ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

It's difficult to say you're covering all terrorist activity in the United States if you don't have all the (phone) numbers," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., told USA Today. "It probably would be better to have records of every telephone company."

A few weeks after departing the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay served as charity auctioneer at a fundraiser for Safari Club International, a gun-lobby group defending man's right to defend himself against unarmed animals.

"Who wants a beaver?" DeLay asked the crowd, hawking a sheared-beaver vest that a lobbyist later won for $1,400.

"Hoots," reports Roll Call's Mary Ann Akers, "and hollers followed." Probably because the crowd of hunters, hunter-lovers, and those who make their living kissing up to hunter-loving lawmakers understood that "beaver" is a slang term for vagina -- although, who knows, maybe they were super-excited about the flat-tailed, dam-building rodents.

"Everybody likes beaver, even women," DeLay declared happily, with a passion he once reserved for attacking "liberals." "The best thing about it, it's a shaved beaver!" he exclaimed -- blissfully ignorant, it would seem, of the disturbing psychosexual inference that prepubescence is somehow erotic in a female partner.

I think we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys, and give them the information about contraception that can prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortion rates and help assure that that every child is loved and cherished. But my Bible tells me that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it. I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young woman's sense of self, a young man's sense of responsibility, and a sense of reverence by all young people for the act of sexual intimacy.

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith -- the politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps -- off rhythm -- to the gospel choir.

But what I am suggesting is this -- secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King -- indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history -- were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize the overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I" resonates in religious congregations across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of America's renewal.

While I've already laid out some of the work that progressives need to do on this, I believe that the conservative leaders of the Religious Right will need to acknowledge a few things as well.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. That during our founding, it was not the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of this separation; it was the persecuted religious minorities, Baptists like John Leland, who were most concerned that any state-sponsored religion might hinder their ability to practice their faith.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians within our borders, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage so radical that it's doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application?

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
Matthew 6:5-6 (NIV)

An odd thing seems to have happened to mighty right-wing talking head media juggernaut. They are still talking, but fewer people seem to be listening -- at least on the Internet.

Alexa.com -- http://alexa.com -- which is owned and operated by Amazon.com, tracks online usage for all Web sites, large and small. At Alexa.com, you can check a site's activity up to the minute, or follow its trail back for many years.

At U.S. Politics Today, we thought it might be interesting to see how the right-wing media machine was doing. Not well, it turns out.

During the past three months, for instance, http://rushlimbaugh.com traffic ranking has declined 18 percent. He still huffs and puffs away daily on radio, but advertisers might want to double check the size of his audience. If the bottom has dropped out on him online, it likely has had a similar trend line with his radio show.

Even Fox News, that gold standard of right-wing media, is down 13 percent. Here are the numbers: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q= &url=www.foxnews.com

Ann Coulter is coining money by attacking widows and orphans -- a new game for her since she's run out of Democrats, living and dead, to defame and verbally pillage. You would think with all of the attention the promotion of her new book has given her would raise visitor numbers at her Web site, http://anncoulter.com. Nope. Traffic there is down 10 percent.

The audience chart reversal seems to be common across the entire right-wing side of the Internet viewing board. Billoreilly.com -- http://billoreilly.com -- has dropped 40 percent in the past three months. Townhall.com -- http://townhall.com -- that once popular center for right-wing news and commentary, has fallen by 24 percent. The Washington Times Web site is down by 27 percent. And Matt Drudge, once the hottest right-wing name in Internet sites? Alexa.com says http://drudgereport.com is down 21 percent.

Could it be that Internet users are getting tired of political sites in general? Maybe so. But http://moveon.org is up 13 percent in the same period.

Markos Moulitsas -- "Kos" of the Daily Kos -- is getting a lot of attention these days. Check out this Time magazine wet kiss about Kos' growing stature as a king maker in left-wing Democratic politics. Playing to his online audience of post-McGovernite neo-commies, Kos enjoys picking fights with Democratic centrists who have the temerity to put America's security as a top priority.

Among those Democrats is Will Marshall, founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Marshall wants Dems to reclaim their Truman-J.F.K. heritage in foreign policy. He calls the Kos crowd "aging boomers out to relive the radical days of their youth."

Call it a tale of two questions.

A Gallup/USA Today poll finds a clear majority -- 57 percent -- of Americans supporting the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; while a Washington Post/ABC News poll finds only a narrow minority -- 47 -- percent in favor.

How can that be?

Well, look at the wording.

Here's the Gallup question: "Which comes closer to your view? Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq (or) decisions about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq should be left to the president and his advisers?"

In other words: Should Congress propose a timetable, or just leave it all up to Bush?

Here's the Post question, with my emphasis: "Some people say the Bush administration should set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further casualties . Others say knowing when the U.S. would pull out would only encourage the anti-government insurgents . Do you yourself think the United States should or should not set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq?"

That's awfully close to: Are you in favor of cutting and running? What's amazing is that 47 percent of Americans said yes.

A study to be released today looking at long-term trends in test scores and academic success argues that widespread reports of U.S. boys being in crisis are greatly overstated and that young males in school are in many ways doing better than ever.

Using data compiled from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally funded accounting of student achievement since 1971, the Washington-based think tank Education Sector found that, over the past three decades, boys' test scores are mostly up, more boys are going to college and more are getting bachelor's degrees.

Although low-income boys, like low-income girls, are lagging behind middle-class students, boys are scoring significant gains in elementary and middle school and are much better prepared for college, the report says. It concludes that much of the pessimism about young males seems to derive from inadequate research, sloppy analysis and discomfort with the fact that although the average boy is doing better, the average girl has gotten ahead of him.

"The real story is not bad news about boys doing worse," the report says, "it's good news about girls doing better.

A number of articles have been written over the past year lamenting how boys have fallen behind. The new report, "The Truth About Boys and Girls," explains why some educators think this emphasis is misplaced and why some fear a focus on sex differences could sidetrack federal, state and private efforts to put more resources into inner-city and rural schools, where both boys and girls need better instruction.

"There's no doubt that some groups of boys -- particularly Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes -- are in real trouble," Education Sector senior policy analyst Sara Mead says in the report. "But the predominant issues for them are race and class, not gender."

The "boy crisis," the report says, has been used by conservative authors who accuse "misguided feminists" of lavishing resources on female students at the expense of males and by liberal authors who say schools are "forcing all children into a teacher-led pedagogical box that is particularly ill-suited to boys' interests and learning styles."

"Yet there is not sufficient evidence -- or the right kind of evidence -- available to draw firm conclusions," the report says. "As a result, there is a sort of free market for theories about why boys are underperforming girls in school, with parents, educators, media, and the public choosing to give credence to the explanations that are the best marketed and that most appeal to their pre-existing preferences."

BOYS and girls are no more likely to achieve better results when they are educated in separate schools than together, according to a study of the way children learn.

Girls' schools consistently top the league tables at GCSE and A level — which the author suggests is attributable to selection and background, rather than gender.

Advocates of single-sex schooling argue that children achieve more academically when they are taught separately. After reviewing a decade of international and national research, Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, says that the evidence does not support this view.

"On performance, there is no evidence that girls will get better results in a single sex than a co-educational school. The same is true for boys," Professor Smithers said. "The girls' schools feature highly in the league tables because they are highly selective, their children come from particular social backgrounds and they have excellent teachers."

This is a joke right? Our government is having a debate about flag burning when nobody burns flags.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "pool." I'd like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women's suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.

About woman's suffrage…I think it's a matter of covenantal thinking and headship. If women are biblically to be under the headship of husbands and fathers, then those men are to represent the household when it comes to voting. Pieter was a judge at a polling place in a recent election here, and he told of several couples that came in who were registered for different political parties and ostensibly cancelled out each other's votes. I think Nickey has a point about women who are heads of households for various reasons, but Deborah's exception notwithstanding, men are to be the elders sitting in the gates, guiding public affairs; yet we find Christian women today having no compunctions about running for political offices and seeking leadership as "ministers" of governmental affairs. I'm obviously not against women having opinions or giving godly wisdom and counsel in certain spheres, but I believe that the feminization of both the church and the political realm is related to the increased involvement of women through voting and policy decision making. As for property ownership: I think thta the welfare state has become such a problem because of the ability of people to vote themselves largesse; property owners are often much more rooted and less likely to vote for politicians who advocate the theft of their property, thus creating a much more stable economy and society. Others have written extensively on this, but that's my controversial position in a nutshell.

I completely agree with both removing women's suffrage and coupling voting rights with property ownership. I am always hesitant to admit my views on the suffrage movement, but I strongly feel that our nation made a grievous error when we allowed women many of the same "rights" as men. First off, I think that voting should be a family affair with the wife putting in her input, but the man ultimately deciding on which candidate he votes for. I think women are too emotional and often vote for the "bleeding heart liberal" cause because it feels right to them. When I tell folks my view on this they always ask if I vote. Yes, I do because my husband wants me to.

About voting rights tied to property ownership, I think this is a great point I haven't thought much about. I also liked the comment about not letting welfare recipients vote. I grew up in the central valley of California and was often dismayed at the sheer number of welfare recipients who were always for the Dems because they knew they would be allowed more years of laziness if they got the right guy in there. Not that I vote party lines and think it's only the Dems that are liberal and give out way too many handouts, I don't. I just know that there are jobs available to those who want to work, even if it's working in the fields picking fruit, etc., but many choose not to because of the welfare perks they get. If voting was tied to owning property then more people would value home ownership and would more seriously consider the politicians, school levies, etc. they are voting for.

The lessons from a sexually conservative society are that, the more you try to contain the pressure from insistent hormones, the worse it becomes. At the same time, it's clear from our experiences in the west that a rampant free-for-all (or what sometimes approaches it), also doesn't work. The truth about 24-hour raunch culture is that, when the temperature all around you is rising, your own temperature rises too. Better, of course, not to ban any material but not to promote any material. But that's not the real world.

In the real world, explicit lingerie and cropped tops and low-slung jeans with obligatory thong all sell, and sell big, but promote a misguided message, especially to young women. They provide a mistaken minimum role model to those most susceptible to it: you can be a doctor or a writer or an architect, they suggest, but you must, at least, "be up for it". Anything less is to deny yourself your freedoms as a woman.

...

The first step is to take control. Searching for political solutions to commercial realities seems like a mismatch of tools. Women (and men) already have the tools at their disposal to decide what is acceptable to them. It is, after all, women who buy women's magazines with airbrushed, perfect women; women who buy lingerie sold to them by anorexic models; women who buy the make-up because they're worth it.

That isn't to say we don't have to play our part. The commodification of women's bodies harms men as well, not just our sisters and daughters. But it is women who wield the strongest economic leverage over companies, women who through boycotts or alternative purchases or simply lobbying companies can make their feelings known. Most men, by dint of inactivity, have set their limits. Women need to do the same and lead the rebellion against raunch.

Think about the advantage when you're negotiating on behalf of 43 million elderly and disabled Americans. That's the image painted by Democratic lawmakers who want the federal government to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare recipients.

The Democrats envision using the money that is saved to close a gap in coverage, called the "doughnut hole," that will affect an estimated 6.9 million people this year.

Under the standard drug benefit, the government subsidizes the drug costs for seniors and the disabled. But after costs reach $2,250, the subsidy stops until a beneficiary has paid out $3,600 of his or her own money. That's the gap called the doughnut hole. Then, the government will start picking up 95 percent of each purchase.

After early challenges, the Bush administration has hailed the drug benefit as a tremendous success. The competition among insurers has resulted in monthly premiums that average less than $24 a beneficiary, versus original estimates of $37.

Meanwhile, the estimated cost of the program has dropped by about $180 billion over the coming decade, from $926 billion to $746 billion, Health and Human Services Secretary
Mike Leavitt said in a report about two weeks ago.

"One size does not fit all, especially when dealing with the health care needs of an aging population," Leavitt said.

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.

But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

But the New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public's right to know in some cases might override somebody's right to live, and whether in fact the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans.

Interviewed on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said the newspaper compromised national security when it exposed a Treasury Department program that secretly monitored worldwide money transfers to track terrorist financing. The program, instituted after the Sept. 11 attacks, bypasses traditional safeguards against government abuse.

"By disclosing this in time of war, they have compromised America's anti-terrorist policies," said King, referring to New York Times reporters and editors. "Nobody elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people."

Calling the report "absolutely disgraceful," King said he would call on Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to begin a criminal investigation of the newspaper.

But at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.

We weighed most heavily the Administration's concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program.

New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito broke a tie Monday in a ruling that affirmed a state death penalty law and also revealed the court's deep divisions over capital punishment.

A clear majority of Americans say Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Half of those surveyed would like all U.S. forces out of Iraq within 12 months.

The poll finds support for the ideas behind Democratic proposals that were soundly defeated in the Senate last week. An uptick in optimism toward the war after the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month seems to have evaporated.

LONDON has lost its status as Europe's most expensive city in which to live, overtaken by Moscow, a global survey reveals today.

The Russian capital was found to be the costliest city on the planet by Mercer, the human resource consultants, who said that it was 12 per cent dearer to live in than London and nearly 25 per cent more expensive than New York City.

On blogs, anything and everything goes, including on the blog names themselves: What the heck, for instance, is "Echidne of the Snakes" or "Nyarlathotep's Miscellany"?

They say that the great leaders are gone and politics has become the realm of the small-minded. But in the land of the Lilliputians, the Keyboard Kingpin must be accorded full respect.

The Keyboard Kingpin, a k a Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way. And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow.

I am a child of God, the blessed wife of Jesse, and joyful mother of Kathrynne. My husband and I are both from large, homeschooling families. Both sets of parents sacrificed much to raise us in the ways of the Lord. As Scripture says, "To whom much is given, much is required." We have been given so much and, as God enables us, we are seeking to give out to others. This blog is one little way, with my husband's oversight and blessing, I am striving to do just that. I do not profess to know all the answers, nor am I setting myself up as a teacher. Rather, I desire to be an encouragement, challenge, and inspiration to women and young women. You may or may not agree with what is written here. As with anything you read, please search the Scriptures for yourself and ask your husband or father for his counsel and direction.

On my post, Hablo Ingles, Anna B. commented:

"You write that you teach your children Spanish. You shouldn't. Your husband should teach his children Spanish. My 3 children are perfectly trilingual thanks to the fact that I always (and I mean always) speak my mother tongue with them, my husband speaks his (English), and their school language (French) is that of the country we live in."

While I appreciate what I imagine the intent of Anna's advice to be, I must say I bristle a bit at being told I shouldn't teach my children Spanish. I am the teacher in our homeschool and my husband is the principal. It is my duty to educate our children while my wonderful husband works two jobs to provide for his family. I feel completely qualified to teach our children Spanish. I took three years of Spanish in high school (only two of those were for required foreign language credit), I was a member of the Spanish Honor Society, I have numerous resources at my disposal, and my husband helpfully answers any questions I have.

Feminism in a Nutshell:

1. Men are jerks.
2. Women should be more like men.

Even beyond the thuggishness, what I despise about so many blogurus, is the frivolity of their "readers." DailyKos might have hundreds of responses to his posts, but after five or six of them the interminable thread meanders into trivial subjects that have nothing to do with the subject that briefly provoked it. The blogosphere's lack of concentration is even more dangerous than all its rage.

A southwest Missouri mall defended its dress code after a security guard told a 10-year-old girl her bandanna decorated with peace signs, smiley faces and flowers violated the mall's code of conduct.

Lydia Smith, who was shopping with her mother at Battlefield Mall for new church clothes when the incident happened Saturday, said she wore the orange and yellow bandanna to give her outfit some color.

Lydia and her mom, Susan Smith, were eating lunch when the girl saw a mall security officer ask a nearby teenager to remove a bandanna. Then the officer approached her.

"(The officer) asked me to take it off and said there's this new rule we have or something like that," Lydia said.

The officer handed Lydia's mother a printed copy of the Battlefield Mall Code of Conduct, which prohibits patrons from engaging in certain activities while on mall property.

Lydia had violated No. 10 on the list of 17 offenses: "failing to be fully clothed or wearing apparel which is likely to provide a disturbance or embroil other groups or the general public in open conflict."

Judging from the amount of publicity they gleaned, the liberal bloggers who gathered in Las Vegas recently for the first annual YearlyKos convention represent the cutting edge of thinking in the Democratic Party.

But the blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought. The candidates who have been adopted as heroes by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the convention's leader, and his fellow bloggers have mainly imploded in the heat of battle -- as was the case with Howard Dean in 2004 -- or come up short, as happened to the Democratic challengers in special House elections in Ohio and California.

It's a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy's dream of full participation but practices democracy's nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It's hard fascism with a Microsoft face. It puts some people, like me, in the equally bizarre position of wanting desperately for Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont so that true liberal values might, maybe, possibly prevail, yet at the same time wanting Lamont, the hero of the blogosphere, to lose so that the fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman might be defeated. (Every critical event in democracy is symbolic of the problem with democracy.)

Even beyond the thuggishness, what I despise about so many blogurus, is the frivolity of their "readers." DailyKos might have hundreds of responses to his posts, but after five or six of them the interminable thread meanders into trivial subjects that have nothing to do with the subject that briefly provoked it. The blogosphere's lack of concentration is even more dangerous than all its rage. In the Middle East, they struggle with belief. In the United States, we struggle with attention. The blogosphere's fanaticism is, in many ways, the triumph of a lack of focus.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday defeated a proposal pushed by Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage in increments from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by January 1, 2009.

Hi folks. The House Republican leadership scurried up to the Rules Committee hearing room for an EMERGENCY meeting they convened with 5 minutes notice. Literally.

Wonder where the fire was? Well the topic Republicans chose for EMERGENCY consideration ... H.R. 5638, the Republican Estate Tax Relief bill, designed to further reduce the estate-tax after the year 2011. Yes, estate-tax reduction, which would benefit less than 1% of the population, was more important to this Republican Leadership than passing a minimum wage increase, extending the voting rights act, or having a real, substantive debate on the war in Iraq.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced "we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House's Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.

Fox News' Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra's claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are "not the WMD's for which this country went to war."

In a room filled with about 50 women at Central Pennsylvania College in this Cumberland County community, Santorum unveiled an advertising strategy designed to appeal to women.

''I know I get a lot of flak for not being great … on women's issues,'' Santorum told the crowd.

Stating his own case, Santorum talked about his support for education-related issues and for aid to small businesses, including those led by women. He also noted that women comprise most of his senior staff.

His ad campaign includes a Web site, http://www.WomenforRick.com , and promotes the use of tracking issues through text messages sent to cell phones.

In the latest Keystone Poll, Santorum trailed Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. among women by 10 percentage points, 47-37. Santorum and Casey were neck-and-neck among male voters in the May survey, with 47 percent supporting Casey and 45 percent favoring Santorum.

Flanked by posters reading, ''Find out how Rick Santorum is leading for women,'' Mary Matalin, who headlined Monday's event, came to the senator's defense, describing him as the ''go-to guy in the Senate.''

''He's so connected, so in touch … to my problems as a woman,'' said Matalin, a political analyst and commentator who has worked for both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

WHEN I say I study gender-specific medicine, most people assume I mean women's health. Patients ask me, "Do you take care of men too?"

I may be partly to blame for the confusion: in the years since the revolutionary 1985 report on women's health from the United States Public Health Service, I — along with many of my colleagues — have tried to atone for the fact that for so long the majority of diseases that afflicted both genders were studied exclusively in men.

Over the past two decades, we've radically revised how we conduct medical research and take care of our female patients. And we've made valuable discoveries about how gender helps determine vulnerability to illness and, ultimately, the timing and causes of death. But I now believe that we doctors and researchers may have focused too much on women.

What emerges when one studies male biology in a truly evenhanded way is the realization that from the moment of conception on, men are less likely to survive than women. It's not just that men take on greater risks and pursue more hazardous vocations than women. There are poorly understood — and underappreciated — vulnerabilities inherent in men's genetic and hormonal makeup. This Father's Day, we need to rededicate ourselves to deepening our knowledge of male physiology.

Men's troubles begin during the earliest days in the womb. Even though there are more male than female embryos, there are more miscarriages of male fetuses. Industrial countries are also witnessing a decline in male to female birth ratios, and we don't know why.

Some scientists have argued that the probability of a male child declines as parents (especially fathers) age. Still others have cited the prevalence of pesticides, which produce more birth defects in male children.

Even when a boy manages to be born, he's still behind the survival eight ball: he is three to four times more likely than girls to have developmental disorders like autism and dyslexia; girls learn language earlier, develop richer vocabularies and even hear better than boys. Girls demonstrate insight and judgment earlier in adolescence than boys, who are more impulsive and take more risks than their sisters. Teenage boys are more likely to commit suicide than girls and are more likely to die violent deaths before adulthood.

As adults, too, men die earlier than women. Twice as many men as women die of coronary artery disease, which manifests itself a decade earlier in men than women; when it comes to cancer, the news for men is almost as bad. Women also have more vigorous immune systems than men: of the 10 most common infections, men are more likely to have serious encounters with seven of them.

While depression is said to be twice as frequent in women as in men, I'm convinced that the diagnosis is just made more frequently in women, who show a greater willingness to discuss their symptoms and to ask for help when in distress. Once, at a dinner party, I asked a group of men whether they believed men were depressed as often as women, but were simply conditioned to be silent in the face of discomfort, sadness or fear. "Of course!" replied one man. "Why do you think we die sooner?"

Considering the relative fragility of men, it's clearly counterintuitive for us to urge them, from boyhood on, to cope bravely with adversity, to ignore discomfort, to persevere in spite of pain and to accept without question the most dangerous jobs and tasks we have to offer. Perhaps the reason many societies offer boys nutritional, educational and vocational advantages over girls is not because of chauvinism — it's because we're trying to ensure their survival.

The question from a British journalist: "President Bush, you've got Iran's nuclear program, you've got North Korea, yet most Europeans consider the United States the biggest threat to global stability. Do you have any regrets about that?"

Bush: "That's absurd. . . . That is the United States is -- we'll defend ourselves, but at the same times we're actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy. So whoever says that is -- it's just -- that's an absurd statement."

And then later, a follow-up from an Austrian journalist:

Q: "Mr. President, you said this is absurd. But you might be aware that in Europe, the image of America is still falling and dramatically in some areas.

"Let me give you some numbers. In Austria, in this country, only 14 percent of the people believe that the United States -- what they are doing is good for peace; 64 percent think that it is bad.

"In the United Kingdom, your ally, there are more citizens who believe that the United States policy under your leadership is helping to destabilize the world than Iran.

"So my question to you is why do you think that you've failed so badly to convince Europeans, to win their heads and hearts and minds?"

Bush: "Well, yeah, I thought it was absurd for people to think that we're more dangerous than Iran.

"I -- you know, it's -- we're a transparent democracy. People know exactly what's on our mind. We debate things in the open. We've got a legislative process that's active.

"Look, people didn't agree with my decision on Iraq. And I understand that. For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us it was a change of thinking.

"I vowed to the American people I would do everything I could to defend our people, and will. I fully understood that the longer we got away from September the 11th, more people would forget the lessons of September the 11th. But I'm not going to forget them.

"And I understand some of the decisions I've made are controversial. But I made them in the best interest of our country and, I think, in the best interests of the world.

"I believe when you look back at this moment, people will say, It was right to encourage democracy in the Middle East.

"I understand some people think that can't work. I believe in the universality of freedom. Some don't. I'm going to act on my beliefs so long as I'm the president of the United States.

"Some people say, 'It's OK to condemn people to tyranny.' I don't believe it's OK to condemn people to tyranny, particularly those of us who live in the free societies.

"And so I understand. And I'll try to do my best to explain to the Europeans that, on the one hand, we're tough when it comes to the terror. On the other hand, we're providing more money than ever before in the world's history for HIV/AIDS on the continent of Africa.

"I'll say, on the one hand, we're going to be tough when it comes to terrorist regimes who harbor weapons.

"On the other hand, we'll help feed the hungry.

"I declared Darfur to be a genocide because I care deeply about those who have been afflicted by these renegade bands of people who are raping and murdering.

"And so I will do my best to explain our foreign policy. On the one hand, it's tough when it needs to be. On the other hand, it's compassionate.

"And we'll let the polls figure out -- you know, people say what they want to say. But leadership requires making hard choices based upon principle and standing by the decisions you make. And that's how I'm going to continue to lead my country.

"Thank you for your question."

The fecklessness of the current regime astonishes me, I admit. Hurricane Katrina displayed to the whole world the inability of the administration to do the bedrock job of government, which is to ensure public safety and protect people from catastrophe, while simultaneously revealing what should definitely not come as a surprise but somehow did to many: the deep poverty of the Gulf region and its racial nature. Surely -- after botching the rescue in full view of the whole world, after Bush's unfortunate use of Trent Lott's beach house as the synecdoche for the towns and neighborhoods destroyed by storm and flood, and his mother's even more clueless remark that living in the Houston Astrodome was "working well" for the displaced, who were "underprivileged anyway" -- surely, I thought, the Administration would pour on steam to show what a good job it would do to get the evacuees back on their feet. I forgot for a moment that this was the same administration that had shown nothing but contempt for professional expertise, whose answers to every question of public policy was tax cuts, and whose response to every crisis has been to leave people to their own devices, down to expecting soldiers on active duty in Iraq to supply their own body armor, like medieval knights.

And speaking of babies, what about feminism? If you follow the media, the women's movement is well into the third decade of the longest funeral in history ("Is Women's Lib a Passing Fad?" New York Times, 1972). A torrent of books, articles, and popular entertainment tells women they don't really want equality, and if they get it they will only be miserable, because what makes women happy is nurturing men and children, or even, as a recent New York Times front-page story suggested, quitting their jobs -- their empty, materialistic, meaningless jobs -- to move back into their childhood bedrooms and tend their aging parents ("Forget the Career. My Parents Need Me at Home," November 24, 2005). When was the last time you saw a mass-market film with a "career woman" character who wasn't a bitch on wheels? In which the diamond-in-the-rough working-class beauty was a genius who needed a scholarship, not a stripper who needed a husband? As for sex, any number of writers, from right-wing Harvard political scientist Harvey Mansfield and novelist Tom Wolfe on down, are eager to warn young women of the horrors of the hookup. (Why young women should care what these septuagenerians think about their sex lives is a question not easily answered.)

Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions that would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The ban would apply to all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, except when the mother's life is threatened. It is similar to a South Dakota law that has become a battleground in the abortion debate.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the government can block development on hundreds of millions of acres of wetlands, even on land miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a connection to the waterways.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his first major environmental case, came up one vote short of dramatically limiting the scope of the landmark Clean Water Act.

At the same time, property rights advocates won a small victory with a new test, authored by moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for determining what land can be regulated.

Virtually any land in America would be covered under the government's interpretation of the law, Roberts and the court's other three conservatives complained in an opinion.

The court's four liberal members said the conservatives would have opened up sensitive wetlands to polluters.

...

Antonin Scalia led the conservative bloc, including Roberts, Justice
Clarence Thomas and new Justice Samuel Alito.

When I set out to write a book about how the first generation of women to grow up with feminism managed their marriages, I never dreamed I'd wind up the subject of a Web article called "Everybody Hates Linda."

Everybody started hating Linda, apparently, when I published an article in the progressive magazine the American Prospect last December, saying that women who quit their jobs to stay home with their children were making a mistake. Worse, I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings. Oh, and by the way, where were the dads when all this household labor was being distributed? Maybe the thickest glass ceiling, I wrote, is at home.

Okay, I'm judgmental. That's what CBS's Lesley Stahl called me on "60 Minutes." But I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives. We've been doing so since Socrates. And yet, even though I knew the Greeks made Socrates drink poison, the reaction to my judgment took me by surprise. It turns out that was what people really hated: the judgment. That working women have the better life.

Kapow! I had wandered, it seems, into ground zero of the Mommy Wars. Although I was aware of the stories about women quitting, I did not know what a minefield the subject was. Specifically, I did not know that you can say almost anything about how great it is for a woman to give up her job; standing up for staying at work is the big taboo.

And yet, even though I knew the Greeks made Socrates drink poison, the reaction to my judgment took me by surprise. It turns out that was what people really hated: the judgment. That working women have the better life.

It's been the kind of week that President Bush and the beleaguered White House have only dreamed about.

A spate of polls now shows a slight rise in public confidence in the war in Iraq after Bush conducted a high-powered summit at Camp David on the Iraq war, made a surprise trip to Baghdad to meet with troops and newly elected Iraqi government leaders, and then returned home to a triumphant Rose Garden news conference.

In addition, Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, learned he would not face charges related to the 2003 leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.

This may have been the president's best week ever.

The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees."

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, "the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government."

It's actually far worse than that, as the details publish below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women's rights, and "ethnic cleansing."

...

Among the other troubling reports:

--"Personal safety depends on good relations with the 'neighborhood' governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central goverhment, our staff says, is not relevant...People no longer trust most neighbors."

--One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

--Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report "pervasive" harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices "have diminished the quality of life." Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods "have visibly deteriorated" and one of them is now described as a "ghost town."

--Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May...."some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative." One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

--It has also become "dangerous" for men to wear shorts in public and "they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts." People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

--Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 horus in line on his day off.

"We do need to do a better job, but it takes time," said Graham, who appeared with Biden on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Zarqawi's death was a sea change. We're now making some progress. If we do shows every Sunday talking about every mistake, we're going to lose this war."

On the other hand, it can be academically demonstrated that the rejection of the ordination of women within the tradition was not predicated on contemporary concepts alone but in essence on theological arguments. Therefore it should not be assumed that the Catholic Church will one day revise its current position. The Catholic Church is convinced that she has no authority to do so.
Where and on What Side Does the Anglican Communion Stand?"

I can't say I know much about Ann Coulter. She says some things that seem to make sense to me and the way she says other things makes me almost wish I didn't agree. But I have to ask: What is the deal with the cover of her new book? When I first saw it a few days ago I assumed that the sexy little black dress was a choice by her publishers that she didn't particularly agree with, but then I saw her on the "Today Show" with Matt Lauer and she had on what appeared to be the same outfit. While what I love about Modestyzone is that we don't go into the specifics of exactly what we and what others should wear (we leave that to the ladies at gofugyourself, right?) this is just downright confusing.

Memo to aspiring Democratic candidates: The blogs can be a good first martini. Don't let them be your second.

As a first martini, left-wing sites like dailykos.com and mydd.com can lift the spirits of a new candidate. They boost confidence and raise some quick campaign cash. These blogs are good for democracy and Democrats, because they force the party to open its primaries to promising outsiders.

As a second martini, though, the blog can be a real problem. All that enthusiasm and love can cloud a candidate's political judgment. The contender starts thinking that these kids represent more voters than they do — and is sucked into left-wing dogma that doesn't play well in the bigger-than-Berkeley world. Even good liberal stances get dressed in a rhetoric that's unbecoming.

After the second martini, a blog-besotted candidate can get sloppy. The hopeful spends too much time around the blogosphere regaling the congregation with what it wants to hear. The Republican foe makes sure that America's bus drivers, janitors and data processors hear the vaguely (or at times overtly) anti-American tone that emerges from some of the radical "critiques."

"The magic and might of her own soft mouth … " Erotic poets have hymned it down the ages, though often substituting the word "his." The menu of brothel offerings in ancient Pompeii, preserved through centuries of volcanic burial, features it in the frescoes. It was considered, as poor Humbert well knew, to be worth paying for.

Stay with me. I've been doing the hard thinking for you. The three-letter "job," with its can-do implications, also makes the term especially American. Perhaps forgotten as the London of Jack the Ripper receded into the past, the idea of an oral swiftie was re-exported to Europe and far beyond by a massive arrival of American soldiers. For these hearty guys, as many a French and English and German and Italian madam has testified, the blowjob was the beau ideal. It was a good and simple idea in itself. It was valued—not always correctly—as an insurance against the pox. And—this is my speculation—it put the occupied and the allied populations in their place. "You do some work for a change, sister. I've had a hard time getting here."

About 100 women had gathered in central Tehran on Monday to protest against what they called the Islamic Republic's discriminatory laws against women. Some men joined them at the gathering which the judiciary said was "illegal".

A Reuters correspondent at the protest saw women and men being put into buses and others being beaten back with batons.

...

Some women had protested about the difficulties in getting a divorce and securing guardianship for their children after divorce.

Others decried unjust inheritance laws and the fact that their court testimony is only worth half that of a man's. Some women said men were abusing with impunity their right to polygamy, which allows up to four wives.

"I want to know why the blood money for a murdered woman is half that for a man," said a woman who wanted to be identified only as Leila. "I am against laws that openly discriminate against women."

"Blood money" is compensation paid to the family of slain person.

Most women at the demonstration were reluctant to speak to journalists because of the heavy police presence.

"It is now generally recognized that while
Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming," Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. "It's a serious problem. It's going to lead to more hurricanes."

...

In his critique of the GOP, Clinton also touched on the war in
Iraq, the rising federal deficit and high health care costs. The crowd of about 500 greeted him with loud applause and shouts of "We love you, Bill!" and "Four more years!"

Jeff Sadosky, spokesman for the state Republican Party, decried Clinton's rhetoric.
"Bill Clinton's class warfare and race-baiting message gets us no closer to solutions for the issues he brings up," he said.

Sadosky referred in part to Clinton's comments earlier this month in Arizona. At that event, Clinton characterized Republican Party leaders as right-wing, white Southerners.

But over on MSNBC, the news anchors debated an issue much more pressing: Coulter's Hot or Not factor. From June 9th's Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you find her physically attractive, Tucker?

TUCKER CARLSON: I'm not going to answer that, because the answer, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. That's not the point.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Positively.

RITA COSBY: Don't ask me that question.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Mike, do you want to weigh in here as an older fellow. Do you find her to be a physically attractive woman?

MIKE BARNICLE: I'm too old to be doing that. I had enough fights in my life.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: OK, Rita, do you find her to be a physically attractive woman?

RITA COSBY: I'll throw it back to you, Chris, do you find her attractive?

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys are all afraid to answer. No, I find her—I wouldn't put her—well, she doesn't pass the Chris Matthews test.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, left, and White House Counselor Dan Barlett, ride in a military helicopter wearing helmets and flak jackets for a trip from Baghdad International Airport to U.S. Embassy in the Greenzone.

For a dozen years until his appointment, Zinsmeister held forth on all manner of issues and personalities as editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine. With a sharp pen, he skewered the left, taking special aim at environmentalists, anti-globalists, feminists, contemporary artists, university faculties, Hollywood, Broadway and particularly the media, composed mainly of "left-wing, cynical, wiseguy Ivy League types, with a high prima donna quotient."

A review of years of articles reveals a formidable thinker with a powerful sense of what he considers right and wrong. As Zinsmeister sees it, racial profiling by the police makes sense; the military, if anything, treats terrorist suspects too gently; and casual sex has led to wrecked cities, violence and "endless human misery." In a "soft, often amoral, and self-indulgent age," he warned, some children "will be ruined without a whip hand," and he assured that "things generally go better with God."

...

Foreign policy won't fall under his new portfolio, but he has written extensively on social issues that will, such as race, class and culture. He has condemned "feminist absolutism," "Green irrationality," "limousine leftists" and "the dreary left-wing, homophilic P.C. propaganda that has dominated Broadway."

Zinsmeister lamented a "forced diversity crusade" that fuels more alienation than it solves and argued that "Americans should jettison affirmative action and all racial preferences." He dismissed reparations for slavery as "a clear absurdity" because "the U.S. already made a mighty payment for the sin of slavery. It was called the Civil War." He traces wrongheaded political correctness to colleges that have become "virtual one-party states, ideological monopolies, badly unbalanced ecosystems."

The Clintons in particular are anathema. He is "a chronic liar, an out-of-control adulterer, an obstructer of justice, a draft dodger, an all-round morally challenged sleazeball." She has shown "a disturbing pattern of reflexive truth-stretching and reality-doctoring."

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.

In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."

Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he would not comment on Mr. Rove's status.

By the time Moulitsas makes his first official appearance, it's after those cordial conferencees have been milling around at a buffet reception for an hour or so, drinking from the cash bar and getting glittery-eyed. The cartoonist Tom Tomorrow warms up the crowd, reading his cartoons aloud as they are projected on giant screens behind him. It doesn't seem that vital to pay attention, but halfway through the act, a Yearly Kos volunteer stops by the conversational knot I'm in and shushes us. It's the first sign of militancy and while they may not be reaching for the bayonets, the audience stomps and hoots when Moulitsas takes the stage. He smiles benignly and begins: "My name is Markos and I run a site called Daily Kos — maybe you've heard of it."

They greet his sardonic understatement with appreciative howls. The speech starts with a warm celebration of the site's achievements (including the somewhat dubious claim that Jon Tester owes his primary Senate victory in Montana to them and not to his opponent's zipper problem) and then becomes self-congratulatory, boasting about the insurgent primary challenge to Joe Lieberman, where the incumbent now leads by only 55-40. The message of these triumphs? That the "riff- raff" has triumphed over the elite. It's all very empowering, though the speech's crescendo is about how the liberal blogosphere propelled Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents' dinner speech into the No. 1 spot on iTunes. As wins go, it seems symbolic at best. But what a symbol! The mainstream media is obsolete! "We don't need them!" "We can now choose for ourselves the media we consume!" The air, which had been merely charged, positively crackles. A gaggle of mainstream media reporters in the back grows nervous. "Are you worried they're going to blog us?" I ask someone. He replies, "I'm worried they're going to lynch us."

I tracked down the cult leader, wading through a sea of Kossacks, who were sitting on the floor in the hall with their laptops or at tables where they blogged, BlackBerried, texted and cellphoned — sometimes contacting someone only a few feet away. They were paler and more earnest than your typical Vegas visitors, but the mood was like a masquerade. This was the first time many of the bloggers had met, and they delighted in discovering whether their online companions were, as one woman told me, male, female, black, white, old, young or "in a wheelchair."

Mr. Moulitsas assured me he didn't see himself as a journalist, only a Democratic activist. "I don't plan on doing any original reporting — screw that. I need people like you," he said, agreeing that since he still often had to pivot off the reporting of the inadequate mainstream media to form his inflammatory opinions, our relationship was, by necessity, "symbiotic."

As I wandered around workshops, I began to wonder if the outsiders just wanted to get in. One was devoted to training bloggers, who had heretofore not given much thought to grooming and glossy presentation, on how to be TV pundits and avoid the stereotype of nutty radical kids.

Mr. Moulitsas said he had a media coach who taught him how to stand, dress, speak, breathe and even get up from his chair. Another workshop coached Kossacks on how to talk back to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. "One of my favorite points," the workshop leader said, "is that the French were right."

Even as Old Media is cowed by New Media, New Media is trying to become, rather than upend, Old Media. Ms. Cox has left her Wonkette gig to be a novelist and Time essayist. Mr. Moulitsas and Mr. Armstrong wrote a book called "Crashing the Gate," and hit "Meet the Press" and the book tour circuit. Mr. Armstrong left his liberal blog to become a senior adviser to Mr. Warner. What could be more mainstream than that?

There are three gender-segregated sections in any airport: the restrooms, the security pat-down area and the bookstore. In the men's sections of the bookstore, there are books describing masterly men conquering evil. In the women's sections there are novels about ... well, I guess feelings and stuff.

The same separation occurs in the home. Researchers in Britain asked 400 accomplished women and 500 accomplished men to name their favorite novels. The men preferred novels written by men, often revolving around loneliness and alienation. Camus's "The Stranger," Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" topped the male list.

The women leaned toward books written by women. The women's books described relationships and are a lot better than the books the men chose. The top six women's books were "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights," "The Handmaid's Tale," "Middlemarch," "Pride and Prejudice" and "Beloved."

Young boys are compelled to sit still in schools that have sacrificed recess for test prep...

Young boys are compelled to sit still in schools that have sacrificed recess for test prep. Many are told in a thousand subtle ways they are not really good students. They are sent home with these new-wave young adult problem novels, which all seem to be about introspectively morose young women whose parents are either suicidal drug addicts or fatally ill manic depressives.

It shouldn't be any surprise that according to a National Endowment for the Arts study, the percentage of young men who read has plummeted over the past 14 years. Reading rates are falling three times as fast among young men as among young women. Nor should it be a surprise that men are drifting away from occupations that involve reading and school. Men now make up a smaller share of teachers than at any time in the past 40 years.

Those who study the larger trend, however, say there are concrete reasons no woman has ever come close to winning the American presidency. There are fewer political dynasties here of the sort that have given women the stamp of authority elsewhere, like the Bhuttos in Pakistan or the Ghandis in India. (Mrs. Clinton, of course, is a product of a mini-dynasty).

The electoral system here is more challenging than a parliamentary one, in which a woman (Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Golda Meir in Israel) is elected only by members of her own party, not the entire electorate.

Then there is the political pipeline in the United States, which now, with 8 female governors out of 50, and 14 female senators of 100, still offers a limited number of experienced candidates for the presidency.

"There are very few women in the pool when you think about it," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. "The pool that candidates tend to come from in this country are U.S. senators and governors, and until recently we've had very few women in those positions. That's something that's really held us back. It's the whole pipeline that's been problematic, and frankly, our pipeline hasn't been doing that well lately."

Yet such statistics, long the foundation for conventional wisdom about the plight of women in politics, may not fully explain the resistance. Experts who scratch their heads over how many women are elected as chief executives elsewhere — including Ms. Bachelet, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia and Angela Merkel in Germany — point to sociological and cultural reasons why Mrs. Clinton is one of only a few women to have been viewed seriously as a presidential candidate. Ms. Walsh said American society has "not yet raised a generation of girls growing up and thinking, 'I can be president of the United States someday.' "

In any case, I'd love to vote for a female if she had the best qualifications.

No weapons. No ties to terrorists. No threats. No apologies. No explanation. No remorse. Under those circumstances, Americans were told they were fighting a war in Baghdad for liberty and democracy throughout the Middle East. Bush could shift the rationale in the blink of an eye with no apparent qualms.

And, of course, it was important to support the troops in Iraq. Reporters were left to follow the administration's lead. Anything less would have been seen as "unpatriotic". The nation paid a heavy price for the media's blind trust. The administration which never lacked for chutzpah, rode out the storm with its credibility in the tank and few reporters daring to push President Bush on his flimsy reasons for invading Iraq.

My concern is why the nation's media were so gullible. Did they really think it was all going to be so easy, a cakewalk, a superpower invading a third world country? Why did the Washington press corps forgo its traditional skepticism? Why did reporters become cheerleaders for a deceptive administration?

Could it be that no one wanted to stand alone outside Washington's pack journalism?

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn't do it," said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

In a case of interesting timing, Mary Anne Weaver , writing in the latest issue of Atlantic (subscription required), debunks the mythology of Zarqawi, who she insists "is not the terrorist mastermind that he is often claimed to be."

She also writes: "During my time in Jordan, I asked a number of officials what they considered to be the most curious aspect of the relationship between the U.S. and al-Zarqawi, other than the fact that the Bush administration had inflated him.

"One of them said, 'The six times you could have killed Zarqawi, and you didn't.'

From the June 8 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:

GIBSON: You know, we talked about it a minute ago before we went on the air. Out in Las Vegas, the far-left-wing Daily Kos is having its big convention. Every major democratic leader -- Howard Dean, Harry Reid, John Kerry -- is coming out to speak, and they have been defeated in Southern California, [Brian] Bilbray won.

ROLLINS: Right.

GIBSON: Zarqawi was caught the day their convention opens. This is -- the left is demoralized by this.

ROLLINS: Well, they'll claim it's a conspiracy theory. That we knew their meeting was going on and that's why we did it.

GIBSON: Well, they are claiming that. They are claiming at this moment that they were saving Zarqawi to kill at an important moment.

Hundreds of liberal (they'd say progressive) Internet bloggers crawled out of their cybertunnels for face-time and political networking here at the first-ever YearlyKos convention.

Named after DailyKos.com, the widely read political Web log by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the three-day convention that opened on Thursday is something of a milestone — an event that unites the irreverent and ever-morphing liberal blogophere with mainstream political figures who have begun to recognize the bloggers' potential clout.

Billed as "Uniting the Netroots," the convention at the Riviera Hotel promises top Democratic politicians as its headliners, like poli-Web pioneer Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic Party who was one of the first presidential candidates to mobilize supporters and fundraise online, Senator Harry Reid, minority leader in the Senate who not only reads and guest-blogs but has his own Web site (giveemhellharry.com), Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House, Gen. Wesley Clark, and so on.

The gathering resembles a mini-political convention, with seminars instructing participants on the potential power of the blogosphere as well as talks on the Supreme Court, on religion, on the environment, immigration and other issues of the day. No hidden agenda here; the speakers and panelists mocked their own screen-worn politics as those of Bush-bashing, rebel-rousing, noodgy operatives, some already well-known for trying to breathe a new political life online to what the blogocracy views as tired old Democratic ways. Most of the panels, too, emphasize activism, online and offline.

First-term incumbent Michael G. Fitzpatrick is touting himself as "an independent voice for Pennsylvania,"...

...

Fitzpatrick recently introduced legislation to protect children from child predators on social networking sites such as Dailykos, Blogger and MySpace.

infection from human papillomavirus, which is spread through sexual contact. The Food and Drug Administration today permitted Gardasil for females ages 9 through 26, with the goal of inoculating girls before they may become sexually active.

About half a million women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year. The approval raises the possibility that a cancer may be eliminated within a generation, specialists said. It is also a victory for Merck, the fourth-biggest U.S. drugmaker, which has focused increasingly on vaccines and may generate $3 billion in annual sales from Gardasil alone.

...


Gardasil shots will be given in three doses over six months, with each dose costing $120, Merck said. Affordability may help determine whether [sic] how effective the drug in quelling cervical cancer, since 80 percent of the cases are in poorer countries.

"We found that some Asian women in Britain are afraid even to get tested for HPV infection, because they say if it is positive they will be killed, never mind that their husbands probably gave it to them," says Szarewski. She feels that such attitudes may mean that HPV vaccination may be a non-starter in such communities.

Greg Zimet of Indiana University in Indianapolis is more optimistic. His surveys in the US show parents overwhelmingly favour getting their daughters vaccinated. "Doctors tend to fear the worst," he says.

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."

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.

The real battle over the vaccine will be in the coming weeks as the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issues their recommendations for how the vaccine should be administered. While the ACIP decisions are non-binding, its recommendations set the standard by which states decide if they will mandate vaccination, insurance companies choose to cover the cost, and doctors decide how to advise their patients. Their decision on June 29 will determine whether or not we will be on our way to eradicating an STI that affects 80% of women by age 50 and is at the root of almost all cases of cervical cancer.

The only member of the 15-member panel to publicly state his opinion about making the vaccine routinely available is Reginald Finger. Dr. Finger nominated himself to the ACIP after the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family was asked to provide a list of scientists to nominate for various federal boards. Dr. Finger (sorry, I can't get over that name) describes himself as a liaison between the CDC and Focus on the Family. He says, "Focus on the Family wants to have good relationships at CDC - and I can help make those happen."

He has also said that if "people begin to market the [HPV] vaccine or tout the vaccine that this makes adolescent sex safer, then that would undermine the abstinence-only message." For the record, Finger would also be wary of approving an HIV vaccine, should one become available.

MATTHEWS: How did you manage to get Francine Busby the Democratic nomination in that seat?

MEHLMAN: We didn't have anything to do with that, but look...

MATTHEWS: ... What did you make—we just showed the tape, David Shuster just showed that tape of a woman candidate in the United States openly advising people in this country illegally to vote illegally.

The biggest news of the day was how Republicans held onto that seat we talked about last night of convicted former Congressman Duke Cunningham.

How did they do it? Here to make sense of that and more is Charlie Cook, NBC political analyst and publisher of the "Cook Political Report."

You're the best guy at numbers. That race turned out to be about a four-point margin, much narrower than the time before. The challenger Busby, the woman, went from 38 last time to 45 this time. Is that enough of a signal of the Democrats' pre-eminence this time?

...

COOK: Exactly. But on the other hand, this Democrat was a very weak candidate. To be honest, she would have come a lot closer or won this thing had she not opened her mouth and made a huge faux pas last week.

MATTHEWS: My point, I believe illegal immigration is a huge issue in this country. It's not just a Republican issue, it's a national issue. Protecting our identity as citizens is serious business. It is in every country.

This woman, this candidate of the Democratic Party came out and told Hispanic voters go ahead and vote, you don't need papers. She was encouraging illegal voting right on - we heard it on the mike.

The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country.

Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as "inappropriate behaviour". The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women.

In the British-occupied south, where Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death.

One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children's hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her.

Eman Aziz, one of the first women to speak publicly about the dangers, said:"There were five people on the death list with Dr Kefaya. They were threatened 'If you continue working, you will be killed'."

...

A television producer Arij Al-Soltan, 27, now exiled, said: "It is much worse for women in the south. I blame the British for not taking a strong stand."

Sajeda Hanoon Alebadi, 37, who - like Mrs Aziz - has now taken to wearing a headscarf, said: "Women are being assassinated. We know the people behind it are saying we have a fatwa, these are not good women, they should be killed."

Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued.

Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists.

Ms Alebadi said: "After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra."

To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap.

...

A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: "I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men's rights."

There is a fear that Islamic law will become enshrined in the new legislation. Ms Aziz said: "In the Muslim religion, if a man dies his money goes to a male member of the family. After the Iran-Iraq war, there were so many widows that Saddam changed the law so it would go to the women and children. Now it has been changed back."

...

Optimists say the very fact that 25 per cent of Iraq's Provincial Council is composed of women proves women have been empowered since the invasion. But the people of Basra say it is a smokescreen. Any woman who becomes a part of the system, they say, is incapable of engineering any change for the better. Posters around the city promoting the constitution graphically illustrate that view. The faces of the women candidates have been blacked out, the accompanying slogan, "No women in politics," a stark reminder of the opposition they face.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lashed out at Ann Coulter for a "vicious, mean-spirited attack" on a group of outspoken 9/11 widows, whom the right-wing television pundit described as "self-obsessed" and enjoying their husbands' deaths.

Coulter writes in a new book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," that a group of New Jersey widows whose husbands perished in the World Trade Center act "as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them."

She also wrote, "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

Clinton, who has felt Coulter's wrath over the years, responded angrily on Wednesday.

"Perhaps her book should have been called 'Heartless,"' the senator said.

"I know a lot of the widows and family members who lost loved ones on 9/11. They never wanted to be a member of a group that is defined by the tragedy of what happened."

The New York Democrat and former first lady said she found it "unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I've known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safety and security of our country."

The senator spoke after delivering a speech on protecting children from exposure to sex- and violence-saturated media.

Coulter appeared Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show, and reiterated her stance, saying the women used their grief "to make a political point."

Her criticism was aimed at four New Jersey women whom she dubbed "The Witches of East Brunswick," after the town where two of them live.

COLMES: You know, [President] George [H.W.] Bush 41 pardoned drug dealers and drug traders, all presidents have pardoned. So, you know what? We can play a game of who is worse on criminals. You say your Christianity fuels everything you do --

COULTER: Oh, yes. That's my Human Events interview.

COLMES: -- everything you write, and that you're called upon to battle cruelty. You said that to Human Events. Would Jesus sanction a book that belittles and ridicules a large segment of the American population?

COULTER: Yes.

COLMES: Jesus would? Where would Jesus -- can you point to the passage where Jesus would approve of that?

COULTER: Well, there's the famed money changers' passage, which is my favorite, probably a favorite of Sean's, as well. I mean, liberals always think of Christ as, you know, some pantywaist. No. We are called upon to do battle.

La. Governor Kathleen Blanco is expected to sign a strict abortion ban into law now that the Senate has given the measure final legislative approval.
Blanco said last week that she planned to sign the bill, which would ban nearly all abortions in Louisiana if the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 abortion rights ruling is ever overturned.

Under the measure, doctors found guilty of performing abortions would face up to ten years in prison and fines of one hundred thousand dollars.

Newsweek's preachers found single women guilty of at least three deadly sins: Greed - they put their high-paying careers before the quest for a husband. Pride - they acted "as though it were not worth giving up space in their closets for anything less than Mr. Perfect." And sloth - they weren't really out there beating the bushes; "even though they say they want to marry, they may not want it enough."

Now came the judgment day. "For many economically independent women, the consequences of their actions have begun to set in," Newsweek intoned. "For years bright young women singlemindedly pursued their careers, assuming that when it was time for a husband they could pencil one in. They were wrong."

Rarely does a magazine story create the sort of firestorm sparked 20 years ago next week when NEWSWEEK reported on new demographic projections suggesting a rising number of women would never find a husband. Across the country, women reacted with anger, anxiety—and skepticism. The story reported that "white, college-educated women born in the mid-1950s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent." Much of the ire focused on a single, now infamous line: that a single 40-year-old woman is "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to ever marry, the odds of which the researchers put at 2.6 percent. The terrorist comparison wasn't in the study, and it wasn't actually true (though it apparently didn't sound as inappropriate then as it does today, post 9/11). Months later, other demographers came out with new estimates suggesting a 40-year-old woman really had a 23 percent chance of marrying. Today, some researchers put the odds at more than 40 percent. Nevertheless, it quickly became entrenched in pop culture.

SO Newsweek has retracted its 1986 cover article that said a 40-year-old, single, white, college-educated woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry.

For a lot of women, the retraction doesn't matter. The article seems to have lodged itself permanently in the national psyche.

"That Newsweek cover struck terror in the hearts of single women everywhere," said Candace Bushnell, whose New York Observer column, Sex and the City, famously chronicled the angst of single women in Manhattan.

...

In its cover story last week, Newsweek acknowledged that its original article was a reaction to — or a misreading of — the large-scale social changes at the time: women were staying single longer, rising further in their careers and having children later or even not at all.

"The women's movement wrought enormous change in intimate life," said Suzanna Danuta Walters, who is chairwoman of the gender studies department at Indiana University. "We shouldn't have been surprised women were chastised for creating this situation. The panic was a socially and culturally constructed panic."

Islamic militias declared victory today over Somalia's traditional warlords in the battle for control of Mogadishu, quelling months of fierce fighting in the lawless capital but raising new questions about whether this regime, which American officials have accused of sheltering terrorists, will steer the country down an extremist path.

"We want to restore peace and stability to Mogadishu," Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, said in a radio broadcast, according to The Associated Press. "We are ready to meet and talk to anybody and any group for the interest of the people."

Some of the warlords who have ruled over Mogadishu for the last 15 years were on the run today. One was holed up in a hospital north of the city. Others were on the outskirts of the capital, their forces having been pushed from the strategic center.

They had been defeated by militia fighters allied with the Islamic courts that have grown in influence throughout Somalia in recent years, filling a void left by the lack of a central government. The Islamists are a loose coalition of leaders who have put forward Islam, the universal religion in Somalia, as the way out of anarchy.

Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell offered a greeting to delegates to the Republican convention. "It's great to be back in the holy land," the Fort Worth native said to the cheers of the party faithful.For the 4,500 delegates at last week's biennial gathering, it was both an expression of conservative philosophy and religious faith, a melding of church and state.

At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, party leader Tina Benkiser assured them that God was watching over the two-day confab.

"He is the chairman of this party," she said against a backdrop of flags and a GOP seal with its red, white and blue logo.

The party platform, adopted Saturday, declares "America is a Christian nation" and affirms that "God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom."

"We pledge to exert our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and dispel the myth of the separation of church and state," it says.

At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, ministers delivered prayers, gospel singers sang, and the Rev. Dale Young, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Laredo, picked up the convention's dominant theme of immigration.

"Lord, your words tell us there's a sign that this nation is under a curse, when the alien who lives among us grows higher and higher and we grow lower and lower," he preached.

There are five common defensive strategies men unconsciously employ to cope with their envy of women's capacities to generate and nurture life: idealization, appropriation, provoking envy in others, devaluation of the object, and transforming love and longing into hate and fear. These defenses are not mutually exclusive, and often operate in concert.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush - and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in "tinfoil hats," while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as "conspiracy theories,"(1) and The New York Times declared that "there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale."(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots - or received them too late to vote(4) - after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment - roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. "We didn't have one election for president in 2004," says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. "We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities."

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) - more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

MICHAEL CHERTOFF took control of the Department of Homeland Security calling for a more rational, risk-based allotment of federal resources to prepare for and combat the threat of terrorist attacks. So where is the rationality, and what is the risk, that would justify increasing homeland security grants to Charlotte, Omaha, Milwaukee and Tampa and cutting those to New York and Washington?

Unfortunately, Mr. Chertoff and his team aren't offering satisfying explanations for those funding decisions, which were determined according to a formula -- ostensibly risk-based -- whose details are secret. If there is a sound reason why Louisville's grant has jumped by 70 percent while the Washington area's and New York's have plummeted by 40 percent, we haven't heard it. If there is any sense to rating the risk of catastrophe in Washington in the bottom 25 percent of the nation's cities, while rating the Washington metropolitan area in the top 25 percent, we haven't heard that, either.

The temptingly cynical interpretation is that the changes in 2006 funding are all about pork-barrel spending, but that's probably wrong. Texas is about as red as states get, but homeland security grants to Houston, Dallas and San Antonio have been slashed, in some cases severely, and they are among the nation's 10 most populous cities. Nonetheless, the procedure by which funding was determined -- 17 "peer review panels" composed of representatives from 48 states and two U.S. territories reviewed grant applications -- seems to have ensured that political balance trumped a cool-headed assessment of real risk. That is exactly the problem that Mr. Chertoff correctly identified when he entered office and promised to address.

Researchers from the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) analysed the outcome of 28,373 who gave birth to a single baby between 2001 and 2003 at 28 hospitals in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.

Three-quarters of these women had had genital mutilation to varying degrees.

Compared to non-mutilated women, those who had undergone mutilation were up to 31 percent likelier to have a caesarean delivery, 66 percent likelier to have a baby that needed resuscitation and 55 percent likelier to have a child who died before or after birth.

In the countries that were monitored, the national rate of perinatal death ranges between four and six per 100 deliveries. But among the mutilated women, this rose to five and seven deaths per hundred.

"FGM (female genital mutilation) is estimated to lead to an extra one or two perinatal deaths per 100 deliveries," the study said.

Mutilated women were also likelier to suffer from haemorrhage during delivery, need surgery to enlarge the vagina and require an extended hospital stay to recover from childbirth.

Ayesha Baloch was dragged to a field, her brother-in-law held the 18-year-old down, her husband sat astride her legs and slit her upper lip and nostril with a knife.

They call such assaults on women a matter of "honor" in some Pakistani communities, but for the majority it is a source of national shame.

Married less than two months ago in Pakistan's central district of Dera Ghazi Khan, Baloch was accused of having sexual relations with another man before marriage.

"First they tortured me and beat me. I started screaming. Akbar then caught my hands and pulled me to the ground. Essa sat on my legs and cut my nose and lips," Baloch mumbled through her bandages at hospital in the city of Multan.

"I was bleeding and started screaming after they fled on a motorcycle. People heard me and rescued me and took me to my mother's home."

At least she wasn't killed.

More than 1,000 women are slain by their husbands or relatives, and that is just the reported, not actual, number of "honor killings" in Pakistan each year.

Many killings are planned rather than done in rage, and the motive often has more to do with money or settling scores.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

...

Time magazine has described Mr. Warren as one of the nation's most influential Evangelical Christian leaders. He describes himself as a "stealth evangelist" and describes his training programs as "a stealth movement, that's flying beneath the radar, that's changing literally hundreds, even thousands of churches around the world." He claims that he has sold tens of millions of copies of The Purpose Driven Life by developing a worldwide network of pastors.

The international director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church, Mark Carver, is a former investment banker who serves on the Advisory Board of the corporation created in October 2001 to develop and market this game. The creators plan to market their game using the same network marketing techniques that Mr. Warren used to turn The Purpose Driven Life into a commercial success. For example, they plan to distribute their merchandise through pastoral networks, especially mega-churches.

This game immerses children in present-day New York City -- 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian. The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the AntiChrist, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).

Is this paramilitary mission simulator for children anything other than prejudice and bigotry using religion as an organizing tool to get people in a violent frame of mind? The dialogue includes people saying, "Praise the Lord," as they blow infidels away.