the charge isn't going away. Though it is misused by partisans, scholars have for generations held serious debates about judicial activism -- and have sometimes even found ways to embrace it.

In a highly unusual move, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are pushing for the Secret Service to decide whether the controversy over unauthorized access of Democratic memos should be referred to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.

The Republican action comes after key Democrats on the committee demanded that a special prosecutor be appointed to conduct a criminal probe into how some 4,700 Democratic memos fell into Republican hands between 2001 and 2003.

Republicans want the Secret Service to be involved because the controversy has become too politicized for lawmakers to decide if the Justice Department should become involved. They say that some Democrats appear open to handing off what has become a political hot potato to the Secret Service, setting the stage for a bipartisan compromise later this week.

To let the Secret Service make the call on whether the access of private Democratic memos and the subsequent distribution of some of those files to the media should be treated as a criminal matter is highly unusual, as the Secret Service is primarily a fact-finding agency.

But by leaving the sensitive question of how to proceed to the Secret Service, senators would relinquish control over an issue that could undermine the doctrine of separation of powers and set a precedent for future forays into internal Senate business by the executive branch.

[edit]

Members of the committee will meet in executive session Thursday to decide what step to take next in what some in the Senate have dubbed "Memogate."

A Justice Department-authorized criminal probe would arm investigators with subpoena power and other prosecutorial weapons that could force greater cooperation, especially from members of the media, and conservative activist groups. One such group, Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, posted 14 of the private Democratic memos on its website last fall.

And, according to the sergeant at arms report, Manuel Miranda, who handled judicial nominees for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, gave copies of the Democratic memos to the Committee for Justice, another conservative group. Miranda denied the allegation.

Both conservative groups declined to cooperate with Pickle's investigation.

For example, Blix gives an account of his first visit to the White House after being appointed to head the U.N. inspections. In October 2002, he and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and director of the inspection of Iraq's nuclear program, were taken first to see Vice President Cheney. He said Cheney "did most of the talking . . . and gave the impression of a solid, self-confident, even overconfident, chief executive."

When it came to Iraq, Cheney made it clear that inspections could not go on forever if they did not produce results, Blix writes. In that case, the United States "was ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament," he quotes Cheney as saying.

Blix left Cheney believing the session "was not meant as a real exchange of views. Perhaps it was just to put us on notice."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-WBA), who prides himself on being conservative on spending issues, might want to give Amtrak a jingle the next time he needs to get from Philadelphia to New York in a jiffy.

DeLay had Integrated Device Technology Inc. pick up a $3,595 tab for round-trip transportation between Philly and NYC on Jan. 29, according to a travel disclosure form filed with the House.

The pricey expenditure stemmed from the fact that DeLay wanted to continue his charm offensive on the Jewish community. The Majority Leader, who was attending the Republican legislative retreat in Pennsylvania, needed to take a quick hop to the Empire State to deliver a speech at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee event honoring IDT Corp. Chairman Howard Jonas and then get back to the retreat.

Jonas gave $2,000 to DeLay’s campaign last May, so this was a priority meeting. But $3,595 to get from Philly to New York, which is only about 100 miles apart? It turns out that DeLay had to travel by helicopter, hence the high price.

It was worth checking with Orbitz.com on Monday to see whether DeLay should have explored other options. Presuming that the Majority Leader had at least seven days’ notice for such an important trip, HOH found a round-trip flight for $384 for a hypothetical one-day excursion between the two cities next Tuesday. (Even with only a one-day advance on flights for today, there was a nonstop for just $552 as well.)

According to Orbitz, one could rent a car — and an SUV, at that, for travels with a posse — in Philly for just $66.79 a day. That includes taxes and fees, plus unlimited mileage, from Avis.

Then there was Amtrak, which takes a VIP from Philly to New York on an Acela Express in just one hour and 14 minutes. Even with first-class accommodations, it came to a grand total of $209.

But DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella told HOH that a helicopter ride was the best option to accommodate the leader’s tough schedule.

“Air Wolf helped us attend major events in Philly, NYC, and back in Philly in the same evening,” he said. “Shuttle diplomacy at its swiftest.”

The tax cuts and other policies President Bush proposed in his $2.4 trillion budget would probably have a minimal impact on the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

In its annual report on the president's budget, the agency that provides fiscal analysis for lawmakers said Bush's proposals could either increase or reduce economic output through 2009, and improve it in the following five years.

"However, the differences are likely to be small, affecting output by less than one-half of one percentage point on average," the study said.

[edit]

The budget office began examining the economic impact of White House fiscal blueprints last year in response to congressional conservatives eager to see the "supply-side" effect of Bush's budgets. They say tax cuts spur the economy, in turn generating federal revenue, by more than analysts have credited.

Many other Republicans - including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - have agreed that tax cuts have such an effect, but cautioned that there is no accurate way to measure it. Holtz-Eakin said he believes such analysis provides useful information, but said the budget cannot yet be exclusively measured that way because "the science isn't ready."

A year ago, the Congressional Budget Office examined Bush's 2004 budget and concluded that its impact was "not obvious."

[Former System Administrator and Republican employee who was aware of the problem] Mr. Davis does not recall ever notifying [Judiciary Committee Systems Administrator] Mr. Wikner of the fact that he was able to access folders that should have been closed. During this investigation Mr. Davis, still a Senate employee, sent an e-mail to Senator Hatch’s counsel responding to a Boston Globe report that a Republican “computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem” by stating:

... my firmest recollection is that I did not have a conversation with Mr. Wikner about what, at the time, I could only have deemed him as being sloppy with some permission and not some problem that of which others would take advantage. What I can remember is leaving him a message to call me about a concern and he didn't return my call.

The only individual interviewed who alleged that Mr. Davis told the Committee’s System Administrator about open access to user files was Mr. Miranda. He claimed to have learned about this from Mr. Lundell. However, Mr. Lundell denied telling Mr. Miranda this and stated he did not know whether Mr. Miranda was apprised of the situation.

[edit]

Footnote 11: Mr. Davis advised investigators that he received a voice mail from Mr. Miranda on February 24, 2004, asking whether Mr. Davis had ever advised Brian Wikner of a problem with the computer, or folder permission.

POLITICAL ANIMAL?.... Since the word is already out, I guess I might as well confirm it: Yes, I have sold out to The Man™ and will soon be blogging for cold, hard cash.

Which is pretty cool, isn't it? What's even better is that I'll be blogging for the Washington Monthly, a magazine I've admired for 20 years, ever since a conservative friend of mine introduced me to it right after I graduated from college. (He's even more conservative these days, though, so I guess it didn't have much effect on him.)

Not much is going to change, though. There will be a new URL, but it's still going to me blogging about whatever I feel like, although hopefully with more opportunity to do a bit of reporting here and there and to make a few contacts I otherwise couldn't.

The switch will happen sometime in the next day or two. I'll have more later as soon as all the technical details are worked out.

1 DELIVER US FROM EVIL, by Sean Hannity
2 THE PASSION
3 AMERICAN DYNASTY, by Kevin Phillips
4 LIES (AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM), by Al Franken
5 THE PRICE OF LOYALTY, by Ron Suskind
6 GIVE ME A BREAK, by John Stossel
7 THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, by Brian Greene
8 BLINDSIDED, by Richard M. Cohen
9 DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY? by Michael Moore
10 GHOST WARS, by Steve Coll

1. HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL, by Noam Chomsky
2. THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, by Karen Armstrong
3. WHO KILLED THE CANADIAN MILITARY?, by Jack Granatstein
4. THE PRICE OF LOYALTY, by Ron Suskind
5. GOD'S SECRETARIES, by Adam Nicolson
6. SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, by Roméo Dallaire
7. THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING, by Simon Winchester
8. JUNO, by Ted Barris
9. DUDE, WHERE’S MY COUNTRY?, by Michael Moore
10. ELIZABETH & MARY, by Jane Dunn

Taking those kinds of tough votes is never easy, and neither is running against opponents that have potentially unlimited resources. So, we now need to raise the money to fund a statewide grassroots network, to pay for creative TV and radio, and for everything else Russ will need to beat our millionaire opponents and Karl Rove’s fundraising machine in November.

We need to raise at least $20,000 by the end of this month from Internet supporters like you. So let me make you an offer. Make a donation to Senator Feingold’s reelection campaign before March 31, 2004 – of $50 or more – and we’ll send you our handsome limited edition “Russ has a backbone” t-shirt.

[B]ut for over 30 minutes, with no cue cards, President Bush laid out before a small group of us from conservative think tanks his reasoning in the conduct of foreign policy. It was the most lucid, most candid, most articulate exposition of why a President is doing what he is doing that I have ever heard in my 38 years in this town. There were people who have previously served in the White House and the cabinet there in the Roosevelt room. Even they were amazed by W’s performance. I say 'performance' not in the acting sense, but just the way he could string together a seemingly unrelated series of foreign policy issues into a tapestry that made sense to everyone present.

[edit]

Well, let me tell you, W is on top of things. A wide variety of challenges involving both foreign and domestic issues were thrown at this President in more than an hour’s worth of dialogue. He was on top of just about everything. By on top I don’t just mean that he understood the question and could reply as if he knew what he was talking about. I mean this President was decisively in command of the facts of the situation in great and absolutely appropriate detail. In one case with which I am very familiar since I have been involved with the bills in both Houses of Congress, Bush knew exactly the status of the bill in the House as well as the Senate, how those bills differed from his position and what he intended to do about it. This is not a likely topic to have come up in that meeting so it isn’t as if he was just well prepped.

Had [Cousin Kathy] been with us, even she would have had to admit, regardless of where she might have come down on some of the matters he touched on, that he was brilliant.

[edit]

Yes, I do wish cousin Kathy could have seen W last week.... And knowing her as I do, I’ll bet she would have walked out of that room and turned to me and said, “You’re right. I no longer think President Bush is stupid. Of course, I think he is wrong on this and this and that, but he certainly is not dumb. As a matter of fact I would have to agree with you. He is brilliant. And if there is one thing I hate it is a brilliant conservative Republican”.

President Bush, facing criticism for using stark footage from the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, will visit a memorial to the victims next week, the White House announced Friday.

Bush plans to travel Thursday to East Meadow, N.Y., for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Nassau County 9/11 Memorial. Afterward he is to speak at a campaign fundraiser in the same town.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, criticized by some conservatives for toeing the White House line too often over the past three years, is about to announce his own legislative agenda.

"I have not discussed this with President Bush or anyone else in the White House, and have no desire to," Mr. DeLay told The Washington Times in an interview in his majority leader's office. "But if you don't set these conservative goals, you don't get conservative governance."

On Wednesday, Mr. DeLay will take the extraordinary step of introducing his own set of legislative and policy goals, for this year and beyond. He said that while he was still working on the specifics, his proposed initiatives "will cover three basic issues: security, prosperity and family."

[edit]

The first hint of Mr. DeLay's agenda came in a speech he delivered last month at a private retreat for Republican legislators in Philadelphia.

Some fellow Republicans who heard that speech said it sounded like an updated version of the "Contract with America" that Newt Gingrich introduced before the 1994 elections. Widely credited with having helped spur the Republican takeover of the House for the first time in 40 years, the Contract with America also boosted Mr. Gingrich from minority whip to House speaker. But a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president when Mr. Gingrich devised his Contract.