THE LITTLE ORANGE BOOK:

A Graceful Guide to Vietnamese History and Cuisine (Warren Johnston, 1/31/07, Valley News)

In 1975, just days before the North Vietnamese Army swept into the city, 6-year-old Andrea Nguyen and her family escaped from Saigon to a new life in California.

Along with than a change of clothes and few other things, one of the most valuable possessions the family took was her mother's small recipe notebook. That little orange book and her parents' passion for the distinctive Vietnamese cuisine molded Nguyen's life and became the essential link to the family's rich heritage and cultural past.

When she decided to write a cookbook, her mother gave her the orange notebook, which became the basis of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, which was published in December.

"So, consider this book a new, expanded version of that notebook. I present it to you from the heart and soul of our family kitchen," Nguyen writes in the introduction.

The book is a lesson in the history of a proud country and a doorway into the culture of Vietnam, where the food reflects centuries of influence from foreign occupation and strife, as well as the ingenuity and creativity of the people who live in the beleaguered nation.

AND LABOUR HAMMERS THE STAKE IN:

Forget constitution or we veto all plans, Britain tells the EU (Philip Webster, 2/01/07, Times of London)

Britain will refuse to sign up to minor changes in the running of the European Union unless it secures a pledge that there will be no revival of the European constitution, The Times has learnt.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have agreed that the Government should take a tough line to avoid the constitution dominating British politics for the two years leading up to the next election.

THEY WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE 13% WITHOUT THE COERCION THE MONOPOLY PROVIDES:

An intelligent approach to intelligent design (Michael Balter, January 31, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

Given the theory of evolution's monopoly in the classroom, one might think that it has gained a steady stream of converts over the years. But a recent poll taken for the BBC found that the British public was split on the issue: Only 48 percent of respondents thought evolution best explained the development of life on earth, while 22 percent chose creationism, 17 percent intelligent design, and the rest said they did not know.

As depressing as those figures might be to scientists, they are pretty good compared to the results of similar surveys in the United States. A Gallup poll in November 2004 found that only 13 percent of respondents thought that God had no part in the evolution or creation of human beings, while 45 percent said they believed that God had created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so.

To be sure, this chronic skepticism about evolutionary theory reflects the continuing strong influence of religion. Yet it also implies that scientists have not been persuasive enough, even when buttressed by strong scientific evidence that natural selection alone can account for life's complexity.

Could it be that the theory of evolution's monopoly in the classroom has backfired?

And, of course, the honest ones are beyong redemption, Why Do We Invoke Darwin?: Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology (Philip S. Skell, 8/29/05, The Scientist)

Darwin's theory of evolution offers a sweeping explanation of the history of life, from the earliest microscopic organisms billions of years ago to all the plants and animals around us today. Much of the evidence that might have established the theory on an unshakable empirical foundation, however, remains lost in the distant past. For instance, Darwin hoped we would discover transitional precursors to the animal forms that appear abruptly in the Cambrian strata. Since then we have found many ancient fossils - even exquisitely preserved soft-bodied creatures - but none are credible ancestors to the Cambrian animals.

Despite this and other difficulties, the modern form of Darwin's theory has been raised to its present high status because it's said to be the cornerstone of modern experimental biology. But is that correct? "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas," A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, wrote in 2000. "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one." [...]

Darwinian evolution - whatever its other virtues - does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit. None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however, mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.

Claudio Angelo: What is the book about?

Ernst Mayr: What the book is about. (Laughs.) Primarily to show, and you will think that this doesn't need showing, but lots of people would disagree with you. To show that biology is an autonomous science and should not be mixed up with physics. That's my message. And I show it in about 12 chapters. And, as another fact, when people ask me what is really your field, and 50 years or 60 years ago, without hesitation I would have said I'm an ornithologist. Forty years ago I would have said, I'm an evolutionist. And a little later I would still say I'm an evolutionist, but I would also say I'm an historian of biology. And the last 20 years, I love to answer, I'm a philosopher of biology. And, as a matter of fact, and that is perhaps something I can brag about, I have gotten honorary degrees for my work in ornithology from two universities, in evolution, in systematics, in history of biology and in philosophy of biology. Two honorary degrees from philosophy departments.

Steve Mirsky: And the philosophical basis for physics versus biology is what you examine in the book?

EM: I show first in the first chapter and in some chapters that follow later on, I show that biology is as serious, honest, legitimate a science as the physical sciences. All the occult stuff that used to be mixed in with philosophy of biology, like vitalism and teleology-Kant after all, when he wanted to describe biology, he put it all on teleology, just to give an example-all this sort of funny business I show is out. Biology has exactly the same hard-nosed basis as the physical sciences, consisting of the natural laws. The natural laws apply to biology just as much as they do to the physical sciences. But the people who compare the two, or who, like some philosophers, put in biology with physical sciences, they leave out a lot of things. And the minute you include those, you can see clearly that biology is not the same sort of thing as the physical sciences. And I cannot give a long lecture now on that subject, that's what the book is for.

I'll give you an example. In principle, biology differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don't know exceptions so I think it's probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.

Now then you can say, how can you have theories in biology if you don't have laws on which to base them? Well, in biology your theories are based on something else. They're based on concepts. Like the concept of natural selection forms the basis of, practically the most important basis of, evolutionary biology. You go to ecology and you get concepts like competition or resources, ecology is just full of concepts. And those concepts are the basis of all the theories in ecology. Not the physical laws, they're not the basis. They are of course ultimately the basis, but not directly, of ecology. And so on and so forth. And so that's what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics.

THEY'RE BOUND BY TRADE TREATIES, WE AREN'T BY KYOTO:

Chirac tells U.S. to join climate protocol or face taxes (Katrin Bennhold, January 31, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

[I]n an interview, Chirac warned that if Washington did not join a global climate accord, a Europewide carbon tax on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol could be imposed to try to force U.S. compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for U.S. goods.

"A carbon tax is inevitable," Chirac said. "If it is European, and I believe it will be European, then it will all the same have a certain influence because it means that all the countries that do not accept the minimum obligations will be obliged to pay."

LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE NOT (via Kevin Whited):

Welcome to Palestine (Caroline Glick, 1/31/07, Real Clear Politics)

In the world of international diplomacy few issues receive more wall-to-wall support than the notion that it is essential to establish a Palestinian state. Leaders worldwide are so busy speaking of how essential it is for a State of Palestine to be founded that none of them seems to have noticed that it already exists.

This state was officially founded in the summer of 2005, when Israel removed its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip and so established the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history. Israel's destruction of four Israeli communities in Northern Samaria and curtailment of its military operations in the area set the conditions for statehood in that area as well.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists.

NOT THAT THE KNOW-NOTHING RIGHT WILL EVER CATCH ON TO HOW MUCH GOOD THE DO-NOTHING CONGRESS DID (via Kevin Whited):

A Health-Care Bargain (DAVID GRATZER, January 31, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Three years ago this month, insurance companies began offering Americans a new type of medical coverage: health savings accounts, which marry low-cost, high-deductible health insurance policies with pre-tax accounts to pay for day-to-day health care. But the anniversary is muted. A slew of reports have been critical, dismissing consumer-driven health care as unpopular and harmful; and with the Democrats in control of Congress, Washington's enthusiasm for the concept has cooled. Nevertheless, the Republicans should take credit where due. The White House ought to build on the growing success of HSAs, which are integral to the president's vision of "affordable and available" health care.

An executive of an upstart airline recently described her company as having three 757s, more than 200 employees, and one big headache: rising health-care costs. Thus, they made the switch to HSAs in 2006, and premiums rose just 5%, compared with a national average of over 8%. Such successes aren't making the news, but overwhelmingly negative stories are. A much reported Commonwealth Fund survey, for example, concluded that enrollment in consumer-driven plans is stagnant, people are grossly dissatisfied, and care is delayed. But the report was flawed on its face: For one, it was unrepresentative, drawn from a pool of "Internet users who have agreed to participate in research surveys."

Here's the untold story: Despite recent entry into the market, these plans are gaining popularity. Drawing on information from major insurance carriers, William Boyles, publisher of the Consumer Driven Market Report, estimates that enrollment in HSA-type plans or HRAs (a forerunner to health savings accounts) more than doubled since January 2006, to 13.4 million Americans. The estimate is plausible, as last year twice as many employers offered this coverage than in 2005, and the number of financial institutions supporting HSAs tripled.

Early data suggest good results. [...]

Looking back on GOP-era Capitol Hill, welfare reform stands out as the greatest achievement; health savings accounts may eventually be considered a close second.

MORE:
Bad Plan, Necessary Step: The progressive case for Bush's health insurance tax deduction (Paul Starr, 01.24.07, American Prospect)

Anyone with a long view of the struggle for universal health insurance ought to be in favor of it.

Before I bring down a chorus of disapproval, let me explain.

Ever since the 1940s, when employment-based insurance took off, proposals for universal coverage have faced a huge barrier in public opinion. The millions of people receiving employer-provided coverage have had no idea how much it costs.

Many employees believe they are getting coverage essentially for free. Or else they see their own share of the premium -- say, 20 percent -- and mistake it for the whole cost. New taxes inevitably seem to them an extra burden, and they are easily recruited into the opposition.

To get a clear and fair debate over progressive proposals -- whether those are for single-payer or other alternatives -- requires that Americans understand how much health insurance already costs. The Bush proposal is a step in that direction. It would eliminate the tax-free status of employer payments for health insurance, which means everyone would see on their W-2 how much they were paying for coverage. Then there would be a $15,000 deduction for a couple ($7,500 for a single person) regardless of whether they bought health insurance directly or received it via their job.

Is this more equitable than the current system? Yes, actually it is.

MORE/MORE:
A Tax Increase You Could Love (AMITY SHLAES, January 26, 2007, NY Sun)

[T]he big change here isn't in the pennies and dimes. It is in the way the plan lodges responsibility for a family's health budget with the family, instead of employers. This isn't merely a tax shift but also a cultural shift, Republicans say. It would make Americans feel stronger and more economically secure.

And they are right. In fact, the move is long overdue. The old system of employers providing health care is as much a result of historical accident as of coherent policy. Back in the 1930s, Congress and President Roosevelt created Social Security over corporate protests. A national system of payment for health care seemed next. In 1945 Harry Truman would go around talking about "the right to adequate medical care."

Terrified employers raced to pre-empt Presidents Roosevelt and Truman by proving they could handle health themselves. They contracted with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to provide benefits for employee pools. The tax treatment came last -- in fact no one knew for a while whether companies really could claim the insurance deduction.

But World War II made the new arrangement seem doubly logical. Congress imposed an "excess" profits tax of as much as 90% and froze wages. Paying for health insurance was a way to reduce tax bills and keep workers, who were suddenly scarce. Unions were pleased. By 1945, 32 million Americans were in health-insurance programs, many sponsored by companies, up to 13 million from 12 million just five years before.

Though such fringe benefits quickly came to feel as American as a Ford in the driveway, the arrangement affected our culture in ways that were not all positive. It helped give rise to the Organization Man of the 1950s, a fellow dependent on his employer to the point of caricature. Corporate health plans also smothered incentives to economize. Having three parties responsible for health-cost decisions meant that no one was. Needless to say, innovations from magnetic-resonance imaging devices to the heart stent -- you name it -- only expanded spending.

Fast forward to today and the accidental health insurance exclusion has morphed into a giant revenue drain. In 2007, the federal government will forgo about $150 billion in tax revenue by way of this break. That figure is higher than the cost of either of two other such deductions, one for home-mortgage interest and the one for state and local taxes. It is something like paying for an extra Iraq every year.

OUTLASTED ANOTHER ONE... (via Ed Driscoll):

Molly Ivins Dies of Cancer at 62 (KELLEY SHANNON, 1/31/07, Associated Press)

Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as "Shrub," died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62. [...]

"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a better person," she said in an interview with the San Antonio Express- News in September, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

A RATHER TYPICAL SUPER BOWL QB:

How Does Grossman Rank Among the Worst Super Bowl QBs? (ALLEN BARRA, January 26, 2007, NY Sun)

Let's compare Grossman with the leading competition for Worst Super Bowl QB:

Joe Kapp, 1969, Minnesota Vikings. Kapp passed for just 1,706 yards but had a respectable 7.3 yards per throw and an okay TD-to-interception rate of 19-13. Kapp's Vikings got stuffed in the Super Bowl by Kansas City, 23-7.

Terry Bradshaw, 1974, Pittsburgh Steelers. Later, Bradshaw would develop into a great and one of the greatest of postseason quarterbacks. In 1974 he was dreadful, completing just 67 of 148 passes for 785 yards and a horrendous 5.3 YPP and 7 TDs against 8 interceptions. [...]

Craig Morton, 1977, Denver Broncos. The much-maligned Morton wasn't bad in '77, passing for 1,929 yards and a 7.6 average with 14 TDs and 8 INT. Lost to history is the fact that in '77, at least, Morton was as good a passer as his Cowboy opponent, the great Roger Staubach. But Staubach's Cowboys had the better defense and won 27-10.

Vince Ferragamo, 1979, Los Angeles Rams. Ferragamo's name has pretty much become a joke among NFL history buffs, and it's true he had just 5 TD passes to 10 interceptions that season, throwing for only 778 yards. [...]

David Woodley, 1982, Miami Dolphins. There's no getting around it: Woodley was one of the worst ever to make it to the big game, passing for only 1,080 yards with a dreadful 6.03 average and 5 TDs and 8 Ints. [...]

Drew Bledsoe, 1996, New England Patriots. One of Bill Parcells's great achievements was going to the Super Bowl with a quarterback as undistinguished as Drew Bledsoe, whose numbers are fairly similar to Rex Grossman's this year: 4,086 yards but a only 6.56 YPP average. [...]

Kerry Collins, 2000, New York Giants. Kerry Collins should just have gone out on the field with the word "Mediocre" stitched to the back of his uniform. [...]

Trent Dilfer, 2000, Baltimore Ravens. Truly the 2001 Super Bowl matched the two most perfectly ordinary quarterbacks in the game's history. Dilfer threw fewer passes than the Ravens other QB, Tony Banks, 225 to 274. But Dilfer had a better YPP, 6.7 to Banks' 5.8, so by the end of the season, he was Baltimore's starter. He wound up with a measly 12 TDs against 11 interceptions. [...]

Brad Johnson, 2002, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Like Dilfer, Johnson played QB for a team with a truly great defense. Unlike Dilfer, Johnson made some small contributions: 3,049 yards passing, 6.8 YPP, and, best of all, a TD-INT ratio of 22-6.

PLENTY OF FLUFF AND NUTTERS TO GO AROUND:

Biden Unbound: Lays Into Clinton, Obama, Edwards (Jason Horowitz, 1/30/07, NY Observer)

"Are they going to turn to Hillary Clinton?" Biden asked, lowering his voice to a hush to explain why Mrs. Clinton won't win the election.

"Everyone in the world knows her," he said. "Her husband has used every single legitimate tool in his behalf to lock people in, shut people down. Legitimate. And she can't break out of 30 percent for a choice for Democrats? Where do you want to be? Do you want to be in a place where 100 percent of the Democrats know you? They've looked at you for the last three years. And four out of 10 is the max you can get?"

Mr. Biden is equally skeptical--albeit in a slightly more backhanded way--about Mr. Obama. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

But--and the "but" was clearly inevitable--he doubts whether American voters are going to elect "a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate," and added: "I don't recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic." [...]

Mr. Biden seemed to reserve a special scorn for Mr. Edwards, who suffered from a perceived lack of depth in foreign policy in the Presidential election of 2004.

"I don't think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about," Mr. Biden said, when asked about Mr. Edwards' advocacy of the immediate withdrawal of about 40,000 American troops from Iraq.

"John Edwards wants you and all the Democrats to think, 'I want us out of there,' but when you come back and you say, 'O.K., John'"--here, the word "John" became an accusatory, mocking refrain--"'what about the chaos that will ensue? Do we have any interest, John, left in the region?' Well, John will have to answer yes or no. If he says yes, what are they? What are those interests, John? How do you protect those interests, John, if you are completely withdrawn? Are you withdrawn from the region, John? Are you withdrawn from Iraq, John? In what period? So all this stuff is like so much Fluffernutter out there. So for me, what I think you have to do is have a strategic notion. And they may have it--they are just smart enough not to enunciate it."

WAH WAH, HE EXPLAINED:

Memo to Republicans: Shut up, shut up, shut up! (Ted Rall, 1/30/07, United Press International)

The accompanying picture does indicate momentary self-control, as Mr. Rall is not sticking out his tongue or making any funny faces.

THE CW IS ALWAYS WRONG...

Whose Iran? (LAURA SECOR, 1/27/07, NY Times Magazine)

Early on, Ahmadinejad's faction was expected to win last month's elections handily. But the results contradicted the conventional wisdom about the Iranian electorate. The president put forward his own slate of candidates for the city councils. It was trounced. By some reckonings, reformists won two-fifths of the council seats and even dominated in some cities, including Kerman and Arak. Some conservative city-council candidates did well, particularly in Tehran, but they were not the conservatives associated with Ahmadinejad: rather, they belonged to the rival conservative faction of the current Tehran mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And most significant, the vote for Rafsanjani for the Assembly of Experts dwarfed that of Mesbah-Yazdi by nearly two to one. By mid-January, Ahmadinejad's isolation even within his own faction was complete: 150 of 290 members of parliament, including many of Ahmadinejad's onetime allies, signed a letter criticizing the president's economic policies for failing to stanch unemployment and inflation. A smaller group also blamed Ahmadinejad's inflammatory foreign-policy rhetoric for the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. As if that were not enough, an editorial in Jomhouri Eslami, a newspaper that reflects the views of the supreme leader, accused the president of using the nuclear issue to distract the public from his failed policies. Ahmadinejad's behavior was diminishing popular support for the nuclear program, the editorial warned. The Iranian political system seems to be restoring its equilibrium by showing an extremist president the limits of his power. But is it an equilibrium that can hold?

In part, last month's election results reflected the complexity of Ahmadinejad's skeptical, conditional and diverse constituency. They also demonstrated his isolation within the powerful conservative establishment, whose politics, however opaque, are determinative. At its center, Khamenei commands a faction known as the traditional conservatives. No elected leader can serve, let alone execute a policy agenda, without the acquiescence of the supreme leader and his associates. But was Ahmadinejad one of the leader's associates? Or was he, like his predecessor, Khatami, something of a political rival? The answer to this question should determine the extent to which Ahmadinejad's foreign-policy extremism and authoritarian tendencies are taken seriously as a political program. But it is a puzzle that has vexed political analysts since the president took office in August 2005, bringing with him a faction that was largely new to the post-revolutionary political scene. Composed partly of military and paramilitary elements, partly of extremist clerics like Mesbah-Yazdi and partly of inexperienced new conservative politicians, those in Ahmadinejad's faction are often called "neoconservatives." But to the extent that they have an ideology, it is less new than old, harking back to the early days of the Islamic republic. Since that time, the same elite has largely run Iranian politics, though it has divided itself into competing factions, and the act of wielding power has mellowed many hard-liners into pragmatists. Ahmadinejad's faction, on the other hand, came into power speaking the language of the past but with the zeal of the untried.

SOMEONE DIDN'T GET THE PERLSTEIN MEMO:

Senate Republican challenges Bush on war powers (Laurie Kellman, 1/30/07, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

"Read the Constitution," [Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California] told her colleagues last week. "The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts."

Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia.

NEAT STRIPED PABULUM YOU CAN EAT WITH A SHOVEL:

The Secret of Obama's Appeal Stays a Secret (Andrew Ferguson, Jan. 31, 2007, Bloomberg)

Barack Obama's book ``The Audacity of Hope'' is well into its fourth month on the bestseller list, and even a professional sourpuss (not that I know any) can see why.

``I am new enough on the national political scene,'' he writes in the book's prologue, ``to serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.''

Never mind the mixed metaphor about striped people projecting on screens (a rare infelicity from such a graceful writer). The statement is the purest Obama, the kind of sentiment that people seldom get from a career politician: knowing, self- aware, candid, vivid in its expression and -- most amazing of all -- true.

``The Audacity of Hope,'' in fact, can best be understood as an extended effort on the part of the first-term Illinois senator to keep that screen as blank as possible.

He's been so successful that already some of his would-be supporters are expressing frustration at their inability to pin Obama down on their favorite causes.

THERE IS NO BRITAIN:

Scots Guard: How Anti-Scottish sentiment will crush Britain's Labour Party. (Alex Massie, 01.31.07, New Republic)

Like Bute before him, Brown has found himself subject to trial by tabloid in London. And he, too, is being found wanting.

The current tensions have arisen as a result of a Labour government's decision to establish a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh in 1999. This was, as John Smith, Blair's predecessor as Labour leader and another Scot, put it "the settled will of the Scottish people." Unfortunately, no one thought to ask the English what they thought of this disruption to what they had assumed was a great and happy Union. Since devolution, the English have come to suspect they have received the leaner half of the bargain first made in 1707 when the Scots and English parliaments first agreed to unite. And, now that Brown is on the point of succeeding Blair, the English are revolting.

The 59 Scottish MPs who remain at Westminster may (and do) vote on laws affecting England but not Scotland, while English MPs have no reciprocal right to legislate or vote on matters reserved to the new parliament in Edinburgh. Worse, the English look north and see a Scottish parliament that lavishes baubles--such as free university tuition and health care for the elderly--upon Scots that are unavailable in England. Annual identifiable government spending remains approximately $3,000 per capita higher in Scotland than England, providing grounds for English grousing that the Scots are little more than subsidy junkies. And English discontent is granted righteousness when Blair's government relies upon the votes of Scottish Labour MPs to provide its majority for increasing college tuition fees in England.

So these are chilly times for Scots at Westminster. A cry of "English votes for English laws" can be heard whenever the English stir themselves to contemplate the Union. According to a poll for the BBC's "Newsnight" program, 61 percent of them now favor an English Parliament. The programs' host, Jeremy Paxman, has complained that the English are compelled to suffer under a "Scottish Raj." It is time, The Daily Telegraph's Simon Heffer wrote recently, for "English independence from Scotland."

WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL TARIFFS?:

Bush Seeks Less Money for Farm Programs (Greg Hitt, 1/31/07, WSJ: Washington Wire)

Plowing into the sensitive political debate over farm policy, the Bush administration is proposing to lift spending on conservation initiatives but trim the commodity subsidies that support farm production. The plan, to be unveiled today by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, is designed to pull agriculture spending $10 billion below the controversial farm program adopted in 2002. [...]

The more market-oriented program will undoubtedly spark sharp debate in the Democratic-led Congress, where lawmakers are gearing up to overhaul the 2002 program. The new program will be touted as consistent with President Bush's call to eliminate the federal deficit. But in taking on the politically sensitive subsidy issue, the Bush administration is also making an effort to signal a new seriousness in the Doha Round of global trade talks, bringing domestic programs in closer alignment with the course of negotiations.

NO ONE'S KILLED MORE CIVILIANS THAN WE HAVE:

Iranians Overwhelmingly Reject Bin Laden (World Public Opinion)

Although the U.S. government has accused Iran's government of sponsoring international terrorism, the Iranian people themselves are somewhat more likely than Americans to oppose attacks that deliberately target civilians. [...]

Both Iranians and Americans have strongly negative views of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Three in four Iranians (74%) and more than nine in ten Americans (94%) view bin Laden unfavorably, including large majorities (68% and 89%, respectively) who view him very unfavorably. Only 10 percent of Iranians look at the al Qaeda leader favorably (2% Americans). [...]

At the most general level, respondents were asked: "Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?"

A very large majority of Iranians (80%) take the strongest position that such attacks "are never justified," and another 5 percent say they are rarely justified. Only 11 percent call them sometimes (8%) or often (3%) justified.

Americans largely concur but at lower levels of intensity. Forty-six percent say that such attacks are never justified, while 27 percent say they are rarely justified. Twenty-four percent see them as sometimes (19%) or often (5%) justified.

Iranians were also asked specifically about attacks on American and Iraqi civilians, with "sometimes" or "never" justified the only options given. Nine in ten Iranians (88%) say that "attacks against Iraqi civilians in Iraq" are never justified. Nearly as many (76 percent) say "attacks against American civilians living in the United States" are never justified (15% sometimes justified).

Respondents were then asked to think "in the context of war and other forms of military conflict" and to consider whether certain types of civilians could be a legitimate target. Overwhelming majorities of Iranians reject as "never justified:" attacks on women and children (91%), the elderly (92%), and "wives and children of the military" (86%).

Americans largely agree, though larger percentages in each case said such attacks are rarely justified. This is true for attacks on women and children (72% never, 15% rarely), the elderly (71% never, 16% rarely), and wives and children of the military (74% never, 12% rarely).

Three more questions dealt with targeting civilians employed by the government. Here again, Iranians are more unequivocal than Americans in their rejection of such attacks, whether the targets are civilians employed by the government, policemen, or intelligence agents.

THEY DESERVE GENIUS GRANTS:

Schoolyard penis seen from space (EducationGuardian.co.uk, January 31, 2007)

Two pupils who drew a giant penis on a school lawn using weed killer two years ago can still admire their work from satellite photos now posted on the internet.

Despite the school re-seeding the area, the penis has turned up on satellite image search engines because a photo was taken before the new grass could conceal the appendage.

The unnamed pair of year 11 pupils from Bellemoor school for boys in Southampton, burned the 6-metre (20ft) phallus into the grass as an end of term joke.

FORTUNATELY, NYC HAS CORPORATE OFFICES, NOT PLANT FLOORS::

Bush pushes free trade at tractor plant: Campaigning to renew his fast-track powers, the president also gets a chance to drive a giant earthmover (James Gerstenzang and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, January 31, 2007, LA Times)

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, signaled a readiness Tuesday to work with Bush on the issue, saying he was trying to get the two political parties out of "divorce court."

"If we don't give trade promotion authority [to the White House], we've got to have a good reason for not giving it," he said during a committee meeting. [...]

Bush's audience, 300 plant workers and company managers, was generally subdued. But it came alive, just as he did, when he described his encounter with a D10 track-type tractor, a behemoth of a machine.

He climbed aboard, telling reporters, "I would suggest moving back. I'm about to crank this sucker up."

With that, the machine came to life, moving forward on its yellow metal treads, until the president brought it to a halt about 20 feet down the line and started it on a backward turn. When Bush climbed down from the cab, the inner boy was shining through, and a broad, sheepish grin crossed his face.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

"If you've never driven a D10," he told the workers and managers a few minutes later, "it's a cool experience."

FEAR OF THE TRINITY:

In Legacy of a Revered Martyr, Saudi Shiites Find Sustenance: Lessons From Killing of Hussein in 7th Century Define Lives, Ambitions of His Followers Today (Faiza Saleh Ambah, 1/31/07, Washington Post)

To many of the region's historically persecuted Shiites, the death of Hussein in what is now Karbala, Iraq, the event that triggered the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, remains central to their lives. Shiite belief that Hussein and his descendants were robbed of their rightful succession as rulers of the Islamic world heightens their sense of persecution and victimization.

The story of Hussein, who chose to confront an enemy army with only a small band of men rather than bow to an oppressive leader, permeates Shiite life from childhood, Hani said.

"You cannot understand Shiites if you don't understand the lessons of Hussein's death," the 44-year-old author added. "Hussein taught us not to fear death because you can achieve victory even through death, as long as you fight injustice and stay true to your principles."

That lesson has not been lost on Saudi Arabia's long-suppressed Shiite minority, a 2 million-strong community living mainly in the oil-rich Eastern Province. Shiites here have only recently been granted greater religious freedoms, including the right to commemorate Ashura publicly. But fears in the Arab world of growing Shiite clout have raised concern among local Shiites that sectarian tensions could roll back some of the progress.

Shiite Iran's increased regional influence, Iraq's newly dominant Shiite majority and the push for more power by Lebanon's Shiites have led to a closing of Sunni ranks in many countries of the region and calls for quashing a Shiite revival.

Shiites, who make up less than 15 percent of the kingdom's 16 million citizens, are considered heretics by the Wahhabi Sunni ideology practiced in the kingdom.

Emboldened by Iran's 1979 revolution, Saudi Shiites began staging demonstrations during Ashura demanding more rights and freedoms. This led to a brutal government crackdown that resulted in scores of deaths, hundreds of arrests and tense relations in the 1980s.

The situation improved after Shiite exiles returned in 1994 following a truce with the government. And several years ago, reform-minded King Abdullah launched a policy of openness, allowing the community to build mosques and once-illegal community centers called husseiniyas. Shiites have also been granted a small measure of political power with wins in local municipal elections in 2004. But many complain that they still face severe discrimination in government positions, in the military and in schools.

Now, after a lull, Wahhabi clerics have again started issuing fatwas, or religious edicts, labeling Shiites infidels who are more dangerous to the faith than Christians and Jews.

EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT...:

FBI probing Rep. Miller's land sales: The Diamond Bar congressman made millions but avoided taxes by saying the sales were forced. Cities that were the buyers deny it (William Heisel, January 31, 2007, LA Times)

The FBI is investigating Rep. Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar) for a series of land transactions in which he avoided paying capital gains taxes after saying he had been forced to sell under eminent domain in Monrovia and Fontana.

The federal investigation was initiated after The Times reported in August that officials in both cities denied that they had acquired Miller's property using eminent domain, which enables governments to buy land for certain purposes even if owners do not want to sell.

After a land sale in Monrovia in 2002 and two subsequent sales in Fontana in 2005 and 2006, Miller claimed an exemption under Internal Revenue Code Section 1033, which grants those forced to sell property through eminent domain at least two years to reinvest the profits without paying capital gains taxes.

Miller's repeated use of the forced-sale exemption has enabled deferment of capital gains taxes through at least 2009.

Dick Singer, a spokesman for Monrovia, said federal agents had interviewed city officials and requested a videotape from a City Council meeting in 2000 cited by The Times in which Miller asked city officials four times to buy his land.

NO ONE'S EVER KIDDING:

HOSTILE ACTS: "The Sarah Silverman Program" puts the mean back in funny. (TAD FRIEND, 2007-02-05, The New Yorker)

Hostility may be the engine of humor, but the broadcast networks dread its snarl. Whenever they air a truly mean sitcom, such as the long-gone "Buffalo Bill" or "Action," the audience flees, so TV executives have learned to muffle their comedies' barbs in "Only kidding" smirks and "You're the greatest" hugs. Even on "Seinfeld," which forbade hugs and learning, the core foursome reserved their mockery for outsiders, for the close-talkers and re-gifters. They were there for one another--the network made sure that we saw the love beneath.

So "The Sarah Silverman Program," much the meanest sitcom in years--and one of the funniest--premières this week, perforce, on Comedy Central. Silverman, the telescope-necked comedienne, has had trouble finding the right showcase for the contrary elements of her persona: the post-feminist tomboy who's sexually cocky and emotionally frigid, the eerily alert counterpuncher who's totally self-involved. (In her 2005 concert movie, "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic," Silverman makes out with her own mirrored image.) She is best known for jarring "The Aristocrats," the documentary about a legendary joke, with her deadpan claim that "Joe Franklin raped me," and for dropping the epithet "chinks" into a joke on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Unlike many comedians, Silverman excavates prejudice less by digging into her own background (though in one episode she insincerely promises "full-frontal Jew-dity") than by strip-mining the turf of other minorities, particularly blacks and gays. Her game is to throw out stereotypes in a little-girl voice and with a winsome look that suggests no offense can legitimately be taken. You might admire Silverman's boldness, or you might feel that there's something sneaky in her appropriation of slurs that never wounded her--that it's the standup equivalent of the person who cuts in line and then can't believe you object.

NO MAHMOUD FOR COMPROMISE:

Shoppers see red and President feels the heat over tomatoes: Robert Tait finds the Iranian people and parliament in revolt (Robert Tait, January 28, 2007, Observer)

History is not littered with cases of heads of state being brought down by the price of tomatoes but, with his critics growing by the day, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could be in danger of earning such a distinction.

Besieged by denunciations of his economic and nuclear policies, the President was put further on the defensive last week by MPs complaining that the cost of tomatoes had soared to 30,000 rial (£1.65) a kilo - an unthinkable price in a country where the average worker scrapes by on £225 a month.

Prices subsequently slipped back in response to the outcry. But the startling statistic crystallised popular anger over runaway inflation, which has eaten into the living standards of the army of low-income Iranians whom Ahmadinejad came to office pledging to help. [...]

More threatening to Ahmadinejad's authority is the increasing assertiveness of Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former President and head of the powerful expediency council. Rafsanjani - whom Ahmadinejad defeated in the last presidential election - believes Iran faces a crisis and must negotiate on the nuclear case, even if it means backing down.

Rafsanjani last week voiced his concerns about the economy and the nuclear strategy to 100 MPs. He said the expediency council would scrutinise Ahmadinejad's budget and criticised 'high-ranking officials' for under-estimating the international threat.In remarks interpreted as designed to show the President's waning influence, Rafsanjani described how a top-level official had been slapped down by Khamenei. 'We had a session with the supreme leader and a group of officials,' he said. 'Somebody said, "the threats are not serious and there is no need for concern", to which Ayatollah Khamenei replied, "the threats are serious".' The unnamed official is broadly assumed to have been Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani reminded MPs that the 'highest religious duty' of officials was preserving Iran's Islamic system - implying this might mean making painful compromises with the West.

Rafsanjani was pushing at an open door. Parliament is in open revolt, believing the President guilty of incompetence, arrogance and self-indulgence.

Moves were afoot to rein him in even before Rafsanjani's pep talk. A petition is being circulated to summon Ahmadinejad for questioning over his economic and nuclear policies, while impeachment proceedings are under way against four ministers.

Emad Afrough, a fundamentalist MP, said parliament would start dictating to Ahmadinejad unless he learnt the art of consultation. 'The political situation is going to force the government to consult more. If not, some issues be dictated to them,' he said. 'The government cannot count on the fundamentalists like before.'

A reformist MP, Akbar Aalami, said disenchantment had reached unprecedented levels. 'This government lacks the maturity to fulfil its legal duties and exercise authority,' he said.

ALL HUMOR COMES AT SOMEONE'S EXPENSE:

No Joke: Hillary's failure to connect (Jonah Goldberg, 1/31/07, National Review)

A weird thing happened in Iowa this week. Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president -- no, that's not the weird thing -- and she paraphrased a question from the audience about what in her experience prepared her to deal with "evil and bad men." Before she could answer, the audience burst into laughter, and Clinton joined in.

It was such an awkward moment, much of the commentariat hasn't figured out exactly what to say about it, starting with Clinton herself. At first she tried to explain that she was thinking of Osama bin Laden and Bush's inability to capture him. Later, she claimed she was making a joke -- just not about her husband.

From my own viewing of the video -- you can find it on YouTube and elsewhere -- Hillary wasn't making any joke at all. She was merely the butt of one and laughed along with the crowd -- without getting the joke -- in an excruciating "I meant to do that" sort of way.

When asked whether the joke was about Bill, she said, "Oh, come on. Well, I don't think anybody in there thought that." But of course everyone thought that.

CRANK UP THE VCR:

'The Supreme Court': PBS Does Justice to History (Tom Shales, 1/31/07, Washington Post)

Although the idea of spending four hours listening to professors and law clerks might not sound precisely irresistible, "The Supreme Court" -- a two-part history of "the most powerful judicial tribunal in the world" -- bravely upholds a PBS tradition. Namely, providing television for people who have a serious interest in the country and world around them.

The film is rarely as dry as one might fear, filled as it is with the stories of epochal cases -- Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade-- and illuminating details, such as the fact that President Dwight D. Eisenhower only appointed Earl Warren to the court because of a promise made at the 1952 Republican convention. Or that when the court handed down its decision on Marbury v. Madison in 1803, it lacked a home of its own and was forced to convene in a hotel lobby.

History is inherently dull stuff only to the determinedly uninformed, but obviously presentation counts, especially in television. Executive producer Jody Sheff keeps "Supreme Court" (airing in two two-hour segments) arrestingly visual. There are various historic photographs, well-shot and edited close-up interviews with authoritative figures -- including current Chief Justice John Roberts, who proves a highly telegenic communicator. And there are printed or written words from key decisions that are pulled from documents, magnified and swept across the screen -- a case in which taking words out of context, literally, is helpful.

WHY DOES DAD HAVE THE CAR RUNNING AND THE GARAGE DOOR CLOSED?:

"Goodnight Moon" | Gentle, playful and musical (Mary Murfin Bayley, 1/31/07, The Seattle Times)

It is hard to imagine a more still and quiet picture book than Margaret Wise Brown's 1947 "Goodnight Moon," or one less likely to become a full-length musical complete with tap-dancing bears. The book's lovely illustrations by Clement Hurd show the same simple green room and small bunny going to bed as each page gets darker and the stars outside the windows get brighter. The text is a series of goodnights: to mittens and kittens; to comb, brush, and bowl full of mush; to the pictures on the walls; and to a quiet old lady whispering hush. The goodnights gradually open out to include the moon, the stars and the air.

Despite adding some scenes of showbiz razzle-dazzle and high-energy slapstick, the Seattle Children's Theatre version retains much of the gentle mood of the book.

THE WHITE WHALE STAYS ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST:

Air Force tanker request gives Boeing edge, for now (Alicia Mundy, 1/31/07, Seattle Times)

After a behind-the-scenes battle in which politics counted as much as procurement goals, the Pentagon on Tuesday unveiled its rules for a potential $100 billion contract to replace the Air Force fleet of refueling tankers -- and the balance of power tilted toward Boeing.

The request for proposal (RFP) issued by the Pentagon "inherently favors Boeing" against its only competitor, a partnership between European Aeronautics Defence & Space (EADS), and Northrop Grumman, said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace industry analyst.

NOT CHINA'S MODEL, FRANCE'S:

One thing China can't offer Africa (Bright B Simons, Evans Lartey and Franklin Cudjoe , 2/01/07, Asia Times)

China's model is much too dependent on the extravagant profusion of resources and too unproductive to be of much use. The African connection in this context is discussed in detail in the second half of this article.

In the past decade, China has moved mountains to effect radical, wholesale changes to the way its defense industries are organized and their output calibrated to the global projection needs of its evolving geopolitical strategy. The impression has been given that reforms will be bold and sweeping and will manifest in a clear break from the traditional approach of melding technical progress to political priorities in China.

But clearly, from the results, it does not seem as if Chinese leaders had been prepared to move sufficiently away from their comfort zone, because they have only imported the most bureaucratic, centralist, crony-based aspects of military-industrial complexes in operation elsewhere, so that the long-lamented issue of the coupling of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) bureaucratic inefficiency to a resource-intensive approach to military innovation has now been compounded with and magnified by the admission of private sector's "rent seekers" (corrupt influences) into the fold.

It makes one wonder whether China has been taking lessons from fabulously Dirigiste France. The French military-industrial complex, which has spawned white elephants such as the fancy-ballroom aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, is a perfect study of how anti-competitive, over-subsidized, crony-dependent, pork-barreled institutional frameworks can handicap even the finest engineering and managerial talent.

The extent to which France's Grande Ecole and Ecole Polytechnique old boys' networks have become stumbling blocks in the reform of that country's stagnating defense industry cannot be summarized here; that the country's defense industry was nearly bankrupted in the mid-1990s ought to suffice as a hint.

WHAT HAS A QUARTER CENTURY OF FREE TRADE GIVEN US...:

Dems want trade talks to include protections (David J. Lynch, 1/30/07, USA TODAY)

President Bush and congressional Democrats fired the opening salvos Tuesday in what could become a major debate about whether the U.S. pursues additional trade agreements. [...]

The looming battle about an extension comes amid what Democrats say is rising economic insecurity despite an unemployment rate of 4.5%.

THEY VOTE DEMOCRAT, DON'T THEY?:

Essay linking liberal Jews and anti-Semitism sparks furor (Patricia Cohen, January 30, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.

An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist. [...]

By spotlighting the touchy issue of whether Jews are contributing to anti-Semitism, both admirers and detractors of the essay agree that it aggravates an already heated dispute over where legitimate criticism of Israel and its defenders ends and anti-Semitic statements begin.

MAVERICK ISN'T GONNA LIKE THAT:

How Mitt Romney Avoided Campaign-Finance Rules (Wall Street Journal, 1/30/07)

Federal law limits how much money individuals can give to presidential candidates -- $2,300 per election. But what about Compuware Inc. founder Peter Karmanos? Last year, he gave $250,000 to presidential aspirant and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Since 2004, 15 other Romney backers have sunk at least $100,000 each into the Republican's coffers, sometimes with a series of checks issued on a single day.

Because he doesn't hold federal office, Romney became subject to the federal rules only after he set up a presidential exploratory committee earlier this month. Until then, his team took advantage of a little-noticed gap between federal and state law. While most states limit political donations, about a dozen don't. Romney's political team set up fund-raising committees in three of those: Michigan, Iowa and Alabama. During that time, his political action committees raised $7 million.

As a result, Romney was able to hit the ground running, a big advantage in what has already become a feverish race.

GONNA NEED MORE ROBOTS:

Job offers topped seekers in '06; unemployment down (Japan Times, 1/31/07)

The average ratio of job offers to job seekers topped 1.0 in 2006 for the first time in 14 years, while the unemployment rate for the year fell to an eight-year low, government statistics showed Tuesday.

Last year's ratio of job offers to seekers rose 0.11 point from 2005 to 1.06, meaning there were 106 offers to every 100 people seeking work, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.

FILTHY EUROS (via brian boys):

The man who knows why we're so hooked on coffee: Starbucks plays on our secret desires and trains us to speak its language. After visiting 400 outlets, one academic reveals how it's done (David Smith, January 28, 2007, The Observer)

The reason for the remarkable growth of one of the social markers of the past two decades - upmarket coffee shops such as Starbucks and Caffe Nero - could now be a little clearer thanks to an American academic who has undertaken a remarkable personal odyssey to try to get to the bottom of the conundrum. Bryant Simon spent a year visiting more than 400 of its coffee shops in several countries, observing customers for around 12 to 15 hours a week. [...]

There are 530 branches in the UK and, with profits soaring, the company has said it aims to add 50 per year, about half of them in the south east of England. Anyone can now calculate their 'Starbucks density' using a locator on the company website: a person in Regent Street in London is within five miles of 166 branches.

It is proof the formula works even in a nation of tea drinkers, but Simon feels one element was lost in the move across the Atlantic: 'Starbucks is dirtier in Britain. Americans have been taught to do part of the labour, and they clean up after themselves. In the US, part of Starbucks' appeal is its cleanness.'

NOW THAT WE'VE GOT THAT CLEARED UP:

A Fundamental Evil (Doug Soderstrom, 31 January, 2007, Countercurrents.org)

I have come to the conclusion that the Christian fundamentalists, also known as the religious right, are the most evil people in the world

THE DEMOCRAT SENATE CAN DO ANYTHING REPUBLICANS WAN T IT TO:

Republicans clear way for minimum-wage rise (Reuters, 1/30/07)

Full Senate approval is now possible because Democrats agreed to Republican demands to include tax cuts for small businesses to help cover the cost of raising the minimum wage over two years to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour.

On an 87-10 vote, the Democratic-led Senate agreed to end more than a week of debate and hold a vote in coming days on the bill to increase the minimum wage and provide about $8.3 billion in tax breaks.

GENERAL ASHCROFT WINS AGAIN:

Court reinstates key Padilla charge (CURT ANDERSON, 1/30/07, Associated Press)

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a key terrorism charge, the only one carrying a potential life sentence, against suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with federal prosecutors in Miami that the charge that the U.S. citizen and his two co-defendants conspired to "murder, kidnap and maim" people overseas did not duplicate other counts in the indictment.

The Atlanta-based court reversed a decision last summer by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who said the three charges in the indictment contained nearly identical elements and could subject the defendants to extra punishment for the same act, violating protections against double jeopardy.

THE STEFANI WIVES (via Bryan Francoeur):

Chairman: Bush officials misled public on global warming (AP, January 30, 2007)

The Democratic chairman of a House panel examining the government's response to climate change said Tuesday there is evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought repeatedly "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."

WHAT'S THE CHINESE FOR SOYLENT GREEN? (via Fred Jacobsen):

China's getting old before it becomes rich: AGING POPULATION LACKS SUPPORT OF PENSIONS, FAMILY (Evan Osnos, 1/30/07, Chicago Tribune)

A generation after China adopted its unprecedented one-child policy, the world's most populous nation is aging faster than any major country in history. The graying of the population, lost in the astonishing statistics on China's economy, threatens to hinder growth and strain a frayed public-welfare system, say researchers in China and abroad.

``They are looking at 400 million old people, 30 years from now, the vast majority of whom will not have pensions or health care or extended family,'' said Richard Jackson, director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``This is social and political dynamite, and the government knows it.''

The problem is a peculiar side effect of progress. For most of Chinese history, people over 60 rarely numbered more than 7 of every 100 people. But improved health care, sanitation and living standards since the Communist Revolution have allowed the average citizen to live more than 30 years longer than in 1949. At the same time, China has restricted family size since the late 1970s in an attempt to control population growth.

The result is a China-size version of America's Social Security crunch, in which there are neither enough offspring nor pension funds to finance tomorrow's retirements. But China faces an even greater hurdle, because its per-capita income remains barely a tenth of U.S. levels. As economists put it, China is getting old before it has gotten rich.

``Feeding the people is the most common problem in developing countries, and taking care of the elderly is the most common problem in developed countries. China has to solve both at the same time,'' said Hu Angang, an economist at Qinghua University in Beijing.

NOW WE'VE NO EXCUSE NOT TO NUKE THEM:

U.S. missile defense maturing, latest test a success (Andrea Shalal-Esa, 1/30/07, Reuters)

[Brig. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, deputy director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency,] said there would be no formal announcement that the system was operational. He predicted the capability to defend against enemy missiles and to continue testing and development work would be achieved within a year.

"It's just a matter of maturation," he told reporters after a speech hosted by the George C. Marshall Institute, a public policy group.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, MAHMOUD:

Iranian President's Setbacks Embolden His Domestic Critics: Establishment Rivals Fault Populism, Foreign Policy; Nuclear Deadline Looms (BILL SPINDLE, January 30, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Many of Tehran's elite politicians and even clerics have long harbored concerns about Mr. Ahmadinejad, who ascended to the country's top political post from outside the traditional ruling circles. But the immense popularity he generated among Iran's poor and working-class voters kept many of his critics from speaking out or openly moving against his policies. [...]

a round of elections late last year -- for local municipal and village leaders as well as an important national consultative body -- has undermined Mr. Ahmadinejad's political momentum and unleashed a flood of public criticism and moves to clip his wings. Candidates whom Mr. Ahmadinejad supported fared poorly in the elections, while key adversaries re-established themselves as fixtures of the political scene.

In Tehran's city council, from which Mr. Ahmadinejad launched his campaign for president two years ago, his supporters went from a majority to a handful of seats. Meanwhile, Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Mr. Ahmadinejad defeated in the presidential election two years ago, dominated the voting for seats on the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with choosing a new Supreme Leader when the 67-year-old Mr. Khamenei steps down or dies.

Since those public votes, a drumbeat of criticism against Mr. Ahmadinejad's administration has emerged from within Iran's Parliament and among some senior regime officials. The president even found himself confronted by a crowd of jeering students during an appearance at a Tehran university campus, with a video of the incident distributed on the Internet3.

"The elections opened a space and legitimized criticism of him," said Nasser Hadian, a political-science professor at the University of Tehran. "There are going to be more attempts to contain him."

The poor showing by candidates associated with Mr. Ahmadinejad in local elections -- and the relatively better performance of reform candidates opposed to him -- resulted from the sort of strong turnout that generally favors reformers. The country's conservatives also failed to rally behind a single slate of candidates, as they did during the earlier presidential election. But high on many voters' minds is Iran's increasingly muddled economy.

THERE IS NO LEBANON:

Iran and Saudi Arabia mediating in Lebanon crisis (Michael Slackman, January 30, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

Leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed party trying to overthrow Lebanon's government, have recently visited the Saudi king in Riyadh, according to officials who attended the meeting. And Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi chief security adviser, has met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, in Riyadh and Tehran to try to stop Lebanon's slide into civil war. [...]

Members of Lebanon's governing party say that the dynamics inside Iran, where the firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be losing political strength, have led Tehran to lean on Hezbollah. [...]

[T]he fight is also over who will be the next president, whether Hezbollah will be allowed to keep its weapons, how to rewrite the nation's electoral laws, whether UN troops will remain on the southern border with Israel and, more fundamentally, whether Lebanon will lean toward the United States and Europe or Iran and Syria.

There have been proposals that each side has presented as compromises only to be rejected by the other as insufficient.

"It is true, whoever governs will decide Lebanon's political direction," said Muhammad Fneish, a senior member of Hezbollah who said he recently attended a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been involved in Lebanese affairs for decades. Saudi Arabia has close ties with the Hariri family and has invested large sums of money in rebuilding Beirut. Recently, as Iranian-backed parties have taken over in Iraq and as Iran has tried to establish itself as the regional superpower, Saudi Arabia has begun, at American urging, to press back.

But in Lebanon, political leaders and diplomats said, both see a common interest in calming sectarian tensions, at least for now. The fight has effectively divided the country between the predominantly Shiite Muslim opposition and the predominantly Sunni Muslim governing alliance. Lebanon's Christian community is divided between the two.

WHAT THEY'D SAY IF THEY COULD:

See Sarah Swear (BRENDAN BERNHARD, January 30, 2007, NY Sun)

Ms. Silverman's specialty is to take false problems, like overdeveloped racial or gender sensitivities, and then make inhuman, "daring" little jokes about them -- fake humor about fake dilemmas. In a scene from this episode, for instance, Sarah compliments a 70-year-old black woman on how young she looks, and then, when the woman is so pleased she tries to give her a kiss, Sarah suddenly reverses herself and says, actually, she does look her age. "Bitch," the woman mutters, walking away. Of course, had she taken a course in "Cultural Theory," she'd have known to call her a "meta-bitch."

Ms. Silverman -- or the version of herself she plays here -- is a bit like Lenny Bruce in a world in which obscenity, or mock obscenity, has been mandated by the Entertainment Authorities. Rather than being jailed, hounded, put on trial for making dirty jokes, and winding up dead from an overdose of heroin, you are prescribed anti-depressants, appear on television, and are profiled at length in the New Yorker, four-letter words included. Your ironic brand of "meta-comedy" also provides fertile fodder for endless ponderings, as in this analysis, from Slate magazine:

"Silverman is a prototypical ironist -- someone who says things she doesn't mean and (through more-or-less subtle contextual winks) expects us to intuit an unstated, smarter message underneath. But what is that message? Does she, like Socrates, play dumb in order to make us smart? Or just to experience the cheap thrill of public racism? Every ironic statement, should, in theory...." Etc., etc.

Ms. Silverman has been called "the funniest woman alive" by Rolling Stone, which is enough to make one weep for women. But perhaps it would be more to the point to weep for critics.

AND THEY'D NEED 67 TO OVER-RIDE THE VETO:

Senate to Consider Minimum Wage Bill With Tax Breaks (KATE ZERNIKE, 1/30/07, NY Times)

Aides to some House leaders say they would be willing to allow some of the tax breaks. But others, including Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, are insisting that they will not concede any tax cuts. [...]

"We are still operating on the assumption or hope that the Senate will pass a clean minimum wage bill," said Stacey F. Bernards, a spokeswoman for Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic leader. "If it doesn't happen, it's because a minority of Republicans held it up. It's their fault."

That simple approach to raising the minimum wage failed in the Senate last week. Sixty votes were required to cut off debate on the bill, sending it for a vote, but Democrats were able to enlist just five Republicans, for a vote of 54 to 43.

"The only way we're going to get a minimum wage increase through the Senate is if it is accompanied by tax breaks for small businesses," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "I haven't seen a diminution of the opposition."

LOW CREDIT SCORE:

What the President Got Right: Give Bush credit for his energy proposal. (Gregg Easterbrook, Jan. 29, 2007, Slate)

Last week Bush proposed something environmentalists, energy analysts, greenhouse-effect researchers, and national-security experts have spent 20 years pleading for: a major strengthening of federal mileage standards for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. The number-one failing of U.S. energy policy is that vehicle mile-per-gallon standards have not been made stricter in two decades. Nothing the United States can do in energy policy is more important than an mpg increase. Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and, until last week, George W. Bush had all refused to face the issue of America's low-mpg vehicles, which are the root of U.S. dependency on Persian Gulf oil and a prime factor in rising U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. But now Bush favors a radical strengthening of federal mileage rules, and last week to boot became the first Republican president since Gerald Ford to embrace the basic concept of federal mileage regulation (called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard).

This should have been Page One headline material--PRESIDENT CALLS FOR DRAMATIC MPG REGULATIONS. Instead, most news organizations pretended Bush's mpg proposal did not exist, or buried the story inside the paper, or made only cryptic references to it. In his 2006 State of the Union address, when Bush said America was "addicted to oil" but proposed no mpg improvements, critics rightly pummeled the president. Now Bush has backed the needed reform, and the development is being downplayed or even ridiculed.

What's going on? First, mainstream news organizations and pundits are bought and sold on a narrative of Bush as an environmental villain and simply refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts the thesis. During his term the president has significantly strengthened the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution caused by diesel fuel and diesel engines, to reduce emissions from Midwestern power plants, to reduce pollution from construction equipment and railroad locomotives, and to reduce emissions of methane, which is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. You'd never know these reforms even happened from the front page of the New York Times, which for reasons of ideology either significantly downplays or fails to report them. Second, with the war in Iraq appearing a fiasco of the first magnitude, editors and pundits feel Bush must be ridiculed on all scores--even when he offers intelligent, progressive proposals.

MORE (via Kevin Whited):
"The Bush Administration is Caught Half-Way Across a Bridge": President George W. Bush's former speechwriter David Frum coined the phrase "Axis of Evil." In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE he accuses the White House of serious mistakes in Iraq and in the war on terror. (Der Spiegel, 1/23/07)

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is Bush "the last neocon in power," as Bill Kristol recently wrote?

Frum: The story of the Bush Administration is a story of absorbing certain doctrines that are called "neo-conservative," but entrusting them to be executed by people who did not believe in those doctrines. And by always limiting the applications of those doctrines, so as not to touch on the really deep American commitments to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. If Bush were a neo-conservative, as everybody said, then his response to 9/11 would have been that this originated in an extremism that the government of Saudi Arabia has whipped up in order to protect itself from the consequences of its own corruption.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Has the Iraq chaos discredited the essentially correct vision of democracy for the Middle East?

Frum: No, the idea will go into hibernation, but it will be back more powerful than ever. The diagnosis that the problems of the Middle East are traceable to the failures of the way they govern themselves strikes me still as very deeply true.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But isn't there proof now that you shouldn't try to change the political landscape by force?

Frum: Force is always the last resort. But if you use it there has to be real democratization afterwards.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your colleague, Joshua Muravchik from the American Enterprise Institute argues that the neocons should now make the case for bombing Iran.

Frum: It's not a good idea to begin talking about things that would shatter the unity of the Western approach to Iran. It's not necessarily true that bombing is the only answer. We are learning more and more every day about the economic vulnerability of the Iranian regime.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will history say about this president?

Frum: On his tombstone could be written: "He tried a lot." He dreamed big. But it's a dangerous question because presidents are like stocks, their reputations rise and fall. He will get marks for being willing to take on the problem of Islamic extremism more broadly. He will suffer for having underestimated Iraq. That will be held against him.

DRAGON SLAYER:

Bernanke quietly guides economy: On Thursday, Ben Bernanke will have been Fed chairman for a year. He has steered the central bank through an economic turning point. (Sue Kirchhoff, 1/30/07, USA TODAY)

As he finishes his first year as chairman, the unassuming Bernanke, 53, doesn't have Greenspan's head-turning sway over the general public, at least not yet, but he does have firm control of the central bank and the growing confidence of financial markets.

The former Princeton professor, Fed governor and White House adviser has steered the central bank through a turning point in an economy that was confronting a tumbling housing market and uncomfortably high inflation. The Fed, which meets here today and Wednesday to review interest rate policy, has held the target for short-term interest rates steady since June after two years of raising it to combat inflation. Economic growth slowed in the second half of 2006, but the job market strengthened.

"I congratulate you and the Fed in keeping interest rates where the American people can stand and the economy can prosper," Jim Bunning, R-Ky., the sole senator to oppose Bernanke's nomination, told him this month.

Working with other regulators, the Bernanke Fed has also tightened guidelines for commercial real estate and mortgage lending and toughened standards for complex financial products misused by energy giant Enron.

MORE:
Bullish on Bernanke: Turnaround Earns Him Praise from Wall Street to Capitol Hill (Nell Henderson, January 30, 2007, Washington Post)

The new chairman of the Federal Reserve got off to a rocky start last spring. Inflation was surging, the housing market was slumping, and Ben S. Bernanke's initial responses caused turmoil on Wall Street.

But a year into Bernanke's tenure, the picture has turned considerably brighter. Inflation is falling; unemployment is low; wages are rising; and the economy, despite continued problems in housing, is growing at a brisk clip. Bernanke is earning plaudits from Wall Street to Capitol Hill.

AND PASSIVE ALCOHOL TESTS ARE ON THE WAY:

16 states see road deaths slashed (Larry Copeland, Alan Gomez and Oren Dorell, 1/30/07, USA TODAY)

Traffic deaths dropped substantially in 16 states last year, in many cases reflecting stepped-up enforcement and education campaigns, according to a USA TODAY analysis of statistics reported by the states. [...]

Illinois saw traffic deaths fall below 1,300, the lowest total since 1924. Road deaths there have been dropping every year since 2003, when the state enacted a law that allows police to stop motorists solely for not wearing seat belts.

"These numbers represent clear and convincing evidence to us that the law is working and seat belts really do save lives," Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says.

Last year, three other states -- Alaska, Kentucky and Mississippi -- enacted such laws, bringing the number to 25. All three states reported declines in traffic deaths. Officials in Kentucky and Mississippi attributed the drops to the new law.

Among other factors cited in states that had drops in traffic fatalities: stiffer drunken-driving laws, police checkpoints aimed at aggressive driving, improved highway design, and graduated license programs and other safety efforts targeting young drivers.

IF YOU NEVER UNDERSTOOD VIETNAM IT'S ESPECIALLY HARD TO DRAW COMPARISONS TO IRAQ:

New Thesis on Vietnam Aimed at 2008 Election (SETH GITELL, January 30, 2007, NY Sun)

A new thesis about the end of the Vietnam war is making the rounds in the context of the debate over Iraq. It holds that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger -- not the Democratic Congress and public opinion -- were chiefly culpable in America's betrayal of South Vietnam.

The managing editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose, is the most vocal proponent of this revision of history. According to Mr. Rose's writing in Slate, "the settlement the Nixon administration negotiated left the South vulnerable to future attacks." More recently, writing for the New Republic online, Rick Perlstein stated, "there is a popular fantasy that liberals in Congress, somehow, at least metaphorically, abandoned American troops in Vietnam."

The importance of this argument has to do with the debate that is taking place for the 2008 presidential election. There is a growing sense that the Democratic leadership in the Congress will try to force a retreat in Iraq by defunding the war, which is what happened in Vietnam.

But that history is insignificant to Iraq, where there is no parallel for North Vietnam, China, Russia, Laos, Cambodia, the Buddhists, Nixon, Kissinger, Ford, etc., etc., etc..

MORE:
Group reports increase in number of displaced Iraqis: Baghdad's neighborhoods are being reshaped along sectarian lines as victims flee to safer areas (Paul Richter, January 30, 2007, LA Times)

Sectarian violence has driven 181,000 Baghdad residents from their homes in the last three months, and more than 1 million more could be forced to flee in the next six months if trends continue, an international relief group said Monday.

International Medical Corps, based in Santa Monica, said in a study that 546,078 Iraqis had been displaced since the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra intensified sectarian fighting.

Eighty percent of the departures have been in ethnically mixed Baghdad, the site of bitter fighting between Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite Muslim militias. [...]

The departures are reshaping the city along sectarian lines, much as Sarajevo was reshaped by ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s. Unlike displacements that occurred before the February bombing, the most recent moves appear to be permanent, the study says. Earlier movements often were forced by short-term military operations, but these departures often involve the sale or abandonment of property, the study notes.

OBLIGATORY HITLER REFERENCE:

Bush's three-front blunder (Gareth Porter, 1/31/07, Asia Times)

US President George W Bush's State of the Union address appears to confirm other indications in recent weeks that he is not merely sending more troops to Iraq to do more of the same, but has adopted a new strategy of fighting all three major Iraqi Arab political-military forces simultaneously. [...]

One veteran military expert on Iraq, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, said Bush's new policy is a "war against all" in Iraq and called it "a blunder of Hitlerian proportions".

FORTUNATELY, THE AYATOLLAH CAN READ, EVEN IF MAHMOUD CAN'T:

The writing's on the wall for Iran (Leon Hadar, 1/31/07, Asia Times)

The Israelis, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have been playing into the hands of US warriors by suggesting that an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose an "existential" threat akin to the European Holocaust and that if US diplomatic and/or military power failed, Israel would have no choice but to "take care of the problem". The warnings were buttressed through a series of public statements, including a visit by Olmert to Washington, and leaks to the press, including a recent British newspaper report that Israel could use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear military sites.

At the same time, the Saudis have been warning that a nuclear Iran would help transform Tehran into a hegemonic power in the Persian Gulf and provide it with an opportunity to lead an alliance of Shi'ite Mideast factions, from Iran to Israel/Palestine through Lebanon, in a way that would threaten Saudi Arabia and other pro-US Arab-Sunni regimes.

The sense of alarm perpetuated by the Saudis was reinforced through press leaks suggesting that the members of the hawkish wing of the Saudi royal family, led by former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan, were gaining strength, and that the Israelis and the Saudis, backed by Washington, have been conducting secret talks to coordinate the anti-Iran strategy.

Indeed, according to Israeli press reports, Olmert and Prince Sultan have met to discuss Iran and related issues. The meeting and other signs of coordination on Iran among Washington, Jerusalem and Riyadh have raised the possibility that the Bush administration is trying to draw the outlines of a new strategic consensus involving it, Israel and the pro-US Arab-Sunni regimes (Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states, and Egypt and Jordan).

These reports recalled a similar "strategic consensus" that evolved in the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration, when the Americans, Israelis and Saudis - and, yes, then-US partner, Saddam's Iraq - were cooperating in dealing with both the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and with the challenge from revolutionary Iran.

And anyone who knows how to assess the balance of power in Washington will tell you that when the Americans are joined by the Saudis and the Israelis and their powerful supporters in Washington in a coordinated effort to harm you, run fast for cover.

THERE GOES THE TODD:

Helton talks are off: Choice of prospects is the deal-breaker (Nick Cafardo, January 30, 2007, Boston Globe)

Helton is Epstein's type of guy, a tough out who wears down pitchers (.430 career on-base percentage) and a tough player. So Epstein listened and listened. He laid down the ground rules to the Rockies:

take on two big veteran salaries, pay some of Helton's contract, and we'll also give you one or two mid-level prospects.

But when the Rockies asked for more, the deal broke down, and the collapse became official last night. [...]

In the end, the Red Sox and Rockies were far apart on two major issues: how much of Helton's $90.1 million contract the Rockies would be willing to assume , and which prospects the Red Sox were willing to part with.

While numerous reports and sources indicated the Rockies were willing to eat half of Helton's salary, the last amount the Red Sox heard was about $27.5 million, or just more than a quarter of the contract.

Also, the Rockies wanted to choose one or two players from a list of Jon Lester, Craig Hansen, Jacoby Ellsbury, Daniel Bard, Manny Delcarmen, and Clay Buchholz. The Red Sox wouldn't part with any of them. Epstein countered with more of a second-tier prospect list, and that's when the negotiations broke down.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF REPETITIVE REDUNDACY:

'Hobbit' human 'is a new species' (BBC, 1/30/07)

The researchers believe the 1m-tall (3ft) people evolved from an unknown small-bodied, small-brained ancestor, which they think became small in stature to cope with the limited supply of food on the island.

The little humans are thought to have survived until about 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption devastated the region.

LB1 possessed a brain size of around 400 cubic cm (24 cu inches) - about the same as that of a chimp.

Long arms, a sloping chin and other primitive features suggested affinities to ancient human species such as Homo habilis.

HE'S NO MAHDI:

Iraqis Describe Plot To Kill Shiite Clerics: Cult Leader, Many Allies Died in Siege (Joshua Partlow and Saad Sarhan, 1/30/07, Washington Post)

A Shiite cult leader, who claimed to be a revered Muslim figure who vanished in the 10th century, was killed Sunday along with scores of fighters who were poised to attack a holy city in southern Iraq and assassinate the country's Shiite religious leadership, Iraqi officials said Monday. [...]

The cult leader killed Sunday probably sought to assassinate conservative Shiite religious leaders because they likely would have disputed his claim to be the Mahdi, said John O. Voll, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University, in a telephone interview.

MORE:
Battle-ready Iraq cult leaves casualties and questions (Richard Mauer and Hussam Ali, 1/30/07, McClatchy Newspapers)

Even in Iraq's volatile and violent brew of sectarian, political, tribal and ethnic factionalism, the explosive emergence of the religious group Soldiers of Heaven stands apart as a reminder of how little understanding there is of the country's complex web of militias.

The group's leader, who was known by several names, including his birth name of Diya Abdul-Zahra Kadhim, believed he was the earthly representative of the "Hidden Imam" of Shiite theology, Mohammed al-Mahdi.

Police said Monday that Kadhim, who reportedly was born in 1969 in Hilla, planned to attack the Shiite commemoration of Ashoura today in the holy city of Najaf, an event expected to draw as many as 2 million pilgrims.

Police said Kadhim's motive in planning the assault was to hasten the return of the Mahdi, an event that Shiite theology predicts will lead to peace, justice and the conversion of the world to Islam.

Sunni Muslims don't believe in the Hidden Imam, but the concept is a driving force in Shiite belief. Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr drew the name for his Mahdi Army militia from that theology.

In the absence of hard evidence about the group and its connections, Iraqis have been speculating wildly and contradictorily, asserting that they recognize elements of Shiite, Sunni and other influences among the militants.

Asad abu Kalal, the governor of Najaf, said as much himself on Monday.

"In external form, the way they look is Shiite, but its reality is something else," Kalal said. "They meant to destroy the Shiite and kill the Grand Marjiyas and occupy the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali." The Grand Marjiyas are the four leading ayatollahs in Najaf. They are led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric.

Iraqi officials said the militants had been holed up with their wives and children stockpiling food and weapons in the village of Zergha on the opposite bank of the Euphrates River from Najaf. According to some reports, women and children were among the casualties in the intense ground and air assault.

Abdul-Zahra was a charismatic figure, Iraqi officials said, whose tale conjures up American religious zealots Jim Jones and David Koresh.

The officials said Abdul-Zahra, also known as Thamir abu Gumar, was arrested twice during the rule of Saddam Hussein on charges of claiming to be Imam Mahdi, the revered Shiite Muslim saint who disappeared more than 1,000 years ago and whose return is said to herald a new dawn of justice.

After Hussein was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Abdul-Zahra's group appeared to be a legitimate political movement "coming out of the new civil freedoms," said Ali Jarew, Najaf's provincial security advisor.

But soon Abdul-Zahra, who is in his mid-30s, began telling followers that he was the reincarnation of the Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, another revered Shiite saint.

Jarew described Abdul-Zahra as tall, fair-skinned, rugged and handsome. His followers were said to include Sunnis and Shiites, Iraqis and foreigners, men and women.

They apparently came to believe that the man from the small Shiite town of Hillah was Mahdi, and the chaos engulfing Iraq an omen of the coming apocalypse.

The Iraqi Cabinet, in a statement, described the Heaven's Army as an "ideologically corrupted group" led by a man with "a suspicious history."

Ashoura, the 10-day ceremony that culminates today and marks the run-up to the 7th-century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, has leapt in importance in the Arab world since the 2003 U.S.-led Iraq invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and his Sunni regime.

"Ashoura is the marquee event of Shiism," said Vali Nasr, a scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and author of "The Shia Revival." [...]

For centuries, Shiites communities were considered an underclass in Arab countries, oppressed by powerful and wealthy Sunni leaders, even where Shiites constituted a majority as in Iraq and Bahrain, an island country in the Persian Gulf. While Iran is predominately Shiite, it was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that produced the Arab world's first Shiite-controlled country, an event Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of Iraq's main Shiite political coalition, calls the "Ashoura Revolution."

The effect throughout the Middle East and beyond has been electrifying. In Sunni-ruled Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where Shiites until recently were barred from celebrating Ashoura, Shiites pressed for more rights. In Saudi Arabia, Shiites demanded they be granted the right to celebrate Ashoura in the open. The Saudi government nervously complied.

Shiites' demands for rights have upset the centuries-old balance of power in the region but also created new democratic openings in autocratic Sunni regimes.

But the emergence of Shiite Arabs as a significant player on the world stage has been riddled with conflict. Sunni Arabs often refuse to embrace Shiites as fellow Arabs, sometimes deriding them as Persian agents.

IT'S CALLED THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH FOR A REASON:

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation (ROBERT PEAR, 1/30/07, NY Times)

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE RESPIRATOR:

Elderly most at risk of theft by own children (Sarah Womack, 30/01/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Greedy middle-aged sons and daughters are the people most likely to rob their parents of money, valuables and even their homes, according to a report today.

The findings, published by Action on Elder Abuse, are based on a study of calls to the charity's helpline last year.

They show that far from the family being a haven for the elderly, many pensioners are victims of their close relatives' avarice and psychological cruelty. They are regarded as easy targets if they have disabilities or suffer dementia.

MAYBE HE COULD EXPLAIN THE REAL TWO AMERICAS TO JOHN EDWARDS (via Mike Daley):

Mexico's Calderon Urges Region to Reject Turn to Failed Past (Juan Pablo Spinetto and Patrick Harrington, Jan. 29, 2007, Bloomberg)

Mexican President Felipe Calderon warned that Latin America is splitting into two economic camps, one embracing a failed past of state control, the other seeking growth with foreign investment.

Calderon, 44, used the global audience provided by the World Economic Forum in Davos for some of the sharpest language of his 60-day presidency to deride a push, led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, for increased state control of the region's economies. In the past six months, Venezuela and Bolivia have moved to nationalize foreign assets and Ecuador is threatening to default on its foreign debt. The countries are also weakening central bank autonomy.

``Many countries in Latin America have chosen a move toward the past, and among their most harmful decisions are seeking nationalizations, expropriations, state control of the economy and authoritarianism,'' Calderon said in an interview in Davos. ``Mexicans have decided to look to the future and to strengthen democracy, markets and investment.''

Latin American nations must choose a path of democracy and free markets or risk falling behind competitors in the rest of the world, Calderon said. Mexico, by asserting the rule of law and luring investment, will become one of the world's largest economies in coming decades, he said.

MORE:
Five lessons that Latin America could learn from India (Andres Oppenheimer, HACER)

First lesson: Continuity pays. Unlike many Latin American countries, which change economic policies with each new government, India has stayed the course of its economic reforms. Since 1991, India has opened up most sectors of its economy to the private sector, including airlines, railroads and telephone companies.

While India is a messy democracy, with a few communist-ruled states and dozens of ethnic enclaves that in some cases have violent separatist movements, there is a consensus that stability brings about investment and that there is no growth without investment.

Even India's communists have turned pro-investment. Earlier this month, the communist government of India's West Bengal state made headlines by granting rural lands to India's Tata Motors for a car manufacturing plant, despite violent protests from local farmers and peasants.

Second lesson: There is more than one way to privatize. Unlike several Latin American countries, which sold major state-run monopolies to private investors, India has most often left state-owned companies alive, but forced them to compete with new private firms. That helped reduce social opposition to privatizations, officials say. [...]

Third lesson: Gradualism pays. Unlike in many Latin American countries, where governments privatized state monopolies overnight, India opened its economy gradually over the past 15 years. That made these measures politically easier to implement.

Fourth lesson: Investment in education pays. [...]

Fifth lesson: Meritocracy has its merits. While education is largely free in India, the country has set up a meritocratic school system, in which students have to pass a rigorous high-school exam, whose grades determine which university students can attend.

YET THE LEFT CARES THAT THE FRENCH HATE US:

A railway that did Nazis' bidding: France's state railroad is being sued by Holocaust survivors and their families. (Mary Papenfuss, 1/29/07, The Inquirer)

Sonia Jeruchim heard that "something big" was about to happen to the French Jewish community in July 1942. Her husband, a watchmaker, dismissed the rumors as bubbe meises - Yiddish for "grandma tales."

But within days, the French police rounded up about 13,000 Jews for deportation to German death camps. And Jeruchim found herself sobbing in the home of a sympathetic Christian family, pleading that they arrange safe passage for her three children.

"I remember she said: 'If anything happens to me, please see my children get an education,' " recalled Simon Jeruchim, 77, a retired package designer from Pomona, N.Y., who was 12 at the time.

Within hours, the children were whisked away to safety in rural Normandy. But their parents were soon arrested and forced onto a French train. Final destination: Auschwitz.

"It makes me so angry," said Simon's younger brother, Michel Jeruchim, 69, of Paoli, who was 5 when he last saw his mother. "The pain of my parents' loss is a wound that never heals."

The Jeruchims are among more than 100 Americans who have joined a groundbreaking legal action in Paris against the French state-owned railway, Societé Nationale des Chemins de Fer, which shipped thousands of Jews to transit hubs on their way to liquidation. It is the same railway that now carries French commuters to their jobs. About 76,000 Jews in France were transported to German death camps; only 2,500 survived.

HOW DID TWO MORE YEARS OF BLOW-DRYING HIS HAIR HELP?

Edwards says he may have been too inexperienced in 2004 (AP, 1/29/07)

A TEST OF MATURITY:

DAVOS-Top Kremlin official Medvedev woos world forum (Clara Ferreira-Marques, Jan 27, 2007, Reuters)

Reserved at home, [Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev appeared relaxed and chatty at the forum, leading a Russian charm offensive aimed at restoring a national image tarnished by spats with its neighbours and accusations that Moscow wields its huge resources as a diplomatic weapon of blunt nationalism.

In his keynote speech in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, he outlined a three-point plan for Russia's development: diversify the economy, overhaul infrastructure and develop human capital.

He then concluded in fluent English.

"We realise the problems we are facing -- excessive dependence on (natural resources), corruption, a declining population," he said, adding Russia would woo the West not with force but with its achievements, while also protecting its own strategic assets.

"We are not trying to push anyone to love Russia." [...]

Quizzed on the succession, Medvedev said a transparent process would be a test of the maturity of Russian democracy.

"As I see it, the difference between a democratic state and a non-democratic state is the path to power," he said.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REMOVE HALF AN A-FRAME?:

Only the US hawks can save the Iranian president now: Ahmadinejad is failing to deliver for the poor and losing support, but he could yet survive because of the international threat (Ali Ansari, January 30, 2007, The Guardian)

Ahmadinejad was elected on a platform of anti-corruption and financial transparency, and few appreciated how rapidly he was intoxicated with the prerogatives of his office. He very soon forgot the real help he had received in ensuring his election, basking in the belief that God and the people had put him in power. Ahmadinejad soon had a view for all seasons: uranium enrichment. Of course Iran would pursue this, and what's more, sell it on the open market at knockdown rates. As for interest rates, they were far too high for the ordinary borrower, so cut them immediately. And then there was the Holocaust.

None of this might matter so much, if the president had based his rhetorical flourishes on solid policies. But much to everyone's surprise nothing dramatic materialised. Ahmadinejad appeared to follow the dictum of his mentor, Ayatollah Khomeini - "Economics is for donkeys". Indeed, his policies could be defined as "anything but Khatami" (his predecessor). So the oil reserve fund was spent on cash handouts to the grateful poor, and the central bank, normally a bastion of prudence, was instructed to cut interest rates for small businesses.

These had the effect, as Ahmadinejad was warned, of pushing up inflation. The rationale for high interest rates was to encourage the middle classes to keep their money in Iran. Now they decided to spend it. Richer Iranians, worried about rising international tension, decided it would be prudent to ship their money abroad. This further weakened the rial, and added to inflationary pressure. In the past few months the prices of most basic goods have risen, hurting the poor he was elected to help. Moreover, far from investing Iran's oil wealth in infrastructure to create jobs, he announced recently that Iran's economy could support a substantially larger population, as if current unemployment was not a big enough problem.

Views such as these, along with his well publicised unorthodox religious convictions, have earned him the ridicule of political foes. What is more striking perhaps is the growing concern of those who should be considered his allies, especially in the parliament. These are people who supported him and expected results. They expected their populist protege to overturn the heresy of reform.

Much to their irritation, not only has Ahmadinejad singularly failed to consolidate and extend his political base, the recent municipal elections saw his faction defeated throughout the country. Traditional conservatives and reformists reorganised and hit back, ingeniously using technology to work round the various obstacles placed in front of them. Now, over the past weeks, with biting weather, shortages of heating fuel are further raising the political temperature, while his political opponents point to the burgeoning international crisis for which the globetrotting president seems to have no constructive answer. Talk has turned to impeachment.

HOLD THE PEANUT PRODUCTS (via David Hill, The Bronx):

NOW THAT'S A GREAT HEADLINE:

3 Weeks to Pitchers and Molinas (JACK CURRY, 1/29/07, NY Times)

The energetic, young children scampered along a bumpy dirt infield, chased baseballs around an outfield that was missing almost as much grass as it contained and sidestepped a leaning light tower that was a miniature Tower of Pisa. Still, to them, this tattered field in Vega Alta, P.R., is hallowed ground.

Actually, Jesus Rivera Park is sacred to little ones and not-so-little ones because it is a place where three neighborhood legends once played. It is a field where the Molina brothers -- Bengie, José and Yadier, all catchers -- rumbled through the divots as they developed into major leaguers.

From the time they sip their morning coffee until hours after they have eaten dinner, the people who hang around the park can boast that the Molinas stand apart from the 18 other families that have sent at least three brothers to the major leagues.

The three DiMaggio brothers had superb careers and featured one of the most famous Joes to ever hit or throw a ball. The three Alou brothers combined for strong careers during a collective 47 seasons. But only the three Molinas all ended up behind the plate and only they, of all those 18 other groups of brothers, can each claim a World Series championship.

EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT...:

Pelosi, two other Democrats failed to disclose roles in family charities (Matt Kelley, 1/29/07, USA TODAY)

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and two other prominent Democrats have failed to disclose they are officers of family charities, in violation of a law requiring members of Congress to report non-profit leadership roles.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana also did not report they serve as family foundation directors, according to financial disclosure reports examined by USA TODAY.

EVEN MORE FRUSTRATING WHEN YOU'VE NONE:

Senate Dems' anti-surge vote hits snag (ROBERT NOVAK, 1/29/07, Chgicago Sun-Times)

The Democratic plan was for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden to sit down over the weekend with his longtime Republican colleague, Sen. John Warner, and hammer out a consensus bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's troop surge in Iraq. But Warner, who has been making backroom deals for 28 years in the Senate, informed Biden late last Thursday: no deal.

Warner wrote that the "will of the Senate" should be determined in "open" session, not closeted negotiations. That killed the Democratic leadership's dream of passing a Biden-crafted anti-surge resolution by 70 votes or more. Such a proposal now cannot get the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster (and could fall short of the 50 senators needed for a simple majority). Conceivably, no resolution may be passed by the Senate.

Despite new Democratic control, the Senate remains sluggish, quirky and madly frustrating for anybody with an agenda. [...]

[B]iden was surprised Wednesday afternoon to receive a blunt letter from Warner and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. They asserted that "issues set forth in [the resolution] should occur as a consequence of the will of the Senate, working in 'open' session." In other words, no private negotiations.

That stand poses a dilemma for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid because of bipartisan support for Warner's resolution. Besides Ben Nelson, co-sponsors include Democrats Mary Landrieu (La.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Ken Salazar (Colo.), and Republicans Norm Coleman (Minn.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Gordon Smith (Ore.). If they all stick together, Biden cannot change the Warner resolution.

JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR DISORDERED:

Late economist Friedman left mark on history (TERRY SAVAGE, January 29, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times)

Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, also a renowned economist, explained that inflation was not caused by full employment and wage demands pushing prices higher. Instead they demonstrated that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."

Inflation increased when the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, created too much money or credit. The last two decades have shown that you can have strong economic growth, the lowest unemployment rate in history, a bull market in stocks -- and low inflation, if the Fed keeps a stern watch on the appropriate level of money supply.

Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, remembers the importance of Friedman's endorsement of his concept of a financial futures market.

Says Melamed about his late good friend, "His greatest contribution worldwide was to prove that you cannot run an economy in a command form, that a government can't dictate pricing. . . . He convinced a generation of policy makers and average citizens that market forces of supply and demand can be the only determinants of fair market value." [...]

Today has been declared Milton Friedman Day, and he will be honored today at the University of Chicago Rockefeller Chapel at 2 p.m., a ceremony that will be open to the public, and is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

If you want to know more about his formidable influence, you can watch his biography, "The Power of Choice" on PBS tonight.

MORE:
The Power of Milton Friedman (AMITY SHLAES, January 29, 2007, NY Sun)

The first thing this excellent program reminds us is what Friedman and his Chicago friends were up against. Between the 1940s and 1970s, America's political leaders really did believe in John Maynard Keynes's old rule that "a large extension of the traditional functions of government" was necessary in the new era. In those days, too many economists (even GOP economists) believed they should manage the economy almost hour by hour, using any number of devices that have since proven to be perverse or destructive.

After the Englishman died, John Kenneth Galbraith, a nearly-Englishman from Canada, preached the Keynes message to the Yahoos in America. "The Power of Choice" contains a wonderful clip of Ambassador Galbraith on a talk show sometime in the 1970s, archly telling the audience that "wage and price controls are an indispensable part of any economic policy that this country can have."

Friedman, as this program demonstrates, attacked such thinkers first of all on the economic plane. His "Permanent Income Hypothesis" demonstrated that citizens don't respond so much to their government's short-term behavior as to their own assessments of what will happen to themselves economically during the course of their lifetimes. If voters or taxpayers expected government -- the man on the porch, as it were -- to change its mind frequently, they would be less likely to change behavior on the basis of its offers. An even more important contribution from Friedman came on the monetary side. Friedman and his partner, Anna Schwartz, showed with their landmark monetary history that the Great Depression was caused by government failure to recognize deflation --not the failure of the stock market.

But Friedman also battled successfully on the political plane, including presidents from Ford forward. Friedman judged President Nixon the most intelligent but found that President Reagan understood his arguments best -- in part, perhaps, because Reagan was old enough to have been educated before Keynes took hold. Friedman's own famous documentary, "Free To Choose," aired in 1980, the year Reagan ran for the presidency.

A million viewers crowded before TV screens to watch Friedman reach for the "STOP" button at the printing presses at the United States Mint to show how you checked inflation.

Friedman's insight is that a market limits the power that others have over us; conversely, limiting the power that others have over us allows us to have markets. Friedman argued that no matter how wise the officials of government may be, market competition does a better job of protecting us from idiots.

THE FRUIT OF OUR DESTABILIZATION:

Saudi king invites Palestinian factions to talks (Greg Myre, January 28, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Sunday on the rival Palestinian factions to hold emergency talks in the holy city of Mecca in the latest bid to halt some of the worst ever Palestinian internal fighting.

As the two main factions, Hamas and Fatah, waged a fourth straight day of fighting in the Gaza Strip, leaders from both groups said they would take up the invitation by the Saudi monarch, though no date was set. [...]

Saudi Arabia does not have a tradition of such direct involvement in Palestinian affairs. But as one of the most important figures in the Arab world the king, by his decision to hold the talks in Mecca, could increase the pressure on the Palestinian leaders to find a compromise.

WINNING THE WoT:

Progress is Impressive in Indonesia (Ian Bremmer, 1/29/07, Real Clear Politics)

Amid all the fears in the United States and Europe that direct elections in the Muslim world breed only political radicalism and an anti-Western agenda, recent developments in Indonesia have gone virtually unnoticed.

Over the last decade, Indonesia has endured the unexpected implosion of former President Suharto's 31-year authoritarian rule, the Asian financial crisis, ethnic and religious violence, the loss of East Timor, separatist movements, terrorist attacks, a tsunami that killed 168,000 of its people, and a volcano last September that left thousands homeless as it buried villages in rivers of mud. But a visit to the country today reveals plenty for both Indonesians and foreigners to celebrate as the country's first directly elected president makes steady progress toward political and economic reform.

Since his inauguration in October 2004, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has brought real stability to Indonesia. That's no mean accomplishment in a nation comprised of thousands of islands scattered across the Pacific, home to more than 300 local languages and a diverse range of ethnic groups. This stability is transforming the archipelago into a promising long-term investment bet.

WHICH IS WHY AMERICANS HOLD INTELLECTUALS IN CONTEMPT:

Admit it - you really hate modern art (Spengler, 1/30/07, Asia Times)

The most striking difference between the two founding fathers of modernism is this: the price of Kandinsky's smallest work probably exceeds the aggregate royalties paid for the performances of Schoenberg's music. Out of a sense of obligation, musicians perform Schoenberg from time to time, but always in the middle and never at the end of a program, for audiences flee the cacophony. Schoenberg died a poor man in 1951, and and his widow and three children barely survived on the copyright royalties from his music. His family remains poor, while the heirs of famous artists have become fabulously wealthy.

Modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, most famously Clement Greenberg's sponsorship of Jackson Pollack in The Partisan Review. It is not supposed to "please" the senses on first glance, after the manner of a Raphael or an Ingres, but to challenge the viewer to think and consider.

Why is it that the audience for modern art is quite happy to take in the ideological message of modernism while strolling through an art gallery, but loath to hear the same message in the concert hall? It is rather like communism, which once was fashionable among Western intellectuals. They were happy to admire communism from a distance, but reluctant to live under communism.

When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance.

That is why at least some modern artists come into very serious money, but not a single one of the abstract composers can earn a living from his music.

DE FACTO ALLIES:

Iranian Reveals Plan to Expand Role in Iraq (JAMES GLANZ, 1/29/07, NY Times)

Iran's ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq -- including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital -- just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs. [...]

The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraq government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called "the security fight." In the economic area, Mr. Qumi said, Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for Iraq reconstruction, an area of failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago.

"We have experience of reconstruction after war," Mr. Qumi said, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. "We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis."

MORE:
Another illusion out of the Iraqi hat (Sami Moubayed , 1/30/07, Asia Times)

Had Maliki been prime minister of a real state he would have had a lot of explaining to do when mortars hit an all-girls secondary school three days later, on Sunday, killing five students. All of them were Sunnis. A Sunni group called the General Conference of the People of Iraq accused Shi'ite militias of carrying out the attack, saying that the markings on the mortars indicated that they were "made in Iran".

Also on Sunday, Iraqi and US forces reported that they killed "several hundred gunmen" who were said to be planning an attack on a Shi'ite shrine. In a battle in the holy city of Najaf that raged all day, a US helicopter crashed, killing two troops.

More than 150 people were killed in the week preceding the attack on the girls' school, most targeting Shi'ites as they prepared to celebrate the holy day of Ashura on Tuesday.

Preceding all this bloodshed was the much-publicized shootout between Sunni militants and US troops, backed by Iraqi security, in Haifa Street in Baghdad in which 30 militants died. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the government, said it was aimed at eradicating "terrorists and outlaws" from the neighborhood.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group, claimed that the Haifa Street attack was "genocide", using it as further evidence to blame the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government of persecuting Sunnis. [...]

A major cause of concern over the past six months has been Maliki's alliance with the Mehdi Army of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

It is accused, among other things, of kidnapping Sunni notables, assassinating Sunni clergy and burning Sunni mosques. The hanging of Saddam Hussein on December 30, which fueled Sunni anger not only in Iraq but throughout the Arab world, was carried out by members of the Sadr movement, who chanted Muqtada's name in the Iraqi dictator's face before telling him to "go to hell".

Maliki never lifted a finger to stop them. When Iraqi troops stormed Muqtada's districts in late 2006, the prime minister apologized and released the arrested Sadrists. While he cracks down routinely on Sunni militias, Maliki refuses to harass Muqtada's Shi'ite militias or his rival in Shi'ite politics, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Some of Maliki's personal guards, it is reported in Baghdad, are members of the Mehdi Army. During the latest holy month of Ramadan, Hakim gave a banquet in honor of the premier. Maliki attended and promised to bring security to Baghdad, while disarming the militias. Those guarding him and his cabinet at Hakim's banquet were members of the Badr Organization, one of the militias the premier promises to "disarm".

In a very simple equation of the patron-client system of the Middle East, Maliki offers them protection, exemptions and "above the law" treatment, while they offer him allegiance. [...]

Muqtada is under heavy pressure to dismantle the army, he added, and has even brought the matter before the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Although leading Shi'ite cleric Sistani is a wise man who is unimpressed by Muqtada's revolutionary and adventurous conduct, and is even threatened by his rising cult status in Shi'ite politics, Sistani very well might have advised against dismantling the Mehdi Army at this stage.

Because of rising Sunni anger in Iraqi with Shi'ites, there is a need for some kind of credible, loyal and experienced armed protection for Shi'ite neighborhoods. Sistani cannot provide this; Muqtada can.

EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT....:

As Spending Deadline Looms, Congress Debates Earmarks: Lawmakers Can't Agree on What Outlays Are Wasteful (Lyndsey Layton, 1/29/07, Washington Post)

[W]hat precisely is an earmark?

That question has been at the heart of passionate negotiations across the capital as lawmakers, federal agencies and lobbyists argue over what constitutes waste and what is legitimate spending.

"I heard an appropriator say this week that it was like Justice [Potter] Stewart's definition of pornography -- it's hard to define an earmark, but he knew it when he saw it," one Democratic staffer said.

The debate goes beyond semantics. The stakes are huge -- deciding how to spend $463 billion between now and Sept. 30 on thousands of programs run by local communities, states and federal agencies. While public debate on Capitol Hill has been dominated by the war in Iraq, closed-door arguments about what the federal government will fund this year have been nearly as intense.

The Congressional Research Service says there is no widely accepted definition of "earmark." The White House won't take a stab at it either, saying through a spokesman that it will be addressed when the president presents his fiscal 2008 budget next month.

"Defining earmarks is a little like defining a terrorist," said Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group aimed at making government more transparent. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Part of the problem is there is no standard. Some of the earmarks are good stuff that government ought to be doing. This has the potential of throwing the baby out with the bath water."

THERE IS NO BRITAIN:

Just like Scotland, I'm in the middle of an identity crisis (Niall Ferguson, 28/01/2007, Sunday Telegraph)

Having once been the best educated and most entrepreneurial part of the United Kingdom, Scotland has become a byword for big government, high unemployment and low achievement. Southern Ireland -- once regarded by Scots like me as a benighted outpost of Popery and poverty -- has eclipsed Scotland at everything from foreign direct investment to football.

The answer, argue the Scot Nats, is independence. And the "Celtic Tiger" is not their only role model. The SNP website also lauds the achievements of Australia, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Montenegro, New Zealand and Norway, all places where "independence has worked".

It is, of course, a little premature to conclude that independence has worked in Montenegro, which has enjoyed self-government for less than eight months. Still, the point is superficially a reasonable one. There are indeed plenty of countries smaller than Scotland (population 5.1 million) that have prospered under their own flag. And it is not wholly implausible to imagine an independent Scotland as Finland West or New Zealand North.

On the other hand, there are plenty of countries with populations of around five million that have made rather less of a success of independence. Sierra Leone springs to mind. As does Eritrea. As does Turkmenistan. Small isn't always beautiful. The question therefore arises: Just when does it make sense for a people to go it alone?

The past century has seen a remarkable global experiment in what used to be called "self-determination", so we have plenty of evidence to go on. Back in 1913, around 82 per cent of the world's population lived in some 14 empires. Nation states were the exception, not the rule. But two world wars, a depression and a spate of revolutions shattered the old imperial order, ushering in an era of almost incessant political fragmentation. In 1946, there were 74 sovereign states in the world. By 1995 there were 192.

MAVERICK & JEB WILL CARRY EVERY ONE OF THEM:

Are Democrats Surging Out West? Numbers Say No (Stuart Rothenberg, 1/29/07, Real Clear Politics)

More than a few journalists and political pontificators have noted recent Democratic gains in the Mountain West, which includes Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Some see those gains in 2004 and 2006 as shattering a reliable Republican region, while others argue recent wins are only the beginning of a Democratic rally that will continue in 2008 and beyond.

After one of the best newspapers on the planet screamed "West Is Going Democrats' Direction" and "Political Shift in Mountain States" in headlines, I figured I'd look at the numbers myself to see how much of an opportunity Democrats have to turn the Mountain West blue, or at least purple.

After dissecting the historical data over the past 25 years and comparing it to election results from the past few cycles, it's very clear that not much is going on.

FITTING HEROES FOR THEM THOUGH:

The Border-Patrol Two Deserve Jail: Law enforcement defends its honor, despite the "hero" propaganda (Andrew C. McCarthy, 1/29/07, National Review)

A solid law-and-order conservative, [Johnny] Sutton's position, United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, is a unique perch from which to appreciate hundreds of dedicated Border Patrol agents, to grasp in a real way -- not a bandwagon way, but a rubber-meets-the-road way -- that these men and women truly are our last line of defense against the hordes for whom our political elites are determined to put out a big, fat welcome-mat reading "AMNESTY."

He has thus vigorously supported them. Sutton's office prosecutes their cases against alien smugglers and narcotics importers at an impressive clip. It is not for nothing, moreover, that badlands are called "badlands." Illegals and their facilitators routinely assault the agents. Frequently, there is gunfire. Sutton knows the outnumbered agents have to be able to defend themselves and impose what passes for order. Since he's been U.S. attorney, there have been several incidents in which agents have shot at hostiles, including four resulting in fatalities. In each, Sutton's office investigated the matter thoroughly and the agents were cleared without charges being filed.

So why are some Border Patrol agents vilifying Sutton today? Why are they joined by a full-throated chorus of union reps, anti-immigration activists, media heavyweights, and a small but vocal cabal of mostly Republican congressmen? Because two rogues who had no business wearing badges and carrying guns have managed to entangle their gross malfeasance in the impassioned politics of immigration, that's why.

THE GREAT WHITE WAY HOPE:

Categorizing Minor League Pitchers: Part One - The Starters (Rich Lederer, 1/29/07, Baseball Analysts)

I have listed the top 25 pitchers in the northeast quadrant by strikeout rate. Ages are as of July 1, 2007. Organizations, for the most part, are updated to include trades. Levels are based on classifications where the pitcher threw at least 50 innings in 2006. Stats have been combined for those who competed at more than one level, provided they pitched a minimum of 50 innings at each of the stops.

NORTHEAST QUADRANT (ABOVE-AVG K AND GB RATES)

PITCHER AGE ORG LEV K/BF GB%
Yovani Gallardo 21 MIL A+/AA 31.70% 47.14%
Philip Hughes 21 NYY AA 31.44 50.72
T. J. Nall 26 LAD AA 28.17 46.61
Wade Davis 21 TB A 27.82 48.25
Franklin Morales 21 COL A+ 27.37 53.18
Michael Bowden 20 BOS A 27.09 51.10
Dana Eveland 23 MIL AAA 26.42 53.05
Samuel Deduno 23 COL A+ 26.18 60.26
Chi-Hung Cheng 22 TOR A 25.84 49.48
Adam Miller 22 CLE AA 25.61 53.92
Sean Gallagher 21 CHC A+/AA 25.33 51.24
Carlos Carrasco 20 PHI A 25.21 48.23
Tom Gorzelanny 24 PIT AAA 25.20 45.88
John Bannister 23 TEX A+ 25.06 49.64
Jonathon Niese 20 NYM A 24.67 48.84
Mitch Talbot 23 TB AA 24.41 50.68
Cory Wade 24 LAD A 24.35 53.15
Renyel Pinto 24 FLA AAA 23.94 47.71
Ryan Tucker 20 FLA A 23.33 47.99
Kevin Roberts 23 MIL A 23.13 46.60
Justin Thomas 23 SEA A/A+ 23.01 51.02
Kason Gabbard 25 BOS AA/AAA 22.92 59.13
Adam Daniels 24 STL A 22.70 51.75
Jonathan Barratt 22 TB A+ 22.52 47.76
Zach Ward 23 MIN A 22.20 67.44

When separating the wheat from the chaff, it helps to look at age vs. level. Yovani Gallardo, Philip Hughes, and Sean Gallagher all pitched in Double-A as 20-year-olds. T.J. Nall pitched in Double-A as a 25-year-old. All else being equal, you take the younger pitcher every time. Nall isn't the only Dodgers hurler that needs to be discounted due to his age. Cory Wade spent the majority of the season pitching in Low-A as a 23-year-old. He was promoted to High-A (Vero Beach, Florida State League) and got clobbered (2-4, 8.24 ERA with 9 HR in 39.1 IP). Despite Wade's excellent K and GB rates at Low-A, he is NOT a legitimate prospect.

Gallardo won't turn 21 until next month, yet is about as polished and mature as any minor leaguer. Milwaukee's second-round draft pick in 2004 ate up hitters in High-A (6-3, 2.09 ERA) and AA (5-2, 1.63) although his K and GB rates dipped at the higher level. The righthander out of Mexico led the minors with 188 strikeouts in 155 combined innings while only allowing 104 hits and 6 HR. At 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds, he combines size with stuff (including a low-90s fastball, a slider, and changeup), command, and performance. Unlike Nall and Wade, Gallardo is the real deal.

Hughes, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound righthander, went 12-6 with a 2.16 ERA in 146 combined innings in the Florida State (A+) and Eastern (AA) Leagues. The first-round draft choice in 2004 was a dominant force down the stretch (5-0, 1.43 with 62 SO, 21 H, and 9 BB in 44 IP) and in the first game of the playoffs (13 punchouts in 6 IP vs. Portland, the team that won the EL championship). He throws a heavy two-seam fastball, a four-seamer that sits at 93-95, a plus curve, and is working on developing his changeup. Hughes will begin the season in Triple-A at the Yankees' new Scranton/Wilkes Barre affiliate and should reach the Big Apple no later than this summer.

Excellent Prospects
1. Philip Hughes, rhp
2. Jose Tabata, rf
Very Good Prospects
3. Joba Chamberlain, rhp
4. Humberto Sanchez, rhp
5. Dellin Betances, rhp
Good Prospects
6. Kevin Whelan, rhp
Average Prospects
7. Tyler Clippard, rhp
8. J. Brent Cox, rhp
9. Ian Kennedy, rhp
10. Alberto Gonzalez, ss

1. Philip Hughes, rhp

DOB: 4/24/86
Height/Weight: 6-5/220
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted: 1st round, 2004, California HS

What he did in 2006: 1.80 ERA at High A (30-19-2-30), 2.25 ERA at AA (116-73-32-138)

The Good: The total package, making him the best pitching prospect in the game. His 92-96 mph fastball has good movement to go along with outstanding location, and his hard curveball gives him a second major-league-quality out pitch. His change-up is at least average, and has nice fade and deception. His size is ideal and his mechanics are nearly flawless.

The Bad: 2006 was Hughes' first season with no health problems, and he was treated with kid gloves at the end of the season. He's yet to prove that he can hold up under a full-season workload, although he was as dominant as ever at the end of the year.

The Irrelevant: In the first inning of games, opposing hitters facing Hughes hit .125 (11-for-88) with 34 strikeouts.

In A Perfect World, He Becomes: An absolute ace--a legitimate No. 1 on any team.

Gap Between What He Is Now, And What He Can Be: Low - The Yankees insist that they want Hughes to begin the year in Triple-A, but if he's lights-out in spring training, it will be hard to send him down. No matter what happens in March, he should be up before the All-Star break.

2. Jose Tabata, rf

DOB: 8/12/88
Height/Weight: 5-11/160
Bats/Throws: R/R
Signed: Venezuela, 2005
What he did in 2006: 298/377/420 at Low A (363 PA)

The Good: Plus hitting skills and a mature approach well beyond his years. With outstanding bat speed and excellent hand/eye coordination, Tabata projects through the roof offensively based on what he's already been able to do at such a young age. He's a tick-above-average runner and a solid outfielder with a good arm.

The Bad: While nobody questions Tabata's ability to hit for average down the road, his power projection is a matter of some debate. Some feel that his pure hitting skills are enough to project for plus power, with others are concerned that his smallish frame will limit him to no more than 15-20 home runs annually.

The Irrelevant: In 2006, Tabata hit .261 with the bases empty, and .331 with runners on base.

In A Perfect World, He Becomes: A star corner outfielder, but whether he competes for batting titles or slugging titles is still up in the air.

Gap Between What He Is Now, And What He Can Be: High. Tabata will begin the season in the High-A Florida State League as an 18-year-old. There's no reason to rush him.

NOT RICHER, JUST SMARTER:

Helton's Sox interest at Fever Pitch (Michael Silverman, 1/29/07, Boston Herald)

Josh Beckett has been aware for some time that the prospect of Todd Helton getting traded from the Colorado Rockies to the Red Sox [team stats] was at least being discussed.

Having known Helton for a long time and sharing the same agent as the first baseman, the pitcher also was fully aware of how Helton feels about the idea of playing in Boston.

"I know Todd wants to be a Red Sox," Beckett said yesterday by telephone while watching "Fever Pitch" at home. "He's pretty excited about it - at least excited about the chance of it happening." [...]

Sources close to the Red Sox indicated the club is not only unmotivated to tinker with its roster, but also have not yet seen a proposal it would consider serious. That could change, of course, depending on how much of Helton's remaining salary -90.1 million is due during the next six years, including a buyout in 2012 - the Rockies are willing to pay.

JUST ANOTHER FAILED EXPERIMENT:

Pub law U-turn will curb opening hours (Sam Coates, 1/29/07, Times of London)

The Government is preparing to make a substantial U-turn over 24-hour drinking by making it harder for pubs to open later in future amid the first signs they realise that the policy went too far too fast.

Tessa Jowell will unveil the latest controversial change to social policy tomorrow by announcing the location of Britain's first super-casino, which will bring £1 million slot machines into this country for the first time.

But The Times can reveal that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is attempting to curb the development of a 24-hour drinking culture by changing the guidance to councils to spell out that there is "no general presumption in favour of lengthening licensing hours".

BOY FROM SEARCHLIGHT CAUGHT IN HEADLIGHTS (via Kevin Whited):

A deal in the desert for Sen. Reid?: A bill he wrote could have affected the friend who sold the land. (Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger, January 28, 2007, LA Times)

It's hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled.

In 2002, Reid (D-Nev.) paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Haycock, a Las Vegas lubricants distributor and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid's price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the value the assessor placed on it at the time.

Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Haycock family had brought to Reid's attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events.

If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000.

It is a potential violation of congressional ethics standards for a member to accept anything of value -- including a real estate discount -- from a person with interests before Congress.

NOW THERE'LL NEVER BE AN ORRIN ORIN JUDD...:

POST D.C. BUREAU CHIEF DEBORAH ORIN-EILBECK DIES (CYNTHIA R. FAGEN, January 28, 2007, NY Post)

Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said, "Deborah was one of the nation's finest political reporters. She was never part of press group-think that so often rules Washington.

"Common sense ruled her mind, not dogma. I will miss her advice, and The Post's readers will miss her honesty and wisdom."

Orin-Eilbeck, 59, joined the New York Post in 1977 after a stint with the Long Island Press, and she immediately made her mark on New York politics.

When the Post dispatched her to Washington in 1988, she quickly emerged as one of the nation's top political journalists.

She covered four presidencies, interviewing leaders and dignitaries including President Bush, Barbara Bush, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell.

Even one of her biggest sparring partners, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), reached out to wish her well during her illness.

"As hard as it is to believe, we really miss you around here," Clinton wrote.

Orin-Eilbeck, a native New Yorker, graduated with honors from Harvard University. She received a master's degree from Northwestern University, Rubenstein said. She attended the schools on scholarships, he said.

Orin-Eilbeck, who was fluent in French, also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, he said.

She was a gourmet cook and an avid gardener and was passionate about politics.

Laura and I were saddened to learn of the death of Deborah Orin-Eilbeck. Deb had a distinguished, decades-long career as a journalist, covering every Presidential campaign since 1980 and joining the New York Post's Washington bureau in 1988. Deb fought a valiant battle against cancer with the same tenacity, devotion, and determination that she brought to her work in the White House briefing room through numerous Administrations.

Laura and I send our condolences to Deb's husband Neville Eilbeck, and to her family, friends, and colleagues. She will be missed by all of us at the White House who cared deeply for her.

TO MASS IS TO DIE:

Raids foil plot to kill Shia pilgrims (Stephen Farrell in Baghdad and Hassan al-Jarrah in Najaf, 1/28/07, Times of London)

Iraqi troops backed by US tanks and helicopter gunships fought insurgents near the Shia city of Najaf yesterday as the Government said it had foiled an attempt to kill pilgrims during a key religious festival.

A US helicopter crashed during the fighting. Witnesses said that they saw it come down after trailing smoke during a machinegun battle.

Iraqi police officials in Najaf said that 250 insurgents were killed during bombing raids and gun battles, although similar claims have been wildly exaggerated in the past. [...]

Ghanim al-Qureyshi, the provincial police chief, said that halid Al-Senjeri, a Sunni, was dismissed as mayor amid suspicions that he was collaborating with Sunni insurgents.

BEST NOT SUBJECT IT TO SPECTRUM ANALYSIS (via Tom Corcoran):

"Progressive" anti-Semitism?: S.F. meet considers phenomenon (Ben Harris, Jan. 23, 2007, JTA)

On Jan. 28 the ADL will try to do more than just douse fires when it convenes Finding Our Voice, a daylong conference in San Francisco aimed at empowering Jewish progressives to respond to anti-Semitism on the left.

Co-sponsored by more than 50 Jewish organizations from across the political spectrum -- including the ADL, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Americans for Peace Now and the Jewish Labor Committee -- the conference aims to empower participants to respond to what organizers describe as an alarming trend. [...]

The left's tolerance for anti-Jewish bigotry is considered strange by many progressive Jews in the Bay Area, who noticed a marked increase in anti-Semitic rhetoric following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Several anti-war protests in San Francisco organized by the ANSWER Coalition featured imagery and slogans some considered anti-Semitic, including the burning of the Israeli flag, chants of support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Nazi-like arm salutes.

Conference participants say that while some of this activity reflects a sinister political agenda, much of it stems from ignorance of the complexity of the Middle East conflict.

Some say a tendency to project familiar tropes of imperialist aggression or American racial politics onto the conflict produces a simplistic narrative in which Jews are the "white" oppressors and Palestinians the "black" victims. [...]

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the founder of Tikkun and perhaps the most well-known Jewish progressive in the country, will be in Washington on the day of the conference protesting the Iraq war.

A spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace, a liberal advocacy group working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said: "From our perspective, you cannot get to the roots of anti-Semitism in the progressive movement without honestly addressing the severe human-rights violations that Israel engages in every day. Judging by the lineup, that kind of honest examination is not likely to happen at this conference."

MISREMEMBER THE MAINE:

Was 9/11 really that bad?: The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting (David A. Bell, January 28, 2007, LA Times)

Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy.

WHERE YOU FIND THE WORDS:

EXCERPT: from Words that Work by Frank Luntz

How "Words That Work" Are Created

"If you think about it, talking to a polling company is an odd way to behave. Strangers ask you to give them time and personal information for nothing so that they can profit from it."
--Nick Cohen, Sunday Observer (London)

"If I need five people in a mall to be paid forty dollars to tell me how to do my job, I shouldn't have my job."
--Roger Ailes, President, Fox News Channel

This story may get me barred from the United States Senate, but it was how I established my credibility with the toughest, most skeptical organization in America. Back in 1998, I was asked to create and then present new language on environmental issues to a meeting of the entire Republican Senate Conference. Helping members of the House is easy: They are open-minded, creative, and focused. The Senate, however, is a different animal entirely. They're generally older, uncompromising, and don't take kindly to others telling them either what to think or what to say. They also demand proof that your conclusions and recommendations are based on fact. I knew that to convince these senators that I had created the right language, I had to do something so novel, surprising, and provocative (rule five of successful communication) that even the most determined cynic would accept the results.

And so I arrived there armed with a video presentation that I knew could cost me dearly with four specific senators but would earn me the confidence I needed with everyone else. On that tape were speeches that I had written for these four senators. More accurately, I had written just one speech, and I had four senators read exactly the same text, word for word. I then had the speech "dial-tested" using a Madison Avenue technique described later in this chapter. The presentation video was a compilation of the results -- each senator's second-by-second score.

On a big screen in front of the room, the senators watched as computer-generated lines created by a focus group of swing voters rose and fell based on how those thirty individuals felt about each word and phrase. But instead of showing each Senate speech individually, I had the tape edited to show how each paragraph fared, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, senator by senator. Sure enough, it didn't matter whether the speech was well delivered or mangled. It didn't matter whether the senator had a rich southern accent or flat northwestern inflection. The senator's gender didn't even matter. Regardless of the senator or the delivery, the good language scored well and the bad language scored poorly. And so the more than forty senators in the room were mildly amused to see that their four colleagues had unknowingly delivered the exact same speech, but they were impressed and convinced that good language does well no matter how good or bad the speaker. The methodology for creating words that work passed their stringent credibility test, and I have been invited back more than two dozen times.

Here's where I need to address the profession -- the methodology -- and give you a peek behind the one-way glass and word-laboratory curtain. My editors wanted this section to be very brief: to them, how words that work are created is less important than the words themselves. But I insisted that the process of word creation is and should be just as important as the outcome. So if you are just trying to pick up the language lingo, you may want to skip this section. But if you are in the business of language, or you enjoy the "making of" DVD "extras" as much as the movie itself, read on.

Let's start with the practitioners.

It's hard to tell who is in greater demand today: the Madison Avenue branding experts who are brought in to teach political parties how to define themselves, or the political consultants brought into corporate boardrooms to teach businesses how to communicate more effectively. The tools and techniques invented on Madison Avenue firmly took hold in Washington during the Reagan years -- and they continue to drive our politics today. Similarly, more and more companies are turning to political professionals for help achieving the speed, agility, and linguistic accuracy that were once the unique province of electoral campaigns.

Pollsters and the polling they do are unnecessarily shrouded in a cloud of mystery, much of it their own making, in the mistaken assumption that the less people understand about the pollster's craft, the more the pollster can charge. The two best-known pollsters of the modern political era are Pat Caddell, who did the numbers for the Carter White House from 1977 through 1981, and Dick Morris, who became more of a general political advisor to President Clinton for most of his political career. Both men took on almost mythical proportions in the eyes of their clients and the media for their uncanny ability to translate staid numbers into vibrant political and linguistic strategy. And both men broke the first professional rule of thumb (and by the way, the term "rule of thumb" is based on an archaic rule where a husband was not allowed to beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb) that the pollster is not the maker of public opinion but the translator of it.

Nevertheless, they forever changed the world of public opinion gathering. Caddell was the first pollster to test and turn language into a powerful political weapon, applying the art of "wordsmithing" to the science of opinion gathering. Morris, through the actual polling services of Mark Penn and Doug Schoen, was the first outside political advisor to essentially drive White House communication strategy. Between them, they applied the techniques of ongoing public opinion sampling and the application of language as an instrument of policy to create the permanent presidential campaign.

Today, polling is no longer a black art. There is a poll on every possible topic, and some Americans follow polls the way Wall Street follows the market. I am constantly amazed that the Q&A periods following my speeches across the country to various corporate and association audiences are consistently peppered with questions about some specific polling result in the news that day and its veracity -- usually asked by someone who holds a contrary point of view.

The truth is, Americans are drowning in polling numbers. National news organizations poll on a monthly or even weekly basis, and the results are given more weight, space in print, and time on air than what the politicians are actually saying. Most recently there have been times when polls about the war in Iraq drowned out the real, actual events of the day. Unfortunately, while the media have all the numbers they can possibly crunch, most surveys and their accompanying analyses are lacking in meaningful insight.

I don't seek to undermine the profession that built my home and pays my mortgage, but telephone surveys have serious limitations that most readers would acknowledge -- if they were in fact polled. The first is the increasing difficulty of getting a truly random sample of the population. The increase in cell-phone usage, particularly among those under age thirty, has made it extremely difficult to sample younger Americans (because some cell-phone calling plans charge individuals for incoming calls, it is not acceptable to poll cell phones). Similarly, the rise of "do not call" lists, the increase in unlisted phone numbers, and a general unwillingness of some Americans to answer questions from a stranger are all challenges that pollsters have to overcome every day.

Another problem with telephone polls, and Internet surveys as well, is that Americans don't want to respond yes or no to alternatives that are either unacceptable or require clarification. In the context of today's political environment, there are too many shades of gray, too many "Yes, but what I really think is . . ." attitudes, too many voter priorities that cannot be ranked and explained over the phone. You can test a few words or slogans, but after about fifteen minutes, the respondent will stop responding. Internet surveys have an even shorter patience threshold before respondent fatigue sets in.

Even more problematic is the ordering of questions. Opinion pollsters know full well that where they ask a question within the survey exerts tremendous influence on what answers they receive. If a pollster has just spent fifteen minutes with you on the phone, grilling you about the frustrations of dealing with your HMO, and then closes the survey by asking you to rate the importance of health care reform against a host of other issues, you're far more likely to pick health care as highly important than you would be if it had been the first question in the survey. Likewise, laying out a new corporate pension policy to your employees will generate a strikingly different reception if you've first explained to them that the current policy is bankrupting the company and will lead to layoffs.

And even if the ordering of questions is correct, too many polls report what voters or consumers think without explaining how they feel -- and why. They measure thoughts and opinions, but they don't provide a deeper understanding of the mind -- and the heart. Feelings and emotions are what generate words that work.

That's why I am a committed disciple of focus groups in general and the "Instant Response Dial Session" in particular. A focus group is often nothing more than a formal discussion for ninety minutes or two hours with eight to twelve people who have similar backgrounds, behaviors, opinions, or some other commonality. Madison Avenue has been commissioning focus groups for more than half a century, and virtually every aspect of every major new product launch will involve a dozen or more of these sessions. Political researchers were slower to apply the value of face-to-face discussions to politics, as they are somewhat less profitable and somewhat more labor-intensive than traditional telephone surveys.

Focus groups have been much maligned by the media as a rogue science, designed to learn how to obscure and/or manipulate. True, they do have their limitations, most important among them the scientific inability to project the results of a discussion with two or three dozen people to a population of thousands or millions. They are reflective of the people in the session, not the total population.

But a well-run focus group is the most honest of all research techniques because it involves the most candid commentary and all of the uncensored intensity that real people can muster. As in telephone polling, focus groups begin by gauging respondent awareness and superficial opinions and attitudes. But unlike telephone polling, the superficiality is then stripped away, revealing deeper motivations, associations, and underlying needs. The interaction between a professional moderator and the participants encourages more honesty and less pandering, while measuring the intensity of opinion as well as individual motivation. That's where you'll find the words that work.

A well-run focus group is a laboratory for social interaction and word creation -- yet it is one of the most obscure components of audience research. The composition of the focus group must be arrived at scientifically and statistically, and most Americans will never be invited to participate simply because most Americans don't qualify.

I ONLY WATCH IT FOR THE SCIENCE:

EXCERPT: Introduction: Welcome to the Buffyverse (The Physics of the Buffyverse by Jennifer Ouellette)

"Hell's empty, and all the demons are here."
--Ariel, The Tempest

It begins with the sound of shattering glass. A young man and his pretty blond date break into the science lab at the local high school late one night for a bit of mischief -- most likely to engage in some extracurricular hanky-panky on the roof. The girl appears nervous, starting at every sound, fearful that someone, or something, with evil intentions, is lurking in the darkened school. The young man has all the arrogance of youth, dismissing her fears and assuring her with an insinuating leer that they are quite alone. Whereupon the girl's face transforms into that of a fanged, yellow-eyed demon, and she sinks her teeth into her soon-to-be-former date's neck.

This is the weird yet wonderful world of the Buffyverse, where magic, vampires, and demons are real, and mystical convergences and otherworldly phenomena are everyday occurrences. When Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted as a midseason replacement in 1997, few industry insiders expected it to do well. After all, the campy film version had tanked at the box office. Actor Kiefer Sutherland -- whose father, Donald Sutherland, co-starred in the film -- reportedly was so pessimistic about its chances that he told the show's star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, not to worry, because she was bound to get another series later on. But the TV show defied the naysayers and ended up running for seven seasons. While it never achieved the blockbuster popularity of mainstream sitcoms like Friends or Seinfeld, Buffy quickly attracted a strong cult following, drawn by its unique blend of horror, science fiction, and high school melodrama. The show also became a critics' darling, thanks to generous sprinklings of mythology, literary allusion, biting wit, and a lexicon of its own hip teen lingo (dubbed "Buffyspeak").

The premise is simple enough: "Into every generation, a Slayer is born, one girl with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires." That girl is fifteen-year-old Buffy Summers. In the pilot episode ("Welcome to the Hellmouth"), Buffy moves to the fictional town of Sunnydale, California, with her divorced mother, Joyce, after Buffy is expelled from her former high school in Los Angeles. (She burned down the gym, but there were extenuating circumstances: It was full of vampires.)

Sunnydale is not the picture-perfect town that it seems to be on the surface. It is located squarely on top of a Hellmouth, a mystical portal between the world of Sunnydale and a separate hell dimension. The Hellmouth emits all kinds of bad juju, and its energy draws evil beings to the area like a giant magnet of badness. Buffy's job is to keep the demons at bay and prevent hell from erupting on Earth. She does so for the next seven years, beating back everything from vampires to hell gods to the very First Evil, while simultaneously grappling with the usual travails of high school, college, and the onset of young adulthood -- all of which can be scarier than any demon horde.

Fortunately, she doesn't fight alone. Buffy is aided by her oh-so-British Watcher, Rupert Giles, and her new friends: Willow, Xander, and Angel -- a reformed vampire cursed by gypsies who restored his human soul. In 1999, Angel became the star of his very own eponymous spinoff series (Angel). He sets up shop as a private investigator to fight injustice and help the hopeless in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles -- which usually involves killing demons and battling other forces of evil. The characters and events that populate these two series make up what is known as the Buffyverse.

On the surface this surreal, fictional world would appear to have very little to do with the world of science. Science, especially physics, views the universe as a gigantic, complex machine that operates in accordance with a handful of underlying fundamental principles: the laws of physics. Magic and superstition rightly have no place in serious science. Tell a physicist that you're interested in exploring the physics of the Buffyverse, and the most likely response will be a blank, puzzled stare, followed by a dubious observation: "But vampires aren't real . . ." The skepticism is understandable. But look a bit closer, and you'll find that science lurks everywhere in the Buffyverse, from the "Big Picture" framework to the nooks and crannies. It's not just relegated to Sunnydale High School's science lab.

For instance, many of the monsters' traits are drawn from real-world biology, such as demons that inject their victims with poisonous toxins to paralyze them before they feed. Vampirism could be viewed as an infectious disease, spreading through contamination of the blood, almost a modern metaphor for AIDS. The ancient demon Illyria reemerges from a multimillennium-long sleep in "A Hole in the World" (Angel, Season 5, or, henceforward, A-5) as a form of biological warfare. Just like a virus, she infects her host, killing that host so that she can inhabit the shell that remains. The host becomes a potential weapon of mass destruction. Any attempt to extract Illyria from her victim would make the virus "airborne"; thousands would die, instead of just one person.

Chemistry is plainly evident in the concoction of brews and potions for the casting of spells. In "Witch" (Buffy, Season 1, or, henceforward, B-1), Xander and Willow make use of the ingredients in their science class to concoct a potion that will tell them if their classmate Amy is a witch -- although they have to improvise a bit, obtaining the "eye of newt" during their dissection of a frog. When Buffy's mother becomes mysteriously ill ("No Place Like Home," B-5), Buffy suspects that it might be the result of a magic spell. She performs her own spell called tirer la couture -- literally, "pull the curtain back" in French, although Buffy (who didn't do well in French class) mistranslates it as "rotate many foodstuffs." All spells leave a trace signature normally invisible to humans, and her spell enables Buffy to see these traces to determine whether a spell has been cast. The concept is very similar to chemical elements' having distinct "signatures," in the form of emitted light (electromagnetic radiation) that is undetectable to human eyes. We can detect this light with instruments called spectrometers. The color of the light tells us which elements are present in a given sample, while the intensity of that color indicates how much of a particular element is present.

As for physics, writers for both series have openly drawn on specific concepts in quantum mechanics, relativity, and string theory to develop innovative plots for episodes. A high school girl becomes invisible after months of nobody noticing her -- a clever twist on the quantum notion that observation determines the outcome of a subatomic-scale experiment ("Out of Mind, Out of Sight," B-1). There are teleporting demons, temporal folds, time loops, and dimensional portals, conceptually similar to the hypothetical wormholes proposed by real-world physicists. And one critical scene in an Angel episode takes place at a scientific symposium on string theory ("Supersymmetry," A-4). The Buffyverse has seeped into physics in turn. In December 2005, astronomers found that a small object in a ring of icy bodies near Neptune (known as the Kuiper belt) had an unusually tilted orbit. They dubbed the object "Buffy," in part because -- like many things in the Buffyverse -- its orbit can't be explained by the prevailing scientific theories of how the outer solar system formed.

More generally, Buffy and her entire gang of "Scoobies" -- a reference to those meddling kids in the cartoon Scooby-Doo -- know the value of doing their homework. When some new evil comes to town, the first thing they do is launch into "research mode." Angel and his team of fellow demon hunters adopt the same approach. Skipping that vital step is usually a recipe for failure. In the same way that scientists must first understand the nature of a problem before they can design successful theories and experiments, the Scoobies and "Team Angel" understand that they must first understand the nature of the thing they are fighting in order to defeat it.

There are technological parallels as well. The books in the library of Wolfram & Hart (aka "the devil's law firm") on Angel are blank until someone asks for a specific tome. Then the pages fill with the requested text. Electronic paper is a similar real-world technology that is already being used for commercial signage in the marketplace. In "Witch" (B-1), Buffy uses a mirror to reflect the energy of a witch's spell back onto the witch. The technique is similar in concept to Alexander Graham Bell's photophone, an early forerunner to fiber optic communication. The photophone transmitted sound on a beam of light to a mirror, causing the mirror to vibrate in response. The instrument then captured the vibrations that reflected off the mirror and transformed them back into sound.

Even the most familiar technology gets a new twist. The demon puppets in "Smile Time" (A-5) use the TV signal of their hit children's show as a two-way conduit. They graft a hidden carrier signal onto the regular broadcast signal -- camouflaged by a magic spell -- that enables them to communicate individually with their young viewers and sap their innocence away. In "I Robot, You Jane" (B-1) a demon who has been bound into an ancient mystical book goes binary, unleashed on the Internet when Willow scans the text into a computer. The demon's essence is broken into electron "bits," much like radio and TV signals, and then digitized into the "bytes" used in computers. Giles and the school's computer science teacher, Jenny Calendar, must combine magic with information technology to defeat the demon: They form a virtual mystical circle in an online chat room to cast a "rebinding" spell.

This melding of magic and science is a defining feature of the Buffyverse. Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon has said that the original series was intended as a metaphor for how high school can sometimes seem like hell to teenagers. He made his fictional high school a literal hell, with vampires and other monsters embodying humanity's inner demons. The same can be said for the physics in the series. Sometimes it takes center stage, but more often than not, it's woven into the fabric of the fictive framework, and works best on a metaphorical level. The Buffyverse is ruled largely by metaphysics. Try to interpret things too literally, and one quickly runs into absurdities, much the same way that attempting to precisely determine two mutually exclusive properties of a subatomic particle leads to unwanted mathematical "singularities."

BARE IN THE WOODS:

Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders: Boasts of a nuclear programme are just propaganda, say insiders, but the PR could be enough to provoke Israel into war (Peter Beaumont, January 28, 2007, Observer)

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.

Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.

NO ESCAPE:

Awash in Words: Why the SAT makes lousy shower reading (Joel Achenbach, January 28, 2007, Washington Post)

One of the great traditions and cultural hallmarks of Western civilization is reading in the bathroom. In my house, this has taken on a dramatic new element with the acquisition of a shower curtain filled with 500 common SAT words. Santa Claus brought it as a lovely Christmas present for a teenager who understands that her societal worth and the honor of her family hinge entirely on her SAT score.

The shower curtain gives very brief definitions of the kinds of use-at-your-risk words that appear only on standardized tests. The vocabulary in our house is, I can proudly report, effervescing. And yet, despite my strict policy of avoiding arguments with inanimate objects (exception: CD wrapping), I find myself getting highly annoyed with the shower curtain.

MAVERICK IS JUST A PLACEHOLDER:

Jeb Bush Rallies Conservatives at Summit: Non-Candidate Shows Ability to Excite the Party (Zachary A. Goldfarb, 1/28/07, The Washington Post)

"Don't take offense personally if I get mad at Congress," the Republican former Florida governor began. "It's important for us to realize we lost, and there are significant reasons that happened, but it isn't because conservatives were rejected. But it's because we rejected the conservative philosophy in this country."

He added, "If the promise of pork and more programs is the way Republicans think they'll regain the majority, then they've got a problem."

Bush's speech prompted three standing ovations from the audience of hundreds at the National Review Institute's conference at the JW Marriott Hotel, reflecting the widespread concern among conservatives that exorbitant government spending led to the loss of majorities in the House and Senate and concern about whether Republicans would again embrace the traditional principles.

To Ed Gillespie, a prominent lobbyist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Bush's two terms in Tallahassee -- where he developed a reputation as a tax-cutter and staunch spending hawk -- exemplified conservative politics at its best, and what makes for a compelling presidential candidate.

"For those who are worried if you can put forward a vigorous conservative policy agenda in a state like Florida and still get elected and still be popular: Our keynote speaker left office with approval ratings above 60 percent," Gillespie said.

"If he were former two-term governor Jeb Smith, he might be in Des Moines today," Gillespie said, alluding to presidential hopefuls' campaigning.

DESTRUCTIVE RAGE VS CONSTRUCTIVE DISGUST:

Bin Laden, The Left and Me (Dinesh D'Souza, January 28, 2007, Washington Post)

[I] uphold Edmund Burke's view: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely."

Immediately following 9/11, there was a wondrous moment of national unity in which the American tribe came together. "Why do they hate us?" some wondered, but no one wanted to comprehend the enemy -- only to annihilate him. And I shared this view.

But five years later, that unity has dissolved amid a furious national debate over the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. I thought it was time to go back and reconsider 9/11; in so doing, I concluded that the prevailing conservative and liberal theories explaining Muslim rage were wrong.

Contrary to the common liberal view, I don't believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn't upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn't upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn't all about Israel. (Why hasn't al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality -- and that the United States is leading that attack.

Contrary to President Bush's view, they don't hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom. When Planned Parenthood International opens clinics in non-Western countries and dispenses contraceptives to unmarried girls, many see it as an assault on prevailing religious and traditional values. When human rights groups use their interpretation of international law to pressure non-Western countries to overturn laws against abortion or to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, the traditional sensibilities of many of the world's people are violated.

This argument has nothing to do with Falwell's suggestion that 9/11 was God's judgment on the ACLU and the feminists for their sins. I pose a simple question: Why did the terrorists do it? In a 2003 statement, bin Laden said that to him, the World Trade Center resembled the idols that the prophet Muhammad removed from Mecca. In other words, bin Laden believes that the United States represents the pagan depravity that Muslims have a duty to resist. The literature of radical Islam, such as the works of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, resonates with these themes. One radical sheik even told a European television station a few years ago that although Europe is more decadent than America, the United States is the more vital target because it is U.S. culture -- not Swedish culture or French culture -- that is spreading throughout the world.

What would motivate Muslims in faraway countries to volunteer for martyrdom? The fact that Palestinians don't have a state? I don't think so. It's more likely that they would do it if they feared their values and way of life were threatened. Even as the cultural left accuses Bush of imperialism in invading Iraq, it deflects attention from its own cultural imperialism aimed at secularizing Muslim society and undermining its patriarchal and traditional values. The liberal "solution" to Islamic fundamentalism is itself a source of Islamic hostility to America.

Contrary to the accusations of Alan Wolfe and others, I have no sympathy for bin Laden or the Islamic radicals. But I do respect the concerns of traditional Muslims, the majority in the Muslim world. In fact, the United States cannot defeat terrorism without driving a wedge between radical Islam and traditional Islam, because the latter has been the main recruiting pool for the former.

All my arguments can be disputed, but they are neither extreme nor absurd.

It is on the question of what is to be done about the problem that conservatism diverges from Islamicism. Islam hasn't found its Burke yet and, so, is left with nothing to offer but a return to the imagined conditions of the 7th Century -- a nihilism disguised as utopianism they borrowed from Western rationalists -- whereas conservatism is long reconciled to human progress.

If Mr. D'Souza really wanted to get in trouble he could flesh out the odd strain of homosexual/misogynist tension within the movement --- most evident in Mr. Wright's portrayals of Qutb and Mohammed Atta.

MORE:
-ESSAY: THE MAN BEHIND BIN LADEN: How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror LAWRENCE WRIGHT, 2002-09-16, The New Yorker)
-ESSAY: THE MARTYR: THE MAN BEHIND BIN LADEN: How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror (LAWRENCE WRIGHT, 2002-09-16, The New Yorker)

MORE/MORE:
Why do they hate us? How about because, Girl of 14 who was a boy until she was 12 (ALLAN HALL, 29th January 2007, Daily Mail)

Even at the age of two, Tim insisted he was a girl trapped in a boy's body.

And when puberty began to approach at the age of 12, he convinced his parents that something had to be done.

With their agreement, he became the youngest sex-change patient in the world, receiving hormone injections which arrested his male development.

BLESS THE AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE:

A surefire breakfast treat: Let them eat coffeecake (Amy McConnell Schaarsmith, January 28, 2007, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

While most tea- and coffee-drinking societies always have served treats alongside those steaming cups and mugs, 1950s American housewife culture is credited with the creation of the coffeecake.

Easy enough to make on a whim, yet tasty enough to serve to friends, quick breads will keep at room temperature, loosely covered, for 2 to 3 days, according to Lou Seibert Pappas in her new book, "Coffee Cakes: Simple, Sweet and Savory."

Almost all coffeecakes freeze well for up to one month, according to Ms. Pappas. Let them cool to room temperature, then freeze them in resealable, heavy-duty plastic freezer bags. (You can also slice the cake first, then freeze individual slices to defrost and toast for breakfast as needed, or microwave briefly while still frozen. Don't microwave too long, though, or the slice will toughen.)

To defrost, you should let the coffeecake stand at room temperature fully wrapped but with the wrapping loosened a bit to let moisture out, according to Ms. Pappas. When thawed, reheat in a preheated 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the cake.

BANANA, MACADAMIA NUT AND COCONUT COFFEECAKE [...]

* 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
* 1 1/4 cups mashed bananas (about 2 1/2 large ripe bananas)
* 2 large eggs
* 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil (choose a buttery, mild one) or canola oil
* 2 tablespoons dark rum or amaretto liqueur
* 1/2 cup sour cream
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
* 1/2 cup (1 1/2 ounces) chopped macadamia nuts or pecan halves
* 1 tablespoon granulated sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan or round cake pan.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and brown sugar. Stir to blend.

In a blender or food processor, combine the bananas, eggs, oil, rum or amaretto, sour cream and vanilla, and blend until smooth. Add the banana mixture to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Stir in the coconut.

Spread evenly in the prepared pan and sprinkle evenly with the nuts. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the batter.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cake is golden-brown and a cake tester or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool in the pan on a wire rack, then remove the pan sides. Serve warm or at room temperature after cutting into wedges.

THE LITTLE CORSICAN AFFAIR:

All lies! L'affaire Ségo stirs up dirty tricks battle in France (Matthew Campbell, 1/28/07, Sunday Times of London)

Gérald Dahan, 33, said he had telephoned Royal on Wednesday pretending to be Jean Charest, Quebec's premier, and had spoken to her for 11 minutes. He has a record of hoaxes, including fooling Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former French prime minister, into thinking that Philippe Douste-Blazy, his health minister, had been caught by police with a prostitute.

In 2005 Dahan phoned Zine-dine Zidane, the footballer, just before a match against Ireland, pretending to be President Jacques Chirac. He asked "Zizou", nickname of the former French captain, to get the team to sing La Marseillaise with their hands on their hearts. The players happily complied.

Dahan said he managed to convince five Royal advisers that he was Charest by putting on a Quebec accent: "I don't know Quebec's prime minister and neither does she, apparently."

Royal was already in hot water over her suggestion that she was in favour of independence for Quebec. This had drawn a rebuke from Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister.

The comedian told her that a French person backing Quebec's sovereignty was like a Canadian urging independence for Corsica. Royal laughed and, in an extract of the conversation that was broadcast on radio, was heard saying: "The French people would not be opposed to that idea . . . Don't repeat that though. It would cause another incident in France. It is a secret."

After controversial comments about Iran, the Middle East and China, opponents seized on this as fresh evidence of her inexperience and inability to govern: the idea that France might be willing to grant Corsica independence is anathema. The Mediterranean island is seen as an integral part of the nation.

EXOTIC PETS:

Shore leave: Wellfleet shellfisherman pulls oysters from sea to hibernate in his back yard (Mat Schaffer, January 24, 2007, Boston Herald)

Commercial oyster-farming on Cape Cod is a bit of a shell game in winter -- ice and cold can damage both oysters and equipment. That's why shellfishermen such as Jim O'Connell of the Wellfleet Shellfish Co. "pit" their oysters -- moving them from the metal racks on the ocean floor where they grow to an onshore pit or cellar to sit out the coldest months.

O'Connell usually pits his oysters in December. But because of this year's unseasonably warm weather, he waited until mid-January. Transferring his 250,000 oysters -- in mesh bags and plastic baskets -- from the sea floor off Wellfleet to a cellar in his back yard takes several days, and a trio of teenage assistants.

Pitting "protects my investment of time and money and it protects the oysters I'm trying to make a living with," O'Connell said. "They go into a root cellar where they can live a long time."

Until "the first big tide of March," to be specific. Oysters consider the cool and humid conditions of O'Connell's cellar, with its plastic tarp entrance, concrete walls and dirt floor, perfect for hibernation.

"Oysters go dormant in the winter," he explained. "When the water gets below a certain temperature there's no algae in the water, there's no food. So, from the layman's point of view, they fatten up (beforehand) to get through the winter."

PLEASE COME TO BOSTON FOR THE SPRINGTIME...:

Helton to Red Sox? (Buster Olney, 1/27/07, ESPN)

For financial superpower Boston...Helton could be an extraordinary find, even at high cost. He is a Gold Glove-caliber first baseman, having won that award three times, and he would complement their offense perfectly, with his ability to hit doubles, draw walks and drive up pitch counts; he is considered to be among the best two-strike hitters in baseball. Last season, in what was regarded as a subpar offensive season for Helton, he drew 91 walks, struck out just 64 times, registered a .404 on-base percentage, and averaged 3.93 pitches per plate appearance.

"His swing is not a power swing," said one National League talent evaluator. "And he hasn't been healthy. Our team was able to pound the hell out of him last year, pitch him inside, much better than you used to. It'll be interesting to see how healthy he is, and he needs to come back, if he's going to take a serious run at Cooperstown." (Helton has 286 career homers, 996 RBI, 1,700 career hits, nine straight seasons of averages better than .300).

"He's a line-drive-type hitter, and for the kind of money Colorado is paying him, they need power.".

MORE:
A trade with possibilities: Helton would be intriguing acquisition (Nick Cafardo, January 28, 2007, Boston Globe)

Major league sources told me yesterday that the Red Sox aren't jumping through hoops to make this deal. It's been proposed to them by the Rockies. The Sox love the concept, but they won't do anything that stretches their boundaries financially or means giving up prominent young players.

According to a Rockies official, they would have to get one or two young players who would make an impact in the near future. Colorado doesn't want to lose the popular Helton, take on a veteran at the end of his contract, and a year later have nothing to show for it.

"They [Red Sox] like their team as it's constituted," said one of the sources. "It would be surprising if they gave up young pitching. Helton would be a great hitter in that ballpark and he's their type of player in that he's patient and he'll work the count."

Helton is 33 and has five years remaining on his deal at $90.1 million (including a $4.6 million buyout for 2012). There is concern that as he ages, he'll decline to where his production doesn't match what you're paying him.

Presumably, the Red Sox wouldn't be against giving up Mike Lowell (possibly to San Diego for a reliever such as Scott Linebrink) and moving Kevin Youkilis to third. Or they might get Colorado to bite on Lowell; the Rockies already are interested in Julian Tavarez. That way, the Sox could keep their young pitchers, but you have to think Colorado would need at least one young pitcher in a package deal.

Boston, in an effort to get rid of contracts it doesn't want, has proposed including third baseman Mike Lowell and right-handed reliever Julian Tavarez in the deal to offset some of Helton's contract. Lowell will earn $9 million in 2007, the final year of his contract. Tavarez is guaranteed $3.1 million in 2007 with a $3.85 million option for 2008 that is guaranteed if he makes 65 appearances in 2007.

The Rockies had a strong interest in Ramirez, anxious to add his bat to the middle of the lineup, and moving Ramirez was an original off-season priority for the Red Sox, who in the midst of the annual winter meetings last month suddenly did an about face.

Lowell and Tavarez could have short-term interest to the Rockies, but only if the Red Sox included top-line pitching prospects in the deal, as well.

The Rockies could play Lowell at third base, moving Garrett Atkins back to first base, his original position in pro ball, with the anticipation that within the next year highly-touted Ian Stewart would be ready to come to the big leagues. That would keep them from having to try and move Stewart to the outfield this spring. Also, Joe Koshansky, who has led the organization in home runs the last two years, is expected to play first base at Triple-A Colorado Springs this season, and could enter the picture if Helton were dealt.

Tavarez would provide a veteran arm for middle relief. He was 11-5 with a 4.42 ERA for the Rockies in 2000 when he bounced between the bullpen and rotation.

BACK UNDER THE THUMB?:

Gordon Brown will rely on unions to escape £40m 'black hole' (Patrick Hennessy, 1/27/06, Sunday Telegraph)

Gordon Brown will shun the appointment of a powerful Lord Levy-type fundraiser as he grapples with a "black hole" of more than £40 million in Labour Party finances, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The Chancellor must tackle debts of around £25 million, attracting interest charges of more than £1.2 million a year, and build up a war chest of about £15 million for the next general election if, as expected, he takes over from Tony Blair this year.

Mr Brown is likely to rely on a mixture of individual donations and more money from trade unions as he prepares for the next election, possibly in 2009. The party's finances are in such a parlous state after the cash-for-honours affair that it is thought highly unlikely that Mr Brown would want a poll before then.

IT'S NOT THE HONESTY, BUT THE EFFORT, THAT SURPRISES:

Researcher is amazed by honest results of his private wallet test (Shane Graber, 01/07/2007, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH)

Paul Kinsella lost his wallet 100 times on the dot, all in the pursuit of knowledge. Call his study an exercise in vigilante research.

Kinsella wanted to know whether folks could be trusted, whether they're honest, upright citizens. So he took the research into his own hands.

He spent a month dropping wallets around town. He then tracked whether the finders would return the wallet and its contents -- $2.10 and a fake $50 gift certificate in each -- to the rightful owner.

And here's the good news: They did. Oh, how they did. By a 3-1 ratio, they did.

"They actually took the time to do it," said Kinsella, 35, a website designer.

Of the 100 "lost" wallets, 74 were returned to Kinsella.

SHHHH...THIS WAS ALL SUPPOSED TO BE OUR SECRET... (via Steve Jacobson):

Ex-Cheney aide details media tactics (MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press)

Wilson's charges first surfaced, attributed to an unnamed ex-ambassador, in Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column. But Martin testified she felt no urgency to set him straight because Kristof "attacked us, our administration fairly regularly."

But by July 6, 2003, Wilson wrote his own account in the Times and appeared on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

After that much exposure, Cheney, Libby and Martin spent the next week trying get out word that Cheney did not know Wilson, did not ask for the mission to Niger, never got Wilson's report and only learned about the trip from news stories in 2003.

Cheney personally dictated these points to Martin. She e-mailed them to the White House press secretary for relay to reporters.

When the story did not die, Martin found herself in a bind because Cheney's office was known for disclosing so little.

"Often the press stopped calling our office," Martin testified. "At this point, they weren't calling me asking me for comment."

So she had to call National Security Council and CIA press officers to learn which reporters were still working on stories.

Once Martin got names, Cheney ordered his right-hand man, Libby, rather than lowly press officers, to call -- a signal of the topic's importance.

Top levels of the Bush administration decided that CIA Director George Tenet would issue a statement taking the blame for allowing Bush to mention the Niger story. Cheney and Libby worried Tenet would not go far enough to distance the vice president from the affair.

Libby asked Martin to map a media strategy in case Tenet fell short.

A Harvard law school graduate, Martin had succeeded legendary Republican operative Mary Matalin as Cheney's political and public affairs assistant. Matalin had brought Martin to Cheney's office as her deputy and trained her.

Martin offered these options in order:

_Put Cheney on "Meet the Press."

_Leak an exclusive version to a selected reporter or the weekly news magazines.

_Have national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hold a news conference.

_Persuade a third party or columnist to write an opinion piece that would appear in newspapers on the page opposite the editorials.

Not only did Tenet leave unanswered questions about Cheney, his remarks came out late on a Friday, the government's favorite moment to deliver bad news.

Why?

"Fewer people pay attention to it later on Friday," Martin testified. "And in our view, fewer people are paying attention on Saturday, when it's reported."

As Martin rated their options, putting Cheney on "Meet the Press," NBC's Sunday morning talk show, "is our best format." Cheney was their best person for the show and "we control the message a little bit more," according to Martin.

The downside was that Cheney could "get pulled into the weeds and specifics. We like to keep him at a pretty high level," she said. Also, it "looks defensive to rush him out on `Meet the Press.'"

Next they could give an exclusive or leak to one reporter and she considered David Sanger of The New York Times, Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, or Time or Newsweek.

Because reporters are competitive, "if you give it to one reporter, they're more likely to write the story," Martin testified.

Plus an official can demand anonymity in return for the favor. "You can give it to them as a senior administration official," she said. "You don't have to say this is coming directly from the White House."

IT'S AMAZING. IT'S THE MIRRORS:

US: Use mirrors to solve global warming (Bonnie Malkin, 27/01/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The US government has called on the world's scientists to research using giant mirrors or reflective dust to slow global warming. [...]

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution.

Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulphate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption.

HE SHALL OVERCOME?

Mitt Romney's Conversion: His pro-life turn is more recent than you think. (Jennifer Rubin, 02/05/2007, Weekly Standard)

In the spring of 2002 Romney completed a Planned Parenthood questionnaire. Signed by Romney and dated April 9, 2002, it contained these responses:

Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade? YES

Do you support state funding of abortion services through Medicaid for low-income women? YES

In 1998 the FDA approved the first packaging of emergency contraception, also known as the "morning after pill." Emergency contraception is a high dose combination of oral contraceptives that if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, can safely prevent a pregnancy from occurring. Do you support efforts to increase access to emergency contraception? YES

Romney also completed the questionnaire of the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL (now called NARAL Pro-Choice America), with this statement:

I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's. The truth is no candidate in the governor's race in either party would deny women abortion rights. So let's end an argument that does not exist and stop these cynical and divisive attacks that are made only for political gain.

As he had with Planned Parenthood, Romney answered "Yes" to questions asking whether he supported Roe v. Wade and opposed attempts to restrict abortion. After completing the questionnaire, Romney met with three NARAL executives. In this meeting, NARAL executives recount, Romney evidenced no hesitation about his pro-choice views. He also tried to pique the executives' interest in endorsing him by bluntly acknowledging that he had higher political aspirations, saying, "You need someone like me in Washington." Moreover, those present recall that Romney argued that his election would make him credible in the Republican party nationally and thus help "sensible" Republicans like him overshadow more conservative elements in the GOP.

THEY CAN'T EVEN KEEP THEM ABOVE $40:

Saudis want to hold down the price of oil (Jad Mouawad, January 27, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

Saudi Arabia, which benefited immensely from record oil prices last year, has sent signals in the last two weeks that it is committed to keeping oil at around $50 a barrel -- down $27 a barrel from the summer peak that shook consumers across the developed world.

The indications came in typically cryptic fashion for the oil-rich kingdom. In Tokyo last week, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, said that Saudi Arabia's policy was to maintain "moderate prices." The previous week, on a stop in New Delhi, he effectively put his veto on an emergency meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to prop up prices after oil briefly dropped below $50 a barrel, the lowest level in nearly two years.

The events that propelled oil prices above $77 a barrel last July then dragged them down again were beyond the control of any single producer.

SIX YEARS?:

Rockies launch talks on Helton: Red Sox explore deal for veteran (Troy E. Renck, 1/26/07, Denver Post)

Helton's future became a central issue this week after owner Charlie Monfort told The Denver Post the franchise remains open to dealing the most accomplished player in the Rockies' history.

Helton has six years and $90.1 million remaining on his contract, and the Red Sox could face luxury-tax penalties if they acquire the first baseman, issues that would have to be resolved.

The Rockies, however, have shown a willingness to eat a portion of Helton's remaining salary in any deal, which, depending on the amount, would have an impact on the type of players they would receive in return.

Colorado's first priority has been to add young pitchers, which Boston possesses. The Rockies have asked about reliever Manny Delcarmen, 24, in previous talks regarding other players and considered selecting pitcher Craig Hansen in the first round of the 2005 draft.

THEY AREN'T TRYING TO BE FUNNY, NO MATTER HOW HARD WE LAUGH AT THEM:

After laughter, action (Courtney E. Martin, January 7, 2007, Baltimore Sun)

Satire, of course, has a long and proven history as the source of bona fide social change. Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, George Orwell's Animal Farm - all of these led to new public awareness that then led to protest, even some pragmatic reforms. But does the one-millionth joke about President Bush's preschool perception of global geography really regain the trust of the international community?

It seems that the difference between a satire such as Animal Farm and The Daily Show is that the latter too often makes us comfortable, satiated, even happy, as opposed to the very motivating and sometimes terrifying disequilibrium caused by Orwell. Rebels distributed copies of Animal Farm, a novella satirizing totalitarianism, to displaced Soviets in Ukraine right after World War II. The occupying American military discovered them and confiscated 1,500 copies that would later be handed over to the Russian authorities whom the Americans were, at least temporarily, trying to aid. The vicious and powerful humor contained within that small book sure scared the corrupt leaders of that time.

PURITAN NATION FILES:

Beefed-up LAPD presence in skid row begins paying off: Areas have been swept clean of homeless encampments and crime is down 35% this month. Still, some ask if the commitment will be long term. (Richard Winton, January 27, 2007, LA Times)

Five months into the Los Angeles Police Department's crackdown on crime in skid row, there is little doubt that the neighborhood is changing.

Last year, the district that for decades led the city in drug crimes recorded an 18% decline in major crime -- more than 1,000 fewer incidents, according to LAPD figures.

So far this year, the drop in crime has accelerated. It fell 35% during the first four weeks of January, with 106 fewer crimes. The campaign has resulted in more than 1,000 drug arrests alone.

"In the last 24 hours we had one [serious] crime for the entire downtown compared with 22 crimes last year," said Capt. Andrew Smith, who commands the Central Division.

Among downtown residents and advocates for the homeless, there is consensus that the 50 extra officers the LAPD assigned to the district have improved the situation -- though they say the area remains mired in poverty, blight and drugs.

They also remain skeptical about whether the LAPD's commitment to the area is long term. They say they have seen crackdowns reduce crime before -- only to see it return when resources were focused elsewhere.

"Are we seeing and feeling a different level of crime on skid row? Yes. Have we turned a corner for skid row? I'd say it is too early to tell," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., a business owners group. "To break the back of crime in skid row will require more than six months."

HUGO'S WOBBLY AXIS::

Ground zero in Bolivia's dispute: Cochabamba, scene of rioting, symbolizes the nation's rift and calls president's leadership into question (Patrick J. McDonnell, January 27, 2007, LA Times)

Embattled President Evo Morales launched his second year in office this week, mocking his political opponents and vowing that "this Indian is going to be around for a while."

But recent turmoil in this city long regarded as a bastion of support for Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has raised new questions about his leftist government's ability to serve out its five-year mandate. [...]

[T]he paroxysm of rage has reverberated in national politics at a time when Morales' "democratic revolution" was already facing fierce resistance.

"If you'd asked me six months ago if Evo's government would survive, I'd have replied, 'Yes, absolutely,' " said Jim Shultz, a Californian who works with a nonprofit pro-democracy organization here. "I still say 'yes' today, but the possibilities of 'no' are rising."

Bolivia has a long history of forced ousting of governments, including many military coups. Morales won the presidency after protests chased out two previous presidents.

HEY, FERDINAND, NICE FALSIES:

Top 10 Solutions for a More Perfect Union (Katrina vanden Heuvel, January 27, 2007, The Nation)

The "thumping" taken by the Republican Congress on election day was not just a rejection of K Street corruption and the catastrophe in Iraq. It was a call to action on issues that are more immediately relevant to people's lives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will begin to answer that call by pushing a "100 Hours" agenda -- including common-sense legislation to increase the minimum wage, cut interest on student loans and open the way for Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

That's a good beginning, but it's only a down payment on a broader agenda. Progressives now have the opportunity to develop a new vision that returns power to the American people for the first time in generations. But to-do lists don't add up to a vision. But Democrats must show they are serious by passing bold measures that define a new "people's agenda." With that in mind, here are ten existing pieces of legislation that deserve to be passed by our new Congress. Some of these bills are eminently passable, a few are related to the "100 Hours" agenda and others can be seen as long-term goals. But all would help return our nation to the path to a more perfect union (note: Bill numbers may change in the new Congress).

GOOD BORDERS MAKE GOOD NATIONS:

Along Beirut's Line of Confrontation (Anthony Shadid, January 27, 2007, Washington Post)

During Lebanon's 15-year civil war, the Green Line divided Beirut into predominantly Christian and Muslim halves along a road that became a symbol as telling as it was intimidating. In time, in a war in which more than 100,000 people were killed, it was less a front line and more a no man's land, named, some say, for its unkempt weeds and bushes.

Little remains of the Green Line today, save the Barakat Building near the downtown, its stately columns and arches still honeycombed by the damage of war. Like much of Lebanon itself, the other scarred buildings along the road are sheathed in a thin facade of concrete, stone and glass.

These days, the front has shifted to the Old Airport Road, a mile-long stretch of which divides its residents by Muslim sect -- Sunni or Shiite. The emerging border evokes the old and the new of Lebanon's two-month-old crisis: civil war memories and the sectarian schism transforming Lebanon and the region around it.

UNLIKE TED KENNEDY, SHE'LL HAVE TO STAB THEM IN THE FRONT:

Pelosi, Maliki Discuss Timing of Drawdown (Ernesto Londoño, 1/27/07, Washington Post)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), visiting Baghdad on Friday in her new capacity as House speaker, that he would like to see 50,000 U.S. troops leave by the end of the year, Iraqi officials said.

Pelosi's primary concern in meeting Maliki appeared to be to determine how soon he thought the United States could withdraw its soldiers from Iraq, said Ali Dabbagh, the prime minister's spokesman. [...]

Pelosi, a critic of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, told the prime minister that she and fellow Democrats are eager to see a prompt transition of authority, Maliki's office said in a statement.

"The prime minister assured them that they could speed up the withdrawal of the troops if the equipment and training of the national forces could be speeded up," Dabbagh said Friday night in an interview.

REFUGE:

Rebus on draught (IAN RANKIN, 1/27/07, The Scotsman)

When I first went to the Oxford Bar in the 1980s, I was struck by this great mix of students and lawyers, police officers and mechanics, the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the political, the apolitical, the upper classes, the lower classes. It was a wonderful melting pot.

That's also what makes a pub a great place for a cop. If a detective wants to find out how a city works, a pub is the place to go. You'll overhear stories, you'll be told stories. And, at the end of your working day, where else are you going to let off steam? The vast majority of us let off steam in the pub.

A pub is also a kind of community. The regulars who drink with Rebus in the Oxford Bar are as close to a family as he's got. Ironically, sometimes these are people whose surnames he doesn't know, and he doesn't know what they do for a living. But for an hour, or a couple of hours, they know each other and they relax.

Pubs are the measure of community in modern Britain. You see that in the soap operas. The two most successful soaps in the UK - EastEnders and Coronation Street - both revolve around a pub, and there's a good reason for that. Pubs localise things. The "local" is where the people from that city or town or village discuss the issues that are relevant to them.

I think Rebus likes the fact that in a pub you can strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, you don't have to give too much of yourself away. It's a refuge from the real world, but at the same time, you can find out quite a lot about the real world in a good pub.

IMPORTING REDS:

Devout Poles show Britain how to keep the faith (Stephen Bates, December 23, 2006, Guardian)

One little-noticed side effect of the influx of young Poles to Britain since their country's accession to the European Union in 2004 has been an extraordinary boost to Catholic worship. Congregations that were formerly waning have been restored and expanded by the arrival of devout young Poles from the land of Pope John Paul II and they may yet change English Catholicism for ever.

A church which was amalgamating parishes, having difficulty recruiting priests - even from traditional sources of supply such as Ireland - and was seeing declining attendances has suddenly experienced a dramatic infusion of new blood. Most English parishes experience such huge congregations rarely, perhaps only for the Christmas Eve midnight mass, where revellers from the pubs on their annual visit to church boost the numbers in the pews for one night only. In English churches where separate monthly masses are held for local Poles they are often better attended than ordinary Sunday services.

"It is the Catholic community's biggest opportunity and biggest challenge," said Francis Davis, director of the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge who is carrying out a study of the new arrivals for Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O'Connor, leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales, and Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who heads the Birmingham diocese.

"In terms of its own life this is a huge opportunity. They are bringing new energy, new life and new resources and networks into the Catholic community. They are bringing a faith of their own that is so vibrant you can chew it. And they will have an unquantifiable effect on the whole debate about the future of faith schools.

"The challenge is in the mutual lack of understanding, not only between the local population and the new arrivals, but within the Polish community, between those who came because of Communism and the young economic migrants. There are 35,000 in the Southampton area alone - more than was expected for the whole country. "

SELECTION IS A FUNCTION OF INTELLIGENCE:

Extinction of Australian 'megafauna' linked to humans: From fossils of dozens of species, researchers suggest man's use of fire is a more likely cause of death than climate change (Alan Zarembo, January 27, 2007, LA Times)

Three Australian caves have yielded a treasure trove of fossils of ancient kangaroos, marsupial lions and giant lizards that roamed the outback for hundreds of thousands of years.

These so-called megafauna went extinct about 45,000 years ago, shortly after humans arrived on the continent.

Researchers, writing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, suggest that the extinction was the result of the human use of fire for hunting -- and not climate change, as some scientists have suggested.

OTHER THAN THE $400k IN MY HOUSE AND IRA I'M BROKE:

A Contrarian View: Save Less, Retire With Enough (DAMON DARLIN, 1/27/07, NY Times)

Could it be possible that you are saving too much for your retirement?

Such an idea would fly in the face of almost every exhortation to a nation of spendthrifts that saving more is an imperative. After all, even as people are living longer, corporate pension plans and Social Security can no longer be relied on to ease most Americans through their retirement years. Fidelity, the nation's largest provider of workplace retirement savings plans, says the average 401(k) account balance is only $62,000.

Beyond that, the national savings rate -- the difference between after-tax income and expenditures -- is actually negative, government statistics show.

Nevertheless, a small band of economists from universities, research institutions and the government are clearly expressing the blasphemy that many Americans could be saving less than they are being told to by the financial services industry -- and spending more -- while they are younger. The negative savings rate, they say, is wildly distorted.

According to them, the financial industry, with its ostensibly objective online calculators, overstates how much money someone will need in retirement. Some, in fact, contend that financial firms have a pointed interest in persuading people to save much more than they need because the companies earn fees on managing that money.

The more realistic amount could be as little as half the typical recommendation made by Fidelity, Vanguard or any number of other financial institutions.

YOU AREN'T WELCOME IN THE OTHER AMERICA:

Edwards Home County's Largest (Don Carrington, 1/26/07, Carolina Journal)

Presidential candidate John Edwards and his family recently moved into what county tax officials say is the most valuable home in Orange County. The house, which includes a recreational building attached to the main living quarters, also is probably the largest in the county.

The Edwards residential property will likely have the highest tax value in the county,- Orange County Tax Assessor John Smith told Carolina Journal. He estimated that the tax value will exceed $6 million when the facility is completed.

The rambling structure sits in the middle of a 102-acre estate on Old Greensboro Road west of Chapel Hill. The heavily wooded site and winding driveway ensure that the home is not visible from the road. "No Trespassing" signs discourage passersby from venturing past the gate.

THAT WHICH YOU CONSTANTLY ANALOGIZE TO YOU BELIEVE IN (via Brian Boys):

Fish Capable of Human-like Logic (Robin Lloyd, 1/24/07, LiveScience)

Fish have the reasoning capacity of a 4- or 5-year-old child when it comes to figuring out who among their peers is "top dog," new research shows.

Stanford University scientists made the discovery--said to be the first demonstration that fish can use logical reasoning to figure out their social pecking order--by studying fights among small, highly territorial, spiny-finned fish called cichlids, common in freshwater in tropical Africa, including in Lake Tanganyika in central Africa.

Logan Grosenick, a graduate student in statistics, and his colleagues found that a sixth fish could infer or learn indirectly which were the 1st through 5th strongest simply by observing fights among them in adjacent, transparent tanks, rather than by directly fighting each fish itself or seeing each fish fight all four others.

This type of reasoning, called transitive inference (TI), is a developmental milestone for human children, showing up nonverbally as early as ages 4 and 5; it also has been reported in monkeys, rats and birds. It allows thinkers to reason that if A is bigger than B, and B is bigger than C, then A is also bigger than C.

Anthropomorphizing animals, or casting human intentions on them, is a mistake, Grosenick said...

Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior.

NORMING PATHOLOGY:

Wal-Mart And The Great Income Divide (Martin T. Sosnoff, 01.26.07, Wal-Mart)

The Congress is just waking up to the great divide. Holdouts on the minimum wage issue are seeing the ground cut out beneath them. Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed got it right years ago. Unskilled single mothers need to hold down two jobs to make ends meet.

IT'S NOT ABOUT HEALTH, JUST ATTENTION-SEEKING:

Should You Have a Physical? (Steve Gordon, 1/26/07, Valley News)

An editorial in a medical journal a few years ago posed this scenario to physicians: An apparently healthy 45-year-old woman comes to you requesting a physical. She has no medical problems, and her cholesterol was fine when last checked two years ago. You ask her a range of questions about her life and lifestyle: about depression, for instance, and smoking and alcohol use. No red flags emerge.

"Your assistant" the editorial continues, "has recorded the patient's blood pressure (normal) and weight (10 pounds above ideal). You examine the patient's breasts and pelvis while counseling her to lose 10 pounds, wear seatbelts, take calcium and visit a dentist regularly. As you leave the room, you tell her to come back in three years unless (her Pap) smear is abnormal or she experiences new symptoms of concern.

"Would this patient feel well-cared for?

"Probably not."

What, no blood test? No X-rays? No rectal exam? No chilly stethoscope on the chest or back?

The routine physical, often done annually, was once a staple of every general medical practice. Over the years, it has included blood tests, listening to the lungs, looking into the eyes and ears, checking blood pressure, testing reflexes, even taking chest X-rays, among other things. It had a cookie-cutter quality: Pretty much everyone got pretty much the same thing.

Today, though, the routine physical exam is a discredited anachronism.

Well, sort of.

Major medical organizations such as the American Medical Association have been saying for more than 20 years that physicals have no clinical value that justifies the time and resources involved. In other words, they haven't been shown to catch or prevent serious illness or lengthen patients' lives.

But, as surveys and studies consistently find, patients still want them.

IT'S ONLY IN THE MIDDLE EAST THAT WE DENY MAJORITIES SIMILAR DEALS:

Kosovo Wins Support For Split From Serbia: U.S., European Allies Agree to Secession With Ongoing International Supervision (R. Jeffrey Smith, 1/26/07, Washington Post)

Nearly eight years after NATO warplanes intervened in a bitter ethnic conflict between Serbs and rebellious Kosovo Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, the United States and its European allies have agreed to support Kosovo's permanent secession from Serbia under continuing international supervision, according to senior U.S. and European officials.

The decision is likely to lead, possibly as early as this summer, to the formal creation of a new Connecticut-size country in southeastern Europe with membership in the United Nations and, eventually, its own army, the officials said. [...]

Historically a province of Serbia, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999. That year, a 78-day air campaign by NATO forced out the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, ending its brutal war against guerrillas fighting for self-rule for the province's ethnic Albanian majority. Many members of Kosovo's Serb minority have since fled Albanian retribution.

The new plan, a culmination of lengthy diplomatic consultations between nervous continental Europeans and more enthusiastic Americans and British, is meant in part to alleviate continuing intense pressure from the Albanians for independence. Western officials fear that without official action on the issue, new violence might break out this summer.

Officials say that finally allowing Kosovo to stand mostly on its own also has a major economic impetus: They anticipate it would open the door to private investment, new Western lending and aid, supplanting more than $2.5 billion already poured into the province by foreigners since 1999 with only a slight impact on a faltering and highly corrupt economy.

Kosovo has Europe's largest deposits of lignite coal. Economic planners hope that the new state might build power plants and emerge as a primary supplier of electricity to its Balkan neighbors.

Some diplomats caution that achievement of consensus by the Western powers might not be the end of the tale: Serbia's leaders have persistently and heatedly campaigned against any forced separation of one of their country's provinces.

THE WORLD'S BEST POVERTY ALLEVIATION PROGRAM:

Political muscle raises hopes of saving Doha (Larry Elliott, January 26, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

Hopes of a final breakthrough in the long-running global trade talks rose today as President Lula of Brazil joined Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in calling for a speedy end to the stalled negotiations.

Ahead of a meeting of 30 trade ministers in Davos tomorrow, the head of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy, said the involvement of political leaders and finance ministers had changed the atmosphere of the talks.

"The winds have restarted blowing in the direction of a conclusion of this round", Mr Lamy said this afternoon.

WHEN EXISTENTIALISTS WRITE WELL THEY REFUTE THEMSELVES:

Oh, That Meddlesome Priest (JAMES BOWMAN, January 26, 2007, NY Sun)

"Becket" is very much a movie of its time -- that is, 1964. Edward Anhalt's adaptation of Anouilh's play (directed by Peter Glenville) retains a lot of the playwright's sensibility, particularly his conception of the 1170 murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by agents of King Henry II, in terms of the questions of morality and honor raised by the collaboration of a conquered people with their conquerors.

Though obviously an important subject for a Frenchman in the post-war years, this now appears slightly bizarre. To start with, it is doubtful that Becket was, as Anouilh imagined him, a Saxon who first became the best friend of the Norman King Henry and then turned against him, or that the English clergy were all-Saxon while the nobility were all-Norman, like rival football teams.

Without these assumptions, the carefully built-up but rather strained self-hatred of the film's Becket (Richard Burton) makes no sense. Also, its ideas of honor and duty are confused and confusing. And yet, at this distance of time, it comes as a shock that a movie should have concerned itself with such matters at all. [...]

Inspired partly by the postwar rage for psychotherapy, the intellectual spectacular derived a lot of its kick from the illusion that this or that historical figure had been "explained" in terms of what, a few years later, were to be described as his "hang-ups." Oh, so that's what the Reformation or the Renaissance -- or whatever large historical phenomenon you like -- was all about.

JUST REPORT TO CAMP ALREADY!:

Unwinding the gyroball: The physics behind the mysterious pitch and the burning question of whether Matsuzaka throws it (Brett Bull, 1/26/07, SI.com)

"It is a pitch with a gyro spin," explains Dr. Ryutaro Himeno, the director of the Advanced Center for Computing and Communication at the physics and chemistry research institution Riken in Saitama Prefecture.

Himeno, who has done computer simulations of the gyroball's movement since the late 1990s, says that the pitch is delivered much like a "football pass," speeding toward the plate in a tight spiral. In 2001, he co-authored the book Makyu no Shotai (The Truth about the Supernatural Pitch) with baseball instructor Kazushi Tezuka. "Tezuka is the godfather of the gyroball," Himeno says of his associate, who operates sports clinics in Tokyo and Osaka. "I just proved that the pitch exists."

Since Matsuzaka's signing, U.S. newspaper stories have compared the gyroball's elusiveness to that of a ghost or the Loch Ness Monster. Graphs have apocryphally approximated the degree of the pitch's break, showing a sweeping turn as it crosses the plate -- a movement so large that it exceeds even that of a curveball.

But Matsuzaka has never admitted to more than occasionally experimenting with the gyroball; often, he has denied using it at all. The diverging opinions of Himeno and Tezuka, the foremost experts on the pitch, only add to the uncertainty. In fact, reaching some kind of concurrence on what the gyroball is and whether Matsuzaka throws it is about as easy as hitting a Matsuzaka delivery -- any one of them.

ALL HE EVER WANTED WAS TO SIT AT THE GROWN-UPS' TABLE:

Cooperative tone of Sadr surprises U.S.: The Shiite cleric's movement, long a foe of America, says it backs the new Iraq security plan (Borzou Daragahi, January 26, 2007, LA Times)

Muqtada Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, has backed away from confrontation with U.S. and Iraqi forces in recent weeks, a move that has surprised U.S. officials who long have characterized his followers as among the greatest threats to Iraq's security.

Thursday, a leader of the Sadr movement in one of its Baghdad strongholds publicly endorsed President Bush's new Iraq security plan, which at least some U.S. officials have touted as a way to combat Sadr's group.

"We will fully cooperate with the government to make the plan successful," said Abdul-Hussein Kaabai, head of the local council in the Shiite Muslim-dominated Sadr City neighborhood. "If it is an Iraqi plan done by the government, we will cooperate."

Over the last several weeks, the Shiite cleric and his followers have dropped their threats to quit Iraq's U.S.-backed government, and after years of shunning the "occupier," they have allowed their emissaries to meet with U.S. officials.

THE RAGING FUNDAMENTALISTS:

The Dawkins Delusion (Alister McGrath, January 26, 2007, AlterNet)

Every worldview, whether religious or not, has its point of vulnerability. There is a tension between theory and experience, raising questions over the coherence and trustworthiness of the worldview itself. In the case of Christianity, many locate that point of weakness in the existence of suffering within the world. In the case of atheism, it is the persistence of belief in God, when there is supposedly no God in which to believe.

Until recently, western atheism had waited patiently, believing that belief in God would simply die out. But now, a whiff of panic is evident. Far from dying out, belief in God has rebounded, and seems set to exercise still greater influence in both the public and private spheres. The God Delusion expresses this deep anxiety, partly reflecting an intense distaste for religion. Yet there is something deeper here, often overlooked in the heat of debate. The anxiety is that the coherence of atheism itself is at stake. Might the unexpected resurgence of religion persuade many that atheism itself is fatally flawed as a worldview?

That's what Dawkins is worried about. The shrill, aggressive rhetoric of his God Delusion masks a deep insecurity about the public credibility of atheism. The God Delusion seems more designed to reassure atheists whose faith is faltering than to engage fairly or rigorously with religious believers, and others seeking for truth. (Might this be because the writer is himself an atheist whose faith is faltering?) Religious believers will be dismayed by its ritual stereotyping of religion, and will find its manifest lack of fairness a significant disincentive to take its arguments and concerns seriously. Seekers after truth who would not consider themselves religious may also find themselves shocked by Dawkins' aggressive rhetoric, his substitution of personal creedal statements for objective engagement with evidence, his hectoring and bullying tone towards "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads," and his utter determination to find nothing but fault with religion of any kind.

It is this deep, unsettling anxiety about the future of atheism which explains the high degree of dogmatism and aggressive rhetorical style of this new secular fundamentalism. The dogmatism of the work has been the subject of intense criticism in the secular press, reflecting growing alarm within the secularist community about the damage that Dawkins is doing to their public reputation. Many of those who might be expected to support Dawkins are running for cover, trying to distance themselves from this embarrassment.

LAND OF THE RISING SALSA:

Japan Mulls Importing Foreign Workers (JOSEPH COLEMAN, 1/20/07, The Associated Press)

The prospect of a shrinking, rapidly aging population is spurring a debate about whether Japan _ so insular that it once barred foreigners from its shores for two centuries _ should open up to more foreign workers.

Japan's 2 million registered foreigners, 1.57 percent of the population, are at a record high but minuscule compared with the United States' 12 percent.

For the government to increase those numbers would be groundbreaking in a nation conditioned to see itself as racially homogeneous and culturally unique, and to equate "foreign" with crime and social disorder.

"I think we are entering an age of revolutionary change," said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute and a vocal proponent of accepting more outsiders. "Our views on how the nation should be and our views on foreigners need to change in order to maintain our society."

Oizumi's more than 6,500 foreigners, mostly Brazilian, provide a glimpse into what that change might look like.

Walk down the main drag and it's obvious this is no typical Japanese town. Among the convenience stores and coffee shops are tattoo parlors and evangelical Christian churches. At the Canta Galo grocery, people line up at an international phone to call family 10,000 miles away.

The only reason these foreigners are able to be here is their Japanese descent, which entitles them by law to come here as guest workers.

Watanabe's grandparents emigrated to Brazil decades ago, and he and his friends stand out in Japan with their non-Japanese features, booming voices and backslapping manners. At 2 a.m., after a night out with friends, his manner becomes even less Japanese _ shirt off to expose a hefty belly, howling farewells as he drives off in a beat-up car.

Not everyone feels as isolated as he does. Another Brazilian, Claudinei Naruishi, has a Japanese wife and two kids, and wants to buy a house. "I like it here," he says.

Still, City Hall officials are clearly overwhelmed trying to plug the holes in a social system that seems to assume that everyone living in Japan is Japanese.

"We're kind of an experimental region," said Hiroe Kato, of the town's international section. "Japanese people want immigrants to come here and live just like us. But foreigners are different."

Speaking poor Japanese, they tend to be cut off from their neighbors, unable to _ or critics say, unwilling to _ communicate with policemen, file tax returns or understand notices to separate plastic garbage from burnables.

Schooling is compulsory in Japan until age 16, but only for citizens. So foreign kids can skip school with impunity. Arrangements such as special Japanese classes for newcomers are ad hoc and understaffed. Many of the foreigners aren't entitled to pensions or the same health benefits as Japanese workers because they're hired through special job brokers.

Above all, the differences are cultural and rife with stereotypes: Latinos playing music late on weekends; teenagers congregating in the streets at night, alarming police.

"We have people who don't follow the rules," said Mayor Hasegawa. "So then we have a lot of cultural friction."

All the same, demographics suggest Japan has little choice but to open the doors a little further.

The population is 127 million and is forecast to plunge to about 100 million by 2050, when more than a third of Japanese will be 65 or older and drawing health and pension benefits. Less than half of Japanese, meanwhile, will be of working age of 15-64.

Fearing disastrous drops in consumption, production and tax revenues, Japan's bureaucrats are scrambling to boost the birthrate and get more women and elderly into the work force. But many Japanese are realizing that foreigners must be part of the equation.

ONE SOX NATION UNDER CURT:

Capitol idea: Senator Schilling? Curt's not so sure, but fans think he's just the ticket (Jesse Noyes, January 26, 2007, Boston Herald)

Curt Schilling seemed surprised yesterday by the sudden groundswell of local supporters hoping to draft him into national politics and a 2008 Senate run against John Kerry. [...]

"I couldn't rule it out because it's not something I ever thought about in a serious capacity," Schilling told the Herald.

"I envision that I will probably be pretty busy in 2008," he said. "But I'm flattered as hell to even make this phone call."

The chatter around Schilling taking on Kerry in a senate race started on talk station WRKO-AM (680) yesterday, when a caller to the Todd Feinberg show suggested Schilling would be the best candidate for the job.

"It just kind of energized from there," Feinberg said. "He became the popular candidate."

KNOCK THEIR BLOCS OFF:

Angry Dispute Erupts Among Iraqi Lawmakers (MARC SANTORA, 1/26/07, NY Times)

Mr. Maliki made his threat to arrest the Sunni lawmaker shortly after promising once again that a crackdown on illegal activity and would be carried out with equal vigor in Shiite as well as Sunni communities.

The prime minister's claim was challenged by Abdul Nasir al-Janabi, who represents a powerful Sunni Arab bloc. "We can not trust the office of the prime minister," he said over jeers from the Shiite politicians before his microphone was cut off.

Mr. Maliki could barely contain his rage, waving his finger in the air and essentially accusing Mr. Nasir of being a criminal.

"I will show you," Mr. Maliki said. "I will turn over the documents on you" showing all your crimes, "then you can talk about trust," Mr. Maliki said.

Shiite politicians in the room erupted in applause.

But Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament and a Sunni Arab, slammed his gavel down and condemned the prime minister and those who applauded.

"That is unacceptable, Mr. Prime Minister," Mr. Mashhadani said over the tumult. "It is unacceptable, Mr. Prime Minister, to make such accusations against a lawmaker under the dome of Parliament."

But Mr. Maliki pressed on. "What about the 150 people kidnapped near al-Bairaat," he said, referring to an area by a lake south of the Baghdad where Mr. Nasir has his base of support.

In an interview after the session, an Iraqi lawmaker asserted that Mr. Nasir's brother had been implicated in the deaths of more than a dozen Shiites who were killed recently as they returned to Iraq from the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and that this might have been the incident Mr. Maliki was referring to.

As the prime minister continued, Shiites encouraged him on and Sunni Arabs tried to shout him down.

THE CONNECTING HIGHWAY:

India takes a slow road (Sudha Ramachandran, 1/26/07, Asia Times)

India's involvement with road-building is bitterly opposed by both the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan, as the highway under construction not only will boost Afghanistan's connectivity and trade ties with the outside world, it will also enhance the trade and influence of Iran and India - countries whose relations with Islamabad and the Taliban are hardly friendly. Pakistan fears that with the completion of the highway, India's presence and influence in its neighborhood to the north, ie Central Asia, will increase manifold.

India's Border Roads Organization (BRO) is constructing the 217-kilometer Zaranj-Delaram highway in the southwest of the country. It will link Zaranj, which lies on Afghanistan's border with Iran, to Delaram, situated on the "garland highway". The garland highway links Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz. Once the highway is completed, Zaranj will be linked to several Afghan cities.

This highway will connect Iran with the garland highway, too. Iran has been working on improving road links from its ports to towns that lie on its border with Afghanistan. It has completed construction of a vital bridge on the Helmand River marking the frontier between itself and Afghanistan, and is busy upgrading the road from Chabahar, where its new port on the Makran coast is coming up, to Zaranj.

So once the Zaranj-Delaram highway is completed, goods from Afghanistan's main cities can be brought overland to the border with Iran from where they will be transported to Chabahar, and vice versa. The Zaranj-Delaram highway will provide landlocked Afghanistan with a valuable lifeline.

THE WAXING CRESCENT:

Fear of a Shia full moon: Events are proving that the king of Jordan was right to warn of a 'Shia crescent' across the Middle East - even though the phrase was a tad undiplomatic (Ian Black, January 26, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

Late in 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan coined a controversial phrase that still resonates powerfully in the Middle East: there was, he argued, a "Shia crescent" that went from Damascus to Tehran, passing through Baghdad, where a Shia-dominated government had taken power and was dictating a sectarian brand of politics that was radiating outwards from Iraq across the whole region.

The king's words were certainly prescient: the divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims looks like being one of the big themes of 2007 as both come to terms with the apparently unstoppable chaos in Iraq, the rise of Iran as a regional power, and the fear of new and catastrophic consequences if the US and/or Israel enter into armed confrontation with the Islamic republic.

Now some scholars are even talking of a new "30 years' war" between the two branches of Islam - something akin to the struggle between Protestants and Catholics in 16th-century Europe. [...]

Protests from Iraq itself and from Lebanon were predictable. But there was nervousness in the Gulf, too, where Bahrain has a Shia majority and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (in its oil-rich eastern province) sizeable Shia minorities.

KEEP NUCLEAR AND YOU'RE HOME FREE:

Energy roadmap backs renewables (BBC, 1/26/07)

Half of the world's energy needs in 2050 could be met by renewables and improved efficiency, a study claims.

It said alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, could provide nearly 70% of the world's electricity and 65% of global heat demand. [....]

The report calls for ageing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants to be replaced by renewable generation when they reach the end of their operational lives.

"Right now, we have five main sources of energy - oil, coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. In our scenario, we have solar, wind, geo-thermal, bio-energy and hydro," Mr Teske told BBC News.

IT'S NOT THAT THEY'RE RICHER, BUT SMARTER:

The Best Just Got Better In the American League (TIM MARCHMAN, January 26, 2007, NY Sun)

[N]ot only has the AL improved, its best teams have done the best job with their resources.

Atop any list of the off-season winners must be the defending pennant winner, the Detroit Tigers, and the Yankees. The Tigers, with an impressive mix of young players and veterans who can still play well, only had one obvious need, and that was for a lineup anchor with a high on-base average. Trading some live arms for Gary Sheffield was therefore quite the wise idea. Sheffield, who will be 38 this year, posted a fine .355 OBA in limited time last year; it was the first time it had dipped below .379 since 1993. When you win the pennant and then fill your one need, you're counted a winner. The Yankees did an even better job, by clearing out Sheffield, Jaret Wright, Randy Johnson, and other expensive veterans while filling out the pitching staff with several of the best starters available on the market, who were signed to short-term contracts. The rest of the league should be scared of these teams.

The clubs that did the next best jobs were, alarmingly, also among the league's elite. Boston can be marked down a bit for the drama surrounding the contract of hangnail-prone outfielder J.D. Drew, which was finally settled yesterday after four years of negotiations, but they also picked up a fine middle infielder in Julio Lugo and the best available player in starter Daisuke Matsuzaka, filling clear needs with both moves. Chicago, meanwhile, took advantage of the ludicrous market for starting pitching by shipping off two starters at the likely peak of their value -- Freddy Garcia and Brandon McCarthy -- while receiving a bounty of high-end prospects in return. Everyone says that cheap, adequate pitching is the most valuable thing in the game; Chicago GM Kenny Williams, unusually, actually acts like he believes it. Good for him.

SO EASY TO FORGET HOW YOU GOT INTO THIS MESS:

Make a Deal With Syria and Weaken the Iran-Hezbollah Axis (Martin Van Creveld, Jan 26, 2007, The Forward)

Both Iran and Hezbollah are committed to a radical version of Shi'ite Islam. Since the regime in Damascus is secular, Assad finds him in a rather uncomfortable position. Were Shi'ite fundamentalism to gain a stronger foothold in Syria, it might upset the delicate religious-ethnic balance that for the past quarter-century has kept the country stable. Should the United States evacuate Iraq and some kind of Iranian-guided Shi'ite entity established in Baghdad, Damascus will find itself in a less comfortable situation still.

Add to that the fact that Hezbollah, far from being controlled by Damascus, is to some extent a loose cannon -- one that someday may drag Syria into a war against a much more powerful Israel. Should such a war break out, Tehran's willingness -- and certainly its ability -- to come to Assad's aid will be strictly limited.

All this, of course, does not come as news to Assad, and it is because of his weak position that he has been going out of his way during recent months to call for peace talks with Israel. So far, Israel has rejected the outstretched Syrian hand, either because Washington cast a veto or due to other reasons.

If Washington and Jerusalem's aim, however, is to dismantle the alliance between Syria and Iran and in the process leave Hezbollah high and dry, then perhaps Assad's calls for peace talks deserve a more positive response.

BETTER FETCH HIS SOAP-ON-A-ROPE:

In perjury trial, testimony by Cheney aide damages Libby (Neil A. Lewis, January 25, 2007, NY Times)

Cathie Martin, who was Cheney's chief spokeswoman, was the fourth witness for the prosecution in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Libby, who is charged with lying during an investigation of who leaked the name of the CIA operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, and why. Unlike the previous three witnesses, who worked at the CIA and State Department, Martin provided an insider's perspective, one from directly inside the office of the vice president.

The perspective she laid out under questioning from a federal prosecutor was damaging to Libby. She testified that both Cheney and Libby were intensely interested in Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a mission to Africa to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger for his nuclear weapons program.

Martin's testimony was damaging for Libby in two respects. She bolstered the prosecution's assertion that Libby was fully aware of Wilson's identity from a number of administration officials, and did not first learn about her from reporters, as he has claimed. Perhaps more important, she testified as a former close colleague of Libby's and demonstrated her familiarity with him by repeatedly referring to him by his nickname, Scooter.

FROM DENIAL TO DA NILE:

Davos: Demographics, Economics, Destiny: With the help of workforce consultants, some governments are addressing the economic shortcomings that a dearth of workers portend (Christopher Power, 1/25/07, Business Week)

A talk with some of the top brass of Manpower (MAN) of Milwaukee is very revealing. In 2005, Manpower's network of temp services and human resources operations put 5 million people to work around the globe. With more than $17 billion in revenue, it ranks with Swiss-based Adecco (ADO) as the world-class provider of workers to the top corporations on the planet. Manpower's studies of global workforce trends are some of the best available.
Joining the Union

Take their study on the European labor force. Corporate affairs boss David Arkless says Manpower estimates that in a few decades the European Union will have a shortfall of 60 million people of working age. "And that includes the newly admitted member states of Bulgaria and Romania," says Arkless.

This presents an enormous opportunity for workforce companies such as Manpower, which is advising European governments on bringing older workers back into the workplace, loosening labor rules, seriously retraining workers, and expanding the Continent's pool of part-time workers. All this will help Europe's looming labor shortage. But Manpower figures it won't be enough without a massive revision of immigration laws in Europe. Turkey and Egypt have the people--if Europe will have Turkey and Egypt. [...]

Still, even China cannot escape demographic destiny. China has a rapidly aging workforce and faces pension shortfalls in the trillions. Eventually, these choke points will affect China's supercharged growth. That's why Arkless figures India, with its superyoung population, could eventually surpass China in economic importance. Demographics cannot be denied.

TOO DUMB TO BE THE NEXT MR. HEINZ?:

Dems' beauty skin deep: Ugly cuts straight to bone (Kyle Whitmire, 1/25/07, Birmingham Weekly)

Three years ago, when he held the second spot on the Democratic ticket, [John] Edwards spent his one and only campaign stop here with this schedule: Rubber chicken fundraiser at the Summit Club (30 minutes), unannounced/unpublicized visit to local headquarters (20 minutes), dinner at Bottega (3 hours). At least he set foot here, which is more than his running mate, John Kerry, could claim. Dinner at Bottega is fine dining, but working the lines at the Fish Market, with camera crew in tow, is smart campaigning. Instead, to paraphrase Steve Miller, he took the money and ran. Alabama voters not dining so well that night were left again to feel lonely and unappreciated.

But something funny happened on the way to the White House this time. Alabama has moved its primaries to February 2008. Supposing other states don't try to leapfrog ahead of us (and they very well might), this state will have much to say in who will be the next presidential nominees. And someone like Edwards, with his Southern boy credentials, could theoretically do well here. He speaks about God, country and family in our familiar inflections. He says "y'all" a lot. Last Friday he had a second chance to make a first impression.

"I grew up in the rural South, in South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, small towns the whole time," Edwards said to a group of TV reporters in a suite at the Wynfrey Hotel. "I think I have a good understanding of what people in Alabama care about. They care about their faith, they care about their family, and they care about their work, in that order."

If only that were true. In fact, what Edwards didn't say, and what the TV cameras didn't show, was what was going on downstairs: the Mid Winter Conference of the Alabama Trial Lawyers Association. That's right. Edwards was here, in his first campaign visit, to take money from trial lawyers. If he had performed an abortion and married another man, he could have hit the trifecta for running crossways of Alabama values.

LET US GET THAT PLUG FOR YOU:

The squeeze is on: A new economic history argues that Europe's institutions must adapt if the continent is to thrive in future (The Economist, Jan 25th 2007)

More recently...Europe has tended to lag behind America. And that, concludes this sympathetic American observer (a professor at the University of California, Berkeley), gives rise to doubts about the old continent's future economic prowess.

The key to these two facets of the economy lies in Europe's institutions. In lesser hands, "institutions" might be a lazy, catch-all explanation. Mr Eichengreen, though, crafts his arguments well. Western Europe's rapid post-war growth, he says, stemmed from more than the free play of market forces: cohesive trade unions and employers' associations, often inherited from pre-war times, and growth-minded governments were needed too. Hence the "co-ordinated capitalism" of his subtitle.

He makes a strong case that Europe did not start from scratch after the war. A good deal of physical capital remained; and of the roads, railways and factories that had been destroyed, much could be quickly rebuilt. By 1947, industrial production had surpassed 1938 levels, if Germany is left out of the European average; by 1948, production was as high as it had been a decade earlier even if Germany is included. The continent also had plenty of what economists call human capital and the rest of us call skilled and educated people.

Co-ordinated capitalism worked well in those countries that had it. Britain, with its fragmented unions and employers' groups, was a conspicuous exception, and its attempt to mimic French indicative planning in the 1960s was a conspicuous failure. Co-ordination crossed borders too, in the shape of what eventually became the European Union.

Strains showed even when co-ordinated capitalism was in its prime, most clearly in the series of exchange-rate realignments from the 1950s to the 1990s. Pride played as big a part as economics in patching up the system: just about every devaluation of the French franc seems to have been dressed up as a revaluation of the D-mark.

Europe's institutions served it less well once it had more or less caught up with America. They were much less good at fostering "intensive growth"--pushing back the bounds of economic possibility as opposed to merely catching up with them. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, while America put its research and development dollars into aerospace and electronics, Europe went for marginal improvements in chemicals, textiles and machinery--in Italy, for example, adding numerical controls to existing textile looms rather than coming up with altogether new machines. This was already beginning to matter by the end of the 1960s, with labour tight and living standards getting close to American levels. It is not clear that Europe has cracked this problem even now.

IT'S BEST NOT TO CAPTURE THE ZIETGEIST PERECTLY WHEN YOU LIVE IN A ROTTEN SOCIETY:

Weighing the universe: How scientists are trying to find where Einstein went wrong (The Economist, Jan 25th 2007)

FAMILIAR as it may seem, gravity remains a mystery to modern physics. Despite several decades of trying, scientists have failed to fit Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity holds big objects together, with the quantum mechanics he pioneered, which describes the tiny fundamental particles of which matter consists and the forces by which they interact. Recent discoveries have highlighted further problems.

Many physicists are therefore entertaining the idea that Einstein's ideas about gravity must be wrong or at least incomplete.

A HIGHWAY IS A MONUMENT TO SELF, A RAILWAY TO SOCIETY:

Rehabilitating Robert Moses (ROBIN POGREBIN, 1/23/07, NY Times)

FOR three decades his image has been frozen in time. The bulldozing bully who callously displaced thousands of New Yorkers in the name of urban renewal. The public-works kingpin who championed highways as he starved mass transit. And yes, the visionary idealist who gave New York Lincoln Center and Jones Beach, along with parks, roads, playgrounds and public pools.

This is the Robert Moses most of us know today, courtesy of Robert A. Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography from 1974, "The Power Broker," which charts Moses' long reign as city parks commissioner (1934-60) and chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (1946-68). A 1,286-page book that reads like a novel, it won a Pulitzer Prize and virtually redefined the biographical genre by raising the bar for contemporary research. Today it remains the premier text on the evolution of 20th-century New York, a portrait of a man who used his power without regard for the human toll.

But according to the Columbia University architectural historian Hilary Ballon and assorted colleagues, Moses deserves better -- or at least a fresh look. In three exhibitions opening in the next few days -- at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art and Columbia University -- Ms. Ballon argues that too little attention has been focused on what Moses achieved, versus what he destroyed, and on the enormous bureaucratic hurdles he surmounted to get things done. [...]

As for Mr. Caro, 71, he said he was not informed of the exhibitions in advance, nor is he part of a symposium Thursday at the Museum of the City of New York or other panel discussions pegged to them. Asked how he felt about having been excluded, Mr. Caro said: "When I am writing a book, I try always to give all sides a chance to express their viewpoint. I guess they didn't want my viewpoint expressed, and not inviting me is certainly an effective means of accomplishing that."

He will make a solo appearance at the museum on Feb. 11, but only because one of the exhibition's financers, the philanthropist Roger Hertog, argued that Mr. Caro should be included.

"The exhibition elevates Moses' achievements to historic -- almost grandiose -- accomplishment, yet he's a complicated person," Mr. Hertog said. "If you're going to really think about this, there is this looming presence, this thousand-pound gorilla, in the middle of the room, and it's Caro. His interpretation has to be heard as well."

Mr. Caro spent seven years on his book, conducting 522 interviews and combing thousands of personal and public documents. To scholars who take a revisionist approach, he urges caution. "The enduring legacy of Robert Moses includes magnificent achievements, which I celebrated in 'The Power Broker,' " he said. "But it is also necessary to look at his overall impact."

He cited the ouster of more than half a million people from their homes in the Bronx, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, in Sunset Park in Brooklyn and on Long Island farms for the sake of new highways or "slum clearance": evictions that largely could have been avoided by using alternate routes and that in some cases helped create new slums.

"His highways and bridges and tunnels are awesome all right, but no aspect of those highways and bridges and tunnels is as awesome as the congestion on them," Mr. Caro said. "Congestion was always going to be inevitable in New York, but it could have been substantially less had he only combined his roads with the mass transit suggested by so many planners."

IF HE WERE ANY VAGUER HE'D BE PAT/PAT:

Obama: "The Time Has Come For Universal Health Care In America" (TPM Cafe, 1/25/07)

It's time to act. This isn't a problem of money, this is a problem of will. A failure of leadership. We already spend $2.2 trillion a year on health care in this country. My colleague, Senator Ron Wyden, who's recently developed a bold new health care plan of his own, tells it this way:

For the money Americans spent on health care last year, we could have hired a group of skilled physicians, paid each one of them $200,000 to care for just seven families, and guaranteed every single American quality, affordable health care.

So where's all that money going? We know that a quarter of it - one out of every four health care dollars - is spent on non-medical costs; mostly bills and paperwork. And we also know that this is completely unnecessary. Almost every other industry in the world has saved billions on these administrative costs by doing it all online. Every transaction you make at a bank now costs them less than a penny. Even at the Veterans Administration, where it used to cost nine dollars to pull up your medical record, new technology means you can call up the same record on the internet for next to nothing.

But because we haven't updated technology in the rest of the health care industry, a single transaction still costs up to twenty-five dollars - not one dime of which goes toward improving the quality of our health care.

This is simply inexcusable, and if we brought our entire health care system online, something everyone from Ted Kennedy to Newt Gingrich believes we should do, we'd already be saving over $600 million a year on health care costs.

The federal government should be leading the way here. If you do business with the federal employee health benefits program, you should move to an electronic claims system. If you are a provider who works with Medicare, you should have to report your patient's health outcomes, so that we can figure out, on a national level, how to improve health care quality. These are all things experts tell us must be done but aren't being done. And the federal government should lead.

Another, more controversial area we need to look at is how much of our health care spending is going toward the record-breaking profits earned by the drug and health care industry. It's perfectly understandable for a corporation to try and make a profit, but when those profits are soaring higher and higher each year while millions lose their coverage and premiums skyrocket, we have a responsibility to ask why.

At a time when businesses are facing increased competition and workers rarely stay with one company throughout their lives, we also have to ask if the employer-based system of health care itself is still the best for providing insurance to all Americans. We have to ask what we can do to provide more Americans with preventative care, which would mean fewer doctor's visits and less cost down the road. We should make sure that every single child who's eligible is signed up for the children's health insurance program, and the federal government should make sure that our states have the money to make that happen. And we have to start looking at some of the interesting ideas on comprehensive reform that are coming out of states like Maine and Illinois and California, to see what we can replicate on a national scale and what will move us toward that goal of universal coverage for all.

But regardless of what combination of policies and proposals get us to this goal, we must reach it. We must act. And we must act boldly.

MORE:
Obama's Appeal to Blacks Remains an Open Question (Michael A. Fletcher, 1/25/07, Washington Post)

The question of how Obama chooses to define and approach race looms large as he moves closer to formally launching his campaign next month. Although he rides a wave of enthusiasm among Democrats who like his vision of a different kind of politics and see him as an alternative to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), it is not clear that his multiracial message can excite black voters hungry for affirmation of their top concerns.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE ON A ROLL WHEN...:

Boeing cuts 787 wireless system (Dominic Gates, 1/25/07, Seattle Times)

Boeing has abandoned its plan to install a wireless inflight-entertainment system on the 787 Dreamliner, one it had touted earlier as saving weight and complexity by eliminating wires.

Boeing will substitute a wired system with cables running to each seat row, instead of a wireless antenna at each row, to feed movies and music to passengers' seats.

Mike Sinnett, director of 787 systems, said the switch will ease the plane's development schedule rather than cause any delay. Paradoxically, he said, the change will reduce weight.

"We're putting in about 50 pounds of wiring and taking out about 200 pounds of other gear" including wireless antennae, wireless access points and thickened ceiling panels, said Sinnett. "And from a schedule point of view, it makes life easier for us."

WHEREAS DEMOCRATS WANT A UNIVERSAL PLAN DESIGNED ONLY FOR THE EXCEPTIONS:

Experts Examine Bush Health Plan (Christopher Lee and Lori Montgomery, 1/25/07, Washington Post)

Under the plan, which would take effect in 2009, winners would vastly outnumber the losers -- at least at first.

Families that spend less than $15,000 on their health coverage (either on their own or with an employer's contribution) would come out ahead, because the new deduction would apply to all of the money spent on premiums. A family that spends, $13,000 a year on health insurance could claim the full deduction. The administration says about 100 million people with employer-sponsored coverage would see their tax bills go down.

Other winners include the 17 million people who buy health insurance on the individual market, who would for the first time enjoy a tax break on the money they use to pay health premiums.

On the losing side are consumers with more expensive policies, especially those financed by employers, who would have to pay taxes on the money used to pay premiums exceeding $15,000. About 30 million people with employer coverage would see their tax bills go up in the first year, the administration says.

"You've got a Republican president willing to take from the rich and redistribute to the poor, which, symbolically, is a really big deal," said Thomas A. Scully, a former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under Bush. "It's breaking the ice to where the real source of revenue is and redistributing it from overinsured people to poor people. . . . The concept is a huge step in the right direction."

Advocates said the proposals would hold down health-care costs by motivating people to seek plans that cost $15,000 or less, and would help put basic insurance within reach of about 5 million of the uninsured. Still more people would gain coverage with the help of another Bush proposal to redirect some federal health money to new grants to assist states in finding innovative ways to cover the uninsured.

"It gives everyone a strong incentive to search for less-costly health care," said Mark B. McClellan, a health economist and former Bush adviser. [...]

Others fear the plan would prompt more employers to drop health coverage and offer employees an immediate increase in wages to buy coverage on the individual market. But those plans tend to be more expensive, less comprehensive and harder to get for consumers who are already sick.

ECONOMISTS VS. ECONOMICS:

U.S. motorists cutting back a bit: Americans cut miles driven for the first time since 1980. High prices are behind the change in transportation habits. (Elizabeth Douglass, January 25, 2007, LA Times)

[T]o the surprise of many economists, U.S. motorists changed their ways enough to cut the nation's per-driver mileage by 0.4% in 2005, ending a string of increases dating back to 1980, government data show.

Other reports over the last year on mass transit ridership, total miles driven nationwide, gasoline demand, vehicle sales and retail and restaurant spending reinforce the notion that U.S. drivers made significant -- and in some cases, lasting -- adjustments to offset steadily rising gasoline prices.

"In 2005 and into 2006, we did see consumers start to change their driving behavior," said David Portalatin, director of industry analysis at NPD Group Inc., which tracks consumer spending. "That's a very hard thing to change, because I've either got to change where I work, where I live, or what kind of car I drive in order to actually consume less gasoline."

It's a small but important shift for a nation that many believed was impervious to rising gas prices because drivers were unable or unwilling to rein in their gas-guzzling ways. Lofty energy costs have generated such concern that President Bush devoted a significant chunk of his last two State of the Union speeches to addressing the nation's oil addiction.

"The message is that price matters," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Boston-area consulting company that recently published an analysis called "Gasoline and the American People."

JUST ANOTHER REGIME CHANGE, COURTESY OF THE CRUSADER STATE:

Liberians love their Iron Lady, for now: The woman who would heal the nation has no illusions and few tears (Robyn Dixon, January 25, 2007, LA Times)

Johnson-Sirleaf is under no illusions: A few more months or a year without bringing jobs and her people's love and admiration will themselves blink out. But for now she offers hope of a new beginning to a nation torn by war's atrocities, many of them committed by doped-up children who fought in drag and believed magic could protect them from the bullets.

When she changes into colorful Liberian costume for official functions, Johnson-Sirleaf seems to blossom like a tropical flower. Her raspy, charismatic voice rises powerfully as she addresses the crowds.

She is divorced with four sons and six grandchildren, and comes from a pious family. As a student, her only ambition was to be a schoolteacher like her mother. Both her grandmothers, one of whom had a market stall, were illiterate.

She played soccer with the boys, a rarity in those days. She was a lethal volleyball player, leaping up and whacking the ball two-handed across court, a shot that almost never failed.

After studying in the United States, she returned home to become finance minister under President William Tolbert in the early 1970s. After she was jailed by the regime of Samuel Doe in 1985 and was charged with treason under Taylor in 1997, she went into exile. She worked for the World Bank, Citibank, the International Monetary Fund and other organizations. [...]

Though few doubt that her toughness and piety signal a break from the theft and violence of previous regimes, her task is immense.

Liberia today seems a country of slogans, acronyms and good intentions. Crudely painted notice boards tell the population (more than half of which can't read) how to live: "Stop mob violence; use the law." "Say no to cigarettes, pipes and chewing tobacco." "Raped? Get help." Some are slapped up on walls by indignant residents: "Only dogs urinate here."

The acronyms of dozens of international nongovernmental organizations litter the country, proclaiming their intended sites for schools and clinics.

In Monrovia, the capital, a teeming population jostles and hustles. The smell of sewage pervades some streets. The city seems to exhale grime, leaving a grubby sheen upon the skin.

The hip-hop song about Johnson-Sirleaf is called "A Letter to the President."

Hello, Ma. See, what we need is change, a change from suffering, a change from poverty. You can make it, Ma. We trust you; that's why we voted for you.

To help jump-start the economy, Johnson-Sirleaf is relying on an end to diamond sanctions imposed by the United Nations, a revival of the rubber and timber industries, and an iron ore project by Mittal Steel offering more than 3,000 jobs.

A key donors conference is to be held in February. And moves to resolve the country's IMF debt are crucial if Liberia is to borrow from countries such as China, which wants to invest $1 billion thanks to Liberia's abundant resources. [...]

Johnson-Sirleaf has drastically cut the civil service, restored power and water to parts of Monrovia, pursued corrupt former officials and pressured the international community to help the country by lifting the diamond sanctions and forgiving its unsustainable level of debt.

Her government is admired abroad -- in Washington, she won a standing ovation at a joint session of Congress last year -- but is often lambasted in the independent local press. To her opponents, her famous tough exterior translates as vindictiveness; to supporters, it shows she's the only one strong enough to save Liberia from itself.

GUNS FOR POLITICAL POWER IS ALWAYS A GOOD DEAL:

Iraqi Official Offers Terms From Militia to Avoid Fight (SABRINA TAVERNISE, 1/24/07, NY Times)

An Iraqi official authorized to speak on behalf of field commanders for the country's most powerful militia has approached Western military officials and laid out a plan to avoid armed confrontation, senior Iraqi and American officials said this week.

The official is Rahim al-Daraji, the elected mayor of the Sadr City district, the vast grid in the northeast corner of the capital that is the stronghold of the militia, the Mahdi Army. Mr. Daraji has met twice in the past two weeks with Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, a British officer who is the deputy commanding general in Iraq, said a senior Iraqi official in the office of the prime minister.

During the meetings, which took place on Jan. 17 and, most recently, on Monday, Mr. Daraji laid out a proposal from what he said were all the major political and militia groups in Sadr City, the senior Iraqi official said. The groups were eager to head off a major American military offensive in the district, home to two million Shiites, as the Americans begin a sweeping new effort to retake the streets of Baghdad.

With attack helicopters circling overhead, U.S. and Iraqi forces waged an intense battle Wednesday to clear armed men from high-rise buildings in a strategic Baghdad neighborhood that had been the scene of a similar day of combat two weeks ago.

The fighting along Haifa Street, a Sunni-dominated area on the west bank of the Tigris River, began before dawn and lasted well into the day, with insurgents firing down from tall buildings, U.S. military officials said.

"We have intelligence information that the terrorist group is back and trying to take some other places," said Ali Dabbagh, a spokesman for the prime minister. "It's a very strategic and important location. It's in the middle of Baghdad; it has a view of all of Baghdad."

MORE:
In a new joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol, Americans go first (Damien Cave and James Glanz, January 24, 2007, NY Times)

In the battle for Baghdad, Haifa Street has changed hands so often that it has taken on the feel of a no man's land, the deadly space between opposing trenches. On Wednesday, as American and Iraqi troops poured in, the street showed why it is such a sensitive gauge of an urban conflict marked by front lines that melt into confusion, enemies with no clear identity and allies who disappear or do not show up at all.

In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.

HELLO, YOU MUST BE GOING:

Ray gun brings some zap to the battlefield (Matt Weaver, January 25, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)

The American military has unveiled its latest hi-tech weapon - a virtual flame-thrower on top of a Humvee that microwaves enemies at 500 paces. [...]

The futuristic new weapon, called the Active Denial System, was tested yesterday on 10 journalists who volunteered to be fired at. [...]

The system uses tiny waves, which only penetrates 0.4mm of the skin, just enough to cause discomfort. By comparison, common kitchen microwaves penetrate several centimetres of skin. The system was developed by the military, but the two devices currently being evaluated were built by defence contractor Raytheon.

Airman Blaine Pernell, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk.

"All we could do is watch them," he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops "could have dispersed them".

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

"It will repel you," one test subject said. "If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again."

But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," the Air Force experiments concluded.

The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects.

The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would "benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory," said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants.

The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses.

In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.

The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.

The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.

LOADED?:

When Does Green Rage Become Ecoterrorism? (Matt Rasmussen, January 25, 2007, Orion Magazine)

The crimes to which the six confessed included seventeen attacks, all but one of them arson or attempted arson. The actions took place in five western states between 1996 and 2001. No one was injured. Sport utility vehicles were burned at a Eugene car dealership. So was a meat-packing plant in Redmond, Oregon. Other targets included federal facilities in Wyoming and California and Oregon, where wild horses and burros were let loose and buildings burned down. And in the most notorious action, a spectacular nighttime blaze high in the Rockies destroyed several structures at the Vail ski area. Many of the attacks were followed by communiqués issued under the banner of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy, leaderless offshoot of the group Earth First!, and by its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front.

Prosecutors say those who did the crimes took extraordinary means to conceal their involvement. They met in secret gatherings they called "book club" meetings, discussing details such as computer security, target surveillance, and lock-picking. They required that each attendee describe actions they took to avoid detection while traveling to the meeting sites. They used nicknames and code words. They called their criminal actions "camping trips," and dubbed the timing devices they attached to incendiary bombs "hamburgers."

"Terrorism is terrorism -- no matter the motive," FBI director Robert Mueller said in January 2006, after the Bush administration announced indictments in an investigation it calls Operation Backfire. "The FBI is committed to protecting Americans from all crime and all terrorism, including acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of animal rights or the environment."

Many were appalled. How could anyone possibly use that singularly loaded word to describe these acts?

THE RACE MITT OWES HIS PARTY:

GOP ready to pounce on vulnerable pol (Dave Wedge, January 25, 2007, Boston Herald)

Bay State Republicans are circling like vultures around a politically weakened John Kerry, vowing to field a strong challenger that may be able to capitalize on his fractured image and snatch his coveted U.S. Senate seat.

One potential GOP challenger, state Sen. Scott Brown, said last night that he "would consider" a run against Kerry in 2008 and that the senator is ripe for the picking.

"I think he'll get a challenge this time. I don't think he'll get a free ride," Brown (R-Wrentham) said. "His handling of himself during this Iraq situation has been outrageous. He needs to be held accountable. Whether I'm the guy to do it or someone else, I think people are tired of his poor representation."

SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS EVEN THE USUAL SUSPECTS CAN FIGURE IT OUT:

Ayatollah's snub pressures Iran president (Con Coughlin, 25/01/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Internal pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to abandon his confrontational policies with the West has intensified after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme spiritual leader, snubbed a request for a meeting on the country's controversial nuclear programme. [...]

"It is a clear indication that the cracks are starting to appear in the highest echelons of the Iranian regime," said a senior Bush administration official with responsibility for monitoring Iran. "If the country's leading religious figure is not talking to the political leadership then obviously something is going seriously wrong." [...]

[T]he country's growing international isolation, together with a dramatic decline in the economy, has seen opposition to Mr Ahmadinejad harden. Last week 150 Iranian parliamentarians took the extraordinary step of signing a letter blaming him for the country's economic woes.

MORE:
Clock may be ticking on Iran's fiery leader (DARIUSH ZAHEDI and OMID MEMARIAN, Peninsula On-line)

THE BUSH administration's decision to step up pressure against Iran by going after Iranian agents inside Iraq, coupled with the Islamic Republic's increasing economic and diplomatic isolation, have pushed conservatives inside Iran to further distance themselves from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Many pragmatic and traditional conservatives, such as former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, who is the secretary of the Council of Guardians, were critical of Ahmadinejad's management of Iran's economic and foreign policies before US military forces recently detained members of the Revolutionary Guard and Iranian intelligence agents in Irbil, Iraq.

This incident, coupled with the UN Security Council's imposition of sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to abandon its nuclear program, has reportedly prompted 50 parliamentary members to sign a letter calling on Ahmadinejad to appear before parliament to explain himself.

There have also been reports that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has given a green light to parliament to criticise the president's performance. Coupled with the country's deteriorating economy, these developments could push Ahmadinejad's opponents to replace him with a less doctrinaire politician.

Even as Tehran ignores threats from the U.S. and other foreign powers, shouts and murmurs from within may begin to take a toll on the conservative mullahs running Iran. The Islamic Republic's version of Generation Next, eager for wider economic and educational horizons, is finding its voice.

The challenge was heard a few days before local elections late last year. Students at prestigious Amir Kabir University in Tehran rallied against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech. In a nation where "Death to the United States" is a routine chant during Friday prayers, student protesters - angered in part by the regime's renewed purges of professors - unleashed a loud and stunning rebuke: "Death to the dictator."

The elections themselves presented an apparent backlash against the ruling class. Moderately conservative candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad - a leader who seems to revel in bombast designed to isolate Iran from Western values and allies - made unexpected gains. In polls where voter turnout topped 60 percent, the shift was widely seen as a comeuppance to the hard-line conservatives and military guard who engineered Ahmadinejad's rise two years ago.[...]

In dozens of interviews in Tehran and other cities last year, Iranians from all walks of life - shop owners, homemakers, university professors and the vast student class - pointed out Iran's failings. The government, a ruling theocracy that controls all horizons, has fallen short. It is hard to find a good job, difficult to pay the bills and, for a population where the median age is just a shade under 25, the future seems bleak.

The nuclear standoff has, again, left Iran battling the world.

"The government doesn't care what we want. If they want (nuclear power) for agriculture and industry, then it's good. But if they want to start a Hiroshima, we don't want it," 20-year-old Arman Azizi, who ran a small jeans shop in Tehran, said a few months ago.

[I]t appears Iran is using Saudi Arabia as a conduit to send messages to the United States, especially since the Iranians are well aware of the close relationship between Bandar and the Bush administration. Just last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Saudi Arabia, after which she traveled to Kuwait for a meeting with representatives from the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Egypt and Jordan to discuss Iran and Iraq.

This is not just the Iranians warming up to the Saudis. On Tuesday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, National Security Council and executive branch issued a flurry of statements saying Iran is willing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed this in a live television appearance, saying the government is trying to prevent another U.N. Security Council resolution against the Islamic republic.

In another development, Ahmadinejad told Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Wednesday that Tehran is "fully ready for any cooperation which will lead to security and peace in Iraq." This comes after Talabani told Saudi-owned Arabic daily Al Hayat that, during a recent visit to Tehran, Iranian officials said they are ready to negotiate a settlement with the United States on issues ranging from Afghanistan to Lebanon.

The Iranians are moving toward a conciliatory approach on all fronts, which has been made possible in part by what appears to be a reining in of Ahmadinejad and his ultraconservative faction.

None of the policies conducted along his "redistributive Islamic socialism" are helping the poorest people and some have clearly worsened their situation.

One of his plans to eradicate poverty was to offer discounted shares of Iran's biggest state-owned companies to the neediest people. The initiative completely failed as these people have no money to buy these shares, even at discounted prices, and anyway most of these companies fail to make a profit.

"Since the privatization process ... failed to produce the desired results, one question that arises is how the present administration intends to move forward in containing the role of the state," the Iran Daily asked.

The massive injunction of oil money into the Iranian economy has only fueled inflation and accelerated unemployment.

The cost of necessities such as bread, fruits, vegetables, poultry and meat has increased by 25 percent since the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran in late December. Rents are up 30 percent and so is the average rate of unemployment, which is even worse among young people.

As a result of the Ayatollah's pro-birth policies, the Iranian population is very young. Two-thirds of the 70 million Iranian people are less than 30 years old. In such context, the opinion and aspirations of the youth can hardly be ignored.

On Dec. 11, Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at the Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. For the first time, he got a taste of what may be waiting for him if he does not manage to deliver on his promises.

To his surprise, students interrupted his speech. They set fire to pictures of their president while chanting "death to the dictator."

On a Web site, the students accuse him of corruption, mismanagement and discrimination. "The students showed that despite vast propaganda, the president has not been able to deceive academia," a statement said.

Some students were also angry over the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust. "The conference was shameful and had brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world," a student said.

On the country's annual student day, 2,000 students protested at Tehran University. They denounced the crackdown on university professors. Since Ahmadinejad was elected, many intellectuals have been forced to take an early retirement.

The 2006 elections for the Assembly of Experts and local councils were the first nationwide elections since Ahmadinejad became president. Sixty percent of the voters showed up and inflicted a humiliating defeat to his political allies. Ninety percent of them failed to retain their seats.

"The results show that voters have learned from the past and concluded that we need to support moderate figures," the daily Kargozaraan wrote.

"This is a blow for Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi's list," an Iranian political analyst was quoted as saying.

While most Middle East analysts have focused on the region's Sunni-Shiite divide, the main Shiite champion, Iran, is undergoing internal rifts of its own.

On 15 December 2006, as the world focused on Iran's nuclear sabre-rattling and holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Republic quietly held simultaneous elections for the Assembly of Experts and city councils throughout the country. The official results of the contest offer several important lessons that provide a glimpse into the complex, opaque internal politics of the regime's power-brokers.

The big winner of these two elections - even though his own seat was not up for election - was supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. [...]

What, then, are the implications of these elections for the current and future political development of Iran? First, these elections were merely a competition amongst groups inside the current regime. Independent political groups and civil society were entirely absent from this picture, and the results of the election will have little direct impact on the democratisation of Iran.

Second, the elections show that Iran's transformation from an Islamic theocracy to a military autocracy has been suspended. The paramilitary Basij forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that brought Ahmadinejad to power were conspicuously absent from these elections. This shows that it is not Ahmadinejad who controls these forces, but rather the supreme leader.

The most pressing question is why Khamenei did not use these forces to support and mobilise for Ahmadinejad.

TENACIOUS W:

Bush proposal revives private-school vouchers (Greg Toppo, 1/24/2007, USA TODAY)

On the heels of the State of the Union address, the Bush administration unveiled its education wish list Wednesday. It proposes more leeway for administrators to move good teachers into poorly performing schools and would provide a $4,000 check for students who would rather leave the public system for private school.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings released the 15-page plan as Congress gears up for hearings on reauthorizing President Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Hearings could come as early as spring; the law expires this year.

Under the plan, school districts would be required for the first time to send parents a "report card" showing how students do both on state skills tests and on a more rigorous national test. In many states, the majority of students meet state standards but not national requirements.

The move could force schools to toughen coursework in math and reading.

IT'S ALL ABOUT DENYING THE SHI'A THAT SAY:

Lebanon strike vanishes: An uneasy calm follows the deadly protests a day earlier. The change underscores who has a say on the nation's fate (Megan K. Stack, January 25, 2007, LA Times)

By the time morning commuters headed off to work Wednesday, the fires had been snuffed out. The roadblocks had melted away. The rampaging youths who had been burning cars and choking off the nation's roads seemed to have evaporated.

As quickly as they had mobilized a vast network of demonstrators to lay siege to much of the country, the Islamic militant group Hezbollah and its anti-government allies pulled Lebanon back from a fiery day of sectarian tensions and street fights by calling off a general strike.

The sudden peace Wednesday was nearly as disconcerting as the explosion of violence the day before, which left three people dead and more than 100 injured, including nearly 50 who suffered gunshot wounds. Like the massive strike led by Hezbollah, the calm was a reminder that the country's fate is under the control of a few political leaders, especially the Shiite Muslim movement's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

THE EMPATH:

Ryszard Kapuscinski (Daily Telegraph, 25/01/2007)

Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died on Tuesday aged 74, was Poland's most renowned foreign correspondent and a witness to much of