WRONG AND WRONGER (David Hill, The Bronx):

Germany puts its faith in Keynesian (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 30/04/2005, Daily Telegraph)

Germany is backing a 1970s-style Keynesian to take over the crucial job of chief economist at the European Central Bank, marking a dramatic shift in Berlin's economic thinking and horrifying the guardians of orthodoxy in Frankfurt.

The post has been held for the last eight years by Dr Otmar Issing, a monetary hawk who has fought off political pressure for lower interest rates and sought to uphold the low-inflation traditions of the former Bundesbank.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder now hopes to replace him early next year with Professor Peter Bofinger, the leading advocate of a ''New Deal'' spending blitz to cut unemployment and lift the country out of protracted slump.

RED VS RED:

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas won't run for Jeffords’ Senate seat (Shay Totten, April 30, 2005, Vermont Guardian)

Gov. Jim Douglas ended more than a week of increasing political speculation Saturday, announcing he would not run for U.S. Senate in 2006.

But, his stalwart sidekick, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, quickly stepped up to fill the speculation about who in the GOP will take on U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, who has said he intends to run for the Senate.

“I am thinking about it,” Dubie told reporters in a crowded hallway outside Douglas' announcement.

Dubie said he would consider a run for U.S. Senate or U.S. House, but not without consulting his family first. “For me, it’s not what’s in the best interest of the White House, but what’s in the best interest of my house," he said. [...]

Republicans desperately want to retake the Senate seat they held while Jeffords was in office as a member of the GOP. In 2001, Jeffords made national headlines when he dropped out of the Republican party to become an independent. Jeffords made the switch in opposition to many of then newly-elected Pres. George W. Bush’s policies on education and the environment. The switch threw the control of the Senate into the hands of the Democrats.

Sanders, also an independent, has already stated he intends to run for Jeffords’ open seat, but has not made a formal announcement. Sanders received an early statement of support from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and from the liberal online advocacy group MoveOn.org.

DISCIPLINED? THEY SHOULD GET COMMENDATIONS FOR REACTING QUICKLY:

Ex-Hostage's Italian Driver Ignored Warning, U.S. Says (RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROBERT F. WORTH, 5/01/05, NY Times)

The car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena that was struck with a deadly hail of gunfire as it sped toward Baghdad International Airport on March 4 ignored warnings from American soldiers who used a spotlight, a green laser pointer and warning shots to try to stop it as it approached a checkpoint, the American military said in a report released Saturday evening.

The gunfire killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent who was in the back seat with Ms. Sgrena. The driver and Ms. Sgrena were wounded. Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the ground commander in Iraq, has approved a recommendation that soldiers involved in the shooting not be disciplined, the military said.

The report's exoneration of the soldiers, which was made public last week, angered Italian officials and threatened to further inflame relations between the United States and Italy, one of its staunchest allies in the war in Iraq. The findings have created a political problem for the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who faces a public upset by the incident at a time when his own fortunes are sagging.

Italy has kept 3,000 troops in Iraq, but Mr. Berlusconi has suggested that Italy might begin withdrawing them by September.

THE SILENT WEALTH OF NATIONS:

Rescuing environmentalism: Market forces could prove the environment's best friend—if only greens could learn to love them (The Economist, Apr 21st 2005)

The coming into force of the UN's Kyoto protocol on climate change might seem a victory for Europe's greens, but it actually masks a larger failure. The most promising aspect of the treaty—its innovative use of market-based instruments such as carbon-emissions trading—was resisted tooth and nail by Europe's greens. With courageous exceptions, American green groups also remain deeply suspicious of market forces.

If environmental groups continue to reject pragmatic solutions and instead drift toward Utopian (or dystopian) visions of the future, they will lose the battle of ideas. And that would be a pity, for the world would benefit from having a thoughtful green movement. It would also be ironic, because far-reaching advances are already under way in the management of the world's natural resources—changes that add up to a different kind of green revolution. This could yet save the greens (as well as doing the planet a world of good). [...]

Rachel Carson meets Adam Smith

If this new green revolution is to succeed, however, three things must happen. The most important is that prices must be set correctly. The best way to do this is through liquid markets, as in the case of emissions trading. Here, politics merely sets the goal. How that goal is achieved is up to the traders.

A proper price, however, requires proper information. So the second goal must be to provide it. The tendency to regard the environment as a “free good” must be tempered with an understanding of what it does for humanity and how. Thanks to the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the World Bank's annual “Little Green Data Book” (released this week), that is happening. More work is needed, but thanks to technologies such as satellite observation, computing and the internet, green accounting is getting cheaper and easier.

Which leads naturally to the third goal, the embrace of cost-benefit analysis. At this, greens roll their eyes, complaining that it reduces nature to dollars and cents. In one sense, they are right. Some things in nature are irreplaceable—literally priceless. Even so, it is essential to consider trade-offs when analysing almost all green problems. The marginal cost of removing the last 5% of a given pollutant is often far higher than removing the first 5% or even 50%: for public policy to ignore such facts would be inexcusable.

If governments invest seriously in green data acquisition and co-ordination, they will no longer be flying blind. And by advocating data-based, analytically rigorous policies rather than pious appeals to “save the planet”, the green movement could overcome the scepticism of the ordinary voter. It might even move from the fringes of politics to the middle ground where most voters reside.

I ONLY JOINED FOR THE CHICKS:

A Rewrite for Hollywood's Blacklist Saga (Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, April 25, 2005, LA Times)

For more than 50 years, the communists and former communists of Hollywood have written the script of the past, telling the story of the blacklist in memoirs and histories, movies and documentaries in which they depict themselves as noble martyrs and champions of democracy. It is time, finally, to put an end to the glorification of this unhappy period and take a cleareyed look at the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist and the movie industry Reds who wielded such influence in the 1930s and 1940s.

According to the familiar but utterly romanticized script, the screenwriters, directors and actors who flirted with and joined the Communist Party are unadulterated heroes — just "liberals in a hurry." It is a simple black-and-white tale, as they tell it: The villains were the Hollywood moguls who blacklisted them, the liberals who abandoned the fight, and most of all, the "friendly" ex-communist witnesses who testified about their lives in the party and named names of old associates to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

It is a fable that has acquired an almost irresistible weight as a result of half a century of telling and retelling. Read Lillian Hellman. Or go see the Irwin Winkler film "Guilty by Suspicion."

But is it true? Certainly the blacklist harmed the careers of some of Hollywood's finest. Its damage extended not only to actual party members but, in some cases, to the well-meaning who joined party-controlled "popular front" organizations. But the accepted narrative obscures the important truth about communist influence in Hollywood. The Hollywood Ten were among the most committed of the party faithful, yet they've been wrapped and protected in a romantic haze, allowed to wear their appearance before HUAC as a badge of honor.

NEVER?:

If not now, when?: In a new report, six think-tanks have slashed their forecast for German economic growth in 2005, citing high oil prices and an unfavourable exchange rate. If Germany’s export-driven economy cannot recover when the world economy is racing along, how will it fare during a slowdown? (The Economist, Apr 29th 2005)

IN THEORY, Germany should be booming by now. Sizzling global economic growth in 2004, and more of the same expected for 2005, has raised demand for its exports, a boon to its large manufacturing sector. The European Central Bank (ECB) has kept interest rates in the euro area at an easy 2% for 22 months, and looks set to keep doing so well into 2005. Fiscal policy is also expansionary: the government’s budget deficit has breached the Maastricht treaty’s 3%-of-GDP limit for three years running, and by all accounts will do so again this year. Yet for all this, for the past four years Germany has struggled to produce GDP growth of even 1% a year.

The future looks little better than the past. This week a consortium of German think-tanks released its semi-annual report, slashing its forecast for German growth this year from a lacklustre 1.5% to an almost pulseless 0.7%. The German government then altered its own forecast to 1.0%, down from its previous one of 1.6%, made in January. More worryingly, the think-tanks' report argues that the German economy is not stuck in a particularly vicious cyclical slowdown. Rather, its structural problems, particularly the highly regulated labour market, have reduced trend growth (the average growth rate of the economy) to a meagre 1.1%, in contrast to roughly 2% for the rest of the euro area, and about 3% for the United States. Unless these trends reverse, Europe’s largest economy could eventually wind up as its economic backwater.

The most stagnant pool is undoubtedly the labour market. Germany’s unemployment rate fell to 11.8% in April from the record 12% it hit in March, pushing the number of jobless back below 5m for the first time in months. However, this may have more to do with changes in benefits for the unemployed, and a cold spell in March that made that month's figures unusually low, than any improvement in hiring conditions. On Tuesday April 26th Bert Rürup, head of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s panel of economic advisers, said that the country will not begin adding significant numbers of jobs until annual economic growth hits 1.5-2%. High unemployment has helped keep consumer spending depressed, leaving the economy dependent on exports to drive recovery. But global economic growth, which the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook puts at 5.1% in 2004, is forecast to slow a bit, to 4.3%, in 2005. If 5.1% wasn’t enough to pull Germany out of its doldrums, what will?

To be fair, Germany knows that it has a problem.

DOESN'T THE PREGNANCY DEMONSTRATE HER IMMATURITY?:

Florida girl has abortion blocked (Jeremy Cooke, 4/30/05, BBC News)

A pregnant 13-year-old girl in Florida has been told she cannot have an abortion because she lacks the maturity to make such a decision.

A state court granted an injunction which prevents the girl from terminating her pregnancy.

She is three months pregnant and had planned to have an abortion on Tuesday of this week.

The American Civil Liberties Union says it will launch an urgent appeal against the ruling.

HIS RIVERBOAT--DEMOCRATS ARE JUST ALONG FOR THE RIDE:

President's Radio Address (George W. Bush, 4/30/05)

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This past week I addressed the nation to talk about the challenges facing Social Security. The Social Security system that Franklin Roosevelt created was a great moral success of the 20th century. It provided a safety net that ensured dignity and peace of mind to millions of Americans in retirement.

Yet today there is a hole in the safety net for younger workers, because Congress has made promises it cannot keep. We have a duty to save and strengthen Social Security for our children and grandchildren.

In the coming week, I will travel to Mississippi to continue to discuss ways to put Social Security on the path to permanent solvency. I will continue to assure Americans that some parts of Social Security will not change. Seniors and people with disabilities will continue to get their checks, and all Americans born before 1950 will also receive their full benefits. And I will make it clear that as we fix Social Security we have a duty to direct extra help to those most in need, and make Social Security a better deal for younger workers.

We have entered a new phase in this discussion. As members of Congress begin work on Social Security legislation, they should pursue three important goals. First, I understand that millions of Americans depend on Social Security checks as a primary source of retirement income, so we must keep this promise to future retirees, as well. As a matter of fairness, future generations should receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get.

Second, I believe a reformed system should protect those who depend on Social Security the most. So in the future, benefits for low-income workers should grow faster than benefits for people who are better off. By providing more generous benefits for low-income retirees, we'll make good on this commitment: If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty.

This reform would solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security. A variety of options are available to solve the rest of the problem. And I will work with Congress on any good-faith proposal that does not raise the payroll tax rate or harm our economy.

Third, any reform of Social Security must replace the empty promises being made to younger workers with real assets, real money. I believe the best way to achieve this goal is to give younger workers the option of putting a portion of their payroll taxes into a voluntary personal retirement account. Because this money is saved and invested, younger workers would have the opportunity to receive a higher rate of return on their money than the current Social Security system can provide.

Some Americans have reservations about investing in the markets because they want a guaranteed return on their money. So one investment option should consist entirely of Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Options like this will make voluntary personal retirement accounts a safer investment that will allow you to build a nest egg that you can pass on to your loved ones.

In the days and weeks ahead, I will work to build on the progress we have made in the Social Security discussion. Americans of all ages are beginning to look at Social Security in a new way. Instead of asking whether the system has a problem, they're asking when their leaders are going to fix it. Fixing Social Security must be a bipartisan effort, and I'm willing to listen to a good idea from either party. I'm confident that by working together, we will find a solution that will renew the promise of Social Security for the 21st century.

Thank you for listening.

In proposing on Thursday night to cut Social Security benefits for future generations of retirees, President Bush made two big bets, one political, one on the substance of his policy, and if he is to succeed in remaking the retirement system, both of them will probably have to break his way.

The political gamble is straightforward. Will putting benefit cuts on the table eventually break the legislative logjam by providing political cover to members of both parties who accept that something painful must be done to set Social Security right? Or, by imposing substantial cuts on middle-income workers relative to what the system currently promises, will the approach endorsed by Mr. Bush so permanently harden the wall of opposition from Democrats, as it seemed initially to have done, that no compromise becomes possible?

MAYBE 60 MPH IS 30 KPH?:

US satellite recorded checkpoint shooting, shows speed of Italian car: CBS (AFP, 4/29/05)

A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting in
Iraq last month, enabling investigators to reconstruct how fast a car carrying a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage was traveling when US troops opened fire.

The report, which aired Thursday on CBS News, said US investigators concluded from the recording that the car was traveling at a speed of more than 60 miles (96 km) per hour.

Giuliana Sgrena has said the car was traveling at a normal speed of about 30 miles an hour when the soldiers opened fired, wounding her and killing Nicola Calipari, the Italian agent who had just secured her release from a month's captivity.

ARE THE PYGMIES PEPPERED? (via Bruce Cleaver):

Pygmy found near home of hobbits (Sydney Herald Sun, 30apr05)

INDONESIAN scientists have found a community of pygmy people in the eastern island of Flores.

The community is near a village where Australian scientists discovered a dwarf-sized skeleton last year and declared it a new human species.

The latest discovery will likely raise more controversy over the finding of Homo floresiensis, claimed by Australian scientists Mike Morwood and Peter Brown in September. They nick-nam

JUST RAISE THEM HIGH ENOUGH:

Oil-rich Norway is taxing on cars (Simon Romero, APRIL 30, 2005, The New York Times)

Norway, the world's third-largest oil exporter, is home to perhaps the world's most expensive gasoline.

But drivers here greet high pump prices of almost 11 kroner a liter, or $6.60 a gallon, with little more than a shrug.

Yes, there was a protest from the Norwegian Automobile Association, which said, "Enough is enough," And a rightist party in Parliament, the Progress Party, once again called for a cut in gasoline taxes, which account for about two-thirds of the price. But "those critics are but voices in the wilderness," said Torgald Sorli, a radio announcer with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. who often discusses transportation issues. "We Norwegians are resigned to expensive gasoline. There is no political will to change the system."

Norway, has been made wealthy by oil, trailing only Saudi Arabia and Russia in exports. Last year alone, oil exports jumped 19 percent to $38.4 billion. But no other major oil exporter has attempted to reel in its own fuel consumption with as much zeal as Norway. These policies have resulted in one of the lowest car-ownership rates in Europe and fuel-efficient Volkswagens and Peugeots far outnumber big sport utility vehicles on its roads.

MORE:
Taxing America Clean?: The gas tax is still a terrible idea. (Chris Pope, 04/28/2005, Weekly Standard)

AMERICA IS THE LAND OF THE AUTOMOBILE. Cars are the keys to adulthood, the grail of status, the lifeblood of the economy, and the passport to a vast land. They are also Public Enemy Number One.

The automobile has long been blamed for global warming, respiratory diseases, and the destruction of the countryside, but it has also recently been indicted for treason in the war on terror. Though it made possible the most extraordinary social progress, opened up a world outside cramped cities to the millions, and almost every sector of the economy would grind to a halt without it, the internal combustion engine is now almost universally condemned as A Bad Thing.

One need not believe that fear of global warming should motivate an end to car use (or that an end to car use would end global warming) to believe that the "external cost" to society of car use is a potential reason for taxing gas. Conservative economists Martin Feldstein, Gary Becker, and Greg Mankiw have all joined the chorus for a gas tax, though their arguments are admittedly based as much on the income tax being bad for the economy, as they are on the gas tax being good.

Since Thomas Friedman warns us that there is also an imminent groundswell from "an alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens," surely it is only a matter of time before congressmen swarm to the call of the gas tax?

Like most disastrous liberal schemes, astronomic gas taxes have already been tested on the British, where taxes account for 76 percent of the pump price, and regulation has further forced prices up to £3.73 ($7.13) per gallon. Even though the whole of Britain is essentially urban, and people are never far from a variety of kind of public transportation, roads are just as full in the United Kingdom as they are in the United States. For all the promises of environmental salvation through gas taxation, car use has been limited more by the fact that roads are so jammed that people now get to places quicker by train. Yet despite the enormous popularity of cars in the face of a high gas tax, Britons still hear claims that an even higher tax is what is needed to save the environment. The fig-leaf of economic rationale has, however, fallen.

GIVE US A KING:

Israel Asks for a King (1 Samuel 8)

1 Samuel 8:1 And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.

1 Samuel 8:2 Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: [they were] judges in Beersheba.

1 Samuel 8:3 And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.

1 Samuel 8:4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,

1 Samuel 8:5 And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

1 Samuel 8:6 But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.

1 Samuel 8:7 And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

1 Samuel 8:8 According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.

1 Samuel 8:9 Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.

1 Samuel 8:10 And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.

1 Samuel 8:11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint [them] for himself, for his chariots, and [to be] his horsemen; and [some] shall run before his chariots.

1 Samuel 8:12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and [will set them] to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

1 Samuel 8:13 And he will take your daughters [to be] confectionaries, and [to be] cooks, and [to be] bakers.

1 Samuel 8:14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, [even] the best [of them], and give [them] to his servants.

1 Samuel 8:15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

1 Samuel 8:16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put [them] to his work.

1 Samuel 8:17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

1 Samuel 8:18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

1 Samuel 8:19 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;

1 Samuel 8:20 That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

1 Samuel 8:21 And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD.

1 Samuel 8:22 And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king.

CAN LIBERALISM SURVIVE DEPTH?:

CNN shifts news focus: New boss stresses a more in-depth approach, akin to archrival Fox News. (MIKE TIERNEY, 04/30/05, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

[I]'s not programs or on-air personnel that [Jon] Klein fixated on throughout an interview Friday. [...]

It's how CNN presents the news.

"Dramatically different, certainly in our prime-time approach," contends Klein, 47, who has done the New York-Atlanta shuttle — here one day, gone the next — most weeks since stepping into the revolving-door job in December.

"When I got here, we were doing just straight newscasts with two-minute-long pieces. The problem with that approach is by [midevening], the public already knows what happened. You've got to go beyond the headlines.

"That's what Fox [News] has been doing — discussing stories that you're already familiar with. Now we've started doing stories in our way, not just by talking about them but reporting them in greater depth."

And, with un-CNN-like techniques. One reporter, in a story on a device that shocks the body with an electrical charge, strapped on the belt and absorbed a few thousand volts.

Another, following up on the drowning of a prop plane pilot, donned a survival suit and, accompanied by the Coast Guard, flopped into the lake — where he delivered his report.

"There is a big difference between that and a clown," Klein says. "Reporters must be less stiff, less imperious, less above-it-all, less condescending. More involved and passionate in the stories they do."

Klein's gospel: Pounce on a story and explore it from every angle.

THE NEARLY SENSUOUS NUT:

Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree (SUSAN FREINKEL, 4/30/05, NY Times)

TO celebrate Arbor Day yesterday, President Bush added a new tree to the White House grounds - an American chestnut. At first glance it may seem an odd choice, since chestnuts have been largely absent from the American landscape for more than half a century. Yet if any species can help us see the importance of trees to humanity, it is the American chestnut, and its story makes it the perfect emblem for Arbor Day.

Chestnuts were once so plentiful along the East Coast that according to legend a squirrel could travel the chestnut canopy from Georgia to Maine without ever touching the ground. The trees grew tall, fast and straight. Many considered it the perfect tree: it produced nourishing food and a rot-resistant wood that was used for everything from furniture to fence posts. Chestnut ties were the sturdy foundation of the ever-expanding railroad lines; chestnut poles held up the lengthening miles of electrical and telephone wire.

Then in the early 20th century a deadly fungus imported from Japan hit American forests. Within 40 years this fast and merciless fungus spread over some 200 million acres and killed nearly four billion trees. The blight brought the chestnut to the brink of extinction. Even today new sprouts continue to shoot up from the roots of seemingly dead trees only to be attacked again by the fungus before they can flower and reproduce.

But, in memory at least, the tree endures. That's particularly true in Appalachia, where the chestnuts were vital to the local culture and economy. The sweet nuts that appeared every fall sustained people and their livestock. Families built their homes from chestnut logs, marked their property with chestnut fences and brewed home remedies for burns from chestnut leaves.

SUPREMELY AWKWARD:

Bush as Robin Hood (JOHN TIERNEY, 4/30/05, NY Times)

Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.

They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor? [...]

As a poverty-fighting program, Social Security is woefully inefficient because most of the money goes to people who aren't poor. It would take just 20 percent of what Social Security dispenses to move every elderly American out of poverty, according to June O'Neill, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

CONVERGENCE (via Kevin Whited):

Women's rights (Houston Chronicle, 4/29/05)

Who would have thought Iran, for decades synonymous with repression and religious fanaticism, could offer a beacon of sensible discourse for the United States? According to the government news service in Tehran, Iran's Parliament passed a law permitting abortions in cases of danger to the mother or severe disability in the fetus. [...]

Abortion is a serious matter, worthy of mature debate and responsibly crafted law. How ironic that Iran is moving forward toward this goal, while the United States is sliding backward.

IT WAS NEVER ABOUT WMD:

Puncturing Another Weapons Myth (NY Times, 4/30/05)

The last refuge of those who continue to insist that Saddam Hussein must have had weapons of mass destruction was virtually eliminated by the chief weapons inspector this week. Not willing to accept the unpalatable truth that the search for W.M.D. in Iraq had come up empty, die-hard supporters of the war had clung to the possibility that Mr. Hussein might have shipped his weapons off to Syria to avoid their capture. Never mind that American military leaders said that he could not have pulled that off during the war, when his regime was collapsing too fast to salvage much of anything, and that reconnaissance craft had seen no major arms shipments at the borders. Perhaps the wily dictator had spirited off the weapons before the war began.

The final report of the Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, has now declared any mass transfer of illicit weapons improbable.

It isn't anymore.

THE LEFT WILL HAVE A PARTY TOO (via Tom Morin):

U.S. Politics Since September 11: Perspectives for Rebuilding the Left (SHARON SMITH, March–April 2005, nternational Socialist Review)

MORE THAN three years after September 11, it is now possible—and necessary—to define the political character of U.S. politics since this turning point. This article aims to draw some general conclusions about the political period since 9/11 and to suggest some key strategies for rebuilding the Left.

Social polarization and squandered opportunities

The 2004 election took place in the context of sharp social polarization. Roughly equal proportions of the U.S. population stood on opposite sides over the Iraq War, tax cuts, and the Bush administration itself. But the Democrats squandered the opportunity to define themselves as an opposition party—even though opinion polls showed a majority of the U.S. population thought the country was headed “in the wrong direction” and Bush was shown to have lied about the justification for the Iraq War.

This sharp polarization offered an opportunity to strengthen and rebuild the Left among the millions opposed to Bush. Nevertheless, virtually the entire U.S. Left collapsed into supporting the Democratic Party candidate—leaving those against the war and Bush’s domestic policies with no organized expression to the left of the Bush Lite program of John Kerry. Indeed, the Anybody But Bush (ABB) Left assisted the Democrats by policing the movement against the only genuine electoral alternative, accusing the Nader/Camejo campaign of “helping” Bush to get reelected.

The Democrats spent months of effort and millions of dollars to keep Nader’s name off ballots in states across the country. As a result, Nader’s half-million votes had no influence on the outcome of the 2004 election. The reasons for Kerry’s defeat lay elsewhere.

In reality, Kerry’s defeat exposed the reverse logic employed by the ABB Left—when Kerry’s “electability” (that is, his similarity to Bush) failed to get him elected. That is how, in a country where a majority of the population views the Iraq War as a mistake, the man who led the country into that war on false pretenses managed to eke out a victory.

The resulting Bush victory predictably emboldened the Right, while demoralizing the Democratic Party’s most prominent left-wing supporters—who interpreted Bush’s victory as a major breakthrough for the Christian Right. Although the Christian Right has grown modestly in size, its influence in mainstream politics is magnified by the absence of a genuine Left opposition, due to the collapse of the Left into the Democratic Party.

The dynamics of the 2004 election were merely an acceleration of those already in place since 9/11. The terrorist attacks in 2001 provided the excuse for the U.S. ruling class to pursue its imperialist aims more aggressively abroad while escalating its war on the working class at home. In both cases, the U.S. Left has proven both unable and unwilling to build a viable political opposition. [...]

Bill Clinton represented a new breed of Democrat. As a founder of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), he aimed to shift the party away from the Democrats’ -traditional voting base (liberals, Blacks, and labor) to appeal to “swing” voters (white middle-class voters torn between Democrats and Republicans). This strategy required the party to lurch to the right, adopting positions that were unique to the Republican Party during the era of Reaganism.

Clinton’s “I feel your pain” campaign slogan soon proved to be smoke and mirrors as he stole the Republican’s thunder in dismantling welfare, and passing both the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (which paved the way for Bush’s more draconian federal ban on gay marriage proposal) and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (which preceded the yet more repressive Patriot Act).

Clinton’s approach to Iraq, likewise, differed little from his Republican predecessor. He continued the murderous sanctions put in place after the 1991 Gulf War that claimed over a million Iraqi lives—half of them children under age five. In addition, the U.S. and Britain conducted a continuous bombing campaign over Iraq’s “no-fly zone” throughout Clinton’s two terms in office, interrupted only by the more vigorous “Operation Desert Fox” bombing campaign in 1998. Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, calling for the “regime change” carried out by George W. Bush in 2003.

Had Clinton been a Republican, liberals would have protested many of these policies. Because Clinton was a Democrat, however, liberals continued to support Clinton as he embraced a range of conservative positions during his presidency.

The feminist movement never protested against Clinton, even as he allowed the erosion of legal abortion and dismantled welfare for poor women and children. Most gay rights organizations maintained their loyalty even after Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Many antiwar activists who had opposed the Gulf War in 1991 remained silent during Clinton’s subsequent “humanitarian” invasions.

The collapse of liberalism during the Clinton era allowed mainstream politics to shift rightward in the years before Bush took office.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Oil Slides Below $50 Mark: Rising U.S. supplies and worries about the global economy cool the market. Many analysts expect gas prices to fall. (John O'Dell, April 30, 2005, LA Times)

Oil prices plunged below the $50-a-barrel mark Friday for the first time in more than two months, triggering hopes for cheaper gasoline and diesel prices as the summer travel season approaches.

Light crude for June delivery dropped $2.05 to $49.72 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The U.S. benchmark grade, which last settled below $50 on Feb. 18, fell $5.67 a barrel, or about 10%, during the last week amid rising U.S. supplies and fears of a softening world economy that could suppress global demand in coming months.

The $50 mark is a psychological barrier that, once broken, makes its easier for traders to think in terms of lower prices, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey.

"If there's no contrary news, this thundering herd may stampede to the mid-$40s in relatively short order," he said.

LIKE WATCHING GALE SAYERS (*):

Bush Plan Aids Poor, Squeezes the Rest (Peter G. Gosselin, April 30, 2005, LA Times)

As the full dimensions of President Bush's Social Security plan come into view, so too does a broader vision: improving benefits for the poorest Americans while reducing the reliance of everyone else on government programs that long have seen them through economic difficulties.

Although Bush devoted most of his prime-time news conference Thursday to describing how he would expand Social Security protections, virtually all of his improvements would be aimed at the bottom one-third of American wage earners. The remaining two-thirds would see their future Social Security benefits curtailed, a reduction that they'd be encouraged to make up by saving and investing of their own.

The president often portrays his effort as simply trying to accommodate reality; funds to pay full Social Security benefits are expected to run short toward the middle of the century. But his approach also corresponds to a long-held conservative goal of reducing Washington's influence in the lives of ordinary Americans and to the aim of his chief political strategist Karl Rove to realign the nation along Republican principles.

"What you're going to see is an effort to scale back middle-class entitlements that many people do not need and to become more focused on the antipoverty aspects of these programs," said Michael Tanner, an expert on Social Security at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates small government.

"We're going to tell non-poor Americans that they are going to have to save more on their own and not depend on a transfer from government," he said.

YOU MEAN YOU JUST SCAN THE GROCERIES?:

Blair forced to back down over health service targets (JAMES KIRKUP, 4/30/05, The Scotsman)

AN "OUT of touch" Tony Blair was forced into a public retreat yesterday over government health and education targets, an embarrassment that came as Labour members predicted he will quit sooner rather than later.

Labour was thrown on to the defensive by Mr Blair’s appearance on BBC’s Question Time on Thursday night, when he admitted he was "absolutely astonished" by suggestions that some English NHS patients can only book a doctor’s appointment at 48 hours’ notice, so that GPs can meet central government targets.

The Prime Minister’s incredulity gave the Conservatives a perfect opportunity to produce a welter of evidence of misfiring targets and, more damagingly, proof that the government had been well aware of the problem. [...]

[B]y the afternoon, the growing row forced Mr Blair into a public apology over central targets in health and education.

"There is danger that they have been too crude," he told BBC television. "We have to have them, but [need to] make them more flexible. We need to strip the targets down."

Mr Blair’s faltering performance over health yesterday came as members of his own party publicly speculated that he will fail to see through his promise to serve a full third term if re-elected.

Bob Marshall-Andrews, a veteran Labour backbench rebel, suggested Mr Blair could even face a leadership challenge if he tries to stay on for more than a year after the election.

"I see absolutely no reason why that shouldn’t take place. Indeed, I suspect confidently that it will," he said in a Channel Four interview to be broadcast today.

Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, suggested that the Prime Minister will not seek to prolong his leadership "for the sake of it. "

"He’s not looking for a page in the history book; he’s got that in any case," Lord Kinnock said in a GM-TV interview to be broadcast tomorrow. "He’s not looking to extend the chapter for the sake of it."

In the vote Thursday, it seems a foregone conclusion that voters will return Tony Blair's Labour Party to government.

But since Blair's announcement, on the opening day of the campaign, that "at the election following there will be a different leader," speculation has raged about who could be his successor.

The widespread assumption is Gordon Brown.

But what should the world expect from a man who, despite establishing Britain as one of Europe's best-performing economies, has remained largely hidden by Blair's more charismatic shadow?

And what of the loyal coterie of young supporters who surround Brown - people like Ed Balls - and who are likely to rise with him?

Balls grew up in Nottingham, England, went to Oxford and Harvard, and started his career writing at The Financial Times before Brown hired him as an adviser in 1994.

When Brown took over the Treasury in 1997, Balls in effect became the deputy chancellor of the Exchequer, unelected but ruling over civil servants and British economic policy with notorious muscularity.

He drew up the memo that granted the Bank of England independence in setting interest rates. Brown and Balls set the tests that kept the British pound out of the euro. With Blair focusing on foreign policy, Brown and Balls decided how far free-market forces could invade Britain's public services.

Achieving so much, so young has made Balls "even more charming and self-deprecating" than his famously curt mentor Brown, says one former government colleague, ironically. [...]

One possible date for regime change is the referendum next spring on the European Union's constitutional treaty "because," according to Kampfner, "if Blair loses that, he is finished."

And what would Brown's policies be if he were prime minister?

"There is a moral element to Brown's approach to politics that derived from his father, who was a very hard-working minister in the Church of Scotland who devoted a lot of time to the unemployed," says Robert Peston, a British journalist and author of "Brown's Britain," a book about the chancellor.

On Iraq, most analysts believe Brown would probably have taken Britain to war, just as Blair did, but only after securing wider public backing. While instinctively pro-American, he has become increasingly skeptical about the EU, devotes scant time to visits to Brussels, and rarely mentions Germany and France without a lecture about reforming their stuttering economies.

ANGLOSPHERE IN ACTION:

Nepal's state of emergency ended (BBC, 4/30/05)

King Gyanendra of Nepal has lifted a state of emergency he imposed after taking direct control of the country three months ago. [...]

The lifting of the state of emergency has been welcomed by India which, like the US and Britain, has suspended arms supplies to Nepal.

DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS THEY DID:

Is Democracy in the Middle East a Pipedream?: Amidst the first signs of change, longing competes with mistrust of Western democracy (Fawaz Gerges, 25 April 2005, YaleGlobal)

From Baghdad to Beirut and from Cairo to Jerusalem, stirrings of freedom are unsettling deeply entrenched autocratic rulers, as Arab civil societies are beginning to challenge their ruling tormentors. In Egypt, for instance, one of the most populous and important Arab states, President Hosni Mubarak responded to critics of his autocratic style by agreeing to hold free elections Although it is too early to draw any definite conclusions about the nature and substance of recent developments, they point to a more assertive civil society and a real longing for political empowerment and emancipation. Careful support and nurturing by the West will be critical for their success.

Most Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East are fed up with their ruling autocrats, who had promised heaven but delivered dust and tyranny. These sentiments clearly show that there is nothing unique or intrinsic about Arab and Islamic culture that inhibits democratic governance. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Arabs and Muslims have struggled to free themselves from the shackles of political authoritarianism without much success, thanks partly to the support given by the West, particularly the United States, to powerful dictators. [...]

Now, however, we are witnessing the emergence of rudimentary social movements that could dramatically revolutionize Arab and Muslim politics. These movements – be they professional associations, workers organizations, students, or women's groups – are much more assertive, mobilized, and challenging of governments' autocratic methods, thanks to the power of the new media, which has broken official monopoly on the flow of information. As a result, consensus is emerging in the Muslim world regarding respect for human rights, legal transparency, and the peaceful transfer of power.

Even mainstream Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the most powerful transnational organization, have now come to this very same conclusion: Democracy is the most effective mechanism to guard against political authoritarianism and protect the human rights of the Muslim Ummah (the Muslim community worldwide).

Still, in the minds of many Arabs and Muslims, liberal democracy remains synonymous with Western political hegemony and domination. Democracy tends to be seen as a manipulative tool wielded by Western powers to intervene in Arab/Muslim internal affairs and to divide and conquer. Within the past 10 years, mainstream Islamic voices have worked arduously to redefine liberal democracy in Islamic terms and make it comprehensible and acceptable to Arab and Muslim masses. Simply put, Muslim and Islamic democrats have been trying to Islamize democracy and modernity and strip them of their Western clothing.

MUCH TO BE PESSIMISTIC ABOUT:

In Europe, economic pessimism takes hold (James Kanter, APRIL 30, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

The sick man of Europe, Germany, cut its already meager growth forecast for this year and next on Friday, while a slew of equally dire economic news from elsewhere illustrated that pain is being felt across Europe, even in the relatively dynamic services sector and in the better-performing economies, like Britain.

"Pessimism really is the order of the day," said Ken Wattret, an economist at BNP Paribas in London.

In Germany, the economy minister, Wolfgang Clement, cut 2005 growth forecasts to 1 percent from 1.6 percent, while in Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi cut his country's growth expectations nearly in half, to 1.2 percent.

Meanwhile in France, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent in March - the highest since December 1999 - from 10.1 percent in February.

TAKE YOUR ALLIES WHERE YOU FIND THEM:

Bush finds ally in Hub executive (Michael Kranish and Nina J. Easton, April 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

[Robert C.] Pozen and Bush might seem at first blush to be an odd couple. In 2004, Pozen gave $40,250 to Democrats, including $2,500 to Kerry's presidential bid. His national GOP contributions were $1,000, all of it going to Representative Rob Portman of Ohio, according to campaign finance records. Pozen said he voted for Kerry because ''I'm a Democrat."

But Pozen has a history of working with Republicans, too.

He spent about a year as Governor Romney's director of economic development in 2003. In an interview yesterday, Romney said Pozen spent much of his time working to help close a budget gap, but also played key roles on health and auto insurance overhaul. ''When he came into my administration, the economy was sour, we were trying to get our economic ship right," Romney said. ''He helped lead the economic stimulus plan."

Like others, Romney said Pozen approaches issues analytically, rather than politically. [...]

Pozen, who left Romney's administration to become chairman of MFS Investment Management, first worked with Bush when Pozen served in 2001 on Bush's bipartisan Social Security commission. Blahous, then executive director of the panel, also got to know Pozen at the time.

The panel produced three proposals, including creating private accounts and cutting future benefits, none of which Bush endorsed. But an aide said the president remembered Pozen's service on the commission and was intrigued earlier this year when he heard Pozen was working on a new plan that would ensure that lower-income workers received all currently promised benefits.

For months, Bush aides had said they were studying a change in the way benefits are calculated. Under the current system, annual increases in benefits are based on calculations that show the average yearly increase in wages. Bush aides figured if that calculation, known as a wage index, could be changed to a price index -- a calculation of the average rise in consumer prices, which typically rise more slowly than wages -- then most of the solvency issue might be solved.

Bush has said the government made promises on Social Security that can't be kept under the current system. But many Republicans feared that switching from wage indexing to price indexing would be seen as a huge benefit cut, even though the White House insisted that it simply reduces how fast future benefits will grow and doesn't affect current benefits.

Pozen's plan represents a compromise: It wouldn't change benefits for people who earn an average of $25,000 or less annually, but those earning between $25,000 and $113,000 would get benefits calculated on a sliding scale that blends wage and price indexes. Those who earned more than $113,000 would receive benefits based only on the price index, meaning they would have the biggest cut in future benefits.

Pozen outlined his ideas in various newspapers, including The Globe, earlier this year. His opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal about indexing may have caught the White House's attention.

On March 15, the same day the article appeared, Pozen attended a meeting at the White House with Blahous and other advisers. He spent about an hour explaining his indexing plan in detail. The advisers liked his presentation, setting in motion the events that led to Bush's public embrace of it in the Thursday press conference.

After Pozen described his idea at the White House, other Washington policy analysts quickly took notice.

''People have been talking about wage-price indexing for a while," said Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. But Pozen's idea to make the system progressive was a new and important wrinkle. ''A lot of us said, 'Oh, now that's interesting,' " Tanner added.

IN THEIR BACKYARD:

Big boost to Darfur peace force (BBC, 4/29/05)

The African Union has agreed to more than double the number of its peace monitors in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur.

By September, the force should be 7,700-strong, which could be further increased to 12,000, an official said.

There are currently just 2,200 troops, with another 1,000 expected next month, to monitor an area the size of France.

FADE TO RED:

Doyle vetoes voter ID, school voucher bills (Associated Press, 4/29/05)

Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a plan to require voters to show government-issued photo identification, saying Friday the requirement would disenfranchise poor and elderly voters who lack IDs.

The governor's veto came three days after Republicans hand-delivered the bill to Doyle's office as they urged him to sign a law they said would improve the integrity of Wisconsin elections. [...]

Doyle also vetoed a bill Friday to expand a state program that pays for poor Milwaukee students to attend private schools. The bill would have allowed 1,500 more students in Milwaukee to enroll in the school voucher program.

Republicans who control both the Assembly and the Senate said they would immediately schedule votes to try to override Doyle's veto of the voter ID bill, but they did not appear to have enough votes to succeed. The bill passed 21-12 in the Senate and 64-33 in the Assembly, just short in each chamber for the two-thirds necessary.

UP OR DOWN AND MOVE ON:

Break the Filibuster: Democrats are looking to the Constitution to preserve the judicial filibuster; the Constitution isn't on their side. (William Kristol, 05/09/2005, Weekly Standard)

As David A. Crockett of Trinity University in San Antonio has explained, the legislative filibuster makes perfect sense. Article 1 of the Constitution gives each house of Congress the power to determine its own rules. Senate Rule XXII establishes the necessity of 60 votes to close off debate. With this rule, the Senate has chosen to allow 40-plus percent of its members to block legislative action, out of respect for the view that delaying, even preventing, hasty action, or action that has only the support of a narrow majority, can be a good thing. As Crockett puts it, "Congress is the active agent in lawmaking, and if it wants to make that process more difficult, it can." One might add that legislative filibusters can often be overcome by offering the minority compromises--revising the underlying legislation with amendments and the like.

There is no rationale for a filibuster, however, when the Senate is acting under Article 2 in advising and consenting to presidential nominations. As Crockett points out, here the president is "the originator and prime mover. If he wants to make the process more burdensome, perhaps through lengthy interviews or extraordinary background checks, he can." The Senate's role is to accept or reject the president's nominees, just as the president has a responsibility to accept or reject a bill approved by both houses of Congress. There he does not have the option of delay. Nor should Congress have the option of delay in what is fundamentally an executive function of filling the nonelected positions in the federal government. In other words--to quote Crockett once more--"it is inappropriate for the Senate to employ a delaying tactic normally used in internal business--the construction of legislation--in a nonlegislative procedure that originates in a coequal branch of government."

This is why the filibuster has historically not been used on nominations. This is the constitutional logic underlying 200-plus years of American political practice. This is why as recently as 14 years ago the possibility of filibustering Clarence Thomas, for example, was not entertained even by a hostile Democratic Senate that was able to muster 48 votes against him. The American people seem to grasp this logic. In one recent poll, 82 percent said the president's nominees deserve an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

They are right. History and the Constitution are on their side, and on majority leader Bill Frist's side.

ALL IN THE QUESTION:

Poll: 57% of Americans want Senate rules changed (WorldNetDaily.com, April 29, 2005)

As the battle continues in Washington over President Bush's selections for federal judges, a new poll indicates 57 percent of Americans want Senate rules to be changed so a vote must be taken on every person the president nominates to become a judge.

FREENESS TRUMPS FAIRNESS:

Rush to Victory: Why is Harry Reid acting like David Koresh? Because conservatives are winning. (DANIEL HENNINGER, April 29, 2005, Opinion Journal)

In 1987, Rush Limbaugh sat down at a microphone at radio station KFBK-AM in Sacramento and began broadcasting something called "The Rush Limbaugh Show."

The rest is history.

The "rest"--the inexorable 15-year rise of conservative ideas and clout across what Howard Stern calls "all media"--is described in a provocative new book by Brian C. Anderson, "South Park Conservatives." What was once a mostly exclusive liberal country club--television, the press, book publishing, even the campuses--has become heavily integrated with aggressive, even crude, conservatives.

As described by Mr. Anderson, a writer with the Manhattan Institute, conservatives established their first beachhead in the early 1990s with talk radio. Then Fox conquered cable news and finally a virtual Mongol horde of conservative-to-libertarian bloggers swept across the Internet. In the 2004 election, these electric horsemen (apologies to Jane Fonda) pulled down Dan Rather and haunted John Kerry's war hero with Swift-boat ghosts. [...]

Contrary to myth, Roger Ailes didn't do this. Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan may not make it to Mount Rushmore for winning the Cold War. But he secured his place in the conservative pantheon for tearing down another wall: the Fairness Doctrine.

WHERE THE WAR WAS LOST:

Opting for Truth Over 'Triumph' (Anne Applebaum, April 27, 2005, Washington Post)

Try, if you can, to picture the scene. A vast crowd in Red Square: Lenin's tomb and Stalin's memorial in the background. Soldiers march in goose step behind rolling tanks, and the air echoes with martial music, occasionally drowned out by the whine of fighter jets. On the reviewing stand, statesmen are gathered: Kim Jong Il, the dictator of North Korea, Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former dictator of Poland -- and President George W. Bush.

That description may sound fanciful or improbable. It is neither. On the contrary, that is more or less what will appear on your television screen May 9, when the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II is celebrated in Moscow. I have exaggerated only one detail: Although Kim Jong Il has been invited, his attendance has not yet been confirmed. But Jaruzelski is definitely coming, as are Lukashenko, Bush and several dozen other heads of state. President Vladimir Putin of Russia will preside.

Not every European country will be represented, however, because not everybody feels quite the same way about this particular date. In the Baltic states, for example, May 1945 marked the end of the war but also the beginning of nearly a half-century of Soviet occupation, during which one in 10 Balts were murdered or deported to concentration camps and exile villages. The thought of applauding the same Red Army veterans who helped "pacify" their countries after 1945 was too much for the Estonian and Lithuanian presidents, who have refused to attend. Although the Latvian president will attend the Moscow festivities, she's had to declare that she will use her trip to talk about the Soviet occupation. The president of Poland also has spent much of the past month justifying his decision to celebrate this particular anniversary in Moscow. By May 1945, after all, the leaders of what had been the Polish anti-Nazi resistance were already imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the KGB's most notorious Moscow prison.

HANG-GLIDING AIN'T FOR FOR GRANNIES

Ottawa prof dies during Everest ascent (Toronto Star, April 29th, 2005)

An Ottawa university professor who studied mental and physical training for mountain climbers died today after an apparent heart attack on the slopes of Mount Everest, a member of the Canadian expedition team said.

Dr. Sean Egan, 63, was leading his third expedition to the world's highest mountain in Nepal, which would have made him the oldest Canadian to accomplish the feat had he succeeded. [...]

Egan, a professor of human kinetics at the University of Ottawa since 1977, had been preparing for his first actual summit attack. He held a doctorate in sports psychology and his research interests included mental and physical training for mountain climbers, according to the University of Ottawa website.

"Reaching the summit for me is a personal goal," Egan said in an interview with the CBC before the expedition.

"I've been into fitness, health and wellness for many years ...I believe teaching is one thing, but practice is the main thing. And I feel like I'm a model for the general population and the old folks anyway."

What a waste, and what a tragedy that so few both modern young and elderly can recognize it. Even if he had no family, did he ever pause to think of how many kids in the throes of reckless, confused youth he might have guided and mentored if only he had acted his age?

BUBBLICIOUS (via AWW):

Dow Ends Up 122 Points As Oil Prices Skid (Michael J. Martinez, 4/29/05, AP)

Wall Street ended a volatile week with a big advance Friday as oil prices tumbled below $50 per barrel and jittery investors took solace in a pair of economic reports that eased their inflation concerns. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 122 points for the session, but the major indexes finished the week mixed.

A late selloff in crude futures helped Wall Street solidify its gains in an otherwise uncertain session. A barrel of light crude settled at $49.72, down $2.05, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, its lowest level since Feb. 18. Oil prices began the week above $55 per barrel.

The buying was further buoyed by economic data that showed prices and labor costs remained in check. The Commerce Department reported a 0.5 percent increase in income and a 0.6 percent hike in spending for March, and the Labor Department said labor costs for businesses were falling. Both are key inflation readings which bode well for interest rates and the economy.

THE STUBBORN PERSISTENCE OF SPECIES:

Call it zonkey or a deebra? (The Associated Press, April 29, 2005)

It's male. But what is it? A zonkey? A deebra? That's the debate in Barbados since a zebra gave birth to a foal sired by a donkey.

Alex was born April 21, a milk-chocolate brown creature with the black stripes of a zebra on his ears and legs. His face looks more like a horse, with a distinctive black "V" patch on the forehead.

"It's really funny and a little bit freaky," said Natalie Harvey, a 29-year-old waitress. "I was stunned to hear about such a weird thing happening here."

While zebra hybrids are not uncommon, most Barbadians have never seen anything like Alex.

MIRACLE? IT'D TAKE THE GREAT DEPRESSION:

'Miracle' needed to win back Senate (Charles Hurt, 4/29/05, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid raised a few eyebrows yesterday on the Senate floor when he said it would take a "miracle" for Democrats to win enough races next year to take back the Senate.

"I would like to think a miracle would happen and we would pick up five seats this time," he said during a floor debate over the filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. "I guess miracles never cease."

Republicans were delighted by what they called an "admission" from the highest-ranking elected Democrat in the country.

CAN ANYONE LOAN US A BIBLE FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS?

Same-sex blessings halted (Toronto Star, April 29th, 2005)

Canada's Anglican bishops have passed unanimously a resolution to put a two-year moratorium on future church blessings of same-sex relationships.

The decision, reached after three days of debate at a closed-door conference session, will halt the ritual for two years to give church leaders time to study how it relates to the official doctrine of the faith, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison said.

THE STEADY MARCH FROM IGNORANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT

How ice cream tickles your brain (David Adam, The Guardian, April 29th, 2005)

Eating ice cream really does make you happy. Scientists have found that a spoonful of the cold stuff lights up the same pleasure centre in the brain as winning money or listening to your favourite music.

Neuroscientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London scanned the brains of people eating vanilla ice cream. They found an immediate effect on parts of the brain known to activate when people enjoy themselves; these include the orbitofrontal cortex, the "processing" area at the front of the brain.

The research was carried out by Unilever, using ice cream made by Walls, which it owns. Don Darling of Unilever said: "This is the first time that we've been able to show that ice cream makes you happy. Just one spoonful lights up the happy zones of the brain in clinical trials."

We assume this means liver and broccoli light up the same brain centers as an IRS audit.

ONLY YOGI CAN HANDLE THIS ONE...:

Study: Housing price-salary gap widens (SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, 4/29/05, Associated Press)

The American dream of having a job and owning a tidy home is becoming a fantasy for more people.

Housing prices are outstripping wage increases in many areas, meaning more people are either spending above their means or living in dilapidated conditions, according to a pair of studies being released today by the Center for Housing Policy, a coalition pushing for more affordable housing.

A greater portion of minority Americans own homes now than ever before, but their homeownership rate still lags far behind whites, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week.

GIVE US THE CHILD... (via AWW):

Lexington school calls cops on dad irate over gay book (Laura Crimaldi, April 28, 2005, Boston Herald)

Police arrested a Lexington father who refused to leave the Joseph Estabrook School yesterday after school officials rejected his demands that his 6-year-old son be shielded from any discussions about gay households.

David Parker, 42, confronted officials after his son brought home ``Who's in a Family,'' a storybook that includes characters who are gay parents.

Yesterday, Parker refused to leave a meeting after Lexington Superintendent Bill Hurley rejected his demand that he be notified when his son is exposed to any discussion about same-sex households as part of classroom instruction.

``Our parental requests for our own child were flat-out denied,'' Parker said in a statement.

FASTER & LONGER:

Rare treat: Duel of 300-game winners (Paul Sullivan, April 29, 2005, Chicago Tribune)

Of the thousands of pitchers who have appeared in a major-league game, only 22 have achieved the grand milestone of 300 victories.

Two of those immortals will go head to head Friday night in Houston when Greg Maddux is to face Houston's Roger Clemens in the first meeting of 300-game winners in the National League in 113 years.

They seem to be the yin and yang of pitchers, with Clemens (329 victories) relying on his power arm and Maddux (305) on his control and guile. But, as Maddux insists, they are cut from the same cloth.

"I think we do everything exactly the same," Maddux said. "He just does it at faster speeds. You look at me like I'm crazy, but I'm telling you the truth.

"He does it just a little bit better and a little bit longer."

There were four matchups of 300-game winners in the American League from June 28, 1986, to Aug. 4, 1987, all involving California's Don Sutton, who had two starts against Phil Niekro and one apiece against Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton.

The last time two NL pitchers with 300 or more victories faced each other was Philadelphia's Tim O'Keefe against St. Louis' Jim "Pud" Galvin on July 21, 1892.

NO NEW VISION REQUIRED:

Why does New Labour stand for nothing?: Blair-bashers ignore New Labour's roots in both its party, and its times. (Josie Appleton, 4/29/05, Spiked)

The features of New Labour so harped upon by critics - its arrogance, superficiality, and managerialism - can all be derived from the fact that it grew in a political vacuum. These weren't traits that the party intentionally sought; indeed, the founders of New Labour went to great lengths to find a substantial, defining concept to keep it together and command people's allegiance.

In search of the 'vision thing'

New Labour looked long and hard for a defining vision. But its problem was that it was little more than a collection of talented and motivated individuals, not a movement with deep roots in society. As such, it drifted from one idea to another, lacking an anchor or an established course.

Blair's regime came in the wake of the collapse of left and right. As a result, it was principally defined by what it was not - not old left, not Thatcherite right, not the past - rather than what it was. It could say what had failed, but found it more difficult to say what would work instead. The result was a pick-and-mix of policies: when he took over as leader, Blair talked about 'breaking through old left-right barriers', saying in 1995 that 'New Labour is neither old left nor new right. We understand and welcome the new global market. We reject go-it-alone policies on inflation and the macro-economy. We stand for a new partnership between government and industry'.

New Labour ideologue Anthony Giddens argued that the Third Way was about 'reconciling opposites', bringing together concepts such as state and market, equality and diversity, rights and responsibility, which had previously been heralded by different political camps. But the primary reason that New Labour could unite these ideas is that they no longer meant anything in society. Because there was no left proposing state socialism, and no right defending the free market, it was easy to say: okay, let's have both. When political movements aren't demanding their right to protest, there appears to be no contradiction between rights and responsibilities. But the fact is that, once these words are no longer political battle cries, they lack broader resonance.

The ties that bound 'the Project' were personal rather than political. Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and Philip Gould went on holiday with one another, and thought up policies in each other's houses and French villas. Because they were working in a vacuum, they saw the development of new political ideas as a question of brainstorming. In his account of the period, The Unfinished Revolution, Gould is constantly moaning that 'we still lacked a defining concept'; 'we needed a central compelling argument'. He and fellow New Labourite David Miliband sat up late at night wondering: what could this defining concept be? Where could they find it?

If they clicked their fingers and got into the right mood, perhaps they could just dream up a new politics. The New Labour phrase was Gould's in 1989: 'I suggested a concept to get Labour on its feet again. I called it New Labour.' The phrase 'A new life for Britain' was invented by Campbell, sitting with Gould on a beach in Majorca - Campbell can also take the credit for the 1997 election slogan 'New Labour, New Britain'. It was Tony Blair's idea to make a show out of abolishing Clause Four, to show definitively that the party had changed.

But while the old Clause Four reflected the ambitions of mass movements in society, the new one was entirely the product of Blair's imagination. Gould describes the debates about the form of the new Clause Four: 'Matters came to a head one Sunday afternoon with Tony Blair sitting on his bed, Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell and David Miliband perched around the room, while Blair's daughter Kathryn's party going on downstairs.' In the end, they couldn't agree on the answer, except that they didn't like the draft that had been drawn up by the Labour policy team. In the end, Blair wrote it himself.

Brainstorming can't provide a new politics; if words don't represent movements in society, they are only words. New Labour may have made an effort to be serious and inspiring, but it could only come up with fluff. Compare the old and the new versions of Clause Four. The old was: 'To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.' While it leaves open the form and means of achieving this 'best obtainable' system, the clause is concrete and concise, and would spark disagreement among political rivals.

By contrast, the new Clause Four is vague and inoffensive, as if you had asked the manager of the local charity shop to list their beliefs. It goes: 'The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.' Most Labour Party members, even MPs, would struggle to remember this.

To mark the tenth anniversary of Blair's first conference speech as leader, when he called for Clause Four to be scrapped, the Fabian Society solicited suggestions for a Clause Four mark three. No doubt partly miffed because the original clause was the work of its old leader, the Fabian Society nonetheless touched a truth in its statement that: 'There is little in the Labour party's statement of values that is seriously objectionable to anyone from the mainstream of British politics. Labour Party members cannot identify enthusiastically with the new Clause because it misses out key elements of what makes politics important to them.'

New Labour's lack of roots led to its strange new language, which tends to resist direct translation. When terms are concocted by an isolated political elite, rather than drawn from common currency, it's no surprise that they are elusive and jargonised. Take the 'progressive consensus', for example, Tony Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown's current description of their project, which seems to be something to do with everybody going forward together.

A number of commentators have noted that Blair's habit of leaving verbs out of sentences makes it unclear exactly who is going to do what to whom. 'Your family better off', 'your child achieving more', 'your community safer', read Labour's 2005 election pledges, as if these things could somehow just occur of their own accord. Vague, feel-good adjectives have multiplied, as have terms for efficient-sounding procedures. In the current Labour manifesto there is a promise to 'make the contract of rights and responsibilities an enduring foundation of community life', to 'strengthen clinical governance in the NHS', and to 'build new ladders of social mobility and advancement on the firm foundations of stability, investment and growth'.

When New Labour tries to put the rhetoric into practice, it crashes against the hard rocks of reality. The Millennium Dome was supposed to be a 'spiritual beacon', an 'opportunity for renewal' - in Blair's words, 'Britain's opportunity to greet the world with a celebration so bold, so beautiful, so inspiring…'. But it's one thing to say you want to give Britain a new sense of purpose, another thing entirely to display that purpose before the nation. Mandelson trotted off around the world looking for ideas, even meeting Mickey Mouse in Disneyland. But somehow that elusive vision just couldn't be found.

Mangerialism

The only New Labour ideas with solid content weren't political at all. Instead, they were about managerialism, and the reduction of politics to the day-to-day grind of administering society. 'Modernisation', 'social inclusion', 'community' - all of these key New Labour ideas are basically about keeping society ticking over and holding alienated individuals together. New Labour thinkers defined the point of politics in prosaic terms. In his 1996 book The Blair Revolution, Peter Mandelson said that Blair was 'working through a credible strategy for successful government'. In 1997, New Labour adviser Geoff Mulgan said in Life After Politics that politics was 'a way to solve problems and…a means of providing security and a stable sense of belonging'. The pledge cards with which Labour fought the 1997 election promised small, tangible improvements to the running of things.

Anthony Giddens' The Third Way is perhaps one of the most dispiriting documents in existence: it's basically an instruction manual, a series of sociological recommendations for how it would be possible to run society. Giddens weighs up every issue not on its principles but on its contribution to social order. Meritocracy might seem like a good idea, he says, but it 'would create deep inequalities of income, which would threaten social cohesion'. In another section he ponders which type of family structure would be best: the traditional family is long gone, but you wouldn't want too many unconventional families because of the evidence suggesting that these aren't good for children. Better go for the middle ground, a 'democratised family' that is open and negotiable but where both sides have a sense of responsibility.

As Alan Finlayson argues in his perceptive study, Making Sense of New Labour, the Third Way was a 'description of the present society that could also provide an ethic'; 'political thought is subordinated to sociology'. The Third Way reflects the end of the 'politics of redemption' - rather than aiming towards a transformation in society, it merely seeks to 'update' politics to 'a changed world'.

But the point isn't that New Labour suffered from a pathological lack of imagination, or that its leaders had managerial personalities. Instead, the Third Way reflected the general state of political exhaustion at the turn of end of the twentieth century. With the cessation of the battle between left and right, there was no longer any fundamental choice about how society should be organised. Margaret Thatcher's TINA - there is no alternative - became the order of the day. But while for Thatcher TINA embodied the confidence of free-market fundamentalism, TINA quickly came to represent a shoulder-shrugging acceptance that market economy is here to stay - though nobody was very enthusiastic about it.

Political horizons were lowered to tinkering with what exists. Hence this gloomy prediction from Francis Fukuyama's 1992 End of History: 'The end of history will be a very sad time…. [T]he worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.' This wasn't just about Blair; it was about the zeitgeist. What New Labour did was turn the temper of the time into a how-to manual for government.

THE SENSIBLE DESIRE NOT TO BE NEXT:

Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism: Despite once harboring Bin Laden, Khartoum regime has supplied key intelligence, officials say. (Ken Silverstein, April 29, 2005, LA Times)

The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden here, even though Sudan continues to come under harsh U.S. and international criticism for human rights violations.

The Sudanese government, an unlikely ally in the U.S. fight against terror, remains on the most recent U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, however, it has been providing access to terrorism suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States.

Last week, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration, U.S. government officials confirmed.

A decade ago Bin Laden and his fledgling Al Qaeda network were based in Khartoum. After they left for Afghanistan, the regime of Sudanese strongman Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir retained ties with other groups the U.S. accuses of terrorism.

As recently as September, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in putting down an armed rebellion in the western province of Darfur. And the administration warned that the African country's conduct posed "an extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States.

Behind the scenes, however, Sudan was emerging as a surprisingly valuable ally of the CIA.

The warming relationship has produced significant results, according to interviews with American and Sudanese intelligence and government officials. They disclosed, for example, that:

• Sudan's Mukhabarat, its version of the CIA, has detained Al Qaeda suspects for interrogation by U.S. agents.

• The Sudanese intelligence agency has seized and turned over to the FBI evidence recovered in raids on suspected terrorists' homes, including fake passports.

• Sudan has expelled extremists, putting them into the hands of Arab intelligence agencies working closely with the CIA.

• The regime is credited with foiling attacks against American targets by, among other things, detaining foreign militants moving through Sudan on their way to join forces with Iraqi insurgents.

Sudan has "given us specific information that is … important, functional and current," said a senior State Department official who agreed to discuss intelligence matters on condition of anonymity. The official acknowledged that the Mukhabarat could become a "top tier" partner of the CIA.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

John Kerry: The first 100 days (David Martin, April 29, 2005, Boston Globe)

Jan. 20 Watch TV as Bush sworn in again. Throw J. Crew socks and Godiva chocolate wrappers at set every time he says ''freedom" or ''democracy." Phone rings, but I don't answer. Call display shows it's Al Gore probably wanting to commiserate again. No way I'm joining that loser in Loserville.

Jan. 26 Channel all energies into tracking down members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Phone remaining loyal crew members to engage their services in search and destroy mission. Despite generous offer, none is ''reporting for duty." Regrettably, mission is terminated with extreme prejudice.

Jan. 31 Teresa issues ultimatum: Either I stop moping around the house in bathrobe all day or she'll cut off my weekly allowance. Her words hit me like a cold splash of water. Stop watching C-Span in hopes of finding ongoing election recounts. Briefly leave house to avoid Teresa's incessant swearing in Portuguese.

Feb. 2 Groundhog Day. If I see my own shadow, there'll be six more years of Republican rule. If I don't, there'll be eight. Back to bed. What's the point?

Feb. 9 Concerned about Bush's reform proposal, visit local Social Security office and inquire about filing early application for benefits. Informed that qualifying age is 67 and reminded that I am still employed by US Senate. Vow to attend at least one sitting in current session.

BUSY DYING OFF:

To French workers, minutes add up (Thomas Fuller, APRIL 29, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

One minute and 52 seconds is the time it might take an employee to remove his coat and begin booting up his computer, or maybe to dart off for a trip to the water cooler. In France this year, it is the additional time that staff at the national railroad company were asked to work each day as their contribution to a "solidarity fund" for the handicapped and elderly.

The rail workers' response: not unless we get paid for it.

"One minute and 52 seconds doesn't seem like much but it still adds up to 7 or 8 hours a year that would not be paid," said Grégory Roux, secretary of the railroad workers division of the CGT, one of France's largest unions.

The rail workers are not alone. Many are protesting the government's decision to turn a national holiday into a working day, worsening the atmosphere here at a time when President Jacques Chirac is desperately seeking a way to turn around public opinion before the French referendum on the European Union constitution.

The dispute over the solidarity fund is perhaps the best illustration today of the sour mood gripping the country. There is mistrust between bosses and workers, disenchantment with the government and overwhelming hostility toward reform.

No one wants to budge from his position, and everyone, it seems, is complaining.

French unemployment has risen to its highest level in five years, increasing concerns about the strength of France's economic growth.

The jobless rate in March, as measured according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) method, rose by 0.1% from February to 10.2%.

THE GERMANS HAVE OUTLAWED MIRACLES

'Miracle' needed to win back Senate (Charles Hurt, The Washington Times, 4/29/05)

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid raised a few eyebrows yesterday on the Senate floor when he said it would take a "miracle" for Democrats to win enough races next year to take back the Senate.

"I would like to think a miracle would happen and we would pick up five seats this time," he said during a floor debate over the filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. "I guess miracles never cease."

JUST ANOTHER AMERICAN FAMILY:

YABU FITS LIKE A GLOVE: A's reliever blends in with crowd in Bay Area, clubhouse (Susan Slusser, April 29, 2005, SF Chronicle)

In Japan, Keiichi Yabu cannot make a simple trip to the supermarket. He's swamped.

"People follow you to see what you're buying,'' the A's reliever said. "There's very little privacy.''

So he loves his new home in San Mateo, where, Yabu said, he can walk to the park with his wife and three children, "and we're just another Asian family. It's nice. I can relax.''

The first native of Japan to play for the A's, Yabu, 36, has done a terrific job of blending in with his teammates after 11 years of playing with Hanshin of Japan's Central League. After a difficult spring, he's performed pretty well this April, with a 0.96 ERA, and he gained immediate acceptance with his enthusiasm and his wicked sense of humor.

"Yabu's the funniest guy here, which is amazing considering he doesn't speak that much English,'' A's bullpen coach Bob Geren said. "He makes me laugh every day, he's hilarious, but I don't think it's stuff I can repeat.''

Yabu's English is coming along so well that he often bypasses translator Andy Painter when he answers questions from American reporters.

"Pretty soon, I'll be totally unnecessary,'' Painter said with a laugh.

Painter, who is from San Mateo and now lives in Burlingame, is as much a fixture in the clubhouse as Yabu, and just as popular. He has jumped into the job with so much gusto that he warms up coaches before they throw batting practice and he shags flyballs, even diving on occasion. It's quite a sight, the graying 43-year-old anthropology professor (undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz; Ph.D. from Michigan) grinning from ear-to-ear as he bounces around the field.

FLICKING THE RAIL:

Bush Cites Plan That Would Cut Social Security Benefits (RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ELISABETH BUMILLER, 4/29/05, NY Times)

President Bush called Thursday night for cutting Social Security benefits for future retirees to put the system on sound financial footing, and he proposed doing so in a way that would demand the most sacrifice from higher-income people while insulating low-income workers.

COME, LET US REASON TOGETHER:

Bush would trim benefits of well-to-do: Stands by his Social Security plan with talk in prime time (Michael Kranish and Susan Milligan, April 29, 2005, Boston Globe)

President Bush, in a prime-time effort to reverse the perception that his Social Security plan is faltering, last night proposed cutting currently promised future Social Security benefits for higher-earning workers, modeling the idea on a plan put forward by a Boston investment company executive.

But Bush did not back away from his proposal for private accounts, saying it must be part of any deal. Trying to reassure people concerned about a stock market slide, he said he would allow investment in government bonds as well as stock mutual funds. Democrats have said requiring private accounts would kill chances of their support for a Social Security deal.

''I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off," Bush said in a nationally televised press conference. ''By providing more generous benefits for low-income retirees, we'll make this commitment: If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty. This reform would solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security."

Bush did not provide details of his proposal for changing the benefit formula, but the White House released a statement last night saying the idea would be ''similar" to a plan put forward by Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management of Massachusetts. Pozen said his plan calls for leaving now-promised benefits intact for those who earned an average of $25,000 annually during their working career, with the increase in benefits ''slowed down" on a sliding scale for those who earned more. Under the Pozen plan, the deepest cuts in future benefits would affect those who earned an average of more than $113,000.

In a telephone interview last night, Pozen said, ''it's ''very satisfying to have the president of the United States say that he is endorsing the plan." But Pozen said he was concerned that Bush's insistence on including his concept of private accounts in the plan might prevent Democrats -- and some Republicans -- from endorsing it.

MORE:
Press Conference of the President (George W. Bush, 4/28/05, The East Room)

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight I will discuss two vital priorities for the American people, and then I'd be glad to answer some of your questions.

Millions of American families and small businesses are hurting because of higher gasoline prices. My administration is doing everything we can to make gasoline more affordable. In the near-term, we will continue to encourage oil producing nations to maximize their production. Here at home, we'll protect consumers. There will be no price gouging at gas pumps in America.

We must address the root causes that are driving up gas prices. Over the past decade, America's energy consumption has been growing about 40 times faster than our energy production. That means we're relying more on energy produced abroad. To reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, we must take four key steps. First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy. Secondly, we must find innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal and safe, clean nuclear power.

Third, we must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or biodiesel. Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently, and reduce global demand of fossil fuels. I applaud the House for passing a good energy bill. Now the Senate needs to act on this urgent priority. American consumers have waited long enough. To help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, Congress needs to get an energy bill to my desk by this summer so I can sign it into law.

Congress also needs to address the challenges facing Social Security. I've traveled the country to talk with the American people. They understand that Social Security is headed for serious financial trouble, and they expect their leaders in Washington to address the problem.

Social Security worked fine during the last century, but the math has changed. A generation of baby boomers is getting ready to retire. I happen to be one of them. Today there are about 40 million retirees receiving benefits; by the time all the baby boomers have retired, there will be more than 72 million retirees drawing Social Security benefits. Baby boomers will be living longer and collecting benefits over long retirements than previous generations. And Congress has ensured that their benefits will rise faster than the rate of inflation.

In other words, there's a lot of us getting ready to retire who will be living longer and receiving greater benefits than the previous generation. And to compound the problem, there are fewer people paying into the system. In 1950, there were 16 workers for every beneficiary; today there are 3.3 workers for every beneficiary; soon there will be two workers for every beneficiary.

These changes have put Social Security on the path to bankruptcy. When the baby boomers start retiring in three years, Social Security will start heading toward the red. In 2017, the system will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. Every year after that the shortfall will get worse, and by 2041, Social Security will be bankrupt.

Franklin Roosevelt did a wonderful thing when he created Social Security. The system has meant a lot for a lot of people. Social Security has provided a safety net that has provided dignity and peace of mind for millions of Americans in their retirement. Yet there's a hole in the safety net because Congresses have made promises it cannot keep for a younger generation.

As we fix Social Security, some things won't change: Seniors and people with disabilities will get their checks; all Americans born before 1950 will receive the full benefits.

Our duty to save Social Security begins with making the system permanently solvent, but our duty does not end there. We also have a responsibility to improve Social Security, by directing extra help to those most in need and by making it a better deal for younger workers. Now, as Congress begins work on legislation, we must be guided by three goals. First, millions of Americans depend on Social Security checks as a primary source of retirement income, so we must keep this promise to future retirees, as well. As a matter of fairness, I propose that future generations receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get.

Secondly, I believe a reform system should protect those who depend on Social Security the most. So I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off. By providing more generous benefits for low-income retirees, we'll make this commitment: If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty. This reform would solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security. A variety of options are available to solve the rest of the problem, and I will work with Congress on any good-faith proposal that does not raise the payroll tax rate or harm our economy. I know we can find a solution to the financial problems of Social Security that is sensible, permanent, and fair.

Third, any reform of Social Security must replace the empty promises being made to younger workers with real assets, real money. I believe the best way to achieve this goal is to give younger workers the option, the opportunity if they so choose, of putting a portion of their payroll taxes into a voluntary personal retirement account. Because this money is saved and invested, younger workers would have the opportunity to receive a higher rate of return on their money than the current Social Security system can provide.

The money from a voluntary personal retirement account would supplement the check one receives from Social Security. In a reformed Social Security system, voluntary personal retirement accounts would offer workers a number of investment options that are simple and easy to understand. I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Options like this will make voluntary personal retirement accounts a safer investment that will allow an American to build a nest egg that he or she can pass on to whomever he or she chooses. Americans who would choose not to save in a personal account would still be able to count on a Social Security check equal to or higher than the benefits of today's seniors.

In the coming days and weeks, I will work with both the House and the Senate as they take the next steps in the legislative process. I'm willing to listen to any good idea from either party.

Too often, the temptation in Washington is to look at a major issue only in terms of whether it gives one political party an advantage over the other. Social Security is too important for "politics as usual." We have a shared responsibility to fix Social Security and make the system better; to keep seniors out of poverty and expand ownership for people of every background. And when we do, Republicans and Democrats will be able to stand together and take credit for doing what is right for our children and our grandchildren.

And now I'll be glad to answer some questions, starting with Terry Hunt

President Bush, seeking support from Democrats and moderate Republicans for an overhaul of Social Security, said Thursday that he favored changing the pension system so that benefits for low-income workers would grow faster than those for wealthy retirees.

Bush, speaking at a nationally televised news conference, said such a change "would solve most of the funding challenges facing Social Security." He cited a proposal by a Democratic policy expert to reduce the rate of growth in benefits for wealthy workers but did not explicitly endorse the plan, saying it was up to Congress to work out the details.

With the president's ambitions for restructuring Social Security apparently stalled despite weeks of barnstorming to mobilize public support, his endorsement of what he called means-based benefits appeared designed to inject momentum into the debate. Aides said it was also a response to Senate moderates from both parties who had called on Bush to lay out specific steps to shore up the finances of the system. [...]

He repeated, with vigor, many of the lines from his campaign speeches of the last two months to persuade a skeptical public that the Social Security system was in financial trouble because of the coming wave of baby boom retirees and needed an immediate fix.

But he also threw out several signals of what kind of changes he was willing to negotiate with Congress — in phrases that may have sounded obscure to much of the public.

For example, he proposed that in restructuring the program, future retirees should receive benefits "equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get" — a promise that sounded generous but left room for a cutback from what workers now expect their future benefits to be. That's because Social Security benefits are constructed to rise over time, and historically have done so faster than the rate of inflation.

He proposed a pledge to increase benefits for low-income workers enough to keep them above the poverty line, a guarantee not in current law. "If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty," he said.

Aides said those proposals were intended to rebut complaints from Democrats and some Republicans that the president had called for major changes in Social Security but had not laid out specific steps that would improve the pension system's solvency. Instead, Bush has focused on adding individually directed investment accounts to Social Security, even though his aides acknowledged that such accounts would not help with solvency.

In addition, the idea of an antipoverty guarantee for low-income workers has been popular among moderate Republicans in the Senate, whose votes Bush will need to pass any overhaul plan.

PATIENCE, CHILDREN:

A Crucial Window for Iraq: 15 Weeks to Pull Together (JOHN F. BURNS, 4/29/05, NY Times)

It was a moment for which Iraqis had yearned for generations: parliamentary approval of a government with a mandate won at the ballot box. For Shiites, especially, Thursday's vote was a moment in history: for generations, going back to Ottoman imperial rule that ended with World War I, Shiites, accounting for 60 percent of the population, have been a political underclass. Until American troops toppled Saddam Hussein two years ago, political power rested with the Sunni minority, accounting for no more than 15 to 20 percent of the country's 25 million people.

The moment found its expression in the new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, a 58-year-old doctor and a devout Shiite, who fled into exile in 1980 on the day an arrest warrant was issued that would probably have sent him to the gallows. Among many Shiites, that has made him and the party he leads, Dawa, totems of repression under Mr. Hussein, especially of religious groups, that led to scores of mass graves.

But Dr. Jaafari and his cabinet, expected to be sworn in next week, face daunting challenges. One reading of Thursday's events was that they were the start of the hardest passage yet in the American enterprise in Iraq: an eight-month period, up to fresh elections for a full, five-year government in December, in which issues basic to Iraq's future and its prospects of emerging as a stable democracy - at worst, of avoiding a civil war among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - can no longer be papered over. That, in effect, is what occurred during the 15 months of American occupation to last June, and under Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, appointed by the Americans, which will cede to Dr. Jaafari's.

Dr. Allawi, also a Shiite, will retreat to the sidelines and hope for a comeback for his brand of secular politics after Iraqis have had a taste of being ruled, also for the first time, by a government led by men rooted in Shiite religious politics. The new government, with 17 ministries led by Shiites, 8 by Kurds, 6 by Sunni Arabs, and 1 by a Christian, faces a deadline of Aug. 15, to win parliamentary approval for a permanent constitution. That leaves 15 weeks - not much longer than the 12 weeks it took to form the Jaafari government - to settle issues on which Arabs and Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, religious politicians land secularists have potentially polarizing views.

Principally, these issues include the role of Islam, and whether future Shiite-led governments should be free to adopt Shariah law and other elements of conservative Islam; the division of powers and oil revenues between central and regional governments; and the geographical boundaries - especially the potentially explosive issue of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, claimed by Sunnis and Kurds alike - to be granted to the proud and wary Kurds.

Overshadowing these issues is the insurgency, and the particular challenges it poses for the Shiites who will dominate the government. The war has been driven by die-hard Hussein loyalists, unreconciled Baathists and Islamic militants, all Sunnis, for whom a Shiite majority government is anathema. Even American officials concede that the accession of the Jaafari government may harden militants' resolve to fight on.

POISED? (via Tom Morin):

Israel's tech titans are challenging Canadian entrepreneurs as a global force (Aron Heller in Tel Aviv and James Bagnall in Ottawa, April 28, 2005,
The Ottawa Citizen)

It's a common Hebrew expression: "holech al gadol," which translates directly to "going for big." In casual usage, the words describe an ambitious person but they also apply in a larger sense to 21st century Israel. Look just about anywhere in this country -- from the heart of the Negev desert in the south to the R&D heartland of Haifa towards the north -- and you'll see signs of a remarkable economic renaissance anchored by Israel's role as a high-tech proving ground.

The new cross-country super-highway, the massive state-of-the-art passenger terminal at Ben Gurion Airport and the sky-scraping Azrieli towers in downtown Tel Aviv are the most obvious manifestations. But you can see it, too, in the clusters of high-tech startups that radiate outward from Tel Aviv in ever-expanding waves.

The country's high-tech economy should be on its knees by now. It was hit by a double-whammy in 2000 when dot-com stocks crashed at almost precisely the same time as the Palestinians launched their second intifada. Israeli's entrepreneurs struggled to make do with meagre financing against the backdrop of a wave of suicide bombings.

Yet, as Israel and the Palestinians take the first tentative steps towards a possible accord, Israel's tech titans are in remarkably good shape -- so good in fact that Israel is starting to challenge Canada as a tech power, not just in relative terms but dollar for dollar.

Consider that Israeli startups last year for the first time attracted more venture capital than Canadian firms -- $1.4 billion compared with $1.36 billion (all figures U.S. dollars). Evidence of the global ambition of Israeli's entrepreneurs can be seen in the fact that more than 70 Israeli technology firms trade on America's two biggest stock exchanges.

Only Canada has more foreign listings on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, but many of these are energy, utilities and railway stocks.

When it comes to technology listings, Israel is the leader.

STILL C.E.O.ING:

Bush muscles his agenda with tactical flexibility: From Social Security to Tom DeLay, he's projected steely consistency to beat the 'lame duck' rap. (Linda Feldmann, 4/29/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

The vast array of issues George W. Bush faces have enhanced his image for steadfastness - or stubbornness, depending on one's political prism.

President Bush is sticking by John Bolton, his embattled nominee for UN ambassador. He is actively supporting House Republican leader Tom DeLay, under fire on ethics. He is still touring the country to promote major changes to Social Security that include personal investment accounts, despite growing public skepticism and signals from Congress that personal accounts might not make it. He still supports oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He hasn't backed down on judicial nominees.

But Bush's carefully crafted image of constancy belies a suppleness he has long employed to his benefit on matters of policy and personnel. He reversed course on creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11 commission, after initial opposition. He also at first resisted holding elections in Iraq last January, then came around. When his intelligence bill faced trouble in last December's lame-duck Congress, Bush made the necessary concessions to gain passage.

Now, four months into his second term, the president and his team are working hard to protect his ambitious agenda, including aggressive use of the bully pulpit - and nary a public hint of doubt or acknowledgment of error.

"So far, they're sticking to their public persona of steadfastness, because they think that's their best chance to win enough to avoid being pushed into early lame-duckism," says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. "But behind the scenes, they're calculating carefully where to cave in."

DOUBT FULL:

Crisis of Faith: HOW FUNDAMENTALISM IS SPLITTING THE GOP (Andrew Sullivan, 04.25.05, New Republic)

Rich Lowry of National Review recently argued that it is not: "The secularist view misses that freedom is grounded in truths, in the God-given dignity of man as a rational creature and in our fundamental equality. This is why the pope could say, 'God created us to be free.' If the idea of freedom is detached from these truths, it has no secure ground, because the strong will inevitably attempt to dominate the weak unless checked by moral truths (see slavery or segregation or communism)." Without Christianity, Lowry argues, the rights of the individual will be trampled. [...]

The defense of human freedom offered by conservatives of doubt, on the other hand, is founded on more accessible and less contentious arguments. Such conservatives can point to the Constitution itself as the basis of U.S. political life, and its Enlightenment concept of freedom as sturdy enough without extra-Constitutional theology. (The purpose of the Constitution was to preserve the Declaration of Independence's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The word "virtue" is not included in that phrase. Its omission is the single greatest innovation of the U.S. founding.) They can point to the astonishing success and durability of the U.S. experiment to buttress the notion that the Constitution is a much more stable defense of human equality than that inherent in any religion. The Constitution itself has far wider support among citizens than any theological argument. To put it another way: You don't need an actual religion when you already have a workable civil version in place.

DIE, YOU LITTLE S.O.B.! (David Hill, The Bronx):

Complaint Filed on Behalf of Mother Whose Born-Alive Baby Died at Abortion Clinic (Melanie Hunter, April 28, 2005, CNSNews.com)

A conservative legal group has filed two complaints against a Florida abortion clinic claiming the clinic refused to help a mother whose baby was born alive, despite a law that protects babies "accidentally" born during abortion procedures from being killed or left to die.

The mother, Angele, had gone to the EPOC clinic in Orlando, Fla., to get an abortion. After the first day of the procedure, she was required to return to the clinic the following day for an induced abortion. When her baby was born alive, the woman screamed for help, but the clinic workers refused to help her, according to the Liberty Counsel.

Angele was forced to watch her son Rowan die, and during the incident, no doctors were present at the abortion clinic, the legal group said.

The Health and Human Services recently announced it would take steps to improve compliance with the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act after receiving "testimony that some infants who had been born alive after unsuccessful abortions were left to die."

AND THE ECONOMY WOULDN'T SEEM TO HAVE BEEN TURNED UPSIDE DOWN:

U.S. Pollution Drops (Ryan Pearson, 28 April 2005, Associated Press)

Fewer Americans have had to breathe unhealthy levels of smog or microscopic soot in recent years, but air pollution remained a threat in counties where more than half the nation lives, the American Lung Association said in an annual report Thursday.

Using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the group found that the number of counties in which unhealthy air was recorded fell significantly for the first time in six years, to 390 from 441 in last year's report. The new report covered 2001 to 2003, while the previous one analyzed pollution levels from 2000 to 2002.

The association attributed the dip to cool and wet weather in the years studied, government controls on Eastern coal-fired power plants and improved vehicle emissions standards. Areas of the Southeast accounted for much of the drop in pollution.

But Janice Nolen, the group's director of national policy, emphasized that the counties where problems persist are home to 152 million people, or 52 percent of the U.S. population.

"People's lives are shortened by months to years because of the air they're breathing,'' she said. "The trend has gotten a little bit better in the last few years ... but we're not out of the woods.''

A HUNDRED HOURS LATER THE COFFEE IN THE SAUCER SHOULD BE COOL ENOUGH:

Frist Offers Deal for Vote on Judges (William Branigin, April 28, 2005, Washington Post)

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today offered extended debate on President Bush's top judicial nominees in return for Democratic agreement to stop using filibuster threats to block confirmation votes. But the chamber's Democratic leader immediately raised objections to the proposal, calling it a sop to the far right.

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, said on the Senate floor that his offer was aimed at ensuring "an up-or-down vote" by the full Senate for Bush's judicial nominees "after fair, open and, some might say, exhaustive debate."

He said the Senate's majority party is prepared to allot up to 100 hours for debate on each nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court or to a federal appeals court, to be followed by a confirmation vote by the full Senate.

"Judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes," Frist said. Calling his offer "a compromise that holds to constitutional principles," he said, "It's time for judicial obstruction to end, no matter which party controls the White House or the Senate."

Under his proposal, Frist said, the Judiciary Committee "will no longer be used to obstruct judicial nominees."

But he said he guaranteed that the ability of minority senators to block bills through filibusters "will be protected," and he vowed that filibuster rules "will remain unchanged."

MORE:
They'd satisfy the Dean of the Washington press corps anyway, A Judicious Compromise (David S. Broder, April 24, 2005, Washington Post)

It is not too late to avoid a Senate-splitting rules fight over President Bush's embattled judicial nominees and achieve something positive for both the public and the cause of good government, if only Democrats and Republicans can free themselves for a moment from the death grip of the opposing outside interest groups.

Here is what should happen: The Democratic Senate leadership should agree voluntarily to set aside the continued threat of filibustering the seven Bush appointees to the federal appeals courts who were blocked in the last Congress and whose names have been resubmitted. In return, they should get a renewed promise from the president that he will not bypass the Senate by offering any more recess appointments to the bench and a pledge from Republican Senate leaders to consider each such nominee individually, carefully and with a guarantee of extensive debate in coming months

NOT UNSELECTED AFTER ALL:

Woodpecker Thought to Be Extinct Is Sighted in Arkansas (JAMES GORMAN, 4/28/05, NY Times)

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird that ornithologists had long given up for extinct, has been sighted in the watery tupelo swampland of a wildlife refuge in Arkansas, scientists announced today.

The birders, ornithologists, government agencies and conservation organizations involved had kept the discovery secret for more than a year, while efforts to protect the bird and its territory went into high gear. Their announcement today provoked rejoicing and excitement among birdwatchers, for whom the ivory bill has long been a holy grail: a creature that has been called the Lord God bird, apparently because when people saw it they would be so impressed they would utter an involuntary "Lord God!"

"This great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe," as John James Audubon described the ivory bill - with its 30-inch wingspan, stunning black and white coloration with red on the male's cockade and a long, powerful bill - was once found in hardwood swamps and bottom land through the Southeast. As the forests were logged the numbers of birds decreased, until the ivory bill, the largest American woodpecker, faded from view. The last documented sighting was in Louisiana in 1944.

Though it appeared lost, the ivory bill haunted birders and ornithologists and others, and over the years there were dozens of reports of sightings. But each effort was unmasked as a hoax or wishful thinking - until Feb. 11, 2004.

On that date Gene M. Sparling III, an amateur birdwatcher from Hot Springs, Ark., sighted a large woodpecker with a red crest in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, about 60 miles northeast of Little Rock. Tim W. Gallagher at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, author of a new book about the ivory bill, "The Grail Bird," saw Mr. Sparling's report on a Web site, and within two weeks he and Bobby R. Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., were in a canoe in the refuge, with Mr. Sparling guiding them.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A TEACHER AND A PRIEST:

'ET' Ponies Up for Letourneau Wedding (Zap2it.com, 4/28/05) "Entertainment Tonight" has won the rights to televise the wedding of former schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her student-turned-fiance, Vili Fualaau. [...]

Letourneau, you'll recall, was a 34-year-old teacher and mother of four when she began having an affair with the then 12-year-old Fualaau, one of her sixth-grade students, about a decade ago. She was convicted of raping the boy and served a 7 1/2-year prison sentence that ended last August.

THE FUTURE NEVER HAPPENS HERE:

Europe’s Present, America’s Future? (George Weigel, April 27, 2005, The Catholic Difference)

What do Konrad Adenauer, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and the two Augustines (Hippo and Canterbury) have in common? Or Bach, Bacon, Becket, Bede, Benedict, Bernini, Bonhoeffer, and Borromeo? What about Calvin, Caravaggio, Charlemagne, Columbus, Constantine, and Cromwell? Or, to stop this promiscuous alphabetizing, what’s the thread linking Dante, William Wilberforce, Galileo, Dominic, Joan of Arc, de Gasperi, Luther, Rublev, Thomas More, John Wesley, Mozart, and Hieronymus Bosch?

The envelope, please.

And the answers are:

1) They are all Christians who, acting precisely as Christians, had a profound impact for better or worse (and sometimes for both) in making "Europe" what it is today.

2) Their contributions to Europe’s evolution as a continent committed to freedom, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law were willfully omitted from the preamble to the new European constitution, which takes the strange position that Christian culture had no significant impact on the civilizational formation of today’s European Union.

Is Europe "Christophobic?" Neither the formulation nor the suggestion are mine; rather, they come from one of the world’s foremost international legal scholars, J.H.H. Weiler of New York University, a practicing Orthodox Jew. I think Professor Weiler is right, at least in terms of European high culture and European public life. I’d take his claim one step further, though, and suggest that Europe’s present incapacities – including the demographic suicide that is stripping the continent of population at a rate unseen since the Black Death in the 14th century – are related to its Christophobia. And that, in turn, is a by-product of what happened in the most influential intellectual circles in 19th century Europe, when atheistic humanism jettisoned the God of the Bible in the name of human liberation.

PRACTICAL IDENTICALITY:

Towards a Catholic-Orthodox Alliance (Robert Moynihan, 4/24/05, Orthodoxy Today)

Interview with Hilarion Alfeyev, Bishop of Vienna and Austria, Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, by Robert Moynihan, editor-in-chief of 'Inside the Vatican', on 24 April 2005, the day of enthronement of Pope Benedict XVI.

What are your hopes for the new pontificate?

As a Russian Orthodox bishop, I hope, first of all, that the new pontificate will be marked by a breakthrough in relations between the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox Churches, and that a meeting of the Pope of Rome with the Patriarch of Moscow does take place. This meeting must be preceded by concrete steps in the direction of a better mutual understanding, and by careful elaboration of a common position on major dividing issues.

I hope, next, that there will be a general amelioration in the relations between the Catholic Church and the world Orthodoxy, and that the Joint Catholic-Orthodox Theological Commission resumes its work after a five-year pause, or that a new commission for bilateral dialogue is formed in order to discuss Uniatism, primacy and other theological and ecclesiological questions which still divide our churches.

As far as the Catholic Church as such is concerned, I hope that it will continue to preserve its traditional social and moral teaching without surrendering to pressures from the 'progressive' groups that demand the ordination of women, the approval of the so-called 'same-sex marriages,' abortion, contraception, euthanasia, etc. There is no doubt that Benedict XVI, who has already made his positions on these issues clear, will continue to oppose such groups, which exist both within the Catholic Church and outside it.

I also hope that the Catholic Church will continue to combat liberalism, secularism and relativism both in Europe and outside it. Just two days before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, the then Cardinal Ratzinger addressed his fellow cardinals with a sermon which, according to some journalists, broke like a thunderclap. 'We are moving,' he said, toward 'a dictatorship of relativism. that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure.' A sermon on the eve of the conclave was meant to be programmatic, and it is clear that the war against relativism which Cardinal Ratzinger declared did not scare the other cardinals: on the contrary, by electing him as Pope they expressed their readiness to join him in this noble, but extremely painful and difficult combat.

In order for this combat to be more inclusive, I have recently suggested that a European Catholic-Orthodox Alliance be formed. This alliance may enable European Catholics and Orthodox to fight together against secularism, liberalism and relativism prevailing in modern Europe, may help them to speak with one voice in addressing secular society, may provide for them an ample space where they will discuss modern issues and come to common positions. The social and ethical teachings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are extremely close, in many cases practically identical.

GIVE JOE THE U.N.:

Springtime for Senators: The 2006 Senate races are underway. (John J. Miller, 4/28/05, National Review)

[T]he GOP performed well in 2002, and there's reason to think the outlook for 2006 is anything but bleak. [...]

CONNECTICUT: Democratic senator Joe Lieberman's job-approval rating among Republicans (72 percent) is higher than it is among members of his own party (66 percent), according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Will the Greens at least put up a candidate?

FLORIDA: Democratic senator Bill Nelson is a big, fat target for Republicans — neither his approval ratings nor his reelect numbers are especially healthy in this more-red-than-blue state — and the GOP's bench is deep. Looking good in very early polling is Rep. Katherine Harris, who became a household name during the 2000 election controversy. One or more of the candidates now running for governor might switch to the Senate race. The name of retired general Tommy Franks is heard as well. [...]

MICHIGAN: As a first-term senator, Democrat Debbie Stabenow should find herself vulnerable to a Republican challenge. But the GOP's top candidates are staying on the sidelines, in the belief that they're better off waiting for 2008, when they assume Democratic senator Carl Levin will head into retirement. Nationally, Republicans would love to see a potential self-funder, such as Domino's executive David Brandon, jump in — not so much because they think he'll win, but because they believe he would free up cash for more competitive contests. Another possible candidate is Jane Abraham, the wife of the senator Stabenow beat in 2000.

MINNESOTA: With former GOP senator Rod Grams announcing that he won't run for the seat of retiring Democrat Mark Dayton, the Republican primary field is now clear for congressman Mark Kennedy. Think about it: Republicans cheering on a Kennedy. This one, of course, isn't related to that one. Surprisingly, Democrats are having trouble finding a top-notch opponent. (Maybe they think there really is a relation.) This is a very good pickup opportunity for the GOP, and it keeps looking better. [...]

MONTANA: This could be a dark-horse race for Democrats. The incumbent, Republican senator Conrad Burns, is less popular than his Democrat counterpart, Sen. Max Baucus. State auditor John Morrison says he'll take on Burns.

NEBRASKA: Democratic senator Ben Nelson breathed a big sigh of relief when President Bush tapped Gov. Mike Johanns — a possible challenger, and a very strong one — to become secretary of agriculture. Republicans once had high hopes here, and they've by no means abandoned the idea of winning, but the odds are looking longer.

NEW JERSEY: The key question here involves Democratic senator Jon Corzine's bid to become governor this year. If he wins, his seat in the Senate will become available. If he loses, Republicans will consider him battered and weakened. Likely Democratic candidates include congressman Rob Andrews and Bob Menendez; on the GOP side, there's state senator Tom Kean Jr.

NEW MEXICO: Democratic senator Jeff Bingaman is a popular incumbent. Among Republicans, congresswoman Heather Wilson possibly could provide an interesting challenge — but this would require her to quit a competitive House district that the GOP might lose. Denny Hastert won't want her to do that. Moreover, she's not the type of candidate who would excite conservatives, which is probably a prerequisite for beating Bingaman in an upset. [...]

NORTH DAKOTA: Democratic senator Kent Conrad will face a tough fight if Gov. John Hoeven, a Republican, decides to challenge him. [...]

PENNSYLVANIA: Republican senator Rick Santorum is the top target for Democrats, and several polls show him trailing state treasurer Bob Casey Jr. One survey from a couple of weeks ago had Casey ahead by 14 points — seemingly too wide a margin to be credible, but certainly not welcome news for the incumbent. This may become the closest and most-watched race in America.

RHODE ISLAND: Wouldn't it be cool if John Bolton could run against Republican senator Lincoln Chafee in a primary? As it turns out, Chafee may face Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey, who hopes to become the Pat Toomey of 2006. Among Democrats, challengers include former attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse (what a name for a politico!) and secretary of state Matt Brown. [...]

VERMONT: The retirement of "independent" senator Jim Jeffords creates an open-seat opportunity for Republicans, but only if newly elected governor Jim Douglas declares. He'll probably decide this summer. Meanwhile, Democrats are rallying behind socialist congressman Bernie Sanders, another "independent" (who has not yet formally announced). Isn't it at least a little bit embarrassing for DNC chair Howard Dean that he can't get an official Democrat to run for the Senate in his home state? [...]

WASHINGTON: Democratic senator Maria Cantwell barely defeated Sen. Slade Gorton in 2000, and her reelection numbers are best described as fair to middling. This is a blue state and she's the incumbent, which makes her the favorite against just about anybody. Republicans are waiting for Dino Rossi to decide whether he wants to run — and Rossi is still waiting for his challenge to last year's gubernatorial race, which he apparently lost by a handful of votes, to make its way through the courts.

WEST VIRGINIA: If Democratic senator Robert Byrd proposed naming West Virginia after himself, it's possible that most of his constituents would say that's just fine with them. The man won't be defeated, even though a recent poll raised some GOP eyebrows: Tested against Rep. Shelly Capito in March, he led by only 10 points.

THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR A MODERATE DEMOCRAT THESE DAYS?:

Salazar regrets 'Antichrist' barb (M.E. Sprengelmeyer, April 28, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he regrets referring to Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson as "the Antichrist" - a term among the worst slurs in Christianity.

TIME TO PEN ANOTHER JUST-SO STORY:

Exploding toads puzzle German scientists (Associated Press, 4/28/05)

More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks, and German scientists have no explanation for what's causing the combustion.

WHY THE HOOD IS RUNNING SCARED:

Red state?: West Virginia shift (The Charleston Gazette, 4/27/05)

Several times, we have posed this question for political experts: Why did West Virginia — long a Roosevelt-and-Kennedy Democratic “blue state” — become a Republican “red state” in the past two presidential elections, despite 2-to-1 Democratic registration?

Why did this low-income state vote for the party of the rich — a party openly slashing help for common Americans and giving huge rewards to the wealthy?

We never received an explanation from any of the state’s political professors or other societal analysts. But an answer was offered by one of the world’s premier journals, Le Monde of Paris.

In a long report titled “What’s the matter with West Virginia?” the French newspaper said the Mountain State has been pulled to the right by exaggerated patriotism, love of guns, Bible Belt fundamentalism, resentment of liberal intellectuals, and defense of the coal industry against environmentalism.

HOW MUCH HARM COULD 800 MILLION DISGRUNTLED PEASANTS DO?

No well-off farmers, no well-off China (Qiu Xin, 4/;29/05, Asia Times)

"The target of a well-off China will never be achieved unless the rural population lives a well-off life; national modernization will never be completed unless rural areas attain modernization," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao proclaimed in a press conference after the closing of National People's Congress.

These remarks, delivered March 14, are evidently a rebuttal of president Jiang Zemin's claim, made in his 2002 work report, that the underdeveloped People's Republic of China (PRC) was already "well-off" on the whole. Jiang, who also was the general secretary of Chinese Communist Party (CCP), announced in his address to the 16th plenary session of CCP National Congress three years ago that China had "generally accomplished [its] aim of [creating] a well-off society". At the same time, he conceded that "the well-off society is [at a] low level, [with] partial and unbalanced development". The alleged "achievement" did add a glorious feather to the nation's cap, and naturally, to that of president Jiang. However, the feather did not fit according to the incumbent premier, who has been showing growing concern for the 800 million disadvantaged farmers inhabiting the vast countryside.

NOT LIKE A STEPPING RAZOR (David Hill, The Bronx)

Rasta Republican: Meet Los Angeles's Ted Hayes. He's black, dreadlocked--and belongs to the GOP. (JILL STEWART, April 28, 2005, Opinion Journal)

Condoleezza Rice and Ward Connerly once epitomized black Republicans in California. But their ilk now also includes Ted Hayes, a social activist and inner-city coach whose billowing robes and dreadlocks don't exactly conjure up an image of the GOP.

More blacks than ever support vouchers and faith-based initiatives, and side with President Bush on gay marriage. Mr. Hayes recently made the transition himself, ending a long journey for this former leftist who founded Dome Village, an outcropping of pod-like homeless shelters along the freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

There are other prominent black Republicans in California, of course, such as syndicated radio host Larry Elder and community relations expert Joe Hicks. But even among these unusual thinkers, Mr. Hayes stands out. He's an intense critic of L.A.'s powerful "black old guard"--Democratic politicians, charity bosses and inner-city preachers who, for a generation, have responded to poverty and illiteracy by demanding government programs and blaming white racism.

Not surprisingly, plenty of people wish pesky black Republicans like Mr. Hayes would just slink away. He has skewered L.A.'s entrenched black leaders as "Negro officials," and he has the street cred to get away with it. As L.A. endured another crisis between black leaders and cops recently, he refused to denounce police for shooting dead a 13-year-old, Devin Brown, after a car chase. Instead, Mr. Hayes's press release faulted black church leaders who, despite their great power, rarely point to the lack of parental responsibility.

A totemic figure in L.A., Mr. Hayes has long emphasized problem-solving and individual responsibility. If you want to stop kids from shooting people, Mr. Hayes has told appalled black preachers and activists, stop blaming cops and "white folks" for urban tragedy and start blaming the lackadaisical inner-city family culture you support.

Mr. Hayes spent last fall tooling around the fortified neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, knocking on security screens and urging stunned residents to vote Bush. He explained that the Democratic Party was the Klan's party in the 20th century, and the party of the slave trade before that. A lot of people he met didn't know their pre-1960s history. He's ever unflappable. In early December, he appeared on Fox News to vociferously defend the right of Condi Rice to be Republican. His segment was introduced by a bemused Brit Hume, who hardly knew what to make of the Rasta Republican.

THE PLACE IS, AFTER ALL, A SWAMP:

Unleash John Bolton (Maureen Dowd, APRIL 28, 2005, The New York Times)

Why are they picking on poor John Bolton? Everyone knows the man is perfect for the UN job. For one thing, his raging-bull temperament is ideally suited to an organization steeped in global pettifoggers and oil-for-food pilferers.

The uncombed, untethered Bolton is fabulously operatic - the Naomi Campbell of the Bush administration, ready at a moment's notice to beat up on underlings.

Who doesn't want to see Old Yeller chasing the Syrian ambassador down the hall, throwing a stapler at his head and biting at his ankles?

Who doesn't want to see him foaming at the mouth - yes, it will be hard to tell - at the Cuban delegate over Castro's imaginary weapons of mass destruction?

Who doesn't want to see him mau-mauing the Iranian mullahs?

Who doesn't want to see him once more misusing National Security Agency eavesdropping technology, this time to spy on Kofi and son?

Who doesn't want to see him outrage North Korea by calling Kim Jong Il a fat, maniacal munchkin?

Even if his suave statesmanship were not so perfectly suited to high-level diplomacy, Bolton should still get the job.

A ruthless ogre who tried to fire intelligence analysts who disagreed with his attempts to stretch the truth on foreign weapons programs deserves to be rewarded as other Bush officials have been.

GOOD FOR BUSINESS:

Cleaning Up With 'Socks and Knocks' (Bill Paul, April 21, 2005, Motley Fool)

One of the media's favorite themes is that the Bush administration refuses to clean up the environment because it is in bed with the energy industry.

But in fact, the Bush administration is about to require the electric power industry to spend a whopping $40 billion over 10 years to install equipment that significantly cuts the airborne pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants, perhaps 700 in all, that are a key cause of numerous medical and environmental maladies.

As much as environmentalists are unhappy with this new federal initiative because they don't think it goes far enough in reducing the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury coming out of coal-fired generators, utilities argue that the rule goes too far.

Assuming that spending on equipment to reduce airborne nasties does occur, it could spell opportunities for investing in the companies receiving all those orders.

THE WESTERN AND EASTERN FRONTS MEET:

Japanese PM due for India talks (BBC, 4/28/05)

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is due to arrive in India on a three-day visit to boost trade and ties between the two countries.

Mr Koizumi will hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President APJ Kalam.

The two countries are expected to reiterate support for each other's pursuit for permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

Brazil, Germany, Japan and India have launched a joint bid for the Council.

SHOCKING REVELATION!:

Jackson not model parent says ex (BBC, 4/28/05)

What was her first clue?

PULL THE OTHER ONE:

Crucial warnings Blair kept from MPs (FRASER NELSON AND GERRI PEEV, 4/28/05, The Scotsman)

TONY Blair suffered a devastating blow last night as it emerged that the legal advice he had been given before the Iraq war bore little resemblance to the summary he presented to parliament.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, warned Mr Blair he could not bypass the United Nations simply because France threatened to veto a move to war. A court "might well conclude" that war was illegal.

Yet there was no hint of this in the summary of the advice shown to the Cabinet and published - exposing Mr Blair to the charge that he misled both parliament and the public.

The revelation could alter the course of the election campaign - marshalling an anti-Blair vote and bolstering his opponents’ case that he lied on the eve of war.

THERE was mounting speculation in political and media circles last night that yesterday’s leak had somehow been engineered by the Conservative Party.

At first glance, such an explanation seems unlikely. The attacks on Tony Blair and his government over the legality of the Iraqi invasion have been principally driven by critics on the left of politics, many within the Labour Party itself.

And the Conservatives did, after all, support the war. Even yesterday morning, Michael Howard, the Tory leader, told journalists in Edinburgh that he still backed the conflict. "It was the right thing to do," he said.

And unlike Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Howard has taken pains not to suggest in public that he doubts the legality of the decision to go to war.

Yet for all that, Iraq has undoubtedly been central to the Conservatives’ strategy for the closing stages of the general election campaign. Simply, it acted as a sort of universal adaptor for political issues: every issue, every policy area, could be linked back to Mr Blair’s credibility over the decision to invade.

This week’s election posters linking Mr Blair’s "lies" over Iraq to his entire approach to the campaign are the final evolution of that strategy. They had been prepared weeks ago for deployment at this stage, referred to by the senior party workers who knew about them as "the nuclear option".

So what is the evidence linking the Conservatives to the leak? Perhaps the most convincing is the fact that events surrounding those 13 fateful pages show all the signs of being carefully orchestrated by someone with an acute understanding of Britain’s media and political culture, and the deliberate intention to inflict maximum harm on Mr Blair and his bid for re-election.

JUST MEAT:

Hospital 'left dead baby in the basement' (Debbie Andalo and agencies, April 28, 2005, SocietyGuardian.co.uk)

A hospital has launched an investigation and suspended two of its porters following allegations that a dead baby was left in a basement overnight instead of being taken to a mortuary.

The baby is thought to have died at the maternity unit at New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton over the weekend. It is claimed the body was stored in a box rather than sent to a morgue.

(THE NATION FORMERLY KNOWN AS BRITAIN):

Staff take more time off for ill pets than relatives (ANGIE BROWN, 4/28/05, The Scotsman)

BRITISH people are more likely to take time off work to care for their sick pets than their partners or relatives, new research out today claimed.

The study revealed that dog owners took 2.7 million working days off over the past two years to care for poorly animals.

Of the UK’s estimated 5.4 million dog owners, 10 per cent have missed at least five days of work and 5 per cent have taken two weeks. But the same compassion is not applied to sick partners or relatives - the same owners took only 1.08 million days off in the same period to care for them.

(THE NATION FORMERLY KNOWS AS SCOTLAND)

Scotland's population swelled by largest immigration in 50 years (STEPHEN MCGINTY, 4/28/05, The Scotsman)

SCOTLAND’S population increased significantly last year as a result of the largest net rise in immigrants in more than 50 years.

According to new figures published by the General Register Office (GRO) for Scotland, 27,200 more people arrived in Scotland than departed from it between July 2003 and July 2004. This swelled the nation’s population to 5,078,400.

Taking into account births and deaths, the total increase in the Scottish population was about 21,000...

ODDLY ENOUGH, THEY'RE FOUND ONLY IN MA (via Tom Morin):

Same-sex fungi can mate: C. neoformans' sexual cycle could shed light on the evolution from asexuality to sex (Charles Q Choi, 4/26/05, BioMedCentral)

Members of the same sex of a pathogenic fungal species can mate and produce offspring, scientists report in the April 21 issue of Nature. The finding suggests for the first time that the fungus has developed a novel type of sexual cycle, according to senior author Joseph Heitman at Duke University in Durham, NC.

THE DIFFERENCE ISN'T ALL THAT HARD TO FIGURE:

Bush Takes Risk With Show of Support for DeLay (Jim VandeHei, April 27, 2005, Washington Post)

President Bush is doing for Tom DeLay what he refused to do for Trent Lott three years ago: taking a political risk to defend an embattled congressional leader's career, several Republican officials and strategists said.

With DeLay facing intense scrutiny of his travel, fundraising practices and relationship with controversial lobbyists, Bush yesterday offered the Texas Republican a timely show of support by inviting him to a public event and aboard Air Force One for a trip back to Washington from Texas. Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters before the flight, said the president supports DeLay "as strongly as he ever has."

While the two men have never been close personally, Bush has told friends he needs DeLay's help enacting a second-term agenda and does not consider the allegations against the House majority leader serious enough to warrant the cold shoulder he delivered to Lott (R-Miss.), then Senate majority leader, in 2002. Lott was forced to step down after making racially insensitive comments, and the president refused to voice support for Lott, which many Republicans said contributed to the Senate leader's fall.

Bush is adopting a markedly different strategy in publicly defending DeLay amid recent allegations that the Texas Republican may have violated House ethics rules by taking a trip to London and Scotland partially charged to the credit cards of two lobbyists, several Republicans said. If the DeLay controversy explodes into a bigger scandal, some said, it could taint the White House, especially with Bush going out of his way to align himself with DeLay.

"He does not think DeLay has done anything wrong," said Charlie Black, a GOP lobbyist with close ties to the White House. "It's Bush's natural instinct to stand with him. There could be a risk, but it's the kind of risk [Bush] takes all the time."

THE NATION'S RED, HE JUST BLENDS IN WELL:

Evangelical Bush? (William F. Buckley Jr., April 27, 2005, Sacramento Bee)

Wilfred McClay, who is a learned senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., gave an arresting lecture in February called The Evangelical Conservatism of George W. Bush; Or, How the Republicans Became Red. [...]

McClay lists the energizing discontents of President Bush. "His 'compassionate conservatism,' his relatively favorable view of many federal social and educational programs, his sensitivity to issues of racial injustice and reconciliation, his softness on immigration issues, his promotion of the faith-based initiative, his concern with issues of international religious liberty, his African AIDS initiative, and above all, his enormously ambitious, even seemingly utopian, foreign-policy objectives -- (these) are positions that are best explained by the effects of his evangelical Christian convictions, and by his willingness to allow those convictions to trump more conventional conservative positions."

Mr. McClay darts off here to make different points, entirely engrossing: "It is strange that, of all the things liberals loathe about Bush, his religiousness seems to be at the top of the list. For it is precisely the seriousness of Bush's commitment to his evangelical faith that has made him more 'liberal,' in a certain sense, than many of his party brethren."

But it is high time to pause. The positions listed by McClay as most likely related to evangelicalism are not plausibly removed from a general political idealism that can be said to be rooted in Christian belief, but not exclusively so. The points listed in the Bush agenda are independently backed by many non-Christians, and indeed the most conspicuous of these, the ultra-Wilsonianism of Bush's second Inaugural Address, is most reliably traced not to Christian impulses, but to a non-Christian expression of them. It is the neo-cons, most frequently identified as Jewish in orientation, who are primarily identified with such policies -- so that we have arrived at exactly what, beyond that Jewish idealism and Christian idealism can and often do converge?

How otherwise to ingest the statement by Woodrow Wilson campaigning for the presidency in 1911? "A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about. ... America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture."

Whether Bush owes his election to any explicit connection with evangelical Christianity is sheer speculation, as noted. But a derivative point, made by Wilfred McClay and of quite general interest, is: What has happened to the political idealism associated with the liberals?

END IT, YOU CAN'T MEND IT:

The Latest Returns: How we botched the gubernatorial election of 2004, and why there's no end in sight. (Rick Anderson, 4/27/05, Seattle Weekly)

As you might recall, Rossi initially won the 2004 gubernatorial election by 261 votes, a margin requiring a recount. That's when the fun began. A combination machine and hand recount gave him a narrower, 42-vote win but set off an automatic full and final hand recount. Gregoire wound up ahead by 10 votes. The state Supreme Court then ordered 735 previously rejected King County absentee ballots be counted. When 556 ballots were eventually verified for inclusion in the manual recount, Gregoire wound up with a 129-vote margin statewide. She quickly took office and changed the locks, hanging out the No Realtors sign.

All the reviews of the process in King County and the statewide lawsuit by Republicans could run the year. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges will hear arguments at a hearing next Monday, May 2, in Wenatchee, where the Republicans filed their suit, leading up to perhaps a two-week trial slated to begin May 23, with the outcome almost certain to be appealed to the state Supreme Court. The GOP wants the courts to effectively evict Gregoire from the Olympia manse and make her stand for re-election in her first year. State GOP Chair Vance says a new vote is warranted on the basis of so many King County ballots lost and found, uncounted and miscounted, and illegally cast by lawbreakers and the dearly departed. Using what's called a "proportional deduction" method (or "guesswork," in the Democrats' lexicon), the party argues that a certain number of the provably illegal votes cast for governor in 2004 should be deducted from each candidate according to the proportion of votes each one carried in the given precincts. The result, theoretically, would demonstrate that it's impossible to prove a clear winner was picked by 2.8 million voters. The GOP has not outright alleged intentional election fraud. But it is convinced that error and incompetence were so prevalent, especially in King County, that a runoff is the only fair resolution.

Thing is, the 2004 King County election was run much like elections past. In fact, up until Nov. 2, the 2004 election system was in better shape than in 2002, if you accept Ron Sims' analysis. After a series of human errors and technical glitches caused mailing delays and left ballots uncounted in 2002, Sims formed a Citizens' Election Oversight Committee in 2003 and brought Logan aboard. In its impressively detailed, 158-page April 2004 report, the committee reviewed a few special elections and found they were "now much more professionally and reliably conducted" and that "absentee ballot processing and tabulating has also improved dramatically." It saw promise of perfection in Logan, whose fixes and advances included a new electronic election management and voter registration system, bilingual ballots, and staff reorganization. The department was already better at managing its absentee mailing system and voter rolls (4,305 dead voters were purged in 2004, along with 605 felons). The potential for widespread failure had been reduced.

Unfortunately, while all that might have improved ballot handling and counting, systemic weakness remained either unfixed or undiscovered. The convergence of extraordinary events in November 2004, Logan now concedes, "exposed the gaps in our systems and limits on our capacity." Besides the closest gubernatorial vote in state history and the rise in accounting fallibility as the historic recounts progressed, King County endured a record voter turnout and was swamped by a bureaucratic nightmare: a record number of county absentee (646,000) and provisional (31,000) ballots issued, all of which had to be counted manually. In the election run-up, more than 138,000 new county voter registrations had to be handled, 40 percent more than in the 2000 election.

At the polls, 540 optical-scanning county computers, which tally hand-marked ballots, got their biggest workout ever, not only by the volume of ballots processed but by thousands of voters who flunked the bubble test. Most people managed to simply fill in the selection circle next to their preferred candidate, as required. But at least 1,600 original King County poll and absentee ballots had to be scrutinized, to determine "voter intent," by two review boards because markings on them were unclear. In the assorted counts, almost 5,000 ballots that were physically distorted or damaged had to be duplicated for recounting, while 55,000 other ballots had to be enhanced so a machine could read them. Rather than coloring inside the bubble lines, quirky voters wrote in the names of candidates already on the ballot, circled the name of their candidate, circled the candidate's party, checked the circles, circled the circles, and even stabbed the circles with pens or knives—in the manner of the old punch-card voting system. Some voters crossed out opponents, leaving the likely candidate uncircled. Others wrote in personal comments, political slogans, and assigned votes to Mickey Mouse and other unannounced candidates—perhaps, understandably, because they were sometimes faced with choosing the lesser liar on the ballot. "We had some very creative voters," Logan says dryly. A number of others asked that their ballots be set aside and counted by hand because they worried the county's AccuVote scanning computers might electronically alter their choices.

To a degree, all those problems show up at every election. But with more voters lured out by a divisive presidential-year election that also produced the hairbreadth gubernatorial vote, foul-ups happened on steroids in 2004. The recounts compounded the error factor. The final tally, handing Gregoire her meager victory, was done all by hand, the least reliable method of tabulating large numbers of votes. The scrutiny brought on by the recounts exposed other failures, including lack of training for part-time (mostly one- or two-day) poll workers. In a vote this close, all it takes for a major snafu is one poll worker or county elections employee overlooking a cache of votes—which, in fact, happened more than a few times. Even without recounts, the record vote likely would have caused systemic glitches. But, like in the past, they would have been at least stage-managed and dealt with by more promised fixes.

NEW COLOSSUS:

Taliban coming in from cold: Citing fatigue, five Taliban commanders have taken an amnesty offer this month. Will more follow? (Scott Baldauf, 4/28/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

When Taliban commander "Dr. Rasheid" handed himself over to the Afghan government three months ago, he half expected to end up in a US plane bound for Guantánamo Bay.

Instead, he was greeted with open arms and invited to help the government persuade his Taliban friends to turn themselves in as well.

His decision to accept Afghan President Hamid Karzai's amnesty offer has been followed in the past three weeks by at least five mid-level Taliban officials. It's too soon to tell if the trickle of hard-line Taliban commanders like Rasheid will become a torrent - and it's premature to declare the demise of the Taliban as a fighting force. With the warmer spring weather, in fact, the frequency and intensity of the Taliban attacks on some 16,000 US and 2,200 NATO forces is rising.

But the tide appears to be shifting. Fatigue is setting in among Taliban fighters. "We are tired of war; we don't want to continue with the destruction of our country," says Rasheid, who used a pseudonym for this interveiw because he continues to cross the border into Pakistan to persuade Taliban members to stop their fighting and support the Afghan government.

DANG CURIOUS IMPERIALISM:

US (mostly) lets Iraq form its cabinet: Despite some visible pressuring this week, Washington has taken a light hand in steering the process - wisely, experts say. (Howard LaFranchi, 4/28/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

[T]he government of at least 32 ministers, which could finally be presented for the national assembly's approval Thursday after weeks of haggling among religious factions and political parties, is both a work of promise and of considerable foreboding, say Iraq experts and consultants who have been working with Iraqi leaders.

That the politically ascendant Shiites and Kurds made room for six Sunni ministers, despite their absence from January's elections and association with the former regime, demonstrates the kind of hard power-sharing necessary for national unity. The Sunnis' portfolio even includes the coveted defense minister slot. [...]

For the most part, analysts agree that it's an imperfect political process the US has been right to leave basically to the Iraqis, despite some last-minute phone calls and high-profile public pressure from Washington to get a government going.

Herb and Garlic Skirt Steak: Adapted from The Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired by the Seasons by Maria Helm Sinskey (Washington Post, 4/26/05)

6 large garlic cloves

Fresh rosemary from two 5-inch sprigs

8 fresh thyme sprigs

About 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons cracked black pepper, or to taste

2 skirt steaks* (about 2 1/4 pounds total)

Salt

Smash the garlic cloves with a heavy knife. Finely chop the rosemary and remove the thyme leaves from the sprigs. In a shallow bowl, combine the garlic, herbs, oil and pepper, and set aside.

Preheat the grill, or place a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Season the steak on both sides with salt and pepper to taste. Grill or cook the steaks over medium-high heat, turning once, for about 4 minutes per side for medium rare. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and set aside to rest for about 10 minutes.

Using a sharp knife, thinly slice the steak against the grain and fan the slices on a platter. Before you spoon the herb sauce over the steak, you may want to remove the smashed garlic cloves or finely chop one of them into the sauce.

THE DEMOCRAT FILIBLUSTER JUMPS THE SHARK:

Gore Blasts GOP Bid to Block Filibusters (DONNA CASSATA, 4/27/05, Associated Press)

Former Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday blamed Republican "lust for one-party domination" for the GOP campaign to change Senate rules on filibustering judicial nominees, and he assailed religious zealots for driving the effort.

Wading into the political fight that has roiled the Senate, the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate and former Tennessee senator warned that altering rules that have served the nation for 230 years would result in a breakdown in the separation of powers.

60-40 NATION:

Study: Vast Majority Says News Reporting is Biased (E&P Staff, April 27, 2005, Editor & Publisher)

A national survey conducted by the Missouri School of Journalism's Center for Advanced Social Research has found that 85% detect bias in news reporting. Of those, 48% believe it is liberal bias, 30% conservative -- and 12% both.

Almost two out of three said journalists too often invade people's privacy. About three in four feel the news is too negative. The same number said reporters tend to favor one side over the other when covering political and social issues.

AND SO THE LAST REASON TO VOTE TORY BITES THE DUST:

Blair ditches the euro: Tony Blair went as close as he could to ruling out membership of the euro while he is Prime Minister (Philip Webster and Peter Ridd, 4/28/05, Times of London)

The disclosure by Channel 4 of Lord Goldsmith’s advice to Mr Blair electrified the campaign on a day when the Prime Minister also moved towards ruling out British membership of the euro in the next Parliament. [...]

An earlier Populus poll showed a continuing high level of opposition to joining the euro. Some 59 per cent would oppose joining, with just 35 per cent being in favour. Only among Labour supporters is their a narrow majority, 50 to 46 per cent, in favour.

Moreover, only a third of voters think Mr Blair has learnt his lessons from the Iraq war, from the criticisms of his informal style of government, and from people saying that he has not done enough to improve public services. Only just over a quarter say he has learnt the lessons of the criticisms that his Government is too concerned with spin. In last night’s interview on Sky News Mr Blair made plain that if elected he would not be launching another push for entry.

“At the moment it doesn’t look very likely, does it, because the economics aren’t in the right place,” he said.

His comments came after a speech this week by Gordon Brown — who has always been cooler on the euro and is expected to succeed Mr Blair — which emphasised that the five tests would be applied rigidly through the next Parliament and if necessary beyond.

800 MILLION PEASANTS CAN'T BE WRONG:

Why Beijing May Be Playing With Fire: Protests against Japan could quickly find new targets closer to home (Dexter Roberts, 5/02/05, Business Week)

In China...the winds of protest have a funny way of shifting direction without warning. That's what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when student demonstrators started out commemorating the death of former Party boss Hu Yaobang but ended up demanding democratic change. And on May 4, 1919, protests against concessions given to Japan after World War I exploded into broad demonstrations and spawned a national debate about modernizing China. As the spring wears on, there will be plenty of opportunities for students and workers to voice their complaints: On May 1 there's the international labor holiday. Three days later it's the anniversary of the May 4th Movement. And just a month after that, the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, will have its 16th anniversary. As a sign of just how jittery Beijing has become, the Foreign Ministry on Apr. 19 warned Chinese not to participate in "unapproved demonstrations."

There's no shortage of gripes among China's citizenry. Workers have suffered massive layoffs during the transition to a market economy. They're also feeling more assertive as a result of the new populist stance struck by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. With Beijing pushing to educate workers about everything from overtime pay to occupational safety, laborers are becoming more demanding. According to one mainland magazine, there were 58,000 protests involving 3 million workers in 2003 -- and the true number is probably far higher. "You actually have a labor movement emerging in China today," says Robin Munro, director of research at rights organization China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong. "That wasn't true five years ago." Even veterans of the People's Liberation Army have started demonstrating for better salaries and pensions.

There's more than just labor unrest. China's runaway economic growth has trashed the environment and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Late last year, Beijing was forced to send in troops and seal off a village in Sichuan Province when thousands demonstrated against plans to force them from their homes to make way for a dam. And in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang in April, thousands more overturned police cars and threw stones at officers to protest pollution from local chemical plants that had poisoned their fields and water. The problem is, cleaning up the environment or putting the brakes on projects such as the dam could slow economic growth -- which could lead to fewer jobs and more protests from angry workers.

REDDER REMATCH?:

Stenberg poised to announce Senate bid (DON WALTON, 4/27/05, Lincoln Journal Star)

Former Attorney General Don Stenberg appeared poised Wednesday to jump into the 2006 Republican Senate race and seek a rematch with Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson.

Stenberg, who served as attorney general for 12 years, will hold a news conference today at Republican state headquarters to make "an important announcement about his future political plans." All signs pointed to his third bid for a seat in the Senate.

Stenberg, who left the attorney general's office in 2003 to enter private practice in Omaha, lost to Nelson in 2000 by 15,000 votes.

But Stenberg supporters are quick to point out that was the closest margin since Nebraska began directly electing senators by popular vote in 1916 and that the Republican voter registration advantage over Democrats has grown by 34,000 since 2000.

BUBBLIN' CRUDE:

Oil: A Bubble, Not a Spike?: Analyst Tim Evans thinks the crude rally isn't justified by fundamentals and expects prices to "fall hard" soon to $26 to $30 a barrel (June Kim, 4/27/05, Business Week)

While the rest of Wall Street just can't seem to get enough of the oil market, energy analyst Tim Evans isn't afraid to go against the tide. Evans, a senior analyst at IFR Energy Services, a division of Thomson Financial, thinks that the current run-up in oil prices is much like the Internet bubble of the late '90s. [...]

Q: Where do you see oil going?

A: [Recently], we saw the highest level of commercial crude oil inventory in the U.S. since June, 2002. Then, we were trading in the range of $26 to $30 per barrel. The current physical fundamentals, not even projecting to a greater surplus down the road, are consistent with a $26 to $30 price.

We first got to $50 at the end of last September after Hurricane Ivan. We've got an all-time high price without a physical shortage.

Q: Then what's driving the uptick in prices?

A: We don't have a physical bull market, but we do have a financial bull market. The measure of the financial market is the open interest on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The futures market is 72% larger than it was 18 months ago. Over that same period, the physical market is maybe 5% larger. What you have on the financial side is a bunch of money being thrown at the energy futures market. It's just pulling in more and more cash. That's the side of the market where we have runaway demand, not on the physical side.

DOE [Energy Dept.] crude inventories have been rising since last September. If demand is outpacing supply, how can inventories rise?

Q: But there's a limited global supply and rising demand in the U.S. and China?

A: First, oil supplies are always finite, and oil reserves are always finite. That's not really headline news.

In terms of rate of growth, world oil demand grew last year by 3.4%. Yes, 3.4% was more yearly growth than we had seen in quite some time. [But] going back to the '50s and '60s, world oil demand during that era was growing an average of 9% per year. We didn't have oil-price shocks then.

Part of our fear really dates back from 1998 and 1999, when we had oil prices down at $12 per barrel. Those prices choked off investment in production capacity. That was the bust part of the cycle, and we're now in the boom part of the cycle. But it's still a cycle. The believers in the long-term steady march to $105 are basically making that it's not a boom-and-bust cycle anymore.

QUICK, EVERYONE LISTEN TO AIR AMERICA

AIR AMERICA RADIO INVESTIGATED AFTER BUSH 'GUNSHOTS' (Drudge Report Exclusive, 4/27/05)

The red-hot rhetoric over Social Security on liberal talkradio network AIR AMERICA has caught the attention of the Secret Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Government officials are reviewing a skit which aired on the network Monday evening -- a skit featuring an apparent gunshot warning to the president!

COINCIDENCE?:

SAVE ERIC ROBERTS! (MICHAEL KANE, April 24, 2005, NY Post)

ERIC Roberts isn't a creep - he just plays one on TV. And in movies. And in music videos.

The actor brother of Julia, who faded into semi-obscurity after an early '80s heyday...

IRKLED:

Air India-Boeing deal irks EU (Hindustan Times, April 27, 2005)

EU's resentment regarding Air India's decision to purchase planes from the US Boeing instead of the European Airbus Industry, has exposed a political tussle between the EU and the US.

Air India has decided to purchase 50 planes from Boeing, investing almost Rs 300 billion in upgrading its fleet.

EU continues its protest, although Air India's final decision is in favour of Boeing. Opposing India succumbing to US pressure, EU is hoping to win over the deal by lobbying for Airbus.

With the US granting an unlimited access to many of its airports, Indian carrier will gain tremendously. The issue was discussed between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to India. Further, US Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta has supported the signing of the "open sky" policy agreement during his visit to Delhi.

21ST CENTURY ALLY:

U.S., Brazil discuss trade, Chávez: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reached out to Brazil during a five-day trip through Latin America that will also take her to Colombia, Chile, and El Salvador. (PABLO BACHELET, 4/27/05, Miami Herald)

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Brazilian counterpart Tuesday vowed they would work together to shore up democracy and promote free trade in Latin America, but showed subtle differences over how to deal with Venezuela's controversial President Hugo Chávez.

''We have agreed to continue to work together in a way that respects the sovereignty of countries, to favor democracy, especially in our own continent,'' Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim said in a joint press conference with Rice.

Rice's five-day trip to Brazil, Colombia, Chile and El Salvador is the latest instance of the Bush administration's efforts to reach out to Latin America, after criticism that it did little in the president's first term to help solve the region's problems. Since President Bush's reelection, Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have twice traveled to the region.

Rice said she talked with Amorim about how ''we might reenergize our efforts to make progress on the FTAA,'' a reference to the stalled drive for an agreement on a Free Trade Area of the Americas. ''There ought to be as much free trade as possible,'' she said.

Rice met with Amorim and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the first leg of her swing to push Bush's agenda for more free trade, fewer barriers to business and more transparent governments as a way to ensure that the region becomes more prosperous, less corrupt and more stable.

EVERYONE IS CREAM:

Who's Using HSAs (Heritage Foundation, 04/26/05)

Remember that HSA-opponents said that only the young, single, and well-off would use HSAs. That has not been the case:
• 73% of HSA purchasers are families with children;
• 35% of HSA purchasers are from households of four or more people;
• 57% of HSA purchasers are over age 40; and
• 40% of all HSA purchasers have high school or technical school training as their highest level of education.

And the argument that HSAs would just pull the "cream" out of other insurance options hasn't proven true, either. About 40 percent of those who have applied for Assurant's HSAs do not indicate any prior coverage.

Put simply, this consumer-driven option has done exactly what its proponents said it would: lower the cost of care by bringing consumers back into the loop for non-catastrophic care and, in turn, helping many who find traditional insurance too expensive find an alternative that fits them better.

IT EVEN GREASES THE SKIDS FOR THE CLOSINGS:

Bush wants refineries at ex-defense bases (H. JOSEF HEBERT, 4/27/05, Associated Press)

President Bush, trying to blunt growing unrest over high energy prices, is laying out proposals to speed construction of nuclear power plants and oil refineries and boost sales of energy-efficient vehicles.

Bush is outlining his new proposals in his second energy speech in a week. The increased attention reflects the growing concern in the White House over potential political damage from high energy prices that are beginning to affect economic growth as well as the president's approval rating.

In remarks to small business leaders, Bush will urge using closed military bases as sites for new oil refineries. The Energy Department is being ordered to step up discussions with communities near such bases to try to get refineries built.

"We know we have a capacity problem," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday. "We haven't built a new refinery since the early 1970s."

THE BLOOM IS OFF THE ROSE:

Decline in the ranks?: EMILY's list works to train female Democrats for office (Lisa Vorderbrueggen, 4/27/05, CONTRA COSTA TIMES

EMILY's List, a national organization that advocates for the election of pro-choice Democratic women, fears declining numbers of women in the political pipeline could reverse decades of advances for the fairer sex in the California Legislature.

Nearly half of the Legislature's 37 elected women will lose their seats to term limits in 2006, and an additional 11 will see their time run out in 2008.

If women fail to run and win these open seats, the number of women in the Legislature could plummet to 10, or just 8 percent of the 120-member Assembly and Senate.

"Term limits open up seats for women, but it also means that we need to provide support and training at the local level to keep a strong flow of women in the political pipeline," said Cristina Uribe with EMILY's List.

California is not alone.

Declining or stagnant numbers of women willing to participate in political life "is a big concern nationwide," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

CULTURE WAR WALKOVER:

Bush signs bill to let parents strip offensive scenes from films (Associated Press, 4/27/05)

President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs.

The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. Bush signed it privately and without comment, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

The legislation came about because Hollywood studios and directors had sued to stop the manufacture and distribution of such electronic devices for DVD players. The movies' creators had argued that changing the content - even when it is considered offensive - would violate their copyrights.

The legislation, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, creates an exemption in copyright laws to make sure companies selling filtering technology won't get sued out of existence.

PENETRATED:

New Boeing jet orders taking off (MATTHEW DALY, April 27, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Buoyed by an influx of new orders, Boeing appears to be turning the corner in its battle with archrival Airbus.

Boeing's commercial airplanes chief, Alan Mulally, conveyed that message in a private meeting with lawmakers Tuesday -- backed by a slew of new orders that testifies to the company's improving jet sales outlook.

The latest evidence came earlier Tuesday when Air India announced plans to order 50 new Boeing jetliners -- a deal worth $6.8 billion minus undisclosed price discounts. On Monday, Air Canada said it had made firm orders for 32 Boeing jets at a list price of $6 billion.

Earlier this month, Korean Air said it will order up to 20 of Boeing's new fuel-efficient 787 aircraft in a deal worth up to $2.6 billion at list prices. Analysts and numerous published reports also have said that Northwest Airlines is negotiating an order for a substantial number of planes.

''The momentum has definitely swung in their favor, in terms of orders,'' analyst J.B. Groh of D.A. Davidson said of Boeing.

All the airlines involved in the recent orders had been committed Airbus clients.

''It's not just sheer volume in customers' orders -- it's penetration deep in the heart of Airbus territory,'' said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst for the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.

MILITARY TRANSPORT:

Roads Without the State (Peter Samuel, January 1998, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty)

Can there be roads if the government doesn’t build them? The first roads were probably not even made by humans but by animals. Herds of buffalo, deer, and other grass foragers pushed aside the shrubs and trampled down the grass to make tracks for their mass migrations—tracks that humans exploited.

Many of the first manmade improvements to those tracks were made by the military because the deployment of armies depended heavily on reliable supplies. There’s a saying among military logisticians that soldiers fight on their stomachs, so in order to keep those stomachs filled, armies needed wheeled carts to bring in the supplies of grain, meat, and other provisions to sustain the bodily energy and the morale of the soldiers. Military engineers were among the first road and bridge builders. Because the state depended on the military for its survival, it has always been interested in roads.

THE LEFT MUST HAVE A PARTY TOO:

Defector says more MPs set to quit Labour (GERRI PEEV, 4/27/05, The Scotsman)

A VETERAN former Labour MP who dramatically defected to the Liberal Democrats warned yesterday that more of his colleagues would jump ship after the election.

Brian Sedgemore, who is standing down after 27 years at Westminster, denounced Tony Blair as an "empty husk who should be thrown on the scrapheap of history".

Mr Sedgemore’s resignation was designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on the Prime Minister and New Labour ahead of the election. The defector warned: "I am not alone. A small group of us - all MPs who are standing down - decided we would leave the Labour party immediately after the election."

He added they had planned to unveil a joint statement directly after the 5 May poll.

But Mr Sedgemore - a long-time critic of the Blair government - said: "I believe I owe it to voters to speak out now.

COME BACK, ALL IS FORGIVEN (via Jorge Curioso):

Pope in talks with rebel Anglicans (Christopher Morgan and John Follain, 4/24/05, Times of London)

THE new Pope has established links with a faction of discontented Anglican traditionalists seeking to form their own church affiliated to the Vatican.

Benedict XVI, whose inaugural mass as Bishop of Rome today is expected to be attended by half a million people, has held meetings with representatives of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), according to Archbishop John Hepworth, the group’s primate.

The TAC represents more than 400,000 Anglicans around the world who have either left their church or are protesting against its liberal policies. It is estimated that 400-500 Church of England parishes may support the group in the long term.

“We are looking at a church which would retain an Anglican liturgy, Anglican spirituality and a married clergy,” said Hepworth, a serving Anglican bishop in Adelaide, Australia. “We dream of this happening soon.” One such community exists in America but so far there are only 14 parishes.

Any hint of a pact between the TAC and Benedict — who has maintained his interest in the group over the past 10 years — would alarm Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and undermine his efforts to maintain the unity of Anglicanism amid squabbles over whether to ordain female bishops or homosexual priests.

SO SORRY

We mustn't go too far with our US success, says Toyota
(David Litterick, The Telegraph, April 27th, 2005)

Japanese carmakers should give their US rivals some breathing space or risk a political backlash, the chairman of Toyota said yesterday.

Hiroshi Okuda said he feared the success of Asian companies, which have grabbed nearly a third of the US car market, could prompt a trade war if politicians seek to protect the domestic industry.

General Motors last week posted its largest quarterly loss for over a decade, while rival Ford saw its profits tumble 38pc and said its carmaking business would break even at best this year.

By contrast, Toyota is expected to follow Honda and Nissan in reporting record profits for the past year.

"We need to give time for some American companies to take a breath," Mr Okuda said.

Take a breath? Been working too hard, have they?

ONCE THE KETOSIS SETS IN YOU'LL ENJOY IT:

Schröder aids Chirac in push for EU charter (Thomas Fuller, APRIL 27, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

The leaders of France and Germany united on Tuesday in appealing to French voters to endorse the European Union's constitution in a May 29 referendum and lamented what President Jacques Chirac described as a "cult of pessimism" stalking Europe.

Visibly frustrated in his campaign to persuade French voters to swing toward acceptance of the constitution, Chirac warned of a weakened France if voters say no.

He spoke in a gilded hall of the Élysée Palace beside the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, the latest European leader seeking to sell French voters on the idea of approving the constitution next month.

If France voted no, Schröder said, "Europe's voice would weaken, it would have trouble making itself heard."

Other Europeans were hoping that France "remains true to its promises" of European unity, he said.

The meeting between Chirac and Schröder, which involved a retinue of ministers, is part of a program of periodic joint cabinet meetings meant to symbolize the close links between France and Germany.

TSEDEQ?:

As Poles take jobs, bitterness in Germany (Carter Dougherty, APRIL 27, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

The new Europe only arrived last year, but Boris Ried is already pining for the familiar old version.

Ludwig Ried & Sohn, a Frankfurt tile-laying company in its fourth generation, needs to charge €43.65, or $56.72, an hour to make ends meet, said Ried, its general manager.

But the enlargement of the European Union, which has brought to Frankfurt hundreds of Poles who are willing to work for half that, may now do what depression and war could not, he fears: put the Rieds out of business.

"I'd be happy if we could close Germany's doors right now and wait a while," Ried said.

But don't ask the Poles to apologize.

"Why shouldn't the Poles have more work than the Germans?" said Rafal Boroweic, a Polish tile-layer who came to Frankfurt in July and now lives a 10-minute walk away from the Rieds.

"They're doing good work, and the customers are happy."

NO, OFFICER, I'M JUST PERPENDING:

Word of the Day (Wordsmith.org, 4/27/05)

perpend (pur-PEND) verb tr. and intr.

To reflect upon; to consider; to ponder.

[From Latin perpendere (to weigh thoroughly), from per- (thoroughly) +
pendere (to weigh), ultimately from Indo-European root (s)pen- (to draw,
to spin) that is also the source of pendulum, spider, pound, pansy,
pendant, ponder, appendix, penthouse, depend, and spontaneous.]

BOYS, KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR SHORTS AND DARK SOCKS

U.S. vigilante group targets Canada
(Associated Press, April 26th, 2005)

A civilian patrol group that has been monitoring the Mexican border for illegal immigrants wants to expand its mission to the Canadian border, organizers said Tuesday.

Minuteman Project leaders said their volunteers alerted U.S. authorities to more than 330 cases this month of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States across a 37-kilometre stretch of Arizona's southern border. Now they plan to extend their patrol along the rest of the border with Mexico and are helping organize similar efforts in four states that neighbour Canada.

“In the absence of the federal government doing its mandated duty to secure our borders, we will pick up the slack. Reluctantly,” said Chris Simcox, a Minuteman co-organizer who also operates Civil Homeland Defense, another Arizona group that monitors illegal immigration.

On their first day, they intercepted four doctors and sent them packing.

EVEN ATHEISTS DON'T HATE THEIR FATHERS THAT MUCH:

The Best Man for the U.N. (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN , 4/27/05, NY Times)

My biggest problem with nominating John Bolton as U.N. ambassador boils down to one simple fact: he's not the best person for the job - not even close. If President George W. Bush wants a die-hard Republican at the U.N., one who has a conservative pedigree he can trust, who is close to the president, who can really build coalitions, who knows the U.N. building and bureaucracy inside out, who can work well with the State Department and who has the respect of America's friends and foes alike, the choice is obvious, and it's not John Bolton.

It's George H. W. Bush, a k a 41. No one would make a better U.N. ambassador for Bush 43 than Bush 41.

WHEN THE TAIL END WAGS THE DOG:

MOVEON, MOVIN' ON UP (BYRON YORK, 4/27/05, NY Post)

Last month, [a] MoveOn rally in support of filibusters, held at a hotel near the Capitol, featured an appearance by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, along with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Schumer, Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy and others. The 87-year-old Byrd worked the crowd into an almost evangelical fervor, waving his copy of the Constitution and yelling, "Praise God!" and "Hallelujah!" as he denounced Republicans.

The turnout of top Democrats, the enthusiasm and the lineup of rallies today are all indicators of MoveOn's growing profile in national politics. That growth is likely to continue. For one thing MoveOn boasts nearly 3 million highly-motivated members who are generous with their contributions to its causes. For another, it has mastered the art of attention-getting political theater. Together, that equals political power.

It's no wonder that MoveOn's leaders have come to see themselves as Democratic leaders. "Now it's our party," Eli Pariser, head of MoveOn's political operations, wrote last December. "We bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back."

The prospect horrifies some centrist Democrats who have urged the party to steer clear of MoveOn. "You've got to reject [filmmaker] Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd," Al From, head of the Democratic Leadership Council, said recently, calling MoveOn's members "elites, people who sit in their basements all the time and play on their computers."

The problem for Democrats is that both Pariser and From might be right. MoveOn has become quite powerful while at the same time representing a fairly narrow slice of the Democratic electorate.

QUITE THE MIX:

Osvaldo Golijov's star continues to rise: He's an Eastern European-Argentinean-American Jew who mixes Klezmer and tango with classical styles — and is taking the music world by storm (Paul Horsley, 4/27/05, JewishWorldReview.com)

An Eastern European-Argentinean-American Jew who mixed Klezmer and tango with classical styles? Come on.

But Osvaldo Golijov was "their" composer, and they waited expectantly for the piece. And waited.

Finally the composition arrived in dribs and drabs. As they played it, anxiety turned to despair. They could make no sense of it.

"It was hate at first sight," the 44-year-old Golijov said recently with a laugh. "I was late with the piece, they were totally distrustful, there was a lot of tension."

The Argentinean-born composer recalled the moment recently from his adopted home of Boston, where he teaches at Holy Cross and Boston Conservatory.

The quartet panicked.

"Suddenly you get this piece that, for us, an inexperienced group, looked like cacophony on the page," said St. Lawrence second violinist Barry Schiffman. "Plus there was more of it coming in all the time. I was a little hostile at first."

The decisive moment in the development of "Yiddishbbuk" came when Golijov arrived in Tanglewood and attended the quartet's rehearsal.

"After you speak to Osvaldo for a few minutes, you're his friend," Schiffman said. By the end of the rehearsal, he said, all was forgiven.

"One of us asked him, 'Ozzie can you sing it?'" Schiffman said. "What he's written, you have to know, is impossible to sing. But as he sang, he became transformed, he was in another world."

The musicians were in awe, he said, "not just of how beautiful the music was, but of how convinced he was of his compositional voice. We were humbled."

BUT TOO RADICAL FOR SENATE DEMOCRATS?:

Confirm Janice Brown now (Terence Jeffrey, April 27, 2005, Townhall)

When California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown faced a retention vote in 1998, 76 percent of Californians voted to keep her on their state's highest court. In San Francisco, perhaps America's most liberal city, she won 79.4 percent.

Brown won more votes statewide than any of the other three justices up for retention that year -- even though she had cast a (dissenting) vote in favor of upholding the state's parental-consent law.

But when President Bush nominated Brown to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003, her demonstrated support in places like San Francisco did not matter to Senate Democrats.

At the beginning of her confirmation hearing, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois lectured Brown about her worldview. "Let me talk to you for a minute about the world according to you as you see it," said Durbin. "It is a world, in my opinion, that is outside the mainstream of America."

What Durbin really meant is that Brown is the Senate Democrats' worst nightmare

NO SOCIETY CAN TOLERATE FREE SPEECH:

Jurors Convict Muslim Leader in Terrorism Case (Jerry Markon, April 27, 2005, Washington Post)

A prominent Muslim spiritual leader from Fairfax County was convicted yesterday of inciting his followers to train overseas for violent jihad against the United States.

The jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria decided that Ali Al-Timimi's words, coming shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, were enough to send him to prison for what prosecutors said will be a mandatory life sentence.

Timimi, 41, who was born and raised in the Washington area and has lectured on Islam around the world, was convicted of inspiring a group of his Northern Virginia followers to attend terrorist training camps abroad and prepare to battle American troops. He was found guilty of all 10 charges against him, including soliciting others to levy war against the United States and contributing services to Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.

The heart of the government's case against Timimi was a meeting he attended in Fairfax on Sept. 16, 2001 -- five days after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Timimi told his followers that "the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujahideen engaged in violent jihad in Afghanistan," according to court papers.

TURN OUT THE ENLIGHT; THE PARTY'S OVER:

Whose nation under God? (Robert Kuttner, April 27, 2005, Boston Globe)

WHEN John Kennedy was running for president and passions were running high about whether a Catholic could serve both the American citizenry and Rome, a joke made the rounds about a priest and a minister whose friendship nearly came to blows. Finally the priest phoned his old friend. ''What a pity," he said. ''Here we are, both men of the cloth, fighting over politics." ''It's true," said the minister. ''We're both Christians. We both worship the same God -- you in your way, and I in His."

America, which separated church and state precisely to protect the private right to worship, has long had its share of religious absolutists who have wanted to harness the power of the state to their own view of revealed truth. But never before in our history has the government deliberately and cynically intervened on the side of the zealots.

President Bush, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and company are playing with serious fire. As the joke suggests, there is no challenging revealed truth. That's why the state stays neutral.

What's under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment

HOW DO YOU SAY "BOO" IN KOREAN?:

No choice but to deal with Kim Jong Il (Jason T. Shaplen and James Laney, APRIL 27, 2005, The Boston Globe )

[T]he only option is meaningful engagement, a policy we have avoided by demanding that the North dismantle its entire nuclear program before it receives anything concrete in return other than heavy fuel oil. But there are few leaders foolish enough to give up the one card that guarantees their nation's survival based only on promises of future concessions by an adversary they don't trust.

HELLO, ABYSS:

The Not-So-Great Divorce: Multiculturalism and liberalism look toward splitting up. (John O'Sullivan, 4/25/05, National Review)

Multiculturalism is easy enough to grasp. It is the doctrine that all cultures are equal and must be given equal respect and protection by government. It was fueled by the arrival in Britain of immigrant groups with different religious cultures. And it has led to such social changes as rewriting British history and allowing strict Muslim dress in school.

Cultural liberalism is a larger and vaguer concept. Its essential meaning is that people should be helped to free themselves from irksome traditional moral customs and cultural restraints. And in the last 30 years it has affected a quiet revolution in Britain — in religion, family life, national identity, and moral values.

Religion has declined; fewer people go to church; the national (Anglican) church has less social and political influence. But its place has not been taken by any other denomination. Public life is increasingly and aggressively secular. In one revealing incident, Tony Blair was bullied by his subordinates out of ending a television address on Iraq with the words "God Bless you."

Family life has been devalued: Fewer people get married; more get divorced; more children are born out of wedlock. All in all, "alternative" lifestyles from gay couples to cohabiting ones compete with the traditional family.

Patriotism is no longer a simple virtue. It is seen as a problem for a "diverse" or multicultural society, unwelcoming to immigrants, and an obstacle to Britain's full commitment to a European identity. All too often it is treated as synonymous with xenophobia. In another minor but typical incident, magistrates refused a pub owner's request for a late license to celebrate St. George's Day — the English equivalent of the Fourth of July — because it was an unimportant occasion.

And a whole battery of long-standing moral restraints — on idleness, gambling, public drunkenness, drug-taking, pornography, illegitimacy, profane language, and sexual coarseness — have simply evaporated. [...]

Cultural liberalism also changes the terms of trade for political parties. For the Tories it makes politics more difficult. When young men felt obliged to marry their pregnant girlfriends, they paid for their children's upbringing; when they don't, the government picks up the tab, public spending rises, and higher taxes follow inevitably. When patriotism was an uncomplicated virtue, the party of One Nation benefited. And when religion shaped political attitudes, it encouraged people to be law-abiding, self-reliant, gratification-delaying, and generally conservative. (American conservatism is stronger precisely because American Christianity is stronger.)

Conversely Labour, as the party of bureaucratic compassion, tends to benefit when people are dependent on government aid and when religion stresses welfare rather than salvation. [...]

For a long time, it seemed that multiculturalism was simply one ingredient in cultural liberalism. But this was a delusion resting on three errors: First, it did not take into account that a nation, society, or community is held together by a common culture and common moral values — often values that its members are not conscious of holding until they are challenged. That common culture had already been subtly undermined by cultural liberalism; it was now directly assaulted by multiculturalism. An official report even concluded that the very concept of "Britishness" was racist. And one of the most frequent complaints of voters in this election (at least as reported by the newspapers) is that their country has been stolen from them.

Second, it did not take into account that some of these cultures and multiculturalism itself were incompatible with liberalism. Multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal; liberalism is the doctrine that all human beings have equal rights; so if a culture holds that some human beings, (e.g., women) have fewer rights than others, then liberalism has to confront that culture and reject the multiculturalism sheltering it. On some issues liberal society can reach a modus vivendi with other cultures — for instance, by designing school uniforms that conform to Muslim views of female modesty. On really important questions such as "honor killings," however, liberal society has to impose its own values without apology, if necessary in condign ways. In practice it has been nervous of doing so, and the authorities have until recently turned a blind eye to such things.

And, third, liberals have failed to persuade these other cultures that the liberal theory of universal human rights is an entirely secular one posing no threat to their religion. Muslims in particular persist in seeing it as an expression of Christian civilization — which, historically, it is certainly is — and thus tainted at best. They also trace what they see as the moral decadence of Western society — the cultural liberalism described above — back to this Christian heritage. They accordingly seek to protect Muslims from both cultural pollution and the political results of such liberal heresies as free speech.

At the urging of mainstream Muslim leaders, for instance, the Blair government recently introduced legislation to restrict criticism of religion. Since no other religion was seeking this protection, the bill was reasonably seen as a sectarian measure to protect Islam from the robust British traditions of free speech. (The bill fell by the wayside when parliament was prorogued, but it will be reintroduced if Labour wins the election.)

The reductio ad absurdum of these developments was the scene in Bethnal Green where the Muslim fundamentalists threatened to murder George Galloway for encouraging pious Muslims to commit the "sin" of democratic voting.

CHANGE IS BAD:

Each spring, Dad and I set sail - in Nebraska (John Leeke, 4/27/05, CS Monitor)

I inherited the awning job from my older brother when he left home to join the Navy. It became a familiar routine: Put them up in the spring, take them down in the fall. Those red-and-green awnings shaded the windows to keep the blazing heat of the Nebraska prairie summers out of my folks' old home.

My dad showed me the ropes. For some reason, chores like this always seemed like a lark when I was working with Dad.

In late spring we hauled the awnings out of the attic, dusted them off, and hung them on the windows. This was my introduction to working with ropes and pulleys.

It was a lot like rigging on a ship. The only way to untangle the lines was to understand how each line passed through the various eyelets and pulleys that would give a mechanical advantage in lifting the heavy iron framework of the awning.

I learned to handle a ladder and discovered the thrill of high places and dangerous work.

During the summer, a prairie thunderstorm could rip the awnings to shreds. With thunder booming like canons, I would dash around the house, walk on beds (not otherwise allowed), and leap in and out of windows to furl up and secure the awnings. A heroic effort could save the day, and an afternoon of canvas repairs later on.

Early in the fall I hauled down the awnings, made repairs, and stowed them away. Dad taught me how to stitch loose seams and ripped canvas. I still have the sailmaker's kit he put together for me: leather palm thimble, hook knife, awl, bone burnisher, marlin pin, needles, spool of Irish linen cord, and a ball of beeswax.

A few years ago, I was back home visiting my folks and helping my dad take down the awnings.

INDUSTRY STANDARDS:

Ethics war feared in wake of DeLay controversy: Congressmen scramble to correct omissions, 'clerical errors.' (The Washington Post, 4/26/05)

Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

Some offices have sharply limited staff travel, and some members are not traveling at all because of the intense review they believe they will face in coming months.

Lawmakers are paying old restaurant bills, filing missing forms and correcting erroneous ones as journalists and political opponents comb through records and DeLay, R-Texas, attempts to answer questions about travel financing and his past relationships with lobbyists.

TOUGH ARGUING THE 30% POSITION:

A new federal move to limit teen abortions: The House considers new out-of-state restrictions. (Linda Feldmann, 4/27/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

The abortion issue has long undergirded some of the biggest political questions of the day - from how federal judges are confirmed to whether a politician can credibly compete for the presidency. Now, with little fanfare, the House of Representatives is set to take up legislation Wednesday that would impose new restrictions on access to abortion itself, specifically, in the case of minors.

The bill, called the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, or CIANA, would make it a federal offense to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion in order to evade a parental notification law, unless she has obtained a waiver from a judge. The bill would also require a doctor to notify a minor's parent before performing an abortion, if that girl is a resident of another state. The second part also contains provisions that allow a minor to get around parental notification.

In contrast with the ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions," which is not in effect as it faces continued court action, legal experts say that the new teen abortion restrictions have a much better chance of becoming the law of the land and would have broad impact. [...]

Abortion-rights advocates are caught in a bind: The bill goes to the heart of parental rights, an emotional issue particularly for social conservatives. Historically, the public has strongly supported parental involvement in decisions related to minors' abortions, as long as there is a judicial bypass procedure for girls in abusive families.

Furthermore, abortion-rights supporters are focused on preserving the right of the Senate to filibuster judicial nominees - a procedure they believe is crucial to keeping antiabortion judges out of federal courts, and, ultimately, preserving the existence of the constitutional right to abortion. [...]

As for CIANA, "this is tough legislation to argue against on its face," says Helena Silverstein, a political scientist at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and author of a forthcoming book on judicial bypasses. "The appeal of parental-involvement mandates is so strong, and this legislation appears to bolster that."

SEEING SAUCERS:

Founders' intentions may be casualty in fight over judges (USA Today, 4/26/05)

When the Founding Fathers were establishing the political ground rules for a new nation more than 215 years ago, they were determined not to give anyone, or any group, too much power. That sound principle is under attack in Washington in the fight over filling federal judgeships.

The Founders deliberately divided authority among Congress, the president and the courts, each to be a check on the others. They split Congress into a House and a Senate that would have to agree on all legislation, a defense against political stampedes. And the Senate, which they called "the saucer that cools the tea," was created with no limit on debate.

Any senator could, by continuing to talk, prevent any issue from being brought to a vote. That check, which later became known as the filibuster, ensured that the majority of the moment couldn't ride roughshod over a concerned minority. Over time, Senate rules were modified to permit 60 members to cut off debate and order a vote. But the principle of deferring to a significant minority has been honored — until now.

To the People of the State of New York:

THE President is ``to NOMINATE, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not otherwise provided for in the Constitution. But the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper, in the President alone, or in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. The President shall have power to fill up ALL VACANCIES which may happen DURING THE RECESS OF THE SENATE, by granting commissions which shall EXPIRE at the end of their next session.''

It has been observed in a former paper, that ``the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.'' If the justness of this observation be admitted, the mode of appointing the officers of the United States contained in the foregoing clauses, must, when examined, be allowed to be entitled to particular commendation. It is not easy to conceive a plan better calculated than this to promote a judicious choice of men for filling the offices of the Union; and it will not need proof, that on this point must essentially depend the character of its administration.

It will be agreed on all hands, that the power of appointment, in ordinary cases, ought to be modified in one of three ways. It ought either to be vested in a single man, or in a SELECT assembly of a moderate number; or in a single man, with the concurrence of such an assembly. The exercise of it by the people at large will be readily admitted to be impracticable; as waiving every other consideration, it would leave them little time to do anything else. When, therefore, mention is made in the subsequent reasonings of an assembly or body of men, what is said must be understood to relate to a select body or assembly, of the description already given. The people collectively, from their number and from their dispersed situation, cannot be regulated in their movements by that systematic spirit of cabal and intrigue, which will be urged as the chief objections to reposing the power in question in a body of men.

Those who have themselves reflected upon the subject, or who have attended to the observations made in other parts of these papers, in relation to the appointment of the President, will, I presume, agree to the position, that there would always be great probability of having the place supplied by a man of abilities, at least respectable. Premising this, I proceed to lay it down as a rule, that one man of discernment is better fitted to analyze and estimate the peculiar qualities adapted to particular offices, than a body of men of equal or perhaps even of superior discernment.

The sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation. He will, on this account, feel himself under stronger obligations, and more interested to investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them. He will have FEWER personal attachments to gratify, than a body of men who may each be supposed to have an equal number; and will be so much the less liable to be misled by the sentiments of friendship and of affection. A single well-directed man, by a single understanding, cannot be distracted and warped by that diversity of views, feelings, and interests, which frequently distract and warp the resolutions of a collective body. There is nothing so apt to agitate the passions of mankind as personal considerations whether they relate to ourselves or to others, who are to be the objects of our choice or preference. Hence, in every exercise of the power of appointing to offices, by an assembly of men, we must expect to see a full display of all the private and party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies, attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight. In the first, the qualifications best adapted to uniting the suffrages of the party, will be more considered than those which fit the person for the station. In the last, the coalition will commonly turn upon some interested equivalent: ``Give us the man we wish for this office, and you shall have the one you wish for that.'' This will be the usual condition of the bargain. And it will rarely happen that the advancement of the public service will be the primary object either of party victories or of party negotiations.

The truth of the principles here advanced seems to have been felt by the most intelligent of those who have found fault with the provision made, in this respect, by the convention. They contend that the President ought solely to have been authorized to make the appointments under the federal government. But it is easy to show, that every advantage to be expected from such an arrangement would, in substance, be derived from the power of NOMINATION, which is proposed to be conferred upon him; while several disadvantages which might attend the absolute power of appointment in the hands of that officer would be avoided. In the act of nomination, his judgment alone would be exercised; and as it would be his sole duty to point out the man who, with the approbation of the Senate, should fill an office, his responsibility would be as complete as if he were to make the final appointment. There can, in this view, be no difference others, who are to be the objects of our choice or preference. Hence, in every exercise of the power of appointing to offices, by an assembly of men, we must expect to see a full display of all the private and party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies, attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight. In the first, the qualifications best adapted to uniting the suffrages of the party, will be more considered than those which fit the person for the station. In the last, the coalition will commonly turn upon some interested equivalent: ``Give us the man we wish for this office, and you shall have the one you wish for that.'' This will be the usual condition of the bargain. And it will rarely happen that the advancement of the public service will be the primary object either of party victories or of party negotiations.

The truth of the principles here advanced seems to have been felt by the most intelligent of those who have found fault with the provision made, in this respect, by the convention. They contend that the President ought solely to have been authorized to make the appointments under the federal government. But it is easy to show, that every advantage to be expected from such an arrangement would, in substance, be derived from the power of NOMINATION, which is proposed to be conferred upon him; while several disadvantages which might attend the absolute power of appointment in the hands of that officer would be avoided. In the act of nomination, his judgment alone would be exercised; and as it would be his sole duty to point out the man who, with the approbation of the Senate, should fill an office, his responsibility would be as complete as if he were to make the final appointment. There can, in this view, be no difference between nominating and appointing. The same motives which would influence a proper discharge of his duty in one case, would exist in the other. And as no man could be appointed but on his previous nomination, every man who might be appointed would be, in fact, his choice.

But might not his nomination be overruled? I grant it might, yet this could only be to make place for another nomination by himself. The person ultimately appointed must be the object of his preference, though perhaps not in the first degree. It is also not very probable that his nomination would often be overruled. The Senate could not be tempted, by the preference they might feel to another, to reject the one proposed; because they could not assure themselves, that the person they might wish would be brought forward by a second or by any subsequent nomination. They could not even be certain, that a future nomination would present a candidate in any degree more acceptable to them; and as their dissent might cast a kind of stigma upon the individual rejected, and might have the appearance of a reflection upon the judgment of the chief magistrate, it is not likely that their sanction would often be refused, where there were not special and strong reasons for the refusal.

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

HARD TO MAKE THE WRONG CASE, BUT MAKES THE ACTUAL ONE:

Columbia Unbecoming (Jennifer Washburn, 4/25/05, The Nation)

In recent months, a growing chorus of conservative critics has decried the existence of a liberal orthodoxy on college campuses and called for new measures to safeguard students' free speech. Curiously, however, these critics are silent regarding the free speech rights of graduate student employees, including teaching assistants (TAs) and research assistants (RAs) who have been trying to hold union elections and have been censored by their university employers. In recent years, in fact, Columbia, Tufts, Penn, Brown and other prestigious private colleges have responded to student organizing drives with tactics that can only be described as profoundly illiberal and undemocratic.

At Columbia, where the students just concluded a weeklong strike in tandem with their brethren at Yale, a previously undisclosed internal memo (just obtained by The Nation) reveals that the administration has been flirting with union-busting tactics that go well beyond anything an academic institution should contemplate. The memo, dated February 16, 2005, is signed by none other than Alan Brinkley, a well-known liberal historian who is now serving as Columbia's provost. Brinkley has gone out of his way to assure outside observers, including New York State Senator David Paterson, that "students are free to join or advocate a union, and even to strike, without retribution." Yet his February 16 memo, addressed to seventeen deans, professors and university leaders, lists retaliatory actions that might be taken against students "to discourage" them from striking. Several of these measures would likely rise to the level of illegality if graduate student employees were covered under the National Labor Relations Act.

Such measures include telling graduate student teachers and researchers who contemplate striking that they could "lose their eligibility for summer stipends" (i.e., future work opportunities) and also "lose their eligibility for special awards, such as the Whitings" (a prestigious scholarship and award program). Yet another proposal cited in the memo would require students who participated in the strike "to teach an extra semester or a year" as a condition for receiving their scholarly degree.

It's unclear whether Columbia's deans and department chairs ever deployed any of these punitive measures--or threatened to deploy them--during the most recent strike, where hundreds of students, joined by other union sympathizers, participated in rowdy demonstrations along Broadway. But the fact that Brinkley proposed such illiberal tactics is itself highly revealing. It suggests that, when it comes to the universities' current administrations, the conservatives have it wrong.

True, college professors in the United States overwhelmingly vote Democratic. But it is hard to make the case that the governance of these institutions--most of whose trustees and regents have backgrounds in business, not education--can be classified as "liberal."

BOO! RIGHT BACK:

With Syria out, Lebanon clout grows: The last Syrian troops left Lebanon Tuesday, ending 29 years of military domination. (Nicholas Blanford, 4/27/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

Elite Syrian paratroops in pressed camouflage uniforms and red berets marched alongside their Lebanese counterparts at an old airfield here Tuesday in a colorful farewell ceremony that formally ended Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon.

The departure of the last batch of Syrian troops was a historic moment for the Lebanese and underlined just how dramatically and quickly Syria's grip on this tiny Mediterranean country has weakened after 15 years of near-total domination.

With the pro-Syrian establishment in Beirut continuing to unravel by the day, any hope that Damascus might have harbored of retaining some level of influence in Lebanon appears to be fading fast. "The question should be what influence will Lebanon have on Syria," says Michael Young, a Lebanese political analyst.

"Syria was stronger militarily but it was never stronger politically, economically, culturally ... in all the domains Syria imposed its order through force," Mr. Young says. "At this point, to my mind, Lebanon is stronger."

TIME FOR A REDEAL (via Tom Corcoran):

FDR's Card Trick: The cynical idealism behind Social Security. (WILLIAM VOEGELI, April 26, 2005, Opinion Journal)

We know at least two things about the Democratic Party. First, it is preoccupied with economic inequality. Implying that the middle class had somehow vanished, Sen. John Edwards campaigned for a year with a showcase speech about two Americas, "one for people who are set for life, [who] know their kids and their grandkids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck." Second, it is unyielding in its defense of Social Security--a defense that rejects the idea of reducing by a penny the pension checks the government sends to Warren Buffett. (Twenty years ago Paul Kirk, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, suggested publicly that the party ought to consider means-testing Social Security benefits. He was forced--before the end of the day--to issue a statement of regret for even mentioning the subject.)

To make sense of this apparent contradiction is to make some sense of the ongoing debate over Social Security and the meaning of modern liberalism. One can begin by imagining a government program to prevent poverty among the aged, one that would be both simpler than Social Security and more aligned with liberals' desire to tax the rich and help the poor. It would derive its revenue from the progressive income tax rather than Social Security's regressive payroll tax. It would pay its benefits according to individual need. And for the majority of people who--John Edwards notwithstanding--are neither rich nor poor, it would devise incentives and requirements that would encourage them to provide secure retirements for themselves from pensions and savings.

What's wrong with such an approach? Wilbur Cohen, who devoted half a century in government to designing and defending America's social insurance programs, gave his answer in a 1972 debate with Milton Friedman on Social Security: "I am convinced that, in the United States, a program that deals only with the poor will end up being a poor program. . . . Ever since the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, programs only for the poor have been lousy, no good, poor programs. And a program that is only for the poor--one that has nothing in it for the middle income and the upper income--is, in the long run, a program the American public won't support." In other words, people who don't need Social Security and Medicare are enrolled as beneficiaries for the sake of people who do. Cohen doubted that people could be persuaded to support programs to help the poor, but he was confident that they could be induced to support them.

There is cynical calculation in Cohen's position, and also some idealism. Chris Suellentrop, a political writer for the webzine Slate, captures the former when he says, "Liberals are willing to keep paying rich people Social Security in the hopes that the payments will keep those rich people from figuring out that Social Security is a redistributive transfer program." [...]

A further, powerful inducement to support the welfare state comes from the logic and rhetoric of social insurance. Franklin D. Roosevelt had stipulated in advance that any federal pension system had to be based on funds "raised by contributions rather than an increase in general taxation." According to "Freedom From Fear" (1999) by Stanford historian David M. Kennedy, FDR's advisers understood that his insistence on following the model of private insurance "meant that, virtually alone among modern nations, the United States would offer its workers an old-age maintenance system financed by a regressive tax on the workers themselves."

Roosevelt, as usual, was thinking farther ahead than his aides. In 1941, after the law had been passed and the first pension benefit checks had been issued, he defended the system when someone complained about its regressivity: "Those taxes were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those payroll taxes there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."

Nor was it simply the structure of Social Security that encouraged Americans to believe that its benefits were a return on their own money, not welfare. The government's subsequent public information efforts amounted to a vast marketing campaign for the idea that there was no contradiction between the American tradition of self-reliance and receiving Social Security.

WHY BE PRESIDENT? (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Opening Day in Washington, D.C. (MLB.com, 10/01/04)

Each Major League Club has its own unique celebration to mark the opening of the Major League Baseball season, but Opening Day in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., was always a special and sometimes historic event.

Washington, D.C.'s Opening Day tradition dates back to April 14, 1910. William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, attended the home opener of the Washington Senators against the Philadelphia Athletics. Numerous other government officials including Vice President James Sherman and Charley Bennett, secretary of the U.S. Senate, joined President Taft at the ballpark.

An overflow crowd of 12,000 fans - the largest baseball crowd in Washington at that time - gave President Taft an enormous standing ovation as he made his way to his seats on the first base side. Senators team president Thomas C. Noyes then took the two managers - Washington's Jimmy McAleer and Philadelphia's legendary Connie Mack - to meet the President.

Just prior to the start of the game, umpire Billy Evans walked over to President Taft's box and presented him with a new baseball. Evans instructed President Taft that he was to throw the ball from his seat in the stands to Senators pitcher Walter Johnson, who was standing at home plate, to officially commence the start of the American League championship season. After giving the ball briefly to First Lady Helen Taft, the President adjusted his gloves and made a good throw to Johnson, who immediately gave the ball to catcher Charles Street to have it secured in a safe place.

President Taft watched the entire game, a 3-0 Washington victory in which Johnson hurled a one-hit, complete game shutout. After the game, Johnson sent the historic ball to the White House accompanied by a note to President Taft asking for his autograph on the ball. President Taft returned the ball after penning the following on it:

"For Walter Johnson, with the hope that he may continue to be as formidable as in yesterday's game. William H. Taft." [...]

The only President to never throw out a ceremonial first pitch at an Opening Day game was Jimmy Carter.

TURN THE OTHER:

'A slap in the face' as US clears troops who killed hostage hero (Richard Owen, 4/27/05, Times of London)

A FIERCE row erupted in Italy yesterday after a US military investigation cleared American soldiers of any wrongdoing in the killing of a top Italian intelligence agent as he escorted a hostage to safety.

The US Ambassador to Rome was summoned for urgent talks with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, while opponents of the war in Iraq condemned the draft US report as a “slap in the face” for Italy.

In a sign of how deep Italian anger was running over the exoneration by Washington of its troops, Italy was reported to be drawing up a “counter report” pinning the blame on the US.

IN THIRTY YEARS THEY'LL BE WRITING THE SAME ABOUT OPPONENTS OF THE WoT:

Time unravels Whitlam's liberation theology: The Left got it badly wrong about Vietnam, yet few will admit it. (Gerard Henderson, April 26, 2005, The Age)

Three decades ago - after the fall of Saigon and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge coming to power in Cambodia two weeks earlier - Gough Whitlam's Labor government welcomed what was then fashionably termed the "liberation" of Indochina.

Jim Cairns, Whitlam's deputy prime minister and the (then) guru of the Australian left, on April 8, 1975, had looked forward to communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia, maintaining that this was "the only way to stop the carnage, the bloodshed and the suffering" in Indochina. On May 26, 1975 - two months after Saigon fell - Whitlam told the Parliament that "the changeover has been peaceful and effective". [...]

Once it was fashionable to support the communist victories in Indochina. This was the position of most leading ALP figures (Whitlam, Cairns, Tom Uren) and also of the overwhelming majority of academics, journalists and other opinion leaders involved in the public debate on our Vietnam commitment.

On January 26, 1978, Uren and some fellow Labor comrades issued a statement addressed to Pol Pot in Cambodia (then Kampuchea) and Phan Van Dong in Vietnam. The leftist signatories declared their support for the "national liberation struggles of both Vietnam and Kampuchea" and urged both leaders to resolve their "current border conflict". No mention was made about the human rights violations then taking place in both countries.

In September 1978, Whitlam addressed a conference in Canberra where he declared that he did not accept the validity of any of the reports about human rights violations in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. He was particularly emphatic about Cambodia, declaring: "I make bold to doubt all the stories that appear in the newspapers about the treatment of people in Cambodia." [...]

It is true that the regime that came to power in Saigon in 1975, assisted by the communist leadership in the Soviet Union and China, did not engage in wide-scale killings. But it did incarcerate about 1 million South Vietnamese in Hanoi's own gulag.

The growing hysteria of the administration's posture on Cambodia seems to me to reflect a determined refusal to consider what the fall of the existing government in Phnom Penh would actually mean.... We should be able to see that the kind of government which would succeed Lon Nol's forces would most likely be a government ... run by some of the best-educated, most able intellectuals in Cambodia.

Play ball! (Nancy M. Kendall, 4/27/05, CS Monitor)

Each word or phrase below can be completed with a word that comes from baseball. Read the clues, and check your answers at the bottom. Batter up!

1. Plain and simple; _ _ _ _ spun

HEY, LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO:

Today anti-Japan, tomorrow anti-Beijing? (Aaron Kyle Dennis , 4/27/05, Asia Times)

The flood of anti-Japan demonstrations then spread to Shanghai, Tianjin and Hangzhou. Waving banners that read "The anti-Japan war is not over yet," and chanting "We love our China, we hate your Japan," and in English "We want war," demonstrators made it undeniably clear they were not merely marching in protest of a textbook or in denunciation of Japan's bid for permanent Security Council membership. More than a dozen Japanese restaurants, shops and bars (many of them Chinese-owned) had rocks flung through their windows and were pelted with crimson-red paint bombs; a Nissan sedan (Chinese-owned) was smashed and overturned, and a police car alleged to be protecting a Japanese passenger had its windshield broken out while onlookers chanted "Kill the Japanese!" Police were standing in lines three-deep, not with the intention to block demonstrators, but to guide them; police behind a professionally printed blue-and-white sign reading; "March route continues in this direction"; police sipping lattes with demonstrators in cafes - these scenes do not even hint at an urge toward suppressing anti-Japanese hostilities.

The question that has arisen out of the big Shanghai demonstration - and those leading up to it over the past few weeks in Chengdu, Shenzhen and Beijing, among others - concerns whether it is on the Chinese government's agenda to allow anti-Japan protesters to voice their opinion publicly. But the bigger question is this: in a new era of online petitions with 22 million signatories and of public demonstrations of 20,000 organized primarily by SMS (short message service) and e-mail, in what ways will Chinese citizens be able to shape future government agendas? It is possible that equipped with an understanding of how to organize en masse and seemingly under the radar of Beijing's censors, younger Chinese may begin encouraging others to take to the streets against corruption and government land seizures, to complain about economic inequality or ideological repression. That is to say, with a slight change of focus, Beijing may see a change of course in its internal affairs towards more turbulent political waters.

NO WONDER THE LEFT HATES MARKETS:

Air America’s Year of Decline: The liberal network scores its lowest-ever ratings. (Byron York, 4/26/05, National Review)

The latest radio ratings are in, and they show continued bad news for Air America, the liberal talk-radio network featuring Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, Janeane Garofolo, and others.

While it is difficult to pinpoint Air America's ratings nationally — it is on the air in about 50 stations across the country, and has been on some of them for just the last few months — it is possible to measure the network's performance in the nation's number-one market, New York City.

The new Arbitron ratings for Winter 2005, which covers January, February, and March, show that WLIB, the station which carries Air America in New York, won a 1.2-percent share of all listeners 12 years and older. That is down one tenth of one point from the station's 1.3 percent share in Winter 2004, the last period when it aired its old format of Caribbean music and talk. [...]

The ratings also show WABC radio, which airs Rush Limbaugh, consistently beating Air America in New York City even though Franken had at one time claimed to be beating the conservative host there. In the 10 a.m. to 3 P.M. period in the Winter of 2005, WABC (and Limbaugh) won 2.7 percent of the audience to Air America's 1.4 percent. In Spring 2004, WABC beat Air America 2.7 percent to 2.2 percent. In Summer 2004, WABC won 2.7 percent to 2.3 percent. In Fall 2004, WABC won 3.6 percent to 1.6 percent.

That last number surprised some observers because it showed Air America faltering in October and November 2004, the period when the presidential election was reaching its finish and political passions were presumably at their highest.

CAN'T BE BRUTAL ENOUGH:

Fallout for Syria's Assad could be brutal (DONNA ABU-NASR, 4/25/05, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Syrian President Bashar Assad will always be remembered as the leader who lost Lebanon, one of the strongest cards Syria ever held in its standoff with Israel.

What was a policy coup 29 years ago for his father, the late President Hafez Assad - the dispatch of troops to a country that Syria had long coveted - turned into a disaster for the son, alienating the world's most powerful nations and threatening his own political future.

On Tuesday, after the last Syrian soldiers left Lebanon, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched a team to verify the withdrawal. Syria's compliance with the U.N. demand for withdrawal could relieve some of the pressure it has faced since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Lebanese opposition blames Syria and its Lebanese allies for the slaying.

But the pullout won't end all of Syria's woes nor Assad's. It could weaken Assad at home. Or it could give him a chance to move against opponents within his regime by blaming them for a series of recent mistakes.

Either way, Syria faces trouble on all fronts.

WHAT ATLANTIC?:

Air India to purchase 50 new Boeing jets (The Associated Press, 4/25/05)

Air India announced today a $6 billion order for 50 new Boeing jetliners.

State-owned Air India said it would purchase eight 777-300 long-haul jetliners, 15 737-200 medium range aircraft and 27 787s — Boeing's newest jet, the Dreamliner.

The announcement came one day after Air Canada said it would purchase up to 96 Boeing jets.

Air India spokesman Jeetendra Bhargava said the board had reviewed purchase proposals from both Boeing and rival Airbus SAS before making a decision.

Earlier this month, Boeing's senior vice president of sales Dinesh Keskar said his company had offered "comprehensive and competitive bids" for the planes and last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta visited New Delhi and said relations between the United States and India would benefit if Boeing gets the order.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, HUBBLE:

LESS AND LESS:

Japanese economy stuck in deflation (David Pilling, April 26 2005, Financial Times)

Consumer prices fell for a seventh straight year in the 12 months to end-March 2005, confirming that the economy remains stuck in deflation in spite of three years of stop-start growth.

The decline in the core consumer price index, of 0.2 per cent, was far less severe than the 0.8 per cent of the previous two years.

But a sharp fall in the price of deregulated utilities, including electricity and fixed-line telephone charges, may have added fresh impetus to deflation. The CPI for Tokyo in April, which comes out a month ahead of nationwide statistics, fell by 0.5 per cent.

The Bank of Japan is on Thursday widely expected to put back its prediction of a return to inflation from this year to next when it publishes a six-monthly report on future trends in prices and economic activity. Last October, the BoJ forecast a return to mild inflation, of 0.1 per cent, in the year to end-March 2006.

Word of the Day (April 26, 2005)

matutinal \muh-TOOT-n-uhl\, adjective:

Relating to or occurring in the morning; early.

WHO AMONG US WOULDN'T DO THE SAME:

Actor-comedian George Lopez has kidney transplant from wife (AP, 4/25/05)

George Lopez underwent a kidney transplant with an organ donated by his wife, a publicist for the actor-comedian said Monday.

WHOSE SIDE WERE YOU ON IN THE WAR, DADDY?:

The prime minister is a war criminal: Like Chamberlain in the 30s, Blair is an appeaser of a dangerous global power. He should be in prison, not standing for election (Richard Gott, April 26, 2005, The Guardian)

Tony Blair has been the worst prime minister since Neville Chamberlain, a figure with whom he shares a number of significant characteristics. Chamberlain was a supremely confident and arrogant politician, an excellent speaker and a deeply religious man with a hotline to God. He had an unassailable majority in parliament, was popular in the country and presided over a cabinet stuffed with nonentities.

Unfamiliar with the outside world, he conducted his own disastrous foreign policy with the help of backroom advisers as ignorant as himself. By seeking to appease the German government, the principal threat to world peace at the time, he onlysucceeded in encouraging that country's appetite for aggression and expansionism. His egregious errors played a not insignificant role in the outbreak of the second world war, the principal tragedy of the 20th century.

Blair has followed in his footsteps, and is destined for the same place in history's hall of infamy. Like Chamberlain, he is an arrogant and God-fuelled appeaser, the unseemly ally of an unbridled country that presents a global threat similar to Germany in the 1930s.

Instead of seeking a grand alliance to confront this new danger - "a coalition of the unwilling" that would include the Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese - Blair has sided with the evil empire.

MAN DATE?:

Oil Prices Slip After Saudi Assurance (Reuters, 4/26/05)

OPEC's acting Secretary General Adnan Shihab-Eldin said that oil prices much above $50 will start to hurt world economic growth.

The comments followed assurances from Saudi Arabia on Monday that it would provide buyers with all the crude they need, serving as a cue for traders to take profits after a week of gains and a price rise of nearly $5.

Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, said after a meeting between President Bush and Abdullah in Texas that world oil supplies were adequate, but the kingdom was willing to provide as much crude oil as buyers wanted.

The kingdom is producing slightly over 9.5 million bpd, with between 1.3 million and 1.4 million bpd in spare production capacity that could quickly be tapped, Jubeir said.

A GOOD CAUSE, BUT MINE IS BETTER (via Paul CellaM):

The Moral Complexity of War: A conversation with Max Hastings. (Interview by Donald A. Yerxa, March/April 2005, Books & Culture)

Can there be anything else to say about the collapse of the Third Reich—anything worth saying, that is? Sir Max Hastings, one of Great Britain's most respected military historians, convincingly shows that there is much more to the end of the Third Reich than speculations about mystery weapons and accounts of those murky final days in Hitler's Berlin bunker. Hastings' new book, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945 (Knopf), is an impressive and disturbing account of the last stage of the European war. This was nothing short of a cataclysm, and Hastings recounts some of the "extraordinary things that happened to ordinary people" on both fronts. What emerges is a picture of suffering, degradation, dignity, and profound moral complexity. [...]

What about the other side of this coin? What about those writers who are also unwilling to embrace moral complexities not because of celebratory sentiments, but because they want war to yield to purist moral standards?

I don't buy such arguments at all. Of course, no war is morally perfect. One of the worst diseases of our time is the notion that we must pursue moral absolutes. Most of life is about making very difficult marginal choices about morality. It is never going to be 100 percent, and that's why we should always exhibit some sympathy for our rulers when they make decisions about peace or war. I happen to be a critic of the Iraq business. There well might be a case to be made for using force against the North Koreans, Iranians, or someone else who threatens the peace of the world with weapons of mass destruction. What caused some of us to say before the Iraq war began that we were skeptical about going in was that we were fearful that it would compromise the case for using force in a better cause. So it is madness, I think, to say that nothing is worth the use of force. When civilized societies lose the strength of purpose to be prepared to use force for relatively good causes, we might as well all give up. We must have the confidence to make these decisions, but obviously every time we use force in a cause that is not very good, it weakens our ability to muster the will of our society to use force in a better cause. In the current situation, a lot of us are very worried about what the Iranians are doing with their nuclear capability. And we do feel pretty sore toward Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld because we feel they have made it harder to use force on something that looks as if it may really matter.

فُولاذِيّ ? (via Kevin Whited):

United States pursues more free-trade agreements in the Middle East: Washington is trying to entrench its economic and political ties in the region (Peyman Pejman, April 26, 2005, The Daily Star)

Trying to entrench its economic and political ties in the region, and blaming the Gulf Cooperation Council's slowness in devising region-wide economic measures, the United States is aggressively pursuing a number of free-trade agreements in this part of the Middle East.

The latest chapter in this effort started in March when Washington initiated free-trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with the United Arab Emirates and Oman, two politically moderate countries in the region considered to be U.S. allies in the Middle East.

So far only Jordan and Morocco have signed an FTA with Washington, although the U.S. Congress is likely to ratify soon a similar agreement the United States has signed with Bahrain. Other countries in "serious discussions'' with the United States are Kuwait and Qatar. Many in the Middle East argue - and some in the U.S. agree - that FTAs with governments here are more a matter of politics, although no one denies that in the long term they can be a powerful tool for the countries that sign them.

In 2004, total exports to the U.S. from the six Middle Eastern countries - U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan - amounted to $6.6 billion. Total imports from the U.S. were estimated at $7.2 billion.

Even without an FTA, bilateral trade with those six countries has increased in the past few years, jumping about 30 percent since 2002, although most of that have been U.S. exports rather than imports.

U.S. officials in the region emphasize the worthiness of FTAs from an economic perspective but quickly add that if they result in political freedom and accounting transparency in the Middle East, those are valuable end-results in themselves.

MR. KRUGMAN IS NOT AMUSED:

The Proof's in the Pension (JOHN TIERNEY, 4/26/05, NY Times)

I made a pilgrimage to Santiago seeking to resolve the Social Security debate with a simple question: What would Pablo Serra do?

I wanted to compare our pensions to see the results of an accidental experiment that began in 1961, when he and I were friends in second grade at a school in Chile. He remained in Chile and became the test subject; I returned to America as the control group. [...]

After comparing our relative payments to our pension systems (since salaries are higher in America, I had contributed more), we extrapolated what would have happened if I'd put my money into Pablo's mutual fund instead of the Social Security trust fund. We came up with three projections for my old age, each one offering a pension that, like Social Security's, would be indexed to compensate for inflation:

(1) Retire in 10 years, at age 62, with an annual pension of $55,000. That would be more than triple the $18,000 I can expect from Social Security at that age.

(2) Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $70,000. That would be almost triple the $25,000 pension promised by Social Security starting a year later, at age 66.

(3)Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $53,000 and a one-time cash payment of $223,000.

You may suspect that Pablo has prospered only because he's a sophisticated investor, but he simply put his money into one of the most popular mutual funds. He has more money in it than most Chileans because his salary is above average, but lower-paid workers who contributed to that fund for the same period of time would be in relatively good shape, too, because their projected pension would amount to more than 90 percent of their salaries.

By contrast, Social Security replaces less than 60 percent of your salary - and that's only if you were a low-income worker. Typical recipients get back less than half of their salaries.

THERE IS NO RUSSIA:

Protest in Urals Seeks Ouster of a Putin Ally (STEVEN LEE MYERS, 4/26/05, NY Times)

Heartened by the political upheavals in two of Russia's neighbors, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, thousands here have staged a series of demonstrations since February calling for the ouster of the president of the Bashkortostan region, Murtaza G. Rakhimov.

An ally of President Putin, he has served as the leader of this largely Muslim region, formally an autonomous republic within Russia, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He won re-election in 2003 in a contest in which his chief opponent withdrew from campaigning, reportedly at the urging of the Kremlin.

The issues are largely local, but the complaints against Mr. Rakhimov's government evoke those that were raised against the recently ousted leaders in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and are now increasingly heard about Mr. Putin. They include allegations of manipulated elections, increasing state control of business, and corruption. [...]

"An end will come," Ramil I. Bignov, a businessman and leader of a diverse coalition of Mr. Rakhimov's opponents, said after the latest protest, on April 16. "And it will come soon."

Although Mr. Bignov limited his comments to his hopes for Mr. Rakhimov's political demise, the implications of a successful street campaign against the regional leader would reach Mr. Putin as well, most obviously because Mr. Putin has supported Mr. Rakhimov and because Bashkortostan, like the rebellious Chechen republic, is a part of Russia.

ISN'T THERE A JUNKET WE COULD GO ON?:

Senate Committee Takes Up Bid to Overhaul Social Security (ROBIN TONER and DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, 4/26/05, NY Times)

After months of political maneuvering, presidential campaigning, advertising and ultimatums, the 20-member Senate Finance Committee plans to start grappling this week with overhauling the Social Security system.

So far, the committee has proven to be just about as divided - and stalled - as the Senate at large. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the committee, says somewhat ruefully that most of his committee members simply wish the issue would go away.

Of course, if they do them right they can make the issue go away.

STATUS WILL SELL THEM:

Honda collaborates on a hybrid for the home: Heating device that creates electricity as a bonus unveils today (Chris Reidy, April 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

American Honda Motor Co., which has been working on hybrid cars, is collaborating on a hybrid of sorts for the home: a roughly $8,000 natural gas system that ''co-generates" heat and electricity.

For consumers willing to invest $3,000 to $4,000 more than the cost of a conventional heating system, there's a potential for savings when it comes to paying energy bills down the road, according to Climate Energy LLC of Medfield, one of Honda's partners. With the new system, called a Micro-CHP System, natural gas that home owners buy to convert to heat creates electricity as a bonus byproduct.

At an event set for today at the Museum of Science, Climate Energy, and Honda plan to unveil a combined heat-and-power appliance that Climate Energy claims can shave about $600 off a local consumer's annual electricity bill.

According to the two companies, this is the first time such an appliance will be available at affordable prices to US home owners.

DON'T HIDE YOUR FACE:

Some fear law would create national ID card (Charlie Savage, April 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

Congress is poised to pass a law that would make sweeping changes to the nation's system for issuing driver's licenses by imposing stringent requirements on states to verify the authenticity of birth certificates, Social Security cards, legal residency visas, and bank and utility records used to obtain a license.

House Republicans attached the bill to a must-pass supplemental spending package for troops in Iraq without first putting it through the usual legislative scrutiny of hearings and debate. Should it emerge intact from House-Senate negotiations over the spending package, it could be law next month.

Touted as an antiterrorism measure, the ''Real ID Act" would also overturn laws in nine states that allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. If a state does not comply with any provision of the law, its residents would no longer be able to use their driver's licenses for federal identification purposes, such as for boarding a plane.

The law, some say, would effectively turn the new driver's license into a national identification card. Its chief champion, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, says the measure would help prevent terrorists from fraudulently gaining official documents that would allow them to enter the country and move freely.

CULTURE WARRIOR:

Faith 'War' Rages in U.S., Judge Says: A Bush nominee central to the Senate's judicial controversy criticizes secular humanists. (Peter Wallsten, April 26, 2005, LA Times)

Just days after a bitterly divided Senate committee voted along party lines to approve her nomination as a federal appellate court judge, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech. [...]

"There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It's not a shooting war, but it is a war," she said, according to a report published Monday in the Stamford Advocate.

"These are perilous times for people of faith," she said, "not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud." [...]

The Advocate quoted Brown as lamenting that America had moved away from the religious traditions on which it was founded.

"When we move away from that, we change our whole conception of the most significant idea that America has to offer, which is this idea of human freedom and this notion of liberty," she said.

She added that atheism "handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom…. Freedom then becomes willfulness."

Brown's remarks drew praise Monday from one of the nation's most prominent evangelical leaders, Gary Bauer, president of the socially conservative advocacy group American Values.

"No wonder the radical left opposes her," Bauer wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "Janice Rogers Brown understands the great culture war raging in America. That is why the abortion crowd, the homosexual rights movement and the radical secularists are all demanding that Senate liberals block her confirmation."

MORE:
The war on religion (Paul Greenberg, 4/26/05, Jewish World Review)

Mark Pryor, the junior senator from Arkansas, may not make the news very often, but when he does say something newsworthy, it's a doozy.

The other day, he strongly objected to those religious fanatics (fa-nat-ic — anyone who disagrees with you strongly) who have been campaigning against the never-ending filibuster that is denying the president's judicial nominees a straight up-or-down vote in the United States Senate.

Mark Pryor wasn't so much challenging these folks' political views but their daring to express them. It's unbecoming, you see, for church people to participate in the low rough-and-tumble of politics. Their tactics, he says, could "make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special interest group."

So shut up, he explained.

TO THE CONTRARY:

The Soul of a Lost Cause: Ernesto Cardenal is still the poet-priest of Nicaragua's Sandinistas. But he knows that the church and the times have turned against him. (Reed Johnson, April 26, 2005, LA Times)

The radical priest who once bucked the will of Pope John Paul II looks old and frail now, with his wintry beard and shuffling gait.

He's still wearing his beatnik beret, and when he speaks of the glory days of the '70s and '80s his eyes blaze with an apostle's ardor. But Father Ernesto Cardenal's fiery eloquence can't burn away this stubborn thought: that the Nicaraguan revolution, the cause that Cardenal served so devoutly, through so many years of sacrifice and spilled blood, is a ghost of its former self.

Sitting beside his living-room wall, with its eerie photo montage of fallen comrades, Cardenal offers a thudding assessment of what happened to that distant revolutionary dream.

"For now it would seem that it wasn't worthwhile, the death of anyone," says Cardenal, a Roman Catholic priest and one of the most renowned Central American poets of the last half-century. "But in that time it was felt that they had died for a better country, in order to create a better country."

The revolution that brought the leftist Sandinistas to power, and the civil war that followed, left tens of thousands dead and laid waste to this majestically beautiful land. As Cardenal, 80, chronicles in his latest volume of memoirs, "La Revolucion Perdida" (The Lost Revolution), revolutions sometimes have an odd way of turning the tables on their inventors.

AMAZING GRACE:

For Suzuki, Hits Keep On Coming (BOB SHERWIN, April 26, 2005, NY Times)

Ichiro Suzuki, whose adjustments as a hitter can be as minute as subtle pressure from one finger on his bat, caused a stir among Japanese reporters before spring training when he revealed, "I have nothing to find."

The cryptic message was Suzuki's way of disclosing that he had successfully changed his batting stance in the middle of last season - a change that was nearly imperceptible but nevertheless instrumental in breaking the 84-year-old single-season hit record and reaching 262.

"I was thinking a lot about hitting and trying many, many things," said Suzuki, the Seattle Mariners right fielder. "For years, I don't think I was able to get it. It just didn't come to me."

But June 24 was the night of his breakthrough, he said. During batting practice, he experimented by moving his right foot - the front foot in his batting stance - a couple of inches away from the plate, opening his stance and spreading his legs four more inches apart. He said those minor changes allowed him to lower his bat angle slightly.

"It was nothing that I wasn't aware of," Suzuki said through the interpreter Allen Turner. "It just feels like baseball when I was really young, that type of feeling came back to me."

The difference was instantaneous, Suzuki said.

"When I took a practice swing, I already felt comfortable," he said. "Then when I hit a couple balls, I felt the same way. It was really comfortable."

Suzuki went on to collect 51 hits in July, 56 in August and 50 combined in September and October. He won his second American League batting title with a .372 average, hitting .429 after the All-Star Game break.

WHEN BLACKER MEANS REDDER:

Three key US election races to keep in mind: Elected African American Republicans have been nearly a non-entity since Reconstruction, but that could change (Dr. Mark Byron, April 25, 2005, Spero Forum)

Republicans have made major inroads into the Hispanic vote in the last decade, often appealing to a Catholic family values in doing so, but have yet to make their 10% percentage among African-Americans budge much. Blacks are more devout - recall that it was the black church, personified by Martin Luther King, that spearheaded and won the Civil Rights battles of the 50s and 60s - and more culturally conservative on sexual issues than whites, yet the civil rights and economic liberal planks of the Democrats have kept blacks voting Democratic until now.

The 2006 elections may well see that start to change.

Three black Republican candidates stand a good chance of being elected to statewide posts. In Maryland, Lt. Governor Michael Steele is the likely GOP senate candidate. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is the early favorite to be the next governor. Mega-church pastor and former Detroit city councilman Keith Butler has broad support to get the Republican US Senate nomination in Michigan.

All three stand a good chance of being the first black Republican since Brooke to win a top-of-the-ticket state race.

Steele is currently within the margin of error in recent polls - this in a state that went 56-43 for Kerry in the last election. He's a Catholic in a state with a very large Catholic population. He's also from the multi-racial Prince Georges county in the Washington suburbs, which might given him an advantage there over a Baltimore-based candidate. Steele's been given a high-profile spot as part of the White House delegation to Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural mass. That will both give him exposure and remind Maryland voters of his Catholic faith.

Steele's a conservative on social issues, contrasting with Governor Bob Ehrlich, who comes from the moderate wing of the GOP. [...]

Ken Blackwell has been a Great Black Hope of the GOP for over two decades, having served as mayor of Cincinnati and as Secretary of State. He distanced himself from Gov. Robert Taft and other Republican leaders by supporting an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment in 2004. The amendment passed with 62% of the vote. He's currently leading in polls for the Republican nomination for governor in 2006. Taft is term-limited.

Blackwell got fifteen minutes of fame in November, as Ohio became the pivotal state in the presidential election. The relatively large margin of victory - at least when compared to Florida in 2000 - saved Blackwell from being 2004's Katherine Harris, as Kerry took only until Wednesday afternoon to concede. There are some folks who think that Bush's 2% Ohio margin was bogus and hold Blackwell among others to blame, but they're unlikely to be swing voters next year.

Keith Butler has less of an elective track record, having only served a term as a Detroit city councilman, but has become part of the Republican establishment in Michigan. He's a pastor/bishop of World of Faith International Christian Center a 21,000 member megachurch in suburban Southfield. Butler is getting more than just theocon support in the Michigan GOP mainstream Republicans such as state Attorney General Mike Cox and former Lt. Governor Dick Postumus were introducing - but stopping short of endorsing - Butler in his candidacy announcement tour earlier this month.

If he gets the nomination, he'll create a different dynamic than Michigan's used to.

ALL COMEDY....:

Interview with Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias (Orrin C. Judd, 4/25/05, Spero Forum)

Q: One of the things that connects various media that you cite in the revolt against liberal bias is the use of humor to skewer political correctness and the Left's dogmas, is there something about comedy in particular that makes it a better weapon for the Right than the Left?

BA: Humor is a powerful weapon for the Right these days in part because the cultural establishment in this country has been liberal for so long—and it almost never pokes fun at itself. For decades of network programming, it’s always been the priest or the businessman or the general or the adherent of traditional values who turns out to be the bad guy, the repressed maniac, the hypocrite, the butt of humor. The liberal do-gooder, the social worker, the progressive teacher, the wise, straight-talkin’ minority—they’ve all been celebrated, held up as paragons of meaningful life.

Reality isn’t like that. Liberals in entertainment and the news media have created a kind of ideological construct, a narcissistic bubble just begging to be burst. The liberal do-gooder might be driven by rage and resentment, might be a kind of micro-fascist; the minority might be a racist thug; maybe the social worker abets self- and community destroying behavior. Perhaps not all businessmen are evil! Maybe some of them legitimately practice business as a moral calling, as Michael Novak argues. Maybe the general is both moral and a hero. Maybe the priest is holy.

That’s why South Park is so satirically powerful—it pops that liberal bubble and let’s some truth in: tolerance can be carried to the point of oppressiveness; rights can be extended in ways that are morally indefensible; anti-business protesters can be mindlessly misguided; hippies are selfish narcissists. My book offers plenty of examples. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park’s creators, go after conservatives too—I don’t mean to suggest they’re across-the-board right-wingers. But going after the Right is nothing new. What is new, especially in television humor, is skewering the Left so savagely.

As I mentioned earlier, a key reason the Left hasn’t done well in talk radio is its lack of humor. Jonah Goldberg, a pretty funny guy, makes the point that liberals have this "Coalition of the Oppressed" as their constituency, and if a liberal humorist targeted blacks or gays or animal rights activists, he’d be bombarded with complaints from his "base" saying: "How dare you laugh! That’s not sensitive!"

Conservatives have—or should have-a keen understanding of man’s propensity for evil, of the complexity of human motivations in a fallen world. They thus should have a proper dose of cynicism in their worldview, which makes it easier to laugh at human foibles, their own included.

WHAT WoT?:

Libya stepping into open market economy (SADEK TARHONI, 4/25/05, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL)

Libya is moving slowly but surely into an open-market economy after decades of socialist-style policies.

Products from all over the world have become largely available as billboards for Western goods now fill the streets of the capital, Tripoli, and other large Libyan cities. Shopping outlets, previously called cooperatives, are now known as supermarkets and posters promote previously unseen brand names such as "White Westinghouse," "Nokia," and "Carrier."

The changes began two years ago after Libya said it would pursue "popular capitalism." The policy was boosted by Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem, a staunch advocate of an open economy.

Economic experts say the aim of the new policies is to ensure economic stability and create new sources of income for a country that is heavily dependent on oil. Free-trade zones are being created, foreign investment encouraged, and service and tourism boosted.

THREE STRIKE RULE:

Nightmare of social Europe (Martin Walker, 4/24/05, UPI)

Social affairs has become the most controversial issue of public policy all across Europe. Having defined itself for a generation by the generosity of their welfare states and an insistence of "social solidarity" rather than a robust clash of interests between labor and capital, Europe is grappling with three separate threats to its future. Any one of them could well prove fatal to the EU's social model. Combined, they are devastating.

The first has been the sharpening of competition, with its consequent pressure on wages and on employment, which helps explain why France and Germany are grappling with double-digit unemployment. The competition has been made more ferocious by Europe's enlargement. The EU was joined last year by 10 new member states, mostly from low-wage Central and Eastern Europe, where salaries are one-third to one half those of Western Europe and taxes even lower. So the new Volkswagen and Peugeot factories in the Czech Republic and Slovakia represent growth for them, but unemployment back in France and Germany.

The second threat to Europe's social model is the demographic disaster. This is far more serious than America's concern with the future of Social Security as the baby boomers retire. Europeans are about to start dying out. By the end of this decade, the populations of Italy and Germany will start to shrink because Europeans have almost stopped breeding. The Russian population is already shrinking by more than a million a year. Without some dramatic changes in the birth rate, Europeans will become in this century an endangered species.

To maintain a constant population requires an average 2.1 children from each woman of child-bearing age. In today's EU, the average woman bears 1.3 children. In Italy and Lithuania (both overwhelmingly Roman Catholic countries) the figure is down to 1.1. The only countries close to replacing themselves are France and Britain, thanks in part to the higher birthrates of immigrant mothers.

So while Americans might face some discomfort in paying for Social Security after the 2040s, disaster hits Europe in the next 10-15 years. By 2020, on current trends, there will be one German worker for every pensioner. So already German pensioners are paying the price as neither the state nor young workers can afford to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. For example, the health insurance payments of German pensioners now rise the older they get. The long-term unemployed no longer get state payments in generous proportion to their last working salary, but a standard $450 a month plus their rent.

The third threat to the European social model is immigration, which is ironic, because immigration was supposed to be part of the solution to the demographic disaster. Were Europe's immigrants solely young Arabs and Asians seeking work, and paying taxes while they did so, that would help Europe's problem. But many of those young workers then bring their parents, and marry a young woman from their home country, who brings her own parents and so on. The result is that in Belgium, for example, more than half the immigrants over the age of 40 are unemployed and dependent on social security payments.

But the deeper problem with immigration is political. Europe's home-grown population resents it.

CHEAP, BUT FUNNY:

RNC finds Bush-Reid tit-for-tat (Alexander Bolton, 4/26/05, The Hill)

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has resurrected a bill Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sponsored when he was in the House more than 20 years ago that would have kept members of Congress out of the Social Security program.

RNC researchers contend that the 1983 bill belies Reid’s repeated claim that Social Security is the “most successful program in the history of the world.”

The Republican salvo is in response to Democrats’ frequent use of a statement President Bush made in 1978 during his unsuccessful campaign for Congress that Social Security will “go bust in 10 years unless there are some changes.”

APING THE TABLOIDS:

Fischer fails to deflect attack over visa scandal (Roger Boyes, 4/26/05, Times of London)

JOSCHKA FISCHER, the embattled German Foreign Minister, failed to quell doubts about his political future yesterday with an irritable performance before a parliamentary investigation into an immigration scandal.

Herr Fischer could yet be brought down by the controversy over a relaxation of visa rules that led to an influx of Ukrainian prostitutes and gangs into Germany and other European countries.

The controversy also threatens to undermine the country’s ruling coalition, in which the Green party, which he leads, is the junior partner.

WINNING THE WoT, HE YAWNED:

Syria Ends 29-Year Presence in Lebanon (DONNA ABU-NASR, 4/24/05, AP)

As soon as the truckloads of Syrian soldiers had left for home, Mariam Majzoub started dishing out paint to erase the last vestiges of their 29-year presence.

Her children, nephews, nieces and neighbors stuck Lebanese flags on top of the abandoned posts near her home in this tiny Bekaa Valley village, slapped whitewash on the walls and celebrated the departure date in green paint: "Independence 2005, Sunday, April 17."

"We started dancing in the street even before they turned the corner," said Majzoub, her plump face glowing with joy. "We could finally express ourselves, and there was nothing they could do about it."

Syria ended its three-decade presence in Lebanon on Sunday, leaving behind only a few score troops who will attend a farewell ceremony Tuesday.

TURN THE CRANK (via Steve Jacobson):

Frist, Reid Work on Judge-Approval Deal (DAVID ESPO and JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press)

In private talks with Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate's top Democrat has indicated a willingness to allow confirmation of at least two of President Bush's seven controversial appeals court nominees, but only as part of a broader compromise requiring Republicans to abandon threats to ban judicial filibusters, officials said Monday.

At the same time he offers to clear two nominees to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for approval, officials said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants a third appointee to be replaced by an alternative who is preferred by Michigan's two Democratic senators.

The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the conversations between the two leaders.

Reid issued a statement during the day saying he has had numerous conversations with senators in both parties in hopes of avoiding a showdown. "As part of any resolution, the nuclear option must be off the table," the statement concluded, referring to the GOP threat of banning judicial filibusters. [...]

Officials said as part of an overall deal, Reid has indicated he is willing to allow the confirmation of Richard Griffin and David McKeague, both of whom Bush has twice nominated for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. At the same time, the Democratic leader wants the nomination of Henry Saad scuttled. Democrats succeeded in blocking all three men from coming to a vote in 2004 in a struggle that turned on issues of senatorial prerogatives as well as ideology.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has led the opposition to all three men. [...]

Democrats drew criticism when they threatened to stop or slow the Senate's business if Republicans ban judicial filibusters. Party leaders began stressing an alternative approach during the day, attempting to force debate on their own agenda rather than the president's

SUCKING THE FUN OUT OF BEING A KID:

How the baseball card game is played (Robert Tuttle, 4/26/05, CS Monitor)

Shortly after the 1952 World Series, executives at the Topps Co. had a problem. They had boxes and boxes of baseball cards that nobody wanted to buy. So, in a decision that would echo through the baseball-card market for decades to come, they tossed the extras into the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

And so, only a fortunate few ended up with that year's Mickey Mantle rookie card. Today, a near-mint condition Topps No. 311 Mickey Mantle from 1952 is worth more than $20,000.

Back then, baseball cards were for kids. They were made of cardboard. Each one-cent pack of cards included a wide stick of (usually dried-out) bubble gum. Kids would wrap their stacks of cards with rubber bands and stash them in shoe boxes. Cards got lost, worn, and thrown out. Few knew they'd be valuable. Not many of those cards survived to the present.

Today baseball cards are mostly a grownup hobby. Twenty or 30 years ago, the cards were marketed mostly to kids. Most collectors now are over 30. And in this age of PlayStations and the Internet, kids are less interested in baseball cards.

"We are competing with lot of other things that get the kids' attention these days," says Lloyd Pawlak. He's senior vice president of sales and marketing for cardmaking company Fleer.

Trading-card companies like Fleer, Topps, Upper Deck, and Donruss still make cardboard varieties (for $1 to $2 a pack), but they also make lots of expensive cards designed to appeal to older collectors. Topps removed the bubble gum from most packs of cards in 1991 after numerous complaints from collectors that the gum was staining the cards.

IF YOU DESTROY IT THEY WILL BUILD ANEW:

Florida economy blows past hurricanes (Jacqui Goddard and Richard Luscombe, 4/26/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

A few short months ago, the outlook for Florida's job seekers looked every bit as black as the dark clouds blown in by last year's unprecedented four major hurricanes.

The storms caused billions of dollars of damage to the state's staple industries of tourism and agriculture and put more than 100,000 out of work - spiking an unemployment rate that had been steadily falling since Sept. 11.

But now, after a remarkable economic recovery that has stunned observers by its speed and intensity, the blue skies are back over the Sunshine State. Business is experiencing its biggest boom in at least a quarter century, driven by a state economy that is equipped to rebound from disaster - and that even before the hurricanes had the right combination of elements to flourish.

Consider that Florida:

• Leads the nation in jobs growth.

• Is attracting tourists in record numbers.

• Has one of the hottest real estate construction and sales markets in the country.

• Has just handed its governor a $2.2 billion windfall to spend on tax cuts and services.

"It's just unbelievable," says Frank Ryll, president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "Tell me where else in the country this is happening."

Indeed, Florida enjoys a unique set of economic factors. The population flow into the state has been largely undeterred by the hurricanes, as workers, baby boomers, and others bank on the region's warm climate and reasonable cost of living. And this burgeoning population has plenty of economic sectors to buoy it: Everything from tourism to agriculture to high tech is booming in the Florida, as state incentives and relatively low wages attract business to the region.

Of course, other parts of the United States have also experienced devastation from natural disasters, and then a boost from recovery efforts. But the phenomenon taking place in Florida is on a scale larger than most.

THE CATS ARE NEARLY ALL IN THE HERD:

Anti-Voinovich Ads HALTED! (Move America Forward)

*UPDATE* - TERRIFIC NEWS!!!! New information into Move America Forward officials confirms that Senator Voinovich is taking a 'new' and 'fair' look at John Bolton - the man President Bush has nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. We are confident Senator Voinovich will vote 'YES' to allow Mr. Bolton's nomination to proceed from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. MAF's principals are not at liberty to disclose who they've heard from and specifically what was said - under promise of confidentiality - but the organization is now confident that John Bolton's nomination will make it to the floor for a vote by the full U.S. Senate.

LET'S KISS AND MAKE UP:

Turkeys OKs U.S. Request on Air Base Use (SELCAN HACAOGLU, 4/25/05, Associated Press)

After months of delay, Turkey's Cabinet on Monday approved a long-standing U.S. request to have increased access to a strategic air base for flying into Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decision was another step toward improving relations with Washington that were strained when Turkey refused to allow U.S. troops to stage an invasion of Iraq from Turkish territory in March 2003.

DO HIM ON JULY 14TH:

Moussaoui's Mom Urges France to Save Son (ANNE DEVAILLY, 4/25/05, Associated Press)

The mother of the only person convicted in the United States for participating in the Sept. 11 attacks urged France on Monday to take a firmer stand in opposing the death penalty for her son.

SPOTS, BARS, PEPPER...:

Forests grow, owls decline under plan (JEFF BARNARD, 4/21/05, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

A decade after the Clinton administration reduced logging in national forests in the Northwest, scientists have concluded the forests are growing, but the population of the threatened northern spotted owl has declined. [...]

Scientists are not sure what is causing the declines, but possible factors include invasion of the spotted owl's habitat by the barred owl, an aggressive cousin from Canada that often drives them off...

...AND REDDER:

Slow population growth threatens N.E. political clout: Census paints a graying region (Matt Apuzzo, 4/21/05, Associated Press)

New England stands to lose about 20 percent of its congressional seats over the next quarter-century as political power follows population booms in the South and West, newly released census data indicate.

Population projections released today by the US Census Bureau project much slower growth in New England. They also paint a picture of a region that is increasingly elderly, especially in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where statisticians expect a dramatic spike in the number of residents 65 and older.

If the projections hold true, Massachusetts would lose two of its 10 congressional seats, Connecticut would lose one of its five, and Rhode Island would lose one of its two, according to an Associated Press analysis of the data.

That diminished political clout threatens to make it harder for New England lawmakers to push regional issues such as transportation and home heating costs onto the national agenda.

The states also will have to grapple with how to afford the costly social services required by their aging population.

Specialists say lawmakers won't be able to rely on Washington to fund those programs, as states around the country jockey for money to deal with aging baby boomers.

The Census Bureau projects that by 2030, 26.5 percent of people living in Maine will be 65 and older, a percentage that would trail only Florida's projected 27.1 percent.

''That means more concerns about budget pressures for healthcare, more concerns over rising housing costs when it's already getting difficult to add to the supply," said Jeffrey Carr, the state economic forecaster in Vermont. ''There's a million ramifications to this."

The federal government allocates seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years based on census data. Massachusetts lost a seat in 1980 and another in 1990, and Connecticut lost one in 2000.

In 2030, according to census estimates, New England will have about 15.6 million residents, up about 12 percent from 2000. That compares with 51 percent growth projected in the South Atlantic states and 65 percent growth projected in the Mountain region.

''New England is on the edge of a precipice here because of the political shifts dictated by population growth," said Darrell West, a Brown University political scientist. ''There are going to be stark political consequences. As we lose political representation in the House, it affects which laws get passed and how the federal budget gets divided up."

WRONG QUESTION:

If Senate shuts down, who's to blame?: Facing Bush judicial nominees, eager interest groups, and the 'nuclear option,' a divided Senate keeps raising the stakes. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 4/26/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

As the Senate moves toward a showdown over the so-called nuclear option, risks and rewards confront both Republicans and Democrats, whatever the outcome.

Both sides concede that the move to lower the threshold required to end a filibuster from 60 votes to a simple majority could shut down the Senate. But it's not clear for how long, with what consequences, and who would be blamed if the Senate's work grinds to a halt.

IT'S THE STUPID AGENDA, STUPID (via Kevin Whited):

The Dems' integrity act will fail (David Hill, 4/20/05, The Hill)

[T]he softness of the Democrats’ political integrity initiative is not its greatest defect. More damning is that it suffers from a lack of relevance for most voters. Probably no ordinary American voter anywhere in our great nation awoke this morning thinking that his or her family needs congressional lobbying reform. Some voters woke up hoping for a better job. Or praying for peace. But no one was really thinking about political reform.

A recent release of the Harris poll’s long-running examination of public confidence in American institutions explains why so few Americans care much about what the Democrats consider such a sizzling issue. While just 16 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the people in charge of running Congress, that’s about par for the course since Watergate.

The average percentage of Americans expressing a great deal of confidence in congressional leaders from 1974 to 1979 was 14 percent. The 1980s saw the average rise to 18 percent. Then, in the 1990s, it fell again to 12 percent. Since 2000, it has averaged 17 percent. So there is no trend in voter cynicism about Congress.

The truth of the matter — and the Harris data make this point — is that few Americans expect Congress to be especially worthy of exceptional trust and confidence. So when one party tries to tell voters that it’s so much more trustworthy than the other party, voters are naturally going to be very skeptical. Voters aren’t about to believe that any politician or political party in Congress is really very pure. The politicians may, in fact, be clean, but almost no one will believe it. Most Americans don’t want to think of themselves as being that naive.

The Democrats’ strategy has other shortcomings, too. By focusing so much on DeLay, they are not making any broader points.

Suppose DeLay just up and quit. Where would the Democrats be then?

INCISIVE HEADLINE OF THE DAY

CLARIFICATION: Sinners unhappy with new pope (Grand Forks Herald, 4/22/05)

AH YES, GERMS...IT SPREADS GERMS

Good Book too good at spreading germs, hospital feels (Canadian Press, April 22nd, 2005)

A hospital in Fredericton has removed bedside Bibles out of fears they might be spreading germs.

A spokeswoman for the River Valley Health Authority, Jane Stafford, told the CBC that the decision to remove the Bibles from the Chalmers Hospital was made strictly for health reasons.

She said it was a matter of common sense and infection control.
Some bugs viruses such as C. difficile, can live for months on telephones, toilets, stethoscopes and books, Ms. Stafford said.

Some people, however, were suspicious of the hospital's motives.

SPHERE VS AXIS:

Fischer faces a test in inquiry on visas (Judy Dempsey, APRIL 25, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

The political future of Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, and even the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, hangs in the balance Monday, when Fischer will be questioned by a special parliamentary committee examining lax visa regulations that allowed tens of thousands of people to enter the country under dubious circumstances.

The case has generated such controversy that the opposition Christian Democrats, desperate to unseat Schröder's coalition of Social Democrats and Fischer's Greens party, succeeded in having the entire proceedings broadcast live on television. This means that Fischer, until recently Germany's most popular politician and almost beyond criticism because of his charisma and temperament, faces one of his most crucial tests since becoming a Green politician more than two decades ago.

If he is to survive and if Schröder's coalition hopes to win regional elections next month in North Rhine-Westphalia, Fischer will have to use his television appearance to salvage his reputation and rescue the government, which also faces a federal election next year.

His supporters say he will have to walk a fine line explaining how much he was responsible for ignoring the pleas for more help by the German embassies in Ukraine and the Balkans in dealing with the huge demand for visas and how such lax regulations led to a proliferation of human trafficking and an influx of illegal workers into Germany.

The opposition has gnawed away at the visa issue, convinced that if it can expose Fischer as a weak foreign minister, it will have struck at the coalition's Achilles' heel. Schröder's Social Democrats would not have won power in 1998 or 2002 without Fischer.

WE'RE NOT QUITE ALL CAPITALISTS:

Internet, Polarized Politics Create an Opening for a Third Party (Ronald Brownstein, April 25, 2005, LA Times)

The Internet is a leveling force. It diffuses power and empowers new competitors to challenge old arrangements.

Elite newspapers and magazines, for instance, dominate their markets partly because it costs so much to build conventional hard-copy competitors. But the Internet has allowed thousands of new voices to find audiences at little cost for a panoramic assortment of news and opinions in Web logs and online magazines.

Some of the same effect is already evident in politics. Once it took years of heavy spending on direct mail and other recruitment methods to build a national membership organization; MoveOn.org, the online liberal advocacy group, acquired half a million names — with virtually no investment — just months after posting an Internet petition opposing President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

MoveOn, and groups like it on the left and right, chisel at the power of the major political parties by providing an alternative source of campaign funds and volunteers. But otherwise, the two parties that have defined American political life since the 1850s have been largely immune from the centrifugal current of the Internet era.

Joe Trippi, a principal architect of Howard Dean's breakthrough Internet strategy in the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, is one of many analysts who believe that may soon change. The Internet, he says, could ignite a serious third-party presidential bid in 2008.

"This is a very disruptive technology," says Trippi. "And it is going to be very destabilizing to the political establishment of both parties."

JAPAN AGAIN:

Why China Has to Steal Technology (Judith Apter Klinghoffer, 4/25/05, History News Network)

All in all, it seems that at least in principle the Europeans have decided on a Helsinki agreement type linkage policy which helped end Communist Party monopoly of power in the USSR.

But is China vulnerable to such a linkage policy? The short answer is yes because Communist China, like its Soviet predecessor, has hit the innovation roadblock. In his 1968 essay directed to his country’s leadership, the premier Soviet nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov warned “that a society that restricts intellectual freedom and prevents the free exchange of ideas would be unable to compete with societies that unleash the creative potential of their people.” He went on to compare the race between the US and the USSR to one between two cross country skiers traversing deep snow. If the dictatorships seem to be catching up fast, it is only because they follow in the tracks already smoothed out by democracies. Lack of freedom consigns “fear societies” to the role of followers, never leaders since “a fear society must parasitically feed off the resources of others to recharge its batteries.”

If Chinese military buildup is moving faster than some expected, it is because “European nations have been selling China hundreds of millions of dollars worth of dual use military equipment each year, but as long as the embargo is in force, explicitly military gear can only be sold under the table and smuggled in.” In “China’s Secret War,” Patrick Devenny, lays out the variety of ways, China goes about acquiring the technologies it needs but cannot produce.

The degree to which the continued existence of the Chinese totalitarian system depends on continued democratic aid comes into particularly sharp focus in the following Washington Post report: Web Censors In China Find Success:

Chinese authorities perform these tasks largely using U.S. hardware and software. For example, Cisco Systems Inc. routers, machines that move Internet traffic around, are capable of recognizing individual portions of data, a technology that helps battle worms and viruses. That same technology can be used to distinguish certain content.

Companies such as Cisco and Google Inc. have been accused of aiding China's censorship by tailoring their products to suit the government's needs. The study did not confirm those allegations, which the companies have denied.

According to the Economist, the Chinese problem even extends to the economic sphere as an article entitled “China's people problem” reveals: “The particular shortages mentioned most often are of creativity, of an aptitude for risk-taking and, above all, of an ability to manage—in everything from human resources and accounting to sales, distribution, branding and project-management.” Interestingly, just as the Soviet leadership was more aware of the problem than its Western counterparts, so is the Chinese leadership. Thus, Hu Jintau, general secretary of the Communist Party of China, identified “increasing the capabilities of innovation in science development” and rural development as the two central challenges facing China.

China is desperately hoping to find a way to institutionalize innovation which is based on risk taking without giving up significant control.

NOW THAT'S A NUCLEAR OPTION:

Blair 'to debate nuclear power' (BBC, 4/25/05)

A re-elected Labour government would put nuclear power back on the agenda in an effort to meet targets on climate change, government sources have said.

The sources told BBC News Tony Blair wanted a national debate on the issue.

He would raise the issue when ministers responded to a climate change policy review in June or July, they said.

The Tories say there should be new nuclear stations provided they meet cost and waste concerns but the Lib Dems oppose the idea.

YIN = YANG:

His Brain, Her Brain: It turns out that male and female brains differ quite a bit in architecture and activity. Research into these variations could lead to sex-specific treatments for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia (Larry Cahill, April 2005, Scientific American)

On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female brains tend to be smaller--to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men.

To date, no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering. And the brains of men and women have been shown to be quite clearly similar in many ways. Nevertheless, over the past decade investigators have documented an astonishing array of structural, chemical and functional variations in the brains of males and females.

These inequities are not just interesting idiosyncrasies that might explain why more men than women enjoy the Three Stooges. They raise the possibility that we might need to develop sex-specific treatments for a host of conditions, including depression, addiction, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, the differences imply that researchers exploring the structure and function of the brain must take into account the sex of their subjects when analyzing their data--and include both women and men in future studies or risk obtaining misleading results.

THANKS, FIDEL:

The Paq-Man’s Half-Century: Saxophone virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera receives the coveted “Jazz Masters” Award 50 years after his debut as a child prodigy. (Mark Holston, March 2005, Hispanic Magazine)

Even on the most important night of his professional life, Havana-born saxophone and clarinet virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera can’t avoid the kind of lighthearted quip that has become his calling card. “We could only get Carnegie Hall on January 10, not December 31, so we decided to call the concert ‘50 Years and 10 Nights,’ ” he wisecracks of the lavish, all-star studded extravaganza that was created to observe his half-century in music. He first took to the stage, a tiny curved soprano saxophone in hand, in 1954 at the age of 6 after several months of intensive tutoring by his father Tito, a classical saxophonist. Today, he’s widely regarded as one of the top woodwind artists in the world.

The choice of the planet’s most revered concert venue for the event was more than symbolic. “My fascination with Carnegie Hall came when my father played for me the historic recording of clarinetist Benny Goodman and his orchestra, recorded there in 1938,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Wow, what is that?’ At the time, I understood ‘Carnegie Hall’ as carne frijol! I was a stupid kid! But ever since then, I dreamed about being a musician in New York.”

D’Rivera’s special night featured a once-in-a-lifetime assembly of stellar talent, ranging from classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Dominican pianist Michel Camilo to Cuban conga legend Cándido and Brazilian vocalist Rosa Passos, his wife Brenda Feliciano, an opera singer, and members of The Youth Orchestra of the Americas. Also on hand was a trio of octogenarian Cuban artists—Bebo Valdés, a storied pianist, and Las Hermanas Márquez, master practitioners of the Cuban guaracha. “I’ve never seen a concert event that put together so many different kinds of music,” D’Rivera proudly says. “From classical to Brazilian, Cuban and jazz, we had everything.”

As documented by the unending series of accolades and awards he has accumulated since arriving in the U.S., D’Rivera enjoys a stature virtually unparalleled in the history of Hispanic musicians in the U.S. [...]

Although he has lived in the U.S. for almost a quarter of a century, D’Rivera still finds some characteristics of his adopted homeland perplexing. “One of the amusing aspects of living in a democracy,” he observes from his home in Weehawken, New Jersey, “is that Americans like to complain about everything. But, perhaps the point of it is that they can. They have freedom. But every time I think about complaining about something, I’m reminded of the political prisoners in Cuba, especially the poets and writers. These people are in jail just for speaking their hearts. ”

Indeed, on most days, you won’t hear Paquito D’Rivera complaining. Universally admired, at the peak of his career, and scoring one success after another, his world is filled with triumphs, artistic collaborations and friendships with today’s most renowned musicians. “Almost every day,” he happily admits, “I ask myself, ‘Am I dreaming?’ ”

GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE YOUNG:

Reform Social Security:
Latinos have a big stake in the outcome of this policy fight (Ruben Navarrette, Hispanic Magazine)

[T]his debate isn’t really so complicated. What you have is a casita with a leaky roof. On one side, there are those who want to put in the effort to fix it before the storm clouds gather. On the other side, you have those who don’t want to do anything because, they insist, doing so would be costly and painful and, besides, it may never rain.

The first group includes President Bush, who insists that, unless something is done, young people (let’s say, anyone born after 1970) won’t see a dime of the money they’re contributing to the system. At present, workers contribute about 6.2 percent of earnings into the system. Employers match that. Bush wants to let workers siphon off part of their contribution and invest it in personal accounts that would offer a higher return that the government does.

The do-nothing defenders of the status quo insist that Social Security is in fine shape and that there is no crisis. And, they charge, what the Republicans really want to do is dismantle the nation’s most beloved entitlement program, provide a windfall for Wall Street and the rest of the private sector, and push senior citizens onto the streets and into soup kitchens.

Don’t laugh. That’s pretty much the line they’re pitching. Further, they want to come off like all they really care about is giving voice to the voiceless.

That’s where Hispanics come in. Consider the bilingual press release sent out earlier this year by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. In it, Reid insists, “Bush’s plan to cut benefits will be particularly damaging for the Hispanic community, which relies on Social Security … more than other Americans.”

It's an interesting argument. But it’s also disingenuous. What matters in all this isn’t dependence but demographics. Hispanics are above all a young population, especially when compared to the rest of the country. The average age of a Hispanic person in the United States is 25 years old. That’s almost 15 years younger than the white population. That means anything that hurts young people can be expected to take an especially high toll on the Hispanic population. And, make no mistake: The current system hurts young people.

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST...SOMETHING OR OTHER

Hijacking Christianity . . . (Colbert I. King, Washington Post, April 23, 2005)

Emboldened by their appropriation of the flag, ideologues on the right have now set their sights on religion, and specifically Christianity, as the means to promote their political agenda. And as the promoters of tomorrow's "Justice Sunday" national telecast have demonstrated, there is no depth to which they won't sink in their campaign to seize the country.

The statement by one of the sponsors of tomorrow's event, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, is an example of the Holy War that is being launched by the right. In one of the most outrageous smears to be uttered by a so-called religious leader, Perkins said that "activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups . . . have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms." That is an unmitigated lie that should not be allowed to stand.

Which judges are out to rob Christians of their heritage? That is religious McCarthyism. Perkins should name them, provide evidence of their attempted theft of "our Christian heritage" or retract that statement with an apology. Don't count on that happening.

Angered by Democratic opposition to some of President Bush's judicial nominees, Perkins's group has also put out a flier charging that "the filibuster . . . is being used against people of faith." To suggest Democrats are out to get "people of faith" is despicable demagoguery that the truly faithful ought to rise up and reject.

But will that occur in American pulpits tomorrow? The Christian right counts on the religiously timid to keep their mouths shut. So why not exploit religion for their own ends? They will if we let them.

And that's just it. Americans of faith -- and those lacking one -- ought to vigorously resist attempts by power-hungry zealots to impose their religious views on the nation. That means standing up to them at every turn.

It means challenging them when they say of Americans who support a woman's right to choose; the right of two adults to enter into a loving, committed, state-sanctioned, monogamous relationship; the right to pursue science in support of life; the right of the aggrieved to launch aggressive assaults against racism, sexism and homophobia, that they are not legitimate members of the flock. Where do those on the religious right get off thinking they have the right to decide who is in and who is out? Who appointed them sole promoters and defenders of the faith? What makes them think they are more holy and righteous than the rest of us?

They are not now and never will be the final arbiters of Christian beliefs and values. They warrant as much deference as religious leaders as do members of the Ku Klux Klan, who also marched under the cross.

The left seems terribly confused these days as to whether they should be trying to co-opt religion or battling it.

I WANNA BE LIKE MIKE:

Terri Schiavo, political prisoner (Nicholas Stix, April 25, 2005, Enter Stage Right)

I know what you're thinking. Terri Schiavo, may she rest in peace, died on March 31. But indeed, she still "lives," and still functions in the same way she did before her passing, for partisans on the Left and Right alike: As a symbol for their respective causes.

The Right, Part I: I know, I know. You cared so much about Mrs. Schiavo that you obsessively called her "Terri," as if she were your sister or daughter or best friend. You claimed she "taught" us so much. What did she teach you? Anyone who claimed that Mrs. Schiavo taught him something was either projecting his own fantasies onto her, or insane. I don't see how either position shows any respect for the person that was Terri Schiavo.

Folks on the Right decided that morality trumped the law, so we didn't need to bother ourselves with legalistic fine points like Mr. Schiavo's legal rights, because he was a bad guy. Well, you know what? I've got morality and God on my side, so the next time one of you disagrees with me, I think I'll just blow your head off, because I too am above the law.

TREMENDOUS SOUL:

Musician's music tapestry of Miami (JORDAN LEVIN, 4/25/05, Miami Herald)

Javier García is not afraid of heights, or of taking chances, musical or physical. [...]

García, 30, has invented a musical narrative for Miami on 13, as sweet as kissing your honey on the beach to a swaying reggae beat, as danceable as a 3 a.m. Cuban jam session. And as eclectic as García himself, the son of a Cuban father and an Irish mother, born and raised in Madrid, who came to Miami at 15 and discovered himself and his musical identity. [...]

García's flavor attracted Gustavo Santaolalla, the producer of Juanes and Molotov, who produced 13 and signed García to his label. He has ''great songs, great sensibility, incredible sense of rhythm,'' says Santaolalla from his Los Angeles home. ''A lot of spirit, tremendous soul that projects in everything he does.'' Santaolalla also believes García's music is the next step from the Afro-Cuban pop sound that has dominated Latin music in Miami.

''He shows you Miami from a different angle,'' Santaolalla says. ``He does have an Afro-Cuban influence, but there's rock and soul and ska and reggae and cuarteto [Argentina's hyped-up dance music], and yet he is Miami too.''

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY:

LYME SUFFERERS RECLAIM LIVES: Knowledge lets them fight tick-borne illness (Joan Morris, 4/25/05, CONTRA COSTA TIMES)

Although doctors in the early 20th century recognized Lyme disease -- called erythema migrans -- as a bacterial infection spread by ticks, it wasn't until the early 1980s that researchers got a firm grasp on how the disease progresses. But more than 25 years later, the disease often remains undiagnosed and misunderstood. And even though antibiotics can be effective, some cases require years of treatment.

In the United States, an average of about 23,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, but researchers estimate that the number of people who actually have the disease and don't know it is far greater. More than half of those who have been diagnosed with the disease have no recollection of having been bitten, and many did not develop what doctors consider the telltale sign of the illness, a red rash.

The symptoms of Lyme disease are many and varied, and shared by a number of other common ailments. Is it the flu or is it Lyme disease? By the time a patient sees a doctor and gets a diagnosis, precious time has been lost.

What's maddening for those involved in treatment and education, is that if caught early, Lyme disease often can be successfully treated with a strong course of antibiotics. If administered within 72 hours of exposure, chances for a full recovery are excellent.

One problem, says Sheri Miller of Walnut Creek, is that even when patients go to doctors for immediate treatment, their concerns can be dismissed. Miller, who with Selvig is part of the East Bay Lyme Disease Support Group, recommends patients seek "Lyme literate" doctors -- physicians who are especially knowledgeable about the disease and treatments.

"Some doctors," Miller says, "are still telling patients we don't have Lyme disease in California."

Although the disease is more prevalent on the East Coast, where about 25 percent of deer ticks carry the disease, California has a number of cases each year. About 5 percent of deer ticks can carry the bacteria that causes the disease. [...]

For more info

• LymeDisease.org

• LymeGroups.org/EastBay

• igenex.com

• ilads.org

• www.lyme.org

THEY CHOOSE, YOU LOSE:

Syria's Ba'athists loosen the reins (Sami Moubayed, 4/26/05, Asia Times)

A new Ba'ath Party law is to be created in Syria, breaking the socialist parties' monopoly over politics in that country, in place (with the exception of the years 1961-63) since 1958. The move is a calculated gamble on the part of the government, and will also challenge a US bill against Syria calling for "Assistance to Support a Transition to Democracy in Syria." [...]

The question that many are asking: "Why now?" Why has the Syrian government decided to create a multiparty system which might challenge the power of the Ba'athists? Contrary to what many believe, the Ba'ath Party is very strong in Syria, and has a lot of active supporters. Changing the views of a society indoctrinated with Ba'athist views since 1963 will not be easy. The masses, who generally lack a proper democratic culture, will not readily join other political parties, especially ones that challenge Ba'athist ideology.

This is the exact reason. The state is confident enough that no real threat will be presented to its power if a multi-party system emerges in Syria. Let the parties operate, and let them win parliamentary seats. The ruling party of the state and society will still be the Ba'ath Party, since amending Article 8 of the constitution, which gives it that leadership status, will not be discussed at the upcoming conference. A multi-party system will threaten nobody, and yet be greatly welcomed by the Syrian masses, who are demanding such a kind of political reform in Syria.

The Syrian masses will be pleased, and the Syrian government will get good public relations credit for it. It will also challenge a US bill against Syria, presented on March 8 in the House of Representatives, calling for "Assistance to Support a Transition to Democracy in Syria". It reads: "The president is authorized to provide assistance and other support for individuals and independent non-governmental organizations to support transition to a freely elected, internationally recognized democratic government in Syria."

The message from the public and government alike in Damascus is clear: there is no need for US help, the Syrians will democratize on their own, at will.

100% A YEAR ADDS UP FAST:

Sales of hybrid cars sizzling in California (Mercury News Wire Services, 4/25/05)

One of the few things rising faster than gas prices is -- not coincidentally -- sales of hybrid vehicles in California.

More than 25,000 new hybrids were registered in the state in 2004, a 102 percent increase over 2003. The national figure was 81 percent, according to figures released today by R.L. Polk & Co., which collects and interprets automotive data.

The combination gas-electric vehicles represent less than 1 percent of the 17 million new vehicles sold in the United States in 2004, but major automakers are planning to introduce about a dozen new such models in the next three years.

TO FALL DON'T YOU HAVE TO BE STANDING:

(Honor Mahony, 25.04.2005, EU Observer)

Former European Commission president Romano Prodi has warned that a French No to the European Constitution would mean the "fall of Europe".

In an interview with French newspaper Journal du Dimanche (24 April), Mr Prodi said that a French rejection of the document on 29 May would result in "no more Europe".

"We will go through a great period of crisis. The problem will not only be a catastrophe for France, but the fall of Europe."

FISHHERD:

Pope Issues Call for Unity: Benedict XVI reaches out to 'the whole church' at a colorful inauguration but offers few hints of his agenda for the new papacy. (Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Boudreaux, April 25, 2005, LA Times)

In golden robes and crown, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday took on the ancient trappings of a troubled Roman Catholic Church and sketched the spiritual outline of his papacy, telling followers that only by embracing God can mankind escape a wasteland that haunts this Earth.

The inauguration of Benedict in a sun-streaked ceremony in St. Peter's Square was regal and subdued. It capped an emotionally charged three-week interregnum that started with the death of Pope John Paul II and ended with the election and installation of his controversial successor.

The German-born Benedict delivered a homily in accented but clear Italian, a speech laden with grim pictures of humanity's plight but also hopeful hints of redemption. There was little indication what shape his papacy might take, however, and only brief mention of some of John Paul's initiatives, such as dialogue with other faiths.

Instead, Benedict focused on moral and spiritual directives.

"We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death, in the sea of darkness without light," the 78-year-old pontiff said in his first public Mass since his election Tuesday. "The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendor of God's light, into true life."

He said his government plan was "not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas," but to "listen, together with the whole church, to the word and will of the Lord." [...]

In his homily, Benedict occasionally struck a more upbeat note than was typically associated with his role as austere enforcer of orthodoxy. Where he previously portrayed the church as a victim under siege, he used the inaugural Mass to assert the vitality of Roman Catholicism.

"The church is alive!" he repeated five times. "And the church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way toward the future."

Benedict issued a call for unity among Christians, lamenting that the "fisherman's net" had been broken as it cast about for men and women to follow God. He also saluted those of other faiths in a clear attempt to dispel fears about his past assertions of Catholic primacy and condemnations of other faiths as inferior. However, he did not retract those earlier judgments.

He said Jews were Christians' brothers, "to whom we are joined by a great shared spiritual heritage, one rooted in God's irrevocable promises."

In a darker side of his homily, Benedict used the bleak imagery that often characterized the speeches he made before becoming pope. He described a world of dark, empty souls and "external deserts" of poverty, hunger, abandonment and loneliness.

"The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast," he said.

"The human race — every one of us — is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The son of God will not let this happen; he cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition. He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the cross. He takes it upon his shoulders and carries our humanity; he carries us all; he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep."

HOW MUCH ENERGY DO DYING NATIONS REQUIRE?:

Gas bubble ‘will deflate UK prices by a third’ (Carl Mortished, 4/25/05, Times of London)

BRITAIN’S natural gas market will become oversupplied within two years, transforming a worrying winter shortage of fuel into a glut. The potential gas surplus emerges from a series of massive import schemes, including the world’s longest sub-sea gas pipeline, linking Norway with Britain.

Together these plans will create a gas bubble of more than two billion cubic feet per day by 2007 and send wholesale gas prices into decline for several years. Within two to three years the infrastructure building boom will have created additional gas import capacity roughly equal to Britain’s current annual demand, the Energy Contract Company’s report Gas Market Review 2005 says.

“It’s a massive fluctuation and it will depress gas prices,” Niall Trimble, director of the global consultancy, said. He expected wholesale gas prices to fall by about a third over the three winters after this year’s

PICK THE 60%, NOT THE 40%:

'NYT' Preview: New Public Broadcasting Chief Wants Conservative Viewers (E&P Staff, April 22, 2005)

In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Ken Ferree, the new president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, says he wants PBS, long considered a liberal bastion, to attract more conservative viewers. "Does public television belong to the Democrats?" he asks. [...]

Asked if he is worried that liberal PBS loyalists may exit, he says: "Well, maybe we can attract some new viewers." More conservative ones? Deborah Solomon asks. "Yeah! I would hope that in the long run we can attract new viewers, and we shouldn't limit ourselves to a particular demographic."

(1) If you're a business and you are going to limit yourself to one demographic make it the larger one, not the smaller one.

(2) If you're there to serve the public, limit yourself to the one that includes most of the public, not the elites.

TIME TO SILENCE GIDEON'S TRUMPET:

Preserving the Right to a Lawyer (NY Times, 4/25/05)

Criminal defendants who cannot afford a lawyer have the right to have one appointed to represent them. In Michigan, however, some poor defendants are denied appointed counsel at a critical stage: when they want to challenge the sentence imposed on them. The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a challenge to this rule. It should order Michigan to provide defendants in this position with appointed lawyers.

The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1963 case of Gideon v. Wainwright that poor defendants have a constitutional right to appointed counsel. The court has held that this right generally extends to a defendant's first appeal after a criminal conviction.

In virtually every state, poor defendants are appointed lawyers for their first appeals. But in Michigan, they do not have the right to a lawyer on appeal if they have pleaded guilty. Normally, defendants who plead guilty do not appeal, but there are times when they do, like when they want to challenge the sentence that they receive. In the case the court is hearing today, a mentally impaired defendant had to appeal without a lawyer when he was given a prison sentence of up to 30 years that he maintains was improperly calculated.

For the right to counsel to be meaningful, it must apply to the initial trial and to one appeal before a different judge.

THE BLUE DOGS ARE RED:

Democrats See Rift In House (Erin P. Billings, April 25, 2005, Roll Call)

A major rift has developed within the House Democratic Caucus, as moderates and liberals wage a war over influence and questions mount over the leadership's direction for the minority party. [...]

Tensions flared at the gathering over recent defections by moderate Democrats on key votes, most particularly the recent bankruptcy bill, in which 73 Members including House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) sided with the GOP. The meeting left Hoyer defending the moderates' votes and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) siding with progressives and criticizing centrists.

"People are frustrated we had a divided leadership on this bill and they were very outspoken on the opposite sides. Maybe that's what helped this meeting turn into what it turned into," said a senior Democratic staffer. "It's possible this was the final straw for many."

Numerous House Democratic sources said the meeting simply underscored broader tensions between a growing and emboldened centrist faction and the traditionally dominant liberal wing of the Caucus. [...]

"There is a feeling that there is nothing to unite this party right now," said another senior Democratic staffer of the Caucus' failure to take strong, detailed positions on issues. "There is Social Security, and we're doing a good job on that, but that's it. There are no grand ideas or principles for the party. [...]

Even before Tuesday's dust-up, a veteran Democratic House Member summed up the 109th Congress this way: "There is heavy division in the Democratic Party over virtually every policy issue." [...]

One aide said while it's unclear how things will play out, there is a recipe in place for the frustrations of conservative and moderate Democrats to explode. ... But another Democratic source countered: "We aren't going to win by being Republican lite. If we're going to be the opposition party, let's be an opposition party."

ONE SIZE FITS ALL:

Putin says Russia Remains Committed to Democratic Course (Lisa McAdams, 25 April 2005, VOA News)

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia has no future, if it turns its back on democracy. In his annual state-of-the-nation address Monday at the Kremlin's Marble Hall, he urged lawmakers and the public to strengthen democracy and rule of law.

President Putin says freedom, rule of law and a basic respect for human rights must be the hallmark of Russian institutions and society, as the nation works toward his promise of a better future.

In remarks broadcast live on state television, President Putin said Russia's place in the world will be defined by strength and success in both democratic and economic gains

GOOD DAY IN MANHATTAN:

A Jazz Discovery Adds a New Note to the Historical Record (BEN RATLIFF, 4/25/05, NY Times)

[N]ow this: tapes bearing nearly a full hour of the Thelonious Monk quartet with John Coltrane, found at the Library of Congress in January. The library made the announcement this month.

The tapes come from a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29, 1957, a benefit for a community center. The concert was recorded by the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service, and the tapes also include sets by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Ray Charles with a backing sextet, the Zoot Sims Quartet with Chet Baker, and the Sonny Rollins Trio. (Newspaper accounts of the concert indicate that Billie Holiday appeared as well, though she is not on the Voice of America tapes.)

But it is Monk with Coltrane that constitutes the real find. That band existed for only six months in 1957, mostly through long and celebrated runs at the East Village club the Five Spot. During this period, Coltrane fully collected himself as an improviser, challenged by Monk and the discipline of his unusual harmonic sense. Thus began the 10-year sprint during which he changed jazz completely, before his death in 1967. The Monk quartet with Coltrane did record three numbers in a studio in 1957, but remarkably little material, and only with fairly low audience-tape fidelity, is known to exist from the Five Spot engagement.

The eight and a half Monk performances found at the Library of Congress, by contrast, are professionally recorded, strong and clear; you can hear the full dimensions of Shadow Wilson's drum kit and Ahmed Abdul-Malik's bass. It is certainly good enough for commercial release, though none has yet been negotiated.

AT LEAST NO ONE SAYS WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF SUNLIGHT YET:

Bright Future for Solar Power Satellites (Leonard David, 17 October 2001, Space.com)

Two new studies looking at the feasibility of space-based solar power - orbiting satellites that would serve as high-tech space dams - suggest the concept shouldn't be readily dismissed and could generate both Earth-bound and space-based benefits.

These "powersats" would catch the flood of energy flowing from the Sun and then pump it to Earth via laser or microwave beam. On earth it would be converted to electricity and fed into power grids to be tapped by terrestrial customers.

TONY BLAIR KNOWS WHOSE HEIR HE IS:

Labour invoke Thatcher memories (BBC, 4/25/05)

Margaret Thatcher would have been appalled by the economic pledges being made by her Conservative successors, Labour ministers have claimed.

I'M AGIN 'EM:

With the recent scandals involving steroids in Major League Baseball, my company, WebSurveyor, has created a survey to find out how baseball fans are reacting to this situation. I found your website and thought you might be interested in telling your readers about it. As a bonus, to get as many responses as we can, the company is giving away a free Sony PSP to the website owner that refers the most survey respondents to the Steroids in Major League Baseball survey. If you’re interested in signing up, you can sign up for the contest at:

"Steroids in Baseball Online Survey"

Results from the survey will be posted in real time at:

http://www.websurveyor.com/baseballresults.

Thanks so much.

THE CANARY JUST DIED:

Republicans Say Have Votes to Ban Filibusters (Thomas Ferraro, 4/24/05, Reuters)

U.S. Senate Republicans have the votes to ban any more Democratic procedural roadblocks against President Bush's judicial nominees, a top Republican said on Sunday.

A spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada promptly questioned the claim, while another Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, floated a possible compromise to avert a fight that could bring the Senate to a near halt. [...]

The key question is whether Republicans can muster the support needed to change Senate rules to ban procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against judicial nominees.

"There's no doubt in my mind, and I'm a pretty good counter of votes ... that we have the votes we need," Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told CBS's "Face the Nation."

W, F.O.B.:

Bush picks brains of Clinton, father (Bill Sammon, 4/08/05, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

President Bush solicited foreign policy advice from former President Bill Clinton at CIA briefings this week and even told Mr. Clinton that he liked his approach to reforming Social Security.

'It was really a lot of fun, Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday after spending three days with Mr. Clinton and former President George Bush in Rome.

'These CIA briefings a lot of time prompt policy discussions,' he added. 'It's interesting to get their points of view about their experiences in particular countries.'

The president also praised one of Mr. Clinton's domestic policies -- trying to reform Social Security. Both men have proposed personal savings accounts as part of the solution, an idea that is vociferously opposed by congressional Democrats.

'I was telling President Clinton I remember watching one of his town hall meetings in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on this very subject,' Mr. Bush said just hours after bidding farewell to his predecessor at the Rome airport.

'And I thought it was a very impressive presentation,' he added. 'By the way, a lot of the language happens to be pretty close to some of the town hall meetings we've had.'

CHURCH 1, HUMANISM NIL:

The Last European Pope?: The mission of Benedict XVI. (Joseph Bottum, 05/02/2005, Weekly Standard)

A FAILING CIVILIZATION CAN'T BE argued out of its failing. It can be led, perhaps, or inspired, or converted and reformed. But argument requires the application of universal truths to the particular facts of the moment, and when a culture is tumbling downward, all its truths and facts--indeed, the whole idea of truth and fact and argument--are exactly what its people increasingly disbelieve.

Does anyone doubt that Western Europe is tumbling downward? It cannot summon the will to reproduce itself. It has aborted and contracepted its birthrate down toward demographic disaster: perhaps 1.4 children per couple across the western end of the continent, when simple replacement requires a rate around 2.1. It can discover neither how to absorb nor how to halt the waves of Islamic immigrants swamping its cities, and it has proved supine in the face of those immigrants' anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, and even anti-Europeanism.

Meanwhile, Western Europe's economies are soft, its unemployment rates are shocking, and its emerging continent-wide government is elitist and antidemocratic. Its people are hedonists and materialists, its soccer clubs are nativist militias in waiting, its churches are empty, and--well, that's the problem Joseph Ratzinger faces, isn't it? The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI has just inherited the world's greatest pulpit, but, on his home continent at least, there's hardly anyone in the pews to listen.

He can preach to the choir, of course: After nearly three centuries of enlightened disdain for religion, Europe is about as dechristianized as it's likely to get; everyone who's going to leave the Church already has, and still there are millions of believers scattered across the continent--to say nothing of the billion or so who don't happen to live a train ride away from Rome. In all likelihood, the European Union and the national governments will soon cave in and grant their Muslim immigrants the religious exemptions those governments have consistently refused to grant Catholics. And that will prove what the Vatican claimed all the way back in its struggles with the French Revolution: The European form of Enlightenment secularism and laïcité was never some purely philosophical stand on the necessary political separation of church and state; it always began and ended with anti-Catholicism.

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Behind the rage at Benedict XVI (Patrick J. Buchanan, April 25, 2005, Creators Syndicate)

"Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you."

Hearing Jesus' words in the synagogue at Capharnum, many of his disciples said, "'This is a hard saying, who can hear it?' ... From that time many ... walked no more with him."

This episode from the Gospel of St. John is instructive. For today, scores of millions do not believe that John Paul II taught infallibly when he condemned abortion, contraception, homosexuality and the idea of women-priests. They cannot accept church teaching as settled and final, and want it changed to reflect their own beliefs. Yet, all the modern popes, and now Benedict XVI, refuse to change doctrine to accommodate them.

Thus, the rage, resentment and frustration that the conclave chose Cardinal Ratzinger as pope. They are like children who have been told by a stern but loving father that their tantrums are to no avail and they are not going to get their way, though they have been used to getting their way for most of their pampered lives.

And so the new pope is denounced as "God's rottweiler," "der PanzerKardinal," John Paul II's enforcer and the chief inquisitor who cruelly silenced the voices of dissent after Vatican II. What the hostility of the liberal media to the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger tells us is that the conclave got it right.

The secular world, too, hoped the church would alter its doctrines to conform to a moral relativism that teaches there is no law above manmade law, and that what is right and wrong is decided by each generation. The notion that there is a higher law – God's law, permanent law – to which all manmade law and human conduct must conform is anathema.

NURSING'S LOSS...:

Mother sues NHS after twin survives abortion (David Lister, 4/25/05, Times of London)

A MOTHER who underwent an abortion after learning that she was pregnant with twins is suing the NHS for £250,000 after one of the babies survived.

Stacy Dow, who was 16 when she found out that she was pregnant, is seeking compensation and damages for the “financial burden” of raising her daughter. Miss Dow, whose father has had to take on a second job to help to pay for his granddaughter, is claiming for “loss, injury and damage” suffered at the hands of Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The teenager, who hoped to train as a nurse...

JUST LIKE ANY BUSINESS:

Why Drug Dealers Live With Their Moms: If you had a job paying $3.30 an hour, you'd be bunking at home too. (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, April 24, 2005, LA Times)

During the crack cocaine boom of the 1990s, the image of the millionaire crack dealer implanted itself on the public consciousness. But anyone who spent time around the Crips or Bloods or any other crack-selling gang might have noticed something odd: A great many crack dealers still lived at home with their moms. Why was that?

Sudhir Venkatesh, a University of Chicago graduate student at the time, discovered the answer.

He had originally been sent by his thesis advisor into a Chicago housing project to administer a sociological survey. But after a harrowing encounter with a local crack gang, he befriended its leader and virtually embedded himself with the gang for six years. He was given a pile of notebooks containing four years' worth of the gang's financial transactions — a trove of data that, when subjected to an economic analysis, proved incredibly revealing.

At root, economics is the study of incentives — how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. The rules apply just as well to a crack gang as to a Fortune 500 business.

As it turned out, the gang worked a lot like most American businesses, though perhaps none more so than McDonald's. If you were to hold a McDonald's organizational chart and the crack gang's organizational chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.

RUNNING THE NUMBERS:

Absolutely, Power Corrupts (MICHAEL LEWIS, 4/24/05, NY Times Magazine)

In February 2004, a 24-year-old minor-league baseball player named Steve Stanley sat down and wrote a letter to President Bush. He had no talent with a pen, and he wanted badly to be understood, so he asked his wife, Brooke, to put what he had to say into words. He wanted to thank the president, whom he admired, for mentioning steroids in his State of the Union address, but he was also hoping to use his own case to advance the discussion. He was a small-boned, 5-foot-7, 155-pound center fielder who, even as he wrote, was succeeding in baseball because of his speed and his abilities to play defense and get on base. Even so, just over a year into his pro career, he was beginning to feel like a freak. He could live with being the least likely player on the field to hit the ball over the wall; what drove him nuts was the thought of bigger players using drugs to widen the power gap even further between him and them. The season before, he'd actually watched some hulking bomber taking batting practice hit a high fly ball to the warning track, turn to a teammate and, referring to a steroid, say, ''One cycle of Deca and that's out.'' And he had no doubt that the slugger would make sure that, next time, the ball left the park.

The putatively rigorous drug testing in the minor leagues, in Stanley's view, didn't reduce the use of steroids so much as it increased the energy players put into not getting caught. In 2003, players were going off into a separate room to fill a cup with urine; that was a joke. Last year, the testers followed the players into the bathroom; steroid users were said to fill false penises -- whizzinators, they called them -- with clean urine and stick them down their pants. The testing wasn't designed to catch cheaters but to create the illusion of trying to catch them. And never mind the biggest loophole of all: the off-season, when the testing of players was haphazard at best.

As the 2003 season's end approached, players could contact their dealers and arranged for shipments of Winstrol -- a kind of steroid with a half-life sufficiently short that it was undetectable a few weeks after the final dosage. A year into his professional baseball career, Steve Stanley had seen enough. In his letter to the president he -- or his wife -- made three observations: 1) the higher the level of the game, the more steroid-aided power he seemed to encounter; 2) steroids put a player like him, who refused to take them, at a competitive disadvantage; and 3) steroids were so deeply embedded in the game that the only way for baseball to be cleansed of them was for outsiders to take matters out of baseball hands.

When he mailed his letter to the president, steroids seemed to be Steve Stanley's problem more than baseball's. The people who judged baseball players, and made decisions about their careers, hardly gave steroids a second thought. Never knowing for sure who was on them, and having no good way of finding out, they were unable to calculate their importance. Anyone with eyes could see that, since the late 1980's, the shape of baseball players had changed. Anyone with a record book could see that, since the late 1980's, there had been a widespread increase in power, as measured by the number of doubles and home runs. But who was to say what caused the one, or that the one caused the other?

Of course, there's now some sketchy evidence that steroids have contributed mightily to the power surge. Clay Davenport, who studies minor-league players for the Web site Baseball Prospectus, has found that three of the four players with the most remarkable midcareer power surges in the last two decades are now famously linked to steroid use: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi. (Giambi has gone from hitting 10 home runs in his entire college career to hitting 43 home runs off major-league pitching in a single season.) Ron Shandler, who has worked as a statistical analyst for the St. Louis Cardinals and publishes Baseball Forecaster, an annual survey of major- and minor-league players for fantasy leaguers, expresses his suspicions another way: he flags players who acquire power the same season that they've come back from vacation 20 pounds or more heavier. For instance, Shandler has noted that last season Adrian Beltre, in his final year with the Dodgers before becoming a free agent, reportedly showed up 20 pounds heavier than the year before. Beltre, whose career up to that point had been a story of unfulfilled promise, blasted 48 home runs, 25 more than he had ever hit in a single season -- for which he was rewarded, by the Seattle Mariners, with a new five-year, $64 million contract. (When a Tacoma, Wash., reporter asked if he had used steroids, Beltre laughed in denial.)

Another piece of evidence that steroids work is the reluctance of the players to part with their drugs.

THAT WHICH THE REST OF US REGRET AS INEVITABLE THEY BASE A PARTY ON:

Democratic Moral Values? (MATT BAI, 4/24/05, NY Times Magazine)

You can forgive Democrats in Washington for feeling somewhat vindicated by the way the controversy over Terri Schiavo played out. For years, after all, they waited in vain for the moment when Republicans might trip over their own arrogance while crusading for moral values, and finally, if polls are to be believed, it happened. Spurred by opportunism and more than a little genuine religious fervor, the heirs to Goldwater and Reagan seemed to forget how they came to control the values debate in America in the first place: not by interfering in the moral choices of families but by promising to stop government from doing exactly that. In truth, it had been a long time since Republican leaders paid more than superficial tribute to their libertarian creed, but it was only now, in the battle over a dying woman's wishes, that the public seemed to call them on it.

And yet, satisfying as it was for Democrats to watch Bill Frist and George W. Bush grow mute in the face of voter unease, they couldn't escape from the fact that the Schiavo episode exposed something hollow in their party too. Far from having made a compelling case for euthanasia or against morality by fiat, Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, pretty much became bystanders to the whole unseemly affair. And while Republicans managed to further define themselves as a party that would even go to unpopular lengths to defend the sanctity of ravaged and unborn souls alike, Democrats were again left to ponder their own identity in an age in which religious values and scientific insight seem increasingly to be hurtling toward collision. Even in defeat, Republicans emerged as ''the party of life.'' And as one leading Democratic operative privately warned a roomful of allies, ''We can't just be the party of death.''

AS YE SOW:

Cardinal Ratzinger had websites dedicated to boosting him for Pope. Lawrence Tribe has one tracking his plagiarism mess.

IT SEEMS SO ATTRACTIVE 'TIL IT'S YOU:

What Living Wills Won't Do: The limits of autonomy (Eric Cohen, April 12, 2005, Weekly Standard)

For decades, we have deluded ourselves into believing that living wills would solve our caregiving problems; that healthy individuals could provide advance instructions for what to do if they became incompetent; that such a system would ensure that no one is mistreated and that everyone defines the meaning of life for himself until the very end. But it is now clear that living wills have failed, both practically and morally.

In the March-April 2004 issue of the Hastings Center Report, Angela Fagerlin and Carl E. Schneider survey the social science data, and their conclusions are damning: Most people do not have living wills, despite a very active campaign to promote them; those who do usually provide vague and conflicting instructions; people's opinions often change from experience to experience; and people's instructions are easily influenced by how a given scenario is described. These are not problems that any reform can fix. A person simply can't grasp in the present every medical and moral nuance of his own future case.

The dream of perfect autonomy--everyone speaking for himself, never deciding for another--should fade each time we change a parent's diaper, or visit a grandparent who does not recognize us, or sell an uncle's property to pay for the nursing home. After all, the only fully autonomous death--with every detail governed by individual will--is suicide. And suicide is hardly a basis for dealing more responsibly with the burdens of caregiving.

As the baby boomers age, we are entering a period when long-term dementia will often be the prelude to death, and when caregivers will regularly have to make decisions about how or whether to treat intervening illnesses like infections, heart trouble, or cancer. When should we accept that death has arrived, and when does stopping treatment entail a judgment that Alzheimer's patients are "better off dead"? What do we owe those who are cognitively disabled and totally dependent?

On these hard questions, the most vocal critics of Congress and "the religious right" in the Schiavo case have revealed the shallowness of their own thinking. Defending the "right to privacy" ignores the moral challenge of deciding how we should act in private, as both patients and caregivers. Asserting that "the state should stay out" of these decisions ignores the fact that some hard cases will always end up in court; that legislatures have a civic responsibility to pass the laws that courts apply; and that a decent society should set some minimum moral boundaries, such as laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide. And claiming that we should "defer to medical experts" ignores the potential conflict between the ideology of living wills and the ethic of medicine, since some people will leave instructions that no principled physician could execute.

In the end, the retreat to moral libertarianism and liberal proceduralism is inadequate. We need, instead, a moral philosophy, a political philosophy, and a medical philosophy that clarify our roles as caregivers, citizens, and doctors attending to those who cannot speak for themselves.

ANY MORAL PHILOSOPHY of care should begin with the premise that disability--even profound disability--is not grounds for seeking someone's death. But seeking death and accepting death when it arrives are very different matters. And while we should not seek death, neither should we see extending life at all costs as the supreme goal of care.

ONE GLOBAL WAR AT A TIME:

US begins to be more assertive with China as terror, Iraq concerns ease (AFP, Apr 24, 2005)

The Bush administration is becoming more assertive with China on issues ranging from trade and currency to nuclear proliferation as concerns over Iraq and terrorism begin to ease. [...]

"I see new energy and interest in addressing what the United States perceives to be its top priority in US-China relationship -- namely rectifying trade imbalance and dealing with North Korea's nuclear proliferation," said Elizabeth Economy, an expert on US-China relations at the influential US Council on Foreign Relations.

The shift reflects a "return to the more traditional kind of US-China relationship rather than something very new and startling" and part of it has to do with less attention focused now on the war on terror and Iraq, she said.

Bush abandoned his aggressive China policy after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

He downplayed key bilateral differences as a trade off for Chinese support for Washington's war on terror and tacit backing for the US-led war on Iraq.

Nearly four years later, as Bush trumpets gains in Iraq and the war on terrorism and faces an increasingly impatient Congress over his China policy, the administration is slowly turning the screws on Beijing.

The thousands of people who poured onto the streets of China this month for the anti-Japanese protests that shook Asia were bound by nationalist anger but also by a more mundane fact: they are China's cellphone and computer generation.

For several weeks as the protests grew larger and more unruly, China banned almost all coverage in the state media. It hardly mattered. An underground conversation was raging via e-mail, text message and instant online messaging that inflamed public opinion and served as an organizing tool for protesters.

The underground noise grew so loud that last Friday the Chinese government moved to silence it by banning the use of text messages or e-mail to organize protests. It was part of a broader curb on the anti-Japanese movement but it also seemed the Communist Party had self-interest in mind.

"They are afraid the Chinese people will think, O.K., today we protest Japan; tomorrow, Japan," said an Asian diplomat who has watched the protests closely. "But the day after tomorrow, how about we protest against the government?"

Nondemocratic governments elsewhere are already learning that lesson. Cellphone messaging is an important communications channel in nascent democracy movements in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. Ukraine's Orange Revolution used online forums and messaging to help topple a corrupt regime.

Few countries censor information and communications as tightly as China, which has as many as 50,000 people policing the Internet. Yet China is also now the largest cellphone market, with nearly 350 million users, while the number of Internet users is roughly 100 million and growing at 30 percent a year.

The result is a constant tension between a population hungry for freer communication and a government that regards information control as essential to its power. Anti-Japanese protesters have been able to spread information and loosely coordinate marches in a country where political organizing is illegal.

"That has to put the government on guard," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley. He said the recent organizing effort was even more notable because no one had been able to identify any of its leaders.

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China's hardly in a position to lecture Japan (Ross Terrill, 22apr05, The Australian)

East Asia is the axis of world power, because the US, China, Japan, and Russia intersect here as nowhere else.

Coiled Japan and theatrical China have seldom got on well. War between them in 1894-95, starting over Korea, undermined China's last dynasty and gave Taiwan to Japan. Widespread war again occurred from 1937 to 1945, as Japan's armies sought to put China under Japanese tutelage. Japan's attack doomed Chiang Kai-shek's rule and fuelled Mao Zedong's victory - and Tokyo lost control of Korea as well as Taiwan. Since 1945 only US power has prevented a resurgence of China-Japan rivalry, with all that would mean for Australia and other countries in the region.

Although the issues seem genteel, the China-Japan crisis is not really a surprise. China, buoyed by the world's gushing endorsement of its "rise"', believes it can lecture Japan with impunity. Just at this time Tokyo, thanks to North Korea's craziness, generational change in Japan, China's economic clout, and the flourishing Koizumi-Bush relationship, has forsaken bowing and scraping and become hard-nosed in its foreign policy.

Beijing's gripes with Tokyo are mostly spiritual. Younger Japanese are not willing to kowtow in unending shame for World War II. Japan has an economy three times the size of China's (with 10per cent of China's population), which rankles a Middle Kingdom used, until the 19th century, to being No.1. It judges Japan morally unfit for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

Japan says it is graduation time for China. No longer poor and a victim, Beijing is seen to be shamelessly milking the World War II issue for concessionary loans and self-esteem. Many Japanese also see China's anti-Japan rhetoric as calculated political mythology -- and this indeed is the heart of the matter.

China's diplomatic awkwardness in the world is inseparable from its tight political control at home. Apologies, textbooks, uninhabited islands, war memories -- all become painted faces and props in the Beijing opera of the paternalistic Chinese state's cultural and foreign policies. Marxism has mostly lost its hold over Chinese minds. But truth and power emanate from one fount: historically the emperor's court, today the Communist Party. The hold of the Chinese Communist regime over its people depends on belief in the cries and groans of the Beijing opera.

One opera act can give way to a surprising sequel. Folk in the People's Republic were taught to love the Soviet Union and then to hate it. India was esteemed in the 1950s and vilified in the '60s. Vietnam was "as close as lips and teeth" in the '60s yet invaded by Chinese armies in 1979. When Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka tried to apologise directly to Mao for World War II in 1972, Mao brushed him off, saying the "help" provided by Japan's invasion of China made possible the Communist victory in 1949.

The moment's raison d'etat is supreme. Turning on rhetoric, emotion, and government-sanctioned demonstrations is an easy trick. Since political safety valves are lacking in Chinese society, no one knows the relative weight in the anti-Japan demonstrators' motivations among (a) dislike of Japan, (b) doing what supervisors prompt and (c) letting off steam by shouting slogans in the street (normally forbidden in China) that might end up annoying a Chinese government seen as condescending and corrupt.

On textbooks, a projection identification occurs. Dynastic regimes in East Asia all viewed history as the province of state orthodoxy. China and Vietnam, putting Leninist dress on the skeleton of traditional autocracy, still do. Japan and Taiwan, as democracies, do not.

No book of any kind attacking the Communist Party's monopoly of power in China has been published in China in the 56 years of the PRC. Some of the most trenchant books anywhere in the world on Japanese war atrocities have been written, published, and widely read in Japan. Beijing seems to think that because its textbooks jump to government policy, Japan's do too. But they do not. In Japan, unlike in China, there are government-sponsored textbooks as well as independent ones.

The blunt truth is that reasonable Chinese, Japanese, and other scholarly estimates vary widely for Chinese killed by Japan in the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 and in World War II. They also do for Chinese killed by their own Communist government in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (no apologies, yet, for these mishaps; what's a million here, 10million there, among comrades?). No one textbook can embody final truth.

The main text for middle-school history in China devotes nine chapters to Japan's aggression against China in the 19th and 20th centuries, but does not mention China's invasion of Japan under the Yuan Dynasty. (Vietnam comes off even worse than Japan. Nothing is said of the Han Dynasty's conquest of Vietnam or of China's 1000-year colonisation of thecountry.)

China has enjoyed a good run in relations with Japan and reaped economic benefit. The very real horror of war is one reason and the skilful political theatre practised by Beijing is another. But the mood in Japan toward China has changed and Beijing may be miscalculating. China will certainly pull back from the brink of a real rupture; it has too much to lose. But it is not certain that Tokyo will lie down and take any more abuse, vandalism, and Chinese distortions of history.

Australia and other friends of China and Japan should talk earnestly to both powers about the crucial role of the Japan-China relationship for peace in East Asia.

IS THEIR SLANG THAT MUCH DIFFERENT?:

'My lesbian marriage was snatched away' (Matthew Davis, 4/22/05, BBC News)

SOMEONE HAS TO CARRY THE LEGACY FORWARD...:

Bush Boosting Hillary in '08? (NewsMax, 4/24/05)

By befriending Bill Clinton so enthusiastically, ex-President George H.W. Bush is inadvertently helping Hillary Clinton to reclaim the White House in 2008, a longtime Bush family confidante said Sunday.

"They're trying to move Hillary to the center for 2008, and this helps de-demonize her and her husband," the unnamed Bush insider tells the New York Daily News.

An unidentified Clinton aide agreed that the ex-presidents' warm relationship is giving Hillary's presidential bid a big boost, proclaiming, "It gives [Mr.] Clinton back some legitimacy."

Sen. Clinton certainly left no doubt that she approves of her husband's new pal, telling the News, "They really have been having a great time together."

ARE THEY WORRIED HE MIGHT CHASE KOFI DOWN A HOTEL CORRIDOR?

Republican joins Bolton hearing monkey biz (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, April 24th, 2005)

I'll bet Pope Benedict XVI is glad that his conclave doesn't include either Cardinal Biden or Cardinal Voinovich, or his church would be pontiff-less indefinitely while they ''investigated'' last-minute rumors that he'd been off-hand to some guy in seminary 55 years ago. I had no strong views about the new pope one way or another, but I'd have voted for him just for the pleasure of seeing him drive the U.S. media bananas. Apparently, the New York Times was stunned that their short list of Cardinal Gloria Steinem, Cardinal Rupert Everett and Cardinal Rosie O'Donnell were defeated at the last moment by some guy who came out of left field and isn't even gay or female but instead belongs to the discredited ''Catholic'' faction of the Catholic Church.

Unlike the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the conclave of cardinals takes its job seriously. They understand the demands of the New York Times: women priests, gay sex, condoms for all. But, as befits an ancient institution, they take the long view: They think that radical secularism is weak and that the consequences of its weakness will prove dangerous and possibly fatal for the Western world. Therefore, there's no point accommodating it -- and, after all, those churches that do (the Episcopalians, for example) are already in steep decline. You can disagree with this, particularly if you're as shrill and parochial as Pope Benedict's American critics. But the conclave at least addressed the big issues.

By contrast, at a time of great geopolitical turbulence, all the senior foreign relations figures in the upper house of the national legislature of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth can do is retail lame smears from the early '90s and late '80s. Last week, Newt Gingrich visited New Hampshire -- strictly for the beautiful defoliated trees and meandering washed-out washboard roads of scenic late-April Mud Season, you understand; nothing to do with putative presidential campaigns or anything like that. Anyway, a surprisingly large number of hitherto quiescent Granite State Republicans demanded to know what's the deal with the inept and unreliable GOP senators. Newt gave pretty much the standard reply: Well, you must understand the party's still not used to being in charge of Congress. If they'd taken the first poll of the 2008 primary right there and then, he'd have dropped off the graph.

Newt's answer was just about plausible in 1995. But after a decade in charge? The Iraqi people are expected to get the hang of this self-government thing in 20 minutes, but the Republican Party requires another decade or three? The Democrats lost in 2004 for two reasons: their lack of credibility on national security issues, and their descent into mindless obstructionism. Remember Tom Daschle? Me neither. But if you go to the local library and dig up all the yellowing clippings, you'll find he used to be in the papers pretty much every day until the second week of November.

The weak bromides touted by the Dems in lieu of a policy -- a legalistic approach to the war on terror, greater deference to the U.N. and America's ''friends'' -- were defeated at the polls. Since then, they've been further discredited: The failure of terrorist prosecutions in Europe underlines how disastrous John Kerry's serve-'em-with-subpoenas approach would be; the sewer of the Oil-for-Food scandal and the attempts by Kofi Annan to castrate the investigation into it demonstrate yet again that there is no problem in the world today that can't be made worse by letting the U.N. have a hand in solving it; and America's ''friends'' -- by which Kerry meant not allies like Britain and Australia but the likes of France and Canada -- turn out to be some of the countries most implicated in the corruption of U.N. ''humanitarianism.''

Republican voters understand this. Why don't Republican senators? The rap against John Bolton is that he gets annoyed with do-nothing bureaucrats. If that's enough to disqualify you from government service, then 70 percent of citizens who've visited the DMV in John Kerry's Massachusetts are ineligible. Sinking Bolton means handing a huge psychological victory to a federal bureaucracy that so spectacularly failed America on 9/11 and to a U.N. bureaucracy eager for any distraction from its own mess. The Democrats' interest in derailing Bush foreign policy is crude but understandable. But why would even the wimpiest Republican ''moderate'' want to help them out? Who needs capuchin monkeys in the Senate when GOP squishes are so eager to tap-dance for Democrat organ grinders?

Do these senators think that the UN can be charmed into reform by a kind of earnest diplomatic collegiality? How positively Canadian of them.

WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD KILL:

Two, four, six, eight: time to transubstantiate (Kevin Myers, 10/04/2005, Daily Telegraph)

[P]olly Toynbee's hate-flecked diatribe in The Guardian against the Pope and the Catholic Church probably spoke for a sizeable community of intolerant feminist liberals.

Even by her usual intellectual incoherence, the following sentence sets positively Olympian standards of doctrinaire witlessness: "With its ban on condoms, the Church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries in Africa and right across the globe."

So there you have it: not merely is the Catholic Church in political power in all those states in sub-Saharan Africa, but also, its ban on condoms actually causes the deaths of millions. And bizarre though it is, such toxic mumbo-jumbo is probably well-received in certain corners of Hampstead, where bigoted, sectarian secularism disdains the affections of the masses and curses simple, celibate virtue such as the Pope's.

But it is not his goodness alone that has commended itself to the people of Britain: the Catholic Church seems to have established a moral primacy within the British Christian community. Cardinal Basil Hume and now Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor have achieved an authority far greater than their equivalents in Canterbury, even though the Catholic Church has been rocked with both the evils of child-abuse and by falling vocations.

People apparently crave what it stands for - unbending moral authority in personal and public life - even if they do not comply with every instruction it issues.

POSTCARDS FROM HELL:

So, marital amity required a trip to MA this weekend for Passover and served up a number of reminders of why you should never leave your house.

(1) Did you know the Post Office doesn't have a Book Rate anymore? It's called Media Rate now.

(2) A package of razor blade refills now costs $10 for like four of them? You used to be able to get a whole sack of Bic shavers for less.

(3) One of The Wife's cousins is getting married but the rabbi won't do the service, not because the spouse is also a male, which is permissible, but because he's not Jewish.

LOW STAKES AT THE END OF HISTORY:

Politics is no longer Britain's cup of tea: Experts say voter turnout in the May 5 general election could plunge to a century-low 53 percent. (Mark Rice-Oxley, 4/25/05, f The Christian Science Monitor)

With less than two weeks to the May 5 vote, the big question facing British politicians is not who votes for them, but who votes at all. Experts predict the lowest participation in a century.

Turnout that persisted above 70 percent for decades after World War II is expected to plunge to 53 percent this cycle, according to Professor Paul Whiteley of England's Essex University. Turnout in the 2004 US presidential vote was 61 percent.

DEAR GOD, WE NEED MORE PLAGUES:

Under siege (Melanie Phillips, 4/24/05)

Jews are currently celebrating the festival of Passover. This commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt, the point at which they gained their freedom and became a nation. The two concepts are intimately connected. On Friday afternoon, when orthodox Jews preparing for both the Sabbath and Passover would have been unable to attend, the Association of University Teachers took a large step towards delegitimising the Jewish national homeland as a prelude to its destruction. It passed a motion calling for a boycott of two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar Ilan, which it accused of being complicit in the abuse of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and agreed to circulate a Palestinian call for a total university boycott.

The targeted Israeli institutions have denied the specific charges. They were given no opportunity to put their case; indeed, a request from Bar Ilan to send someone to do so at the conference was turned down. This was not surprising to anyone who has grasped what is going on here. For it was not these universities which were on trial, but Israel itself. And for the stupid and vicious people who now pass for our intelligentsia, Israel is a pariah nation — an ‘apartheid state’ — simply because the Arabs who are trying to exterminate it say that this is so.

The vote has drawn immediate protests at the denial of academic freedom that it embodies. I have already commented in posts below on this particular aspect, along with the disgusting requirement for Israeli academics to side with those who would exterminate their nation in order to avoid this punishment. In these circumstances, it was astonishing to hear Steven Rose, the original begetter of the boycott movement three years ago, adduce on BBC Radio Four’s The World Tonight as a reason for this action the ‘appalling’ restrictions by the Israeli authorities on the academic freedom of his Palestinian colleagues who were prevented from moving freely between universities in the territories. No mention by Rose, of course, of the 50-year Arab war against Israel and the systematic mass murder of Israeli citizens by Palestinians — the only reason for those restrictions being applied.

But then, the whole premise of the motion is a truly monstrous lie about who is the aggressor and who the victim in the Middle East, with Israel being wickedly blamed for having the temerity to defend itself against annihilation and genocide. Susan Blackwell, the Birmingham university lecturer (described in David Aaronovitch’s Observer column as a former Christian turned revolutionary socialist who co-wrote the motion, said the union was ‘standing up for human rights’. What is so terrifying is that, in stamping on the human right to life of the Israelis, she probably sincerely believes this Orwellian inversion of the truth. And these people are teaching our young. [...]

The AUT motion cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a tiny minority of far-left academics in a marginal union. It may be that other academics, appalled by what has occurred, will resign from that union or protest in other ways. But this development is merely the latest in an apparently unstoppable stream of comments and incidents of an anti-Jewish nature. And the crucial thing is the absence of outrage in the wider community — indeed, on occasion, it provides its endorsement. The AUT motion came at the end of a week which saw the award of the MBE to Orla Guerin, the BBC reporter whose venomous dispatches from Israel have come to epitomise the virulent anti-Israel hatred at the BBC. For her to be given this award, presented by Baroness Symons, the junior Foreign Office minister, is a calculated kick in the teeth by the labour government towards the Jewish community in Britain, where feeling about Guerin’s reporting runs very high as the government well knows.

The Jewish community in Britain is under siege.

MORE:
Why Israel will always be vilified: It is convenient for many British liberals that Israel exists. It saves them from examining the manifest failings in their own actions (David Aaronovitch, April 24, 2005, Observer)

In itself, Israel is not anything like South Africa, where a majority was denied all political and civic rights on the grounds of race. What is analogous, however, is Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, which bears comparison with South Africa's occupation of Namibia or, some might say, Serbia's occupation of Kosovo.

So the object of those wanting peace and justice in the Middle East is to bring about an end to that occupation, and enable the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state. It is to persuade both sides that such a settlement is practical and to persuade both sides to make the difficult sacrifices that are necessary. It is to build confidence between Jews and Palestinians, and to strengthen, always, the hand of the peacemakers.

Unless, of course, you don't believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state at all within any borders. And this, as it happens, seems to be the view of Sue Blackwell, who describes Israel as 'an illegitimate state'. Unlike the United Nations, she does not believe it should have been set up and she would rather it disappeared. As she pointed out in 2003 to a previous AUT council: 'From its very inception, the state of Israel has attracted international condemnation for violating the human rights of the Palestinian people and making war on its neighbours.' Or, to put it even more bluntly, everything is all the fault of the Israelis.

The problem is that many Jews understand very well that this is her view and, unfortunately, will believe that it is also the view of all her fellow campaigners. Consequently, there will now be a battle royal (of which this article is part) about the rights and wrongs of these particular tactics, and the bigger picture will inevitably be lost. Everyone will return to their trenches and take the tarpaulins off their heaviest and most inaccurate artillery.

NOTHING SO BEAUTIFUL AS A SUNSET:

Bush's Most Radical Plan Yet: With a vote of hand-picked lobbyists, the president could terminate any federal agency he dislikes (OSHA GRAY DAVIDSON, Rolling Stone)

If you've got something to hide in Washington, the best place to bury it is in the federal budget. The spending plan that President Bush submitted to Congress this year contains 2,000 pages that outline funding to safeguard the environment, protect workers from injury and death, crack down on securities fraud and ensure the safety of prescription drugs. But almost unnoticed in the budget, tucked away in a single paragraph, is a provision that could make every one of those protections a thing of the past.

The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the "Sunset Commission," which would systematically review federal programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. Any programs that are not "producing results," in the eyes of the commission, would "automatically terminate unless the Congress took action to continue them."

The administration portrays the commission as a well-intentioned effort to make sure that federal agencies are actually doing their job. "We just think it makes sense," says Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, which crafted the provision. "The goal isn't to get rid of a program -- it's to make it work better."

In practice, however, the commission would enable the Bush administration to achieve what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it. With a simple vote of five commissioners -- many of them likely to be lobbyists and executives from major corporations currently subject to federal oversight -- the president could terminate any program or agency he dislikes. No more Environmental Protection Agency. No more Food and Drug Administration. No more Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Ronald Reagan once observed, 'The closest thing to immortality on this earth is a federal government program,' " says Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from Texas who has been working for the past nine years to establish a sunset commission. "We need it to clear out the deadwood."

ET TUTU? (via Kevin Whited):

Africans hail conservative Pope (BBC, 4/20/05)

African church leaders have welcomed the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

Archbishop John Onayekon of Nigeria told the BBC that African Catholics supported his conservative views on social and sexual issues.

However, South Africa's Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he was sad that the new pope was unlikely to end the church's opposition to condoms.

He said this was more important than the fact that the Pope was not African.

"We would have hoped for someone more open to the more recent developments in the world, the whole question of the ministry of women and a more reasonable position with regards to condoms and HIV/Aids," Archbishop Tutu said.

YOU ARE HOW YOU THROW (via brian boys):

Wide World of Sports: Soccer mirrors globalization and its discontents.: a review of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, by Franklin Foer (Michael Young, April 2005, Reason)

In one chapter of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer evokes this alleged effetism by using soccer to help explain America’s culture wars. Foer distinguishes two camps that emerged in the U.S. after 9/11. One is cosmopolitan, shares values with Europe, opposes war in Iraq, and, presumably, is amenable to soccer; the other believes in American exceptionalism, views Europeans as lax and degraded, and regards soccer as “a symbol of the U.S. junking its tradition to ‘get with the rest of the world’s program.’”

BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED (via Tom Corcoran):

The Fever Swamp: “Don’t You Want to Be Prepared?” (Meghan Cox Gurdon, April 22, 2005, National Review)

I don’t want to sound unpatriotic, and I realize that this is not a wildly original point, but there is something creepy about how risk aversion has become a kind of unofficial American creed.

It’s creepy in the way that it has crept stealthily into our national life, and creepier still in its sinister, innumerate, fear-fanning, joy-squashing effects. There have been days lately when I have caught myself wondering aloud, “Can we really be the people who settled the Great Plains?”

Spend a few hours at the park and you’ll hear the endless gull-like cries of fretful parents and nannies: “Don’t climb so high! Watch out with that stick! No running! No pushing! Don’t get on the slide until everyone’s off it!” Of course children can get hurt, but really, they usually bounce. Go to a swimming pool and it’s all, “No running! No diving! No jumping! Stop splashing!”

When Paris went recently to his pal Emma’s 8th birthday party — “Laser tag, wow!” — he came out cheerful and sweaty but slightly crestfallen. “It was fun,” he told me, “but not as exciting as I expected. We weren’t allowed to run or jump, so everyone just walked around slowly, shooting each other with beams of light.”

The next day Molly returned from a field trip to a D.C government office and informed us that a new municipal regulation requires children to wear protective headgear when…sledding! To grasp the full craziness of this rule, you must understand that we get sled-worthy snow maybe three times a winter — at which point school is invariably cancelled due to the peril of slippage — and that Washington, D.C. is not exactly Alpine. Them thar hillocks is hazardous, m’am! Them moguls is downright deadly!

It seems a no-fun approach to life to me, but then I come from a generation that knew not the steel-reinforced child car seat, the bicycle helmet, or that antibiotic gel that conscientious mothers rub on their toddlers’ hands when they’ve been playing in a sandbox.

UNIVERSAL HSA'S NOW:

States Rein In Health Costs: Legislatures are looking to cut Medicaid or add fees. Missouri is poised to end the program, which many of the poor rely upon for care. (Stephanie Simon, April 24, 2005, LA Times)

Hundreds of thousands of poor people across the nation will lose their state-subsidized health insurance in the coming months as legislators scramble to hold down the enormous — and ever-escalating — cost of Medicaid.

Here in impoverished southeast Missouri, nurses at a family health clinic stash drug samples for patients they know won't be able to afford their prescriptions after their coverage is eliminated this summer. Doctors try to comfort waitresses, sales clerks and others who will soon lose coverage for medical, dental and mental healthcare.

"I don't know what cure to offer them," Dr. Hameed Khaja said.

Lawmakers say they feel for those who will lose coverage. But they say also that they have no alternative.

Prenatal checkups, care in nursing homes and other health services for the poor and disabled account for more than 25% of total spending in many states. Medicaid is often a state's single biggest budget item, more expensive even than K-12 education. And the price of services, especially prescription drugs and skilled nursing for the elderly, continues to soar.

The federal government helps pay for Medicaid, but in the coming fiscal year, the federal contribution will drop by more than $1 billion because of changes in the cost-share formula. President Bush has warned of far deeper cuts to come; he aims to reduce federal spending on Medicaid by as much as $40 billion over the next decade.

"It's frightening a lot of governors," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

IF YOU BLOW STUFF UP WE WILL WATCH (via The Mother Judd):

Watching TV Makes You Smarter (STEVEN JOHNSON, 4/24/05, NY Times Magazine)

SCIENTIST A: Has he asked for anything special?

SCIENTIST B: Yes, this morning for breakfast . . . he requested something called ''wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk.''

SCIENTIST A: Oh, yes. Those were the charmed substances that some years ago were felt to contain life-preserving properties.

SCIENTIST B: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or . . . hot fudge?

SCIENTIST A: Those were thought to be unhealthy.
— From Woody Allen's ''Sleeper''

On Jan. 24, the Fox network showed an episode of its hit drama ''24,'' the real-time thriller known for its cliffhanger tension and often- gruesome violence. Over the preceding weeks, a number of public controversies had erupted around ''24,'' mostly focused on its portrait of Muslim terrorists and its penchant for torture scenes. The episode that was shown on the 24th only fanned the flames higher: in one scene, a terrorist enlists a hit man to kill his child for not fully supporting the jihadist cause; in another scene, the secretary of defense authorizes the torture of his son to uncover evidence of a terrorist plot.

But the explicit violence and the post-9/11 terrorist anxiety are not the only elements of ''24'' that would have been unthinkable on prime-time network television 20 years ago. Alongside the notable change in content lies an equally notable change in form. During its 44 minutes -- a real-time hour, minus 16 minutes for commercials -- the episode connects the lives of 21 distinct characters, each with a clearly defined ''story arc,'' as the Hollywood jargon has it: a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. Nine primary narrative threads wind their way through those 44 minutes, each drawing extensively upon events and information revealed in earlier episodes. Draw a map of all those intersecting plots and personalities, and you get structure that -- where formal complexity is concerned -- more closely resembles ''Middlemarch'' than a hit TV drama of years past like ''Bonanza.''

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down.

INHERITED LANDSCAPE:

Bruce Almighty (JON PARELES, 4/24/05, NY Times)

WHEN Bruce Springsteen talks about his new album, he can sound more like a preacher than a rock star. Soul and spirit, God and family; that's what's on his mind in the quiet, folky songs on Devils & Dust. He sings, reverently, about Jesus and his mother, Mary; he also sings about a man with a hooker in a hotel room.

"I like to write about people whose souls are in danger, who are at risk," Mr. Springsteen said. At rehearsals for a solo tour that starts on Monday in Detroit, he and his crew were fine-tuning technical details here at the Paramount Theater, the faded movie palace at the Asbury Park Convention Hall.

"In every song on this record," he added, "somebody's in some spiritual struggle between the worst of themselves and the best of themselves, and everybody comes out in a slightly different place. That thread runs through the record, and it's what gives the record its grounding in the spirit."

In a way, "Devils & Dust" is Mr. Springsteen's family-values album, filled with reflections on God, motherhood and the meaning of home. [...]

Thoughts of redemption, moral choices and invocations of God have been part of Springsteen songs throughout his career, but they have grown stronger and more explicitly Christian on his 21st-century albums. "It was something I pushed off for a long time," he said, "but I've been thinking about it a lot lately." He has a trinity of reasons for his connection to Christian imagery and concepts: "Catholic school, Catholic school, Catholic school," he said. "You're indoctrinated. It's a none-too subtle form of brainwashing, and of course, it works very well."

Mr. Springsteen grew up half a block away from his Catholic church, convent and rectory. "I'm not a churchgoer," he said, "but I realized, as time passed, that my music is filled with Catholic imagery. It's not a negative thing. There was a powerful world of potent imagery that became alive and vital and vibrant, and was both very frightening and held out the promise of ecstasies and paradise. There was this incredible internal landscape that they created in you