Here is what is happening: Germans who marry and divorce Americans take their children back to Germany. Then, in a scenario worthy of Kafka, the American parent is deprived of any custody or visitation rights. After several years, the children don't know or remember their other parent. The courts then decree that the children don't want to see that parent and would be traumatized by any visit. The courts also bill the American parents for child support. If these parents refuse to pay, and still try to see their children any way they can (say, from a parked car across the street from the house), they are thrown in jail for nonpayment.

This is happening in Germany not only to American parents but also to any parent who is not a German national.

This week German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer denounced the United States for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, demanding that it adhere to the Geneva Convention. How ironic that he cares so little about the rights of kidnapped children and their parents from foreign countries. If ever there was a human rights violation, these kidnappings are it. One might even call them acts of terrorism.

The horror stories are legion. Here are just a few:

Joseph Cooke married a German woman. She stole his children, went back to Germany, had a nervous breakdown and put the children in foster care. The German government thinks it is better to have the children in German foster care than living with their non-German natural father. After years of fighting and thousands of dollars, Cooke still has no visitation rights, and his children regard him as a stranger.

The children of Catherine Meyer -- now the wife of Britain's ambassador to the United States -- were abducted in 1994. She has seen them for only a matter of hours since then, despite many trips to Germany and thousands of dollars in legal fees. A recent German court ruling denies her visitation rights before 2003, at which time it will be argued that her children would be traumatized by any contact.

Two recent cases are chilling. U.S. Army Maj. Andrew G. Andris, now serving in Germany, divorced his German wife seven years ago. He is now married to a British army sergeant, also serving in Germany. He has seen his children by his first marriage for one hour in the past seven years. Last week he was arrested at the Frankfurt airport and put in the maximum security prison in Weiterstadt as a "deadbeat dad." This was only one incident in a long history of harassment against him for trying to see his children.

In the other case, an American father from Texas whose son had been abducted by the German mother became so distraught he killed himself on Jan. 10.

Brutalized? I have seen the inmates resting or chatting to their neighbors from cages big enough to do jumping jacks in. They are receiving hot showers, halal meals, Apple Jacks, Froot Loops and Granola Bars.

Tortured? Far from inflicting wounds, the U.S. military is healing them. There are 161 medical staff treating the detainees. I have talked to surgeons who told me that hardened fighters suffering from shrapnel and bullet wounds had thanked them after being operated on.

Humiliated? Korans have been distributed and I have witnessed a Muslim chaplain arriving to lead the predawn call to prayer. Guards are so anxious that the detainees might suffer the indignity of defecating in public that they have devised a hand-signal system. "Who would want to do the Number Two in a bucket?" asked Staff Sgt. Monte Webster, a military policeman from Baltimore. "So they hold up the Number Two and we get to them as fast as we can and take them to the bathroom."

The Clinton Legacy
The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, Calif., publishes an appalling op-ed piece by one Lindsay Llarena, a 13-year-old girl. Some background: Earlier this month, Blaine Trimble, a former policeman who served as a "resource officer" at Indio High School, pleaded guilty to "two counts of consensual digital penetration with a minor," according to a Jan. 8 Associated Press dispatch. The sexual encounters involved a 17-year-old girl and took place on school grounds.

When he's sentenced Feb. 6, two counts of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" will be dismissed. Trimble's expected sentence: probation, community service and counseling. Young Lindsay's article is a response to an earlier column, by Cindy Uken, arguing that the sentence was too mild. Lindsay blames the girl for Trimble's actions:

The girl should've known not to do this, unless she wasn't brought up to know right from wrong. . . . Blaine is a very kind man and is a person who wouldn't parade around school looking for innocent minors. . . .

Also, he probably did care when he was getting his "jollies." Blaine needed to have the girl's trust to have a sexual relationship with her. . . .

Everybody makes mistakes, nobody's perfect, and there is no perfect world.

Look at Bill Clinton. He was an honorable person. He ran our country, and he had an affair. He didn't even get a punishment, and his authority ranked above police officers.

We can't blame Lindsay for her moral slovenliness. After all, it takes a village.

The company had attracted many notable business and political figures as investors, including Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who profited by selling Global Crossing stock before it declined.

Another early investor was former President George Bush, who accepted stock in lieu of an $80,000 fee for speaking to Global Crossing customers in Tokyo in 1999, although it is not known whether Mr. Bush sold his stock. Other investors included the Tisch family of New York and Lodwrick Cook, the retired chairman of ARCO and a big Republican Party fund-raiser.

The principle that the government can and should run a deficit to stimulate a sick economy was first propounded by John Maynard Keynes. This is called Keynesian Economics. The principle that the government can and should run a deficit when it does not have to was developed by George W. Bush. This is called Enronian Economics.

And so, as luck would have it, is the president's tax plan. He has managed, in a way that would make Kenny Boy green with envy, to make a projected $4 trillion budget surplus disappear. In this case, the money has not been parked in some offshore tax haven. Nosiree. Bush did it by giving tax breaks to the rich and the poor alike over a 10-year period.

Your letter is one of the most important that has ever appeared in this space. It could save lives.

I am strictly opposed to the death penalty, no matter how heinous the crime. Unfortunately, 10 or 20 years after an execution, a confession often emerges from a criminal who is conscience-stricken or terminally ill. Alas – too late. However, even those who favor the death penalty should support your recommendations. They are compassionate and sensible.

What is so remarkable is that out of 280 separate news stories (from a computerized Nexis-Lexis search) in the week after the event, just four stories mentioned that the students who stopped the attack had guns.

Only two local newspapers (the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Charlotte Observer) mentioned that the students actually pointed their guns at the attacker.

Much more typical was the scenario described by the Washington Post, where the heroes had simply "helped subdue" the killer. The New York Times noted only that the attacker was "tackled by fellow students."

Most in the media who discussed how the attack was stopped said: "students overpowered a gunman," "students ended the rampage by tackling him," "the gunman was tackled by four male students before being arrested," or "Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, who dropped his weapon."

In all, 72, stories described how the attacker was stopped without mentioning that the student heroes had guns.

The Canadian military is still waiting to see whether the U.S. will be able to send some of its planes to pick up Canadian troops and fly them to Afghanistan.

The problem is the U.S. is already flying in its own soldiers.

Canada is looking at renting a civilian cargo plane to transport the troops and their equipment. But so far, it's been unable to find anything suitable.

Seven years after the Air Force's top-ranked female fighter pilot began a one-woman crusade, the Defense Department yesterday dropped its requirement that female military personnel in Saudi Arabia put on black, head-to-toe gowns when leaving their base.

The action comes at a time when some congressional leaders are questioning whether the United States should withdraw its military forces from the kingdom. Saudi officials are reportedly considering whether American troops should leave.

Lt. Col. Martha McSally had sued Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the dress code. She contended that the policy on abayas, a form of head-to-toe gown similar to the burqa worn by many women in Afghanistan, discriminates against women and violates their religious freedom by forcing them to adopt the garb of another faith.

McSally also is fighting regulations that prohibit the nearly 1,000 military women stationed in Saudi Arabia from driving, sitting in the front seat of vehicles and leaving base except in the company of men. Those restrictions apparently remain.

1982, Tom Bradley running for governor of California. Ahead in the polls on election day, loses. 1989, Doug Wilder, big lead in the polls in Virginia. You know this barely squeaks by. A year later, Harvey Ganton, North Carolina, five, six points ahead of Jesse Helms in the polls, loses by five points.

What this seems to suggest is that there still is, or least those 10 years ago, a chunk of white voters who simply will not acknowledge that they don't intend to vote for the black candidates. Still true?

Kiely makes it seem that if there were only more gerrymandering, there would be a better "farm team" of minority officeholders who might then advance as senators and governors. But this is exactly wrong. What gerrymandering has done is create a generation of Bobby Rushes and Maxine Waters — radical-left politicians who have no ability or even desire to build multiracial voting coalitions that can succeed at the statewide level.

And that's the most important — and unstated — reason why there weren't any black or Hispanic faces illustrating yesterday's cover story in USA Today.

The suspect would be given immunity from prosecution based on information elicited by the torture. The warrant would limit the torture to nonlethal means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause excruciating pain without endangering life.

Aides to President Bush assert that since no one in the administration seems to have tried to rescue Enron, Enron's campaign money cannot be an issue. That is nonsense. In the last election cycle, Enron was one of the nation's biggest donors. The company and its executives doled out $2.4 million, more than two-thirds of it in unregulated soft money. What the administration fails to see is that, as Representative Christopher Shays points out, campaign money is given to obtain two things, influence and access. Enron clearly got what it paid for. Its executives were able to get through on the phone to virtually everyone they wanted.

Although Enron did not get everything it wanted from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, the administration's regulatory policies were tailored to Enron's specifications. Last year's economic stimulus bill contained a tax break estimated at $250 million for the company.

Tom DeLay is practically Mr. Enron in Congress. His Texas district is near the company's headquarters. He has raised money from Enron for himself, the Republican Party and advocate groups, in return backing energy deregulation, the company's favorite issue.

All of Washington has been blackened by Enron's shameful conduct. Campaign finance reform is the path back to respectability.

Patty Nowack, spokeswoman for America West, said she could not respond to specific questions about the Foss case, as she cannot verify he flew on the airline. She could not say whether there would be any security concerns about a medal but that it would cause a metal detector to go off.

"Our primary objective is to ensure the safety and security of all passengers and employees. We're not trying to single out any individual," she said yesterday.

Jail 'em. All the Enron and Arthur Andersen principals, and then some. Why? To save our system of corporate governance, which used to be the best in the world. To save investor confidence. Maybe even to save our entire free-market system of capitalism.

Now, I'm a pro-business guy. I can't stand it when the Tom Daschles or Ted Kennedys of the world start bashing business or rich people. Business is the center of the American economy. You can't have jobs without healthy businesses. And business is what we do best in this country -- better than any other nation on the planet.

But the characters at Enron and Arthur Andersen are wrecking the very foundation of American business. Their shenanigans, chicanery, fraud, insider dealing, self-serving excuses, and hubris are undermining everything this free and democratic nation stands for.

Afghans may have danced in the street and ripped off their burkhas when the war on terror liberated them from the Taliban. But judging from the latest survey by Human Rights Watch, the world might have been better off had the Taliban liberated Washington, D.C., instead.

We exaggerate only slightly. In its annual survey of rights around the world, released last week, Human Rights Watch devotes at least three times as much critical space to America as to any other country. And it treats the war on terror as a far greater threat to humanity than terrorism itself. Many of our liberal friends have been bragging that the blame-America-first left has vanished since September 11. Well, it's back, and running Human Rights Watch.

Start with the war in Afghanistan, where it says U.S. "conduct so far has not been auspicious." Apparently those dancing Afghans on TV were hallucinating. According to Human Rights Watch, all the war has accomplished is a return to "political fragmentation" and perhaps new oppression. Its report barely acknowledges America's role in removing the hated Taliban, except to criticize U.S. use of cluster bombs and to suggest that the small number of civilian casualties constitute "possible violations of international humanitarian law."

This is a moral slander against the U.S. military, which went to lengths unknown in history to avoid such casualties, including the insertion of special forces, at great personal risk, to direct laser-guided bombs.

I got interested in liberal bias not because of my conservative views but because what I saw happening violated my liberal sense of fair play. Why, I kept wondering, do we so often identify conservatives in our stories, yet rarely identify liberals? Over the years, I began to realize that this need to identify one side but not the other is a central component of liberal bias. There are right-wing Republicans and right-wing Christians and right-wing radio talk show hosts. The only time we journalists use the term "left-wing" is if we're talking about a part on an airplane.

During the impeachment proceedings a few years back, Peter Jennings was doing a live play-by-play on ABC as senators went up to sign the oath book, in which they promised they would be fair and impartial. He described Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as a "very determined conservative," Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania as "one of the younger members of the Senate, Republican, very determined conservative," and Bob Smith of New Hampshire as "another very, very conservative Republican."

I have no problem with any of this. Viewers needed to know that these senators were conservative and that it might influence their votes. But Barbara Boxer was simply "Senator Boxer," Ted Kennedy just "Senator Kennedy," Paul Wellstone "Senator Wellstone." No liberal labels necessary. Did Peter Jennings, a first-rate, intelligent newsman, really think their liberalism would not affect their votes?

When George W. Bush co-owned the Houston Astros and construction began on a new stadium, Kenneth Lay agreed to spend $100 million over thirty years for rights to name the park after Enron.

When George W. Bush co-owned the Texas Rangers and construction began on a new stadium, Kenneth Lay agreed to spend $100 million over thirty years for rights to name the park after Enron.

Even in areas where Enron did not get every policy it advocated, the White House energy plan is helpful to the company. In the area of global warming, for example, the plan does not support the mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions sought by Enron. But the plan does direct federal agencies to identify “market mechanisms” to address global warming, which would help develop the type of market in carbon credits sought by Enron.

The White House energy plan is intended to be “a national energy policy designed to help the private sector, and as necessary and appropriate, State and local governments, promote dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound production and distribution of energy for the future.” In large part, however, the plan contains policies recommended by Enron. There are at least 17 separate policies in the White House energy plan track policies that were supported by and would benefit Enron. These policies include a large number of proposals to deregulate the electric utility industry, as well as proposals that promote trading in energy derivatives and open federal lands to natural gas drilling. The White House energy plan even contains proposals that would assist Enron operations in foreign countries such as India.

Hosea Williams, who in 1968 stood with Dr. King on the motel balcony where he was shot, told the Ottawa Citizen that the profiteering has sullied the King message of humility. "It wasn't white racists, nor was it the white government that did it; the people who killed King's dream are those closest to him, and that's the nightmare," he said.

SO HERE'S what I resolve for the new year: To never forget our murdered brothers and sisters. To never let the relativists get away with their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's political science professor says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."

Michael Flynn: "It was all part of my plan to clamp down on terrorists. See, it works like this. I get all the weapons in Gaza. I hand them out to whoever wants them. If they use them, bingo, we know they're a terrorist and we can round them up. It was perfect."

It does not matter that Bob Rubin called Treasury about Enron. He is the chairman of Citigroup's executive committee, and Citigroup had lent Enron at least $750 million. Rubin was merely doing his job -- as was the Treasury official who said thanks for calling. It does not matter that various Enron officials called the White House or some Cabinet department and warned that the company was about to tank. This, after all, was going to be the largest bankruptcy in American history and might have what economists call "macro" consequences. The Great Depression, for instance, was very macro.

No, this is not a political scandal.

The fact remains that these guys -- these pals of Bush and Cheney and others in the administration -- made money off a shell game.

But I am here to tell you what you already know in your gut: This is not a political scandal. It is not another Whitewater, where you can't figure out what happened. We all know what happened. A bunch of bastards picked the pockets of their own employees. That's not a scandal. It's a blinkin' outrage.

High Bias
Andrew Sullivan has been doing a brilliant job rebutting liberal media folks who pooh-pooh Bernard Goldberg's best-selling book, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News." We particularly like this exchange, which Sullivan found in the Dec. 18 transcript of CNN's "Newsnight With Aaron Brown":

Brown: Some conservatives jumped on [John] Walker, saying he is a product of cultural liberalism--the California kind--helping to turn an impressionable kid against his own country.

Joining us from Salinas, California, one of those conservatives, Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution. Mr. Steele wrote a provocative article the other day in The Wall Street Journal--a column in the Journal.

And here in New York, a columnist who thinks Mr. Steele is making an awfully broad generalization. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. It's nice to have both of you here. Mr. Steele.

Steele: First of all, let me interrupt you just a minute.

Brown: OK.

Steele: Is Richard Cohen a liberal?

Brown: Yeah, Richard Cohen's a liberal. I think he would say that, wouldn't he? . . .

Cohen: On this issue.

Brown: On this issue. OK. Everyone is now branded, I guess.

Steele: OK. Great.

Brown: Now let me try . . .

Steele: If I'm going to be, everybody is going to be.

Of course no one suggests Brown is deliberately being unfair, but this does seem to be an indisputable example of the kind of unthinking bias about which Goldberg writes.

MR. RUSSERT: This is what Waxman’s concern is, however, in August, he says, that Ken Lay, he believes, sent this e-mail to all Enron employees: “I want to assure you that I have never felt better about the prospects for the company. ...Our performance has never been stronger; our business model has never been more robust; our growth has never been more certain. ...We have the finest organization in American business today.”

And during that time, 29 executives of Enron were taking out about a billion dollars over the last year, selling their stock. But the average guy was locked down and being told this in e-mails. So if the Bush administration is told in September, October, “We got some real problems. We need some help with the credit agency,” should the administration been more assertive in saying, “What about the little guy?”

SEC’Y EVANS: Well, you know, again, I mean, in terms of what we knew in September and October—I mean, I didn’t hear from Ken on this particular subject until October the 29, so at the very end of October. At that time, everything he told me was already in the public domain. The public knew about it. The shareholders knew about it. Wall Street knew about it. Yet, on Wall Street, 11, 12 research analysts still had a strong buy on Enron.

But let me go a little bit further, Tim. If I had of stepped in—and, again, I mean, I think it would have been an egregious abuse of the office of the secretary of commerce, the United States of America, for me to step in. I’m not confused about whose office that is. That office belongs to the people of America. It’s not my office. And I’m going to do everything I can to protect the integrity and the trust of that office. And my judgment was to protect the integrity of that office, not to step in. But if I had of stepped in, if I had of stepped in and made a call to Moody’s and in some way influenced some examiner’s opinion and he had decided at that point not to take the credit down, he had said, “Let’s leave it right where it is,” what do I say to the lady who bought the stock that day, that put her life savings into the stock that day, when it was $10 a share—I had played a role in stabilizing the stock for a week or two.

And guess what? Thirty days later they were bankrupt. What do I say to her?

Obviously hoping to follow in the footsteps of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, two intellectual giants by comparison, Goldberg has fashioned his rantings into a book succinctly titled "Bias," which, appropriately enough, won the dubious honor of a commendatory editorial from The Wall Street Journal. And we all know how unbiased those Journal editorials are. Gosh it is soooo hard to figure out where they're coming from.

(State Department Spokesman Richard) Boucher said the United States, which gives Israel about $2 billion a year in weaponry used to kill Palestinians, objected to the $100 million shipment to the Palestinians on the grounds that it contributed to the escalation of violence. (emphasis added)

Oh yeah, baby, give me the news. You are just sooo . . . credible.

Manager of office football pool is arrested on gambling charges

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) … A middle manager with AT&T was arrested for running an office football pool in which he took a
10 percent cut of the action equal to nearly $3,000, authorities said.

Wayne Davis, 34, of New York City was charged with promoting gambling and could get up to five years in prison, though prosecutors said he is unlikely to do any jail time.

"Look, I do not consider Wayne Davis to be Public Enemy No. 1," prosecutor Ron Kercado said. "Nonetheless, he is in
violation of the statute."

Kercado said Davis ran afoul of the law when he took a 10 percent cut.

His lawyer, John Murphy, countered: "He's nothing other than a guy in the office who was asked to draw the grid for a
football pool."

Lasseter's lawyer, Robert Lipman, said he was unaware of the fine, but questioned the FAA's right to impose the penalty.

"At this point I'm in between astonished and amused," Lipman said.

As to cost, Mr. (Joe) Biden estimates that an antimissile defense system would have a price tag "well over $100 billion." To put that in perspective, the Sept. 11 attacks cost the economy maybe twice that. Recently 54 senators voted in support of a farm subsidy bill that would have added $75 billion to existing farm subsidy programs. In any case, to paraphrase humorist P.J. O'Rourke, a missile defense is cheaper than filling the hole that used to be San Francisco.

Sansour said she did not protest the screener's demands to remove her head scarf because she was afraid after Army National Guard troops with automatic weapons surrounded her.

"I want an apology, because there was a nun covered from head to toe, and they didn't make her take it off," Sansour said. "I only cover my head, and they didn't do anything to her."

AN American special forces team was credited yesterday with the deaths of 1,300 Taliban and al-Qa'eda fighters and the destruction of more than 50 tanks and other pieces of heavy weaponry.

The so-called A-team, codenamed Tiger 03, which directed American bombers to enemy positions, helped to unseat the Taliban and made a huge contribution to the war, its commander said.

The first details of the covert operations of the A-teams, each composed of up to 18 lightly armed infantrymen and air controllers, were released after the Pentagon allowed reporters to spend three days with different units operating within Afghanistan.

Otherwise, as Jan Hoffman, who began working on "Portraits of Grief" during its second week and eventually wrote almost seventy of them, noted the other day, "The hardball rules of journalism went out the window. You can never presume to say, 'I know how you feel.' Because you don't.

"I did all my reporting over the phone," Hoffman went on. "For most of the people I talked to, I think that was liberating. It's almost like they're on the couch talking to a shrink. They don't have to look at your face, they free-associate, and when they hear a long silence they rush to fill the space. The way in which the reporter is not really a shrink, though, is that you cry. I have never wept so much while working. I would often cry before the person I was speaking with would. It was the crispness of their memories, the way they described these poignant, funny, heroic moments. I can't emphasize enough how humbling this work was. As a reporter, you have to be patient enough to keep probing until you have that click where you can see the person and how they moved on the planet.

"I made a call the other day that I resisted because it was the parents. I usually don't get much from parents. But this was one of the more enthralling interviews I had. It was a fireman, and he was the ninth of their ten children. The parents were exuberantly articulate. They were blunt. They said, 'You know, he wasn't a saint. He was a giant pain in the ass.' But they told me these stories about him in such a way that I couldn't help myself. I fell in love with the guy."

The (National Cathedral School) girls ask smart and tough questions. They hunt for compromise. They question her timing. "In this time of heightened hostility, isn't this a safety issue?" one asks. "I recently heard about force protection."

McSally asks them to envision the scenario the policy outlines -- an American woman covered head to toe in black, surrounded in downtown Riyadh by studly blond guys in crewcuts and jeans. "We hardly blend in," she says with a broad smile, and everybody cracks up at the image.

Here in America, another girl ventures, we accept people from other countries and don't disrespect those peoples' cultures. "So isn't it a question of respect, for you to not adopt their dress?" she asks.

"Here's the difference," parries McSally. "We let them choose to wear whatever they wish. When you value people, you give them freedom. That is who we are."

The military she loves has stripped her of that choice, McSally suggests. She is an observant Christian required against her will to represent herself as an adherent of a religion, Islam, which is not her own. Her attorneys, who have been hired by the Rutherford Institute, best known for its role in Paula Jones's suit against President Clinton, contend the abaya policy violates her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion.

"If it were in our national security to deploy to South Africa under apartheid, would we have found it acceptable or customary to segregate African American soldiers from other American soldiers, and say, 'It's just a cultural thing?' " McSally asks. "I don't think so. I would hope not.

"When those customs and values conflict with ones that our Constitution is based on, and that women and men in uniform died for in the past, that is where you draw the line."

"We can respect their customs," she says. "We don't need to impose their values and faith on us."

The Taliban guards again tied him on the table. This time, they poured water on his feet, then wound electrical wires around both of his big toes. The wires were attached to an old Soviet military field telephone. The guards turned the telephone's crank, sending a searing electrical current into Sayed's feet. It went on for more than an hour. He felt as if some powerful force was lifting him high off the table, then slamming him down again, over and over.

"Do you want to write (a confession) now?"

Sayed thought that if he continued to refuse he would convince them of his innocence. And he thought that if he confessed, they would kill him, probably in Kabul Stadium, where the Taliban held public executions. He imagined his body hanging there before the screaming crowd, with his own family too scared to claim it.

He couldn't pick up the pen.

They cranked the phone.

On Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., sent a letter to executives of the recording industry's trade association, asking whether anti-piracy technology on CDs might override consumers' abilities to copy albums they have purchased for personal use.

A 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels.

"I am particularly concerned that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home-recording using recorders and media covered by the" Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), Boucher wrote. "Any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes (the allowed personal copies) no longer possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations."

Western statesmen almost desperately declare at every opportunity these days that true Islam is a tolerant faith. But even "moderate" Muslim countries today are half-hearted at best in condemning Islamic extremists who not only stamp out Christianity and other religions at home but dream of violently establishing Islam as the one true faith throughout the world.

JUST before Christmas, a dozen happy American families were ready to bring a group of newly adopted kids home from Cambodia - when the U.S. government stepped in and aborted the adoptions on spurious charges of slavery.

I heard about it because one of the parents caught in the blender is a colleague. But every American ought to care. For one thing, the war we're in is going to be showing us pictures of orphans on a daily basis and figuring out how to manage them is going to matter. But even more important, this story tells us that key people in the U.S. government think it's better for a child to die in Cambodia than be raised in Akron.

In parts of the Third World children, mostly female, are sold by their families to slave traders. Others are stolen or simply dumped as too expensive to feed. Most end up in brothels, mines or sweat shops. A few end up in orphanages, who then pass them on to people from the First World who are desperate for children.

When the first Laskar commandos arrived in Sulawesi in July, they were formally received by the Governor of Central Sulawesi province and the head of the local parliament. Such a welcome underscores what the group's opponents and many independent analysts say is the greatest challenge to controlling the militants: their support at the highest levels of Indonesia's government. From direct infusions of cash to fund the fighters to phone calls to local military commanders to prevent crackdowns, sympathizers have ensured that the Laskar Jihad can operate with impunity.

Christians who refused to convert to Islam were killed; those who did convert were then separated from their families, given Muslim names, and forcibly circumcised — without anaesthetic, and with dirty instruments. Scissors were used on the adults. They were then told to wash in the sea to disinfect their wounds. The women underwent female genital circumcision.

...

One Washington, D.C.-based group, International Christian Concern, interviewed a woman with a horribly disfigured face who had been attacked in Duma, a Moluccan village on the island of Halmahera.

"When I saw the jihad warriors approaching," the woman told the interviewer, "I cried out, 'Lord help me.' Then a jihad warrior came up to me and said, 'I'll show you how God helps you,' and then placed the pistol in my mouth and pulled the trigger."

U.S. and allied military forces are stepping up aerial-reconnaissance flights over Somalia in preparation for raids against al Qaeda terrorist bases in the north African nation, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Intelligence reports also disclosed that some 100 al Qaeda terrorists were identified recently in Somalia. The terrorists were spotted as part of the Islamic rebel group there known as Al-Ittihad Al-Islam, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Mogadishu-based group, known as AIAI, is linked to Somali warlord Hussein Mohammed Aideed and has close ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group in Afghanistan.

"Somalia will likely be next," said one defense official familiar with defense planning.

The ads posted at 50 bus shelters in the District include such statements as "Because the bishops ban condoms, innocent people die" and "Catholic people care. Do our bishops?" Similar ads are running in 134 Metrorail cars.

(The ads) are part of an international campaign sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington-based religious advocacy group. The campaign was launched Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, to promote the distribution of condoms among sexually active teenagers and adults as a means of helping prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, said Frances Kissling, president of the group.