**IF YOU CAN'T ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE, CONTACT US AT
rays.list@comcast.net and we'll be happy to send the full article.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-edittdreidoct22,0,492555.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial
Corruption
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
October 22, 2006
ISSUE: Top Senate Democrat in ethics flap.
"My lawyers made me do it."
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid didn't put it exactly that way, but hedid seem to embrace a disturbing political trend when he tried to blame anobvious ethical lapse on his attorneys. It's not the way you'd want apotential future Senate majority leader to act.
Reid said his attorneys said it was OK for him to use political campaigndonations to give Christmas bonuses to a doorman and other staff at theluxury condominium he owns in Washington. Yet federal law expressly forbidsusing campaign money for personal expenditures. What kind of lawyers arethey?
Reid bought the condo with $750,000 in cash. Yet he apparently couldn'tafford, or preferred not to afford, the $3,300 he gave out in Christmasgifts over a three-year period. So he dipped into his campaign fund, listingthe payments as campaign "salary" for two of the three years, then blamingthat misrepresentation on another favorite excuse of politicians: a"clerical error." He now says he'll reimburse the campaign fund.
=
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2006/10/16/woman_sues_over_anti_bush_bumper_sticker?mode=PF
Woman sues over anti-Bush bumper sticker
By Daniel Yee, Associated Press Writer | October 16, 2006
ATLANTA --A woman who was ticketed for having an obscene anti-President Bushbumper sticker filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday against DeKalb Countyand its officials.
Denise Grier, 47, of Athens, Ga., got a $100 ticket in March after a DeKalbCounty police officer spotted the bumper sticker, which read "I'm Tired OfAll The BUSHIT."
Although a DeKalb judge threw out the ticket in April because the state'slewd decal law that formed the basis for the ticket was ruledunconstitutional in 1990, Grier is seeking damages for "emotional distress"against the county, according to the lawsuit.
Grier also seeks a declaration in federal court that her bumper sticker isconsidered protected speech under the First Amendment because she is"uncertain and insecure regarding her right to display her bumper sticker inDeKalb County," the lawsuit said.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100819_pf.html
Questions to Guide an Exit Policy
By George F. Will
Sunday, October 22, 2006; B07
A realist with a wintry smile, James A. Baker III, who helped make George W.Bush's presidency possible, is seeking ways to salvage it. After the 2000election, Baker orchestrated the Bush campaign's lawyering against the Gorecampaign's lawyering that tried to overturn Bush's 537-vote Florida margin.Today Baker is co-chairman -- with former congressman Lee Hamilton, theIndiana Democrat -- of the Iraq Study Group, which will issuerecommendations after Thanksgiving.
International crises rarely conform tidily to electoral cycles. Too bad.America's electoral cycles are constitutional facts: Every two yearselections take the nation's temperature; every four years the nation selectsthe occupant of the office responsible for formulating foreign policy.
Today the policy of "staying the course" means Americans dying to preventShiites and Sunnis from killing each other. If in January 2009 more than100,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq, there might be 100 fewer Republicans inCongress. So "stay the course" is a policy stamped with an expiration date.Here, then, are four questions the Iraq Study Group might address:
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001261_pf.html
Clothes Aren't the Issue
By Asra Q. Nomani
Sunday, October 22, 2006; B01
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. When dealing with a "disobedient wife," a Muslim man has a number of options. First, he should remind her of "the importance offollowing the instructions of the husband in Islam." If that doesn't work,he can "leave the wife's bed." Finally, he may "beat" her, though it must bewithout "hurting, breaking a bone, leaving blue or black marks on the bodyand avoiding hitting the face, at any cost."
Such appalling recommendations, drawn from the book "Woman in the Shade ofIslam" by Saudi scholar Abdul Rahman al-Sheha, are inspired by asauthoritative a source as any Muslim could hope to find: a literal readingof the 34th verse of the fourth chapter of the Koran, An-Nisa , or Women."[A]nd (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them andleave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them," reads one widelyaccepted translation.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001662_pf.html
Stark Lessons From Iraq
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, October 22, 2006; B07
The bloody chaos of Iraq under U.S. occupation is shaking Westerngovernments into sobering reassessments of that conflict and of war itself.More urgently, some of these governments have launched tightly heldcontingency planning for the consequences of a possible American failure inIraq.
"There will be no papers or staff meetings on that subject in our mainministries," one European senior official told me recently. "It would leak,and that would be disastrous. But our intelligence agencies have begun towork on where the terrorists would go post-Iraq. That is a threat we cannotignore now."
The deepening doubts about America's commitment and strategy in Iraq thatdominate polling for U.S. midterm elections have spread across the Atlanticin recent months as insurgency has metastasized into sectarian warfarebetween Sunnis and Shiites.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001661_pf.html
After Elections, a Democratic Push
By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 22, 2006; B07
No one speaks more authoritatively for the Democrats on defense and nationalsecurity issues than Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of RhodeIsland, both longtime members of the Armed Services Committee. If you wantto know what Democratic gains in this midterm election would mean fornational security policy, Levin and Reed can provide the answers.
In a conference call with reporters the other day, the two senators outlinedthe changes in U.S. policy toward North Korea and Iraq that they and theirfellow Democrats would like to see. They signal to voters the kind of changea Democratic victory would mean.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001785_pf.html
Deaf Culture and the Gallaudet Uproar
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, October 22, 2006; B06
Part of a newspaper's responsibility is to educate readers. The protests andturmoil over the Gallaudet University presidency give The Post an excellentopportunity to take readers who hear into a world where most people don't.Although daily coverage has been good, more depth and breadth is needed.
Gallaudet is the center of deaf America. The Web site DeafToday.com says ofthe Gallaudet presidency: "[T]he position carries with it the weight ofbeing one of the leading deaf figures in the country and a representative ofdeaf people to the hearing world."
The protests by students, faculty members and alumni againstpresident-designate Jane K. Fernandes started in the spring but reached acrescendo last week with a second faculty vote of no confidence in herleadership -- and a similar vote for retiring president I. King Jordan, whobecame the school's first deaf president after historic student protests in1988.
=
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/ats-ap_top10oct21,0,6308999.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines
Diplomat Cites U.S. 'Stupidity' in Iraq
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
October 22, 2006, 12:06 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown"arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any groupexcept Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, AlbertoFernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near EasternAffairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment ofAmerica's war in Iraq.
"We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticismbecause, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from theUnited States in Iraq," he said.
=
The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/opinion/22rich.html?pagewanted=print
October 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Obama Is Not a Miracle Elixir
By FRANK RICH
THE Democrats are so brilliant at yanking defeat from the jaws of victorythat it still seems unimaginable that they might win on Nov. 7. But even themost congenital skeptic has to face that possibility now. Things have gottenso bad for the Republicans that were President Bush to unveil Osama binLaden's corpse in the Rose Garden, some reporter would instantly check tosee if his last meal had been on Jack Abramoff's tab.
With an approval rating of 16 percent - 16! - in the new NBC News/WallStreet Journal poll, Congress has matched the Democrats of 1994 or, for thatmatter, Michael Jackson during his own version of Foleygate. As for Mr.Bush, he is once more hiding behind children in an elementary school, as hedid last week when the monthly death toll for Americans in Iraq approached anearly two-year high. And where else could he go?
Some top RepublicanCongressional candidates in the red state he was visiting, North Carolina,would not appear with him. When the president did find a grateful campaignmate at his next stop, Pennsylvania, it was the married congressman who paid$5.5 million to settle a lawsuit by a mistress who accused him of throttlingher.
=
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Kennedys-Court.html?pagewanted=print
October 21, 2006
Justice Kennedy Holds Key to High Court
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:40 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Anthony Kennedy takes his seat, third from the left,among the black-robed justices of the Supreme Court, his presence behind theraised mahogany bench is remarkably unremarkable.
There is nothing of the buttoned-down manner of Chief Justice John Roberts,the professorial mien of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the biting wit of AntoninScalia.
Genial and unassuming, Kennedy poses insightful questions without anydisplay of theatrics. Outside the courthouse, tourists have been known toenlist his help snapping photos, unaware that it is a justice whom they arepressing into service.
=
The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/opinion/22kristof.html?pagewanted=print
October 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Send in the Fat Guys
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
A North Korean visiting South Korea once sniffed that all the cars must havebeen brought in from around the country just to make a good impression forhis visit. His South Korean host added dryly that it had been even moredifficult to bring in all the tall buildings.
Such interactions with the outside world are the best hope to chip away atNorth Korean totalitarianism, but we've missed the opportunity because fordecades we've conspired with Kim Jong-il to isolate his people.
Lately Americans have been quarreling over who is more to blame for NorthKorea's nuclear test, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
Well, Mr. Clinton inherited a situation that, if it had continued, wouldhave resulted in North Korea having hundreds of nuclear weapons by now, andproducing an additional 50 each year. Instead, Mr. Clinton negotiated a dealwith North Korea that resulted in it producing not a single ounce of newplutonium in his eight years in office.
#####
