For example, in July two enterprising Middle Eastern firms started offering cellphone service in Baghdad, setting up jury-rigged systems compatible with those of neighboring countries. Since the collapse of Baghdad's phone system has been a major source of postwar problems, coalition authorities should have been pleased.

But no: the authorities promptly shut down the services. Cell service, they said, could be offered only by the winners in a bidding process — one whose rules, revealed on July 31, seemed carefully designed to shut out any non-American companies. (In the face of strenuous protests the rules were revised, but still seem to favor the usual suspects.) Oddly, the announcement of the winners, originally scheduled for Sept. 5, keeps being delayed. Meanwhile, only Paul Bremer and his people have cellphones — and, thanks to the baffling decision to give that contract to MCI, even those phones don't work very well. (Aside from the fact that its management perpetrated history's biggest accounting fraud, MCI has no experience in building cell networks.)

For a few days at the end of July, a couple of companies from Bahrain and Kuwait actually did set up a working cell-phone network for the public. But Bremer shut it down right away. According to the briefer sent out to meet the press, the “illegal” Bahrain and Kuwait phone service was interfering with U.S. military communications and the MCI network. The public’s phones were causing problems, in other words, for all those folks in the Bubble. Now we’re told “legal” phones won’t be in operation until mid-November at the earliest.

When a colleague of mine pressed one of the Bubble’s senior officials about this problem the other night, this up-and-coming Washingtonian said he didn’t see what all the fuss was about. “Quite frankly, we are in no hurry to establish a cell net here,” the official confided. “We don’t want the terrorists talking to each other.”

No bidder could be more than 5% government-owned. That meant that nearly every mobile operator in the Middle East and Europe was out of contention. Plus, the three winners would be required to post bonds covering the full cost of construction -- possibly as high as $150 million each. Such demanding terms, says telecom-equipment analyst Jason Chapman for researcher Gartner Inc., "would have made the short list very short."

But a surprising thing happened over the next few weeks. Responding to the outcry from potential bidders, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) twice relaxed its terms. By the time bids were due on Aug. 21, the CPA had lowered the bond requirement to $30 million and agreed to permit up to 10% government ownership in any bidding consortium. That let state-owned carriers enter the running in conjunction with private investors. More than a half-dozen Middle Eastern telcos have thrown their hats in the ring.

Seeking a lightning-fast rollout, the CPA devised a scheme to carve Iraq into three wireless regions. Each will be served by different carriers. After 12 months, the operators are encouraged to invade other territories in the hopes of fostering competition.

The decision to limit the contracts to two years was perhaps the boldest stroke. After that, a new Iraqi government is expected to organize its own tender -- and there's no guarantee September's winners will be picked again. It's an assurance to Iraqis "that we're not giving it away forever," says a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer. Thus, most bidders have lined up Iraqi partners. "Having local investors in a winning consortium is seen as an insurance policy when a subsequent Iraqi government takes over," says Norman Sandler, director of global strategic issues for Motorola Inc. (MOT ).

On the other hand, the two-year term could make it nearly impossible for companies to recoup their investments. Iraq's infrastructure is so shattered that operators may need to build pricey fiber or microwave backbones to connect cellular towers. The threat of sabotage by rebels necessitates expensive security. And market potential is limited by widespread poverty. Motorola figures on only about 500,000 mobile users initially -- roughly a $60 million annual business if customers spend an average of $10 per month. Such small returns suggest that only the very brave -- or foolhardy -- are plunging into the fray.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante got credit but did not have to attend a basic speech class at Fresno State in the late 1990s because a professor decided in 15 minutes or less that the Fresno Democrat would have earned at least a C based on his public utterances.

Bustamante left Fresno State in the late 1970s without earning a bachelor's degree but returned 20 years later to complete it, which he did this spring. He needed to take approximately eight classes, and the speech class satisfied a general-education requirement.

"In my judgment at the time, he had certainly demonstrated minimal proficiency, and I emphasize minimal proficiency ... in the fundamental skills mandated by the course," Robert Powell, former chairman of the communication department, said last week. He interjected: "I'm not going to make any judgment about the eloquence or anything else" of Bustamante's speeches.

Although NBC requires four weeks' notice for ad cancellations, the employee said, affiliates treat political candidates as "preferred customers" and would likely reach a quick compromise with Bustamante.

At his funeral, daughter Rosanne Cash said he was "a Baptist with the soul of a mystic." Pop idol Sheryl Crow sang "The Old Rugged Cross." The only sour note, by some accounts, was struck by Al Gore, who seemed to forget who was at center stage. "I wish I could stand here . . . and tell you I was Johnny Cash's closest friend. I can't. I'm not a singer. I'm not a preacher. I'm just a recovering politician . . . who used to be the next president of the United States of America."

Former Vice President Al Gore, who knew Cash but said he wouldn’t claim to being a close friend, said that he felt he could “speak for the millions who felt like they knew Johnny Cash.” Gore drew laughter when he said that he was “not a singer or a preacher. I’m just a recovering politician. I used to be the next president of the United States of America. If it had been up to Johnny Cash, I would have been the next president of the United States of America.” Cash, Gore said, was able to empathize and feel the suffering of the underclass and identify with prisoners so effectively because Cash “had come to understand that there is a prison within, and he lived in that prison. He found a way out, but he was a recidivist, a repeat offender. He came to understand through the healing love of time and his family that he could explore the truth within him and reach out to his savior and break loose of those walls.”

What astounds is that race demagogues like (Jesse) Jackson and (Cruz) Bustamante are hardly the only ones who hold this view. Many whites in California also share this view, particularly those who consider themselves enlightened on matters of race.

The "enlightened" whites think themselves above race prejudice, beyond race discrimination. But they think the rest of California's white population is less colorblind than they.

So they oppose Proposition 54 ostensibly to keep other whites honest. And to affirm their solidarity with blacks, browns, yellows and reds in the continuing struggle of those "minorities" for race equality.

The perverse irony is that the white and nonwhite foes of Proposition 54 find themselves supporting public policy – classifying individuals according to their skin color – that has a long and racist tradition.

And they employ the most dubious arguments to justify their support for public policy that has no moral or legal validity.

Like the claim that, if California health care providers stop collecting race data, the state's nonwhite population will not receive proper medical treatment.

That does not jibe with the scientific findings of J. Craig Venter, who founded Celera Genomics, the biotechnology firm that shares credit for decoding the human genome.

In a recent issue of Science, Venter says that collection of race and ethnicity data – for clinical drug trials – could lead to "misleading and biologically meaningless conclusions."

That's because "race" is a social, rather than scientific construct. "Instead of applying social categories," he wrote, we should be promoting obtaining scientific data. Color of skin does not work as a surrogate."

In fact, he noted, several scientific studies have shown that there are more differences in drug responses within racial and ethnic groups than among them.

You see, in the Cold War we were defensive. We were trying to protect our country from communism. Well guess what, it's over. Communism lost. Now we've got to go out there and finish the job and help people live the way they want to live. We've got to let them be all they can be. They want what we have. We've got some challenges ahead in that kind of strategy. We're going to be active, we're going to be forward engaged. But if you look around the world, there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office: men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condolzeezza Rice, Paul O'Neill--people I know very well--our president, George W. Bush. We need them there, because we've got some tough challenges ahead in Europe.

Matt Houston, a 19-year-old sophomore, called the group's price list offensive.

"My reaction was disgust because of the ignorance of some SMU students," said Houston, who is black. "They were arguing that affirmative action was solely based on race. It's not based on race. It's based on bringing a diverse community to a certain organization."

An article on Monday about Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz's comments at a forum on Iraq misstated President Bush's position on whether there were contacts between Al Qaeda and the government of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Bush has said there were such contacts; he has not said they were unsubstantiated.

judge has blocked as unconstitutional the state's plan to borrow nearly $2 billion to pay for employee pensions, part of the more than $15 billion in borrowing lawmakers relied on to balance the budget.

If upheld on appeal, the judge's preliminary opinion could raise legal questions over other planned bond sales in the $99 billion budget signed by the governor early last month, and possibly lead to further cutbacks and new taxes.

Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Cecil ruled orally Tuesday that the sale of bonds approved in the Legislature violated a portion of the state Constitution which bans borrowing more than $300,000 over several years to pay for routine spending.

• The debate's format, something that was a point of contention, worked surprisingly well. Candidates were able to give longer, though still scripted, answers. You didn't have the annoying moderator trying to cut them off incessantly. Everyone got their say, and it just seemed to be more interesting this way.
  
  
• Arianna Huffington is a nut. Arnold Schwarzenegger had it right when he suggested that she should be running against George W. Bush -- every issue that was raised, Huffington linked to problems in Washington, D.C. If Huffington wants to solve the problems she's identified, then she's running for the wrong office. If there is another debate, Huffington shouldn't be invited to participate.
  
  
• Bustamante made it through the night with no major gaffes, but he did make an admission that Schwarzenegger and McClintock would be wise to pounce on in their media buys.
  
  

  
  Well clearly we spent too much. We spent more as a government, we spent more than it was coming in. There's no rocket science to this. We clearly knew that there were certain incomes that were coming in, and we spent more than we had. But what I've decided to do, what I've decided, to face this realistically, to deal with this practically, to understand it and not tell half-truths about what we're likely able to do. We've done all the easy things, and now it's time to do the tough things. That's why I submitted a plan. A plan that I called tough love for California. In that plan, I raised tobacco taxes, I raised alcohol taxes, I raised the upper income tax brackets on the largest and the highest 4 percent of all Californians. I do that, but in return we close the budget gap, we fully fund education, we put 123,000 community college students back into our colleges, and we relieve the car tax for all those vehicles that are under $20,000. We do something in terms of raising taxes. She called it raising revenues. We know what it really is. But at the same time, we get something good for California.
  

  
  
  Bustamante acknowledges that the governor and the state legislature spent taxpayer funds irresponsibly -- and now they want more. Also note the conflicting impulses from the Democrat candidate. Bustamante wants to raise taxes on "the rich" (I'm always wary of how that definition is determined -- sometimes it seems much too low), but he also wants to raise the "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol -- which is effectively a tax on the poor.
  
  
• Bustamante also seemed very laid back. Quite a few of the commentators, including Democrat Susan Estrich, observed that it appeared as though Bustamante had been over-prescribed valium. Others likened his performance to that of Al Gore with his condescending sighs towards George W. Bush.
  
  
• Schwarzenegger had some good one-liners, but not a whole lot in the way of substance. He was right to note that Bustamante and Huffington seem to believe that the only major problem in California is the fact that corporations and "the rich" aren't taxed enough. Polls show that the vast majority of Californians think the state is heading in the wrong direction -- raising taxes alone is not going to get that opinion turned around.
  
  
• McClintock overall gave the best performance, though his odds of being elected are still long. Agree or disagree with him, he knows what he stands for and isn't inclined to compromise. He doesn't try to soften stands that are considered unpopular among many Californians (read: pro-life), he is who he is.
  
  
• Peter Camejo is a socialist. If that's what you want, he's your man.
  

The 59 players gathered in a conference room whistle at the actresses, add their own comments to the scripted innuendo and basically act like boys among boys, which is not far removed from what they are. Fifteen in the group are under 21.

One player comments that the couple on stage don't act like they're committed to a 50-50 partnership. But another says the woman seemed ideal – she knew her place, didn't challenge her upbraiding and acted perfectly compliant to somebody superior to her. (The players' names cannot be used under an agreement which granted reporters access to the drama session for the first time.)

"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

Forget for a moment that this is like Ian McKellen announcing he's no longer a classically trained actor and that he now considers himself part of the Hollywood action-hero fraternity.

You make a plea for "straight talk on judicial nominees" (editorial, Sept. 10), though your own talk has not always been consistent.

On Jan. 1, 1995, an editorial proclaimed, "Time to Retire the Filibuster." Yet on Feb. 13 of this year, you changed your tune, saying "Keep Talking About Miguel Estrada."

You claim that "Mr. Estrada would not answer senators' questions." In fact, he answered more than 125 questions, at his hearing and in writing afterward.

Mr. Estrada's caution about discussing issues and precedents that he would likely face as an appeals court judge is the same as previous Supreme Court nominees'. Democrats defended them and voted for them, yet they filibustered Mr. Estrada for taking that same position.

"You know who's on the panel, right? Do you think it's going to have much of a chance of surviving? I wouldn't bet on it," Judge Harry Pregerson said in an interview.

“I would have been a Republican,” Clark told them, “if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.”

On the third day of his campaign, Gen. Wesley K. Clark struggled today to clarify his statement on Thursday that he would "probably" have voted for the Congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

General Clark, a former NATO commander who has retired from the Army, never denied making the statement in an interview with four reporters on his chartered plane. But he seemed stunned by the headlines that it generated, as supporters worried that he had undercut his position as an antiwar candidate with military bona fides.

"I never would have voted for war," he said here this afternoon in an interview and in response to a question after a lecture at the University of Iowa. "What I would have voted for is leverage. Leverage for the United States to avoid a war. That's what we needed to avoid a war."

"I would have never voted for war," Clark told Reuters before delivering a foreign policy speech at the University of Iowa. "I'm a soldier. I understand what war's about, but I would have voted for the right kind of leverage for the president to head off war and avoid it."

These erroneous statements occur in the published opinion of the panel concerning my reasons, as then-Secretary of State, for decertifying pre-scored punchcard voting systems in 2001. The panel opinion begins with two incorrect factual statements contained in its lead topic sentence at page 1 of the panel opinion: that "the [punchcard] voting system is so flawed that the Secretary of State has officially deemed it 'unacceptable' and banned its use in all future elections."

This statement is incorrect in two ways: (1) as Secretary of State, I have never concluded, nor was it -- or is it -- my view, that pre-scored punchcard voting systems are flawed; and (2) I did not "ban the use of punchcard voting machines in all future elections" The incorrect implication of the first statement is that punchcard voting systems were and are defective, a view I never held and do not hold now. During my tenure as Secretary of State, dozens of elections involving national and local contests were successfully conducted using pre-scored punchcard voting systems. There was never a challenge in California to the result of any election because the election had been conducted using pre-scored punchcard voting systems.

The incorrect implication of the latter statement above is that punchcard voting systems would not be used in any elections between my decertification order and the date of its implementation. Moreover, the latter statement implies -- incorrectly -- that my action in 2002 somehow anticipated the recall and validates the panel's decision.

The Court ruling canceling the October 7, 2003 Statewide Special Election has already resulted in more voter confusion and antipathy than would ever potentially occur as a result of the continued use of the punch card voting system at issue.

If this election is delayed until March, 2004, it is possible that Sacramento County will have insufficient ballot capacity on our optical scan card to include all 135 candidates for the recall, plus all of the Federal, State and local contests that are scheduled for the March 2, 2004, election. The optical scan system that we plan to use does not allow for multiple cards, so we could potentially need to use a second voting system to accommodate the entire ballot. This would definitely cause voter confusion. We would be asking the voter not only to use a new system, but two new systems.

Voter confusion would also occur because the recall candidates are non-partisan running in a primary election. How would we explain to a Republican voter that he could vote for a Democrat in the recall contest but not for president?

Sacramento County estimated that this election would cost $1.5 million. At the present time, we have already expended approximately $1 million for the printing and mailing of ballots and Sample Official Ballots. This figure does not include staff time, overhead or indirect costs. The ballots and Sample Officials Ballots were prepared specifically for the October 7, 2003 Statewide Special Election and cannot be used or reused in another election. At least $1 million of Sacramento County’s taxpayer dollars will have been wasted if the October 7, 2003 Statewide Special Election is cancelled.

People moaned and groaned about a hanging chad here and a dimpled chad there in Florida in the election of 2000 and succeeded in getting the federal judiciary to throw away thousands of ballots still uncounted as of an arbitrary date (Dec. 12, 2000).

...

The Ninth Circuit's critics aren't being wholly inconsistent with the game they played in the 2000 election: they're again hanging onto a purely arbitrary, artificial deadline (there it was midnight on Dec. 12; here it's the arbitrary Oct. 7 date) ...

"They didn't listen," she said, during a telephone interview from a holding facility at the Los Angeles International Airport.

"They said 'Sit down and be quiet. We don't care what you say. We're sending you back.' "

Confusion quickly turned to panic.

When she asked to call her husband, immigration officials said, 'No, you don't have any rights,' " she said.

Her daughter was hungry and getting sick, the mother said. The infant's eyes were running, her forehead was clammy-hot with fever and she hadn't had a bottle in hours.

She cradled the baby and looked again to a detention officer for help, asking for water to mix baby formula.

"They asked me if I had money to buy the water," she said, explaining she had Australian currency and 65 cents in U.S. change.

"Oh, my God, I couldn't believe they wouldn't give me water for my baby," Vetter said.

Finally, she said, an agent whom Vetter described as "the only one who cared," gave her a bottle of water.

Although they hadn't talked, Rob Vetter, 30, learned of her situation when he went to pick up his wife and daughter at the airport.

"They told me I couldn't talk to her, that she had no rights to see me," he said. Finally, he said, a sympathetic airport medical technician told him they had been moved to a nearby clinic, where he could find them.

There, he talked with his wife, who by then was getting sick with a sinus and ear infection. Rob Vetter said that when immigration authorities intervened, he asked to take his child home.

"She's an American citizen. You have no right to keep her," Vetter said he told an official.

Pete Gordon, interim assistant director for the Los Angeles customs office of Immigration and Border Protection, said they wanted Vetter to take his daughter but he said no.

"What we were told by him is he would have a problem with day care and couldn't take the child," Gordon said.

The next day, Petty Officer Vetter said he was able to leave with his daughter, whom he took to the San Diego Naval Medical Center, where she was treated for dehydration and an ear infection.

Questioned by government lawyer Jonathan Sumption, Gilligan admitted a "slip of the tongue" in his report, subsequently failing to alert BBC bosses when his error got repeated, and losing notes of a key meeting.

But he stood by his argument that there had been misgivings among intelligence officials about a dossier on Iraq's weapons, published by Tony Blair's government in September 2002.

Later, Richard Sambrook, the BBC's head of news, admitted there had been errors in BBC statements following Gilligan's report as a row developed with Blair's office.

He said the BBC should have taken longer examining the issues and that Gilligan's radio report should have been approved by lawyers first.

In his May 29 broadcast, Gilligan said an unnamed senior British intelligence official alleged that Blair's office inserted a claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes' notice, when it knew the information was probably wrong.

Appearing at the inquiry for a second time Wednesday, Gilligan said he had not intended to give the impression the government had lied.

"The allegation I intended to make was a spin. I do regret those words ... and I shouldn't have used them."

Gilligan also admitted he was wrong to describe the scientist as a "member of the intelligence services" in his report.

I'm not excusing the games Republicans play. But by projecting all evil onto Republicans, Democrats spread the same political disease: the notion that you don't have to be wary of lying or cheating unless the other side is doing it. Lying and cheating don't belong to Republicans or Democrats. We're all susceptible, and we're all guilty.

Voters in the counties stuck with punch cards are far more likely than other Californians to have their ballots thrown out. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, saying it violated equal protection to have recount methods vary by county. By the same logic, as the Ninth Circuit noted, counties should not use ballots with significantly different reliability rates.

[A]n Op-Ed article on Friday about the playoff hopes of the Cubs and the White Sox incompletely described the life cycle of cicadas in Chicago. While some have appeared after 13 years underground, most emerge after 17 years.

An Op-Ed article on Sunday about Johnny Cash misidentified the branch of the military he served in. It was the Air Force, not the Army.

But, for the second time in as many weeks, I find myself wondering where European statism is heading. In France, where the death toll in the brutal Gallic summer is now up to 15,000, the attitude of Junior to the funny smell coming from gran'ma's apartment was the proverbial Gallic shrug and a demand that the government should do something about it. On Thursday, Swedes, though more upset, took much the same line: The government should have done more for Lindh.

''This can happen to anyone, anywhere,'' said Annika, described as ''a 24-year old bystander,'' at the scene of the attack. ''She should have had bodyguards.''

There seem to have been an awful lot of bystanders to Lindh's stabbing -- in broad daylight, in a crowded Stockholm department store, after being pursued by her assailant up an escalator. Granted that most of the people bystanding around were women, it still seems odd -- at least from this side of the Atlantic -- that no one attempted to intervene or halt the blood-drenched killer as he calmly left the store.

Gephardt: My criticism is of what the administration did right after the president came into the presidency. Because he said the arrangement or the contract of the Clinton administration had reached with North Korea was appeasement. He criticized severely what President Clinton had done with the North Koreans and made it sound like he would never have put up with that agreement. And then he put them in the axis of evil after 9/11. And then said the leader of North Korea was one of the worst leaders in the world.

• At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, some 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year.
  
• Products made by prison laborers may wind up on U.S. store shelves, having been "washed" first through Chinese companies that serve as intermediaries.
  
• Entire families, including grandchildren, are incarcerated for even the most bland political statements.
  
• Forced abortions are carried out on pregnant women so that another generation of political dissidents will be "eradicated."
  
• Inmates are used as human guinea pigs for testing biological and chemical agents, according to both former inmates and U.S. officials.
  

So, we kind of by rhetoric, pulled back from an agreement that was making some sense and got us in a pretty good place.

Hume: Didn't North Korea break that agreement?

Gephardt: North Korea did after all these statements. The president was left an agreement from another administration that I think was a sound agreement. It sure was better than having a war with North Korea, and he disparaged the agreement. Put them in a very unusual category without explaining, you know, why they were there and so we wind up with them pulling out of the agreement; announcing they've violated the agreement. And now we've got to scurry around to get back to the agreement that he called appeasement at the outset. I don't think this is a good performance.

If he had been alive in the Middle Ages, he would have earned his living by licking the boots of the third-rate nobility and then bragging to friends about the sanctity of his tongue.

Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (or so we are again urged to believe) are merely bystanders.

Nobody believes this interpretation of events; and yet many, including even the US State Department, feel obliged to continue repeating them. And so they disguise from themselves – and constrain Israel too to ignore – the only possible answer to the Palestinian terror campaign: Arafat and the Palestinians have chosen war. They must therefore have war until they are sick of it, war until they decide that even a disappointing (from their point of view) peace with Israel is better than one more day of fighting. Three years of advice to Israel to show restraint, to use less than its full power against its murderous enemy, has not restored the laughably misnamed “peace process.” Restraint has prolonged and exacerbated the war, at terrible cost to both sides.

And some stunts no longer seem feasible. Maybe it was the pressure of other commitments that kept Mr. Bush from visiting New York yesterday; but one suspects that his aides no longer think of the Big Apple as a politically safe place to visit.

Bush's audacity is unabated two years after the terrible tragedy. Other pressing committments couldn't keep the publicity-seeking Bush from attending ceremonies at Ground Zero.

TO: Brad Smith
Sr. Vice President, Microsoft Legal & Corporate Affairs

FROM: Cyrus Krohn
Publisher, Slate Magazine

RE: Non-Compete Clause & Contractual Interference

Dear Brad:

As per my voicemail earlier today, I would like to bring to your attention an ongoing problem we're experiencing at Slate.

A prominent East Coast newspaper, The New York Times, has been poaching from Slate, taking key writers and editors invaluable to our evolving franchise. Several years ago I viewed these departures as testament to Slate's reputation within our industry. Being recognized by the media establishment as a breeding ground of top journalists was rewarding. But no longer do I hold these egress offenders in such high regard.

Granted the New York Times has been experiencing talent problems of their own lately, but that's no excuse to "brain drain" us. In my seven years with Slate, I've seen the Times make off with no fewer than five Slatesters. And just last week, they tried to hire away our esteemed editor-in-chief, Jacob Weisberg, according to this item in the New York Post. While the opportunity offered Weisberg was beneath his abilities, I'm thankful he didn't follow his former colleagues.

Our mantra at Slate is to support budding journalists growing in their profession. Should a better opportunity present itself, by all means go forward. But this trend must cease. Our staff are bound by the non-compete clause they signed upon employment, and I was wondering if you could spare some time for Slate now that the DOJ case is behind us? This tortuous contractual interference is beginning to have adverse effects on us.

It's improbable we'll be able to recoup our losses. But just in case, we'd like all of them back except for Paul Krugman.

I appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Cyrus [Emphasis added]

(CNSNews.com) - A self-described racist has endorsed California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante in the California recall election, praising the candidate for being what he calls "a separatist," based on Bustamante's past association with a racist Hispanic organization.

The unusual endorsement by Tom Metzger, former Grand Wizard of the California Ku Klux Klan and director of the White Aryan Resistance, was accompanied by a call for all like-minded Californians to vote for Bustamante in the Oct. 7 election.

Insisting his endorsement is legitimate, Metzger said he hopes that if Bustamante is elected, the issue of immigration and border control will reach a boiling point.

"Worse is better, to bring it to a head," Metzger said. "Either we're going to solve this by realistic negotiation or there will be blood on the border. One of the two ways is the only thing that's going to solve this problem."

It's now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (Applause.)

Now almost half the Army's combat strength is bogged down in a country that wasn't linked to Al Qaeda and apparently didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Bush tells us that he needs another $87 billion, right away.

It gives me no pleasure to say this, but I (like many others) told you so. Back in February I asked, "Is this administration ready for the long, difficult, quite possibly bloody business of rebuilding Iraq?" The example of Afghanistan (where warlords rule most of the country, and the Taliban — remember those guys? — is resurgent) led me to doubt it. And I was, alas, right.

Surely the leader who brought us to this pass, and is now seeking a bailout, ought to make some major concessions as part of the deal. But it was clear from his speech that, as usual, he expects to take while others do all the giving.

The money is actually the least of it. Still, it provides a clear test case. If Mr. Bush had admitted from the start that the postwar occupation might cost this much, he would never have gotten that last tax cut. Now he says, "We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary. . . ." What does he mean, "we"? Is he prepared to roll back some of those tax cuts, now that the costs of war loom so large? Is he even willing to stop urging Congress to make the 2001 tax cut permanent? Of course not.

I find it ironic as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech that we will soon be asked to decide on Proposition 54 and whether the government should be allowed to continue to classify its citizens by race.

Rather than reveal this personal information to the state, I think I would be more comfortable checking a box that would allow me to describe the content of my character.

Until the mid-1990s, terrorists always wanted something. The IRA wanted a united Ireland, the ETA wanted a separate Basque state, the PFLP wanted a Palestinian state and the extirpation of Israel, the Tamil Tigers wanted a Tamil state in part of Sri Lanka...and so on.

Some wanted separation, some unification, some (like the Kurds) a state of their own, others (like the Red Brigades) a fully communist state. Precisely because of that, they wanted to stay alive and see their vision come true, and therefore the Establishment could, if it wished, negotiate.

Then a small group arose who said this: "We do not want anything of you but your deaths. In thousands, in hundreds of thousands and eventually in millions.

"We say this because we hate you. We hate you with an all-consuming passion, not just for what you have done (though that is bad enough) but for what you are.

"There is no point in negotiating, for there is nothing to negotiate. We are going to kill you whenever, wherever and in as great a number as we can.

"We do this because the Almighty has commanded it. We have His texts to prove it. We do not fear death, we welcome it, for we are guaranteed eternal bliss if we die while killing you."

It was a weird message. It did not come in the mail, nor was it enunciated on Al-Jazeera television. It came from a thousand imams in a thousand mosques. It was directed at the United States in particular and the West in general. Its source can best be described as Islamist fundamentalism, a tiny but virulent incubus within the body of that great, billion-devotee religion, Islam. Not unnaturally, no one took it particularly seriously – at first.

Following the Aqaba summit, 79 percent of the Palestinians supported Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and wanted to give peace a chance, while the Israelis under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not waste time in undermining the process by doing everything in their power to jump-start the cycle of violence.

Sharon was never elected as a man of peace; he was elected as the tough army general whose policies are summarized in hitting the Palestinians hard and forcing them to both submit and leave, or to react violently, which in return empowers the warmonger who is only fluent in the language of death and war.

Over the past two months, Israeli troops killed 76 Palestinians, mostly civilians. There were at least eight illegal assassination attempts violating the U.S.-led world desire for building trust and easing life on the occupied Palestinians in accordance with the road map. Over 100 homes were demolished during Israeli incursions into Palestinian urban areas.

Even though it is impossible to control the actions of revengeful Palestinians with nothing to lose, it is time for Palestinians to rise above the Sharon provocations by avoiding any reaction that dehumanizes and hurts the just Palestinian cause.

One can only hope that sanity will prevail during these chaotic times and that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will reconsider their actions and thwart Israel's attempts to unleash a new cycle of violence that threatens to be more lethal than anything endured thus far.

SAMER SHIHABI
San Diego

Democrats will inevitably respond that they opposed Estrada because they believed that he was conservative. But they had less reason to believe he was conservative than (D.C. Circuit Court Justice John) Roberts. This demonstrates what is at the heart of the issue: They opposed him more vehemently because he was perceived to be a conservative Hispanic, and as such is thought to be a viable Supreme Court nominee. As much as they may say that they just love Hispanics (some of their very best friends are Hispanic!), they can't avoid the fact that it is because he is conservative and Hispanic that they oppose him — even if they are using Hispanic heritage as a proxy for upward mobility.

Miguel Estrada is not alone and he didn't get to this point in his career because you and I were exercising our political rights. He is at this point because we were too silent. We let others dominate Washington while we were taking our kids to school, going on summer vacations, playing sports or working out. A new barrier has been erected by the Senate Democrats and we let it happen.

The crossword puzzle yesterday provided an erroneous clue for 60 Down, seeking the answer "ELAL." " `Raid on Entebbe' airline" was incorrect because the hijacked passengers who were rescued at Entebbe in 1976 had flown on Air France, not El Al.

But Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Judiciary Committee member, said Estrada's decision to withdraw his nomination could have been avoided if the administration had been forthcoming about Estrada's views, including the legal memos sought by Senate Democrats. "Unfortunately, this White House thumbed its nose at the Constitutionally-prescribed role of the Senate in the nominations process when it admonished Miguel Estrada not to answer the fair, reasonable, and relevant questions we put to him," Schumer said in a statement.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: IS THERE ANY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM OR SERVICE THAT YOU BELIEVE UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS SHOULD NOT RECEIVE?

BUSTAMANTE: WELL, FIRST OF ALL, LET ME ADDRESS THE DRIVERS LICENSE, DRIVERS LICENSE FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING. BY DEFINITION, A FARMWORKER WORKS.

BY DEFINITION A HOTEL WORKER IS WORKING. WHAT WE ARE DOING IS THAT WE HAVE 70% OF ALL OF THE FOLKS WHO ARE IN AGRICULTURE COME FROM ACROSS THE BORDER. 30% OF CONSTRUCTION COMES FROM THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE COMING ACROSS THE BORDER. WE HAVE A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO ARE HERE TODAY WHO ARE WORKING, AND TAKING CARE OF THEIR FAMILIES AND PROVIDING US THE BENEFIT OF THE LABOR. LABOR THAT YOU AND I DO NOT DO, IN FACT, WOULD NOT DO. I KNOW BECAUSE I CAME FROM THOSE AREAS AND THOSE FIELDS IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY. I'VE PICKED COTTON AND I'VE PICKED PEACHES AND DONE THE KIND OF HARD LABOR THAT HAS BEEN OUT THERE IN THOSE FIELDS. YOU KNOW WHAT? I'M GLAD THAT I'M OUT. THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING IT.

I RESPECT THEM FOR THE WORK THAT THEY DO. IF IT TAKES A DRIVERS LICENSE FOR THEM TO GET TO WORK, TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR FAMILIES, GET THEIR KIDS TO SCHOOL AND TAKE CARE OF THE SENIORS, LET THEM GO TO SOME KIND OF A DOCTORS APPOINTMENT, I'M FOR GIVING THEM A DRIVERS LICENSE.

SHANDOBIL: I DO NOT THINK THAT YOU DIRECTLY ANSWERED THE QUESTION, WHICH WAS ARE THERE ANY SERVICES THAT YOU WOULD DENY?

BUSTAMANTE: I WOULD SAY THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF SERVICES THAT ARE GIVEN TO CITIZENS THAT CLEARLY ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THOSE WHO ARE HERE ILLEGALLY. BUT FOR THE BASIC NEEDS, FOR SOMEONE WHO GETS INJURED, I MEAN IN AGRICULTURE IT IS A VERY DANGEROUS JOB, IN CONSTRUCTION IT IS DANGEROUS, IF SOMEONE IS WORKING AND THEY ARE PROVIDING US THE OPPORTUNITY, THE FRUITS OF THEIR LABOR, AND THEY GET HURT, I THINK THEY SHOULD BE RECEIVING EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE. I THINK THEY SHOULD BE ELIGIBLE TO HAVE THEIR CHILDREN GO AND GET A GOOD EDUCATION. THEY ARE HERE, PAYING TAXES. EVERYTHING THAT WE'VE SEEN THEY PAY $1,400 MORE A YEAR THAN THEY GET BACK ON ASSISTANCE.

In Santa Fe, N.M., Gov. Bill Richardson, who offered sanctuary to the Texans, cautioned the Republicans that their "big power grab" in Texas might impel him to put redistricting before New Mexico's special legislative session in October. "I don't want to use it as a threat," Mr. Richardson said. "It's just an option."

The head of a Senate subcommittee on new technologies, Bowen is no technophobe. She's among the many pet owners that have had their cats and dogs implanted with RFID (radio frequency identification) chips in order to find them if they're picked up by the pound. She's also a fan of science fiction writers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, whose books have won popularity among the geek-chic crowd and have inspired some of Bowen's policy stances. [emphasis added]

"Until he sits in those shoes -- and I don't think he's going to have a chance to -- he's really in no position to criticize what we've done," the governor said.

I am currently deployed in northern Iraq, and would like to express my thanks to everyone who supports us and what we are fighting for.

For those, however, who oppose the actions taken on behalf of the Iraqi people, consider this: Not even a week into being in this country, I found myself trying to communicate with an Iraqi man, a husband and father of five children, who could only point to pictures in a book and use hand gestures to tell us about the rocket-propelled grenades and actual rockets that had been left only a few hundred feet from his dwelling, where his kids and numerous others liked to play.

The dwelling was an old shop-type building that his family had moved into due to its proximity to the army compound where this man, among others, was being held for belonging to the wrong political or religious party.

The difficulty in communicating with this man, to me a true hero, was not the result of a language barrier. It was because his tongue had been literally cut out by the same Iraqi soldiers who had dumped the munitions near his “house,” just prior to releasing him because of our impending arrival.

Later that day I returned with a convoy and removed the ordnance so the kids could play without blowing themselves up.

So those of you who question the righteousness of this conflict might look to your children, or your friends’ children, give thanks for your blessings, and pray that if you were in the same type of situation someone would have the courage to help you and not stay complacent.

CLINTON REES
Tikrit, Iraq