Taking a deep breath…

First the bad news. Because I used a relational shotgun to handle my mosquito–sized storage needs here, the first version of MTClient, zipped into an archive with a single subdirectory, weighs in at a hefty 3.1 megs. There's a chance that version 1.0 can come in at less than a meg. To compensate for that, you uninstall it by deleting the directory. I just noticed the spell checker leaves an entry in the Registry, but that will change.

I've been working on a home for my blogging tool (called MTClient, by the way). It's given me an excuse to try a few things I'd been meaning to try anyway. So I've set up a new Movable Type installation from scratch, set up Yabb SE, a php forum package, mucked around with the configuration…all that will run out of a different domain name, which I will post sometime tomorrow.

I've worked on MTClient most of yesterday and a good chunk of today, and right now it works really…I mean really nicely for me. It needs some spit and polish, and it needs to be more configurable. Beyond that, it worls pretty much like a word processor for Movable Type.

No?

You mean things can happen for non–economic reasons? Shocking!
Flu vaccine rationed as need grows
Shortage in US; demand in area high after death

By Raja Mishra and Jenna Russell, Globe Staff, 12/12/2003

Following the death of a Worcester college student, parents and students scrambled for flu protection yesterday after most area doctors and clinics had run out of vaccine.

The events reflected a widespread national shortage that has local and federal health officials planning strict rationing of the coveted vaccine.

The influenza outbreak has stretched the health care system. In one breath, physicians urged flu shots and then in the next complained they had none, as hundreds of patients darted from office to office in search of vaccine.

Libya's Slow Trek Out of the Shadows
After more than three decades of ironfisted rule, Moammar Kadafi is changing course. But it will be a long journey for the pariah nation.
By Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writer

December 12, 2003

TRIPOLI, Libya — At first, the changes were easy to ignore. Military roadblocks on the long, sun–scalded highways out of town melted away. Pious Muslim men were allowed to grow beards again. Libyans were permitted to carry a second passport after years as pariah travelers. Things like that; little things, one after the next.

Improbably, Moammar Kadafi stopped cursing America and the West, and the mercurial Libyan leader took to the national airwaves to hail a "new era." Libyan officials began reminding anybody who cared to listen that this sandy Mediterranean nation issued one of the first arrest warrants for Osama bin Laden.

Then, this spring, Kadafi brought in a sharp–tongued, American–educated oil specialist and handed him unlikely instructions: Reform a system engineered by Kadafi himself. Under that newcomer, Prime Minister Shukri Mohammed Ghanim, Libya is undergoing a massive privatization of its socialist economy.

"It's trying to become more democratic — quote, unquote," a European diplomat here said. "It will be easier for the West to stomach."

Beneath its virgin beaches and its crumbling troves of Roman ruins, Libya is still a shadowy place. After more than three decades of capricious, ironfisted rule by the man known as "The Revolution Leader," or simply "The Leader," most people are afraid to speak with journalists, and international human rights groups are kept away. Allegations of arrests, disappearances and killings continue to darken Kadafi's regime, along with suspicions that Libya is trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Nevertheless, long–standing U.N. sanctions were lifted this fall, and hopeful, fearful Libyans are now blinking about like a people slowly waking from collective slumber. They are telling themselves, as one government official says quietly over a cup of coffee, glancing over both shoulders to see who might be near: "We can be a normal country, even with Kadafi."

Guild: More Minority Writers Find TV Work
The Associated Press
Friday, December 12, 2003; 1:41 AM

LOS ANGELES – The number of minority writers working on television series rose in 2002, part of an overall hiring increase, the Writers Guild of America–West said Thursday.

The total number of writers working in prime–time TV increased from 1,334 in 2001 to 1,576, while the number of minority writers rose from 135 to 205 in the same period, the guild said.

Minority writers have started to break into non–ethnic sitcoms and dramas but remain concentrated in comedies, especially ethnic ones, the guild said.

Let's face it: a strong EU would mean there's suddenly three superpowers again (do NOT ignore China)
EU Leaders Divided on New Constitution

By PAUL AMES
The Associated Press
Friday, December 12, 2003; 7:02 AM

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Leaders from 25 nations struggled Friday to overcome deep divisions on a new constitution to settle the balance of power in the European Union as it opens up to new members from the former Communist east.

The talks began with an agreement on a separate deal to boost the bloc's ability to run military operations, including by setting up a EU planning cell at NATO's high command.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi called the defense deal a "fantastic step forward" that would improve relations with the United States.

The Europeans have to agree on a draft constitutional treaty to guide an expanded EU that will be bigger and richer than the United States, generating a quarter of the world's economic output with more than 450 million people.

The charter aims to strengthen cooperation on defense, foreign policy, immigration and other issues to give the European bloc a political voice to match its formidable economic clout.

Saddam's grand presidential palace likely site for U.S. Embassy
JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

(12–11) 15:28 PST BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) ––

U.S. bombs never hit Saddam Hussein's grandiose presidential palace in Baghdad, making its ample meeting rooms and vast conference tables an ideal headquarters for U.S.–led occupation authorities after the war.

Now the building –– the physical seat and biggest symbol of Saddam's 23–year dictatorship –– is the likely site for the next U.S. Embassy in Iraq, U.S. officials in Washington and Iraq said this week.

A State Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the palace is among several locations under consideration for the embassy, where the U.S. government's official representative will be based after power is handed over to an Iraqi government by July 1.

Critics say the move will show the world that the U.S. intends to remain the true power in Iraq.

A Deliberate Debacle
By PAUL KRUGMAN

James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on?

Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard–liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation.

Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq – will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging? And reports suggest a scandal in Bechtel's vaunted school–repair program.

But I've always found claims that profiteering was the motive for the Iraq war – as opposed to a fringe benefit – as implausible as claims that the war was about fighting terrorism. There are deeper motives here.

Mr. Wolfowitz's official rationale for the contract policy is astonishingly cynical: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts" – future efforts? – and "should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members." Translation: we can bribe other nations to send troops.

But I doubt whether even Mr. Wolfowitz believes that. The last year, from the failure to get U.N. approval for the war to the retreat over the steel tariff, has been one long lesson in the limits of U.S. economic leverage. Mr. Wolfowitz knows as well as the rest of us that allies who could really provide useful help won't be swayed by a few lucrative contracts.

If the contracts don't provide useful leverage, however, why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation.

Senate eyes civil union bill for SJC
Would ask justices for 'clarification'

By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 12/11/2003

The Massachusetts Senate, hoping to find some middle ground in the divisive debate on same-sex marriage, is expected today to send a civil union bill to the state Supreme Judicial Court and ask if the legislation conforms with the court's gay marriage decision.

With Senate President Robert E. Travaglini spearheading the move, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary is scheduled to produce a sweeping civil unions bill that the Senate leadership is convinced provides all the protections, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage that the court says the law must grant gay couples.

But the bill would not describe the unions as "marriage" -- a key sticking point with gay marriage advocates who say civil unions fall short of offering the full legal benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples. [P6: This is what I'm talking about. If you've got all the protections, obligations and benefits, why let a specific word become a sticking point?]

Pentagon Finds Halliburton Overcharged on Iraq Contracts
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — A Pentagon investigation has found evidence of overcharging and other violations in billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts for Iraq that were awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, military officials said today.

The violations by a Halliburton Company subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, could involve "potentially tens of millions of dollars" in overcharging for fuel that the company is trucking into Iraq under one of two contracts, said Michael Thibault, deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. In a draft report, Mr. Thibault said, the agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers seek reimbursement from the company.

A second set of violations, in a second contract with the Army, involve unacceptable delays by the Halliburton subsidiary in providing cost estimates to the government for dozens of separate projects already under way in Iraq, Mr. Thibault said. These violations, for work that includes the construction of food, housing and other facilities for the military, could involve overcharging as well, Mr. Thibault said.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, said in an e-mail message that "it is not the fact that K.B.R. has overcharged." Ms. Hall said she was confident that responses being prepared by the company would satisfy the audit agency.

The MT client now works. Which is to say I found the one random letter that was (but should not have been) capitalized. You'll note (or not) this post has a category. Now it needs a couple of formatting commands to make it useful.

That's not all the capabilities I intend to give it, of course. I want spell checking, file uploads and insertion of custom HTML. I have a couple of other weird thoughts, like submitting a post to multiple blogs (sort of a back-up blog arrangement). But now that I have all the remote updating stuff working the rest is straightforward coding.

Big Money's Spigot Will Stay Open
By Nick Anderson and Janet Hook
Times Staff Writers

December 11, 2003

WASHINGTON ? Even though it erected formidable new barriers between politicians and deep-pocketed donors, the election law upheld Wednesday by the Supreme Court has not shut down big money in politics.

Instead, creative operatives allied with both parties are constructing new groups to raise and spend political money to get around the law.[P6: emphasis added]

The law wiped out a vast source of unregulated funding, known as "soft money," that became a subject of scandal in the 1990s as corporations, unions and wealthy individuals wrote large checks to political parties. But as opponents of the law predicted, much of that money is finding its way back into the political system through other means.

"This law will not remove one dime from politics," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the law's leading congressional opponent. "Outside special interest groups have become the modern-day political parties. Soft money is not gone ? it has just changed its address."

It is too early to predict the law's full effect, but the unfolding 2003-04 campaign cycle is, to some degree, proving him right.

Click to get the whole story

Click for the answer

…might be my enemy too.

By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A41

The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.

The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

Badran and Ayad Alawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein. The agency and the two men believe they can effectively screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory, officials said.

By contrast, some Pentagon officials and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, vehemently oppose allowing former intelligence and military officials into the new organization for fear they cannot be trusted. Intelligence experts said Chalabi and his sponsors also fear some former government officials would use the new apparatus to undermine the influence of Chalabi, who wants to play a central role in a new Iraq.

Although no deadline has been set, officials hope to have the service running by mid-February. Congress had approved money for the effort in the classified annex of this year's budget. The service will focus largely on domestic intelligence and is seen by some administration officials as a critical step in the administration's effort to hand over the running of the country to Iraqis.

The CIA declined to comment on the program.

Court Ruling Affirms New Landscape of Campaign Finance
By GLEN JUSTICE

ASHINGTON, Dec. 10 ? The Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of last year's campaign finance law quashed any final hopes politicians and their parties had about returning to the days when unlimited contributions flowed freely into their hands.

The decision affirmed the core provisions of the largest overhaul of the campaign finance system in the last 30 years, locking in place rules that have been in effect since last November. It upheld the ban on the "soft money" that national political parties collected from corporations, labor unions and anyone wealthy enough to write a large check. And it restricted political advertising around election time.

What's left is a system in which regulated contributions known as "hard money" are the official coin of the realm for those who play in federal politics. Candidates can collect up to $2,000 per donor in each election and parties can raise $25,000 per donor each year.

Practically speaking, those who have skillfully found ways to raise such contributions in large amounts will hold the largest sword in next year's elections. At the top of the list is President Bush, who has established a vast network of business executives and other loyal Republicans and has amassed roughly $110 million so far this year. Among the Democratic candidates, Howard Dean has far surpassed his party's rivals by building an Internet-based network of contributors who have so far given more than $25 million.

Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals
By DAVID E. SANGER and DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 … President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.

White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.

Many countries excluded from the list, including close allies like Canada, reacted angrily on Wednesday to the Pentagon action. They were incensed, in part, by the Pentagon's explanation in a memorandum that the restrictions were required "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."

Bidding for Isolation

Just when it looked as if there was a chance to expand international involvement in Iraq, President Bush has reversed field again and left the European allies angry, the secretary of state looking out of step, and the rest of us wondering exactly what his policy really is.

Late last week, it seemed as if Mr. Bush had decided to seek the global support he needs to free the United States of the demands that come with its unilateral occupation of Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Brussels, expansively inviting NATO and the United Nations to join the security and reconstruction efforts. And President Jacques Chirac was sending the message that he was prepared, finally, to get involved.

Then came the news that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had issued a decree, approved by Mr. Bush, barring any country that did not support the invasion ? including France, Germany, Russia and Canada ? from competing for next year's $18.6 billion in prime reconstruction contracts. The document, printed before Mr. Powell was back in Foggy Bottom, said America's "essential security interests" required the move. But it is hard to follow that reasoning when it means cutting out countries that might be able to bid competitively, contribute money, forgive debts and relieve American forces. The approved list of 63 nations includes Britain, Italy and Japan, but quickly tapers off to countries unlikely to help and to struggling nations like Albania and Eritrea.

United States officials say the rules apply only to American-financed contracts. But the other sources, like the World Bank, are small. And the American portion covers such things as rebuilding the electric, transportation, communications and oil industries, and what the Wolfowitz memo delicately calls "the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to equip the new Iraqi army."

Now the European Union is considering whether the ban violates world trading rules. The Russians say they will refuse to write off their $8 billion in Iraqi debt. And the new Canadian government, which was supposed to have been friendly to Mr. Bush, says it will reconsider its own donations.

No amount of preferential bidding and sweet deals for American companies ? including the extra dollar or so a gallon that Halliburton charges for shipping fuel into Iraq ? will repay American taxpayers for the cost of going it largely alone.

I've ignored everyone on and off-line today for no good reason. I started obsessing on my MT client, only to run into a wall that shouldn't be there. The wall is called mt.setPostCategories, and the procedure call and results are in the extended text.

The category ought to be Tech, but…

For no apparent reason I've chosen to make this a "live fire" test.

Test, you say? Yes. This post is written in my very own Movable Type client. Seriously NOT ready for prime time because I need to add some HTML tagging support. Oh, and there's some stuff I haven't tested, like Trackbacks. And I'll be adding spell-checking and a thesaurus I bought the code for it…there's a limit to my cleverness).

In a week or so it'll be ready for my personal use, and I'll be soliciting suggestions for user interface improvements and maybe the occasional additional feature.

The Center for American Progress:

Pigs at the Trough

The House yesterday passed a massive $373 billion spending bill, laden with pork-barrel spending and controversial provisions as far as the eye could see. As the WSJ reports, "The size of the measure invites abuse. Spending set-asides for home-state projects have grown to extraordinary levels, filling scores of pages in the Congressional Record, and from the National Rifle Association to major corporations, conservative] political allies have added legislative language for their self-interests." For instance, "over the bitter protests of many small ranchers and growers, country-of-origin food labeling rules, scheduled to take effect in September 2004, would be delayed two years after a lobbying campaign by big meatpackers and food marketers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., whose political action committee tops the list of PAC contributors to federal candidates this year, quietly added its muscle. The United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Association stepped in at the end with Republicans to help seal the deal." Similarly, the gun manufacturers have added a provision which "requires the FBI to destroy records of applicants for gun purchasers after 24 hours instead of current 90 days."

WHAT'S IN -- PORK: At a time of massive budget deficits, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, "Lawmakers face so much pork, it can't be counted." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), "said more than 7,000 earmarks worth more than $7.5 billion are in the bill." Some projects included in the bill: $200,000 for "educational outreach" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; The Detroit Free Press notes there is "$225,000 for a Kentucky Civil War theme park, $325,000 for a swimming pool in Salinas, CA., and $2 million for the First Tee youth golf program"; the LA Times points out "$100,000 for street furniture and sidewalks in Laverne, AL., $44 million for a bridge to Treasure Island in Florida and $75,000 for a North Pole Transit System in Alaska"; "Fiscal conservative" Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) secured $225,000 to fix a swimming pool in his hometown that he and childhood friends clogged 60 years ago; and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) -- the same Senator who helped negotiate a Medicare privatization bill to "control costs" -- secured $50 million to build a rainforest in Coralville, IA. The pork barreling is so egregious that even some hometown papers that stand to benefit are outraged. AP reports that last month, an Iowa newspaper columnist wrote that the rainforest project suffers from a "legitimacy crisis," while a recent editorial in another newspaper complained that asking for a federal handout gives Iowa a bad name. "There's nothing Iowa about begging the federal government for ($50) million," a Nov. 21 Iowa City Press Citizen editorial stated. "There's nothing Iowa about a project that won't pay for itself."

WHAT'S OUT -- MEDIA OWNERSHIP PROVISIONS: The Financial Times reports that while both Houses passed bills to preserve a national media ownership cap of 35%, the final bill makes it 39% - just high enough so that News Corporation and Viacom do not have to sell any of their local television stations. Right-wing News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch , not surprisingly, hailed the victory, as did many other media companies that contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers to make
sure they got their way. Still, the WP reports, "to many lawmakers, consumer advocacy groups and ordinary consumers, Congress is missing the point by focusing on how many stations a network can own and not on other FCC media rules allowing more local television station consolidation and newspaper-television common ownership." Specifically, "unaddressed by the spending bill are five other new media ownership rules adopted by the FCC, including one that largely lifts a ban prohibiting one company from owning a newspaper and television station in most cities, the 'cross ownership rule.'" Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has passed a bill through the Senate that would turn back all of the FCC's regulations -- but that bill is being barred from a vote by House leaders. However, it appears the House is only a handful of votes away from forcing a vote. In the House, 206 members are sponsoring Dorgan's bill -- and if just a few more sign on to a "discharge petition," the bill would be forced to a vote.

WHAT'S OUT -- OVERTIME, REIMPORTATION, RADIO FREE EUROPE: Despite passing both
houses of Congress by wide margins, the final spending bill stripped out provisions giving seniors access to lower-priced prescription drugs from abroad. It also waters down the House and Senate-passed rollback of the FCC's media ownership deregulation. On overtime, under White House pressure, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) dropped his provision to prevent the Bush Administration from implementing rules that will deny overtime pay to about 8 million workers. And the WP reports that the bill also eliminates Radio Free Europe. The program is a tiny $11 million a year -- and is "one of the cheapest, most effective and most popular tools of U.S. public diplomacy." The cutback comes just weeks after the State Department Advisory Commission called for "an immediate end to the absurd and dangerous underfunding of public diplomacy in a time of peril."

Shockingly, Kristol manages to show a difference between biased and dishonest by providing a decent look at the possibilities while making his preferences clear.

By William Kristol
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27

… Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004.

But surely the fact that Bush is now a proven president running for reelection changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover under whom there will have been no net job creation, and the first since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S. soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been misleading.

And President Bush will be running for reelection after a two-year period in which his party has controlled both houses of Congress. The last two times the American people confronted a president and a Congress controlled by the same party were in 1980 and 1994. The voters decided in both cases to restore what they have consistently preferred for the last two generations: divided government. Since continued GOP control of at least the House of Representatives seems ensured, the easiest way for voters to re-divide government would be to replace President Bush in 2004. And with a plurality of voters believing the country is on the wrong track, why shouldn't they boot out the incumbent president?

This article notwithstanding, I have no problems treating North Korea as a major problem. It's one thing to act on merely suggestive intelligence when a country is denying they have what your intel suggests, another when the country openly declared your intel is correct.

December 9, 2003

SEOUL — The Bush administration has asserted in recent months that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs and is rapidly developing the means to make more. The statements have raised anxiety about a nuclear arms race in Asia and the possibility that terrorists could obtain atomic weapons from the North Korean regime.

But the administration's assessment rests on meager fresh evidence and limited, sometimes dated, intelligence, according to current and former U.S. and foreign officials.

Outside the administration, and in some quiet corners within it, there is nothing close to a consensus that North Korean scientists have succeeded in fabricating atomic bombs from plutonium, as the CIA concluded in a document made public last month.

Independent experts and some U.S. officials also are skeptical of administration claims that North Korea is within months of manufacturing material for more weapons at a secret uranium-enrichment plant.

Interviews with more than 30 current and former intelligence officials and diplomats in Asia, Europe and the United States provide an in-depth look at the development of North Korea's nuclear program, the regime's elaborate efforts to conceal it and the behind-the-scenes debate over how much danger it poses.

According to these officials:

• The U.S. has failed to find the North Korean plant that the Bush administration says will soon start producing highly enriched uranium.
• North Korea's attempts to reprocess plutonium recently hit a roadblock, raising new questions about its technical capabilities.
• China rushed 40,000 troops to its border with North Korea last summer after the U.S. warned that the regime of Kim Jong Il might try to smuggle "a grapefruit-size" quantity of plutonium out of the country. No signs of smuggling have been discovered.

The doubts about U.S. intelligence come as the administration engages in a high-wire diplomatic battle over its demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program and open the country to inspectors.

City looks to get drugs via Canada
(By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff)
Beginning next July, Boston plans to import prescription drugs from Canada for thousands of city workers and retirees, under a cost-saving proposal Mayor Thomas M. Menino will announce today.

The San Francisco Chronicle:

The store that brought you t-shirts bearing offensive Asian characature washing clothes with the slogan "Two Wongs Make It White" continues it's enlightened policies.

In the article, Larry Elder…long at or close to the top of the Troublesome Negro list…has the most precious quote:

I didn't get her name, but I'm guessing Brittany or Jordan. She was standing at the check-out counter yesterday of the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the San Francisco Center on Market Street. She was blond, thin and wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole and a cutoff-jeans miniskirt low enough on her hips to reveal the waistband of her Abercrombie & Fitch long johns.

"Can I help you?''

"I'd like to apply for job,'' I said.

"Oh,'' she said, momentarily flustered. "You want to check on an application?''

"No, I'd like an application.''

She handed me the form, then at my request left to fetch the manager. Huge photographs of fresh-faced blonds covered the walls. As I waited, two actual fresh-faced blond employees, trying not to be obvious, peeked around the wall to take a look at me for themselves.

Word had spread: A middle-aged woman in a turtle-neck and slacks was asking for an application. To work here. With us. I must have seemed to them like a slab of headcheese trying to sneak on to a plate of petits fours.

The fresh-faced blond manager couldn't have been nicer. He said all the right things: The store was always looking for good people, so drop off the finished application any time.

But I haven't turned in the application. I don't need another job, and I know -- and the surely manager knows -- I don't embody the carefully and expensively created A&F persona.

Neither, apparently, do young minority applicants, according to a class- action suit filed against the 602-store chain. The plaintiffs claim Abercrombie & Fitch discriminates against minorities by pressuring stores to hire sales associates who fit the "A&F look,'' which from their catalogs, advertisements and looping videos in their stores, is white, young and preferably blond. The plaintiffs claim they were denied jobs or squeezed out of jobs because of their race or ethnicity.

Governor abandons groping inquiry
Stuntwoman sues, alleges a smear
Bob Egelko, Christian Berthelsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 9, 2003

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised after his election to seek an independent investigation into allegations that he groped or harassed women during his acting career, has changed his mind, an aide to the governor said Monday.

"After consulting with legal counsel and advisors, the governor has concluded that given the political nature of the allegations, an investigation would only provide more fodder for his political opponents,'' said Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman.

The announcement came hours after a former movie stuntwoman sued Schwarzenegger for libel, claiming that one of his campaign operatives had smeared her after she accused the actor of sexually abusing her on two movie sets. She said the operative, Sean Walsh, had led reporters to believe that she was a convicted felon.

ABC News: Gore to Endorse Dean in Harlem Tuesday

(New York-WABC, December 8, 2003) ? ABCNews has confirmed that former Vice President Al Gore is about to endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A so-far unnamed Democratic source "close to Gore" dropped the word Monday.

It's a dramatic move that could cement Dean's position in the fight for the party's nod.

The source reports Gore agreed to endorse Dean in Harlem in New York City on Tuesday, and then travel with the former Vermont governor to Iowa. That's the site of the January 19th caucuses which kick off the nominating process.

ABC News just finished an interesting special titled "How To Get Fat Without Really Trying." It seems the transcript is already online. It's another long one and it has grist for the two major mills around here—progressives and libertarians.

Black Publishing Company Closes Doors - and Three Magazines
by George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Vanguarde Media, the company that shut down Emerge: Black America's Newsmagazine and BET Weekend, a Sunday supplement that was second only to Ebony magazine in circulation, to make room for Savoy, a new feature-oriented publication that targeted the Black middle class, has filed for bankruptcy.

The filing kills Savoy and two other magazines, throwing more than 75 full-time employees out of work and leaving fewer places for Black writers, photographers and illustrators to showcase their work.

Keith Clinkscales, the CEO of Vanguarde, made the unexpected announcement to magazine employees during a meeting in New York just two days before Thanksgiving.

Help the Jobless

Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A24

THE HOUSE PLANS to show up today for what looks to be its sole day of work this month; the Senate will put in an appearance Tuesday. After that, lawmakers will likely leave for a long Christmas break, but unless Republican leaders change their minds, Congress will leave a major task undone: extending emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed. The emergency program will begin to phase out starting Dec. 21; as a result, an estimated half million of the nation's jobless will be without benefits by the time lawmakers come back to town Jan. 20.

Ordinarily, unemployed workers are entitled to about 26 weeks of state benefits. But in tough economic times, when jobs aren't to be found even with diligent searching, the federal government has stepped in to provide extra, temporary help. The current federal program, which was started in March 2002 and has been extended twice since, gives unemployed workers an additional 13 weeks of benefits after their state assistance runs out. It should be extended again.

Republicans Indulging in Pork Along With Power
By Nick Anderson
Times Staff Writer

December 8, 2003

WASHINGTON ? Before they took control of Congress nearly nine years ago, Republicans often mocked the Democratic practice of larding government spending bills with provisions that earmarked funds for pet projects in particular lawmakers' districts and states.

But a $328.1-billion bill that the Republican-led House expects to pass today, funding a grab bag of government agencies, takes earmarking to greater heights and uses it for what Democrats claim are new, partisan purposes.

The bill includes an eye-popping number of earmarks ? around 7,000 by one estimate, at a cost of several billion dollars. Other spending bills bring the grand total for the year to more than 10,000. In that long list are items big and small, from $100,000 for street furniture and sidewalks in Laverne, Ala., to $44 million for a bridge to Treasure Island in Florida ? a plum for the Tampa Bay district of House Appropriations Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young.

But more than that, to a degree unseen since their 1995 takeover, the majority Republicans are publicly flaunting their power to use pork for explicitly partisan purposes.

Traditionally, the dominant party oils the legislative machinery by setting aside a healthy fraction of earmarked funds for the minority. This year, in a key section of the spending bill, the Republicans got stingy.

They were irate when House Democrats voted en masse in July against their version of the annual spending bill for the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments. As punishment, in the labor, health and education provisions of the pending bill, they are denying Democrats the customary minority share of what are euphemistically known on Capitol Hill as "member projects."

Democracy, Not Off-the-Shelf

By William Raspberry
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A25

…It isn't that I don't favor democracy. I do, and I'd love to see more of it in the world. But because of America's peculiar history (excluding that unpleasant little episode called slavery), we may be thinking of democracy as a lot easier, more natural and more inevitable than it is.

We sometimes behave as though, if we can only get democracy on the supermarket shelf alongside other forms of government, the world will choose it the way it would choose fresh-squeezed orange juice over canned.

… Still, there is reason for caution. After all, it takes a lot more than theoretical availability to get nations to choose democracy, and it takes a lot more than elections, however free or fair, to produce it. I'm reminded of an observation uttered more than 10 years ago by someone who understood the point.

"Elections are not automatically the establishment of democracy. . . . Democracy is a process, painful to establish in a land that has never known democracy, where suspicions are high, where absolutism has been the way of life. In a way it's a cultural thing that needs to be based upon respect for human rights, for other people's opinions, for institutions, including the courts. Elections are only a step -- a necessary step -- toward the goal of democracy."

The words were from Francois Benoit, a representative of Haiti's government during the exile of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But they are worth noting and remembering.

So is this: Democracies are not necessarily engines of great morality. The Communitarian Network recently invited responses to the Bush proposal that America reconsider its 60-year support of autocracies in the Middle East. Here is what one respondent, a Canadian professor, had to say:

"Democracies can be worse than autocracies. To be poor in democratic Mexico or Brazil is certainly worse than to be unrepresented in Cuba or Saudi Arabia. We should know better than to put much stock in the form of government. That it is necessary even to say this shows how tightly we are in the grip of a clichéd ideology."

That is professor Michael Neumann's caution. Here is mine: When you combine overwhelming military might with the utter certainty that your way is the one true way, the temptation can be very strong to impose truth -- political or religious -- at gunpoint.

We could do with a bit less cocksure certainty on both counts.

Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop
By BOB HERBERT

Published: December 8, 2003

…Think of Medicare as a giant chicken coop. Keep in mind that the hostile-to-Medicare Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress. Now you decide who the foxes and the chickens are. (Hint: we're not talking about spring chickens.)

…The bill that President Bush will sign today is a giant windfall for the drug companies, opening up a huge new market with virtually no effort to restrain prices. It will give Medicare recipients a modest drug benefit, but at a potentially dreadful cost. The bill starts the process of undermining Medicare by turning parts of it over to insurance companies, H.M.O.'s and other private contractors.

The drug benefit will be delivered almost entirely through private insurance plans. It would have been more efficient and cheaper to deliver it the same way other Medicare benefits are delivered. But that's not the idea. The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money ? the people's money ? are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.

Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad.

And then there's the "demonstration" project, to begin in 2010, in which Medicare will be forced in several cities to compete against private, profit-making health plans. It will be a rigged competition in that, among other things, the private plans will be heavily subsidized by Medicare money and will be able to cherry-pick the healthiest patients.

As one Capitol Hill staffer told me last week: "This is more than the camel's nose under the tent. This is like the head, the hump and everything else."

New York's Federal Judges Protest Sentencing Procedures
By IAN URBINA

To most people, they might seem like minor outbursts. But in the last few months, federal judges in New York, who tend to steer judiciously clear of politics and public debate, have been surprisingly vocal in their criticism of a new sentencing law that they say represents a breach in the separation of powers and bullies them into handing down harsher sentences.

In June, Judge John S. Martin Jr. of United States District Court in Manhattan announced that he was taking early retirement, relinquishing his lifetime appointment, in part, he said, to protest what he called the unjust nature of the sentencing process. Three months later, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, John M. Walker Jr., and 26 colleagues from around the country signed a statement calling for repeal of the law.

Judge Thomas C. Platt of Federal District Court in Brooklyn was so reluctant to follow the sentencing procedures that an appellate panel unanimously removed him from a routine drug case, saying that his decisions were "improperly affected" by his "annoyance" with the sentencing guidelines and with the United States attorney's office.

And in perhaps the boldest criticism of the law, another federal judge in Brooklyn, Sterling Johnson Jr., who was New York City's special narcotics prosecutor from 1975 until 1991, recently issued a wide-ranging order that directly contradicts the law's provision granting Congress more direct access, without the need for judicial permission, to a variety of case documents. Judge Johnson placed a blanket seal on all such documents in cases before him, forbidding Congress to examine these materials without his approval.

Click to continue…

Looks more and more like the neocons picked the wrong section of the world to represent as a threat, don't it?

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01

TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb.

The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.

The last known repository was here, in a tiny separatist enclave known as Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova 12 years ago. The Transdniester Moldovan Republic is a sliver of land no bigger than Rhode Island located along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. Its government is recognized by no other nation. But its weapons stocks -- new, used and modified -- have attracted the attention of black-market arms dealers worldwide. And they're for sale, according to U.S. and Moldovan officials and weapons experts.

The title will make sense to Isaac Asimov fans

The link is one of those non-expiring ones because it's a NY Times Magazine article, which tend too be good but too damn long to effectively quote or read in one sitting.

Published: December 7, 2003

Andy Markishtum's hair reaches past his shoulders, thick and shining. He speaks in a low monotone, a rocker growl, and his favorite band is Cradle of Filth. As a student at McKay High School in Salem, Ore., Andy was part of the stoner crowd -- a self-described slacker with a backpack full of half-finished assignments. ''I'd get too distracted,'' he says. ''There would be kids sitting right next to me talking or something, and instead of paying attention to the teacher, I would drift off. Someone would drop a book, and I'd have to look.'' Attention-deficit disorder was diagnosed; for a while, Andy took Ritalin, but it gave him migraines. His mom decided he needed to get out of McKay and leave behind his old scene, his old messed-up self. Andy enrolled in Salem-Keizer Online high school, and he says, ''Now I can really concentrate.''

Salem-Keizer Online, or S.K.O., is one in a growing number of public, private and charter schools available to kids who are looking for an alternative to a traditional education. Commonly called ''virtual school,'' it's a way of attending school at home without the hovering claustrophobia of home-schooling. S.K.O. has 131 students enrolled in the Salem area. Nationwide, there were about 50,000 students in virtual courses last year. As a business, virtual school is booming. Jim Cramer, co-host of CNBC's ''Kudlow & Cramer,'' calls online-school-software companies a hot commodity.

Andy Markishtum says that without virtual school, he ''probably would have dropped out.'' Now he will graduate almost on time. The biggest problem was that ''too many people were too dumb.'' The teachers bored him, the homework flummoxed him, he hated the mandatory pep assemblies ''that were really prep assemblies.''

Walking through his old school, Andy points out the cafeteria table he and his friends used to sit at. ''People would shun us, even though we had never done anything to them,'' he says. A sign reads ''Drug and Gang Free: McKay Togetherness.'' The bell rings, and the hall floods with bodies. A few clean-cut kids grimace at Andy's flowing hair. It's not so hard to understand why Andy would want to get out of here, why he would rather enroll in a school he can log into anywhere -- the public library or his mother's house. Now instead of walking through the dreaded double doors past a suspicious security officer, Andy enters a Web site where a plain white screen welcomes him: ''Sign in!'' He checks his e-mail and clicks on the day's assignments, blasting music from his stereo, free of the tyranny of class periods.

Virtual school seems like an ideal choice for kids who don't fit in or can't cope. ''I'm a nervous, strung-out sort of person,'' says Erin Bryan, who attends the online Oregon-based CoolSchool. Erin used to attend public school in Hood River, Ore., but ''I didn't like the environment,'' she says. ''I am afraid of public speaking, and I would get really freaked out in the mornings.''

Kyle Drew, 16, a junior at S.K.O., says: ''I couldn't get it together. I was skipping more and more classes, until I was afraid to go to school.'' Leavitt Wells, 13, from Las Vegas, was an ostracized girl with revenge on her mind. ''The other kids didn't want anything to do with me,'' she says. ''I'd put exploded gel pens in their drawers.'' Now she attends the Las Vegas Odyssey Charter School online during the day, and when her adrenaline starts pumping, she charges out into the backyard and jumps on the trampoline.

On S.K.O.'s Web site, students can enter a classroom without being noticed by their classmates by clicking the ''make yourself invisible'' icon -- a good description of what these kids are actually doing. Before the Internet, they would have had little choice but to muddle through. Now they have disappeared from the school building altogether, a new breed of outsider, loners for the wired age.

Funds for Iraq Are Far Short of Pledges, Figures Show
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 ? Six weeks after organizers of an international donors conference in Madrid said that more than $3 billion in grants had been pledged to help Iraq with immediate needs, a new World Bank tally verifies grants of only $685 million for 2004.

The vast gap seems to have occurred largely for two reasons: some countries, like Japan, changed the nature of their commitment after the conference from immediate aid to slower, long-term help; and some that had left their intentions unclear were incorrectly assumed to be giving immediate aid.

Many experts also say that donation pledges often do not materialize in the end, or come in the harder-to-tally form of credits for the purchase of commodities.

The grant money for immediate needs was part of a total $13 billion that organizers said was raised at the conference.

The Bush administration does not dispute the gap, but officials say it is too early for an accurate count, asserting that the number of grants will probably grow.

Some United Nations officials concur. "We know the Japanese are rethinking what they're going to do," said Julia Taft, director of the Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery at the United Nations Development Fund. "But once we get our trust funds up and running, about 15 donors will come forward. It's like, the money is in the bank, but the bank doesn't exist yet."

An independent trust fund was promised at the Madrid conference and is due to be set up next week.

Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas?
By ERIKA KINETZ

The outsourcing of jobs to China and India is not new, but lately it has earned a chilling new adjective: professional. Advances in communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to be shipped from the United States and Europe as never before, and the outcry from workers who once considered themselves invulnerable is creating a potent political force.

After falling by 2.8 million jobs since early 2001, employment has risen by 240,000 jobs since August. That gain, less than some expected, has not resolved whether the nation is suffering cyclical losses or permanent job destruction.

Last month, The International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape.

The participants were Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington that receives a third of its financing from labor unions; Diana Farrell, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, which is McKinsey & Company's internal economics research group; Edmund Harriss, the portfolio manager of the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong fund and the Guinness Atkinson Asia Focus fund; M. Eric Johnson, director of Tuck's Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; and, via conference call from Singapore, Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley . Following are excerpts from their conversation.

Ruse in Toyland: Chinese Workers' Hidden Woe
By JOSEPH KAHN

SHENZHEN, China ? Workers at Kin Ki Industrial, a leading Chinese toy maker, make a decent salary, rarely work nights or weekends and often "hang out along the street, play Ping-Pong and watch TV."

They all have work contracts, pensions and medical benefits. The factory canteen offers tasty food. The dormitories are comfortable.

These are the official working conditions at Kin Ki as they are described on paper ? crib sheets ? handed to workers just before inspections.

Those occur when big American clients, like the Ohio company that uses Kin Ki to produce the iconic toy Etch A Sketch, visit to make sure that the factory has good labor standards.

Real-world Kin Ki employees, mostly teenage migrants from internal provinces, say they work many more hours and earn about 40 percent less than the company claims. They sleep head-to-toe in tiny rooms. They staged two strikes recently demanding they get paid closer to the legal minimum wage.

Most do not have pensions, medical insurance or work contracts. The company's crib sheet recommends if inspectors press to see such documents, workers should "intentionally waste time and then say they can't find them," according to company memos provided to The New York Times by employees.

After first saying that Kin Ki strictly abides by all Chinese labor laws, Johnson Tao, a senior executive with the privately owned company, acknowledged that Kin Ki's wages and benefits fell short of legal levels and vowed to address the issue soon.

He said that the memos might have reflected attempts by factory managers to deceive inspectors, but that such behavior "did not have the support of senior management."

William C. Killgallon, the chief executive of Ohio Art Company, the owner of Etch A Sketch, said that he considered Kin Ki executives honest and that he had no knowledge of labor problems there. But he said he intended to visit China soon to "make sure they understand what we expect."

…by 18 inches of snow, 32 degrees of cold, 22 degrees of wind chill!

ARRRRRRRGGHHHH!