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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09tierney.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Waiting for Al Qaeda
By JOHN TIERNEY
John Mueller has an awkward question for those of us in the terrorism industry, which is his term for the journalists, politicians, bureaucrats and assorted "risk entrepreneurs" who have alarmed America about terrorism.
For five years, we've been telling Americans that Sept. 11 changed everything. "It will always be a defining moment in our history," President Bush says in this year's Patriot Day proclamation. We declared it a harbinger of a new clash of civilizations, a global ideological struggle - World War III, in Newt Gingrich's words.
We reported intelligence estimates of thousands of Al Qaeda terrorists and supporters in "sleeper cells" in America. In May 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that Al Qaeda's preparations for an attack were 90 percent complete. We braced for acts of terrorism forecast to occur during the political conventions, the presidential campaign, on Election Day, after
Election Day. Through yellow and orange alerts, we kept in mind the Department of Homeland Security's warning: "Today's terrorists can strike at any place, at any time and with virtually any weapon."
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09dowd.html
September 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Unslammed Phone
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Sandy Berger is lucky they didn't show him stuffing government documents into his bra. After all, cinematic license is cinematic license.
Regarding ABC's tarted-up 9/11 movie that sparked a furor among Clintonites who felt they were unfairly blamed for the rise of Osama, I hate to be so quaint as to defend reality. There's not much point. It's as dead as dial-up.
In Hollywood, reality comes with quotation marks around it, as in fixed and scripted "reality" shows. In New York, hybrids of fiction and nonfiction are lavishly rewarded; publishers want the reality part to sell the fiction part and the fiction part to enhance the reality part. In Washington, the Bush team is on a cynical and dangerous new pre-election push to present its fantasies about Iraq as reality, accusing reality-based critics of "moral or intellectual confusion," as Rummy put it.
When a reporter asked President Bush a couple of weeks ago what Iraq had to do with 9/11, he blurted out the truth: "Nothing." But momentarily dismissing that fantasy isn't about to dissuade him from others. "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror,'' President Bush told Katie Couric this week. I bet. Making up is hard to do.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/business/09ford.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Ford Chairman Receives Call From Bush
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
DETROIT, Sept. 7 - Although he has put off a meeting with Detroit automotiveleaders until after the November elections, President Bush called thechairman of Ford Motor on Friday, only days after the struggling automakernamed a new chief executive.
The phone call came the same day that Ford disclosed details of itsemployment agreement with the new chief, Alan R. Mulally, the former BoeingCompany executive whose appointment was announced this week.
Ford said Mr. Mulally would receive a salary of $2 million a year, plus a$7.5 million signing bonus. He will also receive $11 million to offsetperformance awards and stock options that he forfeited by leaving Boeing,where he was chief executive of the commercial airplanes business.
Mr. Bush's call to the Ford chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., came as thePresident flew to the Detroit area, where he attended a fund-raising eventnorth of Detroit for Mike Bouchard, the Republican candidate for the UnitedStates Senate. Mr. Bouchard is challenging Senator Debbie Stabenow, aDemocrat who is completing her first term.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/us/09immig.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Boston Tests System Connecting Fingerprints to Records of Immigration
Violations
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - Immigration officials will automatically be notifiedanytime the local or state police do a federal fingerprint check on asuspect who also happens to be wanted for serious immigration violations,under a new system being tested in Boston.
The automated notification is part of a Department of Homeland Securityprogram that could expand the role that the local and state policenationwide play in the immigration enforcement effort.
To federal officials, it is a natural next step as police forces havehundreds of thousands of officers who routinely come into contact withillegal immigrants, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a squad ofonly about 6,000 criminal investigators.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/world/middleeast/09iran.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
U.N. Is Moving to Punish Iran, U.S. Envoy Says
By JUDY DEMPSEY, International Herald Tribune
BERLIN, Sept. 8 - The United States wants the major powers to begin talksnext week on a draft United Nations resolution against Iran if it does nothalt its enrichment of uranium, a senior American official said Friday.
"We are heading toward the U.N. Security Council to consider a sanctionsregime," R. Nicholas Burns, the United States under secretary of state forpolitical affairs, said in a speech at the American Academy in Berlin aftermeeting with diplomats from Britain, France and Germany. He also metseparately with representatives of China, Russia, Japan, Italy and Canada.
Mr. Burns said that the meeting with the European diplomats, held Thursday,was "the first time we sat together to discuss what type of sanctions" toimpose on Iran. He said talks with them and the diplomats from Russia andChina would resume Monday by conference call, and then shift to the UnitedNations.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090800714_pf.html
Politics
If the Democratic Party has lost its way, will democracy itself be sure to
follow?
By Matthew Dallek
Sunday, September 10, 2006; BW13
In the 1990s, several important books sought to explain, as Washington Postcolumnist E.J. Dionne Jr. succinctly put it, "why Americans hate politics."Dionne's answer was that American democracy was "decaying" because liberalsand conservatives had ineffective governing philosophies. In The System: TheAmerican Way of Politics at the Breaking Point , Haynes Johnson and David S.Broder described how "private interest" trumped "the public interest" in
dooming President Clinton's health care reform. And journalist James Fallowsfound that a media elite attached to profits and entertaining "distort[s] the processes by which we . . . resolve our public problems."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/us/politics/09elect.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Before Speeches, a Bush Strategy to Regain Edge
By DAVID E. SANGER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to sketch out a strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks,it was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock - back to atime, before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chiefwas a far simpler task, and before Hurricane Katrina, when questions about the administration's competence did not weigh so heavily.
From those discussions emerged the speeches Mr. Bush has delivered over thelast week, the leading edge of a remarkably intensive and aggressivecampaign in which he has tried to regain ground he has lost for more thantwo years, by turning the conversation away from Iraq and back toward thebroader war on terror.
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http://www.local10.com/health/9804002/detail.html?treets=mia&tid=2655619429813&tml=mia_health&tmi=mia_health_1_11150109072006&ts=H
Eye Disorder Blamed on Computer Use
POSTED: 12:52 pm EDT September 7, 2006
UPDATED: 12:55 pm EDT September 7, 2006
HALLANDALE, Fla. -- If you sit at a computer for several hours a day, youmay suffer from a condition the American Optometric Association says affectsmore than 10 million Americans.
It's called computer vision syndrome. And this eye disorder has a lot of ussitting in the dark.
Like many Americans today, Mario Shirley, 38, spends a lot of time on hiscomputer.
"Seventy-five percent of my day I was in front of the computer," saidShirley.
His eyes began to irritate him so much, he would sit in the dark for most ofthe day.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/washington/09cuba.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
U.S. Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
MIAMI, Sept. 8 - The Bush administration's Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid10 journalists here to provide commentary on Radio and TV Martí, whichtransmit to Cuba government broadcasts critical of Fidel Castro, a spokesmanfor the office said Friday.
The group included three journalists at El Nuevo Herald, theSpanish-language sister newspaper of The Miami Herald, which fired themThursday after learning of the relationship. Pablo Alfonso, who reports onCuba for El Nuevo Herald, received the largest payment, almost $175,000
Other journalists have been found to accept money from the Bushadministration, including Armstrong Williams, a commentator and talk-showhost who received $240,000 to promote its education initiatives. But whilethe Castro regime has long alleged that some Cuban-American reporters inMiami were paid by the government, the revelation on Friday, reported in The
Miami Herald, was the first evidence of that.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/world/middleeast/09khamenei.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
A Cleric Steeped in Ways of Power
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN, Sept. 3 - As Iran defies the West over its nuclear program, thepublic face of the nation has become the outspoken president, MahmoudAhmadinejad. But it is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who bymost accounts has been the primary architect of Iran's combative foreignpolicy, and the force behind the president's own power.
Cloaked in religious robes, with a black turban signaling that he is adescendant of the Prophet Muhammad, Ayatollah Khamenei delivers the sameblistering anti-American, anti-British, anti-Israeli message as thepresident.
His political evolution charts his own rise to power. As the Friday Prayerleader nearly two decades ago, he questioned the absolute power of Iran'ssupreme leader, saying Islamic law and the Constitution must come first.Today, he has emerged as an aggressive defender of his own right to have thefinal say in all matters of state and religion - a power he has not beenafraid to exercise.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701615_pf.html
Tehran's Two Worlds - Veering Between Conciliation and Confrontation
By David Ignatius
Friday, September 8, 2006; A17
TEHRAN -- At the end of a 10-day visit here, I am struggling with aquestion: Is the Iranian revolution of 27 years ago following the normal arcof history and moving toward a rational and stable society? Or is thiscountry still exploding with radical energy and a desire to export itsrevolution to other Muslim nations?
The answer, I'm afraid, is that while Iran is maturing as a nation, the heat of the Islamic revolution is still intense -- and dangerous.This should be Iran's moment, in which this big, dynamic country claims itsplace as the region's dominant power, with commensurate responsibilities.But its leaders seem unable to make the compromises that would lock inIran's gains. They have an "up" staircase toward confrontation but not a"down" staircase toward agreement.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801967_pf.html
Antiabortion Centers Offer Sonograms to Further Cause
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 9, 2006; A01
On June 6, Cheryl Smith took her last $600 and drove her teenage daughterfrom Baltimore to Severna Park to get an abortion.When they got there, a receptionist told them the clinic had changed hands.The abortion provider had moved a few miles away, she said, but the newclinic would offer a pregnancy test and sonogram for free.
The Smiths stayed. After they saw a picture of the fetus at 21 weeks witharms and legs and a face, their thoughts of termination were gone.
"As soon as I seen that, I was ready. It wasn't no joke. It was real,"Makiba Smith, 16, said. "It was like, he's not born to the world yet, but heis inside of me growing."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09terrill.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
China Is Not Just Rising, but Also Changing
By ROSS TERRILL
Xian, China
CHINA'S advance toward global economic pre-eminence appears irresistible.Having recently surpassed Britain, France and Italy, its economy is now thefourth-largest in the world, growing, Beijing says, at the startling rate of10 percent a year. Brokers in Hong Kong and New York entertain themselves bypredicting the year in which China's gross domestic product will outstripthat of the United States.
The speculation is understandable. China's appetite for oil, gas and othernatural resources from abroad is all but insatiable. Its urban middle classenjoys cellphones, poodles, Häagen-Dazs, gated apartments, psychiatrists,overseas vacations and cars for which city streets have little room in anation that is now 40 percent urban.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09sat1.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Editorial
Veterans of Sept. 11
One of the worst things about listening to those who rushed to ground zeroafter the attacks on Sept. 11 is that you can barely hear their stories. Formany, the lungs hardly work. The cough, the ragged breathing, the confusionand even the bitterness make it hard for some of those who labored in thattoxic cloud to explain how they feel forgotten. Like Steven Centore, aformer federal worker from Flanders, N.Y., who became so emotional at aCongressional hearing in Manhattan yesterday that he had to be gentlyreminded of his own condition.
Sick from his time working at ground zero, Mr. Centore was forced to pay forhis treatment, and the federal government offered only one thing, he said: a"screening" that determined he was indeed sick. "You mean I'm just a datapoint for you," he recalled saying to the nurse filling out his forms.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/opinion/09sat2.html?pagewanted=print
September 9, 2006
Editorial
With All Deliberate Foot-Dragging
We were certainly relieved that the Senate Intelligence Committee finallymade official yesterday what pretty much everyone but President Bush andVice President Dick Cheney had already acknowledged: There never was anyconnection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, not even between Mr. Husseinand the self-styled Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraq also was not busily trying to build a nuclear weapon before the war,nor did it have a biological weapons program.
Those conclusions were contained in documents released by the committee aspart of the second phase of its investigation into the prewar intelligenceon Iraq. Releasing any documents was a change of pace for the panel'schairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, who has consistently tried tostymie this phase of the investigation.
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Subject(s): 2006 Elections, 2008 Elections, Bush Crimes, Bush Enemy of Civil
Liberties, Civil Liberties
Local Area(s): None
September 8, 2006 at 10:03:55
Sen. Feingold Stands Up Again
by Dave Lindorff
http://www.opednews.com
Once again, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), has nailed it, doing exactly theright thing, acting in a courageous manner as a progressive politicianshould act.
It is clear to everyone in Congress that President Bush knows he's in deeppolitical and legal trouble over his warrantless NSA spying program. It hasbeen declared a violation of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence lawpassed by Congress in 1978, and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, bya federal judge in Detroit. His justification for breaking those laws--thathe is the commander in chief in a so-called "war" on terror--was summarilyslapped down and tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court in the course of itsHamdi v. Rumsfeld decision in June.
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Forwarded from Ron Mills
http://www.RonMills.us
http://www.pewtrusts.org/ideas/ideas_item.cfm?content_item_id=3574&content_type_id=18&issue_name=Public%20opinion%20and%20polls&issue=11&page=18&name=Public%20Opinion%20Polls%20and%20Survey%20Results
Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics
August 24, 2006
Polls/Survey Results
The relationship between religion and politics is a controversial one. While the public remains more supportive of religion's role in public life than in the 1960s, Americans are uneasy with the approaches offered by both liberals and conservatives. Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government. But the proportion who express reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this.
The Democratic Party continues to face a serious "God problem," with just 26% saying the party is friendly to religion. However, the proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion, while much larger, has fallen from 55% to 47% in the past year, with a particularly sharp decline coming among white evangelical Protestants (14 percentage points).
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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/editorial/outlook/4173654
Sept. 8, 2006, 8:19PM
Couric blew first chance to stand up for women
Anchor lightened up when weight was weighed
By BEVERLY MCPHAIL
All eyes were on Katie Couric this week as she moved from the cheery NBCmorning show Today to the more somber CBS Evening News. However, prior toher first appearance as network anchor, Couric's image created a stir whenit was revealed that a CBS promotional magazine doctored a studio photographof Couric in order to make her look much slimmer in the face, arms andwaist. Before she uttered a word in her new role as anchor, she had alreadybeen cut down to size.
Although the airbrushing of photographs of women to remove pounds and hideso-called flaws is not new, such machinations have largely affected modelspromoting a product rather than powerful professional women. Airbrushingphotographs of women creates unrealistic and unattainable standards ofbeauty. When young girls and women peruse these pictures, often unfavorablycomparing themselves to these artificial depictions, problematic behaviorscan result. These range from body dissatisfaction to yo-yo dieting, plasticsurgery, eating disorders and self-objectification.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/31/opinion/printable1956701.shtml
For Democrats, Some Tactical Advice
Sept. 1, 2006
(The American Prospect) This column was written by Thomas F. Schaller.
A few weeks before the Democrats' 2002 midterm disaster, I found myself at apolitical event seated next to a longtime Democratic congressman. During alull, I asked him why Democrats were unable to nationalize the congressionalelections as Republican Newt Gingrich did in 1994. "It's a lot tougher forus," he bemoaned. "We're more heterogenous, and it's hard to find a messagewe can all agree on."
He was more or less right: The Democrats are the bigger tent party, makingit difficult to fashion a national policy umbrella under which 200incumbents and another 200-plus challengers can fit comfortably. Take Iraq,this election's most salient issue. Prominent national Democrats have stakedout at least four positions. Feingold Democrats opposed the war from thestart and want America to withdraw. Kerry-Edwards Democrats voted for thewar, complained frequently about its management, and later admitted theirwar votes were a mistake. Hillary Democrats are akin to Kerry-Edwards ones,only they express no regret for their war votes. Finally, there areLieberman Democrats, proud of their war votes and determined to "stay thecourse." From such divergence a concerted electoral plan is unlikely to
emerge.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/09/dublin_out_prou.htmltypepad.com/direland/2006/09/dublin_out_prou.html
New from DIRELAND, September 8
DUBLIN: OUT, PROUD, AND YOUNG
The entire new issue of Ireland's gay magazine, GCN, written andedited solely by gay and lesbian teenagers, symbolizes the explosionof Ireland's out gay community, despite the traditionally austere andstrict Irish Catholic culture and the country's legendary history ofsexual repression, long the stuff of plays and novels. For a look atschools, the new gay Ireland, and the evolution of the Irish gaymovement in the last three decades, click on:
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Forwarded from Susan Fishkorn
Tri-County - chances@attglobal.net
The New York Times Company
August 20, 2006
The Count
A Nonpartisan Look at the Price Tag of Overseas Wars
By HUBERT B. HERRING
What, exactly, are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costing us? (In merely dollar terms, that is; the human cost is another, unthinkable matter entirely.) That's what the Congressional Research Service, Congress's nonpartisan public policy research arm, explored in a recent study.
As the study notes, the Defense Department recently put the "burn rate" - a term for the sums being spent - for Iraq and Afghanistan at $6.8 billion a month. But as the study says, that excludes maintaining and replacing equipment or building and improving facilities. The official "burn rate," it concludes, is only about 70 percent of the true cost.For fiscal 2006, monthly costs for Iraq alone could hit $8 billion, the study projected.
The study found a bit of surprising news: that the cost of feeding troops in Iraq fell in fiscal 2005 to $1.2 billion from $2 billion, despite comparable troop levels. No, we have not cut rations. The change may simply reflect success at reducing costs, the study says.
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From: The Whimsy LOOPS
THE WASHINGTON POST / The STATESMAN JOURNAL (Salem,OR)
AUGUST 17, 2006
A political earthquake
By: DAVID S. BRODER, The Washington Post
August 17, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio - When The Columbus Dispatch's respected poll recentlyreported that Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was trailingDemocratic Rep. Ted Strickland by 20 points in the race for governor ofOhio, there was dismay but no shock among his fellow Republicans. Those Iinterviewed during a recent visit here said they had seen it coming for along time.
But it is a political earthquake. Democrats have not been able to win asingle statewide office in Ohio for most of the past decade and arecompletely shut out of power in the capitol at this moment. Strickland hasnever run a statewide campaign and is trying to break a tradition that haskept any congressman from ever being elected as governor of Ohio. Blackwellhas
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In Chicago, Adalberto United Methodist Church is Offering Sanctuary As
Deportation Nears
From: The Whimsy LOOPS
THE WASHINGTON POST
AUGUST 17, 2006
Church Is Sanctuary As Deportation Nears
Immigrant Activist Defies U.S. Order
By: Kari Lydersen, Washington Post Staff Writer
CHICAGO, Aug. 16 -- A 31-year-old illegal immigrant who has become a spokeswoman for undocumented workers is defying a deportation order and has taken sanctuary in a church on this city's West Side.
Elvira Arellano refused to comply with the order directing her to return to her native Mexico on Tuesday. She is camped out in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago's Humboldt Park, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
The church's storefront and pulpit are plastered with signs declaring it a holy sanctuary, invoking the sanctuary movement of the 1980s in which churches sheltered undocumented refugees from civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.
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