There's another measure of Republican (and Bush) success in 2004. For the first time in more than a century, a Republican president won re-election as his party improved its hold on the House and Senate while increasing its majority of governorships (28 now) and maintaining control of a plurality of state legislatures (20). At the same time, Republicans held a majority of state legislators--a feat they initially achieved in 2002 after a half-century in the minority.

And don't forget what Democrats insisted for decades was their path to sure victory. If Democrats could match Republican campaign spending, energize their base, dramatically increase voter turnout, and provoke a robust debate on big issues, they'd win the White House and probably a whole lot more. Well, they managed all of that in 2004. The result: A Republican won with the first presidential majority since 1988. Mr. Bush touted an agenda of bold conservative reform. The last time a Democrat won as an unalloyed liberal was 1964.

Where are Democrats? They're desperately seeking to preserve every government program and benefit enacted since the days of the New Deal. The problem for them is that the New Deal paradigm--the belief that Washington could endlessly improve people's lives--has lost its appeal. Mr. Bush discovered this the hard way. He pushed a Medicare prescription drug benefit through Congress in 2003, expecting it to boost his popularity. It didn't. The program drew disapproving poll numbers. His newer idea of an "ownership society" hasn't quite replaced the New Deal paradigm, but it has a chance.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats are experiencing an extraordinary reversal of roles. Democrats were once the inclusive party of the "big tent." Republicans now have a bigger tent. Social liberals like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger were prominent speakers at the GOP convention. Social conservatives were virtually nonexistent at the Democratic convention. Democrats have embraced a series of ideological litmus tests on abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem-cell research. Republicans haven't.

Progress for America, an independent conservative group that backed Bush in the campaign, has set aside about $9 million to support the president's Social Security plan as well as other White House domestic priorities in the new year, said spokesman Brian McCabe. The group is asking its donors for much more, he said.

Stephen Moore, head of the conservative Club for Growth, has raised $1.5 million and hopes to hit a $15 million target when his fundraising drive ends.

But their contributions are likely to be dwarfed by those from corporate trade associations, spearheaded by the National Association of Manufacturers. Other likely contributors include the financial services and securities industries and other Fortune 500 companies, GOP officials say. White House officials, led by Karl Rove and Charles P. Blahous III, the president's policy point man on Social Security, are helping to shape the public relations campaign, said the officials, who talked about private discussions with the White House on the condition of anonymity.

"It could easily be a $50 million to $100 million cost to convince people this is legislation that needs to be enacted," Moore said. "It's going to be expensive" because "it's the most important public policy fight in 25 years," he said.

"As an issue, Social Security has not really been out there in front of the public," said David Certner, director of federal affairs at AARP. "It was less of an issue in this past election than it has been in any election in the past two decades."

Consequently, both sides are rushing to define the problem and potential solutions just as most Americans start tuning in to the debate over overhauling the 65-year-old program.

Montana's public universities must provide their gay employees with insurance coverage for their domestic partners, the state's Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The majority in the 4-to-3 decision said the decision had nothing to do with the rights of gay couples to marry. But a dissenting judge criticized his colleagues as "radically altering common law marriage in Montana."

[snip]

The court's majority focused on this option, saying that making it available only to heterosexual couples violated the equal protection clause of the state's Constitution.

Although the decision turned on a definition of marriage, the majority emphasized that gay marriage was not at issue.

"We have not been asked nor will we address the question of whether Montana's marriage statutes discriminate against same-sex couples by denying them the right to marry," Justice Jim Regnier wrote for the majority.

"What they're actually doing is using dead people to make cheap points." That's how the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan described some partisans' use of this week's deadly Indian Ocean tsunami to promote various and sundry political agendas. We think it about describes the exploitation of the tragedy by the United Nations' Jan Egeland with his "stingy" remark and the New York Times' criticism of the United States.

It being Christmastime, most world leaders were on vacation when the tsunami hit. Kofi Annan was just arriving back in New York late Wednesday. By Thursday morning he still hadn't met with U.N. humanitarian relief point man Jan Egeland —the man in charge of tsunami relief. President Bush was in Crawford, Texas, until yesterday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was vacationing in Egypt. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was away, too. That's to be expected. World leaders should be judged by the job they do — not by how fast they can turn to a camera.

But that didn't much matter to the New York Times, where selective outrage is the rule. In an editorial entitled "Are We Stingy? Yes," the Times singled out President Bush for a gratuitous snarl. "President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia," the piece read.

Don't we owe the dead, dying and injured the minimal grace not to convert their suffering into a chat-show segment — the latest left-right clash over the Bush presidency?

And couldn't the editorialists at The New York Times have forborne — even just for a week — making use of the tsunami to complain about U.S. government spending on "development aid"?

The other day, a United Nations official accused the United States of being “stingy” in terms of aid to tsunami victims in South Asia. After criticism from the State Department, the official clarified his position. Americans are not being stingy in helping tsunami victims, only stingy in terms of overall foreign aid as compared to other countries.

This is a familiar attack, which comes up annually when the foreign aid appropriations bill is before Congress. But let’s look at the facts. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, in 2003, the world’s major countries gave $108.5 billion in combined foreign aid. Of this, the U.S. contributed $37.8 billion or 35 percent of the total. The next largest foreign aid contributor was The Netherlands, which gave $12.2 billion, following two years in which it was actually a net recipient of foreign aid.

The claim of stinginess, however, comes from a different calculation—foreign aid as a share of national income. In 2003, U.S. foreign aid came to just 0.34 percent, well below the world leading Dutch at 2.44 percent. Other big contributors are Ireland (1.83 percent), Norway (1.49 percent), and Switzerland (1.09 percent). The U.S. would have to triple foreign aid just to reach the lowest of these contributors.

The first thing one notices when looking at the big foreign aid contributors is that they all spend very little on national defense. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2002, The Netherlands spent just 1.6 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. Norway spent 2.1 percent, Switzerland spent 1.1 percent, and Ireland spent a piddling 0.7 percent. By contrast, the U.S. spent 3.4 percent—and this was before the Iraq war. It’s easy to be generous with foreign aid when another country is essentially providing your defense for free.

Another thing one notices is that the foreign aid data are only for “official” (i.e., government) aid. The data are sketchy, but by all accounts Americans are far more generous in terms of charitable contributions than the citizens of any other country. A 1991 study found the United Kingdom to have the second largest percentage of private charitable giving. But in 2003, charitable giving amounted to 8.6 billion pounds or 0.8 percent of GDP in the U.K., according to the Charities Aid Foundation, compared to $241 billion or 2.2 percent of GDP in the U.S., according to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel.

But even this estimate of charitable giving by Americans is low because it counts only cash contributions and omits volunteer work. According to Independent Sector, in 2003, they contributed an additional $266 billion worth of their time to charitable enterprises. This is based on a value of $17.12 per hour of time. But even if one assigns a value equal to the minimum wage, this noncash contribution still comes to about $100 billion.

An indignant Russian who arrived at the Novotel Phuket Resort on the day after the tsunami loudly complained that there was no champagne reception.

Other guests have pestered the hotel's grieving staff with complaints that their rooms lack good views.

Belgian tourist Desmet Romain, 42, questioned whether he should have stayed on despite all the death and misery.

But the prospect of missing the New Year's beach holiday he had been looking forward to all year was too much to bear.

Some Thais are amazed that the foreigners can be so insensitive to be sipping cocktails poolside while surrounded by death and grief.

"I think the people are good, but I don't know why they stay here now when we are so sad," a waiter at the Novotel said, asking that his name not be reported out of fear of losing his job.

The beaches of Patong and Kata were filling up with tourists and Thais when the tsunami hit Sunday. Nearly 300 are confirmed dead, including more than 100 tourists.

Another 1,600 people are still missing from Phuket beaches, and there is an army of grieving family members searching for them.

The Thai survivors on Phuket are preparing to mark the new year in a much more somber manner.

"I will go to the temple to make merit for all the dead people," said Supone Sengsahus, 43, who drives a converted pickup truck as a taxi.

The final tally is yet to be known, but it's clear the Red Cross and other aid groups are experiencing perhaps the largest surge in donations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or the string of hurricanes that hit Florida and the Caribbean this summer.

"The volume (of donations) that they're seeing in the last few days is several times what they saw during the hurricanes, which was several times what they see on a normal day," said Charlie Cumbaa, a vice president at Blackbaud Inc., which makes software used by the Red Cross and many other aid agencies to process donations.

Among the biggest corporate givers are Pfizer Inc., which is donating $10 million in cash and $25 million worth of drugs to relief agencies; The Coca-Cola Co., which is donating $10 million; Exxon Mobil Corp., which is giving $5 million; and Citigroup Inc., which is contributing $3 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $3 million.

Pharmaceutical and health-care products companies were among the biggest givers.

Merck & Co. Inc. is giving $3 million in cash while Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories Inc. are each donating $2 million; each of the three are also sending drugs and other health care supplies to the region. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is donating $1 million in cash and $4 million in antibiotics and antifungal drugs. Roche Group and GlaxoSmithKline PLC were also planning to donate supplies and/or cash.

Nike Inc., American Express Co., General Electric Co. and First Data Corp. are each giving $1 million.

For some corporations with operations in the countries struggling with the disaster, their far-flung enterprises are serving as quick supply routes for aid.

Drug makers with offices or plants in the region sent employees out with antibiotics, nutritional supplements, infant formula, baby food and other supplies. Employees of companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo Inc. and Marriott International Inc. hotels in the region are delivering bottled water, food and other supplies.

"They're sending whatever they can, as fast as they can," said Elaine Palmer, spokeswoman for PepsiCo, which rushed out Aquafina bottled water from one of its Indian bottlers and plans to contribute a minimum of $1 million to the relief effort.

Fresh drinking water is one of the items most needed. Many sources of fresh water, like wells, have been contaminated by seawater, debris and sewage.

Lisa Montgomery, 36, faces federal charges of kidnapping resulting in murder in the December 16 death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, in her home in Skidmore, Missouri.

[...]

Maughmer [U.S. Chief Magistrate John T. Maughmer] appointed public defenders Anita Burns and David Owen to represent her.

She is scheduled to be back in court on Thursday for a detention hearing.

Prosecutors allege that Montgomery strangled Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the fetus from her womb.

Attorneys for Lisa Montgomery did not ask for bond during a brief hearing before U.S. Magistrate John T. Maughmer, who granted the prosecution's request to keep her in jail. Maughmer said there is no condition, or combination of conditions, he could impose that would ensure she would appear if he released her from custody.

The Marine apparently picked up a prostitute he believed was a female, investigators said. When he discovered the prostitute was a man, the Marine allegedly killed the man and dumped the body near Melrose Avenue.

Craig Harvey, Operations Chief at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, said his office could not release the identity of the alleged prostitute pending notification of next of kin.

He was a 25-year-old male Hispanic with an unknown last address, Harvey said. His body, which indicated gunshot wounds, was found in the 4900 Melrose Hill, Los Angeles.

The coroner’s office will conduct a standard homicide autopsy on the 25-year-old and is conducting a standard LAPD officer-involved shooting autopsy on Vallor.

LAPD has declined to release further information about the incident, which is under investigation.

Officers first fired a beanbag round to subdue Vallor, but he pointed the weapon at officers and he was shot, Officer Jack Richter said Monday

It Not that it excuses the Marine for his actions, but it is a shame that the prostitute didn't have enough sense to level up front about being transgendered. The entire incident may have been prevented with a little common sense.

These guys pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers in sheep's clothing. They attack the Mainstream Media for not being fair while pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers.

They should call themselves "Powertool." They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power.

I work for a dopey old newspaper committed to covering the news fairly while Powerline doesn't make boring commitments. They are not Mainstream Media. They are Extreme Media. Call them reliable partisan hacks.

That's what they call me: A reliable partisan hack, even though they sometimes like columns I write about dumb things Democrats do. I have criticized many dumb Democrats, but Democrats don't matter these days. All the power is in the hands of Republicans, and Powerline's job is to make life easier for them. Mine isn't.

Powerline is run by Ivy League lawyers, one of whom (Johnson) is a vice president at TCF Bank in Minneapolis and works for Bill Cooper, an ex-state Republican Party chairman. Johnson and Hinderaker are fellows at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that seems to be obsessed with gays and guns and wants to return us to the principles of our founders, although I can't determine if that includes Ben Franklin's skirt chasing.

Mainstream or Extreme? We report, you decide: Last month, Claremont gave its Winston Churchill Award to that visionary statesman and recovering drug addict, Rush Limbaugh!

But Extreme bloggers don't tell truths. They tell talking points. Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism. Extreme bloggers are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor and the disadvantaged while working out of paneled bank offices.

But enough. It's time for auld acquaintance to be forgot. So as a gift to Powerline, let me try my hand at some blogger-style "fact-checking."

1) "It's totally unexpected," Johnson, the banker, told the newspaper after Powerline won "Blog of the Year."

But the Aw Shucks Act doesn't fly. Powerline campaigned shamelessly for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the Time honor. That online award was a bloggers' poll, and Powerline linked its readers to the award site 10 times during the balloting, shilling for votes.

The goal of the fee is to reduce some 50 million bags distributed by San Francisco supermarkets each year. Environmentalists say the bags pollute cities and wilderness areas, jam recycling machinery and often blow into the world's oceans and harm marine organisms. Environmental groups estimate there are

46,000 pieces of plastic in each square mile of ocean.

The 17-cent fee would cover current estimated recycling, collection, disposal and street cleaning costs. "If you want to use the bag, you pay a fee to use the bag," said Westlund. "If you don't want to use the bag, you bring your own. And ideally we'll be able to drop the number of bags in use." The fee would apply to shoppers at the city's larger grocery stores, specifically those earning more than $2 million per year in sales.

Paul Smith, vice president of government relations at the California Grocers Association, called the fee a tax on food and on consumers. "It's very punitive," he said, "primarily against grocery stores and large grocery stores." Smith said his members worry that a reduction of at-register bags might inadvertently lead to an increase in shoplifting. "You're opening the ability for customers to bring a rather large, discreet bag and go down the aisle with it," he said.

The survey found that consumers' outlook for the next six months was more upbeat than the month before. Respondents saying they expected business conditions to improve rose to 22.0% from 20.3%, while those saying they expected conditions to worsen fell to 7.7% from 11.4%.

Those saying they believed business conditions were good rose to 24.4% from 23.2%, while those saying they were bad fell to 17.8% from 20.2%.

The survey's reading of the labor market also improved. The percentage of respondents saying jobs are plentiful rose to 19.4% from 17.1%, while those saying jobs were hard to get fell to 26.4% from 28.0%.

The outlook for jobs also improved. Those saying they expected fewer jobs to become available in the coming months declined to 15.5% from 19.3%. However, those saying they expected more jobs to become available slipped to 16.2% from 17.6%.

History says the rise of reason and revulsion stopped religious witch-burning. Or maybe they just got all the witches.

Likewise, the global warming hysterics of today may run out of steam when reason prevails. Or when they get all the capitalists.

"Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question," he said at the National Press Club this month. But it keeps a lot of preachers of the faith employed and the folks stirred up.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

As historical facts, global warming and cooling have occurred.

The Earth warmed in the Middle Ages, up to a peak around 1300 when it was perhaps 2 degrees warmer than now, whereupon the Little Ice Age ensued until about 1900.

We'd like to have that explained in the context of "man-made global warming."

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The U.N. emergency relief coordinator says the Southeast Asia tsunami death toll should surpass last year's 26,000 dead in the Bam, Iran, earthquake.

Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland told reporters Monday at U.N. World Headquarters in New York an enormous relief effort was under way in the region struck Sunday by giant waves generated from an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The latest estimates run at about 22,000 killed.

[...]

...more casualties are feared from aftereffects, such as polluted drinking water, adding that "acute respiratory disease always comes in the wake of disasters."

Speaking of "unacceptable" interference, Electoral Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said on Sunday: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election."

An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said was raised already with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, is the possibility of adding some of the top vote-getters among the Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates.

The diplomat said even some Shiite politicians who were followers of Ayatollah Sistani were concerned that a Pyrrhic victory by Shiites, effectively shutting Sunni Arabs out of power, could alienate Sunnis and lead to more internal strife. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraqis and were generally denied power under Saddam Hussein.

Strife was still the word in Baghdad, where the death toll from the explosion of a tanker truck on Christmas Eve rose to nine on Saturday, with 19 wounded, the Interior Ministry said. No group has taken responsibility for the attack, which apparently did not damage any obvious insurgent targets. [Page 20.]

The idea of adding Sunnis to the legislature after the election was acknowledged by officials as likely to be difficult to carry out, but they said it might be necessary to avoid Sunni estrangement.

Sunnis Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population and formed the core of Mr. Hussein's power structure.

Much of the violent insurgency is taking place in Sunni-dominated areas in the central part of the country, and some Sunni leaders have called for a boycott of the election. This has led to fears that large numbers of Sunnis will obey the call or be afraid to vote.

For me I don’t care whether Sunni, shiat, Kurdish or any religion/ethnic group win the elections if they are qualified, but I don’t want an Islamic government (I want a secular government). What I really hate about this election is that it’s made as ethnic and religious groups only, without giving concern about who is qualified and who is not. I heard that in the next days those parties will start their campaigns on TV and newspapers.

Till now I don’t know any of those parties, I don’t want to vote based on religion. I want to choose what I think is right and best for my country.

Since the governing council was established a year ago, everything in our live is dividing according to religious/sect origin, they even distributed the ministries according to that not the qualification!.

In the eighties and the years before it, nobody cared about whether you are sunni or shii, or even asked what your religious is. Saddam created this problem by his bloody policy and increased largely in the nineties. now after the war the gap increased very much, every religion sect thinks that they should vote to their group to win and nobody thinks which are the best for them. For me I think a religion is something you inherited, you might believe in it or not, it is something between you and God. It had nothing to do with politics.

I always wonder Why the sunni should listen to their clerics not to vote in the elections, I wonder if those clerics asked themselves who will lose if they did not participate. They are of course.

If there are a lot more Iraqi people with that attitude the elections should go well.

Via the Milwaukee State Journal/Sentenel Online

Defensive lineman Reggie White, who terrorized quarterbacks for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles, has died of a massive heart attack at age 43, according to ESPN.

Reggie White, the soon-to-be Hall of Fame defensive end who came to the Green Bay Packers in 1993 and helped the organization regain the glory of its past, died Sunday at the age of 43.

Former Packers safety LeRoy Butler told the Journal Sentinel he spoke with Sara White, Reggie's wife, Sunday morning and was informed that White had passed away earlier in the day. He had turned 43 on Dec. 19. ESPN reported that he died of a massive heart attack at his home near Huntersville, N.C.

Sara White released a statement through a family pastor that said, "Today our beloved husband, father and friend passed away. His family appreciates your thoughts and prayers as we mourn the loss of Reggie White. We want to thank you in advance for honoring our privacy."

White joined the Packers in 1993 as the most heralded free agent in NFL history and within four years the Packers were Super Bowl champions. White played six seasons with the Packers and held the all-time NFL record for sacks when he retired as a member of the Carolina Panthers after the 2000 season.

BAGHDAD, Iraq_The radical Islamic group that claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq, released on Sunday dramatic footage of what appeared to be the explosion that killed 22 people.

The video sequence _ which carried Monday's date on the footage _ shows three Ansar al-Sunna Army guerrillas clad in black, wearing face masks and carrying AK-47 automatic rifles, describing the plan to blow up the mess hall at Marez base on the outskirts of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

One of the men read a statement saying a member of the group _ identified as Abu Omar al-Musali _ would carry the attack by breaking into the base through the perimeter fence.

"He will take advantage of the change of guards. We have been observing their schedule for a long time. This lion will then proceed to his target and we will take advantage of lunch time. He will storm the dining room where the crusaders and their (Iraqi) allies are gathered," said the unidentified man.

The man reading the statement indicated with a rifle bayonet to a hand drawn map of the base.

"Let Bush, Blair and (interim Iraqi leader Ayad) Allawi know that we are coming and that we will chase them all away, God willing," the masked man said before embracing the suicide bomber who was wearing an explosives-laden vest.

A later outdoor video image _ shot on Tuesday, when the attack occurred _ shows a fireball rising from the distance with the accompanying sound of the explosion. A final image _ shot from a vehicle driving past the base _ shows the torn white tent that served as the base mess hall.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years struck deep under the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra on Sunday, triggering tidal waves up to 20 feet high that obliterated villages and seaside resorts in six countries across southern and southeast Asia. At least 8,000 people were killed in the devastation.

Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water that rolled across the Bay of Bengal, unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake. The tsunami waves barreled nearly 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa, where at least nine people were killed in Somalia.

In Sri Lanka, 1,000 miles west of the epicenter, more than 3,000 people were killed, the country's top police official said; that number, however, does not include the 1,500 deaths reported by rebels who control part of the country.

Nearly 2,500 were reported dead in Indonesia, and about 2,300 along the southern coasts of India. At least 289 were confirmed dead in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and 2 in Bangladesh.

But officials expected the death toll to continue to rise, with hundreds reported missing and all communications cut off to towns in the Indonesian island of Sumatra that were closest to the epicenter. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said.

The rush of tsunami waves brought sudden disaster to people carrying out their daily activities on the ocean's edge. Sunbathers on the beaches of the Thai resort of Phuket were washed away. A group of 32 Indians - including 15 children - were killed while taking a ritual Hindu bath to mark the full moon day. Fishing boats, with their owners clinging to their sides, were picked up by the waves and discarded.

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.

President Bush has implemented economic policies that resemble those of the Roman Empire, which forced the baby Jesus into homelessness on the night of his birth, former civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a pre-Christmas rant late Thursday.

"In the last [Bush] budget, we cut housing again, and that was Jesus' dilemma. In Bethlehem, his family ended up homeless," Jackson told MSNBC's Campbell Brown.

I can understand why some folks may not want a picture of Jesus in a public school classroom, as many Catholic schools have. But Santa Claus? Santa is so thoroughly secularized and commercialized today, many people don't even know he is based on the patron saint of children, St. Nicholas, who died more than 1,600 years ago. Besides, it would be hard to find a more politically correct saint.

Born to wealth, St. Nicholas was one big social worker, giving his money away to the poor and doing benevolent deeds for the most downtrodden in society. His generosity was always pure — of an anonymous nature with no expectation of reciprocation or acknowledgment. The tradition of Santa coming down the chimney started when the real St. Nicholas dropped money down a poor man's chimney — which fell into stockings hung there to dry — so his daughters would have dowries to get married.

And it wasn't just about money. St. Nicholas also rescued kidnapped children, saved sailors and stood up for the unjustly accused. When he died, he became the patron saint of seafarers, scholars, bankers, jurists, brewers, travelers, perfumers, unmarried girls, brides and especially — children. If he ran for office today, that would be one mighty constituency.

Throughout the 1900s, St. Nicholas was transformed into the thoroughly secular figure of Santa Claus — pasted onto every sort of advertising junk, soft drink and food carton in the free world.

Perhaps, some public officials in America no longer see the season for what it is. Possibly, they haven't gone door to door in their election efforts, to witness firsthand who the poor are in their towns — how many kids are from broken homes, how many destitute people could use a little hope this season. And if they ban Santa Claus from schools and public places, they also ban not only hope but also the miraculous reward anonymous, unreciprocated generosity can bring: a joy that has no words, a pleasure whose origins are in the heart and soul, not the mind and body.

When city officials of Kensington, Md., tried to ban Santa Claus in 2001, citizens took to the streets — literally. Dozens of white-bearded, red-suited Santas roared into town in pickup trucks and motorcycles, defying this stunningly stupid ban in a wonderful act of Christmas civil disobedience. The townspeople cheered.

Maybe it's time for us all to engage in some Christmas civil disobedience: Don a red suit, grab a knapsack of toys and charge full-tilt into the poorest sections of our towns, hoping that our belly laughs will be heard in every dark corner of City Hall, in every dingy school administration building.

And, as politically incorrect as it may be, we might do this in the name and memory of the original Santa Claus: old St. Nicholas who held the love of children and charity to the poor high like a blazing beacon, against the dark forces that try to erase reverent charity and generosity from public society — perhaps even from the human heart.

For example, in the wake of the 1999 Columbine shootings, Colorado voters passed a law requiring background checks for all firearm sales at gun shows. The argument in favor of the law was that criminals were taking advantage of the fact that such checks had been required only if a licensed firearms dealer was selling a gun. But if a recent report from the Justice Department is any indicator, this law and others like it are likely not very effective.

The study noted that the number of criminals who obtained guns from retail outlets was dwarfed by the number of those who picked up their arms through means other than legal purchases. The report was the result of interviews with more than 18,000 state and federal inmates conducted nationwide. It found that nearly 80 percent of those interviewed got their guns from friends or family members, or on the street through illegal purchases. Less than 9 percent were bought at retail outlets — and only seven-tenths of 1 percent came from gun shows. So much for the much-ballyhooed closing of the “gun-show loophole.”

The Justice Department’s interviews also gave lie to the notion that so-called assault weapons in private hands decrease the safety of police officers and citizens. Only about 8 percent of the inmates used one of the models covered in the now-expired assault weapons ban, passed under Bill Clinton in 1994. If the supposed increased firepower of these firearms truly made them attractive to lawbreakers the percentage would have been much higher.

And so another gun-control myth ends up on the ash heap of history.

Writing in his new book, Lakoff states: "Democrats are shocked or puzzled when voters do not vote their self-interest. 'How,' Democrats keep asking me, 'can any poor person vote for Bush when he hurts them so badly?' "

Republicans might dispute the "hurt," but no one is arguing that their party's base stretches well beyond the rich and powerful these days. Lakoff argues that Republicans are succeeding because they have been carefully choosing words to frame issues around values. The strategy has left Democrats on the defensive in many areas.

"Partial-birth abortion." "Tax relief." "Healthy Forests Initiative." "No Child Left Behind." Lakoff says the words are no accident.

What's more, when Democrats argue against the issues and employ the same words and phrases, they are unwittingly reinforcing the conservative frame.

That was the inspiration for the title of Lakoff's book: If you are told not to think of an elephant, you can't help but think of one.

Lakoff says conservatives have been perfecting this strategy for 30 years, investing millions in think tanks and framing issue after issue in conservative terms.

"In the 2000 election (Al) Gore kept saying that Bush's tax cuts would go only to the top 1 percent," Lakoff writes, "and he thought that everyone else would follow their self-interest and support him. But poor conservatives still opposed him ... they believed that those who had the most money - the "good" people - deserved to keep it as their reward for being disciplined. The bottom 99 percent of conservatives voted their conservative values, against their self-interest."

Toward the end of "Don't Think of an Elephant," which is essentially a speech and some writings hastily pieced together, Lakoff offers advice on framing. For example, he suggests countering the conservatives' "strong defense" with "stronger America," "free markets" with "broad prosperity," and "smaller government" with "effective government."

"You don't communicate your vision through programs," Lakoff says. "You communicate your values."

Pablo Paredes is reporting for duty at San Diego Naval Station while the Navy decides whether to charge him for refusing to board his Iraq-bound ship.

Paredes, a petty officer third class, turned himself in to naval authorities Saturday. He had refused to board the Bonhomme Richard on Dec. 6, when it left for the Middle East carrying thousands of Camp Pendleton Marines.

Navy spokesman N. Scott Sutherland said Paredes, 23, has assigned duties and responsibilities but isn't restricted to the base. The Navy considers Paredes a deserter, Sutherland said.

Paredes had called the news media to say he intended to become a conscientious objector. Several journalists were pier side when the Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship, sailed without Paredes.

The Navy didn't arrest Paredes at the time, saying that technically he couldn't be considered missing until a roll call was taken aboard ship.

"While there is no legal prohibition against charging someone with desertion right off the bat, customarily the military waits 30 days," said Rehkopf, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel in Rochester, N.Y. He said the maximum penalty for desertion is five years' imprisonment.

Citizen Smash the Indepundit has a report plus details of a rally put on by some of Pablo's supporters.

The ACLU, Max Cleland, Chevy Chase, Susan Estrich, Al Franken, Whoopi Goldberg, Bev Harris, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Terry McAuliffe, Bill Maher, The New York Times, Lawrence O'Donnell, Keith Olberman, Sean Penn, Charles Rangel, Ron Reagan Jr., Randi Rhodes, George Soros, Bruce Springstein, Jon Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Henry Waxman, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga

Ted Rall is an admitted Marxist who would probably be better suited to writing press releases for Fidel Castro than writing for American newspapers, although Rall might even be a bit too anti-American even for the Cubans.

Last year, Rall won the Most Annoying Liberal For 2003 and if anything he was nauseatingly worse this year.

So far this year, Rall referred to Condi Rice as Bush's House N*gga, said that Reagan was "turning crispy brown right about now" soon after his death & also said that "If there is a hell, this guy is in it", recently wrote a column comparing Pat Tillman to a terrorist...I could go on and on and on with this...

Rall is like a living, breathing, caricature of everything that's wrong with the left. He's an America hating Marxist, who doesn't support the troops, roots for America to lose wars, and generally comes across as a slightly unhinged, hate filled, loon....oh, and did I mention that he's annoying?

Defining Quote: "(A)nyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq (as a soldier) is fighting for an "an evil cause under an evil commander in chief." -- Ted Rall

"We will provide every tool and resource for our military, we will protect the homeland," Bush said. He said he would "maintain strict discipline in spending tax dollars."

Bush acknowledged that efforts to train Iraqis to take charge of the country's security had "mixed" results, and noted "there have been some cases where, when the heat got on, they left the battlefield."

"That's unacceptable. Iraq will never secure itself if they have troops that, when the heat gets on, they leave the battlefield," he said, adding that he was "confident" that training efforts would pay off in the long run.

On the home front, Bush shrugged off a question about news reports that the increasingly embattled Rumsfeld does not sign condolence letters to families of US soldiers killed in Iraq, using a machine instead.

"I know Secretary Rumsfeld's heart," said Bush. "Beneath that rough and gruff, no-nonsense demeanor is a good human being who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war causes."

Last year, a school administrator stopped Jonathan Morgan at the door to his classroom because the "goody bag" he had brought to a school party on the last day before Christmas vacation contained candy canes with a religious message attached. Titled "The Legend of the Candy Cane," it said the candy was shaped in a J for Jesus and bore a red stripe "to represent the blood Christ shed for the sins of the world."

This year, the 9-year-old and his evangelical Christian parents went straight to court. They were among four families who persuaded Judge Paul Brown, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, to issue a temporary restraining order on Thursday securing their children's right to hand out "religious viewpoint gifts" at school-sponsored holiday parties.

Kelly Shackelford, the Liberty Legal lawyer who argued the case, said in a telephone interview that Supreme Court decisions since 1969 clearly have established that students do not give up free-speech rights when they walk through the school door. Expressions of religious faith that would be unconstitutional coming from a teacher in a classroom are acceptable among students as long as they do not "materially and substantially disrupt" school operations, he said.

On Friday, the ACLJ persuaded officials in Pasco County, Fla., to reverse their decision to remove Christmas trees from all public buildings. Daniel R. Johnson, an assistant county administrator, said the removal had been triggered by a request from a resident to put a Hanukah menorah next to the Christmas tree in the public library.

A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday ordered the town of Bay Harbor Islands to grant a resident's request to erect a creche next to a local synagogue's menorah on public property.

In Maplewood, N.J., Christian groups threatened to sue over the school district's policy of allowing secular songs, such as "Jingle Bell Rock," but not hymns, such as "Silent Night," at student concerts. In Mustang, Okla., voters angry over the school superintendent's decision to remove a Nativity scene from a student play helped defeat a $10.4 million bond issue to build a new elementary school.

But the president's most nettlesome intra-party issue in early 2005 may be immigration, lawmakers said. Bush's goal of granting guest-worker status to large numbers of undocumented immigrants is about to collide head-on with House Republicans' push to crack down on illegal immigrants, in part by denying them driver's licenses.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) salvaged the intelligence legislation this month only by telling GOP colleagues that the White House has vowed to allow tough immigration restrictions, including the driver's license proposal, that were removed from the measure to accompany the first "must-pass" legislation of 2005.

"If the president wants to maintain credibility with House Republicans, he has to be engaged and willing to pass immigration reform that conservatives want," said Rep. Ray LaHood (Ill.), one of 57 House Republicans who voted against the intelligence bill Bush just signed into law. "If he does that, he will build a bridge" that could open the way to far-reaching changes to Social Security, the tax code and other policies, LaHood said. "If he's missing in action on that issue, he's going to have big problems."

Bush's ability to navigate these concerns will go a long way toward determining whether he can do what few previous presidents have done: enact broad domestic policy changes in a second term.

Some Republicans no longer feel tethered to the president politically, as they did in the 2002 midterm elections and this year. Other senators, including Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), John McCain (Ariz.) and George Allen (Va.), will be animated by White House ambitions of their own.

The Senate may be even more problematic. Graham is pushing a different Social Security plan and challenging Bush's refusal to tinker with the payroll tax to finance the changes.

Bush has ruled out raising taxes to fund the plan, while Graham says the amount of income subject to the payroll tax, which is capped at $87,900, should be lifted to $200,000.

Hagel plans to unveil his own plan early next year. It takes 60 votes to pass controversial measures in the 100-member Senate, so Bush can ill afford Republican defectors.

A number of legal filings and complaints are being readied as green groups turn to the courts to seek redress against countries -- chiefly the U.S. -- and companies that environmental activists believe are causing catastrophic global warming.

Environmental groups ranging from Greenpeace to EarthJustice held seminars this week at the United Nations climate conference touting new legal strategies to go after the countries and companies they believe contribute to climate change.

A joint press release from Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace and WWF on Thursday warned "there will be more [legal actions against countries and businesses] unless deep cuts are made in emissions and victims are compensated."

The California state attorney general, Ken Alex, made the trip to the Buenos Aires conference to promote his "first-ever climate change litigation against private companies."

Critics of the environmental movement see the shift in focus to the courts as evidence of the green groups' failure to convince the world of the righteousness of their cause.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

"The Kyoto Protocol is dead for all intents and purposes, so environmentalists now go to Plan B: What they couldn't obtain through the open democratic process, they are now desperately trying to seek through the courts," said Chris Horner of the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute who attended the U.N. conference here. The CEI does not believe that science supports alarmist claims of human-caused climate change.

The greenhouse gas-limiting Kyoto Protocol is set to go into effect in February despite the fact that the U.S. will not participate. Horner believes that the agreement is meaningless because there are no enforcement mechanisms and the treaty exempts developing nations that will soon be the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

Many environmental groups also concede that Kyoto is too weak to even begin to address their concerns about "global warming."

Scientists hope new evidence of an ancient rise in sea level from a fresh water flood will tell them how global warming can lead to global cooling.

A global cooling event was caused by global warming? Sounds strange. But that is exactly what scientists say happened.

The Earth was emerging from an ice age 8,200 years ago. Seas were warming and life was heating up. Then quite abruptly and for a relatively short period of time -- about 100 years -- the entire globe chilled down again, by almost 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 Centigrade).

One widely held theory for the chill was the sudden release of a substantial amount of fresh water into the northern Atlantic.

A lake twice the size of the Caspian Sea broke through an ice sheet that contained it over current day Minnesota and Canada, the evidence shows. It poured its fresh water into the salty Atlantic and changed the density of the ocean water.

The oceans work on a sort of conveyor belt method to circulate cold and warm waters, thereby helping control cold, moderate, and warm areas of the globe. (Earth's climate is only partly affected by land temperatures and sunlight. Oceans, which store vast amounts of energy and are slow to warm up and cool down, contribute greatly to climate.)

But what happens if that conveyor belt stops or slows down?

Cold, fresh water sinks, and warm salty water rises. The influx of fresh water into the Hudson Bay from Lake Agassiz provided a barrier against the warm, salty water struggling to move north on the conveyor belt. This effectively shut down the circulation of warm water in the Northern Atlantic.

With warm waters unable to move as far north the world became cooler. The amount of water Lake Agassiz dumped into the ocean is equivalent to how much the seas rose. Knowing these amounts will tell scientists how much fresh water could create this type of climate change nowadays, were a bunch of it to suddenly find its way into the ocean.


The oceans were able to find their balance relatively quickly in that ancient event, and the effects wore off in about a century, but a century of that kind of change today would create widespread havoc.

BAGHDAD: Sliding out of the insurgents' house in Fallujah, the Iraqi journalist headed out of town with the Arab fighters' threat echoing in his ears: "Interview us or we will kill you."

Before he had reached his car, masked Iraqi fighters sensitive about the presence of foreign guerillas in the city countermanded the order, presenting him with an impossible dilemma. "Broadcast that and we will kill you," they told 30-year-old television journalist Mohamed Abdul Razzaq.

"Tolerance is the lowest starting point we must have in order to respect, live and deal with each other," says Mark Weitzman, director of the New York Tolerance Center. "It's the capacity for recognizing and respecting the beliefs of other people," adds Dana Williams, writer/editor for Tolerance.org, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Crista Martinez, director of Families First Parenting Programs in Cambridge, says, "I don't even like the word 'tolerance.' 'Embrace' is a better expression for the kind of respect and acceptance 'tolerance' implies."

Whatever definition you follow, one thing is certain: In today's world, children must embrace the concept of tolerance.

"We live in a diverse world," explains Jennifer Young, a teacher at the Lesley Ellis School in Andover and advocate of teaching tolerance. "We encounter people every day who are different from ourselves, in appearance, beliefs and opinions."

Thus, accepting differences in people helps kids adapt to diversity.

"Being tolerant enriches our lives and makes us more open-minded," says Williams. "It also prepares children for the real world. In fact, college and the workplace may come with serious shocks if tolerance is not taught [in the home]."

Karen Dill of Haverhill strives to teach her teenagers, ages 15 and 17, to be respectful and tolerant of others. "I truly try to set an example for them, but it is hard," Dill says. "There are so many external influences that say otherwise."

Iraqi officials say it is too early to predict who will be the country's next prime minister, but privately suggest that Allawi, a secular Shi'ite heading a list that includes several ministers from the U.S.-backed government, is considered the front runner if he wins a seat in the new National Assembly.

Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.

[snip]

The film promises to depict the story from the point of view of US soldiers and politicians; it seems unlikely that the plight of the Iraqis will figure too prominently in Hollywood's take on the subject.

Writing last week for the online journal Slate.com, West said: "If America needs a hard job done, the marines will do it, and they won't lose their humanity in the process or any sleep over pulling the trigger. Yes, they are 'the world's most lethal killing machine.' That's what America needs in battle."

Well, here's the problem. Social Security was launched when there were more than 40 workers carrying the costs of each retiree. Today there are three workers for each Social Security recipient, and we're heading to a 2-1 ratio soon. It sounds to me that, whatever its original merits, the experiment has run its course. FDR "batted" Social Security farther than most of his ideas. But it would be nice to believe that the man who derided "horse and buggy thinking" and who most famously said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" would look at all of this fear-mongering about how Social Security is the "third rail" of American politics with disdain (though he might have liked it, given his penchant for demagoguery).

A mother’s worst nightmare came true in Skidmore, Mo., Thursday afternoon.

An unknown individual entered the home of the Stinnetts — a couple married a little more than a year — and killed the 23-year-old wife, who was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child, according to Nodaway Sheriff Bill Espey.

The unborn girl was cut out of the mother’s womb and taken from the house, Mr. Espey said.

It may be that every American "knows" the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a Bill of Rights as a guarantor of various liberties, and this belief may be so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that virtually every famous political actor in the country has attested to the framers' wisdom in their crafting of the great bill, but the plain, historical and undeniable fact of the matter is the framers overwhelmingly rejected any notion of a bill of rights. When the proposal was put forth during the Constitutional Convention, only two men of 55 spoke in favor of the measure, and the state delegations rejected the idea unanimously.

And the bill didn't fare much better with the men of the First Congress, who approved the amendments only because of crushing pressure from Anti-Federalist factions. Respected constitutional scholar Robert Goldwin notes the House was almost "unanimously opposed" to the amendments; and that the bill's sponsor was told of these feelings "in terms that were caustic, scornful, and even derisive."

The framers were convinced that such a bill would actually rob Americans of their rights, not protect them. And they were correct, for as Alexander Hamilton said: "I affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution but would even be dangerous."

When the framers wrote our Constitution, their strategy for safeguarding liberty against government encroachment was really quite simple - they would list, specify and detail the few and defined rights of the federal government. All the uncountable, innumerable scores of rights and powers not found on this small list were off limits to the federal government and were retained by the people. As every good conservative knows, this list the framers referred to is the "enumeration," and it is contained in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

At this point the framers directed their critics who bemoaned the absence of a bill of rights to the enumeration and noted, quite logically, that since the enumeration contained no provision for the federal government to assail cherished liberties, those rights were already protected. A bill of rights was unnecessary because the rights so loved in our Bill of Rights were already protected, were already completely off limits to federal authority. Nowhere in the enumeration do the people cede to the government the power to regulate the press, thus the federal government has no authority whatsoever to do so, or to suppress free speech, or establish a church, or seize firearms. The logic and simplicity of their reasoning are undeniable.

"In a government consisting of enumerated powers, such as is proposed for the United States, a bill of rights would not only be unnecessary, but, in my humble judgment, highly imprudent. In all societies, there are many powers and rights, which cannot be particularly enumerated. A bill of rights annexed to a constitution, is an enumeration of the powers reserved. If we attempt an enumeration, every thing that is not enumerated, is presumed to be given. The consequence is, that an imperfect enumeration would throw all implied power into the scale of the government; and the rights of the people would be rendered incomplete."

This, of course, is the sad situation in which we now live. A huge majority of Americans and our legislators believe that the federal government may legislate on any topic, at any time, for any reason, period - so long as the legislation does not offend the Bill of Rights. We used to have all the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, plus untold scores of others. Now, as the framers predicted, we have only those rights contained in the Bill of Rights. This is a disaster, not a blessing.

The world the framers gave us (government's powers limited to a small list) is entirely different from the world given by the Bill of Rights (people's powers limited to a small list). These two worlds are mutually exclusive. They represent, with mathematical precision, exact and precise diametric opposites. One is the antithesis of the other. The world the framers gave us is not diminished by the Bill of Rights, it is not marginalized; it is utterly and absolutely destroyed. These two visions simply cannot exist side by side. One must die, and indeed, one did.

Others will blame any of a dozen different reasons for our lost rights, but can it really be a coincidence that the only rights we have left are found in the Bill of Rights? Can it?

... What angers me is that the atheist minority is waging an unholy war against God, against religion, in communities throughout our once fair land.

Indeed, California, the modern day Babylon, is ground zero in the war on religion. In San Diego, for instance, atheists are trying to remove a cross that has stood atop publicly owned Mount Soledad for a half-century, a memorial to those who fought in this nation's service in the two World Wars and the Korean War.

The next thing we know, the ungodly element will demand that crosses and other religious symbols be removed from the graves of the war dead buried at military cemeteries in San Diego administered by the federal government.

Meanwhile, up the road in Los Angeles, the county's Board of Supervisors voted recently to remove a tiny cross from the county seal. The supervisors just didn't think it appropriate for the government to officially endorse religion. Of course, if they follow their all-too-politically-correct thinking to its illogical conclusion, then they need to change the name of the county. For the reference to "Angeles" obviously has religious overtones.

Indeed, once again this year, Time and Newsweek have featured Christmas-themed cover stories (which are always among their best-selling issues).

But the covers are just a facade. Go on the Internet. Download the Newsweek Christmas story (it will appear on MSNBC's Web site). Scroll to the bottom of the article headlined: "Religion: The Birth of Jesus."

That's where you'll see what the editors and writers really think about the Christmas story, about Christianity in general. Page 4: "An Outlandish Message." Page 6: "Dubious on Almost Every Score." Page 7: "A Religion of Perplexing Contradictions."

It's the same thing in Hollywood. The studios no longer make movies like "King of Kings," the "Greatest Story Ever Told" or "Jesus of Nazareth."

Instead, they make films like "Dogma," in which Jesus is sacrilegiously portrayed as some sort of cartoonish figure -- "Buddy Christ" -- winking and giving a Bill Clinton-like thumbs-up.

All I ask is that nonbelievers stop trying to impose their will upon the majority of us who believe, as the Apostle John wrote two millennia ago, that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The world's chief climate scientist on Tuesday disputed the U.S. government contention that cutbacks in carbon dioxide emissions are not yet warranted to check global warming.

Experts readied a report, meanwhile, saying 2004 will be one of the warmest years on record.

"The science says you've got to reduce emissions," Rajendra K. Pachauri told The Associated Press in an interview midway through a two-week international climate conference.

The Kyoto Protocol, the international accord requiring cuts in carbon dioxide, "is driven by the need to reduce emissions, and on that there is no question," said Pachauri, chairman of a U.N.-sponsored network of climatologists.

The 10 warmest years globally, since records were first kept in the 19th century, have all occurred since 1990, the top three since 1998. Specialists here this week will issue a report saying 2004 ranks as the fourth- or fifth-warmest year recorded.

Conference delegates from dozens of nations are fine-tuning the workings of the Kyoto pact, which takes effect Feb. 16. It sets targets for 30 industrial nations -- excluding the nonparticipating United States and Australia -- to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases, most importantly carbon dioxide, a byproduct of coal, oil and gasoline use.

Before leaving for the annual climate-treaty talks, U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told reporters in Washington that the United States -- the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide -- would eventually stop the growth in its emissions "as the science justifies." After arriving here, he said the Kyoto Protocol's approach was "not based on science."

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

[snip]

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) take note: You wouldn't be safe in Costa Rica. A startled taxi driver shot and wounded a jokester wearing a plastic mask of the al-Qaida leader, police said Tuesday.

Leonel Arias, 47, told police he was playing a practical joke by donning the Bin Laden mask, toting his pellet rifle and jumping out to scare drivers on a narrow street in his hometown, Carrizal de Alajuela, about 20 miles north of San Jose.

Arias had startled several drivers that way on Monday afternoon. But when he jumped out in front of taxi driver Juan Pablo Sandoval, the motorist reached for a gun and shot him twice in the stomach. He was hospitalized in stable condition.

"For me and I think for anybody else at a time like that one thinks the worst and so I fired my gun," Sandoval told Channel 7 television.

Police declined to detain Sandoval, saying he had believed he was acting in self-defense.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Sununu of New Hampshire have introduced innovative legislation creating large personal retirement accounts, or PRAs, which provide a reasonable solution to the problem. It will satisfy everyone except those politicians who want to continue pillaging the Social Security trust fund to finance their own projects. Unfortunately,invoke the word “privatization” and citizens are likely to envision catastrophic changes resulting in the loss of their retirement security.

Instead of privatization, Mr. Ward says, we should be viewing changes as modernization. If the bill is enacted, we will be able to place a portion of our payroll taxes into PRAs, which would be invested in the private sector. The important thing to remember is that we are guaranteed to receive at least the amount we would have under the old plan. We also have the opportunity to grow money, depending on the type of investment we choose — that is, highrisk or low-risk investments.

The other important change is that we will own the account and can pass it on to our beneficiaries. That’s something we cannot do now.

It seems to me that all around it’s a win-win situation, and I asked Larry Ward why anyone would object to this necessary reform of this increasingly endangered system. Congress would lose control of the Social Security trust fund, he answered, and that’s why the current administration will have an uphill battle trying to get reform legislation through, unless all Americans get involved. Larry Ward is much better at getting the message out to the public, and I hope the radio and cable networks will discover why Mr. Kemp chose to team up with IPM. Senior citizens are the fastest-growing group of new computer owners and will now have access to information on Social Security reform unfiltered by special political interests.

“People’s lives and security are at stake,” Mr. Kemp said in a press release.“The only way we are going to engage people in the debate is to change the way we communicate the message.”

Failure to communicate is not an option.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 10-year-old girl was placed in handcuffs and taken to a police station because she took a pair of scissors to her elementary school.

School district officials said the fourth-grade student did not threaten anyone with the 8-inch shears, but violated a rule that considers scissors to be potential weapons.

Administrators said they were following state law when they called police Thursday, and police said they were following department rules when they handcuffed Porsche Brown and took her away in a patrol wagon.

"My daughter cried and cried," said her mother, Rose Jackson. "She had no idea what she did was wrong. I think that was way too harsh."

Police officers decided the girl hadn't committed a crime and let her go.

However, school officials suspended her for five days. Administrators will decide at a hearing whether she may return to class, or be expelled to a special disciplinary school.

PARIS -- France's highest administrative body on Monday ordered the TV station of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group off French airwaves within 48 hours for broadcasting hateful content in some shows and posing risks to public order.

The decision came after a Nov. 23 Al-Manar program quoted someone described as an expert on Zionist affairs warning of "Zionist attempts" to transmit dangerous diseases like AIDS to Arab countries. Another program the same day glorified attacks against Israel, the administrative body said.

The Council of State ordered Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat to stop broadcasting Al-Manar within two days or pay a fine of $6,600 a day.

The station broadcast some programs that were "openly contrary" to a French law banning incitement to hate, a situation that poses "risks to maintaining public order," the council said in its 11-page ruling.

However, the council left open the possibility that Al-Manar could keep operating if the company that airs the station, the Lebanese Communication Group, shows itself ready to modify its programs to conform with French law.

The decision risks a tit-for-tat move against France. Last Friday, Lebanese media officials warned that any decision to suspend or cancel Al-Manar could force Lebanese officials to take action against French stations.

Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNSNews.com) - The United Nations climate change conference here is being panned as a "conference about nothing" by a free market advocate.

"The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty about nothing. It's the Seinfeld (TV sitcom) conference," declared Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute. Horner was referring to the former NBC sitcom that billed itself as a show about nothing.

Horner, a skeptic of alarmist global warming claims, is attending the conference along with a delegation of international free market activists who oppose the United Nation's economic and environmental policies.

"This is a conference where on the very first day, the participants agreed that they would not issue an agreement at the end of the conference -- which is the only thing they typically produce [at these conferences] besides lots of C02," Horner told CNSNews.com on Sunday.

Thousands of environmentalists and government leaders are in Buenos Aires for the Conference of Parties or COP-10 meeting that began December 6 and ends December 17.

The conference in Buenos Aires will be the final meeting before the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect in February, following Russia's recent ratification. The treaty, opposed by the United States, is an international agreement that seeks to reduce developed nations' greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

One of the chief aims of the U.N. meeting here is to put pressure on the U.S. to agree to mandatory greenhouse gas emission limits

Four days later, however, the channel broadcast one report claiming that Israel had been spreading the AIDS virus and other diseases throughout the Arab world for year and a second calling for war against Jews and the destruction of Israel.

The broadcasts set off new demands by French officials, members of parliament, academics and commentators to shut down the channel.

"This affects the security of our fragile suburbs, the interest of France, the respect for human rights, even the honour of our country," Ladislas Poniatowski, a senator from Normandy, told a public senate session with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

"We must stop the broadcasts of Al Manar without delay. I'm demanding it."

Poniatowski was loudly applauded. Raffarin agreed, saying: "These programs are incompatible with our values."

The Council of State, France's highest judicial administrative authority, was meeting yesterday to consider how the channel might be legally banned.


But, confesses, Raffarin: "We don't have the judicial means to intervene immediately."

Al Manar estimates that it reaches 10 million viewers in dozens of countries. The channel is transmitted through international satellite providers in a package with other Arabic channels, often free.

It is available in the United States through Intelsat, despite the fact that the State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 1997.

[snip]

On Wednesday, the American Jewish Committee sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow asking that Al Manar be shut down in the United States under existing counterterrorism laws and executive orders.


So far, the Bush administration has not taken a position on whether it can shut down the channel in the United States.

Asked at a briefing in October whether the United States could stop the broadcasts, State Department official Adam Ereli said: "At this point, I'm not in a position to speculate about what steps may or may not be taken."

• What lies behind the terrorists’ attacks on our country?

• How does radical Islam really threaten our survival?

• Why was “regime change” necessary in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what else must we do to stop terrorism once and for all?

• Within the US itself, are we really in the midst of a “Second Civil War” that will decide whether our traditional culture survives?

• Why are the Judeo-Christian concepts of marriage and family under such ferocious attack?

• Is this “Second Civil War” the reason our politics has become so partisan, so divisive, and so vicious?

• What are the economic threats that loom before us?

• How will the demographic crises in Western Europe and Japan hurt us?

• Can our economy survive its own demographic problems?

• Most of all, what must we do to defend civilization itself, and to assure that our children understand what Western Civilization really is and why it’s worth defending?

Meyer sees the first line of defence in preserving the western democratic way of life is to prevent another 9/11 and especially prevent Islamic terrorists from their dreams of getting hold of nuclear weapons.

If they get them, they'll use them, not even worrying if we retaliate likewise.

They'll just be happy to go to Heaven and be with Allah.

But he sees an opening within Islam, too, and it is among the tens of millions of Muslim woman who want to have equal rights with men, and the tens of millions of moderate Muslim men and women who want to live in free societies under the rule of law rather than governed by harsh, unelected spiritual leaders such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Meyer points out in the 15th and 16th centuries, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world.

With that, art, literature and music flourished as never before and scientific and economic advancement took off.

Soon after, it was determined that God's power flowed to the people, not to the kings of the world.

Hence, the rule of law and the freedoms we all enjoy today were put in place.

Sadly, unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam never reconciled itself with the modern world, which is why all Islamic nations are economically backward, there is no flourishing of the arts or sciences, and few people have any rights.

That's the reason, insists Meyer, that Islamic countries are for the most part "basketcases,"

Their leaders see the growing power and affluence of the West.

They know that if they are to preserve their authoritarian power, they themselves can't modernize, so they must destroy our world.

In this, the radical Islamic leaders might want to look at the Soviet Union, in which the hardliners in the Kremlin tried to hide their people from the modern world and preserve their dictatorial power, only to see it fall apart overnight when their peoples would have no more from their godawful regime.

Anyway, Meyer's The Siege of Civilization is a wake-up call for all of us who value the freedoms we have and are determined not to lose them to barbarism.

She isn't exactly going quietly. Until a few days ago, Berry was preparing for a legal fight with the Bush administration over the duration of her term. She insisted that her tenure did not end until Jan. 21 -- though her contract specifically states that her last day was Dec. 5. She now acknowledges that a legal battle over a stint of six weeks might be a little much.

Berry departs with allegations of mismanagement swirling about her head. The commission is small potatoes, Washington-wise, with a budget of only $9 million and a staff of only 70. But no one knows how that money has been spent over the past 12 years, while Berry has presided with an iron hand. Peter Kirsanow, a black conservative member of the commission, writes that the management of the agency is "completely dysfunctional." Record-keeping is said to be "indecipherable," and there hasn't been an independent audit (required by law) for 12 years.

Berry ruled the Civil Rights Commission like a dictator, bullying her allies and undermining her foes through means fair and foul. When President Bush appointed Kirsanow, Berry refused to seat him until a court ordered her to do so. She stood for the principle that no fact should stand in the way of her moral posturing. She got away with it for way too long.

Today's New York Times article was an incomplete and therefore inaccurate representation of the plans of the Human Rights Campaign.

HRC's goals are unchanged and rock solid. There will be no retreat or compromise in the pursuit of full equality for GLBT Americans, including our right to marry, protect our families and be free from discrimination at work.

The letter, titled "Where We Stand," was released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in response to an article in yesterday's New York Times. The article quoted officials from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) as saying that, in light of defeats for gay rights in the Nov. 2 election (including the bans on same-sex marriage passed in 11 states), the organization decided to place less emphasis on same-sex marriage and more on "strengthening personal relationships." One HRC official was paraphrased as saying that the group would consider supporting Bush's efforts to partially privatize Social Security in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the federal retirement program.

The letter, signed by more than 30 gay rights leaders, states: "The New York Times today reported that some in the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community are ready to pull back on our struggle for freedom to make everyone more comfortable politically, or willing to bargain away the rights of others to make a deal for themselves. Specifically, the notion was advanced that we could make gains at the expense of senior citizens by privatizing Social Security. . . .

"We specifically reject any attempts to trade equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, a group that includes many elders, for the rights of senior citizens under Social Security or, for that matter, the rights of any other group of Americans.''

But HRC officials said yesterday that the article was incomplete and, therefore, inaccurate. They denied that the HRC is planning to endorse the partial privatization of Social Security or back away from any of the major issues surrounding gay rights, including marriage rights. "Our tactics are adapting; our goals are not," said Winnie Stachelberg, HRC's political director.

The report on the HRC prompted a torrent of criticism from gay leaders. "That article really represented a sharp change in what has always been a united voice in our community -- that we don't negotiate our rights," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the NGLTF.

Hannity - the second most popular talk show host on the radio behind Rush Limbaugh, according to Talkers magazine - is getting about $25 million over five years, sources said.

Syndicated radio leader ABC inked the Hannity contract several months ago but has kept the deal hush-hush. ABC faces a big threat from Fox News, which is capitalizing on its cable TV dominance to expand on the radio.

Fox News TV program "Hannity & Colmes" is the second-highest rated show on cable news overall. Hannity would have been an obvious target for Fox radio.

"In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive," the message continued. "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."

Pariser urged MoveOn supporters to help support a DNC chair with a bold vision to represent Democrats outside Washington. Democrats will vote at their February meeting in Washington on a successor to McAuliffe.

More good news from Iraq.

December 8, 2004: One of the most powerful peacekeeping tools, aside from keeping the peace, is improving the lives of the people. In Iraq, most of the country is at peace. A few thousand Sunni Arabs continue to terrorize the population, mostly in Sunni Arab areas. As a result, most of the reconstruction has taken place in the Kurdish and Shia Arab regions. In 18 months, nearly 3,000 schools have been rehabilitated or built. Nearly nine million new textbooks were reprinted, or created from scratch (to replace old ones that mentioned Saddam Hussein a lot.) Electrical power production is up 20 percent, and the transmission system has been rebuilt. This has made it possible to distribute electricity equally over the entire country. Under Saddam Hussein, Baghdad and other Sunni Arab areas in central Iraq had priority on electricity, while the rest of the country often got only a few hours a day. Now everyone gets over 12 hours a day. This pleases the majority of Iraqis, but not the Sunni Arabs, and especially not those living in Baghdad.

Iraq used to be one of the few Arab countries that could grow enough to feed itself. But decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein ruined the farming sector. Actually, Saddam stopped investing in infrastructure and the economy over two decades ago, when he invaded Iran. That ruinous war plunged Iraq into debt. His subsequent invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was an attempt to eliminate over $10 billion in debt by conquering the country that lent him the money. Even though the UN set up the oil-for-food program in the 1990s to provide money for reconstruction, most of it was used for other purposes. The reconstruction going on now is the first most Iraqis have seen since 1980. Only the Sunni Arab areas had money spent on them in the last twenty years.

In addition to repairing the irrigation system, new industries have been created, like fish farming. New, more productive types of seeds have been brought in. Saddam would not provide money for improved seed varieties, so Iraqi agriculture fell behind the rest of the world. New crops have been introduced, like alfalfa, which, when fed to cows, increase milk production by about 50 percent.

Most of the people running the reconstruction projects are Iraqis, and most of the foreigners are non-American. The only danger is in some Sunni Arab areas. Many Sunni Arabs support the Sunni Arab terrorists, but they are having second thoughts as they see the reconstruction progress in other parts of the country. As the Sunni Arabs fall farther behind in economic terms, their willingness to support the terrorism falters. The terrorists want to restore Sunni Arab rule to the country. But as time goes on, that appears less likely, even to hard core supports of the violence. Over a thousand reconstruction projects are currently underway in the 80 percent of the country that is Kurdish or Shia Arab.

The federal government will gain control through airport checkpoints and other places where federal agencies demand identification. After a phase-in period, the government will refuse to accept licenses that do not comply with the standard. The same rules will apply to photo identification issued by states to nondrivers.

"We're really looking at a national ID system," said James C. Plummer Jr., a policy analyst at Consumer Alert. "Basically, each state might have the name of the state written in a different font on the front, but there will be a magnetic stripe on the back containing virtually identical information."

The new law requires digital photographs, meaning that the photos will be easily maintained in linked databases, he added.

At the American Civil Liberties Union, Greg Nojeim, associate director of the Washington legislative office, said, "Licenses that purport to meet the federal standard will become the gold standard."

But Mr. Nojeim and others say they may not be nearly as secure as some people assume, because the "source documents," including birth certificates and Social Security numbers, are so easily faked.

"It's a garbage-in, garbage-out situation," he said.

"The same people who manufacture fake driver's licenses today will be manufacturing fake national driver's licenses tomorrow," Mr. Nojeim said, although the price will increase, he predicted.

Some security advocates also complained that the requirements on source documents were not strong enough. Representative Candice S. Miller, a Republican who is a former secretary of state of Michigan, where she oversaw driver's licenses, was the author of the House language.

In the past week alone, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian advocacy group, has accepted the resignation of its executive director, appointed its first non-gay board co-chairman and adopted a new, more moderate strategy, with less emphasis on legalizing same-sex marriages and more on strengthening personal relationships.

The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, at a meeting last weekend in Las Vegas, concluded that the group must bow to political reality and moderate its message and its goals. One official said the group would consider supporting President Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security partly in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the program.

But others involved in the drive for gay and lesbian equality say the Human Rights Campaign's approach smacks of pre-emptive surrender and wrong-headed political calculation.

"For a certain segment of the movement, for which I would certainly elect the H.R.C. as poster child, it means that the error was that we were wanting too much too fast," said Jonathan D. Katz, executive coordinator of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale. "It is entirely characteristic for them to believe that what is required is a sort of retrenchment and a return to a more moderate message. They are, of course, completely wrong."

Downing Street last night confirmed that the Prime Minister had held “lengthy discussions” with Mr Bush about a fresh initiative that would bypass Washington’s steadfast opposition to the Kyoto Protocol.

The deal, described by one source as “Kyoto-lite”, would involve scientific agreement on the scale and nature of the threat, as well as an international programme to develop the technology needed for renewable energy and the reduction of carbon emissions.

Aides acknowledge that a breakthrough on climate change would bolster the Government’s green credentials before the next election, as well as provide Mr Blair with tangible proof that his alliance with Mr Bush on Iraq “has not been a one-way relationship”.

The issue focuses on a paper by them that supports the widely held view that the climate of the last millennium has been quite variable and includes a Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age. This is only controversial because it, and the wider body of scientific literature that exists, directly contradicts recent research by Michael Mann, a leading global warming proponent. Mr. Mann argues global air temperatures have been stable over the last 1,000 years, with the exception of the last 100. It is the "Mann-made" warming to which Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas have objected.

Mr. Mann testified before the Senate committee that his research is the "mainstream view" because it is featured in a chapter of the U.N. Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, of which Mr. Mann was a lead author. Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas challenged Mr. Mann's claim by reviewing the large body of literature that shows his claims to be unsubstantiated and his research to be fatally flawed. In truth, Mr. Mann's work is the scientific outlier — the one study that does not fit with the wealth of scientific evidence.

Mr. Soon and Mr. Baliunas argue that Mr. Mann's conclusions rest on a dubious manipulation of data. While many of the problems in Mr. Mann's work require scientific expertise to understand, one flaw is so basic that everyone can understand it. Mr. Mann and his colleagues compiled a historical climate reconstruction — called the "hockey stick" because of its shape — primarily using tree ring records to infer air temperature trends. Their use of proxy data is not novel, but the methods they used and thus the results, certainly are. For example, Mr. Mann and his colleagues simply attached the surface temperature record of the 20th century to the end of the proxy record. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison as air temperature readings are not directly comparable to proxy records. However, putting the two different sets of data together in this way makes a stunning visual display for the average reader.


Also, in his analysis for the Northern Hemisphere prior to 1400, Mr. Mann uses data from nine locations in addition to statistical summaries derived from data for the Western United States only. Four of these additional locations are in the Southern Hemisphere, including Tasmania and Patagonia.

The widespread acceptance of this revisionist history was possible because the global-warming community was eager to accept the "hockey stick" as proof of human-caused climate change.

Steven W. Coleman, 37, allegedly threw two Molotov cocktails made from Budweiser beer bottles, gasoline and rags at his ex-girlfriend's house Saturday night, according to Foster's Daily Democrat newspaper of Dover, N.H.

Neither bomb exploded — the rags never caught fire, a crucial part of making a Molotov cocktail work — but the gas fumes stank up the street so badly that two neighbors had to go the hospital.

A police cruiser flipped on its lights — and Coleman gunned the engine of his riding lawn mower.

The leisurely chase wound over several streets of the New Hampshire town, until a second cruiser blocked off the lawn mower's escape.

It could be on an internal flight in France, or be travelling as far away as the US, Japan and Brazil.

Police insist the package of explosives is no more harmful than a chocolate bar - it has no detonator and does not react to movement, shock or even fire.

But they do concede that somewhere in the world, one of the thousands of passengers who passed through the airport will get a nasty surprise when they open their luggage.

Observe: In July 2004, Ken Livingstone, mayor of London and a Labor Party member, hosted Imam Yusuf Qaradawi on a visit to the city. Qaradawi, an Egyptian with a Muslim Brotherhood background, is a resident of Qatar and a founder member of the Al-Jazeera TV channel. He is also the director of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, based in Dublin. Qaradawi is a keen supporter of suicide bombings in Israel, which he describes as "martyrdom operations." He has spoken of the inherent "iniquity of the Jews as a community." These views (in addition to suspected terrorist connections and his support, variously, for the execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterous women) led to Qaradawi's being banned from entering the United States.

The public action of Mayor Livingstone, is, according to Jewish community activists in the UK, only the tip of the iceberg. They point to the presence of Muslim Brotherhood extremists such as Azzam Tamimi among the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition, which was raised to protest the war in Iraq (and organized a demonstration of over a million people in central London in April 2003).

In the very different context of France, as official recognition of communal differences increases, once again the representation of Muslim communities is falling into the hands of the extremists. Thus, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, created in December 2002 as a representative body of the Muslim community in France, is headed by a moderate, Dalil Boubakeur. The real power in the organization, however, is the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), a Muslim Brotherhood-associated group.

Why does any of this matter? The shared goal of Qaradawi, Tamimi, Ramadan, the UOIF and other Islamist organizations in Europe is to effect a shift in the terms of the European debate. They seek to establish a foothold in the mainstream political discussion in Europe for elements of militant Islamist ideology. These elements include the delegitimization of Jewish communal activity, the normalizing of support for violence against Israelis and Jews, and of calls for the destruction of Israel. This is a long-term project, which through the slow build-up and nurturing of political power and influence is intended to eventually bring forth the fruit of profound shifts in policy.

The Islamists described here will not be co-opted. Neither will they become contented citizens of secular Europe in return for shifts in policy toward Israel. Theirs is a revolutionary project, concerned with the transformation of societies. They see, however, the shifting of the European view toward greater hostility to Israel as an important interim goal. Israel's legitimacy, they hope, will be tossed to them as a morsel in return for political and social peace.

A crucial task for Israel in Europe must be to lay bare the real nature of these individuals and organizations, and to remind those who would treat with them of Winston Churchill's classic definition of an appeaser: namely, one who feeds a crocodile in the hope that it will eat him last.

Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.

For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away. The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals instead.


Photo: Courtesy of Foster-Miller

"We were ready to send it a month ago," Tordillos said. Navigating the Pentagon bureaucracy and putting together the proper training manuals are what's keeping the Talon stateside, for now.

Back in December 2003, the Army's 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division tested an armed Talon in Kuwait. Now, the brigade wants 18 of the UGVs to watch the backs of its Stryker armored vehicles.

Four cameras and a pair of night-vision binoculars allow the robot to operate at all times of the day. It has a range of about a half-mile in urban areas, more in the open desert. And with the ability to carry four 66-mm rockets or six 40-mm grenades, as well as an M240 or M249 machine gun, the robots can take on additional duties fast, said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.


Photo: Carl P. Evans III

"It's a premonition of things to come," Pike said. "It makes sense. These things have no family to write home to. They're fearless. You can put them places you'd have a hard time putting a soldier in."

It's the same goal Army-funded researchers are keeping in mind as they develop an unmanned ambulance. The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin. The idea is for battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back to a field hospital in the REV. But the REV also carries an electrically powered, 600-pound, six-wheeled robot with a mechanical arm that can drag a wounded fighter to safety if there isn't a flesh-and-blood soldier around.


REV and smaller robot. Photo: Carl P. Evans III

Ordinarily, it takes two to four men to get the wounded out of harm's way. Patrick Rowe, with Applied Perception of Pittsburgh, said he hopes the REV will cut that number, maybe by half. The firm is scheduled to show off prototypes of the robots to the Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center in March.

The ruling, made after five days of hearings by the court's 21 justices, was a major victory for opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who had rejected the government's demands that an entirely new election be held.

And it was a stinging blow to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his powerful ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to preserve Moscow's centuries-old influence in Ukraine in the face of Yushchenko's followers' desire to move closer to the West. Only a day earlier, Putin had sharply derided the idea of holding a new run-off.

The opposition had pinned its hopes on the court's ruling in its bid to overturn the results of the Nov. 21 run-off vote, in which Kuchma ally Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner. The opposition said the vote was rigged to cheat Yushchenko of victory.

"Today Ukraine has turned to justice, democracy and freedom," Yushchenko told the throng of supporters who have packed the capital's Independence Square for 12 days. "It happened thanks to you."

"The Supreme Court has put a big final stop to the new election that Kuchma wanted," said Yushchenko, wearing an orange scarf, his campaign color. He urged Kuchma to fire Yanukovych and his Cabinet and demanded a reshuffle of the Central Election Commission, which he said "betrayed" the nation by endorsing the fraudulent vote.

Yushchenko waved his clasped hands over his head like a victorious prizefighter, and the crowd, fluttering orange banners and blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags, burst out with the national anthem, with Yushchenko joining in putting his hand over his heart as he sang along.

Kuchma had been pressing for an entirely new election instead of a new run-off, apparently in hopes of replacing Yanukovych with a stronger candidate to run against the opposition leader.

YOU won't believe this. I don't believe this. None of God's chillun will be lieve this. Hard to believe this. But, believe this.
Barbra Streisand is contemplating another tour. Another comeback tour. Another final this-is-for-sure-the-last-shot-and-after-this-you-won't-have-Yentl-to-kick-around-again-I'm-off-into-the-sunset farewell tour.

Go back a few years. Remember her heralded farewell schlep around the country where in New York she worked the Garden and pocketed millions and guaranteed mankind this was It and she was finished . . . over . . . done . . . history? Then remember a few minutes later, yet another positively, absolutely, definitely her final-and-forever-and-ever-and-ever-bye bye-ta ta-so long-adieu-auf weidersehn swan song?

Well, she's itching and twitching again. The woman's been resurrected more often than the man from Galilee.

Who makes whiskey? A laconic Scot tending a still in the Highlands? A good old boy nursing his sour mash in Kentucky? A moonshiner brewing sneaky Pete up yonder in the holler?

They're not the only kinds of whiskey makers anymore. Lately there's been an explosion of handmade whiskey here on the West Coast. Forget Scotland and Kentucky — we have a crop of eager Western dudes who want to create a distinct Western style of whiskey.

They're taking this nouvelle whiskey idea in wildly differing directions — rough and powerful, sweet and fruity, gnarled and smoky, mellow and harmonious. The result is whiskeys with very distinct personalities, whiskeys you don't find anywhere else.

In the last few years six distilleries have started making and selling whiskey in California and Oregon, and two more will join them in the next year or so. An equal number of outfits up and down the coast are eyeing the idea. Already we have three times as many (legal) pot-still distilleries as the rest of the country combined.

Bangkok - A Cathay Pacific Airways jet carrying 362 passengers and crew was forced to turn back to Bangkok after part of an engine unit broke free and crashed onto the car of an astonished motorist below, officials and witnesses said on Thursday.

The Boeing 777-300 had just taken off from Bangkok airport at about 18:00 on Wednesday when a 2m protective layer around one of its two engines sheared off and landed on the roof of Mongkol Uotoksiri's car.

Newspaper pictures showed the piece of damaged aircraft on the ground next to his damaged car. "I'm consulting my lawyer," he said

The aircraft, flight CX751 from Bangkok to Mumbai, turned back to the airport under the power of both engines, according to the airline.

The airline said there had been no fire and people on the ground may have seen sparks when the metal and fibreglass cover broke free.

"The pilot reduced the number one engine thrust and returned to Bangkok as a standard precautionary procedure. The safety of the 345 passengers and 17 crew members on board was not in question," Cathay said.

Cotecna provided services to the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program which is under investigation for an embezzlement that could run as high as $23 billion, according to U.S. congressional investigators.

Cotecna, it is alleged, certified the purchase of substandard medicines and foodstuffs at full market value. The difference between what the U.N. was charged and what the inferior merchandise was actually worth was believed to be pocketed by various Iraqi and U.N. officials.

Annan the father insists he had nothing to do with Cotecna's U.N. contract.

Kojo also claimed he severed ties with Cotecna in 1999, shortly after the U.N. contract was awarded.

Last Thursday, The Sun revealed that Kojo remained on Cotecna's payroll as late as February 2004, receiving money paid out under a non-competition agreement.

Calls for Annan to step down as U.N. chief are also gaining momentum on Captiol Hill.

Though Annan himself has not been implicated in the investigations, the long-term fallout is of increasing concern.

Leaders of a group representing more than 300 family members of 9/11 victims urged Congress on Tuesday to scrap the intelligence reform bill because it doesn't include key provisions to secure the nation's borders against terrorist infiltration - the same objection raised by one of the bill's leading opponents, Wisconsin Sen. James Sensenbrenner.

[...]

"The agricultural and construction businesses who employ [illegal aliens] have big lobbies in Washington," Burlingame said. "You have the banks, who get billions of dollars from illegal aliens because they use banks to wire money back home."

"The biggest contributor of all are the immigration lawyers, whose entire income stream is derived from getting illegal aliens here and keeping them here," she said.

Molinaro, Burlingame and other 9/11 familles who back Sensenbrenner's efforts have been largely ignored by the media, which has focused instead on other victim families aligned with 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, who strongly backs the bill.

But Burlingame blasted Chairman Kean on Tuesday, saying he was wrong when he insisted that tighter border controls wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 hijackers. "He should read his own report," she said.

9/11 Families for a Secure America plans to launch a radio ad campaign praising key congressional Republicans for opposing the flawed intelligence bill.

CLEVELAND -- The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Christian Grantham also has a post on this story.

Update: The Queen is spot on at Queen Of All Evil.

Update II: Talking Points Memo writer Josh Marshall spoke to a CBS a spokesman and got their explaination. You decide if it is lame.

Misbegotten intelligence reform

For the next four years you can take it as an immutable Washington truth that when President Bush is allied with the Senate and most of the mainstream media against the conservative Republican base in the House of Representatives, he is on a quick path to a big mistake.

And so he finds himself this week on the intelligence "reform" bill. In fact, he is not only down the path, he is almost to the finish line. The current conference report will pass imminently. Its stalwart opponents in the House, Chairmen Duncan Hunter and and Jim Sensenbrenner are going to be outflanked and defeated. So it is not too soon to perform an autopsy on the death of common sense intelligence reform.

President Bush had appeared to be conspicuously unenthusiastic about the bill as supported by the Senate. The Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed it. Conservatives concerned about effective war fighting and controlling our borders were strongly against it -- and for good reason.

As House Armed Services Committee Chairman Hunter has powerfully pointed out, the bill would take operational control of needed battlefield intelligence away from the Pentagon and give it to the new intelligence czar. It seems surpassingly odd that we would take control away from the Pentagon, which has been performing superbly for years and give it to the Intelligence agency that has been failing catastrophically for decades.

Likewise, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner is being nastily opposed for calling for tougher driver's license and political asylum standards to make it harder on possible terrorists. Ironically, the driver's license provision was in the 9/11 commission's final report (page 390), but was deemed too controversial for open border-favoring politicians of both parties.

The president, having weakly endorsed the bill, is now being successfully pressured to overwhelm Chairmen Hunter and Sensenbrenner by his personal intervention. It appears he will do just that.

What part of 'enforcement' don't they understand?

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism. By smearing the overwhelming majority of Americans who support real borders as racists and xenophobes, the OBL obscures its deadly agenda: sabotaging our existing immigration laws and blocking any new efforts to punish those who abuse the system.

Flavia Jimenez of the National Council of La Raza illustrates perfectly this blustering open-borders tactic in a hysterical "action alert" this week titled: "STOP ANTI IMMIGRANT PROVISIONS FROM BECOMING PART OF THE INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL." La Raza and their fellow travelers argue that tough enforcement measures "needlessly scapegoat all immigrants," are "extraneous" and "harsh," "would not have prevented the terrorist attacks and will not make us safer," and are "non-solutions that will only drive people further underground and cause panic among immigrant communities."

Open-border activists not only oppose the most-publicized provision that would deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens, they also oppose provisions:

-- Adding at least 2,000 new border patrol agents, 800 new interior enforcement investigators, and 150 additional consular officials overseas.

-- Increasing illegal alien detention facility space by 2,500 beds.

-- Expanding the number of foreign airports with counterterrorist passenger prescreening programs.

-- Creating a uniform identity document rule for all aliens present in the United States

-- Toughening criminal penalties for using or trading false identification documents.

-- Reducing bureaucratic delays that allow illegal aliens who obtained fraudulent visas to re-enter or remain in the country even after their visas have been revoked.

-- Creating an information- and intelligence-sharing system at the Department of Homeland Security to track terrorist travel tactics, patterns, trends and practices and disseminate the data to front-line personnel at ports of entry and immigration benefits offices.

-- Making it easier to deport terrorists and alien supporters of terrorism by curbing their avenues for appeal and delay.

-- Speeding up the development of a long-delayed entry-exit system to guard against terrorists slipping through the cracks.

-- Requiring asylum-seekers tied to guerrilla, militant or terrorist organizations, and who claim asylum without submitting corroborating evidence, to provide credible proof of their "persecution."

More good news from Iraq.

They include Zainab Ahmed, an Iraqi who lived in Iran for the past 18 years.

"This is my homeland, all of my relatives are here," Mrs. Ahmed, 65, said, when asked why she returned.

Like thousands of other Iraqis, she and her family of seven were kicked out of Iraq by Saddam, who took over her house and gave it to another family.

"I have no house, no furniture, nothing but some blankets to sleep in," said Mrs. Ahmed, who now lives with her son-in-law in Baghdad.

When they saw the images on television of U.S. troops entering Iraq, families wanted to return home immediately, Mrs. Ahmed said. "It seemed like there was a new life in Iraq. In Iran, I have no nationality, so I have no rights."

The Iranian government also has been pushing Iraqi exiles to return home, said Fatma Latif, 49, one of Mrs. Ahmed's daughters.

"The word continues to spread in Iran that we can get our old documents back here," Mrs. Latif said. "Thousands of people have gone to the ministry here to see what they can do for us. Now, maybe we can get something."blockquote>

"We are exploring every possibility right now," Moonves said. "After the first of the year, we are going to come to a decision and, by the way, it could be more than one person."

The possibility of a second or even a third chair on the "CBS Evening News" set throws a new angle into the anchor-heir handicapping, but it also brings back some sour memories at CBS of the failed partnering of Rather and Connie Chung in 1994, a year before Moonves joined the network.

Anchor duos have produced some of TV journalism's finest moments, such as NBC's Chet Huntley-David Brinkley partnership, which lasted more than a decade, and some of its biggest flops, including Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd in the early '80s and the Barbara Walters-Harry Reasoner debacle in 1976.

[snip]

CBS News is awaiting a final report from an independent committee investigating a story on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard that was sourced, in part, with documents that were found to have been forged.

Moonves said he's confident that any level of negligence found in the decision to air the documents would not prevent Rather from continuing as an investigative reporter for "60 Minutes."

One partridge, seven swans and eight maids may be a bargain this year, but the prices of three French hens and six geese-a-laying have soared, according to an annual estimated cost of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song shopping list released Monday.

The three French hen posted the biggest percentage increase -- up 200 percent to $45, while the price of the six geese rose 40 percent to $210. The price of two turtle doves actually fell 31 percent to $40, while the cost of a partridge remained unchanged from last year at $15.

According to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, the escalating price for French hens and geese may be due to fewer hatchlings during this breeding cycle creating an imbalance in the supply-demand chain.

Turtledoves, on the other hand, may have had a more fruitful breeding cycle creating an oversupply of birds and falling prices.

Additionally, hiring the nine dancing ladies this year will pinch the wallet a little more than last year. The total cost for the dancing ladies rose 4 percent to $4,400 this year, up from $4,230.89 in 2003.

"The abundance of cheaper labor in countries such as India and China has resulted in pressure on U.S. manufacturers to outsource unskilled labor," Kleintop said. "As a result, the cost of skilled dancers has steadily increased while the unskilled milk maids haven't managed an increase in pay for their services in many years."

Other labor-intensive gifts saw increases as well. The cost of 11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming both rose 3.6 percent; the price of 10 lords-a-leaping rose 3 percent.

And don't think you'll save more by shopping for the same goods on the Internet. The report warns that most items are more expensive to buy online primarily due to the cost of shipping, which continues to go up because of rising fuel costs.