[I]t also occurs to us that increasing the quality of military recruits would probably help avoid future Abu Ghraibs. One constructive step toward that end would be for elite universities to drop antimilitary policies, so that the military would have an easier time signing up the best and brightest young Americans.

Many academic institutions have barred ROTC or military recruiters from campus for left-wing political reasons--first as a protest against the Vietnam War, and later over the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" law. Whatever the merits of these positions, it's time the academic left showed some patriotic responsibility and acknowledged that the defense of the country--which includes the defense of their own academic freedom--is more important than the issue du jour.

TV Coverage of Rwanda from CNN, ABC, CBS & NBC (in Minutes)

April: 91
May: 108
June: 79
July: 278

TV Reports with Datelines from Rwanda vs. Zaire

April: 35 from Rwanda
May: 40 from Rwanda
June: 30 from Rwanda
July: 195 from Zaire

Last fall, after the Atlantic Monthly excerpted Power’s chapter on Rwanda [from "A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide"], a National Security Council aide sent a memo to President Bush summarizing her argument and detailing the Clinton administration’s reluctance to act. President Bush’s four-word response to this failure to stop genocide, which he jotted in the memo’s margins, could not have been clearer: “NOT ON MY WATCH.”

Sudan is waging a bloody campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in the western Darfur region, killing thousands of people and driving more than 1 million more from their homes by bombing villages, shooting men and raping women, a human-rights group said Friday.

Human Rights Watch, based in New York, called on the UN Security Council, scheduled to meet Friday on the Darfur situation, to help stop the bloodshed and look for evidence of crimes against humanity.

The rights group likened the situation in Darfur to the beginning of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when 500,000 people were slaughtered by a government-backed, extremist militia. The international community was widely criticized for not intervening to stop the bloodshed.

"Ten years after the Rwandan genocide and despite years of soul-searching, the response of the international community to the events in Sudan has been nothing short of shameful," Human Rights Watch said in its 77-page report

"The system works."

Donald Rumsfeld on May 5, 2004


"I royally !@#*)%! up."

Donald Rumsfeld on May 7, 2004

... the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry. Even better, he said, would be if priests would read letters from the pulpit denouncing the senator from Massachusetts "whenever and wherever he campaigns as a Catholic."

The difficulty in achieving "moral purity in politics," as New York Times columnist Peter Steinfels noted over the weekend, was underscored by the case of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). A strong foe of abortion, Santorum campaigned hard in Pennsylvania's Republican primary for Sen. Arlen Specter, a supporter of abortion rights. Specter prevailed narrowly over Rep. Pat Toomey, a staunch antiabortion advocate.

The question: Why is it acceptable for a committed Catholic abortion opponent such as Santorum to support Specter over an antiabortion candidate, but not Kerry over Bush? Might Specter's party label have something to do with it?

Roman Catholic priests who wander up and down hugging or shaking hands with worshippers during services are to be told to stay at their altars under a new Vatican crackdown.

Members of the congregation will also be urged to curb their enthusiasm by offering the "sign of peace" only to their immediate neighbours in a "sober manner" rather than hopping from pew to pew.

The new rules, published at the weekend, are part of a Vatican effort to counter "abuses" during Mass, which could have a significant impact on the way many services are conducted.

Shortly before Bush administration officials presented Republican congressional leaders with a request for $25 billion in Iraq funding this week, Secretary of State Colin Powell was telling members of the Congressional Black Caucus that no such request would be forthcoming.

[edit]

After word of the $25 billion Iraq funding request broke Wednesday, Powell called Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to assure him he hadn't deliberately misled the caucus. Powell explained he hadn't been informed of the funding request because it was for the military, Cummings said: "Apparently the decision was held closely between the Pentagon and the budget offices."

• Scope: Only a narrow subset of the 'worst of the worst' killings - those involving terrorism or torture, serial murder, the murder of police, the murder of witnesses, or murder while serving a life sentence for murder - would be considered capital cases.

• Science: Scientific evidence, particularly DNA, would be required in every case to corroborate guilt. The state supreme court would appoint an independent committee of forensics experts to subject crime labs and medical examiners to rigorous accreditation standards, and to appoint expert panels to review the scientific evidence used in cases that end in a guilty verdict.

• 'No doubt': Instead of proving a defendant's guilt only 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' prosecutors would need to leave 'no doubt' in jurors' minds. Juries would get special instructions about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, statements made by defendants in police custody, and the word of accomplices who have agreed to testify in exchange for lighter sentences. Defendants would also be able to choose whether the same jury that found them guilty would determine their sentence.

• Lawyers: The state attorney general would review all district attorneys' decisions to seek the death penalty to ensure consistency in its application. Each defendant would be represented by two lawyers, and defense attorneys would have to meet rigorous standards of experience, capital-case training, and 'exemplary performance' to be assigned potential death penalty cases.

• Review: Trial and Massachusetts supreme court judges would have broad discretion to turn capital-murder convictions into first-degree murder ones where they feel verdicts are not supported by sufficient evidence. Appellate courts would be required to review every capital case, whether or not there were procedural errors during the trial and whether or not the defendant requested an appeal. An independent death-penalty review commission would be created to investigate claims of innocence or death-penalty ineligibility by death row inmates and to suggest legal reforms.

When news of his deed filtered through southwest Pennsylvania's mountain hollows to his high school home of Jenners, "I thought, 'That don't sound like Joe,' " said Doug Ashbrook, Darby's friend during their days at North Star High School in nearby Boswell. Then he remembered Darby in the high school bathroom, punching out paper towel dispensers.

"When he got mad at somebody, he wouldn't hit out at them -- he'd go bust something up," said Ashbrook, 24. "He had this temper, and that might have been the thing."

"Like the rest of us might, I thought maybe he'd just turn and forget about" the prisoner abuse, Ashbrook said. "Maybe I'd do the same. You just never know."

[edit]

She got acquainted with Darby's temper one afternoon on the school bus, when a fellow student insulted him. "He just started pounding on the guy," she said.

[edit]

"Joe was ornery like the rest of us," Ashbrook said, only more so. Occasionally, he recalled, something -- a slight, a school problem, another disappointment -- would anger Darby, who "broke so many of those towel dispensers I think he paid for one once a month," he said.

A friend, Kerry Shoemaker-Davis, said: ... "There's not a malicious bone in [England's] body."

[edit]

Lynndie Rana England was born in 1982 in Kentucky, where her father worked for a railroad company. The company transferred him to its station in Cumberland, Md., when she was 2. So the family moved to Fort Ashby, 13 miles south.

By all accounts, the family was extremely close. Lynndie and her siblings, an older sister and younger brother, spent much time together hunting, camping, fishing and swimming.

Her parents called her a tomboy, eager to prove that she was as tough and athletic as the guys. She played a mean center field in softball, her father, Kenneth, said on Wednesday in an interview. But she sometimes found it difficult to kill animals when they went hunting.

"I don't think she ever got a deer," Mrs. England, 44, said. "I think she went just because she wanted to be outside, and wanted to be with me."

Those American soldiers torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners have made criminals of us all.

And there are only two possible responses to this horrible outrage: get out of Iraq. Now!

And imprison the man responsible, George W. Bush.

... In the name of a "Higher Father," Bush ordered this attack virtually on his own, and trashed every legal and moral constraint to get it done.

We Americans have a higher responsibility to stop this flood of outrages, and bring this man to justice.

If those photos from Iraq prove anything, it is that George W. Bush must face criminal prosecution as soon as possible.

Joe Wilson now admits in his book that Iraq did in fact inquire about uranium in Africa, or at least that's what Wilson's own source thought at the time. So all of the Wilson-inspired hoopla (or horse shinola) that it was all a lie was in fact not true.

It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.

That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium.

[edit]

In his book, Wilson recounts his encounter with the unnamed Niger official in 2002, saying, he "hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium."

"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances," [Greenspan] said in remarks to a banking conference.

Greenspan noted that the federal deficit, estimated by the administration to hit a record $521 billion this year, will amount to 4.25 percent of the total economy after being in surplus just a few years ago.

... "We have legislated commitments to our senior citizens that, given the inevitable retirement of our huge baby-boom generation, will create significant fiscal challenges in the years ahead," Greenspan said in a speech delivered by satellite to the conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

"I'm sitting here and I'm upset about the deficit and I'm upset about spending. There's no way I can pin that on the Democrats. Republicans own the town now."

Many judges can't admit they are wrong.

The 30 companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the country, and their trade association, have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars, according to a new analysis.

The Scripps Howard study found that inaccurate voting rolls occur more often when states and counties fail to follow proper accounting procedures. For example, 12 states do not count the number of ballots cast in their elections, critical information to ensure that votes are not lost during ballot tabulation.

"In Minnesota, we meticulously count the ballots so that they are all accounted for," said Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, also president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. "I just assumed all the other states do this, as well. How can you balance a checkbook if you don't know how much money you have?"

The states that don't count ballots are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. The Scripps Howard study found those states were much more likely to have poorly maintained voter lists than the rest of the nation, accounting for 106 of the 261 counties with registration rates over 100 percent.

Six months before a presidential election that is again expected to be decided by a narrow margin in Florida, state officials ordered local election supervisors Wednesday to begin purging voter rolls of felons -- a move that may take as many as 40,000 people off the rolls, many of them likely to be black Democrats.

The state Division of Elections is turning the list over to local election supervisors in all 67 counties, and has ordered them to make sure to remove any felons whose voting rights have not been restored. The state says a preliminary check shows as many as 40,000 former felons are still registered to vote.

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, is one of the worst in the world, and has been devastating to women and girls, according to senior UN officials.

"This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with so many people in the most belligerent way being chased from their homes. Everything has been taken away from these people. This is tragic," UN World Food Programme Executive Director James Morris was quoted by UN News as saying in London on Tuesday.

[edit]

The continuing conflict was having a devastating effect on women and girls, according to Pamela Delargy, the chief of the humanitarian response unit of the UN Population Fund, who was part of the team led by Morris. Women and girls were vulnerable both during attacks and when they left camps for internally displaced persons to do chores to gather water, fuel or fodder, she said.

"As in many other recent conflicts, rape has become a weapon of war in western Sudan, with disastrous consequences for women and girls," she added.

Sudan was elected Tuesday to serve a three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, provoking a walkout by a senior U.S. diplomat who accused the government of helping to drive more than a million African villagers from their homes in Sudan's Darfur province.

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.

Want a real progressive? President George W. Bush is right for you. Want a real conservative? Well, then John Kerry's your man. No, of course not in the ideological sense. I'm talking about in a leadership sense. There, Kerry's conservative, with a stand-pat foreign policy, whereas Bush is progressive, even radical, in his global approach.

Right after taking office, George W. Bush showed he was a progressive by freeing America from the straitjacket of outdated or just plain bad treaties. Take the ABM Treaty. For 20 years, Presidents Reagan, Bush the 1st and Clinton danced around this real barrier to protecting America. George W. Bush, the progressive, kicks this barrier aside. Next up: the Kyoto treaty. It sat in the Senate for years. Then along comes the progressive, Bush, who opens the way to a sounder approach for the future.

The second sign of President Bush's progressivism is the pre-emption doctrine. Adopting it broke with past US doctrine of containment and deterrence. He recognized that al-Qaeda fanatics can neither be contained nor deterred.

The third and most radical of President Bush's progressive approaches is his advocating democracy across the Arab world. No president--no, not Nixon or Ford, Carter or Clinton, and especially not Bush the Elder--would have ever dared anything this jolting to the status quo.

John Kerry's consistent approach to foreign policy has been, well, consistency. Throughout the 1980s, Kerry opposed the progressive moves of Ronald Reagan, who advocated regime change for a Communist dictatorship in Central America, the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, and a robust military buildup to help prompt regime change even in the Soviet Union. Instead, Kerry sought the conservative, steady-as-she-goes approach to world problems: `Don't change much, because either not all that much needs changing, or not that much can be changed.'

Years ago, leadership scholar James McGregor Burns made a telling distinction. Transactional leaders are those who keep their desk clean and react to staff papers. They tinker and, thus, are conservative towards change. In contrast, transformational leaders direct their staffs and fundamentally flip the whole debate. They leap, thus being progressive in approach. Transactional leaders seek office to be somebody, while transformational leaders seek office to do something and, obviously, something different from the way it's been done in the past. President Bush's combining a solidly conservative ideology with being a daring progressive in seeking to transform the world--well, that's so mind-bending that even Professor Burns couldn't have imagined it.

I'd first noticed [the dogs] when a few colleagues and I took a walk one day to a village called Yambi Yaya, two miles south, which had been emptied by the fighting. In Yambi's abandoned market area, about six bodies lay sprawled in the red dirt road. We chased several dogs from around the body of a young girl, around fifteen years old, who lay flat on her back in front of a small, concrete house. There were no signs of machete wounds or bullet holes; it looked as if she had just walked outside and fallen dead in her steps.

One of the girl's legs twisted out from a pink dress; the other had been chewed off at the knee. As we got closer to the girl, I saw something that made my skin suddenly go cold. Five yellow ducklings were gathered at the base of her knee, picking at the flesh.

Even weeks later some of the same guys, steely correspondents, would stop whatever they were doing, look up, and mutter "Ducks, man. Fucking ducks."

"Everything George W. Bush has said and done indicates that on matters of race, ethnicity, 'diversity,' and multiculturalism, he is as liberal as it is possible to be."

Pascal Lamy, the European Union Trade Commissioner, is a 57-year-old Frenchman ... (who) works tirelessly on behalf of France and Europe, and his aggressive -- some would say ruthless -- personal style has earned him the nickname "Exocet," after a French-built missile. ... In late February, Lamy paid a visit to Washington to meet with senior members of Congress and delivered an audacious demand: If Congress did not eliminate a large tax break for American exporters by March 1, the European Union would slap $4 billion in retaliatory trade sanctions against the United States.

When it comes to taxes, President Bush hasn't been swayed by angry Democrats, a burgeoning federal deficit, worried economists, a stagnant job market, or moderates of his own party. But faced with Lamy's threat, he caved ... (and) called upon Congress to quickly bring America's tax code in line with the E.U. Commissioner's demands.

... Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg has popularized the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" to deride the French, but on one economic issue after another, it has been the United States that has raised the white flag. In December 2003, the Bush administration lifted tariffs on imported steel after Lamy threatened $2 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports ...

Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice approved the merger of U.S.-based G.E. and Honeywell, only to watch the E.U.'s competition commissioner effectively block the deal. The E.U. claimed jurisdiction because the combined business sold more than $225 million annually in Europe.

... The war in Iraq taught a clear lesson: Unilateral (U.S.) foreign policy, especially one that ignores Europe, doesn't work ... The same lesson now increasingly applies in the economic realm. More than previous administrations, the Bush White House has tried to make economic policy unilaterally ... Yet from trade to taxation, antitrust to safety rules, the Europeans are proving to be powerful competitors who can work against our interests if we ignore theirs.

Gilio explained that Shamp necessitated her restraint because she had kicked him in the groin just before the officers arrived.

After receiving identification, [Sheriff's Deputy] Aldridge stated that Anderson must be the "infamous Bo Anderson."

Gilio told Deputy Phillips that he did not think he was well-liked in Cass County....

RUSH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

I LIKE RUSH [Ramesh Ponnuru]
but this seems pretty bad. (The F-word is used in the link, btw.) I'm assuming this isn't taken out of context, but it's hard to imagine what defensible context there could be.

Look, there's no doubt those prisoners were humiliated. There's no doubt that in a democratic society, we want to hold our forces accountable for their abuses. We want to set a higher standard for ourselves than the Arab nations do. But the media is floating this story into creating a Big Quagmire Picture, where America is an imperialist country, an oppressive force with zero moral authority. Moral equivalence is running rampant. The media's concern for our democratic accountability can lead to an imbalance of outrage. How does what happened at Abu Ghraib under American control compare to what happened at Abu Ghraib under Saddam? The media don't want to ask that question.

I agree that the abuse does not put us on the same level as Saddam Hussein's regime, but I don't know how comforting that is--I would hope the bar for American conduct would be set a lot higher than that. I've seen the whole transcript now, and much of the time Limbaugh is disputing the idea that the abuse was "systemic" and making other sound points. He says, "[L]ook, this is a tough, tough line here, because I don't want you to think that I think this ought to be standard operating procedure. But I don't think that it is, and I think everybody is overreacting" (by jumping to the systemic conclusion). I see what he was trying to say. It was a tough line he was trying to walk. But when he ended up comparing the abuse to a fraternity initiations ritual, I'm afraid he fell on the wrong side of it.

It is hard to know what led to this breakdown in discipline. But one factor that may have contributed -- but which I doubt investigators will want to even consider -- is whether the presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior, especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal.

Before you dismiss the suggestion as some sort of raving misogynistic fantasy, let me explain why this possibility should at least be explored.

Although the military brass has been loath to admit it, the increased presence of women in the military serving in integrated units has made military discipline more challenging. While some advocates of women in the military have argued that women's presence would improve behavior, in fact, there is much evidence to suggest it has had the opposite effect. For years now, the military has ignored substantial evidence that the new sex-integrated military interferes with unit cohesion and results in less discipline.

[edit]

So what does this have to do with those pictures of mistreated prisoners? Take a look at the faces of those soldiers again, especially the female soldiers. They look less like sadists than delinquents. They look like they're showing off at some wild party trying to impress everybody with how "cool" they are. What they are doing is despicable, but they seem totally oblivious.

The men and women who engaged in this behavior abused and humiliated their captives, dishonored their country and deserve severe punishment. But if we want to prevent this type of conduct from ever occurring again, we not only need to punish those responsible but also look at all the possible factors that might give occasion to such abuses -- including the breakdown in discipline and unit cohesion that have gone hand in hand with gender integration in the military.

"I mean, the fact of the matter is that this is a serious problem. And it's something that the department is addressing. The system works. The system works. There were some allegations of abuse in a detention facility in Iraq. It was reported in the chain of command. Immediately it was announced to the public. Immediately an investigation was initiated. Six separate investigations have been undertaken over a period of months since January.

"I believe that members need the experience that staying on the committee a long time brings," Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said. "There's a tough learning curve on this committee. If members are going to really have proper oversight over the intelligence community, you have to have some institutional memory. We probably need to make some other institutional changes as well, but this is a beginning."

In the fall of 2002, for example, as Congress debated waging war in Iraq, no more than six senators read the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate that laid out the threat from Iraq, as well as the debate within the intelligence agencies over Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear programs.

Kristi Bacon, 26, was watching the news that night on one of the Chattanooga television stations and couldn't believe what she heard: Gays would not be welcome in her town.

She dialed the television station's number.

''I called them and said, 'Hey, I live in Dayton.' I said if they want to start arresting gays for crimes against nature, arrest me,'' Bacon recalled, holding out her arms as if she were handcuffed.

The next night her face was on the TV, expressing anger, frustration and disappointment. It was the first of several appearances she would make in the coming weeks as reaction to the 8-0 vote rippled into an ever-widening circle via the Internet and satellite networks.

[edit]

Even if the motion that rocked this town hadn't been taken back, Kristi Bacon said, she is still glad to live here.

''I'm not sorry I moved here. It's a nice comfortable town, basically. The majority of the people are nice. Where I'm from you don't get a lot of that, a lot of politeness toward anybody,'' she said, recalling her days in Pennsylvania.

''There's been no problem at all,'' she said.

Aside from the veiled threats of a few gay hate groups that may or may not try to interrupt Saturday's event, Bacon said, locals have been supportive of the rally. Most downtown businesses do not plan to close and, in fact, are hoping for customers.

Bacon is aware of the local ministerial association's efforts to ''embrace the person, not the sin.''

''That's fine. I'm not trying to change them. I know that's not possible. Just like they're not going to be able to come up to me and try to change me to be straight.

''I was talking to a reverend the other day and he was talking about starting a gay and lesbian Bible study here in Dayton. I thought it was a cool idea. It depends on your religion and what you believe and don't believe. The way I see it, only God can judge me,'' she said.

''All we can do is try to help them understand a little bit more. That's what we're all about, understanding one another.''

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) yesterday defended his decision to go to South Dakota on May 22 to campaign for the Republican challenging Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), citing the GOP's narrow margin of control in the Senate and his close relationship with the candidate.

Some Democrats have accused Frist of contributing to already intense partisan hostilities in the chamber by campaigning personally against the Democratic leader.

"In a closely divided Senate, where politics is first and foremost a political matter . . . one vote matters," Frist said in defense of his plans at a news conference.

He now regularly talks about the F.C.C. on his show, and his Web site has a quotation from Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, discussions of the presidential election and voter registration information. More uplifting content than usual, but it is taking Mr. Stern's time and energy away from sphincters, flatulence and all the other vulgarities he has a constitutional right to obsess about.

The Oprah show ... was so offensive that my child's head literally exploded. Please ban free speech so this never happens again.

"The State Department plans to delay the release of a human rights report due out on Wednesday partly because of sensitivities over the U.S. prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said.

One official who asked not to be identified said the release of the report, which describes actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for human rights by other nations, could 'make us look hypocritical.'"

The U.S. system for taxing overseas profits of American companies is so riddled with loopholes and credits that the government would collect $6 billion more each year if it stopped trying to tax those profits altogether, according to a new estimate by congressional tax experts.

[edit]

Current law aims to tax the profits of U.S. companies no matter where they are earned. But plenty of foreign profits escape taxation because the complex U.S. system allows so many breaks, including deductions for interest on loans funding operations abroad and credits for taxes paid to foreign governments.

Global U.S. companies routinely use those deductions and credits to reduce their overall tax burdens. In essence, the U.S. tax code gives them more in tax breaks for foreign operations than it collects in revenues, according to the estimate by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan scorekeeper on taxes for Congress.

[edit]

In the preliminary estimate that it described as "conservative," the Joint Committee on Taxation said that switching to a territorial system [where the US taxed companies only on profits made within the US] would yield the U.S. Treasury about $60 billion more over 10 years than the current system would raise.

The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

[edit]

"Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor."

You cannot judge the wisdom of the criminal laws enacted by Congress, that is, whether or not there should or should not be a federal law designating certain activity as criminal. That is determined by Congress and not by you.

While the grand jury is an independent entity, not part of any branch of government, the function it performs is most accurately described as prosecutorial. The grand jury usually acts as a check on prosecutorial discretion by occasionally refusing to return an indictment that the prosecutor seeks, although it can also investigate and bring charges not presented to it by a prosecutor. Prosecutorial discretion—the decision whether to bring charges against a particular defendant—is widely recognized as having an important political component. Not every potential crime can (or should) be investigated or prosecuted, and an important part of the prosecutorial function is deciding which potential defendants to select for criminal prosecution, and how serious the charges should be. Prosecutors can, and often do, make such decisions based on their judgment as to how wise and important certain laws may be.

There’s no reason grand juries cannot or should not make similar political judgments about which laws deserve vigorous enforcement and which ones do not, in deciding whom to indict, and on what charges. As Judge Hawkins explains [in the dissent to an earlier case], grand jurors are traditionally viewed as the “ ‘conscience of the community.’ ”

[snip]

This kind of community judgment strikes me as particularly important in federal prosecutions, and not merely because Washington is usually much farther away geographically than the state capital. State prosecutors are elected locally and must stand for re-election on a regular basis. They will, of necessity, take the local community’s values into account. United States Attorneys, by contrast, are appointed by the President and never have to stand for election. In their daily operations, they are supervised by the Department of Justice, whose prosecutorial policies they implement.

[snip]

Second, allowing (perhaps even encouraging) the grand jury to consider the wisdom of the law under which a suspect is to be prosecuted seems particularly urgent, given that we no longer permit petit [i.e., trial] juries to exercise such discretion....Given modern conceptions of due process, it would be wholly intolerable to allow petit jurors to make up the law as they go along. Petit jurors, rather, must decide guilt or innocence strictly in accordance with clearly established and scrupulously defined legal standards. Yet the cry that a member of the community should not be convicted of a crime unless an independent group of his peers believes that such a conviction would be consistent with community values, is not without historical plausibility. See, e.g., http://fija.org/links.htm (last visited Mar. 3, 2004) (quoting statements by the Founders that support this view). Because the petit jury may not do this, it is even more important to foster this traditional function of the grand jury....

Memogate involves the allegation that a Senate computer was improperly accessed to obtain Democratic documents describing improprieties in the Senate obstruction of federal judicial nominations. The allegation isn't true: Authorized users discovered Democratic documents on an open server. Cyber-security expert Ira Winkler, himself a Democrat, has written that this isn't Memogate, it's "Memo-gateless." The Democrat memos, he concluded, were discovered as if left "in the Capitol rotunda."

Of course, the press coverage of Memogate has focused on the manner in which these embarrassing documents were discovered and paid almost no attention to their substance. The Washington Post ran their flagship story on a Saturday two days after New Year's Day, when the entire city was in recess.

[edit]

Unlike the Anita Hill or Pentagon Paper disclosures, Memogate is about documents that are neither confidential nor stolen, no matter what politicians say. Of course, politicians who complain so bitterly about the disclosure of their documents may simply have something to hide.

— Manuel A. Miranda is former counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch.

Another shocking aspect of the protest was an overwhelming barrage of immorality. I have always believed that the pro-abortion movement is built largely upon a desire for sexual freedom. At the march this was spelled out clearly.

The profanities I repeatedly heard the marchers shouting against the scattered groups of pro-lifers would have made a sailor blush and many of the participants’ posters carried slogans which are unpublishable. Even the podium became a medium for their vulgarities.

Many of the speakers (who claim to promote respect for women) were referring to female anatomy in “street terms” that I have never heard used in public. One woman started reciting a “poem” that was so vulgar, that, as a practicing Catholic, I could not in good conscience continue listening to her.

The Arab world is shocked and incensed by the alleged abuse of Iraqis in one U.S. military prison. Shame on Uncle Sam, say the sons of the desert.

As Steve Martin would say: Well, excu-u-use me! If Muhammad's mob ever showed an ounce of compassion toward non-Moslems, their outrage would be more credible.

That's no excuse for what supposedly happened at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Still, some of the allegations seem mild compared to the horrors that routinely go on in the dungeons of Middle Eastern regimes. Initial reports said prisoners were made to wear women's underpants, or stripped naked and forced to lie on top of each other -- which sounds more like a fraternity initiation than a KGB interrogation.

[edit]

But now that it's infidels who are at fault, you'd think the U.S. had turned Iraq into Auschwitz without the amenities. The New York Times informs us, "such degradations (forcing prisoners to simulate sex acts)...are particularly humiliating to Arabs because Islamic law and culture so strongly condemn nudity and homosexuality."

[edit]

If America were Egypt, the culprits would get commendations, promotions and a weekend at the beach. Coptic Christians, who constitute 10 percent of Egypt's population, are routinely persecuted and occasionally murdered by Moslem mobs, to enormous yawns from the Egyptian government.

[edit]

After the Arab street is through lecturing us on the humane treatment of prisoners, perhaps David Duke could address us on racial tolerance, Al Sharpton could comment on responsible social activism and al-Qaeda could instruct us on ecumenical relations. [emphasis added]

When an audience member asked why Bush came to Niles, he replied: "Because I wanted to get out of Washington."

Although Bush has given the fewest news conferences of any modern president, the campaign on Monday introduced a new event format called "Ask President Bush," which allowed people who had been given tickets by Bush supporters to lob mostly friendly questions.

"Gosh, it's exciting to be here. I'm here because I want you to know I have a reason to be your President for four more years."

The Supreme Court refused Monday to free a Texas man who has served more than six years in prison for stealing a calculator from a Wal-Mart, even though state prosecutors admitted his crime called for a maximum of two years behind bars.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said simple claims of injustice or "actual innocence" were usually not the basis for appeals in federal courts. To win in a federal court, defendants must show a "constitutional error" in the handling of their cases, they said.

In 1997, Haley walked out of a Wal-Mart in Tyler, Texas, with a calculator tucked into his pants. He was arrested and charged with theft, a misdemeanor.

Because he had a criminal record, authorities charged him under a state "habitual offender" law, and Haley was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Several years later, a new lawyer discovered that Haley's prior offenses didn't meet the standards of the habitual-offender law, and he challenged the long prison term.

Texas prosecutors agreed that a mistake had been made, but said Haley had failed to raise the issue in time. Texas courts rejected his appeal.

However, when Haley filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal courts, a U.S. magistrate, a U.S. district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that Haley must be freed because he had served six years in prison for a crime that carried a two-year maximum sentence.

"This is a classic example of a fundamental miscarriage of justice," said Judge Carl E. Stewart of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Although state prosecutors had admitted the original sentence was an error, Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott asked the Supreme Court to reverse the rulings that had freed Haley.

"This is a case about federalism," he said, quoting a 1991 opinion by O'Connor. "It concerns the respect that federal courts owe the states and the states' procedural rules when reviewing the claims of state prisoners."

African nations have ensured that Sudan will keep its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, a decision that angered the United States and human rights advocates who cited reports of widespread rights abuses by the Khartoum government.

[edit]

"Sudan's human rights issues are well-known. We've been concerned for quite some time, and will continue to work to make progress at the Human Rights Commission and in other venues," he said.

In late April, the Human Rights Commission expressed concern about the situation in Sudan's western Darfur region but stopped short of formal condemnation of the government, which has been accused of backing militias that are destroying villages, executing civilians, raping women and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

"A government that engages in wholesale abuses of its citizens should not be eligible for a seat at the table, especially a country just criticized by the commission," said Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch which is part of the coalition.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm the President

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: We'll win in November

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: I have a wife

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: al Qaeda

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: The United States military

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: I lead our nation

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: I lead this country

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry is bad

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: I'm George W. Bush

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: Saddam Hussein

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: Saddam Hussein

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: Iraq

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: John Kerry

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: The cause of freedom

AUDIENCE: Bush! Bush! Bush!

THE PRESIDENT: America is great

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: America is really great

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: God Bless America!

Q: Mr. President, my name's Christine Van Landingham (phonetic) -- and I have the privilege of working with 120 senior citizens in these three counties who volunteer as foster grandparents in our local schools, and each and every one of them, touching the hearts of many, many kids. What my question to you is, this year that program funding saw a cut in federal funding. How do you propose to support those programs, and more importantly, those volunteers?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, was it cut at the federal level? It was? Well, it's what you get for trying to make sure the deficit gets cut in half. I think it's very important for you to continue to work and calling on people to volunteer. These are volunteers. The good thing about volunteers, they don't cost much. I don't know the specifics about your request, but I'll look into it.

(Defense Sec. Donald) Rumsfeld has not read an internal Army report that spelled out abuses at [Abu Ghraib] prison in Iraq, officials said Monday, although they said he has kept abreast of the allegations that Iraqi prisoners have been mistreated.

Rumsfeld has been publicly silent on the controversy since it began when the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" broadcast photographs taken by U.S. military guards inside the Abu Ghraib prison last fall. Pentagon officials were scrambling to explain what was being done to address the problem, which they had known about for months.

The Army report, said to have been completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba and first disclosed in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker magazine, chronicles abuses at the prison and cites serious Army command failures ...

Asked on Sunday why he had not read Taguba's report, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "I know what we did, and what we did is we got the deputy secretary of defense to ask the Army to go look theater-wide at our detainee operations and to make sure that we were following all the rules in the law that we follow."

Myers said there was not yet any evidence that a breakdown of U.S. military discipline at Abu Ghraib last fall was more than an isolated problem. Later, however, he said he was not sure whether it was widespread.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Defense Department officials have known at least since January about the problems at Abu Ghraib, and he said they were slow to respond.

Referring to Myers' statement that he had not yet read the 53-page Taguba report, Bingaman said, "This is an unacceptable response ..."

One of the deep, dark secrets of America's past has finally come to light. Starting in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of American children were warehoused in institutions by state governments. And the federal government did nothing to stop it.

The justification? The kids had been labeled feeble-minded, and were put away in conditions that can only be described as unspeakable.

Now, a new book, "The State Boys Rebellion," by Michael D'Antonio, reveals even more: A large proportion of the kids who were locked up were not retarded at all. They were simply poor, uneducated kids with no place to go, who ended up in institutions like the Fernald School in Waltham, Mass.

The Fernald School is the oldest institution of its kind in the country. At its peak, some 2,500 people were confined here, most of them children. All of them were called feeble-minded, whether they were or not.

In 1994 Senate hearings, it came out that scientists from MIT had been giving radioactive oatmeal to the boys - men now - in a nutrition study for Quaker Oats. All they knew is that they'd been asked to join a science club.

Among those who attended the hearing was Almeida, also a member of the club. He says the boys were recruited with special treats: "We were getting special treatment, you know, extra dessert, we got to eat away from the other boys. We were getting extra oatmeal. We're getting extra milk."

"But they forgot to mention the milk was radioactive," says David White-Lief, an attorney who worked on the state task force investigating the science club.

... the perception persists among Mr. Bush's most fervent critics: Mr. Cheney is de facto president, and a clueless Mr. Bush takes his orders from him. An angry left ... sees in Mr. Bush's less-than-articulate news conferences a less-than-sharp mind. Therefore, Mr. Cheney must be running the country from under Mr. Bush's Oval Office desk.

... Mr. Bush's advisers, who still bristle at the perception, acknowledge that it has benefits.

"Look, the best commodity in politics is to be underestimated,'' said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "He's happy to keep expectations low. He's been underestimated in politics since he first ran for office.''

For a half-century, Republicans have embraced anti-intellectualism, in some cases as a way to broaden the party's reach. The tradition started with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the West Point graduate who mangled the English language but was more purposefully obtuse than was known at the time.

... Under President Reagan, the strategy reached its zenith in the creation of an entire new group of Republicans, Reagan Democrats -- working-class voters who warmed to the president's plain talk about family and faith.

"How do you make a party whose policies appeal to big business and the wealthy appear to favor the little guy?'' said Bruce J. Schulman, a professor of history and American politics at Boston University. "One of the ways you do that is to make it the party of the regular guy, and to try to turn the opponents into the sophisticated, highly educated and internationalized elite.''

The expansion of the European Union this weekend from 15 members to 25, marking the formal end of Europe's postwar division, presents America with a choice. Should it embrace this new union that stretches to the Russian border or try to foster Europe's many fissures in order to divide and rule?

... "The situation has never been so bad in 50 years," Gunter Burghardt, the union's ambassador in Washington, said in an interview. "It is a fact of life that America is a hegemonic power, but the question is how that power is used. We need to know that America is open to a confident relationship, not just with certain member states but with the E.U. as such."

This assessment reflects the enduring wounds of the Iraq war and the feeling among many European officials that an American administration has determined that its interests may lie more in division within Europe than in unity ...

"This is an administration that simply does not care about Europe," said Philip H. Gordon, an expert on European affairs at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think they do anything solely to divide Europe, but if that's a consequence of an action, fine, because they don't want a counterweight to American power emerging."

In many respects, the new European Union is a potential major power .... But it is also divided between formerly Communist states in Central Europe that are enthusiastic about Atlanticism, and other countries, led by France, where dislike of President Bush's America is intense.

... But Iraq has been a sobering experience, and American officials seem, for now, to have dropped talk of "old" and "new" Europe in favor of a rediscovered pragmatism.

"When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy."
--President Bush, June 2001

David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media.

Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.

With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.

[edit]

For Mr. Brock, 41, the project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990's for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure.

Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court.

A woman charged with manslaughter in the 1999 highway death of her boyfriend was acquitted Thursday. Her attorney had argued that she couldn't have been behind the wheel because she had been performing a sex act on the driver at the time.

The jury deliberated about 50 minutes before finding Heather Specyalski, 33, not guilty. She had been charged with driving Neil Esposito's Mercedes-Benz convertible when it veered off the road and hit several trees, killing him.

The defense said Esposito, a Connecticut businessman, had been driving, and that Specyalski was performing oral sex on him at the time. Paramedics testified his pants were down at the crash scene.

There is a weight lifted off my shoulders. I have my whole life in front of me and I just want to get back to being a mom.

State police initially concluded Esposito, 44, was driving at up to 120 mph when his leased Mercedes went out of control Oct. 30, 1999, and crashed. They closed the case.

But Jo McKenzie, Gov. John G. Rowland's longtime aide and political confidant, testified she contacted then-Public Safety Commissioner Henry C. Lee about reopening the case after a member of the Esposito family called her for help. Esposito, who operated a large trash and recycling firm with his father, had supported Rowland's election campaigns.

After Esposito's father, Raymond Esposito, wrote a letter to Lee citing inconsistencies in the first investigation, Specyalski was identified as the driver and arrested in November 2000.

"We're concerned that they are seeking to disqualify me from participating in the case," Dunn said in an interview. "If that were to happen, it would derail the case -- at the very least, it would substantially delay any preliminary injunction proceeding. We do not have the luxury of finding new lawyers before the convention."

COSBY: President Bush condemning what many of you have seen this week, disturbing photos of Iraqi prisoners being mistreated by U.S. soldiers. Now evidence that the U.S. is not alone in this. Photos splashed all over done of the British tabloids in London today showing British soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners. So far six U.S. soldiers have been identified and may be court marshaled. Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick is one of those accused. His parents Ivan and Joanne Frederick now join us by phone from Maryland. Joann, I have to start with you, what were your thoughts when you heard your son was accused of this?

JOANN FREDERICK, MOTHER OF STAFF SGT. CHIP FREDERICK: Well, of course, it was so shocking. And the pictures are so disturbing and so horrible. It was just hard to believe. We've lived a nightmare since January 14.

COSBY: Do you believe your son did something wrong?

J. FREDERICK: Absolutely...

COSBY: It certainly sounds like the military does.

J. FREDERICK: Absolutely not. He's being made a scapegoat, so far this has been a one-sided story. It's all been on the military side. They have shown him as a monster. And it's about time his side got out.

COSBY: And what is his side, Joann?

J. FREDERICK: His side is he's a nice guy. He's never been in any trouble. He's served his country for 20 years, flawless years. Absolutely no trouble at all. No trouble in his younger years or in his place of employment. He's highly respected every place, and this is totally, totally out of character for him.

COSBY: Joann, what was his place of employment prior to this?

J. FREDERICK: It's the Buckingham Correctional Institution in Buckingham, Virginia. He was a correction's officer.

COSBY: OK. Let me bring in Ivan, the father if I could. Ivan, I want to show a comment, because "New Yorker" magazine is quoting in here the attorney for your son saying that he's arguing essentially as the defense that he was carrying out the order of others. In addition to that, there is a letter that your son wrote to Joann and it says, quote, I want to show this, "I questioned some of the things that I saw, such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes on in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell. I questioned this and the answer I got this is how military intelligence wants it done." Ivan, do you believe that your son was carrying out orders of others? Is that essentially...

IVAN FREDERICK, FATHER OF STAFF SGT. CHIP FREDERICK: He was doing these things, I'm sure he was doing it, and was being told to do these things. I think that the CIA, C.I.D., or whoever hired these contractors they're trained to intimidate whoever they're with. And I think they're the ones that should be investigated. As Mr. President Bush said this morning, he was deeply disgusted. But I'm deeply disgusted with how the military put my son in a position with absolutely no training whatsoever for hundreds of Iraqi prisoners.

COSBY: Unfortunately, we've got to go, Ivan, I'm sorry, but I do appreciate you being here. Thank you both.

And joining me now in Washington is Fox News military analyst Bill Cowan with some pretty strong emotions on this. Bill, what we were just hearing from Ivan and Joann, the parents. They were saying the military didn't train them well. Basically their son's a scapegoat.

BILL COWAN, FOX NEWS MILITARY ANALYST: I don't know exactly what Staff Sergeant Frederick's involvement in all of this is, Rita. But I do no one thing, nobody needs to be trained in basic human decency. No question about it.

How do you think the war with Iraq is affecting the United States image in the Arab world? Is the war making the U.S. image in the Arab world better, making it worse, or is the war having no effect on the U.S. image in the Arab world?

Better: 10%
Worse: 71%

Which comes closer to your opinion: Iraq was a threat to the United States that required military action now; OR Iraq was a threat to the United States that could have been contained; OR Iraq was not a threat to the United States at all?

Required Action Now: 32%
Contained: 48%
Not a Threat: 17%

Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?

Right Thing: 47%
Stayed Out: 46%

Do you think of the war with Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, or do you think of it as separate from the war on terrorism? IF ANSWERED "PART OF WAR ON TERRORISM" ASK: Is it a major part of the war on terrorism, or a minor part of the war on terrorism?

Major Part: 38%
Minor Part: 13%
No Part: 45%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism?

Approve: 60%
Disapprove: 32%

A prolonged investigation by a state grand jury has angered Republicans and helped turn a once-friendly, bipartisan atmosphere into one of distrust.

I entered the race for the 9th Congressional District at a late date (the end of February) and came up just short of getting the required 4,200 petitions signed. Now I need raise nearly $ 9,300 dollars just to get on the ballot, and much more to run an effective campaign against Mike Bilirakis. The hardest part is that I have to raise it by Thursday, May 6th. The qualifying deadline is at noon on Friday.