Opponents of the move to recall Gov. Gray Davis are asking their supporters to intimidate signature gatherers and complain of harassment at stores where recall petitions are circulating, stepping up the political battle taking place in front of Wal-Marts and Home Depots across California.

In an e-mail message and Internet posting titled "How to Advocate Against the Recall," Davis supporters were told, "It is OK to stand in front of their table or approach potential signers before they do, or otherwise inhibit their activity." The memo instructs people to say they are "offended by being harassed" and file complaints with managers of stores.

In 1968, Mr. Thurmond, then 66 and a widower for eight years, married for the second time. His bride, Nancy Moore, a former Miss South Carolina, was 22.

...

Although Mr. Thurmond had been criticized for marrying a woman much younger than he, the marriage produced four children.

As sometimes happens with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he let his mouth race ahead of his brain Wednesday night at a gathering of Young Democrats at the Washington nightspot Acropolis. After presidential candidate Howard Dean spoke, Kennedy delivered an impassioned peroration against President Bush's tax cut. We hear that Kennedy told the crowd: "I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life." With that he got the audience's attention -- the dropping-jaws kind. "He droned on and on, frequently mentioning how much better the candidates would sound the more we drank," a witness told us. "Finally, he had to be stopped by a DNC volunteer." Kennedy's spokesman, Ernesto Anguilla, told us yesterday: "He was talking to the crowd; it was a rally-the-troops kind of speech about the tax cut. He was energizing the crowd and got caught up in it and used an unfortunate word, which he regrets using. . . . And no one pulled him off the stage." [emphasis added]

In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.

In "Welcome to the Real World," Matthew Hoy draws together stories usually reported in isolation -- from the drive to expand Medicare, to the anti-tax cut positions taken by union leaders, to the anti-war rallies organized by professors at public universities. As he points out, these are symptoms of the decline of the national Democratic party, one that is well on its way to marginalizing itself in the eyes of the American mainstream.

"As a result, campaign finance is only the tip of the iceberg. Next year, George W. Bush will spend two or three times as much money as his opponent; but he will also benefit hugely from the indirect support that corporate interests — very much including media companies — will provide for his political message.

Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images — John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit — or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.

Since I've been accusing the Bush administration of cooking the intelligence on Iraq, I should confess my intentions. Countless Iraqis warned me that they would turn to guerrilla warfare if U.S. troops overstay their welcome, so I thought I'd find an Iraqi who had had his tongue or ear amputated by Saddam's thugs and still raged about the U.S. That would powerfully convey what a snake pit we're in.

An article on Wednesday about Congressional committee testimony by a top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons misstated the response of other officials from several intelligence agencies who were asked whether they had been pressured to tailor their analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views. All said no; they did not remain silent.

So why did Ms. Saga agree to give up her kids? The answer is simple: her fear that her father would have her killed if she stayed. Even sympathetic Saudis, she says, told her there was no turning back, and she figured she was of better use to her children alive in America than dead in Saudi Arabia. "There was no choice," she says flatly.
Certainly Ambassador Jordan deserves full marks for sticking to his promise in what must have been trying circumstances. But as much as we celebrate Ms. Saga's deliverance, it should give us pause. Surely no American mother should be forced to choose between her children and her life and freedom. And exercising that freedom shouldn't require the combined efforts of this newspaper, daily exposure on the FOX News Channel and a desperate flight to a U.S. consulate. And notwithstanding the joint Saudi-State distaste for publicity, none of this would have happened too without the push by their joint nemesis, Pat Roush.

If things are to improve, the State Department must cease treating these matters as private disputes and beginning every explanation with the phrase "under Saudi law." As Ms. Saga notes, the Saudis take a different approach, actively lobbying her husband not to agree to let their children go to America. Under the status quo created by Saudi intransigence, not only are Americans denied their freedom but Americans and Saudis alike are denied any chance for civilized custody arrangements that would allow children to be with their Saudi fathers in Saudi Arabia and their American mothers in America. The sad fact is that State imposes no sanction on the Saudis for their outrageous behavior.

What is known now by the CIA and other U.S. government officials ... is that the Iraqis, No. 1, were way ahead in developing this program, could have put it together with the components they had and the information in about three years, according to top nuclear scientists.

On the other hand, the scientist [Mahdi Obeidi] who turned it over to them said that there was no program after '91, that he was ordered in 1991, and other top nuclear scientists, to take various components and kits, as they were called, with the various plans and diagrams for this centrifuge and hide them.

He hid it under a rose bush in a barrel in his garden, and there it stayed for 12 years, and there he lied about it for 12 years until Baghdad fell to coalition forces, and at that point he decided he wanted to cooperate with the United States, and he did.

They (libraries) cannot maintain adults-only terminals without filters, or rely on alternative methods, such as monitoring by librarians, to keep children from looking at inappropriate Web sites.

"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," Gephardt said.

I would go back to the Clinton era of taxes because I think most Americans would gladly pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president if they could only have the same economy that they had when Bill Clinton was president.

Russert: Let’s turn to the campaign. This is what you said last month about the Bush tax cut and I’ll show you and our viewers. “It has become clear what this president is attempting to do and why we must repeal the entire package of tax cuts.” The Department of Treasury, we consulted and asked them: What effect would that have across America? And this is what they said. A married couple with two children making $40,000 a year, under the Bush plan, would pay $45 in taxes. Repealing them, under the Dean plan, if you will, would pay $1,978, a tax increase of over 4,000 percent. A married couple over 65 making $40,000 and claiming their Social Security, under Bush would pay $675 in taxes. You’re suggesting close to $1,400, a 107 percent tax increase. Can you honestly go across the country and say, “I’m going to raise your taxes 4,000 percent or 107 percent,” and be elected?

Dean: Well, first of all, were those figures from the Treasury Department, did you say, or CBO?

Russert: Treasury Department.

Dean: I don’t believe them.

Russert: Well, in 1995, when you were advocating that position, you were asked how would you balance the budget if we had a constitutional amendment...

Dean: Yeah.

Russert: ...calling for that, and this is what Howard Dean said. “The way to balance the budget, [Gov. Howard] Dean said, is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut almost everything else. ‘It would be tough but we could do it,’ he said.”

Dean: Well, we fortunately don’t have to do that now.

Russert: We have a $500 billion deficit.

Dean: But you don’t have to cut Social Security to do that.

Russert: But why did you have to do it back then?

Dean: Well, because that was the middle of—I mean, I don’t recall saying that, but I’m sure I did, if you have it on your show, because I know your researchers are very good.

Russert: Well, Miles Benson is a very good reporter for the Newhouse News.

Dean: Yes, he is. No, no, no. I’m sure I did. I’m not denying I said that. I have...

Russert: But you would no longer cut Social Security?

Dean: But you don’t—no. I’m not ever going to cut Social Security benefits.

Russert: Would you raise retirement age to 70?

Dean: No. No.

Russert: Would you cut defense?

Dean: You don’t have to do that either. Here’s what you have to do. You got to get rid of the tax cuts, all of them, and then you have got to restrict spending.

Sidney Allen Stokes, born July 25, 1919 in El Centro, went home to be with the Lord on June 14, 2003.

He moved to San Diego in 1923. He graduated from Brown Military Academy (now San Diego Army-Navy Academy) in 1937. He attended San Diego State College. He later worked in heavy construction on the Texoma Dam in Denison, Texas, for the E. Paul Fords Co.

Sidney met his future wife, Bonnie Jean Lindley in Wynne, Ark. The couple was married April 4, 1942, in San Diego.

He served in the Army Air Corps in WWII as a B-29 navigator and engineer. Years later he wished he had not been competent at math, which enabled him to pass the navigator's test. Those who passed the test became navigators; those who failed the test became pilots. He had wanted to be a pilot.

After leaving the service, he worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. for 38 years before retiring in 1977.

He was a member of the Good Sam Fifth Wheel Trailer Club and College Avenue Baptist Church.

Sidney could fix, build or make practically anything. In his retirement he kept busy by building motorcycles from the frame-up. A motorcycle accident caused his wife, Bonnie, to put a stop to motorcycling, so he started on the next-smallest thing she would allow - restoring British sports cars. Over the years he rebuilt two MGs and periodically loaned them out to his grandchildren.

Sidney loved Jesus. He and Bonnie would pray together every morning. His example instilled in his children and grandchildren a love of God.

His family will see him again in heaven.

Sidney is survived by his wife of 61 years, Bonnie L. Stokes of La Mesa; son and daughter-in-law James and Barbara Stokes of Carlsbad; daughter and son-in-law JoAnne and Richard Hoy of La Mesa; grandchildren Matthew Hoy of Escondido, Rebecca Hoy Short of La Mesa, Daniel Stokes and Bonnie Stokes of Carlsbad; sisters Elsie Underwood of Nokesville, Va., and Dorothy Wiker of El Cajon.

If only Sarah Saga were trying to crash a men's-only golf club. Then she and those like her might be guaranteed some sustained media coverage. As it is, this intrepid 23-year-old American mother is now holed up with her two children in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah in a desperate bid for freedom.

Back in September Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., claimed in this newspaper it is "absolutely not true" that any American women were in his country against their will. Ms. Saga's flight to the consulate suggests otherwise. For under Saudi law no woman--even an American--is free to leave that country if her father or husband forbids it.

Look at the op-ed page of the Times itself. It deteriorated beyond recognition. Paul Krugman, once a respected economist, has become a shrill polemicist, a show-off and a bully. A good editor would try to guide Krugman, a non-journalist, toward writing in ways that might actually influence policy or attempt to change the minds of people who aren't already far to the left. Instead of explaining economic concepts and taking a well-reasoned position (as Robert Samuelson, a meticulous non-economist, does in the Washington Post), Krugman vilifies his opponents, calls them liars, heaps abuse on them and, in his posturing, doesn't bother to illuminate difficult intellectual issues. What a waste!

Under the Raines regime, a single viewpoint has dominated among non-Times op-ed writers as well. Why doesn't the Times - unlike, say, the Washington Post - have the courage to display the other side's arguments? Is there a chance that the reader, hearing the case for tax cuts, might defect?

Luckily, there is a better model for judicial selection. Although the Constitution gives the president the power to pick all federal judges, senators have long had great influence in the choice of the federal trial judges who sit in their states. For decades, New York's Republican and Democratic senators have appointed judicial screening panels, composed of members of the community, not limited to lawyers, and charged them to recommend candidates for the federal trial courts in the state. Any lawyer can apply for a judgeship.

For each vacancy, the panels compile a list from which the senator can then recommend a nominee to the president. This tradition has given New York an excellent federal trial bench. Lawyers who would be excluded from consideration in a world that demanded political loyalty or ideological devotion have been willing to submit their names.

Maybe Mr. DeLay's public profile will be raised by his success yesterday in sabotaging tax credits for 12 million children. Those tax credits would cost only $3.5 billion. But Mr. DeLay has embedded the credits in an $82 billion tax cut package. That is, he wants to extort $22 in tax cuts (in the face of record budget deficits) for every dollar given to poor children.

But the really important stories about Mr. DeLay, a central figure in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, involve his continuing drive to give his party a permanent lock on power.

Consider the case of Westar Energy, whose chief executive was indicted for fraud. The subsequent investigation turned up e-mail in which executives described being solicited by Republican politicians for donations to groups linked to Mr. DeLay, in return for a legislative "seat at the table." The provision Westar wanted was duly inserted into an energy bill. (Republican leaders deny that there was any quid pro quo.)

Then there's the Texas redistricting story.

Normally states redraw Congressional districts once a decade: Texas redistricted after the 2000 census. But under Mr. DeLay's leadership, Texas Republicans are trying to increase their advantage in seats with a second redistricting. This in itself is an unprecedented power grab.

This is a perfect illustration of the way the greenhouse theory is manipulated. The base theory suggests warming that isn't happening to the extent it should. Science then suggests something else. A new theory is produced, or an old one updated, to make the new data fit with the base theory. Worst-case scenarios are dreamed up and promulgated, normally worse than before. Action is then demanded now from policy-makers to avert the worst-case scenario.

Whatever this is, it isn't real science. It's science distorted to fit a politically-accepted view of nature. Those who question the progress of the science are vilified and pilloried. Galileo would recognize what's going on here, I think.

An Iranian government official with ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Tehran sides with the Americans on one big issue — Saddam Hussein's weapons.

"Yes, we agree with the Americans. Our intelligence indicated that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction and was hiding them from the U.N.," the official said.

The official, from the top ranks of Iran's cleric-led government, asked to remain anonymous amid escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran.

He went on to say that the big question is, "What did the Iraqis do with these weapons?"

Although Tehran does not know where these weapons may be today, there is a strong suspicion that some may have filtered onto local black markets.

The AG was asked about a report from his own inspector general criticizing the way in which the Justice Department had treated 762 illegal immigrants locked up and detained after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. None of them -- that's precisely zero -- was ever linked to terrorist activities.

In the first place, the Justice Department got things exactly backward. In this country, you're innocent until proven guilty -- not the other way around. Second, harsh and inhumane treatment -- keeping the cell illuminated 24 hours a day -- ought not to be tolerated. After all -- and it is worth repeating -- the detainees were never charged with any crime linking them to terrorism. Most of them were detained because they were Muslims or Arabs. In this country, that ain't a crime.

Go ahead, connect the dots on Ashcroft yourself. A cavalier attitude toward civil liberties, an inability to concede mistakes, a refusal to see imperfections in the criminal justice system, a zealously irrational belief in the death penalty -- and pretty soon you can read between the lines of that Justice Department report: The attorney general is far more dangerous than any of the immigrants he wrongly detained.

The trend worries diplomats and others. Turkmenistan — sitting amid Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan — is in a tense region where repression is fueling the emergence of extremist groups. It also holds energy resources critical to Russia and is important to a U.S.-backed effort to build a trans-Afghan gas pipeline to Pakistan.

Given the obstacles to development of a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that such an idea will make any progress in the near future, and no major Western companies have expressed interest in reviving the project. The security situation in Afghanistan is one obvious major risk, and the tensions between India and Pakistan make it unlikely that such a pipeline could be extended into India, which unlike Pakistan has sufficient immediate demand for imported natural gas to justify a project of such magnitude. Financial problems in the utility sector in India, which would be the major consumer of the natural gas, also could pose a problem. [emphasis added]

Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers. I don't know whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to inflate balloons, as the Iraqis claim — a claim supported by a number of outside experts. (According to the newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq a similar system back in 1987.) What is clear is that an initial report concluding that they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times, "a rushed job and looks political." President Bush had no business declaring "we have found the weapons of mass destruction."

It's now two months since Baghdad fell — and according to The A.P., military units searching for W.M.D.'s have run out of places to look.

The stark failures at the top of the list have led to the Exploitation Group's work being scaled back, with fewer than 300 of the 900 targets inspected.

(Douglas) Feith (undersecretary of Defense) said U.S. forces have searched about 20% of roughly 600 suspected weapons sites.

Pentagon officials say that 110 of 616 suspected sites had been searched, and that the number of people conducting the searches will more than double in coming weeks, to 1,300.

"We've interviewed a fraction of the people who were involved. We've gone to a fraction of the sites. We've gone through a fraction of thousands and thousands and thousands of documents about this program," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

Intelligence agents and weapons hunters have been speaking with scientists and experts for the past month, but those interviews have not led the teams to any illegal weapons and none of the tips provided by Iraqis have panned out.

So if you like a good conspiracy, this one's a doozy. And the best thing about it is that if all these people are lying, there's only one person who ever told the truth: Saddam Hussein. And now we can't find him either.

I come from a country whose rulers are indifferent to the mass starvation of their own people--one whose citizens are on average more than seven inches shorter than their Southern brothers and sisters, and one that requires its citizens to rise early in the morning to join screeching public-address systems in singing absurd songs of praise to a deranged leader. But--and this is now increasingly true and true to a degree that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago--my fellow countrymen know and openly acknowledge that Kim Jong Il is both evil and lunatic and doomed. More and more, midlevel officials like me in the North Korean military and WMD industry see the regime's blustering threats against other countries as evidence of its isolation, desperation and declining hold on power.

The time has come for South Korea and the U.S. to encourage the defection of thousands like me who are prepared to tell the world what they know and whose departure will deprive the regime of skills it needs to survive. Such mass defections will occur if the defectors are given a reasonable prospect for safe harbor outside of North Korea. At the same time, Seoul should end its barbarous "sunshine policy," which sentences fellow Koreans to slavery because giving them freedom would cost too much money.

A Danish Lutheran priest has been suspended from his duties after confessing that he does not believe in God.

Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town near the capital Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection".

Local bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel suspended the priest for a week after a meeting with him on Tuesday at which she demanded that he retract his comments.

However, Mogens Lindhardt, the leader of Denmark's Theological College of Education, described Mr Grosboel's claims as "refreshing".

The measure applies to a type of abortion used to terminate pregnancies in the second and third trimester. The procedure, which is medically known as intact dilation and extraction, is rarely used, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group.

A prominent member of the abortion rights movement said Tuesday that he lied in earlier statements when he said a controversial form of late-term abortion is rare and performed primarily to save the lives or fertility of women bearing severely malformed babies.

He now says the procedure is performed far more often than his colleagues have acknowledged, and on healthy women bearing healthy fetuses.

Ron Fitzsimmons, the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said he intentionally misled in previous remarks about the procedure, called intact dilation and evacuation by those who believe it should remain legal and "partial-birth abortion" by those who believe it should be outlawed, because he feared that the truth would damage the cause of abortion rights.

A report in The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, last September sparked controversy when it reported that doctors at just one clinic in suburban Englewood estimated using the controversial procedure in about half of the 3,000 abortions they perform each year on women in their 20th to 24th weeks of pregnancy. A normal pregnancy is about 40 weeks.

The significantly lower levels of happiness and higher levels of depression among sexually active teens suggest that sexual activity leads to a decrease in happiness and well-being among many, if not most, teenagers. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that the majority of sexu­ally active teens express reservations and concerns about their personal sexual activity.

During his trial, Xu (Wei) told the court he had been brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks to his genitals after refusing to admit guilt, according to Human Rights in China.

"His health is rapidly deteriorating because of the abuse he suffered previously during his two years in custody while awaiting sentencing," the group said in a statement.

Xu and his three co-defendants had set up an internet-based group, the New Youth Society, which was dedicated to exploring democracy and social reform.

Am I exaggerating? Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have "found the weapons of mass destruction," the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. You've heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes.

Families with incomes lower than $10,500 will also not get the refund checks, but under the 2001 tax revision, they would not have been eligible for either the $600 or the $1,000 child tax credits because they do not pay federal tax. [emphasis added]