April 24, 2004

Is Kerry's Campaign Colorblind?
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, April 24, 2004; Page A21

John Kerry, oh, John Kerry, say it isn't so. But, alas, apparently 'tis true.

The Massachusetts senator, putative 2004 Democratic standard-bearer and soon-to-be leader of the party that most voting African Americans and other people of color call home, has an innermost circle of advisers that is practically as white as the driven snow. That slam against the Kerry high command appeared last week in "The Inside Edge" column of Carlos Watson on CNN.com.

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Colbert, both you and Carlos need to grow up.

A couple of dark faces aren't enough to make up for all the rest of us being the fulcrum on which the Southern Strategy pivots. I'm not voting for someone because he pays a couple of folks well when he doesn't give a damn about the rest,

and the hat tip goes to N.Z. Bear.

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The crazy week is over but the craziness isn't.

My machine is a functional as necessary, but not everything has been reinstalled yet…I forgot how many programs I use on a regular basis, and how extensively configured much of it is. It's been fun reviewing, installing and disposing but I need a break now, so I thought I'd return to yesterday's last post of the day; specifically to this part of my response:

If you want equal distribution of income, move to a socialist nation and stop trying to push it on the rest of us true Americans.

But I don't want equal distribution of income. Never even suggested it. Maybe now that this slightly crazed week is coming to an end I'll consider writing up a position that will help folks avoid such an assumption…anyone who really wants to, anyway.

Most folks take a pretty theoretical position on politics, economics and such. I think words become symbol, such that "socialist nation" means something (i.e., a place where everyone is allocated the same resources) that does not, has not ever, and (given my understanding of humans) looks to me like it CAN not, exist. People assume because one makes a coherent sequence of words that the sequence has meaning. Any time someone mentions solving social problems by free market methods, they've as much as saddled up a unicorn.

As I said, I don't expect or even want to see an equal distribution of income, nor of wealth. I recognize that much of the material advantage of the European diaspora was the result of people competing for power and influence. Tacky as it may sound said like that, the result has been the potential for freeing the planet from fear…or burying the planet under it.

What I want is the recognition of that option, and a clear explanation of chosen direction.

Somewhat less grandiosely, I'd like to see subsidized subsistence. A floor beneath which one can't fall. Right now, the competition is such that you could starve to death, die of exposure, if you lose…and that simply isn't necessary. Americans should be guaranteed survival in their own nation.

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The first "suicide bomber" in world literature was Samson, and there is not a hint anywhere in the text, or in subsequent theological or popular opinion, that his death (and the thousands of people he took with him -- more, if the text is to be taken literally, than died on 9-11) ought to be thought of as anything but redemptive and heroic.

Judges 16:23-30
Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.

And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.

And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.

And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them.

Now the house was full of men and women;
and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport.

And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left.

And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

…If the President thought of our enemies as so many Samson wannabees, rather than so many Iagos, he would make better predictions about their behavior and therefore have a better chance of influencing the terrorists or thwarting their plans. But intellectual and moral laziness, his besetting sins, tempt him to think of them as self-consciously evil.

Big, big mistake. Some of us may die for it.

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blunted at blunted on reality came across a site that is only 20% complete but shows great promise.

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Culture Matters
Posted by Kieran

There’s often a strong temptation to think that only other people have culture, a mistake of the same kind as thinking only other people speak with an accent. The odd beliefs and attitudes of foreigners are best explained by reference to their culture, whereas our own actions are generally rational and defensible on their own terms.

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Somehow you always manage to forget something in the quest for order. In this case it was archived email. I'm trying to be upset about, but it's not working.

I'm a couple of hours away from full functionality, and then I can take a few days weeding out the useless archives, backups, downloads, etc.

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Most in State Support Some Tax Increases
Higher levies on alcohol, tobacco and the wealthy are suggested to help close the budget gap. Boxer holds a big lead over Jones for Senate.
By Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writer

April 25, 2004

With the state mired in a budget crisis for the fourth year in a row, most Californians support raising taxes and expect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to adopt that approach, a new Los Angeles Times poll has found.

The Republican governor has resisted calls by Democrats to cushion spending cuts with higher taxes, but in recent weeks has hinted at flexibility, given the depth of the state's fiscal troubles.

The poll found that the public strongly favors increasing taxes in at least several areas. Nearly four out of five Californians back higher taxes on cigarettes, and, by the same margin, alcoholic beverages. An overwhelming 69% support raising income taxes on the wealthy. On the question of a sales tax increase, the state is almost evenly split.

The poll also found that Democrat Barbara Boxer is strongly favored for reelection to the U.S. Senate in November. If the election were held today, she would trounce her Republican challenger, former Secretary of State Bill Jones, 54% to 34%. Jones remains largely unknown to most voters.

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Sharon to Bush: Arafat a Target
The premier says Israel will no longer refrain from harming him. The remarks could be a bid to win a party vote on his Gaza pullout plan.
By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

April 24, 2004

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is fighting to shore up support among hard-liners in his Likud Party, said Friday that he had told President Bush during their White House meeting last week that he no longer felt bound by an earlier pledge not to harm Yasser Arafat.

Sharon's threat against the Palestinian Authority president was by no means new, but his remarks seemed designed to imply that he had the tacit approval of the U.S. administration for any action Israel takes against Arafat. Israel recently assassinated two leaders of Hamas.

By issuing his threat against Arafat, Sharon could also be seeking to curry favor with the most conservative elements of Likud before the party's May 2 vote on his proposal to withdraw from settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Polls have suggested only a narrow margin of support for Sharon's initiative among the Likud membership.

In an interview aired Friday night on Israel's Channel 2, Sharon said he informed Bush during their April 14 meeting that a commitment he made at the outset of the 43-month-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict — that Israel would refrain from physically harming Arafat — was no longer valid.

Sharon said he told Bush, "I understand the problems, but I am free of this commitment." He refused to say how the president responded.

Bush administration officials confirmed that the prime minister told the president of the change. But they said the White House continued to oppose the assassination of Arafat.

"Our position hasn't changed," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said. "President Bush reiterated to Prime Minister Sharon in his meeting with him our opposition to the assassination or exile of Arafat."

In the U.S. view, the Israelis' previous pledge is still in effect, he said.

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Bush Promotes Wetlands Plan to Counter Kerry's Attack
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

CORAL GABLES, Fla., April 23 — President Bush made a highly lucrative visit on Friday to the state that made him president, coupling a promotion of his environmental policies in Naples with two fund-raisers for the Republican National Committee that brought in $4.4 million.

It was the second day in a row that Mr. Bush had spoken of a new goal to expand wetlands, but this time he did it in a state, run by his brother Jeb, that is crucial to his re-election prospects. Mr. Bush seized on the wetlands issue this week as a way to blunt criticism from Senator John Kerry, his presumptive opponent for president, who has made the environment a central line of attack against Mr. Bush.

"I know there's a lot of politics when it comes to the environment," Mr. Bush said in a noontime speech under a hot sun at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, with mangrove trees, sable palms and Gov. Jeb Bush at his back.

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Yes, there's a lot of politics when it comes to the environment. Bush himself never speaks of it until it becomes politically contentious.

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World Bank Meeting to Focus on Poverty
By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, April 23 - With the global economic outlook improving, the top economists at the World Bank said the focus of their annual meetings this weekend would be further reducing poverty.

To that end, they will try to persuade wealthy nations to drastically increase their aid to developing nations and bolster programs to halt the spread of AIDS and improve education in poor countries.

Officials of the bank, who are meeting at the same time as officials of the International Monetary Fund, will also wrestle with the Bush administration's desire to see the World Bank and other United Nations affiliates do more to smooth Iraq's transition to a sovereign government. While the handover of power is scheduled for the end of June, the World Bank's president, James D. Wolfensohn, says the bank and other institutions cannot do much more for Iraq until its dangerous security situation improves.

…Using data from the United Nations and the World Bank, Oxfam calculated that seven million cases of H.I.V. could be prevented in the next decade if all children in the world received a complete primary education.

"We knew there was a correlation between the level of education and prevalence rates, but we had no idea how important education was to any prevention program," said Max Lawson, a consultant for Oxfam who helped write the report.

The World Bank has an "Education for All" fast-track program aimed at getting wealthy nations to finance programs that will allow poorer countries to offer primary education for their citizens.

But Mr. Wolfensohn said he was "quite embarrassed" that many wealthy countries had refused to donate more money despite what he said were programs developed in some poor countries that are "very good plans that are well-integrated and well-supported."

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Though I'm starting to think Van Helsing would be more effective.

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Vatican Cardinal Signals Backing for Sanctions on Kerry
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: April 24, 2004

Addressing a question about Senator John Kerry's support for abortion rights, a high-ranking Vatican cardinal said in a news conference in Rome yesterday that a Roman Catholic politician who supports abortion "is not fit" to receive communion.

The official, Cardinal Francis Arinze, refused to comment directly on Mr. Kerry, a Catholic who frequently takes communion, but his statement was the Vatican's strongest on the issue in recent months. It came only hours before Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, told a women's rights rally in Washington that if elected he would work to preserve abortion rights.

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Home From Iraq, and Without a Home
By DAN BARRY

Published: April 24, 2004

THIS is how Nicole Goodwin travels these days: with her 1-year-old daughter pressed to her chest in a Snugli, a heavy backpack strapped across her shoulders, and a baby stroller crammed with as many bags of clothes and diapers as it can hold. When you are a homeless young mother, these are the things you carry.

And tucked away somewhere are the documents attesting to Ms. Goodwin's recent honorable discharge from the United States Army, as well as Baghdad memories that are still fresh.

Two months ago, she returned to Bronx circumstances that were no less difficult than when she had left them three years earlier; no yellow ribbons greeted her. Now, every day, she soldiers on to find a residence where the rent is not covered by in-kind payments of late-night bus rides to shelters and early-morning rousting. All the while, she keeps in mind the acronym she learned in the Army: Leadership. L is for loyalty; D for duty; R for respect; S for selfless service; H for honor; P for personal courage. "And I is my favorite," she says. "It's integrity."

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The thing about Windows machines is that sooner or later you must got through what I think of as slash-n-burn file management…you make sure all your good stuff is backed up and reformat/reinstall. Decades of cruft and barnacles (miraculously accrued in mere months) sloughed off, you have a semblance of responsiveness once again.

The bad part, of course, is you feel like you're working with one hand until all your stuff is configured again.

It's time for the desktop machine to undergo the purge. And since I have the laptop all configured I can actually take my time and eliminate all the old Delphi 3 archives.

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April 23, 2004

I don't get many email arguments. I don't get ANY assholes…I think I make them nervous or something.

Anyway I got an email argument just now, and it's quite rational (if, in my opinion, a bit wrongheaded).

Hello. I find discrepencies in your report of April 10, from the UFE. First of all, President Bush hasn't been in office since 1962. Secondly, corporations do not pay federal taxes. Thirdly, wasn't it nice that you received a $400 check from the governmenmt so that you could contribute to your school and buy your children new school clothes instead of carrying the whoe burden yourself? Fourth, in my state, there are numerous corrupt misuses of monies, embezellments especially, and monies being redirected to useless accounts. If the politicians in our states would use the public's money wisely (the same could apply to the federal government as well), then there just may possibly be enough to do all the right things. We have just had the largest educational budget bill passed, written by Ted Kennedy himself, that allows states to experiment with new methods to improve the public school system. Fifth, is it fair that 1% of the people in this country pay 60% of the taxes? There are many people who do not pay taxes that work legitimately. There are many more who do not pay taxes but work, therefore dodging the system. Is this fair? Shouldn't everyone pay some tax? Why should only part of the nation pay taxes? All for one and one for all. If you want equal distribution of income, move to a socialist nation and stop trying to push it on the rest of us true Americans. Thank you, [Name Redacted]

Just so you know, UFE is an acronym for United for a Fair Economy, and the report my correspondent is disputing is in a post entitled, Unlike newspapers I always let you know when a post is just a press release.

Now, on to the specifics:

First of all, President Bush hasn't been in office since 1962.

True, but irrelevant. There is a lot of references to Bush's decisions and priorities because most of his decisions and priorities accelerated the ongoing trend, but the ongoing trend is the issue under discussion.

Secondly, corporations do not pay federal taxes.

In practice I would tend to agree…but I will note that since the GAO says

Since the majority paid no taxes that means a minority did…and "corporateness" is not the criterion which determines whether or not one pays taxes.

Thirdly, wasn't it nice that you received a $400 check from the governmenmt so that you could contribute to your school and buy your children new school clothes instead of carrying the whoe burden yourself?

Rhetorical question.

Fourth, in my state, there are numerous corrupt misuses of monies, embezellments especially, and monies being redirected to useless accounts. If the politicians in our states would use the public's money wisely (the same could apply to the federal government as well), then there just may possibly be enough to do all the right things.

No dispute here.

We have just had the largest educational budget bill passed, written by Ted Kennedy himself, that allows states to experiment with new methods to improve the public school system.

Rhetorical, non-argument.

Fifth, is it fair that 1% of the people in this country pay 60% of the taxes?

When they get 60% or more of the benefits? Ya damn skippy I think it fair.

There are many people who do not pay taxes that work legitimately. There are many more who do not pay taxes but work, therefore dodging the system. Is this fair? Shouldn't everyone pay some tax? Why should only part of the nation pay taxes? All for one and one for all.

Yes, which is pretty much the point of the press release being disputed.

If you want equal distribution of income, move to a socialist nation and stop trying to push it on the rest of us true Americans.

But I don't want equal distribution of income. Never even suggested it. Maybe now that this slightly crazed week is coming to an end I'll consider writing up a position that will help folks avoid such an assumption…anyone who really wants to, anyway.

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Kevin Drum raised the class vs. race based affirmative action question. Again. And Cobb's reaction is pretty much on point. However, since Kevin has been correct on racially charged topics often enough that I'm willing to let the occasional error slide, I'll say a bit more than that.

Affirmative action does not exist to correct any flaw in Black folks. It was created because at one point white folks didn't know how to hire Black folks (and, as became obvious later, other designated minorities), because white folks actively and passively, consciously and unconsciously, denied the racism in their behavior and judgments. Affirmative action was created to address the flaws in white people's practices.

Until white folks get over their racism entirely the reason for race-based affirmative action programs continue to be valid.

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I already read the NY Times and Boston Globe via RSS. With the addition of the Washington Post feeds, my evil power grows exponentially! Bwa ha ha!

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Not to mention too short.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID
The problem with Democrats is our tendency to get bogged down in details, to want to talk about the facts.

Screw that. The only appropriate response to these attempts to attack Kerry's service record goes like this: At least he has a service record to attack. We're still trying to find anyone who remembers seeing George Bush serve.

Precision polemics. I approve.

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For God's sake

The strong influence of the Christian right on US policy will only increase if George Bush wins a second term, says Philip James

Friday April 23, 2004

Evangelical lobbyists used to talk about access to previous Republican administrations. Today, they can say with confidence: "Who needs access when we are already on the inside?"
The influence of the Christian right on the Bush White House is self-evident. As well as George Bush, cabinet members Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and Don Evans all consider themselves to be born again.

This administration has embarked on a bold agenda to roll back liberalism in the US, and won't let up if it gets a second term.

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Louisiana May Ban Low-Slung Pants
1 hour, 59 minutes ago

BATON ROUGE, La. - People who wear low-slung pants that expose skin or "intimate clothing" would face a fine of up to $500 and possible jail time under a bill filed by a Jefferson Parish lawmaker.

State Rep. Derrick Shepherd said he filed the bill because he was tired of catching glimpses of boxer shorts and G-strings over the lowered belt lines of young adults.

The bill would punish anyone caught wearing low-riding pants with a fine of as much as $500 or as many as six months in jail, or both.

"I'm sick of seeing it," said Shepherd, a first-term legislator. "The community's outraged. And if parents can't do their job, if parents can't regulate what their children wear, then there should be a law."

The bill would be tacked onto the state's obscenity law, which restricts sexual activity in public places and the sale of sexually explicit items.

Joe Cook, head of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites)'s Louisiana chapter, said the bill probably does not meet the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites)'s standard for the prohibition of obscene behavior under the First Amendment.

"What about a woman who is wearing a bathing suit under her garment or she has something like a sarong wrapped around her and it's below her waist," he said. "I can think of a lot of workers, plumbers, who are working and expose their buttocks..."

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Washington Approves 5-State Pool to Buy Drugs for 900,000 Medicaid Recipients
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, April 22 — The Bush administration on Thursday approved plans by five states to pool their purchasing power and seek deeper discounts on prescription drugs for more than 900,000 Medicaid recipients.

The action significantly increases the leverage that states will have in negotiating with drug companies. States have been under intense fiscal pressure in recent years. Medicaid spending and drug costs, in particular, have grown much faster than state revenues.

"This is the first time in the history of the Medicaid program that states have been able to work together like this to negotiate lower drug costs," said Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The Department of Health and Human Services said the five states in the pool — Alaska, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont — expected to save more than $12 million this year.

Gov. Craig Benson of New Hampshire, a Republican, said, "Minnesota, Hawaii and Tennessee intend to join the pool, with more states likely to follow."

Mr. Benson and Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan, a Democrat, announced the project in February 2003.

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Study Links Child Obesity and Soft Drinks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON, April 22 — School programs discouraging carbonated drinks appear to be effective in reducing obesity among children, a new study suggests.

A high intake of sweetened carbonated drinks probably contributes to childhood obesity, and there is a growing movement against soft drinks in schools. But until now there have been no studies showing that efforts to lower children's consumption of soft drinks would do any good.

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Follow the Leader
By JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL

WASHINGTON

In this year's presidential campaign, no wisdom is more conventional than the assumption that George W. Bush's re-election effort will succeed or fail along with the American mission in Iraq. If Iraq collapses, the reasoning goes, the Bush presidency will soon follow. And yet here was the president gaining ground, in several polls released this week, in the face of what were certainly the worst three weeks in Iraq since the United States deposed Saddam Hussein a year ago.

The actual shift in the numbers was small — only a matter of a few percentage points, just about the margin of error in the polls. And it might be explained by $50 million worth of President Bush's TV ads or Mr. Kerry's relative absence from the nightly news. But the new numbers do suggest a paradoxical question: could escalating national security crises be bolstering the president's support — even if they are crises of his own making?

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It's pretty critical that Moussaoui get access to the testimony of the captured folks. I'm not concerned for him, though. I don't want to see another crack in our legal protections.

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Federal Appeals Court Restores Sept. 11 Prosecution
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: April 23, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 22 — A federal appeals court on Thursday restored the government's full case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, and allowed prosecutors once again to seek the death penalty.

At the same time, the three-judge appeals panel, in Richmond, Va., backed defense lawyers in their argument that Mr. Moussaoui is entitled to introduce testimony from captured members of Al Qaeda who have told interrogators overseas that he had nothing to do with the plot.

The panel, drawn from members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ordered the trial judge to work out a compromise on the issue that has long threatened to derail the case: how to grant Mr. Moussaoui access to information from the captured Qaeda members while preserving the government's rights to interrogate enemy combatants without interruption during wartime.

"We reject the government's claim that the district court exceeded its authority in granting Moussaoui access to the witnesses," the panel wrote, referring to the trial judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va. "However, we reverse the district court insofar as it held that it is not possible to craft adequate substitutions."

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This whole handing over sovereignity this is just a way to say "Don't blame me for anything that happens after June 30."

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White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could Be Limited
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: April 23, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 22 — The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

These restrictions to the plan negotiated with Lakhdar Brahimi, the special United Nations envoy, were presented in detail for the first time by top administration officials at Congressional hearings this week, culminating in long and intense questioning on Thursday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing on the goal of returning Iraq to self-rule on June 30.

Only 10 weeks from the scheduled transfer of sovereignty, the administration is still not sure exactly who will govern in Baghdad, or precisely how they will be selected. A week ago, President Bush agreed to a recommendation by Mr. Brahimi to dismantle the existing Iraqi Governing Council, which was handpicked by the United States, and to replace it with a caretaker government whose makeup is to be decided next month.

That government would stay in power until elections could be held, beginning next year.

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April 22, 2004

Former Rebels Surrender Weapons in Return for Money
Abdullah Dukuly

MONROVIA, Apr 17 (IPS) - After four months of uncertainty and anxiety, the 15,000-strong UN troops in war-ravaged Liberia this week resumed a six-month campaign to disarm tens of thousands of fighters. The 15-million-dollar exercise is designed to end the country’s 14-year brutal civil war.

The first five days of the campaign was concentrated on the central Liberian city of Gbarnga, formerly controlled by the biggest rebel movement – Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).

The process started in Dec. 2003 but was stalled after militias of former president Charles Taylor rioted in the eastern suburb of the capital, Monrovia, in demand for 300 dollars as their resettlement benefits.

The peacekeepers – who numbered only 5,000 and were deployed in a single cantonment site – found themselves overwhelmed with hundreds of combatants queuing up at Camp Schefflin, 48 km east of the city, to surrender their weapons in return for money.

Now the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has constructed four cantonment sites around the country to disarm some 60,000 militias who fought most of the country’s 14-year civil war.

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Just too slow by a factor of 20.

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Washington Fails to Realign Oil Business
Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Apr 22 (IPS) - A year on, the invasion of Iraq has turned into a fiasco for long-term U.S. goals to ensure access to steady, secure supplies of inexpensive crude oil and to start playing a decisive role in oil markets at the expense of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Pumping and transporting oil in Iraq today are risky ventures, endangering the lives of foreign oil workers. Halliburton, the U.S. construction giant that has benefited so handsomely from oil contracts in Iraq, has seen 29 employees and contractors killed..

Output is still lower than on Mar. 20, 2003, when U.S. and British forces launched the invasion of Iraq, while oil prices are one-third higher.

The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate closed Wednesday at just under 36 dollars a barrel, compared to last year's average price of 29 dollars, while the OPEC reference price basket stands at around 32 dollars, up from the 2003 average of 28 dollars and the 2002 average of 24 dollars.

Iraq's oil output stands at just over two million barrels a day, in a world that consumes 40 times that amount, and the remaining OPEC members -- especially Saudi Arabia -- have the ability to increase short-term production to meet the market's demands.

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…but reason to keep the truth simple and in active circulation.

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Majority Still Believe in Iraq's WMD, al-Qaeda Ties
Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 22 (IPS) - U.S. public perceptions about former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be re-elected, according to a survey and analysis released Thursday.

Despite statements by such officials as the Bush administration's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay; its former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke; former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, as well as admissions by senior administration officials themselves, a majority of the public still believes Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and had WMD stocks or programmes before U.S. troops invaded the country 13 months ago.

''The public is not getting a clear message about what the experts are saying about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and its WMD programme'', said Steven Kull, director of the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, which conducted the survey.

''The analysis suggests that if the public were to more clearly perceive what the experts themselves are saying on these issues, there is a good chance this could have a significant impact on their attitudes about the war and even on how they vote in November'', he added.

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Caribbean, EU Vow to Gear Trade to Development
Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Apr 21 (IPS) - Caribbean experts say a new trade accord with the European Union (EU) will give the two sides another chance to put trade at the service of development, unlike former and current agreements with the region's second largest trading partner.

The governments opened talks last weekend on an economic partnership agreement (EPA), which provides another opportunity for the Caribbean ”to get our house in order”, according to trade policy consultant Rosalea Hamilton.

”Let's not miss this opportunity to get it right this time. A great deal is at stake for CARICOM (the Caribbean Community),” she added in a column in the 'Jamaica Observer' newspaper.

The European Commission (EC) describes the future pact, expected to enter into force by Jan. 1, 2008, as a free trade deal between the EU and the Caribbean. Europe is negotiating similar agreements with African and Pacific nations as a follow up to the 2000 Cotonou Partnership Agreement between the 15-member EU and 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations.

The new deals will broaden access to European markets for ”basically all ACP products”, said Amos Tincani, head of the EC delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, in a series of articles leading up to the announcement.

”It will lower the price paid for capital and intermediate goods, fundamental for local industries. Ultimately, it will promote more competitive, better-governed and more credibly regulated economies, again fostering investment and growth,” he added.

The 20-year Cotonou Agreement replaced previous five-year deals known as the Lomé Convention.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2004
WWW.USDOJ.GOV CRM
(202) 514-2008
TDD (202) 514-1888

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL INTERNET PIRACY SWEEP
‘Operation Fastlink’ Is The Largest Global Enforcement Action Ever Undertaken Against Online Piracy

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today the most far-reaching and aggressive enforcement action ever undertaken against organizations involved in illegal intellectual property piracy over the Internet. Beginning yesterday morning, law enforcement from 10 countries and the United States conducted over 120 searches worldwide to dismantle some of the most well-known and prolific online piracy organizations.

“Intellectual property theft is a global problem that hurts economies around the world. To be effective, we must respond globally,” Attorney General Ashcroft said. “In the past 24 hours, working closely with our foreign law enforcement counterparts, we have moved aggressively to strike at the very core of the international online piracy world.”

Operation Fastlink is the culmination of four separate undercover investigations simultaneously being conducted by the FBI, coordinated by the FBI Cyber Division, and the U.S. Department of Justice, coordinated by the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) of the Criminal Division. As a result of Fastlink, over 120 total searches have been
executed in the past 24 hours in 27 states and in 10 foreign countries. Foreign searches were conducted in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden as well as Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Operation Fastlink is the largest multi-national law enforcement effort ever directed at online piracy. Nearly 100 individuals worldwide have been identified by the investigation to date, many of whom are the leaders or high-level members of various international piracy organizations. As the investigations continue, additional targets will be identified and pursued.

“The amount of international coordination and cooperation in this effort is unprecedented and will send a clear and unmistakable message to those individuals and organizations dedicated to piracy that they will no longer be protected by geographic boundaries,” Attorney General Ashcroft said. “We are committed to combating this theft and will pursue these thieves regardless of their location.”

In addition to attacking piracy globally, Operation Fastlink struck at all facets of the illegal software, game, movie, and music trade online, which is commonly referred to as the “warez scene.” The investigations focused on individuals and organizations, known as “warez” release groups, that specialize in the Internet distribution of pirated materials. Release groups are the first-providers - the original source for most of the pirated works traded or distributed online. Once a release group prepares a stolen work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure, top-level warez servers and made available to a select clientele. From there, within a matter of hours, the pirated works are further distributed throughout the world, ending up on public channels on IRC and peer-to-peer file sharing networks accessible to anyone with Internet access.

The top release groups are hierarchical, highly structured organizations with leadership positions that control day-to-day operations, recruit new members and manage the group’s various computer archive sites. These groups exist solely to engage in piracy and compete with each other to be the first to place a newly pirated work onto the Internet - often before the work is legitimately available to the public. Highly sophisticated technological measures are employed by the groups to shield their illegal activity from victims and law enforcement.

The release groups targeted by Fastlink specialize in the distribution of all types of pirated works including utility and application software, movies, music and games. Among the groups targeted by Fastlink are well-known organizations such as Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class and Project X, all of which specialized in pirating computer games, and music release groups such as APC. The enforcement action announced today is expected to dismantle many of these international warez syndicates and significantly impact the illicit operations of others.

Operation Fastlink also resulted in the seizure of more than 200 computers, including 30 computer servers that functioned as storage and distribution hubs. These servers collectively contain hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated works. One of the storage and distribution servers seized in the United States reportedly contained 65,000 separate pirated titles. Other
servers seized, so-called “elite” sites, contain the most highly coveted and valuable “new releases,” many of which were distributed to the warez scene before they are commercially available to the general public. Although access to these elite servers is limited, authorized users frequently provide the first copies of new releases that are traded and distributed online throughout the world within hours of their initial illegal release. Conservative estimates of the value of the pirated works seized easily exceed $50 million. Conservative projections of the losses to industry attributable to these distribution hubs are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Operation Fastlink has been conducted under the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and agents from 30 separate field offices across the nation were involved in the enforcement action. The investigation has been coordinated with the Justice Department’s CCIPS Section and federal prosecutors from 42 separate United States Attorneys’ Offices nationwide.

The ongoing investigations were assisted by various intellectual property trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, the Entertainment Software Association, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.
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Quote of note:

Powell also disputed Woodward's contention that he and Cheney were so estranged by their differences over the war that they barely speak, insisting that his relationship with the vice president is "excellent."

"When the vice president and I are alone, it's Colin and Dick," he said.

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If his name was Colon I might believe him.

Powell: We were instructed to talk to Woodward
President's campaign site calls book 'suggested reading'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials Monday disputed some points raised in journalist Bob Woodward's provocative new inside account of the march to war in Iraq -- a book that nevertheless appears to have earned the White House seal of approval.

In an interview Monday in which he disputed suggestions by Woodward that he was out of the loop and dragooned into supporting President Bush on the war, Powell confirmed that the White House had told administration officials to cooperate with Woodward's "Plan of Attack."

"We all talked to Woodward. It was part of our instructions from the White House," Powell said. "It was an opportunity to help him write a contemporary history of this period."

Unlike the hostile treatment accorded recent tell-all tomes from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and counterterrorism adviser Richard Clark, Woodward's book received a generally positive reception at the White House. The president's campaign Web site even listed the book as "suggested reading," providing a direct link to order a copy from Amazon.com.

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Quote of note:

The machines make meaningful recounts impossible and rely on software developed by companies with strong ties to President Bush and his Republican Party. California is expected to decide this week whether to decertify its touchscreen machines.

The debate over the health of America's electoral procedures is turning into a partisan fight, with Republicans dismissing the concerns as Democratic politicking unworthy of serious examination. When the Commission on Civil Rights convened an expert panel in Washington this month to discuss its report, the Republican Party delegation walked out before the proceedings began, one panel participant, Rebecca Mercuri, a Harvard University voting machinery expert, said.

In Florida during the 2000 election, thousands of eligible, predominantly black, voters were erroneously identified as former felons and purged from the voter rolls by a private company hired by Katherine Harris, who acted as the state's top electoral official and also as co-chair of George Bush's state campaign committee.

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US heading for another election fiasco as reforms fail
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
22 April 2004

The United States may be on the way to another Florida-style presidential election fiasco this year because legislation passed to fix the system has either failed to address the problems or has broken down because of missed deadlines and unmet funding targets.

Such is the conclusion of a damning new report by the US Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan government body which previously looked into the Florida mess and found alarming evidence of voter disenfranchisement among poor and minority groups, incorrectly compiled voter rolls and other glaring irregularities. "Many of the problems that the commission previously cautioned should be corrected yet prevail ... Unless the government acts now, many of those previously disenfranchised stand to be excluded again," the report said.

The commission's criticisms focused on the failure to implement President George Bush's Help America Vote Act (Hava), passed in October 2002, which promised $4bn (£2.3bn) to help states overhaul antiquated voting machinery - notably the notorious punchcard devices that caused so much trouble in Florida - and sought to set up a nationwide system of provisional voting for people who believe they have a right to vote but find themselves omitted from the official list.

It said that out of 22 key deadlines that have come and gone since the act's passage, only five have been met. Most seriously, an oversight committee designed to advise states on streamlining their voting procedures and implementing the act's provisions was not appointed until last December, 11 months behind schedule. Most states are unlikely to make reforms before the presidential election on 2 November.

In addition, the Bush White House has consistently proposed less money than promised by the act, so states that have passed their own reform legislation have found themselves crucially short of money for implementation.

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Woman fired by military contractor for published photograph of flag-draped U.S. coffins
By Associated Press, 4/22/2004 10:44

SEATTLE (AP) A cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of U.S. soldiers was published on a newspaper's front page was fired by the military contractor that employed her.

Tami Silicio, 50, was fired Wednesday by Maytag Aircraft Corp. after military officials raised ''very specific concerns'' related to the photograph, said William L. Silva, Maytag president. The photo was taken in Kuwait.

Silva declined to identify the Pentagon's concerns but said Silicio violated company and federal government rules. He declined to comment further.

Silicio said she hoped the photo of the 20 flag-draped coffins awaiting transport from Kuwait to the United States would show the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq that civilian and military crews return the remains of their loved ones with care and devotion.

''It wasn't my intent to lose my job or become famous or anything,'' Silicio said.

Silicio's husband and co-worker, David Landry, was also fired, but the company gave no reason for his dismissal.

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An interesting way to search Amazon for music

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This is NOT the story you hear about Haiti. But it's the one you SHOULD hear.

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Who removed Aristide?
Paul Farmer reports from Haiti

In November 1803 the former slaves won what proved to be the war's final battle, and on 1 January 1804 declared the independent republic of Haiti. It was Latin America's first independent country and the only nation ever born of a slave revolt. The Haitian Revolution, Dubois writes, was 'a dramatic challenge to the world as it then was. Slavery was at the heart of the thriving system of merchant capitalism that was profiting Europe, devastating Africa, and propelling the rapid expansion of the Americas.' Independent Haiti had few friends. Virtually all the world's powers sided with France against the self-proclaimed Black Republic, which declared itself a haven not only for runaway slaves but also for indigenous people from the rest of the Americas (the true natives of Haiti had succumbed to infectious disease and Spanish slavery well before the arrival of the French). Hemmed in by slave colonies, Haiti had only one non-colonised neighbour, the slaveholding United States, which refused to recognise its independence.

Haiti's leaders were desperate for recognition, since the island's only source of revenue was the sugar, coffee, cotton and other tropical produce it had to sell. In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti's independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The 'debt' that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human 'property'.

The impact of the debt repayments - which continued until after World War Two - was devastating. In the words of the Haitian anthropologist Jean Price-Mars, 'the incompetence and frivolity of its leaders' had 'turned a country whose revenues and outflows had been balanced up to then into a nation burdened with debt and trapped in financial obligations that could never be satisfied.' 'Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,' the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country 'in its hands', was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.

hat tip to Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul

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As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, New Efforts to Level the Field
By DAVID LEONHARDT

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — At prestigious universities around the country, from flagship state colleges to the Ivy League, more and more students from upper-income families are edging out those from the middle class, according to university data.

The change is fast becoming one of the biggest issues in higher education.

More members of this year's freshman class at the University of Michigan have parents making at least $200,000 a year than have parents making less than the national median of about $53,000, according to a survey of Michigan students. At the most selective private universities across the country, more fathers of freshmen are doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers or members of the military — combined.

Experts say the change in the student population is a result of both steep tuition increases and the phenomenal efforts many wealthy parents put into preparing their children to apply to the best schools. It is easy to see here, where BMW 3-series sedans are everywhere and students pay up to $800 a month to live off campus, enough to rent an entire house in parts of Michigan.

Some colleges are starting to take action. Officials long accustomed to discussing racial diversity are instead taking steps to improve economic diversity. They say they are worried that their universities are reproducing social advantage instead of serving as an engine of mobility.

"It's very much an issue of fundamental fairness," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said in an interview. "An important purpose of institutions like Harvard is to give everybody a shot at the American dream."

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Michael Jackson Is Indicted on Child-Molesting Charges
By NICK MADIGAN

Published: April 22, 2004

LOS ANGELES, April 21 — A grand jury in Santa Barbara indicted Michael Jackson on Wednesday on charges of child molesting, making it a virtual certainty he will stand trial in a case brought by prosecutors in December, officials said.

Mr. Jackson had originally been accused of seven counts of sexually abusing a boy, now 14, and of two counts of giving him alcohol as part of the molesting. The Santa Barbara district attorney's office said the acts occurred early last year at Mr. Jackson's ranch, Neverland, about 25 miles north of Santa Barbara. A conviction could bring a 20-year prison sentence.

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This should start you thinking about the medium-term future.

Rates to Rise as Economy Expands, Greenspan Says
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, April 21 — Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, sent investors an implicit message today: don't get ahead of yourselves.

One day after after Mr. Greenspan unnerved the financial markets by declaring that the threat of deflation has disappeared, the Fed chairman strongly hinted that rising productivity and low inflation would allow the central bank to keep interest rates at rock-bottom levels a bit longer.

"The crucial difference between now and in the past is the extraordinary acceleration of productivity," Mr. Greenspan told members of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress. "That means that price pressures are not anywhere near where they would have been in the past."

He did acknowledge that the economy had "entered a period of more vigorous expansion" and that rates would eventually have to rise.

Testifying before Congress for a second day, Mr. Greenspan again demonstrated his ability to keep his options open by projecting ambiguity without actually contradicting himself.

But the bottom line of his remarks today were consistent with a theme echoed in official Fed statements and remarks by other senior Fed officials. The message is that the economic growth appears robust and job creation is likely to accelerate, but that the central bank can afford to retain its policy of cheap money because the economy still has a considerable amount of "slack" in it.

Investors have been skeptical of that message and are increasingly convinced that faster growth will force the Fed to raise rates as early as this summer in order to head off inflation.

Why? Brad DeLong , discussing "Global Economic Prospects: Bright for 2004 but with Questions Thereafter" :

Greenspan is confident that raising interest rates and thus raising the unemployment rate during the bubble of the late 1990s would have been the wrong policy, and that aggressively lowering interest rates after the bubble was the right policy. Lowering interest rates cushioned falls in bond prices. Lowering interest rates made use of bond financing for investment more attractive. Lowering interest rates boosted bond and real estate prices, induced households to refinance, and so provided a powerful spur to consumption spending that largely offset the post-bubble fall in investment spending. In Greenspan's view, the aggressive lowering of interest rates was exactly the right thing to do in the aftermath of the bubble to shift spending from investment to consumption and so to keep the economy not far from full employment.

Mussa says: not so fast. Very low interest rates, coupled with assurances from high Federal Reserve officials that interest rates will stay very low for substantial periods of time, produce a situation in which the prices of long-duration assets--long-term bonds, growth stocks, and real estate--climb very high. What goes up may come down, and may come down rapidly. And should some class of asset prices come down rapidly and should it turn out that many debtors in the economy go bankrupt because their assets have lost value, serious financial crisis will result. The price of using exceptionally easy money to keep the collapse of the dot-com bubble from turning into a depression has been the creation of a three-fold vulnerability:

• If the assets the prices of which collapse when interest rates start to rise are emerging-market debt, then the memories of the 1990s and increasing risk will induce large-scale capital flight from the periphery to the core--an echo of the East Asian financial crises of 1997-1998.
• If the assets the prices of which threaten collapse when interest rates start to rise are domestic bond and real estate holdings that have been pushed to unsustainable levels by positive-feedback "bubble" buying, then the "monetary authority would... confront the grim choice of trying to keep an unsustainable asset price bubble alive or trying to combat the collapse of such a bubble without a great deal of room for monetary easing" to keep real estate and bond prices from falling far and fast.
• "If monetary policy is tightened too much too soon" (presumably because of fears of positive-feedback "bubble" buying), the result may be a credit crunch and a recession--with no guarantee that a reversal of the monetary policy tightening will undue the effects of the credit crunch.

I do not believe that many economists would say that Mussa's fears about the potential macroeconomic vulnerabilities created by the low interest-rate policy the Federal Reserve has pursued since the end of the dot-com bubble are unreasonable. (Few, however, carry their alarm to the degree that Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley does.) And Mussa expresses them in a coherent language--one in which sustained rises in asset prices induce positive-feedback trading that "bubbles" prices above fundamentals, one in which what goes up comes down rapidly, one in which large sudden falls in asset prices produce chains of bankruptcy and raise risk and default premia enough to threaten to cause deep recessions. The language has echoes of the great Charles P. Kindleberger's (1978) Manias, Panics, and Crashes (New York: Basic Books), and of earlier writings about the consequences of excessive money-printing: "inflation, revulsion, and discredit."

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As scandals fade, firms resist reforms to protect investors
Wed Apr 21, 8:55 AM ET

In the spring of 2002, barely months after the Enron scandal had erupted, a reform drive in Washington to curb corporate abuses already had run out of steam. Only after a second major scandal erupted on Enron's heels - the collapse of WorldCom - did Congress and federal regulators overcome fierce lobbying by businesses to enact new shareholder protections.

Now, a drive to reform the mutual fund industry is in danger of a quiet death, as fund improprieties exposed last year recede into memory. Lobbyists have stalled legislation that would require funds to disclose more clearly the fees they charge, so investors can more easily compare costs. Separately, proposed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules that would make fund directors better watchdogs face uncertain prospects because of industry attacks.

The reforms could protect investors from paying exorbitant fees for paltry returns and losing money from trading improprieties by fund managers. A failure to enact them suggests Washington isn't serious about cracking down on corporate wrongdoing and restoring public trust in the financial system.

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Quote of note:

In the end, the answers lie with this president—and later maybe with Congress and the American voters. Is he so committed to this imperial policy that he is unable to consider rethinking it? In short, is his mind closed? And if so, how many wars will he take us into?

These are not questions in a college debate, where the answers have no consequences. When a president's closest advisers and military planners are patrons of a policy that speaks matter-of-factly of fighting multiple, simultaneous, large-scale wars across the globe, people have a right to be told about it.

…A five-year military campaign. Seven countries. How far has the White House taken this plan? And how long can the president keep the nation in the dark, emerging from his White House cocoon only to speak to us in slogans and the sterile language of pep rallies?

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Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying
The Widening Crusade
by Sydney H. Schanberg
October 15 - 21, 2003 [P6:note the date]

…No one who believes in democracy need feel any empathy toward the governments of Syria and Iran, for they assist the terrorist movement, yet if the Bush White House is going to use its preeminent military force to subdue and neutralize all "evildoers" and adversaries everywhere in the world, the American public should be told now. Such an undertaking would be virtually endless and would require the sacrifice of enormous blood and treasure.

With no guarantee of success. And no precedent in history for such a crusade having lasting effect.

People close to the president say that his conversion to evangelical Methodism, after a life of aimless carousing, markedly informs his policies, both foreign and domestic. In the soon-to-be-published The Faith of George W. Bush (Tarcher/Penguin), a sympathetic account of this religious journey, author Stephen Mansfield writes (in the advance proofs) that in the election year 2000, Bush told Texas preacher James Robison, one of his spiritual mentors: "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me…I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."

Mansfield also reports: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president. And he framed America's challenges in nearly biblical language. Saddam Hussein is an evildoer. He has to go." The author concludes: " …the Bush administration does deeply reflect its leader, and this means that policy, even in military matters, will be processed in terms of the personal, in terms of the moral, and in terms of a sense of divine purpose that propels the present to meet the challenges of its time."

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Quote of note:

Bush also said that night, "This country must go on the offense and stay on the offense." Americans have a right to wonder if his plan for the world means that we will be at war for generations.

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George Bush's global holy war threatens our Presidency—and perhaps the future of our nation
Turning Point
by Sydney H. Schanberg
April 20th, 2004 12:00 PM

Who can dispute that Americans of all political and personal beliefs can now see that the nation is at a turning point in its history. It is hard to think otherwise.

The president has led us into a war of civilizations and cultures. He says he is guided in all decisions by "the Almighty." He has done nothing that would give us reason to doubt that he truly believe this in his bones. Eerie, is it not, that the Al Qaeda killers who follow Osama bin Laden and seek to destroy the United States claim they have God on their side, too.

Is this an argument for moral equivalence? Absolutely not. Moreover, moral equivalency is not the grave issue before the American citizenry today. The state of our presidency—and perhaps the future of our country—is.

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Which Nigerian spammer are You? via ArtMachine

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The man who stopped Miami recount makes gaming millions
A Dirty Trickster's Bush Bonanza
by Wayne Barrett

Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry. Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper.

The longtime GOP consultant's reward for fomenting the "Brooks Brothers mob" that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000 was an invitation within days of Bush's election to serve on the Department of Interior transition working group—helping, in his own words, to staff its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Stone has since used this unannounced perch to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Just two of the five deals examined by the Voice are projected to pay him at least $8 million, and perhaps as much as $13 million.

Time, The Washington Post and The New York Times have published exposés about Bush's BIA, with a February story highlighting $45 million in payments to two GOP lobbyists from four tribes since 2001. But no one has focused on Stone's profiteering, which, unlike the payments to registered lobbyists, is not reported on any public filings. He is routinely brought into casino deals in part because of his perceived ability to win Bush and/or Republican congressional support, a role ostensibly inconsistent with his financing and staffing of the Bush-bashing reverend's campaign.

But it was Sharpton himself who focused the Voice's attention on Stone's bonanza, indicating that business motives pushed Stone to take over the campaign. "It's all about Indian gaming," he said. When pressed recently to explain, Sharpton said, "I will not spell it out." In fact, Stone has a history of bizarre political operations, beginning with his Watergate-era infiltration of the McGovern campaign. And Sharpton has his own bunko background—beating up on Democrats to benefit behind-the-scenes GOP allies like Al D'Amato, George Pataki, and Mike Bloomberg.

"I helped Sharpton because I like him," says Stone, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, Dole, and Bush campaigns, who steered $288,000 to Sharpton's National Action Network last year. "There's no connection between helping Sharpton and my business." But with adviser Stone scripting Sharpton, any damage the reverend might do would burnish Stone's bona fides with Bush, thereby bolstering his leverage for second-term gaming deals. Stone and Sharpton concede that they still talk, and Stone's ally, Charles Halloran, remains the manager of Sharpton's suspended campaign, organizing fundraisers to pay off a $634,500 debt, $134,000 of it due to five Stone-tied aides.

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The Condensed Bob Woodward
Slate reads Plan of Attack so you don't have to.
By Bryan Curtis
Posted Wednesday, April 21, 2004, at 2:51 PM PT

…Page 250: Karl Rove, a Norwegian-American, is obsessed with the "historical duplicity" of the Swedes, who seized Norway back in 1814. This nationalism manifests itself as hatred for Swedish weapons inspector Hans Blix.

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Dump Cheney
A winning strategy for Bush.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, April 20, 2004, at 4:17 PM PT

Early this year, a rumor spread that President Bush was going to drop Dick Cheney from the 2004 ticket. This turned out to be wishful thinking by liberals and by the sort of moderate Republican internationalists who ran foreign policy during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. By the end of February, Robert Novak reported that "[n]ormally closed-mouthed political operatives" on Bush's re-election campaign were stating "unequivocally" that Cheney would remain. A story by Stewart M. Powell in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted experts explaining that even if it wanted to, the Bush White House couldn't drop Cheney, because that would display weakness.

This is nonsense. As Powell's story noted, in the five previous instances where vice presidents failed to make it onto the re-election ticket, the incumbent president won the election on three occasions (Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Roosevelt again) and lost on two (Benjamin Harrison and Gerald Ford). The only tangible threat posed by dumping a vice president is that it may create a presidential candidate bent on revenge or vindication. But it's extremely unlikely that Dick Cheney, who is 63 and suffers from heart disease, would ever try. Dumping Dick Cheney would actually be a very smart move.

Before proceeding, Chatterbox should declare his bias, which is against a second Bush term. Loyal Republicans will therefore suspect the argument contained herein is an attempt at sabotage. Not so. As a loyal Democrat, Chatterbox fervently hopes Karl Rove will ignore Chatterbox's advice. But as a political analyst, Chatterbox thinks Rove would be a fool not to recognize that Bush would benefit from throwing Cheney overboard.

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Republican battle in Pennsylvania primary could threaten Bush's hopes of re-election (21 Apr 04)
RUPERT CORNWELL

…For the moderate Mr Specter, who is seeking a fifth six-year term in the Senate, his upstart conservative rival - currently a sitting Congressman - is "not far right, he's far out". To which Mr Toomey, pro-life, anti-tax and an ardent de-regulator, replies by calling himself the candidate of "the Republican wing of the Republican party".

The race, according to a new survey, could hardly be closer. Only 10 days ago Mr Specter enjoyed a massive financial advantage and a comfortable 15 per cent lead in the polls. The margin has now shrunk to 5 per cent among likely Republican primary voters, in statistical terms a virtual dead heat.

So much importance does the White House attach to the result that Mr Bush turned out for a Specter fundraiser in Pittsburgh on Monday. But the momentum is with Mr Toomey. While Mr Specter has been forced to spend $7m (£3.9m), half his total campaign war chest, his opponent has been raking in money from ultra-conservative Republican groups.

These efforts appear to be paying dividends. In the new poll, 51 per cent of respondents described Mr Specter as "too liberal", while only 14 per cent said they considered Mr Toomey too conservative.

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April 21, 2004

Accepting the truth is the only way to be able to change the truth. Accepting the truth is difficult sometimes. We often think things are other than what they are, and that desire makes us search for evidence that something hidden will come to light and prove things were the way we expected them to be all along.

Meanwhile, had we just accepted events as they happened, unpleasant as they may be, we would have been freed immediately to work on changing things.

Choosing which truth to accept and which to reject is just as bad as rejecting all the truth. We accept pleasant truths and deny unpleasant ones. Or we accept unpleasant truths and deny pleasant ones - you know people that do that, don't you? Go on, tell the truth.

How do you know what the truth is, though?

It's easy, really. Much easier than most would have you believe. The only reason anyone would have you think otherwise is so that they can think otherwise and not be exposed.

Be awake. Pay attention. Ignore nothing that happens to you. Instead of acting as though things will turn out as you expect, give your best effort to make it turn out as you choose. And watch to see how it actually turns out, each action. You'll be wrong at first, because by rejecting the truth in the past, you learned the wrong ideas about how the world works. And it will be painful sometimes. But pain is as much a part of life as joy is. . . that's the truth.

But as you remain alert, as you stay aware, as you stop explaining away the difference between your expectations and events, you learn. And as you learn, the truth becomes clearer. And you feel strong enough to handle whatever pain comes to you.

But you're actually no stronger than you ever were. You just stop wasting your strength on the imaginary, unnecessary battles that result from denying the truth.

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Mice created without fathers By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff Scientists have created two female mice without fertilising the eggs they grew from, the journal Nature says. The eggs had two sets of chromosomes from two female mice, rather than one from the mother and one from the father as in a fertilised embryo. The phenomenon, called parthenogenesis, never occurs naturally in mammals. Some researchers say the procedures may be applied to stem cell research, but the scientists who carried out the work say it would not yet work in humans. Mammal difference Tomohiro Kono and colleagues switched off a key gene in the donor eggs which affected imprinting - a barrier to parthenogenesis in mammals. "Insects can reproduce by parthenogenesis. Even chickens can be made to reproduce by parthenogenesis. I wanted to find out why mammals are different," Dr Kono of Tokyo University of Agriculture, Japan, told BBC News Online.

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Let me take this opportunity to say the outlook current in most humans is such that I really hope a lot of what's under development takes a long, long, long time…time on an evolutionary scale, perhaps…to come to fruition.

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THE FIVE WORST ARGUMENTS IN BLOGISTAN

1. The comparison of Thurmond/Lott to Byrd/Dodd. I know Dodd apologized, but for what? Saying something harmless that provoked a stupid reaction? Giving Armstrong Williams, a certifiable fool, something to talk about? [P6: I thought that was what he apologized for.] I really don't get it. Dodd said Byrd would have been an asset to the nation at any time in its history. The reference was obviously to Byrd at his modern best, not the Byrd who took a leading role opposing civil rights legislation, much less the youthful Klan member over half a century ago.

2. The Memo of Mass Destruction. As Assistant-something-or-other in Clinton's DoJ, Jamie Gorelick writes a memo alleged by the R's to have crippled the Bush Administration's ability to combat terrorism. A f*cking memo. A MEMO. Not even a regulation, much less a statute. Couldn't John Ashcroft, as one of his first official acts, have written a memo of his own entitled, "Jamie's memo sucks"? What kind of excuse is that?

3. The Politicized 9-11 Commission. Judgements of criminal culpability or civil liability aside, politics is the way decisions are made in a democracy. We like that because it's better than, say, dictatorship. Decision-making is more costly, but the results command greater legitimacy and support. The beef with commissioners should not be that they are political, but that their points are not well-founded, if they aren't.

4. The Plame Game. The Bushies were caught dead to rights on this. Determining the perpetrators would be elementary for the president, were he so inclined. Where is the justification in bloviating about the hubbie's political allegiance, in light of that indubitable fact?

5. Musical job surveys. When one survey showed no job growth, an assortment of people demanded we consider the other survey, which came off better. More lately, the bad numbers on the first survey turned around, while the numbers on the other went south. The reaction of the White House's defenders was to hype the good numbers and ignore the bad ones.

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Kerry Campaign to Release Military Records
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: April 21, 2004

…Mr. Meehan gave The New York Times documents that certify Mr. Kerry's three Purple Hearts for combat injuries. The documents included details of the wounds that led to his second and third Purple Hearts. Mr. Meehan said no after-action report had been found for the first Purple Heart, awarded, according to the certificate, "for wounds received in action on Dec. 2, 1968." In lieu of that report, Mr. Meehan offered a "Sick Call Treatment Record" from Mr. Kerry's personal medical files with these handwritten notes from someone who treated to him on Dec. 3, 1968, at the naval support center at Cam Ranh Bay:

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One of the Rush-Hour Blasts Hit a School Bus Full of Children
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 21 — Three car bombs exploded in front of Iraqi police stations in the southern city of Basra this morning, killing 68 people and wounding 98, the governor of Basra, Waei Abdul Latif, said. The toll included 23 schoolchildren and 9 police officers.

Mr. Latif said he believed the attacks were the work of an alliance between Al Qaeda and extremists in Iraq. He said that the attacks were simultaneous.

"The attacks have the hallmark of al Qaeda," he told reporters in Basra, adding that he expected more violence as the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty in Iraq nears.

Samir Sumaitey, the Iraqi interior minister, condemned the killings at a news conference in Baghdad.

"The terrorists want to lead Iraq down the path of darkness and chaos," he said. "The Iraqi government condemns this and is determined to find these people and bring them to justice and bring an end to this cancer that is invading the body of Iraq.

"Every child that has been lost represents the future of Iraq."

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Security Building in Saudi Capital Is Destroyed by Bombs
By TERENCE NEILAN

Published: April 21, 2004

A suicide car bomber blew off the front of a security office building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, today, witnesses told Reuters and a local English-language newspaper.

At least 10 people were killed, the newspaper and Reuters said, citing witnesses. The death toll was expected to rise.

Dozens were reported wounded in what a Saudi Interior Ministry official described as a "terrorist attack."

The official, who was not identified, told Reuters that a car packed with explosives blew up in Al Murabaa district.

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You know, it would be good to remember the lasttime folks decided to make the world safe for democracy

One of the victors' stated aims in World War I had been “to make the world safe for democracy,” and postwar Germany adopted a democratic constitution, as did most of the other states restored or created after the war. In the 1920s, however, the wave of the future appeared to be a form of nationalistic, militaristic totalitarianism known by its Italian name, fascism.

Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This time the "ism" is terrorism.

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April 20, 2004

Call things to a close early tonight, because I'm doing a good deed over here. Here your chance to leave insulting comments because I won't see them to delete them for a while.

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U.S. Army Documents Warn of Occupation Hazards
The War After the War
by Jason Vest

Despite the sanguine way George W. Bush and his chamberlains talk about a post-war Iraq, senior military officers are worried.

According to recent unpublicized U.S. Army War College studies being read with increasing interest by some Pentagon planners, "The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious."

And that's especially true if occupation force soldiers are not retrained to be "something similar to a constabulary force" and imbued with the understanding that "force is often the last resort of the occupation soldier." The War College studies explore in detail a troubling paradox: While all experts agree that stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq would be a protracted endeavor, "the longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues," one of the studies notes, "the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces."

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Bush plans world recruitment drive to arm for peace
April 20, 2004

Facing a chronic shortage of foreign troops for peacekeeping missions, US President George Bush has decided to launch an international drive to boost the supply of available forces.

It calls for the United States to commit about $US660 million ($880 million) over the next five years to train, equip and provide logistical support to forces in nations willing to take part in peace operations.

The Global Peace Operations Initiative will be aimed largely at Africa. It will expand the peacekeeping skills of African forces and encourage international military exercises in the region, where US officials say much of the need exists.

But African forces developed under the program could be used in peace operations anywhere in the world, they said.

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MASSACHUSETTS: CITY SAVES BUYING CANADIAN DRUGS Springfield has saved about $2 million in nine months by buying prescription drugs from Canada for city workers and retirees, said Chris Collins, the director of the program. Mr. Collins said about 3,000 city employees, retirees and their dependents were in the voluntary program. In July, the city became the nation's first to turn to Canadian drugs for its health plan. (AP)

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Folic Acid in Pregnant Black Women Studied
By RENEE C. LEE
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS Researchers studying pregnant women found that black women with a dangerous high blood pressure complication had less folic acid and more of a certain amino acid than white women.

The difference could help explain why black women are at higher risk for the life-threatening complication, pre-eclampsia. And it suggests they should take higher doses of the vitamin, folic acid.

The finding also could indicate future risk for cardiovascular disease.

Pre-eclampsia affects 3 percent to 5 percent of pregnant women and is a common cause of premature births. It typically occurs very late in a pregnancy. Besides inducing high blood pressure, it can cause kidney failure, swelling of hands and feet, seizures and death.

In the United States only a few hundred women die from pregnancy-related causes each year, but pre-eclampsia kills thousands in developing countries.

Researchers have long known that black women have higher incidences of pre-eclampsia, but they have yet to pinpoint why.

"We know that when black woman experience the disorder, they are more likely to have a more severe form that shows up as early as six months into pregnancy," said lead researcher Thelma Patrick, an assistant investigator at the Magee-Womens Research Institute in Pittsburgh. "We've been looking at biochemical evidence to help us understand why they're at higher risk."

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The problem with prvaication is, liars and truth tellers will always say the same thing.

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By TERENCE NEILAN

Published: April 20, 2004

Saudi Arabia is strongly denying accusations that it agreed with the White House to "fine tune" oil prices before this November's presidential elections, a move that would help the economy at an opportune time for the Republicans.

"The allegation that the kingdom is manipulating the price of oil for political purposes or to affect elections is erroneous and has no basis in fact," a top Saudi foreign affairs adviser, Adel al-Jubeir, said in a statement issued in Riyadh late Monday.

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Civilians Return to Falluja as U.S. Starts to Implement Plan
By IAN FISHER

Published: April 20, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 20 — American officials in Iraq took initial steps today to put into effect an agreement with civic leaders in the flash-point city of Falluja intended to end a standoff between American troops and Sunni insurgents.

The spokesman for the governing Coalition Provisional Authority, Dan Senor, said that the authority had shortened the curfew, begun to allow for the passage of official ambulances through the city and permitted the return of a limited number of families who had fled the fighting. News services also reported that some Iraqi police officers returned to their posts in the city today.

But Mr. Senor warned that American officials were still waiting to see whether the Fallujan negotiators would be able to convince the Sunni rebels to turn in their heavy weapons, a cornerstone term of the agreement.

"Time is running out," he said at a news conference here. "And while we believe that the Fallujan negotiators — the Fallujan delegation — were quite serious about their intentions, we continue to question whether or not they will be able to deliver on those intentions, on those commitments."

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Imagine that the U.S. administration deliberately hid money from Congress to invest in a war in the Middle East, potentially crafted secret deals with an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has ties to terrorism, and appointed ideologues to be the key diplomatic emissaries to a war-torn region. Think you are back in the 1980s living through the Iran-Contra scandal? Think again. Over the last two days, new revelations by journalist Bob Woodward and actions by President Bush have evoked memories of a previous scandal and an old foreign policy/national security strategy gone wrong. Yesterday, new details emerged about the Bush administration's deliberate circumvention of Congress to divert $700 million into a secret war plan, and about the potential manipulation of U.S. elections by the Saudi Arabian government. Meanwhile, President Bush nominated key Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte as the new Ambassador to Iraq.

IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES - HIDING MONEY FROM CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) became the first lawmaker to "demand to know whether the Bush administration transferred $700 million to Iraq war planning efforts out of counterterrorism funds without informing Capitol Hill." According to Woodward, the $700 million came out of a supplemental Appropriations bill meant for Afghanistan operations. And a close look at the two supplemental Appropriations bills that passed between 9/11 and July 2002 when the secret transfer took place shows that both bills mandate the White House to inform Congress if money is moved. The Emergency Supplemental Act passed on 9/14/01 specifically instructs the president to "consult with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of any funds. The president actually told the American public that the money would be used for those purposes, saying the bill would be used "to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military" in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  He said nothing about Iraq. Similarly, while the summer 2002 supplemental bill allows the administration to transfer "up to $275 million" in unused money within the Pentagon budget, it requires the president to notify Congress within 15 days of moving money. So far, the administration has not produced a shred of evidence that it followed these laws and informed Congress. As Woodward said, "Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money."

IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – LYING TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT MILITARY FOCUS: According to a new AP report, "Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch." "I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.

IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – SECRET DEALS WITH COUNTRY TIED TO TERROR?: The Saudi Arabian government, which has ties to terrorism yet maintains close ties to the Bush administration, continued to deny Woodward's charges that its U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar promised an increase in oil supplies to coincide with the November presidential election to help President Bush's campaign. Mounting a Saudi defense, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir deflected the questions by claiming, "Over the past 30 years, the kingdom has sought to ensure adequate supplies of crude at moderate price levels." Of course, al-Jubeir did not explain why the Saudis had led the recent charge within OPEC to reduce oil supplies and artificially inflate the price of gasoline in the U.S. to record levels. Woodward remained steadfast in his reporting, saying the Saudi's definitely made a "pledge." He said, "over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Author Craig Unger points to a possible motive for the alleged Saudi pledge. In his book "House of Bush, House of Saud," he says Bush presidencies "strengthen Bandar's position in Saudi Arabia. During the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush era, Bandar had enjoyed unique powers - partly because of his close relationship to Bush...But during the Clinton era, Bandar had lost clout. [He was] never an insider in the Clinton White House."

IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – THE IMPORTANCE OF NEGROPONTE'S RECORD: Negroponte, who has no prior experience in the Middle East and does not speak Arabic, is sure to face new questions about his Iran-Contra past, given the circumstances of his Iraqi post. As the LA Times reports, human rights advocates charged that during his tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, "Negroponte underplayed human rights abuses by death squads to ensure that the country would continue to serve as a base for U.S.-backed Contras." Negroponte denies this, but according declassified documents, "U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth." As Molly Ivins notes, this record is important because Negroponte was a key player in a "plot that sold U.S. arms to Iran" in its war against Iraq. That means "our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy" – a fact that might not be lost on local Iraqis with whom he must work closely. Negroponte will also be charged with convincing U.S. allies to desist from removing troops from Iraq. The problem is some of these key allies are from Central America, where Negroponte's sordid record is well-known and where his name might not be well-received. In fact, just yesterday Honduras – the country where Negroponte made his most indelible mark – said it was planning to remove its troops from Iraq. Finally, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights watch notes the "serious unanswered questions about Negroponte's complicity with the atrocities in Honduras" are important as the issue of "U.S.-sponsored forces avoiding complicity in atrocities" could arise in Baghdad.  

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Portions of the Patriot Act, passed in the chaotic days after 9/11, are scheduled to expire in 2005. President Bush hit the road yesterday and grossly distorted the reason some of the provisions are scheduled to "sunset." Bush said that Congress designed some provisions to expire in 2005 because of the belief that "maybe the war on terror won't go on very long." The truth: "Lawmakers of both parties...said at the time the Patriot Acts passed that the sunset provision would allow Congress to ensure that the administration did not abuse its new power." Meanwhile, even as the president asks Congress to make all provisions in the Patriot Act permanent, Attorney General John Ashcroft has failed to disclose critical information necessary to evaluate how the government uses the law.

ROVING FROM THE TRUTH: President Bush touted the use of roving wiretaps, authorized by Section 206 of the Patriot Act, as an "essential tool" for locking up terrorists. Roving wiretaps allow the government to tap not just an individual phone number but any phone that they believe the target of their surveillance might use. The provision raises serious privacy concerns. As explained in an American Progress report, "Section 206 does nothing to require that, as the wiretap 'roves,' the subject is actually present, or even likely to be present at the new location." So if "the location of the surveillance is, for example, a public computer terminal, [roving wire taps] could expose hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people to clandestine surveillance." But last year, when James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) asked the Justice Department how roving wiretaps had been used, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jamie Brown responded that the information was classified. How is Congress supposed to decide whether or not to make the roving wiretap provision permanent if it doesn't even know how it is being used?

DELAYED NOTIFICATION OF THE FACTS: President Bush also praised the effectiveness of "delayed notification search warrants," which are authorized by Section 213 of the Patriot Act. A delayed notification search warrant allows the government to search a home or office and not inform the owner as long as the government believes that doing so would have an "adverse result." The president's comments on this topic are somewhat of a red herring because Section 213 is not scheduled to sunset. Nevertheless, serious concerns about the provision persist as the government could argue that disclosing that a search has taken place could have an "adverse result" in nearly every case. The provision has been used hundreds of times – but as of May 13, 2003, it has never been used to combat terrorism.

SO ESSENTIAL IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED: Bush also urged the extension of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, which permits the government to more easily obtain "any tangible thing" – a classification so broad it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items." That Bush would single this provision out as essential to the war on terrorism is puzzling since, on September 18, 2003 – after insisting for two years the information was classified – John Ashcroft said that the provision had never been used. The Justice Department is now equivocating, saying that Ashcroft's denial only applies to the period before September 18, 2003. But, before Congress decides to make Section 215 a permanent part of the law, it should know if and how it has been used. 

ASKING FOR AN END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION: Bush not only asked for a rubber-stamp approval of all expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, he also asked for certain authorities to be further expanded. His proposal to expand "administrative subpoenas," which allow the government to obtain records and interrogate any witness without any court review. The president claims the government needs this extraordinary power to speed terrorism investigations. But the Department of Justice could not even cite a single instance where the existing rules slowed down their efforts against terrorism. Eliminating the judiciary from its fundamental role as a check on executive branch power runs squarely against the Constitution while doing nothing to further the fight against terrorism.

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Now you too can Kill Bill…if you read Czechoslovakian.

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Lamb: Inmate writing erased
Associated Press

HARTFORD -- Prison officials destroyed computer files containing inmates' personal writing days after a prisoner won a national writing award, best-selling author Wally Lamb said.

Lamb, who teaches a creative writing workshop at the York Correctional Facility in East Lyme, said Wednesday that 15 women inmates lost up to five years of work when officials at the prison's school ordered all hard drives used for the class erased and its computer disks turned over.

"It flies in the face of the First Amendment," Lamb said.

Department of Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz halted the writing program March 29 after learning that inmate Barbara Parsons Lane had won a $25,000 PEN American Center prize for her work on the 2003 book "Couldn't Keep It To Myself: Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters."

Lantz said miscommunication between Lamb and herself about the award led to the shutdown, but the rehabilitative program will continue after it is reorganized.

The commissioner is investigating the writings being deleted, said Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett.

"She is aware and obviously concerned about what Mr. Lamb as told her, and she has pledged to look into it further," he said.

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My gut says the good Commissioner felt entitled to a chunk of the winnings.

via Boing Boing Blog

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Bicycling to War
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A19

Old joke: A man repeatedly rides a bike across the Mexican-U.S. border. Each time, he's stopped by Customs and the bike is taken apart. Nothing is found. Finally, one day a Customs official offers the man immunity from prosecution if only he will tell what he's smuggling. The man pauses for a second, shrugs and says, "Bicycles."

I offer you this because I have just finished Bob Woodward's compelling new book, "Plan of Attack," and while it contains several gasps per chapter -- more reasons why George Tenet should be fired, more proof that Condi Rice is in over her head and more reasons that Dick Cheney should be medicated -- the stunning disclosure that I expected is simply not there. I thought Woodward would reveal the real reason George Bush went to war in Iraq. It turns out we already knew.

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Mr. Ashcroft's Smear

Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A18

IN HIS TESTIMONY last week before the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft loosed a remarkable attack on Jamie S. Gorelick, a commission member who served as deputy attorney general during part of the Clinton administration. The "single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem," Ashcroft said, "was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," and the "basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum" from 1995 -- which Mr. Ashcroft had conveniently declassified for the hearing. "Full disclosure," he said, "compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the commission" -- that is, Ms. Gorelick. Mr. Ashcroft's allegations, which triggered criticism and demands for her resignation from prominent Republicans, are grossly unfair.

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Think about it.

WorldCom Fades Into History
Reorganization Complete, Telecom Company Now Becomes MCI Inc.

You: Hey, man, where's that $20 you lent me?
Me: You lent that to Earl.

I'm Bobby, now.

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I call this "Small effects" because, though it appears the full impact of the desired changes has been blunted, no one should mistake affecting the system with reforming it.

Quote of note:

Michael Eastman, director of labor policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said he was disappointed that the Labor Department had increased overtime eligibility for "highly compensated" workers making $65,000 to $100,000 a year.

"But we're hopeful there are other improvements in the regulations that will help us in other ways," Eastman said. "Politics is a process of compromise, and any changes over the current law are better than nothing."

Another quote of note:

The Labor Department received more than 75,000 letters during the public-comment phase of the process, and thousands more since, with many writers critical of the Bush administration for making changes workers feared would cost them money or force them to work longer hours. Employer groups and the administration had argued the rules were a much-needed update of regulations issued in 1938, when the U.S. economy was much different.

Oh, yeah, the article…

Plan Expands Eligibility for Overtime Pay
By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A01

The Labor Department will allow workers who earn up to $100,000 a year to be eligible for overtime pay, a substantial shift upward from an earlier proposal that Democrats had promised to make an issue in the presidential campaign.

More low-wage workers would become automatically eligible for overtime under the final rules, due to be released today, according to Labor Department documents describing the regulation. Police, firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians and licensed practical nurses will also be assured of eligibility for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week.

The overtime rules, which haven't been revised in 50 years, have become a major subject of political dispute. The changes have been avidly sought by a wide coalition of business groups. But both houses of Congress voted last year to block the Bush administration's attempt to issue the rule because of controversy over the number of workers who might be adversely affected.

A research organization that focuses on labor issues estimated that the proposed changes would cost up to 8 million workers their chance to earn overtime. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao has countered that the original rules would cost fewer than 1 million more highly paid workers their overtime checks, while expanding overtime eligibility to millions of lower-wage workers.

The changes to be announced today amount to a more generous proposal for workers on both ends of the pay scale.

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Quote of note

In 2001, the Kansas City Police Department received a multimillion-dollar federal grant to help investigators use DNA testing to clear unsolved cases. The department worked with its regional crime lab and used the money to pay overtime and other costs for work on the old cases.

"Solving old crimes is now a regular thing for us," Sanders said Monday. "But we haven't had a serial case, particularly one so painful and extensive."

So how about we use all that expertise to settle all those wrongful imprisonment claims?

Same reaon the FDA won't allow a premium beef exporter to test his stock for Mad Cow disease…it "sends the wrong message."

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DNA Leads to Suspect in Decades-Old Kansas City Slayings
By P.J. Huffstutter and Lynn Marshall
Times Staff Writers

April 20, 2004

Using DNA samples, some of them nearly three decades old, prosecutors have charged a 53-year-old man in Kansas City, Mo., with strangling a dozen women between 1977 to 1993.

Lorenzo J. Gilyard, a supervisor with a trash collection company, was charged Monday with 10 counts of first-degree murder and two counts of capital murder, the statute in effect at the time of two of the slayings.

If Gilyard is convicted in the city's largest serial killing spree, he could face life in prison without parole, or the death penalty, Jackson County prosecutor Mike Sanders said.

Gilyard, who is married and lives in southern Kansas City, is being held without bail. He previously had been convicted in Missouri of assault, theft, burglary and sexual abuse.

Gilyard was arrested Friday night. His attorney could not be reached for comment Monday.

Gilyard's friends and acquaintances were shocked to hear that he could be connected to the women's deaths.

"People around here are just stunned," said Tom Coffman, a spokesman for Deffenbaugh Industries Inc., where Gilyard has worked since 1986. "He was calm, even-tempered, respected by all the guys who worked with him."

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As Hate-Crime Concerns Rise, So Does the Threat of Hoaxes
Campuses often provide conditions that can cultivate false reports of racist or anti-gay acts, experts say.
By Nora Zamichow and Stuart Silverstein
Times Staff Writers

April 20, 2004

Colleges across the nation have become the stage for hate crime hoaxes that thrust the purported victim into the limelight and twist campuses into turmoil.

At San Francisco State, two black students reported racial epithets scrawled in their dorms. At Northwestern University, a freshman told police that someone grabbed him from behind, held a knife to his neck and uttered an anti-Latino slur. At the College of New Jersey, the treasurer of a gay organization said someone sent threats on his life.

In each instance, police said, the alleged victims turned out to be the perpetrators.

Although such incidents occur everywhere, experts say college campuses can provide the perfect petri dish for cultivating a hoax: a community capable of rallying to correct a perceived injustice.

"A person who is a victim of a hate crime can probably expect to get almost universal sympathy on a college campus. Out in the world at large, that's not necessarily true," said Mark Potok, who has researched hate crime for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "But on a college campus, you are very likely to get the support of the administration, the faculty and virtually all the students. It tends to put you in the limelight very quickly."

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THE WORLD
Road Perils in Iraq Add to Chaos, Shortages
By Nicholas Riccardi and Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writers

April 20, 2004

BAGHDAD — At a sprawling desert camp in southern Iraq, U.S. soldiers sleep in trucks and Humvees because Iraqi merchants are afraid to deliver tents to them.

On a key road through the Sunni Triangle, masked men with Kalashnikov assault rifles occupy the concrete-block checkpoints the U.S. military once used.

And at Baghdad's airport, goods are piling up because Iraqi truckers refuse to brave the main highway to the capital or transport the material to other U.S. bases.

In Baghdad's central market, Iraqi shippers and merchants fret that business is drying up.

Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages. Though there are no serious shortages, the perilous state of Iraq's roads adds to a sense of chaos in much of the country.

Over the weekend, the military announced it would close two of the country's biggest arteries to civilian traffic in an effort to get the fighting under control, cutting into Iraqi commercial life and raising fears of an economic slowdown.

"It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf without worrying about it," said Charles Heyman, a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting Group, citing two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control. The fact that one cannot take those roads, he said, "is not a good sign."

American military officials acknowledge that there have been some supply shortages as a result of stepped-up insurgent activity on the routes. They are flying in more material from Kuwait and altering convoy routes and schedules. But they say there are no widespread shortages, and they vow to retake the roads.

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Idiots.

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Rapper, 2 others taken off plane, face charges
April 19, 2004

O'HARE -- A rap artist and two associates were taken off a United Airlines flight Sunday afternoon and charged with simple assault for allegedly causing a disturbance after a flight attendant said they refused to turn off their radios.

Clayton Gavin, a member of the group Dead Prez, were scheduled to leave on a 1:50 p.m. United Airlines flight from O'Hare Airport to New York City. Police said the men "caused a disturbance."

Gavin, 30, of Crawfordsville, Fla.; Harris DeJesus, 27, of New York City; and Umi Bem Niilampti, 26, of Cordova, S. C., are scheduled to be in court May 5, police spokesman Hector Alfaro said.

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Quote of note:

To Sharp, his songwriting career was like something that happened in a different life. He owned a dusty, beat-up piano, but he rarely played. "I wouldn't deal with it," he said.

But Miller, who dedicated the album to her stillborn son, Aidin, brought that part of Sharp back to life. Now his piano is covered with old sheet music and onionskin lead sheets. He has stacks of CDs and cassettes piled around his small home. "I've had all these songs sitting around here for eons," he said, surveying the stacks of papers and tapes as if they were lost children back home.

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Bobby Sharp's forsaken catalog of songs became 'Unchained' by twist of fate
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Monday, April 19, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ

Bobby Sharp says the song "Unchain My Heart" saved his life.

He wrote the 1961 Ray Charles hit while junk-sick in his parents' Harlem apartment on a Sunday afternoon while they watched television in the next room. He sold the song the next day for $50 and bought drugs.

Sharp, now 79, spent longer working as a drug counselor than he did in the music business and hasn't written songs seriously in more than 35 years. But in March of last year, he heard local jazz vocalist Natasha Miller being interviewed on KCSM, and when she said that she also lived in Alameda, Sharp found her number in the phone book.

"Unchain My Heart," in a way, saved Natasha Miller's life, too. When she did that radio interview she was nine months pregnant with her second child. She grew ill, was hospitalized and lost the baby. Sick and exhausted back home, she was too weak to sing. But she had this stack of lead sheets and cassettes that Sharp gave her at a meeting in an Alameda coffee shop. She transposed his 1968 song "My Magic Tower" into her key and started singing again.

Miller, 33, will celebrate the release of "I Had a Feelin': The Bobby Sharp Songbook" on Tuesday night at Yoshi's, with Sharp in the audience, as he was for every recording session. With the Charles biopic starring Jamie Foxx due in October titled "Unchain My Heart," Bobby Sharp's unlikely star is on the rise after a life out of the spotlight.

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AP Interview: Powell says more countries may follow Spain in leaving coalition
BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

(04-19) 19:52 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that one or more countries may follow Spain's lead and withdraw peacekeeping troops from Iraq "based on their own political situation." Hours later, Honduras said it was pulling out its 370 soldiers.

Last month, Spain's new Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, "indicated the troops would be staying through the end of June, which is when they are supposed to come out," Powell said in an interview with The Associated Press.

And, Powell said, Zapatero had said that Spanish officials would then examine a U.N. resolution on peacekeeping if one was ready by then.

"And suddenly, troops are being withdrawn," Powell said with obvious disappointment with Zapatero's announcement Sunday he was ordering their departure "as soon as possible."

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April 19, 2004

Given everything you know about Black folks, list for yourself the disadvantages of not being Black.

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I wonder how many people, even percentage-wise, use more than one type of blogging system?

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John at Discriminations says

Now comes Amy Wax, a law professor at Penn, who demonstrates in OpinionJournal that "the belief that stereotype threat is the sole or even the chief cause of the differences [between blacks and whites in testing] is without foundation."

And she says it…

The Threat in the Air
Is fear of "stereotypes" really why blacks do poorly on tests?

BY AMY L. WAX
Sunday, April 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

People do badly on tests for different reasons. Some do badly because they're anxious or fear failure, others because they don't know how to answer the questions. How important are these factors? When it comes to the long-observed patterns of black-white differences on a range of academic measures, social science purports to know the answer. Journals and textbooks of psychology will tell you that the principal cause of black students' poor performance on tests is something called "stereotype threat." Black test-takers fall short because they're afraid that the results will be used to confirm negative views about their group's abilities. It follows that if some way can be found to dispel this "threat," group differences in scores will disappear.

Yet the belief that stereotype threat is the sole or even the chief cause of the differences is without foundation. In the main study in this area, done by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in 1995, black and white Stanford undergraduates were given a difficult test of verbal ability. The students of both races were divided into two groups. Half of both black and white students were told the test would be used to assess their groups' intellectual ability--the "stereotype threat condition." The black students who were tested under threat did worse than the black students who were not told this. White students performed the same, whether or not they were threatened.

The key to this study, and to its misuse, can be found in how the results were reported. The average incoming verbal SAT scores of the black Stanford students lagged about 40 points behind the white students in the experiment. In order to control for those academic disparities, the authors adjusted scores on the experimental tests to account for any background SAT score differences. Since the adjustment allowed them to compare students as if they were equally qualified, it's no surprise that black and white students were reported as achieving the same scores when the stereotype threat was removed.

…but I think "demonstrates" is a bit strong.

Ms. Wax gets her information from On Interpreting Stereotype Threat as Accounting for African American–White Differences on Cognitive Tests by Paul R. Sackett, Chaitra M. Hardison, and Michael J. Cullen an article in January's American Psychiatrist magazine. And the fact that I'm only commenting now means I'm not a subscriber, but the fact that it was published in January means I ought to be able to find something more dispassionate than an OpinionJournal piece.

I found a review of the original research and the analysis done in the article at the National Association of Scholars Online Forum:

Steele and Aronson sought to find out why blacks with the same SAT scores as whites earn lower grades in college and take longer to graduate. They hypothesized that the pressure of a negative racial stereotype concerning intellectual ability might impede academic performance, especially among those for whom academic success is important. Their experiments used a series of verbal reasoning tests, in which some participants were given instructions that "primed" the stereotype, while others were not. (The priming consisted of describing the test as a measure of cognitive ability, or requiring the test taker's racial identification.) The participants were black and white Stanford University sophomores, whose average verbal SAT scores were 603 for blacks and 655 for whites. The results: When the stereotype was primed, black performance fell, but white performance did not. When the stereotype was not primed, black performance equaled that of whites who had similar SAT scores.

Note that the problem confronted by the researchers was not the racial gap in SAT scores, but a racial gap in the college achievement of students whose SAT scores are similar. And the result was not the elimination or reduction of the racial gap in SAT scores, but the elimination of a racial gap in the experimental test performance of students whose SAT scores were similar. [See the description by Steele and Aronson in Chapter 11, "Stereotype Threat and the Test Performance of Academically Successful African Americans," in C. Jencks & M. Phillips, (Eds.) The Black-White Test Score Gap, 401-430. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, online here. The original research report is Steele, C.M. & Aronson, J. (1995), "Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, 797-811.]

The original research didn't set out to explain the "SAT gap," so it can't be blamed for failing to do so. And research as social criticism like the American Psychiatrist article is useful; pointing out the general misrepresentation of the results is a good thing. That's why I want to point out Ms. Wax says:

Since the adjustment allowed them to compare students as if they were equally qualified

when the actual adjustment made was to compare equally qualified students

The Frontline summary of the Steele-Aronson research gives a fair description of the experimental process, but misrepresents both the investigated problem and the experimental result. As we have seen, the problem was to explain the college under-performance of blacks as compared to whites who have similar SAT scores. The actual result was that the "Blacks who believed the test was merely a research tool did as well as the Whites" whose SAT scores were similar, while the "Blacks who believed the test measured their abilities" did less well than the whites whose SAT scores were similar. The qualification in red type makes all the difference. Its omission is the heart of the misrepresentations alleged. Leave it out, and you create the false impression that removing "stereotype threat" removed the black-white test score gap. Restore the qualification, and you make clear what was actually accomplished by removing the threat: similar performance by black and white participants with similar SAT scores.

The interesting thing is, Ms. Wax also disregarded the qualification in red type, rhetorically removing the "stereotype threat" from the realm of significant contributing factors. Keep the properly qualified statement in mind as you read her article and it will sound rather petulant.

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Violence in Iraq will get even worse, says Blair
By Melissa Kite in Washington and Alex Thomson in Basra
(Filed: 18/04/2004)

Tony Blair will tell MPs tomorrow that Britain should be prepared for worse violence in Iraq in the coming weeks.

The Prime Minister believes that British and American troops must brace themselves for "acts of desperation" by anti-Coalition rebels as the June 30 deadline for the handover of sovereignty in Iraq draws closer, senior advisers to Mr Blair said yesterday.

The warnings came as the commander of British troops in southern Iraq, Brig Nick Carter, admitted that he would be powerless to prevent the overthrow of Coalition forces if the Shia majority in Basra rose up in rebellion. Brig Carter, of the 20 Armoured Brigade, who has been in Iraq for four months, said British forces would stay in Basra with the consent of local Shia leaders, or not at all.

Last month, 14 British soldiers were injured in Basra, at least three seriously, when they came under attack from demonstrators armed with petrol bombs, rocks and a grenade.

"A crowd of 150,000 people at the gates of this barracks would be the end of this, as far as I'm concerned," Brig Carter said. "There would be absolutely nothing I could do about that."

via Juan Cole

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via Atrios (who should have posted this picture)

Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip
A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates must be crushed…

LATER: Action Jack at Ludis beat me to the cartoon link, dammit

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Lack of Resolution in Iraq Finds Conservatives Divided
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: April 19, 2004

A growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of support he can expect from his political base.

The continuing violence and mounting casualties in Iraq have given new strength to the traditional conservative doubts about using American military power to remake other countries and about the potential for Western-style democracy without a Western cultural foundation. In in the eyes of many conservatives, the Iraqi resistance has discredited the more hawkish neoconservatives — a group closely identified with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

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What Awaits the G.O.P. in Convention
By JOYCE PURNICK

Published: April 19, 2004

IT was inevitable, but still it is always instructive to be reminded of the adaptability of our public officials. The Republicans are coming to New York, holding their convention from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Time for the Democrats to take a vacation? No way.

A few days ago, Representative Charles B. Rangel threatened to disrupt the convention if Washington Republicans did not modify a law requiring some public housing tenants to work in community service. "If they don't do it, they're going to have a hot time in the old town when they get here," Mr. Rangel said at a news conference at City Hall on Friday.

Yesterday, he elaborated over the phone: "My position is that this is once again the arrogance of the Republican Party, which the mayor is a member of. The mayor is so proud of his newly acquired Republican credentials that it would seem to me that since this provision by anyone's interpretation is strictly a political shot to show the poor should be working, he should be our messenger."

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Many Started Web Logs for Fun, but Bloggers Need Money, Too
By JULIE FLAHERTY

Published: April 19, 2004

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 18 - "This is my claim to fame," Ned Batchelder said as he held up a small cube of off-white paper. It all began on his Web log, or blog, last June, when he described how to make boxes out of business cards.

While not a particularly fascinating bit of origami, the trick has become a tiny source of income. Thanks to references and links to the card cubes on other Web logs, the visitors to that page of his blog bring him about $2 a day in ad revenue.

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Hey, don't laugh…$2 is more than I've earned in Amazon.com fees over the entire existance of the blog.

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Study Suspects Thousands of False Convictions
By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 19, 2004

A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today.

Almost all the exonerations were in murder and rape cases, and that implies, according to the study, that many innocent people have been convicted of less serious crimes. But the study says they benefited neither from the intense scrutiny that murder cases tend to receive nor from the DNA evidence that can categorically establish the innocence of people convicted of rape.

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Stuck on the Wrong Side Of the Economic Divide
By Susan Yuzna
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B03

SAN FRANCISCO

I never expected to find myself in this position in my mid-fifties -- single, jobless and without health insurance. But that's where I've been for the past 23 months -- just one of the 5.7 percent unemployed over whose predicament President Bush and his presumptive Democratic opponent, John Kerry, have been jousting.

With a master's degree and 10 years of teaching experience, I'm not yet prepared to give up on the ambition that propelled me 15 years ago to pursue my dream of becoming an English professor. But, before I resign myself to waiting tables or cleaning other people's houses, I'm getting some humbling insights into the lives of the chronically unemployed. I'm beginning to discover what a very scary way of life theirs is. And, believe me, it's a way of life that other well-educated Americans could suddenly face.

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The Cost of 'Arrogant Daydreams'
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B05

Chas W. Freeman Jr., U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, assistant secretary of Defense (1993-94) and current president of the Middle East Policy Council, sent this message about the Iraq war to an e-mail discussion group of foreign affairs experts earlier this month after visiting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The following excerpts appear with his permission.
[P6: The above-referenced permission was given to the Washington Post. I am a mere copyright infringer this time. I infringe because the article supports a thought I had last week

There is no Quote of Note because the whole damn article qualifies. See below the fold.]

The view in the region, from which I have just returned, is that by destroying the Iraqi state the U.S. made it almost impossible to accomplish regime change, as opposed to regime removal, in Baghdad. No one regrets the end of Saddam's tyranny, but Iraq over the past year is viewed as an Arab zone of anarchy under foreign occupation. No one believes that what will be transferred to the Iraqi Governing Council on July 1 is "sovereignty."

Thus the mid-summer situation will be one in which an Iraqi native civilian authority with little or no legitimacy is asked to coexist with an intensely unpopular foreign occupation force over which it has no control. Few believe this dysfunctional arrangement will be up to managing an increasingly dangerous situation.

Many believe that the only thing now saving Iraq from civil war is the increasing unity of ordinary Iraqis against the occupation. This unity increasingly transcends religious schisms. It is drawing religious fanatics into alliance with secular nationalists. ("My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin and I against a stranger.") A new crop of home-grown Iraqi jihadis is, many fear, forging anti-American alliances with trans-regional and possibly global reach. (Shia with Hezbollah; Sunnis with Hamas; both, somewhat warily, with al Qaeda and its affiliates.)

The most charitable characterization of the Iraqi Governing Council (widely known as "Ahmed Chalabi and the Twenty Thieves") is that they are opportunists. Most observers believe that, once cut loose from direct association with the U.S., such men will find the temptation to engage in demagoguery against the U.S. occupation irresistible. The forecast in the region is an escalating guerrilla war against U.S. forces, coupled with the progressive collapse of the successor regime to the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority], and conjoined with jockeying for position in the civil war to follow U.S. military withdrawal.

The way in which the emerging domestic U.S. debate about Iraq is cast and the language we (especially the president and members of his administration) use to describe it are disturbing to many in the region despite their unusually high tolerance of hypocrisy. They see it as truly Orwellian to describe a large U.S. force accompanied by a small number of foreign auxiliaries as "the coalition," foreign occupation as "freedom," desecularization as "democratization," the establishment of a hand-picked government of exiles as a "transfer of sovereignty," and the presence of a plague of federally funded U.S. carpetbaggers and mercenaries as "reconstruction" and "development." People in the region were mightily impressed by our army's prowess as it took Baghdad. So far, however, neither our image nor our credibility in the region have been enhanced by our post-assault performance. This accounts in part for the almost universally derisive reaction to President Bush's "greater Middle East" initiative.

In the broader context, one might ponder a few possible lessons: Military triumph does not necessarily equate to political victory. Wars end only when the defeated accept defeat, not when the victor declares victory. A victory that does not produce peace can be much more costly than protracted confrontation that accomplishes deterrence. Arrogant daydreams that inspire military actions can become humiliating nightmares that produce political debacles

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This Hard-Earned Money Comes Stuffed in Their Genes
By Dusty Horwitt
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B03

In every age and every nation, the rich and powerful employ new myths to preserve their privileged status. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European monarchs justified their rule through "the divine right of kings," perhaps most famously articulated by Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, a tutor to Louis XIV's son. "God establishes Kings as his ministers, and reigns through them over the people," Bossuet wrote in a document published posthumously in 1709.

As the election season heats up, you can count on hearing more references to the modern American equivalent of "the divine right of kings": the sacred notion of "hard-earned money." Late last month, President Bush praised his tax cuts by saying that as a result, "We've left more money in the hands that earned it." And a few weeks earlier, his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, praised tax cuts in his state that, he said, meant Floridians were "keeping more of their hard-earned money."

Many wealthy Americans and their political allies have fueled the popular myth that we earn all of our money through individual effort. After all, if our money is fully "hard-earned," the argument goes, it's unfair for the government to take it away -- and especially unfair to provide it to the less affluent among us who didn't "earn" their way as we did.

But like the divine right of kings, there is more myth than truth in the phrase "hard-earned" money.

Exhibit A is Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, which tells the story of a massive redistribution of wealth based more on birth than on hard work.

…followed by two pages of really rewarding nepotism.

Among the 100 wealthiest Americans on this year's list, Forbes reports that 46, or almost half, owe at least a chunk of their fortunes to inheritance. They include real estate mogul Donald Trump (net worth $2.5 billion), media baron Rupert Murdoch (net worth $7.2 billion) and five heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune Alice, Helen, Jim, John and Robson Walton who are worth $20.5 billion each.

While some people who inherit money work as hard and competently as some who haven't inherited piles of cash, inherited money is not the product of the heir's hard work. Neither is the wealth created by inherited investments.

And inherited money is only one form of unearned wealth. Other types include the businesses, jobs and even access to universities that millions of Americans inherit, at least in part.

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At this point I think it's pretty clear.

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The War: What We're Missing
By John DeBlasio, Page B01

Ever since the initial planning phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we Americans have struggled with the single most important question about our role in Iraq: Are we "occupiers" or "liberators"?

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Leadership: Now, the Nation Needs Answers More Than Exhortations
By Lewis L. Gould
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B01

AUSTIN

There comes a moment in almost every presidency when an unpleasant bit of reality intrudes upon the happy routine of striking media poses, harvesting reelection money and rubbing the egos of political allies. It's a moment when the unique burdens of the Oval Office begin to weigh upon its occupant more heavily than before, when a sense of impending tragedy threatens to overwhelm any countervailing assumption of divine, or even just plain political, purpose.

…In any presidency, there is the temptation to do only those things that the holder of the office finds pleasant. For Bush, the cheers of the crowd in a banquet hall filled with campaign donors are sweet music. That audience needs no persuasion. The president's aura and his vigor are enough to satisfy its psychic needs. But when the American people face life-and-death choices, with no good end in view, they look to their president not as a cheerleader or a sermonizer. They want instead the steadying reassurance of a person with a clear sense of where the nation should go and how it will get there.

Citizens are prepared to "stay the course" when they have a pilot who explains the dangers ahead, options available and troubles to be surmounted. What the nation got on Tuesday night were the words of a presidential preacher and an adroit campaigner. No president can be successful in this modern world without those qualities. But what the president experienced on Tuesday night, in the most painful public way, is the reality that a chief executive with only those attributes at his command falls short. The ability to persuade and convince, which Bush up to this point has not shown that he possesses, could well determine whether the American people will give him four more years in the modern presidency.

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We need a new term. Anyone know what hippopotamus meat is called?

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Quote of note:

Out of the 264 provisions now in the legislation, 146 were added as "sweeteners" after it was voted out of committee, said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy at the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. And senators still have more than 70 amendments pending when they take it back up, possibly this week.

"This is one of the biggest exercises in congressional vote buying we have ever seen," Ashdown said.

And not everyone is so sure the tax cuts will really be paid for. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that more than two dozen of the tax cuts abruptly disappear in a few years, but their offsetting provisions extend over 10 years. If those tax cuts are extended, as they routinely are, the cost of the legislation would quickly balloon.

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Special-Interest Add-Ons Weigh Down Tax-Cut Bill

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A01

Congress's task seemed simple enough: Repeal an illegal $5 billion-a-year export subsidy and replace it with some modest tax breaks to ease the pain on U.S. exporters.

But out of that imperative has emerged one of the most complex, special-interest-riddled corporate tax bills in years, lawmakers, Senate aides and tax lobbyists say. The 930-page epic is packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers, to name a few. There is even a $94 million break for a single hotel in Sioux City, Iowa.

Even one of the tax lobbyists involved in drafting it conceded the bill "has risen to a new level of sleaze."

"I said a few months ago, any lobbyist worth his salt has something in this bill," said the lobbyist, who would only speak candidly on condition of anonymity. "Now you see what I'm talking about."

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…as well as the difference between "rationale" and "rational."

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With CIA Push, Movement to War Accelerated
Agency's Estimate of Saddam Hussein's Arsenal Became the White House's Rationale for Invasion

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A01

This is the second of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.

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Second of five, huh?
About 'Plan of Attack'
Book Excerpts
• CIA Push Sped War Plans (this post is linked already)
The CIA's estimate of Saddam Hussein's arsenal became the White House's key rationale for war.
• Behind Diplomacy, Military Plan Was Launched
• Rove Revels in Democrat Kerry's Lead

Maybe I won't have to buy the book on day one.

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Politics, not science, blocks access to 'morning-after' pill

USATODAY.com - Each year, hundreds of people die from overdoses or adverse reactions to common pain relievers such as aspirin, which any child can buy at the corner drugstore. By contrast, research shows no deaths or serious harm from a contraceptive known as the "morning-after" pill. Even so, dispensing or obtaining it without a doctor's prescription is a crime in 45 states.

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Must…bathe…now…

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BIDDING OUT SCHOOLS . . .
Mon Apr 19, 3:33 AM ET

Everyone wants to run the schools - especially when money's involved.

Or, rather, especially because there is money involved - billions of dollars each and every year.

Thus, last week the usual suspects zeroed in on school contracts, particularly those not competitively bid.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Council Speaker Gifford Miller want more oversight of such contracts (preferably by them, no doubt).

(Oh, and by the way: Both may run for mayor next year.)

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's education-committee henchman, Steve Sanders (who's still sore over the 2002 reform that let City Hall run the schools) also wants to handcuff top brass. Or at least shift some of its money-dispensing powers to . . . well, let's just say, others.

"There is very little accountability right now as it relates to millions, if not tens of millions of dollars," Sanders says.

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Guerrilla 'psychological operation' has U.S. military worried (18 Apr 04)
JIM KRANE
AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- With videos of kidnapped civilians and leaflets threatening violence, one top U.S. military officer said insurgents were operating a brilliant campaign of fear that experts said was meant to drain international workers from Iraq and isolate the U.S. military and its allies.

Guerrilla ``masters of intimidation'' are also successfully countering the U.S. military's own psychological campaign.

One of the most demoralizing weapons in the campaign has been the release and broadcast of four videotapes of hostages, one of whom was filmed during his execution.

Insurgents have also issued a burst of fliers and statements warning Iraqis against cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation. The U.S. military used similar fliers and warnings to intimidate the Iraqi army during the war.

``There are activities here, people here, insurgents and extremists who are masters of intimidation,'' a senior U.S. military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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Don't blame me for the formatting. It can by email.

Call for submissions
subject: Iraq
Deadline: ongoing
.
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
global networking project
is preparing a feature related to Iraq - the war and the periode afterwards, and is looking for proposals of net based art works, papers, articles, comments, links etc which fit in this spectrum.
.
Accepted works and items must have a clearly defined copyright note and will be included into the new Iraq module to be created. Besides URLs of works or sources, also certain media files are optionally accepted, see specification below.
.
Please use this form for submitting
.
1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL
2. a brief bio/CV (not more than 300 words)
3. title and URL or type of media file,
4. a short work description (not more than 300 words),
5. one screen shot (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg)
.
please send your submission to
[email protected]
subject: Iraq
.
Only these types of media files are accepted:
1. text-->plain email, .txt or .doc
2. image--->.jpg
3. movie--->.swf, .dcr, .mov, .mpeg
.
Deadline -->ongoing
as soon as the first submissions are accepted, they will be included and posted.
**********************
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
[email protected]
global networking project by Agricola de Cologne
is part of --->
Version>04 Festival Chicago/USA - 16 April - 01 May 2004
Basics Festival Salzburg/Austria - 08-16 May 2004
Electronic Art Meeting Pescara/Italy - 19-23 May 2004
Festival of New Film/New Media Split/Croatia 26 June - 02 July 2004

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Kelley at Suburban Blight has her Cul de Sac running. With 170 links in there, I shouldn't feel special, except that she linked to me literally for no reason. Well, she says it's because she likes me. How the hell did THAT happen?

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Remember when MP3.com was sold and the new owners cleared out the archives of all those uploaded tracks by all those in dependant artists?

Well Garageband.com bought those archives. Those artists can get their old content back online almost immediately.

Good move, for both the artists and Garageband.com. That MP3.com was purchased is proof there's a workable business model in there.

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April 18, 2004

Here.

I have to admit, this book I'll be buying the day it hits the shelves.

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This quote, from the same story linked to below, is even better.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election -- to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

Emphasis added, of course.

Kind of puts a new light on increasing gasoline and oil prices, doesn't it?

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Here's mine:

“And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, ‘What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.’"

Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam -- and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.

“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

Do you realize this means accusations that the Bush administration diverted resources from the "War on Terror" are—quite literally—true?

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Start here and look around. Understand there's a too-sizable-too-ignore fraction of America that considers me (for my politics) to be a literal demon from hell.

You don't want a theocracy here any more than you want one in Iraq.

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What with the long term plan to reshape the judiciary humming along so nicely, I'd be calling their integrity into question if they did anything short of breaking the law to pursue their agenda.

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NAACP Legal Group's Integrity Called Into Question
By Robert B. Bluey
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 15, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Fifty years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the integrity of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is being challenged because of an alleged plot by its president to delay the confirmation of one of President Bush's judicial nominees.

A controversial memo reveals that Elaine R. Jones, president of the Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), used her relationship with an aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to seek a delay in the confirmation of Julia Smith Gibbons to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago.

At the time, the appeals court was embroiled in two high-stakes affirmative action cases involving the University of Michigan. Jones was trying to prevent Gibbons from being seated in time to cast a vote, according to a memo that outlines the strategy. The LDF defended the affirmative action policy in one of the cases, and thus had a stake in the outcome.

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The NY Times has this humorous editorial that ends with

By the end of the summer, Mr. Tenet's hair had completely gone up in smoke. His head was now smooth and shiny, making the C.I.A. director look eerily like a silver bullet. Dr. Rice cautioned against making too much of this resemblance: "George Tenet may have looked like a silver bullet, but he was not the silver bullet we were looking for." Concurring with Dr. Rice were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and an unmanned Predator drone.

…and this thought immediately flashed through my mind:

"Why did he name Condi twice?"

It's the cheapest shot I've ever taken.

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There's a reason the death threats against one of the 9/11 Commission members is disturbing enough for me to link it twice in one day.

I remember what happened the last time anti-government fervor reached fever pitch in this country.

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If you

1. save these lines
   <?php
$fortuneFilename = 'fortunecookie.txt';
$wisecracks = file($fortuneFilename);
$wisecrackCount = count($wisecracks);
echo $wisecracks[rand(0, $wisecrackCount - 1)]
?>
   in a file named fortunecookie.php,
2. save a list of wisecracks, one per line, in a file named fortunecookie.txt
3. FTP both files to your site
4. add
   <?php include '[path]/fortunecookie.php'; ?>
   somewhere in your template (I put it in <DIV class="description">)

You'll have the random quote thingie I just added to the page banner. It might stay, I dunno yet.

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Missouri House votes to hike newspaper tax after tough editorial

By The Associated Press
04.16.04
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri House has voted to raise taxes on the state's two largest newspapers after an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch branded the Republican-led chamber the "House of Hypocrites."

Democratic lawmakers decried the tax proposal as retaliation. But the Republican sponsor insisted he was simply "closing corporate tax loopholes."

Legislators in many states over the years have considered taxes on newspaper publishing, but the actions of the Missouri House could be cause for alarm, Paul McMasters, ombudsman at the Arlington, Va.-based First Amendment Center, said yesterday.

“The newspaper associations usually manage to use the Constitution — and common sense — to fight off such proposals,” McMasters said. "But it is a very troubling situation if indeed the effort is linked to trying to punish newspapers who have expressed criticism of the Legislature."

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"Nobody knows you're a dog." And as long as you don't make anyone acknowledge your canine nature, no one cares, right?

But what's wrong with being a dog?

Gay Republicans may get over being in denial faster than Black Republicans, though.

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Gay Republicans say its hard to back Bush
By Michael R. Blood, Associated Press Writer | April 18, 2004

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. --Gay Republicans are stung by President Bush's support for a ban on same-sex marriages and are divided over where to turn in November, with many weighing party loyalty against outrage.

"I'm going to have a hard time going with Bush. In my good conscience, I don't know how I can support him," said Shawn Gardner, one of several hundred party members attending this weekend's annual convention of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP organization that backed Bush in 2000.

"It's difficult for me to reconcile him having turned his back on an organization that supported him," said Gardner, who was among an estimated 1 million gays who voted for the president four years ago.

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World's Promises Failing Ethnic Groups in Sudan
Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Apr 14 (IPS) - One week after world leaders warned of another 'Rwanda' in the making, pro-government forces reportedly continue attacks on indigenous groups in Sudan's Darfur region and the African nation's government is refusing access to human rights investigators.

Speeches warning of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" of the Fur, Zaghawas and Massalit groups by Sudanese forces and pro-government militia made headlines as the world marked the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the massacres that killed more than 800,000 people in Rwanda.

But little has changed on the ground in Darfur, according to observers.

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Quote of note:

Economists purport to be surprised about them; we read in the press, repeatedly, that "no one" predicted it. That's not true. Economists who applied a systematic Keynesian framework to current conditions -- notably, Wynne Godley of Cambridge University and the Levy Institute, and this author -- have been issuing warnings on these issues since the 1990s.

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Bankers Versus Base
Deficit reduction is the wrong obsession. Democrats need to embrace jobs and growth.
By James K. Galbraith
Issue Date: 05.07.04

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There may come a day, in January 2005, when the Democrats will come back to power. Can we perhaps divert ourselves from the campaign long enough to ask, what then?

The Democrats have a problem. Their base wants jobs and security. Their financial leadership wants a return to the Clinton formula of deficit reduction, leaving low interest rates to generate economic growth and jobs. John Kerry's emerging economic platform pays heavy homage to this formula, but it is unlikely to work out. A return to Bill Clinton's policies will not reproduce Bill Clinton's results. There are at least six reasons why this is so.

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9/11 commissioner: 'I've received threats'
Gorelick says she won't step down; FBI investigating

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Jamie Gorelick, a member of the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, said Saturday that she received death threats this week after a number of conservatives alleged that her former work in the Justice Department may have contributed to failures leading to the attacks.

In the mid-1990s, Gorelick served as deputy attorney general of the United States.

During that time, she wrote a memorandum establishing distinctions between intelligence that could be used for law-enforcement purposes and intelligence that could be used for national security purposes.

That separation was originally required as a safeguard against abuse of citizens' rights by government investigative agencies. But passage of the Patriot Act in the wake of the attacks eliminated the requirement.

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Bad New Days for Voting Rights

Tt has been years since the bad old days when Southern blacks were given "literacy tests," and voting rights activists were beaten and killed. But blacks, Hispanics and Indians are still regularly discouraged from voting, often under the guise of "ballot integrity" programs that are supposed to be aimed at deterring fraud at the polls.

Minority vote suppression tears at the fabric of American democracy. It persists, however, for a simple reason: in close elections, when some minority groups are strongly identified with a single party, it can be the difference between winning and losing. In 2002, the Indian vote in South Dakota helped Senator Tim Johnson win by just 528 votes.

Today, in Bennett County, S.D., Indians say they have to contend with poll workers who make fun of their names, election officials who make it hard for them to register and — most ominously — a wave of false voter fraud charges that have been made against them, which they regard as harassment. Jo Colombe, a Rosebud Sioux tribal council member, said that when she worked as a poll watcher in a recent election she was accused of fraud simply for taking a bathroom break. When she returned, she said, white poll watchers charged her with copying the names of Indians who had not yet voted, and taking them out to Indians waiting in the parking lot. In January, prosecutors dropped a highly publicized case against another Indian woman, Rebecca Red Earth-Villeda.

With South Dakota's senior senator, Tom Daschle, running in another hotly contested race this year, Indians are bracing for more trouble at the polls. Many Indians feel their situation is similar to other so-called ballot integrity efforts over the last few decades. In the 1986 Louisiana Senate race, for instance, Republicans began a purge of tens of thousands of voters. An internal party document made clear that the goal was to "keep the black vote down." In North Carolina's 1990 Senate race, Jesse Helms supporters mailed 125,000 postcards to predominantly black voting precincts, misleading voters about residency requirements and warning that misstatements to voting officials could mean five years in prison.

More recently, Republican poll watchers in the 2002 Arkansas Senate election took photos of blacks as they voted, an intimidation tactic that has been used in other parts of the country. In last fall's Kentucky governor's race, Republicans announced plans to challenge voters in 59 predominantly black precincts. After the N.A.A.C.P. objected, the program was scaled back. And this year, a local Texas prosecutor threatened to arrest students at historically black Prairie View A&M if they tried to vote from their campus addresses, which the law allows them to do. He backed down when he was sued.

Intimidation of Hispanic voters has often focused on immigration matters. In one case that caused an uproar in California in 1988, Republicans hired uniformed security officers to serve as "poll guards" in Latino precincts in Orange County.

Federal and state officials, party leaders and voters themselves should act now to ensure that this loathsome and undemocratic trend stops. To achieve this:

• The Republican and Democratic party chairmen should publicly commit not to single out minority voters for intimidation, and to get this message out to party workers at every level.
• The National Association of Secretaries of State, and individual secretaries of state and state election officers, should state publicly that they will be on the lookout for minority vote suppression, and that they will deal with it strictly.
• The Department of Justice, which has lately seemed more focused on voter fraud than minority voter intimidation, should explain how it intends to discharge its legal duty to protect minorities from discrimination in voting.
• Prosecutors should vigorously pursue anyone involved in vote suppression; this is rarely done now. And its victims should bring civil lawsuits, to make those who engage in it pay.

Experts are predicting that this year's election will be among the most hard fought in decades. The people who play a leadership role in it should be making clear, well in advance of Election Day, that minority vote suppression will not be tolerated.

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Guarded U.S. Statement Urges Israeli Restraint
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

Published: April 18, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 17 — The Bush administration issued a guarded expression of concern about Israel's killing of the new Gaza Strip leader of Hamas on Saturday, saying that it "strongly urges" Israel to exercise restraint in retaliating for Palestinian attacks at a particularly delicate moment.

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Under Plan, Every Dog Would Have His Insurance
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Careful New Yorkers probably have insurance to cover the chance fender-bender, house fire or surprise attack of the chicken pox. Now, if a Bronx lawmaker has his way, they will have to take out yet another policy - one for their dogs.

State Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Democrat whose district is in the Bronx, proposed a new bill last month that, if passed, would require all dog owners in New York State to have liability insurance for their pets. The bill, which Mr. Rivera said would probably be ready for debate on the Assembly floor in a month, is called "Elijah's Law" for a 3-year-old boy, Elijah Torres, who was seriously injured in an attack by a Rottweiler in the Bronx last fall.

The law would circumvent the major sticking point in dog attack cases in New York City, Mr. Rivera said. Currently, an attack victim can take legal action only if a dog is documented as "dangerous," a designation assigned only after the dog has already bitten, he said.

"There's an old doctrine that says an owner is not liable until a dog is declared dangerous," Mr. Rivera said. "My legislation would require that any dog owner has to have insurance."

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Anti-Bush sentiment busts out all over (17 Apr 04)
And it's not just the usual suspects taking shots. The fire is coming from feature film, theatre and TV
SIMON HOUPT
Globe and Mail

NEW YORK -- It was an unusual occasion for a political statement. On Wednesday morning, the day after George W. Bush hosted a prime-time news conference to defend the fuzzy state of affairs in Iraq, architect James Polshek took the podium at a Brooklyn Museum preview to speak of the challenges in completing a multimillion dollar glass-and-steel renovation to the museum entrance.

"Building is a little like war. Once you get in it, you have to go all the way," he said. "But in this case, we did so successfully." Polshek paused, and a tiny smile crept across his face while the assembled media and museum supporters offered chuckles and light applause. "I don't want to get into that."

So much for architecture being a non-partisan discipline. Anti-administration politics are busting out of their usual homes in music, books, fine art and standup comedy, and crossing easily over into feature films, theatre, and even mainstream television shows in the run-up to this November's U.S. presidential election. At the same time, many of the flag-waving, administration-friendly movies that Hollywood rushed to produce in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, either foundered in development or are bombing at the box office, including the current The Alamo.

Writers and others say the sniping now directed at the White House is at least partly a response to the self-censorship they endured for more than a year after the terrorist attacks for fear of being seen as disloyal, and the disenchantment many have over the perception that George W. Bush intentionally misled the nation into war.

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'Good job, Prime Minister' - and Bush campaign is back on track

Downing Street is pleased with the Rose Garden double act but only Ariel Sharon left the White House with a broad smile, report Paul Harris in Washington and Kamal Ahmed in London

Sunday April 18, 2004
The Observer

The press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House went perfectly. Under an azure sky and in warm sunshine Tony Blair fended off the last reporter's question about the Iraqi crisis. As Blair turned from the microphone President George Bush patted him on the elbow. 'Good job, Prime Minister,' he said quietly and then: 'Well done.'

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"Newly minted Mrs. Zenpundit"?

Well, since he posted that last Tuesday maybe I only have to be nice for th enext two days. We'll see…

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