Boyd

I've moved on from it and I wish the media would," McGwire said. "I've made my statement in Washington, that's my statement, and when I left Washington that's the last time I was ever going to talk about it, and that's really about it."

McGwire told Congress he'd be interested in speaking out against steroid abuse. Now he said he isn't interested in discussing the steroids issue anymore.

"That statement comes from the heart and that's the way it is," McGwire said. "When I left there, I'm never going to talk about it again.

When I read this article I was slammed, shocked even yet. There is no denying that in almost 150 years since the Civil War, racism in this country still prevails. This man had a radio show and blatantly stated that to decrease crime in this country, the best course of action is the kill every Black person before they are even born.

Not that I am straightforward anti-abortion. But this man has called for the death, even purification, of a whole race in this country. This man is no better than Adolf Hitler, himself.

The cost of attending a public four-year institution rose by 22 percent between 2001-2 and 2004-5 and tuition and fees for in-state students at the institutions grew by 33 percent, more than for any other sector of higher education, according to a U.S. Education Department report issued Thursday.

The question now, however, concerns where the Republican party should go from here with respect to the matter of black people. First,we must abandon fruitless "outreach" efforts to "the black community," and treat black people as we would any other group of people. The message: We want you to join us in this pursuit of a more perfect union. But, we have no interest in you based on your "race" or skin color. Our interest is based on values that we hope you will share.

"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." - Thucydides

The continued growth in manufacturing output shows that the fall in jobs has not been caused by mass substitution of Chinese goods for locally made ones. It has happened because rich-world companies have replaced workers with new technology to boost productivity and shifted production from labour-intensive products such as textiles to higher-tech, higher value-added, sectors such as pharmaceuticals. Within firms, low-skilled jobs have moved offshore. Higher-value R&D, design and marketing have stayed at home.

All that is good. Faster productivity growth means higher average incomes. Low rates of unemployment in the countries which have shifted furthest away from manufacturing suggest that most laid-off workers have found new jobs. And consumers have benefited from cheap Chinese imports.

Yet there is a residual belief that making things you can drop on your toe is superior to working in accounting or hairdressing. Manufacturing jobs, it is often said, are better than the Mcjobs typical in the service sector. Yet working conditions in services are often pleasanter and safer than on an assembly line, and average wages in the fastest-growing sectors, such as finance, professional and business services, education and health, are higher than in manufacturing.

A second worry is that services are harder to export, so if developed economies make fewer goods, how will they pay for imports? But rich countries already increasingly pay their way in the world by exporting services. America has a huge trade deficit not because it is not exporting enough, but because American consumers are spending too much.

The charge of white racism remains, as it has been for the past 40 years, a sword hanging over our society, paralyzing rational discourse and obstructing sensible action in areas ranging from crime prevention to education to anti-terrorism measures to immigration control.

Although this is not a new problem, it is becoming ever more urgent. We are faced with an engineering juggernaut emanating from India and China, with more than 10 Asian engineers graduating for every one in the United States. Educated at great institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology or Tshingua University, these engineers are every bit as technically competent as their American counterparts.

They finally had something in which they could appear quasi heroic, and they tried very hard to appear quasi heroic, and in so doing they botched the story. And I just have to object to my fellow guest here, it wasn't that they missed things; there were sins of omission, it's that they reported panic inducing, fear inducing, hysteria inducing mass sort of casualty events, looting, pillaging, murder sprees, sort of the most squalid journalism you could imagine, and I have to ask them and ask the media generally, don't we have to go back and find out how to guard against this sort of thing, because we've had mass disasters in the past, we're going to have them in the future — if media becomes addicted it to — they told me it was so I'll put it out there — that's terrible for democracy to have a media that is willing to suspend their disbelief and report urban myth.

And I think one other thing, Jeff, people have to ask: Why was the media so eager and willing to circulate these stories? Is it because we were dealing with the urban under class, largely black, and largely a community with which the elite media does not often deal? And as a result they were willing to believe stories about this community that they might not have given any credence to in a different situation.

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes are apparently out to rehabilitate themselves through the assertion of several themes related to Rathergate. In his interview with Marvin Kalb, Rather reiterates several of the themes: the Bush National Guard story was accurate, there is something sinister about the exposure of the documents as fradulent, and the documents were not proved to be fraudulent in the Thornburgh-Boccardi report or elsewhere.

Something, every week reminds me that here in our little corner of the world we still see, talk and relate to one another in ways that are conspicuously absent nearly everywhere else I travel.

General Electric Co. plans to buy a 7 percent stake in China's Shenzhen Development Bank in the latest foreign strategic investment in China's increasingly competitive banking market, reports said Thursday.

Through the purchase, valued at about $100 million, GE Consumer Finance hopes to gain entry into China's developing personal loan market, the reports said.

The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection.

One of the reasons that the GOP has been allowed to get away with their seeming drift away from the core principles of their base has been because they’re the only game in town. The GOP can rightfully say “Hey, you think we spend to much and allow too many illegals into the country? Fine. But what’s your option, the Democrats? They’re solution is to spend even more money and make it even easier for more illegals to come into the country”.

And you know what? They’re right. The Democrat party has drifted so far to the left that they cannot be considered a serious alternative. That is a bad thing.

We have said on numerous occasions that even though we delight in bashing Democrats, the country works best when two viable — and sane — parties are compete in the marketplace of ideas. While many scoffed at the thought, especially coming from us, we were, and remain, totally serious.

"My father was playing in a fashion I hadn't heard him play, and I had played with him when I was 20. This was like the legend of who he was back then. And when Coltrane started to play ... whoa, this is that band I've always heard about, one of the baddest in the world."

While Coltrane is clearly in top form on the recording, unleashing sizzling lines that presage his improvisational breakthroughs in the following years, it is Monk who captivates with his rich sound and free-wheeling thoughts.

A month later, a review of the available evidence now shows that some, though not all, of the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of the public.

Beyond doubt, the sense of menace had been ignited by genuine disorder and violence that week. Looting began at the moment the storm passed over New Orleans, and it ranged from base thievery to foraging for the necessities of life.

Everything that American media could throw at a story, it threw at New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. No expense was spared. All hands were on deck. And yet not one news organization produced anything like complete coverage of the events unfolding inside the city's convention center or the Superdome. Horrific stories of murders and rapes spread like wildfire, reports of little girls with their throats slashed stunned Americans, and hysteria gripped many in the MSM. Weeks later the Los Angeles Times and others began to examine the collapse of the media's own levees that traditionally hold back rumor and urban myth.

Given this failure to capture the true story in New Orleans even with all of the combined resources of all the MSM working around the clock, why would anyone believe that American media is accurately reporting on the events in Iraq from the Green Zone, in the course of a bloody insurgency fought in a language they don't understand? If the combined forces of old media couldn't get one accurate story out of the convention center, why for a moment believe it can get a story out of Mosul or Najaf?

In 2004, Bush backed liberal Republican Arlen Specter over conservative Pat Toomey in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania. Bush still lost Pennsylvania and, worst of all, Specter won. So that worked out well.

Also this year, Bush is backing developmentally-disabled Lincoln Chafee over the only Republican in the race, Stephen Laffey, Harvard MBA and mayor of Cranston, RI. Chafee opposes Bush on taxes, Iraq, abortion and gay marriage. This man is literally too stupid to know he's a Democrat. If Chafee hadn't inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, he would be living in a shack tending weeds. In the last election, Chafee famously refused to vote for Bush, instead writing in Bush's father.

The secret to Reagan's greatness was he didn't need a bunch of high-priced Bob Shrums to tell him what Americans thought. He knew because of his work with General Electric, touring the country and meeting real Americans. Two months a year for eight years, Reagan would give up to 25 speeches a day at G.E. plants — a "marination in middle America," as one G.E. man put it. Reagan himself said, "I always thought Hollywood had the wrong idea of the average American, and the G.E. tours proved I was right."

Because of these tours, Reagan knew — as he calmly told fretful advisers after the Grenada invasion — "You can always trust Americans." The G.E. tours completely immunized Reagan from the counsel of people like Karl Rove, who think the average American is a big-business man who just wants his taxes cut and doesn't care about honor, country, marriage or the unborn.

Reagan knew that this a great country. If only today's Republicans would believe it.

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The sex drive of women plummets sharply as they juggle the increasing demands of partners, children and careers, researchers said on Thursday.

I liked your point about New Media. Everyone keeps talking about the Blog Revolution, but what does that even mean? If you were in film school and wanted to make movies for a living, would you create a movie from scratch, or would you just make documentaries about other filmmakers and how much they stunk? You'd make the movie from scratch, right? Well, what's the point of writing about people who write about sports/movies/politics/music if you're not backing up your words with your own columns or features? How do you have credibility then? I could write for a living, I just choose to rip everyone else. What? How does that make sense? What's the ultimate goal there? Why not come up with your own material, angles and thoughts? Wouldn't that be more rewarding? How do you get better? That's what I don't understand.

The indictment charges that DeLay, 58, conspired to have corporate contributions funneled through his political action committee to help Republican state candidates. The $155,000 in fnds from companies, including Sears Roebuck, was allegedly handed over from the PAC in a $190,000 check to the Republican National Committee, which was also given a list of Texas state House candidates and the sums they were to receive.

The indictment included a copy of the check.

"The defendants entered into an agreement with each other or with TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee) to knowingly make a political contribution in violation of the Texas election code," says the four-page indictment. "The contribution was made directly to the Republican National Committee within 60 days of a general election."

Last month, the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature, deliberated but was divided on a draft amendment to the Law on Personal Income Tax, which proposed raising the threshold at which income tax is levied from 800 yuan (US$99) to 1,500 yuan (US$185) per month.

A public hearing was then called to solicit opinion from various circles.

Yesterday, 17 of the 20 speakers - including civil servants, academics and migrant workers - chosen from nearly 5,000 applicants, favoured raising the starting line to 1,500 yuan or higher, with some suggesting 3,000 yuan (US$370).

The left's main target is the jurist liberals know is the president's ultimate Katrina exit strategy, Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Although at her hearing she was a model of grace and intellect and she wrote more majority opinions than any of her colleagues on the California Supreme Court, liberals paint Brown as "unrelenting" and a "lightning rod." Her critics say that she has not been on the federal appellate court very long, even though she has now been on as long as David Souter had been when he was elevated, and she would have had more than two years' experience had Democrats not filibustered her nomination.

All of the major newspapers contributed to the hysterical environment, passing on one unconfirmed rumor after another. And, to be fair, almost everyone else in one way or another contributed to the climate as well. The blogosphere bought the hyperventilation hook, line, and sinker. The low point was almost certainly when Randall Robinson ominously disclosed on the Huffington Post that African-Americans in New Orleans had resorted to eating the flesh of corpses to stay alive. This was just days into the flood (it took the stranded Donner party weeks to resort to eating the dead). Yet this supposedly fact-checked blog found it credible that African Americans would eat the bloated carcasses floating in New Orleans' floodwaters almost the second they ran out of groceries.

Race is obviously part of the equation, too. "If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle-class white people," Times Picayune editor Jim Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor mongering." As with the cannibalism canard, there seemed to be an eagerness on the part of many — on the Right and Left — to believe the very worst stories possible about poor African Americans.

Dear Howard Coble,

Hopefully you have heard of the Porkbusters campaign. If not, here's the site.

What locally directed federal spending do you propose cutting to pay for the costs of hurricane relief?

I look forward to your reply.

David Boyd

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 27 - The audience - 500 women covered in black at a Saudi university - seemed an ideal place for Karen P. Hughes, a senior Bush administration official charged with spreading the American message in the Muslim world, to make her pitch.

Karen P. Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, was hired to publicize American ideals in the Muslim world.
But the response on Tuesday was not what she and her aides expected. When Ms. Hughes expressed the hope here that Saudi women would be able to drive and "fully participate in society" much as they do in her country, many challenged her.

"The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn't happy," one audience member said. "Well, we're all pretty happy." The room, full of students, faculty members and some professionals, resounded with applause.

The administration's efforts to publicize American ideals in the Muslim world have often run into such resistance. For that reason, Ms. Hughes, who is considered one of the administration's most scripted and careful members, was hired specifically for the task.

Many in this region say they resent the American assumption that, given the chance, everyone would live like Americans.

The group of women, picked by the university, represented the privileged elite of this Red Sea coastal city, known as one of the more liberal areas in the country. And while they were certainly friendly toward Ms. Hughes, half a dozen who spoke up took issue with what she said.

Ms. Hughes, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, is on her first trip to the Middle East. She seemed clearly taken aback as the women told her that just because they were not allowed to vote or drive that did not mean they were treated unfairly or imprisoned in their own homes.

"We're not in any way barred from talking to the other sex," said Dr. Nada Jambi, a public health professor. "It's not an absolute wall."

Kausfiles comtinues to ridicule the New York Times' New Coke strategy of charging a high price for columns very few people will pay for. The good news is that this fiasco will certainly discourage other papers from experimenting with pay-for-view news. If you aren't the Wall Street Journal, it will be difficult to charge for an internet subscription unless (1) it is for the whole paper and (2)there's a lot of web-only content. This is an obvious rule, but one which the aristocrats couldn't figure out. Reason: They believe we must read them.

Nobody is irreplaceable. Especially not Dowd and Krugman.

McCain later told reporters that he had been misled into believing that her delegation included some of his Arizona constituents. Otherwise, McCain claims he wouldn't have met with her at all.

Does anyone believe that? McCain's entire career shows him as a rank opportunist, and with his recent moves to establish himself for a run at the 2008 Presidential nomination, he figured he could score a twofer: he could embarrass George Bush and make himself a media darling by getting some friendly face time with Sheehan. Instead, she winds up, predictably, talking about him in shrill tones while he mumbles some excuse about thinking that he would meet an Arizona representative among her staff. In the end, he proved Bush's wisdom in declining a second meeting with the poster woman for the radical Left.

The big lie of the Hurricane Katrina story is that it reveals deep and hateful racism in America, that blacks were treated worse than other people because they were black, and that this shows the hypocrisy of this supposedly egalitarian nation.

Here's the truth. Many black people were harmed by Katrina because of where they lived relative to the path of the hurricane and the location of their neighborhoods below sea level and their refusal or inability to obey the mandatory evacuation orders for New Orleans. This is not racism. This is a matter of geography, weather patterns, and poverty or confusion. It has nothing to do with purposeful mistreatment of blacks by whites. Poverty and confusion, certainly big factors here, were in no sense caused by white mistreatment of blacks unless it was white mistreatment of blacks that ended many decades ago.

As soon as the rescue effort started -- and although it was tardy, it was just as tardy for whites and Hispanics as it was for blacks -- the main story was whites by the thousands hurrying to New Orleans to rescue blacks from rooftops, from evacuation centers, from hospitals, from old folks' homes. The rescue effort was totally and utterly colorblind. The idea that blacks in New Orleans were left to suffer while whites in Mississippi or Alabama were treated royally is simply fantasy. Whites suffered too, and yes, they were often helped by blacks.

For four out of ten Americans today, their physical and spiritual origins have nothing to do with Europe — they are offspring of Asia, Latin America, or Africa. Demographic and immigration realities mean that our ostensible blood link with Europe will continue to thin. Like it or not, more Americans are coming to know and care less about Europe and more about China, Korea, Mexico, India, and the Philippines. The teaching of French, German, and Italian is sliding, while Spanish and Chinese rise.

Religious belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses.

Nearby, about 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans Convention Center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

"It doesn't take anything to start a rumor around here," Louisiana National Guard 2nd Lt. Lance Cagnolatti said at the height of the Superdome relief effort. "There's 20,000 people in here. Think when you were in high school. You whisper something in someone's ear. By the end of the day, everyone in school knows the rumor — and the rumor isn't the same thing it was when you started it."

Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.

Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.

Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."

The New York Times repeated some of the reports of violence and unrest, but the newspaper usually was more careful to note that the information could not be verified.

The tabloid Ottawa Sun reported unverified accounts of "a man seeking help gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and "a young man run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer."

London's Evening Standard invoked the future-world fantasy film "Mad Max" to describe the scene and threw in a "Lord of the Flies" allusion for good measure.

Televised images and photographs affirmed the widespread devastation in one of America's most celebrated cities.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.

"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.

Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.

The third possibility is that men aren't so much underrepresented in college as women are overrepresented. This is plausible. There probably are too many people going to college in general, and it may be that men — more likely to choose, or at least consider, high-paying but unfeminine alternatives like plumbing, or other, more "masculine" alternatives like military service — are less likely to wind up in college as an unthinking extension of high school. If this explanation is true, we can expect to hear little about it from university administrations, who have fully absorbed the marketer's ethos and have little interest in suggesting that college isn't for everyone.

More importantly, we have lost sight of what university presidents are supposed to be. Their first allegiance ought to be to honesty and truth, not campus orthodoxy masquerading as intellectual bravery amid a supposedly reactionary society. In a world of intellectual integrity, Robert Birgeneau would ask, "Why are Asians excelling, and what can Berkeley do to encourage emulation of their success by other ethnic groups?" Denice Denton might wonder whether open hiring, monitored by affirmative action officers, applies to university staff or only those who are not associates of the president. President Hoffman would decry Ward Churchill's crass behavior and order a complete review of affirmative action and the politicized nature of hiring, retention, and tenure practices at Colorado. And Larry Summers? In the old world of the campus, he would defend free inquiry and expression, and remind faculty that all questions are up for discussion at Harvard. And if self-appointed censors wished to fire him for that, then he would dare them to go ahead and try.

The signs of erosion on our campuses are undeniable, whether we examine declining test scores, spiraling costs, or college graduates' ignorance of basic facts and ideas. In response, our academic leadership is not talking about a more competitive curriculum, higher standards of academic accomplishment, or the critical need freely to debate important issues. Instead, it remains obsessed with a racial, ideological, and sexual spoils system called "diversity." Even as the airline industry was deregulated in the 1970s, and Wall Street now has come under long-overdue scrutiny, it is time for Americans, if we are to ensure our privileged future, to re-examine our era's politicized university.

Bush, however, is blessed with circumstances more forgiving than Reagan was. Most obviously, Republicans today control the Senate, which they didn’t then. The only way for Democrats now to block a nomination is by using the filibuster, though that might induce a countermeasure: the dreaded nuclear option, ending the use of filibusters for judicial nominees, that was debated and shelved this past spring. Indeed, one scare scenario currently making the Democratic rounds is that the White House might pursue what’s being referred to as the “sacrificial-lamb strategy”: Nominate one of the wingnuts’ favorites, such as appeals-court justices Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown, precisely to create a chain reaction that would lead to going nuclear. If the nominee got through, great. But if not, no big deal. The White House would then send up another far-rightist, on the assumption that Democrats would be unable to muster the energy or discipline to defeat two consecutive appointments.

So McCain is in a different game from other potential candidates. They need money, media attention, and insider buzz. McCain needs the right to stop loathing him, and he seems to realize it.

When McCain went out on the campaign trail with Bush — whom he held in contempt for years after 2000 — and gave him bearhugs, it was clear that the senator’s presidential ambitions hadn’t died. It is hard to believe that those hugs were heart-felt. Indeed, McCain’s campaign will strain his capacities for insincerity. If a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, a second McCain presidential campaign, to be successful, will have to be the triumph of experience over the candidate’s own predilections.

The TV Watch column on Sept. 5 discussed broadcast journalists' undisguised outrage at the failings of Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. It said reporters had helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around, and added, "Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."

The editors understood the "nudge" comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.

Numerous readers, however - now including Byron Calame, the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast.

Our discussion last week on Democrats who wanted John Roberts to share his feelings prompted our friends at the Media Research Center to e-mail us about MRC's 1993 award for "Dumbest Question of the Year." It came in an exchange between NPR's Nina Totenberg and Justice Harry Blackmun on "Nightline." Totenberg was asking Blackmun about death-penalty cases:

Totenberg: Have you ever cried over these cases?

Blackmun: Have I ever what?

Totenberg: Have you ever cried over them?

Blackmun: No.

U.S. Special Forces killed Al Qaeda's No. 2 terror mastermind in Iraq, Defense Department officials said.

FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam, who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad early Monday morning Iraq time. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted terrorist.

Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offered, and not unsullied maidens or houris.

Neither Bush nor congressional leaders will tolerate tampering with the drug subsidy, the president's least popular initiative among conservatives. While the White House would be happy to see some highway pork eliminated, the House leaders absolutely refused. At stake here is a basic disagreement over the philosophy of government within the Republican Party as it nears the end of its 11th year controlling the House of Representatives.

Hastert believes it is not just the privilege but the duty of a House member to deliver federal projects to his constituents. Many younger conservatives could not disagree more, but most -- like Pence -- are loyal Republicans who are loath to criticize their leaders. An exception on the RSC to such reticence is 42-year-old Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who like Pence ran a conservative think tank before entering Congress.

Self-limited to three terms ending next year, Flake has acted as though there is no tomorrow from his first day in the House in January 2001. He, along with Pence, was one of only 25 Republicans to vote against the drug subsidy in 2003. Flake believes big government is addictive. "The leadership hooks the new members when they come into Congress," Flake told me, "and they stay hooked."

Bush, asked about his next nominee, said "I will pick a person who can do the job. But I am mindful that diversity is one of the strengths of the country." The president is under pressure from many quarters _ including his wife _ to pick a woman or a minority for the seat of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring.

According to conservative boilerplate, a judge's task is to apply, narrowly, the written law and resist temptation to become a policymaker. Brown's understanding is more expansive. Although she regularly insists that courts are not, indeed, to behave like legislatures, she rejects any notion of the judge as a robotic strict constructionist. In her jurisprudence, courts should function, first and last, as defenders of freedom.

US and British occupation of Iraq is regarded as the re-emergence of the old colonialist practices of the western empires in some quarters. The real ambitions underlying the brutal onslaught are still highly questionable - and then there are the blatant lies over weapons of mass destruction originally used to justify the war. There were no great victory marches by the occupiers, nor were they thrown garlands of flowers and greeted in triumph. More US soldiers have died in Iraq since George Bush declared an end to the war on 1 May 2003 prompting the question: Will Iraq turn into a new Vietnam eventually bringing the US to its senses ... or perhaps to its knees?

Iraq's history, and along with it that of the Arab Muslim world, speaks of several similar encounters. In the past, enemies attacked from East and West before they were swallowed by the moving sands of the region, or forced to retreat, leaving behind a phoenix-like people who adore life and still accept to die for their freedom.

The escalating Iraqi resistance seems to be setting the stage for another act which might usher in a new Arab World or set the clock ticking for the end of yet another empire.

Avondet is the local representative for Passion Parties, a large and growing company that sells adult-oriented products to women via small parties.

Chalk up the company's success — revenues have grown by 40 to 50 percent annually for the past four years — to a society that's increasingly comfortable with, and bombarded by, sexuality.

"We see it on TV and everywhere a lot more than ever," says 39-year-old Mary Sullivan, who recently gathered with five co-workers for a Passion Party in Greensboro.

"You couldn't even see (I Dream of) Jeannie's belly button when I was a kid."

Blink all you want. It won't change the fact that Avondet is passing out packets of Pure Satisfaction Uni-Sex Enhancement Gel to party guests.

"This is what enhances your relationship and wakes up all those little nerve endings," she tells them. "You can go to the bathroom and try some to see how you like it. Your homework is to go home and call me, and tell me how it went."

There is a narrow parking lot in Cunningham Park in Queens surrounded by playing fields for adult softball and youth soccer and baseball. At one end of the lot, retirees arrive to practice their golf and mothers in minivans gather to wait for their Little Leaguers.

The other end is popular with another set with a much lower profile in this suburban setting: gay men cruising for sex. Their playing field is the parking lot itself and the goal is a sexual encounter, usually quick and anonymous.

No, the reason the Times found this story so worthy of the public’s attention was certainly the claim made by the older gay regulars that the “vast majority” of cruisers are family men drawn to the parking lot’s blandishments. One “longtime parking lot user” tells Kilgannon: “I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve had here who were wearing wedding bands, with baby seats in the car and all kinds of kids’ toys in the floor.”

This makes the parking lot even more of a “paradise” for the Times’s anti-bourgeois staff: it allows them to throw mud for the ten-millionth time on the Leave-it-to-Beaver “normalcy” (scare quotes courtesy of Timesian world-view) of the white-bread suburbs. One would have thought that the Times’s own story this summer about the new “multicultural” suburbs would have finally provided these long-suffering neighborhoods a respite from elite scorn. Alas, it was not to be. Undoubtedly chagrined by the findings in the latest nationwide sex survey that only 2 percent of men self-identify as homosexual, rather than the 10 percent trumpeted by gay activists, the Times has found a rebuttal: self-declaring heterosexual married fathers with a “suburban . . . house, a mortgage, a wife and children” perform gay sex acts with strangers in the privacy of their SUVs.