ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Nobody mentioned in the mid-70s that "having it all" would not include marriage and children. Many young women, now that it is too late, are lamenting the cost of careerism and promiscuity as they discover that marriage and children are not likely in their future. So-called sexual freedom, loudly touted by libertines and radical feminists, has brought soaring rates of sexually transmitted diseases and plummeting rates of marriage. Abortion has eliminated 45 million pregnancies and left behind a host of problems: heartbreak, as well as physical and emotional distress.

Millions of women are finding, through bitter experience, that while the wonders of modern communication technology can distract much of the time, at the end of the day –– when the iPod and cellphone sit in their chargers, when the television's relentless barrage is finally silent –– there is no hand to hold and no baby to cuddle.

Today in America, we are beginning to reckon with the bitter harvest from the scourge of self-centered "me-ism." The moral relativism of post-modernism has resulted in a culture that scorns marriage, casually embraces cohabitation, and dismisses divorce; such values have decimated the family for the last 50 years.

Drinking from the springs of a false ideology can steal priceless, irreplaceable elements of life for years before its tragic consequences are evident and its true nature revealed for all to see. For instance, the millions of deaths from Hitler's Nazi horror or in Stalin's Gulags, or the bloody massacres of today's suicidal terrorists, reveal all too clearly the true character and the threat of counterfeit creeds. But for the victims, the exposé comes too late.

Meanwhile, as today's women remake the shape of this next century, crafting out their own life-course and blazing new trails, in the finest tradition of American exploration and creativity, today's feminist groups remain mired in the last century, spinning their wheels over old ground. The feminist's celebration of Equal Pay Day last week is a perfect example. Senator Hillary Clinton strode to the microphones to decry discrimination against women. And the National Organization of (Some) Women issued their same-old tired press release. "Eradicating the current wage gap," it read, "that exists between the sexes is part of NOW's longstanding commitment to women's equality."

The statistical mantra that the feminist groups cite – that women make 76 cents for every male dollar – compares the average full-time working male to the average full-time working woman. Ironically, the NOW materials refuse to recognize the validity of the career choices women make to spend more time with their young children, which differs from most men's choices.

Imagine two rape victims taken to the same hospital emergency room. Imagine them put in adjoining examination rooms.

Let's say they have identical injuries.

Presume everything about them is the same except for where they are in their menstrual cycles.

Do they deserve access to the same medical treatment?

At most Catholic hospitals in Colorado, they can't get it.

The protocol of six Catholic hospitals run by Centura calls for rape victims to undergo an ovulation test.

If they have not ovulated, said Centura corporate spokeswoman Dana Berry, doctors tell the victims about emergency contraception and write prescriptions for it if the patient asks.

If, however, the urine test suggests that a rape victim has ovulated, Berry continued, doctors at Centura's Catholic hospitals are not to mention emergency contraception. That means the victim can end up pregnant by her rapist.

Bush said a system in which benefits for low-income workers "grow faster than for people who are better off would solve much of the solvency problem" facing the government retirement program.

"I propose that future generations receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get," he said. But a White House fact sheet suggested changes that include lower benefits than currently planned for all but lower-income future retirees.

And to compound the problem, there are fewer people paying into the system. In 1950, there were 16 workers for every beneficiary; today there are 3.3 workers for every beneficiary. Soon there will be two workers for every beneficiary.

In a reformed Social System, voluntary personal retirement accounts would offer workers a number of investment options that are simple and easy to understand. I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Bush disagreed with the contention of the conservative Family Research Council that his judicial appointments were being held up in the Senate because of their religious faith. "I think people are opposing my nominees because they don't like the judicial philosophy of the people I've nominated," he said.

Boy Scouts of America's National Director of Programs Douglas B. Smith will appear in a Dallas courtroom tomorrow to face charges of distributing child pornography, according to reports by NBC News.

An Allen Superior Court judge denied a sentence reduction request by a 34-year-old man convicted of having sex with a teenager whom he mentored through church and who had baby-sit his children.
...
A jury convicted him last year of having sex with a 14-year-old girl between June and August 2000 while he was a volunteer minister at a Fort Wayne church. He knew the girl's family and mentored her in church activities.

A former East Texas principal was convicted of sexually assaulting seven girls and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

A jury on Thursday sentenced Russell Thomas Hirner, 43, after deliberating for about four hours. He was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child earlier in the day.

"I accept responsibility," Hirner, the former principal of the Longview Baptist Christian Academy, testified. "I couldn't bring myself to tell and I vowed to God that after it came out I'd make a disclosure."

A self-described Internet evangelist who has preached about everything from morality to spirituality on his family's Web site was arrested Wednesday and charged with raping a child younger than 12.

Charles Michael Balfe, 60, was picked up at his job site at 84 Lumber in DeLand, DeLand Police Cmdr. Randel Henderson said. He is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail without bail.

Balfe, married and the father of three, is accused in three warrants of raping a child younger than 12, Henderson said. The remaining counts accuse him of sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation and domestic violence.

Gates and other leading technology executives have pressed Congress aggressively to let them hire more foreign employees by raising visa limits, but Gates hasn't previously campaigned to abolish the immigration law entirely. Technology executives have argued they are unable to find qualified American workers, a contention disputed by U.S. labor groups and unemployed computer engineers.

"Anybody who's got good computer science training, they are not out there unemployed," Gates said. "We're just not seeing an available labor pool."

Government figures showed 5.7 percent of information technology employees were out of work last year versus 5.5 percent of all workers.

ony Blair was told by the government's most senior law officer in a confidential minute less than two weeks before the war that British participation in the American-led invasion of Iraq could be declared illegal.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, spelt out to Mr Blair the dangers of Britain going to war without a second resolution. It is understood that he then went on to warn that British soldiers could be hauled before the International Criminal Court.

He warned that while he could be able to argue a "reasonable case" in favour of military action, he was far from confident a court would agree. Indeed, he added, a court "might well conclude" that war would be found unlawful without a further UN resolution.

In a legal opinion which Mr Blair has repeatedly sought to conceal, the attorney warned the prime minister that Britain might be able argue it could go to war on the basis of past UN resolutions, but only if there were "strong factual grounds" that Iraq was still in breach of its disarmament obligations.

"People who compare the two are not very smart and if you don't understand the difference, Ms. Gormley, between trying to ban the savage practice of watching chickens trying to kill each other and protecting people rights in CDV statutes, I'll never be able to explain it to you in a 100 years ma'am."

Rep. Altman spoke about domestic violence, "There ought not to be a second offense. The woman ought to not be around the man. I mean you women want it one way and not another. Women want to punish the men, and I do not understand why women continue to go back around men who abuse them. And I've asked women that and they all tell me the same answer, John Graham you don't understand. And I say you're right, I don't understand".

During the same interview, he responded to the reporter's question, "You seem to be drawn to this fixation that women have to go back. I don't think that speaks highly of women. I think women can think and be responsible for their own actions. Woman are not some toys out there, drawn back to the magnet of the man a lot of these men are bums and cretins and they have to be punished but I think women are independent enough to not go back to the men who beat them. And we have a lot of men who are abused by women, but they are too ashamed to admit it.

The world and humanistically-trained minds are repelled in horror at the thought of a God who would deliberately order painful correction of a child and use words as strong as "beat" in ordering parents to carry out that correction. The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that such painful correction is the most loving, wise, and responsible procedure that a Godly parent can follow in developing obedience and character in his child. Therefore, when you hear someone object, "But that will hurt my child," you can answer, "Precisely, that is God's goal, that the child be hurt with the pain of the spanking during a session of correction."
...
Both my wife and I have often remarked that it is good that one of our children was not our firstborn. This particular child who came along later in our family was extremely willful and rebellious toward our authority and would often require sessions of correction lasting from one to two hours in length before the will would finally be broken! Had this child been our first, we may well have been tempted to despair of the grace of God.

Do not be discouraged, dear parent, when it appears that your Godly efforts to chastise your child with the rod of correction meet with total resistance towards your authority. This simply means that you have started on the right course and you must now pursue your objective of a broken will with great vigor until your mission is finally accomplished. This may require a great deal of self-discipline on your part but you can do it, since God requires you to do so.
...

My wife and I have a general goal of making sure that each of our children has his will broken by the time he reaches the age of one year. To do this, a child must receive correction when he is a small infant. Every parent recognizes that this self-will begins early as he has witnessed his child stiffen his back and boldly demonstrate his rebellion and self-will even though he has been fed, diapered, and cared for in every other physical way.

On what occasions should a child be corrected? Whenever a child directly disobeys authority or shows disrespect and rebellion toward authority, that child should receive correction. Lesser infractions of course would receive lesser forms of correction with the rod being reserved for the more serious infractions.

In my position as the director of a rehabilitation ministry for troubled teenage girls, I receive phone calls daily from desperate parents all across the United States. They have children for whom all hope seems to be gone because they did not start the use of the rod of correction while there was hope as the Scriptures mandated. I do not mean to discourage parents with older teenagers, who have suddenly been exposed to God's inspired instructions in this matter. As long as you have a child under your authority and your home where you can directly supervise and correct him, there still is hope that you may turn that child from his wicked ways and break his will. You may still teach him to submit to authority in his life.

A good illustration of this hope is found in the case of a mother who called me from a distant state about her troubled teenage daughter. This teenager had gotten into such continual mischief and wickedness that the desperate mother went to the local hardware store and purchased a lock and chain with which to lock the girl to her body. This unorthodox measure kept the girl in her home at night but fell far short of Scriptural methodology in changing the heart! I explained to the mother that we did not have room to receive the girl at the time because our beds were filled. However, I mentioned that I could give her a possible answer for her predicament. I also said, "But I doubt that you will follow through." The mother, hearing that there might be a solution to her crisis, desperately implored, "Yes, I will take your counsel. What is your solution?" I then proceeded to explain that the mother should get a stick that would not break and get after that daughter until the daughter asked for peace in their relationship. The mother hesitated in silence for a time on that long distance telephone call, and then seemingly made a firm commitment before me and the Lord that she would do so. She answered, "Alright, I will!" I then forgot about the mother and her call inasmuch as we receive several calls like this daily.

Three weeks later, I received a phone call from this same mother. I had forgotten who she was and was reminded of her identity only when she reminded me of the lock and chain she had purchased to secure her daughter. I remembered who she was at that point since that was a unique method of restraining the girl. I asked, "Well, what has happened since our last conversation?" The mother replied that she had taken my advice to secure a large stick that would not break, and to quote the mother, "I wore off her behind!" I chuckled at the mother's response and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the story.

Putting your baby in daycare in its first year could mean it is less likely to develop childhood leukaemia, researchers said yesterday.

Exposure to other childhood infections among other infants might prime the immune system and sometimes prevent the second half of the "double whammy" that scientists believe is needed for the cancer to develop.

A 15-year study of childhood cancers in Britain, said to be the biggest in the world, suggests that infants who have been to formal daycare in their first 12 months are half as likely as those with no socialising to succumb to acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, the most common form of leukaemia in the young.

The former East Germany, where infants went into childcare at three months, had a leukaemia incidence a third lower than that in the former West Germany. But since reunification and the end of such universal care, the level had become the same across the whole country.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who said that putting more evangelicals on the court will mean rulings more in tune with the religious convictions of churchgoers.

"We are not asking for persons merely to be moral," Mohler said. "We want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ."

"Just because we believe the in the Bible as a guidepost for life does not disqualify us from participating in our government," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "As American citizens, we should not have to choose between believing what is in this book and serving the public."

"If Christians don't stand up and don't participate, I cringe about the future."

"Republicans are really good at trembling," Dobson told members of the audience. "Get a hold of them and tell them that you care and you will remember how you vote."

These days, feminism is all sexy uplift, a cross between a workout and a makeover. Go for it, girls--breast implants, botox, face-lifts, corsets, knitting, boxing, prostitution. Whatever floats your self-esteem! Meanwhile, the public face of organizational feminism is perched atop a power suit and frozen in a deferential smile. Perhaps some childcare? Insurance coverage for contraception? Legal abortion, tragic though it surely is? Or maybe not so much legal abortion--when I ran into Naomi Wolf the other day, she had just finished an article calling for the banning of abortion after the first trimester. Cream and sugar with that abortion ban, sir?

Deuteronomy 22:11: Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together.

Six wild horses rounded up on federal land in the West and sold to a private owner have been slaughtered - four months after Congress did away with protection for wild mustangs, a government official said Thursday.

``This is something we regret and are very disappointed'' about, said Celia Boddington, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Washington, D.C. ``We make every possible effort when the horses are sold to make sure the animals are placed in good homes for long-term care.''

In December, Congress replaced a 34-year-old ban on slaughtering any mustang with a law that allows the sale of older and unwanted horses. But the Bureau of Land Management says it is trying to prevent sales of horses for their meat.

The animals up for sale are captured during periodic government roundups aimed at reducing the wild population. About 37,000 wild horses and burros roam the Western range, about 9,000 more than the BLM has said the natural forage can sustain.

BLM has sold and delivered nearly 1,000 horses since the new law passed. Some 950 more have been sold and are awaiting delivery.

President Bush canceled an Earth Day visit to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Friday because of bad weather.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the threat of hail and thunder storms was keeping the president from visiting the park, but Air Force One still was making a brief stop at an airport outside Knoxville, Tenn., so Bush could make remarks near the park on Earth Day.

Bush then planned to fly on to Texas, where he was spending the weekend at his ranch and then hosting Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Monday.

The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.

The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.

Last month, an expert committee met to consider a number of new drugs for inclusion on the list. They approved for the first time two pills, to be used in combination for the termination of early pregnancy, called mifepristone and misoprostol. In poor countries where abortion is legal, doctors currently have no alternative to surgery.

The Guardian understands that the US department of health and human services has been lobbying the director general's office at the WHO to block approval of the pills, in line with President George Bush's neoconservative stance on abortion.

While the availability of pills might make abortion easier and could increase the number choosing it, the experts want them listed to reduce the deaths and damage caused by surgery. Every year, 19 million women have unsafe abortions - 18.5 million of those take place in developing countries. An estimated 68,000 women die as a result of botched or unhygienic surgery, while many others suffer long-term damage, including sterility.

Plan B's most outspoken critic, the right-wing Concerned Women for America, insists it is actually worried about safety, given the lack of studies on the pill's long-term effects. But the vast majority of medical experts say Plan B is completely safe, in part because birth-control pills have such a well-established safety record themselves. According to the Guttmacher Institute, Plan B was available in 2002 without a prescription in 26 countries, including Switzerland, Israel, and Congo.

A less flimsy argument against Plan B is that it is tantamount to abortion. While science has demonstrated that Plan B works, it has not shown definitively how Plan B works. And, although most researchers believe that it acts by postponing ovulation or preventing fertilization, it could also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus--which, according to some pro-life groups, is murder. That's a perfectly respectable, intellectually consistent position for people who believe life begins at the instant when sperm meets egg. But it's also a very severe standard, given that fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant 40 to 60 percent of the time. This is one reason that the medical establishment defines pregnancy as beginning only when a fertilized egg has implanted.

The other serious argument against Plan B is that it will increase risky sexual activity by young people. But peerreviewed studies published in mainstream medical publications (like one just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association) have repeatedly found no such link. Of course, conservatives argue that making emergency contraception available sends a broader cultural message about the acceptability of premarital sex. But, even if that were true, there are the likely benefits of Plan B to consider. James Trussell, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, has estimated that, if emergency contraceptives were widely available in this country, they could reduce the approximately 1.3 million abortions that take place yearly in this country by half. If a culture of life is so sacrosanct, shouldn't that trump the issue of premarital sex?

Throughout the article, Cloud presented instances where Coulter was
allegedly misunderstood or underappreciated. And in each case, Cloud
either gave Coulter a pass, or concluded that her opponents were wrong.
Cloud generously wrote that Coulter "likes to shock reporters by
wondering
aloud whether America might be better off if women lost the right to
vote"-- as if she writes or speaks such things on national television
only
to get a rise out of journalists. Cloud also argued that Coulter can
"write about gender issues with particular sensitivity," an odd trait
to
attribute to someone who recently claimed that women are "not that
bright"
(Fox News, 9/23/04).

Cloud also recalled a TV debate over environmentalism where Coulter
offered her typical hyperbole: "God gave us the earth. We have dominion
over the plants, the animals, the seas.... God said, 'Earth is yours. Take
it. Rape it. It's yours.'"

You see the febrile young teens in their skintight spaghetti strap tank tops with their acres of exposed pelvic skin. You hear 50 Cent's ode to oral sex, "Candy Shop," throbbing from their iPods. You open the college newspapers and see the bawdy sex columns; at William and Mary last week I read a playful discussion of how to fondle testicles and find G spots."

After the traditional burning of ballots and the pope's triumphant balcony appearance Tuesday, Benedict XVI invited the cardinals back to a hasty celebratory dinner. Caught off-guard, 20 nuns at the cardinals' Vatican residence improvised a repast of soup, beans, cold cuts, ice cream and champagne.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay intensified his criticism of the federal courts on Tuesday, singling out Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's work from the bench as "incredibly outrageous" because he has relied on international law and done research on the Internet.

DeLay also said he thought there were a "lot of Republican-appointed judges that are judicial activists."

The No. 2 Republican in the House has openly criticized the federal courts since they refused to order the reinsertion of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube. And he pointed to Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activist and isolated.

"Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous," DeLay told Fox News Radio. "And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

The new Iraqi president said today that more than 50 bodies had been discovered in the Tigris River and suggested they were victims of a massive kidnapping south of Baghdad that Iraqi officials insisted was a hoax just three days ago.

President-elect Jalal Talabani, who made the surprise assertion after a meeting with Shiite leaders over dividing up top jobs in the new government, offered no details about the crime, including when or precisely where the bodies were found.

Mr. Talabani, in his comments to reporters, offered no documentation that could help independently verify his statement, like a list of victims, photographs of the bodies, or the names of witnesses. He said the government knew the names of victims and had such photographs, however.

In the latest bizarre turnabout in a succession of claims about whether any kidnappings occurred, Mr. Talabani said that hostages had , in fact, been killed, and their bodies thrown into the Tigris. An American military spokesman in Baghdad said today that he had no information about the bodies.

The pronouncement came amid continuing violence in the country, as 20 Iraqi troops were taken from their trucks near the western city of Haditha, dragged to a soccer stadium and lined up against the wall and shot, according to an official in the Interior Ministry. Nineteen of the Iraqis died, and one was taken to a hospital, the official said.

Later today, a suicide car bomb went off near the headquarters of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's political party in Baghdad, a police official told news agencies. At least one person was killed.

The question isn't why for Sullivan or me or anybody else it's "always about the sex." The question is why in contemporary society much of religion is all about the sex, and especially gay sex. Last I checked there were all kinds of sins and all kinds of sinning going on. The Church may never stop considering homosexuality to be a "moral evil." But, they consider lots of things to be "moral evils." Why the obsession with hot gay sex?

I generally don't listen to female artists. Nothing against women in music, it's just that the music they produce rarely does anything for me.

The prelate said relativism "recognises nothing definitive and its final measure is no more than ego and desire".

"Every day new sects are born and what Saint Paul said about the deception of men, on cleverness that leads to mistakes, is becoming so.

"Having clear faith according to the credo of the church is often labelled fundamentalism, while relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried here and there by whatever wind of doctrine, seems like the only attitude with any currency today," said Ratzinger.

Once settled he was quick to make a mark with his old-fashioned dogmatism and conservative values. He was particularly upset by what he saw as destructive, liberalizing influences unleashed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). These 'wild excesses' extended to the introduction of a non-Latin Mass after Vatican II which Ratzinger characterized as a 'tragic breach' in tradition. But the Cardinal's discomfort with modern life and yearning for the good old days also extended to the social realm, especially into the areas of gay rights and women.

In 1986 Ratzinger issued a letter to the Catholic Bishops in which he wrote that homosexuality was a 'tendency' towards an 'intrinsic moral evil'. A few years later, in 1992, he rejected the notion of human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be 'legitimately limited'. He followed up by remarking that 'neither the church nor society should be surprised' if 'irrational and violent reactions increase' when gays demand civil rights. Not a man to mince his words, Ratzinger urgently set to work to ferret out gay-sensitive clergy.

The good Cardinal also extended the Papal principle of 'infallibility' by declaring that the ordination of women was impossible because John Paul II said it was so. Ditto for the use of the word 'priest' by the Anglican Church: not on, said Joe, because Leo XIII in 1896 said it wasn't allowed.

The Cardinal is also not happy mixing religion and politics – at least not the kind of politics which suggests the Church has an obligation to assist the poor in their fight for justice. So he set out to muzzle outspoken 'liberation' theologians including Brazil's charismatic Leonardo Boff. He also replaced the now-deceased Archbishop of Recife, Dom Helder Camara, with Monsignor José Cardosa – a conservative right-winger – and warned the ex-Bishop of Chiapas in Mexico, Samuel Ruiz, to preach the Gospel 'in its integrity without Marxist interpretations'.

As if that weren't enough, the ever-busy Cardinal has used his privileged take on the Truth to set back inter-faith tolerance and religious pluralism a few decades. In 1997 Ratzinger annoyed Buddhists by calling their religion an 'autoerotic spirituality' that offers 'transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations'. And Hinduism, he said, offers 'false hope'; it guarantees 'purification' based on a 'morally cruel' concept of reincarnation resembling 'a continuous circle of hell'. The Cardinal predicted Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic Church's main enemy this century.

O'REILLY: Now, there was another request up there from a woman -- prisoner, inmate, convict -- who wanted to marry another woman who's not in prison. And, I guess they're still mullin' that over. No, it was denied -- no, I'm sorry, they're mullin' it over -- no, it was approved! Oooh, no, look at this! The other request was approved because it involved the marriage of a female inmate to a woman who's not in prison. See, I woulda denied that. I'd have said, "When you get outta prison, you can marry her." But not here. This isn't pre-Cana [Catholic premarital counseling] prison -- all right, you can't do that. See, I'm not buyin' into any of this politically correct nonsense. If you're a prisoner, you're a convict, you lose your rights until you get out. So, I'm sorry. We're not lettin' you get married, not gonna let you drive a car, you can't vote. You're in -- you're in, that's it.

So this is just the beginning, ladies and gentlemen, of this crazy gay marriage insanity -- is gonna lead to all kinds of things like this. Courts are gonna be clogged. Every nut in the world is gonna -- somebody's gonna come in and say, "I wanna marry the goat." You'll see it; I guarantee you'll see it.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

But some problems have already surfaced. India is planning to do its own clinical trials, but will not test the vaccine in young girls. "This is not possible until around the age of marriage in India," Ganguly says.

Once licensed, the vaccine should be given to younger girls, he says. "But people will say 'My girl is very virtuous, why vaccinate?' It will be a real challenge, not like other vaccines."

Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, wanted to see Falluja for himself instead of relying on dry reports from the "interagency process," as he put it.

So midway through a trip otherwise focusing on Sudan, he stopped here Wednesday morning and sped downtown in an Army Humvee, squinting at the city through thick bullet-proof glass, then got out at an American base to speak to the new city council. He got an earful.

On the flight here, which was kept secret for security reasons, a State Department official shared a relatively rosy view of Falluja five months after the American military operation that largely rid the city of insurgents but also leveled a good part of it.

Ninety-five percent of Falluja's residents now have water in their homes, the official said, reading from a report. Eighty-five percent of people in northern areas that were not the focus of the American offensive have electricity. Three out of five medical clinics are now open.

But sitting with five members of Falluja's temporary city council, Mr. Zoellick asked the chairman, Sheik Khalid al-Jamily, "Do most people in Falluja have safe drinking water?"

The short answer was no.

"Two sewage pipes dump raw sewage into the river," he said. The Euphrates is an important source of drinking water. "The whole sewer system is in very bad shape."

Mr. Zoellick asked whether electricity and schools were functioning. "We brought in some tents and desks for schools," Mr. Jamily replied.

The first indication that things were veering off track for "Team Arnold" came with his promise at the end of last year to "kick the butts" of nurses protesting against his proposals to reduce nurse-patient ratios.

"Pay no attention to those voices over there," Schwarzenegger told a conference as it was disrupted by a group of nurses protesting against him. "They are the special interests. Special interests don't like me in Sacramento [California's capital] because I kick their butt."

He said he would take on special interests by introducing merit pay for teachers, reforming the pensions of state employees, and redrawing constituencies. But a clause in the pension reform plan would have removed death and disability benefits from the system, leaving the grieving relatives of, for example, firefighters, stranded.

The protests started almost immediately. The California Nurses Association organised demonstrations at his normally discreet fundraising dinners at homes in the Hollywood hills and hotels in San Francisco. A light plane was a frequent uninvited guest at Schwarzenegger events, towing a banner through the skies reading "California is not for sale". Protesters even blocked the red carpet for a film premiere, forcing Schwarzenegger to go into the cinema through a side entrance.

Then another previously unseen phenomenon began to appear, this time on California's television screens: the anti-Arnold commercial. Teachers joined firefighters and nurses joined police officers to denounce Arnold's wicked ways.

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.

Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Chuck Colson, the born-again Watergate figure and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The telecast also signals an escalation of the campaign for the rule change by Christian conservatives who see the current court battle as the climax of a 30-year culture war, a chance to reverse decades of legal decisions about abortion, religion in public life, gay rights and marriage.

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."

"And why did 'New Democrats' Ellen Tauscher, Ron Kind, Artur Davis, and Joe
Crowley push this bill on their colleagues? What party do they imagine they
belong to? Who do they think elected them to Congress?" Fertik asked.

"DebtSlavery.org is just getting started. In three short weeks, we built a
broad and determined coalition of progressives who will fight for economic
justice and will fight against Republican class warfare from above. We have
served notice to 'New Democrats' in the House and Senate that we will hold them
accountable for selling their votes to Big Business and selling out America's
working families," Fertik said.

"We will move on to new bread-and-butter battles, including the Paris
Hilton Estate Tax Cut battle in the Senate, the Loan Shark Predatory Lending Act
in the House, and the Gasoline Price Gouging Energy Bill. We will unite the
Democratic base and reach out to grassroots Independents and Republicans who
want to end Republican class warfare from above. We will give hardworking
Americans a voice - and a choice," Fertik concluded.

"We will remember who voted against the Democratic base," said Tim
Carpenter, Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America. "Those
73 House Democrats and 18 House Senators have a year in which to try to make up
for this. It's hard to see how they'll be able to do it, but we'll be watching
and remembering, and we'll be ready to promote challengers in 2006."

Washington, DC - Republican Members of the House Rules Committee voted today in Committee to kill several amendments to S-256, the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005." These amendments were designed to protect veterans who have recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan, families who have experienced a catastrophic medical event, and people who are the victims of identity theft.



On a straight party-line vote, Republicans rejected an open rule, which would have given the Democratic Members who brought more than 30 thoughtful amendments to the Rules Committee the chance to have their ideas debated on the House floor.



The Republican Members also voted against exempting the men and women fighting for our country in Iraq and Afghanistan from the bankruptcy bill's so-called "means test." They opposed an amendment by Rep. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts (amendment # 23) that would protect disabled veterans who have developed financial problems due to their combat service and they voted against another amendment (amendment # 12) requiring credit counseling agencies to provide free services to men and women who have recently left the military after serving in combat zones.



"Our veterans deserve so much more. This legislation will have a horrible impact on our brave boys and girls returning home from military service. We should be making their transition back into private life as easy as possible. This legislation throws up roadblocks and makes that transition all the more difficult," said Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules.



The Republican Members also voted against assisting people who are forced into bankruptcy as a result of identity theft. They opposed an amendment offered by Rep. Adam Schiff of California (amendment # 11) that would protect consumers who find themselves with large debts because criminals have stolen their Social Security numbers and other personal identification information.



"We all see the headlines: Identity theft poses an enormous financial risk to the average American. No one deserves a bill for someone else's crime, but the Republican majority seems to think so. Their legislation would punish victims of identity theft, and their refusal to adopt the simple fix proposed today raises real questions about who they are fighting for," said Rep. Doris Matsui, a Democratic Member of the Rules Committee.



The Republican Members even voted against several amendments intended to protect people who file bankruptcy because they or a family member are experiencing a serious, costly illness. For example, they opposed an amendment offered by Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California (amendment # 12) that would protect people whose medical costs total more than 50% of their annual income.



"With medical costs soaring and so many working families being cut off from health insurance it is unconscionable that Rules Committee Republicans would allow this legislation through without protecting families forced into bankruptcy because of medical expenses," stated Rep. Slaughter. She added, "Where are their values? Where is their morality?"



The "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005," (S-256) is expected to go to the House Floor tomorrow morning for a vote.

The .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle puts us all at risk whenever we fly an airplane.

These powerful sniper rifles which were designed for the battlefield to puncture armor and destroy targets from long range are easier to get than a handgun.

Why should we be spending billions of dollars on homeland security when a terrorist can buy a sniper rifle that can shoot armor piercing bullets up to 2000 yards with great accuracy?

Why do we permit the sale of a weapon that is powerful enough to threaten civilian airplanes taxiing on the runway or during landing and takeoff?

A Minnesota teenager shoots and kills nine people with a gun stolen from his grandfather. A Wisconsin man kills seven members of his church with 22 rounds from 9mm handgun. In another era, the violence might have given rise to a new round of ripped-from-the-headlines legislation on gun control. But not now, and not just because the Republicans control Congress.

In an effort to begin to win back the middle, Democrats are beginning to step away from gun control as a central party issue. The theory: Something's got to give, and it's politically more palatable to go soft on guns than to retreat on other hot-button issues like abortion or gay rights. While a group of House Democrats requested new hearings on gun control in the wake of last month's shootings on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, the Democratic response has generally been more muted -- when there has been a response at all. In a brief interview the other day with an Arkansas writer, Howard Dean predicted that guns won't be much of a factor as Democrats plot their national strategy. "Guns aren't an issue," Dean said. "If Philadelphia wants gun control, fine. If Alabama doesn't, also fine."

Over the years, media owners and editors have come up with different
explanations for the lack of left or progressive voices across the media
landscape. We're told those ideas are unpopular with the public, for
example, or that leftists aren't as engaging or likeable as, say, Sean
Hannity.

The new CNN President Jonathan Klein offered another theory during an
appearance on PBS's Charlie Rose Show on March 25: Progressives aren't
angry enough. When Rose asked if there could ever be a successful
progressive version of Fox News Channel, Klein thought not. He explained
that while Fox was tapping into a brand of "mostly angry white men"
conservatism, "a quote/unquote, 'progressive' or liberal network probably
couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like
to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know,
they don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally
relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff."

Does Klein really think progressives don't get too worked up about
anything? If he does, that might be because he's watching too much CNN,
where centrists are often booked to stand in for bona fide progressives.

Tell CNN President Jonathan Klein that the notion that progressives don't
get "worked up" is wrong-- and that if he'd allow genuine progressives
on
his network more often, he'd know that.

CONTACT:
CNN President
Jonathan Klein
Phone: (404) 827-1500

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you
maintain a polite tone.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the panel said that he had "grave concern" about Bolton's nomination.

Biden said that he respected Bolton's abilities and intellectual capacity, but he questioned his judgment and temperament.

"We need a strong voice in New York who knows the U.N. and who can advance our reform agenda. But we don't need a voice which people may not be inclined to listen to," Biden said. "And I fear that, knowing your reputation -- and your reputation known well at the U.N. -- people will be inclined to tune you out."

Committee chairman Sen. Richard Lugar, said that Bolton's tough talk might just be what the U.N. needs.

"The next U.S. ambassador to the U.N. must pursue reform without diminishing the effectiveness of his core diplomatic mission: namely, securing greater international support for the national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States," the Indiana Republican said.

Bolton has drawn criticism for his sometimes blunt comments about the U.N., including a 1994 statement that "there is no such thing as the United Nations."

"If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference," he said during a Federalist Society forum.

In his opening statement, Bolton said that if confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., he would pursue four priorities: Strengthening institutions that strengthen democracy and freedom, stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, supporting the war against terrorism and fighting humanitarian crises such as the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Bolton said that the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were committed to the U.N., but he stressed that it must be reformed so that its authority is not undermined by scandal.

"Now more than ever, the U.N. must play a critical role as it strives to fulfill the dreams and hopes and aspirations of its original promise to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom," Bolton said.

There are people in the world who walk wounded and have the courage not to shut up about it, not to let our greater comfort with stoicism muzzle them; there are people who open their lives up to criticism so they can point out what we'd be happier not to consider, because considering it calls into question aspects of our lives we want -- need -- not to question. I think such people are canaries in the mine: you can judge the civilization of a society by what happens to them, how they're treated.

Who are these members of the U.S. delegation? Sauerbrey, who describes herself as "a conservative, not a feminist," was the Maryland for Bush campaign chair. Brister served as the head of the Louisiana Republican Party. Hirschmann is Texas Rep. Tom DeLay's former chief of staff. Parshall, a former Wisconsinite, hosts a conservative Christian radio talk show.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that they trotted off to New York with righteous fire to try to wrench the focus of the "Beijing + 10" gathering from women's equality to abortion.

halt gender-based violence, end workplace discrimination, ensure educational and economic equality with men, and provide adequate family planning resources.

Confronting "judicial tyranny" is now "the great battle of our time," Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate, wrote in his daily e-mail newsletter a few days after Schiavo died.

Republican John Cornyn of Texas, in a speech on the Senate floor last week, suggested that outrage over so-called judicial activism might lead "to the point where some people engage in violence" against judges. (He later backpedaled.)

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.

The day after Terri Schiavo died, Gallup pollsters began calling Americans to ask them how various national figures had acquitted themselves in the operatic debate over whether to remove the terminally ill woman's feeding tube. The results seem to provide a simple outline of American opinion on the matter. In short, Americans think the Schiavo case was none of their business. The poll, like all other polls on the case, shows that Americans, by an overwhelming majority, don't think it was the president's or Congress' business, either. Asked what issues matter to them, Americans said pretty much the same thing they've been saying for months -- terrorism, healthcare costs, gas prices and the state of the economy. "Changes to how the federal courts handle moral issues" is an issue deemed "extremely important" by only 20 percent of the nation.

Here's the troubling thing: That 20 percent is running the country, and they're now pressing for such changes in the way the courts decide cases. While most Americans are apparently indifferent to the long-term implications of the Schiavo case, many religious conservatives see it as having lasting political utility. Its most important outcome, they say, is in highlighting an unsettling flaw in American governance. They call this flaw "judicial tyranny," though most of the rest of us know it by a friendlier name, "checks and balances."

Dobson, the influential evangelical leader and founder of the ministry group Focus on the Family, unleashed a 5,000-word attack on the judiciary in the April issue of his Action Newsletter. Dobson writes that "although many fine men and women serve on the bench," their decisions on moral issues illustrate "the heady abuse of power that is all too common among independent fiefdoms known as judges. They rule like royal monarchs. And sitting on the top of the pyramid is the U.S. Supreme Court, which threatens the liberty that was purchased with the blood of countless men and women who died to secure it."

A recent Wall Street Journal opinion poll asked respondents whether they thought the Democrats' proper role in Congress should be to "work in a bipartisan way to pass Bush's legislative priorities" or, instead, to "provide a balance so Bush and Republicans don't go too far." By a 2-1 margin, respondents wanted Democrats to make sure that Bush doesn't go too far. As for the filibuster, 50 percent want to keep it, while 40 percent want to see it defeated.

My mind is that of a fool - how blank!
Vulgar people are clear.
I alone am drowsy.
Vulgar people are alert.
I alone am muddled.

The delusional is no longer marginal.

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

Zubulake's case got a boost when Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin sanctioned UBS for destroying E-mails related to Zubulake. The jury was told of the bank's action. Only some E-mails were recovered, including one in which a UBS exec advocated firing Zubulake after she filed the EEOC complaint.

Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in the ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.

Participants at this week's Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration meeting said the group also will focus on forcing Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against any judge who does not conform with their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution, as well as permanently curb judicial authority over matters of church and state, marriage and governmental acknowledgement of a Christian deity.
"What it is time to do is impeach justices," Texas Justice Foundation President Allan Parker extolled a crowd of a hundred or so conservative lobbyists, attorneys and activists. "The standard should be any judge who believes in the 'living constitution' should be impeached."

It has become an article of faith among right-wing bloggers -- and, as of yesterday, the Washington Times -- that a memo identifying the Terri Schiavo case as a "great political issue" for Republicans was a fake, planted by the Democrats or created out of whole cloth by the liberal media conspiracy.

Only it wasn't.

As the Washington Post reports this morning, a staffer for Republican Sen. Mel Martinez admitted yesterday that he wrote the memo. The admission -- and with it, the resignation of Brian Darling, Martinez' legal counsel -- came after Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin revealed that Martinez had handed Harkin a copy of the memo on the Senate floor during debate on the Schiavo bill. Like every other Republican senator, Martinez had previously insisted that he'd never seen the memo before.

And while [Craver] reiterates his belief that the mainstream media "has done a terrible job of balanced news coverage from Iraq" because it "wants to be the voice of opposition," irony doesn't get a whole lot richer than with his take on the Michelle Malkins and Little Green Football throwers of the world:

"It's not like these Web sites to go off half-cocked with such limited information," Craver says. "The MSM are the experts at rumor, speculation and innuendo -- let's not follow their example."

The Bush administration, launching its campaign to renew portions of the USA Patriot Act that expire at the end of the year, acknowledged today that it had used the act's most controversial sections dozens of times.

The administration also opened the door to accepting incremental changes in the law, which it has said is crucial in the fight against terrorism.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, strongly defended the administration's use of the terror-fighting law and warned that any effort to dismantle it would be tantamount to "unilateral disarmament" in fighting terrorism.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying at the same hearing, argued for major new powers that would expand the bureau's authority to issue administrative subpoenas in terror cases that would give it access to a wide range of data without gaining court permission.

The hearing marked the beginning of what is expected to be a long and wrenching congressional review of how the Patriot Act has operated in practice.

Public opinion about the Patriot Act remains sharply divided, in part because much of the law and how it operates has remained shrouded in secrecy.

Even some congressional Republicans -- including Sen. Arlen Specter, the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee -- have expressed concern over how the law has operated and have indicated that revisions are needed.

Federal judges, who have lifetime appointments, should be held in check, he argued.

"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. "No one, including those judges, including the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects."

Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."

Conservatives have not triumphed because they have built a disciplined and efficient message machine. Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. As these factions have multiplied, more people have come to call themselves conservatives because they've found one faction to agree with.

Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I'd asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he'd call me back. He never did.

Liberals are less conscious of public philosophy because modern liberalism was formed in government, not away from it. In addition, liberal theorists are more influenced by post-modernism, multiculturalism, relativism, value pluralism and all the other influences that dissuade one from relying heavily on dead white guys.

As a result, liberals are good at talking about rights, but not as good at talking about a universal order.

We can only hope that the next pope will engage all Catholics in ways this pope did not. An extraordinary communicator, John Paul II was also a great polarizer. Through the choices he made in dinner companions, papal appointments, religious orders and lay associations, he exacerbated the divide. Women in the North were told that we were exaggerated or extreme feminists and that our desire for autonomy -- bodily, spiritual and intellectual -- was not shared by the good women of the South. First-world Catholic women who believed in radical equality between men and women in the church were demeaned and caricatured by other women whom he appointed to Vatican commissions.

Conservative Catholic intellectuals who had unprecedented access to him and the Curia dined on that access and publicly degraded mainline Christian churches and leaders as irrelevant while lauding conservative evangelical and fundamentalist Christians as true partners in faith. Bullies who spoke to and of those they disagreed with in the ugliest terms were welcomed in the Vatican. I can only cringe at my memory of Randall Terry -- who stood in front of abortion clinics in the United States screaming at women entering those clinics and justifying the murder of healthcare professionals who serve them -- meeting the pope.

I get up to leave. "I'll show you out a different way," she says. We walk through an atrium painted in pale pink, with huge silver doors leading out of her flat. "I designed it myself," she says. "It represents the womb. The doors are the labia, and this" - she points to the corridor - "is the birth canal."

I stare at her. Are you serious?

"Yes," she says. "I'm serious."

People on the political left not only have their own view of the world, they have a view of the world which they insist on attributing to others, regardless of what those others actually say. A classic example is the "trickle down theory," which no one has ever advocated, but which the left insists on fighting against.

Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 - Amends the Federal judicial code to prohibit the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal district courts from exercising jurisdiction over any matter in which relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government or an officer or agent of such government concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.

Prohibits a court of the United States from relying upon any law, policy, or other action of a foreign state or international organization in interpreting and applying the Constitution, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

Provides that any Federal court decision relating to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction by this Act is not binding precedent on State courts.

Provides that any Supreme Court justice or Federal court judge who exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of this Act shall be deemed to have committed an offense for which the justice or judge may be removed, and to have violated the standard of good behavior required of Article III judges by the Constitution.

On the Indian coast many women were waiting for the fishermen to return with their catches, while in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka, the tsunami hit at the exact moment many of the women were taking baths in the sea.

Because it was a Sunday, most of the women in Aceh were at home with the children rather than at work.

Many of the men were either carrying out errands or in their boats out at sea where the waves were less ferocious.

The hardest part of Supini's story is the death of her mother. More than a month later, she still chokes through her tears as she recalls the way her 36-year-old mother disappeared.

"The water came with a huge force, moving like an angry monster across the sand and into the home. My mother helped my younger brother to tear of his shorts to swim away, but she didn't follow. She was just too modest to remove her clothes to escape," says Supini.

Fernando, who has worked for years with rural women, says that most of the village women who drowned in the huge wave were wearing traditional saris that restricted them from running and also weighed them down when they became water logged after the sea swept into their homes.
...
Volunteers cleaning the areas also report several deaths in which women appeared to have been pinned by the long hair to broken rubble.

...that even the women who survived suffered from the tsunami, many pushed into early marriages because of the relatively few women left.

...

Those in the emergency shelter told of physical and verbal harassment from the men and fear of sexual abuse.

Becky Buell, from Oxfam, said: "The tsunami has dealt a crushing blow to women and men across the region. In some villages it now appears that up to 80% of those killed were women.

"This disproportionate impact will lead to problems for years to come unless everyone working on the aid effort addresses the issue now.

"We are already hearing about rapes, harassment and forced early marriages. We all need to wake up to this issue and ensure the protection, inclusion and empowerment of the women that have survived."

Gov. Rod Blagojevich approved an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions quickly after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill an order because of moral opposition to the drug.

The emergency rule takes effect immediately for 150 days while the administration seeks a permanent rule.

"Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to," Blagojevich said. "No delays. No hassles. No lectures."

Basic rules of reportage:

"dozens of protestors" -- roughly 50.
"scores of protestors" -- close to 100, but not quite
"over 100 protestors" -- at least 101
"100s of protestors" -- maybe 200, counting is hard
"1000s of protestors" -- see counting is hard above.
"a handful of troublemakers" -- anything over 500,000 anti-war protestors

The Roman Catholic Church plans to establish its first religious society devoted exclusively to fighting euthanasia and abortion, church leaders said this week.

The male-only Missionaries of the Gospel of Life — founded by Father Frank A. Pavone, an outspoken opponent of abortion rights — will be housed in a vacant Catholic high school and dormitory on the grounds of the Diocese of Amarillo.

The order will have a decidedly political bent, and will be active rather than contemplative, Pavone said.

Its priests will be trained to conduct voter-registration drives, use the media to get out their antiabortion message and lobby lawmakers to restrict abortion rights.

They also will learn to lead demonstrations outside offices where abortions and family-planning services are provided.

"There is a difference between knowing the teachings and knowing how to effectively advance a movement," Pavone said.

It isn't just Michael Schiavo -- even George W. Bush has drawn the wrath of American evangelicals. In February 2002, the president and Laura Bush visited a Shinto shrine in Japan, to which they showed respect with a bow. They were immediately denounced by evangelical organizations for having "worshipped the idol." To listen to the anguished cries of disbelief from Bush's Christian base, you would have thought he had met the same fate as Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," where Indie was hypnotized by the evil rajah into worshipping the pernicious Hindu idol of the thugees.

The reason for the evangelicals' frenzy is the first two commandments of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), said to have been given to Moses on Mount Sinai by God. The first says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The second says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God..." George and Laura's respectful nod to the spirits in the Meiji Shrine violated those precepts in the eyes of true believers.

Both the reelection of George Bush and the Schiavo travesty have heightened the sense that the religious right in the United States is all-powerful. Reading the press, you get the impression that almost all Americans are devout Christians, people who believe in a literal heaven and hell and spend their idle moments devouring the "Left Behind" novels about the end of the world. This isn't true -- and it's getting less true all the time. While evangelical Christians are a significant political force, they are probably only a fifth of the country, and not all of them are politically conservative: Only 14 percent of voters in an exit poll for the presidential elections in 2000 characterized themselves as part of the "Christian right."