Lester at Vision Circle analyzed:

However there is a trick bag that we can't get out of. That Rice can't get out of.

Plainly put, she's black.

What this means is that every single editorial cartoon she appears in is going to look like a racist lampoon.

And that every attempt to praise/condemn her is going to fall victim to one of two stereotypes:

1. The Superwoman stereotype--look at this strong black woman who can do everything AND lift weights too!

2. The Black Aid stereotype--made famous by Thomas Jefferson's behind the back comments about Benjamin Banneker. Everything black people do cannot possibly be a product of their own agency--particularly if they go against the black grain. She's GOT to be somebody's agent.

Racism Studies Find Rational Part of Brain Can Override Prejudice
Associated Press

When scientists theorize about why racism is pervasive - so much so that some have suggested it is hard-wired into us - they come up with something like this: Back when humans were venturing out of the species' birthplace in east Africa, each little band mostly kept to itself. But occasionally someone, searching for food or territory or maybe adventure, came upon someone unfamiliar, from a different band.

He could wait for the thoughtful, cognitive part of his brain to assess the stranger. Or he could follow the instincts of the primitive, vigilance and wariness-inducing part of his brain, instantly identifying the guy as an outsider and then either running like heck or assaulting him. With this reaction, he was more likely to live and reproduce. We, the descendants of such people, inherited their genetically based brain modules, which reflexively classify people as "like me" or "unlike me." And thus was racism wired into humankind.

Boi from Troy wants to be practical about a gay agenda for 2005:

I am more interested in a 2005 Gay Agenda. That is, given a Republican President and a Republican House and a Republican Senate, what legislation can we get passed that will benefit gays and lesbians?

What bills are they talking about that help us and how can we benefit from their posturing on the marriage issue?

Sadly, what he suggests doesn't bring gay folks up to the level of rights we straight folks have. Instead there's more of a crabs in a basket effect. He has four points: federal recognition of civil unions is the only positive position taken. He argues for the other three by saying they will put straight folks on the same footing as gay folks.

via Afro-Nteizen

White radio host calls Rice 'Aunt Jemima'
By JAMES A. CARLSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

MILWAUKEE -- A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday after calling Condoleezza Rice an "Aunt Jemima" and saying she isn't competent to be secretary of state.

John Sylvester, the program director and morning personality on WTDY-AM in Madison, said in a phone interview Thursday that he used the term on Wednesday's show to describe Rice and other blacks as having only a subservient role in the Bush administration.

Rice has served as President Bush's national security adviser and was named this week to replace the departing Colin Powell as secretary of state.

Sylvester, who is white, also referred to Powell as an "Uncle Tom" - a contemptuous term for a black whose behavior toward whites is regarded as fawning or servile.

Foe of DeLay Rebuked by House Ethics Panel
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The House ethics committee has ruled that a Democratic lawmaker exaggerated in the accusations he brought in June against the majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay.

Mr. DeLay invoked the finding to claim vindication Friday despite having been admonished by the committee after its inquiry into the complaint.

In a letter issued Thursday night, the two leaders of the bipartisan ethics panel told the accuser, Representative Chris Bell, like Mr. DeLay a Texan, that his charges violated a committee rule that prohibits "innuendo, speculative assertions or conclusory statements'' in accusations against a colleague.

Violence Surges Through Central and Northern Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 20 - Violence surged through central and northern Iraq on Saturday as a tenacious insurgency led by Sunni Arabs kept up relentless assaults in a string of major cities, from Ramadi to Falluja to Baghdad.

At dawn, insurgents armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades tried storming a police station in the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Amariya, where American and Iraqi soldiers had engaged in a bloody mosque shootout on Friday. The gun battle at the station left three Iraqi policemen dead and two others injured, Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said.

Germans Weigh Taking Stocks Off Wall Street
By MARK LANDLER

FRANKFURT, Nov. 19 - Add another entry to the list of how Americans and Europeans are parting ways. Several German companies, which rushed to have their shares traded on exchanges in the United States during the bull market of the late 1990's, are now seriously thinking about abandoning the market.

The Germans are disenchanted by the United States as a source of capital, and offended by what they view as oppressive new regulations adopted in the aftermath of Enron and other corporate scandals.

With trading volumes in New York that are, in most cases, a small fraction of their turnover in Europe, the companies are less willing to bear the legal costs, liability and the bureaucracy of complying with the rules.

Quote of note:

"In this country, rich as it is, people shouldn't have to choose whether their child will live or die," said Angela Ray, the mother of a severely ill 12-year-old girl in Lawrenceburg. "It's amazing to me that it's come down to this."

Once a Model, a Health Plan Is Endangered
By RICK LYMAN

NASHVILLE, Nov. 19 - A decade after Tennessee inaugurated a health care plan for the state's most vulnerable residents that was hailed as a model for the nation, the program is once more being held up as a model - of failure in an era of soaring medical costs and voters' aversion to higher taxes.

Today the plan, TennCare, which sought to improve health care for Medicaid recipients while covering those who fall through the federal program's cracks, is on the ropes.

Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Saturday, Nov. 20 - House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year.

The provision may be an early indication of the growing political muscle of social conservatives who provided crucial support for Republican candidates, including President Bush, in the election.

House officials said Saturday morning that the final details of the spending measure were worked out before midnight and that the bill was filed for the House vote on Saturday.

Black Men Outraged At Racist Rice-Bashing
November 17, 2004

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Gino in Chicago. Gino, welcome to the EIB Network. Nice to have you with us.

CALLER: How you doing? Rush, I enjoy your show.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: You know, I can't say how back I am taken at the New York Times and the article, the cartoon. I'm waiting for black leadership to stand up and say "Hey, you know what? This is wrong." I'm waiting to hear Jesse Jackson; I'm waiting to hear from the leaders of the Nation of Islam; I'm waiting to hear from Jesse Jackson, Jr.; I'm waiting to hear from Al Sharpton, but I'm waiting to hear from them. But you know what I'm going to hear, Rush? I'm going to hear silence. Do you know why? It's not, "Well, I'm up for the black man." They're more Democratic than they are black. That's the only way I can put it. They are more Democratic than they are black, and I have to say --

Share prices pressured by Greenspan warning on trade gap; Dow down 115
- MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, AP Business Writer
Friday, November 19, 2004

Click to View

(11-19) 16:56 PST NEW YORK (AP) --

Stocks fell sharply Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrials losing more than 115 points, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sounded a warning over the nation's spiraling trade deficit. Crude oil futures rose more than $2 per barrel, further pressuring stocks.

Greenspan's unusually frank assessment of the trade imbalance and its effect on the U.S. economy worried many investors. The Fed chairman said the economy was resilient thus far, but foreign investment could wane should the deficits continue to build and the U.S. dollar remain weak.

The quote of note comes from The Skeptic's Dictionary

Under Lysenko's guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. Lysenko's methods were not condemned by the Soviet scientific community until 1965, more than a decade after Stalin's death.

See Scientific American for more.

Genesis Through the Back Door

November 20, 2004

American high school seniors rank 16th among 21 industrialized nations when it comes to achievement in science, and you can bet a frozen mastodon that the leaders — Sweden, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway — got there with a stronger curriculum and better-trained teachers, not with endless court fights over creationism.

Yet fighting creationism has evolved into a booming business for the American Civil Liberties Union. It is awaiting a ruling in Georgia in a suit it brought against the Cobb County school board. Seeking to mollify religious parents who take the creation story in Genesis literally and believe that their religion should intrude into their public schools, the board decided to paste a sticker inside the cover of high school biology textbooks, saying in part, "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Caveat homo sapiens. What next? A back-cover sticker to American history texts wondering if ending slavery was really such a great idea?

…Far more troubling was last month's decision by the Dover, Pa., school board to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside evolution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that the required teaching of creationism as science violated the 1st Amendment. Trying to disguise creationism with the label of "intelligent design" (which sounds like an IKEA marketing pitch) doesn't pass the smell test — or any valid science test.

Ending Hunger Today and Into the Future
Aid agencies plan for those in need.
By Michael Flood
Michael Flood is the executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank. Website: www.lafoodbank.org

November 20, 2004

…There are two main fronts in the fight against hunger: programs that fight hunger today and public policies that can end hunger in the future. Food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens and other charities are on the front lines providing food to adults, children and senior citizens who need assistance today. Federal nutrition programs, such as food stamps and the school lunch and breakfast programs, are also crucial in the fight against hunger. Support for all of these programs is critical to help the people who require food assistance today.

Not All Spiritual E-Mail Is Sent With Divine Intentions
By Chris Gaither
Times Staff Writer

November 20, 2004

Sometimes that junk e-mail in your computer inbox isn't trying to sell you something — it's trying to save your soul.

Get ready for spiritual spam. An e-mail security company Friday reported an uptick in evangelical missives crusading across the Internet.

While religious spam makes up less than 2% of the billions of junk e-mail messages sent each day, its numbers have grown in recent weeks, according to MessageLabs, a New York-based anti-spam company.

"With the recent right-wing swing in elections, maybe they're trying to ride that wave," said Paul Wood, the firm's chief analyst.

PLAYERS VS. FANS
Palace Revolt
In one of the ugliest moments in NBA history, Artest leads charge into the stands and punches fans, who fire back at players, before Pacer-Piston game is called off
From Associated Press

November 20, 2004

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Fists were flying. So were cups, plastic bottles and even a chair in one of the ugliest NBA brawls ever — and Indiana's Ron Artest was right in the middle of it.

Artest and Stephen Jackson charged into the stands and fought with fans in the final minute of their game against the Detroit Pistons on Friday night, and the brawl forced an early end to the Pacers' 97-82 victory at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Officials stopped the game with 45.9 seconds remaining after pushing and shoving between the teams spilled into the stands once fans got involved by throwing things at the players near the scorer's table.

The thing that annoys me most is ignoring the obvious. So people that claim affirmative action programs are prima facie violations of the 14th amendment are very annoying.

Amendment XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

They get stuck on Section 1 and forget all about Section 5:

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

China eyes new turf: S. America
Bush visits Friday, but President Hu Jintao has been striking business deals for two weeks.
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SANTIAGO, CHILE - When President Bush arrives here Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, he's likely to be met by student protesters already in the streets chanting against "globalization," "colonialism," and the US occupation of Iraq.

But China's President Hu Jintao is getting quite a different reception. For two weeks now, he's been cutting ribbons at new factories in Argentina, enjoying beef barbecues in Brazil, addressing congresses, and announcing investment projects as he and 150 Chinese businessmen make their way across South America and on to Cuba.

New low-cost HIV treatment hailed

The World Health Organization has recommended a new treatment for HIV-positive children which researchers say can dramatically cut death rates.

The drug - a common antibiotic called co-trimoxazole - costs less than 10 cents per person a day.

A trial on children in Zambia suggests it can nearly halve mortality rates for infections such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, often caused by HIV.

Every day about 1,300 children die from HIV/Aids illnesses across the world.

The Zambia trial was carried out by doctors from the UK's Medical Research Council.
The study ended early when they realised how effective of the treatment was.

After about 19 months, a quarter of the children who had been taking co-trimoxazole had died, compared with more than 40% of the children who had been given a placebo.

A guide to future U.S.ofA. military campaigns.

Jesus and the FDA
By KAREN TUMULTY
Saturday, Oct. 05, 2002

A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration's plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women's health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency's choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager's appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment.

Talking Points Memo:
Florida's Adam Putnam voted for the DeLay Rule on Wednesday. And here in the local paper he's explaining how he stood up for principle by voting for the 'compromise' ...

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, said he voted for the compromise in
Republican House rules covering suspension of House GOP leaders, who
are indicted in state courts, but that he would not have voted for the
proposal that would have totally exempted committee chairs and other
leaders from state indictments.

The issue has arisen because of a potential Texas grand jury
indictment on political corruption against Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

It would have been to me rather hypocritical to have said that we
are above state law, but not above federal law," Putnam said. "The
initial package stated that House Republican leaders would be excluded
from state courts, but not federal courts. But there is total agreement
on the final package (with the compromise)," he said.

Children Left Behind
Friday, November 19, 2004; Page A28

DEFICIT SPENDING didn't bother the Bush administration when the issue was tax cuts. Congress had no trouble finding "savings" to supposedly offset new costs when the costs were in a corporate tax bill stuffed with special-interest provisions. But when it comes to health care for poor children, different, stricter rules seem to apply. This week's lame-duck Congress is poised to leave town without taking any action to restore $1 billion in federal funding for children's health care that wasn't used before its Sept. 30 expiration and therefore reverted to the Treasury. Republican lawmakers say they don't oppose renewing the funding but insist that it has to be paid for with cuts elsewhere. The result is that some 200,000 low-income children will be at risk of losing health coverage in the next three years.

If an effective treatm,ent for, say, Alzheimer;s disease, was developed via stem cell research using therapeutic cloning, would a U.S. law banning such research prevent us from buying and using such a drug?

UN Short-Circuits U.S.-Led Drive to Ban Cloning
Thu Nov 18, 2004 09:11 PM ET

By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to secure a global treaty banning the cloning of human embryos, including for stem cell research, were dealt a major setback on Thursday when U.N. diplomats agreed to work for a political declaration on the issue instead.

"This is a done deal. We resume consideration in February on a declaration," said one envoy involved in last-minute negotiations before a showdown on the issue which had been expected at a United Nations committee on Friday.

Wal-Mart is an economic force of nature, but one that…for now…can still be affected.

---

Lawsuits and Change at Wal-Mart
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Wal-Mart is not only the world's largest retailer, but also a magnet for employee complaints about off-the-clock work. It faces lawsuits in more than 30 states.

Wal-Mart says its deep pockets have made it an attractive target. Plaintiffs' lawyers counter that off-the-clock work is endemic at Wal-Mart because of the company's emphasis on keeping its costs low.

Wal-Mart settled one case involving 69,000 workers in Colorado for $50 million four years ago. In Oregon, a federal jury found in 2002 that the company had required off-the-clock work, but the court awarded back pay to only 83 workers.

Quote of note:

Software developer SCO Group Inc., which claims that Linux is based on its Unix software, is suing companies including International Business Machines Corp..

It is to laugh. Ha ha ha!

Singapore's Ministry of Defense last month switched 20,000 personal computers to run on open-source software instead of the Microsoft operating platform.

Other governments in the region are also looking to use more open-source software. China, Japan and South Korea this year agreed to jointly develop applications running on Linux.

It is NOT to laugh.

Someone's been studying the history of European imperialism, with a particular focus on economic spheres of influence.

Anyway…

Microsoft Warns Asian Governments of Linux Suits

D.C. Water Test Finds Toxic Substance
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 19, 2004; Page B01

A more refined test of the water in the Washington Aqueduct has revealed the presence of perchlorate, a toxic chemical typically found in weapons and explosives, federal officials said yesterday.

The discovery of the chemical in the water supply challenges the prevailing theory of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has argued that contamination from buried World War I munitions in the Spring Valley neighborhood to the north poses no threat to Dalecarlia Reservoir along MacArthur Avenue NW.

Thomas P. Jacobus, chief of the Washington Aqueduct, said perchlorate in the reservoir measured between 1.2 and 1.8 parts per billion (ppb) and did not pose a health risk. He said he has ordered weekly tests of the water and is recommending that the corps accelerate its search for the source of perchlorate contamination.

Nuclear Disclosures on Iran Unverified
U.S. Officials Checking Evidence Cited by Powell
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 19, 2004; Page A01

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared information with reporters Wednesday about Iran's nuclear program that was classified and based on an unvetted, single source who provided information that two U.S. officials said yesterday was highly significant if true but has not yet been verified.

Powell and other senior Cabinet members were briefed last week on the sensitive intelligence. The material was stamped "No Foreign," meaning it was not to be shared with allies, although President Bush decided that portions could be shared last week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, officials said.

Bush Confronts New Challenge on Issue of Iran
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

Published: November 19, 2004

SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 18 - While assembling a new national security team, President Bush is confronting what could become the biggest challenge of his second term: how to contain Iran's nuclear program and what some in the administration believe to be Tehran's support of violence in Israel and insurgents in Iraq.

In an eerie repetition of the prelude to the Iraq war, hawks in the administration and Congress are trumpeting ominous disclosures about Iran's nuclear capacities to make the case that Iran is a threat that must be confronted, either by economic sanctions, military action, or "regime change."

via MetaFilter
Florida is the New Florida
Although many discussions of voting anomalies focused on Ohio, a statistical analysis of Florida voting patterns performed by sociologists at University of California, Berkeley suggests that electronic touch screen voting

in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade may have credited George Bush

Quote of note:

In his testimony, Graham said the FDA's Office of New Drugs unrealistically maintains a drug is safe unless reviewers establish with 95 percent certainty that it is not.

That rule does not protect consumers, Graham told the Senate committee. "What it does is it protects the drug," he said.

FDA reviewer says five drugs now on market are so worrisome they deserve another look
- DIEDTRA HENDERSON, AP Science Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
(11-18) 17:31 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

At least five medications now sold to consumers pose such risks that their sale should be limited or stopped, said a government drug reviewer who raised safety questions earlier about the arthritis drug Vioxx.

Jonathan Sachs, the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, has an editorial in the L.A. Times titled Religion's Eternal Hope that you humans should read.

It provides that most excellent of commodities, context.

eBay bans the ‘N-word’
But other slurs make the cut.
November 18, 2004

Online marketplace eBay announced a new language policy this week, limiting the use of racial slurs by the 125 million registered sellers who hawk their wares on the most popular shopping site on the web.

"The policy is putting some more restraints on derogatory racial terms such as the N-word, and the J-word for Japanese Americans," said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

While government officials and members of the National League of Cities (NLC) - the organization that pushed for the change - celebrated eBay’s new rules as a step toward ending racism, cultural experts and activists said banning racial slurs wouldn’t change anything more than the language used on eBay.

"Though I understand groups like the NLC need to police words like nigger, there are more important battles to be fought," said Lester Spence, assistant professor of political science and African-American studies at Washington University in Saint Louis.

Internet race and ethnicity experts echoed Mr. Spence’s opinion.

"The energy that they spent changing the language on eBay could have been redirected to something economic, something political, something structural," said Earl Dunovant, an Internet activist whose web site, Prometheus6.org, focuses on African-American issues. "Just like it was nice of Oprah to give away all those cars, it won’t change anything."

Before anyone panics:

A. baumannii, which is found in water and soil and resistant to many types of antibiotics, surfaces occasionally in hospitals, often spread among patients in intensive care units.

and

The injured soldiers are being treated with a spectrum of drugs and are expected to recover from their infections.

However, for their sakes:

Health-care providers in the United States are urged to watch for A. baumannii infections among soldiers who have been recently treated at military hospitals, especially those who were in intensive care units.

Rare Blood Infection Surfaces in Injured U.S. Soldiers

(this is one of those Salon things you'll need the free daily pass for)

Welcome to the new cold war
It's Chirac vs. Cheney, SUVs vs. minicars, and pommes frites vs. freedom fries in the new transatlantic culture war. But here's what you don't know: In the global conflict for moral and economic supremacy, Europe is winning.

…American heavyweights like Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger, by the way, publicly predicted that the euro, now the common currency of 12 European countries (with many more to follow), would never work. This week the euro is trading at an all-time high of about $1.30 against an ever weaker Bush-economy dollar. Other confident-sounding things that you hear Americans say about the EU -- that it's plagued by a sclerotic bureaucracy, that it squelches entrepreneurship and initiative with overregulation, that its cradle-to-grave welfare states are dragging down its economy -- should be viewed with similar skepticism.

Justifiably.

John Robb's Weblog:

Wow. It looks like Bush is going to lead a Red State raid on Blue State incomes (again). Bush is now pushing the elimination of the deduction of state and local income taxes from your federal return. Who do you think that is going to hit? Here are the states (thanks Greg) that pay the most in state and local income taxes on a per capita basis (in decending order). See a pattern here? It's time to cut welfare payments to red states not increase them.

Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Alaska
California
Wisconsin
Maryland
Hawaii
Maine
Delaware
Rhode Island
Illinois
Washington
Michigan
Vermont

…goes to the San Francisco Chronicle

The only real surprise about ABC's shameless double-play plug for football and its hot new TV series is that the network didn't try to squeeze in a paid pitch for one of those erectile-dysfunction drugs that seem to show up at every timeout.

Quote of note:

The original meaning of "conservative," he went on, has been dumped like an ashtray emptied out a car window. "It's no longer used even in economic terms. Conservatives are saying 'Have budget deficits, spend money, don't worry about the future,' " and applying " 'conservative' … almost exclusively to family values or social issues."

A Century After TR, Conservatives Decide to Stop Conserving
The GOP could learn something from 'Gommy.'
Patt Morrison

November 17, 2004

Almost nine months before, I had put down my name and my deposit on the wait list for a hybrid car. Did I say wait? This wasn't a wait, it was a gestation.

Then I got the call: Congratulations, it's a Prius. The night before I picked it up, I did a television news gig. I ran into a friend who works at the station, and I told her how excited I was about the Prius. A Republican political aide, whose boss had been on TV with me, heard us. "Huh," he said sarcastically. "Does it come with a Kerry sticker?"

It made me wonder: When did conserving — saving — gasoline, or anything else, become something those awful liberals do? When did big SUVs and bigger federal deficits redefine "conservative"? When did conservatives start mocking conservation?

Quote of note:

Fairness aside, do we really want to spend $1.3 million to keep someone like Angelos locked up for the rest of his life?

Cruel, but Not That Unusual
November 19, 2004

A 25-year-old Utah man sold eight-ounce bags of marijuana on three occasions to an undercover officer. This week he was sentenced to 55 years in prison because he had a pistol strapped to his ankle during the deals.

That's more time than he would have received if he had hijacked a plane, beaten someone to death in a fight, detonated a bomb in an aircraft and provided weapons to support a foreign terrorist organization. The maximum sentence for all those crimes together is less than the mandatory minimum under federal sentencing rules for a small-time dope dealer carrying a gun. Those federal rules make California's three-strikes law — recently upheld by voters — look mild.

Sudan, Rebels Agree to End Civil War
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer

12:10 AM PST, November 19, 2004

NAIROBI, Kenya — Sudanese government and rebel officials signed an agreement Friday to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan by the end of the year.

The signing came at a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council in Africa.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and southern rebel leader John Garang, the main negotiators for the two sides, made a similar pledge last year that never came to fruition.

The Security Council, meanwhile, was considering a draft resolution on Sudan to conclude its meeting in the Kenyan capital -- a rare appearance outside of New York intended to focus attention on two wars that have left millions of people dead or homeless.

Live action footage.

When I attended a seminar on Blacks in the Ivy League at Columbia University a little while ago, Professor Kimberle Crenshaw gave us a heads-up about the next anti affirmative action move. It would be spearheaded by an article written by a professional associate of hers. The thrust is to be that affirmative action hurts Black folks directly, not "merely" by forcing white folks to think Black people are inferior.

Angela Winters at Politopics linked to the preliminary report (pdf) titled Racial Preferences and Black Law Students, which I grabbed. There was a related article that was harder to find…the link at Politopics to an article at The Chronicle for Higher Education is broken. There's one in the free section and another, subscriber-only one. I think they're the one and the same.

Russia Developing New Nuclear Missile
President Vladimir Putin Says Russia Developing New Form of Nuclear Missile
The Associated Press

Nov. 18, 2004 - Russia is developing a new nuclear missile system unlike any weapon held by other countries, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday, a move that could serve as a signal to the United States as Washington pushes forward with a missile defense system.

Putin gave no details about the system or why Russia was pursuing it, and it was unclear whether the Kremlin's cash-strapped armed forces could even afford an expensive new weapon.

But in remarks that could also be aimed at a domestic audience, he told a meeting of the top leadership of the armed forces that the system could be deployed soon, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Quote of note:

''The U.S. negotiators want to allow the patenting of plants and animals,'' and the bilateral treaty will prevail, and will be more specific and come after the Andean law, Flórez said. ''Treaties are signed in order to be honoured, and the United States has many, many ways to ensure that obligations are met,'' he added.

''What is defended in these treaties is not free trade. Products have been without tariffs for a thousand years. The problem is the rights of the investor, defended tooth and nail'' in the U.S. proposal, said Flórez.

Andean Nations Clash with U.S. on Patenting Life Forms
Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Nov 17 (Tierramérica) - Access to genetic resources in South America's Andean region, which holds a quarter of the planet's biodiversity, is a point of discord in the free trade agreement that the United States has been negotiating with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru since May.

I may not even try to talk fools out of this.

---

Iran May Be Trying to Make Nuke Missiles
U.S. Intelligence Suggests Iran Trying to Adapt Missiles to Deliver Nuclear Weapons
The Associated Press
Nov. 18, 2004 - The United States has intelligence indicating Iran is trying to fit missiles to carry nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

Powell partially confirmed claims by an Iranian opposition group that Tehran is deceiving the United Nations and is attempting to secretly continue activities meant to give it atomic arms by next year.

"I have seen intelligence which would corroborate what this dissident group is saying," Powell told reporters Wednesday as he traveled to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago. "And it should be of concern to all parties."

It never ceases to amaze me how everything Black folks do is emulated. Andthe more loudly you decry it, the faster it's taken up.

Quote of note:

Self-references like "original chinky-eyed emcee" and "Chinaman" initially feel jarring; but surprisingly, Jin's visceral rage and proud swagger reclaim these slurs the way black rappers use nigga: He makes them his own.

At Long Last, Hip-Hop Deigns to Recognize Asian America
by Janet Tzou
November 15th, 2004 1:15 PM

When Wyclef Jean and 22-year-old Chinese American rapper Jin tha MC chose "Learn Chinese" as their first joint from Jin's debut album, The Rest Is History, they wondered: What's the first thing listeners will focus on? "[That] I'm Chinese," Jin flatly told The Source. "So if that's what they want, we'll give it to them."

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In them they found more than 2,500 more objects, including 2,000 gold and silver coins depicting Afghan royalty back to 500 B.C., a collection long regarded as looted and missing. Next came plaster medallions, ivory water goddesses and intricately carved ivory plaques from the 2,000-year-old Kushan culture.

In all, the boxes contained 5,000 years of Afghanistan's history as a pivotal way station on the "Silk Road" between Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The recovered pieces also included cast bronze busts in the classical Roman style; Chinese lacquer bowls; and a glass bottle bearing the image of the Alexandria lighthouse. Hiebert said fewer than 100 objects from the museum's display collection remain unaccounted for.

Treasure Trove of Culture Recovered

Easy Fixes For Social Security By Edith U. Fierst in the Washington Post

The president's determination to partially privatize Social Security stems from ideological reasons. But in fact the projected Social Security deficit is small enough -- 1.89 percent of payroll, under the Social Security trustees' intermediate assumptions (neither optimistic nor pessimistic) -- that a major revision to the system is not necessary. The deficit can be remedied with a few discrete changes in the program, all of which are surprisingly easy to understand and accept.

…can help forestall fiscal panic.

Margaret Thatcher's Son Charged in Plot
Son of Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Formally Charged in Alleged Coup Plot
The Associated Press
Nov. 18, 2004 - Equatorial Guinea prosecutors confirmed Thursday they have charged Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in an alleged coup plot in the oil-rich west African nation.

Thatcher is accused of having helped finance the coup attempt, Attorney General Jose Olo Obono said.

Thatcher was added to the existing list of 19 other defendants, all accused mercenaries, on Tuesday, Obono said.

Equatorial Guinea intends to seek Thatcher's extradition, a legal official close to the government's case told The Associated Press earlier this week.

Quote of note:

the new group is expected to skirt most controversial public policy issues, at least for now, said clergy members involved with the organization

U.S. Catholic Bishops Agree to Join New Ecumenical Group
By NEELA BANERJEE

The top hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States decided yesterday to join the broadest alliance of Christian churches in the country so far, a new ecumenical group that would bring the church to the same table as conservative evangelicals and liberal Protestants.

Members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have played a central role in the formation of the group, Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., since discussions began with leaders of other denominations in fall 2001. The conference approved membership in the group at a meeting in Washington.

U.S. Knew Last Year of Flu Vaccine Plant's Woes
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A01

The Food and Drug Administration found serious problems of bacterial contamination at an influenza vaccine plant in England in 2003, 16 months before British regulators effectively closed the site and impounded its flu shots because of fears they were tainted.

Those earlier problems were among many revelations in about 100 pages of documents released yesterday by a House committee looking into how the United States lost about half this winter's flu vaccine supply just as the season for giving the shots began.

The documents, which include FDA inspection reports, letters and e-mails, also revealed that the agency was nine months late in giving Chiron Corp., the owner of the plant, a detailed report of the problems it found and then rebuffed the company's efforts to learn more about what it could do to fix things. At the same time, FDA managers overruled its inspection team and made its fixes voluntary rather than mandatory.

Marine Officers See Risk in Cuts in Falluja Force
By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that if American troop levels in the Falluja area are significantly reduced during reconstruction there, as has been planned, insurgents in the region will rebound from their defeat. The rebels could thwart the retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate the local population and derail elections set for January, the officers say.

They have further advised that despite taking heavy casualties in the weeklong battle, the insurgents will continue to grow in number, wage guerrilla attacks and try to foment unrest among Falluja's returning residents, emphasizing that expectations for improved conditions have not been met.

Chinese Move to Eclipse U.S. Appeal in South Asia
By JANE PERLEZ

CHIANG RAI, Thailand - In pagoda-style buildings donated by the Chinese government to the university here, Long Seaxiong, 19, stays up nights to master the intricacies of Mandarin.

The sacrifice is worth it, he says, and the choice of studying Chinese was an easy one over perfecting his faltering English. China, not America, is the future, he insists, speaking for many of his generation in Asia.

"For a few years ahead, it will still be the United States as No. 1, but soon it will be China," Mr. Long, the son of a Thai businessman, confidently predicted as he showed off the stone, tiles and willow trees imported from China to decorate the courtyard at the Sirindhorn Chinese Language and Culture Center, which opened a year ago.

…or, by the impact of their actions shall you know their priorities.

And you ain't one of them.

Anyway…

FDA Is Flexing Less Muscle
Some Question Its Relationship With Drugmakers
By Marc Kaufman and Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A01

In the past four years, the Food and Drug Administration has taken a noticeably less aggressive approach toward policing drugs that cause harmful side effects, records show, leading some lawmakers, academics and consumer advocates to complain that the agency is focusing more on bolstering the pharmaceutical industry than protecting public health.

From 2001 to 2004, three important drugs were taken off the market, compared with 10 that were recalled from 1996 to 2001.

Abercrombie & Fitch Bias Case Is Settled
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Abercrombie & Fitch, one of the nation's trendiest retailers, settled race and sex discrimination lawsuits yesterday, agreeing to alter its well-known collegiate, all-American - and largely white - image by adding more blacks, Hispanics and Asians to its marketing materials.

After a federal judge in San Francisco approved the class-action settlement yesterday, the two sides announced an agreement that calls for Abercrombie & Fitch to pay $40 million to several thousand minority and female plaintiffs. Abercrombie also agreed to hire 25 diversity recruiters and a vice president for diversity and to pursue benchmarks so that its hiring and promotion of minorities and women reflect its applicant pool.

$333,333.34 (with Dick Cheney getting the leftover four cents) per university.

If anyone thinks that's enough to fund enough research to settle even the most pressing possible threats, they been smoking too much genetically modified chronic.

Well meaning pandering of note:

Scott Walsh, a project manager at Washington-based Environmental Defense, called the EPA grants "a great start" but decried the federal government's failure to invest more in the effort.

"Government is not yet investing enough to ensure that the risks are discovered in the laboratory instead of in our bodies, our back yards and our workplaces," Walsh said. "We're probably $90 million shy of what we need to be spending to do the job right."

This is a start, but not a "great" one. This is closer to the point:

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Who figured that out? Not the police. The father of one of the women got a copy of the records, came to Prince George's and asked a prosecutor to review them. She recognized the mistake and arranged for an emergency hearing to dismiss the case. After 22 days in custody two of the three women were released from the county jail, and the third, a 17-year-old, was freed from a youth detention center in Arizona. At the time, police offered no apologies and no help paying for the trip home to Arizona.

Paying for Bum Raps
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page A24

A SINGULARLY terrible example last year of sloppy detective work, erroneous arrests, coercive interrogations and wrongful jailings by Prince George's County police in a 2002 murder case has been quietly papered over with an undisclosed amount of public money to settle lawsuits. The money is going to three Arizona women who were rounded up, jailed and charged with the murder of a Mitchellville woman found strangled in her home. Even before police hauled them in, two other innocent women -- sisters from the District -- had been jailed for several weeks in the same case until DNA tests exonerated one and the other proved that she had been away on business at the time. And the case is still unsolved.

WSJ.com launches 'Video Center'

The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com has launched a free ad-supported Video Center.

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Instead the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations.

The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.

Who would these paired suggestions help or hurt?

Shielding the investment income would help those whose income come mostly from investments. Eliminating the deductions for state and local income taxes will hurt those who income comes mostly from working.

Slate has collected a bag of cartoons about General Powell's resignation. The cartoonists of the world are treating him nicely for the most part. I think this page is about as harsh as it gets.

I have a contact form in th enavigation menu now. And for you registered commenters you can shut off the WYSIWYG editing in your account profile.

Feel their pain, group tells those who eat fish
By David Crary, Associated Press | November 17, 2004

NEW YORK -- Touting tofu chowder and vegetarian sushi as alternatives, animal-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that fish -- contrary to stereotype -- are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat.

Called the Fish Empathy Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.

"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's director of vegan outreach. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."

Bush Nominates Spellings for Education Post
Wed Nov 17, 2004 12:09 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Wednesday nominated a longtime close aide, White House domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings, as the next education secretary.
Spellings, 46, would replace Rod Paige in the top education post in Bush's second-term Cabinet. Paige's resignation was announced on Monday.

She became the third White House insider to be nominated for a top Cabinet position. White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales was picked as attorney general and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

US bishops shelve statement urging greater use of Bible
Vote part of effort to cut spending
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | November 17, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Despite pleas from Bible Belt bishops, the Catholic bishops of the United States yesterday voted to shelve plans to develop a statement urging greater use of the Bible, a move aimed at restraining spending and cutting down on a crush of publications they fear have little impact.

The cost of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to local dioceses has become an increasing concern for bishops, many of whom, including Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, face severe financial crises at home. Two US dioceses, in Tucson, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., have filed for bankruptcy, and the Spokane diocese, home to the president-elect of the bishops' conference, is expected to file for bankruptcy this month.

Football player charged with assault on National Guard officer
Sunday, November 14, 2004

An Oregon State football player has been charged with assaulting an Oregon National Guard soldier after a fight resulting from racial comments about the soldier and his wife.

Joseph Rudulph, 19, a freshman from Sacramento, Calif., was arrested Friday after the confrontation early Friday morning at the Headline Caf De in downtown Corvallis.

Staff Sgt. Gabriel Sapp was dancing with his wife at the restaurant when they were approached by a group of black men, identified as Oregon State football players. The men began making comments to Sapp's wife, who is also black, about her relationship with her husband, who is white, according to Corvallis police Capt. Jon Sassaman.

The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial titled The heartland votes for its economic interest which proves Einstein was right when he said things should be as simple as possible…but no simpler.

This analysis is simpler than possible.

Well-paying jobs
In the vast majority of cases, rising wages don't result from labor union agitation. Rising wages result from labor scarcity. If enough businesses are established so that there is an abundance of jobs, business owners have a harder and harder time finding and keeping workers. They are forced to compete against other businesses for workers. They do that by raising workers' pay and/or improving their benefits.

A key to raising wages, therefore, is to have lots of businesses. That's done through business-friendly policies such as lower taxes, fewer onerous and expensive regulations, and keeping the trial lawyers at bay. Guess which party scores better in that regard?

Sometimes I get lucky
One of the members here is Darryl Cox, a former political consultant, campaign manager and community organizer. Being a serious sort of brother, every so often he feels compelled to speak on a topic. The last beneficiary of that impulse was BlackElectorate.com. The latest is you.

The Never Ending Confusion Over Black Voters, by Darryl Cox

Black people have played a decisive role in American electoral affairs since the founding days of the Republic despite the fact that law and custom barred the majority of them from voting for nearly two centuries. Thomas Jefferson’s political opponents, for example, attributed his victory in 1800 over the incumbent president John Adams to “Negro electors, Negro vote, and Negro congressmen.” What had raised their ire was the infamous provision enshrined in the Constitution decreeing that each slave would be counted as three fifths of a person in determining the members of the Electoral College from each state.

Texas Officials Wary of Plan to Hunt by Internet
Tue Nov 16, 2004 09:36 PM ET

By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms.

A controversial Web site, http://www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday.

Texas officials are not quite sure what to make of Underwood's Web site, but may tweak existing laws to make sure Internet hunting does not get out of hand.

Soldiers who refused duty said to face discipline
By Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun | November 16, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Soldiers from an Army Reserve unit in Iraq who refused to take part in a convoy last month, citing security concerns and maintenance problems with their vehicles, are facing disciplinary action and some could be charged criminally, Pentagon and military officials said yesterday.

As many as two dozen soldiers from the 343d Quartermaster Company, an Army Reserve based in Rock Hill, S.C., were part of the investigation that began Oct. 13 when soldiers refused to take part in a cross-country fuel convoy.

The mission was carried out later by others from the 120-soldier unit who took the convoy from Tallil air base near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah to Taji north of Baghdad.

Quote of note:

At the Spring district, where no student has ever been kidnapped, the system is expected to be used for more pedestrian purposes, Chief Bragg said: to reassure frantic parents, for example, calling because their child, rather than coming home as expected, went to a friend's house, an extracurricular activity or a Girl Scout meeting.

When the district unanimously approved the $180,000 system, neither teachers nor parents objected, said the president of the board. Rather, parents appear to be applauding. "I'm sure we're being overprotective, but you hear about all this violence," said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34, the parent of a fourth grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus."

In Texas, 28,000 Students Test an Electronic Eye

New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to "support the administration and its policies in our work,'' a copy of an internal memorandum shows.

"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Mr. Goss said in the memorandum, which was circulated late on Monday. He said in the document that he was seeking "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road."

While his words could be construed as urging analysts to conform with administration policies, Mr. Goss also wrote, "We provide the intelligence as we see it - and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker.''

Sears and KMart Agree to Merge in $11 Billion Deal
By REUTERS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sears, Roebuck & Co. (S.N) and Kmart Holding Corp. (KMRT.O) on Wednesday said they would merge in an $11 billion deal to form the third-largest U.S. retailer.

The companies said in a joint statement that the new company, Sears Holdings, will have about $55 billion in annual revenues, 2,350 full-line and off-mall stores, and 1,100 specialty retail stores.

Group Says Iran Has Secret Nuclear Arms Program
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - An Iranian opposition group says it has new evidence that Iran is producing enriched uranium at a covert Defense Ministry facility in Tehran that has not been disclosed to United Nations inspectors.

The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, is planning to announce its finding in Paris on Wednesday. The group says that inspection of the site would demonstrate that Iran is secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons even while promising to freeze a critical part of its declared nuclear program, which it maintains is intended purely for civilian purposes.

In total honesty though, there hasn't yet been a noble war, and the idea of the winner submitting to judgment is…new.

Anyway…

U.N. official denounces Fallujah killings
By Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer | November 16, 2004

GENEVA --The United Nations top human rights official on Tuesday denounced the killing of civilians and injured people in Fallujah, saying violators of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, spoke in general terms and did not specifically mention insurgents' attacks against hostages or a U.S. military report that it is investigating the videotaped fatal shooting of a wounded man by a U.S. Marine in a mosque in Fallujah.

…then in Illinois you may, in violation of local ordinances, purchase a hand gun if it is for the purpose of shooting burglars.

Ill. lawmakers OK banned-gun exceptions
November 16, 2004

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. --Illinois lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to give legal protection to homeowners who violate handgun bans to shoot burglars, overriding Gov. Rod Blagojevich's veto of legislation that became a symbol in the tug-of-war over gun control.

The legislation says that people who shoot intruders on their property cannot be convicted of violating local gun bans, but it does not prevent charges if prosecutors believe the shooting itself was a crime.

Apology a tool to avoid malpractice suits
Doctors shown financial benefits
By Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press | November 12, 2004

CHICAGO -- It is a lesson children learn even before their ABCs -- say you are sorry when you hurt someone. But it is now being taught in the grown-up world of medicine as a surprisingly powerful way to soothe patients and head off malpractice lawsuits.

Some malpractice-overhaul advocates say an apology can help doctors avoid getting sued, especially when combined with an upfront settlement offer.

The idea defies a long tradition in which doctors cultivated a Godlike image of infallibility and rarely owned up to their mistakes.

U.S. Launches Giant Study on Children
Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government researchers launched the biggest-ever study of children on Tuesday, saying they will track 100,000 children from birth through age 21 to see what makes kids sick.

The study, being launched at 96 centers, will follow the children as they grow up, looking at their environments, behavior, family and genetics.

"Together the children from these 96 locations will represent the face of all of America's children," the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is sponsoring the study, said in a statement.

US urges worldwide restrictions to halt shark slaughter
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press | November 16, 2004

NEW ORLEANS -- The United States yesterday proposed broad international measures to curb the slaughter of sharks in the Atlantic Ocean and encourage the study and preservation of threatened shark populations throughout the world.

The proposals were made at the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which also covers conservation of other large fish. This is the first time the United States has been host of the session.

''I think sharks have been abused over the last 10 years," said William Hogarth, the head of the National Marine Fisheries Service. ''We haven't managed sharks in a very sustainable manner."

Hans Blix's reports were full of wishy-washy crap like this

''The Agency is, however, not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran," the report, which summarizes nearly two years of investigative work, continued.

that left the door open for the U.S. to claim invading Iraq was justified.

Anyway…

UN finds no proof of nuclear weapons in Iran
US remains skeptical of Tehran's intentions
By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent | November 16, 2004

PRAGUE -- After nearly two years of investigation, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said yesterday that it has not uncovered proof that Iran has a covert weapons program, although it could not rule out that Tehran was engaging in clandestine nuclear activities.

Quote of note:

Added Klieg: "Rather than trying to attract more voters, let's attract better voters. We could reduce the overall cost of the election by 97 percent if we paid a small body of informed, designated voters to keep abreast of candidates' policy positions. The candidates would save time and money, too, because they could focus their attention on the thousand votes that count. And fewer ballots means faster, more accurate counting. It's just good sense."

Some critics have voiced concerns about private-sector elections, arguing that small businesses might be excluded from the bidding process.

"The government needs to make sure that local companies have a shot at contracts, too," said Dean Small, founder of Capitol City Speed-E Elections in Austin, TX. "It's only fair."

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With only about one-tenth of the U.S.'s 300 million population, Canada's market is much too small to support the demand from the U.S. Canadian Internet pharmacies posted sales of $1 billion in 2003, compared with the $200 billion market in the U.S. "It's too much volume for us to sustain," says David MacKay, executive director of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.

Why Canada Won't Be Our Pharmacy
Importing cheaper drugs from up north isn't as simple as it seems
By JYOTI THOTTAM

As the flu-vaccine shortage began, Canada quickly emerged as a potential life buoy. Ujjal Dosanjh, Canada's Health Minister, personally phoned Tommy Thompson, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and offered to share whatever surplus Canada had to help meet the 48-million-dose shortfall. "I assured him that if there was anything we could do to assist our American friends, we would be happy to do that," Dosanjh told TIME. But it wasn't long before Dosanjh was spelling out the limits of what his country could do. "Canada cannot be the drugstore of the United States," he said last week in a speech at Harvard. "Neither American consumers nor Canadian suppliers should have any illusions otherwise."

Treasury maneuvers to hold off debt limit
By Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press Writer | November 16, 2004

WASHINGTON --The government will carry out another accounting maneuver to avoid breaching the $7.4 trillion ceiling on the national debt, Treasury Secretary John Snow said Tuesday.

The step marks the latest move by Treasury to free up billions of dollars -- on paper -- so the government can keep paying its bills. Treasury is doing this because it is running out of room in its statutory authority to borrow.

In a letter to Congress, Snow said the department, starting Wednesday, will suspend new investments in Treasury securities that would be credited to the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund.

Who Are the Activists Now?
Judges that rule for Bush escape that nasty label.
Michael Kinsley

November 14, 2004

…But has anybody read the 2004 Republican platform on abortion? It doesn't merely call for reversal of Roe vs. Wade. It calls for "legislation to make it clear that the 14th Amendment's protections apply to unborn children," and for judges who believe likewise. How's that for activism? If fetuses are "persons" under the 14th amendment, which guarantees all persons "equal protection of the law," abortion would be illegal whether a state or the Congress wanted to keep it legal it or not. More than that: There could be no legal distinction between the rights of fetuses and the rights of human beings after birth. So, just for example, a woman who procured an abortion would have to be prosecuted as if she had hired a gunman to murder her child. The doctor would have to be treated like the gunman. And that includes capital punishment in states that have it. And the party that now controls all three branches of government says this is already the case. Only legislation is needed to "make it clear," and judges are needed who will enforce it.

Who Are the Activists Now?
Judges that rule for Bush escape that nasty label.
Michael Kinsley

November 14, 2004

…What does President Bush mean, if anything, when he says that his kind of judge "knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law"? Every judge sincerely believes that he or she is interpreting the law properly.

Bush's complaint must be understood in the context of Republican Party history over the last half-century. Ever since Chief Justice Earl Warren and Brown vs. Board of Education (the 1954 school desegregation case), conservatives have complained about "activist" judges and justices who allegedly imposed their own liberal dictates on the country with no legal basis. Taking up this rallying cry is one way Republicans won the South. Even Southern conservatives don't publicly complain about Brown anymore, of course. But denouncing activist judges is now Republican boilerplate.

Judges make decisions and impose their will all the time. That's their job. When does this generally salutary activity turn into the dread judicial activism? If activism has any specific meaning, it means judges overruling laws and policies put in place by the democratically elected branches of government. It also refers to federal judges overruling policies enacted by the individual states.

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How long will moderate Republicans accept being kicked around? It's about a lot more than abortion. In the House, DeLay, the party's strongman, won't even let moderate legislation get to the floor. He insists that his party's moderates support internal procedures that cut off all possibility of genuinely bipartisan compromise. Will the moderate Republicans just keep going along?

Will the Moderates Speak Up?
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A25

So will moderate Republicans stand up? Or will the Republican right render them even more impotent than they were before Nov. 2?

With our nation's capital now under even firmer Republican domination, conservatives are claiming a mandate for everything from the partial privatization of Social Security to a transformation of the judiciary. The moderates have a choice of going along with a swing to the right or fighting for the power to influence policies in their direction.

Since writing Why we need a progressive national policy something has been gnawing at the back of my mind. Then Lester mentioned an article at Salon, and it clicked. State's rights.

When I say people want to live the way they choose, I recognize that prime among people's requirements is that their not be constantly challenged in fundamental ways.<set mode="Chaos Lord" />From a spiritual development perspective, this is weak as hell and I have no sympathy for any of you, but<set mode="mortal" /> this is understandable. If a community doesn't give you the stability you need to build the life you want it makes little sense to attach to it. Barring any restrictions at all, people will self sort into communities of like minds that blend at the edges (a really weak metaphor, but that's the best I can do off the top of my head). That feels like pretty strong support for state's rights.

Quote of note:

Millions of taxpayers in Britain opted into a comparable system in recent years and, amid a poor investment climate, fared worse than those who stuck with the old state-run pension system. The government ended up cutting incentives to shift into private accounts, and unscrupulous financial advisers put many workers in unsuitable investments, leading to new calls for reform and a raft of lawsuits.

Taking The Plunge
On the way to his vision of an "ownership society," President Bush picks a big fight over Social Security
By DANIEL KADLEC

Just two days after the election, President George W. Bush was already teeing up the mother of all political issues, Social Security reform, declaring it a top priority for his second term. In a bold admission, Bush warned that "there are going to be costs." No other President or candidate for the office has been willing to say it so plainly and then tackle the issue head on — even though Social Security's looming insolvency has been apparent for decades. It's a daring gambit on Bush's part, and he can expect a difficult fight. But he has made it clear that he's eager to spend his newfound political capital on Social Security reform. The President sees reforming Social Security as a linchpin in reaching his broader goal of creating an "ownership society."

Quote of note:

Race-based therapy is a "bad idea," said Patricia Davidson, a cardiologist at Washington Hospital Center. For a doctor to employ this type of treatment, the practitioner would have to ask a patient, "How much African American blood do you have" in you? she said. "We have to be very careful with that."

Idiot.

You have to find the physical conditions that this combination of drugs treats (obviously that condition is NOT identified merely by symptoms) and look for that. Because some whte guy somewhere will have the some condition, and wouldn't it be a shame if he died because his doctor was only looking at melanin content to judge the appropriate treatment?

How many illnesses have fever, body aches and upper respiratory problems as symptoms? Why is everyone all surprised that the symptoms of two different problems are the same? If this is seen as some dramatic proof of physical differentiation of races, why doesn't the fact that cancer runs in certain families proof those families constitute a separate race?

Anyway…

A Cure for A Race?
Heart Drug Findings Set Off Ethics Debate

CIA Chief Seeks to Reassure Employees
E-Mail Sent After 2 Officials Resign

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01

Hours after the two top clandestine service officers at the CIA resigned yesterday, Director Porter J. Goss asked employees to remain loyal to the agency and rebutted allegations that he had a partisan agenda.

"We provide the intelligence as we see it and let the facts alone speak to the policymakers," Goss wrote in an internal e-mail to CIA employees, according to two people who read it to The Washington Post. Goss told them to expect "a series of changes" in the days and weeks ahead, "in the organization, personnel" and mission of the agency.

Former G.I.'s, Ordered to War, Fight Not to Go
By MONICA DAVEY

The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops.

Many of these former soldiers - some of whom say they have not trained, held a gun, worn a uniform or even gone for a jog in years - object to being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan now, after they thought they were through with life on active duty.

They are seeking exemptions, filing court cases or simply failing to report for duty, moves that will be watched closely by approximately 110,000 other members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a corps of soldiers who are no longer on active duty but still are eligible for call-up.

Bush Taps Campaign Manager to Lead Party
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A03

President Bush has chosen Ken Mehlman, manager of his successful reelection campaign, to become the next chairman of the Republican National Committee, the White House announced yesterday.

Mehlman, 38, known for his loyalty to Bush and his assiduous attention to detail, said his main goal will be to strengthen the majority party status of the GOP, reaching out to women, minorities and Jewish voters.

Mehlman is a favorite of Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and he has functioned as a kind of chief operating officer, translating Rove's strategic ideas into actual practice.

Quote of note:

But it's now clear that Mr. Powell long ago chose loyalty over leadership and was not a major figure in the biggest foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration. Most accounts of the rush to war in Iraq show that Mr. Powell was deeply troubled about the planning for the war, its timing and the intense opposition of most of Washington's European allies. But he was unwilling or unable to exert much influence over the president in that critical time, and it's not clear whether Mr. Bush even consulted him before making his decision to go to war.

Good Soldier Powell

As Secretary of State Colin Powell resigned yesterday, reportedly to be succeeded by the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, it was hard to avoid the feeling that this imposing figure - who once personified the dignity, integrity and promise of government service and was the first African-American considered to have a shot at the White House - will be remembered for one picture and three sentences.

"The war is very long, and always think of this as the beginning,'' he said. "And always make the enemy think that yesterday was better than today.''

Rebels Attack in Central Iraq and the North
By EDWARD WONG and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 15 - A rebel counteroffensive swept through central and northern Iraq on Monday as American troops struggled to flush the remaining insurgents from the rubble-strewn streets of Falluja.

Guerrillas in Baquba, Mosul, Kirkuk and Suwaira stormed police stations, set oil wells ablaze and struck at American military convoys with suicide car bombs, routing Iraqi security forces in several coordinated assaults and severely damaging parts of the country's petroleum-based economic lifeline.

The "That makes perfect sense" quote of note:

Only Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from the unsigned 12-page opinion. They did not write an opinion of their own.

Supreme Court Rebukes Texas Again Over a Death Sentence
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The Supreme Court overturned a Texas death sentence on Monday while delivering its latest rebuke to the way the death penalty is being handled by judges in the state, which has executed far more people than any other in the modern era of capital punishment.

The errors committed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in upholding the death sentence of LaRoyce L. Smith were so clear to a majority of the Supreme Court that the justices decided the case in the inmate's favor on the basis of the briefs, without hearing arguments.

F.D.A. Strengthens Warning on the Abortion Pill
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The death of a California woman in January after she took an abortion pill prompted federal drug regulators on Monday to strengthen the warning label on the drug, RU-486, also known as mifepristone.

The death was the third in the United States that the Food and Drug Administration has linked to the pill since its approval in 2000.

The warnings, though largely present on the old labeling, will now be given added prominence, with physicians urged to redouble efforts at watching their patients carefully for signs of systemic bacterial infection, excessive vaginal bleeding and ectopic, or tubal, pregnancies.

In Moscow, Volunteers Keeping An Eye on the People Next Door
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A21

MOSCOW -- In her former life as a top Communist Party official at a closed military factory in Samara, a city on the Volga River, Albina Tsareva helped enforce ideological conformity and general discipline among the workers.

Now living in retirement in northwest Moscow, Tsareva, 66, is still on the lookout for anti-social behavior. "We want to make our community better," she said. "Safe, secure and healthy."

Tsareva heads a network of 190 volunteers who keep an eye out for suspicious people and questionable behavior at 51 apartment buildings, courtyards and parks in Moscow's Shukino district. In her role as chairwoman of the Public Order Council in Territorial Administrative Unit No. 4, she describes herself half-jokingly as "Czar and God."

After all, she did SUCH a good job running the Iraq Stabilization Group.

Anyway…

Rice's NSC Tenure Complicates New Post
Failure to Manage Agency Infighting Cited
By Glenn Kessler and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A07

Condoleezza Rice, who will be named as Colin L. Powell's replacement as early as today, has forged an extraordinarily close relationship with President Bush. But, paradoxically, many experts consider her one of the weakest national security advisers in recent history in terms of managing interagency conflicts.

Quote of note:

Moreover, in elevating Rice, Bush is signaling that he is comfortable with the direction of the past four years and sees little need to dramatically shift course.

Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01

By accepting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's resignation, President Bush appears to have taken a decisive turn in his approach to foreign policy.

Powell's departure -- and Bush's intention to name his confidante, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as Powell's replacement -- would mark the triumph of a hard-edged approach to diplomacy espoused by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Powell's brand of moderate realism was often overridden in the administration's councils of power, but Powell's presence ensured that the president heard divergent views on how to proceed on key foreign policy issues.

U.S. Bishops Pick Leader From Bankrupt Diocese

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A03

Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., who plans to declare his diocese in bankruptcy because of sexual abuse claims, was elected yesterday as the next president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At the same time, Kathleen McChesney, the former FBI agent who established the bishops' Office of Child Protection, announced that she will step down in February.

The developments came as the bishops began their semiannual meeting in Washington and showed they are still grappling with the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church nearly three years after it erupted in Boston and a year after their outgoing president, Bishop Wilton D.

School Talent Show Draws Secret Service

Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush
- Parents and students say they are outraged and offended by a proposed band name and song scheduled for a high school talent show in Boulder this evening, but members of the band, named Coalition of the Willing, said the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.

The students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan's song "Masters of War" during the Boulder High School Talent Exposé because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities.

But some students and adults who heard the band rehearse called a radio talk show Thursday morning, saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die.

So curious I overrode my aversion to HTML in titles.

Quote of note:

Joseph J. Salvo, the population director for the New York City Department of Planning, had yet another theory. The migrants, he surmised, might be prison inmates.

To that end, Mr. Salvo explained that, according to the census, 99 percent of these new Bronx residents were living in institutional group quarters, a category that includes prisons. Nearly 90 percent of them arrived in the Bronx, he said, to Community Districts 1 and 2, which includes Rikers Island. Furthermore, almost all of them were men.

It looks like a prison population transfer, he went on, but quickly added that there were not enough state prisons and holding facilities in Allegany County to account for more than 4,000 people. He mused aloud that it was conceivable that inmates from other upstate counties might have accidentally been counted in the mix, although he could not tell for sure.

Quote of note:

We, the Europeans, have one specific task. Industrial civilization, which now spans the whole world, originated in Europe. All of its miracles, as well as its terrifying contradictions, can be explained as consequences of an ethos that is initially European.

The European Experiment
Vaclav Havel
November 15, 2004
With the Bush administration leaving the reality-based world for pursuit of a greed-based domestic agenda and an imperial foreign policy, the newly unified Europe is positioned to lead. Here, Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, calls upon Europeans to stop blaming the Americans and confront the horrors and injustices of industrial globalization. It looks like the American Experiment may be about to emigrate...back to Europe.

Axis of evil
Meet the new Republican senators. Five of them hope to make your worst nightmares come true.
BY DAN KENNEDY

1) Tom Coburn: Keeping us safe from condoms and the ‘gay agenda’

Fresh from helping to save Oklahoma from the scourge of teenage lesbianism, Tom Coburn arrives in Washington with perhaps the most bizarre set of right-wing credentials of anyone in the Republican Class of 2004. A former three-term congressman who was swept into office 10 years ago on the coattails of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Coburn — who succeeds retiring Republican senator Don Nickles — is an obstetrician possessed of an obsessive fascination with other people’s sexuality.

Quote of note:

the kinds of investments that make sense for such a fund - like long-term bonds that will mature as members enter retirement - are not attractive to most money managers, because they generate few fees. Consequently, very few pension funds use such strategies today

Teamsters Find Pensions at Risk
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

n the 1960's and 1970's, the Teamsters' huge Central States pension fund was a wellspring of union corruption. Tens of millions of dollars were loaned to racketeers who used the money to gain control of Las Vegas casinos. Administrative jobs were awarded to favored insiders who paid themselves big fees. A former Teamster president and pension trustee was convicted of trying to bribe a United States senator.

Safire to Step Down as Times Columnist
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

illiam Safire, whose political commentary column has appeared on the Op-Ed Page of The New York Times for more than 30 years, is stepping down, The Times said today.

The newspaper said in a statement that Mr. Safire would make his final appearance as an Op-Ed columnist on Jan. 24, 2005.

"The New York Times without Bill Safire is all but unimaginable," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times, said in the statement. "Bill's provocative and insightful commentary has held our readers captive since he first graced our Op-Ed Page in 1973. Reaching for his column became a critical and enjoyable part of the day for our readers across the country and around the world.

Until Successor Is Confirmed, Powell Pledges to Work Hard
By DAVID STOUT
and MARK J. PRENDERGAST

ASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that he would resign as soon as a successor was chosen, the result of what he described as a longstanding agreement with President Bush that he would serve only four years as the nation's chief diplomat.

"It has always been my intention that I would serve one term," Mr. Powell told reporters in a televised briefing from the State Department early this afternoon.

"In recent weeks and months, President Bush and I have talked about foreign policy and we've talked about what to do at the end of the first term," Mr. Powell said. "After we had had a chance to have good and fulsome discussions on it, we came to mutual agreement that it would be appropriate for me to leave at this time."

Black Thought and Black Introspection:

If the Christian revolution were to manifest seriously, it would have to come in direct conflict and battle for dominance over the worship of money and materialism in this nation. The reason being is that one cannot have an economic system fueled by greed and gluttony, 2 of the 7 deadly sins, and truly be a follower of orthodox Christianity, which preaches against such sins. This, I guarantee you, is a battle that so called Christian Conservatives are not willing to fight….because they religion will lose and they will be forced to recognize that their true God is not in heaven, but printed as the federal reserve system.

Quote of note:

Many experienced diplomats, including senior officials of the Bush administration, believe it's more important to appeal to the national interest of a Russia or an Egypt than to worry about how those nations are governed.

But Bush says he is convinced of the opposite view: that America will actually be safer if more countries become democratic. "As freedom advances, heart by heart, and nation by nation, America will be more secure and the world more peaceful," he argued in that same convention address.

Such a belief translated into policy would not mean that liberty would automatically and always take precedence over basing rights, counterterrorism cooperation or smooth trade relations. But in Bush's first term, democracy promotion seemed to be the policy mostly when it was convenient: in Palestine, where it allowed him to avoid confrontation with Israel's leader; in Cuba, where it allowed him to win votes in Florida. If you see him in the next four years risking other U.S. interests to champion liberty where it is not so convenient, then you will know he meant what he said on the campaign trail.

Firefox Leaves No Reason to Endure Internet Explorer
By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page F07

Internet Explorer, you're fired.

That should have been said a long time ago. After Microsoft cemented a monopoly of the Web-browser market, it let Internet Explorer go stale, parceling out ho-hum updates that neglected vulnerabilities routinely exploited by hostile Web sites. Not until August's Windows XP Service Pack 2 update did (some) users get any real relief.

And yet people found reasons to stick with IE -- alternative browsers cost money, were too slow, too complicated, or didn't work with enough Web sites.

No more. Tuesday, the answer to IE arrived: a safe, free, fast, simple and compatible browser called Mozilla Firefox.

Slowly but Cheaply, a New Way to the Moon
Spacecraft Tests Usefulness Of Non-Chemical Propulsion
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A10

Time was you could get to the moon in a few days, and you can still do it if you have a really big rocket. But SMART-1, a washing machine-size spacecraft carrying an experimental engine, has taken the long way around.

And around, around, and around, flying more than 13 months to make 331 loop-de-loops around Earth in ever-expanding spirals until today, when it is scheduled to enter lunar orbit. Give it another couple of months to get comfortable, and it should be ready to collect data on the moon's composition and begin searching for ice at the lunar poles.

Quote of note:

The BLM said it modified the original development proposal to offer greater protection to wildlife and sensitive habitats in the reserve.

U.S. OKs Commercial Drilling in Alaska Oil Reserve
Fri Nov 12, 2004 03:51 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Friday gave final approval to a plan by ConocoPhillips and partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. to develop five tracts around the oil-rich Alpine field on Alaska's North Slope.
The department's Bureau of Land Management authorized the first commercial development of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, allowing the companies to go forward with developing the tracts, which are located in the northeastern corner of the reserve.

Report Assails Harvard's Links with Nazis
Sun Nov 14, 2004 06:34 PM ET

By Missy Ryan
BOSTON (Reuters) - Collegial relations between Harvard University and the Nazis in the 1930s were a "shameful" episode that helped give a favorable picture of the regime in the United States, according to a report released on Sunday.

"As the Nazi menace steadily increased ... Conant's administration at Harvard was complicit in increasing the prestige of Nazi regime by seeking and maintaining friendly and respectful relations with Nazi universities and officials," the report said.

The findings were presented by Stephen Norwood, professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Oklahoma, from a paper presented at a Boston conference sponsored by the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

This is my still favorite map of voting patterns.Click that dude to get the full sized image.

The reason it's my favorite is it gives the best view into how we live, instead of how our votes registered. All that vast territory claimed by the "red states" is shown to be unoccupied for the most part. All the red state folks are clumped up around the blue state folks, even in red states.

Now, one thing has been made clear: no one wants to live under rules made by people whose values are alien to their own. I think we can all agree on that. Public policy as espoused by Conservatives, and the religious elites in particular, would interfere in any number of areas most of us consider personal and private. Public policy as espoused by Progressives would prevent interference in those areas.

Yahoo, EarthLink to Test New Anti-Spam System
Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:04 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - EarthLink Inc. and Yahoo Inc. said on Monday they would begin tests of a new anti-spam technology that encodes digital signatures into customers' e-mail as a way to separate legitimate messages from unwanted spam.
Developed by Yahoo, the technology is one of several emerging standards that seeks to flush out fake addresses used by spammers to slip through content filters. It would be invisible to regular Internet users.

Yahoo's DomainKeys embeds outgoing messages with an encrypted digital signature matched to a signature on the server computer that sends the message.

Bush Warns of Growing Violence in Iraq
Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:08 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush warned on Saturday that guerrilla violence in Iraq could worsen, even as U.S. forces battled to stamp out resistance in the insurgent stronghold of Falluja.

I posted a couple of blue state rants, one in particular of which annoyed La Lubu a bit. She feels purple is more appropriate (those are links to conversations here, btw).

I intended to post a few equivalently malevolent red state rants. I changed my mind because I don't want to subject myself to them, because it would look like goading the audience, and because William Raspberry has done the purple state editorial I'd have needed to follow it all up.

It has become routine for reporters to look for typical partisans in every fight and to tell our stories through their irreconcilable arguments. It is a tendency that plays us false more often than we care to admit.

Quote of note:

Iraq's Red Crescent group has sent seven truckloads of food and medicine to the city, but U.S. forces blocked the aid convoy at Falluja's main hospital and said it could not enter.

American forces were working to deliver assistance in the city themselves, a U.S. Marine officer said.

Falluja Fighting Persists; Aid Convoy Turned Back
Mon Nov 15, 2004 06:28 AM ET

By Michael Georgy and Omar Anwar
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes, artillery and mortars attacked areas across Falluja Monday as diehard insurgents held out to the last in the week-long battle.

The U.S. military says it has taken full control of the city, but scattered pockets of resistance remain, particularly in southern parts. Large areas lie in ruins, devastated by the ferocity of the U.S. military's seven-day onslaught.

My response to the quote of not

Opponents of the House bill say it would make it more difficult for refugees to obtain political asylum in the United States by raising the standards of proof required. It would also make it easier for the authorities to deport non-citizens, including legal residents.

…is, isn't that the point?

Bush Faces Early Test on Immigration Policy
Sun Nov 14, 2004 10:28 AM ET

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush faces an early test on immigration policy this week as Congress considers legislation denounced by Latino groups as anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant.

Several provisions that would affect the lives of immigrants and asylum seekers found their way into a bill passed by the House of Representatives to reform the nation's intelligence services.

Press down here, it pops up over there. And any movement causes waves that take a while to subside.

Anyway…

Trouble Spots Dot Iraqi Landscape
Attacks Erupting Away From Fallujah
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 -- The fighting started in Mosul two days after U.S. tanks entered Fallujah. Armed men appeared in a sudden tide on a main street in Iraq's third-largest city, a wide avenue where so many American convoys had been ambushed that locals nicknamed it "Death Street."

At 11 a.m. Thursday, the target was an armored SUV. Witnesses said that after its Western passengers were chased into a police station, the driver was burned alive atop the vehicle as the attackers shouted "Jew!" The city of 1.8 million people then devolved into chaos. Thousands of police officers abandoned their precinct houses. The governor's house was set alight. Insurgents took the police chief's brother, himself a senior officer, into his front yard and shot him dead.

Rumor's as Phony as a $2 Bill
By Al Kamen

Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A23

In this time of change in the upper echelons of government, it's important for senior officials to be able to read even the slightest indication, no matter how subtle, to determine where they stand on the presidential firmament.

The signals might come in traditional ways: leaks to the media, body language at meetings, other Cabinet members not answering your calls, staffers not laughing at your jokes.

It seems they can come in very creative ways as well. For example, anyone pondering the fate of Treasury Secretary John W. Snow might browse eBay and find this:

"Choice Uncirculated 2003 $2.00 Minneapolis FRN With The Hand Autographed Signature Of, Then Secretary Of The Treasury, John W. Snow Grading Choice Uncirculated! Mr. Snow Was In Office A Very Short Time, Making Him A Very Scarce Signer, He Signed Very Little & Is Tough To Locate Any Example Of On Currency!"

Respecting Sources
Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A24

TWO REPORTERS are facing jail in the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times have been held in contempt by the respected chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington for behavior that countless government sources and whistle-blowers depend on from reporters they talk to. That is, they are honoring promises of confidentiality. Yet unless they prevail on a pending appeal, Ms. Miller -- who never even wrote about the Plame matter -- and Mr. Cooper risk being locked up in an effort to force them to talk.

Audit Compliance Deadline Proves Costly to Companies
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A14

Some of the nation's biggest companies face a deadline today for completing reviews of their internal financial controls, a labor-intensive, costly effort that has created intense friction between corporate managers and auditors.

Top regulatory officials repeatedly have warned that a significant minority of companies, from a few hundred to a thousand, may report serious weaknesses in their fiscal checks and balances, which could have repercussions in the price of stock shares.

For Specter, a Showdown Over Judiciary Chairmanship
GOP Senator Battles Conservatives Angered by His Comments
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A03

After winning a bruising battle for a fifth term, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) is struggling to keep the fruits of victory with the same aggressiveness, agility and finely honed survival skills that have marked most of his idiosyncratic 24-year career on Capitol Hill.

He is in line to achieve his long-sought goal of chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee but could be denied the post by fellow Republicans as a result of a furious backlash among conservatives about his post-election comments suggesting the Senate is likely to reject staunchly antiabortion nominees to the Supreme Court.

The quote of note for this one comes from Amnesty International.

The Death Penalty

The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

It violates the right to life.

It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It has never been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments.

As an organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights, Amnesty International (AI) works for an end to executions and the abolition of the death penalty everywhere.

The progress has been dramatic. When AI convened an International Conference on the Death Penalty in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1977, just 16 countries had abolished capital punishment for all crimes. Today the figure stands at 80.

Urban renewal is still the primary tool, though.

Anyway…
How to De-power a Minority Voting Bloc

Here is an interesting article about power sharing between factions at the city level. One widely known activity of city and local governments has been consolidation, merging and annexation of nearby city, local, and county governments.

I think such stories are intersting. Usually they center around small-town fueds or corporate development. The article below tags the issue from the racial angle and begins to answer the questions: what happens when a groups that was 37% of the municipal population goes to less than 15% -and- was this power dilution intentional?

Quote of note:

Alex Rubinsteyn, junior in LAS, and his brother Michael walked by the popcorn giveaway on Friday and were somewhat surprised.

"I think it's pretty absurd," Alex Rubinsteyn said. "I know that there is some amount of truth in it, but I just don't see what the point of giving popcorn away is. I don't really know what it is going to accomplish."

Michael Rubinsteyn said he understood where the GPSC was coming from.

"I didn't really understand any of this until I had a black girlfriend," he said. "She said people always checked her ID when she used her credit card or followed her around in stores to make sure she didn't steal anything. I'm just not sure how much of it is true."

Yes, son, I'm sure your Black girlfriend lied to you. But props for not just ignoring the story on the way to dat azz, seriously.

…I don't get a single reply?

Read Sheelzebub's appropriate rant. Then check the story (my links work, her's dont).

The best justice money can buy

There’s nothing like being the son of a rich deputy sheriff.
Especially when you’re a wealthy white spoiled brat who can’t get even
a night’s worth of jail time for your numerous crimes--including rape and drug possession.

Too bad one of the girls Greg Haidl and his two inbred loser friends
Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann gang raped doesn’t have the same
luxury. Joseph “Cotton Mather” Cavallo, Haidl’s misogynistic,
sexophobic lawyer, decided that it was okay to leak two drug arrests involving Jane Doe, saying: “She can’t be trusted.”

…um, I mean Iraq. Sorry.

CIA plans to purge its agency
Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush
BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 14, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

That's because they'll never do it.

Anyway…

Local GOP: Qualified Blacks Need Not Apply

Did you know that 16% of the African American voters in Ohio supported President Bush? This Cincinnati Enquirer editorial examines some reasons for Bush's increased African American support and offers suggestions for more improvement in the GOP.

For years, Democrats have taken African-American votes for granted in America, largely because the Republican Party in recent years had lost its moral advantage as the party of Lincoln.

Along with highlighting Bush's position that are popular with African Americans, including education ("No child Left Behind" and "school choice" are both popular with African Americans), faith-based initiative, home ownership, health care, and Social Security, the editorial then hits on something I think is overlooked and deserves more attention.

Interestingly enough, it's one of the folks who supported the war from the beginning, trying to figure out why he was wrong.

And, of course, his reasons are much too complicated to be true.

Barren Ground for Democracy
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Andersen Air Force Base, Guam

Whether one views the war in Iraq as a noble effort in democratization or a brutal exercise in imperialism, there can be little doubt that it has proved the proverbial "bridge too far" for those who planned and, like myself, supported it. [P6:Layered emphasis added] While much has been made of the strategic missteps the Bush administration has made since the Saddam Hussein regime was toppled, it seems likely that even the best-executed occupation would have been a daunting prospect.

really shouldn't do this live

But I never was smart.

Why Isn't Maggie Cheung a Hollywood Star?
By SUSAN DOMINUS

Published: November 14, 2004

Cheung has been a fixture of Asian superstardom for 21 years and has won more acting awards in China than any other woman. She started out as Jackie Chan's long-suffering, slapsticky girlfriend, May, in the goofy action-oriented "Police Story" movies. (Chan said that when he first saw Cheung on Hong Kong TV, she struck him as someone who "wouldn't mind me kicking her down a flight of stairs.") Eventually tiring, as much physically as creatively, of action films, by the late 80's she had started working with the dreamy, painterly filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, trading her role as a plucky comic for more nuanced parts in films like "As Tears Go By" and "In the Mood for Love" -- women with a noirish unattainability or ingenues shedding their innocence. In the mid 90's, she crossed over to select Western audiences for the first time, working with the French director Olivier Assayas, whom she would eventually marry and who directed her recently in "Clean," the film for which she won the best actress award at Cannes. For Cheung's Asian audiences, it's as if they've watched her morph over the years from Audrey Hepburn to Greta Garbo.

The discussion is about simplifying the tax code for citizens. And the trade-off between a lower nominal rate and deductions (referred to as "loopholes"here, for some strange reason…PLEASE don't let Conservatives redefine personal tax deductions as "loopholes"!)

Gauging the Cost of a Loophole
By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER

WHEN President Bush and Congress get around to grappling with a rewrite of the tax code, much of the focus will be on closing loopholes to raise revenue so tax rates can be lowered.

But some analysts doubt that anything substantive will be accomplished because administration officials have indicated that two of the most cherished loopholes - the deduction of interest paid on mortgages and deductions for charitable contributions - are not going to be touched.

It's right in line with my own views.

Quote of note:

[T]he nation's bill for prescription drugs is forecast to reach $520 billion by 2013, more than twice its current level. At some point, something may crack. "We're on a path that is clearly not sustainable," Mr. Baker said. Then, perhaps, the current system could change or die.

Until then, the United States can rely on Canada.

Do New Drugs Always Have to Cost So Much?
By EDUARDO PORTER

AMERICAN politicians are so perplexed about how to deal with prescription drug prices that the best solution they can offer is to effectively import a Canadian law - by buying drugs subject to Canadian government price controls - rather than pass one of their own.

What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers' Habits
By CONSTANCE L. HAYS

HURRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.

A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.

The Way to Gut a Deer Is to Cut From Groin to Neck
By Gregory Rodriguez
Gregory Rodriguez, a contributing editor of Opinion, is an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

November 14, 2004

Every year, tens of thousands of American high school students and college undergraduates participate in exchange programs that take them to all corners of the globe for new experiences. The idea behind these journeys is simple. Familiarity breeds tolerance — sometimes even acceptance.

That's what Americans need now after our bitter presidential election, blue states accepting red and vice versa. How better to achieve that than a cultural exchange program between the two. Coast dwellers should spend some quality time in the "fly-over" states.

China Barrels Ahead in Oil Market
The country's hunt for the energy it needs to fuel its economy has led to deals in political hotspots, riling the U.S.
By Don Lee
Times Staff Writer

November 14, 2004

SHANGHAI — About a three-hour drive south of Shanghai, along the East China Sea, workers are building 52 gigantic tanks, each capable of holding more than 25 million gallons of oil — enough to supply every driver in China with gasoline for a month.

The storage tanks will help accommodate China's thirst for oil as it looks to fuel its booming economy. And it has plans to stockpile much, much more.

China, the world's second-largest consumer of oil after the United States, has plenty of cash to secure sources of petroleum and natural gas. But as aggressively as any nation, it is also cutting deals and forging alliances to get the energy it needs.

U.S. Closes In, but Fallouja's Rebels Persist
Insurgents are pinned down, and up to 1,600 have been killed, but 'this thing's not over,' a Marine commander says. At least 22 U.S. troops have died.
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Ashraf Khalil
Times Staff Writers

November 14, 2004

FALLOUJA, Iraq — U.S. commanders said Saturday that they had established at least loose control over almost all of Fallouja, and estimated that 1,600 insurgents had been killed during the six-day battle to reclaim the city from the rebels.

As Marine units continued to press southward through the city, 1st Marine Division commander Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski said the battle had come down to "pockets of determined resistance" by increasingly hemmed-in militants.

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Kansas City and St. Louis and Iowa City and New Orleans, and Athens, Georgia, Austin, Texas, Durham, North Carolina, Buffalo, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin. All blue. All towns known to be relatively quirky and progressive and safe and kid friendly and beautiful and all-American and replete with big universities and mediocre Thai restaurants and underground music scenes and healthy smatterings of gay culture and lots of gul-dang book-learnin', and every single one of 'em seems to be right in line with the big cities in understanding that Bush is utter poison to anything resembling true juicy spiritual hope or intellectual progress or really exceptional semidrunken sex.

Is this really still the rule? The bigger and more vibrant and more vigorous and more culturally dynamic the city, or the more educated and progressive and literate the small town, the more likely they were to vote blue, Democrat, progressive, open minded, less fearful? Have we progressed almost not at all from the days prior to the Civil War, when the nation was split almost exactly as it is now? Verily, it would appear not, not so much. In fact, it's only getting worse.

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The professors looked at 480 cases decided by Bush appointees on such issues as privacy, free speech and the rights of criminal defendants. The professors found, for example, that the Bush judges decided civil liberties cases in the direction of restricting these rights -- the conservative position -- more than 70 percent of the time.

Impending war over high court nominees
Ultraconservative Bush choices sure to draw filibusters
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, November 14, 2004

Washington -- President Bush was direct when asked after his election victory about his intentions for the Supreme Court.

"If people are interested in knowing the kind of judges I'll pick," Bush said, "look at the record."

These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep
A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning soldiers afflicted, experts say.
By Esther Schrader
Times Staff Writer

November 14, 2004

WASHINGTON — Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.

The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said, "feeling dead inside." LaBranche's back is now covered in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is emblazoned with the words LaBranche says encapsulate the war's effect on him: "I've come to bring you hell."