Fortson on Wednesday decried what he called society's increasing acceptance of abortion, same-sex relationships and pornography as evidence of "decaying moral values." He said Promise Keepers will not actively seek to change laws but will speak broadly about issues' moral underpinnings.

Mostly, Promise Keepers will seek to unleash armies of men to change the culture, Fortson said.

He said politicians will be challenged to lead the way with legislation, and doctors will be asked to sway their field against abortion.

A look back at the United States' anti-terrorism posture in the final hours before the devastating attacks of September 11 also reveals an administration that did not view terrorism as a domestic matter. Rather, Bush officials saw terrorism as a foreign issue, one largely within the purview of the NSC, the Defense Department, and the CIA. Homeland defense meant missile defense.

Two and a half years after 9/11, the Bush administration is deeply enmeshed in its "war on terrorism," but remains primarily focused on the part of that fight it is waging abroad. When talking of terrorism, President Bush emphasizes the importance of staying "on offense." Bolstering homeland security -- domestic efforts to defend against another attack on American soil -- is Plan B.

[edit]

The FBI had come under fire for mishandling both the Phoenix agent's warning and the Moussaoui investigation. In May 2002, Director Robert Mueller unveiled a plan to refocus the FBI on terrorism by shifting 518 agents from garden-variety criminal cases to terrorism, centralizing oversight of field offices, and bolstering the FBI's intelligence-analysis capacity.

This reorganization repositioned the FBI to lay claim to domestic responsibility for terrorism prevention. At a lunch with reporters in January of this year, Mueller was asked, "Who's in charge?" His answer: "If [something] is in the U.S. and it is related to terrorism somehow, we are." But, in fact, federal law now gives that responsibility to the secretary of Homeland Security. Questions within the administration over who's really in charge have yet to be resolved. As one person close to the administration noted, "The president doesn't do that kind of conflict resolution."

If anything, Bush has blurred the lines of responsibility. For example, in his 2003 State of the Union address, less than two months before the Homeland Security Department was to open for business, he announced the creation of yet another terrorism-fighting entity: the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. TTIC (pronounced "tea-tick") was to be -- and now is -- a joint venture of the CIA, the FBI, the Homeland Security Department, and state and local law enforcement, with a mandate to fuse and analyze terrorism-related threat information. Folks at the soon-to-be Homeland Security Department were confused by Bush's announcement: Wasn't that supposed to be their job?

Homeland Security was being dismantled even as it was being built.

[edit]

Meanwhile, Homeland Security's authority continues to erode. First, TTIC and the FBI encroached on its turf. Now the Transportation Department is asserting itself on highway and rail security. The Defense Department has launched its own domestic intelligence wing, and its U.S. Northern Command is building up many of the same capabilities, including vulnerability assessments, as Homeland Security -- with little if any consultation between the two.

Homeland Security is fractured into warring fiefdoms -- a competition that's hindering internal intelligence-sharing, between, the Customs and Border Security agency and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement counterpart, for example. And FEMA often freelances without telling top department management what it's up to. The department hasn't even been able to establish an integrated network of field representatives, because each undersecretary already has representatives out there and doesn't want to give them up.

Meanwhile, the White House has thrust upon the department a number of Bush loyalists who have no background in security issues or management, according to several people who work closely with the department. Staff turnover has been debilitating. The deputy secretary left after less than a year. The chief financial officer quit. Since November, the office responsible for the National Capitol Region has had no leader. The top intelligence officer at the Transportation Security Administration left early this year.

[edit]

One thing is clear, though. At the highest levels of this administration, terrorism continues to be perceived as a problem to be fought primarily "over there."

Tonight, ABC's "Nightline" will pay tribute to U.S. troops killed in Iraq by airing a 40 minute special – the names of the fallen will be read by anchor Ted Koppel as their photographs appear on screen. But Sinclair Broadcast Group – the country's largest owner of TV stations – will not allow its ABC affiliates to air the show. In a statement, Sinclair claims the special "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last night with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign.

[edit]

"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

Congo's War Decimates Gorillas

Years of civil strife in eastern Congo have decimated the habitat of the eastern lowland gorilla, cutting the apes' population by more than 70 percent in the past decade, experts said Wednesday.

With the number of apes estimated to have dropped to 5,000 -- down from about 17,000 in 1994 -- a U.S.-funded program is trying to stem the habitat loss by creating community nature reserves.

[edit]

To help preserve eastern Congo's natural diversity, the Dian Fossey fund is launching a $2.9 million program to help tribal chiefs and villagers create community nature reserves. Fossey set up camp in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park in the 1960s and documented her work in the book "Gorillas in the Mist," later adapted into a movie.

[edit]

"This may be our last chance to reverse this crisis," Mehlman said. "The only viable solution to this crisis is the participation of local people in the stewardship of their biological heritage."

"I'm just sitting here watching Fox News and recovering with a scotch in my hand. When I wake up tomorrow, maybe I'll think about it some more,'' he said.

MR. RUSSERT: [H]ow many troops--how many men and women do we now have on active duty?

DR. DEAN: I can't tell you the answer to that either. It's...

MR. RUSSERT: But as commander in chief, you should now that.

DR. DEAN: As someone who's running in the Democratic Party primary, I know that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people, but I don't know the exact number, and I don't think I need to know that to run in the Democratic Party primary.

MR. RUSSERT: How many troops would have in Iraq?

DR. DEAN: More than we have now. My understanding is we have in the neighborhood of 135,000 troops. I can't tell you exactly how many it takes....Tim, you have to understand, and I know you do understand, that as you run a campaign and as you acquire the nomination and as you go on to be president, you acquire military advisers who will tell you these things. And, no, I don't have a military background. Neither did Bill Clinton. George Bush had a National Guard background. Ronald Reagan did not have a military background. I will have the kinds of people around me who can tell me these things. For me to have to know right now, participating in the Democratic Party, how many troops are actively on duty in the United States military when that is actually a number that's composed both of people on duty today and people who are National Guard people who are on duty today, it's silly. That's like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is.

MR. RUSSERT: Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. Not if you want to be commander in chief. But we now have 9,000 troops...

DR. DEAN: So your perception--your position is that I need to know exactly how many people are on duty today in the active military forces...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, have a sense...

DR. DEAN: ...six months away from the first primary?

MR. RUSSERT: If somebody wants to be president of the United States, have a sense of the military. [Emphasis added]

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 civilian and one of the key architects of the war, incorrectly estimated the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq at about 500 -- more than 200 shy of the actual number -- when asked at a House Appropriations Subcommittee how many troops had died in Iraq.

"It's approximately 500, of which -- I can get the exact numbers -- approximately 350 are combat deaths," Mr. Wolfowitz said in response to the question. So far, 722 U.S. servicemen and women have died in Iraq -- about 521 from combat -- since the start of the war. Mr. Wolfowitz's misstatement came on the heels of the bloodiest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since last spring's U.S.-led invasion: So far in April, more than 125 U.S. troops have died and more than 900 have been wounded. Ten American soldiers were killed yesterday, eight in a car bombing south of Baghdad and two in separate ambushes. [Emphasis added]

I don't think the voting age should be lowered. If it was, many people wouldn't know who to vote for. If the voting age was lowered, whichever president gave away video games or money would have all the kids' votes.

Todd Shotts, East Central Middle School, Grade 6

No, I think they should keep the age the same. Because some little kids would vote and not even have a clue as to who they vote for. They should keep the age the same. I'm 12, and if I went and voted for something, I wouldn't have a clue what it was for. I would rather wait until I was 18 and vote because then I would know what to do. If they lowered it, it shouldn't be lower than 16. If they lowered it to my age, I wouldn't go vote. I think I'm too young to vote. My parents would probably let me, but I still wouldn't vote. This is what I think.

Shawnee Smith, East Central Middle School, Grade 6

I think the voting age should stay the same. Most people younger than that don't know what's going on in the politics.

If they don't keep it the same, it needs to be raised to 21. Most people that old know what is really going on in politics.

Brandon Slater, East Central Middle School, Grade 6

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. ordered its ABC affiliates to preempt tomorrow's broadcast of "Nightline,'' which will air the names and photos of U.S. military personnel who have died in combat in Iraq, saying the move is politically motivated.

"Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq,'' the company said in a faxed statement. Sinclair, which owns 62 U.S. television stations, said ABC is disguising political statements as news content.
...
Sinclair owns stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, WB and UPN in 39 markets.

In an e-mailed statement, ABC said the broadcast ``is an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country.''

One of the nation's newest and fastest-growing TV news networks says it's tired of left-leaning news reporting and wants to offer Americans a fair and balanced perspective, just as Fox News Channel does.

Fox News eschewed politically correct news to become the dominant force on cable news. And now the Sinclair Broadcast Group has been following in Fox's footsteps to do the same for broadcast news in news markets across the nation.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) is the eighth-largest network of television stations, based on revenues, and the nation's largest independent group owner of stations, according to Broadcasting & Cable.

Headquartered in the suburbs of Baltimore, it owns or manages 62 television stations in 39 markets - giving the network coverage of 25 percent of the nation's television audience.

An anti-war group planning a massive demonstration at the start of the Republican National Convention in Manhattan has been denied a permit to rally in Central Park because the crowd would be too large.

The parks department denied the request by United for Peace and Justice organizers, who applied last June for a permit to rally in the park's Great Lawn after marching from 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue .... The anti-war group was preparing an appeal, which is part of the parks permit process ...

The permit denial letter said the Aug. 29 event, expected to draw hundreds of thousands of protesters, would exceed the 13-acre Great Lawn's capacity of 80,000 people ... United for Peace and Justice indicated on its permit that it expected 250,000 demonstrators.

"In the view of the parks department, an event attended by 250,000 people would cause enormous damage to the lawn," the letter said.

The group plans to state in its appeal that numerous events with more than 80,000 people have taken place on the lawn, including a 1981 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel concert that drew at least 400,000 fans and a 1982 anti-nuclear demonstration attended by more than 750,000 people, considered the largest protest in the city's history.

* Earlier this month, commentator David Limbaugh directed this message to Kerry: "If you were focused on showing support for our troops and helping to establish a stable Iraq, you'd say something supportive rather than sputtering irrelevancies about "multilateralism" and diplomacy ..." (It's scary, but these people actually believe that "diplomacy" is irrelevant.)

* A post on the right-wing Free Republic website: "If come November we are still fighting the fanatics in Iraq, you can thank John Kerry and Ted Kennedy."

* "An e-mail, sent to Democrats in the Middle East from the Kerry campaign was published, word for word in the Tehran Times and Kerry's plan (on terrorism) brought great joy to the fundamentalist leaders in Iran," writes Barbara J. Stock at the right-wing MichNews.com, adding: "All the terrorists and the states that support them have to do is wait and hope that John Kerry wins ..."

* John Kerry, writes Insight magazine, is "[p]laying directly into the terrorists' hands ..."

* A few weeks ago, even Bush's re-election campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, offered a slightly more nuanced version of the 'Kerry-helps-terrorists' message when he called policy criticisms by Kerry "a political attack that is very, very seriously undermining our efforts in Iraq and in the war on terror."

* Not surprisingly, the ever-vile Ann Coulter helped lead this "Kerry loves terrorists" chorus. In March, Coulter wrote, "... like the Democrats, the Spanish hate George Bush more than they hate the terrorists. ... So don't think of the Spanish election as a setback for freedom -- think of it as a preview of life under President John Kerry!"

"In the absence of those dollars, we have to prioritize, and No Child Left Behind is not a high priority when we need to make sure our classrooms have textbooks and teachers."

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada," Bush explained to The Dallas Morning News back in 1990. "So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

Bush wanted to be a flier, like his father, a decorated World War II naval aviator, so he joined the Texas Air National Guard. It was an option more available to the well connected than to others; Bush reportedly jumped ahead of others on a long waiting list to get in. His entering group included the sons of two U.S. senators and seven Dallas Cowboys.

Souter suggests he's just not very comfortable with the government's main assurance: "Don't worry about the timing question. We'll tell you when the war is over." And [Hamdi attorney] Frank Dunham offers a fiery rebuttal in which he claims Clement is a "worthy advocate who is able to make the unreasonable sound reasonable." He adds that the government's claim that we should trust them is exactly why the Great Writ exists: because we don't trust them. The passion seems to startle the justices, who remain silent throughout. Dunham surely knows they don't generally take to all this emotionalism. But he's not arguing to the court anyhow. This part is for you.

Mr. Brahimi's performance is providing an excellent illustration of why Mr. Kerry's approach of entrusting the Iraqi transition to the United Nations is bad policy.

We're working closely with the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and with Iraqis to determine the exact form of the government that will receive sovereignty on June 30th. The United Nations election assistance team, headed by Karina Parelli (phonetic), is in Iraq, developing plans for next January's election....That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

Has the United States done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq?*

December 2003 ..... Yes - 63% No - 31%

March 2004 ........... Yes - 58% No - 37%

Today ...................... Yes - 47% No - 46%

(* -- Totals do not add up to 100% because of "undecided" responses)

"The diminished public support for the war did not translate into any significant advantage for Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The poll showed the two men remaining in a statistical dead heat ..."

Conservatives have spent the last 20 years distorting reality and getting away with it. That is about to change. The Center for American Progress has launched this new database project to chart the dishonesty and lies of conservatives – and compare them with the truth. In this database, each conservative quote will be matched against well-documented facts.

A man whose son was killed 11 years ago in a gruesome workplace accident urged Congress on Tuesday to give prosecutors the threat of felony convictions against employers whose neglect for federal safety rules causes a death.

Ron Hayes, a Fairhope, Ala., resident who in December ended his two-year term on the advisory panel overseeing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was in Washington to lobby for a proposal by Sens. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Commerce Secretary Donald Evans called the Corzine-Kennedy proposal "just another policy to destroy jobs." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said the proposal would be "the worst thing that you could do - telling a small business person that they could go to prison over an OSHA violation."

A national Republican spokesman who last week criticized a South Dakota Democrat for taking a salary from campaign contributions said Monday that Arkansas Republican state Rep. Marvin Parks gets a pass for doing the same thing.

"This case is different," National Republican Congressional Committee Communications Director Carl Forti said of Parks, who is drawing about $4,000 a month from contributions.

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

Folks at the Internal Revenue Service say the allegedly political tax day reminder in Monday's column was from the Treasury Department, not the IRS. And Treasury says it lifted the pro-Bush language from the White House Web site, not from the Republican National Committee.

After seeing the reminder, the RNC thought the language was so politically neutral it should be posted on the committee Web site.

The university will be funded through private donations, and no taxpayer money will be used, Walker said. The project has the support of the Reagan family and longtime Reagan advisers such as Edwin Meese, who served as Reagan's attorney general, Walker said.

"Ed Meese can pick up the phone and call every wealthy person in the country," Walker said.

A Roman Catholic entrepreneur from Honolulu is funding a $900,000 expedition to find Noah's Ark this summer, after a record heat wave last year revealed what could be a large man-made object on the northeastern slopes of Turkey's Mount Ararat.

Daniel P. McGivern, 64, told reporters yesterday he was sending a team of 30 American and Turkish scientists, forensic specialists and archaeologists to the site, revealed in recent satellite photographs, in the hopes of fostering belief in God and a worldwide religious revival.

"The discovery of Noah's Ark [would be] the single greatest event since the resurrection of Jesus Christ," Mr. McGivern said, "and it ? I know ? will change the way science currently thinks about the Earth," in reference to the Bible's account of a global flood.

Backers of the ambitious plan to build a private university outside Denver that would focus on the former president's economic and diplomatic principles asked the Colorado legislature this week to endorse the idea. With a 200-acre campus site donated by a prominent Colorado Republican, the plans call for construction to begin next year and a student body of 10,000 to be in classes before the end of the decade.

... Plans for Ronald Reagan U. were made public for the first time this week when Colorado state Rep. Jim Welker, a Republican and a supporter of the idea, introduced a nonbinding resolution asking the state legislature to offer its moral support.

"This resolution is a we-wish-you-well kind of thing, that's all," Welker said. "We're not going to ask for a single penny of taxpayer money for this project. It wouldn't really be the Reagan way to come up with the idea and then try to get the government to pay for it."

As insurgents continue to use improvised bombs to attack U.S. military vehicles in Iraq, officials are growing increasingly concerned that the lack of heavy armored vehicles is putting U.S. forces at risk.

Defense officials said yesterday they are working to increase the number of armored Humvees for Operation Iraqi Freedom but said the 2,000 specially armored trucks there account for only half the Army's estimated requirements. Standard Humvees, considered utility vehicles similar to jeeps, are too vulnerable to attack, officials said.

... [Gen. Larry R. Ellis at Army Forces Command] wrote the Pentagon that commanders in the field have found the armored Humvee "is not providing the solution the Army hoped to achieve" and that red tape could "fail our soldier and our nation." Ellis suggested the purchase of hundreds of eight-wheel Stryker combat vehicles instead.

Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said yesterday it is vital to the protection of soldiers to immediately increase the number of hardened vehicles in Iraq, whether that means more armored Humvees or Strykers. "Soldiers are dying because they're in a war zone," Simmons said, "but the risks they face increase when the equipment they have is inadequate for the threat."

Human rights groups accuse the government [of Sudan] of bombing villages before janjaweed raids and providing helicopter reconnaissance afterward. New York-based Human Rights Watch calls it "a strategy of ethnic-based murder, rape and forcible displacement of civilians in Darfur."

Last week it said it had documented dozens of janajaweed attacks supported by government forces. It described an operation in which troops allegedly worked with janjaweed to detain 136 African men whom the militias later massacred.

A U.N. report leaked last week accused Sudanese forces of raping non-Arab women and girls and bombing civilians in what may amount to crimes against humanity.

In a TV interview last week, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the janajaweed "took up arms to defend themselves" against rebel attacks.

But while denying the government was backing the janjaweed, he said it "may have turned a blind eye toward the militias ... because those militias are targeting the rebellion."

Meanwhile the Habyarimana circle was preparing the organization and logistics to attack the minority. During 1993, some loyalists from Habyarimana’s party expanded the recruitment and training of the Interahamwe. But others, perhaps concerned that the militia were too tainted by partisan rivalries, proposed a “civilian self-defense force” which was to recruit young men through administrative rather than party channels. The recruits were to be trained by former soldiers or communal police who would direct them in attacking the “enemy” in their communities.

Soldiers and political leaders distributed firearms to militia and other supporters of Habyarimana in 1993 and early 1994, but Bagosora and others concluded that firearms were too costly to distribute to all participants in the “civilian self-defense” program. They advocated arming most of the young men with such weapons as machetes. Businessmen close to Habyarimana imported large numbers of machetes, enough to arm every third adult Hutu male.

[edit]

Both on the radio and through public meetings, authorities worked to make the long-decried threat of RPF infiltration concrete and immediate. Throughout the country they disseminated detailed false information, such as reports that Tutsi had hidden firearms in the bushes behind the Kibungo cathedral, or that they had prepared maps showing fields to be taken from Hutu in Butare, or that they had killed local administrative officials in Nyakizu. Authorities counted on such news to convince Hutu that their Tutsi neighbors were dangerous agents of the RPF who had to be eliminated. Community leaders and even clergy assured Hutu that they were justified in attacking Tutsi as a measure of “self-defense.”

Most chemical mixtures quickly settle into an unchanging state. So the fact that dynamic cell-like structures can arise spontaneously from a simple mixture is a surprise....

Understanding how this happens could give us clues about how life may have arisen on Earth, or even other planets, where the blends of chemicals present might be quite different from that of the early Earth.

Bush-League Lysenkoism

The White House bends science to its will

By The Editors

Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.

With weekly headlines about suppressed information, slanted scientific panels, and altered research reports, the National Council for Research on Women joins a growing chorus of researchers, scientific experts, policymakers, and journalists in a call to concerned citizens to protest and reverse decisions that diminish the amount and quality of information available to us all. These decisions, we believe, cannot be left unchecked.

MISSING concentrates on missing information – information that directly affects women’s lives. Vital data has been deleted, buried, altered, or has otherwise gone missing from government websites and publications. Taken cumulatively, these actions are serious for women and need to be addressed. As the report shows, such distortions and omissions have debilitating consequences for peoples’ health and livelihoods. They also deny researchers critical facts and impede our ability to craft solutions and develop strategies to address the pressing challenges of our times.

Americans share a proud legacy of trusting the federal government to assemble information needed to advance women’s rights and well-being. As data on women disappears, an important, non-partisan tradition of government is being destroyed.

With no one interested, no media interested -- in fact, one of the great shocking things of even the genocide, as we move into that phase, was the fact that on NBC, ABC and CBS, there was more airtime given to Tonya Harding knee-capping her colleague, than there was to the genocide in Rwanda.

[edit]

However, as we poured tens of thousands of troops into Yugoslavia and billions of dollars of resources and assets, as the whole world was concerned about Yugoslavia and, in fact, the whole NGO and media dimension was concentrating on Yugoslavia, they were pulling out the few troops I had out of Rwanda.

And the question then is raised: How come there was a difference? Are all humans human? Or are some more human than others?

Do some humans count more than others? Do Yugoslavs, European, white count more than a whole bunch of black Africans in central Africa who are simply slaughtering themselves?

Ethnic cleansing is just as brutal and as disgusting as was outright genocide and destruction. There is no difference.

However, the perception and the response was enormously different, totally different in such circumstance.

And so from the actual use of the term "genocide" by myself, it was accepted by Boutros-Ghali on the 29th of April. We entered into a very interesting debate on genocide in the different power structures of the world, and particularly here, which was rather interesting, of the spokesman of the president trying to describe acts of genocide as different from genocide.

It took another week or so before people actually were courageous enough to use the term "genocide."

What is the downside of that, is that it did absolutely nothing. There was no difference. There was still no response.

Not one person was more interested in the genocide before the term was used than after. And so the term, although significant in legal and diplomatic and legislative milieus, actually on the ground in its application, was seen to be simply another word and brought nothing.

Ladies and gentlemen, all humans are human.

One experience, as I was moving between the lines, there was a 3- year-old boy in the middle of the road. The extremists would use children to stop convoys. And if the children didn't stay in the road, they'd shoot them.

The child was there. I stopped with a couple of soldiers. We expected an ambush, and there was no ambush. And as we looked through the huts looking for his parents, all we saw were decaying bodies, bodies eaten by dogs and so on.

But we lost the child. So we went back and looked for the child. I found him and brought in front of my vehicle. And as I looked at this child whose stomach was bloated, and he was dirty and flies all around him and barely no clothes, and had scabs all over him, I all of a sudden concentrated on his eyes.

And what I saw in those eyes was exactly what I saw in my 3-year- old boy's eyes. They were both human children. There is no difference between them.

The bottom line is they're both members of humanity and deserve that humanity be participants in maintaining their ability to be considered as humans, and that the response be at that level -- not national interest level, but at humanitarian level.

Scalia took his seat behind the court's high bench as usual Tuesday, and almost immediately posed a hard question to the administration lawyer. Since the case concerns whether outsiders influenced the outcome of the task force's work, why not release voting records of the energy task force, Scalia asked.

Told that such a disclosure would raise privacy concerns, Scalia sounded skeptical.

"All I'm saying is, why would that be such an intrusion ... just to know whether anybody who voted on any of the recommendations was a nongovernment employee?" he asked.

[C]ooperate with the international community to support civil society organizations and leaders in Uganda, including Acholi religious leaders, who are working toward a just and lasting resolution to the conflict

[and]

[W]ork with the international community to assist institutions of civil society in Uganda to increase the capacity of such institutions to monitor the human rights situation in northern Uganda and to raise awareness of abuses of human rights that occur in that area

Just last month, a displaced persons camp was attacked by the LRA, and in a 3-hour period, some 200 unarmed civilians were hacked, shot, and burned to death. Many fear that targeting of civilians will only increase with the government's efforts to arm and train local defense forces, and local leaders warn of the potential for these forces to take the form of ethnic militias, harkening back to some of the worst days of Uganda's history.

Reputable human rights organizations have reported disturbing abuses committed by Ugandan security forces in the region, and an absence of reliable mechanisms for holding those responsible to account. The recent history of Ugandan military adventures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in Ituri, does not inspire confidence. Thankfully, Uganda has withdrawn from the DRC. But lingering questions about the military's commitment to basic human rights standards remain. I believe that the Ugandan military and the Ugandan government want to answer those questions definitively, and to reaffirm their commitment to developing professional and responsible forces. But pretending that these questions and concerns do not exist is not in the interest of Ugandans, it is not in the interest of Americans, and it is not in the interest of the kind of solid, frank, genuine partnership that I believe we all wish to cultivate with Uganda.

[edit]

The human tragedy is devastating and the implications are quite serious. If Sudan is continuing to support the LRA, I am concerned about what this tells us about the nature of the Sudanese regime. I am troubled by the prospect that some will, for their own purposes, cast the conflict in northern and eastern Uganda in purely ethnic terms, lumping civilians who have been victimized in with the LRA forces responsible for their suffering. I worry about the potential for regional fractures when one part of the country lives in such a different world from the rest, enjoying none of the stability and development that we all so admire. I want Uganda to succeed. I want the volume of positive news to increase. And that means that we must address this serious issue frankly today.

This legislation asks the administration to report to Congress on a number of issues relating to the situation in northern and eastern Uganda. I ask for these reports because I certainly do not have all of the answers. But I know enough about the problem to know that these reports will help the Congress to make informed decisions about how to proceed in our relationship with Sudan and about how to most effectively help the people of northern and eastern Uganda.

"Kerry never voted specifically against body armor and had criticized the president for sending about 40,000 troops to Iraq without the new generation of sophisticated armor. Body armor was contained in Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan, which the senator opposed as a protest against the administration's Iraq policy ... (Yet Kerry) earlier supported the $87 billion ... if Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy were dropped (to help pay for the new funds)..."

"The government has believed from Day 1 that the medical records were relevant," Ms. Gowan [the government's lawyer] said. "We believe that."

But she added, referring to the continuing trial: "The government would like resolution of the important issue before Your Honor as quickly as possible. To that end, over the last few days, we have determined to voluntarily withdraw the subpoena to New York-Presbyterian Hospital."

In cases outside New York, the release of records was prohibited either by an appellate court or a district judge, though some files were surrendered in the Nebraska trial. But in New York, Judge Casey had ordered the medical records released in redacted form. Yesterday, he called the government's move "an interesting change in position" and added, "I don't know if I agree."

What makes a president great? The editors from two of America's most prominent institutions, The Wall Street Journal and the Federalist Society, tackle this question with the help of a range of eminent scholars, providing a fascinating and at times surprising ranking of our nation's leaders from Washington to Clinton, including an early assessment of George W. Bush's presidency.

Based on a national survey developed by Northwestern Professors Steven Calabresi and James Lindgren and conducted by the Federalist Society, "Presidential Leadership" examines the nation's leaders in this collection of refreshing, enlightening essays - one on each president, plus several broader thematic essays on presidential leadership - written by a distinguished and diverse group of historians, journalists, and current and former high-ranking government officials.

Never before in book form has a group of experts of such standing weighed in on the topic of presidential performance. The survey included an illustrious list of both liberal and conservative scholars, balancing the sample to reflect the political makeup of the population as a whole, rather than just of the academy. Essay contributors include renowned historians Forrest McDonald, Douglas Brinkley, and Robert Dallek; government officials Lynne Cheney, John McCain, and Kenneth Starr; and journalists Michael Barone, Fred Barnes, and Peggy Noonan.

It couldn't be a worse time for a scandal. George Bush's administration recently praised a proposal for greater involvement by the United Nations in Iraq's political future. ... Yet just as the Bush administration and the UN are starting to cosy up to each other, allegations of massive fraud in the UN's former oil-for-food programme for Iraq have heated up. On Wednesday April 21st, the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution requiring all UN members to co-operate with an official probe into the affair ...

The oil-for-food programme was established in 1996 to allow Iraq, devastated by years of sanctions, to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian supplies, principally food and medicine. The programme ... is often described as the biggest humanitarian programme in history, delivering over $30 billion-worth of goods to Iraq.

... Allegations of wrongdoing in the programme are nothing new; Britain and America complained of this before the war. But the breadth and depth of the alleged fraud now go far beyond what was thought at the time. In January, an independent Iraqi newspaper, al-Mada, published a list of 270 names (of individuals, companies and institutions) it claimed to have found in Iraqi oil ministry documents. Those named were said to have received oil contracts under the programme, either as thanks for political support for Saddam’s regime, for turning a blind eye to corruption or in payment for illegal imports. Those who were handed these contracts could then sell them on to legitimate oil traders. The scheme appeared to allow its beneficiaries to say they had never taken money from the Iraqi government. The list of alleged beneficiaries includes a senior UN official and top French, Indonesian and Russian politicians. The documents behind the list have yet to be authenticated, however.

In addition to allegedly buying political support through the oil contracts, Saddam’s regime itself looks to have profited enormously from the scheme. The General Accounting Office (GAO), an arm of the American Congress, reported last month that prices for humanitarian imports were inflated by some 10%. This allowed the regime to sell 10% more oil to pay for the imports and to cream the extra money off for itself. In addition, the GAO said that the regime managed to sell over $5 billion-worth of oil illegally outside the programme. In all, Saddam's government may have netted almost $10 billion from its chicanery.

The accusations have triggered a round of finger-pointing. Richard Lugar, the head of a Senate panel conducting one of three congressional probes into the scandal, said on April 7th that, to pull off the scam, Saddam would have needed members of the Security Council to be "complicit in his activities." The French ambassador to America, Jean-David Levitte, noted in response that America sat on the sanctions committee that approved all contracts. John Negroponte, America's ambassador to the UN, admitted that while sitting on that committee, America had been more worried about keeping military goods out of Iraq than about corruption.

Pat Tillman is a hero, and all the more when compared with others in a similar position. Gone are the days when Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart flocked to the army to do their patriotic duty. Tillman was alone among our nation’s stars in joining the service. The only other pampered American to go to war in Afghanistan was John Walker Lindh.

In fact, Tinseltown opposed the War on Terror with all its might. It is to Hollywood’s undying shame that as Tillman went off to fight the enemy, they organized huge marches to tell him he was doing the Devil’s bidding.

And unlike a certain presidential candidate, he did not use his uniform as a steppingstone to public acclaim; he jettisoned the pleasures of fame to die with a literal "band of brothers."

"Hostages 'anti-Japan': lawmaker"

"Government orders former hostages to pay up"

A Liberal Democratic Party member of the House of Councilors on Monday described the Japanese civilians recently released from captivity by militants in Iraq as "antigovernment, anti-Japan elements."

"I have heard that some of them openly expressed opposition to Japan's deployment of Self-Defense Forces troops in Iraq," Takeaki Kashimura, 60, said during a meeting of the Upper House Audit Committee.*

"I cannot help feeling discomfort in or strongly against spending several billion yen of taxpayers' money on such antigovernment, anti-Japan elements."

Kashimura told reporters after the committee session: "They are indeed anti-Japan elements as they are against government policies."

The Justice Department has referred a criminal investigation into improperly accessed Senate Democratic memos to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, acceding to Democratic calls for an independent probe of the matter.

The Justice Department informed Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, in a letter Monday that an investigation into the accessing of more than 4,600 memos had been assigned to David Kelley, the lead federal prosecutor for one of the most critical regions of the nation.

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The appointment of Kelley is a stinging rebuke to conservative activists who long argued that accessing the memos was not a crime since the two former aides at the center of the case did so without hacking into Democratic computer systems. As late as last week, Manuel Miranda had not been contacted by federal investigators and was telling friends he did not expect to be contacted.

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Democrats were happy with the appointment, noting that the Pickle report noted that there were many instances in which the in-house investigators did not have full authority to convene a grand jury and subpoenaing witnesses. “With the power available to a federal prosecutor, this matter can now be more thoroughly investigated so that those who engaged in criminal conduct may be brought to justice,” Leahy said.

HHS Withholds Funds for Global Health Meeting

After complaints from Republican congressional staff members and conservative groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition, Bush administration officials have decided to withhold money for an international health conference that opponents say promotes abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Global Health Council over the past few years, backed off plans to contribute $170,000 for the June conference because it appeared the money could be used for lobbying, HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said.

Conservative activists, however, took credit last night for persuading the administration to abandon a conference the federal government has supported for 30 years.

"Obviously this conference does not reflect the administration policies," said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. Initial reports that the liberal MoveOn.org would participate demonstrated a "clearly political agenda" that was not "in sync" with the Republican administration, she added.

STOPP International, a subsidiary of the American Life League, and Focus on the Family also lobbied against giving federal money to the conference, Lafferty said.
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Conference organizers said the three-day meeting will include a diverse mix of experts speaking on such topics as reproductive health, infectious diseases and emerging threats such as SARS, nutrition and disaster assistance. The theme of the conference is "Youth and Health: Generation on the Edge." Louis W. Sullivan, HHS secretary in the first Bush administration, is a member of the board of the council.

"There's balance in this thing," said James M. Sherry, vice president of Global Health Council. "You can't deal with global health and not have some issues of controversy come up." MoveOn.org was asked to speak about using technology to organize grass-roots groups but could not attend, Sherry said.

As part of a five-year $1 million grant, the U.S. Agency for International Development has pledged about $150,000 for the conference. Sherry said the council has been told "to expect a letter" forthwith rescinding that portion of the grant. Spokesmen for USAID did not return several phone calls.

The Hill newspaper and a publication sponsored by Focus on the Family first reported some elements of the controversy.

Vice President Cheney was rebuked by his host yesterday after lambasting Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in a speech at a private college in Missouri.

Fletcher M. Lamkin, president of Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., e-mailed students, staff and faculty shortly after Air Force Two headed back to Washington.

"I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech," Lamkin wrote. "The content and tone of his speech was not provided to us prior to the event -- we had only been told the speech would be about foreign policy, including issues in Iraq."

Today we are clearly engaged in a new war in Iraq. From the day of Saddam's fall, the Iraqi people's hopes for a better life and the Coalition force's lives have been attacked by an evil alliance of remnants of Saddam's regime who refuse to accept defeat and of fanatical foreign and Iraqi terrorists who are part of the same jihadist movement that mercilessly attacked us on September 11, 2001.

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The question is no longer why we got in, but how we and the Iraqis can win in Iraq. We must quickly acknowledge that consensus and then find ways to work together to advance it.

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My point here is that the homefront affects the battlefront. Politics as usual at home can and will have unusually bad consequences in Iraq. It encourages our enemies to believe they are succeeding in their attempts to influence our policy. They clearly seek by their hostage taking, by their desecration of the bodies of our dead, and by their terrorism to break the will of the people of America. And although we all say repeatedly that we support the 135,000 Americans who are serving in Iraq today, the more our troops hear the partisan division at home, the more they will, at best, be confused, or at worse, be demoralized. The world is also watching our political debate on Iraq, and gauging the depth of our resolve and the strength of our leadership.

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Now, more than ever, politics must stop at the water's edge, because now, more than ever, our politics here at home have profound consequences for security within our borders as well as beyond our shores. That is the urgent challenge we face today - as Democrats, as Republicans, as Americans. It is a challenge we must and will best meet together.

In the run-up to the war on Iraq, a top Pentagon official pushed a highly unorthodox plan to deploy one of the U.S. government’s most controversial legal tactics—the designation of suspected terrorists as “enemy combatants”—in hopes of finding new evidence of alleged connections between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The proposal, pressed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, called for President George W. Bush to declare Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as an enemy combatant in the war on terror. This would have allowed Yousef to be transferred from his cell at the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo., to a U.S. military installation.

Wolfowitz contended that U.S. military interrogators—unencumbered by the presence of Yousef’s defense lawyer—might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War.

On what led to his arrest April 18: A woman called 911 to say she heard a gunshot at 3012 Sunnyside Drive. Breit told officers he accidentally fired a round from a newly purchased gun into his door frame. Breit told officers he had been sitting on his living room couch attempting to dismantle his newly purchased semiautomatic AK-47 assault rifle, when he accidentally pulled the trigger and the rifle fired.

On what they found inside: Breit gave officers written consent to search his apartment and his vehicle, which was parked outside. From his apartment, officers recovered firearms, and components to be used in building pipe bombs. Items recovered included:

A Mauser 8 mm model 98 firearm, serial number 8014, loaded with two rounds of ammunition, which had been manually shortened from its original length.

A Western Arms Corp. 126A shotgun, serial number 21594, loaded with two rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, which had been manually shortened from its original length.

A DS Arms .308-caliber model SA-58 rifle, serial number DS21358.

A Remington 126A model 870 shotgun, serial number B873723M.

A MAADI AK-47 rifle, serial number CM16575.

Two .44-caliber black powder pistols, serial numbers P74683 and 438783.

More than 700 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, along with several magazines, two of which were loaded.

Forty rounds of .308-caliber ammunition, along with two magazines.

A box of black powder loading tools.

A powder flask with black powder.

A 1-pound can of Pyrodex black powder.

Five shotgun shells disassembled of shot.

Four 1-pound cans of IMB 7828 smokeless black powder.

Cannon fuse.

Five pipe sections.

A box containing pipe sections, shot and a broken pellet pistol.

A plastic jar containing shotgun shot.

An inert hand grenade.

A cut-off section of a shotgun barrel.

Two cans of No. 11 percussion caps.

Five boxes containing 100 rounds each of 12-gauge shotgun shells, as well as three boxes containing 75 shells each, two boxes containing 25 shells each and a plastic green box with 100 rounds of 12-gauge shells.

Two ammunition pouches, along with seven 30-round banana-clip magazines.

113 rounds of 8 mm Mauser ammunition.

Several rounds of miscellaneous ammunition.

Eight knives.

One sword.

Several handwritten notes, drawings, including pictures of guns and pipe bombs (discussed further in paragraph below)

Several bags and boxes of fireworks.

Several books including the following titles: "Department of the Army Operator's Manual for AK-47;" "The Anarchist Cookbook;" "Guns, Freedom and Terrorism," "The Turner Diaries," and "Boston's Gun Bible." The book "The Anarchist Cookbook" includes instructions on how to make pipe bombs and other types of explosive devices. "The Turner Diaries" is a novel about armed revolution against the federal government.

On what Breit said to officers: A list of current and former federal officials and other political and public figures was found in his apartment. Next to each name was the word "marked." When asked what that meant, Breit said "marked to die" because they were liberal and supported anti-gun efforts or did not support the current administration.

Outsiders led by Kenya, Norway, Britain and the United States have been successfully mediating a peace deal in the long-running north-south conflict. A final breakthrough may be announced in the next week or two. Although this progress owes much to international pressure -- and in particular, the Sudanese government's fear that, after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration was serious about punishing rogue states -- the United States and its allies seem reluctant to apply more pressure on the Darfur issue. They have yet to ask for a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing coercive force, for example, even though U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has spoken of the destruction of Darfur's villages in the same context as the Rwandan genocide. They worry that excessive pressure will cause Sudan's government to pull out of talks with the south or that Sudan will refuse to permit U.N.-authorized monitors to implement an eventual north-south deal.

Sudan escaped heavy criticism at the United Nations' top human rights forum as countries adopted a softly worded text on atrocities allegedly committed in the western Darfur region.

The decision enraged the United States which failed to push through a second vote for a stronger response to reports of attacks by Sudanese troops and Arab militias on black African civilians, in what could constitute war crimes.

And it drew anger from the Americans and advocacy groups, which accused the UN's Commission on Human Rights of failing to condemn the "ethnic cleansing" in the region.

As a UN team traveled to Darfur to probe what is described as the world's worst ongoing humanitarian disaster and the warring sides began delayed peace talks in the neighbouring capital of Chad, 50 countries approved the mildly-worded decision on the last day of the Commission's six-week session.

Washington rejected the text, drawn up as a compromise between the European Union and a bloc of African nations, and there were two abstentions.

Refusing to be beaten, the United States demanded a special session of the assembly once the UN mission returns to hear the results of its investigation.

"An acceptable commission product must condemn this ethnic cleansing, must hold accountable those engaged in these deplorable acts," Richard Williamson, head of the US delegation, told the assembly earlier.

"Ten years from now all that will be remembered about this commission is what we do on this issue," he declared.

Of course, not all religious people agree with me that women — not government — are best able to make the most private decisions of conscience about families and children. Some politicians and clergy claim that their religions mandate that they oppose abortion rights, family planning, and even responsible sexuality education. I respect the teachings of their religions but I reject their insistence that the rest of us adhere to their beliefs.

My faith does not require the government to forbid women, or men, from making choices about their future and the destiny of their family or to withhold information about contraception from teenagers. It teaches me that women, and men, can search their conscience and come to a responsible understanding about moral questions.

Legislating one religious view about the beginning of life strikes me as an affront to people of other religions and just plain wrong in a nation with such a great diversity of faiths. I will march because I respect varying beliefs and because I will not trample on the rights of others.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. delivered a forceful rebuke to Maryland business leaders yesterday, challenging them to increase their influence in Annapolis and demanding that they withhold support from Democrats who vote for higher taxes and labor costs.

"You have yet to prove a willingness to engage those members who enjoy your checks and your endorsements, but who vote at critical times against jobs and growth and opportunity and prosperity," Ehrlich told business leaders and lobbyists at the Baltimore Convention Center in his first major address since the end of the General Assembly session.

"That's the Patty Hearst syndrome. You identify with your captors. The time has come for the Maryland business community to lose that syndrome."

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"I do not care how many e-mails are sent over 90 days. I do not care how much money you pay to powerful lobbyists in this room," Ehrlich said. "We need you to influence votes. We need you to be dangerous."

"If we can't get a beachhead in the public policy of the state under this governor, it's never going to happen."

At the official march kickoff rally Saturday night, the most frequently used word was the f-word — and I don't mean "feminist." There was a crass, angry framework to the whole march weekend, in fact....It's a crowd that needs some growing up.

And healing. Quietly gathering around the march were women and men — and college students — organized under a group called Silent No More, which works with families suffering from abortion....No yelling. No hating. [emphasis added] They held signs that said "Women Deserve Better," "I Regret Lost Fatherhood," and "I Regret My Abortion." One sign was simply a happy face that said, "I Am Pro-life."

Robert Novak reports that word is spreading "through Republican circles ... that a runaway Democratic prosecutor in Texas may indict House Majority Leader Tom DeLay."
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Austin District Attorney Ronnie Earle wants to prosecute DeLay [ed- also known around here as the World's Biggest Asshole] for alleged illegal cash payments in connection with the episode, a move that would force DeLay to step aside till the case was resolved.

This is the home of Britton Stein, who describes George W. Bush as "a man, a man's man, a manly man," and Al Gore as "a ranting and raving little whiny baby."

Next he goes to a Web site called WorldNetDaily.com. He clicks on an article that says, "Poll: Bush's Approval Sinking," but dismisses it as untrustworthy when he sees the poll was done by CBS. "Of course I have a suspicion of CBS," he says. "Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw -- they don't have any credibility with me."

We recently documented massive atrocities in Darfur, a large region, about the size of France, in western Sudan. Government troops and government-backed militias are conducting a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. They are killing and raping civilians and burning their villages, forcing nearly one million people to flee. Thousands have died, and estimates are that hundreds of thousands more could perish from disease and starvation. The United Nations calls Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

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Human Rights Watch's on-the-ground reporting and high-level advocacy can mobilize the international community to mitigate the atrocities that we – and few others – have documented. There is hardly any international reporting from western Sudan. With the war in Iraq still monopolizing attention, little information is reaching the Western public about this massive crisis. Our reporting is essential, as is our advocacy in capitals in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where governments can force Sudan to change. You can help us. We would be grateful for a gift that can help defray the $300,000 we will need to undertake this work.

Your contribution will underwrite research in one of the most forbidding regions of the world. Transport and communications are extremely difficult, and hence, expensive. The government is trying to obstruct human rights monitoring. Obtaining information in such a hostile environment is complicated, and requires the sophisticated approach our investigators bring.

Its name may be dull, but there's some lively politics behind the long-languishing Law of the Sea Convention.

After decades of debate and setbacks, proponents this spring appeared within grasp of Senate ratification, which would add the United States' name to the treaty signed by 145 nations. With President Bush's support, and a unanimous Foreign Relations Committee endorsement, only a full Senate vote was needed.

Then the conservatives stepped in. Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich, Frank J. Gaffney Jr. and other staunch conservatives with Web sites and followers began denouncing the treaty as a dangerous sop to those who prefer a one-world government to muscular U.S. sovereignty.

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Schlafly, head of the Eagle Forum, distributed a column saying the treaty "would be a giant giveaway of American wealth, sovereignty, resources needed to maintain our economy, capacity to defend ourselves, and even our ships' and submarines' ability to gather intelligence necessary to our national defense."

At the 1985 hearings, opponents continued to challenge the convention, trotting out the same objections and accusations as before. Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum, told the Senators, "Anyone who takes the time to read the [convention] can easily see that it is a double-edged piece of propaganda and a constitutional embarrassment ... Anyone reading it article by article can see from its text that it is at best an embarrassment and at worst a trap to ensnare American citizens and our allies."