ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Alone, the woman strides with her head down through an isolated park near Adams Morgan, seemingly unaware of her status as potential prey.

District vice officers Tommy Ellingsworth and Christopher Dove immediately classify the slight woman in her twenties as a "straggler," or victim in waiting, as she wanders along the path a few blocks from the bustle of one of the city's nightlife pulse points.

"Hey, Miss, a little helpful information -- there has been a lot of robberies here," Ellingsworth yells out of his driver's-side window to the spooked woman in jeans.

With a wave and a "thanks," the woman proceeds through Pierce Park in Northwest Washington, a common but dangerous shortcut.

"They don't help us out any, do they?" Ellingsworth asks his partner, speculating on how helpless the woman and others like her would be if an attacker jumped out from the bushes.

"They're done," Dove said, imagining them as victims on a robbery report.

Deployed in a constant struggle between cops and robbers around the city's center, the two officers in the street-crimes unit view muggings as a survival contest. The way they see it, the stickup men and juveniles patrol the streets like hyenas in search of their next meal: those who wander from the crowd, only to find themselves vulnerable and ultimately victimized.

...
A man pedals his bike behind another man walking alone through an alley. A lone woman steps deep into a neighborhood of rowhouses, with her head down, unaware of the two men in the next block, or even that two other men -- Ellingsworth and Dove -- are watching her from their car.

"She had no clue," Ellingsworth says. "She didn't even look this way."

The two bills passed by the House last Friday and Saturday reflect a single Republican electoral strategy. Representatives want to appear to have accomplished something when they face voters during their five-week summer break, which starts today, and at the same time keep campaign donations flowing from special-interest constituents who are well aware that a great deal was left to do.

One of the bills was a pension reform measure. The other was a grab bag that contains three main items: an extension of the expired tax credit for corporate research; a $2.10 an hour increase in the minimum wage, to be phased in over three years; and a multibillion-dollar estate-tax cut. That's the deal House Republicans are really offering — a few more dollars for 6.6 million working Americans; billions more for some 8,000 of the wealthiest families.

Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called Sunday for hundreds of thousands of his supporters to erect permanent protest camps to cripple Mexico's capital until a disputed presidential election is decided.

Addressing about a half-million marchers filling the city's historic central plaza and spilling down fashionable Reforma boulevard, Lopez Obrador said, "I propose we stay here permanently until the court resolves this ... That we stay here day and night."

If Lopez Obrador supporters heed his call, blockades could have a catastrophic effect on already chaotic city traffic, hurting downtown commerce.

The leftist asked his followers not to "invade public spaces" and demonstrators said they wouldn't block streets, but Lopez Obrador also apologized in advance for "any inconvenience our movement might cause."

"We will take drastic measures. We will blockade airports, we will take over embassies," marcher Sara Zepeda, 32, said as she pushed her 2-month-old son in a baby carriage.

The former Mexico City mayor finished slightly behind his conservative opponent, ex-Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon, in the July 2 election, and says a vote-by-vote recount will expose fraud that titled the election.

Leave your cares behind come with us and find
The pleasures of a journey to the center of the mind

Come along if you care
Come along if you dare
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind

Beyond the seas of thought beyond the realm of what
Across the streams of hopes and dreams where things are really not

Come along if you care...

But please realise you'll probably be surprised
For it's the land unknown to man
Where fantasy is fact
So if you can, please understand
You might not come back

Come along if you care
Come along if you dare
Take a ride to the land inside and you'll see

How happy life could be if all of mankind
Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind

Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind
Center of the mind

A blitzed Mel Gibson launched into an obscenity-laced tirade when he was busted on suspicion of drunken driving early yesterday, threatening an officer and making anti-Semitic and sexually abusive remarks, according to a police report.

The "Passion of the Christ" director repeatedly said, "My life is f----d," according to the report by Los Angeles County Deputy James Mee, which was obtained by TMZ.com. The celebrity news Web site posted excerpts of the handwritten report.

Gibson, 50, was pulled over for speeding at 3:10 a.m. on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., cops said. The Oscar-winning "Braveheart" star and director was driving 80 mph when he was snared by a radar trap, sheriff's deputies said. The speed limit in that area is 45 mph to 55 mph.

Gibson failed both alcohol breath and field sobriety tests, deputies said. His blood-alcohol level was .12, Deputy Anthony Moore said. The legal limit is .08 in California.

According to the incident report obtained by TMZ.com, the Road Warrior embarked on a belligerent, anti-Semitic outburst when he realized he had been busted.

"F-----g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," Mee's report quotes him as saying.

"Are you a Jew?" Gibson asked the deputy, according to the report.

The actor also berated the deputy, threatening, "You motherf----r. I'm going to f--- you," according to Mee's report.

The actor also told the cop he "owns Malibu" and would spend all his money "to get even with me," Mee said in his report.

TMZ quoted a law enforcement source as saying Gibson noticed a female sergeant on the scene and yelled at her, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar t--s?"

--U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon's tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme Court.

Administration officials, who declined to comment on the draft, said the proposal was still under discussion and no final decisions had been made.

Senior officials are expected to discuss a final proposal before the Senate Armed Services Committee next Wednesday.

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

...

The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony.

In Fresno, the morgue is full of victims from a California heat wave. A combination of heat and power outages killed a dozen people in Missouri. And in parts of Europe, temperatures are hotter than in 2003 when a heat wave killed 35,000 people.

Get used to it.

--For the next week, much of the nation should expect more ''extreme heat,'' the National Weather Service predicts.

--In the month of August, most of the United States will see ''above normal temperatures,'' forecasters say.

--For the long-term future, the world will see more and worse killer heat waves because of global warming, scientists say.

The July burst of killer heat waves around the world can't be specifically blamed on global warming. And they aren't the worst ever -- they still can't quite hold a melting candle to the scorching heat of America's 1930s Dust Bowl. But the trend is pointed in that direction, experts say.

Heat waves and global warming ''are very strongly'' connected, said Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis branch chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The immediate cause of the California heat wave -- and other heat waves -- is day-to-day weather, he said.

A persistent high pressure system in the upper atmosphere prevents cooler jetstream air, from making it into the West, said National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen. ''You can't tie global warming into one single event,'' he said.

But what global warming has done is make the nights warmer in general and the days drier, which help turn merely uncomfortably hot days into killer heat waves, Trenberth said.

Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.

Never before had Brother Francis actually seen a pilgrim with girded loins, but that this one was the bona fide article he was convinced as soon as he had recovered from the spine-chilling effect of the pilgrim's advent on the far horizon, as a wiggling iota of black caught in a shimmering haze of heat. Legless, but wearing a tiny head, the iota materialized out of the mirror glaze on the broken roadway and seemed more to writhe than to walk into view, causing Brother Francis to clutch the crucifix of his rosary and mutter and Ave or two. The iota suggested a tiny apparition spawned by the heat demons who tortured the land at high noon, when any creature capable of motion on the desert (except the buzzards and a few monastic hermits such as Francis) lay motionless in its burrow or hid beneath a rock from the ferocity of the sun. Only a thing monstrous, a thing preternatural, or a thing with addled wits would hike purposefully down the trail at noon this way.

I have found it difficult in the past several weeks to reach a conclusion as to what a citizen should do with respect to this fall's forthcoming congressional elections. I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans, active in Merced and San Bernardino Counties as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have just engaged in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Republican Chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, in the 11th Congressional District Republican primary, obtaining just over 32% of the Republican vote against Pombo's 62%.

The observation of Mr. Pombo's political consultant, Wayne Johnson, that I have been mired in the obsolete values of the 1970s, honesty, good ethics and balanced budgets, all rejected by today's modern Republicans, is only too accurate.

It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.

I have decided to endorse Jerry McNerney and every other honorable Democrat now challenging those Republican incumbents who have acted to protect former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who have flatly reneged on their Contract With America promise in 1994 to restore high standards of ethical behavior in the House and who have combined to prevent investigation of the Cunningham and Abramoff/Pombo/DeLay scandals. These Republican incumbents have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the public interest.

"I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine," one person wrote. "I immediately turned the magazine face down," wrote another. "Gross," said a third.

These readers weren't complaining about a sexually explicit cover, but rather one of a baby nursing, on a wholesome parenting magazine _ yet another sign that Americans are squeamish over the sight of a nursing breast, even as breast-feeding itself gains more support from the government and medical community.

Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo _ a baby and part of a woman's breast, in profile _ inappropriate.

One mother who didn't like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.

"I shredded it," said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. "A breast is a breast _ it's a sexual thing. He didn't need to see that."

It's the same reason that Ash, 41, who nursed all three of her children, is cautious about breast-feeding in public _ a subject of enormous debate among women, which has even spawned a new term: "lactivists," meaning those who advocate for a woman's right to nurse wherever she needs to.

"I'm totally supportive of it _ I just don't like the flashing," she says. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

How bad is the political environment for House Republicans? So bad, apparently, that even the party's leadership won't even admit that they are Republicans in their campaign ads this year, as The Hill's Jonathan E. Kaplan reports.

Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), who is in charge of keeping Congress in GOP hands this fall, surprised the political establishment yesterday by airing an early television advertisement that made no mention of his party affiliation.

...

In addition, Reynolds, a 30-year veteran of upstate New York politics and a former GOP minority leader in the state Assembly, is one of several House GOP leaders who do not mention their party affiliation on their campaign websites. In ads posted on their sites, Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) also do not state their Republican credentials.

With Kyra Phillips's discussion of the Apocalypse and the Middle East conflict with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh -- CNN has, for the second time in three days, featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East.

For the second time in three days, CNN featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East. The July 26 edition of CNN's Live From ... featured a nine-minute segment in which anchor Kyra Phillips discussed the Apocalypse and the Middle East with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh. At one point in the discussion, Phillips asked Rosenberg whether she needed "to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done," to which Rosenberg replied: "Well, that would be a good start." Throughout the segment, the onscreen text read: "Apocalypse Now?"

As Media Matters for America documented, the July 24 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now featured a segment examining what "the Book of Revelation tell[s] us about what's happening right now in the Middle East." CNN re-aired this segment the next day. Media Matters also noted that Rosenberg is just one of several conservative media figures who have identified and expounded upon the purported signs of the Apocalypse to be found in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During his appearance on Live From ..., Rosenberg claimed that he had been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill, and the CIA to discuss the Rapture and the Middle East, and noted -- several times -- that the apocalyptic events described in his novels keep coming true.

Senate Approves Bill That Would Criminalize Assisting Minors To Circumvent State Parental Notification Laws

The Senate on Tuesday voted 65-34 to approve a bill (S 403) that would allow federal charges to be filed against any individual who transports minors across state lines for the purpose of evading state abortion parental notification or consent laws, the Washington Post reports (Babington, Washington Post, 7/26). Under the bill, sponsored by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), people who violate the measure would be subject to a fine or up to one year in prison. The measure includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant minor (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 7/24). Senate leaders last week agreed to vote on a small list of amendments to the legislation before a final vote, CQ Today reports. Senators on Tuesday voted 98-0 to approve an amendment, sponsored by Ensign and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), that would bar a father who rapes his daughter from suing anyone who assists in her abortion, as well as bars anyone committing incest on a minor from transporting a minor to another state to obtain an abortion, according to CQ Today. Boxer said the amendment is an "improvement" on the legislation, but she added that the bill still allows parental consent rights to fathers who impregnate their daughters and does not ban the criminal prosecution of people who assist minors who became pregnant through incest (Perine/Stern, CQ Today, 7/25). According to National Right to Life Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, 26 states that have parental consent laws would be affected (Hulse, New York Times, 7/26). Minors or their parents could not be charged under the legislation (Washington Post, 7/26).

Supporters of the bill said it would prevent boyfriends and others from pressuring girls to have abortions, while opponents said the bill could harm girls' safety because some parents could beat their daughter if they found out she planned to undergo the procedure, the Post reports (Washington Post, 7/26). Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said that opponents of the legislation "want to strip the overwhelming majority of good parents of their rightful role and responsibility because of the misbehavior of a few" (AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/26).

Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 -- up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both "substantial" and "surprising" in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.
The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion, which supports President Bush's original rationale for going to war. Respondents were questioned in early July after the release of a Defense Department intelligence report that revealed coalition forces recovered 500 aging chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin gas nerve agents in Iraq.
"Filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist," said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, during a June 21 press conference detailing the newly declassified information.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who shared the podium, said, "Iraq was not a WMD-free zone."
In recent weeks, the Michigan Republican has recommended that more material confiscated since the invasion be declassified and made public, including a 1998 standing order to Iraqi officials to hide or destroy weapons and thus evade inspectors from the United Nations.

Irreparable damage, argues Carol Sarler in this article on the hollow promise of Girl Power, was wrought upon womandom by the Spice Girls. She connects various dots from vapid girl group worship to teen drunkenness to impoverished single motherhood:

It would be absurd, of course, to lay every teenage pregnancy, every inebriated ladette or every cheap tart sleeping with her sixth holiday 'romance' in a week at the feet of five barely competent girl singers. It would be fair, however, to recognise that [The Spice Girls] presided over a period that saw young womanhood spiral into a previously unimaginable decline; that they wrote its soundtrack, they sang its theme, they invited a generation to play along — and that altogether too many women sadly did.

Asserts Sarler, according to Girl Power you need only be hot and dumb to succeed as a woman.

It will come as no great shock that I concur with Sarler; women's liberation from the Sexy'n'Stupid Mandate appears to have taken enormous, mind-blowing strides backwards. These days young women wish to emulate America's spokes-ho Paris Hilton, whose glittering, anorexic, trust-funded blonde emptiness demonstrates the ample rewards awaiting those who agree to wear the nation's jizz on their faces. The fellatiolution will be televised.

But uh-oh, guess what. It's not your right to 'choose' to be a sexay layday. Making traditional, patriarchy-approved, feminine submissive 'choices' is like spitting in the eye of every woman who has ever been raped, humiliated, harassed, denied birth control, abandoned, passed over, or beaten. While you were poledancing for your patriarch in a maid's uniform, this tragic woman was so deranged by the blunt force trauma of patriarchy she thought ditching her 6-year-old kid at a Chicago food fair was a 'choice'.

Operation Save America has identified a whole host of things they call offensive to God. Their director, Pastor Phillip "Flip" Benham, told his congregation they had three choices with Muslims: kill them, be killed by them, or convert them. "Which is your choice?" he asked. "While not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims," he said. "We destroy the Quran, not to desecrate their religion, but to set them free.

Pastor Flip has a special disdain for feminists as well. "Feminism is rebellion against God," he says. "They hate men. Gloria Steinem said, 'A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' That'll help you to understand what feminists think of men." Pastor Flip believes feminists are angry, ugly white women who, for the most part, have been unable to find a male partner. And as they eschew having children, he says, they condemn themselves to a lonely and unhappy life, striving continually to be something they cannot be: men. "There is not a greater vocation in the world for a woman than to be a mother," says Pastor Flip.

Basically, Diebold included a "back door" in its software, allowing
anyone to change or modify the software. There are no technical safeguards in place to ensure that only authorized people can make
changes.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the
software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against the law.

Typically, modern voting machines are delivered several days before an election and stored in people's homes or in insecure polling stations. A wide variety of poll workers, shippers, technicians, and others who have access to these voting machines could rig the software. Such software alterations could be difficult to impossible to detect.

Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the
back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold's actions by saying, "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut on Sunday promised a bruising fight in the U.S. Senate against confirming John Bolton to be the country's ambassador to the United Nations.

President George W. Bush bypassed the Senate and installed Bolton into the position last year when lawmakers were on recess.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled a confirmation hearing on Bolton for Thursday after Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich, who previously opposed the nomination, expressed support for Bolton.

``This is going to be a bruising fight,'' Dodd said on CNN's ''Late Edition'' program. ``I'm sorry the administration wants to go forward with this.''

He argued that problems Democrats had raised last year were not resolved. They blocked the nomination amid accusations Bolton in his previous job as the top U.S. diplomat for arms control had bullied intelligence analysts.

``The problems still persist. Many ambassadors at the U.N. feel he hasn't done a good job there,'' said Dodd, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. ``It's polarized the situation.''

Bolton's appointment expires in January when the current congressional session formally ends. While Bush could reappoint him, he would not be paid.

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.

The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency's 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the I.R.S. who oppose them.

The Bush administration has passed measures that reduce the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax — which opponents refer to as the "death tax" — but has failed in its efforts to eliminate the tax entirely. Mr. Brown said in a telephone interview Friday that he had ordered the staff cuts because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under President Bush's legislation.

But six I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a "back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax."

The contraceptive pill saves the lives of up to 3,000 women a year in the UK and Europe, according to new medical research.

A number of studies now suggest that the Pill reduces the risk of ovarian cancer significantly. One study, reported in the British Journal of Cancer this week, found a protective effect of up to 50 per cent for Pill users, while another, reported in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, found a similar effect after analysing data on the use of the Pill since its introduction.

According to the studies, women who use the contraceptive pill reduce their risk of developing ovarian cancer by more than a third, and the longer they take it for, the greater the protection.

Carlo La Vecchia of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche in Milan, one of the world's leading experts on cancer, says that ovarian cancer cases have dropped in recent years: "Ovarian cancer incidence and mortality for younger generations have been declining in most developed countries, and the decline has been greatest in countries where oral contraceptive use had spread earlier.''

Although early forms of the Pill have been linked to some health problems, there is increasing evidence that it prevents others. The report says women who used the Pill at some time are 30 per cent less likely to develop the cancer. The protection increases with the length of time a woman takes the Pill by around 5 per cent a year, to about 50 per cent protection for long-term use. The reduced risk was seen in women both with and without a family history or genetic predisposition to ovarian cancer.

"The favourable effect against ovarian cancer risk persists for years after Pill use has ceased, and it is not confined to any particular type of Pill,'' says Dr La Vecchia. "Since the incidence of ovarian cancer is already appreciable in middle age, and survival from the disease is unsatisfactory, the protection of Pill use corresponds to the avoidance of 3,000 to 5,000 ovarian cancer cases, and consequently 2,000 to 3,000 deaths a year in Europe." He added that similar numbers were benefiting from taking the Pill in the US.

The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.

Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.

The profile of the lawyers being hired has since changed dramatically, according to the resumes of successful applicants to the voting rights, employment litigation, and appellate sections. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Globe obtained the resumes among hundreds of pages of hiring data from 2001 to 2006.

Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds -- either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups -- have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.

...

Many lawyers in the division, who spoke on condition of anonymity, describe a clear shift in agenda accompanying the new hires. As The Washington Post reported last year, division supervisors overruled the recommendations of longtime career voting-rights attorneys in several high-profile cases, including whether to approve a Texas redistricting plan and whether to approve a Georgia law requiring voters to show photographic identification.

In addition, many experienced civil rights lawyers have been assigned to spend much of their time defending deportation orders rather than pursuing discrimination claims. Justice officials defend that practice, saying that attorneys throughout the department are sharing the burden of a deportation case backlog.

As a result, staffers say, morale has plunged and experienced lawyers are leaving the division. Last year, the administration offered longtime civil rights attorneys a buyout. Department figures show that 63 division attorneys left in 2005 -- nearly twice the average annual number of departures since the late 1990s.

At a recent NAACP hearing on the state of the Civil Rights Division, David Becker , who was a voting-rights section attorney for seven years before accepting the buyout offer, warned that the personnel changes threatened to permanently damage the nation's most important civil rights watchdog.

``Even during other administrations that were perceived as being hostile to civil rights enforcement, career staff did not leave in numbers approaching this level," Becker said. ``In the place of these experienced litigators and investigators, this administration has, all too often, hired inexperienced ideologues, virtually none of which have any civil rights or voting rights experiences."

In short, the administration approach embodies a few principles we neoincrementalists hold dear. First, you create policies in accord with your basic values while fully understanding the downside risks — the downside risk in this case being that terrorists may have developed methods that make it nearly impossible for superior military forces to uproot them given the global media environment.

Second, you go to war with the world you have. Right now unilateral actions are politically unsustainable, so everything has to be done through a coalition. And third, statecraft is soulcraft. If you can create circumstances in which democrats win, you can change perceptions and create the momentum for future victories — incrementally.

Though these fledgling female armies may surprise many in the West, a much bigger line was crossed in 2002, when Wafa' Idris, a resident of al-Ama'ari Refugee Camp in the West Bank, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber. Idris had been forced into an arranged marriage by her elder brother. Like most other Palestinian women, she was dependent almost entirely on male relatives for her economic well-being and survival and had no choice but to accede to her brother's decision. In her heart, however, she remained defiant and never accepted the marriage or her new husband, a first cousin. When she became pregnant against her will, she secretly aborted the child. On top of her unhappy marriage, abortion, and subsequent divorce, Idris was further traumatized by her weekly exposure to blood and death in her work as a paramedic for the Red Crescent, where she volunteered every Friday, caring for large numbers of Palestinians wounded during the second intifada.

It has never been clear whether Wafa' Idris intentionally blew herself up with the 22-pound bomb she was carrying or whether she was simply a courier, but she died in the blast, killing one Israeli and wounding a hundred more. Idris' brother, for his part, said that her decision to become a suicide bomber was due to her work at the Red Crescent and that she was a hero.

Two years later, Hamas sent out its own female suicide bomber -- a 22-year-old woman from a wealthy family in the Gaza Strip and the mother of two young children, one of whom, reportedly, was not yet weaned. Pretending to be crippled, Reem Riyashi arrived at an Israeli checkpoint and requested a personal security check so that she would not have to go through a metal detector. Minutes later, she blew herself up, killing four Israelis. Seven more Israelis and four Palestinians were also injured in the explosion, which was so powerful that it blew the roof off the building and scattered human remains to such a degree that the bomber's body parts could not be distinguished from those of her victims.

Like Idris before her, Riyashi had a secret. She reportedly had had an affair initiated by a Hamas operative, and when she was offered the chance to redeem herself by carrying out a suicide bombing, she took it. Her husband, Palestinian security forces assert, drove her to the checkpoint. Hamas leader Ahmad Yasin had stipulated that a female suicide bomber must be chaperoned by a male.

Once a woman from each of the two major Palestinian factions had carried out a suicide bombing, it was inevitable that others would follow. Yet even as their numbers grow, what is most remarkable about these women is the way in which their stories are presented, particularly in the Western media. The usual motives cited for carrying out a suicide bombing -- humiliation, despair, revenge, hate, fame, money, religion, nationalism, the occupation and combinations thereof -- are deemed insufficient to explain female bombers. Male suicide bombers, of course, often have their own unofficial motivations, but they are rarely the focus of a report. In contrast, the innermost recesses of a woman's psyche, her most shameful secrets -- almost invariably sexual in nature -- are displayed to a world eager for such an unveiling, eager to be shown that women do not truly relish the job of dying and killing.

Palestinian female suicide bombers, unlike some of their male counterparts, are not sex symbols but rather icons of purity, sacrifice and honor -- and this holds true both for the Islamists and the nationalists, if to varying degrees. Whereas the Syrian Social Nationalist Mouhaidli adorned herself in a snazzy red Falangist beret and, later, in a white bridal gown and veil symbolizing her deathly post-bomb wedding, Um al-Abed appeared before the cameras in Gaza wearing a conservative Saudi-style hijab, or head covering, and a niqab, or face covering, with a small slot through which she looked out at the world. Despite her moment of fame, this new bride of Palestine was already faceless and invisible -- as if foreshadowing her death -- while the institution whose birth she announced promised to produce many more like her.

Over at The Corner, even John Derbyshire thinks there's some evidence that the middle class isn't doing too well these days:

If the rich get richer while the middle class thrives, and some decent provision is made for the poor, I'm a happy man, living in a society I consider healthy and am proud of. If, however, the rich get richer while the middle class is struggling, or actually declining, I am not a happy man. There are some reasons to think that is happening, and you don't have to be a socialist to worry about this.

It is, perhaps, telling that Derbyshire's post sparked not a single response from his fellow conservatives. Even the neo-Lafferians at NRO seem a little too embarrassed by the whole thing to go through their usual exercise of digging up a few pseudo-statistics to demonstrate that, really, the middle class is going great guns under today's Republican leadership.

....No amount of chaff can hide the failure of our remarkable productivity surge (and the accompanying robust growth of the overall economy) to meaningfully boost average wages, which have barely grown with inflation. Separated by income level, the picture is more dismal. From 2000 to 2005, for example, average weekly wages for the bottom 10% dropped by 2.7% (after adjustment for inflation), while those of the top 10% rose by 5.3%.

So, the top quintile is making more. That means by definition, the bottom three [sic] quintiles are making less. Again according to the Census bureau for the years 1969 - 1999 the fourth highest quintile saw its percentage of national compensation income drop from 23.6% in 1968 to 22.8% in 1999. This is a 3% drop. The third quintile saw its percentage drop from 17.3% to 15.3% or a 11.56% decrease. The second lowest quintile saw its percentage drop from 12.1% to 9.8% or a drop of 19%. The bottom quintile saw its percentage decrease from 5.7% to 4.1% or a drop of 28%.


In other words, the lower you are, the larger share of national income you have lost over the time period.

A substitute judge hearing the case of an illegal immigrant seeking a restraining order against her husband threatened to turn her over to immigration officials if she didn't leave his courtroom.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Pro Tem Bruce R. Fink told Aurora Gonzalez during last week's hearing that he was going to count to 20 and that if she was still in his courtroom when he finished, he would have her arrested and deported to Mexico.

"I'm going to count to 20, and if you people have left this courtroom and disappeared, she isn't going to Mexico forthwith," Fink said, according to the court transcript. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. When I get to 20, she gets arrested and goes to Mexico."

After Gonzalez left the courtroom, Fink asked Salgado if he wanted to stay, and he said yes.

Fink then dismissed the case: "Well, she brought the proceedings, and if she's not here to go forward, I guess all of the requests are denied."

On Wednesday, Fink, who has been a family law attorney for 35 years, insisted he was seeking what he thought was an agreeable solution for both parties.

"What I saw was nothing more than some yelling and screaming between a husband and wife," he said.

"I also saw that they really didn't want to not be together anymore."

If he had issued the restraining order, Fink said, "we'd wind up with exactly the opposite of what these people wanted."

"The cure could be far worse than the illness," he said.

One former senior administration official said Bush is only emboldened by the pressure from U.N. officials and European leaders to lead a call for a cease-fire. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded yesterday that the fighting in Lebanon stop.

"He thinks he is playing in a longer-term game than the tacticians," said the former official, who spoke anonymously so he could discuss his views candidly. "The tacticians would say: 'Get an immediate cease-fire. Deal first with the humanitarian factors.' The president would say: 'You have an opportunity to really grind down Hezbollah. Let's take it, even if there are other serious consequences that will have to be managed.' "

...

Those who know Bush say his view of the conflict was shaped by several formative experiences -- in particular the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which made fighting terrorism the central mission of his presidency. Another formative experience was a helicopter ride over the West Bank with Ariel Sharon in 1998, when Bush was Texas governor -- a ride he later said showed him Israel's vulnerability. The cause of Israel has been championed by many of the evangelical Christians who make up a significant chunk of the president's political base.

Bush and his team were also deeply skeptical of the Middle East policy of the previous administration, and of what they see as an excessive devotion to a peace process in which one of the protagonists, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was not seriously invested. Explaining the reluctance to push quickly for a cease-fire, one senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record indicated a belief that premature diplomacy might leave Hezbollah in a position of strength.

"We don't want the kind of truce that will lead to another conflict," said this official, who added that, when the time comes, "you will see plenty of diplomacy."

Fred S. Zeidman, a Texas venture capitalist who is active in Jewish affairs and has been close to the president for years, said the current crisis shows the depth of the president's support for Israel. "He will not bow to international pressure to pressure Israel," Zeidman said. "I have never seen a man more committed to Israel."

U.S. President George W. Bush playfully slaps U.S. Congressman Al Green (D-TX) as he greets delegates following his remarks at the annual convention at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Given the American stakes in this crisis, the Bush administration's passivity is inexplicable. Hezbollah and Israel have been tossing lighted matches back and forth in a region soaked with gasoline, and the world is waiting for robust American diplomacy. Instead we see a tongue-tied superpower, led by a president who grumbles into an open mike in St. Petersburg that Kofi Annan should get on the phone to Syria and make it all go away, or maybe Condoleezza Rice should get on a plane to the Middle East.

Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon.

Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration arms-control official who is close to Vice President Cheney, said he believes foreign policy innovation for White House ended with Bush's second inaugural address, a call to spread democracy throughout the world.

"What they are doing on North Korea or Iran is what [Sen. John F.] Kerry would do, what a normal middle-of-the-road president would do," he said. "This administration prided itself on molding history, not just reacting to events. Its a normal foreign policy right now. It's the triumph of Kerryism."

The Bush administration and Republican legislators yesterday proposed a $100 million national plan to offer low-income students private-school vouchers to escape low-performing public schools. The plan was immediately assailed by Democrats, unions and liberal advocacy groups.

The proposal comes four days after the independent research arm of the Department of Education issued a report showing that public schools are performing as well as or better than private schools, with the exception of eighth-grade reading, in which private schools excelled. The results prompted questions from foes of vouchers about why taxpayer money should go toward private schools instead of toward improving public schools.

The National Center for Education Statistics compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores from about 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools. Private-school students historically score higher, but the NCES made adjustments to account for student background -- such as socioeconomic factors and race -- which leveled the playing field.

The report also found that conservative Christian schools -- a constituency that supports vouchers -- lagged significantly behind public schools in eighth-grade math. The report supported similar findings from a University of Illinois study on math.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told reporters yesterday that she hadn't yet read the report and made references to the report's "modest sample." The report itself cautioned that because schools are all very different, overall comparisons of the two types of schools may be of "modest utility."

"It was not an evaluation of how school vouchers, how scholarship programs, how additional resources work for low-income families trapped in chronically low-performing schools," she said. "I do see them as . . . apples and oranges issues."

Grover "Russ" J. Whitehurst, director of the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences, said this was the first time NCES used student variables. He said that while the report shows that considering the variables did change scores, it is of limited value because it's just a snapshot in time -- with no long-term reference points.

Spellings, flanked by Senate and House leaders on Capitol Hill, said the "opportunity scholarship" plan would be aimed at helping low-income students "trapped" in poor schools by offering them transfers to other public schools, tutoring, and scholarships to private schools, up to $4,000 per student. The secretary said the plan would cover 28,000 students.

Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.

"This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution," one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government."

With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.

Nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across
Iraq in May and June, a spike in deaths that coincided with rising sectarian attacks across the country, the
United Nations said Tuesday.

...

The report from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq describes a wave of lawlessness and crime, including assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation.

Hundreds of teachers, judges, religious leaders and doctors have been targeted for death, and thousands of people have fled, the report said. Evidence suggests militants also have begun to target homosexuals, it said.

"While welcoming recent positive steps by the government to promote national reconciliation, the report raises alarm at the growing number of casualties among the civilian population killed or wounded during indiscriminate or targeted attacks by terrorists or insurgents," the U.N. said in a note accompanying the report.

A tribal president who was ousted for proposing an abortion clinic on the reservation has been reinstated at least through next week.

Council members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe removed Cecelia Fire Thunder from office June 29 for proposing the clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation that would be beyond the reach of South Dakota's strict new abortion ban.

A tribal judge reinstalled her temporarily Monday after she argued that council members didn't follow procedure when voting to remove her from office. A tribal court is scheduled July 28 to consider making the order permanent.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is renewing its call for Congress to step in and stop the Bush administration from funneling millions of taxpayer dollars into so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) that, as a new congressional report documents, are blatantly misleading women regarding medical issues.

Today Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Government Reform Committee, released the investigative report, False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers. The report outlines how 20 CPCs in 15 states that received federal tax dollars misled or provided false information to investigators who called asking about their services.

For too long he has defined his image by distancing himself from other Democrats, cozying up to right-wing media figures and, at key moments, directing his criticisms at members of his own party instead of at the Republicans in power.

Late last year, after President Bush's job approval ratings hit record lows, Lieberman decided to lash out at the administration's critics, writing in the ultraconservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages that "we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril." In this he echoed the most toxic of Republican talking points — that criticizing the conduct of the war is actually damaging to national security.

Lieberman has a long history of providing cover for the worst of Republican actions while enthusiastically serving as his own party's scold. After the Senate acquitted President Clinton on all impeachment charges, Lieberman called for his censure. More recently, he rejected a call by Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) to censure Bush over the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, calling the attempt "divisive."

Much of the interest in this race is not because of Lamont but rather his perceived base of support from bloggers, including me. One prominent pundit claimed that Lamont's online backers were practitioners of "blogofascism"; another called the campaign an "inquisition." Online political discourse can indeed be caustic and combative, like talk radio. But too many in the Lieberman wing of the party have elevated civility and the illusion of bipartisan comity over challenging Republicans' failed policies. In the process, they have echoed GOP jargon in dismissing critics as "angry" and "hate-filled."

Politics is a contact sport. Those who would paper it over with a veneer of false propriety are pretending it's something that it is not. More than that, loud and raucous debate is a healthy part of our democracy.

An alliance of nearly a hundred of the nation's wealthiest donors is roiling Democratic political circles, directing more than $50 million in the past nine months to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives.

A year after its founding, Democracy Alliance has followed up on its pledge to become a major power in the liberal movement. It has lavished millions on groups that have been willing to submit to its extensive screening process and its demands for secrecy.

These include the Center for American Progress, a think tank with an unabashed partisan edge, as well as Media Matters for America, which tracks what it sees as conservative bias in the news media. Several alliance donors are negotiating a major investment in Air America, a liberal talk-radio network.

But the large checks and demanding style wielded by Democracy Alliance organizers in recent months have caused unease among Washington's community of Democratic-linked organizations. The alliance has required organizations that receive its endorsement to sign agreements shielding the identity of donors. Public interest groups said the alliance represents a large source of undisclosed and unaccountable political influence.

I spent my years at college struggling to maintain a Biblical outlook on life. I was constantly attacked with every liberal "ism" known to modern man: feminism, humanism, relativism, evolutionism, etc. In my semester of student teaching alone, I felt that much of my purity was robbed from me as I was subject to horrifying discussions on unmentionable topics - often instigated by my mentor teacher! I survived 4 years in a secular university, but only by the grace of God. It was not an experience I would wish to repeat, though God certainly used that experience to teach me many, many lessons. If I could change one thing about my experience in college, though, it would not be to edit out all the crud or to delete my entire experience - though those would be close seconds! I spent much of my years in college bitter towards my parents and very judgmental of everyone and everything I encountered. If I could change one thing about my college experience, it would be my attitude. My first responsibility was to honor my parents and to glorify God in all circumstances, and I failed in that.

In general I would not recommend college to other women. I think, in general, that young women would make better use of their time and spiritual development by pursuing studies on their own and serving their family and their church during their years of singleness. There are many opportunities for home-based businesses that do not require a college degree or much initial capital. A typical college education is not good training for being a wife and mother, since it is normally coupled with feministic ideology and a focus away from home responsibilities. Women today are leaving college disillusioned as to their Biblical roles. In college they are masculinized by feminist teachings, and after 4 years spent focusing on training for a career, few women exit college still focused on being content and submissive keepers at home. I think there are valid reasons for women to attend college, but I think they are few and much farther between than is generally believed. Certainly a college education has some benefits, and I do not believe that every single woman is by default called to be a wife and mother. I do believe, though, that for the vast majority of young women - especially those who do feel called to serve God as a wife and mother - the negatives of college outweigh the benefits.

Living without her father or another appointed male authority figure, independently on a college campus, doesn't seem to properly keep with the notion of living under authority. When a girl is, say 500 miles away from her father, she can ask advice over the phone, but really, is that any different that chatting with her best friend for advice about a situation? In fact, I would guess the best friend's advice would be more often-sought and (in most cases) more readily taken, so it seems the girl would be more living under the authority of her friends than her father, if occasional long-distance advice suffices for authority.

And please let me make it clear that I am speaking of authority and headship in a positive sense, not in the domineering sense of a father with a power problem, who will not let allow his unmarried, adult daughter to purchase a new pair of socks without his permission. That is not Biblical headship; that is a power problem. I am talking of a positive father-daughter relationship where the father earnestly desires to lead his daughter and guide her in her every day life, and where the daugher earnestly desires her father's opinion and protection in her life on a regular basis, not just on major decisions like marriage. And I am the first to admit that I fail to properly display the daughter's side of the picture I just painted.

We have seen in previous chapters that evangelicals, Southern Baptist Convention adherents, and others oppose government social and economic programs because they interfere with a person's individual responsibility for his or her salvation. One recent scholarly analysis updated evangelical economic thinking to include the role of televangelists, specifically Falwell and Robertson, in upholding "a marriage between religion and American capitalism" during the 1980s. It further elaborated on "theology increasingly espoused by Pentecostal and charismatic preachers: ...that God's blessings are not confined to the next life. Indeed, God desires to bless his children materially in this world. By naming what you want (a new car, better job, good health), claiming it in the name of Jesus, and living in the faith that it will come to you, these believers no longer tied private property to the notion of hard work.

We referred to the fifth-century Council of Ephesus, which condemned belief in a future, historical millennium. Clearly the idea is very old. But with a lot of added features, it has become popular in the U.S. only very recently. We speak about the New Right in religion, as well as in politics, only since the late '70s. The preachers of these "new" teachings are the leaders of the new religious right. We will start our survey with a more moderate and serious view.

The Pre-millennialist picture. As we defined this teaching it holds that the Second Coming of Christ will be followed by a thousand years of Christ's earthly reign. George Eldon Ladd of Fuller Seminary, an exponent of this view, writes, "...the New Testament for the most part does not foresee a millennial kingdom"; and again, "The New Testament nowhere expounds the theology of the millennium, that is, its purpose in God's redemptive plan" (in The Meaning of the Millennium, op. cit. p. 39). Having made this careful statement, Ladd outlines the whole program to the end.

Before you read any further, I urge you to read Revelation 19:11—20:15 and take notes. This is important so that you yourself can judge and are not left between Professor Ladd's and my perceptions. For your independent view read the passage carefully: what happens, to whom, who does what? What are you reading about? What does it all mean? Try to visualize what you read. Then come back to this text and find out if your notes agree with what follows.

The Second Coming, says Ladd, brings Christ as conqueror who now destroys his enemies: first the Antichrist and all his supporters, then the one behind the Antichrist -- the dragon, or Satan, who is bound and imprisoned for a thousand years. The "first resurrection" of the saints takes place, they share Christ's millennial reign. At the close of this period Satan is released and finds supporters among the unregenerated who are prepared to stand against God. A final, eschatological war ends with the devil being cast into the lake of fire. The second resurrection -- of those not raised before the millennium --takes place, and they stand before God's judgment throne.

Finally death itself is vanquished; like the devil and the wicked, it is thrown into the lake of fire. To most of us this, as a prophecy about the end of time, is all new. How is it that some Christians know this much about the "program" of the end times while the rest of us do not? They are reading the book of Revelation, from chapter 19, verse 11, to the end of chapter 20, a sequence of apocalyptic visions, as if they were prophecies. And inevitably they interpret those chapters. If you read Revelation 19:11—20:15, did you find all of the above? I did not, and needed the interpretation of millennialists to make "sense" of some of the events. Millennialists like Ladd are restrained interpreters because they hold that apocalyptic literature is about the end time -- and as we noted, they read apocalyptic as if it were prophetic fore-telling. But they do not turn other passages into end-time predictions.

Dispensational approach. The restraint noted above is singularly lacking in this school of thought. John Nelson Darby, a founder of the Plymouth Brethren, and C.I. Scofield following him, developed a scheme of dispensations. They taught that God has two distinct plans for two distinct communities. God has an earthly plan for Israel and a heavenly plan for "born-again" Christians. The rest of humanity has the possibility of joining one or the other. This view was popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909.

In the 1917 edition, Scofield writes in the introduction: "...the dispensations are distinguished, exhibiting a majestic, progressive order of divine dealings of God with humanity, the increasing purpose which runs through and links together the ages from the beginning of the life of man to the end of eternity."

Darby and Scofleld claimed to have discovered a doctrine of ages or dispensations in the Bible. The past is seen as a line of distinct, distinguishable periods; the present and the future are also part of the scheme of dispensations. They have discovered seven distinct dispensations:

1. Dispensation of innocence -- which ends with Genesis 3.

2. Dispensation of conscience -- ends with the flood.

3. Dispensation of human government -- ends with tower of Babel.

4. Dispensation of promise -- ends with Abraham's descendants going to Egypt and slavery.

5. Dispensation of law -- ends with the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70.

6. Dispensation of grace -- ends with Second Coming of Christ.

7. Dispensation of the kingdom that will bring .history to an end.

The endings of the first five ages indicate that humanity failed completely and God thought up another dispensation and gave another opportunity in which humanity failed once again. Scofield warned of ruin, disaster, catastrophe to the end. There is no possibility of peace on earth until the millennium. Only true Christians need not fear because they will be with Christ. These and a number of other characteristics present in Scofield's dispensationalism became stronger and more obvious among his followers.

Dispensational interpretation of Scripture. Any passage from the prophets or apocalyptic writings can be used by dispensationalists as if it were speaking about the millennial reign of Christ. There is no justification for this, least of all by people who claim to interpret the Bible literally. The original meaning of the text -- that is, the intention of the writer in the historical, cultural context of the writing -- is disregarded by dispensationalists.

It is true that Jesus and the early Christian community reinterpret some texts, in the light of the Christ event and only in that light, not with reference to something yet to come. Matthew 2:15 reinterprets Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." Philip reinterprets Isaiah 53 to the Ethiopian eunuch as speaking of Christ (Acts 7:30-35). But no other figure or event save Christ -- his cross and resurrection -- is ground for reinterpretation.

One example may show how differently biblical texts can be handled. We will look at Daniel 7:7-8, as commented on by John Calvin and C.I. Scofield. The verse speaks of the fourth beast, a dreadful creature with ten horns and "among them another little horn." When interpreters get to the little horn, says Calvin, they quickly point to the Pope or the Turks, that is, whoever opposes or threatens the faithful in their own day. But Calvin rejects this, because "they think the whole course of Christ's kingdom is here described," but instead God is showing to the prophet "what should happen up to the first advent of Christ." The convulsions of the age before Christ were too many, says Calvin. Dominion in the Near East went to the Persians, then the Macedonians -- "afterwards those robbers who made war under Alexander suddenly became kings" -- and strife and hostility were experienced. Then the Roman Empire took over. "Thus this vision was presented...that all the children of God might understand what severe trials awaited them before the advent of Christ." Daniel "does not embrace...the whole kingdom of Christ" (Commentary on Daniel 7:8). As here, so Calvin reads the entire book of Daniel as addressed to contemporaries at the time of writing with understandable historical and social references, therefore relevant for those who first hear or read it. It is speaking about the time before the first coming of Christ and needs to be interpreted in its historical context

According to Scofield the vision speaks of the end of Gentile world-dominion. The "little horn" is identified with "prince that shall come" (Dan. 9:26,27), the "king" (Dan. 11:36-45), "the abomination" (Dan. 12:11 and Matt. 24:15), the "man of sin" (II Thess. 2:4-8) and the "Beast" (Rev.13:4-10). What a horn!

Scofield's end of the Gentile world-power is still in the future. "The 10 kingdoms, covering the regions formerly ruled by Rome, will constitute, therefore, the form in which the fourth or Roman empire will exist when the whole fabric of Gentile world-domination is smitten by the 'stone cut out without hands' = Christ." How did Scofield know this? What reason can one find to say this is prophecy about the end of this world? None, according to the rest of us -- outside dispensationalism. That Scofield is really speaking of the end time he makes clear both by the phrase "Gentile world power" and by cross-referencing the Daniel 7 passage with a footnote to Revelation 16:14: "The time of the Gentiles is that long period beginning with the Babylonian captivity of Judah...to be brought to an end by the destruction of Gentile world-power,...i.e., the coming of the Lord in glory (Rev. 19:11,21). Until which time Jerusalem is politically subject to Gentile rule (Luke 21:24)." And again on Daniel 2: "Gentile world power is to end in a sudden, catastrophic judgment," that is, in Armageddon

Originally Posted by bazza
Some of the old testament prophecies confuse
me regarding the time frame....but I have read
before that the following chapter-Isaiah 18- re-
fers to a country/people that could be the U.S.
If this chronologically follows Isaiah 17, then it
is time to really start to look UP!

bazza



I have heard that too, but I have no idea if it's true. No one except Israel is hated more than America. It makes me really sad, because I love my country. My prayer is that Jesus raptures us before that happens. It would break my heart to see the destruction of this beautiful land.
------
Hizbullah, though primarily in Lebanon & Israel is currently holding Lebanon accountable, is under SYRIAN Control (with the help of Iranian funding and support). The fact that they have just today kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers and Olmert has declared this an ACT of WAR (against Lebanon for now), it's not hard to see how this could easily and rapidly escalate into the fulfillment of the Isaiah 17 prophecy.

Incredible times that God is allowing us to live in – May He be Praised !!!
-----
Wars and rumors of wars, boys does this not sound true,, middle east, korea, Iran, ten nation union and other hot spots around the world... as in the new superman movie "the world says it does not need a savior, but every day I hear it calling out for one!" but their savior will not be the Prince of Peace
Do you ever wonder, of all the time in history you or me for that matter could have been born, that we are born now... sure makes the hair on my neck stand up... everytime the world seems it is slipping out of God's hand "contol".... bam... God slap's us awake and makes us take a good hard look at who is really in control.. Now with Syria in the news and knowing what can and will happpen to Damascus makes you look up and see if the clouds are parting and the Lord Jesus Himself is standing there....
------
was watching Hannity & Colmes on Fox News with Oliver North giving his comments on the situation with Israel/Hizbollah. Oliver North actually said:

'IF YOU LIVE IN DAMASCUS, BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID"!!!!

I almost fainted, as Damascus was on my mind as well.

He was great, defending Israel, and placing the blame squarely on Syria and Iran. He said Israel is surrounded, and they won't back down.

Hope we are going home soon!
-----
Damascus becomes ruinous heap, this eventually leads to the attempted Gog-Magog invasion of Israel. Russia is supernaturally obliterated. Makes sense to me.
-----
As much as it is to stir the pure hearts in Christians. That Syria is in the news--on the front page with a plausible path towards its destruction before our very eyes--should quicken the hearts of you who understand.

Keep an eye on Damascus. This is getting more interesting every day. And me thinks G-d is about to take center stage (for those who know what to look for). I get chills just thinking how priviledged we are to see the signposts through the clutter!

I also do not believe that non-Christians are going to turn to G-d because of the obvious signs we are and will be witnessing. Again, prophecy is meant to stir the hearts of Christians.

There are many excellent posts regarding Damascus and Syria on RR right now. May G-d continue to stir your hearts.
-----

The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools on eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations and calling such a comparison of public and private schools "of modest utility."

Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were "doing an outstanding job" and that if the results had been favorable to private schools, "there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools."

"The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning" to advance his political agenda, Mr. Weaver said, of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools as alternatives to failing traditional public schools.

A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, offered no praise for public schools and said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. Mr. Colby emphasized the caveat, "An overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility."

"We're not just for public schools or private schools,'' he said. "We're for good schools."

On Fox News' Your World, ABC anchor John Stossel advocated the legal sale of organs, citing the fact that "hot dogs don't spoil when we get to them" as evidence that "the market figures out ways to make these things work."

Claiming that "we have no shortages of anything else that faces the open market," ABC News 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel, on the July 13 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, advocated the legal sale of organs. Responding to Cavuto's concerns that some organs "might not be safe," Stossel cited the fact that "hot dogs don't spoil when we get to them" as evidence that "the market figures out ways to make these things work." Despite Stossel's earlier assertion that "I have two [kidneys]; I only need one," he was noncommittal when Cavuto asked: "Would you give me a kidney if I needed one?" Stossel said he "would consider" it. Even when Cavuto suggested the offer would be high, Stossel responded: "I don't know, we'll have to talk later."

CAVUTO: But how would you -- yeah, OK, good, we got that covered, John doesn't believe in murder. Would there be a limit to this, though, or risk to this? In other words, would you be getting organs that might not be safe, that might, might have a whole lot of problems? Or those who are suffering from AIDS, and you're getting an AIDS contaminated --

STOSSEL: But the market takes care of these things all over the place. We don't get hot dogs --

CAVUTO: You love the markets. It's what you believe from --

STOSSEL: I do.

CAVUTO: You're a libertarian.

STOSSEL: It took me too long, but also, a consumer reporter who was hostile to markets, until I saw, wow, you know, the hot dogs don't spoil when we get to them. You know, there's all these greedy people selling them, the meat could be bad. But the market figures out ways to make these things work.

The danger of Iranian-backed adventurism is immense right now, but that's all the more reason for America and Israel to avoid past mistakes in countering it. Reliable strategic lessons are hard to come by in that part of the world, but here are a few:

The first is that in countering aggression, international solidarity and legitimacy matter. In responding to the Lebanon crisis, the United States should work closely with its allies at the Group of Eight summit and the United Nations. Iran and its proxies would like nothing more than to isolate America and Israel. They would like nothing less than a strong, international coalition of opposition.

A second point -- obvious from Gaza to Beirut to Baghdad -- is that the power of non-state actors is magnified when there is no strong central government. That may sound like a truism, but responding wisely can require some creative diplomacy. The way to blunt Hamas is to build a strong Palestinian Authority that delivers benefits for the Palestinian people. The way to curb Hezbollah is to build up the Lebanese government and army. One way to boost the Lebanese government (and deflate Hezbollah) would be to negotiate the return of the Israeli-occupied territory known as Shebaa Farms. That chance is lost for now, but the Bush administration should find other ways to enhance Siniora's authority.

A final obvious lesson is that in an open, interconnected world, public opinion matters. This is a tricky battlefield for an unpopular America and Israel, but not an impossible one. To fight the Long War, America and Israel have to get out of the devil suit in global public opinion. For a generation, America maintained a role as honest broker between Israel and the Arabs. The Bush administration should work hard to refurbish that role.

In the Lebanon crisis we have a terrifying glimpse of the future: Iran and its radical allies are pushing toward war. That's the chilling reality behind this week's events. On Tuesday the Iranians spurned an American offer of talks on their nuclear program; on Wednesday their Hezbollah proxy committed what Israel rightly called "an act of war." The radicals want to lure America and Israel deeper into the killing ground, confident that they have the staying power to prevail. We should not play their game.

Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

Further complicating the GOP outlook to turn things around is a solid percentage of liberals, moderates and even conservatives who say they'll vote Democratic. The party out of power also holds the edge among persuadable voters, a prospect that doesn't bode well for the Republicans.

The election ultimately will be decided in 435 House districts and 33 Senate contests, in which incumbents typically hold the upper hand. But the survey underscored the difficulty Republicans face in trying to persuade a skeptical public to return them to Washington.

Less than four months before Election Day, the latest FOX News Poll finds that voters strongly favor the Democrats on key issues such as the economy and gas prices, and give the minority party a double-digit lead for control of Congress this fall. For most of President Bush's second term in office, more Americans have said they disapprove than approve of his job performance and that is again the case in this new poll.

The president's approval rating dropped to 36 percent, down from 41 percent approval two weeks ago and 40 percent in mid-June. Bush lost ground this week among some key constituent groups, such as Republicans, whites and men. Overall, 53 percent of Americans say they disapprove.

"It is important to remember that the president got his bounce after the killing of al-Zarqawi in Iraq," comments Opinion Dynamics Chairman John Gorman. "While administration officials were careful not to overplay the significance of this, it naturally created hope that things would get better. Several weeks of bloody footage from Iraq have pretty much dashed those hopes."

And on Lebanon, Bush embraced what sounds like an improbable goal. "Whatever Israel does, though, should not weaken the Siniora government in Lebanon," he said. "We're concerned about the fragile democracy in Lebanon."

But you've got to think that Israel's bombing of the Beirut airport and blockade of Lebanese ports and airspace doesn't exactly strengthen Premier Fouad Siniora's hand.

Here's an exchange toward the end of the session:

"Q Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed? And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?

"And on Iran, they've, so far, refused to respond. Is it now past the deadline, or do they still have more time to respond?

"PRESIDENT BUSH: I thought you were going to ask me about the pig.

"Q I'm curious about that, too. (Laughter.)

"PRESIDENT BUSH: The pig? I'll tell you tomorrow after I eat it."

The suggestion that Marco Materazzi might have insulted Zinédine Zidane's mother during the World Cup final seems justification enough for the head-butt that followed. But why is it that the worst insults in the world are always about your mum? Stuart Jeffries reports.

...

It was seven minutes before half time. Real Madrid were 2-0 down against already relegated opponents in May 2004, when David Beckham tackled Real Murcia's Luis Garcia. The England captain thought the tackle was clean but the linesman flagged for a foul. Leaping to his feet, the Dagenham-born galáctico unleashed a volley of idiomatic Spanish, calling the official a "hijo de puta" (son of a whore). The referee, Turienzo Alvarez, had no hesitation in producing a red card. But was that the right decision? After all, Beckham's Spanish had been so risible in press conferences hitherto that this sure-footed demonstration of his grasp of Hispanic rudery surely should have won him a round of applause.

Beyond questions of Beckham's linguistic (in)competence, though, there were cultural differences at issue. After the match, Beckham (reverting to English) told reporters: "I didn't realise what I had said was that bad. I had heard a few of my team-mates say the same before me." This is a bravura defence: in Britain, to call someone a son of a bitch or to deploy any derogatory barb that focuses on impugning the sexual integrity of the target's mother is hardly the worst thing one can say. If he had abused a fourth official at Goodison Park in an Everton-Man Utd game in the same terms, the linesman would not have got the hump; nor would the referee have seen red quite so readily. In Spain, it is different.

The Sun even drew up a list of mother insults that Beckham could deploy if he sought an early bath on future occasions. They included the rather infantile Tu madre tiene un bigote (Your mother has a moustache) and the frankly laborious Anda la puta que te pari (Go back to the prostitute who gave birth to you), but not the one that would surely have got him lynched in the Bernabeu, namely Me cago en la leche que mamaste (I shit in the milk that you suckled from your mother's breast). The Times concocted a letter of apology that Beckham might send to the linesman: Dear Assistant Referee, (Ayudante Arbitro) I am sorry that I called you a son of a whore. (Lo siento que se llamo hijo de puta .) I am sure that your mother is not a whore at all. (Estoy seguro que su madre no es una puta.) I am sure that your mother is, in fact, a respected figure within her community. (Estoy seguro que su madre es una mujer muy respetable en su comunidad.)" And so on. But neither helped him become as fluent in Spanish as his fellow English team-mate Jonathan Woodgate had become. In September 2005, he got into a rumble in the tunnel with an Espanyol player after calling him a "hijo de puta", which suggests his Spanish had developed as fast as the British press had hoped.

"There are certainly cultural differences in swearing," says feminist socio-linguist Deborah Cameron, Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford. "In Scandinavia, the taboo words are to do with the devil. Here [Britain] they're fuck or cunt. In Mediterranean cultures it has to do with the classic relationship that exists between a son and his mother. Italians, for example, adore their mothers. One's trespassing on a sacred relationship if one insults a man's mother." (Incidentally, the devil taboo does not mean that mother insults are unknown in Scandinavian countries: in Finland, for example, there is an expression "Äitisi nai poroja!" which means "Your mother copulates with reindeer!" Sweet!)

Why aren't fathers the butt of insults so much as mothers? Had David Beckham said to the linesman "Tu padre es un gigolo que tiene cópula con una multiplicidad de diversos socios" (Your father is a gigolo who has intercourse with a multitude of different partners), he probably wouldn't have got a red card. Just a baffled look, and applause from those impressed by his command of his second language. "The underlying idea is you're attacking what your rival came out of," says Cameron. "That's why it's mothers rather than fathers who feature in the more potent insult. Everybody comes from their mother".

Of course, like every writer, I had been obsessively monitoring the sales ranking on my Amazon.com page since well before publication, ignoring the advice of my friend the historian. ("Don't look at Amazon, whatever you do! After they dredged up that Welsh farmer to review my book, it was like watching Enron stock implode.") By judiciously purchasing one book an hour — something I was going to do anyway, I have free shipping and a lot of relatives — I had managed to raise my rating from 101,333 at 2:25 on June 17 to 6,679 at midnight — a staggering advance of 94,636 places at a cost of only $110.60.

Skillfully timed additional purchases — I have a lot of friends as well — kept things simmering in the 4,000's. When I clicked on my number for the previous day, I could even see what books were selling like my own. On June 28, for example, when, inexplicably, my book had plummeted to 55,777, it was sandwiched between "Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction" and "Calligraphy Alphabets Made Easy." Fortunately, I found an old Rolodex with the addresses of a whole bunch of people I used to know in Canada — what better way to reconnect than to send them a book!

"Mom," my daughter said in that stern way she gets sometimes. "Stop it. Those numbers don't mean anything."

"Well, I don't know the precise algorithm, nobody does, but the ratings aren't totally meaningless."

"No, Mom, I mean your numbers don't mean anything. You're raising them by buying the book yourself."

There's something deeper at work here than just conventional media bias or capitalist economics, although they're certainly part of it. There's always been a powerful current of anti-intellectualism in American politics, just as there is in American life. It's the dark side of democracy: The pressure to accept what the majority, or the most vocal minority, thinks is true as truth – even when the evidence is entirely on the other side. When Henry Ford said history was bunk, he wasn't taking about the past but about the present, and his ire wasn't directed at historians per se but at the revisionist historians of the Progressive Era, who were telling him and his fellow know nothings inconvenient facts they didn't want to hear. Pump Henry full of Hillbilly Heroin and put him on the radio, and you've got Rush Limbaugh, still making the same point.

The difference between Ford's time and Limbaugh's is that the political presumption against rationality is now shared, or at least pandered to, even at the top of the political and cultural pyramid. It's curious that people who are paid to think and write for a living, and who, like Gore, attended the "best" schools, are now nearly as susceptible to the politics of ignorance as your average conservative talk show host, but then the elite media ain't what it used to be. Like academia, it's fighting a losing rear-guard action against the spirit of the times and the angry, irrational prejudices that go with it.

The blogger Misha of the blog Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is one of the most linked-to and popular bloggers in the right-wing blogosphere. He's the 42nd most linked-to blogger on the Internet, and he is in the blogroll of scores of right-wing bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin and Captian's Quarters Blog. He wrote a post today discussing the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan and here is what he said:


Of course, this is the same Supreme Court that earlier decided in Kelo that private property rights only matter as long as a private company doesn't offer a better deal, above or below the table, to local authorities, so one shouldn't really be surprised. The unelected, black-robed tyrants have a long history of not giving a fig about the Constitution if they don't like what it says, not to mention a long tradition of usurping the powers of the legislative and executive branch by ruling by judicial fiat. . . .

Try doing anything to those mutilating darlings of the Supremes in order to extract life-saving intel from them, and then wait for the Supreme Whores to decide that you were "humiliating" them in doing so.

Five ropes, five robes, five trees.

Some assembly required.


He's advocating that the five Supreme Court Justices in the Hamdan majority be hanged from the neck until they're dead.

When Title IX was enacted in 1972, women were a minority on college campuses, and it sounded reasonable to fight any discrimination against them. But now men are the underachieving minority on campus, as a series by The Times has been documenting. So why is it so important to cling to the myth behind Title IX: that women need sports as much as men do?

Yes, some women are dedicated athletes, and they should be encouraged with every opportunity. But a lot of others have better things to do, like study or work on other extracurricular activities that will be more useful to their careers. For decades, athletic directors have been creating women's sports teams and dangling scholarships and hoping to match the men's numbers, but they've learned that not even the Department of Education can eradicate gender differences.

At the University of Maryland, the women's lacrosse team won national championships year after year but still had a hard time getting 40 players to turn out for the team. The men's team had no such trouble, because guys were more than willing to warm the bench even if they weren't getting a scholarship, but the coach had to cut the extra ones to maintain the gender balance. The school satisfied Title IX, but to no one's benefit.

On or off campus, men play more team sports and watch more team sports. Besides enjoying the testosterone rushes, they have a better chance of glory — and of impressing the opposite sex. Thirty-four years after Title IX, most women's games still attract sparse audiences. Both sexes would still rather watch men play games, especially football.

You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God's name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ's divinity, to address her priests.

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

It doesn't help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.

A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith.

In the South, it is said, there are more Baptists than people. Besides a bit of humor about how numerous they are, the saying is a sly reference to the well-known Baptist practice of padding the church roll, yielding a larger total in the local Baptist association than there is in the census.

But far from being a provincial denomination of rural churches, the Southern Baptist Convention has evolved into an organization that asserts its political clout and claims its prominence as the largest Protestant denomination, with 15.7 million members.

Now convention leaders admit that figure is inflated by as much as a third. And since more reliable figures show that membership has remained flat throughout the '90s, they are searching for ways to start the church growing again.

The U.S. Catholic population at the start of 2004, according to the directory, was 67,259,768 -- an increase of some 850,000 over the 66,407,702 reported in 2003. Catholics continue to make up 23 percent of the total U.S. population.

The letter pinned overnight to the wall of the mosque in Kandahar was succinct. "Girls going to school need to be careful for their safety. If we put acid on their faces or they are murdered then the blame will be on their parents."

Today the local school stands empty, victim of what amounts to a Taliban war on knowledge. The liberal wind of change that swept the country in 2001 is being reversed. By the conservative estimate of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, 100,000 students have been terrorised out of schools in the past year. The number is certainly far higher and many teachers have been murdered, some beheaded.

In the province of Zabul a teacher and female MP, Toor Peikai, said yesterday: "There are 47 schools in my province but only three are open." Only one teaches girls. It is 200 metres from a large US military base in the provincial capital.

Across the south, schools burn during the night. According to a bleak report released by Human Rights Watch today at least 200 have been destroyed in the past year and half. Their blackened shells, many of them new buildings constructed with foreign aid money, are visible from the ever more dangerous road south to Kandahar.

What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain. I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness, but they are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate.

Next has come the effort to expel Lieberman from modern liberalism. In a dark parody of the old struggle between Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party has turned liberalism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity.

...

The big story out of the campaign last week was the aggressiveness Lieberman has finally brought to his side of the fight. Over the past few years, polarizers have dominated Congress because people who actually represent most Americans have been too timid or intellectually vacuous to stand up. Even today many Democrats who privately despise the netroots lie low, hoping the anger won't be directed at them.

But Lieberman has had no choice but to fight, and he will probably prevail. If he doesn't, and if his opponents go from statewide victory in Connecticut to a national primary assault in 2008, then I hope the Republicans will be smart enough to scoop up what is sure to come — yet another wave of disaffected Democrats looking for a political home.

I've always liked to think that feminism is the West's secret weapon against Islamism. How can an ideology that aims to push half the human race into purdah hope to claim the moral high ground? Islamic feminists would fight Islamism, and we Western feminists would offer our sisterhood in the struggle. But while Muslim women are being stuffed into burkas, American post-feminists are trying to stuff their feet into stilettos. Who are you going to call when the morals police attack you for wearing eye shadow in Kabul or flashing some ankle in Teheran -- a wonkette?

``The blogosphere has always been mainly about scrutinizing everybody else and expressing violent opinions about them," said Alex S. Jones , director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. ``Kos is a very powerful blog, so in that sense it's taken on the vulnerability of one of the [political] leaders."

...

And Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said he was not impressed with the Daily Kos crowd.

``The liberal blogosphere are a group of people who feel incredibly disenfranchised. They feel their country's been hijacked and they're essentially powerless and the only way to stop it is to scream as loudly as you can," Foer said.

Mogadishu - Radical Islamic militia fighters in central Somalia shot and killed two people at the screening of a banned World Cup soccer broadcast, an independent radio station reported.

The Islamic fighters, who have banned such entertainment, were dispersing a crowd of teenagers watching the match. They opened fire after the teenagers defied their orders to leave the hall in which a businessman was screening the Germany-Italy match on satellite television, Shabelle Radio reported on Wednesday. It said the dead were a girl and the business owner.

Islamic fighters who wrested control of the Somali capital from warlords in June forbade movies and television entertainment in line with their strict interpretation of Islam. The Supreme Islamic Courts Council, originally called the Islamic Courts Union, has expanded its control to other parts of southern Somalia.

As the congregation of the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church looked on and its pastor, Apostle Alton R. Williams, presided, a brown shroud much like a burqa was pulled away to reveal a giant statue of the Lady, but with the Ten Commandments under one arm and "Jehovah" inscribed on her crown.

And in place of a torch, she held aloft a large gold cross, as if to ward off the pawnshops, the car dealerships and the discount furniture outlets at the busy corner of Kirby Parkway and Winchester that is her home. A single tear graced her cheek.

Another with profit potential is ``Snakes on a Plane'' in August, from the New Line Cinema unit of New York-based Time Warner, the world's biggest media company. The over-the-top thriller about poisonous snakes let loose on a passenger jet already is getting good word-of-mouth on the Internet, Pandya said. It's scheduled for release Aug. 18.

Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their "opportunity," specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they'll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates. Those seeking to subvert PayPerPost from within can't: No pornographic or "illicit" content is accepted.

...

IT'S BETTER FOR A BRAND to get into a blog than to surround it as a banner or text ad, says Murphy. Unlike ads, blog posts live on in search engines and through links from other sites. "A couple thousand" bloggers have participated in Blogstar Network, he says. As for disclosure, "it's up to [bloggers] to be their own morality police," he says.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism.

Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc., Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for the 3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."

"It can be challenging for information analysts to tell what's important in blogs unless you analyze patterns," Ulicny said.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has closed a unit that for a decade was charged with looking for Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants, The New York Times reported.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts were reassigned within the CIA Counter-terrorist Centre, intelligence officials told the newspaper.

The officials said that the move reflected the view that al-Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, as well as a growing concern about groups inspired by al-Qaeda that had started to carry out attacks independent of bin Laden and Ayman alZawahiri, his second in command.

Ned had a press conference today in which he made the point — and I think quite forcefully — that Lieberman wants to "have it both ways." Absolutely. He's trying to walk out the back door of the party but still be considered a Democrat. He said it over and over during the press conference today — he believes in the values of the Democratic party, and he'll run as an "independent Democrat." Hogwash. As Digby reminds us, this is what Chuck Schumer said recently:

Schumer said that the DSCC "fully supports" Sen. Joe Lieberman in his primary bid, and he refused to rule out continuing that support if Lieberman were to run as an independent.

There were degrees of independence, Schumer said. "You can run as an independent, you can run as an independent Democrat who pledges to vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader."

Which says to me that they've been coordinating this little hair-splitting act for quite some time. If Joe wants to run as part of the "Independent Democrat" party, he has to gather signatures to create such a party (and I'm not even sure he can). He won't. If Joe bolts the party, he will be an Independent. Period. There will be no "Democratic" about it. I'm sure his internal polling tells him that if people don't consider him a Democrat any more his numbers abjectly suck, and he certainly wants to retain all the perks his seniority in the Senate would grant him as a Democrat. But why does anyone believe he would do anything but auction himself off like a two-dollar whore to the highest bidder once elected? If we're counting on his principled commitment to the Democratic party, color me skeptical.

The Lieberman presser just ended in Hartford, and I just got off the phone with Jane. She and Paul Bass and the poodles are back in the car and driving over to a Ned Lamont presser. But she had time to relay this quote from Boltin' Joe:

"I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party."

Hannity:I need to know, do you want my endorsement?

Lieberman: Well, it's good that you asked me in private like this [yuck, yuck]. I appreciate your friendship and I appreciate your support.

Hannity: If you want me to do it, then I'll do it.

Lieberman than requested that Hannity endorse his primary challenger, in a joking manner.

CAVUTO: So you would admire more at least the politician that says a timetable to get out than going back and forth?

COULTER: No. I would admire a politician, not as much as basically your run of the mill garden-variety Republican, but as far as Democrats go like Lieberman, who apparently does want to defend America and fight the war on terrorism. He is the one facing a primary fight.

CAVUTO: You know, there is talk about him maybe bolting to a third party. The seeds are there for a third party movement. Do you buy that?

COULTER: I think he should come all the way and become a Republican. He wouldn't be our best Republican but at left he'd fit in with the party that wants to defend the country.

German Sterligov was one of post-communist Russia's first multi-millionaires. By the age of 24, he had built up a financial empire with offices in London and New York. He is now 39 - but no longer a jet-setting financial whizzkid. With his wife and five children, Sterligov decided to adopt a traditional peasant life-style deep in the Russian countryside. And on one of his now rare trips to Moscow, he told Fred Dove why he could not be happier.

A member of the Orthodox church with strong nationalist views, he entered politics, running on an anti-abortion and pro-death penalty ticket for governor of a Siberian region in 2002 and then for mayor of Moscow. Both attempts ended in failure. Three years ago he tried to run for president but the Kremlin barred him.

Sterligov said he had lost a fortune on his three doomed campaigns but denied this was the reason for his radical change of lifestyle. "I moved not because of financial problems but because I don't want my children to be exposed to the morally bankrupt society we used to live in," he said.

AFTER becoming one of post-communist Russia's first millionaires at the age of 24, German Sterligov lost no time building a financial empire with offices in Wall Street and Mayfair. Now, at 39, he has tired of life in the fast lane.

He has given up the two private planes and the fleet of luxurious cars, the four-storey Moscow mansion and the Manhattan penthouse.

In their place he has acquired a horse and a tractor, and moved his wife and five children into a three-bedroomed wooden house with no electricity or gas on a patchwork of fields surrounded by forbidding forest. Sterligov the international whiz-kid has become a humble peasant.

Until recently he brokered lucrative deals and tended a fortune which, at its peak, stood at hundreds of millions of dollars. Last week he was looking after pigs and sheep.

The family bakes its own bread and instead of champagne, Sterligov and Lena, his wife of 17 years, drink milk from their own cows, and kvas, a brown alcoholic brew made with birch-tree juice.

In summer their small corner of countryside 100 miles south of Moscow is infested with mosquitoes and in winter, when temperatures can drop to
-45C, the house is heated by a wood-burning stove and lit with candles.

...

His quest for a simple life is uncompromising. There is no road to the Sterligovs' house — only sprawling fields and dense fir and birch. It is so remote that in snow it can be reached only by horse sleigh. A fence surrounds the house and three stables to keep out wolves.

In a muddy garden where geese and chicken roam, Sterligov has had a lavatory built. There is no radio in the house, let alone television. The floor is made of dusty planks.

"It's been quite a change," said Lena Sterligova, 38, her hair covered by a scarf as she toiled in the kitchen. "When German was a millionaire I was the wife of a millionaire, constantly shadowed by bodyguards. Now that he is a peasant I am the wife of a peasant.

"When we married he promised an adventurous ride. It certainly has been that, but I think our life now is great. The only thing I miss is a hot bath." Last winter she briefly went back to her mother in Moscow with Mihey, her 18-month-old baby.

Sterligov, who once employed more than 2,500 people and now has three, said he had not asked his wife's opinion before changing their lives. He claimed friends who thought he had gone mad had come to envy his uncluttered existence.

Instead of attending a private school, Pelageya and her brothers Arseniy, 9, Sergiy, 5, and Panteleimon, 3, play in the stables and are taught at home by village teachers in exchange for a turkey or goat. In the evenings their father reads them religious and historical texts. His mobile phone and the brass bell that Alisa traders used to mark the end of a day's trading are the only reminders of his past life.

When Congress created the Medicare prescription drug program, it adopted an unusual idea to hold down costs: the so-called doughnut hole.

The program pays most of a participant's drug bills until expenses reach $2,250 in a year. Then it stops paying until costs exceed $5,100. That leaves a hole of $2,850 that seniors with serious prescription needs are expected to manage on their own.

Now, six months into the drug program — the first new major healthcare benefit for the elderly in decades — 3.4 million seniors are approaching the doughnut hole.

Most of them are middle-class seniors with multiple chronic illnesses. (The poor are exempt from the gap.) Some have already experienced an abrupt surge in prescription costs.

Economist Jack Rodgers of PricewaterhouseCoopers likened the Medicare benefit to two plans rolled into one: The first offers limited coverage of medication, with a cap at $2,250; the second provides a more generous benefit for higher bills. In between is the doughnut hole.

"A lot depends on whether you look at the doughnut or you look at the hole," said Rodgers, adding that he believed the availability of enhanced plans, albeit for higher premiums, would soften the impact of the gap.

Make no mistake about it, there is a war going on in this country. The aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists who began a scorched earth campaign against President Bush before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq. The initiators of this war were Al Gore and Jimmy Carter who attacked the president's attempt to rally the world against Saddam's defiance of international law in September 2002 just after his appeal to the UN General Assembly. Coming from national leaders of the opposition party these were attacks unprecedented in the history of post-Civil War American politics. Carter's perfidious decision to accept a Nobel Peace Prize designed to attack his own president followed shortly after.

Here's the New York Times report:

"The vote all but commits the federal government to spend as much as $2 billion alone on a program to buy the vaccine for the nation's poorest girls from 11 to 18.

"The vaccine, Gardasil, protects against cancer and genital warts by preventing infection from four strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted disease, according to federal health officials. The virus is also a cause of other cancers in women."

If you think 11 sounds young for sex, how about age 9--the recommended age in some cases?

But there are a few hitches--such as parents who, uh, balk at the idea of telling prepubescent girls that it's just fine for them to have all the sex they want, 'cuz now they'll be vaccinated! And isn't it against the law to have sex with children?

"Another challenge is Gardasil's price. At $360 for the three-shot regimen, it is among the most expensive vaccines ever. Because cervical cancer is mostly a disease of poverty, those in most need of the vaccine will be the least able to afford it. State vaccination programs, already under financial strain, may refuse to provide it."

I hope they do refuse. How about telling young teen-agers instead that sexual promiscuity is not only a bad idea but actually dangerous to their health?

If you are a Canadian woman who is harassed, catcalled, commented on, kissy-noised at, or otherwise bothered by men on the street, whip out your camera and snap a pic of the offending jackass. Then email the pic, along with the location of the incident (as specific or vague as you like) and your comments, and we will post it for the world to see.

Her Voice Her View provides a forum for female writers, directors, and
producers to share their work with the community. The festival represents
some of the finest pieces from domestic and international women filmmakers
presenting films about anything and everything: modern feminism, b-girls,
abortion, sexual violence, prison, eroticism, human rights abuses, fairy
tales, motherhood, hip-hop.

The festival will open with Missing in America starring Danny Glover (The
Color Purple/Lethal Weapon) and Zoe Weizenbaum (Memoirs of a Geisha),
which has taken home awards like Best Feature Film from the San Francisco
Womens Film Festival and the Monaco International Film Festival. The
documentary NO! unveils the reality of sexual violence and healing in
African-American communities and includes testimony from women including
feminist activist Barbara Smith and former Black Panther Party Chairperson
Elaine Brown. The Shape of Water (narrated by Susan Sarandon with
introductory narration co-written by Edwidge Danticat) explores the
revolutionary ways in which five women from India, Jerusalem, Brazil, and
Senegal respond to environmental, cultural, and economic pressures and
constraints around them, receiving international acclaim. Not to be missed
is Soundz of Spirit, which features hip-hop artists Andre 3000, KRS-1,
Talib Kweli, Common, Cee-Lo, Jurassic 5, Blackalicious, Dilated Peoples,
Saul Williams, and many more exploring the relationship between
spirituality and the creative process in hip-hop culture. Lets Talk About
It is a new documentary by Deepa Mehta (Fire/Water/Earth) giving voice to
children as they break the silence and secrecy of family abuse for the
first time.

At each screening, audience members will receive a complimentary goody bag
filled with items generously supplied by our sponsors: Altar Magazine,
Clamor Magazine, BuyOlympia.com, Bitch Magazine, Random House Publishing
Group, Tomboy Tools, Barcelona Bath and Body, and more. For details on any
of these outstanding programs or interviews with the filmmakers, contact
us at the number listed above.

Ticket Info:
Pioneer Theater
155 E. 3rd Street (at Avenue A)
New York, NY 10009

Festival Info:
Her Voice Her View
955 Metropolitan Ave, #4R
Brooklyn, NY 11211

- Find more detail at www.altarmagazine.com.

Strident feminism can seem out of place — even tacky — in a world where women have come so demonstrably far. With Katie Couric at the anchor desk, Condoleezza Rice leading the State Department and Hillary Clinton aiming for the top of the ticket, many of the young, educated and otherwise liberal women who might, in another era, have found themselves burning bras and raising their consciousness would rather be fitted for the right bra (like on "Oprah") and raising their credit limit. Katha Pollitt is the skunk at this "Desperate Housewives" watching party. Her new collection of essays, "Virginity or Death!," culled from her columns for The Nation over the past five years, shows her to be stubbornly unapologetic in championing access to abortion and fixated on the depressingly slow evolution of women's rights in the Middle East. In the midst of our celebration of Katie's last day, Pollitt is the one who would drown out the clinking of cosmo glasses with a loud condemnation of the surgery available to those women who would sacrifice their little toes the better to fit their Jimmy Choos.

I've called myself a feminist for years. I've elbowed my way into more boys' clubs than I care to remember and I once participated in a piece of street theater in support of Anita Hill — something else I'd just as well forget, actually. But the first thing I thought when I read Pollitt deride the false consciousness of pink-ectomy patients (O.K., maybe not the first) was "Does it really work?" While I hesitate to consider myself representative (and no, I would never actually do it), the ability to hold a predilection for stilettos and support for abortion rights in one's head simultaneously seems suggestive of today's compromised, complicated feminist mind-set.

I'm sure Pollitt doesn't care if she's welcome at the next gathering of the Ladies Who Lunch but Still Protest Getting Paid Only 73 Cents on the Dollar. If self-described feminists choose to wear "excruciatingly high heels" and submit to Botox, Pollitt sees a charade: "Women have learned to describe everything they do, no matter how apparently conformist, submissive, self-destructive or humiliating, as a personal choice that cannot be criticized because personal choice is what feminism is all about."

This may be the book's most cogent statement, though a headline in The Onion put it better: "Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does." But there's a world of difference between choosing to wear heels that require foot-soaking and choosing to cut your toe to fit your shoe. When women dress up damaging choices as empowerment, it weakens feminist argument. But when feminists start lecturing about wrong choices, it lessens their numbers. I wish I had an easy answer about how to navigate between stridency and submission. Then again, I wish Katha Pollitt did too.