RALEIGH, NC. A man who served the eight years required under his ROTC contract remains an Army reservist obliged to report for active duty because he failed to sign a resignation letter, a federal judge has ruled.

Todd Parrish, 31, had sought to block the Army from calling him to active duty until his lawsuit on the issue was decided.

But Judge Louise Flanagan denied the request on Friday, meaning that if the Army denies Parrish's administrative appeal, he could be forced to go on active duty while the case is litigated.

Parrish signed the ROTC contract while a student at North Carolina State University. He argued that his military obligation ended Dec. 19, following four years of active duty and four years in the reserves.

His attorney, Mark Waple, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

Army lawyer Maj. Chris Soucie told the judge that Parrish could be recalled to duty because he failed to sign a resignation line on a letter asking for an update on his personal information.

Parrish, a married communications officer, said he sent the Army a letter resigning his commission and did not sign the line on the form because he thought he had already resigned.

"It is an obscene comparison - you know, I am not sure I like it - but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions, and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism."

That Buckhead is a real renaissance man, isn't he? Where does he find the time to study typography and forensic document investigation on top of his legal work for the VRWC, serving on the local elections board and spending vast amounts of time on Freerepublic? Busy, busy, busy.

One thing I might warn everyone about on this voting technology issue. Be advised that if we win and it's close, the set-up has been put in place for Buckhead and his grubby little friends to rush online claiming that we stole the election. I have a hundred bucks riding on it. Projection has gone beyond a psychological diagnosis to an actual propaganda tool.

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

"Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed,"

"In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards."

"The people who are using telephone surveys are in denial," Zogby was saying. "It is similar to the '30s, when they first started polling by telephones and there were people who laughed at that and said you couldn't trust them because not everybody had a home phone. Now they try not to mention cell phones. They don't look or listen. They go ahead with a method that is old and wrong."

. It's not only become a "me first" country, it has become a "me only" country. From where I am, America has decided that it is not a citizen of the world, but rather that the world belongs to it, and that the rest of us are damned furriners, who should be grateful they let us mow their lawns and wash their toilets. You break treaties with impunity. You torture. You kill civilians and give it (as Bob above writes), 4 sentences in your news. Devout, evangelical Christians tacitly support this by aligning themselves with an administration whose actions belie any credible interpretation that they attempt to follow the teachings of God and his Son.

Now, I know that it isn't all of you. It's (probably) not even a plurality of you. But dammit, if you don't vote this administration out, in the eyes of the world, you're endorsing it. You saw the danger of the electoral system 4 years ago, and you wrung your hands for, what, 5-6 months after the election? And then it was never heard of again. We understand that people fell last time for Bush's "compassionate conservatism" line. Maybe some of you thought that a vote for Nader made you a cool kid, and that you were sending a message. Well, you were. You did. And if you do it again, and Bush wins by the same margin, the rest of the world will get the message loud and clear. When you had the chance to get rid of Bush, you didn't. Call us simple-minded, tell us we're trying to disenfranchise you, but we'll see the result, and judge you by it, rather than the intent. Results matter.

...even if they're real they don't really add much to the story. After all, here's what we already know:

Former Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes pulled strings in 1968 to get George Bush into the National Guard so that he could avoid the draft. This isn't something Barnes just cooked up recently for Dan Rather, either. He testified under oath about it five years ago.

In early 1972, with two years still left on Bush's Guard commitment, something happened. Nobody knows what happened, but for some reason he started flying again in training jets that he had graduated from two years previously; he began putting in simulator time; he had trouble making landings; and in April 1972 he made his last flight. He then refused to take his required annual physical and was subsequently grounded.

In May 1972, Bush left for Alabama and disappeared from the Guard. He showed up for no drills for the next five months, and, contrary to White House statements, he never made up these missed drills.

Bush returned to Texas in late 1972, but in May 1973 his superior officers in Houston (one of whom was the now famous Jerry Killian) refused to rate Bush, saying he "has not been observed at this unit" for the past 12 months.

Here's how bad off the Democrats are: They're cowering behind closed doors, whispering that if it should ever turn out that Republicans are behind this, it would be so exquisitely Machiavellian, so beyond what Democrats are capable of, they should just fold and concede the election now - before the Republicans have to go to the trouble of stealing it again.

There's no evidence - it's just a preposterous, paranoid fantasy at this point. But it speaks to the jitters of the Democrats that they're consumed with speculation about whether Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks and surrogate sleaze, could have set up CBS in a diabolical pre-emptive strike to undermine damaging revelations about Bush 43's privileged status and vanishing act in the National Guard, and his odd refusal to take his required physical when ordered.

In this vast left-wing conspiracy theory, Mr. Rove takes real evidence on W.'s shirking and transfers it to documents doomed to be exposed as phony (thereby undermining the real goods), then funnels it through third parties to Dan Rather, Bush 41's nemesis on Iran-contra. A perfect bank shot.

The administration has been so dazzling in misleading the public with audacious, mendacious malarkey that the Democrats fear the Bushies are capable of any level of deceit.

Iraq is a vision of hell, and the Republicans act as if it's a model kitchen. The president and vice president brag about liberating Iraqis and reassure us that they are stopping terrorist violence at its source and inspiring democracy in the region by bringing it to blood-drenched Iraq.

But what they haven't mentioned is that they have known since July that their rosy scenarios are as bogus as their W.M.D. That's when the president received a national intelligence estimate that spelled out "a dark assessment of prospects" for stability and governance in Iraq in the next 18 months, as Douglas Jehl wrote in today's Times. Worst-case estimates include civil war or anarchy.

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band ``The Ramones'' that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55.

Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band's longtime artistic director Arturo Vega.

George Bush’s record speaks for itself. 1.6 million lost jobs. The first president in 72 years to actually lose jobs on his watch. 8 million Americans are now looking for work. 45 million have no health insurance – 5 million more than the day he took office. 4.3 million Americans have slipped into poverty over the last four years – 1.3 million are children. The average family saw their income fall $1,500, while they saw the cost of health care, child care, gasoline, and tuition rise faster than ever before. 220,000 more Americans did not attend college last year for the simple reason that they could not afford it. This President turned a $5.6 trillion surplus into trillions of debt for our children. George Bush accomplished all this in only four years. Imagine what he could do in another four. I want to be clear: I’m not saying that president wanted these consequences. But I am saying that by his judgments, by his priorities, he has caused these things to happen. And he can’t see the error of his ways.

At that convention in New York the other week, President Bush talked about his ownership society. Well Mr. President, when it comes to your record, we agree – you own it.

Of course, the President would have us believe that his record is the result of bad luck, not bad decisions. That he’s faced the wrong circumstances, not made the wrong choices. In fact, this President has created more excuses than jobs. His is the Excuse Presidency: Never wrong, Never Responsible, Never to Blame. President Bush’s desk isn’t where the buck stops – it’s where the blame begins. He’s blamed just about everyone but himself and his administration for America’s economic problems. And if he’s missed you, don’t worry – he’s still got 48 days left until the election.

Our opponents see an America where more of the tax burden is paid by those who work the hardest and not those who have the most – where a fireman who works overtime to save lives pays higher tax rates than a billionaire who just inherited a fortune. We believe in an America that rewards work with lower taxes and higher incomes.

September 10, 2004

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER THIS, BUT THEY LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON

That's right, it's the third anniversary of their greatest achievement, LETTING A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON, and the Bush Gang is celebrating with another round of terrorizing the American people. My personal flip off partner, Dick Cheney, led the festivities with his now infamous speech which boiled down to "If you vote for Kerry, there will be another 9-11."

Of course, no facts, arguments, realities or common sense can convincingly back up this outrageous death threat. It is obviously appalling and creepy for ANYBODY to claim that only they can keep the American people safe and any other government will lead to disaster. But if there is one group of people who LEAST deserve to make that claim, it would be the one who LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON.

Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

Gaddis, a Decatur bankruptcy attorney, owns Enviromate, a cellulose insulation company in Moulton.

Gaddis did not return phone calls from THE DAILY about the alleged Thursday firing.

Gobbell said she consulted a lawyer, but then changed her mind about going to see him. She said she has cried about the incident and must do without income for three weeks while the state unemployment commission decides if she is eligible for compensation.

Gobbell said she was averaging 50 to 60 hours a week on the plant's bagging machine.

"The lady there (at the unemployment commission) said that she has never heard of a firing like this before," Gobbell said.

The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn't return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn't turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. "He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told me. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."

Gobbell accepted Kerry's job offer, "so I reckon I'll be working for John Kerry." Kerry left it that someone from his campaign would call Gobbell to work out the details. Let's hope there's quick follow-through (I'll be checking!), because Gobbell told me she couldn't wait to tell Geddes that she had a better offer.

Lauer: "Clearly the White House is not pleased at all with this book?"

Kelley: "No, they're not."

Lauer: "And there's a reason for that. It's an extremely, extremely unflattering look at the Bush family. Let me start by..."

Kelley: "I think it's realistic. It's, I mean..."

Lauer: "I'm not, I don't think I'm misstating anything to say it's about 99 percent negative."

Kelley: "No, I think you are. I think it's 99 percent realistic. Up to this point we have had almost a Hallmark card image of the Bush family. All this does is lift the blinders and you see another side."

Lauer: "Let's talk about you first. Let's, so that people have the right perspective."

Kelley: "Sure."

Lauer: "Who'd you vote for in 2000?"

Kelley: "I voted in 2000. I'm registered in the District of Columbia. I vote for Republicans, I vote for Democrats. And I used to give money to both. In fact, probably, the last campaign contribution I made was to the Republican Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison."

Lauer: "Whom might you vote for in 2004? Who are you thinking of?"

Kelley: "It's not so much I'm going to vote for the person as I'm going to vote for principles that I believe in."

Lauer: "Who are you going to vote for?"

Kelley: "Is that relevant to this book?"

Lauer: "I think it at least gives people some... "

Kelley: "Who are you — tell me something, who are you going to vote for?"

Lauer: "...it gives some people some information or some perspective as to what's contained in the 600-plus pages."

Kelley: "I think that your viewers need to know that this is not a partisan book. I come from a red, white and blue Republican family. My father was behind George Bush, Sr. and behind George Bush, Jr. Now he has a little problem with Barbara after she took the Smithsonian exhibit out."

Lauer: "What about the timing of this book? You've been working on it for four years."

Kelley: "I have."

Lauer: "Why release it 50 days before what is a hotly contested, incredibly divided election?"

Kelley: "Why not?"

Lauer: "Well, I'm asking why?"

Kelley: "I mean, why not? It's relevant."

Lauer: "Do you want people to read this and do you want it to influence their choices as they go to the polls on November 2nd?"

Kelley: "Matt, I want them to read this book. It's an important book. There are relevant themes here. Is it going to change an election? No. I wrote a book about Frank Sinatra; I still love his singing."

Lauer: "He's an entertainer."

Kelley: "I wrote a book about the British royal family. The queen still sits."

Lauer: "Nobody goes to the polls to vote for them."

Kelley: "I wrote a book about the Kennedy family. There's no more revered family..."

Lauer: "They weren't in office at the time."

Kelley: "I feel sorry for Sharon Bush in a sense. And I have to tell you over that lunch, we knew the next day that Sharon was going to be frightened over this. She was hysterical at the time, and she said herself that Neil Bush left a message on her tape machine saying that if she didn't stop what she was doing she'd find herself in a dark alley."

Lauer: "So you — you say that right — you say right now that she's lying."

Kelley: "No, I do not say she's lying."

Lauer: "Well she's categorically denied saying it."

Kelley: "I mean on this she is, yeah."

Lauer: "She's lying She's going to join me live in the next half hour..."

Kelley: "Good."

Lauer: "...right here in this studio and we'll get to ask for her version of this."

The White House, when I spoke to them over the weekend, Dan Bartlett said, 'speaking on behalf of the president this is an outright lie.' Anything coming out of the White House right now surprise you regarding this book?"

Kelley: "No, no. Look what they tried to do to Richard Clark. Look what they did to Paul O'Neil. Look what they did to Ambassador Joe Wilson. If they don't like the message, beat up on the messenger."

Kitty Kelley: “How's that? You know, there's an old southern expression that when you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that's hit is the one that barks. And there's an awful lot of barking on this book. I'm so glad that it's out now, so that people can make up their mind.”

Kelley: “I took public records and I combined it with interviews. First of all, what this book shows you is the pattern of connections that the family has used. George W. Bush admitted to his macro-economics professor at Yale, Yoshi Tsurumi – I hope I'm pronouncing that right...”

Lauer: “Right.”

Kelley: “...that his father used pull to get him into the National Guard.”

Lauer: “I'm talking about fulfilling his obligation in the National Guard.”

Kelley: “And I'm answering the question. For the first four years he had a solid, good record. Starting in April of 1972, no record. There is a huge gap. He made his last flight in – in April of 1972. And Lt. Col. Roger … Robert Rogers told me that the reason for that gap, that's when the Air Force and the National Guard started random drug testing.”

Lauer: “But you have no evidence of any positive drug test for George W. Bush in the Texas National Guard?”

Kelley: “Didn't say that. No, I don't.”

Lauer: “Okay.”

Kelley: “But all he has to do is release the flight board inquiry record, because those are the medical records. They have not been released.”

Lauer: “You allege that people surrounding then Governor George W. Bush went to great lengths and scrubbed his National Guard service record...”

Kelley: “They call it the tidy-up team.”

Lauer: “Did you read this article in the Houston Chronicle in 2004?”

Kelley: “It's in the back of my book...”

Lauer: “Right, so...”

Kelley: “...as part of the documentation. But that does not mean that the man is lying.”

Lauer: “However, you know, it does cast doubt on the fact that he may have had a grudge against the Texas National Guard and the governor's office at the time which handled his complaints.”

Kelley: “Gee, what a surprise, Matt. This isn't the first time that the White House, the Bush White House has tried to trash the messenger whose bringing the message. Just read the book, look at the documentation and you know what, the American people are going to have to make up their own mind on this, because not all of the records are available.”

Lauer: “Most people, no matter what their politics, would say that if a family has three generations of public service, the reality has to be that there are some nice things that need to be said about them, and why aren't they in this book?”

Kelley: “Matt, you play golf with the former President Bush?”

Lauer: “I have never played golf with him.”

Kelley: “You know that he's is a gregarious man. He's gracious. That's a very, very nice thing. That's in the book. The reason this looks so negative to people is that for years and years and years, we've had a very crafted public image. It looks like ‘The Donna Reed Show.’ Now we've got a little bit of ‘The Sopranos.’ Every family has got negatives and positives.”

Lauer: “But every – but where are the positives, Kitty?”

Kelley: “Well start – Matt, start with the first page. Don't you fall in love with Flora Sheldon Bush? Didn't you – weren't you impressed with Prescott Bush and the way he grew into his role? Didn't you...”

Lauer: “When – when your publishing company sent us the book last Thursday, they also sent us what they felt are the highlights of the book, the things that needed to be talked about. It's 22 pages long, Kitty. It covers 39 topics. Of those topics how many are positive, do you think?”

Kelley: “I don't know. I have...”

Lauer: “Zero.”

Kelley: “Zero.”

Lauer: “Zero. Not one. Twenty-two pages, 39 topics, not one positive topic that the publishing company feels that people should know about.”

[Note from me: People have heard nothing but positive about the Bush family since December 12, 2000 from people like Matt Lauer, the idiots at Faux, and buttlickers like Judy Woodruff, who tried to butcher the noble Kristen Breitweiser today. It's high fucking time we heard the other side.]

Kelley: “Well, I want people to know the positives and the negatives. I want them to know the light and the dark side. It is all there, both of them.

Lauer: “Going to come back tomorrow for a third part of this?”

Kelley: “I think I'm going in the federal witness protection program.”

The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report.

Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs -- 206,300 -- were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied.

Researchers Snigdha Srivastava and Nik Theodore compiled the numbers using the Current Employment Statistics survey and the Current Population Survey.

The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies.

Theodore, director of the university's Center for Urban Economic Development, said one factor in the staggering high-tech job losses is the familiar lament that businesses have been wary to hire because of uncertainty over how much the economy is improving.

But he also attributes some of the job losses to corporations farming high-tech jobs out to overseas companies whose labor is cheaper.

Theodore said the study shows that high-tech workers "are really bearing the brunt of economic restructuring strategies." It also shows that the end of the recession did not signal the end of high-tech job woes, he said.

"Not only has it not turned around, in many cases it has gotten worse," said Theodore.

President Vladimir Putin on Monday demanded an overhaul of Russia's political system, including an end to the direct popular election of governors, saying the changes were needed to combat terrorism.

Five outspoken Sept. 11 widows on Tuesday will publicly endorse John Kerry for president, The Associated Press has learned, throwing their weight behind the Democratic challenger in a heated campaign debate over who is best suited to defend the nation from another terrorist attack.
Some, including Kristen Breitweiser, of Middletown, N.J., and Monica Gabrielle, of West Haven, Conn., also have agreed to make campaign appearances for the Democratic senator, campaign sources told the AP.

"We will be speaking from the heart, and speaking from our conscience," Breitweiser said Monday. She would not elaborate. Breitweiser is by far the most visible and outspoken of the Sept. 11 family advocates, and has been highly critical of the government's reform efforts to date.

The move highlights the widening political divide among the nearly 3,000 Sept. 11 families.

At the Republican National Convention two weeks ago, two widows and the sister of another Sept. 11 victim offered moving tributes to their departed loved ones. The somber appearances offered no direct endorsement of President Bush, but their message of support was unmistakable.

Other relatives publicly have praised Bush's response to the attacks, even amid the displeasure of many families over an early Bush campaign ad that used images from the World Trade Center site.

Bush has made his response to the terrorist strike the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

Three years after the attacks, most of the families agree on the need for reforms in how the government manages and conducts intelligence work. But they are split on what those changes should be and who should make them.

Some relatives, including Breitweiser, have promised to create a watchdog list to track any lawmakers who oppose reforms proposed by an independent, bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks.

The commission issued its report in July. Among its major recommendations are the creation of a national counterterrorism center and a new director of intelligence with Cabinet-level authority over budgets and intelligence policies. Congress is hurrying to enact some of the recommendations before its adjourns for the year, including Bush's support for creating the post of national intelligence director.

Kerry has said all of the recommendations should be adopted as quickly as possible.

The Flag Code, which formalizes and unifies the traditional ways in which we give respect to the flag, also contains specific instructions on how the flag is not to be used. They are:

The flag should never be dipped to any person or thing. It is flown upside down only as a distress signal.

The flag should not be used as a drapery, or for covering a speakers desk, draping a platform, or for any decoration in general. Bunting of blue, white and red stripes is available for these purposes. The blue stripe of the bunting should be on the top.

The flag should never be used for any advertising purpose. It should not be embroidered, printed or otherwise impressed on such articles as cushions, handkerchiefs, napkins, boxes, or anything intended to be discarded after temporary use. Advertising signs should not be attached to the staff or halyard

The flag should not be used as part of a costume or athletic uniform, except that a flag patch may be used on the uniform of military personnel, fireman, policeman and members of patriotic organizations.

The flag should never have placed on it, or attached to it, any mark, insignia, letter, word, number, figure, or drawing of any kind.

The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.

When the flag is lowered, no part of it should touch the ground or any other object; it should be received by waiting hands and arms. To store the flag it should be folded neatly and ceremoniously.

The flag should be cleaned and mended when necessary.

When a flag is so worn it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of our country, it should be destroyed by burning in a dignified manner.

More than 80 percent of the population of Detroit is black. This is very well understood by John Pappageorge, who is white and a Republican state legislator in Michigan. "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote," said Mr. Pappageorge, "we're going to have a tough time in this election."

Oops! Republicans aren't supposed to actually say they want to suppress black votes. That's so retro. It's so Jim Crow. This is the 21st century, and the thing now is to do the dastardly deed, but never ever acknowledge it.

That's where our friend Pappageorge went wrong.

After his startling quote was published several weeks ago in The Detroit Free Press, Mr. Pappageorge, who is 73, apologized and said he certainly never meant to suggest that anything racist or illegal take place. But he reiterated to me in a phone conversation last Friday that he did indeed mean that the vote in Detroit needed to be kept down.

if you need to measure type (body size, ledding, letter spacing) and match it exactly, you have to work with original documents. If you are measuring a photocopy of an original document, the measurements can be off by half a point or more. If you are measuring a photocopy of a photocopy, the distortion grows to more than a point. If you are measuring a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy scanned into a PDF file, e.g. the Killian documents, forget it. The "kerning" and letter spacing you think you see may or may not exist on the original document. Probably not, in fact.

I know this because I learned it from my old film patching days. If all I had to work with was a photocopy, my patch wouldn't match. I had to measure the original printed page.

So, let's dispense with the "proportional type" theory. I've looked at the PDF files, and IMO the quality thereof is too far removed from the original (the wavy baselines are a dead giveaway) to know what the original type proportion was. And any "kerning" one might see is probably the result of distortion that occurs in photocopies that are generations removed from an original.

Now, let's shift focus onto the capabilities of common electric typewriters, circa 1972. As I've already explained, the IBM Selectric was very common. By 1972 the offices of America had replaced old manual uprights for electric typewriters, and the Selectric II, introduced in 1971, was the best.

By the time I graduated college in 1973 it would have been shocking to walk into a business office and not see Selectric IIs or similar. It would be as unusual as using a rotary phone today.

And Selectrics produced documents in a variety of type fonts, including Greek letters and all manner of esoteric scientific/mathematical symbols. You really could type open and close quotation parks and curly apostrophes. Superscript type was easily created by shifting. Even a reduced superscript "th" was technically possible, in spite of what the wingnuts are saying now.

It's true that some whizbangs took a couple of extra steps. People ask, Why would Killian have gone to the trouble of creating a reduced superscript "th"? But we're talking about the early 1970s here. Let's be frank -- in those dear departed times, real men did not touch typewriters. Trust me on this. It's highly probable Killian scribbled a note and gave it to one of the office "girls" to type up for his signature. The office "girls" hardly ever bothered about putting their initials on such documents, in spite of what the secretarial practice books said. But the "girl" would have typed the document very nicely.

ONCE UPON a time, in a far-off land, there lived a spoiled, irresponsible scion of a rich and powerful family.

Since his family was so very wealthy, having an accumulated fortune of many years, he did not have to work for a living, and thus he could - and did - devote himself to various and sundry dissipations and pleasures, especially drink (in fact it was widely bruited about, that in his younger years, he was alcoholic).

The men of his family had been for generations illustrious leaders in public life: He was determined to use any means available to outshine them all.

As unprincipled as he was hedonistic, he decided to use the state as his stepping stone to power; thus he would achieve glory and more wealth for himself and his cronies.

There were those who loved and followed him (he was good-looking, and could, if he wished, put on a veneer of captivating charm). But there were those who, with equal fervor, hated him. They detested his arrogance, his blatant hypocrisies, and his thinly disguised contempt of the masses.

Before he came to power, the reputation of his state was an enviable one. The state had many friends and allies, and was a highly respected leader of the world. It was "firmly governed and very wisely led." Everyone was considered "free and equal under the law" and wealth was regarded as "something not to be vaunted, but to be used sensibly" for the benefit of all. In short, it was an open honorable government that commanded the admiration of other states. It was a citadel of democracy.

Enter our playboy turned politico.

He quickly proposed that the state wage war against a certain other country. He was regarded as not only the initiator of this war, but its most vociferous supporter. He neglected no opportunity whatever, to fan the people's desires, and he raised great expectations of success amongst a credulous populace.

Actually he was counting on this expedition to "bring him personally public esteem and more wealth." In all his policies, he would first calculate the advantages to himself and his career. The state was an afterthought.

His proposed military campaign was not without its critics. They pointed out that such an endeavor demanded much thought and foresight, that it required "forces large enough to accomplish the task successfully, and above all, it would require huge governmental expenditures." Did the public treasury have all that money?

But our scion convinced the legislature that the expedition was important and necessary, it would show the state's military might, and enable "the soldiers to return home in safety" and glory. The propaganda machine was in full force.

The result of the excessive beating of the drums, on the part of the war crowd, was such that the legislature voted for the war overwhelmingly. "Those who truly opposed the expedition maintained a silence. They feared they would be branded as unpatriotic if they voted against the proposal."

And so with great fanfare and promises of increased dominance and power, the war was launched. But its jingoistic sponsors were generally "ignorant of the size of the opponent's country and the nature of its inhabitants." They did not even recognize the magnitude of their attempted conquest.

There was insufficient planning. The flower of young manhood died daily on the bloodied fighting fields, mismanagement was rife, and the whole affair proved to be a fiasco.

Hard times on the home front followed, the reputation of the state soon collapsed, and our anti-hero "very soon shipwrecked the state."

The name of this paradigm of hubris?

It was Alcibiades, who for a while in the 5th century B.C. in Athens held center stage. It was in great part due to him that the image of Athens in her Golden Age came to be tarnished. His campaign against Sicily was no mere contretemps. It was a disaster, and its aftermath was humiliating and mortifying for Athens.

Also, it was in great part due to him that the democracy in September of 411 B.C. was overthrown by a swift coup. Athens gradually slipped from zenith to nadir.

The lesson I drew from September 11th wasn't about vengeance, retribution, remaking the world through might and money. It was that we are facing people who destroy for a purpose worse than no purpose at all. And if we are to fight them, to turn the world against them, we must fight in a way that is a total and utter repudiation of them. That's not just moral or ethical; it includes their political goals as well. We can't stop them from being a political force simply by killing them - their ideology thrives on an enemy to destroy, and raising the conviction in others that the enemy is worth of being destroyed as well. Our actions matter because we are not operating in a framework where we will simply be taken at our word because we are good and just; we must prove it in the face of an enemy working to convince the world that the exact opposite is true, and do so in order to gain very real political power.

After the Florida election fiasco of 2000, the most obscure parts of state election law keep attracting attention.

The latest effort to disqualify Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate in Florida has led to renewed scrutiny of papers filed by other candidates - including President Bush.

State law sets a Sept. 1 deadline for the governor to certify a list of presidential electors for each party's candidates.

But Sept. 1 was also the day President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were being nominated at their party' convention in New York. Consequently, some of their paperwork did not arrive at state elections headquarters until Sept. 2, a day after Gov. Jeb Bush certified the candidates for president.

Paperwork problem?

No, says Secretary of State Glenda Hood's office.

Spokeswoman Jenny Nash said Friday the law is clear: The deadline applies to the governor and the list of presidential electors, not to the candidates themselves. The list of Republican electors released by Hood's office does not show a time stamp indicating when the document was received by the state.

Democrats said they aren't so sure, but they won't challenge the Bush campaign's papers.

Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox said he knew the president's certificate of nomination did not reach the state until Sept. 2, but he said he decided not to make an issue of it.

"To keep an incumbent president off the ballot in a swing state the size of Florida because of a technicality, I just don't think would be right," Maddox said.

it should give everyone pause if they think there is even a snowball's chance in hell that any member of the Bush administration will ever get justice for the crimes they have committed while in office. Clearly, the press and much of the public are so willing to be used that it is hopeless. This entire episode is nothing but a pathetic reminder of how easily they manipulate perceptions.

We'd better be content to congratulate ourselves for having integrity because it's clear that we do not get any public credit for it. Indeed, we are perceived as being just as bad as they are. If that's the case, does it even matter that we aren't?