I guess it's good that he got a colonoscopy -- he uses his GI tract to make policy.

spiked-politics | Column | Bush makes 'history' on the hoof In other words, both speeches were shaped far more by emotional kneejerk responses to events than by any 'historic' vision for the Middle East. Thus a Bush aide admitted that the one new proposal in his June address - the suggestion that Yasser Arafat must go - was largely motivated by the president's 'gut feeling' about the Palestinian leader.

The incoherent state of US policy was clear in the run-up to the latest 'historic' presidential speech. When he met Egyptian President Hosni Barak on 8 June, Bush said that the USA must start working immediately towards establishing a Palestinian state. Yet two days later, meeting with Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, Bush said there could be no progress before sweeping reform of the Palestinian Authority (1).

These confused signals were hardly surprising given that, as one Washington Middle East expert noted around the same time, the Bush administration had 'still not really made a basic decision on what they're going to do or even what the objective is' (2). Bush's long-anticipated speech was being rewritten until almost the moment before he delivered it. The 'ditch Arafat' line was apparently a final addition, presumably made after the president developed a late-night gut feeling.

Bush does not have command of his Middle East policy. But nor, as some have suggested, is he being led by the nose by Ariel Sharon; a state of six million citizens does not tell the USA what to do. Rather, the US administration is making up policy as it goes along (or if you prefer, making 'history' on the hoof) in reaction to an out-of-control cycle of events.

Yesterday, I sat in a luxury box at Camden Yards to watch the O's pound the hell out of the Phillies. That is the way to watch a game -- and the parking was even better. enjoying the life of the rich and powerful -- does that make me a limousine liberal or a parlor pink?

Adam Magazine -- the fastest pundit in the East.

I wondered about the implications of Admiral Charles R. Larson, a good friend of John McCain, switching parties to run as a Democrat for Lt. Governor of Maryland, way back on Thursday. It took Mickey Kaus until well into Friday to write about the same thing. Proving that I really need to work harder at my job when I'm at the office, I guess.

I have a choice -- I can believe this article (from the Skeptical Inquirer) on the truth about Bigfoot, or I can believe the Six Million Dollar Man.

I've never been privileged to be examined in that way, so I wondered:

What Can You Expect During a Colonoscopy?

During the procedure, everything will be done to ensure your comfort. An intravenous, or IV, line will be inserted to give you medication to make you relaxed and drowsy. The drug will enable you to remain awake and cooperative, but it may prevent you from remembering much of the experience.

Once you are fully relaxed, your doctor will do a rectal exam with a gloved, lubricated finger; then the lubricated colonoscope will be gently inserted.

As the scope is slowly and carefully passed, you may feel as if you need to move your bowels, and because air is introduced to help advance the scope, you may feel some cramping or fullness. Generally, however, there is little or no discomfort.

Yikes! Yeah, I'm sure there is "little or no discomfort." I wonder which is worse -- the camera, or the big, hot lights.

Thanks to (of course) colonoscopy.com.

I hope that I'm the first to make the following joke re. W's colonoscopy:
Finally, he's getting done to him what he's been doing to all of us since January 2001.
Ba da bing!

Tapped says that the blogosphere should get in a frenzy about this abominable comment from Cal Thomas, a notorious conservative pundit/crank.

On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His protection against future attacks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists.

A greater injury than that caused by the terrorists. Unbelievable.
Let's email Eve Becker, Managing Editor, Syndicate News & Features of Tribune Media Services which syndicates his column. Tell her that many people think his kind of theocratic b.s. causes much more damage than, oh, the First Amendment.

Somehow, George Bush has managed to make America lose faith in its economy, and the world to lose faith in our leadership. No wonder more people voted against him than for him.

Times Online

The possibility of a lame duck President brings me finally to the most interesting – if farfetched – consequences of the Wall Street scandals. By weakening Mr Bush, discrediting the US economic model and undermining America’s moral authority, these scandals will confirm a trend which began with the Axis of Evil speech and Mr Bush’s over-enthusiastic embrace of Ariel Sharon. By threatening to go to war against countries which have never attacked the United States, and boasting about his power to dispose of any political regimes not to his liking, Mr Bush has lost the respect of both America’s military enemies and its allies. Now the loss of international respect for the United States is moving a step further.

America has forfeited its global military leadership by blustering against President Saddam Hussein and failing to curb Mr Sharon. It has forfeited its global diplomatic leadership by abrogating treaties on climate change and criminal justice. It has forfeited its global economic leadership by protecting its steel companies and increasing subsidies to farmers. Now America is forfeiting its global business leadership by failing to enforce proper financial practices and ethical standards. This loss of American leadership will probably be the most enduring legacy of the scandals on Wall Street.

Uh oh.

Times Online: Bank warns of Enron-style collapses
By Gary Duncan and James Moore
THE Bank of England yesterday gave warning that more large companies may be vulnerable to an Enron-style collapse triggered by loan conditions linked to their credit ratings.

As WorldCom, the US telecoms giant, struggled to fend off bankruptcy in the latest accounting fraud scandal to afflict corporate America, the Bank highlighted the dangers posed by a so-called “credit cliff” facing some companies.

The Bank said that tightly drawn contracts directly linking company payments and liabilities for borrowing to credit ratings — so-called “hard-wiring” — posed the risk of provoking collapses in susceptible firms’ viability.

You just can't make up jokes about stuff like this.

Martin Woollacott of The Guardian makes a salient point about the way that Washington ignores reality -- and throws in a Vietnam analogy.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Marooned on his fantasy island, Bush stands firm America is not of course fighting in the Middle East, and this administration's refusal to fully engage is clear, yet most see success there as vital to its wider interests. If the question that the press in Vietnam initially raised through its reporting was "is this the right way to make war?" that for their successors in Israel and Palestine is "is this the right way to make peace?" The answer of the reporters today, with many nuances, is no, and they may be discreetly joined in that by diplomats and others. But this scepticism, as President Bush's speech this week makes clear, is not getting through to the centre. Elements of a response to reality mingle with elements of what was so evident during the Vietnam years - an insistence that reality conform to ideology or to the compromises worked out between Washington schools and factions, and anger at those who point out that it does not.

Thus the Bush administration does not ask whether it is possible that the Palestinians pass through the eye of the needle in order to attain the heaven of a state, it merely asserts that they must. It does not attend to the evident readiness of the Sharon government to sabotage any progress toward a political settlement, but assumes a goodwill in that respect which simply does not exist.

At least somebody is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

sunspot.net - nation/world Putin did not comment on the ruling.

More Democractic Hall of Shame

ajc.com | Metro | Ruling riles GeorgiansSen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a triple amputee as a result of wounds suffered in Vietnam, called the decision "ludicrous."

"The Pledge of Allegiance is a totally voluntary expression of patriotism, which is exactly what our country needs right now. Is 'In God We Trust' on our money unconstitutional too? I hope a higher court will strike this decision down," Cleland said.

Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), a former Marine, called the ruling "disgraceful, especially coming a week before this nation celebrates July 4. I bet Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and our other founding fathers are spinning in their graves today."

Miller said he expects the decision to be overturned by a higher court "and if it isn't, I believe Congress should take immediate action."

Joe Conason on the Bush Peace Plan, or W.-- hypocrite at home and abroad!

The New York Observer Under the suasion of the hard-liners in his own Cabinet and of domestic political considerations as well, Mr. Bush has completed his abandonment of positions he staked out only a few months ago. Where he once acknowledged the "legitimate aspirations" of the Palestinians for an independent and viable state, he now insists that they must first "embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror."
Such stringent conditions will never be imposed on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a state we have provided with massive security assistance; or on Egypt, a state we have subsidized for decades with military and economic aid; or on Kuwait, a state we defended with American blood and treasure. Only the Palestinians must suddenly meet these insurmountable demands—and do so within 36 months—in order to qualify for statehood and economic aid.

I'm not as sanguine as Eschaton about Democrats pandering on the Pledge issue. It really pisses me off. So herewith, the Democratic Hall of Shame:

The decision was written by Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, whom Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., called an "atheist lawyer."

"I hope his name never comes before this body for any promotion, because he will be remembered," said Byrd.

As an atheist lawyer (Jewish division) I'm really offended. I but Judge Goodwin isn't even an atheist! Byrd has been losing it for years, but this is a little over the top.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a former vice presidential candidate, immediately called for a constitutional amendment to make sure the words stay in the pledge: "There may have been a more senseless, ridiculous decision issued by a court at some time, but I don't remember it."

As Eschaton points out, there was a pretty ridiculous decision just about 18 months ago that he might remember.
Come on, a constitutional amendment? Is it that big a deal?

"This decision is just nuts," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who called on senators to arrive early Thursday morning to publicly recite the pledge.

Nuts? It's not nuts. It might be wrong, or misguided, but it's a defensible opinion on legal grounds. Now, making all the Senators get to the Capitol early so they can prove how wonderfully god-fearing and patriotic they are, that's nuts.

Evidently Admiral Larson is a close friend of John McCain. Will McCain switch parties? Will there be a trend of national greatness-type Republicans switching parties? I doubt it. But go read this American Prospect discussion on McCain-as-Democrat.

Here's a little from Instapundit on the pledge issue. And here's Eugene Volokh, who really understands this stuff. I want to read the opinions, and the Supreme Court opinion on school choice, before I talk about them.

I don't know how I feel about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend choosing a running mate who was a Republican until two weeks ago. Maryland is one of the most consistently liberal and Democratic states in the country. There's not one Democrat who would make a good lieutenant governor.
Does anybody know anything about former Naval Academy Superintendent Charles R. Larson?

Instapundit fails to live up to his name -- he has yet to post on the Pledge of Allegiance decision. On the other hand, this article that he wrote is very good.

The Independent on the Bush peace plan.

Independent Argument Mr Bush's decision to turn his attention back to the Middle East, on the eve of the world leaders' summit in Canada, has had one positive effect. It has placed the subject on the international agenda and reopened a discussion about how the hideous cycle of violence might be halted. And in tackling the question of the Palestinian leadership head-on, Mr Bush has said no more than is acknowledged behind the closed doors of diplomacy: it is hard to envisage a lasting peace so long as Yasser Arafat holds the reins of Palestinian power. But what Mr Bush omitted to say, and is surely as true, is that the cause of peace is unlikely to be furthered while Ariel Sharon holds power in Israel. It takes two to make peace, and neither leader seems disposed to make the requisite concessions or show the requisite vision. This is what makes third-party intervention so urgent – and where all the inadequacies of Mr Bush's latest approach start to show.
Mr Bush's speech, and the lead-up to it, risks making matters even worse, if that were possible. By leaking selective details about support for a "provisional" Palestinian state, the White House raised expectations and trapped Mr Bush into having to say something at a time that was not of his choosing. The result was delay and the impression of indecision.

Columnist Terence Blacker in the Independent on Bush, fat, civil liberties and American wackiness.

Independent Argument America has always been a strange and fascinating country but right now it is becoming not only stranger but also more alarming. In the Oval Office, and across the media, earnest discussion is made of the moral rights involved in the size issue. Meanwhile, the destruction of real civil liberties tends to be regarded as being of marginal interest, if not actively unpatriotic.
The case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the second US citizen captured in Afghanistan, has for example caused little concern outside civil liberties groups, which are routinely described in the mainstream media as of "the far left". Unlike John Walker Lindh, the other American fighting for the Taliban, Hamdi has been deemed insufficiently American to deserve a trial or access to legal advice. Asked whether this decision did not represent something of a watershed in that it allowed government to suspend habeas corpus for one of its citizens without explanation or appeal, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, remarked breezily that it was up to lawyers to think about what he called "these niceties".

Men, college, syllogisms

There seems to be a logical gap in Instapundit's original argument here... If an anti-male atmosphere is supposedly responsible for a diminishing percentage of graduates being male, then either (1) significant numbers of men are refusing to go to college because of the fear of oppression via sensitivity training, or (2) significant numbers of men are not graduating -- either quitting, failing out, or being expelled -- because the administration is cracking down on drinking, date rape and hazing. Doesn't it seem more likely that more women are simply going to school? Certainly more than 30 years ago. Why? Maybe, to speculate, because an uneducated man has more opportunities than an uneducated female. Maybe a lot of older women are going back for degrees which their male peers got long ago. Or maybe because a lot of men, especially minorities, are in jail. -- Mr.Joel

Go and read Eschaton (a great blogger) on the male/college issue. In addition to agreeing with me, he makes other, salient points.

Obviously, all of the financial and accounting stuff that's been going on -- Enron, WorldCom, etc. -- did not start on January 20, 2001, when W. was inaugurated. How much is the Clinton Administration to blame? What would a Gore Administration be doing differently? I don't have the expertise to answer this -- but somebody must. Maybe Josh Marshall Eric Alterman or Max Sawicky can answer this question. I'd really like to hear from someone who is not a Clinton basher, but who isn't afraid to criticize the Big Dog.

I love calling Baltimore. Even the operator at the Bankruptcy Court calls you "hon".

Wow, take on Instapundit and you get hundreds of hits.

I'm trying to install a comment system. Any suggestions?

Some more thoughts on men and college:

I don't think that I'm oppressed-- in fact, I am well aware that I am one of the people most advantaged by American society. I'm white, male, straight, above-average in intelligence, and I went to outstanding schools in one of the most affluent suburbs in America. (Montgomery County, MD). I did not mean to imply that I was or have been the oppressed. And I don't think that I identify with my oppressors, as Instapundit wonders. (Although I could be wrong).

Maybe I'm lucky, but I have never been exposed to the kind of all-men-are-rapists (or potential rapists) rhetoric that Jenn Fuller states is rampant. Perhaps it is, and if so, it is one of the excesses I referred to. But I'm not sure that such a belief is really that widespread. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just too knee-jerk a liberal too notice.

However, I think my point is still valid. The vast majority of colleges and universities in this country favored wealthy white men in their admissions, social attitudes, honors and policies. If in the last twenty years or so there has been a concerted effort to try and make higher education more accommodating to people who are not straight white men, that only seems fair to me. I don't believe that every change that helps women is anti-men, just as allowing blacks into college isn't anti white.

Let's not forget that colleges are traditionally bastions of the elite. Weren't their Jewish quotas in the Ivy League into the 60s?

Fuller states:

Magazine's cluelessness about other men is striking - he really seems to think that either you're a sensitive theater major or a hulking brute, with nothing in between.

I will always plead guilty to cluelessness, but my view of my fellow men isn't that black and white.

Its been fun being in my first real blog debate.

CBS News | A Bathtub Battle For Rooney | June 7, 2002 13:47:23 We got into an argument in our house recently when I wanted to tear out both bathtubs and put in stall showers.

Most houses have the same number of bathtubs as they have television sets. The television sets are used all the time but no one except small children ever use the bathtubs.

Instapundit replies to my reply. He is, as always, cogent and interesting. I'll have more to say later.

Thanks to Eschaton for the link.

Paul Krugman from The NYTimes -- right as usual:

The Reality Thing I think that most commentators missed the point of the story about Mr. Bush's commencement speech at Ohio State, the one his aide said drew on the thinking of Emily Dickinson, Pope John Paul II, Aristotle and Cicero, among others. Of course the aide's remarks were silly — but they gave us an indication of the level of sycophancy that Mr. Bush apparently believes to be his due. Next thing you know we'll be told that Mr. Bush is also a master calligrapher, and routinely swims across the Yangtze River. And nobody will dare laugh: just before Mr. Bush gave his actual, Aristotle-free speech, students at Ohio State were threatened with expulsion and arrest if they heckled him.

There's an article in today's Washington Post that reports that the clear majority of college graduates are women. The article quotes one the usual anti-feminist suspects, Christina Hoff Sommers, on why this is a horrible thing. I'm not going to argue about that (at the moment). What do I want to talk about is what Instapundit, King of the Bloggers (in real life law professor Glenn Reynolds) says:

SEX DISCRIMINATION IN COLLEGE: 57 percent of degrees are going to women. There's a lot of hand-wringing about why, but they miss the obvious: over the past 20 years there has been a concerted effort to make colleges male-unfriendly environments, with attacks on fraternities, with anti-male attitudes in many classes, with intrusive sexual-harassment rules that start with the assumption that men are evil predators, and so forth. Now men don't find college as congenial a place. It's a hostile environment, quite literally.

How come none of the experts quoted in this article has noticed that?

I've actually been in college for an embarrassingly large part of the last twenty years -- four years as an undergrad at UVa, three years in law school at Georgetown, and five years as a grad student in the theatre department at the University of Maryland-- so I've seen a lot of the changes that Reynolds talks about. He's making a fundamental mistake -- he's equating all males with some stereotypical college man. Many of the changes that he decries are not anti-male as much as they are anti-asshole. I think that the anti-drinking crusade on college campuses is stupid, but cracking down on fraternities that discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation and income is a good thing. The social and political dominance of fraternities at UVa in the mid 80's was intimidating and alienating to those of us who weren't Greeks.
Similarly, while I am sure there are excesses, campaigns against sexual harassment, date rape, and other forms of male-on-female creepery are not anti-male. They are anti-males-who-abuse-women. I like to think I'm not that kind of guy.
Making college campuses friendlier for women makes them friendlier for lots of men. I'm sure that gay students have benefited from the transformation of college campuses. Colleges certainly aren't perfect. Students seem to think that professors are there to give them good grades and spoonfeed them information relevant only to the final exam and/or getting a job. But I'd much rather be an undergraduate now than 15 years ago. I'm sure that women and minorities mostly feel the same way. If that's a problem for (other) straight white men, tough.

The end of our democracy -- (even the wacko libertarians at the Cato Institute get it right once in a while.)

Cato News Release - June 20, 2002 "The bottom line is that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft are attempting to suspend the 'Great Writ' of habeas corpus, which allows Americans to get into a court of law to challenge the legality of their arrest and to have their liberty restored if the court agrees that the arrest was unlawful. Without judicial review, the police can arrest people without warrants and jail people without trials.

"The controversial 'military order' that Bush issued last November has, in effect, now been extended to American citizens--and the writ of habeas corpus is now under assault. President Bush seems to believe that his commander-in-chief power gives him the authority to ignore every other part of the Constitution when he deems it necessary. The president is profoundly mistaken about that -- and the judiciary should resist this power grab."

What's wrong with the Bush "Peace Plan."

Tell a Vision - When is a state not a state? When it's Palestinian. By William Saletan Why is Bush's plan so vague? Because it was conceived as a pretty picture, not as a solution. From the moment last fall when he first spoke of "a day when two states, Israel and Palestine, live peacefully together," Bush and his aides have described this idea as a "vision." The word, which Bush repeated twice in his speech today, is significant. A vision is something you imagine, not something you do. In this case, it's something Bush wants Palestinians to imagine"a political process on the horizon" to encourage them to build "the institutions necessary for peace," as he put it on June 10. On June 13, Powell affirmed that the United States was trying to "give the Palestinians something to look forward to in the form of a state that will eventually come into being." When asked at that day's White House press briefing what Bush meant by "Palestine," Fleischer replied, "The President thinks it is very important to send signals to the Palestinian people that they are worthy and deserving of a state."

That's what the offer of a "state" with no defined borders, powers, or timetable (and no right to be represented by its present leadership) is. It isn't even a bone thrown to the Palestinians. It's a picture of a bone. Bush's father was notorious for confusing the photo op of a thing ("Message: I care") with the thing itself. The son, too, seems to think that his words are equal to deeds. A month ago, when he was asked about progress in the Middle East, he noted with pride, "I gave a speech right here in the Rose Garden on April the 4th that said parties have responsibilities. "I've talked about a vision of two states." Congratulations, Mr. President. You've done it again.

In addition, the Bush plan exemplifies the imperial arrogance of this administration. We will allow the creation of a trial state, with borders upon which we decide. We will mandate elections, which will be allowed to choose any leader of our choosing. We will then decide whether the Palestinians are deserving of a permanent state.

I think that Arafat is a vicious bastard, who supports terrorism abroad and corruption at home. I believe that Israel has a right to exist, in safety and security. But I don't believe that the United States has the right to dictate terms at all times, to all other people.

We are in the last days of the Roman Republic-- when the forms still existed, but the law was used at home as the battleground among vicious oligarchs, and the empire existed for the aggrandizement and enrichment of an arrogant few in Rome.

More Bush lies and hypocrisy -- this time on AIDS in Africa:

TOMPAINE.com - The Loyal Opposition: So This Is The Thanks Bono Gets? The President expects his project to prevent nearly 150,000 infant infections over the next five years. The problem is, there are about 800,000 children born with AIDS each year, according to the UN. That means the Bush initiative is aiming at helping less than 4 percent of this population. Moreover, $200 million dollars of this supposedly "new" initiative were approved for use this year by Congress days before Bush's announcement. What he added was $300 million for this type of AIDS prevention in the following two years. Which averages out to $150 million a year -- a cut from the current level. It gets worse. At the start of June, several Republicans -- notably, Sens. Bill Frist and Jesse Helms -- were trying to raise overseas AIDS funding this year by $500 million. But the White House leaned on Frist and Helms and got the pair to slice that to $200 million.

The bottom line? When Bush hailed his initiative as one that would save lives, he could have as easily said, thanks to me, this program will save fewer lives than it would have had Frist and Helms gotten their way. As Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat who has worked with Frist and Helms to increase global AIDS funding, griped, "Just as we've achieved bipartisan momentum to make a real difference on the toll this devastating disease is taking on Africa, the administration announces a retreat and pretends it's a forward charge."

Mr. Cranky on the evil that is Scooby Doo:

Scooby-Doo : Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies : Scooby-Doo What exactly compels the American public to throw $56 million at a movie like "Scooby-Doo," a movie so dumb it's unlikely to catalyze a single neural synapse within its catatonic, drooling audience? It's simple, really. The American public is approximately 95% moron. These morons toss their cigarette butts out of the car into dry brush, they try to talk on their cell phones while riding their bikes, they demand lower taxes and more services, and they go to see the "Scooby-Doo" movie.

President Bush is about to make his big Middle East peace speech. I'm sure that he's the guy to fix the problem.

Things must get mighty odd when you're between the Firth of Forth and the Arctic Circle.

Yahoo! News - Scotland - Aliens' Favorite Holiday Destination Around 300 "Unidentified Flying Objects" are spotted in Scotland each year, the most per square kilometer and per head of population of anywhere in the world, figures compiled by Scotland's official tourist body found.

VisitScotland said 0.004 UFOs were spotted for every square kilometer of Scotland -- a rate four times as high as in France or Italy, this planet's other UFO hotspots. The 2,000 UFOs are spotted every year in the United States represent just 0.0002 sightings per square kilometer.

"This confirms that Scotland is the nearest thing there is to the Costa del Sol for aliens," a VisitScotland spokesman said, referring to the tourist mecca of southern Spain, which attracts tens of thousands of holidaymakers every year.

More on political freedom in the Ashcroft era.

Independent News Nine months after the attacks of 11 September, leading American political cartoonists say they are under intense pressure to conform to a patriotic stereotype and not criticise the actions of Mr Bush and his "war on terror". Those who refuse to bend to such pressure face having their work rejected, being fired or even publicly humiliated by the President's press secretary.

The very astute Robert Fisk on W.'s foreign policy incompetence.

Independent Argument I love the idea of this increasingly incompetent strategist on Middle East affairs quietly weighing, like Frederick the Great, the odds on the rights of three million Palestinian refugees to return, the future of Jerusalem, and the continued growth of settlements for Jews on occupied land – only to decide that these weighty matters of state must be withheld from his loyal people. After lecturing the pompous and pathetic Arafat on his duties to protect Israel it only took an Israeli shell fired into a crowded Palestinian market – another of those famous Israeli "errors" – to shut Bush up again. Just a week ago, as we all know, Mr Bush had another of his famous "visions". They started in the autumn of last year when he had a vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. This particular vision coincided quite by chance, of course, with his efforts to keep the Arab states quiescent while America bombed the poorest and most ruined Muslim country in the world. Then this dream was forgotten for a few months until, earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to drum up Arab support for another war on Iraq. The Arabs tried to tell Cheney that there was already a rather dramatic little war going on in the region. And what happened? George Bush suddenly had his vision thing again.

I say, hang him high!

Northpinellas: Llama attacker gets three years in prison Llama attacker gets three years in prison
Brandon R. Eldred, who pleaded guilty in the beating of three pet llamas in East Lake, begs for leniency. But the judge says a probation violation "blew that opportunity."

7-Eleven: News Room - Fun Facts & Trivia Who's buying the most 7-Eleven stuff? The answer is - the most Slurpee® beverages in Detroit, hot dogs in Washington, D.C., coffee on Long Island, nachos in Colorado, Big Gulp® drinks in Las Vegas and Utah.

Greed isgood! President Bush was at a fundraiser while the suspicious plane was circling Washington. Thus, Republican money-grubbing from corporate fat cats might have saved the Presidency!

Independent Argument Arafat is simply interested in saving himself. He has had almost 10 years of freedom to run a petty kingdom, and has succeeded essentially in bringing opprobrium and scorn on himself and most of his team. Why anyone for a moment believes that at this stage he is capable of anything different, or that his new streamlined cabinet (dominated by the same old faces of defeat and incompetence) is going to produce actual reform, simply defies reason.

We aren't the only country with religious nuts trying to build a bridge to the 16th Century.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Schools special reports | Dawkins criticises 'spread' of creationism Creationism was insinuating itself into British schools, Richard Dawkins, of Oxford University, told teachers today.

"As ever, when we have fanatics to contend with, we need to be vigilant because otherwise the fanatics win by default," said Professor Dawkins, author of a series of influential popular biology books on genetics and Darwinism.

Number 11, watch out.

al.com: News Tuscaloosa and Northport are Alabama's only officially designated All-American Cities this year, but la-di-dah. Birmingham is the 12th sweatiest.
Try Our Classifieds


Old Spice, the deodorant people, saluted the Magic City on Tuesday for the volume of its residents' perspiration the salty, stinky product of our hard-working pores.

The Independent on Bush, Saddam, the CIA and America's arrogance:

Few disagree with the objective. The fall of Saddam is overdue and much-desired, even among Arab countries. But for Washington to disclose that it now plans to do this extra-judicially sends out entirely the wrong message, however good it sounds to American voters. The road to global condemnation of the United States is paved with the coups and attempted coups of the CIA, from the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadeq in Iran and Allende in Chile onwards. It is not without justification that the organisation has managed the rare feat of combining a reputation for deviousness with that of incompetence; recent events show little evidence that it has changed its bungling ways.

Happy Watergate Day! As the grandson of the general contractor of the building, I have a special place in my heart for the building and the scandal. I look forward to June 23 -- Smoking Gun Day!

American civilization has reached a new nadir:

Yahoo! News - 'Scooby-Doo' Debuts at No. 1 LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Scooby-Doo," where are you? Well on top of the weekend box office.
The big-screen update of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, starring Matthew Lillard, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Linda Cardellini and a computer-animated Great Dane, took in $56.4 million to debut as the No. 1 film, according to industry estimates Sunday.
"The weekend really went to the dogs," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "In these trying times, what could be more escapist than `Scooby-Doo,' which is so fun and lighthearted?"

Well, the rest of the world seems to have caught up with me in thinking that the phrase "Homeland Security" is sinister and not particularly American. Josh Marshall's Talking Points, and Mickey Kaus both make the case against the term very well. They however, concentrate on the Germano-fascist overtones to the word "homeland."

I agree totally, but I'll point out again that the name of the KGB "Committee for State Security" sure sounds a lot like "Department of Homeland Security." "Security" is one of those slippery words -- it doesn't take long before protecting the security of the homeland means making sure that people don't act in un-American ways. Paranoid? Ask the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist. Or ask Jose Padilla. Whoops, I guess you can't do that, since he's being held in military custody.

Isn't it great that the Catholic Bishops need to convene a huge conference, hear testimony, and argue among themselves in order to decide -- get this -- sexual assault on children is wrong. And just a few years after the Pope apologized for locking up Galileo. What's next -- apologies for aiding and abetting the Nazis? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Tapped points out that the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and other territories are "countries" eligible for the World Cup, even though those places lack national sovereignty. Tapped goes on to ask "What is FIFA up to? And the best question of all: If FIFA is trying to subtly undercut lingering U.S. colonialism, why not give Washington, D.C. a soccer team as well?"
It's actually more interesting than that. For example, England and Scotland have World Cup teams, but so do Wales (not independent since the 14th Century or so) and Northern Ireland (which isn't a nation or country -- it's arguably part of two countries). Palestine has a team, so does Taiwan ("Chinese Taipei") and the British Virgin Islands.
So the real question is: what about the Basques? The Bretons? Texas? Quebec? Staten Island? The San Fernando Valley? Does Hong Kong deserve separate status more than the Walloons? I think not.

FT.com / Comment & analysis By declaring that "the war on terrorism will not be won on the defensive", the president gave notice that the US intended to discard the conventions that have governed relations between nation states for more than half a century. Washington wants to impose new limits on the sovereignty of adversaries, real and potential. It is reinterpreting the meaning of self-defence. In short, America's war against terrorism is not simply a matter of hunting down al-Qaeda or, even, confronting today's rogue states. The changes in the geopolitical game proposed by Mr Bush are at once profound and troubling.

At the heart of all this is the belief that US security can no longer rely on the familiar cold war doctrines of containment and deterrence - an approach that until September 11 had survived the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mr Bush said that deterrence - the threat of massive retaliation - did not work against shadowy terrorists. Containment was not an option with "unbalanced dictators" capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction on ballistic missiles.

Happy Flag Day!!
BFD.

Let's hear it for the Senate Democrats who showed the cojones to stop the permanent repeal of the estate tax. The Bush Administration and its Republican soulmates on the Hill are noit just in favor of the rich -- they are not embrassed to be in favor of the rich.

The idea that the estate tax is a tax on money that's already been taxed once is a pernicious fiction. Most of the money taxed is capital gains that have never been taxed. Most Americans only earn wages and salary, which is in fact taxed at least twice -- FICA and income tax. Yet the rich, for whom wages are usually not the most significant part of their income, avoid taxes as much as possible.

TAP: Vol 13, Iss. 11. Tax the Wealthy. William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins. The United States also stands to lose one of its most progressive federal taxes. Only estates worth more than $1 million (or $2 million for couples) are subject to the tax -- and the bulk of it is paid by the fewer than 3,000 estates with assets in excess of $5 million. Thanks to the Bush tax cut, between now and 2009 the exemptions will rise to $3.5 million for an individual ($7 million for couples).

Let's hear it for the Senate Democrats who showed the cojones to stop the permanent repeal of the estate tax. The Bush Administration and its Republican soulmates on the Hill are noit just in favor of the rich -- they are not embrassed to be in favor of the rich.

The idea that the estate tax is a tax on money that's already been taxed once is a pernicious fiction. Most of the money taxed is capital gains that have never been taxed. Most Americans only earn wages and salary, which is in fact taxed at least twice -- FICA and income tax. Yet the rich, for whom wages are usually not the most significant part of their income, avoid taxes as much as possible.

I gave up on the new look.

Enough of this stuff. Here's something important -- the Redskins announced the 70 greatest players in the team's history.

CBS News | John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear | June 12, 2002 21:13:36 Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants?

The way the attorney general detonated the “dirty bomber” case this week completes his metamorphosis from a common press hog to a genuine fear monger.

That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.

That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.

This is Julius Caesar's Blog.

Bush is evidently angry at Ashcroft over the dirty bomber hype. Ashcroft is clearly out of control.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Bush Distances Himself From Attorney General by James Ridgeway According to press reports, the White House thinks Ashcroft made too much of Padilla, who has not been charged with a crime. The government attorneys apparently could not get an indictment out of a New York grand jury and, rather than let him go, handed Padilla off to the military. According to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking from Quatar, he might never be tried.

By this morning, there were charges flying around the capital that Bush had known about the Muhajir case for at least a month, and that Ashcroft released the information hurriedly only to divert attention from Intelligence Committee inquiries into the FBI and CIA handling of 9-11. The White House has been desperately trying to stay clear of accusations that the intelligence agencies knew about terrorist threats well before 9-11.

The Guardian has a very interesting article on British officials who think the Bush Administration's alarmist rhetoric is hindering the fight against terrorism.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK anti-terrorist officials alarmed at US tactics They say that imprecise or exaggerated warnings of attacks merely serve to encourage panic, and give gratuitous propaganda victories to the terrorists.

One official described a blanket warning by Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, last month about possible attacks on apartment blocks in the US as being so vague as to be meaningless. Another British official put it down to "back-covering".

There is also deep concern about the rhetoric employed by senior members of the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general - and even Mr Bush himself. Some suspects have been described as serious terrorists despite a lack of evidence against them, with remarks which would be prejudicial to a fair trial.

The New York Observer Suddenly, an American citizen can be detained indefinitely without being accused of any statutory offense, and can be deprived of all the rights previously afforded him under those lawful traditions, which date back beyond the beginnings of this Republic. To hear the Attorney General describe this situation is to realize that under certain circumstances, a citizen has fewer rights than an alien, who would at least be given the opportunity to defend himself in a military tribunal. Suddenly, the United States looks a little more like Castro

Maureen Dowd -- saying it very well:

Summer of All Fears It's bad enough that the terrorists are using fear as a device. Does the Bush administration have to do the same thing?

Independent News British and European security officials are highly sceptical of American claims that the alleged "dirty bomb" plotter, Abdullah al-Muhajir, was preparing to unleash a radioactive attack.

British sources point out that despite extensive inquiries, no evidence has been produced to show that he had access to the radioactive material needed to build the bomb, or indeed that he had even worked out a time or place to launch the attack.

Independent News For the Bush administration, the more alarmed the public the better as it tries to push through Congress a measure to set up a new Department of Homeland Security and seeks to convince Americans, as the holiday season begins, that the war on terror continues, and that al-Qa'ida remains a potent threat.

The arrest, moreover, deflects attention from the deficiencies of the security services – especially the FBI – before 11 September, which are now under a Congressional spotlight.

Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened Ashcroft's remarks annoy White House Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday overstated the potential threat posed by ''dirty bomb'' suspect Abdullah Al Muhajir, Bush administration and law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Ashcroft's remarks annoyed the White House and led the administration to soften the government's descriptions of the alleged plot. ''I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and (Al Muhajir's) coming in here obviously to plan further deeds,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told CBS on Tuesday.

He was taken from us too soon, because God needed a plumbing contractor.

I've got nothing against soccer, but I do have something against this hat:

The Washington Post has a very good editorial on the danger to constitutional liberties by the Administration's actions in the Dirty Bomber matter.

Detaining Americans (washingtonpost.com) Less encouraging are the events that followed his arrest. Mr. al Muhajir has been held for a month in secret by the Justice Department -- apparently as a material witness -- and he has now been transferred to the custody of the military and is being treated as an enemy detainee. This transfer appears to have been accomplished not as a result of a court order but at the sole discretion of the president and his administration. Administration officials acknowledged yesterday that as a citizen, Mr. al Muhajir cannot be tried before a military commission. So the idea seems to be to hold him indefinitely as a combatant -- in a war that the administration has repeatedly stated is no temporary state of hostilities but a permanent new reality. Asked if Mr. al Muhajir even had a lawyer, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson conspicuously spoke in the past tense: "He was being held under the authority of a federal judge, and he had legal representation in connection with that." Yes, but what about now that he is being held by the military without judicial oversight?

Ashcroft had to announce from Moscow that they had caught the dirty bomber on May 8? Gee, do you think the announcement had anything to do with the beating up the administration took on the Sunday talk shows? I'm not the only one wondering.

I can't believe the British are better looking than our guys.

The Royal Marines and a gay warlord - smh.com.au Afghan warlord Malim Jan is a man with split loyalties. Once a Taliban commander in a central district, where he is accused of torture and extortion, he is now paid by the US military to patrol the rugged border with Pakistan.

He admits that he has two wives and "several boyfriends", and has now taken a fancy to the Royal Marines who have visited his camp.

"Very handsome boys, much cleaner shaven and prettier than the American special forces," he said of the marines, as his own fighters - whom he refers to as "beautiful young boys" - smiled up at him.

From The Brunching Shuttlecocks -- a truly funny site.

Here's the GOP at work -- Texas Republicans declared the United States a Christian nation. Welcome to the 17th Century.

Dot Dot Dot

KRT Wire | 06/06/2002 | NSA didn't share key pre-Sept. 11 information, sources say The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the conversations between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta were intercepted by the National Security Agency, or NSA, an intelligence agency that monitors and decodes foreign communications.

The NSA failed to share the intercepts with the CIA or other U.S. intelligence agencies, the officials told Knight Ridder. It also failed to promptly translate some intercepted Arabic language conversations, a senior intelligence official said.

The officials declined to disclose the nature of the discussions between Mohammed, a known leader of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network who is on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list, and Atta, who piloted one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Dept. of Political Security After weeks of scalding revelations about a cascade of leads and warnings prefiguring the 9/11 attacks that were ignored by the U.S. government, the president created the Department of Political Security.

Or, as the White House calls it for public consumption, the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Bush's surprise move was a complete 180, designed to knock F.B.I. Cassandra Coleen Rowley off front pages. He had resisted the idea of a cabinet department focusing on domestic defense for nine months.

But clearly, Iago Rove saw his master's invincibility cracking and did a little whispering in W.'s ear. Why not use national security policy for scandal management?

Henry Kissinger wins a Nobel Peace Prize, and now this --

After a career of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, singer Mick Jagger is being tipped to receive the ultimate accolade from the establishment he once outraged – a knighthood in next week's honours list.

Frank Rich has a great op ed on the incompetence of the Bush Administration.

Department of Homeland Insecurity Is the new Department of Homeland Security an antidote to a broken system? Or is it merely a hastily contrived antidote to Ms. Rowley's TV debut, knocking her out of the evening-news lead lest she wreak damage on this Bush administration akin to what Anita Hill, appearing before the same committee, inflicted on the first? It's not Ari Fleischer but Al Qaeda that will ultimately provide the answer.

What is clear is that the White House has lost control of a hagiographic story line that, as codified everywhere from Annie Leibovitz's triumphalist photos in Vanity Fair to a multipart series co-written by Bob Woodward at The Washington Post, portrayed it as a steely, no-nonsense team of razor-sharp executives running government like a crack Fortune 500 corporation. When it comes to domestic security, the administration turns out to mirror America's C.E.O. culture all right — but not that of Thomas Watson's I.B.M. or Jack Welch's General Electric so much as that laid bare by the dot-com crash. It's a slipshod business culture in which arrogant C.E.O.'s, held accountable by no one (including their own boards), cash out just before their own bad deals take their companies south. It's the culture that has wrecked Americans' trust in the market and that this week prompted Henry M. Paulson Jr., the chief of Goldman Sachs, to speak out, chastising "the activities and behavior of some C.E.O.'s" and concluding, "I cannot think of a time when business over all has been held in less repute."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a remarkably uninteresting article on his fellow-Columbian, pop singer Shakira, in The Guardian. Here's an example:

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The poet and the princess Today, her dreams have more than come true. Shakira's music doesn't sound like anybody else's, and she has invented her own brand of innocent sensuality. "If I didn't sing, I'd die," is a thing often said lightly, but in Shakira's case it's true: when she's not singing, she's hardly alive. Her inner peace comes from an ability to feel alone in the middle of a crowd. She never has stage fright: she's only frightened of not being on stage: "I feel," she says, "like a lion in the jungle." It's where she can be who she really is.

Gag me with a magical realist spoon.

BTW--doesn't "Department of Homeland Security" sound like a Stalin-era name for the KGB? In fact, KGB stands for Committee of State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti). No wonder I find it faintly menacing.

Whether or not a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security is a good idea, it's clear that the only reason Bush has made his proposal is because of the recent revelations of bueracratic incompetence. Of course, the new DHS would not include the FBI and the CIA, which would seem to be the most important players (other than the military) in thwarting terrorism.

It's also very clear that the announcement was timed to dilute the impact of Colleen Rowley's testimony. But don't take my word for it -- here's the NY Times lead editorial:

Back to the Drawing Board It was hard not to see these comments, and the announcement of the reorganization, as a response to the embarrassing disclosures of recent weeks. Only a few hours before Mr. Bush addressed the nation in prime time, Coleen Rowley, the F.B.I. whistle-blower, was vividly detailing the bureau's failures before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Earlier Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, told the committee about his own reorganization plan, which seemed by last night to have been superseded in part by Mr. Bush's blueprint. It did not look as if the two men had coordinated their plans. The disharmony left the impression that the White House had assembled its plan at the last minute.

I wish the government would go after a real threat to America. I refer, of course, to the live-action Scooby Doo movie. Did I miss the meeting when it was decided that every television show that aired before 1990 will get a feature-film?

TAP: Web Feature: The Barn Door:. by John Prados. June 7, 2002.

Initial impressions may be misleading, but it appears the department will advance security in just one way: By unifying border controls at entry points to the United States and combining this activity with aviation security and emergency response. At the same time, the plan threatens to weaken United States security in at least three other ways: By establishing a new agency that will compete for the homeland defense mission; by drafting offices and services from all over our government and combining them willy-nilly into a new entity; and by creating fresh cross-cutting competition among elements of the U.S. government.

I'd like to read this book : The Black Death Transformed, by Samuel K Cohn Jnr.
It's reviewed in The Independent

But Cohn does not deviate from his thesis, and as epidemiological detective he is convincing. People developed immunity to Black Death, something medically impossible with bubonic plague. Whatever it was, the new and ferocious disease which first assailed Europe between 1347 and 1352 was not the rat- and flea-borne bacillus with which modern science is familiar.

Having established this revolutionary claim, Cohn does not waste time with speculation as to what the Black Death really was. He is a historian, not a scientist, and he has bigger ideas to explore. Did the speed and confidence with which rational investigation and treatment of plague replaced pessimistic religiosity lay the foundations for the Renaissance?

We've had enough witch hunts

The truth is that the bureau was hamstrung not by constitutional limits on its powers but rather by incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance at the organization's top, which ignored ample warnings from below that something terrifying was afoot. Furthermore, the FBI's parent bureaucracy, the Justice Department, was itself hobbled by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who remained steadfastly focused on the so-called war on drugs despite urgent warnings from the previous administration that terrorism was the main law-enforcement problem.

The rest of the Bush administration was equally distracted before Sept. 11, focusing on an illusory promise of missile defense rather than on the hard reality of terrorism. Former White House officials have told me that despite the passionate warnings of Richard Clarke, a top anti-terrorism official under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the president's Cabinet went the first eight months of his administration without discussing terrorist threats.

Why all of the "reforms" are so very scary.
J. Edgar Ashcroft?

The same day the new FBI guidelines were revealed, Mueller outlined the "FBI Priorities" as follows: protect the U.S. from terrorist attack; protect the U.S. against foreign intelligence operations and espionage; protect the U.S. against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes; combat public corruption at all levels; protect civil rights; combat transnational and national criminal enterprises; combat major white-collar crime; combat significant violent crime; support federal, state, local and international partners; and upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission. But although none of these priorities identify domestic activities as threats to America, the expanded powers of the FBI target domestic, not international, "terrorism."

This is a very interesting review by Germaine Greer of Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley. The book (published by Yale University Press) is an exploration of nude dancing.

Here's Greer on the "power" excercised by a tripper over her patrons:

What is demonstrated in Bentley's case, as in the cases of the wives and girlfriends, is certainly power, but it is the power of delusion. No woman who dances naked in public is in control of the situation; she is merely an attraction on the bill, an alternative to the strongman and the conjurer. Male desire, her standing ovation, as it were, is all in her imagination. Men are titillated as much by the presence of other men as by the spectacle itself, but they will lose the respect of their male companions if they give evidence of actual arousal.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. If you read the article, you'll see he's being disciplined under a very old law, one that may actually be a good idea.

The Sacramento Bee -- sacbee.com -- Air Force colonel suspended after bad-mouthing Bush

A U.S. Air Force colonel who called President Bush "a joke" and accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen because "his presidency was going nowhere," has been suspended and could face a court-martial.

The letter from Lt. Col. Steve Butler, who was vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, was published May 26 in The (Monterey County) Herald.

"He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism," Butler wrote. "His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama. His presidency was going nowhere. ... This guy is a joke."

The New York Observer

From what we know of Mr. Ashcroft’s conduct since he assumed office last year, he shrugged off the terrorist threat in favor of his own small-time agenda. He wanted to prosecute people in California who provide marijuana to cancer patients. He wanted to prosecute doctors in Oregon who assist the suicides of terminally ill patients. He wanted to prosecute pornographers.

No doubt he wanted to stop terrorists, too, but that particular item got priority only when he appeared before Congress or made speeches—not when he allocated funds or issued directives within the Justice Department. He can’t say he wasn’t warned. As Newsweek reported two weeks ago, Mr. Freeh tried to convince him that additional resources and action were needed to fight terrorism during a conference at the F.B.I. facility in Quantico, Va., but Mr. Ashcroft brushed him off.

This is a very interesting article on the "metaphorical Blackness" of Spiderman and other Spidey related thoughts. Believe it or not, it's from The London Review of Books.

LRB | Jonathan Lethem: The Amazing . . .

Spider-Man, as a dashiki-wearing instructor at a Brooklyn day-care centre once explained to me and a group of other (multi-hued) children, wasn't actually invented by white people at all, but derived from an African legend of a spider-demon of the jungle, a trickster figure. Everyone knew this, it was as basic as Elvis Presley's music having originated in black sources. I listened, that day, and believed. It may have been nonsense, or only coincidence, but the fact that it needed to be claimed is significant.

As if we needed more reason to have an independent investigation.
Yahoo! News - Report: Egypt Says It Warned U.S. of an Attack

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was quoted on Monday as saying his intelligence services warned U.S. officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against a U.S. target.
The New York Times, in an interview with Mubarak published on its Web site, quoted the Egyptian leader as saying Cairo obtained the information through a secret agent in close contact with bin Laden's al Qaeda network and had tried unsuccessfully to halt the operation.

3 Amish men charged in buggy race, crash

Three young Amish men have been charged in a late-night buggy race in the Town of Leon in which a collision with a fourth buggy left a horse dead.

The charges were announced Sunday after a weeklong investigation of the May 19 accident by the Cattaraugus County Sheriff's Department. Deputies were called to the scene after a dead horse and smashed buggy were found in a ditch on Riga Road last Monday.

Deputies said the three men from Leon were racing their buggies south on Riga Road at 11 p.m. when they crested a knoll and encountered a northbound buggy driven by Eli D. Miller, 17, of Napoli. The unsuspecting Miller collided with the horse and buggy driven by Jacob E. Wengerd, 17, of Route 62, deputies said. Wengerd's horse was killed, and Miller's horse suffered cuts to its legs and chest, deputies added.

Adam magazine folds after 3 issues

LA Weekly: News: Indicting Ashcroft THAT ASHCROFT APPARENTLY LEARNED OF THE PHOENIX memo just days after September 11 and never bothered to tell his boss is by itself enough for the White House to put him on ice. But the scandal on Ashcroft's watch is much deeper. Start with the fact that the agencies whose bureaucracies stumbled most spectacularly -- the FBI and INS -- report directly to the attorney general. True, both were rife with problems that predate the Bush administration. But Ashcroft took office promising to clean the stables. Instead, he presided over some of the most scandalous and deadly bureaucratic misjudgments in American history, from last summer's active suppression of FBI investigations in Arizona and Minneapolis to those late-fall student visas granted two of the deceased hijackers.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, it was easy to blame red tape. But increasingly, Ashcroft's basic judgment is the issue. It was Ashcroft who insisted on naming Robert Mueller, a Justice bureaucrat under the first President Bush, as new FBI director. It was Ashcroft who kept the embarrassing news of Agent Williams' Phoenix memo from going to the president or Congress. It was Ashcroft who in the autumn took the September 11 investigation away from the one U.S. attorney in the country with experience and success prosecuting al Qaeda -- Mary Jo White in New York -- and gave it to the same Justice Department that (we now know) had bungled earlier inquiries. Senators are suddenly remembering that back in November, it was Ashcroft who in apparent deference to the sensibilities of the NRA refused to use the federal government's gun-owner registry in his terrorism investigation.

The Village Voice: Nation: Nat Hentoff: Unleashing the FBI As usual, television—broadcast and cable—got it wrong. The thrust of what they call reporting on the reorganization of the FBI focused on the 900 or so new agents, the primacy of intelligence gathering over law enforcement, and the presence of CIA supervisors within the bosom of the FBI. (It used to be illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans within our borders.)

But the poisonous core of this reorganization is its return to the time of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, the counter-intelligence operation—pervasively active from 1956 to 1971—that so disgraced the Bureau that it was forced to adopt new guidelines to prevent such wholesale subversion of the Bill of Rights ever again.

What We Really Need to Know The basic Bush attitude toward accountability seems to be: stuff it. This distaste for what he considers “Monday-morning quarterbacking” predates September 11. Allow historians continued access to old unclassified presidential documents? Nope. Release the names of those corporations that had private audiences with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force? Not gonna happen without a court order. Come clean at long last on the contacts between the White House and Enron? In your dreams.
The Democrats will try to exploit that impulse this fall. One of their big campaign themes is summed up by James Carville and other strategists as “lack of accountability”—on everything from Enron to the environment to national security. I’m not sure it will work, but I do know that the only way to secure our safety—at the FBI or the chemical plant down the road—is holding people accountable for performance. Bush understands that in the field of education. It’s about time he starts raising standards for homeland defense too.

Another bridge to the 21st Century

Swiss Voters Lift Restriction on Abortions Swiss voters agreed today to ease the country's abortion laws, among Europe's strictest, and bring them closer to much of the rest of the continent's laws and actual practice in Switzerland.

About 72 percent of voters approved a measure permitting abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, provided the woman requests the procedure in writing and agrees to counseling and medical advice. After 12 weeks, a woman may obtain an abortion only if she can show a physician that her physical health is endangered or that she faces "profound distress."

Independent News Is Chekhov too racy for high-school students? Is Isaac Bashevis Singer too Jewish?

It seems New York state's board of education thinks so, because its members have been going through the works of eminent authors and excising all references to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, drugs, bad language and anything else that might cause offence to anyone.

This ham-fisted attempt at political correctness has nevertheless ended up causing enormous offence

Shockingly, the SUpreme Court rules for sanity.

Death Row Inmate Whose Lawyer Slept at Trial Gets New Trial (washingtonpost.com)
A Texas Death Row inmate whose lawyer slept for long portions of his murder trial will either win freedom or a new trial, after the Supreme Court refused to intervene Monday.

The high court rejected an appeal from Texas authorities, who argued that the lawyer's inattention did not necessarily equal an unfair trial.

The Supreme Court's action means that Texas must choose whether to retry Calvin Jerold Burdine or set him free.

Burdine was convicted of stabbing to death his gay lover, W.T. Wise, at the Houston trailer they shared in 1983. Burdine confessed to police, but now denies killing Wise. He claims an accomplice actually killed Wise, while Burdine tried to talk him out of it.

Jurors and a court clerk later described how court-appointed lawyer Joe Cannon slept for up to 10 minutes at a time during the 1984 trial, and the separate sentencing phase that followed. Burdine was sentenced to death.

In honor of the World Cup

Please note that Jesus is not wearing regulation soccer cleats. What kind of example is that for the little ones?