Along with all the questionable ties and golfing underwear, health advocates in recent years have used the annual focus on Dad around Father's Day to raise awareness of the ills of man.

But the results of a new national survey on public awareness of prostate cancer reveal some cross-gender knowledge gaps.

The prostate gland is exclusive to the male reproductive system. Still, the telephone survey of 1,572 adults done for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Gillette Prostate Cancer Challenge found that 36 percent of male respondents and 32 percent of female respondents believed that women were also at risk of developing prostate cancer.

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

[snip]

Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”

The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.

Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by “provisional” ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, “Caging.xls.” Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

A check of the demographics of the addresses on the “caging lists,” as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.

Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: “The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this - these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.”

These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first exposed the wrongful purge of African-American “felon” voters in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights of those voters — 94,000 were targeted — likely caused Al Gore’s defeat in that race.

[snip]

The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having “bad addresses” subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.

The apparent challenge campaign was not inexpensive. The GOP mailed the letters first class, at a total cost likely exceeding millions of dollars, so that the addresses would be returned to “cage” workers.

[snip]

While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. However, Tucker Fletcher asserted Republicans could still employ the list to deny ballots to those they considered suspect voters. When asked if Republicans would use the list to block voters, Tucker Fletcher replied, “Where it’s stated in the law, yeah.”

It is not possible at this time to determine how many on the potential blacklist were ultimately challenged and lost their vote. Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a challenge.

The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans' right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers must "knock and announce" themselves before entering a private home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law. But President Bush's two recent Supreme Court appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.

This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.

The case arose out of the search of Booker T. Hudson's home in Detroit in 1998. The police announced themselves but did not knock, and after waiting a few seconds, entered his home and seized drugs and a gun. There is no dispute that the search violated the knock-and-announce rule.

The question in the case was what to do about it. Mr. Hudson wanted the evidence excluded at his trial. That is precisely what should have happened. Since 1914, the Supreme Court has held that, except in rare circumstances, evidence seized in violation of the Constitution cannot be used. The exclusionary rule has sometimes been criticized for allowing criminals to go free just because of police error. But as the court itself recognized in that 1914 case, if this type of evidence were admissible, the Fourth Amendment "might as well be stricken."

The court ruled yesterday that the evidence could be used against Mr. Hudson. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, argued that even if police officers did not have to fear losing a case if they disobeyed the knock-and-announce rule, the subjects of improper searches could still bring civil lawsuits to challenge them. But as the dissenters rightly pointed out, there is little chance that such suits would keep the police in line. Justice Scalia was also far too dismissive of the important privacy rights at stake, which he essentially reduced to "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes." Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent that even a century ago the court recognized that when the police barge into a house unannounced, it is an assault on "the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."

Chicago gay rights activists are concerned about what may have been a hate crime in the Lakeview neighborhood.

The Chicago Public Library says that about 100 books were destroyed after someone set a fire in the section for gay and lesbian literature.

It happened Tuesday about noon at the John Merlo branch of the public library in the 600 block of West Belmont.

Newsradio 780 is told that someone is believed to have set fire to books with a cigarette lighter and that about 90 gay and lesbian books were destroyed, and that about 10 books destroyed in the African American literature section.

Police say they are investigating but are not calling it a hate crime investigation at this point.

Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

MR. SNOW: It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something.

TED STEVENS COMPARES TERRRORISTS TO AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS: “I really believe we ought to try to find some way to encourage that country to demonstrate to those people who have been opposed to what we're trying to do, that it's worthwhile for them and their children to come forward and support this democracy. And if that's amnesty, I'm for it. I'd be for it. And if those people who are, come forward… if they bore arms against our people, what's the difference between those people that bore arms against the Union in the War between the States? What’s the difference between the Germans and Japanese and all the people we’ve forgiven?” – Sen. Ted Stevens

MCCONNELL SUGGESTED A RESOLUTION COMMENDING IRAQIS FOR GIVING TERRORISTS AMNESTY. “…might it not just be as useful an exercise to be trying to pass a resolution commending the Iraqi government for the position that they’ve taken today with regard to this discussion of Amnesty?” – Sen. Mitch McConnell

ALEXANDER COMPARED IRAQI AMNESTY FOR TERRORISTS TO NELSON MANDELA’S PEACE EFFORTS. “Is it not true that Nelson Mandela's courage and his ability to create a process of reconciliation and forgiveness was a major factor in what has been a political miracle in Africa…Did not Nelson Mandela, win a - the co-winner of - a noble Nobel Peace Prize just for this sort of gesture?” – Sen. Lamar Alexander

CORNYN: IRAQI AMNESTY DEBATE IS “A DISTRACTION.” “It makes no sense for the United States Senate to shake its finger at the new government of Iraq and to criticize them… it really is a distraction from the debate that I think the American people would want us to have.” - Sen. John Cornyn

CHAMBLISS: AMNESTY IS OK FOR EX-INSURGENTS AS LONG AS THEY ARE ON OUR SIDE NOW. “Is it not true today that we have Iraqis who are fighting the war against the insurgents, who at one time fought against American troops and other coalition troops as they were marching to Baghdad, who have now come over to our side and are doing one heck of a job of fighting along, side by side, with Americans and coalition forces, attacking and killing insurgents on a daily basis?” - Sen. Saxby Chambliss

My bitterness and laughter were occasioned by the description of certain of those "huge treasure" of documents that have miraculously turned up just in time to boost Bush's sagging political fortunes:

A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a "huge treasure" of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The document, purporting to reflect al-Qaida policy and its cooperation with groups loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, also appear to show that the insurgency in Iraq was weakening.

The al-Qaida in Iraq document was translated and released by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaida.

...

The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants' financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks.

"Generally speaking and despite the gloomy present situation, we find that the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups," the document said, as quoted by al-Maliki's office.

According to the summary, insurgents were being weakened by operations against them and by their failure to attract recruits. To give new impetus to the insurgency, they would have to change tactics, it added.

"We mean specifically attempting to escalate the tension between America and Iran, and America and the Shiite in Iraq," it quoted the documents as saying, especially among moderate followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq.

"Creating disputes between America and them could hinder the U.S. cooperation with them, and subsequently weaken this kind of alliance between Shiites and the Americans," it said, adding that "the best solution is to get America involved in a war against another country and this would bring benefits."

They included "opening a new front" for the U.S. military and releasing some of the "pressure exerted on the resistance."

This is a joke, right? Normally, I wouldn't believe anything that comes from the U.S. government or U.S. military, or from the Iraqi National Security Adviser (which is about the same thing). The Bush administration started its endless campaign of misrepresentations, distortions and lies on the afternoon of 9/11, and it's never stopped. At this point, no one has grounds to lend credence to a single word they utter on any subject -- and that is especially true in connection with matters of war and national security.

But in this case, I can believe that this branch of the insurgency in Iraq sought to increase tensions between the U.S. and Iran, simply because it's entirely ludicrous to present this as "proof" of some dastardly, evil plan hatched by our enemies. Why do I say it's ludicrous? The answer is very simple: because this is the same exact strategy and goal embraced by the Bush administration itself.

This would hardly be the first time that the strategies of our own government and of our enemies were entirely congruent. Take a look at this entry, which excerpts an article by Peter Bergen. Consider just these two paragraphs from Bergen's piece:

In more than a dozen interviews, experts both within and outside the U.S. government laid out a stark analysis of how the war has hampered the campaign against Al Qaeda. Not only, they point out, did the war divert resources and attention away from Afghanistan, seriously damaging the prospects of capturing Al Qaeda leaders, but it has also opened a new front for terrorists in Iraq and created a new justification for attacking Westerners around the world. Perhaps most important, it has dramatically speeded up the process by which Al Qaeda the organization has morphed into a broad-based ideological movement -- a shift, in effect, from bin Laden to bin Ladenism. "If Osama believed in Christmas, this is what he'd want under his Christmas tree," one senior intelligence official told me. Another counterterrorism official suggests that Iraq might begin to resemble "Afghanistan 1996," a reference to the year that bin Laden seized on Afghanistan, a chaotic failed state, as his new base of operations.

What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure that bin Laden has long predicted was the United States' long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a "defensive" jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terrorism.

For the same reasons, if we were to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran, it would be the equivalent of a thousand Christmases rolled into one -- for all the terrorists and all our enemies across the globe. And if we engaged in the aggressive use of nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise, you can probably say farewell to civilization as we now know it. Large-scale destruction might arrive overnight, or more slowly over the course of several years. But such destruction would be averted only by a miracle.

Despite these facts -- which are widely acknowledged by all those actually concerned with facts, as opposed to those who are driven by a True Believer ideology, with its Utopian delusions of refashioning the entire world in our own image -- the administration hardly needs help from anyone else "to escalate the tension between America and Iran." That is precisely what Bush, Cheney, Rice, Bolton and all the rest of the warmongers have been attempting to do for many months now. See this essay, where I discuss how the alleged danger from a nuclear Iran was first portrayed as being a decade in the future, a period of time that has been steadily reduced to a few years, and then to a few months. I also discuss how even many liberals swallow this propaganda, almost in its entirety. Now Bush has reduced the time horizon to a matter of weeks, just as he did in the runup to the Iraq invasion.

See this more recent essay, too: Morality, Humanity and Civilization: "All that remains...is memories." And with profound regret, simply because they may be the only potential obstacle between where we are now and Armageddon, I have to note that almost all the prominent Democrats are no better than the Bush administration on the question of Iran and, hard as it is to believe, some of them are even worse. I'll be discussing that in more detail; for a preview, you might want to read this entry about Mark Warner's ignorant and dangerous recent comments. For instance: "When he spoke about the biggest threats we face in the WMD proliferation arena, he named Iran..." Remember that all the best estimates conclude that Iran will not have even one nuclear weapon for a minimum of five to ten years (assuming that is, in fact, their goal). I'm sure the Bush administration is deeply grateful for Warner's diligent efforts to help them start the next war -- or, more accurately, the next chapter in the same war.

The benefits of Iran-hysteria to the Bush administration are obvious. Of greatest importance is the fact that, to the extent the administration can once again create an atmosphere of danger and even panic, it serves to distract attention from the calamitous consequences of their past and present actions. Interestingly, much of the American public doesn't seem to be buying the Iran propaganda -- at least, not yet. And I would find the public's infinitely more sensible and accurate assessment of the danger a cause for hope, except for the fact that the administration doesn't give a damn what the public thinks in that sense. Moreover, our criminally incompetent media have learned next to nothing from their numerous errors during the propaganda onslaught about Iraq, and they still unthinkingly parrot administration talking points. So when the administration decides to ratchet up the Iran propaganda, the media will transmit and amplify the lies just as they did before.

And when the hysteria reaches a certain point -- with cries of "appeasement" and "cowardice" targeted at all those who even question the government line, causing most of the administration's opponents (and almost all Washington Democrats) to slink away in fear and shut up -- the public may well finally go grudgingly along. If there are no significant public voices to protest the administration's insanity, exactly who or what is the public going to rally around in opposition, even if they were so inclined?

All in all, it is quite a spectacle: we are supposed to be horrified at the depths of evil revealed by the insurgents' plans "to escalate the tension between America and Iran" -- when that is precisely what our own government is and has been doing with absolute consistency. And at this point, and after the record of the last several years and the constantly repeated lies from the administration on every imaginable subject, I trust no one will be heard to say: "Oh, but they would never do that! How can you even think that the administration would launch an attack on Iran, when that might be the start of a global nuclear conflict that would destroy life on a scale never seen before?"

If you had even the glimmer of such a thought, I have but a single response: You cannot be serious.

The electronic Diebold voting systems used in the special run-off election last week for California's 50th U.S. House district were effectively 'decertified' and invalidated for use in the election after massive security breaches in the storage of those systems were sanctioned by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, The BRAD BLOG can now conclude.

Based on the review of several different very specific state and federal requirements, laws and provisions, the unsecured overnight storage of Diebold voting machines and their memory cards in poll workers houses, cars and garages in the days and weeks prior to the closely watched election between Republican Brian Bilbray and Democrat Francine Busby violated several federal and state provisions which, if not followed, would revoke the certification of use for the voting systems in any California election.

In the wake of discussions yesterday with SD County Registrar Mikel Haas, who admitted to The BRAD BLOG that storage in poll workers' cars could not be considered secure, it has now become clear that several violations of certified provisions of use for Diebold voting machines — which have been found and confirmed in the past several months to be highly tamperable by dozens of methods and by the company's own admissions — occurred in last week's race.

When it was discovered last December, after a security examination of Diebold optical scan systems in Leon County, FL, that both op-scan and touch-screen systems made by Diebold could be hacked via their memory cards — due to the presence of so-called "interpreted code" which is banned by federal voting systems standards — both federal and California officials instituted new security requirements concerning their use in elections. The violation of those requirements, as has clearly occurred in the CA-50 race, would effectively nullify their certification for use in the state of California.

Adding fuel to the concerns of the incredibly cavalier statements about the security issues related to this matter by Registrar Haas (read on below) is the fact that just last week, two different elections in an Iowa Republican primary revealed that the popular incumbents — who had both apparently "lost" their races after paper ballots were optically-scanned — had in fact won their races after a subsequent manual hand-count revealed the scanners were programmed incorrectly. Those revelations, along with the details of CA-50 that we have been reporting here, have led non-partisan election watchdog organization VoteTrustUSA to join us in demanding that SD County prove their reported results are accurate by carrying out a full manual hand-count of all paper ballots and "paper trails" in the race.

The National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED) the national body responsible for qualifying voting systems for use on the federal level, issued a warning about the severe tamperability of memory cards back on March 22nd, 2006, after the issue came to light during the December Leon County tests which revealed that exploitation of this vulnerability could be used to flip an election on a Diebold optical scan system. If exploited, the tampering would not be visible to vote tabulation witnesses and no trace of the hack would be left behind save for counting the paper ballots themselves for accuracy.

In another examination by computer security professionals in Emery County, Utah in March, it was discovered that Diebold's touch-screen systems could have their entire election software, operating system and even computer firmware ("BIOS") overwritten in less than two minutes time — no password necessary — should a sing malicious user have unfettered phyiscal access to the system. Such access could then affect every voting machine used across the entire county.

The result of all of this would be that if there had been malicious tampering with these voting systems, no amount of observations of the tabulation would reveal the tampering that had occured inside the machines. Unfortunately, candidate Francine Busby's own statement in regard to this matter, seems to reveal that she is wholly unaware of the incidiousness and invisibility of the points in question here and, as we'll show, the fact that the voting machines, as used in her own election, were in clear violation of the law.

As a blood sample taken at a crime scene and then stored in someone's garage for a week before delivery to the crime lab would be considered "contaminated" on its face — even if there had been no actual tampering to the sample — so must the world's most easily-hackable voting machines be considered as contaminated when such a massive breach of security in the chain of custody has taken place such as sending machines home, unprotected, with poll workers.

It is as incredible to me as it is to you that, after only a few days as an elected member of this committee, I should be rising to make this speech, but our party is facing a genuine emergency. As we all know, Joseph Ferriero has made our party a laughingstock. He has made Bergen County into the ultimate playground for pay-to-play – a sort of Six Flags where big money and puppet politicians swap favors. There is a wrong way to do politics, and it consists of selling off our state to companies seeking pay-to-play contracts, and using the campaign contributions you get to bury all opposition and bully the legislature. We have a political party in the United States for people who want to do these things. It’s called the Republican Party. There is a right way to do politics, and it’s the way that my group won our County Committee seats in Fair Lawn – by Xeroxing simple handouts, distributing them by volunteers, and going door-to-door to talk to our neighbors. We don’t need to sell off New Jersey to buy political office for ourselves, and only lazy cowards will tell you otherwise. The more we sell of New Jersey, the less of New Jersey is left for our children. We need to stop sacrificing our children for the sake of our politicians. We need to start sacrificing certain politicians for the sake of our children. I see a Bergen County Democratic Party that is the guardian of green space and recreational areas for our children. I see a Democratic Party that considers the quality of life for our communities, and not just the potential profit for developers. I see a Democratic Party that leads the fight against pay-to-play and protects every possible penny of the taxpayers’ money.

The convention held a number of surprises. As he passed out his campaign statement to incoming committee members, Gulack was personally confronted with statements by Ferriero supporters that appeared to threaten him with physical violence. “Don’t badmouth the Chairman,” one Ferriero supporter repeatedly warned Gulack. “It’s bad luck to badmouth the Chairman.”

Inside the convention, Gulack had been promised, in a May 26, 2006 letter from Chairman Ferriero, that all candidates would be given three minutes to speak. On the morning of the convention, Gulack confirmed on the telephone with Ms. Jackie Grillo, the Bergen County Democratic Organization Executive Director, that, following the nomination process, Gulack would have his three minutes. However, when the nomination process was completed, Gulack was told he would not be allowed to speak. When he mounted the podium anyway, explaining that he had been promised three minutes, Ferriero’s supporters drowned out the speaker with noise and denied him the opportunity to be heard. Chairman Ferriero took no action to bring the convention to order. Fortunately, because Gulack had arrived with hundreds of copies of his speech, he was able to distribute them by hand.

More than 11,000 coalition troops were preparing Wednesday for their biggest offensive since the fall of the Taliban five years ago with an attack on militants responsible for a deadly upsurge in violence across southern Afghanistan.

The push starting Thursday by U.S., British, Canadian and Afghan troops aims to squeeze Taliban fighters in four volatile provinces. It will focus on southern Uruzgan and northeastern Helmand, where the military says most of the forces are massed.

The offensive, called Operation Mountain Thrust, comes amid Afghan and coalition efforts to curb the fiercest Taliban-led violence since the hard-line Islamic government was toppled for harboring Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attacks.

"This is not just about killing or capturing extremists," U.S. spokesman Col. Tom Collins told reporters in Kabul on Wednesday as he announced the operation.

Congress is considering pre-empting laws in 17 states that allow anyone to freeze their own credit and instead restricting the privilege to ID theft victims.
The proposed Financial Data Protection Act of 2006, expected to be voted on by the House as soon as next week, comes on the heels of the recent theft of sensitive data for 26 million veterans and active duty military personnel. If it becomes law, vets and military personnel who live in states that permit unrestricted credit freezes would lose that option.

A credit freeze cuts off access to your credit history. Since most banks and merchants insist on seeing a credit report before issuing credit, identity thieves can't open bogus accounts using ill-gotten data. Under the bill, backed by the financial services industry, simply having your data lost or stolen isn't enough. You must file a police report describing a specific instance of it being used to commit a crime.

"It's like telling someone you can't put a deadbolt on your front door until after you've been burglarized," says Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna.

Rep. Steven LaTourette, R.-Ohio, the bill's co-author, says credit freezes must be held in check to keep the financial system from unraveling. "Even the simplest process of buying groceries with your credit or debit card will break down if we allow a patchwork of competing and conflicting state laws," he says. Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times, and other critics counter that the bill abolishes the rights of citizens who live in states that permit anyone to request a credit freeze. "It's a nightmare bill for consumers," Hendricks says.

The bill also would pre-empt laws in 29 states requiring companies, institutions and agencies to notify individuals about security breaches compromising their data. It sets national criteria for data protection and breach disclosures, and puts banking and Treasury officials in charge of compliance.

"I do not think it is a smart strategy, either, for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government...Nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interests.

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.

In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."

Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he would not comment on Mr. Rove's status.

For months Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation appeared to threaten Mr. Rove's standing as Mr. Bush's closest political adviser as the prosecutor riveted his focus on whether Mr. Rove tried to intentionally conceal a conversation he had with a Time magazine reporter in the week before the name of intelligence officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, became public.

The decision not to pursue any charges removes a potential political stumbling block for a White House that is heading into a long and difficult election season for Republicans in Congress.

Mr. Fitzgerald's decision should help the White House in what has been an unsuccessful effort to put the leak case behind it. Still ahead, however, is the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., on charges for perjury and obstruction of justice, and the prospect that Mr. Cheney could be called to testify in that case.

WITH an approval rating of 63%, one Bush is riding high in the polls. But his first name is Jeb and he will be out of office by January. Republicans who think he is too good a politician to waste are hoping to persuade the governor of Florida to become Senator John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election.
President George W Bush’s younger brother is keeping busy during his final months in power after running one of America’s most critical swing states for nearly eight years. Next month he is travelling to Britain and Ireland for nine days on behalf of “Team Florida”, visiting Farnborough air show and promoting local business links.



British officials believe it is an unusually long stay for an outgoing governor, which suggests he has a wider agenda. In April he visited Afghanistan and Iraq, an essential trip for presidential hopefuls.

“If only his last name was Smith,” sighed Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard, the right-wing political magazine. “He’d be the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.”

In The Family, a book about the Bush dynasty, Kitty Kelley recounts how in 1998, George W and Jeb, then both governors, were asked about the presidency. “Listen, I didn’t want to grow up wanting to be president of the United States,” said George W.

“I did,” said Jeb.

“Yeah,” George W replied. “You did.”

There was more than a touch of sibling rivalry. Jeb was regarded as more gifted and able than George W, the black sheep, who drank too much. But the younger Bush, now 53 and 6ft 4in tall, has had to shelve his White House ambitions, at least temporarily, on the grounds that America has had its fill of Bushes (their father, George H Bush was the 41st president). “He knows he has to wait it out,” said Barnes.

Bush remains popular because of his record in creating jobs, cutting taxes and holding down spending, his support for family values — despite daughter Noelle’s experience of drug addiction — and promotion of educational reform. George W said twice last month Jeb would make “a great president”, prompting him to rule it out.

That still leaves a vacancy for what for many Republicans would be a dream ticket: McCain-Bush in 2008, with Jeb Bush making up for McCain’s more prickly relationship with traditional conservatives.

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has done little to improve views of how things are going for the U.S. in Iraq or boost President Bush's approval ratings, a CBS News poll finds.

Mr. Bush has been cautious in his response to Zarqawi's killing by U.S. troops this week, calling it "a major blow to al Qaeda" but warning that it won't end the war "and it's certainly not going to end the violence."

Americans agree. Half think the level of violence in Iraq will be unchanged by Zarqawi's death, while 30 percent say it will actually lead to more attacks against U.S. forces. Just 16 percent think the number of attacks will decrease as a result of his death.

Sixty-one percent also say Zarqawi's death won't have any impact on the terrorist threat against the United States, while 22 percent it will increase that threat. Thirteen percent predict a decreased risk of terrorism.

[snip]

Zarqawi's killing hasn't helped President Bush with the public, either. His overall job approval rating remains just 33 percent — down slightly from 35 percent last month — while 60 percent disapprove.

For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.

He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes's presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.

But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.

Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state's history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.

In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn't know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats' phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.

"A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people," he said. "I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody."

President Bush's two-day strategy session starting Monday at Camp David is intended to revive highly tangible efforts to shore up Iraq's new government, from getting the electricity back on in Baghdad to purging the security forces of revenge-seeking militias, White House officials said.

Billions of dollars have been spent on both electricity and security, yet residents of Baghdad get only five to eight hours of power a day, and the American ambassador acknowledged on Friday that the city is "more insecure now than it was a few months ago."

One of the senior officials involved in the strategy session characterized it as a "last, best chance to get this right," an implicit acknowledgment that previous American-led efforts had gone astray.