THEY'LL KNOW FUNKYTOWN BETTER THAN THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (via The Mother Judd):

P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs (SETH SCHIESEL, 4/30/07, NY Times)

Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.

In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”

Bill Hines, a physical education teacher at the school for 27 years, shook his head a little, smiled and said, “I’ll tell you one thing: they don’t run in here like that for basketball.”

It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.

Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade.

HOW DO YOU TELL A JUDICIAL EXTREMIST?:

High court: police can use violent means to end high-speed chases: The Supreme Court's 8-to-1 decision involved a Georgia teenager, who sued a police deputy who rammed the teen's speeding car, causing serious physical damage. (Warren Richey, 5/01/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

In an important ruling defining Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in the context of high-speed police chases, the US Supreme Court on Monday gave a green light to law enforcement to use violent force to stop fleeing suspects who pose a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others. [...]

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a lone dissent.

DEMOCRATS ARE SO REACTIONARY THESE DAYS...

Supreme Court declines to enter fray on detainee trials: Monday's action helps to clear the way for the next military trials against terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. (Warren Richey, 5/01/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

The US Supreme Court has helped clear the way for the next round of special trials by military commissions at the terror detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

On Monday, the court declined to take up a joint appeal filed by former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, who faces murder charges for allegedly throwing a hand grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan. Mr. Khadr was 15 years old at the time.

LIFE JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER:

How pistachios help the heart (FIONA MACRAE, 30th April 2007, Daily Mail)

A handful or two of pistachio nuts a day could keep heart disease at bay, research suggests.

They appear to lower cholesterol and keep arteries healthy.

Just three ounces of pistachios a day is enough to significantly lower the risk of heart disease.

THE TALIBAN'S BRILLIANT NEW STRATEGY...:

Allies 'kill 145 Taliban' in Operation Achilles (Kim Sengupta, 01 May 2007, Independent)

British, Nato and Afghan forces have launched offensives in the west and south of the country, with reports that "scores" of Taliban rebels have been killed during heavy fighting.

The battles took place in Shindbad, 80 miles south of Herat, and the Sangin Valley in Helmand, with about 4,500 Western and Afghan troops involved. The US military claimed 145 Taliban fighters had been killed in the west during fighting that claimed one American life.

The figures, if accurate, would mean the worst loss for the Islamist forces this year.

THE WEST NEVER TIRES OF BEING YELLOW SCARED:

The Empire of Lies: The twenty-first century will not belong to China. (Guy Sormanm, Spring 2007, City Journal)

The Western press is full of stories these days on China’s arrival as a superpower, some even heralding, or warning, that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident of China’s economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Investment pours in. Crowning China’s new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

But China’s success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China’s economic “miracle” is rotting from within.

The Party’s primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms—the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison—even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.

The West’s tendency to misread China dates back to the seventeenth century, when French and Italian Jesuit travelers formed stereotypes that clutter our minds even today. We learned then—or thought we learned—that the Chinese were not like us. They had no religion, and the notion of freedom was alien to them. They naturally gravitated toward enlightened despotism, as embodied by the philosopher-emperor. Such misconceptions link up across time: Voltaire sang the praises of the Mandarins, wishing a similar elite class could rule Europe; leftist intellectuals in the sixties and seventies celebrated the heroism of Mao Zedong; and today’s business elites happily go along with the Communist propaganda that democracy and free speech are contrary to the Chinese ethos.

Yet with enough patience and will, one can plunge into the real China. Since 1967, I have visited the country regularly, and I spent all of 2005 and part of 2006 traveling through her teeming cities as well as her innermost recesses, where few Westerners go. I make no claim to know China fully, an impossibly ambitious task. I merely want to record the words and impressions of some exceptional Chinese men and women, who mostly suffer in silence, raising when they can the demand for a free nation—a “normal” nation.

NOT TO MENTION ALL THE SWEET PRISON CONSTRUCTION JOBS FOR IMMIGRANTS:

Broken Windows Turns 25: And it has worked wonders on both coasts. (Charles Upton Sahm, Spring 2007, City Journal)

Twenty-five years ago, social scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist (and Manhattan Institute senior fellow) George Kelling first introduced the phrase “Broken Windows” into the public policy lexicon. In a pathbreaking Atlantic Monthly article, Wilson and Kelling pointed out that people were likelier to vandalize a building with one broken window than a building with none, since a broken window sends the message that nobody cares, encouraging vandals to act on their destructive impulses. Similarly, they suggested, if a community tolerates quality-of-life offenses, such as drug use and prostitution, it signals to all potential lawbreakers that it doesn’t care what happens to it; more serious crime will soon result.

In the early nineties, the chief of New York City’s transit police, William Bratton, put the Broken Windows theory into practice. With Kelling as consultant, Bratton began to go after the fare evaders, aggressive panhandlers, pickpockets, and other petty (and not so petty) criminals who had turned the subway system into what he called “the transit equivalent of Dante’s Inferno.” Bratton also had cops enforce anti-loitering laws to steer the homeless away from the subways and toward social services. Homeless advocates and civil libertarians fought him every step of the way, but Bratton prevailed, bringing order to the chaotic system. Sure enough, not only did minor crime plummet; serious crime did, too, and ridership soared. In nabbing low-level offenders, Bratton also discovered that many of them were wanted for much more serious crimes.

A few years later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani chose Bratton as his top cop and charged him with leading a similar revolution above ground. The rest, as they say, is history. With Broken Windows as a key part of a broader reform of policing (including the introduction of new accountability measures and computer analysis of crime patterns), the Giuliani era saw serious crime fall 65 percent in Gotham, sparking a citywide revitalization. Bratton’s successors—Howard Safir and Bernard Kerik under Giuliani, and now Ray Kelly under Mayor Mike Bloomberg—have kept the policing innovations in place.

Bratton is now the chief of police in Los Angeles, where he has successfully employed many of the tactics that worked in New York.

HOW MITT COULD BEST SERVE HIS PARTY AND COUNTRY:

John Kerry's neverland (Joan Vennochi, April 29, 2007, Boston Globe)

Like it or not, Kerry could end up a US senator for life, even though his popularity is down since his glory days as a presidential nominee.

A December 2006 Survey USA poll put Kerry's approval rating in Massachusetts at 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. A more recent poll conducted by Suffolk University and 7News suggests that Bay State voters are, fittingly, for and against their junior senator. When 400 registered voters were asked whether Kerry should run for another six-year term, 56 percent of them said that it is time to give someone else a chance.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN LEFT...:

Germany Rediscovers the US as a Partner (Der Spiegel, 4/30/07)

For Merkel...the closeness with the US is much more than mere symbolism. She sees America as "a force that has brought freedom to the peoples of the world." She now plans to make the most of that freedom by further strengthening the two countries' economic ties. In the storm of globalization, the United States and Europe plan to expand their cooperation to benefit both countries.

It is virtually unprecedented in German history for a chancellor to be so unreservedly aligned with the US. Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, saw America as a guarantor of freedom, but also perceived it as an occupation force. Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt, both Social Democratic (SPD) chancellors, were pro-American but innately skeptical.

Merkel, on the contrary, wants to expand Germany's close ties with the United States and is on the verge of making a pact with America the cornerstone of her foreign policy. Indeed, the resoluteness with which she has pursued this goal stands in conspicuous contrast with her government's lack of political progress back home in Germany.

A new beginning in trans-Atlantic relations? Out of consideration for her SPD coalition partners, Merkel has elected not to shine the spotlight too brightly on recent improvements in US-German relations -- indeed, her political modesty is one condition for the policy's success. Should she toot her own horn, she would likely alienate the SPD, her party's partner in Berlin's governing coalition.

Still, the contrast between Merkel and SPD-man Schröder, who courted Russian President Vladimir Putin and cultivated anti-American sentiment, couldn't be greater. Today's SPD, led by Kurt Beck, a skeptic on the subject of the United States, and represented in the cabinet by Foreign Minister and Schröder friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier, prefers a clearly distanced approach. Even in his inaugural speech, Steinmeier stressed his intent to be "when necessary (America's) constructively critical partner."

Merkel thinks differently. She is dedicated to the trans-Atlantic relationship and bases it on a fundamental political calculation. She is convinced that there can be no progress anywhere in opposition to the United States -- not in Europe and not in the Middle East. Even Europe's relationship with Asia requires coordination with Merkel's friends in the White House.

FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN...:

Reality Show: Sen. McCain Injects Some Useful Truths Into The Presidential Campaign (The Washington Post, April 29, 2007)

[M]r. McCain's remarks upon his formal entry into the 2008 presidential campaign offered a reminder of the appealing qualities that attracted so many voters eight years ago -- and that make him a formidable contender still. [...]

Whatever your position on the war, then or now, Mr. McCain deserves credit for foresight and consistency about how the war should have been waged.

The senator spent the bulk of his speech outlining other priorities, including reforming a wasteful and needlessly complex tax code, reducing dependence on foreign oil, maintaining free trade while finding more effective ways to help workers hurt by globalization, and helping the uninsured "without bankrupting the country."

His discussion of the looming problem of runaway entitlement spending was forthright As with the other areas he discussed, the senator didn't spell out what tough choices he would endorse, but at least he addressed the issue, neither discounting the magnitude of the problem nor promising a painless solution. This is why the 2008 race is better for having Mr. McCain in it.

KILLER CLOWNS:

Why you pretend to like modern art (Spengler, 5/01/07, Asia Times)

After I wrote Admit it - you really hate modern art (January 30), many readers assured me that I was quite mistaken about them. Especially among the educated elites there are many who will go to their graves proclaiming their love for modern art, and I owe them an explanation of sorts. At the cost of most of few remaining friends, I will provide it.

You pretend to like modern art because you want to be creative. In fact, you are not creative, not in the least. In all of human history we know of only a few hundred truly creative men and women. It saddens me to break the news, but you aren't one of them. By insisting that you are not creative, you think I am saying that you are not important. I do not mean that, but will have to return to the topic later.

You have your heart set on being creative because you want to worship yourself, your children, or some pretentious impostor, rather than the god of the Bible. Absence of faith has not made you more rational. On the contrary, it has made you ridiculous in your adoration of clownish little deities, of whom the silliest is yourself.

INSUFFICIENTLY THATCHERITE:

Blair's regrets over three wasted years: Reforms were too slow, says Falconer (Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour, April 30, 2007, The Guardian)

Tony Blair will mark his decade in office this week with "big regrets" at his inability to move more quickly to reform Britain's public services, one of his closest cabinet allies has claimed.

As the prime minister puts the finishing touches to his resignation statement, in which he will declare that Labour has transformed schools and hospitals, Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, told the Guardian that up to three years were lost after the 1997 election victory. "One of Tony's big regrets, I think, would be that we didn't realise quick enough that if you genuinely wanted to change the way the public service delivered for the public you needed to embark upon a process of cultural change," he said in an interview to mark Mr Blair's 10 years in Downing Street.

"I think it is 99-2000 that he begins to realise that something more profound is required."

Lord Falconer, who has played a key role as Mr Blair's "fixer", said the initial period after Labour's landslide general election victory became an immense struggle, like "pushing water up hills".

The assessment of the pace of reform in key areas of domestic policy, such as health, education and welfare, comes as Mr Blair moves to underline the significance of his legacy.

WHICH IS WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE:

The real winner of an SNP victory in Scotland this week would be English nationalism (Melanie Phillips, 30th April 2007, Daily Mail)

[Alex Salmond] has even suggested that an independent Scotland would remain a loyal subject of the English Crown. Some might find such touching effusions simply incredible; but the fact remains that Mr Salmond has skilfully transformed his image from Braveheart warrior to emollient statesman. [...]

[T]he potential implications for British politics are seismic.

Labour will lose not just Scottish Executive seats but its national power base. For its strength as a national political party derives from its representation in Scotland, where the vast majority of MPs are Labour.

Gordon Brown, meanwhile, will have lost the country which has been regarded as his personal fiefdom and where so many of his own placemen have been put into positions of power. If he can't even win in his own 'backyard, his party will be asking, how is he going to win in the rest of the nation? At the very moment he finally comes into his longed-for inheritance at Westminster, he will lose the basis of his political power.

Indeed, the fact that he is so determined above all else to become Prime Minister in the English Parliament has confirmed many Scots in their opinion that he has betrayed his origins.

THE CLASSIC PLIGHT OF THE NOUVEAU RICHE...:

The Pirate Pose: Twenty years after Bonfire of the Vanities, the author checks in on the new masters of the universe and finds them even coarser and ruder than their predecessors could have ever imagined being. (Tom Wolfe, May 2007, Conde Nast Portfolio)

Somehow the members of the Knickerbocker, the Brook, the Union, and the Leash, for that matter, do not seem too keen on recruiting people infinitely richer than they are who pride themselves on their aggressive nature and will happily see to it you enjoy doing things their way; even less so, the three clubs that count, socially, in Greenwich, the Round Hill Club, the Field Club, and the Greenwich Country Club. The country club is bigger and doesn’t seem as picky as the others, but it is not eager to welcome these people.

So what? We will build our own clubs! Our own sports emporia! Our own resorts! We will outdo the wobbly too-tall old elite with their scrubbed-wood aesthetic left over from the early days of the 20th century. Have you -ever actually been inside that Round Hill Club they’re so proud of? The worn wood, the rickety sashes, the tired paint, the failing fabrics, the cracked leather—the place is falling apart, the way we see it. (We’re capital-M Modern.) Imagine how it would look if it were set beside Stevie Cohen’s own 32,000-square-foot clubhouse and 14 acres of grounds! Next to Stevie’s art collection—which is nothing less than a world-class museum!—Stevie’s indoor basketball court, year-round swimming pool under glass, his gym, his spa facility, his theater for movies and every other electronic medium, his hair salon, two putting greens complete with sand traps and a fairway in between, and, as the pièce de résistance, an ice rink the size of Rockefeller Center’s with a 30-by-24-foot rink house for the Zamboni! Clubhouses? We’ll show you clubhouses!

The only thing missing is an entire 18-hole golf course. There is always the Burning Tree Country Club, whose membership is largely Jewish, nearby, but who has to bother with “nearby”? When we want to play golf, we just go over to the Westchester County Airport, where our Gulfstreams, Falcons, and full crews fly us anywhere in the world to play on courses that make the Greenwich Country Club look like miniature golf. Every weekend? Anytime we want!

As for the co-op buildings in New York, their residents having felt already burned by the fabulous new money, some are now considering new screening devices. The “good buildings” have traditionally required full financial--disclosure statements, certified by C.P.A.’s, to make sure applicants have enough money. The board of a building on Park Avenue is now considering rejecting applicants who have too much money. These days, when a personal net worth punches a hole in the earth’s atmosphere, it invariably signals one of these people.

In Greenwich, the two charities with old-money cachet, namely the Boys and Girls Club and Greenwich Hospital, will gladly accept these people’s money but don’t seem to have them on their boards. So these people’s money goes mainly to the Bruce Museum, which has no such scruples. The Bruce Museum’s Renaissance Ball is perhaps the most lavish party of the year in Greenwich.

In New York there are now, as there have been for 125 years, two cracks in the “walled city,” as Theodore Dreiser called it in Sister Carrie, through which new money can slip: charity and the arts.

But these people keep getting stuck halfway. On the art front, they soon realize they have a problem. New York’s great cultural repositories, the museums, libraries, and performing arts centers, have a social hierarchy. To use an N.C.A.A. analogy, there is Division I, consisting of (1) the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (2) the New York Public Library, (3) the Museum of Modern Art, and (4) the Frick Collection. From that elevation it is a terrifying plunge in status to Division III: the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Natural History, the Morgan Library, the Museum of the City of New York, and the New-York Historical Society. There is no Division II.

All these institutions are dying to get their hands on the stupendous palletloads of money that socially ambitious hedge fund managers have amassed. The Division III institutions can’t resist. For example, 43-year-old David Ganek of Level Global Investors is not only on the board of the Guggenheim, he is treated as a star. He is touted as having assembled a breathtaking art collection of his own, of the Richard Prince, Jeff Koons hot-now variety. He was co-chairman of the museum’s annual benefit extravaganza in November and appeared onstage with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and celebrity lure Dennis Hopper. The party brought in $4 million, which made the museum’s director ecstatic.

On the other hand, it was anemic compared with the Robin Hood Foundation’s $48 million. That may explain why another Division III board, Lincoln Center’s, has made Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates vice chairman and featured star. Kovner has donated $20 million (as well as $25 million to Juilliard). He is also head recruiter of other hedge fund managers. Last year, he convened a breakfast meeting in his office with six of them, including Steven Mnuchin of Dune Capital and Eric Mindich of Eton Park, both of whom are also on the Division III Whitney’s board.

Lincoln Center’s gratitude to Kovner knows no boundaries—except possibly for a single tiny leg up he accomplished in all innocence. There were old-money sorts on the board who rolled their eyes in a northerly orbit the time he sat down at a meeting and slung one leg over the arm of his chair.

Only halfway, halfway, halfway … These people have yet to actually make it into the walled city and onto the boards of the Big Four. Steve Cohen has a $3 billion fortune, according to Forbes, and a huge collection of Modern and contemporary art reportedly worth $500 million one day and $750 million the next. That may be so, and the Museum of Modern Art would no doubt like to have some of both, but Cohen has gotten no further at the museum than its paintings-and-sculpture-acquisition committee. Ganek, likewise, has made it to the Metropolitan Museum’s photography committee, and that’s it for him.

Edith Wharton’s New York new money, embodied by Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, wanted nothing so much as to replicate the status symbols and customs of old money—the architecture, the art collections, the country estates, the dress, manners, politesse, sophistication, worldly wisdom—in order to achieve certified respectability. But we can assume no such thing about our new hedge fund money. Getting in socially in the Edith Wharton sense may be part of their ambition, but it crashes head-on into their most cherished values, their very status fixation. The animal spirits that have brought them their astounding fortunes and, equally important, honor in the eyes of one another practically guarantee that they will be shut out of places like the Knickerbocker, the Brook, the Union. For that matter, even a much younger, hipper club, such as Soho House, hasn’t welcomed them either—and these people thought they would fit right in.

So in the spring of 2005, they opened their own club, the Core Club, in midtown Manhattan, a club to beat all clubs, a billionaires club. No amenity would be regarded as too over-the-top. Every member working out in the club’s fitness center would have a butler at his elbow. To do what, was not immediately evident. Nevertheless, the prospects of the ultimate club seemed so swell, 100 people ponied up $100,000 each as “elite founding members,” reported a wide-eyed Time magazine. Each of the 400 other members—500 was the limit—agreed to pay an initiation fee of $55,000, staggeringly high for an in-town, indoor club, plus $1,000 a month in dues, meaning the club would take in $6 million a year in dues alone. The membership was a royal assortment of hedge fund managers and suchlike: David Ganek, Richard Perry, Stephen Schwarzman, Barry Rosenstein, Teddy Forstmann, Bruce Wasserstein, plus a few female celebrities such as Patty Smyth and Fergie, Duchess of York, plus—ahhhh, the poetry of status justice!—the bitterest and most poetic mocker of private clubs in our time … Daniel Loeb! Daniel Loeb … club man at last! The club remains flush with cash and Croesuses. Some have been saying, however, that there are reports that the members are not exactly wild about going to the club to beat all clubs anymore.

If so, the reason is not hard to find. At the Soho House, and wherever else the younger smart set convenes, the Core Club is now known as the “club for people who can’t get into clubs.”

THE BRITS ARE JUST LUCKY IT ISN'T WINTER...:

UK troops lead anti-Taliban operation (Independent, 30 April 2007)

British troops were today leading an operation to drive the Taliban out of one of its heartlands in the south of Afghanistan.

Operation Silicon, involving more than 2,000 Nato and Afghan troops, was launched before dawn in the Sangin valley area of Helmand province.

In the first hours of the operation, several Taliban compounds were seized and destroyed amid moderate resistance from the group's fighters, said a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Regional Command South.

MAHMOUD NO LONGER MATTERS:

Iran's long road to Sharm al-Sheikh (Kaveh L Afrasiabi, 5/01/07, Asia Times)

Although Iran's delegation will be headed by Mottaki, all eyes are on Ali Larijani, the powerful head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, who made a surprise visit to Baghdad to discuss the summit, about which Larijani has expressed "certain ambiguities and questions".

But the ambiguities may run on both sides, and a key question centers on Iran's own diplomatic priorities. Larijani is fresh from constructive dialogue with Javier Solana, the foreign-policy chief of the European Union, in Ankara last week, on Iran's nuclear program. Solana has said Larijani told him Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had expressed "readiness to engage in direct dialogue" with the United States. [...]

Rice appears to be amenable to Solana's suggestion and has stated that she does not "rule out" the possibility of direct dialogue with Mottaki on the sidelines of the Egypt conference, adding that if this were to take place, she would discuss not only Iraq but also the nuclear issue.

MORE:
Inside the struggle for Iran (Simon Tisdall, April 30, 2007, The Guardian)

A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they call the "militia state" on public life and personal freedom.

Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. [...]

[O]pposition spokesmen say their broader objective is to bring down the fundamentalist regime by democratic means, transform Iran into a "normal country", and obviate the need for any military or other US and western intervention. Rightwing political and religious forces, divided and dismayed by Mr Ahmadinejad's much-criticised performance, are already mobilising to meet the threat.

The movement amounts to the clearest sign yet within Iran that the country is by no means unified behind a president who has led it into confrontation with the west over the nuclear issue, while presiding over economic decline at home.

WHICH RAISES THE QUESTION...:

Keep Foot On, Or Chaos and "Shiastan" (Leon Krauze, 4/30/07, PostGlobal)

Four years ago, George W. Bush opened Pandora’s Box. And now there is no realistic way to put the lid back on.

For a while now, there have been only two possible outcomes in Iraq: the bad and the worse. Which is the latter and how to avoid it? The worst outcome for Iraq would be a full-scale civil war that ends in the country’s partition. There is little question that, once the American forces leave, the country will become a far bloodier and more lawless battleground than it is now.

Once that happens, I see no reason why Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite strongmen would seek any kind of compromise with Sunni leaders in a pluralist government. Outright Shia domination of Iraq should never be allowed.

A HEALTHY RECOGNITION THAT CATHOLICISM IS IRRECONCILABLE WITH LIBERALISM:

Did Justices' Catholicism Play Part in Abortion Ruling? (Robert Barnes, 4/30/07, Washington Post)

Is it significant that the five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold the federal ban on a controversial abortion procedure also happen to be the court's Roman Catholics?

It is to Tony Auth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He drew Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. wearing bishop's miters, and labeled his cartoon "Church and State."

Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters hashed out the issue on "The View," with O'Donnell noting that a majority of the court is Catholic and wondering about "separation of church and state."

WOMEN VS MOTHER EARTH:

Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity: Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives (Blaine Harden, 4/30/07, Washington Post)

Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world.

To that end, Alex Sifford, 51, has been buying compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use about 75 percent less power than incandescent bulbs. He sneaks them into sockets all over the house. This has been driving his wife nuts.

She knows that the bulbs, called CFLs, save money and use less energy, thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. She knows, too, that Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey and the Department of Energy endorse them. Still, the bulbs, with their initial flicker, slow warm-up and slightly weird color, bug her.

"What really got me was when my husband put a fluorescent in the lamp next to my bed," recalls Sara Sifford, 53. She said she yelled at her husband for "violating the last vestige of my personal space."

Experts on energy consumption call it the "wife test." And one of the dimly lighted truths of the global-warming era is that fluorescent bulbs still seem to be flunking out in most American homes. [...]

"There is still a big hurdle in convincing Americans that lighting-purchase decisions make a big difference in individual electricity bills and collectively for the environment," said Wendy Reed, director of the federal government's Energy Star campaign, which labels products that save energy and has been working with retailers to market CFL bulbs.

"I have heard time and again that a husband goes out and puts the bulb into the house, thinking he is doing a good thing," Reed said. "Then, the CFL bulb is changed back out by the women. It seems that women are much more concerned with how things look. We are the nesters."

MORE:
Lamps Out Over D.C. (MARK STEYN, April 30, 2007, NY Sun)

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Senator Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

WHICH IS THE POINT OF THE SURGE:

Maliki's Office Is Seen Behind Purge in Forces: Some Commanders Had Pursued Militias (Joshua Partlow, 4/30/07, Washington Post)

A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post.

Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals.

WHERE'S THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE WHEN YOU NEED THEM?:

What war?: At home, the economy soars and Americans let the good times roll. Meanwhile, Iraq burns. (Niall Ferguson, April 30, 2007, LA Times)

On Wednesday, fueled by seemingly limitless liquidity and reports of strong corporate earnings, the Dow Jones industrial average hit a record 13,000. The financial markets seem to have shrugged off their recent anxieties about so-called subprime mortgages, focusing instead on the megabucks being made at the other end of the income distribution scale. A survey by Alpha magazine revealed that three American hedge-fund managers earned more than $1 billion last year.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Iraq burns. More than 3,100 Americans have died there, the equivalent of 100 Virginia Techs.

THE DECLINE OF DARWINISM:

Generation tolerant: A cellphone poll of California youth shows remarkably liberal attitudes toward race but conservative beliefs on family values. (LA Times, April 30, 2007)

The survey, sponsored by New America Media, found dramatically liberal attitudes when it comes to the issue of getting along. Two-thirds say they have dated someone of another ethnicity, and a whopping 87% say they would marry or have a life partner of a different race. [...]

Most young adult Californians have many friends outside their own race, the survey found. For Asians and Anglos, the majority of their friends are of different races, while Latinos and blacks said that about 40% of their friends come from different groups.

And as for illegal immigration, basically the kids don't see what the fuss is all about — 82% say illegal immigrants should be given a chance to earn citizenship.

But if you think that California is producing a generation of young liberals, think again. The young people in the survey swing to the right when it comes to family values and religion.

Their No. 1 concern is the breakdown of the family. Second is violence in their neighborhoods. A majority say they are religious and spiritual. They plan to go to college, have jobs, marry, buy homes, raise kids.

IMAGINE? A STATIST SOUNDING FRENCH POLITICIAN...:

Sarkozy: I am no fascist (even if I sound like one) (John Lichfield, 30 April 2007, Independent)

The centre-right candidate gave a cheering crowd of 20,000 people a piece of vintage "Sarko" - 80 minutes of finger-jabbing indignation against the political system to which he has belonged for 20 years.

True, M. Sarkozy, 52, the centre-right candidate for the presidency, angrily denied that he was a fascist or even a "nationalist". He reminded the crowd that France's greatest, modern political hero, Charles de Gaulle, had also been accused of having fascist, anti- democratic leanings. True, M. Sarkozy promised, if elected, to introduce a small dose of proportional representation into one of the two houses of the French parliament. That is a long-standing demand of supporters of the centrist UDF party who hold the key to Sunday's election.

Otherwise, it was a high-octane performance of controlled populism, touching every button of anger and indignation in a country with as many grumbles as cheeses. M. Sarkozy said that he wanted to be the "spokesman for France".

He wanted to stand up to all those who fleeced the French people, which included "politicians, technocrats, trades unionists and fraudsters". Presumably, M. Sarkozy does not count himself as a politician.

This was the language of the extreme, populist right, in the name - M. Sarkozy insisted - of consensual, pragmatic, liberalising reform. M. Sarkozy may not be a fascist but he is not afraid of sounding like one. This may be the secret of his success but it also explains why a large part of France - and not just on the left - is scared of the prospect, even the probability, of a Sarkozy presidency.

MALI CONTENT:

Malians vote in model election for Africa (Simon Usborne, 30 April 2007, Independent)

It is one of the world's poorest countries and lies at the heart of a region often marred by vote rigging and polling day violence, but as Malians await the results of yesterday's election - their fourth free ballot in 15 years - the former French colony is quickly emerging as a democratic model for Africa.

A steady trickle of voters began lining up early yesterday morning at polling stations in Bamako, the Mali capital, and throughout the vast West African state, which stretches from the windswept dunes of the Saharan north to the fertile cotton fields that lie beside the River Niger in the south.

Soldiers guarded voting centres and early balloting was reported to be calm and orderly, in stark contrast to the bloody chaos that beset elections in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, earlier this month.

Most voters predicted an easy re-election victory for former coup leader, President Amadou Toumani Touré, known as "The Soldier of Malian Democracy" by his supporters after he saved the country from decades of dictatorship.

Speaking to reporters after voting in central Bamako, Mr Touré, who faced competition from seven other candidates, was quick to affirm that elections would be free and fair.

"My wish is for a turnout which reflects our democratic culture," he said as supporters mobbed him chanting "ATT", the initials by which is he popularly known.

EV...:

Companies Shift More Donations To Democrats: House Leaders' Coffers Swell as Balance Swings Against Republicans (BRODY MULLINS and DEAN TREFTZ, April 30, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

For the new Democratic bosses in the House, power has quickly translated into money, as many big companies have shifted more of their campaign contributions to the new congressional majority, and away from longtime Republican allies.

The top four House leaders -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Majority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland and their main lieutenants -- raised a combined $2.24 million in the first quarter of 2007, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. That was more than three times as much as the $697,694 they raised in the first quarter of 2005, the comparable period in the previous two-year election cycle.

OLD GUYS DON'T GET YOUNGER:

Yanks' pitching, not Torre, is to blame (Ken Rosenthal, 4/30/07, FOXSports.com)

Torre shouldn't be fired Monday. He shouldn't be fired Tuesday. He probably shouldn't be fired at all this season, not when general manager Brian Cashman handed him a pitching staff that would make any manager look dumb.

Even Cashman could not have anticipated that four of the Yankees' top six starters would get injured, though the losses of Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano do not exactly qualify as surprises.

The truth is, rival general managers have spent years waiting for this moment — the moment when the Yankees' pitching staff would be caught in a difficult transition between old and young.

SOMEWHERE, LEE ATWATER SALIVATES:

A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith (JODI KANTOR, 4/30/07, NY Times)

Members of Trinity United Church of Christ squeezed into a downtown hotel ballroom in early March to celebrate the long service of their pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. [...]

Few of those at Mr. Wright’s tribute in March knew of the pressures that Mr. Obama’s presidential run was placing on the relationship between the pastor and his star congregant. Mr. Wright’s assertions of widespread white racism and his scorching remarks about American government have drawn criticism, and prompted the senator to cancel his delivery of the invocation when he formally announced his candidacy in February.

Mr. Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate who says he was only shielding his pastor from the spotlight, said he respected Mr. Wright’s work for the poor and his fight against injustice. But “we don’t agree on everything,” Mr. Obama said. “I’ve never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics.”

It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright. [...]

It is difficult to tell whether Mr. Obama’s religious and political beliefs are fused or simply run parallel. The junior senator from Illinois often talks of faith as a moral force essential for solving America’s vexing problems. Like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and John Edwards, his fellow Democratic candidates, he expresses both a political and a religious obligation to help the downtrodden. Like conservative Christians, he speaks of AIDS as a moral crisis. And like his pastor, Mr. Obama opposes the Iraq war.

His embrace of faith was a sharp change for a man whose family offered him something of a crash course in comparative religion but no belief to call his own. “He comes from a very secular, skeptical family,” said Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty activist and longtime friend of Mr. Obama. “His faith is really a personal and an adult choice. His is a conversion story.”

The grandparents who helped raise Mr. Obama were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists. His mother was an anthropologist who collected religious texts the way others picked up tribal masks, teaching her children the inspirational power of the common narratives and heroes.

His mother’s tutelage took place mostly in Indonesia, in the household of Mr. Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.

“My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s younger half sister. [...]

Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy. Mr. Obama had never met a minister who made pilgrimages to Africa, welcomed women leaders and gay members and crooned Teddy Pendergrass rhythm and blues from the pulpit. Mr. Wright was making Trinity a social force, initiating day care, drug counseling, legal aid and tutoring. He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views.

Followers were also drawn simply by Mr. Wright’s appeal. Trinity has 8,500 members today, making it the largest American congregation in the United Church of Christ, a mostly white denomination known for the independence of its congregations and its willingness to experiment with traditional Protestant theology.

Mr. Wright preached black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as the story of the struggles of black people, whom by virtue of their oppression are better able to understand Scripture than those who have suffered less. That message can sound different to white audiences, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. “Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dr. Hopkins said...

JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS...:

Sexier and slimmer with a pill that raises the libido while making you thin (SAM GREENHILL, 29th April 2007, Daily Mail)

It could be the answer to many women's prayers - not to mention men's.

A wonder pill has been developed which not only boosts a female's sex drive, but helps her lose weight at the same time.

So far it has been tested only on shrews...

MOSS-GATHERING (OR ROLLING STONED?):

Pats procure incomparable weapon (John Tomase, 4/30/07, Boston Herald)

It’s fair to say that Tom Brady has never thrown to anyone even remotely approximating Moss, who’s big (6-foot-4), strong (210 pounds) and blazingly fast (4.29-second 40-yard dash, if you’re to believe his representatives).

He can sprint by defensive backs on one play, then leap over them on the next. He can stretch the field before the catch, and run with the ball after it. He’s a weapon on either 10-yard line.

Oh, and he’s dying to win a Super Bowl, as he proved yesterday by leaving $21 million on the table to sign a one-year, $3 million deal with the Pats that includes $2 million in incentives.

“I’ve made a lot of money in my career and I still have money in the bank,” Moss said. “So by me coming to an organization like the Patriots, why would money be a factor?” [...]

Imagine being an NFL defensive coordinator and game-planning for the Pats. Moss and Donte’ Stallworth represent vertical threats on every play. Wes Welker works the slot as well as anyone. Tight end Ben Watson, freed from the pressure of serving as the top target, can exploit mismatches underneath. That still leaves Kevin Faulk out of the backfield, Laurence Maroney in the running game or tight end David Thomas sitting in a zone.

It’s no stretch to say the Patriots have transformed the league’s worst receiving corps into its best. Last year’s starters, Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney, might not even make the team. Same goes for old favorite Troy Brown.

MORE:

Patriots have dealt themselves into Super Bowl favorite's role with Moss (David Steele, April 30, 2007, Baltimore Sun)

Moss going to the Patriots -- baggage, Hall of Fame numbers and all -- eclipsed everything that had happened in the draft Saturday and everything that followed it yesterday. JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, all the overblown, premature hype surrounding the most out-of-control non-event in sports, were quashed by the news of Moss joining forces with Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, fellow wide receiver newcomers Donte' Stallworth and Wes Welker and some guy named Adalius Thomas on the three-time champs.

Even the most hard-core, purple-clad here in town now have to look at everything that's happened with their team this offseason, and everything that will happen, through the Moss-New England filter. [...]

Remember last January: Brady had Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney as his wide receivers, and he had them one minute away from a Super Bowl berth in the AFC title game at the RCA Dome.

He also gets A.D. on defense this season. The Ravens, you might have heard, lose A.D. on defense.

Yikes.

MAKING TAKING SIDES MAKE SENSE:

FRENCH LESSONS: a review of PACIFICATION IN ALGERIA 1956-58 and COUNTERINSURGENCY WARFARE: THEORY AND PRACTICE
BY DAVID GALULA (Ann Marlowe, 4/29/07, NY Post)

Galula's big idea was simple: to place small numbers of the 100 soldiers under his command in isolated villages, living among the populace. His company was "spread over six posts with 10 to 15 men each." Galula's men supervised and funded the building of the area's first schools, first latrines, garbage pits and street cleaning in their villages.

The top brass didn't get it. An inspecting general complained, "Your posts are utterly useless, their strength is too small to allow a serious sortie against the guerrillas!" The generals were looking for body counts.

Galula "tried to explain that the very fact that I could disperse my company so much was proof of my success." He realized that the objective wasn't to kill terrorists so much as to create an environment in the civilian population where they could not find support.

Galula's practice mustn't be mistaken for the nonsense known as "winning hearts and minds," which suggests bribing the locals into obeying the laws of their own elected government. Galula restored the government's control over disputed areas and showed the locals that taking the government's side made sense.

"Pacification" also discusses in grainy detail such issues as the use of torture and the press' role in counterinsurgency. The Algerian war was the last major conflict fought just before the advent of television, but print journalism had an enormous influence on its conduct.

Happily, the U.S. Army has recognized Galula's insights.

AN APPROPRIATE BUGLER FOR THE NATIVIST F-TROOP:

Isolationist Ignorance in Action: Watch Lou Dobbs ascend to the pinnacle of protectionist prevarication. (Donald Luskin, 4/30/07, National Review)

The advocates of free trade have on their side over 200 years of settled science in economics, going all the way back to Adam Smith. The advocates of protectionism have Lou Dobbs.

With his nightly harangues on CNN and through his books, Lou Dobbs has become the public face of today’s dangerous movement toward economic isolationism. That movement has become all the more dangerous since the Democratic party took control of Congress. Beholden to Big Labor, the Democrats have no choice but to cater to that powerful lobby’s fears of a dynamic globalized American economy.

Last month, when Dobbs testified before Congress, it was not just a case of preaching to the choir, or even the blind leading the stupid. It was vivid proof of Goethe’s famous dictum, “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.”

FLATTENING THE WORLD:

All Eyes on Slovakia's Flat Tax: Q&A with: Laura Alfaro, Vincent Dessain, and Ane Damgaard Jensen (Martha Lagace, April 30, 2007, HBS Working Knowledge)

The flat tax is an idea that's burst to life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, especially in Slovakia. But is the rest of the world ready? A new Harvard Business School case on Slovakia's complex experience highlights many hurdles elsewhere, as HBS professor Laura Alfaro, Europe Research Center Director Vincent Dessain, and Research Assistant Ane Damgaard Jensen explain in this Q&A.

Q: Could the flat tax only have been introduced in the context of other reforms that Slovakia was managing during its post-communism transition, such as labor reform and privatization?

Alfaro: It is true that the countries that have introduced a flat tax have all been in macroeconomic situations where something had to be done to foster growth and attract investments, which indicates a major trend for linking tax reform with, for instance, privatization and labor and welfare reforms. So existing evidence indicates that overhauling other parts of the public system, in order to afford a perceived cut in tax revenues through a flat tax implementation, is needed. This, however, does not indicate that the opposite is impossible.

It also has to be said that a lot of the appeal behind the flat tax is related to the reduction in the administrative burden, but also that flat taxes tend to be low. So one could question whether the theoretical flat part of the flat tax concept is in fact what has been attractive or whether the flat aspect has been a political way to sell the overall tax reform, and hence mostly low taxes.

Q: Can Slovakia serve as a model for other countries that are weighing a flat tax? If so, how should other countries learn from positives and negatives of the Slovak experience?

Dessain: Estonia, Slovakia, and other Eastern European countries are in fact already serving as models for other countries that are considering adopting a flat tax. The former Prime Minister of Estonia, Mart Laar, was the pioneer in Eastern Europe, implementing a flat tax in 1994. One of the fascinating aspects about the Estonian example is that Laar thought that a flat tax had already been tried and proved successful in Western economies, as the literature on the concept was widespread and it seemed so obvious to him what a flat tax could do. So he decided to give it a try. And this is essentially what he advocates: that countries should try it out. Laar has made a tour of many countries and recently paid a visit to Costa Rica to talk to government officials, members of congress, economists, and businesspeople about his country's experiences with the flat tax. He also gave advice on what he believed the flat tax should be linked with (privatization and access to a free trade area) in order to turn the economy around and make it grow.

Jensen: Former Finance Minister Ivan Mikloš, who introduced the flat tax in Slovakia, has also been a strong advocate for the wider spread of the concept. Martin Bruncko, a 2003 graduate of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and the chief economic adviser to Finance Minister Mikloš, has traveled extensively throughout Europe in order to explain what a flat tax is and what it can do. Interestingly enough, Western European countries are also listening. But again, the fact that many countries are thinking about adopting a flat tax may have something to do with finding a political way to implement low corporate tax rates. And there are fears of a race to the bottom. However, recent events in Slovenia might demonstrate a reversal in Eastern Europe. Slovenia is one of the smallest among the recent wave of EU entrants, and it is also the closest to the standards of living enjoyed in the more established EU countries. Slovenia rejected the flat tax, which is consistent with the aversion seen in some EU 15 countries.

Alfaro: Overall, other countries can look to Slovakia as a model of what might happen when a flat tax is adopted, as this example illustrates several aspects. The overall economic performance has improved: Real output growth in Slovakia was 8.2 percent in 2006—a record high. However, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the flat tax from that of the other reforms. Clearly, a lesson to be learned from Slovakia is that such a drastic change to fundamental tax habits needs to be thoroughly explained to all individuals and groups affected by it. It has to be taken into consideration, however, that flat taxes in these countries were often made possible by the fact that tax collection had been limited under the communist regime, so in any case tax revenues were likely to increase. Recently, the government elected in June 2006 introduced some changes to the original reforms, even through these changes were, in the eyes of many, quite minor. But again, the case of Slovakia highlights that beliefs and views of a country on what is fair matter for the long-term sustainability of reforms.

Q: What do you think it would take for the idea of a flat tax to gain ground in the U.S. or Western Europe?

Dessain: Economists and business leaders alike are talking about flat taxes in many countries. As Western European countries lose ground vis-à-vis countries in Eastern Europe endowed with low tax rates, low salaries, and skilled labor, governments will increasingly look for ways to reform their tax and labor systems in order to attract business—or simply stop businesses from delocalizing. The direct effect of the Slovak flat tax can be seen in Europe, where neighboring Austria has lowered its corporate tax rate from 34 percent to 25 percent. This has been perceived by many as a clear sign that the Slovak reforms have been attractive to foreign investors. In response to broader initiatives, Germany has recently decided to reduce its corporate tax rate from 39 percent to below 30 percent in an effort to make the country attractive for investors.

Jensen: Similarly, voters in Finland decided to oust the ruling Social Democrats in favor of parties promoting tax cuts in response to the attraction of neighboring Estonia's flat tax. Most recently, the United Kingdom reduced its corporate tax rate from 30 percent to 28 percent and its income tax rate from 22 percent to 20 percent in an attempt to simplify the tax system. Still, the British government decided to reduce social security contributions and industry allowances, as the initiative was supposed to be revenue neutral.

Alfaro: In spite of these examples of tax reduction, there is a long way to go from lowering tax rates to introducing a flat tax in the U.S. or in Western Europe. This would require a change of attitude in countries marked by a substantial history with progressive taxation. To many, the concept of applying the same rate of tax to everyone regardless of income is simply not possible. Most certainly, the elimination of deductions and exemptions—such as mortgages, etc.—is a battle many politicians will not want to take on in the near future. Also, the argument that a flat tax is likely to be paid by the middle classes is probably one reason why the concept has yet to gain ground in the U.S. or in Western Europe; the middle class simply doesn't want it. As economist Joseph Schumpeter said, "The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—all this and more is written in its fiscal history."

CAN WE DIG CARL UP AND TAUNT HIM?:

Climate change hits Mars: Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap (Jonathan Leake, 4/29/07, Sunday Times of London)

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

THREE'LL DO:

Tulowitzki turns unassisted triple play (Owen Perkins, 4/29/07, MLB.com)

Rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki gave the Coors Field crowd something to cheer about Sunday, once they recovered their dropping draws.

In the top of the seventh inning of a tied game, with runners on first and second and nobody out, Chipper Jones hit a line drive at Tulowitzki, who snared the ball in flight, stepped on second to double up Kelly Johnson, and tagged Edgar Renteria just between first and second for an unassisted triple play.

Just to be safe, Tulowitzki fired the ball to Todd Helton at first, but three outs was sufficient on the play.

ONE THING THAT HAS MADE WINNING THE LONG WAR SO EASY...

New Saudi tack on Al Qaeda: The arrest of 172 suspected militants reveals a Saudi public that is helping in the fight against the terrorist group. (Dan Murphy, 4/30/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

What happened, analysts say, is that the Saudis came to view Al Qaeda as a legitimate threat as average Saudis – who had been somewhat supportive of Al Qaeda when its attacks seemed targeted at driving the US out of Afghanistan or Iraq or focused on foreigners in the kingdom – grew disgusted with bloodshed on their own soil. [...]

"More importantly, there has been a change in Saudi society," says Alani. "Al Qaeda made a strategic mistake by attacking Saudis, Arabs, and Muslims. For the sake of killing one foreigner, they are killing five or 10 Saudis. The average man no longer believes it is jihad. Any attacks in Saudi Arabia they see as unjustifiable, illegitimate, and terrorism, not jihad."

LOCK DOWN:

California to expand its packed prisons: California's solution to desperately overcrowded prisons seems simple enough: Expand the prisons. (Ben Arnoldy, 4/30/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) this week is expected to sign a $7.4 billion bill that will primarily add 53,000 beds, with a $50 million sliver going to rehabilitation programs. California's state prisons currently house 172,000 convicts, nearly twice the system's capacity. [...]

But the bill's critics – and even some lawmakers who voted for it – decry the lack of changes to sentencing and parole policies, and the proportionately small funding increase for rehabilitation.

ALL RADIO IS LOCAL

Friend John Barrett, Jr. has a jazz radio show on WIDR, which streams over the web. He invites everyone to join him for the broadcast from noon to three on Sunday.

NOR WAS THE CHURCH REFORMED FROM ROME:

Islam's coming renaissance will rise in the West: A wave of rationalism is spreading from emigre Muslim intellectuals (Ameer Ali, April 30, 2007, The Australian)

IN the minds of many Muslims, an imagined West is the source of all or most of the problems afflicting the world of Islam. Similarly, in the West, an imagined Islam, purposefully structured and popularly propagated, has created a perception that this religion is a threat to Western civilisation. Between these mutually exclusive mind-sets a new phenomenon is emerging in the real West, laying the foundations for a new wave of Islamic rationalism in the 21st century.

The Islamic resurgence of the post-1970s strengthened the hands of the religious orthodoxy and engendered the spectre of political Islam but failed to rekindle the spirit of intellectual rationalism that once pushed Islam to the frontiers of science and modernity. That failure was compounded and worsened by the rise of tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world. The absence of democracy and lack of popular support forced these regimes to look for legitimacy elsewhere.

By championing the cause of religious orthodoxy of the dominant variety in each context, these regimes masqueraded as champions of popular and populist Islam. Any intellectual pursuit that threatened this state-mullah alliance was aggressively curtailed. In Egypt, in Pakistan, in Syria, and in many other Muslim countries Muslim intellectuals who challenged populist Islam faced condemnation not only by the religious hardliners but also by the secular elite that governed these countries.

One happy outcome of this tragic situation was the voluntary exodus of Muslim intellectuals to the West. From an inhospitable environment of political tyranny and ideological oppression Muslim scholars migrated to find refuge in the West, where the mind enjoys more freedom to think, debate and express. As a result, the migrant Muslim intellectuals are now producing a new genre of publications, many of which are questioning centuries-old interpretations of the primary texts in Islam. A new era of ijtihad (independent thinking) rooted in scientific, objective reasoning is spreading from the West and is beginning to make its mark in the Muslim mind-set.

WE EASILY FORGET...:

Boris the Fighter (BILL CLINTON, 4/29/07, NY Times)

The last time I saw Mr. Yeltsin during my presidency was in June 2000, six months after he became the first leader of Russia to step down voluntarily as part of a constitutional transition. Though the burdens of office and his heart surgery had taken a toll on his health, he still had his trademark bear hug and smile. He clearly thought he had done the right thing in stepping down early and in selecting as his successor Vladimir Putin, who had the intelligence, energy and stamina the country needed to get Russia’s economy on track and handle its complicated politics.

I told him I was impressed by what I had seen of President Putin but wasn’t sure he was as comfortable with or committed to democracy as Mr. Yeltsin. Mr. Yeltsin replied that we would have disagreements as Russia found its way into the future, but that President Putin would not turn the clock back and we would find a way to work together.

I saw Mr. Yeltsin one more time, when I went back to the Kremlin for the 75th birthday party President Putin held for him last year. He seemed in good health and at peace with himself and his work.

Boris Yeltsin was intelligent, passionate, emotional, strong-willed and courageous. He wasn’t perfect, and he had to contend with staggering political and economic challenges as he led Russia away from centuries of authoritarian rule. But lead he did. At the end of the cold war, Russia and the world were lucky to have him.

History will be kind to my friend Boris.

WHEN COURT'S NOT IN SESSION:

Somalia's 'total nightmare': The Somali capital Mogadishu has this week seen some of its worst fighting for 16 years. A fragile transitional government there has been trying to destroy groups of fighters left over from the so-called Islamic Courts group which was in control of much of the country last year. (Adam Mynott, 4/29/07, BBC News)

Just a few months ago, Mogadishu and much of Somalia were enjoying their most stable period for 16 years.

Under the brief control of the Islamic Courts Union, the grip of the warlords was loosened and some of the basic expectations of an organised life were being restored.

Schools were opening, police were being trained, roadblocks were removed and litter was even collected from the streets.

Many Somalis were unhappy with the more extreme rules of the Islamic Courts: closing down the cinemas, banning music and insisting women were veils.

But the Islamists were able to spread their power steadily through more of Somalia and this alarmed the government in neighbouring Ethiopia who have long feared a radical Islamic group in control of the country.

It worried the Americans too, who feared the Islamic Courts were harbouring al-Qaeda elements.

So with tacit American approval and with other international governments looking on, Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to support the weak transitional government.

Ethiopia is now trapped.

It wants to get out of Somalia, but cannot go until what it calls the "Islamist threat" is eliminated.

But every moment Ethiopian troops spend in Somalia stirs up more resentment and their presence acts as a compelling recruiting sergeant for insurgents, who say they will die trying to rid their country of the Ethiopian invaders.

THEIR EVANGELICALS:

Catalytic Converters (ANDREW TABLER, 4/29/07, NY Times)

Direct inquiries into Shiite numbers in Syria raise more questions than answers, as the sensitive topic gives observers complex incentives to round up or down. When I asked Sayyid Abdullah Nizam, leader of Syria’s Shiite community, to estimate the size of his flock, he put it at less than 1 percent of the population of 19 million. Asked the same question, the leader of Syria’s Sunnis, Grand Mufti Sheik Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun, replied carefully; he said that 6 to 8 percent of Syrians now adhere to the “Jaafari school,” the school of Islamic jurisprudence followed by mainstream Shiites in Iran and Lebanon.

It was only when I met an actual convert that the mufti’s words began to make sense. Louay, a 28-year-old teacher in Damascus wearing jeans, a wool sweater and a close-cropped beard, seemed the epitome of the capital’s Sunni middle class. Yet within the last year, as Hezbollah rose to national prominence in the Lebanese government, he — along with his mother — began practicing Shiite Islam. He changed the wording of his prayers and his posture while praying, holding his arms at his sides instead of before him, and during Ramadan he followed Shiite customs on breaking the fast. In many Middle Eastern countries, his conversion wouldn’t be possible — it would be considered apostasy. The Syrian regime restricts its people’s political liberties, but unlike most other ruling dynasties in the Arab world, it allows freedom of religion. “In Saudi Arabia, they ban books on other faiths,” Louay said. “In Syria, I can buy whatever book on religion I want, and no one can say a word.”

Politics, it seems, is only one of the attractions of Shiism. In addition to Louay, I spoke with four other Syrian converts, who asked not to be identified for fear of harassment by Sunni fundamentalists. Louay and the others all spoke of religious transformation as much as of Hezbollah. “Half the reason why I converted was because of Ijtihad,” Louay said, using the Arabic word for the independent interpretation of the Koran and the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Suddenly the mufti’s enigmatic answer became clearer. Ijtihad is practiced more widely by Shiites of the Jaafari school than by Sunnis. These Shiites believe that, on all but the largest moral issues, Muslims should interpret their faith by reading holy texts and reasoning back and forth between them and current issues. Many Sunnis say they quietly practice Ijtihad in everyday life as well, but conservative Sunnis do not encourage individual interpretation of the Koran.

For Louay, the difference is immense. “Take the Internet. Some conservative Sunni sheiks say the Internet is haram,” or illegal, he said. “If I go back to Jaafar al-Sadiq” — the eighth-century founder of the Jaafari school — “I will not find a ruling on it. So instead I use my mind to sort it out. On the Internet, some things are positive, some negative. I choose the positive for myself.”

Americans might find it surprising that the man Louay looks to for more current and oftentimes liberal guidance on controversial issues is Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. For four decades, Syrians had to rely on advice from the local Sunni clerics who appeared in state-owned media. With the advent of satellite television and the Internet, however, Louay said he is now able to keep up with his favorite scholars across the Islamic world. You could easily draw a comparison with the way Protestants in Europe were able to follow the likes of Martin Luther after the introduction of movable type.

Even if Shiitization is at this point as much a rumor as a confirmed fact, the subject is highly charged. It is part of a much larger discussion among Washington’s Sunni allies about the rise of a “Shiite Crescent” — an Iranian-backed alliance stretching westward from Iran to Syria to Lebanon that could challenge the traditional power of Sunni elites. With its Sunni masses and minority Tehran-backed regime, Syria is the weak link in the chain. Many Syrians say they are worried Iraq’s sectarian strife might spread to Syria; the execution of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, at the hands of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, infuriated many. The conversion of Syrians to Shiism could create still more conflict.

STUCK IN THE MERDE:

Change France but keep the lunches (Caroline Wyatt, 4/29/07, BBC News)

As France goes to the polls many agree that change is vital to tackle the slowing economy and growing public debt. But they also want to keep the best of what makes the country so distinctive... so French...

AL QAEDA'S BIG PROBLEM...:

Iraqis reclaim Ramadi from insurgents: Residents turn against militants and cooperate with the U.S. after three years of oppression and killings of friends (Chris Kraul, April 29, 2007, LA Times)

They closed down Hissam Hamed's Internet cafe, told history professor Abid Mohammed how to pray, and killed 16-year-old Ammar Alwani because he scoffed at their religious edicts.

Nearly everyone you talk to in Ramadi has a story about how life under the insurgents calling themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq progressively worsened over the three years they were in control here, finally pushing the residents of this Sunni Triangle city into the unlikely arms of the U.S. military.

When they arrived in the summer of 2003, the Islamic extremists found Ramadi fertile ground for recruits to fight the U.S. Marines and soldiers who had occupied the city after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda in Iraq even declared an Islamic state of Iraq, with Ramadi its provisional capital.

But over time, the extremists overplayed their hand by imposing strict religious doctrine, hijacking the city government and enforcing a brutal intimidation campaign to keep the locals in line, residents said.

"They killed people right in front of our eyes," said Sameh Khalif, an apparel merchant on Market Street, referring to insurgents from foreign countries, including Syria, Algeria and Morocco, who flocked to Ramadi.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mike Silverman, who commands a unit in charge of northwest Ramadi, permits himself the hope that a corner has been turned here in Al Anbar province, thanks in large part to Al Qaeda in Iraq's missteps.

"They nearly achieved it, turning Al Anbar into the new Afghanistan," Silverman said. "But they shot themselves in the foot. Their violent tactics just discredited them further and further." [...]

The militants also targeted Ramadi's educators, killing several schoolteachers as well as 10 professors at Al Anbar University who refused to teach Sharia, or Islamic law, said Arab history professor Abid Mohammed. As a result, Ramadi's school system was closed for months because students and teachers were terrified that Al Qaeda would raid classes.

But schools in most of the city have been open since September, officials say, and Mohammed is running a special literacy school for security force recruits working out of the new police station in the Faraj neighborhood.

Young entrepreneur and Internet cafe operator Hamed said Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened to blow up his shop unless he shut down his two computers. "They ruined my income," Hamed said. "Then suddenly the Iraqi police were here and security has improved, and so I've reopened. Of course I support the security forces here."

That support has been evidenced by a surge in police and army recruits, a downturn in attacks on U.S. forces and a rise in weapons cache recoveries, a cycle fed by improved security. Most insurgents were flushed from Ramadi in 10 U.S.-led military operations between January and mid-April. In its wake, the military left a score of police stations manned by the fresh recruits.

"I couldn't have joined a year ago. I would have been beheaded," said police recruit Nasser Ibrahim Hussein, 20, as he stood guard at Ramadi General Hospital.

HOLLYWOOD KINGPIN:

Revenge of the Dark Knight: Hard-edged comics guru Frank Miller is hot in Hollywood. Now for the graphic details (Geoff Boucher, April 29, 2007, LA Times)

FRANK MILLER, his pale hands wrapped around a cane and the smoke from his cigarette swirling beneath the brim of his Homburg, sat at the poolside bar at the W Hotel in Westwood and watched the swimsuits saunter by. "I'm married to New York," he said between sips of a fizzy Red Bull cocktail. "But there's something to be said about Los Angeles too."

Miller arrived at the W a month and a half ago with a one-week reservation, but the L.A. fling is still going and he's still living out of a suitcase filled with black clothes. The reason is that Miller, the most important comic book artist of the last 25 years, is enjoying his moment in the Hollywood sun. There was, of course, the record-breaking March box office of "300," a lovingly faithful adaptation of Miller's bloody 1998 graphic novel, but there's also the two sequels to "Sin City" now in the pipeline and the Batman project now being filmed in London that borrows its title from Miller's 1986 masterpiece, "The Dark Knight Returns." "They finally got the title right," Miller said with a pretend sneer. "I was wondering when that would happen."

Miller fancies himself a curmudgeon, and on talk shows he's proven to be a firebrand with his political views challenging modern-day Islam. But it's hard to stay grumpy when everything is going your way. Like most stars of the comic-book community (where he is the rare artist who became equally celebrated as a writer), he had become accustomed to be treated like a valet by Hollywood — Hey, kid, thanks for the keys and the vehicle, here's a couple of bucks — and then forced to watch the studios wreck everything on screen. The 1990s Batman movies, for instance, would not have happened without Miller's work, but they often ignored or trampled his contributions to the character. On two "RoboCop" films, meanwhile, Miller was hired as a screenwriter, but the efforts fell flat. Then Elektra, a beloved character he created, tanked badly on the screen in the hands of others.

Now there's a sweet satisfaction in the fact that the new Hollywood approach is to hire fan-boy directors and show fawning respect for the source material. "Sin City's" Robert Rodriguez even insisted on sharing director credits with Miller on those films (a maverick stand that cost Rodriguez his membership in the Directors Guild), and that led directly to a somewhat shocking development: Miller has now been tapped to write and direct his own film based on Will Eisner's classic noir hero "The Spirit." [...]

MUCH has been made of Miller's politics in the wake of "300." The deliriously violent and stylized sword film is based on a Spartan battle in 480 B.C., and although Miller wrote and drew the story for Dark Horse comics a decade ago, in film form it was received by many as a grotesque parody of the ancient Persians and a fetish piece for a war on Islam. Miller scoffs at those notions. "I think it's ridiculous that we set aside certain groups and say that we can't risk offending their ancestors. Please. I'd like to say, as an American, I was deeply offended by 'The Last of the Mohicans.' "

Still, Miller gets stirred up about any criticism of the war in Iraq or the hunt for terrorists, which he views as the front in a war between the civilized Western world and bloodthirsty Islamic fundamentalists.

"What people are not dealing with is the fact that we're going up against a culture that finds it acceptable to do things that the rest of the world left behind with the barbarians in the 6th century," Miller said. "I'm a little tired of people worrying about being polite. We are fighting in the face of fascists."

The director of "300," Zack Snyder, chuckled about the portrayal of Miller as a conservative on the attack or a "proto-fascist" as one pundit called him. "I don't think he really has politics, he just sees the world in moral terms."

YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM GO SLOW, BUT YOU NEEDN'T LET THEM GO AT ALL:

Deadly crashes are wrecking young lives (Marie Szaniszlo, Heather Schultz and Laura Crimaldi, April 29, 2007, Boston Herald)

The lucky survivors of teen car wrecks are warning their peers against the heartbreaking formula of speed and an inexperienced driver after a devastating spate of car crashes claimed the lives of at least nine young Bay Staters in the last 19 days.

CAUTION--CURVY HILL:

Hill's big break (CAROL SLEZAK, 4/29/07, suntimes.com)

Rich Hill's curveball has been called lethal, unhittable, dominating, baffling, wicked and nasty, and that's just for starters. It's tough to find the perfect word for Hill's curve. How do you describe a pitch that breaks so sharply, it looks as though it's being yanked toward the ground by an invisible string? Magical?

''I don't think it's magic,'' the Cubs left-hander said with a laugh. ''I think probably the majority of it is God-given. I've been fortunate to be blessed with a good curveball. Sometimes I try to teach my curveball, and I don't know how to explain it. You can tell somebody how to do it, but unless you have the ability to do it, it just usually doesn't come out.''

Holding a baseball, the 6-5, 205-pound Hill demonstrated the grip as he tried to explain it.

''If the horseshoe part of the stitching is facing where it makes [the letter 'C'], you put your [middle] finger on the outside seam of the 'C,''' he said. ''Your thumb goes underneath, on the other seam. And you want to throw it almost like a chop action with your hand.''

And then, abracadabra, the ball will do its thing and frustrate the heck out of the batter. (Note to kids: Don't try this at home. Hill didn't throw his first curve until he was 17.)

IT'S A CIRCADIAN THING:

Saved by the (Later) BellTen schools in Massachusetts are testing a first-in-the-nation initiative to extend learning time. Believe it or not, the students (after initial grumbling) seem to like it, and so do their parents. Shouldn't every school rethink its schedule? (Lisa Prevost, April 29, 2007, Boston Globe)

School schedules that stretch into late afternoon are keeping kids off the street and away from the television, filling once-empty hours with extra teaching, homework help, sports, music lessons, and theater. Some students relish the structure, some still resent it. Either way, cops say it’s keeping kids out of trouble, and some parents say it’s boosting their children’s grades. Politicians like Governor Deval Patrick and US Senator Ted Kennedy are promoting the longer school day as the 21st-century norm in a global economy where American students’ competitors spend an average of 30 percent more time in school.

Most folks applaud expanded days for underperforming schools and students whose parents don’t have the resources to provide quality after-school activities. (Together, the 10 ELT schools have high rates of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals and low rates of proficiency on state exams.) But the politically charged question is whether a longer day is right for all schools. Many middle-class parents, after all, are already paying for Little League and tutors and piano lessons. Their children are already getting high marks on standardized tests and college acceptances. Why lengthen their school day if it means stealing hours from family time?

Advocates say all children deserve more enriching class time (and, in many cases, a restoration of the art and physical education classes that have been eliminated over the years). They hope that momentum for longer days will build on its own if kids at underperforming schools begin showing their stuff on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, the proficiency tests that reveal school performance and dictate whether high schoolers can graduate. Despite the disagreement, educators know there is nothing like the gift of time.

At the 10 schools participating in this reform experiment, the teachers’ obvious elation – in spite of their fatigue – is perhaps the most persuasive indicator that the program makes sense. “I’m absolutely exhausted, but this has been one of my most rewarding teaching years in all my life,” says Stephanie Baker, a family and consumer science teacher who has taught at Fall River’s Matthew J. Kuss Middle School, another ELT grant recipient, for the past 22 years. Baker says the longer day allows her more time to answer students’ questions and to connect with them on a more personal level, especially in her new afternoon cooking class. “I feel good about this year,” Baker says. “There’s something absolutely right about this.”

Education officials here and around the country are keeping close watch on the experiment. The ELT initiative is an outgrowth of the work of Massachusetts 2020, the nonprofit foundation started by venture capitalist and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli. After initially leading the effort to strengthen Boston’s after-school programs, the foundation rolled that success into a drive to make those programs part of the normal school day. “It’s not that it’s more convenient to extend the day,” Gabrieli says. “It’s just that you can’t do it all in less time.” As it stands now, higher-income parents are unlikely to entrust the public schools with providing the same quality of afternoon enrichment they’re currently paying for elsewhere, he acknowledges. More middle-class districts, including Framingham and Methuen, are considering a longer day, however. As the concept gains traction, Gabrieli says, “we’re hoping that it will be hard to resist.”

Also watching the experiment closely is Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who supports extended days for students falling behind as well as four successful students, who would benefit from extra enrichment programs like art. “Our school day was created 70 years ago, when we had farms,” he says. “If we really want to get serious about education, we need longer school days.”

While school districts in other states are adding an hour here and there at underperforming schools, Massachusetts is the first state to sponsor competitive grants for expanding learning time and to open up the opportunity to the entire system (even schools meeting state testing goals). Every participating school must commit to extending its schedule by 25 to 30 percent. If Massachusetts 2020 is the chief architect of the expanded day, the principals and staff are the craftsmen, molding the concept into a workable form that looks slightly different at each school. One of their primary aims, and the measure by which they will be judged, is to move as many kids as possible to proficiency on the MCAS. Across the 10 schools, about 65 percent of students have not achieved proficiency in English/language arts and about 75 percent have fallen short in math. Most of the kids at the ELT institutions began to fall behind in elementary school, “so to help them catch up requires a very intense intervention,” says Michael Sabin, principal of Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, one of the ELT schools. “It’s not realistic to think it’s going to happen without more time.”

Simply tacking two or three hours onto the school day isn’t enough. Research has shown the strongest links between additional time and increased learning when those hours are used for more direct instruction and active learning.

VITAL ATTRACTION:

Why health saving accounts are growing popular (KAREN KERRIGAN, April 28, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times)

There are two things a small business or self-employed person dreads the most: taxes and health-care costs. However, the small business and self-employed sectors have been increasingly turning to a solution that provides a much-needed break: health savings accounts.

These accounts help control costs and provide attractive tax advantages, both for people who purchase their own insurance (self-employed) and for small business owners. The market is headed in this direction as the U.S. Treasury estimates the number of Americans with health savings accounts will grow to 25 million to 30 million by 2010. Many insurance companies are seeing the growth in their popularity and are marketing a variety of products.

United Healthcare's Golden Rule Insurance Co., based in Indianapolis, pioneered the health savings account concept about 15 years ago, and now 40 percent of its customer base has the accounts. Other companies including Aetna, Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shield continue to enter the health savings account market in large part because of its attractiveness to small-business and self-employed individuals.

That attraction is being driven in part by prohibitive costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits 2006 Survey, health insurance premiums have ''increased more than twice as fast as workers' wages and overall inflation.'' Premiums have actually increased by 87 percent over the past six years.

The same report noted that the self-employed pay an average of $11,480 for family health coverage. This is where health savings accounts become an increasingly attractive solution.

WHERE'S THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILLING TO EMBRACE SUCH THIRD WAY REFORMS?:

10 Steps to Reforming Baby-Boomer Retirement (John C. Goodman, Devon M. Herrick and Matt Moore, April 2007, Kiplinger's)

Step 2: Improve 401(k) Plans. More than half of all workers invest in a 401(k) or similar savings vehicle. But not enough people are investing appropriately for their future. They either do not invest enough or they pursue investment strategies that will not provide an adequate retirement income. To correct this problem, employers should be given a safe harbor against lawsuits and receive other regulatory relief if they invest employees in diversified portfolios, follow an investment strategy that becomes more conservative as the employee ages, and convert the funds into an annuity at retirement -- unless the employee specifically opts out.

Step 3: Expand Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). Current tax law penalizes those who do not have employer-sponsored savings plans. For example, participants in an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan can contribute up to $15,000 annually, while nonparticipants can contribute only $4,000 to a tax-advantaged IRA. Treat all savers equally. [...]

Step 6: Use the Roth Method of Taxation. Unlike traditional savings vehicles, deposits into Roth IRAs are made with after-tax dollars, and withdrawals are tax free. Given the effects of the Social Security benefits tax and the expectation that tax rates will be much higher in the future (in part to deal with the expenses of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), Roth taxation makes sense for many taxpayers. Yet Roth IRAs, like traditional IRAs, are discriminated against relative to employer-provided savings plans. Level the playing field. [...]

Step 9: Create Health Savings Accounts for Seniors. Despite coverage from Medicare, seniors pay half their medical bills out of their own pockets. And they have few opportunities to use tax-free savings to prepare for these expenses. Under current law, Medicare-eligible seniors cannot open or make deposits to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and opportunities for young people to make deposits are too restrictive. Clearly we need a more liberal HSA policy. Short of that, seniors should be able to turn IRA and 401(k) funds into new Roth HSAs so money spent on health care is not taxed.

THANKS, AYATOLLAH:

Iranian tip-off may have led Americans to al-Qaeda leader: A major in Saddam's army, believed to have masterminded the London bombings, could have been betrayed in Tehran (Jason Burke, April 29, 2007, Observer)

Abdul Hadi, 45, a former Iraqi army officer who speaks five languages and is a key link between the al-Qaeda leadership in western Pakistan and militants in Iraq, had 'met with al-Qaeda leaders in Iran' and had urged them to support efforts in Iraq and to cause 'problems within Iran', US military sources told The Observer

Elements within the complex matrix of interest groups that make up the Iranian regime, who have co-operated with Western intelligence services before when it has served their purposes, provided crucial elements of information, possibly through intermediaries, allowing Abdul Hadi to be captured. 'They may have felt he posed an equal threat to them,' said one Paris-based Middle Eastern diplomat yesterday. 'One of Tehran's biggest fears is of an alliance between Kurdish ethnic separatists in the northwest and al-Qaeda.'

Any such help would have been highly secret, given the tense relations between the Iranian regime and Western nations which came to a head with last month's detention of British naval personnel, allegations that Tehran is supporting Shia militants in Iraq and fierce recriminations over Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear technology.

However, senior US intelligence officials told The Observer that the Iranian government has 'in some cases' been helpful in tracking and 'disabling' key militants crossing their national territory between Iraq and Afghanistan. The key Egyptian militant Saif al-Adel, once in charge of training al-Qaeda's new recruits, and one of Osama bin Laden's sons are both believed to be under some kind of detention in Iran.

HOW'S THAT RESURGENCE GOING?:

US aircrews show Taliban no mercy (Gethin Chamberlain in Kandahar, 29/04/2007, Sunday Telegraph)

Caught in the middle of the Helmand river, the fleeing Taliban were paddling their boat back to shore for dear life.

Smoke from the ambush they had just sprung on American special forces still hung in the air, but their attention was fixed on the two helicopter gunships that had appeared above them as their leader, the tallest man in the group, struggled to pull what appeared to be a burqa over his head.

As the boat reached the shore, Captain Larry Staley tilted the nose of the lead Apache gunship downwards into a dive. One of the men turned to face the helicopter and sank to his knees. Capt Staley's gunner pressed the trigger and the man disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust.

By the time the gunships had finished, 21 minutes later, military officials say 14 Taliban were confirmed dead, including one of their key commanders in Helmand.

The mission is typical of a new, aggressive, approach adopted by American forces in southern Afghanistan and particularly in Helmand, where British troops last year bore the brunt of some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

American commanders believe that the uncompromising use of airpower in recent weeks has been a key factor in preventing the Taliban from launching their expected full-scale spring offensive against coalition forces and forcing them to rethink their tactics.
advertisement

Aircrews say they have been told to show no mercy, but to press home their advantage until all their targets have been destroyed.

BECAUSE NOTHING CAN DISTRACT ME FROM ME:

Motherhood On Hold (Julia Stuart, 29 April 2007, Independent)

Look around and there are certainly the signs. Most of us know of women in their mid-thirties who haven't had children. But research published last week showed a startling picture: 40 per cent of graduate women are still childless by the age of 35, an increase of 20 per cent in just over a decade. A third of female university graduates will never have children. Some right-wing commentators blamed these "selfish" women for the pensions crisis facing the country. Others asked, "Who is to blame?" But the author of the research - along with women all over Britain - says that the real questions are much more complex.

The findings come from a study of more than 5,000 women born in 1970 and tracked throughout their lives by researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, based at the Institute of Education, University of London. "Highly educated women," says Professor Heather Joshi, head of the research team, "are more likely not to have children young and they are more likely to end up with none. It's probably because they have better paying careers, better alternatives: they may have the kind of careers in which they need to settle before they think about having breaks or finding the means to combine parenthood with paid work. They may have higher aspirations about the housing market and who they will settle with. There are a lot of factors."

The author Lionel Shriver, 49, chose not to become a mother. "For me, establishing myself as a writer was so important, and took so long, that it consumed my entire reproductive lifetime ... I didn't feel I could afford the distraction and emotional energy that it would have taken to try and raise a family at the same time."

Shriver, who won the Orange Prize in 2005, believes that had she become more successful earlier in her career, she would have been more likely to have had children. But she is at peace with her decision.

WHICH ALSO EXPLAINS WHY...:

Ukraine is Drifting to the West - Slowly but Surely (Oleksandr Shepotylo, The Ukranian Observer)

Democracy works efficiently when there is a wide consensus over the ideological values across different groups of population. When the population is ideologically united and determined to protect their economic and political rights, the ruling elites are forced to sign a mutual pact even if they have serious conflicts of interest. The elites have limited opportunities to manipulate public opinion and prefer to follow the rules and agreements that mark the boundaries of their political powers specified in the pact.

The Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 was an illustration of Weingast's ideas. In the aftermath of the revolution, the Bill of Rights had been signed in 1689. The document declared the separation of powers between the Crown and the Parliament and outlined the basic rights of the citizens that could not be violated by anyone, including the King and other influential individuals. The Bill of Rights proved to be very successful and laid down the basis of the unwritten British Constitution because it was accepted not only by elites but also by the citizens.

On the other hand, a democratic country may be trapped into political disputes and economic stagnation if a broad consensus of citizens has not been reached. In these circumstances, any political agreement among elites is unstable and frequently violated.

The problem of finding common ideological ground becomes more severe when a country is sharply divided in religious, ethnic, or cultural dimensions. In his study, Weingast pointed out directly that countries with culturally or ethnically diverse population have major difficulties in finding social consensus and implementing efficient economic policies.
The Universal of National Unity signed in August of 2006 by the President and by four political parties represented in the Verkhovna Rada in Ukraine was meant to unite the nation and elites over some basic principles. However, as we all observed, the Universal proved to be extremely ineffective in reaching its declared goals.

The Universal was not reached as the consensus across various groups of the whole population but was worked out as a partial compromise of political elites. Therefore, the Party of Regions felt comfortable to violate the Universal because it was not obliged to follow the principles declared by the party's supporters.

The Ukrainian example is not unique. The most culturally and ethnically diverse countries are located in Africa according to a study conducted by Alberto Alesina, a highly regarded Harvard University economist. Therefore, it is not surprising that African countries have major difficulties in forming stable governments and experience frequent military coups. [...]

Regression analysis of the last parliamentary elections shows that the choice of voters was primarily driven by ideological and cultural differences. The share of Ukrainian and Russian speaking population at the oblast level - an indicator of cultural differences -explains about 86 percent of all variations in the share of voters who voted for the "Party of Regions".

Likewise, this explains 74 percent of the cross oblast differences in voting patterns of the Block of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYT) supporters. [...]

The ideal solution would by to put aside our differences and concentrate on common economic interests. If our politicians accepted the current division of power and started working on reforming the tax system, legal system, social security, education and medicine we would all benefit, regardless of the language we speak. Unfortunately, our political leaders will not leave well-enough alone and try as hard as they can to exploit our differences in their political games. They have done it many times before and I see no reason why they would be willing to stop these practices.

There is hope though. Speaking of the long term horizon, Ukraine is demographically drifting to the European Union. First of all, the population mass is literally moving to the west - Western regions of Ukraine and Kyiv outperforming Eastern regions in the demographic dynamics - due both to natural demographic changes and to migration processes. Secondly, the younger generations of Ukrainians are less likely to vote for parties with the socialist or communist ideologies, as the regression analysis showed. Both trends work in favor of the Europe-oriented liberal economic model of development and reduce ideological and cultural differences for the whole country.

AXIS OF GOOD--AFRICA DIVISION:

Letter from Liberia: Liberia is a country mired in its past. But, as Zadie Smith discovers when she meets its traumatised boy soldiers, struggling rubber workers and children desperate to learn, it is taking its first tentative steps to a better future. In the second part of the Observer and Oxfam's 'Words in Action' initiative, the prize-winning writer finds hope amongst the heartbreak (Zadie Smith, April 29, 2007, The Observer)

The street scene in Monrovia is post-apocalyptic: people occupy the shell of a previous existence. The InterContinental Hotel is a slum, home to hundreds. The old executive mansion is broken open like a child's playhouse; young men sit on the skeletal spiral staircase, taking advantage of the shade. Abraham points out Liberia's state seal on the wall: a ship at anchor with the inscription The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here. In 1822 freed American slaves (known as Americo-Liberians or, colloquially, Congos) founded the colony at the instigation of the American Colonization Society, a coalition of slave owners and politicians whose motives are not hard to tease out.

Even Liberia's roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s a small colony of 3,000 souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, they demanded the 'Country of Liberia' declare its independence. It was the first of many category errors: Liberia was not yet a country. Their agricultural exports were soon dwarfed by the price of imports. A pattern of European loans (and defaulting on same) began in the 1870s. The money was used to partially modernise the black Americo-Liberian hinterlands while ignoring the impoverished indigenous interior. The relationship between the two communities is a lesson in the factitiousness of 'race'. To the Americo-Liberians, these were 'natives' - they continued an illicit slave trade in Malinke people until the 1850s. As late as 1931, the League of Nations uncovered the use of forced indigenous labour.

Abraham, in the front seat, bends his head round to Lysbeth in the back: 'You know what we say to that seal? The Love of Liberty MET us here.' This is a popular Liberian joke. He laughs immoderately. 'So that's how it was. They came here and always kept the power away from us! They had their True Whig Party and for 133 years we were a peaceful one-party state. But there was no justice. The indigenous are 95 per cent of this country, but we had nothing. Oh, those Congos - they had every little bit of power. Everyone in the government was Congo. They did each other favours, gave each other money. We were not even allowed the vote until the Sixties!'

Lys asks a reasonable question: 'But how would one know someone was a Congo?'

'Oh, you would know. They had a way of speaking, a way of dressing. They always called each other Mister. Always the Big Man. And they lived very well. This,' he says, waving at the devastation of Monrovia, 'was all very nice.'

The largest concrete structures - the old ministry of health, the old ministry of defence, the True Whig Party headquarters - are remnants of the peaceful, unjust regimes of President Tubman (1944-71) and President Tolbert (1971-80), for whom Liberians feel a perverse nostalgia. The university, the hospital, the schools, these were financed by a True Whig policy of massive international loans and deregulated foreign-business concessions, typically given to agriculturally 'extractive' companies which ship resources directly out of the country without committing their companies to any value-added processing. For much of the 20th century Liberia had a nickname: Firestone Republic. The deals which condemned Liberians to poverty wages and inhumane living conditions were made in these old government buildings. The people who benefited most from these deals worked in these buildings. Now these buildings have rags hanging from their windows, bullet holes in their facades, and thousands of squatters inside, without toilets, without running water. Naturally, new buildings are built, new deals are made. On 28 January 2005, while an interim 'caretaker' government presided briefly over a ruined country (the elections were due later that year), Firestone rushed through a new concession: 50 cents an acre for the next 37 years.

A processing plant - for which Liberians have been asking since the Seventies - was not part of this deal. Ministers of finance and agriculture, who had no mandate from the people, who would be out of office in a few months, negotiated the deal. It was signed in the cabinet room at the Executive Mansion in the presence of John Blaney, US ambassador at the time. During the same period, Mittal Steel acquired the country's iron ore, giving the company virtual control of the vast Nimba concession area. The campaigning group Global Witness described the Mittal deal as a 'case study in which multinational corporations seek to maximise profit by using an international regulatory void to gain concessions and contracts which strongly favour the corporation over the host nation'.

It is a frustration for activists that Liberians have tended not to trace their trouble back to extractive foreign companies or their government lobbies.

AT SOME POINT...:

When Needed Most, Pettitte Can’t Steady the Sliding Yankees (TYLER KEPNER, 4/28/07, NY Times)

The season is too young to be slipping away from the Yankees. But it has gotten ugly quickly, with the team on its longest losing streak since 2000. The voices in the organization that grumble about Manager Joe Torre, whose contract expires after the season, will grow louder if the losses keep mounting.

Torre left Yankee Stadium at 12:40am this morning, much later than usual. He was nearly fired after last season, and if the Yankees are swept this weekend, his job security would be very much at risk. It is doubtful that General Manager Brian Cashman could save Torre’s job again.

Yet there are some nights Torre seems helpless, when stalwarts like Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera let him down. Last night the Yankees gave a lead to Pettitte, their best starter, in the middle innings. But with a burst of wildness by a veteran, another game got away.

“This is as frustrating as you can get,” Pettitte said. “It’s embarrassing, is what it is.”

THERE IS NO IROQUOISTAN:

Joe Biden is Dead Right on Iraq: He may not have a prayer of becoming president. But the six-term Democratic senator from Delaware is the only presidential candidate talking sensibly about Iraq. (Michael Hirsh, 4/26/07, Newsweek)

Biden...has been on the record for a year with a fully thought-out vision for Iraq that offers a real alternative to the bleak choice we’re getting from everyone else. Let’s face it, the “debate” pits the Bush administration’s model-democracy delusion against the Democrats’ let’s-just-get-out state of denial. The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee—far and away the most experienced foreign-policy hand among the Democratic candidates—has proposed a quasi-partition plan that actually does reflect the bloody reality emerging on the ground. His scheme calls for dividing Iraq into three or more separate regions held together by a loose central government, thus clearing the way for withdrawing most U.S. troops by 2008. It’s a solution, not a surrender, and it’s what they used to call realpolitik.

OBLIGATORY NAZI REFERENCE:

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps (Naomi Wolf, Chelsea Green Publishing)

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down -- the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration.

IT'S NOT ABOUT CONFESSIONS:

CIA held suspect in secret prison for months (Mark Mazzetti and David S. Cloud, April 28, 2007, )

The CIA held a captured Al Qaeda leader in a secret prison since autumn and transferred him a week ago to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Friday.

The detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd who is said to have joined Al Qaeda in the late 1990s and ascended to become a top aide to Osama bin Laden, is the first terrorism suspect known to have been held in secret Central Intelligence Agency jails since President George W. Bush announced the transfer of 14 captives to Guantánamo Bay in September.

Intelligence officials said that under questioning Iraqi had provided valuable intelligence about Al Qaeda's hierarchy and operations. It appears he gave up this information after being subjected to interrogation methods approved for the Defense Department, not harsher methods that the CIA is awaiting approval to use.

Human rights advocates expressed anger that the United States continued a program of secret detention, and some wondered why the CIA claimed it needed harsh interrogation methods to extract information from detainees when it appeared that Iraqi had given up information using Pentagon-approved interrogation practices.

THIS JUST IN... (via Ed Driscoll):

Keeping it unreal: We consider the "primitive" music of blues singers such as Leadbelly to be more authentic than that of the Monkees. But all pop musicians are fakes: a review of Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor (Jeff Sharlet, 16 April 2007, New Statesman)

Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, two publishing professionals who have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music, borrow the title of their book, Faking It, from a suicide note - the most authentic, and also the stupidest, genre of all. "The fact is," wrote Nirvana's singer Kurt Cobain shortly before eating the muzzle of a shotgun in 1994, "I can't fool you, any one of you . . . The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun." [...]

Consider the case of Mississippi John Hurt, the subject of the book's longest and most powerful essay. First, there's his name: Mississippi was an add-on from the record company. Then there's his reputation as a patriarch of the Delta blues: Hurt wasn't from the Mississippi Delta and he insisted he wasn't a blues musician. And then there is the problem of his blackness, thought by the white fans who rediscovered him in the 1960s to be pure and profound ("Uncle Remus come to life," write the authors). When Hurt was "discovered" the first time, he was performing for black and white audiences backed by a white fiddler and a white guitar player who also happened to be the local sheriff. He recorded blues because the record company insisted he do so. Meanwhile, Jimmie Rodgers, a white musician who happened to be a bluesman, recorded what came to be known as "country" music because the blues were reserved by the market for black men. One more twist: when Harry Smith included two of Hurt's songs on his great Smithsonian Folk Anthology, most listeners mistook the black musician for a white hillbilly.

The term "folk" itself presents more problems. Until 1949, country music was simply "folk", as was much "black" music. Racism was the centrifuge that separated them: Henry Ford, for instance, poured money into a campaign to promote square-dancing as a form of authentic (read: white and Protestant) Americanism. One of the pioneering producers of "old-time" music in the early 20th century, Ralph Peer, later boasted: "I invented the hillbilly and nigger stuff."

The weakness of Faking It, otherwise a fascinating and nimble investigation of pop's paradoxes, is its failure to explore the political implications to which it so often points. Barker and Taylor have escaped the authenticity trap, but only by embracing the pleasures of inauthenticity. There's nothing wrong with entertainment, they insist. True enough; but there's nothing wrong with taking music seriously, either, even when it's "fake".

Barker and Taylor do that, too, but after describing the marketing manoeuvres that made country and the blues racially "pure" categories (and left much of folk a politically impotent exercise in earnestness), they shy away from the legacy of that divide: rock purists and anti-hip-hop crusades on the one hand, and, on the other, pop music that entertains but rarely provokes, and never threatens any real danger but suicide, packaged and sold as a gesture of romantic authenticity. By the time they get to punk, a genre defined by politics, they're so committed to avoiding the authenticity trap that they celebrate punk's overlooked showmanship, failing to recognise that their embrace of inauthenticity as the essence of popular music is itself a trap.

But, as they write of the Monkees' utterly contrived "I'm a Believer", so what? It's still a great song.

Their point eludes me.

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE?:

Sex, Life, and Videotape: Ultrasound and the future of abortion. (William Saletan, April 28, 2007, Slate)

Last week, pro-lifers won their biggest victory in 40 years: a Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. This week, they announced their next target. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, concluded that the court's ruling "should give encouragement to the legislators who are pursuing other types of regulation," particularly bills that "require the abortionist to offer the woman an opportunity to view an ultrasound" of her fetus.

For pro-lifers, this segue is logical. For the court, it means trouble. It threatens to unravel the latest judicial compromise and, with it, Roe v. Wade. In its April 18 ruling, the court treated abortion like an obscenity—something that could be done, but not out in the open. Partial-birth abortions, the court reasoned, could be banned because they occur outside the woman's body. Other abortions need not be outlawed, since the womb conceals them.

Ultrasound dissolves this distinction. It offers to make every fetus and every abortion visible. It forces the court to renounce either the partial-birth ban or the right to abortion.

UNLESS THE NATIVISTS CAN DRIVE NEW REDS INTO THE ARMS OF THE BLUES:

Immigration set to boost Texas, Florida Republicans (GERRY SMITH, 4/28/07, Cox News Service)

Immigration is driving the growing electoral power of Texas and Florida, as census projections show a shift of congressional seats to those states, and Republicans are expected to reap the biggest immediate gains, demographers say.

After the 2010 census, when House seats are redistributed based on population, Texas will pick up three seats and Florida will pick up two seats. Six of the seven states projected to gain seats in 2010 now lean Republican, according to Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau.

By 2030, Texas will gain eight seats and Florida will gain nine seats. And Republicans could double their advantage in the Electoral College from 34 votes to 68 votes if voting patterns remain unchanged, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute.

But with Hispanic immigrants driving much of the population growth, the future for Democrats may not be entirely grim, analysts say.

MORE:
A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves (JASON DePARLE, 4/22/07, NY Times)

About 200 million migrants from different countries are scattered across the globe, supporting a population back home that is as big if not bigger. Were these half-billion or so people to constitute a state — migration nation — it would rank as the world’s third-largest. While some migrants go abroad with Ph.D.’s, most travel as Emmet did, with modest skills but fearsome motivation. The risks migrants face are widely known, including the risk of death, but the amounts they secure for their families have just recently come into view. Migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $300 billion last year — nearly three times the world’s foreign-aid budgets combined. These sums — “remittances” — bring Morocco more money than tourism does. They bring Sri Lanka more money than tea does.

The numbers, which have doubled in the past five years, have riveted the attention of development experts who once paid them little mind. One study after another has examined how private money, in the form of remittances, might serve the public good. A growing number of economists see migrants, and the money they send home, as a part of the solution to global poverty.

Yet competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss. About half the world’s migrants are women, many of whom care for children abroad while leaving their own children home. “Your loved ones across that ocean . . . ,” Nadine Sarreal, a Filipina poet in Singapore, warns:

Will sit at breakfast and try not to gaze

Where you would sit at the table.

Meals now divided by five

Instead of six, don’t feed an emptiness.

Earlier waves of globalization, the movement of money and goods, were shaped by mediating institutions and protocols. The International Monetary Fund regulates finance. The World Trade Organization regularizes trade. The movement of people — the most intimate form of globalization — is the one with the fewest rules. There is no “World Migration Organization” to monitor the migrants’ fate. A Kurd gaining asylum in Sweden can have his children taught school in their mother tongue, while a Filipino bringing a Bible into Riyadh risks being expelled.

The growth in migration has roiled the West, but demographic logic suggests it will only continue. Aging industrial economies need workers. People in poor countries need jobs. Transportation and communication have made moving easier. And the potential economic gains are at record highs. A Central American laborer who moves to the United States can expect to multiply his earnings about six times after adjusting for the higher cost of living. That is a pay raise about twice as large as the one that propelled the last great wave of immigration a century ago.

With about one Filipino worker in seven abroad at any given time, migration is to the Philippines what cars once were to Detroit: its civil religion. A million Overseas Filipino Workers — O.F.W.’s — left last year, enough to fill six 747s a day. Nearly half the country’s 10-to-12-year-olds say they have thought about whether to go. Television novellas plumb the migrants’ loneliness. Politicians court their votes. Real estate salesmen bury them in condominium brochures. Drive by the Central Bank during the holiday season, and you will find a high-rise graph of the year’s remittances strung up in Christmas lights.

Across the archipelago, stories of rags to riches compete with stories of rags to rags. New malls define the landscape; so do left-behind kids. Gain and loss are so thoroughly joined that the logo of the migrant welfare agency shows the sun doing battle with the rain. Local idiom stresses the uncertainty of the migrant’s lot. An O.F.W. does not say he is off to make his fortune. He says, “I am going to try my luck.”

A kilometer of crimson stretched across the Manila airport, awaiting a planeload of returning workers and the president who would greet them. The V.I.P. lounge hummed with marketing schemes aimed at migrants and their families. Globe Telecom had got its name on the security guards’ vests. A Microsoft rep had flown in from the States with a prototype of an Internet phone. An executive from Philam Insurance noted that overseas workers buy one of every five new policies. Sirens disrupted the finger food, and a motorcade delivered the diminutive head of state, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who once a year offers rice cakes and red carpet to those she calls “modern heroes.”

NO ONE WANTS THEIR NEWFIES:

Is Scotland on Verge of Independence? (Ian Bremmer, 4/28/07, Real Clear Politics)

On May 1, England and Scotland will mark the 300th anniversary of the treaty that wedded the two within the United Kingdom. The festivities won't last long. Two days later, Scottish voters are expected to hand dominance of Scotland's parliament to the separatist Scottish National Party, which has called for a popular referendum to force a divorce.

Prospects for Scottish independence are far from certain. Even if the SNP finishes first on May 3, it's not at all clear it can win enough seats to bring independence to a vote in 2010. Even if it does, Scots may not be ready to cut all ties with England. But nationalist control of Scotland's parliament, with or without a vote on independence, poses plenty of risks -- for the UK, for Scotland and perhaps for unity in other European countries. [...]

Even if an SNP government lacks the votes to schedule the referendum, tensions between England and Scotland will grow. The Scottish parliament will seek (and likely receive) new concessions from Westminster, provoking resentment in England. Many English officials argue it is inherently unfair that Scottish members of Britain's parliament now vote on health and education issues affecting English voters, while English lawmakers have virtually no say in Scottish affairs.

In addition, as part of the original devolution plan, British subsidies provide Scottish students with free university tuition and elderly Scots with free long-term health care, benefits the English must pay for. Scottish voters counter that these subsidies are financed with revenue from North Sea oil and gas, much of it extracted from "Scotland's waters." Yet, polls suggest that many English voters are now content to see Scotland fend for itself.

This is a particularly awkward problem for the member representing the Scots of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, British Labour's prime minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown. If his countrymen vote to bolt from the United Kingdom, those who ask "who lost Scotland?" will surely point toward Brown -- especially since the original devolution of powers was Labour's idea.

ORIGINAL:

Reading the Constitution Right (Stephen B. Presser, Spring 2007, City Journal)

Despite Thomas's willingness to go against the grain, critics have often charged that he is subservient to the man the Times calls his "mentor": fellow originalist Scalia. And it's true that Thomas concurs more often with Scalia than with any other justice. In one of his lighter moments, he mused that Scalia must have implanted a chip in his brain to control his jurisprudence. But Thomas is no Scalia clone; in fact, he's even more committed to originalism than is the elder justice. Scalia, for instance, has said that he might temper his originalism to accommodate long-standing Court precedent. Thomas believes that, when given the chance, the Court should right its past errors--even if it means overturning "settled" law.

Fittingly, Thomas has emerged as a muscular proponent of states' rights, again countering decades' worth of constitutional law, which has cut back on state power and signed off on a massive expansion of the federal government. Thomas makes clear that, for him, the "ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." This "compact" theory of the Constitution has a tricky history. Jefferson and Madison--the father of the Constitution himself--adopted it in the crisis of the late 1790s; so did the Southern states when they withdrew from the Union. It's a controversial idea, to say the least, and it flies in the face not only of much modern legal theory but also of the views of some nineteenth-century jurists, including Supreme Court justice Joseph Story, in his celebrated and influential 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution.

Equally boldly, and again in accordance with his views of the primacy of state power, Thomas argues that modern jurisprudence "fundamentally misunderstands"--"ignores" might be a better way of putting it--the notion of "reserved powers" from the Tenth Amendment, which holds that the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Taking the Tenth Amendment seriously would mean imposing a more modest role on the central government.

Thomas's states-rights leanings show up most clearly in his dissent in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), a case in which the Court ruled unconstitutional Arkansas's imposition of term limits on its congressional representatives. The Constitution, reasoned the Court, already listed certain qualifications for congressional office--a representative must be at least 25 years old, for example, and a senator 30--and no state could add to those restrictions. The Court had read Story's treatise, which not only rejected the compact theory but also asserted that the states' sole "reserved powers" were those that they enjoyed before the framing of the Constitution. Because none of the states at the time had placed term limits on their national representatives, it followed that they didn't have the power to do it now.

Thomas didn't buy it, opining that the majority made a mistake in relying on Story's constrained interpretation of "reserved powers." Story "was not a member of the Founding generation, and his Commentaries on the Constitution were written a half-century after the framing," Thomas noted. "Rather than representing the original understanding of the Constitution, they represent only his own understanding." Story's assertion "conflicts with both the plain language of the Tenth Amendment and the underlying theory of the Constitution." Surveying the historical period shortly after the Constitution's ratification, Thomas also showed that at least some states had imposed restrictions on qualifications for office beyond those that the Constitution specified--implying that the document, as the founding era interpreted it, permitted them. Therefore, Thomas concluded, since there was no explicit constitutional denial of the power of setting congressional term limits, the people of the states should retain it.

As a simple matter of text and original understanding, Thomas may well have been right, and the venerated Story wrong.

Thomas has also taken on the modern Court's misinterpretation of the First Amendment's religion clause, which has barred states and localities from promoting religion in the public square. The clause provides that "Congress . . . shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Since its decision in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947), the Court has interpreted that to mean a nearly impenetrable "wall of separation" should stand between church and state--and has applied the principle not only to the federal government but also to state and local governments. For example, the Warren Court barred state-sanctioned public school prayer or Bible reading. More recently, the Court has forbidden public schools to invite clergymen to give benedictions at graduations, or to allow student-led prayer at football games.

But recent work of legal historians, including my own, has shown that the religion clause's real purpose was likely to protect the state establishments of religion that still existed in 1791 in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia, and probably also the religious restrictions for voting or for holding public office that 11 states had on the books at the time. Endorsing this view, Thomas--alone on the Court--wrote in his concurrence in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004) that "the text and history of the Establishment Clause strongly suggest that it is a federalism provision intended to prevent Congress from interfering with state establishments." As he bluntly put it, "the Constitution left religion to the States."

Justice Thomas's views on abortion similarly reflect his belief that, according to the Constitution, it's up to the states to decide the most important matters of domestic law. In his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), joined by justices Rehnquist and Scalia, Thomas affirmed that Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 declared that the constitutional "right to privacy" included the right for a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy, was "grievously wrong." "Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother," said Thomas. "Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so." It seems that those liberals who feared that a Justice Thomas would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, and return the issue of abortion to state voters, were correct.

Thomas's most powerful opinions, however, concern race. In his view--which not all originalists share--the Fourteenth Amendment's provision forbidding states from depriving any person of the "equal protection of the laws," together with Fifth Amendment federal due-process protections, means that the Constitution is colorblind, pure and simple.

In Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995), the Supreme Court, narrowing the range of permissible race-conscious policies, found that a federal affirmative-action program that gave preferences to minorities in awarding contracts had to show a "compelling governmental interest"--and be "narrowly tailored" to address it--to pass constitutional muster. Thomas concurred, but made clear that he would have gone much further: "I believe that there is a 'moral [and] constitutional equivalence' . . . between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality." No matter the law's intentions, Thomas maintained, "under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race."

For Thomas, the core of racial preference programs was a paternalism "at war with the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution." To support his assertion, he cited the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." As Scott Gerber observes, Thomas's striking argument seeks to incorporate the notion of equality that inheres in the Declaration into the Constitution itself.

AXIS OF GOOD--SOUTHERN DIVISION:

Brazil's leader begins diplomatic offensive: Analysts say Lula, on visits to Chile and Argentina, hopes to offset the growing influence of Venezuela's oil-providing Chavez. (Patrick J. McDonnell, April 27, 2007, LA Times)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Argentina on Thursday night as part of a diplomatic offensive aimed at reasserting Brazil's regional leadership role against a mounting challenge by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Though Lula has denied any effort to undermine Chavez's petro-diplomacy, South American analysts see the Brazilian president responding to his Venezuelan counterpart's oil-funded strategy to become a regional power broker — a role Lula believes should rightly be his because his nation is Latin America's largest and most populous.

"Brazil is returning step by step to the political initiative," said Julio Burdman, a political analyst here. "That includes balancing the aspirations of Chavez to lead the region." [...]

Lula touched down in the Argentine capital after a visit in Santiago with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, another leader with close ties to Washington who is wary of Chavez's growing sway.

While in Chile, the Brazilian president said he agreed with the assessment of popular former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos that chavismo, as the Venezuelan leader's charismatic vision of socialism is sometimes called, was illusory.

"Neither do I believe in the existence of chavismo," Lula told reporters in Chile. "I believe in the existence of a South American conscience."

The Brazilian president has been a strong proponent of South American integration, a vaguely defined goal that most leaders on the continent endorse in theory. But Lula has departed from Chavez's anti-U.S. vision of integration, failing to embrace, for instance, the Venezuelan's plan for a "Bank of the South," a kind of alternative to U.S.-dominated lending agencies such as the World Bank.

The Bush administration, alarmed by the emergence of a pro-Chavez, anti-Washington alliance in Latin America, has warmly embraced Lula as a moderate leftist who is a role model for the region. President Bush's visit last month to Brazil, and Lula's subsequent trip to Washington, solidified the perception in South America that the Brazilian president — just embarking on a second four-year term — was keen to assume a broader profile and offset Chavez's larger-than-life image.

"Brazil has long had a position of leadership, but in recent years it has lost that momentum," noted Rafael Villa, a political analyst in Sao Paulo, Brazil. "Now, through diplomatic action, it is trying to recover the initiative."

MORE:
The Return of the Idiot: Throughout the 20th century, Latin America’s populist leaders waved Marxist banners, railed against foreign imperialists, and promised to deliver their people from poverty. One after another, their ideologically driven policies proved to be sluggish and shortsighted. Their failures led to a temporary retreat of the strongman. But now, a new generation of self-styled revolutionaries is trying to revive the misguided methods of their predecessors. (Alvaro Vargas Llosa, May/June 2007, Foreign Policy)

Ten years ago, Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner, and I wrote Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, a book criticizing opinion and political leaders who clung to ill-conceived political myths despite evidence to the contrary. The “Idiot” species, we suggested, bore responsibility for Latin America’s underdevelopment. Its beliefs—revolution, economic nationalism, hatred of the United States, faith in the government as an agent of social justice, a passion for strongman rule over the rule of law—derived, in our opinion, from an inferiority complex. In the late 1990s, it seemed as if the Idiot were finally retreating. But the retreat was short lived. Today, the species is back in force in the form of populist heads of state who are reenacting the failed policies of the past, opinion leaders from around the world who are lending new credence to them, and supporters who are giving new life to ideas that seemed extinct.

Because of the inexorable passing of time, today’s young Latin American Idiots prefer Shakira’s pop ballads to Pérez Prado’s mambos and no longer sing leftist anthems like “The Internationale” or “Until Always Comandante.” But they are still descendants of rural migrants, middle class, and deeply resentful of the frivolous lives of the wealthy displayed in the glossy magazines they discreetly leaf through on street corners. State-run universities provide them with a class-based view of society that argues that wealth is something that needs to be retaken from those who have stolen it. For these young Idiots, Latin America’s condition is the result of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism, followed by U.S. imperialism. These basic beliefs provide a safety valve for their grievances against a society that offers scant opportunity for social mobility. Freud might say they have deficient egos that are unable to mediate between their instincts and their idea of morality. Instead, they suppress the notion that predation and vindictiveness are wrong and rationalize their aggressiveness with elementary notions of Marxism.

Latin American Idiots have traditionally identified themselves with caudillos, those larger-than-life authoritarian figures who have dominated the region’s politics, ranting against foreign influence and republican institutions. Two leaders in particular inspire today’s Idiot: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chávez is seen as the perfect successor to Cuba’s Fidel Castro (whom the Idiot also admires): He came to power through the ballot box, which exonerates him from the need to justify armed struggle, and he has abundant oil, which means he can put his money where his mouth is when it comes to championing social causes. The Idiot also credits Chávez with the most progressive policy of all—putting the military, that paradigm of oligarchic rule, to work on social programs.

For his part, Bolivia’s Evo Morales has indigenista appeal. In the eyes of the Idiot, the former coca farmer is the reincarnation of Túpac Katari, an 18th-century Aymara rebel who, before his execution by Spanish colonial authorities, vowed, “I shall return and I shall be millions.” They believe Morales when he professes to speak for the indigenous masses, from southern Mexico to the Andes, who seek redress of the exploitation inflicted on them by 300 years of colonial rule and 200 more of oligarchic republican rule.

The Idiot’s worldview, in turn, finds an echo among distinguished intellectuals in Europe and the United States.

8 BATS, NO PITCHING:

Red Sox continue dominating Yankees (Ronald Blum, 4/27/07, AP)

Daisuke Matsuzaka overcame control problems to defeat the Yankees for the second time in six days, and Kevin Youkilis and Julio Lugo homered in a come-from-behind 11-4 victory Friday night that improved Boston to 4-0 against its longtime rival this season. [...]

Given a 4-2 lead after the Yankees scored four in the fourth, Andy Pettitte (1-1) immediately gave it back, forcing in the tying run with a bases-loaded walk and allowing the go-ahead run to score on a wild pitch. Pettitte allowed five runs, six hits and five walks in 4 2-3 innings, making it 11 times in 21 games that New York's starters failed to pitch five innings.

AXIS OF GOOD--EASTERN DIVISION:

F-22 Tops Japan''s Military Wish List (David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie, 4/22/07, Aviation Week)

Top Japanese military officials are quietly but firmly insisting they want the U.S. to release the F-22 to compete for the air force's F-X fighter program, and are adamant about fielding the most advanced air-combat technology available.

Tokyo wants a stealthy fighter equipped with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for cruise missile detection and wide-band data links to push additional information into Japan's increasingly sophisticated air defense system. For the moment, only the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor offers all these features.

Access, however, is far from assured, with the U.S. Congress requiring over-sight and approval of any plan for foreign sale of the stealth fighter. [...]

Release of the F-22 is becoming a point of pride with the Japanese, who provide the U.S. forward bases in the region as well as dispersal and rapid deployment options in case of a military confrontation or natural disaster, say U.S. officials. Exporting the technology isn't a concern for U.S. combat pilots, since software packages for U.S. versions of the aircraft will always contain extra capabilities. In addition, U.S. military officials are privately asking administration and senior Pentagon civilians to reconsider the export restrictions, at least for Japan.

"I'm aware the Japanese are interested in the F-22," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Aviation Week & Space Technology last week. "I'm also aware of our concerns about what we export and don't export of our high technologies. The Japanese are very close friends. We're committed to protecting Japan, so we'll work our way through it. We all need to be concerned about both ballistic and cruise missile defense. It's something that we . . . need to work on."

There also seems to be a Pentagon precedent for meeting Japan's high-tech needs.

"We had an identical situation with the F-15," says a U.S. aerospace industry official close to the program. "It was a point of pride with the Japanese, and even though the F-15 was considered exceptional technology, they had it within two years of initial operational capability in the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. Air Force and the Japanese Ministry of Defense want the sale to take place, but what's missing this time is someone pushing it at the State Dept. level. There needs to be political pressure, but right now there's no vocal advocate."

What may change the formula is the growing awareness of cruise missile technology proliferation and the fact that little attention has been paid to fielding cruise missile defenses in Japan, which is only a few hundred miles from North Korea and China and would be the most vulnerable from a surprise attack.

"Once the Japanese politicians realize that it's a matter of national survival, not just national pride, it could generate support outside the Japanese Self-Defense Force," the industry official says.

CASHMUMMIES:

Pitching has Yankees in a tailspin (Bob Klapisch, 4/27/07, ESPN.com)

So where does the blame lay? Pick your poison. There's been assembly line of starting pitchers -- nine different ones in 21 games -- none of whom have come close to matching Josh Beckett's 5-0 start. In fact, Yankee starters are averaging just 4.9 innings per appearance, worst in the majors. No wonder the Yankees' bullpen has four relievers on a pace for more than 100 games this year.

No one counted on such a wide gulf between the blueprint and reality. Wang has been hurt, and Pettitte, with just one win to show for his 1.78 ERA, actually has had to pitch out of the bullpen twice, a clear sign of Torre's distress. The manager's decision to use Rivera in the eighth inning last Friday at Fenway also stunned observers.

"Five outs? In April?" one executive asked incredulously. Of course, Torre couldn't have known Rivera would fail so completely. He blew a 5-2 lead and was clocked at just 88 mph, a 5-mph drop-off from his usual velocity. Even more significantly, Rivera's cutter was missing its last-second darting action. That's what really troubles Yankee officials: Rivera's stuff was diminished following three games of inactivity, when the Yankees were sweeping the Indians and the closer was reluctant to take the ball.

Could Rivera be trying to nurse his arm through an injury? The Yankees don't dare think that way, especially since he threw with more authority last Monday against Tampa Bay. Still, if Rivera can't be counted on to dominate (of the nine swings the Red Sox took last Friday, they missed just once) the Yankee dynasty may be closer to collapse than at any time since the early '90s.

Of course, all of this could change quickly. Wang and Pettitte are both capable of beating the Sox and changing the chemistry in the East in the next three days. And it's also possible rookie Phil Hughes could evolve quickly. But long-range issues linger. No one knows if Mike Mussina will regain the 5-mph on his fastball that's so far been missing. At 85 mph, "he hasn't got enough" said one American League scout. Indeed, Mussina's other pitches, particularly his curveball, are all dramatically compromised unless he's throwing harder. The Yankees will find out on Wednesday, when Mussina is scheduled to come off the disabled list.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have all but given up on Carl Pavano, who continues to insist there's a "grabbing" sensation in his right forearm. Pavano's only remaining ally in the organization is general manager Brian Cashman, who's on the hook for the $40 million he's invested in the pitcher. Otherwise, Pavano is an invisible man in the clubhouse. [...]

Of all the mistakes the Yankees' hierarchy has made in recent months -- underbidding on Daisuke Matsuzaka, counting on Pavano to return to the rotation, failing to acquire a run-producer at first base -- the $20 million invested in Igawa through 2011 could turn out to be one of the most costly.

That's no small wound, now that Cashman is trying to run the organization with a business plan.

MORE:
Tracy Ringolsby's weekly baseball notes package (TRACY RINGOLSBY, April 26, 2007)

Right-hander Philip Hughes, the Yankees' first-round draft pick in 2004, became the first No. 1 pick to make it to the majors with the Yankees since shortstop Derek Jeter, who was their No. 1 in 1992.

300 MILLION AMERICANS WITH GUN RIGHTS CAN'T BE WRONG (via Bryan Francoeur):

The disarming of America (Dan Simpson, 4/27/07, Toledo Blade)

LAST week's tragedy at Virginia Tech in which a mentally disturbed person gunned down 32 of America's finest - intelligent young people with futures ahead of them - once again puts the phenomenon of an armed society into focus for Americans.

The likely underestimate of how many guns are wandering around America runs at 240 million in a population of about 300 million. What was clear last week is that at least two of those guns were in the wrong hands.

When people talk about doing something about guns in America, it often comes down to this: "How could America disarm even if it wanted to? There are so many guns out there."

Because I have little or no power to influence the "if" part of the issue, I will stick with the "how." And before anyone starts to hyperventilate and think I'm a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands, let me share my experience of guns.

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm.

FORGET THE POLLS...:

Brown dragging Labour to defeat in polls (George Jones and Andrew Pierce, 27/04/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Gordon Brown is becoming a growing electoral liability to the Labour Party as a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph today shows that he is falling even further behind David Cameron.

The poll points to Labour's worst local election performance in two decades, with the party poised to lose hundreds of seats in England and Wales. Labour is also facing a catastrophic loss of power to the nationalists in Scotland, opening up the prospect of a referendum on the end of the Union within four years.

The Tory leader has surged into a 10-point lead after voters were asked if they would prefer a Cameron-led Conservative government to a Brown administration.

The rapidly growing gap has triggered the first signs of panic within the Labour Party leadership that the local elections will give a powerful boost to Mr Cameron's aim to be regarded as a potential prime minister.

THE FUNNY THING IS...:

Misguided rage at US supremacy: A new book offers insights about how America (Greg Sheridan, April 28, 2007, The Australian)

WHEN the 9/11 terror attacks occurred in the US, the official reaction of the Iraqi government was ecstatic. Saddam Hussein issued a statement saying: "The American cowboy is reaping the fruits of his crimes against humanity."

As two Iraqi authors write in a new study: "Saddam Hussein did his utmost to implant in the Iraqi psyche an ugly image of the US: coloniser, Zionist, bully and greedy oil thief."

At the same time, the opponents of Saddam had come to be profoundly hostile to the US for exactly the opposite reason. After the 1991 US-led operation to reverse Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, the Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north rebelled against Saddam's rule, only to be savagely crushed. The Americans did not come to the aid of the rebels, who saw this, with some justice, as American betrayal.

Here is a classic contradiction of anti-Americanism. The Americans are hated by one segment of Iraqi society for opposing Saddam and are hated equally by another section for not opposing Saddam enough.

SHE WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT...:

Clinton Seen as the Hawk of Democrats: Debate May Reshape the Race Ahead (RUSSELL BERMAN, April 27, 2007, NY Sun)

The Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina may reshape the party's primary when it comes to national security, casting Senator Clinton and Governor Richardson as the hawks in the race, positioning Senator Obama and John Edwards in the middle, and giving new prominence to two strident opponents of military force: Rep. Dennis Kucinich and a former senator from Alaska, Michael Gravel.

Mrs. Clinton positioned herself as more willing than Messrs. Obama or Edwards, her chief rivals for the nomination, to use military force in the event of terrorist attacks against America.

"I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate," Mrs. Clinton said when asked how she would use the military if terrorists struck two American cities simultaneously. The answer came in stark contrast to the responses given by Messrs. Obama and Edwards to the same question.

NO PRIVATE AIRLINE WILL FLY THEM (via The Other Brother):

Branson Twists Knife In Airbus' Back With Boeing Order (Aero-News, 26 Apr '07)

Sir Richard Branson is irked at Airbus, for three delays in Virgin Atlantic's order for the A380 superjumbo.

How irked? Branson posed with Boeing executives to announce his decision to purchase as many as 43 Boeing 787 Dreamliners for Virgin, snubbing the Airbus A350 XWB. But he didn't stop there, reports Forbes.

The statement from Virgin said its new partnership with Boeing would benefit the environment, because the US-made 787 burns 27 per cent less fuel per passenger-mile than the Airbus A340s it will replace.

Ouch. But Branson still wasn't through.

Branson -- never at a loss for words -- also called the A380 "a financial disaster", suggesting Airbus will be hard-pressed to ever sell enough of the planes to turn a profit.

MORE:
Nigerian order caps Boeing's big day (Dominic Gates, 4/27/07, Seattle Times)

At Boeing Field on Thursday, Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick Ekpu, of Nigeria, sprinkled holy water from a Fairmont Hotel water bottle onto two new 737-700s.

With that, the jets were officially baptized Michael and Martin — the names are painted on the fuselage — after the two sons of J.I.A. Arumemi-Johnson, chairman of Nigerian startup airline Arik Air. Before the elaborate 737 delivery ceremony, Arumemi-Johnson announced a big order for seven Boeing wide-bodies: three 787-9 Dreamliners, two ultra-long haul 777-200LRs and two 777-300ERs. The order previously was booked as being from an unidentified customer.

The order appears to secure for Boeing the fledgling airline market in a country that, though troubled, is rapidly developing, thanks to oil wealth. The 737s parked behind him as he spoke are the first new airplanes sold into the Nigerian market in 25 years. Arik bought them not from Boeing but from U.S. carrier Air Tran, which sold the 737s to the African airline directly off the production line.

The Arik announcement capped a big order day for Boeing, as the planemaker also announced new firm orders for 16 jets. India's Spicejet ordered 10 Boeing 737-800s and Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private-equity firm, ordered six Boeing 777 freighters.

EV...:

Shift in Congress Brings Little Change, Most Americans Say (John Harwood, 4/27/07, The Wall Street Journal)

Six in 10 Americans say restoring Democrats to control of Capitol Hill “hasn’t brought much change.”

WAITING FOR THE NEXT PRETEXT:

Iraq, and the Truth We Dare Not Speak: We must win American hearts and minds. (Victor Davis Hanson, 4/27/07, National Review)

Not long ago I talked to a right-wing hardnosed fellow in a conservative central California town about the need to stay and finish the task of stabilizing the democracy in Iraq and rectifying the disastrous aftermath of 1991. He wasn’t buying. Instead he kept ranting about the war in the ‘more rubble, less trouble’ vein. And his anger wasn’t only over our costs in lives and treasure. So I finally asked him exactly why the venom over Iraq. He shouted, “I don’t like them sons of bitches over there — any of ’em.” His was a sort of echo of Bismarck’s oft-quoted “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” [...]

A controversial and costly war continues, in part so as to give Arab Muslims the sort of freedom the West takes for granted; but at precisely the time that the public increasingly is tired of Middle Eastern madness. In short, America believes that the entire region is not worth the bones of a single Marine.

To counteract this, we need more clarity both here and abroad. First, the administration must articulate how our idealism is stark realism as well. Americans daily have to be reminded that consensual government in Iraq — not just plebiscites — is in our long-term strategic interest. Second, we should hear far more of Iraqi cooperation and joint operations, both military and civilian, that in fact do characterize this war and reveal an Arab desire to be free of the past. And third, far more long-suffering members of the Iraqi government need to express some appreciation for the American sacrifice — and express such gratitude to the American people directly.

We worry rightly about anti-Americanism and winning over the people of Iraq. But the greater problem, at least as we now witness it in the Senate and House, is winning back those here at home.

WHICH WOULD MAKE THEM ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR:

Ethiopia Finds Itself Ensnared in Somalia: Some Observers See Similarities To U.S. in Iraq (Stephanie McCrummen, 4/27/07, Washington Post)

Four months after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared his own "war on terror" against an Islamic movement in Somalia, Ethiopia remains entangled in a situation that analysts and critics are comparing to the U.S. experience in Iraq.

Though Meles proclaimed his military mission accomplished in January, thousands of Ethiopian troops remain in the Somali capital, where they have used attack helicopters, tanks and other heavy weapons in a bloody campaign against insurgents that in recent weeks has killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, and forced half of the city's population to flee.

On Thursday, the Ethiopian-backed Somali prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, declared that three weeks of heavy fighting was over, a statement tempered by the mortar blasts that continued to boom in the distance, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, a political crisis seems to be worsening, as the Somali transitional government, steadfastly supported by the United States, faces a swell of criticism for ignoring concerns of the city's dominant Hawiye clan, whose militias form the core of the insurgency and who are motivated not by the ideology of jihad, but power.

"It's just exactly like the Americans in Iraq," said Beyene Petros, a member of the Ethiopian Parliament and an early critic of the invasion. "I don't see how this was a victory. It really was a futile exercise."

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, THEY DODGE BECKETT THIS TIME:

Pena makes it grand finale: He lowers the boom as Sox dust Orioles (Gordon Edes, April 27, 2007, Boston Globe)

So, Red Sox shortstop Julio Lugo was asked, for one day would he like to have Wily Mo Peña's body?

"No, I like my body," said Lugo, who gives away at least 100 pounds to a man who makes David Ortiz look like a welterweight.

OK, then, how about Peña's power?

"Oh, yeah, I'd love to have his power," Lugo said. "I'd love to have his power. He's amazing. That ball he hit, with the wind blowing in?"

Let Josh Beckett pick up the retelling of Peña's 430-foot grand slam, the one that made Beckett the majors' first five-game winner this season after a 5-2 victory over the Orioles last night.

[A.J.] Burnett dominated the struggling Yankees and outclassed their prized prospect on the mound, sending last-place New York to its sixth straight loss by pitching the Toronto Blue Jays to a 6-0 victory last night.

"He's got the capability of doing that every time he goes out there. All we have to do is keep him healthy," Toronto center fielder Vernon Wells said.

Making his much-anticipated major league debut, Hughes received a rough welcome from the hard-hitting Blue Jays and a valuable lesson in power pitching from Burnett. [...]

The Yankees (8-12) are on their longest skid since they dropped six in a row from May 28-June 3, 2005. They managed only four singles and are percentage points behind Tampa Bay in the AL East.

"There's going to be panic soon if the winning doesn't start," said center fielder Johnny Damon.

HE PUTS THE RUDE IN RUDY:

What Rudy Believes: Gun control? Welcoming immigrants? A woman's right to choose? Never mind his past positions. The only -ism that Rudy Giuliani believes in is sadism. (Michael Tomasky, 05.08.07, American Prospect)

Conservatives who admire Rudolph Giuliani for his association with the date September 11, 2001, may wish to consult Google on the question of the mayor's behavior on May 10, 2000. The Rudy of that date should give them, and everyone, reason to stop and think about the great hero's moral architecture.

The weeks leading up to the date had been surreal. Giuliani was running for a U.S. Senate seat against Hillary Clinton. The traditional Senate campaign in New York consists of swings upstate to discuss economic development and airfares, day trips out to Long Island to curse sprawl and pledge devotion to oysters, and occasional high-minded speeches in the city at places like the Council on Foreign Relations -- Clinton's tedious, but quite effective, course. Rudy's, however: Rudy's campaign since March had consisted of vicious attacks on a police-shooting victim named Patrick Dorismond; an announcement by his estranged wife, Donna Hanover, that she would appear in The Vagina Monologues ("GYNO-MITE!" ran the headline in the New York Post); and the exposure, at long last, of Rudy's extramarital relationship, with a woman named Judith Nathan. In the middle of it all, he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but even that sympathetic note seemed strange enough as to be somehow part of his willed unraveling.

A full week had now passed since the Nathan story broke, and Giuliani, in the face of a frenzied media circus, had said nothing publicly about his marriage. A photo, indelibly etched in my memory, from Cardinal John O'Connor's May 8 funeral service -- he had died the same night Nathan hit the papers -- summed up the weirdness better than any words could: There in the front pews sat the Clintons, the Gores, the Bushes, the Patakis, and, all by himself, Giuliani. And so the papers, that morning of May 10, carried livid admonitions from Republicans like state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno for the mayor to return to planet Earth, to address his situation, and to run a campaign. As fate would have it, I had lunch that day on Union Square with Juleanna Glover Weiss, Giuliani's just-hired press secretary who later went on to a certain kind of fame as one of "Cheney's Angels" (the vice president's loyal and secretive spokeswomen). So I missed the press conference -- as did she, more importantly -- at the New York Public Library at which The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller asked Giuliani, "Do you have any reaction to Mr. Bruno's comments yesterday … about your marriage?" [...]

"I do," Giuliani said to Bumiller. "It was very, very painful. For quite some time, it's probably been apparent that Donna and I" -- his New York accent, never thick, was real enough that "Donna and I" always came out "Donner and I," making it sound like he was talking about a reindeer -- "lead, in many ways, independent and separate lives. It's been a very painful road, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to formalize that in an agreement that protects our children …"

Sounds reasonable, right? Indeed, it sounds even open, honest, and painful -- and for those reasons admirable, especially for a politician. But there was one huge catch: He hadn't told Donna that he was announcing this. Today, as Giuliani seeks the presidency, journalistic shorthand typically refers to his "messy divorce," or uses other phrases like that. Barbara Walters assembled a report for 20/20 in late March that was focused squarely on the question of the Giuliani-Nathan relationship -- this was the Giuliani campaign's spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to render Nathan a sympathetic figure -- but even then, Walters glossed over the sordid details. Reports like Walters' avoid describing what really happened: that he used his own philandering as a ploy to elicit public sympathy in a battle that he started against the mother of his two children, then ages 10 and 14.

That May afternoon, "Donner" emerged from Gracie Mansion and announced that she'd tried to keep her marriage together, referring to an attempted reconciliation the previous summer, but that "it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member" (both Giuliani and Lategano have always denied a dalliance). Two nights later, while Donna and the kids were on a plane to Los Angeles to spend the weekend -- Mother's Day weekend, no less! -- with her parents, Rudy took Judy out for a stroll up Second Avenue, permitting the newspaper photographers to snap pictures all along the way. They were on the cover -- the "wood," in the argot -- of the tabloids the next day, as Giuliani undoubtedly knew they would be. That, I thought, was an interesting way to "protect" his children, which he had vowed so solemnly to do just 48 hours previous.

Bill Clinton may have embarrassed his family, but Rudy Giuliani humiliated his. That previous summer to which Donna referred, when she thought she and her husband were reconciling? He was dashing out to the Hamptons to spend weekends at Judy's condo! This was not mere irresponsibility, the kind of "mistake" we "learn from," as he has taken to saying on the stump. This was sadism. And he didn't act this way only toward his wife and kids, which might render this a private matter. No -- this was how the man dealt with enemies private and public.

Conservatives may think they're supporting the September 11 Rudy. But I covered the man for 15 years, and I can guarantee them they'll be getting the May 10 Rudy as part of the bargain. If they actually nominate him, they will eventually learn this the hard way, just like poor Donna did.

NEARLY WORTH VIOLATING THE TIME ZONE RULE:

Morse: The No.1 gentleman detective: He's described by his producer as 'a miserable sod who likes beer and can't relate to women'. Yet the viewers love him - all one billion of them. As ITV celebrates 20 years of Inspector Morse with a weekend of back-to-back screenings (Guy Adams, 27 April 2007, Independent)

Twenty years ago, a white-haired detective with a melancholy disposition drove a red Jaguar past some dreaming spires to the scene of an apparent suicide in the Oxford suburb of Jericho.

The detective was called Inspector Morse. His assistant was a younger man by the name of Lewis. After several pints of beer and a few crossword puzzles, they rubbed their heads together and realised the suicide was actually murder. Eventually, they caught the killer.

So began a famous partnership that endured for 13 years, 33 episodes, and more than 80 murders. It was a career of staggering, almost unbelievable commercial success, which turned a middle-aged Oxfordshire copper into a global icon.

Morse also became one of the biggest exports in the history of British television drama. The shows were sold to a total of 200 countries from Mongolia and Nepal to Malawi, El Salvador and Papua New Guinea. According to ITV, a billion people, just under a sixth of the world's population, have watched at least one episode.

At the same time, John Thaw, the late actor who played Morse, achieved fame on a par with a major Hollywood star, becoming a poster boy for an idyllic land of warm beers and happy country pubs that the rest of the world likes to associates with Middle England.

His success has spawned a thousand less-successful imitations and a spin-off television series called Lewis. It was behind a minor industry that has flogged ranges of merchandise and DVD box-sets to fans, and still sees a total of three companies competing to offer Morse-themed city tours to tourists visiting Oxford.

Today, seven years after he was finally killed off, Morse is the subject of a long-awaited celebration. This weekend sees the old dog's official 20th birthday, and ITV3 is devoting an entire 48 hours of television to the occasion. Morse fans, as they say in the Shires, are putting up the bunting.

OF WHAT USE IS A PIECE OF PAPER?:

Compromising ideologies: Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies by Zaki Chehab (Simon Martelli, 4/27.07, Asia Times)

Time will tell whether Hamas can maintain its support at the level of mainstream politics and continue on its path of defiance. Zaki Chehab has no crystal ball. But with his book Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies, the London-based Arab journalist has given us a colorful first-hand account of a movement, both despised and revered, that must yet play a central role in any resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As Gaza sinks further into a state of anarchy, this is a well-informed contribution to a highly emotive and pressingly topical issue.

Despite its violent history, only a small fraction of the Hamas budget has gone toward its military operations, with the lion's share being allocated to its social and welfare programs. These programs, along with Hamas' clean-handed administration and moral discipline, were inspired by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and have characterized the political activities of its Palestinian offshoot. At the parliamentary elections in 2006, Hamas' clean image contrasted sharply with the rival secular party Fatah's history of bad governance, corruption and failed negotiations with Israel. Fatah was left completely shattered after 40 years in power.

After the movement's inception, which coincided with the first Intifada and was loosely tolerated, as the author points out, by the Israelis then looking for a way to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas developed its military wing, the Izzedin Al Qassam brigades, "initially armed with nothing more dangerous than plastic guns and knives". Chehab charts the painful and violent years of the 1990s, after the Oslo Accords, when many disillusioned Palestinians volunteered themselves for suicide missions, and touches on the important role Iran and Syria played in supporting and sheltering the movement. [...]

[Y]assin and his successors' strategic decisions were only ever temporary measures, since their long-term goal has never changed: to reclaim the whole of Palestine as it had been before 1948, with Jerusalem as its capital. In the words of one senior Hamas official, speaking after the election, "You will never find anyone in Hamas who will recognize Israel's right to exist. If you do, he is a liar."

In itself, however, and as some observers have pointed out, this does not entirely preclude the possibility of an agreement with Israel now that Hamas is in power. After all, the hardline Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein signed up to a peace agreement with the British and Irish governments in 1998 that eventually paved the way for a power-sharing assembly, despite decades of violent opposition to British rule.

Contrary to the claims of those who saw the Hamas election victory as dashing any hope of peace, new opportunities for a long-term interim agreement could yet emerge, say the optimists, with the moribund peace initiatives of the past being replaced by bolder and fairer solutions for the Palestinians. The prospects are hardly encouraging. [...]

Hamas is not a hostage to its ideology. But in the absence of any significant concessions from Israel, the movement will never discard its core ideological position and make the transition to parliamentary politics. It will not just be the Palestinians who pay the price for Hamas' failure to do so.

PINNING THE TARGET ON THEIR OWN CHESTS:

Rogues of the world unite (Clifford McCoy, 4/28/07, Asia Times)

One advantage for North Korea in normalizing bilateral relations with Myanmar would be to establish a formal diplomatic channel to pressure the junta to crack down on North Korean refugees escaping across the Chinese border, traveling through Myanmar and across to Thailand, from where they are repatriated to South Korea. Growing refugee flows have become a point of embarrassment for Pyongyang and it undoubtedly would like to see the route through Myanmar severed. Myanmar security forces would also likely have knowledge of the movement of North Korean refugees through their contacts with ethnic insurgent ceasefire groups along the Chinese border and hence would be in a position to interdict the refugees if ordered to do so.

Yet there are also risks to normalizing ties. South Korea has become one of Myanmar's leading trade partners and a major investor, and establishing formal diplomatic relations with North Korea could risk antagonizing the budding commercial relationship. The decision will likely also be unpopular with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly with member countries Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Myanmar is a member of the grouping.

Myanmar's apparent desire to acquire power-projection capabilities makes Thailand in particular nervous, considering the two traditional adversaries share long stretches of contested border areas and Bangkok has quietly provided sanctuary and support to armed ethnic insurgent groups. Myanmar's army and Thai security forces have occasionally clashed in recent years.

Meanwhile, both Malaysia and Singapore would likely view any sort of North Korean military presence in the region as a destabilizing influence. Myanmar's attempts to acquire SRBMs, submarines and nuclear capability from Pyongyang could spark a new arms race, one that few regional governments could afford.

The SPDC may be hoping that the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea will give it an ally against Western pressure, especially from the US. It may turn out, however, that the opposite is true. Both regimes have well-documented histories of human-rights abuses, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, human trafficking and forced labor, and establishing formal bilateral relations and strategic linkages will likely make the US and the European Union take greater notice of their interactions.

The US already views Myanmar as a rogue state and some US politicians called for adding Yangon to President George W Bush's "axis of evil" after the SPDC's violent attack in May 2003 on democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade. Until now, Myanmar has not been a strategic concern to the US, but a substantial improvement in Myanmar's military capabilities and closer ties with a proliferating North Korea could quickly change that calculus.

NOT SURE WHY THEY NEED AIRPLANES...:

Saudis arrest 172 militants in anti-terror sweep (The Associated Press, April 27, 2007)

Police have arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom were being trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

THE END IS JUST A MATTER OF PACE:

Beijing spring: Democracy is in the air (Kent Ewing, 4/27/07, Asia Times)

Spring has not proved to be a hopeful season in the politics of China's past, but that could be changing. These days, there is democracy as well as pollen in the air. All this seems to pave the way for the introduction of a more democratic election system in the all-important 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) this autumn.

Start with the fact that both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have recently spoken positively about democratic development both in Hong Kong and on the mainland. In addition, a number of articles on political reform have appeared in the state-controlled media and Communist Party journals. There has also been speculation by veteran commentators overseas on the possibility of a democratic future for China. [...]

Both the president and premier have pledged to support Hong Kong's democratic development. But that is no big surprise, as the Basic Law, the constitution agreed to by London and Beijing before the city reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, calls for popular election of executive and legislature some time in the future.

But Wen's expatiations on democratic development on the mainland at a March 16 news conference created a genuine stir. When the premier was asked about an article he had written for the People's Daily in which he stated that socialism and democracy were not mutually exclusive, he answered willingly and at length.

At one point, he declared: "You are actually asking what socialist democracy means. Let me be very clear about it: socialist democracy, in the final analysis, is to enable the people to govern themselves. This means we need to ensure people's rights to democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic oversight. It means we need to create conditions for people to oversee and criticize the government."

But Wen went on to say that the development of democracy in a country as large and complex as China would be a gradual process and that, more immediately, it was important for the present (unelected) leadership to create a sense of social, economic and political justice among ordinary citizens. That, he added, can only come from listening and responding to the people - although he said nothing about letting them vote.

IF THE DEMOCRATS CAN'T EVEN SINK FREE TRADE...:

Trade Talks: Nearing a Deal? (Greg Hitt, 4/26/07, Wall Street Journal)

Expectations grow that House Democrats may be nearing a deal with the Bush administration to allow some key trade pacts to move forward.

THE LAST PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN:

Like it or loathe it, after 10 years Blair knows exactly what he stands for: Sitting in the Downing Street garden, I ask him what is the essence of Blairism in foreign policy. 'Liberal interventionism' (Timothy Garton Ash, April 26, 2007, The Guardian)

So what is the distinctive feature of Blair's own approach? What is the essence of Blairism? His answer could not be clearer: "It is liberal interventionism." Blairism is, he elaborates, about a progressive view of the world, starting from the reality of interdependence in an age of globalisation, and acting according to certain values. "I'm a proud interventionist." He would not withdraw anything he said in his 1999 Chicago speech, with its liberal interventionist "doctrine of international community". Even if it is true, as I suggest, that the Bush administration is rowing backwards from its advocacy of democratisation as a central plank of its foreign policy, he is not: "Whether they do or not, I don't."

That includes Iraq. The overwhelming majority of ordinary Iraqis want peace and democracy, but they are being sabotaged by "external players" - he mentions Iran and al-Qaida - plus "a minority of internal extremists". Isn't it a nightmare for him that he'll spend the rest of his life answering questions about Iraq? No, that seems to him perfectly reasonable, but "when people say 'Iraq will determine everything', the answer is: it depends what happens." So are they wrong to argue that the situation in Iraq will determine the verdict on his foreign policy? No, it was certainly "a major dimension" of it; but it is too soon to say how Iraq will turn out. History will tell.

I turn to those alliances with Europe and the US. The only major foreign policy plank in Labour's 1997 election manifesto was to "give Britain the leadership in Europe which Britain and Europe need". Does he think he has? "Britain has been a leader in Europe," he says, a tad defensively, although "on the surface, British attitudes remain stolidly Eurosceptic". A great deal of that is due to the Eurosceptic media. Europe is the area above all "where I'm urged by even quite sensible parts of the media to do things that I know are completely daft, and that anyone sitting in my chair would think are completely daft".

But "I have a theory about this". His theory is that "the British people are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice about Europe, they don't expect their government necessarily to share it or act upon it". So, for example, at the European council on June 21 and 22 (which he clearly still expects to be attending as prime minister), he hopes to agree, with other European leaders, the terms for negotiating a treaty, codifying those institutional changes that are required to make an enlarged EU work. Not a constitution any more, just a simple amending treaty. The Eurosceptic press will cry blue murder, but this will nonetheless be "the proper decision in the true British national interest".

Then, with a new French president, a friendly German chancellor and a helpful European commission president, Britain can go forward with its partners to tackle more important matters for the future of Europe.

OH, SNAP!:

Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake (ELIZABETH PUDWILL, Houston Chronicle)

* 2 cups finely crushed gingersnap cookies

* ½ cup finely chopped pecans

* 6 tablespoons butter, melted

* 3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

* 1 cup sugar, divided

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 3 eggs

* 1 cup canned pumpkin

* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

* ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

* Dash ground cloves

* Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

To make the crust, mix the gingersnap crumbs, pecans and butter. Press
onto the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch springform pan.

To make the filling, beat the cream cheese, ¾ cup sugar and vanilla
with an electric mixer until very smooth. Add the eggs, 1 at a time,
mixing on low speed after each addition, just until blended. Remove and
reserve 1½ cups of the plain batter. Stir the remaining ¼ cup sugar,
pumpkin and spices into the remaining batter.

Spoon half of the pumpkin batter over the crust. Top with spoonfuls of
half of the reserved plain batter. Repeat layers. Cut through batters
with a knife several times to marble the cake.

Bake for 55 minutes or until the center is almost set. Remove from the
oven. Run a knife along the edges of the pan to loosen the cake; this
will help prevent the cheesecake from cracking. Cool before removing
the sides of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

A SOCCER FAN AND HIS MANHOOD ARE SOON PARTED (via Brian Boys):

Old Mike, new Christine (Mike Penner, April 26, 2007, LA Times)

During my 23 years with The Times' sports department, I have held a wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat reporter. Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL columnist. Recent keeper of the Morning Briefing flame.

Today I leave for a few weeks' vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation.

As Christine.

I am a transsexual sportswriter. [...]

When I told Robert, the soccer-loving lad from Wales who cuts my hair, why I wanted to start growing my hair out, he had to take a seat, blink hard a few times and ask, "Does this mean you don't like football anymore, Mike?"

No, I had to assure him, I still love soccer. I will continue to watch it. I hope to continue to coach it.

My days of playing in men's over-30 rec leagues, however, could be numbered.

When I told Eric, who has played sweeper behind my plodding stopper for more than a decade, he brightly suggested, "Well, you're still good for co-ed!" [...]

People have asked if transitioning will affect my writing. And if so, how?

THE BIG QUESTION HERE... (via Bryan Francoeur):

Rice Signals Rejection of House Subpoena (MATTHEW LEE, 4/26/07, AP)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday
she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to
answer before a congressional committee and suggested she is not
inclined to comply with the order. [...]

Rice noted that she had been serving as President Bush's national
security adviser during the period covered by the panel's questions
and stressed the administration's position that presidential aides not
confirmed by the Senate cannot be forced to testify before Congress
under the doctrine of executive privilege.

``This all took place in my role as national security adviser,'' she
said. ``There is a constitutional principle. There is a separation of
powers and advisers to the president under that constitutional
principle are not generally required to go and testify in Congress.

``So, I think we have to observe and uphold the constitutional
principle, but I also observe and uphold the obligation of Congress to
conduct its oversight role, I respect that. But I think I have more
than answered these questions, and answered them directly to
Congressman Waxman.''

DID ANYONE BUT THE MOST RABID RUSSOPHOBES THINK HE'D RUN?:

I will not seek third term, says Putin (Associated Press, April 26, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today said he would not seek a third term in power. [...]

Mr Putin's second - and constitutionally final - term in office ends next year, and some observers have suggested he could attempt to amend the constitution to remain in office.

Last month, the head of the upper house of parliament proposed making such a change.

However, Mr Putin has consistently dismissed the idea, and today said the next state of the nation address "will be given by another head of state".

THE CRISIS WITHIN THE ELEPHANT:

Culture War: AMERICA'S BEST WEAPON IS THE IRANIAN PEOPLE. (Azar Nafisi, 04.26.07, New Republic) If you take the long view of

Iranian history and focus on the country's people rather than its rulers, a very different picture emerges: that of an Iranian order in crisis.

Evidence for this proposition is everywhere. A cursory look at Iran's publications and blogs shows that, although some Iranians--for a variety of reasons--support their regime's nuclear ambitions, most are far more interested in trying to redress day-to-day problems like corruption, the struggling economy, rising unemployment, political and social repression, and a general lack of freedom. Few are well-informed about the nuclear program, and most are embarrassed and disturbed by the image of their country in the world. Indeed, Iran's new international isolation and pariah status is deeply unpopular at home, and the fact that the government is emptying its coffers to foment revolution abroad rather than to support the welfare of the Iranian people has turned many of Ahmadinejad's supporters against him. Workers' protests have lately escalated in at least ten cities. Angry union leaders have held the president responsible for the weakening of the economy. In the recent city council elections in Tehran, only two of 13 winners were supporters of Ahmadinejad.

This discontent has seeped upward to high levels of Iranian politics--for instance, members of parliament, who, during Ahmadinejad's presentation of the annual budget last December, noisily protested the worsening economic conditions. There has even been serious talk about impeaching him. Since his election, Iranian hard-liners have openly divided into two opposing factions, creating a great deal of anxiety among conservative leaders who have been trying to mend the breach. Prominent reformist dissenters, such as Ayatollah Montazeri, have accused the government of using the country's considerable resources to meddle in other people's affairs. Even Ahmadinejad has occasionally sounded dispirited. He recently conceded that 28 years of Islamic rule has failed to eliminate liberal elements from Iranian society. Almost 30 years ago, in his prophetic essay "The Power of the Powerless," Václav Havel wrote that "a specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called dissent.'" That specter has now moved to Iran.

The fact that neither Khatami nor Ahmadinejad has been able to foster unity--even within the ruling elite--is a good indication of the crisis within the system. For over two decades, the main resistance to that system has come from within Iranian civil society. And it is Iranian civil society that will ultimately prove to be the Achilles heel of the Islamic Regime.

DOES ANYONE EDIT THE AP?:

Senate OKs Bill Containing Iraq Timeline (ANNE FLAHERTY, April 26, 2007, Associated Press)

The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president's threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.

WHAT WAR? (via Gene Brown):

Al Qaeda Strikes Back (Bruce Riedel, May 2007, Foreign Affairs)

Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before. It has suffered some setbacks since September 11, 2001: losing its state within a state in Afghanistan, having several of its top operatives killed, failing in its attempts to overthrow the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But thanks largely to Washington's eagerness to go into Iraq rather than concentrate on hunting down al Qaeda's leaders, the organization now has a solid base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and an effective franchise in western Iraq. Its reach has spread throughout the Muslim world, where it has developed a large cadre of operatives, and in Europe, where it can claim the support of some disenfranchised Muslim locals and members of the Arab and Asian diasporas. Osama bin Laden has mounted a successful propaganda campaign to make himself and his movement the primary symbols of Islamic resistance worldwide. His ideas now attract more followers than ever.

Bin Laden's goals remain the same, as does his basic strategy. He seeks to, as he puts it, "provoke and bait" the United States into "bleeding wars" throughout the Islamic world; he wants to bankrupt the country much as he helped bankrupt, he claims, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Are U.S. blue-chip stocks ready to shed their ugly-duckling status?

A surge in big-name shares Wednesday catapulted the Dow index past the 13,000 mark for the first time and boosted hopes that those issues could lead the market to heady gains this year.

The Dow industrials jumped 135.95 points, or 1.1%, to a record 13,089.89 amid a broad rally stoked by upbeat earnings reports and encouraging economic data.

ARE THERE ANY HAPPY DAYS?:

Sad Day Ahead In Caracas (YOUSSEF IBRAHIM, April 26, 2007, NY Sun)

On or around May 1, President Chavez is expected to expropriate American and European oil ventures in Venezuela.

It will be a sad day for the Venezuelan economy. The same thing happened to Libya in the 1970s, when Muammar Gadhafi nationalized the oil industry, and Libya and the other OPEC member states that later undertook such an experiment have yet to recover.

While the oil companies survived, and even expanded, the Libyan oil industry suffered stilted growth and a huge drop in technological advances, restricting it to this day to a meager production level of about 1.4 million barrels a day. [...]

By and large, once Big Oil, be it American or European, is plundered, it is disinclined to come back for more. To be sure, new "service" contracts have been signed with Libya, Saudi Arabia, and OPEC to do some exploration work, lend a hand with the pumping. But without a share of the equity, these are cosmetic efforts. The heart isn't in it.

That is the lesson Mr. Chavez is about to learn.

A SEEMING NO-BRAINER:

Take a Bite of Education (TIMOTHY MULHEARN, April 26, 2007, NY Sun)

Two New York legislators have introduced a bill that can help all New York students, whether they attend public or nonpublic schools. With the Educational Tax Incentives Act, Senator Serphin Maltese of Queens and Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn attempt to go one better than Governor Spitzer, who did not succeed in passing his tuition tax deduction proposal, which would have benefited nonpublic school students.

This measure, which they have jointly promoted for several years, would allow principals as well as school boards to solicit donations from individuals and corporations. Because of its potential to help all New York State, a total of 41 legislators, Democrats and Republicans representing city districts as well as suburban and rural regions, have signed on as co-sponsors to the 2007 version. While the legislation would allow some help for nonpublic school children, public education would be its primary beneficiary.

Donors to schools could claim a credit on their state income tax returns. This credit would be for 50% of the donation, with a $140 cap for personal tax returns and a $4,000 cap for taxpayers who file a corporate franchise tax return, as well as for those who have S corporations, limited liability partnerships, and other such business arrangements.

The significance of these donations is that all the money thus raised would come without an increase in the school tax rate. These dollar amounts were calculated to bring the first-year cost of the bill within the $25 million figure proposed by Governor Spitzer for helping parents of nonpublic school students.

Since the credit is for only half of the amount donated, this measure has the potential to raise $50 million to support education. Based on the experience of Arizona, where a similar law has been in effect for several years and about 80% of first-year donations went to public education, analysts have projected that in New York about $40 million would go to support public schools in the first year. In other words, public education would gain $15 million more than the state would lose. New York's public schools would benefit even more in subsequent years, as the amounts donated are expected to increase.

SO?:

Putin gains a bargaining chip with suspension of treaty (C.J. Chivers, April 26, 2007, NY Times)

President Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday that Russia would suspend its compliance with a treaty on conventional arms in Europe that was forged at the end of the cold war. Putin said the Kremlin would use future compliance with the treaty as a bargaining point in the dispute with United States over American proposals to install missile defenses in Europe.

Putin's announcement, made in his annual address to Parliament, underscored the Kremlin's anger at the United States for proposing a new missile-defense system, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.

BOTH RIGHT:

Justices Raise Doubts on Campaign Finance (LINDA GREENHOUSE, 4/26/07, NY Times)

The argument on Wednesday was over whether, despite the 2003 blanket endorsement, the law would be constitutional if applied to three specific ads that an anti-abortion group sought to broadcast before the 2004 Senate election in Wisconsin.

The ads, sponsored by Wisconsin Right to Life Inc., mentioned the state’s two senators, both Democrats: Russell D. Feingold, a co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold law, who was up for re-election, and Herb Kohl, who was not. The advertisements’ focus was a Democratic-led filibuster of some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Viewers were urged to “contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster.” The ads provided no contact information, instead directing viewers to a Web site that contained explicit criticism of Mr. Feingold.

A special three-judge Federal District Court here ruled that because the text and images of the ads did not show that they were “intended to influence the voters’ decisions,” they were “genuine issue ads” that the government could not keep off the air.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, arguing on behalf of the Federal Election Commission, told the justices that if these ads qualified for an exception to the law’s ban on issue ads that mention a candidate for federal office right before an election, so would many or most others, leaving the statute “wide open.”

Describing the ads as typical of those the court had reviewed when it rejected the initial challenge to the law, Mr. Clement said that a finding that these could not be regulated “just seems inconsistent” with the earlier ruling.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. turned the solicitor general’s argument against him. It was Mr. Clement who was being inconsistent, the chief justice said, noting that in an earlier phase of this case a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the provision could be challenged “as applied” on a case-by-case basis.

If the Roberts court were writing on a clean slate, a broad declaration of unconstitutionality might well be the result. But the court’s 2003 decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, upholding the law, is so recent as to make such a bold step unlikely. Instead, many election law experts believe the fate of the statute may depend on how broad an exception the court carves out through its handling of this or future “as applied” challenges. [...]

For the first half-hour of the argument, Justice Alito said nothing, leaning forward in his seat at the end of the bench with an intense expression. He finally intervened during the argument by Seth P. Waxman, who was defending the law on behalf of a group of its Congressional supporters including Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is the other lead sponsor.

What would happen, Justice Alito asked Mr. Waxman, if a group had been running an ad about an issue, “and let’s say a particular candidate’s position on the issue is very well known to people who pay attention to public affairs.” Suppose the blackout period established by the law was approaching — 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election — “and an important vote is coming up in Congress on that very issue.” Could the group be prohibited from continuing to broadcast the ad?

That would depend on the context, Mr. Waxman replied.

Justice Alito did not appear satisfied. “What do you make of the fact that there are so many groups that say this is really impractical?” he asked. His reference was to the impressive array of ideological strange-bedfellows that filed briefs in support of Wisconsin Right to Life’s challenge. These range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Rifle Association to the United States Chamber of Commerce to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“I love it!” Mr. Waxman replied energetically, as if he had been waiting for just such a question. He said that although these many groups opposed the law, they were living with it and contenting themselves with running advertisements that advocated their positions on issues without mentioning candidates. The only two as-applied challenges, he noted, have both been brought by Wisconsin Right to Life’s lawyer, James Bopp Jr., who also has another case pending before the court.

Chief Justice Roberts was unimpressed by this line of argument. “I think it’s an important part of their exercise of First Amendment rights to petition their senators and congressmen and to urge others to, as in these ads, contact your senators, contact your congressmen,” he said, adding, “Just because the A.C.L.U. doesn’t do that doesn’t seem particularly pertinent to me.”

The law’s most vigorous defense from the bench came from Justices Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter. “If we agree with you in this case, goodbye McCain-Feingold,” Justice Breyer told Mr. Bopp. His point was that there is an inextricable link between the law’s two major provisions: the advertising restriction and the ban on the receipt and expenditure by political parties of unregulated “soft money” from corporations and unions. If corporations can underwrite television ads, which are “the single best way to get somebody defeated or elected,” Justice Breyer said, then “forget the rule that corporations can’t contribute.”

ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN:

Even in death, Yeltsin shuns Soviet ways: The former president is buried with Orthodox rites, a first since czarist times for a Russian head of state. (David Holley, April 26, 2007, LA Times)

Former President Boris N. Yeltsin, putting an end to Soviet practices in death as he did in life, was buried Wednesday with Russian Orthodox rites. The service marked the first time in more than a century that Russia bid a religious farewell to a deceased head of state. [...]

At the graveside, Yeltsin's widow, Naina, stroked and kissed his forehead and face, then blessed him with the sign of the cross. The coffin was then closed, and an artillery salute was fired as it was lowered into the grave.

"The fate of Boris Nikolayevich reflects the entire dramatic history of the 20th century," Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, who was unable to attend because of medical treatment, said in a statement read out at the cathedral service. "At the turn of the 1980s and the early 1990s, he became a witness and a participant in a historic turnaround in the life of Russia. At that time the will of our people for freedom became manifest. Boris Nikolayevich sensed that will and helped for it to be carried out."

NO VISION, SOFTLY CREEPING:

The Sounds of Silence From Democrats on the Hot-Button Issues (Stuart Rothenberg, 4/26/07, Real Clear Politics)

If you really want to see how times have changed across the nation in general, and on Capitol Hill in particular, all you need to do is consider both the way high-profile Democrats have reacted to recent events and how the Democrats are proceeding in Congress. It’s stunning, and that’s not mere hyperbole.

ONLY THE WEST IS SURPRISED AT THE POPULARITY OF THE TWO:

Can Russia meld order with the freedom it briefly savoured? (News Statesm,an, 4/30/07)

As Boris Yeltsin is laid to rest, to what extent can the excesses of his period be seen as responsible for the clampdown that has followed? To what extent could Russia have followed a different, more gradual course out of communism? The two questions are interlinked. They tend to be posed by many Russians now in order to elicit a derogatory response to the late president and his record. Yeltsin allowed a nation's assets to fall into the hands of the largest modern-day kleptocracy. That much is undeniable. But perhaps those most at fault were the foreign advisers who took over the Kremlin, pursuing "shock therapy" privatisation without heed to the peculiarities of the country in which they were experimenting. They not only failed to appreciate the need to build a new form of civil society first, but sent millions of Russians into abject poverty. They undermined confidence in western economic and political remedies.

And yet, it is still not clear whether the outcome would have been significantly better if a more wary path had been pursued. Such were the structures of the former USSR that it was almost inevitable that those who enjoyed political power would seek to grab for themselves and their friends the riches of a newly marketised economy. Putin has restored a semblance of order to economic dealings, but this is superficial. The corruption and cronyism that reached a peak in Yeltsin's second term have simply become more discreet.

Despite the surprisingly fond farewell for Yeltsin, most of what he built is being systematically dismantled by his successor. A crusading press has withered. Parliament and television stations have regained their puppet status and dissent is again a parlous occupation. The deaths of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko attest to that. Other journalists and activists have given in to threats and silenced themselves. Those who do not, such as Garry Kasparov's "Other Russia" group, meet violence from police even where their rallies have been notionally sanctioned by city authorities. Those who wish to make money keep their heads down.

Putin is more confident than he was three years ago. He presides over not a return to the dictatorship of Soviet communism but a form of Latin American autocracy. Only the most outspoken get into trouble. Meanwhile, rich Russians go skiing and eat sushi, and the poor seek to make ends meet. (At least state salaries are being paid now.) It was not wrong for western leaders to seek to woo Putin when he came to power in 2000. It is right that they continue to engage with him, albeit more cautiously. Attention will soon turn to the next succession when the incumbent's two-term tenure runs out in 2008. Will Putin do what Yeltsin did and go quietly? The prospects are not encouraging.

PORPHYRIA LOVERS:

Introducing the latest superfood... Purple asparagus (Daily Mail, 26th April 2007)

A purple asparagus, so sweet it can be eaten raw, has gone on sale in British supermarkets for the first time. [...]

Purple aspa­ragus has much smaller quantities of lignin, the fibrous ­material that makes the green version stringy.

This is also the reason why it can be eaten raw, making it suitable for salads, for instance.

Purple foods are popular with health-conscious consumers because the colour indicates a high level of supposedly health-enhancing anti­oxidants.

Other purple superfoods include tomatoes, being perfected by researchers at Oregon State University, and Purple Haze carrots, which remain orange on the inside.

Growers also have high hopes for purple sprouting broccoli, which has be­come increasingly popular in recent years.

Pacific Purple Aspara­gus, to give it its full name, has high concentrations of the antioxidant called anthocyanin.

DOH?/HA!:

A dry run for a Japan-US FTA (Hisane Masaki, 4/27/07, Asia Times)

Japan has kicked off negotiations with Australia on concluding a free-trade agreement (FTA), in a desperate bid to play catch-up in the ever-intensifying regional and global FTA race. The negotiations with Australia, launched this week, are particularly significant because they are Japan's first with a major agricultural exporter and are widely seen as a dry run for possible future talks with the United States. [...]

Pressure has been growing from other domestic industries for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government to move toward FTA negotiations with the US as soon as possible. The pressure has increased since the US and South Korea reached an agreement early this month.

Abe is expected to raise the possibility of concluding an FTA with the US in his talks with President George W Bush in Washington on Friday during a two-day US visit, his first since taking office last September.

Japan's recently revved-up FTA drive has been largely fueled by an intensifying rivalry with China, a rapidly ascending economic as well as military power, over leadership in regional economic integration - and political clout - and also by increasingly tough global competition for oil, gas and other resources.

NO SYRUP?:

Spinach Pancakes (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, April 26, 2007)

10 ounces fresh spinach, well-washed, large stems removed, or 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 tablespoon sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 to 2 cups buttermilk or thin yogurt

2 tablespoons melted and cooled butter, plus unmelted butter for cooking, or use oil

1 cup sour cream, optional

1 tablespoon minced lemon peel, optional.

If using fresh spinach, place in a covered saucepan over medium heat, with just the water that clings to its leaves after washing; or plunge it into a pot of salted boiling water. Either way, cook it until it wilts, just a couple of minutes. Drain, cool, squeeze dry and chop.

Preheat large skillet over medium-low heat while you make batter. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

In a bowl, mix together dry ingredients. Beat eggs into 1 1/2 cups buttermilk, then stir in the melted butter. Stir this into dry ingredients, adding a little more buttermilk if batter seems thick; stir in spinach.

Place a teaspoon or two of butter or oil in pan. When butter foam subsides or oil shimmers, ladle batter onto skillet, making any size pancakes you like.

Adjust heat as necessary; first batch will require higher heat than subsequent batches. Add more butter or oil to pan as necessary. Brown bottoms in 2 to 4 minutes. Flip only when pancakes are fully cooked on bottom; they won't hold together well until they are ready.

Cook until second side is lightly browned; as pancakes are done, put them on an ovenproof plate in oven for up to 15 minutes. Mix sour cream and lemon peel together and place a small dollop on each pancake.

WE'RE AN AMERICAN PROXY, AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP:

Thousands flee as shelling by Ethiopian tanks kills hundreds of civilians in Somali capital (Chris McGreal, April 26, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

The Somali capital Mogadishu suffered some of the heaviest bombardment in nine days of fighting today, as Ethiopian tanks supporting the interim government shelled new areas of the city despite a claim by the Somali prime minister to have routed Islamist insurgents.

The Ethiopian assault has killed several hundred people, many of them civilians harmed by indiscriminate shelling that has destroyed homes and shops, and forced tens of thousands to flee the city as it spread to previously relatively peaceful parts of Mogadishu. Corpses lay scattered on the streets because it is too dangerous to collect them.

More than 1,000 people were killed in an earlier round of fighting last month. More than a third of the civilian population — some 340,000 people — have fled in the past three months.

HE COULD BEAT HILLARY...IN THEIR PRIMARIES:

START WORKING ON YOUR APOLOGIES:

Beer Foam Riddle Solved (AFP, April 25, 2007)

There is the nagging question of whether life exists other than on Earth. The enduring mystery of who made us — and why.

And then there is this: Why does the foam on a pint of lager quickly disappear but the head on a pint of Guinness linger?

Answers to questions 1 and 2 are still being sought, but the Great Beer Riddle, at least, may soon be solved.

Writing in the prestigious British science journal Nature, an elite scientific duo say they have devised an equation to describe beer froth.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I MISS MICHAEL KELLY:

C.J. Chivers Wins Michael Kelly Award

Esquire contributor C.J. Chivers won the journalism award for his gripping story "The School," about the 2004 Beslan school massacre.

The School: On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than eleven hundred hostages. The attack represented a horrifying innovation in human brutality. Here, an extraordinary accounting of the experience of terror in the age of terrorism. (CJ Chivers, Esquire)

Mid-afternoon. The cafeteria.

The survivors slumped in the corner by the dish-washing room, perhaps twenty-five people crammed in a tiny space. Still the bullets kept coming. A crash sounded along the outside wall; they noticed that the iron bars on the window in the left corner were gone. Three Russian commandos climbed in.

They were a fit and nimble trio, carrying rifles and wearing body armor and helmets. They stood among the dead and the injured, weapons ready, blood, broken glass, and spent shells around their feet. One of them bled from his hand. "Where are the bastards?" one whispered.

A door to the storerooms swung open. Ibragim was there. Simultaneously, the commandos and the terrorist opened fire over the hostages. Ibragim stepped aside, then reappeared, holding two hand grenades. Bullets hit him as he let them go.

Time seemed to slow.

Larisa Kudziyeva watched one of the grenades, a smooth metal oval about the size of a lime, as it passed over her, fell to the floor, and bounced off the kitchen tile toward the soldiers. Her son was beneath her and her daughter beside her. She squeezed the boy, threw her leg and arm over him, and swung her other hand over her daughter's face.

A hand grenade is a small explosive charge surrounded by a metal shell, whose detonation is controlled by a fuse with a few-second delay. When the charge explodes, it shatters the metal exterior, turning it into bits of shrapnel that rush away at thousands of feet per second, accompanied by a shock wave and heat. It can kill a man fifteen yards away. The nook was less than six yards across.

The grenade exploded.

FUNNY HOW THAT HAPPENS:

Eastern Europeans Happier and Healthier Under Capitalism: Eastern Europeans are happier and healthier than ever before as a result of a better diet and economic success. Drinking and smoking less hasn't hurt either. (Der Spiegel, 4/26/07)

Slovaks, Czechs and Poles are healthier and happier than ever before, new studies show.

Life expectancy in Slovakia has increased to just over 70 years for men -- up from 67 in the 1980s -- according to new statistics from the country's Public Health Bureau, while the average life expectancy for Slovak women is now 77.9 years, up from a 1980s lifespan of some 75 years.

Reflecting increased awareness of health and diet, Slovaks are drinking less beer. Slovaks drank a mere 7.4 liters of pure alcohol per capita in 2003, slightly more than half of the 13.7 liters they each quaffed in 1991.

Poles, too, are living longer, to the ripe old age of almost 71 for men and 79 for women on average -- both about four years more than under Communism -- according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). One explanation for their longer lives could be that they are also smoking less. Back in the bleak 1980s, 15 million Poles smoked out of a population of 38 million -- now the country has a mere 8 million smokers.

Women in particular are taking better care of their health, getting check-ups more often, meaning health problems are being recognized earlier.

NEWSLETTER
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday.

Czechs too are happier than ever, with a massive 81 percent of the population describing themselves as satisfied. They too are living longer, with life expectancy figures similar to Poland, partly as a result of a healthier diet containing less fat and more vitamins.

"The increase in quality of life as a result of the booming economy and improved education has had a positive effect on people's state of health," comments Ivan Rovny, head of the Institute of Public Health in Bratislava,

BUT WHAT IF WE DON'T SHARE IN YOUR SELF-LOATHING?:

America The Ugly (OTTO PENZLER, April 25, 200, NY Sun)

Let me make something clear. I'm prejudiced: I don't like people who don't like America, and I especially don't like Americans who don't like America. I've never met David Ignatius, but I don't believe I'd like him, though I hope I'm wrong because he sure can write. I just find it impossible to separate the political tone (it's all our fault) from the novel, just as I can no longer be enchanted by Barbra Streisand's voice or Sean Penn's thespian skills.

Now, if you're more open-minded than I am (I won't say liberal, because no one is more closedminded than liberals, thereby ruining a wonderful word and an outstanding concept), just skip this column and go out and get a copy of "Body of Lies" ) because it is an exceptionally exciting thriller.

INSTANT GRATIFICATION:

Are Yanks Wrong To Push Hughes in the Deep End? (TIM MARCHMAN, April 25, 2007, NY Sun)

Tomorrow night, two months before his 21st birthday, Phil Hughes will take the mound at Yankee Stadium as the best pitching prospect in baseball, and the best New York has seen since Dwight Gooden. In better circumstances, he might have pitched in the minor leagues for a few more months, apprenticed in the Yankees bullpen for a time, and then taken a rotation spot either later in the summer or next year. As things have turned, he will bear not only the immense pressure of his reputation, but the burden of having to restore order to a Yankees rotation that has, due to injuries and failures, gone from a strength to a liability in three weeks.

In several ways, the Yankees are compromising their own interests by turning to Hughes under these conditions. That doesn't mean that promoting Hughes right now will prove to be a mistake — he may, right now, be their best pitcher. But it's at best a curious way to protect one of the game's more valuable assets.

The main problem is that the Yankees have two mutually opposed interests right now. The first, and I think clearly the most important, is ensuring that Hughes is put in the best possible situation for his long-term development. The second is winning. This creates a variety of conflicts. There is no doubt that in an ideal world Hughes would spend a few months testing himself against experienced hitters at Triple-A and that his first major league games would be of little or no consequence. Whether or not one agrees, one can understand why the Yankees would put a higher priority on not falling deep into a hole by the end of April than on creating the ideal environment for the development of a young pitcher, but one can't ignore the costs of doing so.

Somewhat less obviously, these opposing interests cause conflicts that will either lead to the Yankees getting far less out of Hughes than he has to offer, thus making his call up essentially irrelevant, or to them putting his career and potential at risk in exchange for a fix to a temporary and easily solved problem.

MORE:
Crawford Slam Sends Yankees To Last Place (Associated Press, April 25, 2007)

Alex Rodriguez's 23-game hitting streak is over. The Yankees can't say the same about a slide that's dropped them into last place.

Tampa Bay pitching cooled off ARod, and Carl Crawford hit his first career grand slam rallied the Devil Rays over Chien-Ming Wang and the Yankees 6–4 last night, extending the Yankees' losing streak to five games.

EV...:

Democrats still silent on gun control (Derrick Z. Jackson, April 25, 2007, Boston Globe)

Last week's massacre at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives has done little to reignite the gun-control debate. One expects nothing from the Bush administration and the Republicans, who beginning with the 2000 elections have received 92 percent of the $9.1 million in campaign contributions from gun-rights organizations, according to the Center for Responsible Politics.

The Democrats, not officially beholden to the National Rifle Association, have been cowards more concerned about reelection in centrist districts than the trauma to American children. The same Reid who bemoans the loss of life over a failed Iraq war said about Virginia Tech, "I hope there's not a rush to do anything. We need to take a deep breath." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignored a question by a reporter on whether Virginia Tech would inspire Democrats to revisit gun control. All she said was, "the mood in Congress is one of mourning, sadness, and the inadequacy of our words or our actions to console the families and the children who were affected there."

"Inadequacy of our words or our actions" was a Freudian slip. None of the home pages on the websites of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards says anything about guns in relation to Virginia Tech. This is despite the fact that the US public arsenal, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group based in Switzerland, "is comparable or even greater than the total firearms of all the armed forces in the entire world."

This week, Massachusetts Representative Michael Capuano told the Globe "we know we're going to lose" on any serious push for gun control because "the NRA has this place wrapped up." With defeatism like that, who needs a Democratic majority?

IN THE LONG TERM, FRANCE IS DEAD ANYWAY:

Glimmer of Hope in Europe (ALBERTO ALESINA and FRANCESCO GIAVAZZI, April 25, 2007, NY Sun)

The current conservative government folded up reforms as soon as a few thousand students marched the streets of Paris. But considering that Mr. Sarkozy sometimes has a difficult personality and many voters dislike him personally, the fact that he is ahead in the polls shows how much the French are worried about their future if nothing changes.

Things are also changing in Sweden, the champion of the Nordic model: competition in the markets for labor, goods, and services, and the country has one of the most efficient social safety nets in the world. Six months ago, Swedish voters replaced the Social Democrats that had been in power for over 10 years with an young, energetic prime minister, Fredrick Reinfeldt, committed to reassessing the country's social model. While maintaining the generosity of the welfare system, he promised to eliminate distortions and further protect free markets. He wants to merge deregulation of markets, including labor markets, with a tax transfer system consistent with the Swedish predilection for low inequality, but with the least possible amount of market distortions.

In Denmark, deregulation of the labor market has made the unemployment rate even less than that of America. Some unproductive hiring in the public sector has helped, but the direction of the reform is right.

In Germany, its chancellor, Angela Merkel, despite the internal strife of her "grand coalition" has introduced a health reform which will slow down the explosion of health spending, something that America has not done yet. Even in Italy some timid steps toward more open markets, especially in services, have finally happened. Unfortunately, when it came to the sale of the Italian telecommunication giant, Telecom, state capitalism rose its ugly head, stopping foreign bidders, including AT&T, in order to protect Italian insiders.

European citizens are not ready for an anti-tax revolt, but they are increasingly more reluctant to pay high taxes if they are not accompanied by good public services. In the countries where governments are chronically unable to provide good services, taxes can only go down.

Let's be clear: Europeans will always prefer a more generous welfare state than Americans, but perhaps they are beginning to understand two things. One is that generous social insurance can be coupled with competition in markets for goods, services, and labor. Second, you do not need to increase public spending to 50% of the gross domestic product to protect the truly poor.

ALITO BIT OF JUSTICE GOES A LONG WAY?:

Court Weighs Campaign Ads: Curbs on Firms, Unions In Run-Up to Elections May Ride on Alito Vote (JESS BRAVIN, April 25, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Last year, the court acknowledged that in some cases, the regulation of corporate-financed "electioneering communications" potentially could be enforced in a way that impinged on First Amendment free-speech and association rights.

The unsigned opinion opened the door to a lawsuit brought by Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. against the Federal Election Commission, which enforces McCain-Feingold, over a set of ads aired before the 2004 elections. While the FEC considered the ads to be prohibited "electioneering communications," Wisconsin Right to Life said the ads, which it financed with money supplied by undisclosed corporations, comprised constitutionally protected "grass-roots lobbying."

The provision bars corporations and labor organizations from funding "electioneering communications" on TV or radio for 30 days prior to a primary and 60 days prior to a general election. To fall under the restriction, the ad must refer to "a clearly identified candidate for federal office" and, for House and Senate races, target the candidate's constituency, defined as an audience of at least 50,000.

There are some exceptions. For instance, ideological lobbying groups organized as nonprofit corporations can run such ads, as long as they don't accept donations from corporations or unions that are themselves restricted under McCain-Feingold. Corporations and unions also can form and make limited contributions to separate political action committees that pay for campaign ads. And the curbs don't apply to other forms of political ads -- in newspapers, on the Web or through bumper stickers, billboards or telephone calls.

In 2004, Senate Democrats, then in the minority, used a filibuster to block some Bush nominees to appellate courts. The president's supporters focused on the filibuster as a reason for conservative voters to elect Republicans. During the covered period, Wisconsin Right to Life ran one TV and two radio ads against the filibuster. The ads criticized an unnamed "group of senators" for using a filibuster to block "qualified candidates" from getting a "chance to serve" as judges. "Contact Senators Feingold and [Herb] Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster," the ads said.

Sen. Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, wasn't on the ballot, so the ad could have mentioned him with no controversy. But Sen. Feingold was seeking re-election, and the FEC found the ads in violation. Mr. Feingold won his race by 12 percentage points.

In December, a special panel of the U.S. District Court here voted 2-1 for Wisconsin Right to Life. The court observed that "to the untutored viewer's eye, the ads, on their face, neither reveal either senator's thinking on the issue nor reference Sen. Feingold's upcoming election contest." It therefore found the ads couldn't be considered an attempt to influence voters, and fell outside the McCain-Feingold regulation.

TODAY'S TEST: SERIOUS OR PARODY?:

Spinal Tap to reform for Live Earth (Paul MacInnes, April 25, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

While rock fans have been dreaming of a Spinal Tap reunion for years, an important enough reason for the band to get back together has remained elusive. What possible cause could be big enough bring back the band who have seen it all, played it all and, later, scooped it all into a box so they could take it on their tour bus with them?

The answer has become clear today, however, after it was announced that the legendary UK act led by Nigel Tufnel and David St Hubbins are to reform in order to fight global warming. A new film delving into the band's eco-consciousness is to be screened today, and they will back it up with an appearance at this summer's Live Earth festival.

Director Rob Reiner, whose relationship with the band dates back to their classic rockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, explained the decision ahead of the film's debut at a New York festival tonight. "They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming," said Reiner. "Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing - that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler."

FOOLING A FEW FLATLANDERS WON'T GET HIM ANYWHERE:

Giuliani Faces Skeptical GOP Voters (LIZ SIDOTI, 4/24/07, Associated Press)

Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani defended his positions on a late-term abortion procedure and gun control Tuesday as he faced skeptical GOP voters who questioned his sincerity. [...]

Molly Smith, 27, of Hooksett, N.H., a Republican who says she supports former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, noted Giuliani's backing of abortion rights as well as his response last week to the Supreme Court ruling.

"How can we trust you on this issue?" Smith asked.

"I think you can be personally opposed to it, hate abortion, respect somebody else's conscience who might make a different decision, and also believe that particular form of abortion is wrong," Giuliani said.

Peter Bearse, 65, a Freemont, N.H., Republican who said he isn't yet backing a candidate but is leaning toward Arizona Sen. John McCain, asked how Giuliani planned to survive a GOP primary given that his past and current positions on abortion and gun control are in conflict. That, Bearse said, raises questions about "believability."

"I'm older than most here, so I remember certain things," Bearse said, recalling that the ex-mayor had advised Clinton on the issues.

WHAT'S IN YOUR iPOD?:

-The Zincs (Official Band Site)
-The Zincs (MySpace)

PORK IS LIKE BEER...:

Need a reason to eat asparagus? Here are 10 (HSIAO-CHING CHOU, 4/25/07, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

You need another reason to eat bacon.

Toss some homemade bacon bits onto cooked asparagus, or wrap thick spears with bacon strips. One bite has it all: salty, smoky, juicy, sweet.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN ARM DUSTY CAN'T DESTROY:

Move Over, Moneyball: Stat nerds are out! Biomechanics nerds are in! (Seth Stevenson, April 24, 2007, Slate)

You could view the mechanics obsession as just another evolution in fan identity. We've always been armchair managers, second-guessing our team's decisions to bunt, or hit and run, or leave a pitcher out on the mound (damn you, Grady Little). Since the advent of fantasy baseball, we've identified more closely with the GMs—analyzing stats, weighing different roster constructions, and calculating salary-to-production ratios. Now, with the mechanics movement, we're all amateur scouts.

There are some inherent frustrations in this approach to baseball fandom. With reams of statistics now available to anyone who cares, the average fan can make his own judgments with regards to the numbers. But when it comes to mechanics, it still feels like we're in the Dark Ages. There's a clear thirst out there for this kind of stuff, but it's hard to tell which (if any) of these message-board guys knows what he's talking about. Mechanics analysis is so subjective, and such an esoteric niche right now, that the fan has little recourse but to put his faith in guys who claim to have some expertise.

As with any trend, the mechanics movement has its emerging gurus. At the Hardball Times, someone named Carlos Gomez (a self-described "retired pro baseball player" and "mechanics geek") has written a series of columns on pitching mechanics. His essay on Matsuzaka's motion praised Dice-K's "aggressive" leg swing and "elbowy" arm action. Sounds legit, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Baseball Prospectus' Will Carroll has also positioned himself as a mechanics expert. Carroll (who at times seems ickily comfortable with self-promotion) makes confident predictions about which pitchers are injury risks due to flawed form and which boast deliveries so smooth as to make injuries unlikely. Again, I just have to take him at his word. Carroll's analysis of Matsuzaka—a featured video clip at MLB.com—throws up side-by-side video of Dice-K and Roger Clemens, noting how similar the deliveries look. But it's my feeling that at least half the hard-throwing right-handers in baseball would look nearly identical to an untrained eye.

Also consider that in late 2003, Carroll (and co-author Nate Silver) wrote that Cubs pitcher Mark Prior

might be a special case, not because of his numbers, but because of his mechanics. What does a biomechanist see when Prior takes the mound? There are five major principles of proper delivery that can be summarized as balance, posture, anatomical position, rotation, and release. Prior is textbook with all five.

Prior is also now an injury-ridden mess. Carroll blames this on the heavy usage Prior has endured in his young career. But you'd think "textbook" mechanics would let him handle a heavy workload without major problems. Other pitchers have done that.

WE WANT THE

Illegal migrants' right to work wins support of public in poll (Colin Brown 25 April 2007, Independent)

A campaign for an estimated 500,000 illegal workers in Britain to be given the official right to earn a living would have popular support, according to findings in an opinion poll. [...]

But an opinion poll commissioned by Strangers into Citizens - a campaign to give employment rights to illegal immigrants -shows that 66 per cent of people in the UK would accept refused asylum-seekers and those who had overstayed their visas if they worked and paid taxes. The poll was conducted last weekend by ORB with a sample of 1,004 adults across the UK.

Polling here likewise shows that large majorities want them to be able to stay, just want them legalized first.

Comments

---

OUR NATIONAL DNA? HOW ABOUT OUR SOUL? (via Gene Brown)

John McCain's Speech On Energy Policy (Senator John McCain, 4/23/07, Center for Strategic and International Studies)

Thank you. I appreciate the invitation to talk with you about a great and urgent challenge - breaking our nation's critical dependence on foreign sources of oil, and making America safer, stronger and more prosperous by modernizing the way we generate and employ energy.

Oil is often called the lifeblood of our economy-the indispensable commodity that keeps commerce humming and America on the move. But, in today's world, our dependency on foreign oil and the way we use hydrocarbons is a major strategic vulnerability, a serious threat to our security, our economy and the well being of our planet.

Fortunately, there are times in a nation's history when great challenges coalesce with great moments of opportunity. We are at such a moment today. We have the urgent need and the opportunity to build a safer and thriving future with more diverse, reliable, and cleaner energy. But it will take another indispensable commodity to make it happen -American leadership. I'm running for President to help provide that leadership. And I want to talk a little today about the direction I want to lead us and why.

Oil is a vital resource and we will always need it. But we account for 25% of global demand and possess less than 3% of proven reserves. Most of the world's known reserves are in the Persian Gulf, in the hands of dictators or nationalized oil companies. Its availability and price are manipulated by a cartel of countries where our values aren't typically shared and our interests aren't their first priority.

By mid-century there will be three-and-a-half billion cars worldwide-over four times the number today. Most of the growth will take place in the developing world, in India and China, but the increase in fuel prices, pollution, and climate impacts will be felt worldwide. As world demand for oil soars, higher prices, severe economic volatility, and heightened international tensions follow. These unpredictable forces could seriously circumscribe our future if we let them. Great nations don't leave the "lifeblood" of their economy in the hands of foreign cartels or bet their future on a commodity located in countries where authoritarians repress their people and terrorists find their main support. Terrorists understand the seriousness of our vulnerability. Al Qaeda plans for attacks on oil facilities in the Middle East to destroy the American economy. A little over a year ago, a suicide attack at a major Saudi Arabian oil refinery came close to disabling its target. Had it succeeded, it would have driven the world price of oil above $150 dollars a barrel -and kept it there for a year.

We're one successful attack away from an economic crisis. The flow of oil has many chokepoints - pipelines, refineries, transit routes, and terminals; most of them outside our jurisdiction and control. Our enemies understand the effects on America of a significant disruption in supply - a crippled transportation system, gasoline too expensive for many Americans to purchase, businesses closed.

Al Qaeda must revel in the irony that America is effectively helping to fund both sides of the war they caused. As we sacrifice blood and treasure, some of our gas dollars flow to the fanatics who build the bombs, hatch the plots, and carry out attacks on our soldiers and citizens. Iran made over $45 billion from oil sales in 2005, and it is the number one state sponsor of terrorism.

The transfer of American wealth to the Middle East helps sustain the conditions on which terrorists prey. Some of the most oil-rich nations are the most stagnant societies on earth. As long as petro-dollars flow freely to them those regimes have little incentive to open their politics and economies so that all their people may benefit from their countries' natural wealth. The Middle East's example is spreading to our own hemisphere. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is using his country's oil revenues to establish a dictatorship, bully his neighbors and succeed Castro as Latin America's leading antagonist of the United States. The politics of oil impede the global progress of our values, and restrains governments from acting on the most basic impulses of human decency. There is only one reason China has opposed sanctions to pressure Sudan to stop the killing in Darfur: China needs Sudan's oil.

The burning of oil and other fossil fuels is contributing to the dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, altering our climate with the potential for major social, economic and political upheaval. The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak havoc with God's creation. A group of senior retired military officers recently warned about the potential upheaval caused by conflicts over water, arable land and other natural resources under strain from a warming planet. The problem isn't a Hollywood invention nor is doing something about it a vanity of Cassandra like hysterics. It is a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge.

National security depends on energy security, which we cannot achieve if we remain dependent on imported oil from Middle Eastern governments who support or foment by their own inattention and inequities the rise of terrorists or on swaggering demagogues and would be dictators in our hemisphere.

There's no doubt it's an enormous challenge. But is it too big a challenge for America to tackle; this great country that has never before confronted a problem it couldn't solve? No, it is not. No people have ever been better innovators and problem solvers than Americans. It is in our national DNA to see challenges as opportunities; to conquer problems beyond the expectation of an admiring world. America, relying as always on the industry and imagination of a free people, and the power and innovation of free markets, is capable of overcoming any challenge from within and without our borders. Our enemies believe we're too weak to overcome our dependence on foreign oil. Even some of our allies think we're no longer the world's most visionary, most capable country or committed to the advancement of mankind. I think we know better than that. I think we know who we are and what we can do. Now, let's remind the world.

George Gershwin wrote that good music reflects its people and times. "My people are Americans," he said. "My time is today." That's what made his music memorable. That's what made all America's best accomplishments memorable. We were capable and confident, we aspired to greatness and we understood our times. Our time is today, my friends, and the achievements of our storied past will shine no brighter than those we accomplish right now, in our time, if we meet our problems confidently and honestly; if we trust in the strength and ideals of free people; if we aspire to greatness.

As President, I'll propose a national energy strategy that will amount to a declaration of independence from the fear bred by our reliance on oil sheiks and our vulnerability to the troubled politics of the lands they rule. When we reach the limits of military power and diplomacy to contain the dangers of that cauldron of burning resentments and extremism, energy security is our best defense. We won't achieve it tomorrow, but we must achieve it in our time.

The strategy I propose won't be another grab bag of handouts to this or that industry and a full employment act for lobbyists. It will promote the diversification and conservation of our energy sources that will in sufficient time break the dominance of oil in our transportation sector just as we diversified away from oil use in electric power generation thirty years ago; and substantially reduce the impact of our energy consumption on the planet. It will rely on the genius and technological prowess of American industry and science. Government must set achievable goals, but the markets should be free to produce the means. And those means are within our reach.

Energy efficiency by using improved technology and practicing sensible habits in our homes, businesses and automobiles is a big part of the answer, and is something we can achieve right now. And new advances will make conservation an ever more important part of the solution. Improved light bulbs can use much less energy; smart grid technology can help homeowners and businesses lower their energy use, and breakthroughs in high tech materials can greatly improve fuel efficiency in the transportation sector. We need to dispel the image of conservation that entails shivering in cold rooms, reading by candlelight, and lower productivity. Americans have it in their power today to contribute to our national security, prosperity and a cleaner environment. They understand the dangers we face, and are prepared to respond to appeals to patriotism that explain how we can free ourselves from them.

We need not wait for another age, in which science fiction becomes every day reality. Flexible-fuel vehicles aren't futuristic pie in the sky. We can easily deploy such technology today for less than $100 per vehicle; and we must develop the infrastructure necessary to take full advantage. We were able to overcome the challenges of putting seatbelts, airbags, and computer technology in practically every car. We can provide fuel options and improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet by making them out of high tech materials that improve their strength and safety. We are doing that very thing right now to beat our foreign competitors in the aerospace industry.

Alcohol fuels made from corn, sugar, switch grass and many other sources, fuel cells, biodiesel derived from waste products, natural gas, and other technologies are all promising and available alternatives to oil. I won't support subsidizing every alternative or tariffs that restrict the healthy competition that stimulates innovation and lower costs. But I'll encourage the development of infrastructure and market growth necessary for these products to compete, and let consumers choose the winners. I've never known an American entrepreneur worthy of the name who wouldn't rather compete for sales than subsidies.

America's electricity production is for the most part petroleum free, and the existing electric power grid has the capacity to handle the added demand imposed by plug-in hybrid vehicles. We can add more capacity and improve its reliability in the years ahead. Nuclear energy, renewable power, and other emission free forms of power production can expand capacity, improve local air quality and address climate change. I'll work to promote real partnerships between utilities and automakers to accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids.

With some of the savings from cutting subsidies for industries that can stand on their own, we can establish a national challenge to improve the cost, range, size, and weight of electric batteries for automobiles. Fifty percent of cars on the road are driven 25 miles a day or less. Affordable battery-powered vehicles that can meet average commuter needs could help us cut oil imports in half. The reward will be earned through merit by whomever accomplishes the task, whether a laboratory in the Department of Energy, a university, a corporation or an enterprising young inventor who works out of his family's garage.

There is much we can do to increase our own oil production in ways that protect the environment using advanced technologies, including those that use and bury carbon dioxide, to recover the oil below the wells we have already drilled, and tap oil, natural gas, and shale economically with minimal environmental impact.

The United States has coal reserves more abundant than Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. We found a way to cut down acid rain pollutants from burning coal, and we can find a way to use our coal resources without emitting excessive greenhouse gases.

We have in use today a zero emission energy that could provide electricity for millions more homes and businesses than it currently does. Yet it has been over twenty-five years since a nuclear power plant has been constructed. The barriers to nuclear energy are political not technological. We've let the fears of thirty years ago, and an endless political squabble over the storage of nuclear spent fuel make it virtually impossible to build a single new plant that produces a form of energy that is safe and non-polluting. If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why can't we? Is France a more secure, advanced and innovative country than we are? Are France's scientists and entrepreneurs more capable than we are? I need no answer to that rhetorical question. I know my country well enough to know otherwise.

Let's provide for safe storage of spent nuclear fuel, and give host states or localities a proprietary interest so when advanced recycling technologies turn used fuel into a valuable commodity, the public will share in its economic benefits.

I want to improve and make permanent the research and development tax credit. I want to spend less money on government bureaucracies, and, where the private sector isn't moving out of regulatory fear, to form the partnerships necessary to build demonstration models of promising new technologies such as advanced nuclear power plants, coal gasification, carbon capture and storage, and renewable power so we can take maximum advantage of our most abundant resources. And I'll make it a national mission to develop a catalyst capable of breaking down carbon dioxide into useful chemical building blocks, and rendering it a new source of revenue and opportunity.

America competes in a global economy where innovation and entrepreneurship are the pillars of prosperity. The competition is stiff and the stakes are high. We have the opportunity to apply America's technological supremacy to capture the export markets for advanced energy technologies, reaping the capital investment and good jobs it will provide. Our innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs and workers have the knowledge, resources, and drive to lead the way on energy security, as we have in so many other world-changing advancements. The race has always been to the swift, and America must be first to market with innovations that meet mankind's growing energy and environmental needs. Again, government should set the standards, and leave it to the marketplace to win the race.

I have proposed a bipartisan plan to address the problem of climate change and stimulate the development and use of advanced technologies. It is a market-based approach that would set reasonable caps on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, and provide industries with tradable credits. By reducing its emissions, a utility or industrial plant can generate credits it may trade on the open market for a profit, offering a powerful incentive to drive the deployment of new and better energy sources and technologies; for automakers to develop new ways to lower pollution and increase mileage; for utilities to generate cleaner electricity and capture carbon; for appliance manufacturers to make more efficient products, and for the nation to use energy with maximum efficiency-building conservation into the economy in a manner that produces financial and environmental benefits. Dupont Corporation has reaped $2 billion dollars in energy savings and reduced its carbon emissions by 72% since 1990.

As it always does, the profit motive will attract the transformational power of venture capital, and unleash the market to move clean alternative fuels and advanced energy technologies from the margins into the mainstream.

Some urge we do nothing because we can't be certain how bad the problem might become or they presume the worst effects are most likely to occur in our grandchildren's lifetime. I'm a proud conservative, and I reject that kind of live-for-today, "me generation," attitude. It is unworthy of us and incompatible with our reputation as visionaries and problem solvers. Americans have never feared change. We make change work for us.

In the coming months, other proposals will be offered to establish a national climate policy. I welcome this. But let's not let urgency breed rashness and irresponsibility. I claim no monopoly on the best answers. Let the marketplace of ideas flourish. But as there is great reward in the responsible policy, there's also enormous risk in the wrong way forward. The policy must include mechanisms to control costs and protect the economy. Just as there is danger in doing too little, there is peril in going too far, too fast, in a way that imposes unsustainable costs on the economy. I believe "cap and trade" is the best way to manage cost and maximize benefits, but we must look at other market-based means to give added assurance that our policies are an instrument of job creation, economic progress, and environmental problem solving.

Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. But we know America has both an obligation and a compelling national interest in fulfilling our historic leadership role. China's carbon emissions will soon exceed ours. As President, I will invite a collaborative relationship with China to make coal use cleaner and climate friendly. But, we should address the problem on our terms, and bring others into the fold of a common sense effort to solve it, while we sell to the world the technologies needed to do it.

Answering great challenges is nothing new to America. It's what we do. We built the rockets that took us to the moon not because it was easy but because it was hard. We've sent space probes into the distant reaches of the universe. We harnessed nuclear energy, mapped the human genome, created the Internet and pioneered integrated circuits that possess the computing power of Apollo spacecraft on a single silicon chip you can barely see. In twenty years we've gone from using this cell phone, a $4000 toy for the wealthy, to this cell phone, an inexpensive and virtually universal means of communication. We can solve our oil dependence. You can't sell me on hopelessness. You can't convince me the problem is insurmountable. I know my country. I know what we're capable of. We're capable of unimaginable progress, unmatched prosperity, and vision that sees around the corner of history. We've always understood our times, accepted our challenges and made from our opportunities, another better world. My people are Americans. Our time is today. That is the country I ask to lead.

THE BELCHING DRAGON (via Oswald Czolgosz):

Report: China Will Pass U.S. As Polluter (AP, 4/24/07)

China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper.

"In the past couple of months, economic growth and related coal consumption has grown at such an unexpected rate," Birol was quoted as saying. China's rising emissions will effectively cancel out attempts by other countries to reduce their own, he said.

WE JUST HAVE TO LET THEM BE US:

A ruthless foe (Michael O'Hanlon, April 24, 2007, Washington Times)

In its 230 years of independence, the United States has faced a wide range of military opponents. We started of course with the British; the North fought the slave-holding South in the Civil War; we fought native Americans as well as the Mexicans and Spanish during other parts of the 19th century; we opposed Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany in World War I and Adolf Hitler as well as the Japanese in World War II; during the Cold War we waged war against North Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese communists.

Against this historical backdrop, two facts stand out about our collection of enemies in Iraq, with a particular focus on the ex-Ba'athists and the terrorists who produced the bulk of the violence over the conflict's first three years. First, they are a small group relative to the population within which they are found. And second, even by the standards of our nation's past enemies, they are a despicable lot. [...]

Admittedly, guerrilla movements are often relatively small, but Iraq's insurgency has been particularly so. Its al Qaeda element, responsible for most of the suicide attacks such as those that terrorized Baghdad April 18, has been downright tiny.

As for the character of our enemies, they have been unusually ruthless and nihilistic. This is not meant as a trite, nationalistic but a comparative comment. Looking back historically, at least some of our enemies can be respected, albeit begrudgingly.

HOW'S THAT FEARSOME SPRING OFFENSIVE GOING?:

Hundreds of Taliban Forces Surrounded (Associated Press, April 24, 2007)

Afghan forces have trapped up to 200 Taliban fighters in a southern village, possibly including the militia's military commander, demanding they surrender or come under attack, Afghan officials said Monday.

Afghan police and government officials said the suspected Taliban fighters were surrounded as they gathered for a meeting in the mountain village of Keshay in Uruzgan province on Saturday.

VON HAYSY MEMORIES:

Franco marks 25th anniversary of debut (Anthony DiComo, 04/23/2007, MLB.com)

Twenty-five years has its way of blurring memories. So it is with Julio Franco, who, on the silver anniversary of his big-league debut, can't dig out details of the night that became the intro to an epic.

But the scraps of memory that do exist are historical artifacts, the last remnants of a banner day. No pictures, no souvenir balls, no jerseys -- just dusty recollections. [...]

[A]pril 23, 1982, became Franco's night to shine, batting seventh against a Cardinals team that went on to win the World Series. It was one of just 29 at-bats the 23-year-old Franco would receive that year and one of only eight hits.

IS THE ELECTION TOMORROW?:

Jindal "in the Catbird Seat" (Christopher Tidmore, 4/24/07, www.thenew995fm.com)

Pollster Bernie Pinsonat tells 99.5 FM that there is little that can stop Bobby Jindal from becoming Governor of Louisiana. And, if the Democrats do not find a decent candidate, the may lose effective control of the State Senate--as well as the House.

"Jindal is in a great position based on what I've seen. He's in the catbird seat, and we may have a dull election," Pinsonat told Rob Couhig and Bo Walker Tuesday morning.

The Democrats seem incapable of fielding a competitive candidate, and as a consequence, have put themselves in serious danger of becoming a minority party--in Both Houses of the Legislature.

"If there is a Jindal landslide, and the Democratic Party is sitting on the sidelines," Pinsonat explained, "If Jindal is able to win 10 to 12 points, their dreams of having a dominant role in the Senate are over."

WHY THE MAYOR WON'T RUN (via The Other Brother):

McCain surges among New Hampshire conservatives (Granite Prof, 4/24/07)

What leaps out from Smith's copious crosstabs is how well McCain is doing among New Hampshire's conservative Republicans.

Just two months ago, McCain's net favorables (favorable minus unfavorable) among conservatives stood at a paltry 14 percent. In the latest poll, McCain now stands at + 47 among conservatives.

Moreover, he has increased his favorability among conservatives without hurting his popularity with moderate and liberal Republicans. In February, he enjoyed + 55 net favorables, and the latest survey puts him at + 56.

McCain also doubled his net favorables among undeclareds, from +29 in February to + 57 in April.

THEY NOTICED THE REFORMATION, EH?:

Muslims Believe US Seeks to Undermine Islam (World Public Opinion, 4/24/07)

There is strong support for enhancing the role of Islam in all of the countries polled, through such measures as the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). This does not mean that they want to isolate their societies from outside influences: Most view globalization positively and favor democracy and freedom of religion.

These findings are from surveys in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia conducted from December 2006 to February, 2007 by WorldPublicOpinion.org with support from the START Consortium at the University of Maryland.

Large majorities across all four countries believe the United States seeks to “weaken and divide the Islamic world.” On average 79 percent say they perceive this as a US goal, ranging from 73 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan to 92 percent in Egypt. Equally large numbers perceive that the United States is trying to maintain “control over the oil resources of the Middle East” (average 79%). Strong majorities (average 64%) even believe it is a US goal to “spread Christianity in the region.”

“While US leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the US as being at war with Islam,” said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Consistent with this concern, large majorities in all countries (average 74%) support the goal of getting the United States to “remove its bases and military forces from all Islamic countries,” ranging from 64 percent in Indonesia to 92 percent in Egypt.

TOO MANY CRACKS TO PHIL:

Yankees make tough call on Hughes; Rocket next? (Tom Verducci, April 24, 2007, Sports Illustrated)

The most important man in the American League East has made himself known. It took just 18 games, 18 ridiculously messy New York Yankees games in which:

• Andy Pettitte, a guy with a checkered history when it comes to his left elbow, pitched twice out of the bullpen.

• Manager Joe Torre broke his spring vow to keep Mariano Rivera out of the eighth inning.

• And Chase Wright turned himself into an infamous trivia answer, if not an outright public hazard because of the carpet bombing of home run balls he engendered on Lansdowne Street.

It took 18 games for Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who tried to sell everyone on a rotation that included Carl (the Tin Man) Pavano and Kei Igawa (Japanese for "Jaret Wright"), to cry uncle.

Cashman is bringing up Phil Hughes, 20, the best pitching prospect in baseball, simply because it made no sense for the top pitcher in the organization to be getting outs for Scranton when nobody on the big league club could do so with even half his efficiency. Hughes, on Thursday, will become the team's ninth starting pitcher in the first 21 games of the season.

Cashman didn't want Hughes this early, perhaps not even at all this year -- not when the organization babied him last year while holding him to 146 total innings. Now he says Hughes may be around only for one start. Right. He is the best arm the Yankees have -- the one Torre wanted last August -- and they'd rather keep giving the ball to Igawa or counting on Pavano? Sure.

There's no way Hughes should be allowed to pitch 175 innings this year, but good luck getting him out of the rotation now. You try telling Torre that Hughes shouldn't pitch in September because his arm isn't ready for a sixth month and 30 more innings than he's ever thrown in a season.

(1) Instead of starting Randy Johnson against the Sox this weekend he has Luis Vizcaino walking everyone in the park.

(2) Doug Mientkiewicz and Kevin Thompson are getting meaningful at-bats, instead of Garry Sheffield, while Humberto Sanchez's injured arm has him lost for the season.

(3) In trying to match the Sox' Japanese starter he saddled himself with a AAA pitcher he can't afford to farm out simply because it's too embarrassing.

(4) Rather than using the tried and true strategy of trading small-market teams guys like Melky Cabrera, who are attractive only because of NYC hype, he's held them long enough to expose their limitations to everyone.

(5) Even with Jorge Posada in his walk year and getting on in years, he's backing him up with Wil Nieves, who catches as if the pitcher were heaving porcupines at him.

(6) They still have a good shortstop playing third and a quite possibly passable centerfielder butchering short. With every year that passes it looks a worse decision.

(7) He kept Joe Torre for another year, even though everyone knows he's going to be fired unless they win the World Series, and now he's handing him the crown jewel of the thin farm system. Mike Hargrove gave us all an object lesson in what such managers do to young arms when he left King Felix out on the mound for no apparent reason in several April starts. Does anyone think Joe is going to pull Phil Hughes from a start and hand the ball to Kyle Farnsworth just because the young stud has thrown 85 pitches through 5?

(8) Worst of all, this set of moves reflects a deep schizophrenia that he's allowed to infect the entire organization. Keeping Torre, pulling Highes up before he's ready, etc. suggests a team that thinks it can, or even needs to, win this year. Trading Randy Johnson and Garry Sheffield for mediocre youngsters, stocking the coaching staff with succesors to the managerial seat, etc. suggests a team that realizes it needs to rebuild. Trying to walk the tightrope between the two, instead of commiting to one or the other, is usually a recipe for disaster.

Where firing Mr. Cashman several years ago would have been just another sign of George Steinbrenner's petulant nature, it would by now be pretty well justified. If he and Joe Torre wreck Phil Hughes firing may be too good for them.

A TEMPLATE:

Health care proposal gains steam: Plan offers more choices, benefits (Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, 4/23/07, The Courier-Journal)

Even as lawmakers continue to debate how to pay for expanding health coverage to more Hoosiers, key Republicans and Democrats say they are close to agreement on the basic outline of the insurance itself.

The proposal will give adults who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but still have incomes that are less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level a chance to buy newly created coverage that is sponsored by the state but offered by private companies.

The state already covers children at that income level.

Democrats like the plan because it has the potential to reduce the state's uninsured population with benefits that go beyond the basics. Republicans like its "market-based" approach, giving consumers choices plus incentives to make financially prudent decisions.

"This is about getting people with no insurance to have insurance," said the plan's author, Senate Health Chairwoman Pat Miller, R-Indianapolis. "This is going to help a lot of people who need it, but it will also help taxpayers who are already paying higher bills because of those who don't have insurance."

The plan is based on a proposal Gov. Mitch Daniels made to the legislature earlier this year when he asked lawmakers to raise cigarette taxes to pay for it. He called it the Healthy Indiana Plan.

1979 INSTEAD OF 1789?:

Ségolène faces uphill struggle for hearts and minds of France (Daily Mail, 23rd April 2007)

Ms Royal, 53, is sometimes called Mitterand's political daughter and she has pledged to pursue traditional policies of the Left.

They include increased state aid for the unemployed (who make up almost 10 per cent of the population) intervention on the part of workers affected by globalisation and a massive campaign against social exclusion.

Mr Sarkozy, 52, says further featherbedding by the state will lead France into deeper economic stagnation, stifling opportunities which - especially for the young - are already few.

During his campaign Mr Sarkozy visited a city where he knew there were 400,000 potential votes - London. He has pointed to Britain as an example of how free market policies and a laissez-faire attitude towards business can bring growth and prosperity.

The French population in Britain, especially London, has grown substantially as workers seek opportunities they cannot find at home, a point he stressed again and again.

For many, his message bears echoes of Thatcherism. He wants to make the 35-hour working week a minimum, rather than a maximum.

He wants to shift the emphasis from employment by the state to a revitalised business sector. He wants to sell social housing to its tenants. Unlike his opponents on the Left, he does not despise what is called the "Anglo Saxon model".

Ms Royal, by contrast, has pledged that her socialism would not reflect that of New Labour across the Channel and she has pointedly said that she would never bend her knee to George Bush.

ACTUALLY, IT JUST TAKES ONE:

Diplomatic dances over Iran (Kaveh L Afrasiabi , 4/25/07, Asia Times)

"Iran is prepared to provide the most cooperation in the area of control and monitoring" of its nuclear program, the powerful editor of Resalat has stated, a position reiterated by Larijani, who has said: "If they are concerned about diversion [to a weapons program], the issue is so important as to become the focus of future negotiations. We would like that others would have no concern about Iran's peaceful nuclear activities."

Calling for a "different methodology" to pursue results in the nuclear talks, Larijani has at the same time declared Iran's "readiness to step in the path of cooperation". He has dismissed a report from Russia that as long as the nuclear stalemate continues, the power plant in Bushehr in Iran that the Russians are building will not be completed.

Yet that may be the price that Iran will have to pay if Russia and other members of the UN's "5+1" - the Permanent Five Security Council members (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China) plus Germany - escalate pressure on Iran in the face of Tehran's defiance of UN resolutions over ceasing uranium enrichment.

Russia has already committed itself to the charted path of the Security Council, and President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to shift course at a time he is cultivating relations with the EU and repairing damage with Washington.

Iran's challenge is precisely how to find a suitable formula whereby its nuclear rights can be maintained while, at the same time, it shows a greater deference than hitherto observed toward UN resolutions.

Failed talks between Larijani and Solana will only harden the resolve of the 5+1 to toughen sanctions, whereas a mini-breakthrough will give Russia the space necessary to maneuver at the UN and, perhaps, make a pitch for returning Iran's dossier to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog.

In the absence of serious signs of a new flexible approach, Iran's nuclear diplomacy runs the risk of alienating not only the EU but also Russia and China, and thus failing to reverse the negative impact of sanctions on Iran's economy. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes, and the new circumstances demand a deeper level of flexibility from Iran than hitherto observed.

AND, NO, THEY DON'T MEAN HIS ORCA:

Docs fight to save man's willy (MIKE SULLIVAN and JOHN KAY, April 24, 2007, Daily Sun)

DEATH OF A SPORTSWRITER:

Pulitzer Prize winner Halberstam killed in car crash (ESPN.com news services, 4/23/07)

David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who chronicled the Vietnam War generation, civil rights and the world of sports, was killed in a car crash Monday, his wife and local authorities said. He was 73. [...]

After years of daily journalism, Halberstam turned his attention to America's fascination with sports later in his career.

His classic baseball book, "Summer of '49," was published in 1989 and chronicled the famed pennant race between the Red Sox and Yankees. The 1999 book "Playing for Keeps" looked at Michael Jordan phenomenon. His most recent work, 2001's "The Education of a Coach" provides an inside look into Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

TO A REALIST...:

Bush Flunks Diplomacy 101: How to infuriate Russia and the European Union and waste $10 billion a year. (Fred Kaplan, April 23, 2007, Slate)

As Casey Stengel once screamed, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?"

It's one thing to waste $10 billion a year quixotically developing a missile-defense system; President Bush clearly announced from the get-go that he was determined to do that, and Congress has been complicit in his quest.

But to spark a diplomatic crisis with Russia and the European Union while doing so—that takes bungling of an unusually intense quality.

RED FRANCE/BLUE FRANCE:

Sarkoland and Segoland: an election of two nations (John Lichfield, 24 April 2007, Independent)

The map looks like France in the middle ages: a country split down the middle, owing allegiance to different monarchs.

It shows, in fact, the France of April 2007 or rather it shows "two Frances" - the deeply divided country that voted in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday.

To the north, east and south is "Sarkoland": the départements (or counties) where the centre-right candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, topped the poll. To the west and south-west, with one outlying island in the centre, is the much smaller territory of "Ségoland": the départements where the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, scored the largest number of votes.

François Bayrou, the centrist candidate, came first in only one département, his home area of Pyrénées-Atlantiques on France's Atlantic border with Spain. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate, who came first in many areas in the east and north and south in 2002, topped the poll nowhere in 2007.

The sheer size of the Sarkozy territory illustrates the magnitude of Mme Royal's challenge as she tries to become France's first female president in the second round on 6 May.

The first round of the French presidential election was a disaster for the veteran far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Was it a triumph for his ideas?

The French left and the far right, who usually agree on nothing, agreed on one thing yesterday. Nicolas Sarkozy owed his high score on Sunday to the theft of several of M. Le Pen's fav-ourite themes: immigration, crime, national identity.

France's Communist and far-left parties suffered an electoral debacle in the first round of the presidential election.

The Communist Party shrank to a record 1.93 per cent of the vote under its leader, Marie-George Buffet, an even more catastrophic result than under her predecessor, Robert Hue. [...]

In 2002, the Communist and radical left parties soaked up 13.8 per cent of the total first-round vote, contributing to the defeat of the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, by the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

On Sunday, their vote totalled 9 per cent.

YOU WON'T BELIEVE THE INSANITY:

'Girls Gone Wild' Founder Gets Jail Time: Founder of 'Girls Gone Wild' Videos Sentenced in Fla. to Jail for Contempt of Court (Melissa Nelson, 4/23/07, AP)

Blowing his nose and wiping away tears, the multimillionaire founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire pleaded guilty to contempt of court Monday and was sentenced to 35 days in jail.

Joe Francis, who was sued by seven women who were minors when filmed, apologized to the judge for yelling at the plaintiffs during settlement talks.

"I am sorry for my behavior. It was wrong. I had heard about appeals and things and I was confused. I am sorry, I really am," said Francis, 34.

Francis drew the contempt charge during negotiations to settle the federal lawsuit brought after his production company filmed the women at Panama City Beach in 2003.

Attorneys for the women said Francis, who makes a reported $29 million a year taping topless women for his videos, lost his temper in negotiations and yelled obscenities at them.

U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak ordered Francis to settle the case or go to jail for contempt of court. When talks fell through, Francis lashed out at Smoak in the media, calling him a "judge gone wild" and questioning the judge's authority to order a settlement.

CAN YOU SPELL PANIC?:

Phil Hughes-S- Yankees (Rotoworld, 4/23/07)

The Yankees will call up Phil Hughes to start Thursday against the Blue Jays.

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

More Saudi women join the workforce, but limits remain strict: They are challenging sex segregation, taking jobs in education, medicine, and banking (Dan Murphy, 4/24/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

Just as in the West, Saudi women are graduating from universities at higher rates than men. And they are demanding opportunities that the ulema – the Islamic scholars who hold vast sway in the Kingdom – have long denied them.

They are taking jobs in education, medicine, and banking. Lately, the country's labor minister has been pushing for legal changes that would allow more women to work in retail jobs and factories – a sharp challenge to Saudi Arabia's sex segregation.

RIGHT TEST, WRONG ANSWER:

Why Syrian Elections Matter: . . . even though they aren't much of a horserace. (David Schenker, 04/20/2007, Weekly Standard)

Washington, it appears, has decided to stay clear of the Syrian elections, neither funding its reformer allies nor condemning the entire charade. No doubt, the administration debated the merit of wading into Syrian electoral politics--pressing for international election monitors, for example--but in the end, decided against it. Perhaps the decision against weighing in reflects the administration's new, more circumscribed view of the priority of democracy promotion. Given the increasingly long--and growing--list of U.S. grievances against Syria, however, the administration's disinclination to tangle with Damascus on the democracy issue is troubling.

Syria remains a problem for U.S. policymakers. This week's elections are yet another reminder, both to the administration and Congress, that Washington should harbor no illusions as to the true nature of the Assad regime. At the same time, good U.S. policy options on Syria are limited. For decades, Washington has been in search of elusive leverage vis-à-vis Damascus. And while democracy hasn't always been a winning issue, it does resonate with some of our European allies who are currently weighing a rapprochement with Syria. At the very least, democracy would be another arrow in the U.S. policy quiver. In this regard the U.S. tact on the elections represents a missed opportunity.

POLITE MATTERS MORE THAN POLITICS:

The Big White Lie (Andrew Klavan, 4/23/07, City Journal)

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

MAYOR DALEY'S HEIR AS THE LAST NEW DEMOCRAT:

Cory Booker’s Battle for Newark: A bold reformer takes on entrenched crime and corruption. (Steven Malanga, Spring 2007, City Journal)

Some politicians shape their election strategies on the campaign trail. Others develop them while poring over poll numbers or plotting with advisors. Cory Booker found his on the streets of Newark. One day in 2004, as Booker strolled near his apartment building with his father, the pair heard shots ring out, and then watched chaos erupt as a pack of teens ran past. Booker rushed toward the source of the gunshots and saw a young man staggering toward him. “I caught him in my hands and saw that his chest, his white T-shirt, was filling with deep rich red blood,” Booker remembers. Though Booker urged the boy to “hold tight” and “stay with me,” 19-year-old Wazn Miller died in his arms, gunned down in broad daylight by a hooded assassin.

Miller might have been another in a depressingly long line of Newark teens murdered and then forgotten, except for Booker’s presence. Booker describes that day as one of his darkest, when he feared most for the city’s future. It was also the day when he resolved to double his efforts to lead Newark, one of America’s poorest and most violent cities, out of the turmoil that has afflicted it for more than 40 years. Booker invoked Miller’s murder during a successful 2006 campaign to become Newark’s mayor, and today rarely shrinks from describing the harsh reality of crime in New Jersey’s biggest city. “People are dying on a chillingly regular basis in Newark, and there is no moral outrage,” says Booker.

Booker believes that he can revive Newark by bringing to it many of the urban reforms that turned New York City around in the nineties. Since taking office last July, the former Rhodes scholar, who grew up in a largely white, affluent suburb, has made reducing crime his Number One priority and installed a zero-tolerance policing strategy engineered by a veteran of New York’s drug wars. He’s also pushing school choice to shake up Newark’s appalling public schools, and has imported top managers from around the country to combat the legacy of political bossism and patronage that has left Newark with an often woefully incompetent government.

As thorny as the challenge might seem in a city whose residents have seen one broken promise after another since race riots erupted there 40 years ago, Booker and his team are hopeful. Unlike some other faded industrial cities, Newark has potential advantages for the twenty-first-century economy, with a location in the middle of the Washington–New York corridor, impressive transportation options, and far lower costs than nearby Gotham. “The unrealized potential of Newark is tragic,” says Stefan Pryor, Booker’s new economic development chief.

HE WAS WHO THEY WISHED GORBACHEV TO BE:

Boris Yeltsin, flawed hero with a giant legacy, dies at 76 (Marilyn Berger, April 23, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

Yeltsin left a giant, if flawed, legacy. He was at once the country's democratic father and a reviled figure blamed for most of the ills and hardships that followed the Soviet collapse. Mikhail Gorbachev, his last Soviet predecessor and sometime rival for power, told the Interfax news agency that Yeltsin was one "on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country, and serious mistakes."

Although Yeltsin's commitment to reform wavered, he eliminated government censorship of the press, tolerated public criticism and steered Russia toward a free market. The rapid privatization of industry led to a form of buccaneer capitalism, and a new class of oligarchs usurped political power as they plundered the country's resources, but Yeltsin's actions assured that there would be no turning back to the centralized Soviet command economy that had strangled growth and reduced a country populated by talented and cultured people and rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations.

Not least, Yeltsin was instrumental in dismembering the Soviet Union and allowing its former republics to make their way as independent states.

The Yeltsin era effectively began in August 1991, when he clambered atop a tank to rally Muscovites to put down a right-wing coup against Gorbachev, a heroic moment etched in the minds of the Russian people and television viewers all over the world; it ended with his electrifying resignation speech on New Year's Eve 1999, surprising the world.

These were Yeltsin's finest hours, in an era marked by extraordinary political change as well as painful economic dislocation for many of his countrymen and stupendous wealth for a privileged few.

To turn around the battleship that was the Soviet Union, with its bloated military-industrial establishment, its ravaged economy, its devastated environment and its antiquated and inefficient health and social services system, would have been a Herculean task for any leader in the prime of life and the best of health. But in Russia, the job of building a new state from the ashes of the old was taken on by Yeltsin, the dedicated but imperfect reformer, a man in precarious health whose frequent mysterious disappearances from public life were attributed to heart and respiratory problems, excessive drinking and bouts of depression. These personal weaknesses left a sense of lost opportunity.

Yeltsin left with his fondest wish for the Russian people only partly fulfilled. "I want their lives to improve before my own eyes," he once said, remembering the hardship of growing up in a single room in a cold communal hut, "that is the most important thing."

In fact, in the dislocation and chaos that accompanied the transition from the centralized economy he had inherited from the old Soviet Union, most people saw their circumstances deteriorate. Inflation became rampant, the poor became poorer, profiteers grew rich, the military and many state employees went unpaid and flagrant criminality flourished. Much of Russia's inheritance from the Soviet Union stubbornly endures.

Gorbachev had sought to preserve the Soviet Union and, with his programs of glasnost and perestroika, to give communism a more human dimension. Yeltsin, on the other hand, believed that democracy, the rule of law and the market were the answers to Russia's problems.

During a visit to the United States in 1989 he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by the centralized, state-run economic system where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare. He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.

MORE:
Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007: A genuine man of transition. (Anne Applebaum, April 23, 2007, Slate)

It was October 1987, three weeks before the 70th anniversary of the Russian revolution. The Soviet elite had gathered in Moscow to mark the occasion. Following the customarily lengthy speech by the Communist Party general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, the chairman asked if anyone wanted to respond.

Unexpectedly, Boris Yeltsin, then the Moscow party boss, came to the rostrum. He spoke for a mere 10 minutes—and in that 10 minutes, he changed Russian history.

Reading that speech now, it's hard to see what the fuss was all about. Yeltsin complained that the party was lacking in "revolutionary spirit" and that the Soviet people were suffering from "disillusionment." The language was that of a party functionary, which is, of course, what Yeltsin was.

But then, unexpectedly, he resigned. And with that extraordinarily canny decision, he won instant notoriety: Never before had a Communist leader set himself up as a popular alternative to the Communist Party. Within days, half a dozen different versions of Yeltsin's speech were being sold on the streets of Moscow, their authors variously speculating that Yeltsin had condemned communism, had supported democracy, had attacked the privileges of the Communist leadership. Every person who felt dissatisfied—and there were many— believed that Yeltsin shared his views. Two decades later, in a far more cynical Russia, this mood is hard to remember. But in the late 1980s, Yeltsin was wildly popular. When the first presidential elections were held in Russia in 1991, it was inevitable that he would win.

MORE/MORE:
Russia’s U.S. Grant: Boris Yeltsin’s place in history. (Nikolas K. Gvosdev, 4/23/07, National Review)

He was the man who did more than any other to delegitimize the Communist Party and the Soviet system, the favored son who saw the errors of his ways and whose dramatic “repentance” (when he left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1990 before the fate of the U.S.S.R. became clear) started the tidal wave that doomed Mikhail Gorbachev’s hopes of making the C.P.S.U. a kinder, gentler organ of power. It was Yeltsin, unlike Gorbachev, who was willing to stake his political career on the gamble of popular sovereignty, subjecting himself to election campaigns in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1996. It was Yeltsin who brokered the arrangements that allowed a fractious and sometimes rancorous group of anti-Soviet deputies at both the U.S.S.R. Congress of People’s Deputies and the Russian Republican legislature to coalesce into a powerful pro-democracy movement, the man who could bring together dissident intellectuals, working-class union organizers, reform Communists and Russian nationalists into a common movement. And it was Yeltsin’s personal courage and public defiance which doomed the aborted coup attempt in August 1991.

Yeltsin was the man who collapsed the U.S.S.R., but he struggled with fashioning order out of the rubble.

It is the classic historian's question: do individuals or impersonal forces move nations? Anyone who saw Boris Yeltsin, as I did, descend the steps from the Russian parliament and clamber on to the tank to address a message of defiance to the small crowd of Muscovites below, will retain not a sliver of doubt. Individuals move nations - brave, foolhardy, strangely guileless individuals, such as Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.

That scene from 19 August 1991 is preserved in slow motion in my memory, as it must be in the memory of everyone who was there. That morning, Moscow seemed a zone of timeless uncertainty. A state of emergency had been declared before dawn. According to a clumsily formulaic announcement, the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been removed from power due to ill health. A committee had taken over and a state of emergency declared.

Tanks had rolled into Moscow amid the Monday morning rush-hour traffic and converged on strategic locations: the Kremlin, the KGB headquarters, the defence ministry and the White House, the cavernous building of the Russian parliament. Anticipating the paraphernalia of military coups, ID checks, barred roads, I decided for no particular reason, to make for the White House.

Armoured vehicles were positioned around the building. Diplomatic cars, whose arrival apparently predated the tanks, filled the car park. Then suddenly there was movement: a small group started to come down the steps. Yeltsin was in the centre; aides on either side seemed to be trying to dissuade him. He walked slowly and very deliberately, towards the tanks. A few pleasantries with the guards, and he was on the top, reading from a scrap of paper. "I do not accept this coup," was the crucial sentiment I remember now.

Until the world allowed itself to be diverted by the drunken buffoonery of Yeltsin's last years in office, this was the image that defined him. It is also his rightful legacy. Without Yeltsin's challenge, the coup against the Soviet President might have succeeded, the Soviet Union might have staggered on, with an increasingly fearful, and repressive, Politburo in charge.

Yeltsin called the plotters' bluff. He rallied the nation. He anathematised the Communist Party and pronounced it summarily dissolved. The bizarrely incompetent coup still had two full days and two agonisingly tense nights to come, but one man in Russia had refused to accept it. At the emergency committee's embarrassing press conference that afternoon, a few brave young Russian journalists followed suit. The sparse crowd outside the White House grew through the rainy evening, as people came after work intent on seeing the night through. Young men offered themselves to fight, swearing allegiance to Russia and its President on a Bible. Those were truly the days Soviet Communism was smashed. They were also the days when Russia was reborn.

The evolution of Yeltsin from loyal ally of Gorbachev into deadly rival is open to several interpretations, to do with personality and the exploitation of opportunity through the lying and intrigues that the Communist system standardized for everyone. But the decisive factor, according to Aron, was Yeltsin's discovery in Moscow that perestroika and glasnost were beautiful but inapplicable ideas. Ordinary people, as Yeltsin was the first Communist leader ever to admit openly, led lives of helpless degradation, while party bosses were privileged thugs. Nothing could be done to change these extremes. Taking the unprecedented step of resigning from the Politburo in October 1987, Yeltsin became an instant folk hero and martyr.

Lenin had always maintained that the only real danger to Communism lay in factionalism. The moment the party ceased to speak in a single voice, its claim to absolute authority was open to challenge. To protect themselves against such an emergency, previous general secretaries would have had Yeltsin murdered or at least exiled. Gorbachev merely demoted him. This was also unprecedented, and a credit to Gorbachev's character. At the same time, the leniency of the response revealed that he completely misread the essential nature of Communism. The instrument of force alone guaranteed the party's supremacy, and the least attempt to moderate it- never mind genuine reform-led straight to confusion and chaos.

Virtually all observers had always agreed that, for human reasons, Communism was not sustainable in the long run; but the likely ending of the Soviet system in world war and apocalypse was too frightful to envisage. The introduction of a process of election to the Soviet and then the Russian parliaments proved to be all that was necessary. The process was partial, and rigged in several respects, but it was still enough to widen factionalism out into open politics. An alternative to the Communist monopoly of power was at hand. The merits of democratic procedure have rarely been so convincingly demonstrated.

Almost certainly, Yeltsin saw in these elections only the means to have his revenge on Gorbachev. Their mutual animosity had become obsessive and total. Nobody could predict who would win, or what the consequences might be for the losers. Anxious to be on the winning side, petrified by Stalinist memories of Siberia and worse, bureaucrats and generals and even the KGB suspended all decision-making until they knew which way to jump in safety. The state was paralyzed.

Far less intelligent than Gorbachev, Yeltsin won through tactical skill, daring, the support of Andrei Sakharov and the handful of like- minded reformers who understood what was at stake-and last but most importantly, luck. Unforeseeably, the coup of August 1991 enabled Yeltsin to seize the role of popular tribune and champion of liberty, standing on a tank for all the world to applaud and remember. The August conspirators well knew that force was the prime Communist instrument, and it is again inexplicable-the hand of fortune-that they did not make sure to kill Yeltsin. In the aftermath, he duly rubbished Gorbachev, dissolved the Communist party and the Soviet Union too, granting the national republics their freedom. What Gorbachev had begun unconsciously, Yeltsin finished consciously. It was in his interest to do so, but a wonderful feat all the same, and Aron is right to acclaim it.

MORE THAN ANYTHING, IT EXPOSED HOW LITTLE THE "EXPERTS" UNDERSATAND IRAN:

Balance of Power (Dennis Ross, 04.23.07, New Republic)

Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors dominated international headlines and attention for nearly two weeks. Many wondered whether it would become a long, drawn-out affair like the American hostage crisis in 1980. Others feared that it might lead to an escalation, not just of tension with Iran, but of incidents across Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

From the outset, I saw it as an event that would offer us a window to watch the balance of forces in the Iranian leadership. [...]

Since, with any act of statecraft, it is essential to understand reality as it is, knowing whether the IRGC and its standard bearer, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hold the upper hand in Iran will tell us a lot about whether we can dissuade the Iranians from going nuclear--and if so, how best to do it. While some observers like John Bolton declared that, in the crisis, Ahmadinejad "scored a political victory, both in Iran and internationally," the facts suggest just the opposite.

First, note that the Iranian press did not even mention the crisis for several days after the British sailors were seized: This was hardly a case in which the regime was trying to whip the public into a frenzy. On the contrary, it seemed to downplay the issue. Second, after the release of the sailors, Ahmadinejad was roundly criticized in many Iranian newspapers, with several articles making the point that the crisis cost Iran greatly without any corresponding benefit. Third, Admadinejad himself acknowledged that the British made no concessions when he said that they weren't big enough to admit mistake; and an article in the Iranian newspaper Aftab e Yazd even suggested that the Iranians were coerced into letting the sailors go: "If we wanted, as the president says, to pardon them while we had the authority to try them, why did we not release them before Blair's ultimatum or three days after it?"

It is hard to escape the conclusion that Ahmadinejad was a loser in the crisis, and that other Iranian leaders decided they needed to cut their losses. Interestingly, I know from speaking to British officials that they were surprised when Ahmadinejad announced the release of the sailors in his press conference. They had expected that there were going to be more quiet talks with the Iranians, in part to work out the details of the release and in part to discuss, without any British apology, how to minimize the possibility of avoiding future such problems. This was how they expected the Iranians to climb down.

And, yet, the Iranians ended the crisis unilaterally. Bear in mind that, early in the crisis, unnamed Iranians were quoted insisting that there must be a British apology and that the British sailors would be tried. They proved to be wrong. Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme Council on National Security, later told a British interviewer that there would be no trial and that the issue needed to be resolved peacefully; he proved to be right.

Larijani is known to be close to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. While Khamenei made no public comments during the crisis, he is the only one empowered by the Iranian constitution to pardon detainees. Again, according to the British officials I spoke with, they believe that Khamenei ordered the sailors released but allowed Ahmadinejad to do it--giving him a platform to weave his own public story and to bestow medals upon the IRGC soldiers who seized the sailors. Even then, Ahmadinejad wasn't spared public criticism in Iran. (For an overview of the criticism he sustained, read Mehdi Khalaji's April paper for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.)

MAKING THE PIGS PAY TO USE THE TROUGH:

Bloomberg and Pigou (New York Sun Staff Editorial, April 23, 2007, NY Sun)

A bit of a debate is erupting on the World Wide Web in respect of whether the fee that Mayor Bloomberg plans to charge for driving into Manhattan is a Pigovian tax. This is a reference to the ideas of a British economist named Arthur Cecil Pigou. The mayor reckons that congestion pricing, which involves making drivers pay a fee to enter parts of Manhattan during certain hours, will keep down traffic in the city, speed the flow of cars and delivery vehicles, and, on a net basis, give a boost to commerce.

This is in line with the ideas of Pigou, who reckoned that it was a beneficial thing for governments to use the taxing power to affect behavior. Pigou would have understood what the mayor was talking about when he said, "Using economics to influence public behavior is something this country is built on — it's called capitalism." The mayor was quoted to that effect in the Web log of a Harvard professor of economics named Gregory Mankiw, who is a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and who offers what he calls "random observations for students of economics." [...]

"When people are not charged (or are undercharged) for using a common resource such [as] a congested road, then incremental use of the resource entails a negative externality on other users. Imposing a user fee for the scarce resource can be described as a Pigovian tax to deal with this externality. Similarly, a conventional Pigovian tax such as a tax on pollution emissions can be described as a user fee for consuming clean air."

Mr. Mankiw maintains what he's calling the Pigou Club, which is basically a group of economists and pundits with what Mr. Mankiw calls "the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes and carbon taxes." His list includes not only himself and Martin Feldstein but columnists Paul Krugman, Gregg Easterbrook, John Tierney, Jonathan Rauch, and Thomas Friedman, along with Vice President Gore. Secretary of State Shultz and Chairman Greenspan are also in the Pigou Club.

THERE IS NO IRAQ:

Kurds Cultivating Their Own Bonds With U.S. (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, 4/23/07, Washington Post)

With Sunni and Shiite Arabs locked in a bloody sectarian war, Iraq's Kurds are promoting their interests through an influence-buying campaign in the United States that includes airing nationwide television advertisements, hiring powerful Washington lobbyists and playing parts of the U.S. government against each other. A former car mechanic who happens to be the son of Iraq's president is at the center of Kurdish efforts to cultivate support for their semi-independent enclave, but the cast of Kurdish proponents also includes evangelical Christians, Israeli operatives and Republican political consultants.

In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush's war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration's ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.

But elements of the Kurds' campaign run counter to the policy of a unified Iraq espoused by the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

TRADE WITHOUT TRANSNATIONALISM:

US experts call for new trade system (Krishna Guha, April 20 2007, Financial Times)

[The Atlantic Council of the US], which is chaired by two former US commerce undersecretaries, said the struggle to complete the Doha round showed that it was no longer possible to make meaningful progress in a global negotiating system that operated through consensus. It said economies willing to offer large tariff and subsidy cuts need to be able to deal with the “free rider” problem by not extending the same terms to everyone regardless of whether they made equally big concessions – the so-called MFN principle.

A coalition of pro-free trade states should be able to exclude non-participants from taking advantage of tariff cuts in specific product lines, though not from sectoral agreements.

Stuart Eizenstat, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, said this proposal would be compatible with World Trade Organisation rules and the coalition of the willing would agree to use the existing WTO dispute settlement mechanism.

Mr Eizenstat said whether the current Doha trade round yielded an agreement or not, it should be the last of its kind. “The world is moving too fast for this kind of consensus-driven, five, six, seven, eight-year rounds.”

IT AIN'T EASY BEING MOOKIE:

Sadr's murky vision for Iraq (Edward Wong, April 22, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

[P]ress his aides for concrete details of a timetable to present to the Americans, and the picture becomes murkier. They say they want the Americans out. But not just yet.

"In order to drive out the occupation, we need to build up the security forces; then we can have a timetable," said Abdul Mehdi Mutairi, one of Mr. Sadr's top political officials, as he smoked at his desk inside the main Sadr office in Baghdad, his television tuned to an Iranian-financed satellite network. He was referring to the Iraqi government's largely Shiite army and police, which by all accounts could not yet control Iraqi violence on their own.

The gap between Mr. Sadr's public oratory and his actions shows that he, as much as any American or Iraqi official, is captive to the fact that there is no easy path to securing Iraq's future. He does have a starkly plain vision — a centralized Islamist Iraq ruled by nationalist Shiites who are distanced from, if not openly hostile to, the United States. But he also has a problem all too familiar to the Bush administration: he does not know exactly how to realize his vision, given the complexities of the conflict.

He has become a great improviser, the Miles Davis of the war.

REASON ENOUGH TO DO YARDWORK:

Lemonade Remade (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4/23/007)

1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice (from about 12 lemons)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 lemon thinly sliced

cold water

In a large pitcher, combine the lemon juice, sugar and 1 cup of cold water. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Add 5 more cups cold water, the lemon slices, some ice and serve.

LIKE CRACK FOR WONKS:

Welcome to the new Politico.com (Dan Kunitz, April 23, 2007, Politico)

Politico.com is three months old today, and just like a real baby, it's growing so fast its parents can't believe it. We launched a redesigned site this weekend that has a cleaner look. It's easier to read, and our best features are easier to find. Our home page and story pages feature the new look; many of our sub-pages will be re-designed in the coming weeks.

Not only does the new Politico.com have a lot more content, it has lots of ways for you to interact with other politicos, including the pack of people running for president.

MARKETS GO UP, MARKETS GO DOWN:

Baseball's Big Bucks (Kurt Badenhausen, Michael K. Ozanian and Christina Settimi 04.19.07, Forbes)

Baseball games can turn quickly with one swing of the bat. Baseball's finances can change quickly too.

Three years ago, the 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams posted an operating loss (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $57 million. Last season, they earned a record $496 million. [...]

Three years ago, MLB, which owned the Montreal Expos, couldn't find a buyer for the team. Two years after the team moved to Washington, D.C., the Nationals, as the team is now known, were bought for $450 million by Theodore Lerner and his family. Buyers have been lining up to bid for the Cubs (the team will be put on the block after the pending sale of Tribune is finalized), who haven't won the World Series in a century and have not even played in one in three generations. Look for the buyer to be a Chicagoan that will pay around $600 million, or perhaps as much as $900 million if Tribune's interest in WGN and Comcast SportsNet are also part of the deal, surpassing the then-record $700 million John Henry's group paid for the Red Sox and 80% of NESN five years ago.

How quickly the game has changed.

EHRLICH-MAN:

United on immigration, Democrats divide voters (Stephen Dinan, April 23, 2007, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

While some of the top Republican candidates have begun to change their positions to appeal to conservative voters, Democratic candidates remain firmly behind legalization of most illegal aliens. Still, they are almost apologetic as they make their pitches. [...]

Former Vice President Al Gore, who has said he is not running in 2008, may have the best chance to capture voters who favor increased restrictions.

Americans for Better Immigration, which opposes legalization of aliens, graded Mr. Gore an A-minus for his votes in Congress.

BUT A LOSE-LOSE...

Back to the future of seats on a plane? (Dan Reed, 4/23/07, USA TODAY)

The dreaded middle seat in coach may never be the same on long international flights.

Britain's Premium Aircraft Interiors Group, or PAIG, has introduced the Freedom Economy Seat, a three-seat row that flips the middle one backward. PAIG also has a four-seat row in which the middle two face backward.

The configuration, introduced at a trade show in Germany last week, promises to minimize or eliminate the current problems of coach passengers bumping elbows, knees and especially shoulders, typically the widest part of the body. Freedom seats also would give passengers at least two more inches of legroom than conventional seats, PAIG says.

Ben Bettell, the PAIG executive who led the seat design project, says they provide passengers more room while allowing airlines to get 10 passengers across in coach sections of wide-body planes such as the Boeing 777 rather than the current nine. The typical gain for that type of plane would be 21 seats. "It's a win-win situation for the passenger and the airline," he says.

FOUND ON CRITICAL METRICS:

RELOADED:

Positioned to succeed: New Patriot Thomas values his versatility, determination (Christopher L. Gasper, April 19, 2007, Boston Globe)

Three rounds went by without a call, two more the following day, when about half of the friends and family returned. Thomas was finally taken by the Baltimore Ravens in the sixth round with the 186th overall pick, one selection before the Patriots picked safety Antwan Harris out of Virginia and 13 before New England tabbed Tom Brady. Thomas was out playing with his two pit bulls when he got the call, having long since stopped waiting for it.

"I was thinking this draft thing is overrated. It was just a big disappointment," said Thomas, during a recent interview in Foxborough. "It was kind of like tears of frustration and tears of joy; it's still a blessing that you get a chance to play, but it was a bittersweet thing."

Now, Thomas, New England's prize free agent acquisition, is on the same team as Brady, signed to a five-year, $35.04 million deal last month to upgrade a linebacking corps that was exposed in the AFC Championship game loss to the Colts. For the first time in his career, Thomas is getting what he deserves. As his father, Reverend Adonis Thomas, pastor of the Flint Hill Baptist Church in nearby Alexander City, said, his son has turned a stumbling block into a steppingstone.

The 29-year-old Thomas comes to Foxborough with a reputation for versatility -- he played eight positions in his seven seasons in Baltimore -- durability -- he's missed just three regular-season games since 2001 -- and big-play ability -- he has five career defensive touchdowns, four of which have come in the last two seasons.

Like Brady, the 6-foot-2-inch, 270-pound Thomas has blossomed, but he still carries a chip on his shoulder.

"I think you have to," said Thomas, who earned a Pro Bowl selection, his first as a defensive player, last season with a career-high 11 sacks. "You carry it not from a standpoint that you're bitter, but you carry it from a standpoint that you know that everything that everybody says about you isn't true. That's even from the standpoint of when I came here and people said, 'Baltimore is not losing much.' That's fine. That's your opinion."

With the big contract, which included $20 million in bonuses ($12 million signing bonus and $8 million option bonus, payable starting in 2008), comes the responsibility of proving he's worth it. Thomas has always had to prove his worth on the field. He was lightly recruited coming out of high school, as only Southern Mississippi and Mississippi State offered scholarships. He was overlooked in the early rounds of the draft, despite being a two-time Conference USA Defensive Player of the Year and setting a school record for sacks with 34 1/2 at Southern Miss., and he was, perhaps, undervalued on a Ravens defense laden with stars such as vociferous linebacker Ray Lewis, rapacious safety Ed Reed, and sackmaster Terrell Suggs.

Deion Sanders, who played two seasons in Baltimore with Thomas and is now an analyst for the NFL Network, said Thomas never got his just due.

"You know how someone is just not that high draft choice, not that guy you thought was going to be this or that?" said Sanders. "He was just that guy. He wasn't that high draft choice. Lewis was, Reed was, Suggs was. He wasn't."

Sanders said teammates knew Thomas's value and so did defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, who nicknamed Thomas, "The Coordinator."

"Ray Lewis was the leader by media and on game day, but AD was a leader. He was the leader. He knew all his assignments. He knew everyone else's assignments and then he played special teams. He touched every aspect of the game. You would see him just busting his butt and they really didn't want to give him his credit."

MORE:
OSU’s Gonzalez might be quite a catch (John Tomase, 4/23/07, Boston Herald)

This wide receiver class is considered particularly deep, with Pro Football Weekly giving it an A, thanks to the presence of a number of underclassmen.

Whether the Patriots dive in after a busy offseason remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting they’ve selected a wide receiver in four of the last five drafts. Considering the depth issues that plagued them last year, there’s always a chance they’ll add a prospect to a group that includes new faces Wes Welker, Donte’ Stallworth and Kelley Washington. [...]

If the Patriots go the receiver route in an early round, one name to watch is Anthony Gonzalez. Ginn’s teammate at Ohio State, Gonzalez is speedy (4.4 in the 40), strong (6-0, 195) and smart (philosophy major).

He’s considered a potential standout in the slot, which the Patriots currently have manned by Welker and veteran Troy Brown [stats], should he be healthy enough to play.

“What I hope to bring is consistency and reliability and accountability,” Gonzalez said. “That’s on the field, off the field, wherever. I want to be the type of person that coaches and fans and the media know, when he comes in a situation, he’s going to be a consistent person.”

Defensive line is one of the last positions the Patriots [team stats] need to address in the upcoming draft, but their reliance on a rotation in the 3-4 alignment means a high pick here can’t be ruled out.

A number of underclassmen have turned this position from a so-so group into a strong one. Considering the importance the Pats place on depth at the position, it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if they use one of their two first-round picks on a player like Nebraska’s Adam Carriker. [...]

If there’s a player who appeals to the Patriots who could be there at either 24 or 28, it’s Carriker. The Big 12 defensive lineman of the year recorded seven sacks and 16 tackles for losses last year, but in the pros he projects as a versatile run stuffer in either the 3-4 or 4-3.
Scouts rave about his work ethic, character and love of the game. He interviewed very well at the combine and fits the Patriots mode of being a team-first performer. At 6-6, 296, he’s also big and strong enough to hold his ground against the run.

The Pats had University of Washington’s Isaiah Stanback in for a visit. The 6-foot-2, 216-pounder is cut out of the Michael Vick mold. He’s a pure athlete who clocked a 4.4 in the 40, can play receiver and return punts and kicks. He lettered on Washington’s track team.

Although he has a strong arm, Stanback likely will be converted into a wide receiver, a move he doesn’t necessarily want to make.

“For me, personally, I love playing quarterback,” he said at the NFL’s scouting combine in February. “I’m passionate about the position. I don’t see any reason why I can’t play the position. I’ve been through a lot of changes in the past few years and haven’t been comfortable to get established at that, but the past two years, where I’ve had a consistent staff, I have made great jumps. I’m just looking for an opportunity to do that.”

Iowa’s Drew Tate is another possibility.

His lack of size - 5-11, 191 - might be a drawback, but he reads defenses well, leads receivers well, has a good pocket presence and has good touch on short-to-intermediate length passes.

Pittsburgh’s Tyler Palko, meanwhile, had a taste of pro sets and schemes with Dave Wannstedt as his coach and Matt Cavanaugh as his offensive coordinator. The two previously coached in the NFL.

“(Wannstedt) runs the program like it’s a professional team,” Palko said at the combine. “Having him and Matt (Cavanaugh) helped me tremendously, just the approach of playing football as a professional. So it definitely helped.”

IMAGINE WHAT THEY MIGHT HAVE DONE WITH SOME HELP?:

How Hitler cheated death in 1943 coup... thanks to the Allies (MURDO MACLEOD, 4/22/07, scotlandonsunday.com)

DER Führer Adolf Hitler ist tot. These six words, announcing the death of the Nazi leader, should have brought the Second World War to an end in November 1943. [...]

Major General Henning von Tresckow created a new force of around 20,000 troops based in German-controlled territory in the east, telling High Command it was needed to protect against a potential revolt by slave labourers.

Tresckow then organised a 'fashion parade' at which Hitler was to inspect new uniforms, little suspecting one of the models was a suicide bomber. Once the Führer was dead, Tresckow planned to blame the killing on rogue SS elements, use his secret army to take command, and end the war.

But the putsch was foiled days before it was due to be launched, thanks to the RAF. The uniforms were among the casualties from two nights of bombing raids on Berlin, so the plot was abandoned.

Documents minutely detailing every moment of the overthrow of Nazi Germany and its aftermath were immediately buried by the panicked plotters. They were uncovered by the victorious Soviets in 1945 and lay in Moscow archives until a recent study by Professor Peter Hoffmann of the McGill University, Montreal.

Hoffman, a world authority on wartime resistance to Hitler within the German army, believes another of the plotters was Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who earned his place in history by almost killing the Führer with a briefcase bomb in 1944.

BRITISH V. FRENCH:

Sarkozy prepares for a battle Royal (Henry Samuel, 23/04/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The result heralds the promise of a true showdown between an uninhibited Right, offering relatively liberal reforms, and an emphasis on work and meritocracy, and a Left offering a real change in leadership style while seeking to preserve at all costs the generous social model.

Mr Sarkozy said the French "have clearly shown their desire to get to the end of the debate between two ideas of the nation, two projects for society, two value systems, two conceptions of politics".

BAD PITCHING MAKES BAD HITTERS LOOK GOOD:

Boston hits 4 straight homers off Yankees rookie Wright (Associated Press, 4/22/07)

The Red Sox hit four straight home runs Sunday night against the New York Yankees, tying a major league record.

Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek connected in a span of 13 pitches during the third inning against Chase Wright, who was making his second major league start for New York.

The Red Sox became the fifth team in major league history to hit four consecutive homers. The Los Angeles Dodgers did it on Sept. 18 last season against San Diego — and Drew hit the second homer in that outburst as well.

MORE FUN THAN A BAG OF SCHRODINGER'S CATS:

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality: Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871) (Jon Cartwright, 4/20/07 Physics Web)

Markus Aspelmeyer and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization.

They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism."

SURE, IT'S A BIT PRICEY...:

Edwards 'embarrassed' by haircut (Todd Dorman, April 20, 2007, Quad City Times)

As a gusty spring wind tousled his neatly trimmed locks Friday, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said he’s embarrassed about his now-famous $400 haircut.

Campaign finance records show that Edwards’ campaign paid a Beverly Hills stylist $400 for his haircuts. Those pricey snips have undercut Edwards’ image as a populist crusading for the little guy.

“It’s a ridiculous amount of money for a haircut,” Edwards told reporters after a campaign stop on Adel’s town square. “I’m actually embarrassed by it."

ALL OF THE RIGHT AND HALF OF THE CENTER WOULD GIVE HIM A WIN:

Sarkozy, Royal lead French election (Reuters. 4/22/07)

Conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy has finished first in the opening round of France's presidential election and will meet Socialist rival Segolene Royal in a run-off vote, initial returns show.

With just over 80 per cent of the vote counted, Mr Sarkozy had 30.7 per cent of the vote, Ms Royal was in second place on 25.17 per cent and centrist Francois Bayrou was third with 18.4 per cent.

Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who stunned France by coming second in the 2002 election, looked set to finish a distant fourth with around 11.05 per cent.

MORE:
Now for the race to the centre of France: Sarkozy may be the man to beat. But Royal could still pip him to the Elysée - with a little help from the voters who backed the man in the middle (Mark Tran, April 23, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

The combined left vote in the first round came to 36.4%, including Ms Royal's 25.84% and that of the other candidates on the left such as the anti-globalisation candidate José Bové and Arlette Laguiller, the Trotskyist candidate. All those on the left can be expected to rally to Royal in a "stop Sarkozy" coalition.

But Mr Sarkozy still has the numerical advantage. The combined left vote does not match up to that on the right. Mr Sarkozy came top, with 31.1%. And the vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, collapsed to 10.5% from his shock 18% in the first round of the 2002 presidential vote, with many defecting to Mr Sarkozy. Mr Le Pen has said he gets on better with Mr Sarkozy than with Mr Chirac, so it is likely that the 78-year-old former paratrooper will fall in line behind Mr Sarkozy.

So for the second round, Mr Sarkozy can count on a solid foundation of 41% of the popular vote. That makes him the man to beat. But there remain all those Bayrou voters to play for. If - and it is, admittedly, a big if - most of them throw their support for Ms Royal, then she could still pip Mr Sarkozy.

WHERE BRONSON ARROYO CAN BE AN ACE:

One League Is Superior, and Don’t Blame the Yankees (DAN ROSENHECK, 4/22/07, NY Times)

[A]lthough the teams had the same 2006 won-lost record and split their interleague games, last year’s Yankees probably would have beaten the Mets comfortably had they played more games against each other.

The Yankees were superior because they faced a subtle but significant disadvantage: their league. The gap between the American League and the National League has grown larger in the past two years than at any point since the 1950s, when the N.L. integrated black players much faster than the A.L. did. According to Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus, a typical A.L. hitter moving to the N.L. can expect to gain about 10 points of batting average and on-base percentage and 20 points of slugging percentage. A.L. pitchers switching leagues will usually have their earned run averages decrease because of the absence of the designated hitter in the N.L., but Silver calculates that the E.R.A. of an A.L. pitcher switching leagues is likely to drop by 0.25 runs more than can be accounted for by the D.H.

At a team level, an average A.L. squad would probably improve its record by about 10 games if it could face N.L. competition, meaning that last year’s Yankees probably would have been a 107-win juggernaut if they had played the Mets’ schedule. The same is true in reverse: if the 2006 Mets had played in the A.L., they would have won only 87 games and missed the playoffs. This is about the same difference in league strength as the gap between today’s N.L. and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

Some variation in league strength is not uncommon in baseball history, but the magnitude of today’s imbalance is remarkable.

MOST HONORED AMONG THIEVES AND MASS MURDERERS:

France Looks Ahead, and It Doesn’t Look Good (TONY JUDT, 4/22/07, NY Times)

By standing up to Mr. Bush and instructing his representatives at the United Nations to block a rush to an unprovoked war, the French president saved both the honor of the United Nations and the credibility of the international community.
We can argue about whether he was a good or bad leader, but in backing the Stalinist Saddam against the Anglo-American liberationists he was a quintessentially French one.

THE MOST JUSTIFIED TORTURE:

After Iraqi Troops Do Dirty Work, 3 Detainees Talk (ALISSA J. RUBIN, 4/22/07, NY Times)

Out here in what the soldiers call Baghdad’s wild west, sometimes the choices are all bad.

In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three insurgent suspects who had provided information he believed would save American lives.

“The detainee gave us names from the highest to the lowest,” Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers. “He showed us their safe houses, where they store weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims, how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you detained this guy this is the first intelligence linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.”

The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.

To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and necessary. They were proud of their technique and proud to have helped the Americans.

“I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate.”

THERE IS NO BRITAIN:

Outrage as Salmond brands Labour opponents 'anti-Scottish' (EDDIE BARNES, 4/22/07, scotlandonsunday.com)

ALEX Salmond last night branded his Labour opponents anti-Scottish, prompting a furious counter-claim that he had plumbed new depths in the search for votes.

The SNP leader accused Labour of "attacking Scotland and Scottish self-confidence", claiming Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack McConnell were guilty of falling "out of touch" with a new mood of can-do optimism in the country.

Labour's campaign, which has sought to highlight the cost of independence and the SNP, is "anti that modern Scotland," he added.

PASS THE DICEMAN A BROOM:

Dice-K joins in rivalry (Steve Buckley, 4/22/07, Boston Herald)

Years from now, aging New England baseball fans will be able to tell you that Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first appearance in a Red Sox uniform was a spring training tuneup against Boston College, and that the first man to connect for a hit was Eagles outfielder Johnny Ayers.

Some will remember that Matsuzaka’s first appearance against a big league team took place in Jupiter, Fla., in a Grapefruit League game against the Florida Marlins, and that his first regular-season game was in Kansas City.

The Dice Man’s Fenway Park debut? April 11. Seattle Mariners. Ichiro.

And now, as this season of firsts continues for the most-watched, most-covered, most-talked-about rookie in Red Sox history, another significant milestone is kneeling in history’s on-deck circle.

Tonight, Daisuke Matsuzaka faces the New York Yankees.

MORE:
Reliever's been lighting it up: Okajima emerging from large shadow (Gordon Edes, April 22, 2007, Boston Globe)

Daisuke Matsuzaka is the Monster. Hideki Matsui is Godzilla. And what about Hideki Okajima?

A reader (and baseball blogger) named Peter Naboicheck of Farmington, Conn., has taken to calling Okajima "Darkman," a comic-book creation played in the 1990 movie version by actor Liam Neeson. Naboicheck is riffing off Okajima's spring training utterance in which he said of pitching in Matsuzaka's shadow, "I am willing to be a hero in the dark."

The nickname may not stick, but Naboicheck may be onto something. Okajima has to rank as the revelation of the team's first month. Coming into the season, the 31-year-old lefthanded reliever's greatest value to the Sox, according to the wise guys, was to keep Matsuzaka company.

THE LAWLESS AND DISORDERED PARTY?:

French slums key to presidential vote?: Front-runner Sarkozy finds himself on the defensive in the leftist bastions, but he has supporters there too (Sebastian Rotella, April 22, 2007, LA Times)

"It's true that after the riots of 2005, many young people accepted our appeal," said local Socialist leader Ali Romdhane, a former city council member who led a drive here that registered 7,200 new voters, a 15% increase.

"In a way, Sarkozy helped us. Our slogan was, 'Vote instead of vandalize.' We told the young people that their strength rested in their voter identification card. And they are the ones who are going to make the difference."

But Sarkozy's rivals may be simplifying matters. The 52-year-old has won admirers on France's toughest streets precisely because of his plain-spoken, pugnacious attitude and his crime-fighting record as interior minister, experts say. And his feud with a relatively small population of youths enhances his popularity with older, more conservative voters, they say.

"There's a rupture between him and the immigrant youth, but overall the political forces in the banlieues are more balanced than you would think," said a veteran police intelligence official who asked not to be named, using the French term for areas on the urban periphery that typically contain industrial housing projects. "Sarkozy does well with a population, whether French or North African, that wants security restored in the housing projects. He's responsible for the rupture with the kids, but he also benefits from it."

Although the police official disagrees with Sarkozy's politics, he said the candidate is one of the few leaders with a keen insight into the brew of crime, poverty, alienation and Islamic extremism in the slums. Sarkozy resigned as interior minister recently to run for president.

A pro-Sarkozy youth leader in Argenteuil said he respects the candidate because he has a long record of visiting underprivileged areas, where he emphasizes hard work, upward mobility and equal opportunity.

"What happened here with the youths who want to derail Nicolas Sarkozy is not representative of what's happening in the banlieues," said Tarek Moudane, 27, who leads a local youth association called Blue, White and Red. "In fact, those were youths who don't vote and don't have the slightest notion of the political world. I've got kids who come to see me at the association and say, 'Yeah, we like Sarkozy,' but a lot don't want to say it loud. But they tell us that he's the only gentleman who can get France going."

EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD AGAIN:

An asterisk to Obama's policy on donations: A presidential hopeful's refusal of lobbyist money has its limits. (Dan Morain, April 22, 2007, LA Times)

While pledging to turn down donations from lobbyists themselves, Sen. Barack Obama raised more than $1 million in the first three months of his presidential campaign from law firms and companies that have major lobbying operations in the nation's capital.

Portraying himself as a new-style politician determined to reform Washington, Obama makes his policy clear in fundraising invitations, stating that he takes no donations from "federal lobbyists." His aides announced last week he was returning $43,000 to lobbyists who donated to his campaign.

But the Illinois Democrat's policy of shunning money from lobbyists registered to do business on Capitol Hill does not extend to lawyers whose partners lobby there.

Nor does the ban apply to corporations that have major lobbying operations in Washington. And the prohibition does not extend to lobbyists who ply their trade in such state capitals as Springfield, Ill.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Sacramento, though some deal with national clients and issues.

"Clearly, the distinction is not that significant," said Stephen Weissman of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on campaign issues.

EVEN DEMOCRATS DON'T NEED TO BE RETAUGHT THE LESSON OF '94:

Tragedy that has Capitol Hill running scared of gun laws (ALEX MASSIE, 4/22/07, Scotland on Sunday)

WHEN A former Miss America was confronted by a thief in her Kentucky barn last week, the plucky 82-year-old knew just how to react. Venus Ramey, whose figure adorned Second World War B52 bombers, pulled out her .38 calibre handgun, leaned on her walking frame to steady her aim and coolly shot out the tyres of the startled intruder's getaway vehicle. She then held him at gunpoint, flagged down a motorist to raise the alarm and calmly waited until the sheriff arrived.

The story was celebrated as an example of the unquenchable American frontier spirit and the inalienable constitutional right to defend hearth and home with firearms.

Coming just a few days after South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui used a handgun to slay 32 fellow students and teachers on the campus of Virginia Tech, there can be no clearer example of America's schizophrenia towards gun control.

STASSENITIS:

Gore campaign team assembles in secret (Tim Shipman in Washington, 21/04/2007, Sunday Telegraph)

Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.

Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again.

Mr Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case made in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won him an Oscar this year.

SEEKING SALVATION IN A BINGO HALL:

Yankees need Clemens immediately, if not sooner (Wallace Matthews, April 22, 2007, Newsday)

[W]hat happened to the Yankees yesterday and what is likely to happen to them tonight is simply not acceptable, coming into Boston with one major-league starter and two minor-league call-ups for a series against the only team realistically standing between them and October.

The Yankees' new policy of fiscal restraint is admirable in many ways and many cases. But this isn't one of them. The season is only 16 games old, the Red Sox are only three games in front and as of today, the Yankees still have only one dependable starting pitcher.

"I wouldn't say we're hanging on," Joe Torre said. "My feeling is, we just need to hold our own here."

Who was the last Yankee manager to say a thing like that? Stump Merrill?

For the first time in their recent history, the Yankees are living like mortals, with not enough pitching, with too many key guys hurt and with no easy answers in sight.

This is the kind of thing that happens with regularity in Pittsburgh and Kansas City and Tampa Bay, but not in the Bronx and certainly not at Fenway when the Yankees come to town, even if the season is a mere 16 games old.

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK:

Charge for the presidency: Sarkozy strikes a pose for the floating voters (Anne Penketh, 22 April 2007, Independent)

It was probably one of the most striking images of France's presidential campaign - the front-runner, right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, astride a horse in a pose reminiscent of George Bush on his Texas ranch.

EMERGING? THAT SUCKER DONE EMERGED:

The Emerging Axis Of Good (INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, 4/20/2007)

Alliances: The sun may be setting on the British empire, but at least one part of it is still showing some spunk. Japan, meanwhile, is shaking off its pacifist past to become the Gibraltar of the Far East. We are not alone.

The departure of Tony Blair and Britain's resolve is regrettable. And the wimpy reaction of Britain to Iran's seizure of 15 Royal Navy seamen won't make anyone forget Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar anytime soon. But Australia and its prime minister, John Howard, have made it clear they aren't going anywhere.

THE REVOLUTION ROLLS ON:

Bush gains support for new approach on global food aid (Celia W. Dugger, April 21, 2007, international Herald Tribune)

It was here in Kansas City, at the 2005 food aid conference, that the Bush administration pushed for a fundamental change that would have diminished profits to domestic agribusiness and shipping companies. It proposed allowing a quarter of the Food for Peace budget to be used to buy food in poor countries near hunger crises, rather than buying only U.S.-grown food that had to be shipped across oceans.

And Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns spoke at the conference on Wednesday to make the administration's case for the same idea, contending that such a policy would speed delivery, improve efficiency and save many lives.

Congress in each of the past two years killed the proposal, which was opposed by agribusiness and shipping interests who stood to lose business, even as it won support from liberal Democrats like Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.

But there are signs that the frozen politics of the issue are beginning to thaw, especially as evidence of flaws in the current aid system mounts.

IN FOR A PENNY...:

Benedict’s Global Agenda (Samuel Gregg, D.Phil., 4/18/07, Acton Institute)

Given his age, Benedict knows he has limited time to pursue his particular concerns. The irony is that each amounts to a grand project in itself.

Unquestionably Europe – especially Western Europe – ranks high in Benedict’s concerns. Even before becoming pope, Joseph Ratzinger had been writing about European cultural trends for decades.

Since his election, Benedict has repeated many times that Europe seems “tired,” and referenced its collapsing demography as symptomatic of deeper problems. But he upped the ante recently by insisting that the apparent determination of Europe’s political classes to continue denying Europe’s Judeo-Christian historical roots amounted to Europe apostatizing from itself.

Though few recognized it at the time, Benedict’s now-famous 2006 Regensburg address also touched deeply on Europe.

This lecture – which will be remembered as one of this century’s most provocative orations, akin to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address – identified the separation of faith and reason as central to the existential crisis of historical denial which Benedict believes is sapping Europe’s civilizational genius.

It is not well understood that Benedict does not view this as an epic “Catholicism-versus-the Enlightenment” clash.

Careful reading of Benedict’s speeches demonstrates his belief that many Enlightenment thinkers made positive contributions to Europe’s development, especially with respect to religious liberty. Reason, Benedict writes, needs faith to check reason’s potential for hubris, while faith needs reason to purify religion of unreasonable behavior.

Which brings us to another subject high on Benedict’s agenda — Islam.

Catholicism and Islam are the world’s fastest growing religions. They co-exist alongside and within each other. Significant Muslim minorities now live in Christianity’s European hinterlands. Large numbers of Christians have lived in Islamic countries for centuries.

Early in his papacy, Benedict made clear his dissatisfaction with the character of official Catholic-Muslim dialogue. At Regensburg, he dramatically moved the conversation beyond the bromides all too common in ecumenical/inter-religious circles by publicly asking the question few had hitherto dared ask. Is violence somehow intrinsic to Islam, or is it an aberration?

The less-than coherent response from much of the Muslim world and many Westerners’ evident unease that Benedict even posed the question indicates he struck a nerve, but also forced open a long overdue debate.

The stakes are not simply intellectual. Benedict was reminding Europe that the more it trivializes religion, the less it possesses the capacity to understand some of its own and Islam’s problems. He was also attempting to facilitate a conversation about Islam and violence among Muslims themselves – an argument with profound implications for international stability.

The same debates also created room for Benedict to press another point that concerns him: the legal and informal restrictions endured by Christians living in Islamic countries. Benedict’s 2006 visit to Turkey highlighted to the world the constraints upon the religious liberty of Christians living in this ostensibly secular Muslim country.

Benedict is not asking for some form of privileged status reminiscent of 19th century colonialism for Christians in Muslim countries. He is merely requesting reciprocity: that Christians in Muslim nations experience the same religious liberty enjoyed by Muslims living in nations with Christian heritages.

The same insistence upon religious liberty underpins Benedict’s outreach to China, something no-one predicted as a priority for his papacy.

THE GREAT WALL AIN'T A DIKE:

Thousands of China's dams are 'time bombs' waiting to burst (AFP, 4/20/07)

Thousands of reservoirs in China are "time bombs" waiting to burst, an official was quoted as saying Friday, a day after a dam collapse forced the evacuation of 1,700 people.

"The problematic reservoirs are like time bombs, seriously threatening the lives and property of people living downstream," said Jiao Yong, deputy minister of water resources, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

On Thursday, 1,700 people had to be evacuated from four villages after a dam in northwest China's Gansu province was breached, causing water to flood the surrounding area and destroying a highway bridge. [...]

China has more than 85,000 reservoirs, of which 30,000 have serious structural problems, including 200 large and 1,600 medium-sized dams, Xinhua said.

LEFT MEETS PETARD:

From Clinton, Hip-Hop Hypocrisy (Colbert I. King, April 21, 2007, Washington Post)

Put me in the camp of those who implore Sen. Hillary Clinton to give it back -- "it" being the reported $800,000 that's sitting in her presidential campaign coffers thanks to a fundraiser hosted in her honor March 31 in the Pinecrest, Fla., home of a huge Clinton fan who refers to himself as Timbaland. [...]

Mrs. Clinton, you may recall, took umbrage at Imus's remarks, branding them "small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism." His words, she said in an e-mail to supporters, "showed a disregard for basic decency and were disrespectful and degrading to African Americans and women everywhere."

Good for her, I say, except it must be asked why she was down in Florida making nice to -- and pocketing big bucks from -- a rapper whose obscenity-laced lyrics praise violence, perpetuate racist stereotypes and demean black women.

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

Vatican panel condemns limbo to eternal dustbin: An advisory study, approved by the pope, concludes that unbaptized babies may go to heaven after all (Tracy Wilkinson and Louis Sahagun, April 21, 2007, LA Times)

The Vatican's International Theological Commission issued its findings — with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI — in a document published by the Catholic News Service, the news agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The commission is advisory, but the pope's endorsement of the document appears to indicate his acceptance of its findings.

Limbo, the commission said, "reflects an unduly restrictive view of salvation."

"Our conclusion," the panel said in its 41-page report, is that there are "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and brought into eternal happiness." The committee added that although this is not "sure knowledge," it comes in the context of a loving and just God who "wants all human beings to be saved."

A church decision to abolish limbo has long been expected. Benedict and his predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, expressed misgivings about the concept. Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the church's top enforcer of dogma, said he viewed limbo as a mere "theological hypothesis." Never part of formal doctrine because it does not appear in Scripture, limbo was removed from the Catholic catechism 15 years ago.

TOTALITARIAN, BUT MARGINAL:

A totalitarian Islam (Khaled Fouad Allam, 4/20/07, Chiesa)

The Taliban is the product of the contemporary fracture between an absolutist Islam and an open Islam.

They have found in Arab Wahhabism of the Qur’anic school of Deoband, founded in New Delhi at the end of the 1800’s, their ideological point of departure. They then made this the ideology of the Pashtun, over 12 million persons divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Why were the Pashtun, and not another tribe, made the bearers of Wahhabism in that area? Because they are the only tribe in that place that boasts an Arab genealogy: Wazir, one of their ancestors who gives the name to the Pakistani province of Waziristan, was from the Arabian peninsula. Wahhabism, born in the 1700’s in an Arab context, has functioned as a unifying force for many of these tribes. Al Qaeda understood well that the phenomenon of the Taliban could become a political experiment, a laboratory from which political Islam could draw, in order to bring the entire Muslim world along with it.

The battle taking place in Afghanistan is, therefore, a battle of meaning, and the fate of much of the Muslim world depends on its outcome.

A SCARY THOUGHT FOR YANKEE FANS...:

Red Sox overcome 2 more homers by A-Rod (Jimmy Golen, April 20, 2007, AP)

Alex Rodriguez hit two more homers, but Coco Crisp tied the game with a two-run triple and then scored the winning run on Alex Cora's blooper during a five-run eighth inning Friday night in the Boston Red Sox's 7-6, comeback victory over the New York Yankees.

Crisp was already in the highlights after toppling into the Boston bullpen in pursuit of Rodriguez's second homer of the game, a three-run shot in the fifth that gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead. Rodriguez went 3-for-5 and joined Mike Schmidt, who hit 12 homers in the first 15 games in 1976, as the fastest to reach a dozen in baseball history. [...]

Rodriguez, who has hit safely in all 15 games this year, also leads the majors with 30 RBIs and 65 total bases.

MORE:
Red Sox honor Auerbach with green (Alex McPhillips, 4/20/07, MLB.com)

No, it wasn't that time of the year. As Friday's unseasonably seasonal weather pushed a reluctant sunny day on Boston, and the Red Sox wore their signature St. Patrick's Day green jerseys a month later than usual, fans witnessed a different kind of Yankees opener.

That was because the team was honoring legendary Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who died last year at the age of 89. Last week's originally scheduled celebration, which was to feature Bill Russell, Jim Loscutoff and Frank Ramsey, among others, was postponed because of wind and rain.

This time, the Red Sox managed to unfurl 16 championship banners from the top of the Green Monster -- from '57, '59, '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '68, '69, '74, '76, '81, '84 and '86 -- and keep them there through the first pitch, a one-hopper down the middle by NBA Hall of Famer Bob Cousy.

DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN:

Jindal wins endorsement from La. sheriff's association (KATC3, 4/20/07)

The Louisiana Sheriff's Association has voted to endorse Republican U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal for governor, a rare move for a politically influential group made up mainly of Democrats. [...]

Hal Turner, the group's executive director, announced the endorsement Friday in a press release, saying Jindal "has demonstrated an unerring and determined dedication to the higher good of law enforcement, anti-terrorism, the criminal justice system and the people of Louisiana."

Sheriffs are a potentially powerful political force, partly because they employ so many people. Modern telephone, television and Internet advertising campaigns have diluted that clout, but they retain sway over many voters, political observers said.

"Sheriffs are still really important, especially in rural parishes," said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. "They're generally considered to be the most important elected official in any parish. And in a rural parish, you can multiply that by two."

AND YOU WON'T HEAR A PEEP FROM ANTI-IMMIGRATIONISTS IF THEY ALL COME HERE:

>Jobless doctors 'to be shipped overseas' (George Jones, 21/04/2007, Daily Telegraph

Up to 10,000 young doctors who are unable to find jobs in the NHS could be offered voluntary work overseas.

According to official documents leaked yesterday, the plan was drawn up by NHS managers following the botched introduction of an online appointments system, which could leave thousands of junior doctors without training places this summer.

The document, Maximising Employment Opportunities, confirmed that there was a 10,000 "excess of applicants for training posts over places".

CREEPY:

I will protect you, Sarkozy tells France as his flame burns again on last day of campaigning (Angelique Chrisafis, April 21, 2007, The Guardian)

On a stage facing a sea of tricolour flags stood a small figure in a pinstriped suit hailed as the greatest orator in France. Slicing the air with both hands and jabbing his finger, he waved his arms like an orchestra conductor, whipping the crowd into a frenzy as he promised a France that would no longer hate itself, that would no longer let unchecked immigrants invade its borders and burn its suburbs.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the rightwing frontrunner in France's first-round presidential vote, has spent weeks stressing that he has mellowed. But at his final campaign rally in front of 20,000 people in Marseille, the former interior minister who once suggested wayward suburban youths were scum, sent a clear message: "I'm still myself."

Reclaiming the passion he had recently toned down, he dripped with sweat as he promised to be France's "protector" and restore faith in a country crippled by unemployment, economic stagnation and self-doubt.

"I hate this fashion for repentance that says France hates itself and its history," he roared. He said colonisation might have been an "unfair system" but would not apologise for it and talked of the debt owed to those "decent and hardworking French families" forced out of Africa. Boasting no fear of the "politically correct" lobby, he proudly repeated his codewords for a new moral and patriotic France. "Authority! Authority! Authority!" he shouted to wild cheers.

MORE:
Resentment and anger mar slice of paradise (Simon Heffer, 21/04/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The north-west part of Provence is everything the French like to imagine their country to be. It has vineyards, olive groves, fields of artichokes, strawberries and lavender, rolling hills and distant mountains. Even in mid-April, it is hot rather than warm, the sky is an unbroken azure, and little stone-built hilltop villages shimmer in the strong sunlight. Tourists flock here and Parisians buy up charming houses as second homes - the capital is just over two-and-a-half hours from the local TGV station.

Yet this apparent slice of paradise - the Vaucluse - is also a microcosm of all the French feel is wrong with France today. Beneath the gorgeous face it presents to the world, there are tensions, discontents and fears that have bred anger and resentment - emotions that will strongly influence how the locals are likely to vote in tomorrow's first round of France's presidential election.

Rural Vaucluse is still visibly the bucolic France of Marcel Pagnol; but go into even small towns such as Carpentras, 15 miles from Avignon and about 75 minutes by road north of Marseilles, and the social revolution that has disturbed so many of the French, and caused them to want a clean break with the policies that successive governments have followed since the Second World War, is plainly visible. With some 30,000 inhabitants, Carpentras is about the size of Chippenham or Whitstable, and has a similarly rural hinterland. However, quite unlike such English towns, a considerable proportion of its population is of North African origin. The French do not publish official figures of people by ethnic origin: everyone in France is deemed to be French, and the authorities have no truck with ethnic monitoring.

However, the consensus among the indigenous French in Carpentras is that the Muslims in the town now comprise about a quarter of its population. In France as a whole, estimates of the Muslim population range from between 10 and 13 per cent, but the hinterland of Marseilles has a heavy concentration of North Africans. Unemployment is just above the national average of 10 per cent, and seems widespread among the Muslim population - some local businessmen put that community's unemployment at around 60 per cent, including illegal immigrants who do not feature in the official statistics. Throughout the day, the benches in the neat little gardens in the town are packed with men in Maghrebian dress, simply sitting and staring into an indefinite distance. The bourgeois who walk past seem to be making a conscious effort not to notice them, and it is reciprocated.

WHICH MAKES HIM SOUND LIKE CLINTON/BLAIR/W:

Blair savages ‘lightweight’ Cameron (Daily Mail, 20th April 2007)

Labour can win the next election if it exposes David Cameron as a "lightweight" PR man who has failed to change the Tories, the Prime Minister has said.

THE MORE THEY KNOW THE LESS THEY LIKE:

Rudy showing off his flip side (DAVID SALTONSTALL and CELESTE KATZ, 4/19/07, NY DAILY NEWS)

It happened again yesterday - the pro-choice Giuliani was quick to applaud the Supreme Court ruling upholding a partial-birth abortion ban, calling it "the correct conclusion."

But when he was preparing to run against Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2000, Giuliani opposed a partial-birth abortion ban for New York, saying he would "preserve the option for women" and that he did not foresee ever changing his view. [...]

The calculus has divided Giuliani into the old Rudy and the new Rudy.

Just this week, Giuliani said the Virginia Tech tragedy "does not alter the Second Amendment." Since he began running for President, he has said he believes states should have the power to set gun laws.

But as mayor and as a Senate candidate before dropping out for health reasons, Giuliani strongly favored mandatory federal licensing of handguns, and backed an assault weapon ban and a waiting period for gun purchases.

And while as mayor he declared the flat tax, where everyone pays the same amount, a "terrible mistake for urban areas," he seemed much more open to the idea last month while accepting the endorsement of Mr. Flat Tax himself, Steve Forbes.

RED DIVIDED BY BLACK = BLACK:

Iraqi insurgents now fighting each other (TODD PITMAN, 4/20/07, The Associated Press)

At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq.

U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group's sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The tribes are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults, the officers say. The influx of Sunni fighters to areas outside the capital in advance of the security crackdown in Baghdad may have further unsettled the region.

"This is a big turning point," U.S. Maj. David Baker said Friday in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba. "If they are fighting against each other, it's better than them fighting against us."

FORTUNATE IN HIS ENEMIES:

When you've got MoveOn accusing you of being too tough on Iran you're winning the new cycle eight ways from wednesday.

THE CONSTITUTION MEANS WHATEVER TONY SAYS IT DOES:

Justice Kennedy is key to abortion future: Justice's wording in opinion is seen as good news and bad by both sides (MARK SHERMAN, 4/20/07, Associated Press)

Kennedy holds the balance of power.

He has written key decisions on both sides of the long-standing divisive issue.

Particularly since O'Connor's retirement last year, what he thinks probably is where the court will come out when asked to consider new abortion restrictions.

Ed Whelan, a former law clerk to Scalia and later an official in the Bush administration Justice Department, said the decision most likely would invite new state laws banning the same procedure covered by the federal law and requiring that women seeking abortions be given detailed warnings about the dangers of abortion.

"Those regulations seem to me far more likely to be sustained," Whelan said.

IN FACT, MICKEY D OUGHT TO RUN ACADEMIA:

McJobs worth more than university (The Local, 20th April 2007)

A majority of personnel managers consider a job at McDonalds more valuable than a political science course at university.

LAWYERS, GUNNERS & MONEY:

In Loco Parentis - Not (KAY HYMOWITZ, April 20, 2007, NY Sun)

So what prevented anyone from taking this creature out of the dorms and off the streets? For starters, as the New York Times reported, privacy and anti-discrimination laws make it almost impossible for school officials to protect students from crazed classmates. If they try to expel a student from a dorm because they think he's dangerous, they can be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Recently, CUNY officials had to pay $65,000 to forestall a lawsuit by a student barred from her dormitory after her suicide attempt and hospitalization.

The only people who might be able to take some action when a student shows signs of trouble — family members — are kept deliberately out of the loop. A 1974 law, known as the Buckley Amendment in tribute to its architect, former senator, James Buckley, makes it illegal for administrators to tell parents almost any details about their child's college life — including serious medical problems — without the student's permission.

Some years ago, when my daughter was starting out at Amherst, the college president explained the terms of the Buckley Amendment to the parents of incoming freshmen. One parent asked in disbelief, "You mean, if my kid were to disappear to California with a drugged-out nut, you wouldn't even tell me she was missing?" The president smiled with just a hint of condescension. "That's right," he said.

Mental-health experts also found themselves paralyzed by laws and bad ideas when faced with a dangerous psychotic. The psychologist at Carilion St. Albans Hospital got a pretty good look at Cho in 2005, yet released him the next day because, as he wrote, the young man "denies suicidal intentions" and "does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder."

Lay people may not find it surprising that a madman, if asked, would deny being a madman. But today's psychiatrists, who have all but jettisoned the idea of the unconscious, use crude interviewing protocols that rely on superficial self-reports and resort to tautological diagnoses that tell little about any underlying disease.

Further, unless someone has committed a crime, civil-liberties laws and limited hospital space make it exceedingly difficult to hospitalize someone, no matter how bizarrely dangerous his behavior.

MORE:
We're not all victims: Not everyone was connected to Virginia Tech, but you wouldn't know it by watching Americans. (Rosa Brooks, April 20, 2007, LA Times)

FIVE DAYS after the Virginia Tech massacre, the friends and families of the victims are grieving — and despite the relentless glare of the media spotlight, their pain is still private. It belongs to them, not to the rest of us.

But you sure wouldn't know it from the way we talk about the tragedy.

In modern America, there's always plenty of trauma to go around. Even if you knew no one involved in the shootings, have never been to Virginia and can't tell the difference between a Hokie and a Wahoo, there's no need for you to feel left out.

NBC's decision to broadcast portions of Seung-hui Cho's angry rants triggered a storm of condemnation Thursday from viewers and victims' relatives, illuminating the treacherous middle ground between exposure and exploitation in a fast-moving news cycle.

A day after receiving a package containing the Virginia Tech gunman's profanity-laced writings and videos, mailed shortly before his second round of shootings, NBC drastically curtailed its use of the images, as did most of its television brethren.

But the rapid dissemination of the materials and subsequent backlash triggered a debate about where the line gets drawn — what constitutes news, and what goes too far.

Though media ethicists generally approved of NBC's handling of the tapes, Tony Burman, editor in chief of Canada's CBC News, called NBC's airing of the footage a "mistake," warning it could lead to copycat massacres.

ONLY THE LEFT WASN'T LAUGHING:

McCain: Critics of Iran joke should "get a life" (Kathleen Hennessey, 4/20/07, The Associated Press0

Sen. John McCain has a message for any critics who thought his musical joke about bombing Iran wasn't funny: Get a life.

While campaigning for president in South Carolina on Wednesday, McCain responded to a question about how to deal with Iran by breaking into the melody of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" but changing the lyrics to "Bomb Iran."

"That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran,' " McCain said, and then added: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb ... anyway, ah ... " The audience responded with laughter.

The Arizona Republican was asked for his reaction to any negative response to the joke.

"Please, I was talking to some of my old veterans friends," he told reporters. "My response is, lighten up and get a life."

EN FUEGO:

Dan Zanes goes for the Grateful Dead effect: Former Del Fuego Dan Zane likes his concerts homey and his fans dancing! (Lynne Heffley, April 19, 2007, LA Times)

DAN ZANES' idea of a good time is hanging out with family and friends old and new, making music, swapping stories or just grooving to the rhythm of the day.

That casual approach and an all-inclusive spirit have fueled Zanes' plunge into the growing family music pool. And it's paid off for the former frontman of the alt-rock band Del Fuegos.

This year, Zanes' signature "handmade" music earned the singer his first Grammy Award, a best children's music trophy for "Catch That Train," a mix of old-time spirituals and folk songs and warm-hearted, quirky originals. The album was recorded in Zanes' living room with the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, the Blind Boys of Alabama and such Zanes regulars as singer Barbara Brousal and banjo-master Donald Saaf.

Zanes' concert schedule, including a sellout at Carnegie Hall last November, continues to expand to major venues across the country and beyond — with gigs in Melbourne, Australia, and London. This weekend, Zanes returns to UCLA's Royce Hall, where he will play two Saturday concerts.

As always, the wild-haired, raspy-voiced singer wants his audiences young and old to come prepared to "sing at the top of their lungs and do as much dancing as they want. I really want it to be as much like a little Grateful Dead concert as possible.

"No one's expected to sit quietly in their seat — it would make me anxious if they did," Zanes said. "It's really just, whatever venue we go to, how can we make it feel like one big living room?"

CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES:

Great stuff: The most unhittable pitches in baseball (TOM KOCH-WESER, April 19, 2007, Yahoo)

Scouts often speak of pitchers with "plus" or "plus-plus" offerings, usually referring to where a particular pitch falls on the 20-80 scouting scale in terms of both velocity and movement. But if we dig a little deeper, which pitches - given their speed, movement and deception - are actually the most unhittable in the game? [...]

[Cole] Hamels consistently delivered the most unhittable changeup in 2006, producing a Whiff Rate of .514, the leading figure by a significant margin over Colorado closer Brian Fuentes, who posted a rate of .460, and Arizona's Brandon Webb (.454).

Johan Santana, widely considered to have the best change in the game, finished the year at .450, fourth among qualifiers. To his credit, Santana also delivered his changeup more frequently in the strike zone (38.6 percent) than anyone in the top five, while opposing hitters slugged a meager .221 against it, also the best of the group.

Hamels' teammate, Ryan Madson, ranked fifth at .426.

While those players are certainly dominant when it comes to the premier off-speed pitch, the mantle of the most unhittable pitch in 2006 goes to the slider of Fernando Cabrera.

Cleveland's young reliever recorded a Whiff Rate of .652 on that breaking ball, and, if you think that's a fluke, think again. Had Cabrera qualified the year before, 2006 would have been the second consecutive season his slider led the league. In 2005, Cabrera posted an eye-popping Whiff Rate of .762, though in limited action (42 swings).

Interestingly, Cabrera only threw his slider in the strike zone 28.6 percent of the time, well below the major league average of 41.6 percent. In other words, he makes the pitch unhittable with a late bite that places the ball outside the plate or in the dirt much of the time.

HECK, EUROS THINK THE WIMPLE A SIGN OF OPPRESSION TOO THESE DAYS:

'I felt more welcome in the Bible belt': Manal Omar had used her five-piece 'Islamic-style' swimsuit for years - in Rio, Washington and Kuala Lumpur - and it had never brought her more than a curious glance. Then she went for a dip in Oxford ... (Manal Omar, April 20, 2007, The Guardian)

One Sunday last month I went for my afternoon swim at my local David Lloyd's fitness club wearing the Islamic-style swimsuit I have been wearing for years. The swimsuit has recently been celebrated by media outlets from Newsweek to National Geographic as an innovative way for Muslim women to become more active. As an American-Muslim woman, I have always been determined to be active without compromising my faith. I have been swimming in capital cities across the world from Rio de Janeiro to Washington DC to Kuala Lumpur, and now London. Although I get curious stares, I have never had any awkward moments when I head out for a swim.

Article continues
That is, until I came to Oxford.

As I was getting ready to head home from my Sunday swim, I heard a loud voice from a man stating that he needed to speak to the manager about dress code. I picked up on it, but didn't really give it too much thought, until I heard him yelling about "that woman over there" who was wearing the "burkini", the gist of what he was saying seemingly being that it was inappropriate. What the hell is that? The burkini? I could feel a rising indignation at the man's audacity in singling me out in this way. Who had died and declared him the pool police? There were several lifeguards on duty who had seen me swimming there over the previous six months, and none had objected to the swimsuit. It's been nearly a year since I moved to Oxford, and frankly, I had had enough of the anti-Muslim rhetoric in British political life. Now that I was in the middle of it, I refused to stand on the sidelines.

I walked up to the burly, middle-aged man who had been pointing at me a minute before and asked, "Are you guys talking about me?"

He turned towards me, and waved a dismissive hand: "This has nothing to do with you."

"Are you talking about me? Because if you are, this has everything to do with me."

He then confirmed he was indeed talking about me, but not talking to me. He was talking to the manager. [...]

Having spent my entire life in the United States, as a veiled Muslim woman I am no stranger to discrimination. In fact, as a child, I grew up in the hardcore territories of the south in the US, known as the Bible belt. Although I faced comments and questions, my personal lifestyle and space never felt invaded. In fact, the churchgoing community I lived in as a child welcomed me, and after my experience in the UK I want to go back to the local priest and kiss him on the forehead for not only preaching about respect but putting it into practice.

Looking back, what disturbed me the most about the debate was that my very identity was reduced to a cluster of cliches about Muslim women. I was painted in broad strokes as an oppressed, unstable Muslim woman. I was made invisible, an object of ridicule and debate, with no opinion or independent thoughts. The fact that I had dedicated the past 10 years to working on women's issues on a global level, led a delegation of American women into Afghanistan in 2003, and put my life on the line in Iraq struggling for women's constitutional rights were clearly beyond anyone's imagination. The part of my life where I had the opportunity of meeting leading women from Queen Rania of Jordan to Hillary Clinton was erased.

When I chose to wear the headscarf nearly 15 years ago, I promised myself it would never hold me back from my two passions: travel and sport. Neither my mother nor my sister had worn the headscarf, and my family raised us with the gift of freedom of choice. To this day my sister and I enjoy the outdoors, each never giving a second thought to our choice of dress - her bikini or my "burkini". It strongly disturbs me that I was disregarded as an individual, and demeaned to a one-dimensional stereotype. For many of those involved in the debate, the fact that I covered my head and my body seemed to make them forget that I had a brain.

The truth of the matter is that as a Muslim woman living in the US - and I was in Washington DC on September 11 2001 - I never felt so isolated and discriminated against as I have these past few weeks in Oxford. Given that this is supposed to be one of the great seats of western civilisation, that should give British citizens something to chat about.

OH, TO BE BRIGHT...:

Sarkozy accused of forging ties with National Front leader (Delphine Strauss, April 14 2007, Financial Times)

The magazine Nouvel Observateur reported yesterday that a survey of voting intentions by the intelligence services showed Mr Sarkozy could find himself facing the nationalist candidate in this year's run-off vote.

The intelligence services, recently under Mr Sarkozy's control as interior minister, deny having conducted any survey.

The Nouvel Observateur said it put Mr Sarkozy inthe lead in the first-round vote, with his Socialist party rival, Ségolène Royal, eliminated.

Yet rivals to the left of Mr Sarkozy's UMP party view his sympathy for far-right themes as the weakest point of his campaign, and appear to be making it their key target in a concerted attempt to erode his consistent lead in opinion polls.

THEY'LL OUTGROW THIS PHASE:

Fetal Attraction: Why embryos are cooler than kids. (JULIA GORIN, April 19, 2007, Opinion Journal)

There's another reason I have a soft spot for the preborn: Children who have been born have plenty of defenders, advocates, protective laws and folks who love kids; they're universally recognized as human beings and get all the attendant protections, including a mother's self-restraint even at the most trying times. Their right to life isn't in dispute. But these other, utterly defenseless critters are under daily threat of slaughter. The way I see it, the "mass of cells" has a human soul in there. (Of course, once it's out, then I don't know what it is aside from a pain in the butt that you'd better keep out of my way.)

As a former fetus--and an endangered one at that (in Russia abortion was the dominant form of birth control)--yes, I take it personally when people want to kill fetuses. But remembering what a horror I was as a toddler, I can totally understand people giving up their kids. While I didn't deserve to be aborted, I might have earned a visit to the adoption agency.

Feminists heralded the proliferation of abortion as a tool by which to "empower" women and give them control over their lives and destinies. But power is being pregnant. Because it gives you control over other people's lives.

THERE IS NO "I" IN INCREMENTALISM:

The I's Have It: Three cheers for pro-life incrementalism (Michael J. New, 4/20/07, National Review)

Wednesday’s Gonzales v. Carhart decision upholding the federal partial-birth-abortion ban has been well received by pro-lifers. Indeed, the Judiciary has been a consistent thorn in the side of the pro-life movement and Supreme Court decisions that uphold pro-life laws should rightfully be applauded. More importantly, this decision demonstrates that the incremental strategy pursued by the pro-life movement continues to pay some real dividends. The ruling is a good indication pro-lifers would do well to continue this strategy of incrementalism in the future.

Recall Hoffer:

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.

MORE:
Finding Real Alternatives to Abortion: Interview With Official of Pro-life Government-Funded Agency (APRIL 19, 2007, Zenit.org)

In 1995, Pennsylvania started a bold, state-funded initiative to reduce the number of abortions by providing pregnant women the necessary resources to keep their children.

In this interview with ZENIT, Kevin Bagatta, president & chief executive officer of Real Alternatives, (www.realalternatives.org/aboutus), discusses the Pennsylvania Alternative to Abortion Services Program and how it has helped abortion rates in the state to fall steadily.

Q: How did you get involved in Real Alternatives?

Bagatta: My three brothers and I were born and raised on Long Island, New York. Both of our parents are handicapped. My Italian-American dad, a World War II veteran, walks with cane and a brace and my Irish-American mom became paralyzed with polio during the polio epidemic.

They both taught us -- and still do -- the true value of life. Having watched the culture of death practiced by Nazi Germany, they immediately explained to my brothers and I how wrong the Roe vs. Wade decision was that legalized abortion in America and the ill effects it would have on our country. [...]

Q: Recently you began working with faith-based organizations. How does that teamwork happen, practically speaking?

Bagatta: This has been a greatly welcomed change in our ability to use experienced service providers to serve women throughout the state.

Again, due to interpretation of U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment cases, we were restricted in the type of faith-based organizations we were allowed to contract due to the program being funded with government money.

Thanks to President George Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Executive Order, all entities administering government funds are allowed to contract with faith-based organizations as long as the faith-based organization keeps their promotion of religion separate from the government-funded service.

Now, women can receive our government-funded service from a faith-based organization like Catholic Charities and also receive religious services and support.

Comments

---

AND THEY WONDER WHY DOCTORS DON'T WANT TO BE THE KILLERS?:

One baby in 30 left alive after medical termination (FIONA MACRAE, 20th April 2007, Daily Mail)

One in 30 babies aborted for medical reasons is born alive, a study has found.

They lived for an average of 80 minutes - although in some cases foetuses survived for over six hours.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN:

Comebacks Set the Weekend Stage (Tim Daloisio, 4/19/07, Red Sox Times)

As if in anticipation of the next twenty-seven (or more) innings to come over the weekend, both the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees stepped up their game in the late innings of their games today with come from behind wins. With a three game series looming, neither team wanted to come in on a down note. Instead, they both came in with a bang.

As the Red Sox entered the eighth inning down 3-1 to the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees were giving back a 2-1 lead to the Cleveland Indians in the seventh inning. As Manny Ramirez’s first home run of the year, hopefully a slump-breaker, flew over the center field wall in the Rogers Center to tie the game at three, the Yankees found themselves down 6-2. The Red Sox would grab two runs in the ninth inning off of Blue Jays interim closer Jason Frasor and watch Jonathan Papelbon close out the ninth inning in impressive fashion capping off the come from behind win.

In New York, the Yankees would find themselves down to their final out still facing that four run deficit and Indians closer Joe Borowski, that is until Josh Phelps started a rally for the ages with a solo shot to left field. A single, walk, and back to back singles brought Alex Rodriguez up to the plate with two men on trailing now only by one run. Previous versions of Arod would have likely made the final out quelling a rally and squashing any momentum that the Yankees could take with them to Boston, but Arod 2.0 - the 2007 version - did just the opposite treating the Yankee fans to his second walk off home run of the season.

Somehow you have to figure that this series comes down to Arod, who can convert his detractors by continuing his hot start, or feed their animus by stumbling in these first meaningful games of the season.

MORE:
Three for the money: Sox throw big-game experience at Yanks (John Tomase, 4/20/07, Boston Herald)

They found Curt Schilling one Thanksgiving in Arizona by way of Alaska. Young Texan Josh Beckett arrived from Florida for two of their best prospects. Daisuke Matsuzaka merely required some of the highest-stakes negotiations in the game’s history - not to mention thousands of frequent flier miles to Japan.

The Red Sox were willing to do whatever it took to secure the three because they represent the rarest of commodities - battle-tested power pitchers with no fear of the crucible that is Boston.

Schilling’s playoff exploits are legendary and will probably land him in the Hall of Fame. Beckett could retire tomorrow and never be forgotten for his shutout to clinch the 2003 World Series. And Matsuzaka has merely been a national icon since high school.

All three were clearly born with something that keeps their palms dry no matter how overwhelming the pressure. And though it’s only April, they’ve serendipitously been given a stage on which to strut their stuff this weekend. [...]

“We didn’t maneuver to have it work out this way,” manager Terry Francona noted, “but we’re not going to apologize for having those three going.”

After two seasons in which the ceaseless chatter that surrounded the team so often centered on what was going wrong—on the field, in the front office, wherever—we’re now talking about the epic potential of a lineup whose number three, four, and five hitters combined to hit 109 home runs and drive in 339 runs last season. And then there’s Daisuke Matsuzaka, baseball’s newest international idol, who judging from the hype should turn out to be a combination of Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, and God. Oh, and we did it all without giving up any of the team’s much heralded prospects. It’s a far cry from last year, when the biggest news was the addition of a man who shared his name with a breakfast cereal.

Surely it’s no accident that these moves are occurring during a time in which Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino appear to have reached the kind of uneasy truce that allows them to focus on the team and not each other. The two men aren’t, to be certain, about to take any vacations together. What they have proved, though, is that they can work together when they need to—and their combined firepower can be pretty damn impressive. If all you’ve been focusing on are the individual headlines, you might have missed the bigger story. Put the pieces together, though, and there’s no denying it: The Red Sox have got their groove back.

In the half decade since John Henry and Tom Werner bought the team, public reaction to the owners (and the front office) has been ping-ponging between extremes. When the Sox didn’t bring Cliff Floyd back in 2003, they were cheapskates. When a bunch of garbage-heap pickups—Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, et al.—powered that season’s prodigious, record-setting offense, they were geniuses. Screwing up the A-Rod negotiations: moronic. Convincing Curt to come to Boston: brilliant. Alienating Nomar: ine