Perfect review. As a produced screenwriter, I wish I could serve up hash like this and be taken seriously. The critics are so happy to not have a typical ending to a Hollywood movie that they're falling all over themselves to praise an untypical, and poorly conceived story.

Re: Your review of Million Dollar Baby.

Pardon me, but you're an idiot. This is simply the best examination of the nature of guilt, forgiveness and redemption I've seen since, well, Unforgiven. You must have put on a stupid hat the day you saw this amazing film.

"America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd...We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq."

"I know there are some people who may be economic conservatives and not consider themselves cultural conservatives," he said. Addressing himself to them, he tried to explain how banning gay marriage is crucial to laissez-faire governing. "Think about those communities where marriage does not exist," he said, invoking their poverty and illegitimacy. "What you see is a model of what life would look like in a country that has fathers and mothers not wedded together in strong relationships to raise children." In poor neighborhoods, he said, there's a strong government presence, "because if Mom and Dad isn't there to raise the child, someone else has to bridge the gap, and that someone else is always the government."

Santorum didn't quite explain how proscribing gay unions would strengthen families in poor communities. The assumption seemed to be that homosexuality would make a travesty of matrimony. Like a suburban block where undesirables insist on moving in, its worth would go down. "If we deconstruct marriage in society, if we say marriage is whatever you want it to be, then marriage loses its intrinsic value," he said.

"I'm talking at a very protective level about what is important to our society if we are to be a free people," he said. "The less virtue we have in our society, the more the need for government to control our lives, to govern our lives." In other words, government needs to enforce virtue in order to keep government out of our lives.

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

There's been K Street chatter, our colleague Jeffrey H. Birnbaum tells us, that Lieberman could be on an administration list to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the next year or so.

That would be convenient for Lieberman, whose term is up in 2006, and could give Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) an opportunity to appoint a Republican to the seat for at least a few months before the election, inching the GOP closer to a filibuster-proof Senate.

Iran and Syria say to build 'common front'

At odds with U.S., nations agree to 'confront threats' together

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran and Syria, both locked in rows with the United States, said on Wednesday they would form a common front to face challenges and threats.

“We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats,” Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said in Tehran after meeting Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari.

Otari told reporters, “This meeting, which takes place at this sensitive time, is important, especially because Syria and Iran face several challenges and it is necessary to build a common front.”

President Bush (news - web sites) is not ruling out raising taxes on people who earn more than $90,000 as a way to help fix Social Security (news - web sites)'s finances.

At the same time, he renewed his pitch Wednesday for Congress to approve an overhaul that would include Social Security private accounts for many workers. He told 2,000 people in an airport terminal that rich and poor alike should have a chance to invest in the stock market.

"Investors aren't just Wall Street people, as far as I'm concerned," Bush told the crowd invited by the state's all-GOP congressional delegation. "I think every citizen, every citizen has got the capacity to manage his or her own money."

He gave only passing mention to options for fixing the program's long-term financial woes, but told reporters for regional newspapers on Tuesday that he isn't ruling out making more wages subject to Social Security taxes.

Asked directly, Bush said he would not bar raising the $90,000 cap, although he does not want to see the payroll tax rate go up.

"The one thing I'm not open-minded about is raising the payroll tax rate. And all the other issues go on the table," Bush said in the interview, according to an account in Wednesday's New Haven (Conn.) Register.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said raising the cap on Social Security taxes is just one option among many being advocated.

"Just because he said it was an option doesn't mean he embraced it," Duffy added.

Under the current system, payroll taxes are paid only on the first $90,000 in wages. That ceiling rises each year with inflation — last year it was $87,100. The Social Security tax rate is now 12.4 percent of pay, split between workers and employers.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., and other lawmakers have argued that Bush's plan for personal accounts, which will cost more than $1 trillion up front, would be more attractive to Democrats if it is financed by raising taxes on the wealthy.

If Congress did nothing but lift the cap entirely and therefore subjected all wages to the tax, Social Security would be financially balanced for 75 years, though the system would again face trouble after that, according to one economic analysis.

Howard Dean, just four days into his job as Democratic National chairman, called Wednesday for New York's state Republican chairman to apologize or resign over remarks linking Democrats to a civil rights lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists.

Calling Stephen Minarik's comments "offensive," the former Vermont governor said, "The American people deserve better than this type of political character assassination."

Minarik touched off a firestorm on Monday by saying that in electing Dean as national party chairman on Saturday "the Democrats simply have refused to learn the lessons of the past two election cycles, and now they can be accurately called the party of Barbara Boxer, Lynne Stewart and Howard Dean."

Stewart is a New York City lawyer convicted last week of helping terrorists by smuggling messages from one of her imprisoned clients, a radical Egyptian sheik, to his terrorist disciples on the outside. Boxer is a liberal senator from California.

"The Democratic Party doesn't have anything to do with Lynne Stewart," Pataki said Tuesday. "Obviously, she was found guilty of a heinous criminal act and that is not something within the realm of appropriate political discourse in New York state."

"I'm pleased that Governor Pataki publicly rebuked Mr. Minarik for his offensive comments," Dean said in a statement issued by the Democratic National Committee. "I agree with Governor Pataki and my fellow New York Democrats that Mr. Minarik was completely out of line."

"But this is not settled. Mr. Minarik has shown neither regret nor remorse for what he said," Dean added, calling on other New York and national Republican leaders to "follow Governor Pataki's lead and rebuke Minarik."

Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side.

WHAT THE FUCK? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! A conference that is geared toward preventing suicides in a community is being required to omit the four words that describe what the conference is about—you know, the words that will actually inform GLBT community members who might be at risk for suicide that there’s help to be found—because the administration doesn’t like those words (read: doesn’t like those people) and issues a thinly veiled threat to withhold their funding if they don’t comply with the change. But that isn’t the main point of the story. No. The main point is that these fucking assholes who clearly don’t give a shit whether every single member of the GLBT community offs themselves are being persecuted. The federally-funded bigots are getting angry emails, and that’s the motherfucking lead of the story. Unbelievable. Not to mention that fuckwits like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh go around calling liberals traitors and jihadists and all kinds of fucked-up shit every day of the fucking week, and I don’t see that making headlines in the tossing WaPo.

You know what the headline of this piece of shit article is? “Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire.” Subhead: “HHS Is Being Accused of Marginalization.”

How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Indicative of Continuing Attacks on GLBT Community by Administration.” Subhead: “HHS Is Practicing Bigotry.”

How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk on Gays, Suicide Risks Increasing Suicides Due to Misinformation.” Subhead: “HHS Not Concerned About Health of Gays”

How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk on Gays, Suicide Intolerably Prejudiced.” Subhead: “Blogger Goes Berserk.”

It’s complete bullshit that this story was framed so as to make the administration the victim of intolerance, right from the fucking headline. If only those gays weren’t so touchy, this wouldn’t even be a story. It’s the ire that makes the headline; not the underlying bigotry that induced it. By the time you get through reading about the ire, the incredible venom, and the fascist prick getting (apparently somehow unfairly) called a Nazi, does it even matter what people are mad about, or is the important thing that they’re clearly being unfair to the poor old Bush administration, who was only trying to whitewash any reference to gays out of a talk designed to possibly help save their lives? Do the calm and reasonable representatives of the conference have any chance to be heard fairly after the introduction identifying those who object as “venomous”?

Fucking WaPo wankers.

Kurtz is wrong, by the way, that Gannon's nude pictures are what is keeping this story going. What is important is the revelation that the "leaker" in the White House pushed the Valerie Plame story on Gannon.

As an example, David Brock used to work for the more thuggish wing of the Republican right, and came around of his own accord. He now runs "Media Matters" and seems to be doing a great job.

Perhaps those who want to get to the bottom of the Plame scandal should try and turn Gannon. If he said what he knew, he'd become a star -- on every talk show and reality sitcom -- and probably make a fortune. That may be incentive enough.

Maybe rather than villifying this guy, we who want to know who undermined American national security and divulged the CIA identity of Joe Wilson's wife should help him repent and reform and help him get on a better path.

You see, for all the carnage in President Bush's budget, one program is being showered with additional cash - almost three times as much as it got in 2001. It's "abstinence only" sex education, and the best research suggests that it will cost far more lives than the Clinton administration's much more notorious sex scandal.

Mr. Bush means well. But "abstinence only" is a misnomer that in practice is an assault on sex education itself. There's a good deal of evidence that the result will not be more young rosy-cheeked virgins - it will be more pregnancies, abortions, gonorrhea and deaths from AIDS.

Look, I'm all for abstinence education. I support the booming abstinence industry as it peddles panties and boxers decorated with stop signs (at www.abstinence.net), and "Pet Your Dog, Not Your Date" T-shirts.

Abstinence education is great because it helps counteract the peer pressure that often leaves teenagers with broken hearts - and broken health.

For that reason, almost all sex-ed classes in America already encourage abstinence. But abstinence-only education isn't primarily about promoting abstinence - it's about blindly refusing to teach contraception.

To get federal funds, for example, abstinence-only programs are typically barred by law from discussing condoms or other forms of contraception - except to describe how they can fail. So kids in these programs go all through high school without learning anything but abstinence, even though more than 60 percent of American teenagers have sex before age 18.

In the old days, social conservatives simply fought any mention of sex. In 1906, The Ladies' Home Journal published articles about venereal disease - and 75,000 readers canceled their subscriptions. Congress banned the mailing of family planning information, and Margaret Sanger was jailed in 1916 for selling a birth control pamphlet to an undercover policewoman.

But silence about sex only nurtured venereal diseases (one New York doctor, probably exaggerating, claimed in 1904 that 60 percent of American men had syphilis or gonorrhea), so sex education gradually gained ground. Then social conservatives had a brilliant idea: instead of fighting sex ed directly, they campaigned for abstinence-only programs that eviscerated any discussion of contraception.

[snip]

Perhaps the most careful study of the issue involved 12,000 young people. It found that those taking virginity pledges had sex 18 months later, on average, than those who had not taken the pledge. But even 88 percent of the pledgers had sex before marriage.

More troubling, the pledgers were much less likely to use contraception when they did have sex - only 40 percent of the males used condoms, compared with 59 percent of those who did not take the pledge.

Bush might as well be proposing legislation that two plus two is five. And if that happened, there would be no shortage of Republicans prepared to endorse this view, experts on arithmetic to declare that it is a very difficult question, research to indicate that the answer may lie anywhere between 2.3 and 7.09, moderate Washington sages to urge caution, media to report both sides of the question, and media critics to accuse the media of a subtle bias in favor of two plus two is four.

...if this were 1998, we'd be knee deep in congressional investigations into the gay hooker ring in the White House. Every news crew in the DC area would be camped out on JimJeff's front lawn. A wild-eyed Victoria Toensing and panting Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick would be crawling up on the Hardball desk rending their silk teddies and speaking in tongues while Matthews'exploding head spun around on his shoulders.

But, it isn't 1998 and it will probably not even be mentioned. And I'm not a Republican so I don't think, as they would, that it's necessary to dig into every single White House staffer's sex life to find out who leaked a confidential memo to a gay hooker.

As a Democrat, however, if gay hookers are running around the White House I do find it somewhat frustrating that we have to put up with this shock and horror bullshit from the right wing about average Joe and Jane gay person wanting to get married and have a family. Please.

And yes, I do think that Patrick Fitzgerald's boys will probably be paying JimJeff another visit. Sadly, I think it's entirely likely that they didn't know about this until today. It is impossible to believe that the secret service and the FBI would allow a known prostitute to have access to the White House after 9/11. If they did, then our national security is in very deep shit. Come to think of it, it's also pretty scary that they didn't know. What's up with that?

We're changing the culture of this country from one that has said, if it feels good, do it, and, if you've got a problem, blame somebody else, to one in which each of us understands that we are responsible for the decisions we make. ---

Mary K. Letourneau, the former Burien elementary school teacher who had an illegal intimate relationship with one of her sixth-grade students, plans to wed the man she was convicted of raping.Letourneau, 43, and Vili Fualaau, 22, plan to wed April 16, according to an online bridal registry.

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role. In a statement, President Bush praised Iraqis "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom. And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

"This is a government that will have very good relations with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion. Talabani is very close to Tehran," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraq. "In terms of regional geopolitics, this is not the outcome that the United States was hoping for."

Added Rami Khouri, Arab analyst and editor of Beirut's Daily Star: "The idea that the United States would get a quick, stable, prosperous, pro-American and pro-Israel Iraq has not happened. Most of the neoconservative assumptions about what would happen have proven false."

If you flip through the magazines aimed at moms this month, you'd be hard pressed to find much talk of romance, unless you count all the articles on modern marriage's lack of romance, which are legion: Working Mother pleads, "Make Time for Your Valentine." Good Housekeeping insists, "Men can be romantic." Child magazine offers tips on "Staying Lovers While Raising Kids." And Parents, acknowledging that marriage with children often feels "about as romantic as changing a dirty diaper," offers advice for getting "back in the groove," like establishing "no-sex nights." (Absence makes the heart grow fonder?)

In many marriages, erotic love has been supplanted by what The New Yorker once called "the eros of parenthood." Up to 20 percent of couples now report having sex no more than 10 times a year, qualifying them for what the experts call "sexless marriages." Many mothers freely admit to preferring their children's touch to their husband's, without regret or shame.

Where did our love go? Look no further than the adorable little girl on the cover of this month's Parents, clutching a huge, red-sequined heart in her chubby little hands. According to a recent report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, children are a "growing impediment" to a happy marriage.

That's a sobering thought. And it raises an important question: Is our national romance with our children sucking the emotional life out of our marriages?

It may well be. After all, in an era when Parents magazine can suggest, in its love issue, a "Second Honeymoon with Kids" under the rubric "Fun Time," it's clear that something is very much askew. In many households, the distinctions between married life and family life have all but disappeared.

With the widespread acceptance of "attachment parenting" - family beds, long-term breast feeding and all the rest - the physical boundaries between parents and children have worn away. Marital romance has dried up. Real intimacy has gone the way of bottle-feeding and playpens. In fact, the whole ideal of marriage as a union of soul mates, friends and lovers that's as essential to a happy family life as, say, unconditional love for the children, has taken a direct hit. And in its place has come the reality of a utilitarian relationship dedicated to staying afloat financially and child-rearing of a sort we tend to associate with frontier marriages, arranged marriages, marriages of convenience - marriages far removed, in time and place, from our lives, our parents' lives and even our grandparents' lives.

Some would say that's not a bad thing. After all, hard work and commitment are much better indicators of marital stability than are passion and that fickle thing, romantic love. The divorce rate is slightly down, to about 50 percent from a high of 52 percent in the early 1980's. Virtually no one believes anymore that the potential "self-fulfillment" that might come from leaving a less-than-satisfying marriage could in any way outweigh the harm that divorce does to children. Indeed, for many couples these days, staying married is not so much the definitive sign of their love for each other but the ultimate expression of their love for their children.

But does this virtuous child-centeredness equal family happiness? Apparently not. For although the divorce rate has gone down, the percentage of couples saying they're in less-than-happy marriages has gone up. According to the National Marriage Project, fewer children are growing up with happily married parents today than a generation ago. From 1973 to 1976, 51 percent of children under the age of 18 were living in a household in which the parents' marriage was rated as "very happy," the study found. From 1997 to 2002, only 37 percent were so fortunate.

RWCM: "Al Gore has a crappy, unlikable personality and must reinvent himself if he expects to be elected."
Response: Gore re-invents himself
RWCM: "Al Gore has re-invented himself in order to get elected President. What a fake, two-faced, dishonest guy he obviously is. People should vote for Bush instead because he is so real. Whether you like his policies or not, you should vote for him because at least you know what you are getting."

RWCM: "The Democrats should support Bush and his policies after 9/11 because we need to be united and they need to prove to those real, non-elitist, patriotic Americans that they are willing to put party politics aside and be patriotic in a time of crisis."
Response: Dem congressional compliance and lack of alternate vision, followed by losses to Repubs in 2002 election.
RWCM: "Those Democrats lost because never articulated an alternative to what Bush had to offer. What a weak, namby-pamby, confused, pandering party!"

RWCM: "Dean is out-of-touch and unelectable. The Democrats should never nominate him. Anybody is better than Dean. Kerry, for example, is electable."
Response: Primary voters pick Kerry over Dean, allowing the media to (they thought!) permanently destroy Dean by making him out to be SUCH a pathetic loser because he went from front-runner to far behind so quickly and gave a speech that could be easily misportrayed on TV. The media beats up enough on Kerry that he becomes beatable (at least when you include GOP cheating), which would have arguably been harder to do against Dean because he would have fought back harder and would have (if he hadn't been demonized during the primary season) been able to continue his record of inspiring people to convert to our side. The RWCM knew they had to get rid of Dean, because (whether he was easier or harder to defeat than Kerry) he was the one who would further the reframing that needed to take place and would be the lightning rod for a strong, long term progressive movement.

RWCM: "The Dems better have a positive, upbeat convention because mainstream America just sees them as too negative and fanatically anti-Bush."
Response: Party holds what PR Week snidely termed the "Shiny Happy" Dem National Convention, with not much Bush bashing and lots of optimism and hamster stories.
RWCM: "Those Dems got up there and had this vapidly positive convention despite the fact that they are an angry opposition party who disagree with so much of the status quo. How insincere, lame, and strategically disastrous!"

I am against them [private accounts as part of Social Security...While everyone wants to think they can invest better than the government, all of these people screaming to keep government out of Social Security and invest on their own will be the first on line to cry to the government to bail them out when they lose their money through their own investing mistakes or fraud. ... Having this much money up for grabs on Wall Street is scary. ... Private accounts seem to have all the makings of a breeding ground for massive fraud, followed by a government bailout that would make the savings and loan bailout look like a mere warm-up....

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Johnnie Chennault has no regrets about joining the Navy Reserve, even though it means he's going to Iraq later this month.

But he does worry about not being around to help take care of his house full of 11 kids.

"Leaving my children, leaving my wife for so long -- you're going to miss all the little things as the kids grow up," he said.

Chennault and his wife, Ronda, have a full range of children of all ages growing up at their home in Springfield, a small town about 30 miles north of Nashville: Terr'i, 17; Stephen, 15; Jobie, 14; Joshua, 12; Zakari, 8; Johnnie IV, 7; Mikal, 6; Syerra, 4; Gracee, 3; Jakob, 1; and Nikalus, 8 months.

If I am a Republican shill, wouldn’t you think I am the least amount of a threat to the president?