IF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION FAIL THE REVOLUTION WAS A FAILURE:

Foundering? (NOAH FELDMAN, 7/31/05, NY Times Magazine)

When a constitution succeeds, its framers come to be regarded as visionaries. They are seen in retrospect to have predicted future difficulties and dealt with them ingeniously, by building a machine that would run of itself. From the inside, though, constitution drafting is not so philosophical and frictionless; it does not take place under the aspect of the eternal. The immediate politics of the moment dominate, along with the lurking fear that if the constitution is not ratified, national collapse may follow.

In Baghdad today, as in Philadelphia in 1787, constitution writing means horse-trading, improvisation, dispute and deferral. [...]

Meanwhile, the specter of a national breakup bedevils the Iraqi negotiators, just as it did the drafters in Philadelphia. Kurdish autonomy, politely relabeled ''federalism,'' may be the greatest stumbling block to reaching a constitutional deal. Many Arab Iraqis will experience an initial shock when they look closely at the de facto self-government that the Kurds have negotiated for themselves. Meanwhile, ownership of disputed Kirkuk and its oil fields cannot be assigned without calling ratification into doubt. As in the U.S. Constitution, ''secession'' itself will go unmentioned -- allowing politicians to claim in the future that the omission either allows or prohibits Kurdistan from establishing itself on its own.

But the bottom line is that Arab Iraqis, like Northerners who objected to slavery but cared more for Union, have no choice but to acquiesce in vague language that opens the door to Kurdish demands. The Kurds have a substantial military force and a strong friendship with the U.S.; who is going to take their self-government away from them? Anyway, federalism always entails tension between a central government and states' rights. So Iraqis must gamble that their precarious arrangements do not lead to secession and civil slaughter.

A constitution that acclimates a people to living with contradiction pretty much guarantees unintended consequences. The Philadelphia framers decided to leave out a bill of rights, since they worried that listing some rights might imply the nonexistence of others. But when the states' ratifying conventions insisted on specific guarantees, the first Congress went to work. Today the 10 amendments (originally plotted as 12, with our First as the less impressive Third) seem more like universal principles than a political afterthought.

For the Iraqis, the unexpected results lie in the not-too-distant future. But to get there, to arrive in a world where courts resolve difficult questions of interpretation in ways the original authors could never have imagined -- this would be a tremendous accomplishment for the Iraqis, not to mention the coalition that unleashed at once the powers of democracy and anarchy, as if to see which would prevail.

HAVE NEPOTISM RULES BEEN REPEALED?:

When They Knew (MASSIMO CALABRESI, 8/01/05, TIME)

As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration.

THINK IT, DON'T SAY IT (via David):

Majority would curb freedom (Nina Berglund, Aftenposten English Web Desk)

A vast majority of Norwegians say they'd like to see limits placed on the constitutional freedom of extremist groups, like neo-Nazis, to express themselves. They'd also favor a ban on public meetings of racist groups or Muslim or Christian fundamentalists. [...]

"This is very surprising, and shows that there's a certain anti-democratic current running through the population," said lawyer Cato Schiøtz, one of the Norway's foremost experts on freedom of expression.

The survey results also defy those in another survey taken more recently, where a majority of Norwegians said the war on terrorism must not damage individual human rights. (see link list).

Schiøtz linked the NSD survey results to "an element of common intolerance" lying under the surface of lofty claims to the contrary.

"You only have to scrape the surface to find the undemocratic opinions," Schiøtz told Aftenposten. "It's like racism. You don't have to scrape very deep with the average Norwegian before the clear racist interpretations emerge."

He thinks most Norwegians are less liberal than they'd like to believe.

THERE'S A DECENT SHORT STORY HIDDEN WITHIN:

Audiobooks: Clinton wins top prize (Tara Bradley-Steck, July 31, 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Among great works of literature, former President Bill Clinton's autobiography, "My Life," hardly rates a footnote.

Among the great audiobooks of 2005, however, it was voted "audiobook of the year" by the Audio Publishers Association, edging out a 22-CD set of James Joyce's "Ulysses"...

NOW THERE'S A GOOD QUESTION:

A line of inquiry for Supreme Court nominee Roberts: The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, gave former slaves full citizenship. Not long afterward it was read by the high court to also apply to corporations. Morton Mintz says that was a radical ruling. (Morton Mintz, 7-27-05, Nieman Watchdog)

Q. For Judge Roberts: The law of the land since 1886 is that a corporation is a person, with all the rights that entails. What’s your view: Is a corporation a person?

Judge Robert H. Bork, President Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee, famously denounced Roe v. Wade as "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative authority." For the moment, at least, let's assume he was correct. Then what about the Court's pronouncement more than a century ago that a private corporation—a paper entity that cannot wear a uniform, bleed, vote, be sent to prison or the death chamber, and that may give tens of millions of dollars to politicians during a possible lifespan of hundreds of years—is a "person" that cannot be denied "the equal protection of the laws"? Was that pronouncement also "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative authority"?

These would surely be appropriate and challenging questions for Judge John G. Roberts, Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, when he comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But don't count on any such questions being asked. That's because Democratic and Republican committee members alike, sensitized to corporate power, have for decades avoided putting them to any one of hundreds of judicial nominees.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868, soon after the end of the Civil War. It declares that no state shall deprive "any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The "person" Congress and the ratifying states had in mind—the human being in need of equal protection, particularly in the states of the old Confederacy—was the newly-freed slave. Nothing in either the text or the legislative history of the Amendment suggests otherwise.

HEY, NOMAR, WAIT UP:

Trade cools, details emerge on Ramirez (Michael Silverman, July 31, 2005, Boston Herald)

``They don't talk, they haven't spoken since the first day Ramirez came,'' the source said of Francona and Ramirez. ``He's had it for Manny for a while. The friction's been there for a while. Manny's not his kind of player - Francona has one way of thinking and there's one type of player he wants on his team and that's not Manny.''

Said Francona: ``I'm not going to lower myself by responding to that.''

The source said Ramirez was disappointed about what happened when bench coach Brad Mills asked Ramirez before Wednesday's game in St. Petersburg, Fla., if he still needed a day off. Ramirez answered yes, without knowing the Sox needed him to play because Trot Nixon was hurt. If asked to play for that reason, the source said Ramirez would have played.

Also, the source said that before that game, which was started by Tampa Bay's Seth McClung, David Ortiz said aloud to Schilling, ``Man, that guy's got some nasty stuff,'' to which Schilling supposedly responded, ``Yeah, that's why Manny took the day off.''

Ramirez then supposedly said to Schilling, ``Screw you, I can hit anyone in baseball, including your ass.''

Then, the source said, Ramirez went up to Schilling and, before the confrontation escalated, Ortiz had to separate the two.
You can't keep a guy who's afraid to face the hometown fans.

MORE:
Wells comes out firing (Amalie Benjamin, July 31, 2005, Boston Globe)

If any teammate of Manny Ramirez's was going to speak out, it wasn't hard to guess who it would be. David Wells, bombastic as usual, took to the New England Sports Network set postgame and, well, let his teammate have it.

Ramirez hadn't been in the lineup. And Wells, of course, had an opinion.

''I didn't know until we hit in the bottom of the inning and there's no Manny," Wells said. ''The guy's messing with my cake. I want to try to get a ring, man. If he's not out there, that creates a problem. And I don't know the situation. Whatever it is, he better have a great excuse because we need Manny Ramirez in the lineup. I don't care what's going on. This team needs him.

''If he's going to come out and say he needs another day off, that's not going to sit well with a lot of guys. There's no question. . . . It's selfish for him not to step up. Listen, we've got a couple guys hurt. We need you in there. His impact in that is tremendous. The [opposing] pitchers are going, 'Oh boy. What do we throw this guy?' He's hitting everything. For Manny not to step up, I think that was selfish on his part."

AS YOUNG AS THE NATION:

A change of command as Old Ironsides sets sail again (Russell Nichols, July 31, 2005, Boston Globe)

A long time ago in an ocean not so far away, the USS Constitution blasted the British vessel HMS Guerriere into submission in a fierce firefight.

In that battle off the coast of Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, British cannonballs appeared to bounce off the wooden hull of the Constitution, resulting in the ship being forever known as ''Old Ironsides."

For more than two centuries, the oldest commissioned warship in the world has stood as a symbol of patriotism for the American public, and particularly for those who have served aboard her.

That makes any change of command aboard Old Ironsides, an occasion to remember and reflect.

The ship set sail again yesterday morning from Constitution Wharf in the Charlestown Navy Yard for still another solemn ceremony at sea. Commander Thomas C. Graves, 41, relieved Commander Lewin C. Wright, 43, as the ship's commanding officer, becoming the 69th man to command the 207-year-old warship.

CONTRA THE BRENNANISTAS:

Supreme Court Nominee Stood Out for Conservative Rigor (ADAM LIPTAK and TODD S. PURDUM, 7/31/05, NY Times)

They are not exactly father and son, but they share a singular bond in an elite business: 25 years ago this summer, almost exactly half his lifetime ago, John G. Roberts went to work for William H. Rehnquist, and now he stands poised to become the first Supreme Court clerk in American history to sit on the bench alongside the justice he served.

His 13 months in the chambers of Justice Rehnquist spanned the period of the 1980 election and the dawn of the Reagan revolution in Washington. It was a heady time of relentless work, long walks on Capitol Hill discussing cases informally with the justice and sharp-elbowed basketball games in the Supreme Court gym, wryly referred to as the "highest court in the land."

It was a time when the Supreme Court was far different, more liberal, and that made John Roberts stand out among the other clerks.

"John's conservatism was in fact a sign of intellectual courage, coming out of Harvard and being surrounded by law clerks from mainly liberal, East Coast, Ivy institutions," said John A. Siliciano, a law professor at Cornell who clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the same time.

His was "a very solid, rigorous, coherent view of very important social questions," Professor Siliciano said, "about the relations between courts and legislatures, about the relationship between the federal government and the state, between the public sphere and the private."

Fifteen of the 32 Supreme Court clerks in the 1980-81 term agreed to be interviewed about Mr. Roberts, including both of his fellow Rehnquist clerks. They offered a revealing portrait of an affable, ambitious and frankly conservative intellectual, much like his boss.

"John certainly was in sync with his justice," said Paul M. Smith, who clerked for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and is now a lawyer in Washington who frequently appears before the Supreme Court. [...]

Few if any of the memorandums found so far from Mr. Roberts's clerkship shed much light on his political leanings. They are, if anything, concise and reliant on procedural points. They do, however, bear the dry wit that so many have cited in describing Mr. Roberts's writings and personality.

Most justices hired clerks who shared their views. But the Rehnquist clerks did not wear their politics on their sleeves, said Robert B. Knauss, a Los Angeles lawyer who also clerked for the justice that year.

"Frankly, the people that did were the liberal clerks, who were more out there, more aggressive, more, frankly, intolerant," Mr. Knauss said. "There were a few that were pretty aggressive that would try to come into the chambers and lobby you."

WHY NOT JUST BURN YOUR MONEY?:

Renting the American Dream (Monica Collins, July 31, 2005, Boston Globe)

My guy and I are moving in together and decided to rent before we buy. We're not students, the customary transients who rock Boston's rental stock every September. We're 50-somethings in transition and simply taking a breather by leasing somebody else's turf. If real estate is the new religion, call us agnostics. Or call us crazy - as one researcher suggests. "The traditional reasons why some people might have rented at 35 and above have been taken away," says Tom Meagher, president of Northeast Apartment Advisors of Action, which provides research and analysis to housing developers. "Interest-only or adjustable-rate mortgages are well within the means of almost anybody who is going to rent."

GIVE ANY SCIENTIST THE RESULT YOU WANT AND HE'LL GIVE YOU THE STUDY YOU NEED:

Beliefs drive research agenda of new think tanks (Michael Kranish, July 31, 2005, Boston Globe)

President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ''Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.

Bush's assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.

But Bush's statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ''Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" -- a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.

The president's statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ''dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.

That pediatric study asserted a ''considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.

The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.

Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.

THE MONSTERS...:

'Confession' lifts lid on London bomb plot (BRIAN BRADY AND JOHN PHILLIPS, 7/31/05, The Scotsman)

THE London bomb plot suspect arrested in Rome has allegedly confessed to Italian interrogators, lifting the lid on the plan to bring a wave of terror to Britain.

Anti-terror police in the Italian capital say Osman Hussain has told them that the "bombers" watched videos of British and American troops "exterminating" Iraqi women and children before embarking on the attack on London's transport network on July 21.

THE CELLBLOCK WEPT:

Never say never, but Connery ends career (TOBY MCDONALD AND JEREMY WATSON, 7/31/05, The Scotsman)

IT IS a decision that will horrify his legion of worldwide fans and leave grown women in tears.

Scottish screen legend Sir Sean Connery has almost drawn the curtain on his long and glittering career by revealing it would take a Mafia-style "offer he couldn't refuse" to tempt him to make another film.

At the age of 74, Connery still manages to be Britain's highest-paid actor, commanding up to £10m per movie. But his three-year absence from the industry has prompted questions about whether the Scots star has decided to retire after half a century in Hollywood and 77 films.

Now, Connery has provided the answer. In an interview with a New Zealand newspaper, the actor says he has no time for the "idiots" now making films in Hollywood.

THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WORKIN':

At State, Rice Takes Control of Diplomacy: Secretary Summons 'Practical Idealism' (Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, July 31, 2005, Washington Post)

Three weeks after taking office, Condoleezza Rice hosted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their Japanese counterparts at the State Department. When Rumsfeld began to speak, Rice gently cut him off. The message was clear: I'll take the lead, Don. Both Japanese and U.S. officials noted the decisive nudge.

Now six months on the job, Rice has clearly wrested control of U.S. foreign policy. The once heavy-handed Defense Department still weighs in, but Rice wins most battles -- in strong contrast to her predecessor, Colin L. Powell. White House staff is consulted, but Rice designed the distinctive framework for the administration's second-term foreign policy.

In short order, she has demonstrated a willingness to bend on tactics to accommodate the concerns of allies without ceding on broad principles, what she calls "practical idealism." She also conducts a more aggressive personal diplomacy, breaking State Department records for foreign travel and setting up diplomatic tag teams with top staff on urgent issues.

U.S. foreign policy has always had "a streak of idealism, which means that we care about values, we care about principle," Rice said in an interview last week. "The responsibility, then, of all of us is to take policies that are rooted in those values and make them work on a day-to-day basis so that you're always moving forward toward a goal."

It is too early to know whether the new tactics will ultimately bring results, and many of Rice's steps so far this year have been limited to overtures or temporary fixes. But those have at the least created momentum where before there was deadlock.

MORE:
What Makes Condi Run (Ann Reilly Dowd, September & October 2005, AARP Magazine)

ONE THING TO BE FRENCH, ANOTHER TO ACT IT:

'Two-faced French sell out Cuban dissidents' (David Rennie, 26/07/2005, Daily Telegraph)

A leading Cuban dissident yesterday accused a "two-faced" French government of putting trade ahead of the suffering of the Cuban people.

The comments by Marta Beatriz Roque, a 60-year-old economist who was arrested during a protest outside the French embassy in Havana on Bastille Day, came after Paris unilaterally ended a European Union diplomatic embargo against the regime of President Fidel Castro, and normalised relations with his government.

Apparently emboldened by the French overture, Cuban authorities responded by launching the largest wave of dissident arrests since 2003, when almost the entire dissident leadership of the Communist-ruled island was rounded up.

In the latest wave of arrests, about 30 democracy activists, including Mrs Roque, were taken into custody after they attempted to protest outside the French embassy on July 14 to denounce the new policy towards Cuba. As many as 19 were still believed to be in custody last night.

Fourteen dissidents were released after a day or two in detention, including Mrs Roque, who is in fragile health after two periods of imprisonment.

Speaking from her Havana home, Mrs Roque said the aborted protest was organised after France broke the EU embargo and invited the Cuban foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque to a Bastille Day celebration at the French embassy, from which dissidents and democracy activists were excluded. The French invitation was intended to signal the normalisation of relations between Paris and Havana. Mrs Roque alleged that France had sold out its principles for the sake of business deals with Cuba.

"For a little money, they have made the Cuban people suffer," she said.

AUH2O II:

Goldwater nephew to run for governor (HOWARD FISCHER, 07/30/2005, Arizona Daily Sun)

Don Goldwater confirmed Friday he is seeking his party's nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Janet Napolitano. Goldwater has planned announcements Tuesday in Sun City, Phoenix and Tucson.

Goldwater, the nephew of former U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater, has been active in state party politics for years. He heads the GOP committee for his legislative district and has been a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

He is joining what could become a crowded field that already includes a former state Senate president, with the current Senate president, the U.S. surgeon general, a state representative and the wife of a former vice president candidate all potential contenders.

The 50-year-old resident of Laveen, an unincorporated community on the southwest edge of Phoenix, is little known outside the party.

That, however, may not be a problem, according to pollster Bruce Merrill.

"I wouldn't bet against Goldwater, just because of the name," said Merrill, who also is a professor of journalism and mass communications at Arizona State University. "The name is obviously golden in Arizona, particularly among the party people."

Nathan Sproul, a political consultant who works with Republicans, said the nature of statewide campaigns actually would give Goldwater an advantage.

That's because most of the candidates are likely to run with public funds. That stems from what happened in 2002 to Republican Matt Salmon, where his status as a privately financed candidate actually worked against him: Any funds he spent -- or spend by others on his behalf -- resulted in matching state dollars given to Napolitano.

I.C.T.:

Coming together: The men of learning against the men of violence (The Economist, Jul 28th 2005)

OVER the few days before the attack on London of July 7th, something historic was happening in the world of Muslim theology. After some careful deliberations in the air-conditioned comfort of a hotel in Jordan's capital, Amman, the world's leading Muslim scholars—over 170 of them from 35-odd countries—made a series of pronouncements designed to affirm their own authority, soften differences and deal a blow to advocates of terror.

The things these august gentlemen decided on may sound arcane to non-Muslims. But for the hosts, including Jordan's King Abdullah, the agreement was an encouraging first success in what will have to be a long ideological war against readings of Islam that lend support to violence.

In several ways, the muftis and professors agreed to minimise their own (previously sharp) differences and work together to promote what they regard as “good theology” over some superficial, violence-promoting interpretations of Islam that have circulated, electronically and in print, all over the world. Among the scholars' main conclusions is that nobody who accepts Islam's basic beliefs should be denied the label of Muslim. A statement of the obvious? Far from it, because a hallmark of virtually all the shrillest voices in Islam is that they reject the Muslim credentials of anybody who disagrees with them. As an example of a Muslim thinker who rejects anybody less extreme than himself as an apostate, many would cite Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who is one of the leaders of al-Qaeda.

Equally important, the scholars announced a sort of “mutual recognition” agreement between Islam's eight main schools of legal interpretation: four Sunni ones, the two main Shia traditions, the Ibadis of Oman and the small but prestigious Zahiri school. While these schools' leaders will never concur on everything, they recognised each other's authority in their respective communities—and resolved to deny authority to anybody who purports to be a scholar but lacks the training.

At least in theory, this implies a degree of mutual respect between rival versions of Islam that has not been seen since the Fatimid empire a millennium ago. More practically, the pronouncement should act as a restraining influence in Iraq, by denying Sunni Muslims any right to attack their Shia compatriots as heretics.

WHAT DEMOCRATS OPPOSED:

CAFTA Expected to Benefit U.S. Consumers (MARTIN CRUTSINGER, 7/30/05, AP)

U.S. shoppers should get a price break on shirts and pants made in Central America. American farmers and manufacturers are hoping to gain new sales in the region. U.S. sugar growers, however, are fretting about increased competition now that Congress has passed and sent to the president a trade deal that eliminates barriers between the United States and Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

YANKEE GO HOME...:

Yankee Lefty Might Pitch to the Right (Washington Whispers, 8/01/05, US News)

Lefty pitcher Al Leiter is the toast of New York, now that he's left the Florida Marlins to help the Yankees in the pennant stretch. The Yanks think the 39-year-old with a winning record will help solidify a muddling rotation. But insiders say that's not the only reason he headed north. Republican tipsters say he's mulling a political bid in his adopted state or back home in New Jersey. GOP-ers say he has helped at recent Republican events and is up on current issues. He has even been featured as GOP "dude of the week" on the New Jersey Republican Party Web page. "Oh, he's one of us," says a Republican tipster: "A conservative."

WHY NOT GIVE THE JOB TO ONE SOLDIER OPERATING A PREDATOR? (via Kevin Whited):

New post to help Castro 'demise' (BBC, 7/29/05)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced the creation of a new post to help "accelerate the demise" of the Castro regime in Cuba.

Caleb McCarry, a veteran Republican Party activist, was appointed as the Cuba transition co-ordinator.

JUST GET ACCOUNTS AND YOU WIN:

A Feasible Fix for Social Security (Nicole Gelinas, Summer 2005, City Journal)

Conservative reformers greeted President Bush’s late-April proposal for “progressive indexing” of Social Security benefits with dismay—and prominent conservative leaders haven’t said much about it since. They’re wasting an opportunity. Yes, Bush’s proposal was meant as a giveaway to liberals—a politically calculated trade to win their support for reining in Social Security’s unsustainable growth. And it’s a fair deal, provided that conservatives get what they’ve always wanted from reform: personal accounts within Social Security, to entice millions of middle-income Americans to join the investor class. [...]

Though the president’s proposal is still vague, its basic elements are clear enough. Let’s start with the bad part before looking at what makes the overall scheme so attractive, and then consider how its underlying principles can best be realized.

Bush would pare back Social Security’s future payouts to middle and top earners, giving a huge relative boost to retirees whose lifetime earnings were low. Right now, the Social Security Administration determines a new retiree’s initial benefit according to a formula based on how quickly U.S. wages increased during that worker’s career. The president would like to preserve that formula for the bottom 30 percent or so of earners. But for higher earners, the initial benefit would be based on how quickly prices, rather than wages, increased during a worker’s career—in other words, at the rate of inflation. Since wages usually rise more quickly than prices, future benefits for lower-income people would grow much faster over time than would benefits for middle- and higher-income people.

This doesn’t sound like enlightened reform, and understandably it has annoyed some conservatives. Columnist George Will objected on ABC’s This Week in late April: “So what [Bush is] doing is making Social Security less and less relevant to a majority of the American people. You’re stigmatizing it . . . by . . . means-testing Social Security so it becomes a poverty program.” Republican senator George Allen of Virginia worried that the plan would “reduce the retirement security for . . . middle-income working people.” Cato Institute senior fellow Alan Reynolds warned, “Any Social Security ‘reform’ that [is] increasingly generous to those who paid the least in taxes would be increasingly perceived as grossly unfair and therefore politically untenable.”

But they’re forgetting the good news in Bush’s proposal: personal accounts, which will make Social Security more relevant to middle and upper earners, not less, since it will give them the ability to save for a middle-class retirement within Social Security, not despite it. Reform without personal accounts, or with tiny personal accounts for top earners, isn’t real reform.

With the establishment of personal accounts, progressive indexing won’t mean a benefit cut for middle and upper earners. In its entirety, Bush’s proposal would simply shift massive future liabilities from the government to the free market.

Here’s how it would work. Social Security benefits currently rise faster than inflation, because, as noted, growth in future benefits keeps pace with average wage increases, and wages historically rise faster than prices. The Social Security Administration’s actuary estimates that wages will keep rising slightly over 1 percent faster than prices each year for the next 50 years or so.

Wages rise faster than prices because productivity growth and technological advances, not just inflation, push them higher over time. American workers produce more each year with less capital and less time, so their wages rise while prices stay down. Retirees now see the results of that wage growth in their Social Security checks—but the burden is entirely borne by younger taxpayers who must fund that growth in future benefits, and that burden is becoming unsustainable.

Personal accounts within Social Security would let current workers continue to benefit from those same economic advances. After all, the same worker productivity that allows wages to rise also shows up in robust corporate profits, which in turn fuel strong stock- and bond-market returns. Future retirees would reap those returns through their personal accounts, where some of their tax dollars would go to building up nest eggs for retirement.

Just compare the returns on Social Security of three hypothetical young earners under the way things are supposed to work now—though remember, the current system is unsustainable—and then under City Journal’s fleshed-out version of Bush’s still-sketchy proposal.

HARRY "BLISTERFACE" REID:

Senate Approves Bill Protecting Gun Businesses (CARL HULSE, 7/30/05, NY Times)

"This is about politics, the power of the N.R.A. to dictate legislation," said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, who led the opposition. [...]

The gun measure was just one of the significant pieces of legislation to advance as Congress cleared its plate for a fall that will initially be consumed, in the Senate at least, by consideration of a Supreme Court nominee. Before leaving, Senate Republicans and Democrats also agreed on the schedule for confirmation hearings.

Ending a long policy struggle, the Senate passed and sent to Mr. Bush a broad piece of energy legislation, fulfilling an early domestic policy goal of his administration.

After extinguishing one last policy flare-up, the House and Senate also gave final approval to a $286.4 billion highway measure stuffed with special projects for virtually every Congressional district in the nation. Congress also finished its first two spending bills of the year, delivering $1.5 billion in emergency money to cover a shortfall in spending on veterans' health care.

And in an unexpected development, the Senate renewed its version of the antiterror USA Patriot Act.

It was a blistering pace ...

MORE:
Senate Makes Permanent Nearly All Provisions of Patriot Act, With a Few Restrictions (ERIC LICHTBLAU, 7/30/05, NY Times)

The Senate voted unanimously on Friday to make permanent virtually all the main provisions of the law known as the USA Patriot Act, after Republican leaders agreed to include additional civil rights safeguards and to forestall any expansion of the government's counterterrorism powers.

The House passed a bill of its own last week that would also extend the law's surveillance and law enforcement powers, which the Bush administration considers critical to combating terrorism. While the House and Senate bills are not identical, the differences are modest enough that Congressional officials said they were confident that they could work out a compromise.

GOLDILOCKS SMILES:

U.S. Economic Expansion Displays Steady Strength: The April-to-June period is the ninth straight quarter of growth above 3%. Depleted inventories could spur higher GDP. (Bill Sing, July 30, 2005, LA Times)

[I]t was the ninth straight quarter the economy exceeded its long-term growth rate of about 3%. And although the nation can't match China's gazelle-like 9.5% clip, it is outperforming most other industrialized nations and topping average growth during the booming 1990s.

And analysts said the economy was actually stronger than it appeared, as a sharp drawdown of inventories during the quarter depressed the headline growth number. [...]

Fearing a slowdown earlier in the quarter, businesses curbed production.

But consumers kept buying, whittling store shelves. Inventories of autos, for example, were pared through aggressive sales promotions by General Motors Corp. and others.

The overall inventory reduction cut about 2.4 percentage points from second-quarter growth.

"The replenishment of diminished inventories soon will quicken economic activity," John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's Investors Service, said in a report Friday.

He added that inventory depletion of the size seen in the second quarter normally occurred during recessions — efforts to replenish such inventories "helps to power the economy out of a recession."

Some analysts are forecasting that growth in the current July-to-September period could hit or top 4%.

A separate report Friday suggested that inflation remained tame.

WHILE HE'S ON A ROLL:

Bush Plans to Bypass Senate, Appoint Bolton: By elevating his pick for U.N. ambassador during a recess, the president would skirt Democratic opposition. The move could last through 2006. (Warren Vieth and Sonni Efron, July 30, 2005, LA Times)

President Bush will sidestep Democratic opposition to his nomination of John R. Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by making a recess appointment not subject to Senate confirmation, a senior administration official said Friday.

The appointment, which is likely to further roil relations with congressional Democrats, will be announced before the president leaves Washington on Tuesday for a five-week working vacation at his Texas ranch, said the official, who requested anonymity because Bush had not yet publicly disclosed his intentions.

MAN-DATES OF HEAVEN:

Bright lights beckon China's young (Jim Yardley, JULY 30, 2005, The New York Times)

Dai Yichen is in the third row, far right side, her feet kicking and scraping against the wood floor with other students in her tap dance class. The rehearsal hall fills with a noise as pounding and repetitive as a hailstorm.

Yichen is lanky and a little awkward. She sidesteps and thrusts her shoulder in a suggestive move that no one in the class gets quite right.

But she keeps trying. As the teacher calls forward different lines of dancers, Yichen stands off to the side, practicing her footwork. She watches herself, unsmiling, in a floor-to-ceiling mirror that betrays every stumble.

Her dream is to perform one day on a Chinese equivalent of Broadway, though one does not yet exist. Yichen, 17, is one of 30 students at a private fine arts school on the outskirts of Beijing who are far removed from the days when Mao demanded that culture serve the Communist Party: They are studying how to perform in American-style musicals, an academic major about as improbable as one in which American teenagers would dedicate themselves to the Peking Opera.

It is an example of the changes engulfing China that a teenager like Yichen has been far more influenced by the musical "Cats" than by the Communist Youth League.

SMASHING GOOD NEWS:

Armed police smash terrorist bomb cell (MICHAEL HOWIE, KAREN MCVEIGH, SHAN ROSS AND KEVIN SCHOFIELD, 7/30/05, The Scotsman)

POLICE yesterday smashed the suspected terror cell behind last week's attempted suicide attacks on London in a series of dramatic armed raids.

Two of the suspects were arrested at gunpoint after armed police stormed a flat in west London.

Within hours, a man believed to be another of the bombers was arrested in Rome after having apparently travelled to see his brother.

Police last night named the two men arrested in the flat as Muktar Said-Ibrahim, who allegedly tried to blow himself up on a number 26 bus in Hackney, east London, and Ramzi Mohammed. A third man also arrested in London was suspected of being the possible fifth failed bomber. The suspect arrested in Rome was named as Osman Hussain, who is suspected of planning an attack at Shepherd's Bush Tube station.

END THE OCCUPATION NOW:

US announces German base closures (BBC, 7/30/05)

US troops will pull out of 11 bases in southern Germany in 2007 as part of a shake-up of US forces around the world.

The bases, mainly in Bavaria, are home to the 1st Infantry Division which will return to the US in 2006, the defence department said in a statement.

It will be replaced by smaller forces able to react rapidly to new threats.

Up to 70,000 US troops currently in Europe and Asia are to be redeployed in accordance with plans announced by President George W Bush last year.

The US has almost 100,000 soldiers stationed in Western Europe and about 80,000 in the Far East.

AL QAEDA GAVE THEM A HAMMER:

Terror attacks spur soul-searching by Egyptians (Nadia Abou el-Magd, July 30, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Stunned by terror attacks in a Red Sea resort, Egyptians are in a remarkably frank debate about whether mainstream mosques and schools -- and the government itself -- should be blamed for promoting Islamic extremism.

Even some in the pro-government press say authorities have created a climate in which young people are turning into radicals and suicide bombers. [...]

In a country more used to hearing general condemnations of terrorism, critics on Wednesday were angry -- and specific -- hammering at instances when they say the government let state press and mosque preachers, including many appointed by the government, promote intolerance.

The debate since Sharm el Sheik has been a deepening of the soul-searching that has gone on across the Arab world in recent years over whether religious interpretations need reform in the face of terror attacks by Muslim radicals.

The debate began, hesitantly, after the September 11 attacks on the United States. And the voices have grown with each act of terrorism -- particularly ones in the Middle East.

MORE:
Opposition to challenge Mubarak (BBC, 7/30/05)

One of Egypt's leading opposition politicians, Ayman Nour, has applied to stand against President Hosni Mubarak in elections due in September.

It will be the first time the presidential poll has been open to more than one candidate.

METRICS SYSTEM:

Task force to set pace of pullout (Rowan Scarborough, July 30, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Pentagon plans to set up a task force of senior U.S. and Iraqi officials that will set conditions for withdrawing substantial numbers of American troops from Iraq next year, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Up to this point, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he would make such an important decision based on recommendations from his two main commanders in the region, Gen. John Abizaid of U.S. Central Command and Gen. George Casey Jr., who runs operations in Iraq. He will also consult with Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now, however, the U.S.-Iraq alliance plans to seek the advice of Americans and Iraqis in Baghdad because officials realize the decision will be based on so many complex facts -- a system of analysis Mr. Rumsfeld calls "metrics" -- that a task force is needed.

The panel will set conditions that must be met before a sizable withdrawal and will give Iraqi officials a bigger say in the ultimate decision.

STEELE CAGE DEATH MATCH:

ROVE IN MARYLAND (Robert Novak, July 30, 2005, Townhall)

Bush political adviser Karl Rove told a closed-door fund-raiser for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in Washington Tuesday that Steele's campaign for the Senate is a top White House priority for 2006.

Steele is running for a Senate seat left empty by retirement of Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes. The capital lobbyists who attended the event were urged to exert more effort for Steele than they usually do on an empty-seat contest. Steele, an African-American, fits in with Bush's emphasis on raising the Republican share of the black vote.

NEVER SHOULD HAVE GRADUATED:

Laughing at the Left (Harry Stein, Summer 2005, City Journal)

Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, remembers feeling stunned when the fan letter showed up in February 1998. After all, his strip— featuring a right-leaning TV newsman or, more accurately, newsduck—was still in its relative infancy. Yet here was George Herbert Walker Bush declaring that he and Barbara turned to Mallard, “sage duck that he is,” first thing every morning. Even more gratifying, the former president thanked Tinsley for taking on “that horrible Doonesbury” and its creator, liberal icon Garry Trudeau, “a guy that tore me up in a vicious, personal way strip after strip.”

By all accounts, Bush 41 is a pretty mild-mannered guy, but in this case it’s easy to understand his feelings, since Trudeau really did regularly savage him politically and personally—perhaps most famously in portraying him as having “placed his manhood in a blind trust.” Not that such nastiness was anything but par for the course for Doonesbury. For all the complexity of its characters and its sometimes engaging story lines, the strip has been relentless over the decades in its unbridled hostility to those on the other side of the ideological fence.

The Mallard strips that prompted Bush’s letter had been a response to a series of Doonesbury strips that disdainfully characterized conservative talk radio as “hate radio.”

“Mallard Presents: Learning the Liberal Lexicon!” reads the opening panel of one of the strips. “ ‘Hate Radio,’ a common liberal word made from 2 ordinary words.” In the second panel, a bespectacled professor type explains: “ ‘Radio’—the thing we use to listen to N.P.R. in our Volvos.” “ ‘Hate,’ ” adds a dowdy aging hippie in panel three—“the word we use to describe any opinion that DISAGREES with OURS!”

“That was really terrific,” says Tinsley today of the ex-president’s appreciative letter, noting that from the start he intended Mallard to be, among other things, an antidote to Doonesbury. “It was for all those people, and I guess that included even him, who never get a fair shake from the liberal media and cultural establishment.”

IF MAN IS STILL ALIVE:

With Gammons, Hall makes the write call (Dan Shaughnessy, July 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

Our own Peter Gammons gets the J.G. Taylor Spink Award at the Hall of Fame tomorrow. On the day that Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg are inducted, Gammons takes his rightful place in Cooperstown.

It's about time. Gammons has done more to influence the way major league baseball is covered than any columnist or beat guy of the last half-century. He is, and forever will be, the de facto commissioner of baseball. He is to our craft what Ted Williams was to his: When Gammons walks through a press box, any scribe who knows history should point and say, ''There goes the greatest baseball writer who ever lived."

And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.

When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk's convulsive leap to John Kiley's booming of the "Hallelujah Chorus'' to the wearing off of numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.

At 12:34 a.m., in the 12th inning, Fisk's histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.

For this game to end so swiftly, so definitely, was the way it had to end. An inning before, a Dwight Evans catch that Sparky Anderson claimed was as great as he's ever seen had been one turn, but in the ninth a George Foster throw ruined a bases-loaded, none-out certain victory for the Red Sox. Which followed a dramatic three-run homer in the eighth by Bernie Carbo as the obituaries had been prepared, which followed the downfall of Luis Tiant after El Tiante had begun, with the help of Fred Lynn's three-run, first-inning homer, as a hero of unmatched majesty.

So Fisk had put the exclamation mark at the end of what he called "the most emotional game I've ever played in.'' The home run came off Pat Darcy and made a winner of Rick Wise, who had become the record 12th pitcher in this 241-minute war that seemed like four score and seven years.

But the place one must begin is the bottom of the eighth, Cincinnati leading, 6-3, and the end so clear.

THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO PURGE EXCESS YOUNG MEN:

China's One-Child Policy Tips Scales: 25 Million Men Could Remain Single (Zenit.org, 7/29/05)

China might soon become the most populous country of bachelors, reported a missionary of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions.

Father Giancarlo Politi, speaking on Vatican Radio, said that the one-child policy, instituted to "maintain control over the population, so that it wouldn't grow enormously," favors the birth of boys among Chinese families.

"There is still a need to seek by all means to have at least a male child," said the priest.

As a result of the policy, instituted in 1979, an estimated 25 million young men in China might remain single for life.

MS CAPITO GETS A PASS:

GOP puts up first Senate campaign ad (WILL LESTER, 7/28/05, Associated Press)

The ad shows a picture of Byrd as a brown-haired young man with a bow tie and a fiddle under his chin that alternates with a picture of the white-haired senator, who is now 87. Byrd entered the Senate in 1958 and is in his eighth term.

"Byrd voted for soldiers in the 50s, but he voted against body armor in the war on terror. Back then, he stood with working families ... today he votes for higher taxes for the middle class." The first claim refers to a 2003 bill providing money for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the second refers to Byrd's votes against President Bush's proposed tax cuts. [...]

Byrd hasn't formally announced he will run for re-election, though aides say they expect him to run. The GOP field is uncertain, though Republican activists hope Rep. Shelly Moore Capito challenges Byrd.

SON VOLT ALSO RISES:

Melody Riot: As Son Volt returns with its first album in seven years, its frontman discusses his ambivalence about being known as an 'alt-country' pioneer and his split with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. (Jac Chebatoris, 7/29/05, Newsweek)

At age 38, Jay Farrar may seem too young to be a grandfather, but musically speaking that’s just what he is. Farrar, along with former Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jeff Tweedy, is credited with starting the alt-country movement in the early 1990s. The two high-school friends expanded on the roots and folk music they had listened to growing up in Illinois, by adding the melodic elements of country with the intensity of punk.

Uncle Tupelo split up in 1994 after Farrar and Tweedy had a well-publicized falling out. Tweedy went on to form the critically ballyhooed Wilco with other Uncle Tupelo members. Farrar fronted Son Volt for three albums until his solo ambitions put the band on hiatus. After seven years, during which Farrar recorded three of his own albums, Son Volt is back with “Okemah and the Melody of Riot”--which pairs Farrar's warm voice with jangly guitars and up-tempo melodies not heard in their previous efforts. From his studio in St. Louis, Farrar called NEWSWEEK’s Jac Chebatoris to discuss where he’s been all this time, and what it means to be a “pioneer.” Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You married your high-school sweetheart and you have two kids. Did that play a part in your sort of taking a break from it all?

Jay Farrar: It did. I really did want to spend more time with them and watch them grow. I knew that I wasn’t going to have a chance to do that again--at least I didn’t foresee that--so I wanted to scale back a little bit. [...]

When you first came out with Uncle Tupelo and then Son Volt you were quickly ordained the pioneer of the whole “alt-country” movement. You were very resistant to the idea of that.

At the time it just seemed a little weird because we’d been doing Uncle Tupelo for about seven years, and up to that point, there were just some loose terms thrown around like “roots-oriented rock” or something like that, and then all of sudden it was called “alternative country” and there was a magazine [called No Depression, which took its name from the band’s debut album, although Uncle Tupelo wasn’t involved with it]. It was just a little strange to get acclimated to it at first.

But it had to be exciting, no?

[Laughs.] It was more confusing than exciting because a lot of people were confused about the fact that there was a magazine with the same name as an Uncle Tupelo record. So you know, it was just one of those things. I’m sure there were a lot of well-intentioned people who came up with the whole idea, and it’s gratifying to think that someone believes we started the movement, but that’s not the way I really looked at it. I mean, there were so many bands that were doing similar things in the ‘80s--bands like the True Believers, Rank and File, Jason and the Scorchers.

SHE HAS NO MCCAIN:

Planting Her Flag: Hillary Clinton is carefully positioning herself as a hawkish centrist. How proving that she is tougher than the boys could work for her in 2008. (Eleanor Clift, 7/29/05, Newsweek)

Ultimately an antiwar candidate will also emerge on the Democratic side, and it could be Al Gore. He hasn’t done anything to advance his candidacy, but he has universal name recognition and is a favorite of Internet activists through MoveOn.org. The Bush administration may be venal, but they’re not stupid, and they’re beginning to lay the groundwork—at least rhetorically—for a pullout from Iraq beginning next year. Gore has the luxury of waiting and seeing whether there will still be a war left for him to oppose by ’08.

Five years ago, when Clinton first ran for the U.S. Senate in New York, she had to overcome resistance among women who thought she was too hard and calculating. She was trying then to soften her image, but now the premium is on toughness. And Clinton has one advantage over other Democrats, she has been under fire from the other side for 15 years; she understands how they operate, and she’s got the war-room mentality to fight back. It’s not personal for her anymore. She’s not going to feel bad if they call her names, or portray her as something she’s not. She’s going to respond.

Just as Karl Rove eviscerated Gore’s ethics and John Kerry’s patriotism, the line of attack against Clinton will be to question her strength of character and portray her as a calculating, ambitious woman who will do anything for power, including staying with a husband who humiliated her. It’s a game she’s played before, and she’s getting pretty good at winning.

INSULT TO INJURY:

Dunce of the Week: Nancy Pelosi: CAFTA Contra (Rich Karlgaard, 07.29.05, Forbes)

This week our dunce's cap gets passed to Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader, U.S. House of Representatives. In coming out against the Central America Free Trade Agreement, which passed the House this week, Pelosi made the familiar (and disingenuous) left-wing case: CAFTA, written by greedy capitalists, fails to include protections for labor and the environment. Otherwise she'd have voted for it.

Yeah, right. Over John Sweeney's dead body you would.

NOT VICTOR/VICTORIA?:

Julia Roberts to make Broadway debut (AP, 7/29/05)

Julia Roberts, movie star, is heading to Broadway next spring.

The 37-year-old actress will make her Broadway debut in a revival of Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain."

HEY-HO, WHADDA YA KNOW, SUPPORT FOR ROE HAS GOTTA GO:

HILL ON ROBERTS: 'WADE' AND SEE (Ian Bishop, July 29, 2005, NY Post)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to be hedging on her 2000 campaign vow to make support for legalized abortion a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees.

Asked yesterday if court pick John Roberts' position on Roe vs. Wade would make or break her vote, Clinton said, "I'm going to wait to hear his answers to the Judiciary Committee . . . I want to see the facts, the evidence. I want to see more documents."

QUOTA KING:

Democrats Request Files Involving Court Pick (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 7/29/05, NY Times)

Departing from the measured tones Democratic leaders have used in speaking about Judge Roberts, Mr. Kennedy laid the groundwork for a new line of questioning focused on Mr. Roberts's role in the civil rights debates of the 1980's

WELL, THE GRAY LADY WAS SURPRISED ANYWAY:

Despite Problems, Bush Continues to Make Advances on His Agenda (RICHARD W. STEVENSON, 7/29/05, NY Times)

His problems remain many, and include the relentless violence in Iraq, the leak investigation that has ensnared some of his top aides and poll numbers that suggest substantial dissatisfaction with both his foreign and domestic policies. But President Bush has still had a pretty good July, showing how his own doggedness and a Republican majority in Congress have consistently allowed him to push his agenda forward even when the political winds are in his face.

ONLY THE FED CAN STOP A BOOM:

Economy grows despite high energy costs (JEANNINE AVERSA, 7/29/05, Associated Press)

The economy clocked in at a chipper 3.4 percent annual growth rate in the second quarter, fresh evidence the country's business climate is healthy despite surging energy costs.

The solid increase in the gross domestic product for the April-to-June quarter, reported by the Commerce Department on Friday, came on the heels of a larger 3.8 percent growth rate in the opening quarter of this year.

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the broadest barometer of the country's economic standing.

Despite the toll of elevated energy prices, consumers and businesses still managed to boost spending and investment modestly, helping to underpin overall economic growth in the second quarter.

"There has been a lot of hand wringing going on about high energy prices, consumer debt, fears of terrorism, fears of China, the housing bubble - the list is long and yet these numbers show there is a stealth boom going on in the business world," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

STATE OF THE NATION:

Shameless and loveless: The condition in which we now find ourselves is novel in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting is the enormous effort that is now devoted to overcoming or abolishing shame. (ROGER SCRUTON, 4/16/05, The Spectator)

Sexual intercourse began, according to Philip Larkin's famous poem, in 1963. Four decades have elapsed since then, and these decades have seen a growing recognition that sexual liberation is not the answer to the problems of sex but a new addition to them. Traditional sexual morality reinforced the society-wide commitment to marriage as the sole legitimate avenue to sexual release. It is easy to understand such a morality. It has a clear social function — ensuring stable families and guaranteeing the transfer of social capital from one generation to the next. And it has an intrinsic rational appeal in making sense of love, commitment, jealousy, courtship and the drama of the sexes. The problem is that, by impeding our pleasures, it creates a strong motive to escape from it. And escape from it we did, with a great burst of jubilation that very quickly dwindled to an apprehensive gulp.

The condition in which we now find ourselves is novel in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting is the enormous effort that is now devoted to overcoming or abolishing shame. The Book of Genesis tells the story of man's fall, caused by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until eating the forbidden fruit, the Bible tells us, 'they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed'. No sooner had they eaten, however, than 'the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons'.

When you do something wrong and are discovered you feel ashamed of yourself. This kind of shame is a moral emotion, founded on the thought that someone else is judging you. But it is not what is referred to in the verses quoted, which are about sexual shame. Sexual shame differs from moral shame in two ways. First, it is not a confession of wrongdoing: on the contrary, it testifies to the reluctance to do or suffer wrong. Secondly, it is not troubled, as moral shame is troubled, by the thought that you are being judged as a self, a free being, a moral subject. On the contrary, it arises from the thought that you are being judged as a body, a mechanism, an object. Hence the German philosopher Max Scheler described sexual shame as a Schutzgefühl — a shield-emotion that protects you from abuse, whether by another or yourself. If we lose the capacity for shame we do not regain the innocence of the animals; we become shameless, and that means that we are no longer protected from the sexual predator.

Shame still existed in 1963. Couples hid their desire from the world, and sometimes from each other — at least until the moment when it could be clearly expressed. Obscenity was frowned upon, and by nobody more than the prophets of liberation, such as Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown. Sex, for them, was something beautiful, sacred even, which must not be sullied by dirty language, lavatorial humour or exhibitionist displays. Shame has since been banished from the culture. This we witness in Reality TV — which ought to be called Fantasy TV since that is its function. All fig leaves, whether of language, thought or behaviour, have now been removed, and the feral children are right there before our eyes, playing their dirty games on the screen. It is not a pretty sight, but nor is it meant to be.

This shamelessness is encouraged by sex education in our schools, which tries both to discount the differences between us and the other animals, and to remove every hint of the forbidden, the dangerous or the sacred. Shame, according to the standard literature now endorsed by the DES, is a lingering disability. Sexual initiation means learning to overcome such 'negative' emotions, to put aside our hesitations, and to enjoy 'good sex'. Questions as to 'who', 'whom' or 'which gender' are matters of personal choice — sex education is not there to make the choice, merely to facilitate it. In this way we encourage children to a premature and depersonalised interest in their own sexuality, and at the same time we become hysterical at the thought of all those paedophiles out there, who are really the paedophiles in here. I see in this the clear proof that shame is not a luxury, still less an inhibition to be discarded, but an integral part of the human condition. It is the emotion without which true sexual desire cannot develop, and if there is such a thing as genuine sex education, it consists in teaching children not to discard shame but to acquire it.

Equally novel is the loss of the concept of normal sexual desire. In 1963 we still saw homosexuality as a perversion, even if an enviably glamorous one. We still believed that sexual desire had a normal course, in which man and woman come together by mutual consent and to their mutual pleasure. We regarded sex with children as abhorrent and sex with animals as unthinkable, except for literary purposes. Thanks in part to massive propaganda from the gay lobby, in part to the mendacious pseudo-science put out by the Kinsey Institute (whose charlatan founder has now been admitted to the ranks of saints and heroes), we have abandoned the concept of perversion, and accepted the official view of 'sexual orientation' as a natural and inescapable fact.

Indeed, things have gone further. Around 1963 the philosopher Michael Polanyi presented his theory of 'moral inversion', according to which disapproval once directed at an activity may become directed instead at the people who still disapprove of it. By moral inversion we protect ourselves from our previous beliefs and from the guilt of discarding them. Moral inversion has infected the debate about sexual inversion to the point of silencing it. To suggest that it would be better if children were not exposed to homosexuality or encouraged to think of it as normal, that the gay scene is not the innocent thing that it claims to be but a form of sexual predation — to make those suggestions now, however hesitantly, is to lay yourself open to the charge of 'homophobia'. And this will spell the end of your career in any place, such as a university, which has freedom of opinion as its guiding purpose. In this area, as in so many others, the ruling principle of liberalism applies; namely, all opinions are permitted, so long as they are liberal.

Novel too is the way in which sex and the sexual act are now described. In 1963 it was possible — just — to believe that the language of Lady Chatterley's Lover safeguarded the moral core of sexual emotion, and showed it to be the beautiful and personal thing that it is. Sex, for Lawrence and his liberated followers, was still something holy, which could therefore be defiled. Forty years on we have acquired a habit of describing sex in demeaning and depersonalised terms. Having lost all sense of the human being as 'made in God's image', we take revenge on the body by describing it in what the Lawrentians would regard as sacrilegious language.

A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham’s law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.

In no country has the process of vulgarization gone further than in Britain: in this, at least, we lead the world. A nation famed not so long ago for the restraint of its manners is now notorious for the coarseness of its appetites and its unbridled and antisocial attempts to satisfy them. The mass drunkenness seen on weekends in the center of every British town and city, rendering them unendurable to even minimally civilized people, goes hand in hand with the appallingly crude, violent, and shallow relations between the sexes. Britain’s mass bastardy is not a sign of an increase in the authenticity of our human relations but a natural consequence of the unbridled hedonism that leads in short order to chaos and misery, especially among the poor. Take restraint away, and violent discord follows.

Curiously enough, the revolution in British manners did not come about through any volcanic eruption from below: on the contrary, it was the intellectual wing of the elite that kicked against the traces. It is still doing so, though there are very few traces left to kick against.

For example, the boundless prurience of the British press concerning the private lives of public figures, especially politicians, has an ideological aim: to subvert the very concept and deny the possibility of virtue, and therefore of the necessity for restraint. If every person who tries to defend virtue is revealed to have feet of clay (as which of us does not?) or to have indulged at some time in his life in the vice that is the opposite of the virtue he calls for, then virtue itself is exposed as nothing but hypocrisy: and we may therefore all behave exactly as we choose. The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

It is in the arts and literary pages of our newspapers that the elite’s continuing demand for the erosion of restraint, and its unreflective antinomianism, is most clearly on view. Take for example the June 8 arts section of the Observer, Britain’s most prestigious liberal Sunday paper. The section’s two most important and eye-catching articles celebrated pop singer Marilyn Manson and writer Glen Duncan.

Of the pop singer, the Observer’s critic wrote: “Marilyn Manson’s ability to shock has swung like a pendulum in a high wind. . . . He was really scary at first, when [he] burst out of [his] native Florida and declared war on all Middle America holds dear. Manson spun convincing tales of smoking exhumed bones for kicks. . . . But . . . Manson’s autobiography revealed a smart, funny man—even if he did enjoy covering hearing-impaired groupies in raw meat for sexual sport. He turned into an artist, rather than the incarnation of evil. Church groups still picketed his gigs, which often echoed Nazi rallies (they still do). But any fool could see that Manson was making a valid point about rock ‘n’ roll gigs and mass behavior, as well as flirting with fascist style.”

The author of this review—who fastidiously balks at using the word “deaf” for the hearing-impaired but appears not to mind too much if they are exploited for perverted sexual gratification—takes pains to let the reader know that she is not so unsophisticated, naive, and, well, Middle American, as to find the whole spectacle disgusting: for example, by objecting to the adoption of the name of a sadistic multiple killer for trivial publicity purposes. To have responded in such a way would have been to lose caste, to side with the gawky, earnest Christians, rather than with the secular devil worshipers—though the determination to be shocked by nothing, to object to nothing, is itself, of course, a convention. It seems beyond the critic’s range of imagination or sympathy that people who actually fought against fascism and risked their lives and lost their compatriots in doing so, or who suffered under fascism’s yoke, might find the concept of flirtation with fascist style not only offensive but a cause of real despair in the last years of their lives. Fascism is not fashion.

The “any fool” of the last sentence is a subtle form of intellectual snobbery and flattery, intended to suck the reader into the charmed circle of the sophisticated, disabused intellectual elite, the knowing and the cognoscenti who have moved beyond moral judgment and principles, who are not deceived by mere appearances, do not condemn according to outmoded ways of thought, and are therefore unmoved by such trifling (and oppressive) considerations as public decency. It does not occur to the writer—nor would it matter to her if it did—that in the audience in which fascism was flirted with there might not have been any fools but many fools, those who failed to see the ironically playful “valid” point behind the flirtation and would embrace fascism without irony. [...]

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation’s culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day.

In 1914, for example, Bernard Shaw caused a sensation by giving Eliza Doolittle the words “Not bloody likely!” to utter on the London stage. Of course, the sensation that this now-innocuous, even innocent exclamation created depended wholly for its effect upon the convention that it flouted: but those who were outraged by it (and who have generally been regarded as ridiculous in subsequent accounts of the incident) instinctively understood that sensation doesn’t strike in the same place twice, and that anyone wanting to create an equivalent in the future would have to go far beyond “Not bloody likely.” A logic and a convention of convention-breaking was established, so that within a few decades it was difficult to produce any sensation at all except by the most extreme means.

If there was a single event in our recent cultural history that established literal-minded crudity as the ideal of artistic endeavor, however, it was the celebrated 1960 trial of Penguin Books for the publication of an obscene book, the unexpurgated version of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The trial posed the question of whether cultural tact and restraint would crumble in the absence of legal sanctions. For, as the much derided prosecutor in the case, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, understood only too well, and specifically advised the government of the day, if the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover went legally unchallenged, or if the case were lost, it would in effect be the end of the law of obscenity. To adapt slightly Dostoyevsky’s famous dictum about the moral consequences of the nonexistence of God, if Lady Chatterley’s Lover were published, everything could be published.

rutality is now a mass phenomenon rather than a sign of individual psychopathology. Recently, I went to a soccer game in my city on behalf of a newspaper; the fans of the opposing teams had to be separated by hundreds of policemen, disposed in military fashion. The police allowed no contact whatever between the opposing factions, shepherding or corraling the visiting fans into their own area of the stadium with more security precautions than the most dangerous of criminals ever faces.

In the stadium, I sat next to a man, who appeared perfectly normal and decent, and his 11-year-old son, who seemed a well-behaved little boy. Suddenly, in the middle of the match, the father leaped up and, in unison with thousands of others, began to chant: "Who the f—k do you think you are? Who the f—k do you think you are?" while making, also in common with thousands of others, a threatening gesture in the direction of the opposing supporters that looked uncommonly like a fascist salute. Was this the example he wanted to set for his son? Apparently so. The frustrations of poverty could hardly explain his conduct: the cost of the tickets to the game could have fed a family more than adequately for a week.

After the game was over, I saw more clearly than ever that the thin blue line is no metaphor. Had it not been for the presence of the police (whose failures I have never hesitated to criticize), there would have been real violence and bloodshed, perhaps even death. The difference between an event that passed off peacefully and one that would end in mayhem, destruction, injury, and death was the presence of a relative handful of resolute men prepared to do their duty.

Despite the evidence of rising barbarism all around us, no betrayal is too trivial for the Quislings of civilization to consider worthwhile. Recently, at the airport, I noticed an advertisement for a firm of elegant and costly shirt- and tie-makers, headquartered in London's most expensive area. The model they chose to advertise their products was a shaven-headed, tattooed monster, with scars on his scalp from bar brawls—the human type that beats women, carries a knife, and throws punches at soccer games. The advertisement is not ironical, as academic cultural critics would pretend, but an abject capitulation to and flattery of the utmost coarseness and brutality. Savagery is all the rage.

THE FAULT LINE RUNS (RAN?) THROUGH THE WEST (via Rick Perlstein)

Ratzinger Is Right (NPQ, Summer 2005)

René Girard, a prominent Roman Catholic conservative and author of the seminal book Violence and the Sacred, is an emeritus professor of anthropology at Stanford University. His more recent books include Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Recently NPQ editor Nathan Gardels spoke with Girard at his home near the campus.

NPQ: When Pope Benedict XVI recently denounced what he saw as the "dictatorship of relativism," especially in European culture, it caused great controversy. Is the Pope right that we live in such a dictatorship?

René Girard: Yes, he is right. This formula—the dictatorship of relativism—is excellent. It is going to establish a new discourse in the same way that John Paul II’s idea of recovering "a culture of life" from the "culture of death" has framed a whole set of issues, from abortion to stem cell research, capital punishment and war.

It makes sense that this formula comes from a man—(the former) Cardinal Ratzinger—whose specialty is dogma and theory.

This reign of relativism which is so striking today is due, in part, to the necessities of our time. Societies are so mixed, with such plurality of peoples. You have to keep a balance between various creeds. You must not take sides. Every belief is supposed to be accorded equal value. Inevitably, even if you are not a relativist, you must sound like one if not act like one.

As a result, we have more and more relativism. And we have more and more people who hate any kind of faith. This is especially the case in the university. And it hurts intellectual life. Because all truths are treated as equal, since there is said to be no objective Truth, you are forced to be banal and superficial. You cannot be truly committed to anything, to be "for" something—even if only for the time being.

Like Ratzinger, however, I believe in commitment. After all, we are both convinced by the idea that responsibility demands we must be committed to one position and follow it through. [...]

NPQ: Just as there is clash within Islam between tradition and modernity, doesn’t Pope Benedict’s crusade against relativism also announce a clash within the West? But the issue in the West is not about accommodating faith with reason. It is about resisting a culture of materialism and disbelief by insisting on values, as the Pope has put it, beyond "egoism and desire." Figuratively, the conflict is between the Pope and Madonna (the pop singer).

Girard: It is a culture war, yes. I agree. But it is not Ratzinger who has somehow changed and suddenly become reactionary and conservative. It is the secular culture that has drifted beyond the pale.

Remember, Ratzinger was a supporter of the Vatican II Council that reformed the Church in the 1960s. He opposed the idea that the Church should stand still in a modernizing world. For him, to be a Roman Catholic is to accept that the Church has something to learn from the world. At the same time, there is a Truth that doesn’t change the Gospel. Today, he is just reaffirming his position. He is just standing his ground.

Ratzinger is an intelligent conservative. He wants to avoid the fundamentalism of some Muslims and Christians—no change at all—but also avoid this idea that whatever is new is better than what is old. He wants to resist this dissolving of the Church in whichever direction the world goes. In this sense, I am pro-Ratzinger.

MORE:
Violence and the Sacred (Scott McLemee, 7/28/05, Inside Higher Ed)

Beginning in the late 1950s, Girard published a series of analyses of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Proust (among others) that foregrounded their preoccupation with desire, envy, and imitation. He found that there was a recurrent structure in their work: a scenario of what he called “triangular” or “mimetic” desire. Don Quixote offers a fairly simple example. The would-be knight feels no particular longing for Dulcinea. Rather, he has thrown himself into a passionate imitation of certain models of what a knight must do — and she’s as close to a damsel as circumstances allow.

Girard argued that, at some deep level, all of human desire is like that. We learn by imitation — and one of the things we learn is what, and how, to desire. (Hence, I didn’t so much want that book in the window for its own sake, but as a means to triumph in the struggle for the position my wife calls “Ma’s favorite son-in-law.")

For the most part, we are blind to the mediated nature of desire. But the great writers, according to Girard, are more lucid about this. They reveal the inner logic of desire, including its tendency to spread — and, in spreading, to generate conflict. When several hands reach for the same object, some of them are bound to end up making fists. So begins a cycle of terror and retaliation; for violence, too, is mimetic.

By the 1970s, Girard had turned all of this into a grand theory of human culture. He described a process in which the contagion-like spread of mimetic desire and violence leads to the threat of utter social disintegration. At which point, something important happens: the scapegoat emerges. All of the free-floating violence is discharged in an act of murder against an innocent person or group which is treated (amidst the delirium of impending collapse) as the source of the conflict.

A kind of order takes shape around this moment of sacrificial violence. Myths and rituals are part of the commemoration of the act by which mimetic desire and its terrible consequences were subdued. But they aren’t subdued forever. The potential for a return of this contagion is built into the very core of what makes us human.

OKAY, YOU WIN:

Hastert eyes immigration (Stephen Dinan, July 29, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said yesterday his chamber will work to produce an immigration bill this year, even as the White House signaled a new emphasis on immigration law enforcement as part of selling President Bush's proposal.

The Illinois Republican placed immigration near the top of the list of priorities when Congress returns from its August recess, just below the must-pass spending bills and just before Social Security. He said any immigration bill must mix enforcement, a program for new foreign workers an

SEE THE REFORMISTS ALONG THE NILE:

Mubarak taking an abrupt turn (Michael Slackman, JULY 29, 2005, The New York Times)

President Hosni Mubarak is moving slowly in his embrace of Western-style democracy, but the man who has been called a modern Pharaoh because of his unrivaled power and his 24 years in office has kicked off a re-election campaign that bears many of the hallmarks of a Western-style political campaign.

Setting up a campaign headquarters and having a candidate give a speech on the grounds of his high school is not surprising in industrialized democracies, but until Thursday it was unheard of in Mubarak's Egypt.

There he was, a man who three times before ran for re-election without ever having to face an opponent, announcing his bid for a fifth term from a stage inside his old high school. He gave a speech that sought to humanize himself, laying out his accomplishments, spelling out the challenges ahead and trying to use adversity - in this case recent terror attacks - as cause to stay the course and not change leaders.

"He is trying to tie himself to his country, to his people, to his own community," said Osama El-Ghazaly Harb, a political analyst based in Cairo. "Mubarak never made this before. This is something new and strange."

THAT DISH COLD ENOUGH, GERHARD:

Bush in talks with German opposition (Honor Mahony, 29.07.2005, EU Observer)

Wolfgang Schauble, the foreign policy expert in Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU), expected to win the general elections next month, held an unscheduled 45-minute meeting with the US leader. [...]

Repeating sentiment expressed by Mrs Merkel during a recent meeting with French government officials, Mr Schauble underlined the importance of the relationship between Berlin and Washington.

"German foreign policy has to find its way back to a traditional balance between good relations with the US and France", he said.

This was also a pointed reference to current chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who managed to infuriate the US when during an election campaign he referred to American plans to invade Iraq as an "adventure".

Mr Schroder then formed a very public triangle of opposition to the war with the leaders of France and Russia, further souring relations with Washington, which are still not back on a completely even keel.

According to Mr Schauble, the current German government went "flatly against its own interests".

WORKED LAST TIME; IT'LL WORK AGAIN:

Dien Bien Phooey (Spengler , 7/26/05, Asia Times)

"Iraqification" bears no resemblance to "Vietnamization". Hanoi commanded a regular army of more than half a million men, with a record of conventional military victories going back to the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1953-1954. It could count upon unlimited Russian materiel. After "Vietnamization", Northern regulars beat the army of the Republic of Vietnam in conventional war. The new Iraqi armed forces, haphazard as their organization might be, face no challenge from regulars, only the constant annoyance of suicide attacks. As noted, the Shi'ites have nowhere else to go. "Iraqification" may turn out to be a dog's breakfast, but no one will have to consume it on the Potomac.

Washington is embarrassed by this turn of events, but has no other choice than to adapt to it by removing American troops from the line of fire. Although President George W Bush and his advisors would prefer a stable and democratic Iraq, no degree of violence among Iraqis will undermine American interests. In an earlier era, the British would have encouraged such things. America lacks the sophistication, not to mention the cynicism, to stir the pot, but the pot appears to be stirring itself briskly enough without outside encouragement.

"HOT AIR" AMERICA

Robin Hood and Air America (Washington Times, 7/29/05)

Did Al Franken's liberal radio network Air America divert city money for the elderly and inner-city children to itself? That's the question people should be asking this week after the revelation that the New York Department of Investigation is looking into whether hundreds of thousands of dollars were illegally transferred from a Bronx community center to Air America. Only a community paper and a few Internet bloggers seem interested in what could be an egregious case of illegal funneling of tax dollars to a private, partisan organization.

In late June, city officials designated the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, a nonprofit organization that runs mentoring programs for children and day care for Alzheimer's patients, a "non-responsible city contractor." Investigators found "significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various City agencies." The city subsequently suspended the club's contracts, which run well into the millions.

It turns out, according to sources quoted anonymously by the Bronx News, that the mishandled money went to Air America. One source claims that $480,000 was wrongly transferred. The city investigation is concentrating on Charles Rosen, the club's president for 15 years, and Evan Cohen, the development director, who is a former chairman of Air America. Mr. Cohen resigned from Air America in May after the network's leasing plans in Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere fell through.

Pursuant to the concept that direct quotation is sometimes the very best method of embarrassing an opponent, read the following Air America summary of one day's programming back in January and then ask yourself whether these knuckleheads could ever be trusted to handle money responsibly:

Recent research indicates that not only does George W. Bush have blood ties to the Irish, but also to the ones who plundered that land of green back in the eleven hundreds. Historian, Ann Griffin Bernstorff joins hosts Rachel Maddow, Lizz Winstead and Chuck D to talk about this amazing discovery. [...] Plus, Alix Olson is the special guest for "The Party Machine." Alix has headlined HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, received Venus Magazine’s Activist of the Year Award and has been called a "fierce revolutionary" by Howard Zinn. Alix's latest CD is titled "Independence Meal." [...]

You won't see it on your TV. Bush certainly won't admit it. But today, Randi Rhodes will tell you the truth about the elections in Iraq. They're a sham! [...] And for comic relief, Randi talks about Dick Cheney's wardrobe choice at Auschwitz. It's Friday you bastards. Get ready to bounce your boobies!

JUST ANOTHER HOUSE CAT:

Namibia reserve finds way to protect cheetahs (Michael Wines, JULY 29, 2005, The New York Times)

Roused from his lair in the knee-high grass of the Namibian bush, Dewey the cheetah lifted his head toward his latest clutch of gaping humans, maybe nine meters away, and offered a contemptuous stare of the sort that only cats can deliver.

Dean Masika played at reading the animal's mind. "They found me again," he mocked. "How do they do that?"

Simple. Wielding an antenna that resembles an oversized branding iron, Masika leads eco-tourists to Dewey every few days as surely as if the big cat carried a homing beacon - which he does, of course, on a bulky plastic collar around his neck.

But tourism is in some ways an asterisk to these visits. Dewey is one of about 70 cheetahs living on a 4,000-hectare, or 10,000-acre, sanctuary managed by the AfriCat Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping Namibia's big carnivores survive.

HOW COULD THE BOMBERS HAVE SUCH CONTEMPT FOR LIFE?:

Patient Loses 'Right-To-Life' Case (Yahoo News, 7/28/05)

The General Medical Council has won its appeal against a ruling allowing a terminally ill man to stop doctors withdrawing his feeding tube.Lesley Burke did not want doctors to stop giving him food and water in the final stages of his illness.The ruling has wide implications for terminally ill people who want the right to die.

And it means that decisions over people's right to live or die are back in the hands of doctors, rather than the patients.

THE FOLKS WHO STILL THINK LENNY BRUCE IS CUTTING EDGE:

Un***ing the Donkey: Advice for weary, wandering Democrats (Rick Perlstein, July 28th, 2005, Village Voice)

[I]t may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.

Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.

As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are un****withable.

It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."

Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.

Every American must believe in the promise of America. And to reach this noble, necessary goal, there is a role for government. America doesn't need more big government, and we've learned that more money is not always the answer. If a program is failing to serve people, it makes little difference if we spend twice as much or half as much. The measure of true compassion is results.

Yet we cannot have an indifferent government either. We are a generous and caring people. We don't believe in a sink-or-swim society. The policies of our government must heed the universal call of all faiths to love a neighbor as we would want to be loved ourselves. We need a different approach than either big government or indifferent government. We need a government that is focused, effective and close to the people; a government that does a few things, and does them well.

Government cannot solve every problem, but it can encourage people and communities to help themselves and to help one another. Often the truest kind of compassion is to help citizens build lives of their own. I call my philosophy and approach "compassionate conservatism." It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on responsibility and on results. And with this hopeful approach, we can make a real difference in people's lives.

Compassionate conservatism places great hope and confidence in public education. Our economy depends on higher and higher skills, requiring every American to have the basic tools of learning. Every public school should be the path of upward mobility.

Yet, sadly enough, many are the dead-end of dreams. Public schools are some of the most important institutions of democracy. They take children of every background, from every part of the world, and prepare them for the obligations and opportunities of a free society. Public schools are Americans' great hope, and making them work for every child is America's great duty.

The new education reforms we have passed in Washington give the federal government a new role in public education. Schools must meet new and high standards of performance in reading and math that will be proven on tests and posted on the Internet for parents and everyone to see. And we're giving local schools and teachers unprecedented freedom and resources and training to meet these goals.

It is conservative to let local communities chart their own path to excellence. It is compassionate to insist that every child learns, so that no child is left behind. By insisting on results, and challenging failure where we find it, we'll make an incredible difference in the lives of every child in America.

Compassionate conservatism offers a new vision for fighting poverty in America. For decades, our nation has devoted enormous resources to helping the poor, with some great successes to show for it: basic medical care for those in need, a better life for elderly Americans. However, for millions of younger Americans, welfare became a static and destructive way of life.

In 1996, we began transforming welfare with time limits and job training and work requirements. And the nation's welfare rolls have been cut by more than half. But even more importantly, many lives have been dramatically improved.

One former welfare recipient here in California, happened to be a mother of a chronically-ill child and the victim of domestic violence, describes her experience upon leaving welfare. She said, "I feel like an adult again. I have my dignity back."

We need to continue to fully transform welfare in America. As Congress takes up welfare reform again in the coming weeks, we must strengthen the work requirements that prevent dependency and despair. Millions of Americans once on welfare are finding that a job is more than a source of income. It is a source of dignity. And by helping people find work, by helping them prepare for work, we practice compassion.

Welfare reform must also, wherever possible, encourage the commitments of family. Not every child has two devoted parents at home - I understand that. And not every marriage can, or should be saved. But the evidence shows that strong marriages are good for children.

When a couple on welfare wants to break bad patterns and start or strengthen a marriage, we should help local groups give them counseling that teaches commitment and respect. By encouraging family, we practice compassion.

In overcoming poverty and dependence, we must also promote the work of charities and community groups and faith-based institutions. These organizations, such as shelters for battered women or mentoring programs for fatherless children or drug treatment centers, inspire hope in a way that government never can. Often, they inspire life-changing faith in a way that government never should.

Our government should view the good Americans that work in faith-based charities as partners, not rivals. We must provide new incentives for charitable giving and, when it comes to providing federal resources to effective programs, we should not discriminate against private and religious groups.

I urge the Senate to pass the faith-based initiative for the good of America. It is compassionate to aggressively fight poverty in America. It is conservative to encourage work and community spirit and responsibility and the values that often come from faith. And with this approach, we can change lives one soul at a time, and make a real difference in the lives of our citizens.

NO SUNSHINE BLOWER, HE:

Activating Iraqi forces (Anthony H. Cordesman, Jul 28, 2005, UPI)

The United States and its allied coalition may have made serious mistakes in developing Iraqi forces in the past, but a recent trip to Iraq indicates that it is now beginning to have far more success.

If current plans are successfully implemented the total number of Iraqi military, regular police, and police units that can honestly be described as \"trained and equipped\" should rise from 96,000 in September 2004, and 172,000 today, to 230,000 forces by the end of December of 2005, and 270,000 by mid-2006.

The December total could be a bit lower due to the extension of the police basic course from eight to 10 weeks, one of several initiatives to raise the quality of the police and military forces.

There will be a good balance of military, regular police, and police units. Plans call for about 85,000 military in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense by December, and 145,000 special police and police in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

The 85,000 in the military will include about 83,000 in the army (including the \"national\" forces originally envisioned, along with the former National Guard; also including combat support, service support and training units). The remaining manpower will include the special operations forces and the air force and navy.

About 100,000 of the Interior Ministry personnel will be station/traffic/patrol police; in addition, nearly 20,000 more will be in the special police and the emergency response unit. The remainder covers the border forces, the highway patrol and dignitary protection. By June 2006, the total number in the Iraqi Security Forces (military, regular police and police units) will go to about 270,000. The Defense Ministry will have about 90,000, and the Interior Ministry will have about 180,000 -- provided that there is no change in the currently planned level of regular police.

Included in the numbers of individuals trained and equipped will be significant numbers of combat battalions. In July 2004, just after the Iraqi resumption of sovereignty, neither the Iraqi military nor the Iraqi police had any battalions that could be deployed nationally. Under current plans, the numbers of combat battalions in the Defense Ministry will total around 106 by December of this year.

On top of this, Iraq will have 35 brigade and 10 division headquarters providing command and control of Defense Ministry forces.

BLAME THE RIGHT (via Gene Brown):

When the Profile Fits the Crime (PAUL SPERRY, 7/28/05, NY Times)

IN response to the serial subway bombings in London, Mayor Michael Bloomberg prudently ordered the police to start searching the bags of New York's subway riders. But there will be absolutely no profiling, Mr. Bloomberg vowed: the police will select one out of every five passengers to search, and they will do so at random, without regard for race or religion.

In that case, the security move is doomed to fail.

Young Muslim men bombed the London tube, and young Muslim men attacked New York with planes in 2001. From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won't be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.

Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it's based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That's just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.

Besides, done properly, profiling would subject relatively few Muslims to searches.

KLANDESTINED:

Capito's CAFTA vote fuels political speculation (The Hill E-News, 7/28/05)

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito's (R-W.Va.) decision to resist GOP leaders' arm-twisting on Wednesday night's cliffhanger vote on the Central America Free Trade Agreement has fueled speculation that she will take on Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who is up for reelection next year. During the last intense 20 minutes of the vote, Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) were at Capito's side pressing her to vote in favor of the trade deal, but she would not budge. In the end, GOP leaders squeaked out a 217 to 215 victory when other Republicans, including Reps. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), who was the lynchpin vote on trade promotion authority a few years ago, and Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) consented to vote yes. A number of yes votes quickly followed.

EV DIRKSEN LAUGHS (David Hill, The Bronx):

Pelosi questions US Republican tactics in CAFTA win (Reuters, 7/28/05)

The House of Representatives' top Democrat accused Republicans on Thursday of possibly illegal action to encourage some Democrats to vote for a free-trade pact with Central America.

The House voted 217-215 in favor of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, early on Thursday morning, with 15 Democrats joining 202 Republicans in support.

At a briefing hours later, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, complained that deals offered by House Republicans to win CAFTA made the House seem like the "set of 'Let's Make a Deal,"' referring to a TV game show.

Some Democrats were made offers that they said they didn't think "passed legal muster," Pelosi told reporters.

She refused to provide any details of who was involved and what was offered that might have been illegal. She also said the deals were hard to prove because they weren't consummated.

MOMMY, WHO'S THAT SCARY LADY? (via Robert Schwartz):

Activist tells Democrats to get democratic (MIKE HARDEN, July 28, 2005, Columbus Dispatch)

Victoria Parks, in the entrance to the Ohio Honest Elections office, says, "I love the flag, I love my country. We are here every day fighting for a real democracy."

When Democrats from across the nation converged on Columbus this week for a love feast of the already-converted, Victoria Parks began nipping at every heel she could find. "I’m trying to save my democracy," she explained of her picketing of the Democratic Leadership Council. "This nation is becoming a corporate plutocracy. I don’t like to see one-party rule, but that is what we have."

Intense, passionate and tenacious, Parks, who lives in Prairie Township in western Franklin County, claims that the Democratic Party is abandoning its traditional values and agendas to embrace a political philosophy she describes as "Republican lite."

"I have to wonder how democratic the Democratic Party really is. Are they drawing their support from their base, the grass roots, the average Joes, union workers, soccer moms — the people who got out the vote for (John) Kerry — or from corporate interests?"

HOW'S YOUR WEEK GONE MR. REID/MS PELOSI?:

Why are the Dems caving in on Cox? (Jamie Court, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

In a better world, next week's Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission would be the Democratic Party's finest hour. The hearings offer a perfect opportunity to decry Wall Street's looting of Main Street and to put the GOP on trial for creating the conditions under which corporate criminals flourished.

Instead, Democrats have been eerily silent on Cox, a right-wing Republican who wrote a 1995 law making it harder for investors to take corporate swindlers to court. Cox's Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which became law over President Clinton's veto, has been blamed for allowing some of the nation's worst financial scandals — including those at Enron and WorldCom — to proceed unchecked. The law let corporate executives off the hook for exactly the kind of utterly misleading statements Enron Chief Executive Kenneth Lay made to keep his company's stock price artificially high.

Indeed, Cox — who President Bush has tapped as the best possible choice to be Wall Street's top cop — is the poster child for how laissez faire, country club Republicanism took trillions out of the pockets of Americans. If the Democratic Party can't find it within itself to stand against putting Americans' life savings in Cox's hands, the party doesn't stand for anything.

The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday approved President Bush's nomination of Rep. Christopher Cox to be the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The committee also endorsed the nominations of Roel Campos and Annette Nazareth to fill two Democratic positions on the five-member SEC.

All three officials were approved by unanimous voice votes, clearing the way for them to be taken up by the full Senate before it adjourns this week for a monthlong recess.

The banking panel also approved by voice vote Bush's nominations of John Dugan to be the new comptroller of the currency, succeeding John Hawke, and John Reich to be director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, succeeding James Gilleran. Both the Office of the Comptroller and the Office of Thrift Supervision are financial regulatory divisions under the Treasury Department.

The White House said Bush, who had challenged Congress to end four years of stalemate over energy legislation, looked forward to signing the legislation. The president has acknowledged the measure will have little impact on oil or gasoline prices.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the legislation would address root causes of high energy prices, but "we didn't get into this overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight."

The bill passed the House by a vote of 275-156 and was expected to be approved by the Senate, which was to begin considering the legislation Thursday night, with a vote on Friday.

"This bill is going to go through lickety-split," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., though he denounced it as a collection of giveaways to cash-rich energy companies that would fail to curb the nation's thirst for imported oil. [...]

"This bill is packed with royalty relief, tax breaks, loan guarantees for the wealthiest energy companies in America even as they are reporting the largest quarterly profits of any corporation in the history of the United States," complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

DOES HE NEED TO GET THE NOMINATION, OR IS ANNOUNCING ENOUGH.

REPORTER VOWS TO 'KILL SELF' IF CHENEY RUNS FOR PRESIDENT (Drudgereport, 7/28/05)

Veteran wire reporter Helen Thomas is vowing to 'kill herself' if Dick Cheney announces he is running for president.

ROVE TOLD THE TRUTH, DURBIN LIED:

Durbin was source for column about Roberts (Charles Hurt, 7/27/05, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin acknowledged yesterday that he was the source for a newspaper column that reported earlier this week that Judge John G. Roberts Jr. said he could not rule in a Supreme Court case where U.S. law might conflict with Catholic teaching. [...]

When the column appeared Monday, Mr. Durbin's office clarified that "Judge Roberts said repeatedly that he would follow the rule of law."

Spokesman Joe Shoemaker also said he did not know who Mr. Turley's source was, although only a handful of people were in the room at the time.

"Whoever the source was either got it wrong or Jonathan Turley got it wrong," Mr. Shoemaker said Monday.

Yesterday, Mr. Shoemaker said the source was Mr. Durbin.

I've got a book here--the outstanding new collection, Our Culture, What's Left of It : The Mandarins and the Masses, by the great Theodore Dalrymple--for the first person who can find this admission that Durbin was the source of the story he denies getting prominent play in a mainstream outlet.

PELOSI WALKED WITH GREATER DIGNITY:

The Note: Tough Duck (MARK HALPERIN, DAVID CHALIAN, MARC AMBINDER, KELLEY PREMO, and SARAH BAKER with JAVIER HERNANDEZ and KIM KICENUIK, July 28, 2005, ABC News)

If the Bush White House weren't so completely distracted by the Wilson leak investigation, perhaps the President would be able to actually get something done — besides sign CAFTA, the highway bill, and the energy bill into law; read all the improving economic figures; celebrate his still-bullet-proof Supreme Court nomination; and continue along semi-stealthily on 2006 fundraising and candidate recruitment.

And if the Democrats weren't so sure that a one-sentence party platform ("Karl Rove should be in jail.") was a sure winner, perhaps they would Notice that the Republican majority is likely to get at least some credit with voters for passing these laws; that the Bill Clinton Democratic Party of free trade just might have been dead and buried shortly after midnight; and that the AFL thing — along with the America Coming Together thing, along with the DNC thing — leaves the party with some serious money and organization questions.

“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.

DO OVER!:

Bar Assn. Examines Roberts' Credentials (GINA HOLLAND, July 28, 2005, AP)

The American Bar Association is reviewing whether the favorable recommendation it gave John Roberts for his federal appellate court judgeship is good for the Supreme Court nomination as well.

FAILING GRADE (via Jeff Brokaw):

Now for the good news (Lexington, Jul 21st 2005, The Economist)

THERE is no shortage of bad news for the White House these days. The Washington press corps is on death watch outside the house of Karl Rove, George Bush's chief adviser, and the car bombs continue to explode across Iraq. Yet last Thursday also saw some rare good news. It is buried in a pretty obscure place, in a report published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But it has some big implications—not only for Mr Bush's much-maligned claim that he is a different sort of conservative, but also for the future health of American society.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress has been periodically testing a representative sample of 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds since the early 1970s. This year's report contained two striking results. The first is that America's nine-year-olds posted their best scores in reading and maths since the tests were introduced (in 1971 in reading and 1973 in maths). The second is that the gap between white students and minorities is narrowing. The nine-year-olds who made the biggest gains of all were blacks, traditionally the most educationally deprived group in American society.

The education establishment—particularly the two big teachers' unions—were quick to pooh-pooh the result. The critics argued that Mr Bush cannot take credit for the gains because his chief educational reform, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, had been in place for only a year when the tests were administered. They also pointed out that the gains are not universal. The results are mixed for 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds. The reading skills of black and Latino 17-year-olds were nearly identical to those of white 13-year-olds.

All this is true, but self-confounding. Mr Bush's act may be very new. But the ideas that lie behind it—focusing on basic subjects such as maths and reading and using regular testing to hold schools accountable—have been widely tried at the state level since at least the mid-1990s. Mr Bush deserves credit for recognising winning ideas thrown up by America's “laboratories of democracy” and then applying them at the federal level.

IF A BUTTERFLY FLAPS ITS WINGS THE FED RAISES RATES:

Bubble babble (Alan Reynolds, July 28, 2005, Townhall)

Why is even the slightest rollback of asking prices on homes supposed to be such an ominous threat? The most revealing answer came from New York Times writer Anna Bernasek in "Hear a Pop? Watch Out." She began with a hypothetical wealth effect. "Economists use this rule of thumb: A $1 change in household wealth leads to a roughly 5-cent change in consumer spending. By that measure, a 10 percent decline in real estate prices would knock about half a percent off the gross domestic product."

This wealth effect results from single-entry bookkeeping -- looking only at sellers and ignoring buyers. The wealth of young couples mainly consists of their future earnings, or "human capital." High house prices reduce that wealth for first-time homebuyers by as much as they raise financial wealth for sellers.

Those trading one home for another are both buyers and sellers, so the net effect on their wealth depends on whether home prices are most inflated in the place where they are buying or selling. For those changing homes in the same area, a lower price on the house being sold would be largely offset by a lower price on the one being purchased, with little net wealth effect. If home prices softened sufficiently to make selling less attractive, then fewer people would put their homes on the market and the resulting scarcity would limit any price decline.

Bernasek went on to fret that "a fall in values ... would probably lead to tightened credit standards, less lending and higher interest rates." Yet her sources believe "the most attractive way for policy makers to cool the housing market would be to put pressure on lenders to tighten their credit standards" and for the Fed to "nudge the long end of the market toward higher rates." Their proposed solution is identical to the assumed problem.

LAST YEAR'S AL QAEDA:

IRA says armed campaign is over (BBC, 7/28/05)

The IRA has formally ordered an end to its armed campaign and says it will pursue exclusively peaceful means.

In a long-awaited statement, the republican organisation said it would follow a democratic path ending more than 30 years of violence.

THE DISADVANTAGE OF HAVING WON:

The roots of Islamic terrorism (Phillip Blond and Adrian Pabst, JULY 28, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

Regarding classical Islam, the oft-quoted remark that Islam is a religion of peace is false. It is historically illiterate to claim that war is foreign to Islam and it is theologically uninformed to argue that jihad is merely a personal inner struggle with no external military correlate.

On the contrary, Islam is linked from the beginning with the practice of divinely sanctioned warfare and lethal injunctions against apostates and unbelievers. Islam experienced no period of wandering and exclusion; from its inception, Islam formed a unitary state bent on military conquest.

The Prophet died a successful military leader who created a single Islamic polity that expanded - through warfare - all over the known world. The caliphate combined the double logic of a religious community and an imperial state.

BIG BROTHER ISN'T THERE:

FBI slow to translate counterterror tapes (Kaitlin Bell and Charlie Savage, July 28, 2005, Boston Globe)

The FBI is falling further behind in translating intercepted communications from terrorist suspects, leading to a backlog of unreviewed tapes that has doubled in the past year to more than 8,000 hours, the Justice Department's inspector general disclosed yesterday.

The backlog has surged despite efforts by the FBI to hire more Arabic-language and other translators, because the bureau is collecting much more counterterrorism data than it used to, Inspector General Glenn Fine said. In some cases, the FBI is failing to translate highest-priority intercepts within 24 hours, despite a bureau policy mandating that deadline.

''The FBI's collection of audio material continues to outpace its ability to review and translate all that material," Fine told the Senate Judiciary Committee, warning that ''the FBI's ability to translate foreign-language materials is critical to national security."

OCCUPATION WAS A FAILURE--WE NEEDED A BIGGER ONE (via Kevin Whited):

Panel: Bush Was Unready for Postwar Iraq (BARRY SCHWEID, July 27, 2005, The Associated Press)

An independent panel headed by two former U.S. national security advisers said Wednesday that chaos in Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning.

Planning for reconstruction should match the serious planning that goes into making war, said the panel headed by Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft.

TURNS OUT WE NEVER DOMESTICATED THE HORSE EITHER:

Wild ponies make annual swim in dense fog (AP, July 27, 2005)

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. --Between 150 and 200 wild ponies made the annual swim to the shore of this resort island in dense fog Wednesday morning.

LEADING MEN:

Bush Wins Approval of Trade Pact: Contentious House vote to ratify CAFTA is seen as more of a political than economic victory. (Warren Vieth, July 28, 2005, LA Times)

The House voted late Wednesday to ratify the Central American Free Trade Agreement, handing President Bush a hard-fought victory on a measure with limited economic effects but large political consequences. [...]

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), the Ways and Means Committee chairman who steered the bill through the House, said the near-unanimous opposition of Democrats would help the Republican Party solidify its political gains of recent years.

"I wondered when this moment would come. Apparently it comes tonight," Thomas said before declaring an end to debate. "Tonight … we mature into a permanent majority. We will lead. We will be progressive. We will help our neighbors."

MORE:
Five-year negotiations lead to modest energy bill: It covers oilfields, the power grid, and daylight savings time. (Brad Knickerbocker, 7/28/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

[T]he first major energy bill since 1992 does do enough to qualify as political progress, not least of all because it manages to avoid the twin threats of congressional filibuster or presidential veto. And coming as it does when war is being fought in an oil-rich part of the world, and when it nearly takes a second mortgage to fill up the family car, the package shows that Washington is doing something on energy.

The $11.5 billion, 10-year measure provides tax breaks for both energy production and conservation. It would nearly double ethanol production, which advocates say would improve air quality. It provides new subsidies and tax breaks for solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear power, and it orders an inventory of offshore oil and gas resources. It requires new commercial appliances to be more energy efficient. It would strengthen the nation's energy grid in order to avoid the kind of blackouts seen in recent years, and it would extend daylight saving time by a month. [...]

Success in finally fashioning the bill after five years of trying came because two potential show-stoppers were avoided. One, lawmakers refused to shield the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), from lawsuits in the more than 30 states where the substance has polluted groundwater. And two, they ignored the administration's - and the oil industry's - push for new oil exploration in that part of Alaska known as "America's Serengeti" for all the wildlife it supports. In both cases, Democrats and some Republicans were prepared to hold up the bill had it gone the other way on those two issues.

Still, oil drilling in ANWR will continue to be a contentious issue: It's been attached to the 2006 budget resolution as a potential source of revenues. Overcoming a filibuster requires 60 votes, but the budget resolution requires only a 51-vote majority - which pro-drilling lawmakers are quite confident they have.

If there's one clear winner here it's corn farmers and the ethanol industry. The measure requires refiners to raise the amount of ethanol used in gasoline from 4 billion gallons to 7.5 billion gallons a year.

"Beyond the energy benefits, this renewable fuels standard will create thousands of jobs, revitalize numerous rural communities, and improve air quality," says Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the ethanol industry.

DON'T BE EMBARRASSED, JOIN UP:

US-Asia climate deal casts doubt on Kyoto (Andrew Rettman, 7/28/05, EU Observer)

A new US-Asia agreement on climate change might damage the EU and UN-sponsored Kyoto protocol and has embarrassed the UK presidency, which failed to get Washington on board a climate deal at the recent G8 summit.

The US unveiled the creation of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Development (APPD) on Wednesday night (27 July) bringing together China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

The group represents 50 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but the deal is unlikely to include binding reduction targets and will probably focus on the spread of cleaner technology from the US and Australia to developing countries such as China and India instead. [...]

The deal seems to have taken Brussels and London by surprise, with the UK's environment ministry issuing a cautious "welcome" last night, while stressing that "the announcement from Australia and others certainly does not replace the Kyoto process".

Australia sees things differently however.

"It is quite clear that the Kyoto protocol won't get the world to where it wants to go. We have got to find something that works better. We need to develop technologies which can be developed in Australia and exported around the world - but it also shows that what we're doing now, under the Kyoto protocol, is entirely ineffective", Australian environment minister Ian Campbell told the Guardian.

"Anyone who tells you that the Kyoto protocol, or signing the Kyoto protocol is the answer, doesn't understand the question", he added.

BLOGGERS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES BEING SPUN BY THE WHITE HOUSE:

Documents Show Roberts Influence In Reagan Era (R. Jeffrey Smith, Jo Becker and Amy Goldstein, July 27, 2005, Washington Post)

To a greater extent than the White House documents previously released, the more than 15,000 pages of Justice Department memos show Roberts speaking at times in his own voice. In memos to the attorney general or senior officials of the Justice Department, Roberts argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances; depicted as "judicial activism" a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student who had already been given a hearing aid and tutors; and argued for wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects out of the presence of their attorneys.

In the rare instances revealed in the documents in which Roberts disagreed with his superiors on the proper legal course to take on major social issues of the day, he advocated a more conservative tack.

In one instance, he wrote a memo to the attorney general urging Smith to disregard the recommendation of William Bradford Reynolds, the head of the agency's civil rights division, that the administration should intervene on behalf of female inmates in a sex discrimination case involving job training for prisoners.

"I recommend that you do not approve intervention in this case," Roberts wrote. He said that such a step would be inconsistent with the administration's belief in judicial restraint and that, if equal treatment for male and female prisoners was required, "the end result in this time of state prison budgets may be no programs for anyone." Besides, he said, private plaintiffs were already bringing suit.

On June 15, 1982, Roberts faulted the Justice Department for the outcome in Plyler v. Doe , in which the Supreme Court overturned a Texas law that had allowed school districts to deny enrollment to children who had entered the country illegally.

Roberts argued that if the solicitor general's office had taken a position in the case supporting the state of Texas "and the values of judicial restraint," it could have "altered the outcome of the case."

"In sum, this is a case in which our supposed litigation program to encourage judicial restraint did not get off the ground, and should have," Roberts wrote.

Much of Roberts's time at the Justice Department was taken up by the debate over GOP-sponsored bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases. He wrote repeatedly in opposition to the view, advanced by then-Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson, that the bills were unconstitutional. He scrawled "NO!" in the margins of an April 12, 1982, note Olson sent to Smith. In the memo, Olson observed that opposing the bills would "be perceived as a courageous and highly principled position, especially in the press."

Roberts drew a bracket around the paragraph, underlined the words "especially in the press," and wrote in the margin: "Real courage would be to read the Constitution as it should be read and not kowtow to the Tribes, Lewises and Brinks!"

The three appear to be to Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis and then-American Bar Association President David R. Brink, who opposed the bills.

Roberts added skeptical margin notes again when Olson wrote that the bills were unnecessary because the court now had more Republican-appointed members than it had in the 1960s, and was moving to the right as a result.

Roberts underlined the name of one of the Republican appointees Olson listed, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade , and drew an arrow connecting it to the word "abortion."

Later, then-counselor to the attorney general Kenneth W. Starr asked Roberts to prepare a memo that "marshals arguments in favor of Congress' power to control" the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. Roberts noted as a result that his memo "was prepared from a standpoint of advocacy of congressional power . . . [and] does not purport to be an objective review of the issue."

Roberts approvingly cited comments by "Professor Scalia" -- then-University of Chicago law professor Antonin Scalia -- at a conference on the bills. Scalia "recognized that non-uniformity in the interpretation of federal law could be criticized as 'sloppy,' but asked: compared to what? Given the choice between non-uniformity and the uniform imposition of the judicial excesses embodied in Roe v. Wade, Scalia was prepared to choose the former alternative."

Roberts also took issue with the view that bills restricting the court's jurisdiction would be unconstitutional because they interfere with "fundamental rights." "None of the pending bills concerning jurisdiction in abortion or school prayer cases directly burden the exercise of any fundamental rights," he wrote.

NO NYLONS?:

Child abuse gang horrifies France (Sarah Shenker, 7/28/05, BBC News)

France has been shocked by the scale of abuse revealed at the Angers paedophile trial, where 65 adults were accused of sexually abusing 45 children.

It was the biggest criminal trial in recent French history.

The abused were aged from six months to 14 years, and some of them were prostituted and raped by their own parents and grandparents, in a poor district of the town in western France.

Sometimes they were offered to strangers in return for small amounts of money, food, alcohol or cigarettes.

AND THE LIVIN' IS EASY:

Economic Reports Continue To Show Quickening Growth (Nell Henderson, July 28, 2005, Washington Post)

U.S. factories booked orders more briskly and new-home sales rose to a record high last month, the government reported yesterday, adding to other recent signs that the economy is gaining momentum.

New orders for big-ticket manufactured goods rose 1.4 percent in June, the Commerce Department said yesterday. It also increased its previous estimate of May orders for such durable goods -- items expected to last at least three years, such as computers, machinery and appliances -- to a 6.4 percent increase, reflecting in part some big aircraft orders.

Sales of new single-family homes increased 4 percent last month to an annual pace of 1.37 million, the department said in a separate report.

Other recent reports shows that consumers bought previously owned homes at the highest rate ever in June, retail sales were stronger and employers hired more people.

MORE:
Stocks rise in hopes Fed may ease up on hikes (ELLEN SIMON AND MARTIN CRUTSINGER, 7/28/05, Chicago Sun-Times)

Wall Street had a surge of optimism Wednesday, sending stocks higher after investors interpreted a Federal Reserve report on the economy as a sign the Fed's year-long string of interest rate increases might be nearing an end.

Wall Street was mired in a narrow trading range until midafternoon, when the Fed released its Beige Book, a survey of the business climate around the country. The central bank said the job market showed some improvement and that inflation, a major concern for the Fed and the stock market, was fairly contained

MAYBE I'M JUST CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT "STALLED" MEANS:

CAFTA just passed.

In Bush Win, House Narrowly Approves CAFTA (JIM ABRAMS, 7/28/05, Associated Press)

The House narrowly approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement early Thursday, a personal triumph for
President Bush, who campaigned aggressively for the accord he said would foster prosperity and democracy in the hemisphere.

The 217-215 vote just after midnight adds six Latin American countries to the growing lists of nations with free trade agreements with the United States and averts what could have been a major political embarrassment for the Bush administration.

And they worked out a Highway deal today that's within a rounding error of the number the White House demanded, to go with the Energy bill...

AS WE AWAIT WHITE SMOKE FROM THE ROTUNDA...

Fool me 8 Times, Shame on Me (Ann Coulter, 7/27/05, Universal Press Syndicate)

Like John Roberts, Souter attended church regularly. Souter was also touted for his great intellect. He went to Harvard! And Harvard Law! (Since when does that impress right-wingers? So did Larry Tribe. It is one of the eternal mysteries of the world that liberals are good test-takers.) [...]

Roberts would have been a fine candidate for a Senate in Democratic hands. But now we have 55 Republican seats in the Senate and the vice president to cast a deciding vote -- and Son of Read-My-Lips gives us another ideological blind date.

Fifty-five seats means every single Democrat in the Senate could vote against a Republican Supreme Court nominee -- highly unlikely considering some of those Democrats are up for election next year -- along with John McCain, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee. We would still win.

Of course it's possible that Roberts will buck history -- all known human history when it comes to the Supreme Court -- and be another Scalia or Thomas. (And we'll hear this news while attending a World Series game between the Cubs and, oh, say ... the Detroit Tigers.) [...]

Bush said "Trust me," and Republicans trust him. It shouldn't be difficult for conservatives to convince themselves that Roberts is our man. They've had practice convincing themselves of the same thing with Warren, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter.

MORE:

Roberts Would Be Fourth Catholic on Court (Richard N. Ostling, 7/27/05, AP)

If John Roberts is confirmed, he will be the fourth Roman Catholic on the Supreme Court, an all-time high that is focusing attention on how faith might influence law on the high court.

From abortion to capital punishment to physician-assisted suicide, the upcoming term offers plenty of issues in which the Catholic church has strong interest. But history shows a justice's religion does not provide a roadmap for rulings. [...]

Writing in the online edition of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, Roberts foe Adele Stan contended that President Bush was "playing the Catholic card" by nominating Roberts, who would be the 10th Catholic in the court's history.

"Bush is betting he's bought himself some insulation any opposition to Roberts, particularly because of his anti-abortion record, will likely be countered with accusations of anti-Catholicism," she said. [...]

The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which opposes Roberts, says all indications are "he's on a trajectory dramatically different from the way church-state law has gone the last few decades."

But Lynn also insists that "the issue is entirely his judicial philosophy, not where he goes to church." [...]

There's no question about Roberts' strong Catholic background.

Growing up in Indiana, he attended the Notre Dame grade school in Michigan City and La Lumiere School, a Catholic college preparatory school in LaPorte.

His wife is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, where she now serves on the board along with Justice Thomas. She's also a board member of the John Carroll Society, which sponsors a Mass for judges and lawyers at the opening of each Supreme Court term.

Shifty-eyed, faux-conservative Souter clone? Or "Papacy-In-Exile" proponent who hums the Kyrie Eleison in his sleep?

US AND THE SHI'ITES:

Senior clerics denounce faxed Zarqawi 'death list' (Mohammed Zaatari, July 28, 2005, Daily Star)

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani and Higher Shiite Council Vice-President Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan spoke out in denunciation of a recent communique claiming Al-Qaeda is targeting prominent Lebanese Muslims. Qabbani and Qabalan said that the communique aimed to stir sectarian strife among Muslims in Lebanon by attacking religious figures known for their piety and care for Islamic and national interests.

The threats were made in a communique signed by "Qaidat al-Jihad Fi Bilad al-Sham" and faxed Tuesday to the Shiite community's religious center, known as Dar al-Ifta, in the port city of Tyre.

Qabbani's and Qabalan's word came in reply to the letter's announcement that Al-Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of Iraq has established a cell in Lebanon that is planning to assassinate nine Shiite leaders, including Speaker Nabih Berri and high-ranking Hizbullah leaders.

HOW DO YOU PLUG THIS DANG THING IN...:

Feeding the blogs to promote the judge (Paul Bedard, 7/27/05, US News)

Senate Democrats and Judiciary Committee minority staffers are miffed that conservative bloggers appear to have more information about Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts than they do.

"They've got material out there that we don't know about," complained Sen. Edward Kennedy, who's leading an effort to force the White House to turn over any documents it has on Roberts.

Other Democrats said that they believe the White House is providing supportive bloggers with information that paints Roberts only in a positive light. Kennedy, speaking to reporters last Friday, said that he was unaware of the prolific GOP blogging on behalf of Roberts until his wife pointed it out.

THEY LAUGHED AT TOM WOLFE (via John Resnick):

Mugged by reality? (Mark Steyn, July 25, 2005, The Australian)

WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier.

Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."

So a few weeks later, when fellow 9/11 terrorist Marwan al-Shehhi arrived to request another half-million dollar farm subsidy and Atta showed up cunningly disguised with a pair of glasses and claiming to be another person entirely - to whit, al-Shehhi's accountant - Bryant sportingly pretended not to recognise him and went along with the wheeze. The fake specs, like the threat to slit her throat and blow up the Pentagon, were just another example of the multicultural diversity that so enriches our society.

For four years, much of the western world behaved like Bryant.

THE DIRTIEST TRICK (via The Mother Judd):

How Willkie Ran, Lost and Helped Win the War (TODD S. PURDUM, 7/25/05, NY Times)

It is June 1940. France has just fallen to the Nazis. A conservative, isolationist Republican Party, incensed at the prospect of a third term for Franklin D. Roosevelt, nominates a liberal, interventionist political newcomer named Wendell Lewis Willkie. His moderate candidacy gives Roosevelt the cover he needs to pass a draft, swap American destroyers for bases from a beleaguered Britain and win re-election by five million votes.

Fiction? Nope, just improbable fact, recalled with relish by Charles Peters, West Virginia lawyer, John F. Kennedy campaign worker, Peace Corps official and founder of The Washington Monthly, who may be Washington's most prominent cockeyed optimist, in his new book Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing 'We Want Willkie!' Convention of 1940 and How it Freed F. D. R. to Save the Western World.

"This is the plot that saved America," Mr. Peters said recently in his living room perched in a wooded cul de sac above the Potomac River, as he explained his fizzy, nonfiction book that could be a rejoinder to "The Plot Against America" (Houghton Mifflin), Philip Roth's darkly imagined 2004 novel in which Charles A. Lindbergh wins the 1940 Republican nomination and the presidency and there are scattered pogroms in the country.

"Because you realize," he added, referring to Willkie's conservative rival, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, that "Bob Taft would have been the nominee. He was Charles Lindbergh, except for the anti-Semitism, so Roth's nightmare could have come true. He was a very nice, very principled man, but he was dead wrong at the crucial point in our history."

GRAB A BUCKET AND MOP (via Luciferous):

Home Schools Run By Well-Meaning Amateurs: Schools With Good Teachers Are Best-Suited to Shape Young Minds (Dave Arnold, NEA.org)

There's nothing like having the right person with the right experience, skills and tools to accomplish a specific task. Certain jobs are best left to the pros, such as, formal education.

There are few homeowners who can tackle every aspect of home repair. A few of us might know carpentry, plumbing and, let’s say, cementing. Others may know about electrical work, tiling and roofing. But hardly anyone can do it all.

Same goes for cars. Not many people have the skills and knowledge to perform all repairs on the family car. Even if they do, they probably don’t own the proper tools. Heck, some people have their hands full just knowing how to drive.

So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this -- the shaping of their children’s minds, careers, and futures -- to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!

(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)

EXACTLY WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT?

Truly Muslim, fully American (Fatina Abdrabboh, 7/28/05, CS Monitor)

"I condemn terrorism." Lately, because I'm a Muslim, these are the only three words people seem to want to hear come out of my mouth. Beyond the words themselves, the way I proclaim them is measured for sincerity. Perhaps even more than the days immediately after 9/11, I as a Muslim feel now that many of my fellow Americans believe that Islam and its adherents are evil, pure and simple. [...]

Why is my stance on terrorism my only defining feature?

MORE:
U.S. Muslim Scholars To Forbid Terrorism (Caryle Murphy, July 28, 2005, Washington Post)

An organization of top American Muslim religious scholars plans to issue a formal ruling today condemning terrorism and forbidding Muslims to cooperate with anyone involved in a terrorist act, according to officials of two leading Islamic organizations.

The one-page ruling, or fatwa, will be issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Islamic legal scholars that interprets Islamic law for the Muslim community. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, said the ruling does not represent a new position on terrorism.

Rather, Hooper said, "it is another way to drive home the point that the American Muslim community rejects terrorism and extremism."

Although Muslim leaders and political organizations have repeatedly denounced religious extremism, Hooper added, "any time any Muslim goes on a talk show or on television, the first question is, 'Why haven't Muslims condemned terrorism?' "

Louay Safi of the Islamic Society of North America noted that there is an "important difference" between a fatwa and previous statements from the Muslim community. The fatwa "is not a political statement. It's a legal or religious opinion by a recognized religious authority in the United States," said Safi, whose group is based in Indianapolis.

In light of bomb attacks in London and Egypt, Muslim interest groups in Chicago on Friday joined Muslims nationwide in publicly decrying acts of violence performed for religion's sake.

Several Muslim interest groups here officially endorsed the fatwa, or religious decree, issued by the Fiqh Council of North America against religious extremism.

According to the teachings of the Quran, acts of terrorism targeting innocents are forbidden in Islam, the fatwa reads. The decree seeks to remind Muslims that Islam condemns violence and to assure non-Muslims that not all of the Islamic world resorts to violent means.

"We believe suicide bombing is criminal and sinful," said Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago. "Killing civilians, for whatever cause, will result in God's utter displeasure."

AH, WELL, WE'RE ALL AMERICANS...:

There are perfectly coherent explanations for why you would vote against CAFTA if you're a Democrat, but the argument they've offered repeatedly tonight is hilarious: We have a constitutional duty to examine this treaty and upon that examination I have determined that it will not enhance and enforce labor laws in the Central American signatories so I have to oppose it.

One wonders what nation's constitutional republic it is they think they're supposed to be defending?

N.B. You can tell the GOP means business because they have Ray LaHood in the Speaker's chair.

THAT JUST CAN'T BE KOSHER:

Fishy milk hits shelves in boost for healthy living (LOUISE BARNETT, 7/27/05, The Scotsman)

A "SUPERMILK" containing Omega 3 fatty acids derived from oily fish is to go on sale this week.

It is produced by cows which are given a special fish oil blend along with their normal feed. A 250ml serving contains ten times more of the Omega 3 acids known as DHA and EPA than regular milk but is said to taste the same.

Omega 3 fatty acids tackle heart disease and ensure healthy nails, hair and skin.

Claire Williamson, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, said many people in the UK do not eat the recommended one portion per week of oily fish.

"Consuming oily fish is linked to a decreased risk of heart disease," she said.

BOOM! WE WIN:

In Egypt, Many Question Whether Their Own Culture Is to Blame for Terror Attacks (Nadia Abou El-Magd, 7/27/05, Associated Press)

At one mosque in Cairo, some worshippers objected to prayers for the dead and missing after Saturday's bombings in Sharm el-Sheik because some victims were likely non-Muslims, said the editor of the government weekly Al-Musawwar.

Another columnist pointed to a weekly column in the government Al-Ahram daily by a religious scholar, Zaghloul al-Naggar, who explains science by using the Quran. After December's tsunami in the Indian Ocean, he went on Arab television and called the devastation God's revenge on Westerners engaged in vice.

The debate since Sharm has been a deepening of the soul-searching that has gone on across the Arab world in recent years over whether religious interpretations need reform in the face of terror attacks by Muslim radicals.

The debate began, hesitantly, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. And the voices have grown with each act of terrorism - particularly ones in the Middle East. A series of attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2003 forced that country to begin taking action against extremist thought.

The 2004 Madrid bombings increased calls for change among Muslims in Europe and the Mideast. After the July 7 suicide bombings in London, Britain's largest Sunni group issued a binding religious edict, known as a fatwa, condemning the attack.

Egypt has been hit this month by a double blow: the kidnapping and slaying of its top envoy in Iraq by Islamic militants and the bomb blasts that ripped through Sharm, killing as many as 88 people - the vast majority of them Egyptians.

What was unusual about the self-criticism after Sharm was that it came from government media - and even from within the Islamic clerical hierarchy picked by the government.

"There is no use denying. ... We incited the crime of Sharm el-Sheik," ran a bold red headline of a lead editorial Wednesday by Al-Musawwar's editor in chief, Abdel-Qader Shohaib.

The bombers "didn't just conjure up in our midst suddenly, they are a product of a society that produces extremist fossilized minds that are easy to be controlled," Shohaib wrote.

"They became extremists through continuous incitement for extremism which we have allowed to exist in our societies. Regrettably, the incitement is coming from mosque pulpits, newspapers, and TV screens, and radio microphones," which are all state-run, Shohaib said.

In Al-Ahram, columnist Ahmed Abdel Moeti Hegazi wrote: "This is not just deviation, it is a culture,"

Hegazi said he went to one mosque after the July 7 London bombings and the slaying of the Egyptian diplomat but the preacher made no mention of either attack. Instead, he denounced women wearing bathing suits.

Abdel Moeti Bayoumi, a theology professor at Al-Azhar University and a member of Al-Azhar's Center of Islamic Research, said change is needed. Al-Azhar, in Cairo, is one of the leading Sunni Muslim institutions in the world.

"Islamic preaching institutions are in a very acute need for shake-up," Bayoumi told The Associated Press. "Issuing statements and holding conferences to condemn terrorism is not what is needed. They are more like a cover-up of unresolved problems."

MORE:
Struggle for a British Islam (James Brandon and John Thorne, 7/28/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

Notably, they're not taking their cues from Britain's leading Muslim clerics. Rather, their effort is largely spontaneous - a grass-roots phenomenon that is emerging to bridge the disconnect between faith and nationality that, for some Muslims, ends in violence.

"We believe that we are as British as anyone, if not more, because we are British by choice," says Dr. Akmal Makhdum, a psychiatrist who organized the gathering. "The way of life here does not mean you have to give up your culture, because the British way of life allows you to keep it."

Polls taken since the bombings, however, show that men as unabashedly pro-British as Mr. Makhdum face a daunting challenge. Nearly two-thirds of Britain's 1.6 million Muslims have considered leaving the country, a Guardian/ICM poll this week showed.

Between Makhdum and the rejectionists opposing him, the bulk of ordinary Muslims have been thrown into the thick of the debate by the Islamic terrorists who struck London twice in a fortnight.

"The bombers are throwing away everything our parents have done for us," laments Wasif Khan, who works for global professional services firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in London. "It's so frustrating."

"It's only been in the last 10 years that we've been able to say we are British," says his wife Ayesha, a third-generation Muslim who remembers the lingering racism her elders had struggled against. "All [the bombers] were thinking is that they, personally, were going to heaven," she adds bitterly. "They'd been brainwashed for a larger cause, but individually they were completely selfish. They need to figure out what true Islam is."

THE SOLID 40:

Test vote shows gun industry win (Brian DeBose, July 27, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Senate likely will pass a bill this week to make gun makers and dealers immune from civil lawsuits by local governments seeking to hold the industry responsible for gun-related crimes, after a test vote yesterday showed overwhelming support for the legislation.

On Monday, the Lawful Commerce in Arms Act acquired a 60th Senate co-sponsor -- Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat. It easily passed the first hurdle on passage, being brought to the floor for debate on a 66-32 vote.

Mr. Byrd's signature gave the bill 60 co-sponsors, assuring a filibuster-proof majority and passage on the floor, said Dan Whiting, spokesman for Sen. Larry E. Craig, Idaho Republican and the bill's sponsor.

Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, said his party expects to use the same tactic that defeated the bill last year...

CORELESSNESS (via Robert Schwartz):

Ten core values of the British identity (Daily Telegraph, 27/07/2005)

We prefer simply to set out, in general terms, the non-negotiable components of our identity - the qualities of the citizenship that Muktar Said Ibrahim applied for.

I. The rule of law. Our society is based on the idea that we all abide by the same rules, whatever our wealth or status. No one is above the law - not even the government.

II. The sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament. The Lords, the Commons and the monarch constitute the supreme authority in the land. There is no appeal to any higher jurisdiction, spiritual or temporal.

III. The pluralist state. Equality before the law implies that no one should be treated differently on the basis of belonging to a particular group. Conversely, all parties, sects, faiths and ideologies must tolerate the existence of their rivals.

IV. Personal freedom. There should be a presumption, always and everywhere, against state coercion. We should tolerate eccentricity in others, almost to the point of lunacy, provided no one else is harmed.

V. Private property. Freedom must include the freedom to buy and sell without fear of confiscation, to transfer ownership, to sign contracts and have them enforced. Britain was quicker than most countries to recognise this and became, in consequence, one of the happiest and most prosperous nations on Earth.

VI. Institutions. British freedom and British character are immanent in British institutions. These are not, mostly, statutory bodies, but spring from the way free individuals regulate each other's conduct, and provide for their needs, without recourse to coercion.

VII. The family. Civic society depends on values being passed from generation to generation. Stable families are the essential ingredient of a stable society.

VIII. History. British children inherit a political culture, a set of specific legal rights and obligations, and a stupendous series of national achievements. They should be taught about these things.

IX. The English-speaking world. The atrocities of September 11, 2001, were not simply an attack on a foreign nation; they were an attack on the anglosphere - on all of us who believe in freedom, justice and the rule of law.

X. The British character. Shaped by and in turn shaping our national institutions is our character as a people: stubborn, stoical, indignant at injustice. "The Saxon," wrote Kipling, "never means anything seriously till he talks about justice and right."

SELF-REFERENCE ALERT:

‘Worthless’ gifts get the good girls (Anna Gosline, 7/27/05, New Scientist)

Men who spend big money wining and dining their dates are not frittering away hard-earned cash. According to a pair of UK researchers, they are merely employing the best strategy for getting the girl without being taken for granted.

Using mathematical modelling, Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London, UK, found that wooing girls with costly, but essentially worthless gifts – such as theatre tickets or expensive dinners out – is a winning courtship strategy for both sexes.

Females can assess how serious or committed a male plans to be and males can ensure they are not just seducing ‘gold-diggers’ – girls who take valuable presents with no intention of accepting subsequent dates.

PURITANISM SHOULDN'T BE A BUSINESS PROPOSITION (via Gene Brown):

Think Again, Karen Hughes (Anne Applebaum, July 27, 2005, Washingtn Post)

Only two senators were in the room when Karen Hughes testified at her confirmation hearings. When it came time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote on her nomination yesterday, she was easily approved. And thus with no discussion and no debate, Hughes takes over the least noticed, least respected and possibly most important job in the State Department. Her formal title is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. In plain English, her job is to fight anti-Americanism, promote American culture and above all to do intellectual battle with the ideology of radical Islam, a set of beliefs so powerful that they can persuade middle-class, second-generation British Muslims to blow themselves up on buses and trains.

Presumably, President Bush selected Hughes for this task because she was very good at running his election campaigns. And indeed, in the testimony she gave last week to a nearly empty room, she sounded like she was still running an election campaign. Like Hillary Clinton, she said she wanted people around the world to know that she would be "listening" to them: "I want to learn more about you and your lives, what you believe, what you fear, what you dream, what you value most." Like Jesse Jackson, she deployed alliteration, alluding to the four "E's": "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."

Unfortunately, Hughes's most important constituents aren't going to respond to engagement and empowerment, let alone exchange and education, unless the latter involves those flight schools where they don't teach you how to take off or land. It has become clear in Iraq, if it wasn't already, that what we call the "war on terrorism" is in fact a small part of a larger intellectual and religious struggle within Islam, between moderates who want to live in modern countries, and radicals who want to impose their extreme interpretation of sharia , or religious law. So far, most of the money, and most of the "public diplomacy," has been channeled to the radicals. Consider, for example, an extraordinary report published this year by the Center for Religious Freedom, a division of Freedom House, which surveys more than 200 books and pamphlets collected at mosques and Islamic centers in U.S. cities. Most were in Arabic. All were published by the Saudi government or royal family, and all promote the extreme form of Wahhabi Islam found in Saudi Arabia. The books reflect contempt for the United States, condemn democracy as un-Islamic, and claim that Muslims are religiously obliged to hate Christians and Jews. Most insidiously, the documents denounce moderate Muslims, especially those who advocate religious tolerance, as infidels. If a Muslim commits adultery or becomes a homosexual, one pamphlet -- published by the Saudi government's ministry of Islamic affairs -- advises that "it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and take his money."

COUNTING COUP:

Roberts had larger 2000 recount role: The role of U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported. Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case. (MARC CAPUTO, 7/27/05, Miami Herald)

U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported -- as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation's highest court, according to the man who drafted him for the job.

Ted Cruz, a domestic policy advisor for President Bush and who is now Texas' solicitor general, said Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation ''lions'' and ''800-pound gorillas,'' which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys in Florida.

Until now, Gov. Jeb Bush and others involved in the election dispute could recall almost nothing of Roberts' role, except for a half-hour meeting the governor had with Roberts. Cruz said Roberts was in Tallahassee helping the Bush camp for ''a week to 10 days,'' and that his help was important, though Cruz said it is difficult to remember specifics five years after the sleep-depriving frenetic pace of the 2000 recount.

But one thing was certain, Cruz told The Herald: ``There was no one better for the job.''

''He's one of the best brief writers in the country. Just like a good journalist or a novelist, he can write with clarity, concisely and can paint a picture with words,'' said Cruz. Roberts, a constitutional-law expert in a top Washington law firm at the time, is now a federal appeals court judge in D.C. Roberts was a no-brainer for the recount effort: His win-loss record at the U.S. Supreme Court was one of the most impressive. And, like Cruz, he was a member of a tight-knit circle of former clerks for the court's chief justice, William Rehnquist -- a group jokingly referred to as ``the cabal.''

MEMO TO MR. DIAMOND:

"People think you can't train a dog to pull a plow. Impatient people think that. Patient people know better."

--Anonymous Farmer, The Simpsons

MUST THE CIA BE POLITICIZED? (via Kevin Whited):

PLAME'S ANTI-W. MONEY (DEBORAH ORIN, July 27, 2005, NY Post)

Outed CIA spy Valerie Plame last fall gave a campaign contribution to go toward an anti-Bush fund-raising concert starring Bruce Springsteen, it was revealed last night.

It's the first revelation that Plame participated in anti-Bush political activity while working for the CIA.

The $372 donation to the anti-Bush group America Coming Together, first reported by Time magazine's Web site, was made in Plame's married name of Valerie E. Wilson and covered two tickets.

The Federal Election Commission record lists her occupation as "retired" even though she's still a CIA staffer.

THE NEW LINE OF ATTACK...:

In Reagan's White House, a Clever, Sometimes Cocky John Roberts (JOHN M. BRODER and CAROLYN MARSHALL, 5/27/05, NY Times)

A sliver of John G. Roberts's voluminous files from his years as a junior White House lawyer reveals a young man with a facile mind and a sharp and sometimes smart-alecky tongue. [...]

The papers here show that in August 1983, Mr. Roberts was asked to draft a response to a letter to Mr. Reagan from a college professor who feared he might land on an alleged United States Information Agency blacklist for lodging a complaint about the agency. Mr. Roberts, in a memorandum to his boss, Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, noted in an aside, "Once you let the word out there's a blacklist, everybody wants to get on."

There was also the time he offered a snide analysis, in an internal White House memorandum, of a proposal from a member of the House, Elliott H. Levitas. After the Supreme Court struck down efforts by Congress to veto actions taken by the executive branch, Mr. Levitas, a Democrat from Georgia, proposed that the White House and Congress convene a "conference on power-sharing" to codify the duties of each branch of government.

Asked to comment on the congressman's proposal, Mr. Roberts mocked the idea, and him. "There already has, of course, been a 'Conference on Power Sharing,' " Mr. Roberts wrote in a memo to Mr. Fielding. "It took place in Philadelphia's Constitution Hall in 1787, and someone should tell Levitas about it and the 'report' it issued."

Mr. Roberts also expressed mild scorn for two members of the District of Columbia City Council, Wilhelmina Rolark and David A. Clarke, who along with Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. and others were seeking more autonomy for the city. When asked to assess a proposed response from a Justice Department lawyer to the municipal officials, he wrote that "I will call the attorney at Justice handling this matter and suggest use of a more neutral sobriquet than 'the Home Rule Act' in the Clarke and Rolark reply, and some stylistic changes to prevent the last sentence in the Clarke and Rolark letter, which also appears in the Barry letter, from reading as if it were an awkward translation from Bulgarian."

WITH EVERY BOMB THEY LOSE:

Our extreme makeover: Favorable impressions of the U.S. are being detected around the world, including inside Muslim countries. (Max Boot, July 27, 2005, LA Times)

The public opinion poll was conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, hardly a bastion of neocon zealotry. (It's co-chaired by Madeleine Albright.) Over the last three years, Pew surveys have charted surging anti-Americanism in response to the invasion of Iraq and other actions of the Bush administration. But its most recent poll — conducted in May, with 17,000 respondents in 17 countries — also found evidence that widespread antipathy is abating.

The percentage of people holding a favorable impression of the United States increased in Indonesia (+23 points), Lebanon (+15), Pakistan (+2) and Jordan (+16). It also went up in such non-Muslim nations as France, Germany, Russia and India.

What accounts for this shift? The answer varies by country, but analysts point to waning public anger over the invasion of Iraq, gratitude for the massive U.S. tsunami relief effort and growing conviction that the U.S. is serious about promoting democracy.

There is also increasing aversion to America's enemies, even in the Islamic world. The Pew poll found that "nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries."

Support for suicide bombing has declined dramatically in all the Muslim countries surveyed except Jordan, with its large anti-Israeli Palestinian population. The number of those saying that "violence against civilian targets is sometimes or often justified" has dropped by big margins in Lebanon (-34 points) and Indonesia (-12) since 2002, and in the last year in Pakistan (-16) and Morocco (-27).

This has been accompanied by a cratering of support for Osama bin Laden everywhere except (unfortunately) Pakistan and Jordan. Since 2003, approval ratings for the world's No. 1 terrorist have slid in Indonesia (-23 points), Morocco (-23), Turkey (-8) and Lebanon (-12).

What accounts for this decline? Primarily the actions of the terrorists themselves.

DON'T TEACH THE CONTROVERSY, TEACH THE CONSENSUS:

The evolution of George Gilder: The author and tech-sector guru has a new cause to create controversy with: intelligent design (Joseph P. Kahn, July 27, 2005, Boston Globe)

CREATIONISM: Ascribes creation of all matter and species to the work of a divine agency such as God.

EVOLUTION: Theorizes that plant and animal species developed from earlier life forms by a process of random mutation and natural selection.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: Asserts that life is too complex to be explained by purely natural processes, and therefore some agent or agents of higher intelligence played a role in its creation. [...]

[T]wo primary influences began nudging Gilder toward intelligent design.

One was the work of Claude E. Shannon, which Gilder discovered through his interest in the science behind the computer chip. Shannon is regarded as the father of information theory, a branch of mathematics that combines probability theory and statistics and is used by communication engineers to orchestrate how information bits are transmitted.

The more the inner workings of the cell are understood, according to Gilder, the more Shannon's theory is useful in deconstructing life itself. Given the cell's complexity and capacity for information exchange, Gilder and other ID proponents maintain, it seems improbable that life could have evolved haphazardly. It's not that Darwin is wrong or irrelevant, they contend, or that processes like genetic mutation and natural selection play no role in how species evolve. But these processes cannot explain everything that biologists ascribe to them. Ergo, some form of higher intelligence -- call it God, a Supreme Programmer, or whatever -- must have played a role, they say.

''Physics and chemistry alone cannot account for the complexity of the genome," Gilder asserts. ''It's like trying to understand how basketball is played by studying the rules. There's far more to the game than that."

Though a conservative Christian by upbringing and temperament, Gilder insists his belief in ID is not a faith-based proposition.

''The analogy between Shannon and codes in biology isn't something that sprang from my belief in God," he says, shaking his head. Information theory and Christianity are not deeply entwined for him, he says -- ''except maybe on some deeper or more transcendent level." Using Darwin to explain how life began, he adds, ''isn't even remotely feasible in information-theoretic terms. Something else has to be posited. What that additional factor is, how this intelligence emerges in the universe, I don't know and isn't for me to say. But nobody else does, either."

Gilder is also cofounder of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank established in 1991. The institute, which promotes a conservative public-policy agenda, has occupied a lead role in the ID movement recently, most notably through its Center for Science and Culture, which boasts a number of leading ID proponents among its fellows and advisers. The institute is headed by Bruce Chapman, Gilder's former college roommate, coauthor, and Reagan White House colleague.

As a senior fellow at the institute, Gilder primarily focuses on telecom policy. Yet the controversy over ID, recently reflected in the Smithsonian Institution's decision to screen an ID-friendly documentary titled ''The Privileged Plant: The Search for Purpose in the Universe," has brought the issue to Gilder's front doorstep.

And for an old culture warrior like Gilder, there's no ducking this fight, either.

''I'm not pushing to have [ID] taught as an 'alternative' to Darwin, and neither are they," he says in response to one question about Discovery's agenda. ''What's being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there's a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content."

JUST ONE DANG TRANSFORMATION AFTER ANOTHER:

Negotiators reach pact on a broad energy bill: Overhaul aimed at spurring output (Rick Klein and Susan Milligan, July 27, 2005, Boston Globe)

Congressional negotiators reached agreement yesterday on a sweeping overhaul of the nation's energy policies, with a sprawling package of tax breaks, subsidies, and regulation changes designed to spur production of oil, gasoline, and other energy sources.

The agreement brings a national energy plan close to passage in Congress, more than a decade since the last one was passed, and after President Bush had lobbied extensively for it throughout his presidency. If House and Senate leaders meet their goal and approve the measure by week's end, it would hand a major victory to the president, whose second-term agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill. [...]

It rejects Democrats' calls for tighter emissions controls and for further encouragement of renewable fuel technologies.

''It's a transformational bill," said the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.

WHIP IT, INTO SHAPE:

CAFTA's Upshot More Political Than Economic (Paul Blustein and Mike Allen, July 27, 2005, Washington Post)

The grand debates about open markets, workers' rights and U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere don't matter much anymore. Within days, and possibly hours, the Central American Free Trade Agreement is likely to face an exceedingly tight vote in the House, and its fate hangs on issues of less than cosmic import -- such as pockets and linings.

To a handful of Southern Republicans with textile mills in their districts, it is no small matter what sort of fabric is used in the interior portions of garments that would enter the U.S. market duty-free under CAFTA. So the Bush administration essentially promised this week that the fabric in such pockets and linings will be from the United States -- and that pledge won the support for CAFTA of at least five Republican lawmakers in the past two days.

Cajoling, deal-cutting and browbeating were always in the cards for CAFTA because it is by far the most controversial trade agreement in years. While Congress easily approved recent pacts eliminating trade barriers between the United States and middle-income countries such as Australia and Singapore, the administration's proposal for a similar deal with six low-wage Latin American nations has drawn overwhelming rejection from House Democrats, mainly on the grounds that labor rights are inadequately protected in those countries. Several dozen Republicans, many of whom face hostility toward free trade in their districts, also are refusing to or are reluctant to cast pro-CAFTA votes.

Administration officials and House Republican leaders are scrambling to ensure that they are at least within striking distance of a one-vote majority when the roll call begins, on the assumption that a number of lawmakers from their party can be persuaded to vote yes if their support is essential.

MORE:
Bush lobbies Republicans on CAFTA bill (JIM ABRAMS, 7/27/05, Associated Press)

In a rare piece of lobbying on Capitol Hill, President Bush appealed personally to fellow Republicans Wednesday to close ranks behind a free trade agreement with Central America that faces a very close floor vote.

The House was beginning debate on the Central American Free Trade Agreement later in the day, with a vote likely on Thursday. With Democrats strongly against it, passage depends on keeping Republican defections to a minimum.

Bush, who has invested considerable time and effort to winning approval of CAFTA, was accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman at the closed meeting of House Republicans. It isn't unusual for presidents to press their agendas with members of their own party or the opposition party, but they usually do it at the White House.

Bush's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Bush planned to address other issues likely to come up as Congress rushes toward summer recess, including major energy and highway legislation.

TONY BLAIR SHOULD SIGN ON:

U.S. to announce 'Beyond Kyoto' greenhouse pact (Michelle Nichols, 7/27/05, Reuters)

The world's top polluter, the United States, is set to unveil a pact to combat global warming by developing energy technology aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, officials and diplomats said on Wednesday.

China and India, whose burgeoning economies comprise a third of humanity, as well as Australia and South Korea are also part of the agreement to tackle climate change beyond the Kyoto protocol.

Kyoto requires a cut in greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 but the United States and Australia have never ratified the protocol because it excluded major developing nations such China and India.

Diplomats in the Laotian capital Vientiane said the pact would be formally announced on Thursday when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick holds a press conference attended by representatives of the other signatories.

Grass is greener with a cool summer drink (LEZLI BITTERMAN , July 27, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

CREAMSICLE

MAKES 1 SERVING

6 ice cubes
1/2 cup frozen orange juice concentrate (do not thaw)
2 large scoops (about 1 cup) vanilla ice cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Orange slice for garnish

Place ice cubes in blender, cover and process on high speed until crushed, about 30 seconds.

Add frozen orange juice concentrate, vanilla ice cream and extract; process until smooth. Pour into a chilled class and garnish with the orange slice.

The Ultimate A-To-Z-Bar Guide (Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst)

IRAQ FOR THE IRAQIS:

Iraqi prime minister calls for speedy withdrawal of troops (ROBERT BURNS, July 27, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Iraq's transitional prime minister called Wednesday for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops and the top U.S. commander here said he believed a "fairly substantial" pullout could begin next spring and summer.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said at a joint news conference with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the time has arrived to plan a coordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control throughout the country.

Asked how soon a U.S. withdrawal should happen, he said no exact timetable had been set. "But we confirm and we desire speed in that regard," he said, speaking through a translator. "And this fast pace has two aspects."

First, there must be a quickening of the pace of U.S. training of Iraqi security forces, and second there must be closely coordinated planning between the U.S.-led military coalition and the emerging Iraq government on a security transition, he said.

"We do not want to be surprised by a withdrawal that is not in connection with our Iraqi timing,"' he said.

BACK FROM ELBA:

Files Highlight Legal Stances of a Nominee (DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, 7/27/05, NY Times)

As a young lawyer in the Justice Department at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's presidency, John G. Roberts advocated judicial restraint on the issues of the day, many of which are still topical, documents released Tuesday by the National Archives show.

He defended, for instance, the constitutionality of proposed legislation to restrict the ability of federal courts to order busing to desegregate schools.

On other civil rights issues, he encouraged a cautious approach by courts and federal agencies in enforcing laws against discrimination.

Judge Roberts, now on the federal court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, also argued that Congress had the constitutional power "to divest the lower federal courts of jurisdiction over school prayer cases."

In another memorandum, he maintained that the Supreme Court, to which he is now nominated, overreached when it denied states the authority to impose residency requirements for welfare recipients.

This was an example, he wrote, of the court's tendency to find fundamental rights, like the right to travel between states, for which there was no explicit basis in the Constitution. "It's that very attitude which we are trying to resist," he wrote.

JUST KEEP HIM TALKING:

Dick Durbin's evolving standard of decency (Terence Jeffrey, July 27, 2005, Townhall)

[Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press,"] put Durbin on the rack last Sunday, torturing the poor man with his own contradictory words.

When Durbin was first elected to the U.S. House, you see, he was pro-life. Now, as a pro-abortion member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he is expected by left-wing groups to enforce his party's pro-abortion litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. With the nomination of Judge John Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Durbin is showing every sign of living up to those expectations.

Back in 1983, as Russert pointed out, Durbin "believed that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided" and supported "a constitutional limit to ban all abortions." Durbin, Russert said, wrote to a constituent: "The right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution."

Durbin did not contest Russert's characterization of his formerly pro-life, anti-Roe views. "I'll concede that point to you, Tim," he said. [...]

What changed Durbin's mind about the meaning of the Constitution?

On "Meet the Press," this is how Durbin explained his conversion: "You know, it's a struggle for me. It still is. I'm opposed to abortion. If any woman in my family said she was seeking abortion, I'd go out of my way to try to dissuade them from making that decision. But I was really discouraged when I came to Washington to find that the opponents of abortion were also opponents of family planning. This didn't make sense to me. And I was also discouraged by the fact that they were absolute, no exceptions for rape and incest, the most extraordinary medical situations. And I finally came to the conclusion that we really have to try to honor the Roe v. Wade thinking, that there are certain times in the life of a woman that she needs to make that decision with her doctor, with her family and with her conscience, and that the government shouldn't be intruding."

This is not only devoid of constitutional reasoning, it is devoid of all reasoning.

THE BUSH CLIMATE CHANGE ACCORD HAS A RING TO IT:

New Asia-Pacific climate plan (Dennis Shanahan, July 27, 2005, The Australian)

AUSTRALIA has joined the US, China, India and South Korea in a secret regional pact on greenhouse emissions to replace the controversial Kyoto climate protocol.

The alliance, which is yet to be announced, will bring together nations that together account for more than 40 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

To be known as the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, the grouping will aim to use the latest technologies to limit emissions and to make sure the technologies are available in the areas and industries that need them most.

The US and Australia have refused to sign the Kyoto protocol -- an international agreement setting greenhouse gas emission targets for developed countries by 2012. China and India are not limited by it because they are considered developing economies.

The US initiative has been discussed between the five nations for five months and is viewed as a practical attempt to rein in greenhouse emissions without harming development or economic growth in the region.

THEY DON'T SWEAR TO DEFEND THE EXTRACONSTITUTION:

AG: High Court Not Bound by Roe V. Wade (MARK SHERMAN, 7/26/05, Associated Press)

The legal right to abortion is settled for lower courts, but the Supreme Court "is not obliged to follow" the Roe v. Wade precedent, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday as the Senate prepared to consider John Roberts' appointment that would put a new vote on the high court.

SOMETIMES THE PROSPECT OF A HANGING DOESN'T HELP:

Democratic Self-Strangulation (The Prowler, 7/27/2005, American Spectator)

KEEP ROVE ALIVE

Just how hijacked is the Democratic Party? Former CIA analyst and Joe Wilson advocate Larry Johnson was allowed to give the party's weekly national radio address. Some Democrats in both the House and Senate are wondering why the party continues to beat on the supposed Karl Rove scandal, despite the fact that there is no clear evidence the story is helping the party politically.

"I haven't seen a single, serious poll beyond the media's that attacking Rove helps us one bit with the voters," says a Democratic House member. "No one can show me numbers. This is all the fringe people like MoveOn and even Howard Dean. It's all about not getting past 2000 and 2004. And I really fear we're going to pay for it down the road." [...]

STRANGULATED

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was none too pleased with press reports on Monday that his junior colleague from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, had announced that she would not oppose the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

"He pitched a fit," says a Senate Judiciary staffer, who interacts extensively with Schumer's staff. "His staff thought she was opening up the trapdoor for him to fall through. It appeared to be classic Clinton triangulation."

MORE:
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net: White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail (Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei, July 27, 2005, Washington Post)

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.

CHILD FATHER TO THE MAN:

Documents Show Roberts Aiding O'Connor (GINA HOLLAND, 7/26/05, Associated Press)

As a young Justice Department lawyer, John Roberts helped guide Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O'Connor through the Senate confirmation process he now confronts as the choice to replace her.

Roberts was just six weeks into his job when he drafted a memo to Kenneth Starr describing his work with O'Connor. The young Roberts said he helped ready O'Connor for her confirmation hearing, preparing draft answers to questions she was likely to be asked.

"The approach was to avoid giving specific responses to any direct questions on legal issues likely to come before the court, but demonstrating in the response a firm command of the subject area and awareness of the relevant precedents and arguments," Roberts wrote in the Sept. 17, 1981, memo to Starr, who later became solicitor general and then served as a special prosecutor investigating President Clinton.

The document was among thousands of pages released Tuesday at the National Archives in College Park, Md., covering part of Roberts' tenure as a lawyer in the Reagan administration.

PLAYING THEIR PART IN THE TRIANGULATION:

Clinton Angers Left With Call for Unity: Senator Accused of Siding With Centrists (Dan Balz, July 27, 2005, Washington Post)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's call for an ideological cease-fire in the Democratic Party drew an angry reaction yesterday from liberal bloggers and others on the left, who accused her of siding with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in a long-running dispute over the future of the party.

Long a revered figure by many in the party's liberal wing, Clinton (D-N.Y.) unexpectedly found herself under attack after calling Monday for a cease-fire among the party's quarreling factions and for agreeing to assume the leadership of a DLC-sponsored initiative aimed at developing a more positive policy agenda for the party.

The reaction highlighted the dilemma Democratic politicians face trying to satisfy energized activists on the left -- many of whom are hungering for party leaders to advance a more full-throated agenda and more aggressively confront President Bush -- while also cultivating the moderate Democrats and independents whose support is crucial to winning elections. The challenge has become more acute because of the power and importance grass-roots activists, symbolized by groups such as MoveOn.org and liberal bloggers, have assumed since the 2004 election.

BREAKING THE WAVES:

In Europe, abortion foes gain support, and funds (Elisabeth Rosenthal, JULY 27, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

For most of July, pedestrians in the Polish city of Lodz found themselves face-to-face with 14 grisly billboards pairing images of aborted fetuses with photographs of blood-spattered corpses - victims of genocide in Srebrenica or Rwanda, toddlers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing attack.

Placed by a Polish anti-abortion group, the traveling exhibition, which has moved on to Lublin, personifies an aggressive, well-financed and growing conservative movement across Europe that opposes not only abortion but also contraception, sex education, artificial insemination and gay rights.

Encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, enabled by the election of conservative governments in many countries and financed in part by anti-abortion groups in the United States, the movement has made powerful inroads in countries where a full array of women's health services were once taken for granted.

These include Poland, Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania and even the Netherlands, where the new Christian Democratic secretary of health has suggested a review of that country's liberal abortion law.

"It's gotten worse in many places over the last two to three years, as more Christian Democrat and conservative governments have come to power," said Rebecca Gomperts, founder of the Dutch abortion rights group Women on Waves.

SO MUCH FOR RANDOMNESS:

Even dad's smoke bad for fetuses (Anita Srikameswaran, July 27, 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Pooling data from three earlier studies, Stephen G. Grant, an environmental and occupational health researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, found that secondhand smoke leads to the same number of genetic mutations in newborns as does smoking by the mother herself.

As Grant put it: "Passive exposure gives you just as much of an exposure and just as bad damage as active smoking." [...]

In the earlier studies, umbilical cord blood samples from newborns were tested for changes in the HPRT gene, which is on the X, or female, chromosome.

The study compared gene mutation rates among babies born to mothers who smoked, quit smoking when they learned they were pregnant, lived or worked with smokers, or had no exposure to smoking.

"What we found is the three exposed groups were all pretty much the same," Grant said. "But they were all significantly different from the unexposed."

Mutations of the HPRT gene were almost twice as common in the exposed groups, he said.

"If the mutations are occurring at this gene, there's no reason why they shouldn't be occurring at the same elevated frequencies at other genes," Grant said. Depending on which genes are affected, those changes could ultimately lead to birth defects, cancer or other conditions.

NOT IN MY NAME:

Son of Spiritual Mentor of Osama Bin Laden Calls Attacks on Civilians Criminal (The Associated Press, 7/26/05)

The son of Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentor said the recent string of terror attacks that have swept Egypt, Britain and other countries are "a crime."

Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who led Islamic militants in Afghanistan and was killed there by a roadside bomb in 1989, is considered the mentor of bin Laden, but the younger Azzam said his father would fight against groups that target civilians and use his name.

"All those using my father's name are only using his name to market for their operations," Hudhaifa Abdullah Azzam said in an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network broadcast Tuesday.

IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME TWO SIDES:

Venezuela's Chavez lashes back at cardinal (AP, 7/19/05)

President Hugo Chavez has denied an outspoken cardinal's allegation that he is leading Venezuela toward a dictatorship as tensions mounted between the leftist leader and the Roman Catholic Church.

Chavez said anyone who thinks his "revolutionary" government is gradually turning into a dictatorial regime "is crazy enough to be tied up or just ignorant (and) doesn't know what's happening in Venezuela."

The statements made by Chavez in Lima, Peru, where he was attending an Andean summit meeting, were released by his press office in Caracas on Monday. A day earlier, Cardinal Rosalio Castillo Lara said Chavez's administration "has seized control of all the branches of government" in Venezuela.

The cardinal warned that "true democracy" does not exist in Venezuela, and said the president is steering the world's fifth largest oil exporter toward a Cuba-style dictatorship.

"The only solution is democratic, which must involve the resistance of all the people," Castillo Lara said.

The church has been one of the loudest critics of Chavez, a former paratroop commander and self-styled revolutionary. Chavez, in turn, has described the church leadership as a "tumor."

A BENIGN MILITARY AIN'T MUCH USE (via Rick Turley):

The Best Army We Can Buy (DAVID M. KENNEDY, 7/25/05, NY Times)

[B]y some reckonings, the Pentagon's budget is greater than the military expenditures of all other nations combined. It buys an arsenal of precision weapons for highly trained troops who can lay down a coercive footprint in the world larger and more intimidating than anything history has known. Our leaders tell us that our armed forces seek only just goals, and at the end of the day will be understood as exerting a benign influence. Yet that perspective may not come so easily to those on the receiving end of that supposedly beneficent violence.

KARL WHO?:

Court nominee does well in poll; Rove does not (Susan Page, 7/25/05, USA TODAY)

[B]y 34% to 25%, Americans have an unfavorable view of Rove; 25% have never heard of him. Seen by many as Bush's most powerful White House adviser, Rove has been in the news lately because of an investigation into whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of a CIA operative to reporters.

The controversy hasn't gripped the public's attention. Just half of those surveyed say they are following the story closely; one in five aren't following it at all. [...]

In the survey, Bush's job-approval rating was steady at 49%, in the same range where it has been for more than a year. [...]

His current rating as a "strong and decisive leader" is 62%, about the same as in 2000.

EVERYTHING'S DOMESTICABLE:

Is This How the West Won?: a review of Guns Germs and Steel (Michael Balter, July 8, 2005, Science)

Jared Diamond is a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles; a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Now he is also the star of a three-part series, based on the book, that airs this month on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The series details Diamond's influential yet controversial explanation for why the world is divided into haves and have-nots--the principal reason, he maintains, is geography: At the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,500 years ago, prehistoric hunter-gatherers living amongst the wild ancestors of today's domesticated plants and animals--most notably the wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle native to the Near East--were ideally situated to invent farming and amass the agricultural surpluses that fueled the rise of civilization and technology. Meanwhile, the unfortunate inhabitants of geographic regions with few domesticable species--such as Africa and the New World--lagged behind in their development; even worse, they eventually fell victim to armies of (mostly European) colonizers whose technologically superior weaponry allowed them to subjugate entire continents. Adding to this onslaught of guns and steel, Diamond argues, were the ravages of deadly diseases that the invaders brought with them, such as smallpox, to which Europeans had developed some immunity (often through their long coexistence with domesticated animals) but which felled native peoples by the millions.

Diamond's thesis is one of the most widely discussed big ideas of recent years, and deservedly so. For one thing, it is an explicitly anti-racist explanation for social and economic inequalities on a global level, an explanation that dispenses with subtle and not-so-subtle assumptions about the inherent superiority of Europeans and their descendants. The have-nots, Diamond counters, are simply those whose prehistoric ancestors were dealt an unlucky draw of the geographical cards. The book, a best-seller in both the original and paperback editions, is required reading in many university courses. It has stimulated considerable debate; for that reason alone a film version, which will undoubtedly reach an even wider audience than the book, seems justified. And it would be churlish to deny Diamond the star treatment he receives in the film, even if one repeated scene of the biologist cruising down a river in Papua New Guinea--while the narrator, actor Peter Coyote, tells us dramatically that Diamond is "on a quest" to understand the roots of power--seems just a bit too focused on the person rather than the ideas.

More worrying, however, is the fact that during all of Diamond's journeys--which take him across the globe by boat, train, airplane, and helicopter, with film crew in tow--the viewer is told only once (at the end of the first hour) that there are scholars who disagree with his thesis. Nor are any of these dissenters ever interviewed, even though a number of other experts and personalities appear in the film to bolster Diamond's viewpoint. This imbalance is a disservice to television viewers, who are surely sophisticated enough to hear challenges to Diamond's ideas without losing track of the plot line. The omission might not be so serious if Diamond had only recently presented his thesis, but over the eight years since the book was first published its tenets have been much debated. Indeed, it is usually assigned to university students precisely so that they can discuss the merits of Diamond's arguments. In 2001, for example, Cornell University in New York required all of that year's incoming undergraduates to read Guns, Germs, and Steel as part of a new student reading project. Members of Cornell's anthropology department organized a campus-wide debate about the book and raised a number of important questions--including whether the geographic vagaries of 11,000 years ago are sufficient to explain why hundreds of millions of human beings live in dire poverty today.

YOU CAN'T GIVE THE LEAST RESPONSIBLE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY DEADLY WEAPONS:

Bill would target teen drivers: More restrictions will help safety, some say (Megan Tench, July 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

Amid another summer of young people dying in car crashes, some state lawmakers and officials are pushing for what they call the most comprehensive package yet of new restrictions and requirements aimed at young drivers.

The changes include requiring more practice behind the wheel, banning teenagers from using cellphones while driving, and getting parents more involved. The proposal would also give police more power to enforce restrictions already in place, such as barring 16- and 17-year-olds from driving between midnight and 5 a.m. and not allowing teens to have passengers under the age of 18 during their first six months with a license.

''Right now, the law's kind of a joke, because it's a secondary offense, and police can't pull you over for just that," said state Representative Bradford Hill, an Ipswich Republican and lead sponsor of the bill. ''We want to make it a primary offense in this bill, which means the police can pull you over. The first offense, you lose your license for 90 days; the second offense, six months; the third offense, you lose it for a year."

SO LEAD:

Romney vetoes law on pill, takes aim at Roe v. Wade: Opinion article reflects a shift from '02 view (Scott S. Greenberger, July 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

Three years after expressing support for ''the substance" of Roe v. Wade, Governor Mitt Romney today criticizes the landmark ruling that legalized abortion and says the states should decide separately whether to allow it.

Romney outlines his abortion position in an opinion article today in The Boston Globe, a day after he vetoed a bill that would expand access to the so-called ''morning after" pill, a high dose of hormones that women can take to prevent pregnancy up to five days after sex.

In a written response to a questionnaire for candidates in 2002, Romney told Planned Parenthood that he supported ''the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade," according to the group. Today, Romney describes himself as a ''pro-life governor" who wishes ''the laws of our nation could reflect that view." Calling the country ''divided over abortion," he says states ''should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate."

YESTERDAY I vetoed a bill that the Legislature forwarded to my desk. Though described by its sponsors as a measure relating to contraception, there is more to it than that. The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception.

Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor. I pledged that I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to facilitate it. What's more, this particular bill does not require parental consent even for young teenagers. It disregards not only the seriousness of abortion but the importance of parental involvement and so would weaken a protection I am committed to uphold.

I have spoken with medical professionals to determine whether the drug contemplated under the bill would simply prevent conception or whether it would also terminate a living embryo after conception. Once it became clear that the latter was the case, my decision was straightforward. I will honor the commitment I made during my campaign: While I do not favor abortion, I will not change the state's abortion laws.

I understand that my views on laws governing abortion set me in the minority in our Commonwealth. I am prolife. I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother. I wish the people of America agreed, and that the laws of our nation could reflect that view. But while the nation remains so divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.

Because Massachusetts is decidedly prochoice, I have respected the state's democratically held view. I have not attempted to impose my own views on the prochoice majority.

For all the conflicting views on this issue, it speaks well of our country that we recognize abortion as a problem. The law may call it a right, but no one ever called it a good, and, in the quiet of conscience people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America.

You can't be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time, the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the child waiting to be born.

In some respects, these convictions have evolved and deepened during my time as governor. In considering the issue of embryo cloning and embryo farming, I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead -- to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited.

OKAY, SO ALL HIS IDEAS AREN'T BAD:

COKE FIEND BIN LADEN (DAN MANGAN, July 26, 2005, NY Post)

Osama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, spike it with poison and sell it in the United States, hoping to kill thousands of Americans one year after the 9/11 attacks, The Post has learned.

The evil plot failed when the Colombian drug lords bin Laden approached decided it would be bad for their business - and, possibly, for their own health, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the Drug Enforcement Administration's probe of the aborted transaction. The feds were told of the scheme earlier this year, but its existence had never been made public. The Post has reviewed a document detailing the DEA's findings in the matter, in addition to interviewing sources familiar with the case.

WHEN THE FLAK CATCHERS MAU-MAU:

Bush to Seek More Funding for Faith-Based Charities: He tells black leaders that he will pressure corporate foundations to adjust their policies. (Peter Wallsten, July 26, 2005, LA Times)

Embracing an old cause to open a new front in his outreach to African American church leaders, President Bush pledged Monday to pressure corporate foundations to give more money to faith-based charities.

Bush made that promise during a closed-door session at the White House with 17 black ministers and civic leaders — his second such meeting since January. [...]

The White House plans to sponsor a March summit that officials said would bring together corporate foundation leaders and faith-based social service organizations, many of which are affiliated with black churches.

Administration officials said they would focus attention on major foundations with policies limiting or forbidding donations to religious charities. Those include foundations run by Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., IBM Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Citigroup, according to each foundation's website.

"I think we can all understand their reluctance, just as we see within government a reluctance to fund a faith-based organization because you don't want money to go to preaching or proselytizing," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who arranged Monday's meeting.

Towey noted that many faith-based groups had separate accounts — one for strictly religious activities and one for social services — so that "the corporate or foundation or government money can go to the social service itself" and not the religious component.

But, he added, "while we have removed barriers [on donations to faith-based groups] at the federal level, within corporate boardrooms and foundation boardrooms, there are still barriers in place."

The focus on corporate giving mirrors the administration's bid to increase government grants to religious social service agencies. That effort, which included opening faith-based offices in at least 10 agencies, including the Labor Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was credited last year with helping Bush make political inroads with black preachers in battleground states who, in turn, helped increase the president's share of the vote among African Americans.

Although Bush has had some success in redirecting government dollars and shifting the debate about the line between church and state, he may find corporations a harder sell. Companies are loath to risk alienating customers by wading into topics as emotional as religion.

MORE:
Weiner Says He Would Increase Ties With Religious Groups (RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, 7/26/05, NY Times)

Chastising Democrats for failing to build relationships with religious groups, Anthony D. Weiner, a Democratic candidate for mayor, said yesterday that if elected he would increase the role of "faith-based" organizations in providing city services.

Mr. Weiner said Democrats should unabashedly use the term closely associated with President Bush and Republicans in Congress, who he said had used the debate over religious values in government to divide the country.

"Instead of recoiling from this word simply because President Bush has co-opted it and bastardized the term, we should seize the opportunity when it presents itself," Mr. Weiner said at a speech at the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University.

Mr. Weiner, a congressman who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, including heavily Jewish areas, said he would push for several measures to tie the city more closely to religious groups, including one to create a "nonprofit czar" to coordinate the work of religious institutions and nonprofit organizations in combating poverty, drug abuse, hunger and homelessness.

Mr. Weiner advocated changes in zoning regulations and tax incentives to make housing more affordable for large families, singling out Orthodox Jews, an important constituency for his campaign, as an example.

DEMOCRATS WANT TO AIRLIFT THEM CONDOMS (via Kevin Whited):

U.S. Pushes Anti-Terrorism in Africa: Under Long-Term Program, Pentagon to Train Soldiers of 9 Nations (Ann Scott Tyson, July 26, 2005, Washington Post)

The U.S. military is embarking on a long-term push into Africa to counter what it considers growing inroads by al Qaeda and other terrorist networks in poor, lawless and predominantly Muslim expanses of the continent.

The Pentagon plans to train thousands of African troops in battalions equipped for extended desert and border operations and to link the militaries of different countries with secure satellite communications. The initiative, with proposed funding of $500 million over seven years, covers Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia -- with the U.S. military eager to add Libya if relations improve.

The Pentagon is also assigning more military officers to U.S. embassies in the region, bolstering the gathering and sharing of intelligence, casing out austere landing strips for use in emergencies, and securing greater access and legal protections for U.S. troops through new bilateral agreements.

IT'S THE NATIVES WHO FREELOAD:

Immigrants use fewer health care services, study finds (Alana Semuels, July 26, 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Although her husband is employed, 30-year-old Pamela Ramirez still pays her health bills the same way many immigrants do -- out of her savings account.

Ramirez, of the South Side, moved here from Argentina more than four years ago. She's typical in that she costs less to the health care system than do native-born residents, according to a study published yesterday in the American Journal of Public Health.

The study found that immigrants use 55 percent less health care than non-immigrants, and that both insured and non-insured immigrants use less services than the native born.

Immigrants actually subsidize care for the rest of the population, according to the study, because they pay Medicare payroll taxes and health insurance premiums, but do not reap all the benefits of these services.

STRIP AWAY COMMUNIST MYTHS AND ALL YOU HAVE LEFT IS PILES OF CORPSES (via Robert Schwartz):

Stalin, the ghost who haunts China: Jung Chang not only demolishes Mao with her new book, she sets Beijing a new problem (Jonathan Fenby, Times of London)

Four elements lie at the heart of the Mao story. All are totally or largely false.

A key assertion is that he was a pure nationalist who put his country first and led the only true resistance to the Japanese invasion of China from 1931 to 1945. This is particularly important today, when the wilting appeal of communism has led the authorities to promote nationalism to win public support, particularly against Japan. Mao as patriotic hero is a potent recruiting sergeant.

But this new biography shows how a foreign leader, Joseph Stalin, aided and directed Mao’s rise. Halliday is a Russian expert, and has extracted a wealth of documentation from the Moscow archives. The Soviet role in establishing the Chinese Communist party around 1920 was already known, but what is new is how, despite some divergences, Mao followed Stalin’s dictates to win power.

Only the Kremlin could provide the political backing, money and arms he needed. Since Stalin played a double game in China, maintaining relations with the Nationalists and supplying Mao’s great opponent, Chiang Kai-shek, with arms, Mao’s greatest fear must have been that Moscow would desert him in the name of realpolitik. To avoid that, he kowtowed to Moscow — even after he achieved power he rose to his feet during a visit by a Soviet envoy to cry out three times “ May Stalin live ten thousand years”.

Another big hole in the Mao-as-patriot story comes during the full-scale war that broke out with Japan in 1937. Apart from one offensive, of which the Chairman disapproved, the Red Army avoided conflict, saving its resources for civil war with the Nationalists after Tokyo’s defeat. Petr Parfenovich Vladimirov, the main Soviet adviser at Mao’s headquarters, makes this evident in his diary, which was published in 1974 in India but escaped attention until recently.

Communist forces, Vladimirov noted in 1942-43, “have long been abstaining from both active and passive action against the aggressors”. Instead, they were ordered to retreat and seek truces. Visiting battle areas a little later, a US unit found that Communist units had struck non-aggression agreements with the invaders. Trade flourished across the lines.

Nor was this all. The Communists maintained contacts with the collaborationist regime set up by Japan. Mao even floated the idea of a ceasefire with Japan in northern China.

Similarly, the base from which the Chairman operated during the war years at Yenan in north China turns out to have been very different from the model society of selfless idealists portrayed in official writing, and reproduced by many western accounts. The truth was that the base writhed with political intrigue as Mao used terror and mass indoctrination to get unquestioning allegiance.

On top of this, the politburo decided to go into the opium trade. Vladimirov records a cadre telling him narcotics would “play a revolutionary vanguard role”. Trading as the Local Product Company and describing its output as “soap” in its records, the Communist drug enterprise exported millions of boxes of opium a year, supplying it to itinerant merchants or using the Red Army for transport through enemy lines. A Taiwanese researcher estimates this provided 40% of the base’s revenue.

The war against Japan over, the orthodox story is that, led by the all-wise Chairman, China’s peasants overthrew the reactionary Nationalists in a template of rural revolution. In fact, Mao had a low opinion of the peasantry, amounting to contempt. While the masses in the Communist rural areas were needed to provide manpower and act as bearers, the Chairman preferred attacking cities to waging war in the fields as the Chinese civil war unfolded after Japan’s defeat in 1945.

Initially, he was not very successful. Though it was exhausted by the long war with Japan, Chiang’s regime pushed the Communists to the far north of the country, and was poised to finish them off. At that moment, a powerful American emissary, the future secretary of state George Marshall, forced Chiang to call a truce, which allowed the Red Army to escape.

Stalin then came through as Moscow provided large quantities of supplies to the Chinese Communists. Using Russian arms and tactics, Communist forces swept south, crossed the Great Wall, took Beijing and defeated the Nationalists in an epic battle involving millions of men in east China. Despite the peasant legend, this was the victory of a modern army using American equipment captured from the Nationalists, as well as Soviet supplies — the first troops to enter Beijing rode in US trucks.

A hidden element in that victory, as Chang and Halliday lay out, was that key Nationalist generals were secret Communist agents or switched sides. These defections hammered the final nail in the Nationalist coffin and, at the end of 1949, Chiang flew to Taiwan to dream fruitlessly of reconquering the nation he had lost.

It is also clear that the most important plank in the Maoist platform is deeply worm-eaten. The year-long Long March out of southeast China to a safe haven in the north of the country in 1934-35 is extolled as one of the great heroic feats of the 20th century, in which the Red Army, under Mao’s leadership, scaled mountains, forded torrents and crossed murderous swamps as it fought off Chiang’s troops. Fanned by uncritical reports from western writers, the trek became proof of the Chairman’s genius and his natural-born aptitude to lead the cause.

The reality was that regional warlords allowed the Red Army to escape for fear that Chiang’s central government troops would set up permanent camp in their domains. The Communists killed huge numbers of peasants along the way.

Far from trekking with his men, Mao was carried on a litter. When his wife was severely wounded by shrapnel, he paid her no attention. Chang and Halliday even report that the most celebrated incident of the journey, in which intrepid soldiers were said to have climbed across the chain links of a demolished bridge above a foaming river, simply never happened. They also say that Chiang let the Communists escape because he hoped that, in return, Stalin would release his son, who was being held in Moscow.

Confronted with such a charge sheet, what would Beijing be left with if it allowed the myths to be stripped away? An inhuman dictator who cared nothing for the ideology on which the post-1949 state is supposed to be based. A revolution achieved by armed force, not popular support. A wartime leader who dealt with the enemy, and presided over a drug empire. A serial murderer who dreamt up torture methods and exulted in the suffering of victims. A man for whom relationships had no meaning, who despised the masses and who fabricated his own image for posterity.

TARGET ACQUISITION:

Bush Working to Stitch Together Political Support for Trade Deal: The White House, still short votes for CAFTA, makes side agreements with some lawmakers. (Warren Vieth and Richard Simon, July 26, 2005, LA Times)

With a congressional showdown looming on a high-profile trade pact with Central American nations, Bush administration officials scrambled Monday to negotiate side deals that might get them the two dozen or so additional votes needed to ensure passage.

By day's end, they appeared to have nailed down at least five.

"I told them this is what they needed to do to get my vote," said Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who joined with four House colleagues to seek concessions for home-state textile plants. "The bottom line is they have done everything I asked for."

Gingrey said the five Southern lawmakers were "95%" certain to support the Central American Free Trade Agreement and were waiting for final signatures on agreements to protect U.S. makers of denim cloth and trouser pockets.

Vote counters on both sides of the issue said it remained unclear whether President Bush would prevail when CAFTA came up for a vote in the House, expected Wednesday or Thursday. The Senate has approved the trade deal.

LIKE FINDING COALS IN NEW CASTLE:

Ancient phallus unearthed in cave (Jonathan Amos, 7/26/05, BBC News)

A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say.

The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000 years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura.

SOMETHING! ANYTHING! THROW US A LINE!:

Centrist Dems Urge Party to Be 'For Something' (Fox News, July 25, 2005)

"We've got to be for something..." Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack told those attending the group's conference on Monday.

DICK DURBIN, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING:

Skirmish Over a Query About Roberts's Faith (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 7/26/05, NY Times)

Congressional Republicans warned Democrats on Monday not to make Judge John G. Roberts's Roman Catholic faith an issue in his confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, reviving a politically potent theme from previous battles over judicial appointees.

The subject came up after reports about a meeting on Friday at which Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, is said to have asked Judge Roberts whether he had thought about potential conflicts between the imperatives of their shared Catholic faith and of the civil law. The discussion was described by two officials who spoke anonymously because the meeting was confidential and by a Republican senator who was briefed on their conversation.

Judge Roberts responded that his personal views would not color his judicial thinking, all three said, just as he has testified in the past.

An opinion-page article in The Los Angeles Times on Monday by Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, included an account of Mr. Durbin's question. Professor Turley cited unnamed sources saying that Judge Roberts had told Mr. Durbin he would recuse himself from cases involving abortion, the death penalty or other subjects where Catholic teaching and civil law can clash.

A spokesman for Mr. Durbin and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who spoke to Judge Roberts on Monday about the meeting, said Professor Turley's account of a recusal statement was inaccurate.

But in an interview last night, Professor Turley said Mr. Durbin himself had described the conversation to him on Sunday morning, including the statement about recusal.

MORE:
The faith of John Roberts (Jonathan Turley, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

Judge John G. Roberts Jr. has been called the stealth nominee for the Supreme Court — a nominee specifically selected because he has few public positions on controversial issues such as abortion. However, in a meeting last week, Roberts briefly lifted the carefully maintained curtain over his personal views. In so doing, he raised a question that could not only undermine the White House strategy for confirmation but could raise a question of his fitness to serve as the 109th Supreme Court justice.

The exchange occurred during one of Roberts' informal discussions with senators last week. According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).

Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.

WHICH IS WHY YOU NEED TO "MERCY KILL" THEM QUICK...:

The Awakening: Sarah Scantlin's 20-Year Journey From Coma to Silence to Breakthrough (DeNeen L. Brown, 7/24/0, Washington Post)

Up Highway 96, sometimes called the State Fair Freeway, past the cliche of wheat fields, the thicket of signs proclaiming a right to life, take a left on 23rd Avenue and you will find a very plain nursing home, where something happened that wasn't supposed to happen.

Defied man-made logic.

Resisted complicated scientific analysis.

Couldn't be explained by some of the smartest brains in the world.

Still can't.

Sarah, lying in this bed nearly 20 years, brain-damaged, blank, speechless, immobile, staring out the same window. Couldn't talk to the people who came to talk to her. Couldn't say change the channel. Couldn't say shut up. Couldn't say scratch that itch . . .

Sarah, who 20 years ago was run down by a drunk driver, the impact throwing her into the path of a second car that slammed her forehead and left her so damaged nobody understood how her body survived, let alone her mind.

Sarah. They didn't know that as she lay in that bed, with her mouth gaping, face wretched in a silent agony, body atrophying, feet gnarling, fists clenched across her chest, tight, as if she were afraid, big, blue eyes staring out like she was trapped . . . They didn't know that as she lay there, something in her brain was mending.

People came and people went. Some grew up and some grew old. Some gave up and went away, guiltily diving into their own lives as Sarah Scantlin lay in that bed. Never believing she would do anything more than lie there and stare into oblivion, or wherever it is that brain-damaged people go, hovering between now and then, nowhere and somewhere, just out of reach.

Then six months ago, Sarah came back.

Sarah spoke.

WAIT! THERE'S A PULSE!:

Tory Right rallies around faith, flag and the family: A new group of MPs has stepped into the leadership race with attack on liberals in the party ranks (Philip Webster, 7/25/05, Times of London)

CONSERVATIVE traditionalists make a ferocious counterblast against the party’s modernising wing today, arguing that “faith, the flag and family” must be central to Tory thinking if the party is to win again.

In a striking intervention in the party’s leadership race, a newly formed 25-strong group of MPs calls for the demolition of the foundations of the liberal establishment and says that the Tory party has deserted “conservative Britain”, prompting the voters to desert it.

The Cornerstone group of right-wing MPs, which recently grilled leadership hopefuls about their beliefs, is to use the contest to argue for “authentic conservatism”. Its critique of “rampant liberalism” is a barely concealed attack on some of the centre-left contenders. An obvious target is Alan Duncan, the openly gay MP, who last week quit the contest with a blast at “censorious judgmentalism from the moralising wing”. [...]

Supporters of Cornerstone include John Hayes, a former member of the Shadow Cabinet, Owen Paterson, formerly chief aide to Iain Duncan Smith, Brian Binley, Peter Bone, Julian Brazier, Douglas Carswell, William Cash, Christopher Chope, Robert Goodwill, Ian Liddell-Grainger, Andrew Rosindell, Lee Scott, Desmond Swayne and Angela Watkinson. Most of the group would be expected to support David Davis or Liam Fox in the leadership contest.

In a direct attack on the liberal modernisers, the pamphlet says: “It is unacceptable for people whose electoral success is dependent on carrying the Conservative badge to use it to conceal fundamentally unconservative attitudes. Such critics usually have little to offer as a clarion call beyond the shrill cry for ever more unbridled liberty.”

The group is also critical of the Tory election campaign, describing it as too timid about tax cuts, public service reform and family values. The leadership, the pamphlet says, framed a message barely distinguishable from Labour after relying too heavily on focus groups.

SUBTRACT '93-'94 AND HE'S BLAIR:

Clinton to Direct Creation of Democrats' Agenda (Ronald Brownstein, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

The Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of influential party moderates, named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today to direct a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton, once considered a champion of the party's left, with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.

REALIGNMENT:

Boeing in Talks with Indian Air Force To Supply F-18s (India Defence, 25/7/2005)

Boeing said on July 22 it had begun preliminary talks with India on selling and co-producing F-18 Super Hornet fighter planes, a month after New Delhi and Washington signed a far-reaching defense pact.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has plans to buy as many as 126 multi-role fighters for an estimated $9 billion, as it replaces its aging fleet of Russian-built MiG 21s.

AMERICA IN A NUTSHELL:

Foreign-born US soldiers take citizenship oath in Iraq (AFP, Jul 25, 2005)

A total of 147 foreign-born US military personnel serving in Iraq gathered inside a former Saddam Hussein palace to be granted US citizenship.

In a mass ceremony the soldiers, sailors, and airmen, along with one marine and a navy medic, simultaneously raised their right hands and swore to "support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Those sworn in as US citizens came from 46 countries, with the single largest group born in Mexico (27), followed by the Philippines (15), Jamaica (nine) and Nicaragua (eight) and Nigeria (five).

Other nations of origin included China, India, Taiwan and Vietnam. There was even one Iraqi-born soldier.

The ceremony, in the giant indoor rotunda of the Al-Faw palace, in Baghdad's Camp Victory military base, was led by Lieutenant General John Vines, the commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.

Three officials from the naturalization branch of the US Department of Homeland Security were also present.

"Welcome into that exclusive club called American citizenship," Vines told the group.

Army Specialist Maridel Cardona-Herrera, 31, who was born in the Philippines, could only find one word to describe both the event and the giant rotunda inside ornate palace where the event took place: "fantastic."

THEN I ATE SOME MORE GRASS... (via Robert Schwartz):

Breaking from the pack: History from a wolf's perspective? or a cow's? A new breed of thinkers looks beyond Homo sapiens (ALEX LICHTENSTEIN, 7/01/05, Houston Chronicle)

Forty years ago, in an intellectual revolution that accompanied the other revolts of the '60s, historians began to study the lives of working people, immigrants, women, African-Americans, Chicanos and other marginalized groups. The masses of ordinary people, previously treated as bit players in a drama staged by kings and statesmen, moved to the center of the stage.

More recently, historians have tried to assess the interior lives of other groups whose history has often been told through the voices of others -- gays in a society that privileges heterosexuality, for example, or colonial subjects of imperial states.

But once the subjective perspective of nearly every human group on the planet has become part of written history, what remains? Well, animals. Yes, what's new in history? The animal turn. Thirty years ago, in an attempt to parody the new social history, "Charles Phineas" (a pseudonym) wrote a mock essay in which he proclaimed that the history of household pets remains too much the history of their masters, revealing more about the owning society than the owned. Little did Professor Phineas imagine that a new generation of historians would eventually produce scholarship that addressed his mock complaint.

No doubt Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will have a field day with this one, but in fact animals have their own subjective history, too.

THOUGH WE'LL MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR MAD DOG 20-20 (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Americans tap wine over beer (Jennifer Harper, July 19, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

A Gallup poll released yesterday found that wine has surpassed beer and spirits as the stated drink of choice among those who imbibe.

Oh, it's not by much: 39 percent of the respondents said they drank wine most often; 36 percent drank beer. Statistically, this is a mighty close race between the dueling beverages, as the poll has a margin of error of four percentage points. [...]

Gallup also has found a "gender gap" in drinking. More than half of the male respondents -- 52 percent -- prefer beer, while only 23 percent of women preferred it.

CHANGE TO WHINE (via Robert Schwartz):

Teamsters, SEIU Bolt From AFL-CIO: Unions Are Part Of 'Change To Win Coalition' (NBC5, July 25, 2005)

It's a double jolt for organized labor.The Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union have decided to bolt the AFL-CIO.Teamsters' president James Hoffa said the AFL-CIO is taking an "opposite approach" to what's needed to strengthen the labor movement -- and that's what's prompted his organization to leave. And the Service Employees International Union -- the AFL-CIO's largest affiliate -- said it was leaving because the umbrella organization isn't changing with the times.The unions earlier announced they were boycotting the federation's convention that began Monday in Chicago, a step that was widely considered to be a precursor to leaving the federation. Two other unions -- the United Food and Commercial Workers and a group of textile and hotel workers -- also joined the boycott, a possible sign they may be the next to leave. [...]

[O]ther attendees said larger forces are swaying popular opinion."I do not believe that anybody in the AFL or any other organized labor group is at fault," said Bill Brumfield, who supports the AFL-CIO leadership. "The conservatism of the country has driven a wedge between workers and organized labor."

A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE NEXT TIME KARL MAKES THE FRONT PAGES:

White House may sidestep Dems on Bolton (TERENCE HUNT, July 25, 2005, AP)

Frustrated by Senate Democrats, the White House hinted Monday that President Bush may act soon to sidestep Congress and install embattled nominee John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations on a temporary basis. [...]

Some in Washington had expected Bush to give Bolton a recess appointment over the Senate's July Fourth break. But Republicans said negotiations with Democrats were ongoing, and a recess appointment, should it come to that, probably wouldn't occur until August. There has been no sign of a breakthrough in recent days.

WHERE'S LIZZIE GRUBMAN WHEN THE GENE POOL NEEDS HER? Kevin Whited):

Lending a Hand to Argentina's Protesters
Foreign Volunteers Glean Perspective On Globalization (Monte Reel, July 25, 2005, Washington Post)

It's not the usual sort of vacation destination, hidden away among crumbling brick bungalows on a rutted mud road. Accommodation is a bunk in an unheated room. Days are spent working without pay in a neighborhood bakery, or marching in street protests.

But for hundreds of young American and European activists, the new way to spend summer break is living and working among Argentina's piqueteros, or picketers -- the protest marchers who have filled the streets of many cities and towns since the country's massive economic collapse in 2001.

In this ragged neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the college-age visitors say, globalization is more than a vague concept to be criticized from abroad. Here, they say, it has caused real problems and sparked creative solutions.

"In the U.S., you might have a big protest of 200,000 people in Washington, and then everything just goes away," said Tessa Lee, 20, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But I heard that here in Argentina, they were getting things done. That's why I came."

PERMANENTIZATION:

Parties Are Tracking Your Habits: Though both Democrats and Republicans collect personal information, the GOP's mastery of data is changing the very nature of campaigning. (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, July 24, 2005, LA Times)

At first glance, Felicia Hill seems to fit the profile of a loyal Democrat: She is African American, married to a General Motors union worker and voted for Dukakis, Clinton and Gore in past presidential elections.

But in the weeks before election day 2004, the suburban mother of two was deluged with telephone calls, invitations and specially targeted mailings urging her to support President Bush.

The intense Republican courtship of Hill, 39, was no coincidence.

A deeper look at her lifestyle and politics reveals a voter who might be persuaded to switch sides. Among the clues: she is a church member uneasy about abortion; she lives in a growing suburb and she sent her children to a private school.

Hill and millions of other would-be Bush backers in closely contested states were identified by a GOP database that culled information ranging from the political basics, like party registration, to the personal, such as the cars they drive, the drinks they buy, even the features they order on their phone lines. The "micro-targeting" effort was so effective that the party credited it with helping to secure Bush's reelection.

In Ohio, which tipped the election to Bush, the Republican strategy helped boost African American support for the president by seven percentage points over his 2000 performance, securing the state for the president. It drew millions of Republican voters to the polls in every battleground state.

Nationally, Republicans said, the targeting produced a 10 percentage point increase for Bush among evangelicals, nine points among Latinos, four points in big cities, three points in labor-union households and five points among Catholics — all groups that were wooed by both parties.

Both parties have long collected information on voters. But the sophistication of the GOP effort is now so clearly superior that it has given Republicans an edge in an area that had been a Democratic strength: identifying sympathetic voters and getting them to the polls.

Democrats will be especially vulnerable in the next two national election cycles: In 2006, they will have to defend more congressional and Senate seats than they did in 2004; and several states viewed as competitive in past presidential elections are increasingly viewed as GOP turf for 2008.

Hill said the campaign outreach effort had such an effect on her that she was unable to decide who to vote for until she was in the booth. She ultimately chose Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry over Bush. But Hill said she was now open to Republican arguments in a way she never was before.

For the first time, she sees the GOP as a place where black women can be comfortable

"I saw people I could relate to," she said, describing conversations she had with Republican professional women during telephone outreach calls and at party events. During one campaign event in Dayton, the president was introduced by Hill's friend Donald K. McLaurin, the black mayor of suburban Trotwood.

"I saw families there who seemed like our family, and I found that their ideology lined up with mine," she said.

Such sentiments signal progress for the Republican Party as it seeks to achieve the goal set by White House strategist Karl Rove of building a majority that will last well into the 21st century.

SHE WANTS TO BE BILL, NOT TED:

HILLARY CLINTON TO SUPPORT BUSH COURT NOMINEE (Drudge Report, 7/24/05)

Senator Hillary Clinton has confided to associates that she intends to vote FOR Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. [...]

With her support of Roberts, Clinton ignores pressure from the reactionary-activist wing of the Democrat party.

"She is simply doing what is right for the country, not MOVEON.ORG," the Clinton insider explained.

QUEER SORT OF LAME:

Congressional Negotiators Are Nearing Agreement on Broad Energy Measure (CARL HULSE, 7/25/05, NY Times)

With strong encouragement from the White House, top House and Senate negotiators said Sunday that they were nearing a final agreement on a broad energy bill that would drop a plan to protect producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from lawsuits over water pollution.

The apparent settlement of the MTBE issue moves Congress closer to enacting an energy bill than it has been in years. [...]

The Republicans who lead the House and Senate energy committees, Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, told participating lawmakers on Sunday that they hoped to resolve most of the remaining issues by Monday and present a bill to Mr. Bush before Congress adjourns for the summer on Friday. [...]

Congressional approval of an energy measure would end a long stalemate and provide some satisfaction to Mr. Bush, who took over the White House in 2001 discussing his desire to reshape the nation's energy policy. Regional disputes and environmental objections have thwarted the efforts, even after a major blackout hit the Northeast and Midwest in the summer of 2003.

Hoping to spur lawmakers, Mr. Bush talked to the four chief negotiators in a conference call on Sunday, and aides said Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman had also weighed in.

If enacted, the energy bill would set new rules intended to make the nation's electrical supply more reliable; provide billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to oil and gas producers, as well as to the wind, solar and geothermal industries; encourage construction of nuclear power plants; and finance research into other energy sources.

THE COUPLE WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE:

Senate Panel to Examine Use of Cover by U.S. Spies (SCOTT SHANE, 7/25/05, NY Times)

The Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct hearings on American spy agencies' use of cover to protect the identities of intelligence officers, the committee chairman said on Sunday.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said on the CNN program "Late Edition" that the committee was "going to go into quite a series of hearings in regard to cover." The practice of intelligence cover has come under scrutiny during the investigation of the disclosure of the C.I.A. employment of Valerie Wilson, who had worked under cover for the agency for 18 years before being publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative in 2003.

"You cannot be in the business of outing somebody" working under cover, Mr. Roberts said. He said, however, there were questions about the depth of Ms. Wilson's cover, because she had been based at the Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency at least since 1997.

"I must say from a common-sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the C.I.A. headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," Mr. Roberts said.

WITTENBURG WEST:

Homegrown Risk Worries U.S. Muslims (Larry B. Stammer, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

In the wake of London bombings that point to homegrown terrorists, American Muslim leaders are increasing their efforts to determine why some Muslim youths are drawn to violence and how to divert them from radical influences. [...]

U.S. Muslim organizations and leaders have long disavowed terrorism and the killing of innocents as alien to mainstream Islam. Just this month, for example, the Council on American Islamic Relations announced yet another public relations campaign to denounce terrorism, this one with the theme, "Not in the Name of Islam." But that message is chiefly directed at the U.S. public.

Since the July 7 London bombings that killed 56 — including four British Muslims presumed to be suicide bombers — and Thursday's similar but less damaging attacks, Muslim leaders said they would focus directly on their own young people and why a small minority may be attracted to a virulent interpretation of their faith that has abetted terrorism.

Muslim leaders are also examining other reasons why youths may be disaffected. On Saturday, for example, an estimated 120 Muslims listened intently at a forum at Cal State Northridge that grappled with a major dilemma faced by many second-generation Muslim youths — "American or Muslim." Chantal Carnes, a 30-year-old American convert to the faith, spoke of a generation gap between many Muslim youths in the U.S. and their parents that makes it difficult for young Muslims to fully integrate into American life.

"Some parents need to recognize their kids are part of this society," she said. "They need to pass on their Muslim identity but recognize the American identity is there also," she said in an interview.

Muslim youths, she told the audience, do not sit on the boards of most mosques or other Muslim organizations. Most of the 1,800 full-time Islamic parochial schools in the U.S. do not require their students to be involved in community service projects, such as volunteering at soup kitchens, as do many public schools and parochial schools of other faiths.

"Our presence in the world is to be an active, positive presence," she told the group.

Similar efforts are underway elsewhere. In Virginia, the Muslim American Society said it would intensify its work with youths and expand youth training programs to encourage volunteerism, community service and overall civic engagement.

The Muslim Students Assn. said last week that it had begun to forge closer ties with other mainstream Islamic groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, based in Los Angeles, and the Islamic Society of North America. At the urging of the Los Angeles group, the student association issued a statement pledging to be "steadfast in combating this ideology of hatred" among its own constituency.

AS CLINTON PREPARED TO BE PRESIDENT...:

Roberts Was Ready at Every Turn: High Court Nominee's Fortunes Called Result of Being Well-Prepared, Focused (Richard A. Serrano, David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

Three Republican presidents have shepherded him at the White House. Two powerful federal judges have mentored him in the law. And one of the capital's most prestigious law firms helped make him a millionaire. At every step in his 25-year legal career in Washington, it seems good fortune has traveled with him.

Even his first appearance in the nation's capital, where as a young man he'd walk each morning from his cramped Capitol Hill apartment to his new job as a Supreme Court clerk, could not have been timed more fortuitously.

The year was 1980, the dawn of the Reagan revolution.

His boss was William H. Rehnquist, the future chief justice of the United States.

And for a young conservative, bright but conforming, modest and deeply religious, a workaholic content with weekends in the office, the only son of a steel plant manager, raised on the shore of Lake Michigan, John G. Roberts Jr. had arrived.

A quarter-century later, Harvard-educated and Washington-trained, at age 50 he now stands on the brink of where he seems to have been headed all along. President Bush nominated him last week to the Supreme Court.

"Opportunity is important. Chance is important," said Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.), a classmate of Roberts at Harvard Law School. "But opportunity and chance also favor the prepared mind. And he's clearly the kind of person who was prepared to serve."

WE'VE GOT AN AWFUL LOT OF MEANS THOUGH:

Spending Cap Called Key to National Plan: Conservatives say an initiative on California's November ballot could, like Prop. 13, propel similar measures now brewing across the U.S. (Evan Halper, July 25, 2005, LA Times)

The cap on state spending that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants voters to pass in November is emerging as a centerpiece of a nationwide strategy by influential conservatives to slash government spending in state capitals across the country.

Although the authors of the California proposal say they were not influenced by out-of-state groups, a loose affiliation of ideologically conservative organizations are hoping that the proposed California "Live Within Our Means Act" will help fuel a national taxpayer revolt they are working to coordinate in more than two dozen other states.

"This is the next big thing at the state level," said Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, one of the country's leading anti-tax activists. "A lot of groups have become involved…. Soon you will see it on the ballot in every initiative state."

The California "Live Within Our Means Act" would prevent the budget from growing faster than the average increases in state revenues over the previous three years. Other states have taken somewhat different approaches, prohibiting budget growth that is faster than the rate of population and inflation or personal income.

WHO WILL TELL TEXEIRIA?:

Opposition to Roberts slow to muster: Nominee's record isn't generating storm of liberals (Rick Klein, July 25, 2005, Boston Globe)

Appellate judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court has caused an early splintering among liberal groups who were geared up for an epic battle against President Bush's nominee, providing momentum to Republican-led efforts to have Roberts quickly confirmed in the Senate.

Among prominent liberal groups, only abortion rights advocates and far-left groups such as MoveOn.org are now opposed to Roberts outright. Others -- including some of the most influential environmental, civil rights, and consumer advocacy groups -- are critical of him but say they will reserve judgment for now.

While powerful interest groups on the political left may ultimately coalesce to oppose him, early indications suggest that Democrats who seek to defeat Roberts cannot depend on the liberal lobbying and financial juggernaut that helped deny conservative Robert Bork a seat on the high court in 1987. [...]

With Republican-allied groups united and stepping up their campaign to see Roberts confirmed by the Oct. 3 start of the next court session, fractures among organizations that have traditionally been allied with Democrats could ease the way for the GOP-controlled Senate to confirm Roberts.

A LABOR ARTIFACT:

State GOP sows seeds in hope of 2008 victory: Republican workers raise funds and point out the vulnerability of Gov. Granholm, senators. (George Weeks, 7/24/05, The Detroit News)

Republicans, after the 1991-2002 reign of Gov. John Engler, control the Legislature and the Michigan Supreme Court. Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Attorney General Mike Cox are well-positioned for re-election on the GOP ticket.

But no Republican presidential nominee since 1988 has carried Michigan, and the state's political Big Three are Democrats: Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. We're deep blue on the national political map.

Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman, at the conclusion of his two-day Michigan cheerleading and fund-raising blitz last week, vowed that "seeds of success" have been planted to oust "the vulnerable" Granholm and Stabenow in 2006 and deliver Michigan for the 2008 presidential nominee.

SHE HAD TO BE A KETTLEWELL, HUH?:

Butterfly unlocks evolution secret (Julianna Kettlewell, 7/24/05, BBC News)

Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin.

Given our planet's rich biodiversity, "speciation" clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it.

Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species.

The team, from Harvard University, US, discovered that closely related species living in the same geographical space displayed unusually distinct wing markings.

These wing colours apparently evolved as a sort of "team strip", allowing butterflies to easily identify the species of a potential mate.

For me, this is a big discovery just because the system is very beautiful
Dr Nikolai Kandul, Harvard University
This process, called "reinforcement", prevents closely related species from interbreeding thus driving them further apart genetically and promoting speciation.

SO WHO SHOULD WE GIVE BOOKS TO?:

EXCERPT: from The Washing Machine: : How Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Soils Us (Nick Kochan)

Our friends at FSB Associates are sending a few extra copies, can anyone figure out a Supreme Court giveaway? I suppose we could just have a drawing from among folks who pick the nominee correctly. Only one pick per person please.

Introduction

Part One:

World at risk

Our security depends on it. Our way of doing trade with trust is based on it. Global economic activity with nations relies on it. Money must be earned and spent fairly and openly. By the same token, money that is earned illegally or is unaccountable, must be excluded from the economic system. Its possessors must be apprehended. That is the money laundering mantra. Those who wage the war against economic crime are working harder than ever to stem the tide of black money as acquisitive crime threatens to get out of control.

The criminal who possesses black money and wants to pass it off as legitimate must fabricate an explanation to make the source look genuine. These tricksters make friends with corrupt elements in the financial system. They will hide their money so that it becomes untraceable to those who may want to hunt it. As more people or financial institutions handle money with dirty origins, those origins can be lost. And criminals are caught and convicted by the dirty money they possess.

So who are the elements in our society who close their eyes to criminal money? Most are those who committed the crime in the first place. There are four key groups. They are global corporations engaged in fraud; corrupt governments and their politicians who accept bribes; organized criminals who trade in drugs and other illegal goods; and terrorists. These are nebulous forces, and there will be those who say much talk of global money laundering is fuelled by paranoia and even hysteria. But tyrants have triumphed by having their money laundered, drug gangs have ruined countries by passing their money through complicit banks, terrorists have waged wars on the financial system to fund their outrages and companies have made themselves available to organized criminals in a Faustian laundering pact. Laundering is as sinister as it is ubiquitous.

Global Corporations

Those who perpetrate bankruptcies, frauds, huge share scams and bogus schemes like Enron and WorldCom -- not to mention executives at the Bank of New York, Citibank, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International involved in laundering scandals -- exploit the crevices within the financial systems of which they are themselves integral, even cartelistic parts. Launderers who work inside the gate undermine structures of governance and trust. Economic systems rely on the integrity of those who administer them and those who regulate them. When these key roles are shown to have been suborned by bankers in smart suits, as well as crooks and conmen, all participants in the economic system are weakened.

Global corporations are in many ways the most powerful, and certainly the wealthiest of the three groups listed above. Criminals need the services provided by global corporations especially banks and other financial institutions, to move and clean their money. Criminals and corrupt politicians in developing countries and the former Soviet Union look to Western banks for a huge array of devices that include offshore companies and tax structures, false names for their bank accounts, and lawyers and accountants for their complex financial structures. Some banks will provide them willingly, satisfying the authorities with the formalities of due diligence that have increased in volume in recent years in response to the perceived terrorist threat to the economic system.

Global corporations are driven by competitive pressures to spread into risky new markets and deal with unknown and possibly criminal counterparties. When doing business in many parts of the world contact with corruption and illegality is hard to avoid. Organized criminal groups grow and feed off the enforcement vacuum in many developing countries and these groups have reached positions of such political and economic power that they can determine the conditions under which Western companies do business within their markets. Trade with these criminal entities becomes a condition of entry into the market or country.

These criminal groups also extract a price for their collusion and the world's largest global banks and businesses move illegal wealth at the behest of launderers, creating a money laundering merry-go-round that sneaks black cash between the crevices of corporate and banks' anti-money laundering systems.

Huge financial ingenuity may be employed to create these deceptions but launderers understand the system at least as well as those who work in it legitimately, and often better. They use the language and instruments of the legitimate system to explain the provenance of their wealth. They are capable of sending stolen money along the same byways as legitimately gained wealth, harnessing technical developments such as the global electronic movement of money and complex financial derivatives. By diverting funds across borders or within financial or governmental institutions, they dodge police who challenge the validity or history of their illegal financial documents or instruments. Their corrupt money mingles with the hard-earned funds of genuine citizens who pay their taxes and trust their banks.

But however it comes about, when dirty wealth is moved, the bank participates in a theft, even if it has been duped by a criminal who is skilled at hiding the source of his funds. The maker of the corrupt or fraudulent money and the financial institution who helps moves it are equally complicit in a process, where both parties are conspirators, in both parts of the activity.

The processes that are apparently lawful are corrupted the more the corporation abuses the trust placed in its systems. The Western way of doing business and moving wealth becomes increasingly suspect as more criminal money is moved into the system. Turning the blind eye to the dubious transaction has become the norm for business in many parts of the world. Corporations benefit from money laundering by investing dirty money for fraudsters as well as hiding it in off-shore accounts. Either way, they will be beneficiaries when they gain a fee, paid from crooked funds.

Governments

The fruits of money laundering find most fertile ground where corruption is rife. Corruption not only puts dirty money into the hands of politicians through bribery, but corrupt politicians are exposed to extortion from mafiosi. Those hoodlums may be small-time hoodlums or they may be oligarchs (including most dramatically, but not exclusively, Russians) at the other. The two forms of black money-transfer link together in a vicious cycle of corruption.

Hoodlums that have obtained great wealth can make their position sustainable. The intelligent ones can acquire the trappings of honesty. They are in our midst and have achieved the status where they are considered 'upright citizens'. Money launderers operating on this global scale have great intellectual ability. They are also intriguing and complex personalities. Friends of Victor Bout say he is charming, very talented and gregarious. He hobnobs well with powerful politicians, attracting admiration and trading favors with aplomb. Other Russian money launderers have demonstrated considerable intellectual ability in an academic context before turning their cerebral firepower towards breaking down the financial system's controls.

Western institutions have been content to treat with mafia, intelligence agencies and private individuals who have gained access to newly privatised state industries in countries experiencing economic and political change. The speed and efficiency with which the West has absorbed capital released from the bankrupt former Soviet Union over the last decade is a remarkable case study in how financial manipulation can be institutionalized. Established banks in the West collaborated with some dubious operators in Russia in a systematic process of pillaging that took place under the noses of politicians both in Russia and in the United States.

Both countries' political elites had reason to turn a blind eye to this criminal activity; Western politicians were still exercised by the Communist bogey and treated the launderers and conmen who came out from under the Russian dungheap when Communism expired, as legitimate entrepreneurs. Russian politicians were content to let the scams continue because they were corrupt and in the crooks' pockets. Those who were disturbed by what they saw had no means to reverse it because the country's administrative systems were in a shambles.

Intelligence agencies handling and distributing black money on behalf of their governments have the greatest opportunity to influence unstable regimes. Indeed, some argue that these shadowy groups are among the most active of all money launderers. The financial resources possessed by Oliver North, the architect of the Iran-Contra affair, puts him into the top echelon of money launderers, even though he was arguably guided by a political mission rather than personal enrichment.

Organized Gangs and 'Terrorists'

Organized criminal gangs have grown rich on the proceeds of the drugs trade or other contraband. This money has then been ploughed back into other criminal activity such as counterfeiting and the movement of people, the transportation of asylum seekers or economic migrants, and the trade in human body parts. The more established parts of organized criminal gangs seek to make investments in the 'legitimate' economy, by buying companies or real estate. The less established parts, the 'parvenus,' are likely to trade in illegal arms where commissions and profits are massive.

A key customer for arms and material are groups perpetrating political violence. These are easily defined as 'terrorists,' but definitions are difficult as the term can not be applied to groups seeking to overthrow illegitimate regimes. Definitions are equally problematic when describing terrorist money. This is because the money used by these groups may have legitimate origins -- for instance from individual charitable donations or government funds. Whatever the case, in recent years we have seen growing political pressure on law enforcers to intercept this form of money as its significance on the stability of the social and political system is so much more direct and evident.

The 'war against terrorism' as it was dubbed after September 11, led to new attack on the 'hidey holes' used by criminals involved in fraud and financial deception. But like so much of the Patriot Act, the authorities appear to have applied the machine gun -- kill everything -- approach other than the rifle approach aimed to thwarting terrorism. The red flags of criminal money-making differ from those thrown up by terrorist money-making, because the first shows exploitation of the financial system for acquisitive ends. Most terrorist money, on the other hand, is spent in the black market buying arms, while small amounts are used to support terrorists while they prepare an illegal act. The first form of purchase is not applicable to conventional anti-money laundering solutions because such deals take place only in the black market. The second are unlikely to trigger suspicion because the amounts are very small and the transactions unlikely to be particularly complex. Today's anti-money laundering policies are convenient and cheap for governments as they place most of the burden on the legitimate banking and financial system. However, as this short analysis demonstrates, they are of questionable relevance to terrorist financing.

Intelligence agencies working in conjunction with police are likely to be more effective in stopping terrorist trade than banks as they can intercept the money flows between donors and terrorist groups. These take place in the underground economy, and intelligence agencies may be able to spot suspicious movements of cash or other valuable items like diamonds by using other participants in the black economy as sources. For example criminal gangs in the jewellery industry might be persuaded to work with intelligence agencies in breaking the link between the terrorist donor and the operating terrorists on the ground. Those money flows may issue suspicious signals if the donor creates complex trails to divert attention from his interest in the terrorist group.

The Size of the Black Economy

The players in the money laundering merry-go-round are clear enough. But what sort of money do they handle, and where do they put it. The amounts are as vast as they are unquantifiable. Many inflated figures are proposed to scare governments, populations and bankers. But here are a few that may be more trustworthy. For example, The International Monetary Fund has estimated that drug use alone accounts for 5 percent of the global gross domestic product of some $33 trillion. That is some $1.65 trillion. Much of this acquired and laundered by organized criminal groups.

It is further estimated that $100 billion of illegal money moves annually from the 'undeveloped' world to the 'developed' world through illegal trade. This is pay into, or through global corporations.

These two numbers do not include the many unquantifiable figures like the value of trade in illegal arms, the payment of illegal commissions on those arms deals and the value of illegal trade in precious stones. They further do not include the amount spent by terrorists or the amount lost to the world's economy through fraud and counterfeiting. It would probably not underestimate the scale of the problem to say that $2.5 trillion is now swilling around the black economy as well as white.

The Victims of Laundering

Those who secretly manipulate the sources and movement of money affect the security of nations and the wealth of people. We are all victims. Money laundering affects everybody who participates in the world's economy. It is a salutary thought that a large number of the currency notes that pass through our hands have been subject to laundering by crooks or their intermediaries, even though we may be using the money for quite legitimate purposes.

Dirty money is thus a tax on the global economy as well as a threat to the stability of the weaker parts of the global system. It is no exaggeration I say that the combined cost of money lost to governments through tax together with the cost to the economic system of imposing anti-money laundering controls amounts to 10 cents in every dollar of income.

When major financial or commercial institutions with a global reach handle criminal money, the wider economy is debased, and social and political structures devalued. Money laundering by criminal or terrorist groups also has far-reaching implications for the world's security.

However, perhaps the biggest losers are the ordinary inhabitants of developing countries. Skillful operators in the developing world apply the tools of finance to steal from their home countries. Wealth that has been criminally obtained, whether by bribery or fraud, needs to be hidden and moved if it is to be enjoyed or re-used. There are many reasons for this. Politicians in unstable countries fear that a government will be changed and their records and bank accounts examined; fraudsters are vulnerable to investigation by police or tax authorities.

Western financing schemes hollow out the wealth of poor countries, leaving behind economic deserts and volatile forces bent on political instability. This form of wealth transfer by deception benefits a few sharp or crooked entrepreneurs to the detriment of the larger economy. Ironically, it is most likely to occur in countries where there is least economic activity. If there were more economic activity in these countries, it might be argued there would be less scope or need for laundering as the financial system would be more dynamic and the regulators more powerful. So if the countries of Africa where diamonds are mined had their own viable diamonds markets, would sharp local operators need to ship them off to Antwerp or Beirut under the cover of bogus companies, to launder them?

Short term theft has long-term implications for these poor countries. As we have seen, mafiosi and oligarchs use their illegally gained prosperity stored outside the country in secret offshore centers to rebuild their local reputations, and so wipe out the evidence of how the wealth was obtained. The shrewdest will take political office and run their criminal businesses under the cover of legitimate authority. The most ruthless will use criminal gangs to create a rule of fear and extortion in economic sectors.

These scenarios are particularly ominous as they destroy trust in political and civilian leadership. Governments that are 'up for sale' to the highest bidder must be prone to terrorist or mafia intervention, as we saw in Afghanistan where an alliance between drugs dealers and terrorists brought us the Taliban and then Al Qaida.Vulnerable countries are also in hoc to international banks, that supported the leaders on their way up, and now extract their pound or dollar of flesh when their man is in charge.

Attacking Laundering

Western governments and multilateral bodies have understood these dangers and sought to introduce some standards into banks' relationships with politicians and those close to them. These standards are embodied in the Wolfsberg Principles and all large banks subscribe to them. The implementation of such standards -- however patchy -- offers the best hope for poor countries eager to rebuild their economies without the depredations of mafia and their Western abetters.

Tax officials and police encounter these cheats and subject them to criminal trials. The penalties for money laundering, especially when drugs are involved, are very heavy. But in recent years, the financial police have turned their attention to another criminal use of the money-go-round. These are terrorists and others who perpetrate violence for political ends. Financial police -- tax officials, police detectives, customs agents, bank money laundering reporting officers and the like -- have been charged with examining suspicious money movements for terrorist links. This new dimension has dramatically raised the profile of economic crime and investigation from a discipline that was performed by a few specialized -- and often under-funded boffins -- to one that has come to pre-occupy every professional who handles money. Money laundering rules are their constant concern.

Today, the bank manager, the accountant, the lawyer, the estate agent, the seller of expensive yachts . . . you name it, is required to ask his customer about the source of his money. The money laundering mantra that prevails in this 'enforcement area' is the need to 'know your customer'. This process of acquiring 'knowledge' is performed by asking a series of questions about the bona fides of the money and the business activity which produced it. Clients interrogated in this way are often offended, whether or not they have anything to hide. It will also be argued that the time involved puts an additional cost on doing business and that is an economic burden on the economy. The inconvenience and bad feeling will be a small price to pay if this process of interrogation and due diligence succeeds in staunching the growing amounts of funds lost through acquisitive crime and fraud; allegedly two thirds of all reported crime is acquisitive. The 'know-your-customer' system, if it works effectively, not only puts the authorities on the tracks of those planning to behave dishonestly, but also deters would-be crooks from embarking on their schemes.

The need for the system to 'know its customers' has another, much more general context. The huge sums of money handled today by a machine or computer in a digital form has lowered levels of accountability and scrutiny and opened the way for abuse. When a criminal enters the system, computerization allows him to move greater amounts of money faster than was ever possible when money was in a intangible, note form. Interrogation of those participating in this 'immaterial' system introduces a personal element that has been lost as computers have taken over.

But will the imposition of today's money laundering regimes help to prevent orchestrated and elaborate abuse? Checks by banks may stop low-level fraud but, arguably, have much less impact on high-level and well-financed criminal activity.

Massive money laundering is likely to be performed by crooks and organized crime gangs operating through large companies and banks and it is highly unlikely the form-filling, 'tick-in-the-box' type controls involved in much anti-money laundering supervision will affect the well-financed and sophisticated crook.

Financial secrecy and manipulation are today viewed as the genie that escaped from the bottle during the free-wheeling 1980s and 1990s. Returning it to captivity is a vast task for law enforcement, let alone the governments that sponsor them.

Launderers menace a stable and fair society. The importance of keeping them outside the gate has never been greater. Likewise the need for a clearer and more focused system of regulation is paramount. Laws passed round the globe since September 11 (not to mention those passed before and largely ignored), have given the authorities greater powers to tap phones, investigate individual and corporate bank accounts and seize illegally obtained wealth. Enforcement authorities also now encounter fewer obstacles now than before September 11 to cross-border collaboration. They face an unprecedented opportunity to attack money laundering and seize criminal and terrorist wealth.

But there is a cost to society and the individual entailed in this extension of power. The rights to privacy from state intrusion have been diminished as a result of anti-money laundering powers. This has been accepted by governments round the world in the arguable interest of security and the greater good of society. As a result, money laundering is much more likely to be cited as a pretext for 'fishing expeditions' where the police seek to obtain confidential documents referring to an individual's financial affairs without a specific cause. Worse still, police authorities, acting on a governmental agenda, may seek to use money laundering legislation to gain evidence from banks to pry into the affairs of political dissidents. The very nebulousness of the money laundering controls and legislation risks obstructing efforts by those pursued by the authorities to challenge the validity of this process.

The world watches and awaits a clampdown that is commensurate with the risks it now faces from money launderers, corrupt governments, criminal gangs and terrorists. It is paramount that the law enforcement authorities attack not merely the small fry but the ring leaders of crime and the dirty dictators. If these heinous operators are stripped of their wealth and liberty as a result of the new money laundering regimes, few would deny they had served a worthy purpose. If, on the other hand, those new laws add to the cost of doing legitimate business without the payback in terms of a growing number of convictions, leading to improved levels of honesty and integrity, anti-money laundering will be regarded as no-more than dead letters. Criminals will march on and society will have been shown to be powerless in touching their illegal wealth and systems. The opportunity to turn back the march of the vicious and greedy gangs will have been lost, and respect for proper ways of doing business will be diminished. To say the very future of the economic system is at risk, is no exaggeration.

DEATH THROES:

Taliban recruiting children in desperation (Associated Press, July 24, 2005)

Fierce fighting in recent months has devastated the ranks of the Taliban, prompting the rebels to recruit children and force some families to provide one son to fight with them, a US commander said.

MARGINALIA:

French happy, but wary (PRANAY SHARMA, 7/23/05, The Telegraph of India)

France is happy the US is finally ready to accept India as a responsible nuclear state — a line it claims the French leadership has been advocating for seven years. But it is not sure if the growing Indo-US ties will be at its expense and reduce France to being a marginal player in the subcontinent.

200 YEARS OF DENYING RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN LIVES IS ENOUGH:

After London, Tough Questions for Muslims (Mona Eltahawy, July 24, 2005, Washington Post)

[T]he London bombings did it for me. Or maybe it's the knowledge that the more these faceless cowards strike, the more Muslim men in the West like my brother are pushed onto the stage of suspicion. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ehab -- who spends virtually all of his time caring for his cardiology patients or fulfilling his role as husband and father -- was one of the 5,000 Muslim men questioned by the FBI; two years later he was among the thousands more who had to submit to being fingerprinted and photographed as part of a special registration.

But most of all, the London bombings rid me of all patience with the excuse that "George Bush [or Tony Blair or take your pick of Western leaders] made me do it." We don't know who was behind Thursday's explosions, but an Arab analyst told a satellite channel that if Blair hadn't learned the mistake of the Iraq war, these new attacks were a firm reminder.

I never bought the explanation that U.S. foreign policy had "brought on" the Sept. 11 attacks, and I certainly don't buy the idea that the Iraq war is behind the attacks in London. Many people across the world have opposed U.S. and British foreign policy, but that doesn't mean they are rushing to fly planes into buildings or to blow up buses and Underground trains in London.

I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I'm done with the "George Bush made me do it" excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out.

And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is at least in some way bigoted to think that Muslims can only react violently?

MORE:

Muslims' vigil for bomb victims (BBC, 7/24/05)

British Muslims remembered those who died in London's bomb attacks at a silent vigil on Sunday.

Organised by the British Pakistani Psychiatrists Association, it was held in Hyde Park, near Marble Arch.

A spokesman said it was important that British Muslims showed they were "law abiding and patriotic".

GUESS WHO'S NOT CRUSADING...AGAIN:

Where the Right Is Right (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 7/24/05, NY Times)

Liberals took the lead in championing human rights abroad in the 1970's, while conservatives mocked the idea. But these days liberals should be embarrassed that it's the Christian Right that is taking the lead in spotlighting repression in North Korea.

Perhaps no country in human history has ever been as successful at totalitarianism as North Korea. Koreans sent back from China have been herded like beasts, with wires forced through their palms or under their collarbones. People who steal food have been burned at the stake, with their relatives recruited to light the match. Then there was the woman who was a true believer and suggested that the Dear Leader should stop womanizing: after she was ordered executed, her own husband volunteered to pull the trigger.

"The biggest scandal in progressive politics," Tony Blair told The New Yorker this year, "is that you do not have people with placards out in the street on North Korea. I mean, that is a disgusting regime. The people are kept in a form of slavery, 23 million of them, and no one protests!"

Actually, some people do protest. Conservative Christians have aggressively taken up the cause of North Korean human rights in the last few years, and the movement is gathering steam.

BAD TRAINING

Police admit 'tragic' error: the man we shot on the Tube was no terrorist (Andrew Alderson, Charlotte Edwardes and David Harrison, Telegraph, 7/24/05)

Scotland Yard was facing a severe crisis last night after it admitted that the man shot dead at Stockwell Tube station on Friday morning had no links to terrorist attacks on the capital.

The victim, a Brazilian, was shot five times in the head as he ran on to an Underground train pursued by armed officers, including members of SO19, Scotland Yard's specialist firearms unit.

The Metropolitan police named him as Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, an electrician from Minas Gerais who was living in Scotia Road, Stockwell, with three cousins. He is an innocent victim of a new "shoot to kill" policy under which officers have been told to shoot at the head if they believe they are confronting a suicide bomber. . . .

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said on Friday that the man was "challenged and refused to obey police instructions". The shooting was "directly linked" to anti-terror operations. . . .

It is believed that Mr de Menezes, who is thought to have spoken good English, may have been working illegally in Britain for up to four years. He is thought to have panicked when confronted by armed men as he was about to buy a Tube ticket at about 10am. Witnesses said that he hurdled the ticket barrier, ran down the escalator and stumbled into a carriage.

Three armed officers who pounced on him, might have thought his padded jacket contained explosives. One of them shot five bullets from a handgun into his head in front of horrified passengers. . . .

One senior source said last night: "We were led to an address in Stockwell by documents found in the abandoned rucksacks and by our intelligence. This house, which now appears to be a multi-occupancy address, was put under surveillance." . . .

TOO BRITISH:

Will anyone rise to take al-Qaeda's bait? (FRASER NELSON, 7/24/05, Scotland on Sunday)

THE VOICE of Muslim Britain seems almost provocative in the opinion sampled so far. A quarter claim some sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of those who carried out the attacks, and 6% consider the July 7 attacks justified.

But widen the focus to look at British political opinion, and the picture is not much different. When ICM asked the country at large, three-quarters thought Tony Blair was to some degree responsible for the suicide bombings.

WHO SNUCK ATTACKED WHOM?:

52% of Japanese don't trust U.S. government (Japan Times, 7/24/05)

More than half of the Japanese public doesn't trust the U.S. government, but 59 percent of Americans consider Tokyo trustworthy, according to a joint public perception survey by Kyodo News and the Associated Press.

THOSE PERCENTAGES LIKELY HOLD FOR THE NATION AS A WHOLE (via Robert Schwartz):

One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists (Anthony King, 23/07/2005, Daily Telegraph)

The group portrait of British Muslims painted by YouGov's survey for The Daily Telegraph is at once reassuring and disturbing, in some ways even alarming.

The vast majority of British Muslims condemn the London bombings but a substantial minority are clearly alienated from modern British society and some are prepared to justify terrorist acts.

The divisions within the Muslim community go deep. Muslims are divided over the morality of the London bombings, over the extent of their loyalty to this country and over how Muslims should respond to recent events.

Most Muslims are evidently moderate and law-abiding but by no means all are.

CAN'T WIN THOSE RACES EITHER:

Democrats Are on the Wrong Battlefield (Colbert I. King, July 23, 2005, Washington Post)

If John Roberts is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, as now seems likely -- barring a shocker in his record or his past -- the reasons he made it won't be solely his résumé or the support of President Bush. The groundwork for Roberts's elevation to the high court -- and the likelihood of success for future Bush Supreme Court nominees -- was laid nearly three years ago in Georgia, Minnesota and Missouri, and last November in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana and South Dakota, when Republicans captured eight Democratic Senate seats.

Today, with Republicans holding 55 seats and having a good chance of landing the votes of some Democrats, the White House enters the Supreme Court fights in excellent shape. That thought alone has some in Washington seized with myocardial infarctions. But they have only themselves to blame.

Self-designated as a government in exile, Democratic Party activists have spent recent election cycles working their fannies off for that glorious day in January when they, as victors, could show the door to a vanquished Republican administration. For members of Washington's Democratic administration-in-waiting, winning the White House has been the only game in town. The presidency, in their view, is the instrument to make the way straight and easy for all who wage war against the heathen right.

So, lo these many years, they have been spending millions of dollars and consuming time and energy treading the primary roads that they hoped would take them to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Meanwhile, far beyond the presidential trails, Republicans have been picking off Democrats on the Hill one by one, making it possible for George W. Bush to fulfill his upfront pledge to govern America from the right, where tax cuts, changing the face of the federal judiciary and making liberals perfectly miserable every waking moment remain the order of the day.

SHOULD HAVE SWITCHED PARTIES WHEN HE HAD THE CHANCE:

To the Victor Goes the Court (Martin Frost, 7/23/05, Fox News)

Elections have consequences. George W. Bush has won two elections as president of the United States and now he gets to name Supreme Court justices. And as long as those nominees are qualified and not extreme, they deserve confirmation. His first nominee, John Roberts, should be confirmed unless something unforeseen surfaces during Senate hearings.

CHANGE IS BAD:

A key player: Josh Kantor, one of the few organists left in baseball, sees the Red Sox for a song (Bella English, July 23, 2005, Boston Globe)

It's a glorious night at Fenway Park, and Josh Kantor is thrilled to be playing for the Red Sox. No, he wasn't acquired in the trade for Jay Payton. He gets more playing time than Payton ever got, though he'd like more.

Kantor is the organist at Fenway Park, and on this balmy night with the Toronto Blue Jays in town, he's serenading the arriving fans with ''When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)," segueing into ''I Second That Emotion," his fingers moving as deftly over the keys as Johnny Damon's glove catching those center-field fly balls.

He's the guy who plays ''Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch, the one who warms up the fans as they head into the ballpark and who celebrates -- or commiserates -- with them as they head out. On a recent night, after a horrendous drubbing by the Blue Jays, Kantor sent Sox fans home to the tune of ''Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" Once, when some players were on the verge of a fight, Kantor broke into ''Why Can't We Be Friends?" And when they played a video of former Sox slugger Jim Rice on the huge screen, Kantor offered, ''You Don't Mess Around With Jim."

Tucked away on a small platform, ensconced in the lofty luxury of the .406 Club, Kantor, 32, sits at his Yamaha electric organ, waiting for the chance to chime in. There's a lot of waiting. Much of the music fans hear at Fenway is recorded and played by Megan Kaiser, the ballpark's music programmer, who has hundreds of CDs loaded onto a computer, only the push of a button away.

Together, Kaiser says, she and Kantor create ''a soundtrack for your day at Fenway." [...]

The organ first appeared at the park in 1953, when Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey decided to add music to the Fenway experience. He hired John Kiley, who over the next 36 years became a Boston legend. Kiley was known for stirring up the crowd with antics that included playing ''The Hallelujah Chorus" when Carl Yastrzemski hit one out of the park or pumping out ''White Christmas" on a scorching day. By the time he retired in 1989, recorded music had begun to elbow its way into the repertoire.

65 IN '08:

Downstate rep could help GOP defeat Durbin (THOMAS ROESER, July 23, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Some Republicans don't think it's too early at all to start zeroing in on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). He'll be running for re-election in 2008 but he made a mistake last month that could be fatal. By comparing U.S. servicemen who run Gitmo to those who guarded the prison camps in Nazi Germany, the gulags in the USSR and the extermination centers in Cambodia under Pol Pot, the East St. Louis-born liberal hustler handed his opponents a battery of weapons to use against him. At least five anti-Durbin TV commercials come to mind.

First, the tape of Durbin's outlandish attack on U.S. guards at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility. Then there's the tape of Mayor Daley excoriating Durbin as a disgrace. Third, Durbin standing before the Senate in trembling apology, his voice quavering. Fourth, the Robert Novak column saying that fear of Daley drove Durbin to apologize. [...]

Some say the best challenger would be Rep. John Shimkus of Collinsville, a Republican incumbent since 1997. Of Lithuanian descent like Durbin, Shimkus, 47, is markedly different from the senatorial glad-hander. He's a West Pointer, trained as an Army Ranger and paratrooper (a reserve lieutenant colonel), and a former high school teacher. Shimkus came to politics early, got elected Madison County treasurer, the lone GOP officer, in 1990 and re-elected in 1994.

Shimkus has had experience with Durbin. He ran against him for Congress in 1992 and, although outspent 4-1, carried 44 percent of the vote. Four years later, Shimkus won his House seat in a district that Bill Clinton carried by 7 percentage points. Then, against conservative Democrat Dave Phelps in 2002, Shimkus won by almost 10 percentage points.

YOU MEAN HE WAS SERIOUS ABOUT THAT CULTURE OF LIFE STUFF?:

Stem Cell Bill, Once Seen as a Sure Thing, Is Now Mired in Uncertainty (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 7/23/05, NY Times)

A measure to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, passed by the House and once considered a shoo-in for adoption by the Senate, is tangled up in a procedural dispute that will probably delay a vote until fall - and could wind up killing the bill, its chief Republican backer said.

"The bill is in some danger," said Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware and the measure's leading sponsor in the House.

Mr. Castle accused the White House, which has threatened to veto the measure, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, of "doing everything in their power to deflect votes away from it or keep it from coming up for a vote at all."

A BRIDGE TOO FAR:

Anti-Abortion Advocacy of Wife of Court Nominee Draws Interest (LYNETTE CLEMETSON and ROBIN TONER, 7/23/05, NY Times)

[T]here is little mystery about the views of his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, a Roman Catholic lawyer from the Bronx whose pro bono work for Feminists for Life is drawing intense interest in the ideologically charged environment of a Supreme Court confirmation debate.

Some abortion opponents view her activities as a clear signal that the Robertses are committed to their cause; supporters of abortion rights fear the same thing. Others say that drawing a direct line from her activities to how her husband might rule on the Supreme Court - assuming that he not only shares her views, but would also act on them to overturn 32 years of legal precedents - is both politically risky and in bad form.

No less a Democratic stalwart than Senator Edward M. Kennedy said, at a breakfast meeting with reporters on Friday, that Mrs. Roberts's work "ought to be out of bounds."

YOU KNOW YOU'VE LOST WHEN...:

Liberals wary of Roberts' charm (Charles Hurt, July 23, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Wade Henderson, a civil rights leader who wields influence with Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, lamented yesterday that U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. appears headed for a "coronation."

"He has friends on both sides of the aisle." said Mr. Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "As a general matter, he is moving not so much toward a confirmation but what appears to be a coronation."

The comments reflect a wariness among liberal lobby groups that Judge Roberts -- viewed by them as extremely conservative -- may garner broad support from not only Senate Republicans, but also from the Democrats with whom the groups are most closely aligned.

At last count, 44 senators -- all Republicans -- have expressed support for Judge Roberts. Another 15 -- including 10 Democrats -- have made positive statements about the nominee but declined to take a position until after Senate hearings.

And in recent days, even some of Judge Roberts' toughest critics have been barely short of effusive after meeting with him in private.

THAT VISION THING...IN SPADES:

House to Back Bush on Moon, Mars Trips (Guy Gugliotta, July 22, 2005, Washington Post)

The House for the first time in five years will weigh in on national space policy today, considering a bipartisan endorsement of President Bush's initiative to send humans to the moon and Mars and authorizing an extra $1.3 billion over the next two years to forestall cuts in NASA's traditional programs in science and aeronautics.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005 also endorses a maintenance visit by the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope and calls on NASA to develop a national aeronautics policy.

But in the face of a partisan impasse, the bill does not take a position on whether to retire the space shuttle in 2010, an administration goal favored by the Republicans, or to keep it in service until a next-generation spacecraft is developed, the view favored by House Democrats and by both parties in the Senate.

The House bill, scheduled for debate and a vote today, reflects a desire by Congress to make a statement on space policy as NASA gets ready to fly the space shuttle for the first time in 2 1/2 years and undertakes a major shift in focus toward Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration."

GO AHEAD, GEORGE VOINOVICH WILL UNDERSTAND:

Young Potter readers need to talk, grieve: (Barbara F. Meltz, July 21, 2005, Boston Globe)

As she was leaving for summer school Monday morning, the day after she had finished ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," 14-year-old Chelsey Bowman of Newton asked her mother, ''Will you be here when I get home at 1 o'clock? I don't want to be alone."

The neediness took June Bowman by surprise. Not only is it unlike her daughter to be frightened, it's also unlike ''Harry Potter" to cause that degree of intensity.

Less than 24 hours after the book was released last weekend, readers who had already finished it were seeking solace in a chat thread on livejournal.com:

''Is anyone else in complete and utter shock about who just died and how, or am I the only one?"

''I am in shock. OMG, I can't believe what I just read. I spent like the last three chapters bawling my eyes out. I'm just in shock, pure utter shock."

We won't be the spoiler here, but it's no secret that a much-beloved character dies in this sixth book in the series by J.K. Rowling. What do you say when your child has been up all night reading, and her eyes are red and swollen from crying?

If you're reading it with children, odds are you'll spend the final chapters asking them to pass the Kleenex.

WHEN HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES EVER SERVED THE COUNTRY RATHER THAN THEMSELVES?:

Intel Officers: Bush Needs to Punish Rove for Plame Outing (Fox News, July 22, 2005)

Former U.S. intelligence officers criticized President Bush on Friday for not disciplining Karl Rove in connection with the leak of the name of a CIA officer, saying Bush's lack of action has jeopardized national security.

In a hearing held by Senate and House Democrats examining the implications of exposing Valerie Plame's identity, the former intelligence officers said Bush's silence has hampered efforts to recruit informants to help the United States fight the War on Terror. Federal law forbids government officials from revealing the identity of an undercover intelligence officer.

"I wouldn't be here this morning if President Bush had done the one thing required of him as commander in chief — protect and defend the Constitution," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst. "The minute that Valerie Plame's identity was outed, he should have delivered a strict and strong message to his employees."

BLACK IS ALWAYS IN STYLE

An Image A Little Too Carefully Coordinated (Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 7/22/05)

It has been a long time since so much syrupy nostalgia has been in evidence at the White House. But Tuesday night, when President Bush announced his choice for the next associate justice of the Supreme Court, it was hard not to marvel at the 1950s-style tableau vivant that was John Roberts and his family.

There they were -- John, Jane, Josie and Jack -- standing with the president and before the entire country. The nominee was in a sober suit with the expected white shirt and red tie. His wife and children stood before the cameras, groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers. There was tow-headed Jack -- having freed himself from the controlling grip of his mother -- enjoying a moment in the spotlight dressed in a seersucker suit with short pants and saddle shoes. His sister, Josie, was half-hidden behind her mother's skirt. Her blond pageboy glistened. And she was wearing a yellow dress with a crisp white collar, lace-trimmed anklets and black patent-leather Mary Janes. . . .

The wife wore a strawberry-pink tweed suit with taupe pumps and pearls, which alone would not have been particularly remarkable, but alongside the nostalgic costuming of the children, the overall effect was of self-consciously crafted perfection. The children, of course, are innocents. They are dressed by their parents. And through their clothes choices, the parents have created the kind of honeyed faultlessness that jams mailboxes every December when personalized Christmas cards arrive bringing greetings "to you and yours" from the Blake family or the Joneses. Everyone looks freshly scrubbed and adorable, just like they have stepped from a Currier & Ives landscape. . . .

[T]he Roberts family went too far. In announcing John Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, the president inextricably linked the individual -- and his family -- to the sweep of tradition. In their attire, there was nothing too informal; there was nothing immodest. There was only the feeling that, in the desire to be appropriate and respectful of history, the children had been costumed in it.

MORE (Via AOG):

The family picture is incredibly revealing. Bush is planted between the nominee and his family, and Roberts only has eyes for the President. The angling of the podium further shoves the family to the outside. The empty halls of power behind the men, with nice red carpet reminds me of Aggamemnon.

The family? :shudder:

That is soooooo dysfunctional, it is scary. The mother and daughter are terrified of being in public: probably brutalized verbally on a daily basis for never being good enough.

Posted [at Bagnewsnotes] by: hauksdottir | July 21, 2005 04:32 AM

WHAT OTHER WHITE HOUSE COULD HAVE KEPT IT QUIET FOR A YEAR?:

A Year of Work to Sell Roberts to Conservatives (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 7/22/05, NY Times)

For at least a year before the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court, the White House was working behind the scenes to shore up support for him among its social conservative allies, quietly reassuring them that he was a good bet for their side in cases about abortion, same-sex marriage and public support for religion.

When the White House began testing the name of Judge Roberts on a short list of potential nominees, many social conservatives were skeptical. In hearings for confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he had called the original abortion rights precedent "the settled law of the land" and said "there is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

And they were frustrated, as many Democrats were this week, by his not having left a long record of speeches and opinions that laid out his views.

But with a series of personal testimonials about Judge Roberts, his legal work, his Roman Catholic faith, and his wife's public opposition to abortion, two well-connected Christian conservative lawyers - Leonard Leo, chairman of Catholic outreach for the Republican Party, and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of an evangelical Protestant legal center founded by Pat Robertson - gradually won over most social conservatives to nearly unanimous support, even convincing them that the lack of a paper trail was an asset that made Judge Roberts harder to attack.

Both had been tapped by the White House to build the coalition for judicial confirmation battles.

SLIP SLIDIN' AWAY:

Roberts reminds Democrats of 2004 outcome: A legislative legacy at stake (Tom Curry, July 22, 2005, MSNBC)

At a press conference Thursday to urge the Senate to grill Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts on his views, Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., stood with the senior senator from Massachusetts, Sen. Edward Kennedy. “I wonder what it would be like if the junior senator from Massachusetts had been making this appointment,” Watt mused ruefully.

But John Kerry lost last November, and by losing, let slip away the chance for Democrats to shape the judiciary. [...]

Watt, who is black, made the issue personal by mentioning that the Supreme Court, in a series of 5-to-4 decisions, had supervised the redesign of his own gerrymandered congressional district, arguing over whether overt consideration of the race of the voters ought to be permissible when state legislators map out House districts.

The Senate confirmation of Roberts, which looks increasingly likely, would be a setback for the Democratic Party and especially for liberal Democrats such as Watt and Kennedy.

GRAND ALLIANCE:

India, US make a tectonic move (Greg Sheridan, 23jul05, The Australian)

Some little time ago a senior US defence official received an admiral of the Indian navy. The Indian admiral explained that his country's military doctrine envisaged in due course Indian nuclear-armed submarines permanently in the Pacific Ocean. That would be unacceptable to the US, said the American defence man (or words to that effect).

The Indian made two replies. First, he said, the Pacific doesn't belong exclusively to you and we can sail there if we want to. But also, consider the effect that our having nuclear subs in the Pacific would have. It would mean that the cities of northern China, presently beyond the range of our land-based missiles, would be covered by our nuclear deterrent.

Well, of course, said the American, in that case we can probably make a deal. [...]

[I]t was Singh's speech to a joint session of the US Congress that was most masterful. It was beautifully crafted for an American audience. The Congress was packed. Both sides of US politics have bought into this relationship in the biggest way. And Singh touched every right note for the Americans - India and the US are common democracies, one the oldest democracy, one the largest. They are united in the war on terror. At the press conference Singh lavished praise on Bush for his leadership in the war on terror. He told Congress that the two nations shared values and interests. India's success, he said, was in the national interest of the US.

One of the delightful touches in the speech was that it completely omitted mention of Pakistan, the most exquisite punishment an Indian leader in Washington could possibly administer to his troublesome neighbour. It is a sign of the decoupling of India and Pakistan in the Western mind, and the way in which India is moving forward on a much higher economic and strategic plane than Pakistan.

Singh emphasised that what he and Bush have embarked on is a broad-ranging partnership, ranging from IT investment and agriculture to heightened defence co-operation. Astoundingly, one of Singh's greatest applause lines was: "I would like to reiterate that India's track record in nuclear non-proliferation is impeccable."

YOU, TOO, CAN ANSWER DUMB A** QUESTIONS

SCHUMER MEETS JUDGE ROBERTS, HANDS HIM LIST OF QUESTIONS HE WILL ASK AT JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARINGS

Senator's Questions Touch Major Issues From the First Amendment to the Commerce Clause

Schumer Reaffirms Belief That Ideology and Legal Convictions Are More Important Than Personal Life In Evaluating Supreme Court Nominees

Today U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer met with Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts and presented him with a number of questions on his judicial philosophy ranging from the First Amendment to the Commerce Clause to the environment. Schumer, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, re-iterated his belief that questioning judicial nominees is a duty and not a privilege, which he first suggested that a nominee's views and philosophy should be known in an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2001.

Schumer said that he believed a court nominees' ideology and philosophy is fair game for questioning in a Supreme Court nomination hearing. "I have long believed that federal court candidates - who serve for life - should explain their judicial philosophy and their method of legal reasoning. They should be prepared to explain their views of the Constitution, of decided cases, of federalism, and a host of other issues relevant to that lifetime post."

Schumer said there is a difference between asking about a particular case with particular facts, but asking broad questions about particular issues is acceptable. "I have always said that one should not ask a question specifically about Enron, because there are particular facts and parties involved, but one can certainly ask a question about a nominee's views on corporate responsibility and the proper role of the federal Government in enforcing it."

After the jump, let's work our way through Senator Schumer's questions.

1. First Amendment and Freedom of Expression:

What, if any, are the limitations on the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution?

The First Amendment is a limitation on the power of Congress, not a guarantee of substantive rights to the people.

YES

The (over)exercise of power (Jonathan Chait, LA Times, 7/22/05)

A week ago, when President Bush met with Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III to interview him for a potential Supreme Court nomination, the conversation turned to exercise. When asked by the president of the United States how often he exercised, Wilkinson impressively responded that he runs 3 1/2 miles a day. Bush urged him to adopt more cross-training. "He warned me of impending doom," Wilkinson told the New York Times.

Am I the only person who finds this disturbing?

BOB'Z IN THE 'HOOD

Sen. Byrd praises Bush on nominee (Charles Hurt, Washington Times, 7/22/05)

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, one of President Bush's harshest critics, has become an unlikely ally on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr.

"I said to him, 'I am shouting your name from the steeple tops for reaching out, reaching across the aisle,'?" the West Virginia Democrat reported after taking a phone call from Mr. Bush to discuss a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

After Mr. Bush nominated federal Judge Roberts this week, Mr. Byrd again issued a statement praising the president. "I thank President Bush for reaching out to senators on both sides of the aisle as he worked to select a nominee for the court," Mr. Byrd said. "I hope that this bipartisan cooperation will continue as the confirmation process begins." . . .

Mr. Byrd embraced the same judicial philosophy as the president in his memoir, "Child of the Appalachian Coalfields," released earlier this summer. In the book, he repeatedly blamed "liberal judges" and "activist judges" for many of the nation's problems.

"One's life is probably in no greater danger in the jungles of deepest Africa than in the jungles of America's large cities," he writes. "In my judgment, much of the problem has been brought about by the mollycoddling of criminals by some of the liberal judges who have been placed on the nation's courts in recent years."

VICTORY LAP:

Rice makes surprise visit to Lebanon (ANNE GEARAN, 7/22/05, Associated Press)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to volatile Lebanon under heavy guard Friday to encourage a new democratic government outside Syrian control.

Rice met with Saad Hariri, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Together, they visited the seaside grave of the elder Hariri, an anti-Syrian politician slain in a February car bombing. Afterwards, she went directly to the Presidential Palace for a meeting with Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

This will be an opportunity first of all to congratulate the Lebanon people on their incredible desire for democracy," Rice said en route to Beirut.

STASIS (via Brian Boys):

British Have Changed Little Since Ice Age, Gene Study Says (James Owen, July 19, 2005, National Geographic News)

Despite invasions by Saxons, Romans, Vikings, Normans, and others, the genetic makeup of today's white Britons is much the same as it was 12,000 ago, a new book claims.

In The Tribes of Britain, archaeologist David Miles says around 80 percent of the genetic characteristics of most white Britons have been passed down from a few thousand Ice Age hunters.

GUN-GRABBER:

Roberts dissents from gun search ruling (PETE YOST, July 22, 2005., AP)

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts sided with police but was on the losing end of an appeals court decision on whether officers were within their authority to search the trunk of a suspect's car.

Roberts dissented in a 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reversing a man's conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm.

The decision was released by the court Friday, even as Roberts was touring Senate in a political candidate-like search for confirmation votes.

NEVER SHOW YOUR OPPONENT HOW WEAK YOUR HAND IS:

Rallies against Pakistan crackdown fall flat (Faisal Aziz, Jul 22, 2005, Reuters)

An Islamist call for nationwide protests in Pakistan against a crackdown on militants after the July 7 London bombings fell flat on Friday with rallies in big cities failing to attract more than a few hundred people.

More than 300 militant suspects have been detained across Pakistan since revelations that three of the four London bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin who had visited the country before the attacks.

Pakistan's main alliance of Islamist parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, called for protest rallies after Friday prayers, when tens of millions of Pakistanis visit mosques.

But like previous calls for demonstrations against President Pervez Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led "war on terror," it failed to draw big crowds.

DOWN TO BLOOD:

'We Don't Need to Fight, We Are Taking Over!' (Paul J. Cella, 07/22/2005, Tech Central Station)

"We don't need to fight. We are taking over!" ["Abdullah," a Muslim watch-mender and evangelist] said. "We are here to bring civilization to the West. England does not belong to the English people, it belongs to God." [...]

The people of the free nations of the world, the citizens of the West (or her descendents if in fact the West is no more), are now confronted with sufficient evidence that the efforts to call totalitarian Islam into existence in every free nation are well underway; that such efforts will be materially supported from the home bases of totalitarian Islam, and may be spiritually supported by the very nature of Islam as such*; and that those efforts can, at least to some degree, be encouraged or discouraged by the actions of our own governments.

SHOOTING ON TUBE (Via The Corner)

I saw Tube man shot - eyewitness (BBCNews, 7/22/05)

A passenger has told how he saw armed police officers shoot a man dead on a Tube train at Stockwell.

Mark Whitby said: "I was sitting on the train... I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'.

"I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun.

"He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24.

"As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox.

"He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.

"He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.

Heavy coat

"He [the suspect] had a baseball cap on and quite a sort of thickish coat - it was a coat you'd wear in winter, sort of like a padded jacket. . . .

Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man.

"I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."

KINGS NEVER HAVE A SECOND INAUGURAL (Via The Corner)

The Left’s war on Britishness (Anthony Browne, The Spectator, 7/23/05)

The terrorist attacks of 7 July, as the ludicrous BBC refuses to call them, have raised many questions. We might ask what turned ordinary Muslim youths into mass murderers. Or we might wonder how a religion of peace can inspire people to terrorism across the world.

A more pressing question, however, is: why Britain? Not why was Britain attacked, because the list of countries targeted by Islamist terrorism is growing so fast it will soon be quicker to list those unaffected. But rather: why did Britain become the first country in the developed world to produce its own suicide bombers? Why is Britain just about the only country in the world to have produced suicide bombers who sought to kill not another people but their fellow citizens? Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland were all part of the war on Iraq, and have not produced suicide bombers. The US and Spain had to import their terrorists. For those who think that Muslims in Britain are particularly oppressed and poor, try visiting Muslims in France or Italy. . . .

No, the real answer to why Britain spawned people fuelled with maniacal hate for their country is that Britain hates itself. In hating Britain, these British suicide bombers were as British as a police warning for flying the union flag.

Britain’s self-loathing is deep, pervasive and lethally dangerous. We get bombed, and we say it’s all our own fault. Schools refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud, and use it instead as a means of instilling liberal guilt. The government and the BBC gush over ‘the other’, but recoil at the merest hint of British culture. The only thing we are licensed to be proud of is London’s internationalism — in other words, that there is little British left about it.

Obviously, I'm not talking about Britain.

If you read enough about the 50's and 60's, particularly biographies but also fiction, a shared experience emerges. The radical as a child has a pure love for this country, which he learns in school is good and just; the greatest country in history. He then goes on to college and discovers (either through his own brave exploration or with the help of a brave truth-telling teacher) that in fact nothing he was taught in kindergarten was true and in fact our history is stained with sin from conception. Never the same again, he fights the reactionary forces for control of the country in order to establish true justice. Also, he doesn't want to be killed in Viet Nam.

Becoming a radical because history is more subtle than is presented in kindergarten is easy to mock. To teach, in reaction, that America is tainted, unexceptional and hypocritical is not just wrong, but suicidal. Yet we can't ignore our history. The native peoples were destroyed. Many of the Founders were slaveholders. The Constitution is a pact with the devil. There is a different justice for the rich. We are war-mongers.

The trick is to understand that this does not change the essential truth. The United States is the great achievement of humanity. We are the indispensable nation. We are exceptional, just and true. Our history is everything we are taught in kindergarten, and everything we learn afterwards. The United States is the most human of nations, with everything that implies. We need to face that much of what our enemies say about us is true -- which should make us proud and them nervous.

VALUE SHOPPING:

China Unpegs Itself (PAUL KRUGMAN, 7/22/05, NY Times)

Capital usually flows from mature, developed economies to less-developed economies on their way up. For example, a lot of America's growth in the 19th century was financed by investors from Britain, which was already industrialized.

A decade ago, before the world financial crisis of 1997-1998, capital movements seemed to fit the historic pattern, as funds flowed from Japan and Western nations to "emerging markets" in Asia and Latin America. But these days things are running in reverse: capital is flowing out of emerging markets, especially China, and into the United States.

This uphill flow isn't the result of private-sector decisions; it's the result of official policy. To keep China's currency from rising, the Chinese government has been buying up huge quantities of dollars and investing the proceeds in U.S. bonds.

One way to grasp how weird this policy is would be to think about what a comparable policy would look like in the United States, scaled up to match the size of our economy. It's as if last year the U.S. government invested $1 trillion of taxpayers' money in low-interest Japanese bonds, and this year looks set to invest an additional $1.5 trillion the same way.

[T]he bonds in the Social Security trust fund are obligations of the federal government's general fund, the budget outside Social Security. They have the same status as U.S. bonds owned by Japanese pension funds and the government of China. The general fund is legally obliged to pay the interest and principal on those bonds, and Social Security is legally obliged to pay full benefits as long as there is money in the trust fund.

MORE:
India pops the champagne (Indrajit Basu, 7/23/05, Asia Times)

Even as the rupee soared to a six-year high to close at 43.25 to the dollar within an hour of the announcement of the yuan revaluation on Thursday, Indian exporters are popping their bubbly as the move will mean higher prices for Chinese exports, and thus more volumes for Indian ones. Over the past few years, while Indian exporters have been fighting hard to break into global markets for low-cost and labor-intensive manufactured products, they kept losing out to China, due to the major disadvantage of a rising rupee against the dollar as the yuan was kept artificially weak. This meant that to stay competitive, Indian exporters had to steadily squeeze their margins.

According to Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), an India-based think-tank on global issues, since most of the Asian currencies have in the past few months appreciated much higher then the yuan (the rupee has appreciated by over 10%), it could be safely expected that the "natural" exchange rate of the yuan is much higher than the present valuation. RIS believes that even if the currency float is managed and violent movements are restricted - since China's central bank has restricted the daily movement within 0.3% - gradually the yuan will tend to move toward the natural exchange rate.

In fact, Indian exports have already started gaining. US retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Gap Inc and Chico's FAS Inc had of late started increasing purchases of inexpensive clothing and jewelry from India in anticipation of rising costs that would result when China, their biggest offshore supplier, revalued its currency.

Quoting Ken Mark, managing director of the Martello Group in London, Ontario, Bloomberg reported that retailers who bought about $65 billion in Chinese goods last year were turning to India because the anticipated yuan revaluation might increase their costs by 10% over two years. Currently, Wal-Mart sources goods worth $2 billion - including indirect sourcing - a year from India, while its procurement from China exceeds $18 billion each year, out of which direct sourcing is about $9 billion.

IT'S NOT LIKE THEY DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS COMING:

Big push for judge surprises liberals (Joseph Curl and James G. Lakely, July 22, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The White House's heavily orchestrated campaign to quickly define Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. to America and the U.S. Senate -- using the Republican Party's top strategist and a well-respected former senator -- has left Democrats and liberal groups flat-footed.

Even before President Bush wielded the hefty power of the presidency by making a prime-time, nationally televised announcement, Karl Rove was working the phones. Mr. Bush's top political adviser called such key conservative leaders as C. Boyden Gray, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III of the Heritage Foundation and Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society and the head of Catholic outreach for the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie -- working out of the West Wing office granted to him to manage Mr. Bush's Supreme Court confirmation battle -- put into action a complex plan to win the early public relations battle to define Judge Roberts, on Capitol Hill and beyond.

JUST GET RID OF ZION AND NO ONE WILL EVER DIE AGAIN:

The Cost of Israel And US Wars (Gideon Polya, 21 July, 2005, Countercurrents.org)

Notwithstanding the 1967 Israeli attack on the defenceless USS Liberty (34 deaths out of 206 US casualties), the US has continued to bank-roll Israel and the illegal Israeli occupation of Arab lands. Further, US support for Israel is intimately connected with the continuing US War on Muslims from Africa to Afghanistan. What has been the financial and human cost of Israel and US wars over the last half century?

For a detailed and carefully documented account of (a) the economic cost to the US and (b) the human cost of illegal war and occupation in the Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories and the US-Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories see "The Economic and Human Cost of Israel & US Empire" in Media Monitors Network (see: http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/16112).

Below are some key statistics of importance for decent folk who believe in the Jeffersonian principles of the American Declaration of Independence, namely the equality of all men and their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Estimates of the cost of US support for Israel range from $200 billion (simple monetary value plus interest, 1949-2005) to $2,600 billion (total actual economic cost to the US, 1956-2002).

The post-1967 avoidable mortality (excess mortality) and under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Palestine Territories have been about 320,000 and 170,000, respectively. The post-1950 avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in Israel's neighbours have totalled 24 million and 17 million, respectively. The post-1950 avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in countries Israel has attacked militarily have totalled 43 million and 29 million, respectively. Israel's complicity in this carnage is clear but the actual extent of its responsibility is debatable.

In the post-war era the US has economically and militarily dominated the people and resource utilization of the World and is accordingly complicit in the associated horrendous global avoidable mortality (currently about 20 million per year). The post-1950 avoidable mortality (excess mortality) has been 1.3 billion (for the World), 1.2 billion (for the non-European World) and 0.6 billion (for the Muslim World) - however the actual extent of US responsibility is debatable.

Imagine how much contempt you have to hold for these peoples to believe that they aren't responsible for anything that happens to them?

JUST KEEP WINNING:

House Votes to Extend Patriot Act (GLEN JOHNSON, 7/22/05, Associated Press)

The House voted Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the nation's main anti-terrorism tool, just hours after televisions in the Capitol beamed images of a new attack in London.

As similar legislation worked its way through the Senate, House Republicans generally cast the law as a valuable asset in the war on terror. Most Democrats echoed that support but said they were concerned the law could allow citizens' civil liberties to be infringed.

After more than nine hours of debate, the House approved the measure 257-171. Forty-three Democrats joined 214 Republicans in voting to renew key provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of the year.

HE'S WHOEVER YOU WANT HIM TO BE:

The Nominee As a Young Pragmatist: Under Reagan, Roberts Tackled Tough Issues (Jo Becker and Amy Argetsinger, July 22, 2005, Washington Post)

As an up-and-coming young lawyer in the White House counsel's office from 1982 to 1986, John G. Roberts Jr. weighed in on some of the most controversial issues facing the Reagan administration, balancing conservative ideology with a savvy political pragmatism and a confidence that belied his years.

Asked to review legislation that would have prohibited lower federal courts from ordering busing to desegregate public schools, Roberts, now President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, took on no less a conservative legal scholar than Theodore B. Olson, who at the time was an assistant attorney general and later served as the solicitor general under Bush.

Olson had argued that based on his reading of case law, Congress could not flatly prohibit the busing of children to achieve racial balance in public schools. That argument did not impress Roberts, who was two weeks past his 29th birthday.

"I do not agree," Roberts wrote to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding in a memo dated Feb. 15, 1984. Congress has the authority "and can conclude -- the evidence supports this -- that busing promotes segregation rather than remedying it, by precipitating white flight."

But, he added, "Olson's view has already gone forward as the Administration view, and it would probably not be fruitful to reopen the issue at this point."

The memo -- and others like it that are available at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. -- offers a revealing glimpse into the mind of a judge whose relatively short two-year tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has produced few clues on how he would vote on key issues facing the high court.

Everyone knows that, like all good Republican lawyers, John G. Roberts Jr. is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative law and public policy organization where right-of-center types meet to denounce liberalism and angle for jobs in the Bush administration.

And practically everyone -- CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times and, just yesterday, The Washington Post -- has reported Roberts's membership as a fact. One liberal group opposed to Roberts's nomination, the Alliance for Justice, has noted it on its Web site.

But they are wrong. John Roberts is not, in fact, a member of the Federalist Society, and he says he never has been.

"He has no recollection of ever being a member," said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman who contacted reporters to correct the mistake yesterday.

She said that Roberts recalls speaking at Federalist Society forums (as have lawyers and legal scholars of various political stripes). But he has apparently never paid the $50 annual fee that would make him a full-fledged member.

MORE:
Clues on how Roberts might act on high court: His record while at a federal appeals court, though sparse, shows a resistance to limits on presidential power. (Warren Richey, 7/22/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

In his two years as a member of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., Judge John Roberts has helped decide more than 120 cases. [...]

Among cases drawing considerable interest are those in which Roberts:

• Upheld the president's authority to conduct terrorism tribunals at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

• Raised questions in a dissent about whether the commerce clause authorizes enforcement of the Endangered Species Act in certain cases.

• Upheld the arrest of a 12-year-old girl apprehended for eating a single French fry in a subway station.

"The one thing that seems pretty clear is that he is very strong on resisting any limits on presidential power," says William Marshall, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill.

DIFFERENCES AREN'T LIES:

Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters (Richard Keil, 7/22/05, Bloomberg)

Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

THE JIG IS UP (via David):

Judging Roberts (The Forward, July 22, 2005)

Years from now, when historians try to explain George W. Bush's influence on the American political landscape, they may well start by pointing to July 19, 2005, the day he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court. In choosing Roberts, Bush appears to have found the combination that has eluded conservatives for a quarter-century in their efforts to remake the high court: a brilliant legal mind with deeply conservative views but a slim paper trail, widely admired in the legal community and all but certain to win easy Senate confirmation.

The nomination is one more reminder that liberalism's four-decade reliance on the federal courts as a means of advancing its favorite causes has reached the end of its usefulness. Democracy is about winning elections, not lawsuits. Liberals should have figured that out years ago. Now they have no choice.

DIFFERENT AXIS, DIFFERENT STANDARDS:

Breakthrough in U.S.-India ties (Japan Times, 7/22/05)

When U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2001, one of his goals was to transform U.S. relations with India, a nation that was laying the foundation as a future global power. The end of the Cold War and India's economic resurgence provided the opportunity for India to play a larger role on the international stage. Washington was happy to encourage that process as Indian democracy was aligned with U.S. interests and because the U.S. anticipated that India would serve as a strategic counterweight to China.

The primary obstacle to a better relationship was Delhi's nuclear-weapons program. With India's failure to sign the NPT and its 1998 nuclear tests considered a threat to the NPT regime, the U.S. was reluctant to recognize India's nuclear capabilities for fear of legitimizing its status as a nuclear power. That rankled India, as did U.S. support for Pakistan, which India viewed as a source of terrorism.

Yet this week Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh agreed that the U.S. would provide assistance to India's civilian nuclear-energy program, even though Delhi would not renounce its nuclear weapons. The deal allows India to obtain nuclear fuel and reactor components from the U.S. and other countries in exchange for international inspections of, and safeguards on, its civilian nuclear program. India will also refrain from further weapons tests and from transfers of arms technology to other countries.

There are good reasons to accept the deal. India's nuclear weapons are a fait accompli. International inspections of civilian nuclear programs are always to be encouraged. India has no record of proliferating nuclear technology and Mr. Singh pledged to keep that record intact. India needs energy to sustain the 7 percent economic growth that is crucial to its emergence as a global player. Helping India develop nuclear power also lessens the potential for its dependence on Iranian oil. And it lifts the stigma on Delhi due to its nuclear tests and lets India better integrate into the international community.

Indian officials say the agreement allows their country "to assume the same responsibilities and practices -- no more and no less -- of other nuclear states." U.S. officials counter that they have not given up hope that India will eventually give up its nuclear arsenal and that Washington has denied Delhi's request to be recognized as a nuclear-weapons state.

Although the logic behind the agreement makes sense, it will make it even more difficult to get North Korea and Iran, already in international negotiations over their suspected nuclear-weapons programs, to give them up. Those two countries can now hold out hope of winning similar recognition, the distinctiveness of Indian circumstances notwithstanding.

BUT IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE ANY DEMANDS OF US...:

Catholic conservatism on the rise as priest refuses funeral for 'sinner' (Richard Owen, 7/22/05, Times of London )

A PARISH priest has refused to give an Italian woman a Christian funeral because she had “lived in sin”.

Father Giuseppe Mazzotta, parish priest at Marcellinara, near Catanzaro in Calabria, said that he had denied a Christian funeral to Maria Francesca Tallarico, who died of breast cancer at the age of 45, because she had lived with her partner but never married him. Her partner was separated and had an 11-year-old daughter.

“She lived with her lover, so she was a public sinner,” Father Mazzotta said. “I decided not to celebrate an official Mass for this woman, who was not in communion with the Church.”

Father Mazzotta said that he had performed the liturgy of absolution for the dead. He added that he was close to the dead woman’s family and had offered them “words of comfort”.

Father Antonio Sciortino, the Editor of Famiglia Cristiana, a popular Catholic magazine, accused Father Mazzotta of “excessive zeal”. Mario Paraboschi, a local councillor, said that he was perplexed. Father Mazzotta said that his action carried a message: “Marriage is a sacrament. We cannot simply pretend.”

The priest’s decision has underlined the growing power of conservative Catholicism in Italy. The liberal and secular Left is increasingly alarmed by the return to “Catholic values” in politics and everyday life, which has clear implications for the general election, due next May.

THE RIGHT'S DEBT TO JOHN McCAIN:

Roberts likely won't face filibuster (JESSE J. HOLLAND, 7/21/05, Associated Press)

While the group of 14 Democratic and Republican senators said they were reserving official judgment until after confirmation hearings, Sen. Mike DeWine said there was agreement that Roberts' resume doesn't show the "extraordinary circumstances" that would meet a threshold for a Democratic filibuster.

MORE:
Opposition to Roberts Nomination Is Thin So Far (Janet Hook, July 21, 2005, LA Times)

What happens when an army prepares for World War III -- and ends up in a border skirmish?

That question looms for liberal groups that have been collecting millions of dollars and preparing for years for a scorched-earth battle over President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.

But now that Bush has chosen John G. Roberts Jr., a respected jurist with bipartisan ties in Washington's legal establishment, Senate Democrats do not seem so eager to go to war.

That means abortion rights advocates and other liberal groups lobbying against Roberts may first have to fire up their allies if they are to have any hope of blocking the nomination.

The challenge facing the interest groups grew larger Thursday when several moderate Democrats said they had not yet seen anything in Roberts' background to justify blocking him with a filibuster. The Democrats are part of the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group that banded together earlier this year to thwart a showdown over use of the filibuster against judicial nominees.

THOSE WHO WISH WE WERE FRANCE:

The Case for a Democratic Marker: an interview with Rick Perlstein (Christopher Hayes, 7/21/05, In These Times)

Journalist and historian Rick Perlstein's new book, The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party, begins with a "political parable" about the rise and decline of the American airplane giant Boeing. Founded in 1917 with a singular vision of cheap, accessible commercial air travel despite its huge risks, Boeing ultimately became one of the country's most successful companies by sticking to its ambitious vision through thick and thin. In the '80s, just as they were abandoning this long-term thinking for the quarterly profit-driven tactics approved by Wall Street, the upstart Airbus came onto the scene with their own long-term vision of the superjumbo. Boeing thought it folly, but it now appears that Airbus will get the last laugh--their new plane, the world's largest passenger aircraft, made its maiden voyage in April. For Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, this story serves as an analogy for the fortunes of the Democrats, who abandoned their own long-term project in the centrist '90s to please the "stock ticker" of the next election.

UNVACCINATED, NOW UNWASHED (via John Resnick):

Showers 'may damage your brain' (News24, 21/07/2005)

Traces of manganese found in household water could be sufficient to cause permanent brain damage to those who take a regular shower, according to a report published in the US journal Medical Hypotheses.

John Spangler of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and his team suggested that breathing in vapour containing manganese salts could be dangerous over the longer term.

"Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain. The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain," Spangler wrote.

GARLIC RIB EYE (Splendid Kitchen, NPR)

Excerpted from Southern California Cooking from the Cottage: Casual Cuisine from Old La Jolla’s Favorite Beachside Bungalow by Jane and Michael Stern with Recipes and Headnotes by Laura Wolfe

Makes 4 servings

Customers tell us this is the best rib eye they have ever had. It starts with a great cut of meat and a hot grill: proof that good food doesn’t have to be difficult to make.

* 4 tablespoons olive oil
* 4 (10-ounce) rib-eye steaks
* 2 tablespoons minced garlic
* 6 tablespoons Essence (recipe follows)

Preheat the grill to high. Brush the olive oil over both sides of the steaks. Rub in the garlic and liberally season both sides of the steak with the Essence. Place the steaks on the hottest part of the grill and sear both sides to seal in the juices. Transfer the steaks to a cooler part of the grill and continue cooking until the desired degree of doneness, turning once. We like serving this with caramelized onions and mashed potatoes.

ESSENCE

Makes 2/3 cup

The Essence seasoning is one that we make from scratch to get the perfect combination of flavor and spice. We use it in a variety of recipes.

* 2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
* 2 tablespoons salt
* 2 tablespoons garlic powder
* 1 tablespoon black pepper
* 1 tablespoon onion powder
* 1 tablespoon cayenne
* 1 tablespoon dried oregano
* 1 tablespoon dried thyme leaves

Mix the paprika, salt, garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, cayenne, oregano, and thyme together in bowl. Store in an airtight container.

Note: This rub is delicious on beef.

ISAAK WALTON NEVER DREAMT...:

Invasion of the Frankenfish: Five years after the first snakehead catch in Florida, anglers are bagging world-record catches of the infamous exotic invaders in Northwest Broward canals. (CURTIS MORGAN, 7/21/05, Miami Herald)

Hardly anyone had heard of snakeheads when Bob Newland pulled the strange, slithery invader out of a Tamarac lake five years ago.

Ten states, countless headlines and three schlocky sci-fi movies later, snakeheads boast a fear factor that would give a bull shark pause.

Since Newland's catch -- the first documented in Florida -- the Asian imports have been found from Virginia to Massachusetts. Many scientists worry the ravenous, rapidly reproducing, air-gulping predator could spread, devouring native species in its razor-choppered wake.

If the environmental threat wasn't enough, campy movies like Frankenfish morphed them into monsters hungrier for humans than crappies. So it might sound unsettling that Northwest Broward County has become Snakehead Capital, USA.

The fish are getting along so swimmingly that one expert angler -- Martin Arostegui, a retired Coral Gables physician fishing with guide Alan Zaremba of Hollywood -- has bagged six snakehead world records, all out of canals in Margate. The International Game Fishing Association published the latest four, caught on assorted light tackle, this month.

NOT AN EXERCISE IN RESTRAINT:

An Interview by, Not With, the President (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 7/21/05, NY Times)

When President Bush sat down in the White House residence last Thursday to interview a potential Supreme Court nominee, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, he asked him about the hardest decision he had ever made - and also how much he exercised.

"Well, I told him I ran three and a half miles a day," Judge Wilkinson recalled in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "And I said my doctor recommends a lot of cross-training, but I said I didn't want to do the elliptical and the bike and the treadmill." The president, Judge Wilkinson said, "took umbrage at that," and told his potential nominee that he should do the cross-training his doctor suggested.

"He thought I was well on my way to busting my knees," said Judge Wilkinson, 60. "He warned me of impending doom."

Judge Wilkinson's conversation with the president about exercise and other personal matters in an interview for a job on the highest court in the land was typical of how Mr. Bush went about picking his eventual nominee, Judge John G. Roberts, White House officials and Republicans said. Mr. Bush, they said, looked extensively into the backgrounds of the five finalists he interviewed, but in the end relied as much on chemistry and intuition as on policy and legal intellect.

"He likes to have the info, he likes to have the background, but he also is a field player," said Dan Bartlett, the counselor to the president, in a briefing to reporters on Tuesday night. "He likes to size people up himself, make his own judgment."

WHAT THE HECK, THEY'RE ALL SEMITES (via Robert Schwartz):

Israel Defeats Efforts to Delay Gaza Pullout; Protest Thwarted Again (GREG MYRE, July 21, 2005, NY Times)

Late on Wednesday, Reuters reported that a Palestinian boy had been stabbed to death by Israelis in the West Bank, citing reports from unidentified Palestinians.

The boy was taken to Rafidiah Hospital in Nablus, and Dr. Musa Alayan, who examined the body, said he had found 14 stab wounds to the head, chest and abdomen, but initial reports were sketchy.

The boy, identified as Yazan Musa, 12 or 13, was playing with a friend near Qaryout on Wednesday when he was stabbed by Jewish settlers who had marched in the area, Reuters and Israeli radio reported.

The Israeli police had received a report from the Palestinian authorities that the boy had been killed and had begun an investigation, said a spokesman, Shlomi Sagi. He said he could not immediately confirm any circumstances of the killing.

Palestinian sources said they had arrested a suspect on Thursday in the stabbing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy Wednesday night in the West Bank village of Karyut. The sources confirmed that the suspect was a member of a rival clan, Israel Radio reported.

Earlier, Palestinian sources had reported that the boy was killed in a brawl that erupted between Palestinian youths and Israeli settlers who had entered the village from the nearby settlement of Shiloh.

However, Palestinian officials soon admitted to IDF officers that the incident was related to an inter-clan dispute.

GET USED TO GOVERNING:

A Competent Conservative (DAVID BROOKS, 7/21/05, NY Times)

[J]ohn G. Roberts is the face of today's governing conservatism.

Conservatives who came of age in the 1960's did so in an intensely ideological time when it was arduous to be on the right. People from that generation are more likely to have a dissident mentality, to want to storm the ramparts of the liberal establishment, to wade in to vanquish their foes in the war of ideas.

But John Roberts didn't enter Harvard until the fall of 1973. He missed all that sturm und drang, so he lacks, his former colleagues say, the outsider/dissident mentality. By the time he came of age, it was easier for a conservative to be comfortable in mainstream institutions, without feeling embattled or spoiling for a fight.

Roberts has chosen to live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, not the Virginia ones, where the political climate is 30 degrees to the right. He submitted his wedding notice to the wedding page of The New York Times, which is perceived as alien turf by ideological conservatives.

Roberts is a conservative practitioner, not a conservative theoretician. He is skilled in the technical aspects of the law, knowledgeable about business complexities (that's why he was hired to take on Microsoft) and rich in practical knowledge. He is principled and shares the conservative preference for judicial restraint, but doesn't think at the level of generality of, say, a Scalia. This is the sort of person who rises when a movement is mature and running things.

IS ANYONE SURPRISED THAT HE'S NOT A BELIEVER (Via The Corner)

Livingstone Defends ‘Progressive’ Qaradawi (IslamOnline.net, 7/20/05)

Livingstone condemned the vile media campaign against Qaradawi ahead of the August conference, saying that his views were distorted and misunderstood, rejecting that they affected the minds of the London bombers.

“What Sheikh Qaradawi pointed out was, given that the Palestinians do not have jet fighters and do not have tanks, they only have their bodies to use. I do not think he is actually urging people to go out and become suicide bombers,” Livingstone said, denouncing media for having “pandered to Islamophobia.”

He said Israel had “done horrendous things which border on crimes against humanity in the way they have indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children in the West Bank and Gaza for decades.”

He said it is unacceptable that Israel goes on “indiscriminately destroying homes simply because a [Palestinian] bomber came from that area.”

“I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe in that punishment.”

PUTTING THE NATIONALISM IN TRANSNATIONAL:

At the U.N., a Growing Republican Presence (Colum Lynch, July 21, 2005,
Washington Post)

Christopher B. Burnham, the highest-ranking U.S. citizen working in the U.N. Secretariat, is a rare breed here: a Republican Party loyalist and an enthusiastic supporter of President Bush.

Burnham, the United Nations' undersecretary for the department of management, is one of a handful of Bush administration supporters hired by the United Nations in recent months. They have been promoting Bush's political agenda in an organization that has clashed bitterly with Republican policymakers over such issues as the impact of global warming and the justification for the war in Iraq.

Burnham says he sees his purpose as furthering the mission he began as the chief financial officer in the Bush State Department: making the bureaucracy he oversees more accountable. Burnham suggested that his ultimate loyalty may lie with the president, not his new boss, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. He says he also relishes the thought of working with John R. Bolton, a close friend and Bush's choice as U.N. ambassador, to force change.

"I'm not here to be a careerist," said Burnham, a former GOP fundraiser and investment banker who keeps photographs of Bush, Laura Bush and George H.W. Bush in his U.N. office. "I came here at the request of the White House. It's my duty to make the U.N. more effective. My primary loyalty is to the United States of America."

LOSS AFTER LOSS:

Democrats Say Nominee Will Be Hard to Defeat (Peter Baker and Charles Babington, July 21, 2005, Washington Post)

The White House and its allies opened their campaign to confirm Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court with a mix of soft-sell persuasion and hard-pitch pressure yesterday as Senate Democrats plotted strategy for responding to a nomination they conceded could be hard to defeat. [...]

An array of interest groups on the left began mobilizing opposition to Roberts, but reticent Senate Democrats demonstrated little eagerness for an all-out war against him. Some Democratic senators laid the groundwork for a struggle focused on prying loose documents related to Roberts's career in government and using any resistance by the administration against him. Yet as the day progressed, Democrats seemed increasingly resigned to the notion that they cannot stop his appointment.

The key barometer came from members of the Gang of 14 senators who forged a bipartisan accord in May to avoid a showdown over lower-court appointments. Two Republican members of the group, John McCain (Ariz.) and John W. Warner (Va.), said the Roberts selection would not trigger the "extraordinary circumstances" clause of the agreement that would justify a Democratic filibuster.

Under Senate rules, a filibuster would be the only procedural way the minority party could stop the nomination. By the end of the day, though, Democrats held out little prospect of a filibuster.

"Everybody ought to cool their jets on this and let the process work," said Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a Democratic member of the group. "Going in, it looks good" for Roberts, he said.

Democrats and liberal advocacy groups scrambled on Wednesday to see if they could - or should - build a case against the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts. They said they would demand memorandums, briefs and other documents he wrote as a deputy in the solicitor general's office to flesh out an understanding of the views of this conservative newcomer to the federal judiciary.

In an atmosphere of evident frustration, the machinery that had been assembled to fight a Supreme Court nomination by Mr. Bush struggled to deal with a nominee whose two years as a federal appeals court judge had produced only a scant record that could be used to measure what kind of justice he might be.

No Democratic senator stepped forward to oppose Judge Roberts outright, in contrast to what several Democrats said would most likely have happened if Mr. Bush had chosen one of the more conservative judges on his list.

THE GUARDIAN IS RIGHT

A law unto itself? (The Guardian, 7/21/05)

The Guardian He also needs to play a part in reversing the trends of what Michael Ignatieff has called America's "judicial isolationism or judicial narcissism". We live in a world marked by the gradual globalisation of the law. More and more jurisdictions - including our ow