In his most detailed comments to date on the Supreme Court's rejection of his decision to put detainees on trial before military commissions, President Bush said Friday that the court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"It didn't say we couldn't have done — couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made."

Mr. Bush's remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration's policies in the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and violated international law.

The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantánamo Bay to house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try detainees for war crimes.

Mr. Bush has said since the ruling that he will work with Congress to figure out how to use military commissions to try detainees, a promise he repeated on Friday in Chicago.

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they're suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from "state-sponsored religion."

The behavior of the Indian River School District board's behavior suggests the families' fears are hardly groundless.

The district spreads over a considerable portion of southeast Delaware. The families' complaint, filed in federal court in February 2005, alleges that the district had created an "environment of religious exclusion" and unconstitutional state-sponsored religion.

Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for "our heavenly Father's" guidance for the graduates with:

I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name.
In addition to the ruined graduation experience, the Dobrich-Doe lawsuit alleges that:

• The district's "custom and practice of school-sponsored prayer" frequently imposed ... on impressionable non-Christian students," violating their constitutional rights.
  
• The district ignored the Supreme Court's 1992 Lee decision limiting prayer at graduation ceremonies -- even after a district employee complained about the prayer at her child's 2003 graduation..
  
• District teachers and staff led Bible clubs at several schools. Club members got to go to the head of the lunch line.
  
• While Bible clubs were widely available, student book clubs were rare and often canceled by the district.
  
• When Jane Doe complained that her non-Christian son "Jordan Doe" was left alone when his classmates when to Bible club meetings, district staff insisted that Jordan should attend the club regardless of his religion.
  
• The district schools attended by Jordan and his sister "Jamie Doe" distributed Bibles to students in 2003, giving them time off from class to pick up the books.
  Prayer --often sectarian -- is a routine part of district sports programs and social events
  
• One of the district's middle schools gave students the choice of attending a special Bible Club if they did not want to attend the lesson on evolution.
  
• A middle school teacher told students there was only "one true religion" and gave them pamphlets for his surfing ministry.
  
• Samantha Dobrich's honors English teacher frequently discussed Christianity, but no other religion.
  
• Students frequently made mandatory appearances at district board meetings -- where they were a captive audience for board members' prayers to Jesus.

A Schaumburg company allegedly fired a woman, and one employee is accused of calling her a "devil worshipper" after she disclosed she practiced Wicca -- a pagan religion viewed by some as witchcraft.

Now, the woman is suing.

Rebecca Sommers said the company fired her in 2004, citing poor job performance. She had worked with the firm since 2002.

But Sommers insists in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that Crawford & Company Inc. fired her because supervisors there didn't like her religion.

Crawford is a Georgia-based insurance adjusting firm with an office in Schaumburg. Representatives there could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Sommers, an accounts analyst, said when she requested a day off for a Wiccan holiday, she was told by a manager to keep her religion "to herself." She said another supervisor who knew she practiced Wicca called her a devil worshipper in front of other employees.

Sommers said that before revealing her religion she received a favorable review and a bonus. But after her supervisors knew about Wicca, she started getting warnings and told she wasn't returning customer calls fast enough.

Is it possible that Bush himself brainstormed with Rove about the latest “Terrorist Aspirational Scare”?

The first “reports” coming from the Rovian propaganda machine claimed that a vague group of suspected terrorists were planning to flood lower Manhattan by blowing up the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels.

There was just one major problem with this latest “scare them into voting Republican for a third time” tactic: it defied the laws of gravity and basic physics.

You see, Manhattan is ABOVE sea level. A body of water, such as the Hudson River, won’t rise UP without a rather sophisticated plumbing system. In short, bombing the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels could not possibly, according to the law of physics, flood lower Manhattan and “ruin the American economy by destroying Wall Street.”

There might be some basement flooding, but that’s about it.

It’s an idea so contrary to reality and the laws of physics that only Bush himself could have come up with it.

Some first media reports even dutifully noted that government sources told them that the alleged “aspirational” terrorists got their idea of blowing up the tunnels from the Katrina disaster and the flooding of New Orleans. This is a sure sign that the idea came from the man who completely bungled Hurricane Katrina: George W. Bush. Only Bush could fail to realize that New Orleans is situated BELOW sea level, while Manhattan is ABOVE sea level.

How else do you explain the second-in-a-row crack-head scheme (after the Miami clown posse “plot”) that is so ludicrous, it couldn’t make it past peer review in a class of idiots?

By mid-day, Rove must have realized that he had made a big mistake going with Bush’s “brainstorm” contribution to the third cycle of resurrecting the al-Qaeda bogeyman. (Even though, in a horribly cynical move that shows its true hand, the Bush Administration had the CIA close down its unit hunting Osama bin Laden. That’s the reality side. On the propaganda side, they planted a recent story that Osama was reconsolidating his power over al-Qaeda, a story clearly aimed at instilling fear in the American public. After all, if the CIA isn’t hunting him anymore and Bush says that he’s not important, how could he becoming an increasing threat? You can’t have it both ways in the real world, unless you are a demagogue.)

Because by the afternoon, we were hearing that really the alleged “aspirational” target was something more vague, like flooding the New York Subway system, which no doubt would send shivers of terror through Manhattanites because of all the rats that would hit the streets.

When asked to speculate on why houses are getting bigger and bigger, Fergerson and her dining companions at Bobby Van's, a classic, old Bridgehampton restaurant, throw out dozens of ideas. Real estate agent Barbara Bornstein says land is so expensive, builders have no choice: They have to build big houses to make a profit.

"You know, we are very tenuous," says local architect Ann Surchin. "No one knows when the next 9/11 will happen. And these houses represent safety -- and the bigger the house, the bigger the fortress."

Town planning-board member Jacqui Lofaro says that people who work in cities see bigger homes as a source of peace of mind.

"If you have people coming out from the city, where they are bombarded by people, the tendency is to isolate themselves," Lofaro says. "Their house is their community. It is not the community's community, it is their community."

Way Beyond Keeping Up with the Joneses

Robert Frank, a professor of management and economics at Cornell University, says the growth of big houses is not really about greed. It's all about context.

If you live in a village in Africa, even a modest American house seems huge. But in the United States, there are now millions of people with lots of money, and their wealth shifts the frame of reference for those just below them.

So let's say you want to find the best school district for your child, but the houses there are huge and expensive. You might take fewer vacations, endure a much longer commute, save less. But you don't forgo the bigger house, because it means a better neighborhood and a better education. This is a deeper phenomenon, Frank says, than keeping up with the Joneses.

"This is about what we feel we need as a function of the context in which we live," he says. "We know that when everyone stands up, no one gets a better view. We know there are all sorts of situations where individual choices that are perfectly rational add up to a total outcome that none of us likes very much. This is one of those."

In yet another bizarre twist to the Enron saga, the sudden death of Kenneth L. Lay on Wednesday may have spared his survivors financial ruin. Mr. Lay's death effectively voids the guilty verdict against him, temporarily thwarting the federal government's efforts to seize his remaining real estate and financial assets, legal experts say.

"The death of Mr. Lay in all likelihood will render the government's hard-fought victory null," said Christopher Bebel, a former federal prosecutor based here who specializes in securities fraud.

But while the death of Mr. Lay may have limited government efforts in his criminal case, he remains the subject of civil lawsuits by the Securities and Exchange Commission and former investors and Enron employees. Those lawsuits could still proceed, with the aim of taking control of some of Mr. Lay's remaining assets.

[snip]

The government's forfeiture effort ahead of the planned sentencing of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling this fall, however, has been thrown into doubt, at least in relation to Mr. Lay's assets since the death of a criminal defendant before his sentencing and the appeal process may void the criminal case against him.

"Technically, he was found guilty, but that's extinguished as of today," said Joel M. Androphy, a prominent defense lawyer in Houston.

A person involved in the government's action against Mr. Lay, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case, said that Mr. Lay's death did not necessarily rule out proceeding with forfeiture actions, explaining, "The family at the end of the day cannot sit on the fruits of the fraud." But, this person said: "Even if the verdict is nullified, he paid for his actions with his life. That is more tragic."

The civil lawsuits against Mr. Lay may continue with efforts to seize his remaining assets, but even those moves may be complicated by his death since technically there was no conviction of Mr. Lay in the criminal case to rely upon as proof.

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's interview.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so.

[snip]

One senior government official familiar with the discussions between Bush and Cheney -- but who does not have firsthand knowledge of Bush's interview with prosecutors -- said that Bush told the vice president to "Get it out," or "Let's get this out," regarding information that administration officials believed would rebut Wilson's allegations and would discredit him.

A person with direct knowledge of Bush's interview refused to confirm that Bush used those words, but said that the first official's account was generally consistent with what Bush had told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Publicly, Bush has consistently portrayed himself as not only uninvolved with the leak of Plame's identity, but utterly in the dark about it -- and determined to punish any wrongdoers.

But Waas's story suggests that Bush was directly responsible for the sequence of events that resulted in that leak.

As it turns out, there were two major byproducts of Bush's charge to Cheney to counter Wilson's ultimately substantiated charge that the White House had misrepresented intelligence in the runup to war in Iraq: Cheney's top aide, Scooter Libby, distributed highly classified but nevertheless disproved and inaccurate information to reporters; and Libby and White House political guru Karl Rove outed Plame in a specious attempt to suggest that Wilson's trip was a junket arranged by his wife.

Fitzgerald's grand jury has charged Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame case. Among other things, Libby told investigators he had first heard of Plame's CIA job from reporters when his own notes showed he had learned about it from Cheney.

Waas has previously reported that prosecutors suspect Libby may have lied to cover up for Cheney. This new report raises the possibility that Libby lied to cover up for Bush, too.

But even if that's not the case, it certainly seems clear by now that Bush knows a lot more about this case -- and his White House's enthusiasm for discrediting its opponents -- than he's let on in public.

Isn't it about time Bush stopped pretending ignorance about this story -- and came clean on his own role? Why should that information only be shared with criminal prosecutors?

Is it approved White House procedure to distribute misinformation? Is it okay to out a covert CIA operative? If it's not okay was he disappointed in how top deputies like Cheney and Rove -- both still very much at work at the White House -- carried out his orders?

Mexico endured a new cycle of suspense on Wednesday as the authorities tabulated their final official count of votes from Sunday's disputed presidential election, in which preliminary results separated the candidates by less than one percent.

With tallies taken from about 93 percent of the polling places, the electoral authorities reported that the count had tilted toward the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had 36 percent of the vote, while the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, had 35 percent.

But with a race this close, elections officials said they would not announce a winner until all the tally sheets had been counted. As the night wore on, Mr. López Obrador's lead steadily narrowed as tallies arrived from the northwestern states that voted heavily in favor of Mr. Calderón. Even some of Mr. Lopez Obrador's advisers acknowledged privately that they were not confident their candidate's lead would hold.

The final tally, usually little more than a formality, turned into another cliffhanger of a moment in the most competitive presidential race in Mexican history. As the count ticked along on newspaper Web sites into the night, the president of the electoral institute said he would announce the final results as soon as he had them, no matter the hour.

Leaders of the Calderón campaign were huddled at their party headquarters. Officials from Mr. López Obrador's campaign remained at the electoral institute, making clear they would not recognize the results until there was a vote-by-vote recount.

The expectation among election observers was that any result would again be challenged, this time in an electoral court.

Security was increased around the presidential palace and the electoral institute, where authorities expected protests if the final results did not go in Mr. López Obrador's favor.

Still, for most of the day the official tallies indicated a shift from the preliminary count, which had shown Mr. Calderón in the lead from the beginning, and had ended giving him a feather-thin margin, 0.6 percent.

The official count began amid a volatile political storm kicked up Tuesday by the announcement by federal electoral authorities that some three million votes went untabulated in the preliminary count; by demands from Mr. López Obrador for a vote-by-vote recount; and by objections to those demands from the government.

Mr. Calderón, backed by big business and President Vicente Fox, appeared before the news media to repeat his claims of victory. Mr. López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City who has the support of the poor, held his own news conference to restate his case that the election had been rigged.

He said his campaign had uncovered irregularities at tens of thousands of polling places. Among them, he said, there were polls where the numbers of votes exceeded either the numbers of registered voters or the numbers of ballots. He said that in some cases votes from a single polling place had been tabulated several times.

Mexico's conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon appeared headed for a razor-thin victory on Thursday although his leftist rival could fight the result with legal challenges and street protests.

Calderon had 35.62 percent support with results in from 97.84 percent of polling stations, just 0.05 points ahead of anti-poverty campaigner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a tense vote recount, the Federal Electoral Institute said.

Lopez Obrador had led the recount from the start but Calderon caught up and overtook him in the early hours of Thursday as late returns came in from northern and western Mexico, his conservative strongholds.

Sorry, Nicky, human nature-
Nothing I can do!
It's...
Schadenfreude!
Making me feel glad that I'm not you.

George Bush is upset, distraught, that North Korea has fired a missile that could reach Alaska — carrying a nuclear warhead.? Well, Mr. President, you have only yourself to blame.

In case you can’t recall, your intelligence chiefs ordered US agents to curb their investigation of A.Q. Khan, head of Pakistan’s bomb-building program.? There was mounting evidence Khan was selling his nuclear and missile material technology to Libya and North Korea.
The reason for the spike order, the “back off” directive, was that the investigators had tracked the source of funds for Mr. Khans flea market in fissile material to Saudi Arabia.? Apparently, Team Bush did not want to make the Saudi’s uncomfortable by exposing their payments to Khan.

We reported this on BBC in November 2001, based on informants within the top levels of our intelligence agencies, men unhappy with politicians who would have them avert their gaze.

Americans did not undertake a revolution against the reign of King George III to create a government that would spy on its citizens, torture enemy combatants, detain suspects without charges for extended stretches on an island beyond reach of U.S. law, invade foreign countries without just cause and attempt to edit not only the press -- but laws that have been duly crafted and approved by our elected representatives in Congress.

This nation is veering too far from the course of its Founding Fathers. Two hundred-thirty years ago, the Declaration of Independence reproofed that a government's power is "derived from the consent of the governed." Those words ring true today.

If Americans are ceding too many freedoms under the guise of a war on terrorism -- which, by its nature, may never officially end -- it is because their absence of outrage is taken as a nod of assent.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not doing so to commission an annual party. They were making a covenant with history that requires day-to-day vigilance to defend the liberties it asserted. Honor them by speaking out.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes [My note: like presidential blowjobs]; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[snip]

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

[snip]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

[snip]

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

... so far there is no evidence that the banking story harmed national security, and I'm sure that editors of this newspaper, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal weighed their responsibilities seriously, for they have repeatedly held back information when necessary. In contrast, the press-bashers have much less credibility.

Take Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Roberts has criticized The Times, but he himself is responsible for an egregious disclosure of classified intelligence. As National Journal reported in April, it was Senator Roberts who stated as the Iraq war began that the U.S. had "human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein."

That statement horrified some in our intelligence community by revealing that we had an agent close to Saddam.

No responsible newspaper would risk an agent's life so blithely. And The Times would never have been as cavalier about Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as the White House was. The fact is, journalists regularly hold back information for national security reasons; I recently withheld information at the request of the intelligence community about secret terrorist communications.

More broadly, the one thing worse than a press that is "out of control" is one that is under control. Anybody who has lived in a Communist country knows that. Just consider what would happen if the news media as a whole were as docile to the administration as Fox News or The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.

[snip]

So be very wary of Mr. Bush's effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.

On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.

This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their troubling assessment on classified information, but the analysts still puzzled over exactly why bin-Laden wanted Bush to stay in office.

According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. …

“Their [the CIA’s] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.

“At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.’”

McLaughlin’s comment drew nods from CIA officers at the table. Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, suggested that the al-Qaeda founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt threatened by the rise in Iraq of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; bin-Laden might have thought his leadership would be diminished if Bush lost the White House and their “eye-to-eye struggle” ended.

But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have recognized how Bush’s policies – including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the endless bloodshed in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.

“Certainly,” the CIA’s Miscik said, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,” according to Suskind’s account of the meeting.

As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts drifted into silence, troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. “An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched,” Suskind wrote.

One immediate consequence of bin-Laden breaking nearly a year of silence to issue the videotape the weekend before the U.S. presidential election was to give the Bush campaign a much needed boost. From a virtual dead heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, according to one poll.

Al-Qaida leaders sold out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden, the slain militant's wife claimed in an interview with an Italian newspaper.

The woman, identified by La Repubblica as al-Zarqawi's first wife, said al-Qaida's top leadership reached a deal with U.S. intelligence because al-Zarqawi had become too powerful. She claimed Sunni tribes and Jordanian secret services mediated the deal.

Al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, died June 7 in a U.S. airstrike outside Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

"My husband has been sold to the Americans," the woman said in an interview published Sunday. "He had become too powerful, too troublesome."

She was identified only as "Um Mohammed," which means "mother of Mohammed" and would be a nickname, not her full name. The Rome-based newspaper said the interview was conducted in Geneva and described her as Jordanian and about 40 years old.

In Jordan, Al-Zarqawi's eldest brother, Sayel, said the family had not been aware of the woman's whereabouts for about two years.

"I think a secret pact was struck whose immediate goal was his death," she told the newspaper. "In return, the American troops promised to ease, at least momentarily, their hunt for bin Laden."

And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Their names are varied: Team Condi. Rice for America. The Draft Rice movement. Condistas.

But this disparate group of Internet gurus, politics junkies and Hillary haters shares a common goal: Elect Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice president in 2008.

[snip]

Similar Web sites from Seattle to West Sand Lake, N.Y., from Magna, Utah, to Cedarville, Ohio, have cropped up, touting Rice's credentials, marketing T-shirts, bobblehead dolls and "I Like Rice" buttons, and soliciting donations.

The Miami-based Americans for Dr. Rice political action committee has gone further, establishing state-level chapters in key political battleground states, including Ohio and Florida, and putting state chairs in place around the country. A second PAC, Rice for America, emerged in Greensboro, N.C., in July - though neither has yet reported any income or spending to the Federal Election Commission.

[snip]

"Nothing happens by chance in politics. Absolutely zero," said Bruce Newman, a DePaul University professor and expert in political marketing. "Everything is driven by marketing, by polling, by market research, and by very careful analysis of voters' preferences."

Newman, author of "The Marketing of the President: Political Marketing as Campaign Strategy," said the emergence of a grass-roots movement surrounding Rice will allow voters to feel they played a role in her candidacy - though he believes she is clearly being groomed as the political successor to Bush in light of Vice President Dick Cheney's health problems and unpopularity.

"The people running the Bush administration, and pushing for the geopolitical repositioning we're seeing take place around the world, would be happy to see that kind of person keep political power down the road," he said.

Backers like Rice for her intelligence, poise, self-reliance (she would also be America's first single president), values, and ability to carry on Bush's international agenda.

Steve, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking. (Condoleeza Rice, press briefing, May 16, 2002)

We're going to seek a peaceful solution to this. We think that one is possible [CBS, 10/20/02].

We all want very much to see this resolved in a peaceful way. [Briefing, 11/21/02].

We are still in a diplomatic phase here. [ABC, 3/9/03]

“We're going to seek a peaceful solution to this. We think that one is possible” [CBS, 10/20/02]. Then in November of 2002, she said, “We all want very much to see this resolved in a peaceful way” [Briefing, 11/21/02]. In March of 2003, she claimed “we are still in a diplomatic phase here” [ABC, 3/9/03]

- North Korea will respond to a pre-emptive U.S. military attack with an "annihilating strike and a nuclear war," the state-run media said Monday, heightening its antagonistic rhetoric.

The Korean Central News Agency, citing an unidentified Rodong Sinmun newspaper "analyst," accused the United States of increasing military pressure on the isolated communist state.

The North Korean threat of retaliation, which is often voiced by its state-controlled media, comes amid U.S. official reports that Pyongyang has shown signs of preparing for a test of a long-range missile.

"The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent," the report said. DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The report accused Washington of escalating military pressure on the country with war exercises, a massive arms buildup and aerial espionage by basing new spy planes in South Korea.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

MS. MITCHELL: Let me, let me show you a Wall Street Journal editorial--a very unusual editorial--that was in the paper on Friday. It said that "The problem with The New York Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that The Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it." John, I don't want to really put you on the spot here, but I am. Your paper's news columns also ran this story, and here you have this editorial. It really is a really sharp conflict.

MR. HARWOOD: Couple of points on that. First of all, that editorial wasn't kidding when they said there's a separation between the news and the editorial pages at The Wall Street Journal.

MS. MITCHELL: That's for sure.

MR. SAFIRE: Same with us.

MR. HARWOOD: Secondly, there is a very large gap between the ideological outlook and philosophy of The New York Times editorial page and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is not a large ideological gap between the news staffs of those two places, and why would there be? Some of the top people of The New York Times were hired from The Wall Street Journal. What I found shocking about the editorial was the assertion that The New York Times did not act in good faith in making that judgment. I don't know anybody on the news staff of The Wall Street Journal that believes that. I certainly don't. (Emphasis mine.)