Whistle-Blowers at Risk

One thing all these software systems have in common is the ability to strictly control the flow of information through a company, to control what employees can do with documents and data, and to track who has accessed that information.

Sounds great so far. But imagine a company with less-than-worthy goals—say, one with unethical or illegal business practices—installing this type of software. All of a sudden, it becomes hard to copy or view documents and data that show the company's actions. And if you do view a document, someone higher up will know you looked at it. If that person thinks you might tell the authorities, he or she may remove the offending data.

I can't help but get the feeling that these software applications, designed for worthy goals, will end up being used to protect all kinds of corporate information and stop whistle-blowers before they can get started. I have to think that even ethical companies, once they've installed these applications to protect privacy and handle reporting, will use these systems to protect many other types of business information, especially the information they don't want outsiders to see.

Even some of our best pollsters appear to have been caught off guard by what took place in the 2002 mid-term elections--a sure sign that we're operating without a good theoretical model of the electorate. I think it's one reason our leaders often look indecisive and weak (Clinton's uncanny instinctive feel for the electorate may have spared him from this perception.) One of our best writers, Frank Rich of the New York Times, is left to glumly hope for a change in the political cycle. Tucker Carlson gloats to Rich that:

…Blogging is a medium that invites response and dialogue, and that's what progressives need. Maybe there's some great brainstorming going on in the liberal think tanks that's about to bear fruit in a great new approach to communicating the Democratic message. I hope so. But in case there's not, it is well past the time for us regular progressive Democrats to do more than moan and even weep about the direction of the country and the seeming impotence of our leaders to do anything about it. What I'm about to do is to try and provoke some thinking, some writing, some talking and finally, some action. Comment here on what's being written and help improve it. Be inspired to come up with your own TOE and write about it on your blog (and link back here!).

…Lakoff's research has led him to conclude that most of us use a metaphor of our nation as a family. The government at the federal, state and local level is thought of as the "parent" and the citizens stand in the role of "children." Those who understand politics in this way do not all have the same family model, however. People that we usually think of as conservatives hold a Strict Father worldview of the nation and politics. Liberals have a Nurturant Parent worldview.

…With so much depending on it, however, there are a few additional considerations. I would suggest that Lakoff's model misses one very important and growing worldview in the electorate. This conceptual metaphor does NOT see the nation as a family. I will call it the "Every man (and woman) is an island" worldview. The central metaphor is this worldview is that of personal boundaries and space. Simply stated:

No one is entited to intrude into my space if I do not intrude into theirs. Those who intrude into the space of others are morally bad and should be punished.

Many of those who operate by this metaphor call themselves libertarians.

The White House clearly hoped that Hadley's generous mea culpa closed the book on Yellowcakegate. Maybe, along with Cheney's AEI speech, it will. But Hadley's account leaves a dangling thread. Can you spot it? Tenet's Oct. 6 memo elaborating on why it was dumb, in the Cincinnati speech, to make reference to Saddam's purported yellowcake safari, came, Hadley says, after Hadley had already agreed to take the reference out. (Hadley's exact words: "[B]y this time, by draft eight, the reference to Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium has already been deleted from the speech, as DCI Tenet asked me to do in his telephone request.") Tenet is a very busy man—too busy, we now know, to bother vetting the president's State of the Union address himself, a lapse that required him to render an elaborate and somewhat embarrassing apology. Yet Tenet was not too busy in October to filibuster Hadley by memo on the yellowcake howler after Hadley had removed the yellowcake howler from the speech. Why wouldn't Tenet let go of Hadley's lapel?

Because, Chatterbox submits, Tenet knew (or perhaps just guessed) that someone else would try to overrule Hadley and put the yellowcake howler back in. Was that someone else Cheney or Libby?

A Clear-Eyed Son of Africa Totes the Continent's Pain and Despair
By RICHARD EDER

THE ZANZIBAR CHEST
A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands
By Aidan Hartley
Illustrated. 414 pages. Atlantic Monthly Press. $24.

oe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia," Aidan Hartley quotes from the prophet Isaiah. "Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down."

That shadowed, peeled nation is Africa, Mr. Hartley writes, hitching Isaiah's prophecy to the ever more ghastly cycle of coups, famines and massacres of the past dozen years.

As for "the swift messengers," the author numbers himself among them: one of the pack of journalists who crisscrossed Africa for some of those years. He uses that epithet in an unassayable mix of irony, vainglory, passionate sympathy and despair. His book displays the same mix.

"The Zanzibar Chest" is a many-legged hybrid. In part it is a wrenching account of African horrors, particularly those of Somalia and Rwanda.

There is the Rwandan refugee camp. A starving boy "crouches like a frog with eyes clouded white as moonstones," he writes. "And the American nurse is whispering in my ear, `We say the ones like that are circling the drain. You know, like a spider in your bath?' " There is the gang of paparazzi stampeding behind Sophia Loren, on a celebrity-appeal tour of a Somalian famine camp, and stomping on the arm of a child too weak to roll away.

Further "The Zanzibar Chest" is also a loving, often evocative account of East Africa where the author grew up, the son of a British agriculture expert and would-be rural entrepreneur, and descendant of a long line of colonial administrators and army officers. (When Mr. Hartley's Boer War great-grandfather asked to marry the daughter of the writer's great-great-grandfather — a medical corps general in the war against New Zealand's Maoris — the older man replied, "Better for her to be your widow than my unwed daughter!")

New World Ancestors Lose 12,000 Years
By NICHOLAS WADE and JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Scientists have found genetic evidence that the first human migrations to the New World from Siberia probably occurred no earlier than 18,000 years ago.

Government Offers Plan to Coordinate Climate Study
The Bush administration introduced a program to coordinate current efforts studying climate change — and develop some new ones — across some 13 federal agencies.

Your site is too intense for me to decide just how much I completely agree with many of your posted notes. However, I DO think that your site would help me in 'cementing' some of my own political beliefs.

BAGHDAD, July 22 — Widespread and sporadic gunfire crackled across Baghdad after dark on Tuesday as word spread that Saddam Hussein's feared and hated sons may have been killed in a gunbattle with U.S. troops.

…Much of it was Kalashnikov rifles, but Reuters correspondents also heard some machinegun bursts and small explosions. Tracer fire could be seen in the sky from several directions.

''It's celebration. People have heard about what happened,'' a U.S. military spokesman said.

Like Father, Like Son
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, July 21, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

Here are three of my favorite quotes:

"I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

The first two quotes, as everybody knows, were uttered by former President Bill Clinton. The last, published in the May 17, 2002, New York Times, was attributed to Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor to President George W. Bush.

All three quotes fall into the broad category of obfuscation, telling the literal truth with intent to deceive.

…When the time comes to investigate the present Bush administration, trying to determine what went wrong and why, and who was responsible, my advice to the investigators would be to take a very, very close look at George Herbert Walker Bush.

It's impossible for an outsider like me to untangle all the webs of intrigue operating in national politics, but in this case I think a good start would be to look at something called "Project for the New American Century," now known by its detractors as PNAC.

PNAC laid out its " statement of principles" on June 3, 1997. Its 25 signers read like a Who's Who of Bush cronyism, with a few marginal characters thrown in to give the illusion of balance: Elliott Abrams, Bill Bennett, Gary Bower, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalizad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel and Paul Wolfowitz.

Most of these people had roles in the former Bush administration and now have roles in the current one.

…Where did the phrase "New American Century" come from? I wondered about that, so I did a Nexis search of The New York Times through the 1980s and '90s.

Guess what? Almost every time the phrase was mentioned by the Times, it came out of the mouth of the first George Bush.

March 17, 1989, in Houston: "My agenda for a new American century ..."

Jan. 27, 1992, 1992, to a group of religious broadcasters: Said his State of the Union messsage would "detail how we can nuture creativity ... and harness it to the needs of a new American century."

March 22, 1992, at a swearing-in ceremony, "... help us compete in a new world economy and create a new American century."

April 2, 1992, in Philadelphia: "Today our mission is to begin restoring the principles of our founders and guaranteeing for our children a new American century."

And so on. If you put everything into context, "new American century," as used by the elder Bush, did not mean a new century in America. What it meant, in simplest terms, is that the United States would dominate the world in the 21st century.

And that's what the younger Bush is clearly striving for: world domination.

…It's hard to tell now when the Bush family steamroller will finally be brought under control. When it is, I do hope the investigators took a good look at Daddy. He Da Man! [p6: and a happy Black English Month to you, too!]

The perfect prescription

Everyone has a health care reform plan. But the best approach to covering the uninsured isn't even on the table.

… Today, this jury-rigged system is almost perfectly structured to stymie constructive action. Begin with a simple fact: Most Americans are insured. While an inexcusable 15 percent lack coverage (and perhaps twice as many were uninsured at least once in the past two years), most have real, if often inadequate, coverage most of the time.

This helps explain why the biggest insurance issues of recent years-for example, the Patients' Bill of Rights-have concerned the insured, not the uninsured. It also explains why every one of the leading presidential contenders is vowing to build on the current system of employment-based insurance. Only one longshot candidate, congressman Dennis Kucinich, has bucked the trend with a proposal to expand Medicare to all Americans.

Yet even when building on the existing patchwork system, tackling the problem of the uninsured generally entails a Hobson's choice: Either create programs with big price tags that deliver most of their benefits to those who already have insurance, or create narrowly targeted programs that isolate recipients politically while still leaving many without protection.

The first, more ambitious approach has only one major exponent in the presidential race, congressman Richard Gephardt, but his plan is undeniably bold. It would give employers tax credits that would offset up to 60 percent of the cost of insurance; in turn, employers would be required to provide coverage. Lower-income workers would get bigger tax credits.

…In contrast, most of the other Democratic candidates have taken the second tack, offering plans that are essentially souped-up versions of the status quo. Howard Dean's proposal, building on the plan he pushed in Vermont, would expand Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to more lower-income families. Senator John Kerry has a similar blueprint; Senator Bob Graham suggests he will develop one.

… Is there a third way? Not one that will please all sides. But it's surprising that Democrats have not revived the single truly original idea that emerged out of the Clinton-era debate: ''play-or-pay.''

Powerless to Change Tax Credit, House Democrats Turn to Protest
By DAVID FIRESTONE

WASHINGTON, July 23 — Democratic lawmakers slowed business in the House to a crawl today, conducting an hour or two of obstruction to protest the refusal of House Republican leaders to expand the child tax credit for low-income families.

Using one of the few tools available to members of the minority party, Democrats repeatedly forced the House to stop debate and vote on procedural motions they knew would not pass, like immediate adjournment. House Democrats said they also planned to force a vote every half hour on Thursday to make the same point.

"Democrats are in the heat of battle on the floor of the House using every weapon in our arsenal to disrupt the schedule and to force a vote on the child tax credit," the party's House leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said.

Beginning Friday, the government will mail checks of $400 per child to 25 million middle-income families, as part of President Bush's new tax cut law. But 6.5 million minimum-wage families with children will not receive the checks, the result of a decision in May by the White House and Republican lawmakers not to include them in the tax cut because most do not pay federal income taxes.

House Republican leaders have said they will increase the tax credit for low-income families only as part of a much broader tax-cut package for wealthier families, a position that has led to a stalemate in talks with less conservative Senate Republicans. Today's slowdown was the latest effort in a seven-week barrage of news conferences and demonstrations by Democrats to make Republicans pay a political price for their position.

The effect of the slowdown, however, was mostly to annoy Republican appropriations leaders, who had to stay much later than planned to pass an unrelated foreign operations spending bill tonight.

"This really throws us behind," said Representative C. W. Bill Young, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee. "I would really like to get this bill done, but they're using one of the tools of the minority."

F.C.C. Media Rule Blocked in House in a 400-to-21 Vote
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, July 23 — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation today to block a new rule supported by the Bush administration that would permit the nation's largest television networks to grow bigger by owning more stations.

The vote, which was 400 to 21, sets the stage for a rare confrontation between the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House, because there is strong support in the Senate for similar measures, which seek to roll back last month's decision by the Federal Communications Commission to raise the limit on the number of television stations a network can own. The F.C.C. has ruled that a single company can own television stations reaching 45 percent of the nation's households, but the House measure would return the ownership cap to 35 percent.

Only a few weeks ago, support for the F.C.C.'s move by House Republican leaders had been expected to counter the Senate uprising. But many House members from both parties have evidently taken note of the vocal resistance to the F.C.C. action by many members of the public and a broad spectrum of conservative and liberal lobbying groups — from the National Rifle Association to the National Organization for Women.

Today's House rebuke of the F.C.C. was embedded in a spending bill. The White House, which has threatened to veto the bill if the network provision remains in it, today sought to play down the lopsided size of the vote. Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said that presidential advisers had recommended approval of the legislation so that it could proceed to a House-Senate conference committee where the network ownership provision might be stripped out.

If, as is becoming more likely, the provision survives in final legislation, President Bush will face a difficult political predicament. He could carry out his veto threat and alienate some of his traditional constituents, which include several conservative organizations opposed to a number of new rules adopted by the F.C.C. Or, he could sign the legislation, abandon the networks and undercut his own advisers who have recommended that he reject the legislation.

Bush's Four Horsemen
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON
On the domestic front, President Bush is backing into a buzz saw.

The sleeper issue is media giantism. People are beginning to grasp and resent the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to allow the Four Horsemen of Big Media — Viacom (CBS, UPN), Disney (ABC), Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox) and G.E. (NBC) — to gobble up every independent station in sight.

Couch potatoes throughout the land see plenty wrong in concentrating the power to produce the content we see and hear in the same hands that transmit those broadcasts. This is especially true when the same Four Horsemen own many satellite and cable providers and already influence key sites on the Internet.

Reflecting that widespread worry, the Senate Commerce Committee voted last month to send to the floor Ted Stevens's bill rolling back the F.C.C.'s anything-goes ruling. It would reinstate current limits and also deny newspaper chains the domination of local TV and radio.

The Four Horsemen were confident they could get Bush to suppress a similar revolt in the House, where G.O.P. discipline is stricter. When liberals and conservatives of both parties in the House surprised them by passing a rollback amendment to an Appropriations Committee bill, the Bush administration issued what bureaucrats call a SAP — a written Statement of Administration Policy.

It was the sappiest SAP of the Bush era. "If this amendment were contained in the final legislation presented to the President," warned the administration letter, "his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill."

The SAP was signed by the brand-new director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, but the hand was the hand of Stephen Friedman, the former investment banker now heading the president's National Economic Council.

Reached late yesterday, Friedman forthrightly made his case that the F.C.C. was an independent agency that had followed the rules laid down by the courts. He told me that Bush's senior advisers had focused on the question "Can you eliminate excessive regulation and have diversity and competition?" and found the answer to be yes. He added with candor: "The politics I'm still getting an education on."

The Bush veto threat would deny funding to the Commerce, State and Justice Departments, not to mention the federal judiciary. It would discombobulate Congress and disserve the public for months.

And to what end? To turn what we used to call "public airwaves" into private fiefs, to undermine diversity of opinion and — in its anti-federalist homogenization of our varied culture — to sweep aside local interests and community standards of taste.

This would be Bush's first veto. Is this the misbegotten principle on which he wants to take a stand? At one of the White House meetings that decided on the SAP approach, someone delicately suggested that such a veto of the giants' power grab might pose "a communications issue" for the president (no play on words intended). Friedman blew that objection away. The SAP threat was delivered.

In the House this week, allies of the Four Horsemen distributed a point sheet drawn from Viacom and Murdoch arguments and asked colleagues to sign a cover letter reading, "The undersigned members . . . will vote to sustain a Presidential veto of legislation overturning or delaying . . . the decision of the FCC . . . regarding media ownership."

But they couldn't obtain the signatures of anywhere near one-third of the House members — the portion needed to stop an override. Yesterday afternoon, the comprehensive bill — including an F.C.C. rollback — passed by a vote of 400 to 21.

If Bush wishes to carry out the veto threat, he'll pick up a bunch of diehards (now called "dead-enders"), but he will risk suffering an unnecessary humiliation.

What next? Much depends on who is chosen to go into the Senate-House conference. If the White House can't stop the rollback there, will Bush carry out the ill-considered threat?

Sometimes you put the veto gun back in the holster. The way out: a president can always decide to turn down the recommendation of his senior advisers.

With Hussein's Heirs Gone, Hopes Rise for End to Attacks
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
The deaths of Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons could be an important step in the campaign to control and end the guerrilla-style insurgency.

Republicans Are Adding Weight to Reversal of F.C.C. Media Rule
By STEPHEN LABATON
Congress moved toward final passage of a measure that would reverse the recent decision by federal regulators to loosen ownership rules.

…The House measure would reverse one of the most significant new rules. The commission had ruled that a network could own television stations that reach up to 45 percent of the nation's viewers, an increase from 35 percent. The House measure would restore the old 35 percent limit by prohibiting the commission from spending any money to permit the transfer of a broadcast license to any company above that limit.

Today, the House rejected an amendment by two Democrats, Maurice D. Hinchey of New York and David E. Price of North Carolina, that would have reversed two other new media ownership rules. Those rules would make it easier for a company to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city and allow a company to own more TV stations in the same market.

Butting Heads With the Pentagon
By LESLIE WAYNE

…So there is considerable dismay, and some outright consternation, over sweeping "buy America" provisions that Mr. Hunter inserted into the House version of legislation authorizing the coming year's Pentagon budget. Countries that failed to help the United States in the Iraq war, he argues, should not enjoy the spoils of American military contracts or put the Pentagon in a position of depending on them for critical components.

That view has set Mr. Hunter on a collision course with his many friends at the Pentagon and among American military contractors that buy everything from microprocessors to jet engines and airplane wings overseas. Mr. Hunter's proposal would cut back sharply on the foreign content allowed in American military goods as well as provide a laundry list of items — from fuses to machine tools to airplane tires — that only American companies could supply.

IT's Not All Going Away

By Peter Coffee

When I want to see a technical professional turn pale, I quote Neal Stephenson's vision of a world in which "we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries," as described in his 1992 novel "Snow Crash." In a near future when knowledge, capital and even natural resources have become increasingly mobile across national boundaries, Stephenson's narrator observes that "the Invisible Hand has taken historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would call prosperity."

…there's still room to be a U.S. IT professional—but not where U.S. IT providers are themselves leading the race to the bottom, as they respond to intense market pressure to cut costs on the supply side and to slash margins on the demand side. They're finding that it doesn't take much infrastructure to make a country competitive in software development or hardware design. Intel, for example, has its largest design center outside the United States in Bangalore, India, where an engineer costs $8,000 a year instead of $50,000 in Silicon Valley. Texas Instruments plans to triple the size of its Bangalore unit in the next five years to 2,700, having started with only 10 engineers in 1999.

Intel ranks India behind China and Israel for manufacturing capability, but designs are just bits, and it doesn't cost much to move them to the factory—for example, to Intel's half-billion-dollar Pentium 4 fabrication site in Shanghai. Of course, the Chinese can also draw a trend line on a graph and follow it to its logical conclusion: Last year, the Chinese Academy of Science rolled out its own server chip running a localized version of Linux—whose growth in China is transforming system software, and even productivity applications, into public goods. Sun has given its StarOffice suite to educational ministries in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. An Evans Data survey of Chinese developers, conducted last summer, found two-thirds of them planning to focus on Linux development during the coming year.

Stephenson's "bricklayer" scenario might therefore turn out to be optimistic, in that his narrator lists software as one of the four industries in which the United States will retain an edge on its overseas competitors for at least the next several decades. The other three are music, movies and high-speed pizza delivery. I wonder if software is going to be on the real world's list of U.S. leadership areas by the time we've caught up to the "Snow Crash" time frame. Between getting it written cheaply in India and being forced to practically give it away in China, I have to wonder where the business expects to find its revenue growth over the next several decades.

…It's vital to identify the areas in which you plan to hire bricklayers, while you design the building—or you'll be laying bricks yourself. Communication skills and in-the-field experience in IT integration will make American IT pros worth more at home.

And smitten by what? No one confuses Rice with Beyoncé Knowles, and she's a little thin for me anyway. Furthermore, she's Lex Luthor evil, man. How else to explain doing the bidding of a mental paralytic like George Bush? Or being the adopted daughter of the clan that brought us Willie Horton, "read my lips," and the slur "evildoers"? Meanwhile, I'm one part lefty, one part race-man. If you cut me I'd bleed green—then red and black, too. What could a Black Panther-sired, Malcolm X-worshiping, People's History of America-toting idealist see in a battle-ax like Condi Rice? Simply put, Rice, with her commanding presence and steely confidence, is the ultimate black woman.

Power has always been a defining feature for black women. African Americans didn't need Gloria Steinem to acquaint us with strong women. Sojourner Truth invented black feminism. Ida B. Wells rode through the South with a pistol in her lap. Hell, my mother regularly jacked me up, well into my high school days. Wells, Truth, and my moms employed their inner strength for the good of mankind—or maybe just for the good of a stupid kid. But their power always captivated me more than their benevolence. And no black woman—maybe in all of history—has wielded more power than Rice.

"The high standards the president set were not met," [Stephen] Hadley, [President Bush's deputy national security adviser] said. He said he apologized to the president on Monday.

The controversial passage citing a British intelligence report "should have been taken out of the State of the Union," Hadley said. He said he was taking responsibility on behalf of the White House staff just as Tenet had for the CIA.

The White House presented Hadley's apology on a day when public attention on Iraq was focused on the killing of Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai.

"First they blamed the Brits. Then CIA Director George Tenet walked the plank. Now the White House is dragging (Hadley) forward to take the fall for the president's bogus claim," said Tony Welch, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee

The Great Catfish War

For Tran Vu Long, who lives atop his floating catfish trap on the Mekong River near the border with Cambodia, the recent biannual harvest day was not the joyous payday it usually is. Mr. Long, a 35-year-old Vietnamese catfish farmer, sold his flapping fish - 40 tons' worth, all painstakingly weighed and carried in bamboo buckets onto the trading company's launch - at a loss of some $2,000, a small fortune here.

Mr. Long, who stood sullenly to the side as his hired hands scooped out seemingly endless gaggles of fish from underneath the space that doubles as his living room, has Washington politicians to blame. "The United States preaches free trade, but as soon as we start benefiting from it, they change their tune," he said

…The normalization of ties between Hanoi and Washington brought American trade missions bent on expanding Vietnamese free enterprise. One of these delegations saw in the Mekong Delta's catfish a golden export opportunity, with the region's natural conditions and cheap labor affording Vietnam a competitive advantage. Sure enough, within a few years, an estimated half-million Vietnamese were living off a catfish trade nurtured by private entrepreneurs. Vietnam captured 20 percent of the frozen catfish-fillet market in the United States, driving down prices. To the dismay of the Mississippi Farm Bureau, even some restaurants in that state - the center of the American catfish industry - were serving the Vietnamese species.

Soon Mr. Long and the other Vietnamese farmers were caught in a nasty two-front war being waged by the Catfish Farmers of America, the trade group representing Mississippi Delta catfish farmers. The Mississippi catfish farmers are generally not huge agribusinesses, and many of them struggle to make ends meet. But that still does not explain how the United States, the international champion of free market competition, could decide to rig the catfish game to cut out the very Vietnamese farmers whose enterprise it had originally encouraged.

Last year, with the aid of Trent Lott, then the Senate majority leader, the American catfish farmers managed to persuade Congress to overturn science. An amendment, improbably attached to an appropriations bill, declared that out of 2,000 catfish types, only the American-born family - named Ictaluridae - could be called "catfish." So the Vietnamese could market their fish in America only by using the Vietnamese terms "basa" and "tra."

That was only the first step in a bipartisan assault. Congressman Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat, joined in a stupendously tactless disinformation campaign against the Vietnamese, suggesting that their fish were not good enough for American diners because they came from a place contaminated by so much Agent Orange - sprayed over the countryside by American forces during the Vietnam War. Catfish Farmers of America, for its part, ran advertisements warning of a "slippery catfish wannabe," saying such fish were "probably not even sporting real whiskers" and "float around in Third World rivers nibbling on who knows what."

Not satisfied with its labeling triumph - an old trade-war trick perfected by the Europeans - the American group initiated an antidumping case against Vietnamese catfish. And for the purposes of this proceeding, Congressional taxonomy notwithstanding, the fish in question were once again regarded as catfish, not basa or tra. (Don't try explaining to Mr. Long how two branches of the American government, conveniently enough, can simultaneously maintain that his fish are two different creatures.)

…In this case, the Commerce Department had no evidence that the imported fish were being sold in America more cheaply than in Vietnam, or below their cost of production. But rather than abandoning the Mississippi catfish farmers to the forces of open competition, the department simply declared Vietnam a "nonmarket" economy. The designation allowed it simply to stipulate that there must be something suspect going on somewhere — that Vietnamese farmers must not be covering all the costs they would in a functioning market economy. Tariffs ranging from 37 percent to 64 percent have been slapped by the department on Vietnamese catfish.

A July 13 Hartford Courant editorial cartoon depicting a black couple saying that cooperating with police would be "acting white" continues to draw fire from readers as well as members of the newspaper's staff. "Beyond the complete disregard for the reality of fear of retaliation was the outrageous implication that black people in Hartford don't value the safety of their children and their neighborhoods as much as white people do," wrote Courant reader representative Karen Hunter in her July 20 column. According to Hunter, the cartoonist, Bob Englehart, has a history of drawing cartoons that are considered insensitive and stereotypical.

The cartoon can be viewed here.

Think race doesn't matter? Listen to Eminem
Joshunda Sanders

You know that saying: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"? It's true. This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court proved just that in its decision on affirmative action by noting that race "unfortunately still matters."

If you disagree, look no farther than Eminem, hip-hop's poster boy for diversity. He may speak about what's on the minds of disgruntled teenagers everywhere. He may inspire young white teenagers to rap, and he may work really hard to cultivate his talent, but Eminem is underwhelming as a rapper. In fact, he hasn't made a single song that's a poetic standout.

And yet, Nobel Prize poet laureate Seamus Heaney has likened Eminem to Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Rolling Stone deemed him "The Voice of America." You bet your baggy jeans race still matters -- the proof is in the praise.

"He has created a sense of what is possible," Heaney gushed to students at the Prince of Wales' summer school in Norwich, England. With "verbal energy," Heaney added, Eminem has "sent a voltage around a generation."

Feels more like static electricity to me.

Iraqi unrest grows
2 soldiers killed
(By Vivienne Walt, Globe Correspondent)
NAJAF, Iraq -- Two American soldiers were killed yesterday in northern Iraq, and thousands of Shi'ites protested angrily in the holy city of Najaf, as hostility toward the US presence in Iraq jumped religious and regional boundaries, expanding far beyond Saddam Hussein's loyalist base.

At risk in Zimbabwe

PRESIDENT BUSH'S lack of credibility with African leaders is hurting diplomatic efforts to bring an end to political and economic repression in Zimbabwe. The leaders are dragging their feet on getting the country's dictator, Robert G. Mugabe, to negotiate with opposition leaders on a transitional government and new elections. Bush has little standing to make the major players in Africa do otherwise. But that shouldn't be an excuse for him not to invest more energy on the crisis in Zimbabwe, where conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Unprecedented food and oil shortages, triple-digit inflation, and violent government crackdowns on political dissent have caused residents to flee the country. Dozens of people have been killed in state-orchestrated violence, and thousands have been beaten, jailed, or tortured for their views. By some estimates, more than 3.5 million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa, Botswana, or Britain.

Environmental evasion

ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman has just vacated the most thankless job in the Bush administration. In picking a successor the president should under no circumstances use a recess appointment to dodge an overdue examination by the Senate of his environmental policies. A report in The Wall Street Journal last Friday indicated that the president might in fact wait until the Senate recesses next month to appoint Idaho's Governor Dirk Kempthorne. If George Bush took this course, there would be nothing to force the Republican-led Senate, after its recess, to hold a confirmation hearing.

Black colleges turn to unconventional ad strategies

By Tim Whitmire, Associated Press, 7/21/2003

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- People driving around Charlotte have been getting an eyeful of Elizabeth City State University, a small, historically black school on the other side of the state.

Despite being six hours away from Charlotte, the university is running billboards in the city touting Elizabeth City State as ''Your Place to Succeed.''

Other schools are running comic strips and signing up celebrities for their promotions -- part of a national trend that has seen black colleges turn to unconventional, aggressive advertising to boost enrollment and endowments.

The colleges say such creativity is necessary at a time of deficits and dwindling corporate and foundation support.

''The times are simply extremely challenging for any institution,'' said Johnnetta Cole, president of all-female Bennett College in Greensboro and former president of Spelman College in Atlanta.

Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, July 20 — A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

The inspector general's report, which was presented to Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations under the 2001 law.

The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten.

The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers.

The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security.

… While most of the accusations in the report are still under investigation, the report said a handful had been substantiated, including those against a federal prison doctor who was reprimanded after reportedly telling an inmate during a physical examination that "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of you" because of "the crimes you all did."

…The report said that the inspector general's office was continuing to investigate a separate case in which about 20 inmates at a federal detention center, which was not identified, had recently accused a corrections officer of abusive behavior, including ordering a Muslim inmate to remove his shirt "so the officer could use it to shine his shoes."

Race and Politics, a Familiar Pair, Seem to Be Back in Town
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

After years of ugly confrontations between City Hall and various minorities throughout the city, capped by a racially divisive 2001 mayoral primary, racial tensions in New York City seemed to have quieted over the last 18 months. A new mayor committed to soothing the racial storms and a City Council chock-full of new members, a large percentage of them blacks and Hispanics, have combined in part to make it so.

But a number of recent episodes suggest that race has re-entered the political conversation in New York, at least in discussions of sharing power.

Last week, members of the City Council accused Speaker Gifford Miller of supporting environmental racism by delaying action on a bill that would have tougher requirements for the removal of lead paint in city apartments. In that same week, members of the Democratic Party and others argued that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's attempt to remove party labels from municipal elections would hurt minority candidates.

Two months ago, the teachers' union sued Chancellor Joel I. Klein, accusing him of racial discrimination because the Bloomberg administration's plan to lay off nearly 800 classroom aides disproportionately affected blacks and Hispanics.

Further, Mr. Bloomberg's poll numbers among racial minorities are as low as some of the worst faced by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, in spite of the Bloomberg administration's efforts to reach out to minority communities.

Why this is happening is a matter of much debate among Democrats and Republicans alike, and a matter of concern on both the legislative and executives sides of City Hall. At the very least, said political experts and aides to elected officials, the city could be on the verge of another racially charged set of municipal elections, potentially unlike any the city has seen since David N. Dinkins was mayor.

MR. RUSSERT: In the last 48 hours, four more American servicemen have been killed. That’s 37 from hostile fire since May 1; 89 since May 1, when you count all deaths. How do we end this guerrilla war against American soldiers?
AMB. BREMER: Well, let’s put it in perspective. The death of any American serviceman is obviously a tragedy, but what we’re faced here with is a small group of killers, trained killers, who are basically trying to hold back the tide of history in Iraq, and the tide of history is flowing towards democracy. These are people who are ex-Ba’athists, Fedayeen Saddam ex-people in the intelligence community there, and we simply have to overpower them, and we will.
MR. RUSSERT: How many are there?
AMB. BREMER: We don’t know. Obviously, if we knew, we’d have better intelligence and we’d be able to go after them. There were tens of thousands of people in the Republican Guards in the Fedayeen Saddam and they are concentrated in an area which is where Saddam had his traditional political and tribal support, a small area between Tikrit, which was Saddam’s hometown, and Baghdad, in the south. That’s where 85 percent of the attacks against American forces have taken place since June 1. So it’s a small area of the country we’re dealing with.

MR. RUSSERT: Robert Byrd, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, said it’s an urban guerrilla shooting gallery.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: I heard that.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, it is not restricted to urban areas, for one thing. It is happening in some urban centers. It’s also happening in some non-urban areas. Is it a shooting gallery? Are people being shot at? Yes. Is it a difficult situation? You bet. Are more people going to be killed? I’m afraid that’s true.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that Saddam Hussein himself is orchestrating this resistance.
AMB. BREMER: No, there’s no evidence of any central control at this point yet, Tim. What we’re seeing is highly professional but very small sort of squad level attacks, five or six people at a time, attacking us. Saddam Hussein, I think, is alive. I think he is in Iraq. And the sooner we can either kill him or capture him the better because the fact that his fate is unknown certainly gives his supporters the chance to go around and try to rally support for him.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re confident you will kill or capture him?
AMB. BREMER: Oh, I think there’s no question. It’s a matter of time. We now have a reward out, $25 million, leading to his capture or a certain proof that he’s dead. And I think in time we’ll get him.

AMB. BREMER: I think it’s clear that given the size of the task we are going to be there for a while. I don’t know how many years. Of course, in terms of what I’m in charge of, which is the coalition authority, there’s a pretty clear timetable. We took the first step last week with the selection of a governing council, which is the first time the Iraqis have had a representative group. We’ll get a constitutional process started here in the next couple of months. Once a constitution is written, then we have elections, we’ll get a sovereign Iraqi government. And at that point the coalition’s job is done. There may still be a need for security forces, but at least the civilian coalition authority, which I head, will then at that point hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you a bit more of the report I mentioned, and here it is on the screen:
More money, more personnel. Do you agree?
AMB. BREMER: Yes, I agree, but let’s understand where we are. We have some 37 nations that have already pledged almost $3 billion to the reconstruction of Iraq. We have 19 countries which are already contributing troops on the ground in Iraq. This is already a substantial international operation.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Mr. Ambassador, stop there, because we have 147,000 Americans.
AMB. BREMER: Correct.
MR. RUSSERT: The other 19 countries combined represent about 13,000 troops.
AMB. BREMER: That’s right.
MR. RUSSERT: That is a pretty difficult ratio for the American people to accept.

MR. RUSSERT: You know, General Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, said something months ago, and I asked Secretary Rumsfeld about it last week. I’m going to show you, and again, this is what he said: “‘I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers,’ Shinseki said. ‘Assistance from friends and allies would be helpful.’”... That’s what we’re going to need. And at that time, “Pentagon officials have said that U.S. forces massed in the region number about 200,000.”
He was pretty accurate, wasn’t he?
AMB. BREMER: Well, we’ve got 147,000 already just in Iraq. I don’t know what the total number is in the region, but we have substantial, and in my belief, adequate numbers of troops. And incidentally, I think it’s important not to play the numbers game.

…MR. RUSSERT: There was a time when government officials at the Pentagon and the White House were saying that we would have about 50,000 troops this fall in Iraq. That was wildly optimistic, wasn’t it?
AMB. BREMER: Look, I’m just not going to play the numbers game, Tim. To me, this is a question for the military commanders.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me take you back to February and a question-and-answer session with you, and here was the question: “Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?” Rumsfeld: “What is, I think reasonably certain is, the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark. ...it’s not logical to me that it would take as many forces ... following a conflict as it would to win the war.”
The fact is, we now have as many forces on the ground as it took to win the war. You suggested moments ago it may take more. In retrospect, wasn’t General Shinseki correct?
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, put the quote back up.
MR. RUSSERT: Sure will.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: He said several hundred thousand.
MR. RUSSERT: Right. Troops on the ground...
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Troops on the ground...
MR. RUSSERT: ...to secure Iraq and provide stability.
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: He was talking about U.S.—the question was about U.S. servicemen.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s right here. “...take several hundred thousand troops on the ground...”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: “...to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?”
SEC’Y RUMSFELD: No.

SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Right. OK. How does one respond to that? First of all, General Shinseki is a fine officer. He was pressed and pressed in a congressional hearing for an answer, and he finally answered, saying that. He said it in good faith. Several hundred thousand is 300,000 and more. That’s what several hundred thousand means. We have had a total of 148,000 or 150,000 in there. That is not several hundred thousand.

MR. RUSSERT: But would it be worth, some would say, eating a little bit of crow and saying to the U.N., “We need your help,” and saying to the Germans and French, “We need your help”?
AMB. BREMER: You know, I don’t think it’s—you’re making it sound as if we’re resisting the idea of international forces coming in, and that’s just not true. I’ve already said we have 12 different nations that already have forces on the ground. Almost all the NATO members have forces on the ground...
MR. RUSSERT: But it’s a miniscule amount.
AMB. BREMER: ...and committed.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s 13,000; we have 147,000.
AMB. BREMER: Well...
MR. RUSSERT: The ratio is a little bit overextended.
AMB. BREMER: Well, Tim, we are the world’s great power right now, and with great power goes great responsibility.

MR. RUSSERT: We had a situation the other day where one of the ranking Shiite clerics in Iraq called for an Islamic army, saying no to America, no to the devil. This was the scene yesterday as many of his supporters were protesting American presence. Would it be helpful in order to deal with Iraqis like this and the cleric Sadr, that there be more of an international flavor to the occupying force, so it would not be perceived by the Iraqis as simply a made-in-America operation?
AMB. BREMER: No. That, I don’t think, is the problem here. What we’re seeing is an understandable reaction by the Shia—he is a Shia cleric. They were crushed by Saddam over a period of, really, decades and, in fact, for centuries.

MR. RUSSERT: The American troops over there—it has been described as a guerrilla war, as a shooting gallery. The whole issue of morale has been front and center, as many of the American soldiers have been talking to the media. This was what the sergeant at the 2nd Battle Command team headquarters said. He was talking about the deck of cards of the Iraqi leadership, and he said this: “I’ve got my own ‘Most Wanted’ list. ... The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz.”
How serious is the morale problem with our troops, who have been there since September, who believed they were going to be home and should be home?
AMB. BREMER: Well, I think it’s hard to make a general statement. I have visited with all of the American forces there. I have met probably thousands of American troops now. I don’t sense a major morale problem among them. Understandably, it’s not a very easy place to be. The temperatures, when you’re lucky, are 115 to 120. It’s a difficult assignment. But my sense is the American troops are there, they understand what they’re there for, they support the president’s goals there. They’re doing a magnificent job. So I don’t accept the hypothesis that we have a major morale problem among our troops. I just don’t think it’s true.

MR. RUSSERT: And are you confident that you’ll also find weapons of mass destruction?
AMB. BREMER: I believe we will find evidence of the programs of chemical and biological weapons, yes.
MR. RUSSERT: How about the actual weapons?
AMB. BREMER: Well, I just don’t know. Let’s wait and see what the team that’s over there—we have a very large team of some 1,500 people under General Dayton with David Kay, who have begun operations there. Let’s just see what they come up with.

Bitterness in Bush's Wake

The Nation (Nairobi)
COLUMN
July 19, 2003
Posted to the web July 20, 2003

By David Makali / Beyond Politics
Nairobi

In a rather absurd way, the recent visit to Africa by US President George Bush lived up to the billing. Now back in Washington DC, it is doubtful if Mr Bush is more enlightened about the continent than before his sojourn.

The man hardly spent time on the African soil and, going by African wisdom - as enunciated by my colleague Charles Onyango-Obbo - his tour cannot qualify to be called a visit. An African visit is incomplete without sampling the hospitality of a special meal prepared by your host. Any excuses are condescending and contemptuous.

Now it is not in the interest of American presidents to attend to such folksy protocols. Bush was here for our needs and to pity us? Yet, from Senegal to Uganda, from South Africa to Nigeria, his visit seems to have provoked such anti-American outrage that should jolt Washington into some serious soul-searching.

Thanks to the Internet, I have been receiving correspondence on my list serve about how the Big Man's tour went in the places he passed. Let us take a brief stock.

You have probably read of how our neighbours, Uganda, spent nearly Sh250 million to prepare for a four-hour Bush stopover at Entebbe airport. A huge contingent of his Secret Service had been deployed to the country to literally pave the way for the visit, taking over the airport and clearing the area of humanity and vegetation in advance.

On the day he hopped in, last Saturday, regular flights to the Entebbe airport were either rescheduled or rerouted to elsewhere. His entourage of four planeloads annexed the airport and its surroundings. Not even local journalists were allowed near the man.

President Bush was dashed to a nearby home for children infected with Aids and stared at them for the duration of a short call to express his solidarity and encounter the Aids. Then he was back to the airport and shoo to Nigeria where they say he was a guest of President Olusegun Obasanjo and his family! The Ugandan opposition was left waxing about the whole episode.

Demonstrations in Kampala against the visit were nipped in the bud by ample security. What did they expect when the cowboy from Texas comes to town? He takes over your streets and displaces nature.

But woe befell the Senegalese, one of the lucky few countries to be visited by President Bush. The following account by a West African woman simply gave me goose pimples.

"Dearest friends," she wrote, "as you probably know, this week George Bush is visiting Africa. Starting with Senegal, he arrived this morning at 7.20 and left at 1.30 pm. This visit has been such an ordeal that a petition is being circulated for this Tuesday, July 8, to be named Dependency Day."

She goes on to narrate the horrendous experience in anecdotes: "More than 1,500 persons were arrested and put in jail on Thursday and Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that the Big Man is gone. US Army's planes are flying day and night over Dakar. The noise they make is so loud that one hardly sleeps at night.

"[There were] about 700 security people from the US, with their dogs and their cars. Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come near the US President. All trees in places where Mr Bush will pass have been cut. Some of them have more than 100 years.

"All roads going downtown (where hospitals, businesses, schools are located) were closed from Monday night to Tuesday at 3 pm. This means that we could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people were also obliged to stay at home. National exams for high schools that started on Monday [were] postponed until Wednesday."

There are moments when we imagine that we are independent until Uncle Sam steps on our sovereignty. If Codou is to be believed, Mr Bush's visit to Senegal rekindled melancholic memories of slavery indeed.

"As you may know Goree is a small Island facing Dakar where, from the 15th to the 19th century, African slaves to be shipped to America were parked in special houses called slave houses," she reminds us.

"One of these houses has become a museum to remind humanity about this dark period and has been visited by kings, queens, presidents. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson Mandela, the Pope, and many other distinguished guests or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the islanders. But for "security reasons" this time, the local population was chased out of their houses from 5 to 12 am.

"They were forced by the American security to leave their houses and everything open, including their wardrobes to be searched by special dogs brought from the US. The ferry that links the island to Dakar was topped and offices and businesses were closed for the day.

Angry Senegalese organised marches to protest at the disruption of their lives and the demeanour of their visitor but they did not go far. Clearly, the conduct of the United States offends the old wisdom that, when you are strong, you do not have to throw your weight around to be noticed.

Although the United States is trying hard to portray itself as a caring state, its unilateralism and arrogant actions continue to communicate a different message altogether. The righteous tone of Bush statements is prompting questions about America's unbridled quest to dominate the world.

In Mr Bush's garb, you will find it implied that the United States is God's anointed nation to save the world and he, the chosen instrument of that misplaced mission. Bush's statements make it improbable that you can stop America without first halting the man's search for greatness.

Bush intends to achieve greatness by making Americans and the rest of the world feel more vulnerable than they are really, while he passes off as the arch-guardian. Considering the after-taste left in the trail of his visits, you will agree that we are still the better off without his blessings or protection.

Happy birthday, Madiba! You have given something to the world that not even weapons of mass stupidity can destroy! You are the greatest of the generation and the moral force of the century. You are Africa's moral challenge to the world and the personification of triumph over human suffering.

Mr Makali is the director of the Media Institute.

Rebel Forces Return to Liberian Capital
As rocket blasts pound Monrovia, civilians flee the suburbs. President Taylor urges his troops to fight to the last man.
By Ann M. Simmons
Times Staff Writer

July 20, 2003

MONROVIA, Liberia -- Rebels battling to oust President Charles Taylor entered the capital Saturday, pushing tens of thousands of civilians and retreating soldiers farther downtown.

Exploding rockets continued into the night after a day of heavy machine gun and mortar fire. Rebels crossed the St. Paul Bridge that marks the boundary of the city, putting them within three miles of the city center.

Dressed in full combat gear, Taylor took to the streets of Monrovia and called on his troops to fight until the last man. He vowed to stick with his soldiers to the bitter end.

"I say to you, my people, I will be here with you," Taylor said. "I will stay here with you. I will go no place until I am convinced that the international forces are here and in sufficient quantities [so] that I can no longer worry how many of you will die or how many of you can expect to be blown away by some bomb.

"I am with you to the end," the president continued. "This is my country. I live with you and I die with this."

Rebel leaders attending peace talks in the nearby Ghanaian capital of Accra denied that they had plans to seize Monrovia and accused Taylor's troops of provoking a fight.

"The government has sent people out to harass our people and attack us," said Gen. Joe Wylie, a senior military advisor for the rebel movement known as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. He spoke by phone from Ghana. "We are not going to attack Monrovia," he said, even as rebels troops were advancing.

Civilians were not prepared to take any chances. As dawn broke Saturday, thousands straggled into town from Monrovia's far-flung northwestern suburbs: men and boys with sacks of clothes and mattresses balanced atop their heads; women, babies strapped to their backs, toting plastic buckets stuffed with meager bundles of their belongings.

Oh, and don't even dream of asking whether the federal government's civil war debt should have been considered valid. After all, as section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment tells us, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."'

Do we live in a democracy? Do we care?

So what is the state of the country now? Are we interested in having a discussion about the erosion in our core values and principles, or do most of us already know which way the wind blows and the rest just don't care? I think opinions like this below are interesting because at long last, the great mass of formerly complacent middle of the road readers is now being treated to responsible, albeit slow to the mark journalists telling us things like we are living in a Fascist state. Will they hear? Do they care? Just a bunch of Ivory-tower socialists? I think it's possible that Ma and Pa Kettle are beginning to smell something. Maybe this will help them figure it out.

Puzzling indeed. If I were President Bush, I'd be pissed. Apparently Cheney and Libby figured that Powell was too smart to let the uranium claim sneak into any speech he was reading, but that Bush would happily recite whatever they put in front of him. That's not a very pretty picture, is it?

They can do more than bag groceries

AN UNEMPLOYMENT rate of 6.4 percent should be a wake-up call to economists, theorists, and business leaders that they are not creating jobs fast enough to employ the skilled talent that is idle. These folks can do assembly, test, computation, and scientific inquiry. They do not want jobs in retail stores, watering rich men's lawns, or bagging groceries. The unemployed need jobs in mathematics, science, and engineering. It is time to invest in these folks. They should be building ships, planes, tanks, and war machinery to protect this nation from internal and external threats.