The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a controversial domestic eavesdropping program that was secretly authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said yesterday. [emphasis added]

Federal prosecutors will focus their examination on who may have unlawfully disclosed classified information about the program to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants, officials said. [emphasis added]

Nazir Ahmed appears calm and unrepentant as he recounts how he slit the throats of his three young daughters and their 25-year old stepsister to salvage his family's "honor" -- a crime that shocked Pakistan.

The 40-year old laborer, speaking to The Associated Press in police detention as he was being shifted to prison, confessed to just one regret -- that he didn't murder the stepsister's alleged lover, too.

Advertising Slogans German Companies Should Avoid
"The final solution will be revealed on 01/18/06."--Carl Zeiss AG Web site

I am curious to know what the americans said when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, just to be sure nobody else uses that phrase.

Cheers

Then there's the story reported in The Standard-Times newspaper in Massachusetts of a University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, student doing a research paper for a history class on fascism and totalitarianism. He requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" through interlibrary loan for a paper on communism. Two agents of the Department of Homeland Security later showed up at his parents' home in New Bedford, Mass., to interrogate him, telling him they were there because the book was on a "watch list" and the student had spent time abroad.

Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security.

That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of innocent Americans.

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.

"I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it," said Mr. O'Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is "good legislation."

The new Xbox 360 has been a big hit for Microsoft Corp. this season -- but for now, it's also contributing to pain in the games industry.

The reason: Supplies of the new videogame console have been short, and many consumers have held off buying games for it until they can get one next year. [emphasis added]

"The final solution will be revealed on 01/18/06."--Carl Zeiss AG Web site

Virtually from the time he chose himself to be Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000,

Dick Cheney has spearheaded an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency -

from writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives

to abrogating longstanding treaties

and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq,

scrap the Geneva Conventions

and spy on American citizens.

Hugh Hewitt: Do you consider the quality of the media coverage here to be good, bad, or in between?

Cass Sunstein: Pretty bad, and I think the reason is we're seeing a kind of libertarian panic a little bit, where what seems at first glance...this might be proved wrong...but where what seems at first glance a pretty modest program is being described as a kind of universal wiretapping, and also being described as depending on a wild claim of presidential authority, which the president, to his credit, has not made any such wild claim. The claims are actually fairly modest, and not unconventional. So the problem with what we've seen from the media is treating this as much more peculiar, and much larger than it actually is. As I recall, by the way, I was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, and they did say that in at least one person's view, the authorization to use military force probably was adequate here.

HH: Do you think the media simply does not understand? Or are they being purposefully ill-informed in your view?

CS: You know what I think it is? It's kind of an echo of Watergate. So when the word wiretapping comes out, a lot of people get really nervous and think this is a rerun of Watergate. I also think there are two different ideas going on here. One is skepticism on the part of many members of the media about judgments by President Bush that threaten, in their view, civil liberties. So it's like they see President Bush and civil liberties, and they get a little more reflexively skeptical than maybe the individual issue warrants. So there's that. Plus, there's, I think, a kind of bipartisan...in the American culture, including the media, streak that is very nervous about intruding on telephone calls and e-mails. And that, in many ways, is healthy. But it can create a misunderstanding of a particular situation.

An annulment is a judicial declaration that a marriage never legally existed.

It was the first marriage for both.

President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

These programs are criticized as grave threats to civil liberties. They are not. Their significance is in flagging the existence of gaps in our defenses against terrorism. The Defense Department is rushing to fill those gaps, though there may be better ways.

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of personal data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the data are first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most private data from being read by any intelligence officer.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law.

ounterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group's inclusion in the files.

"It's shocking and it's outrageous," Mr. Kerr said. "And to me, it's an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism."

With respect to wiretaps, candidates should state what length of delay is acceptable between the time the government learns about the telephone number of someone in the U.S. with whom a terrorists has been in communication and the time the government taps that phone. They should also state whether, if it takes longer than that amount of time to obtain a court order, the government should wait for the court order or go ahead and tap the phone.

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks.

This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

The blog drew more than 3,400 page views and stirred a number of readers to contribute their own thoughts.

Congress on Friday agreed to establish a national databank of umbilical cord blood and bone marrow that would allow doctors to quickly find a match for patients who need transplants.

The Senate passed the bill by voice vote. The House passed the bill in May by a vote of 431 to 1.

The bill will provide $79 million in federal funding to increase the number of cord blood units available for matches. The objective is 150,000 units, which would mean 90% of patients needing them would have a match. It also reauthorizes the national bone marrow transplant system, combining it and the cord blood in the same database.

"With the passage of this bill, we will now be able to turn medical waste — umbilical cords and placentas — into medical miracles for huge numbers of very sick and terminally ill patients who suffer from such maladies as leukemia and sickle cell anemia," said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who sponsored the bill along with Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

"We are pleased that the Senate placed the importance of saving lives over politics with the passage of this legislation," Davis said. "The use of stem cells from umbilical cords represents a breakthrough of immense promise. This legislation will expand the inventory of cord blood units and will streamline the process for the receipt of blood matches."

The bill had been stalled while lawmakers argued over a farther-reaching plan that would lift restrictions on stem cell research, which President Bush had signaled he would veto.

The paper failed to reveal the urgent story was tied to a book release and sale.

The only way the vote will happen at all is that the US military has forbidden all vehicular traffic, so everyone has to walk for the next few days. This tactic prevents carbombings from disrupting the elections, but it is a desperate measure and not a sign of an election that could be certified as free and fair.

Hugh Hewitt: Erwin, do you think Iraq is worse off today than it was three years ago?

Erwin Chemerinsky: Very much so. How many people have died as a result of this? How much have we destroyed the infrastructure as a result of this? What have we gotten for the hundreds of billions of dollars that we've just thrown down the drain, is what we've done? I think that this was a war that the president got us in, through nothing but lies. It's as ill-advised as anything the United States has done militarily, and there's a fascinating chart on the op-ed page of today's New York Times, that shows that 80% of Iraqis now would like to see the United States leave.

“You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” Freeman asks Wallace. After noting there is no “white history month,” he says, “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history,” he tells Wallace.

The notion of a special month for black history may be hurting rather than helping efforts for racial equality, Freeman believes. When Wallace wonders whether racist attitudes may be harder to eradicate without the education that Black History Month provides, Freeman retorts: “How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!”

At the city's annual holiday celebration, a rabbi lighted a menorah. A dance troupe performed a traditional prayer to the gods.

But six young girls were told they they couldn't perform because they were wearing shirts emblazoned with a silver cross and the words "Jesus Christ" on the front.

The "Jesus Christ Dancers," a group of 8-to-12-year-olds who describe themselves as Christian hip-hop dancers, were scheduled to make their citywide debut at the Dec. 3 holiday festival.

Moments before taking the stage, employees from the city's Parks and Recreation Department barred them from performing, saying they did not want to convey a religious message in the show.

According to the group's dance instructor, Lita Ramirez, the dancers was asked to turn their shirts inside out. The group was also asked if its music had a religious message.

"I told him our music says 'You are my God' and 'We will worship You,'" Ramirez said. "I also said I think it mentions Jesus."

After waiting for more than an hour, the group was told it could not perform.

"It was humiliating," Ramirez said. "The girls cried."

Democratic leaders sternly criticized President Bush yesterday for saying former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is innocent of felonious campaign finance abuses, suggesting his comments virtually amounted to jury tampering before DeLay stands trial.

"The president of the United States said a jury does not need to assemble, that Tom DeLay is innocent," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "To have someone of his stature, the president of the United States, prejudge a case is something I've never seen before."

"The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom Delay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people." — House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

___

"Today, the state of Texas is doing what the Republican-controlled federal government has failed repeatedly to do, which is to hold Republicans in Washington accountable for their culture of corruption." — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

OUR NEW YEAR'S wish: a governor who wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

By thumbing his nose at Massachusetts after less than three-quarters of one term as its chief executive, Mitt Romney, yesterday surrendered his clout and squandered his legitimacy. If, as it appears, his heart and mind are no longer in Massachusetts, he should resign.

Oregonians in Action started over and drew up a new initiative, Measure 37, designed to satisfy Judge Lipscomb's complaints. The new language also solved the money concern, by offering government a choice between compensating property owners and simply exempting them from restrictions. And last year, despite being outspent four-to-one by national green groups, and overwhelming opposition from the press and Democrats, Measure 37 passed by 61%--among the most popular citizen-initiatives in state history.

Not that it mattered. Even as the state moved ahead, receiving thousands of Measure 37 claims and granting exemptions, environmental critics went back to court. And this October, Judge Mary James, also of Marion County, came up with five objections to the law--most insurmountable. At the top of this piece of creative writing was her argument that the law was unconstitutional because it limited the power of the state government over private land. Put another way, Oregonians have absolutely no right to defend against any state use of their property.

Nonsense, says Ron Nehring, the chairman of the local elected school board and a booster of charters.

Despite Big Labor's success in defeating California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's reform initiatives last month, a few brave officials are still willing to challenge the public employee unions at the local level. Take the burgeoning charter school movement, which now has 570 schools in the state serving about 3% of the state's public school enrollment. They are about to be joined by one of the state's largest high school districts, fast-growing Grossmont in San Diego, which wants to convert all 10 of the high schools serving its 25,000 students into self-governing charter schools.

Helix Charter High School has a side agreement with the district to negotiate its own labor contract. Yet, trustees refused to grant a 3.5 percent cost of living adjustment negotiated at Helix, unsure of whether they could or should honor their district's own commitment to the charter school.

Bruce Seaman, the president of the local teachers union in Grossmont, calls the idea "the first step toward the privatization of public schools." Nonsense, says Ron Nehring, the chairman of the local elected school board and a booster of charters. "The schools would be governed by a board elected by the parents which would report to the school district's trustees," he told me. "What can be more democratic and sensitive to what parents actually want?"

[Jim] Kelly, the departing board president, tried (unsuccessfully) to stifle someone with a signed speaker's card from getting up to endorse Priscilla Schreiber for president for the coming year. Then, only Kelly's name was allowed to be placed into consideration, although Schreiber has served two years as vice president and two years as board clerk. A parliamentary challenge produced an appalling result: Neither board members nor the attorney serving as board counsel, Chris Keeler, knew whether meetings were governed by Robert's Rules of Order. (Kelly was re-elected 3-2.)

Parent Wayne Zakarias said he was offended by a comment attributed to Ryan in a story about the teachers' plan that appeared recently in the East County Californian. The superintendent was quoted as saying: "No one that I'd have any respect for" backs the proposal. . . . "I'm not certain that parents would want their children to be guinea pigs."

The proposal has been praised by Grossmont Superintendent Terry Ryan, who told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Mr. Nehring "is calling for a full discourse on charters, and that's really what should be happening."

In fact, even the supporters of the status quo are pushing a plan to convert one local high school in the district to charter status, although half of the seats on the board governing that school would be guaranteed to be filled by teacher union representatives.

The debate over reforming public education in California is increasingly between those who want real reform and those who recognize the public is demanding change but still want to have the new system controlled by the status quo behind the scenes.

The basis of Williams' clemency request is not innocence. Rather, the basis of the request is the "personal redemption Stanley Williams has experienced and the positive impact of the message he sends" (quoting Williams' own clemency reply). But Williams' claim of innocence remains a key factor to evaluating his claim of personal redemption. It is impossible to separate Williams' claim of innocence from his claim of redemption.

After almost six decades of rejection, Israel saw the road cleared yesterday for its emergency and disaster relief organization to join the International Red Cross. The price of admission was relinquishing its symbol, the Red Star of David.

Instead, the Red Cross approved a new "neutral" symbol -- a Red Crystal, which Israel must adopt to become a member, possibly next spring. The Star of David may still be used at home, and on foreign missions it can be put inside the Crystal, provided the host country agrees.

Israeli diplomats are celebrating the Crystal as a great victory. If that's a victory, we'd hate to see a defeat. Even this compromise, which was opposed by most Muslim countries, came only after the American Red Cross withheld its contributions to protest Israel's exclusion from the international body.

Box hits child as toy store shelf falls
GIRL uninjured. Toys 'R' Us store in Whitehall Twp. remains open as staff cordon off area with carts.

(Since Dowd's experience figures so prominently throughout her book, allow me a personal aside here: Why are women so often drawn to grand, totalizing theories to make sense of their individual regrets? I'm roughly Dowd's age and have never been married — a fact I account for not with an anthropological hypothesis but with the rather narrow observation that I've yet to find a supermodel PhD whose standards were low enough to have me.)

The problem with devoting a chapter to the notion that male power attracts women but female power repels men is twofold: In the first place, it's mind-numbingly trite. How many sitcoms through the years, from The Honeymooners to The Simpsons, have run episodes in which the male lead feels threatened by the prospect of his girlfriend or wife outdoing him? And in the second place, it's a grotesque oversimplification. How many straight single men in America would turn down a date with Angelina Jolie because she earns more than they do? Same question for Anna Kournikova, Amanda Peet, and Aisha Tyler.

Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major at UConn, didn't attend the speech.

"We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech," said Knudsen, head of Students Against Hate. [emphasis added]

The lawyer adjusted his focus. The law schools have their own message, "that they believe it is immoral to abet discrimination," he said.

This time, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took issue. "But they can say that to every student who enters the room," she said.

"And when they do it, your honor, the answer of the students is, we don't believe you," Mr. Rosenkranz said.

"The reason they don't believe you is because you're willing to take the money," Chief Justice Roberts interjected. "What you're saying is this is a message we believe in strongly, but we don't believe in it to the detriment* of $100 million."

[T]here's a civil war going. We're caught in between a civil war right now. Our troops are the targets of the civil war. They're the only people that could have unified the various factions in Iraq. And they're unified against us. --ABC's This Week, 12/4/05

[W]hy should I believe what the CIA says about what's happening in Iraq, that there's going to be a civil war? First of all, al Qaeda was wrong. It was wrong on the nuclear stuff. It was wrong on everything they have said over there. So why should I believe that there's going to be a civil war? -- same show, a few moments later.

[T]he military won a military victory. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. ...[snip] ... Now, it's got to be a political win. They have to win this politically. The Iraqis themselves. We'll stay there forever. The Iraqis are never going to say turn it over. We can't allow them to say when it's gonna turn it over.--This Week, 12/4/05

You're gonna see the Iraqis clamoring. Listen, anybody we support in Iraq loses the election. And so they're gonna be clamoring for us to get out. -- same show, a few moments later.

Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.

Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

"We cannot prevail in this war with the policy we have today. We need to mobilize or get out," he said.

"It would be devastating to pull out now, but it may be impossible to mobilize now that the public has turned against it," he said.