In their search for hidden Iraqi arms, U.N. inspectors have so far faced little conflict, have found little evidence and have received little outside intelligence to guide them, said one inspector. The teams have discovered two technical matters that could be considered violations of U.N. resolutions but have yet to find a smoking gun, a trace of radiation or a single germ spore.

"If our goal is to catch them with their pants down, we are definitely losing," the inspector said on condition he wouldn't be named. "We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet."

North Korea, one of the world's poorest, most isolated countries, is a difficult place to employ the containment strategy the United States is now pursuing. The world has little left to withdraw or withhold, according to diplomats and specialists. What levers exist largely have been pulled already -- most recently when the Bush administration cut fuel shipments upon learning that North Korea has a program to create enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. "Economically, there really isn't that much else that we can do to pressure North Korea," said Lee Chung Min, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. For the Bush administration, simply intensifying economic and political pressure on the North involves enormous political obstacles. South Korea has embraced engagement and dialogue as the best way to address the reclusive country to its north. It appears committed to that course -- a fact underscored today as South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, rejected containment as a failed doctrine.....Ultimately, any effort that does not enjoy China's genuine backing is doomed to fail, experts say. China is not only North Korea's largest external source of food and fuel, but also its largest trading partner and its gateway to the rest of the world.

In their desperation to keep hospitals open, voters here last month did just that, approving new property taxes for the first time in a generation. The county hasn't had a property tax referendum on the ballot since the statewide, landmark anti-tax Proposition 13 in 1978, but this year's passed overwhelmingly, with 73 percent of the vote. ...The measure's success, they add, may tell another important story: that health care is returning to the top of voter concerns. The struggles of Los Angeles County, where more than 2.5 million residents have no medical insurance, are one sign among many across the country of how growing economic hardships in states are creating new crises in health care.

North Korea's startling revival of its nuclear program, coupled with the unrelenting threat of international terrorism, presents compelling reasons for President Bush to step back from his fixation on attacking Iraq and to reassess his administration's priorities. North Korea's reopening of its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon puts it within six months of being able to produce sufficient weapons-grade material to generate several nuclear bombs. Contrast this with Iraq. Not only is North Korea much further along than Iraq in building nuclear weapons but, by virtue of its longer-range missiles, it has a greater delivery capability. Every option for dealing with this situation including the administration's "structured containment" is fraught with danger and potentially disastrous consequences....
And then there is the war on terrorism. Deadly terrorist attacks continue around the globe, wreaking havoc in far-flung places such as Indonesia, Kenya, Jordan and Yemen, where three American missionaries were killed by a gunman yesterday. Here at home, we remain highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and woefully unprepared to cope with the consequences. We cannot put this issue on the back burner.

An alarm bell is ringing in California. Will President Bush and the new Republican majority in Congress respond? The alarm is warning of an approaching catastrophe in the health-care system. It's a perfect storm collision of threatening trends.

From one side, the sagging economy and skyrocketing costs of insurance are pressuring more employers to drop health-care coverage for their workers.

From the other side, the cavernous deficits in state budgets are forcing governors and legislators to slash Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor.

As these two trends meet, the result could be a tidal wave in the number of Americans without access to health care. ...

More families without care, longer lines in emergency rooms, more hospitals and public clinics bleeding red ink, more kids sick at school: That's what is looming if Washington continues to close its ears to the health-care alarm ringing now in California -- and soon in state capitals from coast to coast.

Arab leaders looking for a way to avoid a US-Iraq war they fear would ignite their volatile region are considering the possibility of pressing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down and go into exile, diplomats say....“There is a strong feeling that the United States is after Saddam and not after weapons of mass destruction and therefore efforts should focus on how to persuade Saddam to leave,” one Arab diplomat said on condition of anonymity....Jordanian analyst Nedal Mansour said Saddam could choose exile over losing everything, if a way is found for him to leave with his family, members of his inner circle and a significant portion of the fortune he has amassed over his decades of dictatorship.

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague....

According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.

At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world.

Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein. Read on...

Sources: The Bureau of Justice Statistics' Capital Punishment 1999 bulletin, available on-line here. Information on those states banning the imposition of the death penalty on mentally retarded defendants was taken from the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment's April 15, 2002 report, which is available on-line here. The Supreme Court's 1972 decision declaring capital punishment as then applied unconstitutional was Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) and its decision accepting new capital punishment procedures was Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976); these cases are on-line via Findlaw.com.

Death Penalty Information Center: "What we are finding is that the use of the death penalty is becoming more and more concentrated in Texas and a few other states in the South," said Richard Dieter, who heads the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty group that published the study. "And increasingly, Texas is finding itself standing alone in its increasing application of the death penalty," Dieter said.

There is something eerie, even a little unnerving, about the budget crises that continue to spread, like a contagious, crippling disease, to states and cities across the U.S.... The Washington Post reported last week that some rural school districts in seven states had shifted to a four-day week in an effort to cut costs, and other districts may follow. But Julie Underwood of the National School Boards Association told me on Friday that a shorter week wouldn't do much to ease the enormous funding problems facing the nation's public schools

... California's budget crisis is monumental; a shortfall over the next 18 months of $34.8 billion. As The Times's John Broder wrote, that deficit "is bigger than the annual budgets of every other state except New York." Gov. Gray Davis is already hacking away at services, and big tax hikes are sure to come. If you want a story with legs, this is it. President Bush will have a heck of a time getting the national economy back on track while states from coast to coast are trying to balance their budgets by raising taxes, cutting spending and laying off employees. The National Governors Association, in a report last month, said states are facing "the most dire fiscal situation since World War II." Nearly every state "is in fiscal crisis," the governors said.

An internal White House document outlining President Bush's re-election agenda starts with "War on terrorism (Con't)" and domestic security. ... Mr. Bush has said the fight against terrorism will take years to win. But Democrats said the document bolstered their claim that White House officials had methodically worked to politicize the fight against terrorism....It is the latest sign, critics say, that presidential advisers are seeking political gain from the Sept. 11 attacks.... The document lists 10 issues including health care costs and access, legal reform, faith-based services, education, higher education, Social Security, taxes and immigration.

... The issues championed today by traditional civil rights groups, from affirmative action to ending racial profiling, have become virtually identical to the Democratic Party platform, and many are antithetical to the race-neutral goals of Republicans...."I would argue that unemployment benefits are a form of civil rights," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic delegate who represents the District of Columbia in the House. "Because of the great work of the 1960's, there are only a few clear-cut issues left, like hate crimes and racial profiling. Now we're following the bread-and-butter issues that we share with a broader array of Americans, because issues like health insurance and unemployment affect us so disproportionately."

Across Oregon, schools struggling to save money in this year of budget woes have come up with a response: shorten the academic year. No other states have done that, education watchdog groups said this week. Laws in most states require 180 days of school.But a loophole in Oregon's laws allows its school districts to deviate from the requirements for two school years, and that has led superintendents around the state to consider chopping as many as 15 days from the academic calendar. Other states are cutting teacher pay, increasing class size, not filling vacancies and laying off employees, said Dave Griffith, the director of public affairs for the National Association of State Boards of Education.

Topping the list are questions about how to provide prescription drugs for senior citizens; reform Medicare before baby boomers retire; protect state public health programs facing potentially crippling cutbacks because of huge budget deficits; and, most perplexingly, reduce the number of Americans [estimated to be currently over 41 million] without health insurance, which is rapidly rising again.

Against that backdrop, some Republicans see dissatisfaction concerning health care as one of the greatest potential dangers to Bush in 2004. In a recent ABC/Washington Post poll, 33% of Americans said they approved of his handling of health-care issues -- a much weaker grade than he got for his handling of the economy, which was 50% in the survey.

The traditional medical paradigm is fatally flawed. Relying on drugs and surgeries to correct diseases caused by poor diet and stress is a prescription for disaster. If you haven't seen the signs around you please take notice. Health costs are rising through the roof, and shortly we will be spending over two trillion dollars a year for health care in the U.S. It is safe to estimate that over three-fourths of this money is wasted on short-term fixes, primarily drugs and surgeries, which in no way address the long-term cause of the problem. If those funds were redirected to optimize food and stress concerns, we would have more than enough funds left over to help the more than 40 million uninsured Americans.

..."You have this huge contradiction," said Kurt M. Campbell, a former Defense Department official who advised President Clinton on Asian policy and is a veteran of lengthy confrontations with the North. "If the Iraqis do anything to impede inspections, the administration says it's cause for war. But when the North Koreans eject the inspectors and restart their nuclear program, they want us to believe that there's no crisis."

Are there any possible sources of good news? Yes, a few [says Krugman, tongue in cheek!] A walkover victory in Iraq could lead to sharply lower oil prices. Technology marches on, so businesses could finally decide that it's time to replace aging equipment, even though they still have plenty of spare capacity. Inventories are low; someday businesses will restock, and in so doing give the economy a boost. Are you enthused? I'm not. I hope I'm wrong, but this doesn't look like a happy new year.

In the next step in the war on terrorism, we're likely in the coming months to invade Iraq in ways that will terrorize civilians there. So this holy season is a useful moment to step back and critically examine moral clarity, President Bush's byword, a concept that tends to stiffen the backbone of conservatives but make liberals fidget.

The objections leave moral clarity somewhat tattered. [But now Kristof goes off into the 'wild blue'. I just can't believe his logic!] But ultimately terror's potential for becoming the methodology of every desperate organization makes it doubly important that we do all we can to delegitimize it — which is why I ultimately come down strongly in favor of President Bush's campaign for moral clarity. At a Harvard conference early this year, one of the few ideas to combat terrorism that seemed vaguely practical was this notion of mobilizing public opinion worldwide to stigmatize terrorism.

And once again, the private, corporate media in both Venezuela and the United States are answering their paymasters' call by printing and reporting wildly one-sided affairs that virtually omit reference to the vast and consistent pro-Chavez rallies around the country.

Of the recent articles published by the New York Times [Yes, even the NYT has failed us here, except for Nicholas Kristof-- also check blogleft post 12/17] about the situation in Venezuela, one has to read several articles to even find a one sentence mention of the pro-Chavez movement, let alone an entire article about them. Moreover, these people, their movement, and what they represent are half the story, yet are given only 1 percent of the coverage.

Remember the coup in Venezuela earlier this year? A coup, if we need remind ourselves, that was an abortive one that the Bush administration initially backed with much fanfare, but then rescinded that jubilance when they discovered it to have crumbled under the pressures of military powers faithful to President Hugo Chavez and massive public backing from the impoverished Venezuelan masses....

Once again, we have the upper middle class politicians, military officers, merchants, and demagogues attempting to bring the country's economy to a standstill in protest of Chavez's social and geopolitical strategies, strategies that challenge the U.S.' idea of a model South American strongman. Chavez sells oil to Cuba and meets with Fidel Castro. He also openly criticizes the U.S.' "war on terrorism" and globalization, and that's a Washington no-no.

The trend is expected to continue over the next few years as a number of enormously popular brand-name drugs lose their patent protection and drug makers introduce generic versions at high initial prices. Prices of generic drugs are rising faster for several reasons. First, a large number of patents on popular brand-name drugs expired this year, allowing makers of generics to enter the market. Makers of generic drugs typically charge higher prices when the first generic versions of expensive medicines reach pharmacy shelves. In addition, the generic-drug industry is consolidating, leaving fewer companies to compete on the prices of older generic drugs. And wholesalers, drug plan managers and pharmacies have all found they can make higher profits on generic drugs than on brand-name medicines and still offer prices that are typically well below those of brand-name drugs. The trend concerns those who saw in generic drugs a way to hold down medical costs for Americans without depriving them of necessary treatments. ...

Virtually all the companies along the distribution chain, from wholesalers to managed care drug distributors and pharmacies, are profiting handsomely before generic medicines reach patients.

"Consumers get only a fraction of the benefit," said Viren Mehta of Mehta Partners, a drug investment consulting firm.

Mary Jane Gregory recently walked out of Discount Drugs of Canada here with a 33 percent savings on her osteoporosis drug that outweighed any doubts she might have had about the new store, which gets her prescription filled in distant Winnipeg. ... Shopping for cheaper foreign drugs is not a new idea. Americans have done it discreetly through Web sites and excursions to Canada and Mexico over the past few years, as regulators look the other way at an activity that is technically illegal. But buying and selling has now moved into small storefront operations cropping up across the country.

Pharmacies are unhappy, but regulators do not seem ready to crack down on buyers, many of whom are older and on limited incomes.

Drug sales are required by law to be conducted by licensed pharmacies, and importing drugs by mail is illegal. Federal regulations allow travelers to bring in a 90-day personal supply of drugs, but only if the medications are not yet approved for sale in this country. ...

Earle Turow, who opened Discount Drugs two months ago in a busy medical center, says he is not breaking any laws because his store does not import or stock the medications people order. The store takes orders from customers and faxes them to a pharmacy in Canada, which then charges customers' credit cards and ships the drugs to their doors.

"We are strictly providing a service that people need," Mr. Turow said. He added that his customers saved 10 percent to 90 percent on prescriptions. The drug Ms. Gregory takes for osteoporosis, for example, costs her $130 for a three-month supply from Canada. At a local pharmacy, the same money gets her only two months' worth.

Similar ventures in Atlanta, in Scottsdale, Ariz., and at the Mall of America near Minneapolis, among other places, are attracting thousands of Americans who take prescription medicine regularly and have little or no insurance coverage for the drugs.

In Florida, there are operations in Fort Myers, Orlando and Naples. ... John D. Taylor, executive director of the Florida Board of Pharmacy, declined to say whether the board was investigating Mr. Turow's company or others like it.

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the pharmaceutical industry, said it focused enforcement on large commercial drug shipments and not mail-order imports by individuals.... The Food and Drug Administration warns that imported drugs could be contaminated with impure or unknown ingredients, and notes that the pharmacies that dispense them are not under the supervision of the United States government.

"What we are afraid of is when consumers are going outside the United States, they might be getting these risky drugs and suffer some serious and severe side effects," said Tom McGinnis, pharmacy affairs director for the agency.

But many of these drugs are the same ones manufactured for sale in the United States. They are cheaper in Canada because of government caps on drug prices and because the American dollar has more buying power in Canada.
Mr. Turow, a 72-year-old retired clothing manufacturer, said at least 300 people were placing orders each day at his store.

... those opposing the change discuss their tactics with unusual candor and describe marketing practices that have long been shrouded in secrecy.
Drug makers acknowledged, for example, that they routinely made payments to insurance plans to increase the use of their products, to expand their market share, to be added to lists of recommended drugs or to reward doctors and pharmacists for switching patients from one brand of drug to another. Insurers, doctors and drug makers said such payments were so embedded in the structure of the health care industry that the Bush administration plan would be profoundly disruptive.

Moreover, doctors said that drug companies were a major source of money for their professional education programs, and that the administration proposal could drastically reduce such subsidies."Without financial support from industry, medical societies would most likely be forced to curtail or stop offering these important educational activities," said Dr. Michael D. Maves, executive vice president of the American Medical Association.

Frist has close ties to Lilly. The company bought 5,000 copies of a Frist book on bioterrorism and has given money to a Republican committee Frist recently chaired. For the 1997-2002 Senate election cycle, the health-care industry gave Frist $1,072,157 in contributions, more than he received from any other sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research organization.

The Arabic-language news network, notorious for broadcasting the statements of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda colleagues, plans to open an English-language website in early 2003 and begin distributing English-language news programming by satellite and cable late next year. ...But the fact is that Al Jazeera has revolutionized media in the Middle East....
"For the long-range importance of press freedom in the Middle East and the advantages that will ultimately have for the West, you have to be a supporter of Al Jazeera, even if you have to hold your nose sometimes."
Oddly enough, Al Jazeera's journalists face severe restrictions in several Middle East countries that are considered allies of the US. Saudi Arabia, one of the US government's leading partners in the region, has never allowed Al Jazeera to open an office; Bahrain, where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is based, has banned the network's journalists from visiting.
Two other US allies - Jordan and Kuwait - have shut down Al Jazeera bureaus this year. "They hate Al Jazeera," says chief editor Ibrahim Hilal, "because they hate transparency." [Yet the Jordan Times seems to flourish without press freedom restrictions.]
One explanation for the reluctance of these American allies to allow Al Jazeera to function is that these regimes are defensive about media coverage of their links to the US. At a time when many Arabs disparage the US government's unstinting support for Israel and its moves against Iraq, having America as a friend is delicate business.

"It's a misleading connecting of the dots," counters a Western official here who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Al Jazeera has gone after everyone, irrespective of their politics."

"The administration thinks they've addressed enough Black issues with the replacement of Lott and so they callously dump Africa again. The Bush administration is disinterested in Africa aside from oil imports and the use of African territory in Washington's 'war on terrorism.' The U.S. government continues shamelessly to limit funding for AIDS programs in Africa and supports the pharmaceutical companies' efforts to enforce draconian patent laws against poor countries seeking affordable medicines." The Guardian in Britain reported this weekend that Dick Cheney, at the behest of pharmaceutical giants, blocked a global agreement (against the will of all 140 other countries in the World Trade Organization) to provide cheap drugs to poor countries. Booker said: "For Christmas, the Bush administration is reinforcing global apartheid."

... Bush is sending dissonant signals, perhaps intentionally. But in the end, it's his decisions on the courts that will speak loudest. Words matter, but words fade. When he condemns Lott, Bush is writing in sand. When he picks judges, he is carving in granite.

... However, it is increasingly clear to the British government and to public opinion that there is no British interest in fighting Iraq. Quite the contrary. If Britain were to join the US in an unprovoked war against Iraq, it might become a target for terrorist attack. War would damage Britain’s political and commercial relationships with the Arab world. It would deal a severe blow to Britain’s credibility in Europe, especially in France and Germany, which are both opposed to military action against Baghdad. It might even lead to a split in Britain’s Labor Party and pose a threat to Blair’s own political future. It would inevitably result in large numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq and in massive devastation. This then is Blair’s dilemma: how to stay close to America while avoiding the terrible risks of war.

The FBI now can get our list of library books, e-mails, telephone records and so on. When I was worried about an overdue book after the library closed, I called the FBI for help.

Sen. Patty Murray's explanation to high schoolers that charitable works made Osama bin Laden popular in poor countries - and her challenge to the United States to do the same - drew fire Friday from Republicans and conservatives. Murray, D-Wash., told students in Vancouver, Wash. that bin Laden and his supporters have spent years building goodwill by helping pay for schools, roads and even day care facilities. "We haven't done that," Murray said. "How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"

"It is absolutely outrageous and despicable to imply that the American government should learn a lesson from the madman who murdered thousands of American citizens," Vance said. Her comments "sent the message to these students that the United States somehow deserved or brought on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," Vance said.

... And my niece is herself a child of mixed heritage. Her mother (my sister) is black; her father is Mexican. She is among a growing cohort of American youngsters who will not fall into easy racial classifications or feel bound by a hard racial divide.

I don't wish to exaggerate this phenomenon. America remains a deeply segregated society, most rigidly separated along the fault lines between black and white. And interracial marriages still represent a tiny percentage of the total.

But the numbers of interracial marriages are roughly doubling every decade. That is remarkable in a nation that allowed laws prohibiting interracial marriage until a mere 35 years ago....

Though [Tucker declares that] I am an unreconstructed, card-carrying integrationist, my surprise at meeting Sammie betrays me. Those who grew up as I did cannot completely surrender the old ways; we are part of the problem. So [while Tucker] cannot hope to live to see an America in which race and ethnicity hold little significance. But maybe, just maybe, Irene and Sammie can.

Now that Senator Frist is ascending to the majority leader's post, it's interesting to note the Republicans' choice to succeed him as chairman of the senatorial committee. It's none other than Senator George Allen of Virginia, a Neanderthal on matters of race who, like Trent Lott, all but worships at the altar of the Confederacy.

A few years ago, when he was governor of Virginia, Mr. Allen issued a proclamation declaring April "Confederate History and Heritage Month." From Mr. Allen's pro-Confederate perspective, the Civil War was a struggle for "independence and sovereign rights." Independence, in this case, does not refer to the independence of black slaves.

G.O.P. Senators See No Need for Altered Stance on Race

..."I wouldn't say it's hypocritical of the president, but in my mind, nominating a Charles Pickering was much more of a statement than what Trent Lott said at a party for Strom Thurmond," Mr. Mayfield continued. "It's disingenuous for Bush to be so dramatic in his denouncement of Trent Lott. And to take it a step further, it's also interesting whether Sonny Perdue would acknowledge it or not that the president could campaign so forcefully for Sonny Perdue given the [Confederate] flag issue surrounding Sonny's campaign. It just seems inconsistent to me."..."

Along the boardwalk in the Venice section of Los Angeles, Gregory Jackson-Collins, 44, a displaced Mississippian, said he had not been so offended by Mr. Lott's remarks. "I didn't think he meant it that way," he said, while peddling his paintings to beachgoers. "I thought he got caught in the moment." Mr. Jackson-Collins said he has been a Republican for 20 years, ever since he voted for Mr. Reagan. ...

His feelings about affirmative action have led him in the same direction politically. "When I was in school, people would say, `The only reason you're here is because of affirmative action,' " he said. "Affirmative action makes you a second-class citizen. The Republican Party says forget all that. That's why I like the Republican Party."

Mr. Jackson-Collins is impressed by the prominent roles blacks play in the Republican Party. "You've got Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser," he said. "How many Democrats get that kind of love on the international stage?"...

Still, Mr. Jackson-Collins said that though he liked Mr. Bush, he would not vote for him. "It all comes down to money," he said. "Democrats have more social programs. Republicans say you've got to get your own."...

But [the NYT reporter continues] those [African Americans] who said they viewed Mr. Bush and all Republicans as no less hostile to blacks than Mr. Lott were also more likely to cite old grudges to bolster their arguments: Mr. Bush's record as governor in Texas, where executions of blacks were commonplace, for example, and Mr. Bush's accession to the presidency only after a Supreme Court decision that several interviewees said set aside black voters' overwhelming preference for Al Gore. "We didn't put him in office," Raymond Lewis, 33, a Richmond foundry worker, said. "So our votes don't count."

Even those who praised Mr. Bush for his handling of the Lott situation made clear that it would take much more for him to win their support in 2004 and they invariably said that matters like war and economics would play a bigger part in decisions. "If the economy doesn't change, he'll be like his dad, a one-term president," said Tommy Brittain, 53, who was walking to a computer store in Stone Mountain to get his Palm Pilot fixed. "We can't get Osama, we can't get Saddam. If we don't get either one, we go to war, and the economy's in the pits, he's out again

Frist also faces a controversy over a provision of the new homeland-security law that limits liability for makers of vaccine additives that some parents say caused autism in their children. Critics denounced the provision as a giveaway to Eli Lilly and other drug manufacturers. Frist, an ally of the pharmaceutical industry, had authored nearly identical language in a separate bill on vaccines. While he disavowed responsibility for inserting the language into the homeland-security bill, Frist twice spoke strongly in favor of the provision during a Senate debate. This month, Armey, who is days away from retirement, said he put the provision into the bill.

Frist has close ties to Lilly. The company bought 5,000 copies of a Frist book on bioterrorism and has given money to a Republican committee Frist recently chaired. For the 1997-2002 Senate election cycle, the health-care industry gave Frist $1,072,157 in contributions, more than he received from any other sector, according to The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research organization.

George W. Bush is always careful to speak in favor of faith in general, not any faith in particular. Congressional leaders are less careful. Last spring Tom DeLay, soon to be House majority leader, told a church group that: "Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world -- only Christianity." He also said he was on a mission from God to promote a "biblical worldview" in American politics.

By the way, one piece of that biblical worldview involves scientific education. After the Columbine school shootings, DeLay suggested that the tragedy had occurred "because our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." Guns don't kill people; Charles Darwin kills people."

DeLay isn't an obscure crank; he's the most powerful man in Congress. Still, is he an outlier? No. Don Nickles, now challenging the wounded Lott for Senate leadership, is less given to colorful statements but is as closely aligned with the religious right as DeLay.

Last spring in Dissent magazine, for example, Michael Walzer argued in an essay called "Can There Be a Decent Left?" that the overemphasis on civil liberties misses the real nature of the threat. Mr. Walzer more broadly accused the American left of having been "stupid, overwrought, grossly inaccurate" in its condemnations of the United States. Its rationalist and materialist analyses, he continued, have also led to an inability "to recognize or acknowledge the power of religion in the modern world." The left has thus become alienated from its own country, he said, and unrealistic in its expectations. Comparable arguments have been made by Todd Gitlin in Mother Jones and by Michael Kazin in the current Dissent.

....Prejudice wasn't a new word back then, of course, but it enjoyed a vogue in the 50's, particularly in the form of the bare adjective "prejudiced," with no need to specify the object of dislike. The fashion owed a lot to the influential 1954 book "The Nature of Prejudice," by the Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport. Back then, in fact, "prejudice" had the flavor of other terms from social science that were flooding the language, like juvenile delinquent, peer pressure and status symbol....

... Saddam is helping the U.S. make the case for war. But does that mean war is inevitable? Not yet. I believe Saddam will have one more exit opportunity, and the Bush team needs to be ready for it. I call it: "the Primakov moment."...

The Bush administration announced today that Medicare payments to doctors would be cut 4.4 percent next year, after a 5.4 percent cut this year. Federal officials predicted that doctors would, as a result, be less willing to accept new Medicare patients.

If the cuts are not reversed, Congress and the administration will face the wrath of two politically potent constituencies, elderly voters and doctors who care for the elderly. But administration officials are desperately trying to control federal health costs, which they see as a major factor that contributes to federal budget deficits.... [But no mention of how tax cuts for the rich contribute to federal deficits.]

"Whether Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction remains to be seen. Meanwhile its chief accuser, the United States, is blatantly brandishing its own. The 'National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,' released by the White House just last week, combines the worst features of the 'Nuclear Posture Review' and the September 2002 'National Security Strategy of the United States' by openly threatening the first use of nuclear weapons. This deadly international double standard is a recipe for endless arms racing and endless death and destruction. The Bush administration has turned the concept of non-proliferation on its head and made a mockery of international law. If having weapons of mass destruction and a history of using them is a criteria, then surely the United States must pose the greatest threat to humanity that has ever existed. Sustainable global security will require the elimination of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- without exception."

This is it, the first (and probably only) hard-hitting analysis of "The Great Bellingham Idiot President Controversy of 2002."

It started in an Oct. 23 letter to the editor, in which a professor at Western Washington University referred to President Bush as an "idiot." That one word "idiot" infuriated a number of people so much that they wrote their own letters to the paper over the next few weeks, addressing harsh replies to the acerbic academic.

There were a lot of letters, and these folks were really mad. One writer (Nov. 6) even suggested that the professor should move to Iraq. Wow, I thought, exile to Iraq for dissing the president; this lady is tough! ...

I'm not sure this engineer chap was treating my survey with the proper gravity. Using just the answers from the Cost Cutter crowd, I came up with only a 36 percent approval rating for the president. Dimly recalling my college statistics class, I looked for trends in the data.

From my limited, unscientific sampling, it seemed that the president's fans were pretty equally divided between men and women. I did note, however, that (1) Mr. Bush's most vociferous boosters included a disproportionately large number of men wearing golf caps, and (2) the president seems to be more popular with smokers than non-smokers. I don't know what to make of this.

One conclusion it's probably safe to draw from my little survey is that those polls giving Bush a 70 percent approval rating were obviously not conducted in Bellingham.

"The numbers have consistently shown that Americans think global warming is real, and support action to address it," Diringer said. "There is broad support for doing something about global warming. Unfortunately, the support is also thin. But if anything, the issue is drawing more attention than ever, in part because of the actions of the Bush administration."

... Remember that the administration repeatedly rejected calls for a homeland security agency, changing its mind only when Coleen Rowley went public with tales of intelligence failures. And a growing chorus of critics say that hardly anything real has been done to make the country safer.

Similarly, the administration tried to prevent any independent inquiry into what went wrong on Sept. 11, and how to avoid future attacks. Then, when he could no longer avoid an inquiry, Mr. Bush did his best to undermine that inquiry's credibility by choosing Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head it.

And then there's corporate reform. At first the administration opposed doing anything. Then, after WorldCom blew up, it agreed to a modest reform bill, only to undermine the bill's credibility both by trying to renege on promises to provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with adequate funds, and by pressuring Harvey Pitt not to choose a real reformer to head a crucial new panel.

Finally, there's economic policy. Fears that the economy would suffer a "jobless recovery" similar to that of the first Bush administration are no longer hypothetical: over the past year G.D.P. has grown, but employment has continued to shrink, and the risk that the U.S. will slide into a Japanese-style pattern of slow growth and deflation no longer seems remote.

Again, the response has been to do as little as possible.

Instead, the governor made his speech as planned, issuing the pardons, saying he would abolish the death penalty immediately if he could, and hinting that the only thing holding him back from a blanket commutation for the 160 people remaining on death row is the anguished pleas from victims' families.

In a 40-minute speech at the university's law school, the governor detailed the wrongful convictions of Rolando Cruz and Gary Gauger, two of 13 innocent men who have been freed from death row since Illinois reestablished the death penalty in 1977, and of Steven Linscott, who spent 10 years in prison for the murder of a young woman in Oak Park before DNA evidence cleared him in 1992. The pardons erase the convictions from their records.

For Powell’s long-awaited and much-postponed initiative turned out to be superficial, marginal, weak, and impotent; it didn’t even come close to fulfilling the hopes of those for whom it was devised: the Arab peoples. In fact, when announcing his initiative ­ grandly called the US-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) ­ at the Heritage Foundation on Dec. 12, Powell forgot to address the Arab peoples exclusively. On the contrary, he was keen to mention the Arab regimes each time he spoke of the Arab peoples. Not that change would come in a few years either. Powell went to great lengths to stress that the process would take “decades” to accomplish.Yet these were not the only reasons why the MEPI was so disappointing.... compared to the major strategic surgical procedure about to be launched ­ [i.e., Iraqi 'regime change'] and which is supposed to redraw the map of the region ­ the democratization initiative turned out to be a damp squib.

...Lott supporters are privately furious at Nickles, and the feud could cause Republicans to look for someone other than Nickles to replace Lott -- if Senate Republicans in fact decide to oust him. Such bitterness directed at Nickles is a new experience for a politician who has had a storied rise since becoming the youngest Republican, at age 31, ever elected to the Senate...

Whether Trent Lott stays or goes, Democrats and civil rights groups see his apparent nostalgia for a segregated past as a golden opportunity to revive a hate crimes bill, push a minimum wage increase and force the White House to tilt new tax cuts toward minorities and the poor...national legislation banning racial profiling; reform of death penalty laws, which activists say is used against minorities more than anyone else; and AIDS funding, especially for Africa..

...Sadly, the US, seen for long as the champion of freedom, democracy and respect for human beings and their sacred rights is now compromising, if not altogether abandoning, all these values in its frenzied pursuit of political hegemony, its ultimate commitment to protect Israeli violations of all such principles, and its dealing with the negative aspects of the unrestricted utilisation of arrogant military supremacy and the harmful application of double standards....

... These threats have shown opponents of globalization that the most effective way to attack the system is through creating market insecurity in stable countries. Terrorist attacks can cause severe damage to a nation's economy; a looming threat, seen in Southeast Asia, dissuades business interests from investing in risk economies. By spreading the attacks to East Africa, the fear of security now encompasses developing nations in Africa along with struggling Asian tigers, still suffering from the economic shocks of the late 1990s.

... And then there's Ward Connerly, a black man who spends his days dancing passionately to the tune of the anti-affirmative-action zealots. Some of the folks in that crowd are less than progressive when it comes to race relations, and it looks as if Mr. Connerly, who heads the ironically named American Civil Rights Coalition, has decided to shimmy with the worst of their beliefs. In a television interview last week he argued that segregation of the races was not necessarily racist. That is extremely strange. "Supporting segregation need not be racist," said Mr. Connerly. "One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races."

That is the exact argument that the rabidly racist segregationists made in the era that Trent Lott has looked back upon so fondly. It was destroyed by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling....

What distinguishes [African American Republicans] from other Lott critics is an acute sense of betrayal, because they have supported the Republican agenda for years against a powerful tide of black liberal opinion and borne repeated taunts and demands that they explain themselves.

The commitment by President Bush to deploy an anti-missile defense system by 2004 is an exercise in wishful thinking. At a cost of $17.5 billion for the next two years alone, it will provide the illusion of a defense, to guard us against the illusion of a threat.... There are three fundamental problems with the plans laid out by the president Tuesday. [Read them]

NICKLES [, perhaps most conservative senator,] WOULD BE the Republican answer to Nancy Pelosi. He would fire up the GOP’s base, but he would also come under heavy criticism from the media for being “extreme.” Since his election in 1980 as the youngest Republican senator in history (he was 31), Nickles has become known as one of the most socially conservative members of the Senate. He chaired the Republican platform committee during the party’s divisive 1992 convention. He sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act. He told the Daily Oklahoman that the question of whether homosexuals should be allowed in the Republican Party was a “tough one.” He was a prominent opponent of James Hormel, President Clinton’s openly gay ambassador to Luxembourg. ...

In contrast, Frist is “Dr. McCain,” a press darling beloved more for his biography than for his positions. He’s probably a little too liberal for the GOP base, though much more conservative than the 2002 McCain. As the Senate’s only doctor, Frist has carved out a role as an expert on health care and bioterrorism, but his real authority is moral, not intellectual: It stems from his previous dedication to saving lives through heart and lung transplants. He continues to work as a surgeon at least once a year, traveling to Africa to tend to the sick as a medical missionary.

...Most Kuwaitis - including the country's mainstream Islamists, though with some reluctance - openly support the American troop presence, whose military might is seen as a guarantor against any future belligerence from neighboring Iraq. "We dine with death if the Americans leave us," says Abdullah Bishara, who heads the Diplomatic Center for Strategic Studies.

But there is genuine anger among Kuwaitis at Washington's perceived failure to resolve the festering conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Many also harbor deep suspicions about Washington's long-term ambitions for the region.

In part, this stems from positions the Democrats have taken, such as opposing increases in military spending, or pushing nonmilitary solutions to conflicts. Many Democrats voted against the Persian Gulf War, for example - though many of those same Democrats also voted in favor of an Iraq war resolution this time around. The difference between the parties has also been reinforced over the years by campaign rhetoric and images such as Ronald Reagan's forceful attack on the "Evil Empire" - or Michael Dukakis's unintentionally comic ride in a tank.

The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.

Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of [Reagan's] support for "states' rights" — a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters.

Herbert's op ed traces a more damning racist streak in the GOP, but in my view Herbert doesn't go far enough. Herbert rightly mentions the fact that, to show their colors (no pun intended) to the Christian Right, GOP candidates have to ritualistically visit racist Bob Jones University. Remember , an incident involving Bob Jone University became one the reasons why McCain faltered in his campaign for the presidency. [link is to a vivismo search that yielded over 80 hits] But, more to the point about GOP using the racist card, remember how in the Bush I campaign, without any public outcry, the Willie Horton TV spot in 1988 was allowed to go on indefinitely until the campaign was over. Later it was disclosed that George W himself played a major role in the use of the racist ad. [the link is to a search on vivismo that yielded over 30 hits; also see George magazine, Feb.-March, 2000, pages 22-23] . "Bush [and the GOP] knew the ad was racist but did nothing to stop its use.” Finally, let's not forget racist Jesse Helms.

... Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (S.D.) might step down soon to run for president in 2004.... Daschle is also considering retiring from the Senate ... [Daschle is considering] simply running for reelection in 2004, when his six-year term expires...

...As you all know, the drug industry is one of the largest and most powerful industries on the planet. They will use everything in their power to maintain and expand their control and economic prominence; this includes continuing to deceive you by creating the illusion of “fixing” your health so they can extract even more of your money.

Don’t be fooled by their illusions: what they typically provide you is just a symptomatic Band-Aid that will only further accelerate your path toward degeneration, allowing them to sell you even more Band-Aids down the line. What you should be addressing -- and what they won’t address because it is not profitable -- are the underlying causes of your health issues.

Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday.

... Shinseki and Jones, who as service chiefs are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have questioned the contention of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other top officials that Hussein's government is likely to collapse almost as soon as a U.S. attack is launched, the officials said.

The two generals are concerned that the Wolfowitz school may underestimate the risks involved, the officials said. They have argued that planning should prepare thoroughly for worst-case scenarios, most notably one that planners have labeled "Fortress Baghdad," in which Hussein withdraws his most loyal forces into the Iraqi capital and challenges the United States to enter into protracted street fighting, perhaps involving chemical or biological weapons.

A Daschle adviser said: "I think he would concede that he is behind the others in terms of the actual mechanics of putting the race together and having spent time in the early states in 2002. But he would also not feel that those are obstacles that are impossible to overcome, and that there has probably been more planning done for a potential effort than many would realize."

Democrats have been privately critical of Daschle for the way he has handled the controversy over a remark by Senate Republican leader Trent Lott (Miss.), in which Lott appeared to endorse the segregationist platform of Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. Daschle initially said he accepted Lott's explanation that he misspoke, but later toughened his criticism under pressure from others in his party.

Mr. Chávez is an autocratic leftist demagogue who is running the economy into the ground, manipulating the Constitution and fostering hatred between rich and poor. Venezuela would be much better off if he resigned.

... Our neighborhood [i.e., the Americas, particularily the South] risks falling apart. Worse, at this pivotal time, we in the U.S. are losing the battle of ideas in Latin America... In the 1990's the "Washington consensus" — emphasizing free trade and free markets — gained ground, and with tinkering it still offers the best hope for the continent. It is the policy that success stories like Chile and to a lesser extent Mexico have generally adopted.

But this policy is now regarded by many as failed and discredited. That's why a pro-Castro leftist like Mr. Chávez was elected in Venezuela, and why free-marketeers have been losing elections in Brazil, Ecuador and, at the local level, Peru. Ask hawkers in the markets, and they tell you that Washington consensus policies enriched only crooked politicians.
Unfortunately, there's some truth to that. Capitalism hasn't done well in South America.....

"Inequality in most Latin American countries is far worse than 10 years ago," notes Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations. In Brazil the richest 10 percent of the population now gets 48 percent of the income, while the poorest 10 percent gets 0.7 percent. In Argentina, once a first-world country, I visited a slum where doctors told me that 90 percent of the children had worms.

The NAACP says that over the past decade, Nickles and Lott have voted the same on almost every issue deemed important by the civil rights community. And in almost every case, their votes were contrary to the wishes of that community.

On the other hand, both Nickles, of Oklahoma, and Lott, of Mississippi, win the highest ratings from conservative groups. In 2000, the American Conservative Union gave both 100 percent ratings on key votes.

Even after Lott's comments were reported, though, much of the establishment press ignored them for days. It wasn't until Lott apologized last Monday night that such newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today took note of the matter. In the meantime, Lott was pummeled by a number of online Weblogs...

... The return of universal healthcare as a serious issue of debate, so soon after its rejection by Congress and the country, points to more than bad economic times, experts say. It is an indicator of how dire the situation in American healthcare has become.

Some observers suggest this year could be a perfect storm, as new drugs and technologies drive up costs, the ranks of the uninsured grow, and states slash deficits by cutting medical aid. Others suggest that the crisis hasn't yet reached the level of the early 1990s, which gave rise to the Clinton plan, spearheaded by his wife, Hillary.

This time, however, pressure for reform is coming not from the top down, but from states themselves. What happens in a handful of these states - from California to Maine - could shape the nation's healthcare discussion. ..."If it begins to emerge as a priority in seven or eight states, it will begin to change the political dynamic."....

At least three California lawmakers are expected to introduce bills next session with some form of universal healthcare. Moreover, the comments last week by Bruce Bodaken, head of California Blue Shield, proposing a universal-coverage system, have been seen as crossing a new threshold....

... Mississippi "hasn't changed," [a female African American] added. "The poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer."

A few whites interviewed here acknowledged that racism is still rampant -- though more subtle -- in the Gulf Coast region and elsewhere in Mississippi. But the whites who said so had moved here from elsewhere.

"I came here three years ago, and I was shocked at how much racism there was here," said Dave Maxwell, 35, a math teacher and football coach at a local junior high school, who moved to Mississippi after an 11-year career as a naval officer. "It's just kind of accepted here. Some of the kids don't even know that what they experience every day is racist -- the attitudes they hear all the time. They say, 'White folks always speak this way.' Or, 'Black folks always speak that way.' I try to fight that, I tell them, 'No, they don't always.' "...

At the Wal-Mart here, a young interracial couple was strolling down one of the long aisles. He was 21, a Navy fire control man transferred to the local base here, and white; she was 22, a manager at a local Burger King, and black. They declined to give their names but said they were from central Illinois, had been in Mississippi a little more than a year and were acutely aware of the hostile glances they encountered. Both said they felt Pascagoula is a deeply racist place....

SEN. DON Nickles, Lott’s deputy for six years as the GOP whip, urged other Republican senators to consider picking a new leader because of the controversy about Lott’s comments that conveyed nostalgia for the policies of racial segregation.
Nickles, who had kept silent on Lott’s remarks, said he accepts Lott’s multiple apologies over the last week.
“I am concerned that Senator Lott has been weakened to the point that may jeopardize his ability to enact our agenda and speak to all Americans,” Nickles told ABC’s “This Week.” “There are several outstanding senators who are more than capable of effective leadership, and I hope we have an opportunity to choose.”

Truth be told, official Washington is largely inured to right-wing excess. After more than 30 years of Republican rightward drift -- beginning with the party's bid to attract segregationist Democrats in the mid-'60s and continuing through Ronald Reagan's supply-side revolution, Newt Gingrich's "contract with America" and now President Bush's drive to enrich the rich at all costs -- the GOP's radicalism has become just another part of the Washington scenery. ..

Since the mid-'90s, all the Republicans' congressional leaders, save only current House speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, have been Southerners, promoting a harsher conservatism than anything even Reagan contemplated. Bush shares their right-wing zealousness, though by masquerading brilliantly as a moderate he has given the entire movement a renewed air of respectability. Lott is a pillar of this new conservative order, so he can't really be a lunatic -- can he? So what if he voices fond memories of the dank, segregationist South?

... MARK HERTSGAARD: I'd say the main implication is this whole idea that more consumption is always better. And that everyone on Earth should consume in-- at the American level and in the American way. The average American consumes 53 times more goods and services than the average Chinese. Where's all that resources gonna come from? And where is all that pollution gonna go?

MARK HERTSGAARD: Two weeks ago, the Chinese government has announced that they are going to double their road network. Meanwhile, they're cutting back-- on mass transit. They are going to increase the road size for cars and they're going to specifically limit the number of bicycles that can be on-- public freeways. What's that going to mean in addition to terrible pollution in China is-- and the loss of arable land to grow food which is a big problem there. It's going to mean that much more global warming gases. And that's something we have to realize. We cannot insulate ourselves from these decisions. ...

... As of this evening, no member of the Republican Senate conference — the senators who elect Mr. Lott their leader, and thus the majority leader of the incoming Senate — had come out against Mr. Lott, a development that cheered Mr. Lott's beleaguered supporters.... Among Mr. Lott's Republican allies in the Senate who are scheduled to appear appearing on the talk shows are John McCain of Arizona, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Washington says it has a plan to democratize the Arab world, and one has to hope that it succeeds. Before any optimism is justified, however, it would be nice to hear even a small indication that those behind the nascent US policy understand that which their country’s experience has helped demonstrate to the world at large: Democracy has more to do with the law than with the ballot box. The “man in the street” in the Arab world is a very different phenomenon from the vaunted but elusive “Arab street.”...The one thing they all have in common is that they want democracy. By way of a typically cruel response, various Arab regimes have attempted to deal with this longing by staging what they call “elections” in they decree which (if any) candidates will be allowed to stand against those who favor the status quo.They then go back to whatever shenanigans they were up to in the first place, protected all the while by court systems whose verdicts are as predictable as those of the handcuffed voters. If that is democracy, dictatorship is a far better route because at least its advocates are honest. ...If Washington wants its new policy to succeed, it will have to start practicing what it preaches. It is unrealistic to expect Arab law to enjoy any more respect than international law, and right now the adjudication of the latter is as capricious as that of the former....

And as luck would have it, the prime mover behind the manipulation and selective enforcement of international law is the same United States that says it wants to spread democracy in the Arab world. The pinnacle of American mendacity involves Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.Washington knows they are illegal, and not just under the UN Security Council resolutions that make the occupation itself a crime: The settlements are also banned under the Geneva Conventions. Neither category of international law can be implemented, though, so long as Uncle Sam takes it upon himself to decide which rules have to be followed and which do not, who has to obey the law and who can ignore it. That is a lot like garden-variety Arab authoritarianism, but in fact it is even worse because at least the victims of Arab bullying are Arabs.America, by contrast, bullies people outside its own borders. If Washington wants its democracy campaign to be taken seriously, it has to start by righting its own wrongs.

...The explicit pressure to dump Lott comes from such sources as the National Review, the founding magazine of the contemporary conservative movement; a host of southern newspaper editorials; and many of the conservative columnists whose ability to set the tone of public debate was demonstrated throughout the years of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, while not explicitly calling for Lott to step aside, said three other Republican senators would make better leaders.

These conservatives oppose Lott for two reasons. Many believe he has been an ineffective leader for the party in the Senate and see this as an opportunity to get rid of him. But they also want to rid the party of its image as hostile to the aspirations of African Americans and other minorities, and believe that Lott stands as a symbol who will hurt the party.