Robert Byrd to President Bush: We Can Impeach You

In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, former Ku Klux Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd, pledged to put President Bush on trial in the Senate if the House impeaches him.

Addressing the president in absentia, Sen. Byrd began by warning that Congress retains all its original powers under the Constitution.

"You better read that again in the Constitution," Byrd said, declaring that the Senate's powers include "serving as a court of impeachment.

"You better believe it, Mr. President," Byrd continued. "The Senate can send you home. You better believe that."

The ex-Klansman then added: "If the House impeaches you, the Senate will try you. The Senate, don't forget it, serves as a court of impeachment and has an equal say with the House on legislation."

Over at Democrats.com, where a transcript of Byrd's remarks turned up, the outburst was greeted enthusiastically.

Reacting to the West Virginia Democrat's impeachment threat, one poster declared, "Man, I like the sound of that . . . you've got to like whatever gumption some of these guys found while they were on their congressional break."

Howard Stern Shocks NPR, Christian Radio Listeners

Some commuters hoping to ease into their day with National Public Radio or Christian broadcasts are hearing shock jock Howard Stern instead.

Their favorite stations aren't broadcasting Stern's show, which has moved to satellite radio provider Sirius. Instead, poorly installed or defective satellite radio units, which act as mini-FM transmitters, are being blamed.

"Usually they're upset, because they don't know what's going on. This isn't what they tuned in to (hear)," Charles W. Loughery, president of the Word FM Radio Network, a group of contemporary Christian stations in eastern Pennsylvania, told The (Baltimore) Sun.

Some of the units use FM signals to broadcast the satellite signal to the car's audio system, using frequencies low on the FM band such as 88.1, often reserved for noncommercial, religious or educational stations. The signal from the satellite system can sometimes override broadcasts from those stations for listeners in nearby cars.

Anthony Brandon, president and general manager at 88.1 WYPR, a National Public Radio affiliate in Baltimore, said he has sent 60 complaint letters to the Federal Communications Commission, which says it is investigating.

Neil Hever, program director for 88.1 WDIY, an NPR affiliate in Bethlehem, Pa., said he has forwarded 38 letters to the FCC.

"Back in December, a gentleman called from Warren County, N.J.," Hever said. "He said, 'I'm not going to turn you in, but I take offense to the rap music you're playing.' We said, "We don't program gangsta rap."'

"We're upset because we know it's aggravating our listeners, and we know (interference with a licensed broadcaster) is against the law."

Ken Starr to Challenge Sarbanes-Oxley

A constitutional challenge by conservatives to the law that reshaped corporate governance after a wave of business scandals likely will end up before the Supreme Court, attorney Kenneth Starr says.

The legal action that Starr is mounting against the Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law is one of a trio of assaults targeting it, as small companies push for regulatory exemptions and some lawmakers prepare legislation to change it. With memories fading of the corporate fiascos of 2002 that began with Enron Corp.'s collapse, opponents of the law and its mandates on public companies and the accounting industry are banking on a changing political climate.

Starr, the former special prosecutor who led the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater investigations of President Clinton, is one of the attorneys bringing the federal court case on behalf of a pro-business conservative group, the Free Enterprise Fund. They are challenging the board established by the 2002 law to oversee the accounting industry, arguing that it violates the Constitution's mandated separation of powers among the three branches of government.

"This constitutes an excessive delegation of power by the executive branch," Starr said in a telephone interview Thursday.

The five-member Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, endowed by the law with subpoena power and the authority to discipline accountants, "is a board that exercises real power in the marketplace."

"This is a cop on the beat," said Starr.

Given the nature of the issues raised in the case, he said, "It is quite likely that the Supreme Court would be interested in this case eventually."

Christi Harlan, a spokeswoman for the oversight board, said Friday, "We're going to vigorously defend our powers."

The board's attorneys will make the case in writing by May 15, as requested by the judge, why the Free Enterprise Fund's suit should be dismissed, she said. Oral argument before U.S. District Judge James Robertson is set for June 29.

Business interests, meanwhile, especially smaller public companies, have been complaining vocally about the costs of complying with a key part of the Sarbanes-Oxley law: the requirement to file reports on the strength of their internal financial controls and fix any problems. They want the Securities and Exchange Commission to give smaller companies an exemption.

An advisory committee appointed by the SEC formally proposed this week that the agency exempt smaller companies from the requirement - a move that would affect about 70 percent of all public companies in the United States.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, in appearances before Congress this week, reaffirmed his position that the goal should be to make the internal-controls requirement work so that it can apply to companies of all sizes.

"There ought to be a way to make this work," Cox said in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.

A few lawmakers are drafting legislation that would exempt companies with a market value of less than $700 million from complying with the requirement.

Because of the compliance burden, "We are now busy outsourcing America's lead in world capital formation," Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., a lead author of the proposal, said Thursday. "New entrepreneurs are no longer considering the United States of America as a friendly place to raise capital."

Even the House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, lists, as a point in the Democrats' legislative plan, requiring "specifically-tailored guidelines" for small companies "to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley requirements are not overly burdensome."

Prospects for such legislation are unclear, however.

Starr, who now is the dean of Pepperdine University's law school in California, is litigating the case with Viet Dinh, a former assistant attorney general in the Justice Department in Bush's first term, and Michael Carvin, a private attorney who was a member of the Bush legal team during the presidential vote recount in 2000.

They are arguing that the makeup of the accounting oversight board violates the separation of powers doctrine because its members aren't appointed by the president and cannot be removed by him, and Congress cannot control its budget. The chairman of the oversight board and the other four directors are appointed by the SEC, which is an independent federal agency; the accounting board is funded by fees on publicly traded companies according to their size.

The Sarbanes-Oxley law - which, among other things, mandated greater financial disclosures and increased the criminal penalties for securities fraud - could be invalidated if any of its sections, such as that related to the accounting board, is found unconstitutional. Opponents want it sent back to Congress for a revision.

Move Toward Web Site Anonymity

The organization that runs the Internet is considering a rule change that would prevent corporate and government investigators from finding the owners of fraudulent Web sites.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) now requires that anyone who owns a Web site must register, on a database called "Whois,” the name, address and phone number of a contact person able to resolve both technical problems with a site and administrative issues.

ICANN is a nongovernmental organization based in Marina del Rey, Calif.

Earlier this month, an ICANN committee heeded the call from privacy advocates and voted to restrict its listings solely to a contact who can resolve technical "configuration” problems, the Wall Street Journal reports. The full ICANN board is expected to approve the change.

"That means a Web-hosting company could be listed without any link to the person who controls what appears on the site,” according to the Journal.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, supports the move, saying bloggers and others who operate their own sites won’t have to fear stalkers or lawsuit threats.

But law-enforcement agencies around the world and companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Walt Disney Co. oppose the plan, claiming they need ready access to the information now in Whois to combat financial fraud and trademark violation.

For example, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the American Red Cross used Whois to shut down dozens of unauthorized Web sites that were soliciting money under the Red Cross logo.

The U.S. government has reportedly indicated it wants more disclosure rather than less.

But according to the Journal, Rotenberg says the government is in a "delicate political position” because it wants ICANN to retain control of the Internet rather than the United Nations, as some countries have proposed. So it is crucial for ICANN to function as an independent body – even if it sometimes goes against U.S. policy.

Schwarzenegger Cautious on Illegals

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed a federal plan to build a border fence between San Diego and Tijuana. This week, he said walling off hundreds of miles of the California-Mexico border is a strategy from the Stone Age.

It is not the only example of his complex - and sometimes shifting - views on illegal immigration, an issue that has become especially volatile in recent weeks with mass protests around the country by immigrants.

Schwarzenegger's complicated stand reflects both California's immigration politics and his own political vulnerability, as he seeks a second term with his approval ratings in the cellar.

Where California's governor stands on immigration is closely watched, both because the Austrian-born movie star is the best-known immigrant in U.S. politics, and because California has more illegal immigrants than any other state - an estimated 2.4 million, more than the entire population of Nebraska.

In the 1990s, Schwarzenegger supported a ballot measure to deny illegal immigrants many basic services, including public schooling and non-emergency health care. Today, Schwarzenegger says the fight over illegal immigration is at the borders, "not in our schools and not in our hospitals."

Recently he stressed that the economy needs "a free flow of people" to thrive; he also embraces the Minuteman border-patrol movement, which warns of a nation "plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens."

The governor's "schizophrenic view" mirrors divisions among the voters and within Schwarzenegger's own party, said independent pollster Mark DiCamillo.

As a GOP candidate in a state where only about one in three voters is registered Republican, Schwarzenegger needs to lure Hispanics, a traditionally Democratic-leaning group and California's fastest-growing voting bloc.

But he also must take into account the state's business interests, particularly the multibillion-dollar agriculture machine - a powerful political force that relies on a steady supply of low-priced immigrant labor.

In addition, he has to consider GOP conservatives who want a border clampdown.

"There's a great deal of frustration in the Republican ranks right now about the fact that the Republican leadership - whether Arnold Schwarzenegger or George Bush - is not making it a priority to close the border to illegal immigration," said GOP consultant Karen Hanretty, a former chief spokeswoman for the California Republican Party.

Shortly after taking office in 2003, Schwarzegger repealed legislation enacted under his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, that would give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

The governor, himself a naturalized U.S. citizen, has said he favors a temporary worker program, but has said little about how such a plan should work. He does not support blanket amnesty, and has said he thinks it is impractical to consider deporting millions of illegal immigrants.

While the governors of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have shifted more money, equipment or personnel to help the federal government secure the border and contend with illegal immigrants, Schwarzenegger has asked Washington for help but has not marshaled substantial state resources at the border.

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson said the governor has laid out a consistent proposal on immigration, but stressed that ultimately it is Congress' job to work out the details. She said the governor considers fences of use in some instances, coupled with increased patrols and surveillance.

The governor is "doing everything he can to pressure the federal government to provide a comprehensive solution," she said.

One statewide survey Thursday ranked immigration as the most important issue in the state, overshadowing even education. But a survey released the same day by the Public Policy Institute of California found that only two of 10 Hispanics approve of the governor's leadership.

This week, Schwarzenegger took steps to make an impression with the Hispanic community. On Monday, he made a point of saying how troubled he was by anti-Hispanic threats against Bustamante and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He has also endorsed the mayor's plan to take control of city schools, an issue that has strong appeal in Hispanic communities.

His campaign has also recently hired a media representative who speaks Spanish.

And yet his caution was evident in an appearance just days after a half-million people jammed Los Angeles streets to protest a threatened federal crackdown on illegal immigrants. Schwarzenegger met dozens of Hispanic business leaders near Los Angeles and talked at length about the economy and small businesses, but he didn't say a word about the protest.

Kerry's Tire-Slashers Sentenced

A congresswoman's son and three Democratic campaign workers were sentenced Wednesday to four to six months in jail for slashing tires outside a Bush-Cheney campaign office on Election Day 2004.

The men pleaded no contest in January to misdemeanor property damage. A fifth worker was found not guilty.

"This case had to be a public example of what can happen when you interfere with voters' rights," said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michael Brennan, who rejected prosecutors' recommendation of probation for the four men.

Democrats Say Lieberman 'Too Republican'

Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, who once occupied the lofty No. 2 spot on his party's presidential ticket, is too Republican for some Democrats.

The three-term lawmaker, a strong advocate of the Iraq War, proponent of some GOP policies and recipient of a kiss from President Bush, has frustrated several national Democrats and angered enough in his home state to draw a primary challenger.

"I think it's a challenge for Lieberman to reconnect to the rank-and-file of the party and prove he is an authentic Democrat," said John McNamara, chairman of the New Britain Democratic Town Committee.

Bumper stickers spotted in Connecticut read, "Anybody but Joe - I want a real Democrat in '06." Campaign buttons show Bush and Lieberman in an embrace, with the words, "The Kiss: Too Close for Comfort."

In February 2005, after Bush's State of the Union speech, the president hugged Lieberman and planted a kiss on his right cheek.

Call it the buss that launched a challenge.

Ned Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich businessman, is trying to snatch the Democratic nomination from Lieberman, arguing that the 64-year-old senator is "Republican-lite."

"One thing I hear wherever I go, to all audiences, is, 'Come on Democrats, be a constructive alternative, speak loudly and proudly for what you believe, no more mumbling."' Lamont said.

While Lamont's arguments have struck a chord with many Democrats, Lieberman holds a considerable advantage in money, name recognition and party backing. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama recently traveled to Connecticut to offer a vocal defense of his colleague.

On Thursday, Lieberman launched his first television ads in a decade, addressing the war debate head on.

"I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position in Iraq. I respect your views, and while we probably won't change each others' minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree," Lieberman says in the ad.

Still, the Democratic discontent remains loud.

Edward Anderson is a blogger who helped a friend set up the Web site, www.DumpJoe.com., in December 2004, angered by Lieberman's continued support of the Iraq war.

"In Joe's hometown, I can't find a Joe booster. If they are, they're a Republican," said Anderson, who lives in New Haven.

"I think that there's a significant number of Democrats who are disappointed in the senator's stand on the war," said John Stafstrom, a Lieberman supporter and chairman of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee. "He has always had some problems with the more liberal wing of the party anyway. This is a perfect excuse for people to show their displeasure with him."

On May 20, some 1,607 Democratic delegates will gather at the state convention. The majority winner is the party-endorsed candidate, but if Lamont garners 15 percent of the vote, he can force a primary. Even if he doesn't succeed, he can petition his way onto the primary ballot on Aug. 8.

McNamara estimates that more than half of New Britain's 31 delegates are leaning toward backing Lamont.

Lieberman has surprised several Democrats with personal calls asking for their support at the convention. He also raised the prospect of running as an independent, a prospect that could boost the Republicans if he and Lamont split the Democratic vote.

Lieberman was first elected to the Senate in 1988, ousting longtime Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. On foreign and defense policies, he has been a moderate, often aligning himself with the Republicans. But on issues such as abortion rights, gay rights and civil rights, he remains a liberal Democrat.

In 2000, Al Gore picked Lieberman to be his vice presidential running mate. Four years later, with Gore out of the picture, Lieberman made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Lieberman traditionally has been one of the highest vote-getters in Connecticut elections, capturing 63 percent of the vote in 2000 while running both for the vice presidency and the Senate.

Brent Dreher, 24, a student at Southern Connecticut State University who recently attended a Lamont speech, said a senator with Lieberman's national stature and experience should not be penalized because of his stance on the war.

"He's been in there long enough," Dreher said. "I don't see any reason to just automatically vote him out because of that one thing."

Ellen Camhi, the Democratic town committee chairwoman in Stamford, said many Democrats are supporting Lieberman.

"He's been there for us. He's been a good senator. While they may disagree with him on a couple of issues, they still support the man, his integrity and what he's done as a senator," Camhi said.

A Quinnipiac University poll, taken in March when Lamont announced his candidacy, showed Lieberman with support from 68 percent of registered Democrats to Lamont's 13 percent.

"It's still hard to imagine Lieberman being upset by Lamont. It's going to take a Herculean task I think," said poll director Douglas Schwartz.

Lieberman has raised $4.7 million for his re-election. Lamont, who founded a telecommunications company, raised more than $700,000 during the first three months of the year, more than half of it from his personal wealth.

Lieberman has likened the challenge to an "old-fashioned kitchen table debate within the Democratic family." His campaign spokesman, Sean Smith, dismissed the senator's detractors, arguing that many are party activists.

"The people who are engaged in this race right now are a certain type of voter," Smith said. "Most of the people who vote on Aug. 8 are living their lives right now and are not paying attention to this race."

Oscar Buzz for Al Gore

Al Gore, Academy Award winner?

The ex-vice president may have lost the big one back in 2000 against President Bush, but Gore's radical environmentalism, as showcased in his new feature-length documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," may yet turn him into a winner.

"The talk in Hollywood circles is that [Gore's movie] is textbook Oscar-bait," reports Canada's National Post.

Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells is convinced that the film is the odds on favorite to win the best feature documentary Oscar in March, 2007.

"It may or may not emerge as the year's finest doc," writes Wells on hollywood-elsewhere.com. "But what it says is so damned important . . . and it makes its case so persuasively that any Academy member with a smidgen of concern about the perils of global warming is going to want to give it the Oscar so that more people browsing in video stores will be inclined to rent or buy it."

A web promo for Gore's flick calls it, "By far the most terrifying film you will ever see . . . Humanity is sitting on a time bomb."

Gore himself predicted earlier this month that if the U.S. doesn't stop global warming, "we will destroy the habitability of the planet."

The super-green ex-vice president has apparently begun campaigning for his Oscar already, starting with a trip to Canada.

"Gore's pilgrimage to Canada is partly to spread the word, partly to start the drip of Oscar buzz," reports the Post. "Film-and-media-happy Toronto has turned into a can't-miss stop on these sort of trails, especially for these small films."

Still, the paper warns: "While Gore is the [Oscar] front-runner now, there's another well-known do-good auteur who might give him a run for a golden statuette: Michael Moore, whose upcoming film, 'Sicko,' is said to be a wretched take-down of the U.S. health system that is likely to be unveiled in September."

A Gore vs. Moore runoff? Let's hope there are no hanging, dimpled chads when the Academy casts its votes.

Dobbs Blasts N.Y. Times' Friedman

Firing back at New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, an obviously angry CNN's Lou Dobbs says the acclaimed foreign correspondent blatantly distorted his position on immigration.

On his "Lou Dobbs Report" Monday night, Dobbs said that Friedman had charged that he is an ardent foe of immigration, saying that the Times columnist had "completely misconstructed, misconstrued everything I've said on this broadcast."

Quoting Friedman as saying that he has been broadcasting an "unmitigated rant against immigration" Dobbs countered that he had "never once ranted or criticized immigration ... that is simply a lie. I am strongly pro-immigration. In fact I would like to see more legal immigration in this country. I am adamantly and absolutely opposed to illegal immigration. As I have said more than once there can be no reform in our immigration laws without control of immigration and we can't control immigration unless we can control out borders."

Dobbs asked Friedman that if he was listening he would choose to correct the record.

Same Old Song

Osama bin Laden’s latest message.
James S. Robbins

When we last heard from terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in January he offered a truce to the Western world, stating that if we pulled out of the Middle East, he would temporarily call off his assault on the U.S. Three months later the deal is off. The war is back on. Attacks are coming. So he says. But we’ve heard that one before.

It is difficult to analyze fully the latest bin Laden tape because al Jazeera refused to run it in its entirety. We do not know when it was recorded, though from its context clearly very recently, for example making mention of the U.S. cutting off aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Nor is it clear to whom the message is addressed, though it seems to be to his followers, those who are left.

Most noteworthy is the lack of any discussion of the situation in Iraq. True, AJ could have cut those bits out, but why would they? It would make sense that bin Laden would not want to delve too deeply into the Iraq situation, where his local emir Abu Musab al Zarqawi has been demoted by the other insurgents and banned from participating in strategic decision making, and where the al Qaeda brand name has been replaced by the more generic “Mujahedin Shura [i.e. consultative] Council.” Whatever the fortunes of the insurgents generally, al Qaeda has not attained the market share it was seeking in Iraq. The other insurgents eased al Qaeda out — those ingrates, after all Osama did for them.

Thus, it is no surprise that bin Laden now seeks to direct his movement’s energies elsewhere, both to the Palestinian Authority and Sudan. In the AJ excerpts bin Laden pays a great deal of attention to the latter, calling on his followers “to prepare all that is necessary to fight a long-term war against the Crusader thieves in western Sudan.” Osama lived in Sudan for many years, and offers some helpful tactical advice about the onset of the rainy season “which will impede movement and block dirt roads.” Good to know. But more to the point, he cautions prospective fighters not to defend the government of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who expelled bin Laden in 1996 after first offering him to the Clinton administration. “Our difference with [Bashir’s government] is great,” Osama notes. And bin Laden’s primary backer in Sudan in the 1990s, Hassan al-Turabi, the most famous theologian in the country and a major opposition figure, has recently come out in favor of Muslim women marrying Christians and Jews. So that guy is clearly off the list too.

Other than that, bin Laden tells the same old story. The West is foisting a cultural war on the Muslim world through TV and radio. The apostate rulers, especially the Saudi king, are sellouts and traitors. Liberal Arab intellectuals are ridiculing religion and spreading lechery. Moreover, the world has turned its back on their struggle. “Our countries are being burned, our houses are bombed, and our peoples are killed,” Osama complains, “and nobody cares about us.”

Well clearly, the Coalition cares, but maybe not the way bin Laden wants. This message comes in the context of several important blows to bin Laden’s organization. Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir, one of the 1998 embassy bombers, is said to have died two weeks ago in a strike in Pakistan. American forces in Afghanistan recently took out Palestinian-born Husam abu Baker, Zawahiri’s son-in-law and a close confidant to bin Laden. Perhaps most important was the death of Marwan Hadid al-Suri during a shootout at a roadblock in Pakistan on April 20. Marwan was reportedly the al Qaeda “bag man” who made support payments to the family members of terrorists in hiding. His papers show that families received $10,000 per year in quarterly installments, with an additional child-support payment of $500 per child per quarter. It does not sound like much but it is around five times the per capita income in Pakistan — by that measure the equivalent of $200,000 in the U.S. Security forces captured Marwan’s notebooks, laptop, and other assets that will no doubt furnish invaluable intelligence.

That is, if analysts know how to exploit it. There are some articles out there that quote unnamed intelligence officials who assert that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri are on the outs, noting that they stay in separate locations and do not refer to each other in their statements. Staying in separate locations could just be a normal security protocol; why risk having the entire leadership go down at once? As for snubbing each other in their respective statements, that is not even true. Bin Laden affirms Zawahiri’s views on the sacrilege of participating in elections in his latest message; and Zawahiri’s April 13 statement on the four-year anniversary of Tora Bora says with respect to Osama, “may God watch over him.” Not to join the chorus of critics of the intelligence community but it took about two minutes of research to dig that up. Maybe unnamed officials should spend more time reading and less time leaking.

Levees not fully ready for hurricane season

By Anne Rochell Konigsmark

All day, every day and into the night, crews for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pour concrete into walls, pack dirt into hills and ram steel into the earth. They are scrambling to undo the damage Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the region's levee system.

Their task is urgent: Hurricane season begins June 1.

But even when the holes are plugged - a $2 billion endeavor - the entire 350-mile protection system remains flawed, the corps now admits. Flood walls are too weak in some places; earthen levees are too short in others. Locals say the only thing that will save the low-lying region from more flooding this summer is not getting hit with a strong storm.

"I think we can limp along through this hurricane season," says Julie Quinn, a state representative whose district includes the 17th Street Canal, which flooded the Lakeview neighborhood.

Then she laughs. "With some divine intervention, we'll be OK. I just can't imagine we're going to see another Katrina."

Corps officials are confident that by June, they will repair the breaches and other damage incurred along almost half the levee system. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the corps, announced April 12 that the agency wants to correct and strengthen the entire system to withstand storms stronger than Katrina, which was a Category 3 when it made landfall the morning of Aug. 29 in Plaquemines Parish.

Hurricanes are measured on a rising scale of intensity, from Category 1 (sustained winds of 74 mph or more) to Category 5 (156 mph or above).

By 2010, if Congress funds it, the corps will have made the system "better and stronger than it has ever been," Strock says.

That's years and at least $4 billion away. For this year's storm season, which lasts six months and promises to be active, the corps will not be able to upgrade the 181 miles of levees that remained intact during Katrina. An inspection of those undamaged areas began only last week, says Dan Hitchings, the corps' Director of Task Force Hope, which is overseeing levee repairs. Weaknesses, known and unknown, abound in those sections, the corps and other experts say.

"It's all a matter of reducing the risk as quickly as we can," says Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the corps' Director of Civil Works. "But a different storm (from Katrina) on a different track with a different speed could do different damage."

The difference between this year and last? Awareness, Hitchings says. Much of the levee system is the same as it was when Katrina hit, and that means it might fail again. "You're going to have what you had (before Katrina), and that's all you're going to get," Hitchings says. "The threat is the same."

The parts of the city that did not flood - well-known areas along the Mississippi River such as the French Quarter, the Garden District and the area around Tulane and Loyola universities - likely will remain safe, the corps says.

Strock says he is most concerned about the low-lying neighborhoods on the east side of the city, such as the 9th Ward, as well as St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Levees in those areas could be topped again. And some flood walls along Lake Pontchartrain, on the north side of the city, likely are as weak as those that broke in other places.

Half the system destroyed

The corps designed and built the levee system after Hurricane Betsy, a Category 3 storm, hit and flooded New Orleans in 1965. That was the last major hurricane to strike the city until Katrina.

It took decades to build the system: It took only hours to knock almost half of it down.

In the chaotic, post-Katrina world, no issue unites New Orleanians like the levees. Trusting in the corps is not easy. "I'm very hopeful we're going to be safer," says U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La. "But based on the corps track record, I have grave concerns."

On this, most residents agree: Hurricane Katrina did not destroy hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and kill more than 1,000 people. Failed levees did.

"Our city has been destroyed, and it was the federal government that did it," says Rhett Accardo, a former nurse at a now-closed hospital. "People are as mad as they would be if al-Qaeda had hit us."

More than half the city's 450,000 residents have not come home since flooding nearly emptied the city eight months ago, according to Mayor Ray Nagin's office, and many say their decision to return and rebuild hinges on levee safety.

"When people think about getting hit by a hurricane, they feel like those things are inevitable, and just a chance you take in life," says Bob Thomas, director of the Center for Environmental Communications at Loyola University. "But after repeatedly being told by the corps that we were safe, this is different.

"The break in the levees caused people to lose faith in the government's ability to protect them. I gotta tell you, I'm nervous, more because of the frailty of the infrastructure than the power of any storm. The corps is saying the levees will not break now, but that's what they said last year."

As the corps works to repair levees, it also wants to repair the agency's reputation. Meeting the June 1 deadline is part of that effort. Riley and others say work of this scale has never been undertaken under such a tight deadline.

"We have absolute confidence in the repair of the damaged portions," Riley says. "We've got a great system in place that will go a long way to protect New Orleans."

The corps has asked three separate groups of experts to investigate what went wrong with the levees and to ensure that the current work is correct. The agency has invited the most outspoken critics to tour here and offer advice. There are frequent news conferences at levees and alongside flood walls. And the corps has taken the blame for mistakes. The agency admits design flaws led to the collapse of flood walls along canals that cut through the city. "Everyone at the agency feels shocked and numb," Hitchings says. "That was not supposed to happen."

Critics are impressed with the corps' repair work. Floodgates, placed at the mouths of three canals that cut through the north end of New Orleans, will prevent storm surges from entering the city from Lake Pontchartrain.

"The gates are beautiful," says Bob Bea, a University of California-Berkeley engineer who has been investigating the levees with a National Science Foundation grant. He has been an outspoken critic of the corps.

After a recent tour of levees in St. Bernard Parish, another expert said the soils being used to rebuild the earthen hills were much better than what was originally there. "Our concerns have been pretty well addressed," says Raymond Seed, a Berkeley engineer working with Bea.

Paul Kemp, with the Hurricane Center at the University of Louisiana, said he is "astounded" by the recent progress. But he remains worried about earthen levees along the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, and along a shipping channel in St. Bernard Parish, saying they need to be reinforced or "armored" with concrete to prevent erosion. The corps plans to armor levees in coming years, but not for this hurricane season.

"Right now, these levees are not going to do well with a combination of wave and storm surge," Kemp says. "This is a work in progress, and we're going to have that progress perhaps interrupted by a hurricane."

About $1.5 billion in improvements to the levees, including armoring, is currently in a supplemental spending bill before Congress. President Bush has not yet asked for the $2.5 billion needed to provide protection from a "100-year storm" - that is, a storm that has a 1% chance of occurring in a given year. And the White House has announced it will not ask for the $1.6 billion needed to protect the lower part of Plaquemines Parish from such a flood.

Even at its best, the system would not withstand a Category 5 storm. That's why Louisiana's elected officials have been pushing the federal government to fund a complete makeover of the levees. The corps is studying what it would take to provide Category 5 protection; a report is due to Congress in December.

"This hurricane season makes me very uneasy," says Bea, who lived here in the 1960s and lost his home in Hurricane Betsy. "The corps is trying to do in a few months what it couldn't get done in 40 years. If I lived in New Orleans, I'd get a second-floor apartment and put my stuff in storage."

For some, the job is personal

Germaine and Shane Williams would like to see Category 5 protection before they feel truly safe. The two young brothers begin work every day at dawn, rebuilding a 4,000-foot section of the canal wall that collapsed and flooded the 9th Ward.

For the Williams brothers, the job is personal: They grew up here. Their mother's flood-ruined home, marked by the city as unsafe to enter, is walking distance from their work site. On both sides of the canal, the working-class neighborhood remains mostly uninhabited, a ghostly landscape of smashed houses and overturned cars.

"We're building it pretty strong," says Germaine, 23, about the steel-reinforced, concrete wall. "I feel better about it."

When asked if he would rebuild in this neighborhood, Germaine says: "I don't know about that. I wouldn't stay this close." Shane, 20, agrees: "It would take a higher wall."

Germaine now lives with his father in a travel trailer in St. Bernard Parish; Shane lives with friends in an area of the city called the West Bank.

Some residents who have chosen to rebuild in flooded areas say they're trusting the odds, not the corps.

"Katrina was once in 100 years," says Fred Yoder, who just moved back into his Lakeview home. "You can say we have to have Category 5 protection, but that's not going to happen right now. The levees won't be up to standard this year, but we just have to have faith."

Back to the Border

Security first.
By Senator Bill Frist

Democrat obstruction torpedoed comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate earlier this month. At the same time, concerns about getting our border under control came into clear relief with news this week of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to crack down on egregious violations of immigration law. It is time to both secure our borders and reform our immigration system. So next week, the Senate will act to increase funding for border security-first. And then, before the end of May, the Senate must again take up-and finish-comprehensive immigration system reform.

When it takes up the immigration reform, the Senate must address border security, worksite enforcement, and the status of the 12 million people who are currently here illegally. But to build confidence among Americans and Congress that the government takes border security seriously, we have to act to help get the border under control right now.

By Memorial Day, the president plans to sign an emergency-spending measure, which we will use to fund this next step in border security. Democrat obstructionism on the larger immigration bill, I hope, will end before that. So far it has not: Minority Leader Harry Reid has acted to block the Senate from even voting on proposals like a ban on convicted felons taking part in temporary-worker programs.

Under any circumstances, security has to come first. We don't know how many criminals, gang members, and terrorists might have snuck across in the 20 years since Congress last made serious reforms to our immigration system. We need to know who is in our country, and why. A comprehensive immigration bill will allow all levels of law enforcement to focus on those who threaten to do us harm.

Last year, Judd Gregg and others led an effort to hire 1,500 new border patrol agents and build 1,800 new detention beds. The proposal we will consider next week provides nearly $2 billion to build a border fence in high-traffic areas, add new border-patrol aircraft to help police lower traffic areas, and support training for additional Customs and Border Protection Agents.

The Senate is also near consensus on putting nearly 15,000 new border-patrol agents in the field over the next six years. More security spending now is part of the plan. To pay for it, we will cut spending in other areas. The proposal we will consider next week helps Customs and Border Protection enforce the laws we already have. It does not, however, include any of the still necessary reforms to our immigration laws contained in the broader comprehensive package we will act on in May.

For those with deep concerns about the bigger bill, the Senate will be putting the horse before the cart. Security first. Right now. But just as the horse goes with the cart, our action now must occur in concert with finishing action on the bigger immigration bill in May. That legislation contains the full multiyear plan to beef up border-security operations dramatically, including a virtual fence that uses a mix of physical and electronic means to secure every inch of our 1,951-mile border with Mexico.

I believe that a consensus has developed in the Senate that fixing border security is as important as creating an immigrant worker program. In early April, in fact, the Senate came very close to a breakthrough: Senators Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez, along with many others, developed a fair, workable plan that would help deal with the 12 million people who are already in the United States.

Under their proposal, nobody who has violated immigration laws will get a free pass. Nearly everyone who has lived here illegally less than two years will have to return to their country of origin and apply through ordinary channels if they ever hope to live here legally. People who have lived here longer will have to pass rigorous background checks, learn English, and pay fines if they ever hope to achieve legal status.

Action now on border-security spending ought to affirm our country's commitment to getting the border under control. Passing a comprehensive immigration bill will guarantee a sustained plan to improve border security and deal with comprehensive reform. It will honor our heritage as a nation of immigrants and our respect for the rule of law. Finally, and most importantly, it will make America safer and more secure.

Brad Pitt Wants a 'Green' New Orleans

Brad Pitt called for people to submit proposals for an environmentally friendly design competition he is sponsoring to rebuild parts of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

"This competition asks the question, can this catastrophe be turned into opportunity? Can we create for these neighborhoods and its families something even better than they had before? We encourage anyone with an idea to get involved," the actor said Thursday in a statement.

Pitt is teaming up with Global Green USA, a national environmental organization, on the design project. Pitt, who's with Angelina Jolie in Namibia where they're expecting a child, will lead a jury of architects and local leaders to choose designs by six finalists who will then work with local neighborhoods on more detailed proposals.

Matt Petersen, the Global Green USA president who recently returned from visiting New Orleans, said residents were worried both about the slow pace of reconstruction and the coming hurricane season which many fear will result in more damage even as they struggle to rebuild.

"It's a frantic pace of trying to move things forward and at the same time not enough is happening. That's the view I heard from several local residents," he said.

Petersen expects designs will be submitted in June and the finalists to be chosen in July.

Kennedy: Laura Bush 'Enormously Elegant'

Even President Bush’s leading Senate critic Ted Kennedy has nothing but praise for first lady Laura Bush, calling her "enormously elegant.”

Appearing on Larry King’s CNN talk show to discuss politics and plug his new book "America Back on Track,” Sen. Kennedy was asked where he was on 9/11 – and he revealed that he shared the impact of that tragedy with Laura Bush.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Laura was scheduled to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about the need to improve reading instruction.

Kennedy said he was preparing for the hearing and "the phone rang in my office. It was my wife calling. The first plane had crashed ... I thought this is unusual, distressing, bizarre.

"And then the second plane crashed and we obviously knew it was something and tried to get a hold of Mrs. Bush and she was already in the building, in the Russell Building.

"And I remember going out to the door and seeing her walk down the corridor and probably the Secret Service had known just at this time but she was walking down. She was probably 50, 75 yards down the corridor walking in front of her Secret Service," Kennedy continued.

"She came into our office. Senator Gregg from New Hampshire was there ...

"We sat down in that office at this time and she was enormously elegant, dignified, a woman of great composure, strength.”

Kennedy said he and Laura talked about the attack on America and while they "didn't have a real idea of the grasp of the situation, the depth of it, but nonetheless she had her own sort of thoughts and you can imagine her thinking, her husband and children.”

Kennedy told King that the room opposite his office was by then filled with members of the press who were there to cover the first lady’s appearance at the hearing.

"She went in and just spoke very briefly to the press about how we all had to maintain our calmness and that she had been thinking of those that were affected.”

Author Ronald Kessler also gives a detailed account of those intimate moments, and other dramatic events that unfolded for Laura on 9/11, in his best-selling new biography "Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady.” [Editor’s Note: Check out this FREE offer for Ron Kessler’s "Laura Bush” -- Go Here Now.]

Kessler writes that when Laura met Kennedy in his office, "Kennedy was cordial and gave Laura a painting he had done. Lawrence McQuillen of USA Today asked Laura, ‘Mrs. Bush, you know, children are kind of struck by all this. Is there a message you could tell to the nation?’

"‘Well,’ Laura said, looking a bit tense, ‘parents need to reassure their children everywhere in our country that they’re safe.’

"At that point,” Kessler writes, "Laura became the ‘comforter in chief,’ calmly reassuring the nation and dispensing advice on how parents should deal with the tragedy.”

Nepal's king backs down but opposition wants more

King Gyanendra asked the opposition to name a new prime minister to run Nepal, but the three main parties said that was not enough and vowed pro-democracy protests would go on.

"We return the executive power of the country to the people," the monarch said in a televised speech after more than two weeks of tumultuous demonstrations in the capital Kathmandu and sustained international pressure.

He called for "a meaningful exercise in democracy" with elections "as soon as possible."

"We therefore request the seven-party alliance to recommend at the earliest a name for the post of prime minister who will have the responsibility to run the government," he said on state-owned Nepal television.

"We are committed to multi-party democracy and to constitutional monarchy," said the grim-faced monarch, who spoke slowly and wore a traditional topi hat.

"We hope peace and order is restored in the country."

Powerful neighbour India said it welcomed the king's "intention to transfer all executive power of the state to a government constituted by the alliance of the seven political parties."

"This action ... should now pave the way for the restoration of political stability and economic recovery of the country," a statement issued in New Delhi said.

But the three leading parties disagreed.

"The king has been defeated but the defeat is not complete," said Nepali Congress-Democratic party spokesman Minendra Rijal.

"He says he is giving power to the people but the statement is influenced by his own agenda focusing on general elections," he said.

"Anything less" than elections to a constituent assembly was "now unacceptable."

"To make sure that the autocracy is completely defeated, the movement will go on," he vowed.

For the Nepali Congress, the biggest party in the kingdom, the address was "inadequate and ambiguous," said deputy general secretary Ram Sharan Mahat.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) agreed.

"The king has not touched the issues raised by the seven party alliance," said spokesman Pradeep Nepal.

The alliance, which was to meet Saturday to plan the next step, launched a nationwide general strike on April 6 to force the king to relinquish the absolute power he grabbed in February 2005.

Gyanendra responded with a security clampdown that left more than a dozen dead, hundreds wounded and even more under arrest.

The king had reiterated an offer of general elections without fixing a date in a Nepalese New Year address on April 14.

But the opposition spurned the opening as pointless and this time the king went much further, appearing to give in to opposition demands.

The alliance had steadfastly refused to back down and with the popular movement strengthening called Thursday for the strike to be stepped up.

Tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Kathmandu on Thursday and again Friday despite a curfew and shoot-on-sight orders.

The curfew-bound streets of Kathmandu were quiet Friday night after the speech.

Gyandendra had come under intense international pressure to yield.

India sent a top envoy Thursday to tell the king he must open a real dialogue with the opposition to halt the bloodshed.

The United Nations repeatedly called for the restoration of democracy and respect for human rights as pictures of Nepalese police shooting, beating and kicking unarmed demonstrators were beamed around the world.

And the US ambassador warned Gyanendra the king must act fast to save his crown.

Gyanandra said power would return to the people as defined under the 1990 constitution which ushered in multi-party democracy after a long popular struggle under his assassinated brother Birendra.

The king, who ascended to the throne after the 2001 palace massacre, never enjoyed the popularity of Birendra, and was widely believed to oppose the 1990 constitution which transformed the ruler into a mere figurehead.

Gyanendra sacked the government in 2005, blaming politicians for failing to hold elections and to tackle a deadly Maoist insurgency which has left some 12,500 people dead in a decade.

But he was accused of carrying out a coup and tough emergency measures, a crackdown on dissidents and the media ensured he lost vital financial and military aid as well as general international support.

Gore Accelerates Global Warming Campaign

Al Gore has a major campaign under way - to change policies on global warming.

The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has hired longtime political associate Roy Neel to aid in his effort to raise awareness about global warming, a problem Gore calls "a planetary emergency."

Gore's movie and book about the issue, both called "An Inconvenient Truth," are set for widespread release in May.

"He's taking an increasingly high-profile role in working on the climate change issue," Gore spokesman Michael Feldman said.

Gore repeatedly has brushed aside talk of another presidential bid, telling a Tennessee audience last month, "I'm not planning to be a candidate again. I haven't reached a stage in my life where I'm willing to say I will never consider something like this."

A payment of $40,000 to a Democratic polling firm stirred political talk, but pollster Mark Penn said it was settlement of a 2000 account.

Gore has warned about the dangers of global warming for years, arguing that without dramatic changes in the emission of greenhouse gases, the planet is likely to experience a dramatic increase in violent storms, infectious disease, deadly heat waves and rising sea levels that will force the evacuation of low-lying cities.

He plans to hold a training session in Nashville this summer on how to deliver the message on climate change.

The New York Daily News first reported on Gore's hiring of Neel on Tuesday.

Gore's campaign will pit him against an old adversary: President Bush.

Bush acknowledges global warming is a real problem, but he believes more uncertainty exists about the degree to which humans play a part - mainly through fossil fuel burning - than most scientists do.

He reversed a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide, the chief global warming pollutant, and withdrew the United States from the Kyoto climate treaty, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfairly excluded fast-growing developing countries. Gore is a strong supporter of the Kyoto treaty.

Chavez Threatens to Blow Up Oil Fields

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday again raised the specter of U.S. designs to oust him and promised that his government will blow up his country's oil fields if the United States should ever attack.

U.S. officials have repeatedly denied any military plans against Chavez, but also call him a threat to stability in the region.

Speaking to other South American leaders, Chavez said his conflict with Washington is rooted in the U.S. thirst to control oil. He said the Americans will be denied that in Venezuela, which is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and one of the biggest suppliers to the U.S. market.

If the United States attacks, Chavez said, "We won't have any other alternative - blow up our own oil fields - but they aren't going to take that oil."

Some of Chavez's political opponents at home call his warnings about a U.S. invasion far-fetched and contend he pursues the verbal conflict with Washington to encourage a sense of struggle against a foreign enemy as he heads toward the presidential election in December.

Chavez cited what he called a regular flow of threatening statements and actions from the U.S. government, from U.S. naval exercises being held this month in the Caribbean to U.S. questions about Venezuela's deepening ties with Iran.

"The latest they've invented is that we're sending uranium to Iran, and what's more yesterday it came out in the Venezuelan press that we're making a secret plan to bring Iranian nuclear missiles and install them in Venezuela," he said.

In that report, the Venezuelan newspaper 2001 cited unidentified U.S. intelligence sources as saying Iran and Venezuela made a secret deal to ship missiles to Venezuela and Cuba aboard oil tankers. It did not provide any details about its sources, and the report was roundly denied by Venezuelan officials as preposterous.

Chavez accused the United States of "searching for an excuse for anything" against Venezuela, noting U.S. warship are holding exercises this month in the Caribbean - "there under our very noses."

In Caracas, meanwhile, Venezuela's defense minister, Adm. Orlando Maniglia, said Chavez's military plans to hold its own exercises soon along the coasts and with neighboring countries' armed forces.

"We already have planned some future exercises with the government of Curacao, and also with the Dutch, with the navy and armed forces of Colombia," he said, without giving any details.'

But Venezuela also has problems with neighboring Colombia. It demanded Wednesday that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe investigate a Colombian magazine's allegations that Uribe's secret police plotted to assassinate Chavez.

"The government of President Uribe is obligated to thoroughly investigate and share its investigation with the Venezuelan government," Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel told reporters in Caracas.

Demonstators Gather to Protest Bush-Hu Meeting

While President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao hoped their discussions inside the White House would cool tensions over a yawning U.S.-China trade gap, demonstrators massed outside Thursday to protest Beijing's human rights policies.

A single woman on the camera stand interrupted the welcoming ceremony, shouting in English, "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the FalunGong!" She also shouted in Chinese, "President Hu, your days are numbered," according to a translation by reporters on the scene. She was forcibly removed from the South Lawn by uniformed Secret Service personnel.

The talks between Bush and Hu, who was visiting the Washington for the first time as China's leader, were expected to produce little in the way of substance on the trade dispute and no breakthroughs on the major irritant - China's tightly controlled currency.

After two days spent wooing American business leaders in Washington state, Hu arrived Wednesday night in Washington for the half-day summit for what were expected to be frank discussions about America's $202 billion trade deficit with China, the biggest ever recorded with a single country.

That imbalance has spurred calls in Congress to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese products unless China halts trade practices that critics contend are unfair and have contributed to the loss of nearly 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2001.

The visit attracted high-profile attention both inside and outside the White House gates. The spiritual movement Falun Gong, condemned by the Chinese government as an evil cult, gathered hundreds of demonstrators on street corners near the White House in the early morning. Marchers banged gongs, chanted and waved American and Chinese flags. Banners denounced Hu as a "Chinese dictator" responsible for genocide and other "crimes in Chinese labor camps and prisons."

The Chinese government had its say as well. In a median in front of the Chinese embassy, the Falun Gong protesters that are nearly always there had been replaced by Chinese supporters holding huge red-and-yellow banners offering to "warmly welcome" Hu on his American visit.

There were some obvious signs that the summit was not considered on the U.S. side as a "state visit." Though the Chinese flag flew over Blair House, the official guest quarters for visiting dignitaries across the street from the White House, lamp posts surrounding the compound were bare of the usual pairing of flags from the United States and its guest country.

In addition to trade, Bush was to raise a number of other issues with Hu, including a bid for China's help in dealing with current nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran, complaints about China's human rights record and questions over China's growing military strength and whether it poses a threat to Taiwan.

The two sides have even disputed what to call the visit, with the Chinese insisting that it is a "state visit," which was the designation former President Jiang Zemin received in 1997, or an "official visit," the designation the Bush administration is using for Hu's trip.

While Hu was not receiving a black-tie state dinner, he was being greeted by a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn of the White House and a formal lunch for China's first family, with music supplied by a Nashville bluegrass band.

For his part, Hu has carried on a tradition started by Deng Xiaoping on his first visit to the United States in 1979 of courting American business executives in recognition of the fact that the United States is China's biggest overseas market.

Hu had dinner at the home of Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates on Tuesday and on Wednesday he received a warm welcome from employees at Boeing Co.'s massive Everett, Wash., facilities.

Last week, a contingent of more than 200 Chinese trade officials and business executives toured the United States, signing sales contracts for $16.2 billion in American goods, including 80 Boeing jetliners, all in an effort to show that China is trying to bring down the massive trade gap between the two nations.

White House officials said in advance of Thursday's meetings that they did not expect any major announcements on currency or other trade issues, noting that China did make several commitments last week such as requiring that all personal computers sold in China be loaded with legal software and agreeing to drop a ban on imports of U.S. beef.

Some small progress may be made in the area of energy, where China's rapidly growing economy has increased global demand for crude oil, pushing prices higher, and sent China rushing to lock up sources of supply in such questionable areas as Sudan, Burma and Iran.

But without movement on the currency problem, congressional critics are likely to be unimpressed with the results of the meeting.

Spielberg to Help Chinese Communists Stage Olympics

Imagine for a moment if back in 1936 Joseph Goebbels had called up director John Ford for a little help managing the Berlin Olympics. Ford, of course, would've turned such an overture down - but 70 years later, well, Hollywood's a lot more accommodating toward tyrannical dictatorships!

Thus we read that Steven Spielberg will be an official consultant "in culture and art for the creation of the spectacular ceremonies" for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. He will be joined by Chinese director Zhang Yimou ("Raise The Red Lantern," "House Of Flying Daggers"), who's been named chief director for both the Games' opening and closing ceremonies. We also read at ComingSoon.net that:

"Zhang Jigang, director of the Song and Dance Ensemble affiliated with the General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and Chen Weiya, vice director of the China National Song and Dance Ensemble, will be Zhang Yimou's deputies and chief assistants."

Wonderful! We're sure that experience with "the General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army" will give these gentlemen some great insights into how to present this event to the public!

Here's what Spielberg himself has to say about all this, from WENN:

"Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life, we are dedicated to making this the most emotional opening ceremony ever."

Of course, the most "emotional" sort of opening ceremony might include some tribute to those who died during the Tiananmen Square massacre of almost 20 years ago. But don't look for such a tribute to be included.

Satire of Bush in 'American Dreamz'

USA Today was kind enough to ask our opinion recently of the forthcoming comedy "American Dreamz," which happens to satirize President Bush (among others). As described by USA Today, the film "makes light of a president who has a reputation for ignoring security briefing memos, tangles his words while making speeches, has sinking job-approval numbers and is locked in a Middle Eastern war."

"Hollywood Confidential's" Jason Apuzzo is quoted in USA Today's article on the film's politically charged marketing: "The idea of doing broad-based satire is fine," but the marketing of the film may have already alienated a good portion of its potential audience.

"The poster for the film states wryly: 'Imagine a country where the president never reads the newspaper, where the government goes to war for all the wrong reasons, and more people vote for a pop idol than their next president.'"

To further set the context, here are other excerpts from the USA Today piece:

"Not since Ronald Reagan did his own acting has a president been such a prominent figure in the movies as George W. Bush. Two films opening within a week of each other cast a skeptical eye on the Bush White House - through silliness. 'American Dreamz,' opening Friday, features a reality-TV-obsessed commander in chief and a bumbling terrorist who becomes an American Idol-style singing sensation.

"It sends up the current administration with Bush and Dick Cheney look-alikes [Dennis Quaid and Willem Dafoe, respectively]."

Dafoe, by the way, says the Cheney look wasn't meant to be so exact. His "chief of staff" character is supposed to be a "mixture of the two," Dafoe told Monsters and Critics. "I think the character looks quite a bit like Cheney, but I didn't intend to look so much like him. [The character's] probably more Karl Rove, though. The truth is, while a lot of references are thinly veiled in this, that particular character is sort of an invention."

USA Today adds that "'American Dreamz' is more hopeful than cruel about whether a president can pull out of a second-term slump and renew the public's faith in him, says writer/director Paul Weitz ["American Pie," "About a Boy"]. 'I definitely thought certain people from the right would be annoyed with a sendup of the administration, and some from the left would feel I let the president off the hook,' Weitz says. 'In the end, the president is a fairly sympathetic character in the movie.'"

Most of what we discussed with USA Today was the question of "diversity" or variety in Hollywood's message about President Bush and the war. That message, incidentally, is something communicated not merely through films but also through celebrity activism.

Hollywood's message about the war, directly or indirectly, has been that it's a fraud or public relations stunt ("Fahrenheit 9/11," "Jarhead," "Syriana," "V For Vendetta").

Hollywood's message about Bush has generally been that he is either a) a bumbling incompetent; b) a kind of proto-Hitler; c) a tool of multinational corporations. (Cue sinister mood music.) This is the sort of thing we get either directly or indirectly in "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Silver City," "The Day After Tomorrow," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Syriana," "V For Vendetta" and by implication in "Good Night, and Good Luck" (right wing politicians as blowing a chill wind on free speech, etc.).

We're now even getting Bush-hatred as a plot device in romantic comedies - to wit, the new film "Blue State."

"American Dreamz," whatever its cutesy gentility or good cheer, will otherwise continue this line of thinking - and at a certain point one begins to ask the question, does Hollywood have anything positive to say whatsoever about the current Administration? Alternately, are there any other politicians Hollywood is interested in satirizing? How about Hillary?

Our sense is that Republicans don't mind the occasional chuckle at President Bush's expense - in point of fact, even President Bush enjoys the occasional chuckle at President Bush's expense - but that seems to be the only type of "satire" Hollywood is interested in these days. Much as in academia, there is no diversity in Hollywood today, only a kind of monoculture in which Bush/Republicans/conservatives are treated as "the other" - as non-persons to be satirized, belittled, even shot in the head ("V For Vendetta"). And some of us aren't finding it all that funny anymore.

'Hanoi Jane' Fonda Declines Iraq War Protests

Jane Fonda says she would like to tour the country and speak out against U.S. involvement in Iraq, but her controversial history of Vietnam War protests leaves her with "too much baggage."

"I wanted to do a tour like I did during the Vietnam War, a tour of the country," the Oscar-winning actress said Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "But then Cindy Sheehan filled in the gap, and she is better at this than I am. I carry too much baggage."

Sheehan, whose soldier son, Casey, died in Iraq in 2004, has become a leading anti-war figure.

Fonda said that during a recent national book tour, war opponents - including some Vietnam veterans - asked her to speak out.

Last month, the Georgia Senate overwhelmingly rejected a resolution honoring Fonda, an Atlanta resident, for her work preventing teen pregnancy, donations to universities and charities, and role as goodwill ambassador for the United Nations.

Her political activities protesting the Vietnam War, including a trip to North Vietnam in 1972, have long made her a target of veterans.

Fonda, who won Oscars for 1971's "Klute" and 1978's "Coming Home," was interviewed shortly after returning from a vacation trip to Argentina with ex-husband Ted Turner. Fonda said she and Turner remain close.

"He's my favorite ex-husband," the 68-year-old actress said. "We get along great. I love to fish, and he has some beautiful property down there."

Abu Sayyaf leader killed in Philippines

A leading member of the Abu Sayyaf group, blamed for the killing of a US Special Forces soldier from 1st Special Forces Group, SFC Mark Jackson and a string of bombings in the southern Philippines, was killed early Tuesday, the military said.

An elite army unit and military intelligence operatives raided a suspected hideout of the Islamic militant group in Curuan district of the southern port of Zamboanga before dawn and killed Amilhamja Ajijul in a firefight, said Colonel Edgardo Gidaya.

He described Ajijul as the head of an Abu Sayyaf unit engaged in ”urban terrorism”.

One other Abu Sayyaf suspect was killed while four others were arrested in the military raid, Gidaya told AFP.

The official said Ajijul was wanted for the bombing of two shopping malls in Zamboanga in 2002 that claimed several lives, as well as the 2000 kidnapping of 53 students and teachers at a Roman Catholic school from nearby Basilan island.

Gidaya said Ajijul was also the principal suspect in the 2002 bombing of a Zamboanga restaurant that killed a US soldier taking part in counter-terrorist joint military exercises.

“This is a big blow to the Abu Sayyaf,” Gidaya said. “We had received a report that they were planning something this Holy Week,” he added without elaborating.

The Abu Sayyaf, thought to number some 500 militants, has been blamed for the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines, including the firebombing of a passenger ferry on Manila Bay that claimed more than 100 lives, and the kidnappings of Western tourists that led to the deaths of two American captives in 2001 and 2002.

US and Filipino intelligence officials have linked the Abu Sayyaf group to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

US Special Forces units have deployed in the southern hilippines in recent years to train Filipino troops ighting the Abu Sayyaf.

Terror Turf Wars: Bush's Secret Blueprint, Stalled By Infighting

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, April 16, 2006; B02

Four years and seven months after al-Qaeda's attack on the American homeland, more is missing than Osama bin Laden. The Bush administration still struggles to agree on how to carry out its secret blueprint to fight the global war on terrorism.

The blueprint -- whose broad outline was approved in private last month at the White House -- commits the administration to concentrating its national security powers on defeating jihadist terrorism at home and abroad. But a series of internal battles that have been kept more secret than the classified document itself has delayed final agreement on who has the authority to carry out its most demanding responsibilities.

Resolving those divergences still preoccupies interagency drafting committees and the National Counterterrorism Center, even though President Bush originally asked his aides to move urgently to stage a revolution in the government's methods and structures for fighting a new kind of long war.

The story of the making of National Security Presidential Directive 46 is at one level a familiar tale of a Washington turf battle that pits diplomats, soldiers, spooks and new legions of terrorism experts in a scramble for resources and glory. The document is co-titled Homeland Security Presidential Directive 15 because it holds the newest Cabinet department responsible for preventing attacks on U.S. territory.

But the tale also suggests, more disturbingly, that the weak interagency coordination that contributed so greatly to the nation's lack of preparedness for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks continues to hamper the worldwide battle against al-Qaeda, its allies and offshoots. Bush's habit of setting grand designs and leaving overwhelmed subordinates to work out the details is exacting a large cost in this exercise.

Some officials involved in drafting the blueprint think it has the potential to shape national strategy as successfully as did NSC 68, the planning document that set the parameters for American action in the Cold War. Bush hinted last week in a speech that he takes that view. Others fear, however, that unless it mandates decisive action and clearly establishes responsibility for it, the new directive could come to resemble the quickly discredited counterinsurgency plans that Washington's best and brightest put forward in the Vietnam War era.

The outcome is still uncertain. But conversations over the past year with several participants in the review reveal that one iron law of the Washington bureaucracy holds firm: The devil is always in the details.

The quest for a master plan for counterterrorism originated in the need to update or change pre-9/11 laws, presidential policy documents and bureaucratic structures that treated international terrorism directed at Americans primarily as a law enforcement problem, not as a global struggle to be won on foreign battlefields with arms and ideas.

That review stretched over two years in one form or another and appeared to have been completed when NSPD 46 was formally adopted behind closed doors by the Bush national security team one week before the public release on March 16 of the administration's National Security Strategy. In fact, some crucial unresolved disagreements were simply passed over in the interests of a show of consensus on "a statement of aspirations," in the words of one participant.

The most contentious issues -- particularly how far the Defense Department should go in carrying out Bush's direct order to "disrupt and destroy" jihadist terrorist networks, even if they operate in friendly or neutral countries -- were left to be dealt with in annexes that are being negotiated by the departments of State and Defense and the CIA. An NSC spokesman declined to comment on the contents of the document or on any ongoing differences about implementation.

The struggle for control was absent in the emergency days after 9/11, when Bush gave the "disrupt and destroy" order to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That was followed by an "AQSL Ex. Ord." -- a directive that bin Laden and 10 other members of al-Qaeda's senior leadership be brought to justice by all necessary means, "dead or alive," as Bush said.

That was the seed from which grew a broader plan of attack against al-Qaeda's networks, other jihadist bands and the jihadist ideology that loosely unites them. But as the extremist Islamic movement metastasized through the Middle East, Asia and Europe, Rumsfeld is said to have pushed for a presidential directive that would contain clearer definitions and authority for the Pentagon to carry out its "kinetic" missions abroad.

"This war erases that old bright line between conventional warfare and diplomacy," one official told me. "It has moved soldiers and foreign policy experts alike up a ladder of escalation, from trying to bring in bin Laden dead or alive to today's mission of destroying the entire jihadist movement and its ideology. We can't use old thinking and win. We can't wait and win."

A State Department official put it differently: "We have been through the immediate responses we can make and are now in a moment of looking around, of focusing on the long term. It is important to assign the right roles and responsibilities to the government agencies that will lead the war on terror."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated her department's concerns much more bluntly during a videoconference linking Bush's top aides in mid-January. Letting the Pentagon operate outside the U.S. ambassador's control to roll up extremist networks in foreign countries would make U.S. policy "almost exclusively kinetic" -- that is, warlike -- she argued, to Rumsfeld's discomfort, according to a briefing given to colleagues by one official involved in the meeting.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on April 4, Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, made an oblique public reference to the State Department's continuing desire to change relatively little. "Our best means of countering the multilayered terrorist threat is to engage coordinated networks of interagency Country Teams operating under the ambassador" in "an intimately connected whole-of-government approach. We are not there yet, but we have made progress," he noted.

They are not there yet, in large part because far-reaching proposals from the Pentagon to find and deal with Islamic extremists in a systematic way -- "so that we are not chasing rabbits," said one official -- have stirred opposition from the State Department and the CIA, which fear losing primacy abroad through the militarization of foreign policy and intelligence operations.

The New York Times lifted a corner of the veil surrounding the larger conceptual battles by reporting in March on State and CIA opposition to the Pentagon's use of Military Liaison Elements, small teams of Special Operations forces charged with finding and countering jihadist networks. They work with local security forces or on their own in countries where central authority is weak or nonexistent, such as Somalia.

"At this point, this would probably amount to maybe 60 guys in 20 countries," said one official. Added another, "It works in the field in most cases, but creates more hierarchal trouble than it should back here."

Resolving this and other disputes has not been helped by the White House's underpowered and relatively inexperienced staff at the National Security Council, which has tried to smooth over conflicts with abstract proposals to rotate responsibilities among departments.

Without specifically mentioning them, Bush suggested the importance that he attaches to the crafting of the NSPD and its annexes when he appeared at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington last Monday to discuss Iraq and the war on terrorism.

The president noted that Nitze, who advised six presidents on national security policy, was "the principal author of NSC 68 -- the strategic blueprint for America's victory in the Cold War." Nitze's work was essential in convincing "some who wanted to wish away the Soviet threat" that the Cold War was "a real war" that had to be won by building up conventional forces and retaining a nuclear arsenal, he said.

This was a clear signal that Bush has rejected advice that surfaced in the long debate that he rename the GWOT -- the Global War on Terrorism -- to give it a more comprehensive label, such as the struggle against violent extremism. The president, apparently believing that he, too, must overcome skepticism that Americans are engaged in "a real war," has ordered that GWOT will not go, his aides suggest.

Finishing those annexes to NSPD 46 and other counterterrorist implementation plans so that they reflect the needs of this new kind of war would show that all of his Cabinet sees it that way -- and that urgently -- as well.

Affleck: Bush 'Can Be Hung' for Leakgate

Actor Ben Affleck has made it very clear where his sympathies lie in the Leakgate affair -- and it isn't with the White House.

Appearing on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Affleck charged that President Bush "probably also leaked" CIA agent Valerie Plame's name and so "if he did, you can be hung for that! That's treason!" He continued: "You could be killed. That's not a joking around Tom DeLay 'I'll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.' That's like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that."

Affleck also called DeLay a "criminal."

Immigration Bill Grants Illegals In-state Tuition

After the Senate Judiciary Committee approved and distributed a proposal for granting legal status to many undocumented aliens, conservatives were alarmed to discover that the 471-page bill makes illegal aliens eligible for in-state tuition costs.

Under the proposal, illegals could pay the low tuition charged students who attend state universities in their home state, while legal residents of the U.S. would still be required to pay the much higher costs charged students who attend schools outside their state, the Washington Times reports.

"This means that while American citizens from Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Massachusetts have to pay out-of-state tuition rates if they send their kids to the University of Virginia or the University of Alabama, people who have illegally immigrated into the country do not," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

"How much sense does that make, to have people here illegally and they have more benefits than those who are here legally?"

Nine states allow illegal aliens to pay the in-state tuition rates, but the provision is under challenge in those states.

If the new bill passes "the American taxpayers will be forced to pay for illegal aliens to replace their own children in the limited seats in college," said William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration.

"Professional polls in North Carolina show over 81 percent opposition to in-state tuition for illegal aliens.

"It is bad enough the Senate is proposing guest worker amnesty. Now they want us to pay college tuition for illegal aliens!"

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, supports the proposal, saying "it will free eligible students from the constant fear of deportation."

But Gheen declared: "It is a national tragedy the U.S. Senate is even considering giving these finite resources to foreign nationals that broke our laws."

Gheen said information on how Americans can tell lawmakers of their opposition to the proposal can be found at the group's Web site, http://www.alipac.us.

Cheney Shot in Hunting Accident in 1990s

Years before Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a lawyer during a Texas quail hunt, Cheney himself was on the receiving end of an errant shotgun blast.

Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest said he doesn't know for certain if he or his twin brother, Dick Forrest, fired the shot during the hunting trip in the late 1990s. It accidentally pelted Cheney, who was then chief executive at Halliburton Co.

"We're probably the only twins in the United States that have shot the vice president and never have gone to jail," Forrest joked. The Albuquerque Journal reported the incident Sunday.

Cheney wasn't hurt but he was miffed, Forrest told the Journal.

'Dobie Gillis' Actress Pushes for Mandatory Gay History

At a time when illegal aliens are marching in the streets, terrorism is rampant the world over and entitlement spending is through the roof, the California legislature has pinpointed a more important issue - gay history is not yet mandatory in our schools.

Sheila Kuehl, quirky co-star of the classic TV show "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" and current California Democrat state senator, has written a bill that would make it mandatory for California's schools to provide instruction regarding the positive historical impact of homosexuals in America.

SB 1437 has made it out of California's Senate Judiciary Committee with a 3-1 vote, 3 Democrats voting in lockstep.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger may have to decide in the upcoming weeks whether to sign or veto the law.

Because California is the largest buyer of school textbooks in the United States, the bill would set the trend for school curricula across the nation.

The Left Coast Report understands that the producers of the musical "1776" are excited about the possible passage of the gay history bill.

Easter - Time to Denigrate Jesus

It never fails. Along with the Easter season comes the elites' holiday bashing of Jesus.

Doron Nof, a professor at the University of Florida, has just released a study "explaining" how Jesus appeared to walk on water.

According to Nof, Christ merely took a stroll across a layer of ice.

In another Easter treat, NBC's "Dateline" recently did a feature on author Michael Baigent's book, which claims among other things that a married Jesus survived crucifixion and escaped to Egypt.

Baigent, one of the authors who unsuccessfully sued over alleged copyright infringement involving Dan Brown's book "The Da Vinci Code," lacks the evidence to support his assertions.

Baigent insists, though, that his book is backed up by some ancient texts he saw. But in a variation of "my dog ate my homework" he claims he lost the authenticating materials.

The National Geographic Channel added to this year's Easter festivities with its airing of a highly publicized special, which unveiled a manuscript of what was called "The Gospel of Judas."

In a press release, National Geographic referred to the document as one that "has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature" as late as the fifth century but was not actually written by Judas.

The Left Coast Report believes somewhere in all of this lies an Oliver Stone movie.

'Brokeback Mountain' Shown to Prison Inmates

A correctional officer recently showed the film "Brokeback Mountain" to inmates at a prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

Even in liberal Massachusetts one would think authorities could figure out that showing explicit gay sex scenes to incarcerated male inmates is not a good idea.

Apparently, someone did. The officer responsible is being disciplined.

Still, the Massachusetts Department of Correction is trying to shape its rhetoric and come up with a politically correct explanation for the disciplinary action.

Carefully avoiding the obvious, that the movie is gay-themed, spokeswoman Diane Wiffin told Reuters that in no way was the action related to the film's plot.

"It was not the subject matter, Wiffin insisted. "It was the graphic nature of sexually explicit scenes."

The Left Coast Report hears that inmates support the disciplinary action but for a different reason - the gay cowboy flick bites.

U.S.-Born Latinos Oppose Illegal Immigration

Contrary to scenes of hundreds of thousands of united Latinos marching across the country in support of immigration reform, a sizable number of the ethnic group opposes the marches and strongly objects to illegal immigration.

Their voices have largely been muffled by the massive protests, however, which continued Monday as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of cities nationwide.

Those protesting are voicing their support of a Senate bill that would give an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country a chance for U.S. citizenship.

"That's the objective of the marches — to give the impression that all Latinos are for allowing the illegals to become citizens," said Phoenix resident Lionel De La Rosa. "Well, I'm not."

The 71-year-old Texas native and Vietnam veteran said he favors punitive measures more in line with the immigration bill passed by the U.S. House in December that would have made it a felony to be in the United States illegally.

"I'm for that 100 percent," he said. "As far as my Latino friends are concerned, they all agree on this."

A 2005 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center found that Latinos in general have favorable attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. But when it comes to illegal immigration, significant numbers have negative views of undocumented immigrants.

The survey found those feelings are strongest among middle-class and middle-age U.S.-born Latinos.

And though 68 percent of Latinos said they believe undocumented immigrants help the economy by providing low-cost labor, nearly a quarter felt undocumented immigrants hurt the economy by driving down wages.

U.S.-born Latinos looked even less favorably toward undocumented immigrants than foreign-born Latinos. More than a third of U.S.-born Latinos said undocumented immigrants hurt the economy, compared with just 15 percent of foreign-born Latinos.

Latinos also are divided over whether to allow undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship, the survey found.

Though 88 percent of foreign-born Latinos favored allowing undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship, a smaller number of U.S.-born Latinos, 78 percent, said undocumented immigrants should be allowed to do so.

Though views such as De La Rosa's are common among Latinos, they are rarely reflected among Latino leaders, said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that favors greater restrictions on immigration.

"It's easy to tap into the views of the intellectual class, but harder to tap into the views of the common folks," he said.

And because so much of the debate over illegal immigration comes off as anti-Hispanic, Latinos who favor greater restrictions on immigration are often reluctant to speak out.

"That's extremely off-putting," Camarota said. "Whatever their views, they keep it to themselves."

Many Latinos fear being ostracized for their negative views of undocumented immigrants, said Phoenix resident Frank Barrios, 64.

"There are a lot of Hispanics that are upset about the undocumented just the same way as the Anglo population," said Barrios, a third-generation Mexican-American who traces his family's roots in Arizona to the 1870s. "That group is larger than many people would believe."

Colin Powell Criticizes Rumsfeld on Iraq

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has joined the list of prominent figures speaking out bluntly against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq.

Addressing the annual conference of the National School Board Association in Chicago on Saturday, Powell said: "We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.

"We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started and ... got out of control."

Powell was behind failed U.S. efforts to get the United Nations Security Council to endorse a resolution for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Liberal war on terrorism heats up: Delay finally captured

Ann Coulter

If only liberals were half as angry at the people who flew planes into our skyscrapers as they are with Tom DeLay, we might have two patriotic parties in this country.

Any Republicans who didn't ferociously defend Tom DeLay — which is to say, almost all Republicans in Congress, the president, and alleged conservative writers trying to impress the editorial board of The New York Times — better hope liberals never come after them. The only proven method for a Republican to avoid having his name turned into a liberal malediction is to be completely ineffective. You'll notice there's no "Stop Lamar Alexander Before It's Too Late" Web site.

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese, Oliver North, Clarence Pendleton, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay — all these men saw their names used as curse words.

Only one of them was ever indicted. To wit, the comical indictment of DeLay recently brought by political hack Ronnie Earle. To finally get some grand jury to hand up an indictment, Earle had to empanel six grand juries in Austin, Texas, which is like the Upper West Side with more attractive people. In addition, DeLay knows Republican and gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates, who have recently pleaded guilty to various other incomprehensible charges.

Liberals spit out all these names with more venom than they've ever been able to muster for names like "Saddam Hussein" and "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

Even proud American corporations find their names being turned into curse words by liberals, such as "Halliburton," which is currently losing money in Iraq in order to supply food to our troops — you know, the same troops liberals pretend to love (but don't lose money feeding).

I spent a couple of hours listening to liberal hate radio this week to try to figure out what crime against God and man Tom DeLay is even alleged to have committed. But all I heard was the name "Tom DeLay" and "PRISON!" mentioned in the same sentence over and over again.

Back when Newt Gingrich still scared liberals, the House Ethics Committee spent years probing various charges against him, focusing on the charge that a college class he taught was ... partisan! Meanwhile, they're teaching Marxism in comp lit classes, Islamic terrorism in Indian experience classes, and Druidism in divinity classes. As we speak, freshmen in English 101 classes all over the country are rushing to complete their term papers on how all heterosexual sex is rape. Over a million dollars later, the committee realized: Wait a second. This is a college class!

But at the urging of the Democrats, the Internal Revenue Service spent 3 1/2 years investigating Gingrich's college course. After all the hullabaloo, the result was: No crime. The classes "were not biased toward particular politicians or a particular party" — thus distinguishing Gingrich's class from every other college course in America.

To the contrary, Gingrich's college class spent more time praising FDR and JFK than praising Reagan. (Did you know that FDR's radio broadcast after Pearl Harbor included an eight-minute prayer? You would have learned that in Newt's course.)

But the mere mention of the name "Newt Gingrich" was proof of criminal conduct in the '90s.

When Democrats are accused of wrongdoing, it's usually something more like what most people think of as a crime, say, punching a Capitol Hill policeman.

Or perhaps by being captured on tape in hotel rooms stuffing wads of cash into their pockets from Arab sheiks — as Democrats were during the Abscam investigation. This was back when Democrats controlled Congress. Consequently, Congress responded to this shocking proof of criminality by their colleagues by ... investigating the FBI for investigating members of Congress.

The "rule of law" means something entirely different for Republicans and Democrats. Consider the case of a prosecutor faced with the same possible wrongdoing by a Republican office-holder and a Democrat office-holder at the same time.

In the midst of Ronnie Earle's witch hunt of Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for allegedly using her office for campaign purposes — begun days after she was elected to the U.S. Senate by a 2-1 margin — employees in former Democratic Gov. Ann Richards' office admitted that they destroyed almost three years' worth of long-distance billing records that were supposed to be preserved — to ensure the office wasn't being used for campaign purposes, among other things.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Earle promptly "cleared (Richards) and her staff of wrongdoing, saying there was no evidence of criminal intent."

Conservatives live under a jurisprudence of laws, but they get prosecuted under liberals' jurisprudence of epithets.

Sixteen Words, Again

The myth of a great sin lives on.
Michael Ledeen

In Sunday’s Washington Post Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman provide their gullible readers with a reprise of one of the great myths of the runup to the Iraq war: that President Bush used blatantly false information to justify the war.

The story revolves around various claims by several intelligence services that Saddam’s agents were trying to buy uranium in Africa. At least three European services — the French, the Italian, and the British — told Washington about the reported Iraqi efforts. Some of the reports were carefully described as "unconfirmed." Others were based on documents that were given to the American embassy in Rome by Italian journalists, some of which subsequently turned out to be forgeries. Still other reports were highly regarded by the Europeans, especially the British, which led President Bush to say, in his State of the Union speech (January 28, 2003): "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The consensus at CIA was highly critical of these reports (most CIA officials were against the war and didn’t want to be blamed for it), but the White House, understandably very suspicious of the quality of CIA’s information and analysis, had pushed hard to get more information. Ambassador Joe Wilson had been sent by CIA to Niger in 2002 to snoop around, at least in part because he came highly recommended by his wife, Valerie Plame, herself a CIA officer, and opposed to the war.

After Bush’s State of the Union, Wilson claimed publicly that his trip had convinced him that the intelligence reports were groundless. However, he had reported privately — oddly enough in a verbal, not written, report to CIA — that a former high Nigerien official had said that the Iraqis had wanted high-level discussions about "increasing trade," which either meant uranium or goats.

Nonetheless, after the war began, Wilson’s public remarks earned him celebrity status in New York and Washington, and the White House decided to try to discredit him. Accordingly, Scooter Libby was authorized to talk to select journalists (which the Washington Post editorially described as a "good leak") about some of the information that suggested Saddam was trying to get uranium in Africa. Libby’s actions just showed up in a filing by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and prompted the Linzer-Gellman story.

Linzer and Gellman say, referring to the phony documents, that "the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before." And they add, in a triumphant tone reserved for the announcement of a knockout punch, that "the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story."

But Linzer and Gellman are wrong, indeed so clearly wrong that it takes one’s breath away. The British government did indeed have information about Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium in Africa, and it wasn’t connected to the forgeries. And the definitive British parliamentary inquiry — the Butler Commission Report of July, 2004 — not only did not deliver "a scathing critique," but totally endorsed the position of British intelligence.

The key paragraph in the Butler Report is this:
We conclude that...the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded. (Page 123, Paragraph 499)

The British Intelligence Service, MI6, still stands by that story, as does the French service, the DGSE. And the two agencies did not base their assessments on the phony documents (indeed, the DGSE knew all about those documents, which were peddled and probably drafted by one or two Italian agents of theirs). According to London Sunday Times reporter Mick Smith — an outspoken critic of the American/British use of intelligence to justify the war, and an outspoken critic of Bush — the Franco/British analysis is based in part on a letter from Iraq’s Ambassador to the Vatican, that specifically discussed uranium from Niger. Smith also adds the delicious tidbit that the pile of forgeries actually contained an accurate document about the visit of Saddam’s man in the Vatican to Niger in 1999.

So Linzer and Gellman are entirely wrong. Bush’s statement was true, and an extensive British parliamentary inquiry concluded that there was good reason for him, and Blair, to say so. Nonetheless, it is now part of the conventional wisdom to say that "the sixteen words" were a lie. How can that be? It’s not as if Bush’s critics need that detail in order to tear apart the bad intelligence work leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There are enough errors to fill several volumes, as they have.

Part of the answer — the other part being the malevolence and sloppiness of the press — is that the White House made a total hash of the whole thing, as is their wont. Indeed, if you go back and read the painful statements regarding "the sixteen words," you will find at least one in which Steven Hadley, then deputy national-security adviser, took full "responsibility" for the sin of including those words in the State of the Union. Incredibly for the fine lawyer he is, Hadley seems to have confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.

Moreover, the entire Libby operation was misconceived. The White House was reacting to Wilson’s writings (and an earlier leak of his own to a New York Times columnist). Didn’t they know that Wilson’s actual report actually supported the president’s 16 words? If they did, they should have hung him with his own two-faced actions. If they did not, it was either because they didn’t press CIA for the whole story, or because CIA didn’t provide it, knowing it would have helped the White House to which they were legally obliged to tell the whole truth (maybe Fitzgerald, in his poor imitation of Savanarola, might like to look into that).

Once again, when it comes to telling their own story, this administration has few peers in its ability to make a mess. Maybe they caught a bug from the Washington Post?