Even though the Democratic governor insists that the state is still at risk of power blackouts and spiking energy costs, fellow lawmakers -- mostly Democrats -- are calling on him to end the emergency. A national taxpayers' group is threatening to sue.

They argue that Davis is upsetting the balance of power between the state's executive and legislative branches of government and is violating state law in the process.

"Emergency powers temporarily disrupt a constitutional balance of power between the governor's office and the Legislature, which is the house that more closely represents citizens," said state Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, who is the author of a resolution that would end the state of emergency.

Only the governor or the Legislature, by concurrent resolution, can end a state of emergency.

"An emergency declaration basically makes the governor the supreme dictator while it's operative," she said.

The release came from Sen. Tim Johnson, Mr. Daschle's fellow South Dakota Democrat, and it quoted the majority leader at some length. "We need to provide natural disaster assistance as soon as possible," Mr. Daschle stated. "The new farm bill sets up sound policy for the future . . . but that will not help farmers whose land is so bone-dry that their crops will not grow and their cattle cannot graze." So much for that promise to Mr. Russert that "we're getting rid of those ad hoc disaster payment approaches."

In order for them to get more money they would have to verify their financial statements, which they cannot do," a different banking source said.

(Even while loudly denouncing WorldCom, George W. Bush is trying to appoint the man who drafted the infamous "Enron exemption" — a law custom-designed to protect the company from scrutiny — to a top position with a key regulatory agency. And some congressmen seem more interested in clamping down on New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, than in doing something about the corruption he has been investigating.)

So why does it matter if the attorney general is a highly ambitious character? Look at the weakness of the Merrill Lynch settlement. If Spitzer had really been interested in reforming Wall Street and protecting small investors, he would have brought Merrill to trial to force real institutional change, and demanded that substantial damages be paid to investors (none of the proceeds of the fine are going to them). Instead, having grabbed the headlines he sought, Spitzer let Merrill off with a slap on the wrist--a promise to try to do better in the future and a $100 million fine. (That sounds like a lot of money only until you consider that Merrill is taking in about $20 billion per year, making the fine exactly as onerous as a $750 fine for an individual making $150,000 per year. Inconvenient? Sure. Something to put the fear of God into you? Nope.)

The Palestinian Authority has placed the founder and spiritual mentor of the Islamic militant group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest in Gaza City, a Palestinian security official says.

The move came amid redoubled Israeli and international pressure on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to crack down on militants after two suicide bombings in Jerusalem and a gun attack on a Jewish settlement left 31 Israelis dead last week.

"It was decided, starting from tonight, to impose house arrest on Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to safeguard the ultimate national interests of the Palestinian people," the official told Reuters on Sunday.

"The decision was issued from high up, from President Yasser Arafat," he said.

WASHINGTON – President Bush decided to call for Yasser Arafat's removal after receiving intelligence information last week showing that the Palestinian leader had authorized a $20,000 payment to a group that claimed responsibility for the most recent suicide attack in Jerusalem, senior administration officials said yesterday.

As a result of the last-minute decision, the officials said, the aggressive diplomacy that had originally been expected to follow the president's speech – including an immediate trip to the region by Secretary of State Colin Powell and a Middle East peace conference – will be delayed. Instead, officials acknowledged yesterday that they would need a new round of consultations before deciding on their next steps.

Although Arab leaders said Bush's call for Arafat's removal had caught them by surprise, most chose to ignore that emphasis in the speech. Instead, they offered constructive and cautiously supportive public comments.

Arafat said Bush certainly wasn't referring to him.

Speaking to reporters at his Ramallah headquarters, Arafat said it was incorrect to conclude Bush's speech was critical of him, saying Bush had spoken about a Palestinian state and elections. Palestinians proudly carried out democratic elections in 1996, he said, repeating "democratic" three times for emphasis.

FROM THE DESK OF PRINCE TUNJI MOHAMMED
FAX NUMBER: 234 9 2720164

DEAR SIR,

WE ARE SENDING THIS LETTER TO YOU BASED ON INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE FOREIGN TRADE OFFICE OF THE NIGERIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY. WE BELIEVE THAT YOU WOULD BE IN A POSITION
TO HELP US IN OUR BID TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF FORTY-0NE MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ($18M USD) INTO A FOREIGN ACCOUNT.

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE FOR BUDGET AND PLANNING OF THE MINISTRY OF PETROLEUM, THIS COMMITTEE IS PRINCIPALLY CONCERNED WITH CONTRACT APPRAISALS AND APPROVAL OF CONTRACTS IN ORDER OF PRIORITIES AS REGARDS CAPITAL PROJECT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA. WITH OUR POSITIONS, WE HAVE SUCCESSFULLY SECURED FOR OUR SELVES THE SUM OF EIGHTEEN THOUSAND UNITED STATE DOLLARS (US$41.5M). THIS AMOUNT WAS ACCUMULATED THROUGH OVER INVOICED CONTRACTS PURPOSELY DONE BY US FOR OUR OWN GAINS.

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU IS TO PLAY THE ROLE OF EXECUTOR OF THE CONTRACT AND THEREFORE THE BENEFICIARY OF THE FUNDS, YOU WILLALSO PROVIDE A SAFE ACCOUNT WHICH THE INCIDENCE OF TAX WILL BE LOW AND WE ARE SURE TO BE ABLE SPEND THE MONEY AFTER THEN, INTO WHICH THE FUNDS WILL BE TRANSFERRED SINCE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ARE NOT ALLOWED BY OUR LAWS TO OPERATE FOREIGN ACCOUNT. IT HAS BEEN AGREED THAT THE OWNER OF THE ACCOUNT WILL BE COMPENSATED WITH US$8.3 MILLION OF THE REMITTED FUNDS, WE KEEP US$31.125MILLION WHILE US$2.075MILLION WILL BE SET ASIDE TO OFFSET EXPENSES AND PAY THE NECESSARY TAXES.
SO IF YOU CAN PROVE YOURSELF TO BE TRUSTED AND INTERESTED IN THIS DEAL THEN WE ARE PREPARED TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU. WHAT WE WANT FROM YOU IS THE ASSURANCE THAT YOU WILL LET US HAVE OUR SHARE WHEN THIS AMOUNT OF US$41.5M IS TRANSFERRED INTO YOUR ACCOUNT.IF THIS PROPOSAL SATISFIES YOU, PLEASE CONTACT ME STRICTLY THROUGH MY E-MAIL STATED ABOVE, MY FAX NUMBER.ABOVE SO WE CAN ADVICE YOU ON THE MODALITIES OF THE TRANSACTION. ALL MODALITIES OF THE TRANSFER HAVE BEEN WORKED OUTAND ONCE STARTED WILL NOT TAKE MORE THAN 30 WORKING DAYS WITH THE ABSOLUTE SUPPORT OF ALL CONCERNED. THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% SAFE. PLEASE TREAT AS URGENT AND VERY CONFIDENTIAL.

GOD BE WITH YOU AS I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR REPLY.


BEST REGARDS.


PRINCE TUNJI MOHAMMED

U.S. District Judge Dennis W. Shedd, 49, has the support of the White House and both senators from his home state as well as other prominent members of the bar there. Shedd spent 10 years on Capitol Hill as a top aide to Sen. Strom Thurmond (R), who nominated Shedd to the appeals court last May.

[Y]ou can say this about the Bush administration: where others might see problems, it sees opportunities.

A slump in the economy was an opportunity to push a tax cut that provided very little stimulus in the short run, but will place huge demands on the budget in 2010. An electricity shortage in California was an opportunity to push for drilling in Alaska, which would have produced no electricity and hardly any oil until 2013 or so. An attack by lightly armed terrorist infiltrators was an opportunity to push for lots of heavy weapons and a missile defense system, just in case Al Qaeda makes a frontal assault with tank divisions or fires an ICBM next time.

President George H. W. Bush once confessed that he was somewhat lacking in the "vision thing." His son's advisers don't have that problem: they have a powerful vision for America's future. In that future, we have recently learned, the occupant of the White House will have the right to imprison indefinitely anyone he chooses, including U.S. citizens, without any judicial process or review. But they are rather less interested in the reality thing.

For the distinctive feature of all the programs the administration has pushed in response to real problems is that they do little or nothing to address those problems. Problems are there to be used to pursue the vision. And a problem that won't serve that purpose, whether it's the collapse of confidence in corporate governance or the chaos in the Middle East, is treated as an annoyance to be ignored if possible, or at best addressed with purely cosmetic measures. Clearly, George W. Bush's people believe that real-world problems will solve themselves, or at least won't make the evening news, because by pure coincidence they will be pre-empted by terror alerts.

But real problems, if not dealt with, have a way of festering. In the last few weeks, a whole series of problems seem to have come to a head. Yesterday's speech notwithstanding, Middle East policy is obviously adrift. The dollar and the stock market are plunging, threatening an already shaky economic recovery. Amtrak has been pushed to the edge of shutdown, because it couldn't get the administration's attention. And the federal government itself is about to run out of money, because House Republicans are unwilling to face reality and increase the federal debt limit. (This avoidance thing seems to be contagious.)

But facing nearly unanimous Democratic opposition, House GOP leaders say they lack the votes to increase the ceiling. Democrats blame the need to raise the limit, the first increase in five years, on President Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut and say they will not bail out the GOP.

So now would be a good time to do what the White House always urges its critics to do — put partisanship aside. Will Mr. Bush be willing to set aside, even for a day or two, his drive to consolidate his political base, and actually do something that wasn't part of his preconceived agenda? Oh, never mind.

I think that most commentators missed the point of the story about Mr. Bush's commencement speech at Ohio State, the one his aide said drew on the thinking of Emily Dickinson, Pope John Paul II, Aristotle and Cicero, among others. Of course the aide's remarks were silly — but they gave us an indication of the level of sycophancy that Mr. Bush apparently believes to be his due. Next thing you know we'll be told that Mr. Bush is also a master calligrapher, and routinely swims across the Yangtze River. And nobody will dare laugh: just before Mr. Bush gave his actual, Aristotle-free speech, students at Ohio State were threatened with expulsion and arrest if they heckled him.

But back to the festering problems: on the economic side, this is starting to look like the most dangerous patch for the nation and the world since the summer of 1998. Back then, luckily, our economic policy was run by smart people who were prepared to learn from their mistakes. Can you say the same about this administration?

As I've noted before, the Bush administration has an infallibility complex: it never, ever, admits making a mistake. And that kind of arrogance tends, eventually, to bring disaster. You can read all about it in Aristotle.

Today’s decision is the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence. Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate. Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.

...

The Court pays lipservice to these precedents as it miraculously extracts a “national consensus” forbidding execution of the mentally retarded, ante, at 12, from the fact that 18 States—less than half (47%) of the 38 States that permit capital punishment (for whom the issue exists)—have very recently enacted legislation barring exe-cution of the mentally retarded.

...

The Court attempts to bolster its embarrassingly feeble evidence of “consensus” with the following: “It is not so much the number of these States that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of change.” Ante, at 10 (emphasis added). But in what other direction could we possibly see change? Given that 14 years ago all the death penalty statutes included the mentally retarded, any change (except precipitate undoing of what had just been done) was bound to be in the one direction the Court finds significant enough to overcome the lack of real consensus. That is to say, to be accurate the Court’s “consistency-of-the-direction-of-change” point should be recast into the following unimpressive observation: “No State has yet undone its exemption of the mentally retarded, one for as long as 14 whole years.”

...

But the Prize for the Court’s Most Feeble Effort to fabricate “national consensus” must go to its appeal (deservedly relegated to a footnote) to the views of assorted professional and religious organizations, members of the so-called “world community,” and respondents to opinion polls. Ante, at 11–12, n. 21. I agree with the CHIEF JUS-
TICE, ante, at 4–8 (dissenting opinion), that the views of professional and religious organizations and the results of opinion polls are irrelevant. Equally irrelevant are the
practices of the “world community,” whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people.

...

Retribution is not advanced, the argument goes, because the mentally retarded are no more culpable than the average murderer, whom we have already held lacks sufficient culpability to warrant the death penalty, see Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420, 433 (1980) (plurality opinion). Ante, at 14–15. Who says so? Is there an established correlation between mental acuity and the ability to conform one’s conduct to the law in such a rudimentary matter as murder? Are the mentally retarded really more disposed (and hence more likely) to commit willfully cruel and serious crime than others? In my experience, the opposite is true: being childlike generally suggests innocence rather than brutality.

Assuming, however, that there is a direct connection between diminished intelligence and the inability to refrain from murder, what scientific analysis can possibly show that a mildly retarded individual who commits an exquisite torture-killing is “no more culpable” than the “average” murderer in a holdup-gone-wrong or a domestic dispute? Or a moderately retarded individual who com-mits a series of 20 exquisite torture-killings? Surely culpability, and deservedness of the most severe retribution, depends not merely (if at all) upon the mental capacity of the criminal (above the level where he is able to distin-guish right from wrong) but also upon the depravity of the crime—which is precisely why this sort of question has traditionally been thought answerable not by a categorical rule of the sort the Court today imposes upon all trials, but rather by the sentencer’s weighing of the circumstances (both degree of retardation and depravity of crime) in the particular case. The fact that juries continue to sentence mentally retarded offenders to death for extreme crimes shows that society’s moral outrage sometimes demands execution of retarded offenders.

...

This newest invention promises to be more effective than any of the others in turning the process of capital trial into a game. One need only read the definitions of mental retardation adopted by the American Association of Mental Retardation and the American Psychiatric Association (set forth in the Court’s opinion, ante, at 2–3,
n. 3) to realize that the symptoms of this condition can readily be feigned. And whereas the capital defendant who feigns insanity risks commitment to a mental institution until he can be cured (and then tried and executed), Jones v. United States, 463 U. S. 354, 370, and n. 20 (1983), the capital defendant who feigns mental retardation risks nothing at all.

After spending the day drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, petitioner Daryl Renard Atkins and a partner in crime drove to a convenience store, intending to rob a customer. Their victim was Eric Nesbitt, an airman from Langley Air Force Base, whom they abducted, drove to a nearby automated teller machine, and forced to withdraw $200. They then drove him to a deserted area, ignoring his pleas to leave him unharmed. According to the co-conspirator, whose testimony the jury evidently credited, Atkins ordered Nesbitt out of the vehicle and, after he had taken only a few steps, shot him one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times in the thorax, chest, abdomen, arms, and legs.

...

The jury also heard testimony about petitioner’s 16 prior felony convictions for robbery, attempted robbery, abduction, use of a firearm, and maiming. Id., at 491–522. The victims of these offenses provided graphic depictions of petitioner’s violent tendencies: He hit one over the head with a beer bottle, id., at 406; he slapped a gun across another victim’s face, clubbed her in the head with it, knocked her to the ground, and then helped her up, only to shoot her in the stomach, id., at 411–413.

For example, the mystery money infusions that the commission assumes will somehow be forthcoming are almost enough to preserve Social Security exactly as it is, with no benefit cuts, forever.

The Bush doctrine, which he announced at a Republican fund-raiser last weekend, is that the United States will take "pre-emptive" action against states and groups that could pose a threat to us.

This is the first example in history of a democratic nation conferring on itself the right to attack those nations it may perceive itself to be threatened by. Tyrannies often have done such things, but that is what makes them tyrannies.

Some people spend their whole lives seeing molehills as mountains. And, among this group, there are people living perfectly happy and normal lives who for some reason also believe that we are a hair's-breadth from tyranny. From across the ideological spectrum, these folks imbue comparatively tiny events with profound ideological and historical import. And sometimes they seize on important events, and magnify these to the point of near-biblical prophecy.

To keep from looking irrational, Bush needed a rationale for his Iraq obsession, and he has found one: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," is how he explains the principle underlying his doctrine. He has dressed up the rationale of a few weeks ago, when he told a group simply, "I made my mind up that Saddam needs to go."

To give the attack on Iraq a modicum of respectability, the administration has worked hard to find a link between Iraq and Sept. 11. Unfortunately, it has been forced to admit that there is "no smoking gun," as Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, and "no evidence" of a link, in the words of CIA Director George Tenet.

"Pre-emptive" warfare is a risky concept because it puts you in the business of causing a conflict that otherwise might not occur. A nation like North Korea has no leverage save bluster, but bluster is a long way from action. During the Cold War, Moscow and China were constantly blustering, but were deterred from action by the risks of U.S. retaliation.

Why would not North Korea or Iraq be deterred as well?

The Bush doctrine shows no understanding of the causes of quarrels. In the Middle East, a solution to the Israel-Palestine issue would do far more for U.S. security than the overthrow of Saddaam (sic) Hussein. Yet Bush's Mideast policy is a wasteland.

Dr. Steve White of the University of Chicago sent this:

The researchers collected thymic stem cells from mice, not humans (the clonal populations were collected from 15.5 day old mouse embryos). The exact populations were R1 (CD45.MHC class II.MTS24-) and R2 (CD45.MHC class II.MTS24+) cells. These cells were separated from other cells by flow cytometry and then engrafted into mouse kidneys. Embryonic cells at 15.5 days old (mid gestation for a mouse) were used as it was felt that this represented a point at which thymus cells (technically, thymic epithelial cells) had differentiated into two component types for the developing thymus gland.

This is a remarkable study and deserved publication in Nature Immunology. But these were mouse cells, not human cells, and came from an embryo, not an adult. Hope this clarifies it for you.

Dr. White was kind enough to send me the PDF of the Nature article, and he's right -- it says rather clearly in the methodology section that mouse cells, not human cells, were involved.

Glenn, I might be mistaken, but I think you've got this development wrong, at least as it relates to the cloning debate.

To quote from the article you linked to:

The Monash scientists put thymus stem cells into the kidney cavity of a mouse.

"To see the thymus grow, complete and working, was exciting," Professor Boyd said.

Note it says "thymus stem cells" this would indicate to me that these were taken from a developed organ. Otherwise the reference would likely be to "embryonic stem cells" which are undifferentiated.

Also, according to the theory, if embryonic stem cells were injected into the kidney, they should have turned into kidney cells -- not thymus.

I'll admit I don't know all there is to know about the science -- but it appears to me that this report is fodder for the anti-cloning debate -- another scientific success for adult stem cell research -- which doesn't require the destruction of any human embryos.

Well, as far as I'm concerned that's actually better news if it's true. I'm more interested in the treatments than in how they're arrived at, and success with adult stem cells shortcircuits a lot of potential political opposition. And he's right -- I assumed the story was about fetal cells, but it doesn't actually say that.

The legal bills continue to pile up as Gov. Gray Davis tries to extricate himself from an embarrassing quagmire of his own making.

Davis is counting on a state appeals court to spare taxpayers from an $88.5 million award to attorneys who helped secure smog-fee refunds of $300 plus interest for more than 1 million motorists.

The state has paid outside counsel more than $500,000 to contest an arbitration panel's decision in favor of the attorneys, who include representatives of some of San Diego's most prominent law firms.

(San Diego attorney Bill) Lerach said in his declaration that "we agreed there would be no floor and no ceiling." The three-member arbitration panel, chaired by retired state Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Lucas, unanimously ruled that the law firms were entitled to 13.3 percent of the $665 million set aside by lawmakers.

The Senate Democratic plan would cost about $500 billion over the next decade; if we could afford that $1.35 trillion tax cut, we can afford prescription drug coverage — and if we can't afford both, why not reconsider some of the tax cut? Just by canceling future cuts for the top income tax bracket, and retaining current taxes on estates over $3 million, Congress could save enough revenue to pay for the Senate Democrats' plan — and adversely affect only a handful of very affluent families.

Why should we have prescription drug insurance in the first place? One answer is that the voters want it.

But retired Border Patrol agent Ron Sanders faces no such constraint. The former head of the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers 281 miles of Arizona's 350-mile stretch of the Mexican border, spoke openly of his distrust of the Mexican army.

Before retiring in 1999 he received intelligence reports "on a routine basis" that tied the army to drug trafficking, he said.

"The intelligence reports clearly stated that the military was taking drugs from drug traffickers, destroying only part of it and then reselling it to the cartels in the Douglas and Nogales areas," he said, referring to two Arizona border towns.

"They seemed always to be in the area when the drugs were coming north and they seldom seemed to be keeping drugs out," Sanders said.

But his habit of always believing the worst about Bush and the best about Clinton ruins the piece. Thus, Clinton is presented as a simon-pure free trader whose "scrupulousness continued to the end." No mention that the Seattle trade talks collapsed because Clinton wouldn't put our anti-dumping protectionism (among other things) on the table. No mention of the tariff requests to which Clinton acceded. At the end of the column, Krugman suggests that Bush's opportunism might lead to another Smoot-Hawley. That's just neo-liberal hysteria.

If Bill Clinton had given the steel industry the tariffs it wanted, Al Gore would probably be living in the White House. But administration officials actually worried about the consequences — for the nation, and for the world economy — of giving in to special interests.

You want an explanation of why he lost Ohio by four points and New Hampshire by one? Try the WTI hazardous-waste incinerator (world's largest) in East Liverpool, Ohio. Gore promised voters in 1992 that a Democratic administration would kill it. It was a double lie. First, Carol Browner's EPA almost immediately gave the incinerator a permit. When confronted on his broken pledge, Gore said the decision had been pre-empted by the outgoing Bush crowd. This too was a lie, as voters in Ohio discovered a week before Election 2000.

William Reilly, Bush's EPA chief, finally testified this fall that Gore's environmental aide Katie McGinty told him in the 1992 transition period that "it was the wishes of the new incoming administration to get the trial-burn permit granted. The Vice President-elect would be grateful if I simply made that decision before leaving office."

Don't think this was a picayune issue with no larger consequences. Citizens of East Liverpool, notably Terry Swearingen, have been campaigning across the country on this scandal for years, haunting Gore. So too, to its credit, has Greenpeace. They were particularly active in the Northeast, during Gore's primary battles with Bill Bradley. You can certainly argue that the last-minute disclosure of Gore's WTI lies prompted enough Greens to stay firm and cost him New Hampshire, a state which, with Oregon, would have given Gore the necessary 270 votes.

[S]ome months ago an academic colleague — a man with strong Democratic connections — urged me to write a couple of columns praising the Bush administration. "What should I praise?" I asked.

There was a long pause — funny, isn't it, how "balance" becomes a goal in itself? — but eventually he came up with something: "How about its commitment to free trade?"

[A]s Senate investigators examine evidence on the administration's Enron contacts, the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, has already delivered the verdict: Everything's fine, because officials did nothing to help Enron as it was collapsing.

I believe him. I also believe that the administration played no role in the death of Elvis Presley, an equally relevant assertion.

Mr. Gonzales is pulling the same trick on energy policy that Dick Cheney has pulled on antiterrorist policy: Respond to real, serious questions about the administration's actions by self-righteously denying charges that nobody is actually making. Nobody has accused the White House of helping Enron when it was down, just as no Democratic leader has accused the administration of deliberately allowing Sept. 11 to happen.

The real questions in both cases are whether the administration failed to act against real threats because it was preoccupied with a preconceived agenda; why officials who manifestly got it wrong have not been held accountable; and whether, because nobody has been held accountable, the administration is continuing to make the same mistakes.

I know that I'm about to get a barrage of mail saying that energy policy and terrorism are not comparable; but bear with me for a minute.

In the case of energy policy, the administration still won't release information about Dick Cheney's energy task force. But it's clear that energy companies, and only energy companies, had access to top officials. The result was that during the California power crisis — which, it is increasingly apparent, was largely engineered by Enron and other companies that had the administration's ear — the administration did nothing.

Under former chairman James Hoecker, a Clinton appointee, the agency plunged ahead with energy deregulation with an inadequate staff and no experience in policing markets. Hoecker has described at length his failure to transform the FERC from a bureaucracy that took an average two years to approve a utility rate request. The best thinking was that power buyers and sellers were big outfits that could look out for themselves in competitive wholesale markets.

But under Gov. Gray Davis, California's bungled deregulation put ordinary consumers at risk and removed risk from the state's three big utilities. What's more, during the critical early months of the 2000 market meltdown, Davis bet heavily on FERC intervention. The Clinton FERC did nothing.

Enter Pat Wood, chief utility regulator in Texas who was widely admired by consumer advocates despite his diehard belief in deregulation.

Wood certainly smelled fishy to Californians: Bush, Wood and the fallen Enron chairman Ken Lay go way back.

Yet in Texas, utility lobbyists had unsuccessfully pressed then-Gov. Bush to get Wood to back off. The regulator blocked state deregulation until an abundance of power plants was built, ensuring a surplus to prevent price spikes.

In his first decision as federal chairman, Wood engineered price caps on Western markets.

He issued the first fines on marketers who abused federal market rules. He ordered generators to run their power plants, forestalling the sort of false electricity shortages that enabled gouging last winter.

He has also threatened powerful utilities in other states with the "death penalty," loss of the right to sell at market rates, if they prevent fair access to competitors on power lines.

Wood has been far from perfect, as evidenced by his refusal so far to take back from power sellers the obscene profits they extorted from spot markets. And California will get no federal help wiggling out of the expensive long-term contracts signed by Davis. Look for Wood to uphold the FERC's long tradition of honoring legal deals signed by consenting adults.

But just as John Ashcroft, who brushed aside appeals to make terrorism a priority, remains in charge of our effort against terrorism, Mr. Cheney — who ridiculed conservation and price controls, which in the end were what saved California — remains in charge of energy policy. And that scares me more than terrorism.

Earlier this week the Environmental Protection Agency released a report confirming what the vast majority of climatologists, and every other advanced-country government, had already concluded: human activity is causing global warming, and the consequences will be nasty. But the E.P.A. did not propose any preventive action. Instead, it talked only about adapting to the changes.

Old hands recalled the days of James Watt, the interior secretary back in the 1980's. When scientists discovered that industrial chemicals were depleting the earth's protective ozone layer, Mr. Watt suggested that people wear hats, sunscreen and dark glasses. Luckily for the planet, he was overruled; the United States joined other countries in curbing production of ozone-depleting chemicals. The ozone hole is still growing, but disaster has at least been postponed.

No such happy outcome seems likely on global warming. After a curious pause, George W. Bush rejected his own administration's analysis. "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," he sneered.

Clearly, this was a replay of what happened early last year, when the E.P.A.'s Christie Whitman assured the public that Mr. Bush would honor his pledge to control carbon dioxide emissions — only to be betrayed when the coal and oil industries weighed in on the subject. So the administration learned nothing from the California crisis; it still takes its advice from the energy companies that financed its campaign (and made many administration officials, including Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, rich).

And it's one thing to reward your friends with subsidies and lax regulation. It's something quite different to let them dictate policy on climate change.

Many people believe that the Bush administration had a special window of opportunity on global warming policy. Politically, it could have been a Nixon-goes-to-China moment: Mr. Bush could have passed legislation that would have been totally out of reach for a Democrat. Furthermore, many corporations were actually eager for guidelines that would allow them to make long-term plans.

But because the administration continues to listen only to the usual suspects, that window of opportunity is closing fast. And bear this in mind: Whatever he imagines, Osama bin Laden can't destroy Western civilization. Carbon dioxide can.

America woke up Wednesday to one of its greatest soccer wins," the Associated Press reports from Suwon, South Korea. "The U.S. soccer team shocked heavily favored Portugal at the World Cup, earning a 3-2 victory and breaking a five-match Cup losing streak dating back to 1994."

This just goes to show what a lame sport soccer is. A victory over Portugal is a big deal? Portugal--a country that hasn't been a major power since the 16th century?

ID is not, however, true science. According to the eminent modern philosopher Karl Popper, the defining characteristic of science is that its assertions are falsifiable. In other words, if we have no means to prove a theory wrong -- by experiment, observation, and the like -- then it is not scientific. And theories that cannot be falsified simply have no place in science books or classrooms.

[W]ASHINGTON, June 4 — Federal regulators threatened today to strip four large energy traders of their ability to charge unregulated rates for electricity because of their responses to inquiries about their strategies in California.

In an order issued late today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said it appeared that three of the companies — El Paso Electric, the Avista Corporation and Portland General Electric, an Enron subsidiary — may have submitted false information to the commission in response to inquiries about whether they engaged in manipulative energy trading strategies in California. The fourth, the energy trading unit of the Williams Companies, has simply refused to answer a crucial question, the commission said.

Late today, the four companies said they would act quickly to provide new information demanded by the commission.

The commission has never before even threatened to strip an energy trader of its ability to charge unregulated rates, commission officials said last night. But one commissioner, Nora Brownell, said it was important that all energy traders recognize the seriousness of the commission's investigation into market manipulation in California during the 2000-01 power crisis.

What they knew and when they knew it

Bush administration reveals who had information on Sept. 11 terror attacks -- and didn't warn the public

An Army lieutenant whose jaw is wired shut from a bullet wound he received in Afghanistan claims screeners at San Francisco International Airport denied him permission to pass through security with wire clippers used to snap open his jaw in an emergency.

Lt. Greg Miller, a combat medic and member of a special forces patrol, was shot in Kandahar in April. The bullet passed through his jaw, severing nerves and leaving him without feeling in his mouth.

He said his jaw was wired shut at a hospital in Germany, and his doctor issued him wire clippers to carry in case he became sick and needed to open his jaw to avoid choking.

[I]n his latest ad hominem-based syndicated article, the resident radical-Left opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer, mocked the intelligence of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a vertical screed, Scheer wrote the following: Ashcroft is "not the sharpest [tool] in the shed." He "managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man." He "was not picked for his smarts." He is a "Keystone Kop in charge of law enforcement." And, in the most telling comment, "Perhaps it is just too difficult for a stern, God-fearing fundamentalist like the attorney general to fully anticipate the dark side of religion's wrath."

Scheer's writing reflects the polemic arrogance monopolized by a Left that is convinced its ranks are just too smart for conservatives to fathom and that conservatives are just too troglodytic to be liberal.

Going through Table 3 on pages 14-15, it seems to me as if $85M of $2.2B is unquestionably administrative, and it is possible some fraction of other expensitures [sic] is administrative as well.