Edwardian swimsuits for women, circa 1910	"WholesomeWear" swimsuit for women, 2006

The makers of WholesomeWear swimsuits would like women to cover up their tummies. And their backs. And their arms. And half their legs. The Oregon company, based outside Portland, sells a collection of swimwear online that consists of a wet suit topped by a dress. The spandex underpinning is not sufficient on its own because bystanders would still be able to make out the curves of the woman's body. The nylon overdress takes care of any audacious display of an hourglass shape.

The collection is not aimed at practitioners of any specific religion. There is no obvious mention of spirituality, God, Allah or Joseph Smith on the company's Web site.

[snip]

WholesomeWear is going into its fifth year and, according to Ferguson, has sold thousands of swimsuits in three styles: culotte, skirted and "slimming," which looks like a loose-fitting housedress. There is an option with the slimming suit to extend the sleeves below the elbows and to lower the hem so it ends just above the ankles. A woman would be swimming in something akin to a choir robe. "These are designed to highlight the face and not the body," Ferguson says. That may be true, but a woman is more than just a disembodied head. Why be fearful of the rest of her?

The company may not be preaching to a specific denomination, but it is nonetheless preaching. Ferguson describes her family as "Christian people who love the Lord." And the swimsuits are "a ministry."

Bush later toured the 700-year-old St. Nicholas Church, where he put Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the spot.

Rice, who once trained to be a concert pianist, admired an enormous 165-year-old organ with pipes that filled one end of the sanctuary.

Bush noticed, and saw an opening, too. He turned to the tour guide, Pastor Hans Peter Neumann.

"This is Condoleezza Rice," he said. "She wants to play the organ."

But the secretary made no music.

That came later when the party was met in Trinwillershagen by a band dressed in red jackets that played American songs.

Clearly in a playful mood, Bush took the band leader's baton and conducted a few bars. Then he sneaked behind a female flutist and poked her on the shoulder, giving her a start.

President Bush had more on his mind than Iran's nuclear program, Middle East tensions and Russian press freedoms during a visit to Germany Thursday.

He kept mentioning a wild boar, slaughtered and roasted according to local tradition, that he planned to share at a dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her home constituency at a Baltic resort.

"I'm looking forward to the feast you're going to have tonight. I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig," Bush told Merkel at the outset of their joint news conference in Stralsund, north of Berlin.

A few minutes later -- after discussing Iran, the Middle East, the merits of press freedoms in Russia and progress on the Doha round of free trade talks -- Bush returned to the boar.

"Thank you for having me," he told Merkel. "Looking forward to that pig tonight."

Bush answered a few more questions before wandering back to the boar for a third time.

"I haven't seen that pig yet," Bush said out of the blue. Merkel laughed and said she had seen television pictures of the boar and could verify it was dead, adding she hoped it was on the spit and ready in time for dinner.

Near the end of the 30-minute briefing, Bush fielded a question about the Middle East with his fourth pig rejoinder.

"I thought you were going to ask about the pig," he told a reporter, who then said he was indeed curious about that too.

"The pig?" Bush said. "I'll tell you tomorrow after I eat it."

"I and my former colleagues trusted the government to protect us in our jobs."

On June 27, following a news item about President Bush's denunciation of the Times story on financial tracking of suspected terrorists via the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications ) bank consortium, Morgan sputtered, "Get 'em! Yes, hang 'em! Yeah!"

Two days later, her sidekick Rodgers became exasperated with the Associated Press for reporting that antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and others had begun a hunger strike. "Why don't you dopes at the Associated Press do the world a favor? Commit mass suicide!"

"Oh, Lee!" tittered Morgan.

The hilarity continued on June 30 when Morgan clarified her position. For the sake of listeners who wondered why she kept calling for prosecution of the New York Times but not of the other newspapers that had published stories on the SWIFT tracking, she explained that they're all traitors in her mind.

"I'm going to say this one more time," she barked peevishly. "Yes, we're picking on the New York Times, the poor defenseless New York Times. But I don't care if it was the New York Times or the L.A. Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. All of you people are equally guilty of treasonous behavior!"

By then Rodgers had gotten plenty fed up with all the criticism of his co-host, and he issued an ominous warning. "God Almighty," he muttered. "The day will come ... The day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals. It's going to be amusing to watch, it's going to be very amusing to watch." Morgan cackled as if on cue, "Heh heh heh."

[snip]

Then she and her crew came up with a new position regarding what should happen to those journalists whom she deems traitors. Not what should happen, actually, but how it should happen.

"I really do believe that anybody who publishes classified information that results in a charge of treason should be fried! Fry 'em! Trial, conviction, death penalty!"

At that point one of her co-hosts cheerfully interjects, "You originally called for the gas chamber ... but we kind of like Ole Sparky," meaning the electric chair. To shrieks of laughter from Morgan, he launched into a gruesome description of execution by electrocution: "Their hair would go up and everything, smoke, electrical jets shooting out of their eyeballs ... We'd take Bill Keller, put him in the electric chair -- after a trial -- and then fire it up." He then launched into a series of oral sound effects -- buzzing, screeching, hissing and blubbering sounds meant to simulate the high-voltage end of the Times editor.

Police and environmental workers responded to The New York Times offices today after an employee in the postal services department opened a letter addressed to the newspaper and saw a powdery substance he believed to be suspicious, the police said.

The incident unfolded at about 12:35 p.m. on the eighth floor of the newspaper’s West 43rd Street offices as the mailroom worker opened the white, business-sized envelope with no return address and saw what he later described as a white powder, the police said.

The letter had a postmark from Philadelphia, the police said, and contained an editorial published by The New York Times on June 28 titled “Patriotism and the Press,” with a red “X” written across it, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Browne said the substance had yet to be identified but that it was later deemed to be beige in color, not white.

Shortly before 5 p.m. an announcement was made over the Times public address system saying that the powder had been found to be “nonthreatening and nonhazardous.” According to field tests conducted by the Department of Environmental Protection, the substance was preliminarily identified as corn starch, though further analysis will be done at the city Health Department’s laboratory, as the protocol requires.

Valerie Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, filed suit on Thursday against Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Cheney’s former top aide and the senior presidential adviser Karl Rove, charging they had conspired to violate their constitutional rights.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court, accused Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove and the former Cheney aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., of conspiring to destroy Ms. Wilson’s career by leaking her identity as an undercover C.I.A. operative to the press. It says the three men had conspired to punish Mr. Wilson for his public assertions that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The civil lawsuit, which does not specify any amount of damages being sought, is the latest chapter in a complicated legal and political story that began when Valerie Plame, Ms. Wilson’s unmarried name, first appeared publicly in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

As a longtime friend of the F---- family, I am obligated to tell you that your written words could not be further from the truth about T-- F----. You don't know T--, his family, or his life story, so please do not be disrespectful and presumptuous by placing this tragedy in a neat and tidy box for the sake of punctuating your view points. He was a simple, down to earth man of no pretense. No designer clothes, no fancy cars, no luxury lifestyle to allude to. His shore house was purchase for $150,000 hard earned dollars many years ago and had only been on the market for 2 weeks. Hardly enough time to conclude a "soft market" was doomed to ruin him. He understood his business was at the end of it's cycle and had been involved in plans to change careers. He was street smart and came from no money. He was not afraid nor ashamed to downsize. Many close to this family belive foul play will be found somewhere in the crime scene. Some one else must have been in the house that morning and caused this horrible event. This was not the result of a man who "snapped" over finances.

LEAHY: The president has said very specifically, and he’s said it to our European allies, he’s waiting for the Supreme Court decision to tell him whether or not he was supposed to close Guantanamo or not. After, he said it upheld his position on Guantanamo, and in fact it said neither. Where did he get that impression? The President’s not a lawyer, you are, the Justice Department advised him. Did you give him such a cockamamie idea or what?

BRADBURY: Well, I try not to give anybody cockamamie ideas.

LEAHY: Well, where’d he get the idea?

BRADBURY: The Hamdan decision, senator, does implicitly recognize we’re in a war, that the President’s war powers were triggered by the attacks on the country, and that law of war paradigm applies. That’s what the whole case —

LEAHY: I don’t think the President was talking about the nuances of the law of war paradigm, he was saying this was going to tell him that he could keep Guantanamo open or not, after it said he could.

BRADBURY: Well, it’s not —

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRABURY: It’s under the law of war –

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRADBURY: The President is always right.

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”

Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets.

“Seems like someone has gone overboard,” said Larry Buss, who helps organize the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill. “Their time could be spent better doing other things, like providing security for the country.”

New York, for example, lists only 2 percent of the nation’s banking and finance sector assets, which ranks it between North Dakota and Missouri. Washington State lists nearly twice as many national monuments and icons as the District of Columbia.

Montana, one of the least populous states in the nation, turned up with far more assets than big-population states including Massachusetts, North Carolina and New Jersey.

The inspector general questions whether many of the sites listed in whole categories — like the 1,305 casinos, 163 water parks, 159 cruise ships, 244 jails, 3,773 malls, 718 mortuaries and 571 nursing homes — should even be included in the tally.

But the report also notes that the list “may have too few assets in essential areas.” It apparently does not include many major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs.

The department does not release the list of 77,069 sites, but the report said that as of January it included 17,327 commercial properties like office buildings, malls and shopping centers, 12,019 government facilities, 8,402 public health buildings, 7,889 power plants and 2,963 sites with chemical or hazardous materials.

George W. Foresman, the department’s under secretary for preparedness, said the audit misunderstood the purpose of the database, as it was an inventory or catalog of national assets, not a prioritized list of the most critical sites.The database is just one of many sources consulted in deciding antiterrorism grants.

The inspector general recommends that the department review the list and determine which of the “extremely insignificant” assets that have been included should remain and provide better guidance to states on what to submit in the future.

Mr. Agen, the Homeland Security Department spokesman, said that he agreed that his agency should provide better directions for the states and that it would do so in the future.

One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name.

“I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.”

But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: “Maybe because popcorn explodes?”

In getting ready for the big National Press Club event tomorrow to discuss the politics of “free” trade – and Washington’s refusal to back off selling out Americans – I came across this positively shocking piece in the Wall Street Journal. The broad strokes are simple: the Bush administration and both parties in Congress are considering signing a "free" trade pact with South Korea that would cover a special project in North Korea that allows Big Money interests to exploit the enslaved people there.

This proposed deal goes beyond the other awful trade deals that we've watched the Bush administration and Congress consider recently - it goes beyond the job-destroying Central American Free Trade Agreement and even beyond the proposed trade pact with Malaysia, a country that prohibits a minimum wage. This trade pact "would be the U.S.'s largest pact since the North American Free Trade Agreement passed Congress more than a decade ago." The Journal story, of course, is filled with hedging. No one wants to come out and say this is what the trade negotiations are all about, or that they really want this North Korea piece - even though its obvious Big Money is salivating for it. What they want is the issue to go back into the background and get quietly passed without anyone noticing. They would rather the public ignore the effort to validate the "joint-venture Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea" that "combines South Korean capital with North Korean labor" (read: combines multinational corporate cash with exploitable slaves). By the time the complex is in full operation in 2012, "it could employ more than 750,000 North Koreans" – again, North Koreans who are literally enslaved and barred from leaving their prison.

Geopolitically, this is like the Dubai Ports controversy on steroids. During that controversy, the Bush administration ignored its own military officials’ warnings and tried to allow a foreign government to purchase our critical infrastructure – effectively going on record as saying our international trade policy prioritizes profits over national security. Now, we have a U.S. administration publicly considering economically rewarding a country that is test firing missiles, developing nuclear weapons, and threatening our allies - rewarding this global threat with a trade pact that validates that aggressor’s enslavement of its population.

But even beyond the geopolitical implications are the implications for American workers – and workers all over the globe. Even considering this atrocious pact lays bare what our government sees our "free" trade as: a vehicle for driving wages, workplace standards, environmental protections and standards of living into the ground in order to pad Big Money's bottom line. Such a deal would force the world’s workers to compete with slave labor. It would rewarding a dictator like Kim Jong Il in that it would create a premium for corporations to exploit his enslaved population. The fact that this is even being talked about as a legitimate consideration inside our governemnt tells you everything you need to know about the hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests.

In my new book Hostile Takeover, I referred to North Korea as an extreme example to illustrate where our “free” trade policy really is going. Here is the excerpt:

"It begs the simple question: where does it all end? When Americans’ wages rose, during the early and mid-twentieth century, 'free' trade deals like NAFTA, the China pact and CAFTA forced us to choose either lower wages or the elimination of our jobs. As Latin Americans’ wages rise, their jobs are now getting shipped off to China. If Chinese wages eventually rise because workers there start demanding a better life, where’s next? Will we suddenly see a 'free' trade agreement with North Korea – a country whose dictator has quite literally enslaved his population? Forget about 'low-wage' labor – Big Business would have access to 'no-wage' labor. Are our politicians going to suddenly start telling us that’s a good thing that America’s trade policy should encourage and reward? If you think this is hyperbole, remember: Corporate America has admitted this downward spiral is precisely its goal. As GE CEO Jack Welch has said, Big Business's objective is 'ideally [to] have every plant you own on a barge.' Exactly – with U.S. government trade policy encouraging that barge to move away from whatever country’s workers demand better wages."

Sadly, the North Korea example seems not that far off from reality. Undoubtedly, Big Money interests will trot out politicians from both parties to once again tell us this is all good for American workers, even as wages continue to stagnate, pensions get cut, and health care benefits eliminated. We see the outlines of the upcoming propaganda campaign already, as the Journal says a "business coalition including U.S. auto makers, financial-services firms and drug manufacturers sees important market-access gains to be had." The term "market-access" as we have seen over the last decade of "free" trade, is a euphemism for job outsourcing, and downward wage/benefit pressure at home as Americans are forced to compete with oppressed workers.

Similarly, pundits like Tom Friedman and David Brooks will likely travel to the Four Seasons in Seoul, look out their window at a breakfast with a couple of American CEOs and then tell us that those who want this trade policy reformed are crazy, that rewarding dictators who oppress their people is a utopian dream - and then blurt out a nonsequitur that "the world is flat" (whatever the hell that nonsensical term actually means).

Clearly, though, it is the bought off, the dishonest and the immoral who would continue justifying a trade policy that deliberately eliminates all wage, workplace, environmental and human rights protections. It is these elitists who would sit by while our government openly debates whether to reward a country like North Korea for its horrific treatment of its people.

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, whose campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor has been clouded by questions over his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is promoting himself as the candidate with "stronger values."

An investigation by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Senate committee last month found that two Indian tribes, which were both Abramoff clients, sent $5.3 million to Reed, sometimes using non-profits as intermediaries, to battle gambling initiatives that would have hurt their business.

Reed has not been charged with a crime and has said repeatedly that he regrets the work he did with Abramoff. His campaign said the committee's two-year probe vindicated Reed and confirms he has not been accused of wrongdoing. At a recent debate, Reed reprimanded Cagle for implying he should be charged.

"It's a low blow to suggest that somebody's committed a crime. As far as I'm concerned, you should be ashamed of yourself," he said, adding that voters will reject a "guilt by association" strategy.

MR. McCLELLAN: The President expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized to do such a thing...If someone leaked classified information of the nature that has been reported, absolutely, the President would want it to be looked into. And the Justice Department would be the appropriate agency to do so.

[SNIP]

Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, "The President knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove --

Q But how does --

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into conversations that the President has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature; that's not my practice.

Q But the President has a factual basis for knowing that Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: I said it publicly. I said that --

Q But I'm not asking what you said, I'm asking if the President has a factual basis for saying -- for your statement that he knows Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: He's aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it.

[snip]

MR. McCLELLAN: He's making it clear that this is a serious -- through his spokesman, me -- that this is a serious matter, and if someone did this, it should be looked into and it should be pursued to the fullest extent.

[snip]

MR. McCLELLAN: Wait a second, I made it very clear that if something like this happened, the President believes the Department of Justice should look into it and pursue it to the fullest extent. Leaking classified information, particularly of this nature, is a very serious matter.

[snip]

The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

Columnist Robert Novak said publicly for the first time Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove was a source for his story outing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

In a column, Novak also says his recollection of his conversation with Rove differs from what the Rove camp has said.

"I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection," Novak wrote. Novak did not elaborate.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has frequently said he won't run for president in 2008, but he's never ruled out being a running mate.

And he didn't Monday when asked about teaming up with Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"I like Sen. McCain. I think he's a good guy," Bush told reporters after returning from a holiday in Maine with his family.

Bush, 53, would provide some age balance on such a ticket. McCain turns 70 next month.

When prodded about the likelihood of a McCain-Bush ticket, Bush hedged just slightly.
"There's all sorts of time to worry about the 2008 election," he said. Bush is prohibited from seeking a third consecutive term as governor by Florida law.

The rape of an 11-year-old girl may have involved as many as 10 men, most of whom are football players at local community colleges, police said.

Police arrested two men in connection with the rape Saturday night, and officials said they identified eight others as persons of interest in the case. Most or all are students at either Fresno City College or Reedley College, police said.

The victim, a runaway from a group home, went to a Fresno apartment complex Saturday night to visit an acquaintance, said police spokesman Jeff Cardinale.

While she was inside one of the units, she allegedly was sexually assaulted multiple times by several men, he said.

The girl then fled the apartment and sought help from a couple on the street who called police, Cardinale said.

Once again, another Iranian woman has been sentenced to death by the barbaric practice of public stoning. On June 28, 2006, a court in the northwestern Iranian city of Urmia sentenced Malak Ghorbany to death for committing "adultery." Under Iran's Penal Code, the term "adultery" is used to describe any intimate or sexual act between a man and a girl/woman who are not married. The crime of adultery is also used in cases where a girl is deemed to have committed "acts incompatible with chastity," which includes instances of rape. The punishment for "adultery" is death.

On the day of her punishment, the woman's hands are tied behind her back as she becomes covered from head to toe in winding sheets and is placed seated in a pit. The pit is then filled up to her chest with dirt and the dirt is tamped down. At that point, members of the community are invited to murder her by hurling rocks at her. However, to ensure that the condemned woman/girl receives the absolute maximum amount of pain and torture, the Iranian government has even mandated the size of the stones that are to be used in this barbaric act of public execution. By law, the stones must not be too small as to prevent ultimate death, nor must they be too large that they could cause the girl's death "too soon."

Days after former private Steven Green was charged as a civilian in a U.S. court with rape and four murders, four serving soldiers were charged with the same offences, the U.S. military said in statement. It did not name the troops.

Another soldier, apparently a sixth member of Green's former unit in the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged on Saturday with dereliction of duty for not reporting the crime in March.

All five were charged with conspiring with Green, accused by U.S. prosecutors of going with three others to a house near the checkpoint they were manning outside Mahmudiya, near Baghdad, and of killing a couple and their two daughters. The five could face the death penalty.

Court documents described the raped daughter as an "adult female" and estimated her age as 25. U.S. military officials in Iraq say their documents have her as 20. Local officials and relatives had said she was 15 or 16.

Her identity card and a copy of her death certificate obtained by Reuters, however, show she was 14.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was born on August 19, 1991 in Baghdad, according to the identity card, provided to Reuters by a relative. Issued in 1993, it features a photograph of her at 18 months, wide-eyed and with a lick of dark hair over her brow.

A copy of her death certificate, dated March 13, gives the same birth date. She was found at home by a relative on March 12 and had died from "gunshot wounds to the head, with burns", said the document, signed by doctor Wael Habib and a registrar.

No independent verification of the documents was immediately available.

The age of consent with parental approval in Iraq is 15, though it is not uncommon for girls to marry younger in rural areas.

Abeer's sister Hadeel was aged six when she died of "several gunshot wounds".

SCORCH MARKS AND BLOODSTAINS

The killers tried to burn the bodies and house to cover their tracks, relatives and local officials have said. Scorch marks and bloodstains can still be seen in the one-storey home.

Some relatives have said they would not object to exhuming the dead for forensic tests, a religiously sensitive process.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, balancing a dependence on U.S. firepower with a need to show Iraqis he is in charge, has voiced frustration with a mounting number of cases against Americans and wants a review of their immunity from Iraqi law.

Since revelations in March of a U.S. probe into whether Marines killed 24 people at Haditha, Mahmudiya is the fifth case of serious crime being investigated by the U.S. military. In all, 16 soldiers have been charged with murder in the past month or so -- as many as in the previous three years of fighting.

[snip]



"She was a beautiful girl," one relative said, asking not to be named. "She complained to her mother about trouble from American soldiers. She gave them no encouragement as we are a conservative and respectable family."

Two car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, officials said, as sectarian tensions rose following a rampage by Shiite gunmen killed 41 people, most of them Sunnis.

The violence began when a car parked near a repair shop on the edge of the Shiite slum of Sadr City blew up, followed within minutes by a suicide car bomber who drove into the crowd that had gathered near the site.

Hospital officials said at least eight people were killed and 41 wounded in the blast. AP Television News footage showed the devastated repair shop with a crumpled roof and the blackened hulks of cars on the street outside.

A roadside bomb also struck a police patrol near a restaurant elsewhere in eastern Baghdad, wounding three policemen, police Lt. Ahmed Qassim said.

And a bomb exploded in the Shurja market in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 18, police Col. Adnan al-Obeidi said.

In Kirkuk, a suicide truck bomb struck an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties in Iraq, killing five people and wounding 12 others, police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said.

A police patrol in the predominantly Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, also hit a roadside bomb, leaving one policeman dead and four wounded, army Capt. Hassim al-Khafaji said.

'A dangerous precipice'

The streets in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad were calm on Monday after the deadly rampage the day before by Shiite gunmen, who dragged Sunnis from their cars, picked them out on the street and killed them.

Police said 41 people were killed, although there were conflicting figures. An official in the prime minister's office, Haidar Majid, said only nine people died in Jihad, while police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun insisted the figure of 41 was correct, with 24 bodies taken to Yarmouk hospital and 17 to the city morgue.

Some Sunni clerics put the death toll at more than 50 in Jihad, a once prosperous neighborhood of handsome villas owned by officials of Saddam Hussein's security services.

Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of a dangerous precipice."

We occasionally are able to pop in with great success, like Zarqawi or 12 million people voting. But increasing electricity in Baghdad is not the kind of thing that tends to get on the news, or small business formation is not the kind of thing to get -- or new schools or new hospitals, the infrastructure being rebuilt that had been torn apart. And I'm not being critical. I'm just giving you a fact of something I have to deal with in order to make it clear to the American people that the sacrifice of those families is worth it. We are winning. And a free Iraq is an essential part of changing the conditions which causes the terrorists to be able to recruit killers in the first place.

FP: The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad recently sent a cable to Washington detailing the dangerous situation under which its Iraqi employees work. Is the situation in the Green Zone as bad as the cable made it out to be?

RN: Yes, it is that bad. [The cable] didn’t come as a surprise to me, except that somebody in the embassy was courageous enough to outline the hardships in very frank detail, and the ambassador was honest enough to put his name to it. It is exactly what our own Iraqi staff has gone through for years now. As early as 2003, the Iraqis who work for us were not telling their family or friends that they worked for Americans. At the time, we thought it was a ridiculous precaution—a throwback to the Saddam era—but as time went on, they proved that they knew their society a lot better than we did.

FP: Where do you get information about the insurgency?

RN: There was a stage in the war when we could talk to insurgents and people representing insurgents. Now, it’s just too dangerous. There is no way to safely contact them. We talk to Sunni leaders who are in touch with at least the Iraqi insurgents, the distinction being that al Qaeda insurgents are mainly foreign terrorists. [Iraqi] groups have a political constituency among Sunni politicians and they are in touch. So we can and do talk to them frequently. In fact, so does the U.S. Embassy.

FP: Are journalists and the military seeing two different pictures in Iraq?

RN: Sometimes it’s hard to say. Many in the military are here on their second or third tour and they don’t want to feel that this is all a doomed enterprise. I’m not saying it is, but to some extent they are victims of their own propaganda. Two reasonable people can look at the same set of information and come to different conclusions. A good example: I traveled recently to Taji for the handover of a large swath of territory north of Baghdad to the Iraqi Army’s 9th Armored Division. This was meant to be a big milestone: an important chunk of territory that has lots of insurgent activity, given over completely to the control of the Iraqi Army. But when we spoke to the Iraqi Army officers, they said they didn’t have enough equipment. They are still completely dependent on the U.S. Army for their logistics, their meals, and a lot of their communications. The United States turned territory over to them, but they are not a functioning, independent army unit yet.

American and allied troops are engaged in their biggest operation against Taliban forces in Afghanistan since they drove the fundamentalist movement from power in 2001. These photographs were taken over two weeks in June with Charlie Company, Fourth Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, near Hazarbuz, in Zabul Province.

The Americans face the hard job of trying to tell local farmers from Taliban insurgents, who have gained strength across southern Afghanistan. The Americans set up a base, then probed into villages. They were soon ambushed. The Taliban can easily persuade or coerce villagers to assist them. They arm the villagers or equip them with radios. Almost any man is suspect. During one raid, which was typical, the Americans separated the men. Homes were searched, and the men were marched to the base for questioning.

The Americans feel the hands of those who claim to be farmers, to make sure they are rough. They check under the men's shirts for calluses from carrying rifle clips, or for bruises from firing rocket-propelled grenades. As often is the case, almost all are released for lack of evidence.

Col. Tom Collins, the American military spokesman in Kabul, said, "We have intelligence that leads us to a certain village where there are antigovernment elements and we take in those we find, screen them, and some are then let go immediately, but they still have to be questioned."

The day after the raid, the Americans were ambushed again, this time at their base. Automatic rifle fire sprayed just inches above a row of soldiers as they lay resting.

On the final day of the operation, a raid on a village sent several men fleeing for the mountains. They were met by American Ranger Scouts. Three men were captured. They confessed to being Taliban fighters and were brought back to the base to be handed over to the Afghan authorities.

There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.

Dallas Austin, 35, who has produced hits for Madonna, Janet Jackson and others, flew home to Atlanta on Wednesday, after being released after midnight on Tuesday from a holding cell in a Dubai jail. Hours earlier Mr. Austin had been sentenced to four years in prison for carrying just over a gram of cocaine with him when he entered the country on May 19 to attend a birthday celebration for Naomi Campbell.

Senator Hatch made numerous phone calls on Mr. Austin's behalf to the ambassador and consul of the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington — Dubai is one of the seven emirates — and served as an intermediary for Mr. Austin's representatives, the producer's lawyers said.

"The senator was one of a number of people who were very actively involved," said Joe Reeder, the Washington lawyer, who, with an Atlanta colleague, Joel A. Katz, spent 10 days in Dubai working to secure Mr. Austin's reprieve.

Mr. Katz, an entertainment lawyer, represents both Mr. Austin and the somewhat less musically successful Mr. Hatch, a singer and songwriter who has recorded religious-oriented albums. After hiring Mr. Katz's firm, the senator last year took in $39,092 in income from music publishing, according to financial documents filed in May under the Ethics in Government Act.

The senator declined to be interviewed or to confirm details of his efforts on Mr. Austin's behalf, but he issued a statement acknowledging his involvement and said he was asked by Mr. Austin's lawyers to help.

A spokesman for Mr. Hatch said that the senator was a proponent of rehabilitation for drug offenders, and that he had worked to revise federal sentencing guidelines regarding cocaine, and, through legislation in 2005, had advocated treatment for nonviolent offenders and the easing of restrictions on medication to treat heroin addiction.

In the statement Mr. Hatch said he was "confident that this talented young man will learn from this experience." He did not say if he requested that Mr. Austin seek treatment.

• Increasing penalties for selling illegal drugs.
  
• mandatory jail sentences for selling illegal drugs.
  
• capital punishment for convicted international drug traffickers.
  
• expanding federally sponsored drug education and drug treatment programs.
  
• Increasing border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the US

A man drove his car into a crowd at a New London waterfront festival Saturday afternoon, injuring more than two dozen people, police said. The car narrowly missed Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who was campaigning nearby, a spokesman said.

At least three of Lamont's campaign workers were hurt. One, Susan Goldman of Norwich, suffered a broken leg, said Lamont spokesman Tom Swan. The car missed Lamont by 6 to 18 feet, Swan said.

All 27 of the injured, many of them with scrapes, cuts and bruises, were expected to be treated at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital by late Saturday or early today and released, said Kelly Anthony, a hospital spokesman.

No charges had been filed against the driver of the car, Robert Laine, 89, of Wallingford, late Saturday. New London and Amtrak police were still investigating.

What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain. I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness, but they are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate.

So these days, for example, one hears that Lieberman is a crypto-conservative, a Bible-Belter. In reality, of course, this is a man who has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. He has a Christian Coalition rating of 0.

But a lifetime's record is deemed not to matter any longer. For in the midst of the inquisition all of American liberalism has been reduced to one issue, the war. Just as some edges of the pro-life movement reduce all of conservatism to abortion, the upscale revivalists on the left reduce everything to Iraq, and all who are deemed impure must be cleansed away.

The grassy area to the right looked like warm ups for the World Cup, and not team USA either unless they're all some kind of latinos. As we walked around, aside from a small softball game going on, NOBODY spoke English. Spanish, spanish, spanish. Up close to the playground and litter was everywhere. The kids were throwing candy wrappers on the ground and their mothers weren't telling them to pick them up. They had water bottles and threw them on the ground when they were done. Boy, I never would have thought I'd see this in this part of Bergen. I mean years ago they would bus people into Van Saun, but then at the end of the day, usually a weekend, they would leave and the park would get back to normal...where the hell did all these people come from ? Are they renting rooms or houses along ****** Road, or are they coming from ***** Rd ? It was very disheartening to see that park today. We'd better wake up or one day we're going to wake up and hear that not much English is being spoken around Emerson anymore. I'm glad I don't live in ************. The people there should be furious.

A black woman with really long, painted nails with the studs on them, lowering her talons into her Gucci bag to pull out FOOD STAMPS to pay for groceries, which she then loads into a white Caddy, a new one at that, and pulls away.
Just what happened at Shop Rite last week. What I want to know is what's up with that ? Her bag was nicer than mine and so was her car, and yet SHE had food stamps and I didn't. I guess welfare pays real good these days !

The ELITE communities ... are populated by the best and the brightest, mostly WHITE families. These are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, the ACTUAL "prospective home buyers" who are paying from a half-million to upwards of one million to live near FELLOW ELITES. There are asian and indian families here as well, but these families assimilate into the upscale white society within which they live. These values are not racist at all. Should elite whites be apologetic for such ? Certainly not. This has nothing to do with hate and everything to do with choice. I hate no one and resent accusations of such. As an AMERICAN, I have the right to choose my neighborhood and my neighbors, and I choose to live among elite whites...It's not the white families who destroy real estate values. It's the black and mexican ones. This is documented fact for which no one owes an explanation save for members of these groups.