February 07, 2004

There is, however, a Bushit quote:

Yeah, right. This from a man that has difficulty with a teleprompter.

I wonder if he'll show up wearing the flight suit.

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Bush Decides to Enter Fray on TV Show
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: February 7, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — With his poll numbers slipping and Democrats attacking him and his credibility over the failure so far to find any banned weapons in Iraq, President Bush has decided to strike back. He will throw his first punch in the rough and tumble of a ring familiar to all candidates for high office: a Sunday morning news show.

White House officials said the president had chosen to appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to make a case that he has done well in handling the challenges of terrorism and a weak economy, and to bring the political debate back to the ground he wants to fight on.

"The president's very eager to go out and talk about his policies, the actions he's taken and why it's making the nation more secure," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "He's more than comfortable talking about those decisions and he believes the country wants to hear from the president about these issues."

But Republicans allied with Mr. Bush's re-election campaign said there was a heavy dose of politics behind the decision as well. As he faces intensifying pressure on weapons in Iraq, they said, it is more urgent that Mr. Bush go on the offensive. After saying for months that he was too busy dealing with the nation's business to descend into the partisan wars, Mr. Bush and his top advisers have concluded that the risk of remaining on the defensive outweighed the risk of dropping the pose that he was above politics and appearing on television in candidate mode, Republicans said.

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Survey Finds Profit Pressure Is Leading to Poor Decisions
By ALEX BERENSON

Published: February 7, 2004

The pressure to meet short-term earnings targets is causing many publicly traded companies to make business decisions that could hurt them in the long run, according to a new survey from Duke University and the University of Washington.

Nearly two years after a wave of accounting scandals scarred investors and corporate America, the survey suggests that senior executives at public companies continue to feel intense pressure to meet earnings forecasts from Wall Street analysts.

The survey found that accounting gimmickry seems to have become less common but that many public companies will sacrifice spending on research and development or maintenance to meet quarterly earnings goals.

"It seems like this fixation on the consensus is causing value to be destroyed," said Campbell R. Harvey, the J. Paul Sticht professor of international business at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. "Earnings management is just so common everybody believes everybody does it."

Mr. Harvey said he was surprised that the executives were so open about their willingness to manage their businesses to meet Wall Street's expectations.

With investors closely scrutinizing companies' accounting for gimmicks, companies have grown reluctant to use aggressive accounting techniques, the survey found. Only about 10 percent of all the companies surveyed said they would alter their accounting assumptions to meet a quarterly target, and only about 20 percent said they would postpone making an accounting change to meet a target.

But many companies said they would be willing to sell assets, give their customers incentives to buy more products than they need or cut spending on maintenance or research and development.

More than half of the companies surveyed said they would delay starting a project to meet their earnings target, even if they knew the project would be profitable. About 80 percent said they would cut spending on research and development, advertising or maintenance that would not hurt them in the short run but could hurt them over time.

"We got the impression that they are extremely risk-averse when it comes to doing anything with accounting," Mr. Harvey said. "Yet they felt O.K. in doing things that sacrifice long-term value."

The survey covered 401 financial executives, who were questioned in late 2003 by e-mail or regular mail. An additional 20 executives agreed to be questioned in person or over the phone, Mr. Harvey said.

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Administration's Message on Iraq Now Strikes Discordant Notes
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — It will be more than a year before the country hears the conclusions of the commission that President Bush reluctantly appointed on Friday to examine what has gone wrong with American intelligence collection.

But in recent days, it has been obvious in Washington that something has also gone awry in a White House that prides itself on never wavering from its message, especially when the subject is Iraq. At moments, Mr. Bush and his national security team — badgered for explanations about whether the country would have gone to war if it knew then what it knows now — have sounded as if these days, it is every warrior for himself.

Rather than uniform and disciplined, their answers have been ad hoc and inconsistent. And the result is that the president appears very much on the defensive just at a moment when his aides thought he would be reaping the political benefits of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.

[P6: The answers have ALWAYS been ad hoc and inconsistant. But at leastthe SCLM seems to be waking up.]

"It's been a bit of a cacophony," one national security official at the White House acknowledged Friday. "Maybe the naming of the commission will smooth it out."

The change in pitch began with Mr. Bush himself, who in the heady days after Mr. Hussein's fall regularly declared that it was only a matter of time before weapons of mass destruction would be found. When the chief American weapons inspector, David A. Kay, emerged from Iraq and punctured whatever remained of that confidence, Mr. Bush shifted, declaring that the war there had been the right one to fight, for reasons having little to do with any Iraqi weapons that could have been imminently used. Yet he declared his unwavering confidence in the intelligence that lands on his desk every morning at 8, and in the people who provide it.

On Friday afternoon, looking unusually ill at ease in the White House press room while quickly announcing most of the members of his commission, he acknowledged that "some prewar intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed."

"We are determined to figure out why," he said, his first specific acknowledgment that he decided to engage in a preventive war last March on the basis of a flawed assessment, at best, of how urgent a threat Iraq posed to America and its allies.

Mr. Bush has not gone as far as his secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, who caused more than a few winces in the White House this week when he told The Washington Post that had he known there were no stockpiles of weapons, he is not sure he would have recommended going to war. Mr. Powell stated the obvious: "It was the stockpiles that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and the world." And, he noted, "the absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus."

He was quickly reined in, but few in the State Department - or the White House - doubt that Mr. Powell, perhaps thinking about his legacy in what is expected to be his last year in office, gave a brief glimpse of his true thoughts.

Not surprisingly, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been the most combative, saying that if Mr. Hussein could hide in a hole for months on end, then surely his weapons could also hide in one.

"What we have learned thus far," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "has not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated and what we believed he had, but it also has not proven the opposite."

Only a day later, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, conceded that the C.I.A.'s critics had at least half a point.

"When the facts on Iraq are all in," Mr. Tenet said, "we will be neither completely right nor completely wrong."

That assessment, many in the White House believe, may be their best talking point from this moment forward.

Even if the appointment of the commission allows the administration, at least for now, to get back on message, chinks exposed in the White House armor on this issue will not be easily sealed.

People close to Mr. Bush say he has been frustrated that Mr. Kay's assessment rekindled all the arguments that dominated the news over the summer, when the White House had to pull back from the president's State of the Union claim of last year that Mr. Hussein had sought uranium in Africa.

Mr. Bush certainly was in no mood Friday to entertain many questions on the issue of intelligence. He announced the commission's formation in a five-minute statement. He barely introduced its co-chairmen, former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals judge in Washington. He left the room without taking questions.

More to the point, Mr. Bush never explained whether the charter of the commission would extend beyond intelligence gathering to the politically crucial question of how the White House had used the intelligence it received. Democrats seized on the omission.

"On the one hand, the commission is charged with looking at prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq, but apparently not at exaggerations of that intelligence by the Bush administration," said the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan. "On the other hand, the commission is tasked to look at so many other areas that it will not be able to adequately focus on the paramount issue of the analysis, production and use of prewar intelligence on Iraq."

Even some in the White House conceded that only one member of the commission - Adm. William O. Studeman, former deputy director of central intelligence - was deeply versed in both human and high-tech intelligence collection, though Senator Robb once served on the Intelligence Committee.

Also on the panel is Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who frequently gets under Mr. Bush's skin on questions of the deficit and other domestic issues. But he was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, and his independent streak will most likely insulate Mr. Bush from the Democratic accusations that the president picked a panel unlikely to challenge him.

In any event, the commission's makeup seems to have been influenced more by a quest for political balance than for depth of knowledge about the challenges facing the turf-conscious intelligence agencies. That is in sharp contrast to the last major investigative panel that the administration appointed, to examine the disaster involving the space shuttle Columbia. That panel had specialists on composites and propulsion, organizational dynamics and safety, along with experts who spend their lives thinking about the future of the space program.

An equivalent panel in this case might have included experts in a variety of espionage specialties, in the difficulties of piercing secretive governments and terror groups, and in the way other nations have organized their intelligence agencies.

But then again, intelligence collection is not a precise science. And in the end, its findings merge with the necessities of politics and power.

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I've installed PHP-Nuke 7.0 and Movable Type on my personal intranet. In fact, Movable Type is now on my laptop as well…I think PHP-Nuke will fit on there too. This means I get to experiment without chewing up my bandwidth.

PHP-Nuke is a big, sprawling piece of software. I've been looking it over and with some serious planning I can think of some serious stuff that can be done with it. For instance (with the exception of trackbacks, and I believe that's forthcoming as well), cloning Daily Kos would be pretty straightforward.

And I am doing some planning. I have a whole lot of bandwidth and storage that I intend to put to good use.

It's actually way early to get specific about functionality and such, but I'm playing with design elements too. A first draft of a banner will give a clue as to what I have in mind. Hopefully I'll drive the editorial staff of The American Prospect out of their minds.

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Who is Marcus Dixon?
By Evan Mayor
February 03, 2004

Marcus Dixon, a 2003 Vanderbilt football recruit out of Rome, Ga., could very likely spend the next 10 years of his life in jail.

Dixon was convicted in May of statutory rape and aggravated child molestation and sentenced to 10 years in prison with no chance of parole, but Dixon’s attorneys appealed the case, which was argued in the Georgia Supreme Court two weeks ago.

The decision as to whether or not the Georgia Supreme Court will uphold the Floyd County Superior Court’s aggravated child molestation conviction is expected in the next several months.

Dixon was found not guilty of rape, false imprisonment, aggravated assault and sexual battery, all of the charges involving force.

But the conviction of aggravated child molestation carried with it a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison without eligibility for parole.

Dixon’s attorneys are saying this sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for what they say was consensual sex between two teenagers. Dixon was 18 and the girl was 15 at the time of the incident.

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PASSING IT ON
Black Families Teach History to Preserve Heritage
By Rebecca Mahoney
The Ledger

To Brenda Reddout, black history is more than marches, protests, speeches and dates. It's her life and her family's heritage. Her great-grandfather was a slave in Alabama. He was sold for a horse. Reddout herself was born at the height of the civil rights movement and was among the first generation of black Americans to attend integrated schools.

Now that she's a parent, Reddout, 47, wants her two children to know what their ancestors experienced. She wants them to understand that black history is their history.

And she wants them to hear it from her.

"There's a line (from the film) 'Amistad' -- 'We stand on the shoulders of those who come before us,' " said Reddout, a Polk County school board member who lives in Winter Haven. "I think it's important that they understand that the opportunities I have and my children will have is a result of what my ancestors endured."

Reddout is among a number of black parents who are making a point to teach their children about black history.

Although many schools include lessons on slavery, the civil rights movement and other events in black history, many black parents say they believe it's their responsibility to reinforce those lessons at home.

Horace West, a Haines City commissioner, said he believes his children will be better prepared for the challenges and opportunities facing them if they understand their culture's history.

"It's not the only thing they should learn, but I think people need to learn about their heritage and where they come from," said the 44-year-old West, whose children are 24, 18 and 12. "I think they've learned some of it in schools, but there are always some things schools don't teach."

Cheryl Joe, 44, a curriculum specialist for Polk schools, uses black history to remind her three children of the advantages they have.

When her two oldest turned 18, for example, she told them about malicious practices that kept blacks from voting. Then she encouraged them to register to vote as soon as possible.

"When you have a vote, you have a voice. Too many people died to have that vote," said Joe. "I don't want them to take that for granted."

It's not uncommon for parents to want to pass their family history on to their children -- especially if they come from cultures where there is a history of pain and oppression, said John Belohavek, a professor of history at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

"Many parents are concerned about making sure their children know where they come because history tells you who and what you are," he said. "Understanding who you are, in terms of your roots, is an important part of the evolution of your own selfconception."

Carolynne Mather, 52, who owns Kids World Enrichment Center in Lakeland, said she believes it's so important black children understand their history that she passed it along to her own kids -- now 35, 33, 23, 21 -and teaches it to the children that attend her learning center.

"You want to know your own history," she said. "If you don't know your own from the start, then that's not going to speak very well of your own identity."

There's something about sharing personal history that makes it hit home, Reddout said.

"Whatever the kids learn in textbooks, they should also be enriched by parents sharing their own experiences as AfricanAmericans," said Reddout. "I can read about experiences of African-Americans, but it doesn't become real. It does become real when I learn that a member of my own family was a slave."

Some parents, like Michele Marbra, 29, of Lakeland start teaching their children black history early.

Her son Jalen is only 6, but she's already finding ways to help him understand his culture.

Recently, for example, he learned about Martin Luther King in kindergarten. It sparked a conversation at home.

"I want him to feel proud about his heritage," said Marbra. "Being black is a good thing, not a negative thing."

Rebecca Mahoney can be reached at 863-802-7548 or rebecca. [email protected].

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Noticing these folks' contributions is fine. I just question calling them leaders.

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A closer look: Forgotten leaders key links in black history
By Brendan Kearns
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]

Each February, Black History Month provides an opportunity to celebrate the historical achievements of black individuals.

It is a month founded on the principle of inclusion, acknowledging figures whose contributions have long been neglected in the United States. But with most attention focused on a select few blacks, a large number of significant contributors remain forgotten by the most of the general public.

While figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X are frequently honored as pillars of black achievement, others equally deserving of recognition continue to wallow in anonymity.

For many UCLA students, this limited perspective on black history is instilled as early as elementary school.

"The emphasis was always on Martin Luther King or Harriet Tubman – those were the only people we heard about," said Sarah Moore, a second-year psychology student.

But beyond the famous names students learn in second grade lie several individuals – such as Ella Baker and Garrett Morgan – whose significant contributions are not as easily forgotten as their names.

Ella Baker: A unique voice in the Civil Rights Movement

The story of the Civil Rights Movement is often mistakenly depicted as an "all-boys affair" that was generally led, organized and articulated by males.

Rosa Parks - whose role was more as a symbolic impetus than a leader - excluded, there are almost no female figures considered when most students think of the Civil Rights Movement.

"I'm sure there are plenty of female leaders, but we don't hear about them," said Che Soto-Vigil, a fourth-year international developmental studies student.

An activist who dedicated her life to civil rights and social justice, Ella Baker is one of the female leaders who proved pivotal to the fight for equality.

"She was a driving force in the movement from the beginning," said Dr. Mary Corey, a lecturer in the history department.

Baker was an instrumental figure in several civil rights organizations throughout the 1940s and '50s; her emphasis on grassroots activity would establish a foundation for later growth in the movement.

"A lot of back-breaking work was done by people like her (who believed) in grassroots organization," Corey said. "She believed that charismatic stars are not what was needed."

But arguably Baker's greatest contribution came in 1960, when she played a crucial role in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

SNCC was a decentralized organization practicing the direct-action tactics long-advocated by Baker. It played a pivotal role in the voting registration and social reform activities in the early to mid-1960s.

The organization also attracted non-minorities to the Civil Rights Movement.

"It engaged young, white, affluent students all over the country," said Corey, who was a member of the UCLA branch of SNCC while she was an undergrad during the 1960s.

Though SNCC would ultimately turn toward a less inclusive approach to civil rights activism as the decade wore on and the "black power" ideology rose to prominence, Baker's early impact and the organization she helped create would help shape the future successes of the Civil Rights Movement.

He changed the nature of war,

firefighting ... and traffic

Many, if not most, of the famous blacks lauded each February are leaders who participated in the long battle for abolition, desegregation and civil rights.

Such an emphasis on figures who fought for these causes can lead to the simplified - and false - notion that the achievements of blacks are primarily centered around a battle to better their condition in the United States.

This view discounts many of the other contributions made by those of African descent that - through areas such as science - improved the state of not only blacks, but all people.

Garrett Morgan made the world safer for those fighting both fires and opposing armies with his creation of an innovative gas mask.

His invention was introduced to the world July 25, 1916, when he used his gas mask to personally rescue several men trapped during an explosion.

Able to endure the heat of a burning building and the rigors of warfare, Morgan's invention made an instant impact on American firefighting techniques and the United States efforts in World War I, saving an incalculable number of lives.

A second important invention of Morgan's is undoubtedly familiar to anyone who has driven a car - the traffic signal.

In the early 20th century, roads were often a chaotic mix of automobiles, horse-drawn carriages and bicycles. There was nothing to maintain a sense of order on the road, and accidents were a common occurrence.

After witnessing one such collision, Morgan was determined to improve the situation, and soon the traffic signal was born.

Alex Tucker, president of UCLA's Black Faculty and Staff Association, said that a better understanding of minority contributions, like Morgan's traffic signal, can illuminate the diversity that characterizes the modern world.

"As a person, you drive a car, and you don't think about it," he said. "Acknowledging the figures behind these inventions, you begin to see the world and how it comes together with different ethnicities' contributions."

Why forgotten?

Scholars offer many views on the reasons certain figures are remembered while others, such as Baker and Morgan, recede into anonymity.

"Much of it has to do with social style," Corey explained.

Neither Baker nor Morgan were charismatic speakers, and this may contribute to the lack of attention they receive in the public consciousness.

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Activists Urge Blacks to Vote
By Deborah Barfield Berry
WASHINGTON BUREAU

February 3, 2004

Orangeburg, S.C. - The Rev. Joseph Lowery tucked the voting brochures under his arm and strolled up to the woman plucking laundry off her clothesline.

"How ya doing, darlin'?" the prominent civil rights activist from Georgia asked as he handed her the brochures. "We came up here to encourage you to vote. ... We need you to turn out the vote Tuesday."

The woman nodded, promising to vote and to urge others to go to the polls. Lowery, 82, headed to another house.

More than 20 years after making a similar trek through the same rural communities in South Carolina, Lowery and other civil rights activists, community leaders and local politicians returned here last weekend hoping to spur blacks to vote in today's Democratic presidential primary.

A high turnout here could not only help determine the party's nominee, but set the tone for national efforts to get more blacks to vote in November, activists say. That turnout, they say, is key to taking over the White House. "I want them to set the bar high," Lowery said of black South Carolinians.

Democratic presidential candidates have courted blacks, who form about 30 percent of the population and are expected to make up half the state's primary voters. A win could show a candidate's broad appeal and energize the party's most loyal base.

"They realize how important our vote is, but we don't," said Derrick Williams, an Amityville native who moved to Orangeburg about five years ago. "If we did, more of us would get out and vote."

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Deb at DebWire's Blog is working Black History Month with a series of profiles of seriously notable Black folks.

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February 06, 2004

I don't read The Volokh Conspiracy anymore since Cowen and Bernstein last simultaneously annoyed me. But Kevin at Calpundit still does.

Seems Bernstein got email from a woman that got fired over the incorrect use of "Eenie-meenie-miney-moe." Seems a number of folks took umbrage over the words being on the cover of a calendar.

For the 2003 Calendar, they chose a cover photo showing the feet of several children in a circle with their toes touching. The title of the photo was "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe."

Seems the writer forgot that the next line in the eyes of many is, "Catch a nigger by the toe."

She was fired, Bernstein is offended, Kevin (whose credentials as a human I'm not questioning) says:

Being the liberal sort that I am, I'm pretty sympathetic to the commonsensical notion that blacks and other minorities have suffered considerably from both de facto and de jure racism in the past and continue to suffer from de facto racism today. Furthermore, we as a society should be willing to do something concrete about this instead of just conveniently pretending that a faux colorblindness will make it all go away.

At the same time, we need to show a lot less tolerance for manufactured racial outrage from the kind of people who insist on being offended as often and as loudly as possible just on general principle. This kind of thing reduces racism to trivia and actively hurts our chances of making progress in the future toward a genuinely colorblind society. We shouldn't put up with it simply for fear of being attacked ourselves.

And the discussion thread is…typical.

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I love it.

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Help Grandparents of Rich Kids Now. Deal With Real Problems Later
FLOYD NORRIS

IT is said that you can determine a government's priorities by studying its tax proposals. By that standard, the Bush administration does not appear to be very interested in the biggest tax fight now going on with Europe.

Nor is it eager to deal with the prospect of the alternative minimum tax, which was intended for high-income earners, harming many middle-class taxpayers.

But assuring that wealthy Americans who die in 2011 and after will not face taxes on their estates is viewed as too important a decision to be postponed.

And in one of the lesser tax proposals in the budget released this week, President Bush offers a tax break for what must be a very small group of taxpayers: those who support their grandchildren even though the kids are independently wealthy or earning a substantial income on their own. For the first time, such grandparents will be able to claim dependent exemptions for the grandkids.

The most pressing corporate tax issue is the tax break for exporters that has been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Europe plans sanctions next month if the tax is not repealed. Though the budget discusses the issue, it does not offer proposals. Chances are Congress will repeal that tax break while passing other corporate tax breaks that will cost the government a lot of money. By remaining silent, President Bush can make the revenue projection look less bad than it is.

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A Portrait of a Neighborhood Is Now Just a Click Away
By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: February 6, 2004

Want to know how many vacant lots are in your neighborhood? How steep the rent increases have been? The rate of mortgage foreclosures? How many people live in "linguistic isolation" (bureaucratese for "non-English speakers'')?

Under a new federally financed program, anyone wanting to tap into a wealth of housing (and other) information about any of New York City's neighborhoods - would-be home buyers, renters, policy makers or community advocates - can log on at no charge to a simple-to-use Web site at www.nychanis.com.

Advertisement


Nychanis stands for New York City Housing and Neighborhoods Information System, and the Web site is the design child of Michael H. Schill, director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University's School of Law, and Denise Previti, a former researcher at the center. It was financed by a $457,000 grant from the United States Department of Commerce, with matching contributions from local foundations and banks.

"The project is part of a national movement toward democratizing data," Professor Schill said. "The idea is that government agencies and private organizations collect huge amounts of information that average people have no way of accessing. With Nychanis, anyone can have this data at their fingertips."

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Online Voting Canceled for Americans Overseas
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: February 6, 2004

Citing security concerns, the Department of Defense yesterday canceled plans to use an electronic voting system that would have allowed Americans overseas to cast votes over the Internet in this year's elections.

The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department.

Advertisement


The decision was announced in a memorandum from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz to David S. C. Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Paraphrasing the memorandum, a Department of Defense spokeswoman said: "The department has decided not to use Serve in the November 2004 elections. We made this decision in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes, thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election results."

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In a Suit, Hip-Hop Grows Up and Buttons Down
By GUY TREBAY

Hip-hop has long been synonymous with jeans big enough to upholster a sofa, with throwback sports jerseys draped to the knees, with outrageously priced, limited-edition sneakers and with the diamond-barnacled hardware that has entered the vernacular as bling-bling.

But now the generation that made these trappings a perennially adolescent uniform is pushing 35. As fans mature and ascend the ranks in the work force, they find themselves looking for a new sartorial statement. Following the trends set by musical stars like Jay-Z, major hip-hop brands like Ecko and Sean John are ready with a simple proposition: the time has come for them to put on a suit.

During New York's Fashion Week, which begins today, Ecko will present a fall 2004 collection that largely dispenses with its trademark track suits and sneakers, and arranges its new image around that staple of Everyman's wardrobe, the blazer. On Sunday night at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, few fans of Pharrell Williams, who has been nominated for six awards, are likely to be shocked if he appears in one of the Perry Como-style sports jackets he wears so rakishly.

"This generation is getting older," said Wyclef Jean, 34, the founder of the Fugees. "When you mature, you realize that it's fine to wear your comfortable throwback jersey in the studio, but when you go out with your girl in a restaurant, you want to look clean-cut and mature."

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…I know the guy in blue.

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I had to change the time on the post titled "Just Ill, is all." It was a cute joke and all, but the way the posting worked out, when I scrolled the page to the Recent Comments links, JJ's tit-tay was staring me in the face. I don't know if I'll be posting anything else that would make it the move down the page so I forced the issue.

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Someone in the comments to this thread said the bug has been fixed

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Dataloss Bug in Latest Windows Installer Builds Can Delete Contents of Program Files Folder

Thursday February 5th, 2004
A serious bug in the latest Windows installer builds of the Mozilla Application Suite can lead to users having the entire contents of their Program Files folder deleted. The problem is present in the 2004-02-03-18 and later trunk Windows installer and net installer builds. The affected binaries have had the suffix -dangerous added to their filenames and been removed from the latest-trunk and latest directories on the mozilla.org FTP site. Testers are strongly advised not to download these dangerous builds. The issue is being tracked in bug 233014 (please do not add unnecessary comments to this bug). Thanks to Zbigniew Braniecki for alerting us to this problem.

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You know Cory Doctorow? Science fiction author who has written two novels (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe)under a Creative Commons license?

Well, folks are taking advantage of the rights Mr. Doctorow didn't reserve,

That speed reader is a Java applet. Interesting.

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Finally finding a track you've heard on am MP3 stream ("Go Ahead London" by The Rapino Bros) only to discover it was released so long ago it's only on vinyl…and you have no turntable anymore.

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Excerpts and photos from Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture, essays by leading voices in African-American history and literature:

Part One: Celebrating African-American Culture
Part Two: How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy
Part Three: Understanding Slavery in Terms of Black and White
Part Four: America's Cultural Roots Traced to Enslaved African Ancestors
Part Five: The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice
Jubilee Photo Gallery

News Features
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Civil Rights Dream at 40
United States Marks 75th Year of Black History Celebration [P6: this article is three years old]
Reexamining U.S. Slaves' Role in Their Emancipation
Black Soldiers in WW II: Fighting Enemies at Home and Abroad
Civil Rights Era Captured in Black and White
Charles Houston, "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow"
"Black Livingstone" Blazed Trail in Dark Congo of 1800s
Profile: African-American North Pole Explorer Matthew Henson
Tale of the Tape: Saving Historic U.S. Sounds
New Film Hart's War Highlights World War II Bigotry
Q&A: Actor Danny Glover on Africa Activism

African History, Culture, Heritage
Glories of African Royalty Celebrated in Photography
A Day in the Life of Africa-Photos From the Book
African Warrior Shares Humor, Lessons In Book for Kids
Voodoo a Legitimate Religion, Anthropologist Says
Voodoo Blood Rite: Reporter on African Ritual
Unique Dogon Culture Survives in West Africa
Dogon Photo Gallery
Gene Study Traces Cattle Herding in Africa
Timbuktu Photo Gallery by Chris Rainier
Kayaking to Timbuktu, Writer Sees Slave Trade, More
The Queen of Sheba: More Than a Myth?
Rare Nubian King Statues Uncovered in Sudan
Reclaiming the Ancient Manuscripts of Timbuktu
Africa Fights To Reclaim Lost Art, Artifacts
Africa's Imperiled Rock Art Documented Before it Disappears
Ancient Spirits Incarnated in Rare U.S. Exhibition of African Ritual Art
Smithsonian Salutes Contemporary African Art

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Did Quilts Hold Codes to the Underground Railroad?
Sarah Ives
for National Geographic News
February 5, 2004

Two historians say African American slaves may have used a quilt code to navigate the Underground Railroad. Quilts with patterns named "wagon wheel," "tumbling blocks," and "bear's paw" appear to have contained secret messages that helped direct slaves to freedom, the pair claim.
Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard first posited the quilt code theory six years ago in their book Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, published in 1998. In the book, the authors chronicled the oral testimony of Ozella McDaniel, a descendant of slaves. McDaniel claims that her ancestors passed down the secret of the quilt code from one generation to the next.

The code "was a way to say something to a person in the presence of many others without the others knowing," said Dobard, a history professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "It was a way of giving direction without saying, 'Go northwest.'"

The Code

In a series of discussions with Tobin and Dobard, McDaniel described the code: A plantation seamstress would sew a sampler quilt containing different quilt patterns. Slaves would use the sampler to memorize the code. The seamstress then sewed ten quilts, each composed of one of the code's patterns.

The seamstress would hang the quilts in full view one at a time, allowing the slaves to reinforce their memory of the pattern and its associated meaning. When slaves made their escape, they used their memory of the quilts as a mnemonic device to guide them safely along their journey, according to McDaniel.

The historians believe the first quilt the seamstress would display had a wrench pattern. "It meant gather your tools and get physically and mentally prepared to escape the plantation," Dobard said. The seamstress would then hang a quilt with a wagon wheel pattern. This pattern told slaves to pack their belongings because they were about to go on a long journey.

Dobard said his favorite pattern was the bear's paw, a quilt he believes directed slaves to head north over the Appalachian Mountains. "You were supposed to follow the literal footprints of the bear," Dobard said. "Bears always go to water and berries and other natural food sources."

The last quilt had a tumbling blocks pattern, which Dobard described as looking like a collection of boxes. "This quilt was only displayed when certain conditions were right. If, for example, there was an Underground Railroad agent in the area," Dobard said. "It was an indication to pack up and go."

Fact or Myth?

The quilt-code theory has met with controversy since its publication. Quilt historians and Underground Railroad experts have questioned the study's methodology and the accuracy of its findings.

Giles R. Wright, a New Jersey-based historian, points to a lack of corroborating evidence. Quilt codes are not mentioned in the 19th century slave narratives or 1930s oral testimonies of former slaves. Additionally, no original quilts remain.

"What I think they've done is they've taken a folklore and said it's historical fact," Wright said. "They offer no evidence, no documentation, in support of that argument."

Dobard refutes the claims that his book lacks evidence, noting that he uses oral history and thus lacks written records. "Who is going to write down what they did and what it meant … [if] it might fall into the wrong hands?" Dobard said.

Addressing the lack of concrete evidence, Dobard emphasized the fragility of quilts. "Consider the nature of quilts. A quilt was to be used," Dobard said. "To expect a quilt that remained within the slave community to survive more than one hundred years is asking a lot."

Fact or myth, people agree that the idea of a quilt code is compelling. Bonnie Browning of the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Kentucky, said: "It makes a wonderful story."

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African-American Chamber Orchestra Brings Classical Music to Inner City Kids
Maura Farrelly
Chicago
05 Feb 2004, 17:21 UTC

Listen to Maura Farrelly's report from Chicago (RealAudio)
Farrelly report - Download 580k (RealAudio)

Jazz... blues... gospel... hip hop. All these styles of music are inextricably linked to the African-American experience. But what about classical music? Bach? Mozart? Beethoven? The music of these dead, white, European men isn't usually associated with the black community in America. But an 83-year-old man in Chicago has spent the bulk of his adult life trying to change that. VOA's Maura Farrelly recently sat down with Leo Harris and his musical colleagues... to find out why.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, A Little Night Music - The piece was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787... and heard on the radio in Chicago 139 years later by a six-year-old African-American boy named Leo Harris. The year was 1926... and ever since then, Mr. Harris has had a love affair with classical music. He learned to play the violin as a child. When he grew up, he encouraged his wife and children to play. And then in 1983, when Leo Harris finally retired from his job as an air conditioner repairman, he founded the South Side Family Chamber Orchestra. It's composed entirely of African-Americans, and it performs primarily in Chicago housing projects and schools where the majority of students are black and Hispanic. And, for the last 20 years, members of the orchestra have been giving free string lessons to any inner city student who wants them.

"It awakens something that's inside," he says. "It's something that's innate that you have inside of you. I don't say that everybody has it, but it awakens that, and that's my effort, is that every child should have the opportunity to have that happen to them. And that's why I try to go around and play for all the different minority groups, so that all the children have the opportunity to hear the classical music."

Classical music doesn't really have a strong following among African-American listeners... and because of that, there are few black classically trained musicians in the United States. Tameka Reed, 26, is one of them. The cellist says she was very excited two years ago, when she first heard there was an all-black orchestra on Chicago's South Side.

"It's a rarity. It's not common," she says. "And I decided that it was a great opportunity to meet other black classical musicians, 'cause in my experience, with my schooling, there aren't a lot of us."

Things are changing. Pianist Awadajin Pratt and violinist Nokuthula Ngwenyama have been bringing young African-American listeners into concert halls and music conservatories across the country. Both performers were born in the United States... both are black... and both are in their thirties. But classical music in America is still a basically white and Asian genre. Just one of the 111 performers in the Chicago Symphony is black. The Cleveland Orchestra boasts two out of 108. And the Boston Pops has two black performers in a field of 93 players. David Howard, principal violinist for the South Side Family Chamber Orchestra, says part of the reason African-Americans aren't drawn to classical music, is that for the last century or so, many live performances have taken place in fancy concert halls, where African-Americans couldn't attend… either because of segregation or the cost of a ticket.

"Classical music was something that was taken up by a privileged class after the fact," he explains. "When it became a profession, and when the conservatory movement began, then, due to economic reasons or legal reasons or social reasons, it's more difficult to make the exposure."

And that's why octogenarian Leo Harris still spends hours every day searching for grant money to support the all-black orchestra he founded. He says he wants to share not just the beauty... but also the power of classical music. Mr. Harris says he believes in the 20 years his players have been offering free lessons, classical music has saved countless inner-city children from gang violence... and gotten many of them into college.

"See, here's the key thing about classical music: It requires discipline. Discipline is what is lacking in our society, not only in minority communities, but everywhere. And it's very seldom that you hear of a violinist going to jail," he says.

It seems that some very important people in Chicago agree that classical music has the power to change lives. In January, 2004, Leo Harris was honored by Chicago Magazine as one of seven "Chicagoans of the Year." The South Side Family Chamber Orchestra was invited to perform at the ceremony. The piece they played was... of course... Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

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Students at predominantly black university in Texas file voting rights suit
By JUAN A. LOZANO
The Associated Press
2/5/04 8:25 PM

HOUSTON (AP) -- Civil rights groups and students at Prairie View A&M University filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking to halt what they claim are threats by a county prosecutor to prevent students from voting.

Waller County District Attorney Oliver Kitzman has said students at the predominantly black university aren't necessarily entitled to vote where they go to school. He said students and others, like military personnel, must meet state-mandated residency standards.

Hundreds of angry Prairie View A&M students marched last month in protest of Kitzman's stance.

Thursday's lawsuit comes a day after Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion saying students may vote in their university town if they designate their campus address as their residence.

But Abbott's ruling is not enough to ease students' fears that their voting efforts will be denied, said Jon Greenbaum, with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

A representative with Kitzman's office said he was not available late Thursday afternoon to comment on the suit.

On Wednesday, Kitzman, who is white, said there was no discrimination intended and he agreed with Abbott's opinion. But he reiterated that students must meet state-mandated residency standards.

Yolanda Smith, executive director of the NAACP's Houston branch, said the lawsuit was filed because students fear Kitzman will change his mind, not adhere to Abbott's ruling and prosecute students after they vote.

"That's a fear no student should have to go through," she said.

Monday is the deadline to register to vote in the March 9 primary.

The suit was filed on behalf of the 60 members of the NAACP's Prairie View campus chapter, as well as four other students. Prairie View is about 48 miles northwest of Houston.

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The mission was simple. Turn this:

into a work of edible art.

And the result:

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I'm really not thrilled with the idea of funding government with the proceeds of gambling.

Unless the casino is the NYSE.

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Black Caucus offers Ehrlich slots support
By Robert Redding Jr.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

ANNAPOLIS — The Maryland Legislative Black Caucus says it will support the Ehrlich administration's slot-machine bill if blacks are given ownership in two proposed casinos along Interstate 95.

"He will get slots if black folks get ownership," Senate Majority Leader Nathaniel J. McFadden, Baltimore Democrat, told The Washington Times.

House Deputy Majority Whip Obie Patterson, chairman of the 42-member Black Caucus, yesterday said black ownership is essential to winning the approval of the caucus.

"It has been our position all along that we look at ownership and not just participation," said Mr. Patterson, a Prince George's County Democrat.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. last week told The Times that he and Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who is black, agree that minority ownership is an essential part of the slots legislation.

"We know that is a concern of the Black Caucus, and we think it is a good idea," the Republican governor said.

Mr. Ehrlich this year has proposed basically the same slots legislation he first offered to the General Assembly last year - a bill that would allow the state to reap revenue from licenses for 11,500 slot machines at four Maryland racetracks. However, he has included this year a measure that would set up 4,000 slot machines at two non-track sites along I-95 to garner support from House Democrats, who killed his legislation last year.

The governor said the additional sites can be privately or state owned, and that a panel consisting of himself and Senate and House leaders would decide where to put the gaming facilities. He expects the state to make $2 billion annually from the revised plan.

"If [track owners] can own the other four, why can't we own the two?" Mr. Patterson said.

His comments came one day after six caucus members participated in an anti-slots rally and vowed not to accept a slots bill under any circumstances.

"We are just not entertaining [slots] at this point," Mr. Patterson said. "We would entertain [slots] if some of these changes are made."

He also does not support the panel making the decision about where to put the two additional locations.

"I think local control has to be a part of that process," Mr. Patterson said.

Mr. McFadden said caucus members "at a minimum" want blacks to have at least 51 percent ownership of at least one site before helping Mr. Ehrlich win votes in the House and Senate.

Still, he says the first concern of the caucus is finding money to improve public education.

"The only reason we are having this discussion about expanding gambling is for the purpose of fully funding the Thornton" plan, he said.

The governor wanted to use slots revenue to pay for the Thornton plan, which attempts to erase the disparities between rich and poor school districts.

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POS334-L: THE RACE AND ETHNICITY BOOK REVIEW DISCUSSION LIST

POS334-L is a discussion list constructed for the Race, Ethnicity and Social Inequality seminar (formerly numbered POS302) held each spring semester at Illinois State University. Subscription to the list is open to all faculty and students at any University or College. The discussion on the list consists of book reviews and commentaries on book reviews submitted by the subscribers. The purposes of the list are to provide an audience for the work of the students in the seminar, to provide the seminar with an external source of opinion and insight on the readings under discussion, and to provide all subscribers with an public forum for the discussion of contemporary books on race, ethnicity, and social inequality. The list is hosted by the Matrix center at Michigan State University.

Graduate and Undergraduate students are especially encouraged to submit book reviews to the list and to participate in the discussions. Faculty are encouraged to use this list with their classes.

The discussion list is open for reviews of books on race and ethnicity at any time, including books that are not on the class schedule.

FORMAT AND CONTENT OF COMMENTARIES:
The POS334-L aims for serious and thoughtful academic discussion, it is not a forum for stating personal opinions. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SENDING SHORT SPONTANEOUS REACTIONS TO A BOOK OR REVIEW TO THE LIST. Commentaries should be at least 100 words in length and should reflect a reading of the work or other works of the author.

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This will be an interesting site to wander about in. looks like a couple of hundred…I don't know, I think I'd call them book reports more than reviews , from 1995 to 2003, with the 2004 syllabus already posted. I think I want to compare the vibe from 1995 to that from 2003. And out of sheer curiosity I'll be reading Bringing the World into the Classroom, which is about the creation and management of the mailing list, and its impact on the course and its students.

It doesn't make it into "Dropping Knowledge," but it could easily germinate the seeds of thought.

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The Association for the Study of African American Life and History just came to my attention in the most roundabout way (and that's embarrassing).

Professor Kim of Professor Kim's News Notes left a comment on the post I basically lifted from Poynter Online yesterday. She mention she'd left a comment on the original essay at Poynter, so I go to check it out.

Three points were made—two analytical and this:

Well.

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History was founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson himself. That's why it was embarrassing to find out it still exists this way…simply put, I should have know.

And their 89th annual convention will be held, September 28 - October 3, 2004 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's close enough to NYC that I could go, and I'm seriously considering it because one of the presenters is Dr. Lerone Bennett, the author of "The Shaping of Black America," chapter three of which I copyright infringed to support the discussion in "Where We Stand." The man is literally one of my heroes, author of a book that deeply informs my views on the development of race and race relations in the USofA (the closest any other single author came to that impact on me was Dr. Harold Cruse, particularly with "Plural but Equal"). I would LOVE to meet him, and maybe get official permission to have that chapter over there.

In fact, I'd kinda like to have the whole book available online. But that would be pushing it, I'm sure.

Anyway, The Association for the Study of African American Life and History is added to the "Dropping Knowledge" section of the sidebar.

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I never got around to changing the template around here to show the category of each post.

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February 05, 2004

Keith M. Woods at Poynter Online

Disentangling Desegregation Discourse

Here's a linguistic pop quiz: If you integrate a school, have you desegregated it? And if a school that was all-black in 1954 has come to be all-black again today, does that mean we're experiencing re-segregation? And given those demographics, wouldn't logic hold that busing was a failure, inasmuch as the goal of all that driving was diversity?

…That's important not just because excellent journalism should be precise, though that's reason enough to pay attention to words. It's also important because in retelling history, journalists can easily distort the roots of a problem and send citizens off in odd directions as they try to solve it.

Look at the language. Segregation. Integration. Desegregation. Diversity. Re-segregation. There are no synonyms there. Behind each word is an era of our history, each distinct from the others, each capable of radically reframing the way we understand the story of public education.

So know what you're saying.

[P6: I'm not giving you Mr. Woods'…correct…definition. Consider this an invitation to check out the site in general, as well as to read the specific article.]

Here's why it makes a difference.

When language slips from the moorings of context, history is set adrift. We forget where we've been, how we got here and where we were trying to go. Stories get distorted and conflated so that the simple goal of the Brown decision –- outlawing state-sanctioned racism in public schools -– gets folded into every spin-off movement meant to fix the damage bigotry has done to the education of black children in particular and to race relations in general. Desegregation becomes busing, which becomes integration, which becomes diversity.

So 50 years later, we find journalists describing the history-altering decision to rout "separate but equal" from the American lexicon by using the word diversity. The "Brown" ruling was not about diversity, that feel-good ideal of racial utopia. It was not about black children wanting to sit next to white children. It was about demanding that states honor the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and provide black children with equal protection under the law.

[P6: Emphasis added, because there is no topic to which this does not apply]
Because the 1st Amendment makes journalism the only profession with Constitutional protection, journalists owe a special responsibility to the public to get this right. A nation that forgets the roots of its public school problems might squander years, even decades, trying to solve the wrong problems.

So tell the story of "Brown" and its legacy. Look critically at the NAACP's dogged pursuit of school integration decades after the court ruling. Tell the public how local school boards have failed their children. Write about race relations and the lingering aversion so many white parents have to letting their children attend schools with a black majority. Delve into the push by many black parents away from integration. Report boldly on what some sociologists say is a thread of black culture resistant to academic achievement because it looks too "white." Investigate the economic inequities born in segregation and haunting public schools to this day.

And remember that there's a difference between diversity and justice; between re-segregation and the countless forces that frustrate integrationists; between the right to choose a school in 1954 and school choice in 2004.

Words matter. That's a timeless lesson courtesy of the public schools.

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An Experiment in Transparency

These documents are drawn from a collection of 19,000 files of Paul H. O'Neill, the U.S. Treasury Secretary for the first two years of the Presidency of George W. Bush. Like all Treasury Secretaries, O'Neill was the top domestic appointment of the President and also a principal of the National Security Council. The files, which range from memoranda to the President to handwritten notes to "sensitive" internal reports, cover a sweeping array of foreign and domestic issues. They also display the attending political and personal matters that often determine policy. They were collected as part of a Treasury Department archiving process in which every item that crossed O'Neill's desk, from every department in government, was copied into a TIF, or image, file. Documents cited in the "The Price of Loyalty" are presented with explanations of context and little comment. They speak, as does all irrefutable evidence, for themselves. More files of compelling public interest will be released in the coming days and weeks.

The posting of these files is meant to encourage more productive, fact-based public dialogues. Those who wish to add documents to The Bush Files, can contact Ron Suskind through this site or send submissions to his private post office box.

"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman."
-- Justice Louis Brandeis, 1913

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First The Black Commentator on Al Sharpton:

I've always appreciated the good Reverend's oratory skills. I've generally appreciated his politics. I don't appreciate this unnecessary alliance.

This should not hurt Sharpton. His constituency is not the sort of people who are moved by pundits. They are people who see him as an effective agent. Few not in his constituency took him seriously to begin with. So what changes? For myself, nothing: if I agree with what he says I'll say so, as I will when I disagree.

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CHENEY – GOD WANTS ME TO DO BUSINESS WITH DICTATORS:

In the 04/01/96 edition of Petroleum finance week, then-CEO Cheney blithely dismissed the ethical concerns of doing business with brutal dictators, saying, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments." CBS reports that, while CEO, Cheney created an off-shore subsidiary to avoid U.S. sanctions and "set up shop in Iran." The company now "sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian Government."

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Brad deLong is the kind of guy that can legitimately issue such a challenge. As an ex-Presidential economic advisor, everyone under discussion in the challenge is fully aware of it, I assure you.

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Leaving a Sinking Ship II

Remember the text of last year's "economists' letter" supporting George W. Bush's then budget proposals? The support was

• Enthusiastic.
• Supporters were confident that the proposals:
• Were fiscally responsible.
• Would create more employment.
• Would create more economic growth.
• Would create more opportunities for all Americans
• Moreover, the proposals would:
• Improve corporate accountability.
• Strengthen the nation's international competitiveness.

I called for any of the signers of last year's letter to write to me if they still believed, and were willing to sign a similar letter today. (It should be straightforward: this year's policies are almost entirely last year's policies moved ahead one year in time, after all.)

So far I have had 0 takers.

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BWAHHahahahahaha!

Bitter?

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It's been months since I last watched Bush give a speech.

The next time I see him speak live will hopefully be a concession speech.

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Is Bush going to follow the Democratic candidates around the country?

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Some Christians See 'Passion' as Evangelism Tool
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

For years it was an article of faith for many Christians that the most powerful vehicle for bringing nonbelievers to Jesus was a Billy Graham crusade.

Now, they expect it will be a Mel Gibson movie.

Three weeks before the release of "The Passion of the Christ," a graphic portrayal of the torture and crucifixion of Jesus, Christians nationwide are busy preparing to use it in an immense grass-roots evangelistic campaign.

Mr. Gibson, who produced, directed and largely financed the film, has tried to stoke their enthusiasm by screening it the past two months for at least 10,000 pastors and leaders of Christian ministries and media. Many emerged proclaiming it a searing, life-changing experience.

Now those leaders are buying blocks of tickets, encouraging church members to invite their "unsaved" friends and co-workers and producing television commercials that start with scenes from the movie and finish with a pitch for their churches.

"I don't know of anything since the Billy Graham crusades that has had the potential of touching so many lives," said Morris H. Chapman, president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination. "It's like the Lord somehow laid in our lap something that could be a great catalyst for spiritual awakening in this nation."

The movie opens on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25, and Christian groups are already distributing merchandise to capitalize on the moment. There are lapel pins in Aramaic, the language of much of the film, and "witnessing cards" to give those who ask about the pin; door hangers for the neighbors; one million tracts asking moviegoers to "Take a moment right now and say a prayer like this," and a CD-ROM for teenagers that features a downloadable picture of a nine-inch nail like those that pinned Jesus to the cross.

Although Mr. Gibson is Roman Catholic and the movie is replete with Catholic touches, like the Stations of the Cross and the centrality of Mary, influential Pentecostal and evangelical leaders have embraced it anyway, seeing its value as a tool in evangelism. Evangelical Christians account for 30 percent to 40 percent of the American population, and many of them have recently been hearing their leaders declare that the nation is primed for a return of the ecstatic Great Awakenings that moved Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries to convert to Christianity in droves.

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No money quote, but an interesting one:

U.S. Image Abroad Will Take Years to Repair, Official Testifies
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — Margaret D. Tutwiler, in her first public appearance as the State Department official in charge of public diplomacy, acknowledged Wednesday that America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that "it will take us many years of hard, focused work" to restore it.

Ms. Tutwiler, the former ambassador to Morocco, was recently tapped to try to address rising hostility toward the United States in much of the Muslim world.

In testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee, she agreed with the main findings of an independent panel that American outreach has suffered from budget cuts and neglect since the end of the cold war.

"Unfortunately, our country has a problem in far too many parts of the world," she said, "a problem we have regrettably gotten into over many years through both Democrat and Republican administrations, and a problem that does not lend itself to a quick fix or a single solution or a simple plan."

The findings were the result of an extensive bipartisan study led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria. The panel asserted that American prestige had dwindled, that much of its charity was overlooked and that its overall approach lacked strategic direction.

"The bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States," Mr. Djerejian, speaking after Ms. Tutwiler, told the subcommittee in his first public presentation of the report.

The report, requested by the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, was released in October. It identified systemic problems, including a lack of Arabic speakers in the State Department - only five Americans are fluent and "TV ready," Mr. Djerejian said. It also noted the decline in the number of public diplomacy officers, from 2,500 in 1991 to 1,200 in 2003. The report urged a greater role for America's private sector, especially its media companies, in developing creative new ways to reach out to Arab youths.

The report, and Republicans on the subcommittee, urged placing a public diplomacy coordinator in the White House, with access to the president and a team that would scrutinize foreign perceptions.

But Ms. Tutwiler refused to embrace calls for the new position.

She also said she was determined to work within the existing budget of about $600 million for worldwide public diplomacy, which includes a wide range of efforts, including exchange programs, partnerships between American embassies and local institutions, distributing textbooks and supplying textbooks to local schools.

Mr. Wolf called the administration's overall response to the report "lackluster" and "disappointing."

Representative Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican, cited polls showing that only 15 percent of Indonesians, 7 percent of Saudis and 15 percent of Turks have a favorable image of America - despite their governments' friendly relations with Washington.

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C.I.A. Director Defends Assessments of Iraqi Weapons
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — After months of silence, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has decided to mount a strong public defense of the prewar judgments made by American intelligence agencies about Iraq and its illicit weapons stockpiles, intelligence officials said on Wednesday.

In a speech scheduled on short notice at Georgetown University on Thursday, Mr. Tenet will seek "to correct some of the misperceptions and downright inaccuracies concerning what the intelligence community reported and didn't report regarding Iraq," an intelligence official said.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered his own defense of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence. Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress that he believed that the American-led team still searching for illicit weapons in Iraq might eventually find them despite comments last month by David A. Kay, the group's former leader, that no stockpiles of such arms existed in Iraq at the time of the American-led invasion last March.

The dual defenses come as the strongest administration response to Dr. Kay, and follow a stir caused by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's comment that he was not sure he would have recommended an invasion if he had known that Iraq did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons.

Mr. Tenet and Mr. Rumsfeld, both of whom played pivotal roles in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, have often been at odds in debates over which should have the upper hand in intelligence matters, and their departments have at times disagreed about intelligence on Iraq. Now they appear to be allies in the administration's efforts to defend the prewar intelligence.

Mr. Bush himself has tried to deflect criticism of the intelligence. In a speech on Wednesday at the Library of Congress, Mr. Bush did not mention banned weapons, saying only that in deposing Saddam Hussein the United States had dealt with a dictator who had "the intent and capability" to threaten his own people and the world.

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As probes mount, Bush has allies
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - President Bush faces a daunting accretion of investigations - topped by his creation this week of an independent commission on WMD intelligence - but he has a resource many of his embattled predecessors did not possess: a Congress controlled by his own party.

The inquiries pose real risks to the president, especially with election-year attacks from Democrats mounting. Ongoing inquiries now cover the nation's vulnerability to the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, the decision to go to war in Iraq, and the illegal outing of a CIA operative's name.

But in an era when the question "What did the president know and when did he know it?" has become commonplace, Bush has a political edge that others in the Oval Office have lacked.

Facing a hostile Congress, Presidents Nixon and Clinton watched a bungled burglary and a sex scandal morph into resignation and impeachment. President Reagan faced a tough Iran-Contra investigation on Capitol Hill. The Bush administration, by contrast, has been wielding at least some say in the timing and focus of investigations, and restraint on Capitol Hill can help preserve a his credibility, presidential experts say.

"Despite the increasingly contentious climate in Washington, the fact that the president's party controls both houses of Congress provides President Bush a much greater degree of insulation," says Richard Ben-Veniste, who was involved in the Watergate investigation and Whitewater (as chief counsel for Senate Democrats), and now serves on the 9/11 commission. President Clinton, by contrast, was tangled in "an endless series of investigations."

The willingness of the GOP Congress to limit the scope of their investigations to the gathering of prewar intelligence - and not to its possible political manipulation -has shielded Bush from potential damage.

Meanwhile, Bush is setting his own parameters for the new independent commission on WMD. The commission won't report until after the presidential election, for example. And while its scope will be expanded to include WMD intelligence regarding North Korea, Iran, and Libya, the focus will still be on intelligence, not its use by politicians.

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Scientists win right to study skeleton

By Joseph B. Frazier, Associated Press, 2/5/2004

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Scientists can study the Kennewick Man -- 9,300-year-old remains found in Washington state -- despite the objections of some American Indian tribes, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

Northwest tribes consider the bones sacred and want to bury them. But the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with a lower court that found the federal grave-protection law does not apply because there is no evidence connecting the remains with any existing tribe.

Kennewick Man has drawn scientific interest because it is one of the oldest, most complete skeletons found in North America and unlike modern Indians.

The bones, found in 1996 on the north bank of the Columbia River by teenagers going to a boat race, are housed at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The Army Corps of Engineers initially agreed with the tribes and seized the bones before they could be transported to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Scientists seeking to study the bones went to court, but then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ordered the remains returned to the tribes in 2000.

US Magistrate John Jelderks ruled in 2002 that the remains could be studied, and a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court agreed. The appeals court found that the remains do not fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and can be studied under the Archeological Resources Protection Act.

The repatriation law "unambiguously requires that human remains bear some relationship to a presently existing tribe or people or culture to be considered Native American," Judge Ronald M. Gould wrote.

The ruling said it is impossible for a tribe to demonstrate such a relationship with Kennewick Man because the remains date back before any recorded history. The Umatilla, Yakama, Colville, and Nez Perce tribes are seeking the remains.Rob Roy Smith, a Seattle attorney in the firm representing the Colville tribe, called yesterday's decision "a great injustice" and said the tribes will have to decide whether to seek a rehearing or turn to Congress. "The Ninth Circuit turned the statute on its head," Smith said. "The law Congress passed gives tribes the right to prevent the study of remains. What the Ninth Circuit seems to have done is to require the tribes to prove the remains are Native American before the statute applies."

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On a certain level I couldn't care less. But guys…you can't handle a 80 year old human teat?

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Super Bowl Fallout Still Shaking Things Up
Janet Jackson no longer will participate in Sunday's Grammy Awards, a source says.
By Lynn Smith
Times Staff Writer

February 5, 2004

A Pro Bowl halftime performance was scrapped. A five-minute delay was imposed on the Grammy Awards telecast. A shot of an elderly woman's breast was deleted from tonight's episode of "ER" on NBC. And producers of the Academy Awards show decided to use a short delay in the live broadcast.

The fallout from the Super Bowl halftime show continued Wednesday as major broadcast networks scrambled to shield themselves from potential fines in the growing clamor over nudity and profanity on TV.

As for Janet Jackson, whose breast-baring stunt set off the uproar, she will no longer participate as planned in Sunday's Grammy Awards ceremony on CBS, a person close to the singer said.

Jackson's Super Bowl dance mate, Justin Timberlake, was still scheduled late Wednesday to perform on the show.

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Girl Suspended from School for Saying 'Hell'

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A second-grade girl from Pittsburgh was suspended this week from her public elementary school for saying the word "hell" to a boy in her class.

But 7-year-old Brandy McKenith says she was only warning the boy about the eternal comeuppance he could face for saying: "I swear to God."

"I said, 'You're going to go to hell for swearing to God,'" Brandy was quoted as saying in an article that appeared on the Web site of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on Wednesday.

School officials were unavailable for comment. A Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman told the newspaper that the student code prohibits profanity but does not provide a clear definition of what profanity is.

The girl's parents, who said they believed their daughter's version of the story, were flabbergasted by the suspension and complained to the school principal.

"Kids are bringing guns and knives to school. ... They've got dope. And we're worried about 'hell'?" said her father, Wayne McKenith.

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Having had it made clear to me on this very site why gay people aren't settling for civil unions and want the full marriage symbolism, I think this is a good thing. The start of a good thing, anyway.

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Massachusetts Grants Gays Right to Marry
The landmark court ruling makes it the first state to uphold full marriage rights for same-sex couples, not civil unions and similar separate arrangements.
By Elizabeth Mehren
Times Staff Writer

February 5, 2004

BOSTON — The highest court in Massachusetts, clarifying its stand on gay unions, ruled Wednesday that same-sex couples were entitled to marry, beginning as early as May 17.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruling makes Massachusetts the first state to grant the full rights of marriage to gay and lesbian couples. In clear and forthright terms, the court declared that civil unions or other marriage-like institutions would not meet the state's constitutional standards.

"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," the court ruled. Three of the seven justices dissented.

The landmark ruling comes as states across the country are considering constitutional amendments to keep gays from marrying and are passing statutes to protect the union between a man and a woman.

The issue is likely to be troublesome for Democrats in this year's presidential race. The current front-runner, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, long has opposed gay marriage but advocates full legal protection for same-sex couples. The controversy may remind conservative voters that he comes from a liberal state. Kerry did not comment on the court's action.

Wednesday's ruling affirmed the court's November decision granting seven same-sex couples the right to marry - and extending that privilege to all gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts. The court gave the Legislature six months to establish a law for same-sex marriage.

The justices were firm in responding to a request by the Legislature that the court approve civil unions instead of marriage for homosexual couples.

"The very nature and purpose of civil marriage," the justices said Wednesday, "renders unconstitutional any attempt to ban all same-sex couples … from entering into civil marriage."

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Tom Reilly said the meaning of the court's ruling was indisputable. "Same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marry under Massachusetts law," he said.

Next week, state legislators plan to convene a rare constitutional convention to consider pursuing an amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples.

Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who has voiced strong opposition to gay marriage, said Wednesday that he welcomed the opportunity to take the issue to Beacon Hill.

"We've heard from the court, but not from the people," Romney said. "The people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage."

Calling the issue "too important to leave to a one-vote [court] majority," the governor added, "that is why it's imperative that we proceed with the legitimate process of amending our state constitution."

State Senate President Robert Travaglini, however, urged all parties to "stay in an objective and calm state as we plan and define [how] … to proceed." The Democrat called the court's opinion straightforward, but added: "What is not so readily apparent is how this legal opinion now figures into the very personal decision each lawmaker must face."

If an amendment passes the Legislature, voters still would have to ratify it, a process that could not take place before 2006. In the interim, the Supreme Judicial Court decision would stand.

Thirty-eight states so far - including California - have enacted "defense of marriage" statutes that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. President Clinton signed the federal Defense of Marriage act in 1996.

Amendments banning gay marriage already are under consideration in Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia, Idaho, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Utah, Kentucky, Alabama and Indiana.

The Ohio Legislature on Tuesday approved one of the country's broadest bans on same-sex marriage, prohibiting state agencies from extending benefits to gay and lesbian domestic partners and barring the state from recognizing civil unions granted elsewhere. Gov. Robert A. Taft, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill next week.

In Iowa - where the state Supreme Court is reviewing a controversial divorce decree granted to a lesbian couple - foes of same-sex marriage vowed Wednesday to prevent their state from becoming the next Massachusetts.

"I look across the country, and I'm seeing decision after decision [favoring same-sex unions], and I'm just reeling," said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). "I don't think our society can adjust."

Laurie Letourneau, founder of Massachusetts Voices for Traditional Marriage, said Wednesday that her organization would seek a legislative "bill of address" to impeach the four judges who ruled in the majority.

"Remember, they are unelected in this state," Letourneau said. "What they have done is quite ridiculous. To demand something like [same-sex marriage] without letting the people have a say is really judicial tyranny."

And as state legislators prepared to consider the possibility of an amendment banning gay marriage, all 10 members of the Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter urging them not to do so.

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February 04, 2004

Famine: Oh No, Not Again!
The Nation (Nairobi)
EDITORIAL
February 4, 2004
Posted to the web February 4, 2004
Nairobi

The spectre of famine that always leads to massive food imports is worrisome, and no efforts should be spared to avert it.

Reports started filtering in in December that people were starving in some parts of the country due to crop failure. It was just a matter of time before the matter exploded into a full-scale crisis.

This is not the first time the country is likely to find itself in such a precarious situation. Only three years ago, we faced a harrowing food shortage that occasioned deaths and misery to many. The Government had to cry out for food donations to help the starving, itself a dehumanising situation.

Although we know that food shortages happen every so often, the tragedy is that we hardly take measures to avert it. We are always caught flat-footed and are usually forced to resort to fire-fighting measures.

Granted, the weather patterns are beyond our control. But even when the weather is favourable and we realise bounties in harvest, we end up with losses due to poor post-harvest crop handling and storage systems.

As a result, farmers enthusiastically sell their products to middlemen for a song only to be faced with scarcity a few months down the line.

We have to revisit the whole question of food production and set out clear strategies to avoid scarcity.

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Too Little Testosterone Can Lead to Depression

MONDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDayNews) -- Men who have low testosterone levels are more likely to suffer depression, says an article in the February issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Researchers examined the clinical records of 278 men, 45 years or older. Over a two-year period, 21.7 percent of the men with testosterone deficiency (hypogonadism) were diagnosed with depression, compared with 7.1 percent of men with normal testosterone levels.

When they adjusted for age, alcohol use and other factors, the researchers concluded that men with hypogonadism were 4.2 times more likely to be diagnosed with depression.

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There was a lot of noise in the blogs over white studies a little while back. I'm not interested enough in what was said to search out all the entries. The opinions expressed came down to

• White studies is an evil plan to inflict the white race with TLG (Terminal Liberal Guilt), which will render them helpless as great waves of brown, yellow and black (especially Black) people wash over this great nation of ours, taking our jobs and making us pay taxes


• White studies in necessary to open the eyes of The Man (even when he's a woman) to the depths of depravity they inflict on the world, pillaging and plundering the natural wealth of the native world and despoiling all as they pass

I'll be honest: some 10-15 years ago I considered the idea of studying white folks the way Margaret Meade studied the Samoans. White studies as currently executed is not what I had in mind. The flaw seems to be that it's about teaching white folks about themselves. My personal position is, if we knew all that about white folks there'd be no racial issues No, I don't think we're ready to teach about white folks. I think we're still in the research phase.

My approach to the research would be to use Maslow's Hierarchy of Motivations as a framework (yes, this is the third Maslow reference in as many days).

Also, since whiteness, Blackness, Chicanoness, etc.-ness are social things (not traits inherent an any single entity but are emergent qualities that arise from human interactions) I would look into the social machinery available to white people to satisfy these requirements. We're not comparing white people with any other ethnicity at this point. I just want to observe: how do a fully acculturated white people resole their physiological needs?

Oh, yeah, I don't want any conversation from my subjects. We all know how easy it is for humans to have the wrong idea about their own motivations.

Where was I? Right.

What social mechanisms are available to white folks to insure their physical safety? How do they go about establishing a connection to the groups they identify with? How do they determine which groups they identify with? How well thought of do they have to be to feel comfortable with their in-groups?

That's where I'd like to see research begin.

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And yes, the category is "Race and Identity," not "News."

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Confederacy Month Wins Early Support
Va. Senate Debate Looms; Black Caucus Troubled

By Chris L. Jenkins and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page B01

RICHMOND, Feb. 3 -- A resolution that would designate April as Confederate History Month received preliminary approval from the Virginia Senate on Tuesday, reopening a debate over how the Old Dominion should remember its legacy as a slave-holding state that seceded from the Union.

The measure sidesteps Gov. Mark R. Warner's refusals to officially recognize Confederate commemorations. Instead, state heritage groups are seeking support from the General Assembly, hoping that legislators will pass a resolution similar to the Confederate History Month proclamations issued by past governors.

"The reason why I've introduced this is because this is our history and we need to come to terms with it," said Sen. Charles R. Hawkins (R-Pittsylvania), the chief sponsor of the measure that he said would honor the legacy of the thousands of Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War. "History is history. This is part of all of our backgrounds, and there's no need in running from it," he added.

Senate Joint Resolution 96 was approved by the chamber's Rules Committee last week by a vote of 11 to 3. A full debate in the Senate is scheduled for Wednesday. Because it is a resolution, it does not require the signature of Warner, a Democrat, if it passes both the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

A majority of the 16-member Legislative Black Caucus has "very strong concerns" about the resolution, said Del. Dwight Clinton Jones (D-Richmond), the group's chairman.

"I just think it's time we put the Confederacy behind us," said Sen. Benjamin J. Lambert III (D-Richmond), a member of the caucus. "These are the folks, this is the history, that had my forefathers in chains."

Hawkins's resolution is another salvo in a long debate about how the state should acknowledge the Confederacy's role in its history, beginning with former governor L. Douglas Wilder (D), who signed a similar proclamation in 1990. Then in the late 1990s, former governor George Allen (R) issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights." It was observed during April, the month in which the Civil War essentially began with the Confederates' attack on Fort Sumter, S.C., and ended with the Army of Northern Virginia's surrender at Appomattox. The declaration made no mention of slavery, angering many civil rights groups.

James S. Gilmore III (R), who succeeded Allen, modified the decree in 1998 by adding a condemnation of slavery. Later, he dropped references to Confederate History Month, instead designating April as "Virginia's Month for Remembrance of the Sacrifices and Honor of All Virginians Who Served in the Civil War." In 2002, Warner decided not to offer a proclamation, saying that it was a "lightning rod" that would not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia.

The Hawkins resolution's supporters said Tuesday that the measure does not honor slaveholders, only those who fought for what they believed was a noble cause.

"This has nothing to do with trying to celebrate slavery. Most of those who fought in the war were not slaveholders," said Brandon Dorsey, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans' executive committee. "What we want is the state to recognize the sacrifices of our ancestors."

Several civil rights groups, long opposed to creating statewide commemorations of the Confederacy, said they continued to be concerned about the efforts of heritage groups to receive endorsements from the state on the issue.

"It seems like, to us, that there are enough schools, bridges and other private monuments such that the state does not need an official Confederate History Month," said Salim Khalfani, director of the Virginia NAACP. "It goes without saying that we are opposed to this resolution."

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You're a Cardassian! Intelligent and devious,
you're a bit of an enigma to those around you
and scientific to the core.


What Star Trek Race Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hat tip to phill at Enigmatic Musings of a Cynical Mind

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Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock won the Best Director prize in the documentary competition at Sundance last week. The film, "Super Size Me," documents the changes he goes through as a result of eating at McDonalds three times a day. MSNBC's interview is interesting.

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You ate three meals a day at McDonald’s for 30 days for this film. What happened to your body over the course of that month?
My body just basically falls apart over the course of this diet. I start to get tired; I start to get headaches; my liver basically starts to fill up with fat because there’s so much fat and sugar in this food. My blood sugar skyrockets, my cholesterol goes up off the charts, my blood pressure becomes completely unmanageable. The doctors were like “You have to stop.”

You saw more than one doctor?
I was seeing three different doctors over the course of this, just so I would really have a fair balance between all the people so nobody could say “oh, it was doctor bias; it was physician bias.” Each of these doctors was doing their own blood tests and each of the blood tests were going to three different labs so there was no way lab error could be an issue. Everything that happens to my body over the course of the film was caused by this diet. And everything that happened to my body was caused by this food that I got at this restaurant. I didn’t eat anything—no gum, no candy, not even a Tic Tac—everything that I put in my mouth came from over the counter at McDonald’s. Even the water. I wouldn’t even drink water from outside, that way there would never be a question that “oh there was probably something in the water somewhere else when he was traveling around.” I only drank bottled water from McDonald’s.

How much weight did you put on?
I put on about 25 pounds in a month.

How did you feel at the end of the month?
[Laughs] I felt terrible! I felt so bad because I put on this weight so quickly my knees hurt. I was so depressed. I would eat, and I would feel so good because I would get all that sugar and caffeine and fat and I would feel great. And an hour later I would just crash—I would hit the wall and be angry and depressed and upset. I was a disaster to live with. My girlfriend by the end was like “You have to stop because I’ve had it.” It really affects you in so many ways that I think a lot of people don’t realize, very subtle little things. Over the course of the film you see my transformation, and it’s not pleasant.

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Literacy, antiabuse programs face ax

By Adam Entous, Associated Press, 2/4/2004

WASHINGTON -- One day after proposing bigger budgets for defense and homeland security, the White House yesterday released a list of the 128 programs it wants gutted, from education equity for women to combatting alcohol abuse.

While calling on Congress to rein in domestic spending to address a record budget deficit, Bush has made education reform a key plank in his campaign for reelection in November and announced in last month's State of the Union address a $300 million program to help released prisoners reintegrate into society.

But according to newly released details about his fiscal 2005 budget, Bush would scrap programs to improve writing skills, teach economics and foreign languages, and promote literacy in prison.

A program that provides residents of poor areas access to computers and training would also get the ax, along with recreation programs for the disabled, aid for migrant farm workers, and an initiative to promote "educational equity" for girls and women.

The budget would do away with recreational programs for people with disabilities, deferring to states to pick up the slack. Olympic scholarships, arts in education, and an exchange program for native Alaskans and Hawaiians would also be scrapped.

It also would end a $30 million program which, the White House says, "supports innovative and effective programs to reduce alcohol abuse in secondary schools." The White House said state grants could provide similar help.

It took the White House more than 24 hours to provide the complete list of the 65 program terminations and 63 major program reductions included in Bush budget for the fiscal year that begins in October. It was unclear how much of Bush's spending plan will win congressional approval, as there was already growing opposition within both parties.

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Key point:

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A Big-Picture Investigation

February 3, 2004

The script goes something like this: The White House opposes the creation of an investigative commission. Eventually it buckles to congressional and public demands but tries to control the panel's work.

That's how the Bush administration has treated the independent 9/11 commission. Such history begs for scrutiny of the White House's reluctant proposal for a new panel to judge the intelligence that was used as justification for waging war on Iraq.

"I want to know all the facts," President Bush said Monday. To back that assertion, he must give the commission real powers to examine not only U.S. spy agencies but the context in which they gathered and provided information.

Intelligence is, in part, a political craft. The commission will have to investigate, among other things, whether the CIA became too dependent on dubious Iraqi defectors eager to take power in Iraq.

Intelligence is full of gray areas of information that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Satellite photographs that were prominent in the arguments for war are good examples. Recall the photos that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell brandished in front of the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, describing them as chem-war decontamination vehicles. It now appears they were ordinary commercial trucks.

No matter how often officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claim they never depicted an imminent threat, the message was clear. The president made his case for war in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, with these words: " … we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Since the war began, inspectors have concluded that Iraq had no productive nuclear weapons program.

In choosing members of the new commission, Bush should recall the experience of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, named by the White House to head its 9/11 commission but pushed out under pressure from critics who cited his obsession with secrecy in the Nixon White House and his current roster of business clients, including the Chinese government.

Credible candidates for the intelligence panel include Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to former President George H.W. Bush and an opponent of the Iraq war. As far back as 1998, Scowcroft said of U.S. policy, "One of the things we need to learn to do better - not just in Iraq - is to blend diplomacy and force." Foreign policy heavyweights on the order of former Republican Sen. Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire and President Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, are other names in the ring.

To rescue U.S. credibility around the world, Bush will have to allow - and assist - a thorough study not just of intelligence gathering but of how the White House used the information. Was it sifted and colored to push a preordained goal of war? That is as important a question as how the agencies themselves stumbled.

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Iraqi Insurgency Is as Lethal as Ever Since Hussein's Capture
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

February 4, 2004

FALLOUJA, Iraq — Nearly two months after the capture of Saddam Hussein, the casualty rate among U.S. soldiers and Iraqis in insurgent attacks has accelerated, and much of this nation's Sunni Muslim heartland remains a perilous zone of conflict — with bouts of violence also striking the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.

The most recent spate of bloodshed includes bombings last weekend in the northern cities of Irbil and Mosul as well as last month's suicide attack outside the main U.S. compound in Baghdad, blasts that claimed well over 100 lives.

Iraqi security forces, civilians and others deemed collaborators are now the major targets, and although attacks on U.S. troops have diminished in number, they remain lethal: 45 soldiers were killed in January, according to unofficial tallies, compared with 40 in December.

As U.S. forces prepared to head home in a massive rotation that would leave troops vulnerable to attack, front-line commanders interviewed in recent weeks expressed confidence that a measure of order had been restored after Hussein's capture. But they cautioned that the attacks might continue and possibly intensify as the U.S. occupation enters its second year this spring with fresh units of soldiers and Marines.

"I won't defeat all the enemy in my time. That's very clear," Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine said in this hostile city west of Baghdad, where U.S. troops typically would draw fire within an hour if they remained stationary. "I don't have the threat of a tank battalion rising out of the dust and coming after me. But I've got mortars, I've got rockets, and I've got small elements that are trying to chip away at our will."

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Replace them with cartoonists.

And these two as well.

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Beneath Even Texas
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page A22

UNLESS TEXAS authorities or the courts come to their senses, Scott Louis Panetti will be executed tomorrow for the double murder of his in-laws more than a decade ago. Texas is unique among the states of the union in its unbridled enthusiasm for capital punishment; it has executed about 35 percent of those put to death nationally since 1976. But even against this bloody backdrop, Mr. Panetti's execution would stand out. The state would be killing someone who is seriously mentally ill and who, despite that fact, was permitted to represent himself at trial and thereby end any chance that a jury might take his illness into account.

There is no dispute that Mr. Panetti killed Joe and Amanda Alvarado. Nor is there any question that he had a long history of schizophrenia before the killings, including a number of hospitalizations. His competency even to stand trial, in fact, was seriously in doubt and caused the first jury that heard the matter to deadlock. Yet not only did the court permit his trial to go forward, the judge let him fire his counsel and handle his own defense. So, in a case where any competent defense lawyer had a potentially compelling insanity defense, he appeared before the jury dressed in a purple cowboy outfit. He tried to subpoena Jesus (address: "everywhere"; county of residence: "heaven") and John F. Kennedy. He rambled incoherently. And, hardly surprisingly, the jury convicted him on capital charges.

We have argued before that the right to act as one's own lawyer -- recognized by the Supreme Court in 1975 -- is a constitutional paradox, because it entitles a defendant to what no reasonable person would want: the ability to compromise his own interests in court. But giving that right to the seriously mentally ill is a cruel joke, akin to handing a loaded gun to someone known to be suicidal. Executing people with serious mental illnesses is, in any event, a barbaric practice. In Mr. Panetti's impending execution, Texas will be killing a man who is not merely indisputably delusional but who may be on death row precisely because of his illness -- because his thought disturbances prevented a jury from hearing the case that he should be spared. Such justice is unbefitting even Texas.

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Halliburton to Return $27.4 Million to Government

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page E01

The Defense Department said yesterday that Halliburton Co. will reimburse the government $27.4 million for possible overcharges for food services in Iraq and Kuwait.

The amount includes $16 million that a Halliburton unit may have overcharged for meals it never served at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, as well as $11.4 million in previously undisclosed overcharges at four other dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq.

Lt. Col. Rose-Ann L. Lynch , a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Defense Department auditors also are reviewing billing at 53 other dining facilities that the Halliburton unit, KBR, operates through subcontractors in Iraq and Kuwait.

She said the possible overbillings, which took place over nine months last year, were discovered "during routine evaluation of contract costs submitted for payment."

Halliburton said on Monday that it would temporarily delay billing the government for food services until it can improve counting methods that may have led to the overcharging.

"KBR has a responsibility to clients and it is important to understand that this is not any sort of admission," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said yesterday in an e-mail. "It is an agreement to temporarily delay billing while KBR and the government jointly determine the best way to estimate how many meals to prepare."

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CBS Says Grammys Won't Become the Anatomy Awards
By Lisa de Moraes

Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page C01

Listen up Christina Aguilera, Britney, Lil' Kim and Pink: Should you decide to bare your breasts at Sunday's live Grammy Awards ceremony in a show of support for Janet Jackson's right to freedom of expression, it will not be seen on national television.

And Justin Timberlake, honey, if you suffer another of those fits of "wardrobe malfunction" that cause you to rip clothes off women, CBS is there to save you from yourself.

The network announced yesterday that its engineers are working overtime to make sure they will have the technology in place to zap all clothing-challenged moments from Sunday's trophy show. Or any other non-broadcastable action on the part of performers and presenters, for that matter.

Using a five-second delay, CBS has long had the ability to cut audio from the live Grammy broadcast, which it has aired since 1973.

Starting Sunday, an "enhanced delay" of still undetermined length, combined with new technology, will allow for split-second video editing as well, designed to prevent another of those revealing moments that made CBS's telecast of the MTV-produced AOL TopSpeed Super Bowl Halftime Show so memorable.

At the end of their halftime performance, Timberlake reached across Jackson's chest, ripped off the right cup of her bodice and revealed her breast.

CBS Executive Vice President Marty Franks told The TV Column yesterday that the network began working on this video editing system almost immediately after Jackson's appearance Sunday night.

He and CBS CEO Leslie Moonves "spoke about 12:30 [a.m.] on Super Bowl Monday, and he asked me to see if there was some way to figure out how to do this for the Grammys," Franks said.

Asked to explain in nontechnical terms how it works, Franks said, "It's a combination of computer software and very high-tech tape machines." He added, "It's very expensive -- the tab is still running."

The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which puts on the Grammy Awards, said yesterday that Jackson and Timberlake will appear on the show, despite their Super Bowl stunt, which provided Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell with the rocket fuel he needed to power his Pro-Consolidation but Anti-Smut Machine.

"Janet is still scheduled to be a presenter and Justin is still scheduled to be a performer," NARAS representative Ron Roecker said, according to a Reuters report.

However, when asked whether the two singers will actually appear, sources close to the situation said, "It's a long week." A CBS rep refused to confirm that J&J were still on board.

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Doubt grows over preventive war
Intelligence lapses over Iraq raise skepticism among allies and others about the Bush doctrine on when to wage war.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - As questions mount around the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the intelligence that was used to justify going to war, one of the first casualties may be the Bush administration's doctrine of preventive war.

That is just one way the controversy over the use of intelligence to justify war is likely to impact US foreign policy. Already the wisdom of waging war against a gathering but unexercised threat is being questioned in Congress and among weapons experts.

But the failure to find weapons and the clouds over prewar intelligence are also feeding US allies' doubts on the rationale for war, and solidifying opposition to the administration's stated right to preemptive war.

"People who opposed this war feel vindicated and will feel even stronger about the risks of the doctrine of preventive war, that you have to base it on intelligence that may be flimsy, inaccurate, or can be interpreted in different ways," says Jens Van Scherpenberg at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

Calling the last year "difficult for everybody," a European diplomat in Washington says, "We see validation of the importance of inspections, the priority of cooperation, and we will emphasize that as the right way to go forward." Still, to the extent the administration holds to its first-strike policy even in the absence of a proven, imminent threat, defining differences between the US and some allies will continue.

"There is a lasting schism" between the US and some of its allies over the use of military force, fed by specific differences over defense spending, adds Mr. Van Scherpenberg. But he and others in antiwar countries say the underlying differences, while too deep to go away, will be played down in coming months as Europe seeks to repair relations with Washington, and Washington continues to press for international help in postwar Iraq.

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This 21st-Century Japan, More Contented Than Driven
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Many Americans — reared in a nation whose identity is inseparable from its No. 1 status — find it hard to grasp why there is not greater unhappiness in Japan, which fell from such heights and has yet to pull itself decisively out of the slump. But Japan has now grown into a mature society that is trying to forge forward with its own standards.

Hidehiko Sekizawa, executive director of the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, conducts a comprehensive survey on attitudes toward life every two years. His findings show that people are focusing on enjoying life and are happy despite the long slump.

There is strong nostalgia nowadays for the Edo Period, the feudal era preceding the last century and a half of rapid change. While the Edo Period had many social problems, people are now remembering it as a time of stability and great cultural vitality.

"People want to return to an era where life was perceived to be more enjoyable," Mr. Sekizawa said.

The feeling is noticeably strong among the young. If the icon of the 1980's was the "salaryman" who sacrificed his private life for his company, today's icon is the "freeter" — the young Japanese who take odd jobs to make just enough money to enjoy their personal interests or choose their way of life. The stress of competing inside Japan, let alone as part of a country competing against a visibly, and to some, frighteningly, hungry China, is furthest from their minds.

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The Debt No One Wants to Talk About
By DAVID M. WALKER

…The truth is that the United States faces a long-term deficit that will only increase as the baby boomers retire. The resulting fiscal imbalance will test the nation's spending and tax policies. Washington's recent difficulty in maintaining fiscal restraint has not helped matters.

The fiscal 2005 budget President Bush released on Monday includes a deficit of $364 billion. Although the administration and the Congressional Budget Office show declining deficits in the years ahead, and an improving economy will reduce deficits further, the long-term projected gap is now so large that we will not be able simply to grow our way out of the problem. Difficult choices are inevitable.

But the current system of federal financial reporting provides an unrealistic and even misleading picture of the government's overall performance and financial condition. Few agencies adequately show the results they are getting with the taxpayer dollars they spend, and too many significant government commitments and obligations are not fully disclosed.

Particularly troubling are the many big-ticket items that taxpayers will eventually have to reckon with, including Social Security, Medicare, civilian and military retirement and health care benefits, and veterans' medical care. Despite their serious implications for future budgets, tax burdens and spending flexibility, these future obligations get short shrift in the government's financial statements and in budgetary deliberations.

The federal government's gross debt — the accumulation of its annual deficits — was about $7 trillion last September, which works out to about $24,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. But that number excludes items like the gap between the government's Social Security and Medicare commitments and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the burden for every American rises to well over $100,000.

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Sex, Lies and Bush on Tape
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Using this week's White House budget methodology, I can project that if you just keep reading this column, your assets will increase by $28,581 and you will lose 12.42 pounds. And this column is projected to end after just one paragraph.

Well, so much for White House projections.

If we're serious about confronting threats to our way of life, we don't have to hunt them in the caves of eastern Afghanistan. We can find a serious threat in the West Wing of the White House as the Bush administration charts its fiscal policy.

President Bush's budget policies have mortgaged America, yet instead of repairing the damage, he is intensifying the harm by trying to make his tax cuts permanent. And this week he presented a budget that is so dazzlingly deceitful it does not even attempt to include the bills for our presence in Iraq.

Conservatives have traditionally been the conscience of America's checkbook (and, to their credit, many now are screaming). If Mr. Bush were a genuine conservative, he might cut taxes, but he would cut spending to match. If he were an honest liberal, he might increase spending, and taxes as well. Instead, the president is inviting us out for a wild night on the town and leaving us — and our children — with the bill.

…"That night, Bush stood before the nation . . .," recounts the book, "The Price of Loyalty," "and said something that knowledgeable people in the U.S. government knew to be false." I've excerpted that speech at www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds (look for Posting No. 266), and it makes painful reading.

In the 2000 campaign, I covered Mr. Bush a bit, so this week I dug out tapes of his speeches. On those tapes, he claims that he will leave the great bulk of the surplus intact: "My plan is to take a portion of the projected surplus, a little over $1 trillion of the $4 trillion surplus, and give it to the people who pay the bills."

The reality is that under Mr. Bush, surpluses have completely vanished. Granted, he had help from a bad economy. But spending has increased more rapidly than under any president since Lyndon Johnson, and Mr. Bush refuses to pay for it. I've seen that story before — in Argentina.

Now the I.M.F. has warned that the U.S. budget and trade deficits are a threat to the global economy.

A new study from the Brookings Institution, "Restoring Fiscal Sanity," estimates that by 2014 the average family's income will be $1,800 lower because of slower economic growth caused by these budget deficits. A family with a 30-year $250,000 mortgage will be paying $2,000 more per year in interest costs alone.

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Powell and White House Get Together on Iraq War
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The White House and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell scrambled on Tuesday to present a united front about the war in Iraq, a day after Mr. Powell said he was not sure if he would have recommended an invasion had he known Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of banned weapons.

After telling The Washington Post in an interview on Monday that the absence of weapons stockpiles "changes the political calculus" about whether to go to war, Mr. Powell told reporters on Tuesday, in comments coordinated with the White House, that "the bottom line is this: the president made the right decision."

Mr. Powell's comments to The Post clearly irritated some White House officials, who have complained before that Mr. Powell sometimes strays from the official line on national security issues. Repeating a line that Mr. Powell had used to describe himself during a dispute with the White House on another topic three years ago, one administration official said on Tuesday that the secretary was "a little forward on his skis again."

Mr. Powell's comments focused attention again on the longstanding foreign policy conflicts within the administration that have often pitted Mr. Powell against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Powell's statements highlighted the contrast between his sometimes measured support for the war and the more full-throated justifications offered by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.

"There definitely appears to be some jockeying going on around here," said one administration official. "There's a high degree of frustration and it does creep out."

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February 03, 2004

Smokers used to get warnings about emphysema and bronchitis. Nowadays we get warned about Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD, but it's the same thing with a sexier name.

This research (the full report of which hides behind a free registration to MedScape) was an attempt to understand why there are fewer COPD cases per hundred among Black folks than among white folks.

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Smoking Patterns in African Americans and Whites With Advanced COPD

Wissam M. Chatila, MD, FCCP; Walter A. Wynkoop, MD; Gwendolyn Vance, RN; Gerard J. Criner, MD, FCCP
CHEST 125(1):15-21, 2004. © 2004 American College of Chest Physicians
Posted 01/28/2004

Abstract and Introduction

Abstract

Background: The prevalence and mortality associated with COPD increases with age, with higher rates observed in whites than African Americans. Causes and explanations for smoking-related racial differences on the respiratory system have not been determined.
Objective: To investigate racial differences in smoking patterns and lung function in patients with advanced COPD.

Design: Retrospective record review of patients with advanced COPD.

Setting: Outpatient pulmonary clinic in a tertiary-care urban hospital.

Patients: One hundred sixty patients with advanced COPD (80 African Americans and 80 whites) referred for either lung volume reduction surgery or transplantation evaluation.

Data Collection: Demographics, smoking profile, pulmonary function testing, arterial blood gases, and exercise stress tests were compared between African-American and white patients.

Results: Despite comparable pulmonary function, African Americans were younger at presentation and had lower overall pack-years of smoking than whites (58 ± 10 years vs 62 ± 8 years, and 44 ± 23 pack-years vs 66 ± 31 pack-years, respectively; p < 0.05 [mean ± SD]). Additionally, African Americans started smoking later in life than whites (18 ± 5 years vs 16 ± 4 years). Similarly, women presented at a younger age and smoked less compared to men (58 ± 9 years vs 62 ± 9 years, and 49 ± 28 pack-years vs 61 ± 29 pack-years, respectively; p < 0.05), without showing any difference in lung function or exercise performance.

Conclusion: Among susceptible patients with advanced COPD, African Americans and women seem more prone to the effects of tobacco smoke than their counterparts.

Introduction

Despite narrowing differences in smoking patterns between races and genders,^[1,2] the prevalence of COPD remains higher in whites than in African Americans, and in men than women.^[3] In addition, whites and men continue to have higher mortality rates than African Americans and women; however, both latter groups appear to be catching up to their counterparts.^[3] In 1962, Murphy and colleagues^[4] were the first to suggest that COPD is a disease of the "white male." Since then, many large epidemiologic surveys^[3,5] have confirmed that the prevalence and attributable mortality in COPD is greater in whites and men. Despite these observations, population-based studies have not shown a difference in the rates of decline in FEV₁ between African Americans and whites when adjusted for pack-years of smoking.^[6] A limitation of these population-based studies is the observation that only 10 to 15% of regular smokers acquire COPD. To our knowledge, no studies have examined racial differences in cigarette smoking exposure in a group of susceptible smokers.

Possible explanations for smoking-related racial differences on the respiratory system are currently obscure. Previously published epidemiologic studies^[3,6] do not discriminate whether the observed differences are due to genetic differences in susceptibility to smoking, or other confounding factors such as differences in smoking behavior (debut, amount, duration), environmental exposure, or physiologic differences (eg, smaller lung volumes). More importantly, selection and survivor effects could bias estimated COPD racial prevalences. Smaller numbers of African Americans in studies,^[7] which in part may be due to their greater attrition from the increased smoking-related cardiovascular/cancer mortality, might have lead to an underestimation of the prevalence of COPD and, thus, to the observed wider racial gap.

If the higher COPD prevalence rates found in whites compared to African Americans are secondary to whites being more susceptible to the adverse effects of cigarette smoking, then one would expect whites to have more severe COPD. At our center, however, which treats a relatively large number of African-American patients with COPD, our experience indicates that African Americans present with as severe manifestations of COPD as their white counterparts. Accordingly, we performed a retrospective review of medical records of patients with advanced COPD referred to our urban teaching hospital with the aim to investigate racial differences in smoking patterns and lung function.

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Texas Pharmacist Refuses Pill for Rape Victim

DALLAS (Reuters) - A Texas pharmacist was disciplined for refusing to fill the prescription of a rape victim seeking a morning-after pregnancy-prevention pill, the pharmacy chain that employed the man said on Tuesday.

Eckerd Corp. said the pharmacist considered it a violation of morals to give a rape victim, with a valid prescription, a pill that would prevent her from getting pregnant due to the sexual assault.

The incident took place on Jan. 23 at an Eckerd drug store in the Dallas suburb of Denton.

Eckerd spokeswoman Joan Gallagher said she could not give details of the disciplinary actions, but that the pharmacist had violated company policy.

"A pharmacist is obliged to fill a prescription if it is a valid, legal prescription," she said. "We do not make exceptions for any moral, religious or ethical concerns with regard to filling the prescription."

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Clay Shirky muses on what it was about what the Dean campaign did right and why it made everyone he had unshakeable support. It's a good read.

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Exiting Deanspace

I wanted to wait ‘til today’s polls opened to post this, because I wanted it to be a post-mortem and not a vivisection. What follows is a long musing on the Dean campaign’s use of internet tools, but it has a short thesis: the hard thing to explain is not how the Dean campaign blew such a huge lead, but rather why we ever thought that lead actually existed. Dean’s campaign didn’t just fail, it dissolved on contact with reality.

The answer, I think, is that we talked ourselves, but not the voters, into believing. And I think the way the campaign was organized helped inflate and sustain that bubble of belief, right up to the moment that the voters arrived.

Take this as an early entry in a conversation everyone who was watching Dean’s use of the internet should contribute to: what went right? what went wrong? and what to do differently next time? We should do this now because ‘next time’ still includes a passel of primaries and then, most importantly, the general election. If we have the conversation now, we won’t have to wait til the few uncontested House races of 2006 to see if we learned anything.

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I don't think I'll apply for the MT version 3 alpha program. It's not like I haven't got enough juggling to do, plus I suspect the commenting will be light for the next few weeks.

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This was originally posted as part of the Racism Series, a link to which is available in the Best of P6 box.

Don't worry, I'll get around to posting new stuff this month.

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The Root of the Resistance

I've already pointed out that I feel our physical, animal nature is a prime determinant of our needs, capabilities and reactions and that I'm a fan of the way Maslow described what motivates humans. I need to quickly review Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to make sure we're on the same page. The following text has been stolen from Educational Psychology Interactive:


That the deficiency needs must be met first is critical to understanding the position Black people find themselves in today. The third and fourth needs are social in nature, the first and second (because we are social) are best fulfilled in a social context; though they are possible to fulfill as individuals, instinct compels us to seek out social means of doing so. This means the primary requirements of living successfully as a human are only (belongingness and esteem) or best (physiological and security) met as an integrated (in the non-sociological sense) part of a functioning society. Only then is it reasonable to expect a human to grow into the pursuit of knowledge, beauty, wisdom and all the higher aspects of human nature made possible by intelligence.

Unfortunately, potential members of a group do not get to simply attach themselves to the group. Africans in America, and their descendant African Americans, have sought to do exactly that and found it outside our power to compel the mainstream to grant us full membership in American society (which, unless you're in absolute denial, you will admit is more than a matter of legal status). Unreasonable people have actively resisted that inclusion… though in strict terms I'm hard pressed to call it unreasonable because that inclusion would change the nature of the social "laws of nature," which would affect them much like changing the rate of gravitational acceleration would change the life of your average bird. Reasonable people (and those who would appear reasonable) place a requirement on membership—Black people must demonstrate proficiency ("be qualified") in exactly those areas Maslow says cannot be approached successfully outside the context of the membership we seek.

This is the crux of the dilemma Black folks find ourselves in, and its repercussions are legion.

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February 02, 2004

In May 1997, The Atlantic Monthly published an article by Randall Kennedy titled, "My Race Problem -- And Ours." In it he sought to explain why he feels the entire idea of racial solidarity is absurd.

WHAT is the proper role of race in determining how I, an American black, should feel toward others? One response is that although I should not dislike people because of their race, there is nothing wrong with having a special -- a racial -- affection for other black people. Indeed, many would go further and maintain that something would be wrong with me if I did not sense and express racial pride, racial kinship, racial patriotism, racial loyalty, racial solidarity -- synonyms for that amalgam of belief, intuition, and commitment that manifests itself when blacks treat blacks with more solicitude than they do those who are not black.

Some conduct animated by these sentiments has blended into the background of daily routine, as when blacks who are strangers nonetheless speak to each other -- "Hello," "Hey," "Yo" -- or hug or give each other a soul handshake or refer to each other as "brother" or "sister." Other manifestations are more dramatic. For example, the Million Man March, which brought at least 500,000 black men to Washington, D.C., in 1995, was a demonstration predicated on the notion that blackness gives rise to racial obligation and that black people should have a special, closer, more affectionate relationship with their fellow blacks than with others in America's diverse society.

At the time I was active on their discussion board, and the article generated quite a bit of talk. Professor Kennedy was to join the forum. I posted the following in response to his article and he never showed up…can't say whether or not there's a connection there.

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Your Race Problem - And Mine
Copyright 1997 Earl Dunovant

I am a Black partisan--one of those people that actively choose to accept racial kinship. My position is simple and straightforward-every event that affects Black people affects me. Therefore there is a connection between myself and other Black people that I must respond to in some fashion. What the mainstream thinks of Black people in general becomes my starting point in any new situation. My feelings of kinship with Black folks represents my recognition that my fate is linked to that of everyone else of visible African descent and my feelings of loyalty represents my recognition that the fate of everyone else of visible African descent is linked to mine.

In mainstream examinations of African-American issues, I expect to see the "-American" part acknowledged and the "African" part downplayed, or given a curt nod at best. This is a distinct improvement from the days where Black people lost their lives for trying to claim a small part of the "-American," but still frustrating at times. So when I saw Randall Kennedy's article "My Race Problem-And Ours", I approached it with what I hope was an open mind. I hoped a Yale law professor would be able, at last, to coherently explain to the mainstream the what and why of Black people's recent tendency to aggregate.

In a way I was impressed with the article. The message of the article, far more than the weak justification for his position, demonstrated in an almost self-referential way that he does indeed eschew pride in, and reject kinship with Black people. Unfortunately, for the Black people under discussion he misses the point entirely. Also, I don't find his argument rigorous enough.

The first problem is the critical one. Mr. Kennedy says:

"Neither racial pride nor racial kinship offers guidance that is intellectually, morally or politically satisfactory."

I grant that. They are not guides. They are platforms to stand on. Consider Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of motivations:

1. physiological
2. security and safety
3. love and feelings of belonging
4. competence, prestige, and esteem
5. self-fulfillment

According to Maslow, one must be substantially secure in each stage in order to successfully begin work on the next because each stage builds on the previous one. I submit that the quest for intellectual, moral or political satisfaction is a stage four motivation that one can only indulge in after achieving a certain amount of physical and psychological security. Getting past level three is difficult for everyone, but Black people get stuck more frequently due to the emotional impact of environmental factors. When you're the Black person everyone is surprised to see, when your mere presence makes folks nervous, each startled expression can chip away at your feelings of belonging.

The current social attitude toward Black people, translated into Maslow's terms, seems to be "If you embrace America as it is, you'll have your stage three needs satisfied and can move on to stage four." The problem with this is that feelings of belonging are not self generated-America would have to embrace Black people back. Until America is ready to do this, it is fruitless at best and foolish at worst to expect Black people to release the things that do embrace them. At any rate, this missing of the point was the first strike against my personally accepting his argument as valid.

Mr. Kennedy also says:

"I eschew racial pride because of my conception of what should properly be the object of pride for an individual"

Had it rested here, I would have accepted his statement as a postulate of his system of thought. However, he invoked a historical Black leader by scissoring a few words out of the context of his life (common practice since it was so effective using Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's words).

I confess that my reaction to his invoking Frederick Douglass in this way was a bit emotional, as Douglass is among my personal heroes. Still, it is as difficult for me to imagine someone familiar with his life and work doubting Frederick Douglass' pride in what and who he was, as it is to imagine Dr. King as a mere dreamer of peace.

His next point, that inherited status is often a substitute for personal achievement, is unfortunately positioned--in the midst of an article about the attitude that Black people should take toward each other, the jibe strikes one as specifically targeting Black people. However, judicious reading shows that he makes reference to "people" without racial delimiters. Therefore the implied insult to those that "made inherited group status an honorific credential" applies as well to The Daughters of the Confederacy, B'nai B'rith, the snobby country club set, everyone who ever wanted their daughter to marry someone of the same religion and/or ethnic background, any college admission board that gives any benefit whatsoever to children of alumni, every participant in a St. Patrick's Day or Columbus Day parade, and everyone survives off inherited wealth. At any rate, I enjoyed reading the paragraph, even though as an unnecessary aside it did nothing to advance to point of the article. It showed the brother can still play the dozens.

Unfortunately, by attempting in the last paragraph of the section to justify his eschewal of racial pride, Mr. Kennedy returns it to the realm of things one must judge rather than simply accept. He says he recognizes "an important virtue in this assertion of the value of black life," but cannot support it because:

"within some of the forms this assertiveness has taken are important vices-including the belief that because of racial kinship blacks ought to value blacks more highly than others."

Even assuming, as Mr. Kennedy does, this belief to be a vice, the possibility of the vice developing is not reason to abandon racial pride but merely those forms of it that are subject to the problem.

I must also weigh vice against virtue, and let me be clear that it will be a partisan judgment. America is, and always has been, a pastiche of cultures. Assuming Black people's pride, kinship and loyalty caused them to aggregate in the fashion of other ethnics, America should survive. Black people are dealt with in that fashion now anyway. For Black people in particular, it makes it simpler to resolve stage four issues (competence, prestige, and esteem) if positive ideas are associated with the group through which they resolve our stage three issues. Though my judgment will change if conditions change, on balance I must judge racial pride to be less damaging to Black people, and therefore to America, than the lack of it. Strike two.

Mr. Kennedy begins the section "Racial Kinship" with:

"I reject the notion of racial kinship. I do so in order to avoid its burdens and to be free to claim… the unencumbered self."

He then quotes Michael Sandel's description of unencumbered self as "unencumbered by aims and attachments it does not choose for itself," and "[f]reed from the sanctions of custom and tradition and inherited status, unbound by moral ties antecedent to choice… installed as sovereign, cast as the author of the only obligations that constrain."

As a Black man I can certainly feel the attraction of this unencumbered self. It is a goal in keeping with the American worship of the individual. However, as a rational man, I must question the possibility of the self so described. Humans… or at least the bodies we live in… are social animals. As such, we must have socially defined aims and attractions, no matter what our personal desires on the issue. And as a practical matter as long as one lives in a society, what one chooses, not to mention what one chooses from, is largely determined by culture and tradition. Sadly, I must relegate the unencumbered self to the same category as the unicorn-a fabulous beast with magical powers that looks like it ought to be able to exist.

It is true that often we receive unexpected gain from attempting the impossible, so perhaps pursuit of the unencumbered self could result in some benefit. I find it difficult, however, to be sanguine about freedom from "moral ties antecedent to choice." When you choose your morality, on what is the choice based? If choice is made based on desire (which it must be, as needs are not optional and therefore not a choice) and given freedom from "moral ties antecedent to choice," I can see no way of avoiding the conclusion that fulfilling one's desire is the highest moral act possible. All your morals will be bent to that end. That idea flies in the face of almost every religious and philosophical teaching in human history… though it's totally in keeping with the market philosophy at the heart of American (hence, world) culture.

Therefore, I do not need to further defend my feelings of racial kinship because of Mr. Kennedy's analysis. Instead, I find on rational grounds that rejecting racial kinship does not achieve the goal Mr. Kennedy set forth. Only one of Mr. Kennedy's two stated requirements (personal absolution from the burdens such kinship brings) is achieved, as the other goal (the unencumbered self) is impossible for a social animal to attain. I also reject it on visceral grounds: my distaste for the necessary elevation of desire over morality to which the unencumbered self must lead. Strike three.

I will not, however, comment on the moral judgments Mr. Kennedy uses to rout the subsequent array of straw men without knowing the nature of the desire that led him to this morality. I am willing to suspend moral judgment on those conclusions because in the end Mr. Kennedy seems quite the reasonable man. He makes a number of fair observations. For instance, the fact that "black problems" are actually "our problems" is a message that needs to be heard correctly by everyone who suddenly found themselves included when we changed "black" to "our". The behaviors he models based on his principles are quite acceptable in their net effect, so far as they go. The problem is that a person that rejects morality antecedent to choice cannot logically object to any choice on moral grounds.

I suspect Mr. Kennedy, a self-avowed liberal intellectual, of noble intentions in writing the article. I believe he intended to build a case for a viewpoint that does not specify race yet renders racial justice. But to suggest Black people should actually hold these positions is, I believe, a bad idea… telling people that Black folks need to do something no other ethnic group has been called on to do, i.e., become a nation of unencumbered selves, is not the way to convince them Black people are just like them, only darker.

In the final section of the article, "Beyond Racial Loyalty," Mr. Kennedy anticipates in response to his position a statement that Black people must stand together because all the other ethnic groups are doing so. And rightly so, as he conceded earlier in the article:

"currently the dominant form of racial kinship in American life, the racial kinship that has been the best organized and most destructive, is the racial kinship mobilized in behalf of whites"

it is difficult to dispute the idea. Such a concession begs the question, is it not just to assist those who are victim of this irrational condition? In the end, Mr. Kennedy responds to the challenge he foresees to his thesis with a simple statement of faith, justified by

• his fear of a stultifying effect within the race (as, by his observation, racial pride tends to stunt intellectual development). The calls for loyalty made by Black nationalists (and he names Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan) implies to him a threat of punishment against those Blacks who don't toe the line. Yet I don't think a single case of either these men or their organizations initiating violence can be documented. And the hyperbole of Mr. Kennedy's phrasing not withstanding, all groups have the concept of group loyalty. Though one may object to the reason these groups assembled, logically one can not object to their acting like all other groups once they have assembled. Finally, as a point of personal curiosity, I would like to know which white purveyors of racial pride he would point out as stunted intellects.
• his observation that the most admirable efforts to overcome racial oppression in the United States did not "merely" seek the advancement of a particular group. Assuming he is correct, that does not mean that the most effective efforts to overcome racial oppression in the United States did not "merely" seek the advancement of a particular group. By way of example, I direct your attention to the Irish, the Jewish and Chinese peoples. It also disregards the tremendous efforts of Black people before the Civil War to secure their own freedom, to buy the freedom of their spouses and relatives, to escape, to write and teach and explain the evils of slavery, often at the risk of identifying themselves well enough that they could legally be pressed back into slavery.

Since the response Mr. Kennedy anticipates is the starting point from which his argument was unable to dissuade me, I too will close with a simple statement of faith based on several observations. He made two observations and one statement of faith; I will make four observations and two statements of faith:

• In the USofA, one has power to the extent that one has a constituency (Ralph Reed has discovered both edges of that particular sword).
• Among self-identified social groups, only Black people have inoffensiveness and support of other social groups as a requirement for official representatives of the group.
• As long as Africans and their descendants have been on this continent, all they have ever sought was freedom to join the cultural and political body of the mainstream. They have never sought to take that which others claimed, but merely to participate in decisions that affect their property and seek their own destiny unobstructed.
• So far, every time an identifiable group of Black people has made significant progress toward that goal, there was a backlash from some other group.

Based on these observations, I do not believe ending race loyalty in the mainstream has been made to seem attractive to the mainstream (in fact, I don't believe it has been discussed), so I do not believe it will happen. And I believe ending race loyalty would be attractive to Black people… as long as we don't have to go first, because we can least afford to be wrong.

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Here, have some intellectual and political cotton candy.

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Nude Wrestling? Good Practice for Politics
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: February 2, 2004

WASHINGTON

It will be a field day for conspiracy theorists: President Bush and Senator John Kerry are not only graduates of Yale but also fellow members of the university's most elitist secret society, Skull and Bones. So if Mr. Kerry becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the 2004 campaign will represent the first skull-to-skull match-up of Bonesmen in history.

Does this mean anything at all?

Well, aside from an opportunity to revisit all the weird, unsubstantiated but widely told stories about Skull and Bones initiation rites — like nude wrestling or having to recite one's sexual history while lying in a coffin — it suggests that the old East Coast blue-blood establishment may not be as washed up as people imagine.

Second, it raises tantalizing questions: Did Mr. Kerry, class of '66, and Mr. Bush, class of '68, know each other at Yale? More to the point, did they ever participate together in a Skull and Bones rite in the club's windowless crypt?

The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second question is no, at least not as far as anyone knows or admits.

"Rest assured, there are no pictures of them dancing together naked," said David Wade, Mr. Kerry's spokesman.

The two crossed paths at Yale, where Mr. Kerry was the ambitious president of the Yale Political Union and Mr. Bush was the somewhat less ambitious president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, otherwise known as the Animal House.

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A Vital Bloc, Realizing Its Power, Measures Its Suitors
By SARAH KERSHAW

HOENIX, Feb. 1 — The Arizona primary was less than 48 hours away, and John Ramos, a 38-year-old Mexican-American Democrat who voted for the first time in 2000, had still not made up his mind.

"As a Democrat, I really am not thrilled," said Mr. Ramos, who runs a small construction company in South Phoenix with his wife. "I think a lot of us are the same way. I just don't see a real front-runner that I'm totally happy with."

With time running out, the Democratic presidential candidates are heavily courting the surging number of Hispanics in Arizona and New Mexico who are about to go to the polls in what some have labeled Latino Super Tuesday.

The potential power of the Hispanic vote is clear: In Arizona, 25 percent of residents are now Hispanic; in New Mexico, 42 percent are Hispanic.

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Haitian President Rescinds Ban on Marches
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 1, 2004

Filed at 11:55 p.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Tens of thousands of government opponents marched peacefully Sunday to demand President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's resignation, a day after the embattled leader rescinded restrictions on street protests and vowed to implement measures aimed at ending the country's unrest.

The protesters walked nearly 10 miles from a park in suburban Petionville to the capital, protected by a contingent of police.

On Saturday, Aristide rescinded a police order outlawing marches in Port-Au-Prince after a one-day meeting with Caribbean leaders in Jamaica, who put forth measures to end a three-year political impasse in Haiti.

Sunday's demonstration was organized by the Democratic Platform, a coalition of opposition political parties and civil society groups.

``We're fed up with Aristide. I'm marching to demand his resignation and to say we have to prepare his succession,'' said law student Paul Jean, 23.

At Saturday's meeting, Aristide also agreed to disarm politically affiliated gangs, reform the nation's 5,000-member police force and release prisoners who have been detained since a Dec. 5 protest at Haiti's university.

He also said he would work with the opposition to appoint a new prime minister and expressed support for a new governing council made up of members of his government, the opposition and civil society.

Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said most of the reforms should be carried out within four to six weeks. He declined to outline consequences if Haiti doesn't comply, but said leaders haven't ruled out sanctions.

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Liberia Needs $500 Million, Report Says
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: February 2, 2004

DAKAR, Senegal, Feb. 1 — Liberia will need nearly $500 million in stabilization aid after 14 years of nearly relentless war, the United Nations and the World Bank reported last week in preparation for a donors conference in New York this week.

Advocacy groups have urged that particular attention be paid to disarming and reintegrating an estimated 50,000 former soldiers, a great many of them children, with a warning that a failure to invest heavily in peacemaking in Liberia would bring further bloodshed to West Africa.

The International Reconstruction Conference on Liberia, to be held at United Nations headquarters in New York on Thursday and Friday, is to bring together officials from international lending institutions and donor countries to discuss aid efforts.

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I've been looking for a good web statistics analysis package. I had just decided on AWStats, an open source package, and found it already installed.

Webalizer gets a severe beat down.

Among the things I found interesting, especially given that it's only half the month (we restarted on the 15th):

- 5,413 unique visitors, 8,522 visits, 18,549 page loads
- two IP addresses actually access the site more than I do
- Bloglines hit the site 711 times
- I got 2,392 visitors from the Bloggies nomination page. That means the non-Bloggies traffic is in line with what I'd come to expect
- I got 3 hits each from WebTV and CP/M (!!!) users, 10 from an OS/2 user and almost 8000 from systems that don't identify their OS.
- RSS version 1.0 (1539) and 2.0 (1733) downloads are a statistical dead heat
- How it was done I can't imagine, but it's estimating P6 was added to 111 people's favorites list.
- Slightly less than one quarter of my bandwidth usage was graphics, and this isn't even a particularly graphics-heavy site. I even minimize the size of any graphic I post, so this was a big surprise.

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I'm thinking about giving this a go. Given that comment registration will be a focus of this release, I thought I'd mention it.

Since this is a new install it doesn't look like there's very many comments but there's more comments than posts…if I was able to import the old site (the data file for which yet lurks on the local drive) P6 would look like a more attractive test site than it does right now.

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Alpha Testing to Begin Soon
01.30.2004
We're starting to coordinate our round of alpha testing for Movable Type 3.0 that will occur prior to the public beta. If you're a Movable Type authority, plugin developer, web standards advocate or just a Movable Type user with an active commenting community and want to be involved in this round, please drop us a line using the Movable Type contact form.

In this message, please let us know:

1. What version will you be upgrading from?
2. How many total comments are in your installation? (per weblog)
3. Will you enable comment registration? If no, why not?
4. The URL for your weblog(s)

If you're not comfortable installing alpha software, you may want to wait for the public beta. Our schedule calls for alpha testing to begin in the next two weeks.

Thanks as always for your interest in Movable Type!

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A Rapper Torn Between Cash and Dignity
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

"Just Another Story," which has its premiere on Showtime tonight, recalls the early work of Barton Fink, but that's not all bad.

True, the accusations of self-righteous sentimentalism leveled at fake grit — the kind the Coen brothers savaged in "Barton Fink" — come to mind while you watch "Just Another Story." (How about that self-effacing 40's title?) But the efforts by left-wingers to conjure street stories seem innocuous in hindsight.

Maybe in the day certain Marxist playwrights didn't know the real common man as well as we did, but they still wrote big monologues about how dirty money is, and these continue to bring out the best in American actors and impel audiences to their feet.

In that spirit, "Just Another Story" — with its speechifying and stylization of, oh yes, the common man — is a pleasant but slight movie even as it inspires more than one cringe with its labored ebonics, images of broken chain link and insistent references to cool street themes of the 50's like sex and getting high.

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And the money quote is:
"The realization is growing rapidly among low-income Americans that their interests are not just being neglected but are under assault."

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Vote, and the Pols Will Listen
By BOB HERBERT

COLUMBIA, S.C.

Henry Fernandez, who had come down from Connecticut to join other activists from around the country, was giving instructions to the busload of volunteers.

He said: "The first thing you ask is, `Are you registered to vote?' If they answer yes, don't believe them."

The volunteers laughed. Mr. Fernandez smiled, but he hammered the point home: "Even if they think they're registered, they may have been purged. You can say, `We suggest you register again to make sure your registration is up to date.' "

One of the biggest reasons politicians continue to trample on issues of crucial importance to low-income Americans - issues like jobs, education and access to health care - is the traditionally poor voting habits of that segment of the population. The percentage of people who vote (and the level of attention they get from politicians) rises steadily as you scale the income ladder.

South Carolina is a state with plenty of poor people. The Bush recovery went right by the Palmetto State without even stopping to wave. "It's like a depression down here," said Wilbur Collins, an unemployed factory worker. "The plants are closing so fast, the workers don't have no place to go."

Parts of South Carolina are economic wastelands. The jobless rate in some counties is approaching 20 percent. The median income for blacks, statewide, is less than $15,000, and for whites, less than $30,000.

The anxiety over the absence of work is pervasive, and in some cases heartbreaking. At a forum attended by all of the Democratic presidential candidates except Joseph Lieberman, a woman named Elaine Johnson told Senator John Edwards about her son, Darius. She said she gave Darius three choices: go to college, get a job or join the military. He tried college, but that didn't work out. "He wasn't ready for college," his mother said. He couldn't find a job. So he joined the Army and was killed in Iraq.

Ms. Johnson told Senator Edwards that young people should go into the military because they really want to, not because they've been unable to find a civilian job.

The candidates forum was sponsored by the Center for Community Change, an organization that was started more than three decades ago by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Fund and that is now coordinating the activities of local groups from around the country in an effort to sharply increase the political clout of low-income people. The cornerstone of that effort is an ambitious national campaign to register and mobilize two million new voters.

The idea is to make low-income voters a force too strong to be ignored. A recent study commissioned by the center showed that small increases in voting by low-income people could be decisive in several strategically important states.

Most Americans are unaware of the extent of the suffering that has fallen on the bottom 20 percent or so of the population. Many low-income Americans are leading lives of grim and sometimes painful determination, struggling to survive from one day to the next. The contrast between the real lives of families sinking beneath the weight of economic distress and the headlines that continue to insist that the economy is doing famously is extraordinary.

"There are no jobs that can sustain you," said Fran Ruff, a Columbia resident who has three children and is trying to work her way to a college degree that she hopes will lead to a better life. "We're not living lavishly, but I'd like to be able to buy some snacks and go to a movie once in a while. All you can really get around here is a retail job, or maybe a job in an office. And just as a temp, with no benefits. It's awful."

The realization is growing rapidly among low-income Americans that their interests are not just being neglected but are under assault.

Deepak Bhargava, the center's director, said: "We want to convert the anger that people feel, and the pain, which is really extraordinary in this community, into a sustained campaign of political involvement. And that means registering people to vote and getting them to the polls."

I tagged along as the volunteers filed off the bus behind Mr. Fernandez. Filled with enthusiasm and good cheer, they began knocking on doors in a public housing project, doing their part in a difficult effort to coax enough people out of the shadows to bring change to a government that barely acknowledges their existence.

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I'm starting to get annoyed with headlines that have nothing to do with the meat of the article that follows.

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Stress of Harlem's Rebirth Shows in School's Move to a New Building
By ALAN FEUER

To get a sense of the mixed emotions swirling around the building boom in Harlem, consider the Thurgood Marshall Academy, which is to move this morning to its new home at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 135th Street.

The public school - the first to be built in Harlem in 50 years - has been praised by local residents who marvel at its spacious greenhouse, its wireless classrooms, its library stocked with 20,000 books.

But creating a new home for the school, which is moving from 135th Street and Edgecombe Avenue, has also drawn the criticism of local preservationists who complain that it and a pancake house would be taking over the spot long occupied by a famous Harlem nightclub. In addition, a neighbor's lawsuit maintains that poor construction put a six-foot sinkhole in her basement and destroyed her pipes.

The second renaissance of Harlem has arrived, but it has arrived in a vortex of money, opportunity, new hopes and old resentments. Even as developers have brought in Starbucks, Disney and the Body Shop, not to mention scores of beautifully refurbished brownstones, many residents have cried foul play.

Perhaps no group has felt this shifting tide of anger and excitement more keenly than the Abyssinian Development Corporation, which built the school in partnership with New York City. As the development arm of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which has served the poor in Harlem for 195 years, the corporation has been forced to walk a fine line between bringing economic growth to the community and remaining true to its community roots.

It has not always been easy. Abyssinian has struggled to create a balance between working successfully with big developers like Forest City Ratner while keeping an ear open to local residents who complain of changes in the quality of their life, like rats invading their block.

"People recognize that because we span both worlds, it's exactly why you want to deal with us," said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the pastor at Abyssinian. "People in the community are intelligent. They want you to deal with people who have the large dollars. They just don't want you to sell them out."

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White House Says Congress Underestimated New Medicare Costs
By ROBERT PEAR and EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: February 2, 2004

ASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Bush administration officials said Sunday that Congress had grossly underestimated the cost not only for prescription drug benefits, but also for private health insurance plans that would be offered to elderly people under the new Medicare law.

When President Bush signed the legislation on Dec. 8, the Congressional Budget Office said it would cost $395 billion in the decade from 2004 to 2013. On Thursday, the White House put the cost at $534 billion.

Advertisement


Mr. Bush will try to explain the difference when he submits his budget to Congress on Monday.

The budget is expected to show a record deficit of more than a half-trillion dollars in 2004, up from $375 billion last year. But the president says his policies will reduce the deficit to $364 billion in 2005 and to $237 billion by 2009, fulfilling his vow to cut the deficit in half in five years.

Administration officials said that Mr. Bush's budget would not include the costs of the Iraq war. Nor, they said, would it include the costs of restructuring the alternative minimum tax, estimated at more than $162 billion over five years.

The minimum tax is intended to prevent wealthy people from making excessive use of sophisticated tax breaks, but it will snare millions of people with moderate incomes in the next few years.

Budget analysts say the administration's five-year goal glosses over the much bigger fiscal gap that looms over the next 10 years. The huge upward recalculation of costs for the new Medicare law has little effect in the first five years, because the new drug benefits do not become available until 2006.

The same is true of Mr. Bush's proposal to make his tax cuts permanent. The cost would be more than $1.2 trillion over 10 years, but most of that would come at the end of this decade.

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I just checked the referral log and saw I got about 40 hits in the last hour of people looking for Janet Jackson's Superbowl tit.

LATER: Go here. Get it out of your system.

LATER-LATER: Although the whole situation reminds me of the Halle Berry Oscar kiss.

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February 01, 2004

I've just been thinking about whether or not I want to do the history thing. See, I came to realize years ago that one month of Black history without the context of American history is just as lame as 11 months of American history is without the context of Black history.

What I'd really like to do is a Black Future Month. That would require a level of arrogance beyond my ability to muster, though. I mean, what sense would it make for me to get all proscriptive when I can't know the conditions we (however you choose to define "we") will face? There is a condition we'll have to deal with that is known…the human condition. But that seems to be the most difficult condition of all to understand.

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download MTClient version 1.0

MTClient version 1.0 is here!

MTClient is a Windows-based desktop blogging client designed for Movable Type weblogs. It has several advantages over the web interface for entering posts:

• Intuitive, easy-to-use interface is close enough to the web interface as to be immediately familiar
• Easy text and paragraph markup. Add bold, links, blockquotes, and paragraph alignment quickly and easily
• Support for all Movable Type entry fields including:
  • Title
  • Body
  • Extended Entry
  • Excerpt
  • Keywords
  • Multiple categories
  • Comment Status
  • Send TrackBack pings
  • Edit entry date
• Spell checking (including the title)
• No need to post before assigning multiple categories
• Edit previously-published entries
• Remembers last used category, text filter, allow comments and allow pings settings for each blog account
• Offline operation
• Save posts on your hard drive
• Manage multiple blogs on multiple sites
• It correctly converts between the high ASCII characters that choke most other desktop clients and HTML entities. In fact, it has a pop-up (Ctrl-Alt-E) that pastes Latin-1 entities into a message for you
• File uploads (Ctrl-Alt-U) copies the URL of the uploaded file to the clipboard

MTClient can be downloaded as an installation file or as a zip file. The installation file creates an uninstall. Installation of the zip file can be done by simply extracting it into a directory, and uninstallation can be done by deleting it.

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Dumbing down our past doesn't serve our future
The state has unveiled sweeping changes it wants to make in the K-12 curriculum. A high school history teacher says the plan will gut the subject he has taught for 25 years. But the state superintendent says the new curriculum will make Georgia's schools the best.

By JOSEPH JARRELL

The Georgia Department of Education recently unveiled a draft of the new high school history curriculum. Officials tout it as "world class." It's not. They describe it as "rigorous" and "strengthened." It's neither. With much fanfare, spokesmen say it will raise expectations. It won't.

While presented as part of the state's vision of "leading the nation in improving student achievement," the new curriculum will actually result in nothing more than dumbing down world history and U.S history courses.

…The current high school world history course surveys civilization from the earliest times to the present. The new curriculum calls for teaching only the period from 1500 to the 21st century. Students will no longer study such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, William the Conqueror or Joan of Arc.

"The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" will not be mentioned. The development of democratic government in Greece and the fall of the Roman Empire will be skipped. Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and Confucius are not to be found in the new curriculum. Great civilizations like ancient Egypt will no longer merit study, and the concept of feudalism will not be discussed.

The present 11th-grade U.S. history course covers the Exploration period to today. In the proposed changes, teachers will spend two or three weeks discussing the foundation of our country, with the remaining time devoted to studying events from 1876 to the present. Gone is any mention of the Louisiana Purchase or Lewis and Clark. There will be no discussion of Indian removal and the Trail of Tears.

Students probably will not be remembering the Alamo; it won't be a topic of discussion in Georgia's high schools. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay will be omitted, as well as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad.

Search in vain for discussion of the Civil War; that topic is off limits. In a course entitled "American History," students will not study our most devastating war. There is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years.

Though teachers supposedly have no time to discuss topics essential to understanding our heritage, the curriculum suggests they have their students write a 1920s radio drama. Teachers are also encouraged to assign essays about dating in the Jazz Age and to show segments from "All in the Family," "Good Times" and "Chico and the Man."

I have yet to talk to any teacher who likes the new curriculum, though I am sure there are some who favor the idea of teaching less. The misguided rationale behind the hastily prepared revision is that we teach too much history in high school. The solution? Eliminate 40 percent of the current coursework.

Education officials note that much of the material removed from the high school courses will be taught in grades four through seven. They ignore the fact that elementary and middle school students lack the maturity necessary to grasp the importance of many of the events, people and concepts.

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Drug report barred by FDA
Scientist links antidepressants to suicide in kids
Rob Waters, Special to The Chronicle
Sunday, February 1, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

A scientist at the Food and Drug Administration has been barred from publicly presenting his finding that several leading antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal behaviors among children, according to sources inside the FDA.

FDA medical officer Andrew Mosholder was to present his report Monday at an FDA advisory hearing in Washington that promises to be a contentious affair involving competing medical experts and parents whose children took their own lives while on the medications.

A senior FDA official said the study wouldn't be presented because it wasn't "finalized." But critics fear that the agency's action indicates it is not prepared to take stronger action against the drugs, despite warnings about their possible effects on children.

Mosholder had been asked by the agency to perform a safety analysis of antidepressants after reports emerged this summer of high rates of suicidal behavior among children enrolled in clinical trials for Paxil, Effexor and other antidepressants.

Mosholder, a child psychiatrist, reviewed data from 20 clinical trials involving more than 4,100 children and eight different antidepressants. His preliminary analysis, according to two FDA sources familiar with the report's contents, concluded that there was an increased risk of suicidal behavior among children being treated for depression with Paxil and several other antidepressants.

An initial agenda for Monday's hearing listed Mosholder and his findings, but his presentation was removed from a revised agenda, and Mosholder was told that he could not present his findings at the hearing, one FDA official, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Chronicle.

According to the official, in early January, Russell Katz, director of the division of neuropharmacological drug products, called Mosholder in for a meeting. "He told him that he was sorry, but he wasn't going to be able to present (his report) because he had reached a conclusion and therefore was biased," the official said.

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Judgment: Not Rape-Worthy

And some people question the conventional wisdom that says many, many rape cases go unreported in the US and other countries each year because women are afraid and/or ashamed to come forward.

Look at the quote below, and you'll see why conventional wisdom is right: because a woman can't trust that anyone will treat her with an ounce of humanity after being raped:

Why would he want to rape her? She doesn't look like a day at the beach.

Any ideas who said it? Nope, it's not the defense attorney making a sleazy attempt to exonerate his client.

It's the judge presiding over the rape case. He made that comment after looking at a photograph of the battered victim, shortly before the defendant pleaded guilty to the crime.

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This article is more about the difficulty Europe is having trying to adapt to immigrant cultures than the specific genital mutilation issue.

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Doctor in Italy Tries to Ease Pain of an African Tradition
By FRANK BRUNI

FLORENCE, Italy, Jan. 26 — Week after week, scarred women came to Dr. Omar Abdulcadir's gynecology clinic here for help, and while the ways in which they suffered differed, the reason was always the same.

They were immigrants to Italy who had been subjected back in Africa to a brutal girlhood ritual, common throughout much of the continent, in which part or all of their external genitalia had been sliced off.

Dr. Abdulcadir treated their infections or inflammation and then, earlier this month, took an unusual step — intended, he said, to protect their daughters from the same fate. He publicly proposed that the hospital where he works let him perform a much less severe version of — or alternative to — female genital cutting.

His goal, he said, was to ease the physical toll of a tradition that was not going away.

"My proposal isn't ideal," he said. "But is there a better answer for how to save the children?"

Health officials in the region of Tuscany are seriously considering that question and have yet to reject his proposal, which he says may prevent immigrants from bringing girls under 10 years old to Africa or to illicit places here for more extreme operations. Opponents have denounced the doctor's proposal, calling it an implicit endorsement of an unacceptable practice.

But as an intense debate plays out in Italy, it encompasses more than a medical issue and touches on the same quandary that France confronts in regard to Muslim head scarves and that other European countries face in other ways.

How far can, and should, Europeans bend to accommodate so many new immigrants with such a wide variety of cultural traditions?

Italians' difficulties in coming up with an answer were reflected in the positions articulated by Cristiana Scoppa, a spokeswoman for the Italian Association for Women in Development, an education and advocacy group.

She adamantly opposes Dr. Abdulcadir's proposal. "It would undermine the fight of hundreds of thousands of women throughout Africa who have said that no form of genital manipulation can be permitted and that it symbolizes a culture that submits women to the control of men," she said.

But she also said she opposed a bill in the Italian Parliament that would explicitly criminalize genital cutting. She said that more general laws against violence covered the situation and that a law against genital cutting would represent "a specific attack against a culture."

Marzia Monciatti, a Florence city official, said certain cultural traditions were at such odds with Italian values that accepting them in any form was impossible.

Genital cutting was one example, she said. Marriages of Romanian Gypsy immigrants in their early teens, which also happen here, was another.

But she said she sympathized with efforts by some Muslim immigrants to have crucifixes removed from classroom walls. That, too, has been the recent subject of fervent debate in Italy, where an estimated 85 percent of the population is at least nominally Roman Catholic.

Public buildings, Ms. Monciatti asserted, "are places where people with diverse origins, cultures and traditions gather." That diversity warranted respect, she said.

Female genital cutting is practiced in more than two dozen African countries, as well as in countries with immigrants from those places.

It has become enough of a concern in Europe that Denmark, Britain and Sweden, for example, have enacted laws that expressly criminalize it. Broader laws in other countries also serve to ban the procedure.

Immigrants who want their daughters to submit to it either return briefly to Africa or have the operation done illegally, outside of a licensed medical setting, said Dr. Abdulcadir and other health officials who have studied the issue.

Dr. Abdulcadir said he did not know how frequently that was happening in Italy because most of the 500 new patients he saw yearly were grown women whose genitals were cut in Africa at least a decade ago. He treats them for menstrual problems, swelling and chronic infections, among other problems.

But he said he did indeed know, from his conversations with those patients, most of whom come from Somalia, that a change in country did not necessarily mean a change of thought.

"Whether they live in Italy or Britain of France or America, they don't want to let go of their traditions," he said as he sat in his office on Monday afternoon. "So I'm trying to give them a way to save that tradition."

He developed his proposed alternative in consultation with immigrants from Somalia, which is also where he was born and reared. Female genital cutting there is widespread, and he said his seven sisters, who now live outside Somalia, were all subjected to it.

That alternative, as he described it, would be a piercing of the tip of the clitoris that would draw just a drop or two of blood and would be largely symbolic. He said he would use a topical anesthetic.

But whether immigrant women would actually use the procedure, which would probably not violate any law, remains unclear.

Several opponents said immigrants who were deeply invested in tradition would probably deem the alternative insufficient, while immigrants who were liberated from that tradition would feel no need for a substitute.

Other opponents said his proposal tacitly approved genital cutting.

"We will teach our daughters that this doesn't have to be done and that's that," said Ghanu Adam, an immigrant from Somalia, at a recent news conference in Florence.

There has been an outpouring of reaction to the doctor's proposal, and the force and range of it partly reflect relatively sudden demographic changes in Italy, whose population of about 57 million includes an estimated 1.5 million legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of illegal ones.

Italians are still absorbing that reality and sifting through the related challenges, both practical and philosophical.

A front-page article in the Turin daily La Stampa on Jan. 23 asked why a symbolic alternative to genital cutting would validate that practice any more than the symbolic consumption of the body of Jesus at a Catholic Mass would validate cannibalism.

A front-page article in the Rome daily Il Messaggero on Monday mulled the process of cultural integration, concluding that "to consider people as if they were irredeemable prisoners of their customs" was its own kind of offense.

"This is all difficult, very difficult," said Marisa Nicchi, a regional official in Tuscany, in an interview in Florence on Monday. "It condenses many problems, the biggest of which is how two cultures coexist together."

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My understanding is that economic figures aren't considered sound for at least a year. Does this sort of attempt even make sense?

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Growth Forecasts, Without the Wait
By DANIEL GROSS

Published: February 1, 2004

HE accusation that the Bush administration stifled internal debate on its tax-cut proposals wasn't the only surprise in "The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind's new book about the stormy tenure of Paul H. O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary.

Buried deep in the book was the news that the Treasury Department had developed a new and apparently effective means of forecasting economic growth as it was taking place.

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A Politically Confusing Economy
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Published: February 1, 2004

NOBODY doubts that many Americans will vote their pocketbooks in this year's presidential election. The puzzle is figuring out which party those pocketbooks will favor.

The Democratic candidates, traveling around Arizona, Missouri and other states holding primaries this week, are talking about the millions of layoffs and millions of people who have lost health insurance under President Bush. Senator John Kerry, whose fortunes have risen as the war in Iraq as receded as an issue, has dismissed the recent surge of economic growth as a "Wall Street Bush-league recovery."

Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is showing new confidence that the economy will in fact help his chances come November. His State of the Union address offered a laundry list of Reaganesque optimism that he is likely to repeat in coming months: home ownership, exports and employment are up; inflation and interest rates are down. Mr. Bush even dropped a common refrain from last year in which he had vowed not to be satisfied until everyone looking for work could find it.

"It's difficult to figure out," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, "if the glass is half-empty or half-full."

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Bush to Back Off Some Initiatives for Budget Plan
By ROBERT PEAR and EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — President Bush will propose a $2.3 trillion budget on Monday that backs away from some of the major spending and tax initiatives he supported in prior years, administration officials say.

Constrained by big budget deficits and political realities, the officials said they would retreat on some of their own ideas and oppose others favored by Republicans in Congress.

Mr. Bush will try instead to lock in some of his prior victories, by pressing Congress for a permanent extension of most of the tax cuts adopted in the last three years that were set to expire over the next seven years. He says the tax cuts foster economic growth, which helps create jobs. But many Democrats say the tax cuts are fiscally reckless and widen the gap between rich and poor.

…Under fire from Republicans alarmed at the growth of the federal budget in recent years, Mr. Bush called Saturday for new statutory limits on spending.

"To assure that Congress observes spending discipline, now and in the future, I propose making spending limits the law," Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This simple step would mean that every additional dollar the Congress wants to spend in excess of spending limits must be matched by a dollar in spending cuts elsewhere."

Mr. Bush did not say who would set the limits or how they would be enforced. Unlike similar rules that governed Congress in the 1990's, Mr. Bush's proposal would not impose restrictions on new tax cuts.

While Congress has often exceeded Mr. Bush's spending requests, fiscal conservatives have complained that he has never vetoed a spending bill.

Mr. Bush boasted that he would virtually freeze many domestic programs, with an increase of less than 1 percent for domestic discretionary spending outside of military and homeland security.

But he is proposing an increase of 7 percent for the military, including 13 percent more for missile defense systems; an increase of nearly 10 percent for heightened security against terrorist attacks; and an increase of 11 percent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Those increases and Mr. Bush's determination to make his tax cuts permanent will limit his maneuvering room in other areas.

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