When her newborn was found crying at the bottom of an air shaft earlier this week, the baby's teenage mother was charged with trying to kill the child.

But after the decaying body of a second infant was found in the same place, the authorities trying to unravel the gruesome story said it took an even more tragic turn: The teenager told them that her own father was the father of both babies.

The mother, a high school junior, was accused on Tuesday of throwing her newborn son into an air shaft from the third-story window of her apartment in West New York.

The boy survived, landing on a trash pile at the bottom, and residents called the police after hearing his cries.

When the investigators went to the building a second time, they found in the same pile of garbage the remains of the second infant - a girl believed to have died more than a year ago.

Prosecutors said when they first interviewed the young mother, she told them that the infants were fathered by different men. But in a second round of interviews on Thursday, the girl said her father was the children's father.

Gaetano T. Gregory, the Hudson County first assistant prosecutor, said investigators must wait for DNA tests before determining the baby's paternity, but they believe the girl's account.

The events of Thursday night "provide public closure to the tragedy of abuse, which has affected three generations," Mr. Gregory said on Friday.

The young mother was charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault. The baby boy was being treated in a hospital for a skull fracture and other injuries. On Friday, the mother was charged with murder in the death of the other infant.

The names of the girl and her father were withheld because the girl is considered the victim of a sex crime.

Prosecutors said the girl would be tried in juvenile court on the murder charge because she was not 18 when the death took place. She was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation on Friday.

In adult court, the murder charge would carry a sentence of 30 years to life; Mr. Gregory said it would most likely be less for a conviction in juvenile court. The attempted murder charge carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.

The father was charged with aggravated sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child and child abuse. If convicted, he could face 10 to 20 years in prison on the most serious charge. He was being held in the Hudson County Correctional Center.

"FEMA City is now a socioeconomic time bomb just waiting to blow up," said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, where most FEMA City residents used to live. "You throw together all these very different people under already tremendous stress, and bad things will happen. And this is the really difficult part: In our county, there's no other place for many of them to go."

As government efforts move forward to relocate and house some of the 1 million people displaced by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast -- including plans to collect as many as 300,000 trailers and mobile homes for them -- officials here say their experience offers some harsh and sobering lessons about the difficulties ahead.

Most troubling, they said, is that while the badly damaged town of Punta Gorda is beginning to rebuild and even substantially upgrade one year after the storm, many of the area's most vulnerable people are being left badly behind.

The hurricane began that slide, destroying hundreds of modest homes and apartments along both sides of the Peace River as it enters Charlotte Harbor, and almost all of Punta Gorda's public housing. Then as the apartments were slowly restored -- a process made more costly and time-consuming because of a shortage of contractors and workers -- landlords found that they could substantially increase their rents in the very tight market.

As a result, the low-income working people most likely to have been displaced by the hurricane are now most likely to be displaced by the recovery, too.

The unhappy consequence is that FEMA City's population has barely declined -- its trailers are occupied by 1,500 check-out clerks, nurse's aides, aluminum siding hangers, landscapers and more than a few people too old, too sick or too upset to work. A not-insignificant number of illegal immigrants and ex-convicts live there as well.

To the county's surprise, Hebert said, finding solutions to their ever-increasing problems is now the biggest and most frustrating part of the entire hurricane recovery effort.

"Having lived through the last year here, this is my advice to New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast towns: Don't make big camps with thousands of people, because it doesn't work," Hebert said. "It takes a bad situation and, for many people, actually makes it worse."

Scientists in Asia and around the world are now working around the clock as they wait for that tipping point.

"Unlike the normal human flu, where the virus is predominantly in the upper respiratory tract so you get a runny nose, sore throat, the H5N1 virus seems to go directly deep into the lungs so it goes down into the lung tissue and causes severe pneumonia," says Dr. Malik Peiris, the scientist who first discovered the so-called SARS virus, which killed 700 people and drew worldwide attention.

To date, there have been 57 confirmed human deaths, and another suspected one last week in Indonesia. Scientists say the humans have only been infected by birds. However, they add, every infected person represents one step closer to the tipping point.

"Once that virus is capable of not needing the birds to infect humans, then we have the beginnings of what can turn out to be this worldwide epidemic problem that the experts call 'pandemics,'" Redlener says.

That is exactly what happened in 1918 when the global epidemic called the Spanish flu struck.

Unlike the avian flu, the Spanish flu spread long before the international air travel routes of today. At that time, there were no nonstop flights from flu ground zero to the United States. But not anymore.

Karesh believes the avian flu could travel from China to Japan to New York to San Francisco within the first week.

"It's on people's hands. You shake hands. You touch a doorknob that somebody recently touched," Garrett says, referring to how the flu is spread.

Redlener, who is stationed at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, has been working with New York City officials to get ready for the deadly epidemic.

"The city would look like a science fiction movie," according to him. "It's extremely possible we'd have to quarantine hospitals. We'd have to quarantine sections of the city."

"I could imagine that you could look at Grand Central Station and not see much of anybody wandering around at all," Garrett agrees. "People would be afraid to take the subways, because who wants to be in an enclosed air space with a whole lot of strangers, never knowing which ones are carrying the flu?"

As for the hospitals, there would be scenes like the ones this past month in the stadiums of New Orleans and Houston after Hurricane Katrina.

"There wouldn't be equipment and personnel to staff them adequately that you could really call them a hospital," Garrett predicts. "You might more or less call them warehouses for the ailing."

[snip]

The prospects have become so bleak that in planning meetings held in New York City, veteran emergency responders have walked away.

"They just don't know how we're going to get through," says Osterholm of those responders. "If we have a repeat of the 1918 life experience, I can't imagine anything to be closer to a living hell than that experience of 12 to 24 months of pandemic influenza."

[snip]

The lack of advanced planning up until the moment in the United States, in the sense of not having a huge stockpile I think your citizens deserve, has surprised me and has dismayed me," he admits.



Faced with worldwide demand, the Roche company, which produces Tamiflu, has organized a first-come, first-served waiting list. The United States is nowhere near the top.



"The way we are approaching the discussions with governments is that we are operating on a first-come, first-serve basis," says Dr. David Reddy, head of the pandemic task force at Roche.

"Do we wish we had ordered it sooner and more of it? I suspect one could say yes," admits Leavitt. "Are we moving rapidly to assure that we have it? The answer is also yes."

When asked why the United States did not place its orders for Tamiflu sooner, Leavitt replied, "I can't answer that. I don't know the answer to that."

Even leading Republicans in Congress say the Bush administration has not handled the planning for a possible flu epidemic well.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., says the current Tamiflu stockpile of 2 million could spell disaster.

"That's totally inadequate. Totally inadequate today," says Frist, who is also a physician. "The Tamiflu is what people would go after. It's what you're going to ask for, I'm going to ask for, immediately."

Leavitt says deciding who gets the 2.5 million doses of Tamiflu currently on hand in the United States is part of the federal government's response plan. However, he also admits that thought has motivated the government to move rapidly in securing more doses of the medicine.

"It isn't going to happen tomorrow, but if it happened the day after that, we would not be in as good as a position as we will be in six months," he says.

However, in the end, even the country's top health officials concede that a killer flu epidemic this winter would make the scenes of Katrina pale in comparison.

"You know, I was down in New Orleans in that crowded airport now a couple weeks ago," Frist says. "And this could be not just equal to that, but many multiple times that. Hundreds of people laid out, all dying, because there was no therapy. And a lot of people don't realize for this avian flu virus, there will be very little effective therapy available early on."

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.

Let's see. What was the problem with Michael Brown exactly? Let's see. No expertise or experience for the job. Got the gig because he was pals with Bush's political fixer. Also a political loyalist.

So to learn the lesson and get back on track, to run the recovery, President Bush picks Karl Rove.

That's great.

Do we really all need the paint by numbers version of this picture.

Then there's the president's great line from the speech: "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces."

No, it's not. Actually, every actual fact that's surfaced in the last two weeks points to just the opposite conclusion. There was no lack of federal authority to handle the situation. There was faulty organization, poor coordination and incompetence.

Show me the instance where the federal government was prevented from doing anything that needed to be done because it lacked the requisite authority.

This is like what we were talking about a few days ago. This is how repressive governments operate -- mixing inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.

You don't repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent. If conservatism can't grasp that point, what is it good for?

As for the military, same difference. The Army clearly has an important role to play in major domestic disasters. And they've been playing it in this case. But what broader role was required exactly?

As I've been saying, repressive governments mix adminsitrative clumsiness and inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies. That's almost always the pattern. The direction the president wants to go in is one in which, in emergencies, the federal government will have trouble moving water into or enabling transportation out of the disaster zone but will be well-equipped to declare martial law on a moment's notice.

Another pack of lies. Right in front of everyone.

Here's a project.

Who will be the first and who will be the last to broach the subject of whether the president's chief political operative should be in charge of the largest domestic reconstruction effort since the Civil War.

Let's list off some of the worthies ... Russert, Brian Williams, Times editorial page, Post editorial page, Stephanopoulos, Schiefer, Hume, Matthews, Wallace, Juan Williams, Will, Mitchell.

We'll make a list and put it up on a separate page. Let us know who broaches the subject and when. And we'll see who's the last one standing.

Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show.

The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said Thursday she couldn't comment "because it's an internal e-mail."

Shown a copy of the e-mail, David Bookbinder, senior attorney for Sierra Club, remarked, "Why are they (Bush administration officials) trying to smear us like this?"

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups had nothing to do with the flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina that killed hundreds, he said. "It's unfortunate that the Bush administration is trying to shift the blame to environmental groups. It doesn't surprise me at all."

John Ellis Bush, the youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials in Texas said.

The 21-year-old nephew of President Bush was arrested by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. Friday on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said spokesman Roger Wade.

John Ellis Bush was released on $2,500 bond for resisting arrest, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.

Alia Faraj, the spokeswoman for Jeb Bush said the incident "is a personal family matter" which the governor and his wife "are dealing with privately."

In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.

Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.

"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."

In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the matters were well known within the company, but that a "culture of fear" had been developed to assure that employees, including technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves.

The "Cyber Security Alert" from US-CERT was issued in late August of 2004 and is still available online via the US-CERT website. The alert warns that "A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remote authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes."

The alert, assessed to be of "MEDIUM" risk on the US-CERT security bulletin, goes on to add that there is "No workaround or patch available at time of publishing."

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

The drive to pour tens of billions of federal dollars into rebuilding the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast is widening a fissure among Republicans over fiscal policy, with more of them expressing worry about unbridled spending.

On Thursday, even before President Bush promised that "federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone," fiscal conservatives from the House and Senate joined budget watchdog groups in demanding that the administration be judicious in asking for taxpayer dollars.

One fiscal conservative, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said Thursday, "I don't believe that everything that should happen in Louisiana should be paid for by the rest of the country. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are due the people of Louisiana."

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, called for restoring "sanity" to the federal recovery effort. Congress has approved $62 billion, mostly to cover costs already incurred, and the price tag is rising. The House and Senate approved tax relief Thursday at an estimated cost of more than $5 billion on top of $3.5 billion in housing vouchers approved by the Senate on Wednesday.

"We know we need to help, but throwing more and more money without accountability at this is not going to solve the problem," Mr. DeMint said.

"We are not sure he knows what he is getting into," said one senior House Republican official who requested anonymity because of the potential consequences of publicly criticizing the administration.

Now it begins: America's biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren't good.

It's a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.

President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government, rather than as a reason to reconsider their faith in Mr. Bush.

And to date the Bush administration, which has no stake in showing that good government is possible, has been averse to investigating itself. On the contrary, it has consistently stonewalled corruption investigations and punished its own investigators if they try to do their jobs.

That's why Mr. Bush's promise last night that he will have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" rings hollow. Whoever these inspectors general are, they'll be mindful of the fate of Bunnatine Greenhouse, a highly regarded auditor at the Army Corps of Engineers who suddenly got poor performance reviews after she raised questions about Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. She was demoted late last month.

Turning the funds over to state and local governments isn't the answer, either. F.D.R. actually made a point of taking control away from local politicians; then as now, patronage played a big role in local politics.

And our sympathy for the people of Mississippi and Louisiana shouldn't blind us to the realities of their states' political cultures. Last year the newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter ranked the states according to the number of federal public-corruption convictions per capita. Mississippi came in first, and Louisiana came in third.

Is there any way Mr. Bush could ensure an honest recovery program? Yes - he could insulate decisions about reconstruction spending from politics by placing them in the hands of an autonomous agency headed by a political independent, or, if no such person can be found, a Democrat (as a sign of good faith).

He didn't do that last night, and probably won't. There's every reason to believe the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, like the failed reconstruction of Iraq, will be deeply marred by cronyism and corruption.

Authorities are searching for three mice infected with bubonic plague that disappeared from a research laboratory about two weeks ago.

While health experts say the risk to the public is slim to none, the incident highlights ongoing security failures at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

The mice went missing from the lab of the Public Health Research Institute, which is located on the UMDNJ campus and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI are investigating, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported in Thursday's newspapers. The rodents may have been eaten by other laboratory animals, although the possibility that they have been stolen has prompted the institute to interrogate two dozen of its employees and conduct some lie detector tests, the newspaper said.

UMDNJ did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday morning.

If the mice got outside the lab, New Jersey Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs said they would have already died from the disease.

Federal official said the mice may never be accounted for.

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image.

That is Rove's hallmark.

Rove, Bush's long-time political adviser and the "architect" of Bush's ascendancy, was rewarded after the 2004 election with a position at the White House with overt policy responsibilities. But whereas in some previous White Houses, governance took precedence over campaigning once the election was safely over, Rove has shown no sign of ever putting policy goals above political ones. (See my Rove profile .)

Tonight's speech promises two classic features of the Rove approach.

Bush will take advantage of powerful imagery -- the Associated Press reports the speech will be held in historic Jackson Square, with the famous St. Louis Cathedral as a backdrop -- and he won't risk having anyone around who might disagree with him or ask an impertinent question. In fact, the AP says, there won't be a live audience at all. (And even the journalists covering the event are being told they won't be allowed to stray from their press vans.)

As for the speech itself, it will inevitably seek to answer any naysaying about Bush by recasting him in the heroic, leadership role he played after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- while advocating a range of measures that are dear to the conservative political agenda.

It will, on the other hand, feature one very unRovian tactic. Typically, it is the Democrats who are blamed for wanting to solve problems by throwing money at them. But tonight, Bush will be the one throwing the money around.

Will it work? Rove has an astonishing track record of success. But at the same time, Bush finds himself today a deeply unpopular president according to the opinion polls, particularly damaged by his lackluster response to the protracted, televised suffering in New Orleans.

For the first time, just half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's handling of terrorism, which has been his most consistent strength since he scored 90 percent approval ratings in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 6 in 10 now say that he does not share their priorities for the country, 10 percentage points worse than on the eve of his re-election last fall, while barely half say he has strong qualities of leadership, about the same as said so at the early low-ebb of his presidency in the summer of 2001.

More Americans now distrust the federal government to do the right thing than at any time since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And the poll revealed a sharp racial divide. While half of all respondents disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled the aftermath of Katrina, nearly three quarters of blacks do. (Mr. Bush won only about 10 percent of the black vote last year.)

[snip]

Taken together, the numbers suggest that a public that has long seen Mr. Bush as a determined leader, whether it agreed with him or not, has growing doubts about his capacity to deal with pressing problems. More than 6 in 10 said they were uneasy about his ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq, and half expressed similar unease about his ability to deal with the problems of the storm's victims.

Mr. Bush's support remained strong among Republicans, conservatives, evangelical Christians and those who said they voted for him last fall. Nearly twice as many people - 63 percent - said the country was "pretty seriously" on the wrong track as those who said it was headed in the right direction, equal to the worst level of Mr. Bush's presidency during a spate of bad news last year.

Over all, 41 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush's performance in office, while 53 percent disapproved.

"I don't blame the President. I blame the American people. Y'all knew the man was slow when you voted him in. You can't blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you're the one who gave him the keys."

Saying "March of the Penguins" celebrates monogamy is like saying "Wedding Crashers" celebrates the institution of marriage.

Republicans are lining up behind plans to use vouchers to help displaced students find new schools, including private ones, and a mix of vouchers and tax breaks to help flood victims pay for health care expenses, from insurance coverage to immunization. A draft Senate Republican plan for post-Katrina policy includes both ideas, according to Republicans who have read the document.

Last week, Bush issued an executive order lifting so-called Davis-Bacon rules mandating that construction workers on federal contracts be paid the average wage in a region. The White House argued the regulations were slowing reconstruction and raising federal costs.

Now Labor Department and White House officials are examining a similar move for service workers covered by the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act, which extended prevailing wage rules to service workers. Administration officials are concerned that workers on demolition and debris removal jobs could protest that even with construction wage supports lifted, they should be paid prevailing wages because their work is more service-related than construction-related.

The Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act includes a provision allowing its suspension for natural disasters. The Service Contract Act does not, and its suspension may be unprecedented, labor experts say.

The point of all this is not a study of Bush's record; that could go on for days. What is amazing is the way Bush supporters can't seem to deal with reality.

The ones I have talked to have blamed everyone but Bush for the poor response: the New Orleans mayor, the Louisiana governor, the Louisiana senator, the deserting New Orleans Police Department, and, of course, the media (always a favorite target of Bush excusers).

I was a Bill Clinton supporter. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, it was an embarrassment to all of us. There was no justification for his behavior or his lies. There's no way around that.

His actions in that scandal will haunt him the rest of his life. It will also mar what was otherwise a fairly effective presidency, as current events and historians are already bearing out.

But despite a George W. Bush presidency filled with lies and inexcusable fiascos, his supporters usually answer with one thing: "At least he didn't use the White House to get a (insert favorite name here for Clinton's favorite sexual act)."

They will not acknowledge that this administration has been a mess. They won't truly consider the seriousness of what this administration has wrought and the lengths it has traveled to accomplish its predetermined agenda.

It continues up to the moment, with Halliburton and other Bush supporters' companies being given no-bid contracts for Gulf Coast cleanup just as they were in Iraq.

It goes on and on, but you won't hear that from the 39 percent (AP-Ipsos) who still say George W. is doing a good job as president. They'll simply continue telling us that the president is not having sex in the White House.

A dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing at least 152 people and wounding 542 in a series of attacks that began with a suicide car bombing that targeted laborers assembled to find work for the day. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility.

The bloodiest attack killed at least 88 people and wounded 227 in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah where the day laborers had gathered shortly after dawn.

Overnight Wednesday, 17 men were executed in a village north of Baghdad, which put the death toll in all violence in and around the capital Wednesday at 169 and the number continued to rise.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said it was behind the attacks.

...unspool the complex helix of Republican thinking, map the GOP Genome backwards from any direction – theological, philosophical, economic, “scientific” – and it always comes down to the same, straightforward building blocks: Fuck Everyone But Me.

And see, this is where every Republican I know trips right over their own dicks every single fucking time.

Because there is no getting around the fact that Fuck Everyone But Me is a depraved and morally bankrupt philosophy.

And when you’re basic moral precept is Fuck Everyone But Me, you back yourself into a corner where you look absolutely ridiculous trying to judge or mock anyone else’s moral choices. What do you care who adults sleep with or marry? What do you care if terrorists kill Americans, as long as they’re not you. From what high moral ground do you get off prattling on about the various sins of Bill Clinton or anyone else?

Don’t get me wrong; it is at least an honest philosophy, and if Republicans were ever honest for five consecutive minutes they’d just own up to the fact that the loathe their fellow man and women on a sliding scale that reaches its zenith when the people on the business end of the shotgun are Poor and/or Black.

Republicans don’t give a shit if “those people” live or die as long as they don’t live or die near them.

As long as their taxes don’t go to them in any way shape or form. As long as they stay in their place, and pump prices stay low. But if brown people have to be killed in their millions to keep Republican’s tanks full of cheap gas, fuck ‘em. If Republican’s have to choose between their poorer, browner fellow citizens living in abject poverty and despair, and a $600 tax cut, fuck ‘em.

It's not even close.

So it’s an honest ideology, in the same way that offering human sacrifices to summon Satan would be a sincere expression of belief.

In case you are wondering how Joe Allbaugh came to be FEMA Director, we need to briefly review his past credentials. He has been a very busy critter indeed. Prior to his appointment as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he served as Chief of Staff to then-Governor Bush. He was the point person for nine presidential disaster declarations and more than 20 state level emergencies. He also happened to serve as National Campaign Manager for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, with the responsibility and oversight for all related activities. He had a lot of experience having already served as Campaign Manager for Bush's first run for governor of Texas and also worked on the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984. Allbaugh is obviously well-connected and quoted as saying, "There isn't anything more important than protecting Governor Bush and the first lady. I'm the heavy in the literal sense of the word."

So why in the world did Allbaugh resign? Here's where it starts to get interesting, tangled, and quite disturbing. Judge for yourself and I will reserve my comments until the end. The Austin Chronicle broke new ground about Bush's involvement in an influence-buying scandal regarding SCI, Service Corporation International, the world's largest cemetery company based in Houston. Reporter Robert Bryce said, "Bush got $35,000 in contributions from SCI. It appears Bush then helped them thwart an investigation by the Texas Funeral Commission. The former director of the Commission, Eliza May, was pressured by Bush's Chief of Staff and Campaign Manager Joe Allbaugh. She has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit." May said she was fired after resisting pressure from the governor's staff to end her investigation, which resulted in a $445,000 fine against the company for a range of offences including using unlicensed embalmers.

Bush was subpoenaed in 1999, but refused to testify as to what his involvement was in halting an investigation into SCI's embalming practices, among other things. A Texas judge put everything right for Bush just in time to campaign for the presidency, ruling that he could not be forced to testify by an ousted regulatory official, who had not produced enough evidence or that Bush had "unique and superior personal knowledge." Bush had filed an affidavit claiming he had no conversations with SCI officials, agents, or representatives concerning the investigation or any disputes arising from it, although by his own admission he said he dropped in on a meeting between Waltrip and Allbaugh, for a quick social visit and couldn't remember what he said. May's lawsuit claimed they did talk about the investigation and asked the judge to hold Bush in contempt of court and compel him to testify. In a news conference (held in August, '99) dominated by tough questions, the issue that really irritated Bush concerned funeral homes. His remarks were, "It's frivolous. It is frivolous."

In November of 2001, Governor Rick Perry approved a settlement of $210,000 in May's lawsuit. SCI was to pay $55,000 and the balance by the state of Texas. May's attorney, Derek Howard, said any terms of agreement were to be confidential and he could not elaborate under the terms in which the state did not admit to any wrongdoings. This took place only weeks before the gruesome discovery was made at two Florida cemeteries catching the brief attention of the media. Fox News reported on Dec.20, 2001 that Fort Lauderdale attorneys were suing a cemetery company (SCI, also known as "Dignity" Memorial) accused of "recycling" graves, removing bodies and throwing them in the woods at Menorah Gardens and Funeral Chapels in West Palm Beach, of which SCI is owner and said they have no knowledge of any wrongdoing. The attorneys showed grisly photos and video footage of crushed burial vaults and scattered human remains and also presented documents they say show SCI and aforementioned cemeteries were aware of grave desecrations. Ten families are represented in the class action lawsuit that more than 1,000 people could become part of. The families say their loved ones were dug up, dumped in the woods, buried in the wrong vaults, or in vaults on top of each other instead of side by side as had been paid for. Co-counsel Neal Hirschfeld said, "There are several hundred people who purchased premium contracts years ago, that do not have a place to rest. We've investigated allegations that we thought were too heinous to be accurate and too horrible to be true, over the last several years." The general manager of Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, Peter Hartmann, who was a central figure in the investigation is dead at 45 yrs. of carbon monoxide poisoning, treated as an apparent suicide by police.

From the above review of the statutory authorities under the Stafford Act, the letters of Governor Blanco to President Bush requesting first a declaration of emergency and then a major disaster declaration in anticipation of the effects of Hurricane Katrina, as well as the President's responses to those requests in declaring a state of emergency with respect to Louisiana effective August 26, 2005, and continuing, and declaring a major disaster with respect to Louisiana effective August 28, 2005, and continuing, it would appear that the Governor did take the steps necessary to request emergency and major disaster declarations for the State of Louisiana in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. In response to the Governor's requests, it appears that the President did take the steps necessary to trigger the availability of Stafford Act emergency assistance and disaster assistance, by declaring first a state of emergency, and later a major disaster, and authorizing specific Stafford Act assistance to be made available to the State of Louisiana to respond to the effects of the Hurricane. We hope that this will be of assistance to you.

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.

And finally, New Rule: America must recall the president. [applause] [cheers] That's – that's what this country needs. A good, old-fashioned, California-style recall election! [applause] [cheers] Complete with Gary Coleman, porno actresses and action film stars. [laughter] And just like Schwarzenegger's predecessor here in California, George Bush is now so unpopular, he must defend his jog against…Russell Crowe. [laughter] Because at this point, I want a leader who will throw a phone at somebody. [laughter] [applause] In fact, let's have only phone throwers. Naomi Campbell can be the vice-president! [laughter]

Now, I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. [laughter] There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. [laughter] You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. [laughter] [applause]

Yeah, listen to your mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out, and no one is speaking to you: mission accomplished! [laughter] Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. [laughter] [applause] Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?! [laughter] [applause]

Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying that there's so many other things that you, as president, could involve yourself in…Please don't. [laughter] I know, I know, there's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. [laughter] Turning the space program over to the church. [laughter] [applause] And Social Security to Fannie Mae. [laughter] Giving embryos the vote. [laughter] [applause] But, sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. [laughter] You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. [laughter] You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. [laughter]

Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes. [laughter]

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans…Maybe you're just not lucky! [laughter] [applause] [cheers]

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. [laughter] So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, “Take a hint.” [laughter]

On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie "verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it."

At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made "a strong case for intelligent design."

The movie is "March of the Penguins," and of all the reactions it has evoked, perhaps the most surprising is its appeal to conservatives. They are hardly its only audience; the film is the second highest grossing documentary of all time, behind "Fahrenheit 9/11."

But conservative groups have turned its stirring depiction of the mating ordeals of emperor penguins into an unexpected battle anthem in the culture wars.

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."

Speaking of audiences who feel that movies ignore or belittle such themes, he added: "This is the first movie they've enjoyed since 'The Passion of the Christ.' This is 'The 'Passion of the Penguins.' "

In part, the movie's appeal to conservatives may lie in its soft-pedaling of topics like evolution and global warming. The filmmakers say they did not consciously avoid those topics - indeed, they say they are strong believers in evolutionary theory - but they add that they wanted to create a film that would reach as many people as possible.

"It's obvious that global warming has an impact on the reproduction of the penguins," Luc Jaquet, the director, told National Geographic Online. "But much of public opinion appears insensitive to the dangers of global warming. We have to find other ways to communicate to people about it, not just lecture them."

In a subsequent interview for this article, he added, "My intention was to tell the story in the most simple and profound way and to leave it open to any reading."

Likewise, the only allusion to evolution in "March of the Penguins" is a line near the beginning, intoned in the English-language version by the narrator, Morgan Freeman: "For millions of years they have made their home on the darkest, driest, windiest and coldest continent on earth. And they've done so pretty much alone."

The movie goes on to follow the penguins as they trek back and forth over 70 miles of ice to their breeding ground and huddle together to protect their eggs in temperatures that average 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

To Andrew Coffin, writing in the widely circulated Christian publication World Magazine, that is a winning argument for the theory that life is too complex to have arisen through random selection.

"That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design," he wrote. "It's sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it's also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film."

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, told the young conservatives' gathering last month: "You have to check out 'March of the Penguins.' It is an amazing movie. And I have to say, penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. These things - the dedication of these birds is just amazing."

Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.

But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.

When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, Whew. There was a sense of relaxation. And that’s what I was referring to.

And I myself thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people probably over the airwaves say, The bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.

An infant born last month to a severely brain-damaged woman has died after emergency surgery to repair a perforated intestine, the family said Monday.

Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on Aug. 2 after her mother was on life support for three months, died of heart failure Sunday, a family statement said.

The infant’s condition had deteriorated rapidly during the weekend, according to the family. She died at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington.

[snip]

The baby’s father, Jason Torres, had made the decision after his wife lost consciousness to keep her on life support for the sake of her fetus.

The pregnancy became a race between the fetus’ development and the cancer that was ravaging the woman’s body. Doctors at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where the baby was born, said that Torres’ health was deteriorating and that the risk of harm to the fetus finally outweighed the benefits of extending the pregnancy.

The mother died shortly after her daughter’s birth when she was taken off life support. The baby was about two months premature and weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces.

There was no immediate indication why the baby’s health deteriorated. A spokeswoman at Children’s National Medical Center would not comment.

In the wake of the House of Representatives' approval of two articles of impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval rating has jumped 10 points to 73 percent, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows.

That's not only an all-time high for Clinton, it also beats the highest approval rating President Ronald Reagan ever had.

At the same time, the number of Americans with an unfavorable view of the Republican Party has jumped 10 points; less than a third of the country now has a favorable view of the GOP.

Despite concerns that public calls for Clinton's resignation would rise after his impeachment, the number of Americans who want Clinton to resign has remained statistically unchanged. Only 30 percent want Clinton to resign; only 29 percent want the Senate to convict Clinton and remove him from office.

The poll, released Sunday, also shows that 35 percent approve of the House's decision to impeach the president.

It was suggested last week that I turn in my conservative credentials because I thought Michael Brown ought to be fired for the way he bungled the initial response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

If hanging on to those credentials means I have to blindly defend everything President Bush does, then, fine, I'll give them up. That's a bigger job than I want.

If being conservative means I have to turn a blind eye to government mismanagement and incompetence just because a Republican is running the show, then I'll take a hike.

Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, screwed up the response to the New Orleans tragedy. He caught a bad case of the slows. His dawdling and the ineptitude of local and state officials cost lives. Friday, Bush yanked him back to Washington, but the damage was done.

It ought to be OK for conservatives to say that. But the conservative movement's principles have given way to partisanship. The words "conservative" and "Republican" are now interchangeable, and it's more important to protect the party than to hew to core values.

One of those principles for conservatives is that government ought to be as efficient and responsive to customers as private business. What private business would excuse the level of indecisiveness Brown displayed to blind-side the chief executive?

Brown allowed the Katrina mess to bite the boss in the backside, and that's unpardonable. But Bush's initial response was to do what he always does -- stubbornly stand by his man. Loyalty is a terrific quality. But loyalty to incompetence is inexcusable.

Republicans ought to think twice this time before falling in line behind the president in defense of the Katrina response.

The country watched firsthand the images of the suffering people of New Orleans waiting, waiting, waiting for help. Excuse-making and blame-spreading won't mitigate the damage done to Bush, but it will increase the likelihood of the taint covering everyone else in the party.

Bush claims to be a buck-stops-here guy. He can't be that and continue to dodge responsibility for the screw-ups of his administration.

What is happening is a gigantic reckoning, as Americans are forced to come to terms with how very, very naked is the emperor who we thought had such incredible clothes.

We are raised in the United States of America to believe our government is the strongest in the world, that as Americans we are basically protected, and that our country is basically good. It is cognitive dissonance for us to be confronted with evidence to the contrary, and yet such evidence has been piling up fast and furiously during this odd and potentially catastrophic phase of American history.

There is nothing strong about rushing into a unilateral war based on faulty intelligence, squandering the resources necessary with which to take care of your own people; there is nothing protective about a government that apparently didn't monitor events on the ground in New Orleans any better -- in fact, less well -- than the average viewer of CNN; and there is nothing good about taking care of the rich at the expense of the poor.

If it took a Category 5 hurricane and the huge suffering of thousands to bring those facts to light, then at least it can be said there is value in this horror. If enough Americans are beginning to wake up and face the awful fact that our country's basic functioning has become infected by a soulless sensibility, then perhaps the suffering on the Gulf Coast will not have been in vain.

Regarding the abysmal response of our government to the hurricane's aftermath, there is a lot of talk right now about accountability. Some argue we should have the discussion today, while others argue that that discussion should wait for a more propitious time.

But there is a danger in waiting, for a governmental status quo has talent for co-opting criticism as long as it can buy enough time. Passions cool; memories become revised and faded.

Six months after a disaster, the government appoints an independent commission to find out what really happened but by the time the commission releases its final report, there is never much sense that too many people are listening. The people are exhausted by then; they're trying their best to move on.

And the status quo knows this; that's part of its game. Do whatever you want; act horrified and remorseful for a minute whenever too much suffering results as a part of your actions; then put off the accountability conversation until people are too tired to care anymore.

This is not a new pattern in America. What might be new -- what I sense might be happening -- is that people are waking up to it now. And as soon as we wake up, then the pattern will end.

[snip]

The president prides himself on running the government like a well-run business. That, of course, makes him the chief executive. And if the government failed, then he failed.

Fool us once, and maybe their tricks were dirty; fool us twice, maybe their public relations was too good; fool us now, and perhaps we just deserve to be fooled. From war to hurricanes, oh, America, the alarm bells of needless human suffering are going off everywhere.

A nation that refuses to wake up at this point is in a dangerous slumber. The nightmares are upon us now. They will remain until our eyes are opened and we have awakened to the truth.

Few marches in Washington, for example, feature people like Rumsfeld as a star, which gave the scene a distinct air of propaganda. A master of ceremonies announced from the stage when he arrived, "Our defense secretary is in the house!"

Black introduced Rumsfeld by saying that his own niece thinks Rumsfeld is "a hunk." Rumsfeld took the microphone to rally the crowd to march again next year. "This is our first March for Freedom and by the size of the crowd, I suspect it will not be the last," he said. Department of Defense materials said organizers will try to hold marches next year in all 50 states.

Marchers said the event provided a tangible way to show support for U.S. troops fighting overseas. Some said they were unaware that the Department of Defense had organized the day's events. Others, like Jack Lynch, from Lenah, Va., said they did not care who organized the march and concert, so long as troops get the message of support. "We came out to support our troops," said Lynch. "We support them no matter where they are at."

Kemp, the marcher from Nazareth Pa., had said she was a bit worried about talking to Salon, which she described as "liberal weenies." She eventually agreed. "I am a 30-year Navy wife. I very much support our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought this was something constructive to do," she said.

But Kemp said she has her own concerns about Iraq, where the United States is "getting bogged down." Still, the event gave her a chance, she said, to show support for U.S. troops even on missions that might be "less than perfect." She said she does not care if the Pentagon organized the event; the message for the troops is still the same.

"You may not agree with the reason we are there," said Kristy Kuhn, from Arlington, Va., who was with Kemp. "But you have to support our troops. That is the only reason I came. They deserve our support and thanks."