CAN GET SOME SATISFACTION:

Optimism After Iraq Election, but.... (ABBY GOODNOUGH, 2/01/05, NY Times)

Some glimpsed the ink-stained fingers of beaming Iraqis on television and felt their first stirrings of optimism about the war effort. Others said the healthy turnout and relative calm that marked Iraq's first free elections in decades merely reaffirmed their support for President Bush's agenda there.

In interviews around the country on Monday, many Americans voiced surprise and at least some satisfaction about the apparent smoothness of the proceedings, which brought out millions of Iraqi voters. But most were consistent in saying the elections did not change their fundamental views of their country's involvement in Iraq.

"If they learn something about what democracy is, that could be good for them," O'Neill Espinal, 34, said of Iraqi citizens as he lounged at an outdoor mall in Miami Beach. "But I still think we are fighting the wrong war, and Bush set this election up to make the U.S. government look like the good boys."

Yvonne Roper, who was on her lunch break in Houston, said that what she had seen of the elections backed up her sense that the American news media put an unfairly negative spin on the war effort.

"The way the Iraqi people reacted disproves what we see on TV every day," Ms. Roper, 40, said. "The way they were cheering and putting their fingers up - they were proud to participate."

For others, the images of Iraqis lining up to vote brought a far more personal, if fragile, sense of vindication. Nelson Carman, a purchasing agent in Jefferson, Iowa, whose 20-year-old son died last April while fighting in Iraq, said the turnout on Sunday put "a big stamp of approval" on Mr. Bush's mission. He recalled the disappointment he felt after the Vietnam War, and said the election helped him believe that his son and other American soldiers had not died in vain.

MASADA STRATEGY:

Democrats flash steel on Gonzales: Their opposition, to the point of alienating Hispanics, offers a preview of likely fight over judicial nominations. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 1/31/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

This week's expected face-off on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be the next US attorney general signals how aggressively Democrats on Capitol Hill will oppose the White House - even at the risk of alienating Hispanic supporters.

Long rumored to be a candidate for a Supreme Court vacancy, Mr. Gonzales enjoys broad support in the Hispanic community. His personal story - up from a humble home with seven siblings and no running water - is inspiring, and his confirmation would mark the first time a Latino has held a top cabinet position.

Hispanic groups ranging from the National Council of La Rasa, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the Hispanic National Bar Association back the nominee. "This is a milestone for the community," says Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for La Rasa.

LESSON ONE--WHEN HE SIGNS A BILL IT'S BECAUSE HE WON:

Healthcare Overhaul Is Quietly Underway (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.

With Democratic strength reduced, President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) are pushing for action.

Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush's "ownership society," say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

"My view is that this is absolutely the next big thing," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose consulting firm focuses on healthcare. "You are going to see a continued move to trying to get people involved in the process by owning their own health accounts."

Critics say the Republican approach is really an attempt to shift the risks, massive costs and knotty problems of healthcare from employers to individuals. And they say the GOP is moving forward with far less public attention or debate than have surrounded Bush's plans to overhaul Social Security.

Indeed, Bush's health insurance agenda is far more developed than his Social Security plans and is advancing at a rapid clip through a combination of actions by government, insurers, employers and individuals.

Health savings accounts, known as HSAs, have already been approved. They were created as a little-noticed appendage to the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill.

PEACE PANDEMIC:

Pakistan, Israel put out feelers (ANWAR IQBAL, Jan. 31, 2005, UPI)

Israel and Pakistan should have "direct, personal contact, publicly, without being ashamed about it," Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told the Pakistani newspaper Jang.

The exclusive interview last week with a reporter from Jang, which has a large circulation, sparked a militant rampage on the newspaper's offices in Karachi. But Saturday's vandalism did not shock many in Pakistan. Most people had expected some violent reaction from the country's religious extremists soon after Jang published the interview on Friday.

What surprised them most is that less than 30 people participated in the assault in a city of almost 14 million people. Equally surprising for most Pakistanis was the reaction to the attack.

Almost all major political parties, social organizations and media groups condemned the ransacking and the beating of guards trying to protect the office. The condemnation was so strong that Pakistan's main religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, was also forced to join the chorus.

NEVER MIND...:

Army suicide rate in Iraq plummets (Dan Olmsted, 1/28/2005, UPI)

The number of suicides by soldiers serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom dropped last year by at least half -- a decline that helped lower significantly the Army's overall suicide rate.

Nine soldiers' deaths in Iraq in 2004 have been ruled suicides, compared with 24 in 2003, the Army told United Press International. Three other deaths in 2004 are being investigated as possible suicides.

Suicide rates are expressed as the number of suicides per 100,000 individuals per year. By that measure, the Army suicide rate in Iraq dropped from 18 per 100,000 in 2003 to 7.9 in 2004.

For the Army as a whole, the number of suicides fell from 77 in 2003 to 58 in 2004, dropping the suicide rate from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2003 to 9.5 in 2004.

HEY, JEAN-CLAUDE, HOW'S YOUR DAY GOING?:

Triumphant White House now looks to Europe (Julian Borger, February 1, 2005, The Guardian)

The high turnout in the Iraqi election has strengthened President Bush's hand at home and abroad, administration officials and the president's supporters said yesterday.

The courage of Iraqi voters was the perfect illustration of the Mr Bush's "freedom speech" at last month's inauguration, Bush supporters said.

They also said it would have an impact on transatlantic ties, making it harder, for example, for European critics to reject his calls for greater involvement in Iraq's stabilisation.

Yesterday, Mr Bush phoned the two European leaders who most vocally opposed the war in Iraq, the French president, Jacques Chirac, and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

MORE:
Europe to step up Iraq security effort (Judy Dempsey, February 1, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

European Union governments, which were divided over the U.S.-led war against Iraq, pulled together Monday and agreed to step up efforts to improve security after Iraqis held their first democratic elections in 50 years.

President Jacques Chirac of France, who along with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany had spearheaded the opposition in Europe to the war, spoke by telephone Monday with President George W. Bush and said the election Sunday "was an important stage in the political reconstruction of Iraq."

"The strategy of terrorist groups had partly failed," Chirac told Bush, according to Chirac's spokesman, Jérôme Bonnafont.

Germany, which has been slowly mending fences with Washington, praised the courage of Iraqi voters. "They deserve great recognition for the will they have shown to shape the future of the country peacefully and democratically, despite massive intimidation," said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

The sense of European unity, at least for the moment, was made during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels and came three weeks before Bush visits Europe, stopping off in Brussels, where he will meet European and NATO leaders.

A FEW ANGLES TOO MANY:

HILL SELLS OUT (Dick Morris, January 31, 2005, NY Post)

So why are the Democrats selecting Dean? And why is Harold Ickes, the putative spokesperson for the Clintons, embracing the choice? Because Dean's momentum is unstoppable and nobody wants to stand in the way of the avalanche of self-destructiveness which is pouring onto the Democrats from their left-wing supporters.

Here's how it work: When moderates and centrists embrace the GOP and President Bush, they leave the Democrats to the tender mercies of the liberals. The party is deprived of the ballast offered by swing voters, the party moves further and further to the left, driven by a Jacobin desire for revolutionary purity and revenge against those who urge pragmatism and point to the path to victory.

And the Clintons? Even as Hillary tries to fool us once more into believing in her political moderation, they do not dare stand up against Dean. Even though they know that Dean knows that it was the Clintons who assassinated him en route to the nomination last year, neither Bill nor Hillary utter a peep as their party falls off the deep end.

The Clintons could have gotten Ickes the job, but neither one did any heavy lifting on his behalf. Why not? I'm no longer privy to their secrets, but my guess is that Bill was too sick, sad, physically weakened and unfocuse — and that Hillary, an ingénue without his guidance and leadership, didn't dare to try on her own for fear of publicly failing.

For his part, Ickes likely acted out of pique in demeaning Hillary's chances for victory in 2008 and in withdrawing from the race for chairman entirely a few weeks later. Left to twist slowly in the wind, this normally loyal operative probably felt abandoned and unappreciated, as he did when he was passed over for chief of staff in Clinton's second term.

GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO:

Fagin, Shylock and Blair (William Rees-Mogg, 1/31/05, Times of London)

THERE are two great anti-Semitic personas in English literature. Both were created by men of genius, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, in works of genius, The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist. Both portray a stereotypical Jew as avaricious, ruthless and cunning. The names of both of these characters are so familiar that they have entered the language. They are Shylock and Fagin.

Yesterday, The Mail on Sunday rightly published two striking photographs side by side. Both are carefully staged, with a Fagin figure holding an old-fashioned pocket watch on a chain. The first is a picture of Barry Humphries actually playing Fagin. The second is a Labour Party poster of Michael Howard, carefully chosen to fit the Fagin image.

The second picture has, of course, been doctored by Labour. The watch and chain have been added. The relationship between the two poses is obviously intentional; there is even an unusual knot in the watch chain that appears in both. We are intended to associate Mr Howard with Fagin, that is with a sinister Jewish criminal as seen by anti-Semites.

This is part of the Labour pre-election campaign.

IT'S ALL FIAT:

Resist the Filibuster Fiat (Kevin Drum, January 31, 2005, Washington Post)

Senate Democrats have relied on filibusters to block judicial nominees far more often than have minority parties in previous congresses. But there's good reason for this: Republicans have steadily done away with every other Senate rule that allows minorities to object to judicial nominees -- rules that Republicans took full advantage of when they were the ones out of power.

Originally, after Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 1994 elections and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch assumed control of the Judiciary Committee, the rule regarding judicial nominees was this: If a single senator from a nominee's home state objected to (or "blue-slipped") a nomination, it was dead. This rule made it easy for Republicans to obstruct Clinton's nominees.

But in 2001, when a Republican became president, Hatch suddenly reversed course and decided that it should take objections from both home-state senators to block a nominee. That made it harder for Democrats to obstruct George W. Bush's nominees.

In early 2003 Hatch went even further: Senatorial objections were merely advisory, he said. Even if both senators objected to a nomination, it could still go to the floor for a vote.

Finally, a few weeks later, yet another barrier was torn down: Hatch did away with "Rule IV," which states that at least one member of the minority has to agree in order to end discussion about a nomination and move it out of committee.

These rule changes aren't a direct explanation for every Democratic filibuster. In fact, some of the filibustered judges have been approved by both of their home-state senators, so they wouldn't have been blue-slipped in any case.

But Democratic frustration is still understandable. For better or worse, the Senate has long been dominated by rules that give minorities considerable power over the legislative and appointment process. The usual justification for this is that it forces compromise and curbs extremism.

When Democrats were in the majority, Republicans defended these traditional Senate rules and used them freely to block judges they had strong objections to. But when they became the majority party themselves, they gradually decided the rules should no longer be allowed to get in the way of unbridled majority power. It was only after Democrats were left with no other way to object to activist judges that they resorted to their last remaining option: the filibuster.

It's arguable, of course, that none of these rules made sense in the first place.

"THINK IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE":

Iraqi Election May Affect Middle East (SAM F. GHATTAS, 1/31/05, Associated Press)

Iraq's election, however imperfect, could increase pressure on other authoritarian Arab countries to begin political reforms and hold free balloting.

"The Americans were able to hold elections in Iraq and that made them much more comfortable in carrying on with their policies in the Middle East," said Lebanese political analyst Ali Hamadeh. "They showed everybody that you can carry on with an electoral process even when you have security problems."

Hamadeh said the message of the election is that if Iraq could carry out "an all-weather democratic process" there is no excuse for other countries not to reform.

Many are feeling the pressure at least to make a show of democratic reform, and 2005 is shaping up to be the year of Middle East elections...

DEATH THROES:

(Culture) War Is Declared in Europe: U.S.-style religious and 'town vs. country' conflicts take hold. (John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

[L]ately, cultural issues have begun to force their way back into the mainstream of European politics, stoked by three things.

The first is the willingness of politicians to ride roughshod over ancient traditions — and the growing willingness of what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" to fight back.

The Labor government's bill banning fox hunting in England and Wales, for instance, delighted metrosexual Islington, where people are less exercised by the rights of foxes than the wrongs of the upper classes. But it has created a furor in rural England — and not just among toffs. [...]

The second factor is the revival of religion — or at least its refusal to die. Europe has long been the world's most secular continent — fittingly so given that the great prophets of secularization such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were European. But now religion is again entangling itself with politics.

The most obvious example is the resurgence of radical Islam. [...]

But Christians are also causing more fuss in Europe these days. [...]

The third factor is the growing ambition of the ultimate technocratic project. The European Union is run by gray men who talk about protocols and summits with the same relish that real people reserve for sports teams. Yet their enthusiasm for both deepening Europe (by creating a European constitition) and broadening it (by admitting Turkey) is stirring up a formidable backlash. The upcoming votes about the European constitution will inevitably raise questions about national identity.

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON IRAQI (via Jim Yates):

VIDEO: Iraq Election Day

The music is especially appropriate.

DEEPEST STAIN ON OUR ESCUTCHEON:

The Castro Experience: A new PBS documentary takes a hard-headed look. (Catherine Seipp, 1/21/05, National Review)

The latest sign that PBS may be indeed moving away from reflexive lefty politics is its hardheaded and compelling new documentary Fidel Castro, which premieres Jan. 31 and is the first non-American biography in the network’s American Experience series. (As executive producer Mark Samuels pointed out at the PBS news conference, an argument can be made that Castro, with his half-century-long "impact on American history," is an American experience, besides being "also a tremendous story.")

Veteran documentarian Adriana Bosch clearly shows the appeal of a charismatic revolutionary like Castro to a populace suffering from the oppressive Batista regime, but refuses to sentimentalize the cigar-smoking, iconic leader they got as a replacement. "It is the tragic story of a nation who saw a messiah in just a man," she says of her film, which doesn’t flinch from detailing the brutal reality beneath Castro’s charm: 500 Bastistianos tried and executed in less than three months, 20,000 people arrested after the Bay of Pigs, and so on.

Was Communism the reason for the treason of Castro's revolution — as Cuban exiles protested in the early '60s? (Castro never actually admitted that the Cuban revolution was socialist in nature until after the Bay of Pigs.) Or was it that Castro himself, as the film reveals, is simply a megalomaniac — someone who as a small boy threatened to burn his family's house down if they didn’t send him to the school of choice, and who confiscated land from his own mother when he grew up? A University of Havana classmate interviewed by Bosch describes young Fidel as a combination of genius and juvenile delinquent, which seems pretty much on the mark.

At the very least, Fidel Castro is a welcome antidote to last year's Looking For Fidel, Oliver Stone's pro-Castro documentary for HBO. "I think it approached a work of fiction," Bosch said, describing the infamous moment in that film when a Cuban prisoner insists to Stone’s cameras that 30 years in jail for stealing a boat seems quite fair to him.

ONLY CONSIDER THE CONTROVERSIAL IF I FAVOR IT (via John Resnick):

Transcript for Jan. 30
Guests: Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (Meet the Press, Jan. 30, 2005)

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Social Security and find out your current thinking. I want to take you back to your campaign in '96 when you talked to your hometown paper, the Boston Globe, and said that, "Dramatic changes are needed to make sure Social Security benefits are available for future retirees." Kerry "said the next Congress should consider controversial measures, such as raising the retirement age and means-testing benefits, called it `wacky' that taxes that pay for the system do not apply to income over $62,700." It's now 90,000. "I know it's all going to be unpopular."

SEN. KERRY: So I was right about wacky.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, we'll see if he runs it--"We have a generational responsibility to fix them."

And then in 2003, you said--"Declaring `I am blessed to be wealthy,' Senator John F. Kerry said that, if elected president, he would consider some form of means-testing for rich Americans as part of a broader review of ideas to shore up the Social Security system." ... But "`Rich people are getting checks from poor people well beyond what they put in the system,' said Kerry. ...Another idea Kerry said he would consider is raising the cut-off point after which people no longer pay into the system. ...`Maybe people ought to pay up to $100,000 or $120,000, I don't know,' the senator said."

Specifically, Senator, do you still agree with yourself? Should we raise the retirement age or consider it? Should we raise the cap on income level that people pay payroll tax?

SEN. KERRY: Precisely what I said in 1996 is "We should consider" a number of these things. We did consider them. I considered them. Others did. I rejected them.

WAIT, KARL, DON'T JUMP YET!:

State Democrats back Dean for DNC post (WILL LESTER, January 30, 2005, Associated Press)

Howard Dean won the backing of state Democratic Party leaders Monday, putting him in a strong position to win the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

"If all of our members vote for him, that will be half of what he needs to win the chairman's job," said Mark Brewer, chairman of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

The party's presidential front-runner in 2003 won 56 votes from the state chairs and Democratic activist Donnie Fowler won 21 during a national conference call. The state chairs ignored a recommendation made Sunday by the executive committee to back Fowler. Other candidates' support Monday was in single digits.

"We're asking all of our state chairs and vice chairs to follow our endorsements," Brewer said, noting that would bring 112 votes. "And we think they will."

WELL, NOW WE KNOW WHY BUBBA SIGNED WELFARE REFORM... (via Pat H):

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' (Clare Chapman, 30/01/2005, Daily Telegraph)

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit.

FUNDAMENTAL:

Senator reignites debate on abortion 'epidemic' (Orietta Guerrera, February 1, 2005, The Age)

Nationals Senator Ron Boswell has placed the controversial issue of abortion issue back on the national agenda, calling on Health Minister Tony Abbott to reveal the extent of what has been described as an abortion "epidemic".

Less than three months after Prime Minister John Howard moved to quell a row among Coalition MPs on the issue, Senator Boswell tabled 16 questions for Mr Abbott relating to the number of terminations, funding of the procedures, and the counselling available to women considering an abortion.

SOAR HIGHER:

AIRLINE-SECURITY FEE SET TO SOAR (NY Post, January 28, 2005)

A fee charged to airline travelers to help pay for airport security would more than double under President Bush's proposed spending plan for the Department of Homeland Security.

Bush's plan calls for raising the security fee from $2.50 to $5.50 for a one-way ticket and from $5 to $8 for a round trip.

Bush's plan, due to be released Feb. 7, would add $48 million to Homeland Security's overall $41 billion budget, according to a copy of the proposal.

CONTINUING CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE ON THE LEFT:

2020 Vision (Fred Kaplan, Jan. 26, 2005, Slate)

Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it?

SORRY, IT'S THE PARTY OF KENNEDY, KERRY, PELOSI & BOXER NOW:

Iraq Elections: A Large Step Towards Legitimate Self-Government (New Democrat No-Longer-Daily, 1/31/05)

Although the results of yesterday's Iraqi elections will not be compiled for a number of days, several important facts appear beyond dispute:

* Despite the threat and reality of violence aimed at voters and candidates, turnout was impressively high -- indeed, higher than in most recent U.S. elections;

* Despite a boycott sponsored by most Sunni Arab leaders, Sunni turnout was much better than expected wherever it was physically possible;

* While Shia are sure to dominate the new government, Sunni representation will likely reflect that community's proportion of the population, and President Allawi 's secular-minded multi-party alliance appears to have done quite well;

* The Iraqi elections were widely publicized in independent Arab media as successful, and as more significant than the insurgents' efforts to subvert them.

This means that during the last year, elections have been successfully carried out -- with women participating -- in three very unlikely places: Afghanistan, Palestine, and now Iraq, despite strong efforts by Jihadists to reduce participation.

There is no question this should be grounds for celebration in all democratic countries, regardless of one's views on the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. And it should definitely be happily welcomed by everyone in the United States, regardless of one's views on the foreign policy of the Bush administration. It's a vindication of the universal appeal of our most fundamental values, and Democrats in particular should make that clear.

At the same time...

JIHADING WE MUST GO:

America's Jihad: the chilling rhetoric of George W Bush's inaugural speech (Hassan Nafaa, 1/27/05, Al-Ahram)

George W Bush's inaugural address was unlike that of any of his predecessors. Whereas they attempted to strike a conciliatory mood as they laid out their domestic and foreign policy programmes his was nothing less than a neo-conservative manifesto that came perilously close to declaring holy war.

The speech must have come as a shock to the many who had hoped that Bush had learned from the mistakes his administration made during his first term. Certainly four years in office should have furnished the experience necessary to lead the world towards greater security and stability. It hasn't -- there was nothing in his speech to give comfort, not one hint of an admission that he may have made some mistakes, not a single sign that he has absorbed the lessons of the consequences of his actions. He made no reference to the wars he declared during his first term or to a timeframe for withdrawal from the Iraqi quagmire in which American forces have sunk up to their ears. There was no indication that he has begun to fathom the limits of recourse to force or the value of diplomacy in resolving international problems. As for the events of 11 September, 2001 which handed him the opportunity to metamorphose from a presidential novice who scraped into power through a dubious process into a latter day Alexander the Great, as his admires would have it, he did not refer to them by name. Instead he spoke of the "day of the conflagration".

It would be a great mistake to dismiss Bush's inaugural address on the grounds that it was merely a formality in which ideological platitudes were spouted with a rhetorical fervour suited to the occasion. This was a very significant speech, and it was drafted carefully. Michael Girson, Bush's favourite speechwriter, wrote it and Bush read and revised it 21 times before settling on the final version delivered to Congress on 20 January. The speech serves as an outline of the agenda of the American ultra-right.

Bush wasted no time in getting down to what his administration has identified as the primary threat to US national security. The most frequently repeated word in his address in this regard was not terrorism, as has been the case in so many of his speeches since 11 September, but dictatorship. It would be foolish, though, to assume that the change in terminology heralds a shift in US foreign policy. There may be some change in means and tactics but not in general strategies and objectives. The neo-conservatives whom Bush represents still believe terrorism is the major peril, but they have also come to realise that the phenomenon is an offshoot of despotism and that their objectives would be better served by treating the ailment and not just its symptoms. I have no doubt whatsoever that America's ultra-conservatives, who now hold the reins of power in the US, are convinced that the terrorism that struck New York and Washington in September 2001 was a product of dictatorial regimes and of nothing else.

It follows that uprooting terrorism requires the destruction of the soil in which it breeds. If Bush's inaugural address was clear about anything it was about the nature of that soil -- dictatorial regimes that whip their people into subjugation and fetter their will. These have to be done away with and replaced by democratic governments with established mechanisms for the peaceful rotation of power.

DIFFERENTLY ACTIVIST:

Bush Forges Weak Links to Legacies of Democratic Predecessors (Ronald Brownstein, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

Probably the last Democratic president who held views roughly similar to President Bush's was Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century. Cleveland embodied the resistance to activist government that dominated the Democratic Party through its first century and fuels the GOP today.

But the unlamented Cleveland isn't one of the predecessors Bush and his allies are enlisting to sell his initiatives at home and abroad. Instead, they are trying to link Bush's agenda with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton.

In each case, to put it mildly, the connection is a stretch. In fact, in each instance, the Bush team is citing the Democrats to sell policies that reverse the strategies those presidents pursued. It's as if General Motors were using a testimonial from Ralph Nader to sell an updated Corvair.

Bush's allies have routinely described his recent inaugural address as the most idealistic statement of America's commitment to expanding liberty since Wilson's declaration in 1917 that, "The world must be made safe for democracy."

Up to a point the analogy holds. Like Bush, Wilson believed that the spread of democracy would make America more secure. And Wilson, like Bush, considered U.S. influence key to encouraging that spread.

But the differences dwarf the similarities. Wilson wanted the U.S. to help organize the world into a League of Nations that would confront threats as "a community of power." In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has demonstrated that he is more comfortable working virtually alone than accepting restrictions on America's freedom of action.

WE'RE THERE:

Israel to Leave 4 West Bank Towns Soon (Ken Ellingwood, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

In the latest sign of budding cooperation, Israel's defense minister said Sunday that the army probably would withdraw troops from some West Bank cities in a matter of days, turning security over to Palestinian forces.

A pullback of Israeli troops from cities where they have operated during the nearly 4 1/2 -year-old conflict would meet a key demand of the new Palestinian leadership, which has impressed Israel by moving to quell the activities of armed militants in the Gaza Strip. [...]

Israeli officials said the withdrawal probably would be accompanied by the removal of roadblocks, which Palestinians complain inhibit their movements and choke their economy. Israel has said the roadblocks and checkpoints around Palestinian towns are needed safeguards against suicide bombers making their way into Israel proper.

Mofaz said Israel could remove troops from all Palestinian cities by year's end.

TOO GOOD FOR THE TIMES:

For a Battered Populace, a Day of Civic Passion (JOHN F. BURNS, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Nobody among the hundreds of voters thronging one Baghdad polling station on Sunday could remember anything remotely like it, not even those old enough to have taken part in Iraq's last partly free elections more than 50 years ago, before the assassination of King Faisal II began a spiraling descent into tyranny.

The scene was suffused with the sense of civic spirit that has seemed, so often in America's 22 months here, like a missing link in the plan to build democracy in Iraq. Gone, for this day at least, was the suspicion that 24 years of bludgeoning under Saddam Hussein had bred a disabling passivity among the country's 28 million people, an unwillingness, among many, to become committed partners in fashioning their own freedoms.

At the Darari primary school, east of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, the courtyard teemed with people of all ages, and of all ethnic and religious groups, doing what American military commanders here have urged for so long: standing up for themselves, and laying down a marker, with their votes, that signaled they could not be intimidated into surrendering their rights by the insurgents who have terrorized the country with guns and bombs and butchers' knives.

The voters were the same people, mostly, who crowded polling centers in the fall of 2002, six months before American troops toppled Mr. Hussein, to re-elect him in a one-candidate referendum by an official vote count of 100 percent. Then, all was uniformity, and cries of fealty to the dictator.

On Sunday, everything about the voting resonated with a passion for self-expression, individuals set on their own choices, prepared to walk long distances through streets choked with military checkpoints, and to stand for hours in line to cast their ballots.

"A hundred names on the ballot are better than one, because it means that we are free," said Fadila Saleh, a 37-year-old engineer, as she hurried about the courtyard trying to find an official who would allow her to transfer her vote to the Darari center, setting aside a mistaken register that had her living miles away. Eventually, she prevailed, along with several friends dressed like her in the head-to-toe cloaks of conservative Muslim women.

DAYTON'S DONE:

Approval rates for Dayton, Coleman drop (Rob Hotakainen, 1/31/05, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Minnesota Sens. Mark Dayton and Norm Coleman both took hits to their public image in the past year, with their job approval ratings falling below 50 percent, according to the latest Minnesota Poll.

Dayton, a Democrat who's up for reelection next year, took the heaviest blow: His approval rating declined by 15 points in a year, from 58 percent to 43 percent. [...]

Dayton's job approval decreased among all categories of Minnesotans, grouped by age, education, income, party and ideology, with the largest drop among men -- down 27 points -- and 18- to 24-year-olds -- down 31 points. [...]

The poll, which was conducted from Sunday, Jan. 23, through Wednesday, came during a week in which Dayton was in the headlines. First, Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., announced that he was considering a run against Dayton, who is regarded by the Cook Political Report as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat seeking reelection next year. Then Dayton gave a highly publicized speech on the Senate floor, accusing Rice of lying to the American people and Congress while making the case for war against Iraq in 2002. In his Tuesday speech, Dayton said his vote against Rice was "a statement that this administration's lying must stop now."

Dayton, who routinely accuses the Bush administration of making false statements, received national -- even worldwide -- attention after making his remarks as part of such a high-profile debate. His office was flooded with more than 4,000 e-mails and phone calls, most of them positive, and Dayton was featured on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."

CRESCENT ROLLS:

New dawn in Iraq (Hassan Hanizadeh, 1/31/05, Tehran Times)

The new era in Iraq finally began to dawn with a massive voter turnout in Sunday’s election and some bloody incidents.

Criminal terrorists tried to sabotage the election by carrying out attacks on polling stations, but the determined Iraqi people braved the threats of the gunmen.

After enduring eight decades of dictatorship and crime, the Iraqi nation has taken the first steps on the path toward a bright future and democracy -- a new phenomenon in Arab world.

The Iraqi people have experienced great suffering due to dictatorships, geopolitical conditions, and demography.

And, unfortunately, some neighboring Arab countries played a direct role in setting up despotic governments in Iraq, since they cannot tolerate the rule of democracy in Iraq due to its complicated ethnic makeup.

Indisputable evidence discovered after the fall of the Baath regime showed that Saddam Hussein could not have committed such crimes against his own people without these Arab states’ support.

The Shia in the south of Iraq and the Kurds in the north succeeded in liberating 14 of the country’s 18 provinces in 1991, shortly after the Iraqi Army was driven out of Kuwait. But certain Arab states pressured former U.S. president George Bush and he eventually gave Saddam the green light to brutally suppress the Shia and Kurdish uprising.

Saddam’s government was on the brink of collapse, but the leaders of some Arab countries helped the Baathists quell the Iraqi nation’s uprising mercilessly, since they preferred a weak Saddam to a democratic government.

Some 450,000 Shia and Kurds were massacred by Iraqi troops loyal to Saddam, who continued carrying out crimes due to the Arab states’ misunderstanding of the Shias.

If power had been transferred through holding a free referendum under the supervision of the United Nations and the international community in 1991, Iraq and the rest of the region would not have witnessed such painful events.

In addition, the United States would not have felt compelled to sacrifice so many lives and spend such a huge amount of money to overthrow Saddam, and the Iraqi nation would have been able to establish a popular government calmly and without carnage.

Yet, the Iraqi people, despite their ethnic and sectarian differences, have maintained their national identity and cast their votes freely in order to find a logical way to resolve the current crisis.

TAKE IT FROM URINE:

Be careful picking baby's name (DELIA O'HARA, January 31, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Parents spend countless hours trying to come up with the coolest baby names, but they may be doing nothing more than setting up the young heirs for a lifetime of rude jokes.

Joe Borgenicht's new book, What Not to Name Your Baby (Simon Spotlight, $7.95), tries to save parents from that fate.

Most people your child will encounter will not know the noble provenance of his name or how it resonated with you when you selected it. Rather, they will think of the mentally challenged character who bears that name on "The Simpsons," or the fact that the moniker rhymes with a titillating body part.

"Parents know that the name they give their child will dictate a lot later in life," Borgenicht says, but they may not know every pop-culture nuance of the names they are considering. He advises them to "be sure your name doesn't appear in this book. You can at least give the child a name schoolyard kids have the least opportunity to make fun of."

ALL MUSICAL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE TOO (via h-man):

VIDEO: Second Term (Jib Jab)

Forget all the analysis you've read and heard, George Bush's victory in November is amply explained by who's upset about him winning in this skit.

THIRD WAY--THE CAPITALIST FATALISM OF THE LIBERAL, THE SOCIAL SAFETY NET FATALISM OF THE CONSERVATISM:

Credit where it's due? Blair's balance sheet: In the first of a three-part serialisation of their new book, Polly Toynbee and David Walker assess whether Labour has delivered on its second-term promises. Today they examine the economy and social justice (Polly Toynbee and David Walker, January 31, 2005, The Guardian)

Gordon Brown's Treasury dominated the domestic agenda of the second Blair term, as it had from 1997 to 2001. Credit for the buoyant state of the economy was claimed, with justification, by New Labour's chancellor. Brown's supporters liked to claim progressive measures and the pursuit of social justice were down to Gordon, while Blair did Middle England, ensuring the electoral coalition Labour had built for 1997 prospered.

The division of labour was in fact nothing like as simple. Brown had become a capitalist-fatalist. He believed that if the markets paid staff less than they could live on, if they showered not-especially competent executives with gold and silver, then a government's only duty was to compensate the losers, not to meddle with the sanctity of markets.

But the Brown camp did provide for the market losers. From the thickets of tax and- benefit details emerged a chancellor intent on making poor people better off, as well as the rest of us. New Labour's second term was a growth era. In the 1990s, the UK economy had grown by 1.7% a year; in Labour's new century, it was 2.7%. Whatever else Blair's Britain did, it worked. From 2001 to 2005, some 1.5m jobs were created; a million or so disappeared. The net result was near-full employment, even in the most deprived parts of the UK, with unemployment at a historic low.

Brown's objective was simple: to create conditions of stability within which private business could flourish. However, British business could not be trusted to invest, innovate, re-skill or play fair. Under Labour, the government was not going to retreat from inspecting or worrying about markets; but then, neither had it really retreated under Thatcher. Brown's problem was that he had no model for intervention. He had a vision of what the economy could look like, which is why he was happy opening pharmaceutical labs. But what else?

"BUT" HEADS:

Acts of Bravery (BOB HERBERT, 1/31/05, NY Times)

You'd have to be pretty hardhearted not to be moved by the courage of the millions of Iraqis who insisted on turning out to vote yesterday despite the very real threat that they would be walking into mayhem and violent death at the polls.

At polling stations across the country there were women in veils holding the hands of children, and men on crutches, and people who had been maimed during the terrible years of Saddam, and old people. Among those lined up to vote in Baghdad was Samir Hassan, a 32-year-old man who lost a leg in the blast of a car bomb last year. He told a reporter, "I would have crawled here if I had to."

In a war with very few feel-good moments, yesterday's election would qualify as one. But...

BUT FILES:
-Birth of a Nation? (Fred Kaplan, Jan. 30, 2005, Slate)

Few sights are more stirring than the televised images of Iraqi citizens risking their lives to vote in their country's first election in a half-century, kissing the ballot boxes, dancing in the streets, and declaring their hopes for a new day of democracy.

And yet...

STATISTS VS. PRIVATIZERS:

Congressional Republicans Agree To Launch Social Security Campaign (Mike Allen, January 31, 2005, Washington Post)

Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.

The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled "Saving Social Security," a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system's trust fund should be built up in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement.

The congressional Republicans' confidential plan was developed with the advice of pollsters, marketing experts and communication consultants, and was provided to The Washington Post by a Republican official. The blueprint urges lawmakers to promote the "personalization" of Social Security, suggesting ownership and control, rather than "privatization," which "connotes the total corporate takeover of Social Security." Democratic strategists said they intend to continue fighting the Republican plan by branding it privatization, and assert that depiction is already set in people's minds.

PAINTED BACKDROP:

Chairman Kim’s dissolving kingdom (Michael Sheridan, 1/30/05, Times Of London)

FAR across the frozen river two figures hurried from the North Korean shore, slip-sliding on the ice as they made a break for the Chinese riverbank to escape a regime that, by many accounts, is now entering its death throes.

It was a desperate risk to run in the stark glare of the winter sunshine. We had just seen a patrol of Chinese soldiers in fur-lined uniforms tramping along the snowy bank, their automatic rifles slung ready for action.

Police cars swept up and down the road every 10 or 15 minutes, on the look-out for refugees. A small group of Chinese travellers in our minibus, some of whom turned out to have good reasons to be discreet, pretended not to notice.

The two made it to shelter and we ploughed on towards a border post that offered us a rare opportunity to cross into the northeastern corner of the last Stalinist state, posing as would-be investors in an experimental free trade zone.

We had already witnessed one sign that North Korea’s totalitarian system is dissolving, even as its leaders boast of owning nuclear weapons to deter their enemies.

“It’s just like the Berlin Wall,” Pastor Douglas Shin, a Christian activist, said by telephone from Seoul. “The slow-motion exodus is the beginning of the end.”

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

WHAT'S MORE FASCIST THAN A SKYSCRAPER?:

Form Follows Fascism (MARK STEVENS, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Traditionally, [Philip] Johnson is presented as the great champion of modern architecture - organizer of the landmark 1932 Museum of Modern Art show on the International Style, and architect of the Glass House on his Connecticut estate, which quickly came to symbolize American modernism. He is equally celebrated for abandoning classical modernism in the late 50's and adopting in the decades that followed a succession of styles that mirrored the changing taste of the time.

It hardly mattered that many of his skyscrapers were corporate schmaltz; he was an enlivening, generous figure, a man who charmingly described himself as a "whore" as he picked the corporate pocket. Always ready to challenge the earnest, Mr. Johnson, who understood Warhol as well as Mies, became both an icon and an iconoclast.

Only one aspect marred this picture: His embrace of fascism during the 1930's, which was mentioned only in passing in most obituaries. He later called his ideological infatuation "stupidity" and apologized whenever pressed on the matter; as a form of atonement, he designed a synagogue for no fee. With a few exceptions, critics typically had little interest in the details, granting Mr. Johnson a pass for a youthful indiscretion.

Then, in 1994, Franz Schulze's biography presented this period of Mr. Johnson's life in some depth. Mr. Schulze's account was as sympathetic as possible - and many reviews of the book still played down the importance of Mr. Johnson's politics - but it was clear that views of Mr. Johnson's import for American culture would change significantly.

Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, "The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally." He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis.

He approved of what he saw.

As Tom Wolfe asked:

O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within they blessed borders today?

BUBBA BEFORE HE KILLED HIS CONSCIENCE (via Jim Yates):

The Old Man (Paul Greenberg, Jan. 31, 2005, Jewish World Review)

There is a small vignette featuring Colonel Holmes and his young visitor back in 1969 in one of the better - and most readable — books of social history published in recent years: "Horns, Hogs and Nixon Coming." Its theme is the big shoot-out that year between the Razorbacks and Longhorns, a game it still hurts Arkies to think about.

But this book is about a lot more than a game. On Page 46, you'll find a brief but telling description of Bill Clinton's demeanor when he came to see the colonel in Fayetteville:

"In July, during the week of the launching of the history-making Apollo 11 mission to the moon . . . William Jefferson Clinton knocked on the colonel's front door. . . . 'He didn't want to come inside,' Holmes says. 'He wanted to sit out on the curb. I had just met him. I thought he was just a normal, young American guy who would fulfill his duty to his country if it came up.'"

Only later would Colonel Holmes decide he'd been hoodwinked.

But what gets me was young Clinton's hesitating to cross the colonel's threshold. As if he wouldn't be deceiving the old man if he didn't actually go into the house. As if he still had some qualms about what he was doing. It's hard not to like that 23-year-old no-longer-boy, not-quite man. Maybe he still had some vestigial sense of Southern honor that would not let him go inside to consummate the deal. Instead he did it outside, on the back patio.

A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS:

IRAQIS turned out in their millions to vote in the country’s first free elections for half a century yesterday, sending a clear message of defiance to militants who had threatened to disrupt the historic poll with a campaign of violence.

Early fears that many would be deterred from voting by warnings of a bloodbath failed to materialise, and by the time the polling stations closed last night officials estimated a significant turnout of about 60 per cent. [...]

Observers put the lack of a concerted attack down to the tough security measures in place for polling day.

Iraq’s borders have been sealed since Friday and private vehicles have been banned from the country’s roads, depriving suicide bombers of their favoured form of attack.

But despite the Draconian security measures, much of the country saw something of a party atmosphere yesterday as Iraqis cast their votes. "This is my great happiness to do this today - I am not scared of car bombs," said Saleem Khadom, 72, as he voted in southern Baghdad.

"This is my chance to choose who I want in government to bring us a comfortable future."

Mr Khadom, a farmworker, was the first in the queue at the Al Ahrar school polling centre in Baghdad’s Karada district when it opened just before 8am.

Dressed in his best clothes - a grey dishdasha robe and tweed jacket - he disappeared behind the cardboard polling booth, folded his ballot slip into the plastic box and then proudly refused to tell waiting reporters who he had voted for. "It’s my right to keep it secret," he said, grinning.

"This is the first time to decide for ourselves," said Taliaa Abdul Karim, a young bank worker who turned up at the al Kamadil girls’ primary school with her friends to vote.

It was already late in the day when she walked in, and there was precious little room left in the transparent plastic ballot boxes for her paper. She waited for the clerk to find her name on the register of voters, took her voting forms, went behind one of the cardboard booths set up at the far end of the room, and emerged to drop the two completed forms into the boxes.

Then she dipped her finger into the tub of indelible indigo ink. It was there to make sure no-one voted twice, but people brandished their marked index fingers like badges of honour.

"This is the first time we can be free," she said. "Saddam Hussein was putting us in jail - he would not allow us to breathe."

The future, she said, would not be that way. "We want freedom, freedom of opinion, and I hope it will be just and we will have equality and no sectarian differences. The voice of women should he heard in this society."

Nori Jawad, the jovial headmaster running the polling station, could not contain his excitement. The first people turned up at 7am; by 4pm, an hour before the polls closed, 80 per cent of the 4,020 people on his list had cast their votes.

"Today, everyone is treating it like Christmas," he said. "Yes, Christmas. The old regime is finished. This will succeed. Saddam put pressure on people to come to the elections, but now they come because they want to."

THE last time that Iraqis went to the polls was in 2002 when they voted 100 per cent for Saddam Hussein, the only candidate on the ballot paper.

They voted again yesterday, millions of them, for a host of candidates, in the first free elections that any but the very oldest could remember. [...]

The sick, the old, the blind and lame surged to polling centres, sometimes carried, sometimes wheeled in carts by relatives. Many put on their best clothes and handed out sweets, in imitation of the Muslim holiday of Eid, a week ago.

“This is an historic moment for Iraq, a day when Iraqis can hold their heads high because they are challenging the terrorists and starting to write their future with their own hands,” Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, said.

In the north, a 100-year-old Kurdish woman named Khadija Chalabi came down from the mountains to cast her ballot. “She told us that as long as she’s alive she must vote for the Kurdish people,” said one of her grandsons.

In Baghdad, Samir Hassan, 33, who lost a leg in a terrorist attack, said: “I’d have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace.”

In the southern city of Basra, women in black abayas queued for up to three hours to vote. People jubilantly waved the ink stain on their index fingers — a device to prevent fraud. “I’m a human being again,” said a Shia man, overcome by tears. “Showing emotion is part of being human. Saddam dehumanised us.”

In Basra, the voting got off to a slow start, as if people were waiting to assess the situation before venturing to the polling centers. The streets were nearly deserted in the early morning, creating an eerie calm, and there were no vehicles except those driven by the hundreds of Iraqi police and the Iraqi National Guard.

It looked at first as if the election experiment might be a failure. But then something changed. By shortly after 9 a.m. the streets looked like a citywide marketplace. The city took on a festive air; people were proud and happy - upbeat about the opportunity to vote.

The turnout was "excellent," said one election worker, Hani Abbas, as he handed out ballots and stamped them at polling station No. 1, the Uday Oda school in the center of the city. "I didn't expect so many people to show up. I feel proud of my people."

FULFILLING ANGELINA

Davos Succumbs to Star Power (Deutsche Welle, January 30th, 2005)

Movers and shakers from business and politics at this year's World Economic Forum in Switzerland were pushed to one side, as international celebrities added combating poverty and AIDS to the agenda.

Hollywood film stars Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone and Richard Gere, as well as singers Bono and Lionel Ritchie, vied for attention with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany at Davos. Normally at the center of attention at the annual event, the world's business elite were left to play supporting roles on the sidelines this time around.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder successively pledged to find ways of spending billions of dollars in aid, trade or debt relief into poor countries this year.

But Stone, an anti-poverty activist like other celebrities invited to the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, stole the limelight by making "an ass of myself" and extracting one million dollars from the largely corporate audience within minutes. She stood up during a debate on poverty involving Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, pledging $10,000 (€7,660) for anti-mosquito bed nets to help prevent malaria in Tanzania and challenged her fellow onlookers to follow suit.

"A lot of them, let's face it, are pretty square," she later said of the business leaders at the debate. But thirty of them responded to her challenge to stump up cash for her cause.[...]

The elite business, political, academic and civil society participants invited to the five day meeting appeared to have sensed the mood of the moment. Asked by the forum organizers to choose six issues that urgently needed to be tackled in the world -- and by the forum over the next year -- 64 percent of them placed poverty at the top, followed by "equitable globalization" and climate change.

Traditional Davos favorites, the global economy and trade, were almost left out altogether, depriving about 100 anti-globalization protestors of their key themes as they trudged peacefully through the resort's icy streets on Saturday.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates tried to grab the spotlight briefly when he heaped praise on communist China for creating "a brand-new form of capitalism". But the drawing power of the geeky computer pioneer paled in comparison to Angelina Jolie, recently voted the sexiest woman alive by Esquire magazine.

Jolie, who has carried out field trips to 20 countries, including Cambodia, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka and Sudan, said keeping near the spotlight was crucial to publicizing humanitarian needs. She said her ambassadorial role with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was "more fulfilling and more interesting to me" than films. "And I know it's more important."

We instinctively grasp the fecklessness and fatuity of many Hollywood activists, but why in the world do conservatives tend to think that success in business bestows a special insight into the ills of the world and how to cure them?

WHY WE HOLD THEM IN SUCH ESTEEM

Politician's promises not set in stone, court says (Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail, January 31st, 2005)

It's official: Politicians can break campaign promises with impunity.

An Ontario Superior Court judge has absolved Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty of breaking an elaborately signed contract promising not to raise or create new taxes, saying anyone who believes a campaign promise is naive about the democratic system.

If anyone who voted for a politician based on a particular promise later were to go to court alleging a breached contract, ”our system of government would be rendered dysfunctional. This would hinder, if not paralyze, the parliamentary system,” Mr. Justice Paul Rouleau said.

The judge was ruling on a request from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to quash the Liberals' new health premium on the grounds that it broke an election promise.

But in unreported obiter dicta, Judge Rouleau went on to opine that he nevertheless thought President Bush could be sued for keeping his.

GREAT WARMUP ACTS, BUT WHEN DOES THE SHOW ACTUALLY START?

Global warming may kill off polar bears in 20 years, says WWF (Bradley Klapper, The Guardian, January 31st, 2005)

Many Arctic animals, including polar bears and some seal species, could be extinct within 20 years because of global warming, a conservation group said yesterday.

Traditional ways of life for many indigenous people in the Arctic would also become unsustainable unless the world "takes drastic action to reduce climate change", said the conservation organisation WWF.

"If we don't act immediately the Arctic will soon become unrecognisable" said Tonje Folkestad, a WWF climate change expert. "Polar bears will be ... something that our grandchildren can only read about in books."

Self-reference alert: In the early eighties, I was working as a legal adviser to a Quebec Inuit political/development corporation that had settled a land claim. The Quebec legislature was studying wildlife management in Arctic Quebec and the Inuit were anxious to have a special role. A hulking traditional Inuk hunter was chosen to appear at legislative hearings. All the progressive white advisers briefed him carefully on what to say–-how the Inuit were natural conservationists who had practiced traditional wildlife management since time immemorial and how they instinctively understood how important a delicate ecological balance was to maintaining their traditional livelihood, which of course was their number one priority. But they forgot how short-fused he was. Grilled by legislators in unfamiliar surroundings, he eventually lost it and started screaming: “Why white man worry so much about polar bear? Polar bear kill Inuit! Polar bear eat fish and seal! Polar bear no good! Inuit want to kill all polar bear!!!”

HOPEFULLY THEY DIDN'T "OVERHYPE" THE STORY:

Voting, Not Violence, Is the Big Story on Arab TV (HASSAN M. FATTAH, 1/30/05, NY Times)

Sometime after the first insurgent attack in Iraq this morning, news directors at Arab satellite channels and newspaper editors found themselves facing an altogether new decision: should they report on the violence, or continue to cover the elections themselves?

After close to two years of providing up-to-the-minute images of explosions and mayhem, and despite months of predictions of a bloodbath on election day, some news directors said they found the decision surprisingly easy to make. The violence simply was not the story this morning; the voting was.

Overwhelmingly, Arab channels and newspapers greeted the elections as a critical event with major implications for the region, and many put significant resources into reporting on the vote, providing blanket coverage throughout the country that started about a week ago. Newspapers kept wide swaths of their pages open, and the satellite channels dedicated most of the day to coverage of the polls.

Often criticized for glorifying Iraq's violence if not inciting it, Arab news channels appeared to take particular care in their election day reporting. For many channels, the elections were treated on a par with the invasion itself, on which the major channels helped build their names.

Far from the almost nightly barrage of blood and tears, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, the kings of Arab news, barely showed the aftermath of the suicide bombings that occurred in the country.

Instead, the channels opted to report on the attacks in news tickers, and as part of the hourly news broadcasts, keeping their focus on coverage and analysis of the elections themselves. And the broadcasters spared no expense to provide an entire day of coverage from northern to southern Iraq.

PUT THE TORIES OUT OF OUR MISERY:

Letwin member of anti-war tax group (Andrew Sparrow, 31/01/2005, Daily Telegraph)

Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, is backing plans for pacifist taxpayers to be allowed not to contribute to the Government's defence spending.

He was identified yesterday as a supporter of Conscience: The Peace Tax Campaign, which wants the law to be changed to allow conscientious objectors to have their money spent on "peace building initiatives" instead of the military.

A spokesman for the shadow chancellor said that it was a personal belief rather than party policy, but if he became chancellor, this was an idea "that he would want to think about".

Mr Letwin's stance, which was strongly condemned by both Labour and Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative chairman, came to light when his name was found on the Conscience website. [...]

More than 75 MPs are listed as supporters on the Conscience website. Most of them are Labour, and Mr Letwin is the only Tory.

PURPLE REVOLUTION:

Looking for Purple Fingers in Sadr City: Let nobody tell you that this Iraqi election was anything but real. (BARTLE BREESE BULL, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Iraqis are scheduled to go to the national polls twice more this year: in October for a referendum on the permanent constitution that the new assembly is charged with writing, and again in December to elect a new government under the rules of that constitution. Each of the country's three main groups - Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites - has a veto over the permanent constitution. And each enjoys a de facto veto as well: not one is strong enough to impose majoritarian misrule on the others.

It would be blatantly against Shiite and Kurdish interests for either group to try to take advantage of any Sunni parliamentary underrepresentation. They have been waiting centuries for this opportunity, and the last thing they want is to make their country ungovernable.

Federalism, enshrined in the interim constitution, is another safety valve. "Regional autonomy will not tear Iraq apart," said Ahmad Chalabi, the clever Shiite politician who, although now disowned by the Americans who long sponsored him, will be a central figure in the new government. "It is the only way to keep it together."

More important, it is not likely that yesterday's low turnout among Sunnis will lead to their dramatic underrepresentation in the Assembly. The latest estimates put Sunni Arabs at a little less than 13 percent of Iraq's population. Yet there were 50 to 60 Sunni Arabs in viably high slots on yesterday's ballots - even if just 40 Sunnis are elected, that would be 15 percent of the 275-seat assembly.

The candidate list compiled by the Shiite religious leadership, the United Iraqi Alliance, had 11 Sunni Arabs from Mosul alone, as well as the head of Iraq's largest Sunni tribe. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular list also had many Sunnis. So did the lists of the monarchists, Socialists, Communists and others. And now the betting is that a Sunni will be named to head one of the big three ministries in the new government: foreign, defense or interior. Sunnis will also likely get a vice presidency of the state and the presidency of the Assembly.

None of this is by accident. Car bombs might make headlines, but the real politics in Iraq is about something much deeper than the fanaticism of the country's 5,000 or 10,000 terrorists. The people who are going to run Iraq are profoundly pragmatic.

The Kurdish leaders in the valleys of the north, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the alleys of Najaf, the radical Shiite Moktada al-Sadr in his hiding place - all understand what they have achieved over the last two years. By showing great restraint toward one another's communities and a spectacular patience with the necessary evil of American occupation, they have woven together the long, improbable, unfinished carpet of an Iraqi future.

This attitude of restraint is echoed on the street. A 34-year-old Shiite engineer I met in Sadr City last week told me, "If we had wanted revenge on the Sunnis, we would have taken it in 2003." Soldiers in Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army told me that their leader has sent them to pray with Sunnis and to provide security at their mosques. And the widespread campaign of Sunni extremist violence against Shiites has been met with deafening forbearance.

Iraq as a nation never rose up against the occupation, and after yesterday it does not need to. Iraqis have just elected the only legitimate government between Istanbul and New Delhi. The prestige and moral force of popular representation cannot be denied, even by Washington. When the Iraqi government tells the Americans to leave, they will not be able to stay. Whether a little too soon or a little too late, this is the way it is supposed to be.

QUICK, HIDE THE EVIDENCE:

Stealth Attack On Evolution: Who is behind the movement to give equal time to Darwin's critics, and what do they really want? (MICHAEL D. LEMONICK NOAH ISACKSON; JEFFREY RESSNER, Jan. 31, 2005, TIME)

Ken Bingman has beern teaching biology in the public schools in the Kansas City area for 42 years, and over the past decade he has seen a marked change in how students react when he brings up evolution. "I don't know if we're more religious today," he says, "but I see more and more students who want a link to God." Although he is a churchgoer, Bingman does not believe that link should be part of a science class. Neither does the Supreme Court, which declared such intermingling of church and state unconstitutional back in 1988.

But that decision does not sit well with a lot of Americans. So at a time when religious faith is increasingly worn on public sleeves--most prominently that of the President--a dispute that dates back to the celebrated 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" is being replayed around the country in legislatures, courts, school-board meetings and parent-teacher conferences. School administrators in rural Dover, Pa., visited biology classes last week to read a declaration proclaiming, among other things, that "Darwin's theory [of evolution] ... is a theory, not a fact." And in suburban Cobb County, Ga., officials pasted stickers on biology textbooks declaring the same thing and are now appealing a court order to remove them.

The intellectual underpinnings of the latest assault on Darwin's theory come not from Bible-wielding Fundamentalists but from well-funded think tanks promoting a theory they call intelligent design, or I.D. for short. Their basic argument is that the origin of life, the diversity of species and even the structure of organs like the eye are so bewilderingly complex that they can only be the handiwork of a higher intelligence (name and nature unspecified).

All the think tanks want to do, they insist, is make the teaching of evolution more honest by bringing up its drawbacks. Who could argue with that? But the mainstream scientific community contends that this seemingly innocuous agenda is actually a stealthy way of promoting religion. "Teaching evidence against evolution is a back-door way of teaching creationism," says Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

OUR FIRST CATHOLIC PRESIDENT:

25 Most Influential Evangelicals: Richard John Neuhaus (TIME, 1/30/05)

Bushism Made Catholic: When Bush met with journalists from religious publications last year, the living authority he cited most often was not a fellow Evangelical but a man he calls Father Richard, who, he explained, "helps me articulate these [religious] things." A senior Administration official confirms that Neuhaus "does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence" on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment.

Neuhaus, 68, is well-prepared for that role. As founder of the religion-and-policy journal First Things, he has for years articulated toughly conservative yet nuanced positions on a wide range of civic issues. A Lutheran turned Catholic priest, he can translate conservative Protestant arguments couched tightly in Scripture into Catholicism's broader language of moral reasoning, more accessible to a general public that does not regard chapter and verse as final proof.

ROVE WEPT:

Fowler 1, Dean 0: The former Vermont governor's candidacy to lead the DNC hits a snag (VIVECA A. NOVAK, Jan. 30, 2005, TIME)
A dent was knocked into the aura of inevitability surrounding Howard Dean's run to be the next Democratic Party chair Sunday afternoon when the executive committee of state party chairs voted to endorse Donnie Fowler rather than Dean. Just last week the former Vermont governor had touted endorsements from some state party leaders. But it was Fowler — bespectacled, Southern, and, at 37, the youngster of the field — who prevailed in Sunday's vote. Fowler, a South Carolinian who lives in California and is the son of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, headed Al Gore's field operation in the 2000 presidential election. Last year he ran the field operation in Michigan for John Kerry, who won that state by three percentage points. [...]

The race now moves to the house of labor, where a committee of the AFL-CIO could vote to endorse one of the candidates on Tuesday.
House of labor? Does even the Labour Party still allow labor much sway?

MOVE ON, MOVEON:

Chief Senate Dem to request Iraq exit plan (DAVID ESPO, 1/30/2005, The Associated Press)

In a pre-State of the Union challenge to President Bush, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid intends to call Monday for the administration to outline an exit strategy for Iraq.

Reid plans to raise the issue as part of back-to-back speeches in which he and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will sketch outline their differences with Bush on two issues likely to dominate Congress' work this year, the war on terror and Social Security.

U.S. troops stationed in Iraq could be out of the war-torn country by the middle of next year, if all goes well.

That according to Iraqi interim Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, who told Britain's Channel 4 News that coalition forces would likely not be necessary in a year and a half.

"I think we will not need the multinational, foreign forces, in this country within 18 months," al-Naqib said. "I think we will be able to depend on ourselves, if everything goes in the right direction.

"We are building our forces and I think we will need 18 months. It's my estimate that we will have quite a reasonable-sized force, trained, well-trained force, well-equipped to protect the country. So I believe very much that we won't need more than 18 months."

His optimism was tempered, though, by Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who told CNN he believes the U.S.-led force should remain in Iraq for "at least a couple of years" until Iraq's security force is up to speed.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION (via David Hill, The Bronx):

Nazi road signs ripped down day after report (KATU, January 28, 2005)

Two controversial road signs that were put up in Marion County have already been ripped down.

The road signs read, "The American Nazi Party has adopted a two mile stretch of Sunnyview Road" and were put up by Marion County officials one week ago.

THANKS, OSAMA!:

Transcript for Jan. 30: Guests: Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (Meet the Press, Jan. 30, 2005)

MR. RUSSERT: At the Clinton Library dedication on November 18, a few weeks after the election, you were quoted as saying, "It was the Osama bin Laden tape. It scared the voters," the tape that appeared just a day before the election here. Do you believe that tape is the reason you lost the race?

SEN. KERRY: I believe that 9/11 was the central deciding issue in this race. And the tape--we were rising in the polls up until the last day when the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared and went down on Monday. I think it had an impact. But 9/11, you know, it's a very difficult hurdle when a country is at war. I applauded the president's leadership in the days immediately afterwards. I thought he did a good job in that, and he obviously connected to the American people in those immediate days. When a country is at war and in the wake of 9/11, it's very difficult to shift horses in midstream. I think it's remarkable we came as close as we did as a campaign. Many Republicans say we beat their models by four or five points as to what they thought we could achieve.

I am proud of the campaign, Tim. And I think if you look at what we did in states, I mean, millions of new voters came into this process. I won the youth vote. I won the independent vote. I won the moderate vote. If you take half the people at an Ohio State football game on Saturday afternoon and they were to have voted the other way, you and I would be having a discussion today about my State of the Union speech.

PROTESTING DEMOCRACY?:

Iraqis clash at polling station (BBC, 1/30/05)

Iraqis have clashed with demonstrators against the election outside a polling station in Manchester.

About 200 demonstrators were chased by another group who burned their flags, while other Iraqis clashed with police.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE $47 TRILLION WE'VE SAVED WE'D BE BROKE:

Spendthrift nation: Why don't Americans save more? (Drake Bennett, January 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

NATIONAL THRIFT WEEK came and went two weeks ago, uncelebrated and unremarked. But the holiday -- once promoted by President Calvin Coolidge as a rebuke to the free-spending 1920s -- was nonetheless honored in the breach, as American prodigality was very much in the news.

Buoyed by reelection, the Bush administration has in recent weeks been pushing for tax-free "Lifetime Savings Accounts," as well as for tax reform that will shift the burden away from savings and investment and onto earnings and consumption. Even the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda, Social Security reform, is pitched in part as a way to get Americans to save more.

Last year, after 25 years of decline, Americans' household savings rate stood at less than 1 percent of after-tax income. Japanese households, by comparison, saved 7.7 percent, while the French socked away 16 percent. Our national savings, which takes into account government and corporate savings, isn't impressive either. We save 13.6 percent of gross domestic product, compared with Japan's 25 percent and China's 50 percent. As Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen S. Roach has warned, "America's saving problem is off the charts -- possibly the most serious imbalance in an unbalanced world."

Both as individuals and as a nation, it seems, Americans are gambling with their future. "We don't want to have the poverty rate of the elderly go back up, so it's a significant problem that people are not saving for their retirement," says Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff. And low savings exposes the country as a whole to the risk of financial crisis. As Dartmouth's Jonathan Skinner puts it, "With the low measured US savings rate, we have money flowing in to the US to be invested in US stocks and a larger share of US assets being owned by all these foreign entities. If they all decide to dump their US assets we'd be in trouble -- it would make the US dollar look like the Italian lira."

But lost in the din of dismay is the question of why Americans are such poor savers. How is it, after all, that the nation of Ben Franklin, apostle of frugality, has become a republic of spendthrifts? Should we blame a cultural proclivity or a changing economic climate, the blandishments of credit card companies or the arrogance bred of economic preeminence?

"I don't think you'll get a definitive answer from anyone you talk to," says Yale University economics professor Robert J. Shiller. In fact, it turns out that there is little consensus not only as to the root causes of our savings problem but how much of a problem it really is.

Most economists agree that savings rates can be misleading. The household savings rate is calculated simply as after-tax income minus the amount spent on consumption. But this leaves out increases in the value of stocks or real estate, often a considerable source of wealth. In fact, selling assets at a profit often ends up depressing savings on paper, even if none of the proceeds are spent.

HOW DO YOU SAY "END" IN ARABIC?

Iraq confounds the prophets of doom (Daily Telegraph, 31/01/2005)

That elections are a better thing than tyranny seems a truth so obvious as not to be worth stating. Yet such were the passions aroused by the Iraq war that many Western observers now find themselves hoping, disgracefully, that that country's first free poll will fail.

Left-wing commentators, in Britain as in much of Europe, have focused disproportionately on the difficulties that any state must undergo during a transition process. To many of them, every terrorist bomb, every murdered election official, every sign of heightened military alertness - even the loss of a British aircraft - makes a nonsense of Iraq's democratic aspirations.

Yesterday's high turnout, in defiance of the gunmen, should be celebrated. Of course the Iraqi insurgency is an important story. But this does not explain the loving attention devoted to each setback faced by the forces of order. Compare yesterday's reports with those by the same commentators during South Africa's first democratic election. Then, too, there were many technical problems: electors who were not properly registered, voter intimidation, long queues. But these things were set in their proper context, as the backdrop against which the moving drama of people casting their first ballots was being played out. No one suggested that the clashes between IFP and ANC supporters in Zululand undermined the whole process. No one argued that the backlash by a handful of black homeland chieftains and Boer irreconcilables made South Africa unfit for democracy.

THEY JUST DON'T GET IT:

Democrats cautiously welcome Iraqi elections (AFP, 1/30/05)

Leading Democratic Party critics of US President George W. Bush's Iraq policy cautiously welcomed the successful staging of elections and distanced themselves from calls for the start of an immediate US troop withdrawal.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who lost the November presidential election against Republican President George W. Bush, described the Iraqi elections as "significant" and "important" but said they should not be "overhyped."

THE FOURTH REICH WON'T LAST MUCH LONGER THAN THE THIRD (via Tom Morin):

Grim Tales: Want to get scared? Ignore what you see. Believe only what you read. (Denis Boyles, 1/28/05, National Review)

Auschwitz adds to U.S.-EU friction

This headline, on a Judy Dempsey item in the International Herald Tribune, is this week's ultimate in bizarre, out-of-reality reporting. According to Dempsey, "the attendance of Vice President Dick Cheney is a bitter disappointment" to "prominent Poles" — who apparently represent the entire EU — because Cheney is not Bush. After all, writes Dempsey, "The Auschwitz ceremony will include President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Horst Köhler of Germany, President Jacques Chirac of France and President Moshe Katzav of Israel." As evidence of how "Auschwitz adds to US-EU Friction," Dempsey quotes "veteran intellectuals," including MEP Bronislaw Geremek: "I would like to see the president of the United States attend the...Auschwitz commemoration." Who wouldn't? But why? Says Geremek, a historian, "[I]t should be said that the Holocaust helped to create the European Union. It was the answer to the totalitarian ideology created on European soil, such as Auschwitz."

A digression: I admire Prof. Geremek. But it should not be said that the Holocaust helped to create the European Union. In fact, the European Union owes its provenance to Walther Funk and other architects of Hitler's New Order, not to Auschwitz. Historian Mark Mazower, in Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, claims that the Funk plan "...bore more than a passing resemblance to the post-war Common Market. The 'New Order' beloved of the youthful technocrats at the Reich Ministry of Economics involved the economic integration of western Europe and the creation of a tariff-free zone." Eugen Weber, writing a few years ago in The Atlantic (here, if you're a subscriber), agrees: "The European Union, its attendant bureaucracy, even the euro, all appear to stem from the Berlin-Vichy collaboration." To the extent that France did more than its share to fill the concentration camps for their partners, the Germans, and that their mutual hatred of Jews brought them both closer together, Geremek may have a point.

Of course, the real story about Bush, Poland, and the EU was not to be seen in the IHT. It was in Die Zeit, where Poland's Wladyslaw Bartoszewski explained the reasons for Polish loyalty toward the US, and in Brussels, where, according to Handelsblatt, Polish representatives didn't take very kindly to leftwing British and German efforts to spare German feelings by attempting to identify Auschwitz as a "Polish camp" in the official EU resolution commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation. The issue blossomed into a Brussels-sized furor, according to the EU Observer. Schroder had to call off his MEPs, who finally agreed to admit that "Nazis" had built the camps.

Meanwhile, Davids Medienkritik has collected a bunch of clips from the German press in which the Auschwitz-Abu Ghraib connection is finally explained. A sample, from TAZ: "The torture scandal of the US army in Abu Ghraib shows that sadism has a place in civilized nations, while Guantánamo Bay proves that the principle of the concentration camp...today is upheld with pride by the leading nation of the civilized world."

Now there's an artificial reality any German can uphold with pride.

TASTES LIKE BUFO ALVARIUS (via Jim Yates):

Catfish licking: a new high?: It's said that fish's slime is hallucinogenic (Tony Bridges, 1/29/05, Tallahasee DEMOCRAT)

It could be the strangest thing anyone ever asked Tolly Van Brunt.

He was at a boat basin in Franklin County, waiting for a buddy who'd gone to the bait shop. They were headed out to the Gulf for some saltwater fishing.

A boy, maybe 17 or so, sidled up to him on the dock.

The kid wanted to make a deal. He'd buy any catfish the anglers caught that day.

"I told him they weren't any good to eat," Van Brunt said. "And he says, 'Yeah, I know that, but we'd like to get some. We've found a way to get high off the slime.'"

Oh, c'mon.

Recreational use of fish goo? That has to be a joke, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Turns out, a story's been going around for years about hallucinogenic properties in the slime of a certain kind of saltwater catfish. But whether fact or urban legend is not exactly clear.

"I've heard of people licking them and getting zonked like they're on LSD," said Dr. John Hitron, with the Florida State University marine lab in St. Teresa Beach. "I'm not sure how true it is."

OK, first a few basics on the fish.

CRUSADING WE MUST GO:

The Doctrine That Never Died (TOM WOLFE, 1/30/05, NY Times)

SURELY some bright bulb from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York or the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton has already remarked that President Bush's inaugural address 10 days ago is the fourth corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. No? So many savants and not one peep out of the lot of them? Really? [...]

Theodore Roosevelt's corollary to President James Monroe's famous doctrine of 1823 proclaimed that not only did America have the right, à la Monroe, to block European attempts to re-colonize any of the Western Hemisphere, it also had the right to take over and shape up any nation in the hemisphere guilty of "chronic wrongdoing" or uncivilized behavior that left it "impotent," powerless to defend itself against aggressors from the Other Hemisphere, meaning mainly England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy.

The immediate problem was that the Dominican Republic had just reneged on millions in European loans so flagrantly that an Italian warship had turned up just off the harbor of Santo Domingo. Roosevelt sent the Navy down to frighten off the Italians and all other snarling Europeans. Then the United States took over the Dominican customs operations and debt management and by and by the whole country, eventually sending in the military to run the place. We didn't hesitate to occupy Haiti and Nicaragua, either.

Back in 1823, Europeans had ridiculed Monroe and his doctrine. Baron de Tuyll, the Russian minister to Washington, said Americans were too busy hard-grabbing and making money to ever stop long enough to fight, even if they had the power, which they didn't. But by the early 1900's it was a different story.

First there was T.R. And then came Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1912 Japanese businessmen appeared to be on the verge of buying vast areas of Mexico's Baja California bordering our Southern California. Lodge drew up, and the Senate ratified, what became known as the Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The United States would allow no foreign interests, no Other Hemispheroids of any description, to give any foreign government "practical power of control" over territory in This Hemisphere. The Japanese government immediately denied having any connection with the tycoons, and the Baja deals, if any, evaporated.

Then, in 1950, George Kennan, the diplomat who had developed the containment theory of dealing with the Soviet Union after the Second World War, toured Latin America and came away alarmed by Communist influence in the region. So he devised the third corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The Kennan Corollary said that Communism was simply a tool of Soviet national power. The United States had no choice, under the mandates of the Monroe Doctrine, but to eradicate Communist activity wherever it turned up in Latin America ... by any means necessary, even if it meant averting one's eyes from dictatorial regimes whose police force did everything but wear badges saying Chronic Wrongdoing.

The historian Gaddis Smith summarizes the Lodge and Kennan Corollaries elegantly and economically in "The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993." Now, Gaddis Smith was a graduate-schoolmate of mine and very much a star even then and has remained a star historian ever since. So do I dare suggest that in this one instance, in a brilliant career going on 50 years now, that Gaddis Smith might have been ...wrong? ... that 1945 to 1993 were not the last years of the Monroe Doctrine? ... that the doctrine was more buff and boisterous than it has ever been 10 days ago, Jan. 20, 2005?

HOW WEIRDLY GRATUITOUS:

Each Vote Strikes at Terror (Walter Russell Mead, January 30, 2005, LA Times)

The teleprompter providing President Bush with his second inaugural address had scarcely gone blank before American and European commentators turned to dismissing his calls for a "war against tyranny" and progress toward universal democracy as naive, dogmatic, overstated and a recipe for chaos in U.S. foreign policy.

BOTH:

Israelis, Palestinians to Hold High-Level Talks (VOA News, 29 January 2005)

Officials say Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plan to meet in two weeks for their first face to face talks since Mr. Abbas' election earlier this month.

The meeting will coincide with a planned visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

GEORGE SOROS SEEMS A NATURAL PURCHASER:

Under Pressure, Qatar May Sell Jazeera Station (STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 1/30/05, NY Times)

The tiny state of Qatar is a crucial American ally in the Persian Gulf, where it provides a military base and warm support for American policies. Yet relations with Qatar are also strained over an awkward issue: Qatar's sponsorship of Al Jazeera, the provocative television station that is a big source of news in the Arab world.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera's broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq.

The pressure has been so intense, a senior Qatari official said, that the government is accelerating plans to put Al Jazeera on the market, though Bush administration officials counter that a privately owned station in the region may be no better from their point of view.

"We have recently added new members to the Al Jazeera editorial board, and one of their tasks is to explore the best way to sell it," said the Qatari official, who said he could be more candid about the situation if he was not identified. "We really have a headache, not just from the United States but from advertisers and from other countries as well."

GALTON CASE:

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: The strange science of Francis Galton (JIM HOLT, 2005-01-17, The New Yorker)

Galton might have puttered along for the rest of his life as a minor gentleman scientist had it not been for a dramatic event: the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” in 1859. Reading his cousin’s book, Galton was filled with a sense of clarity and purpose. One thing in it struck him with special force: to illustrate how natural selection shaped species, Darwin cited the breeding of domesticated plants and animals by farmers to produce better strains. Perhaps, Galton concluded, human evolution could be guided in the same way. But where Darwin had thought mainly about the evolution of physical features, like wings and eyes, Galton applied the same hereditary logic to mental attributes, like talent and virtue.“If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvements of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create!” he wrote in an 1864 magazine article, his opening eugenics salvo. It was two decades later that he coined the word “eugenics,” from the Greek for “wellborn.”

Galton also originated the phrase “nature versus nurture,” which still reverberates in debates today. (It was probably suggested by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” in which Prospero laments that his slave Caliban is “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick.”) At Cambridge, Galton had noticed that the top students had relatives who had also excelled there; surely, he reasoned, such family success was not a matter of chance. His hunch was strengthened during his travels, which gave him a vivid sense of what he called “the mental peculiarities of different races.” Galton made an honest effort to justify his belief in nature over nurture with hard evidence. In his 1869 book “Hereditary Genius,” he assembled long lists of “eminent” men—judges, poets, scientists, even oarsmen and wrestlers—to show that excellence ran in families. To counter the objection that social advantages rather than biology might be behind this, he used the adopted sons of Popes as a kind of control group. His case elicited skeptical reviews, but it impressed Darwin. [...]

In his long career, Galton didn’t come close to proving the central axiom of eugenics: that, when it comes to talent and virtue, nature dominates nurture. Yet he never doubted its truth, and many scientists came to share his conviction. Darwin himself, in “The Descent of Man,” wrote, “We now know, through the admirable labours of Mr. Galton, that genius . . . tends to be inherited.” Given this axiom, there are two ways of putting eugenics into practice: “positive” eugenics, which means getting superior people to breed more; and “negative” eugenics, which means getting inferior ones to breed less. For the most part, Galton was a positive eugenicist. He stressed the importance of early marriage and high fertility among the genetic élite, fantasizing about lavish state-funded weddings in Westminster Abbey with the Queen giving away the bride as an incentive. Always hostile to religion, he railed against the Catholic Church for imposing celibacy on some of its most gifted representatives over the centuries. He hoped that spreading the insights of eugenics would make the gifted aware of their responsibility to procreate for the good of the human race. But Galton did not believe that eugenics could be entirely an affair of moral suasion. Worried by evidence that the poor in industrial Britain were breeding disproportionately, he urged that charity be redirected from them and toward the “desirables.” To prevent “the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality, and pauperism,” he urged “stern compulsion,” which might take the form of marriage restrictions or even sterilization.

Galton’s proposals were benign compared with those of famous contemporaries who rallied to his cause. H. G. Wells, for instance, declared, “It is in the sterilisation of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.” Although Galton was a conservative, his creed caught on with progressive figures like Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In the United States, New York disciples founded the Galton Society, which met regularly at the American Museum of Natural History, and popularizers helped the rest of the country become eugenics-minded. “How long are we Americans to be so careful for the pedigree of our pigs and chickens and cattle—and then leave the ancestry of our children to chance or to ‘blind’ sentiment?” asked a placard at an exposition in Philadelphia. Four years before Galton’s death, the Indiana legislature passed the first state sterilization law, “to prevent the procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists.” Most of the other states soon followed. In all, there were some sixty thousand court-ordered sterilizations of Americans who were judged to be eugenically unfit.

It was in Germany that eugenics took its most horrific form. Galton’s creed had aimed at the uplift of humanity as a whole; although he shared the prejudices that were common in the Victorian era, the concept of race did not play much of a role in his theorizing. German eugenics, by contrast, quickly morphed into Rassenhygiene—race hygiene. Under Hitler, nearly four hundred thousand people with putatively hereditary conditions like feeblemindedness, alcoholism, and schizophrenia were forcibly sterilized. In time, many were simply murdered.

The Nazi experiment provoked a revulsion against eugenics that effectively ended the movement.

TWO MEN AND A BABY:

Sistani thanks Iraqis for voting (Agence France-Presse, January 31, 2005)

SHIITE spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani today congratulated Iraqis on turning out to vote and expressed regret he had been unable to take part himself because of his Iranian nationality.

The reclusive cleric, who rarely ventures from his home in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, relayed his message through his representative in the nearby shrine city of Karbala.

"Grand Ayatollah Sistani thanks the Iraqi people for going to vote," said Ayatollah Ahmed al-Safi.

"(He) has not headed to the polling centre himself because he does not have the right to vote."

The cleric shepherded Iraq on the road to democracy, insisting on elections under the US-led occupation and engineering the frontrunning Shiite list, the United Iraqi Alliance, which is expected to win the biggest number of seats in the new national assembly.

Today the people of Iraq have spoken to the world, and the world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East.

In great numbers, and under great risk, Iraqis have shown their commitment to democracy. By participating in free elections, the Iraqi people have firmly rejected the anti-democratic ideology of the terrorists. They have refused to be intimidated by thugs and assassins. And they have demonstrated the kind of courage that is always the foundation of self-government.

Some Iraqis were killed while exercising their rights as citizens. We also mourn the American and British military personnel who lost their lives today. Their sacrifices were made in a vital cause of freedom, peace in a troubled region, and a more secure future for us all.

The Iraqi people, themselves, made this election a resounding success. Brave patriots stepped forward as candidates. Many citizens volunteered as poll workers. More than 100,000 Iraqi security force personnel guarded polling places and conducted operations against terrorist groups. One news account told of a voter who had lost a leg in a terror attack last year, and went to the polls today, despite threats of violence. He said, "I would have crawled here if I had to. I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace."

Across Iraq today, men and women have taken rightful control of their country's destiny, and they have chosen a future of freedom and peace. In this process, Iraqis have had many friends at their side. The European Union and the United Nations gave important assistance in the election process. The American military and our diplomats, working with our coalition partners, have been skilled and relentless, and their sacrifices have helped to bring Iraqis to this day. The people of the United States have been patient and resolute, even in difficult days.

The commitment to a free Iraq now goes forward. This historic election begins the process of drafting and ratifying a new constitution, which will be the basis of a fully democratic Iraqi government. Terrorists and insurgents will continue to wage their war against democracy, and we will support the Iraqi people in their fight against them. We will continue training Iraqi security forces so this rising democracy can eventually take responsibility for its own security.

There's more distance to travel on the road to democracy. Yet Iraqis are proving they're equal to the challenge. On behalf of the American people, I congratulate the people of Iraq on this great and historic achievement.

Give Terror the Finger

ON THE VERGE OF REDNESS:

Brookline Democrat Diven switches to GOP (Tom Barnes, January 30, 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

State Rep. Michael Diven, of Brookline, has been a member of the Democratic Party for all of his voting life.

But that's going to change. During a spaghetti dinner at Resurrection Church in Brookline last night, Diven told about 200 constituents and supporters that because of his growing dissatisfaction with the state House Democratic leadership, he's changing his party registration to Republican.

That's not all he's up to. He hasn't made a public announcement, but he's all but certain to disclose plans soon to run as a Republican candidate for the 42nd District state Senate seat. It's the seat just vacated by Jack Wagner, of Beechview, who is now the state auditor general.

"I decided to change to the Republican Party because I will be better positioned to serve my constituents," Diven said in a phone interview.

Republicans control both the state House and Senate. With Diven's switch, there will be 110 Republicans in the House and 92 Democrats, with one vacant seat from Eastern Pennsylvania to be filled next month.

HURTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE:

Finally, a budget ax appears (David R. Francis, 1/31/05, CS Monitor)

Next Monday, the president is expected to propose real spending reductions in the first budget of his second term.

That's probably significant.

Up to now, the administration has let deficits mushroom. President Bush did not veto any appropriations bills in his first term. Last week, the White House estimated that this year's red ink would reach a record $427 billion.

But deficits and the costs of war - plus Mr. Bush's promise to halve the deficit, as a proportion of gross domestic product, in five years - are forcing change. So the beneficiaries of federal largesse - civil servants, lobbyists, even some military contractors - are edgy.

"I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal material that there will be an unprecedented squeeze on federal spending," says George Krumbhaar, senior editor of USBudget.com, a commercial service that monitors budget developments. [...]

A possible scenario for the fiscal budget starting in October: a mere 1 percent hike in federal spending outside defense and most of homeland security. That would be tough - a real decline after inflation. "It would be historic for this White House," says Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies at the Cato Institute in Washington.

8 MILLION IRAQIS VS. 13 DEMOCRATS:

Insurgent Attacks in Baghdad and Elsewhere Kill at Least 24 (DEXTER FILKINS and JOHN F. BURNS, 1/30/05, NY Times)

After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years.

American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took at least two dozen lives. The Interior Ministry said 36 people had been killed in attacks, Agence France-Presse reported.

But the violence did not seem to have deterred most Iraqis. In Baghdad, Basra in the South, the holy Shiite city of Najaf and even the restive Northern city of Mosul, Iraqi civilians crowded the polling sites, navigating their way through tight security and sometimes proudly displaying the deep blue ink stain on their fingers that confirmed they had voted.

The chairman of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, Fareed Ayar, said as many as 8 million people turned out to vote, or between 55 percent and 60 percent of those registered to cast ballots. If 8 million turns out to be the final figure, that would represent 57 percent of voters.

MORE:
Less moderate Bayh (ROBERT NOVAK, January 30, 2005, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, feared by Republicans as a dangerously moderate presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2008, surprised colleagues by joining 12 left-of-center senators in voting against confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

In declaring his opposition to Rice's confirmation, Bayh told the Senate on Tuesday: ''I believe she has been a principal architect of policy errors that have tragically undermined our prospects for success in this endeavor [the military operation in Iraq].'' Bayh's statement follows support for Bush's Iraq policy during his re-election campaign last year.

ONLY TOOK THEM 5 YEARS TO FIGURE HIM OUT:

Bush Aims To Forge A GOP Legacy: Second-Term Plans Look to Undercut Democratic Pillars (Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris, January 30, 2005, Washington Post)

[A] recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.

Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.

GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.

Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.

If the Bush agenda is enacted, "there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an operative who speaks regularly with White House senior adviser Karl Rove.

Many Democrats and independent analysts see a methodical strategy at work. They believe the White House has expressly tailored its domestic agenda to maximize hazards for Democrats and tilt the political playing field in the GOP's favor long after this president is out of the White House.

CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS:

Out of tsunami, a quiet Arab media revolution (Marc Lynch, 1/31/05, CS Monitor)

On Jan. 5, the editor of the Palestinian-owned, London-based Al Quds al Arabi - probably the most anti-American of the leading Arab newspapers - described the response of Arab rulers and the wider public alike as "humiliating" and deeply frustrating. Other Arab newspapers such as the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat began publishing article after article lambasting Arab rulers for their absurdly small - and far too tardy - response. Satellite TV stations such as Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Dubai-based Al Arabiya covered the humanitarian disaster heavily, with Al Jazeera beginning its own heavily publicized drive to collect donations, featuring daily advertisements from figures such as the popular Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Even more remarkable than this outburst of public criticism is that, stung by these criticisms, shamed before their own people, Arab leaders changed their tune. Saudi Arabia, which initially offered only token sums of relief, launched a high-profile telethon to which senior members of the royal family ostentatiously contributed large sums; at last count, more than $82 million had been raised. Other Arab states increased their relief contributions, as well.

The Arab media's success in forcing Arab leaders to change their response to the tsunami is quietly revolutionary. Arab leaders haven't generally been accustomed to paying attention to public opinion, nor to the media, which they generally can control, repress, or shut down. Satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya can not be so easily controlled - nor ignored. That humanitarian relief for the victims of the tsunami - rather than more predictable issues such as Israel or Iraq - has become a focus of the Arab media's outrage, and that Arab leaders responded, offers a genuine new road for Arab politics.

It is not only the Arab regimes that have come in for scorn. Several Arab columnists pointedly asked what kind of relief Osama bin Laden has had to offer to the Muslims he claims to represent. Others criticized more mainstream Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood for their efforts. And not a few have criticized the Arab public itself for failing to mobilize in support of the victims of the tsunami in the way that they did for Palestinians or Iraqis.

The Arab response to the tsunami has become a moment for Arab self-criticism and soul-searching, as an impressive roster of Arab journalists and political personalities have demanded a public accounting for the tepid Arab response.

PEACE BE UPON YOU AND DEATH TO THE BAATH:

For Shiites, a sense of triumph> (Dan Murphy, 1/31/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

A second woman teetered up to the registration desk and greeted the poll worker: "Peace be upon you and death to the Baath," she said.

Najaf, the shrine city that serves as the symbolic heart of Shiite Islam, came out in force Sunday to vote in an election that many here hope will put Mr. Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party safely into history.

While Iraq's majority Shiite Arabs also hope for better government and a share of power that reflects their status as Iraq's majority, there seemed to be something cathartic in the act of voting, which combined a rejection of the past with hopes for a safer future.

Unlike Baghdad and other points north, where voting was plagued by violence and the doubts of Sunni Arabs about their position in society, turnout here appears to have been massive, close to 80 percent, according to preliminary estimates. Families poured out into the blockaded and peaceful streets and many proudly displayed their stained fingers - ink was used to prevent voting twice - to passersby.

"This is an enormous day for us. Finally, we're able to vote for people we know, people from Najaf who we can judge by words and deeds,'' says Hasan Salim, a carpenter who says he woke up at 6 a.m. thinking of his two dead brothers, lost to Hussein's regime.

WITH THIS MANY COWBOYS THEY SHOULD HAVE HELD A RODEO:

John Howard blasts 'irrational' Europeans (Robert Gottliebsen and John Kerin, January 31, 2005, The Australian)

"Some of the criticism (of the US) by some of the Europeans is unfair and irrational," Mr Howard said in the panel debate, organised by Britain's BBC TV.

"I mean the negative mindset of the last five minutes (of this debate) is ridiculous - of course America has made mistakes," he said.

Later Mr Howard told The Australian he found the European "irrational level of anti-Americanism" perplexing.

"It is a sign of parochialism and it is disturbingly intense."

He said the BBC debate "was based on an anti-American mindset which was established right at the beginning by the moderators from the BBC".

NO, THE OTHER GEORGE:

Soros Says Kerry's Failings Undermined Campaign Against Bush (Bloomberg, 1/30/05)

Billionaire investor George Soros, the biggest financial contributor to the failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush in November's election, said Democratic challenger John Kerry was a flawed candidate.

Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, spent $26 million in last year's campaign that he said was undermined by the candidate he supported.

``Kerry did not, actually, offer a credible and coherent alternative,'' Soros, 74, said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``That had a lot to do with Bush being re-elected.''

The comments by the Hungarian-born Soros marked his sharpest criticism of Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran who later spoke against the war and focused his campaign against Bush on the war in Iraq. Republicans gained four seats in the Senate, including the defeat of the Senate's highest-ranking Democrat, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Republicans have 55 seats in the 100-seat chamber.

The Kerry campaign ``tried to emphasize his role as a Vietnam War hero and downplay his role as an anti-Vietnam War hero, which he was,'' said Soros. ``Had he admitted, owned up to it, I think actually the outcome could have been different.''

Soros said he also now questions ``what the Democratic party stands for.'' Democrats need to counter ``a very effective conservative message machine,'' he said. ``There really needs to be an alternative.''

MORE (via Jim Yates):
Leftwing Billionaires Try to Sink US Economy (Richard Poe, 1/30/05)

Do you believe in coincidences? I don't. Former CIA division chief David Atlee Philips once said, "The intelligence profession does not exactly condition one to accept coincidence as an explanation for a sequence of events." The same can be said of blogging. When a bevy of public figures all begins reading from the same script at the same time, the alert blogger takes note. Consider the following.

On January 19, leftwing billionaire Warren Buffett told CNBC, "Unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down."

Well, we've all heard that before. Buffett's position is hardly new. He has repeatedly announced that he is "shorting" the dollar – that is, betting against the dollar in global markets – since at least 2002. George Soros has been shorting the U.S. greenback since at least 2001. Moreover – like Buffett – Soros has announced his anti-dollar position repeatedly in the media. These frequent public announcements on the part of Soros and Buffett appear to be aimed at encouraging other investors to follow their example.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has now joined the anti-dollar crusade. "I'm short the dollar," Gates told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose on January 29. "The 'ol dollar, it's gonna go down."

Gates is betting instead on the Chinese yuan. In September, he received permission from the Chinese government to invest $100 million in yuan shares and bonds. Gates praises China as a "change agent" in the world. "It's phenomenal. It's a brand new form of capitalism," he enthuses.

Not to be left out of the feeding frenzy, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has also been spotted swimming with the short-dollar shark pack. In a statement that appears to serve no conceivable purpose other than to help the Gates-Buffett-Soros axis win more converts, Hillary stunned an audience of Brandeis University alumni in Florida on January 24, 2005 when she said, "[T]he economy may be on the brink of collapse... I think the economy is standing on a trap door, and I don't know that we necessarily hold the levers."

If these machinations leave some readers befuddled, a review of recent history might prove clarifying.

Remember that George Soros famously broke the Bank of England in 1992, forcing a devaluation of the British pound. He also helped trigger the "Asian flu" – a general collapse of Asian markets in 1997 – by shorting the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit. One year later, Soros called for a devaluation of the Russian ruble in the Financial Times of London, thus kicking off a wave of panic selling that forced the Russian treasury into default.

WHAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA HATH WROUGHT

For those not under doctor’s orders to avoid stress and rage, compare these pictures (click on: “Pictures: Iraqis at the polls”) with many of these comments.

A VOICE FROM THE DECENT LEFT

Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy (Michael Ignatieff, The Observer, January 30th, 2005)

The election in Iraq is without precedent. Never, not even in the dying days of Weimar Germany, when Nazis and Communists brawled in the streets, has there been such a concerted attempt to destroy an election through violence - with candidates unable to appear in public, election workers driven into hiding, foreign monitors forced to 'observe' from a nearby country, actual voting a gamble with death, and the only people voting safely the fortunate expatriates and exiles abroad.

Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.

Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?

Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.

The Bush administration has managed the nearly impossible: to turn democracy into a disreputable slogan.

Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neo-conservative bombast. Anti-war ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies. And then there are the ideological fools in the Arab world, and even a few in the West, who think the 'insurgents' are fighting a just war against US imperialism. This makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates - fascists.

What may also be silencing voices is the conventional wisdom that has been thrown over the debate on Iraq like a fire blanket - everyone believes that Iraq is a disaster; hence elections are doomed. As I was told by one European observer, all that remains is the final act. We are waiting, he said, for the helicopters to lift off the last Americans from the roofs of the green zone in Baghdad. For its part, the Bush administration sometimes seems to support the elections less to give the Iraqis a chance at freedom than to provide what Henry Kissinger, speaking of Vietnam, called 'a decent interval' before collapse.

Beneath the fire blanket of defeatism, everyone - for and against the war - is preparing exit strategies. Those who were against tell us that democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint, when the actual issue is whether it can survive being hijacked at gunpoint.

Other experts tell us how 'basically' violent Iraqi society is, as a way of explaining why insurgency has taken root. A more subtle kind of condescension claims that Iraq has been scarred by Ba'athism and cannot produce free minds. All this savant expertise ignores the evidence that Iraqis want free institutions and that their leaders have fought to establish them in near-impossible circumstances.

One wonders how many millions of Westerners are today privately hoping democracy in Iraq will fail.

IRRATIONALITY OF REASON:

God, physics and Darwin: Why scientists aren’t sceptical (Richard Webster, from a draft of Chapter 24 of Why Freud Was Wrong)

ONE OF THE OBSTACLES which stands in the way of the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian programme to construct an adequate theory of human nature is science itself. For modern science was, as Bacon conceived it, and as it has subsequently developed, ‘a legitimate, chaste and severe form of inquiry.’ In these words we can see the influence of Purit­anism on scientific thought at its most direct. An attitude of chastity is certainly fitting for the scientist probing into the secrets of mother nature. It is, however, in no way appropriate to the study of carnal humanity. When we confuse the pursuit of knowledge with the pursuit of virtue it is usually at the expense of truth.

Truly scientific empiricism cannot be chaste. Although Freud challenged the chastity of science in a more interesting manner than any other thinker who has claimed, and sometimes been accorded, the title of ‘scientist’, his challenge was broken in its very conception both by his mentalism and by his parallel compulsion to subject emotional and erotic behaviour to a process of purificatory rationalisation.

When he insisted on basing his theory of human motives on an essentially transcendental conception of ‘mind’ Freud was not only succumbing to the orthodoxies of nineteenth century psychology, he was also allowing himself to fall victim to the profound religiosity of Western science. This religiosity is by no means entirely confined to history. We have already encountered Stephen Hawking’s meditation on physics and cosmology as methods of exploring ‘the mind of God’. We might set this idea alongside the words of the physicist Paul Davies:

It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion … science has actually advanced to the point where what were formerly religious questions can be seriously tackled.

The statements of Hawking and Davies remain exceptional, however. For the most part the otherworldliness of modern science is not expressed in explicitly theistic terms and remains implicit rather than explicit. Our powerful assumption that physics is a form of materialism and that as such it is by definition free from all traces of mysticism sometimes prevents us from registering this. But the abstruseness of the modern scientific mysteries which are embraced as orthodoxies by every contemporary physicist is captured well by Bas von Frassen:

. . . once atoms had no colour, now they also have no shape, place or volume...There is a reason why metaphysics sounds so passé, so vieux-jeu today; for intellectually challenging perplexities and paradoxes it has been far surpassed by theoretical science. Do the concepts of the Trinity and the soul, haecceity, universals, prime matter, and potentiality baffle you? They pale beside the unimaginable otherness of closed space-time, event horizons. EPR correlations and bootstrap models.

What is so subversive, or potentially subversive, about this particular way of teasing scientists is Bas von Frassen’s suggestion that modern physics is even more metaphysical than religious metaphysics and even more committed to a form of transcendentalism. His words should serve to remind us that although the particular form of reason which has been legitimated by modern science is generally regarded as having no association with religion, modern physics remains inexorably linked to its origins in seventeenth century Christianity.

Because we associate rationalism with science, and because science tends now always to be opposed to religion, we tend to lose sight of what kind of attitude rationalism implied when it was still the ally of religion. The rationalism of Judaism is not cognate with the rationalism of Christianity, though the prophetic traditions of both oppose magic, ritualism, idolatry and sensuality while idealising systematic self-control, which is what leads some commentators at least to stress their rational character. The rationalism of Plato differs significantly from that of Aristotle, though both thinkers agreed that the universe was essentially rational. The rationalism of the great medieval monastic orders differs from the secularised rational asceticism of Puritanism which it helped to engender.

It should be noted immediately, however, that the assumption which is common to all these forms of rationalism is monotheism – that there is one god and that he presides over both the material universe and the living beings that populate it. The further assumption is that order and rationality are either in themselves divine or in some other way to be construed as an essential aspect of godhood so that knowledge of the order and rationality of the universe, or of the human soul are themselves to be understood as ways of approaching, or knowing, or glorifying, or contemplating the goodness of God. Even Aristotle, who may have ended by abandoning belief in a transcendent god, still understood knowledge as a way of making contact with the divinely rational order of the universe, which existed in some way above and beyond human beings.

It will be noted that, under the characterisation I have offered, rationalism, which is now widely understood to exist in opposition to religion, is itself not only a profoundly religious doctrine, but an interestingly irrational one.

WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES:

What is Conservatism (John Kekes)

One of the safest generalizations is that conservatives tend to be pessimists. In some conservative writings - Montaigne's, Hume's, and Oakeshott's - cheerfulness keeps breaking through, but even then, it does so in spite of their doubts about the possibility of a significant improvement in the human condition. Conservatives take a dim view of progress. They are not so foolish as to deny that great advances have been made in science, technology, medicine, communication, management, education, and so forth, and that they have changed human lives for the better. But they have also changed them for the worse. Advances have been both beneficial and harmful. They have certainly enlarged the stock of human possibilities, but the possibilities are for both good and evil, and new possibilities are seldom without new evils. Conservatives tend to be pessimistic because they doubt that more possibilities will make lives on the whole better. They believe that there are obstacles that stand in the way of the permanent overall improvement of the human condition.

Conservatism has been called the politics of imperfection. This is in some ways an apt characterization, but it is misleading in others. It rightly suggests that conservatives reject the idea of human perfectibility. Yet it is too sanguine because it implies that, apart from some imperfections, the human condition is by and large all right. But it is worse than a bad joke to regard as mere imperfections war, genocide, tyranny, torture, terrorism, the drug trade, concentration camps, racism, the murder of religious and political opponents, easily avoidable epidemics and starvation, and other familiar and widespread evils. Conservatives are much more impressed by the prevalence of evil than this label implies. If evil is understood as serious unjustified harm caused by human beings, then the conservative view is that the prevalence of evil is a permanent condition that cannot be significantly altered.

The politics of imperfection is a misleading label also because it suggests that the imperfection is in human beings. Conservatives certainly think that human beings are responsible for much evil, but to think only that is shallow. The prevalence of evil reflects not just a human propensity for evil, but also a contingency that influences what propensities human beings have and develop independently of human intentions. The human propensity for evil is itself a manifestation of this deeper and more pervasive contingency, which operates through genetic inheritance, environmental factors, the confluence of events that places people at certain places at certain times, the crimes, accidents, pieces of good or bad fortune that happen or do not happen to them, the historical period, society, and family into which they are born, and so forth. The same contingency also affects people because others, whom they love, depend on, and with whom their lives are intertwined in other ways, are as subject to it as they are themselves.

The view of thoughtful conservatives is not a hopeless misanthropic pessimism, according to which contingency makes human nature evil rather than good. Their view is rather a realistic pessimism that holds that whether the balance of good and evil propensities and their realization in people tilts one way or another is a contingent matter over which human beings and their political arrangements have insufficient control. This point needs to be stressed. Conservatives do not think that the human condition is devoid of hope. They are, however, realistic about the limited control a society has over its future. Their view is not that human beings are corrupt and that their evil propensities are uncontrollable. Their view is rather that human beings have both good and evil propensities and neither they nor their societies can exercise sufficient control to make the realization of good propensities reliably prevail over the realization of evil ones. The right political arrangements help, of course; just as the wrong ones make matters worse. But even under the best political arrangements a great deal of contingency remains, and it places beyond human control much good and evil. The chief reason for this is that the human efforts to control contingency are themselves subject to the very contingency they aim to control. And that, of course, is the fundamental reason why conservatives are pessimistic and skeptical about the possibility of significant improvement in the human condition. It is thus that the skepticism and pessimism of conservatives reinforce one another.

It does not follow from this, and conservatives do not believe, that it is a matter of indifference what political arrangements are made. It is true that political arrangements cannot guarantee the victory of good over evil, but they can influence how things go. Whether that is sufficient at a certain time and place is itself a contingent matter insufficiently within human control. The attitude that results from the realization that this is so has a negative and positive component. The negative one is acceptance of the fact that not even the best political arrangements guarantee good lives. The positive one is to strive nevertheless to make the political arrangements as good as possible. The impetus behind the latter is the realization that bad political arrangements worsen the already uncertain human condition.

If the choice of political arrangements is governed by this conservative attitude, it results in arrangements that look both to foster what is taken to be good and to hinder what is regarded as evil. One significant difference between conservative politics and most current alternatives to it is the insistence of conservatives on the importance of political arrangements that hinder evil. This difference is a direct result of the pessimism of conservatives and the optimistic belief of others in human perfectibility. Their optimism rests on the assumption that the prevalence of evil is the result of bad political arrangements. If people were not poor, oppressed, exploited, discriminated against, and so forth, it is optimistically supposed, then they would be naturally inclined to live good lives. The prevalence of evil is thus assumed to be the result of the political corruption of human nature. If political arrangements were good, there would be no corruption. What is needed, therefore, is to make political arrangements that foster the good. The arrangements that hinder evil are unfortunate and temporary measures needed only until the effects of the good arrangements are generally felt.

Conservatives reject this optimism. They do not think that evil is prevalent merely because of bad political arrangements. It needs to be asked why political arrangements are bad. And the answer must be that political arrangements are made by people, and they are bound to reflect the propensities of their makers. Bad political arrangements are ultimately traceable to the evil propensities of the people who make them. Since the propensities are subject to contingencies over which human control is insufficient, there is no guarantee whatsoever that political arrangements can be made good. Nor that, if they were made good, they would be sufficient to hinder evil.

Conservatives insist, therefore, on the necessity and importance of political arrangements that hinder evil. They stress moral education, the enforcement of morality, the treatment of people according to what they deserve, the importance of swift and severe punishment for serious crimes, and so on. They oppose the prevailing attitudes that lead to agonizing over the criminal and forgetting the crime, to perpetuating the absurd fiction of a fundamental moral equality between habitual evil-doers and their victims, to guaranteeing the same freedom and welfare-rights to good and evil people, and so forth. Conservatives reject, therefore, the egalitarian view of justice championed by liberals and socialists, which recommends taking economic resources from people who have more and giving them to those who have less without asking whether the first deserve to have them and the second deserve to receive them. Conservatives think that justice is essentially connected with desert, and its aim is, not equality, but the upholding of the rule of law that assures that people get what they deserve.

Political arrangements that are meant to hinder evil are liable to abuse. Conservatives know and care about the historical record that testifies to the dreadful things that have been done to people on the many occasions when such arrangements have gone wrong. The remedy, however, cannot be to refuse to make the arrangements; it must be to make them, learn from history, and try hard to avoid their abuse. Conservatives know that in this respect, as in all others, contingency will cause complete success to elude them. But this is precisely the reason why political arrangements are necessary for hindering evil. Their pessimism leads conservatives to face the worst and try to deny scope to it, rather than endeavor to build the City of Man on the illusion of human perfectibility.

THEY WALK AMONG US:

Question what you're told about faith-driven voters (Timothy Burgess, 1/26/05, Seattle Times)

So, who are Seattle's faith-driven values voters? How can we be "reached" by political candidates?

We take our faith and citizenship seriously. In fact, for many of us, our political views are shaped and guided by our religious faith.

We're not Bible-thumpers, but we read it, study it and believe it.

We don't preach hellfire and brimstone, but we acknowledge the power of sin in our lives, and its cunning ability to destroy relationships. Confession is something we do every week because we know who we really are and what the grace of God offers. This perspective gives us pause when we engage politically; we try to listen hard and seek understanding. We're well aware of our faults and biases.

We believe the core fundamentals of the Christian faith — that a loving God made the universe, created us in his image (we don't have a clue how he did that), and sent his son, Jesus, to be our savior. We easily embrace reason and science and see no conflict in that with our faith.

We look back at what Christians sparked in this country — the anti-slavery movement, women's suffrage, prison reform, the civil-rights revolution — and then ask ourselves what we should be doing today to make our city a better place.

We place significant value on personal responsibility and contributions to the community.

We try to teach our kids these things.

We worry about the vulgarity and coarseness of our culture and the "values" preached to our children day after day on television, in movies and magazines, and through music lyrics. We despair at the level of coarseness in our political discourse, too.

Admittedly, we struggle with a lot of pressing issues. We don't like abortion. We value the sacredness of marriage between a woman and man. We recognize that not everyone agrees with us and we know the law isn't a good mechanism to resolve these issues, but moral persuasion is.

We abhor racism and desire justice and fairness for all, especially in our courts, but also in our personal relationships. We're conflicted about capital punishment because all life is sacred. We value truth-telling and integrity.

We worry about America's foreign policy while, at the same time, we love our country.

We're leery of politicians who use God-words and quote Scripture. We can sense the natural sincerity of religious expression that comes from a deep, abiding faith. Yet, we have no problem with religious influence in our culture; in fact, we value it. Our religious pluralism is our strength.

COMES THE GLUT:

OPEC has decided to keep output steady (MATT MOORE, January 30, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

OPEC will keep its output limit steady, Libyan Oil Minister Fathi Hamed Ben Shatwan said Sunday, as crude prices hovered near the $50 a barrel.

DID GROVER TELL THEM THIS?

They Invested Years in Private Accounts: Conservatives who want to alter Social Security have long worked to nudge public opinion. Bush will likely advance the cause this week. (Janet Hook, January 30, 2005, LA Times)

Back in 1997, proponents of overhauling Social Security met with the man who would become their most powerful convert: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, whose presidential ambitions were beginning to gel.

The governor dined with Jose Piñera, architect of Chile's 1981 shift from government pensions to worker-owned retirement accounts, in a meeting that helped bring Bush a big step closer to embracing a similar plan for Social Security in his emerging presidential platform.

"I think he wanted to support the idea but needed to be convinced," said Edward H. Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, who was at the dinner. "I really think Jose convinced him."

This week, President Bush's plan to allow younger workers to divert Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts will be a centerpiece of his State of the Union address and a barnstorming tour of the country. It is a tough sell to an uncertain public, but Bush has a secret weapon: A generation of free-market conservatives like Crane and Piñera has been laying the groundwork for this debate.

"It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible," wrote Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, in a 1983 article in the Cato Journal. "But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."

Now, Bush is drawing on a deep reservoir of resources — including policy research, ready-to-hire experts and polling on how to discuss the issue — that conservatives have created over the last 20 years.

When he needed a committed ally at the highest levels of the Social Security Administration, Bush two years ago tapped Cato's staff. When Bush told African American leaders last week that blacks would especially benefit from his proposal, he drew from a controversial 1998 Heritage Foundation paper arguing that African Americans were shortchanged by the current system because of their shorter life spans.

Thanks in part to the work of think tanks like Cato, Heritage and the National Center for Policy Analysis, Bush is also benefiting from a public opinion climate that is far more receptive to changing the government retirement system than it was 20 years ago.

MORE:
Tax Fears Help Bush's Plan Win Business Backing: Manufacturers, restaurateurs and small firms are lining up in favor of restructuring Social Security -- and averting higher payroll levies. (Tom Petruno, January 30, 2005, LA Times)

Some of the nation's major business organizations are preparing to enter the fray over restructuring Social Security, spurred by concern that companies could get stuck with the bill if the system faces money shortfalls.

The groups, including manufacturers, restaurant owners and small businesses, say they will spend millions of dollars to support President Bush's efforts to create private Social Security investment accounts. Leaders say the campaign is being driven by fears that, without an overhaul, the government could resort to raising the Social Security payroll tax to bridge any funding gaps.

"It is a job killer, particularly for small businesses," Dan Danner, senior vice president of public policy at the Washington-based National Federation of Independent Business, said of raising the payroll tax.

He said his members "would come unglued at the prospect" of any tax increase as a solution to long-term funding of Social Security.

Although there is vigorous debate over the long-term fiscal health of Social Security, concerns about a payroll tax hike are not far-fetched, according to business groups.

The Social Security payroll tax has been raised 20 times since it was imposed in 1937. The levy, originally 2%, is now 12.4% — half paid by employers, half by workers.

HOPE AND COURAGE

In pictures: Iraqis vote (BBC, January 30th, 2005)

EXHILARATING:

The exhilaration of democracy after years of exile (SALAH NASRAWI, 1/30/05, The Scotsman)

WE DIDN’T look much alike, those of us milling around the school courtyard and lining up to vote: elderly men in traditional Arab gowns, young men in vinyl ski jackets and women in bright, flowing robes or beneath long, black abayas.

Clearly we were a mix - Shiites, Sunnis, Christians; Kurds, Arabs - but we were all Iraqis and all willing to ignore boycott calls and intimidation to have a say in our future and maybe one day live in the free, democratic, federal and united Iraq touted in election posters.

It was exhilarating, and it was why I travelled to Amman in Jordan from my home in exile in Egypt, which was not among the countries where Iraqi expatriates could vote. As I stood in line, I recalled scenes from South Africa in 1994, when blacks, whites and South Africans of mixed race lined up to participate in the election marking apartheid’s demise.

Some of the people around me must have, like me, fled Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. Others fled the insurgency Saddam’s diehard loyalists and other terrorists are bent on pursuing. For all of us, the vote is remarkable: we survived Saddam’s brutality and also are deciding our future, regardless of when or why we left our homeland.

MORE:
They Drove 22 Hours for a Defining Moment: A caravan of expatriates travels from Seattle to Irvine to vote. 'I feel very fortunate,' one says. (Maria L. La Ganga, January 30, 2005, LA Times)

The waning moon hangs low above the modest mosque as the members of the caravan make their final preparations. Marwa Sadik, 19, watches her mother attach an Iraqi flag to the family's red minivan and steps in to help the older woman explain the passion that fuels the grueling trip ahead.

They will travel nearly 1,200 miles this day through fog and rain, wind and hail, in a 13-van convoy that stretches like an out-of-control slinky moving down Interstate 5 through three states.

It is 6:55 a.m. Friday, and they are heading off to participate in Iraq's first free election in more than 50 years. But the only polling place in the western United States is at the officers' club at the former El Toro Marine Base in Irvine.

Their exercise in prayer, pain and perseverance, somber and celebratory in equal measure, will eventually take the group nearly 22 hours, one way. But it is a trip they make gratefully, fully aware of the much more severe voting hardships in their homeland.

"Last month they kidnapped my uncle from his house in Baghdad," Sadik says about the insurgents, her breath a white plume in the inky morning. "He escaped from them. He is safe, but he's still worried. He can't go out. He can't work. He's depressed. He has four kids. The situation is really bad.

"But he's going to vote," says Sadik, whose family came from Baghdad via Syria to Seattle three years ago because her mother wanted the children to have an education, medicines, a future. "He's really excited to vote, so he can live safe with his children. Especially now, after what happened to him. He really wants a better life."

AND SO LITTLE TO SNEER ABOUT:

They died – and now we sneer (Leo McKinsry, 30/01/2005, Sunday Telegraph)

Last week, the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Although it was achieved by the Russian army, it would never have happened without US intervention in western Europe, which forced Germany to fight on two fronts. America's action was purely altruistic. Whereas Russia was engaged in a life-and-death struggle for survival, the USA was not directly threatened by the Nazi domination of Europe.

What sickens me is that we in Europe are fed a constant diet of anti-American propaganda because of the USA's supposed aggression, greed, imperialism or insularity. Yet, at the very same time, we are urged, through the remorseless process of European integration, to embrace Germany, the country responsible for most of the ills of Europe for the past 140 years. Perhaps even worse is the way the experience of Nazism has been used to promote the ideology of multi-culturalism.

Any objection to mass immigration or the destruction of traditional Judaeo-Christian moral values is deemed as racist, akin to support for fascism. As a result, in the name of multi-cultural tolerance, we have allowed the creation of the brutal, anti-democratic monster of Islamism in our midst.

It is a bizarre paradox that the hysteria over Nazism has encouraged Europe to be swamped by Islam, in which anti-Semitism appears to be an integral part of the creed – tellingly, the Muslim Council of Britain refused to take part in the Holocaust commemorations. Instead of falling under the sway of Islam and European federalism, it would be better if Europe followed the values of America, a country that has always understood the meaning of the word "freedom".

AND THEY ARE PLANNING A TERRIFIC HALFTIME SHOW

Iran puzzle: U.S. and Europe on separate tracks (Elaine Sciolino, International Herald Tribune, January 28th, 2005)

Iran is shaping up as the most serious diplomatic challenge for President George W. Bush's second term, and conflicting pronouncements by Bush and his national security team have left Iran's leadership frustrated and angry about the direction of American policy and the Europeans more determined than ever to push Washington to embrace their engagement strategy.

To the outside world, the administration seems divided over whether to promote the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran, perhaps by force, or to tacitly support the negotiating approach embraced by the Europeans.

That approach implicitly recognizes Iran's legitimacy because it would give concrete benefits to Iran if the country permanently stopped key nuclear activities.

"You need to get everybody to read from the same page, the Europeans and the Americans," said Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday. [...]

The Europeans have made the determination that any negotiation - however flawed - that slows and perhaps eventually even halts Iran's nuclear program is better than the alternatives put forward by the United States.

"Is this approach free of risks? No," Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said in a telephone interview. "Does it have a guarantee of success? No. But at this point in time it is the only game in town, no doubt about that. The other options are worse."

Some senior Iranian officials make the same point. "The West has suspicions about our nuclear program; we have suspicions of the Europeans," said Mohammad Javad Zarid, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and a key negotiator with the Europeans.

Speaking in a telephone interview, Zarid said, "We are eager to use any possible avenue to resolve those suspicions. That's why we have had the pragmatism to understand that the European game is a very serious game. Washington has yet to understand that the European game is the only game in town."

Finally we understand the problem here.

STILL ROLLING:

Segway’s expansion on course (ERIK STETSON, 1/29/05, AP)

Europe is become a key new market for Segway LLC, with a pilot project underway to tie the self-balancing, two-wheeled devices into France’s mass-transportation system and sales picking up, particularly in Italy.

"It feels like we’re constantly on back order," said marketing vice president Klee Kleber. "We’re constantly rushing shipments over there."

Segway’s smallest model is its most popular overseas, a situation opposite to America’s, chief technology officer J. Douglas Field said. The smaller model’s tires measure 3 inches less in diameter than the larger model’s. It also weighs 13 pounds less.

Field said the measurements make the model easier to store and manage in confined areas, trade-offs for its slower speed and shorter range.

"There’s no question that the p series, which is a much smaller part of our market here, is really important in Europe," he said.

The pilot program, named the "Oxygen Network," is based in Lille, France, and managed by the Keolis Group, a transportation company with operations in seven European countries and Canada. It features a rental station that lets commuters rent Segways, electric bicycles and other vehicles, adding another layer to the city’s mass-transit system.

"There is a different motivation in Europe," Kleber said. "They want to get the cars off the road. They want to get pollution down."

He said European cities, which were designed before cars, also are more Segway friendly. Cars and related expenses such as gas and parking are more expensive there as well, he added.

"It’s a totally different transportation environment," he said. "You just don’t drive."

The privately held firm doesn’t release financial figures, but Kleber said the company’s American sales also had doubled in the fourth quarter, fueled by a growing dealership network and a series of promotions, including a free in-home trial offer. The company has about 80 dealerships nationwide, with a goal for roughly 100 overall, he said.

"We have a strategy," he said. "We’re still executing that strategy, and it’s working.

IS BBC BRITISH FOR CIA?:

BBC apologises for misinterpreting Iraqi death stats (Reuters, 1/29/05)

The BBC apologised on Saturday for erroneously reporting that U.S.-led and Iraqi forces may be responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict over the last six months.

The British broadcaster said on Friday in broadcasts and a news statement that its Panorama investigative show would air a report on Sunday citing "confidential" records from Iraq's health ministry to support the contention.

Iraq's health minister said the BBC misinterpreted the statistics it had received and had ignored statements from the ministry clarifying the figures.

WHAT, THEY CAN'T FLY?:

Labour pigs poster divides Jews (Steven Morris, January 29, 2005, The Guardian)

The Labour party refused to back down yesterday over a proposed campaign poster in which the heads of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are grafted on to the bodies of flying pigs.

Some Jewish academics called for the poster to be shelved, claiming it could be interpreted as anti-Semitic as the Tory leader and shadow chancellor are Jewish.

BLAME BUSH:

In Kurdish North, Campaign Turns Into a Street Party: 'We Were Dreaming for This Day to Come' (Jackie Spinner, January 28, 2005, Washington Post)

Adnan Ismael raced to the back of the campaign bus carrying supporters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and frantically pulled aside a dark blue curtain so he could see out.

Hundreds of honking cars were following behind in an impromptu rolling celebration late Thursday afternoon through this ancient city. Passengers hung out of vehicles, shouting and waving the yellow flag of the KDP and the red, white and green flag of the Kurdish semiautonomous region here in northern Iraq.

Ismael turned from the window, a stunned look on his face.

Inside the bus, a group of aging, bewhiskered former guerrilla fighters struck up an old revolutionary song. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they sang in husky voices: "Our flag is waving high in the sky. We are still alive. The Kurds are alive. There is no cannon that will break our will."

"We were dreaming for this day to come," said Ismael, the KDP leader for Irbil's Tajil district, who darted back and forth to get a look at the scene unfolding on every side of the bus. "Now we will all choose our representatives for the future. Every Kurd wishes to see this day."

MORE:
Likewise his Rose Garden speech forced this, Democracy's New Face: Radical and Female ( (Molly Moore, January 29, 2005, Washington Post)

Fathiya Barghouti Rheime sees herself as the new face of Islam in the democratic Middle East espoused so fervently by President Bush.

She is a 30-year-old high school teacher, mother of a 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son. She describes herself as a "very religious" Muslim. She wears the hejab, a scarf wrapped tightly over her head. She does not shake hands with men outside of her family.

Two weeks ago, Rheime became the first woman ever elected mayor of a Palestinian community, an achievement that stunned many residents in this traditional, patriarchal society.

"It's a sign of change, a quantum leap," Rheime said while sitting in her newly painted office with blank white walls and peach draperies. "I'm deeply concerned about transmitting the picture of the active Islamic woman to the world, to wipe away the blemish of the veil."

SUBTRACT DETERMINISM AND IT COLLAPSES:

How the World Ends: a review of COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. By Jared Diamond. (Gregg Easterbrook, NY Times Book Review)

EIGHT years ago Jared Diamond realized what is, for authors, increasingly a fantasy -- he published a serious, challenging and complex book that became a huge commercial success. ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' won a Pulitzer Prize, then sold a million copies, astonishing for a 480-page volume of archeological speculation on how the world reached its present ordering of nations. Now he has written a sequel, ''Collapse,'' which asks whether present nations can last. Taken together, ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' and ''Collapse'' represent one of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation. They are magnificent books: extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in their ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past. I read both thinking what literature might be like if every author knew so much, wrote so clearly and formed arguments with such care. All of which makes the two books exasperating, because both come to conclusions that are probably wrong.

''Guns'' asked why the West is atop the food chain of nations. Its conclusion, that Western success was a coincidence driven by good luck, has proven extremely influential in academia, as the view is quintessentially postmodern. Now ''Collapse'' posits that the Western way of life is flirting with the sudden ruin that caused past societies like the Anasazi and the Mayans to vanish. Because this view, too, is exactly what postmodernism longs to hear, ''Collapse'' may prove influential as well. [...]

''[G]uns, Germs, and Steel'' is pure political correctness, and its P.C. quotient was a reason the book won praise. But the book must not be dismissed because it is P.C.: sometimes politically correct is, after all, correct. The flaws of the work are more subtle, and they set the stage for ''Collapse.'' One flaw was that Diamond argued mainly from the archaeological record -- a record that is a haphazard artifact of items that just happened to survive. We know precious little about what was going on in 11,000 B.C., and much of what we think we know is inferential. It may be decades or centuries until we understand human prehistory, if we ever do.

Diamond's analysis discounts culture and human thought as forces in history; culture, especially, is seen as a side effect of environment. The big problem with this view is explaining why China -- which around the year 1000 was significantly ahead of Europe in development, and possessed similar advantages in animals and plants -- fell behind. This happened, Diamond says, because China adopted a single-ruler society that banned change. True, but how did environment or animal husbandry dictate this? China's embrace of a change-resistant society was a cultural phenomenon. During the same period China was adopting centrally regimented life, Europe was roiled by the idea of individualism. Individualism proved a potent force, a source of power, invention and motivation. Yet Diamond considers ideas to bet environmental conditions, and inevitably there will be a factory manufacturing jet engines.

Many thinkers have attempted single-explanation theories for history. Such attempts hold innate appeal -- wouldn't it be great if there were a single explanation! -- but have a poor track record. My guess is that despite its conspicuous brilliance, ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' will eventually be viewed as a drastic oversimplification. Its arguments come perilously close to determinism, and it is hard to believe that the world is as it is because it had to be that way.

WHICH WOULD REDEFINE EYE TEETH (via Jim Yates):

Tooth used to save woman's sight (BBC, 8/18/04)

A blind woman can see again thanks to UK surgeons who used her own teeth to restore her vision. [...]

It is an option for people with corneal blindness which has not been amenable to conventional eye surgery.

The surgery takes part in two stages, each taking around six hours and carried out about six months apart.

Two surgeons, an eye surgeon and a maxillo-facial surgeon, work together to repair the damaged eye.

During the first stage, the superficial scar tissue over the damaged cornea is removed and the whole surface is then covered with a patch of tissue taken from the inside of the patient's cheek.

This will create a new surface for the eye.

The surgeons then remove one of the patient's teeth, usually a canine, together with a small block of jawbone.

This is used to fashion a rectangular plate with a hole drilled through the middle.

A small synthetic tube is inserted into this hole and the whole thing, now called an OOKP lamina, is placed under the muscle of the lower eyelid for two to four months to allow surrounding tissue to grow into the substance of this implant.

During the second stage, the cheek tissue covering the eye's surface is raised and a hole is made through the centre of the scarred cornea.

The surgeons then remove the iris, the lens and the jelly of the eye that lie behind the cornea.

They extract the OOKP lamina that they had implanted and then insert it into the hole they have made in the cornea and sew it firmly in place.

The cheek tissue is lowered back down to cover the eye again.

About 80% of people who have this surgery achieve an improvement of their vision, according to he eye surgeon who carried out the procedure, Mr Christopher Liu.

IF THEY'D AT LEAST WHERE THOSE YELLOW STARS WE COULD KEEP AN EYE ON THEM...:

Feith Resigns Under Pressure of Investigations (Juan Cole, 1/29/05, Informed Comment)

Douglas Feith, the number three man at the Pentagon who went there from the pro-Likud Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Project for a New American Century, will leave the Pentagon as of this summer. Feith's office is the subject of an FBI investigation as well as two Congressional investigations, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Feith helped set up an Office of Special Plans in the Near East and South Asia desk of the Pentagon to cherry-pick Iraq intelligence and create a case for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and having operational links with al-Qaeda. At one point, contrary to Federal law, Feith's people actually briefed officials in the Executive on intelligence. Feith sent David Wurmser from the Office of Special Plans, once its work was well under way, over to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, so that he could stove pipe OSP analyses into the VP's office and thence directly to the president, doing an end run around the CIA and the State Department Intelligence and Research division.

Having a Likudnik as the number three man in the Pentagon is a nightmare for American national security, since Feith could never be trusted to put US interests over those of Ariel Sharon.

NICE TRY, CHARLOTTE

Parents lose court battle over keeping critically ill girl alive (Nicole Martin, The Telegraph, January 29th, 2005)

The parents of a desperately ill baby yesterday lost the latest round in their legal battle to give their daughter the chance to live.

Darren Wyatt, 33, and his wife, Debbie, 23, had gone to the High Court to try to lift an order allowing doctors not to resuscitate 15-month-old Charlotte if she stops breathing.

They argued that her condition had significantly improved since October, when Mr Justice Hedley made the ruling, and asked for it to be temporarily lifted while independent medical experts reassessed the child's chances of survival. The judge granted the Wyatts permission to conduct an investigation into their daughter's condition and ruled that there should be a hearing before Easter to review the new independent medical reports.

But, rejecting their application to lift the order, he said: "The delight at her improvement has to be qualified by the fact that at present I have no evidence to support any proposition that her improvements reflect any change in the underlying condition from which she is suffering.[...]

Citing one of the medical experts, Dr C, he said that Charlotte had "genuinely good days" when she received no sedatives and was taken out of her oxygen box. She responded to stimulation, had limited perception of light and dark and was able to react, to a limited extent, to noise.

"Contrary to the expectation of many of the doctors, Charlotte has survived and her condition appears to be improving," he said. "What's not yet clear is the extent of the change, the reason for the change and the implications of the change. But the appearance of change is not disputed."

We are obviously dealing with a shrewd judge who can see that Charlotte is faking it.

LAHOOD IS LIKE OXYGEN:

LaHood looks good for governor (THOMAS ROESER, January 29, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Whenever an ocean liner approaches a harbor, it calls for a seasoned pilot who knows the eddies and secret channels to come and steer the ship into port. In the House of Representatives (where I served as a staffer years ago with another unknown named Don Rumsfeld), when passage of legislation runs into trouble, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert calls on a sage master of parliamentary procedure to guide the craft to passage. That pilot is usually Ray LaHood, a beetle-browed 59-year-old Lebanese Catholic, pro-life five-term member from Peoria. LaHood can be warm and ingratiating but also abrasive with the gavel. The other night during inauguration festivities, he had the gavel at the Illinois State Society and tried to get the crowd to calm down. Most of the crowd was circulating around Illinois' rock-star senator, Barack Obama, and Obama wasn't about to dissuade them.

''Sen. Obama,'' LaHood rasped in a voice that silenced the group, ''if you want people to listen to you when you are up here, you should probably listen while other people are trying to speak.''

Obama, chastened, shut up.

These days Ray LaHood is taking time away from his 18th District, where he won with 70 percent of the vote in November, to explore a run for governor. His experience in monitoring the House for his old boss Bob Michel has won him acclaim under Hastert with gilt-edged committee assignments: appropriations, budget and intelligence. But he's a rebel, one of only three GOP members to balk at signing Newt Gingrich's Contract with America (because it put tax cuts ahead of budget balancing), and the first to attack Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (purportedly for insulting Hastert, but also for not supporting public works goodies for Illinois that the delegation had approved). LaHood declared publicly he was looking around for someone to run against Fitzgerald (that someone was Andy McKenna, the multimillionaire paper company executive who is now state GOP chairman). Later, LaHood warned publicly that Rep. Phil Crane was in trouble because he wasn't working hard enough. (LaHood was right; Crane lost to Melissa Bean). [...]

[A]ll things being equal he's an excellent campaigner. Talking with him is like breathing pure oxygen after working in a salt mine. His social instincts are excellent, and his rebellious nature might just be what Illinois needs. Yes, he needs a crash course in Chicago. Knowing him, he'll get on it pronto. We need a good pilot for this leaky ship of state. Gov. LaHood sounds good.

AND A STEADY HAND TO PULL THAT LOAD BEHIND:

The Bushies' New Groove (DAVID BROOKS, 1/29/05, NY Times)

F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American life. That's got to be one of the most untrue truisms ever uttered. As everybody from Donald Trump to Ozzy Osborne can tell you, there are nothing but second acts in American life.

The Bush administration has started its second act, and it is striking how different this one feels. When you ask senior officials to remember the first term, they remember it as a time of war. There was the attack of Sept. 11. There were invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There was the political war of the 2004 campaign.

That was a time when pieces of things were cast asunder. Senior Bush officials talk about this term as a time when pieces of things will be put back together. There's almost a springlike, postwar mood.

QUAGMIRISM:

Flashback to the 60's: A Sinking Sensation of Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam: Nearly two years after the American invasion of Iraq, comparisons to the conflict in Vietnam are bubbling to the fore. (TODD S. PURDUM, 1/29/05, NY Times)

Bubbling? The Left and the far Right have been flogging the Vietnam analogy since around 9-12.

SUBLIME SELF-PARODY:

Democrats Decry Use of Agency in Social Security Battle (Charles Babington, January 29, 2005, Washington Post)

"The president cannot turn the Social Security Administration into his own lobby shop," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said at a three-hour Capitol Hill hearing run by Democratic senators opposing the White House plan.

The hearing featured two Social Security Administration employees who said the agency's marketing plan inappropriately calls on workers to publicly promote Bush's goals.

"That is a political message, and it's not my job as an agency employee to project a political message," said Debbie Fredericksen, a Minneapolis-based employee.

Steve Kofahl, a Social Security claims representative from Seattle who addressed the all-Democrat panel, said SSA employees have been told that Social Security is in a crisis that only private accounts can salvage. He said the employees "have been directed to share this message with the public at every opportunity."

"I do not believe it is proper for public funds or public employees to be used to stir up fear" and push the White House agenda, Kofahl said.

BLAMING SADDAM (via Matt Murphy):

CU prof's essay sparks dispute: Ward Churchill says 9/11 victims were not innocent people (John C. Ensslin, January 27, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims.

Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department. They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."

The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.

The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.

It states: "The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."

NOT THAT I'M HINTING AT ANYTHING

Single-game tickets on sale today: Seats will be available online or by telephone at 10 a.m. (Ian Browne, MLB.com, 01/29/05)

The Red Sox, who had sold out their last 145 regular season home games even before winning the World Series last October, will put 2005 single-game tickets on sale via telephone and the Internet, beginning at 10 a.m. ET today. . . .

With the exception of Opening Day (Yankees on April 11), Patriots Day (April 18 vs. Toronto) and the nine other regular season games against the Yankees, fans will be able to purchase tickets for all home games at redsox.com or by calling (617) 482-4SOX. Fans with disabilities can call (877) REDSOX-9 to purchase accessible seating as long as it is available.

THESE CLOWNS ARE CRITICIZING THE ADMINISTRATION'S DIPLOMACY?:

Meal from Hell Whets Appetite for US-Iran Clash (Paul Taylor, 1/29/05, Reuters)

Call it the meal from hell.

A World Economic Forum dinner designed to promote dialogue between Iran and the United States on Friday night began with a comic strip series of diplomatic and gastronomic blunders, and ended with a sharp exchange over nuclear weapons.

With Iran's vice-president and foreign minister in the room, the organizers began by announcing they had disinvited Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte, one of the listed panelists, because the issues were too serious.

The star guest, U.S. Senator Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, was missing. The organizers kept saying he was on his way.

Moderator David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist, apologized for the fact that wine had been served, upsetting the Muslim guests. Waiters cleared the offending glasses.

They also removed the menus since the hotel had planned to serve non-hallal meat, breaching Islamic dietary rules. Even the soup spoons were withdrawn -- erroneously, it transpired.

One participant asked whether different cultures could not tolerate each other's dietary customs. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi responded that tolerance was fine but it did not mean people should not respect each other's religious values.

If wine was served, his delegation could not participate in the meal, he said.

ALL THE dEMOCRATS ARE BACKING THEM:

The Iraqi people will defy the Ba'athists and Islamofascists: Blair is right. Why aren't more democrats backing these elections? (William Shawcross, January 24, 2005, The Guardian)

Just look at who is trying to stop Iraqis voting and by what methods. That alone shows how important this week's elections are to Iraq. [...]

The Iraqi elections are at one level a brutal theocratic struggle between Sunni and Shia, between Bin Laden and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani, the principal leader of the Shias, who constitute 60% of the Iraqi population, has told his followers that it is their duty to vote. But in a video aired on al-Jazeera, Bin Laden declared that "Anyone who participates in these elections... has committed apostasy against Allah". He endorsed killing of security people in the new government - "Their blood is permitted. They are apostates whose deaths should not be prayed over."

Zarqawi describes the Shias as "the lurking snakes and the crafty scorpions, the spying enemy and the penetrating venom, the most evil of mankind". Every day he murders more. Last Friday a car bomber murdered 14 people, including children, as they left their mosque in Baghdad. He murdered Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the principal Shia parties, and he recently tried to murder Hakim's brother and successor. In that attack 13 other Iraqis were killed and 66 wounded.

Allied to the Islamist groups are Ba'athist groups who want to restore Sunni Ba'athist dictatorship. Several of their military leaders were arrested in Falluja in November.

One was Colonel Muayed al-Nasseri, who said that Saddam had set up his group, Muhammad's Army, after the fall of Baghdad. Under interrogation he said that his group had been receiving aid from both Iran and Syria, neither of which wish to see a democracy in Iraq. He said Iran had given them "one million dollars... cars, weapons... even car bombs". He said that Saddam had sent him to Syria to liaise with Syrian intelligence, which was proving especially helpful with money. Other Saddamite officials are working with impunity from Damascus. Washington has protested about this, but the US has not yet put any really strong pressure on Syria.

The impact of terrorism on the election has already been huge. Many of the political parties have not dared name their candidates for fear they will be murdered. Public meetings are virtually impossible. The risks of going to the polling stations are real everywhere, huge in some places. Many candidates have been murdered; those who are elected will face real dangers.

What is astonishing is that people still seem determined to vote for a new Iraq. [...]

Tony Blair said in Baghdad in December: "On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq. Our response should be to stand alongside the democrats."

Blair is absolutely right. It is shocking that so few democratic governments support the Iraqi people.

(1) Opponents of liberalization in the Arab world are democrats who oppose democracy in this instance.

(2) Opponents aren't democrats.

Given that all the same suspects were arrayed against all the same advocates in the Cold War you'd have to say that (b) is closer to the truth.

APIARIST:

Sac Bee Watch: Watching liberal bias at the Sacramento Bee

NOTHING MORE THAN AN EXCUSE FOR TOLERATING EVIL:

Overcoming the Constraints of Sovereignty (Sidney Goldberg, 01/21/2005, Tech Central Station)

A chief complaint against the Bush inaugural speech is that he seems to ignore the constraints of sovereignty, which prevent the United States from encroaching on the legitimacy of even the most evil of regimes and proclaims their borders sacrosanct.

But sovereignty often has nothing to do with ethics and one can respect sovereignty and commit ethical crimes in doing so. Was it ethical to abide by the sovereignty of Sudan while it was committing genocide? Is it ethical for us to sit on our hands while millions of Africans are maimed or slaughtered? [...]

[W]here the United States finds a people who are suffering under the yoke of a tyrant, and it is a tyrant that we can eliminate and thereby ease the suffering, we should go ahead and do it. This would violate the laws of sovereignty in favor of the obligations of ethics. This action should be taken unless it causes even more deaths and suffering than the existing tyranny. In that case we have to put it on a back burner until a better opportunity for change occurs.

What we have to do, and I'm sure the President has thought this through, is go after the horrible but easy cases first, just as a good salesman makes the easy sales first and works his way up to the most difficult for last. He sells refrigerators first to people who have none and only at the very end of his campaign will he attempt to sell refrigerators to people who already have them. Therefore, China and Russia shouldn't be at the top of our list for "regime change." As the easier tyrannies open up to greater freedom, China and Russia will become more vulnerable and therefore subject to our pressure and influence.

President Bush understands that "sovereignty" can be the greatest cover for evil and that respect for sovereignty is a minor if sometimes necessary virtue compared to ignoring it in the interest of doing what is right and easing human suffering. We do this in our personal life and we should do it as a nation. What the President has chosen to do is accept the challenge of doing the right thing. Sometimes you can get away with it. If he achieves only 25% of his immensely difficult goals during his tenure, he should be enshrined on Mt. Rushmore.

SLAVERY TO SIN:

INTERVIEW: with GK Chesterton: Chesterton is dismayed at the onward march of relativism and secularism. He also thinks the novel has lost its way, understands Islamic grievances against the west and is a proud mentor to satirists (Tobias Jones, January 2005, Prospect)

Tobias Jones: We'll come back to Christianity. But you mention postmodernism: what do you take it to mean?

GKC: Ha! Have you ever asked a postmodernist the meaning of postmodernism? It's all absolute hogwash, or as they would say, meta-hogwash. The whole point is that postmodernism is the negation of meaning and belief and faith. Postmoderns can't say what they mean because that would imply meaning, something they're at pains to deny. Of course, at table you can ask them to pass the mustard, and they seem perfectly able; and they know two plus two is four, even though they get very cross if you affirm your belief in objective reality. In some ways my entire oeuvre, published before and after the first world war, was dedicated to battling the nascent phenomenon of postmodernism. I described the tendency in a book called Heretics and summarised its motto with the line: "let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." That is their ambition: to be relieved of the responsibility of deciding what is good and what evil by pretending that those concepts don't exist. As George Bernard Shaw, the first postmodernist, wrote in his The Quintessence of Ibsenism, "the golden rule is that there is no golden rule."

TJ: Might that not be sensible in a multi-faith society? The intolerance and absolutism of monotheism can be swapped for the tolerance of multiculturalism.

GKC: Dear dear, I can see that you too have been hoodwinked. That is their rhetoric: tolerance, the peaceful coexistence of competing beliefs. In reality, now that their heresy has become enshrined as orthodoxy, you're not even allowed to express a belief. Take, for example, the country which was the cradle of this silly craze: France. There, tolerance apparently implies that one isn't even allowed into school with a veil. Come come. If I may quote myself again, "the old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it." Or take the case of Rocco Buttiglione and his interrogation before joining the European commission: he expressed a personal belief about homosexuality and distinguished between a sin and a crime. That distinction is the cornerstone of a secular body politic; in a theocracy, and in liberal totalitarianism, it is non-existent. Buttiglione was displaying both sincerity and subtlety and tolerance. What could be more tolerant than a man believing that something is wrong but allowing it to happen because he accommodates other beliefs? By contrast, postmoderns believe in nothing and so countenance no dissent.

TJ: You're not seriously telling me we're less tolerant than we were, say, in the Edwardian era?

GKC: My dear boy, I think you're mistaking tolerance for relativism. If the only dogma you have is tolerance, the only thing you believe in is relativism. What nobility is there in tolerance if you don't believe in anything in the first place? You're like someone who makes a great show of denying themselves something they didn't even want anyway. It's an illusion of virtue. Your entire morality, if so it can be called, is negative: against racism and against sexism and against war and so on and so forth.

TJ: We do believe in things: democracy, freedom....

GKC: Your thinking is irredeemably muddled. Those are means, not ends. You can't say you believe in democracy per se. You would have to tell me what you believe democracy can achieve. Besides, I think you're confusing liberty with libertinism, freedom -- as Milton said -- with licence. Freedom, for your generation, implies the removal of all constraint. That's not freedom but licentiousness; from a Christian point of view, it's nothing other than the complete removal of freedom. It is slavery to sin. You see, freedom only has meaning if it is accompanied by morality, if it implies a choice between good and evil. You can hardly blame the vast majority of the Arab world if they equate your freedom with immorality because they know that you no longer believe in good and evil. A few decades into my afterlife I met Viktor Frankl, and I greatly admired his notion that if the east coast of America has a statue of liberty, the west one desperately requires a statue of responsibility. The one without the other has no meaning. Talk all you want about human rights, gay rights, women's rights… but I insist that you tell me what you think are the complementary human responsibilities, gay responsibilities, women's responsibilities. That is why I wrote in What's Wrong With The World that: "Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities."

COMPETENCE IS THE ENEMY:

The conservationist: Under the direction of Bruce Cole, the once-radical National Endowment for the Humanities has returned to the role of preserving America's heritage (Gene Edward Veith, 1/22/05, World)

The National Endowment for the Humanities began in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative. Proponents saw it as a parallel effort to the National Science Foundation, established in 1950 under President Truman. Just as the government funded scientific research in the national interest, it would fund projects in the humanities (that is, history, literature, language, philosophy, and the like).

Over its 40 years of existence, the NEH has helped pay for archeological digs at Jamestown and other important historical sites, accurate editions of the works of classic American authors, museum exhibitions such as "Treasures of Tutankhamen," and documentary films such as Ken Burns's Civil War series. In addition to these relatively popular projects, NEH gives grants to support professors' research projects and academic seminars, which some critics label "welfare for college professors."

The most intense controversy over the NEH came as the academic world became more and more radicalized. Taxpayers sometimes had to foot the bill as researchers set about deconstructing the traditional humanities and constructing new approaches grounded in gender, race, and multiculturalism.

Under Ronald Reagan, William Bennett headed the NEH and brought its focus back to the conservation of American culture. Lynne Cheney, who served under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, succeeded Mr. Bennett and was even more aggressive in using the NEH to challenge current academic trends.

When Democrats returned to power, however,the NEH turned liberal again. The "National Conversation on Diversity" initiative funneled grant money to liberal activist groups such as the National Council on Aging and the American Bar Association. Then the NEH released educational standards for teaching history that left out George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison. Instead, it presented what historian Richard Jenson called "a highly negative image of American history as basically the story of how heroic women and minorities resisted oppressive white males."

The history standards were so extreme that the Senate, in a bipartisan stand, voted 99-1 to repudiate them. Mrs. Cheney, the endowment's former director, called for its abolition.

But with Republicans back in power and the agency under new leadership, those days seem long gone. The overall NEH budget is back up, to $162 million for 2005, with strong GOP support. And overall, under the Republican administration, the NEH is funding culture in a distinctly conservative direction. Not conservative politically, so much—­politicizing the humanities is what the academic liberals do—but in the sense of "conserving" America's history and great ideas and trying to transmit them to future generations.

President Bush's NEH director, Bruce Cole, has the specific goal of combating what he calls America's "amnesia" about its own history.

MAYOR OF THE SHINING CITY:

Idealism swings back in fashion (Gareth Harding, Jan. 28, 2005, UPI)

Idealism is back. After years of hard-headed pragmatism, world leaders are daring to talk about their hopes, dreams and ideals and are risking precious political capital by launching bold plans to tackle some of the most pressing problems of the day.

U.S. President George W. Bush set the tone taking his oath of office last week.

"No-one could say the inauguration speech was lacking in idealism," British Prime Minister Tony Blair Wednesday told political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

They certainly could not. Bush, who is not renowned for being a wishy-washy liberal dreamer, spoke repeatedly of the importance of ideals and idealism. There was no shortage of either in his second address from the steps of the Capitol. He said governments faced a "moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right." He talked of his administration's "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." And he pledged to support freedom fighters in their struggle for liberty, democracy and self-determination.

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors," he said. "When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

It was stirring stuff -- the noblest of ideals driven by oratory of the highest order. Of course, this did not stop Bush's critics scoffing at his speech as phony, hypocritical and utopian. The speech was ambitious -- highly ambitious -- but as Blair said in Davos, it is difficult to argue now that Bush is in the grip of neo-conservative hawks in Washington. "I thought progressives were all in favor of freedom rather than tyranny," said the president's most enthusiastic cheerleader in Europe.

Blair's political discourse has always had an evangelical ring to it, but he has often been compromised by his desire to be all things to all men and women. Lately, the Labor leader seems to have run out of patience with half-measures and there is a renewed sense of outrage and urgency in his speeches about world affairs.

Subject: Watch Spirit of America on C-SPAN Sunday 2pm Eastern, broadcast of Iraq election coverage
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:52:07 +0000
From: Jim Hake, Spirit of America
To: brothersjudd.com

Greetings,

Great news! We've just received confirmation that C-SPAN is planning to cover Spirit of America's Iraq election event this Sunday from 2pm to 4pm Eastern (11am to 1pm Pacific). Please watch. Your support has made this possible. Please forward this message far and wide and encourage people to tune in.

Iraq's elections are an historic event. This broadcast will provide a unique, more complete picture of the elections with ground-level news and views from the Iraqi people. You will get much more than the typical focus on violence and terrorism. We'll have reports, photos and video from all corners of Iraq. The broadcast event is described more here: http://www.spiritofamerica.net/site/blog/459

You can see reports and photos now at:

http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info

And, during the show on Sunday, we will be publishing the discussion at

http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info

and asking for your comments.

Please visit the site and tell us what you think.

All the best,
Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team
staff@spiritofamerica.net
www.spiritofamerica.net

IT'D COST MORE THAN THAT TO FIX WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT:

Report: Soccer Referee Was Paid $65,000 to Fix Games (January 29, 2005, LA Times)

Germany's biggest soccer scandal in more than 30 years deepened Friday when four people were arrested and a newspaper reported that a referee told prosecutors he was paid more than $65,000 to fix games.

The referee, Robert Hoyzer, admitted getting money for rigging three games and also implicated players and other refs, the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.

WE WERE BLUE WHEN IT WAS COOL:

Recasting Republicans as the Party of Civil Rights Strategists reach back to GOP's antislavery roots in an attempt to lure black voters. (Peter Wallsten, January 29, 2005, LA Times)

Condoleezza Rice took the oath Friday as the first black woman to be secretary of State, then immediately reached back into history to invoke the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Her words were the latest example of President Bush and his top aides citing the Republican Party's often-forgotten 19th century antislavery roots — a strategy that GOP leaders believe will help them make inroads among black voters in the 21st century.

And if it reminds voters that the Democrats once embraced slavery, that's not such a bad byproduct, strategists say.

Bush, who keeps a bust of Lincoln prominently displayed in the Oval Office, is making Civil War references a staple of his speeches promoting democracy overseas and policy changes at home. And a glossy, GOP-produced "2005 Republican Freedom Calendar," spotlighting key moments in the party's civil rights history, has been distributed to party officials nationwide.

"We started our party with the express intent of protecting the American people from the Democrats' pro-slavery policies that expressly made people inferior to the state," Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) wrote in a letter printed on the calendar.

The letter continued: "Today, the animating spirit of the Republican Party is exactly the same as it was then: free people, free minds, free markets, free expression, and unlimited individual opportunity."

PRACTICE MAKES IMPERFECT:

Hamas Builds Political Clout With Wins in Gaza Elections: The militant group's candidates take most of the races held in 10 small locales. The strong show could affect cease-fire talks with Abbas. (Laura King, January 29, 2005, LA Times)

Thousands of cheering Hamas supporters took to the streets of Gaza to celebrate after the group easily triumphed in seven out of the nine small to medium-size towns in the seaside territory where its candidates had run.

The group did not field a candidate in the 10th locality where voting was held, a village populated by a single Bedouin extended family. [...]

Analysts said the outcome, like that in municipal races last month in the West Bank, was probably significantly influenced by factors such as clan ties, narrowly focused local issues and long-simmering anger over corruption by Arafat loyalists.

Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, also has a strong and well-disciplined organizational base in impoverished Gaza. The group runs an extensive social-services network that includes much-needed clinics and schools. Using its many community contacts, it simply did a better job in getting out the vote, local officials said. [...]

"This is a big victory," said Mahmoud Zahar, a founding member of Hamas and the group's main surviving leader in Gaza. Most of the group's other prominent figures, including spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, have been slain by Israel over the last 18 months in "targeted killings" with helicopter-fired missiles.

Much in the manner of Hamas' usual public rallies, supporters marched en masse in half a dozen Gaza towns and cities, waving the group's green Islamic flags, passing out celebratory sweets and shouting "God is great!" through loudspeakers.

But Zahar, in remarks that seemed emblematic of Hamas' new aspirations, sounded like an earnest politician anywhere extolling the virtues of democracy.

"Everybody won, those who were elected and those who were not, because the exercise of this process is more important than the winners," Zahar said at a news conference in Gaza City.

Odd as that assertion might have sounded coming from a leader of a violent armed faction, the turnout — more than 85%, according to Jamal Shoubaki, the Palestinian minister for local government — suggested a strong pent-up desire to practice democracy.

Many Palestinians, even those who were supporters of Arafat's ruling Fatah movement, felt stifled and disenfranchised by the late president's near-absolute grip on power.

Of the 118 winners of seats on municipal councils, 75 were from Hamas, according to final official tallies. Fearing arrest or other repercussions, those candidates did not openly claim affiliation with the militant group, but instead called themselves the Change and Reform slate. Two other known Hamas members ran as independents and won.

Candidates affiliated with Fatah won 26 seats, and at least 11 posts went to independents thought to be Fatah supporters. The remaining seats were scattered among other independent candidates and a smaller party.

Continuing a trend set in municipal elections in the West Bank, female candidates also ran in substantial numbers. Shoubaki told reporters that women garnered 17% of the seats being contested, and added: "We are proud of this."

WHERE MORALITY IS SIMILAR TO IMMORALITY:

Swede's Sermon on Gays: Bigotry or Free Speech? (Keith B. Richburg and Alan Cooperman, January 29, 2005, Washington Post)

One Sunday in the summer of 2003, the Rev. Ake Green, a Pentecostal pastor, stepped into the pulpit of his small church in the southern Swedish village of Borgholm. There, the 63-year-old clergyman delivered a sermon denouncing homosexuality as "a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society" and condemning Sweden's plan to allow gays to form legally recognized partnerships.

"Our country is facing a disaster of great proportions," he told the 75 parishioners at the service. "Sexually twisted people will rape animals," Green declared, and homosexuals "open the door to forbidden areas," such as pedophilia.

With these words, which the local newspaper published at his request, Green ran afoul of Sweden's strict laws against hate speech. He was indicted, convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail. He remains free pending appeal.

U.S. law regulates what can be said about individuals, but it generally protects speech directed against groups, however harsh, allowing Ku Klux Klan leaders and neo-Nazis, for example, to state their ideologies publicly. But in Europe, laws banning such speech and similarly controversial symbols are common.

BURNING TIMES:

The Branding of a Heretic (DAVID KLINGHOFFER, January 28, 2005, Wall Street Journal)

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The piece happened to be the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms--such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells--are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection. [...]

The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.

It may or may not be, but surely the matter can be debated on scientific grounds, responded to with argument instead of invective and stigma. Note the circularity: Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too. In any case, the heretic here is Mr. Meyer, a fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, not Mr. Sternberg, who isn't himself an advocate of Intelligent Design. [...]

Intelligent Design, in any event, is hardly a made-to-order prop for any particular religion. When the British atheist philosopher Antony Flew made news this winter by declaring that he had become a deist--a believer in an unbiblical "god of the philosophers" who takes no notice of our lives--he pointed to the plausibility of ID theory.

Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches--like the National Museum of Natural History.

HOW ABOUT, "FIRM" ROAD?:

The hard road to democracy (Victor Davis Hanson, 1/27/05, Jewish World Review)

Fostering elections in Iraq is a hard road, well apart from the daily violence of the Sunni Triangle. The autocratic Sunni elite of surrounding countries prefers democracy to fail, warning us that an Iranian-sponsored theocracy will surely follow in Iraq, legitimizing a new Arab Khomeinism.

Sunni Iraqis want exemption from, or a delay of, the election — even though they cannot or will not stop their own violence that imperils it. The United States earns very little credit abroad for its newfound dedication to democratic reform — even as realists at home warn that we should instead back the status-quo who better guarantee order that purportedly favors our own national security.

There are rarely supporters of the hard road of promoting democracies abroad until they are well established. We learned that well enough both before and after the Afghanistan war. Many swore that the Taliban could not be removed. After their demise, new critics warned that the fascists could not be replaced with democrats — and now suddenly they are mostly silent or indeed supportive of the new Afghanistan.

In the face of censure, the United States once bombed Christian Europeans in the Balkans to arrest an Islamic genocide, in hopes of stopping Milosevic and ushering in a democracy. Greeks and Russians were furious. The Arab world offered little thanks that we saved their fellow Muslims. Europeans who had watched the carnage on their doorstep for a near decade whined about our heavy-handed bombing. But perseverance in pursuit of principle — perhaps the Clinton administration's most controversial hour — saved thousands of lives and gave the Balkans a chance at consensual government.

America's calls for fair elections in the Ukraine only alienated a far more powerful Russia. The Putin administration remonstrated that Russia is the world's largest oil producer and a similar victim of mass terrorism and thus an ally in our war. Yet the Ukraine now has a fairly elected leader and we proved that America is not anti- Russian, but rather pro-democratic.

We are at last pressing Saudi Arabia for internal reform in the knowledge that their monarchy is a fertile ground for religious fascists who manipulate understandable popular discontent against the monarchy for their own Islamic agendas. These efforts at promoting Western-style democracy are either slurred as cultural chauvinism against Arabs or dismissed as criminally naive idealism that will ensure a far worse anti-American theocracy — supposedly a lose/lose proposition.

Yet a day will come when it is recognized that the American withdrawal of 10,000 troops from the Wahhabi state was a wise move — and should be followed by sober reassessment of American subsidies to the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt that is heading toward to a crisis of succession.

America was castigated for isolating Yasser Arafat. However, this ostracism ensured at Arafat's passing that he was not a messianic figure, but generally felt to have been an obstacle to open elections that are moving ahead. So the United States was attacked for shunning a dictatorial nationalist, but never thanked for opposing the corruption and authoritarianism that had ruined the Palestinian state.

In all these cases, the preference for the status quo offers short-term stability, while the principled insistence on consensual government proves risky and hinges on unproven reformers. Yet in the long-term, America has rarely gone wrong for being on the democratic side of history.

BEEN "DOWN" SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO US:

Stories of Imperial Collapse Are Getting Old (Victor Davis Hanson, 1/26/05, New Criterion)

The most recent doom-and-gloom forecast by Matthew Parris of the London Times would be hilarious if it were not so hackneyed. After all, Americans long ago have learned to grin any time a British intellectual talks about the upstart’s foreordained imperial collapse. And as in the case of our own intelligentsia’s gloominess, it is not hard to distinguish the usual prophets’ pessimistic prognostications from their thinly-disguised hopes for American decline and fall.

But this country is now in its third century and assurances that the United States is about through are getting old. In the early 20th century the rage was first Spengler and then Toynbee who warned us that our crass consumer capitalism would lead to inevitable spiritual decay. Next, the Hitlerians assured the Volk that the mongrel Americans could never set foot on German-occupied soil, so decadent were these Chicago mobsters and uncouth cowboys. Existentialism and pity for the empty man in the gray flannel suit were the rage of the 1950s, as Americans, we were told, had become depressed and given up in the face of racial inequality, rapid suburbanization, and the spread of world-wide national liberationist movements.

In the 1960s and 1970s we heard of the population bomb and all sorts of catastrophes in store for the United States and the world in general that had unwisely followed its profligate paradigm of consumption; yet despite Paul Ehrlich’s strident doomsday scenario, the environment got cleaner and the people of the globe richer. And then came the historian Paul Kennedy, who, citing earlier Spanish and English implosions, "proved" that the United States had played itself out in the Cold War, ruining its economy to match the Soviet Union in a hopeless arms race–publishing his findings shortly before the Russian empire collapsed and the American economy took off (again).

In the Carter ‘malaise years,’ we were warned about the impending triumph of ‘Asian Values’ and the supposed cultural superiority of Japan, Inc., which would shortly own most of whatever lazy and ignorant Americans sold them–before the great meltdown brought on by corruption, censorship, and ossified bureaucracies in Asia.

Currently Jared Diamond is back with Collapse, another grim tale from the desk of a Westwood professor, full of remonstrations about social inequality and resource depletion that we have come to expect from the rarified habitat in which tenured full professors thrive.

All that disenchantment is the context in which Matthew Parris now warns us that our military is overstretched and our economy weak–despite the fact that our gross domestic product is larger than ever and the percentage of it devoted to military spending at historic lows, far below what was committed during WWII, Korea, or Vietnam.

The question of why fertility has been falling so dramatically in continental Europe has been food for thought for both demographers and economists. The answer must be looked for in several important factors, which, to further complicate matters, do not simply add up in their impact. Nevertheless, it can be said with a fair amount of certainty that the existence of pay-as-you-go pension systems has had a very negative impact on birth rate. The National Report on Family published by the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in August 2004 says:

"In terms of intergenerational solidarity, the importance of the child as an investment for material support in old age has been limited by the social security and pension insurance system, which has eliminated people's immediate dependence on children. The importance of the child's role in relation to its parents has transferred to the emotional sphere, which reduced the direct material indispensability of children in a family, while also allowing for them being replaced with certain substitutes bringing emotional satisfaction."

To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age. In Czech the word "vejminek" (a place in a farmhouse reserved for the farmer's old parents) is actually derived from a verb meaning "to stipulate": in the deed of transfer, the old farmer stipulated the conditions on which the farm was to be transferred to his son. Instead of an "intergenerational" policy, there used to be direct dependence of parents on their children. This meant that people had immediate economic motivation to have a sufficiently numerous and well-bred offspring - whereas today's anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions of all retirees in an utterly depersonalized manner.

This system enables huge numbers of "free riders" to receive more than what would correspond to their overall contribution in their productive life. Those with incomes way above the average, on the contrary, are penalized, as the system gives them less money than they contributed to it. This is referred to as the "solidarity principle". In terms of birth rate, this arrangement is discouraging for both the low-income group and the high-income one. The latter feel that they are not going to need children in the old age, while the former believe that they can't afford to have them.

Today, children no longer represent investments; instead, they have become pets - objects of luxury consumption. However, the pet market segment is very competitive. It is characteristic that the birth rate decline in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, was accompanied by soaring numbers of dog-owners in cities. While in the past dog-owners were predominantly retirees, today there are many young couples that have consciously decided to have a dog instead of a baby. These are mainly young professionals who have come to a conclusion (whether right or wrong) that they lack either time or money to have a child. Thus, they invest their emotional surpluses into animals. [...]

The birth rate in the US is nearing the replacement level -- about two children per woman. Even so, comparing to Europe, the United States still appears to be a confirmed and stable superpower.

"Even if we include immigration, the population of the original EU-12 will fall by 7.5 million over the next 45 years, according to the UN calculations. Since the times of the 'Black Death' epidemic in the fourteenth century, Europe has never seen such an extensive population decline," writes Niall Ferguson, a British historian. He also predicts that in 2000-2050, the US population will grow by 44 percent. It seems that the European Union will have to forget for good about its ambitious dreams of becoming a "counterbalance" to America.

The demographic trends in Europe are indeed worrying. In Italy, for instance, the birth rate has fallen to an average level of 1.2 children per woman. Why? A journalist from the Daily Telegraph describes the life of young Italians in the following terms:

"It is virtually impossible to make a living. Just take Rome. Life with a minimum of human dignity (a small rented apartment, occasional dinner in a restaurant) requires a monthly pay of 3,000 euros before taxation, which accounts for some 1,800 euros after tax. If in the Anglo-Saxon world a majority of adults is expected to live an independent life on their own salaries, in Italy this is often not the case. An incredible 70 percent of unmarried Italians aged between 25 and 29 live with their parents, where they benefit from subsidized housing and where their poor incomes amount to a handsome pocket money."

When a modern young European has to choose between setting up a family of his own and a comfortable life without children, he is very likely to pick the latter option -- unless he belongs to a social class which regards children chiefly as a source of social benefits. A high amount of taxation combined with ill-functioning labor and housing markets is a truly genocidal mix. That is the case of Italy, but also Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Its impact cannot be corrected by all sorts of government subsidies paid out to young families. On the contrary, under certain circumstances the benefits for families may even lead to a drop in birth rate.

MORE:
-How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation (Michael Lind, 25 January 2005, Financial Times)

WHAT IF THE NEW DEMOCRATS GAVE UP AND NOONE NOTICED?:

The Strange Death That No One Cares About (Orrin C. Judd, 1/27/05, Tech Central Station)

There was a death in Washington recently that received far less attention than it deserved: the New Democrat philosophy of Bill Clinton is dead. This is a truly extraordinary development; one that should not be allowed to pass so quietly.

Subject: NEW DEM DAILY: From Daily to Dispatch
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:10:20 UT
From: New Democrats Online
To: orrin@brothersjudd.zzn.com

*Dear Subscriber:*

After more than four years and over 1,100 New Dem Daily offerings, we've decided to make a change in the frequency of the DLC's regular message, idea and commentary product. Starting this week, it will be called the New Dem Dispatch, and will be released on an "as-needed" rather than daily basis. The purpose of this change is to allow for more focused reporting and commentary on the big challenges facing the country and our political system. We will continue to offer an "Idea of the Week" and while the quantity of e-mails you receive from us may go down, we are determined to make sure the quality of these messages goes up.

As we say goodbye to the New Dem Daily, we would like to thank each of you for inviting our ideas and thoughts into your homes and offices each day and for expanding our reach through passing our messages along to your colleagues and friends. Your subscription to the New Dem Daily will automatically switch over to the New Dem Dispatch, so you don't need to do anything to continue hearing from us.

OWNERSHIP, COMPASSION, RESPONSIBILITY:

The Promise of a Republican New Deal (MARSHALL BREGER, January 28, 2005, Forward)

[T]he president's agenda, I believe, will focus on three themes: creating an ownership society, fostering a compassionate society and reinforcing America as a responsibility society.

The premise of an ownership society is quite straightforward: giving Americans greater control and responsibility over the structures essential to their lives. In its first term, this administration made considerable progress toward this goal. The percentage of Americans owning their own homes trended upward every year from the beginning of 2001 to 69.5% in the third quarter of 2004. And the president plans a variety of programs to increase the number of minority homeowners another 5.5 million by 2010.

The president's ownership society also aims at securing Americans' retirement by offering young workers the opportunity to place part of their retirement money in private pension arrangements similar to the Thrift Savings Plan now available to federal employees. The pension plans will provide American workers with a pre-funded retirement nest egg they can use or bequeath to their families. In the president's words, these reforms will allow every citizen to be, in some small measure, "an agent of his own destiny."

Other efforts to engender an ownership society include encouraging consumer-driven health care and private competition to give patients and doctors more control over health care decisions. As but one example, note the president's proposals for refundable tax credits to help low-income Americans buy health insurance.

Bush is also hard at work fostering a compassionate society. The president reached out to his two predecessors, former foe Bill Clinton and his own father, to spearhead the relief effort for victims of the recent tsunami disaster in South Asia. Moreover, the administration is planning to expand its efforts in hunger disaster relief, and the exciting Millennium Challenge Account will aid the long-term development of those countries that are working on democratization and market reforms.

Wherever possible, the administration wants to promote this American generosity by assisting volunteer efforts and public-private partnerships. [...]

The goal of personal responsibility is one that stands behind much of the president's second-term agenda — whether it is efforts to facilitate job training, or to create choices in Medicare and education. Thus, welfare reform will continue with the goal of maximizing self-sufficiency through ending welfare dependency wherever possible. Likewise, further development of the No Child Left Behind Act will include expanded testing and accountability of schools.

This administration's policies will strive for promoting responsibility in personal conduct as well. Efforts have been and will continue to be made to promote abstinence among teenagers — and contrary to what the cynics say, the numbers show considerable success. Bush has also asked for funds to promote responsible fatherhood — and again, the numbers show that the proportion of children in married families, after two decades, is slowly trending upward. And wherever possible, the Bush administration will seek to strengthen the institution of marriage.

SIGNING THE SUICIDE PACT (David Hill, The Bronx):

American Nazi Party adopts Salem road (CARA ROBERTS MUREZ, January 28, 2005, Statesman Journal)

Marion County has allowed a Portland-area skinhead group to adopt a rural Salem road as part of a volunteer litter clean-up program.

The signs proclaiming that Sunnyview Road NE between Cordon Road and 82nd Avenue is sponsored by the American Nazi Party NSM were installed Monday.

County officials say they were legally advised that excluding the organization would violate a constitutional right to free speech. Their choices, they said, were: allow the group to join the program, remove all of the signs from the program or refuse the group and risk a lawsuit.

Commissioner Sam Brentano said he wanted to turn the organization down anyway and face whatever lawsuits came.

He was outnumbered by commissioners Patti Milne and Janet Carlson. The commissioners did not vote on the issue, but gave staff direction by consensus.

Milne said she considers it strictly a constitutional issue that goes to the core of being American.

GLACIALITY IS SELDOM A RECOMMENDATION:

Savoring Debussy's 'Pelléas' (Anthony Tommasini, January 19, 2005, The New York Times)

Sigmund Freud's seminal "Interpretation of Dreams" was published in 1900. But Claude Debussy had already poked around in the unconscious in his landmark opera "Pelléas et Mélisande," which he had essentially composed (though not orchestrated) by 1895.

Of course, Maurice Maeterlinck, whose play Debussy adapted into his opera, had been treading through Freudian terrain even earlier. Maeterlinck, a leading figure in the Symbolist movement, which arose in the 1880s, espoused veiled emotions, mystery and indirection over realism.

On the surface of a Maeterlinck play, the dialogue might seem everyday, the action inconsequential. But below, his works stirred up disturbing, confounding and sensual feelings. Debussy read the newly published script for "Pelléas et Mélisande" in 1892, saw a production in Paris the next year and immediately seized on it as a subject.

As he wrote at the time, the play had "far more humanity than those so-called 'real life' documents" and contained "an evocative language whose sensitivity can be extended into music and into the orchestra décor." There will be two opportunities to encounter the work here: On Wednesday and Friday, L'Opéra Français de New York will present a staged production of what it calls the "original version" of the opera, for voices and piano. On Jan. 29 the Metropolitan Opera revives Jonathan Miller's alluring 1995 production of the familiar final version.

The mysterious story, set in some vaguely medieval time and place, tells of a sullen middle-aged widower, Golaud, the son of the frail King Arkel of Allemonde. One day, while hunting aimlessly in the forest, Golaud comes upon a lovely, frightened and evasive young woman who cannot bear to say a word about her past life. Passively, she follows Golaud and later marries him, only to find her emotional armor threatened by Golaud's attractive and adoring young half-brother, Pelléas.

For all the perplexing richness of the play, Debussy's deceptively calm music taps the subliminal emotions of the characters more deeply than Maeterlinck's words. Though he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, Maeterlinck is probably best known today for his role in the creation of Debussy's opera.

"Pelléas et Mélisande" is a radical work, a kind of anti-opera that has long divided audiences. Some listeners find it dramatically static and exasperating. Admittedly, the pacing is glacial; inconsequential events are stretched into entire scenes. Debussy's music, sensuous and radiant, can seem as murky and evasive as Mélisande, the most striking example of a compulsive liar in all of opera. Even Maeterlinck nodded off when Debussy played through the score for him at the piano, though, from all reports, Maeterlinck had little sensitivity for music.

But many other opera enthusiasts (myself among them) find "Pelléas" riveting precisely because it is so daringly restrained and oblique. The subliminal impact of the surging, restless, harmonically lush music charges the grim story with intensity. In a good performance, the conversational quality of the vocal writing has an affecting naturalness and an austere beauty.

COWBOY CONTAGION:

PM attacks Chirac's 'pathetic' power vision (Nicholas Watt, January 29, 2005, The Guardian)

Tony Blair yesterday risked a fresh row when he branded the policies of Jacques Chirac, the French president, as "dangerous" and "pathetic".

In a sign of cross-Channel tensions after the Iraq war, the prime minister showed contempt for two key elements of Mr Chirac's presidency: his attempts to turn Europe into a centre of power rivalling Washington and his personal relations with George Bush.

MORE EVOLUTIONARY DOGMA WOBBLING:

Newfound Star Sparks Brown-Dwarf Debate (Joshua Roth, January 25, 2005, Sky and Telescope)

[A]n international research team has determined an orbit — and a precise mass — for the youngest brown dwarf yet. There's just one problem: that object, AB Doradus C, isn't a brown dwarf after all. It has an ostensibly stellar mass of 90 Jupiters — up to twice what evolutionary models predict for the 50-million-year-old object given its distance and near-infrared magnitude.

University of Arizona astronomer Laird M. Close discovered AB Dor C on February 4, 2004, using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. When he found the object, it was just 1/6 arcsecond (2.3 astronomical units) from the 7th-magnitude type-K variable star AB Dor A, which is 120 times brighter. His team then combined the adaptive-optics discovery image with existing astrometry from the Hipparcos satellite and radio telescopes to determine AB Dor C's orbit and mass.

Spotting and "weighing" so dim a companion is a noteworthy achievement, astronomers agree. But Close and his colleagues may get more press for the inferences they draw than from their technical prowess. Because AB Dor C's dynamical mass significantly exceeds the predictions of most widely used evolutionary models, Close implies, those models are now suspect. "Some young objects that people are calling brown dwarfs are really low-mass stars," he says, and "things that people are calling free-floating planets, in almost every case, are likely low-mass brown dwarfs."

That doesn't sit well with Isabelle Baraffe (Astronomical Research Center of Lyon, France), one of the reigning model's architects.

UNILATERALIST COWBOY:

Sen. Biden, Iran Minister Clash Over Nukes (GEORGE JAHN, 1/28/05, Associated Press)

Sen. Joseph Biden and Iran's foreign minister clashed Friday over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, with Biden hinting at the possibility of armed conflict unless fears of an Iranian weapons program were put to rest.

The rare and frank public exchange between a senior American politician and a ranking member of the Iranian government came at a dinner during the World Economic Forum held in this Alpine resort town.

PARITY?:

Rumblings & Grumblkings (Jayson Stark, January 28, 2005, ESPN.com)

Here's something to ponder: Football is the sport that's always praised for its spectacular competitive balance. But as loyal reader David Hallstrom reports, five different baseball teams have won the World Series over the last five years. Think that happens all the time in football? Think again.

In the NFL's 39-year Super Bowl era, there has been exactly one five-year period in which five different teams won a title -- 1984-88. And even if you include the pre-Supe era, that's the only five-year span in which the NFL can make that claim over its last 57 seasons.

# Then there's this year's Super Bowl matchup -- which didn't exactly come out of nowhere. It matches one team going for its third title in four years (the Patriots) versus another team (the Eagles) that has made it to four straight conference finals.

In other words, for a sport that's supposed to be so wide open, there sure has been a lot of regularity to the NFL's postseason final four.

In fact, it turns out the NFL's final four teams actually have been more predictable over the last four years than baseball's final four. In baseball, 12 of the 30 franchises have made it to a League Championship Series over the past four seasons. In football, only 10 have been to a conference final.

# Or let's take this back even more years. Over the last eight baseball postseasons, 16 of the 30 MLB franchises have been to at least one LCS (53.3 percent). That's virtually exactly the same percentage as the NFL (17 of 32, 53.1 percent).

FITTING COMMEMORATION:

Dutch court to free 'Saddam's chemical fixer' (Ian Traynor, January 29, 2005, The Guardian)

An appeal judge in The Hague has ordered the release of a Dutch businessman accused of supplying the chemicals to Saddam Hussein that enabled him to gas the Kurds.

The ruling is a setback for Dutch prosecutors seeking to bring their first case of involvement in genocide.

Frans van Anraat was arrested six weeks ago on suspicion of complicity in genocide. He is accused of supplying the chemicals that enabled the Iraqi dictator to make the mustard gas with which he killed and maimed thousands of Kurds in attacksin 1988. About 5,000 were killed in the town of Halabja alone.

Mr Van Anraat, 62, has never denied supplying the chemicals, but says he did not know what they were to be used for.

Officials and lawyers involved in the case say that the judge's decision reflects judicial reluctance to pursue such cases.

After a year-long investigation, the Dutch authorities arrested Mr Van Anraat early last month at his canal-side house in west Amsterdam.

US customs had Mr Van Anraat on their most wanted list for several years, and had issued an international arrest warrant for him alleging that he provided Saddam with 538 tonnes of a chemical solvent called thiodiglycol, or TDG, which is used in the textile industry and is also the main ingredient in the manufacture of mustard gas.

The Dutch say they have information indicating that Mr Van Anraat supplied more chemicals than the Americans suspect.

JUST IN CASE ANYONE BOUBTED THE NEW DEMOCRATS ARE DEAD...:

Ex-Clinton Aide Ickes Backs Dean for DNC (WILL LESTER, 1/28/05, Associated Press)

Harold Ickes, a leading Democratic activist and former aide to President Clinton, said Friday he is backing Howard Dean to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee — giving a powerful boost to the front-runner.

"I think all the candidates who are running have strong attributes, but Dean has more of the attributes than the others," said Ickes, who considered running for chairman himself before dropping out in early January. "Many people say Howard Dean is a northeastern liberal, he is progressive, but his tenure as governor of Vermont was that of a real moderate."

Ickes, who is chairman of the political action committee of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said the endorsement was his alone and "does not reflect Sen. Clinton's opinion."

While Ickes would not comment on the Clintons' preferences, he is a close ally and would not be endorsing Dean against their strong objections.

MORE:
Ancient Woes Resurfacing As Dean Eyes Top Dem Post (E.J. KESSLER, January 28, 2005, The Forward)

One of Dean's top backers, as he was during the primary, is Steve Grossman, a former DNC chairman who also once served as president of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Grossman waved away the criticism of Dean, saying it was reminiscent of the barbs lobbed at the late Ron Brown when he ran for DNC chairman in 1988. "Party chairs do not make foreign policy," Grossman said, adding that Dean nonetheless favors a "robust" one.

Grossman said that Dean "recognizes he misspoke himself on several occasions" and regretted those statements. In the end, however, Dean "does not want to lose nor does he expect to lose the overwhelming support of the Jewish community" and would spend time rebuilding that relationship.

Even as Dean's critics hammer him for his past statements, his backers cite his rhetoric as being one of the doctor's main draws.

"It seems to me that Governor Dean combines in exactly the correct proportions the rhetorical and inspirational and visionary qualities required by a political party in need of direction with the sound and sensible practical skills that he exhibited for many years as a successful governor," Dean adviser Jim Jordan wrote in an e-mail. "He can reform us and transform us and lead while building on the good practical institution-building work done over the past few years by [current DNC Chairman Terry] McAuliffe."

Dean's image problems are broader than his problems with the pro-Israel community. According to a survey cited last week by The Wall Street Journal, only 27% of Democrats view the Vermonter positively, down from 48% a year ago.

YOU DON'T SUPPOSE...:

Furnace creates instant fossils (Geoff Brumfiel, 1/28/05, Nature)

A group of US researchers have petrified wood in record time, compressing a process that normally takes eons into a matter of days.

NEARLY MAKES UP FOR DITCHING BOOKNOTES:

C-SPAN Special Alert!: This Sunday: President Bush on Q&A

Plan to watch the C-SPAN networks this Sunday night for two special interviews. First, this Sunday's Q&A at 8 & 11 pm ET on C-SPAN features an exclusive half-hour interview with President George W. Bush taped on Thursday afternoon at the White House. Immediately following the interview, presidential historians Doug Brinkley, the director of the Eisenhower Center, and Richard Norton Smith, the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, offer their perspectives on what the president has to say.

WHAT BS STANDS FOR

Ethnic Warfare: A bitchy academic fight within SFSU's College of Ethnic Studies puts the future of the program in question (Tommy Craggs, sfweekly.com, 1/26/05)

The story of San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies, the first and still the only program of its kind, is a sort of shadow history of America's latter half-century. In it you'll find all the familiar blips of the past 40 years. There is student radicalism and campus rebellion; there is hopped-up idealism, followed closely by compromise and a struggle against an encroaching obsolescence. And today, the cold, gray Wednesday after the November election, there is this: the school's recently deposed dean, sitting in a Castro coffee shop, offering a postmodern sociosexual justification for using the word "bitch."

"As a gay man, in the Castro in San Francisco, and camp such as it is, we refer to ourselves in very gendered terms," says Tomás Almaguer, who spent 4 1/2 years as dean before resigning this past fall amid accusations that he created a hostile work environment within the college. "You might notice that my e-mail address is 'tomasa' -- it's a play. Have I ever referred to myself and my friends as bitches? All the time! I've been referred to as Queen Bitch of the Universe! Megabitch! That's one of my identities."

DESIGNING NATURE (via Bryan Francoeur):

Study: Large fires created Australian desert (Reuters, 1/27/05)

Settlers who came to Australia 50,000 years ago and set fires that burned off natural flora and fauna may have triggered a cataclysmic weather change that turned the country's interior into the dry desert it is today, U.S. and Australian researchers said on Tuesday.

Their study, reported in the latest issue of the journal, Geology, supports arguments that early settlers literally changed the landscape of the continent with fire.

"The implications are that the burning practices of early humans may have changed the climate of the Australian continent by weakening the penetration of monsoon moisture into the interior," Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who led the study, said in a statement. [...]

People are also blamed for killing off 85 percent of Australia's huge animals, including an ostrich-sized bird, 19 species of marsupials, a 25-foot-long (7.5-meter) lizard and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise.

Some experts have suggested climate change caused by burning killed off these species, rather than direct hunting by human.

MAJORITY RULES:

Cato/Zogby poll: Majority backs individual accounts for Social Security (Cato.org, 1/28/05)

A majority of Americans agree that younger workers should be allowed to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in individual accounts, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Cato Institute.

Despite a drumbeat of criticism for weeks by congressional Democrats and a concerted public relations campaign by powerful interest groups such as the AARP against Social Security choice, 51 percent of those polled by Zogby support the introduction of individual accounts. Only 39 percent opposed individual accounts being part of any Social Security reform.

Not surprisingly, the results showed a split along age lines, with younger voters (61 percent among those under 30, 58 percent of those under 50) strongly in favor of individual accounts, while those over 65 were opposed (55 percent against). However, opposition by seniors dropped to just 45 percent if they were assured that their own benefits would not be affected.

Reflecting the sharp partisan divide nationally, opinion of individual accounts also split along political lines. Republicans were overwhelmingly united behind the reform proposal, which is a priority of President Bush's second-term agenda (74 percent supporting, 14 percent opposed). Most Democrats remain opposed with 61 percent saying they are against individual accounts. However, a surprisingly strong minority among Democrats (more than 30 percent) favor individual accounts.

Independents polled leaned toward individual accounts, 45 percent to 40 percent, with a high proportion of undecided.

CANADA: BASTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS

A self-made man is master of his domain (Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail, January 28th, 2005)

A man's home is his castle -- even if he accidentally turns it into a neighbourhood peep show.

A Supreme Court of Canada ruling yesterday found that a Nanaimo, B.C., man was wrongly convicted of committing an indecent act in 2000, after he was spotted masturbating near his living room window.

The accused, Daryl Milland Clark, was reported to police after a neighbouring couple furtively observed him through binoculars for 10 to 15 minutes, then called police.

"This is an important case from the perspective of defining a public place," Mr. Clark's lawyer, Gil McKinnon, said in an interview.

"People can be comforted to know that a law-abiding citizen who does some kind of act in privacy -- without knowledge he is being observed by someone outside -- is not at risk of being prosecuted," Mr. McKinnon said.

Unfortunately, exoneration came too late for the married, retired defendant. Mr. Clark has already served a four-month jail sentence and seen his name etched into law books forever. [...]

The complainants, a couple who lived next door to Mr. Clark, told police they were worried for the welfare of their two daughters when they spotted Mr. Clark masturbating about 40 metres away, across their contiguous back yards.

Retreating to their darkened bedroom to get a better look, they peered through a chink in the blinds. One of them -- identified only as Mr. S. -- even fetched binoculars and a telescope.

"He also tried, unsuccessfully, to videotape the appellant in action," Mr. Justice Morris Fish noted, writing for a 9-0 majority.

As much as we rejoice at seeing Locke and Hayek vindicated, one does wonder how many idiots it took to turn this sordid little story into a Supreme Court case.

THE FRAIL IS THE FRANCHISE:

In 'Spaces' Makeover, It's Curtains for Paige (Hank Stuever, January 28, 2005, Washington Post)

To think of all the many around-the-house tasks, circa 2002, that we managed to put off, thanks largely to the irresistible, superhuman chipperness of Paige Davis. (Used to be, oh, look, "Trading Spaces" is on. No, not just on -- a "Trading Spaces" marathon. Put down the car keys, blow off Home Depot and kiss an entire Sunday goodbye.)

Two days! Two neighbors! A thousand dollars! All guided by the perky antics of gamin Paige. Clutching your hand, giggling with that gawky, high-strung girliness of hers, giving you the all-clear: Open your eyes, and look at your room!

Surprise! TLC, the Silver Spring-based network that converted America into a nation of attention-deficit-decorators, announced earlier this week that Paige Davis, the host of "Trading Spaces," has been let go.

Like a harbinger of yesterday's swift resignation of TLC's general manager and layoffs at parent company Discovery, Paige was canned on Monday. Fired, dumped, shown the door: "TLC is taking 'Trading Spaces' in a new creative direction, transitioning to a 'host-less' format this spring," the network explained in a press statement.

CAN YOU SPELL "IGNORAMUS?" (via Kevin Whited):

School district cancels spelling bee (RONALD R. BLAIS, 1/27/05, The Call)

The Lincoln district has decided to eliminate this year’s spelling bee -- a competition involving pupils in grades 4 through 8, with each school district winner advancing to the state competition and a chance to proceed to the national spelling bee in Washington, D.C.

Through the years, it had become a tradition for Adams to pronounce and define spelling words used in the bee.

"It was just fun," she said last Monday from her office at the television studio.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Newman said the decision to scuttle the event was reached shortly after the January 2004 bee in a unanimous decision by herself and the district’s elementary school principals.

The administrators decided to eliminate the spelling bee, because they feel it runs afoul of the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"No Child Left Behind says all kids must reach high standards," Newman said. "It’s our responsibility to find as many ways as possible to accomplish this."

The administrators agreed, Newman said, that a spelling bee doesn’t meet the criteria of all children reaching high standards -- because there can only be one winner, leaving all other students behind. "

180 MILLION FASCISTICS CAN'T BE WRONG:

God and guns: Bush’s inauguration speech was a declaration of holy war (Boston Phoenix)

As we already know from bitter experience, Bush’s idea of supporting freedom and democracy is increasingly close to fascistic. His ideology is a combination of two strains: the small-town Republicanism he absorbed growing up in Midland, Texas, and the born-again Christianity he embraced when he turned 40. Bush’s entire world-view appears to have been shaped by these two experiences — as well as colored by a petulant sense of entitlement derived from membership in the imperial Bush family — and he has devoted much of his presidency to imposing that view on others. His narrow vision, combined with his overweening hubris, calls to mind the ludicrous words of Nebraska senator Kenneth Wherry, who in 1940 said, " With God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City. " Fallujah is not like Midland yet, but Bush intends to keep trying.

Critics who possess the maturity and wisdom that Bush lacks were quick to point out the dangers of Bush’s desire to force democracy upon the world.

OOPS, NOW THEY'LL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE:

Hamas Wins Local Palestinian Elections in Gaza (Sonja Pace, 28 January 2005, VOA News)

Hamas was expected to do well, since it has broad popular support in Gaza. But Palestinian political pollster Professor Nader Sa'id of Birzeit University says the outcome also reflects a strong protest vote against the mainstream Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas.

"At the same time, it's a protest against the political situation, where nothing on the ground is actually changing," he said. "All of that with the economic situation, where you have about 80 percent poverty rate - so you are expecting that people will vote against the status quo."

Many Palestinians see in Hamas an alternative to the often corruption-riddled political establishment. While Israel and the United States have labeled it a terrorist organization, many Palestinians also rely on Hamas for its welfare programs, schools and clinics.

Until recently, the radical Islamic group refused to take part in the political process. But Professor Sa'id says that has now changed.

"Hamas has accepted to be part of the political system - to play within the rules of the game," he said.

Professor Sa'id says the move is significant, since Hamas can no longer play the role of outsider, and will, instead, have to answer to an electorate. That, he says, could make the group more politically moderate.

BY THE VALUES THEY HONOR:

Passionate Christians Perceive Bias in Academy Award Nominations (Andrea James, 1/26/05, Religion News Service)

Conservative Christian groups are outraged, but not surprised, that the box-office hit "The Passion of the Christ" didn't receive an Academy Award nomination for best picture or best director. [...]

"There's no question that bigotry and prejudice is rank among the liberal elite of Hollywood," said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, founder of the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition. "Why would they want to recognize the `ancient of days,' Jesus Christ, unless they want to bow their knee to him?

"They would prefer to be those silent ones in the crowd, that don't yell crucify, but turned their eyes away from the reality of his crucifixion."

The Oscar noms are out, affirming once again just how very, very sick America’s storytellers have become. Many people are dismissive of the culture’s storytellers, but that is short-sighted. A country with sick storytellers dreams sick dreams, or doesn’t dream at all. Both are societal suicide. [...]

So, this year, the top Oscar nominations have gone to...

...a movie that makes a hero out of a man who murders his adopted daughter.

...a movie that makes a hero out of an abortionist.

...a movie that makes a hero out of a discredited researcher who was obsessed with sex and encouraged many others to experiment with various perversions.

...a movie that lionizes a billionaire narcissist who slept with scores of women--including at least one 15-year-old--and died an insane syphilitic.

...a movie that suggests it is funny when an engaged man sets off with his drunkard best friend for a week of debauchery before his marriage.

...a movie that glamorizes four alley cats dressed as beautiful people who fornicate and commit adultery with each other, and indulge in various sexual perversions until the movie ends.

...a movie that makes a hero out of a paraplegic in despair who wants to kill himself.

The truth is, secular Hollywood had next to nuthin' this year. Really. Except for Finding Neverland and the kids movie Incredibles, they got nuthin' this year to give an award to. Nuthin' that people will be watching in five years, nevermind in fifty.

BYPASS SURGERY:

Black Evangelicals: Bush's New Trump Card (Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jan 26, 2005,
Pacific News Service)

In the right place and under the right circumstance, black evangelicals posed a stealth danger to Democrats. As it turned out, the right place for Bush was Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida. These were must-win swing states, and Bush won them with a considerably higher percent of the black vote than he got in 2000. In Ohio, the gay marriage ban helped bump up the black vote for Bush by seven percentage points, to 16 percent. In Florida and Wisconsin, Republicans aggressively courted and wooed key black religious leaders. They dumped big bucks from Bush's Faith-Based Initiative program into church-run education and youth programs. Black church leaders not only endorsed Bush, but in some cases they actively worked for his re-election, and encouraged members of their congregations to do the same.

The helpful nudge over the top that the black evangelicals gave Bush in Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin has not been lost on Bush's political architect Karl Rove. He has publicly declared that he will pour even more resources and attention into revving up black evangelicals in the 2006 and 2008 congressional and presidential elections. Rove has flatly said that Bush will try to pay off one of his debts to evangelicals by pushing the languishing federal gay-marriage ban. Family groups say they'll dump gay-marriage ban initiatives on ballots in as many states as they can.

Republicans will inflame black's anti-gay bias in states such as Michigan, where blacks, who make up a significant percent of voters, backed a gay marriage ban in big numbers. Even if passage of the federal marriage ban ultimately falls flat on its face should it get out of Congress to the states, the fight over it can still turn the 2006 mid-term and 2008 presidential elections into a noisy and distracting referendum on the family. That will give Republican strategists another chance to pose as God's defenders of the family and shove even more black evangelicals into the Republican vote column.

Meanwhile, Bush officials will continue to ladle out millions through their faith-based programs to a handpicked core of top black church leaders. They've already announced a series of conferences that will be held in various cities starting in February to show black church leaders and community groups how to grab more of the faith initiative money. That will be more than enough to assure the active allegiance -- or at minimum, the silence -- of some black church leaders on those Bush domestic policies that wreak havoc on poor black communities.

Bush and the Republicans bank that their strategy of bypassing black Democrats and civil rights leaders to make deals with black evangelicals will finally break the decades-long stranglehold Democrats have had on the black vote. If they're right, it will spell deep peril for the Democrats in future elections.

MISSING THE OBVIOUS QUESTION:

Why insurgents may be the winners (Ehsan Ahrari , 1/29/05, Asia Times)

Today's Iraq has become a place where all the major actors have some advantages, yet those advantages encounter serious limitations and require cooperation from one or more major actors. In the absence of such cooperation, one or more main actors are likely to falter. To be specific, the Shi'ites, the Kurds, the US and the Sunnis enjoy discernible, though limited, advantages. Shi'ites have a numerical majority, yet they must have the US-backed elections in order to become a dominant force. The Kurds have a comparatively lesser advantage, but the US eagerly seeks their support. The Kurds, in turn, are dependent on US support and on the willingness of the Shi'ites not to undermine the Kurdish advantage after the elections. If that were to happen, the Kurds would retaliate by starting a campaign to reject the March 2004 constitution. The Sunnis, seemingly the biggest losers, are on the sidelines, either willing to boycott the elections or afraid to participate because of insurgent threats. Still, they are expected to be given a minority role in the government. After their dominant status of the Saddam era, they don't expect to emerge as a major player, unless the Shi'ites and the Kurds were to become embroiled in a protracted conflict.

The insurgents, on the other hand, are emerging as potentially the most advantaged party, since they have everything to gain if all other parties lose their respective advantages.

LOSING THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC OPTION:

Gay couples drop marriage act challenges in federal court (Orlando Sun-Sentinel, January 26, 2005)

Three gay couples dropped their lawsuits Tuesday in Tampa federal court challenging the national Defense of Marriage Act, a move that will soon by followed by other couples who have filed similar state court actions in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Attorney Ellis Rubin announced Tuesday he will drop all of the lawsuits he has filed challenging the state and federal bans on gay marriages, saying he doesn't want to risk having conservative federal judges set an adverse legal precedent for same-sex couples. Rubin filed the first lawsuit in Broward County with much fanfare in February, then crisscrossed Florida filing similar challenges in state and federal courts.

"I'm going to back off and let the gay rights organizations take over and try to mold public opinion," he said. "That's what it is going to take for the court to recognize same-sex marriages."

Rubin said key in his decision was the U.S. Supreme Court's recent refusal to hear a challenge to the Florida law that bans gays from adopting children.

"That ruling strongly suggests that our case would not be favorably received," Rubin said.

REMEMBRANCE

Katsav at Auschwitz: Mind won't grasp (David Horowitz, Jerusalem Post, January 28th, 2005)

President Moshe Katsav delivered his address at the ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auchwtiz-Birkenau Thursday in Poland. [...]

Earlier, Katsav delivered a blistering attack on the failure of the Allied forces to bomb Auschwitz and the railroad leading to it in the final months of WWII, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives could still have been saved.

Speaking at a ceremony in Krakow's main theater shortly before traveling to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Katsav said, "sixty years later we still find it hard to believe that the world stood silent" as the killing went on. "The allies did not do enough to stop the Holocaust," he said, "To stop the destruction of Jewish people. The gates of countries around the world, the gates to Israel, were kept closed in the face of those who tried to escape."

"The Allies knew about the destruction of the Jews and didn't act to stop it," the president said. "Hundreds of thousands could have been saved." Katsav noted that air sorties passed next to Auschwitz-Birkenau, "but Auschwitz was not bombed bombing the railways would have prevented the destruction of the Jews. The Germans knew that they were going to lose, but they continued, even accelerated, the destruction of the Jews,' Katsav said, and the Allies did not stop them.

For about fifteen years after World War II, there was little public attention given to the Holocaust, even in Israel, where it was widely seen as a dark and even embarrassing counterpoint to the self-confident, forward-looking enthusiasm needed to build the country. But beginning with the Eichmann trial in 1960, the world slowly began to focus its historical gaze and started to try to speak of the unspeakable and explain the inexplicable. Over the last forty years innumerable scholarly and popular analyses have led to a plethora of accusations, political and historical controversies, testimonials, museums and memorials, academic disciplines, curriculum revisions, compensation claims and ever-widening circles of collective guilt for what has become the lodestone of evil incarnate.

We are now at the point where the actual victims and perpetrators will soon all be gone. The Holocaust is slowly passing from the realm of history to the realm of myth. In the popular, non-Jewish mind, the millions of individual stories with all their dramas, tears, terrors, heroism, cowardice, hopes, despairs and moral ambiguities are being subsumed by sharp and simplistic divisions of the world into good and bad collectivities, with the latter steadily outnumbering the former. We say that “Holland” was bad and “Bulgaria” good because most of us really don’t know anything about what actual Bulgarians and Dutch did or why, and so we just check the numbers. So searingly execrable is the story that we now routinely judge pre-Holocaust history on the basis of post-Holocaust knowledge and values, and have convinced ourselves that anyone with half a brain could have seen it all coming.

The notion of collective responsibility for the Holocaust has also changed the rules of international politics in ways that are troubling. The whole abstract concept of human rights that so dominates international discourse is a Holocaust-born disconnect between human slaughter and individual responsibility. UN-led peacekeeping and the sanction-loving ethos of the tranzis are based largely on the notion that atrocities can be prevented without displacing the atrocious governments that perpetrate them, which is why the left is comfortable believing that both Saddam’s crimes and Saddam’s ouster were evil. We stand in awe of the courageous Danes who saved their Jews and disdain the Poles, who did not. That the Danes did almost nothing to resist the Nazis while the Poles killed Germans a-plenty (and were killed a-plenty for it) does not interest us much because our post-Holocaust concept of the hero is no longer the man who resists the oppressive invader. That’s just politics and one government is much like another. The modern hero is the man who cares nothing for creed and country and seeks only to save the poor and innocent bystander.

The Holocaust has become a kind of secular Golgotha. To deny responsibility, or even demur in the face of rhetorical charges like President Katsav’s, is as unseemly and suspect as a Christian asserting he is sin free. We listen to these accusations respectfully and somberly because, even though they are very bad history, we sense we are in the realm of myth, that there are connections to us we can feel if not see and that we may somehow risk our souls and humanity if we disassociate ourselves completely from them. One hopes that the President would not level this charge to the face of an Allied veteran. He undoubtedly wouldn’t, for Holocaust dialogue operates on the general understanding that, while institutions and nations bear a crushing guilt that grows in both scope and intensity, the only individuals who do are the ones who actually did it–the same ones the world recognized in 1945.

May the Lord give special care to the souls of the victims and may He one day reveal the meaning and purpose of it all.

WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE 4 GOALS WERE SCORED? (via Travelling Shoes):

Claim: Football team wins match by scoring against itself. (Snopes.com, 23 June 2000)

Status: True. [...]

Origins: This anecdote is largely true as reported above, save for a few minor discrepancies.

The incident took place during a final group match between Barbados and Grenada for the Shell Caribbean Cup in Goal!February 1994. The Barbados team had to win the match by at least two goals in order to face Trinidad and Tobago in the finals; anything less and Grenada advanced to the next round instead. The rules in effect at the time specified that if the score were tied at the end of regulation play, the match would continue into sudden-death overtime (not a penalty kicks round, as stated above), and the first team to score during the overtime period would be considered a two-goal winner.

As detailed above, Barbados was leading 2-0 well into the second half of play, when Grenada finally managed to score a goal in the 83rd minute to make the score 2-1. Barbados realized with three minutes to play that they were unlikely to score again in the time remaining and deliberately kicked the ball into their own goal to tie the match at 2-2 and force an overtime period. Grenada then attempted to score on their own goal to prevent the match from going into overtime, but Barbados had already started defending Grenada's goal to prevent them from succeeding. The two teams then spent the remaining few minutes with Barbados defending both ends of the field as Grenada tried to put the ball into either goal, but time expired with the score still tied. Four minutes into overtime play, Barbados scored and advanced to the finals.

NOT THE FRANCO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO PHILE:

The dictator, the saint and the minister (Andy Beckett, January 28, 2005, The Guardian)

Just over half a century ago in Spain, a new kind of politician began to appear. As government ministers, they were young, energetic and highly competent. They were confident without being overbearing. And they seemed relatively free of fixed political ideas, except for a general desire to turn their old country into a modern, business-driven one.

During the 50s and 60s they opened up its economy to foreign trade and its poor southern coastline to lucrative tourism. They made themselves potential role models - complete with a suggestive group name used by some of their associates: the"third force" - for future generations of reforming European politicians.

Yet two things about the Spanish modernisers have hindered their reputation since. First, they did their work as part of the dictatorship of General Franco. Second, many of them were members of a new, highly conservative and highly controversial Roman Catholic movement: Opus Dei.

Since 1997, Ruth Kelly has been a similar modernising presence in British politics. As a Labour MP, Treasury minister, and now education secretary at the precocious age of 36, she has been busy, effective and - working closely with both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - seemingly undogmatic. But being a British social democrat is rather different from being one of Franco's lieutenants. And so the revelation over the past five weeks, via a series of distinctly grudging admissions, that Kelly is also "in contact" (the organisation's words) with Opus Dei, and (in her words) receiving "spiritual support" from them, has been one of the stranger political shocks of recent British history.

MORE:
Ruth Kelly, Myth-Breaker (George Weigel, January 12, 2005, The Catholic Difference)

GRANDPA BROKE IT, YOU OWN IT:

Bush Advisers OK Social Security Plan (LAURA MECKLER, 1/28/05, Associated Press)

President Bush's advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security, while on Capitol Hill Senate Democrats were launching an effort to defeat the plan altogether.

Under a plan recommended to Bush, the private accounts would resemble many company-sponsored retirement plans, with just a handful of investment options.

By default, workers would be enrolled in a "life cycle" account, in which investments become more conservative as investors age, if they do not choose one of the other options, according to two officials speaking on condition of anonymity. [...]

In devising a structure for the private accounts, the Bush administration is modeling its proposal after the Thrift Savings Plan, a tax-deferred retirement investment plan similar to a 401(k). The idea is to minimize risk for people at the outset by offering as few as three to five diversified investment funds.

Bush said in December that his plan would make sure people could not invest "in a frivolous fashion."

Under the Thrift Savings Plan, federal workers have five investment options, including government and corporate bond funds, a stock fund that tracks the S&P 500, an international fund and other stock funds.

Under the emerging Bush plan for Social Security, the default investment would be a "life cycle" account. It would begin with investments that have greater potential for both risk and reward and shift to safer bonds as a worker ages, officials in and outside the administration said.

The government would be responsible for keeping track of how much money is in each worker's account and give the lump sums to a financial services company to invest, a mechanism aimed at keeping administrative fees low, they said.

That would mean only a limited profit potential for Wall Street. More money might be available for industry if a second tier of investments were permitted. Under this model, once a worker's account reached a certain level, he or she could choose from a broader range of investment options. Any number of mutual funds could be approved for investment at this stage.

WHAT OTHER EU NATION'S FRIENDSHIP IS WORTH HAVING?:

Poland, America's last friend (Sebastian Christ, Jan. 27, 2005, UPI)

There are basically three reasons why Poland views the United States positively.

First, America is freedom. The United States was the first country in the world with a modern constitution. Very few Americans know that Poland was the second. Inspired by the United States, the Polish Parliament, or "Sejm," in 1791 passed a progressive constitution.

The Poles also like to think in historical terms. America is the only power that (almost) never had any conflicts with Poland. The Polish people gratefully remember President Woodrow Wilson, who in 1918 became the first Western politician to support plans for the recreation of the Polish state -- a state that had disappeared from the map in 1795. Wilson's support proved key to the success of the Polish national movement.

During the Cold War, the Polish people never accepted the Soviet occupation, and of all the Warsaw Pact countries, Poland always displayed the most antipathy towards Moscow. Within a decade of the fall of the Soviet Union, the country joined NATO in 1999 and made it into the European Union in May 2004.

America, however, was seen as the foremost natural ally in resisting the Soviet occupation, and was looked to as "the land of the free."

To this day, President Ronald Reagan remains a popular figure in Poland due to his support of the free Polish labor union, Solidarity, in the early 1980s. The rise of Solidarity and its charismatic leader Lech Walesa marked the fall of Poland's communists.

The word "freedom" in Poland still has a stronger meaning than in the rest of the European Union. [...]

Second, Bush's Christian beliefs in Poland -- where 95 percent of the population is Catholic -- are taken very seriously. Two-thirds of Poles attend church regularly. [...]

Third, Poles long for the United States. America, in Poland, still sounds like the Promised Land. A large number of Poles live in poverty. A doctor's average income is about $400 per month. Public school teachers earn roughly the same. For most families, a car is a luxury item. Millions of Poles have relatives or friends who immigrated to the United States. The government in Warsaw estimates that 60 million American citizens have Polish roots, another reason for strengthened ties between the two countries. Given that the situation in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia may even be worse, Poland has turned to the West, instead of where it historically belongs, in Central Europe.

FEBRILE CRESCENT:

Voting fever takes hold of a people finally free to choose (Richard Beeston, 1/28/05, Times of London)

FOR decades, voting in Iraq meant taking part in a national exercise of state-enforced adulation, as 99 per cent of the electorate would dutifully turn out to tick the box beside the name Saddam Hussein.

Yesterday the contrast could not have been starker, as the campaign for Sunday’s elections picked up pace and voters were presented with a dizzying selection of dozens of candidates and parties.

Notwithstanding insurgent terror aimed at wrecking the polls, there is finally a palpable sense in Baghdad, and other Iraqi cities, that the country is entering a new era.

MORE:
Iraq Votes 2005 (Radio Free Europe)

Iraqi polls open — in Sydney (The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers, 1/28/05)

Iraqi expatriates began casting ballots in Sydney, several jostling to be among the first to vote in Iraq's first independent elections in more than 50 years.

Amid tight security at a converted furniture warehouse, young children mingled with elderly Kurdish women in head-to-toe black robes.

"This is a long dream that now comes true," said 56-year-old Karim Jari before casting his vote. "We hope this is a new beginning."

Australia is one of 14 nations where Iraqis living outside their country can vote — and the first country in the world to begin collecting ballots because of its time zone. In Iraq, the vote is Sunday; elsewhere, it runs today through Sunday.

Polls in Iraq open at 7 a.m. Iraq time (8 p.m. Saturday PST).

PRETTY SIMILAR:

Digging Into Seymour Hersh: You don't have to scratch too deeply to find an enormous reservoir of left-wing bias. (Max Boot, January 27, 2005, LA Times)

It has become a cliche to call Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh the greatest investigative reporters of their generation — Woodward the consummate insider, Hersh the ultimate outsider. In truth the differences outweigh the similarities.

Though he achieved fame by bringing down a Republican administration, Woodward is no ideologue. His only bias, as far as I can tell, is in favor of his sources. Within those parameters he produces invaluable, if incomplete, accounts of government deliberations.

Hersh, on the other hand, is the journalistic equivalent of Oliver Stone: a hard-left zealot who subscribes to the old counterculture conceit that a deep, dark conspiracy is running the U.S. government. In the 1960s the boogeyman was the "military- industrial complex." Now it's the "neoconservatives." "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military!" Hersh ranted at UC Berkeley on Oct. 8, 2004.

Hersh doesn't make any bones about his bias. "Bush scares the hell out of me," he said. He told a group in Washington, "I'm a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House," who are "nuts" and "ideologues." In another speech he called Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft "demented." Hersh has also compared what happened at Abu Ghraib with Nazi Germany. (Were American MPs gassing inmates?) He has claimed that since 2001 a "secret unit" of the U.S. government "has been disappearing people just like the Brazilians and Argentinians did." And in his lectures he has spread the legend of how a U.S. Army platoon was supposedly ordered to execute 30 Iraqis guarding a granary.

Hersh hasn't printed the execution story, which suggests it may not meet even his relaxed reportorial standards, but what he does run is a confusing farrago of fact and fiction.

MORE:
We've Been Taken Over By a Cult: Editors' Note: This is a transcript of remarks by Seymour Hersh at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. (Seymour Hersh, CounterPunch)

JUST WAIT'LL THEY FIND OUT ABOUT IT:

One third of EU citizens unaware of European Constitution (Honor Mahony, 1/28/05, EU Observer)

With several member states beginning the long path to ratification of the European Constitution, a new poll has shown that a high percentage of EU citizens feel they know little about its content and a third are completely unaware of the document.

A eurobarometer poll due to be published next week, and obtained by the EUobserver, says that just 11 percent of EU citizens have heard of the Constitution and feel they know its contents. [...]

The UK, which many feel may reject the Constitution in its planned referendum next year, has among the most extreme results.

At 30%, it has the most people against the Constitution; while, at 20%, the least in favour of the document.

"TRUST" SEEMS A MISNOMER:

Judge to rule in sick baby case: The parents of Charlotte Wyatt are returning to the high court today to fight for their seriously ill premature baby's right to be
resuscitated. (The Guardian, January 28, 2005)

Darren and Debbie Wyatt say that Charlotte has shown signs of improvement since the order was issued and that she should undergo further treatment. Doctors expected Charlotte to die from a respiratory infection this winter.

The Wyatts have been in conflict with Charlotte's doctors over her treatment since late last year. Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust was forced to seek a court ruling after her parents contested its plans for Charlotte's treatment.

The couple also contested the trust's claim at the court hearing that Charlotte felt nothing but pain.

LIBYA'S SEIFIOR:

Libya plans to shed old and begin a new era (Thomas Crampton, January 28, 2005 International Herald Tribune)

Libya on Friday will unveil its most sweeping proposals for economic reform in 35 years as part of a new national strategy aimed at ushering the country into the modern economic era, Libyan officials said Thursday.

The multi-pronged initiative would streamline government, speed up privatization and liberalize the media sector in a bid to begin a transition from what remains essentially an authoritarian regime to a more liberal economy that is competitive in the region, Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, son of the country's ruler, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, and Abdulhafid Mahmoud Zlitni, the chairman of Libya's National Planning Council, said Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

A number of Western advisers, including Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School and Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning economist, have agreed to work with Libya in the transition to craft an efficient framework for implementing the changes over the next two years.

"The old times are finished and Libya is ready to move onto the new stage of modernization," Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi said in an interview. "This will be conducted in a well organized manner that ensures new openness and ownership by the people of Libya, not a small class of oligarchs like Russia or Egypt."

"We are determined," he added. "But of course success can only be measured by the implementation."

GIVE THEM ENOUGH ALTERNATIVES TO MAKE A REAL MARKET:

The Left Loses College Kids (Brian C. Anderson, January 28, 2005, LA Times)

"There's a natural and healthy tendency among students to question the piety of their teachers," notes Alan Kors, a University of Pennsylvania history professor.

Katherine Ernst, a recent NYU grad, confirms the point. Ernst already leaned right when she arrived on campus. But the left-wing propagandizing of her professors made her conservatism rock-solid.

"One professor, right after Sept. 11, gave a terrorist-sympathy speech that went, you know: 'Oil, oil, oil, they're poor, we take advantage of them, it's really complicated, blah, blah, blah,' " Ernst says acidly. "How could anybody exposed to this kind of stuff not become a raging right-winger?"

The leftism that so angers these students includes the "hey ho, Western civ has got to go" theories that inform college courses from coast to coast. A student, conservative or otherwise, who doesn't buy into the West-is-the-worst line can "have an awful time of it," Harvard junior Jordan Hyldenn says.

Some conservative students keep their real views to themselves and parrot the "correct" line, fearing that otherwise they'll get a low grade. One earnest Princeton freshman, for instance, had to write a paper on same-sex marriage, which he opposes, for a constitutional law course taught by a pro-gay-marriage professor. "I radically altered my position to make it more in line with what my professor's beliefs are," he says.

An American Council of Trustees and Alumni survey finds that half of all students — not just conservatives — at the top 50 colleges say profs frequently inject their political views into courses, and almost one-third think they have to agree with those views to get a good grade.

JUST ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL REGIME CHANGE:

Haitians embrace U.N. force: U.N. peacekeepers entered the volatile Bel Air slum in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, to remove trash and provide food and medical aid, a move the populace greeted with joy. (JOE MOZINGO, 1/28/05, Miami Herald)

The U.N. peacekeepers secured the slum block by block, house by house. Sharpshooters scanned alleys from high rooftops. Tractors filled ditches and cleared away burned-up car chassis that had been used as barricades to keep out authorities.

Until Thursday, this part of the Bel Air neighborhood near the presidential palace in downtown Port-au-Prince was a no-go zone -- a twisting warren of bloodshed dominated by armed gangs loyal to ousted President JeanBertrand Aristide.

But the 700 U.N. peacekeepers who rolled in before dawn were eagerly greeted by residents happy to be freed -- at least for the day -- from the gang members who constantly terrorize them.

''It's good, it's good, it's good,'' said Jocelyn Timouche, 25, selling shoes on the sidewalk. Twenty feet away, a U.N. tractor scooped up mounds of sulfurous mud and trash, piled head-high. ``We couldn't even eat, it smelled so bad.''

More than anything, the warm welcome reflected some residents' growing dissatisfaction with the ''rats,'' as the young thugs are called. [...]

The fact that nobody opened fire on the peacekeepers was a welcome sign that they are gradually becoming accepted in even the most pro-Aristide communities. Supporters of Aristide, ousted 11 months ago, have often branded the U.N. troops an occupying force that should leave so that Aristide can return from exile in South Africa.

Led by the Brazilians, the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti now has 6,003 soldiers and 1,400 civilian police officers, and has recently begun more ambitious operations in pro-Aristide holdouts such as Bel Air.

GUTTURAL POLITICS:

Outsider looking in: Howard Dean, Beltway-basher, aims to head the Democratic Party. Go figure. (Mark Z. Barabak, Jan 28 2005, LA Times)

Another hotel ballroom and, again, Howard Dean is at center stage.

The audience, hundreds strong, is rapturous, worshipful, hanging on every word like a life line tossed from the slightly elevated platform. Dean, who is running to become chairman of the national Democratic Party, speaks to the put-upon sentiment of every Californian in the crowd, promising to treat the state as more than a dispensary of cash to spend someplace else.

But that's not all. Democrats have to run to win in all 50 states, Dean continues, venturing into red-voting redoubts like Alabama, and Mississippi and Montana. His voice rises as Dean ticks off the states, and the crowd begins to clap, then cheer, then roar as it hits them. "AND MICHIGAN!"

Dean shouts, his voice suddenly turning to the shrieking, guttural growl that launched a thousand parodies. "AND SOUTH DAKOTA!"

The crowd is going wild and Dean is laughing right along, his eyes crinkled and his smile wide enough to show the crowns all the way in back. Finally, after nearly 30 seconds, the din begins to die and Dean ends his mock rant with a limp "yahoo," delivered deadpan, as if to say, "OK, is this better?"

Dean can laugh these days.

PURITAN WORKPLACE:

Costs Make Employers See Smokers as a Drag (Daniel Costello, January 28, 2005, LA Times)

Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick.

Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.

"Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers," says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in Birmingham, Ala.

Word of the Day (Dictionary.com, January 28, 2005)

bete noire \bet-NWAHR\, noun:

Something or someone particularly detested or avoided; a
bugbear.

JOHN'S SON, PETE'S DISCIPLE:

Pops's Pride Is Hard to Hide (Thomas Boswell, January 28, 2005, Washington Post)

The elder John Thompson, the one they just call "Pops" at Georgetown, tries to hide as much as he can these days.

During the Hoyas' home games, the Hall of Fame coach hides in the highest suite seats of MCI Center. He sits alone, listening to play-by-play on the radio as he watches his son, John III, coach his former team. He knows the only "John" on the Hilltop now is his 38-year-old son. So, he tries to make his famous 6-foot-10 frame disappear in the most remote arena seat.

"I sit in the rooftop in the dark, nobody anywhere near me," Thompson said yesterday, breaking silence for one of the few times since his son became coach last April. "During the game, I talk to myself. I talk to John as if he were sitting there next to me. I curse the air. I listen to Rich [Chvotkin] on the radio. I curse him, too. I don't even realize I can just switch the radio off."

As this surprising January has unfolded, Thompson has had to hide not only his huge physical and symbolic presence at Georgetown, but also his swelling pride in what his son is accomplishing with a team that lost 15 of its last 18 games last season and was picked by Big East coaches to finish 11th in the league this season.

"Anybody who says they predicted before the season that Georgetown would do this is lying," Thompson said of the 13-5 Hoyas. "They've already won more games than I thought they'd win all year. John's a far better coach than I was as this point in my career."

In particular, Georgetown has stunned the Big East with a 5-2 conference record, including a competitive loss to defending national champion Connecticut, an overtime loss to then No. 7 Syracuse, an upset of then 16th-ranked Pittsburgh and amazing wins -- both in the final second -- over Notre Dame (55-54) and Villanova (66-64). [...]

For now, no two teams could look more different than Hoyas of the Thompsons II and III.

Pops tried to create chaos with pressure defense, gladly trading turnovers, fouls and collisions just so the game's tempo would shoot through the roof into a kind of madhouse version of basketball that the other team had never seen, but GU loved.

In contrast, the current Hoyas are more aesthetically pleasing on offense. John III loves back-door cuts, half-court precision and a constant rain of three-point shots from five players who all have permission to shoot from beyond the arc. Princeton, where the younger Thompson played and was an assistant coach under legendary Pete Carril, was famous for its long shooting. GU now launches even more. Bowman and Jeff Green, both 6-8 forwards, as well as Jonathan Wallace and junior Ashanti Cook all light it up.

HUB BIDS KIDS HELLO:

Now is the time to look at future (Gordon Edes, January 28, 2005, Boston Globe)

For the last few days, the Red Sox have given 11 of their top upper-level prospects an immersion course in what it means to be in the big leagues, playing for this team, in this town.

Never mind stashing these guys in a luxury hotel downtown. Director of player development Ben Cherington, who is running this program with Craig Shipley, the former big-leaguer valued by general manager Theo Epstein for his input in both scouting and player development, has these players staying with host families around the Boston area.

"I'm staying with Dr. Kehlman and his family in Newton," volunteered Jon Lester, the lefthanded pitching prospect so highly regarded, the Texas Rangers asked for him last winter as part of the abortive Alex Rodriguez deal. "Great people, but these people are fanatics. They know everything about the Red Sox. We were out to dinner at Morton's, and when Theo and some of his people went running out of the room, they were wondering who had been traded."

There has been baseball in the morning -- daily workouts at Harvard -- but afternoons have been spent on Yawkey Way. They heard from the GM, who is only a few years older than they are, and manager Terry Francona, who delivered the old-fashioned but still relevant message that hustle will take them a long way. Joe Cochran, the equipment manager, and Jack McCormick, the traveling secretary, talked to them about everything from how much to tip the clubhouse kid to how to conduct yourself on the road.

Bob Tewksbury, the former big-league pitcher and NESN analyst just hired as the team's sports psychology coach, talked about how best to develop mental skills, even in the face of a game that dangles success but guarantees disappointment. Eddie Dominguez, the Boston detective who is an integral part of the team's security detail, and a couple of FBI agents warned them about the places and people to avoid, and the dangers of gambling. They also were shepherded on a visit to Jimmy Fund cancer patients, and got an introduction to what that can mean, too.

Last night, Cherington, who loves to lace on the skates and play hockey in his downtime, had lined up Bruins coach Mike Sullivan as a speaker, figuring Sullivan could offer the perspective of someone who had grown up here, played here in college (Boston University), and had coached in the minors and in the NHL. Who better to talk with the players about the high expectations and sometimes impossible demands they would face here, or how to cope with the yo-yoing from the minors to the majors that is so often part of a young player's experience?

There is a common theme that runs through this Sox regime, and ripples from the clubhouse occupied by Curt Schilling and David Ortiz to the much more modest outposts in places such as Sarasota and Portland, Fort Myers and Lowell. Yes, it takes talent to play for the Red Sox, but there are certain other qualities that matter here maybe more than in other places where the spotlights don't shine with quite as much heat. Things like mental toughness and resilience, discipline at the plate and on the mound and in your cubicle, an awareness of how important their performance is to the 35,000 folks who fill Fenway Park night after night.

EITHER IS ACCEPTABLE, NEITHER ISN'T:

The Market Shall Set You Free (ROBERT WRIGHT, 1/28/05, NY Times)

LAST week President Bush again laid out a faith-based view of the world and again took heat for it. Human history, the president said in his inaugural address, "has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty." Accordingly, America will pursue "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" - and Mr. Bush has "complete confidence" of success. Critics on the left and right warned against grounding foreign policy in such naïve optimism (a world without tyrants?) and such unbounded faith.

But the problem with the speech is actually the opposite. Mr. Bush has too little hope, and too little faith. He underestimates the impetus behind freedom and so doesn't see how powerfully it imparts a "visible direction" to history. This lack of faith helps explain some of his biggest foreign policy failures and suggests that there are more to come.

Oddly, the underlying problem is that this Republican president doesn't appreciate free markets. Mr. Bush doesn't see how capitalism helps drive history toward freedom via an algorithm that for all we know is divinely designed and is in any event awesomely elegant. Namely: Capitalism's pre-eminence as a wealth generator means that every tyrant has to either embrace free markets or fall slowly into economic oblivion; but for markets to work, citizens need access to information technology and the freedom to use it - and that means having political power.

This link between economic and political liberty has been extolled by conservative thinkers for centuries, but the microelectronic age has strengthened it. Even China's deftly capitalist-yet-authoritarian government - which embraces technology while blocking Web sites and censoring chat groups - is doomed to fail in the long run. China is increasingly porous to news and ideas, and its high-tech political ferment goes beyond online debates. Last year a government official treated a blue-collar worker high-handedly in a sidewalk encounter and set off a riot - after news of the incident spread by cell phones and text messaging.

You won't hear much about such progress from neoconservatives, who prefer to stress how desperately the global fight for freedom needs American power behind it (and who last week raved about an inaugural speech that vowed to furnish this power). And, to be sure, neoconservatives can rightly point to lots of oppression and brutality in China and elsewhere - as can liberal human-rights activists. But anyone who talks as if Chinese freedom hasn't grown since China went capitalist is evincing a hazy historical memory and, however obliquely, is abetting war. Right-wing hawks thrive on depicting tyranny as a force of nature, when in fact nature is working toward its demise.

END IT, DON'T "MEND" IT:

Congressional Study Notes Ways to Collect Billions More in Taxes (EDMUND L. ANDREWS, 1/28/05, NY Times)

The federal government could increase tax revenues by $311 billion over the next 10 years if it clamped down on hundreds of ways that individuals and corporations elude their obligations, according to a Congressional study issued on Thursday.

The report concludes that the nation's system for taxing overseas profits of American corporations is so flawed that the government would save $55 billion if it simply scrapped the system altogether. [...]

In principle, the United States has a tougher corporate tax system than many other countries have because it uses a "worldwide" approach that imposes taxes on profits of American companies regardless of where those profits are earned. European corporations are subjected to a "territorial" tax system that does not tax profits on foreign operations.

But in practice, the Joint Committee on Taxation said, American corporations almost permanently defer their taxes by keeping money outside the United States in low-tax countries like Ireland or India.

"By maintaining deferral indefinitely, a taxpayer can achieve a result that is economically equivalent to 100 percent exemption of income," the report said, referring to a company's foreign income.

The problem of taxing foreign corporate profits has been the subject of intense political battles for many years. During his campaign to unseat President Bush, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts proposed giving American companies a one-time opportunity to bring their accumulated foreign profits back to the United States at a fraction of the normal corporate tax rate, which is 35 percent. In exchange, he proposed abolishing the practice of letting companies defer their United States taxes in the future.

UGANDA SHALL LEAD THEM:

'Say no until you're ready' is sex health message to children (LOUISE GRAY AND HAMISH MACDONELL, 1/28/05, The Scotsman)

ABSTINENCE was yesterday put at the heart of ministers’ multi-million pound sexual health strategy designed to redress Scotland’s appalling record on teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Andy Kerr, the health minister, told MSPs that abstinence would be the starting point for all sex education lessons in schools but added that contraception services had to be available for everybody, including children, when they started to become sexually active.

Trying to strike a balance between family values campaigners and progressive educationists, the minister stressed that existing sex education guidelines would remain in place.

Mr Kerr said that the new strategy - which he referred to as "abstinence plus" - would provide the framework, not just for sex education in schools but also all sexual health services in the community .

WHERE THERE IS NO CONSCIENCE:

Vice President's Remarks at "Let My People Live" Forum (Dick Cheney, 1/27/05, Juliusz Slowacki Theater, Krakow, Poland)

It is my privilege to join you today as the representative of the people of the United States. I thank the government of Poland, and all of those who have organized these commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz.

On this day in 1945, inside a prison for the innocent, liberators arrived and looked into the faces of thousands near death - while, miles beyond the camp, many thousands more were being led on a death march in the winter cold.

Inside barbed wire, and behind high walls, soldiers found "baths" that were not baths ... and hospitals meant not to heal but to kill ... and the belongings of hundreds of thousands who had vanished.

In the death camps of Europe, men committed some of the greatest wrongs that the human mind can conceive. Yet today these are hallowed places. Auschwitz, said one survivor, is the "largest cemetery in the world, one without gravestones. Only the ashes of countless souls were strewn here."

The camps were also the scene of profound humanity and heroism. From survivors we know some of the stories of brave resistance ... of helpless men, women and children giving comfort to one another in their last terrible moments ... of the righteous, being led to their deaths, affirming to the end their faith in Almighty God.

The Holocaust occupies a single period in history, but it is not a single event. It represents millions of individual acts of murder. Each prisoner who arrived had a name, and a home, and dreams for tomorrow. Each, like you and me, was a child of God who wanted to live ... who had every right to live ... who no man had any right to harm.

Gathered in this place we are reminded that such immense cruelty did not happen in a far-away, uncivilized corner of the world, but rather in the very heart of the civilized world. The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves - some of them well educated, and possessed of refined manners - but without conscience. And where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance toward others ... no defense against evil ... and no limit to the crimes that follow.

The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real, and must be called by its name, and must be confronted. We are reminded that anti-Semitism may begin with words, but rarely stops with words ... and the message of intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror.

President Bush has said of the Holocaust, "There will come a time when the eyewitnesses are gone. That is why we are bound by conscience to remember what happened, and to whom it happened."

At Auschwitz we bear witness to the cruelty, and the suffering, and tragedy of a time that is still within living memory. On this anniversary of liberation, we give thanks for the liberators, and for all who labored to free this continent from tyranny.

We pray that God's mercies are forever with the souls of the departed. And we look to the future with hope - that He may grant us the wisdom to recognize evil in all its forms ... and give us the courage to prevent it from ever rising again.

DOESN'T THIS SLIDE HAVE AN OFF BUTTON? (via Jim Yates):

Unforeseen Consequences?: Stem Cell Debate Branches Out (Chuck Missler, Koinonia House)

Scientists studying degenerative diseases are excited about stem cell research because they hope to implant these baby cells into damaged tissues and spur them to grow into new, healthy cells. Stem cells seem promising because a single cell has the potential to develop into any of 210 different types of human tissue. As in the case of an embryo, one cell divides into many and these cells begin to specialize, forming the different organs and tissues in the developing baby. Adults and children also have stem cells, which respond to a special signal protein produced by damaged cells. These stem cells are rushed to the site and reproduce to repair the damage.

Embryonic cells are not the only source for acquiring stem cells. Stem cells have been harvested from adult bone marrow, fatty tissue, and umbilical cord blood. Stem cell research is still in its earliest stages, and at this point it is believed that adult stem cells are only able to change into a limited number of types of human tissues. For example, tests on mice demonstrate that stem cells from the adult brains of mice can be nurtured into heart, liver and muscle tissues. Other experiments show that umbilical cord blood can be made to grow into brain cells. Researchers believe that because embryonic stem cells are more versatile in their ability to grow into virtually any of the 210 varieties of cells, they offer a greater potential for success.

Because the process of extracting stem cells from embryos results in the destruction of the embryo, pro-life advocates have opposed the procedure, as well as the even more controversial use of aborted fetuses as a stem cell source.6

Although there may be some limitations in the versatility of using the stem cells collected from bone marrow, fatty tissue, and umbilical cord blood, the prospects are good and do not present the type of moral and ethical issues that embryonic research does. Research has only just begun to scratch the surface in this area of science, and it is yet to be seen if the arguments for the superiority of embryonic stem cells will hold up. [...]

The politicians and the scientific community may be overly optimistic about the potential benefits of biotech therapies. A similar debate in the German government prompted one researcher to set the record straight. Oliver Bristle told a German newspaper, "I consider it preposterous to make arguments based on the hopes of patients who are suffering from illnesses in order to get their way politically." He also said that some of the promises of cures were "not serious," and that it would take five to ten years of research to verify the viability of such treatments.

In the area of human cloning, scientists responsible for the successful cloning of the sheep, Dolly, told reporters that the idea of cloning human beings with these same techniques is "dangerous and irresponsible," and the resulting babies likely would die early or suffer numerous abnormalities.

Rudolf Jaenisch and Ian Wilmut said in an article in Science magazine, procedures that have been used in cloning animals yield a very low percentage of viable embryos, and many of these die soon after birth. "Any human baby who survives may experience respiratory, circulatory, immune, kidney and brain abnormalities, and evidence is beginning to suggest other developmental and genetic defects," they said.

Even more disturbing results were reported in The New England Journal of Medicine . A study, aimed at treating Parkinson's disease patients with stem cells, not only failed to produce the desired benefits, but also produced disastrous side effects. In about 15 percent of the patients the implanted stem cell began growing too rapidly, causing the patients to writhe and twist, jerk their heads, and fling their arms about uncontrollably. Dr. Paul E. Greene, a neurologist, describing the patients as follows: "They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend." One of the test subjects was so badly affected that he had to be fed intravenously. Another suffered intermittent attacks of the condition making his speech unintelligible.

Tragically, there was no way to undo the procedure since the stem cells could not be removed. Dr. Greene lamented, "It was tragic, catastrophic. It's a real nightmare. And we can't selectively turn it off." His recommendation in the report called for no more fetal transplants. "We are absolutely and adamantly convinced that this should be considered for research only. And whether it should be research in people is an open question."

MORE:
Stem Cell Therapy Improves Heart Failure (Reuters, Jan 25, 2005)

Patients with heart failure experienced a marked improvement after being given an injection of their own stem cells, investigators reported today at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Thoracic Surgery in Tampa, Florida.

Dr. Amit N. Patel, from the University of Pittsburg, and his associates previously found that stem cells injected during bypass surgery improve heart function. The current study is the first in which a minimally invasive technique was used, the researchers note.

Before the procedure, the patients underwent various tests to identify regions in the heart that were not beating properly. Using a tiny tube to visualize the heart muscle, the researchers injected stem cells into the poorly functioning areas of the hearts of 15 patients. Fifteen other patients served as a comparison group, receiving injections that lacked stem cells.

The patients who got the stem cells experienced a much greater improvement in heart function than comparison subjects. Moreover, ultrasound testing showed that the hearts of stem cell-treated patients shrank from an abnormally large size to a more normal size than did those of comparison subjects.

Despite participating in the same rehab program after treatment, the stem cell group showed a greater improvement in their walking ability than did the comparison group.

HAVE TO? (via Matt Murphy):

The devastating power to die (Terry Eagleton, January 28, 2005, The Age)

While insurgents have been blowing themselves apart in Israel and Iraq, a silence has prevailed about what suicide bombing actually involves. Like hunger strikers, suicide bombers are not necessarily in love with death. They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice.

It is possible to act in a way that makes your death inevitable without actually desiring it. Those who leapt from the World Trade Centre to avoid being incinerated were not seeking death, even though there was no way they could have avoided it.

Ordinary, non-political suicides are those whose lives have come to feel worthless to them, and who, accordingly, need a quick way out. Martyrs are more or less the opposite. People like Rosa Luxemburg or Steve Biko give up what they see as precious (their lives) for an even more valuable cause. They die not because they see death as desirable in itself, but in the name of a more abundant life all round.

Suicide bombers also die in the name of a better life for others; it is just that, unlike martyrs, they take others with them in the process. The martyr bets his life on a future of justice and freedom; the suicide bomber bets your life on it.

BUILT-IN EXIT STRATEGY:

Hoon and Rumsfeld agree Iraq exit strategy (Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill, January 28, 2005, The Guardian)

The US and Britain have privately agreed an exit strategy from Iraq based on doubling the number of local police trainees and setting up Iraqi units that would act as a halfway house between the police and the army.

The agreement was reached on Monday between the US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his British counterpart, Geoff Hoon.

It was based on recommendations from retired US general Gary Luck, sent to Iraq by the Pentagon last month to look at the failings of Iraq's security force.

The more aggressive police force is designed gradually to replace the 150,000 coalition troops and will form the centrepiece of plans for Britain and the US to quit Iraq.

THE HORSES ARE ON THE TRACK:

And They're Off!: The 2008 handicapping begins. (Duncan Currie, 01/31/2005, Weekly Standard)

TOO EARLY FOR REPUBLICANS TO fret about 2008? Never! Before last week's inaugural fireworks had even been lit, the handicapping of 2008 Republican hopefuls was well underway. GOP sources slice the potential '08ers into an A-list and a B-list. Here's a quick roundup of who's where, as President Bush kicks off Act Two.

COME BACK DR. MENGELE, ALL IS FORGIVEN (via Patricia Garnaas):

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy (Maryann Mott, January 25, 2005, National Geographic News)

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

A RIGHTEOUS FIST IN HER OWN EYE:

Boxer's Match: A tale of two senators (DAVID CORN, 1/28/05, LA Weekly)

On one morning, in one Capitol Hill hearing room, two senators from one state displayed starkly different approaches to handling the powerful of Washington. The occasion was the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's pick to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state. Senator Barbara Boxer confronted her; Senator Dianne Feinstein coddled her. The respective performances of California's two U.S. senators - both Democrats - illuminated a divide in Washington. There are those in town who participate in and preside over the clubby atmosphere of a Washington establishment that fosters a we're-all-honorable-men-and-women conceit. And there are those who realize that governments don't make bad policies, people do, and that such officials - especially when they engage in dishonest policymaking - do not deserve respect or hors d'oeuvres.

When Rice came before the Senate foreign-affairs committee, Boxer showed that on this day she cared more for policy and politics - perhaps even for truth - than for the faux politeness that animates many of Washington's official spectacles. Feinstein, however, demonstrated an allegiance to personal bonds, not to holding government leaders accountable for their missteps and misdeeds. In a way, the two reflected alternative modes of opposition available to the Democrats: Kick the GOPers whenever possible and afford them and their agenda not a scintilla of respect, or agree to disagree and confront the Republicans when practical without challenging their motives, intent or character.

WHEN DID THEY STOP MOVING FORWARD?:

Sharon Sees Chance for 'Historic Breakthrough' (Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Jan 27, 2005, Reuters)

Israeli leader Ariel Sharon said on Thursday conditions were right for an "historic breakthrough" on Middle East peace after measures taken by new Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to bring calm.

He said that if Palestinians worked to "fight terror," then Israel could move forward with a U.S.-backed peace "road map" meant to lead to a Palestinian state.

"I believe the conditions have been created to permit us and the Palestinians to reach an historic breakthrough, a breakthrough that will lead us to security and peace," Sharon told a business forum.

HOPE HE'S GOT SOME LONGJOHNS...:

Daniel Pipes Lecture (Chabad at Dartmouth, January 27 2005)

Chabad at Dartmouth would like to invite you to a lecture by DR. Daniel Pipes titled

"The Palestinian-Israeli war: Roots and prognostications."

When: Thursday, January 27
Time: 4:15pm
Where: Dartmouth Hall 105

For more information on DR. Pipes please visit his website at
www.danielpipes.com

* So it's been awhile--25 years maybe?--since I went to a campus talk, but suffice it to say they've changed. On the way into the hall the ALNUR Muslim Students Association hands you a flyer saying Mr. Pipes is the "nation's leading Islamophobe," then a Dartmouth College employee hands you a flyer with the school's policy on "Freedom of Expression and Dissent."

* Professor Meir Kohn, a friend, is introducing Mr. Pipes and refers to the appearance itself as "a triumph over the deadening effects of politically correct groupthink." Apparently Mr. Kohn has been trying for years to get Dartmouth to let Mr. Pipes come and give a talk but has been told "he's too controversial." Under the auspices of Chabad he's finally made it here.

* The talk was excellent and the question and answer session quite civilized. Mine would have been: If we accept your formulation that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a war, that war requires a defeat, and that it is specifically the most expansive vision of Palestinian nationalism that has to be defeated then is not the physical reality of the wall and the geopolitical/military reality of Israel and America dictating what the borders of Palestine are going to be exactly such a defeat?

MORE:
Deciphering Mahmoud Abbas (Daniel Pipes, January 11, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com)

[O]ne moment Abbas demands that Palestinian terrorists stop their attacks on Israel and the next he (literally) embraces them, calling them “heroes fighting for freedom.” Also, he talks of both stopping the violence and of the “right of return” for over 4 million Palestinians to Israel, a well-known way of calling indirectly for the elimination of the Jewish state.

What gives?

Actually, there is no contradiction. By insisting on a “right of return,” Abbas signals that he, like Yasir Arafat and most Palestinians, intends to undo the events of 1948; that he rejects the very legitimacy of a Jewish state and will strive for its disappearance. But he differs from Arafat in being able to imagine more than one way of achieving this goal.

No matter what the circumstances, Arafat persisted from 1965 to 2004 to rely on terrorism. He never took seriously his many agreements with Israel, seeing these rather as a means to enhance his ability to murder Israelis. Arafat’s diplomacy culminated in September 2000 with the unleashing of his terror war against Israel; then, no matter how evident its failure, it went on until his death in November 2004.

In contrast, Abbas publicly recognized in September 2002 that terror had come to harm Palestinians more than Israel. Intended to prompt demoralization and flight from Israel, this tactic in fact brought together a hitherto fractured body politic, while nearly destroying the Palestinian Authority and prostrating its population. Abbas correctly concluded that “it was a mistake to use arms during the Intifada and to carry out attacks inside Israel.”

Abbas shows tactical flexibility. Unlike Arafat, who could never let go of the terrorist tool that had brought him wealth, power, and glory, Abbas sees the situation more cogently. If stopping the violence against Israel best serves his goal of eliminating the sovereign Jewish state, that is his program.

Until the 18th century, there was basically only one kind of Judaism, that which is now called Orthodox. It meant living by the religion's 613 laws, and doing so suffused Jews' lives with their faith. Then, starting with the thinker Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) and moving briskly during the Haskala, or "enlightenment," from the late 18th century, Jews developed a wide variety of alternate interpretations of their religion, most of which diminished the role of faith in their lives and led to a concomitant reduction in Jewish affiliation.

These alternatives and other developments, in particular the Holocaust, caused the ranks of the Orthodox to be reduced to a small minority. Their percentage of the total world Jewish population reached a nadir in the post-World War II era, when it declined to about 5%.

The subsequent 60 years, however, witnessed a resurgence of the Orthodox element. This was, again, due to many factors, especially a tendency among the non-Orthodox to marry non-Jews and have fewer children. Recent figures on America published by the National Jewish Population Survey also point in this direction. The Orthodox proportion of American synagogue members, for example, went from 11% in 1971 to 16% in 1990 to 21% in 2000-01. (In absolute numbers, it bears noting, the American Jewish population went steadily down during these decades.)

Should this trend continue, it is conceivable that the ratio will return to roughly where it was two centuries ago, with the Orthodox again constituting the great majority of Jews. Were that to happen, the non-Orthodox phenomenon could seem in retrospect merely an episode, an interesting, eventful, consequential, and yet doomed search for alternatives, suggesting that living by the law may be essential for maintaining a Jewish identity over the long term.

CONTAGION:

Jordanian king urges Iraqis to vote (Al Bawaba, 1/26/05)

"As political development is a gateway to the full participation of all segments of the grassroots and civil society institutions in the various aspects of the development process, I assert here that political development should start at the grassroots level, then move up to decision-making centers, and not vice-versa," King Abdullah said in a televised address to the nation. [...]

In his speech, King Abdullah congratulated the Palestinians "for their great achievement in concluding the presidential election and choosing their legitimate leadership." The King described this achievement "a key and essential step for the Palestinians in their pursuit to regain their rights and to establish their independent state on their national soil."

King Abdullah also called upon Iraqis of all groups and spectra to take part in the elections to be held in few days. "The elections are the only realistic way for Iraqis to achieve security and stability, rebuild their country, and ensure that Iraq regains its natural and special status within the region," the King said, according to Petra.

TROUBLE WITH HARRY:

CRUSADE VS. RICE FREEZING OUT BLACK DEMS (DEBORAH ORIN, January 27, 2005, NY Post)

The Dem attack on Rice was "very foolish" and "potentially costly" because it could backfire among blacks, said Democratic pollster Ron Lester, an expert on the African-American vote.

"A lot of African-Americans are watching this and they're wondering why [Democrats] are going after her so hard. She has an exemplary record. She's probably better qualified than most secretaries of state that we have had."

Rice, who was confirmed yesterday as the first black female secretary of state, has a very favorable rating among blacks — 55 percent positive and only 15 percent negative, Lester said.

Another high-profile black Democrat was even more blunt, saying the attacks on Rice — featuring ex-Ku Klux Klan "kleagle" Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) — "made me sick to my stomach."

Only 13 Democrats voted against Rice, but party leaders were incapable of reining them in, and so let them become the public face of the Democratic Party.

DO YOUR THING, LIDDY:

Jeff Bingaman (D, NM) is one of those Blue senators from Red States who could face a stiff challenge in '06, but, even worse for the Democrats, Hotline reports he's acting as if he'll retire rather than run for re-election.

ROOSTER'S GOTTA DO WHAT A ROOSTER'S GOTTA DO (via mc and Robert Tremblay):

Senator Wants Boxing Gloves on Chickens (AP, 1/27/05)

A state senator has a plan for saving Oklahoma's gamefowl industry now that cockfighters are legally prohibited from pitting birds fitted with razor-like spurs.

State Sen. Frank Shurden, a longtime defender of cockfighting, is suggesting that roosters be given little boxing gloves so they can fight without bloodshed. The proposal is in a bill the Democrat has introduced for the legislative session that begins Feb. 7.

"Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do? Everybody wins," Sen. Frank Shurden said.

Oklahoma voters banned cockfighting in 2002. The practice is still legal in Louisiana and New Mexico.

Removing the blood from the sport takes away the main argument animal rights groups have against cockfighting, Shurden said.

"Let the roosters do what they love to do without getting injured," Shurden said.

I SUPPORTED FREEDOM UNTIL I FOUND OUT GEORGE BUSH WAS FOR IT:

The new Bush doctrine: We may be wrong. (George Soros, 1/28/05, Daily Times [pk])

President George W Bush’s second inaugural address set forth an ambitious vision of the role of the United States in advancing the cause of freedom worldwide, fuelling worldwide speculation over the course of American foreign policy during the next four years. The ideas expressed in Bush’s speech thus deserve serious consideration.

“It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture,” Bush declared, “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

There is a bow to diplomacy in the assurance that fulfilling this mission “is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend our friends and ourselves by force of arms when necessary.” Similarly, Bush recognises that outsiders cannot force liberty on people. Instead, “Freedom by its nature must be chosen and defended by citizens and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities.”

Finally, there is acceptance of diversity, for “when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way.”

I agree with this goal, and have devoted the last fifteen years of my life and several billion dollars of my fortune to attaining it. Yet I find myself in sharp disagreement with the Bush administration.

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD:

Read My Ears (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, 1/27/05, NY Times)

Having spent the last 10 days traveling to Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland, I have one small suggestion for President Bush. I suggest that when he comes to Europe to mend fences next month he give only one speech. It should be at his first stop in Brussels and it should consist of basically three words: "Read my ears."

Let me put this as bluntly as I can: There is nothing that the Europeans want to hear from George Bush, there is nothing that they will listen to from George Bush that will change their minds about him or the Iraq war or U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Bush is more widely and deeply disliked in Europe than any U.S. president in history. Some people here must have a good thing to say about him, but I haven't met them yet.

In such an environment, the only thing that Mr. Bush could do to change people's minds about him would be to travel across Europe and not say a single word - but just listen.

THIN LINE BETWEEN:

The Right Wing Hates America (Margaret Kimberley, 1/27/05, The Black Commentator)

The right wing hates America. They are the first to wave the flag and loudly proclaim their love of country. They are also the first to stab their country men and women in the back when it suits them.

Now that Bush is safely in power for another four years they are wasting no time in showing us that they are firmly in charge and not taking any prisoners. Their goals are very simple. They want to destroy the government’s ability to do anything except fight wars and make the wealthy even wealthier.

In early 2003 the occupation of Iraq was becoming a certainty. Despite the acquiescence of the media, the entire Republican party, and far too many wimpy Democrats, thousands of Americans joined the rest of the world in demonstrating against the approaching atrocity. The press barely acknowledged the existence of dissent, and the right wing vilification began in earnest.

The protesters were said to hate America but love Saddam, tyranny, and terrorism. They were accused of not supporting the troops, as if sending men and women needlessly to their deaths was proof of love.

Nearly two years later 1,286 American soldiers have been killed. Iraqis have paid a much higher price. At least 14,000 of them are dead as a result of Uncle Sam’s aggression.

ARE WE THERE YET?:

Palestinians, Israelis Hold Initial Talks: Abbas-Sharon summit may soon follow. A U.S. envoy arrives to meet with both sides. (Laura King, January 27, 2005, LA Times)

Bolstering a conciliatory mood that has taken hold since Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was inaugurated this month, Israelis and Palestinians on Wednesday held their first high-level diplomatic meetings in more than 18 months.

A Palestinian official said afterward that a summit between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could take place in two weeks, though other officials on both sides said no date had been set.

HE WANTS TO PILOT THE BOAT:

Obama may be trying not to rock the boat (LYNN SWEET, January 27, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

The Illinois senators, Democrats Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, split on confirming Condoleezza Rice for secretary of state.

Interesting.

Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, was one of 13 Democrats to vote no. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who led the challenge to Rice, an architect of the Iraq war, found a dozen colleagues to stand with her against President Bush's nominee.

Freshman Obama, who ran as an anti-Iraq war candidate with tremendous crucial early support from the anti-war Illinois progressive political community, was one of 85 from both sides of the aisle who confirmed Rice.

Earlier this month, on his first day on the Senate floor, Obama declined to join with progressives on the House side in challenging Bush's electoral votes because of mishaps in Ohio balloting. Obama did speak out for fixing the voting system. I wrote then it made sense for Obama not to stick his neck out, especially since the vote was 74-1 to uphold the Ohio tally. Boxer was the only no vote and tackled the Ohio issue despite pressure from other Democrats to take a pass.

My analysis is that Obama may be exhausting a lot of progressive goodwill very early.

I don't know what else he could have done, because I sense he wants to chart a course that keeps him within the majority of the Democratic minority.

IT COSTS HOW MUCH?:

Senator says Homeland Security won't get budget increase (LARA JAKES JORDAN, January 27, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

An influential Senate Republican is admonishing Homeland Security Department officials not to count on an increase in the agency's $32 billion budget.

"I don't think there's going to be more money," Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Wednesday "In fact, I know there's not going to be more money. I would urge a review of your situation as to how to get the job done better with the money that's there now."

TRICKED:

From Holocaust to hyperpower (Jim Lobe, 1/28/05, Asia Times)

[T]he Nazi Holocaust also lies at the core of the neo-conservative world view that has animated and given coherence to much of the George W Bush administration's post-September 11, 2001, foreign policy that itself is changing the world, albeit not necessarily in ways that either Annan or the international human-rights movement would approve.

"For those of us who are involved in foreign and defense policy today, my generation, the defining moment of our history was certainly the Holocaust," former Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman Richard Perle, a central figure in the US neo-conservative network, told the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) as US forces drove toward Iraq two years ago.

To Perle, who like many neo-conservatives is Jewish (although most US Jews are not neo-conservatives), the Holocaust is irrefutable proof of the existence of "evil" - a word that recurs frequently in their discourse. World events are viewed as a perpetual battle between, as one of their heroes Reinhold Niebuhr called it, "the children of light" and the "children of darkness".

In the last century, "totalitarianism", whether of the right or the left, was the evil. But, as noted by the highest-ranking neo-conservative in the Bush administration in a talk late last year, evil never dies and now takes the form of what some call "Islamo-fascism".

"The thing that hasn't changed, unfortunately, is that there still is evil in the world," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "It is a fascist totalitarianism not fundamentally different from the way it was in the last century - no more God-fearing than [the Nazis and communists] were."

Significantly, the White House chose Wolfowitz - rather than a top State Department official - to speak as the US representative to the Holocaust ceremony at the United Nations on Monday. Wolfowitz, a close friend and colleague of Perle since 1969, when they both arrived in Washington, did not mention that all members of the family his father left behind in his native Poland in the 1920s died in the Holocaust.

A similar fate befell the family of the father of the under secretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith. Dalck Feith, a leading Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist, managed to survive the Holocaust, which, however, took the lives of both his parents, four sisters, and three brothers.

These men, key players in the Bush administration's foreign policy for the past three and a half years, obviously do not see the Holocaust - and the notion of "evil" in international affairs - as a relic of history.

"ONLY"?:

U.S. RANKS SEVENTH IN STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL NONPROFIT SECTORS (afpnet, Jan. 21, 2005)

The United States ranks only seventh in the world in its level of private philanthropy as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), according to a new study from Johns Hopkins University.

Excluding giving to religion...

CEDING TOO MUCH:

One EU future, 25 views on the path (Paul Meller, January 27, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

After a decade of big political projects, the European Union should devote the next five years to reversing the Continent's relative economic decline in the world, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said Wednesday in a speech outlining his plans to make Europe more "business friendly."

But powerful blocs in the European Parliament, which has increasing influence over EU legislation, warned Barroso against straying too far toward a "neoconservative" agenda in his quest to revive the EU economy, illustrating the political difficulties he faces in passing his programs - and getting the 25 EU countries to sign on to them.

"The top priority today is to restore sustainable dynamic growth and jobs in Europe," Barroso told Parliament.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF POWER:

Lula's star dims for anti-globalists (Todd Benson, January 27, 2005, The New York Times)

The last time this prosperous city in southern Brazil hosted the World Social Forum, an annual gathering of anti-globalization activists cast as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the mood was jubilant.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former metalworker and union leader, had just been sworn in as Brazil's first working-class president, fueling hopes on the left that the new government would break from mainstream economics and spend heavily to ameliorate the country's vast social disparities.

For many of the globalization critics that flocked here at the time, da Silva's administration was to be a shining example of how a leftist government could successfully buck the capitalist establishment.

But two years later, as the World Social Forum returns to its original setting in Porto Alegre after a one-year stint in India, the mood is more somber. Instead of steering Brazil off its free-market course, da Silva has embraced the so-called neoliberal economic policies that he so harshly criticized while in the opposition. While that position has won the president fans on Wall Street, it has put him at odds with the far left of his own Workers' Party and with many of the founders of the social forum, which started here Wednesday.

SUCH AN ENORMOUS REDUCTION SEEMS LIKE PROGRESS (via Rick Perlstein):

Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored (LILA GUTERMAN, January 27, 2005, The Chronicle of Higher Education)

When more than 200,000 people died in a tsunami caused by an Asian earthquake in December, the immediate reaction in the United States was an outpouring of grief and philanthropy, prompted by extensive coverage in the news media.

Two months earlier, the reaction in the United States to news of another large-scale human tragedy was much quieter. In late October, a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. On the eve of a contentious presidential election -- fought in part over U.S. policy on Iraq -- many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines.

The paper, written by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University, was based on a door-to-door survey in September of nearly 8,000 people in 33 randomly selected locations in Iraq. It was dangerous work, and the team of researchers was lucky to emerge from the survey unharmed.

The paper that they published carried some caveats. For instance, the researchers admitted that many of the dead might have been combatants. They also acknowledged that the true number of deaths could fall anywhere within a range of 8,000 to 194,000, a function of the researchers' having extrapolated their survey to a country of 25 million.

But the statistics do point to a number in the middle of that range. And the raw numbers upon which the researchers' extrapolation was based are undeniable: Since the invasion, the No. 1 cause of death among households surveyed was violence. The risk of death due to violence had increased 58-fold since before the war. And more than half of the people who had died from violence and its aftermath since the invasion began were women and children.

Neither the Defense Department nor the State Department responded to the paper, nor would they comment when contacted by The Chronicle. American news-media outlets largely published only short articles, noting how much higher the Lancet estimate was than previous estimates. Some pundits called the results politicized and worthless.

Les F. Roberts, a research associate at Hopkins and the lead author of the paper, was shocked by the muted or dismissive reception. He had expected the public response to his paper to be "moral outrage."

FEAR NOT, THE VEGATATIVE STATE APPEARS PERSISTENT:

Campbell's return fuels rumours of snap election (JAMES KIRKUP AND FRASER NELSON , 1/27/05, The Scotsman)

ALASTAIR Campbell has made a full-time return to politics, resurrecting New Labour's winning general election team in readiness to fight a possible snap poll.

Mr Campbell’s daily attendance at Labour’s new campaign HQ in London, along with increasing input from another architect of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, suggests Mr Blair has reconstructed his "dream team" earlier than most observers were expecting.

The heightened preparations for the election are fuelling the hopes of some Labour MPs that the Mr Blair will go to the country before the 5 May date many have pencilled in for the poll.

Labour insiders say Mr Campbell is now working every day at Labour's new election campaign headquarters in London, honing Labour’s message during the "phoney war" before the full election campaign.

His schedule has inevitably stoked suspicions that the poll will come sooner than May.

CONSCIENCE OF A BIOLOGIST:

Outspoken Geneticist H. Bentley Glass Dies (Adam Bernstein, January 21, 2005, Washington Post)

H. Bentley Glass, 98, who died of pneumonia Jan. 16 at a hospital in Boulder, Colo., was a renowned biologist and geneticist. His controversial, often dire and eloquent scientific predictions made him a notable figure long after he had retired. [...]

In the late 1960s, his jobs as Stony Brook's academic vice president and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science provided him high visibility. Perhaps none of his previous speeches seemed to alarm the public as much as those he made during this period.

He forecast the likely proliferation of genetic clinics during the next three decades and warned that couples would be forced to take tests to ensure against hereditary defects in their future children. In cases where parents might produce limbless or mentally handicapped children, "avoidance of parenthood ought to be mandatory," he said.

He envisioned a future where restrictive tax penalties existed for those who did not comply with rules against having a limited number of children. He noted forced abortions for those who were "mentally defective" as well as prenatal adoption and frozen embryos that would be implanted within the mother.

"No parents will in that future time have a right to burden society with a malformed or a mentally incompetent child," he concluded. [...]

He was president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, among other groups, and edited several periodicals, including the Quarterly Review of Biology. He was national president of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society in the late 1960s.

His books included "Genes and the Man" (1943) and "Science and Liberal Education" (1960).

He once said his range of interests served one goal: "educating laymen in the questing spirit of science and reminding science of its social responsibility."

PRIVATIZING THE PAPER PUSHERS (via mc):

Civil Service System on Way Out at DHS: White House Wants All Agencies to Have Option of Setting Own Personnel Policies (Christopher Lee, January 27, 2005, Washington Post)

The Bush administration unveiled a new personnel system for the Department of Homeland Security yesterday that will dramatically change the way workers are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined -- and soon the White House will ask Congress to grant all federal agencies similar authority to rewrite civil service rules governing their employees.

The new system will replace the half-century-old General Schedule, with its familiar 15 pay grades and raises based on time in a job, and install a system that more directly bases pay on occupation and annual performance evaluations, officials said. The new system has taken two years to develop and will require at least four more to implement, they said.

Under the new plan, employees will be grouped into eight to 12 clusters based on occupation. Salary ranges will be based, in part, on geographic location and annual market surveys by a new compensation committee of what similar employees earn in the private sector and other government entities. Within each occupational cluster, workers will be assigned to one of four salary ranges, or "pay bands," based on their skill level and experience.

A raise or promotion -- moving up in a pay range or rising to the next one -- will depend on receiving a satisfactory performance rating from a supervisor, said officials with homeland security and the Office of Personnel Management.

"We really have created a system that rewards performance, not longevity," OPM Director Kay Coles James said in a briefing for reporters. "It can truly serve as a model for the rest of the federal government." [...]

Leaders of federal employee unions, however, immediately denounced the new DHS system and any plans to expand it government-wide. They said the system would undermine the morale of homeland security employees and make it harder to attract and keep talented workers. They said they would file a lawsuit to block its new restrictions on collective bargaining and employee appeals. They conceded that such a move would do nothing to curtail the new pay system, however, which by 2009 will cover at least 110,000 of the department's 180,000 employees.

"They are encouraging a management of coercion and intimidation," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. He added: "This is not a modern system. This is a step backward."

WHERE THE VOTES ARE:

In a switch, Piccola says he favors abortion ban (PETER L. DeCOURSEY, 1/23/05, The Patriot-News

After voting against Gov. Robert P. Casey's 1989 Abortion Control Act and supporting abortion rights for two decades in public office, state Sen. Jeffrey Piccola says he now favors banning most abortions.

In an interview in his law office Friday, Piccola, R-Dauphin, said his new view, that abortions should be banned except to save the life of the woman, was the result of an intellectual and spiritual journey during the last six to eight years.

He denied any political motivations for changing his view on abortion, the issue that matters most to more than one in five Pennsylvania voters, according to state pollsters. Piccola is preparing to challenge Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell for the governorship in 2006.

B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E:

The Hidden Passages in Bush’s Inaugural Address (Matthew Rothschild, 1/21/05, The Progressive)

Bush’s Inaugural Address contained many explicit references to God, but there were even more hidden allusions to the Bible that may have been lost to many in his audience, as they were to me, before I did some research.

The subtle subtext of his speech carries with it a profoundly disturbing message about the separation of church and state in this country.

Here are a few of the hidden passages.

When Bush thanked the American people for granting him patience in “good measure,” he was echoing Luke 6:38, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure. . . .”

When Bush talked of the “ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever,” he was echoing Hebrews 13:8, which says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

When Bush talked about the “untamed fire of freedom” in a passage that included the phrase “hope kindles hope,” he was echoing passages from Jeremiah. For instance, Jeremiah 17:27 says: “I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem.” And Jeremiah 50:32 says: “I will kindle a fire in her towns that will consume all who are around her.”

There are many other passages in the Bible that have a raging fire in them. For instance, Isaiah 33:14: “The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: ‘Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?’ ”...

IGNORING THEOLOGY:

Today's anti-war clergy should ponder their predecessors (Richard N. Ostling, 1/24/05, Associated Press)

[J]oseph Loconte of the conservative Heritage Foundation sees a parallel between clergy who denounce military action against today's Islamic terrorists or tyrants, and their predecessors who opposed America's entry into World War II. [...]

Loconte's heroes include the ''neo-orthodox'' Karl Barth (1886-1968), a refugee from Nazi Germany who was generally considered Europe's leading Protestant theologian, and ''Christian realist'' Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), widely seen as America's top Protestant theologian.

Today it's hard to find a Protestant thinker with the stature of either man.

Barth opposed pacifism because the New Testament depicts the state as God's instrument to control evil and promote social peace (Romans 13:1-5, 1 Timothy 2:1-3). Since appeasement had failed, he wrote, Christians shouldn't just fight Hitler as a ''necessary evil'' but ''approve it as a righteous war, which God does not simply allow but which he commands us to wage.''

Niebuhr was especially interesting because he was a one-time pacifist and had to quit his longtime political home, the Socialist Party, after it decided American ''imperialism'' was so bad that no important principle was involved in challenging Hitler.

To Niebuhr, naive liberals saw no right or duty to defend their own civilization which he acknowledged was morally flawed to prevent ''worse alternatives.'' In the Bible, he wrote, ''human evil is recognized as a much more stubborn fact than is realized in some modern versions of the Christian faith'' that obscure what Scripture says about fostering justice.

On the opposite side, moral opposition to war against Hitler was pursued by some of U.S. Protestantism's best and brightest. Today this is seen as folly. It required over-emphasisis on the evils of America and Western capitalism while ignoring Nazi conquest, oppression and deadly threats against Jews.

The doves were reacting against the devastation and apparent pointlessness of World War I. More basically, they had an idealistic, sentimental belief in human perfectibility that ignored the theology of human sin.

MAN: THE LINE DRAWER (Via Lileks)

Faith in the Foreground: Lance Wilder (Christian Hamaker, Crosswalk.com, January 15-17, 2002)

It was about that time that my future wife [Maria] moved out here. I was friends with her at art school. She also got a job on The Simpsons, and we started hanging out together. She was brought up Catholic; I was brought up in a little Baptist church in Massachusetts, and I’d never like really witnessed to anybody. I was just nervous she wouldn’t like me.

She was really opening up and finding out stuff and she and I started listening to tapes from the Christian radio station and reading and our Bible and going to church together. She became a Christian, and we really helped each other out. We got engaged after a couple years. We’ve been married for six years and have three kids.

ALLIES:

Fundamental union: When it comes to defining family values, conservative Christians and Muslims are united against liberal secularists (Brian Whitaker, January 25, 2005, Guardian Unlimited)

The idea of forging an international Christian-Muslim alliance to fight liberal social policies began to develop in 1996 when an event known to "pro-family" activists as The Istanbul Miracle occurred. It happened at a UN conference in Turkey called Habitat Two. Richard Wilkins - now head of the Mormons' World Family Policy Centre - was there and, according to his own account, helped to perform the miracle.

"The Istanbul conference," he wrote, "was convened - in large measure - by a worldwide, well-organised and well-funded coalition of governments, politicians, academicians and non-governmental organisations that were eager to redefine marriage and family life.

"Natural marriage, based on the union of a man and a woman, was described by professors, politicians and pundits as an institution that oppressed and demeaned women. The constant claim was that 'various forms of the family exist', and all 'various forms' were entitled to 'legal support'. The 'form' most often discussed by those in charge of the conference was a relationship between two individuals of the same gender."

Wilkins challenged all this with a four-minute speech on traditional family values which also castigated sex education in schools. He was hissed by some of the delegates as he returned to his seat but afterwards, he recalled, "I was approached by the ambassador from Saudi Arabia who embraced me warmly".

Wilkins gave the Saudi ambassador a list of suggested changes to the draft Habitat agenda, and The Istanbul Miracle was born.

"Thirty-six hours later, the heads of the Arab delegations in Istanbul issued a joint statement, announcing ... that its members would not sign the Habitat agenda unless (and until) certain important changes were made," Wilkins wrote.

As a result, the draft was altered to define "marriage" as a relationship between "husband and wife", and references to abortion were changed to "reproductive health".

International arguments about the family have raged ever since. The UN has said several times that "in different cultural, political and social systems, various forms of family exist". This is a statement of fact as much as anything, but it is anathema to religious conservatives who dislike the idea of unmarried couples living together, and especially those of the same sex.

The UN points out that ideas of what a family is have changed over the last 50 years. Worldwide, there has been a shift from extended families to nuclear families as well as an increase in the number of cohabiting couples and one-person households. Family structures have also been changed by lower fertility rates, higher life expectancy, migration and, especially in Africa, HIV/AIDS. The UN therefore urges its members to take these changes into account when developing social policies.

Qatar's resolution in the General Assembly last month was part of the conservatives' ongoing struggle to turn back the clock, and once again Wilkins seems to have worked a miracle in getting it approved.

NECESSARILY LESS THAN SUPREME:

A Suitably Pyrotechnic Revisitation of Coltrane's Signature Testimony: Branford Marsalis Quartet's Coltrane's A Love Supreme and Live in Amsterdam (Francis Davis, January 25th, 2005, Village Voice)

Released on both audio and video in one package, Branford Marsalis's live version of A Love Supreme gets it right. Coltrane's four-part suite was his religious testimony; Marsalis is chasing Coltrane, not salvation, but whereas his earlier attempt on Footsteps of Our Fathers left him panting, here he keeps pace with a display of saxophone pyrotechnics comparable to Coltrane's, though very different in character. His tone is lighter and his phrasing bluesier, especially on "Pursuance" (the second movement, and more or less Miles Davis's "Nardis" turned upside down), where his gradual ascent into the scream register shows he knows the difference between building to a climax and giving in to self-induced frenzy. [...] This is the Branford Marsalis we've been waiting for. He does honor to a classic while finally emerging as his own man.

TOMATOES AND CUCUMBERS....SLEEPING TOGETHER...:

SpongeBob's Family Video: What Would Bob the Tomato Do?: VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer discusses teaching children morals through television and the widening values gap between makers and viewers. (Christianity Today, 01/26/2005)

Do you think that some kids' shows do have an agenda to address sexual identity issues?

Kids' shows themselves very seldom have agendas beyond the crassly commercial. Individual writers, however, sometimes do. Writers may slip something into a script for their own amusement or socio-political gratification that the producers of the show will never notice. We evangelicals will pick up on those subtle intrusions and assume they are systemic.

Looking at the world of kids' television today, I can't think of any shows with an overt sexual identity agenda. I do think that will change over the next 5-10 years, though. Since the early 1970s, promoting diversity has been considered vitally important in children's television, especially in the New York-Washington D.C. school of children's programming exemplified by Sesame Street. Nickelodeon has made it a major focus as well.

But for the last 30 years, diversity has meant gender and race. As a result, liberals and conservatives could agree on their children's programming. Sesame Street, a product of the "Blue States," worked just fine in the "Red States" as well. Over the next 5-10 years I think this will change. Sesame Workshop (the foundation behind Sesame Street) and Nickelodeon will come under increasing pressure from their Blue buddies to positively portray sexual diversity alongside racial and gender diversity. The day a same-sex couple moves onto Sesame Street will mark the day the Red States and the Blue States (or more accurately, the Red Counties and the Blue Counties) will no longer watch the same children's shows. How far away is that day? Maybe two years. Maybe ten years. But it will happen.

DISTINCTIVE DEMOCRATS:

Women make pitch to Iraqi voters: In Najaf, women and tribal leaders work the streets, promising progress and getting out the vote. (Scott Peterson, 1/27/05, CS Monitor)

In a vote where one third of the candidates on 111 lists for the new 275-seat parliament are required to be women, these are voices unaccustomed to a political airing in Iraq.

"Actually, our families are afraid," says Radha. "My family is calling me every other hour to see how I'm doing. But we believe that our city and province are safe, and I'm moving from place to place alone. I'm not afraid."

But in much of the south, candidates have been able to cast off the violent threats that are clouding the election in Baghdad and Sunni-dominated areas. They are mixing their new political freedom with tribal tradition, and calling the outcome democracy.

Najaf Gov. Adnan al-Zurfi says every step has been taken to prevent attacks, including deploying 15,000 police and Iraqi forces in the city and around 236 polling stations. In the past week, those units have been conducting night raids to arrest known troublemakers.

"Some people don't want to live in this new country, and participate in democracy, human rights and freedom," says Mr. Zurfi. "Even those people will find out later that they are making a big mistake by threatening people, killing people."

"It's not about Sunni and Shiite, it's about politics and power," adds Zurfi, noting that Najaf officials under Saddam Hussein did not come from Najaf, but from the regime strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi. "Now they have very limited power. They are fighting back, to take the same opportunity they had before. This is not the [path] of the new Iraq."

Instead, that path leads through the women candidates - who, unlike many running for office, are willing to be photographed and named - and through the palm-forested village of Sulayiyah, a 45-minute drive away. There, tribal chiefs show just as much enthusiasm for the process, albeit in a more traditional way.

Subgroups of the large Bani Hassan tribe marched into the compound of the newly anointed tribal chief on Tuesday, waving red and white tribal flags and chanting poetry of love, devotion, and wise leadership.

"We don't need just any politician, but one who will look after our farms, our people and our faith," one man shouted above the din, spraying spittle in his enthusiasm to show his support.

The mustachioed Sheikh Muthanna al-Hatem al-Hassan, who is running for parliament, promised to look after the tribe from a seat of power in Baghdad.

"What's important to us is Iraq, and what we need is one Iraq only," says Sheikh Muthanna, with the practiced, good-news air of a politician. "This is the first step, and like every first step, this one will be hard. Sure, there will be some trouble, but I'm sure, in the end everything will be better."

While Muthanna has a built-in support base of hundreds of thousands of Bani Hassan tribesmen, the women candidates in Najaf have to sell potential voters on their plans and integrity.

LEADING THE CAMEL FURTHER INTO THE TENT:

Bush Promotes Health Savings Accounts: He Says Plan Would Cut Insurance Costs and Increase Patient Responsibility (Michael A. Fletcher, January 27, 2005, Washington Post)

President Bush laid out a plan yesterday for reducing the nation's spiraling health care costs, proposing tax credits to encourage expansion of health savings accounts and calling for allowing small businesses to pool together for health coverage across state lines.

Speaking before an audience that included Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Bush said market forces hold the key to moderating the cost of health insurance, which is strangling many working families and small businesses, resulting in 45 million Americans going uninsured.

The main element of Bush's plan would be health savings accounts, which allow people to save money tax-free. The accounts are used for medical expenses up to a preset deductible amount, and once that threshold is met, insurance takes over. Any money not used can roll over from one year to the next, and the cost of the policies is usually lower than that of traditional health insurance plans.

"Health savings accounts all aim at empowering people to make decisions for themselves, owning their own health care plan, and at the same time bringing some demand control into the cost of heath care," Bush said. "Our view is that if you're a consumer of health care and you're in the marketplace making health care decisions, it is more likely that there [would] be more cost control in health care than a system in which the consumer of health care has his or her health care bills paid by a third-party provider."

REITERATING AGAIN:

Looking for Vonnegut: An elusive, out-of-print book prompts a 30-year search and a question: Was it worth it? (David L. Ulin, January 24th, 2005, Village Voice)

In 1974 I was a reading-obsessed seventh-grader just discovering adult lit. My favorite book was Breakfast of Champions, newly out in paperback: a surreal explosion of a novel, featuring jokes and silly drawings, and the strangest ending, in which Kurt Vonnegut entered the story and set his characters free. Breakfast of Champions hit like a revelation, as if I'd cracked a code. All of a sudden, I got it: the absurdity, the gently anti-authoritarian perspective, the idea that nothing was as important as free will. No sooner had I finished the book than I set out to acquire all of Vonnegut's writings, from the novels that were, by then, available in uniform paperback editions to his 1970 play Happy Birthday, Wanda June and his 1972 teleplay Between Time and Timbuktu. These latter titles, as it happens, would later qualify as arcana, but 1974 was the perfect time to look for them, since neither had been available long enough to be truly obscure.

Of all the volumes on the Vonnegut backlist, one consistently eluded me: Canary in a Cat House, the author's third book, a collection of stories that had appeared in 1961 as a paperback original and was long out of print. Of the book's 12 pieces, 11 had been reanthologized in Welcome to the Monkey House, so the only point in owning the earlier work was if you were a completist, which, I was discovering, I was. The more I thought about Canary in a Cat House, the more it bothered me that I couldn't find it; the more I couldn't find it, the more I looked. [...]

Then about a year ago, I did a Google search. (In retrospect, it seems odd I hadn't tried before.) There among the bibliographies and fan sites was a book dealer in Australia who claimed to have the paperback for sale. I sat, amazed, as my computer screen slowly filled with the cover: first the title, followed by a burst of copy ("Off the top of his head—the short, wild fantasies of one of America's most imaginative young writers, the author of Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan"), and finally a multicolored face composed of images from the stories, with a rocket for a nose and a caged canary making up the iris of one eye. I laughed at the characterization of Vonnegut as a young writer, since he was over 80, although when Canary in a Cat House came out, he'd been younger than I was now. Mostly, however, I remember a sensation like shock, as if I were in the presence of a legend, something that, despite my pursuit, I had never quite believed. Quickly, I sent an e-mail to the dealer. Two weeks and $75 later, Canary in a Cat House arrived.

But here's the thing: Now that I have Canary in a Cat House, I'm dissatisfied. Once in a while, I take the book out and peruse it, yet this feels more like handling an artifact than any kind of reading I know. Partly that's because my edition is old, cheaply bound, and printed on acidic paper, which means that any time I touch it, I add to its decay. Partly it's because I've already read these stories, which means Canary in a Cat House can never exist for me as a text to discover on its own. Partly it's because ownership itself is anticlimactic, which means that after three decades, Canary in a Cat House has become less important for what it is than what it was: a vehicle for longing. Most of all, it's because of how I came across the collection not by discovering it in some forgotten bookstore, but through the clinical precision of the Internet. There was nothing tactile or serendipitous about it; I just visited a website, and there it was. Thirty years ago, all I had was my own wanting, the sense that if I hung in long enough, I might have a small epiphany. On the Internet, though, epiphanies become prosaic, since nearly anything is within electronic reach. What does it mean that, in the end, I got Canary in a Cat House with so little effort, without having to leave my home? Maybe that in gaining a thing, we may lose it also, in regard to the open-ended possibilities of desire.

UNTOUCHABLES:

Europe is at a crossroads, says Commission (Honor Mahony, 26.01.2005, EU Observer)

The European Union is at a crossroads and needs to get back in touch with large sections of the population is the message contained in a new five-year programme for the 25-nation bloc.

Unveiled by Commission president José Manuel Durao Barroso on Wednesday (26 January), the 13-page plan refers to a gap between a "significant section" of the public and decisions taken in Brussels.

"The reasons for this reduced confidence are widespread and include sluggish economic growth, heightened feelings of economic and personal insecurity, fears of a loss of identity and a more general feeling of 'disconnect' between what happens in 'Brussels' and in people's everyday lives".

THE OTHER GOOD THING ABOUT CANADA:

REVIEW: of This Right Here Is Buck 65 (Robert Wheaton, PopMatters)

Warner signed Canadian hip-hop artist Buck 65 in 2002, after he had enjoyed several years of relative success on the underground hip-hop circuit -- including a run of favored albums, a consistent touring schedule, and close ties with Oakland's Anticon collective. There was also, presumably, a calculation by Warner that he might mature into a songwriter with the reach and long-term marketability of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits.

The first part of that calculation was immediately vindicated: Square and Talkin' Honky Blues, his Warner releases to date, have exhibited a fully-developed story-telling talent. Talkin' Honky Blues, in particular, picked up more new listeners than it alienated backpackers with its live instruments and folk- and country-influenced range of sounds.

This Right Here Is Buck 65 -- on the V2 label -- seems calculated to address the second part of that calculation: to break Buck 65 to the American market. It is a compilation of several tracks from Talkin' Honky Blues and Square, a handful of material available only as b-sides and online exclusives, and reworkings of older material in his current style. Although it lacks -- narrowly -- the thematic coherence that made Talkin' Honky Blues a masterpiece, this is quite certainly an essential release by an artist that seems likely, if there is any justice at all, to spend much of his career reshaping popular music. He's just that good.

Buck 65, whose real name is Richard Terfry, hails from rural Nova Scotia. His off-kilter reading of hip-hop tradition has been on display since the early '90s, and was made explicit on his first solo LP, Language Arts, released in 1997. Subsequent releases and collaborations (particularly with fellow Canadian Anticon associate Sixtoo) have always foregrounded an essential restlessness, which at least seems borne out by a handful of off-beat biographical details: a flirtation with professional baseball, an appearance on Sesame Street, and a temporary residence in Paris.

That restlessness shouldn't suggest a diffuse talent, though, or a willingness to flirt with different influences and textures without integrating any of them fully. Terfry's various story-telling influences -- including Waits, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac -- have by now been so thoroughly absorbed into a developed and individual style that it is next to impossible to pick them out. "Talking Fishing Blues" is a Guthrie cover, but it's no more than a tip of the hat: it fits seamlessly amid these tales of drunkenness, wit, escape, loss and self-assured élan.

"Wicked and Weird" openly references Cash, but its gleeful, freewheeling, associative ode to the open road recalls Waits. There is something of the same surreal stream-of-consciousness flow, the same cast of oddball characters drawn into half-chosen, half-forced situations. There's also some of David Lynch's talent for subliminally evocative imagery, but even here, at his most surreal, Terfry's eye for detail -- "Cough drops, loose change in the beverage holder"; "5 o'clock shadow, lips like mudflaps / Hands like eagle's talons, eyes like hub caps" -- is precise and accurate in a manner undeniably his own.

There's a perfect confidence to his writing, a confidence that allows a song as personal as "Roses and Bluejays" -- about his relationship with his father since his mother's death -- to be conducted entirely at the level of surface observations. The details themselves, and their juxtaposition, perfectly conjure a sense of drift and directionlessness, and, somehow, a deep-rooted belonging. The image of his father clearing snow with a flamethrower encapsulates a moment of rage, loneliness, of silent futility.

There's the humor, too: "463" opens with a rant about "the youth of today" that is both brilliant parody and an evocation of the scale and magic of childhood: "When I was a kid... The whole world was made of wood and smelled like gasoline / The days were at least twice as long and the grass was green".

DENYING THE LAW WHILE CLAIMING ITS PROTECTIONS:

Tortured Logic on Torture: Andrew Sullivan misinterprets Abu Ghraib (Heather Mac Donald, 25 January 2005, City Journal)

In 1987, the United States rejected an amendment to the Geneva conventions that would have conferred prisoner of war status on terrorists. The Washington Post and the New York Times applauded the decision. “We must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law,” editorialized the Post. Granting terrorists such recognition, the papers explained, would eviscerate a central purpose of the Geneva conventions: to safeguard noncombatants. By making the protections accorded to lawful combatants conditional on obedience to the rules of war—which forbid targeting civilians and hiding in the civilian population—the conventions create an incentive for soldiers to behave lawfully.

Journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan has a different idea. For Sullivan, who accuses the Bush administration of torture in the January 23 New York Times Book Review, prisoner of war status is an absolute entitlement, not a privilege earned by responsible behavior. Every combatant, no matter how vicious his actions toward noncombatants, has a right to be treated as a lawful soldier, in Sullivan’s view. And thus, the Bush administration’s refusal to grant POW status to suspects taken in the war on terror represents not a judgment based on the law but a failure of moral vision: “The message sent,” writes Sullivan, “was: these prisoners are beneath decent treatment.”

In Sullivan’s account, the administration’s POW ruling led directly to the “torture” of prisoners. It was the “critical enabling decision” that made the “abuse of innocents almost inevitable.” This “torture narrative” ignores some inconvenient facts, however. First, the government ruled unequivocally that the Geneva conventions applied in Iraq, where the overwhelming majority of prisoner abuse occurred. In fact, that abuse had one cause and one cause only: the wholesale and inexcusable breakdown of military order in Iraq that allowed soldiers to violate their rules of engagement. Stomping on detainees, forcing them to masturbate, hitting them—these behaviors were obvious, gross infractions in every war zone. That breakdown of military order had nothing to do with any Geneva decisions pro or con, but resulted from Pentagon planners’ incompetent response to the insurgency. (The Schlesinger report, which supports the administration’s Geneva convention rulings and the resultant interrogation policies, reaches the same conclusion.) Moreover, nearly all the abuse had nothing to do with official interrogation, contrary to Sullivan’s claims. It was perpetrated by fighting soldiers at the point of capture and by military guards intent on punishing prisoners or simply abusing them for “fun.”

Second, if, in Sullivan’s view, the point of Geneva convention decisions is to demonstrate the detaining power’s moral sensitivity, as opposed to establishing a legal framework for the conduct of war, the administration’s ruling clearly did exactly that. President Bush declared that terror detainees were to be treated “humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.” Amazingly, Sullivan mocks this order, even though it articulates the moral understanding that he claims the administration lacked. Sullivan consistently fails to distinguish between behavior that violated interrogation policy and the policy itself. This is a crucial distinction. The fact that rules can be broken does not mean that the rules are invalid. It is a sad fact that abuse occurs in American domestic prisons; I presume Sullivan would not on that ground abolish prisons. The proper response to rule violations is to punish the wrongdoers, which is occurring, and to reform management. [...]

But the biggest flaw of Sullivan’s torture indictment is his casual disregard for the Geneva framework. He can’t be bothered to assess whether a combatant has met the conditions for prisoner of war status. Sullivan calls the “distinction between ‘prisoners of war’ and ‘unlawful combatants’ ” “so vague” as to make abuse inevitable. In fact, Article 4 of Geneva Convention III could not be clearer or more straightforward: under Article 4, terrorists could not possibly be covered. Sullivan accuses President Bush of not wanting to “stay . . . within the letter of the law”; in fact, it was the president who was following the literal language of the conventions, and Sullivan who ignores that language.

If the Geneva drafters had meant to include every combatant in the Third Convention, they would not so carefully have circumscribed the conditions for coverage. Sullivan’s anything-goes approach makes the process of reaching international humanitarian accords meaningless by throwing out the resulting handiwork. It was an achievement of high civilization to have agreed with other developed nations to treat each other’s soldiers humanely when we catch them in war.

To allow barbarous fanatics like al-Qaida to destroy as well the legal framework of reciprocity and responsible behavior that those accords established would not be an advance of “freedom” as Sullivan puts it, but its demise.

LONGING FOR DASCHLE:

Inaugural run-in for Reid aide (Geoff Earle, 1/26/05, The Hill)

An aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was arrested on the West Front of the Capitol for disorderly conduct during President Bush’s inaugural address last week.

The aide, Nathan Ackerman, is a television producer on the Senate Democratic Communications Committee — an organization that was folded into Reid’s new communications “war room.”
About 20 minutes into Bush’s speech, Ackerman, 36, and another man held up a sheet that said “No War.”

IN THE NAME OF LOVE WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP:

BUSH LEFT BONO SPEECHLESS (Contact Music, 1/26/05)

Fast-talking rocker BONO was impressed when President GEORGE W BUSH interrupted him mid-flow to get his point across during a debate on the AIDS crisis.

The VERTIGO singer, who works tirelessly to raise awareness of issues affecting the developing world, wouldn't allow President Bush a word in edgeways, forcing him to bang his fist passionately on the table.

Bono says, "He banged the table at me once when I was ranting at him about AIDS drugs. He banged the table to ask me to let him reply. I was very impressed that he could get so passionate. And let's face it, tolerating an Irish rock star is not a necessity of his office."

WHY MAGGIE GALLAGHER DESERVES EVERY PENNY:

Money, is it overrated?: Economic research focuses on what makes people happy (Martin Wolk, 12/20/04, MSNBC)

A growing body of research on the “economics of happiness” proposes that material wealth is overrated.

These controversial researchers do not say economic growth is undesirable, and they note that unemployed people are almost always unhappy.

But they say policy-makers should pay more attention to what people say about their satisfaction with life as they consider how far to go in the pursuit of unbridled growth.

“The problem we have found is that as (gross domestic product) has gone up, happiness doesn’t go up with it,” said David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College.

One study by Blanchflower and an associate, based on interviews of 100,000 people over three decades, concludes that despite sharp improvements in living standards “the USA has, in aggregate, apparently become more miserable over the last quarter of a century.”

A critical factor in personal happiness appears to be marriage — or at least a monogamous sexual relationship. A widowed or divorced person would have to make an extra $100,000 a year to be as happy as a comparable married person, Blanchflower and co-author Andrew Oswald estimated.

ANOTHER LIGHTNING ROD REMOVED:

Rumsfeld's Top Policy Adviser to Quit (ROBERT BURNS, January 26, 2005, AP)

The top policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a driving force behind the Pentagon's Iraq policy plans to resign from his post this year, a senior defense official said Wednesday.

Douglas Feith would be the highest-ranking Pentagon official to leave the administration. The No. 2 official, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has said he plans to remain.

TICK...TICK...TICK... (via Jim Yates):

The factory nuns of urban China (Michael A. Lev, December 27, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

Bai Lin is a sad-faced 19-year-old who seems to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She works in a small industrial town for a factory that makes intravenous drip kits for hospitals. Once she lived with her family in a dirt-floored hovel at the end of a mud road in a forgotten hamlet called Two Dragons.

She left home at age 15 because her father decided she must. The family was poor, but there was an option: Every day, it seemed, more people from the villages were leaving for work in the city.

Bai Lin remembers clearly the day her father took her to the bus station. He cried. She held in her tears.

Her stoic nature defines her still. Bai Lin is a factory nun. She lives cloistered in the dreary compound of the medical instruments company, where she works 11 or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for 11 months straight until the New Year's break. When she returns home for a month, her year's wages in her pocket, it amounts to about $500.

Bai Lin belongs to one family from one village that represents an infinitesimal piece of a very large story: one of the largest industrial migration trends in human history.

Over the past decade or so, legions of Chinese have left their farms for cities as China's communist government relaxed the travel and housing restrictions that once kept a strict divide between urban workers and country peasants.

Without the rise of a flexible migrant labor force, China's economy never would have developed into the formidable international competitor it has become. China's cities today teem with these domestic migrants, some comfortably settled in jobs, others arriving daily, risking everything--though often they have nothing to lose.

Many of the people working in China's newly established factories are from the countryside.

The men living and working round-the-clock at construction sites often are migrants.

The food hawker on a street corner in Nanjing, who rises at 3:30 each morning in his tiny apartment to make the noodles for his stand and doesn't close up and go home until 8:30 at night, is a migrant.

So, too, are three poorly dressed women, each hoisting over a shoulder a rotund, 80-pound sack stuffed with potential recyclables. They march single-file down a street, bent by the strain, cartoonishly tiny under their heavy, bobbing loads, hoping to earn a few pennies for a full afternoon of rummaging.

A shifting demographic

Counting or even defining migrants isn't easy. The Chinese talk about a "floating population," meaning anyone who has left the city in which they are officially registered. At some level, a destitute farmer collecting garbage on the streets can be considered part of the same mobile phenomenon as a lawyer from Beijing living in Shanghai.

Today there are more than 100 million peasants in the cities, but so many have come and gone through the years that the total number of participants likely is far higher. These migrant workers fit different categories. Some are seasonal workers who go home for the harvest. Others have been living in the city for years but are not recognized as official city dwellers because residency laws are murky and changing.

China's plunge into migrant-based employment represents capitalism that is basic and unfettered, which can mean exploitative.

Industrial workers typically put in punishing hours, often for little or no overtime pay, in factories that can rely on antiquated equipment and provide little training. China has one of the world's highest rates of industrial accidents; at least 5,000 workers die each year in the coal-mining industry alone. Stories are common of inadequately trained machine operators who lose limbs in accidents.

Migrants tend to fare the worst. They're unsophisticated, desperate and thus especially vulnerable to unscrupulous bosses who will work them to the bone and then refuse to pay them.

There are national labor laws governing workplace conditions, but oversight and enforcement often are lax or non-existent and there are no minimum-wage rules. There also are no independent unions and no labor activists to defend workers' rights because the Communist Party does not allow challenges to its authority.

LIBERTY'S CENTURY WITH A HEAD OF STEAM:

Developing World Economy Grows at Fastest Rate in Quarter Century (Peter Heinlein, 25 January 2005, VOA News)

The United Nations has issued an upbeat assessment of the world economy, noting that growth in developing countries is at its fastest pace in more than two decades. The positive outlook is tempered by concerns about global trade imbalances.

The world's economy has considerable momentum at the beginning of 2005, and short-term prospects remain positive. That is the main conclusion of the annual U.N. economic report.

The 125-page report notes that the cyclical recovery of the world economy is reaching its peak. Worldwide economic growth increased by four percent in 2004, and, says the U.N., is likely to grow almost as fast in the next 12 months.

The top U.N. economist, former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo says every region in the developing world is showing rapid economic growth.

WHEN DEMOCRATS LAST IN THE DOORWAY STOOD:

Bitter-enders voting against Condi Rice today, as she's confirmed 85-13:

Byrd
Kennedy
Kerry
Harkin
Boxer
Leahy
Dayton
Levin
Reed
Akaka
Durbin
Bayh
Jeffords

Meanwhile, in an apparent departure from any sense of political reality, Democrats voted along party lines against Alberto Gonzales in the Judiciary Committee and are talking about filibustering him on the floor, which would allow the GOP to invoke the nuclear option in favor of a Hispanic nominee.

CRESCENT ROLE:

A New Iraq: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds all have a stake in liberty. (FOUAD AJAMI, January 26, 2005, Wall Street Journal)

Behold these elections: they are not a prelude to civil war, as some of our sages continually warn. They are the substitute for a civil war. Indeed, the remarkable thing about the Shiites has been their restraint in the face of the terror that the remnants of the old regime and the jihadists have thrown at them. It is their leaders and their mosques and their weddings and their religious gatherings that have been the steady targets of the terror. It is their faith that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his band of killers continue to dismiss as a heresy at odds with Islam's "purity." Men are not angels. The Shiite restraint has rested on the hope that redemption shall come at the ballot box.

We needn't be afraid of a Shiite electoral victory. The scarecrow that stayed America's hand in the first Gulf War ought to be seen for what it is. There is no "sister republic" of the Iranian theocracy in Iraq's future. The religious scholars in Najaf know that theirs is a country that differs from Iran; it is a checkered country of multiple communities. The Shiite secularists know this as well. Besides, the Iranian state next door offers no panacea today, only terrible economic and cultural sterility. It has been Iraq's luck that Ayatollah Sistani was there when most needed. A jurist of deeply quietist bent who embodies Shiism's historical aversion to political redemptionism, he has reined in the passions of his community. He has held out the hope that history could be changed without large-scale violence, and without millenarianism. Grant the old man his due.

Admonitions have come America's way-- made by the Sunni order of power in neighboring Arab lands--of the dangers of Shiite emancipation. It was in that vein that Jordan's monarch, Abdullah II, warned of a "Shia crescent" that would extend from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Our leaders tell us that similar fears are put to them by other Arab rulers. The power of the Arabist worldview lingers in the State Department and in the ranks of the CIA, which retain a basic sympathy for the Sunni order. It is odd, to say the least, that we would fall for this trap. The terrors of Sept. 11, 2001, were not Shiite. Saudis and Egyptians brought soot and ruin to America; and it is a Jordanian from the town of Zarqa--with Zarqawi as his nom de guerre--who is sowing death in the streets of Iraq.

Young American soldiers are not dying in Iraq to uphold the sectarian phobias and privileges of the Arab elites. For if this campaign in Mesopotamia has a broader moral claim, it is to rid the Arabs of the atavisms that have poisoned their life. We can't underwrite Sunni dominion anymore than we can support Shiite radicalism. A Shiite bid to dominate Iraq is sure to be broken, turned back by the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. Nor can we accept at face value the assumption that the Shiites of Iraq are a monolithic force. There are deep wells of anticlericalism among them. If the past is any guide, competing Shiite factions will cast about for alliances across the sectarian lines, among the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds.

THE PLATONIC IDEAL OF THE PRETENTIOUS, PSEUDOINTELLECTUAL ESSAY BY A TENURED IGNORAMUS (From Jonathan Arnold)

DAILY EXPRESS: Future Perfect (Jeffrey Herf, TNR.com, 1/25/05)

Testifying before Congress last week, Condoleezza Rice gave little indication that she grasps the central challenge of the next four years: restoring American credibility in the war of ideas against totalitarian Islam with a new era of candor, acknowledgment of past errors, and clear signs of having learned from them.

Ignorance this invincible can only be the work of a professional and, indeed, "Jeffrey Herf is professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland."

BACK TO THE SECOND WAY:

Kerry proposes health coverage for all children (Rick Klein, January 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

Vowing to use his new ''national voice" in the wake of his presidential campaign, Senator John F. Kerry yesterday unveiled a sweeping plan to bring health coverage to all children, paid for by repealing recent tax cuts for the highest-income Americans.

Kerry's bill would make healthcare for children universal by encouraging states to expand coverage under Medicaid and its companion state-federal program, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. He would also give higher-income parents tax incentives to insure their own children.

''It's just unacceptable in our country that we have so many children -- millions of kids -- who are uninsured, they get no healthcare, some of them get learning disabilities for the lack of diagnosis of something as simple as an earache," Kerry said in an interview with the Globe. ''This has to be priority number one. It's a place to start."

Kerry said the bill fulfills a pledge he made on the campaign trail, where he vowed to make such legislation the first bill he'd file as president. He has signed up 300,000 ''citizen cosponsors," recruited via his campaign e-mail list. Kerry said he is planning to ''gin up energy" for his bill through speeches around the country.

He will have his work cut out for him: The bill is not expected to get a warm reception in the Republican-led Senate, although Kerry promised to reach across the aisle to Republicans members who favor expanded healthcare.

USING BOTH HANDS:

Iraq's female candidates raise voices before vote (Thanassis Cambanis, January 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

[T]he women's discussion at the Najaf Human Rights Center yesterday included a more freewheeling and substantive debate than most events in the anemic campaign season leading up to Sunday's nationwide elections.

With four other Da'wa candidates -- the party name means ''Islamic Way" -- Anwar was pitching a comparatively secular vision of the Iraqi government at a forum organized by US Embassy officials. Da'wa's provincial leaders are focused on reviving the country's economically moribund Shi'ite areas while staving off security threats believed to stem from unstable Sunni areas.

In the other corner was a group of four women candidates from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, who broke with the party's position of publicly downplaying its Islamist credentials.

''Iraq is a Muslim country. It does not hurt that we will depend on the Koran to write the constitution," said candidate Nasran al-Fatlawi.

All the candidates, however, agreed that Iraq's new constitution had to enshrine women's rights.