To: [email protected], [email protected] or whoever you are

Do not ever expect to see the owner of this site show up at yours (https://[email protected]/li_pin/verification/step1_e.htm).

What you don't realize is the email address for P6 is not my primary email address, so a legitimate request for credit card verification would never be directed to the P6 email address. More, I don't use a credit card to pay for my connectivity. Therefore it was obvious to me from the beginning you were identity thieves.

The fact that you use The Bat! (v1.61) Personal to do your bulk emails is another giveaway. Earthlink doesn't use it, much less personal versions of any software, for their enterprise services.

I've forwarded your messages to Earthlink for investigation. And frankly, I hope you bought my address so that you not only wasted your money but aren't a reader of my site so that you'll never see this.

Republicans will find the whole cartoon much funnier than Democrats will.

Poor kids get least qualified teachers
Illinois' standards too lax, critics say
By Jodi S. Cohen, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Darnell Little contributed to this report

December 20, 2003

The first comprehensive statewide assessment of teacher qualifications confirms what anecdotal evidence and studies have suggested for years: Poor and minority children––the students who often need the most help––are most likely to have the least–qualified teachers.

Data released Friday showed that children in Illinois' high–poverty schools are 10 times more likely than students from low–poverty schools to have classes taught by teachers who are not "highly qualified" because they don't have a state teaching certificate or are teaching subjects outside their expertise.

Whitening skin can be deadly

By Dr. S. Allen Counter, Globe Correspondent, 12/16/2003

Earlier this year, I was asked by the editor of an international biomedical journal to write a review article on the effects of mercury exposure on children, an area in which I have conducted scientific studies for the past seven years. I was surprised by the results.

Mexico and Nigeria and the border states of California, Texas and Arizona all show extremely high rates of mercury poisoning.

In clinics in Arizona, for example, doctors had observed more than 300 patients who had toxic levels of mercury in their urine. I found medical reports of similarly high levels of mercury poisoning among patients in Saudi Arabia, Senegal, West Africa, and in Tanzania in East Africa. Even among newly arrived Bosnian and Albanian refugees in Germany, doctors have found patients with toxic levels of this same type of mercury.

One of my first clues to unraveling this mystery turned out to be basic geography: Most of the reported mercury–poisoning cases were found in nations in the lower latitudes.

The second clue: In Mexico, as in other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, most of the patients with clinical evidence of mercury poisoning were women. Even in the Southwestern Unites States, 96 percent of the more than 300 patients found to have abnormal mercury levels were female.

In every case, clinical questioning revealed that the women had used skin–whitening creams –– many for years. In other words, these women had tried so desperately to whiten their skin color that they had poisoned their bodies by applying mercury–based "beauty creams."

Ninety percent of the women entering border clinics in Arizona with mercury poisoning were Mexican–American, and they like their Mexican counterparts had been using skin–whitening creams such as "Crema de Belleza–Manning," which is manufactured in Mexico. These skin–whitening creams contain mercurous chloride, which is readily absorbed through the skin. Saudi, African, and Asian women were also using these skin–bleaching chemicals in a tragic attempt to change their appearance to that of white women.

Mercury poisoning is known to cause neurological and kidney damage and may also lead to psychiatric disorders.

Upon finding high levels of mercury in the urine of women and men in Tanzania, scientists initially thought that the indigenous people had been accidentally exposed to elemental mercury vapors from gold mining operations or methylmercury from the consumption of fish from Lake Victoria that had been contaminated by the liquid mercury discharge from gold mines. It was later discovered that the high levels of mercury in the urine of Tanzanians living around Lake Victoria were the result of the use of mercury–based skin–whiteners. In other parts of Africa, including Nigeria and Kenya, one finds widespread mercury poisoning from the use of skin–lightening creams and soaps.

When asked why she thought women in Saudi Arabia used skin–whitening creams, and in some cases even applied these creams to their children, one woman from an Arab–American family replied directly, "Oh, that's simple. It is well known that in many Arab families the whiter looking children are the most preferred. People will often respond positively to the lighter–colored child and simply ignore the darker one."

So, the prevalent medical evidence of high levels of mercury poisoning among women of Saudi, African, Asian and Mexican backgrounds reflects a common and prevailing belief that whiter skin has greater currency and appeal.

Apparently, the patients reporting to clinics with mercury–induced disease believe that the health risks associated with bleaching their skins are outweighed by the rewarding sociocultural return. In other words, they believe that removing the healthy melanin from their skin with toxic creams and soaps makes them more valuable in their own cultures and in European and Euro–American societies in general.

In an interview with one Latin American woman about identification and self–image, I was told that "whiter–looking Spanish women are generally perceived as more attractive to many Latino men and vice versa." The woman, a journalist, went on to say that during her childhood, her parents and her friends' parents had always carefully screened the children invited to their parties "to be certain that they were light enough in color" and thus "of sufficient socioeconomic value to be included."

While one might accept skin–bleaching among adults as an unfortunate matter of personal choice, albeit an ignorant one, the use of such skin–lightening creams on children is unconscionable. The developing nervous system of children is particularly vulnerable to toxic mercury exposure and other vital organs are also susceptible. In one medical report, a 3–month–old patient was found to have kidney, eye and blood disease because the mother had used mercury–containing cosmetics during pregnancy and later during breast–feeding.

Most women and men we interviewed seemed to have some inkling that they were taking a chance to make themselves look whiter, but it's unfair to say they knew the true risks.

Science has not yet revealed how quickly skin–whitening cream will lead to health problems, though many say women see impacts just a few weeks after they begin applying it. It is imperative that we educate people throughout the world about the hazards of mercury exposure, particularly the risks associated with skin–bleaching cosmetics.

Perhaps we must make an equally strong effort to convince women and men of color that they are beautiful as they are. This task, however, may be as challenging as trying to convince people with light skin that it is unnecessary –– and hazardous to lie out in the sun or go to a salon in pursuit of a tan.

Dr. S. Allen Counter is a professor of neurophysiology and neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Backers of Prop. 187 Push for New Initiative
Proposed measure to deny services to illegal immigrants raises fears of divisive racial politics.
By Daniel Hernandez
Times Staff Writer

December 20, 2003

Organizers who a decade ago wrote Proposition 187 — a landmark ballot measure that divided California — are now gathering signatures for a new initiative that again would attempt to prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving a broad array of public services.

Proposition 187 is considered a watershed in state politics, having galvanized activism among opponents and cost Republicans support from some Latinos.

But organizers, encouraged by the successful recalling of Gov. Gray Davis, hope to place on the November ballot a proposition that, while similar to the 1994 measure, would include several changes that they say would stall legal challenges.

The Washington Post's editorial page carries Google ads.

The Ownership Society, David Brooks' editorial in today's NY Times, is floating an idea he says will be in Bush's State of the Union address.

I'm kind of mixed about all that.

I'm wondering how many people have enough of an understanding of trends to make good judgments about what would benefit them long term. For instance, did you know Forester Research says 26 percent of computer programming and software engineer jobs will be gone by 2015? How many people do you think would almost reflexively enroll in computer–related training of some kind? CNN/Money has an article about jobs vanishing due to structural changes in the economy that gives a decent overview of the current state of the problem.

Even if everyone understood what's going on in the economy, job market, etc. (and I'm convinced we don't), there's the "President Proposes, Congress Disposes" problem. What's the difference between giving workers "their own health insurance" and a national health care program? What's the difference between giving workers "their own pensions" and privatizing Social Security? Two of the most contentious proposals ever floated, one each from the left and right, neither of which ever got enough support to pass. And imagine the representatives of those blue states, the ones whose populations are already declining, voting in favor of a package that subsidizes the abandonment of their states? Redistricting is seven years away (unless Republicans get their way), but at my age that doesn't seem like a long time.

Though Brooks says the proposals treat workers as "self–reliant pioneers," the simple fact is, in this economy they are neither self–reliant nor pioneers. In the aftermath of the proposals Brooks says Bush will set forth, rather than a nation of pioneers we will be a nation of migrant workers.

CNN/Money has a five part streaming video series on the topic

Heading out on the bus yesterday I overheard a discussion between two women who recognized each other as one was getting off the bus:

Woman 1: Happy holidays. How's the family?

Woman 2: Okay. My son just came home for five days.

Woman 1: Oh! He's back for Christmas?

Woman 2: No, he's been home and gone back to Iraq already.

Woman 1: How's he doing? Is he okay?

Woman 2: (touches her temple) Not here. But he's okay.

Saddam, So Not Worth It
Dubya, now that you've got your dime–store thug, can you stop the warmongering and death?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

Well gosh golly it took only upward of 500 dead U.S. soldiers (and counting) and more than 2,500 U.S. wounded (and counting) and more than 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi citizens (and counting) and countless tens of thousands of hapless dead Iraqi soldiers (and counting).

And it'll only cost U.S. taxpayers at least a staggering $350 billion along with the complete gutting of our foreign policy and our national treasury and the appalling blood sacrifice of our national pride and our international status and global sense of self–respect.

Oh, and the truth is, it turns out Saddam actually did have some old stashes of weaponry, a bit of rusty, small–scale WMDs, after all –– because we sold them to him, 20 years ago. But they were never any sort of direct danger to America –– or anyone else, for that matter –– and regardless all evidence points to the fact that the stash was completely destroyed more than a decade ago.

Janet Jackson Tapped for Super Bowl Halftime

Reuters
Friday, December 19, 2003; 2:30 AM

By Carla Hay

NEW YORK (Billboard) – Janet Jackson will perform on one of the world's biggest stages, the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.

"[A] windfall of $1.8 billion in accounting changes and projected revenue"…invoking unique interpretations of obscure laws…typical Republican bullshit.

No wonder he and Bush get along in public.

Cities, Counties Regain Billions; Gov.'s Aide to Cut Education
By Evan Halper, Jeffrey L. Rabin and Nancy Vogel
Times Staff Writers

December 19, 2003

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday went around the Legislature by issuing an executive order authorizing the restoration of billions of dollars that local governments lost when he cut the vehicle license fee last month.

At a news conference where he was flanked by dozens of enthusiastic local government officials, the governor announced that he was invoking an obscure budget law to make the payments directly out of state coffers without legislative consent. And he criticized lawmakers for recessing for the holidays without taking action to restore the payments.

"Even though time is running out for local governments and they are stranded with no money, our Legislature has left town," he said. Since the legislative leadership had not acted, he said, "I am acting without them."

The governor also announced that his finance director, Donna Arduin, would use expanded power given to her in this year's budget to make $150 million in cuts to higher education and other programs on her own authority.

Those cuts will not go far toward offsetting the $2.65 billion in car tax revenue that cities and counties counted on for public safety and other programs until Schwarzenegger rolled back a fee increase enacted by former Gov. Gray Davis.

But the governor proposed that the sum be made up by combining some of the $1.9 billion in midyear cuts that he had already requested with a windfall of $1.8 billion in accounting changes and projected revenue that the state expects to receive by June as a result of improvement in the economy.

Third 'Potter' Film Will Be Shown on IMAX
The Associated Press
Friday, December 19, 2003; 2:51 AM

TORONTO – "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" will be released in both large–format IMAX and conventional theaters when the third film in the series opens next summer.

The movie, directed by Alfonso Cuaron and based on the popular book by J.K. Rowling, is scheduled for release in the United States on June 4. It stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

"We are so pleased that this summer, `Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,' which lends itself beautifully to IMAX's format, will play throughout the IMAX theater network," Dan Fellman, president, domestic distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures, said in a statement Thursday.

IMAX, a Toronto–based projection equipment developer, has been adapting its technology for mainstream Hollywood productions and movie theaters, thereby expanding its market beyond documentary films for science centers and institutional venues.

"This announcement is yet another indication that we are achieving our goal of bringing the very best Hollywood event films to IMAX theaters, which we believe is key to expanding the IMAX network around the world," Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler, co–chairmen and co–chief executive officers of IMAX Corp., said in a statement.

Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees
Justice Department Examines Videos Prison Officials Said Were Destroyed

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A01

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.

An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.

The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.

"Some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time," the report said. "We determined that the way these MDC staff members handled some detainees was, in many respects, unprofessional, inappropriate and in violation of BOP policy."

One focus of the report was an American flag T–shirt that hung from a wall at the MDC with the slogan, "These colors don't run." Four corrections employees told investigators that the shirt, which hung in a prisoner receiving area for months, was covered with bloodstains, including some that appeared to have come from detainees being slammed into the wall.

Court Rejects Music Industry Subpoenas

By Ted Bridis
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; 11:55 AM

A federal appeals court ruled Friday the recording industry can't force Internet providers to identify subscribers swapping music online, dramatically setting back the industry's anti–piracy campaign.

The three–judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a trial judge's ruling that enforced a type of copyright subpoena under a law that predated the music–swapping trend.

"It's an incredible ruling, a blow for the little guy," said Bob Barnes, a grandfather in Fresno, Calif., who was targeted by one of the earliest subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America but isn't among the hundreds who have been sued so far.

The ruling does not make it legal to distribute music over the Internet, but it removes one of the most effective tools used by the recording industry to track such activity and sue downloaders.

The appeals court said the 1998 copyright law doesn't cover the popular file–sharing networks currently used by tens of millions of Americans to download songs. The law "betrays no awareness whatsoever that Internet users might be able directly to exchange files containing copyrighted works," the court wrote.

The appeals judges said they sympathized with the recording industry, noting "stakes are large." But the judges said it was not the role of courts to rewrite the 1998 law, "no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry or threatens being to the motion picture and software industries."

Legal experts said the appeals ruling probably would not affect the 382 civil lawsuits the recording industry already has filed since it announced its campaign nearly six months ago.

But it will make identifying defendants for future lawsuits much more difficult and expensive.

The ruling forces the recording industry to file copyright lawsuits against "John Doe" defendants, based on their Internet addresses, then work through the courts to learn their names.

I have been, shall we say, less than impressed with Israel's efforts toward resolving the whole Palestinian mess. It's really hard for me to see how you can hold someone responsible for controlling folks when

1. You've destroyed their capability to do so
2. You don't have such good control over your own crew

HERZLIYA, Israel, Dec. 18 — Israel will impose a security plan that will separate Israelis and Palestinians if the Palestinians fail to move quickly toward a negotiated peace, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said here in a speech on Thursday.

"If, in a few months, the Palestinians still continue to disregard their part in implementing the road map," he said, referring to the peace plan promoted by the Bush administration, "then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians."

Mr. Sharon reaffirmed his belief that the peace plan, which would lead to a Palestinian state by 2005, remained the best available option. And he said Israel would move to ease conditions for Palestinians and to dismantle illegal settlements, without linking it to immediate Palestinian moves.

But, he said, if the Palestinians did not at some point move "to uproot the terrorist groups and create a law–abiding society," he would pursue a disengagement plan, which would give Palestinians less land and preserve more Israeli settlements.

The Bush administration reacted coolly to Mr. Sharon's statement.

"The United States believes that a settlement must be negotiated, and we would oppose any effort — any Israeli effort — to impose a settlement," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan. "Unilateral steps can help the road map move forward if they are part of the road map, or can block the road map. It depends on what they are."

Specifically, Mr. Sharon said, the plan would involve a pullback of the Israeli Army to what he called "a new security line" and the withdrawal of some settlements from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to "reduce as much as possible the number of Israelis located in the heart of the Palestinian population."

While Mr. Sharon has hinted over the past few weeks that he was considering taking unilateral steps, his speech represented the first time he had expressed a willingness to dismantle settlements without a comprehensive peace agreement.

During times of war, the USofA has traditionally not given a rats' ass about preserving the civil rights of its citizens, only to reverse all the crap inflicted on the population after the war is over. And honestly, on a certain level I can get with that. But a "war metaphor" is NOT at that level.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — The broad presidential powers invoked by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to detain suspected terrorists outside the civilian court system is now being challenged by the federal courts, the very branch of the government the White House hoped to circumvent.

The two separate appellate court rulings on Thursday swept away crucial parts of the administration's legal strategy to handle terrorist suspects outside the criminal justice system and incarcerate them indefinitely without access to lawyers or to the evidence against them.

The rulings are by no means a final judicial verdict on the administration's approach. But the rulings demonstrated powerfully the willingness of the courts to challenge the administration's procedures, which were put in place without Congressional approval in the tumultuous months that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

The issue of whether the administration has gone too far will not be decided definitively until the cases reach the Supreme Court. The court has agreed to decide whether detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open–ended detention.

Nevertheless, in one sense the administration has already lost an important point by the courts' willingness to ignore assertions that the issues are exclusively within the discretion of the executive branch.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the two decisions were a serious setback for the administration's legal approach.

"The Padilla decision emphasized the Bush administration's unilateralism versus Congress," Mr. Roth said, referring to an appellate court ruling on Thursday in the case of a United States citizen, Jose Padilla, arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism.

"The Ninth Circuit decision said that you can't create a legal black hole in territory controlled by the United States," Mr. Roth added, referring to a second ruling on Thursday related to noncitizens captured in the Afghan war and detained at a naval base in Guantánamo Bay.

"Both attacked the Bush administration's view that a war metaphor can justify restrictions on basic criminal justice rights away from a traditional battlefield," Mr. Roth said.

I held off on picking a Christmas gift for the daughter, which is good because she got back to me with a request I'd have never come up with (the first season of Oz). I got my digital camera though (Canon Digital Rebel), and started reindulging my superhero fixation.

And I have started "Economics Explained". First three chapters, which lets you know how clear it is. It's definitely a popularization, the economics equivalent of The Elegant Universe (and it's hard to say which book I flatter more by this).

That's what always happens when I say I'm done before I check the news. But I'm really, really gone from the keyboard now. I even aborted my news reading for now.

I was going to blog Carol Moseley Braun's profile in the NY Times today. I found in the Times' sidebar a link to an interactive set of profiles of most of the Democratic candidates that I'm drawing attention to. This one will load up Ms. Braun's profile first but you can watch the other five candidates they've already gotten to (everyone except Kucinich, Dean and Edwards).

The article goes into more detail than the 2+ minute slideshow, so you might want to check both out.

Hussein Enters Post–9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons
By JAMES RISEN and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to government officials.

It is a secretive universe, they said, made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq.

Many of the prisoners are still being held in a network of detention centers ranging from Afghanistan to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Officials described it as a prison system with its own unique hierarchy, one in which the most important captives are kept at the greatest distance from the prying eyes of the public and the media. It is a system in which the jailers have refined the arts of interrogation in order to drain the detainees of crucial information.

Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.

On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.

"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.

To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.

"This was a pre–emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.

AIDS Is Cutting African Life Span to 30–Year Low, Report Says
By REUTERS

GENEVA, Thursday, Dec. 18 — In AIDS–ravaged parts of southern Africa adult mortality is higher than it was 30 years ago, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

In 14 African countries, the United Nations agency said in its annual World Health Report, child mortality is higher than it was in 1990, with more than 300 children out of every 1,000 born in Sierra Leone dying before the age of 5.

The 194–page report, which includes information on life expectancy, road traffic deaths and the fight against polio and AIDS, also warned of a growing gulf in health care and exposure to disease between the poorest countries and other countries.

The report concluded that life expectancy is on the increase in most of the world, but it also highlighted problem areas.

"Today's global health situation raises urgent questions about justice," Dr. Jong Wook Lee, the director general of the health agency, wrote in an introduction.

"In some parts of the world there is a continued expectation of longer and more comfortable life, while in many others there is despair over the failure to control disease though the means to do so exist."

Of the 57 million premature deaths in 2002, 10.5 million were children younger than 5, and 98 percent of those were in developing countries.

In Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy for men and women was 37.9; in Zambia it was 39.7; and in Angola it was 39.9. In Switzerland it was 80.6, and it was 80.4 in Sweden and 79.7 in France.

A baby girl born now in Japan could expect to live 85 years, while one born in Sierra Leone would probably not survive beyond 36.

"A world marked by such inequities is in very serious trouble," Dr. Lee wrote. "We have to find ways to unite our strengths as a global community to shape a healthier future."

The report said AIDS was the leading cause of death for people between 15 and 59, reducing the life expectancy of adults in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe by 20 years.

Deaths from the virus and the complications it brings were almost twice those from the next top killer — heart disease — and well over twice as high as the toll from the third most fatal disease — tuberculosis — according to the report.

The health agency said diseases related to tobacco were responsible for about five million deaths a year.

It said that in 2002, over 1.2 million people died of lung cancer — largely caused by smoking — which was a 30 percent increase over 1990. Three out of four of those who died were men, the agency said.

Among men, average life expectancy is 77.9 years in Australia and 75.9 in France. In China, the average man lives to 69.6, in Brazil to 65.7 and in Egypt to 65.3.

But in Russia, a man can expect to live to only 58.4.

Virginia Governor Proposes Wide Overhaul of Tax Code
By JAMES DAO

RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 17 — Stepping into a political minefield, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia proposed a sweeping overhaul of the state's tax code on Wednesday that he said would reduce taxes for two–thirds of Virginians, increase revenue and shift more of the tax burden onto the rich.

The plan, part of the governor's two–year budget proposal to the General Assembly, comes at a time when Virginia is facing a $1.2 billion budget shortfall over the next two years and the threat of a downgrading of the triple–A bond rating it has enjoyed for decades.

The state just confronted a fiscal crisis that caused a $6 billion hole in the budget last year, forcing the government to cut spending on higher education and other programs, to eliminate 5,000 state jobs and to freeze the scheduled phasing out of an unpopular automobile tax.

Instead of proposing a new round of deep cuts, Mr. Warner, a Democrat, has chosen in his current proposal to revamp the tax code — considered antiquated by Republicans and Democrats alike — to increase some rates, to reduce others and over all to raise $1 billion in additional revenue over two years.

"I am convinced that the tax and budget reform plan I have proposed meets the test of fairness for all Virginians," Mr. Warner told legislators on Wednesday. "I am confident this plan is the right medicine for Virginia's economy."

"By lowering the tax burden for low– and middle–income families," he said, "we will stimulate consumer spending and job creation."

The proposal represents a major political gamble for Mr. Warner, 49, who is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party and a potential candidate for the Senate in 2006. During the 2001 campaign for governor, Mr. Warner, a wealthy businessman who ran as a fiscal conservative, pledged not to raise income or sales taxes. His plan would increase both.

"It's disingenuous to suggest a promise is just a campaign sound bite and disregard it once you are elected," said Kate Obenshain Griffin, the chairwoman of the Virginia Republican Party. "I think voters will remember that."

Republicans control both houses of the General Assembly.

After I update my blog about the MT client software I'm working in (i.e. 15 minutes from now) I'm leaving the keyboard alone for most of the day. I will then, in order of execution

1. Pick a Christmas gift for my daughter
2. Buy a digital camera (my last major splurge of the year)
3. Start reading "Economics Explained"

Somewhere in the middle of all this I need to start organizing the great, seething chaos that is my physical environment. Curiously enough, Chaos lords need a certain amount of Order to disrupt or we get confused and bored.

Anyway, that's my plan for the day. I considered setting up a guest account to let random folks post, but since I won't be around checking for obscenities and shit I decided against it.

I'm nominating this post on same sex marriage, based on the comments.

The INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BLACKS IN DANCE (IABD) CONFERENCE has become the Mecca for Blacks in Dance as the one time when artists, dance companies, directors, choreographers and those interested in black dance issues, performance showcases, and artistry impact the global community. The Association, founded in 1986, provides a network, formal newsletters, choreographers directory, published papers and is the raison d'être for the annual conference. The Association also responds to and initiates dialogue around issues that impact the Black Dance Community as well as the community at large.

The IABD Conference has become the convergence of ideas and interaction not only for the dance community, but also for those who serve the black community, especially the black critics association and educators.

…is what I've been doing, although you've no way of knowing that. and I should pull it in before reaching the point I have (waking up suddenly after sitting on the edge of the bed).

In President Bush's exclusive ABC interview last night, he appeared to dramatically change the Administration's rationale for the entire Iraq war. Specifically, when ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer asked Bush why no WMD have been found despite repeated claims that Iraq had them, Bush said, "Well, you can keep asking the question and my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger and the world is better off cause we got rid of him." When Sawyer said the Administration "stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons," Bush said, "what's the difference?"

MORE WMD QUESTIONS: Adding fuel to Bush's WMD revelations is a story in Florida Today that reports, "U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said the Bush administration last year told him and 75 other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities." The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense (who had no comment), despite the fact that the President himself had made a similar claim in a speech on 10/7/02. Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. But as he also correctly pointed out, "They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability."

Read the report or check the Flash presentation.
The 12 Days of Christmas

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 8, 2003 – While stiff import competition is driving deeper discounts on merchandise sold in the United States, skilled labor cost is on the rise, resulting in a 16 percent increase in this year's PNC Advisors Christmas Price Index – the biggest jump the Index has seen in its 19–year history.

Each year since 1984, PNC Advisors has provided a tongue–in–cheek economic analysis, based on the cost of the goods and services purchased by the True Love in the holiday classic, "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Indeed, the cost of the five gold rings dropped by 5.6 percent, and the pear tree is down a full 28.6 percent from last year. However, these discounts were offset by the dancers, pipers and drummers who have seen significant increases in the cost of their services over 2002.

Medical Pot Users Win Key Ruling
The U.S. can't prosecute patients who use it on the advice of a physician and obtain the drug at no charge, an appeals court panel rules.
By Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writer

December 17, 2003

People who use marijuana for medical purposes won a victory Tuesday from a federal appeals court that ruled they cannot be prosecuted by the federal government so long as they grow their own or obtain pot from other growers without charge.

The 2–1 decision from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco would protect many medical marijuana users from prosecution in California and six other Western states — Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — that have laws approving the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

"This is huge. This essentially makes Prop. 215 federal law in California," said Dale Gieringer, a coauthor of the proposition, which legalized medical use of marijuana in California.

…Tuesday's ruling involved one of the most hotly debated areas of constitutional law: the power of the federal government to intervene in matters that traditionally have been handled by state and local governments. Through the 1990s, conservatives successfully argued in court for limiting federal power. But with a Republican administration in Washington, liberals are now using the same arguments in attempts to shield state laws they favor.

Under the U.S. Constitution, routine law enforcement matters are normally handled by the states; the federal government can be involved only if the alleged criminal conduct involves federal jurisdiction.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other federal officials, including Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson, have pursued marijuana cases, saying they have jurisdiction because drugs are sold in interstate commerce.

Last year, based on that rationale, federal drug agents seized marijuana used by a number of individuals throughout California, including Diane Monson of Oroville, who smokes the drug to treat chronic, debilitating back pain.

Monson and Angel M. Raich of Oakland, who uses marijuana for a variety of serious medical problems, including an inoperable brain tumor, sued Ashcroft in federal court. They asked for a court order barring the government from confiscating their marijuana or taking any other action against them.

Both women got letters from their doctors saying marijuana helps alleviate their symptoms. That protects them against prosecution by state and local officials. But both women had a "very real fear" that their marijuana would be seized by federal agents, said Oakland attorney Robert Raich, who is married to Angel.

Monson grows her own marijuana. Raich is unable to do so, according to court papers. Two people identified only as John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2 grow it for her.

Lawyers for the two women argued that since they used the drug solely for their own medicinal purposes, and no money changed hands, their actions did not involve interstate commerce. That would mean the federal government had no power to prosecute them.

A federal district judge ruled against them in March, saying that despite "the gravity" of their need for marijuana, the Constitution did not protect them against federal prosecution. But the appeals court majority sided with the women.

"The intrastate, noncommercial cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician is, in fact, different from drug trafficking," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the majority. He was joined by Judge Richard A. Paez.

The federal government has the power to pass laws against trafficking in drugs, Pregerson added, but "the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and not for exchange or distribution is not properly characterized as commercial or economic activity."

The dissenting judge — C. Arlen Beam, who normally sits on the 8th Circuit in the Midwest — argued that even if the women did not pay for their marijuana, they were using a "crop which could be sold in the marketplace, and which is also being used for medicinal purposes in place of other drugs which would have to be purchased in the marketplace." For that reason, Washington can be involved, he said.

Anti–Dean Ad Is Criticized
Independent Group Uses Bin Laden Image in Commercial

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 17, 2003; Page A06

Howard Dean's campaign demanded yesterday that his Democratic presidential rivals repudiate an independently financed commercial that uses a picture of Osama bin Laden in attacking the former Vermont governor.

The 30–second ad, being aired by Americans for Jobs, Health Care & Progressive Values, also was denounced by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which has given the organization $50,000. A spokesman called the commercial "despicable" and said the union may ask for its money back.

Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi sent a letter calling on the other candidates "to condemn this despicable ad and demand it be pulled from the airwaves. Democrats are better than this."

As the ad shows a Time magazine cover photo of bin Laden, the narrator says: "There are those who wake up every morning determined to destroy western civilization. Americans want a president who can face the dangers ahead. But Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience. And Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy."

David Jones, a former fundraiser for Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D–Mo.), said the organization was formed last month as a two–man operation, with him as treasurer and former representative Edward Feighan (D–Ohio), who has made the maximum $2,000 contribution to Gephardt's presidential bid. The group, which has aired other anti–Dean ads, has not disclosed its donors, but the Associated Press reported that two other pro–Gephardt unions, representing laborers and iron workers, have also contributed.

Gephardt told reporters yesterday: "I have no idea what this group is doing. If I wanted to run ads like this, I would run them. I wish they weren't running the ads. . . . I'm sorry they're doing it."

Rick Sloan, communications director for the machinists union, which has endorsed Gephardt, said the ad "does more damage to Dick Gephardt than it would ever do to Howard Dean" because of Feighan's and Jones's ties to Gephardt. Sloan urged the group to disclose its donors now, saying: "These folks are purporting to be supportive of progressive values. This has nothing to do with progressive values. . . . With foes like these, Howard Dean needs few friends."

Error messages that are useful for me but would scare the hell out of an end user

Error messages that are NOT useful for me AND would scare the hell out of an end user

Finding a bug that makes you stop what you're doing to fix it, and then restart what you're doing to take the change into account.

Establishing the line between "this needs to be tweaked" and "this needs to be fixed."

FEC Fines Ashcroft's Senate Bid For Breach

By Thomas B. Edsall and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 17, 2003; Page A01

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president.

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

"Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, respectively, violated the [law] by making and receiving this excessive contribution. Additionally, Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, respectively, violated the [law] by failing to disclose the making or receipt of the excessive contribution," the FEC declared in a news release.

Under the law, the Spirit of America PAC was allowed to give the Ashcroft 2000 committee only $5,000 for the primary and $5,000 for the general election, which it did. The commission found that the Spirit of America PAC far exceeded these limits by illegally transferring to the Ashcroft 2000 committee $110,000 derived from the rental of its donors list.

The FEC vote to fine the Ashcroft committee was 5 to 1, and the one dissenter sought harsher penalties and tougher findings.

C'mon people. You think Bush was out there searching himself? You think the plan to find Hussein originated behind his furrowed brow?

The capture of Saddam Hussein has lifted Americans' view of the state of the nation and their opinion of President Bush, while at least momentarily halting what had been a spiral of concern about the nation's economic and foreign policy, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

But even in the glow of Mr. Hussein's capture, Americans worry that United States forces will be mired in Iraq for years, are concerned that the attacks on American troops will continue and say that President Bush has no plan to extricate the United States from Iraq, the poll found. And 60 percent of Americans said the United States was as vulnerable to a terrorist attack as it was before Mr. Hussein was pulled from a hole in Ad Dwar.

Times/CBS News polls spanned the days before and after Mr. Hussein's capture, offering a vivid demonstration of the extent to which public opinion can shift in reaction to a momentous event. From Saturday night to Sunday night, Americans' view of the success of the war soared, as did their opinion about whether the nation is on the right track and their approval of Mr. Bush.

There was even a slight bump bein the number of Americans who thought the economy was on the mend, a number that had already been growing in polls since October.

In the most apparent demonstration of the shift, 47 percent of respondents said the war was going well for the United States in the poll that ended Saturday night. That number jumped to 64 percent in the second poll. Before the weekend, 47 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Mr. Bush was handling foreign policy, the worst rating of his presidency. After the weekend, that number had slid to 38 percent.

Mr. Bush's approval rating jumped to 58 percent after Mr. Hussein was captured, from 52 percent, and the number of Americans who disapproved of his performance fell to 33 percent, from 40 percent.

Will New HUD Secretary Help or Hurt Blacks?
12/16/2003 08:04 PM EDT

BY TONYAA WEATHERSBEE
BlackAmericaWeb.com

I'm trying to get fired up about George W. Bush's decision to tap Alphonso Jackson as head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But I can't.

I still have "Silent Sam," on the brain.

We all should remember "Silent" Sam Pierce – the last black picked by a Republican president to head that agency. Under Pierce, who was appointed by former President Reagan in 1981, HUD's funding was cut more than in any other Cabinet–level department. Money for low–income housing was slashed from $33.5 billion to $15.1 billion a year. At the same time, housing shortages for poor people doubled – a problem which feeds today's homelessness epidemic. People got so fed up with him that they staged protests outside of his Washington condo.

Yet even at that time I wondered whether Pierce's acquiescence was the result of him seriously being out of touch with the people that his department was primarily charged with serving, or if his aims were frustrated early on by ideologues who like having black people around only as a matter of image, rather than of substance.

That's why I worry about Jackson.

Dean, Gore and Blacks
by Ron Walters

Al Gore's recent endorsement of Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination underscores a titanic struggle within the Democratic Party that places considerable pressure on the Black community. What is now forming is a ''two–camp'' struggle with the Bill Clinton operatives rallying around Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark and the Gore faction supporting Howard Dean. The pressure of two opposite camps takes much of the emphasis away from the other candidates and begins to make this appear to be a two–person race.

The fact that Al Gore announced his support for Dean in Harlem was also important. Not only is it the backyard of Congressman Charles Rangel and now includes the turf of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Gore was sending a clear message: the Democratic Party must change direction. Gore came aboard Dean's train because the former Vermont governor had the courage to directly oppose George Bush on America's invasion of Iraq. Dean criticizes Bush for continuing to pursue a war that is wasting billions of American tax dollars, making many more enemies and thus, heightening American insecurity in the process.

Most important, it also signals a change from the Clinton strategy of talking like a Republican while walking like a Democrat. For my money, I would rather stand for something rather than to be following either Richard Gephardt or Joe Lieberman into the fog of supporting Bush on the war and then criticizing his tax policies. If they support the war, how would they pay for it? Seems to me they would have to run the same budget deficits that Bush is running and dry up funding for social programs.
So, the Gore endorsement was very big because it moved the ball toward the goal post for Dean and caused the entire Democratic team to consider more seriously his emergence as the clear leader of the pack.

The Black Commentator is in the Pro–Dean camp.

Part 1: If you comment here and leave a web site or blog address, sooner or later I'll check out the page. Which is a blunt introduction to Sister Scorpion. Now, I may or may not bring you to the front of the room like this; the major reason I bring Sister Scorpion forward is her comment on my last Saddam Hussein post, and I quote:

Hoping for the Iraqis to try him here...

…which I take to mean she's an Iraqi.

From what I saw of her page she doesn't seen like a war–blogger, but it strikes me folks could get better info from her than me about the Middle East.

Part 2: When I posted those interesting referrals, I spotted one that I had to follow up. It's a German Magazine titled "Telepolis, The Magazine of Net Culture" which I know because English and German have the same linguistic roots. I couldn't make head nor tale of the article as a whole, until I had Google translate it.

I'm just glad people know computer translations aren't the best.

Anyway, It was an article on poverty in the USofA, and they linked to the Census Bureau, Forbes, The National Review, the Heritage Foundation, The Pew Research Center…and me.

How the hell they found me, I can't tell you. But that's some rarified atmosphere to find myself in.

Like hip–hop? Hate terrorists?

Like this.

Not work safe obscenity, drug use (though not by who you'd expect).

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=attack+of+the+cheese&FORM=SMCRT

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO–8859–1&q=snow+prometheus

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF–8&oe=UTF–8
&q=kennedy+forcing+universities+in+mississippi+and+alabama+to+admit+afri
(particularly remarkable because P6 isn't in the result set)

http://www.hotbot.com/default.asp?query=2003+private+email+address+
and+contact+of+citizens+above+20+that+census+counted+in+US&ps

And don't miss:

From Naperville to Texas, `megaburbs' hit middle age
By Lee Powell
The Dallas Morning News: Knight Ridder/Tribune

December 6, 2003

NAPERVILLE, Ill. –– Too small to be considered a bedroom community, too big to be a metropolis.[sic]

Boomburbs, megaburbs, edge cities –– those who study them have searched for a label that fits.

They are the Planos, Arlingtons, Irvings, Garlands and Napervilles of the nation. And they're aging.

Nestled next to larger cities, such places have seen dramatic growth in the last few decades. They are home to more than 100,000 people and helped lead the nation's suburban boom of the 1980s and '90s.

But now, the population flood is receding for some, the new–city feel washing away. With that comes worries about blight, the creep of big–city problems people hoped to escape by moving outward.

Urban planners say these suburbs are at a crossroads: Some, through careful planning, will remain the places to be, losing little of their chamber–of–commerce luster. Others won't be so fortunate. Neighborhoods will turn, looking nothing like they did a decade earlier. Once–thriving retail corners will become virtual ghost towns.

These are uncertain times for leaders in such places, as their cities search for sustainability. Few places have grown so big and amassed so much wealth so quickly. And planning experts have no concrete solutions to guarantee success.

"The fact is that no place can or should boom forever," writes Robert Lang of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech University. "Today's boomburbs are tomorrow's mature cities."

Trial could cast war in new light

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 12/16/2003

WASHINGTON –– The coming trial of Saddam Hussein will blanket world media with the daily evocation of decades of atrocities, potentially recasting the Iraq war from a campaign rationalized by the still–unproven threat of weapons of mass destruction to a moral undertaking justified by ending his regime's massive human rights abuses.

Had Hussein been killed by US soldiers, his final chapter would have made headlines for only a few days. But the improbable fact that he allowed himself to be taken alive offers President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain the opportunity to watch their critics squirm under a sustained flow of headlines that will emphasize the humanitarian argument for their war –– even if it was not the one they most often articulated before the fighting.

While the president yesterday offered only a pledge that the trial will be public and "stand international scrutiny," war supporters envision a televised tribunal, replete with the surviving victims and relatives of the dead offering riveting testimony of torture, massacre, and other personal encounters with horror –– thus obliging opponents to reconsider their assertions that it was a mistake to invade Iraq.

"Without ever appearing to be partisan, but merely by cataloging Saddam's numerous heinous crimes . . . it will become implicit in a lot of people's minds that this was a terrible person and that toppling and catching him was undoubtedly a moral and practical good," said John Hulsman of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "That undermines the moralism at the base of left–wing opposition to the president's Iraq policy. It hits them where they live."

Political analysts doubt that hard–core opponents to the war will be ultimately swayed by that logic, but most acknowledge that the crucial bloc of the undecided, who swing elections, would be more likely to be persuaded.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor of politics, predicted that supporters of the US occupation of Iraq would schedule the trial with politics in mind.

There is the chance, however, the trial will not play smoothly for supporters of US policy. Depending on how far back the charges go and how much opportunity Hussein is given to defend himself, he could try to implicate the United States in his crimes, said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of the antiwar protest coalition United for Peace and Justice.

"If all that comes out during the trial is the crimes that Saddam committed –– and I'm not saying those shouldn't come out –– then I think it could serve to buttress the Bush administration," she said. "But if it also comes out about the role of the US in setting up that regime, then I think there will be even greater questioning about why this war happened and why this occupation is going on and what the real interests of the US are at this point."

Yesterday, Iran said that it is preparing a criminal complaint over Hussein's war crimes from the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq war, in which about 300,000 Iranians were killed –– including many who died in chemical weapons attacks by the Iraqi Army. Iraq was supported by the United States –– and many other nations –– when Hussein invaded Iran the year after its radical Islamic revolution. According to the Arab–language television network Al–Jazeera, an Iranian spokesman said yesterday that after the Iraqis try their former dictator, an international court "should determine who equipped this dictator to disrupt our region."

Cleanups Fuel Debate: How Much Is Enough?
By Miguel Bustillo
Times Staff Writer

December 16, 2003

For ten years, Juanita Tate has worked to bring something so basic to a neighborhood that most take it for granted: a supermarket.

As director of the nonprofit Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles, Tate's goal is to revive an area that was the center of unrest during the city's 1992 riots by filling in a checkerboard of vacant lots and old factories with housing and soccer fields.

But Tate's revitalization plans are repeatedly being held up by a problem common in urban areas throughout California: toxic chemicals lingering in the land, left behind by decades of industrial use. California has more brownfields, as the tainted sites are known, than any other state, and has been slower than most in cleaning them up. At the heart of the delays is a question that divides regulators, environmentalists and developers: How clean is clean enough?

The question often comes down to the equivalent of a few grains of sand –– toxic residue measured in parts per billion. Many of the chemicals California considers dangerous have only been scientifically proven to cause health problems in laboratory animals. But the state, ever careful to reduce the risk of harm, often requires contaminant levels to be reduced far below the threshold. For a builder trying to redevelop a large contaminated lot, parts per million can add up to millions of dollars in cleanup costs.

Government To Purchase FluMist at A Discount
Deal Could Give Boost To MedImmune Vaccine

By Michael Barbaro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 16, 2003; Page E01

The company that makes FluMist, the needle–free influenza vaccine, agreed to sell up to 3 million doses to public health officials at less than half the $46 wholesale price amid a shortage of flu vaccine, the federal government said yesterday, which may ultimately boost faltering sales of the drug.

Negotiated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the agreement lets state and local officials buy the nasal–spray vaccine for $20 a dose from now through the middle of February from MedImmune Inc. of Gaithersburg, the manufacturer, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals of Madison, N.J., which co–markets the vaccine.

…the $20–a–dose deal also sets a precedent that could make it hard for MedImmune to raise the price back to $46.

MedImmune purchased the FluMist technology from California biotechnology company Aviron two years ago for $1.5 billion, justifying the price to critics by arguing consumers would pay more for a flu vaccine sprayed into their noses than one injected into their arms. The standard shot costs $10 to $15 retail.

…MedImmune introduced the nasal spray vaccine this fall with a $25 million marketing campaign to consumers –– one of the largest ever for a vaccine –– and predicted sales of between 4 million and 5 million doses. As of mid–November, it had sold only 400,000.

MedImmune blamed the sluggish sales on FluMist's high price, limited availability, consumer worries about inhaling a live virus and a later–than–expected launch. It even hired a consulting firm to review the launch.

…Stock analysts who follow the two companies have long complained FluMist's $46 price tag is too high. By November, MedImmune had already offered a $25 rebate.

"The rebate is a virtual admission that the $46 price is too high," wrote Joel Sendek, a biotechnology analyst at investment banker Lazard Freres & Co., at the time.

Patriots and Profits
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week there were major news stories about possible profiteering by Halliburton and other American contractors in Iraq. These stories have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture. But the questions remain. In fact, the more you look into this issue, the more you worry that we have entered a new era of excess for the military–industrial complex.

The story about Halliburton's strangely expensive gasoline imports into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High–priced gasoline was purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts, but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only with that firm. I wonder where that trail leads.

Meanwhile, NBC News has obtained Pentagon inspection reports of unsanitary conditions at mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq: "Blood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables." An October report complains that Halliburton had promised to fix the problem but didn't.

And more detail has been emerging about Bechtel's much–touted school repairs. Again, a Pentagon report found "horrible" work: dangerous debris left in playground areas, sloppy paint jobs and broken toilets.

Mr. Smith Limps Home

It's no secret that the House Republican leaders went into full arm–twisting mode last month when they kept a midnight roll–call vote open an extraordinary three hours to finally squeeze out a victory for President Bush's Medicare prescription plan. One of the hounded Republicans, Representative Nick Smith of Michigan, was angry enough the next day to write a newspaper column for constituents alleging that "bribes and special deals" had been offered to sway holdouts like himself.

Mr. Smith, who is planning to retire and hopes to be succeeded by his son Brad, followed up with a radio interview in Kalamazoo in which he said the blatant pressures to turn his vote to "yes" had included an offer of "$100,000–plus" for his son's campaign.

It is illegal to offer money to a lawmaker to affect his vote, and as the question of a possible investigation arose, Congressman Smith soon qualified his vote–buying charges. He said that on second thought, it was "technically incorrect" to specify offers of actual money. Rather, he said, an offer of "substantial and aggressive campaign support" for his son had come from a partisan he did not identify.

Mr. Smith, so hopeful of keeping the House seat in the family, did not object when Speaker Dennis Hastert concluded "there was nothing of substance there." So everything's back to normal in the Capitol. After 40 years in politics, Congressman Smith can retire, anticipating an easier race for Brad. But the father might privately wonder just what sort of a Washington world he would bequeath to his son.

I tell you, if these idiots keep it up, they're going to force me into the Dean camp as opposed to the "get rid of Bush" camp. They Rayne can say "nyah, nyah!" all she wants, and I'll have no defense.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 15 — Howard Dean declared on Monday that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer," provoking an avalanche of new attacks from rivals who have seized on Sunday's surprise news as a way of redrawing the foreign policy debate in the Democratic presidential campaign.

what Lieberman said:

Not that there was a snowball's chance in Gehenna that ol' "Smokin' Joe" would get my vote because there's a snowball's chance in Gehenna that he'll get the nomination. But c'mon dude…

what Wesley Clark said:

Okay, not stupid. Clark hasn't written himself off in my eyes yet.

what Richard Gephardt said:

I repeat: DEAN IS A CENTRIST, NOT A PROGRESSIVE.

Gephardt is good for his immediate constituents. If I could be convinced he'd do for the nation what he does for them (essentially "sell out") I could be convinced to move him up from around the bottom of the heap.

what John Kerry said:

Not stupid, but it doesn't distinguish Kerry from Dean, not actually. Like Kerry writes his own speeches.

what "a group of Democrats" said:

Hussein Tells Interrogators He Didn't Direct Insurgency
By THOM SHANKER and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — Saddam Hussein has denied playing any direct role in commanding Iraqi insurgents or in planning attacks after he went into hiding, and he said his government possessed no prohibited weapons, United States government officials said Monday.

Interrogators began questioning Mr. Hussein just hours after American forces captured him, officials said. An early focus of the interrogation, they said, has been anything he knows about the guerrilla war, in hopes of quickly gleaning information that might help prevent attacks and disrupt or dismember cells responsible for the attacks.

Mr. Hussein has also been quizzed about programs to develop unconventional weapons, according to Bush administration, Pentagon and intelligence officials, but he has so far denied the existence of such weapons. Officials said his denials were in line with statements of other top Iraqi officials who have been captured in recent months, and who still maintain that Baghdad did not have unconventional weapons.

American interrogators took the somewhat unusual step of immediately asking Mr. Hussein about substantive issues, in part because he appeared mentally and physically fatigued, and thus his resistance to interrogation seemed low, officials said.

Yet intelligence and military officials still said they were discounting much of the little information that Mr. Hussein had offered so far. The officials based in Washington who spoke about his interrogation were all referring to reports in briefings transmitted from Iraq.

They said it might take weeks or months for him to face up to the reality of his situation and begin to answer questions more candidly.

Thurmond Kin Acknowledge Black Daughter
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — The family of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina acknowledged on Monday that Essie Mae Washington–Williams, a retired teacher living in Los Angeles is the daughter of Mr. Thurmond and a black woman who worked for his family as a maid nearly 80 years ago.

"As J. Strom Thurmond has passed away and cannot speak for himself, the Thurmond family acknowledges Ms. Essie Mae Washington–Williams' claim to her heritage," a family lawyer, J. Mark Taylor, said in a brief written statement. "We hope this acknowledgment will bring closure for Ms. Williams."

Mr. Thurmond, a Democrat turned Republican who was once one of the nation's leading segregationists, died in June at the age of 100 after serving 48 years in the Senate. For decades, he had acknowledged a friendship with Ms. Washington–Williams, 78, who was raised by an aunt and became a frequent visitor to Mr. Thurmond's Washington office. But despite rampant rumors, both the senator and Ms. Washington–Williams publicly denied their relationship.

From Ms. Washington–Williams's perspective, that was out of respect for him, his family and his political career, said her lawyer Frank. K. Wheaton.

Senator Thurmond's son J. Strom Thurmond Jr., the United States attorney for South Carolina, confirmed Ms. Washington–Williams's assertions in an interview with The State, in Columbia, S.C., The Associated Press reported.

"We have no reason to believe Ms. Williams was not telling the truth," Mr. Thurmond told The State for a story in Tuesday's editions.

via Movable Type:

The "Email this to a friend" functionality in the mt–send–entry.cgi script is vulnerable to being used by spammers to send spam messages. In principle, all "email this to a friend" programs are vulnerable to being used by spammers, because they allow the user to specify a To: address and a message body. But in practice, MT's implementation of this is not as robust as it should be, and a new version is available below.

This fix is already included in all versions of MT 2.64 downloaded from today on.

If you're not using this functionality at all, we recommend that you simply remove mt–send–entry.cgi from your MT directory. MT doesn't have any hooks to use this script by default anyway, so you won't be breaking your MT installation.

If you are using this functionality on your MT weblog, you should download this package with a new version of mt–send–entry.cgi, unzip it, and replace the version of mt–send–entry.cgi on your server. The new version:

* fixes a vulnerability that allows spammers to inject extra headers into messages;
* removes the ability to send the message to multiple recipients;
* restricts the message to 250 characters.

All of these fixes serve to discourage the script being used by spammers.

In fact, it's been a looooooong time and I gotta finish Christmas shopping, so Ipresent Editorial cartoons:

…wherein Tony Auth gets religion
…wherein Ben Sargent applauds the American virtues that forced us to rescue Iraq.
…wherein Pat Oliphant presents Vice President Cheney's short list of loyal, free states in the Iraq Coalition.
…wherein Jeff Danziger shows the latest cavern searched by US forces in search of Al Qaida.

Aaron McGruder has finally explained the neocon plan in a way that makes sense to me.

The hidden holocaust

Ruth Rosen
Monday, December 15, 2003

IMAGINE IF a producer from National Public Radio invited a scholar to speak about his new book on the Jewish Holocaust and then, to provide "balance," included another guest known for denying that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews.

Inconceivable, right?

Yet this is analogous to what happened to Peter Balakian, a professor of American Studies at Colgate University and author of "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response" (HarperCollins, 2003) –– a gripping and evocative account of the 1915 genocide of more than a million Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

As soon as his book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, Balakian received a flood of invitations to speak about what some have called "the hidden holocaust."

One NPR producer, however, insisted on inviting another guest to present the Turkish "perspective" that no genocide ever occurred. Balakian declined the invitation.

Squelching dissent in the name of security

By David Cunningham, 12/15/2003

DESPITE THE FBI's denials, recent disclosures of intelligence efforts against lawful antiwar protesters are strong reminders of the bureau's intensive undercover operations of the 1960s and '70s. Those counterintelligence operations, known as COINTELPRO, sought to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of targets that included communist organizations, civil rights groups, the Ku Klux Klan, and anti–Vietnam War protesters. While the current revelations are confined to the monitoring of perceived threats rather than active harassment, the broad sweep of the FBI's efforts should raise serious concerns over the bureau's motives and methods.

The New York Times has reported that these methods now include the use of "firsthand observation, informants, and public sources like the Internet" to gather "extensive information on the tactics, training, and organization of antiwar demonstrators." Bureau officials were careful to emphasize that this effort is not designed to monitor the masses of law–abiding protesters, but instead to target anarchists and other "extremist elements" likely to plot and carry out violent acts. But clearly their net was cast more broadly, as the FBI's weekly bulletin to local law enforcement officials contained information about legal movement tactics such as online fund–raising, passive monitoring of police arrests, and activist "training camps."

The sheer scope of these efforts closely parallels the organizational logic of COINTELPRO. In my analysis of more than 6,000 pages of FBI memos related to the anti–Vietnam War movement, I found that agents initiated more than 450 actions against hundreds of groups and individuals between 1968 and 1971. These actions ranged from faked anonymous letters to planted evidence to falsified media stories to massive surreptitious infiltration by informants.

Agents' efforts were not designed to reduce criminal activities, nor were they discriminating in their reach. Curious sympathizers were frequently portrayed as insurgents within the FBI's files merely because they happened to attend a particular open meeting. These labels were created to feed an internal demand, as agents in the field conveniently "found" the national security threats that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had identified ahead of time.

Openings for voters

12/15/2003

"SORRY, this election has been canceled" –– that's the message seven states are sending to voters by eliminating next year's presidential primaries, and it's a record number of cancellations, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State. While most of those primaries are being replaced with party caucuses that are supposed to encourage grass–roots participation in the nominating process, the truth is that an election at a polling place pulls in more citizens than a meeting of the party faithful, and getting people involved should be the goal in what is too often an apathetic democracy.

"If 20 people show up at some precinct meetings, they run out of cookies," said Ron Thornburgh, secretary of state in Kansas, where the Legislature voted to cancel presidential primaries for the third time. The reason given this year was money –– canceling will save the state $1.75 million because parties fund their own caucuses.

But canceling has its own price tag: It adds to America's civic engagement deficit. In a phone interview, Thornburgh noted that Kansas primaries draw about 500,000 while caucuses attract fewer than 20,000.

"More people will go to the boat show than will participate in selecting candidates for president of the United States," said Ralph Munro, former secretary of state in Washington state, which switched to caucuses along with North Dakota, Colorado, and Maine.

Crucial Option for Women

In California, women can ask a pharmacist for the so–called morning–after pill without a doctor's prescription. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration will hold hearings on the question of whether women in California and elsewhere should get the drug more easily. Twenty–five years of experience in this country and abroad has proved emergency contraception to be safe and effective at preventing pregnancy for millions of women for whom contraception failed, or who were raped. It should be more freely available.

A Supreme Conundrum

By William Raspberry
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A31

If you think last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign finance pleased no one, just wait until the justices weigh in on congressional redistricting.

The specific issue on which the court heard arguments last Wednesday is the 19–district map of Pennsylvania, drawn up in 2002 by the Republican–controlled state legislature. Democrats, with a statewide voter edge of 445,000 over Republicans, hold only seven of the 19 seats.

The reason is obvious –– and admitted. The Republicans drew the district boundaries to maximize their political advantage. The court, which has long held that it's perfectly fine to take politics into account in drawing congressional and other districts, is being asked by Democrats to say the Pennsylvania plan is too political.

It is, of course, but it's hard to see how the court could bring itself to do anything about it.

Which doesn't mean it won't try. Asked a decade ago to consider whether the North Carolina legislature was too race–conscious in producing a districting map that gave the state its first black U.S. representatives since Reconstruction, the court said yes. The shape of the district from which Mel Watt (D) was first elected –– in some places no wider than Interstate 85 –– was, to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's mind, unconstitutionally "bizarre."

Subsequent clarifications seemed to say that while legislatures are forbidden to engage in racial gerrymandering, they may draw districting maps calculated to satisfy any number of interests, including partisan advantage and protection of incumbents.

What the court seems not to have counted on is the increased sophistication of computers, which now are capable of slicing and dicing states, as National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg put it the other day, "block by block and even house by house . . . [based on] party registration, previous voting patterns, income, charitable contributions, subjects of interest and even buying patterns of the people who live in those houses."

"The result is that the designer can tell with near certainty which way those voters will cast their ballots," Totenberg said.

Will the court tell legislators they can't use this powerful information?

Clark Testifies in Milosevic Trial

By Anthony Deutsch
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 15, 2003; 6:02 AM

THE HAGUE, Netherlands –– Presidential hopeful Wesley Clark began testifying behind closed doors Monday in Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial, facing his former wartime foe for the first time since the ex–Yugoslav leader was ousted in 2000.

Clark, a retired four–star general and former NATO supreme commander, was taking a hiatus from his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination for two days of testimony at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

He entered an unusually quiet tribunal courtroom without making any comment as he is barred under court rules from discussing the hearings.

Most of Milosevic's trial, which began in February 2002, has been public, but the United States won an agreement from the tribunal to keep Clark's appearance closed for security reasons.

Another Battle for Bush
By BOB HERBERT

There are two things I hope will emerge from the capture of Saddam. Like so many others, I hope the effort in Iraq becomes much more widely shared, internationalized, which would be good not just for Iraq and the U.S. but for the short– and long–term stability of the entire planet.

My second hope is that the Bush administration will begin to apply the kind of focus, energy and resources that it used in Iraq to the economic difficulties of ordinary working families here in America.

If you just went by recent headlines, you'd have the impression that the U.S. economy is as bright as the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. The G.D.P. is surging. The stock market, retail sales and corporate profits are up. So is productivity.

The front–page headline in The Daily News on Thursday said, "Santa Comes Early to Wall Street." It was accompanied by a photo of Philip Purcell, the chairman and C.E.O. of Morgan Stanley, who was described by The News as "the first titan to cash in at the end of a banner year."

The article cited several executives who were expected to receive year–end bonuses in the $12 million to $17 million range.

The Bush crowd will tell you that these economic goodies are bound to trickle down. Jobs will become plentiful. Pay envelopes will fatten. Nirvana is just around the corner.

The problem with this scenario is that there are no facts to back it up. The closer you look at employment in this country, the more convinced you become that the condition of the ordinary worker is deteriorating, not improving.

The problem is that we are not creating many jobs, and the quality of those we are creating is, for the most part, not good. Job growth at the moment is about 80,000 per month, which is not even enough to cover the new workers entering the job market.

And when the Economic Policy Institute compared the average wage of industries that are creating jobs with those that are losing jobs, analysts found a big discrepancy. The jobs lost paid about $17 an hour, compared with $14.50 an hour for those being created.

Slashdot tagged this story with the rather amusing from the walk–by–mugging dept. line. Exactly my first thought about the technology. Think: sensitive RFID scanned reads nearby credit card, scanner to WI–FI enabled, portable computer, PC to Internet, Internet to bank, bank to bogus account, wireless thief to cash machine.

It's a wireless world, baby…

Return of pamphleteers
Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, December 14, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ

READERS looking for a good book this season should pick up William Safire's historical novel "Scandalmonger." The tale, which begins in 1792, of Philadelphia's mudslinging pamphleteers –– who hurled crude personal invective and unsubstantiated charges against America's early leaders –– should take on added import with the U.S. Supreme Court's 5–4 decision to uphold the McCain–Feingold campaign–finance reform law.

Safire's book explores an age when voters got their information not from newspapers with modern standards for balance and accuracy (imperfect as they may be), but from highly partisan pamphlets that baldly eschewed information in preference to propaganda.

Sort of like many Internet sites today.

Post–9/11 limits on dissent claimed
Law enforcement cites terror threat

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 12/14/2003

WASHINGTON –– Two years into the post–Sept. 11 era, police across the country are cracking down on street protests, and federal prosecutors are invoking obscure laws to punish activists whose aggressive displays of political expression were once more tolerated, according to groups as diverse as Operation Rescue and Greenpeace.

While law–enforcement officials acknowledge only that the specter of terrorism has made them more wary of large crowds and disruptive behavior, activists say the newly aggressive tactics are jeopardizing a form of dissent as rooted in American tradition as the Boston Tea Party.

On Friday, lawyers for Greenpeace USA, the environmental activist organization, were in a Miami federal court to defend the group against unheard–of criminal charges of breaking an obscure 19th–century law against "sailor mongering."

The charges, which could lead to a $20,000 fine and five years of probation, sprang from a protest in April 2002. Six Greenpeace activists motored out to a freighter off Miami that they believed held mahogany taken from a protected Brazilian forest. Carrying a rolled–up "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging" banner, two clambered up a ladder and were chased down by the crew. All were later convicted of unlawfully boarding a ship.

That should have have been the end of the event under the old rules of protest, say leaders of the group, whose activists been boarding ships to make political statements for three decades. They say that the Justice Department is trying to intimidate them into dropping their signature political act.

"This is clearly an attempt to chill the kind of nonviolent direct action that Greenpeace does," declared John Passacantado, executive director of Greenpeace USA.

… Still, John Firman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police said that since Sept. 11 many law enforcement agencies have made tactical improvements to guard against the danger that a peaceful protest could be hijacked by terrorist infiltrators using the chaos of the crowd.

"While the protest itself may have no relationship to terrorism, the presence of protesters could be a vehicle for people with other issues on their minds," Firman said. "The police have the obligation to respond in a heightened way because of that window of opportunity." In practice, that increased awareness can make protesters feel as if they are "viewed not as citizens with a right to protest but as an enemy and a threat" for something as simple as showing up with a sign, said Operation Rescue president Troy Newman.

"They call out the bomb squad dogs to sniff you," he said. "They're checking your driver's license. They want to know your name, your Social Security number, how long you'll be there, and what your intent is. This is a huge change since Sept. 11. It's a mindset that law enforcement has, even toward peaceful nonviolent American citizens attempting to voice their opposition to legislation and policies."

He pointed to the annual "Red Mass" at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C., traditionally attended by Supreme Court justices on the Sunday before the beginning of their new term. Newman said he and other Christian activists have picketed outside the Red Mass for years without incident.

But on Oct. 5, when activists showed up protesting the removal of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building, US marshals in body armor swept the sidewalk clear of anyone with a sign and arrested those who wouldn't move, Newman said. He was let go after six hours and was fined $25 for "crossing a police line."

Dean has never been a progressive. He is a centrist.

December 14, 2003

WASHINGTON — In November 1987, Al Gore, then a senator and presidential aspirant, appeared at a political dinner in Iowa roughly two months before the state's Democrats were scheduled to attend party caucuses and pick a presidential favorite. Iowa was politically important to Gore, but he acted aloof, nonchalant, almost as if he didn't care whether he won over the state's stalwart liberals. Indeed, instead of singing the activists' praises, Gore jabbed a finger into their eyes by vowing to fight for free trade, raise the U.S. profile abroad and govern as a "raging moderate."

"I will not do what the pundits say it takes to win in Iowa — flatter you [liberals] with promises, change my tune and back down from my convictions," declared Gore.

When Bill Clinton selected Gore as his running mate in 1992, Democrats nationwide knew the party's moderate wing was in the ascendant. Gore's selection allowed Clinton to cast himself off from "the party of George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Mario Cuomo," noted the New Yorker's Louis Menand.

Then, on Dec. 9, 2003, 11 years after Gore and Clinton barnstormed America in a bus in a "New Democrat" crusade to capture the White House, the former vice president turned his back on this past and endorsed a maverick outsider who claims to be the only candidate of "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Howard Dean was the first major candidate in the race to oppose the Iraq war. His home state, Vermont, routinely elects a socialist, Bernard Sanders, as its lone representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.

By endorsing Dean, Gore waved goodbye to the moderate Democratic politics that had defined his decades–long political career. His "people versus the powerful" theme in his 2000 presidential campaign suggested which way the wind was blowing for Gore. But by coming out early for Dean, Gore announced, in the most dramatic way yet, that he has embraced the antiwar views, pro–civil liberties positions and anti–incumbent, anti–Washington rhetoric of the Dean wing of the party.

I'm not interested in your moral and legal judgment of illegal immigrants, the voluntary assumption of risk, whether or not we owe them protection.

I'm saying that unless you live like these people, who are so much merchandise to be haggled over, you are not a slave. And unless you see this as the typical human behavior it is, your political and economic theories are for shit.

December 14, 2003

PHOENIX — Moving with the cunning and cruelty of modern–day pirates, gangs of kidnappers are swooping down on Arizona highways, attacking smugglers transporting illegal immigrants and stealing their human cargo.

The kidnappers stash the immigrants in hundreds of drop houses scattered around this city, using violence and threats to extort money from their relatives.

Now, smuggling gangs are fighting back, shooting it out with kidnappers on sidewalks and freeways in broad daylight.

A gun battle last month between kidnappers and smugglers on Interstate 10 at the height of rush hour left four dead. Four others were killed this month in the desert near Phoenix; authorities blamed the deaths on violence between the two groups.

Kidnappers operate simply enough; they let smugglers take all the risks of getting immigrants into the country, then rob them once they get here. When they can't intercept smugglers on the road, they snatch migrants from houses where they are known to be hiding.

Dean Working to Be Seen as Foreign Policy Centrist
He and Bush Differ Widely on Some Issues, on Others Only in Tone

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page A01

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said he would offer a package deal to North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs and he embraced an unofficial peace plan that establishes the borders of a Palestinian state –– breaking dramatically with the approaches of the Bush administration.

Dean, who has risen to the top of the Democratic field in part because of his early and vehement opposition to the war in Iraq, also said he favors immediate elections in Iraq to replace the U.S.–appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which he said is viewed by the average Iraqi as "simply a council of American–chosen puppets." Dean further said he would end funding for the deployment of a missile defense system, a centerpiece of President Bush's presidential campaign four years ago.

But in a wide–ranging 50–minute interview on foreign policy, given as he flew from Burlington, Vt., to Omaha on Friday, Dean also indicated he agreed with a number of Bush's foreign policy stances. In a speech Monday, Dean will seek to counter his image as a darling of the left by positioning himself as a centrist Democrat on foreign policy. Dean portrayed himself as a realist, willing to use military force if necessary, and to maintain relationships and alliances, even if freedom and democracy in countries such as Russia and Pakistan are eroded.

Indeed, Dean suggested that on some issues, the difference between Bush and himself was more of tone and temperament. He said, for instance, he would not have warned Taiwan not to hold a referendum on Chinese missiles if the Chinese premier was at his side, as Bush did last week. "The president's policy is right, but the president's public slap [at Taiwan] wasn't necessary," Dean said.

"Nuance matters in foreign policy," Dean said. "Not only does this administration have a tin ear and want to push through whatever they want to do without regard to people's feelings or thoughts, I think nuance escapes this administration."

Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop?
A: See below

By Everett Ehrlich
Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page B01

Back in 1937, an economist named Ronald Coase realized something that helped explain the rise of modern corporations –– and which just might explain the coming decline of the American two–party political system.

Coase's insight was this: The cost of gathering information determines the size of organizations.

It sounds abstract, but in the past it meant that complex tasks undertaken on vast scales required organizational behemoths. This was as true for the Democratic and Republican parties as it was for General Motors. Choosing and marketing candidates isn't so different from designing, manufacturing and selling automobiles.

But the Internet has changed all that in one crucial respect that wouldn't surprise Coase one bit. To an economist, the "trick" of the Internet is that it drives the cost of information down to virtually zero. So according to Coase's theory, smaller information–gathering costs mean smaller organizations. And that's why the Internet has made it easier for small folks, whether small firms or dark–horse candidates such as Howard Dean, to take on the big ones.

For all Dean's talk about wanting to represent the truly "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," the paradox is that he is essentially a third–party candidate using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. Other candidates –– John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark –– are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants are the Democratic brand name and legacy, the party's last remaining assets of value, as part of his marketing strategy. Perhaps that's why former vice president Al Gore's endorsement of Dean last week felt so strange –– less like the traditional benediction of a fellow member of the party "club" than a senior executive welcoming the successful leveraged buyout specialist. And if Dean can do it this time around, so can others in future campaigns.

from the first of five pages at the Washington Post

Okay, my obligatory notice of this is over.

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 14, 2003; 7:36 AM

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. troops during a raid on a farmhouse near Tikrit, U.S. officials said in a news conference in Baghdad today.

"We got him . . . ," L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's U.S. civilian administrator, said when making the announcement. "The tyrant is now a prisoner . . ."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, described the operation and said that "not a single shot was fired."

Sanchez said Hussein, who was hiding in a "spider hole" dug near the house, was talking to his captors and "being cooperative." Video of Hussein, with a long gray beard, getting a medical checkup after his capture was shown by Sanchez. Then, he showed video of the man after he had been shaved and compared that to earlier photos of Hussein.

Continuous celebratory gunfire could be heard in Baghdad as the news of Hussein's possible arrest spread across the Iraqi capital.

Bush's Energy Policy Lives Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
By FELICITY BARRINGER

INEDALE, Wyo. — A herd of 100 pronghorn antelopes were trotting over a ridge here, then meandered to a halt and foraged meditatively a few hundred yards from a natural gas wellhead and its squat companion tanks, filled with the petroleum byproducts of the drilling.

The pronghorns were stragglers in the winter migration of antelopes across the Upper Green River Valley, a landscape that has been tied to this ancient pattern for millenniums and is now being remade by the nation's thirst for clean–burning, environmentally friendly natural gas. Energy companies eager to slake that thirst while prices are high are accelerating the makeover of the longest wildlife migration route in the continental United States.

Whether this harms the wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem or affects the air or water in the Wind River Mountains is unclear. But it is clear that here in the Upper Green, as the area is called, the Bush administration's energy policies have come to life. The antelopes' migration route and the winter range of thousands of mule deer lie atop an estimated 7 trillion to 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — more than 4 percent of the nation's reserves, according to Don J. Likwartz, Wyoming's oil and gas supervisor.

As twilight settles in above the gas fields and darkening bands of red climb up the granite flanks of the nearby Wind River Mountains, some 20 drilling rigs light up.

The Alchemy of a Zoning Bonus
By JOSH BARBANEL

CESAR PELLI leaned his lanky frame over a model of his luminous glass 54–story tower, now rising one floor every three days or so over 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, topped by a miniature version of the multistory beacon he designed for its crown, just above 24 floors of luxury condominiums.

As Mr. Pelli spoke, a xylophone and bass played in the background, and residential brokers sipped pale blue drinks from martini glasses. They were gathered for a suave upscale pep rally marketing the remaining apartments of the residential condominium, One Beacon Court, for sale for $2.1 million to $26 million.

"We are only this high now," Mr. Pelli said, pointing toward the model's 46th floor, "and already I could see it from all across Central Park."

Ruth Gardiner, a retired office worker, is somewhat less impressed. She is 85 years old, and a few years ago she and her husband gave up the three–bedroom apartment she had rented for nearly half a century in Queens and moved to a new apartment a few blocks away from Mr. Pelli's tower. "They keep building so much in Manhattan that one of these days Manhattan is going to sink," she told a visitor with a laugh.

But Mr. Pelli's vision and Mrs. Gardiner's apartment are inextricably linked. More than half of the 105 condominium apartments under construction at One Beacon Court were made possible by a zoning provision that allows developers to make large buildings even larger, if they build — or at least pay for — housing for people with limited incomes like Mrs. Gardiner and her neighbors on East 61st Street.

The little known provision was created in the late 1980's, just as housing development dried up. In the last few years it has produced a steady trickle of lower–income housing, close to 100 apartments a year, becoming a critical building block of many new luxury housing developments.

Similar provisions, known collectively as "inclusionary zoning," have been used in New Jersey, Maryland, California and other states to coax, or in some cases require, the creation of housing affordable to less affluent residents.

In Manhattan, inclusionary housing enables developers to increase the size of buildings allowed on many major avenues and streets in areas with high–density development by up to 20 percent in exchange for creating limited–income housing nearby.

Because the program was specifically intended to address the borough's problem of gentrification, it requires developers to build limited–income housing in or around the same neighborhood, including some of the most affluent enclaves in the country. Builders receive up to four square feet of development rights for each square foot of lower–income housing.

Woman, 78, Says She Is a Daughter of Thurmond
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 — After a lifetime of public silence, a 78–year–old Los Angeles woman is stepping forward to say she is the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and a black woman who once worked as the Thurmond family maid.

The woman, Essie Mae Washington–Williams, a retired vocational school teacher, says she has incontrovertible evidence, including financial receipts and cashier's checks demonstrating his support for her and personal notes — showing that Mr. Thurmond, once one of the nation's leading segregationists, was her father.

Mr. Thurmond, a Republican who retired last year as the nation's longest–serving senator after 48 years in office, died in June at the age of 100.

Frank K. Wheaton, a lawyer representing Ms. Washington–Williams, said in an interview on Saturday that she was coming forward "at the urging and encouragement of her children" to establish their family history and confirm years of speculation that Mr. Thurmond fathered a child by Carrie Butler, who was 16 years old at the time.

The story of Ms. Washington–Williams's intention to come forward at a news conference next week was reported on Saturday on the Web site of The Washington Post, which interviewed her. She was unavailable for comment on Saturday. Members of the Thurmond family could not be reached for comment.

U.S. Suits Multiply, but Fewer Ever Get to Trial, Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK

In television and in the popular imagination, lawsuits and prosecutions end in trials, in open court before a jury. In reality, according to a new study, trials have become quite uncommon.

In 1962, the study says, 11.5 percent of all civil cases in federal court went to trial. By last year, that number had dropped to 1.8 percent. And even though there are five times as many lawsuits today, the raw number of civil trials has dropped, too. They peaked in 1985 at 12,529. Last year, 4,569 civil cases were tried in federal court.

"What's documented here," William G. Young, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Boston, said in a telephone interview, "is nothing less than the passing of the common law adversarial system that is uniquely American."

The percentage of federal criminal prosecutions resolved by trials also declined, to less than 5 percent last year from 15 percent in 1962. The number of prosecutions more than doubled in the last four decades, but the number of criminal trials fell, to 3,574 last year from 5,097 in 1962.

The study, based on data compiled by the federal court system, was prepared by Marc Galanter, who teaches law at the University of Wisconsin and the London School of Economics, for the American Bar Association.

"This is a cultural shift of enormous significance," said Arthur Miller, a law professor at Harvard.

Saddam Husein was captured last night.