GOPstrategists and party officials had been contemplating for months filing ethics charges against Kanjorski, who has steered more than $9 million in federal contracts to companies owned in part or controlled by his four nephews and daughter.

Two of the companies involved in the controversy, Cornerstone Technologies and Pennsylvania Micronics, were also at one time tenants in a building co-owned by Kanjorski. Several individuals familiar with the situation have publicly stated in news reports that Kanjorski was essentially in control of the two firms.

The Pennsylvania Democrat has repeatedly denied taking part in any improper or illegal activities.

Kanjorski has said he has no direct or indirect influence over the two companies at the heart of the allegations, and he told the Wilkes Barre Times Leader in February that the ethics committee had given him oral approval in 1995 to vote on appropriations bills including earmarks for the two firms.

The standoff over Kanjorski leaves in place the undeclared five-year truce over use of the ethics process that went into effect following the clashes over former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who was attacked by Democrats over the interlocking network of political nonprofits under his control. Gingrich eventually paid a $300,000 fine for providing false information to the ethics committee, but only after charges and countercharges had been filed against senior lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Congressional watchdog groups have complained bitterly about the ethics cease-fire, saying worthy cases have not received the scrutiny they deserve because of fears of retaliation.

"What's the use of opposition parties if they won't root out corruption in the other party?"asked Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project.

Inexplicably Single Men vs. the Stuck-up Women Who Think They're too Good. A class-action suit against the female sex. It is alleged that the defendants have engaged in a systematic discrimination against men, using wholly subjective criteria as a basis for mating. The defendants are expected to present, in evidence, more than 10,000 snapshots of single men's bathrooms, and rest their case.

It is especially ironic that this latest unidentified mom chose to surrender her baby in San Bernardino, much of which is served by Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte. It was Brulte who sponsored the Safe Arms law, which took effect in January 2001.

But it was Gov. Gray Davis who nearly torpedoed that law last year by eliminating any money to publicize it. Faced with bad press and a tough re-election bid, Davis suddenly "found" $500,000 earlier this year to help get the word out.

Then he assembled a news conference to trumpet the good news.

The January media advisory promised a dramatic tale: "Governor Gray Davis to save state trauma centers from budget ax."

What it didn't say: The governor's own Department of Finance had put the $25 million on the chopping block.

Three months later, the governor told 400 doctors who belong to the powerful California Medical Association that he would expand a health care program for children. He didn't mention his original plans to phase out the program.

Short-term budget surpluses are not the long-term solution to the problems of Medicare and Social Security. Regardless of its size, a projected surplus is no substitute for the tough choices policy makers must make to address demographic realities. Simply using presumed general revenue surpluses to prop up the trust funds, regardless of long-term costs, is an illusion and not a solution. The underlying problems will remain, and even if the surpluses materialize, a unique opportunity to enact needed structural reforms before a crisis hits will have been squandered. Moreover, the situation will get even worse if the expectation of a surplus is used to expand programs that are already on an unsustainable footing.

And the federal budget was in pretty good shape because the Clinton administration, unlike state governments, behaved responsibly. Budget projections were honest ? if anything, too cautious ? and boom-year surpluses were used to reduce debt.

All projections are wrong, but the question is by how much. CBO found that, on average, its own projections of the budget deficit or surplus for the coming fiscal year have been too high or too low by an average of 1.1 percent of the economy (Gross Domestic Product, or GDP). Its projections five years out have been too high or low by an average of 3.1 percent of GDP. Therefore, if CBO's current projection is no better or worse than the its past projections, the unified budget surplus CBO projects for 2006 could be understated or overstated by $412 billion (3.1 percent of projected GDP in 2006).

In 1995, the first year in which the budget contained estimates for FY2001, President Bill Clinton expected a budget DEFICIT of $193 billion this year.

In his last budget, in January 2001, Clinton put the surplus at $256 billion, subsequently upped to $281 billion by the incoming Bush Administration.

House Budget Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) accused the administration of reverting back to a dangerous tax-and-spend style. "We need to have a smaller federal government, we need to have less taxes, we don't need to keep adding to spending. Now when the public hears that the president at the State of the Union said, 'the era of big government is over,' yet we are going to have $125 to $150 billion worth of new programs, they are not going to believe this. They are going to say, 'They are back at it again,'" Kasich said.

Growth of abnormal blood vessels deep inside the eye slowly degrades the retina, impairing vision for nearly 6 million diabetics in the United States.

But working with laboratory mice, a physician-scientist at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and his team may have found a way to stop that process, called diabetic retinopathy.

Dr. Martin Friedlander and colleagues have discovered that a certain type of stem cells found in bone marrow of mice – cells destined to make blood vessels rather than blood – can zero in on damaged veins, repair them and prevent further damage.

Stem cells are a type of cell that can differentiate into many different cells depending on what is needed. They form in the embryo and are also found in adult bone marrow.

[S]ince the early months of 2000, the Nasdaq has fallen about 75 percent, the broader S.&P. 500 more than 40 percent. These aren't mere paper losses; they translate into disappointment and even hardship for millions of Americans. Now more than ever we need institutions that provide a safety net for the middle class.

Yet George W. Bush still wants to party like it's 1999. On Wednesday he insisted that he continued to favor partially privatizing Social Security.

Bear in mind that ordinary Americans are already more vulnerable to stock market fluctuations than ever before. Twenty years ago most workers had "defined benefit" pension plans: their employers promised them a certain amount per year. During the long bull market, however, such plans were largely replaced with 401(k)'s ? "defined contribution" plans whose payoff depends on the market. This sounded great when stocks were rising. But now many will find either that they can't retire, or that they will have to get by with much less than they expected.

For some, Social Security will be all that's left.

Mr. Bush first proposed privatizing Social Security back when people still believed that stocks only go up. Even then his proposal made no sense; as I've explained before, it was based on the claim that 2-1=4, that you can divert the payroll taxes of younger workers into personal accounts and still pay promised benefits to older workers. But now even the nonsensical promise that individual accounts would earn stock market returns looks pretty unappealing. So why does he keep pushing the idea?

One reason is ideology: hard-line conservatives are determined to build a bridge back to the 1920's. Another is Mr. Bush's infallibility complex: to back off on privatization would be to admit, at least implicitly, to a mistake -- and this administration never, ever does that.

But there may be a third reason. Ask yourself: Who would benefit directly from the creation of "personal accounts" under Social Security?

Those personal accounts won't be like personal stock portfolios. The Social Security Administration can't and won't become a stockbroker for 130 million clients, most of them with quite small accounts. Instead it's likely that a privatization scheme would require individuals to invest with one of a handful of designated private investment funds.

That would mean enormous commissions for the managers of those funds. And those who would be likely to benefit showed their appreciation, in advance: During the 2000 election, according to opensecrets.org, campaign contributors in the two categories labeled "securities and investment" and "miscellaneous finance" (basically individual wheeler-dealers) gave Mr. Bush almost six times as much as they gave Al Gore.

Here, too, Mr. Bush's past is prologue. I reported in an earlier column the story of Utimco, the University of Texas fund that, while Mr. Bush was governor and the current secretary of commerce, Donald Evans, headed the U.T. regents, placed more than $1 billion with private funds, many with close business or political ties to Mr. Bush himself. Among the beneficiaries were the Wyly brothers, who later financed a crucial smear campaign against John McCain. ("Bush reveals his poisonous colors" was the headline of a piece about that campaign, written by the online pundit Andrew Sullivan.)

Could America's retirement savings really be used to reward the administration's friends? Ask the teachers of Texas. In one of many odd deals during Mr. Bush's time as governor, the Texas teachers' retirement system sold several buildings without open bids, taking a $70 million loss, to a company controlled by Richard Rainwater, a prime mover behind Mr. Bush's rise to wealth.

In an Aug. 16, 1998, article in The Houston Chronicle -- which should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the Bush administration -- the reporter, R. G. Ratcliffe, matter-of-factly summarized this and many other unusual deals thus: "A pattern emerges: When a Bush is in power, Bush's business associates benefit."

Of course, personal Social Security accounts would have to be managed by nationally reputable institutions. Mr. Bush couldn't give the business to his old Texas cronies ? could he?

When a politician won't let go of a proposal that, by any normal calculation, should be completely off the table, you have to wonder.

Criticizing an $88.5 million payment as "completely in outer space," a state appellate court yesterday tossed out the award that would have been shared among three San Diego law firms that helped secure smog-fee refunds for some California motorists.

"The fact that attorneys even requested a fee award of that absurd magnitude from the taxpayers is a testament to the unreal world of greed in which some attorneys practice law," said presiding Judge Richard Sims.

The three-judge panel unanimously sent the case to a new arbitration panel with the direction that the attorneys cannot receive more than the $18 million originally awarded by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge, plus 10 percent interest accrued since the summer of 1998.

Hoy advocates discriminating on the basis of an odd (more on that later) combination of ethnicity and nationality. Many bigots stop at bigotry based on only one characteristic -- say, race or orientation. Hoy does them one better. Maybe when he gets truly advanced he can attack another group also (how about instant death for gay Arabs from Arab countries?).

What the hell does "from an Arab nation" mean? During law school I was friendly with a classmate who had spent substantial chunks of his youth in Saudi Arabia as the son of a Western businessman. Would he count as someone "from an Arab nation?"

And what of the retaliation by those countries against Americans there? Before expulsion, isn't it likely that thousands will be taking [sic] hostage, ala 1979???? (more re Iran below)

"In the end, any benefits from having those men from the Middle East in our nation don't outweigh the risks of another Sept. 11." Yup, because it's not like any of the 9/11 terrorists had visas from, say, EUROPE!!! Can you IMAGINE the international crisis if the US refused to accept visas for Europeans of Arab descent?

So, what does Hoy mean? Is it Arab ethnicity -- which it cannot be or, if he is to allow European Arabs to travel here. It cannot be Arab nationality, unless we wish to incur all the problems laid out above. No, Hoy cannot be serious. But he sures seems to be. Which is scary.

Hoy indicates absolutely NO awareness that Iran and Afghanistan are NOT ARAB COUNTRIES!!! So an AFGHAN passport would be fine, but not a Jordanian one. . . . And how do we characterize good old Sudan??? Of course, expecting the angrily ignorant Hoy to have wrestled with these issues before posting is, well, too much.

Lindh's case is obviously unique in many respects, not least of which is that he is a young white man from a privileged background. This has led to intense speculation in the media and to popular discussion regarding where this "foolish young man" went wrong. Was it the influence of his birthplace in the liberal enclave of Takoma Park, or the trendy Marin County, Calif., environment of his teen years?

Behind all this is a collective national sigh of relief at the sentence. This young man will be punished severely, but at least he will have a chance to get out of prison and make a life for himself someday.

Contrast this with the scene in most American courtrooms, where 70 percent of the defendants are African American and Latino, most of them from low-income backgrounds. Their "day in court" is often a fleeting affair. More than 90 percent are convicted, as was Lindh, through a plea agreement. In this era of pervasive mandatory sentencing, the incentives to plead guilty are powerful. Prosecutors can threaten a defendant with serious prison time -- 25 years to life for even nonviolent first offenders charged with drug offenses and other crimes far less serious than the violent acts to which Lindh pleaded guilty. Like Lindh, many of them have given statements or have been detained or searched under circumstances in which law enforcement officers are alleged to have violated their constitutional rights.

Kemba Smith, for example, was the girlfriend of one of the biggest cocaine dealers on the East Coast in the 1990s. Her involvement in drugs was minimal and clearly under the direction of her boyfriend. Yet, after her boyfriend was murdered, Smith bore the brunt of the drug conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the last days of the Clinton presidency, her sentence was commuted to the time she had already served. Smith's case and others like hers exemplify the extremes to which federal sentencing policy can lead.

Realistically, we are looking at a decade of deficits, which will eventually pose serious problems for Social Security and Medicare.

On the other hand, with the recovery still wobbly, this is no time for fiscal austerity ? if anything, right now the federal government ought to be pumping more money into the economy than it is.

The sales occurred between September 2000 and October 2001 and violated the Iran-Iraq Nonproliferation Act of 1992. The act mandates sanctions against companies or governments that make sales that "could materially contribute to either country's acquiring chemical, biological, nuclear, or destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons."

The State Department notified the Chinese government of the sanctions yesterday.

The sanctions bar the eight companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prohibit the latter from issuing export licenses to U.S. companies that seek to sell goods to the sanctioned firms.

The measures will be in place for two years.

PEOPLE SAY that Harvey Pitt, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, damages the president's post-Enron credibility. On Wednesday, however, it was the president who damaged Mr. Pitt's credibility. At a news conference with Poland's president, Mr. Bush was asked whether he was confident that the SEC's current investigation into Halliburton Co. would exonerate Vice President Cheney, who used to run that company. "Yes, I am," the president replied. This sort of comment is almost enough to kindle nostalgia for the old days when independent counsels investigated top government officials.

Unfortunately, the information we have received from FTTTF (Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force) so far has been insufficient to permit a consular officer to deny a visa. The information we have received states only that the FTTTF believes the applicants may pose a threat to national security and therefore the FTTTF recommends against issuance.

Under the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), only consular officers have the authority to issue or deny visas. All visa refusals must be based on a specific statutory ineligibility; if there are no grounds under the law on which to deny an alien a visa, the consular officer is required to issue the visa. In order to deny a visa, a consular officer must know or have reason to believe that the applicant is ineligible under one of the specific statutory grounds.

Asked about Social Security — which, in the words of the interviewer, "starts doing a turn-around on cash flow in 2017” — Crippen says, "What happens then is the Treasury will have to raise taxes, cut other spending, or borrow from the public.”

I've read some negative comments about this flick coming from European (especially British) male reviewers. Pretty much, what they have to say is that the movie sucks because it is either totally unbelievable or a 'remake' of 'Here on Earth.'

Now, I'm a male, I'm European, and I grew up in Europe. I think I have an idea or two on why European males consider this movie totally unrealistic. Let's get to the core of the issue here.

The plain truth is that Christianity is a mystery in Europe, especially for the new generations. Girls like Jamie Sullivan in Europe are like white flies (even among the evangelical Christians that I know over there!); therefore, when your typical European guy sees this movie, he'll be thinking, `This thing does not make sense…'

See, the truth is that Europeans can relate more to the girl of 'Here on Earth,' who does not have any problem betraying her boyfriend with the main character of the flick, or with the girl of 'Autumn in New York,' who does not have any problem flirting with the male lead after five seconds she's known him (and going to bed with him after fifteen minutes), even though the guy could be her father and actually had something going on with the girl's mother a few years before.

See, those kinds of creepy things are perfectly acceptable in a movie for your average European guy. But, when you see the pure and innocent love story of 'A WALK…,' they say: 'Already done.' Already done? Really? A love story where two teenagers do not go to bed and yet show the greatest intimacy you can see in a movie, where the guy blesses his girlfriend with total love without expecting anything back, just for the sake of making her whole. You've seen this in many movies? Really? Ok, I'll tell you what. Name one other recent movie where you see the kind of unconditional love, purity, innocence, redemption, forgiveness, and spiritual growth (the average European guy will want to look up the words 'spiritual' and 'growth' in the dictionary, since he's probably not accustomed with them) that you see in 'A WALK…' Since, this story has been done so many times, you won't have any problems naming at least one other movie, right? Oh, and please, do not come up with a movie like `Life as a House.' I saw that one, and it falls under the same category as 'Autumn in New York' and 'Here on Earth;' movies that want to win my heart by showing one aspect of love while showing lack of respect for all or most of its other characteristics.

One final word of advice for your average European guy out there: look up the word 'love' in your dictionary. Too many years of European cultural influence might have led you to confuse it with the words 'Lust,' 'Selfishness,' and 'Sex.'

First, the city of Arlington built the Rangers a new stadium, on terms extraordinarily favorable to Mr. Bush's syndicate, eventually subsidizing Mr. Bush and his partners with more than $150 million in taxpayer money. The city was obliged to raise taxes substantially as a result. Soon after the stadium was completed, Mr. Bush ran successfully for governor of Texas on the theme of self-reliance rather than reliance on government.

Mr. Bush's syndicate eventually resold the Rangers, for triple the original price.

One last item: Mr. Bush, who put up 1.8 percent of the Rangers syndicate's original capital, was entitled to about $2.3 million from that sale. But his partners voluntarily gave up some of their share, and Mr. Bush received 12 percent of the proceeds ? $14.9 million. So a group of businessmen, presumably with some interest in government decisions, gave a sitting governor a $12 million gift. Shouldn't that have raised a few eyebrows?

Finally, there's the indifference to conflicts of interest. In Austin, Governor Bush saw nothing wrong with profiting personally from a deal with Tom Hicks; in Washington, he sees nothing wrong with having the Pentagon sign what look like sweetheart deals with Dick Cheney's former employer Halliburton.

And the Bush administration is full of such insiders. That's why President Bush cannot get away with merely rhetorical opposition to executive wrongdoers. To give the most extreme example (so far), how can we take his moralizing seriously when Thomas White -- whose division of Enron generated $500 million in phony profits, and who sold $12 million in stock just before the company collapsed -- is still secretary of the Army?

And he still opposes both reforms that would reduce the incentives for corporate scams, such as requiring companies to count executive stock options against profits, and reforms that would make it harder to carry out such scams, such as not allowing accountants to take consulting fees from the same firms they audit.

The closest thing to a substantive proposal in Mr. Bush's tough-talking, nearly content-free speech on Tuesday was his call for extra punishment for executives convicted of fraud. But that's an empty threat. In reality, top executives rarely get charged with crimes; not a single indictment has yet been brought in the Enron affair, and even "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, a serial book-cooker, faces only a civil suit. And they almost never get convicted. Accounting issues are technical enough to confuse many juries; expensive lawyers make the most of that confusion; and if all else fails, big-name executives have friends in high places who protect them.

In this as in so much of the corporate governance issue, the current wave of scandal is prefigured by President Bush's own history.

An aside: Some pundits have tried to dismiss questions about Mr. Bush's business career as unfair -- it was long ago, and hence irrelevant. Yet many of these same pundits thought it was perfectly appropriate to spend seven years and $70 million investigating a failed land deal that was even further in Bill Clinton's past. And if they want something more recent, how about reporting on the story of Mr. Bush's extraordinarily lucrative investment in the Texas Rangers, which became so profitable because of a highly incestuous web of public policy and private deals? As in the case of Harken, no hard work is necessary; Joe Conason laid it all out in Harper's almost two years ago.

But the Harken story still has more to teach us, because the S.E.C. investigation into Mr. Bush's stock sale is a perfect illustration of why his tough talk won't scare well-connected malefactors.

Mr. Bush claims that he was "vetted" by the S.E.C. In fact, the agency's investigation was peculiarly perfunctory. It somehow decided that Mr. Bush's perfectly timed stock sale did not reflect inside information without interviewing him, or any other members of Harken's board. Maybe top officials at the S.E.C. felt they already knew enough about Mr. Bush: his father, the president, had appointed a good friend as S.E.C. chairman. And the general counsel, who would normally make decisions about legal action, had previously been George W. Bush's personal lawyer -- he negotiated the purchase of the Texas Rangers. I am not making this up.

Most corporate wrongdoers won't be quite as well connected as the young Mr. Bush; but like him, they will expect, and probably receive, kid-glove treatment. In an interesting parallel, today's S.E.C., which claims to be investigating the highly questionable accounting at Halliburton that turned a loss into a reported profit, has yet to interview the C.E.O. at the time -- Dick Cheney.

The bottom line is that in the last week any hopes you might have had that Mr. Bush would make a break from his past and champion desperately needed corporate reform have been dashed. Mr. Bush is not a real reformer; he just plays one on TV.

My reaction is that, like many things the governor does, it seems to be all about public relations and nothing about substance," said Assemblyman John Campbell, R-Irvine. " ... Freeze means you stop. This is clearly not stopping. Call it a slowdown."

The problem goes beyond perceptions, Campbell said: A real freeze would have put the state in a better position to deal with a budget shortfall now estimated at $23.6 billion.

"I don't think the governor or the Legislature have taken this thing seriously," he said.

Nine out of 10 people will say there's a state hiring freeze," (Mandler) said. "They just saw the headline. Politically, that's the only thing the governor needed."

Whatever the reason, the fact that the report was filed late, while a violation of SEC rules, does not seem particularly damning in the absence of any underlying wrongdoing that a late filing might have been intended to conceal — and especially in light of the fact that the Form 144 was filed on time. In addition, it appears that at the time Bush sent his form to the SEC, late filing was not seen as a very serious offense. "If it had come to the SEC's attention back then, somebody would have said, 'Get the bloody form filed,' and that would have been it," says (former SEC commissioner Edward) Fleischman. "There was precious little attention paid to a timely or tardy filing of Form 4."

The New York Times and Washington Post carried front-page stories on the cat energy stock President Bush sold 10 years ago. Both papers said that Mr. Bush, as the Post put it, "disclosed the transaction to the SEC 34 weeks late." What neither paper mentioned is that the president did notify the SEC of his intention to sell the stock on the very day he sold it. Both papers also took note of an SEC investigation of whether the president was improperly acting on inside information. The Post reported that the SEC had "concluded that he did not have access to inside information." The Times, though, never mentioned that either.

Recall that in Bush v. Gore, the same 5-4 conservative majority ruled, just as it did in White, that a state (there, Florida) did not have carte blanche to decide how elections in that state would be held. Instead, the Bill of Rights (there, the Equal Protection Clause) restricted how elections had to occur. In short, the Justices held the very same positions in 2000 that they have this year. They have been consistent and thus, arguably, principled both times.

That casts the common critique of Bush v. Gore severely into doubt. Did the Court really decide the election, casting policy-minded votes just as the voters who went to the ballot box did? Or did the Justices simply decide to adhere to carefully-considered views of how much deference a state deserves to run its own elections? The White decision suggests, perhaps surprisingly, that the answer may be the latter, since the Justices voiced the very same views two years down the road, as well.

[T]he Islamic world represses women, spawns terrorism, is prone to war, resists democracy and has contributed remarkably few great scientists or writers to modern civilization. So it's time to defend Islam.

In speaking to Arab friends, I've reproached them for the virulent anti-Semitism in their societies. But it's a cheap shot for us to scold Arabs for acquiescing in religious hatred unless we try vigorously to uproot our own religious bigotry.

You just can't make this stuff up. In this column, New York Times big thinker Nicholas Kristof admits that Islam has some problems with, oh, violence, and this discrimination against women thing. But citing American critics of Islam, who call it "a religion of war," he suggests that America is just as bad. Mmm-hmm. When Paul Weyrich orders a mob to stone a retarded man claiming to be the Prophet, as happened in Pakistan yesterday, or Franklin Graham exhorts Christians to kill Muslim men and enslave their women, as God hath commanded, as a Palestinian imam did months ago, then Kristof will have a point. Until then, he's full of the same self-hating liberal guilt we've come to expect from the Times.

Of course, Islam is troubled in ways no one can ignore. The scholar Samuel Huntington has noted that the Islamic world has "bloody borders," with conflict around much of its perimeter. Of the 26 countries torn by conflict in the year 2000, 14 have large Muslim populations. And on average, Muslim countries mobilize twice as large a share of the population in armed forces as do predominately Christian countries.

This is fair grounds for debate, but the sweeping denigrations of Islam are mush. Critics often quote from the Koran, for example, to argue that Islam is intrinsically violent ("fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them"). But the Koran, like the Bible, can be quoted for any purpose. After all, the New Testament embraces slavery ("Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling").

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. -- Galatians 3:28