Daschle said there is strong opposition, particularly for (Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere nominee Otto) Reich. He said Bush should instead withdraw the nomination.

A recess appointment ``isn't the way it ought to be addressed,'' he said. ``The constitutional responsibility of the president and Congress is to work together on these nominees.''

Senator Chris Dodd is still smarting from having tangled with Mr. Reich over the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1980s. So now he refuses to give Mr. Reich even a hearing. And then, in a December 20 letter cosigned by GOP Senator Michael Enzi, he warns President Bush not to give Mr. Reich a recess appointment, on the astounding grounds that Mr. Reich "has not gone through the requisite committee process"!

But nothing illustrates the Daschle Senate better than the treatment of Eugene Scalia, President Bush's pick to be the Labor Department's top lawyer. Back when a Republican-controlled Senate found itself at odds with then-President Clinton over the appointment of Bill Lann Lee as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Mr. Lee was given a hearing. And it was Democrats who fought sending his name to the floor for a vote--because they knew he would lose. President Clinton then responded not with a regular recess appointment that would expire at the end of that Congress. Instead he named Mr. Lee Acting Assistant Attorney General, in clear violation of the Vacancies Act and something that even Mr. Clinton noted was not "entirely constitutional."

In sharp contrast, Mr. Scalia would win a floor vote. He is being held up by Senator Ted Kennedy for what everyone knows is payback for the role his father, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, played in the Bush v. Gore recount case. Mr. Scalia was reported favorably out of the Senate Labor Committee in early October. But Mr. Daschle has prevented it from moving to the floor for a vote, telling ABC News he didn't think "the votes are there."

There may not be 60 votes to end a filibuster against Mr. Scalia, but a clear majority of 54 Senators, including independent Jim Jeffords, are set to back him. Thus, Mr. Daschle seems to be creating a new extra-constitutional rule that "controversial" nominees like Mr. Scalia will need 60 Senators before Presidents get their choice of appointees. In supporting a filibuster, Mr. Daschle is refusing to let the Senate work its will, an abdication of its advise and consent role. No one can remember the last time a nominee who had the majority vote him out of committee did not then get a floor vote.

"I take issue with this obstructionist charge. The fact is we've had a very successful fall if you look at all the things we've accomplished.''

Editor -- While Jonathan Tan (Letters, Dec. 25) and I agree in objecting to bomb attacks on abortion mills, I regret that Tan is not aware of two important items. It is not just Christian fundamentalists but many other concerned Americans who strongly object to abortion and find it a heinous act, and most of the violence that occurs in and around such establishments is committed by skilled abortionists whose chief talent lies in the efficient use of violence against helpless human beings.

Of course, it is in the self-interest of those who profit from such lucrative establishments to perpetuate the myth that only extreme conservatives disapprove of abortion. Many liberal Democrats, including myself, detest abortion just as we do any other form of murder.

PAUL AZEVEDO
Pacifica

Perhaps in mulling over Walker's life, he (President Bush) will try to remember when he was a 20-year-old. True, he did not defiantly challenge the system as so many young protesters did in the Vietnam War era. Politics was not his bag at Yale when others were marching in support of civil rights and against the war.

During an interview with CNN, Walker did not help himself with American public opinion when he replied "definitely" when asked if he were fighting for the right cause.

In the continuing debate over Islam and pluralism, a growing number of observers are staking out a disturbing position. Face the facts, they say: The war against terrorism is only one part of a larger struggle, in which the forces of freedom are arrayed against all those who believe in an absolute truth.

Osama bin Laden couldn't agree more. And both he and they are wrong.

Former president Clinton teed up the point in a recent speech at Georgetown University. "This battle," he said, "fundamentally is about what you think of the nature of truth." So just what does Bill Clinton think of the nature of truth? That it can't be known with any certainty. "Nobody's got the truth," he says. Everybody is just "trying to get closer" to it. That's the big difference between us and them: "Because we don't believe you can have the whole truth, we think everybody counts and life is a journey. . . They believe because they have the truth you either share their truths or you don't. If you're not a Muslim, you're an infidel. If you are and you don't agree with them, you're a heretic and you're a legitimate target." Only uncertainty, in other words, can save us from the killing fields.

Andrew Sullivan warns, "in a world of absolute truth . . . there is no room for dissent." And the only way to reconcile Islam and pluralism, amens Thomas Friedman, is for Islam to affirm "that God speaks multiple languages and is not exhausted by just one faith." The only good religion is a relativist one.

Now, Clinton and company would no doubt be horrified to discover that they agree with the Taliban on anything so fundamental as the nature of truth and freedom, but they do. Both assume truth and freedom are irreconcilable opposites. The difference is that the Taliban happily sacrifices freedom for truth, while Clinton and the others obligingly sacrifice truth for freedom. Both agree, however, that you are either a truth-owning jihadi or a freedom-loving relativist. Choose your corner, and come out swinging.

Serious Muslim friends tell me that the Koran provides a basis for them to affirm the human dignity of every person, just as Genesis (all are made in the image and likeness of God) does for Jews and Christians.

If they are right, the solution to reconciling Islam with pluralism lies not in lecturing Muslims about the supposed virtues of relativism but in helping find within the Koran the absolute truth of human dignity.

Donald Rumsfeld says his preference is for al Qaeda fighters to surrender rather than fight to the death: "It ends it faster. It's less expensive." Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says: "This is not a war of extermination." Such statements are perhaps obligatory and even sincere.

However, is surrender really less expensive in the long run? It is a reasonable surmise that a reformed terrorist is a very rare terrorist, and that the rate of recidivism will be high among terrorists who are forced to surrender but continue to believe they are doing God's will when they commit mass murder of infidels. So, as far as is consistent with the rules of war and the husbanding of the lives of U.S. military personnel, U.S. strategy should maximize fatalities among the enemy, rather than expedite the quickest possible cessation of hostilities.

Rivera's reporting surrounding a Dec. 5 incident in Kandahar where three Americans were accidentally killed by a U.S. bomb has been called into question.

The next day, Rivera reported that he had "walked over the spot where the friendly fire took so many of our men and the mujahadeen yesterday. It was just, the whole place, just fried, really, and bits of uniforms and tattered clothing everywhere. I said the Lord's Prayer and really choked up."

But The (Baltimore) Sun later reported that Rivera had filed his report from Tora Bora, hundreds of miles from Kandahar incident.

Rivera later said that he had witnessed the aftermath of a separate incident where two Afghans were killed in Tora Bora and that he had confused the two cases in his mind.

Fox News Channel said Wednesday that war correspondent Geraldo Rivera had made an "honest mistake" in his reporting of a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.

The network said it had accepted Rivera's explanation and planned no further action.

Rivera told The Washington Post in Monday's edition that allegations that he had lied were "hideously absurd."

"The time has come to stop the Geraldo-bashing," he said.

New Mexico church plans Harry Potter book burning

ALAMOGORDO, New Mexico (Reuters) - A New Mexico church plans to burn Harry Potter books because they are "an abomination to God," the church pastor said on Wednesday.

Pastor Jack Brock said he would have a "holy bonfire" on Sunday at the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo in southern New Mexico to torch books about the fictional teen-age wizard who is wildly popular with young people.

"These books encourage our youth to learn more about witches, warlocks, and sorcerers, and those things are an abomination to God and to me," Brock, 74, told Reuters.

Nor is it any protection to have committed the treason abroad, a point established in the case of Tomoya Kawakita, a young Japanese-American who on the eve of war went to Japan to visit and was prevented by the outbreak of war from returning. During the war, the court noted, he reached his majority in Japan, changed his registration from American to Japanese, showed sympathy with Japan and hostility to the United States, served as a civilian employee of a private corporation producing war materials for Japan, and brutally abused American prisoners of war who were forced to work there. He was brought up on the treason charge when he returned to America on an American passport. In sustaining his conviction, the Supreme Court established that an American citizen owes allegiance to America wherever he may reside.

Since Sept. 11, dear brother, I have noticed that you have turned away from me. I do not hear you ask yourself or anyone else the question you once asked all the time: "What would Jesus do?"

Dear brother, you are right to want to stop evil. The tricky part for humans has always been, what is the best way to stop it? My four-letter answer is written, over and over, in the Bible, but it has been ignored by potentates, peons and sometimes popes for 2,000 years.

Why? Because it contradicts the human instinct for vengeance.

Our Father said, "Vengeance is mine," George, not, "Vengeance belongs to those who have been wronged." Vengeance is never the answer to "What would Jesus do?" Especially vengeance that masquerades as "justice."

Salter's message is quite clear: when the guy in the seat next to you starts lighting his sneakers, whistle a happy Psalm. Tell him you love him. Seek peace, and as you hurtle down into the cold, cold ocean, wrap yourself in your heavy Ghandi cloak for warmth. The cycle of violence has been stopped!

Granted, two hundred people are dead. But at least they didn't die angry. Fighting makes baby Jesus cry.

(Former chairman of the joint chiefs Gen. Henry) Shelton, a senior colleague said, "wanted nothing to do" with a tiny incursion known in the Special Forces community as "going Hollywood." And the political leadership, the colleague said, wanted nothing to do with something larger.

"Absolutely nothing prevented us from running the kind of operation we're running now, if there had been a commitment to do that," Shelton said.

CONGRESS LEFT town for the year yesterday having accomplished a great deal less than the billowing rhetoric of the occasion was meant to suggest. Its main achievement was to squander the budget surplus by passing the president's ill-advised tax cut.

One of the lessons we should have learned from the devastating attack of Sept. 11 is that terrorists determined to do this nation harm can employ a wide variety of means, and that weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological or even nuclear -- need not arrive on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a return address. That's why the Joint Chiefs of Staff argue that an ICBM launch ranks last on the "Threat Spectrum," while terrorist attacks constitute the greatest potential threat to our national security.

China currently possesses no more than two dozen ICBMs. Our own intelligence services estimate that moving forward with national missile defense could trigger a tenfold increase in China's expansion of its nuclear capability. And that doesn't take into account likely Chinese behavior if an arms race ensues, something many experts argue is inevitable when both India and Pakistan respond as expected by ratcheting up their nuclear programs.

The TV stations dutifully alternated shots of Mr. Bush announcing the death of ABM with photos of the World Trade Center collapsing, even though a "Star Wars" system could never have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We feel there is nothing more patriotic than clean water."

What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

LONDON (AP) - A woman threw two eggs at a work of art that won Britain's Turner Prize, but it wasn't damaged, the Tate Britain gallery said. Martin Creed's prize winner - a large, empty room with lights that turn on and off every five seconds - was closed briefly Wednesday so gallery staff could clean up the mess.

It recently won the annual prize, which is regularly derided for focusing on avant-garde art rather than more conventional forms.

The work of other Turner winners and finalists have been vandalized in recent years. Tracey Emin's installation of her unmade bed, a 1999 Turner finalist, was disturbed when two visual artists staged a pillow fight on it.

Newsweek calls it ''truly perplexing'' that John Lindh, who ''grew up in possibly the most liberal, tolerant place in America ... was drawn to the most illiberal, intolerant sect in Islam.'' There is nothing perplexing about it. He craved standards and discipline. Mom and Dad didn't offer any. The Taliban did.

(Goldberg's argument) is also diminished by willfully unreasonable analogies: "Why should the children of Jesse Jackson or Colin Powell or Diana Ross get some kind of racial preference when they apply to college or go out for a job, but no `affirmative action' is given to the child of a white Anglo- Saxon Protestant coal miner from West Virginia?" An example that loaded is as unfair as the weighted news stories he denounces.

In addition, (ABA evaluation committee member David) Weiner was unimpressed with (assistant U.S. Attorney David) Bunning's decision to attend the University of Kentucky for both undergraduate and law-school training. Weiner cited what he called Bunning's "lack of academic achievement" and said his "middle-of-the-class law school record does not speak well for him." Finally, Weiner said Bunning showed "no intellectual spark or legal enthusiasm that carried the day with our committee."

Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the FBI request to use gun records was considered and rejected after Justice officials studied case law.

"It was decided that it would have been improper use of the records," Tucker said.

We need honest, reasoned debate; not fearmongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 20 February 1945. While creeping through a treacherous, twisting ravine which ran in close proximity to a fluid and uncertain frontline on D-plus-1 day, Pfc. Lucas and 3 other men were suddenly ambushed by a hostile patrol which savagely attacked with rifle fire and grenades. Quick to act when the lives of the small group were endangered by 2 grenades which landed directly in front of them, Pfc. Lucas unhesitatingly hurled himself over his comrades upon 1 grenade and pulled the other under him, absorbing the whole blasting forces of the explosions in his own body in order to shield his companions from the concussion and murderous flying fragments. By his inspiring action and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice, he not only protected his comrades from certain injury or possible death but also enabled them to rout the Japanese patrol and continue the advance. His exceptionally courageous initiative and loyalty reflect the highest credit upon Pfc. Lucas and the U.S. Naval Service.

The persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islamic conquests and rule for centuries. The Koran provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world. Conversions from Islam to any other faith are often punishable by death.

A Turkish Muslim from White Plains, N.Y., held in a New Jersey jail for more than two weeks, remains behind bars, despite a judge's order that he be released.

This week, in a hearing closed to the public, an immigration judge ordered Kula immediately released. But when immigration lawyers said they intended to appeal the decision, the judge's order was automatically stayed, and Kula was sent back to jail.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve."
-- Admiral Isaroku Yamamoto

The priesthood of editors, media critics, and current and future Columbia Journalism School professors often defend themselves by pointing to left-wing critics who denounce the "conservative, corporate control of the media," or some similar prattle. They say, "See. there are smart lefties who say we're too conservative."

This, needless to say, is an unpersuasive argument for a host of reasons. But let's just stick to the logic for a moment. If I say you are ugly, you do not refute my assertion by pointing to someone uglier. Alec Baldwin isn't any less stoopid simply by virtue of the fact that he can point to someone who eats lead paint-chips like they were Doritos and say, "But Cletus thinks I'm really smart."

China hands in Washington will desperately try to avoid the clear implications of this vote: America's one-China policy is dead. The citizens of Taiwan think of themselves as a free people separate from China, at least as long as China remains unfree. America has no reason any longer to claim otherwise. It has every reason to support the right of the peoples of Taiwan and China to determine their future relationship based on the principle of popular consent.

So Clinton talked tough. But he did not act tough. Indeed, a review of his years in office shows that each time the president was confronted with a major terrorist attack — the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers attack, the August 7, 1998, bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole — Clinton was preoccupied with his own political fortunes to an extent that precluded his giving serious and sustained attention to fighting terrorism.

Rule 1.6 of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct says "a lawyer may reveal [my emphasis] such information to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary: to prevent the client from committing a criminal act that the lawyer believes is likely to result in imminent death or substantial bodily harm . . ." That "may reveal" is not mere prose. Other lawyers argued at the time for a mandatory obligation to report, but the ABA made it optional. It is not hard to imagine some lawyers convincing themselves that this "opt out" provision would relieve them of the burden of monitoring the speech or intent of their al Qaeda-related clients in the U.S.

Trials in federal courts have features that make them totally inappropriate for the trial of terrorists. Jurors often respond to emotional appeals, and, in any event, would have good reason to fear for their and their families' safety if they convicted. Criminal trials have been adorned by judges with a full panoply of procedural hurdles that guarantee a trial of many months. Appeals and petitions for habeas corpus can take years, and should the death sentence be given, the ACLU has shown how to delay execution for ten years or more through appeals followed by one habeas corpus petition after another.