CAN GET SOME SATISFACTION:

Optimism After Iraq Election, but.... (ABBY GOODNOUGH, 2/01/05, NY Times)

Some glimpsed the ink-stained fingers of beaming Iraqis on television and felt their first stirrings of optimism about the war effort. Others said the healthy turnout and relative calm that marked Iraq's first free elections in decades merely reaffirmed their support for President Bush's agenda there.

In interviews around the country on Monday, many Americans voiced surprise and at least some satisfaction about the apparent smoothness of the proceedings, which brought out millions of Iraqi voters. But most were consistent in saying the elections did not change their fundamental views of their country's involvement in Iraq.

"If they learn something about what democracy is, that could be good for them," O'Neill Espinal, 34, said of Iraqi citizens as he lounged at an outdoor mall in Miami Beach. "But I still think we are fighting the wrong war, and Bush set this election up to make the U.S. government look like the good boys."

Yvonne Roper, who was on her lunch break in Houston, said that what she had seen of the elections backed up her sense that the American news media put an unfairly negative spin on the war effort.

"The way the Iraqi people reacted disproves what we see on TV every day," Ms. Roper, 40, said. "The way they were cheering and putting their fingers up - they were proud to participate."

For others, the images of Iraqis lining up to vote brought a far more personal, if fragile, sense of vindication. Nelson Carman, a purchasing agent in Jefferson, Iowa, whose 20-year-old son died last April while fighting in Iraq, said the turnout on Sunday put "a big stamp of approval" on Mr. Bush's mission. He recalled the disappointment he felt after the Vietnam War, and said the election helped him believe that his son and other American soldiers had not died in vain.

MASADA STRATEGY:

Democrats flash steel on Gonzales: Their opposition, to the point of alienating Hispanics, offers a preview of likely fight over judicial nominations. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 1/31/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

This week's expected face-off on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be the next US attorney general signals how aggressively Democrats on Capitol Hill will oppose the White House - even at the risk of alienating Hispanic supporters.

Long rumored to be a candidate for a Supreme Court vacancy, Mr. Gonzales enjoys broad support in the Hispanic community. His personal story - up from a humble home with seven siblings and no running water - is inspiring, and his confirmation would mark the first time a Latino has held a top cabinet position.

Hispanic groups ranging from the National Council of La Rasa, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the Hispanic National Bar Association back the nominee. "This is a milestone for the community," says Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for La Rasa.

LESSON ONE--WHEN HE SIGNS A BILL IT'S BECAUSE HE WON:

Healthcare Overhaul Is Quietly Underway (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.

With Democratic strength reduced, President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) are pushing for action.

Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush's "ownership society," say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

"My view is that this is absolutely the next big thing," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose consulting firm focuses on healthcare. "You are going to see a continued move to trying to get people involved in the process by owning their own health accounts."

Critics say the Republican approach is really an attempt to shift the risks, massive costs and knotty problems of healthcare from employers to individuals. And they say the GOP is moving forward with far less public attention or debate than have surrounded Bush's plans to overhaul Social Security.

Indeed, Bush's health insurance agenda is far more developed than his Social Security plans and is advancing at a rapid clip through a combination of actions by government, insurers, employers and individuals.

Health savings accounts, known as HSAs, have already been approved. They were created as a little-noticed appendage to the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill.

PEACE PANDEMIC:

Pakistan, Israel put out feelers (ANWAR IQBAL, Jan. 31, 2005, UPI)

Israel and Pakistan should have "direct, personal contact, publicly, without being ashamed about it," Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told the Pakistani newspaper Jang.

The exclusive interview last week with a reporter from Jang, which has a large circulation, sparked a militant rampage on the newspaper's offices in Karachi. But Saturday's vandalism did not shock many in Pakistan. Most people had expected some violent reaction from the country's religious extremists soon after Jang published the interview on Friday.

What surprised them most is that less than 30 people participated in the assault in a city of almost 14 million people. Equally surprising for most Pakistanis was the reaction to the attack.

Almost all major political parties, social organizations and media groups condemned the ransacking and the beating of guards trying to protect the office. The condemnation was so strong that Pakistan's main religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, was also forced to join the chorus.

NEVER MIND...:

Army suicide rate in Iraq plummets (Dan Olmsted, 1/28/2005, UPI)

The number of suicides by soldiers serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom dropped last year by at least half -- a decline that helped lower significantly the Army's overall suicide rate.

Nine soldiers' deaths in Iraq in 2004 have been ruled suicides, compared with 24 in 2003, the Army told United Press International. Three other deaths in 2004 are being investigated as possible suicides.

Suicide rates are expressed as the number of suicides per 100,000 individuals per year. By that measure, the Army suicide rate in Iraq dropped from 18 per 100,000 in 2003 to 7.9 in 2004.

For the Army as a whole, the number of suicides fell from 77 in 2003 to 58 in 2004, dropping the suicide rate from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2003 to 9.5 in 2004.

HEY, JEAN-CLAUDE, HOW'S YOUR DAY GOING?:

Triumphant White House now looks to Europe (Julian Borger, February 1, 2005, The Guardian)

The high turnout in the Iraqi election has strengthened President Bush's hand at home and abroad, administration officials and the president's supporters said yesterday.

The courage of Iraqi voters was the perfect illustration of the Mr Bush's "freedom speech" at last month's inauguration, Bush supporters said.

They also said it would have an impact on transatlantic ties, making it harder, for example, for European critics to reject his calls for greater involvement in Iraq's stabilisation.

Yesterday, Mr Bush phoned the two European leaders who most vocally opposed the war in Iraq, the French president, Jacques Chirac, and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

MORE:
Europe to step up Iraq security effort (Judy Dempsey, February 1, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

European Union governments, which were divided over the U.S.-led war against Iraq, pulled together Monday and agreed to step up efforts to improve security after Iraqis held their first democratic elections in 50 years.

President Jacques Chirac of France, who along with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany had spearheaded the opposition in Europe to the war, spoke by telephone Monday with President George W. Bush and said the election Sunday "was an important stage in the political reconstruction of Iraq."

"The strategy of terrorist groups had partly failed," Chirac told Bush, according to Chirac's spokesman, Jérôme Bonnafont.

Germany, which has been slowly mending fences with Washington, praised the courage of Iraqi voters. "They deserve great recognition for the will they have shown to shape the future of the country peacefully and democratically, despite massive intimidation," said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

The sense of European unity, at least for the moment, was made during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels and came three weeks before Bush visits Europe, stopping off in Brussels, where he will meet European and NATO leaders.

A FEW ANGLES TOO MANY:

HILL SELLS OUT (Dick Morris, January 31, 2005, NY Post)

So why are the Democrats selecting Dean? And why is Harold Ickes, the putative spokesperson for the Clintons, embracing the choice? Because Dean's momentum is unstoppable and nobody wants to stand in the way of the avalanche of self-destructiveness which is pouring onto the Democrats from their left-wing supporters.

Here's how it work: When moderates and centrists embrace the GOP and President Bush, they leave the Democrats to the tender mercies of the liberals. The party is deprived of the ballast offered by swing voters, the party moves further and further to the left, driven by a Jacobin desire for revolutionary purity and revenge against those who urge pragmatism and point to the path to victory.

And the Clintons? Even as Hillary tries to fool us once more into believing in her political moderation, they do not dare stand up against Dean. Even though they know that Dean knows that it was the Clintons who assassinated him en route to the nomination last year, neither Bill nor Hillary utter a peep as their party falls off the deep end.

The Clintons could have gotten Ickes the job, but neither one did any heavy lifting on his behalf. Why not? I'm no longer privy to their secrets, but my guess is that Bill was too sick, sad, physically weakened and unfocuse — and that Hillary, an ingénue without his guidance and leadership, didn't dare to try on her own for fear of publicly failing.

For his part, Ickes likely acted out of pique in demeaning Hillary's chances for victory in 2008 and in withdrawing from the race for chairman entirely a few weeks later. Left to twist slowly in the wind, this normally loyal operative probably felt abandoned and unappreciated, as he did when he was passed over for chief of staff in Clinton's second term.

GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO:

Fagin, Shylock and Blair (William Rees-Mogg, 1/31/05, Times of London)

THERE are two great anti-Semitic personas in English literature. Both were created by men of genius, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, in works of genius, The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist. Both portray a stereotypical Jew as avaricious, ruthless and cunning. The names of both of these characters are so familiar that they have entered the language. They are Shylock and Fagin.

Yesterday, The Mail on Sunday rightly published two striking photographs side by side. Both are carefully staged, with a Fagin figure holding an old-fashioned pocket watch on a chain. The first is a picture of Barry Humphries actually playing Fagin. The second is a Labour Party poster of Michael Howard, carefully chosen to fit the Fagin image.

The second picture has, of course, been doctored by Labour. The watch and chain have been added. The relationship between the two poses is obviously intentional; there is even an unusual knot in the watch chain that appears in both. We are intended to associate Mr Howard with Fagin, that is with a sinister Jewish criminal as seen by anti-Semites.

This is part of the Labour pre-election campaign.

IT'S ALL FIAT:

Resist the Filibuster Fiat (Kevin Drum, January 31, 2005, Washington Post)

Senate Democrats have relied on filibusters to block judicial nominees far more often than have minority parties in previous congresses. But there's good reason for this: Republicans have steadily done away with every other Senate rule that allows minorities to object to judicial nominees -- rules that Republicans took full advantage of when they were the ones out of power.

Originally, after Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 1994 elections and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch assumed control of the Judiciary Committee, the rule regarding judicial nominees was this: If a single senator from a nominee's home state objected to (or "blue-slipped") a nomination, it was dead. This rule made it easy for Republicans to obstruct Clinton's nominees.

But in 2001, when a Republican became president, Hatch suddenly reversed course and decided that it should take objections from both home-state senators to block a nominee. That made it harder for Democrats to obstruct George W. Bush's nominees.

In early 2003 Hatch went even further: Senatorial objections were merely advisory, he said. Even if both senators objected to a nomination, it could still go to the floor for a vote.

Finally, a few weeks later, yet another barrier was torn down: Hatch did away with "Rule IV," which states that at least one member of the minority has to agree in order to end discussion about a nomination and move it out of committee.

These rule changes aren't a direct explanation for every Democratic filibuster. In fact, some of the filibustered judges have been approved by both of their home-state senators, so they wouldn't have been blue-slipped in any case.

But Democratic frustration is still understandable. For better or worse, the Senate has long been dominated by rules that give minorities considerable power over the legislative and appointment process. The usual justification for this is that it forces compromise and curbs extremism.

When Democrats were in the majority, Republicans defended these traditional Senate rules and used them freely to block judges they had strong objections to. But when they became the majority party themselves, they gradually decided the rules should no longer be allowed to get in the way of unbridled majority power. It was only after Democrats were left with no other way to object to activist judges that they resorted to their last remaining option: the filibuster.

It's arguable, of course, that none of these rules made sense in the first place.

"THINK IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE":

Iraqi Election May Affect Middle East (SAM F. GHATTAS, 1/31/05, Associated Press)

Iraq's election, however imperfect, could increase pressure on other authoritarian Arab countries to begin political reforms and hold free balloting.

"The Americans were able to hold elections in Iraq and that made them much more comfortable in carrying on with their policies in the Middle East," said Lebanese political analyst Ali Hamadeh. "They showed everybody that you can carry on with an electoral process even when you have security problems."

Hamadeh said the message of the election is that if Iraq could carry out "an all-weather democratic process" there is no excuse for other countries not to reform.

Many are feeling the pressure at least to make a show of democratic reform, and 2005 is shaping up to be the year of Middle East elections...

DEATH THROES:

(Culture) War Is Declared in Europe: U.S.-style religious and 'town vs. country' conflicts take hold. (John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

[L]ately, cultural issues have begun to force their way back into the mainstream of European politics, stoked by three things.

The first is the willingness of politicians to ride roughshod over ancient traditions — and the growing willingness of what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" to fight back.

The Labor government's bill banning fox hunting in England and Wales, for instance, delighted metrosexual Islington, where people are less exercised by the rights of foxes than the wrongs of the upper classes. But it has created a furor in rural England — and not just among toffs. [...]

The second factor is the revival of religion — or at least its refusal to die. Europe has long been the world's most secular continent — fittingly so given that the great prophets of secularization such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were European. But now religion is again entangling itself with politics.

The most obvious example is the resurgence of radical Islam. [...]

But Christians are also causing more fuss in Europe these days. [...]

The third factor is the growing ambition of the ultimate technocratic project. The European Union is run by gray men who talk about protocols and summits with the same relish that real people reserve for sports teams. Yet their enthusiasm for both deepening Europe (by creating a European constitition) and broadening it (by admitting Turkey) is stirring up a formidable backlash. The upcoming votes about the European constitution will inevitably raise questions about national identity.

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON IRAQI (via Jim Yates):

VIDEO: Iraq Election Day

The music is especially appropriate.

DEEPEST STAIN ON OUR ESCUTCHEON:

The Castro Experience: A new PBS documentary takes a hard-headed look. (Catherine Seipp, 1/21/05, National Review)

The latest sign that PBS may be indeed moving away from reflexive lefty politics is its hardheaded and compelling new documentary Fidel Castro, which premieres Jan. 31 and is the first non-American biography in the network’s American Experience series. (As executive producer Mark Samuels pointed out at the PBS news conference, an argument can be made that Castro, with his half-century-long "impact on American history," is an American experience, besides being "also a tremendous story.")

Veteran documentarian Adriana Bosch clearly shows the appeal of a charismatic revolutionary like Castro to a populace suffering from the oppressive Batista regime, but refuses to sentimentalize the cigar-smoking, iconic leader they got as a replacement. "It is the tragic story of a nation who saw a messiah in just a man," she says of her film, which doesn’t flinch from detailing the brutal reality beneath Castro’s charm: 500 Bastistianos tried and executed in less than three months, 20,000 people arrested after the Bay of Pigs, and so on.

Was Communism the reason for the treason of Castro's revolution — as Cuban exiles protested in the early '60s? (Castro never actually admitted that the Cuban revolution was socialist in nature until after the Bay of Pigs.) Or was it that Castro himself, as the film reveals, is simply a megalomaniac — someone who as a small boy threatened to burn his family's house down if they didn’t send him to the school of choice, and who confiscated land from his own mother when he grew up? A University of Havana classmate interviewed by Bosch describes young Fidel as a combination of genius and juvenile delinquent, which seems pretty much on the mark.

At the very least, Fidel Castro is a welcome antidote to last year's Looking For Fidel, Oliver Stone's pro-Castro documentary for HBO. "I think it approached a work of fiction," Bosch said, describing the infamous moment in that film when a Cuban prisoner insists to Stone’s cameras that 30 years in jail for stealing a boat seems quite fair to him.

ONLY CONSIDER THE CONTROVERSIAL IF I FAVOR IT (via John Resnick):

Transcript for Jan. 30
Guests: Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (Meet the Press, Jan. 30, 2005)

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Social Security and find out your current thinking. I want to take you back to your campaign in '96 when you talked to your hometown paper, the Boston Globe, and said that, "Dramatic changes are needed to make sure Social Security benefits are available for future retirees." Kerry "said the next Congress should consider controversial measures, such as raising the retirement age and means-testing benefits, called it `wacky' that taxes that pay for the system do not apply to income over $62,700." It's now 90,000. "I know it's all going to be unpopular."

SEN. KERRY: So I was right about wacky.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, we'll see if he runs it--"We have a generational responsibility to fix them."

And then in 2003, you said--"Declaring `I am blessed to be wealthy,' Senator John F. Kerry said that, if elected president, he would consider some form of means-testing for rich Americans as part of a broader review of ideas to shore up the Social Security system." ... But "`Rich people are getting checks from poor people well beyond what they put in the system,' said Kerry. ...Another idea Kerry said he would consider is raising the cut-off point after which people no longer pay into the system. ...`Maybe people ought to pay up to $100,000 or $120,000, I don't know,' the senator said."

Specifically, Senator, do you still agree with yourself? Should we raise the retirement age or consider it? Should we raise the cap on income level that people pay payroll tax?

SEN. KERRY: Precisely what I said in 1996 is "We should consider" a number of these things. We did consider them. I considered them. Others did. I rejected them.

WAIT, KARL, DON'T JUMP YET!:

State Democrats back Dean for DNC post (WILL LESTER, January 30, 2005, Associated Press)

Howard Dean won the backing of state Democratic Party leaders Monday, putting him in a strong position to win the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

"If all of our members vote for him, that will be half of what he needs to win the chairman's job," said Mark Brewer, chairman of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

The party's presidential front-runner in 2003 won 56 votes from the state chairs and Democratic activist Donnie Fowler won 21 during a national conference call. The state chairs ignored a recommendation made Sunday by the executive committee to back Fowler. Other candidates' support Monday was in single digits.

"We're asking all of our state chairs and vice chairs to follow our endorsements," Brewer said, noting that would bring 112 votes. "And we think they will."

WELL, NOW WE KNOW WHY BUBBA SIGNED WELFARE REFORM... (via Pat H):

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' (Clare Chapman, 30/01/2005, Daily Telegraph)

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit.

FUNDAMENTAL:

Senator reignites debate on abortion 'epidemic' (Orietta Guerrera, February 1, 2005, The Age)

Nationals Senator Ron Boswell has placed the controversial issue of abortion issue back on the national agenda, calling on Health Minister Tony Abbott to reveal the extent of what has been described as an abortion "epidemic".

Less than three months after Prime Minister John Howard moved to quell a row among Coalition MPs on the issue, Senator Boswell tabled 16 questions for Mr Abbott relating to the number of terminations, funding of the procedures, and the counselling available to women considering an abortion.

SOAR HIGHER:

AIRLINE-SECURITY FEE SET TO SOAR (NY Post, January 28, 2005)

A fee charged to airline travelers to help pay for airport security would more than double under President Bush's proposed spending plan for the Department of Homeland Security.

Bush's plan calls for raising the security fee from $2.50 to $5.50 for a one-way ticket and from $5 to $8 for a round trip.

Bush's plan, due to be released Feb. 7, would add $48 million to Homeland Security's overall $41 billion budget, according to a copy of the proposal.

CONTINUING CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE ON THE LEFT:

2020 Vision (Fred Kaplan, Jan. 26, 2005, Slate)

Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it?

SORRY, IT'S THE PARTY OF KENNEDY, KERRY, PELOSI & BOXER NOW:

Iraq Elections: A Large Step Towards Legitimate Self-Government (New Democrat No-Longer-Daily, 1/31/05)

Although the results of yesterday's Iraqi elections will not be compiled for a number of days, several important facts appear beyond dispute:

* Despite the threat and reality of violence aimed at voters and candidates, turnout was impressively high -- indeed, higher than in most recent U.S. elections;

* Despite a boycott sponsored by most Sunni Arab leaders, Sunni turnout was much better than expected wherever it was physically possible;

* While Shia are sure to dominate the new government, Sunni representation will likely reflect that community's proportion of the population, and President Allawi 's secular-minded multi-party alliance appears to have done quite well;

* The Iraqi elections were widely publicized in independent Arab media as successful, and as more significant than the insurgents' efforts to subvert them.

This means that during the last year, elections have been successfully carried out -- with women participating -- in three very unlikely places: Afghanistan, Palestine, and now Iraq, despite strong efforts by Jihadists to reduce participation.

There is no question this should be grounds for celebration in all democratic countries, regardless of one's views on the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. And it should definitely be happily welcomed by everyone in the United States, regardless of one's views on the foreign policy of the Bush administration. It's a vindication of the universal appeal of our most fundamental values, and Democrats in particular should make that clear.

At the same time...

JIHADING WE MUST GO:

America's Jihad: the chilling rhetoric of George W Bush's inaugural speech (Hassan Nafaa, 1/27/05, Al-Ahram)

George W Bush's inaugural address was unlike that of any of his predecessors. Whereas they attempted to strike a conciliatory mood as they laid out their domestic and foreign policy programmes his was nothing less than a neo-conservative manifesto that came perilously close to declaring holy war.

The speech must have come as a shock to the many who had hoped that Bush had learned from the mistakes his administration made during his first term. Certainly four years in office should have furnished the experience necessary to lead the world towards greater security and stability. It hasn't -- there was nothing in his speech to give comfort, not one hint of an admission that he may have made some mistakes, not a single sign that he has absorbed the lessons of the consequences of his actions. He made no reference to the wars he declared during his first term or to a timeframe for withdrawal from the Iraqi quagmire in which American forces have sunk up to their ears. There was no indication that he has begun to fathom the limits of recourse to force or the value of diplomacy in resolving international problems. As for the events of 11 September, 2001 which handed him the opportunity to metamorphose from a presidential novice who scraped into power through a dubious process into a latter day Alexander the Great, as his admires would have it, he did not refer to them by name. Instead he spoke of the "day of the conflagration".

It would be a great mistake to dismiss Bush's inaugural address on the grounds that it was merely a formality in which ideological platitudes were spouted with a rhetorical fervour suited to the occasion. This was a very significant speech, and it was drafted carefully. Michael Girson, Bush's favourite speechwriter, wrote it and Bush read and revised it 21 times before settling on the final version delivered to Congress on 20 January. The speech serves as an outline of the agenda of the American ultra-right.

Bush wasted no time in getting down to what his administration has identified as the primary threat to US national security. The most frequently repeated word in his address in this regard was not terrorism, as has been the case in so many of his speeches since 11 September, but dictatorship. It would be foolish, though, to assume that the change in terminology heralds a shift in US foreign policy. There may be some change in means and tactics but not in general strategies and objectives. The neo-conservatives whom Bush represents still believe terrorism is the major peril, but they have also come to realise that the phenomenon is an offshoot of despotism and that their objectives would be better served by treating the ailment and not just its symptoms. I have no doubt whatsoever that America's ultra-conservatives, who now hold the reins of power in the US, are convinced that the terrorism that struck New York and Washington in September 2001 was a product of dictatorial regimes and of nothing else.

It follows that uprooting terrorism requires the destruction of the soil in which it breeds. If Bush's inaugural address was clear about anything it was about the nature of that soil -- dictatorial regimes that whip their people into subjugation and fetter their will. These have to be done away with and replaced by democratic governments with established mechanisms for the peaceful rotation of power.

DIFFERENTLY ACTIVIST:

Bush Forges Weak Links to Legacies of Democratic Predecessors (Ronald Brownstein, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

Probably the last Democratic president who held views roughly similar to President Bush's was Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century. Cleveland embodied the resistance to activist government that dominated the Democratic Party through its first century and fuels the GOP today.

But the unlamented Cleveland isn't one of the predecessors Bush and his allies are enlisting to sell his initiatives at home and abroad. Instead, they are trying to link Bush's agenda with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton.

In each case, to put it mildly, the connection is a stretch. In fact, in each instance, the Bush team is citing the Democrats to sell policies that reverse the strategies those presidents pursued. It's as if General Motors were using a testimonial from Ralph Nader to sell an updated Corvair.

Bush's allies have routinely described his recent inaugural address as the most idealistic statement of America's commitment to expanding liberty since Wilson's declaration in 1917 that, "The world must be made safe for democracy."

Up to a point the analogy holds. Like Bush, Wilson believed that the spread of democracy would make America more secure. And Wilson, like Bush, considered U.S. influence key to encouraging that spread.

But the differences dwarf the similarities. Wilson wanted the U.S. to help organize the world into a League of Nations that would confront threats as "a community of power." In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has demonstrated that he is more comfortable working virtually alone than accepting restrictions on America's freedom of action.

WE'RE THERE:

Israel to Leave 4 West Bank Towns Soon (Ken Ellingwood, January 31, 2005, LA Times)

In the latest sign of budding cooperation, Israel's defense minister said Sunday that the army probably would withdraw troops from some West Bank cities in a matter of days, turning security over to Palestinian forces.

A pullback of Israeli troops from cities where they have operated during the nearly 4 1/2 -year-old conflict would meet a key demand of the new Palestinian leadership, which has impressed Israel by moving to quell the activities of armed militants in the Gaza Strip. [...]

Israeli officials said the withdrawal probably would be accompanied by the removal of roadblocks, which Palestinians complain inhibit their movements and choke their economy. Israel has said the roadblocks and checkpoints around Palestinian towns are needed safeguards against suicide bombers making their way into Israel proper.

Mofaz said Israel could remove troops from all Palestinian cities by year's end.

TOO GOOD FOR THE TIMES:

For a Battered Populace, a Day of Civic Passion (JOHN F. BURNS, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Nobody among the hundreds of voters thronging one Baghdad polling station on Sunday could remember anything remotely like it, not even those old enough to have taken part in Iraq's last partly free elections more than 50 years ago, before the assassination of King Faisal II began a spiraling descent into tyranny.

The scene was suffused with the sense of civic spirit that has seemed, so often in America's 22 months here, like a missing link in the plan to build democracy in Iraq. Gone, for this day at least, was the suspicion that 24 years of bludgeoning under Saddam Hussein had bred a disabling passivity among the country's 28 million people, an unwillingness, among many, to become committed partners in fashioning their own freedoms.

At the Darari primary school, east of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, the courtyard teemed with people of all ages, and of all ethnic and religious groups, doing what American military commanders here have urged for so long: standing up for themselves, and laying down a marker, with their votes, that signaled they could not be intimidated into surrendering their rights by the insurgents who have terrorized the country with guns and bombs and butchers' knives.

The voters were the same people, mostly, who crowded polling centers in the fall of 2002, six months before American troops toppled Mr. Hussein, to re-elect him in a one-candidate referendum by an official vote count of 100 percent. Then, all was uniformity, and cries of fealty to the dictator.

On Sunday, everything about the voting resonated with a passion for self-expression, individuals set on their own choices, prepared to walk long distances through streets choked with military checkpoints, and to stand for hours in line to cast their ballots.

"A hundred names on the ballot are better than one, because it means that we are free," said Fadila Saleh, a 37-year-old engineer, as she hurried about the courtyard trying to find an official who would allow her to transfer her vote to the Darari center, setting aside a mistaken register that had her living miles away. Eventually, she prevailed, along with several friends dressed like her in the head-to-toe cloaks of conservative Muslim women.

DAYTON'S DONE:

Approval rates for Dayton, Coleman drop (Rob Hotakainen, 1/31/05, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Minnesota Sens. Mark Dayton and Norm Coleman both took hits to their public image in the past year, with their job approval ratings falling below 50 percent, according to the latest Minnesota Poll.

Dayton, a Democrat who's up for reelection next year, took the heaviest blow: His approval rating declined by 15 points in a year, from 58 percent to 43 percent. [...]

Dayton's job approval decreased among all categories of Minnesotans, grouped by age, education, income, party and ideology, with the largest drop among men -- down 27 points -- and 18- to 24-year-olds -- down 31 points. [...]

The poll, which was conducted from Sunday, Jan. 23, through Wednesday, came during a week in which Dayton was in the headlines. First, Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., announced that he was considering a run against Dayton, who is regarded by the Cook Political Report as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat seeking reelection next year. Then Dayton gave a highly publicized speech on the Senate floor, accusing Rice of lying to the American people and Congress while making the case for war against Iraq in 2002. In his Tuesday speech, Dayton said his vote against Rice was "a statement that this administration's lying must stop now."

Dayton, who routinely accuses the Bush administration of making false statements, received national -- even worldwide -- attention after making his remarks as part of such a high-profile debate. His office was flooded with more than 4,000 e-mails and phone calls, most of them positive, and Dayton was featured on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."

CRESCENT ROLLS:

New dawn in Iraq (Hassan Hanizadeh, 1/31/05, Tehran Times)

The new era in Iraq finally began to dawn with a massive voter turnout in Sunday’s election and some bloody incidents.

Criminal terrorists tried to sabotage the election by carrying out attacks on polling stations, but the determined Iraqi people braved the threats of the gunmen.

After enduring eight decades of dictatorship and crime, the Iraqi nation has taken the first steps on the path toward a bright future and democracy -- a new phenomenon in Arab world.

The Iraqi people have experienced great suffering due to dictatorships, geopolitical conditions, and demography.

And, unfortunately, some neighboring Arab countries played a direct role in setting up despotic governments in Iraq, since they cannot tolerate the rule of democracy in Iraq due to its complicated ethnic makeup.

Indisputable evidence discovered after the fall of the Baath regime showed that Saddam Hussein could not have committed such crimes against his own people without these Arab states’ support.

The Shia in the south of Iraq and the Kurds in the north succeeded in liberating 14 of the country’s 18 provinces in 1991, shortly after the Iraqi Army was driven out of Kuwait. But certain Arab states pressured former U.S. president George Bush and he eventually gave Saddam the green light to brutally suppress the Shia and Kurdish uprising.

Saddam’s government was on the brink of collapse, but the leaders of some Arab countries helped the Baathists quell the Iraqi nation’s uprising mercilessly, since they preferred a weak Saddam to a democratic government.

Some 450,000 Shia and Kurds were massacred by Iraqi troops loyal to Saddam, who continued carrying out crimes due to the Arab states’ misunderstanding of the Shias.

If power had been transferred through holding a free referendum under the supervision of the United Nations and the international community in 1991, Iraq and the rest of the region would not have witnessed such painful events.

In addition, the United States would not have felt compelled to sacrifice so many lives and spend such a huge amount of money to overthrow Saddam, and the Iraqi nation would have been able to establish a popular government calmly and without carnage.

Yet, the Iraqi people, despite their ethnic and sectarian differences, have maintained their national identity and cast their votes freely in order to find a logical way to resolve the current crisis.

TAKE IT FROM URINE:

Be careful picking baby's name (DELIA O'HARA, January 31, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Parents spend countless hours trying to come up with the coolest baby names, but they may be doing nothing more than setting up the young heirs for a lifetime of rude jokes.

Joe Borgenicht's new book, What Not to Name Your Baby (Simon Spotlight, $7.95), tries to save parents from that fate.

Most people your child will encounter will not know the noble provenance of his name or how it resonated with you when you selected it. Rather, they will think of the mentally challenged character who bears that name on "The Simpsons," or the fact that the moniker rhymes with a titillating body part.

"Parents know that the name they give their child will dictate a lot later in life," Borgenicht says, but they may not know every pop-culture nuance of the names they are considering. He advises them to "be sure your name doesn't appear in this book. You can at least give the child a name schoolyard kids have the least opportunity to make fun of."

ALL MUSICAL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE TOO (via h-man):

VIDEO: Second Term (Jib Jab)

Forget all the analysis you've read and heard, George Bush's victory in November is amply explained by who's upset about him winning in this skit.

THIRD WAY--THE CAPITALIST FATALISM OF THE LIBERAL, THE SOCIAL SAFETY NET FATALISM OF THE CONSERVATISM:

Credit where it's due? Blair's balance sheet: In the first of a three-part serialisation of their new book, Polly Toynbee and David Walker assess whether Labour has delivered on its second-term promises. Today they examine the economy and social justice (Polly Toynbee and David Walker, January 31, 2005, The Guardian)

Gordon Brown's Treasury dominated the domestic agenda of the second Blair term, as it had from 1997 to 2001. Credit for the buoyant state of the economy was claimed, with justification, by New Labour's chancellor. Brown's supporters liked to claim progressive measures and the pursuit of social justice were down to Gordon, while Blair did Middle England, ensuring the electoral coalition Labour had built for 1997 prospered.

The division of labour was in fact nothing like as simple. Brown had become a capitalist-fatalist. He believed that if the markets paid staff less than they could live on, if they showered not-especially competent executives with gold and silver, then a government's only duty was to compensate the losers, not to meddle with the sanctity of markets.

But the Brown camp did provide for the market losers. From the thickets of tax and- benefit details emerged a chancellor intent on making poor people better off, as well as the rest of us. New Labour's second term was a growth era. In the 1990s, the UK economy had grown by 1.7% a year; in Labour's new century, it was 2.7%. Whatever else Blair's Britain did, it worked. From 2001 to 2005, some 1.5m jobs were created; a million or so disappeared. The net result was near-full employment, even in the most deprived parts of the UK, with unemployment at a historic low.

Brown's objective was simple: to create conditions of stability within which private business could flourish. However, British business could not be trusted to invest, innovate, re-skill or play fair. Under Labour, the government was not going to retreat from inspecting or worrying about markets; but then, neither had it really retreated under Thatcher. Brown's problem was that he had no model for intervention. He had a vision of what the economy could look like, which is why he was happy opening pharmaceutical labs. But what else?

"BUT" HEADS:

Acts of Bravery (BOB HERBERT, 1/31/05, NY Times)

You'd have to be pretty hardhearted not to be moved by the courage of the millions of Iraqis who insisted on turning out to vote yesterday despite the very real threat that they would be walking into mayhem and violent death at the polls.

At polling stations across the country there were women in veils holding the hands of children, and men on crutches, and people who had been maimed during the terrible years of Saddam, and old people. Among those lined up to vote in Baghdad was Samir Hassan, a 32-year-old man who lost a leg in the blast of a car bomb last year. He told a reporter, "I would have crawled here if I had to."

In a war with very few feel-good moments, yesterday's election would qualify as one. But...

BUT FILES:
-Birth of a Nation? (Fred Kaplan, Jan. 30, 2005, Slate)

Few sights are more stirring than the televised images of Iraqi citizens risking their lives to vote in their country's first election in a half-century, kissing the ballot boxes, dancing in the streets, and declaring their hopes for a new day of democracy.

And yet...

STATISTS VS. PRIVATIZERS:

Congressional Republicans Agree To Launch Social Security Campaign (Mike Allen, January 31, 2005, Washington Post)

Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.

The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled "Saving Social Security," a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system's trust fund should be built up in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement.

The congressional Republicans' confidential plan was developed with the advice of pollsters, marketing experts and communication consultants, and was provided to The Washington Post by a Republican official. The blueprint urges lawmakers to promote the "personalization" of Social Security, suggesting ownership and control, rather than "privatization," which "connotes the total corporate takeover of Social Security." Democratic strategists said they intend to continue fighting the Republican plan by branding it privatization, and assert that depiction is already set in people's minds.

PAINTED BACKDROP:

Chairman Kim’s dissolving kingdom (Michael Sheridan, 1/30/05, Times Of London)

FAR across the frozen river two figures hurried from the North Korean shore, slip-sliding on the ice as they made a break for the Chinese riverbank to escape a regime that, by many accounts, is now entering its death throes.

It was a desperate risk to run in the stark glare of the winter sunshine. We had just seen a patrol of Chinese soldiers in fur-lined uniforms tramping along the snowy bank, their automatic rifles slung ready for action.

Police cars swept up and down the road every 10 or 15 minutes, on the look-out for refugees. A small group of Chinese travellers in our minibus, some of whom turned out to have good reasons to be discreet, pretended not to notice.

The two made it to shelter and we ploughed on towards a border post that offered us a rare opportunity to cross into the northeastern corner of the last Stalinist state, posing as would-be investors in an experimental free trade zone.

We had already witnessed one sign that North Korea’s totalitarian system is dissolving, even as its leaders boast of owning nuclear weapons to deter their enemies.

“It’s just like the Berlin Wall,” Pastor Douglas Shin, a Christian activist, said by telephone from Seoul. “The slow-motion exodus is the beginning of the end.”

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

WHAT'S MORE FASCIST THAN A SKYSCRAPER?:

Form Follows Fascism (MARK STEVENS, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Traditionally, [Philip] Johnson is presented as the great champion of modern architecture - organizer of the landmark 1932 Museum of Modern Art show on the International Style, and architect of the Glass House on his Connecticut estate, which quickly came to symbolize American modernism. He is equally celebrated for abandoning classical modernism in the late 50's and adopting in the decades that followed a succession of styles that mirrored the changing taste of the time.

It hardly mattered that many of his skyscrapers were corporate schmaltz; he was an enlivening, generous figure, a man who charmingly described himself as a "whore" as he picked the corporate pocket. Always ready to challenge the earnest, Mr. Johnson, who understood Warhol as well as Mies, became both an icon and an iconoclast.

Only one aspect marred this picture: His embrace of fascism during the 1930's, which was mentioned only in passing in most obituaries. He later called his ideological infatuation "stupidity" and apologized whenever pressed on the matter; as a form of atonement, he designed a synagogue for no fee. With a few exceptions, critics typically had little interest in the details, granting Mr. Johnson a pass for a youthful indiscretion.

Then, in 1994, Franz Schulze's biography presented this period of Mr. Johnson's life in some depth. Mr. Schulze's account was as sympathetic as possible - and many reviews of the book still played down the importance of Mr. Johnson's politics - but it was clear that views of Mr. Johnson's import for American culture would change significantly.

Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, "The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally." He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis.

He approved of what he saw.

As Tom Wolfe asked:

O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within they blessed borders today?

BUBBA BEFORE HE KILLED HIS CONSCIENCE (via Jim Yates):

The Old Man (Paul Greenberg, Jan. 31, 2005, Jewish World Review)

There is a small vignette featuring Colonel Holmes and his young visitor back in 1969 in one of the better - and most readable — books of social history published in recent years: "Horns, Hogs and Nixon Coming." Its theme is the big shoot-out that year between the Razorbacks and Longhorns, a game it still hurts Arkies to think about.

But this book is about a lot more than a game. On Page 46, you'll find a brief but telling description of Bill Clinton's demeanor when he came to see the colonel in Fayetteville:

"In July, during the week of the launching of the history-making Apollo 11 mission to the moon . . . William Jefferson Clinton knocked on the colonel's front door. . . . 'He didn't want to come inside,' Holmes says. 'He wanted to sit out on the curb. I had just met him. I thought he was just a normal, young American guy who would fulfill his duty to his country if it came up.'"

Only later would Colonel Holmes decide he'd been hoodwinked.

But what gets me was young Clinton's hesitating to cross the colonel's threshold. As if he wouldn't be deceiving the old man if he didn't actually go into the house. As if he still had some qualms about what he was doing. It's hard not to like that 23-year-old no-longer-boy, not-quite man. Maybe he still had some vestigial sense of Southern honor that would not let him go inside to consummate the deal. Instead he did it outside, on the back patio.

A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS:

IRAQIS turned out in their millions to vote in the country’s first free elections for half a century yesterday, sending a clear message of defiance to militants who had threatened to disrupt the historic poll with a campaign of violence.

Early fears that many would be deterred from voting by warnings of a bloodbath failed to materialise, and by the time the polling stations closed last night officials estimated a significant turnout of about 60 per cent. [...]

Observers put the lack of a concerted attack down to the tough security measures in place for polling day.

Iraq’s borders have been sealed since Friday and private vehicles have been banned from the country’s roads, depriving suicide bombers of their favoured form of attack.

But despite the Draconian security measures, much of the country saw something of a party atmosphere yesterday as Iraqis cast their votes. "This is my great happiness to do this today - I am not scared of car bombs," said Saleem Khadom, 72, as he voted in southern Baghdad.

"This is my chance to choose who I want in government to bring us a comfortable future."

Mr Khadom, a farmworker, was the first in the queue at the Al Ahrar school polling centre in Baghdad’s Karada district when it opened just before 8am.

Dressed in his best clothes - a grey dishdasha robe and tweed jacket - he disappeared behind the cardboard polling booth, folded his ballot slip into the plastic box and then proudly refused to tell waiting reporters who he had voted for. "It’s my right to keep it secret," he said, grinning.

"This is the first time to decide for ourselves," said Taliaa Abdul Karim, a young bank worker who turned up at the al Kamadil girls’ primary school with her friends to vote.

It was already late in the day when she walked in, and there was precious little room left in the transparent plastic ballot boxes for her paper. She waited for the clerk to find her name on the register of voters, took her voting forms, went behind one of the cardboard booths set up at the far end of the room, and emerged to drop the two completed forms into the boxes.

Then she dipped her finger into the tub of indelible indigo ink. It was there to make sure no-one voted twice, but people brandished their marked index fingers like badges of honour.

"This is the first time we can be free," she said. "Saddam Hussein was putting us in jail - he would not allow us to breathe."

The future, she said, would not be that way. "We want freedom, freedom of opinion, and I hope it will be just and we will have equality and no sectarian differences. The voice of women should he heard in this society."

Nori Jawad, the jovial headmaster running the polling station, could not contain his excitement. The first people turned up at 7am; by 4pm, an hour before the polls closed, 80 per cent of the 4,020 people on his list had cast their votes.

"Today, everyone is treating it like Christmas," he said. "Yes, Christmas. The old regime is finished. This will succeed. Saddam put pressure on people to come to the elections, but now they come because they want to."

THE last time that Iraqis went to the polls was in 2002 when they voted 100 per cent for Saddam Hussein, the only candidate on the ballot paper.

They voted again yesterday, millions of them, for a host of candidates, in the first free elections that any but the very oldest could remember. [...]

The sick, the old, the blind and lame surged to polling centres, sometimes carried, sometimes wheeled in carts by relatives. Many put on their best clothes and handed out sweets, in imitation of the Muslim holiday of Eid, a week ago.

“This is an historic moment for Iraq, a day when Iraqis can hold their heads high because they are challenging the terrorists and starting to write their future with their own hands,” Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, said.

In the north, a 100-year-old Kurdish woman named Khadija Chalabi came down from the mountains to cast her ballot. “She told us that as long as she’s alive she must vote for the Kurdish people,” said one of her grandsons.

In Baghdad, Samir Hassan, 33, who lost a leg in a terrorist attack, said: “I’d have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace.”

In the southern city of Basra, women in black abayas queued for up to three hours to vote. People jubilantly waved the ink stain on their index fingers — a device to prevent fraud. “I’m a human being again,” said a Shia man, overcome by tears. “Showing emotion is part of being human. Saddam dehumanised us.”

In Basra, the voting got off to a slow start, as if people were waiting to assess the situation before venturing to the polling centers. The streets were nearly deserted in the early morning, creating an eerie calm, and there were no vehicles except those driven by the hundreds of Iraqi police and the Iraqi National Guard.

It looked at first as if the election experiment might be a failure. But then something changed. By shortly after 9 a.m. the streets looked like a citywide marketplace. The city took on a festive air; people were proud and happy - upbeat about the opportunity to vote.

The turnout was "excellent," said one election worker, Hani Abbas, as he handed out ballots and stamped them at polling station No. 1, the Uday Oda school in the center of the city. "I didn't expect so many people to show up. I feel proud of my people."

FULFILLING ANGELINA

Davos Succumbs to Star Power (Deutsche Welle, January 30th, 2005)

Movers and shakers from business and politics at this year's World Economic Forum in Switzerland were pushed to one side, as international celebrities added combating poverty and AIDS to the agenda.

Hollywood film stars Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone and Richard Gere, as well as singers Bono and Lionel Ritchie, vied for attention with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany at Davos. Normally at the center of attention at the annual event, the world's business elite were left to play supporting roles on the sidelines this time around.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder successively pledged to find ways of spending billions of dollars in aid, trade or debt relief into poor countries this year.

But Stone, an anti-poverty activist like other celebrities invited to the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, stole the limelight by making "an ass of myself" and extracting one million dollars from the largely corporate audience within minutes. She stood up during a debate on poverty involving Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, pledging $10,000 (€7,660) for anti-mosquito bed nets to help prevent malaria in Tanzania and challenged her fellow onlookers to follow suit.

"A lot of them, let's face it, are pretty square," she later said of the business leaders at the debate. But thirty of them responded to her challenge to stump up cash for her cause.[...]

The elite business, political, academic and civil society participants invited to the five day meeting appeared to have sensed the mood of the moment. Asked by the forum organizers to choose six issues that urgently needed to be tackled in the world -- and by the forum over the next year -- 64 percent of them placed poverty at the top, followed by "equitable globalization" and climate change.

Traditional Davos favorites, the global economy and trade, were almost left out altogether, depriving about 100 anti-globalization protestors of their key themes as they trudged peacefully through the resort's icy streets on Saturday.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates tried to grab the spotlight briefly when he heaped praise on communist China for creating "a brand-new form of capitalism". But the drawing power of the geeky computer pioneer paled in comparison to Angelina Jolie, recently voted the sexiest woman alive by Esquire magazine.

Jolie, who has carried out field trips to 20 countries, including Cambodia, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka and Sudan, said keeping near the spotlight was crucial to publicizing humanitarian needs. She said her ambassadorial role with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was "more fulfilling and more interesting to me" than films. "And I know it's more important."

We instinctively grasp the fecklessness and fatuity of many Hollywood activists, but why in the world do conservatives tend to think that success in business bestows a special insight into the ills of the world and how to cure them?

WHY WE HOLD THEM IN SUCH ESTEEM

Politician's promises not set in stone, court says (Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail, January 31st, 2005)

It's official: Politicians can break campaign promises with impunity.

An Ontario Superior Court judge has absolved Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty of breaking an elaborately signed contract promising not to raise or create new taxes, saying anyone who believes a campaign promise is naive about the democratic system.

If anyone who voted for a politician based on a particular promise later were to go to court alleging a breached contract, ”our system of government would be rendered dysfunctional. This would hinder, if not paralyze, the parliamentary system,” Mr. Justice Paul Rouleau said.

The judge was ruling on a request from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to quash the Liberals' new health premium on the grounds that it broke an election promise.

But in unreported obiter dicta, Judge Rouleau went on to opine that he nevertheless thought President Bush could be sued for keeping his.

GREAT WARMUP ACTS, BUT WHEN DOES THE SHOW ACTUALLY START?

Global warming may kill off polar bears in 20 years, says WWF (Bradley Klapper, The Guardian, January 31st, 2005)

Many Arctic animals, including polar bears and some seal species, could be extinct within 20 years because of global warming, a conservation group said yesterday.

Traditional ways of life for many indigenous people in the Arctic would also become unsustainable unless the world "takes drastic action to reduce climate change", said the conservation organisation WWF.

"If we don't act immediately the Arctic will soon become unrecognisable" said Tonje Folkestad, a WWF climate change expert. "Polar bears will be ... something that our grandchildren can only read about in books."

Self-reference alert: In the early eighties, I was working as a legal adviser to a Quebec Inuit political/development corporation that had settled a land claim. The Quebec legislature was studying wildlife management in Arctic Quebec and the Inuit were anxious to have a special role. A hulking traditional Inuk hunter was chosen to appear at legislative hearings. All the progressive white advisers briefed him carefully on what to say–-how the Inuit were natural conservationists who had practiced traditional wildlife management since time immemorial and how they instinctively understood how important a delicate ecological balance was to maintaining their traditional livelihood, which of course was their number one priority. But they forgot how short-fused he was. Grilled by legislators in unfamiliar surroundings, he eventually lost it and started screaming: “Why white man worry so much about polar bear? Polar bear kill Inuit! Polar bear eat fish and seal! Polar bear no good! Inuit want to kill all polar bear!!!”

HOPEFULLY THEY DIDN'T "OVERHYPE" THE STORY:

Voting, Not Violence, Is the Big Story on Arab TV (HASSAN M. FATTAH, 1/30/05, NY Times)

Sometime after the first insurgent attack in Iraq this morning, news directors at Arab satellite channels and newspaper editors found themselves facing an altogether new decision: should they report on the violence, or continue to cover the elections themselves?

After close to two years of providing up-to-the-minute images of explosions and mayhem, and despite months of predictions of a bloodbath on election day, some news directors said they found the decision surprisingly easy to make. The violence simply was not the story this morning; the voting was.

Overwhelmingly, Arab channels and newspapers greeted the elections as a critical event with major implications for the region, and many put significant resources into reporting on the vote, providing blanket coverage throughout the country that started about a week ago. Newspapers kept wide swaths of their pages open, and the satellite channels dedicated most of the day to coverage of the polls.

Often criticized for glorifying Iraq's violence if not inciting it, Arab news channels appeared to take particular care in their election day reporting. For many channels, the elections were treated on a par with the invasion itself, on which the major channels helped build their names.

Far from the almost nightly barrage of blood and tears, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, the kings of Arab news, barely showed the aftermath of the suicide bombings that occurred in the country.

Instead, the channels opted to report on the attacks in news tickers, and as part of the hourly news broadcasts, keeping their focus on coverage and analysis of the elections themselves. And the broadcasters spared no expense to provide an entire day of coverage from northern to southern Iraq.

PUT THE TORIES OUT OF OUR MISERY:

Letwin member of anti-war tax group (Andrew Sparrow, 31/01/2005, Daily Telegraph)

Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, is backing plans for pacifist taxpayers to be allowed not to contribute to the Government's defence spending.

He was identified yesterday as a supporter of Conscience: The Peace Tax Campaign, which wants the law to be changed to allow conscientious objectors to have their money spent on "peace building initiatives" instead of the military.

A spokesman for the shadow chancellor said that it was a personal belief rather than party policy, but if he became chancellor, this was an idea "that he would want to think about".

Mr Letwin's stance, which was strongly condemned by both Labour and Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative chairman, came to light when his name was found on the Conscience website. [...]

More than 75 MPs are listed as supporters on the Conscience website. Most of them are Labour, and Mr Letwin is the only Tory.

PURPLE REVOLUTION:

Looking for Purple Fingers in Sadr City: Let nobody tell you that this Iraqi election was anything but real. (BARTLE BREESE BULL, 1/31/05, NY Times)

Iraqis are scheduled to go to the national polls twice more this year: in October for a referendum on the permanent constitution that the new assembly is charged with writing, and again in December to elect a new government under the rules of that constitution. Each of the country's three main groups - Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites - has a veto over the permanent constitution. And each enjoys a de facto veto as well: not one is strong enough to impose majoritarian misrule on the others.

It would be blatantly against Shiite and Kurdish interests for either group to try to take advantage of any Sunni parliamentary underrepresentation. They have been waiting centuries for this opportunity, and the last thing they want is to make their country ungovernable.

Federalism, enshrined in the interim constitution, is another safety valve. "Regional autonomy will not tear Iraq apart," said Ahmad Chalabi, the clever Shiite politician who, although now disowned by the Americans who long sponsored him, will be a central figure in the new government. "It is the only way to keep it together."

More important, it is not likely that yesterday's low turnout among Sunnis will lead to their dramatic underrepresentation in the Assembly. The latest estimates put Sunni Arabs at a little less than 13 percent of Iraq's population. Yet there were 50 to 60 Sunni Arabs in viably high slots on yesterday's ballots - even if just 40 Sunnis are elected, that would be 15 percent of the 275-seat assembly.

The candidate list compiled by the Shiite religious leadership, the United Iraqi Alliance, had 11 Sunni Arabs from Mosul alone, as well as the head of Iraq's largest Sunni tribe. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular list also had many Sunnis. So did the lists of the monarchists, Socialists, Communists and others. And now the betting is that a Sunni will be named to head one of the big three ministries in the new government: foreign, defense or interior. Sunnis will also likely get a vice presidency of the state and the presidency of the Assembly.

None of this is by accident. Car bombs might make headlines, but the real politics in Iraq is about something much deeper than the fanaticism of the country's 5,000 or 10,000 terrorists. The people who are going to run Iraq are profoundly pragmatic.

The Kurdish leaders in the valleys of the north, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the alleys of Najaf, the radical Shiite Moktada al-Sadr in his hiding place - all understand what they have achieved over the last two years. By showing great restraint toward one another's communities and a spectacular patience with the necessary evil of American occupation, they have woven together the long, improbable, unfinished carpet of an Iraqi future.

This attitude of restraint is echoed on the street. A 34-year-old Shiite engineer I met in Sadr City last week told me, "If we had wanted revenge on the Sunnis, we would have taken it in 2003." Soldiers in Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army told me that their leader has sent them to pray with Sunnis and to provide security at their mosques. And the widespread campaign of Sunni extremist violence against Shiites has been met with deafening forbearance.

Iraq as a nation never rose up against the occupation, and after yesterday it does not need to. Iraqis have just elected the only legitimate government between Istanbul and New Delhi. The prestige and moral force of popular representation cannot be denied, even by Washington. When the Iraqi government tells the Americans to leave, they will not be able to stay. Whether a little too soon or a little too late, this is the way it is supposed to be.

QUICK, HIDE THE EVIDENCE:

Stealth Attack On Evolution: Who is behind the movement to give equal time to Darwin's critics, and what do they really want? (MICHAEL D. LEMONICK NOAH ISACKSON; JEFFREY RESSNER, Jan. 31, 2005, TIME)

Ken Bingman has beern teaching biology in the public schools in the Kansas City area for 42 years, and over the past decade he has seen a marked change in how students react when he brings up evolution. "I don't know if we're more religious today," he says, "but I see more and more students who want a link to God." Although he is a churchgoer, Bingman does not believe that link should be part of a science class. Neither does the Supreme Court, which declared such intermingling of church and state unconstitutional back in 1988.

But that decision does not sit well with a lot of Americans. So at a time when religious faith is increasingly worn on public sleeves--most prominently that of the President--a dispute that dates back to the celebrated 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" is being replayed around the country in legislatures, courts, school-board meetings and parent-teacher conferences. School administrators in rural Dover, Pa., visited biology classes last week to read a declaration proclaiming, among other things, that "Darwin's theory [of evolution] ... is a theory, not a fact." And in suburban Cobb County, Ga., officials pasted stickers on biology textbooks declaring the same thing and are now appealing a court order to remove them.

The intellectual underpinnings of the latest assault on Darwin's theory come not from Bible-wielding Fundamentalists but from well-funded think tanks promoting a theory they call intelligent design, or I.D. for short. Their basic argument is that the origin of life, the diversity of species and even the structure of organs like the eye are so bewilderingly complex that they can only be the handiwork of a higher intelligence (name and nature unspecified).

All the think tanks want to do, they insist, is make the teaching of evolution more honest by bringing up its drawbacks. Who could argue with that? But the mainstream scientific community contends that this seemingly innocuous agenda is actually a stealthy way of promoting religion. "Teaching evidence against evolution is a back-door way of teaching creationism," says Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

OUR FIRST CATHOLIC PRESIDENT:

25 Most Influential Evangelicals: Richard John Neuhaus (TIME, 1/30/05)

Bushism Made Catholic: When Bush met with journalists from religious publications last year, the living authority he cited most often was not a fellow Evangelical but a man he calls Father Richard, who, he explained, "helps me articulate these [religious] things." A senior Administration official confirms that Neuhaus "does have a fair amount of under-the-radar influence" on such policies as abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment.

Neuhaus, 68, is well-prepared for that role. As founder of the religion-and-policy journal First Things, he has for years articulated toughly conservative yet nuanced positions on a wide range of civic issues. A Lutheran turned Catholic priest, he can translate conservative Protestant arguments couched tightly in Scripture into Catholicism's broader language of moral reasoning, more accessible to a general public that does not regard chapter and verse as final proof.

ROVE WEPT:

Fowler 1, Dean 0: The former Vermont governor's candidacy to lead the DNC hits a snag (VIVECA A. NOVAK, Jan. 30, 2005, TIME)
A dent was knocked into the aura of inevitability surrounding Howard Dean's run to be the next Democratic Party chair Sunday afternoon when the executive committee of state party chairs voted to endorse Donnie Fowler rather than Dean. Just last week the former Vermont governor had touted endorsements from some state party leaders. But it was Fowler — bespectacled, Southern, and, at 37, the youngster of the field — who prevailed in Sunday's vote. Fowler, a South Carolinian who lives in California and is the son of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, headed Al Gore's field operation in the 2000 presidential election. Last year he ran the field operation in Michigan for John Kerry, who won that state by three percentage points. [...]

The race now moves to the house of labor, where a committee of the AFL-CIO could vote to endorse one of the candidates on Tuesday.
House of labor? Does even the Labour Party still allow labor much sway?

MOVE ON, MOVEON:

Chief Senate Dem to request Iraq exit plan (DAVID ESPO, 1/30/2005, The Associated Press)

In a pre-State of the Union challenge to President Bush, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid intends to call Monday for the administration to outline an exit strategy for Iraq.

Reid plans to raise the issue as part of back-to-back speeches in which he and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will sketch outline their differences with Bush on two issues likely to dominate Congress' work this year, the war on terror and Social Security.

U.S. troops stationed in Iraq could be out of the war-torn country by the middle of next year, if all goes well.

That according to Iraqi interim Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, who told Britain's Channel 4 News that coalition forces would likely not be necessary in a year and a half.

"I think we will not need the multinational, foreign forces, in this country within 18 months," al-Naqib said. "I think we will be able to depend on ourselves, if everything goes in the right direction.

"We are building our forces and I think we will need 18 months. It's my estimate that we will have quite a reasonable-sized force, trained, well-trained force, well-equipped to protect the country. So I believe very much that we won't need more than 18 months."

His optimism was tempered, though, by Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who told CNN he believes the U.S.-led force should remain in Iraq for "at least a couple of years" until Iraq's security force is up to speed.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION (via David Hill, The Bronx):

Nazi road signs ripped down day after report (KATU, January 28, 2005)

Two controversial road signs that were put up in Marion County have already been ripped down.

The road signs read, "The American Nazi Party has adopted a two mile stretch of Sunnyview Road" and were put up by Marion County officials one week ago.

THANKS, OSAMA!:

Transcript for Jan. 30: Guests: Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (Meet the Press, Jan. 30, 2005)

MR. RUSSERT: At the Clinton Library dedication on November 18, a few weeks after the election, you were quoted as saying, "It was the Osama bin Laden tape. It scared the voters," the tape that appeared just a day before the election here. Do you believe that tape is the reason you lost the race?

SEN. KERRY: I believe that 9/11 was the central deciding issue in this race. And the tape--we were rising in the polls up until the last day when the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared and went down on Monday. I think it had an impact. But 9/11, you know, it's a very difficult hurdle when a country is at war. I applauded the president's leadership in the days immediately afterwards. I thought he did a good job in that, and he obviously connected to the American people in those immediate days. When a country is at war and in the wake of 9/11, it's very difficult to shift horses in midstream. I think it's remarkable we came as close as we did as a campaign. Many Republicans say we beat their models by four or five points as to what they thought we could achieve.

I am proud of the campaign, Tim. And I think if you look at what we did in states, I mean, millions of new voters came into this process. I won the youth vote. I won the independent vote. I won the moderate vote. If you take half the people at an Ohio State football game on Saturday afternoon and they were to have voted the other way, you and I would be having a discussion today about my State of the Union speech.

PROTESTING DEMOCRACY?:

Iraqis clash at polling station (BBC, 1/30/05)

Iraqis have clashed with demonstrators against the election outside a polling station in Manchester.

About 200 demonstrators were chased by another group who burned their flags, while other Iraqis clashed with police.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE $47 TRILLION WE'VE SAVED WE'D BE BROKE:

Spendthrift nation: Why don't Americans save more? (Drake Bennett, January 30, 2005, Boston Globe)

NATIONAL THRIFT WEEK came and went two weeks ago, uncelebrated and unremarked. But the holiday -- once promoted by President Calvin Coolidge as a rebuke to the free-spending 1920s -- was nonetheless honored in the breach, as American prodigality was very much in the news.

Buoyed by reelection, the Bush administration has in recent weeks been pushing for tax-free "Lifetime Savings Accounts," as well as for tax reform that will shift the burden away from savings and investment and onto earnings and consumption. Even the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda, Social Security reform, is pitched in part as a way to get Americans to save more.

Last year, after 25 years of decline, Americans' household savings rate stood at less than 1 percent of after-tax income. Japanese households, by comparison, saved 7.7 percent, while the French socked away 16 percent. Our national savings, which takes into account government and corporate savings, isn't impressive either. We save 13.6 percent of gross domestic product, compared with Japan's 25 percent and China's 50 percent. As Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen S. Roach has warned, "America's saving problem is off the charts -- possibly the most serious imbalance in an unbalanced world."

Both as individuals and as a nation, it seems, Americans are gambling with their future. "We don't want to have the poverty rate of the elderly go back up, so it's a significant problem that people are not saving for their retirement," says Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff. And low savings exposes the country as a whole to the risk of financial crisis. As Dartmouth's Jonathan Skinner puts it, "With the low measured US savings rate, we have money flowing in to the US to be invested in US stocks and a larger share of US assets being owned by all these foreign entities. If they all decide to dump their US assets we'd be in trouble -- it would make the US dollar look like the Italian lira."

But lost in the din of dismay is the question of why Americans are such poor savers. How is it, after all, that the nation of Ben Franklin, apostle of frugality, has become a republic of spendthrifts? Should we blame a cultural proclivity or a changing economic climate, the blandishments of credit card companies or the arrogance bred of economic preeminence?

"I don't think you'll get a definitive answer from anyone you talk to," says Yale University economics professor Robert J. Shiller. In fact, it turns out that there is little consensus not only as to the root causes of our savings problem but how much of a problem it really is.

Most economists agree that savings rates can be misleading. The household savings rate is calculated simply as after-tax income minus the amount spent on consumption. But this leaves out increases in the value of stocks or real estate, often a considerable source of wealth. In fact, selling assets at a profit often ends up depressing savings on paper, even if none of the proceeds are spent.

HOW DO YOU SAY "END" IN ARABIC?

Iraq confounds the prophets of doom (Daily Telegraph, 31/01/2005)

That elections are a better thing than tyranny seems a truth so obvious as not to be worth stating. Yet such were the passions aroused by the Iraq war that many Western observers now find themselves hoping, disgracefully, that that country's first free poll will fail.

Left-wing commentators, in Britain as in much of Europe, have focused disproportionately on the difficulties that any state must undergo during a transition process. To many of them, every terrorist bomb, every murdered election official, every sign of heightened military alertness - even the loss of a British aircraft - makes a nonsense of Iraq's democratic aspirations.

Yesterday's high turnout, in defiance of the gunmen, should be celebrated. Of course the Iraqi insurgency is an important story. But this does not explain the loving attention devoted to each setback faced by the forces of order. Compare yesterday's reports with those by the same commentators during South Africa's first democratic election. Then, too, there were many technical problems: electors who were not properly registered, voter intimidation, long queues. But these things were set in their proper context, as the backdrop against which the moving drama of people casting their first ballots was being played out. No one suggested that the clashes between IFP and ANC supporters in Zululand undermined the whole process. No one argued that the backlash by a handful of black homeland chieftains and Boer irreconcilables made South Africa unfit for democracy.

THEY JUST DON'T GET IT:

Democrats cautiously welcome Iraqi elections (AFP, 1/30/05)

Leading Democratic Party critics of US President George W. Bush's Iraq policy cautiously welcomed the successful staging of elections and distanced themselves from calls for the start of an immediate US troop withdrawal.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who lost the November presidential election against Republican President George W. Bush, described the Iraqi elections as "significant" and "important" but said they should not be "overhyped."

THE FOURTH REICH WON'T LAST MUCH LONGER THAN THE THIRD (via Tom Morin):

Grim Tales: Want to get scared? Ignore what you see. Believe only what you read. (Denis Boyles, 1/28/05, National Review)

Auschwitz adds to U.S.-EU friction

This headline, on a Judy Dempsey item in the International Herald Tribune, is this week's ultimate in bizarre, out-of-reality reporting. According to Dempsey, "the attendance of Vice President Dick Cheney is a bitter disappointment" to "prominent Poles" — who apparently represent the entire EU — because Cheney is not Bush. After all, writes Dempsey, "The Auschwitz ceremony will include President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Horst Köhler of Germany, President Jacques Chirac of France and President Moshe Katzav of Israel." As evidence of how "Auschwitz adds to US-EU Friction," Dempsey quotes "veteran intellectuals," including MEP Bronislaw Geremek: "I would like to see the president of the United States attend the...Auschwitz commemoration." Who wouldn't? But why? Says Geremek, a historian, "[I]t should be said that the Holocaust helped to create the European Union. It was the answer to the totalitarian ideology created on European soil, such as Auschwitz."

A digression: I admire Prof. Geremek. But it should not be said that the Holocaust helped to create the European Union. In fact, the European Union owes its provenance to Walther Funk and other architects of Hitler's New Order, not to Auschwitz. Historian Mark Mazower, in Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, claims that the Funk plan "...bore more than a passing resemblance to the post-war Common Market. The 'New Order' beloved of the youthful technocrats at the Reich Ministry of Economics involved the economic integration of western Europe and the creation of a tariff-free zone." Eugen Weber, writing a few years ago in The Atlantic (here, if you're a subscriber), agrees: "The European Union, its attendant bureaucracy, even the euro, all appear to stem from the Berlin-Vichy collaboration." To the extent that France did more than its share to fill the concentration camps for their partners, the Germans, and that their mutual hatred of Jews brought them both closer together, Geremek may have a point.

Of course, the real story about Bush, Poland, and the EU was not to be seen in the IHT. It was in Die Zeit, where Poland's Wladyslaw Bartoszewski explained the reasons for Polish loyalty toward the US, and in Brussels, where, according to Handelsblatt, Polish representatives didn't take very kindly to leftwing British and German efforts to spare German feelings by attempting to identify Auschwitz as a "Polish camp" in the official EU resolution commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation. The issue blossomed into a Brussels-sized furor, according to the EU Observer. Schroder had to call off his MEPs, who finally agreed to admit that "Nazis" had built the camps.

Meanwhile, Davids Medienkritik has collected a bunch of clips from the German press in which the Auschwitz-Abu Ghraib connection is finally explained. A sample, from TAZ: "The torture scandal of the US army in Abu Ghraib shows that sadism has a place in civilized nations, while Guantánamo Bay proves that the principle of the concentration camp...today is upheld with pride by the leading nation of the civilized world."

Now there's an artificial reality any German can uphold with pride.

TASTES LIKE BUFO ALVARIUS (via Jim Yates):

Catfish licking: a new high?: It's said that fish's slime is hallucinogenic (Tony Bridges, 1/29/05, Tallahasee DEMOCRAT)

It could be the strangest thing anyone ever asked Tolly Van Brunt.

He was at a boat basin in Franklin County, waiting for a buddy who'd gone to the bait shop. They were headed out to the Gulf for some saltwater fishing.

A boy, maybe 17 or so, sidled up to him on the dock.

The kid wanted to make a deal. He'd buy any catfish the anglers caught that day.

"I told him they weren't any good to eat," Van Brunt said. "And he says, 'Yeah, I know that, but we'd like to get some. We've found a way to get high off the slime.'"

Oh, c'mon.

Recreational use of fish goo? That has to be a joke, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Turns out, a story's been going around for years about hallucinogenic properties in the slime of a certain kind of saltwater catfish. But whether fact or urban legend is not exactly clear.

"I've heard of people licking them and getting zonked like they're on LSD," said Dr. John Hitron, with the Florida State University marine lab in St. Teresa Beach. "I'm not sure how true it is."

OK, first a few basics on the fish.

CRUSADING WE MUST GO:

The Doctrine That Never Died (TOM WOLFE, 1/30/05, NY Times)

SURELY some bright bulb from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York or the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton has already remarked that President Bush's inaugural address 10 days ago is the fourth corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. No? So many savants and not one peep out of the lot of them? Really? [...]

Theodore Roosevelt's corollary to President James Monroe's famous doctrine of 1823 proclaimed that not only did America have the right, à la Monroe, to block European attempts to re-colonize any of the Western Hemisphere, it also had the right to take over and shape up any nation in the hemisphere guilty of "chronic wrongdoing" or uncivilized behavior that left it "impotent," powerless to defend itself against aggressors from the Other Hemisphere, meaning mainly England, France, Spain, Germany and Ita