How do you think Ronald Reagan will go down in history -- as an outstanding president, above average, average, below average, or poor?

Outstanding ........ 15
Above Average ...... 43
Average ............ 31
Below Average ....... 6
Poor ................ 4
No Opinion .......... 1

(Poll was conducted on June 6.)

In the world's poorest regions, from the Andes to Central Asia, the U.S. government seems to operate almost blindly, facing challenges that it simply does not understand and therefore can't resolve.

This isn't a problem that started in this Bush administration, though the combination of ignorance and arrogance in President George W. Bush's foreign policy has proved especially lethal.

Since the early 1980s, American development programs have been gutted, to the point that there is little institutional understanding about societies seething because of mass unemployment, rapid population growth, (and) pervasive disease ...

This is too bad, because the low-income world (roughly, those who live and die on less than $2 per day) constitutes half of humanity -- and most of the places where American troops have fought and died in recent decades.

When I went to key Bush administration officials in 2001 to urge stepping up the battle against the AIDS pandemic, my counterparts were lawyers, holdovers from the cold war and political operatives. What was lacking was professional expertise ... [USAID’s] budget and expertise had been so sapped by 2001 that there were few independent thinkers left, and even fewer who knew the details of the AIDS catastrophe in Africa.

... When it has been urgent in recent years to confront challenges arising from African poverty, Andean political instability or environmental catastrophes in Asia, there has been almost nobody to speak with in senior U.S. government positions.

... The undoing of U.S. foreign policy is captured in the budget numbers. Long gone are the Marshall Plan times, when America dedicated several percent of its gross domestic product to European reconstruction. The United States will spend about $450 billion this year on the military but only $15 billion on official development assistance.

The 30-to-1 ratio is mirrored by a similar imbalance in American thinking. America's military expertise is undoubted. America's ability to understand what exists before and after wars in low-income countries is nearly nonexistent.

... [USAID] requires a professional, nonpoliticized leadership and staff; a new mandate to study a world economy of startling inequalities; increased financial resources to help fragile and impoverished countries before they fall into chaos; and a rank as a cabinet-level department ... The United States must have leaders who recognize that the problems of the poor aren't trifles to leave to do-gooders, but are vital strategic issues.

Deathfest: Day 4

You can count me among those who find the Week-Long Death Festival more appropriate for the expiration of a North Korean dictator than an American president. But as long as we're all still talking about Reagan, can I pipe up and say I never was one of those people who found his speeches "inspiring"? If the best thing Reagan ever did was to pardon Merle Haggard, the worst was to saddle us with Peggy Noonan.

The annual rains will come this week, or next -- fierce storms that will instantly rob the refugees of whatever shelter they have cobbled together, and make the roads impassable for aid trucks for as much as four months. With the advent of the rains, the farmers will have missed the planting season -- they can put no crops in the ground now, and so they will have nothing to harvest, and nothing to eat in the coming year. So even were there peace in Darfur tomorrow, they could not go home for almost a year; they must stay in the camps where the UN doles out grain and soybeans.

When Ronald Reagan was sworn in as our 40th President, this nation was gripped by a powerful malaise -- inflation and unemployment were soaring, and the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War.

[Reagan] reminded us that "government is not the solution." The solution lies in each of us.

$1.25 million for Aleutian Pribilof church repairs
$2.5 million for a pilot training simulator at the Univ. of Alaska
$750,000 for the Ketchikan Wood Technology Center
$400,000 for a parking lot and pedestrian safety access in the town of Talkeetna (population: 300).

Kerry led Bush 51 percent to 44 percent, according to the poll, which was posted on the Times Web site Wednesday evening. With independent candidate Ralph Nader included, Kerry received 48 percent, Bush 42 percent and Nader 4 percent.

The poll surveyed 1,230 registered voters nationwide from Saturday to Tuesday.
...
Though the poll showed that voters may favor Kerry, it also showed that they lack knowledge about him and are less sure about his stance on issues.

Question: "If the November 2004 general election for Congress were being held today, which party would you like to see win in your congressional district: the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?"

Democrat 54%
Republican 35%
Independent 1%
Neither 3%
Unsure 7%

The Los Angeles Times poll. June 5-8, 2004. N=1,230 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3 (total sample)

An emotional President Bush met Wednesday for the first time with the newly designated interim president of Iraq, Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, telling him, "I never thought I'd be sitting next to an Iraqi president of a free country a year and a half ago."

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

Not a single Sudanese child refugee under the age of five will be alive in six months unless there is immediate and dramatic international intervention, a senior United Nations official warned yesterday.

The pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia has been accused of using systematic rape, as well as killing and destroying the villages of black Africans, in the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha blamed Western governments for the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region that the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

He told a gathering of Egyptian and Sudanese intellectuals and politicians in Cairo that the conflict in western Darfur was "fabricated" by the international community, and in particular, by the West.

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) launched a fourth raid within a month on a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northern Uganda on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and burning over 200 huts, the Ugandan army and witnesses said.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels last night struck Apok camp in Oyam North and killed 25 people. The LC-V of Apac, Ben Chwa visited the scene of the attack in Otwal-sub county, 30 miles northwest of Apac town. He told The Monitor yesterday that he had counted 25 dead bodies.

"We counted 19 bodies of which six were children. Six other bodies were found on the way," he said. The Gombolola Internal Security Officer, Tony Okello, said the rebels who were dressed in army fatigue, duped the wananchi in the camp, before staging the attack.

This wasn't sunny old grandpa carrying candy around in his pocket for children. After watching Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Vietnam War in December 1972, Reagan told President Richard Nixon, "under World War II circumstances, the network [CBS] would have been charged with treason."

Reagan quoted "Mr. Democrat himself," Al Smith, for the proposition that the Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland, but was now the party of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. (And that was 30 years before they tried to push Hillarycare on us.)

Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air-traffic controllers - and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about 'welfare queens' and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and he enraged grim liberals when he warmed up his radio mike by saying, 'My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.'

If you add all of those up, you should have a conservative rebellion against the giant corporation in the White House masquerading as a human being named George W. Bush. Just as progressives have been abandoned by the corporate Democrats and told, "You got nowhere to go other than to stay home or vote for the Democrats," this is the fate of the authentic conservatives in the Republican Party.

I noticed this a long time ago, Pat. I once said to Bill Bennett, "Would you agree that corporatism is on a collision course with conservative values?" and he said yes.

The impact of giant corporations, commercialism, direct marketing to kids, sidestepping parents, selling them junk food, selling them violence, selling them sex and addictions, selling them the suspension of their socialization process -- years ago conservatives spoke out on that, but it was never transformed into a political position. It was always an ethical, religious value position. It is time to take it into the political arena.

PB: Well, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming over, Ralph.

RN: Thank you very much.

President Bush has worked well with friends and poorly with allies, it could be said. But this June, from the shores of Normandy to Sea Island, Georgia, Mr. Bush is making concessions in an effort to bring the old friends, of Old Europe, back to the side of U.S. foreign policy.

Publicly, it's working. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government on Tuesday, as world leaders met in Georgia at the G-8 summit of leading industrialized nations.

But in the corridors of the United Nations, people are skeptical, if not downright displeased, with current U.S. efforts to revive relations.

Rwandan court sentenced former president Pasteur Bizimungu yesterday to 15 years in prison for creating a militia, embezzling state funds and inciting ethnic violence in a country still scarred by the 1994 genocide.

He drew the sentence for threatening national security with the creation of a militia group, embezzling at least $100,000 meant for orphans created by the genocide and inciting ethnic violence.

The sentencing of former Rwandese president Pasteur Bizimungu and seven co-defendants is further proof of the government's willingness to subvert the Rwandese criminal justice system in an attempt to eliminate all potential political opposition.

The trial and judgment of these men combined with other recent events demonstrate the government's readiness to deny the civil and political rights of individuals and civil society organizations that dare to criticize the RPF-controlled government.

[edit]

"The trial procedures and outcome undermine the Rwandan government's claim that it is fostering an open society and that the judiciary is capable of operating independently from government interests," the organization said.

NEW ORLEANS - A purported anti-abortion activist was accused in a lawsuit Monday of running a sham abortion clinic that dupes women into waiting too long to have abortions.

The federal complaint, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of five plaintiffs, accuses William A. Graham of running the Causeway Center for Women as a way to prevent abortions.

One plaintiff, Priscilla Cabrera, contacted Graham in late December seeking an abortion. She said he used an alias and offered to help arrange an appointment with a doctor who performed $125 abortions.

Graham told her if an abortion were "performed too early, it could be harmful to her health," according to the lawsuit.

Graham allegedly said he would schedule an appointment for Jan. 10 but did not call Cabrera back for weeks, though she called repeatedly.

When the two finally spoke, he suggested a later abortion would be better for her health and said he could arrange abortions up to the 30th week of pregnancy, according to court documents.

The torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 38-page report, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” examines how the Bush administration adopted a deliberate policy of permitting illegal interrogation techniques – and then spent two years covering up or ignoring reports of torture and other abuse by U.S. troops.

“The horrors of Abu Ghraib were not simply the acts of individual soldiers,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Abu Ghraib resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to cast the rules aside.”

[T]he lavish praise obscures that much of Reagan's record through eight years in office was highly controversial and intensified social and political divisions.

The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to Iran -- which the United States considered a supporter of terrorism -- to raise cash for Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. An independent investigation concluded that the arms sales to Iran operations "were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan [and] Vice President George Bush," and that "large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials."

January: 102 articles
February: 153 articles
March: 180 articles
April: 348 articles
May: 574 articles

Sudanese children dying of hunger

Hundreds of children have started to starve to death in Sudan's war-torn western province of Darfur.

... corporate profits (before tax and after inventory and capital consumption adjustments) in the U.S. accounted for nearly 41% of the change in national income between the first quarter of 2002 and the fourth quarter of 2003, exceeding the share of national income growth accruing to workers in the form of labor compensation. ... What is most astonishing about these income developments is that the absolute increase in corporate profits over this 21-month period exceeded the entire increase in the compensation of all of the nation’s employees ($325 billion versus $310 billion).

... Corporate profits and proprietors’ income together were responsible for 52% of the growth in national income over this 21-month period. At no other time in post-World War II history did corporate profits and proprietors’ income combined ever come close to capturing such a large share of the growth in national income during the first two years of recovery from a national recession.

... The 40.5% share of national income growth obtained by corporate profits wasmore than twice as high as that obtained by corporate profits in any other recovery period. The previous high was 19% during the two years of recovery from the 1960-61 economic recession.

"The invasion of Iraq has gone fabulously well, exceeding everyone's expectations -- certainly exceeding the doomsday scenarios of liberals."

"This has been a rough couple of months for the president, particularly on the issues of Iraq ..."
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), May 20, 2004

"Members of the president's party are really worried about the (Iraq) war ... As his Democratic counterpart on Foreign Relations, Sen. Joseph Biden, delivered partisan slashes (on NBC's 'Meet the Press'), (Indiana Senator Richard) Lugar offered no criticism. When Biden commanded Bush to ‘take charge,’ moderator Tim Russert asked whether that was good and necessary advice. ‘Yes it is,’ said Lugar. ‘It's very necessary.’ ... Other senior senators share Lugar's concern. Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is reported by colleagues to be unhappy (though it is unlikely he ever would go public)."
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, Oct. 20, 2003

"President Bush should live up to his recent pledges to restrain spending, by ... taking a strong stance that the new Iraq can and should pay for its own reconstruction."
U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) and Stephen Moore, a conservative economist, Sept. 2003 editorial in the National Review.

"President Bush is facing increasing dissent among leading conservative politicians and pundits in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq. ... Republican Party ranks are beginning to break and the White House is worried. Longtime GOP critics on Iraq are growing progressively more vocal in their condemnation."
CBSNews.com, April 7, 2004

"I'm not buying this 'Iraqis are on the American side' right now."
FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly, quote is from the April 6, 2004 edition of "The O’Reilly Factor."

"The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Oct. 16, 2003 memorandum

"Should (the) June 30 handover date to the Iraqis be extended? You can bet your life on it ... because creating this false deadline in time for a presidential election is no way to win a war."
MSNBC-TV host and former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, quoted by CBSNews.com, April 7, 2004

"There’s a deep sense of apprehension about the conflict in Iraq from almost everybody."
U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), May 20, 2004

"If the White House wants to be portrayed as spending tax dollars in Iraq as cost-effectively as they spend [money] anywhere else, they're going to have to explain this (budget)."
Brian Reidl, budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, quoted in The Washington Post, Sept. 26, 2003

"U.S. forces in Iraq are insufficient."
Syndicated columnist George Will, quoted by CBSNews.com, April 7, 2004

The United States should stay out of this. There is no threat to the U.S., and I think we've all had enough of the U.S. imposing its imperialist vision of the world on everyone. If the U.N. wants to do something, that's fine. But Americans like you need to stop thinking that the rest of the world should abide by your rules. Let the Sudanese come to their own solution.

Nader also questioned why Democrats still complain about his 2000 presidential candidacy when millions more Democrats voted for George W. Bush in 2000 than voted for Nader.

"I don't understand how deeply, arithmetically challenged these people are," Nader said. Democrats contend that former Vice President Al Gore would have won the 2000 election had Nader not been a candidate.

A federal judge has ruled that stating that someone is homosexual does not libel or slander them, particularly in light of new court decisions granting gays more rights.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner came as she threw out a lawsuit by a former boyfriend of pop singer Madonna, who claimed he was libeled because his name appeared in a photo caption in a book about Madonna -- under a picture of Madonna walking with a gay man.
"In 2004, a statement implying that an individual is a homosexual is hardly capable of a defamatory meaning," Gertner said Friday in a ruling.

Matthew Limon, who has already served more than four years of his prison term, was convicted under a Kansas law that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says is discriminatory. Since Limon, who was eighteen at the time, engaged in oral sex with a fourteen year-old boy, he was given a punishment 13 times longer than if he had performed the same act with a teen of the opposite sex, says the ACLU.

... Limon was charged and convicted of criminal sodomy, which in Kansas includes acts of oral sex, for performing consensual fellatio on a fellow resident at a school for developmentally disabled youth in Miami County, Kansas. At the time of the incident, Limon had just turned eighteen and the boy he had sex with was nearly fifteen.

... All else being equal, had Limon been convicted for performing oral sex on a female, he would have received a maximum sentence of fifteen months. However, since [Kansas'] Romeo and Juliet law does not apply to teenagers convicted of having sex with someone of the same sex, Limon was convicted under Kansas' criminal sodomy law, which provides for much harsher sentences and labels offenders as child molesters. Thus Limon was sentenced to seventeen years in jail plus five years of post-release supervision, and he must register as a sex offender upon release.

Less than one month after Canada passed a law potentially criminalizing biblical texts that denounce homosexuality, two U.S. Senators have announced plans to introduce a controversial "hate crimes" bill, which could be construed to criminalize various biblical verses.

Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) — both Mormons — plan to introduce the legislation in the upcoming week.

The proposed legislation comes as a result of emboldened leadership within the homosexual community. After the legalization of same-sex 'marriage' in Massachusetts, homosexual advocates are now attempting to achieve special rights and status within America — at the expense of Christians.

Sudan's government bears much of the blame for the "brewing disaster" in its western region of Darfur and should act to resolve the crisis, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Monday

[edit]

"Darfur is a brewing disaster for which the Sudanese government bears a lot of responsibility, and people will look to them to act responsibly to defuse that crisis," she said.

For the past two decades, the American media has been guilty of criticizing, bashing, and reporting the situation in Sudan with an unbelievably biased perspective against the Government of Sudan. Sudan has been ravaged by civil war for many of these years, but on June 5, 2004 the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army signed the framework for a peace deal that will be applied in less than two months. The end of the "worst" and "the most tragic" ongoing civil war is finally in sight. This has been a source of joy and a cause for celebration in Sudan and among the Sudanese people throughout the world, but has been met with a deafening silence from the American media; a media which prefers to focus on human tragedy rather than human triumph.

None of the major U.S. newspapers printed a word of encouragement about the critical achievement wrought by the Government of Sudan and the SPLM/A. Instead, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are waging a smear campaign against the Government of Sudan over the conflict in Darfur. The coverage of the situation in Darfur has failed, so far, to condemn the perpetrators: the rebels, who initially attacked innocent civilians and urban centers, motivated by the erroneous assumption that peace between the north and south would come at the expense of other regions.

The American media has become a champion for these armed elements in Darfur by justifying armed struggle against innocents as a fight against marginalization. This blatant disregard for truth should not be tolerated by the international community and developed world. Allowing the American media to perpetrate these fallacies against countries like Sudan contributes to the chaos and ethnic strife that is prevalent in Darfur and other parts of Africa.

While the media has concentrated its efforts on reporting the "tragedy" in Darfur, the Government of Sudan has been busy guaranteeing unfettered access to humanitarian aid in Darfur, and approving the African Union mechanism for monitoring the ceasefire. Although it took two weeks to get the consent of rebel groups, the Government is the party that has been blamed for the delay when the media finally took notice. Other incidents that have escaped the attention of the media include one that took place two days ago, where the rebels took 16 aid workers hostage, and disrupted humanitarian aid initiatives in the process. Three weeks ago, the rebels burned to the ground five villages near Nyala City, and displaced 12,000 civilians in a single night, this also drew no attention.

What has drawn media attention, illustrated by today's editorial in the Washington Post, is the anticipated death of 300,000 people in Darfur. Not surprisingly, the article fails to mention that these deaths will occur because the response of the international community to food and medicine shortages never exceeded 20 percent of the actual needs. Additionally, the editorial does not address the fact that the Government of Sudan has loudly proclaimed it's willingness to join forces with the U.S. government and the international community, in instituting a feasible plan that will save lives and enable the people in Darfur to return to their villages. It is regrettable that the media has chosen to target the government of a poor nation like Sudan, and to overlook the true perpetrators who thrive on creating conflicts and placing blame on others.

When people are starving en masse, television is there to capture their fly-covered faces as they expire. The world is appalled by the repeated images of the dying and is stirred to action: People open up their purses to charity appeals, and politicians feel strong public pressure to address the famine and its root causes at the highest level.

But mass starvation doesn't just appear out of nowhere in an instant, so where are the TV cameras just before the emaciated bodies start piling up?

The Army's top supply commander said Monday that all American troops in Iraq are now equipped with bullet-resistant vests, after a shortage that led many soldiers to pay for costly body armor themselves.

Writers: Abandon your dreams. And come work for us. Dream of writing the great American novel? Or the next hot Hollywood screenplay? We can help you forget those pesky aspirations. Come work in advertising instead. Sure, it may not be rewarding or...what's the word?...fulfilling. But if you can pour the same passion and flair into a direct mail piece, a sales brochure or an interactive promotion, you may be the morally bankrupt 'artiste' for us. Candidates should preferably have two years writing experience, marketing or otherwise, and a penchant for smart, inspired prose. Basically, the kind of people whose spirits we especially enjoy crushing.

So you still want to be a soulless capitalist drone? That is, a soulless capitalist drone with a health plan? Send a resume, cover letter, salary requirements and a few of your best writing samples to resumes@arn.com or to Helen Searles. Via Arnold Worldwide, 1600 International Drive, Suite 300, McLean VA, 22102. No calls please. EOE

The Convention Against Torture was proposed in 1984 by the United Nations General Assembly and was ratified by the U.S. in 1994. It states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

The case for C-student presidents serves Reagan better than Bush. While Reagan may not have known how his own administration worked, he did understand how America works.

Growing up poor, he'd been a radio announcer, movie actor, union leader, TV host, and corporate spokesman before being elected California governor. He knew how poor people aspire to affluence, how to present himself to audiences, how to close a sale with financial backers, how to drive a hard bargain with studio executives, how to answer tough questions from factory workers, how to build mass movements and how to change the subject from inconvenient facts to big ideas.

But by the time he became president, Reagan was telling stories about "welfare queens," although his father had received public aid, and wondering why the media worried about laid-off workers in "South Succotash," although he knew what it was like to get a pink slip at Christmas time. Why did Reagan forget so much of what he'd learned growing up in poverty and coming of age as a labor liberal?

... But Reagan remained "a closet tolerant," in the words of the journalist Rick Hertzberg, a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter. As governor, he signed a liberal abortion-rights law and later opposed a referendum to prevent gays and lesbians from teaching in California's public schools.

Bush, however, has lived and learned much less. While his admirers present Bush as a man of wisdom and resolve, one wonders where these characteristics came from since he lacks both learning and life experience. He drifted until the age of 40, then capitalized on his connections to acquire a baseball team, a governorship, the presidency and an air of unearned certitude. He admits that his great obstacle was his own irresponsible behavior as a younger man -— hardly the equivalent of Lincoln's poverty, Roosevelt's polio, or Kennedy's PT-109.

... Bush's lack of life experience translates into economic policies that are even worse than Reagan's.

A prosecution witness testifying in the trial of four senior former Rwandan army officials being heard at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda concluded his testimony on Thursday by stating that the former Rwandan head of state, Juvenile Habyarimana, had for a long time prevented the genocide by urging people not to kill Tutsis.

The witness code-named LAI to protect his identity, said 'the genocide could have taken place a long time back but for a long time President Habyarimana had urged the public not to fall into the snares of the enemy.' He added that, 'Habyarimana had called on people not to kill Tutsis and to leave in peace'

LAI continued that 'after the President was killed the massacres took place because nobody could stop them,' referring to the army and Interahamwe militia. The witness had worked closely with the militia and had testified about them.

The tremendous financial blessing that this nation enjoyed for many years was put into place by his tax and fiscal policies back in the early 1980s.

It is widely known, for instance, that federal spending grew substantially during Reagan's presidency, but conservatives explain this away as an unavoidable by-product of Democratic control of Congress, conveniently forgetting that Reagan's proposed budgets increased spending as well.

In an interview with The Washington Post's William Greider early in the administration, Budget Director David Stockman said Reagan's economic theories were really "a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate." He explained, "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle-down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really trickle-down."

Sitting in a wing chair inside his modest brick house —- an American flag fluttering out front —- T.C. Pinckney explains why he is petitioning the Southern Baptist Convention to urge Christian parents to remove their children from public schools.

"In the Bible," he says, "God assigns the responsibility for the education of the children to the parents, not the government." Thus, he says through his white beard and mustache, parents should, ideally, home-school their children.

... (Pinckney) is asking the largest Protestant denomination in the United States to allow its representatives to vote next month on a resolution calling on Christian parents to abandon the public schools. Even if his request is denied, some Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians say the fact that such an action is being proposed is a sign of many Christians' growing unhappiness with public education.

... Mr. Pinckney views his resolution as fitting in with the broader "fundamentalist resurgence" in the Southern Baptist convention that began in 1979. The proposed resolution refers to public schools as "government schools" and calls them "anti-Christian" and "Godless." It criticizes them for "teaching that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable."

... But it’s unlikely that the resolution will make it out of the resolutions committee, according to Ed Gamble, the executive director of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools. He added, though, that he doesn’t consider the authors of the resolution "totally off the wall." He simply doesn’t view the resolution as practical.

Southern Baptist churches run about 650 schools, Mr. Gamble said, and couldn’t cope with droves of parents seeking to enroll their children in those schools. "It’s a lot like asking people to jump off the ship when there are no lifeboats ready," he said.

[A] man and his friends kidnap a woman or girl he has been watching, rapes her and then pressures her to sign a marriage contract.

Woineshet's father recalled that he felt caught between the draw of the modern world in the capital and the traditions of the village. He said he was offered bribes of cows and cash by local elders to keep quiet. He also endured pressure from some members of his family, who thought that Woineshet should marry her abductor. Ethiopian law absolves abductors of their crime if they marry their victims.

Other family members said they also wanted Woineshet to get married because she was no longer a virgin and therefore, they believed, would never find a husband.

If the federal deficit almost tripled in his presidency, if 241 marines he sent to Beirut were killed in a terrorist bombing, if he seemed to equate Nazi storm troopers with the victims of the Holocaust, he was always able to rekindle public support. He became known early on as the Teflon president.

A gay couple said "oui" for the first time in France, days after the prime minister warned that the homosexual union would be legally "null and void."

Stephane Chapin, dressed in a white suit and dabbing tears of joy from his eyes, and Bertrand Charpentier, in deep gray pinstripes, embraced, kissed and smiled broadly Saturday after the brief civil ceremony in the Begles town hall in southwestern France, near Bordeaux.

... Begles Mayor Noel Mamere defiantly wore the blue, white and red ribbons -- France's national colors -- that are conferred on mayors as representatives of the state and used during all official functions. In France, mayors perform civil marriages, which are required by law.

"I regret nothing," he said later. Mamere, choked with emotion, said his decision to marry the two men despite a multitude of warnings (by state officials) was a gesture in the name of tolerance.

"This is not a media operation," Mamere said, adding that he performed the marriage as a gesture toward all those who suffer discrimination "for their skin color, their religion, their social status and also their sexual orientation."

"It is not a question of entering the heart of the debate. But I intend to have the law and the authority of the state respected."