NOTHING'S RELATIVE:

Einstein's Revolution, and Counterrevolution (Tom Bethell, June 2007, The American Spectator)

A BASIC POINT ABOUT EINSTEIN'S life (1879-1955) is that he became more conservative when he reached middle age; not so much politically -- he remained a man of the left to the end -- but in his scientific outlook. This was reflected above all in his prolonged and unresolved dispute with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg about quantum mechanics. If you are unfamiliar with that controversy, there could be no better introduction than Isaacson's. He covers it in about 40 lucid pages, encompassing the contributions of Erwin Schroedinger and others. Most of us know little more than that Heisenberg enunciated an uncertainty principle, wherein observation affects the thing observed; to which Einstein retorted that God does not play dice. Here you will learn, painlessly, a good deal more than that.

Heisenberg insisted that an electron does not have a definite position or path until we observe it. This was a feature of the universe, he claimed, not just some deficiency in our ability to measure. In denying that there is an objective reality out there, it undermined classical physics. When Einstein objected, Heisenberg confidently replied: "I believe that indeterminism, that is, the non-validity of rigorous causality, is necessary."

On the 200th anniversary of Newton's death, in 1927, Einstein defended classical mechanics. Two decades earlier he had "toppled many of the pillars of Newton's universe, including absolute space and time," Isaacson writes. Now he was a defender of Newton, of rigorous causality and (by implication) the established order.

Einstein: "You don't seriously believe that none but observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"

He was confronted with his own youthful rebelliousness.

Heisenberg: "Isn't that precisely what you have done with relativity?"

"Possibly," Einstein said, "but it is nonsense all the same."

TACTICS, BUT NOT THE PLANNERS:

London Finds Linked Bombs, a Qaeda Tactic (ALAN COWELL, 6/30/07, NY Times)

Security experts said that neither the bomb materials nor the cellphone triggering device was particularly sophisticated. Nor, said Sajjan M. Gohel, a counterterrorism expert with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, did the attack “seem to be very well planned.”

But the idea of a multiple attack using car bombs — a departure from the backpack suicide attacks of the London bombings of July 2005 — raised concerns among security experts that jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda may have imported tactics more familiar in Iraq.

IF BEING A LAUGHINGSTOCK SHUT YOU DOWN...:

Who killed Antioch? Womyn: The college went from liberal bastion to PC laughingstock with its sex and dating policy. (Meghan Daum, June 30, 2007, LA Times)Even though it was founded in 1852 and has a number of distinguished alumni, Antioch College, the flagship institution of a larger system called Antioch University (there are campuses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, among other locations) has an endowment of just $40 million. That's appallingly low — neighboring Ohio colleges Oberlin and Kenyon have endowments of $700 million and $165 million, respectively.

There's no lack of speculation as to how this happened. Many have suggested that the career choices of typical Antioch alums (think public servant or activist rather than CEO or law partner) do not lend themselves to generous contributions. Others see a more general problem with liberal philanthropy. In a podcast interview for InsideHigherEd.com, Bard College President Leon Botstein (who in the 1970s was president of the seriously far-out and short-lived Franconia College) came down hard on what he sees as a failure of liberals to support their institutions.

"One of the tragedies of the progressive liberal movement," Botstein said, "is that unlike at a conservative institution — such as Princeton or Dartmouth, where the alumni are deeply loyal and give it support and money — for liberals, higher education is not a strong enough cause. Their causes are social causes, and higher education is left for the conservatives to fund."

Whether or not contemporary Princeton or Dartmouth can fairly be characterized as conservative (though, admittedly, you have to declare a major at these places, and it can't be in roach-clip design), Botstein makes a good point. He also conjectured that Antioch, which he called "the founding college of the American progressive movement," had been "killed" by, among other things, its own liberalism.

Botstein's not totally wrong, but as members of his baby boom generation are apt to do, he equates "liberalism" and liberals with the demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, including a six-week campus strike in 1973 during which students firebombed buildings to protest racial inequality at the school. But it was the next iteration of liberal excess that really did the place in. To later generations, Antioch is famous for one thing: its Sexual Offense Prevention Policy.

In 1993, it suddenly became national news that Antioch required anyone engaging in sexual activity on campus to ask for and grant permission throughout every step of the encounter. Conceived by a group called Womyn of Antioch, the policy stipulated that consent could not be granted through body movements, nonverbal responses or silence. Furthermore, it stated that "consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity" and that "each new level of sexual activity requires consent." Translation: dorm room make-out sessions were being punctuated by steamy questions like, "May I kiss you now?", "May I remove your (Che Guevara) T-shirt now?" and "May I … " (you get the idea).

Admittedly, this was the early '90s, a time when many liberal arts campuses were so awash in the hysteria of political correctness that it seemed entirely possible a lamppost could commit date rape. But the attention to the Antioch policy, which got as far as a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, not only came to symbolize the infantilizing dogma of the new left, it turned an already obscure college into a laughingstock.
..there'd be no Ivies.

WHACHOO TALKIN' 'BOUT, WILLIS?:

Presidential scholar confronts the president: Gives Bush letter decrying torture (Claire Cummings, June 30, 2007, Boston Globe)

Usually, the high school seniors who win the federal government's highest honor just go to the White House, pick up their Presidential Scholars medal, and get their picture taken for posterity with the president.

Mari Oye had other ideas.

In the Georgetown University dormitory the night before the big moment, the newly minted Wellesley High graduate persuaded 49 of her 140 fellow scholars to sign a letter she and a dozen others had drafted and she had just written longhand on notebook paper, calling on President Bush to reject torture and treat terrorism suspects humanely.

Before the scholars posed for a photo with Bush on Monday, she handed him the letter. He put it in his pocket and took it out after the photo shoot. Reading silently to himself, the president looked up quizzically at Oye and said, according to her, "We agree. America doesn't torture people."

JUST QUIBBLING OVER THE PACE AT THIS POINT:

Democracy? Hu needs it: Ahead of its congress later this year, the Chinese Communist Party is tolerating a surprisingly wide-ranging debate about political reform (The Economist, Jun 28th 2007)

[I]n a much-publicised speech this week, [Hu Jintao] acknowledged the growing public demand for a say in politics. [...]

His speech set clear boundaries. The party's leadership must be upheld; reform must adhere to the “correct political orientation”. This means no Western-style parliamentary democracy or balance of power between the executive, legislature and judiciary. But his reference to “political participation” suggests he faces some pressure to set a clearer agenda. He said scope for participation should be expanded, but in an “orderly” way.

Even within Mr Hu's constraints, liberal intellectuals in China see room for big changes. A newspaper article published last October in the normally staid municipal party organ, Beijing Daily, launched a debate about political reform among academics and party officials that still rumbles on. Its author, Yu Keping, a leading party researcher, argued that democracy was essential for China. Study Times, one of the party's leading theoretical journals, republished the piece under the titillating headline “Democracy is a Good Thing”.

The party press does not usually harp on the merits of democracy. But Mr Yu was careful to stay within permitted boundaries. Even Mr Hu himself had said in April 2006 during a trip to America that without democracy there could be no modernisation—a slogan first taken up in China in the late 1970s by political dissidents. But “democracy” in party-speak has a quite different meaning from the one understood by dissidents and Westerners. It certainly does not mean allowing organised opposition. Mr Yu did not define his terms.

However, in February this year a liberal-leaning monthly journal, Yanhuang Chunqiu, threw caution to the winds. It published an article by Xie Tao, a retired vice-president of Beijing's Renmin University, singing the praises of Sweden's Social Democratic Party as a model for China's Communist Party. Mr Xie did not mention multiparty systems explicitly. But he scorned the party's continuing reverence for the “utopian” ideal of communism and warned that it could be destroyed like the Chinese Nationalist Party in the 1940s if it failed to reform politically.

Mr Xie's article touched a raw nerve. Party organisations in some universities arranged symposiums to attack his views. Other official newspapers, including the party's main mouthpiece, the People's Daily, criticised European-style social democracy as unsuitable for China. But the debate has not stopped.

LESS IS MORE:

Khamenei plays for high stakes (David Blair, 28/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

At present, Iran produces 4.3 million barrels of oil every day. This may sound impressive - but it could turn out another million if its drilling rigs and pipelines were not falling to pieces. The inescapable truth is that Iran is lamentably failing to exploit its own natural wealth.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is keenly aware of this. But he faces an acute dilemma. Recovery is only possible if Iran allows Western trade and investment. The vital oil sector will never reach full potential without Western money.

Yet while Iran pursues its nuclear programme, it will remain isolated, devoid of Western investment. It will also be vulnerable to outside pressure. In extremis, the United States and its allies could strangle Iran's economy by imposing a blockade in the Gulf and halting the flow of imported petrol.

But if Ayatollah Khamenei were to sacrifice the nuclear programme in exchange for investment, his troubles would not end.

EXCEPT FOR ONE THING...:

Sharing the secrets of the Constitution (Roger Simon, Jun 28, 2007, Politico)

Don't you wish the U.S. Constitution was not a secret document, its contents known only to a few?

Don't you wish there were copies of it that we could distribute to schoolchildren so they could become better citizens? Or maybe we could put it up on the Web for everybody to read?

What? The Constitution is not a secret document? Schoolchildren do learn about it? And it is on the Web?

I don't think so. And I think I can prove it.

TOUGH TO FIND THE MEDIUM THOUGH:

Indonesian Islam's softer hard line (Seth Mydans, June 28, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

"There is a view that Islam is on the march," said Greg Fealy, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University. "I don't see any evidence for that. Yes, there is a religious and cultural Islamization, in private and public. But in the political realm, there is hardly any evidence to support the view that Islam is rising."

Some analysts said the Shariah ordinances are largely a response to the social dislocations that have accompanied the economic downturn of the past decade, colored by a rise in religiosity that has little to do with radicalism.

More broadly, they said, this Islamic ferment is a product of the democratic clamor that was unleashed in 1998 when the longtime strongman Suharto was driven from power.

The lifting of restrictions on organizations of all kinds, coupled with political decentralization, has permitted local communities to formulate many of their own laws.

The changes in mood can be seen on campuses, where students who might have demonstrated for democracy a decade ago are forming Islamic associations and turning toward religion. The short skirts of the past have been replaced by head scarves.

"Democracy is like a gate that is opened to let people say what they want," said Budi, a student at the secular University of Indonesia who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. "Having the door open wider, it was easier for us to promote Islamic values and teaching."

Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia's 235 million people call themselves Muslims. But Indonesian Islam has a history of accommodation of other beliefs and tolerance for differences.

After Muslim traders brought their religion in the 12th century, it embraced elements of the Hinduism, Buddhism and animism that flourished here. It is still characterized more by the mysticism of these roots than by the orthodoxy of Islamists.

"I don't think they're going to be liberal, but I'm vaguely optimistic that they'll be pluralist in some fashion," said Robert Hefner, an expert at Boston University on Indonesian Islam. "Indonesia has these awful political crises. But one thing that has consistently survived is this kind of sweet nationalism, not a racist nationalism - it's a multiethnic thing."

UNTIL PUTZ DROOPS:

Mariners continue to apply pressure: Seattle wins sixth in a row to move 10 games over .500 (JOHN HICKEY, 6/30/07, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

There's an old adage in baseball that you haven't gotten anywhere in a season until you've gotten to 10 games over .500.

The Mariners have finally done that. Friday's 5-3 win over Toronto at Safeco Field, behind another five-out save from J.J. Putz and three big hits from Jose Guillen, leaves Seattle with a 43-33 record and a six-game winning streak.

"We're playing good," Guillen said. "But it's a long season. It's too early to say what will happen; anything can happen."

Whatever happens, Putz figures to be in the middle of it. The closer is 23-for-23 in saves after pitching Seattle out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth, then putting the Blue Jays away in the ninth.

VIRTUOUS CYCLE:

YES may join Yanks in the tank (Bob Raissman, June 29th 2007, NY Daily News)

The Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network is officially in uncharted waters. For the first time since the network debuted five years ago, the Bombers' ship is sinking.

If the losing continues, will viewers bail? And if they do, and Yankees ratings on YES plummet, will advertisers jump ship, too? And will this all lead to a revenue drop, the kind of dough that allows the Bombers to have a $200 million payroll?

In the midst of the most recent Yankees funk these questions are hardly hypothetical. Over at YES headquarters - the Chrysler Building Think Tank - the powers that be have to be pondering, for the first time, a very uncertain Yankees future.

For starters, if the team does not make the playoffs, what's going to happen next season? What the heck will team look like next season?

The future can wait. Especially when everyone in Yankeeland is choking on the present.

AND WE'D BE SOCCER FANS:

Outrage comes too easy for the Democrats (Derrick Z. Jackson, June 30, 2007, Boston Globe)

THURSDAY NIGHT'S debate was too easy for the Democratic presidential candidates. Before a hugely black audience at Howard University, they bashed the Supreme Court decision ending voluntary desegregation. They lambasted the Bush administration's bungling of Hurricane Katrina. Barack Obama said you can't have No Child Left Behind if you leave the money behind. The biggest cheer of the night came when Hillary Clinton said, "If AIDS were the leading cause of death between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country."

That is precisely the point.

UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE TO DEFENDING CASHMONEY...:

Bad investments: Clemens headlines list of high-priced busts of 2007 (John Donovan, June 29, 2007, Sports Illustrated)

If you saw Roger Clemens pitch against the Orioles on Wednesday, you saw him stink up the joint. He wasn't completely, absolutely, without redemption terrible -- is he ever? -- but he certainly wasn't Clemensesque, allowing four runs in six innings while striking out none. The last time the Rocket failed to strike out a batter in a start was June 14, 2000, when he left the game after one inning.

So Clemens being Zitoesque in his last start got me to thinking: Is he the worst use of megadollars in baseball this year? Is anything else even close? I mean, we knew that Clemens would have to be unbelievable to make this half-year, pro-rated $28 million crapshoot defensible. (Not that the Yankees, who manufacture their own money, are heading into foreclosure anytime soon.) Instead, the Rocket is 1-3 with a 5.32 ERA, the Yankees are 1-4 in his five appearances (he came out of the bullpen once) and the team is worse off now than it was before he signed. The Yankees are 11 games behind the Red Sox in the American League East. They were 10 1/2 back the night before Rocket's first game three weeks ago. Difference maker? The guy hasn't made a dent.

FERDINAND PARTON, I PRESUME?:

Energy plan avoids mileage changes (DAVID IVANOVICH, 6/29/07, Houston Chronicle)

House Democrats rolled out an energy package Thursday that aims to promote greater conservation and use of alternative energy sources but which steers clear of raising fuel mileage requirements for cars and trucks.

HAVING WORKED THE MOB INTO A LATHER...:

Senators looking to pick up pieces: After overhaul bill collapses, work starts on smaller plans (MICHELLE MITTELSTADT, 6/29/07, Houston Chronicle)

[M]any Republicans now are reverting to their key priority: increased enforcement at the Southwest border and in the U.S. interior.

And Democrats, for their part, are considering offering the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship to illegal immigrant students. And they are looking at ways to address acute labor shortages in agriculture by bringing in more foreign farm workers and placing them on a path to legal permanent residence.

"We have to have a different approach," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said shortly after the Senate fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to keep the tenuous immigration deal alive. "It's clear from the vote that this bill was not the right approach."

Hutchison, who was among 37 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent voting to shelve the bill, is pressing for what she calls a "graduated approach."

Under her concept, Congress would first pass bills increasing border security and creating a temporary worker program to fill unmet U.S. labor needs before turning to the most controversial aspect: What to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Fellow Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who also opposed the bill, agreed. "The one thing we have a consensus on that we need to do is to secure the border and to deal with the document fraud and identity theft that makes our current system so hard to enforce," he said.

EXACTLY!:

US offers Canberra a trade fallback: AUSTRALIA could be invited to join the North American Free Trade Agreement as part of a strategy among Asia-Pacific nations to deal with the collapse of world trade talk (Geoff Elliott and Sid Marris, June 29, 2007, The Australian)

In an exclusive interview before her trip to Cairns for next week's meeting of APEC trade ministers, US trade representative Susan Schwab said alternatives to the so-called Doha round of global trade talks were being considered, with the US focusing on the Asia-Pacific region.

"You look at what's going on in the Asia-Pacific - there's so much promise, it's so exciting, and so how do you make sure you sustain that and how do you make sure it grows rather than turning in on itself," Ms Schwab told The Australian.

"I think you will see a real acceleration of bilateral and regional deals including something like a free trade agreement of the Asia-Pacific if the Doha round really disappears from the scene.

"One of the big questions with the proliferation of bilateral and regional agreements is this: is there an inclination - and if so what would it take - to knit together multiple free trade agreements? Because all of us have multiple free trade agreements. That is another issue - we would talk about it."

Asked whether that could mean including Australia in the NAFTA - the regional agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada struck under the Clinton administration - she said: "Exactly."

THIRD WAY NORTH:

Unemployment insurance to become mandatory in 2009 ( 29th June 2007)

The Swedish government said Friday it planned to introduce a mandatory unemployment insurance for all employees from July 2009, as almost a quarter of the labour force currently has no such cover.

"The ambition is that the insurance system will be obligatory by July 1st 2009," a labour ministry advisor, Fredrik Östbom, told AFP.

24 AND COUNTING...:

Harrry Potter VII: Defenders of secrets, unite! (Motoko Rich, June 29, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

They have waited two long years, and now they have only 24 days to go. As the diehard fans of Harry Potter count the minutes until they can get their hands on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final installment in the monumentally successful series by J. K. Rowling, they are engaging in a frenzy of speculation and rumor-mongering about what will happen to their beloved characters.

Predictions are flying across the Web and out of bookstores, where titles like "Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7," "The End of Harry Potter?" and "The Great Snape Debate" spew theories about who will die, who will get together with whom, and who is really good or evil.

At the same time, with little more than three weeks to go before "Deathly Hallows" goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, some people claiming to have actual knowledge of the book's plot are posting ostensible spoilers online. At one site, for instance, what appears to be a page from a manuscript appears, showing one paragraph outlined in red, suggesting that one of the most morally enigmatic characters in the series dies in the final book, with a few bars from the chorus of "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora playing on an endless loop in the background.

CRANK UP THE MLB RADIO:

Twins-Detroit series preview (Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 28, 2007)

Tonight offers a classic pitcher's duel. Santana is 10-3 with a 2.70 ERA for his career against Detroit. Verlander is 3-2 with a 2.90 ERA against the Twins. Since tossing a no-hitter against Milwaukee on June 12, Verlander is 2-0 with a 2.77 ERA. But he lasted only three innings in the Twins' 11-3 victory at Detroit on April 28.

IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

How immigrants improve the curve: In the 'clash of civilizations,' newcomers may deserve to come out on top. (Rosa Brooks, June 29, 2007, LA Times)

[C]ontrast "our" culture with that of recent immigrants. On all too many measures, immigrants look a whole lot better.

Immigrants exhibit no shortage of pluck. It takes guts to leave your home and everything you know — even if a green card awaits. And when it comes to illegal immigrants, just getting here takes astounding courage. Illegal immigrants endure astonishing privation and risk — just for the chance to improve their lot by doing the backbreaking work so few native-born Americans have the inclination to do. While we demand McMansions, they share cramped apartments. We're up to our ears in consumer debt; they save almost every dollar to send to their less-well-off relatives.

The younger generation of illegal immigrants is particularly impressive. Each year, thousands of unaccompanied children cross into the U.S. without their parents, many literally walking here from villages in El Salvador and Guatemala. Could our sheltered and chaperoned children manage such a trip on their own?

Immigrants tend to be straight arrows too. A 2002 survey by the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that an overwhelming majority of immigrants believe that they have a duty to "work hard and stay off welfare" and "respect people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds." A Harvard study found that immigrant students also have more positive attitudes toward education than U.S.-born young people.

And contrary to widespread perceptions, immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. A study in Chicago looking specifically at Mexican immigrants found that "first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) … were 45% less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans." Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson suggests that increased immigration may have been a factor in reduced crime rates in the 1990s.

Another study done in New York City found that immigrants looked pretty good across the board. Compared to their native-born peers, for instance, "foreign-born [adolescents] had less asthma, less obesity, fewer school days missed and less involvement in substance use, sex, delinquency and violence." On average, immigrants even live three years longer than the rest of us.

No wonder Tancredo and his supporters are terrified of immigrants!

Immigrants put us to shame. They're healthier, stronger, thriftier and braver.

LUCKILY, IT'S A CARTOON...:

Pixar cooks up the perfect "Ratatouille" (Moira Macdonald, 6/29/07, Seattle Times)

How good, and how much fun, is "Ratatouille"? So good that when it was over, all I wanted to do was watch it again. And how rare is this experience, in this summer of bloated sequels? Rarer than, let's say, a rat who loves to cook — and a screenwriter who knows how to transform a potentially unappealing tidbit of a story (A rodent? Around food?) into a feast.

The wizards at Pixar, working with writer/director Brad Bird (they previously teamed up for the equally stellar "The Incredibles"), have once again delivered a technically impeccable film with humor and heart — and with surely France's most hygienic rat, Remy, at its center.

The moral of “Ratatouille” is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O’Toole. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” Mr. Ego muses. “But a great artist can come from anywhere.”

Quite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, “Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.

Its sensibility, implicit in Mr. Ego’s aphorism, is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals. Like “The Incredibles,” Mr. Bird’s earlier film for Pixar, “Ratatouille” celebrates the passionate, sometimes aggressive pursuit of excellence, an impulse it also exemplifies.

THE KEY TO THE CLAIM...:

Bush claims privilege over subpoenas (TERENCE HUNT, 6/29/07, The Associated Press)

President Bush, in a constitutional showdown with Congress, claimed executive privilege Thursday and rejected demands for White House documents and testimony about the firing of U.S. attorneys. [...]

Over the years, Congress and the White House have avoided a full-blown court test about the constitutional balance of power and whether the president can refuse Congress’ demands.

Lawmakers could vote to cite witnesses for contempt and refer the matter to the local U.S. attorney to bring before a grand jury.

Since 1975, 10 senior administration officials have been cited but the disputes were all resolved before getting to court.

REDEFINING BLACK IRISH:

Nigerian refugee becomes first black mayor in Ireland (SHAWN POGATCHNIK, 6/29/07, The Associated Press)

Ireland elected its first black mayor Thursday, the latest sign of how rapidly immigration is changing this once all-white nation.

Rotimi Adebari, a Nigerian who arrived in Ireland seven years ago as an asylum-seeker, was elected unopposed to lead the council of Portlaoise, a bustling commuter town west of Dublin. [...]

Little more than a decade ago, a black person in Ireland risked being gawked at, so rare was the sight of visitors from different racial backgrounds. But Ireland has absorbed more than 30,000 asylum seekers – particularly from Nigeria – since the mid-1990s, a wave attracted by Ireland’s booming economy and its relatively lax immigration rules.

These days, West African entrepreneurs run stretches of shops in urban Dublin and other Irish towns and cities, and social activists like Adebari are encouraging the newcomers to integrate into their communities.

KILLER Bs:

Biggio shares moment with Bagwell (Alyson Footer, 6/29/07, MLB.com)

As Jeff Bagwell raced from general manager Tim Purpura's booth down to the dugout Thursday night, he felt tears well up in his eyes.

Bagwell knew what 3,000 hits meant to Craig Biggio, having witnessed most of those in person as Biggio's partner in crime on the right side of the infield. Bagwell, who took a two-day hiatus from his golfing excursion in Colorado in order to be there for the big event, couldn't wait to get to the dugout to give his longtime friend and teammate a congratulatory wave, and perhaps a quick hug.

But Biggio, already in tears after being mobbed by his teammates and engulfed by hugs and kisses from his wife and three kids, had more in mind for Bagwell at this moment. Much, much more.

Biggio has never shaken the void he's felt ever since Bagwell left the game. He's never quite gotten over Bagwell's career ending the way it did. An argument could be made that Biggio took Bagwell's retirement harder than Bagwell himself.

On Thursday, Biggio knew just how to bring closure to a chapter left unfinished.

Biggio was determined to be on the field with Bagwell, one last time, even if it was in a symbolic manner. This gesture was as much for himself as for the fans who Biggio feels never had the opportunity to say the proper goodbye to the beloved first baseman.

Never mind that Bagwell wasn't in uniform, or that his crisp blue shirt and designer jeans didn't match Biggio's Astros attire. No one -- certainly none of the 42,537 screaming fans at Minute Maid Park -- could have predicted that Biggio would pull Bagwell onto the field to share the glory of the moment.

This night was about Biggio. But Biggio knows better than anyone that his legacy is firmly tied to Bagwell.

In case you hadn't noticed, only two other men in the history of this sport ever got 3,000 hits while spending most of their career at second base -- Eddie Collins and Nap Lajoie. Which means the last time a second base legend did anything like this, Calvin Coolidge was president.

So try to digest this for a moment. Craig Biggio has gotten more hits than Rogers Hornsby, more hits than Joe Morgan, more hits than Ryne Sandberg or Robbie Alomar or Red Schoendienst.

Pretty cool names.

And it's those names -- not the numbers -- that get Craig Biggio's attention.

The numbers -- they go flying by nightly, spinning like a slot machine, impossible to comprehend or take stock of. But the names? The names are tough to ignore.

"It's not a numbers thing for me," Biggio said last summer, during a conversation about all the lists he was climbing. "Oh, certain numbers will hit you. There's no doubt about that. But to me, if you don't appreciate the clientele you start finding yourself hanging with [on those lists], you're nuts.

"I passed Babe Ruth in doubles one time. Babe Ruth. That was unbelievable to me. And I passed Carl Yastrzemski. I'll never forget that one. You know, you're just out there playing. You're not even thinking about stuff like this. And then you find yourself thrown in with all these icons of the game, and it's a great feeling. So it's not the numbers, really. It's the names."

Yeah, it's the names, all right. They're the golden names of baseball. The best there ever was.

And now Craig Biggio is one of them.

EXCELLENT, NOW ENFORCE THE NECESSARY COROLLARY:

Supreme Court Blocks Execution of Delusional Killer (RALPH BLUMENTHAL, 6/30/07, NY Times)

Amplifying its ban against execution of the insane, a closely divided United States Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a delusional Texas murderer who insisted that he was being punished for preaching the Gospel.

In a rebuke to lower courts, the justices ruled 5 to 4 that the defendant, Scott Louis Panetti, had not been shown to have sufficient understanding of why he was to be put to death for gunning down his wife’s parents in 1992.

The court, acting on the last day of the 2006-7 term, declined to lay out a new standard for competency in capital cases. But it found that existing protections had not been afforded.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy provided the swing vote, joined by the court’s liberal wing: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

EMPHASUS ON THE WRONG SYLLAABLE:

Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education (JUAN WILLIAMS, 6/29/07, NY Times)

The focus of efforts to improve elementary and secondary schools shifted to magnet schools, to allowing parents the choice to move their children out of failing schools and, most recently, to vouchers and charter schools. The federal No Child Left Behind plan has many critics, but there’s no denying that it is an effective tool for forcing teachers’ unions and school administrators to take responsibility for educating poor and minority students. [...]

In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation.

Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?

His response was that seating black children next to white children in school had never been the point. It had been necessary only because all-white school boards were generously financing schools for white children while leaving black students in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with hand-me-down books and underpaid teachers. He had wanted black children to have the right to attend white schools as a point of leverage over the biased spending patterns of the segregationists who ran schools — both in the 17 states where racially separate schools were required by law and in other states where they were a matter of culture.

If black children had the right to be in schools with white children, Justice Marshall reasoned, then school board officials would have no choice but to equalize spending to protect the interests of their white children.

GOD GAVE US QUICKY-STOPS...:

Don’t Cry Over rBST Milk (HENRY I. MILLER, 6/29/07, NY Times)

Bad-faith efforts by biotechnology opponents to portray rBST as untested or harmful, and to discourage its use, keep society from taking full advantage of a safe and useful product. The opponents’ limited success is keeping the price of milk unnecessarily high.

When rBST is injected into cows, their digestive systems become more efficient at converting feed to milk. It induces the average cow, which produces about eight gallons of milk each day, to make nearly a gallon more. More feed, water, barn space and grazing land are devoted to milk production, rather than other aspects of bovine metabolism, so that you get seven cows’ worth of milk from six.

This may not seem like a big deal, but when applied widely the effects are profound. For every million cows treated with rBST each year, 6.6 billion gallons of water (enough to supply 26,000 homes) are conserved, according to Monsanto, which makes rBST. With much of the nation enduring a drought and many cities in the West experiencing water shortages, this is a significant benefit.

The amount of animal feed consumed each year by those million rBST-supplemented cows is reduced by more than three billion pounds. This helps to keep the lid on corn prices, even as much of the nation’s corn harvest is diverted to producing ethanol for cars. And the amount of land required to raise the cattle and grow their food is reduced by more than 417 square miles.

At the same time, more than 5.5 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel (enough to power 8,800 homes) are saved, greenhouse gas emissions are lowered by 30,000 metric tons (because fewer cows means less methane produced by bovine intestinal tracts), and manure production is decreased by about 3.6 million tons, reducing the chances of runoff getting into waterways and groundwater.

Comprehensive studies by academics and government regulatory agencies around the world have found no differences in the composition of milk or meat from rBST-supplemented cows.

And consumers are apparently happy to drink milk from supplemented cows, in spite of efforts by biotechnology opponents to bamboozle milk processors and retailers into believing that consumers don’t want it. In various surveys to ascertain the factors that influence consumers’ milk purchasing decisions, the predominant considerations have been: price (80 percent to 99 percent), freshness (60 percent to 97 percent), brand loyalty (30 percent to 60 percent) and a claim of “organic” (1 percent to 4 percent). Only the “organic” claim is even remotely related to rBST supplementation. Unless prompted, the consumers surveyed didn’t mention rBST as a concern.

Some milk suppliers and food stores have increased the price of milk labeled “rBST-free,” even though it is indistinguishable from supplemented milk, and offer only this more expensive option, pre-empting consumers’ ability to choose on the basis of price.

THE A TEAM IS DEAD:

London police defuse bomb that could've caused 'significant damage' (AP, 6/29/07)

British police defused a bomb found in a parked car in central London on Friday, and the new government called an emergency meeting of senior security chiefs to investigate what many feared could have been a planned terror attack.

A British security official told The Associated Press that the car was packed with explosives, gas canisters and nuts and bolts and would have caused "significant damage."

He said there were similarities between the device and vehicle bombs used by insurgents in Iraq.

SWEET THREADS, CHAIRMAN:

Federal Reserve holds rates as inflation pressures 'moderate' (Stephen Foley, 29 June 2007, Independent)

The United States Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold last night and rowed back from suggestions it could raise the rate to dampen inflation.

Its description of "moderating" inflationary pressures was new and, although the central bank said it wasn't yet convinced the trend was sustainable, the stock market took that to mean that rates will stay where they are for some months yet. US rates have now been on hold at 5.25 per cent for a year. "Readings on core inflation have improved modestly in recent months," the Fed's open markets committee said in its statement.

MIXED?:

Harry's and Nancy's mixed half-year (The Economist, 6/28/07)

The Democrats owe their majority in large part to war-weariness. Many of their supporters thought they would pull American troops out of Iraq. They have not. They could have done so, by refusing Mr Bush the funds to carry on fighting. But that would have shifted to the Democrats the blame for the carnage that would probably follow a sudden withdrawal.

Instead, Ms Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, sent President George Bush a war budget that included a timetable for withdrawal, knowing he would veto it. Their point made, they sent him another bill, without a timetable, that will fund the war until September. The bill also included benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet if it is to continue receiving non-military aid. It was far short of what the anti-war movement wanted, but it keeps Mr Bush on a shorter leash than he would like.

What else has the 110th Congress accomplished? Of the Democrats' campaign promises, the meatiest one so far enacted is an increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, which is widely popular and will benefit some Americans while perhaps throwing others out of work. The Democrats have also tightened up rules about lawmakers accepting gifts from lobbyists, although Ms Pelosi undermined her own anti-corruption crusade by trying unsuccessfully to place an ethically-challenged ally in the number-two job in the House.

Other pledges have been blocked, delayed or watered down.

THE RELUCTANT THATCHERITE:

It's time to give the Third Way a second chance: Securing greater social justice depends on a strong economy, not the other way round (Anthony Giddens, 28 June 2007, Independent)

The long goodbye is finally over and Britain has a new Prime Minister. Tony Blair is gone. Will his distinctive political philosophy, the Third Way, disappear too?

To answer the question, we have to dispel some of the misunderstandings of what that philosophy was, and is, all about. Nothing much should be read into the term itself. The "Third Way" is a label for the need to update left-of-centre thinking in the light of the big changes sweeping through the world, especially the influence of globalisation.

The "First Way" was the traditional left: traditional social democracy, which dominated political thought and practice in the early post-war period. It was based on Keynesian economics and upon the notion that the state should replace the market in major areas of economic life. That approach foundered as the economy became more globalised and as it came to be recognised that the state is often inefficient and clumsily bureaucratic. The "Second Way" was Thatcherism, or market fundamentalism - the belief that the realm of the market should be extended as far as possible, since markets are the most rational and efficient means of allocating resources.

Thatcherism produced some important innovations and restored British economic competitiveness.

STOP PLANNING AND USE THE MARKET:

U.S. Supreme Court votes to curb school districts' diversity plans (David Stout, June 28, 2007, NY Times)

The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, declaring that the districts had failed to meet "their heavy burden" of justifying "the extreme means they have chosen - discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments."

The decision Thursday, one of the most important in years on the issue of race and education, may not eliminate race as a factor in assigning students to different schools. But it will surely prompt many districts to revise programs they already have in place, or go back to the drawing boards in designing plans.

The majority's rationale relied in part on the historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools - a factor that the dissenters on the court found to be a cruel irony, and which they objected to in emotional terms.

GAS IS THE NEW BREAD:

MPs press Ahmadinejad to end petrol rationing (Robert Tait, June 28, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

MPs said they would press the government to alter or even scrap the scheme after angry protesters set fire to at least a dozen petrol stations in Tehran and chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad following Tuesday night's sudden introduction of quotas.

Banks, supermarkets and fire engines were also attacked while further disturbances were reported in other big cities, including Isfahan and Shiraz.

There were unconfirmed reports that three people were killed in the violence, which led to 80 arrests.

In a sign of official nervousness that the disturbances might spread, the government temporarily closed the country's mobile phone text-messaging network after the widespread circulation of an SMS urging protesters to gather in Tehran's landmark Valiasr Square.

LIE DOWN WITH CRACKERS...:

New Senators Resist Overhaul of Immigration (CARL HULSE, 6/28/07, NY Times)

In narrowly winning her seat last year, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri ran hard against what she saw as a flawed approach in Congress to dealing with illegal immigration. Ms. McCaskill, a Democratic newcomer, says she is not about to change her view now.

“I hope this never wears off, but I like to keep my word,” said Ms. McCaskill, part of a triad of moderate Democratic freshmen balking at the proposed immigration overhaul and complicating efforts by President Bush and Senate leaders to pass it this week.

Her compatriots in opposition are Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana. All three represent Republican-leaning states and are breaking with their leadership and most of their Democratic colleagues on the legislation, whose fate in the Senate could be determined on Thursday after a day of votes on amendments left the outcome up in the air on Wednesday.

Immigration Bill Prompts Some Menacing Responses (JEFF ZELENY, 6/28/07, NY Times)

The threat came in the weekend mail.

The recipient was Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who has been a leading advocate of the proposed legislation for changing the immigration system. His offices in Washington and across Florida have received thousands of angry messages in recent weeks, but nothing as alarming as that letter he received at his home. [...]

While the majority of the telephone calls and faxes, letters and e-mail messages have been civil, aides to several senators said, the correspondence has taken a menacing tone in several cases.

Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who is undecided on the final immigration bill, said his office received a telephone call recently that “made a threat about knowing where I lived.” Mr. Burr passed it along to the authorities. “There were enough specifics to raise some alarm bells,” he said.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is one of the architects of the immigration overhaul, said he also had received threats in telephone calls and letters to his office. Mr. Graham said several other senators had told him privately that they also received similar messages.

“There’s racism in this debate,” Mr. Graham said. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but a very small percentage of people involved in this debate really have racial and bigoted remarks. The tone that we create around these debates, whether it be rhetoric in a union hall or rhetoric on talk radio, it can take people who are on the fence and push them over emotionally.”

The Presidential candidates: All of the Democratic candidates voted YES. McCain, who was part of the bipartisan coalition that crafted and supported the bill, also voted YES. Brownback's initial vote was YES, but later, probably when the outcome was clear, switched to NO.

Senators up for reelection in 2008: On the Democratic side, all the blue state senators voted YES (Biden, Durbin, Kerry, Lautenberg, Levin, Reed). But those Democrats running in red or purples states voted NO (Baucus, Harkin, Landrieu, Pryor, Rockefeller).

Most of the Republican senators up for re-election this cycle voted NO (Alexander, Allard, Chambliss, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Dole, Domenici, Enzi, Inhofe, McConnell, Roberts, Sessions, Smith, Stevens, Sununu, Warner). The exceptions, with YES votes, were Craig, Hagel, and Graham (who is one of the original and most vocal coalition members that wrote the bill).

Senate Leadership: The Republican leadership was split. GOP Leader McConnell, who's also up for re-election, voted NO. (He had voted YES on another procedural vote earlier this week.) McConnell was joined by Texas Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn, as well as Ensign, who's responsible for running the GOP senate campaigns this cycle. Lott and Kyl split with the leadership and voted YES.

ELECTIONS CONFER SOVEREIGNTY...:

Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East (Alastair Crooke, 7/05/07, London Review of Books)

The origins of the Hamas action in Gaza lie in the reaction of the international community, and of Fatah, to Hamas’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s movement, saw itself as the founder of the Palestinian Authority; it believed it was the natural party of government; and it had fought a long battle with Arab neighbours to establish itself as synonymous with the PLO, and therefore, implicitly, as the ‘sole representative of the Palestinian people’. Some within Fatah were unable to come to terms with their loss of power, or to reconcile themselves to the claim that, on the basis of the election result, an Islamist party best represented the views of the Palestinian people. At this crucial juncture, the International Quartet intervened: they pressed President Abbas not to yield to Hamas, to hang onto power; and they promised to support him if he did so.

Not only was Abbas not to yield security control to the government and its Interior Ministry, as the constitution provided, but the International Quartet also demanded that he claw back powers from the new government and embody them in the presidency: financial responsibilities would be removed from the Ministry of Finance; the salaries of government officials would be paid by the president’s office; all key policy decisions would be enacted by presidential decree. The government was to be rendered powerless. As Azzam Tamimi notes in Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, the Hamas government had no police force at its disposal, and no authority over frontier crossings.

At the same time, the West imposed financial sanctions on the government and isolated it politically, insisting on conducting business and channelling funding exclusively through Abbas. In short, instead of helping Fatah through the transition and facilitating Palestinian unity – and taking advantage of a real chance to include Hamas, Islamism’s moderates, in the political process – the international community pursued an aggressive policy of internal division that established the conditions for the recent violence in Gaza. Europeans may wring their hands at what they see on their TVs, but European policy, acting in concert with the US, bears a large measure of responsibility for what has happened.

The US and some European countries, including Britain, also chose to finance, train and arm the security apparatus led by Muhammad Dahlan, whom many Palestinians suspected – rightly – was being groomed as the ‘strong man’ who would eventually assume the presidency and restore Fatah to power. The ultimate aim was to build a Fatah militia around Dahlan that could confront Hamas militarily – and win. American officials hoped in the meantime to place Fatah in a position to depose Hamas from power – in other words, to promote a soft coup d’état against the government. A strategy document prepared by one of the US-led coalition of ‘moderate’ Arab states which was circulating among Palestinians in March 2007 said that the US objective was to have Abbas dismiss the Hamas government in August. The International Quartet endorsed these plans in principle. The support the US and Europe give to Fatah is considerable and arrives by a variety of routes: through NGOs and development agencies; through Fatah reform initiatives; through youth development programmes; through information and media projects; and – most significantly – through a large programme aimed at recruiting, training, equipping and financing Fatah security cadres, Dahlan’s chief among them. In addition, every NGO contract has a clause inserted into it by USAID requiring the organisation to pledge that it ‘will not engage in activity with groups deemed as terrorists’.

In the scathing final report he wrote before resigning in May as UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto said: ‘The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca’ – where the two factions met in February and under the auspices of King Abdullah agreed a unity government – ‘the US envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”’ It was this situation that pushed Hamas into pre-emptive action. With Fatah refusing to delegate constitutional authority over the security services, and with the build-up of the Dahlan militia, the military arm of Hamas moved to seize all the key assets associated with Dahlan and his colleagues in Gaza. Having achieved complete control, the elected government is now finally in a position to provide security in Gaza.

AS THE FAX MACHINE WAS TO THE RUSSIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION:

Text Messages Giving Voice to Chinese: Opponents of Chemical Factory Found Way Around Censors (Edward Cody, 6/28/07, Washington Post)

By the hundreds of thousands, the urgent text messages ricocheted around cellphones in Xiamen, warning of a catastrophe that would spoil the city's beautiful seaside environment and foul its sweet-smelling tropical breezes. [...]

The environmental activists behind the messages might have exaggerated the danger with their florid language, experts said. But their passionate opposition to the chemical plant generated an explosion of public anger that forced a halt in construction, pending further environmental impact studies by authorities in Beijing, and produced large demonstrations June 1 and 2, drawing national publicity.

The delay marked a rare instance of public opinion in China rising from the streets and compelling a change of policy by Communist Party bureaucrats. It was a dramatic illustration of the potential of technology -- particularly cellphones and the Internet -- to challenge the rigorous censorship and political controls through which the party maintains its monopoly on power over China's 1.4 billion people.

"I think this is a great precedent for China," said Zhong Xiaoyong, a Xiamen resident who, in his persona as the blogger Lian Yue, wrote extensively on efforts to stop construction of the factory.

A BETTER BILL, HARDER TO PASS:

Senate faces showdown on immigration: The bill's opponents succeed at deleting a provision for tamper-proof IDs. A crucial vote to end debate is expected today (Nicole Gaouette and Noam N. Levey, June 28, 2007, LA Times)

Supporters of the Senate immigration bill rebuffed all but one of the most serious challenges to the controversial legislation Wednesday, setting up a crucial vote today that could decide its fate.

In a series of votes steadily interrupted by Republicans intent on stalling the proceedings, lawmakers rejected amendments aimed at gutting two key features of the bill: one that would allow illegal immigrants to seek legal status and another that would shift the basis for future immigration away from the current emphasis on family ties.

But the most ambitious attempt to overhaul immigration laws in two decades suffered a major setback late Wednesday when lawmakers approved an amendment that the bill's backers and the administration said would undermine its effectiveness. The measure targeted the bill's work-site enforcement section, removing all provisions that required so-called "Real ID" driver's licenses — tamper-proof, secure identification that does not yet exist, but that the bill's backers consider essential to cracking down on illegal hiring.

GUARDIANSHIP CARRIES OBLIGATIONS:

Gas rationing in Iran ignites anger, unrest: Protesters burn at least 12 stations over the quota system, imposed to curb consumption of heavily subsidized fuel (Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, June 28, 2007, LA Times)

They have endured religious police, political repression and international isolation.

But a quota imposed Wednesday on the purchase of subsidized gasoline sent Iranians to the streets, where they set fire to at least 12 gas stations, damaged government-owned banks and department stores and shouted slogans against the president, according to Iranian news agencies and witnesses.

To curb rapidly increasing gasoline consumption, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday began enforcing a rationing program that limits most motorists to 26.4 gallons a month at the subsidized price of about 42 cents per gallon.

Although Iran possesses huge reserves of crude oil and natural gas, it has too few refineries to meet the energy-hungry country's demand, forcing it to import more than $4 billion of refined petroleum a year, most of it from Europe. That dependence makes Iran vulnerable to economic sanctions from the West, which is pressuring it to halt uranium enrichment. [...]

But despite concerns voiced by supreme leader Ali Khamenei and security officials, the government revived the plan this week, putting it into effect with only two hours' notice.

MORE:
When Heroes Depart (DANIEL JOHNSON, June 28, 2007, NY Sun)

Then it was off to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen. This was a private meeting, the last of many hundreds over the past decade. When Winston Churchill, the first of Elizabeth II's prime ministers, resigned 52 years ago, he wore a frock coat and top hat.

In his time, Mr. Blair has abolished the last vestiges of Victorian tradition. The constitutional role of the monarchy, though, is not just a tradition. It means that no prime minister, however dominant, is above the law.

SHOULDN'T HE HAVE HIS WINGS BY NOW?:

Got discipline?: In a free-speech ruling, Justice Thomas misstates the purpose of education (Jonathan Zimmerman, June 28, 2007, LA Times)

For the last decade, I've taught a history course with that title at New York University. My students and I examine the different purposes that Americans have assigned to public schools, including:

A. to teach the great humanistic traditions of the West;

B. to develop the individual interests of the child;

C. to promote social justice;

D. to prepare efficient workers.

Over the last four centuries, Americans have struggled to balance these goals — and many others — in their schools. To Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, however, there's only one right answer:

E. to instill discipline and obedience

The ideals of that generation flowed directly from their learning and reading. Each and every founder raised his "public voice" to advocate universal education. From Washington and Franklin to Adams and Jefferson, every one offered his ideas about the state of education and the best ways to build an informed citizenry — from the lowliest mechanic's son to the most exalted Harvard grad.

As Jefferson wrote of his Virginia education plan in a letter to his friend George Wythe, "The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."

Jefferson was by no means alone. George Washington called for a national university in his First Inaugural Address. John Adams asked his son in Europe to collect books and ideas for republican schools. James Madison tracked the education efforts in Kentucky and praised innovations and challenging curricula there. They agreed with Noah Webster that, "Knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful Jealousy, will guard our constitutions."

Even before there was a Constitution, the young republic passed the first national education law on July 13, 1787. The Northwest Ordinance was written to govern United States territory north of the Ohio River. It read, in part: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

WE'RE JUST THE SAME:

Hypernova: Illegal Indie-Rock from Iran (Shereen Meraji, June 19, 2007, Day to Day)

In Iran, people are not allowed to listen to Western music, let alone make it.

But more than half of Iran's population is under 25 years old. So it's not surprising that young Iranians download music off the Internet, watch satellite TV and make music in a thriving underground scene.

Hypernova is an indie-rock band from Tehran influenced by groups such as The Strokes, the Arctic Monkeys and Queens of the Stone Age. Their new CD is called Who Says You Can't Rock in Iran?; they recorded it illegally in their home country.

Lead singer Raam says, "There's an element of danger involved in what we do. But the laws are so chaotic back home that they're hardly enforced. Ninety-nine out of 100 times you can get away with anything."

MP3: No One
MP3: Consequence

SEEMS UNLIKELY...:

A hot new television show for the summer season (Mike Duffy, 6/28/07, Detroit Free Press)

Shortly after "Burn Notice" announces its hang-loose, prime-time presence at 10 p.m. EDT Thursday on USA, Weston gets the word that he's been fired from his international gig in covert intelligence.

The pink slip in this case is called a "burn notice," therefore the odd series title.

Perplexed and rather cranky about this turn of career events, Weston gets himself back to his home town of Miami and the plush, bikini-cosmic surroundings of South Beach to begin unraveling the puzzle of his sudden dismissal from the global spying life.

IF OWNER INFLUENCE IS SO DANGEROUS...:

Accord Seen on Oversight of Journal (RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, 6/28/07, NY Times)

Negotiators reached an agreement in principle yesterday on protecting the editorial independence of The Wall Street Journal, an important step toward a purchase by the News Corporation of The Journal’s owner, Dow Jones & Company, people briefed on the talks said. [...]

It is not clear how the current accord differs from the conditions laid down last week by the Bancroft family, owners of a controlling interest in Dow Jones — terms that Mr. Murdoch dismissed as unacceptable. Nor is it clear whether the family, which has veto power over any deal, would accept the changes.

The elder Bancrofts, who control most of the stock, have deep reservations about parting with a company that has been in the family since 1902 and a newspaper they revere. In particular, many of them are reluctant to sell to a company whose journalism they see as sensationalist and slanted to suit Mr. Murdoch’s business interests and right-wing politics.

MAKES 4 MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE (via Mike Daley):

Southwest Chili Burger (Tillamook Cheese)

Instructions:

Garnishes: Guacamole or sliced avocado, tomato and onion; lettuce; pickled jalapeno slices or pepperocinis.

Combine meat, cilantro, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper in a large bowl and mix well. Form 8 equal patties, about 3/4-inch thick.

Broil, grill or pan-fry burgers until desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium. Arrange cheese slices evenly over burgers during final minute of cooking time. Serve in buns with desired garnishes. Makes 8 servings.

Guacamole Mayo:

2 Avocados

4 tsp fresh lime juice

1 cup Mayo

1 tsp ground cumin

Prep

Peel and pit, avocado and mash until chunky, stir in mayo and cumin.

PET STATE:

In West Bank, Hamas is hard to find but still strong (Ian Fisher, June 27, 2007, NY Times)
[I]n scores of interviews in the West Bank, with people of all political shades, one thing seems clear: Hamas activists here may be kept in check by Fatah and the Israeli Army for now, but they remain a powerful presence even in the West Bank. This may be the key fact that Israel, the United States and others will have to absorb as they bolster the West Bank as a sort of trial Palestinian state.

"If Hamas doesn't like it, Hamas can destroy it," said Fais Hamdan, 34, a stonecutter with an "Islamist" beard in this village of 6,000 near Nablus, as he sat in the restaurant with the owner nervous about giving his name. "If they want to kill any political deal, they only have to attack a settlement or another Israeli target. Don't think that Hamas is very weak in the West Bank."

The central issue, as it has been for years, remains credibility.

Hamas crushed Fatah politically last year, sweeping legislative elections in January 2006, partly because Fatah was perceived as corrupt and nonresponsive to ordinary Palestinians. That reality, even many in Fatah complain, has changed little.

Hamas also remains, on paper at least, a strong political force, with the majority of legislative seats in Parliament generally, and in control of dozens of city and town councils around the West Bank. Israel has curtailed that as best it can: Of the 74 Hamas legislators, 40 are in Israeli jails - and many of its other leaders have been arrested since the fighting in Gaza.

But even that can have a counterintuitive effect possibly helpful to Hamas: Palestinian leaders often gain their contacts and political bona fides in Israeli prison.

More broadly, though, many Palestinians seem to hold little hope that anyone - the United States, Israel, or even Arab states fearful that Hamas's Islamism could spread - will actually make good on promises of aid to the West Bank.

That perception seemed reinforced Monday, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel met with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, and made what Palestinians considered a paltry opening gesture: only a portion of the $600 million in withheld Palestinian tax money, and just 250 prisoners held in Israeli jails, among some 11,000.

"Look at the irony here," the restaurant owner said. "Abu Mazen says he rejects talks with Hamas but he sits down with Olmert. And Olmert isn't going to give him anything! Then Hamas leaders appear on TV and say: 'Fatah negotiated for 15 years with Israel and nothing happened. Israel didn't give us anything for 15 years. Why now?' "

"And people are listening," he added.
Were you an Intifadite, you couldn't throw a rock insidfe the Beltway without hitting some "expert" who thinks Palestine can be divided, which just demonstrates the Western divorce from Palestinian reality.

ROLF BENIRSCHKE MAKES A COMEBACK (via pchuck):

Beckham plays the Yanks at their own game (Daily Mail, 26th June 2007)

With his move to Los Angeles imminent, it seems David Beckham is keen to embrace the culture of his new home town in every possible way.

YOU DON'T NEED TO GO PARTICULARLY FAR OUT ON THE LIMB...:

The FP Memo: The Endgame in Iraq: What happens when you take a 40-year-old CIA memo on losing a war and replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq”? The result is a set of conclusions that are just as true today. (Shawn Brimley, Kurt Campbell, July/August 2007, Foreign Policy)

...to safely predict that Iraq will not be taken over by your imagined equivalent of North Vietnam, which makes the comparison asinine.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO PEOPLE-POWERLESS:

People power: Arab economies in a global era (Marcus Noland Howard Pack, 2007-06-27, Open Democracy)

For two generations, the economic performance of the Arab countries of the Middle East has been middling. It has been worse than east Asia, better than sub-Saharan Africa, and about the same as Latin America and south Asia. Yet while there has been no crisis in the past - indeed, on some social indicators progress has been spectacular - the region now faces an imminent challenge: how to create jobs for the large cohort of young people reaching working age. The task is immense and the stakes are high: over the next decade or so, the region may experience population growth of 150 million people - the equivalent of adding two Egypts. Rising labour-force participation by women only increases the pressure. The region is a demographic time-bomb.

The picture is not entirely bleak: underpinned by relatively high oil and gas prices, the region as a whole has exhibited both steady growth of income and employment of late. The small emirate of Dubai appears bent on establishing itself as the Singapore of the Middle East. But whether the current level of energy prices will be sustained is an open question and in any event the impact of this windfall is felt unevenly across the Arab world, where some of the most populous states are not well-endowed in oil. Measured unemployment is decreasing. There may be some rot beneath the veneer, however.

Remarkably, the net increase in employment over the past five years is accounted for entirely by women. The increase in employment opportunities for women is encouraging. But the stagnation of male employment is worrisome and in some countries - including Jordan and the oil-exporters of the Gulf - most of the newly created jobs have been filled by foreigners. This phenomenon is even more acute if one looks at private-sector employment, and there is some evidence of warehousing people in public-sector employment, particularly in the Maghreb. With a few exceptions, employment has not been growing in industries where productivity is increasing - that is, it does not appear to reflect an expansion of activity in rising dynamic sectors.

One method of rapidly creating a sustainable increase in employment is through an expansion of labor-intensive manufacturing or services exports, often in conjunction with foreign investors or local entrepreneurs integrating into global supply networks. But outside the petroleum sector, the region's track-record is inauspicious. Not just in comparison with China or India: in one recent year the Philippines generated more manufactured exports than the entire Arab world. And until the recent oil-fuelled expansion of intraregional foreign direct investment (FDI), the region typically attracted less FDI than Sweden. Even this recent surge in activity appears to be concentrated to a significant extent in so-called "non-tradable" sectors such as real-estate development that could be highly vulnerable to a downturn in the oil market or a contraction of global liquidity. The Arab world risks being left behind at precisely the moment it needs to accelerate job growth.

WHAT COULD BE HEALTHIER THAN NUTS?:

Fudge fans offered a nutty alternative (ELIZABETH PUDWILL, 6/27/07, Houston Chronicle)

PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE

* 3 cups sugar
* 1 (5-ounce) can evaporated milk
* ¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter
* 1 (12-ounce) jar peanut butter
* 1 (7-ounce) jar marshmallow cream
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan. In a medium saucepan, bring the sugar, milk and butter to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in the peanut butter, marshmallow cream and vanilla. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan. Refrigerate. Cut into squares when chilled.

EV...:

Pork reform: Stick a fork in it (Winslow T. Wheeler, June 26, 2007, Politico)

Just how open and honest the reformed process is can be seen in the new Department of Defense authorization bill that came out of the House Armed Services Committee in May. It did list 449 earmarks -- in small, unreadable print -- costing $7.6 billion, but the list was incomplete. An astute watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, found 53 additional, unlisted earmarks costing $744 million.

When the Senate Armed Services Committee reported out its different version of the bill, S. 1547, it listed 309 earmarks costing $5.6 billion. When it comes up for debate in the Senate, 200 or more amendments will be introduced. About half of those amendments will be for home-state projects that for some reason the committee did not add during its initial review process.

During the week or two the Senate will take to consider the bill, there will be debates, some of them interesting, on the great issues of the day: the war in Iraq, nuclear nonproliferation, the worn-out U.S. Army and more. Interspersed through those debates will be strange presentations by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (Mich.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). They will be reading off procedural motions, calling up amendments and passing them by "unanimous consent"; they will do this time after time, sometimes passing as many as 20 amendments in one sequence. The amendments will not be debated; they may not even be described.

There's a reason why these items will receive such little scrutiny: They are the pork amendments. The senators pressing them will have "cleared" them with Levin and McCain. Then the amendments will go through the arcane but well-oiled approval process, with utterly no debate -- all in what calls itself the "world's greatest deliberative body."

This year, there may be some new twists, none of them having the slightest thing to do with the Democrats' reforms.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN TROUBLE...:

No Wafer for Rudy: Giuliani campaigns as a Catholic, but he's on the outs with God (Wayne Barrett, June 26th, 2007, Village Voice)

When Pope Benedict XVI attacked Catholic politicians in Mexico who supported abortion rights last month, Rudy Giuliani was asked for his opinion. The presidential candidate replied in the language of the church: "Issues like that are for me and my confessor. I'm a Catholic, and that's the way I resolve those issues, personally and privately."

Giuliani has invoked his Catholic heritage on Larry King; he's been described by The Washington Post as a "devout Catholic"; he's appeared on Fox News with the label "Catholic" floating on-screen; and he's handled a CNN debate question about a bishop who denounced him with a declaration unfamiliar to those who covered him as mayor. "I respect the opinion of Catholic and religious leaders of all kinds," he said. "Religion is very important to me. It's a very important part of my life."

The ex-mayor's newfound piety also includes a mantra about abortion that wasn't heard while he was in City Hall. "I hate abortion," he now says across America and, in a proposed 12-point plan, he declares that he's committed to decreasing the number of abortions. "I would encourage someone to not take that option," he says, though as a candidate for mayor he said he would pay for an abortion for his daughter. Today, he says it would be "OK to repeal" Roe v. Wade, though he hosted celebrations of its anniversary three times at City Hall. His wholesale reversal on Medicaid funding, late-term abortions, and parental consent are all part of a repackaging designed to soften not just his New York public record, but also the inconvenient details of his personal life.

Married three times, Giuliani simply isn't the Catholic candidate he claims to be. He can't have a confessor. He can't receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, or marriage. While bishops disagree about whether or not a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights can receive the sacraments, there is no disagreement about the consequences of divorcing and remarrying outside the church, as Giuliani did a few years ago.

WHEN HE COMES....:

Fuel Rationing Introduced in Oil Giant: Despite being one of the world's largest oil producers, Iran has introduced gasoline rationing. The move caused long lines at the pumps -- and rioting. (Der Spiegel, 6/27/07)

According to Raja News, a Web site closely linked to the government, nine stations were attacked in the Iranian capital. There were also reports of chants lampooning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to office promising an economic upturn but has so far been unable to live up to the pledge.

There were long lines at the pumps on Tuesday night as people tried to get one last full tank of gas before the new measures kicked in. The rationing, which the government had been planning for weeks and which was originally supposed to go into effect on May 21, was only announced three hours before taking effect at midnight local time.

"Is this good timing, to announce rationing only three hours before it starts?" Ahmad Safai, one of those waiting in line, told the Associated Press. "I had no gas in my car's tank when I heard the report."

Iran is the second biggest oil exporter in OPEC, but has limited refining capacity, meaning that it has to import more than half of the gasoline consumed in the country. Until now, the government has subsidized gasoline to keep prices down, but the program has proven exorbitantly expensive in a period when the Iranian economy is struggling. The new rules mean that car owners can only buy 100 liters (26 gallons) of subsidized fuel per month -- at a cost of 1,000 rials per liter, which works out to 7 euro cents per liter or 38 US cents per gallon. Taxi drivers will be able to buy 800 liters a month.

The rationing comes amid growing dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad's handling of the economy. Inflation is high and rising gas prices will likely only spark further price increases. A reduction in gasoline subsidies in May led to a 25 percent jump in gas prices.

RED, WHITE, BLUE...& GREEN:

Pestos make the most of fresh herbs for summer dinners (J.M. HIRSCH, 6/27/07, The Associated Press)

Pesto is a great way to make the most of fresh herbs.

Though traditional pestos generally involve basil – which is pureed with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts and garlic to make a thick sauce for pasta – just about any fresh herb works fine.

And if you’re going to swap out the herb, you might as well tinker with the other ingredients, too. Using the same basic pesto formula (4 ounces of cheese, 2 cups packed fresh herbs and ½ cup nuts or seeds), tinker with complimentary ingredients, such as parsley, walnuts and feta. Or dandelion greens, almonds and pecorino.

Online collection features Culinary Delights recipes (Nashua Telegraph, 6/27/07)

Today, The Telegraph launches the Culinary Delights Recipe Guide for visitors of www.nashuatelegraph.com.

The recipe guide, which can be found at www.nashuatelegraph.com/recipes, is filled with 25 years of recipes. The recipes, which have been submitted by readers over the years, are now in an online searchable database – making it easy for fans of The Telegraph’s Food section and Culinary Delights to find tasty dishes.

The recipes have been separated into 10 categories: Appetizers & Snacks, Bread, Breakfast, Desserts, Drinks, Ethnic, Main Dish, Salad, Side Dish, and Soups, Stews & Chili. Within those categories are a number of subcategories, making it even simpler to find a dish to make tonight.

The search function allows users to search by recipe name, ingredient and submitter’s name. Also, typing “winner” into the box brings up entries that were category and grand-prize winners over the years at Culinary Delights Cook-offs.

Once viewing a recipe, users have the ability to send the scrumptious recipe to a friend who would enjoy it, print out the instructions onto a 3- by 5-inch recipe card or submit a photo of their results to upload for others to see.

THE WHIFF OF JIMMY:

Brown ready to take reins in Britain: The brainy and somber incoming prime minister waited 13 years to lead (Kim Murphy, June 27, 2007, LA Times)

He shows up for work in famously drab ties with his nails bitten to the quick. He hates networking, and didn't marry until he was 49. He's the glowering figure often seen harrumphing on the bench behind his preternaturally poised boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the House of Commons.

You might say he's the anti-Blair, in more ways than one. [...]

Brown's reluctance to delegate is legendary and stems, many say, from his characteristic impatience.

"When you get to be prime minister, you can't do everything. Therefore, you've got to trust and empower your colleagues more," a former treasury official said. "But he thinks he's smarter than they are, and he works harder than they do."

Brown has always been intellectually intimidating. "He's blind in one eye, and he reads everything. It's really terrifying what he reads. Scary," said Irwin Stelzer, a conservative at the Washington-based Hudson Institute who has known Brown for years. The two often find themselves on opposite sides of a debate.

Brown, who began as a brash and bookish young Scottish socialist, stuck closer to Labor's traditional leftist ideals than Blair and never became the smooth politician that Blair is. He eschews white tie at his annual address to the captains of British industry at the Lord Mayor's ceremonial house, a habit a Times of London columnist recently called "simply bloody rude."

The floor of the study of his weekend home in Scotland is likely to be heaped chaotically with books; at European Council meetings, where networking is everything, Brown often arrives at the last minute, reorders the agenda so the items he's interested in happen first, and catches an early plane home.

His conversation starters with friends are simple: "What are you reading?" is usually the first. Then, "Have you heard any good jokes?"

But his patience ends, many say, when the IQ at the other end of the conversation is found wanting. This is sometimes defined, those who don't get along with him believe, by whether his interlocutor sees the wisdom of his views.

Ruth Lea, an economist and 16-year treasury employee who now directs the London-based Center for Policy Studies, said she found Brown "amazingly intolerant" when she expressed disagreement with him over his program of tax credits for working families.

"He blew up. He just lost his temper with me. And then tried to bludgeon me by loudly justifying his decision," Lea said.

IN LOCO, NOT LOCO:

Bong goes the court in free-speech ruling (Seattle Times, 6/27/06)

The U.S. Supreme Court needlessly chipped away at First Amendment free-speech guarantees with a ruling elevating a high-school prank to a dangerous promotion of drug use.

The 6-3 ruling miscast the case before the court as about drugs. But it was about a student's right to speech.

Of course, all you have to do to see the Editorialists reverse field here is ask if the kids have the right to bear arms too.

SHIASTAN, QUICKER:

Kurdish Iraq focuses on investment and building (Kirk Semple, June 26, 2007, NY Times)

It is a measure of soaring Kurdish optimism that government officials here talk seriously about one day challenging Dubai as the Middle East's main transportation and business hub.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is betting that it can, investing $325 million in a modernist terminal at the Erbil International Airport to handle - officials hope - millions of passengers a year and a runway that will be big enough to handle the new double-decker Airbus A380.

"We're not saying Kurdistan is heaven," said Herish Muharam, chairman of the Kurdish government's Board of Investment. "But we're telling investors that Kurdistan can be that heaven."

As the rest of Iraq has plunged into a downward spiral, Kurdistan has enjoyed relative political stability and limited violence, in part owing to a sectarian and political homogeneity lacking elsewhere in the country.

ALWAYS ON FIRE:

Gore Gore Girls 'Don't Cry': Exclusive! Download this garage rock romp from the Detroit group's new album, Get the Gore. (SAMANTHA PROMISLOFF, June 26, 2007, Spin)

Bye, bye angelic girl groups of today and yesteryear -- you're on the Gore Gore Girls' turf now. Part Ramones, part Donnas, with a pinch of Pipettes-like vocals, rhythmic Ronettes verses, and a splash of sock hop clap-alongs, Gore Gore Girls are loud, proud, and don't give a damn who knows it.

MP3: Fox in a Box
MP3: All Grown Up
MP3: Astral Man
MP3: Up All Night
MP3: I'm Gonna Get You Yet

MORE:
-Gore Gore Girls (Wikipedia)
-ARCHIVES: Gore Gore Girls (Detroit Metro Times)
-REVIEW: of Gore Gore Girls: Get the Gore (Alan Brown, PopMatters)
-REVIEW: of GORE GORE GIRLS: "Get the Gore" (Bob Strauss, LA Daily News)
-REVIEW: of Gore Gore Girls: 7x4 (GENE ARMSTRONG, Tucson Weekly)

VALETUDINARIANS ARE HARDER TO PUT DOWN THAN FREDDY KREUGER:

The U.S. is indebted to itself (Michael K. Farr, Jun 26, 2007, Politico)

There is an unsexy but very important issue being largely ignored by the 2008 presidential candidates: foreign ownership of U.S. government debt. As America continues to operate at a deficit, and as our debt held by foreign countries increases, we lose control over our economic destiny. The successful candidate in 2008 must reduce the deficit and regain control of the economic tiller. The candidate who can successfully and simply outline a workable plan will undoubtedly win friends at the polls and on the Hill.

Foreigners currently hold about $2.2 trillion, or 44 percent, of the roughly $5 trillion in total U.S. Treasury debt held by the public. This percentage is up sharply from about 30 percent in 2000 and demonstrates just how dependent we have become on foreign central banks. We believe our increasing dependence poses systematic risks to both our economy and our security.

NO WONDER SO FEW GO BACK:

God vs. Country: When Chinese scholars arrive at Cal, Christian ministers help them get settled. But church involvement may set the visitors up for trouble back home. (Lygia Navarro, June 27, 2007, East Bay Express)

While the attention may be merely a nuisance for some, others worry about repercussions for being affiliated with Christians should word spread back home — particularly if the scholars are Party members. Despite recent changes, Vala says, China still is not entirely hospitable to religion, especially when the churchgoers have ties overseas. "People could be arrested, held for ransom," he says. "If there is knowledge of an international connection, then local authorities may see this as a moneymaking opportunity. You may have torture."

It's not an entirely abstract threat. Over the last year, the Chinese and foreign press have reported that Chinese authorities beat townspeople attempting to build a church near Hangzhou, raided underground churches, sent house church leaders to reeducation labor camps, arrested Christians for walking too close to the 2008 Beijing Olympic complex — missionary groups have publicized their plans to infiltrate the games — and executed leaders of a Christian sect that the authorities deemed a cult.

Back at Chinese for Christ, Benjamin Yi thinks ahead to the summer, when the next crop of scholars will arrive. A graduate of an all-Chinese seminary in Concord, the Taiwanese minister is new to his scholars-and-students post, which has become higher-profile with the influx of scholars. With short salt-and-pepper hair, Yi, dressed carefully in khakis, striped dress shirt, and a blue windbreaker, is warm and soft-spoken. He and his wife, Meirong, sit for an interview on folding chairs in the church vestibule, where the door's stained glass tints the morning light orange.

Yi gets his list of new scholars' names from Berkeley's Chinese Students and Scholars Association — Wong was cagey when asked about his church's connection with the campus association, as was its president, Peng Li, who refused to discuss anything related to religion.

In any case, Yi says some of the newcomers will be housed with church members until they find apartments. Once they get settled, Yi and others will show them around town, and teach them how to take public transport, open a bank account, and get driver's licenses. "When a new student comes here," he says, referring to the church, "they've been hosted by some family. It's hard for them to say no."

The statement sounds brash, and his wife laughs uncomfortably as he continues: "Some of them will keep coming. Friday night fellowship is a good way to attract them — the friends, the food. Gradually they make friends, and when they have friends, they come."

In the beginning, the couple says, they take care not to be preachy. While helping scholars with day-to-day tasks, they try not to come on too strong or talk about the Bible. "We have to build a relationship," Yi notes. "We have to be trustworthy, and then they come to church. Very few of them keep coming because they're aware of the consequences. They visit one time, two times — that won't cause problems."

But the faithful are indeed under surveillance, according to the minister. "There are spies in every church, and they report back to China," Yi says matter-of-factly. "The spy will tell, 'These are the scholars that constantly attend the church.' So our church is very conscious. You don't know who the spies are." He tells of a friend who came from a house church in China to study at the Concord seminary. Shortly thereafter, the man received a phone call from a Chinese government agent, asking whether he needed help. The purpose of the call was clear, Yi says: "They're watching everything."

The ostracism scholars may face upon return to China isn't lost on Yi: "We know this probably will affect their promotion — the promotion is controlled by the government. So definitely if they are Christian, they will have trouble." However, Yi says self-protection is ultimately the scholars' responsibility. "They understand," he stresses. "They know the Party, they know it well."

He also sees adversity as part of the grand plan. "Don't you think that's God's work?" the minister asks, smiling. "They know that this would jeopardize their career. They are smart guys; they know the consequences. So why can they conquer their fear and really believe? It's not the food that attracts them. It's God's calling they cannot resist. If they don't go to church [in China], we don't blame them. We understand. In the Bible, the Christians were underground."

TRIS WHO?:

Coco’s fielding mighty Crisp (SEAN McADAM, 6/27/07, Providence Journal)

[T]he true measure of Crisp’s 2007 season is found in more arcane numbers, not readily available or found on a Web site. According to data compiled and maintained by one major-league club, Crisp is playing the best center field of any outfielder in the major leagues — and by a long shot.

The club, which asked not to be identified, uses a complicated metric to measure defensive play, including range and coverage. Based on its findings, tabulated monthly, Crisp is playing at a “plus-24” level in center field, meaning that through the end of May, Crisp had already recorded putouts on two dozen more players than the average center fielder.

While the data can’t be easily extrapolated for an entire season — there’s no guarantee that Crisp will finish at a plus-72, for example — he’s on pace to easily top last year’s best full-season grade, a plus-30, earned by Willie Taveras, then with Houston.

Similarly, Crisp could equal the best numbers achieved by Mike Cameron and Andruw Jones, each of whom had graded out near a plus-60 in their prime.

WHO YA GONNA BELIEVE, THE DNC OR YOUR LYIN' TV?:

Democrats spooked by rise of 'new Reagan' (Alex Spillius, 27/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The Democratic party is so alarmed by the prospect of competing against Fred Thompson, a Republican who portrays himself as a successor to Ronald Reagan, that it is advising campaigners how to attack the former actor and Tennessee senator.

Mr Thompson is not expected to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination until next month, but Democratic strategists fear the combination of his conservatism, southern charm and populist style could make him a hard man to beat in 2008. Some polls have already placed him in the top two Republicans, underlining the weakness of his rivals.

The Democratic National Committee's campaign focuses on what it regards as the fallacy in Mr Thompson's portrayal of himself as an outsider ready to shake up Washington.

According to the Politico newspaper, the committee has launched a pre-emptive strike, emailing members and branding Mr Thompson "the inside-outsider".

UNIQUE EVEN WITHIN THE ANGLOSPHERE:

The Big Question: Why do wealthy Americans donate so much to charity and rich Britons so little? (Andy McSmith, 27 June 2007, Independent)

The Americans, it seems, are privately more generous in giving than we are. New figures show that, last year, the US set a record for largesse, giving away the equivalent of almost the entire gross domestic product of Greece in private charitable donations that was an increase even on the bonanza of 2005, when America was moved by the plight of the victims of the Asian tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, Americans dug into pockets and handed over 1.7 per cent of their country's economy, according to the report published yesterday by the Giving USA Foundation. In the same year, Britons gave away 0.73 per cent of the British economy, proportionately less than half as much.

REAL FISCAL CONSERVATIVES:

Appropriate Appropriation? (John Godfrey, 6/27/07, Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire)

Vice President Dick Cheney has been largely dismissive of congressional Democrats for years, but this time they might just hit him where it counts: the $4.4 million he’s told Congress he wants to run his White House offices in 2008.

The threat comes in response to Cheney’s claim that he’s exempt from a presidential order requiring those in the executive branch to report on how they are handling state secrets. Cheney says he’s exempt because he’s also president of the U.S. Senate and therefore not really part of the executive branch.

Cheney’s penchant for secrecy has ruffled feathers in the past, but this time an effort to retaliate is gaining momentum. “I’m going to let the money follow his legal logic,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D., Ill.) said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. Emanuel hopes to strip funding for Cheney’s White House offices from the annual White House spending bill when it’s debated by the House this week.

“We have decided that if the vice president is no longer a member of the executive branch, we will no longer fund the executive branch of his office,” Emanuel said. That would leave Cheney with the $2.3 million set aside in another annual spending bill for the vice president’s operations in the Senate.

SPOKEN LIKE A LITTLE SISTER:

Out of Order: Are firstborns really smarter than their siblings? (Emily Bazelon, June 26, 2007, Slate)

Last year, I dismissed the relationship between birth order and intelligence, relying on such experts as University of Oklahoma psychology professor Joseph Lee Rodgers, who called the finding a "methodological illusion." While that view was not the consensus, it was far better supported than the bedeviling claim that older siblings have higher IQs. Now there's a new study from Norway, reported in two parts in Science and Intelligence, that makes the illusion seem real. According to the New York Times and the Boston Globe, and just about all the other press coverage, the Norwegian research does more than that. It settles the question: Firstborns are smarter.

I hate this idea.

WHICH IS TO SLANDER SALMON:

Marx loses currency in new China: Teaching socialism is mandatory, but learning it is monotonous for today's students, who revere money more than Mao. (Mitchell Landsberg, June 26, 2007, LA Times)

IT was like watching a man try to swim up a waterfall.

Professor Tao Xiuao cracked jokes, told stories, projected a Power Point presentation on a large video screen. But his students at Beijing Foreign Studies University didn't even try to hide their boredom.

Young men spread newspapers out on their desks and pored over the sports news. A couple of students listened to iPods; others sent text messages on their cellphones. One young woman with chic red-framed glasses spent the entire two hours engrossed in "Jane Eyre," in the original English. Some drifted out of class, ate lunch and returned. Some just lay their heads on their desktops and went to sleep.

It isn't easy teaching Marxism in China these days.

"It's a big challenge," acknowledged Tao, a likable man who demonstrates remarkable patience in the face of students more interested in capitalism than "Das Kapital."

THAT WHICH TWO-THIRDS OF THE PUBLIC WANTS...:

Senate resumes debate on immigration overhaul (Donna Smith, June 26, 2007, Reuters)

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted to revive a stalled immigration overhaul backed by President George W. Bush that would offer a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

The Senate voted 64-35 to resume debate on the bill, which ties tough border security and workplace enforcement measures to a plan to legalize an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants and a create temporary worker program sought by business groups.

The legislation would be a significant victory for President George W. Bush in his second term in office. It faces strong opposition from many of his fellow Republicans, who call it an amnesty for people who broke U.S. laws and argue it would do little to stem the flow of illegal immigration into the United States.

IF AMY WENT TO REHAB...:

NPR Live Concert Series: Cat Power in Concert (November 2006, NPR.org)

Hear Cat Power in a full concert, recorded live from Washington, D.C.

Cat Power is the stage name of Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall, who has been around since the early nineties playing in a sort punk-folk style while publicly wrestling personal demons. She seems to finally have them down for the count, and last year's "The Greatest" is the result. If you like old Cowboy Junkies, recent Neko Case, and Dusty in Memphis, you should check this out:

As a side note, I have technology-related musical tip:

I spend a lot of time on my bike (that's a pedal bike), and, while music makes the miles go faster, headphones are dangerous (and, depending on your local laws, perhaps illegal). I'd like to hear the traffic and the tunes.

I've been hooking up walkmans and mp3 players up to little battery-powered speakers mounted to the bike for years--serviceable for talk radio and AM-friendly sounds (like the Apples in Stereo or most of the Motown hits). In the past, I've found that Sony made the best ones, but none I've purchased over the years sound terribly good, especially with acoustic folk, jazz, classical ( i.e. not bubblegum) music.

Last week I upgraded to some Altec Lansing portable mp3 speakers. I bought the Sansa-compatible model because I like the size and color (I don't have either an I-pod or a Sansa), but they make I-pod-dockable systems as well, and they all take standard audio input ( 3.5mm plug). And they rock--you can actually hear the bass, and get them loud enough to hear above the wind and road buzz without distorting. You can run them off 4 AA batteries or with the AC adaptor, and would be fine for the patio, garage, bedroom, or bike. They even have output for a powered subwoofer.

Note that I am not an audiophile, so your opinion of the sound may differ radically (and they weren't exactly cheap). The local Best Buy had display demos so I could test out the various makes and models, and you might want to do that before buying them online.

W'S STRONG LEFT HAND:

Kennedy's zeal for immigration deal alienates liberals: The Senate will hold a test vote on the bill today (JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, 6/26/07, Associated Press)

Months of tumultuous negotiations with the White House and GOP allies have brought the Senate's liberal lion, Edward M. Kennedy, to the brink of passing a bill to legalize up to 12 million unlawful immigrants.

But his concessions to get there have alienated liberals who in the past have counted him as their strongest champion. A showdown test vote is scheduled today, and the Senate could pass — or reject — the bill by week's end.

Traditional Kennedy allies are angry at the Massachusetts senator's willingness to accept Republican-backed measures such as subjecting illegal immigrants to steep fines and trips home, separating immigrants from relatives and letting new guest workers stay only for short periods of time with little chance of citizenship.

"I think that in his heart, he's where I'm at, but he wants to see a deal move forward and he's willing to take certain steps that I might not be willing to take," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

It's a familiar spot for Kennedy, 75, whose liberal standing during his 45 years in the Senate belies his history of partnering with Republicans on major domestic agenda items.

He's done so twice before with President Bush, on the No Child Left Behind education law and on a broad Medicare prescription drug overhaul.

Now that President Bush has rallied Republicans to try again to reshape the immigration laws, supporters of the effort have a new worry. When the bill returns to the Senate floor, probably next week, opposition from labor unions could doom the bill’s prospects by putting pressure on many Democrats to vote against it.

The threat that labor poses to the bill has gone largely unrecognized in part because three prominent unions — the service employees, the farm workers, and the hotel, restaurant and apparel workers — have backed the legislation. But that support, advocates say, has been outweighed by opposition from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and virtually all other unions, including auto workers, Teamsters, food and commercial workers, and construction unions. [...]

Supporters of the bill say that the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in opposing the legislation, is focused on protecting the gains that its mostly middle-class members have made in pay and benefits over the decades. To the labor federation, the big worry is that the bill’s guest worker provision will pull down wages, take away jobs from Americans and exploit immigrants.

FROG MARCH/PERP WALK:

Chirac faces corruption inquiry (Fred Attewill and agencies, June 26, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

Jacques Chirac is to be questioned by judges investigating alleged corruption in the Paris city government while he was mayor.

Jean Veil, the lawyer for the former French president, confirmed Mr Chirac will "very probably" be questioned before September 15 as an "assisted witness", meaning it remains possible he will face criminal charges.

The 74-year-old faces a series of potential legal problems now that he no longer enjoys presidential immunity.

RIGHT TORSO:

Roberts rules the Supreme Court (Michael Doyle, 6/26/07, McClatchy Newspapers)

The Supreme Court on Monday confirmed the contours that are taking shape under Chief Justice John Roberts. [...]

While three of the five decisions Monday arrived on a 5-4 majority, they showcased what has become an ideologically conservative and business-friendly, if narrow, majority.

Since last October, in Roberts' second term as chief justice, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has claimed 11 victories and seen only two defeats on business-related cases.

"We always thought the [Chief Justice William] Rehnquist court was a good forum for business," noted Maureen Mahoney, a lawyer who has argued 18 cases before the court, "but the Roberts court is even better." [...]

Even more than in previous years, the court was skeptical of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the nation's most liberal. With Monday's decisions, the Supreme Court has reversed the 9th Circuit on 17 out of 19 opinions issued since October.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, NAZIS WERE JUST OBSESSED BY A DIFFERENT BEAK COMPARISON:

Secularist Europe Silences Pro-Lifers and Creationists (Paul Belien, June 25, 2007, Brussels Journal)

Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for "Volksverhetzung" (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe's official ideology. The European governments are asked to fight the expression of creationist opinions, such as young earth and intelligent design theories. According to the Council of Europe these theories are "undemocratic" and "a threat to human rights."

Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000 -- which is the number of legal abortions in birth dearth Germany. Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had "incited the people" because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists "professional killers" -- an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans.

Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that "in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed," because this terminology evoked Hitler's euthanasia program, which used the same language.

DEAD FISH CURVE:

Kuwata's sushi-ball has the raw material: Pirates' Japanese legend leans on ultra-slow pitch for early success (Dejan Kovacevic, 6/26/07, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Maybe Masumi Kuwata should call it the sushi-ball.

Like the seaweed that wraps the traditional Japanese dish, the pitch rolls unpredictably and not very attractively as it approaches home plate.

Like the varieties of raw fish and rice inside, no one can guess what is coming. [...]

Whatever it is called, the pitch in question, the one Kuwata throws at a tantalizingly slow 66-68 mph, has been the buzz of an otherwise moribund road trip so far for the Pirates. And that is mostly because it is as difficult to describe as it is to hit.

"I think it's a curveball," left fielder Jason Bay said.

"Looks like a changeup to me," first baseman Adam LaRoche said.

Even Heberto Andrade, the team's bullpen catcher who sees more of it than anyone, does not have a definitive answer.

"I know it moves a lot," he said.

And the man himself?

"Maybe it's a slider," Kuwata said, grinning. "No, really, it's just a curveball. I use many pitches, and that is the one that goes the slowest."

How, then, to explain the way it dives into the dirt, as if to corkscrew a subway tunnel? Or how it can have a similar corkscrew effect on the batter?

"Maybe it's the deception," Kuwata said. "Maybe they can't see it."

More likely, observers say, the batter simply cannot adjust.

When Kuwata was in the early -- and brilliant -- stages of his 21-year career with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan, he was a flamethrower, routinely achieving 95-96 mph. He developed a versatile arsenal, as most pitchers there do, but the heat was the thing.

"I used to throw very hard, you know?" Kuwata said. "But I have had too many things happen to me, too many surgeries here and here and here ..."

He pointed to his elbow, shoulder and each of his ankles.

"Now, of course, I do not throw so hard."

His fastball seldom clocks above 86 mph, the speed of many pitchers' sliders. But, when blended with his curveball, slider, changeup and ... sushi-ball, the velocity becomes relative.

25 YEARS AND COUNTING...:

Inflation Looks Tamer, But For How Long?: Resilient demand and stronger growth will stoke new price pressures (Business Week, 7/02/07)

Inflation readings have taken a turn for the better, at least the ones Wall Street and the Federal Reserve care the most about. The so-called core price indexes at both the wholesale and retail levels, those that exclude the gyrations in energy and food prices, were especially tame in May, and the yearly inflation rate in each sector has edged lower this year. Will these favorable trends continue?

LUCKILY, THE KID GOT THE CONCEPT OF "BAD GUYS":

Boy: Taliban recruited me to bomb troops (Jason Straziuso, Jun. 25, 2007, Associated Press)

The story of a 6-year-old Afghan boy who says he thwarted an effort by Taliban militants to trick him into being a suicide bomber provoked tears and anger at a meeting of tribal leaders. The account from Juma Gul, a dirt-caked child who collects scrap metal for money, left American soldiers dumbfounded that a youngster could be sent on such a mission. Afghan troops crowded around the boy to call him a hero.

Though the Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when U.S. and NATO forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, both Afghan tribal elders and U.S. military officers said they were convinced by his dramatic account.

Juma said that sometime last month Taliban fighters forced him to wear a vest they said would spray out flowers when he touched a button. He said they told him that when he saw American soldiers, "throw your body at them."

The militants cornered Juma in a Taliban-controlled district in southern Afghanistan's Ghazni province. Their target was an impoverished youngster being raised by an older sister — but also one who proved too street-smart for their plan.

"When they first put the vest on my body I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb," Juma told The Associated Press as he ate lamb and rice after being introduced to the elders at this joint U.S.-Afghan base in Ghazni. "After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help."

While Juma's story could not be independently verified, local government leaders backed his account and the U.S. and NATO military missions said they believed his story.

Abdul Rahim Deciwal, the chief administrator for Juma's village of Athul, brought the boy and an older brother, Dad Gul, to a weekend meeting between Afghan elders and U.S. Army Col. Martin P. Schweitzer.

Schweitzer called the Taliban's attempt "a cowardly act."

As Deciwal told Juma's story, 20 Afghan elders repeatedly clicked their tongues in sadness and disapproval. When the boy and his brother were brought in, several of the turban-wearing men welled up, wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs.

"If anybody has a heart, then how can you control yourself (before) these kids?" Deciwal said in broken English.

You know he's telling the truth because if the village elders wanted attention they'd just claim he spent a day at Gitmo.

BUT WAIT, AREN'T HE AND W THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED?:

From No 10 to the Middle East: Blair gets a new job: Support from Bush leads to role as international envoy helping Palestinians (Patrick Wintour and Ian Black, June 26, 2007, Guardian)

Tony Blair has landed a major diplomatic job as the international Middle East peace envoy, responsible for preparing the Palestinians for negotiations with Israel. His role, to be announced today, will be largely to work with the Palestinians over security, economy and governance.

Working from an office in Jerusalem, and possibly another in the West Bank, Mr Blair will become the special representative for the Middle East quartet of UN, EU, US and Russia. The announcement comes on the eve of his departure from Downing Street tomorrow and is privately welcomed by Gordon Brown.

The arrangement, which has been under preparation for weeks, is due to be agreed at a meeting of the quartet today.

Friends of Mr Blair suggest he would make it a central purpose of his mission to work to restore Palestinian unity after the armed takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamist movement Hamas.

IT REQUIRES THE LOOKER:

Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed iy: We will never explain the cosmos by taking on faith either divinity or physical laws. True meaning is to be found within nature (Paul Davies, June 26, 2007, The Guardian)

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super- intellect has monkeyed with physics".

To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile.

Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. So what's going on?

The intelligent design movement has inevitably seized on the Goldilocks enigma as evidence of divine providence, prompting a scientific backlash and boosting the recent spate of God-bashing bestsellers.

AN ESPECIALLY CLEAR DAY:

Campaign Ad Limits Loosened: U.S. High Court Overview (Greg Stohr, 6/25/07, Bloomberg)

The 5-4 ruling marks a shift for the court, which in 2003 upheld the law, including a provision that restricts pre-election ads. The court today said that provision couldn't be constitutionally applied to three 2004 ads, aired by a Wisconsin anti-abortion group, that called on the U.S. Senate to hold votes on President George W. Bush's judicial nominees.

``Discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues may also be pertinent in an election,'' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. ``Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.''

The ruling underscores the influence of Roberts and fellow Bush appointee Samuel Alito in moving the court in a conservative direction. Roberts and Alito were joined today in the campaign ad case and two other constitutional rulings by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.

UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!:

Two Top California Republicans Are Aliens (JOSH GERSTEIN, June 25, 2007, NY Sun)

The California Republican Party is coming under criticism for its decision to hire political operatives who are not American citizens for two top jobs.

In March, the state party hired an Australian, Michael Kamburowski, to be its chief operating officer. He now lives in America on a so-called green card, but he was ordered deported in 2001. That order was eventually lifted, though he is now suing the Department of Homeland Security for $41 million over an episode in 2004 where he was jailed for 30 days by immigration authorities, according to court records.

Recently, the party gave the position of research and political technology director to a Canadian, Christopher Matthews. Mr. Matthews is presently in America on a special work visa for Mexican and Canadian nationals, but California GOP officials applied for and received a coveted "H1B" visa for him, a party spokesman said. The H1B program is the subject of intense lobbying by the technology industry, which has urged Congress to increase the annual allotment of 65,000 visas for skilled workers.

THE IRON LADDIE:

Thatcherism lives on after Tony Blair: Gordon Brown, too, is guided by the Iron Lady's spirit (Simon Jenkins, June 26, 2007, The Australian)

WHEN Tony Blair entered Downing Street in 1997, he had to decide whom first to invite to his new home. Surely it would be one of his Labour predecessors, Jim Callaghan, Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock, all itching for an invitation? No. The lucky guest was Margaret Thatcher. Round she came, and in spirit she never left.

As Blair leaves office, political historians are going to get him completely wrong. [...]

Brown proved more Thatcherite than any of his predecessors, plunging in where they had feared to tread. Thatcher had opposed rail, coal and post office privatisation. Brown not only accepted every privatisation so far undertaken but faced down Blair and insisted that the London Tube be sold on risk-free 30-year contracts to private companies. And in social policy the new Government entered realms that the Tories treated as no-go areas.

Blair's adherence to the outlook of his heroine was not confined to home affairs. He soon turned his back on seeking the heart of Europe - as she and Major had both done on taking office - in favour of the US bond. While half-hearted attempts were made by Robin Cook to clothe Blair's adventurism in ethical garb, it was essentially, if vaguely, neo-imperial. It pronounced a Western values agenda to be imposed on sovereign states at will. The politics of fear and a wildly inflated war on terror became the leitmotif of speech after speech. Told by Thatcher to "hug Washington close", Blair did so to a fault, from the mountains of Bora Bora to the streets of Fallujah and the cells of Guantanamo Bay.

Blair has been a true son of Thatcher. Essentially a presidentialist, he appealed over the heads of political and democratic institutions to the people at large. He found a shattered shell of a party and bent it to his will. His wayward treatment of policy shows a man devoid of personal ideology. He may not have been a dyed-in-the-wool Thatcherite in the sense that Brown became one under the influence of the treasury. To Blair, Thatcherism was part reality check, part opportunism. But neither he nor Brown changed the main premises of policy they found on entering office in 1997. What appeared to have worked for the Tories they made certain worked for them. I see no reason why the man who takes office as prime minister this week should seek any other way. As it says over the gates of the temple, there is no alternative.

SEND MORE SHERPAS...:

Supreme Court nixes suit over faith-based plan: The 5-4 high court decision bars taxpayers from challenging initiative (AP, 6/25/07)

The Supreme Court on Monday barred ordinary taxpayers from challenging a White House initiative helping religious charities get a share of federal money.

The 5-4 decision dealt with a suit by a group of atheists and agnostics against eight Bush administration officials including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The taxpayers' group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc., objected to government conferences in which administration officials encourage religious charities to apply for federal grants.

The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.

Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

MORE:
They lost the CFR case too. The Wall Street Journal has a cool graph on how the Court's been splitting.

DON'T DIS THE DESI:

2M for Hil after Bam Indian dis (MICHAEL McAULIFF in Washington and HELEN KENNEDY in New York, June 25th 2007, NY Daily News)

Sen. Hillary Clinton at the Indian-American fundraiser at the New York Sheraton yesterday.

After being dissed by Barack Obama, Indian-Americans gathered in what organizers called the biggest event their community ever held to hand Hillary Clinton about $2 million yesterday.

"I will work very hard to be a good steward of those contributions," Clinton told 1,200 of the nation's most prominent Indian-Americans, who flew in from all over the country and paid $1,000 to $4,600 to dine with her at the New York Sheraton.

"It is important that the relationship and partnership between India and the U.S. deepen and strengthen."

IT'LL ALL SCAB OVER (via Gene Brown):

In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces (Conn Iggulden, June 24, 2007, Washington Post)

When I had a son of my own six years ago, I looked around for the sort of books that would inspire him. I was able to find some practical modern ones, but none with the spirit and verve of those old titles. I wanted a single compendium of everything I'd ever wanted to know or do as a boy, and I decided to write my own. My brother, now a theater director in Leicester, a city in the midlands of England, was the obvious choice as co-writer. I had dedicated my first book "To my brother Hal, the other member of the Black Cat Club." It was official at last. I persuaded him to come and work with me 12 hours a day for six months in a shed.

We began with everything we had done as kids, then added things we didn't want to see forgotten. History today is taught as a feeble thing, with all the adventure taken out of it. We wanted stories of courage because boys love those. We wanted stories about men like Royal Air Force fighter pilot Douglas Bader, Scott of the Antarctic, the Wright Brothers -- boys like to read about daring men, always with the question: Would I be as brave or as resourceful? I sometimes wonder why people make fun of boys going to science fiction conventions without realizing that it shows a love of stories. Does every high school offer a class on adventure tales? No -- and then we complain that boys don't read anymore.

We added sections on grammar because my brother once said, "If anyone had told me there are only nine kinds of words, I'd have damn well learned them." Boys like to see the nuts and bolts of language. Of course they can empathize and imagine, but they need the structure as well. Why should the satisfaction of getting something right be denied to those who have been educated since the '70s?

We filled our book with facts and things to do -- from hunting a rabbit to growing crystals. As adults, we know that doors have been closed to us. A boy, though, can be interested in anything.

Finally, we chose our title -- "The Dangerous Book for Boys." It's about remembering a time when danger wasn't a dirty word. It's safer to put a boy in front of a PlayStation for a while, but not in the long run. The irony of making boys' lives too safe is that later they take worse risks on their own. You only have to push a baby boy hard on a swing and see his face light up. It's not learned behavior -- he's hardwired to enjoy a little risk. Ask any man for a good memory from childhood and he'll tell you about testing his courage or getting injured. No one wants to see a child get hurt, but we really did think the bumps and scratches were badges of honor, once.

Since the book was published, I've discovered a vast group that cares about exactly the same things I do. I've heard from divorced fathers who use the book to make things with their sons instead of going out for fast food and a movie. I've received e-mails from 10-year-olds and a beautifully written letter from a man of 87.

I thought I was the only one sick of non-competitive sports days and playgrounds where it's practically impossible to hurt yourself. It turned out that the pendulum is swinging back at last. Boys are different from girls. Teaching them as though they are girls who don't wash as much leads to their failure in school, causing trouble all the way. Boys don't like group work. They do better on exams than they do in coursework, and they don't like class discussion. In history lessons, they prefer stories of Rome and of courage to projects on the suffragettes.

It's all a matter of balance. When I was a teacher, I asked my head of department why every textbook seemed to have a girl achieving her dream of being a carpenter while the boys were morons. She replied that boys had had it their own way for too long, and now it was the girls' turn. Ouch.

The problem with fighting adult gender battles in the classroom is that the children always lose.

I expected a backlash. If you put the word "boys" on something, someone will always complain. One blog even promoted the idea of removing the words "For Boys" from the cover with an Exacto knife so that people's sons wouldn't be introduced to any unpleasantly masculine notions such as duty, honor, courage and competence.

The dark side of masculinity may involve gangs and aggression, but there's another side -- self-discipline, wry humor and quiet determination. I really thought I was the only one who cared about it, but I've found many thousands who care just as much.

THE 70 MILLION CHINESE HE MURDERED ARE AN AFTERTHOUGHT, EH?:

Cameron Diaz apologizes for Maoist bag (AP, 6/24/07)

Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for wearing a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.

The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday wearing an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan.

The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.

ARE JUST FINE:

In Performance: John Doe: The 'X' Man Returns (Linda Wertheimer, June 23, 2007, Weekend Edition Saturday)

The legendary early-'80s band X was famous for blending the brashness of punk with the unpretentiousness of country and roots-rock. But when the group split up and bassist/songwriter John Doe went solo, his first album under his own name (1990's Meet John Doe) was a fairly straightforward collection of traditional-style country songs. It was one of many unexpected moves in Doe's ever-evolving career, which has spanned everything from X reunions (and a reunion of its side project, The Knitters) to acting.

In the past 20 years, Doe has also recorded the occasional solo album between movie roles (he has appeared in Wyatt Earp, Salvador, Great Balls of Fire and more). And, though he has incorporated some heavier rock sounds along the way, Doe remains an unpretentious roots musician at heart.

Doe just released a disc called A Year in the Wilderness, and recently sat down in the studio to play a few of his new songs. In between performances, he talks about the mythic qualities of the lonely, liberating American West, as well as the differences between song lyrics and poetry.

John Doe could easily coast for the rest of his life on his history—with ground-breaking cow-punkers X and alt.country-inventing Knitters and, since the late 1990s, in a string of seven solo albums, ranging from country-flavored singer songwriter to venom-laced roadhouse punk. It’s all been good to excellent, and sometimes revelatory, and if he quit right now, he’d still be a legend. Heck, I’d give him a lifetime pass just for “Big Blue House”.

The point, though, is that John Doe doesn’t owe us anything. The fact that he’s made his best-ever solo album roughly 30 years after he started is gravy. Recorded, reportedly, in just two weeks, Doe’s seventh solo CD ranges over boot-stomping garage rockers ("Hotel Ghost") and lovely pop-leaning duets ("Golden State” with Kathleen Edwards). It showcases Cash-like murder balladry ("The Meanest Man in the World") and brings Exene Cervenka back into the fold, at least as a lyricist, in the wryly melancholy “Darling Underdog”. [...]

“Hotel Ghost” is one of a clutch of greasy rockers, a only a notch or two better than “There’s a Hole” or “Lean Out Your Window”, but still clearly the stand-out. It stands alongside an equal number of pop-country ballads, where Doe is assisted by a trio of leading ladies—Kathleen Edwards, Jill Sobule, and Aimee Mann. “The Golden State”, his duet with Kathleen Edwards is the best of these, her sweet, vibrato-touched harmonies and strong solo interludes providing a yin/yang balance that will remind you strongly of X.

SPECIAL BONUS FOR NORTHERN JERSEY KIDS:
Dave Alvin and the Blasters on what must be the revered Uncle Floyd Show:

A DROWNING MAN WILL PAY ALOT FOR A FLOAT:

Yankee Notes (George King, 6/25/07, NY Post)

The White Sox have had a scout looking at Yankees’ Double-A pitchers Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain. Chicago general manager Kenny Williams has vowed to make changes, and if he wants to deal Mark Buehrle or Jermaine Dye, expect the Yankees to be interested. Williams talks regularly with Brian Cashman. Dye has been out since Friday with a quad injury.

SO LONG, SHOOTER:

The place to go where no one knows your name (Wayne Drehs, 5/15/03, ESPN.com)

From the foot of his Iowa Cubs locker to the front porch of his home, former major league pitcher Rod Beck walks 159 steps. Down the hallway, through a thick blue double door, out a green door and along a flattened path of what's become dead grass.

Rod Beck's trailer, parked just behind the outfield wall, is where Iowa Cubs fans can share a beer (but not Miller Light) with the former major-league pitcher.

It's the greatest commute in baseball.

The roughly 400 feet that separate home from office, play from work, is a shorter distance than home plate is from the centerfield wall in some ballparks. And it's only possible because Beck has chosen a most unique place to call home during his comeback stint in Triple-A.

The guy known as "Shooter," the guy with the shaggy mullet, the bushy Fu Manchu and the endearing beer belly, the guy who laughs contagiously, smokes religiously and looks more like a plumber than a professional baseball player, lives behind the right field wall of Iowa's Sec Taylor Stadium. In a motor home.

"For as long as I've been around this game, there have always been guys who have strayed from the norm," said Jerry Reuss, the I-Cubs pitching coach and a veteran of 22 major league seasons. "Then there are the guys that take it to a whole new level: Jay Johnstone. Mark Fidrych. Guys like that. Living in your own personal trailer park behind center field? This qualifies him in that group. I've never seen anything like it."

THERE IS THOUGH A PONY IN THERE:

Stumbling Yanks Keep Taking Steps Backward (TYLER KEPNER, 6/24/07, NY Times)

There is more than half the season remaining. But if the Yankees continue to sputter and wheeze, the seventh inning of Sunday’s game might have been their last stand.

In the top of the inning, Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada and Bobby Abreu came off the bench in succession. In the bottom of the inning, Roger Clemens came on in relief. Yet the Yankees were worse off when the inning ended than when it began.

The pinch-hitting parade produced nothing, Clemens allowed a run, and three more rumbled home in the eighth inning as the Yankees made two errors. The dreary result was a 7-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants that sent the Yankees back across the country in third place, one game below .500 and 11 ½ behind Boston in the American League East.

THE GOP'S LOST OPPORTUNITY:

The delicate balance of black and brown: Population shifts are threatening to upset political understandings that have kept the lid on racial tension (Harold Meyerson, June 24, 2007, Washington Post)

[L].A.'s black and Latino political elites have tended to avoid conflict more often than not. In the 2005 mayoral election, for example, both groups largely supported the candidacy of Antonio Villaraigosa. Multiracial coalitions have been, if not the norm, at least frequent in city politics — surprisingly frequent. Generally, as once heavily black parts of the city have become plurality or majority Latino, the elites have worked together to limit the possibility of Latino candidates winning elections in districts historically represented by blacks.

So the implications of an Oropeza victory in a longtime black seat may at first glance seem stark. Historically black South L.A. is now sufficiently Latino that, in theory, black political representation could be threatened. In the 2000 Census, Millender-McDonald's district was just 25% black and 43% Latino, though many of those Latinos were not registered voters or American citizens. The Latino population also exceeds the black population in the other two L.A. congressional districts represented by African Americans (Maxine Waters and Diane Watson), though again, many of the Latinos are noncitizens.

In the zero-sum game of electoral politics, that could augur the eventual extinction of L.A.'s black political leadership, not only at the federal level but at the state, county and city levels as well. Such a move could imperil the majority center-left coalition that dominates L.A. politics, and destabilize the city more generally. And because African Americans, like the Irish a century ago, have used political power to attain public sector jobs (a logical response to the employment discrimination they've long encountered in the private sector), any reduction in political clout could also foretell a reduction in economic prospects.

So far, though, no one is playing the zero-sum game.

CAN SOMEONE IN CONGRESS...:

Galveston poised to defy geologists: The Texas city lost 8,000 people in a 1900 storm but is about to OK a development that could boost its vulnerability. (Miguel Bustillo, June 24, 2007, LA Times)

Leaders of this fast-eroding barrier island — the scene of the deadliest hurricane in American history — are about to approve nearly 4,000 new homes and two midrise hotels despite geologists' warnings that the massive development would sever a ridge that serves as the island's natural storm shield.

Galveston officials and the developer maintain that the plans are sound for the largest development in city history, and that geologists are placing too much significance on the ridge in question — if it exists at all.

Critics of the plans say that Galveston's officials are ignoring the lessons of science and history in their pursuit of new tax money — and that in considering the building plan, the officials have ignored the very geological map the city commissioned to guide development on the island.

ACKWARDSBAY:

For Bush, a Gift From Paris (Jim Hoagland, June 24, 2007, Washington Post)

France's new president is a hurricane of fresh air. In five weeks, Nicolas Sarkozy has fashioned a government unlike anything the French have seen in diversity and appeal across party lines. He has launched or endorsed French initiatives on Darfur, Kosovo, Lebanon and European integration. He has even appointed staff watchdogs to hold him to the sweeping campaign promises he made.

The impulse to change and to surprise extends even into French foreign policy, normally a model of continuity and obsessive self-regard. This French moment of flexibility may present an opening for the battered and fading Bush administration to steady some of its faltering policies abroad.

FOYLED AGAIN:

PBS has pretty nearly ruined the Mystery franchise -- in favor of boomer drivel like Suze Orman and Peter, Paul & Mary reunions -- but one of the rare exceptions starts a 4 episode run tonight : Foyle's War.

AND A HIGH TORY AT THAT:

Blair tells Pope: Now I'm ready to become a Catholic (John Hooper, June 24, 2007, The Observer)

Tony Blair yesterday used his last official foreign engagement before leaving office to tell Pope Benedict he wanted to become a Roman Catholic, a Vatican source said last night.

IN THE ABSENCE OF FAITH THEY'RE DOWN TO TRANSNATIONALISM VS. NATIONALISM:

Constituting EU (David Warren, 6/24/07, Real Clear Politics)

The new draft treaty, like the old, would include longer terms for president and members of the EU Council, and lay the foundations for a centralized European foreign office. It would assign new voting weights in legislative elections, and alter other voting formulae to enhance the power of France and Germany, and extend the EU's ability to interfere in the smaller states' domestic and judicial arrangements. The most frightening proposal is the one least appreciated: to create a European "charter of fundamental rights" that will accomplish the precise opposite of what it claims. It will swing the iron claw of "progressive thought" through the soft flesh of human variety, enterprise, and freedom, on an unprecedented scale.

It is time people realized that "human rights codes" are a weapon employed by the state to suppress disapproved behaviour by the individual. They cannot be wielded by the individual against the state, as independent civil and criminal courts could be. They are star chambers used, and designed to be used, to mount show trials, in which persons who fail to snap to attention when commissar issues the latest political corrections may be publicly demonized. By removing all of their victims' established legal protections -- presumption of innocence, the right to know one's accuser, to be tried by a jury of one's peers, et cetera -- they put a jackboot directly in the teeth of the tradition of human liberty descending from Magna Charta. The tribunals are created, always, by bureaucratic fiat.

Democracy is not quite dead in Europe, but getting that way. The cumbersome, incompetent, ridiculously corrupt, incredibly arrogant, and unelected Euro-bureaucracy is already in a position to dictate trans-European policies that by-pass all national legislatures. There is nothing to stop, or even slow, the metastasis of micro-managing regulations that interfere with the daily lives and customs of half-a-billion souls.

DUES PAYING:

Lynn Swann 2008? (Salena Zito, 6/24/07, Real Clear Politics)

Three summers and one failed attempt at governor later, according to a variety of inside sources Swann is contemplating another run for office, in a considerably less dramatic fashion.

Swann, who lost to Gov. Ed Rendell last year, now has an eye on Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District.

Despite his rookie status and less-than-stellar campaign, he was the only Republican to win the 4th District in 2006 -- which is part of the reason why U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum and U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart are now referred to as "former."

If he decides to run, he would take on freshman congressman and Democrat Jason Altmire of McCandless.

HERE'S A DEAL...:

Out of America: The US health-care system can work brilliantly, as the recent experience of our correspondent shows. But in a country where 44 million people have no medical insurance, the pressure for change is building (Rupert Cornwell, 24 June 2007, Independent)

Whisper it not to the assembled Democratic presidential candidates, and breathe not a word to Michael Moore, whose new film Sicko hits US movie screens this week. I have just had my first direct encounter with the much reviled US health-care system - and I won't hear a word said against it.

During my regular annual check-up with my GP in April, I mentioned that something was causing severe nerve pains in my leg. He recommended I see an orthopaedic surgeon (in the very same building). The appointment was a week later, and came with an on-the-spot X-ray, which revealed nothing special.

On his instructions I had an MRI scan a few days later, which revealed the problem even to my ignorant eye: a badly herniated, or "slipped", disc that was pressing against the spinal cord and causing the pain.

The specialist prescribed a week's course of steroids, but they made no difference. Surgery, he told me, was the only realistic answer. After the standard pre-op tests, he performed the operation at a very efficient, very friendly and very comfortable local hospital, where I spent a night before being discharged the next day. The whole process, from initial visit to the GP to the surgery itself, took about nine weeks.

The operation seems to have been a total success, and my entire "hospital experience", as they say here, was "very positive". Everything should be paid for by the insurance company - the consultations, the scan, the surgery, the night in hospital. If this is a lousy health-care system, I wonder, what on earth is a good one like?

HEARING FOOTSTEPS:

Iran accelerates crackdown on dissent (Neil MacFarquhar, June 24, 2007, NY Times)

Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, analysts say. with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women's rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world's second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the analysts said, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using U.S. support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as the pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

GAS, NOT THE ROPE:

'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death (The Associated Press, June 24, 2007)

Two decades after Iraq's military laid waste to Kurdish villages, the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and two others to death for their roles in the bloody campaign against the restive ethnic minority.

Majid, a cousin of the executed former president, Saddam Hussein, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering army and security services to use chemical weapons in an offensive said to have killed about 180,000 people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

As the verdicts were read out in Baghdad, to the north about 10,000 American troops were in their sixth day Sunday of a major offensive to oust fighters of the Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia group from the city of Baquba.

SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF WORK FOR A SUMMER DRINK:

Cool Britannia: Refreshing summer drinks from across the pond (Adam Ried, June 24, 2007, Boston Globe Magazine)

LEMON BARLEY WATER

MAKES ABOUT 2 QUARTS

Barley water flavored with lemon is classic, though it can also be flavored with orange or other fruits. It's less sweet than typical American lemonade, and it has more body, from the barley (which, by the way, is not a strong flavor in the drink).

1/2 cup pearl barley Boiling water
2 quarts cold water
8 4-inch strips zest and 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons juice from 4 large lemons
1/2 cup honey, or more to taste
Fresh lemon slices, for garnish (optional)

Place the barley in a fine mesh strainer and pour boiling water over the grains to wash them; drain the barley well.

In a large saucepan, place the washed barley, cold water, and lemon zest. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the barley is almost tender and the water is infused with barley essence, about 30 minutes. Pour the liquid through a strainer into a 2-quart or larger heatproof container, add the lemon juice and honey, and stir until the honey dissolves. (To reserve the barley for another use, remove the lemon zest.) Adjust for flavor with additional honey or lemon juice, if desired. Refrigerate the lemon barley water until well chilled, at least 4 hours or up to 5 days. Serve over ice, garnished with lemon slices, if you'd like.

JUST DON'T LET THEM THROW THE CURVE UNTIL THEY'RE OLDER:

Young Knights: A rivalry is growing between several Massachusetts chess stars, each of whom could become a top-rated, even professional-level player. That is, if they don't lose interest once they get out of middle school. (Michael Fitzgerald, June 24, 2007, Boston Globe)

After a full day of competition, the state championship is hanging in the balance of one battle. Andrew Wang and James Lung are squared off, mano a mano – as mano as 10-year-old boys can be, anyway – renewing a budding rivalry between two of the best young players in Massachusetts. Andrew has beaten James before, and this day, each player has led his team into the final round (team chess features four players per side). But Andrew’s grip looks tenuous as their struggle stretches well into its second hour. People are clustered around this game, since the rest of the day’s matches are done. If Wang bests his rival, the Sage School in Foxborough will win the 2006 state K-6 championship, avenging a loss the year before. If James wins, his school, Lexington’s Harrington Elementary School, will again be the winner. If they draw, the title will go to a third school.

The arena, which happens to be the Natick High School cafeteria, is boisterous – for chess. Which is to say that people can be heard whispering, and at one point, Andrew distinctly hears someone say: "It’s a draw." Indeed, it looks as if neither player can win. Both boys are down to two pawns and a king, though Andrew also has a bishop. And he is sure he can find a way to win. Still, he is running out of time – tournament chess gives each player a two-hour limit, and Andrew has only five minutes remaining. But five minutes of clock time, which stops after each move, can be an eternity in chess, and so he keeps plugging away. Then he sees his edge: He can use his bishop to protect one of his pawns from James’s king and use that pawn to get his queen back. Once Andrew gets his pawn in position, James concede defeat. [...]

Andrew’s father, Frank Wang, was born in Taiwan but grew up in Montreal before immigrating to the United States in 1989. His mother, Tiffany Wang, came from Taiwan to study harp that year at the New England Conservatory. En-Kuang Lung, James’s father, arrived in 1978, while his mother, Florence Lung, came here in 1971; they are also both originally from Taiwan. The two other top rising seventh-graders in the state are Winston Huang, whose parents left Shanghai almost 30 years ago, and Zaroug Jaleel, whose parents emigrated from southern India, living in Wales before moving to the United States in 1995. The only thing these four families seem to have in common, besides roots in other countries, is the fact that they see chess as an activity that will help their children in school.

That and the fact that, right now, these four boys happen to be engaged in a fierce battle for domination. Any one of them might one day become a grandmaster – the game’s highest rank. And it could happen before they are old enough to drive to their own matches.

GUSTAVE EIFFEL COULDN'T PROP UP FATAH:

Hamas war chief reveals his plans for Gaza peace: The man now controlling Gaza City talks exclusively to Mitchell Prothero about his plans (Mitchell Prothero, June 24, 2007, The Observer)

Abu Obieda sees the fighting as a failure by the Palestinian people on both sides of the political divide. 'We are not happy,' he said. 'I am not proud to have defeated and killed the men of Fatah. This is a shame on all Palestinians because we love each other.'

The problem, he explained, was a corrupt security regime led by the Fatah security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, who had led repeated attacks, arrests and executions of Hamas members over the past decade. Despite February's formation of a unity government of the two factions, Abu Obieda knew war between the two would come. He started planning even as the leaders tried to negotiate peace.

He said Israel 'forced us to this point, but we are not ready to do it again. People need help; they need jobs, money and police. They don't need fighting between brothers.'

Despite his months of planning for such a war, Abu Obieda was surprised by the speed of the victory: 'I expected it to take one month. That is what we planned for and trained for. But then at the beginning, all the Fatah commanders escaped their compounds in ambulances and left for Egypt. They left their men to die. Who could do that?'

At one battle, for a security compound - where his men later found weapons, ammunition and food that would survive a three-month siege - he listened on a radio to Fatah fighters on nearby rooftops begging their commanders for more ammunition that never came. 'They all had left,' Abu Obieda said. 'The Fatah fighters are brave but would you fight for a commander who left you alone to die for his war?'

He confirmed that some top Fatah officials with links to Dahlan were arrested and investigated. He insisted all had been released but admitted some summary executions happened during the fighting without authorisation.

'Hamas does not do that, but during the battle some men who were very hated for killing Hamas members were executed by the family members of their victims. We have put a stop to that, for it is wrong. Now any Fatah leader can return and will be safe.'

At a Friday sermon in a Gaza City mosque, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called for talks between Hamas and Fatah to heal the divisions, a suggestion that has so far been rejected by Fatah's president, Mahmoud Abbas, who denounced Hamas as terrorists.

'We forgive any Fatah official who wants to return and help us improve lives in Gaza,' he said. 'But 'Alafu' [the Islamic idea of forgiveness] can only be given once. If they do not stop their activities, then there will be no mercy.'

He admitted 'Alafu' will not apply to Mohammed Dahlan, currently in the West Bank. 'He can never come back here. Everyone in Hamas is ready for Dahlan to return, and the supporters of Dahlan who do anything will be met with force.'

JUST IN CASE THEIR EUGENIC BONA FIDES WEREN'T ESTABLISHED:

Lawmaker urges condoms for border control (Richard Cowan, 6/22/07, Reuters)

A congressman is pushing a not-so-quick fix in the debate over illegal immigrants from Mexico: free contraceptives.

"A slower rate of growth of Mexico's population would improve the economy of Mexico. It would also reduce the environmental pressure on Mexico's ecosystem. But a slower rate of growth would also reduce the long-term illegal immigration pressure on America's borders," reasoned Rep. Mark Kirk, who also supports stronger border security in the short-term.

AND, NOT OR:

Bush Prods Vietnamese President On Human Rights and Openness (Peter Baker, 6/23/07,
Washington Post)

President Bush pressed Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet yesterday to address human rights abuses and open up his communist nation's autocratic system, during the first White House visit by a head of state from Hanoi since the countries were at war.

Bush hailed the growing trade ties between the two former enemies and the signing of a new agreement that could lead to formal free-trade talks. But as flag-waving Vietnamese American protesters demonstrated outside the White House gates, Bush used the opportunity to urge Triet to permit opposition and end crackdowns on religious minorities.

"I also made it very clear that, in order for relations to grow deeper, that it's important for our friends to have a strong commitment to human rights and freedom and democracy," Bush said with Triet at his side in the Oval Office before hosting a lunch of black sea bass and gazpacho. "I explained my strong belief that societies are enriched when people are allowed to express themselves freely or worship freely."

THE ONLY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FATWAS OF ISLAM AND THOSE OF THE LEFT...:

Arise Sir Salman, and goodbye Bernard, those two experts at stirring things up: It was the charmless relish he took in the incorrectness of his jokes that made them work so well ( Howard Jacobson, 23 June 2007, Independent)

So Salman Rushdie gets to meet the Queen and Bernard Manning sleeps with Christ. How variously Fate distributes her favours.

Arise, Sir Salman. It has a ring, I think. But then a bit of alliteration never did anyone any harm. At least I hope it won't on this occasion. And I am of the party that applauds the honour. You can never sufficiently reward people, is where I stand, who cause offence. I don't mean specifically offend Islam. I can see why Muslims aren't too pleased. From where they stand this is another slap in the face. So we need to find a way of depersonalising it. It's not for stirring up Muslims or their religion that we send Salman to meet the Queen. It's for stirring, full stop. It's for doing what writers are supposed to do. And in an age of monolithic fundamentalism on the one hand, and the milk-and-water aesthetics of reading groups and Oprah on the other, it's for doing what writers don't do anything like enough. It's for being an anathema. A cursed thing.

But we're going to have to be consistent about this. We can't esteem offence when it's directed at someone else, and shrink from it when it's directed at ourselves. With what hauteur we dismiss the susceptibilities of Islam, lecturing it in the virtues of Western democracy, John Stuart Mill liberalism, free speech and open minds. Yet let a person challenge what we hold dear in matters of race and gender and the jaws of our society slam shut. Faced with a writer, philosopher, teacher or comedian who doesn't think as we think, our liberal democracies turn out to be as touchy as any theocratic state. True, we don't issue death threats. But orthodoxy for orthodoxy there isn't much to choose between us.

So there was no "Arise, Sir Bernard" before he died. The educated didn't make a good job of getting Bernard Manning for all their trumpeted attachment to the freedom to offend. But a few of us spoke up for him. He wasn't my favourite comedian. I don't have a favourite comedian. Jokes don't do it for me the way other forms of comedy do. But allowing that we must have jokes, that not everybody is going to get their comic medicine from watching Curb Your Enthusiasm or reading Martin Chuzzlewit, I thought he told them consummately.

And I am not just referring to his timing, which even his detractors admired. It was the unapologetic, deliberately charmless relish he took in the incorrectness of his jokes that made them work so well. He did the anathema thing.

AND THEY'RE RIPE RIGHT NOW:

1949: Strawberry Tapioca Flamingo (NY Times Magazine, 6/24/07)

This recipe appeared in The Times in an article by Jane Nickerson.

Today, a looser concoction of tapioca is preferred, so if you want the dessert lighter, add 1/4 cup more juice to the tapioca cooking liquid and 1/4 cup more cream to the topping. If you like a neater presentation, the strawberries may be cut into small pieces rather than crushed.

1 pound strawberries, hulled

1 cup sugar

About 2 cups pineapple juice or water

1/3 cup quick-cooking tapioca

Scant 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup heavy cream, whipped.

1. Lightly crush the strawberries. Add the sugar and let stand at least 30 minutes.

2. Set a strainer over a bowl and drain the strawberries. Set them aside. Add enough pineapple juice or water to the strawberry juice to make 3 cups total.

3. In a saucepan, mix together the juice, tapioca and salt. Bring to a full boil, stirring constantly, then remove from the heat. (The mixture will be thin. Do not overcook.)

4. Fold the drained strawberries into the tapioca mixture. Cool, stirring occasionally. The mixture will thicken as it cools.

5. When the tapioca mixture is cool, divide half among 4 coupe glasses. Chill the glasses and the remaining tapioca mixture.

6. Fold the cream into the remaining tapioca mixture, then pile lightly into the glasses. Serves 4.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD:

Senate to take up tougher immigration measure (MICHELLE MITTELSTADT, 6/23/07, Houston Chronicle)

The Senate next week will consider tougher immigration enforcement measures — including mandatory jail time for foreigners who overstay their visas — to gain more conservative support for a major immigration overhaul.

AND MELTING GLACIERS WILL JUST SPIN IT FASTER!:

'Saudi Arabia of renewable energy' off Scotland's coast (IAN JOHNSTON, 6/23/07, scotsman.com)

Not only could it provide endless supplies of electricity for Scotland and beyond, but spare energy could be used to convert rubbish into environmentally friendly biofuel for cars, trains and airplanes, slashing greenhouse gas emissions and ridding the country of landfill sites.

In August, the world's largest tidal-current generator will be installed on Northern Ireland's Strangford Lough and, next year, ScottishPower will start testing an underwater turbine in the Pentland Firth itself.

ScottishPower believes its system could generate up to a gigawatt (GW) of electricity - equivalent to all of Scotland's wind farms put together, or the power produced by the Hunterston B nuclear power station.

AND THEY WONDER WHY WE PREFER MEXICANS TO THEM?:

A watcher sees across the divide (Christopher Goffard, June 23, 2007, Los Angeles Times)

HE senses them out there in the dark, making their moves, trying to outsmart him. He's planted on a hill in the cab of his mud-splattered, jacked-up truck, a greenish 1976 Silverado with roof-mounted motion sensors, holes in the floorboard and a "Don't Tread on Me" sticker in the window. From the cab, he studies the valley below with night-vision goggles, Ruger revolver strapped to his ribs.

"I own the night, brother," says Max Kennedy, a lanky, sunburned man with a scraggly goatee and a voice like a fistful of desert gravel. In his 53 years, he says, he has driven a cab in Miami and ferried fur coats in New York, peddled marijuana and jewelry, played bass in a punk bank and marched with 1960s radicals. He has been a Gingrich Republican and a pagan, a seeker of meaning in the Kaballah and the sayings of Chairman Mao.

In his latest incarnation, he's a Minuteman staking out a small stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in the beautiful, inhospitable mountains of southeast San Diego County. Untethered to job or family, he's one of three or four hard-core members who camp out here full time, trying to catch illegal immigrants as they cross.

But after 14 months living "in exile from the United States," he might be the most ambivalent of border warriors. His relations with other Minutemen are uneasy, his faith in the mission fraying, his sense of the migrants' desperation increasingly keen. Plus, the desert has its privations. He misses women and chicken cutlets and good conversation.

HE HATED YALE, HE LOVED MIDLAND:

Bush’s Stance on Immigration Has Roots in Midland (JIM RUTENBERG, 6/24/07, NY Times)

Late last spring, Republicans in this West Texas oil town called for a boycott of Doña Anita’s Mexican restaurant, a retaliatory step against its owner, Luz Reyes, for closing shop and showing up at a rally against proposed new penalties for illegal immigrants.

But President Bush’s three best friends here defied the boycott and went to the restaurant, Mr. Bush’s favorite when he lived here, regardless. One of them, the president’s close confidant and former commerce secretary, Donald L. Evans, told Ms. Reyes: “Luz, you didn’t do anything wrong. We love you.”

The hometown divide helps to shed light on a broader rift, as Mr. Bush and like-minded Republicans engage in an unusually contentious fight with the rest of their party in the national debate over immigration.

Mr. Bush has pursued a goal of providing citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants with rare attacks on his conservative supporters, who have derided his approach as tantamount to amnesty. There are various political motivations for Mr. Bush to push for his plan, including the rapid growth in the nation’s Hispanic population, a voting group that he has long considered to be potentially Republican.

But the roots of Mr. Bush’s passion lie here in Midland, now heavily Hispanic, the city where Mr. Bush spent much of his childhood, and to which he returned as a young adult after spending his high school and college years in the more genteel settings of Andover and Yale.

As a boy, and later as a young, hard-drinking oilman, his friends say, Mr. Bush developed a particular empathy for the new Mexican immigrants who worked hard on farms, in oil fields and in people’s homes, and went on to raise children who built businesses and raised families of their own, without the advantages he had as the scion of a wealthy New England family.

Not only did the latter have taxes withheld from their paychecks, but so many of the natives had DWIs and suspended licenses for other reasons that when the crew moved from town to town they ended up driving the company vehicles--the bosses having made the determination that it was better to put guys with valid Mexican licenses driving behind the wheel. Such dependence on illegals, while typical, hardly endeared them to all the Texans, but it made pretty much everyone a coyote. You covered for the guys, helped them get hotel rooms, etc.. On crews that worked close to the border and used their infrequent day off to go over to Nuevo Laredo, or wherever, it was not unheard of to sneak a few guys back and forth over the border so they could go with you.

Some of the guys had been in the states for years and were raising families, but others just wanted to make enough money to be able to open a business back home. One young guy who we became particularly friendly with dreamed of nothing but owning a cinder block business back in Mexico. He was 17 and missed his parents.

The reality a George Bush would have exprienced in Midland is so at odds with the phobias that nativists foster that it's hardly surprising he has so little patience with them.

EXTERMINATION WAS THE POINT:

Whose Orders?: a review of THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 By Saul Friedländer (RICHARD J. EVANS, 6/24/07, NY Times Book Review)

These people were the victims, Friedländer argues, not of anonymous processes generated in the machinery of Nazi and SS administration, but of one man above all: Adolf Hitler. Friedländer is critical of the recent, voluminous literature, mainly by a younger generation of German historians, that attempts to depict the extermination program as the outcome of coldly rational processes of decision-making by administrators, “experts” and officials in the German-occupied areas of Eastern Europe, who decided that the Jews would have to be killed so that the limited food supplies available in the area could go to the Germans, or to make room for German settlers or Germans left homeless by Allied bombing raids.

Such arguments do not explain the manic obsessiveness with which Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the man in charge of implementing the extermination program, tracked down Jews to arrest and kill, even traveling to Germany’s ally Finland to try and persuade its government to surrender that country’s tiny Jewish population, which was of no objective economic or strategic importance to Germany at all. Nor do these arguments do justice to the virulent language of hatred used by the Nazi leaders, Hitler and Goebbels in particular, when they spoke, as they did almost unceasingly, of the Jews.

Friedländer devotes a good deal of space to quoting Hitler at length, showing clearly his personal obsession with the forces of international Jewry that, in his mind, lay behind the actions of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. It was the Jews, he believed, who had fomented the war launched (in reality by himself) in September 1939. As the United States committed itself ever more firmly to the Allied side in the summer and fall of 1941, Hitler delivered one tirade after another against the Jewish conspiracy he thought lay behind Roosevelt’s policy. It was at this point that he escalated his persecution of the Jews first to deportation to the East and then to mass murder and total extermination.

The German defeat by the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943, blamed by Hitler yet again on the Jews, raised his anti-Semitic fury to fresh heights. The Jews, he declared, were driven by their innate racial instinct to subvert civilization everywhere. “The modern peoples have no option left,” he said in May, as the genocide was reaching its height, “but to eliminate the Jews.” Millions of entirely innocent and largely unsuspecting people across Europe paid for such violent fantasies with their lives.

STRANGE THE WAY THE MIDDLE EAST CLOUDS MEN'S MINDS:

Piece Process (NOAH FELDMAN, 6/24/07, NY Times Magazine)

In Iraq as in Israel and Palestine, three outcomes remain possible. In the first, our patience pays off, as ordinary people come to realize that continuing violence solves nothing and as new, realistic leaders emerge who reflect and encourage this sentiment. From prison, the Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti has already tried to broker a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and he might seek to do it again. If he succeeds and Israel releases him, he could negotiate a serious deal with a coalition government led by Ehud Barak, newly returned as Labor Party leader, or Ami Ayalon, the dovish ex-admiral waiting in the wings. It is certainly worth expending our diplomatic capital to encourage such a result — even if it takes time. The cost of such patience is of course much higher in the case of Iraq, where the resources expended include not just American credibility but also American lives. But our responsibility is correspondingly greater as well.

A second prospect is that violence remains at a low or medium level for years, waxing or waning as it has for two decades in Israel and Palestine and for a shorter time in Iraq. Such violence gradually saps hopes for peace by confirming the parties’ worst fears about each other. Leaders who seek peace are discredited one by one. U.S. involvement may limit the scope of Israeli retaliation to Palestinian attacks, but it can also dilute the chances for progress by teaching the Palestinians that they can fall back on U.S. cover and the Israelis that we will not press them too hard to the table. We are past masters at this sort of crisis management in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; in Iraq, however, we cannot sustain such a role indefinitely.

The third possibility is that our impatience with the failure to make progress leads us to disengage. We know from recent experience what that means for the Middle East: declining hope and growing radicalism are making Gaza look like a smaller, poorer Baghdad, to the detriment of Palestinians, Israelis and our national interest. If we disengage in Iraq too, we will probably save American lives — and risk chaos that could make the present troubles there seem minor by comparison.

NOT REALLY FAIR (VIA Ed Driscoll):

A Brazil's Gremio's fan holds up an image of Osama Bin Laden wearing the colors of Gremio prior to the Copa Libertadores final soccer game against Boca Juniors in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Wednesday, June 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Marcelo Hernandez)

HAVING TO FACE THE ELECTORATE IN THE MORNING TENDS TO FOCUS THE MIND:

Go back and stand up to the French, Brown orders Blair: Chancellor insists prime minister resists move to drop free market clause (Ian Traynor and Patrick Wintour, June 23, 2007, The Guardian)

Gordon Brown dramatically intervened in a crucial European summit yesterday to overrule the prime minister in his last week in office and demand that Britain challenge a French move to dilute Europe's commitment to a free market.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, triggered a row at the Brussels meeting by watering down a pledge to maintain "free and undistorted competition" in the operation of the single European market.

Mr Brown, who was not attending the summit, intervened with Tony Blair after the prime minister assented to the French demand. He phoned Mr Blair three times in Brussels as he digested the potential impact of the Sarkozy coup. A chastened prime minister was forced to go back to the negotiating table to demand a new "protocol" to guarantee that the EU's powers to regulate cartels and anti-trust issues were not impaired.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP:

No Guns founder pleads not guilty to gun charges (LA Times, June 22, 2007)

The founder of an antiviolence group called No Guns pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal weapons charges.

Hector "Big Weasel" Marroquin is accused of selling an assault rifle, a machine gun, two pistols and two silencers to undercover federal agents last fall. He could face up to 50 years in prison if convicted.

WHICH IS WHY "WE CARE A LOT" WOULD BE PARODIC:

Edwards' nonprofit kept his profile high: Center not subject to limits imposed by federal election laws (AP, 6/22/07)

When John Edwards pursued his crusade against poverty in 2005, he created a nonprofit center that allowed him to maintain a high profile, and avoid the legal scrutiny aimed at presidential candidates.

Not that Edwards was running for the White House at that point. Fresh from his loss as Democratic nominee John Kerry's running mate in 2004, he would not declare himself a candidate for president until late in 2006.

However, the nonprofit Center for Promise and Opportunity offered distinct advantages to Edwards, its honorary chairman. The center's five officers all had worked for his previous presidential campaign, for example, and it appears to have paid for his travel to New Hampshire and several delegate-rich states.

The center wasn't subject to the limits imposed by federal election laws on a presidential exploratory committee, the first major step in raising money toward a bid. Meanwhile, it may have stretched the limits of tax law, which prohibits political nonprofits from having a primary purpose of supporting or opposing candidates.

"It's possible that the 'opportunity' the center was promoting was only John Edwards' opportunity _ his opportunity to run for president," said Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks money in politics.

WHAT A CROC:

By Executive Order, Crocs Aren't Chic (Robin Givhan, 6/22/07, Washington Post)

George W. Bush was photographed recently in a pair of black Crocs -- Cayman style, $29.99 -- as he was heading out from the White House to ride his bike. He wore the clunky resin clogs -- which have ventilation holes and a heel strap -- with a pair of black shorts, a white camp shirt, a baseball cap with the image of an unidentified Scottish terrier and black bike socks imprinted with the presidential seal. He had the backstraps of his Crocs flipped forward so they rested on the top of the shoes -- turning them into slides. This subtle gesture -- coupled with the subdued color -- actually made the exceedingly unattractive shoes look tolerable. [...]

Bush's decision to wear black socks with his Crocs was ill-considered. The combination makes one think of an old man on his way to the beach. Besides, the shoes were conceived for use on boats. The holes allow air to circulate and water to drain. And the non-slip bottoms offer stability. Pairing them with socks is a contradiction.

A GOLDILOCKS MOMENT:

Senate Adopts Energy Bill Raising Mileage for Cars (EDMUND L. ANDREWS, 6/22/07, NY Times)

[S]enate Democrats also fell short of their own goals. In a victory for the oil industry, Republican lawmakers successfully blocked a crucial component of the Democratic plan that would have raised taxes on oil companies by about $32 billion and used the money on tax breaks for wind power, solar power, ethanol and other renewable fuels.

Republicans also blocked a provision of the legislation that would have required electric utilities to greatly increase the share of power they get from renewable sources of energy.

As a result, Senate Democrats had to settle for a bill that calls for a vast expansion of renewable fuels over the next decade — to 36 billion gallons a year of alternatives to gasoline — but does little to actually promote those fuels through tax breaks or other subsidies.

OUR THATCHERITE (via Kevin Whited):

Making the Bush Mistake All Over Again (Jennifer Rubin, 6/24/07, NY Observer)

The party faithful convinced themselves that he would remain true to conservative principles despite the irksome references to “compassionate conservatism”—an overt dig at the conservatism many of his supporters believed needed no modifier. [...]

Yes, President Bush cut taxes. But he also added Medicare Part D, the largest entitlement expansion in a generation, federalized K-12 education with “No Child Left Behind” and failed to veto a single spending bill. From the perspective of fiscal conservatives, this was a record worthy of, well, Al Gore or John Kerry.

Then of course there was “nation building.” During the pre-campaign tutorials and the 2000 campaign, he seemed to have mastered the notion that America doesn’t do well imposing itself on other cultures. That opposition to foreign adventures vanished after 9/11, when his administration immediately set about planning to democratize the Middle East by remaking Iraq.

And the worst insult of all, from conservatives’ viewpoint, was that the President eventually had the nerve to train his sights directly on them. As he pursued immigration—an endeavor that angered a large segment of the conservative base—the President and his surrogates began talking about his conservative critics with the same disdainful language he had previously reserved for Democrats.

According to the administration, the critics did not have the country’s interests at heart and were racist and ignorant.

AFTER ALL, IT'S JUST ANOTHER LIFESTYLE CHOICE:

Giuliani's loyalty to an accused priest: A grand jury accused Alan Placa of molestation and his diocese has suspended him, but the presidential candidate continues to employ his lifelong best friend as a consultant. (Alex Koppelman and Joe Strupp, 6/22/07, Salon)

Anyone who has followed the career of Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani knows the value he places on personal loyalty. Loyalty is what inspired the former mayor of New York to make Bernard Kerik, once his personal driver, the commissioner of the New York Police Department, and then a partner in his consulting firm, and then to suggest him to President Bush as a potential head of the Department of Homeland Security.

After revelations about Kerik's personal history derailed his bid for the federal post, Giuliani demonstrated that there were limits to loyalty. He has distanced himself from Kerik, who resigned from Giuliani's firm and later pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Giuliani has not, however, sought to distance himself from another, much closer friend whose personal baggage is also inconvenient, and would send most would-be presidents running.

Giuliani employs his childhood friend Monsignor Alan Placa as a consultant at Giuliani Partners despite a 2003 Suffolk County, N.Y., grand jury report that accuses Placa of sexually abusing children, as well as helping cover up the sexual abuse of children by other priests. Placa, who was part of a three-person team that handled allegations of abuse by clergy for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, is referred to as Priest F in the grand jury report.

BY WHICH STANDARD...:

Coors Field Unworthy of Clemens Feat (TIM MARCHMAN, June 22, 2007, NY Sun)

The problem with watching Roger Clemens pitch these days is that he belongs to history, rather than the Yankees.

Yesterday, Clemens had his second chance to win his 350th game, and for the second time, he didn't. This was a good thing, at least in the sense that the win didn't take place in an interleague game in Colorado's ridiculous Coors Field. Such an achievement should not come in a game against a team wearing purple pinstripes.

DING...DING...DING...DING...:

Poland evokes war dead as EU talks get tough Ian Traynor and Patrick Wintour, June 22, 2007, The Guardian)

Under the nationalist Kaczynski brothers, prime minister and president of Poland, it seemed Poland was bent on refighting the second world war against Germany in the bunkers of Brussels. "If Poland had not had to live through the years 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million", rather than 38 million, and would warrant a much higher quota of votes in the EU, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister, told Polish radio.

Under current arrangements dating from 2000, Germany has 29 votes to Poland's 27 in EU councils. The new system,based on population sizes, will give Germany more than double the Polish vote. The Poles are demanding a new way of calculating votes that would diminish German "hegemony".

MEANWHILE, TOM TANCREDO WOULD FROGMARCH HIS KIND BACK TO THE BORDER:

Baseball umpire answers the call: Alfonso Marquez, the first native Mexican to become a major league baseball umpire, spreads hope with charity and actions, never forgetting his roots and helping children try to achieve their dreams. (Kevin Baxter, June 22, 2007, Los Angeles Times)

[Alfonso] Marquez was only 7 when he left the farm fields of Zacatecas, following his mother through a small hole in a chain-link fence separating Mexico from the United States.

That was 27 years ago, plenty of time for memories to fade.

Here Marquez learned English, bought a house and rose to the highest levels of his profession, spending the last eight years as a major league umpire. Last year he worked behind the plate in the World Series. This weekend, he'll work the series between the Angels and Pittsburgh at Angel Stadium.

Certainly he could be forgiven if he had forgotten.

But instead, like Santa Claus, he returns every winter bearing gifts he spends the rest of the year collecting.

"Bottom line is there's a lot of kids that are forced out on the street at 11, 12, 13," Marquez said. "A lot of them are forced to get out of school just to work. So … [I] try to get them involved in some sports."

Along the way he has also provided faith, helping two other umpires turn a six-man religious retreat into a 2,000-member Christian church in Gilbert, Ariz., and charity, founding his own nonprofit group, Fonzie's Kids, to benefit poor children in Mexico.

But perhaps the most important thing he provides, to kids on both sides of the border, is hope.

"For them to look and say, 'Hey, this is one of our people. This is one of our countrymen. And he's made it to a high level.' I would definitely say he's making a difference just as people look at him," said Barrett, also a major league umpire and a former crewmate of Marquez. "But also I think the fact is, his heart is still down there. They've embraced him because his heart's never left there."

THERE IS NO LEBANON:

Lebanon's Sunnis teetering on the fault line of conflict: The army's clashes with militants in the north and a crackdown on Islamists have left the community divided. (Raed Rafei, June 22, 2007, Los Angeles Times)

Fatah al Islam, which is holed up in the Nahr el Bared refugee camp, is a mix of fighters from other Arab countries and young Lebanese men from the area, where some Islamist groups subscribe to Al Qaeda's ideology.

"The phenomenon of Fatah al Islam is a result of the marginalization, injustice and harm that Muslims are subjected to," said Daiat Shahal, a prominent religious scholar in Tripoli. However, he said, "this war is between Sunnis and will eventually weaken the Sunnis."

Most Sunni religious leaders with ties to the government have distanced themselves from the Islamist group. And a committee of Palestinian clerics has held talks with the militants in an attempt to end the fighting, the bloodiest the nation has seen since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Under a 1969 agreement, Palestinians have been responsible for internal security in all of Lebanon's 12 refugee camps, which are home to about 400,000 people.

"We fear that if the battle continues, its effect would be detrimental on Sunnis," said Sheik Mohammed Haj, who has participated in the negotiations.

IF THE LEFT ONLY HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR...:

Hillary's tone-deaf campaign: A Celine Dion theme song? Written for Air Canada? (Rosa Brooks, June 22, 2007, LA Times)

[I]n case you missed this major national event, the winning song was "You and I," by Celine Dion.

Clinton staffers have declared the "pick our theme song" contest a resounding success. And who knows what her wacky campaign will do next? Maybe Clinton will soon have YouTube viewers select her campaign's strategy for ending Iraq's civil war or reducing greenhouse gases. If she's going to base her decisions on the lowest common denominator, Clinton could just eliminate her cadre of overcompensated consultants and pollsters and go straight to YouTube for all her policy needs.

And Celine Dion really is the lowest common denominator. If the SAT's analogies section tested politics and pop culture, even the dimmest teenager would agree that "Hillary Clinton: Politics = Celine Dion: Music." Both Clinton and Dion have enjoyed astounding career success. Both showed early talent but are now widely accused of being sellouts. Dion's interesting, edgy early songs were replaced, during her bid for superstardom, by trite and formulaic crowd pleasers; Clinton's interesting, edgy early policy positions were replaced, during her bid for elected office, by trite and formulaic crowd pleasers.

Selecting "You and I" may ultimately come to seem like a Clinton campaign blunder. For one thing, Dion's name summons up, unbidden, thoughts of other major Dion hits, such as the "Titanic" theme song and the title track from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." Neither suggests helpful associations.

In any case, "You and I" is not exactly in its first run as a theme song. It has already been used by Air Canada. Not just "used": Air Canada commissioned the song, and the airline's advertising consultant wrote the lyrics. (Art at its purest, it ain't.) This isn't the first time a presidential campaign has relied on a song that's basically an advertising jingle, but I think it's the first time a campaign has relied on someone else's advertising jingle.

That the "someone else" is a foreign country's national airline doesn't help. The Canadian-born Dion released "You and I" at an Air Canada event in October 2004. "Wearing a stylish new Air Canada uniform," an Air Canada news release gushed, Dion sang with "a chorus of Air Canada employees," telling the admiring crowd, "[It's] an honor … to promote Air Canada and this great country around the world…. We are all ambassadors for Canada." Oy.

JUST A CHIP OFF THE OLD IRON LADY:

Neoconned!: How Blair took New Labour for a ride: In this brilliant new essay, Britain's leading philosopher argues that Tony Blair owes more to the free-wheeling imperialists of the American right wing than Labour tradition. John Gray explains how George Bush helped shape Blair's decade in office, how religious conviction emboldened him to send troops into battle - and why the truth became a casualty of war (John Gray, 22 June 2007, Independent)

Neo-conservatism is not the most recent variety of conservatism. It is a new type of politics that can emerge at any point on the political spectrum. In Britain, neo-conservatism's political vehicle was not the Conservative Party but the new party that Blair created when he seized the Labour leadership.

The single most important fact in Blair's rise to power was Thatcher's new settlement. Both in economic and political terms it was an established fact, but while this was an index of Thatcher's achievement it was also a source of weakness for the Conservatives.

Thatcher often declared that she aimed to destroy socialism in Britain. She never paused to consider what would be the effect on her party if she succeeded. For much of the 20th century the Conservatives acted as a brake on collectivism. The Conservative Party existed to oppose not just socialism but also - and more relevantly - any further advance towards social democracy. By dismantling the Labour settlement, Thatcher removed the chief reason for the existence of the Conservative Party. Without a clearly defined enemy it lacked an identity. Labour had never been a doctrinaire socialist party - as Harold Wilson remarked, it had always owed more to Methodism than to Marx - but by identifying New Labour with the market, Blair was able to deprive the Conservatives of the threat that had defined them for generations. As a result they were mired in confusion for nearly a decade.

While Blair's embrace of neo-liberal economic policies was a strategic decision, it soon acquired an ideological rationale. More conventional in his thinking about domestic issues than most politicians, and having an even shorter historical memory, Blair embraced without question the neo-liberal belief that only one economic system can deliver prosperity in a late modern context. Modernisation became the Blairite mantra, and for Blair it meant something precise: the reorganisation of society around the imperatives of the free market.

When he was still in opposition, Blair curried support from disillusioned Conservatives by representing himself as a One Nation Tory - a progressive conservative who accepted the central role of the market but also understood the importance of social cohesion. Once in power it was clear Blair came not to bury Thatcher but to continue her work.

Blair's One Nation Toryism was like his fabled Third Way, a political marketing tool. The Third Way originated in Bill Clinton's practice of "triangulation" - a tactic invented in the mid-1990s by Clinton's adviser Dick Morris, which involved Clinton setting himself up as a more pragmatic alternative to both parties in Congress. Adopting the same tactic, Blair attacked his own party as much as the Conservatives. His successful campaign to remove Clause Four (which mandated common ownership of the means of production) from the Labour constitution in 1995 was a symbolic act rather than a policy shift. At the same time it was a marker for larger challenges to Labour's social-democratic inheritance. Blair carried on the agenda of privatisation that had developed from Thatcher's original programme into core areas of the state such as sections of the justice system and prison service, and inserted market mechanisms into the NHS and the schooling system.

In these respects Blair did no more than consolidate Thatcherism, but he did not change British society in the way Thatcher did. His chief impact has been on his own party. New Labour was constructed to bury the past and in this, if in nothing else, it succeeded. It began as a coup masterminded by a handful of people - Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Philip Gould and others - who aimed to rebuild the party as an instrument for securing power.

New Labour was a purpose-built construction with few links to the political tradition that preceded it.

HERE'S A HINT--NO ONE:

Who'll Have Courage to Call for Gas Taxes as Energy Answer? (Mort Kondracke, 6/22/07, Real Clear Politics)

A hefty hike in gas taxes -- better yet, in taxes on all carbon-based fuels -- will accomplish far more than mandates and subsidies for what everyone claims to want: “energy independence” and “clean energy.” [...]

Sensible though the idea is -- and despite evidence that $3 per gallon gas already is causing Americans to move from SUVs to hybrids -- gas and carbon taxes have not even been broached in the current energy debate in Congress.

Nor is President Bush or any candidate for his job advocating them, though all say they support freeing the United States from dependency on foreign oil and improving the environment.

It certainly would take courage. The instant reaction of voters to any tax increase is “no.” The last poll I could find on the subject, a New York Times/CBS poll in 2006, showed that 85 percent of voters opposed a gas tax hike.

And yet, 55 percent said they’d support such an increase if it reduced U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and 59 percent said they’d support it if it resulted in less consumption or eased the threat of global warming.

IN YOUR FACE, PIPSQUEEK!:

Research Finds Firstborns Gain the Higher I.Q. (BENEDICT CAREY, 6/22/07, NY Times)

The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order.

The average difference in I.Q. was slight — three points higher in the eldest child than in the closest sibling — but significant, the researchers said. And they said the results made it clear that it was due to family dynamics, not to biological factors like prenatal environment.

Researchers have long had evidence that firstborns tended to be more dutiful and cautious than their siblings, and some previous studies found significant I.Q. differences. But critics said those reports were not conclusive, because they did not take into account the vast differences in upbringing among families.

AN EMOTION, NOT A THOUGHT (via Kevin Whited):

Immigration: Emotion trumps logic (David Hill, June 20, 2007, The Hill)

On the other side, emotion is overflowing its banks and the levee is threatening to break at any moment. Just check out the blogs, turn on talk radio or glance at your local letters-to-the-editor column if you don’t believe it. The ferocity of this emotion threatens to undermine the rational solution that reformers seek. Even though hard-core opponents — by the most generous of estimates — comprise no more than one-third of the electorate, their hyper-emotional response to the issue frightens leaders who are on the fence. Rather than looking at polls and concluding that reform is possible, the fence-straddlers are scared away by the passion of opponents that call or write their offices daily.

I have read several analyses in recent days bemoaning that this Congress is not handling immigration like one of its predecessors handled the touchy issue of welfare reform. This analogy doesn’t work because in that situation the welfare reformers had emotion on their side. The grassroots crowd that now blocks any talk of immigration reform was in that era a “hair on fire” mob clamoring for quick, comprehensive action by Capitol Hill.

WHEN HAVE THEY EVER NOT BOUGHT THE WORST ILLUSION?:

Putting all the eggs in Fatah basket (Kaveh L Afrasiabi, 6/23/07, Asia Times)

With the dust of Hamas' triumphant counter-coup in the Gaza Strip yet to settle, Israel and the United States have wasted little time on a counter-strategy, of supporting the rival Fatah organization in West Bank and trying to isolate Hamas economically and diplomatically. This they are doing by rallying the "moderate Arab" support for Fatah and, in Israel's case, by preparing for a full invasion of Gaza.

Yet none of these amount to a prudent response, and the best option would appear to be to let Hamas try its chances at ruling Gaza while various interlocutors in the Arab and Islamic world work on rebuilding the broken bridges between the two dominant Palestinian organizations.

Even the staunchly pro-Israel Washington Post has recognized the pitfalls of the Israel-US response, editorializing: "The most dangerous illusion to emerge from the US-Israeli discussions is the idea that Hamas can be isolated in Gaza while Mr [Palestinian President Mahmud] Abbas is built up in the West Bank."

AND WE WONDER WHY THEY HATE US?:

Israel and Palestine pushed closer together (Con Coughlin 22/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

One of the more remarkable features of the past few days has been the almost indecent haste with which the key Quartet players - America and the EU - have rushed to restore ties with the newly formed government of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Suddenly everyone - the Israelis, the Americans, Britain, Brussels - wants to talk to the Palestinians and give them support.

Millions of dollars worth of aid, which had previously been denied, is flooding into the West Bank in an attempt to revive the Palestinian economy and thereby shore up support for Mr Abbas's government. Next week Israel and the Palestinian Authority will attempt to kick-start the negotiating process when they attend a hastily arranged regional summit in Egypt.

Indeed, the more one looks at these rapidly unfolding developments, the more one is struck by how convenient Hamas's Gazan putsch has been for all those with a genuine interest in reviving some form of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians.

As the bitter power struggle between the rival Hamas and Fatah wings of the Palestinian government escalated over the past month, it was generally accepted that Israel was more sympathetic to the Fatah-dominated security apparatus run by Mohammed Dahlan, Mr Abbas's chief security adviser.

But the fact that Israeli gunboats were deployed off the Gazan coast, ready to evacuate key Fatah officials when it became clear they were no match for Hamas's Iranian-trained and equipped fighters, suggests that the Israeli military had a profound understanding of the likely outcome of a fight provoked by Fatah in the first place.

And even if the violence resulted in the summary execution of several leading Fatah commanders by their Hamas captors, Hamas's exclusion from the political process could be regarded as a major bonus both for Israel and the more moderate Palestinians.

NATIONAL TREASURE:

The National Play Nation's Capital (NPR.org, June 20, 2007, All Songs Considered)

The National make thoughtful, mostly melancholy rock in the spirit of Joy Division or Leonard Cohen, with singer Matt Berninger's warm baritone voice set against deftly orchestrated instrumentation that's as epic as it is intimate. Hear the group recorded live in concert from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club.

MORE:
Suddenly, The National finds a whole new world of fans (Jonathan Perry, June 22, 2007, The Boston Globe)

Alligators are hard to ignore. In the case of the National, a quintet comprising two sets of brothers and a college friend who moved from Cincinnati to Brooklyn to play bitterly bemused, soul-ravaged songs about dreams and failure, an album named for that carnivorous reptile is what got the group noticed -- finally -- after six years of sulking in the shadows.

The National is one of the hottest bands on the road right now, having sold out just about every show it's played. Its new album, "Boxer," was leaked to fans over the Internet well before its official May release date -- a sure sign of digital-age rock stardom -- and has been getting rave reviews. As of this week, the disc remains in the Top 20 on Billboard's independent albums chart.

Hard to believe that this is the same group that only two years ago was playing to indifferent audiences in all but empty rooms. In a sense, the success of the National's current tour -- which returns to the Middle East tonight for the second of a pair of, yes, sold-out shows -- has as much to do with a long-delayed reaction to its 2005 disc, "Alligator," as it does a reception for the equally terrific "Boxer." The National represents the inverse of the typical pop universe, where gratification is often instant and fleeting: a late-blooming band of 30-somethings that continues to blossom and grow its audience.

Let's backtrack: "An underground band that has a loyal but small following" is what National frontman Matt Berninger once imagined his band's fate to be, after it made a pair of superb but scarcely heard albums for a small French imprint. But the darkly decadent murk and tug of the National's sound, bejeweled with Berninger's sybaritic baritone and rueful reflections on anxiety, desire, and regret, did catch the ear of the New York indie label Beggars Banquet . It scooped up the band, gave it creative carte blanche, and released "Alligator" without having heard one note of the work beforehand.

MITREC SYSTEM:

After 30 years as a closet Catholic, Blair finally puts faith before politics (Stephen Bates, June 22, 2007, The Guardian)

His spiritual awakening goes back at least 30 years, to his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, but due to political considerations Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism has been a long time coming.

He has been attending Catholic mass, often with his family but also occasionally alone, since long before he became prime minister. His wife, Cherie, is a lifelong and practising Catholic, and in accordance with church rules their children have been brought up as Catholics and were sent to church schools.

More than 10 years ago Mr Blair was slipping into Westminster cathedral and occasionally taking communion, until the late Cardinal Basil Hume told him to stop because it was causing comment as he was not a Catholic - an injunction that bemused him at the time.

Since then he has regularly attended services conducted by Canon Timothy Russ, parish priest of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at Great Missenden, the nearest Catholic church to Chequers.

He is also known to have had discussions with priests such as Father Timothy Radcliffe, former head of the worldwide Dominican order, now at Oxford, and with Father Michael Seed, who has shephered a number of high-profile figures, including Ann Widdecome and, allegedly, Alan Clark, towards conversion. Fr Seed, an engaging if indiscreet figure, has claimed to have paid regular backdoor visits to Downing Street to talk religion, if not necessarily to advise the prime minister.

DON'T PREDICT IT, EFFECT IT:

US predicts regime change in Zimbabwe as hyperinflation destroys the economy (Andrew Meldrum, June 22, 2007, The Guardian)

Zimbabwe's inflation will rocket to 1.5m% before the end of the year, the US ambassador to Harare predicted yesterday, forecasting massive disruption and instability that will drive President Robert Mugabe from office.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Christopher Dell said prices were going up twice a day, sapping popular confidence in a government which is now "committing regime change on itself".

"I believe inflation will hit 1.5m% by the end of 2007, if not before," Mr Dell said. "I know that sounds stratospheric but, looking at the way things are going, I believe it is a modest forecast."

UNDOING THE WARREN COURT...:

High court has been good for business: A dozen rulings in the last year have been a boon to corporations by making it harder to sue them or limiting lawsuit damages. (David G. Savage, June 21, 2007, LA Times)

The Bush administration and corporate lobbyists long have sought sweeping "tort reform" to limit lawsuits and massive jury awards — without much success. But in the last year, they quietly have been winning much of what they've wanted on a case-by-case basis in the Supreme Court.

With a week to go in their term, the justices have handed down a dozen rulings that sharply limit the damages that can be won in lawsuits or make it harder to sue corporations.

"The Roberts court is even better for business" than the court led for two decades by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said Washington attorney Maureen E. Mahoney, who is a longtime friend of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and a former clerk for Rehnquist. "There is unquestionably a greater number of business cases before the court, and [the justices] are quite willing to limit damage remedies."

No Supreme Court nominee could be confirmed these days without paying homage to the judicial doctrine of “stare decisis,” Latin for “to stand by things decided.” Yet experienced listeners have learned to take these professions of devotion to precedent “cum grano salis,” Latin for “with a grain of salt.”

Both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. assured their Senate questioners at their confirmation hearings that they, too, respected precedent. So why were they on the majority side of a 5-to-4 decision last week declaring that a 45-year-old doctrine excusing people whose “unique circumstances” prevented them from meeting court filing deadlines was now “illegitimate”?

BAG MAN:

MISSING IN ACTION: Giuliani quit Iraq panel after missed meetings - but he had time for fundraising (CRAIG GORDON, 6/19/07, Newsday)

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why - the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said - and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.

On one day the panel gathered in Washington - May 18, 2006 - Giuliani delivered a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. Later that day, he attended a $100-a-ticket Atlanta political fundraiser for conservative ally Ralph Reed, whom Giuliani hoped would provide a major boost to his presidential campaign.

The month before, Giuliani skipped the session to give the April 12 keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea for $200,000, his financial disclosure shows.

AL AND RALPH, FOR GAIA'S SAKE:

Nader ponders run, calls Clinton 'coward' (Roger Simon, June 21, 2007, Politico)

Ralph Nader says he is seriously considering running for president in 2008 because he foresees another Tweedledum-Tweedledee election that offers little real choice to voters.

"You know the two parties are still converging -- they don't even debate the military budget anymore," Nader said in a 30-minute interview. "I really think there needs to be more competition from outside the two parties." [...]

Nader would have little or no chance of winning the presidency should he run, but he doesn't need to win to affect the outcome: Many Democrats still blame Nader for draining enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida in 2000 to elect George W. Bush.

THE ALLY KILLER (via Gene Brown):

Getting It Right: David Halberstam and the media's ethos of irresponsibility. (JAMES BOWMAN, June 20, 2007, Opinion Journal)

Halberstam's old employer, the New York Times, took the occasion of his death to run a piece by Dexter Filkins, who writes for the paper from Iraq, comparing now with then. "During four years of war in Iraq, American reporters on the ground in Baghdad have often found themselves coming under criticism remarkably similar to that which Mr. Halberstam endured: those journalists in Baghdad, so said the Bush administration and its supporters, only reported the bad news. They were dupes of the insurgents. They were cowardly and unpatriotic." Small wonder then that, before he died, Halberstam himself "did not hesitate to compare America's predicament in Iraq to its defeat in Vietnam. And he was not afraid to admit that his views on Iraq had been influenced by his experience in the earlier war. 'I just never thought it was going to work at all,' Mr. Halberstam said of Iraq during a public appearance in New York in January." Yet neither Halberstam nor Mr. Filkins mentions one crucial difference between Vietnam and Iraq. In Vietnam, the enemy was militarily formidable even without any assistance from the media. In Iraq, the enemy is militarily weak and can hope to win only by exploiting the media's negativity--and the continuing romance of their role in Vietnam--to make the war seem unwinnable. The role of fearless truth-teller is no longer available, if it ever was. Like it or not, the media are already involved in the action and must pick a side.

After noting how, since Halberstam, it has become part of the romance of being a reporter to question the bona fides of America's leaders, Ambassador Holbrooke added: "But everything depended on David getting it right, and he did." This strikes me as being equally revealing. "Getting it right" is of course an admirable ambition for a journalist, but it is an exercise that has little in common with what generals and politicians must do, which is to lead others through situations of mortal peril with appallingly incomplete and inaccurate information to guide them. Getting it wrong is a given. That's what the romance of the Halberstamian example has made journalists--and not only journalists!--forget when they try to apply his lesson from Vietnam to the Iraq war. For the man who must act and not just observe, the only question that matters is how quickly he can recognize and recover from his mistakes and how strong is his will to keep fighting in spite of them and the inevitable setbacks they cause. On the first of these tests, the Bush administration has done rather badly, I think; on the second it has done rather well. But part of the reason for its failures has been that the mind of the media remains obsessed with the question only of its prescience--as if "getting it right" were the only thing that mattered and getting it wrong a fatal disqualification for leadership.

MORE:
Top Iraqi Officials Growing Restless (Joshua Partlow and Robin Wright, 6/21/07, Washington Post)

Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a senior Shiite politician often mentioned as a potential prime minister, tendered his resignation last week in a move that reflects deepening frustration inside the Iraqi government with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

RIGHT IN HIS WHEELHOUSE:

Bush vetoes stem-cell bill, urges other research (Los Angeles Times, 6/21/07)

President Bush vetoed legislation Wednesday that would have allowed the use of federal funds to support embryonic stem-cell research, the second consecutive year he has blocked such a bill. [...]

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical, and it is not the only option before us," said Bush, who issued an executive order to the National Institutes of Health asking scientists to pursue research on stem cells that "are derived without creating a human embryo for research purposes or destroying, discarding, or subjecting to harm a human embryo or fetus." [...]

The stem-cell bill passed both houses of Congress with strong majorities, but a veto override would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The Senate appears to be one vote shy, and the House is about 35 votes short.

THE HARD IDIOCY OF NOT GRASPING NCLB (via MC):

2,300 schools face 'No Child' overhaul (NANCY ZUCKERBROD, 6/20/07, AP)

The scarlet letter in education these days is an "R." It stands for restructuring — the purgatory that schools are pushed into if they fail to meet testing goals for six straight years under the No Child Left Behind law.

Nationwide, about 2,300 schools are either in restructuring or are a year away and planning for such drastic action as firing the principal and moving many of the teachers, according to a database provided to The Associated Press by the Education Department. Those schools are being warily eyed by educators elsewhere as the law's consequences begin to hit home. [...]

Test scores for students with disabilities, for immigrants, poor children and minorities must be separated out under the law. But if one group fails to hit testing benchmarks at a school — like last year at Long Branch — the whole school gets a failing grade. [...]

It was around 2 p.m, shortly before the school day was to end, and a time when elementary-age students might typically be playing tag, working on craft projects or just easing into the end of the academic day.

But at Arrowhead, a school in the restructuring planning stage, math worksheets were on the desks, kids were sounding out vowels and special-ed teachers were working with small groups of children.

Superintendent Deasy acknowledges the atmosphere at Arrowhead is more intense than at schools that aren't facing restructuring. He said lessons at schools missing testing goals have to be very targeted, and he says there often isn't time for electives and free play like at other schools.

Critics of the law complain about such constraints. But Deasy said Arrowhead's test scores are heading in the right direction, precisely because students are on task and teachers are talking about instruction rather than cafeteria menus or bus schedules.

Said Principal Anthony: "There's a new level of urgency about the work we have to do for students."

EV...:

2 key CEOs give Patrick a fund-raiser (Frank Phillips, June 21, 2007, Boston Globe)

Governor Deval Patrick picked up about $25,000 in political donations this week at a fund-raiser thrown by the chief executive officers of two highly regulated companies whose financial standings and profits could be affected by decisions pending before the new administration. [...]

While not uncommon during previous administrations, Patrick's use of two heavily regulated industry giants to raise political funds stands in sharp contrast to his campaign promise to change the way business is conducted on Beacon Hill and to free politics from special interests.<>/blockquote>

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PRESIDENT TANCREDO WOULD GLADLY SHIP THEM OUR MEXICANS:

Kibbutz Is Haven for Fleeing Sudanese (BEN HUBBARD, 6/12/07, Associated Press )

Five years after he fled his razed Darfur village, and after jail spells in three countries, Ibrahim has found refuge in an unlikely place: a kibbutz in Israel.

The 24-year-old Muslim is one of about 440 Sudanese refugees working in Israeli hotels and on farms while the government seeks to place them in a third country.

Most have fled southern Sudan, where a 22-year conflict left 2.5 million people dead. Others, like Ibrahim, are from Darfur, where a rebellion has cost more than 200,000 civilian lives and made 2.5 million people homeless.

Ibrahim, 24, paused while weeding an avocado orchard on this kibbutz, or communal farm, in northern Israel and told his story. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees barred publication of his surname to protect his relatives in Darfur.

He said he fled five years ago to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, where the government imprisoned him for allegedly conspiring against it. After his release, he bribed his way into neighboring Egypt, and was arrested in Cairo. Once free again, he fled eastward with five others who paid a Bedouin to smuggle them into Israel. They feared police would shoot them.

"Then, thank God, we entered Israel and they welcomed us," he said. [...]

After a year in Israeli prisons, Ibrahim was moved in March to Yad Hannah, a kibbutz of 300 people which has taken in 36 Sudanese. They earn about $37 a day for farm work and shop and cook for themselves, but are still considered prisoners and cannot leave without written permission.

Ibrahim said he still feels isolated, because he speaks only Arabic and can't communicate with his kibbutz employers. But he does feel safe.

"Israel is nice," he said. "No one will hit you in the street or yell at you. I had to come all this way before I could find someone to treat me this way."

Kobi Danzon, who manages Yad Hannah's Sudanese, said the newcomers spent their first paychecks on cell phones to talk with Sudanese friends in Israel and overseas.

Over the years, the Palestinian uprising has deprived Israel of a source of cheap Arab labor, and migrants from Third World countries have flocked here to replace them.

TOP/DOWN:

The Magic Kingdom’s Wild New Ride: Everywhere you look, it seems, the Middle East is in flames. Yet, almost unnoticed by outside observers, the most conservative country in the region has embarked on a historic journey of reform. (Jean-François Seznec, Afshin Molavi, June 2007, Foreign Policy)

Last week, a senior official in one of the world’s wealthiest states suggested that one third of all government jobs should go to women.

Switzerland? Denmark? France?

Wrong, the country is Saudi Arabia, and the senior official is Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the crown prince. In a state that has embraced the most misogynous readings of the Koran and a society that remains deeply patriarchal, Prince Sultan’s statement was truly revolutionary.

As Sultan’s older brother, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, visits Spain, Poland, and France this week, it may not be obvious that Saudi Arabia is undergoing a substantive transformation, but it is. Although the Kingdom’s diplomatic exploits capture the headlines—its efforts to counter Iranian influence in the Arab world, support for peace in Lebanon, and the Saudi-sponsored Arab League peace initiative to name just a few—its domestic changes are likely to be more far-reaching, durable, and consequential.

The Saudi monarch is pushing forward a surprisingly reformist domestic agenda, but his task is delicate. Five key actors will determine how this drama plays out: The 20 or so senior princes (including the king), the civil service, the merchant class, younger princes, and the religious establishment. King Abdullah can win this fight, but he can’t do it alone. By seeing Saudi Arabia as more than just a place to sell arms, buy oil, or fight terror, Europe and the United States can tilt the balance of power toward more reformist elements and marginalize the forces of religious reaction. The stakes couldn’t be higher: King Abdullah is battling not just stubborn conservatives and parts of his own family who are resistant to change, but Saudi history itself. [...]

Perhaps most illustrative of King Abdullah’s vision is the new university to be opened in his name. It will focus on science and technology. It will have coeducational classes (another small revolution). And it won’t be in the hands of the Salafists: A separate curriculum is being planned to ensure that the remaining holdouts in the education ministry don’t scuttle things. What’s more, a mood of dialogue has taken hold: the King Abdulaziz National Dialogue Center, named after King Abdullah’s father, brings together leading figures in public life—including the Shiites, who make up 10 to 15 percent of the Kingdom’s population and are despised by the Salafists—to debate pressing issues of the day. And technological advances are breaking down social barriers: Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones have become an essential item for the young Saudi who wants to meet members of the opposite sex. And the religious police, the fearsome mutawain, have been reined in.

BACK TO THE APPLIED DARWINIST DRAWING BOARD (via Luciferous)

It's Not Enough to Be 'Wanted': Illegitimacy has risen despite--indeed, because of--legal abortion. (JOHN R. LOTT JR., June 19, 2007, Opinion Journal)

Many academic studies have shown that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion. In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5% of all births in 1965-69 to more than 16% two decades later (1985-1989). For blacks, the numbers soared from 35% to 62%. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was nevertheless a key contributing factor.

THEY ASSEMBLE TRINKETS THAT WE DESIGN...:

The Global Savings Glut and Its Consequences (Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, 6/4/2007, American Spectator)

The world is experiencing an unprecedented glut of savings, driving down real interest rates. It is a good time to borrow rather than lend, and to buy equities rather than bonds. This has implications for central banks, corporations and individual investors.

China is investing $3 billion, a tiny fraction of its $1.2 trillion of reserves, in Blackstone, a U.S. private equity company. More such equity investments will surely follow. India, OPEC members, and other developing countries with large foreign exchange reserves should emulate China's strategy.

Foreign exchange reserves are typically invested in bonds of G-7 countries, above all in U.S. Treasury bonds. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers estimates that developing countries are holding more than $2 trillion of reserves in excess of their needs to combat currency volatility. [...]

Several developing countries are running large current account surpluses (representing an excess of savings over investment). So they are accumulating surplus dollars. China has the biggest surplus of $1.2 trillion, but other developing countries put together have accumulated almost as much. And oil exporters are accumulating reserves at the rate of $300 billion per year.

Rapid growth leads to high savings rates: people save a large fraction of additional income. In India, GDP growth has accelerated from 6% to 9%, lifting the savings rate from 23% a decade ago to 33% today. China's savings rate is a dizzy 55%. Not even the investment boom in Asia can absorb these huge savings, which are therefore put into U.S. bonds.

When a poor country buys U.S. bonds, it is in effect lending to the USA. It is paradoxical for the poor to lend to the rich, especially at depressed interest rates.

LOOKIN' BEACH WORTHY:

Tannhauser Rides Again: 1565: Muslims battle Christians in the bloody Siege of Malta: a review of The Religion by Tim Willocks (N.D. Wilson, May/June 2007, Books & Culture)

That fateful decline, according to many, began at the siege of Malta in 1565, the bloody setting for Tim Willocks' The Religion. With Islam once again on an international up-swing, with the West at war, and with imaginations primed for the medieval by The Da Vinci Code and assorted knock-offs, Willocks is almost assured of an international bestseller. On top of that, he's working with nothing short of a fantastic setting. The siege of Malta is as unbelievable as it was important. A small Mediterranean rock became a crossroads in history as the struggle between Suleiman the Magnificent and the antiquated Knights of St. John the Baptist decided the Future of Europe (or at least played a role worthy of rescue from the forgettery).

In 1565, Luther had been dead for twenty years and the Reformation had taken root. Queen Elizabeth (heresiarch) ruled England. As the Sultan mustered his forces in Constantinople, Shakespeare turned one. The Spanish Inquisition was nearly one hundred, and the Templars had long ago been wiped out in France.

Willocks has plenty to work with on every level: social, political, and religious. [...]

The Knights of St. John are fortifying Malta in preparation for the Turkish assault, and they've heard of Matthias. Knowing his experience, they resolve to recruit him despite the fact that he no longer adheres to the faith of his fathers or his one-time captors.

Two women, Countess Carla La Penautier and her attendant Amparo, have been trying to reach Malta in order to search for the son taken from the Countess at birth. The Knights, who had denied their previous requests for passage, decide to use the women to convince Tannhauser to come. And so the plot really begins. Tannhauser and his English friend Bors arrive on Malta with the two women, just ahead of the enormous Turkish fleet.

The siege of Malta began in the third week of May with the arrival of one of the largest armadas assembled in that age. It wouldn't end until the ninth of September. The Knights of St. John were commanded by Jean La Vallette, a military mind tactically well ahead of his time. More than seventy years old and white-bearded, both feared and respected, he was said to match the most rabid Muslims in fanaticism. The knights called themselves "The Religion" (one of those resonant details that get under a novelist's skin, becoming the germ of a book). They originated as hospitallers in Jerusalem and had so distinguished themselves in the First Crusade that they received their own military charter from the Church. Eventually driven out of Jerusalem, they took possession of Rhodes. There they became sea-faring knights, pirates to every Muslim, who called them "the Hounds of Hell." Provoked, Suleiman sacked Rhodes in 1522. La Vallette was present and learned much from the defeat.

The Knights struggled to find a new home. They were sovereign unto themselves, wealthy nobles accountable to no government. This made them of questionable value in the early modern world. Why would anyone endow them with land without certain allegiance in return? But eventually they acquired Malta and immediately began fortification. It wasn't long before their galleys were once again strangling Turkish trade, and La Vallette knew what they were provoking.

The size of the sultan's force varies from account to account. But in every version, it is enormous: hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of trained fighting men. The Knights held multiple fortifications with a total of nine thousand men, primarily Maltese commoners.

Willocks truly and meticulously captures the progression and feel of such a horrific siege. Before taking up The Religion, I decided to read a small—and excellent—military history (The Great Siege: Malta 1565, by Ernle Bradford), from which it's clear that Willocks has managed to seamlessly weave his plot through the timeline of actual events, vividly enfleshing what such action must have looked and felt like to a defender in this strange conflict: a war with castles, galleys, armor, long-rifle snipers, trenches, cavalry, heavy artillery, and early flame-throwers. He also effectively humanizes both sides of the conflict, sending Tannhauser out into the Turkish ranks, putting faces and fears on the attackers as well as the attacked.

FAILING THE MEANS TEST:

Palestinian fantasy vs. reality (Augustus Richard Norton, June 21, 2007, Boston Globe)

IN JANUARY 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. President George W. Bush had insisted on holding elections on schedule, against the advice of key regional allies. While US officials described the polling as "fair and secure," the Bush administration demonstrated that it loves democracy only so long as our friends win.

In this case, it was hardly "our friends" who won, but Hamas. With the United States in the lead and plenty of arm twisting, the European Union, the UN secretary general, and Russia insisted that Hamas recognize Israel, embrace Oslo, and renounce violence.

The United States was intent to see the Hamas government fail. Not only did it work assiduously to block international funding, but it poured arms and money into militias controlled by the discredited nationalist forces that had lost the election. To add to the pressure, Israel refused to transfer tax revenues paid by Palestinians to the new government.

A prime beneficiary of US largesse has been Muhammad Dahlan and his Preventive Security Force, which was decisively defeated last week by Hamas. Dahlan, who is about as popular in Gaza as Ahmed Chelabi is in Iraq, is Washington's man.

The path from 2006 might have led in a different, more constructive direction if the Bush administration were not so captured by an illusory black and white approach to Hamas and similar Islamist groups.

IT'D BE A SHAME...

Mets Drop Their Sixth Series in a Row (Associated Press, June 21, 2007)

Torii Hunter hit a two-run homer and Scott Baker pitched five effective innings to help the Minnesota Twins beat the Mets 6–2 last night.

Joe Mauer also drove in two runs for Minnesota, which won two of three in its first series at Shea Stadium since 2002. Johan Santana tossed a four-hitter in the Twins' 9-0 victory Tuesday night and Baker allowed two runs and seven hits in the finale.

Carlos Beltran went 3-for-4 and singled in a run for the foundering Mets, who have lost 13 of 16. New York has dropped six straight series since it took two of three games against San Francisco from May 29–31.

NICE THING ABOUT AN OWNER WHO PLAYS FAVORITES...:

We Don’t Need No Stinking Baseball (BRYAN CURTIS, 6/03/07, NY Times Play)

The man most responsible is, of course, Daniel Okrent, a writer, editor and former public editor of The New York Times and, despite those vocations, one of the saner guys you’ll ever meet. In 1980, Okrent and 10 friends founded Rotisserie League Baseball, a game that allowed amateur general managers to draft a team of major league regulars and compete in eight statistical categories. (The categories have, of course, caused all sorts of controversy among statheads.) At season’s end, all but a few players — the so-called “keepers” — were released back into the pool for the next year’s draft, so that fantasy delivered what baseball never really did: a fresh start. Several of Rotisserie’s founding partners were media people, and during the 1981 players’ strike, sportswriters in desperate need of material began spreading the gospel of fantasy baseball. Okrent became a kind of yogi to the fantasy set. One afternoon, he spotted a mysterious stranger tailing him in the concourse at Yankee Stadium. “He followed me right into the restroom,” Okrent told me recently. “And then he started telling me about his team, about the trade he didn’t make.”

He was a prophet, that discombobulated stranger. Because what Okrent and his comrades could not foresee was how their creation would smack up against the zeitgeist like a Roger Clemens fastball thwacking a batter’s helmet. Fantasy baseball took hold just as baseball was entering a particularly gloomy period: two labor stoppages and a canceled World Series; rumors of juiced balls and steroids; a competitive imbalance between the large- and small-market teams; a continuous slippage in popularity versus professional football; and frequent intrusions by pariahs like Pete Rose, Marge Schott and Barry Bonds. Being a fan meant opening the morning newspaper to the latest bad news, a dreary buffet that The New Yorker’s Roger Angell once compared to “a dog’s breakfast.”

Had it appeared in happier times, fantasy baseball might have been mere entertainment like Strat-O-Matic Baseball. But over three decades, it has evolved to become a kind of psychological alternative to baseball, a full-fledged fantasy realm. In fantasy baseball, no one is held hostage by the whims and follies of the Lords of Baseball, as the sportswriter Dick Young used to call them, or the indiscretions of the players. You have the feeling of Steinbrenner-like control over the lineups, the rules, even the personnel of the league. If the pose of baseball fans has long been the helpless crouch, the alternate universe of fantasy baseball offers fans an illusory sense of empowerment.

Indeed, part of what makes fantasy so pleasurable is that it has taken the reptilian behavior of the owners and the commissioner and transferred it to the fan. If knucklehead owners like the Florida Marlins’ Jeffrey Loria want to offload key players every season, then the fantasy owner will do them one better, shedding all but a few keepers. If Major League Baseball maintains a caste system between the rich and poor teams, then fantasy players will simply pluck the best players from both. Bud Selig’s rueful ignorance of the human growth hormone coursing through the game is exceeded only by the fantasy player’s. In fantasy baseball, even Barry Bonds becomes an uncomplicated slugger, because in fantasy there is no such thing as a tainted record.

But what you see in the fantasy class is not blissful ignorance so much as a new hardheadedness, a sense that baseball is something to manipulate rather than be manipulated by. In 2004, Donald Levy, an intrepid sociologist at West Virginia Wesleyan College, went spelunking into the subconscious of nearly 1,200 fantasy baseball players. He found that they resembled the BlackBerry warriors in the box seats: 98 percent male, 94 percent white and 69 percent college-educated, with an average income of $90,000 per year. “The people in the fantasy world have been fighting this perception that they’re some geek in their parents’ basement still wearing a Little League uniform,” Levy told me. “This isn’t true. The most ardent fantasy participant is a professional.” These white-collar types, Levy said, preferred the label “owners,” to signify the control they had come to enjoy over the game.

Fantasy owners who packed their lineups with beloved favorites (I love you, Manny!) were deemed ineffectual, even effeminate. “A poor fantasy owner will be described in gendered terms,” Levy said. “He played like a woman, he let his emotions control him. He allowed his inner fan to make the decisions.”

A THUMPIN':

'Thump' it up: On their infectious new disc, the White Stripes make merry in the musical junkyard (Joan Anderman, June 17, 2007, Boston Globe)

For somebody who micromanages his band's image down to the color scheme, Jack White comes off as one of the least packaged rock stars of his generation. Maybe you don't even think of him as a rock star. In many ways the singer, songwriter, and guitarist smacks of a pasty scholar or an eccentric mastermind. White doesn't exude much sex appeal. He isn't behaving badly, nor has he set out to save the world. The man seems genuinely immune to the demands of the marketplace, the cultivation of a fan base, and the rule that says artists are as worthy as their last new idea.

At 31, White is content to simply go about the business of channeling his blues obsession into artful, minimalist rock songs to play with his ex-wife, Meg White, the drummer in their band, the White Stripes. The duo's sixth album, "Icky Thump," comes out on Tuesday, and it's fantastic. Of course the previous five were pretty great, too. But something's different, and it's not just that the band has kissed goodbye the far-flung doodling of 2005's "Get Behind Me Satan." One imagines that Jack's yearlong excursion with pop-flavored side project the Raconteurs, his move from Detroit to Nashville, and the drama of starting a family (with model Karen Elson) have combined to inspire fresh zeal -- and the biggest, nerviest, best-natured record the White Stripes have made.

CAN'T BE RIGHT:

Harry Potter 'hacker' posts plot on internet (Nigel Reynolds, 21/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

A computer hacker claims to have discovered the greatest literary mystery of the decade - how J K Rowling ends her Harry Potter epic and which two characters die in the seventh and final book.

The hacker, calling himself "Gabriel", posted a message on a well-known hackers' site in the early hours of Tuesday, claiming that he had discovered the ending to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which is published on July 21, on the computer of an employee of Bloomsbury, Rowling's publishers.

In less than perfect English, he gives a detailed summary of the alleged ending and names two central characters who have appeared in the series since the beginning 10 years ago.

EVERY FAN A GM:

The Boston Red Sox's Sultan of Statistical Analysis (DAN ACKMAN, June 20, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Since Mr. James was hired by Red Sox owner John Henry in 2002, the team has yet to win the division. It did, however, win the World Series in 2004, beating the Yankees in seven games to win the pennant. A year earlier, the Sox lost to the Yankees in seven games. Two years later they had fallen to third place in the American League East.

What accounts for this year's dominance? "We think we have a good organization, and we thought we had a good organization last August when we couldn't win a game to save our soul," Mr. James says. With "Moneyball," Mr. James's style of analysis has become associated with relatively poor teams. The Red Sox, however, are one of the richest.

"There is a certain backwardness to it, yes," he concedes. But he adds that Boston is "committed to the challenge to figuring out the best way to do things. Nobody in the organization is traditional."

That would include Mr. James, who started writing his Abstracts while working as a night watchman at a pork-and-beans factory in Lawrence, Kan. Even as his fame grew as a writer, Mr. James says he never imagined working in baseball management. Unlike Theo Epstein, who interned for major-league clubs in college and was hired as the Red Sox general manager at age 28, Mr. James says he was never the type to put together a résumé and go find a job. Even today he allows that "there are very good reasons why Theo is the GM and I am not."

Now age 57, Mr. James says he does better working in an organization than he suspected. Still, even after moving to Boston two years ago, he spends a lot of time alone. "A lot of my friends think that I don't like people. The reality is I do like people -- I just need time to myself to work. So I tend to turn off my cellphone," he says.

With the success of the Athletics and of "Moneyball," baseball analysts like Mr. James were given more credit for helping teams draft and trade players more intelligently. In 2006, Time magazine named Mr. James one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Inexplicably, Time dropped him from this year's list even as the Red Sox moved from third place to first. Go figure.

Mr. James is known for claiming that some statistics (such as runs batted in) are less important than was commonly believed, while others (like on-base percentage) are more important. Both are now conventional wisdom. Is there some wrongheadedness still in vogue? "I do have an answer, but I can't tell you what it is. . . . I do think we know at least some small things that not everybody in the world knows."

Even if the analytical tools he helped create are now widely employed, Mr. James says that just as some teams stay richer, others can stay smarter. "In reality, knowledge is a very dynamic universe -- and what is most valuable is not the body of knowledge, but the leading edge of it."

Mr. James does allow that "when a team has resources, there is a powerful tendency to solve problems by spending money. It is less attractive to experiment." The Yankees' recent signing of pitcher Roger Clemens for $28 million a season is "probably" an illustration of the idea, he says.

A QUARTET OF ONE:

Blair may become Middle East envoy, reports claim (Matthew Tempest, June 20, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

Downing Street tonight refused to comment on mounting speculation that Tony Blair would be offered the job of envoy to the Middle East after stepping down from power next week.

Al-Jazeera was tonight quoting sources claiming that top-level US officials had been in talks with Mr Blair about representing the so-called Quartet - the US, EU, Russia and UN - in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

WHERE'S JANET RENO WHEN YOU NEED HER?:

Browns narrowing law officers’ options (Nashua Telegraph, Jun. 20, 2007)

How long will federal law officials play Mr. Nice Guy and continue to wait for convicted tax evaders Ed and Elaine Brown to turn themselves in?

Anyone knowing the answer to that question hasn’t stepped forward to say so. Meanwhile, the Browns continue to bask in the spotlight, vowing that they won’t be taken alive.

And it’s all about money. Specifically, their refusal to pay federal income taxes on some $1.9 million they earned between 1996 and 2003. Now their resistance threatens to cost them everything.

As the Browns continue their defiant talk, it becomes clearer that they live in a fantasy world of their making. They stand tall only in their own mind. [...]

Steve Monier, a former police chief who is now U.S. marshal for New Hampshire, has been trying to coax the Browns to surrender.

This has been going on for weeks to no avail. He’s even allowing the Browns to receive visits, including one from Randy Weaver, a survivor of the Ruby Ridge massacre.

LOSING NEVER GETS OLD FOR THESE GUYS:

Clash Nears in the Senate on Legislation Helping Unions Organize (STEVEN GREENHOUSE, 6/20/07, NY Times)

Senate Democratic leaders moved Tuesday to force a vote on organized labor’s top legislative priority, a bill that would make it far easier to organize workers. But Republican leaders vowed to kill the measure, voicing confidence that they could defeat a motion cutting off debate and bringing it to a vote this week. [...]

Business groups have mounted a big fight against the bill, with one organization, the Center for Union Facts, spending $500,000 on newspaper and broadcast advertisements this week alone.

Though the bill has cleared the House, passage there was on a vote of only 241 to 185, far from veto-proof. And with Senate Democrats and the chamber’s two independents holding just 51 seats, well short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, Republicans and their business allies are predicting that that they can prevent even an up-or-down vote on the measure.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, filed a petition Tuesday night for a vote later in the week to prevent Republicans from blocking consideration of the bill. But Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said: “The cloture petition will not succeed, and the bill will be pulled. That will be the end of that for two years.”

THE RIGHT VS FEDERALISM:

Some Texans Say Border Fence Will Sever Routine (RALPH BLUMENTHAL, 6/20/07, NY Times)

Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president and professor of anthropology at the University of Texas branch in Brownsville, saw a slight problem in the route of a border fence that federal officials displayed at a community meeting earlier this month.

“Part of our university,” Dr. Zavaleta said, “would be on the Mexican side of the fence.”

What about traffic between classes, he wondered. “Would the students need to show a passport?”

He was not the only one who was startled. Local leaders throughout South Texas have been voicing puzzlement and alarm at the implications of the barrier, which Congress has authorized the Department of Homeland Security to construct along 370 miles of the United States-Mexico border, including 153 miles in Texas, by December 2008.

NICE LIPSTICK, PORKY:

Allez-y, Sarkozy (GEORGES de MENIL, June 20, 2007, NY Sun)

It is now clear that the French government will follow Mr. Sarkozy's presidential program to the letter. The program's flagship measure is the wholesale exemption of overtime hours from social security and income taxes. Many economists and some foreign observers are puzzled by the emphasis Mr. Sarkozy has placed on this expensive provision. Indeed, it might appear disproportionate to give higher priority to encouraging overtime than to stimulating employment.

But France is not a normal country. For 10 years, it has struggled with the costs of a mandatory 35-hour week — a ceiling that is now so embedded in the legislation regulating working hours that simple abrogation would lead to chaos. The alternative, a targeted tax holiday, constitutes a welcome break with the culture of "time off," and an encouragement to those who, as Mr. Sarkozy's campaign slogan put it, want to "work more in order to earn more."

The program's other measures are a series of tax cuts for the middle class, entrepreneurs, and the wealthy, which, though expensive, constitute a similarly welcome break with France's tradition of punitive taxation.

However, none of these measures goes to the heart of France's structural problems. The Gordian knot paralyzing initiative and blocking employment consists in the maze of regulations that stifle the labor market. French companies live under the constant threat of a surprise visit from the labor inspector to determine compliance with a thick book of arcane measures. Worse yet, the knowledge that some law or regulation covers every aspect of employment poisons the workplace and discourages attempts to resolve problems pragmatically. When both parties to a dispute know that they are likely to end in a labor court, neither has an incentive to compromise.

The law's most onerous provisions are those regulating the terms of employment contracts, for they condemn employers who decide to close a plant to a marathon of legal proceedings of uncertain duration and unpredictable outcome. This not only hampers restructuring, but also makes firms hesitant to hire and inhibits innovation.

LATE, BUT NOT TOO LATE:

Bush Weighs Reaching Out To ‘Brothers' (ELI LAKE, June 20, 2007, NY Sun)

The Bush administration is quietly weighing the prospect of reaching out to the party that founded modern political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Still in its early stages and below the radar, the current American deliberations and diplomacy with the organization, known in Arabic as Ikhwan, take on new significance in light of Hamas's successful coup in Gaza last week. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is widely reported to have helped create Hamas in 1982. [...]

These developments, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza, suggest that President Bush — who has been careful to distinguish the war on terror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his predecessors to accept the movement fighting for the merger of mosque and state in the Middle East.

Should Mr. Bush ask his diplomats to forge new channels to the Muslim Brotherhood it would also be a recognition of the gains their parties have made in elections in the last three years. In Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories, Islamist parties trounced their secular rivals. In part this was because these parties offered an uncorrupt alternative to the more secular parties in power, but some advocates inside the administration also say it reflects a tangible momentum for parties that seek to create Islamic republics. One State Department official yesterday said, "Our policy has to change from more democracy, fewer headscarves."

AND YET THE WEST THINKS IT CAN HELP FATAH...:

West chooses Fatah, but Palestinians don't: They prefer Hamas, which represents an alternative to Fatah's acceptance of the Israeli occupation. (Saree Makdisi, June 20, 2007, LA Times)

IN THE WEST, there's a huge sense of relief. The Hamas-led government that has been causing everyone so much trouble has been isolated in Gaza, and a new government has been appointed in the West Bank by the "moderate," peace-loving Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.

So why then do Palestinians not share in the relief? Well, for one thing, the old government had been democratically elected; now it has been dismissed out of hand by presidential fiat. There's also the fact that the new prime minister appointed by Abbas — Salam Fayyad — has the support of the West, but his election list won only 2% of the votes in the same election that swept Hamas to victory. Fayyad and Abbas have the support of Israel, but it is no secret that they lack the backing of their own people.

There is a reason the people threw out Abbas' Fatah party in last year's election. Palestinians see the leading Fatah politicians as unimaginative, self-serving and corrupt, satisfied with the emoluments of power.

OR, MORE ACCURATELY, ARRESTS LEAD TO SOCCER:

Football violence leads to 130 arrests (The Local, 20th June 2007)

Nearly 130 football supporters were arrested during the Stockholm derby match between arch-rivals Hammarby and Djurgården on Tuesday evening. Some 110 supporters were kept in cells overnight, suspected of rioting and vandalism.

NO VALUE ADDED:

Capitalism with Special Chinese Characteristics: The runaway train of China’s economy is a special case of what economists label “Dutch Disease” (Gustav Ranis, 19 June 2007, YaleGlobal)

The basic cause of these anomalies in a country that continues to call itself communist – and is currently engaged in an effort to enhance “social harmony” in the context of 10-percent-plus growth rates – is a particular type of Dutch Disease. The economic ailment acquired its name from the1960s natural-gas boom in the Netherlands and is generally defined as the impact of a raw-material export spurt, possibly along with related foreign-capital inflows, on strengthening the exchange rate.

Such an appreciation of the currency implies a shift away from labor-intensive export sectors that are becoming less competitive internationally and toward domestic non-traded goods, also enhancing inflationary pressures.

China has thus far resisted letting its exchange rate appreciate much – despite international pressure – and instead continues to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves resulting from her mounting trade surpluses. As a consequence, China has managed to postpone most of the negative impact of the garden-variety “Dutch Disease.”

But another version of that disease could be more relevant in China’s case, one defined as the massive inflow of foreign exchange, from whatever source, adversely affecting decision-making throughout the body politic. The Chinese version of this phenomenon results from the continuing large-scale export surpluses caused by massive labor-intensive exports, associated with the maintenance of an undervalued exchange rate, and accompanied by large-scale foreign direct investment flows as well as some speculative portfolio capital. As labor surpluses in the coastal provinces are gradually exhausted, these “vent for surplus” activities move into the interior, continuing to fuel the overall investment boom.

China’s cumulative export surpluses since the late 1980s have amounted to $386 billion and inflows of FDI to $994 billion. With foreign-exchange reserves well above the $1 trillion mark, the Chinese government finds itself unable to cool down the boom – investments currently still run at 40 percent of GDP – all of which has led to lower levels of efficiency, i.e., falling rates of return and rising industrial capital-output ratios.

With saving rates nearing 50 percent and consumption continuing to lag as families worry about the need to finance their own health care and pensions down the road, we witness Beijing’s inability to rein in local governments’ continuing investment binges.

Households have two choices: put their money into government banks which continue to lend to local bodies – regardless of what the central government’s monetary and fiscal authorities have to say on the subject – or chase stocks or real estate in highly volatile asset markets.

In other words, this version of Dutch Disease is not caused by a natural-resource bonanza but massive labor-intensive exports plus large-scale capital imports, which affect not the exchange rate but the decision-making process. With enough resources around to buy off any and all stakeholders, incentives to push for reforms or pressure for care in lending and rational decision-making are reduced. Foreign investors remain anxious to maintain a competitive foothold in a market that continues to promise large future returns, and domestic financial institutions at the center are not sufficiently mature to impose their will on local bodies. No one feels obliged to blow the whistle as long as the bonanza lasts.

LIKE AN HONEST RUDY:

Bloomberg quits GOP, stirs buzz: Move heightens speculation on White House run (Scott Helman, June 20, 2007, Boston Globe)
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York officially left the Republican Party yesterday and changed his voter registration to "unaffiliated," further stoking speculation that he will enter the already crowded 2008 presidential race as an independent.

Bloomberg, a longtime Democrat who switched to the GOP to run for mayor in 2001, insisted the move had nothing to do with preparing for a presidential campaign. But his sudden announcement, together with his recent travels and criticism of partisan politics in Washington, will only fuel theories that he has his eye on the White House. [...]

His positions on social issues -- he supports abortion rights and gun control -- made him a Republican anomaly.
Actually, they're what made him not a Republican in national politics.

BECAUSE MAN IS LAUGHABLE:

Bernard Manning and the tragedy of comedy: Sour. Self-pitying. Cowardly. These are the defining characteristics of the stand-up comedian, argues Alexei Sayle. How else can we explain the misanthropic tendencies of performers like Bernard Manning? ( Alexei Sayle, 20 June 2007, Independent)

It's an odd thing, stand-up comedy. You go to some bar or theatre or club you would never normally visit, sit with strangers, and watch another stranger try to make you laugh. One minute you're going about your business. The next you're falling about.

Being a punter at a stand-up gig is nothing like going to a rock concert, or a violin recital, or a play, all of which can drag any and every type of emotion from us. Comedy is alone in focusing on one physiological reaction: laughs.

But how do stand-ups make us laugh? Dylan Moran, a comedian who spends more time thinking about these matters than most, has a theory. "If someone has just come back from holiday," he explains, "and they show you some photographs, and say it was all wonderful, and that the sun wasn't too hot, you're bored out of your mind. Nothing could be more boring than other people's happiness. But if they tell you the hotel was crap, how the toilets leaked, how they all got sick - it's a wonderful story. Something bad will have happened to you in the past, but it didn't happen this time. It happened to them. And you can enjoy it."

Or, as Mel Brooks once said: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." For whatever reason - our maliciousness; our latent survival instincts; our terror of death - the misfortune of others is fecund comedic material. For this reason, most stand-up is licensed schadenfreude.

NOT QUITE FULL...YET...:

Account Balance: Hamas's victory actually presents an opportunity for Israel. (Gadi Taub, 6/19/07, TNR Online)

For the second time in less than two years, Hamas may be experiencing too much success for its own good. Hamas did well as an opposition group, maintaining the purity of its extreme positions while steering clear of political accountability. Hamas leaders were well aware of this and avoided taking part in government for a long time.

Their decision, therefore, to run for the Palestinian Authority elections last year and evolve into an institutionalized opposition party was not taken lightly. Then came the sweeping success which took it by surprise. Not only did Hamas become an official party, it found itself heading the government. This put Hamas in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand it remained faithful to its ideology and continued its refusal to abide by the terms to which Israel and the Quartet insisted: acknowledging Israel's right to exist, accepting the agreements the PLO signed with Israel, and renouncing terrorism. But, on the other hand, its sweeping electoral victory made it accountable in the eyes of its own people for whatever consequence this uncompromising stance would bring.

The solution to this conundrum was to form a coalition government with Fatah, in which Fatah stood for compromise, Hamas for extremism. Fatah was supposed to relieve international and Israeli pressure, and Hamas to somehow continue the Holy War. But what worked under Yassir Arafat, when Hamas was given much leeway as an underground organization, became more difficult to manage with Hamas heading a government. The result was a series of short-term, fragile ceasefires, which periodically broke down, along with a steady deterioration in the well-being of Gaza's citizens. The coalition government actually put Hamas and Fatah on a collision course. It was an unworkable partnership: Hamas didn't let Fatah deliver on its promises to Israel, and Fatah couldn't restrain Hamas's attacks. Policy--if that is the word for it--was not so much a compromise between the two as it was a random median of two mutually exclusive strategies. It was only a matter of time until clashes between the two factions turned into civil war.

That civil war has now given Hamas its second too-spectacular success. It did not simply subdue Fatah in Gaza, it annihilated it. But, as a result, Hamas is now being pushed into the position of full accountability.

NO ONE'S EVER ACCUSED THE LEFT OF GRASPING BASIC ECONOMICS, BUT...

US Congress set to battle over gas-price 'gouging': The Senate and House make a controversial move to control alleged profiteering. (Peter Grier, 6/20/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

Many Democrats think price gouging should be a federal crime. They've included a provision in the energy bill that would make it illegal to reap "excessive" profits at the pump in times of a national energy emergency.
...you'd think even they could grasp that the more gouging the less gas will be consumed. If anything, they should be adding to the gouge via taxes. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're just reacting to the fact that W and Dick Cheney come from the oil biz.

JUST ANOTHER STALL TACTIC:

'West Bank First': It Won't Work (Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, June 19, 2007, Washington Post)

Having embraced one illusion -- that it could help isolate and defeat Hamas -- the Bush administration is dangerously close to embracing another: Gaza is dead, long live the West Bank. This approach appears compelling. Flood the West Bank with money, boost Fatah security forces and create a meaningful negotiating process. The Palestinian people, drawn to a recovering West Bank and repelled by the nightmare of an impoverished Gaza, will rally around the more pragmatic of the Palestinians.

The theory is a few years late and several steps removed from reality. If the United States wanted to help President Mahmoud Abbas, the time to do so was in 2005, when he won office in a landslide, emerged as the Palestinians' uncontested leader and was in a position to sell difficult compromises to his people. Today, Abbas is challenged by far more Palestinians and is far less capable of securing a consensus on any important decision.

But the more fundamental problem with this theory is its lack of grounding. It is premised on the notion that Fatah controls the West Bank. Yet the West Bank is not Gaza in reverse. Unlike in Gaza, Israel's West Bank presence is overwhelming and, unlike Hamas, Fatah has ceased to exist as an ideologically or organizationally coherent movement.

EASILY DIVISIBLE:

Memo on Hillary stupid and caustic: Obama (Indian Express, June 19, 2007)

Facing flak over his campaign's paper criticising his party rival Hillary Clinton's links with Indian-Americans, Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama has blamed lower-level officials in his team for the document and described it as "stupid and caustic". [...]

The memo, which was passed on friendly political correspondents to quote from it without attribution to the campaign, had implied that Clintons haves raised tens of thousands of dollars from American Indians and that is why they are supporting outsourcing without caring for lost American jobs.

The paper also picked up a remark of Hillary Clinton to imply that her investments in India made her fit to fight elections in India. It was referring to the remark made by Hillary Clinton to an Indian-American audience in March that "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily."

OFF AND RUNNING:

Who Needs David Caruso? (BRENDAN BERNHARD, June 19, 2007, NY Sun)

Critics seem almost obliged to go gaga about how good Kyra Sedgwick is at playing a whip-smart police chief and CIA-trained interrogator who can detect a lie before it's even left a suspect's mouth.

But what I really like about TNT's "The Closer" is not its plots or climactic interrogation scenes, riveting as these often are, but the quirky-sexy Ms. Sedgwick herself — the way she's always running rings around her hapless male boss, Assistant Police Chief Will Pope (J.K. Simmons), for instance, not to mention her principal rival, Commander Taylor (Robert Gossett). Or how she manages to cajole, boss, charm, and befuddle all the men under her command into doing whatever she wants them to do, not excluding (by and large) her maximally patient boyfriend, FBI agent Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney). [...]

There were also two subplots, both of which were like dessert in comparison with the main course. The first involved departmental budget cuts, leading to the worrying possibility that the oldest member of Brenda's squad, the crusty-but-endearing Detective Lieutenant Provenza (G.W. Bailey), might have to retire, but the main point was that it allowed us to enjoy watching Brenda flout every order Pope gave her by spending even more of the department's money than she usually does.

My favorite moment in the episode was when Pope, insisting that Brenda go ahead with the budget cuts, said, "Consider, just for a moment, a universe in which you work for me, and in which what I need is important too." Nice try. Brenda is not what you'd call a team player, a phrase she'd probably regard as a euphemism for agreeing to go along with the prevailing mediocrity in a given group. Her idea of team play is to do her best for the team by doing her best as an individual. There's a lot to be said for that approach, but it's amazing how many people can't quite wrap it around their team-playing skulls.

The second subplot was about Brenda's ongoing battle with boyfriend Fritz, who wants them to get a bigger house so that he can finally move his stuff out of the garage. "Don't you realize I'm working on an extremely important murder case?" Brenda asked him plaintively after he reminded her that this was the weekend they'd agreed to go house hunting together. "You're always working on an ‘extremely important' murder case," Fritz replied sarcastically, treating her to a marvelously level staredown. Somehow, Fritz manages to cater to practically all of Brenda's whims while combining understated machismo with the forbearance of a yogi.

CO-EQUALLY THUMBED NOSES:

'Signing Statements' Study Finds Administration Has Ignored Laws (Jonathan Weisman, 6/18/07, Washington Post)

For the first time, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office -- Congress's investigative arm -- tried to ascertain whether the administration has made good on such declarations of presidential power. In appropriations acts for fiscal 2006, GAO investigators found 160 separate provisions that Bush had objected to in signing statements. They then chose 19 to follow.

Of those 19 provisions, six -- nearly a third -- were not carried out according to law. Ten were executed by the executive branch. On three others, conditions did not require an executive branch response.

The instances of noncompliance were not as dramatic as some of the signing statements that have caused the most stir, such as Bush's suggestion that he was not bound by a ban on torture in U.S. military detention facilities. But congressional aides said they were significant.

For example, Congress directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to relocate its checkpoints around Tucson every seven days to improve efforts to combat illegal immigration. But the agency took the law as an "advisory provision" that was "not always consistent with CBP's mission requirements." Instead, the agency periodically shut down its checkpoints for short periods of time, believing that would comply with congressional demands.

Frustrated by the Pentagon's broad budget submissions for the "global war on terrorism," Congress demanded in its 2006 military spending law that the Defense Department break down its 2007 budget request to show the detailed costs of global military operations, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The department ignored the order. While the Pentagon did break out the costs of operations in the Balkans and at Guantanamo Bay, it did not detail expenditures in other operations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also ignored Congress's demand that it submit an expenditure plan for housing assistance and alternatives to the approaches that failed after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA told the GAO that it does not normally produce such plans.

In all those instances, presidential signing statements had asserted that congressional demands were encroaching on Bush's prerogatives to control executive branch employees as he sees fit and to receive effective services from his employees. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Congress should not be surprised that the administration carried out the recommendations of the signing statements, although he cautioned that he could not know whether the agencies took action because of the statements.

"The signing statements assert the president's understanding of how the law should be executed, pursuant to his understanding of the Constitution, and that's the way we deal with them," Fratto said.

But Democratic lawmakers jumped on what they see as the actions of an imperial presidency with little respect for the law or the legislative branch.

"The administration is thumbing its nose at the law," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who requested the GAO study and legal opinion along with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.).

"This GAO opinion underscores the fact that the Bush White House is constantly grabbing for more power, seeking to drive the people's branch of government to the sidelines," Byrd said in a joint statement with Conyers.

HEY, HARRY HAS A PULSE:

Sen. Reid fast-tracks revived immigration bill: Proposal boosts funding by $4.4 billion for border security and workplace enforcement, a Bush-backed provision (Maura Reynolds, June 19, 2007, LA Times)

The new version cleans up the legislation, which had been altered so much in the last year that it had become legislatively unwieldy. It includes a provision, agreed to in principle last week by Senate leaders with the support of President Bush, that would boost funding for border security and workplace enforcement by $4.4 billion.

"Republican obstructionists are going to have a very simple decision to make later on this week," said Jim Manley, Reid's staff director. "Are they going to stand for efforts to provide increased funding for border security along with comprehensive immigration reform? Or are they going to continue to block one of the top priorities of the president?"

The proposal announced Monday will incorporate the substance of about two dozen amendments adopted when the Senate debated the bill for two weeks this year. The core of the legislation has become known as the "grand bargain." Under the plan, opponents agreed to provide many illegal immigrants now in the United States a path to citizenship in return for a restructuring of the immigration system to give greater weight to education and job skills, rather than family ties. [...]

To curb opponents' chances of blocking the bill, Reid used a Senate procedure known as Rule 14 to reintroduce and bring the measure immediately to the floor for debate without going through a committee.

Aides said the majority leader was also considering introducing the last two dozen or so amendments in a block, using a controversial maneuver to prevent others from being offered.

"This is a very heavy-handed tactic by the leader that is cutting a large number of senators out of the process, and there is nothing we can do to stop it," complained a senior aide to one of the bill's GOP opponents, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about inter-party disputes.

AS BROWN WISELY GETS TO HIS RIGHT:

EU reform chaos as Blair and Brown disagree (Toby Helm and Bruno Waterfield, 19/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The bitter row over government tactics flared after Geoff Hoon, the Europe minister, said at the weekend that a referendum may be needed if EU leaders insist on a deal that is unsatisfactory to Britain.

He received strong support from Mr Brown's camp, which saw the threat of a referendum - which ministers believe would be lost - as a good negotiating ploy to focus the minds of other EU leaders to accept Britain's demands.

Both Downing Street and officials representing Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, reacted furiously, believing Mr Hoon was suggesting that Mr Blair and Mrs Beckett may meekly sell out British interests in a cowardly late-night deal at the summit.

OF COURSE IT'S UNCONSCIOUS:

Internal report attacks BBC's liberal consensus (Owen Gibson, June 19, 2007, The Guardian)

The BBC yesterday published a 12-point plan designed to puncture what critics have called a tendency to liberal "groupthink" and guard against its schedules becoming hijacked by single-issue campaigners. [...]

The report said that while there was no evidence of conscious bias at the BBC, "individuals exercise on occasion a largely unconscious self-censorship out of a misguided attempt to be 'correct' in their thinking".

JUST BECAUSE WE LIKE THE GUYS BETTER AND THEY HAVE COOL TOYS...:

The Americans Have Landed: A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military's new frontier outpost. (Thomas P.M. Barnett, July 2007, Esquire)

Ethiopia's Meles regime, which American Central Command officers describe as "xenophobic to the core," was going into Somalia last December whether the Americans approved or not. The recently installed Somali Council of Islamic Courts, with its loose talk of getting back another star point in its flag (otherwise known as Ethiopia's Ogaden region), simply had to go. As it happened, the Americans, who had been quietly training the Ethiopian troops for years, did approve.

In fact, Centcom was very eager for the operation. Most press leaks made it sound like our main targets were a trio of Al Qaeda senior operatives responsible for bombing American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania a decade ago. But the real story is one of pure opportunism, according to a knowledgeable source within the headquarters: "There were three thousand foreign fighters in there. Honestly, nobody had any idea just how many there really were. But we wanted to get them all."

When the invading Ethiopians quickly enjoyed unexpected success, Centcom's plan became elegantly simple: Let the blitzkrieging Ethiopian army drive the CIC, along with its foreign fighters and Al Qaeda operatives, south out of Mogadishu and toward the Kenyan border, where Kenyan troops would help trap them on the coast. "We begged the Kenyans to get to the border as fast as possible," the Centcom source says, "because the targets were so confused, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off."

Once boxed in by the sea and the Kenyans, the killing zone was set and America's first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat "until no more bad guys," as one officer put it.

"We could have solved all of East Africa in less than eight weeks," says the Centcom source, who was involved in the planning. Central Command was extremely wary of being portrayed in the media as Ethiopia's puppet master. In fact, its senior leaders wanted to keep America's participation entirely secret. The goal was for Ethiopia to get all the credit, further bolstering America's controversial but burgeoning military ties with Meles Zenawi's increasingly authoritarian regime. Proud Kenya, still visibly nervous from the 1998 embassy bombing, would have been happy with a very quiet thank-you.

It was a good plan. And it was leaked to the press almost as soon as it started.

Those involved in the Central Command operation suspected two sources: 1) somebody in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who couldn't wait to trumpet their success to bitter personal rivals in the State Department, or 2) a dime dropper from our embassy in Kenya who simply couldn't stand the notion that the Pentagon had once again suckered State into a secret war.

The first New York Times piece in early January broke the story of the initial AC-130 bombardment, incorrectly identifying a U.S. military base in Djibouti as the launching point. That leak just let the cat out of the bag, tipping off the main target, a senior CIC leader named Aden Hashi Ayro, who, according to Centcom intelligence, had been completely fooled up to that point, thinking the Ethiopians had somehow gotten the jump on him. Ayro survived his injuries, and he's now back in action in Mogadishu and, by all accounts, mad as hell at both the Ethiopians and the Americans.

KISSING THE RING:

Fred Thompson seeks Thatcher's blessing (Mike Allen, Jun 18, 2007, Politico)

Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator who is expected to announce next month he is running for president, flew to London on Monday to meet Margaret Thatcher and deliver a foreign policy speech, his advisers tell The Politico.

Thompson's advisers aim to use the London events to bolster his foreign policy credentials and elevate him above the increasingly contentious fray of the GOP race.

On Wednesday, he will pose for photos with Thatcher, which his advisers hope will enhance his support among devotees of former President Ronald Reagan.

THE BARGHOUTI STRATEGY:

Frame Work (Dennis Ross, 6/18/07, TNR Online)

The United States should work with all the other donors to the Palestinians, and especially the Saudis and the Gulf states, to invest in those younger Fatah members who are prepared to organize themselves at the grassroots level and re-brand Fatah as a clean organization responsive to the needs of the Palestinian public. This is where the social, economic, and political competition will be won with Hamas, if it is to be won, particularly in the West Bank where Fatah still has the upper hand.

Secretary Rice's focus, unfortunately, is elsewhere. To be fair, her interest in a political horizon is at least partly shaped by her assessment that Fatah can be most helped by showing that there is a political way to end Israeli occupation and that Fatah can deliver it while Hamas cannot. She has a point. If the Palestinian public believes that Fatah offers a pathway to achieving their national aspirations and Hamas does not, Fatah would have an advantage. But when Fatah is perceived as corrupt and non-responsive to the public and unable to improve the day-to-day realities, the Palestinian public also tends to question whether Fatah is capable of delivering anything. A political horizon that is disconnected from the current realities that Palestinians are experiencing will lack credibility.

THE AUDACITY OF OPPO:

To Avoid Conflicts, Clintons Liquidate Holdings (PATRICK HEALY, 6/15/07, NY Times)

The disclosure forms have new details about Mr. Clinton’s investments and advisory role with funds in the Yucaipa Companies, a privately held California equity firm controlled by Ron Burkle, one of Mr. Clinton’s best friends and one of Mrs. Clinton’s top fund-raisers.

Mr. Clinton has assets of $100,001 to $250,000 in one Yucaipa investment, Garrard Worldwide Holdings Inc., a retail jeweler with a flagship store in London. He has an additional $15,001 to $50,000 in Brazilian Renewable Energy Company Ltd., which produces sugar-cane-based ethanol in Brazil.

Mr. Clinton also has $15,001 to $50,000 in Easy Bill Ltd., an India-based company that works on electronic transactions and business services for Indians.

Shortly after the Clinton campaign released the financial information, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, circulated to news organizations — on what it demanded be a not-for-attribution-basis — a scathing analysis. It called Mrs. Clinton “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” in its headline. The document referred to the investment in India and Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising efforts among Indian-Americans. The analysis also highlighted the acceptance by Mr. Clinton of $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company the Obama campaign said has moved American jobs to India.

A copy of the document was obtained by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which provided it to The New York Times. The Clinton campaign has long been frustrated by the effort by Mr. Obama to present his campaign as above the kind of attack politics that Mr. Obama and his aides say has led to widespread disillusionment with politics by many Americans.

Asked about the document, Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said: “We did give reporters a series of comments she made on the record and other things that are publicly available to anyone who has access to the Internet. I don’t see why anyone would take umbrage with that.”

Asked why the Obama campaign had initially insisted that it not be connected to the document, Mr. Burton replied, “I’m going to leave my comment at that.”

FINALLY, SOMETHING USEFUL, BUT...:

Democrats Press Plan to Channel Billions in Oil Subsidies to Renewable Fuels (EDMUND L. ANDREWS, 6/18/07, NY Times)

Senate Democrats are seeking a major reversal of energy tax policies that would take billions of dollars in tax breaks and other benefits from the oil industry to underwrite renewable fuels.

The tax increases would reverse incentives passed as recently as three years ago to increase domestic exploration and production of oil and gas. The change reflects a shift from the Republican focus on expanding oil production to the Democratic concern about reducing global warming.

YOU DON'T SUPPOSE THEY'VE NOTICED...:

A Democrat in '08! But not that one: Polls show voters support the party, but individual candidates -- particularly Clinton -- are another story. (Michael Finnegan, June 17, 2007, LA Times)

It is a paradox of the 2008 presidential race. By a wide margin, several polls show, voters want a Democrat to win — yet when offered head-to-head contests of leading announced candidates, many switch allegiance to the Republican.

AT THE COCKTAIL PARTIES I GO TO, INFANTICIDE IS FAMOUS!:

Five to Four (Jeffrey Toobin, June 25, 2007, The New Yorker)

Moving with great swiftness, by the stately standards of the Court, Roberts, Alito, and their allies have already made progress on that agenda. In Alito’s first major opinion as a justice, earlier this year, he sharply restricted the ability of victims of employment discrimination to file lawsuits. The Court said that plaintiffs in such cases must bring their suits within a hundred and eighty days of, say, an unfair raise. But, because it generally takes employees longer than that to establish that they have been cheated, the effect of the ruling will be to foreclose many lawsuits. In a similar vein, the Court upheld a death sentence in Washington by lessening the scrutiny applied to jury selection in such cases. Last week, the justices rejected an appeal by a prisoner who had filed his case before a deadline set by a federal district judge. Because the judge had misread the law and given the prisoner too much time—three extra days—the Court said that the case had to be thrown out.

Most notoriously, the Court, for the first time in its history, upheld a categorical ban on an abortion procedure.

GREAT SOCIETY, CONTINENTAL VERSION:

Sour and in Decline (Suzanne Fields, 6/18/07, Real Clear Politics)

In "The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent," Walter Laqueur describes how Europe's promise after World War II, its amazing recovery through the Marshall Plan, led to the belief that its "soft power" would become a unifying force and give birth to common institutions. "The recovery was not just economic," he writes. "Not only were European living standards higher than ever before, but also welfare states were established, providing essential health and other services and free education. No one any longer had to fear disease, old age and unemployment." Europe was not Utopia, but Europeans believed in their future.

The optimism did not last long. Those who wrought the miracle were Europeans -- Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Yugoslavs. The immigrants drawn here by the miracle, numbering in the millions, came from the Middle East and Africa. They didn't want to return to their countries of origin, nor did they want to adjust to the customs of their adopted homeland. Assimilation was something to avoid. Attitudes didn't change with the following generation. While unassimilated immigrant birthrates soar, the Europeans soon failed even to replace themselves.

Demography accelerates intellectual and economic decline, and the "quality of life" founders. The economy fails to sustain the growth that once inspired robust confidence. Unemployment rises along with government payments to the unemployed. Students stay in college for as long as they can find a reason for not getting a job; the student population grows to 10 times the size in earlier generations. Welfare and medical costs soar. The ambitious individualism of American capitalism is scorned as a model. The Europeans love their 35-hour workweek and their five-week vacations, and there's no recognition of the hard fact that making money to pay for the good life requires skill, ambition and competition.

FEAR OF FRANCHISE:

The people of Palestine must finally be allowed to determine their own fate: The drivers of violence in Gaza are clearly external. When all Palestinians can vote for sovereign rule, peace will be within reach (Karma Nabulsi, June 18, 2007, The Guardian)

How did we get here? The institutions created in occupied Palestine in the 1990s were shaped to bring us to this very point of collapse. The Palestinian Authority, created through negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993, was not meant to last more than five years - just until the institutions of an independent state were built. Instead, its capacities were frozen and it was co-opted into performing the role of a security agency for the Israelis, who were still occupying Palestine by military force, and serving as a disbursement agency for the US and EU's funding of that occupation. The PA had not attained a single one of the freedoms it was meant to provide, including the most important one, the political liberty of a self-determining sovereign body.

Why did we get here? Once the exact nature of its purpose emerged, the Palestinians began to resist this form of external control. Israel then invaded the West Bank cities again and put President Yasser Arafat's compound under a two-year siege, which ended with his death. Under those conditions of siege the international "reform" process created a new institution of a prime minister's office and attempted to unify the security apparatus under it, rather than that of the president, whom they could no longer control. Mahmoud Abbas was the first prime minister, and the Israeli- and US-backed Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, was appointed head of security. After the death of Arafat, Abbas was nominated to the leadership of the PLO, and directly elected as the president of the PA.

Arafat had followed the strategy of all successful liberation movements: a combination of resistance and negotiation until the conclusion of a comprehensive peace treaty. Abbas's strategy was of an entirely different order: no resistance in any form and a complete reliance on the good faith of the Israelis. After a year of achieving nothing - indeed Ariel Sharon refused to negotiate with him and Israeli colonisation was intensified - the Palestinian people's support for this humiliating policy of submission wore thin. Hamas, polling about 20% in previous years, suddenly won 43% of the vote in 2006.

This popular reaction was a response to the failure of Abbas's strategy as much as the failure of Fatah to present any plausible national programme whatsoever. The Palestinians thus sought representation that would at least reflect their condition of occupation and dispossession. Although the elections were recognised as free and fair, the US and Britain immediately took the lead in applying sanctions against the Hamas government, denying aid - which was only needed in the first place because the occupation had destroyed the economy - and refusing to deal with it until it accepted what had become, under these new circumstances, impossible "conditions".

The US administration continued to treat Fatah as if it had won the election rather than lost it - funding, arming, and directly encouraging agents within it to reverse the outcome of that democratic election by force.

MORE:
Palestine between delusion and destruction (Rami G. Khouri, 6/16/07, Daily Star)

Even in Abbas' moment of utter failure and complete humiliation - his presidential compound occupied, his guards dispersed, his government non-existent, his orders meaningless, his people sanctioned and starved - this quintessential Arab moderate found himself being defined in public by the US secretary of state primarily in terms of his willingness to negotiate peace with Israel. Nevertheless, Abbas soldiers on, somewhat heroic and moving at one level, but overall a tragic and hapless figure whose ineptitude is matched by his irrelevance - except in the eyes of the US government that uses him as a prop for its diplomatic games in Palestine. Even the Israelis long ago gave up on Abbas and his sclerotic Fatah movement, which has spawned the same sort of local militias and militant gangs that plague many other dysfunctional Arab countries.

The first lesson of this Palestinian catastrophe involves the Palestinians themselves, who must endure a fate that reflects the quality of their own leadership. Fatah dominated the Palestinian national movement since its inception over 40 years ago and forged a unified national movement, with realistic diplomatic goals later based on a two-state solution that garnered great international support. All this was systematically wasted and negated in the past decade. Gaza looks like the ravaged Somali capital, Mogadishu, because its political turmoil is slowly mirroring the Somali legacy of a disintegrating state replaced by feuding warlords.

Hamas shares some of the blame for this also, but much less than Fatah, because Hamas has only shared power for just over a year, and then only barely because of the international financial boycott. We don't know if Hamas will do a better job than Fatah, because it has not had the time to prove itself. Perhaps we will find out in the months ahead.

WHAT? NO BROILED ELDERLY THIS SUMMER?:

Election cements control by Sarkozy (Elaine Sciolino, June 17, 2007, NY Times)

[T]he election was the first time in 29 years that a governing party has retained its majority in the lower house of parliament.

The victory by the "blue wave," as the political power of the right has been called, gives Sarkozy a mandate to push through his ambitious program to cut taxes, reinvigorate the economy, strip some labor protections, slash unemployment, impose curbs on immigration and make France more competitive globally.

In his one month since assuming office, Sarkozy has proved he intends to be both a nonstop and an unstoppable president. At home, he has shown signs of wanting to expand the power of the presidency, usurping some of the functions that traditionally have been carried out by the prime minister.

He has ordered a special summer session of the new Parliament (when much of the country is on vacation and not inclined to protest in the streets) to immediately consider his first set of bills on taxes, labor rules, universities, immigration and crime.

GET READY:

Bluegrass For The Masses: The Road Reveals The Faces Of The Packway Handle Band (David Eduardo, May 23, 2007, Flagpole)

A quick survey of those in attendance and we find a rather conservative collection of personalities. Given the choice, they may have passed on the chance to see Packway perform at The Mission or Legion Field, or honestly any place that wasn’t as simultaneously historic and sterile as The Crimson Moon. These are God-fearing folks, which begs another question: with an album like 2005’s (Sinner) You Better Get Ready, which features a slew of inspirational gospel tunes, can it be presumed (or perhaps, to a lesser degree, argued) the group represents the old guard of players performing on the less than secular tip?

Not so fast, flat-picker. While there's no question where Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder is on Sundays, there are plenty of questions and dashes of mystery, intrigue and progressive thinking in this Packway camp. Again, thankfully so.

Without belittling the merits of faith and piety, Packway performs with tongues that are firmly yet playfully placed in cheek. Listen to their earnest and exalting interpretation of that sophomore album’s title track and then seek out the delightful “Satan’s in Outer Space,” and you’ll understand and agree immediately - it doesn’t matter how you feel about something if you can aggrandize it with such skilled (yet humble) aplomb.

If they aren’t exactly jamgrass, grungegrass or old-guard traditionalists, then where, as is our journalistic duty, can we pigeonhole them? How's the following if/then statement: If you like Chatham County Line and/or The Avett Brothers, then you should catch this perpetually touring five-piece for a trad-absurdist experience delivered from exceptionally seasoned youths.

Download "Wade In The Water" (mp3)
from "(Sinner) You Better Get Ready"
by The Packway Handle Band
Busboat Music

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Stream from Rhapsody

MORE:
-OFFICIAL BAND SITE: The Packway Handle Band
-MYSPACE: The Packway Handle Band
-Wikipedia: The Packway Handle Band

WE DON'T NEED TO GET CLOSER:

The lowdown on new seasons for popular TV (Florangela Davila, 6/17/07, Seattle Times)

The small screen's sweet 'n' sly Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson returns for a third season of "The Closer" (9 p.m. Mondays on TNT). And anybody who's been a fan knows Kyra Sedgwick, who plays the crafty police interrogator, applauded loudly when she (deservedly) nabbed the Golden Globe earlier this year.

But let's hope this new season finally delves into the Brenda Leigh-and-Fritz relationship. I mean, how patient and accommodating can this guy (Jon Tenney) possibly be?

N.B.: Starting at 1AM tonight they're running a marathon of all the prior episodes--set your Tivo

EMPTY THE STAGE:

The Wrong Way to Challenge China (Jim Hoagland, June 17, 2007, Washington Post)

Some countries host the Olympics as a coming out on the world stage. Economically resurgent Japan used the Tokyo Games of 1964 in such a way. So did South Korea in 1988. China as usual is different. The Middle Kingdom will host the 2008 Olympics to bring the world onto the Chinese stage.

For the ruling Communist Party, all that matters is how the Games and the international prestige they can bring to their organizers will play with China's 1.3 billion people. Other nations should keep that difference in mind as they figure out how to deal with China in the run-up to the August 2008 Games. It is not an easy call.

A FAITH SO FAR:

Richard Rorty’s legacy (Roger Scruton, 2007-06-12, OpenDemocracy)

Rorty began his career as an exponent of the analytical philosophy which was, and to a great extent remains, the principal school in the Anglophone academy. His early papers on subjectivity, consciousness and the first-person case were rightly admired and, in the small way which is the way of real advances, were taken up and added to by other writers. At a certain point, however, Rorty suffered a conversion experience, rebelling against analytical philosophy not, primarily, because of its finicky irrelevancies, but because of its entirely erroneous vision - as Rorty saw it - of the nature of human thinking, and of the relation between thought and the world.

The result was Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), a schizophrenic book, the first half of which repackaged Rorty's work as an analytic philosopher of mind, the second half of which argued that there is no such thing as an analytic philosophy of mind, since philosophy does not hold a mirror up to nature, but moves forward with the logic of history, constantly seeking new conceptions for which there is no standard outside philosophy itself. His painstaking refutation of the Cartesian theory of the mind in his early papers was thereby eclipsed by a far from painstaking dismissal of Descartes and all who thought like him. Such thinkers, according to Rorty, make the mistake of believing that a God's eye perspective on the world is attainable and that it is the task of philosophy to ascend to it.

Rorty tried to make sense of his new position by espousing a version of "pragmatism" - the school associated with CS Peirce, William James and John Dewey, which holds that the concept of truth is to be understood through that of utility. Pragmatism is controversial, but its more recent followers have, on the whole, managed to avoid its more paradoxical implications - such as that the core doctrines of feminism must be true since it is useful (at least in an American university) to assent to them, but that they must certainly be false, given the disaster that would come from espousing them in rural Iran.

It is uncertain to what extent Rorty succeeded in escaping that kind of paradox. For, unlike fellow pragmatists like CI Lewis or WV Quine, he adopted pragmatism as a revisionary theory, one that changes the aspect of the world, and opens the way to moral, social and political possibilities that have been blocked by the rigid truth-directedness of traditional philosophical thought. In a series of papers, therefore, Rorty experimented with highly politicised applications of the pragmatist idea, arguing that "pragmatists view truth as... what is good for us to believe. So they do not need an account of a relation between beliefs and objects called ‘correspondence', nor an account of human cognitive abilities which ensures that our species is capable of entering into that relation. They see the gap between truth and justification not as something to be bridged, but simply as the gap between the actual good and the possible better. From a pragmatist point of view, to say that what is rational for us now to believe may not be true, is simply to say that somebody may come up with a better idea..." (Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, 1991).

That quotation would prompt a quick response from any philosopher suspicious of the pragmatist tendency, namely: "When is one idea better than another? When it is more useful? Or when it is more true? Are we not going round in a circle here?"

MORE:
-TRIBUTE: End Point: Richard Rorty's blasé liberalism. (Damon Linker, 6/12/07, New Republic)

Richard Rorty, who died last Friday at the age of 75, was arguably the most influential American philosopher of the past 30 years. That is not to say, however, that he significantly influenced the ideas and intellectual habits of American professors of philosophy. On the contrary, Rorty, who taught comparative literature at Stanford University during the final decade of his life, was treated as a pariah by professional philosophers. And who could blame them? Rorty's notoriety derived in large part from his claim that philosophy as it is practiced by professional philosophers--as the pursuit of timeless truth about the objective world--is futile. No one likes to be told that he has devoted his life and career to an illusion, least of all a philosopher devoted to dispelling the illusions of others.

But skepticism about Rorty's skepticism was not merely the product of professional pride. For anyone familiar with the drama of continental European (and especially German) philosophy during the past two centuries, Rorty's thought appeared to be profoundly derivative. Rorty recapitulated the ideas of numerous philosophers, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida--all of whom believed that the effort to acquire absolute knowledge of the whole of reality had reached an endpoint in our time.

The philosophers (or rather, the anti-philosophers) in this tradition also tended to treat the terminus of philosophy as an epochal event. Nietzsche and Heidegger, in particular, believed that the demise of philosophy signaled the immanent collapse of the intellectual and cultural foundations of Western civilization, which they heralded with a mixture of dread and elation. The West, they insisted, was on the brink of a millennial shift to a new dispensation beyond Judeo-Christianity, beyond modernity, beyond rationality, beyond science, beyond good and evil. It was impossible to anticipate precisely what this new world would look like. All we could know is that it would differ as profoundly from what came before as the rationalistic world of Plato and Aristotle differed from the pre-philosophic world of Homeric myth.

Here Rorty broke decisively with his continental-European precursors. Dismissing their eschatological hopes with shrug of the shoulders, Rorty insisted that the Western philosophical tradition terminates not in the advent of a radically new world but rather in a world precisely like our own. Once human beings give up their quest to find a foundation for their political views in nature, reason, or theology--the quest for capital-T Truth--they will finally begin to value whatever is useful, whatever works, whatever enables them to live in a state of equality, tolerance, and peace. In other words, the end of philosophy culminates in the universal affirmation of pragmatic American liberalism.

Rorty was also, in the words of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "an anti-philosopher's philosopher." [...]

He outraged many philosophers, too, when he declared, not always gently, that it was a waste of time to ask the old questions about how we know what we think we know. They thought he contradicted himself, betraying his early rigor.

Here, he stood squarely in the heretical line of his great 19th and 20th century predecessors, Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, but with a decidedly American accent and earthiness. He was, like them, a corrupter of youth and age alike, giving many intellectuals (myself included) a swift kick out of our dogmatic slumbers. In his ability to win the respect of those he provoked, he heeded Blake's edict: "Opposition is true Friendship." On hearing of his death, a former student at the University of Virginia went online to comment: "He was so accessible and stimulating, it almost felt like we were at a university."

His personal grace and generosity did nothing to weaken his influence. In the '90s and afterward, Rorty did more than anyone else in the academy to articulate a liberal and social-democratic politics that was at once passionate, intellectually respectable, and unimpressed by radical gestures. Though an early importer of theorists like Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger, he chopped his way out from the underbrush of what came to be called Theory (with a very capital T) by rendering unto politics what politics was due -- straightforwardness.

Talk about a straight-talk express: In "Achieving Our Country," Rorty savaged the academic left for letting its rancor and fanciness get the better of it. "We now have, among many American students and teachers, a spectatorial, disgusted, mocking Left rather than a Left which dreams of achieving our country," he wrote there.

By "achieving our country" -- a phrase from James Baldwin -- he meant fulfilling its small-d democratic potential by reviving a "reformist left," exemplified in the New Deal. Though he favored most of what the Sixties' New Left accomplished, he lashed out at its late, frequent, and tragic anti-American revels. Veterans of that era who remained unreconstructed thought he was too harsh; others, like this writer, thought he was dead on.

"Achieving Our Country" was well-received by writers on the liberal and social-democratic left who had wearied of academic smugness, jargon, and marginality. The political historian Alan Ryan lauded it in The New York Times Book Review for affirming "that national pride is the political equivalent of individual self-respect. Without it, nothing can be achieved." No matter that unreconstructed partisans of the cultural left sneered at Rorty for insufficient anticapitalism -- it went with the territory.

But Rorty's version of a national pride that refuses to turn a blind eye to America's sins also outraged conservatives. His attempt to reconnect the American left with the romance of two great small-d democrats -- Walt Whitman, the chronicler of American energies, and John Dewey, the philosopher of public conversation -- did not impress George Will, who devoted a Newsweek column to trashing "Achieving Our Country" ("a remarkably bad book" that "radiates contempt for the country"). In The Weekly Standard, David Brooks called some of Rorty's predictions "loopy, paranoid, idiotic," but his main complaint was that the very risible Rorty was a spotlight hog: "if you strip away Rorty's grand declarations about the death of God and Truth and get down to the type of public personality that Rorty calls for, he begins to appear instead as the Norman Rockwell for the intellectual bourgeoisie."

THERE IS NO BRITAIN:

Tories back vote on independence (EDDIE BARNES, 6/17/07, Scotland on Sunday)

A REFERENDUM on Scottish independence could be held as early as next year after a dramatic move by Conservative leaders to support the historic poll.

The party's vice-chairman has publicly backed a referendum as soon as possible to "clear the air" over Scotland's constitutional future.

Several Tory MSPs are backing the move, claiming the poll - which is likely to reject independence three to one - would "shoot the Nationalists' fox".

Conservative supporters of the plan believe it is essential to kill off the independence issue to reassure businesses and potential investors that Scotland has a stable future, while also giving them a chance to set the "positive case" for the Union.

THE NECESSITY OF BILL MCKAY MOMENTS:

Hamas wakes up to grim reality (ANNETTE YOUNG , 6/17/07, Scotland on Sunday)

"I still haven't yet been outside my building in the last week. None of my family has," said Professor Naji Shurab, a lecturer in political science at Al Azhar University. "All we did is sit in front of the television trying to work out what was going on as we heard gunfire outside.

"While Hamas has the ability to keep the gangs in control, that is not the problem. It's whether they will be able to ensure the hospitals have enough supplies, people have food and that salaries are being paid.

"And are they going to talk to the Israelis about reopening the border crossings to get aid in and also ensure that water and electricity is still supplied to Gaza?"

JUST FOR DISAGREEN:

VALENCIENNES (1793) BY CORP'L TULLIDGE: see "The Trumpet-Major" IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER). DIED 184- (Thomas Hardy, Wessex Poems)

We trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed
The Town o' Valencieen.

'Twas in the June o' Ninety-dree
(The Duke o' Yark our then Commander been)
The German Legion, Guards, and we
Laid siege to Valencieen.

This was the first time in the war
That French and English spilled each other's gore;
--Few dreamt how far would roll the roar
Begun at Valencieen!

'Twas said that we'd no business there
A-topperen the French for disagreen;
However, that's not my affair -
We were at Valencieen.

Such snocks and slats, since war began
Never knew raw recruit or veteran:
Stone-deaf therence went many a man
Who served at Valencieen.

Into the streets, ath'art the sky,
A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleen;
And harmless townsfolk fell to die
Each hour at Valencieen!

And, sweaten wi' the bombardiers,
A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
--'Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears
For me at Valencieen!

They bore my wownded frame to camp,
And shut my gapen skull, and washed en clean,
And jined en wi' a zilver clamp
Thik night at Valencieen.

"We've fetched en back to quick from dead;
But never more on earth while rose is red
Will drum rouse Corpel!" Doctor said
O' me at Valencieen.

'Twer true. No voice o' friend or foe
Can reach me now, or any liven been;
And little have I power to know
Since then at Valencieen!

I never hear the zummer hums
O' bees; and don' know when the cuckoo comes;
But night and day I hear the bombs
We threw at Valencieen . . .

As for the Duke o' Yark in war,
There be some volk whose judgment o' en is mean;
But this I say--a was not far
From great at Valencieen.

O' wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
My wownds come back, as though new wownds I'd had;
But yet--at times I'm sort o' glad
I fout at Valencieen.

Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls
Is now the on'y Town I care to be in . . .
Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
As we did Valencieen!

GOTTA SHUT THEM UP SOMEHOW:

Backlash on bipolar diagnoses in children: MGH psychiatrist's work stirs debate (Scott Allen, June 17, 2007, Boston Globe)

No one has done more to convince Americans that even small children can suffer the dangerous mood swings of bipolar disorder than Dr. Joseph Biederman of Massachusetts General Hospital. [...]

But the death in December of a 4-year-old Hull girl from an overdose of drugs prescribed to treat bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has triggered a growing backlash against Biederman and his followers. Rebecca Riley's parents have been charged with deliberately giving the child overdoses of Clonidine, a medication sometimes used to calm aggressive children. Still, many wondered why a girl so young was being treated in the first place with Clonidine and two other psychiatric drugs, including one not approved for children's use. Riley's psychiatrist has said she was influenced by the work of Biederman and his protege, Dr. Janet Wozniak. [...]

Part of the criticism of Biederman speaks to a deeper issue in psychiatry: the extensive financial ties between the drug industry and researchers. Biederman has received research funding from 15 drug companies and serves as a paid speaker or adviser to seven of them, including Eli Lilly & Co. and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, which make the multi billion-dollar antipsychotic drugs Zyprexa and Risperdal, respectively. Though not much money was earmarked for bipolar research, critics say the resources help him advance his aggressive drug treatment philosophy.

Numerous psychiatrists say Riley's overdose suggests that bipolar disorder is becoming a psychiatric fad, leaving thousands of children on risky medications based on symptoms such as chronic irritability and aggressiveness that could have other causes.

THE MAN IN THE MIRROR:

It's Fatah from over (ADAM NICHOLS, 6/17/07, NY DAILY NEWS)

Yesterday, Abbas angrily rejected proposals from the Arab League for talks with Hamas.

An aide said he wouldn't negotiate with "killers."

WAS THE PLO'S POINT REALLY JUST TO EXPAND JORDAN?:

The divided states of Palestine (Bernard Wasserstein, 17 June 2007, Independent)

Suddenly there are two Palestines: a Hamas-ruled Gaza and a Fatah-controlled West Bank. It seemed to happen overnight but the roots of this division extend back far into Palestinian history. In the inter-war period, when Palestine was ruled by Britain under a League of Nations mandate, the Arab elite was divided into rival coalitions of notable families.

One, headed by Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was traditionalist Muslim in outlook, suspicious of modernisation and Western values, and militantly hostile to Zionism and British imperialism. The mufti developed a countrywide network of power based on his control of Muslim religious institutions and trusts. He accused the Jews of designs on Muslim holy places. His followers rioted at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 1929 and rose in revolt in 1936. Even with massive troop reinforcements and brutal repression, it took the British three years to bring the rebels to heel.

A second coalition was headed by the mufti's chief rival, Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, for long the mayor of Jerusalem. He was a more pliable character who got on better with the British and the Zionists. Whereas the mufti wore old-fashioned robes and the traditional headgear of the hajji (pilgrim to Mecca), Ragheb Bey always appeared in a smart business suit. He and his supporters were widely (and in many cases correctly) suspected of being financially beholden to the Zionists. Pro-mufti newspapers accused Nashashibi and his supporters of being "pack animals of imperialism". During the revolt the mufti's men resorted to bullyboy tactics, assassinations and intimidation to cow their rivals.

After the Israeli victory in the 1948 war, what remained of Arab Palestine was divided into two disconnected fragments. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza strip the mufti set up a short-lived "All-Palestine Government" which drew support mainly from the refugees who had flooded in from elsewhere in Palestine. Meanwhile, what became known as the West Bank was annexed by King Abdullah of Transjordan who installed Ragheb Bey and many of his supporters in positions of authority.

MORE:
Fundamentalists threaten Israel from all sides (Con Coughlin, 15/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Ordinary Palestinians, it is true, in both Gaza and the West Bank, are suffering hardship. But this is not because of a lack of funds entering the Palestinian territories: it is because successive Palestinian administrations have made no effort to distribute the resources available equably among the population.

Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves.

The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place.

Not surprisingly, many Palestinians who were previously agnostic about their Muslim heritage have found themselves embracing the Hamas cause, more out of economic necessity than religious obligation.

Hizbollah - another Iranian-funded militia - used similar tactics to establish its power base in southern Lebanon during the 1980s. Hizbollah, of course, has now become a dominant force in Lebanese politics.

Hamas is trying to replicate Hizbollah's success in Gaza, not a pleasing prospect for Israel, which now faces the threat of having two Iranian-backed, Islamic fundamentalist organisations dedicated to its destruction camped on its northern and southern borders. It is not a thought that will help Israelis sleep easy.

NOT UNILATERAL ENOUGH:

Blair knew US had no post-war plan for Iraq (Nicholas Watt, June 17, 2007, The Observer)

Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, confirms that the President offered Blair a way out. Bush told Blair: 'Perhaps there's some other way that Britain can be involved.' Blair replied: 'No, I'm with you.'

TALK ABOUT A SLIPPERY SLOPE:

Once a victim, always a victim, child study shows (Jonathan Owen, 17 June 2007, Independent)

Children who suffer assaults or other crimes are likely to become serial victims, according to new research, with 59 per cent becoming victims once more within the next year. The study, which tracked 1,500 children between the ages of two and 17 for two years, found that exposure to one type of crime increases the risk of becoming a victim of all others.

Children who had suffered sexual abuse were seven times more likely to be attacked again within the next year compared to those who had not been sexually abused.

The results indicate that children who are victims become less able to protect themselves, according to Professor David Finkelhor, the lead author of the study and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Centre at the University of New Hampshire.

"Some of the kids are affected psychologically by the victimisation," he said. "They get depressed, discouraged, feel powerless and have symptoms that cloud their thinking and their judgment."

THE CHAIN OF BEING...AMERICAN:

Playing catch with dad (Joe Capozzi, 6/17/07, Palm Beach Post)

Dad's knuckles were bloody from working construction all day, but little James Shields never noticed. He just knew his father was home...

Time to play catch.

"He was beat down, tired, and all I wanted to do was play catch,'' said Shields, a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

"I had two older brothers, so when they were always playing together, I got left out. But I used to play catch with my dad all the time. No matter how tired he was, he always played catch with me. That was one of the best things - just to grab my glove and ball and go play catch with my pops.''

There are bigger thrills in baseball, but the first for most players, no matter the level, is the time-honored ritual of playing catch with dad.

It's a special moment immortalized in two of the best baseball-themed movies of all time - Field of Dreams and The Natural. A moment remembered for its simplicity and meaning.

WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION THOUGH:

China's growth pushed up by the grassroots (John Garnaut, June 15, Sydney Morning Herald)

Judging by the renewed egalitarian rhetoric of its leaders, the contrast between China's gaudy urban billionaires and its struggling rural poor is no longer just a political embarrassment. It is a problem of regime survival. President Hu Jintao and the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, have responded by banning rapacious local government taxes in rural areas and opening their wallets for huge spending on infrastructure, health and education. But even in this country of impossible ideological contradictions there is one solution they have not been talking about: democracy.

First, a primer on grassroots democracy, Chinese-style. Deng Xiaoping replaced Chairman Mao's disastrous communes with village management committees in the early 1980s. In 1987 he also began to introduce village elections. By the start of this millennium, grassroots democracy had spread to cover almost all Chinese villages. It was a remarkable development, and largely ignored by the West.

Candidates can stand if they are nominated by 10 or more local villagers. The core elected committee consists of a chairman, vice-chairman and accountant. Their terms are for three years. The system is far from perfect, as democratically elected committees can be challenged by parallel party committees, hijacked by local entrepreneurs or overridden by higher tiers of government. The obvious limitations of village democracy make its power all the more surprising.

Two Chinese economists, Shen Yan and Yao Yang, have analysed official household income data and their own retrospective surveys for 48 villages from 1986 to 2002. The data enabled the authors to control for China's enormous geographic disparities and the fact that incomes have been generally rising steeply. They discovered that the advent of village elections caused a sharp reduction in measured income inequality against a country-wide tide running fast the other way.

AND THEY WONDER...:

China to probe brickyard slavery: The number of people rescued from forced labor in police raids surpasses 500 as scandals continue to plague the government. (Ching-Ching Ni, June 16, 2007, LA Times)

He was a culinary student looking for his first job, and when a stranger offered him restaurant work he eagerly accepted. But the 20-year-old was taken instead to a rural brick kiln where he toiled as a slave with little food, no pay and regular beatings that nearly killed him.

Yet Zhang Yinlei is among the lucky.

He was one of at least 548 workers rescued so far in a crackdown on brick factories in north-central China, where abducted men and children as young as 8 had been sold into slavery for $65 a head. Most of them were freed this week in raids at thousands of kilns in two provinces.

The case has so scandalized China that state media announced Friday that President Hu Jintao had personally ordered a prompt investigation.

Child labor and harsh working conditions used to be the stuff of propaganda movies used by the Chinese Communists to discredit capitalist societies. Today they are a fact of life in a country driven by its own pursuit of wealth, often at the expense of the poor.

As the stories spread across China this week, played prominently in newspaper headlines and on the Internet, a manhunt was announced midweek for Heng Tinghan, the foreman of one of the kilns, where 31 enslaved workers were recently rescued.

Mr. Su said his children were brought to the factory around midnight of the day they vanished. Once there, they were told they would have to make bricks. “You will start working in the morning, so get some sleep, and don’t lose your bowls, or you will have to pay for them,” he said the children were told. “They also charged them 50 renminbi for a blanket.” That is equivalent to about $6.50.

Mr. Su managed to recover his children after only a matter of days at the kiln, but many other parents have been less fortunate, losing contact with children for months or years. As stories of forced labor at the brick kilns have spread, hundreds of parents have petitioned local authorities to help them find their children and crack down on the kilns.

In some cases, according to Chinese news media reports, parents have also come together to try to rescue their children, placing little stock in the local authorities, who are sometimes in collusion with the operators of the kilns. Other reports have said that local authorities, including labor inspectors, have taken children from freshly closed kilns and resold them to other factories.

The director of the legal department of the Shanxi Province Worker’s Union said it was hard to monitor the kilns because of their location in isolated areas.

“Those factories are located in very remote places and most them are illegal entities, without any legal registration, so it is very hard for people outside to know what is going on there,” said the union official, Zhang Xiaosuo. “We are now doing a province-wide investigation into them, both the legal and illegal ones, to look into labor issues there.”

Liu Cheng, a professor of labor law at Shanghai Normal University, had a different explanation. “My first reaction is that this seems like a typical example of a government-business alliance,” Mr. Liu said. “Forced labor and child labor in China are illegal, but some local governments don’t care too much.”

Zhang Xiaoying, 37, whose 15-year-old son disappeared in January, said she had visited over 100 brick factories during a handful of visits to Shanxi Province in search of him.

“You just could not believe what you saw,” Ms. Zhang said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Some of the kids working at these places were at most 14 or 15 years old.”

The local police, she said, were unwilling to help. Outside one factory, she said, they even demanded bribes.

“We finally got into that place, and I saw people hauling carts of bricks with great difficulty,” Ms. Zhang said. “Some of them were very small, and the ropes they pulled left tracks of blood on their shoulders and backs. Others were making bricks, standing by the machines.

“They had to move the bricks from the belt very quickly, because they were hot and heavy and they could easily get burned or hurt by the machines.”

JAMES TARANTO HAS ALL WEEKEND TO STEW OVER THIS ONE:

Looters raid Arafat's home, steal his Nobel Peace Prize (Khaled Abu Toameh, June 16, 2007, Jerusalem Post)

AND WORTH EVERY PENCE:

ITV recaptures Frost with £3m handcuffs (PAUL REVOIR,15th June 2007, Daily Mail)

Sir David Jason has signed a £3million three-year "golden handcuffs" deal with ITV which will see him return in A Touch of Frost.

Despite suggestions that he would never again play Detective Jack Frost, the 67-year-old star has agreed to reprise the role for two more episodes.

WEBCAST: Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival 2007 (Manchester TN)

Old Crow Medicine Show 12:45pm - 1:45pm (Central Times)
Spearhead 1:45pm - 2:15pm
Regina Spektor 2:15pm - 3:30pm
The Black Keys 3:30pm - 4:15pm
Damien Rice 4:15pm - 5:45pm
Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals 5:45pm - 7:45pm
The Hold Steady 7:45pm - 8:15pm
Mago: Billy Martin & John Medeski 8:15pm - 9:45pm
String Cheese Incident 10:15pm - 11:30pm

IF IT'S THE LAST THING THEY DO, THE NATIVISTS WILL KEEP THE ELEPHANT WHITE!:

New mood from new citizens: Latino immigrants in South Florida who have traditionally registered with the GOP have felt alienated by the party, critics say. (Peter Wallsten, June 16, 2007, LA Times)

Surveys show that among Latino voters — a bloc Bush had hoped to woo into the Republican camp — negative views about the party are growing amid a bitter debate over immigration policy.

Republicans in Congress have led the fight against a controversial Senate bill that would provide a pathway for millions of illegal immigrants to eventually become citizens. All but one of the GOP's leading White House hopefuls oppose the measure.

Many Latino leaders, including Republicans, have said the tone of some critics in attacking the bill has been culturally insensitive. They say that has alienated some Latinos from the GOP.

How this eventually plays out at the voting booth remains hard to predict, and that is especially the case concerning newly naturalized Latinos. Even if they register to vote, it is uncertain how many of these new citizens would actually turn out on election day.

And although 2006 election results showed a steep drop off in Latino support for Republicans, polls suggest that there is little, if any, growing enthusiasm for Democrats.

Still, at least on Thursday in Miami Beach, even the occasional new citizen who said he or she had registered as a Republican expressed concern about the tenor of the immigration debate.

Priscilla Girasol, 36, a mother from Brazil who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said she liked Bush because of his Christian faith and the compassion he expressed for the immigrant experience. But she said she could not forget the words of one GOP presidential candidate, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

Tancredo, a vocal critic of illegal immigration, late last year called Miami a "Third World country."

"It's a shame," Girasol said. "I'm sure in his life somebody from another country did something for him."

THE PRESIDENT WHO FEARS HIS PEOPLE...:

Iran Curtails Freedom In Throwback to 1979: Repression Seen as Cultural Revolution (Robin Wright, 6/16/07, Washington Post)

The widespread purges and arrests are expected to have an impact on parliamentary elections next year and the presidential contest in 2009, either discouraging or preventing reformers from running against the current crop of hard-liners who dominate all branches of government, Iranian and U.S. analysts say. The elections are one of several motives behind the crackdowns, they add.

Public signs of discontent -- such as students booing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a campus last December, teacher protests in March over low wages and workers demonstrating on May Day -- are also behind the detentions, according to Iranian sources.

"The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You're going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime's paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks."

Despite promises to use Iran's oil revenue to aid the poor, Ahmadinejad's economic policies have backfired, triggering 20 percent inflation over the past year, increased poverty and a 25 percent rise in the price of gas last month. More than 50 of the country's leading economists wrote an open letter to Ahmadinejad this week warning that he is ignoring basic economics and endangering the country's future.

Universities have been particularly hard hit by faculty purges and student detentions since late last year, according to Iranian analysts and international human rights groups. Professors still on campus have been warned by Iran's intelligence ministry about developing relationships with their foreign counterparts, who may try to recruit them as spies.

"Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated his goal of purging Iranian society of secular thought. This is taking shape as a cultural revolution, particularly on university campuses, where persecution and prosecution of students and faculty are intensifying with each passing day," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch.

In recent weeks, the government has also tried to dissolve student unions and replace them with allies from the Basij -- a young, volunteer paramilitary body, human rights groups say. Between April 30 and June 6, eight student leaders involved in the elections at Amirkabir University -- where Ahmadinejad was reportedly jeered as students set his pictures on fire -- have been jailed in Evin Prison.

DUNGEONS & DUFFERS (via The Mother Judd):

Games seek to bring seniors to their feet: Nintendo marketing the Wii in retirement communities (Robbie Brown, June 16, 2007, Boston Globe)

At age 81, George Mason donated his golf clubs to charity, retiring forever from the links or so he thought.

"I'd had a heart attack, and I didn't envision myself on a golf course ever again," he said.

But the other day, Mason, now 84, stepped to the tee and clobbered a 200-yard drive onto the fairway of a Par 4.

Don't look for him on the Senior PGA tour quite yet. Mason's triumphant return to golfing occurred on a video game.

Last week, his retirement community, Linden Ponds in Hingham , wired a Nintendo Wii to the 68-inch television in its lobby. Since then, the residents, whose average age is 77, have been golfing, bowling, boxing, and playing tennis and baseball on the video-game system, which lets players simulate the physical movement of real sports.

In senior citizens like Mason, Nintendo sees a new target demographic: the elderly gamer. The video-game maker provided the $250 Wii system for free to Linden Ponds and more than a dozen other retirement communities across the nation. Nintendo hopes these seniors will convince their friends that video games aren't just for kids.

REVERSE MASLINISM:

An Also-Ran in the GOP Polls, Ron Paul Is Huge on the Web (Jose Antonio Vargas, 6/16/07, Washington Post)

On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."

Then comes "Ron Paul."

The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.

Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). [...]

But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who's trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls.

Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web's anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature.

NOTHING SAYS SUMMER...:

The US Army Band (Pershing's Own) has a wicked cool website that includes a 24/7 audio stream

Download "Shenandoah" (mp3)
from "Liberty For All Volume 2"
by US Army Band
Altissimo!

HMMMM, HERBY:

How To ... Make tasty potato chips (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 6/15/07)

HERBED POTATO CHIPS

Serves: 8

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Two 5 1/2-ounce bags potato chips

3/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a small saucepan over low heat, warm the olive oil and garlic for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand 10 minutes.

Pour the potato chips into a large serving bowl. Drizzle the chips with the oil and toss to coat evenly. Transfer the chips to a baking sheet and bake for 7 minutes.

Return the chips to the bowl. Add the parsley and lemon zest and toss to coat. Serve warm.

THERE'S MORE POLITICAL HAY TO BE MADE...:

Obama criticizes absentee fathers in black community (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/14/07)

Two days before Father's Day, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama presented a plan Friday for lifting up poor families that included searing criticism of fathers who abandon their responsibilities to raise children.

"There are a lot of men out there who need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child," Obama said. [...]

"Too many black men simply cannot afford to raise a family — and too many have made the sad choice not to," Obama said. "A fatherless household takes its toll. Children who grow up without a father ... are five times more likely to live in poverty and nine times more likely to drop out of school."

Obama's criticism of absent fathers in the black community reprises a theme he has touched on as a senator, first in a Father's Day talk at a South Side Chicago church two years ago. He also introduced related legislation with Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and briefly addressed the subject in a speech he made on a new direction for the civil rights movement in Selma, Ala.

Obama's remarks Friday illustrate the unusual opportunities he is afforded as an African-American candidate to address sensitive racial issues; few white presidential candidates would present such blunt criticism, particularly running in a Democratic primary.

Still, they are not without risk. Bill Cosby provoked charges of elitism and exposed simmering class resentments among African-Americans when he made comments in 2004 sharply criticizing the behavior and values of some poor black people.

THE MAJORITY THAT WALKS INTO DOORS:

Homeland Security bill passes House, but veto likely (ANDREW TAYLOR, 6/14/07, Associated Press)

The House Friday passed a $37.4 billion budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security, but minority Republicans rallied enough votes to uphold a promised veto by President Bush.

The Homeland Security bill passed by a 268-150 vote. The measure exceeds Bush's request for the department by $2.1 billion, thus drawing a veto threat from the White House. The administration has vowed to keep spending passed by Congress this year to limits proposed in Bush's February budget.

The Homeland Security bill is the first of the 12 annual spending bills to pass the House and only did so after Democrats yielded Thursday to GOP protests on the handling of lawmakers' pet projects.

THEY APE, THEY DON'T INNOVATE:

Paris Air Show No Party for Airbus: Plagued by problems and delays, the A350 widebody is trailing its more fuel-efficient rival, Boeing's Dreamliner (Carol Matlack, 6/15/07, Business Week)

The A350 saga underscores that Airbus has been, in many ways, paralyzed for the past two years. Delivery of its A380 megaplane, originally scheduled for early 2006, is almost two years behind schedule because of wiring problems caused by mismatched design software. The delay plunged Airbus $750 million into the red last year and is expected to wipe out more than $6 billion in projected profits through 2010, denying the company a key source of financing to develop the A350.

Multiple redesigns of the A350 have already pushed its planned launch to at least 2013, five years after the 787 is expected to enter service. And the A350 has few major customers apart from Qatar, which had ordered an earlier version of the plane and recently announced it would buy 80 of the revamped model, known as the XWB. Boeing (BA), meanwhile, has mopped up 582 orders for the Dreamliner, giving it a huge advantage over Airbus in widebody planes, the industry's most lucrative sector.

Yet the financial hit from the A380 is only one reason for the A350's painfully slow takeoff. Airlines are worried that the plane, which Airbus says will have an aluminum frame covered with composite carbon-fiber panels, still can't match the efficiency of the all-composite 787. Airbus says they're wrong, and that more airlines will order the A350 once they see detailed specs.

But at least one big customer appears to have walked: Steven Udvar-Hazy, chairman of aircraft-leasing group International Lease Finance Corp. (AIG), the world's single largest aircraft buyer. He has repeatedly criticized the A350's design, and ILFC is set to place a major Dreamliner order during the Paris show, according to people familiar with the situation. "This air show will be brutally hard for Airbus," says Doug McVitie, an aerospace analyst in Dinan, France.

Why doesn't Airbus just respond with an all-composite A350? For one thing, the Europeans are several years behind Boeing in research and development on composite materials.

WHICH IS WHY YOU BOYCOTT THE OLYMPICS:

China blasts Bush tribute to victims of communism (Reuters, 6/13/07)

Communist-ruled China has blasted U.S. President George Bush for attending the founding of a memorial to victims of communism, accusing Washington of "cold war" thinking and provoking ideological confrontation.

Bush attended the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington on Tuesday, naming China among the regimes he blamed for the deaths of about 100 million innocent people. [...]

China, which remains under communist rule even as it embraces booming capitalist investment, shot back late on Wednesday with a statement that did not name Bush but made its anger clear.

MORE:
President Bush Attends Dedication of Victims of Communism Memorial (George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 6/12/07)

Thank you all for coming. Please be seated. Dr. Edwards, thanks for your kind words. Congressman Lantos -- no better friend to freedom, by the way; Congressman Rohrabacher, the same. Members of the Czech and Hungarian parliaments; ambassadors; distinguished guests; and more importantly, the survivors of Communist oppression, I'm honored to join you on this historic day. (Applause.)

And here in the company of men and women who resisted evil and helped bring down an empire, I proudly accept the Victims of Communism Memorial on behalf of the American people. (Applause.)

The 20th century will be remembered as the deadliest century in human history. And the record of this brutal era is commemorated in memorials across this city. Yet, until now, our Nation's Capital had no monument to the victims of imperial Communism, an ideology that took the lives of an estimated 100 million innocent men, women and children. So it's fitting that we gather to remember those who perished at Communism's hands, and dedicate this memorial that will enshrine their suffering and sacrifice in the conscience of the world.

Building this memorial took more than a decade of effort, and its presence in our capital is a testament to the passion and determination of two distinguished Americans: Lev Dobriansky, whose daughter Paula is here -- (applause) -- give your dad our best. And Dr. Lee Edwards. (Applause.) They faced setbacks and challenges along the way, yet they never gave up, because in their hearts, they heard the voices of the fallen crying out: "Remember us."

These voices cry out to all, and they're legion. The sheer numbers of those killed in Communism's name are staggering, so large that a precise count is impossible. According to the best scholarly estimate, Communism took the lives of tens of millions of people in China and the Soviet Union, and millions more in North Korea, Cambodia, Africa, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the globe.

Behind these numbers are human stories of individuals with families and dreams whose lives were cut short by men in pursuit of totalitarian power. Some of Communism's victims are well-known. They include a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 100,000 Jews from the Nazis, only to be arrested on Stalin's orders and sent to Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, where he disappeared without a trace. They include a Polish priest named Father Popieluszko, who made his Warsaw church a sanctuary for the Solidarity underground, and was kidnaped, and beaten, and drowned in the Vitsula by the secret police.

The sacrifices of these individuals haunt history -- and behind them are millions more who were killed in anonymity by Communism's brutal hand. They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin's Great Famine; or Russians killed in Stalin's purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet Communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot's Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest; and Ethiopians slaughtered in the "Red Terror"; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua's Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny. We'll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, Communism's unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever.

We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once described the struggle against Communism as "the struggle of memory against forgetting." Communist regimes did more than take their victims' lives; they sought to steal their humanity and erase their memory. With this memorial, we restore their humanity and we reclaim their memory. With this memorial, we say of Communism's innocent and anonymous victims, these men and women lived and they shall not be forgotten. (Applause.)

We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to future generations to record the crimes of the 20th century and ensure they're never repeated. In this hallowed place we recall the great lessons of the Cold War: that freedom is precious and cannot be taken for granted; that evil is real and must be confronted; and that given the chance, men commanded by harsh and hateful ideologies will commit unspeakable crimes and take the lives of millions.

It's important that we recall these lessons because the evil and hatred that inspired the death of tens of millions of people in the 20th century is still at work in the world. We saw its face on September the 11th, 2001. Like the Communists, the terrorists and radicals who attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims. Like the Communists, our new enemies believe the innocent can be murdered to serve a radical vision. Like the Communists, our new enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that those of us who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our free way of life. And like the Communists, the followers of violent Islamic radicalism are doomed to fail. (Applause.) By remaining steadfast in freedom's cause, we will ensure that a future American President does not have to stand in a place like this and dedicate a memorial to the millions killed by the radicals and extremists of the 21st century.

We can have confidence in the power of freedom because we've seen freedom overcome tyranny and terror before. Dr. Edwards said President Reagan went to Berlin. He was clear in his statement. He said, "tear down the wall," and two years later the wall fell. And millions across Central and Eastern Europe were liberated from unspeakable oppression. It's appropriate that on the anniversary of that speech, that we dedicate a monument that reflects our confidence in freedom's power.

The men and women who designed this memorial could have chosen an image of repression for this space, a replica of the wall that once divided Berlin, or the frozen barracks of the Gulag, or a killing field littered with skulls. Instead, they chose an image of hope -- a woman holding a lamp of liberty. She reminds us of the victims of Communism, and also of the power that overcame Communism.

Like our Statue of Liberty, she reminds us that the flame for freedom burns in every human heart, and that it is a light that cannot be extinguished by the brutality of terrorists or tyrants. And she reminds us that when an ideology kills tens of millions of people, and still ends up being vanquished, it is contending with a power greater than death. (Applause.) She reminds us that freedom is the gift of our Creator, freedom is the birthright of all humanity, and in the end, freedom will prevail. (Applause.)

I thank each of you who made this memorial possible for your service in freedom's cause. I thank you for your devotion to the memory of those who lost their lives to Communist terror. May the victims of Communism rest in peace. May those who continue to suffer under Communism find their freedom. And may the God who gave us liberty bless this great memorial and all who come to visit her.

God bless.

AND THEY ACTUALLY FIT UNDER THE MOOSE:

Classic Mini Cooper: This 1964 Mini Cooper 1275S Works Rally is the forerunner of todays modern, BMW-owned Mini (Paul Frost, 6/15/07, Business Week)

In 1956, the Suez Crisis caused the folks at Austin to invite Alec Issigonis (later Sir Alec) to design a new car to combat what they saw as looming fuel rationing. When he had finished, the engine was the only part of the car that was not completely new. The compact four-seater famously mounted the enlarged A30 engine transversely, driving the front wheels through a four-speed box located in the sump. Independent all-round hydrolastic suspension used ingenious rubber blocks in compression.

The first prototypes ran in October 1957 and the car was launched in August 1959 with several thousand being pre-built for dealer stock. While the Morris version was called the Mini Minor, the Austin was known as the Se7en, but the name never caught on and soon they were all known as Minis.

The top speed of the first 33-hp models was 70 mph, and the Mini's excellent handling soon attracted tuning specialists. With BMC's agreement, race builder John Cooper produced the first Mini Cooper in 1961. The engine was 997 cc tuned to produce 65 hp, and with twin SU carbs, top speed rose to 85 mph. The Mini began its rally career in 1962. In 1963 the Cooper S with 1,071 cc was quickly followed by the 1,275 cc, which delivered 75 hp and 100 mph. From 1964 to 1967, the Mini was almost unbeatable and would have won the Monte Carlo Rally three times in a row, save for a last-minute rules change. Production of the Mini Cooper continued to 1967 and 44,859 were made. BMC built the Mini Cooper S until 1971, by which time 191,242 had been made.

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO:

Dow nears trading high on inflation data (TIM PARADIS, 6/15/07, AP)

Wall Street barreled higher again Friday after the week's most anticipated economic reading indicated that inflation excluding the price of gas remained tepid last month, easing some concerns that have jolted stock and bond markets in recent sessions.

The Dow Jones industrial average — which has surged more than 340 points over the last three days, the biggest three-day point gain since November 2004 — is now less than 40 points below its record close reached on June 4.

Friday's consumer price index showed prices rose at the fastest pace in 20 months in May as the cost of gas jumped. However, the core CPI, which excludes often volatile food and energy prices, rose a lower-than-expected 0.1 percent. The figure, which the inflation-wary Federal Reserve watches closely, was below the 0.2 percent increase Wall Street expected.

OUR LAND:

The Land Was Ours Before We Were the Land's (BENJAMIN LYTAL, June 15, 2007, NY Sun)

A history of America concerning its land, gained in war and diplomacy, would not in itself be a remarkable thing. Andro Linklater has written a history of America that looks at land from a slightly different angle — that of real estate. [...]

A brisk trade in real estate brought revenue to the states and, with the first general U.S. territories, to the federal government, but it meant something more than money to the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson, famously a champion of small farmers, specifically cherished the Saxon idea of alodial law. Alodial law maintains that the man who works a piece of land holds it outright. Jefferson believed this idea had been subverted by the Norman system of monarchical ownership. And Mr. Linklater finds ample evidence of squatter's rights in American history. A frontiersman made his claim, and eagerly awaited the arrival of organized American jurisdiction.

Indeed, Mr. Linklater's history is one of increasing federal power. A territory had to meet federal standards before it could be admitted as a state, and so the interior became more loyal to federal power than the original 13 colonies. [...]

The delicacy of law — in the form of a treaty or a deed — is Mr. Linklater's real subject here, though the book goes out of its way to make a larger, and more grandiose claim, about the importance of boundaries at all turning points in our history. Mr. Linklater moves jerkily between the travails of Andrew Ellicott and the more interesting theoretical work defining private property, as pursued by Jefferson or Lincoln.

What emerges, throughout, is the importance of an executive authority that can guarantee ownership. "What made the settlement of the West such an iconic experience was precisely that it took place under the umbrella of the American government," Mr. Linklater writes. That umbrella is unique, Mr. Linklater argues, noting that it was also the American government that became the global register of Internet addresses, as they were claimed, in a rush, in the last decade.

WHEN YOU PLAY BAD THE FANS GET TO HAMMER YOU:

NOW LOOKS LIKE OMAR’S OFFSEASON WAS OFF MARK (JOEL SHERMAN, June 15, 2007, NY Post)

I have a theory: Omar Minaya had a bad offseason.

Now that does not fit the theory of the moment, and we in the media do not come off the theory of the moment easily. The storyline this season has gone something like this: Omar Minaya, genius; Brian Cashman, fool. And while Cashman is far from absolved for concepts such as Kei Igawa, major league pitcher, a case can be made that Minaya’s offseason was no better and, perhaps, was worse, unless of course you are doing Sports Illustrated cover stories.

Minaya has escaped wrath, in part, because he is such a pleasant guy. However, more important to Mets Nation, his 2006 work was the kind epic poems are written about, or 10,000-word stories in sports magazines. Everything he touched thrived.

He acquired John Maine, Orlando Hernandez, Oliver Perez and Guillermo Mota for little and got a lot in return. He plucked Endy Chavez from obscurity, and Chavez became a cult hero. He said Jose Valentin could play and he could, and so could Paul Lo Duca and Darren Oliver. His biggest acquisition, Carlos Delgado, played to near MVP caliber.

“As a GM, you always hope to have a year like I did in ’06,” Minaya said by phone yesterday. “But it doesn’t always work out that way.”

No, it doesn’t. Aside from Damion Easley and Jorge Sosa, Minaya’s last offseason is more something to C than something to see. He made three trades and, to date, lost each. He obsessed on finding a top-of-the-rotation starter and could not land one. He signed older, brittle players (Hernandez, Jose Valentin, Moises Alou), who have turned out to be brittle. And in three years at $10.8 million for Scott Schoeneweis, Minaya forged one of the worst free-agent signs of the offseason.

“I think it is legitimate to ask questions about our offseason,” Minaya said.

[T]he gloves have come off at Fenway Park, where a sellout crowd of 36,939 did not let last night's 7-1 Red Sox loss to the Colorado Rockies pass without comment.

The object of the fans' disaffection was not Josh Beckett, who lost for the first time this season and gave up two home runs, including a grand slam by Garrett Atkins, in five innings. It was J.D. Drew, whose slow start at the plate was tolerated while the Sox were winning. With the Sox having lost 8 of 13 games in June, and the Yankees reeling off nine wins in a row, Drew no longer is getting a free pass around here. He was singled out for some booing that was much louder than the periodic murmurs of displeasure he'd heard before last night.

"Pretty rough crowd tonight, wasn't it?" batting coach Dave Magadan noted dryly after the Sox, who were 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position, were held to two runs or fewer for the seventh time in the last nine games.

THE PURITY OF REACTION:

Democrats look beyond Clintonomics (Financial Times, 6/15/07)

After almost seven years of George W. Bush's presidency, the Democrats have departed from many of the economic nostrums held during the great economic boom of the 1990s presided over by Bill Clinton.

Then, the Democratic party's priority was to reduce America's fiscal deficit to free up capital for higher investment by the private sector. Mr Clinton was also aggressive in shrinking the size of government, and opened up foreign markets through the North America Free Trade Agreement and the Uruguay Round, which led to the creation of the World Trade Organisation. The role of unions barely featured.

Today, even the economic architects of the Clinton years, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who were successive Treasury secretaries, question much of the 1990s agenda... [...]

On trade, most candidates are more sceptical than Mr Summers and Mr Rubin of whether new deals would be desirable – or even possible. This week, Mrs Clinton rejected the forthcoming trade deal with South Korea: "It will hurt the US car industry, increase our trade deficit, cost us good middle-class jobs and make America less competitive," she said.

Although all the candidates reject overt protectionism, the underlying assumptions have altered. "It is highly doubtful whether a Democratic president would be able to push Nafta through today," says Matt Bennett, of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think- tank. "We are living in a different world from the 1990s."

WHAT A COINCIDENCE...:

Lost in Translation: Updating and downgrading Nancy Drew. (Thomas Hibbs, National Review)

Where is Walden Media when you need it? Well, not making the latest Nancy Drew film, a Warner Bros. production starring Emma Roberts, best known as the niece of Julia Roberts and for her role in the Nickelodeon series Unfabulous. On its own terms, the film is reasonably entertaining. It contains some genuinely funny scenes and moments of suspense, and Nancy is presented, in the end, as an admirable and virtuous heroine. But the problem here is one of translation. Unlike the successful Walden Media productions that have taken cherished books such as Holes, Narnia, and Charlotte’s Web and made the literature come to life, this film version of Nancy Drew has nothing literary about it, nothing to communicate the experience of entering even a modestly rich imaginative universe.

Of course, there have been many Nancy Drew book series (and films and TV series), with later installments making Nancy younger or older or more hip. Even the original book series, issued under the pen name Carolyn Keene, was in fact written by a number of authors. But the original books were by far the best and it would be a worthy undertaking for some ambitious producer to try to bring those books, that Nancy, to life again.

DEFENDING HOOVERVILLE:

Is the Foreclosure Crisis Real?: Activity is on the rise nationwide, but only a handful of states are responsible and delinquency rates are down (Maya Roney, 6/14/07, Business Week)

Know anyone dealing with foreclosure right now? You may—if you live in the Midwest, or in overheated real estate markets like California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona. The rest of you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

Here's something to confuse you further: On Thursday, June 14, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. announced that the delinquency rate for mortgage loans on residential properties fell 11 basis points in the first quarter of 2007, to 4.84%, from 4.95% in the fourth quarter of 2006.

JUST REPEAL THE 17TH:

Vacancy appointments defy voters (David Mark, Jun 14, 2007, Politico)

Less than a century ago U.S. senators were often chosen through backroom dealing, political favors and patronage schemes. Industrial tycoons, railroad barons and other fat cats were thought to have bought Senate influence by pressuring state legislators, who had a constitutional mandate to choose their federal counterparts.

Outrage over this arrangement led Congress to pass the 17th Amendment in 1912, giving people the right to choose their senators.

[I]n the Equality State, Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal has considerably less latitude than other chief executives in appointing an interim senator. Under state law, Thomas’ successor will be chosen in large part by the Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee. On Tuesday, that 71-member body – made up of state committeemen from each county – is scheduled to forward three names to Freudenthal, who then picks one to go to the U.S. Senate.

Utah is the only other state in which party committees choose potential Senate appointees. Alaska, Arizona and Hawaii require the governor to fill vacancies with a person affiliated with the same political party as the previous senator.

BLURRY VISION:

Takeover by Hamas Illustrates Failure of Bush's Mideast Vision (Glenn Kessler, June 15, 2007, Washington Post)

Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared.

The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward peace and then pressed both Israelis and Palestinians to schedule legislative elections, which Hamas unexpectedly won. Now Hamas is the unchallenged power in Gaza.

After his reelection in 2004, Bush said he would use his "political capital" to help create a Palestinian state by the end of his second term. In his final 18 months as president, he faces the prospect of a shattered Palestinian Authority, a radical Islamic state on Israel's border and increasingly dwindling options to turn the tide against Hamas and create a functioning Palestinian state.

It is possible that the two Palestinian factions can find a way to govern together after the fighting, which Hamas characterizes as an effort to weed out troublemakers intent on toppling the government it heads rather than as a bid to eradicate Fatah. A Hamas triumph could bring a halt to the chaos that has made Gazans miserable for months.

The crisis has forced Palestinians to face how far apart the West Bank and Gaza really are, though separated by just 20 miles of Israeli territory at the narrowest point. Israeli restrictions prevent most Palestinians from traveling between the two areas. Palestinian legislators gather via video link because Hamas lawmakers are prevented from traveling across Israel.

"We already see the separation taking place on the ground," said Samir Said, 55, a grocer in Ramallah. "This is really bad for the Palestinian cause. We can see the Palestinian state vanishing."

Gaza, by far the poorer and more pious of the two areas, is Hamas' stronghold, though Fatah had long dominated the established security forces there. The West Bank, especially urban Ramallah, is more liberal-minded. The secular Fatah is the dominant political force, though Hamas enjoys support in some of the bigger towns, such as Hebron and Nablus.

Gaza bears the conservative markings of its years under Egyptian control before its capture by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War, while the West Bank has deep ties with Jordan, said Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Birzeit University near Ramallah.

"There is almost total separation," Jarbawi said.

The distinctions have been evident during the current fighting, with Hamas showing the might of its militias in Gaza and Fatah hitting back in the West Bank, where the Islamist movement is weaker.

A lasting split between the West Bank and Gaza could force Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, to consider whether to talk to the Israelis about peace steps limited to the West Bank, such as terms under which Israel would withdraw from isolated settlements, but short of establishing a Palestinian state, said Yossi Alpher, an Israeli analyst.

"Will Abu Mazen be willing to talk to us about the West Bank alone?" Alpher asked, using Abbas' nickname. "If he is, this could open up some possibilities."

The political crisis has propelled a debate among Palestinian intellectuals over whether Palestinians might be better served by dumping the trappings of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, which created the enfeebled Palestinian Authority, and leaving themselves under Israeli occupation without their own government.

This would, in effect, swap the two-state solution for a one-state vision in which Arabs might someday achieve a demographic majority in the region that includes Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The idea has gained momentum since the power-sharing agreement reached in February between Hamas and Fatah failed to get the international community to end its ban on aid to the Hamas-led government.

"One cannot exclude such a possibility: that this is the end of the two-state solution," said Yitzhak Reiter, a fellow at Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem.

WANNA COMPARE BODY COUNTS?:

Double Standard Seen Among Terror Critics (HEATHER ROBINSON, June 15, 2007, NY Sun)

Jessica Stern's lecture and those of other participants sought to promote "new thinking against violent extremism and radicalization," according to papers circulated at the conference by the EastWest Institute, a think tank hosting the event in Manhattan.

Dr. Stern opened her remarks by saying that, while it may be true there is presently more violence being committed in the name of Islam than in the name of other religions, "all three major monotheistic religions have produced violence."

She then drew a parallel between what she characterized as violence in the name of Islam and violence in the name of Judaism and Christianity, as well as in official responses to such violence on the part of leaders of all three faiths.

"I've heard a lot of bashing of Muslim clerics for not stepping up to the plate and condemning extremist violence," she said. "But Catholic priests are not stepping up to condemn those who kill abortion doctors…[and] rabbis are not condemn