IN A STATEMENT SHE SAID...:

FDA official quits over Plan B pill delay (LAURAN NEERGAARD, August 31, 2005, AP)

A high-ranking Food and Drug Administration official resigned Wednesday in protest of the agency's refusal to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.

Susan Wood, director of FDA's Office of Women's Health, announced her resignation in an e-mail to colleagues at the agency.

LUCKY STRIKES:

A Duel at Safeco Field: It's Randy Johnson vs. Felix Hernandez! (Mike Henderson, 8/31/05, Seattle Weekly))

Let's say we told you that this week Safeco Field featured the four greatest pitchers in Seattle Mariners history. Your obvious response: "Didn't know Gaylord Perry was back in baseball." OK, so make it four of the best five:

• Jamie Moyer, the team's all-time wins leader, who helped make the league-best Chicago White Sox look, for one game anyway, like the Sheboygan Sad Sacks, baffling the South Siders 9-2 on Sunday, Aug. 28.

• White Sox right-hander Freddy Garcia, former M's staff ace and all-star, who that same day seemed to have added a pitch to his repertoire, something low and outside and often consistent with the technical term "wild pitch."

• Randy Johnson, who left the M's in 1998 and is certain to enter the Hall of Fame (probably as an Arizona Diamondback) and was to return Wednesday, Aug. 31, to lead the New York Yankees in the marquee Safeco game of the past three seasons.

• And Felix Hernandez, whose epic, 36-inning big-league career already has some comparing the 19-year-old Venezuelan right-hander with ghosts of Cooperstown. Hernandez's Wednesday start is half of what makes that Yankees game marquee. Team officials, fans, and scribes have saddled the strikeout artist with rainbow-high hopes and expectations. And if he doesn't pan out, hey, we've still got Ryan Franklin.

But "panning out" is scarcely in question. I already see in the poorly nicknamed King Felix (I prefer "Felix Navidad," because he brought an early Christmas to this pitching-poor franchise) signs of a dominating starter.

PRETTY SMART FOR AN OXYMORON

Teaching of Creationism Is Endorsed in New Survey (Laurie Goodstein, NY Times, 8/31/05)

In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was "guided by a supreme being," and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism. . . .

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism." . . .

Eugenie C. Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education and a prominent defender of evolution, said the findings were not surprising because "Americans react very positively to the fairness or equal time kind of argument."

"In fact, it's the strongest thing that creationists have got going for them because their science is dismal," Ms. Scott said. "But they do have American culture on their side."

THIS CAR SPITS ON MT. WASHINGTON

Space Program: Looking Up (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, TCS, 8/24/05)

As I noted earlier, NASA was offering prizes for space elevator research. That's still going on, but there are some new studies suggesting that space elevators may be closer to practicality than previously thought. A cover story in the IEE Spectrum reports:

"A space elevator would be amazingly expensive or absurdly cheap -- depending on how you look at it. It would cost about $6 billion in today's dollars just to complete the structure itself, according to my study. Costs associated with legal, regulatory, and political aspects could easily add another $4 billion, but these expenses are much harder to estimate. Building such an enormous structure would probably require treaty-level negotiations with the international community, for example. A $10 billion price tag, however, isn't really extraordinary in the economics of space exploration. NASA's budget is about $15 billion a year, and a single shuttle launch costs about half a billion dollars.

"The construction schedule could conceivably be as short as 10 years, but 15 years is a more realistic estimate when technology development, budget cycles, competitive selection, and other factors are accounted for."

The first one is the hardest to build, which has an important strategic implication:

"The second elevator would be much easier and cheaper to build than the first, not only because it could make use of the first elevator but because all the R&D and much of the supporting infrastructure would already be complete. With these savings, I estimate that a second elevator would cost a fraction of the first one-as little as $3 billion dollars for parts and construction.

THUS THE NEW STATE TRAVEL MOTTO...:

New Hampshire has high income, lowest poverty rate, census says (Katharine Webster, August 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

New Hampshire had the highest median household income and the lowest average poverty rate in the nation from 2002 through 2004, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. [...]

The median household income averaged over three years was $57,352 in New Hampshire, compared to the national average of $44,473 and the low in West Virginia of $32,589, the report found. Four other states had high household incomes that were not "statistically different" from New Hampshire's: New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut and Minnesota.

The percentage of New Hampshire residents living in poverty was 5.7, compared to the national average of 12.4 percent and the high in Mississippi of 17.7 percent.

HOPE FOR DARWINISM AFTER ALL (via Robert Schwartz):

Most published research findings may be false (Paul Ocampo, Public Library of Science )

"There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," says researcher John Ioannidis in an analysis in the open access international medical journal PLoS Medicine.

In his analysis, Ioannidis, of the University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece, and Tufts University School of Medicine, United States, identifies the factors that he believes lead to research findings often being false.

One of these factors is that many research studies are small. "The smaller the studies conducted in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true," says Ioannidis.

Another problem is that in many scientific fields, the "effect sizes" (a measure of how much a risk factor such as smoking increases a person's risk of disease, or how much a treatment is likely to improve a disease) are small.

Research findings are more likely true in scientific fields with large effects, such as the impact of smoking on cancer, than in scientific fields where postulated effects are small, such as genetic risk factors for diseases where many different genes are involved in causation. If the effect sizes are very small in a particular field, says Ioannidis, it is "likely to be plagued by almost ubiquitous false positive claims."

Financial and other interests and prejudices can also lead to untrue results. And "the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true," which may explain why we sometimes see "major excitement followed rapidly by severe disappointments in fields that draw wide attention."

WHY WOULDN'T HE WAIT & DROWN THEM?:

Hurricane hits just before homosexual event: Christian activist: Act of God prevented 'Southern Decadence' festival (WorldNetDaily.com, 8/31/05)

Hurricane Katrina walloped New Orleans just two days before the annual homosexual "Southern Decadence" festival was to begin in the town, an act being characterized by some as God's work.

Southern Decadence has a history of "filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars," says a statement from the Philadelphia Christian organization Repent America.

MORE:
It seems more likely the Flood was just the two-by-four He used to get Alan Greenspan's attention, Dow Ends Up 69 on Philadelphia Fed Plan (Ellen Simon, 8/31/05, AP)

Stocks climbed in a seesaw session Wednesday, rising after the president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve signaled the central bank could change its interest rate policy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Wall Street moved higher after Philadelphia Fed President Anthony Santomero called increasing oil prices a "tax" and told CNBC it was too early to say whether the Fed would change its interest rate policy in light of the hurricane's wreckage. Many traders took the comment as a signal that the Fed's year-plus streak of rate hikes might end sooner than expected.

"The president of the Philly Fed is saying the Fed has to adapt to changing circumstances," said Todd Leone, managing director of equity trading at SG Cowen Securities. "With what's going on in New Orleans, I don't think the Fed can raise rates."

FREEDOM AND AID?:

U.S. Grows More Generous Toward World's Poor: But the nation still ranks 12th among the 21 richest countries, an annual report finds. (Sonni Efron, August 31, 2005, LA Times)

The United States has significantly increased its foreign aid to poor countries but ranks 12th among the 21 richest nations in its overall performance in helping the world's poor, according to a widely watched annual report released Tuesday. [...]

Critics argued that such studies do not give the United States credit for the billions it spends in military operations that provide global security and ostensibly allow other nations' economies to flourish.

Responding to such criticisms, authors of the 2005 index used a revised methodology, said David Roodman, who heads the study at the Center for Global Development, an independent Washington think tank. This year's report gave the United States points for its military contributions to keeping the world's sea lanes open for global trade, among other things, Roodman said. [...]

Although the United States spent more than $18 billion in foreign aid in 2003, J. Edward Fox, deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it was inaccurate to reduce U.S. foreign assistance to dollar terms. Doing so does not reflect the quality of the aid or the variety of ways that the United States helps the developing world, he said.

Not included are $1.2 billion in U.S. food aid to hungry nations, the estimated $34 billion provided each year by the U.S. private sector and the effect of the remittances that migrants working in the United States send to relatives back home, Fox said.

"Throwing money at a developing country is not necessarily the best way to do it," Fox said.

The index subtracted from the U.S. aid total about $1.5 billion in debt repayment that Washington received from the developing world and about $1 billion in debt that was written off, leaving a net total of $15.8 billion in material foreign aid given in 2003, Roodman said.

Even measured by that stricter standard, however, U.S. aid rose sharply, from $12.4 billion in 2001 and $14.7 billion in 2002, Roodman said, crediting the Bush administration.

BETTER TAXES THAN SPECULATORS:

Why high oil prices are a force for good (Eberhard Rhein, 8/31/05, International Herald Tribune)

During the first half of 2005, gasoline consumption in Germany and Belgium - and presumably in many other countries - fell by about 10 percent. We have not seen a drop like this for many years. It shows that the market mechanism continues to function as the most important regulator of supply and demand - and very speedily indeed.

The international community has been laboring for 10 years under the Kyoto Protocol negotiations to agree on a global reduction of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of less than 10 percent by 2012. So the market has achieved within a few months what international bureaucrats - hampered by resistance from key consumer countries like the United States, China, Australia and India - have struggled to obtain in a decade.

What does this teach us?

First, there is nothing more effective than the price mechanism to induce human beings to change their consumption habits. [...]

Politicians should be preparing citizens worldwide for a future in which energy prices will remain high, and policy makers should be ready to keep the oil price near the present level by raising the level of excise taxation when necessary. Unfortunately, most politicians are still too myopic or timid to deliver such a message. This needs to change.

The high oil price is a bonanza for advocates of the Kyoto Protocol, who will probably claim for the protocol what the market has achieved: the decline of carbon dioxide emissions.

PRIVILEGED POSITION (via Richard Compton):

Galactic survey reveals a new look for the Milky Way (Terry Devitt, August 16, 2005, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

With the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have conducted the most comprehensive structural analysis of our galaxy and have found tantalizing new evidence that the Milky Way is much different from your ordinary spiral galaxy.

The survey using the orbiting infrared telescope provides the fine details of a long central bar feature that distinguishes the Milky Way from more pedestrian spiral galaxies.

GEE, EXCESSIVE SELF-ABSORPTION SEEMS SO HEALTHY (via Robert Schwartz):

Starving won't make people live longer-researchers (Maggie Fox, Aug 28, 2005., Yahoo)

Starving -- officially known as caloric restriction -- may make worms and mice live up to 50 percent longer but it will not help humans live super-long lives, two biologists argued on Sunday.

They said their mathematical model showed that a lifetime of low-calorie dieting would only extend human life span by about 7 percent, unlike smaller animals, whose life spans are affected more by the effects of starvation.

This is because restricting calories only indirectly affects life span, said John Phelan of the University of California Lo Angeles and Michael Rose of the University of California Irvine.

Researchers at various universities and the national Institutes of Health are testing the theories but there are groups already cutting calories by up to a third in the hope they can live to be 120 or 125, while staying healthy.

"Our message is that suffering years of misery to remain super-skinny is not going to have a big payoff in terms of a longer life," said Phelan, an evolutionary biologist, in a statement.

AND BLUER:

God Is in the Details (Dana Milbank and Alan Cooperman, 8/31/05, Washington Post)

What strategists call the "religion gap" between Democrats and Republicans may be widening, despite efforts by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and other prominent Democrats to talk about their faith and the religious underpinning of their positions.

A Pew Research Center poll released yesterday found that 29 percent of the public sees the Democratic Party as "generally friendly" toward religion, down from 40 percent a year ago and 42 percent in 2003. A 55 percent majority continues to see the GOP as friendly toward religion, according to the poll.

Scott Keeter, Pew's director of survey research, said it appears that during the 2004 presidential race, Republicans succeeded in using Sen. John F. Kerry's support for abortion rights to raise doubts about the sincerity of the Democratic nominee's Catholic faith.

Since then, Keeter said, the charge that Democrats are anti-religious has been repeated in debates over judicial nominees, public displays of the Ten Commandments and the teaching of evolution in public schools. "My own sense is that the Democrats haven't forged a coherent response, and it's a hard charge to rebut individually, because if you start making a show of your personal piety, it can easily backfire," he said.

"WORTH A TRY":

In the Opera Hall, This Trucker Delivers: Carl Tanner's Career Is Picking Up Speed (T.R. Reid, August 28, 2005, Washington Post)

Interstate 95, as usual, was one long traffic jam. Carl Tanner, as usual, was singing to pass the time, up in the cab of his 16-wheeler. As the trucker inched forward on the exit ramp toward Old Keene Mill Road, he launched into the Puccini aria "E lucevan le stelle."

In the next lane, a woman in a convertible called up to him: "Is that you, or is that the radio?"

"That's me, lady," Tanner replied.

"Well then, you've missed your calling," the woman declared. "You should be singing for a living, not driving."

That proved to be a comment with fateful consequences, sparking Tanner's transformation from trucker to tenor, with a stellar career and now a date with the Metropolitan Opera. But for Carl Tanner, the suggestion was hardly novel. Ever since his junior year at Washington-Lee High School -- when he used to sing the national anthem before football games and then trot out to play center for the Generals -- people had been telling the Arlington native that his voice was his fortune. He even earned a college degree in vocal performance. But that didn't produce any gainful employment.

So Tanner enrolled in the Northern Virginia Trucking Academy and spent the better part of the 1980s driving big rigs for employers like Fairfax Movers and the Northern Virginia Florists' Pool.

To pick up extra money on the side, he moonlighted as a bounty hunter for Arlington area bail bondsmen.

"I was carrying a 9mm Beretta with the extended clip, the one that holds 23 bullets," Tanner recalls. "Ridiculous weapon. You gotta be a pretty bad shot to fire at some guy 23 times and not hit him."

All of this seems immensely far removed from the glamorous world of today's Carl Tanner, an operatic tenor of international stature whose huge but bright voice has been heard from Covent Garden to La Scala, from New York to Berlin to Naples to Washington (he sang the lead in the Washington National Opera's "Samson et Dalila" in May). [...]

In his high school days in Arlington, Tanner says, he knew he was a good singer, but never thought there was a career in that fact.

"Then a teacher told me that this fat guy in Italy named Pavarotti makes $6 million a year singing opera. And I thought, 'Might be worth a try.' "

After graduating in 1980 -- two years before another Washington-Lee star alum, Sandra Bullock -- he made his way to the Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester to study vocal performance. Tanner was training as a baritone there until a professor, Jackson Sheats, convinced him that his voice was really that of a spinto dramatico , the heroic tenor who sings grand opera roles like Calaf in "Turandot" or Don Jose in "Carmen." (Examples of this "dramatico" style can be heard at his Web site, http://carltanner.com/ .)

That switch proved essential to Tanner's singing career -- but it took nearly a decade after leaving Shenandoah to have any singing career at all. He spent those years driving trucks by day and chasing bail-skippers by night, singing only in the shower or in the cab of his rig.

In one sense, that decade was a detour from his operatic destiny. "It definitely slowed everything down," Tanner says. "While my contemporaries were going around to the small [opera] companies, landing roles, getting experience, I was driving a truck."

But in the highly competitive world of contemporary opera, where a stirring spinto dramatico voice is hardly enough to distinguish one ambitious tenor from a dozen others, Tanner's tough-guy background has turned out to be a spectacular marketing device. The trucker-turned-tenor, who spins out lively stories from his former life with practiced flair, is fully aware of the competitive advantage his unusual career path provides.

"I'm a huge name in opera right now," Tanner says in a matter-of-fact way. "There are a lot of other guys out there, a lot of good singers -- but they weren't truck drivers. They weren't bounty hunters who had some juvenile on the lam fire 17 shots at them. They don't have a story to tell, and I do."

GLORY HOUNDS:

Faith binds many on Sox: Evangelical Christians give sport a spiritual context (Bob Hohler, August 31, 2005, Boston Globe)

They gathered in a makeshift house of God -- a brick-walled retreat in Fenway Park otherwise reserved for postgame interviews -- and prayed for dead and dying loved ones. They prayed for American troops in hot spots abroad. And for the poor souls in the path of Hurricane Katrina.

As the Sunday baseball crowd streamed into the park less than an hour before the defending world champions played their 128th game of the season, a dozen members of the Red Sox -- the largest group of evangelical Christians on any team in Major League Baseball -- joined an equal number of coaches and staffers in sharing a bond of faith that is fast becoming the stuff of national renown among religious figures in sports. [...]

''Without question, chapel attendance among the Red Sox has been far and away more than any of the major league teams over the last two years," said Vince Nauss, president of Baseball Chapel.

Trot Nixon, Mike Timlin, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Curt Schilling, Doug Mirabelli, Bill Mueller, Matt Clement, John Olerud, Mike Myers, Tony Graffanino, Chad Bradford: Each Sox player considers himself an evangelical Christian who believes in the sacred authority of the Bible and the promise of Jesus Christ as his savior.

''In terms of coming to Bible study and chapel, this team has more guys involved than any team I've ever been with," said Olerud, who has played for five teams over 17 seasons in the majors.

The evangelical Sox believe in sharing the ''good news" of their faith, as they demonstrated after their remarkable comeback last October when they climbed out of a three-game chasm against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series and swept the Cardinals in the World Series.

''I wanted to be able to glorify God's name when all was said and done," Schilling proclaimed after he won Game 2 of the World Series while bleeding through his sock because of an experimental medical procedure that enabled him to pitch with a dislocated ankle tendon.

Win or lose, Schilling and his fellow evangelicals said, the message remains the same.

''This is our platform, our place to speak our faith and live our faith," Timlin said. ''This is a special gift from God, to play baseball, and if we can spread God's word by doing that, then we've almost fulfilled our calling."

Sometimes I find consolation in the thought that perhaps he is a preacher. His work has brought him before the multitude in a kindly manner; his example is a cleanly one. He reaches the masses of the people in his own way and he must give them something through his character.

THE DARK AGES RESTARTED IN 1980:

Dark Ages Primary (Harold Meyerson, August 31, 2005, Washington Post)

[R]ecent polling shows that just 35 percent of Americans believe that evolution is supported by evidence, while another 35 percent believe it is not. In a number of red states, of course, the numbers tip more sharply toward creationism. And should this strain of scientific illiteracy pick up more steam, it may broaden its targets from the merely biological sciences. After all, it's the geologists who've demonstrated that Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and the astronomers who've concluded, after measuring the speed of light (was that calculation really necessary? helpful?), that the universe has been around for roughly 14 billion years. Yet our tax dollars are still going to support that Hubble Space Telescope, which keeps discovering stars that are billions of years older than the universe itself, according to the short-order cosmologists of creationism.

I'm going to assume -- a clear leap of faith on my part -- that none of the Republican presidential hopefuls in 2008, with the possible exception of Rick Santorum, actually believes this stuff. But what they believe and what they feel compelled to say to get through the Republican primaries and caucuses may not be one and the same. Already, to curry favor with the faith-above-science right, Bill Frist has hemmed and hawed about the transmission of AIDS and diagnosed Terri Schiavo as no more than inattentive. Mitt Romney and George Pataki -- Republican governors of the bluest of states, but also budding presidential candidates -- have vetoed bills legalizing "morning-after" pills in their states, lest they incur the wrath of the zealots in the Iowa caucuses or the South Carolina primary. And George W. Bush's Food and Drug Administration simply refuses to make a ruling on those morning-after pills, its data validating the safety of the medication trumped by the political need to placate the religious right.

So let the first presidential primary of the Dark Ages begin!

MELANCHOLY, BABY:

Loving Soren: Romancing the theological: Loving Soren is a romance novel with a twist, combining a learned and thoughtful presentation of religious and philosophical ideas, writes Orrin C. Judd in this interview with the book's author Caroline Coleman O'Neill (Orrin C. Judd, August 30, 2005, Spero Forum)

A BOWL BELOW SEA LEVEL:

Mississippi drowning: The Times reports from New Orleans, a city facing disaster as floods pour over its broken defences (Jaqui Goddard, 8/31/05, Times of London)

THE tens of thousands of us trapped in New Orleans are witnessing scenes that we never thought we would see in the 21st century in a major western city.

Hurricane Katrina has washed away escape routes and swallowed streets whole. There is no electricity or running water. Telephone lines are down. The mobile phone system has crashed.

The levees surrounding New Orleans have been breached and torrents of water are pouring into the bowl in which the city sits. The pumps have been overwhelmed. Four-fifths of the city is under water, including both airports, and the tide is lapping around the historic French Quarter.

The mayor is talking of bodies floating through the streets, the authorities have imposed martial law, and looters are ransacking shops.

Hospitals are considering evacuation. An estimated 20,000 people have taken refuge in the Superdome. The Times-Picayune, the city’s newspaper, has abandoned its offices. Rescuers are searching the city in boats and helicopters, plucking residents from rooftops. Authorities even reported that a 3ft shark had been spotted cruising the streets. [...]

There is misery, fear, desperation and — for those who did not heed the evacuation warnings — regret. “I wish I had evacuated when I could,” said Anthony Peterson, 27. “I wish I’d listened. Now we’re trapped like rats. I went to bed on Monday night with the streets dry and I woke up this morning to find I’m in Waterworld. The toilet isn’t working, my mobile phone doesn’t work and we only have a few cans of food that we are trying to stretch between four of us.”

Mr Peterson’s home, close to Lake Pontchartrain, is probably under 15 feet of water. “We might have to start our lives all over again when we get out of this,” he lamented. “My only consolation is that I work as a roofer, so I’ll have plenty of customers.”

A day after New Orleans thought it had narrowly escaped the worst of Hurricane Katrina's wrath, water broke through two levees on Tuesday and virtually submerged and isolated the city, causing incalculable destruction and rendering it uninhabitable for weeks to come.

With bridges washed out, highways converted into canals, and power and communications lines left inoperable, government officials ordered everyone still remaining out of the city and began planning for the evacuation of the Superdome, where about 10,000 refugees huddled in increasingly grim conditions, running out of water and food, and with rising water threatening the generators.

So dire was the situation that the Pentagon late in the day ordered six Navy ships and eight Navy maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations. It also planned to fly in Swift boat rescue teams from California.

With the rising waters and widespread devastation hobbling rescue and recovery efforts, the authorities could only guess at the death toll in the city and across the Gulf Coast. In Mississippi alone, officials raised the official count of the dead to at least 100.

"It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like," Gov. Haley Barbour said, describing parts of Harrison County, Miss.

Across the region rescue workers were not even trying to gather up and count the dead, officials said, but pushed them aside for the time being as they struggled to find the living.

As the sweep of the devastation became clear on Tuesday, President Bush cut short his monthlong summer vacation and returned to Washington, where he will meet Wednesday with a task force established to coordinate the efforts of 14 federal agencies that will be involved in responding to the disaster.

The scope of the catastrophe caught New Orleans by surprise. A certain sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of the city, proved cruelly illusory, as the authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated. Mayor Ray Nagin lamented that while the city had dodged the worst-case scenario on Monday when the hurricane made landfall east of the city, Tuesday "is the second-worst-case scenario."

It was not the water from the sky but the water that broke through the city's protective barriers that changed everything for the worse. New Orleans, with a population of nearly 500,000, is protected from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain by levees. North of downtown, breaches in the levees sent the muddy waters of the lake pouring into the city.

Streets that were essentially dry in the hours immediately after the hurricane passed were several feet deep in water on Tuesday morning. Even downtown areas that lie on higher ground were flooded. The mayor said that both of the city's airports were underwater.

Mayor Nagin said that one of the levee breaches was two to three blocks long, and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was dropping 3,000-pound sandbags into the opening from helicopters, as well as sea-land containers with sand, to try to halt the water.

The mayor estimated that 80 percent of the city, which is below sea level, was submerged, with the waters running as deep as 20 feet. The city government regrouped in Baton Rouge, 80 miles to the northwest.

Last night Col. Terry Ebbert, the city's director of homeland security said that the rushing waters had widened one of the breaches, making the repair work more difficult.

While the bulk of the population of New Orleans had evacuated before the storm, tens of thousands of people chose to remain in the city, and efforts to evacuate them were still under way. The authorities estimated that thousands of residents had been plucked off rooftops, just feet from the rising water.

MORE:
Katrina swamps New Orleans' levees; no fix in sight (The Associated Press, 8/30/05)

New Orleans is apt to stay awash for days under oily, filthy water infested with mosquitoes, even if failed levees can be fixed quickly, according to experts assessing the flooding left by Hurricane Katrina. [...]

Murky water, laced with junk and pollutants, coursed through the city, including many downtown streets. Residents and rescuers came across floating bodies, though the city's death toll was still unknown late Tuesday.

Flooding specialists predicted that conditions could worsen as authorities focused first on saving people trapped in buildings. [...]

[E]xperts warned of potential dangers ahead. Louisiana's frequent summer rains — or even another hurricane — could add to flooding in coming days or weeks, they said. The sitting water could collect more contaminants from homes and industries, and mosquitoes could amplify the danger of disease.

"Because it doesn't drain, there's a chance for things to concentrate," said Marc Levitan, another flooding expert at LSU.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming....Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

ALL IN YOUR MIND:

Science plumbs placebo effect (Robert C. Cowen, 8/31/05, CS Monitor)

When an inert placebo acts like a drug, is it just a psychological illusion? Or is it a real biological effect? Research reported last week suggests that it's both. The mere belief that they had received a pain killer was enough to release the brain's natural painkilling endorphins in the patients tested, scientists say.

This opens a new line of research into the placebo puzzle. The effect has been demonstrated often enough to show that some patients appear to benefit from such belief. But there hasn't been enough evidence to convince skeptics that anything more than the so-called power of suggestion is at work. That's changing. "The findings of this study are counter to the common thought that the placebo effect is purely psychological due to suggestion and that it does not represent a real physical change." says University of Michigan neuroscientist Jon-Kar Zubieta. He is principal author of the study published Aug. 24 in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Some mind/body effects are well known. Adrenaline flows when firefighters go into action. The sight of a lion induces physical changes that prepare a zebra to flee. Humans often experience a similar fight-or-flight reaction to a perceived threat.

But it's been too much of a stretch for many neuroscientists to accept that belief in fake medication can produce medical benefits that can be objectively verified.

THE REACTIONARY PARTY

Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say (Kenneth Chang, NY Times, 8/30/05)

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

From 1970 to 1994, the Atlantic was relatively quiet, with no more than three major hurricanes in any year and none at all in three of those years. Cooler water in the North Atlantic strengthened wind shear, which tends to tear storms apart before they turn into hurricanes.

In 1995, hurricane patterns reverted to the active mode of the 1950's and 60's. From 1995 to 2003, 32 major hurricanes, with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater, stormed across the Atlantic. It was chance, Dr. Gray said, that only three of them struck the United States at full strength.

I have to admit, though, that my weather-cynicism, finely honed by years of the local news spending days covering blizzards that never happen, let me down this time. New Orleans and Mississippi seem to have suffered a tragedy as bad as the worst projections of the tv weather ghouls. This Wiki page, found via Michelle Malkin, offers links to aid agencies and fundraising events.

HEY, THE PIE'S HIGHER:

The Unnoticed Statistic (Michael Mandel, 8/29/05, Business Week: Economics Unbound)

[R]ising MFP [multifactor productivity] is like free money--you get added output without having to invest more. An economy with fast-growing MFP will over the long-run always beat one with low-growth MFP.

I didn't see it at the time, but in June the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued early estimates of MFP for 2003 and 2004--and the results were spectacular. According to their numbers, MFP growth was 3.1% in 2003 and 3.3% in 2004.

To put these results in perspective, this was the first time MFP growth had topped 3% since 1976. And it was the first time since the mid-sixties that the U.S. had had two straight years of plus 3% MFP growth.

If MFP keeps rising at this rate--if Americans keep finding ways to work smarter and to advantage of new technology--then the trade and budget deficits are fairly irrelevant.

Of course, right now you're asking: What the heck is multifactor productivity, and why is it so important? MFP is the lesser-known cousin of labor productivity, which is the amount of output that an average worker can produce in an hour. So, for example, if you're digging ditches, your labor productivity is the number of feet of ditches you can dig in an hour.

A rise in labor productivity can happen for a lot of different reasons. Workers can have more and better machinery and equipment to use -- say, a backhoe rather than a shovel, to move dirt. Or the workers can become better trained in using the equipment they already have. In either case, the increase in labor productivity carries a cost: the price of the backhoe or the expense of training the worker.

Multifactor productivity measures something different. When MFP rises, it means output per hour of the average worker goes up without any additional skills or education or a change in equipment. An increase in MFP equals free money, extra production that you don't have pay for.

Multifactor productivity is borne of the essence of technological innovation -- the creation of new products and new opportunities out of ideas and thin air. For example, the spread of the Internet has not only made doing business easier and cheaper but also allowed people to do things that weren't even possible in the past. Think about Amazon (AMZN ), Google (GOOG ), and eBay (EBAY ). Wireless phones aren't just a substitute for landlines; they enable people to organize their activities in very different ways.

The rate of multifactor productivity growth represents the single best indicator of the economy's true strength. When MFP is increasing rapidly, the size of the economic pie expands, real wages rise, profits go up, and everyone feels good. When that figure stagnates, things are tough all around.

For example, multifactor productivity didn't rise at all in 1973-83, a period that included the era of runaway inflation, President Jimmy Carter's famous "malaise" speech, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. During that stretch, the stock market, adjusted for inflation, fell by 34%, while real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers descended by 11%.

By contrast, the birth of the New Economy can be clearly seen in the sharp acceleration of multifactor productivity growth starting in 1996. From that point to 2002 (the latest year for which figures are available), MFP gained a bit more than 1% a year. From 1995 to today, real wages have risen by 9%, while the inflation-adjusted stock market is up by 68%.

An economy with rapid multifactor productivity growth is potentially quite profitable for investors, which helps explain why the U.S. can attract so much foreign capital to fund its trade deficit. High MFP also generates lots of extra output, useful for paying for, say, military actions or better health-care benefits. It's like having a cushion or a security blanket.

THE TIN EAR:

Free Judy Miller (NY Times, 8/29/05)

The New York Times reporter Judith Miller has now been in jail longer for refusing to testify than any reporter working for a newspaper in America. It is a very long time for her, for her newspaper and for the media. And with each dismal milestone, it becomes more apparent that having her in jail is an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be revered around the world for its freedoms, especially its First Amendment that provides freedom of the press. Ms. Miller, who went to jail rather than testify in an investigation into the disclosure of an undercover agent's identity, has been in a Virginia jail 55 days as of today.

Last week a Paris-based journalists' organization called Reporters Without Borders sent around an impressive petition in support of Ms. Miller. It was signed by prominent European writers, journalists and thinkers including Günter Grass, Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, and Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish filmmaker.

Grass's Tin Drum, published in 1959, flourishes a vivid style, but in every other respect it is a misleading book, whose success has been pernicious.

The central concept in the novel is that Hitler really was a devil and Nazism essentially the spell he cast, a bewitchment. If that was so, then Germans were the victims of a higher power against which they were defenseless, and they cannot be held accountable. The reasons that Germans became Nazis are open to rational analysis, but The Tin Drum instead encourages the mystification that they couldn't really help themselves. The opposite of the Solzhenitsyn truth-telling that enables people to understand their choices and their fates, Grass's approach smoothly converts Germans from active agents of Nazism into passive victims. The cop-out could hardly be more complete.

Grass went on to argue that the present was a replica of the past in many ways. The post-Nazi enemy was the United States, with its capitalism and its consumerism. The United States was responsible for starting and pursuing the Cold War, he insisted, while the Soviet Union was not oppressing central and eastern Europe with its military occupation, but merely taking legitimate precautions against U.S. aggression. Not a Communist, Grass became a model fellow traveler by default. A speechwriter and longtime campaigner for Chancellor Willy Brandt, Grass took the position that appeasement of the Soviet Union was an imperative. Victimized once more, the Germans were right to feel resentment and self-pity, but this time they had to take measures to help themselves.

THE SPREADING CIVIL WAR:

U.S. Warplanes Back Unprecedented Sunni-Led Offensive: Fierce Fighting in Growing Rift Between Zarqawi Insurgents and Sunni Arab Tribes (Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki, August 30, 2005, Washington Post)

U.S. warplanes backed Sunni Arab tribal fighters on Tuesday in what tribal leaders called an unprecedented Sunni-led offensive to drive out Abu Musab Zarqawi's forces.

Three days of ongoing fighting in towns near the Syrian border killed at least 61 people, at least 56 of them Tuesday, said Dr. Ali Rawi, emergency-room director at the hospital in the largest city near the fighting, Qaim, about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Forty-two of them wore the black training-suits and athletic shoes favored by Zarqawi's fighters, Rawi said.

Others appeared to be fighters of a rival tribe or civilians, he said.

Tuesday's bombings and clashes in the towns of Husaybah and Karabilah marked some of the fiercest fighting yet in a growing rift between Zarqawi's insurgents and some tribes of their Sunni Arab base.

The clashes came after insurgents kidnapped and killed 31 men belonging to the Albu Mahal tribe because they had joined the Iraqi security forces, said Sheikh Muhammed Mahallawi, one of the tribe's leaders.

"We decided, either we force them out of the city or kill them," with the support of U.S. bombardment, Mahallawi said.

SORRY, CINDY, I'M SEEING KATARINA NOW:

Bush cancels vacation to focus on relief (RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, August 30, 2005, Associated Press)

Medical disaster assistance teams from across the country were deployed to the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The Red Cross sent in 185 emergency vehicles to provide meals. And President Bush cut short his vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president will chair a meeting Wednesday of a White House task force set up to coordinate the federal response and relief effort.

"We have a lot of work to do," the president said of the storm FEMA director Michael Brown has termed catastrophic.

IF ONLY THE CIA WERE THIS COMPETENT:

Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked (MARCELLO MEGA, 8/28/05, Scotland on Sunday)

A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.

The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

THE HALF-MOONERS VS THE FULL:

Anti-Israel talk shouldn't be tolerated (SUSAN ESTRICH, 8/24/05, Creators Syndicate)

Did an ABC staffer insert the following lines in an e-mail sent by celebrity anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan?

"Am I emotional? Yes, my firstborn was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel." That is what Sheehan is claiming.

If you don't believe that explanation - if you don't believe an ABC staffer set about to put anti-Semitic words into Sheehan's mouth - then your hero, my liberal friends, is a raging, ignorant anti-Semite. Sorry, but what are you doing hanging with that crowd?

THEY WONDER AS THEY WANDER:

The Democrats' Supreme Conundrum (E. J. Dionne Jr., August 30, 2005, Washington Post)

Most Democrats are certain that Roberts is significantly more conservative than Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he would replace, and that he will push the court to the right. But they wonder whether that alone can justify a full-fledged fight against him, let alone a filibuster. [...]

Yet many Democrats are frustrated over the difficulty of establishing exactly what kind of conservative Roberts is -- or, in the case of liberal groups firmly opposed to his nomination, of proving that Roberts is still the conservative ideologue who emerges from his memos as a young Reagan administration official on matters such as civil rights, disability rights and the right to privacy. If trying to stop Roberts is a short-term political risk, letting him through without a fight might be a long-term risk to the judicial principles that liberals care about.

Roberts would not only immediately shift the balance on the court, he is also a potential nominee for chief justice, a post in which his political skills could allow him, in tandem with another Bush appointee, to create a powerful conservative court majority for a generation. If Democrats fail to amass enough votes against Roberts in this round, they will be in a weak position to challenge him as chief justice in the next.

Democrats are also under pressure from their liberal allies to challenge Roberts by way of clarifying what they stand for. "One of the worst consequences politically would be for the majority of Democrats to vote for someone who, in the near future, would overturn well-established precedents on clean air, clean water, privacy, equal opportunity and religious liberty," said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way.

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?:

Consumer confidence rises unexpectedly (ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, 8/30/05, Associated Press)

Consumers reassured by the strengthening job market stayed optimistic in August despite the surging price of gasoline, giving a widely followed measure of consumer confidence an unexpected boost.

The Conference Board said Tuesday its Consumer Confidence Index, compiled from a survey of U.S. households, rose to 105.6 this month up from a revised 103.6 in July. The August figure was better than the 101 analysts expected.

DETERMINED TO ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY:

Prof Denies Human Free Will (Julie Geng, 8/30/05, Cornell Daily Sun)

In the midst of a heated national debate about intelligent design and evolution, Prof. William Provine, ecology and evolutionary biology, tackled the question head-on in a discussion attended by over 60 students, faculty and Ithacan community members last night. Sponsored by the Bioethics Society of Cornell, the lecture, titled “Evolution and Intelligent Design: The Implications for Human Free Will” covered topics including Darwinism, the origin of moral responsibility, the social need to assign blame and reductionism.

“I was a vocal opponent to I.D. [intelligent design] even before [the movement] began,” Provine said at the opening. [...]

“Choosing doesn’t imply free will,” he said. “Choices are not made freely — there are all kinds of constraints on it.” In an attempt to discredit the view that lack of free will would “lead society into a downward spiral,” Provine argued that without free will there would be no means of blaming people for their actions. “Blame is useless,” he said. “It just creates a horrible system of criminal justice.”

He added that if society recognized the absence of free will, society would ultimately be much kinder to its less fortunate.

“I hated the idea of human free will,” Provine added. He also argued that humans mostly provide their own moral guidance, and that “ultimate moral responsibility is nonexistent.” He admitted, “Free will is the hardest [preconception] … to give up.”
Though it's always implicit, you rarely hear Darwinists be so explicit that their philosophy is just an attempt to escape morality.

Comments

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EVEN THE JAPANESE WEREN'T DUMB ENOUGH TO BOMB PEARL HARBOR A SECOND TIME:

4 years later, still no terror (Paul Campos, August 30, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

So why haven't they?

Roughly speaking, three answers can be given to this question. The most pessimistic is that Islamic terrorists already in America are in the process of planning an attack that will dwarf 9/11 in scale, and that therefore small-scale attacks like those described above seem trivial to them. Although there's no evidence for this theory, that hasn't stopped people like former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer from publishing scenarios of death and destruction that, depending on one's point of view, are either sobering cautionary tales or elaborate paranoid fantasies.

The second answer is that those Islamic terrorist groups currently in the country have no capacity to carry out a large-scale attack in the foreseeable future, and that they aren't carrying out small-scale attacks because they don't understand American culture, and therefore fail to grasp how psychologically effective such attacks would be.

The third answer for why we have been free of any Islamic terrorism since 9/11 is that, in part as a consequence of steps taken since that terrible day, there simply are no functioning Islamic terrorist groups in the United States at this time. This theory would seem to be backed by Occam's razor - the logical principle that the simplest explanation that can account for all the available facts is generally best.

ONE FOR THE THUMB:

Baker picks family over campaign: Says he won't run for governor (Frank Phillips, August 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care chief executive Charles D. Baker said yesterday he will not seek the Republican nomination for governor, leaving Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey as the GOP's only declared candidate if Governor Mitt Romney does not seek reelection. [...]

His announcement stunned many of his supporters and others in the political world who were convinced that Baker, who made his reputation in the administrations of governors William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci, would challenge Healey for the party's nomination. Baker said he would not run if Romney ran for reelection, but the healthcare CEO was widely believed to be preparing to resign his $1-million-a-year job to lay the groundwork for a campaign.

Baker's decision marks a major shift in the political dynamics of the 2006 race and a setback for the Democrats, who had hoped for a divisive, resource-draining primary fight among Republicans. The news comes after a well-orchestrated strategy by Healey and her advisers to promote her as Romney's heir apparent.

''This is a big boost for the Republicans," said Senate minority leader Brian P. Lees, a Republican from East Longmeadow. ''This decision by Baker will really solidify Kerry Healey as the candidate for the Republican Party. The Democrats will be slugging it out all spring and summer next year and won't be able to come together until the fall after the primary."

Romney has said he will make a decision on his own reelection plans this fall, but Healey and other Republicans are making plans as if he has decided to forgo a run. Baker's departure from the race means Healey, who has access to her husband's fortune to finance her campaign, is now free to consolidate her candidacy and focus on beating the Democrats. It will also give Healey greater leeway in the choice of lieutenant governor.

AUGUST IS OVER AND SHE'S OVERSTAYED HER WELCOME:

First Read (Elizabeth Wilner, Mark Murray and Huma Zaidi, 8/30/05, MSNBC)

Cindy Sheehan had an odd, little-noticed interview yesterday morning on NPR's Talk of the Nation. When asked about her earlier meeting with President Bush, she said, "Do we have to talk about this?... I have two minutes..." Hearing Sheehan say she had "two minutes," the interviewer noted that "we thought we had more time with you today." Sheehan responded, "Hello? I didn't hear your question?" And then said shortly afterward: "I have to go now, thank you." After she hung up, the interviewer explained to listeners that Talk of the Nation had arranged to speak with Sheehan for the whole hour, and he apologized for the interview being cut short.

PALESTIME:

Egypt envoy seeks state for Palestinians (IBRAHIM BARZAK, 8/30/05, Associated Press)

A senior Egyptian envoy told the Palestinian parliament Tuesday that Egypt will not rest until the Palestinians have established a state on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.

The envoy, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, spoke in the name of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and used particularly strong language to support the Palestinians.

"It's time to see the suffering ended, to see the prisoners released and to see the Palestinian territories living in security and prosperity," said Suleiman, who was in the region to broker an agreement to monitor the movement of people and goods across the Gaza-Egypt border following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Suleiman said the borders of a future Palestinian state should include the West Bank and Gaza, but he did not specifically mention east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967 and is claimed by the Palestinians as a future capital.

THE MARK OF A TRUE CONSERVATIVE

I see (translation: I don't see) (Libby Purves, Timesonline, August 30th, 2005)

Let us now praise famous men! Judge Seddon Cripps, to be precise: a senior circuit judge who also presides over the immigration services tribunal. Last week our hero interrupted a fraud trial in St Albans with a question. What, he asked, is a sofa-bed? When a witness tried to explain, he asked for clarification: “How can a bed be turned into a sofa?” He listened, it seems, attentively. Earlier on he had been fazed by the word “futon”. Modern bedsit furniture is not His Honour’s strong point.

The standard response is to giggle and haul out other judicial questions that have delighted us over the years: Lord Irvine’s ignorance of B&Q; Judge Dunn’s confusion over Pelé; Judge Aglionby who asked “What is a Teletubby?”; and others who at various times have asked enlightenment regarding Gazza, Oasis, Jordan, Linford Christie’s lunchbox, the Rolling Stones and even Barbie. My response differs: it consists of three rousing and un-ironic cheers. Such judges, in their fearlessness and lack of self-preserving subterfuge, show the way to all of us. No human quality is more intelligent, honest and useful than a willingness to ask when you don’t know. We should be less afraid of it.

After all, why should a judge, paid to know the law and reflect on public ethics, be expected to riffle through the style supplements and waste good thinking-time on marshmallow media drivel about soap actors, sporting “heroes”, Jude Law’s nanny, pop musicians and TV for infants? Why should he? He’s not a contestant in some feeble-minded quiz like The Weakest Link, which places cultural dross on the same level as lasting fact. Of course judges need to understand the serious aspects of modernity — like a multiracial society or the weakened status of marriage — but there is no reason to feel embarrassed if they don’t know who Jade from Big Brother is. Indeed sometimes the very question — asked perhaps with sly ingenuity — is the trigger for a clarification of thought. A bewigged figure solemnly inquiring “Who is Madonna?” gives the court and the nation a chance to stop and weigh how important the answer actually is, sub specie aeternitatis.

Excuse the self-reference, but my most embarrassing moment in court came a few years ago when I asked a witness to explain “for Her Honour” what a jet-ski was. The judge gave me a look of withering contempt and assured me she knew exactly what it was, which was too bad because I sure didn’t.

You are all invited to prove your genuine conservative colours by sharing your most humiliating experience involving a public admission or revelation that you didn’t know something about modern culture that absolutely everyone else in the world seems to know.

DESIGNING THE ANGLOSPHERE:

Intelligent Design to be Taught in Australian Schools - Opponents Furious (LifeSiteNews.com, August 29, 2005)

After decades of teaching the theory of Darwinian evolution as though it were established fact, school boards in Australia may rethink their approach. The Intelligent Design (ID) theory is making inroads with formerly skeptical members of the scientific community now that the mathematical improbability of the random and spontaneous generation of life has been more thoroughly analyzed.

Australian Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson told reporters earlier this month that ID would have a place with Darwinism should parents or schools be interested.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Bush accused of Aids damage to Africa (Jeevan Vasagar, The Guardian, August 30th, 2005)

A senior United Nations official has accused President George Bush of "doing damage to Africa" by cutting funding for condoms, a move which may jeopardise the successful fight against HIV/Aids in Uganda.

Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its infection rate.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies]," Mr Lewis said yesterday. "To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa."

The condom shortage has developed because both the Ugandan government and the US, which is the main donor for HIV/Aids prevention, have allowed supplies to dwindle, according to an American pressure group, the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (Change).[...]

Campaigners accuse Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, of being instrumental in the switch towards a policy of abstinence. Ugandan government officials say that her religious beliefs, stemming from being a born-again Christian, are central to her promotion of the message of abstinence. In one poster campaign, signed by the office of the first lady, the slogan alongside the picture of a smiling young woman says: "She's saving herself for marriage - how about you?"

While Uganda needs between 120m and 150m condoms a year, only 32m have been distributed since last October, Change said in a report published yesterday.[...]

Uganda has had extraordinary success in reducing adult infection rates from 30% in the early 1990s to below 6% last year. This success is largely credited to its president, Yoweri Museveni, who spoke out about what was considered a shameful disease and told people how to combat it.

Got that, everyone? Thanks to President Bush and Uganda’s wacky first couple, Uganda has a condom crisis. It doesn’t seem to have an AIDS crisis anymore, but the condom crisis is a catastrophe.

THE CIVIL WAR SPREADS:

Egyptians press hunt for Sinai terrorists (Michael Slackman and Mona el-Naggar, AUGUST 30, 2005, The New York Times)

Thousands of Egyptian security troops have spread out across a sprawling mountain range in the northern Sinai in an increasingly violent hunt for terrorists.

Two high-ranking Egyptian police officers were killed last week when they drove over a land mine, the worst such incident since an Islamic insurgency in the mid-1990s, according to Egyptian security officials.

A week ago, the Egyptian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying it had captured, killed or identified all of those responsible for the suicide bombing attacks on resorts in Taba in October and Sharm el Sheik in July.

But what was supposed to have been a mopping up operation, with a handful of suspects being sought hiding in the caves and hideaways along Halal mountain, took a surprising turn when Major General Mahmoud Adel and Lieutenant Colonel Omar Abdel Moneim were killed last week and the security forces were forced to temporarily withdraw, officials said.

By Monday, officials said that there were thousands of security agents back on the hunt, aided by armored vehicles and army minesweepers searching for mines planted in the rugged terrain of the mountain range.

"This is a huge mountainous region," said an official in the Interior Ministry. "It is high and rugged with caves and turns. We are coming in from below and they are in control from above. It is expected that we lose some men because it is a war and there are arms being used."

MORE:
Jihadism's roots in political Islam (Bassam Tibi, AUGUST 30, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

Although jihadism may not be Islamic, it is based on the ideology of Islamism, which has emerged from the politicization of Islam in the current war of ideas.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of recognizing this truth. Jihadism will continue to be with us for decades to come, as long as the movement related to it within Islamic civilization continues to thrive and to disseminate its deadly ideas.

Jihadists see themselves as non-state actors waging an irregular war against "kafirun," or unbelievers. They see their struggle as a just war legitimated by a religious, political and military interpretation of the Islamic concept of jihad.

Jihadism's relation to Islamism can be stated in a nutshell: Jihadists read the classical doctrine of jihad in a new mind while reinventing Islamic tradition.

Although the Koran allows Muslims to resort to "qital" (physical fighting) for the benefit of Islam, this is clearly for reasons other than terrorism, because the Koran allows qital only under strict rules, while terrorism, by definition, is a war without rules. The new interpretation of jihad adds an "ism" to it, jihad becoming jihadism (jihadiyya), an irregular war that is a variety of modern terrorism.

It is wrong and even deceitful to argue that jihadism has nothing to do with Islam, because the jihadists believe that they are acting as "true Islamic believers" and learn the Islamist mind-set in mosques and Islamic schools, including those of the Islamic diaspora in Europe.

It follows that the debate over whether these terrorists are "Islamic" or "un-Islamic" is meaningless. The fact is that jihadism is a new direction in Islamic civilization, an expression of the contemporary "revolt against the West" that enjoys tremendous popularity in the ongoing war of ideas. In order to combat the deadly idea of jihadism successfully, it is necessary to seek Muslim cooperation to determine who the jihadists are, rather than engaging in empty arguments.

HOMO EMOTIONALENSIS:

Oil markets await details of hurricane impact (Sheila McNulty in Houston and Carola Hoyos in London, August 29 2005, Financial Times)

Anan Shihab-Eldin, acting OPEC Secretary-General told an energy conference in Oslo on Tuesday that if economic fundamentals, rather than perceptions of shortages, dominated the oil markets, there could be price stability. “Fundamentals do not justify the current price levels,” he said. “Forty dollars a barrel is a floor, but I could see around $50-55”, he added. “We want to reassure the market that stock levels are building up.” He also backed a proposal by Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, the OPEC President, on Monday, to raise output by 500,000 barrels per day at a meeting in September in an attempt to help cool oil prices.

TEN ALREADY?:

A Higher Standard: The Weekly at 10: Sometimes Wrong but Always Right (Peter Carlson, August 30, 2005, Washington Post)

Some left-wingers probably don't read the Weekly Standard because they figure it's a Rupert Murdoch-owned, right-wing, warmongering magazine and, of course, they've got a point. But now -- as the Washington-based mag prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary -- it's worth noting that the Weekly Standard is a truly excellent right-wing warmongering magazine, no matter what your political persuasion might be.

The Standard is saved from the worst sins of ideological magazines -- crankiness, sectarianism and self-righteousness -- by a delightfully impish sense of humor. It is America's funniest right-wing magazine, although there is not, alas, much competition for that title. [...]

My favorite writers in the Standard's stable are two guys with sharp eyes and cutting wits -- Andrew Ferguson and Matt Labash.

Ferguson's brain contains a highly effective baloney detector, which enables him to identify balderdash in all its myriad manifestations. Over the years, he has published great comic essays on such celebrated cultural icons as Frank Sinatra, Edward R. Murrow and Mikhail Gorbachev. For the Gorbachev piece, Ferguson found Gorby in the same conference room with Shirley MacLaine and Deepak Chopra, which severely strained Ferguson's baloney detector but inspired a hilarious story.

Labash likes to leave the office and explore the weirder aspects of the world, which is a good trait in a reporter. Back in 2001, when a politically correct faction of gym teachers denounced dodge ball as a threat to America's youth, Labash risked his life by venturing out to a Maryland elementary school to play the deadly game. And he lived to tell the tale in a funny piece called "The New Phys Ed and the Wussification of America."

This summer, Labash spent time with the Minutemen -- the controversial organization that patrols the Mexican border, trying to deter illegal immigrants -- and his nuanced piece shows that the Minutemen aren't xenophobic vigilantes, as they are sometimes portrayed.

But my all-time favorite Labash piece is "Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time," published last March and reprinted in the new anthology. In it, he offers this synopsis of our northern neighbor:

". . . a country that didn't bother to draft its own constitution until 1982, that kept 'God Save the Queen' as its national anthem until 1980, and that still enshrines its former master's monarch as its head of state. Her Canadian title is 'Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories, Queen (breath) Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.' Maybe they should change their national anthem again, to Britney Spears's 'I'm a Slave 4 U.' "

7/07ENING THEMSELVES:

Let pupils swear in school, argues parents' group (FIONA MACGREGOR, 8/30/05, The Scotsman)

PUPILS should be allowed to swear in the classroom rather than be punished for their four-letter-word outbursts, Scottish parents' representatives said yesterday.

The Scottish Parent Teacher Council said teachers exacerbate the use of bad language in school by overreacting to commonly used swear words.

The comment comes after a school in England provoked an angry reaction among traditionalists by announcing it would allow the use of swear words up to five times per lesson to encourage pupils to think about their language.

HANDY PRETEXT:

Lebanese hold pro-Syria officials (BBC, 8/30/05)

Police in Lebanon have arrested three former pro-Syrian security chiefs, security sources said.

The officials are the former heads of public security, the internal security forces and military intelligence.

The current head of the country's presidential guard, Mustafa Hamdan, has also given himself up.

TOP DOG:

Widow of Sudan's Garang Steps In to Continue His Mission: Defying Patriarchal Tradition, She Takes On Public Role (Emily Wax, August 30, 2005, Washington Post)

As soon as the news of his death reached her, Rebecca Garang, a tall and imposing woman in her fifties, began making firm press statements and vigorous speeches. She called for calm and urged people to continue her husband's mission. Within days, she had emerged as an eloquent and powerful force in a place where women rarely have a public role.

"I will not miss my husband as long as you people of Sudan are the watchdogs," she said at the funeral, referring to the peace deal that set up a national power-sharing arrangement. "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."

Although hundreds of rioters took to the streets after John Garang's death in an angry spasm of looting and violence that left more than 100 dead in the capital, Khartoum, and this southern city, Rebecca Garang set a tone that helped calm the nation's emotions. Over and over, she told radio listeners that his death had been an accident caused by bad weather.

"It's just his body which is gone," she said on the air. "His vision of peace remains."

President Bush called from the White House to thank her, and even her husband's former enemies in Khartoum recognized her contribution. She was praised at the swearing-in of Salva Kiir Mayardit, the former senior aide to her husband who replaced him as vice president of the new unified government of Sudan.

"After he died, the words from Mama Rebecca's mouth have been like milk," Abdel-Basit Sabdarat, the minister of information, told government and rebel leaders who had gathered for the subdued ceremony. "We were wounded. She was there to heal and became a symbol of the country."

Many Sudanese hope Rebecca Garang's new role will become permanent. Her husband's personality was seen as a dominating force behind the peace deal. Kiir, who was intelligence chief and military commander of John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army, lacks his political stature.

Three weeks after her husband's death, Rebecca Garang visited Uganda to demonstrate solidarity between that country and southern Sudan. It was a politically meaningful visit, because her husband was killed in the crash of a Ugandan military helicopter as he returned home from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's ranch.

Many southerners believe the crash was a plot by the Khartoum government...

14 YEARS INTO FREE KURDISTAN:

Kurds first, Iraq second (Bashdar Ismaeel, 8/31/05, Asia Times)

Finally free from the totalitarian grip of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime, the Kurds for the first time in 1991, thanks largely to the establishment of a US-sponsored safe haven - enforced by daily air patrols in the three northern-most Iraqi provinces - have flourished economically, socially and politically with relative freedom and stability.

Ever-grateful for the US liberation, soldiers are hugged and given warm receptions and not targeted in this part of the country. Ghomma Mustafa, a prisoner for nearly nine years, showed typical enthusiasm for the US liberation: "Thanks to the US, now the whole of Kurdistan is free and we are grateful. Right now, without the US presence in Iraq, it would collapse."

The problem in this part of the world, a far cry from the terrorist-ridden and volatile south and central areas, is that people do not feel a part of Iraq, or even want to be associated with any of its traditional customs. In this part of the country, it is the Kurdistan flag and not the Iraqi flag that is ubiquitous. Even the crossing at the Haber border gate between Iraq and Turkey suggest that one is entering a separate country, and not Iraq.

For the Kurds, they have fought with their blood and lives to live this day, and they are determined to not settle for anything less than what they feel they deserve - now federalism, as proposed in the draft constitution submitted to parliament this week, perhaps later full autonomy, even independence.

THAT'LL GET HIM OFF MY BACK FOR AWHILE:

It's a Jerk!: Should men want to watch their wives give birth? (Meghan O'Rourke, Aug. 29, 2005, Slate)

A man who doesn't want to watch his wife give birth is a jerk. This was the overwhelming consensus reached by a host of respected blogs after the publication last Tuesday in the New York Times of a piece by a therapist noting an unhappy trend: A number of his male patients have reported that after witnessing their wives have babies they no longer feel attracted to them. "I mean, how are you supposed to go from seeing that to wanting to be with ...?" one husband asked, unable to finish his sentence.

LIVE EVIL:

Horror: The Perfect Christian Genre: Scott Derrickson, co-writer and director of the upcoming film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, says horror movies are an excellent way for a Christian filmmaker to address things of faith. (Peter T. Chattaway, 08/30/05, Christianity Today)

Can a Christian make horror movies? Scott Derrickson thinks so. As a screenwriter—and a Christian—he has worked on quite a few films in the genre, including Urban Legends: Final Cut, Dracula 2000 and Hellraiser: Inferno, the last of which he also directed. His newest film as co-writer and director, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, coming to theaters on September 9, looks at first glance like more of the same.

But this movie is a little different. It is based on the true story of a German woman named Anneliese Michel, who died during an exorcism in 1976; the priest who tried to cast the demons out of her was charged with manslaughter. So the film is part horror story, part courtroom drama—and Derrickson says it will get people talking about God.

Derrickson spoke to Christianity Today Movies from his home in Glendale, California.

Why would a Christian get involved in horror films, of all things?

Scott Derrickson: In my opinion, the horror genre is a perfect genre for Christians to be involved with. I think the more compelling question is, Why do so many Christians find it odd that a Christian would be working in this genre? To me, this genre deals more overtly with the supernatural than any other genre, it tackles issues of good and evil more than any other genre, it distinguishes and articulates the essence of good and evil better than any other genre, and my feeling is that a lot of Christians are wary of this genre simply because it's unpleasant. The genre is not about making you feel good, it is about making you face your fears. And in my experience, that's something that a lot of Christians don't want to do.

To me, the horror genre is the genre of non-denial. It's about admitting that there is evil in the world, and recognizing that there is evil within us, and that we're not in control, and that the things that we are afraid of must be confronted in order for us to relinquish that fear.

MORE:
Behind the lens - A Christian filmmaker in Hollywood (Scott Derrickson, 1/30/02, Christian Century)(

MORE, PLEASE:

After Cologne: The Remarkable Lesson of Professor Ratzinger: For Catholics, Christians, Jews, Muslims. A survey of the first trip outside of Italy for the new pope – who, the more demanding he is, conquers minds and hearts all the more (Sandro Magister, August 25, 2005, Chiesa)

He had announced it since his first morning as pope, in the seminal address delivered in the Sistine Chapel on April 20: “The Eucharist will be the centre of the World Youth Day in Cologne in August.”

And what he said, he did. To the million young people gathered from 197 countries for four days in the city that keeps the relics of the Magi – even to those of little faith and the non-baptized – Benedict XVI preached “the inconceivable greatness of a God who humbled himself even to appearing in a manger, to giving himself as food on the altar.”

One of his other early statements was that the pope “must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”

And he kept this promise, too. From August 18-21 in Cologne, Benedict XVI did not bestow upon the crowd a mere theatrical gesture, or nothing more than a striking phrase. He led the young people to look, not at him, but always and only at the true protagonist: that Jesus whom the Magi adored in Bethlehem, the “House of Bread,” and who is now concealed in the consecrated host.

Joseph Razinger took a big risk in Cologne. Cardinal Angleo Scola, one of the many bishops who came to catechize the young people during the first three days of the vigil with the pope, thought he would win them over with a ten-minute recitation from “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, challenged everyone’s attention span with a difficult explanation of “the different nuances of the word ‘adoration’ in Greek and in Latin. The Greek word is ‘proskynesis’. It refers to the gesture of submission, the recognition of God as our true measure. [...] The Latin word is ‘ad-oratio’, mouth to mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence ultimately love. Submission becomes union, because he to whom we submit is love.”

The theme of this twentieth World Youth Day was: “We Have Come To Worship Him,” the words of the Magi who came following the star. Ratzinger used this episode as the outline for a remarkable lesson that lasted four days – beginning with his arrival on the banks of the Rhine – on “the great procession of the faithful called the Church.” Walking behind the Magi are the saints “in whose lives the Lord has opened up the Gospel before us and turned over the pages.” Their relics “are indeed just human bones,” but of “individuals touched by the transcendent power of God.” And over their reliquary, “the most exquisite reliquary of the whole Christian world,” Cologne “raised above it an even greater reliquary, this stupendous Gothic Cathedral, [...] one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the Christian West,” together with Rome, Santiago de Compostela, and Jerusalem. For this reason, “here in Cologne we discover the joy of belonging to a family as vast as the world, including heaven and earth, the past, the present, the future.” The Church can be criticized, because it contains both grain and darnel, but “it is actually consoling to realize that there is darnel in the Church. In this way, despite all our defects, we can still hope to be counted among the disciples of Jesus, who came to call sinners.”

Benedict XVI spoke the latter of these words at the culmination of the nocturnal vigil in Marienfeld, before an altar beneath a starry sky. And then, all of a sudden, he added: “Dear friends, this is not a distant story that took place long ago. It is with us now. Here in the sacred Host he is present before us and in our midst. [...] He is present now as he was then in Bethlehem. He invites us to that inner pilgrimage which is called adoration.” Silence. The pope blessed the crowd with the host and quickly withdrew into the shadows, without passing through the crowd. He would return the next morning for the Mass, to repeat that it is only through God and the Eucharist that true revolution comes to the world. And he would give two pieces of advice to the young people: that they attend Sunday Mass and study the catechism.

HEY, WAIT, WE'RE THE MINORITY?:

Opting out of Arabism in Iraq (Barry Rubin, 8/30/05, THE JERUSALEM POST)

There is one other fascinating definition of identity: the Arabs of Iraq – and not Iraq as a whole – are said to be part of the Arab nation.

THIS DETAIL is psychologically explosive on a regional level. It means that non-Arab groups can opt out of Arabism. Arab nationalism would thus become a form of ethnic sympathy rather than national policy. This would be a real nail in the coffin of the way the Arab world has been organized in the past half century.

Regarding communal relations within Iraq, the constitution is very tolerant. Arabic and Kurdish have joint status as official languages, while Turkoman – a point that should please Turkey – and Assyrian will have equal status in regions where people who speak them live.

It is important to remember that federalism is completely unknown in the Arab world. Strong central governments have been seen – with good reason – to be the only protection against anarchy and the collapse of the state. Therefore, it is understandable that few Arabs think it will work in Iraq, and they might be right.

Still, the constitution has some very original features in regard to federalism. On the important and controversial question of dividing oil revenues, there is to be a commission including members from all national and regional government bodies to set up the system for apportioning wealth. This is also a gesture toward the Sunnis, whose areas have no oilfields. The principle is that the distribution of money should be in proportion to the population in every area of the country.

Another unique feature is that provinces have the right to set up regions, and regions have the right to merge. This can be done by the demand of voters or legislators, and on paper such a decision looks easy. Each region will have a president and a National Assembly that will write a constitution which must not contradict Iraq's national laws or constitution.

By making this process simple, presumably the goal is to make groups feel secure that they can get a degree of local self-rule if they want one. There is nothing to prevent Sunni Arabs from setting up their own region, too.

APPARENTLY, THOUGH, the Sunnis' fear comes not so much from a threat to their communal life as to the centralized system they have dominated in the past. In practice, though, the proposed constitutional order might be far more beneficial to them than a centralized system putting them at the mercy of a Shi'ite and Kurdish majority. Their problem is adjusting to the fact that as a minority – perhaps only 20 percent of the population – they would benefit from a system entrenching minority rights.

MORE:
Saddam supporters denounce charter (Richard Beeston, 8/30/05, Times of London)

THOUSANDS of Sunni protesters took to the streets of Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit yesterday, holding up portraits of the ousted dictator and denouncing Iraq’s proposed constitution as an American-Israeli plot.

Chanting: “We sacrifice our blood and soul for you, Oh Saddam!” about 2,000 demonstrators kicked off what is expected to be an impassioned campaign to destroy the new charter, which they say will deprive Sunni Arabs of their rights in favour of the Shia Muslim majority and their Kurdish allies.

THEORIST:

Reading Left to Right (Scott McLemee, 8/16/05, Inside Higher Ed)

[W]hen Political Theory Daily Review started in January 2003, it already looked a little bit old-fashioned, blogospherically speaking. It was a log, plain and simple. There were three new links each day. The first was to a newspaper or magazine article about some current event. The second tended to go to a debate or polemical article. And the third (always the wild card, the one it was most interesting to see) would be academic: a link to a scholarly article in an online journal, or a conference site, or perhaps the uploaded draft of a paper in PDF.

In the intervening years, the site has grown wildly — at least in size, if not in reputation. (Chances are that more bloggers read Political Theory than ever link to it.) The same three departments exist, but often with a dozen or more links in each. By now, clearly, the Review must be a team effort. The sheer volume of material logged each day suggests it is run by a collective of gnomes who tirelessly scour the Web for eruditia.

But in fact, it is all the work of one person, Alfredo Perez, who keeps a pretty low profile, even on his own site. I got in touch with Perez to find out who he is, and how he puts the Review together. (I also wondered if he ever got much sleep, but forgot to ask that part.) Here, in any case, is the gist of our e-mail discussion, presented with his permission.

THE CONSERVATIVE IN THE RACE:

McCain Backs Gay Marriage Ban (NewsMax, 8/28/05)

More than a year before the general election, U.S. Sen. John McCain is backing an initiative that would change Arizona's Constitution to ban gay marriages and deny government benefits to unmarried couples.

LIBERATION AND OCCUPATION AREN'T COMPATIBLE:

The Chalabi Comeback: Iraq's "indispensable" man returns to center stage. (ROBERT L. POLLOCK, August 29, 2005, Opinion Journal)

[Ahmed Chalabi] survived a concerted White House campaign last year to undermine him, brokering the Shiite-led electoral list that won the January election and becoming deputy prime minister; because he had become a major player in the constitution-writing process that culminated this past weekend; and because he is rapidly becoming a key figure for U.S. military commanders on the ground here as they contemplate the feasibility of troop drawdowns.

"Very personally courageous," "not afraid to make decisions," and a "hugely important figure in Iraq" are among the phrases I heard U.S. officers apply to him during two weeks I spent in the country earlier this month. Another sums up the stakes thus: "Chalabi is there to talk about protecting strategic infrastructure so they can sell oil so they can fund their own security-force development."

He's referring to the fact that Mr. Chalabi has assumed special responsibility for oil and infrastructure security--a role in which he is widely recognized to be making major improvements on the abysmal performance of L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority and Ayad Allawi's interim government. I watch him in action firsthand shortly after my arrival, chairing a meeting of the Energy Committee he helped create. He suggests that the electrical grid be mapped with GPS, since after a recent attack it took three days to locate the damage. The issue is quickly resolved, as a water ministry official informs the room that such data already exists and that the problem is merely information-sharing. Then Mr. Chalabi offers a gentle reprimand to the Iraqi Army's deputy chief of staff for continued reliance on a local infrastructure protection battalion that has repeatedly failed. What's more important, he asks, keeping some tribal sheikh happy or keeping the lights on in Baghdad?

It doesn't sound like much, but in a society where the modus vivendi for decades has been to tell people exactly what they want to hear, real managerial skills are a rare trait. "Chalabi has emerged as a central figure in the effort to improve infrastructure security," says Gen. David Petraeus, the overseer of Iraqi Security Force training and one of the few officials willing to risk offending the foreign policy mandarins in Washington by going on record about the matter. In particular, Mr. Chalabi is credited with obtaining additional Iraqi funding and focus on the effort, resulting in what one U.S. observer calls "the highest crude oil exports in anyone's memory." Northern exports through the Kirkuk pipeline have resumed, albeit quietly--lest it become an even more tempting target for sabotage.

$37 TRILLION AND DEFLATION, WELCOME TO GOOD TIMES:

Measuring the Economy May Not Be as Simple as 1, 2, 3 (Jonathan Weisman, August 29, 2005, Washington Post)

The Census Bureau tomorrow will release the latest statistics on poverty in the United States, the income level of an average household and the number of Americans still lacking health insurance.

Don't believe the numbers.

A growing chorus of experts and politicians is raising questions about the data that frame Americans' understanding of their nation's well-being. [...]

From the conservative Heritage Foundation to the more liberal Brookings Institution, economists agree the government's basic measurement of consumer price changes is overstating inflation. As a result, tax collection has been depressed, since tax brackets rise with inflation. Government spending on programs like Social Security has been excessive, since such programs enjoy annual cost-of-living adjustments based on the current consumer price index. And labor contracts have been distorted by built-in inflation protections.

The Labor Department's standard consumer price index measures the cost of a basket of goods in urban areas as they rise over time. But since 2000, the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics has also tracked more realistic spending patterns, allowing for the substitution of products when prices spike. This "chained" CPI, for example, might substitute a pound of chicken for a pound of beef one month if steak prices have shot upward, said David S. Johnson, assistant BLS commissioner for consumer prices and price index.

Switching to this more sophisticated measurement from now through 2014 would cut $70 billion from Social Security payments while raising income tax collection by $83 billion, according to Brookings Institution economists. Yet Congress has made no effort to change the official inflation measurement, in part because lawmakers have no desire to slow the growth of either tax bracket increases or Social Security benefits.

"This is a political decision, and no one wants to make it," said Fritz Scheuren, president of the American Statistical Association.

More recently, a debate has begun over the nation's savings rate, which officially hovers just above zero. When Congress returns in September, the House Ways and Means Committee will try to put together legislation to raise personal savings through tax credits and other incentives. But according to David Malpass, chief global economist at Bear Stearns & Co., the United States is accumulating savings hand over fist. The country's pool of liquid savings grew by $1.5 trillion last year, he said, and U.S. households remain the world's largest creditor, with $37 trillion in financial assets.

The problem, Malpass said, is that the official savings rate measure does not consider economic gains from patents, innovation, capital gains or land appreciation.

"We may be throwing billions of dollars at a problem that isn't there," said [Rahm] Emanuel, who has advocated savings proposals.

JUST ANOTHER ISM:

Lessons for Islam from Quebec (Spengler, 8/20/05, Asia Times)

Quebec's "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, in which the birth rate of Francophone Canadians fell to among the lowest from the highest in the industrial world, may offer lessons for the future of radical Islam. Quebecois nationalism peaked after the Quebec's demographic fate was sealed, offering an embittered but futile remonstrance against inevitable decline. Last week I observed that Islamists have only one generation in which to establish the theocracy they want, before modernism catches up with the Muslim world and its birth rate crashes to levels associated with the infecund West (The demographics of radical Islam).

If the owl of wisdom flies at night, as Hegel said of philosophy, so does the buzzard of nationalism. When traditional life is placid and content in its faith and family life, nationalism does not require political expression. Europe's nationalist movements sprang up in response to the threat of Napoleon. Quebec's nationalists invented themselves in response to the imminent decline of the Francophone population of Canada. Something analogous may be said of the Islamists.

Islamism wells up from a profound and well-placed sense of fragility.

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

TOTALITARIAN MEASURE:

Brussels pressures Britain to go metric (Lisbeth Kirk, 8/29/05, EU Observer)

The European Commission has reminded Britain of its legal requirement to set a date for abolishing the imperial system, or the use of pints, miles and acres.

Following lobbying from unnamed groups, Brussels officials over the past few weeks have made a fresh attempt to get the Brits in line with the rest of Europe in using the metric system, UK media report.

NOW YOU'RE TALKIN':

New perk from drinking coffee found (Randolph E. Schmid, August 29, 2005, The Associated Press

When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were.

Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released yesterday.

THAT'S CARRYING BROTHERLY LOVE A BIT FAR:

Implausibility isn't a crime in 'Prison Break':
The Fox series about a man attempting to break his brother out of prison is a comic book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Robert Lloyd, August 29, 2005, LA Times)

"Prison Break," premiering tonight on Fox as either the last new series of the summer season or the first new series of the fall, does not waste any time in establishing itself as completely implausible — which is a smart move indeed.

By getting that matter settled at the top — as young Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller, "The Human Stain") contrives to get himself thrown into prison, one particular prison, to break out his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell, "North Shore") before his impending execution for the murder of the brother of the vice president of the United States — the show can pretty much go where it wants to afterward. If you're still on board at the end of the two-hour pilot, directed by Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour") — and even without much in the way of action, it holds the interest quite handily — you will have long since stopped peppering the TV screen with inconvenient questions. If the show is not absolutely critic-proof, if it is a convocation of clichés and old tropes, it is forearmed with a response difficult to argue with: "Yeah, so?"

It's a comic book, basically, a B-movie, a pulp fiction, and low enough in the cultural reckoning of things to set its own rules with impunity. It is a low-resolution reality the show inhabits. Though Michael will occasionally frown over some bit of prison violence or unexpected obstacle, he is a fantastic man of steel, or anyway of steel nerves, who strolls into a maximum-security prison as though it were a Kmart, and faces the toughest guys in the world as if he were asking them what aisle to go to for envelopes. Part of the pleasure of the series is that particular pleasure of watching a super-heroic character who can't fail.

Michael has worked out a terribly complicated plan to not only get his brother out of prison but out of the country, with a lot of money. (The plan, which is in a sense the series' main asset, will be revealed only little by little.) It seems to have necessitated a degree of research that would under ordinary circumstances keep an army of librarians and private detectives busy for a year, and, as often is the way with these things, it requires that a host of other characters, whose part in the plan is unwitting and therefore unpredictable, respond predictably. Whatever else happens, Michael does have a head start. He's a structural engineer who, by an Incredible Coincidence, happened to be in charge of an earlier retrofitting of the Very Prison in which he and his brother are confined, and for easy reference — this is the pilot's big reveal, so close your eyes now if you don't want to know — has had them tattooed, in coded heavy-metal images, onto his body.

NEITHER/NOR:

Who designed the Designer? (Marcelo Gleiser, August 29, 2005, Boston Globe)

A hypothesis is scientific if it can be empirically validated. One must ''see to believe" -- exactly the opposite of the ''believe to see" which forms the premise of many religious systems. It's much easier to see miracles everywhere if you believe in them. The scientific ''see to believe" is supported by data acquired in the lab or through observations. If the hypothesis is vindicated, the scientific community, after much debate, accepts it. This doesn't mean it will remain part of the established ''truth." New theories sprout through the cracks of old ones. Science needs crisis to evolve. It needs mysteries. It is always incomplete. Behind our ignorance there is just the science we haven't yet developed. [....]

The ID hypothesis, that we, or a few key steps in the evolution of life, are products of purposeful design is not scientific. There is no way to test it. It cannot be confirmed experimentally.

Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science - the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

AS AMERICA GOES... (via Michael Herdegen):

Global economy to pick up in second half: survey (AFP, 8/23/05)

The slowing global economy is due for a pick-up in the second half of 2005, a quarterly survey released by the International Chamber of Commerce and the German Ifo institute showed. [...]

A rebound was anticipated in North America in particular, with economists revising upwards their opinions concerning the economic situation there at present and for the next six months.

Estimates for growth in Asia remained stable and continued to decline for Europe, though not for the 12-nation eurozone.

WHEN 6 MILLION ARE WORTH LESS THAN ONE:

In Defense of Pat Robertson (Richard Kim, 8/26/05, The Nation)

Don't get me wrong. I oppose any US attempt to assassinate Hugo Chávez or to destabilize his government (as he alleges the United States did during the 2002 military coup), and I oppose political assassinations generally. But the press ducked the questions of political assassinations and covert operations that Robertson so brazenly put forward. The Houston Chronicle came the closest to a condemnation, but hedged its bets, saying, "No war is imminent between the United States and Venezuela, so there is no need for the illegal alternative of assassination." But what if a war were imminent? Between Venezuela and the United States--or, say, with Iran or Syria? Would those editorial pages endorse a "take-out" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new hard-line president?

MORE:
Here the Right explains why assassination would be humanitarian, The Chávez Challenge: Venezuela's leader is a regional nuisance (Mark Falcoff, National Review)

Is Venezuela on its way to becoming another Cuba? In spite of superficial similarities and even Chávez's stated intentions, the answer is: probably not. The country is simply too informal, too disorganized, too corrupt — and too vulnerable to foreign, particularly U.S., cultural influences — to be easily pushed into a totalitarian template. Chávez has not even bothered building a political party of his own; the ranks of his regime are drawn from an undifferentiated mass of pocket-lining military officers, opportunists, and leftist ideologues. Nor is there a clear blueprint for where the president intends to take the country. Priorities change without warning, for instance, so that no cabinet minister dares miss the president's Sunday broadcasts: He may not find out what next week's agenda will be.

To be sure, none of this is cause for celebration. Chávez has plenty of money to throw around, and its effects have already been felt in nearby countries like Bolivia, where Venezuelan-funded NGOs and "indigenous" organizations recently brought down a constitutional government. "Anti-imperialist" books and magazines of a type formerly financed by Soviet embassies are suddenly reappearing in other Latin American countries. And security experts around the hemisphere are worrying aloud that some of the weaponry Chávez is buying will end up in the hands of Colombia's FARC guerrillas or Chiapas in Mexico. Such concerns provoked secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's South American trip this past April, intended to isolate Chávez diplomatically from his neighbors. Because the Venezuelan president uses the ballot box so successfully there is a movement afoot, presumably sponsored by our own State Department, to compel the Organization of American States to define more precisely what might represent a departure from democratic practices above and beyond the actual act of electing officials.

But it is difficult to see how such efforts can succeed. A country that supplies oil to half the hemisphere, including the United States (which relies on Chávez's country for as much as 15 percent of its imports), cannot be, by definition, isolated. By providing cheap oil to his hard-pressed Caribbean neighbors, Chávez is now assured of support from the largest bloc of votes at the OAS. Even if this were not so, our long experience with Castro should have taught us by now that the Latins can be expected to hide under tables any time a difficult political decision shows up on the agenda. We can draw some consolation, however, from the fact that Chávez, unlike his Cuban mentor in his great days, enjoys virtually no popular support in the region, even among the Left — many of whose leaders privately refer to the Venezuelan president as a clown. If the clown feels like mindlessly lobbing cash in their direction, the Latins seem to be saying, they'd be crazy not to take it. And who can blame them? But judging by our more than half a century's experience in these matters, you can't buy friends. A policy that holds out more hope for us over the longer term is the effort by our National Endowment for Democracy to help nurture the Venezuelan civic organizations attempting to rebuild the country's shattered democratic political culture. But this cannot be accomplished overnight and certainly not wholly from the outside.

Is the United States vulnerable to a shutoff of Venezuelan oil? Chávez has lately threatened such a measure, particularly if he is the subject of an assassination plot, an invasion, or another coup attempt. In fact, he would find it extremely difficult to carry out such a threat. For one thing, Venezuelan industry is heavily oriented toward the United States and it would take at least two years to redirect it. During that time Chávez would run out of the ready cash on which he is so heavily dependent for power and popularity. Even China, which lately has become a major customer, could not absorb such a large quantity of oil immediately, and in any case, at this point Beijing lacks the ability to refine Venezuelan crude. An oil boycott of the U.S. by Chávez would simply induce other suppliers to step in and replace him in our huge and profitable market.

The United States would therefore be well advised to take a low profile on Chávez and treat his regime as an unpleasant fever that will eventually pass, which it surely will when either oil prices decline or the Venezuelan oil industry begins to fully register the effects of politicization. Most likely, both will happen. To be sure, this may take some years, perhaps even decades. The country will have wasted perhaps the equivalent of five or ten Marshall Plans and have nothing whatever to show for it at the end of the day. Venezuela will not become a better educated, more productive, more socially integrated society no matter how many billions Chávez throws at it. Moreover — again, borrowing a page from Perón's Argentina — when the great man finally does go he will leave behind him a deeply divided society and the prospect of semi-permanent political instability.

To be sure, this is a huge misfortune for Venezuela but merely a moderate inconvenience for the United States.

GRANNY AS RAW MATERIAL

Delivering a body blow to science
(Matthew Syed, Timesonline, August 29th, 2005)

Three things can happen to a dead body: it can be dumped in a grave to be eaten by worms, cast into a crematorium to be incinerated or donated to the medical profession for the good of mankind. You might have thought that public policy would emphatically favour the latter. But no, the Human Tissue Act, of which the main provisions come into force next year, seems to assign greater value to corpses than to living people in desperate need of an organ donation

Not only has the Government failed to grasp the nettle of “presumed consent” (in which everyone is assumed to have consented to the use of their organs unless they have explicitly registered an objection), but also new draft guidelines advise doctors to allow relatives to veto organ removal, even when the deceased carried a donor card. A pathologist friend of mine told me this week that objections are typically expressed thus: “Oooh, I couldn’t possibly bear the thought of Johnny being cut up like that!” To give legislative weight to such fastidiousness is absurd.

If this sounds cold-hearted, let me give you some statistics that will really chill your blood. Today more than 8,000 people in the UK are waiting for an organ transplant, many in considerable pain. Last year 452 died while waiting in hope. Many lose their lives before they even get on to the waiting list. Why allow the relatives of the recently deceased, who often admit later that they would have made a more rational decision had they not been asked at a time of emotional distress, to trump such vital interests? [...]

The fundamental problem with our approach to ethics, manifested in both our mythologising over corpses and embryos, is our inability to separate emotion from policy. The only factor that should enter our moral and legal deliberations is that of welfare, a concept that is meaningless when applied to entities that lack self-consciousness. Never forget that the research that we are so reluctant to conduct upon embryos and dead bodies is routinely carried out on living, pain-sensitive animals. This double standard will come to be seen by future historians as one of the great barbarisms of the age.

Those now old enough to remember the sensitivity with which the issue of donated organs was originally viewed, and all the soothing assurances about free and informed choice that were given, may be taken aback by Mr. Syed’s vehemence, but they shouldn’t be. His is the enraged voice of thwarted humanism, whose oh-so-respectful tolerance for demurral rests entirely on the assumption that dissenters are an unenlightened breed from a primitive past, not without charm perhaps, but doomed to extinction as rational progress winds its way to inevitable triumph. Let anyone pause for a sober second thought and out come the knives.

Like most of his ilk, Mr. Syed cannot see any connection between how we treat the dead and how we treat the the living because that connection is an irrational one, although very real. It would be fun to ask him whether, starting from the point where they were dead anyway, he would have approved of the Nazis’ use of the bodies of their victims to provide wealth and material comforts for the living or what he thinks the psychological effects on the genocidal killers would have been had they been obliged to give their victims traditional, sacred burials.

More (From Ch 11, Heretics, G.K. Chesterton, 1905)

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one--absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The teamed man will say, for instance, "The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe." To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, "The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral." It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence, it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

"NOBODY I CARE ABOUT CARES":

'Senator No' not meant as compliment (Jesse Helms, August 29, 2005, Washington Times)

The Raleigh News & Observer dubbed me "Senator No." It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I certainly took it as one.

There was plenty to stand up and say "No" to during my first of five terms representing the people of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate.

That was why I had sought election in 1972 -- to try to derail the freight train of liberalism that was gaining speed toward its destination of "government-run" everything, paid for with big tax bills and record debt.

My goal, when my wife, Dot, and I decided I would run, was to stick to my principles and stand up for conservative ideals. [...]

My staff wasn't always as thick-skinned as I was. One new aide was all set to fire off a response to a highly critical editorial. I had to tell him, "Son, just so you understand: I don't care what the New York Times says about me. And nobody I care about cares what the New York Times says about me."

FANTASY CAMP:

Martin Sheen, Sharpton visit anti-war camp (ANGELA K. BROWN, 8/29/05, Associated Press)

Cindy Sheehan hasn't achieved a meeting with the president during her three-week war protest, but she met a man who plays one on TV. Martin Sheen, who portrays the president on NBC's "The West Wing," visited Sheehan's makeshift campsite Sunday.

TURNING ZINK INTO GOLD:

The knuckleball: a lost art: A masterstroke when on, but teams rarely paint selves in corner developing it (Jack Etkin, August 29, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

Imagine a pitcher who is practically tireless, capable of working often and can fill a variety of roles. And assume the pitch he relies on puts little strain on his arm, is rarely seen anymore and, at the very least, will be perplexing to hitters.

Considering the dearth of quality pitching, does a possible solution rest in the knuckleball, a trick pitch with few practitioners these days? Should clubs that already go to great lengths to groom conventional pitchers try to develop a knuckleball pitcher?

"We would absolutely love to take a shot at that and we'd be open to it," Colorado Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd said. "But one, we'd have to have a kid in the system that showed the aptitude to do it. And not many do, or not many self-evaluate good enough to know that that's what they should try."

Pitchers who successfully throw a knuckleball often have turned to the pitch with a last-chance, fading-hopes mind-set, having realized their stuff is short and their dream of pitching in the majors is about to be derailed. [...]

Hoyt Wilhelm, who was a reliever for basically all but three seasons of a 21-year career that ended two weeks short of his 50th birthday, had a Hall of Fame career throwing a knuckleball.

Phil Niekro, a starter, used his knuckleball to reach that same exalted destiny. His brother, Joe, also parlayed his ability to throw a pitch that fluttered unpredictably into a successful career.

Left-hander Wilbur Wood was a knuckleball specialist in the 1970s. Tom Candiotti, who relied on his knuckleball less than some other devotees of the pitch, ended up winning 151 games and pitching until he was 41 because he perfected the knuckleball.

While pitching at Class AA Jacksonville in the Kansas City Royals system, Candiotti said manager Gene Lamont, a former catcher, insisted he scrap his knuckleball. It was only when Candiotti left the Royals organization and began throwing the pitch that his career took off.

The knuckleball is an invitation to havoc, maybe even disaster. Passed balls, sometimes a slew of them, come with the territory, as catchers stab at knuckleballs that dart unpredictably. The flip side is a knuckleball with little action, an oh-so-slow offering that wafts toward home plate and a batter salivating at something easy to hit.

The pluses are an utterly baffling pitch that can move every which way and destroy a hitter's timing. Knuckleballers have the ability to throw a lot of pitches, work on far less rest and, in short, save a staff.

The Red Sox won the World Series last year. But they wouldn't have gotten there without Wakefield's efforts against the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. He pitched 3 1/3 innings in Game 3 of the ALCS, a 19-8 Boston loss, and kept the Red Sox from emptying their bullpen. Wakefield was scheduled to start Game 4 but selfishly opted to pitch a day earlier.

Then in Game 5, Wakefield, with one day of rest, pitched three scoreless innings and was the winning pitcher in Boston's 5-4 victory in 14 innings.

"Whether he's the actual best pitcher on the team - who cares?" Hough said. "But he ends up being one of their key guys every year, whether it's helping out in the bullpen for six weeks or whatever. So when you do happen to stumble into and develop one of those guys, if he's pretty good, there's a huge payoff."

In front-office circles, stumble is not a word typically associated with development, the latter seen as a generally orderly process with little that is haphazard. But it's often different with knuckleballers, where chance and luck weigh heavily and resorting to that pitch might be the only alternative with the real world beckoning.

"It's not worth doing from scratch," Boston general manager Theo Epstein said, referring to developing a knuckleballer. "You'd never draft a guy to be a knuckleball pitcher or sign someone internationally and give someone a lot of money."

Charlie Zink, who turned 26 on Friday, is a converted knuckleballer who has started and relieved this season for Boston's Class AA Portland affiliate, where he made 18 starts last year before being demoted to Class A Sarasota. That's where his season ended in early August when he developed tendinitis in his right shoulder.

"We spend as much time and energy developing Zink as we do all our pitchers," Epstein said. "(Throwing a knuckleball) is a way to get big-league hitters out if you do it the right way. So we don't look at those guys as circus freaks or anything like that. They're just doing it a different way."

ONE AT A TIME:

Access to Abortion Pared at State Level (Ceci Connolly, August 29, 2005, Washington Post)

This year's state legislative season draws to a close having produced a near-record number of laws imposing new restrictions on a woman's access to abortion or contraception.

Since January, governors have signed several dozen antiabortion measures ranging from parental consent requirements to an outright ban looming in South Dakota. Not since 1999, when a wave of laws banning late-term abortions swept the legislatures, have states imposed so many and so varied a menu of regulations on reproductive health care. [...]

While national leaders in the abortion debate focus on the upcoming nomination hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, grass-roots activists have been changing the legal landscape one state at a time. In most cases, the antiabortion forces have prevailed, adding restrictions on when and where women can get contraceptive services and abortions, and how physicians provide them.

Antiabortion activists say they have pursued a two-pronged approach that aimed to reduce the number of abortions immediately through new restrictions and build a foundation of lower court cases designed to get the high court to eventually reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making the procedure legal.

On the other side, a handful of states have approved provisions that make it easier for women to get emergency contraception, known as the "morning after" pill. However, two Republican governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and George E. Pataki of New York, vetoed such bills.

SON OF W:

An End to Polarization? (Michael Barone, 8/29/05, Jewish World Review)

For 10 years American politics has been sharply polarized, with just about equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats arrayed angrily against one another. We have come to think of this as a permanent condition. Yet by the next presidential election that may very well change. The reason: The leading candidates for both parties' 2008 nominations are in significant tension with their parties' bases—and, in some cases, outright opposition.

This is most clearly the case on the Republican side. The consistent leaders in 2008 polls are John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani. Of the two, Giuliani is most sharply out of line with the cultural conservatives who have been the dominant force in Republican primaries and provided a large share of the Republican majorities racked up in 2002 and 2004. Giuliani is pro-choice on abortion, opposes the "partial-birth" abortion ban, and opposes a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

McCain's differences with the Republican right are more subtle. He has consistently opposed abortion rights but doesn't seem comfortable talking about the issue. He has taken the lead on campaign finance regulation and on Kyoto-like responses to climate change, in opposition to most of his Republican colleagues. At a critical point in the 2000 campaign, he made a point of denouncing evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. [...]

A McCain or a Giuliani nomination has the potential to change the regional alignments that have mostly prevailed since the election of 1996, in both directions. Either would almost certainly run better than George W. Bush in the vast suburban tracts of once marginal states like New Jersey and Illinois. But they might fail to draw the huge turnout of cultural conservatives that Bush did in the nonmetropolitan reaches of states like Ohio and Missouri.

THEIR MOST IMPORTANT TASK:

Security Department Is Firm on Labor Plan (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/29/05)

The Homeland Security Department is seeking to clarify proposed workplace rules that a federal judge said violated its employee rights, but it is standing by its plans to overhaul personnel and pay regulations.

Responding to a Federal District Court ruling two weeks ago, the department said it was continuing to seek expanded management rights and more flexible labor regulations.

It is also still pushing for the creation of a labor relations panel with members appointed by the Homeland Security secretary. That could erode the authority of an independent panel that reviews personnel disputes between managers and unions.

FOUNDATION STONES:

Indian boost for Afghan democracy (BBC, 8/29/05)

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has laid the foundation stone for a new Afghan parliament building in Kabul on the second day of a historic visit.

On Sunday, Mr Singh and Afghan president Hamid Karzai inaugurated a school renovated by India.

The two sides pledged to fight against terrorism describing it as a threat against democracy.

Mr Singh is the first Indian prime minister to visit Afghanistan in nearly three decades.

The war-ravaged country is a strategically crucial ally for India which is one of Afghanistan's biggest donors.

HOW LITTLE WE CAN KNOW:

Birth, death, balls and battles: It has no clear beginning, middle or end, but the first translation of War and Peace for 50 years reaffirms its greatness. Tolstoy brilliantly interweaves the historical and the personal (Orlando Figes, 8/27/05, Times of London)

While clearly still a novel, War and Peace can be understood, at another level, as a novelist’s attempt to engage with the truth of history. Tolstoy’s interest in history developed long before his career as a novelist. But history-writing disappointed him. It seemed to reduce the richness of real life. For whereas the “real” history of lived experience was made up of an infinite number of factors and contingencies, historians selected just a few (eg, the political or the economic) to develop their historical theories and explanations. Tolstoy concluded that the histories of his day represented “perhaps only 0.001 per cent of the elements which actually constitute the real history of peoples”. He was particularly frustrated by the failure of historians to illuminate the “inner” life of a society — the private thoughts and relationships that make up the most real and immediate experience of human beings. Hence he turned to literature.

During the 1850s Tolstoy was obsessed with the idea of writing a historical novel which would contrast the real texture of historical experience, as lived by individuals and communities, with the distorted image of the past presented by historians. This is what he set out to achieve in War and Peace.

Through the novel’s central characters Tolstoy juxtaposes the immediate human experience of historical events with the historical memory of them. For example, when Pierre Bezukhov wanders as a spectator on to the battlefield of Borodino he expects to find the sort of neatly arranged battle scene that he has seen in paintings and read about in history books. Instead, he finds himself in the chaos of an actual battlefield:

“All that Pierre saw to right and left of him was so negative that no part of the scene before his eyes answered his expectations. Nowhere was there a field of battle such as his imagination had pictured: there were only fields, clearings, troops, woods, the smoke of camp-fires, villages, mounds and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military ‘position’ in this landscape teeming with life. He could not even distinguish our troops from the enemy’s.”

Having served as an officer in the Crimean War (1854-56), Tolstoy drew from his own experience to recreate the human truth of this celebrated battle, and to examine how its public memory could become distorted by the medium of written history. As Tolstoy shows, in the confusion of the battle nobody can understand or control what occurs. In such a situation, chance events, individual acts of bravery, or calm thinking by the officers can influence the morale of the troops en masse and thus change the course of the battle; and this in turn creates the illusion that what is happening is somehow the result of human agency. So when the military dispatches are later written up, they invariably ascribe the outcome of the battle to the commanders, although in reality they had less influence than the random actions of rank and file.

As a novelist, Tolstoy was interested most of all in the inner life of Russian society during the Napoleonic wars. In War and Peace he presents this period of history as a crucial watershed in the culture of the Russian aristocracy. The war of 1812 is portrayed as a national liberation from the cultural domination of the French — a moment when Russian noblemen such as the Rostovs and Bolkonskys struggled to break free from the foreign conventions of their society and began new lives on Russian principles. Tolstoy plots this transformation in a series of motifs. The novel opens, for example, in the French language of the St Petersburg salon — a language which Tolstoy gradually reveals to be false and artificial. Tolstoy shows the aristocracy renouncing haute cuisine for lunches of rye bread and cabbage soup, adopting national dress, settling as farmers on the land, and rediscovering native culture, as in the immortal scene when Natasha, a French-educated young countess, dances to a folk song in the Russian style.

On this reading, War and Peace appears as a national epic — the revelation of a “Russian consciousness” in the inner life of its characters. In narrating this drama, however, Tolstoy steps out of historical time and enters the time-space of cultural myth. He allows himself considerable artistic licence. For example, the aristocracy’s return to native forms of dress and recreations actually took place over several decades in the early 19th century, whereas Tolstoy has it happen almost overnight in 1812. But the literary creation of this mythical time-space was central to the role that War and Peace was set to play in the formation of the national consciousness.

When the novel first appeared, in 1865-66, educated Russia was engaged in a profound cultural and political quest to define the country’s national identity. The emancipation of the serfs, in 1861, had forced society to confront the humble peasant as a fellow citizen, and to seek new answers to the old accursed questions about Russia’s destiny in what one poet (Nekrasov) called the “rural depths where eternal silence reigns”. The liberal reforms of Tsar Alexander II (1855-81), which included the introduction of jury trials and elected institutions of local government, gave rise to hopes that Russia, as a nation, would emerge and join the family of modern European states. Writing from this perspective, Tolstoy saw a parallel between the Russia of the 1860s and the Russia that had arisen in the wars against Napoleon.

War and Peace was originally conceived as a novel about the Decembrists, a group of liberal army officers who rose up in a failed attempt to impose a constitution on the Tsar in December 1825. In this original version of the novel the Decembrist hero returns after 30 years of exile in Siberia to the intellectual ferment of the early years of Alexander II’s reign. But the more Tolstoy researched into the Decembrists, the more he realised that their intellectual roots were to be found in the war of 1812. This was when these officers had first become acquainted with the patriotic virtues of the peasant soldiers in their ranks; when they had come to realise the potential of Russia’s democratic nationhood. Through this literary genesis War and Peace acquired several overlapping spheres of historical consciousness: the real-time of 1805-20 (the fictional setting of the novel); the living memory of this period (from which Tolstoy drew in the form of personal memoirs and historical accounts); and its reflection in the political consciousness of 1855-65. Thus the novel can and should be read, not just as an intimate portrait of Russian society in the age of the Napoleonic wars, but as a broader statement about Russia, its people and its history as a whole. That is why the Russians will always turn to War and Peace, as Mikhail Prishvin did, to find in it the keys to their identity.

DO GODS TAKE BOWS?:

You Hear Him, You Really Hear Him (J.A. Adande, August 29, 2005, LA Times)

The Dodger pregame ceremony Sunday which gathered and honored members of the 1955 World Series champion Brooklyn Dodgers was a good idea, a sentimental home run and, in some ways, not necessary.

If you want to gain an appreciation for the Dodgers' rich tradition or feel a connection to the franchise's New York roots, all you need to do is listen to Vin Scully on a daily basis.

In his sublime way Scully was the star of Sunday's ceremony, even though he never set foot on the field. The old-timers praised him during a video montage before the event. When Scully was introduced the cheer for him was as loud as anything else heard all day.

And the entire time he remained where he has always been: on his chair in the booth.

"I don't want to take a bow," Scully said to Houston Astro announcer Milo Hamilton in the press box dining room before the game. "Never did, never will."

Fifty-six years on the job, a spot in the Hall of Fame, recognition as the top broadcaster in the 20th century by his professional peers isn't enough reason to take a bow?

"I didn't want to go on the field," Scully said later. "I'd rather not. It belonged to them. It was their day, and I really and truly believe it in my heart. That's the way I wanted it."

UNFOLDING:

President Discusses Hurricane Katrina, Congratulates Iraqis on Draft Constitution (George W. Bush, Prairie Chapel Ranch, Crawford, Texas, 8/28/05)

[T]oday Iraqi political leaders completed the process for drafting a permanent constitution. Their example is an inspiration to all who share the universal values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. The negotiators and drafters of this document braved the intimidation of terrorists and they mourn the cowardly assassination of friends and colleagues involved in the process of drafting the constitution.

Their efforts follow the bravery of the Iraqis who voted by the millions to elect a transitional government in January. The example of those voters remains a humbling testament to the power of free people to shape and define their own destiny. We honor their courage and sacrifice, and we are determined to see the Iraqis fully secure their democratic gains.

The Iraqi people have once again demonstrated to the world that they are up to the historic challenges before them. The document they have produced contains far-reaching protections for fundamental human freedoms, including religion, assembly, conscience and expression. It vests sovereignty in the people to be expressed by secret ballot and regular elections. It declares that all Iraqis are equal before the law without regard to gender, ethnicity and religion. This is a document of which the Iraqis and the rest of the world can be proud.

The local process now advances to another important stage for a new and free Iraq. In coming months, Iraqis will discuss and debate the draft constitution. On October the 15th, they will vote for a national referendum to decide whether to ratify the constitution and set the foundation for a permanent Iraqi government. If the referendum succeeds, Iraqis will elect a new government to serve under the new constitution on December the 15th, and that government will take office before the end of the year.

This course is going to be difficult largely because the terrorists have chosen to wage war against a future of freedom. They are waging war against peace in Iraq. As democracy in Iraq takes root, the enemies of freedom, the terrorists, will become more desperate, more despicable, and more vicious.

Just last week, the terrorists called for the death of anyone, including women and the elderly, who supports the democratic process in Iraq. They have deliberately targeted children receiving candy from soldiers. They have targeted election workers registering Iraqis to vote. They have targeted hospital workers who are caring for the wounded. We can expect such atrocities to increase in the coming months because the enemy knows that its greatest defeat lies in the expression of free people, and freely enacted laws, and at the ballot box.

We will stand with the Iraqi people. It's in our interest to stand with the Iraqi people. It's in our interest to lay the foundation of peace. We'll help them confront this barbarism, and we will triumph over the terrorist's dark ideology of hatred and fear.

There have been disagreements amongst the Iraqis about this particular constitution. Of course there's disagreements. We're watching a political process unfold, a process that has encouraged debate and compromise; a constitution that was written in a -- in a society in which people recognize that -- that there had to be give and take.

I want our folks to remember our own constitution was not unanimously received. Some delegates at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 refused to sign it, and the draft was vigorously debated in every state, and the outcome was not assured until all the votes were counted.

We recognize that there's a split amongst the Sunnis, for example, in Iraq. And I suspect that when you get down to it, you'll find a Shiia who disagrees with the constitution and Shiia who support the constitution, and perhaps some Kurds who are concerned about the constitution. In other words, we're watching a political process unfold. Some Sunnis have expressed reservations about various provisions of the constitution, and that's their right as free individuals living in a free society. There are strong beliefs among other Sunnis that this constitution is good for all Iraqis and that it adequately reflects compromises suitable to all groups.

It's important that all Iraqis now actively engage in the constitutional process by debating the merits of this important document and making an informed decision on October the 15th.

On behalf of the American people, I congratulate the people of Iraq on completing the next step in their transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I want to remind the American people, as the democracy unfolds in Iraq, not only will it help make America more secure, but it will affect the broader Middle East. Democracies don't war with their neighbors; democracies don't become safe haven for terrorists who want to destroy innocent life. We have hard work ahead of us, but we're on the -- we're making good progress toward making sure this world of ours is more peaceful for generations to come.

Thank you very much.

YES, TO TRADE--NO, TO UNION:

The EU can work for Britain - if we quit (Daniel Hannan, 28/08/2005)

The idea that the EU might abandon its founding ideology in order to humour Britain is one of our more enduring self-deceits. It lay behind Harold Macmillan's original application in 1961, which was launched on the basis that "the effects of any eventual loss of sovereignty would be mitigated if resistance to Federalism on the part of some of the governments continues, which our membership might be expected to encourage".

Even in Macmillan's day, this was wishful thinking - although, with the EU not yet five years old, it was perhaps excusable. It is less excusable today, when we have half a century of evidence to the effect that the Treaty of Rome means what it says about "ever-closer union". Yet still we delude ourselves, imagining that the other members are on the verge of coming round to our point of view. [...]

My sense is that most British people want to retain our trade links with the EU, and to accompany them with close inter-governmental co-operation, but not with political assimilation. Is it feasible to have our cake and eat it? Absolutely.

Consider, as an example, the members of the European Free Trade Area (Efta): Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein. Each of these countries has struck its own particular deal with Brussels, but the main elements are the same. They participate fully in the four freedoms of the single market - free movement of goods, services, people and capital. But they are outside the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, they control their own borders and human rights questions, they are free to negotiate trade accords with non-EU countries and they pay only a token sum to the EU budget.

Unsurprisingly, they are much richer than the EU members. According to the OECD, per capita GDP in the four Efta countries is double that in the EU. Euro-apologists are, naturally, quick with their explanations. "You can't compare us to Iceland," they say, "Iceland has fish." So, of course would Britain, but for the ecological calamity of the CFP. "We're nothing like Norway," they go on, "Norway has oil." Indeed; and Britain is the only net exporter of oil in the EU. Then my particular favourite: "But Switzerland has all those banks." Yes. And London is the world's premier financial centre - although it is, admittedly, being slowly asphyxiated by EU financial regulation.

I am not arguing that Britain should precisely replicate the terms struck by these Efta nations. On the contrary, we could do far better. We are a larger country for one thing, and, unlike the Efta states, we run a massive trade deficit with the EU. Indeed, the easiest way to answer Tony Blair's claim about the millions of jobs that depend on the EU is to point to the astonishing fact that the Efta nations export more per head to the EU from outside than does Britain from the inside. Efta stands as a living, thriving refutation of the assertion that we must choose between assimilation and isolation.

AND NOW THE STORY IS PERFECTED:

Jackson offers support to Chavez (AP, 8/28/05)

The Rev. Jesse Jackson offered support for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday, saying a recent call for his assassination was a criminal act and the United States and Venezuela should work out their differences through diplomacy.

THINK OF AN ELEPHANT:

Did the Cindy Sheehan vigil succeed? (Linda Feldmann, 8/29/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

Cindy Sheehan's month of fame - or infamy, depending on one's vantage point - is drawing to a close. The grieving mother of a US soldier slain in Iraq will end her vigil at the president's ranch on Wednesday, almost certainly having failed in her stated goal of a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Bush.

DON'T BE THE LAST ONE ON YOUR BLOCK TO ACCEPT THE INEVITABLE:

Time to hedge bets on McCain bid in '08 (Robert Robb, Aug. 28, 2005, Arizona Republic)

Everyone I know who knows John McCain better than I do thinks he will run for president in 2008.

Until now, my bet has been that, in the final analysis, McCain would decide against it. But McCain's appearance and performance at an East Valley Republican town hall last Thursday has caused me to want to hedge that bet.

GENDER IMBALANCE? TRY FORMULA 17 (via Robert Schwartz):

A Tale of Young Love, No Women in Sight (JEANNETTE CATSOULIS, August 26, 2005, NY Times)

A silly-sweet, gay romantic comedy aimed primarily at teenage and college-age audiences, "Formula 17" placed ninth in Taiwan's 2004 ranking of highest-grossing Chinese-language films. Partly because of its bouncy, bubblegum soundtrack and enormously appealing leads, this tiny indie has connected with a generation typically critical of homegrown talent. And by studding her film with signifiers of generic infatuation - like using a mirror to rehearse a kiss, or learning to say "I love you" in different languages - the director, DJ Chen, has breached barriers of sexual orientation with surprising success.

Armed with a red suitcase and his lucky condom, the virginal Tien (the soap star Tony Yang) arrives in Taipei looking for love and a summer job. Tien, whose favorite book is "Love Is a Kind of Faith," is a bit of a priss. "I despise people who toy with love," he tells Bai (Duncan Chow), a smooth playboy with a come-hither gaze and seductively feathered hair.

The two are frantically attracted to each other, but their courtship is hindered by Tien's inexperience and Bai's understandable reluctance to reveal his "serial one-night-stander" dating philosophy. So when Tien's tasteful, soft-focus deflowering precedes the L word, the stage is set for heartache, misunderstanding and more pouting than an episode of "Desperate Housewives."

PRICKING THE BUBBLE (via Robert Schwartz):

In California Enclave, Cougars Keep the People at Bay (GARY RIVLIN, August 28, 2005, NY Times)

You would think that if you plunked down $10 million for a home, including millions to buy three adjoining properties, you could count on a little freedom to roam. But then the occasional mountain lion traipses across your land and, if you are Barbara Proulx, you feel trapped, afraid to let your two young sons out by themselves because of the dangers lurking outside.

Mrs. Proulx and her husband, Tom, a founder of the software company Intuit, even have a three-hole golf course on their 10-plus acres, yet in recent months it has gotten far less use than in the past.

"I won't let my children go to the tennis court by themselves anymore," Mrs. Proulx said. She does not permit the boys, ages 9 and 11, to walk to the pool on their own, either. Her parents live in a home on her property, but "they're terrified."

"Except to come to my house," she said, "they never go outside."

They are hardly the only ones in the area feeling like prisoners in multimillion-dollar homes. In recent months, there have been a few publicized mountain lion sightings up and down this peninsula just south of San Francisco, especially in the area's rural, more upscale neighborhoods, out of the reach of most people beyond venture capitalists and those made outlandishly wealthy by Silicon Valley's star companies.

Yet nowhere has this fear been more pronounced than in Atherton, the country's second-wealthiest community after Rancho Santa Fe, in Southern California. Here, largely because of the efforts of a single neighbor, vast backyards sit largely unused.

SHHHH, NOT YET:

In TV tirade, Rangel calls Cheney a 'sick man' (GLENN THRUSH, August 27, 2005, Newsday)

Rep. Charles Rangel, the gravelly voiced dean of the New York State congressional delegation, launched a blistering attack on Vice President Dick Cheney Friday night, calling him a "sick man" who was unfit to lead.

In a rambling interview on NY1, the Harlem Democrat also said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the "guy who's running the country" - not Cheney or President George W. Bush.

"Sometimes I don't think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on," Rangel said. "He's a sick man, you know. He's got heart disease but the disease is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot so you never really know what he's thinking."

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

MIT crew churns out ice cream with sizzle (Jeffrey Krasner, Boston Globe, 8/28/05)

Like many great scientific discoveries, Teresa Baker's breakthrough in MIT's grimy Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory last October was punctuated by a memorable exclamation of victory. She raced upstairs from the first-floor lab and announced to her fellow graduate students: ''I made ice cream, come down and eat it!"

Baker's work involves liquid carbon dioxide, bulky stainless steel cylinders, heat exchangers, and vanilla ice cream mix, and it may change the way ice cream is made in the $20 billion-a-year industry. For consumers, the novel device could popularize a new type of frozen dessert that combines the chill of ice cream with the explosive fizz of soda pop.

RETIPPING POINT?:

Bush supporters outnumber Crawford critics (Jack Douglas Jr., 8/28/05, Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

President Bush's supporters poured into Crawford by the thousands Saturday, for the first time outnumbering war protesters led by Cindy Sheehan, who began a vigil here three weeks ago, demanding a personal meeting with the vacationing president to talk about her son's death in Iraq.

With police security tight and the heat intense, tempers flared, and traffic was clogged. But by late afternoon, only two people had been arrested for what the Secret Service described as a minor "attitude thing."

An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people attended a pro-Bush rally in Crawford, waving flags and pledging allegiance to U.S. troops. At times, they accused Sheehan of dishonoring the death of her son, Casey, who was in the Army.

HOLD THE TOWNS:

Winning in Iraq (DAVID BROOKS, 8/28/05, NY Times)

[Andrew] Krepinevich has now published an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "How to Win in Iraq," in which he proposes a strategy. The article is already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the American Embassy in Baghdad and the office of the vice president.

Krepinevich's proposal is hardly new. He's merely describing a classic counterinsurgency strategy, which was used, among other places, in Malaya by the British in the 1950's. The same approach was pushed by Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt in a Washington Post essay back on Oct. 26, 2003; by Kenneth Pollack in Senate testimony this July 18; and by dozens of midlevel Army and Marine Corps officers in Iraq.

Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids.

Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.

Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents.

SATAN SQUARES:

Too Much of a Sacrifice?: While Old Guard Stands by Bunt, 'Moneyball' Crowd Says It Comes Up Short (Dave Sheinin, August 28, 2005, Washington Post)

The sacrifice bunt is evil, say the sabermetricians with their numbers and charts and spreadsheets. The cost of the out given up is greater than the value of the base gained, and they can prove it mathematically. Offer to elaborate about this to Washington Nationals Manager Frank Robinson, to show him the charts and spreadsheets, and a big hand emerges from below his desk and jabs -- palm out, fingers spread -- at the air in front of your face: Stop. Put your charts away, son.

"I don't live by the numbers," Robinson said firmly, "and I don't manage by the numbers. I put on the bunt when the situation calls for a bunt."

Home runs are cooler, and the triple is still the most exciting play in baseball, but inch-for-inch, no offensive play inspires as much passion as the lowly sacrifice bunt.

Its advocates, though dwindling in number, still get a thrill out of a perfectly executed one, and they still cringe at a botched one, which causes them, inevitably, to decry the state of modern baseball fundamentals. Critics of the sacrifice bunt, on the other hand, contend it is a losing play that, mathematically, reduces a team's scoring potential in most situations.

If the sacrifice bunt is indeed evil, then Robinson is the devil himself.

IT'S WORKED FOR 400 YEARS:

Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire are `frugal Yankees' (Norma Love, August 27, 2005, Associated Press)

For years, New Hampshire's delinquents have sweltered on hot summer nights, locked in un-air-conditioned rooms behind security doors and heavily screened windows in decades-old buildings.

"When the kids go into the rooms at night, we shut the doors. It's very, very warm," said Tricia Lucas, chief of administration at the Division for Juvenile Justice Services. "Kids come off the mattresses to sleep directly on the floor so they can have the coolness of the floor."

Next summer should be different: the state reformatory, the Youth Development Center in Manchester, will be in a new, 144-bed facility with air conditioning.

The long wait for the $33 million complex illustrates the sort of Yankee frugality that has spared state governments in northern New England the debt problems plaguing some other states.

Nationwide, median state debt per capita is $703. New Hampshire's is a low $457, Maine's is $634 and Vermont's is $716, according to Moody's Investors Service, a credit rating firm.

Vermont actually has the highest credit rating accorded to the three states by Standard & Poor's, another rating firm. Vermont's AA+ rating is one notch below the top AAA rating and one notch above New Hampshire's AA score. Maine is one step below New Hampshire at AA- after a slight downgrade this year.

Geoff Buswick, the Standard & Poor's analyst who keeps tabs on the three states, says the ratings are based on the steadiness of a state's revenues, how well a state predicts its income over time, its spending patterns, the amount of its debt, the health of its economy and what kind of work force it has.

Analysts also watch closely to see that states pay their "living expenses" with current income. When states dip into savings, analysts look to see that the money is put back as quickly as possible.

Intangibles -- like being Yankees -- also are considered.

"We talk about that Yankee frugality as something seen as a credit positive," Buswick said.

FIRST PARAGRAPH MATERIAL:

Anti-Chavez march turns violent (BBC, 8/28/05)

Six people have been injured in clashes between opponents and supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

The fighting broke out as opponents marched in the capital Caracas to demand electoral reform ahead of December's parliamentary elections.

Bottles, rocks, fireworks and tear gas were thrown in the worst violence between the two sides for months.

Venezuela has been relatively calm since President Chavez won a referendum on his rule in August 2004.

But his opponents claim the vote was tainted by fraud, and believe the national electoral board is made up of his supporters - charges the board deny.

LUCK OR RESIDUE?:

Show Me the Science (DANIEL C. DENNETT, 8/28/05, NY Times)

[N]o intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.

To formulate a competing hypothesis, you have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be.

To see this shortcoming in relief, consider an imaginary hypothesis of intelligent design that could explain the emergence of human beings on this planet:

About six million years ago, intelligent genetic engineers from another galaxy visited Earth and decided that it would be a more interesting planet if there was a language-using, religion-forming species on it, so they sequestered some primates and genetically re-engineered them to give them the language instinct, and enlarged frontal lobes for planning and reflection. It worked.

If some version of this hypothesis were true, it could explain how and why human beings differ from their nearest relatives, and it would disconfirm the competing evolutionary hypotheses that are being pursued.

We'd still have the problem of how these intelligent genetic engineers came to exist on their home planet, but we can safely ignore that complication for the time being, since there is not the slightest shred of evidence in favor of this hypothesis.

But here is something the intelligent design community is reluctant to discuss: no other intelligent-design hypothesis has anything more going for it. In fact, my farfetched hypothesis has the advantage of being testable in principle: we could compare the human and chimpanzee genomes, looking for unmistakable signs of tampering by these genetic engineers from another galaxy.

Take the development of the eye, which has been one of the favorite challenges of creationists. How on earth, they ask, could that engineering marvel be produced by a series of small, unplanned steps? Only an intelligent designer could have created such a brilliant arrangement of a shape-shifting lens, an aperture-adjusting iris, a light-sensitive image surface of exquisite sensitivity, all housed in a sphere that can shift its aim in a hundredth of a second and send megabytes of information to the visual cortex every second for years on end.

But as we learn more and more about the history of the genes involved, and how they work - all the way back to their predecessor genes in the sightless bacteria from which multicelled animals evolved more than a half-billion years ago - we can begin to tell the story of how photosensitive spots gradually turned into light-sensitive craters that could detect the rough direction from which light came, and then gradually acquired their lenses, improving their information-gathering capacities all the while.

We can't yet say what all the details of this process were, but real eyes representative of all the intermediate stages can be found, dotted around the animal kingdom, and we have detailed computer models to demonstrate that the creative process works just as the theory says.

All it takes is a rare accident that gives one lucky animal a mutation that improves its vision over that of its siblings; if this helps it have more offspring than its rivals, this gives evolution an opportunity to raise the bar and ratchet up the design of the eye by one mindless step.

DIVIDING LINE:

War Critics Have Backing, but Not Much of a Following (Doyle McManus, August 28, 2005, LA Times)

After a summer of mounting discontent over the war in Iraq, President Bush will face renewed criticism from Democrats and Republicans when Congress returns to work next week. But he appears unlikely to come up against an effective challenge to his policy — because his critics in both parties are deeply divided over what change in course to propose.

"There is an alternative strategy," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a leading foreign policy critic, but "not a united one."

ALL ALONG THE AXIS:

India renews historic Afghan ties (Sanjoy Majumder, 8/28/05, BBC News)

When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh steps off his aircraft in Afghanistan on Sunday, he will be hoping to strengthen his country's historic ties with that country.

It is the first visit to the country by an Indian prime minister for 29 years.

However, Delhi has been working hard to develop its ties with the new Afghan regime following the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001.

HAVE A 'GANSETT:

Voice of a nation: Gowdy was team's best (Dan Shaughnessy, August 28, 2005, Boston Globe)

In the years after leaving the Red Sox, Curt [Gowdy] would become the nation's first famous TV sports broadcaster, working for all three major networks and earning plaques in the baseball, football, and basketball halls of fame. He called Super Bowls, World Series, Rose Bowls, Final Fours, and Olympics. He hosted ABC's ''American Sportsman" for 15 years.

But in Scituate and Saugus, Greenfield and Groton, he forever will be the voice of the Red Sox, the man who said goodbye to Ted and hello to Yaz, the man who can still make some of us 10 years old if we hear him say, ''Hi, neighbor, have a 'Gansett."

The Red Sox are honoring Curt before today's game against the Tigers. It's a nice touch by an ownership group that has consistently paid homage to those who came before. On the cover of the 2005 Sox media guide, superimposed over a photo of the celebration in St. Louis (Somebody, grab that ball from Doug!) and an embossed image of the World Series trophy, it reads, ''This championship isn't just about these 25 guys. This is for every fan who has ever been to Fenway Park . . . This championship is for everyone who came so close and for everyone who cared so much."

The Sox never came close when Curt worked at Fenway from 1951-65, but we all cared, and one of the reasons we cared was the brilliance of Curt Gowdy. His voice and delivery went down like a tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer afternoon. He relaxed us while he told the story of a Red Sox game, too often a loss to the Yankees, Tigers, or White Sox.

''It wasn't like it is now," Gowdy, 86, said yesterday. ''But for the types of teams we had, the fans were very good here. On some Thursday afternoon games, we'd get 25,000 fans. That was remarkable. This has always been a great Red Sox city."

He came to us from Wyoming, after two years of broadcasting Yankee games with Mel Allen. He remembers Ted Williams sidling up to him around the batting cage at spring training in 1951.

''He came up to me and said, 'Somebody told me you like to fish,' and I said I'd grown up trout fishing in Wyoming and we were buddies from then on. We fished together a lot in the Florida Keys and sometimes he'd come out to Wyoming."

Gowdy was master of ceremonies on that September day in 1960 when Ted homered in his last at-bat in the big leagues.

''It was one of the big thrills of my life," said Gowdy. ''Before the game, [equipment czar] Johnny Orlando called me over and said, 'This is the Kid's last game. [Owner Tom] Yawkey and [AL president Joe] Cronin gave him permission to skip the last weekend in New York.' Well, Ted hit a long fly to right that didn't quite make it his third time up. Then his last time up, he hit that ball, and I saw it start to soar and get some distance. I got all excited and I said, 'It's going, going, gone!' and then I stopped and said, 'Ted Williams has hit a home run in his last time at bat in the major leagues.' "

NOT WITH A BANG BUT A SHRUG

Parliament Unbound (Ken Alexander, The Walrus, July/August, 2005)

While Martin played Santa Claus and merchant of fear—gifts for all and beware of Mr. Harper's "hidden agenda"—in truth, Harper stood naked before the public. Greater provincial autonomy fit with his vision of a radically decentralized state, but by offering no social or fiscal conservative policy options and by initially assuring the electorate that he would honour Liberal budget deals, he had merely proven that his own thirst for power was unquenchable, and worse, that the Liberal big tent was so big that it could include an NDP budget and the Conservative policy manual.

Like Nietzsche's madman shouting, "I seek God! I seek God!" and looking for a way forward, I suspect Harper awoke from a troubled Thursday-night sleep and thought: "Why would I want the top job, if the top job stands for nothing?" In this revelatory moment, Harper may have realized that his "party of principle" had been sucker-punched by the party of tactics and strategy. Being rhetorically offensive but policy-lite, Harper had missed the opportunity to present Canadians with a federal government different than that of cash register for the bleating regions or for this or that interest group. Like the main object of his wrath, his courting of the Bloc Québécois—the one party with a consistent narrative, the end of Canada—had shown that he too was only in search of the winning conditions.

As I watched that group of senior citizens, it struck me that Canada has become the ultimate postmodern state, a state governed by verbal gymnastics, by politicians considering spin first and substance not at all, and that older people can find little to cleave to. After World War II, having made a substantial commitment to the Allied effort, Canada slowly emerged as a player on the world's stage. Its position was nuanced, nowhere near as ardent as the patriotic determinism of the United States, or as ideologically confident as the former Soviet Union, or as grasping for national identity as the damaged states of Europe. Long before Pierre Trudeau articulated it as such, Canada's purpose was to craft a just society not from the ashes of ruin, but as a model of tolerance and equity. Ideas spilled from the regions—universal health care, the special accommodations necessary for Newfoundland and Labrador, official bilingualism—and all were put in the hopper, compromises found, and the role of the federal government rooted in time and place.

During this period of nation-building, Canada's malleable constitutional framework, acceptance of a mixed economy, progressive taxation, hyphenated citizenship, and, in general, a philosophy of accommodation, gave us something to offer a troubled world. Accommodation might well describe the central theme of our historic federal narrative. How paradoxical, then, that at a time when ideological quietude and situational ethics are giving way to dogmatic unilateralism and the unifying of church and state, we would allow a predisposition for moderation to morph into standing for nothing at all.

This plaintive cry from the left will resonate with many conservatives, but the author fails to understand how this sorry state is the necessary endgame of his own creed. Tolerance, equity and accommodation can be virtues, but they are situational virtues that only have real meaning in the face of actual intolerance, inequity and exclusion. When they are raised to the level of timeless collective ideals that define a people, public discourse comes to reflect that paradigm and two things eventually happen. The first is that the political and intellectual elites become addicted to a ceaseless and increasingly frantic search for wrongs to redress and causes to promote through “social action” in order to justify themselves and their influence. Not surprisingly, they find them consistently and in the most unlikely places. The second is that the fatigued general population, raised on relativist language and a relentless disdain for the past, becomes stripped of any philosophical or linguistic ability (or confidence) to challenge the zeitgeist and defend matters of importance to them, such as faith, tradition, family and self-reliance, without being shunted to the margins of polite society. Eventually, most become either rotely supportive toadies or withdrawn sceptics unconsciously resigned to a growing chasm between public speech and private thought. Reality and action become secondary to rhetoric and cant. Just as cynical Soviet workers used to joke: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”, so much of the Canadian public seems increasingly disposed to say: “You pretend to fight for social justice and we’ll pretend to care.”

NOW ELECT A FEW:

GOP ratchets upbid to woo blacks (Brian DeBose, August 28, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

More than a dozen black politicians are running on the Republican ticket in 2006 for Senate and House seats, governorships and other statewide races.

It could turn out to be the most diverse Republican slate since the mid-1990s, said J.C. Watts Jr., chairman of GOPAC, a Republican political action committee. Mr. Watts won a House seat in Oklahoma in 1994, becoming the first black Republican to reach Congress since Sen. Edward W. Brooke III, Massachusetts Republican, who served from 1967 to 1979.

"I've often said that most black people don't think alike, most black people just vote alike, and if Republicans understood black people better, you would have 70 to 75 percent of black people voting Republican," Mr. Watts said.

Mr. Mehlman's mantra that "the party of Lincoln will not be whole until more African-Americans come back home" has created a movement that black Republicans said they will use to make significant gains in the largely monolithic, Democratic-voting base. [...]

Retired Army Lt. Col. Frances P. Rice, chairwoman of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA), said her group aims to "enlighten" black voters about the Republican Party and make the black community one that supports two parties.

She said the Democrats' insistence that blacks rely on socialism -- welfare, public housing, public schools -- is destroying the community.

"Blacks after 40 years of Democrat control are complaining about the same things: poorly performing schools, dilapidated public housing," Col. Rice said. "Socialism has not worked anywhere it has been tried. Why should we do it here?"

OUR TREASURE:

The Dodgers' Brooklyn Bridge: Don Newcombe, a link to a glorious past, is 79 and still serving the franchise with character and class, attributes of much concern to the organization today (Bill Plaschke, August 28, 2005, LA Times)

It has been nearly 60 years now, and he still takes the ball.

Night after night, in a stadium where he never pitched, representing a Los Angeles Dodger team for which he never won a game, the old man in the silk suit and Panama hat still shows up.

Smiling through the demons. Shaking hands through the bitterness. Standing tall for a sport that once tried to shrink him.

Many players don't know the name. Many fans have forgotten the face. Never does this loosen the grip.

Hand him the autograph pad. Pull out the disposable camera. Call in the Kiwanis Club. Give him the ball.

It was hell to get here, and Don Newcombe is not leaving.

"I still am bitter to a large degree, but then I think about what Jackie Robinson once told me," he said. "He said, 'You've got to change one letter in that word. Change the 'i' to an 'e.' Forget about bitter, try to make things better.' "

So, you want Dodger character?

Cheer it today, at the 50th reunion of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, upon the introduction of Don Newcombe. [...]

"To see him standing behind the batting cage before the game, it constantly amazes me," said Bob Grant, the Dodger batting practice pitcher who frequently talks with Newcombe. "All he stood for, everything he fought, and he's still here. He's, like, our treasure."

WITNESS:

Underground Chinese bishop dies (BBC, 8/27/05)

Xie Shinguang, a bishop of China's underground Roman Catholic Church who spent 28 years in prison because of his faith, has died.

The bishop of Mingdong was 88 when he succumbed to leukaemia on Thursday. [...]

Monsignor Xie served four separate prison terms and according to the Vatican was kept under surveillance by the authorities until his death.

The Vatican praised him as a "courageous witness to Christ".

Monsignor Xie was ordained in 1949 and became a bishop 1984.

He is reported to have rejected [constant] pressure to join the official Chinese Church.

However, as a result he was jailed first in 1955, again from 1958-1980, from 1984-1987 and finally from 1990-1992.

HARDLY A FAIR COMPARISON ANYWAY:

Wired: First Carl Smith built an archive of Sonny Rollins recorded live. Then he decided to capture the magic himself. (Geoff Edgers, August 28, 2005, Boston Globe)

Carl Smith wore a plaid shirt that night, the dark pattern hiding the $700 microphones sewn into the fabric. He bought four seats in the second row of the Berklee Performance Center, and told his son and two friends to merely pretend to clap. Their presence would provide a sound buffer for his digital recorder.

It was Sept. 15, 2001, and Smith's mission was to capture jazz legend Sonny Rollins as he's rarely heard on record -- live and uninhibited. [....]

Four years later, after a steady campaign to earn Rollins's trust, Smith is moving closer to his greater goal, which is to reveal a different side of the last living jazz giant. On Tuesday, Fantasy Records releases ''Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert," a CD documenting the show that took place four days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Not only is this the first of Smith's live recordings to go on sale, it also signals a breakthrough in the once icy relationship with the Rollins camp, which has historically frowned on collectors.

And for jazz fans, the release offers a tantalizing proposition that cuts to the heart of the Rollins conundrum. His greatness, some contend, is best heard during his live shows. But of the few Rollins concerts legitimately released, none captures the energy and excitement of the jazz improviser on a great night.

''The best of Carl Smith's stuff is staggering," says Stanley Crouch, the writer who long urged Rollins to trust Smith. ''It actually creates a kind of a reevaluation of what we consider musical creativity. When you hear this, these chumps in hip-hop and rock, they're jokes compared to Sonny Rollins."

I'M A DRUG-FIEND, NOT A BOMBER:

Roberts v. the Future (JEFFREY ROSEN, 8/28/05, NY Times Magazine)

In the wake of the recent London bombings, the New York subway system implemented random bag searches, and the London Underground announced plans to introduce high-tech body scanners that peer through clothing. In the coming years, if technology advances as expected and the threat of terror fails to subside, Western democracies will develop ever more sophisticated and intrusive forms of surveillance, many of which will be challenged in court as a violation of rights to privacy and equality. Not long ago, I visited Marc Rotenberg, the head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil-liberties group, at his office in Washington and asked him what form he thought the new legal battles over surveillance technology might take.

Sketching out a hypothetical situation, Rotenberg imagined, in the near future, a young man walking around the Washington Monument for 30 minutes while waiting for a friend. Meanwhile, sophisticated biometric camera systems (which can register the details of someone's face), connected to data-mining computer programs (which link the face to a database of personal information), monitor the young man. The cameras might also detect, say, a copy of the Koran he is carrying under his arm. Taken together, this information is used to generate a ''threat index'' based on how suspicious the high-tech profiling makes him out to be. ''According to the computer algorithm, pacing around a national monument might be a suspicious activity characteristic of someone intending to commit a terrorist attack,'' Rotenberg said. ''The link between his face and his travel records and magazine subscriptions, maintained by a big commercial database, might generate a citizenship trustworthiness score that suggests further investigation.''

Based on a low trustworthiness score, the young man might be stopped by the police, who might open his backpack and find a bag of marijuana. Would the examination of the backpack amount to an unconstitutional search or seizure?

On the current Supreme Court, Rotenberg noted, a challenge on constitutional grounds to this kind of search might face an uphill battle. In January, in a 6-2 decision written by the court's most liberal justice, John Paul Stevens, the court upheld as constitutional a dog sniff of a driver who had been stopped for speeding. (When the dog barked, the cops opened the trunk and found marijuana.) The dissenting justices, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, expressed concern that the majority opinion cleared the way for the police to turn drug-sniffing dogs on large groups of innocent citizens without cause to suspect illegal activity. But even Ginsburg and Souter said there might be nothing wrong with the use of bomb-detection dogs if they were effective in identifying potential terrorists.

According to the court's logic, whether a threat-index system that places citizens in different categories of suspicion violates the Constitution might depend on how accurate the threat indexes turn out to be. But even if the indexes turned out to not be very accurate, Rotenberg suggested, a justice like John Roberts, should he be sitting on the court, might not be inclined to question their use. In two recent cases as an appellate judge, Roberts was very deferential to searches and seizures by the police. In one case, he reluctantly upheld a Washington policy requiring the arrest of a 12-year-old girl who ate a French fry in a Washington Metro station, and in the other, he argued in dissent that the police should have been allowed to search the trunk of a car after stopping the driver for having a broken light. (The officers found a loaded gun in the trunk, a discovery that Roberts's colleagues in the majority contended had to be suppressed because there had been no probable cause to search the trunk in the first place.) ''Roberts seems untroubled by what people would think of as pretextual searches,'' Rotenberg said.

If polls about the U.S.A. Patriot Act are correct (only 22 percent of Americans say it goes too far in restricting people's civil liberties to fight terrorism, while 69 percent are content with it or say it doesn't go far enough), many people may not object to data-mining technology that promises to identify potential terrorists. But if the war against terror escalates further, the government may deploy even more controversial forms of electronic surveillance.

The guru of digital activism is the Stanford law professor and cyberspace visionary Lawrence Lessig, whom I recently reached by telephone in Spain. ''As life moves increasingly onto the Net and the capacity to control every aspect of our cultural capital increases almost to perfection..."

HE'S BLIND?:

Who Controls the Family?: Blind Activist Leads Peasants in Legal Challenge To Abuses of China's Population-Growth Policy (Philip P. Pan, August 27, 2005, Washington Post0

A crowd of disheveled villagers was waiting when Chen Guangcheng stepped out of the car. More women than men among them, a mix of desperation and hope on their faces, they ushered him along a dirt path and into a nearby house. Then, one after another, they told him about the city's campaign against "unplanned births."

Since March, the farmers said, local authorities had been raiding the homes of families with two children and demanding at least one parent be sterilized. Women pregnant with a third child were forced to have abortions. And if people tried to hide, the officials jailed their relatives and neighbors, beating them and holding them hostage until the fugitives turned themselves in.

Chen, 34, a slender man wearing dark sunglasses, held out a digital voice recorder and listened intently. Blind since birth, he couldn't see the tears of the women forced to terminate pregnancies seven or eight months along, or the blank stares of the men who said they submitted to vasectomies to save family members from torture. But he could hear the pain and anger in their voices and said he was determined to do something about it.

For weeks, Chen has been collecting testimony about the population-control abuses in this city of 10 million, located about 400 miles southeast of Beijing, beginning in his own village in the rural suburbs, then traveling from one community to the next. Now he is preparing an unlikely challenge to the crackdown: a class-action lawsuit.

"What these officials are doing is completely illegal," Chen said. "They've committed widespread violations of citizens' basic rights, and they should be held responsible."

It might appear a quixotic crusade -- a blind peasant with limited legal training taking on the Communist Party's one-child policy, which has long been considered a pillar of the nation's economic development strategy and off-limits to public debate. But the Linyi case marks a legal milestone in challenging the coercive measures used for decades to limit population growth in China. [...]

On a recent visit to Maxiagou village, in another rural part of Linyi, he interviewed Feng Zhongxia, 36. She recounted that she was seven months pregnant and on the run when she learned that local officials had detained more than a dozen of her relatives and wouldn't release them unless she returned for an abortion.

"My aunts, uncles, cousins, my pregnant younger sister, my in-laws, they were all taken to the family planning office," she said. "Many of them didn't get food or water, and all of them were severely beaten." Some of the relatives were allowed to call her, and they pleaded with her to come home.

Feng called the family planning officials. "They told me they would peel the skin off my relatives and I would only see their corpses if I didn't come back," she said. The next day, she turned herself in. A doctor examined her, then stuck a needle into her uterus. About 24 hours later, she delivered the dead fetus. "It was a small life," she said quietly.

Afterward, she said, the family planning workers insisted on sterilizing her, too. "I'm a human being. How can they treat me like that?" she asked.

CHECKS AND BALANCES:

Depleted Iran cabinet meets after rejection of four by parliament (Reuters, 26 August 2005)

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad convened his depleted team of ministers for their first meeting yesterday after suffering the ignominy of seeing parliament reject four of his cabinet picks.

Wednesday’s no-confidence vote for Ahmadinejad’s proposed oil, education, cooperatives and welfare ministers marked the first time since a constitutional reform in 1989 that parliament had not endorsed a president’s first cabinet in its entirety.

It left oil policy of Opec’s No. 2 crude exporter in limbo, served an important warning to the young, conservative president and could presage internal power struggles among Iran’s conservative camp, which has swept reformists from all positions of power in the last three years, political analysts said.

“This was a real lesson to Ahmadinejad that he has to listen more. It’s a setback for him,” said one analyst, who declined to be named.

“It showed that, although parliament is mostly conservative, there are rifts developing and the moderate, more centrist camp seems to be getting stronger.”

Ahmadinejad has three months to propose alternative nominees although analysts said he would probably do so much sooner.

“His next picks will have to be more experienced, more moderate figures,” said the analyst, noting that lack of experience and a radical background were the most serious criticisms levelled by lawmakers.

YOU CAN FOOL ONE THIRD OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME:

French morale at record low - poll (Reuters, 8/27/05)

French morale was at a record low less than two weeks ahead of the French prime minister's deadline to restore confidence in the population in his first 100 days in office, according to a survey on Saturday.

Less than a third of French people polled were optimistic about their and their children's future, a drop of 28 percentage points since the last poll in December 2004 and the lowest since the first Ifop survey for newspaper Dimanche Ouest-France in February 1995.

KLAN MOTHER:

Despite heavy coverage, nation's press strangely reluctant to report all she says (David Koppel, August 27, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

Cindy Sheehan claims the media are "a propaganda tool for the government." A New York Post editorial (Aug. 16) argued that Sheehan's statement was self-evidently false, given the overwhelming and almost exclusively positive media attention paid to her in the last several weeks. But in a broader sense, Sheehan has a point: Almost all the news stories and columns in Denver dailies, like the vast majority of the rest of the mainstream media, have failed to inform their readers about what Sheehan really thinks.

The night before Sheehan began her Crawford, Texas, vigil, she spoke at the convention of Veterans for Peace (transcript at www.veteransforpeace.org).She told the crowd about a sympathetic e-mailer who warned that her profanity offended "people on the fence."

In reply, she argued that anyone who supports the war should "get your a-- over to Iraq." Everyone against the war should "stand up and speak out. But whatever side you fall on, quit being on the fence . . . we have to get this country off their butts."

In other words, Sheehan's use of inflammatory rhetoric is an important part of her communication strategy. Yet even as the mainstream media has fawned over her campout, it has neutered her message, refusing to print her statements which are intended to get people off the fence.

For example, on Aug. 16, Sheehan held a media conference call during which she declared "The person who killed my son, I have no animosity for that person at all." Yet her statement was reported only in the National Review Online weblog. In an interview with Mark Knoller of CBS News, she explained that the foreigners who have to come to Iraq to battle the U.S. military are "freedom fighters." (Video at the anti-war Web site dc.indymedia. org/usermedia/video/2/cindyon bus.mov). Conversely, she described last January's vote in Iraq as a "sham election," in her Tuesday entry on her weblog on Michael Moore's Web site (http:// michaelmoore.com/mustread/ index.php?id=465).

Sheehan hopes that her strong words will get people off the fence, yet the mainstream media fails to report them.

EVEN THE WETS CAN FIGURE IT OUT (via Robert Schwartz):

A hard truth: the future of the single currency is now far beyond our Ken (Anatole Kaletsky, 8/25/05, Times of London)

THERE WAS a time when Kenneth Clarke’s admission that “the euro has been a failure” might have dominated the headlines for weeks. It might even have changed the course of Britain’s history. Had Mr Clarke been prescient enough 15 years ago to recognise the fatal flaws in the single currency project, the Tories might have been spared the humiliation of Black Wednesday and the suicidal infighting over the Maastricht treaty; they might still be governing the country.

If the ex-Chancellor had humbly admitted five years ago that he had been wrong about the euro, he would surely now be the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservatives might be vying for power with Labour in a hung parliament. By this week, however, Mr Clarke’s public confession about the failure of the euro was as irrelevant to the future as Macbeth’s final soliloquy comparing himself to “a walking shadow, a poor player who that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”.

But while Mr Clarke’s regrets about the euro may no longer be of any interest in Britain, they remind us of something extremely significant about the wider world beyond. The euro has been enjoying a political honeymoon in the four years since it was introduced. While the Europe’s economic performance has gone from bad to worse almost since the day when the euro was launched in January 1999, no respectable politician has ever dared to blame the euro or criticise the single currency project in any way. This taboo has now been lifted.

THE AMERICANIZATION OF FABIAN:

Nuñez Trip Hits Heavy Resistance: On Mexican goodwill tour, Assembly chief has to defend bid for state of emergency on border. (Sam Enriquez, August 27, 2005, LA Times)

California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez is one of a new generation of Spanish-speaking politicians who represent an increasingly potent Latino constituency. But somewhere between Sacramento and Mexico City, his goodwill message got lost in translation.

Nuñez landed in Mexico this week with the best of intentions: strengthening ties with the country, California's largest trading partner, and addressing the thorny issue of illegal immigration. He worked with a local public relations man to spread his message to as many people as possible: that immigrants were a precious California resource and that the two nations must work together to protect their future.

But two days into his whirlwind schedule of radio and TV appearances — as well as a private meeting with President Vicente Fox — Nuñez was spending most of his time trying to explain his demand that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declare a state of emergency along California's 142-mile border.

Even worse, Mexicans here say, was the speaker's insistence that Schwarzenegger — who this spring praised the "Minuteman" campaign along the U.S.-Mexico border — was a caring person. [...]

But to many Mexicans, the demand for cheap labor and illegal drugs by Americans on one hand, and the demand to seal the border on the other are at best a contradiction — and at worst, hypocrisy.

AL QAEDA'S SUICIDAL BOMBING:

9/11 seen as sparking Arab economic boom (Jim Krane, August 27, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are increasingly viewed in the oil-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf as the catalyst for an economic boom when Arabs divested from America and reinvested at home.

Arab investors pulled tens of billions of dollars out of the United States. They were angered by perceived American hostility toward Arabs. They worried their assets would be frozen by U.S. counter-terrorism measures. And U.S. markets happened to be plummeting while economies in the Persian Gulf were on the upswing, buoyed by rising oil prices.

The results have been spectacular.

Since late 2001, economies in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries -- Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- have soared, with stock markets up a collective 400 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 24 percent over that period.

MORE:
Natural gas of Gaza to profit Palestinians (David R. Sands and Joshua Mitnick, August 27, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Major natural gas fields off the coast of the Gaza Strip may prove a vital lifeline for a beleaguered Palestinian economy that has few other resources to exploit.

Israel's withdrawal from Gaza settlements this month has heightened international interests in exploiting the fields, first discovered more than five years ago.

OUR AMBASSADOR TO THE UN, NOT THEIRS TO US:

U.S. Demands Spur Crisis Talks at U.N.: New U.S. ambassador John R. Bolton has surprised diplomats with 750 amendments to a reform document key to next month's summit. (Maggie Farley, August 27, 2005, LA Times)

Faced with a last-minute list of demands from Washington, key nations met in crisis talks here Friday to head off a collapse of a U.N. reform summit of 180 world leaders next month.

John R. Bolton, the new U.S. ambassador to the world body, surprised diplomats returning from vacation this week with 750 amendments to the reform document that is supposed to be the focus of the 60th anniversary summit Sept. 14. [...]

The U.S. draft significantly reduces a section on poverty in favor of bolstered sections on strengthening free-market values and spreading democracy. It deletes mention of institutions and treaties the U.S. opposes, such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty on global warming.

The draft also deletes a proposal that nuclear powers dismantle their arsenals, while strengthening passages on fighting terrorism. [...]

Despite various objections from other regional groups, the focus is on the concerns of the U.S., in part because of Bolton's reputation for being a U.N. skeptic and a take-it-or-leave-it negotiator.

It is also a moment for Bolton to prove his mettle after the Senate refused to vote on his confirmation, leading the president to install him in a recess appointment without congressional approval.

U.S. officials say the 11th-hour introduction of their many amendments was not an act of sabotage, but simply a result of a lengthy interagency consultation in Washington.

But some criticize the U.S. for being nearly silent during the months of the original negotiations this year.

THE BUSH/SHARON LESSON--UNILATERALISM WORKS:

Shiites and Kurds Halt Charter Talks With Sunnis (DEXTER FILKINS and JAMES GLANZ, 8/27/05, NY Times)

Shiite and Kurdish leaders drafting a new Iraqi constitution abandoned negotiations with a group of Sunni representatives on Friday, deciding to take the disputed charter directly to the Iraqi people.

With the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, standing by, Shiite and Kurdish representatives said they had run out of patience with the Sunni negotiators, a group that includes several former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Shiites and Kurds said the Sunnis had refused to budge on a pair of crucial issues that were holding up completion of the constitution.

The Shiites and Kurds reached their decision in meetings that ran late into Friday night, disregarding the Sunnis' pleas for more time.

The Shiite and Kurdish representatives sought to play down the importance of leaving the Sunnis out, saying that with their Baathist links, they had never truly spoken for the broader Sunni population. The Iraqi leaders who drafted the constitution defended it as a document that would ensure the unity of the country and safeguard individual rights.

"The negotiation is finished, and we have a deal," said Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister and a member of the Shiite leadership. "No one has any more time. It cannot drag on any longer. Most of the Sunnis are satisfied. Everybody made sacrifices. It is an excellent document."

MORE:
Unyielding Sunnis May Be Overruled (Ashraf Khalil and Noam N. Levey, August 27, 2005, LA Times)

The stalemate over an Iraqi constitution continued Friday without agreement, after Shiite Arab negotiators presented a compromise proposal on regional autonomy to Sunni Arabs in what was described as a final attempt to gain their approval.

Several Iraqi leaders indicated that the current wording would be placed before Iraqi voters in an Oct. 15 national referendum whether or not Sunni representatives approve.

"This draft must be presented to the people," government spokesman Laith Kubba told Al Arabiya news channel early today.

Negotiators for Iraq's Shia majority say a deal has been agreed on a final draft for the new constitution.

They say the text will be put to the Iraqi parliament for approval within the next two days.

But politicians for the minority Sunni Arabs flatly contradicted the Shia claim, saying there was no agreement despite talks late into the night.

WAITING FOR AN OFFER THEY CAN'T REFUSE:

Number of unsold homes surges: Economist sees 'tiny declines' or flat prices ahead (Kimberly Blanton, August 27, 2005, Boston Globe)

''It's a sign that the market is weakening," said economist David Stiff, of Fiserv CWS Inc., a Boston real estate research firm. ''The growth in supply is outpacing the growth of demand."

Reports of higher Massachusetts inventories come as many home buyers and sellers fear that the spectacular rise in real estate values and prices may be ending.

Stiff predicted ''tiny declines" or prices going ''flat for three or four years," perhaps starting nine to 12 months from now.

This week, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reported single-family home sales in the state decreased 7.4 percent in July from a year earlier, though the median price -- the midpoint price of all the houses on the market -- rose about 7 percent, to $375,000.

Real estate agents say prices haven't fallen yet in response to more supply because owners unable to sell for as much as they want simply hold out, leaving their properties on the market longer -- or they may not sell them at all.
The reason prices aren't coming down is because -- as we've seen in other stories on the phenomenon -- many of these listings are for folks who aren't interested in moving but would sell if they could realize an absurdly high gain.

OR IF AN ASTEROID HITS:

Greenspan Cites Economic Risks For Consumers (Nell Henderson, August 27, 2005, Washington Post)

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Friday that recent gains in U.S. home prices, stock values and other forms of wealth may be temporary and could easily erode if long-term interest rates rise.

ANTI-SEMITES OF A FEATHER:

White supremacists
claim Cindy's cause: Holding rally: 'We don't want leftist Johnny-come-latelys' to hijack issue (Joe Kovacs, August 26, 2005, WorldNetDaily.com)

The latest entrants in the saga of Cindy Sheehan vs. the White House are white supremacists, as they plan to rally against the Iraq War this weekend in Crawford, Texas.

Members of Stormfront.org are tossing their figurative hoods into the mix, as they invite supporters to come to Camp Casey to "let the world know that white patriots were first and loudest to protest this war for Israel."

MORE:
The Paranoid Style: Iraq: Where socialists and anarchists join in with racialists and paleocons. (Victor Davis Hanson, 8/26/05, National Review)

It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail and is a deep reflection of American pathology.

An anguished Cindy Sheehan calls Bush "the world's biggest terrorist." And she goes on to blame Israel for the death of her son ("Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel").

Her antiwar venom could easily come right out of the mouth of a more calculating David Duke. Perhaps that's why he lauded her anti-Semitism: "Courageously she has gone to Texas near the ranch of President Bush and braved the elements and a hostile Jewish supremacist media."

This odd symbiosis began right after 9/11.

MEMO TO HUGO...:

Chavez swipes at 'assassin' Bush (BBC, 8/27/05)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says US President George W Bush will be to blame if anything happens to him.

ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THE '90'S, FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES IN THE '00'S

Ex-rebel becomes Burundi leader (BBC, 8/27/05)

Former Burundi rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza has been sworn in as president, marking the end of 12 years of war which has left 300,000 dead.

He becomes the first leader chosen through democratic means since 1993.

It marks the end of a five-year peace process designed to end the conflict between Hutu rebels and an army led by the Tutsi minority.

Power will be shared under the peace deal with Tutsis guaranteed a share of power and government jobs.

"I pledge to fight all ideology and acts of genocide and exclusion, to promote and defend the individual and collective rights and freedoms of persons and of the citizen," he said in the Kirundi language in a ceremony attended by several African heads of state.

Former rebel leader and born-again Christian Pierre Nkurunziza has been sworn in as Burundi's new president. [...]

He belongs to the younger generation of Hutu leaders, whose political and military careers started after the killing of Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye by disgruntled soldiers in 1993.

Before joining the rebels, he was a teacher, not known for his political activities.

"I was pushed into rebellion by the inter-ethnic massacres that were taking place at the university in 1995," he said on Wednesday.

In the bush, he kept a low profile, despite his rise to take over the FDD leadership.

He joined the FDD after narrowly escaping death in combat in 2001 in the central province of Gitega.

Injured in battle and with the army in hot pursuit, he says he saw those who had gone to kill him were eaten by crocodiles near the Maragarazi river, in central Burundi.

He says the experience is proof that he was pre-destined to lead the FDD.

The son of a former governor, he was born in December 1963 in the northern province of Ngozi. His father was Catholic and his mother Anglican.

Now a born-again Protestant, he is described by those close to him as "religious, cool and a gentleman devoid of religious fundamentalism".

He says he is against tribalism and fought for peace, justice and security for all.

"When I am in church, I pray and devote myself exclusively to God. And when I am in politics, I do the opposite while at the same time acknowledging that God is everywhere," he once said.

PLEASE, HAMMER, DON'T HURT HER:

Sheehan now looks to take on Congress (Reuters, 8/26/05)

Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan said Friday she plans to expand her focus to Congress, starting with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Bush ally and fellow Texan.

MOLLY BROWNS:

TWO MORE VAN ZANDT COUNTY DEMOCRATS SWITCH PARTIES (LINDSAY RANDALL, 8/25/05, Tyler Morning Telegraph)

The Van Zandt County district attorney and the Precinct 2 commissioner have announced they are switching parties from Democratic to Republican, marking the county's third and fourth party switches since June.

District Attorney Leslie Poynter Dixon said the Democratic Party's press release regarding the party switch of Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Ronnie Daniell prompted her to announce her own change of heart.

"I had planned to formally announce my candidacy for re-election in December 2005 during the statutory filing period," Mrs. Dixon said in a written statement. "While, personally, I feel more comfortable discussing party affiliations during the legal election-filing period, I do not want to appear evasive or hesitant to discuss my party."

In a press release issued a few weeks ago, Democratic Party Chairman Vince Leibowitz said Mrs. Dixon and Commissioner David Risner had failed to return the forms necessary to reaffirm their candidacy on the Democratic ticket.

"We have already undertaken a search for opponents for all positions open on the ticket in 2006, and have had several people express an interest in the position of county commissioner," Leibowitz said.

Risner said his reasons had more to do with the local party than Democratic platforms.

"It seems like the Democratic Party was taking a real bad downfall," he said. "It's kind of like the Titanic - it was sinking and it seems like I had a lifeboat to get on."

THEN THEY WONDER WHY WE SHOOT AT THEM:

Italy's Red Cross Aided Insurgents in Exchange for Hostages (Associated Press, August 26, 2005)

Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraq insurgents — with the knowledge of the Italian government — last year and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two kidnapped aid workers, a top Italian Red Cross official said in an interview published Thursday.

Maurizio Scelli, chief of the Italian Red Cross, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he had kept the deal secret from U.S. officials, complying with "a nonnegotiable condition" imposed by Iraqi mediators who helped him secure the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. The women were abducted in Baghdad on Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28.

"The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat," Scelli was quoted as saying. "We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them."

DISCERNING THE HAND OF GOD (via Robert Schwartz):

Space radiation may select amino acids for life (Maggie McKee, 24 August 2005, NewScientist.com)

Space radiation preferentially destroys specific forms of amino acids, the most realistic laboratory simulation to date has found. The work suggests the molecular building blocks that form the "left-handed" proteins used by life on Earth took shape in space, bolstering the case that they could have seeded life on other planets.

Amino acids are molecules that come in mirror-image right- and left-handed forms. But all the naturally occurring proteins in organisms on Earth use the left-handed forms - a puzzle dubbed the "chirality problem".

"A key question is when this chirality came into play," says Uwe Meierhenrich, a chemist at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France. One theory is that proteins made of both types of amino acids existed on the early Earth but "somehow only the proteins of left-handed amino acids survived", says Meierhenrich.

Meierhenrich and colleagues have a different theory. "We say the molecular building blocks of life were already created in interstellar conditions," he told New Scientist.

The team believes a special type of "handed" space radiation destroyed more right-handed amino acids on the icy dust from which the solar system formed.

THIS TIME THE POPE WILL LEAD THE REFORMATION:

Pope Adopts Tough Talk With Muslims: When Pope Benedict XVI met with Muslim leaders in Germany on Aug. 20, he stuck to one issue and gave it a name -- terrorism. (RNS, 8/26/05)

In his historic 2001 visit to Syria, the late John Paul II became the first pope to visit a mosque, where he stressed the common heritage of Christianity and Islam and highlighted the prominence of the Virgin Mary in the Quran.

He also noted a certain "misuse (of) religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence," but left it undefined.

But when his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, met with Muslim leaders in Germany on Aug. 20, he stuck to one issue and gave it a name -- terrorism.

With a challenge to Muslim leaders to reject and condemn "any connection between your faith and terrorism," Benedict has subtly redefined Vatican relations with Islam, departing from the conciliatory overtures of his predecessor to forge an approach that presses for reform.

The shift, observers say, reflects a growing desire among Vatican officials for the Catholic Church to reassert itself after two decades of dovish dialogue under John Paul II.

ANY DAY NOW THERE'LL BE AN ACTUAL ADVANCE IN MEDICINE FROM WHAT OUR ANCESTORS KNEW:

For FDA, maggots are a kind of device: Larvae and leeches need prescription, advisers decide (Diedtra Henderson, August 26, 2005, Boston Globe)

What do pacemakers, stents, and artificial hips have in common with leeches and maggots?

According to the Food and Drug Administration, they are all medical devices.

FDA advisers considering how much scrutiny to give to leeches and maggots used for medicinal purposes yesterday decided they should require a prescription.

Leeches have been used by doctors for centuries to control bleeding. Maggot therapy was used hundreds of years ago by indigenous Australians and has been credited with disinfecting the wounds of World War I soldiers who lay untreated for days in battlefields.

With FDA approval, doctors now use maggots to trim dead flesh with more precision than scalpels, and leeches to draw excess blood that can collect when severed fingers are reattached.

UNION OF SELF-SERVING RUSSIANS (via Robert Schwartz):

More Abortions Than Births in Russia — Health Official (MosNews, 8/23/05)

Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday quoting the country’s highest-ranking obstetrician.

About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “Many more” abortions weren’t reported.

IS THAT HARRY PEEKING OUT FROM THE CAVE?

At London Zoo, Humans Are Ones on Display (Cassandra Vinograd, Associated Press, August 26th, 2005)

Caged and barely clothed, eight men and women monkeyed around for the crowds Friday in an exhibit labeled "Humans" at the London Zoo.

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment" read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, "Why are there people in there?"

London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills says that's exactly the question the zoo wants to answer.

"Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate," Wills said.

The exhibit puts the three male and five female "homo sapiens" amid their primate relatives. While their neighbors might enjoy bananas and a good scratch, these eight have divided interests, from a chemist hoping to raise awareness about apes to a self-described actor/model and fitness enthusiast.

The other primates are threatening to kill them unless they pay reparations for Chartres.

MUST BE A TRICK:

Gay Advocacy Groups Oppose Roberts' Nomination to High Court: The judge's record shows that he would not protect their civil rights, they say in a statement. (Maura Reynolds, August 26, 2005, LA Times)

Despite John G. Roberts Jr.'s legal help in a landmark Supreme Court victory for gay rights, four leading gay rights organizations said Thursday that they had decided to oppose his nomination to the high court.

The four groups — the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays — argued that the bulk of Roberts' record suggested he would be unsympathetic to gay rights cases.

OH, TO HAVE BEEN THERE FOR THAT:

Helms lauded as conscience of Senate conservatives (Ralph Z. Hallow, August 26, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

From virtually his first day in the Senate in January 1973, [Jesse Helms's] insistence on principle was at times so politically incorrect as to exasperate whoever happened to occupy the Oval Office and to embarrass colleagues on the right whose spines might be less stiff than his.

He tells the story of when the newly inaugurated President Clinton clasped his hand, looked him in the eyes and said: "Senator, I'm so happy to meet you, because we have so much in common."

Mr. Helms recalls his reply: "Mr. President, you must be mistaking me for another senator. My name is Helms. H-E-L-M-S."

OUR GUYS (via Daniel Merriman):

Playing The Shiite Card (David Ignatius, August 26, 2005, Washington Post)

America is finally having its great debate over the Iraq war. In that debate, it's worth listening to a young Iraqi Shiite cleric named Ammar Hakim. He speaks for the people who arguably have gained the most from America's troubled mission in Iraq and, to a surprising extent, still believe in it. [...]

Hakim had a clear message during his visit, and it's one worth mulling carefully as Americans ponder the new Iraqi constitution and the bitter Shiite-Sunni tensions that have surrounded its drafting. If I could sum up his theme in one sentence, it is that the United States should continue to bet on democracy in Iraq -- which of necessity means relying on Iraq's Shiite majority and the mullahs who speak for it. In essence, he was calling for a strategic alliance between Najaf and Washington.

I told Hakim through an interpreter that many Americans were close to despair about Iraq. We see continuing violence and few signs that Iraq's security forces will be strong enough to maintain order once American troops leave. Here's how Hakim responded: "The truth is, this is a grand plan, and any time you are engaged in a grand plan, you will face difficulties. But we will overcome them. We are now in the final quarter of these difficulties." [...]

[A]mericans should ponder the argument that Hakim made to U.S. officials. The way to contain Sunni terrorism and stabilize the Arab world is to develop a strategic relationship with Najaf. Powerful Shiite communities exist in all the region's hot spots: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and above all Iran. An American rapprochement with Iran is essential, he would argue, but the real fulcrum should be Najaf.

MORE:
Shiites offer compromise on constitution (QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, 8/26/05, Associated Press)

Prodded by President Bush, Shiite negotiators Friday offered what they called their final compromise proposal to Sunni Arabs to try to break the impasse over Iraq's new constitution, a Shiite official said.

Bush telephoned a key Shiite leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, on Thursday to urge consensus over the draft, Abbas al-Bayati told The Associated Press.

The Shiites were awaiting a response from the Sunnis, al-Bayati said. Later, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Kurdish mediator Barham Saleh were seen arriving at a Green Zone residence where top Shiites were huddling.

He said the concessions were on the pivotal issues of federalism and efforts to remove former members of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party from public life, adding: "We cannot offer more than that." [...]

"We are trying to put forward the views of others," Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer, a former Iraqi president, told Al-Jazeera television Friday. "We want this constitution to maintain the unity of Iraqi soil and give rights to all Iraqis."

Al-Bayati said the Shiites had proposed that the parliament expected to be elected in December be given the right to issue a law on the mechanism of implementing federalism. He gave no further details.

Not only did Washington knock off Tehran's arch-foe, Saddam Hussein, as well as the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, but, with the near completion of a new constitution that is likely to guarantee a weak central government and substantial autonomy to much of the Shi'ite south, it also appears that Iran's influence in Iraq - already on the rise after last spring's inauguration of a pro-Iranian interim government - is set to grow further.

DON'T YOU PEOPLE HAVE HOBBIES?

Ref: brothersjudd.com

Stephen,

We were forced to disable your MoveableType comments script(oj-comments.cgi) just now because it was causing very high CPU load on the webserver your site is running on. This is a known issue with older versions of MoveableType. We would ask that you either upgrade to the latest version of MoveableType, or consider using our free Wordpress blog service:
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http://www.HostMySite.com

THE PROBLEM IS HE'S NOT A USURER?:

If 'Bubble' Bursts, Legacy of Greenspan May Deflate (Bill Sing, August 26, 2005, LA Times)

As central bankers and prominent economists gather today in Wyoming to assess Alan Greenspan's 18-year stewardship of the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve chairman is expected to win widespread plaudits for fostering solid economic growth while deftly managing several financial crises.

But the final chapter of Greenspan's legacy might be based on how well the central bank manages what many experts say is a crisis looming on the horizon: a housing bubble. [...]

Many economists who praise Greenspan's overall record nonetheless are critical of his handling of the housing market.

"This will have been the most successful period in the history of the Federal Reserve system," William A. Niskanen, a Reagan administration economic advisor and now chairman of the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, says of Greenspan's tenure. But, he says, the Fed chief made three major mistakes, including fostering banking regulations that helped precipitate today's low mortgage rates — "a condition that has contributed to what now looks like a housing bubble." [...]

[Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast and one of the first economists to label the current housing market a bubble] adds that today's housing market is different from the dot-com stock mania of the late 1990s, in that soaring Internet stock prices could at least be justified by the perception that technology was changing the world, creating a "new economy." Greenspan was blamed for helping fuel the stock bubble with statements in the late 1990s touting the "new economy."

But "houses are exactly the same now as two years ago. There is no 'new economy' when it comes to homes," Leamer says. Thus, cooling off housing should have been "an easy call to make."

MORE:
Rates continue to fall on 30-year mortgages (Martin Crutsinger, 8/26/05, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Rates on 30-year mortgages declined for a second consecutive week as low mortgages continued to fuel the country's housing boom.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to a nationwide average of 5.77 percent this week, down from last week's 5.80 percent. Rates have fallen for two weeks after hitting a four-month high of 5.89 percent the week of Aug. 11. [...]

Even with the two consecutive declines, analysts said that rates should resume rising in coming weeks as the Federal Reserve continues its campaign to nudge rates higher as a way of making sure that inflation does not get out of control.

MAN, THE FREE AUTOMATON

Excluded Middle School (Louis Markos, Touchstone, July/August, 2005)

Though public education in the United States has not fully abandoned the concept of ethics and morality, it has quite clearly abandoned what C. S. Lewis dubbed the Tao. As Lewis explained it in The Abolition of Man, the Tao is the universal moral law code known and understood by all peoples at all times through the dual media of natural reason and divinely revealed law codes. Although the Tao has always played a central role in the education of the young, modern Western educators have, in defiance of both our Greco-Roman and our Judeo-Christian heritage, rejected it as the basis for education.

This rejection they have justified on at least three grounds: “scientific” (modern education is to rest on logic, reason, and empirical evidence, not on anything “subjective” and “private”), sociological-anthropological (what we in the West call morality is not universal but culture-specific), and political (a “religious” concept like the Tao has no place in public, state-run education). Even when traditional morality is taught in the classroom, it is not linked to the Tao, but treated as a personal choice that cannot be granted the universal status given to, say, the numerical value of pi or the scientific theory of evolution.

By rejecting the Tao, the educational system has courted disaster. Borrowing a metaphor from Plato, Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man that in all human beings there exists a perpetual war between the head (reason) and the belly (appetite). Through the head we are drawn up toward the angels, and through the belly we are drawn down toward the beasts. In a straight fight between the two, the belly will win every time.[...]

It is not enough to teach young students knowledge of the Tao. In addition to learning how to distinguish virtuous behavior from vicious behavior, the student must be taught how he is to feel about virtue and vice. The student must be trained from a young age to feel good when he performs a virtuous action and to feel a sense of internal disgust (but not self-hatred) when he does something vicious.

It is always amusing to watch secular Darwinists try and juggle their conflicting beliefs that our morality is universal and biologically determined by our common survival needs and that religion is to be rejected because it posits incompatible rights and wrongs in a culturally relativist world. If they are right on the second, there is no morality to teach. If they are right on the first, there is no need to.

YOU DON’T REFORM THE MAFIA

Bolton throws UN summit into chaos (Julian Borger, The Guardian, August 26th, 2005)

John Bolton, Washington's new ambassador to the United Nations, has called for wholesale changes to a draft document due to go before a UN summit next month aimed at reshaping the world body.

Mr Bolton, a long-standing UN critic who was given a temporary appointment by George Bush three weeks ago after the United States Senate failed to agree on his nomination, has proposed 750 amendments to the draft and called for immediate talks on them.

The 29-page document has been drawn up by a committee under the UN general assembly president, Jean Ping of Gambia, over the past year, during which time several drafts have been circulated.

Critics complained that the US objections had come towards the end of the drafting process, with only three weeks to go before the summit.

But Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the American team at the UN, said Mr Bolton had simply been restating long-held US opinions. "Those are not new positions; surprise positions," he said. "We've been engaged in this process, since the first meeting." [...]

In a letter to his fellow ambassadors, Mr Bolton was quoted as urging quick action on the American proposals.

"Time is short. In order to maximise our chances of success, I suggest we begin the negotiations immediately - this week if possible," he wrote.

Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said ferment over the draft statement was a positive sign. "We actually feel fairly confident that member states are taking UN reform seriously," said Mr Haq. "There is stepped-up activity everywhere, and very serious high-level negotiating."

Obviously the bull-o-meter is overheating on both sides here. Whatever chortles and guffaws we may enjoy watching this slapstick, the President’s decision to defend the UN’s legitimacy and support its reform made a needed, principled attack on the supremacy of international law and multilateralism impossible and was a huge missed opportunity.

WHY CONSTITUTIONS MATTER:

Court says Sri Lanka election due (BBC, 8/25/05)

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court has ruled that President Chandrika Kumaratunga's term ends in December, paving the way for elections to be held.

Elections are now expected to be held in October or November.

Ms Kumaratunga won a second six year term after a snap poll a year early in late 1999.

But she has argued that the left-over year from her earlier term should mean that she is entitled to stay in office for another year.

The BBC's Dumeetha Luthra says the decision is a bitter defeat for President Kumaratunga.

Under Sri Lanka's constitution, she cannot stand in elections for a third term.

THE GRAY NEUROTIC LADY

His private Idaho (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, August 25th, 2005)

President George W. Bush vacationed so hard in Texas he got bushed. He needed a vacation from his vacation. The most rested president in American history headed West on Tuesday to get away from his Western getaway - and the mushrooming Crawford Woodstock - and spend a couple of days at the Tamarack Resort in the rural Idaho mountains.

Bush did manage to work in a speech to a friendly Idaho National Guard audience on Wednesday, but basically, "I'm kind of hangin' loose, as they say," he told reporters.

As The Financial Times noted, Bush is acting positively French in his love of le loafing, with 339 days at his ranch since he took office - nearly a year out of his five. Most Americans, on the other hand, take fewer vacations than anyone else in the developed world (even the Japanese), averaging only 13 to 16 days off a year.

It’s bad enough that he is a dishonest, illegitimate leader who spends his days pursuing immoral and dangerous wars, squeezing the poor to benefit his rich friends, undercutting scientific progress by promoting religious mumbo-jumbo and destroying personal freedom. What is really shocking is that he doesn’t work hard enough at it.

ROSA AL-SADR WON'T HAVE TO RIDE IN THE BACK OF THE BUS:

The New Iraq: Spiffy, shiny, theocratic, allied with Iran — and we made it happen (HAROLD MEYERSON, 8/26/05, LA Weekly)

[George W. Bush] has spoken at long last about U.S. casualties in Iraq, and, with echoes of Lincoln at Gettysburg, vowed that, “We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.”

But, of course, Lincoln at Gettysburg did not merely pledge to see the cause through. He redefined for all time the cause for which Union soldiers died; he expanded the scope of the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of human equality; he proclaimed that America would emerge from a Union victory as a freer and more democratic nation than it had been before.

But what is the cause for which U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since they deposed Hussein? If we’re to take the draft constitution seriously, the Iraq we’ve fought and bled to create is to be a loose federation, in which the Shiite South, and perhaps the Sunni center, will be governed by Islamic law, with Shiite senior clerics given special status outside the writ of national law, and Shiite women offered up to the mercies of their friendly local Koranic law judges.

N.B.: Mind you, the KKK, which might be considered the Confederate resistance, is still a going concern a hundred and forty years later, which gives the Shi'a a good long while to put down the Ba'athists remnants quicker than we've managed to deal with their parallel here.

THERE IS NO CHINA:

China steps up pre-anniversary crackdown on Xinjiang separatists (AFX, 8/25/05)

China has stepped up a crackdown on pro-independence and separatist activities in its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region ahead of the 50th anniversary of its takeover of the area, the country's top official in Xinjiang said. [...]

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, said he was outraged at the crackdown, saying China has no legitimate right to rule the region.

'This is a political joke, to forcibly impose this so-called autonomous ruling on an ethnic group which has never recognized China,' Raxit told Agence France-Presse.

Uighur separatists, who maintain a distinct ethnic identity from the Chinese, have been fighting to re-establish an independent state of East Turkestan in Xinjiang since it became an autonomous region of China in 1955.

WHAT'S SENSELESS TO THE LEFT:

Coming Back To Crawford (Cindy Sheehan, 25 August , 2005, Huffington Post)

I'm coming back to Crawford for my son. As long as the president, who sent him to die in a senseless war, is in Crawford, that is where I belong. I came here two and a half weeks ago for one reason, to try and see the president and get an answer to a very simple question: What is the noble cause that he says my son died for?

We're spreading the hope of freedom across the broader Middle East. In the long run, the only way to defeat the terrorists is by offering an alternative to their ideology of hatred and fear. So a key component of our strategy is to spread freedom. History has proven that free nations are peaceful nations, that democracies do not fight their neighbors. (Applause.) And so, by advancing the cause of liberty and freedom in the Middle East, we're bringing hope to millions, and security to our own citizens. By bringing freedom and hope to parts of the world that have lived in despair, we're laying the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren. (Applause.)

We're using all elements of our national power to achieve our objectives -- military power, diplomatic power, financial, intelligence and law enforcement. We're fighting the enemy on many fronts -- from the streets of the Western capitals to the mountains of Afghanistan, to the tribal regions of Pakistan, to the islands of Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa. You see, this new kind of war, the first war of the 21st century, is a war on a global scale. And to protect our people, we've got to prevail in every theater. And that's why it's important for us to call upon allies and friends to join with us -- and they are.

One of the most important battlefronts in this war on terror is Iraq. Terrorists have converged on Iraq. See, they're coming into Iraq because they fear the march of freedom. Their most prominent leader is a Jordanian named Zarqawi, who has declared his allegiance with Osama bin Laden. The ranks of these folks are filled with foreign fighters who come from places like Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran and Egypt and Sudan and Yemen and Libya. They lack popular support so they're targeting innocent Iraqis with car bombs and suicide attacks. They know the only way they can prevail is to break our will and the will of the Iraqi people before democracy takes hold. They are going to fail. (Applause.)

The stakes in Iraq could not be higher. The brutal violence in Iraq today is a clear sign of the terrorists' determination to stop democracy from taking root in the Middle East. They know that the success of a free Iraq, who can be a key ally in the war on terror and a symbol of success for others, will be a crushing blow to their strategy to dominate the region, and threaten America and the free world. They know that when their hateful ideology is defeated in Iraq, the Middle East will have a clear example of freedom and prosperity and hope. And the terrorists will begin to lose their sponsors and lose their recruits and lose the sanctuaries they need to plan new attacks.

And so they're fighting these efforts in Iraq with all the brutality they can muster. Yet, despite the violence we see every day, we're achieving our strategic objectives in Iraq. The Iraqi people are determined to build a free nation, and we have a plan to help them succeed. America and Iraqi forces are on the hunt, side-by-side, to defeat the terrorists. And as we hunt down our common enemies, we will continue to train more Iraqi security forces.

Like free people everywhere, Iraqis desire to defend their own country. That's what they want to do. They want to be in a position to defend their own freedom and their own democracy. And we're helping to achieve that goal. Our approach can be summed up this way: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. And when the Iraqi forces can defend their freedom by taking more and more of the fight to the enemy, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned. (Applause.)

At the same time, we're helping the Iraqi people establish a secure democracy. The people of Iraq have made a choice. In spite of the threats and assassinations, eight and a half million Iraqis went to the polls in January. (Applause.) By casting their ballots in defiance of the terrorists, they sent a clear and unmistakable message to the world: It doesn't matter where you're born; it doesn't matter what faith you follow, embedded in every soul is the deep desire to live in freedom. (Applause.) I understand freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is an Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world. (Applause.)

WHAT, YOU'VE NEVER HAD A SAUSAGE AT FENWAY PARK?:

Bush's Social Security plan may hinge on the House (Carl P. Leubsdorf, August 25, 2005, Dallas Morning News)

As Ronald Reagan might have put it, there they go again.

Congressional Republicans, persisting in hopes of enacting some form of private Social Security option despite opposition from the public and the Democrats, are considering the same kind of maneuver that enabled them to pass a controversial Medicare drug bill two years ago. [...]

The White House and its congressional allies have gone back and forth on whether to try to pass a Social Security bill first in the Senate or in the House.

But insufficient GOP support in the Senate Finance Committee and a solid wall of Democratic opposition that ensures enough votes to sustain a filibuster have forced them to look first to the House.

Solid Republican discipline there has enabled the party's narrow majority to prevail on vote after vote in recent years, most recently on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

None had as torturous a path to enactment as the bill to create a prescription drug program. It only passed in 2003 after three hours of early morning arm twisting and the help of misleading cost estimates that soon proved to have been understated.

Because the Senate had passed a similar bill, Republicans could take the measure to a Senate-House conference. By excluding most Democrats from any role, they crafted the kind of bill they wanted in the first place.

That would appear to be their hope for private Social Security accounts – pass a bill in the House authorizing private accounts, accept any Social Security vehicle in the Senate that gets the issue to conference and write a final version letting the White House proclaim success.

You're invited to attend a live chat at 9pm eastern with Victor Davis Hanson on BookTalk.org. Sorry for the late notice!

Go to http://www.booktalk.org and click on the FORUMS link at the top. Create a free ezboard account and then click on "Join Live Chat."

Chris

Chris O'Connor
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NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

America and the World War, pp. 244-245 (Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915)

Chapter XII

Summing Up

"BLESSED are the peacemakers," not merely the peace lovers; for action is what makes thought operative and valuable. Above all, the peace prattlers are in no way blessed. On the contrary, only mischief has sprung from the activities of the professional peace prattlers, the ultrapacificists, who, with the shrill clamor of eunuchs, preach the gospel of the milk and water of virtue and scream that belief in the efficacy of diluted moral mush is essential to salvation.

It seems necessary every time I state my position to guard against the counterwords of wilful folly by reiterating that my disagreement with the peace-at-any-price men, the ultrapacificists, is not in the least because they favor peace. I object to them, first, because they have proved themselves futile and impotent in working for peace, and, second, because they commit what is not merely the capital error but the crime against morality of failing to uphold righteousness as the all-important end toward which we should strive.... I have as little sympathy for them as they have for the men who deify mere brutal force, who insist that power justifies wrongdoing, and who declare that there is no such thing as international morality. But the ultra- pacifists really play into the hands of these men. To condemn equally might which backs right and might which overthrows right is to render positive service to wrong-doers

Now these were visions in the night of war:

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Sent down a grievous plague on humankind,
A black and tumorous plague that softly slew
Till nations and their armies were no more --
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Decreed the Truce of Life: -- Wings in the sky Fluttered and fell; the quick, bright ocean things
Sank to the ooze; the footprints in the woods
Vanished; the freed brute from the abattoir
Starved on green pastures; and within the blood
The death-work at the root of living ceased;
And men gnawed clods and stones, blasphemed and died --
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Bowed the free neck beneath a yoke of steel,
Dumbed the free voice that springs in lyric speech,
Killed the free art that glows on all mankind,
And made one iron nation lord of earth,
Which in the monstrous matrix of its will
Moulded a spawn of slaves. There was One Might --
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer.
Palsied all flesh with bitter fear of death.
The shuddering slayers fled to town and field
Beset with carrion visions, foul decay,
And sickening taints of air that made the earth
One charnel of the shrivelled lines of war.
And through all flesh that omnipresent fear
Became the strangling fingers of a hand
That choked aspiring thought and brave belief
And love of loveliness and selfless deed
Till flesh was all, flesh wallowing, styed in fear,
In festering fear that stank beyond the stars --
And there was perfect peace . . .
But I awoke, wroth with high God and prayer.

I prayed for peace; God, answering my prayer,
Spake very softly of forgotten things,
Spake very softly old remembered words
Sweet as young starlight. Rose to heaven again
The mystic challenge of the Nazarene,
That deathless affirmation: -- Man in God
And God in man willing the God to be . . .
And there was war and peace, and peace and war,
Full year and lean, joy, anguish, life and death,
Doing their work on the evolving soul,
The soul of man in God and God in man.
For death is nothing in the sum of things,
And life is nothing in the sum of things,
And flesh is nothing in the sum of things,
But man in God is all and God in man,
Will merged in will, love immanent in love,
Moving through visioned vistas to one goal-
The goal of man in God and God in man,
And of all life in God and God in life --
The far fruition of our earthly prayer,
Thy will be done!" . . . There is no other peace!

WOLF! WOLF!:

How to effectively confront nuclear threat from terrorists (Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, 8/25/05, USA Today)

[S]top nations such as North Korea and Iran, which on President Bush's watch have greatly expanded nuclear programs, from joining up with the evil ideology of al-Qaeda.

In the past three years, North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, kicked out the international inspectors monitoring its nuclear activities, and claimed to have reprocessed fuel rods yielding enough plutonium for several nuclear weapons. Iran is working on processes that can produce fuel for nuclear weapons. And neither regime has shown much hesitation in working with terrorists.

Yet, with both Iran and North Korea, the Bush administration has sat by for years and let others deal with the threat. We can no longer outsource national security to the European Union or nations such as China.

CHANGING THE CULTURE:

Mubarak Campaigns as Skeptics Wonder About Real Reform (MICHAEL SLACKMAN, 8/25/05, NY Times)

Those close to Mr. Mubarak say that the very act of holding a campaign is a step toward awakening a society that has been politically lethargic for decades. They believe it will allow creation of a political class and produce political institutions independent of the government or ruling National Democratic Party.

The incremental progress seems aimed at changing attitudes within Egypt's huge bureaucracy rather than promoting democratic values. The very fact that Mr. Mubarak's speeches as a candidate are not broadcast live on state-run television, or that photographers other than those working for the president are permitted to take his picture, are counted by some of his supporters as reforms.

"What is important is the new dynamics existing now in this society," said Muhammad Abdullah, president of Alexandria University and a leading figure in the ruling National Democratic Party. "The idea of competition, and defeating the idea of the pharaoh, will give way to new steps. We are starting a new real era in our life."

AH, BUT IT'S THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PARTY THAT COUNTS (via Tom Corcoran):

Reality Denial: a review of The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History by Robert Conquest (Angelo M. Codevilla, June 2005, The American Spectator)

The second part of the book consists of case studies -- rather, of observations on cases -- of contemporary intellectuals' willful resistance to reality. Since Conquest spent most of his life as an exemplary student of the Soviet Union, the examples are drawn primarily from that fertile field.

The flood of documents from the Soviet Union's collapse by no means caused academics to repudiate their adherence to Communist falsifications. Conquest had shown in his earlier writings that, even when much less information was available, historians who worked honestly had enough to see things as they were. The failure of academics now to bring their judgments into line with today's plenitude of information simply disqualifies them. There never was any evidence, writes Conquest, that Lenin's Bolsheviks ever represented anybody but themselves. Absolutely all the evidence concerning the October Revolution of 1917 shows that, outside the Party, which he controlled, Lenin got outvoted in every venue at every level. If ever there was a case of a gang hijacking a government, the October Revolution was it. Why then is the view to the contrary of British historian Eric Hobsbawm and of so many others still canonical? Why -- long after real economic figures became available and proved that Stalin's massive diversion of social resources to industrialization did not raise the pace of his country's development but rather retarded it -- are the works of E.H. Carr still treated with respect? Because those who so treat it, like Carr, have a fondness for the idea of a planned society and disdain for those who oppose it. Exposure to harsh Soviet realities did not dent their own intellectual identities.

THE BEST THEY HAVE TO OFFER:

Tone-Deafness Among Democrats (George F. Will, August 25, 2005, Washington Post)

Sad yet riveting, like a wreck by the side of the road, Cindy Sheehan, a plaything of her own sincerities and other people's opportunisms, has already been largely erased from the national memory by new waves of media fickleness in the service of the public's summer ennui. But before she becomes fully relegated to the role of opening act for more durable luminaries at antiwar rallies, prudent Democrats -- those political snail darters, the emblematic endangered species of American politics -- should consider the possibility that, although she was a burr under the president's saddle for several weeks, she is symptomatic of something that in 2008 could cause the Democratic Party a sixth loss in eight presidential elections. That something is a shrillness unlike anything heard in living memory from a major tendency within a major party.

Many warmhearted and mildly attentive Americans say the president should have invited Sheehan to his kitchen table in Crawford for a cup of coffee and a serving of that low-calorie staple of democratic sentimentality -- "dialogue." Well.

Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a "lying bastard," "filth spewer," "evil maniac," "fuehrer" and the world's "biggest terrorist" who is committing "blatant genocide" and "waging a nuclear war" in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her recent e-mails -- elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into ferocious left-wing rhetoric -- it is difficult to imagine how the dialogue would get going.

He: "Cream and sugar?"

She: "Yes, please, filth-spewer."

HOW ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO FIT FIVE 52" TV'S? (via Michael Herdegen):

Die, die, monster home! Die!: Homes are bigger than ever. Now there's a backlash against the 'mansionization' of America. (Les Christie, 8/18/05, CNN/Money)

The American home is getting bigger. And fatter. And, to some, uglier. Now, towns are fighting back.

Chevy Chase, Md., an upscale suburb of Washington, recently announced a six-month moratorium on home construction to make time to examine how to deal with the proliferation of oversized single-family houses.

Call them what you will -- starter castles, McMansions, monster homes -- these houses have become increasingly visible in metropolitan landscapes. Many residents hate them. [...]

Are these new homes really so gargantuan that they should attract such fear and loathing?

Back in 1950, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the average new house clocked in at 963 square feet. By 1970, that figure had swollen to 1,500 square feet.

Today's average: 2,400 square feet. One in five are more than 3,000 square feet.

Oddly, as houses expanded, the number of household members shrank, from 3.1 people in 1971 to 2.6 people today. The average building-lot size contracted also, to about 8,000 square feet from 9,000 in the 1980s.

So you're getting bigger houses on smaller lots with fewer people living in them.

STATEHOOD IS THE STRATEGY:

With Gaza pullout, Sharon again has right strategy (Victor Davis Hanson, 8/25/05, JewishWorldReview.com)

"Brilliant tactician, lousy strategist." So goes the conventional wisdom about the old bulldozer Ariel Sharon.

But that assessment is exactly backward. [...]

[S]haron was always a strategic thinker, and we are seeing his accustomed foresight working in the controversial exodus from Gaza.

The Israeli military is crafting defensible borders, not unlike the old Roman decision to stay on its own side of the Rhine and Danube rivers. In Sharon's thinking, it no longer made any sense to periodically send in thousands of soldiers in Gaza to protect less than 10,000 Israeli civilians abroad, when a demographic time bomb of too few Jews was ticking inside Israel proper.

But Gaza itself is only a tessera in a far larger strategic mosaic. The Israelis also press on with the border fence that will in large part end suicide bombings. The barrier will grant the Palestinians what they clamor for, but perhaps also fear — their own isolated state that they must now govern or let the world watch devolve into something like the Afghanistan of the Taliban.

Once Israel is out of Gaza and has fenced off slivers of the West Bank near Jerusalem deemed vital for its security, Sharon can bide his time until a responsible Palestinian government emerges as a serious interlocutor.

Then any lingering disagreements over disputed land can be relegated to the status of a Tibet, northern Cyprus, Kashmir or the Sakhalin and Kurile Islands — all postbellum "contested" territories that do not prompt commensurate attention from the Muslim world, Europe or the United Nations.

WE'LL BE FEEDING HOUSES TO CATTLE LIKE TULIP BULBS IN MERE MONTHS:

Fed Up With Housing Misinformation (James J. Cramer, 8/25/2005, RealMoney.com)

We are at a really and truly bizarre moment where the papers and the television shows are all filled with how buying a condo's now worse than buying eToys common on that secondary in 2000.

We are convincing ourselves -- typically through journalists who couldn't afford or didn't buy homes -- that owning an apartment's dumber than paying $30 for Webvan and owning a beach house is like buying the Viant $100 secondary.

May I suggest that most of this stuff is plain stupid?

EMPLOYED PEOPLE BUY HOMES:

Jobless Claims Drop by 4,000 Last Week (Martin Crutsinger, 8/25/05, The Associated Press)

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits declined last week with the four-week average for people receiving benefits dropping to the lowest level in more than four years.

The Labor Department reported that 315,000 newly laid off workers applied for jobless benefits, a decline of 4,000 from the previous week, providing further evidence that solid economic growth is showing up in an improving labor market.

The four-week average for the total number of people receiving benefits dipped to 2.58 million last week, the lowest level for this figure since March 2001, the month the last recession began.

The drop of 4,000 benefit applications last week was slightly better than economists had been forecasting. Since early January, claims levels have remained well below 350,000 at levels that analysts view as signaling a healthy labor market.

KICKBALL IN WOBEGON (via Brian McKim):

High Schools Address the Cruelest Cut (Eli Saslow, 8/22/05, Washington Post)

He arrived 10 minutes before his fate, so Filip Olsson stood outside Severna Park High School and waited for coaches to post the cut list for the boys' soccer team.

Olsson, a sophomore, wanted desperately to make the junior varsity, but he also wanted justification for a long list of sacrifices. His family had rearranged a trip to Sweden so he could participate in a preparatory soccer camp; he'd crawled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. for two weeks of camp and tryouts and forced down Raisin Bran; he'd sweated off five pounds and pulled his hamstring.

Finally, a coach walked by holding a list, and Olsson followed him into the high school. He walked back out two minutes later, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his eyes locked on the ground.

"It felt," he said later, "like a punch in the stomach."

Thousands of area teenagers suffered similarly last week during high school sports tryouts, an increasingly high-stakes process both coaches and players abhor. As more families invest money into year-round club sports and intensive summer camps in an effort to propel their kids onto top high school teams, the pressure has increased on what remains a subjective tryout process. Because a spot on a varsity or junior varsity team can dramatically impact a teenager's self-confidence and social status, there is little tolerance of mistakes.

In an effort to better explain cuts to players and parents, coaches have started to record player evaluation grades. Few coaches, though, agree on how to decide which players are cut. Fewer still agree on how to cut those players. Only one thing, coaches said, can be universally agreed upon: Tryouts are as imperfect as their punishing end result.

"The day you have to cut kids is the worst day at the school all year," said Andy Muir, the field hockey coach at W.T. Woodson. "Everybody is trying hard to do the right thing -- the kids to make the team, the coaches to pick the right team -- and everyone ends up devastated. It's heartbreaking." [...]

Because of increased complaints from parents, many high school coaches now strive to make cuts more scientific. Until she retired last season, longtime Eleanor Roosevelt girls' soccer coach Kathy Lacey made her players run 1.5 miles in less than 12 minutes to make the team. Mike Bossom, the volleyball coach at Centennial, scores players with a number -- 1 through 5 -- for each drill and then logs the scores on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

For the first time this season, Severna Park Athletic Director Wayne Mook required his coaches to record running times and player evaluation grades, then hand in that paperwork to him. It is an arduous process that many coaches find tiresome, but Mook instituted it for a reason: After a player was cut from the girls' lacrosse team last spring, the family hired lawyers to meet with the school.

"In this day and age, you have to cover yourself a little bit," Mook said. "When I meet with a parent whose kid has been cut, I need something to show them. I need proof."

The Greatest Generation has given birth to the Gratingest Generation. In their quest to obliterate adversity from the lives of their progeny, they may inadvertently destroy competitive sport and eliminate many more opportunities for what usta be called "life lessons."

IMAGINE HOW MUCH YOU'D HAVE TO HATE LIFE... (via Robert Schwartz):

Dieters Eat Less to Live Longer (Joanna Glasner, Aug. 25, 2005, Wired)

Lisa Walford considers her current weight of 82 pounds to be just about optimal.

Granted, it's not easy to maintain. For much of her adult life, Walford, a petite 4'11", hovered around 95 pounds. Sustaining her new weight requires consuming only about 1,300 calories on most days, 15 percent less than what she used to eat.

KURDISTAN, SHI'ASTAN AND ?:

Divided They Stand (DAVID BROOKS, 8/25/05, NY Times)

"The Bush administration finally did something right in brokering this constitution," [Peter W.] Galbraith exclaimed, then added: "This is the only possible deal that can bring stability. ... I do believe it might save the country."

Galbraith's argument is that the constitution reflects the reality of the nation it is meant to serve. There is, he says, no meaningful Iraqi identity. In the north, you've got a pro-Western Kurdish population. In the south, you've got a Shiite majority that wants a "pale version of an Iranian state." And in the center you've got a Sunni population that is nervous about being trapped in a system in which it would be overrun.

In the last election each group expressed its authentic identity, the Kurds by voting for autonomy-minded leaders, the Shiites for clerical parties and the Sunnis by not voting.

This constitution gives each group what it wants. It will create a very loose federation in which only things like fiscal and foreign policy are controlled in the center (even tax policy is decentralized). Oil revenues are supposed to be distributed on a per capita basis, and no group will feel inordinately oppressed by the others.

The Kurds and Shiites understand what a good deal this is. The Sunni leaders selected to attend the convention are howling because they are former Baathists who dream of a return to centralized power. But ordinary Sunnis, Galbraith says, will come to realize this deal protects them, too.

Galbraith says he is frustrated with all the American critics who argue that the constitution divides the country. The country is already divided, he says, and drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies together would create only friction, violence and civil war. "It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," Galbraith says. "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill."

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE SMALL:

Renewed flame from the Welsh dragon (Katrin Bennhold, 8/24/05, International Herald Tribune)

Not long ago, any mention of Wales risked conjuring up images of coal mines, sheep farms and God-fearing traditionalism.

But over the past decade a combination of economic modernization and greater political independence from London has changed the face of Wales and the morale of its three million inhabitants.

"Every day when I wake up, I thank the Lord I'm Welsh," Cerys Matthews of the Welsh pop band Catatonia sang seven years ago. Today all her compatriots seem to be humming along as Wales, long overshadowed by Scotland and Ireland, comes into its own.

Politically, the process started in 1998 with the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, the first Parliament in 600 years in Wales. Unlike the Scottish Parliament, the Assembly has no power to raise taxes or pass primary legislation, but it manages the budget allocated to Wales by Westminster and has taken over most administrative functions.

Despite the Assembly's limited powers, Wales experts say, it was crucial in restoring national self-belief, and not just because of the symbolism of conferring institutional status on Wales as a political entity.

"One key thing the Assembly did for Wales was that it meant we had to take responsibility for our problems," said Geraint Talfan Davies, chairman of the Institute of Welsh Affairs. "We now own our problems and we can no longer just blame others."

WHAT JEANE KIRKPATRICK MEANT:

Musharraf gets his moment (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 8/26/05, Asia Times)

The first of three stages of local council elections has been completed in Pakistan, with the initial results marking victory for people allied with President General Pervez Musharraf.

The longer-term implications of the results, according to analysts, are that Musharraf can now position himself to further consolidate his power, and at the same time do something to answer international pressure for change in the country.

The local elections involve all of Pakistan's 110 districts. In the first stage 53 districts voted, with the remainder due to cast their votes this week. Then, on September 29 the councilors elected in the first two rounds will elect district chiefs. These chiefs have a power far beyond their local communities: they can influence elections for both national and provincial assemblies, which are due in 2007, the same year that presidential elections will be held.

Thus, by gaining support at the grass-roots level, Musharraf is taking a big step toward ensuring his political future as a democratically elected leader, rather than the military ruler he is now, having seized power in a coup in 1999.

THE AXIS OF GOOD MAKES FOR UNUSUAL ALLIES:

Colombia helps Afghanistan wage drug war (Rowan Scarborough, August 25, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Colombia and Afghanistan are becoming counterdrug allies.

Colombia has begun exporting counternarcotics know-how to Afghanistan in a bid to stem that country's record heroin production, which, in turn, bankrolls al Qaeda.

Much of the emphasis will be on Colombia's teaching the Afghans how to find and attack drug labs. Bogota yesterday re-established diplomatic ties with Kabul.

The two countries were brought together in the drug wars by House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican. He sent a letter in February to the chief of Colombia's national police, announcing the arrival of congressional staffers in Bogota to start planning an Afghan-Colombian alliance.

PRO-DEATH, BUT IN PRIVATE:

Party discomposure (Donald Lambro, August 25, 2005, Washington Times)

In recent polling data, Veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg found growing fissures throughout the Democrats' base -- particularly among Hispanics on social issues -- which could cut into their overall vote in 2006 and 2008.

Reviewing what led to the erosion in the Democrats' Hispanic vote last year, when Mr. Bush won 40 percent of this pivotal minority vote, Mr. Greenberg's findings on key social issues have shocked party strategists.

Hispanics who voted Republican, he said, were "slightly more pro-life and slightly more favorable to pro-life groups. A pro-life Democrat runs better than a pro-choice one, and almost half of Hispanic voters [48 percent] say they would be more likely to support a pro-life Republican."

I'm sure that data, when first reported, surprised party leaders. The pro-choice movement has been one of the Democrats' strongest voter-turnout constituencies, but even now there's a rift opening among that party's subset.

Party strategists say its leading advocacy group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, is bitter Democratic leaders turned on NARAL's incendiary TV ad accusing Judge Roberts of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

This time, though, Republicans found themselves outgunned by Democrats, who vehemently condemned the ad. "We have to define the reckless left of our party and differentiate ourselves," Clinton White House adviser Lanny Davis told The Washington Post, calling the ad "smear and innuendo."

ECONOMIC PRNCIPLES MAKE FOR UNUSUAL ALLIES:

A textbook case of competition (Alex Beam, August 25, 2005, Boston Globe)

Call it the Econ 101 smackdown: Two of the country's most prominent economists are joining the battle for a piece of the $100-million-a-year Introductory Economics textbook market.

If you think this is small-potatoes business, think again. First-year econ is one of the most-taught undergraduate courses in the country. The current top dog, Harvard's N. Gregory Mankiw, a former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, has sold 1 million copies of the different editions of ''Principles of Economics" since it was introduced in 1997. Depending on format, it costs between $70 and $120. You do the math.

Now Princeton professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and Glenn Hubbard, Mankiw's predecessor at the CEA and dean of Columbia University's business school, are climbing into the ring. Krugman, a much-decorated trade economist who doubles as the Michael Moore of the Times editorial page needs no introduction. Hubbard was a key architect of the controversial Bush administration tax cuts, which contributed mightily to our current budget deficit.

''As a drunk is to alcohol, the Bush administration is to budget deficits," was a typical, low-key Krugman comment during Hubbard's CEA stint. In a different column, after calling Hubbard ''a highly competent economist," Krugman accused him of publishing ''a ludicrously rigged study" on income mobility during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Hubbard chuckled when I reminded him how Krugman had attacked him. ''Oh, yes, many times," Hubbard recalled. He has read portions of Krugman's textbook and praises it. ''I think Paul is an excellent economist. People don't get into this business for political reasons." I told Hubbard that Krugman's publisher has shot promotional videos of a kinder, gentler Krugman discussing elementary economics with a civility far removed from his fire-breathing op-ed persona. Again, Hubbard chuckled: ''Well, I only have one personality to offer the public."

FOLKS ARE GONNA LIVE SOMEWHERE:

Rents Head Up as Home Prices Put Off Buyers (DAVID LEONHARDT, 8/25/05, NY Times)

Rents are rising again across the country, squeezing tenants who are already coping with high gasoline prices and improving returns to landlords after a deep five-year slump.

The turnaround appears to be another sign that the boom in house prices and sales is finally slowing, as homes have become so expensive in many metropolitan areas that some people have decided to rent instead. [...]

With the economy growing and mortgage rates inching up, more people are looking to rent apartments and homes rather than buy them. At the same time, many buildings are being turned into condominiums, reducing the supply of rental property.

KENT STATE WORKED:

CLINTON'S THE MAN!: August's reading list. (Russ Smith, NY Press)

[N]o one could top Columbia journalism professor Todd Gitlin's escape into fantasy published in the Aug. 21 number of the Washington Post. You might argue that it's unfair to pick on poor Gitlin, an aging hippie who clearly wants to revisit his glory years at least one more time before he's too feeble to shout "Right On!" with any conviction, but his regrettable academic status and access to newspaper opinion pages makes him fair game.

He wrote: "A grieving mother—a mother who now has her own ailing mother's concerns at heart—has put the president at bay… Students will be back at school soon, and Sheehan's camp, should it continue, will likely tug at them, offering a focus for their activity. On Wednesday night [Aug. 17], MoveOn.org claimed there were more than 1,600 candlelight vigils supporting Sheehan across the country. In the small town of Hillsdale, N.Y., I counted 60 protesters; many passing vehicles honked in support."

Sorry to disturb Gitlin's daydream, but I don't think this is quite convincing evidence of what he claims is a "growing antiwar movement." It's certainly sensible to debate the Bush administration's success in Iraq, a war that won't be over any time soon, but the notion of a 1960s revival of marching and charging in the streets is simply naïve. The prof's exultation at 60 protesters in a small town is understandable, but it doesn't strike me as a harbinger of greater demonstrations to come. To state the obvious, there's no military draft today, and anybody who believes that the students who shut down colleges more than 30 years ago weren't acting out of self-interest are deceiving themselves.

Here's an inconvenient reminder to those mired in the distant past. The huge Vietnam protests, some of which numbered a half million attendees, were a lot of fun for college students and those of us in high school. You got to cut class, meet up with buddies and smoke joints, scope the crowd for easy chicks, and call cops "pigs." Had the frightening specter of a letter from the draft board not existed, the numbers would've been minuscule, although still dwarfing today's extravaganzas. I do remember a large gathering in Huntington a few days after the Kent State killings in 1970, easily a thousand people wandering around, a little dazed that students were actually knocked off, but mounting a spirited rally nonetheless. I ran into an older friend there, a sophomore at Kent State, and asked about his reaction: "Are you kidding me? I got the first bus home."

I don't think it's a coincidence that the antiwar movement petered out after those days in May, even as the war, as prosecuted by Nixon, was still going strong. It was just getting too real for kids who weren't likely to do any time in boot camp or Southeast Asia.

YOU CAN'T EVEN SAY IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE:

A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed (Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron, August 25, 2005, LA Times)

Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.

At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns — the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and declining ratings in public opinion polls.

Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the CIA. [...]

In the days that followed, they would cast doubt on Wilson's CIA mission to Africa by suggesting to reporters that his wife was responsible for his trip. In the process, her identity as a covert CIA agent was divulged — possibly illegally.

THEIR TURN:

US general sees significant withdrawal in Iraq (Peter Spiegel in London and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington, August 24 2005, Financial Times)

The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country.

Maj Gen Douglas Lute, director of operations at US Central Command, yesterday said the reductions were part of a push by Gen John Abizaid, commander of all US troops in the region, to put the burden of defending Iraq on Iraqi forces. [...]

He said: “We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the . . . coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward.

“You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country.”

A TOUGH ROW OR HO?

Hugo, Uncle Ho and Uncle Sam (Curtis A White, 8/26/05, Asia Times)

Whatever Robertson's frustrations with Chavez, they seem to be eerily reminiscent of the unwarranted frustrations the US had with the late Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam.

THE COURT FOLLOWS THE ELECTION RETURNS:

On High Court Vote, Centrist Democrats Caught in Middle: Roberts is qualified and likely to be confirmed, but they worry about the judiciary's direction. (Maura Reynolds, August 25, 2005, LA Times)

The outcome appears all but certain, but the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court is still likely to be a nail-biter for the Senate's centrist Democrats.

On the one hand, they would like to reward President Bush for consulting with them in advance and picking a nominee who appears legally better qualified and ideologically more temperate than many had expected.

On the other hand, more than Roberts' fate hangs in the balance. For many Senate Democrats, the debate over Roberts is increasingly a battle over the nature and the direction of the Supreme Court and the president's efforts to narrow or overturn some of its controversial rulings.

LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF:

China: A maverick dares to challenge the Party line (Jonathan Mirsky, AUGUST 25, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

No one living in China is more daring than the maverick writer Yu Jie. He recently said of the memorial to Japan's war dead: "We criticize the Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni. This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese won't take us seriously."

For China's Communist Party, there are two first-degree thought crimes here. First, Mao's huge portrait still looms over Tiananmen Square and China's current leaders claim to be his heirs. Second, Beijing regularly condemns Japanese prime ministers for visiting the Yasukuni Shrine to venerate dead soldiers, including those hanged as World War II criminals. Anti-Japanese demonstrations in Chinese cities are encouraged by the government; any other public protest risks prompt and violent suppression. Yu Jie, therefore, stepped deliberately into China's most dangerous political minefield.

What Yu stated is true. The Japanese behaved with uninhibited cruelty during their war in China from the late 1930s to 1945 and some estimates of Chinese deaths in those years approach 20 million. But because of Mao's ideologically driven agricultural policies, 30 to 50 million Chinese are estimated to have starved to death between 1959 and 1961 alone; in their new biography of the Chairman, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday suggest that during his rule more than 70 million Chinese died - in peacetime.

Mao challenged his comrades, metaphorically, to touch the hind end of a tiger. Few took him up on this dare. Yu Jie does it regularly.

MISMATCH:

Japan to develop rocket for joint defense system (Japan Times, 8/25/05)

The Japanese and U.S. governments have begun arranging for Japan to develop a rocket engine and the United States a warhead for the joint sea-based missile defense system, diplomatic sources said Tuesday.

The missile shield system is scheduled to reach the development phase in fiscal 2006. [...]

The two countries launched the joint missile defense project in 1999, after North Korea fired a long-range missile in August 1998 whose warhead flew over Japan into the Pacific. North Korea claims it was a rocket intended to put a satellite into orbit.

Under the system, Japan would intercept an incoming ballistic missile outside the atmosphere using the SM-3 missile, fired from an Aegis-equipped destroyer.

North Korea's Nodong ballistic missile is believed to have a range of about 1,300 km, which would make it capable of targeting any part of Japan.

There is concern that stepping up Japan-U.S. cooperation on missile defense could antagonize North Korea and China at a time when the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons threat are set to resume next week.

DO BE A CANDIDATE:

Web site asks donation for possible Dubie Senate bid (David Gram, August 22, 2005, Associated Press)

Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie insists that he has made no decision about what political office he might seek next year. But his Web site invites contributions to "Brian Dubie - Senatorial Exploratory." [...]

Speculation has whirled around Dubie since this past spring, when Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., announced he would not seek re-election, and Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., made known his intention to try to succeed Jeffords.

That opened up one of Vermont's two Senate seats and its lone seat in the U.S. House.

South Burlington businessman Richard Tarrant, like Dubie a Republican, announced that his exploratory committee looking at a possible Senate campaign had raised more than $5,000, and that he had filed the required paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.

SACRIFICIAL LAMB

Autistic boy dies during controversial treatment (Karen Kane and Virginia Linn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/24/05)

A 5-year-old Monroeville boy died this week during a medical treatment that's being touted by some as a cure for autism.

The autistic boy died while receiving chelation -- an intravenous injection of a synthetic amino acid known as EDTA, for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice only to treat heavy metal (such as lead) poisoning. The treatment is becoming increasingly popular, though still controversial, for autism.

BLAMING THE VICTIMS (via Robert Schwartz):

From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui (Benny Peiser, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT)

Lord May, the President of Britain’s Royal Society, recently condensed Diamond’s theory of environmental suicide in this way: “In a lecture at the Royal Society last week, Jared Diamond drew attention to populations, such as those on Easter Island, who denied they were having a catastrophic impact on the environment and were eventually wiped out, a phenomenon he called ‘ecocide’” (May, 2005).

Diamond’s theory has been around since the early 1980s. Since then, it has reached a mass audience due to a number of popular books and Diamond’s own publications. As a result, the notion of ecological suicide has become the “orthodox model” of Easter Island’s demise. “This story of self-induced eco-disaster and consequent selfdestruction of a Polynesian island society continues to provide the easy and uncomplicated shorthand for explaining the so-called cultural devolution of Rapa Nui society” (Rainbird, 2002).

The ‘decline and fall’ of Easter Island and its alleged self-destruction has become the poster child of the new environmentalist historiography, a school of thought that goes hand-in-hand with predictions of environmental disaster. Clive Ponting’s The Green History of the World– for many years the main manifest of British eco-pessimism – begins his saga of ecological destruction and social degeneration with “The Lessons of Easter Island” (Ponting, 1992:1ff.). Others view Easter Island as a microcosm of planet Earth and consider the former’s bleak fate as symptomatic for what awaits the whole of humanity. Thus, the story of Easter Island’s environmental suicidehas become the prime case for the gloomiest of grim eco-pessimism. After more than 30 years of palaeo-environmental research on Easter Island, one of its leading experts comes to an extremely gloomy conclusion: “It seems [...] that ecological sustainability may be an impossible dream. The revised Club of Rome predictions show that it is not very likely that we can put of the crunch by more than a few decades. Most of their models still show economic decline by AD 2100. Easter Island still seems to be a plausible model for Earth Island.” (Flenley, 1998:127).

From a political and psychological point of view, this imagery of a complex civilisation self-destructing is overwhelming. It portrays an impression of utter failure that elicits shock and trepidation. It is in form of a shock-tactic when Diamond employs Rapa Nui’s tragic end as a dire warning and a moral lesson for humanity today: “Easter [Island’s] isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future” (Diamond, 2005).

While the theory of ecocidehas become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island’s selfdestruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui’s indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists – and not by themselves! After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island’s indigenous population and the deliberate destruction of the island’s environment has been regarded as “one of the most hideous atrocities committed by white men in the South Seas” (Métraux, 1957:38), “perhaps the most dreadful piece of genocide in Polynesian history” (Bellwood, 1978:363).

So why does Diamond maintain that Easter Island’s celebrated culture, famous for its sophisticated architecture and giant stone statues, committed its own environmental suicide? How did the once well-known accounts about the “fatal impact” (Moorehead, 1966) of European disease, slavery and genocide – “the catastrophe that wiped out Easter Island’s civilisation” (Métraux, ibid.) – turn into a contemporary parable of selfinflicted ecocide? In short, why have the victims of cultural and physical extermination been turned into the perpetrators of their own demise?

This paper is a first attempt to address this disquieting quandary. It describes the foundation of Diamond’s environmental revisionism and explains why it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny. [...]

Throughout his writings, Diamond maintains that he is reasonably hopeful about the future of humanity. Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to foretell environmental calamity and societal breakdown in the most unhinged imagery: “By the time my young sons reach retirement age, half the world’s species will be extinct, the air radioactive, and the seas polluted with oil ... I have no doubt that any humans still alive in the radioactive soup of the Twenty-second Century will write equally nostalgically about our own era” (Diamond, 1991:285).

It is this profound anxiety about the future and its impact on the environment that stirs Diamond’s writings and imagination. Regrettably, his eagerness to forestall doom often clouds his ability to assess historical and archaeological evidence in an impartial, even-handed approach. This fixation bears a striking resemblance to other authors who have tried to apply other standardised theoretical models to Easter Island history.

In a powerful critique of the methods applied by Heyerdahl and a number of other authors, Bahn has highlighted a fundamental problem of contemporary research on Easter Island: “The authors make their assumptions. They then look for evidence, pick out the bits they like, ignore the bits that don’t fit, and finally proclaim that their assumptions have been vindicated” (Bahn, 1990:24). A similar criticism can be made of Diamond’s eco-biased approach to the question of Rapa Nui’s collapse.

In many ways, Diamond’s methodological approach suffers from a manifest lack of scientific scrutiny.

SO'S YOUR OLD MAN:

Kean's move to the center could mean a challenge from the right (STEVE KORNACKI, 8/24/05, PoliticsNJ.com)

It is hard— very hard— to imagine that the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate next year will be anyone but Tom Kean Jr., whose candidacy is being enthusiastically embraced by party leaders in New Jersey and Washington.

But as he quietly goes about raising money and traveling the county GOP circuit, Kean does face something of a balancing act, because the more he flashes the centrist credentials that make him a strategist's dream candidate in the fall, the more he risks provoking a fight within his own party for the nomination.

"I don't think we're going to have an uncontested primary here," said Assemblyman Michael Doherty, one of a handful of conservative Republican lawmakers from the northwest part of the state known collectively as "the mountain men."

"If it gets to November or December and there's only one guy in the race for the nomination, I think someone's going to jump in," said Doherty. "And I think it's going to be a conservative."

Taking on the 36-year-old Kean would seem on paper to be a futile task for a fellow Republican.

OVERWITH:

McCain sounds like presidential hopeful (C.J. Karamargin, 8/24/05, ARIZONA DAILY STAR)

U.S. Sen. John McCain knows why he wants to be president.

He isn't running for the job - officially. That won't happen, if it happens at all, until after next year's midterm elections.

McCain, who turns 69 on Monday, said "there's no point" in formally announcing his candidacy until after the 2006 congressional elections.

But the Arizona Republican didn't skip a beat Tuesday when asked why he would want to run for the White House in 2008.

"Because we live in a time of great challenges," McCain said in an interview with Arizona Daily Star editors and reporters.

Chief among them is the war on terror, a "transcendent issue" likely to last for years, he said. But there is "a broad variety of domestic challenges" as well.

Sounding much like a candidate ticking off the priorities of his platform, McCain said they include immigration, Social Security, global warming, rising health-care costs and the "obscene" spending practices of Washington.

THE PRIVACY OF THE PUBLIC SQUARE:

The Political Power Of The Pew: A new study shows how churchgoing affects voting preferences (Robert J. Barro, 8/22/05, Business Week)

A forthcoming article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics -- "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values," by Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, and Jesse M. Shapiro -- develops a model to explain why religion and politics are so intertwined. In the model, politicians sometimes cater to extreme positions, such as the ardently pro-life views of the Religious Right or the ardently pro-choice views of the secular left. A successful appeal yields a large response by the targeted group in voter turnout or campaign contributions. This part is straightforward. The new idea is that a successful appeal has to be somewhat private. Otherwise, catering to an extreme -- say, pro-life -- has the downside of encouraging too much voter turnout and campaign contributions from the opposite pole -- pro-choice.

THE GLAESER ET AL. STUDY analyzes which groups end up with sizable political influence. The membership cannot be too small because then any perceived catering to the group loses too many votes from the bulk of the population relative to the small number gained. But the membership cannot be too large, because then targeted messages are impossible. The research shows that the most effective groups comprise a little less than half the population. The membership also has to be cohesive enough to facilitate private communication. U.S. churches fit with both characteristics. U.S. labor unions fit once upon a time, as well, but have since become too small.

The study applies the theory internationally by examining how monthly attendance at formal religious services predicts self-described right-wing orientation. The data show that more religious people are more likely to be right-wing. However, the link between religiousness and political outlook is weak when countries have very low or very high religious participation. For instance, whether in Scandinavia and Russia, where few people attend church, or highly religious nations like the Philippines and Bangladesh, an individual's attendance predicts little about political orientation. Instead, religiousness predicts the most about politics in countries where roughly half the population attends formal religious services at least monthly -- places such as the U.S., Turkey, India, and Argentina.

SUCK IT UP, REV, BE AN AGENT OF GRACE:

Robertson apologizes for assassination call (CNN, August 24, 2005)

After two days of criticism, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized for his controversial suggestion that the United States should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement," Robertson said. "I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."

But he compared Chavez to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler and quoted German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "[That if a madman were] driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."

Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis for his involvement in a 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

FALLING PRICES SURE WON'T SLOW SALES:

July new home sales rise to record (Reuters, 8/24/05)

Sales of new U.S. homes jumped 6.5 percent to a record high in July, defying economists' expectations for a decline, as purchases soared in the Northeast and West and median prices dropped, a government report showed on Wednesday.

The Commerce Department said new single-family home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.410 million units from a downwardly revised 1.324 million unit rate in June. The July sales pace was 27.7 percent higher than a year earlier. [...]

The median price of a new home dropped for the third consecutive month, down 7.2 percent to $203,800 from $219,500 in June and off 4 percent from the price a year ago, the Commerce Department report said. The July sales price was the lowest since December 2003, when it hit $196,000.

SO AT LEAST THE GREENS WILL SUPPORT THE WAR:

Water returns to Iraqi marshlands (BBC, 8/24/05)

The marshlands of Iraq, which were drained during the early 1990s, are returning to their original state.

Under Saddam Hussein, the area of marsh was reduced to a tenth of its former size, as the government punished people living there for acts of rebellion.

The latest United Nations data shows that nearly 40% of the area has been restored to its original condition.

JUST TELL ME THE RESULT YOU WANT:

Fetuses May Not Feel Pain in Early Months (LINDSEY TANNER, August 23, 2005, The Associated Press)

A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies. [...]

The authors include the administrator of a UCSF abortion clinic, but the researchers dispute the claim that the report is biased.

ALL CLONING:

Stem cell alliance emerges: Feinstein bill would protect state's new research agency (Gary Delsohn, 8/24/05, Sacramento Bee)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein joined forces Tuesday to urge Congress to ban human cloning in all 50 states at the same time it protects California's multibillion-dollar stem cell research initiative.

Surrounded by patients and stem cell advocates at the UCLA medical school, the Republican governor and the Democratic senator called on the public to lobby Congress on three pieces of legislation pending in Washington.

"The people have spoken and they have said in California we want you to go ahead with any and all stem cell research that's possible because it has hopes for a cure for literally millions of Americans," Feinstein said of last year's Proposition 71, the state's $3 billion stem cell initiative.

"But this research is in danger. If some in Washington get their way, this research will be stopped in its tracks and scientists will face criminal sanctions. This cannot be allowed to happen."

MAYBE CBS JUST DOESN'T THINK IT'S NEWS:

Cindy: Terrorists 'freedom fighters': Sheehan's comment to CBS, others seems to have evaporated in news coverage (Joe Kovacs, August 23, 2005, WorldNetDaily.com)

Cindy Sheehan, the so-called Peace Mom seeking a second meeting with President Bush in connection with the Iraq War death of her son, says terrorists killing Americans are "freedom fighters."

She made the remark during her trek earlier this month to Crawford, Texas; but her equating the enemy with freedom fighters has not been highlighted by the mainstream media, despite her telling it directly to a reporter for CBS News.

Sheehan's comments were recorded on video by Veterans for Peace, a group pushing for Bush's impeachment. (Editor's note: The video of Cindy Sheehan is approximately 30 minutes long, and requires several minutes to load, even with a high-speed connection.)

WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING?:

Seattle, Seventh Heaven: For the religious right, that is. (Knute Berger, 8/25/05, Seattle Weekly)

Seattle likes to think of itself as a bastion of deep blue, a liberal city that keeps the beacon of progressivism lit in the dark days of Bush. We've long patted ourselves on the back for our technological and culture exports, too, from Boeing jets and Microsoft software to artisan coffee, beer, and outdoor gear.

But our chief export these days is right-wing extremism.

A poster child for this is local right-wing radio rabbi Daniel Lapin, who founded Toward Tradition, a national organization devoted to forging ties with the Christian right. Among Lapin's influential pals are Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist. His devoted followers include the conservative cultural critic Michael Medved.

As a promoter of "Judeo-Christian" values, Lapin uses a politically charged phrase. [...]

If you read The New York Times Sunday, Aug. 21, you might have seen a story about another conservative gift that has, uh, evolved in Seattle. It was a profile of the Discovery Institute, the local think tank founded by former Seattle City Council member Bruce Chapman. Discovery is also the headquarters of the "intelligent design" movement that is aimed at undermining the scientific theory of evolution. It seeks to replace the idea of random mutation with the notion that "a creator" is running the evolutionary process. [...]

Another example of local influence is the crusade against sex slavery led by former Seattle GOP Congressman John Miller. [...]

It is truly a sign of Seattle's intellectual liberalism that we are the incubator of powerful ideas. Even bad ones.

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT:

Accept Australian values or get out (Michelle Grattan, August 25, 2005, The Age)

A day after the Prime Minister's summit with Muslim leaders, the Government stepped up its push to get "Australian values" — epitomised, it says, by the Anzac story of Simpson and his donkey — taught comprehensively to Muslim children.

On Tuesday Treasurer Peter Costello said people thinking of coming to Australia who did not like Australian values and preferred a society that practised sharia law should go elsewhere.

Dr Nelson said he would soon meet the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils to discuss programs to ensure those in Islamic schools and all other children fully understood Australian history and values.

"We don't care where people come from; we don't mind what religion they've got or what their particular view of the world is. But if you want to be in Australia, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs," he said.

"We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a hand up and a fair go. And basically, if people don't want to be Australians and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well basically they can clear off."

Dr Nelson said if the country lost sight of what Simpson and his donkey represented, "then we will lose the direction of the country". John Simpson Kirkpatrick, carrying wounded soldiers on his donkey, is the iconic image of Gallipoli. "He represents everything at the heart of what it means to be Australian."

DECLARE VICTORY AND AGREE WITH W (via Kevin Whited):

It's all about-face for the Democrats (Kevin Drum, August 24, 2005, LA Times)

For their part, members of the antiwar left have an easy role: They should continue to push establishment Democrats to support withdrawal from Iraq, but they should also make it clear that no one will be punished for doing so, regardless of their past support for the war. However angry they are, doves can best serve their cause by not demanding tortured explanations and tearful apologies. A change in position should be enough.

The hawks have a much harder job. They're the ones who need to publicly change their position, an act that carries the risk of being tarred forever with the dreaded label that killed Kerry's presidential campaign: "flip-flopper." Besides, mainstream Democratic politicians and their advisors genuinely think immediate withdrawal is a bad idea that likely would plunge Iraq into a savage civil war.

And then there's this: Democrats with long memories know perfectly well that similar demands for withdrawal during the Vietnam War wrecked the party's reputation on national security issues for a generation. The American public tended to associate Democratic doubts with the nation's first-ever military defeat, and regardless of whether that conclusion was fair or not, no one is eager to repeat it.

What's a mainstream Democrat to do? Have the courage to break ranks and advocate the course that's probably the most sensible anyway: a gradual, phased withdrawal based on specified interim goals and a hard end-date two years from now. After all, in December 2007 we will have been in Iraq for nearly five years, and the plain reality is that by then we'll either leave because we've won or we'll leave because it's clear that we can't. So why not say so?

There are many reasons such a public stance makes sense.

CHANGING REALITY, SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITY:

Israel, Egypt reach deal on Gaza border (Associated Press, 8/24/05)

Israel and Egypt have reached an agreement to have 750 Egyptian troops take control of a volatile Egypt-Gaza border area from Israeli forces, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Wednesday.

The transfer of border supervision to the Egyptians is key to ending Israel's 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip. An agreement had been held up by Israeli concerns that weapons and explosives would be smuggled across the border from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula into Gaza once its troops leave as part of the Gaza evacuation.

Under the new agreement, Egyptian troops will be responsible for the security tasks Israeli soldiers used to conduct on the Gaza side of the border.

"This agreement ultimately gives comprehensive - and I emphasize comprehensive - responsibility to the Egyptians regarding the prevention of weapons smuggling in the Philadelphi corridor in tunnels and above ground, into the Gaza Strip," Mofaz told Army Radio.

9 CANARIES:

9 States in Plan to Cut Emissions by Power Plants (ANTHONY DePALMA, 8/24/05, NY Times)

Officials in New York and eight other Northeastern states have come to a preliminary agreement to freeze power plant emissions at their current levels and then reduce them by 10 percent by 2020, according to a confidential draft proposal.

The cooperative action, the first of its kind in the nation, came after the Bush administration decided not to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Once a final agreement is reached, the legislatures of the nine states will have to enact it, which is considered likely.

Enforcement of emission controls could potentially result in higher energy prices in the nine states, which officials hope can be offset by subsidies and support for the development of new technology that would be paid for with the proceeds from the sale of emission allowances to the utility companies.

The regional initiative would set up a market-driven system to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from more than 600 electric generators in the nine states. Environmentalists who support a federal law to control greenhouse gases believe that the model established by the Northeastern states will be followed by other states, resulting in pressure that could eventually lead to the enactment of a national law.

NO ONE?:

Alarm and disarray on rise in China (Howard W. French, AUGUST 24, 2005, The New York Times)

There is a growing uneasiness in the air in China, after months of increasingly bold protests rolling across the countryside.

For reasons that range from rampant industrial pollution that recalls the shock of Minamata disease in Japan in the early 1960s to widespread evictions and land seizures by corrupt local governments working with increasingly powerful property developers, ordinary Chinese seem to be saying they are fed up and will not take it anymore.

Each week brings news of at least one or two incidents, with thousands of villagers in a pitched battle with the police, or bloody crackdowns in which hundreds of protesters are tear-gassed and clubbed during roundups by the police. And by the government's own official tally, hundreds of these events each week escape wider public attention altogether.

No one is ready to predict that this is the beginning of any great unraveling of an authoritarian state that has, over the last two decades, largely brought social peace and a reprieve from demands for political change by delivering breakneck economic growth.

STOP PUSSYFOOTING:

Higher mileage levels eyed (Patrice Hill, August 24, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Bush administration, facing a public outcry over record high gasoline prices, yesterday proposed a 6 percent increase in fuel efficiency for sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks.

The plan is expected to yield savings of 10 billion gallons of gas by 2011 -- the equivalent of about a month's worth of fuel consumed by motorists in the United States. The savings would be achieved at a cost of about $6 billion to consumers and the auto industry.

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said the fuel savings, which would be concentrated primarily in America's current vehicle of choice -- smaller SUVs -- would be a boon to consumers facing gas prices near $3 a gallon in major cities.

YUP, TEN MILLION REVERSE VASECTOMIES OUGHT TO SOLVE IT

A new Korean goal: Having a big family (Norimitsu Onishi, International Herald Tribune, August 22nd, 2005)

After decades of promoting smaller families, South Korea - like several other affluent Asian countries facing plummeting birthrates - is desperately seeking ways to get people to have more babies.

In South Korea, the decline has been so precipitous that it caught the government off guard. Medical treatments like vasectomies and tubal ligations were covered under the national health plan until last year, as part of policies devised to discourage more than two children. This year, the plan began covering reverse procedures for those two operations, as well as care for a couple's third or fourth child.

"I'd been thinking about getting the operation for a while, but was concerned about the cost," said Park, 37, who runs the Samsung Electronics store in this seaside town on the southern shore of the Korean peninsula.

In sharp contrast to countries like China or India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have experienced quick economic growth and social changes that have produced disturbingly low birthrates that are transforming their societies and threatening their economic strength. In an ethnically homogenous nation like South Korea, as in Japan, there is no support for the kind of immigration that has increased birthrates in some Western nations.

"In the next two or three years, we won't be able to increase the birthrate," said Park Ha Jeong, a director-general in the Health Ministry. "But we have to stop the decline, or it will be too late."

Young couples in Seoul and other cities are choosing to have few babies, but the low birthrate has hit rural places like Wando County hardest. Within less than a decade, it has transformed South Korea's rural landscape - shuttering schools, shrinking class sizes and setting off village-wide celebrations for the rare birth of a baby.

Growing up here, Park Pil Soo has watched family sizes shrink to fewer than two children from as many as eight, and Wando's population decreases year by year. People have grown richer here. At his Samsung store, residents began buying air-conditioners four years ago, and they expect television sets in each room and a refrigerator just for kimchi.

"People now want a higher living standard instead of children," he said, as he and his wife attended to customers on a recent Saturday.

Wando's was the first local government to supplement the national health insurance to make reverse vasectomies and tubal ligations free. So far, five men and two women have had the surgeries, said Hwang Dae Rae, the county official who came up with the idea.

Hwang, the official, regularly calls the couples to inquire about possible "good news." None has been reported so far.

It is going to be very amusing, in a tragi-comic sort of way, to watch bureaucracies in Europe and Asia scramble to come up with creative initiatives to make their comfortable, secularized and self-regarding populations re-discover the joys of duty and delayed gratification.

IMPORTED RED:

From pastor to political activist: His church booming, he wants to spread the word statewide (Maria Cramer, August 24, 2005, Boston Globe)

On a recent Sunday, about 30 worshipers packed the altar of Congregacion Leon de Juda in Roxbury, swaying to the contagious music of the choir and band as though they were at a rock concert. At least 100 sat in the congregation, singing along and smiling, while well-dressed women walked around with boxes of tissues to dab the eyes of the most emotional.

Pastor Roberto Miranda strode to the pulpit, one hand in his pinstripe suit, and preached to the rapt audience about the value of hard work, the strength one can derive from tragedy.

''God does not want to create parasites," he said.

In two decades, Leon de Juda, or Lion of Judah, a largely Hispanic evangelical Christian church, has grown from five members to 1,200, representing the rise of evangelical, Pentecostal congregations in a state long dominated by Catholics. With as many as 800 worshipers attending Sunday services, Leon de Juda also exemplifies the dramatic increase of Hispanics around Greater Boston.

But Miranda is not satisfied. He has written a master plan to ''reclaim the state of Massachusetts for Jesus Christ" and penetrate a culture he feels is being lost to promiscuity, activist judges, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. He is organizing Protestant ministers and Christian activists around the state and encouraging them to bring modern marketing techniques to the church.

The 17-page treatise appeals to evangelical leaders to work together to ''proceed systematically to penetrate and reconquer" institutions of culture, business, and politics in a state that he said has become ''saturated with a godless, secular outlook."

WE WERE WRONG, NOW DO WHAT WE SAID:

Ariel Sharon's Statesmanship (NY Times, 8/24/05)

This page has never been shy about criticizing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But this week the last Jewish settlers left Gaza, completing Israel's withdrawal from the desert it took control of 38 years ago. And yesterday, Israeli soldiers completed the evacuation of four much smaller settlements among the hundreds on the West Bank. This is the first time Israel has abandoned communities in lands the Palestinians claim for their future state, so it is incumbent upon us - and all of Mr. Sharon's many critics - to reflect on this extraordinary accomplishment.

Real peace talks are unlikely before those elections are settled, but such talks are needed to build on the Gaza withdrawal, which we hope is a sign of readiness to negotiate rather than a final gesture. In a region where there have been too many dark days, this flicker of sunshine deserves to be nurtured.

A KINDER, GENTLER NEW HAMPSHIRE

NewHampshire.com (Shawne K. Wickham August 22nd, 2005)

The state’s director of travel and tourism development, Alice DeSouza, had an enviable problem when she tried to come up with a new marketing slogan: New Hampshire has too much to offer to easily sum up in a phrase. [...]

DeSouza said she wanted the new motto to somehow encompass all aspects of New Hampshire life: “I keep using the expression, ‘live, work and play.’ You can’t put them in vertical silos and say someone who works here wasn’t once a visitor, and vice versa.”

Indeed, she declared, “The things people like visiting here for are the very same reasons we all love living here.”

The slogan the creative folks at Rumbletree, a Portsmouth ad agency hired by the state, came up with seemed to do the trick nicely:

“New Hampshire. You’re going to love it here.”

We'll let Mark Steyn do the comment on this one: A sign of decline: the Granite State has the all-time great motto and one very pertinent for our times - "Live free or die." It looks great on license plates and on signs on the state border. So of course the state's director of tourism couldn't wait to lavish money on the "creative folks" at some ad agency to come up with a new slogan. The result - "You're going to love it here" - is generic pap unworthy of a great state and almost on a par with the feeble license plate of my native province Ontario: "Yours to discover." Couldn't we have come up with some suitable compromise between rugged North Country self-reliance and bland tourist boilerplate? "Live free or die in America's four-season vacation playground"?

THE POINT OF D-DAY WASN'T TO LEAVE OUR DEAD ON THE BEACHES EITHER:

President Bush's Loss of Faith (NY Times, 8/24/05)

It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

"We owe them something," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that "makes no sense." No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice.

RATHER DEAD THAN OFFENDED (via Bob Tremblay):

Frank doctor in trouble with authorities over advice (AP, 8/24/05)

As doctors warn more patients that they should lose weight, the advice has backfired on one doctor with a woman filing a complaint with the state saying he was hurtful, not helpful.

Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.

"I told a fat woman she was obese," Bennett says. "I tried to get her attention. I told her, 'You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.' "

He says he wrote a letter of apology to the woman when he found out she was offended.

PSSSST, WHAT'S THAT IN THE SACRISTY?:

Vatican to Begin U.S. Seminary Investigation: The problem of accepting homosexuals into the priesthood has become so common that it is now widely and openly considered a "gay profession." (LifeSiteNews.com, 8/24/05)

Catholic News Service has announced that Rome is set to start its long-awaited "apostolic visitation," or systematic investigation and evaluation of the formation offered to prospective priests in seminaries.

With many bishops studiously ignoring what has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of the elephant in the drawing room, Rome may be planning to force the issue at last. [...]

Faithful Catholics in the United States have said for years that the sex abuse scandals have been caused or seriously exacerbated by the laxity in formation of priests in seminaries which, in the 1960's adopted a more secularist and psychological approach to moral formation.

The problem of accepting homosexuals into the priesthood has become so common that it is now widely and openly considered a "gay profession." The USCCB's own report on the sex abuse crisis showed that since 1950 over 80% of victims of clerical sexual abuse were male.

THE CURSE OF THE POLISH PLUMBER

Soviet bloc workers flocking to Britain (Philip Johnston, The Telegraph, August 24th, 2005)

Nearly a quarter of a million workers from the east European countries that joined the EU in 2004 have arrived to work in Britain over the past year - more than 15 times the Home Office estimate, official figures showed yesterday.

Half the new workers are from Poland and are predominantly in their 20s.
Britain has proved attractive to nationals from the eight former Soviet-bloc countries, not only because of its buoyant economy but also because other EU members exercised an option to restrict access to their labour markets for up to seven years. Normally, all EU nationals are free to move anywhere in the Union to look for work and settle.

The Government said at the time that there would be little impact on economic migration and ministers dismissed suggestions of a major influx. The Home Office forecast an increase of up to 13,000 workers a year.

Figures published yesterday, however, showed that between May 2004 and June 30 this year there were 232,000 applicants for work under the special registration scheme established by the Government to defuse a political row over its unwillingness to impose restrictions. Ministers said that with unemployment at its lowest for a generation, Britain needed the workers to fill job vacancies, particularly in the service sector.

By far the largest number of workers has come from Poland, with 131,000, though as a proportion of the population, Lithuania has supplied most with 34,000, representing 0.8 per cent of its total workforce. Most are young - between 18 and 34 - and 60 per cent are men.

Few have brought dependants and hardly any have claimed any benefits, which was one cause of the controversy that blew up before the accession last year.

A separate report from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests that the influx of east European workers has had a positive impact on the economy. It said that despite fears that the incomers would displace existing workers and depress wages, their arrival had allowed certain sectors to expand, creating more jobs and leaving pay levels unchanged.

More: Press Release (British National Party, June 17th, 2005)

The Slovakian government have recently decided that in a bid to cut Slovakian unemployment figures, they will ship thousand of jobless Slovaks to Britain and other neighbouring EU member states. As things stand at the moment, Slovakia’s unemployed are being given train tickets to Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. However, a spokesman for the Slovakian employment ministry recently stated “If it is a success, we will extend it to other countries further afield, such as the United Kingdom”.

Bearing in mind that Slovakia has a population of 5.4 million- 17.5% of which are unemployed- this means that Britain is looking at having to take a huge share of the estimated 875,000 unemployed that are going to be looking at leaving Slovakia in search of an easy life at the expense of the hardworking British taxpayer.

As the consistently reasonable David Cohen points out frequently, the left and the nativist right share the fallacy that people are essentially liabilities that consume and deplete our finite economic, social and cultural capital. This thinking predominates in the countries of continental Europe, which is one reason why their future is so gloomy. The future of the Anglospheric countries will hinge on whether their majorities continue to understand that people are assets that create such capital.

WHERE PIGS TRUMP PEOPLE (via Brit):

Animal rights activists condemned as guinea pig farm gives up fight (Jonathan Brown and Robert Dex, 24 August 2005, Independent)

Scientists have furiously condemned the animal rights movement after the closure of a controversial guinea pig farm which it was claimed would seriously hamper medical research in Britain.

The owners of the Darley Oaks Farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire, finally caved into pressure after a bitter and often illegal six-year battle with activists which culminated in the unsolved theft of the remains of the owner's late mother-in-law.

Hundreds of people were terrorised by the protesters. Threats had been made against anyone who was associated with the family who own the farm, who were themselves the subject of paedophilia smears.

In what was described as a "guerrilla terrorist campaign" hundreds of properties were damaged in the local village, mainly in night attacks, and electricity supplies were cut.

The closure is a blow to the police, the scientific community and the Government, which have fought tooth and nail to keep the operation running.

MILK DUD:

BATBOY SUSPENDED (CLARK SPENCER, 8/24/05, Miami Herald)

A batboy who accepted a dare Sunday by trying to drink a gallon of milk without throwing up has been suspended by the Marlins for his actions.

The unidentified batboy will not be allowed to work the upcoming, six-game homestand at Dolphins Stadium against the Cardinals and Mets from Aug. 29 through Sept. 4.

The Marlins refused to comment on the suspension.

But Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Brad Penny, who offered $500 to the batboy if he could drink a gallon of milk in less than an hour before Sunday's game, was angry about the decision.

''It's kind of ridiculous that you get a 10-game suspension for steroids and a six-game suspension for milk,'' Penny said.

SO CLEAR EVEN JOURNALISTS GET IT:

Glee and Anger Greet Iraq's Draft Charter: Shiites Welcome And Sunnis Fear A Loose Union (Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti, August 24, 2005, Washington Post)

A new draft constitution that would transform Iraq into a loose federal union sparked celebrations Tuesday in the streets of the Shiite south and an angry rally in the Sunni Arab heartland, where some chanted for the return of Saddam Hussein. [...]

"The draft that was submitted is approximately the draft that will be implemented," said Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, whose Shiite coalition holds a majority of seats in the assembly.

"The idea is to try to sell this draft to the Sunnis," Kubba said of the three-day delay on the vote. "That's what this is all about."

"During coming days, we will have a dialogue to convince them, in fact, that federalism is not to divide Iraq," said Humam Hamoudi, the Shiite chairman of the constitutional committee.

Many Sunni Arabs want Iraq to remain under a strong central government. Sunnis dominated the country until the overthrow of Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003, and extremists among them are the mainstays of Iraq's two-year-old insurgency.

MORE:
Iraq Vote May Rest on Swing Provinces: Sunni Arabs who still have doubts are gearing up to defeat the draft charter in October (Edmund Sanders and Noam N. Levey, August 24, 2005, LA Times)

There are no red states or blue states. Ballots won't have hanging chads. But the fight over Iraq's constitution appears headed for an election day showdown that — similar to recent U.S. presidential elections — will be decided by one or two battleground provinces.

A draft of the charter is almost certain to win approval this week in the transitional National Assembly, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds. But Sunni Arabs have strong reservations about the document and, with negotiations still stalled Tuesday, they are gearing up to defeat the charter in an Oct. 15 referendum.

The constitution, which requires the approval of a majority of Iraqis, can be defeated if at least two-thirds of the electorate in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote "no."

Political strategists predict a hard-fought campaign that will focus on a handful of ethnically and politically divided provinces, with regions around Mosul and Baqubah playing the swing roles that Florida and Ohio, respectively, did in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential contests.

TALK IS CHEAP, LET'S WHACK HIM:

Chavez assassination row erupts (BBC, 8/24/05)

A row has erupted over a call by US religious broadcaster Pat Robertson for the US to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Visiting Cuba, Mr Chavez would not be drawn but his deputy said Mr Robertson had made "terrorist" remarks and the country was studying its legal options.

STEELE AND U....:

TV Ad Using Steele Irritates Democrats (John Wagner, August 24, 2005, Washington Post)

Maryland Democrats are steaming over a new public service ad in which Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a likely Republican candidate for U.S. Senate next year, offers tips on avoiding car thefts.

The television spot featuring Steele, who formed a Senate exploratory committee in June, is airing on Comcast cable stations in Maryland's Washington suburbs, where law enforcement officials say car thefts have been most prevalent.

"This is the first Steele-for-Senate campaign ad, as far as I'm concerned," Derek Walker, a spokesman for the Maryland Democratic Party, said yesterday. "It's clear that the exploratory committee is designed to find new and innovative ways to waste taxpayer money to promote the lieutenant governor."

Steele spokeswoman Regan Hopper called that assertion "ridiculous on its face" and said Steele started working on the issue of car thefts long before he expressed any interest in the Senate race.

THE BUBBLE BURST AND ALL I MADE WAS A 66% RETURN:

House sales slip again; condos surge (Kimberly Blanton, August 24, 2005, Boston Globe)

The July decline in sales of single-family homes in Massachusetts mirrored nationwide figures. Sales of existing homes across the country slowed last month as mortgage interest rates, which dipped in early summer, edged up to 5.8 percent. The 2.6 percent decline is the largest since July 2004, the National Association of Realtors reported yesterday. Despite the decline, July 2005 was the third highest on record, and sales continued at a still-strong clip of 7.16 million homes annually.

Analysts noted that the condo and single-family markets are coming off record sales in 2004, and prices continued upward in July. The median single-family price of $375,000 was 7.1 percent higher than July 2004. Condo prices also rose 7.4 percent in July, to $287,900, a record price.

From 2000 to 2003, Massachusetts home values rose 50 percent, the greatest increase in the nation.

But state and national numbers suggest that the era of double-digit increases in home prices in the Boston area may be over.

''The guy who is expecting the house he bought five years ago -- for maybe $300,000 -- who was expecting to sell it for $800,000, may be happy with about $500,000," said Gary Bigg, an economist for Bank of America Corp. ''Expectations may be dampened for those who are expecting to make a killing on their house."

IF THEY DON'T CARE WHY SHOULD WE?:

Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle (SHARON WAXMAN, 8/24/05, NY times)

With the last of the summer blockbusters fading from the multiplex, Hollywood's box office slump has hardened into a reality that is setting the movie industry on edge. The drop in ticket sales from last summer to this summer, the most important moviegoing season, is projected to be 9 percent by Labor Day, and the drop in attendance is expected to be even deeper, 11.5 percent, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks the box office.

Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.

CASSANDRA WAS A SEER, NOT A HISTORIAN:

The value of private charity (John Stossel, August 24, 2005, Townhall)

I once thought there was too much poverty for private charity to make much of a difference. Now I realize that private charity would do much more -- if government hadn't crowded it out. In the 1920s -- the last decade before the Roosevelt administration launched its campaign to federalize nearly everything -- 30 percent of American men belonged to mutual aid societies, groups of people with similar backgrounds who banded together to help members in trouble. They were especially common among minorities.

Mutual aid societies paid for doctors, built orphanages and cooked for the poor. Neighbors knew best what neighbors needed. They were better at making judgments about who needs a handout and who needed a kick in the rear. They helped the helpless, but administered tough love to the rest. They taught self-sufficiency.

Mutual aid didn't solve every problem, so government stepped in. But government didn't solve every problem either. Instead, it caused more problems by driving private charity out. Today, there are fewer mutual-aid societies, because people say, "We already pay taxes for HUD, HHS. Let the professionals do it." Big Government tells both the poor and those who would help them, "Don't try."

Private charity develops a sense of personal responsibility for recipients, and it does something similar for donors, too. If I hadn't thought the government would take care of Cheech, I would've had to decide whether I thought he was worth my money -- money I could spend on myself and my family, or on promoting freedom, or on any number of charitable causes.

When you rely on the government to help those who need it, you don't practice benevolence yourself. You don't take responsibility for deciding whom to help. Just as public assistance discourages the poor from becoming independent by rewarding them with fixed handouts, it discourages the rest of us from being benevolent. This may be the greatest irony of the welfare state: It not only encourages the poor to stay dependent, it kills individuals' desire to help them.

ENGLISH IS ESPERANTO:

Malaysians embrace English (Baradan Kuppusamy, 8/25/05, Asia Times)

English, once shunned as the language of colonialism, is now regarded as the passport to success in the modern world and is rapidly replacing Islamic studies and the sciences.

"My parents say English is the key to the future and that we have to master it," Hafsiah said after her session. "But [English] is so strange to the tongue."

Apparently, the difficulties that Malays have in competing in a rapidly globalizing world is being attributed by the older generation to their failure to master English, and even to turning their backs on the language in 1970 in a wave of nationalism.

Malays form slightly more than 50% of Malaysia's 23 million people. The economically dominant ethnic Chinese form 22% and are concentrated in the urban centers where the English language has survived better. Indians, who form another 7% of the population, are also largely urban.

The frenzy to catch up with English in rural Malaysia is more than just palpable and nowadays second only to the craze for English football and the popular "Malaysian Idol" contest, a reality-type TV show.

BLUES VS CHILDREN:

Judge Roberts's family secret (Scot Lehigh, August 24, 2005, Boston Globe)

In introducing Roberts last month, President Bush mentioned the judge's wife and children, yet when the cameras panned to the family, his spouse stood alone.

Several networks soon aired troubling footage revealing why. Young Jack, the couple's 4-year-old son, had proved such a pint-sized pinball, ricocheting about so persistently as the president spoke, that his mother finally felt compelled to remove the kids from public view.

Now, daughter Josie, 5, was perfectly behaved, and Mrs. Roberts eventually did corral Jack, so there are evidentiary crosscurrents at play here. Still, the incident constitutes at least prima facie evidence that the Robertses could be members of a philosophical sect whose fusion of liberal and laissez-faire tenets should strike fear into the hearts of all reasonable Americans.

They might just be Doting Indulgent Modern Parents (DIMPIES).

There, alas, they would hardly be out of the American mainstream. On behalf of a dwindling contingent of (barely) sane adults, this space has occasionally lamented that US children too often behave like legions of little Grendels intent on visiting chaos upon the meadhall that is America.

AMERICA GETS REDDER AND FRANCE GETS MUSLIMER:

US fertility rate remains high (Press Trust of India, August 23, 2005)

As India continues to top the fertility rate, the US is the only major economic power now with fertility rates high enough to keep the size of its work force relatively constant as the population ages.

Too high a birth rate leads to poverty. Too low a birth rate leads to the economy going downhill. Ideally, it should be at the replacement rate of two per couple or 2.1, says the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based think tank.

The fertility rate or the number of lifetime births per woman, of major economies is now: India 3, US 2, France 1.9, U.K. 1.7, China 1.6, Russia 1.4, Germany, Japan and Spain 1.3 and South Korea 1.2. [...]

"The US is one of the few states where the fertility rates have been holding steady," William Butz, director of the bureau which is funded by the Ford and Gates foundations, among others, told The Wall Street Journal.

JAPAN’S population is on track to show its first annual decline, raising fears over the outlook for the world’s second-biggest economy and the ability of its welfare system to cope. [...]

Economists fear an unstoppable era of population decline. Many analysts believe that as the problem becomes more acute the social security system will come under intolerable strain. [...]

For economists and social scientists, the warning signals of the impending demographic crisis have been there for decades. Japan’s rate of population growth began slowing in the late 1970s and reached a record low last year. The present Japanese birth rate of 1.29 children born to each woman is well below the replacement level of 2.08, and the problem is spectacularly acute in Tokyo, where the rate is 0.99.

The dramatic fall in Japanese birth rates and the ageing of the population has been well documented, but few policy initiatives have had any impact.

OWNERSHIP (via Mike Daley):

Crawford: Joan Baez Talks to The Buzz (Eric Pfeiffer, 8/23/05, NRO: The Buzz)

While I was at "Camp Reality," Joan Baez and a camera crew stopped by to interview the Bush supporters. To Ms. Baez's credit, she was quite
respectful and diplomatic when talking with the supporters, even though they
have very different views on the war and President Bush. Baez even showed
more respect for President Bush than many on the left, referring to
President Bush as "my president." She was also kind enough to answer a few
questions for The Buzz.

When the United States withdrew forces from Vietnam, Baez received much
criticism from the left for stating a vital truth: Even though the war in
Vietnam was "over" from the U.S. military's point of view, thousands of
innocent Vietnamese were still being murdered by the communist regime. So, I
asked Baez if she's concerned a similar situation would transpire were U.S.
forces to withdraw from Iraq:

"As Gandhi once said, yes there will be chaos, but it will be our chaos.
Yes, there will be massive chaos, but nothing is going to stop the massive
chaos. That's my answer."

I then asked Baez what she thinks the U.S. and international community could
do to ensure a peaceful transition if and when the U.S. leaves Iraq:

"There's no way to ensure a peaceful transition. There's already been so
much chaos and unnecessary violence. Much of that has been created by us.
But there was already this disgusting level of chaos and violence with
Saddam Hussein."

MORE MONKEY CHOW, PLEASE (via Michael Herdegen):

Folate May Reduce Risk of Alzheimer's Disease (Patti Connor, August 15, 2005, WebMD Medical News)

Diets high in folate may help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

During a nine-year study, researchers showed that older adults whose diets were high in folate reduced their risk of Alzheimer's disease by half compared with those whose diets contain less than the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA).

The study appears in the inaugural issue of Alzheimer's and Dementia: the Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. [...]

Folate has also been shown to lower blood levels of homocysteine, a risk factor for heart disease. High homocysteine levels, as well as decreased folate and vitamin B-12 levels, have also been associated with stroke and Alzheimer's disease.

The American Heart Association does not recommend widespread use of folic acid supplements to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. They recommend a healthy, well-balanced diet that includes at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Foods rich in folate include oranges and bananas, leafy green vegetables, asparagus, broccoli, liver, and many types of beans and peas, as well as fortified bread.

YOU COULD DO WORSE...:

The less-than-momentous side of the Roberts papers (Warren Richey, 8/24/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

A significant amount of Roberts's time was taken up researching appropriate responses, if any, to letters sent to President Reagan.

Roberts took an active role in preventing presidential correspondence with pop superstar Michael Jackson. He nixed an attempt by journalist Charles Kuralt's publisher to obtain a few kind words about Kuralt to help promote a forthcoming book. And he recommended against the president returning to his former profession for a cameo in an animated movie of Charles Schulz's Peanuts cartoon strip, "This is America, Charlie Brown."

To Roberts such efforts amounted to a presidential endorsement of a commercial venture, "a clear violation of White House policy."

When the Rock Creek Foundation, a Washington, D.C. charitable organization, asked if the president's box at the Kennedy Center could be auctioned off in a fundraiser, Roberts said "no."

In an October 1984 memo, he noted that White House participation even in a charitable auction "is basically selling the prestige of the Office [of the presidency], and that is not for sale, not for any price, not for any cause."

In fairness to Roberts, his memos make clear he wasn't trying to be mean, just consistent, and thus fair (or unfair) to everyone. Indeed, many of the Roberts memos suggest a strong emphasis on ethics and a desire to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

THE SUNN DON'T SHI'INE ON THE SAME DOG'S BUTT EVERY DAY:

Why Iraq's Sunnis fear constitution: Parliament is likely to approve the constitution by Thursday's deadline, despite Sunni objections. (Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll, 8/24/05, CS Monitor)

[A]t root of the Sunni rejection of the constitutional process is fear itself. The psyche of this community, from which Saddam Hussein's most fervent supporters were drawn and who enjoyed privileged positions until his regime was toppled, has been badly damaged in the past few years.

Many fears about the new Iraq are expressed throughout Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods. They fear that Iraq's new masters will punish them for supporting Mr. Hussein's regime; they fear they don't have leaders or social cohesion; and they fear their former status will never be regained.

MORE:
Meanwhile, guess who gets it?

The vacationing president called reporters to a mountain resort 100 miles north of here to address efforts in Iraq to reach agreement on a constitution. He issued a blunt warning to the Sunni minority, which has yet to agree to a draft of the constitution. "The Sunnis have got to make a choice," Bush said. "Do they want to live in a society that's free, or do they want to live in violence?"

DOES ANYONE EDIT THE TIMES?:

Israel Completes Evacuation of Gaza and West Bank Settlers (STEVEN ERLANGER, 8/23/05, NY Times)

Israeli soldiers and police completed the evacuation of 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank today and said that all settler homes would be reduced to rubble within the next 10 days.

The political battle to approve this pullout was intense. But it was done with little significant violence and considerable care on the part of the security forces. The Palestinians, too, largely held their fire, keeping a pledge from their president, Mahmoud Abbas, that the Israeli pullout would not take place under a hail of rockets and mortars.

Israeli officials and commanders insisted that the evacuation of nearly 10,000 Israelis people from all of Gaza and four settlements on the West Bank was providing "a hand to a brother," not warfare at all. But the evacuation's rapid conclusion in six days after predictions of three weeks or more took Israel by surprise and seemed a softer version of the famous Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel won a lightning victory over Arab foes.

THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF ROOM INSIDE THE CUBE:

Japan's population may shrink faster than expected (Reuters, 8/23/05)

Deaths exceeded births in Japan by 31,034 in the first half of the year, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, raising the possibility that the population will start to shrink in 2005, two years earlier than previously forecast.

Japan's falling birth rate and ageing population have fuelled concerns about future growth in the world's second-largest economy, and experts have previously said the population was likely to start shrinking in 2007. [...]

The ageing population has raised concerns about the sustainability of Japan's pension system, which the government is trying to reform by cutting benefits and raising the contribution rate for individuals.

Japan's fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- hit a postwar low of 1.288 in 2004. Demographers generally consider a level of 2.1 as the "replacement rate" needed to keep a population from declining.

MAKE JOHN GALT A FANTASY PICK AND HE'D WIN:

August Straw Poll: The Big One (Patrick Ruffini, August 2005)

It's straw poll time again.

This one should be fun. It's pretty much all the likely candidates as they stand today in a main ballot, and a bonus ballot with the opportunity to vote for four of your favorite fantasy contenders. Once you get to the results page, you'll see exactly which likely candidates the fantasy candidates take the most from.

Here's another reason why this one's the Big One. On your ballot, you'll have the opportunity to mark your state. If this poll is as big as the last one (@13,000 responses), we'll have a statistically valid sample of online activists not just nationally, but in most of the fifty states. On the results page, you can filter the results by state, by region, or by Red vs. Blue states.

THEY JUST WANT TO DIE IN PEACE:

Can Merkel Make It?: Germany's likely next chancellor is the prisoner of her own party. Reform? Shush. Don't even think about it. (Stefan Theil, 8/29/05, Newsweek International)

Gerhard Schröder was at it again. "Take the military options off the table," he roared at a campaign rally in Hannover. "We've all seen they're no good!"

Bashing George W. Bush worked the last time the German chancellor was locked in an uphill election battle, in 2002 on the eve of the Iraq war. So he was understandably tempted to try it again, this time hoping to ride to victory in next month's ballot by denouncing possible U.S. military action in Iran. And like last time, the salvo appeared to catch his opponent, now Angela Merkel, off guard. More than 80 percent of Germans support Schröder's antiwar stance, she knew, and reject her own pro-U.S. foreign policy. What to do? Waffle, obviously. A spokesman lashed out at Schröder and called for unity with Washington, while Merkel herself said she agreed with Schröder.

This election should have been a slam dunk for Merkel. Her opponent, after all, presides over record 12 percent unemployment, five straight years of close-to-zero economic growth and an epidemic of angst over Germany's prospects. Even some of his own cabinet ministers treat the chancellor like a lame duck, openly speculating about political alliances in a post-Schröder era. By rights, these should be ideal circumstances for any opposition. Why, then, are Merkel and her Christian Democrats in such disarray?

Amid intramural bickering, the party has seen its once resounding majority in the polls continue to melt away, down from a 20-point margin in June to just 12 today (42 percent for the CDU to the SPD's 30 percent). Meanwhile, in Germany's depressed east, the CDU is running neck and neck with the Linkspartei, a new anti-establishment protest group that's grown out of the old East German communists and now speaks for 10 percent of the nation's voters. That arithmetic makes it practically impossible for Schröder to come out on top. But it also puts the odds near even that Merkel will fail to get her own majority and be forced to rule in a paralyzing "grand coalition" with Schröder's dysfunctional SPD.

A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT:

Text of Proposed Iraq Constitution (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/23/05)

Chapter One

Article One

The Republic of Iraq is an independent state.

Article Two

The political system is republican, parliamentary, democratic and federal.

1. Islam is a main source for legislation.

-- a. No law may contradict Islamic standards.

-- b. No law may contradict democratic standards.

-- c. No law may contradict the essential rights and freedoms mentioned in this constitution.

2. This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the Iraqi people and guarantees all religious rights; all persons are free within their ideology and the practice of their ideological practices.

3. Iraq is part of the Islamic world, and the Arabs are part of the Arab nation.

4.

a. Arabic and Kurdish are the two official languages, and Iraqis have the right to teach their sons their mother language like the Turkomen and Assyrian in the government educational institutes.

b. The language used orally in official institutions such as the Parliament and the Cabinet as well as official conventions should be one of the two languages.

c. Recognizing the official documents with the two languages.

d. Opening the schools with two languages.

Article Three

Federal institutions in Kurdistan should use the two languages.

Article Four

The Turkomen and Assyrian languages are the official languages in the Turkomen and Assyrian areas, and each territory or province has the right to use its own official language if residents have approved in a general referendum vote.

Article Five

Power is transferred peacefully through democratic ways.

Article Seven

1. Any organization that follow a racist, terrorist, extremist, sectarian-cleaning ideology or circulates or justifies such beliefs is banned, especially Saddam's Baath Party in Iraq and its symbols under any name. And this should not be part of the political pluralism in Iraq.

2. The government is committed to fighting terrorism in all its forms, and works to protect Iraqi soil from being a center or passage for terrorist activities.

CHAPTER TWO

Article 35

-- a. Human freedom and dignity are guaranteed.

-- b. No person can be detained or interrogated without a judicial order.

-- c. All kinds of physical and psychological torture and inhumane treatment are prohibited, and any confession is considered void if it was taken by force, threats and torture. The person who was harmed has the right to ask for compensation for the financial and moral damage he/she suffered.

Article 36

The State guarantees:

1. Freedom of expression by all means.

2. Freedom of the press, printing, advertising and publishing.

Article 37

Freedom to establish political groups and organizations.

Article 39

Iraqis are free to abide in their personal lives according to their religion, sects, beliefs or choice. This should be organized by law.

CHAPTER THREE

Article 66

A presidential candidate should:

1. Be Iraqi by birth and the offspring of two Iraqi parents.

2. Be no less than 40 years old.

3. Have a good reputation and political experience, and be known as honest and faithful to the nation.

Article 75

The prime minister should have all the qualifications as the presidential candidate and should have a university degree or its equivalent and should not be less than 35 years old.

Article 104

A general commission should be set up to observe and specify the central (government) revenues, and the commission should be made up of experts from the central government, regions, provinces and representatives.

CHAPTER 4:

Article 107

Federal authorities should preserve Iraq's unity, security, independence and sovereignty and its democratic federal system.

Article 109

Oil and gas are the property of all the Iraqi people in regions and provinces.

Article 110

The central government administers oil and gas extracted from current wells, along with governments of the producing regions and provinces, on the condition that revenues are distributed in a way that suits population distribution around the country.

CHAPTER FIVE

Article 114

1. A region consists of one or more provinces, and two or more regions have the right to create a single region.

2. A province or more has the right to set a region according to a referendum called for in one of two ways:

-- a. A demand by one-third of all members of each of the provincial councils that aims to set up a region.

-- b. A demand by one-tenth of voters of the provinces that aim to set up a region.

Article 117

A region's legislative authority is made up of one council, named the National Assembly of the region.

Article 118

The National Council of the region drafts the region's constitution and issues laws, which must not contradict this constitution and Iraq's central laws.

Article 120

The executive authority of the region is made up of the president of the region and the region's government.

Article 128

The region's revenues are made up from the specified allotment from the national budget and from the local revenues of the region.

Article 129

The regional government does what is needed to administer the region, especially setting up internal security forces, such as police, security and region guards.

Article 135

This constitution guarantees the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights of different ethnic groups such as Turkomen, Chaldean, Assyrians and other groups.

CHAPTER SIX

Article 144

The Iraq Supreme Criminal Court continues its work as a legislative, independent commission to look into the crimes of the former dictatorial regime and its symbols, and the Council of Deputies has the right to annul it after it ends its duties.

Article 145

a. The Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification continues its work as an independent commission, in coordination with the judicial authority and executive institutions and according to laws that organize its work.

b. Parliament has the right to dissolve this commission after it ends its work, with a two-thirds majority.

Article 151

No less than 25 percent of Council of Deputies seats go to women.

Article 153

This law is considered in force after people vote on it in a general referendum and when it is published in the official Gazette and the Council of Deputies is elected according to it.

PLANT THE ACORN NOW AND GROW IT INTO AN OAK:

Back the 'Grow Accounts,' Mr. President (Donald Lambro, Aug 22, 2005, Human Events)

Contrary to the belief that President Bush's investment accounts plan is dead, one half of his reform proposal is alive and kicking in the House -- the far less controversial part. The so-called "grow accounts" bond investment bill has the full support of House Republican leaders, including Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who is pushing for an early vote.

The only thing that's missing right now is Bush's support. The White House has been cool to the idea, but conservative strategists say the bill would "pass the House in a heartbeat" with the president's backing. While its prospects remain uncertain in the Senate, a roll call vote on its merits would put Bush back onto the offensive on one of his toughest issues, throw the Democrats into a thorny political situation, and, if it fails, give Republicans a great issue to run on in 2006.

"Grow accounts take Republicans out of the weeds on Social Security," said Larry Hunter, vice president and chief economist of the Free Enterprise Fund, which advises Republicans on economic issues. [...]

The Republican plan, sponsored by Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee chairman Jim McCrery of Louisiana, would allow workers to invest some portion of their payroll taxes in such bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Here's how it would work:

The Social Security payroll tax system takes in billions of dollars more than is needed to pay out monthly retirement checks. The government takes this huge cash surplus and uses it as general revenue to pay its other bills. In return, the feds give the Social Security's so called "trust fund" Treasury bonds that promise to pay back the borrowed money in future years.

Under the grow accounts proposal, workers who sign up would own a share of these bonds and the interest payments that would accrue from them over their working years. Instead of having nothing but promises that they will get their future benefits, they would own secure, tangible assets that no one could take away from them when they are ready to retire, and which could be left to their heirs.

"It's a very positive first step," said Social Security analyst David John at the Heritage Foundation. "The way the accounts are structured, there's no risk. You would own the bonds. It would be your money and could not be spent on highways or other things."

AND NO ONE BELIEVES HE'S ONLY 47:

Birthday means nothing to Franco: He doesn't care he's oldest (DAVID O'BRIEN, 08/23/05, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The oldest player in baseball turns 47 today, but Julio Franco won't be eating cake or opening presents.

"Just another day," said the Braves first baseman, who has no special plans. "Cakes? I don't eat cake. I don't celebrate birthdays. Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Father's Day, the Christmas tree at Christmas time. ... All man-made holidays.

"I don't need to wait for someone to tell me it's a holiday or a day to eat turkey; I eat turkey almost every day. I don't need to wait to buy something for someone. If I see a bouquet of flowers I want to buy for my wife, I buy it."

No one ever said the spiritual Franco was a conventional thinker.

The man gets up to drink a protein shake at 3 a.m., one of eight meals he spreads throughout the day. He believes diet, exercise, discipline and — most importantly — the Lord are his keys to longevity.

EASY MONEY:

The $10,000 Question (JOHN TIERNEY, 8/23/05, NY Times)

I don't share Matthew Simmons's angst, but I admire his style. He is that rare doomsayer who puts his money where his doom is.

After reading his prediction, quoted Sunday in the cover story of The New York Times Magazine, that oil prices will soar into the triple digits, I called to ask if he'd back his prophecy with cash. Without a second's hesitation, he agreed to bet me $5,000.

His only concern seemed to be that he was fleecing me. Mr. Simmons, the head of a Houston investment bank specializing in the energy industry, patiently explained to me why Saudi Arabia's oil production would falter much sooner than expected. That's the thesis of his new book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy."

I didn't try to argue with him about Saudi Arabia, because I know next to nothing about oil production there or anywhere else. I'm just following the advice of a mentor and friend, the economist Julian Simon: if you find anyone willing to bet that natural resource prices are going up, take him for all you can.

I proposed to him a bet using what Julian considered the best measure of a resource's value: how it compares with the average worker's wage. I offered to bet that the price of oil would not rise faster than the average wage, meaning that future workers would be able to afford oil more easily than they could today.

MORE:
Betting on the Planet (JOHN TIERNEY, December 2, 1990, NY Times Magazine)

In 1980 an ecologist and an economist chose a refreshingly unacademic way to resolve their differences. They bet $1,000. Specifically, the bet was over the future price of five metals, but at stake was much more -- a view of the planet's ultimate limits, a vision of humanity's destiny. It was a bet between the Cassandra and the Dr. Pangloss of our era.

They lead two intellectual schools -- sometimes called the Malthusians and the Cornucopians, sometimes simply the doomsters and the boomsters -- that use the latest in computer-generated graphs and foundation-generated funds to debate whether the world is getting better or going to the dogs. The argument has generally been as fruitless as it is old, since the two sides never seem to be looking at the same part of the world at the same time. Dr. Pangloss sees farm silos brimming with record harvests; Cassandra sees topsoil eroding and pesticide seeping into ground water. Dr. Pangloss sees people living longer; Cassandra sees rain forests being decimated. But in 1980 these opponents managed to agree on one way to chart and test the global future. They promised to abide by the results exactly 10 years later -- in October 1990 -- and to pay up out of their own pockets.

The bettors, who have never met in all the years they have been excoriating each other, are both 58-year-old professors who grew up in the Newark suburbs. The ecologist, Paul R. Ehrlich, has been one of the world's better-known scientists since publishing "The Population Bomb" in 1968. More than three million copies were sold, and he became perhaps the only author ever interviewed for an hour on "The Tonight Show." When he is not teaching at Stanford University or studying butterflies in the Rockies, Ehrlich can generally be found on a plane on his way to give a lecture, collect an award or appear in an occasional spot on the "Today" show. This summer he won a five-year MacArthur Foundation grant for $345,000, and in September he went to Stockholm to share half of the $240,000 Crafoord Prize, the ecologist's version of the Nobel. His many personal successes haven't changed his position in the debate over humanity's fate. He is the pessimist.

The economist, Julian L. Simon of the University of Maryland, often speaks of himself as an outcast, which isn't quite true. His books carry jacket blurbs from Nobel laureate economists, and his views have helped shape policy in Washington for the past decade. But Simon has certainly never enjoyed Ehrlich's academic success or popular appeal. On the first Earth Day in 1970, while Ehrlich was in the national news helping to launch the environmental movement, Simon sat in a college auditorium listening as a zoologist, to great applause, denounced him as a reactionary whose work "lacks scholarship or substance." Simon took revenge, first by throwing a drink in his critic's face at a faculty party and then by becoming the scourge of the environmental movement. When he unveiled his happy vision of beneficent technology and human progress in Science magazine in 1980, it attracted one of the largest batches of angry letters in the journal's history.

In some ways, Simon goes beyond Dr. Pangloss, the tutor in "Candide" who insists that "All is for the best in this best of possible worlds." Simon believes that today's world is merely the best so far. Tomorrow's will be better still, because it will have more people producing more bright ideas. He argues that population growth constitutes not a crisis but, in the long run, a boon that will ultimately mean a cleaner environment, a healthier humanity and more abundant supplies of food and raw materials for everyone. And this progress can go on indefinitely because -- "incredible as it may seem at first," he wrote in his 1980 article -- the planet's resources are actually not finite. Simon also found room in the article to criticize, among others, Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, Newsweek, the National Wildlife Federation and the secretary general of the United Nations. It was titled "Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of False Bad News."

An irate Ehrlich wondered how the article had passed peer review at America's leading scientific journal. "Could the editors have found someone to review Simon's manuscript who had to take off his shoes to count to 20?" Ehrlich asked in a rebuttal written with his wife, Anne, also an ecologist at Stanford. They provided the simple arithmetic: the planet's resources had to be divided among a population that was then growing at the unprecedented rate of 75 million people a year. The Ehrlichs called Simon the leader of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that new resources would miraculously fall from the heavens. For years the Ehrlichs had been trying to explain the ecological concept of "carrying capacity" to these economists. They had been warning that population growth was outstripping the earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals. But they couldn't get the economists to listen.

"To explain to one of them the inevitability of no growth in the material sector, or . . . that commodities must become expensive," the Ehrlichs wrote, "would be like attempting to explain odd-day-even-day gas distribution to a cranberry."

Ehrlich decided to put his money where his mouth was by responding to an open challenge issued by Simon to all Malthusians. Simon offered to let anyone pick any natural resource -- grain, oil, coal, timber, metals -- and any future date. If the resource really were to become scarcer as the world's population grew, then its price should rise. Simon wanted to bet that the price would instead decline by the appointed date. Ehrlich derisively announced that he would "accept Simon's astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in." He then formed a consortium with John Harte and John P. Holdren, colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley specializing in energy and resource questions.

In October 1980 the Ehrlich group bet $1,000 on five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- in quantities that each cost $200 in the current market. A futures contract was drawn up obligating Simon to sell Ehrlich, Harte and Holdren these same quantities of the metals 10 years later, but at 1980 prices. If the 1990 combined prices turned out to be higher than $1,000, Simon would pay them the difference in cash. If prices fell, they would pay him. The contract was signed, and Ehrlich and Simon went on attacking each other throughout the 1980's. During that decade the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the greatest increase in history, and the store of metals buried in the earth's crust did not get any larger.

IF WE AREN'T KILLING WE'RE MUDDLED:

Stem Cell Advance Muddles Debate: Work May Stall Efforts To Lift Research Limits (Ceci Connolly, August 23, 2005, Washington Post)

A Harvard University advance in generating embryonic stem cells may have the unintended consequence of hindering congressional efforts to lift research restrictions imposed by President Bush four years ago, leaders on both sides of the issue said yesterday as details of the discovery traveled through the scientific and political communities.

The news that Harvard scientists have successfully converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells -- without using a human egg or new embryo -- is likely to muddle the already complex debate over federal stem cell research policy.

BLESSED ARE THE FIG MAKERS:

Continental Christophobia Cubed: a review of The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel (Daniel Gallagher, Books & Culture)

The title of the book refers to the stark architectural contrast between two Parisian monuments: La Grande Arche de la Défense and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Even a cursory glance at these structures reveals two polarized visions of the relationship between faith and culture. The cathedral embodies the subtle intricacy and richness of Catholic social thinking, while the cube was erected to celebrate the humanitarian ideals embraced by French revolutionaries and extolled in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The potential of the agenda it strives to represent, argues Weigel, may be as vacuous as the space contained within it.

While some are heaving a sigh of despair that Europe simply forgot its Christian roots somewhere along the way, Weigel demonstrates that apathy alone is not the cause of empty churches, plummeting birthrates, and defunct welfare programs on the European continent. Nor is it a matter of Europe deciding that God isn't so important, after all, for public life. Rather, it is the overt and occasionally militant attitude that Christianity is actually harmful to political stability and social progress. Europe is not suffering so much from amnesia as from a severe case of what Joseph Weiler calls "Christophobia." Those who campaigned against the inclusion of any reference to Christianity in the EU constitution stood on the following platform: "not only can there be politics without God, there must be politics without God." Weigel points out that the sinking morale across Europe suggests "that the winners of the European constitutional debate are seriously mistaken." [...]

The book does not leave the reader without a sense of hope. More than advancing his own personal plan for revitalization, Weigel exposes points of light that are already shining. Numerous lay ecclesial movements and religiously inspired free associations are burgeoning in Europe. Weigel makes specific mention of Focolare, Opus Dei, the Sant'Egidio Community, the Emmanuel Community, and Regnum Christi. The effectiveness of movements like these—an effectiveness that baffles secular political pundits—simply proves that John Paul II was right: culture matters. Culture is the underlying fabric that supports a just and free society. Culture also holds the potential of toppling regimes that aim to trample justice and freedom underfoot. Any culture, however, is bankrupt without a memory to sustain it. And that is precisely what Europeans have jeopardized by failing to include, among the 70,000 words that make up the EU constitution, the one word which, more than any other, expresses the key to their civilization.

You believe in a crystal edifice, forever indestructible; that is, in an edifice at which one can neither put out one's tongue on the sly nor make a fig in the pocket. Well, and perhaps I'm afraid of this edifice precisely because it is crystal and forever indestructible, and it will be impossible to put out one's tongue at it even on the sly.

LONG PAST TIME:

Televangelist calls for Chavez' death (Associated Press, 8/23/05)

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club."

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS:

Bubble fever (Bruce Bartlett, August 23, 2005, Townhall)

Financial bubbles have fascinated economists for hundreds of years. One of the earliest and best documented occurred in the early 1600s in Holland, where investors became obsessed with buying and selling tulip bulbs -- the rarest and most beautiful tulips sold, for the equivalent today of thousands of dollars each.

A brilliant financier named John Law, who induced huge investments in Mississippi land, engineered another bubble in France in the early 1700s. It eventually came crashing down in one of the most spectacular market collapses in history, wiping out the wealth and savings of thousands of Frenchmen.

At about the same time, something similar was going on in Britain involving the South Sea Company, which held a monopoly on Britain's trade with the Americas and also owned a big chunk of its national debt.

Since then, there have been many other cases where bubbles have emerged, and economists continue to study them. Most recently, millions of Americans had direct experience with the huge run-up in the stock market in the late 1990s and subsequent crash in the 2000s.

HEY, A PLUM:

‘The Kurdish Problem’: An insurgency group in Turkey is responding favorably to the prime minister’s overtures. But after 20 years, is peace possible? (Sami Kohen And Owen Matthews, Aug. 22, 2005, Newsweek)

Has the Kurdistan Worker's Party, better known as the PKK, finally given up insurgency against the Turkish state, which has claimed over 35,000 lives over 20 years? Last week the PKK announced a one-month unilateral ceasefire after a recent resurgence of attacks against Turkish army patrols and a series of bomb attacks on tourist resorts.

The unexpected ceasefire was prompted by a bold reconciliation initiative by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ''The Kurdish problem" can only be solved by "more democracy, more civil rights, more prosperity,'' Erdogan told heavily policed crowds in Diyarbakir, the heartland of Kurdish nationalism, earlier this month. [...]

[E]rdogan's initiative is the boldest move to reconcile Turks and rebellious Kurds in a generation. If Erdogan [can] convince extremists on both sides—and Europe—that he can truly build up Kurdish rights while not undermining the unity of the Turkish state, he has the chance to become a historic peacemaker.

HIS DARK MATERIALISM:

The rejection of materialism (Dennis Prager, August 23, 2005, Townhall)

The Marxist worldview is based on a materialist understanding of life. In popular jargon, "materialism" means an excessive love of material things. But philosophically, "materialism" means that the only reality is matter, that there is no reality beyond the material world.

That is why, for example, to most leftists it is a great wrong that amid Latin American poverty, the church would build expensive cathedrals. In their view, all that gold and treasure should be spent on the poor. To a person with Judeo-Christian values, on the other hand, while feeding the hungry is a primary value, there are many other values, including the need to feed the soul. Moreover, the fact that many of the world's poor people would prefer having a cathedral to distributing whatever money selling such edifices would provide has disturbed the Left since Marx. To a materialist, the notion that poor people would place non-material concerns over material ones is absurd, if not perverse.

The recent best seller What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by liberal author Thomas Frank, perfectly illustrates this point.

BUT I JUST KNOW WE'RE BETTER OFF....:

Warned, but Worse Off (STEVEN WOLOSHIN, LISA SCHWARTZ and H. GILBERT WELCH, 8/22/05, NY Times)

[W]e just don't know if lung cancer screening does more good than harm. While the benefits of screening are unproven, the harms - one familiar, the other less so - are certain.

The familiar harm is caused by false alarms. CT scans are great at finding abnormal areas of the lung. But while relatively few people have lung cancer, many have other lung abnormalities. After a positive CT scan, many are biopsied, and most will turn out not to have cancer. A lung biopsy is not a trivial procedure. Although serious complications are rare, the procedure may result in hospitalization (largely for a collapsed lung), and there have been deaths.

The less familiar, but more worrisome, harm comes from overdiagnosis and overtreatment. In the largest study to date, Japanese researchers using CT scans found almost 10 times the amount of lung cancer they had detected in a similar group of patients using X-rays. Amazingly, with CT screening, almost as many nonsmokers were found to have lung cancer as smokers.

Given that smokers are 15 times as likely to die from lung cancer, the CT scans had to be finding abnormalities that were technically cancer (based on their microscopic appearance), but that did not behave in the way most people think of cancer behaving - as a progressive disease that ultimately kills. So here's the problem. Because we can't distinguish a progressive cancer from a nonprogressive cancer on the CT scan, we tend to treat everybody who tests positive. Obviously, the patients with indolent cancers cannot benefit from treatment; they can only experience its side effects. Treatment - usually surgery, but sometimes chemotherapy or radiation therapy - is painful and risky. Some 5 percent of patients older than 65 die following partial lung removal, and nearly 14 percent die with complete removal.

But wait a minute. Don't those compelling five-year survival statistics of 80 percent vs. 15 percent prove that CT screening works? The short answer is no. You have to consider exactly how a five-year survival rate is figured. It is a fraction. Imagine 1,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer five years ago. If 150 are alive today, the five year survival is 150/1000, or 15 percent. Yet even if CT screening raised the five-year survival rate to 80 percent, it is entirely possible that no one gets an extra day of life.

Word of the Day (WordSmith, 8/23/05)

legerity (luh-JER-i-tee) adjective

Nimbleness; agility.

[From French légèreté, from léger (light), from Vulgar Latin leviarius,
from Latin levis (light).]

HE'S GONNA NEED A FRONT:

Help! I`m A Hollywood Republican! (Robert J. Avrech, 8/18/05, Jewish Press)

I’m a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There’s even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney — yes, Disney — to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats.

Me, I’m a Republican. [...]

The political divide in Hollywood is now being felt in the most important quarter: the war against Islamic terrorism. Basically, Hollywood denies that such a war exists.

Script #1: I was recently hired to write a movie for a cable station about the war on terrorism. I was flown to New York where I had a long meeting with the head of the network about what he wanted. He described it thus: “I want a hard-hitting multi-character story about terrorism, with one storyline that emphasizes how someone can be reached through education.”

Okay, that sounded pretty good. My juices were flowing. This is the kind of material I specialize in. Humanistic but with some good action scenes.

And then the head of the network started talking about President Bush. He accused him of being anti-Semitic.

I was flabbergasted. You may disagree with President Bush’s policies, you may not like his speeches or the way he butchers the English language, but gee willikers, no American president has shown such friendship to Jews and to Israel as this fine man. I tried to lay out a few facts, but the head of the network — Jewish, naturally — just brushed them aside. Don’t bother me with facts, he was saying, I believe what I believe and that’s the end of the conversation.

I should have interpreted this as a warning of what was to come and not taken the job. But I did.

After handing in the first draft, I was told that the character of the Islamic suicide bomber was not acceptable. I was told that my portrayal was “insensitive.” After the second draft I was ordered to remove the mosque where a dissident group was vying for control from the more moderate Muslims. And now, five drafts later, here’s what the screenplay has turned into: The Islamic terrorists who properly dominated the original draft are now minor players. American militia members, ala Timothy McVeigh, are now the bad guys.

When I tried to explain that American militia members are hardly a threat to anyone now that the back of the militia movement has been broken through a series of lawsuits, the executives stared right through me. When I confront these people with the truth they look at me as if I am some visitor from some foreign planet.

Which I guess I am.

This film is no longer about terrorism. It’s no longer about…anything. It’s a mess. A jumble of conflicting story lines that can never co