Deep in the recesses of the Pentagon is the Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA is where Vice Adm. John Poindexter (USN ret.) hangs out these days, working on TIA. TIA stands for Total Information Awareness. The project, which is budgeted at $10 million this year and expected to get more next year, has been getting bad press. That is in part because its Orwellian-sounding purpose is to create a centralized database of personal information about Americans.

This is a defeat that the Democrats need to quickly demystify. They did not lose this election because they were too far left but rather because they did almost nothing to rally either their diehard or their sometime supporters. If they misread this month's mournful numbers -- if they shun a progressive-populist economics, or flee from a defense of environmental or pro-choice policies -- then they cede all the wedge issues to Karl Rove's Republicans.

Civil libertarians argue that he fear of police abuses in a war on terror is neither speculative nor paranoid. In New York, Chicago and San Francisco, police spying and surveillance has a long and ignoble history.

"We are seeing a national phenomenon where, in the name of protecting national security against a new and subtle danger, there is a massive effort to eliminate protections for political protest," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "These safeguards were put in place in the aftermath of a documented history of systematic spying, infiltration and dirty tricks by police agencies and the FBI."

Arab satellite television has also done well in on-the-ground spot news reporting (if with obvious bias in their national perspectives [offers] a mirror image of Fox channel’s using the fluttering American flag as a routine on-screen backdrop, Dan Rather and other broadcast anchors wearing US flag lapel pins, and Geraldo Rivera packing a gun on the air and going after the bad guys in Afghanistan). Hey, in the commercial media world, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep the viewers viewing and sell those deodorant advertisements, in the New World and the Old World alike.

If all this, as the US would have us believe, is the work of a single shadowy terrorist network, with tentacles stretching across the world, then the way to defeat it is to cut off its head and then destroy its offshoots one by one. This is what America and its allies are trying to do. But what if the West is grappling with an altogether different phenomenon? What if the war on terror being waged is fundamentally wrong-headed? [Instead, Seale argues, a more logical] possibility is that the “enemy” is not just a terrorist network but a broad, militant, grassroots rebellion against American military and political interventions in the Arab and Muslim world, against Western arrogance, racism and bullying.

For decades now, but especially under the Bush administration, America’s triumphalism, its contempt for the views and interests of others, its boastful displays of military power, its refusal to recognize and address the “roots of terror,” its apparent indifference to international law, its economic supremacy ­ all these have created a worldwide backlash which has put Americans at risk in many countries. History suggests that any power which dominates others will inevitably create violent opposition to it. If this is true, then what we are witnessing is nothing less than an anti-imperialist movement of the 21st century.... Although often expressed in Islamic terms, the movement of rebellion is essentially political. It aims to liberate the Arab and Muslim world from the suffocating embrace of the West ­ and above all from American neo-imperialism and its Zionist handmaiden. ... Many separate streams feed the river of rebellion. There is no doubt that the epidemic of anti-American sentiment raging from Morocco to Indonesia is fed by American support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. This is the main spring of the rebellion. But there are many others. [Read the rest of his argument]

This week Al Gore said the obvious. "The media is kind of weird these days on politics," he told The New York Observer, "and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party." ... In short, we have a situation rife with conflicts of interest. The handful of organizations that supply most people with their news have major commercial interests that inevitably tempt them to slant their coverage, and more generally to be deferential to the ruling party. There have already been some peculiar examples of news not reported. For example, last month's 100,000-strong Washington antiwar demonstration an important event, whatever your views on the issue was almost ignored by some key media outlets.

The political agenda of Fox News, to take the most important example, is hardly obscure. Roger Ailes, the network's chairman, has been advising the Bush administration. Fox's Brit Hume even claimed credit for the midterm election. "It was because of our coverage that it happened," he told Don Imus. "People watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters." (This remark may have been tongue in cheek, but imagine the reaction if the Democrats had won and Dan Rather, even jokingly, had later claimed credit.)

For the time being, blatant media bias is still limited by old rules and old norms of behavior. But soon the rules will be abolished, and the norms are eroding before our eyes.

Do the conflicts of interest of our highly concentrated media constitute a threat to democracy? I've reported; you decide.

...More Iranians are choosing sides in an explosive debate that pits Islamic rule - defined by Iran's unelected conservatives, who have held key levers of power since the Islamic revolution - against popular democracy..

A Western diplomat says that the current regime "is under more pressure than at any time since the revolution. Something has to give," he says. "Reformers are no longer prepared to compromise. [President Mohamad] Khatami is still regarded as the only one who can peacefully bring about change, and that's what people really want."

"If [the system] survives the next year intact, I think it will survive," says the diplomat, adding that the conservative camp may not grasp the changes afoot. "It's the same with all dictators - they do not see their own demise."...

Such views are sacrilege to Iran's conservative leaders. But Ayatollah Tabrizi notes that proreform views are now as prevalent among martyrs 'families, the Revolutionary Guards corps, and clerics, as they are in liberal circles.

...Where the country's health care crisis is concerned, we have on the left that famous, wacky liberal dreamer, Al Gore, now pushing what is most accurately called national health insurance.

In the center, there is a more famous apostle of moderate and mixed-bag policy wonkery who relies heavily on the private sector for his latest proposal - Edward Kennedy.

On the right, there is the familiarity that ought to breed contempt - President Bush, still trying to fit the square peg of tax credits into the round hole of immense gaps in basic coverage for working families....

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the heart surgeon who helped reclaim the Senate for the Republicans, is plunging into his next political challenge, one fraught with risks and opportunities for his president and his party: overhauling Medicare, the popular; and costly; health insurance program for the elderly.

Most Republicans are keenly aware that they need to deliver prescription drug benefits to the nation's elderly in the next two years. They have repeatedly promised to do so and now control both Congress and the White House. Democrats, who assert that the Republicans simply paid lip service to the issue to get through the elections, are certain to hold them accountable if they fail.

At a time when Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and other wingers seem to be the loudest voices around, those on the left are rallying around a Princeton professor who rarely sets foot inside the Beltway and isn't even a fulltime journalist. Paul Krugman, in other words, is hot.

Of course, one huge challenge to affecting public opinion on the war issue is a staggering lack of resources on the pro-peace side. The Bush war machine, with the general cooperation of the corporate media, buttresses the pro-war debate every waking hour with its continuing emphasis on the permanent war on terror. Seemingly effortlessly, the administration shifted the pro-war frame from Osama to Saddam, bringing us to the brink of war, and, at least for now, risking no political damage.

The Bush communication capacity would be worth billions of dollars in the commercial marketplace. Peace advocates, by contrast, have spent less than $200,000 for paid ads, and anti-war advocates, even those in Congress, get very little free media coverage. On top of that, there has been no research on what anti-war messages might resonate with the public and very little coordination to reinforce messages.

But insufficient resources are only part of the problem, because liberals and progressives do have resources. [George] Lakoff argues that not only are liberal think tanks outfunded by conservatives, they are also "organized in a self-defeating manner."

As he explains, "Most groups work issue by issue and have to constantly pursue funding." He also claims that the funding priorities of liberal foundations are self-defeating in a similar way. Their funding tends "to be program-oriented (issue by issue) and ... short term with no guarantee of refunding. Moreover," he adds, the foundations, "tend not to give money for career development or infrastructure ... and tend not to support their intellectuals ... doing just the opposite of what they should be doing if they are to counter conservatives' success. "

... The family [featured in the beginnig paragraphs of this report] represents a changing portrait of the 41 million Americans who do not have health insurance today. Once thought to be a problem chiefly of the poor and the unemployed, the health care crisis is spreading up the income ladder and deep into the ranks of those with full-time jobs.

According to recently released Census Bureau figures, 1.4 million Americans lost their health insurance last year, an increase largely attributed to the economic slowdown and resulting rise in unemployment. The largest group of the newly uninsured; some 800,000 people; had incomes in excess of $75,000. They either lost their jobs, or were priced out of the health care market by rapidly rising insurance premiums, or, like Ms. MacPherson, both. ...

The problem has long been acute among minorities, immigrants, part-time workers and employees in low-wage service jobs. What is different this time, analysts say, is that the problem is hitting middle-income and upper-income families harder because many of the job losses are in high-wage industries like technology and telecommunications....

Thirty million Americans in working families today, 16 percent of all those in families headed by a worker, lack health care coverage, according to a four-year tracking study by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonprofit research group financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. An additional 16 million Americans, mostly low-income workers are offered health insurance through their jobs but decline because they get health care from government programs or it is too expensive, the study found...

I arrived back in the US from Brazil on election day, Sunday, October 27, when 115 million voters peacefully went to the polls, pressed the keys on their compact electronic voting machines, and by a huge margin elected a former factory worker, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, universally known as Lula, to be president of one of the world's largest democracies. Lula won by 61 percent of the popular vote, a full 22.5 percentage points more than José Serra, former health minister and the candidate of the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and his victory from all accounts was being accepted calmly throughout Brazil.

Lula's triumph seemed like the realization of an American dream, a rise from the backlands of northern Brazil to the presidency; from log cabin to head of state. But two days later, in Washington, D.C., I was not sure I was on the same planet, let alone in the same hemisphere. The United States was not celebrating this remarkable demonstration of democratic civility in a region where neither civility nor democracy is well entrenched and in a country that until not so long ago was ruled by a military dictatorship that lasted twenty-one years. ... [In the next paragraph, read what the reponse of Henry Hyde's House Committee was, but there's much more.]

The girls in the school library are studying ancient Greece. A sign on a wall says, "Reach for the World." The school is the Institute of Notre Dame, 901 N. Aisquith St.[Baltimore Marlyland] To reach for the world, the girls here don't have to reach across the centuries. Sometimes, they just have to sit at a desk and listen for echoes.

Two of America's most prominent women came of age in this little school, though some of the girls are just beginning to absorb such a remarkable fact. Nancy D'Alesandro [Pelosi], Class of 1958, grew up here. So did Barbara Mikulski, Class of 1953. ...

"We're the next them," says Valerie Andrews, a Notre Dame freshman.

The Supreme Court in its landmark Miranda opinion ruled that police must respect the rights of people who are held for questioning. Officers must warn them of their right to remain silent, and, equally important, honor their refusal to talk further. But that widely known rule is about to be reconsidered in the high court in the case of a farm worker here who was shot five times after a brief encounter with police.

Bush administration lawyers have sided with the police in the case. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Dec. 4. Police can hold people in custody and force them to talk, so long as their incriminating statements are not used to prosecute them, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Theodore B. Olson and Michael Chertoff, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, say in their brief to the court. [Recall that Olson was the lawyer who defended the Florida election results before the Supreme Court in 2000, and helped Bush get elected with a majority of one in the 5 to 4 decision.]

It "will chill legitimate law enforcement efforts to obtain potentially life-saving information during emergencies," including terrorism alerts, if police and FBI agents can be sued for coercive questioning, they add.

"This will be, in essence, a reversal of Miranda," said University of Texas law professor Susan Klein."Officers will be told Miranda is not a constitutional right. If there is no right, and you are not liable, why should you honor the right to silence?" she asked. "I think it means you will see more police using threats and violence to get people to talk. Innocent people will be subjected to very unpleasant experiences."

... The story, recounted in Secretary Powell's memoirs, illustrates that the philosophical discord that is becoming increasingly obvious in the current Bush administration has deep roots in the last. Hawk versus dove, unilateralist versus multilateralist, whatever one calls these disagreements, few experts think they will go away. In fact, the divide in the administration is likely to affect not only future choices on Iraq but also on North Korea, Yasir Arafat and the Palestinians, and military issues like missile defense.

As Canadian politicians denounce U.S. racial profiling at border crossings, the son of a Chinese head tax payer insists it’s time for Canada to acknowledge its own racist history. Yew Lee and his mother, Quen-Ying, are plaintiffs in an ongoing class-action suit that seeks redress for sixty-two years of legislated racism endured by Chinese immigrants and their families. “If Chrétien is going to leave some kind of legacy,” says Lee, “it should be a message that all parts of the Canadian family are equal.”

Never one to do anything halfway, the former iron man of campaigning, Al Gore, shot back into public life with a bullet last week....Gore is even negotiating two appearances on Fox News -- and yes, a Bill O'Reilly tęte-ŕ-tęte is a possibility. [Neal]: I'd pay to see that.

The US has, at last, realised it may be the world's only superpower, but it can only wield that strength if the world at large supports it. And countries such as Russia, China and France have, likewise, realised that the only way they can bring influence to bear on Washington is to make it feasible for the US to work through the UN. This is momentous progress, the most significant development since the fall of the Berlin wall. Perhaps, after all, we will soon be saying: “We are all Americans now”.

Four campaign finance advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the FEC accusing officials of both parties and two major GOP lobbyists of conspiring to evade the new ban on party-raised "soft money."...

"The attitude in Washington of some of our elected representatives and the political parties is that there is no sheriff, there is no judge and therefore there is no need to comply with the nation's campaign finance laws," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21.

... What has happened to the Democratic Party? It has been rendered voiceless and incompetent by masterful campaign strategies of the right wing. The solution is not to become more centrist or "Republican Lite" as some have suggested. The solution is to get back to the fundamental principles that have guided the Democratic Party for decades, to be the party of the people and to promote strongly policies that will alleviate suffering and improve the lives of average citizens. This is not accomplished by going along with the right wing just to get along.

Having spent more than $30 million to help elect their allies to Congress, the major drug companies are devising ways to capitalize on their electoral success by securing favorable new legislation and countering the pressure that lawmakers in both parties feel to lower the cost of prescription drugs, industry officials say.

The industry's hand appears stronger now than at any other time in recent years, a result of its large donations to political parties and candidates and millions of dollars spent on television advertising by industry-financed groups. The , who now control both houses of Congress.money was spent overwhelmingly on behalf of Republicans

Executives of the major drug manufacturers met last week at the Westfield International Conference Center, near Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia, to plan ways to turn that influence into legislative victories....

The meeting was described by an industry lobbyist as a "strategic planning retreat" and "deep philosophical conversations about our message for 2003." A pervasive theme was how to block proposals that could erode profits by limiting drug prices or making it easier for people to buy low-cost generic versions of brand-name medicines....

The industry's No. 1 goal is to shape legislation that both parties advocate to provide prescription benefits to the 40 million elderly and disabled people in the Medicare program. What the industry fears most is price controls or any federal effort to establish a list of preferred drugs that leaves out other medications.

Democrats want to give the government a large role in managing Medicare drug benefits, while Republicans would rely more on competing private health plans, insurance companies and pharmaceutical benefits managers.

The industry is also fighting legislation that would speed the approval and marketing of generic drugs. The Senate passed such a bill in July, with support from 49 Democrats and 28 Republicans, but it died in the House.

So far, most Republicans have backed the brand-name drug industry in its battle with generic drug makers. But brand-name drug makers worry that the pressure to limit drug spending, and the cost of Medicare drug benefits, will lead more Republicans to promote the use of generic drugs.

Unlike the committee's current ranking Republican, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who is retiring, Lugar is more likely to support the State Department's approach in its constant intramural battles with the hawks at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration.

"Lugar will be dreadful," said a prominent foreign policy conservative who asked not to be identified. "He is a conventionally minded apparatchik of the establishment."....

..."I don't want to alarm the Republican right, but there is very little Dick Lugar and I disagree on," said the current committee chairman, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who will hand over his gavel to Lugar when the new Congress meets next year and the Republicans take control of the Senate. "He is the most informed Republican in Congress on foreign affairs, and if I can't be chairman there is no one who I would have rather be chairman."

There was always an air of unreality about the United Nations Security Council debate on Iraq. Whether the new inspection regime succeeds or not, that unreality will not go away....The administration always insisted that it had the right to attack Iraq regardless of what the Security Council decided. ... Given the contradiction between the mandate of the Charter and the prevailing American view on Iraq and Kosovo, what has happened to the law?... It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Charter provisions governing use of force are simply no longer regarded as binding international law....[Regardless of what the Un Charter states] since 1945, dozens of member states have engaged in well over 100 interstate conflicts that have killed millions of people.
This record of violation is legally significant. The international legal system is voluntary and states are bound only by rules to which they consent. A treaty can lose its binding effect if a sufficient number of parties engage in conduct that is at odds with the constraints of the treaty. The consent of United Nations member states to the general prohibition against the use of force, as expressed in the Charter, has in this way been supplanted by a changed intent as expressed in deeds.

The United States is therefore correct: it would not be unlawful to attack Iraq, even without Security Council approval. It seems the Charter has, tragically, gone the way of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact which purported to outlaw war and was signed by every major belligerent in World War II.
Of course it remains useful politically to act with the backing of the Security Council. But the Charter was supposed to be about more than politics. The urgent issue today is the breakdown once again of international rules governing the use of force. Until that problem is addressed, the Security Council's deliberations on the use of force will continue to seem surreal.

... "The time for change has come," the panel concluded. "The country that put the first man on the moon and invented the microchip is surely capable of ensuring that children are immunized, that patients who suffer heart attacks receive life-saving drugs".

Communities along Spain's northern coast girded for widespread oil contamination in the coming days after a crippled tanker holding twice the load lost aboard the Exxon Valdez split in two today and sank more than 100 miles offshore.

... many factors that play into America's infatuation with capital vengeance. Commonly mentioned suspects include Hollywood's romanticized depiction of violent retribution as part of our Wild West heritage, the culture of violence that has grown up around our national love affair with firearms, and the highly sensational media coverage given to high-profile crimes. Yet the biggest reason for the success of the death penalty may be good old-fashioned racism. There is little doubt that if this were a more racially homogeneous country, capital punishment would have gone the way of the dodo bird 30 years ago.

No one with knowledge on the subject can deny that race has played a role in the application of capital punishment: Study after study has proven its disproportionate use against minorities. And, yes, many white people have also been executed. But that doesn't change the fact that the death penalty remains predominately something that whites impose on blacks.

When Bob Woodward publishes, people listen. And argue. And get angry. Which is pretty much what's happening over "Bush at War."

If any of the terms in our new lexicon has undergone a process of diminishing returns, it is the word “terrorism.” This is partly because it is carried over from an earlier lexicon. It is also partly because even that previous lexicon was experiencing a little fatigue, in consequence of the word’s ambiguity and hypocrisy....

All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is — which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.

..."It is a turning point in the nation's history, a symbolic benchmark of some significance," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research and policy analysis organization. "If you consider how much of this nation's history is wrapped up in the interplay between black and white, this serves as an official announcement that we as Americans cannot think of race in that way any more."

...In many ways, the new figures are an indication of the growing multiculturalism in American society and the change in the way the Census Bureau allows people to classify themselves. The 2000 census, for the first time, allowed respondents to choose more than one race in identifying themselves. In addition, Hispanics, a cultural and ethnic classification, can be of any race.... "What these numbers reveal is a bit of a conundrum. But advocacy groups, policy people and politicians will pick the interpretation of them that works best for them at any given time."
Much of the social and political impact of the population surge may not be immediately apparent. Roughly one quarter of Latinos living in the United States are noncitizens. And while there has been a significant migration of Hispanics to cities in the South, Midwest, and central plains, more than 50 percent of the Latino population remains concentrated in Texas, California and New York.

... Gephardt was an early supporter of giving the President the authority to go to war with Iraq. Since his principles are sometimes difficult to find, no one could be sure if Gephardt actually believed this or was positioning himself for a run for the Democratic nomination in 2004. Other Democratic senators seethed at the sight of Gephardt and other Democratic supporters of the war standing in the Rose Garden with Bush; nor were they pleased when Lieberman rushed to the Senate floor to introduce the new resolution. Biden lamented to reporters that it was now "too late" to press his own resolution, which limited the casus belli to the issue of Iraq's continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction....

The question of what can be passed by the Senate by a simple majority and what requires a super majority of 60 votes revolves around rules so arcane that few lawmakers have mastered them.

The painful 2000 election behind him, Al Gore warns that Bush is leading America into deep trouble. Is that a message that will win the White House in 2004?...This is the man, remember, who in 2000 got more votes than any other Democratic candidate in history.

Democrats in Search of a Leader -- Nomination Fight Forces New Thinking on Issues, Strategies. ...That strategy assumes that the only real energy within the Democratic Party is on the left, and that, in an era when the country remains closely divided, the key to winning elections, even general elections, is mobilizing core supporters rather than counting on a big turnout among swing voters. The risk is that Bush will have even more opportunity to occupy the center of the political spectrum.

But there will be alternative strategies employed. Edwards, [A la Clinton in 1992.] in recent speeches, has shown that he will attempt to develop a message that is both populist enough to energize loyal Democrats and centrist enough to appeal to swing voters and rural and small-town residents for whom Bush has strong appeal.

Edwards doesn't like to talk about left-right divisions in the party and how to bridge them. But his recent economic speech, in which he urged Democrats to help eliminate the deficit and restore fiscal discipline not just by rolling back Bush's tax cuts but by restraining their own spending impulses, sounded a theme likely to appeal to centrist Democrats....

... The result is a society in which the gap between the haves and have-nots is becoming a vast chasm. As the economy continues to deteriorate and the Bush administration pushes through a tax cut that benefits the super-rich, that chasm will grow wider still.

(Despite the charges of "class warfare" that always follow criticism of the tax cut, the numbers have not changed: More than half of the Bush tax cut will end up in the hands of the top 1 percent of families; that is a heftier share than they pay in taxes.)

Already, the slowing economy is hurting those whose incomes had just begun to creep up in the 1990s. The bottom 40 percent of families didn't gain much during the early years of the '90s boom; their incomes didn't start to increase until the last four years of the decade. But layoffs have already cut into the wages of secretaries, waitresses and assembly line workers. They've lost their meager gains.

Families a bit further up the economic ladder are hurting, as well. Soaring costs for health insurance are pinching household budgets, while a sour stock market has eroded college savings and retirement accounts. Credit card debt is piling up.

... One of Powell's greatest difficulties was that he was more or less supposed to pretend in public that the sharp differences in the war cabinet did not exist. The president would not tolerate public discord. Powell was also held in check by his own code -- a soldier obeys ....

"The reports of our demise and disarray are greatly exaggerated," said Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I don't know that we need to change what we stand for." ...

The problem is pronounced in Washington. The party's most prominent leaders; Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, and Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader (soon to be minority leader); have been at least partly politically discredited by the losses on their watch, as has the Democratic chairman, Terry McAuliffe.... [Evidently, too, where ever Clinton campaigned, the results suggest that he didn't have much impact--for the reference, check this entire report.]

The only relatively fresh face in the party leadership is Representative Nancy Pelosi, 62, who was elected to replace Mr. Gephardt as minority leader after he decided to step down. She entered the House in 1987, but is barely known outside her hometown, San Francisco, and Republicans have already tried to present her as ideologically out of step with most of the nation....
Some Democrats outside Washington said they were most disturbed that a dwindling public interest in politics had filtered into their own increasingly depleted ranks. They said they were having difficulty recruiting talented young people to run; or even to help at headquarters.... [I know that I'm putting myself out on a limb here, but I think that Pelosi's elevation to House leader, rather than being an error, will instead prove to be a stroke of genius. If nothing else, young Democratic women should be inspired and energized.]

"We don't have the farm team that we had 10 or 20 years ago," said Mike Erlandson, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. "Republicans have the farm team now." Mr. Erlandson added, "It's true of both sides, but the leadership is getting older and voters are getting younger."...
Ms. Brazile said she remained hopeful that the party would recover.

"Look, I survived the 80's," she said. "We felt defeated in 1984, and we felt defeated in 1988. I've lived long enough to see the Democratic Party at the top of the game, and I've seen it lose and lose big. What happened last week was a wake-up call."

...Elaine Kamarck can do the tactical stuff -- she was an adviser to the Clinton and Gore campaigns of the past decade -- but she also nurtures dreams of a lasting Democratic majority, the sort of coalition that Franklin D. Roosevelt created with his New Deal. Her party has not had a presidential candidate that won a majority of the votes since 1976. But entwined in those results, she envisions a near future in which Democrats dominate.

"The population is increasingly Democratic," Kamarck asserts, but this is obscured by the archaic electoral college. "We are concentrated in big states, which are underrepresented. That will change in time. The megalopolises are growing, and that's where Democrats live. The other areas are shrinking. The Republican coalition is, frankly, an aging coalition."

Kamarck is one of many Democrats who believe that trends in demographics and cultural values are running in favor of their party. Their strategy for breaking the 50-50 deadlock is simply to keep doing what they are doing. In this vision, the New Democrats of the 1990s, led by former president Bill Clinton, successfully shed their old image as a party of high taxes and anti-Americanism, and replace that with a record of boom times, balanced budgets and a sunny tolerance. This is precisely the image that will appeal to immigrants, "New Economy types and social liberals," Kamarck predicts.

This thesis, that demographic and economic forces are working to Democrats' advantage, is at the heart of "The Emerging Democratic Majority," by authors Ruy Teixeira, a political theorist at the Century Foundation, and John B. Judis, an editor at the New Republic. "The transition from industrial capitalism to postindustrial capitalism involves changes in how people relate to whole ranges of issues: to work, culture, sex, etc.," Judis explains. "Democrats have positioned themselves better to deal with those changes."

...And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.
And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics?

... But as he began his book tour this week, Gore already was making political news. On Wednesday night, he told a New York audience he has "reluctantly come to the conclusion" that the only solution to the "impending crisis" in health care is a "single-payer national health insurance plan" for all Americans. That marks a sharp break with his past position, pushing him sharply to the left on what could be an important issue in the next presidential campaign....Gore's comments on supporting a single-payer health care system caught many Democrats by surprise. ...

...Critics argue they do not need to watch the series. Their objections are based on reports that the storyline revolves around 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', a century-old text dismissed long ago as a fabrication. The text is a plan for world domination allegedly concocted during a meeting by a cabal of Jews.

Egyptian TV Revives the 'Protocols of Zion' Myth
Frontpage in today's NYT, but 'below the fold', reporter Daniel Wakin writes of about a TV production in Egypt, based on a forged document, produced early in the 20th century, that claims the Jews want to take over the world. In other words, another conspiracy for anti-semitic zealots. The Protocols received much attention, especially before the book was proven pure bunk. See the entry in the Skeptic's Dictionary, for a good brief history, including refs to the books that disclosed the forgery and the books that ignored the forgery and promoted the myth. The latter, most famously, are Henry Ford Senior, in his newspaper, and Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf. The results of a vivisimo search are prodigous, and I was lucky to find the entry in the Skeptic's Dictionary first, otherwise searching through the maze of hundreds of hits would be maddening. Vivismo categorizes the hits, but how reliable, who's to know. In the "encyclopedias" category of the vivismo results, for example, about 6 entries, two or three look reliable, but with just a quick analysis of each of the others, I am doubtful about their reliabiltiy.

The unanimous vote in the U.N. Security Council supporting the U.S. resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq was a demonstration of Washington's ability to wield its vast political and economic power, say observers....All these countries were seemingly aware of the fact that in 1990 the United States almost overnight cut about 70 million dollars in aid to Yemen immediately following its negative vote against a U.S. sponsored Security Council resolution to militarily oust Iraq from Kuwait. ....

Could any of these countries easily stand up to the United States or refuse to fall in line with their benefactor or military ally?

James Abourezk, a former U.S. Senator, said he seriously doubts that any country receiving U.S. government aid could withstand the economic pressure to vote for a U.S. resolution at the Security Council.

''It would be a tragedy,'' he told IPS, ''if a war were to be declared based on such pressure''.

For the first time in years, a senior party strategist said, "the Republicans outdid us at what we used to be good at: the ground game, grass-roots organizing and voter turnout."

Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Dennis Kucinich was reelected with 74% of the vote, vice chairman Barbara Lee captured 81% in her district, Major Owens received 86%, Bernie Sanders, 65%, Peter DeFazio 64%, Nancy Pelosi 80% and Jesse Jackson, Jr. nabbed 86% of the vote. And remember Congressman Jim McDermott, who was demonized for visiting Baghdad and for (rightfully) saying Bush would mislead America in order to go to war? 74% of the voters in his district voted for him again. Needles to say, if McDermott had lost, you would have heard braying nationwide.

...In fact, Pelosi isn't any more liberal than the average House Democrat, which is why the average House Democrat is going to vote for her. Critics cite Pelosi's 100 percent voting rating by Americans for Democratic Action, but Dick Gephardt had a 95 percent rating. House Democrats are liberal, and why shouldn't they be? Most Democrats think the party should support gay rights, higher CAFE standards, and spending on social programs. Are Pelosi's positions on welfare reform (against), trade (against fast-track), and war in Iraq (against) worrisome? Perhaps, but so are her caucus's—a large majority of House Democrats voted against the Iraq war resolution. As political scientist Ross K. Baker wrote in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, "if Pelosi were not a liberal when she first aspired to the job, she would quickly have had to become one," as Gephardt did by moving leftward during his climb to the top. While it's true that Pelosi's views, particularly on war and foreign policy, are out of step with much of the American public's, they're right in the mainstream of what House Democrats believe.

What's made Pelosi notable in the Democratic Party is less her voting record than her outspokenness—she called the first President Bush a "jerk"—and her fund-raising prowess. She honed her money-raising skills during her time as an unelected party activist, heading the California state Democratic Party and working as finance chair for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. After she won her first House race in 1987, her ability to rake in the dough helped her rise quickly through the party ranks. Her preposterously safe district—she routinely receives 85 percent of the vote—allows her to spend most of her time campaigning for other candidates (90 congressional districts in 30 states this election) and to give away much of the money she raises for herself. During the 2002 election cycle, Pelosi was the only member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, to distribute more than $1 million to her fellow candidates, nearly doubling the total of the next-closest Democrat, and she led the pack during the 2000 cycle as well. She also has a reputation as an effective party strategist and a good whip, getting credit for the Democrats adding five seats to their House totals in California in 2000 and for corralling enough votes to pass the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill after only a month on the job.

"I don't take [Ford's] candidacy seriously," said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "His object is not to win this race, but to position himself for something else.".... "He represents a different generation and a different political outlook than most senior members of the Black Caucus," Mann said.

... The real problem is not Black voter turnout but White voter tune-out.... Like it or not, there has been a regime change. And it’s here, not in Iraq. Therefore, we must make some bold changes. Clearly, we can’t wait for wimpy Democrats to do it for us.

The secret to the conservative media’s success in reshaping America’s political landscape is not the pervasive nastiness, though that’s played a role. The key is that conservatives have created a “media home” for tens of millions of like-minded viewers, listeners and readers across the country ....[but] [t]here is no liberal “media home” remotely like what the conservatives have built. Indeed, the mainstream news outlets – that conservatives incorrectly label the “liberal media” – studiously avoid tilting to the liberal side and increasingly compete for conservative viewers and readers.

At the center of any viable answer must be the construction of a counter-media that addresses the interests of those tens of millions of Americans who are now “media homeless.” That does not mean that this new structure should be a liberal mirror image of today’s conservative media. It should have a journalistic ethos, not an ideological one.

Yet to succeed in the market place, it must speak to those millions of Americans alienated by today’s news media. In doing so, it would need a distinctive journalistic voice. In part, that could come from treating the Bush administration with a skepticism lacking at Fox News, CNN and most other news outlets. It could report on what Democratic leaders are saying, which might encourage them to sharpen their message.

It also could offer programming of interest to environmentalists, small investors, women, Hispanics, African-Americans and other groups that are underrepresented in the mainstream and conservative media.

There are a variety of strategies that could be followed to this end, but it is a discussion long overdue. The 2002 Election should have killed off any lingering hopes that this is a problem that will solve itself.

The superhawks complain that President Bush made a mistake going through the U.N., because now he'll never be able to use force if Saddam remains defiant or has hidden his weapons. Not only is this wrong, but Mr. Bush had no choice — not because he had to please the Eurowimps, but because he had to please the American and British people....

What an improbable moment. There must be some larger forces driving it: The American administration most skeptical of the U.N. ends up breathing a whole new life into the organization. And the countries most worried about American unilateralism — France, Russia, China and a nation that just barely missed making the short list for the axis of evil, Syria — end up legitimizing an American threat, if not the American use of force.

"I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter," said Thomas, who is now a columnist for Hearst News Service. "Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'" Her short list of answers seems not to vary from war, President Bush, timid office-holders, a muffled press and cowed citizens, pretty much in that order. ...

"Where is the outrage?" she demanded. "Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. I'm on the phone to [press secretary] Ari Fleischer every day, asking will he ever hold another one? The international world is wondering what happened to America's great heart and soul." ...

Thomas didn't let the press off the hook, though. "Everybody learned the lessons of Vietnam, including the Pentagon. In Vietnam, correspondents could go anywhere - just hop on a helicopter and report on the war. Now we don't have that access. It's total secrecy. The media overlords should be complaining about this. I do not absolve the press. We've rolled over and played dead, too," she said.

Asked to advise young journalists, Thomas pounced. "Remind the politicians you interview that you pay them, that they are public servants. Remember every question is legitimate. And don't give up. There's always a leak. There's always someone who's trying to save the country," she said.

Those who staked their personal relations with Bush on getting him to go to the UN, not only Powell but also British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were vindicated, but Bush has won more than vindication; he is positively riding high. The Democrats in the United States had hoped for a strong showing on Nov. 5. Instead, there was a low turnout and the Republicans won the day. This has given Bush exactly what the Democrats hoped he would not get, that is, the legitimacy denied him in the way he gained the presidency, by court decision, in the 2000 election. In addition to endorsement of his personal leadership, Bush can also claim a mandate from the US electorate for a showdown with Baghdad. In his campaign speeches he talked up the danger posed by Iraq. ...

This does not mean there is any general enthusiasm in America for war, except among the ideological hawks....

Opponents to war outside America had looked to the Democrats and demonstrators to rein in the Bush administration. They too are now disappointed and have learnt an unpleasant lesson in the limits of their influence in Washington. The most worrying aspect of the situation is that Bush's successes last week are more the product of fear than enthusiasm. His stature has grown because he is plain spoken, tough and uncompromising in the face of danger. If there is war, he will take the lead. But it will be a war predicated on collective anxiety and the lack of a positive antidote to the politics of fear that threatens to overtake America.

...The attack fits Washington's new vision of preemptive strikes on terrorists, but it infuriated Yemeni officials....
"This is why is it so difficult to make deals with the United States," says Brig. Gen. Yahya M. Al Mutawakel, the deputy secretary general for the ruling People's Congress party in Yemen, who broke his country's official silence on the issue in an exclusive interview. "This is why we are reluctant to work closely with [the US]. They don't consider the internal circumstances in Yemen. In security matters, you don't want to alert the enemy."

Reporters and editors who "protect" their readers and viewers from the truth about Bush's lies are doing the nation -- and ultimately George W. Bush -- no favors. Take a look at the names at that long black wall [the Viet Nam War Memorial] on the Mall. Consider the tragic legacy of LBJ's failed presidency [e.g., the 1968 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution]. Ask yourself just who is being served when the media allow Bush to lie, repeatedly, with impunity, in order to take the nation into war...

President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the mainstream media won't. Liberal pundits Michael Kinsley, Paul Krugman and Richard Cohen have addressed the issue on the Op-Ed pages, but almost all news pages and network broadcasts pretend not to notice. In the one significant effort by a national daily to deal with Bush's consistent pattern of mendacity, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank could not bring himself (or was not allowed) to utter the crucial words. Instead, readers were treated to such complicated linguistic circumlocutions as: Bush's statements represented "embroidering key assertions" and were clearly "dubious, if not wrong." The President's "rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy," he has "taken some liberties," "omitted qualifiers" and "simply outpace[d] the facts." But "Bush lied"? Never.

The evidence-based report, introduced by Dr June Crown, Medact President and former president of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians UK, summarises from a public health perspective the effects of the previous Gulf War, and outlines the likely impact of another war on the people of Iraq, on the combatants and on the wider world. It concludes that the threatened war could have disastrous short, medium and long-term consequences for all concerned and summarises alternatives to war.

Medact is the UK affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The report will be launched on the same day by IPPNW and its US affiliate Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, and by other affiliates in Australia, Canada, Germany, Guatemala, India, Japan, the Netherlands and the Philippines.

1//The Independent, UK--KREMLIN TO IMPOSE ITS PEACE PLAN ON CHECHNYA

2//Yemen Times, Yemen--EDITORIAL: A MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR OUR NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

3//The Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates--PHILIPPINES RULES OUT US MISSILE STRIKE AGAINST SUSPECTED TERRORISTS

4//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--BUSH OUT-HAWKED ON NORTH KOREA?

5//Janes Intelligence Digest, UK--KUCHMA NOT WELCOME AT NATO

The most important consequence of the new Republican majority in the Senate might well be a remade and more conservative federal judiciary, which will embark on a new program of judicial activism. Republicans, no less than Democrats, should be alarmed.

Conservative courts that embrace judicial activism will be just as likely to strike down legislation that has received bipartisan approval as legislation supported by liberals. Bipartisan campaign finance legislation, for example, could be invalidated. Activist courts are poised to forbid affirmative action programs that have support from Republican lawmakers. Most Republican voters favor some kind of gun control, but conservative courts might well rule that the Second Amendment raises constitutional questions about gun control legislation. Such courts might also reduce the government's power to protect both consumers and investors in the arena of commercial speech; protection sought by Republican as well as Democratic legislators....

This development reflects a revolution in conservative legal thought. In the 1960's and 1970's, judicial restraint was the overriding conservative theme. Conservatives offered principled criticisms of the Warren Court and Roe v. Wade. In this period, the conservative heroes were Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan, all of whom greatly respected the powers of Congress and state governments. They argued, time and again, that the Supreme Court should not use vague provisions of the Constitution to strike down laws enacted by elected officials. For much of the 20th century, conservative thought was encapsulated in Holmes's claim that a constitution "is made for people of fundamentally differing views."

All this changed in the early 1980's. At that point, some conservatives started advocating an aggressive role for the Supreme Court. The most obvious reason is that once conservatives began to occupy the federal courts, the argument for judicial restraint suddenly seemed less appealing. (The change is precisely paralleled by the earlier shift on the liberal side; liberals were committed to judicial restraint between 1910 and 1950, but many switched in the 1960's in support of the aggressive role of the Warren Court.)

... Among the less meaningful questions being asked in Washington is whether the Republicans, having won control of the Senate and strengthened their hold on the House, will now go too far and outpace their mandate. My question is: Where have you been? In a nation that is divided almost 50-50 politically, the Republicans flew past their mandate a long time ago...

It would seem so. Because while the Regressive Right is often given a forum, the Progressive Left is not. When 20 antiwar congressmen recently held a press conference before the Iraq resolution vote, the media didn't cover it, as the congressmen were "out of the mainstream." We're not talking Noam Chomsky or Robert Fisk, here, we're discussing U.S congressmen. Nonetheless, Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Dennis Kucinich was reelected with 74% of the vote, vice chairman Barbara Lee captured 81% in her district, Major Owens received 86%, Bernie Sanders, 65%, Peter DeFazio 64%, Nancy Pelosi 80% and Jesse Jackson, Jr. nabbed 86% of the vote. And remember Congressman Jim McDermott, who was demonized for visiting Baghdad and for (rightfully) saying Bush would mislead America in order to go to war? 74% of the voters in his district voted for him again. Needles to say, if McDermott had lost, you would have heard braying nationwide.

But none of this signals it's time to start singing "Power to the People" just yet. It's important to remember that the seismic shift that's occurred in parts of the country is very real. Democrat governor Roy Barnes, for example, lost his bid for reelection for having the gall to remove the Confederate symbol from Georgia's state flag, and though he lost three limbs serving in Vietnam, Max Cleland lost his bid after being attacked for a lack of patriotism, because he held out for an inclusion of worker's rights for Homeland Security employees. President Bush, Karl Rove and Ralph Reed orchestrated much of this -- and we can't help but wonder of Jesus Christ were elected to office, how quickly the Religious Right would be calling for His head.

What the last election showed us is what a deep trauma of vulnerability 9/11 etched on the American psyche. "While the Democrats failed to articulate a broad range of policy differences with President Bush," said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute, "their key failure was their inability to persuade Americans — in their guts — that they were prepared to deal with the world as it really is now." That is a world full of terrorists and rogue regimes dedicated to our destruction and not responsive to therapy or social work.

Let's be blunt: the Democratic Party as a force for shaping U.S. foreign policy is out of business, until that party undergoes regime change. That's not healthy. You can't have a sound foreign policy without an intelligent domestic opposition keeping people honest.

With the Dems out of business, the real opposition party on foreign policy will now be the "De Facto Democrats": Colin Powell, John McCain and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. They are the only voices that, if raised in opposition to any Bush foreign policy initiative, could restrain the president and sway the public. That is not true of any Democrat today....

Mr. Powell has always understood, better than the Bush hard-liners (who say, Forget about streets, treaties and institutions — foreign policy is about asserting U.S. power) that Predators are necessary, but not sufficient. You don't have to cater to the Arab street, or the European street or the Chechen street, but if you don't listen to their legitimate aspirations, you end up refilling the basements with more dangerous characters. If the only outstretched American hand the world sees is the Predator drone, we're in trouble.

This is where the real fight in America is going to be: between those who just want to deal with the world as it is, and those who want to deal with the world as it is — but also really invest in changing it. Until Democrats convince the public that they know how the world really is, we will have to rely on De Facto Democrats to fight this fight. But that means Mr. Powell must step it up. If he and his allies are going to prevail, they are going to have to raise more than just their eyebrows.