ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham revealed on her nationally syndicated radio program that CNN has offered her a one-week guest-host gig for the 8pm ET slot.

H.R. 2831 would fix the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, in which they ruled that workers have only 180 days from the initial discriminatory pay decision to file a wage discrimination claim. This bill, which addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability, clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence that starts and ends with a pay decision, but that each paycheck represents a continuing violation by the employer.

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

One of the least covered aspects of the fallout from the Iraq war is the rising toll of suicides, both near the battlefield and back home.

Latest official figures released by the Pentagon reveal at least 116 self-inflicted fatalities in Iraq. But this does not include several dozen still under investigation, nor any of the many cases back in the U.S.

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton's was a teasing display, then Smith's was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn't as unnerving. Perhaps that's because Smith's cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith's fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

Might I suggest that sometimes a V-neck top is only a V-neck top? As a person of cleavage, I'd guess that Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation, not a deliberate fashion statement.

According to a pool report of the encounter, Mr. Specter expressed anew his criticism of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales but said he saw no signs that Mr. Gonzales would be forced to resign. Mr. Specter attributed Mr. Gonzales's job security to Mr. Bush's "personal loyalty" to him.

Mr. Specter spoke derisively of Mr. Gonzales's appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he faced accusations that he misled Congress last year when he said there had been no disagreement within the administration over the National Security Administration's domestic surveillance program.

"Our hearing two days ago was devastating," Mr. Specter said. "But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that."

Mr. Specter also waded into another uncomfortable subject, the Congressional demands for testimony from Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, among others.

He said that while he hoped "to reach an accommodation" with the White House, "I don't see it now."

President Bush's nominee to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was himself the subject of at least one complaint of employee abuse in his supervisory role at the Justice Department, eight former department civil rights employees charged Monday.

In a letter asking key senators to block the nomination, the former employees also charged that David Palmer's work in the department's employment litigation section was of poor quality and that he was reprimanded for one performance lapse.

The former employees, including three ex-deputy chiefs of the section, charged that Palmer's "work performance was well below the high standards expected of Department of Justice attorneys."

They said that, as section chief since 2002, Palmer undermined the unit's mission of securing the employment rights of women and minorities in the public sector, while defending employers' rights to discriminate based on religion.

Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we're moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I'm less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of 'normal politics' is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.

... Of the 1,400 VA hospitals and clinics scattered across the United States, only 27 have inpatient programmes for PTSD. This despite the fact that an estimated 38 percent of soldiers and 50 percent of National Guard who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan report mental health issues ranging from post-combat stress to brain injuries.

The VA also has a backlog of over 600,000 disability claims, and the average Iraq war veteran who files for disability must wait six months for an answer. If he or she files an appeal, it could take up to three years.

TMZ obtained photos of presidential candidate Mitt Romney trying to win over grammatically challenged South Carolinians Thursday by holding a sign that said, "No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea's Moma."

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid's answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. "That's a hypothetical. I'm not going to get into it," the paper quoted the Democratic leader as saying.

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There's no guarantee that Mr. Bush can agree with Congress on those points or that he will make the effort to do so. But a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible -- and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.

On-the-Ground Report from Birmingham.

By Rev. Katherine Ragsdale

You might have heard about what's going on in Alabama, but the media coverage has been largely biased, if there's any at all, and I want to make sure that our story is told.

Can you imagine going to your doctor's office and navigating through a crowd of 150 protesters screaming at you? Let's mix in the shouts of "baby killer" and other verbal attacks with the amplification of bagpipes playing.

What if the doctor's office had volunteers using umbrellas to shield patients from the mob scene and shouting as they traveled to and from their cars?

That's what is happening outside the New Women All Women Health Clinic, where I arrived yesterday as a representative for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. "Operations Save America" is targeting this clinic and another one in Alabama as part of its ongoing intimidation and violence campaign against a woman's right to choose.

The clinic in Birmingham holds a harrowing place in the history of violence against women's clinics. It was the site of a bombing in 1998 by convicted felon Eric Rudolph that killed a security guard and maimed Emily Lyons, a clinic nurse.

Nearly six years after the United States set out to crush Al Qaeda, the terrorist network has "regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack targets in America, and is intensifying its efforts to put operatives inside the country, according to a sobering new report released today from U.S. intelligence agencies.

The document warns that the United States is "in a heightened threat environment" because Osama bin Laden and other senior leaders of Al Qaeda have taken advantage of a more secure environment in their hiding places in remote Pakistan to reestablish their leadership of the far-flung network and refocus its energies on striking the United States.

The report also concludes that Al Qaeda "will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities" of its violent offshoot organization in Iraq, where the war has given a new generation of operatives lethal experience and helped the broader organization raise money and recruit.

Terrorism works not just by instilling fear in us, but by inducing a sense of helplessness. That is why its violence is random. Indeed, the more indiscriminate it is in selecting its defenceless victims, the better it suits the terrorists' purpose.

Outrages take us into mental territory which is beyond our normal comprehension. And the sheer irrationality of this psychology of fear makes it hard for us to construe what is happening around us.

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Psychologists talk here of the "anticipatory anxiety" as the population waits for the next bomb to go off. They add in the notion of the "learned helplessness" as we come to terms with the fact that there is nothing or very little we can do to stop it. A profound sense of loss of control results. And control, according to Joanna Bourke, is a key ingredient in combating fear.

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Intriguingly, what in the United States came to be called 11 September syndrome was not something which affected those directly involved in the trauma. Rather it affected people across America, in epidemic numbers, and was most prevalent among those who had remained transfixed to their television sets for hours, watching the towers crash over and over again. If the propaganda value of 9/11 was immense, the response of a TV-addicted nation made it even more so. "If there were no television the terrorists wouldn't bother," ventures Dr Reddy. Terrorists want a lot of people watching, more than a lot of people dead.

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

For example, Iran is often characterized in the American press as a "totalitarian" regime, by both conservative and liberal hawks. Leading Democratic Party political operatives like Ken Baer will call you an apologist for the Iranian regime if you dispute this "totalitarian" concept. Thus "you" may well think that Iran is, in fact, a totalitarian society.

Which it isn't. The Iranian regime, though harsh on political dissidents, isn't Stalin's Russia or China during the Cultural Revolution. Crucially, it's not more repressive in any clear way than lots of countries -- China, Saudi Arabia, etc. -- we have perfectly normal diplomatic relations with. One of the reasons Hirsch probably overstated the case somewhat is that so many people -- powerful people -- seem invested in overstating things on the other side.