Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law.

But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation.

"It in no way applies to reporters — in any way, shape or form," said Mike Dawson, a senior policy adviser to DeWine, responding to an inquiry Friday afternoon. "If a technical fix is necessary, it will be made."

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft of the legislation, which could be introduced as soon as next week.

The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who "intentionally discloses information identifying or describing" the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified.

"The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact," said Martin, a civil liberties advocate.

[snip]

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the language would allow anyone — "if you read a story in the paper and pass it along to your brother-in-law" — to be prosecuted.

"As a practical matter, would they use this to try to punish any newspaper or any broadcast? It essentially makes coverage of any of these surveillance programs illegal," she said. "I'm sorry, that's just not constitutional."

When I think about South Dakota, I think about all kinds of things. Like this little item from way back when:

Nader Sees a Bright Side to a Bush Victory
by Melinda Henneberger

Dearborn, MI, November 1, 2000 –

Mr. Nader said he did not think there would be much difference between the justices Mr. Gore would choose and those Mr. Bush would appoint. After all, Democrats had helped confirm Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hadn’t they? Besides, “You can’t really predict how Supreme Court justices will behave.”

And he called the possibility that a court packed with Republican appointees could overturn Roe v. Wade a “scare tactic.” On Sunday, Mr. Nader said in a television interview that even if Roe v. Wade was overturned, the issue “would just revert to the states.” Just?

“Here’s what happened on that,” he said wearily. “The scare tactic is that would end choice in America, and I just said that’s not true, but I should have been astute enough not to mention that.”

He said he did not in any case believe for a moment that Mr. Bush would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. “The first back alley death, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble and they know it,” he said. He described the party’s opposition to abortion as just for show, “just for Pat Robertson."

My point is not that Ralph Nader was secretly pro-coathanger. My point is that Nader, like all too many men on the left, doesn’t believe that the right-wing culture warriors really mean it. They think it’s all shadow-boxing, a distraction, a sop thrown to the radical fringe.

[snip]

The idea is that an actual abortion ban would go too far: the first back alley death, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble. Well, maybe and maybe not, folks. You might think, along similar lines, “the first hideous death by torture in the War on Terror, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first unconstitutional power grab by the executive branch, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first data-mining program of domestic spying, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first systemic corruption scandal involving Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” and you’d be, ah, wrong, you know. Besides, there’s a nasty time lag between that first back-alley death and the repeal (if any) of a state’s draconian abortion law, and in that time-lag, that state’s Republican Party might or might not be in deep trouble. It’s hard to unseat incumbents in this jerry-built and gerrymandered system, after all. So there’s no guarantee that popular outrage against back-alley deaths would jeopardize a state’s elected GOP officials en masse. But we can be pretty sure that women with unwanted pregnancies would be . . . how shall we say? in deep trouble.

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.

Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.

As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:

1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.

2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.

3) Single-payer health insurance.

Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.

Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.

Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”

I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.

We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.

These three wives, who live in adjacent houses, sound much like the women in polygamous marriages I've talked to in rural Africa. The African wives told me they had mixed feelings about the arrangement — and their fellow wives — but over all, they figured it was better to share one prosperous husband than to marry someone else without land, cows or a job.

That's the way social scientists figure it, too. Polygamy isn't the cause of women's low status in traditional societies, but rather a consequence of their trying to move up. The biggest losers from polygamy are the poorer men who end up with no wives. Women benefit because polygamy increases their number of marriage prospects — and in traditional societies, marriage is often the only way for a woman to improve her status.

Even in those societies, polygamy is practiced by just a small minority because few men have enough resources to entice more than one wife. As a society modernizes and women become educated, they gain other economic options and become less and less willing to share a husband. Eventually polygamy is out of question for practically everyone, men and women. At that point, the monogamous majority can safely proclaim its moral superiority and outlaw the practice for everyone else.

Critics say children would be better off growing up in a home with a full-time father, but a part-time one is better than what's in many homes today. The father in "Big Love" is more like Ward Cleaver than today's alpha males who've dumped a series of wives and families.

Polygamy isn't necessarily worse than the current American alternative: serial monogamy.

Elizabeth Joseph, a lawyer and journalist who was married to a polygamist in Utah, says her experience handling divorce cases made her appreciate the stability of her marriage. She also appreciated other perks, like the round-the-clock day care that enabled her to keep an unpredictable schedule at work and to relax when she came home.

"If I'm dog-tired and stressed out, I can be alone and guilt-free," she explained in a speech to the National Organization for Women. "It's a rare day when all eight of my husband's wives are tired and stressed at the same time." She told the NOW audience that polygamy "offers an independent women a real chance to have it all" and represented "the ultimate feminist lifestyle."

She won't persuade many American women, feminists or otherwise. But if a few consenting adults like her still want to practice polygamy, there's no reason to stop them. And if the specter of legalized polygamy is the best argument against gay marriage, let the wedding bells ring.

A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, "God created man exactly how Bible describes it."

Another 31% says that man did evolve, but "God guided." Only 12% back evolution and say "God had no part."

Gallup summarized it this way: "Surveys repeatedly show that a substantial portion of Americans do not believe that the theory of evolution best explains where life came from." They are "not so quick to agree with the preponderance of scientific evidence."

The report was written by the director of the The Gallup Poll, Frank Newport.

Breaking down the numbers, Gallup finds that Republican backing for what it calls "God created human beings in present form" stands at 57% with Democrats at 44%.

Support for this Bible view rises steadily with age: from 43% for those 18 to 29, to 59% for those 65 and older. It declines steadily with education, dropping from 58% for those with high school degrees to a still-substantial 25% with postgraduate degrees.

Newport wraps it up: "Several characteristics correlate with belief in the biblical explanation for the origin of humans. Those with lower levels of education, those who attend church regularly, those who are 65 and older, and those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe that God created humans 'as is,' than are those who do not share these characteristics."

Gallup has asked this question, in different forms, going back to 1982, but has consistently shown support at 45% or higher for the notion that "God created man in present form."

The most recent poll, last September, posed the question this way: "Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings." This produced the 53% who chose "God created man exactly how Bible describes it," the 31% who said man did evolve but "God guided," and the 12% who backed evolution with God playing "no part."

Abraham Lincoln once said, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. Our present is piled high with difficulties. We must think anew and act anew – then we will save our country.” These words are as true today as they were then. Today we stand at another crossroads, no less pivotal than the civil war. In our names, the government pursues policies that reject two hundred years of American values and traditions. The country that once fought wars to give the common man a place at the table, now fights a war to shut the common man away from the table. The country that once fought wars for human rights, now strips away the rights of its own citizens in order to fight a war. The country that once fought wars to end torture, now uses torture as a means in war. And yet despite this clear betrayal of America’s soul, and of all we historically have represented to the world, the voices of opposition, yes even our Democratic Party’s opposition, have been weak, meek and apologetic. And to this systematic destruction of our values, too many Democratic Politicians offer nothing. They parrot the warmed over policies of a past that no longer exists. In that past, both parties agreed that those values were legitimate and defined us, an agreement that is no more. Most Democratic politicians refuse to acknowledge the radical nature of this administrations’s attack on those values, because they fear that the belligerent hatred that fuels those attacks represents the politics of the future. They prefer sticking to safe issues, hoping that if the people become disaffected with Republican offenses, they will vote for them without ever knowing exactly what they stand for.

I am tired of the old Democratic Party voices that lack the courage and conviction to define a vision in opposition to the nightmare that has become the Bush Administration. I believe that the Democratic Party needs new voices. Voices that are not weak and meek. Voices that are not afraid to take clear stands against the ongoing destruction of over two hundred years of American values. Voices that will unapologetically place those values at the very heart of the politics of the present. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I decided, very lately, to run.

We must reject the mantra that says that we can no longer afford freedom and decency if we are to protect ourselves from terror. That is the counsel of cowards. We can be strong on terrorism without being strong on torture. Nazi Germany and Japan in World War Two, and the Soviet Union during the cold war, threatened our very national existence in a way that terrorists could never do, yet we resisted the temptation to give up our values and sell our soul. The terrorists don’t threaten our national existence. They’re not a country. They can’t invade. We’re smarter and more talented than they are. We certainly have more resources. What do they have? They have dates and sand. We have atom bombs. It’s no-contest. There’s no reason to panic.

This is not to say that the terrorists are not a real danger, or that we shouldn’t make every effort to protect ourselves, and ultimately destroy their ability to hurt us. It is just to say that saving the country from terrorism does not require, as the Bush Administration and the Republican Party seem to think, that we give up the rights and values that make our country worth saving. We foiled many a terrorist plot before we had the PATRIOT Act. We must return to the values and the virtues that have always made our country strong in conflicts with our enemies. The value of good old fashioned American know how that always kept us one step ahead of our enemies, a kind of know how that can only be maintained in an open society. The value of good old fashioned American fair play, a value that made others want to help us in our struggles.

We need to make sure that our ports are controlled by Americans. We need to end the leases and take them back. Our ports are the most vulnerable link in the chain of our security against terror. If weapons of mass destruction are ever smuggled into this country, it will be through those ports. In a post 9/11 world, we can no longer afford our security to bow to the demands of profit. Not only must we make sure that the ports are in American hands, but we must make sure that those Americans have the resources to do the job. We must invest in the Coast Guard to enable them to do adequate searches of incoming vessels on the high seas. We must vastly increase the number of radiation detectors in operation so that every container that comes into this country can be tested. We must vastly increase the number of people inspecting those containers and not be content to have only 5% of all containers being inspected, as is true now.

We must bring our troops home from Iraq now. Unless we’re willing to commit genocide, to simply kill anyone there who objects to our presence, which may will be almost everyone who lives there, we can’t end the insurgency. We can’t end it because our very presence there pours gasoline on its flames. The best estimates of the total number of civilian, that is to say completely innocent, Iraquis that have been killed as a result of our presence there is somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000, and the numbers are rising every day. All too soon those numbers will exceed the number of Iraquis Hussein himself killed. How many more Iraquis have to die before we decide that even the noblest of our goals is not worth the price?

It’s for the Iraquis themselves to create a democratic state, if such a thing is possible there. Meantime we’re killing our own children, too – our soldiers still lack enough body and vehicle armor to protect themselves. It’s a disgrace that we send young men and women into war without the equipment to save their lives. That’s the bloody price of tax cuts for the rich.

We already see the effects of this war at home – in how we reacted to Hurricane Katrina. There were no national guardsmen available to help out in that emergency. A country’s first obligation is to its citizens, and yet we have stretched our resources across the globe so that we cannot meet a crisis here at home.

As a party, we must go back to being the champion of the working class. It’s no secret that the country’s drift to the right has been accompanied by a gradual loss of ground by working people. As we have more and more become Republican light, they have abandoned us. We must go back to the traditional Democratic policy of giving workers and the poor a helping hand.

This means first and foremost supporting universal national health insurance. It is a disgrace that we are the only western democracy that doesn’t have such insurance. As the richest country in the world, we clearly have the means to have it. What we lack is the will. If I go to Washington, I will do everything in my power to see that national health insurance goes to the top of the agenda.

We must give education the same kind of priority that it had in the cold war. Right now, we’re going back to the old days, when good schools were the exclusive preserve of the sons and daughters of the rich. We can’t afford that. We need to insure that talented kids, rich or poor, white or black, have the best education. From the thirties to the eighties, this country made a magnificent commitment to higher education for those who had the ability. At one time, talented students went to top flight schools like CCNY and Brooklyn College for free. That generation was the backbone that got us through the second world war, and through the cold war. It was that generation that laid the technological foundation for the power of which we are justly proud.

But the right wing has undermined that commitment to education, with predictable results. They have cut back on state funding for education throughout the country. Tests show American students lagging behind their counterparts in Japan and Europe. And with the erosion of our lead in education has come the inevitable erosion in our technological supremacy.

We need to restore the cuts that have been made in education. We need to invest in the education of our children just as our forefathers did. We need to do this not merely because it is right, but because our security demands it. In the modern world, the country that falls behind in technology will very soon fall behind in power. In the post 9/11 world, this is something we dare not let happen.

In particular, we must commit ourselves to returning to science and reason as the guideposts for our policies. We must reject the Republican position that there is any contradiction between science and religion. There is not. Science has given us magnificent benefits. But it has done so at the risk that we will destroy ourselves. As we have accepted science’s benefits, so we must accept its warnings and its counsels. The thought that there people in power who, on religious grounds, disbelieve the warnings that science gives us, is a terrifying thought. Religion is a wonderful thing because it provides a moral compass and can give us wisdom. It must never be a substitute for thought, as it all too often has been in the Republican Party.

There are technologies available to us that offer real hope about actually doing something about global warming. There is a technology, already used by submarines and space capsules, that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air. There are technologies available that can signficantly reduce our dependence on the fossil fuels that cause global warming. But it takes money and commitment. We need a Manhattan Project to create the solutions to Global Warming. The threat posed by global warming is much worse than the threat posed by Iraq. We need a solution so that our children and grandchildren won’t drown in a second flood of biblical proportions.

Unfortunately, George Bush has three more years to lead as down the course to destruction that he has already started. Unfortunately, our Republican opponents long ago sold out the people of this country in the name of party loyalty. Only the Democratic party, with leaders who are unafraid to lead, can stand between our country and the ruin that must necessarily follow from following so bankrupt and ill-conceived a policy. But if we are to do that, we must unabashedly go back to the values have formed the backbone of our party during all the great moments of its existence, to the values of the decency, of constitutional rights, and most of all to the welfare of all the people. I assure you, my dear friends, that if I am elected to Congress, those values will have a voice that will not be silenced by either fear or the interests of the moment.

Nearly four out of five Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, believe civil war will break out in Iraq — the bloody hot spot upon which Bush has staked his presidency. Nearly 70 percent of people say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a 6-point jump since February.

"I'm not happy with how things are going," said Margaret Campanelli, a retiree in Norwich, Conn., who said she tends to vote GOP. "I'm particularly not happy with Iraq, not happy with how things worked with Hurricane Katrina."

Republican Party leaders said the survey explains why GOP lawmakers are rushing to distance themselves from Bush on a range of issues — port security, immigration, spending, warrantless eavesdropping and trade, for example.

The positioning is most intense among Republicans facing election in November and those considering 2008 presidential campaigns.

"You're in the position of this cycle now that is difficult anyway. In second term off-year elections, there gets to be a familiarity factor," said Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., a potential presidential candidate.

"People have seen and heard (Bush's) ideas long enough and that enters into their thinking. People are kind of, `Well, I wonder what other people can do,'" he said.

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

Bush's job approval among Republicans plummeted from 82 percent in February to 74 percent, a dangerous sign in a midterm election year when parties rely on enthusiasm from their most loyal voters. The biggest losses were among white males.

On issues, Bush's approval rating declined from 39 percent to 36 percent for his handling of domestic affairs and from 47 percent to 43 percent on foreign policy and terrorism. His approval ratings for dealing with the economy and Iraq held steady, but still hovered around 40 percent.

Personally, far fewer Americans consider Bush likable, honest, strong and dependable than they did just after his re-election campaign.

By comparison, Presidents Clinton and Reagan had public approval in the mid 60s at this stage of their second terms in office, while Eisenhower was close to 60 percent, according to Gallup polls. Nixon, who was increasingly tangled up in the Watergate scandal, was in the high 20s in early 1974.

The AP-Ipsos poll, which has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, gives Republicans reason to worry that they may inherit Bush's political woes. Two-thirds of the public disapproves of how the GOP-led Congress is handling its job and a surprising 53 percent of Republicans give Congress poor marks.

"Obviously, it's the winter of our discontent," said Rep. Tom Cole (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla.

By a 47-36 margin, people favor Democrats over Republicans when they are asked who should control Congress.

While the gap worries Republicans, Cole and others said it does not automatically translate into GOP defeats in November, when voters will face a choice between local candidates rather than considering Congress as a whole.

WASHINGTON, DC — Today the United States Senate is considering a bill that would have a serious and damaging impact on health coverage for women across the United States. The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA), introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) would allow insurance companies to ignore nearly all state laws that require insurance coverage for certain treatments or conditions, such as laws that require them to include contraceptives in their prescription plans.

"We need to move forward, not backward in expanding access to quality health care, including birth control," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards. "Congress should work to protect patients, not undermine them."

This federal legislation would raze hundreds of state laws that ensure patients can get the medical care they need and would

• allow women to designate their ob/gyns as primary care providers
  
• not allow women to seek care directly from their ob/gyns, but would force them to be screened by their primary care doctors first
  
• dismantle coverage for contraception
  
• dismantle coverage for annual cervical cancer exams
  
• not allow women to stay with the same doctor throughout a pregnancy, if that doctor was dropped from the insurance provider

For years, many insurance plans covered prescription drugs, but refused to cover birth control pills and other prescription contraceptives for women. In the past decade lawmakers in 23 states have remedied this inequity and enacted contraceptive coverage laws. Under HIMMAA women will lose contraceptive-equity protections currently guaranteed by state law

"States enacted protective laws to ensure that women receive the quality health care and fair treatment that they deserve," said Richards. "We can't allow the health care industry to steamroll over these protections. Congress needs to stand up for women's health and safety."

Earlier this week, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation banning most abortions, exempting only cases when the mother's life is in danger. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he will sign such a ban if it also excepts cases of rape and incest. Lawmakers in eight other states are considering similar steps.

Those state officials, like conservative activist groups, are emboldened by a rightward shift throughout the federal bench during the Bush administration. As a result, they show increasing willingness to test the staying power of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe decision, which placed abortion rights within the Constitution's privacy protections. Its reversal would clear the way for a state-by-state battle over whether, and under what circumstances, abortion could remain legal.

In Ohio, legislation has been introduced to ban all abortions without any exceptions. In Michigan, efforts are under way to get an abortion-ban ballot initiative before voters in November. In Missouri, the Senate is considering a ban on all abortions except to save the mother's life. Mississippi's House passed an abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the mother's life, and the measure is likely to pass the Senate.

MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where a Baptist church has taken a position on some social issue, gay marriage, something that's hot, where that would have aroused somebody?

ATF AGENT CAVANAUGH: I haven't seen that Chris, but it's very viable because we had an arson at a Unitarian church in rural Virginia, back in the summer, and it was right after the church at a national level had embraced gay members. There was an attack on this church in Staunton (?), Virginia, so things like that can happen.

MATTHEWS: That's why I'm thinking like that because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person, who's gay for example, would feel that they've been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don't know.

Three college students, including two aspiring actors known around campus as pranksters, were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine church fires across Alabama.

Federal agents said the defendants claimed the first few fires were set as “a joke” and the others were started to throw investigators off the track.

Gov. Bob Riley said the church arsons did not appear to be “any type of conspiracy against organized religion” or the Baptist faith.

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 7, 2006

Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to help the Federal Government coordinate a national effort to expand opportunities for faith-based and other community organizations and to strengthen their capacity to better meet America's social and community needs, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment of a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.

(a) The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall establish within the Department of Homeland Security (Department) a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (Center).

(b) The Center shall be supervised by a Director appointed by Secretary. The Secretary shall consult with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (WHOFBCI Director) prior to making such appointment.

(c) The Department shall provide the Center with appropriate staff, administrative support, and other resources to meet its responsibilities under this order.

(d) The Center shall begin operations no later than 45 days from the date of this order.

Sec. 2. Purpose of Center. The purpose of the Center shall be to coordinate agency efforts to eliminate regulatory, contracting, and other programmatic obstacles to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the provision of social and community services.

Sec. 3. Responsibilities of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In carrying out the purpose set forth in section 2 of this order, the Center shall:

(a) conduct, in coordination with the WHOFBCI Director, a department-wide audit to identify all existing barriers to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the delivery of social and community services by the Department, including but not limited to regulations, rules, orders, procure-ment, and other internal policies and practices, and outreach activities that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal programs;

(b) coordinate a comprehensive departmental effort to incorporate faith-based and other community organizations in Department programs and initiatives to the greatest extent possible;

(c) propose initiatives to remove barriers identified pursuant to section 3(a) of this order, including but not limited to reform of regulations, procurement, and other internal policies and practices, and outreach activities;

(d) propose the development of innovative pilot and demonstration programs to increase the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal as well as State and local initiatives; and

(e) develop and coordinate Departmental outreach efforts to disseminate information more effectively to faith-based and other community organizations with respect to programming changes, contracting opportunities, and other agency initiatives, including but not limited to Web and Internet resources.

[...]

Sec. 5. Responsibilities of the Secretary. The Secretary shall:

(a) designate an employee within the department to serve as the liaison and point of contact with the WHOFBCI Director; and

(b) cooperate with the WHOFBCI Director and provide such information, support, and assistance to the WHOFBCI Director as requested to implement this order.

Sec. 6. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented subject to the availability of appropriations and to the extent permitted by law.

(b) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

March 7, 2006

With nearly 88 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Delay had 19,684, or 61 percent of the vote, far ahead of his closest opponent, Tom Campbell, at 9,595, or 30 percent.

"I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me," Mr. DeLay said in proclaiming victory.

Mr. DeLay easily outpolled his three rivals together: Mr. Campbell, a lawyer making his first bid for public office; Pat Baig, a teacher also in her first run for office; and Mike Fjetland, a lawyer making his fourth try for the seat. Mr. Fjetland ran third with 1,514, votes, and and Baig had 1,075.

DP World officials suggested yesterday that within days, Peninsular & Oriental's operations will belong to them, no matter what Congress does.

Defying President Bush, House Republican leaders said Tuesday that they would take immediate steps to scuttle a deal giving a Dubai company control of some major seaport operations without awaiting the outcome of a 45-day review of potential security risks.

Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he would use a committee hearing on Wednesday to add a provision preventing the deal from moving forward.

Mr. Lewis said he would add the provision to an essential emergency spending measure that provides money for the war in Iraq and for Hurricane Katrina recovery. "It is my intention to lay the foundation to block the deal," he said.

"Our public is very concerned about a foreign country, in this case specifically a foreign country from the Middle East, having a major role in our ports," Mr. Lewis said.

The effort was endorsed by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who has rarely broken with Mr. Bush.

After a meeting of House Republican leaders, Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said, "We do not believe the United States should allow a government-owned company to operate American ports."

The House effort marked a remarkable public breach with the White House after years of working in tandem or quietly settling any differences behind closed doors. It demonstrated that the administration's effort to dampen opposition by negotiating a new security review and emphasizing Dubai's strategic value as an asset was failing.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said the administration would continue to work with Congress to try to resolve the matter, giving the company, DP World, the right to operate some shipping terminals at Eastern ports.

Well now I’m consumed by curiosity about how the wingers address this thorny issue so I cruise on over to the NRO to consult that self-professed Oracle of all things Right, K.J. Lopez, and I found an article by her on in vitro fertilization cleverly entitled Eggheads. It’s filled with the usual NRO “ooh, Science scary” tocsins, as well as a dig at working women (”The demand side of the market comes mostly from career-minded baby-boomers, the frontierswomen of feminism, who thought they could have it all”). But then she goes on to note that 15% of all mothers in this country get a little help on the fertility front from science, and since that probably includes no small number of Iowa fundies looking to increase the flock of the faithful, she stops short of casting Joe and Sally Christian who just want to breed, breed breed into the fiery ovens of eternal damnation if they happen to brew up a few extra embryos they never intend to use along the way. A strange omission.

Or maybe not. I surfed around to various anti-choice websites, trying to find out if there was any kind of consistent voice on this front, and it took me to a lot of dillies, but I found that most of them simply sidestepped the issue altogether. Some didn’t, several of the Catholic ones were vocally opposed to in vitro fertilization, and I tip my hat to them for the consistency of their argument. I can hardly claim to have made a comprehensive and exhaustive exploration of the subject, because, you know, I had to finish the rest of that Coke. But on the whole it seems to be a bit of a sticking point that the fundies would just rather not address.

But it does lead to this other question that nags at me. When John M. Opitz of the University of Utah testified before the President’s council on Bioethics in 2003, he noted that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman’s normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization, and that women never even know that conception has taken place.

(As a side note, at the same meeting, Harvard government professor Michael Sandel, also a member of the Bioethics council, noted that “If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined.” Although I enjoy Dr. Sandel’s sense of humor and appreciate the presence of a smartass on the Bioethics council, I really do, let’s just chalk this one up to “God’s will” for the moment and proceed with the question at hand.)

Now, I’m certain by most fundamentalist assessments that when I die, barring some sort of deathbed recant of the Lee Atwater variety, I am going to hell. (That last vote for John Kerry probably put me over the top.) But say by some fluke God has a soft spot for unrepentant preacher’s kids who are good to their dogs, and I wind up in heaven. Is 60 to 80 percent of the population going to be filled out with people who never made it past dome stage blastula? I mean — conversation is liable to be a bit thin, don’t you think? What can you really say beyond “congratulations on winning the big swim?”

"A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."

As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.

"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."

Since the elections last year, Cordesman says, more radical Islamist insurgents have made "a more dedicated strike at the fault lines between Shiites and Sunnis." And they have succeeded.

Here's what Mr. Bush said in India, when someone raised the question of the political backlash against outsourcing: "Losing jobs is painful, so let's make sure people are educated so they can find — fill the jobs of the 21st century. And let's make sure that there's pro-growth economic policies in place. What does that mean? That means low taxes; it means less regulation; it means fewer lawsuits; it means wise energy policy."

O.K., so you're a 50-year-old worker whose job has just been outsourced, and Mr. Bush tells you that you should go get a 21st-century education and rejoice in the joys of a lawsuit-free economy. Uh-huh.

Actually, Mr. Bush's remarks were even more off-key than they seem, coming during a visit to India. India's surge into world markets hasn't followed the pattern set by other developing nations, which started their export drive in low-tech industries like clothing. Instead, India has moved directly into industries that advanced countries like the United States thought were their exclusive turf. When Business Week put together a list of areas "where India has made an impact ... and where it's going next," that list consisted almost entirely of high-technology activities like software and chip design.

What this means is that American workers whose jobs are threatened by Indian competition are, in many cases, people who thought they already had acquired the skills to "fill the jobs of the 21st century" — but have just discovered that Indians, who are paid about a tenth as much, also have those skills.

Am I saying that we should try to stop outsourcing? No. But if you don't feel conflicted about the effects of globalization, if you don't worry about the many losers from the process, you aren't paying attention. And American workers deserve a better answer to their concerns than yet another assertion that a rising tide raises all boats, because that's manifestly untrue.

The fact is that we're living in a time when most Americans are seeing little if any benefit from overall income growth, because their share of the economic pie is falling. Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.

And those fortunate few are the only people Mr. Bush seems to care about. Look at what he had to offer after asserting, in effect, that workers get outsourced because they don't have the right education: lower taxes, deregulation and fewer lawsuits. Funny, that doesn't sound like "pro-growth" policy to me. Instead, it sounds like a wish list for wealthy individuals and big corporations.

For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.

The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the last decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends.

For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998, but fell after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.

[snip]

Yet the Times analysis of the states that enacted laws from 1995 to 2004 — most of which had low abortion rates to begin with — found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.

A separate analysis considered whether the existence or absence of a law could be used to predict whether abortions went up or down. It could not. The six states studied are in the South and West: Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. (A seventh state, Oklahoma, also passed a parental notification law in this period, but did not gather abortion data before 2000.)

But some workers and doctors at abortion clinics said that the laws had little connection with the real lives of most teenagers, and that they more often saw parents pressing their daughters to have abortions than trying to stop them. And many teenagers say they never considered hiding their pregnancies or abortion plans from their mothers.

[snip]

Abortion rates have been dropping nationwide since the mid-1980's, most precipitously for teenagers. But in three states — Arizona, Idaho and Tennessee — the percentage of pregnant minors who had abortions rose slightly after the consent laws went into effect.
[snip]

Of the remaining decline in teenage abortion rates in the Times study, Dr. Joyce said that some of it might be attributed to minors going out of state for abortions. The health departments in these states do not track data on such abortions, but in three previous studies of states where such data were available, completed before 1991, two found that any drop in minors' abortions was matched by an increase in minors getting abortions out of state.

[snip]

"I see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one," said Jane Bovard, owner of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, N.D., a state where a minor needs consent from both parents. "As a parent myself, I can understand. But I say to parents, 'You force her to have this abortion, and I can tell you that within the next six months she's going to be pregnant again.' "

Renee Chelian, director of Northland Family Planning Centers in the Detroit area, said she had had to call the police on parents who wanted their daughters to have abortions, "because they threaten physical violence on the kids."

Ms. Chelian added that the laws might have unseen effects, including driving some teenagers to try to abort their pregnancies on their own.

"Kids talk among themselves," she said. "When we tell them they need to go to court or tell their parents, that's when they tell us there's a Web site" for chemicals or herbal remedies that claims to induce abortions.

I don't care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board, the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash's" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

So for people who were discomfited by "Brokeback Mountain" but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, "Crash" provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Brokeback" had to offer. And that's exactly what they did.

"Brokeback," it is worth noting, was in some ways the tamest of the discomforting films available to Oscar voters in various categories. Steven Spielberg's "Munich"; the Palestinian Territories' "Paradise Now," one of the best foreign language nominees; and the documentary nominee "Darwin's Nightmare" offered scenarios that truly shook up people's normal ways of seeing the world. None of them won a thing.

Hollywood, of course, is under no obligation to be a progressive force in the world. It is in the business of entertainment, in the business of making the most dollars it can. Yes, on Oscar night, it likes to pat itself on the back for the good it does in the world, but as Sunday night's ceremony proved, it is easier to congratulate yourself for a job well done in the past than actually do that job in the present.

Birth control prevents God’s work
By Kristin Knight
Special to The Star

Karin McAdams, in response to Laura Scott’s column on family planning, poses an honest question about “what objections, perhaps biblical, perhaps otherwise” people have for discouraging artificial means of birth control (Letters 2/15).
Although many Christians may point to the Genesis account of Onan and many Catholics may point to papal encyclicals, most notably Humane Vitae, the whole biblical tradition reveals that God has intended for sex to be a marriage act that is open to, or at least not deliberately closed off to, the transmission of life.

By using contraception, you prevent God’s creative power in bringing forth new life. Sex is a complete self-giving love you pledge to your spouse within marriage, and contraception destroys the unitive and procreative qualities of sex. Pleasure is not the purpose of sex — it’s the motive or consequence.
Our culture has now put pleasure at the center of everything, and we speak of human sexuality in such animalistic ways — as though we can’t control ourselves, waiting for marriage, waiting for stable economic circumstances, waiting to have sex until we are ready to be open to life.

Self-control or temperance is a Christian virtue, and by practicing modern, effective methods of natural family planning by having periodic abstinence, you can postpone pregnancy if necessary in a healthy, inexpensive, fulfilling way as you embrace chastity appropriate for your stage in life.

As for McAdams’ concern that it’s so “expensive” and “difficult” to raise a child today as opposed to former generations of women with more children than today’s modern moms, I think again that pleasure — and its good ally, materialism — is at the heart of this notion. Our society in general promotes two-income households with more stuff in them than prior generations ever dreamed of having.

The concept of sacrifice has been replaced with stuff, stuff and more stuff as our children are raised in day-care centers and our elderly are shuttled off to nursing homes. Our value for life at both ends of the spectrum has diminished in our society, where life is measured by its contribution, not its intrinsic worth, and where some work so hard to safeguard methods to prevent pregnancies while never accepting that we have the controls already to prevent pregnancies naturally through abstinence and chastity.