...
John le Carre, put it this way in a (representatively venomous) essay this month in The Times of London: "America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember."... Does it matter that we've somehow morphed in public perceptions from the world's only superpower to the world's super-rogue state?

Of course it matters.

The macho notion that we'll do what we choose and if the world doesn't like it, it can go [insert expletive here] is both ludicrous and dangerous. We mustn't become slaves to foreign opinion, but neither should we glibly dismiss it as we prepare to launch a war that will hugely aggravate this distemper, which will nurture more terrorism.....while the lack of allied support won't prevent us from getting into a war with Iraq, it may prevent us from getting out. The U.S. sees its role as the globe's SWAT team, but after we have ousted Saddam and whistled for the cleanup crew it's not clear that the allies will want to help. Nor will they pay the bill for this Iraq war as they did the last one. Each time Don Rumsfeld insults Europe, it costs us another $20 billion. ....

The most sensible suggestion for confronting anti-Americanism comes from one prominent American official: "It really depends on how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us." That was George W. Bush in the second presidential debate. He was dead right, back then.

... The most promising solution to America's health care crisis is mandatory insurance. For the same reasons most states require drivers to carry car insurance, the federal government should require all Americans to purchase basic health insurance. Those who cannot afford the full cost should receive public subsidies. Mandatory self-insurance would provide fully portable coverage to all Americans, while lowering insurance costs, raising the quality of care, maintaining a private insurance market and offering citizens more choice.

The grand bargain underlying compulsory health insurance would be universal coverage in exchange for universal responsibility. Of the 41 million Americans without health insurance, a full two-thirds are below the age of 35. Mandating tens of millions of young and relatively healthy Americans to join the insurance risk pool would drive down the costs for everyone. Insured patients are also less likely to rely on expensive hospital emergency rooms for their basic medical care

Tony Blair headed for a council of war with George Bush yesterday with the backing of seven European countries but with EU policy towards Iraq disintegrating into bitterness and division. The Prime Minister is confident that President Bush will agree to delay a war against Iraq for more than a month during their crucial talks over the timescale for military action at the President's Camp David retreat today....But yesterday's "gang of eight" [ 1 Guardian 2 google news 'gang of eight' ]declaration shattered any pretence of consensus. Four EU countries on the United Nations Security Council – France, Germany, the UK and Spain – are in two camps.
The letter was signed by Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, plus Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which will join the EU next year. In a significant departure, the former eastern bloc countries were brought in to support the declaration, underlining the Atlanticist credentials of many of the nations that will join the EU next year.

Costas Simitis, the Prime Minister of Greece, which holds the EU's rotating presidency but was left out of the loop, declared that the letter signed by eight nations "does not contribute to a common approach". Greek officials were furious. "Prime Minister Simitis had talks with Tony Blair and [Jose Maria] Aznar [the Spanish premier] in the last few days and nobody informed him," said one official. Mr Simitis heard about the Anglo-Spanish initiative only yesterday when he held talks with one of the signatories, Peter Medgyessy, Hungary's premier.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that circumstance have changed since the Senate's earlier vote, including the current UN inspection program. Byrd said he has the support of fellow Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein of California, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland. ...If the administration has evidence that Iraq is hiding weapons, ``We should share it with inspectors today, we should not wait another week,'' Kennedy said.

GWB is going down. History books will mark both Bush presidencies as one term tenures marked by war in the Middle East and crushing financial instability. There's the hard evidence: his poll numbers have been sinking (just like employment figures) and corner men like Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf are saying we need more proof if we even think about going into Iraq. But for me the "oh, damn, he's toast" moment came during a phone call with a long time friend and former roommate. Elaine is a total Sex and the City-style fashion plate who would rather read Lucky than the Week in Review. She's also a recovering Young Republican. But she called me frothing about Bush's plan to give special tax breaks to people who buy SUVs. "I've got to volunteer for the Democrats," she sputtered. "Tell me what to do!!!!"

he prospect of body bags-for-oil will alienate swing voters. So will the administration's looming battle against affirmative action, which may erode their attempts to reach Latino voters, and what the New York Times describes as a war on women--not just against abortion, but also family planning, condoms, and sex education. Then there's that pesky problem of the economy: we can't blame 9/11 forever, and we certainly aren't going to solve the problems facing working- and middle-class families by giving tax cuts to the rich. Bush eked out a victory by convincing just enough women, Americans of color, and working families that he was on their side. But his attempts to appease his religious right and corporate donors are so blatant, it'll be impossible for him to play the same aw-shucks, just-folks role next time around.

Mandela urged the people of the United States to join massive protests against Bush. Mandela called on world leaders, especially those with vetoes in the UN Security Council, to oppose him. "One power with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust," Mandela told the International Women's Forum. Mandela also criticized Iraq for not co-operating fully with the weapons inspectors and said South Africa would support any action against Iraq that was supported by the United Nations ... "Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly?" he asked. ``All that (Bush) wants is Iraqi oil," he said. He accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of undermining the United Nations and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana. "Is it because the secretary general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white," he said...[Mandela] condemned Blair for his strong support of the United States."He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain," he said. .

In his speech Tuesday night, President Bush laid out compelling and perhaps even irrefutable proof that Saddam Hussein continues to defy the United Nations and continues to conceal weapons of mass destruction. As the president knows, though, that alone does not warrant war. The only justification for an invasion likely to end in the deaths of thousands -- or even tens of thousands -- of people, many of them innocent women and children, would be self-defense.

And when the president again attempted to make that case Tuesday night, he again faltered.

"IMAGINE those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam," the president told the American people. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes." [emphasis added]

For the president, that chilling paragraph [above] represents the core of his argument for going to war against Iraq. I do not doubt the sincerity of his conviction in that regard. The events of Sept. 11 hit every American hard, but by all accounts the president found them particularly painful, because in his mind they had happened on his watch and were in some way his responsibility....any case for war that relies so heavily on the word "imagine" is fatally flawed.

Imagine.

"If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means," the president said Tuesday. But the sad truth is, war is not being forced upon us; we are forcing war.

...According to The New York Times, a group of distinguished retired military officers is preparing a legal brief supporting Michigan's affirmative action policies. The military officers have entered the fray because they understand that an adverse Supreme Court ruling in the Michigan case could also force the service academies to dismantle their affirmative action programs. The service academies use the same logic to defend their use of affirmative action in admissions that other major colleges and universities use: They want a diverse student body that reflects the nation. Each year, West Point aims for a class that is 10 to 12 percent African-American but ends up, despite its affirmative action policies, with only 7 to 9 percent African-American representation, Jones said. The service academies have an additional reason for supporting diversity in admissions: With enlisted military ranks disproportionately dependent on racial minorities -- from an Air Force whose enlisted personnel are 28 percent minority to an Army with 44 percent -- an all-white officer corps would hurt morale, military experts say.

Though crowded with proposals for new domestic initiatives, President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday night underscored how thoroughly his presidency is being shaped and driven by the fierce engine of war....In some ways, the speech had a déja vu quality. Almost all of its themes -- from the focus on tax cuts, Medicare reform and energy independence at home to the warnings to Hussein -- echoed priorities and promises from last year's State of the Union speech.

In the year between, Bush's political strength, though still substantial, has eroded on several fronts.

Though Bush's energetic campaigning helped the GOP widen its lead in the House and seize control of the Senate in last fall's election, the president's approval rating has fallen from more than 80% in January 2002 to 60% or less in a flurry of polls released over the last 10 days.

.... Democrats were scornful, arguing that Mr. Bush was promising the impossible: a war without sacrifice."We're paying for this war by enlarging the deficit, cutting back on health care, cutting back on education, jeopardizing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds," said Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee."The economic sacrifice," Mr. Rangel said, "is disproportionately borne by seniors, working Americans and future generations who will have to deal with our debts."
... Mr. Bush might face his greatest political challenge on Medicare, an issue sure to figure prominently in next year's Congressional and presidential elections. His philosophical position, in favor of market-oriented solutions, was not new, but he indicated he would spend more political capital in pushing them through a divided Congress.
He will need to do so: Combining prescription drug benefits with fundamental structural changes in the popular 38-year-old health insurance program makes the task of enacting legislation far more difficult, lawmakers in both parties said.

"Health care reform must begin with Medicare, because Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society," he said. Mr. Bush said that "seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is." But at the same time, he said, "all seniors should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription drugs." ...

Critics assert that the traditional Medicare structure is too costly to be sustained after baby boomers begin to hit the retirement rolls in 2011. These critics also argue that managed care plans would do a much better job of coordinating care for the elderly. Whether they would do a better job of controlling costs is not clear from the available evidence, researchers say.

But efforts to push Medicare in that direction have, in the past, touched off political firestorms, most memorably in 1995 and 1996, when Democrats used the issue to devastating effect against Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Congressional Republicans.

Opponents maintain that Medicare is a fundamental social pact with the American people, a promise of benefits guaranteed by the government.

They assert that Mr. Bush's plan is a first step toward replacing that promise of guaranteed benefits with a voucher to use in the private health insurance marketplace. Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said: "It is clear that President Bush intends to privatize Medicare. He's cleverly using the promise of a meager drug benefit as a bribe to push Medicare beneficiaries into second-rate, low-quality health plans, putting seniors at the mercy of health maintenance organizations and the big drug companies."

``America clearly cannot have economic recovery unless there is economic recovery among everyone of the 50 states,'' ...

Locke ... a preview[ed] ... the Democratic reaction to Bush's address and highlight the party's strategy of criticizing the president's fiscal policy as being too focused on wealthy citizens while doing too little to boost an sluggish economy. U.S. states from California to Maine are suffering the worst fiscal crisis since World War II, according to the National Governors Association. The American Legislative Exchange Council, ... estimates that states are facing a combined budget shortfall of $92 billion through fiscal 2004. ``People are obviously worried about terrorism and Iraq. But those concerns should not overshadow important needs of people here at home,'' Locke said. ``To be strong abroad, we have to be strong at home.''

The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn't seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now. He thinks U.N. inspections are still the proper course to follow. He's worried about the cockiness of the U.S. war plan, and even more by the potential human and financial costs of occupying Iraq.
And don't get him started on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "The Rumsfeld thing . . . "When [Rumsfield] makes his comments, it appears that he disregards the Army," Schwarzkopf says. gives the perception when he's on TV that he is the guy driving the train and everybody else better fall in line behind him -- or else." That dismissive posture bothers Schwarzkopf because he thinks Rumsfeld and the people around him lack the background to make sound military judgments by themselves. He prefers the way Cheney operated during the Gulf War. "He didn't put himself in the position of being the decision-maker as far as tactics were concerned, as far as troop deployments, as far as missions were concerned."

... anyone who takes the trouble to look at the numbers knows that the thrill is gone. Mr. Bush's approval ratings have plunged over the last two months. A year ago he was, indeed, immensely popular; right now he's not significantly more popular than he was before Sept. 11.
Other polls suggest that the public is particularly disenchanted with Mr. Bush's economic policy. Most voters no longer believe that his tax cuts are effective at creating jobs, and many also believe that his policies favor the wealthy and large corporations, rather than people like themselves. (Class warfare!) [We've heard much about this term, and it seems to have been eliminated from Bush's current
vocabulary.]
Still, [says Krugman,] polls can shift as they did, suddenly, after Sept. 11. Can tonight's speech do the trick? ...There are several reasons to doubt whether he can pull it off. ... economists outside the administration, even those who always find ways to praise whatever he proposes, can't see what this tax cut has to do with the economy's immediate problems. This has led to a striking dissonance between what administration officials say on TV; where it's still all about jobs; and what they say when speaking to knowledgeable audiences. In background briefings for reporters, at the Davos conference this past weekend and wherever else they encounter people who might actually know something about the numbers, officials now pooh-pooh concerns about the state of the job market. Never mind that, they say, our plan is all about increasing long-run growth. Um, but what about "economic security"?

When President Bush finishes the State of the Union address Tuesday, the Democrats will nudge to center stage a relatively obscure governor from the West to say that the drums of war should not drown out the worst economic crisis in a half-century for state governments.The governor, Gary Locke of Washington, already has a small niche in history as the first Chinese-American to hold a state's highest office. Now he will become one of few governors chosen to give the nationally televised response to the president's message to Congress. .... Governor Locke, the son of Chinese immigrants, grew up in public housing in Seattle and went to Yale, in part, on affirmative action scholarships. So his biography may be more powerful than the message he plans to deliver in a bit more than 10 minutes Tuesday night. Mr. Locke said in an interview that he planned to contrast President Bush's proposal to cut dividend taxes with Democratic plans to "help out everyday people who are struggling."

"Quota."Announcing his opposition to affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan, President Bush used that word several times to describe those policies.The president ought to be ashamed. Michigan's policies are nothing of the sort, and he knows that. ... There are few other matters as delicate or as crucial to the well-being of this democracy as racial equality and harmony across lines of color and ethnicity. A president who would divide the nation in order to stay in power can hardly claim principle as his highest value. ...In his duplicituous dismissal of Michigan's policies, the president huffed that a perfect SAT score only counts for 12 points in a total of 150. What he didn't say is that grades count for 80 points, and that athletic talent gets as many points as being black or Latino -- 20 points. That seems to track the 1978 Bakke ruling, which allows consideration of race as long as it is not a significant factor....By that logic, the U.S. Senate and the Oval Office have a quota of zero for African-Americans. If you analyze the history of both institutions, you will find that the Oval Office has never had a black occupant and the U.S. Senate usually does not. Who will file the lawsuit protesting the quota system in the highest levels of national politics?

Ridiculous? So is the president's claim that the University of Michigan uses a quota system.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's moralizing diplomacy, his tough talk on Iraq and his steadfast loyalty to President Bush have gained him acceptance in the United States and an invitation to Washington this crucial week, but they have cost him popularity at home and hard-won influence in Europe. Opinion surveys show a majority of the British public questioning his aggressive posture against Baghdad and faulting him for being too subservient to the United States. Britons also increasingly accuse him of becoming distracted from the problems that vex them in their daily lives, like poor transportation, inattentive health services and rising street crime.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told the United States on Thursday that "out-terrorising the terrorists will not work" and forecast a long period of war driven by hatred, revenge and greed.... Mahathir, a veteran Asian leader, accused the West of seeking to impose its brand of capitalist democracy by force and starving or bombing those who did not accept that model.

"It is blasphemy to say anything against democracy. If you do, if you resist, then you'll be considered a heretic and starved to death or bombed out of existence," he said.

While Mr. Ashcroft said that the American aim was to prevent acts of terror before they took place rather than prosecute the perpetrators afterward, Mahathir bin Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, turned to the attorney general across a stage and, in front of hundreds of participants, said, "To say you must do preventive actions irrespective of the causes is wrong."

The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center "did it because they were incensed with something and we have to find out why they were incensed," Mr. Mahathir said. "We should try not to amplify the situation, anger them more and lead more people to join this group of people."

Mr. Ashcroft replied, "I am not prepared to say we have to give up values to appease the terrorist."

Critics from the United States, Europe and the Muslim world specifically challenged many of the Bush administration's antiterrorism measures, including its detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, its refusal to identify by name people detained in the United States and its decision to register foreigners from selected, mostly Muslim, nations.

...Rather than focus on just guns or just butter, White House officials said, the speech will touch on three main themes: [1] the threats from terrorism and Iraq; [2] Mr. Bush's belief that his $670 billion tax cut proposal will help accomplish his goal of creating more jobs; and [3] his plan to put the Medicare system on a sounder financial footing while adding coverage for prescription drugs.

"I don't know what he will say," Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, told an audience in Cleveland on Friday. "But as I travel around the nation and listen to people with all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs, I hear one thing: concern. The state of our union today is anxious."

But the subtext, Republicans said, will be re-establishing Mr. Bush as a leader after several months in which his standing has been reduced. The furor over Senator Trent Lott, the difficulty the administration has had in explaining why Iraq is an immediate threat while North Korea is not, the reluctance of moderate Republicans in the Senate to back his tax plan — all, they said, have eaten away at the strength Mr. Bush exhibited in leading his party to victory in the Congressional elections. ... "What he needs to do — and what he clearly will do with the speech — is re-establish the clarity of his leadership," said one prominent Republican with close ties to the White House. "He needs to regain the momentum that stalled out after the election."

Polls show that a substantial portion of the electorate is unconvinced of the need for an immediate war — as are some of the nation's putative allies in a military campaign against Saddam Hussein. A grass-roots antiwar movement is beginning to make itself heard....

... Veteran journalist [Helen] Thomas, in case you’ve never seen a presidential news conference, is the woman who has haunted every U.S. president since JFK. Thomas believes we have chosen to promote democracy with bombs instead of largess while Congress “defaults,” Democrats cower and a president controls all three branches of government in the name of corporations and the religious right.

As she signed my program, I joked, “You sound worried.” “This is the worst president ever,” she said. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”

... Behind the scenes, the administration is scrambling to deflect the mounting international pressure. "We came slowly to the realization that this is a real crisis. A lot of people thought it could be managed and the Europeans brought along," said a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity. The aggressive French and German campaign to mobilize support against war and some "diplomatic but direct" language from Britain has now convinced many, but not all, of the principal administration players of the need to look for middle ground, he added.

"Gary Hartpence? With all due respect...I think you ...must be smoking something. "First, Gary Hart couldn't even beat Walter Mondale. "Second, two words: Donna Rice." [First scribe responds with] "Donna who? I have seen many articles in the national press talking about Gary Hart, and none of them mention this old news. I think that Clinton set a new standard." ... "Donna Rice? I don't think so. The country is very different than it was the last time Hart ran for president. ... "Look at Rob Lowe: his sex scandal pretty much destroyed his career. Now look at Hugh Grant. Now look at Bill Clinton.QED [Latin for "which has to be proved'] "Sometime in the last fifteen years the mainstream of public opinion in this country stopped caring about sexual peccadilloes short of rape (the phenomenon is not limited to the US-look at how much Major's reputation improved in Britain after it was revealed he had had an affair). This is particularly true of the Democratic Party's base, and most swing voters.

"I find it very hard to believe that many voters who would have otherwise voted for Hart would be dissuaded by a fling he had almost twenty years ago."

[1/9/2003 3:09:25 PM
Another example of the Jamieson-Waldman 'Frames/Narratives' Press Model
The Media: Playing Tag with John Edwards For background see my earlier post on 'Explanatory Model'
An Excerpt: Looking at Mr. Bush's past, how would he have fared if "failed businessman" preceded his name? Or perhaps "multimillionaire failed businessman"? "Multimillionaire sweetheart deal-maker" has a nice ring to it. In Mr. Bush's case, the media typically presented him in a favorable light, focusing on the more positive aspects of his life. The description of Edwards is additionally odd because of the way the words are used. While "multimillionaire lawyer" wouldn't be particularly flattering, it stands head and shoulders above the phrase with "trial" inserted.

When President Bush traveled to the United Nations in September to make his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what he called Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim, with Rice describing the tubes as "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House of recent Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But according to government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be seriously in doubt.

Today administration officials say Mr. Powell is abruptly on the defensive after France and Germany went public with their bluntly worded refusal to support quick action to find Iraq in breach of United Nations resolutions and clear the way for a military attack. One of Mr. Powell's associates said the secretary was irritated at the French, and another that he was "incandescent" with rage at the French and German envoys who, American officials say, surprised him with their opposition to administration policies.

... But even among the self-promoters of Washington, Lieberman and McCain stand out for their enthusiasm and their skill... among the very best of our national politicians, they are smarter, more interesting, and probably more honest than most of their colleagues. On the issues they choose to spotlight, they’re usually right, often first (or at least ahead of the horde) and occasionally even courageous....Lieberman is literally pious — a devout orthodox Jew — and that is admirable, especially in a politician with the highest ambitions. But he also has the hectoring, bromidic high-rhetorical style reminiscent of an especially pompous clergyman....McCain, by contrast, is the naughty boy who gets too much pleasure out of his reputation for naughtiness.... Both men are hooked on cheap iconoclasm....

Do Americans, for instance, face a greater risk of nuclear conflict because Bush indulged in a rant last year that included calling North Korea’s leader a “pygmy” – or of terrorism because Bush termed U.S. military action in the Middle East a “crusade,” with its Christian vs. Muslim overtones? Or does he exacerbate worldwide suspicion that Washington doesn’t care much about the global environment when he mocks environmentalists to his White House aides as “green-green lima beans”?

Remember the scene in 1986 when Bush was miffed about a prediction made by Wall Street Journal political writer Al Hunt that Jack Kemp – not then-Vice President George H.W. Bush – would win the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. At a Dallas restaurant, the younger George Bush spotted Hunt having dinner with his wife, Judy Woodruff, and their four-year-old son.

Bush stormed up to the table and started cursing out Hunt. “You [expletive] son of a bitch,” Bush yelled. “I saw what you wrote. We’re not going to forget this.” [Washington Post, July 25, 1999] ... While thin-skinned about criticism of himself or his family, Bush regularly pokes fun at others. While Texas governor, Bush lined up for a photo and fingered the man next to him. “He’s the ugly one!” Bush laughed. [NYT, Aug. 22, 1999] ... In one of Campaign 2000’s most memorable moments, Bush uttered an aside to his running mate Dick Cheney about New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. “There's Adam Clymer -- major league asshole -- from the New York Times,” Bush said as he was waving to a campaign crowd from a stage in Naperville, Ill. “Yeah, big time,” responded Cheney. Their voices were picked up on an open microphone.

It was a bad week for the Bush administration, and it's likely to get worse. The American people are beginning to understand the folly and greed that inform its economic policy. [Support For a War With Iraq Weakens My local paper had a frontpage headline about the same thing this morning. And heree's the latest from Public Opinion Watch (in pdf)] And most of the civilized world has turned decisively against the Iraqi adventure. The great coalition that George W. Bush proposes to lead against Saddam Hussein is now a coalition of two, and British prime minister Tony Blair has lost the support of his own people, most especially members of his own Labor Party, who warn of a political revolt if Britain goes to war without a new UN resolution.

Utilizing a Reagan-era tax loophole that grants larger business deductions to pick-ups than it does to ordinary cars, the Bush Administration, according to the Times (1/21/03), would "increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take on the biggest and most expensive sports utility vehicles and pickups."
Thus, if a small business owner buys a gas-guzzling (10-11 mpg) Hummer HI, with a list price of $102,581, he or she can deduct $75,000 from the price as a capital equipment deduction. A business that purchases a gas-efficient (45 mpg) Toyota Prius with a $20,500 sticker price, can't even deduct half of that cost, even with the $2,000 deduction the government is allowing for fuel-efficient vehicles included.

....Brazil's new leftist leader will bridge the globalization gap this week, speaking first at the World Social Forum second, at the summit which that gathering is meant to protest: the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.On Friday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will become the first-ever leader of the Brazilian government to speak at the World Social Forum, which opened Thursday in Porto Alegre, Brazil.For many of the 100,000 activists in attendance, Lula, ...his October election in Latin America's largest country represents the best hope in lessening economic inequalities between the First and Third Worlds.

"After participating for the third time at the World Social Forum (previously as an activist), I'm going to Davos to demonstrate that another world is possible," Lula said in a Thursday statement. "Davos needs to listen to Porto Alegre."

He said there was an need for a new pact that would bridge economic disparity.

"I will take to Davos the message that the rich countries need to distribute the wealth of the planet," he said.

Great words of hope, no question, that most people wouldn't disagree with: who doesn't want to see a more efficient global economy that would make us all more prosperous? The great difficulty, of course, is backing those words with the grueling work that goes into tackling global economic issues: drug patent fights, agricultural subsidies, stalled talks on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

It is the bare-knuckled arena of international trade negotiations and Brazil's role of representing the Third World where Lula's appetite for either pragmatically making headway or falling back on ideological differences will be tested.
"One of things that will be important is not only his bridging the globalization gap, but his keeping the discussion of the gap alive," said Margaret Keck, a political science professor at John's Hopkins University, of Lula's role in representing poor countries.

Keck, whose book "The Workers' Party and Democratization in Brazil" was the first major study of Lula and the political party he helped found, says Lula has the potential to be a Third World leader who can act as both a catalyst and a salve as rich and poor countries try to reach mutual understandings.

Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois and the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, warned late last year that Brazil's new president might join Mr. Chávez and Mr. Castro in a Latin "axis of evil." Mr. Hyde also characterized Mr. da Silva as a dangerous "pro-Castro radical who for electoral purposes had posed as a moderate."

The best way to analyze President Bush's proposed $670 billion tax cut is to ask the most basic question of all: Where's the money going, and where's the money coming from? More bluntly, who wins and who loses?

In this case, the answers to both questions are clear. To finance this tax cut, we would have to borrow enormous sums of money from our children and grandchildren, literally mortgaging their futures without their knowledge or approval. They would be the losers. It's going to come out of their pockets and purses.

Having robbed the future, we would then turn around and give the proceeds of that theft to our wealthiest contemporaries, people today who are already doing considerably better than most of our children ever will. For example, more than a quarter of the proceeds of this intergenerational transfer of wealth would go to the 1 percent of American households with incomes of more than $373,000. ...[And what makes this tale even worse,] The estimated deficit of $300 billion for 2003, by the way, does not include the cost of a looming war in the Middle East. That would send the deficit considerably higher, but even that's not enough to dissuade the administration from its raid on our children's future. Economists used to warn politicians against what they called a guns-and-butter budget; under this president, it's guns and caviar.

With the U.S. pressing ahead with its military buildup in the Persian Gulf, the White House stepped up a carefully choreographed campaign aimed at influencing Iraqi troops, wary American voters and reluctant international partners.

But North Atlantic Treaty Organization envoys meeting in Brussels demonstrated just how difficult the sell may be during a heated debate over whether to help any U.S. attack on Iraq. France and Germany, which favor allowing U.N. weapons inspections to continue, led the opposition to the U.S. request. The U.S. would like NATO's political support as well as the use of its troops and equipment.

At the heart of the dispute between the U.S. and some of its European allies is whether Iraq is complying with the inspections. Bush on Wednesday described Iraq's declaration of its weapons program as "12,000 pages of deceit and deception," and he appeared to deride the effectiveness of the U.N. inspection program by referring to "so-called inspectors," a phrase repeated by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Senior Pentagon officials are quietly urging President George W. Bush to slow down his headlong rush to war with Iraq, complaining the administration’s course of action represents too much of a shift of America’s longstanding “no first strike” policy and that the move could well result in conflicts with other Arab nations.....In addition, Capitol Hill Blue has learned that both House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have told the White House that they have “increasing” numbers of Republicans in both Houses raising doubts about the war. “Nobody in the party wants to come out publicly and tell the President he’s wrong,” says one Hill source close to the GOP leadership, “but we don’t have the kind of unity we need on this thing. It could blow apart on us at any time.” Public support for a war with Iraq is also slipping. In November of 2001, just two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, 78 percent of Americans favored military action against Iraq. That support has slipped to as low as 52 percent in January polls. A Washington Post-ABC news poll taken last week shows Americans evenly split over Bush's handling of the crisis with Iraq. Spokesmen for the White House, Pentagon and Congressional leadership offices would not comment on the record for this report.

With U.S. forces building in the Gulf, Iraq's neighbors met in Turkey on Thursday to discuss ways to avert a war and urge Baghdad to cooperate more with U.N. arms inspectors. Some of the countries also want the conference to broaden its scope and demand that the delegates call on the United States to get U.N. approval for any military strike against Iraq.

Delegations from Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia gathered in a former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosporus strait. The foreign ministers of the countries were expected to formally open the meeting in the palace later Thursday. Kuwait is also a neighbor of Iraq but was not attending the summit.

...Only John Horan (chair of the unheard-of Environmental Audit Committee) had the gumption to interrupt answers when they strayed away from the question.

When Mr Blair denied that an invasion would stimulate Arab fanaticism, Mr Horan pointed out that Osama's al-Qa'ida was formed as a direct response to the American invasion of Kuwait. There was no evading that. As this was heroic of Mr Horan, it's unlikely we'll hear of him again.

But Mr Blair failed to carry the committee on his raison d'ętre for war – the link between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Certainly, he never made clear how an invasion of Iraq would stop Algerians dropping ricin in Oxford Street.

However, for those who like that sort of thing, the humanitarian case came across strongly. Iraqis are an enterprising people "totally suppressed by a wicked, dictatorial regime with no feeling for life or human rights".

'There is no way out for Saddam in this,' Mr Blair said.

That's true; and because the prestige of the West is now hung on regime change in Iraq, there's no way out for us either.

Seven in 10 Americans would give U.N. weapons inspectors months more to pursue their arms search in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that found growing doubts about an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In addition to the public's skepticism about military action against Iraq, the poll found that a majority of Americans disapproved of President Bush's handling of the economy for the first time in his presidency

By escalating his threats against Baghdad and insisting he is unwilling to participate in "the rerun of a bad movie," President Bush is serving notice on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the time for prevarication is over. More immediately, Bush is also signaling U.S. allies that he is prepared to go to war with Iraq without their approval.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. We are two women who were born in the early 1970's and, like other Americans our age, were raised with the divisions the decision has wrought.

Like our peers, we, too, are divided: We are activists on opposite sides of the abortion issue. While we are both committed to carrying on the work of our predecessors, we also recognize the need to re-examine their tactics. The slogans are old, the battle is tired. Those older than us have said that Americans born after Roe v. Wade cannot truly comprehend what is at stake. Maybe that is so. But we think we have a fresh understanding of how to achieve real progress.

Instead of just focusing on our differences, we need to acknowledge the surprising number of important issues on which we agree. We all believe we should work to reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion. We should recognize, too, that our efforts are succeeding. Over the last seven years the rate of abortions performed in the United States has dropped by 11 percent, according to a 2002 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group. ...There are times when both movements have missed common-ground opportunities. [1] This past year, advocates should have come together to fight the Florida Adoption Act....[2] many unintended pregnancies could be prevented by ensuring that women have health insurance coverage for the most effective contraception methods... [3] Making the workplace more accommodating to the demands of parenthood is also a common goal....If the pro-choice and pro-life movements work together to support legislation to expand the social safety net for low-income mothers, and to lobby for more family-friendly policies for working parents, their power would be formidable. These are goals that we both share....

The aim of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks is to help Republicans keep track of the important details. In 1980, Feulner and others at Heritage produced a blueprint to help Reagan run the executive branch, a 3,000-page book called ''Mandate for Leadership.'' No one claims that Reagan read the whole thing, but someone in the White House apparently did. Among the 2,000 recommendations in ''Mandate for Leadership'' was advice on handling labor disputes with air-traffic controllers. Heritage's position was, Don't tolerate strikes. [Remember that event?]
Over the past 20 years, virtually every big Republican idea and many small ones -- school choice, welfare reform, enterprise zones, Social Security privatization -- have originated in think tanks, rather than on Capitol Hill. Think tanks have sponsored some of the most important conservative books and published some of the best conservative magazines.
By the time the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, there were scores of conservative think tanks ready to help them govern. One of these was the Project for the Republican Future, a tiny operation run by William Kristol, Dan Quayle's former chief of staff. In January 1994, Kristol decided to derail the Clinton health care plan. He and his staff issued a position paper titled ''How to Oppose the Health Plan -- and Why.'' Aimed at Republicans on the Hill, the paper contended that any compromise with the president on health care would be bad for American medicine and bad for the G.O.P. Kristol argued that Republicans should stonewall Clinton while presenting their own less severe alternatives for reform. Kristol's memo gave Republicans heart. They resisted the Clinton health plan, HillaryCare failed and by the election it was Democrats who were suffering.

In a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration's foreign policy, Sen. Edward Kennedy predicted Tuesday that a military strike against Iraq would "undermine" the war against terrorism, "feed a rising tide of anti-Americanism overseas" and strain diplomatic ties.

"Surely, we can have effective relationships with other nations without adopting a chip-on-the-shoulder foreign policy, a my-way-or-the-highway policy that makes all our goals in the world more difficult to achieve," Kennedy said a speech delivered to the National Press Club.

Under a plan approved by Congress several years ago, single hull tankers can no longer sail U.S. waters by 2015 and must be replaced with safer, double-hull vessels.

"Old, single-hull tankers pose a serious risk to America's coastal communities, marine environment and wildlife," Rep. Lois Capps said this week in a letter asking House colleagues to co-sponsor her bill. "It is estimated that about half of the large tankers in operation are single-hulled."

Yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee headed by Sen. John McCain [scroll down] of Arizona was scheduled to hold a hearing on the safety of single-hull tankers.

..
Consider a recent cover of Business Week. Under the headline "Class Warfare," it asked: "Suppose Bush's tax plan works: It raises long-term growth, reduces unemployment, boosts workers' wages, and eventually cuts a rising deficit. ... Now suppose the rich get richer, and income inequality gets worse. Time to vote."...[L]et's look at what the administration isn't doing. It's not allocating enough money to meet its own goals for homeland security, or to provide adequate funding for Medicare. It has scaled back promised pay increases for the military. It's not providing a penny in aid to desperate state governments - it isn't even helping them meet the new burden of homeland security spending mandated from Washington. (Remember those promises, after Sept. 11, of aid to fire departments and police? That was then.)

In the Senate, moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, who could hold the balance of power in the narrowly divided chamber, are already working across the aisle to scale back Mr. Bush's proposed $670 billion tax cut.... As a result, it is hard to find any more consensus now than there was on Inauguration Day as to whether his "compassionate conservatism" is a new way of approaching the issues or, as liberals would have it, the same old right-wing package in deceptive new wrapping. For all his strengths, Mr. Bush faces some worrisome signs. His overall approval ratings, have been falling, as have figures on his handling of the economy, a politically potent issue even in wartime...."Bush's base is further to the right than where many Americans are outside the South," said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. "That makes it difficult to seek votes from Hispanics, African-Americans, single women, yet Republicans need to do that in order to grow."

Hans Blix and Mohammed el-Baradei, the UN's two most senior weapons inspectors, today secured an agreement from Iraq allowing them to interview key scientists in private.... Baghdad also agreed to respond to questions about Iraq's 12,000-page declaration on nuclear, biological and chemical programmes, which both Washington and UN inspectors have said is inadequate.

... Those who truly want to avoid further turbulence in the Middle East have to stop seeing themselves as Americans, Iraqis, Palestinians and Israelis; we can no longer afford to define ourselves ­ or our interlocutors ­ as Christians, Muslims and Jews. Instead, people on all sides of these increasingly dangerous issues have to start recognizing their natural partners in the other camps. What is required is a new alliance of those who prefer [1] trust to suspicion, [2] cooperation to conflagration, and [3] negotiation to annihilation. Those who thrive on divisiveness have no right to plunge the rest of us into war, but that is exactly what they will do unless reasonable people resolve to stop them. To accomplish this, those who want peace will have to believe in their cause ­ and in each other ­ as much as the warmongers believe in theirs.

British political leaders will be criss-crossing the Atlantic for the rest of this month, trying to make sure that Western nations act in unison as the prospect of war with Iraq draws closer....But the public's nervousness about war is undiminished, despite the Prime Minister's tough talking. According to research carried out by Opinion Leader Research – headed by Deborah Mattinson, who worked closely with Labour's private polling unit in the run-up to three general elections – people associate the drive towards an unwanted war with Mr Blair personally....

Even with all the tutoring he received, for example, Bush's mediocre grades at Andover and his SAT scores would not have qualified him for Yale were it not for the historical affirmative action policy for whites known as "legacy admissions," whereby the scions of alumni are let into the most prestigious Ivy League colleges through the back door.

...Three new books attempt to explain Bush's rise and the broader changes in American politics that have carried him forward. In their own ways, the books follow the divisions in the electorate, presenting portraits that are alternately ambivalent, hostile and admiring. All present some valuable insights. But none succeeds entirely.

..."When you look around the world ... what is currently going on is that we are engaged in a posture of war against people that tend to be people of color," Hagler said. "It clearly relates to the war at home against people of color."...

Ms. Rice, in a rare public foray into domestic issues, said today in the statement that she supported the president both in his views about the need for diversity and his stand on the Michigan cases.

"I agree with the president's position, which emphasizes the need for diversity and recognizes the continued legacy of racial prejudice and the need to fight it," she said.

But in the final line of her statement she added, "I believe that while race-neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body."

The discovery of 11 empty chemical warheads by United Nations weapons inspectors has brought to the fore a simmering debate about how much evidence must be amassed before the United States uses military force to oust Saddam Hussein from power.
With the United States military machine already in motion for a possible winter war, the Bush administration has argued that the onus is on the Iraqis to comply quickly with United Nations demands that it disarm.

The administration knows that it may not find a "smoking gun" in the next few weeks that demonstrates Iraq is thwarting the will of the Security Council, so it is arguing that the warheads are part of a disturbing pattern of deceit and unwillingness to disarm.

But the timetable for United States military action is at variance with the desire of many allied nations to demonstrate to their publics that every effort will be made to resolve the dispute peacefully before resorting to force. It is also seems out of sync with the comprehensive process the weapons inspectors have in mind to determine if Iraq is, in fact, complying.

Those clashing expectations broke into the open today. No sooner did the White House declare that the discovery of the warheads was "serious and troubling" than Hans Blix, a chief United Nations weapons inspector, described it as "not something that's so important."

"What this episode demonstrates is the fundamental divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the allies as to the purpose of the U.N. inspections and what is the trigger for war," said Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution.

Twelve years after the Persian Gulf War began, some American veterans of that conflict are finding new ammunition in their fight to find out who supplied Iraq chemicals that might have made them sick.
More than 5,000 veterans are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses companies of helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein build his chemical warfare arsenal. The plaintiffs are among the tens of thousands who came down with "Gulf War Illness," a debilitating series of ailments that can include chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle joint pain, memory loss, and brain damage. ... Now, plaintiffs' attorneys have acquired, for the first time, what they believe is strong evidence of which companies supplied Iraq the chemicals that might have been used to produce mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and VX. The supplier list, shown to CNN, is included in Iraq's 1998 weapons declaration to the United Nations, parts of which were resubmitted to weapons inspectors last month. Sources tell CNN the list is an authentic document, ...
About 209,000 Gulf War veterans have filed claims with the Veterans Administration, and 161,000 of them are receiving disability payments. [read on]

Chicago's City Council voted 46-1 to oppose a pre-emptive military attack on Iraq unless the country is shown to be a real threat to the United States. The resolution makes Chicago the biggest U.S. city to speak out against war. Anti-war statements have been passed in other, smaller cities, including San Francisco; Seattle; Ithaca, New York, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Chicago, the third largest U.S. city after New York and Los Angeles, has 2.9 million people....

As a drunk is to alcohol, the Bush administration is to budget deficits.
During the 2000 campaign George W. Bush often pledged to maintain fiscal responsibility. Right up to the passage of the 2001 tax cut his people said they could cut taxes, pay for new programs like prescription drug coverage, and still pay off most of the federal government's debt.

As soon as the bill passed, those rosy budget projections fell apart. Then came Sept. 11. "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta," declared Mr. Bush, claiming, falsely, to have said during the campaign that his budget promises didn't apply in the event of recession, war or national emergency. But until this week officials insisted the deficit was temporary.

Now the budget director, Mitch Daniels, has admitted the obvious: The federal government faces the prospect of large deficits as far as the eye can see.

Economics aside, the administration's ever-changing rationale for tax cuts says a lot about its character. If the Bush team never cared about deficits, Mr. Bush's promises of fiscal responsibility were dishonest. On the other hand, if administration officials didn't decide that deficits are O.K. until that belief became convenient, that suggests that they're tough talkers who make excuses when confronted with real problems. That's a scary thought; is this the kind of administration that would, say, call North Korea names and talk about pre-emptive war, but back down and offer aid when the country actually threatens to restart its nuclear program? Nah, couldn't happen.

Two-thirds or more in the Pew poll and other recent polls say they favor military action against Iraq — but only under certain circumstances.
For example, the Pew poll suggested that support for war is strong, 76%, if United Nations inspectors find nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The support is evenly split if they find no weapons but determine Iraq has the ability to make these weapons.

The public doesn't buy the administration's argument that Iraq must prove it does not have these weapons. Almost two-thirds, 63%, said that would not be a sufficient reason for a war.

More than half, 53%, say the president has not yet explained clearly what's at stake to justify the United States using military force to end Saddam's rule, according to the poll. Some 42% say he has.

The number who say Bush has clearly explained what's at stake has eroded since his September address to the United Nations, when it was 52-37 saying he had. ...

... In his heart, too, Bush -- and many senior members of his administration -- are wary of any initiative associated with Clinton. So they are reluctant to embrace the 1994 agreement that Clinton negotiated with the North Koreans that froze a plutonium facility that North Korea reopened last month. Under the deal, known as the Agreed Framework, the United States helped provide fuel oil and build two light-water reactors in exchange for shutting down the plutonium facility. [For background on Clintonian policy for NK for incoming Bush admin, check out this blog, 1/8/03 -- may have to scroll] The North Koreans appear to be using the same playbook of escalating demands they perfected in 1993 and 1994 that led to the Agreed Framework, which is another reason Bush has resisted negotiations that would require compromise. Officially, the United States has offered only to talk about how North Korea can meet its international weapons obligations, not to enter into a round of negotiations.

"The Clinton administration was prepared to engage with a morally reprehensible government in the interests of protecting U.S. security," said Robert Einhorn, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who handled nonproliferation issues in the Clinton administration and part of the Bush administration. "Bush believes it is essentially morally wrong to engage with a regime that cannot be trusted." This has left the [Bush] administration in the strange position of dangling potential carrots while denying that those carrots are related to the current impasse. Although the administration frequently says regional powers -- South Korea, Japan, China and Russia -- are in sync with this approach, foreign diplomats say other nations have found the administration's stance frustrating.

... Under the agreement, negotiated by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), funding for committees would be apportioned to reflect the party division of the Senate, which Republicans control 51 to 49. The Republican committee chairmen would get an additional 10 percent for administrative expenses. Daschle described the agreement as a "mirror image" of the financial arrangements for the last Congress, and said he believed Republicans agreed to it to avoid further delays in Senate business. Republicans, who expressed satisfaction, said the total allocation would give them nearly 60 percent of all resources....

Felix Rohatyn, the civic-minded financier who helped guide New York City through the perilous waters of its 1970's fiscal crisis, is going to Washington next week to talk to the nation's mayors about possible solutions to the current fiscal crisis that is threatening to overwhelm budgets in states and cities across the country.... There were reports early this month that President Bush would include a small package of aid to distressed state and local governments in his most recent tax-cut package. That did not happen. As it stands, the president's tax-cut proposal would result in reduced revenues for most states, thus worsening the crisis.

Mr. Rohatyn strenuously opposes the cornerstone of Mr. Bush's tax-cut plan; the elimination of taxes on corporate dividends paid to shareholders.
"As a priority, it makes no sense to me," he said. At best, the dividend-tax cut is aimed at giving a modest boost to the stock market. But, said Mr. Rohatyn, "The stock market is down because the economy is down. So if you want to get the stock market up, get the economy up."

What would make more sense, he said, would be "some kind of tax-cut program for people who are having a difficult time now and who need some direct assistance." A temporary payroll-tax cut could be helpful, he said.

Mr. Rohatyn believes that a $75-billion-a-year program of federal assistance to state and local governments combined with a $75-billion-a-year tax cut for working people would provide a substantial boost to the economy, and over time would result in the creation of several million jobs.

The International Commission of Jurists, which represents judges and senior lawyers in 60 nations, said today that it "thoroughly and emphatically" supported the decision by the departing governor of Illinois to pardon 4 death row inmates and commute the sentences of 167 others. Other reaction around the world was almost unanimous in support of the decision by Gov. George Ryan, who declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 2002, and who said he was commuting the sentences because of the risk of erroneous verdicts."I congratulate George Ryan on his courage and his conviction," said Walter Schwimmer, secretary general of the Council of Europe, where abolition of the death penalty is a condition of membership and where the United States is an observer. "On making this decision, he proves a shared commitment and belief with the Council of Europe, that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society," Mr. Schwimmer said. "I sincerely hope that this is a step forward to the abolition of the death penalty in the whole of the United States." President Vicente Fox of Mexico telephoned Governor Ryan to "express his deep appreciation for this historic decision," according to the president's office.

...But in a sense, it's these things that often make Bush's actions frustrating, because it suggests a willingness to set aside principles for political expediency and a refusal to lead on issues that are difficult. In other words, it was easier and more expedient to evade the flag issue, and risk offending South Carolina's conservative primary voters, than take a stand. As the Bush administration gets set to announce its position in the looming Supreme Court battle over the University of Michigan's affirmative action program, the Bushies find themselves, despite their best efforts, embroiled in another round of racial politics. Indications are that the administration will come out today or Thursday in support of white students opposing the University of Michigan's affirmative action plan, even as he tries to emphasize his commitment to providing opportunity to all. The stand comes on the heels of Bush's decision to renominate Mississippian Charles Pickering to the federal appellate court just hours after the new Congress was sworn in last Tuesday. The two decisions put the administration -- that had hoped to put the Trent Lott scandal behind it -- once again squarely in the middle of the racial politics tempest. And the Pickering nomination in particular threatens to offset the more positive image the president portrayed when he strongly condemned Lott's comments about Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential bid last month.

... Whatever the particulars of Abdullah’s charter, it will effectively be stillborn unless the proper mechanisms exist to enforce it. That means curing another disease of Arab statecraft, namely the lack of independent judiciaries. A government can quite literally promulgate laws every day of the week, but they are worth less than nothing without judges who have both the official right and the practical ability to interpret them without fear of pressure or punishment. This is especially true when it comes to cases that involve the state itself: There is no other way for politicians and civil servants to be made accountable, a reality to which Arab rulers must adjust if they ever want their people to be free.

The sad tragedy is that we are spending all of this money on disease management focused on drugs and surgery, and our return on this investment is profoundly poor. More and more people do not have the energy they need to get through the day while millions of others are suffering with painful crippling diseases because they have violated basic health principles. Often, negative health and lifestyle choices are made because of a lack of knowledge, and it's my passion to increase the public's awareness of the health tragedies facing the nation. I will give you, the consumer, the tools to become a major force for good health and to alleviate disease and suffering.

But Frist’s pandering to the lobbyists of the voracious health-care industry knows no bounds. "Frist isn’t the senator from Tennessee — he’s the senator from the state of Health Care Industry Influence — he’s gotten more than $2 million from the health-care sector, giving him the dubious distinction of raising more cash from health-care interests than 98 percent of his colleagues," says Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign.

Consider the special servicing he gave to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. In another example of his "patriotism," Frist engineered the insertion into the Homeland Security bill of a provision that would protect Eli Lilly from lawsuits over Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in its vaccines. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Lilly by parents who believe Thimerosal caused autism and other neurological maladies in their kids. The Frist-authored rider shields Lilly by forcing those lawsuits into a special "vaccine court," where they can be easily scuttled, potentially saving Lilly hundreds of millions. The pharmaceutical industry was the largest single contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that Frist chaired, ladling out some $4 million — and Lilly was the single biggest contributor to the GOP from that industry, having given $1.6 million in the last election cycle, 79 percent of it to Republicans.

... Democrats said they were simply insisting on the same near-equitable split of committee financing and office space that they gave Republicans when Democrats held the same two-seat margin of control in the last Congress. "If it was good enough last year, it ought to be good enough this year," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader...."We find this all the more egregious, cutting homeland security, cutting education, while the president espouses a `Leave No Millionaire Behind Act,' its so-called economic stimulus package," Mr. Daschle said.

even some of the lobbyists you would have expected to cheer the plan now believe that it is so complex as to be unworkable.By now you've probably read a lot about the economics of the administration's plan; all the criticisms are true. The plan has nothing to do with stimulus, since less than a dime on the dollar will arrive in the next year. Its benefits are almost ludicrously tilted toward the very, very affluent. (Exercise for readers: Explain how the administration can claim that the average family receives a $1,083 tax cut, when 80 percent of families will receive less than $1,000, most less than $300.)

Paul H. O'Neill, in his first public comment since President Bush fired him last month as Treasury secretary, has criticized the president's plan to eliminate taxes on stock dividends as something "I would not have done." His remark came in an interview broadcast on Sunday by the television station KDKA in Pittsburgh. And though Mr. O'Neill tried to avoid saying anything more on the issue, his comment is consistent with reservations he expressed while still in Washington about broad tax cuts....

... What nobody disputes is that President Bush's plan would provide by far the biggest benefits to the very rich.... The centerpiece of the plan — to eliminate most taxes on stock dividends, would itself cost about $300 billion over 10 years. Since the bulk of taxable dividends are received by a small segment of wealthy families, analysts estimate that about 42 percent of the tax benefit from that move alone would flow to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The looming fight about who pays what is likely to be one of the biggest, bitterest political battles of the year. But the debate is not only about the distribution of wealth. It is also about the basic purposes of the tax system, about its role in promoting economic growth, its efficiency in bringing in revenue and its usefulness in promoting particular social goals or economic interests.
[1] Is the tax code supposed to redistribute wealth, either directly from one pocket to another or indirectly through spending on schools, health and highways?
[2] Is its main purpose to promote economic growth?
[3] Or is it simply to raise money in a way that is efficient and somehow "fair?"

...[Armstrong] Williams, a former Thurmond aide [and a ultra-conservative African American], said he doesn't want to change GOP ideology. Instead, he wants to get more blacks -- especially black candidates -- to support it.
"We have real work to do, and that work started today," Williams said. "When we finish this journey, there will be a true democracy in this country for black Americans. They will have an option not to just vote for that Democratic Party; they will have a party that wants them in the party."

... Lieberman is a decent guy, but sometimes too decent to take the necessary partisan shots. Remember his yawn-inducing performance in the debate against Dick Cheney? You don't get to be president without throwing some punches. Yet he ducked yesterday when asked how he differs from his Democratic rivals....

... There are those, of course, who will insist that the Iraqi leader belongs before an international tribunal to pay for his crimes. They will argue that sparing him that humiliating comeuppance risks setting a dangerous precedent that would encourage dictators around the world to believe that they can and will go unpunished for depredations both within and beyond their own borders.Then there are those who will rail against exile because it is being imposed under the duress of American threats to make war. They will argue that having a head of state leave his country via an ultimatum from abroad constitutes an unacceptable infringement on the very principle of national sovereignty.

Rep. Charles B. Rangel of Harlem, N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, has called for a return to a military draft. Neither President Bush nor Congress will take this unpopular step, of course, in the current run-up to the 2004 presidential election. But Congress should respond to Rangel's call by at least thinking about how our military force should be changed to meet the new and unforeseen demands of the post-9/11 world.

As Rangel rightly pointed out, who should bear the burden of defending the nation is a life-and-death question. You would never know this, though, from what senators and representatives spend most of their time talking about when they discuss national defense. Mostly, they wail about their home states not getting enough money for weapons-building factories, or about their need for more homeland security money to protect their local bridges and airports against terrorists.

His proposal is mostly symbolic, of course. I recognize a blatantly political use of the military when I see one. And usually I find it appalling, but not this time. This time, I'm with you, Mr. Rangel, because my brother serves with the Marines. He is a Cobra attack helicopter pilot currently with his Marine Expeditionary Unit somewhere in or near the Middle East. My father is a former Navy carrier pilot, as are my father-in-law and my husband.

I grew up in a Navy family and then married into one, and like many members of military families I am a careful student of history and foreign policy. I noticed a long time ago that our policymakers often seem divorced from the men and women who serve in the armed forces. I watched the fault lines widen throughout the Clinton era as the military was detailed to carry out patchwork operations in the service of a piecemeal foreign policy. I came to understand that great national risk, in its contemporary expression, is often great personal risk for a relative few. My relative few. Rangel's relative few.

A veteran of the Korean War and opponent of military action in Iraq, Rangel ...said late last month that military service should be a "shared sacrifice" asked of all able young Americans and that minorities make up a "disproportionate number" of troops..... The paper was released at an hour-long briefing by a senior defense official who appeared before reporters on condition he not be identified by name. Saying America's armed forces today are more professional and efficient because they are comprised of people who have chosen to join, the official said military leaders are "horrified by Mr. Rangel's proposal to return to the days when people were forced to serve." Under the current system, however, men are still required to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

House Republican leaders, through a series of little-noticed rule changes and key appointments, are dramatically tightening their hold on power as they prepare to push for new spending cuts, bigger tax breaks and a more ambitious social agenda.
Since padding their majority in the November elections, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) have circumvented the seniority system to reward their most loyal allies with important chairmanships. They have systematically changed internal rules to seize greater authority over rank-and-file members, and they unexpectedly scrapped the eight-year limit on Hastert's reign.

... By proposing large new tax cuts when Washington is already in deficit and facing growing costs for defense, Bush is threatening an explosive growth in the national debt. When Bush took office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Washington would eliminate the publicly held national debt by 2008 -- as long as the government fulfilled the pledge Bush and Al Gore each made in the 2000 presidential campaign to apply the surplus temporarily accumulating in Social Security toward paying down that debt.

But Bush abandoned that promise under the pressure of recession, the war on terrorism and the cost of his $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut of 2001. Even before Bush's new proposals, the CBO had estimated that Washington would need to divert more than $2 trillion from the Social Security surplus to operate the rest of government through 2012. With that money no longer available for debt reduction, CBO projected the debt would rise to $3.8 trillion by 2008.
The further tax cuts Bush proposed last week will only deepen that hole....

...With all eyes on the cat-and-mouse game between Saddam Hussein and United Nations weapons inspectors, a marked shift in the U.S. war strategy for Iraq has been taking place outside of public view....Last month, however, the Defense secretary surrendered to the traditionalists, secretly approving a blueprint for war in Iraq that has the American force relying heavily on tanks, artillery and heavy mechanized infantry.
The plan, reflected in deployment orders now cascading out of the Pentagon, does assign critical roles to air power, Special Forces and covert operators, according to Defense Department officials. They would attack the regime directly, destroy and capture weapons of mass destruction and foment rebellion.... If war comes, it will be no Afghanistan, no war of the future. After six or seven days of preparatory bombing, hundreds of tanks and a force of more than 200,000 soldiers and Marines would roll into Iraq from Kuwait.Read on

Gov. George Ryan's bold decision to grant clemency to all 167 inmates on Illinois' death row will intensify scrutiny of whether capital punishment is administered fairly in the United States. Some observers Saturday predicted an immediate backlash could solidify supporters of the death penalty, but in the long term, most expected heightened chances for reforms.

...The good news is that Saddam is no longer viewed as any kind of folk hero, and most people, it seems, would welcome his demise. The bad news is that George Bush and U.S. policy are disliked even more. What gives?... I am convinced that much of the anger over U.S. policy is really a cry of help from people who know what they have to do — to democratize, liberalize their economies — and who know that they will be lost for another 50 years if they don't, but can't do it because these ideas are promoted by a power they feel is indifferent to their deepest hurt.

I am not talking about what is right, or what is fair, or even what is rational. I am talking about what is.

One of the first things Republicans did in 1995 after they took control of the House was to adopt tighter ethics rules for House members, in response to what they saw as decades of Democratic arrogance and abuse.

On Tuesday, after the new House was sworn in, the Republicans passed their first piece of business for the 108th Congress: House rules that overturned some of their old reforms.

"It would be totally contrary to history to have a speculative bubble, and turn around and reward the people who benefited the most," said Kevin Phillips, whose "Wealth and Democracy" criticized the rise of inequality. "The last time this happened, the wealthy got killed by the government, with the New Deal."

Experts said Mr. Ryan's action would reverberate nationally, especially since it comes after an Illinois commission conducted the most extensive study of capital punishment since the penalty was re-established in most states in the mid-1970's. But Governor Ryan was in an unusual position to act because his political career has been extinguished by a federal investigation showing that, while he was the state's secretary of state, government employees were deployed illegally on campaigns and contracts were traded for contributions.

The governor's decision today "says you have to start all over again if you want the death penalty," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, comparing it to the 1972 Supreme Court decision. "I don't know how many times we're going to go through a revolution like this before we conclude that there's no way for humans to make these irrevocable and infallible judgments." (See also this DPIC page.)

President George W Bush has either withdrawn from or expressed his opposition to implementing a number of key global arms control agreements.
These include:

* the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty;
* the Biological Weapons Convention;
* the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
* and the process of strategic arms reductions with Russia. ...

Having been persuaded to resume the diplomatic process, Mr Bush decided in January 2002 to include North Korea in the "axis of evil", a decision that that country interpreted as tantamount to a declaration of war.

These appealing images leave critics of the administration's health proposals in a quandary. For all the strengths Dr. Frist brings to the table because of his background, they say, he and the administration have embraced an approach to Medicare that many Democrats and others say simply will not work. But separating a popular messenger from what they consider a deeply flawed message is not easy.

"I've been really impressed by his doctoring ability, his compassion and his charitable actions," said Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis at Consumers Union. "But in the past he's aligned himself with market-oriented solutions. His perspective is one of trust in the marketplace, and in this particular place we don't think the market works too well."