Wise words from a genuine adult!
The Truth About MenThe Education of a Courtesan
Essay by Veronica MONET
(Printed without permission)

11/25/05
Have you noticed how popular it has become to make fun of men? Seems every sitcom, comedy routine, or television drama I see finds a way to skewer men. The last episode of "NYPD" tackled the idea of a man getting his penis cut off—with an undercurrent of humor. It concerns me that the "NYPD" writers think such subject matter funny. It wouldn't be funny at all if someone cut off a woman's breast or clitoris or any other part of her body. In fact, if "NYPD" wrote that into their show with anything less than retribution with a religious fervor, they would be censored and penalized at every front. But the mutilation of mens' bodies is fodder for entertainment of many varieties. Men are the last group of people you can poke fun at without getting letters of complaint from the PC police. It is not politically correct to tell certain jokes about women, and references of any kind to racial and ethnic groups can land you in extremely hot water, but when it comes to finding fault with white males, you pretty much have carte blanche. Today's man is most often portrayed as kind of dumb, kind of confused, and kind of child-like. Or he is the exact opposite: violent, selfish, greedy, power-hungry, and always in the mood for sex. As a woman who has spent the last 11 years in the sex industry, I am often expected to have a negative view of men. After all, most people postulate, I have seen the worst side of men, perhaps the true nature of men. How could I possibly encounter all that raw selfish sexuality without coming away a little jaded? Fortunately people's fantasies of my life and my work and the men I see have very little to do with the facts. I actually entered the sex industry on the verge of becoming a lesbian separatist. I hated men and thought working as a prostitute would afford me the opportunity to take their money while spending as little time as possible in their systems (you know the patriarchy!). I had worked a couple desk jobs after college and absolutely hated all the ass-kissing and bullshit that fitting into the corporate environs entailed. I blamed men for the way the world was, but I did need some cash to pay rent and buy groceries. Prostitution seemed the perfect solution. It only required a couple hours a week to pay all my bills, and I used the rest of my time to write and engage in political protests. (This was during the Gulf War, and the groups I protested with would lie down in the middle of traffic; I was also a staff writer for a bisexual magazine called Anything That Moves.)
The transformation was rather unexpected: I began to see men as clients instead of as "tricks." Somewhere along the line, my experiences as a prostitute changed me. But the transformation I underwent was rather unexpected. I began to see the men I worked with as clients instead of "tricks." They brought their individuality to me, and it became impossible to continue to adhere to stereotypes. The reality of men impinged on the mythology. Today, I believe stereotypes are debilitating and inaccurate, whether they are applied to women or men. Stereotyping is a lazy form of perception that we evolved to increase our chances of survival. It was very effective when you were generalizing your first encounter with a bear to your second encounter with a bear. It even worked nicely when trying to decide if people wearing certain clothes might be friend or foe. If you took the time to get to know someone, you might already be dead. But we are not battling Vikings or conquering indigenous island tribes anymore (well, perhaps with our advertising and media, but not with face-to-face encounters). Many if not most of our encounters with other people involve a certain level of built-in safety that can afford us the luxury of getting to know others as individuals. So, unless you need to make a split-second decision about your personal safety based on the appearance of another, you are holding up the emotional evolution of our species by relying on stereotypes and prejudice to guide your human interactions. And I have been, and still am at times, guilty as charged. However, I have made considerable progress in my efforts to take each new person I meet as a unique individual, and my clients of the past 11 years have played a major role in my education and enlightenment in this department. They brought me, first and foremost, their vulnerability. Whether they were acting out a fantasy of withholding a raise from their secretary until she performed sexually for them, or begging me to leave bloody marks on their back with a bullwhip, their vulnerability was ever-present and ultimately endearing. The vast variety I have encountered in men has astounded me. I can no longer listen to others making sweeping generalizations about men without involuntarily flinching and recoiling with discomfort and some measure of revulsion. I just know it isn't so. I often say that if I made the kind of assumptions many men and women make about men, I would severely limit my income. Being open to each man's individual needs and desires and proclivities is what makes me successful at my profession. Ultimately, I have formed some generalizations—but they tend to fly in the face of popular myths about men. For instance, I have found that many men are less interested in sexual intercourse and achieving an orgasm than they are usually portrayed. I have seen many men lay down hundreds of dollars to talk, cuddle, engage in hours of foreplay, and actively seek instruction in how to please women sexually. Yet we as a society continue to perpetuate the myth that all men are interested in doing "the deed," that they must be coaxed into foreplay, and that the majority of men are so self-centered they ignore the physical needs of their sexual partners.
I have had sex with more men who took my needs to heart than with women. As a bisexual woman, I can attest that I have had sex with a lot more men who took my needs to heart than I have had with women. I found most of my female lovers to be lazy and self-centered, while my male clients invested an amazing amount of money, time, and enthusiasm into sexual performance. (Now, before I get a lot of hate mail from women, I want to stress that these are my generalizations after 11 years in the sex biz. I have had far more sexual contact with men than women, so my personal survey is not statistically sound in any way. I also believe the way we socialize and raise males and females has a lot to do with the way they behave. Men are expected to perform—in sports, in war, in work, in the bedroom—while women are merely expected to be: attractive, docile, nurturing, attentive, and so on.) Again, generalizations are dangerous because they make us blind to the unique individual standing in front of us. But if we are going to make generalizations about the majority of men or women, let them be based on how things are—for whatever reason, whether nature or nurture, genetics or environment—and not our beliefs on how things should be. Currently, we invest a lot of time supporting the myths about gender that make us feel everything is as it should be in the world. We feel pride and safety belonging to our group (men or women) and try to hide the ways in which even we don't conform to our group identity. When men get into groups, they tend to posture for status and membership. Women tend to share secrets and confide for membership in a group of females. I do not believe these behaviors are based on X- and Y-chromosomes or progesterone or testosterone. My experiences as a prostitute have shown me otherwise. In fact, both men and women show another side of themselves when they pay for a prostitute. (Yes, women also pay for prostitutes, although not as frequently as men do.) It is as if the exchange of money frees them from their gender role for that hour, evening, or weekend. They are free to explore other aspects of being human, other sides to their own personality. No one will judge them or censor them. They need not worry about losing their job, their standing in the community, or their families. Consequently, they can explore secret desires and urges. Contrary to popular myth, these secret desires more often involve violating the constraints of gender roles than indulging in different sexual practices. I have spent a lot more time giving men permission to be passive, vulnerable, sexually desired, and pursued than I have in treating some guy to his first golden shower. And I have also serviced lesbians who needed a break from their role as a dyke. A typical scenario: Pick her up while wearing my five-inch heels and throw her on the bed, then fuck her silly from behind with a strap-on. This kind of sexual behavior is usually prohibited in the often-rigid roles between butch and femme. My exposure to this unspoken underbelly, the truth so terrible we had to replace it with visions of violence and "perversion," has filled me with compassion where there was fear and love where there was hate. I cannot take a backward glance at moments shared with my clients without feeling a warm sense of connection and gratitude. People are at their most honest, and sometimes at their best, when they seek the services of a courtesan. I know some acts of prostitution involve hate and violence, but for the most part prostitution is merely empty and banal. There is, however, a sizeable minority of prostitutes—courtesans, call girls, whores, whatever you wish to call them—that brings honor and spirituality to the profession. The services of these women and men are sought by people who are looking for sexual transformation, as well as sexual release. Sex was, after all, the very first religion. Many people still find more that touches them spiritually and emotionally in sexual connection and interaction than they can ever find sitting in church.
Many people find more that touches them spiritually and emotionally in sexual connection than they could ever find in church. It is time we included all humans in a movement that embraces the rights of all of us, whether straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual, whether male, female, hermaphrodite, or transgendered. It is time we temper our observations about how things are with our knowledge of how things can be. It is time we learn to see each other and ourselves as individuals instead of members in a group identity. And it is certainly time we abandon our primitive fear of sex for a more mature and educated and hopefully experienced stance. Sex is the very basis of life and renewal. Sex is also the only reason we have male and female. All the other bullshit—from clothing to hairstyles to whether we cross our legs or spit on the sidewalk—are things we invented in an effort to accentuate the differences between male and female. If those differences were so natural and immutable, we would not have such severe taboos against violating gender roles. Deep down we know that if we don't raise our boys to be men, they may not fulfill our expectations for them. Why? Because left to our own devices, men and women and all the people in between those two physical realities would assume a wide variety of identities and personas. I guess that frightens us. It shouldn't. I find all that variety beautiful.

In Strong Terms, Rome Is to Ban Gays as Priests
By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
ROME, Nov. 22 - A new Vatican document excludes from the priesthood most gay men, with few exceptions, banning in strong and specific language candidates "who are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called 'gay culture.' "
The long-awaited document, which has leaked out in sections over the last few months, was published Tuesday in Italian by an Italian Catholic Web site, AdistaOnline.it.
The document appears to allow ordination only for candidates who experienced "transitory" homosexual tendencies that were "clearly overcome" at least three years before ordination as a deacon, the last step before priesthood. It does not define "overcome." Several critics worried that that language would make it nearly impossible for men who believe their basic orientation is gay - but who are celibate - to become priests.
The anticipation of the document has divided Catholics, especially in the United States, igniting contentious debate over whether this is an appropriate response to the recent sex scandals and whether celibate gay men can still be good priests.
On both sides of that divide, there was general agreement on Tuesday night that the document presented a strong deterrent to homosexual men, but with some limited room for seminaries to make exceptions.
The document puts the onus on bishops, seminary directors and the spiritual advisers "to evaluate all of the qualities of the personality and assure that the candidate does not have sexual disorders that are incompatible with priesthood."
A candidate, in turn, would have to be honest about his sexuality.
"It would be gravely dishonest for a candidate to hide his own homosexuality, regardless of everything, to arrive at ordination," the document states. "Such an inauthentic attitude does not correspond to the spirit of truth, loyalty and availability that must characterize the personality of one who considers himself called to serve Christ."
Vatican spokesmen refused to comment Tuesday, saying the document would be published on Nov. 29.
But an Italian reporter, Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican specialist for Il Giornale who saw the entire document two weeks ago, said the Adista document matched the one he saw. An anonymous church official was quoted by The Associated Press as saying the document, a short five pages with footnotes, was genuine.
While church documents as early as 1961 banned homosexuals from the priesthood, conservative Catholics complain that the ban has often been ignored. Some liberals say the priesthood has been enriched, and amplified in numbers, by gay celibate men.
Thus many conservatives called the document a necessary correction, saying the number of gay men in seminaries has deterred heterosexual men from applying.
"I don't think it's anything new or different from the church's constant teaching, but it's new in the sense that the teaching has been widely disregarded in seminaries," said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, editor of Ignatius Press, which published many of Pope Benedict XVI's books before he was elected last April.
The document draws a clear line at banning active gays, and what many experts said was a less clear one banning candidates with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," while leaving the term undefined. Generally, it says, homosexuals "find themselves in a situation that seriously obstructs them from properly relating to men and women."
"It's a clear statement by the Vatican that gay men are not welcome in seminaries and religious orders," said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of "In Good Company: the Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity and Obedience" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
"It raises the bar so high that it would be difficult to imagine gay men feeling encouraged to pursue a life in the priesthood," he added. "It's a very stringent set of rules they're applying. Really the only people that would be able to enter, according to the document, would be people who had a fleeting homosexual attraction."
Francis DiBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates the inclusion of gays in the Catholic Church, said, "It seems that its intent is really to keep homosexuality quiet, to silence gay priests and gay seminarians." Such secrecy, he said, will make it even harder to find candidates who are well adjusted and sexually mature.
But the Rev. Mark Francis, superior general of the Clerics of Saint Viator, a religious order based in Rome, said the document appeared to allow the leeway to ordain a candidate who believed he was gay but also believed he could be celibate.
"You could say, 'I believe I am gay, but that the tendencies toward being gay are not deep-seated,' " he said. "What constitutes deep-seated homosexual tendencies?" he said. "How does one judge that?"
Critics complain that by discouraging gay men from applying, it will alter the makeup of the priesthood, and possibly reduce its numbers at a time of an already acute shortage. Supporters maintain, however, that the priesthood needs to change, though Father Fessio said he worried whether that would actually happen.
"It depends on whether it's implemented or not," he said. "Will it be obeyed? I don't know. I've read a lot of documents in the past that weren't."
The document is marked as signed on Nov. 4 by Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect for the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican department that oversees seminaries. It says that on Aug. 31, Benedict "approved the instruction and ordered its publication."
While the document has been in the works for years, begun under Pope John Paul II, its release marks one of the most significant acts in Benedict's seven months as pope.
A doctrinal conservative who served as John Paul's defender of the faith for two decades, he spoke out before his election against "filth" in the church, which many observers speculated was a reference to the need to clean up the church after the scandals involving sexually abusive priests.
Some critics both in and out of the church have accused the Vatican of using gay priests as a scapegoat for that scandal, a charge the church has vigorously denied. Experts have noted that is incorrect to equate pedophilia with homosexuality.
The document concerns only candidates for the priesthood, not already ordained priests. But in anticipation of the document's release, a handful of priests have publicly declared their homosexuality, and a few bishops and leaders of religious orders have spoken out in defense of their gay priests.
The president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., wrote in his diocesan newspaper in October: "There are many wonderful and excellent priests in the church who have a gay orientation, are chaste and celibate, and are very effective ministers of the Gospel. Witch hunts and gay bashing have no place in the Church."
Bishop Matthew H. Clark, of Rochester, addressing any "gay young men who are considering a vocation to priesthood," wrote: "We try to treat all inquiries fairly. You will be no exception."
Ian Fisher reported from Rome for this article, and Laurie Goodstein from New York. Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.

Marvelous! From Washington Post

Phony Theory, False Conflict
'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith
By Charles KrauthammerFriday, November 18, 2005; Page A23
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
Newton's religion was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and a member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.

What could be more elegant, creative and divine than a world derived from variations in a single, double stranded molecule? Even if the world includes the Kansas Board of Education.'
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation -- understanding the workings of the universe -- as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.
Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" -- today's tarted-up version of creationism -- on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
letters@charleskrauthammer

Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent DesignNov 18 11:55 AM US/Eastern
By NICOLE WINFIELDAssociated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY
The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.
The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.
"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" _ whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism _ a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation _ camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.
In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.
"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."
Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.
"God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," he wrote. "He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."
The Vatican Observatory, which Coyne heads, is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. It is based in the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI waded indirectly into the evolution debate by saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
Questions about the Vatican's position on evolution were raised in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.
In a New York Times column, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis." Schoenborn said the late pope's statement was "rather vague and unimportant." Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

from the November 16, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1116/p04s01-ussc.html
A low-cost laptop for every childEffort to link the world's rural poor to the Internet with a $100 computer gets a boost from the United Nations.
By Christa Case Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
In Cambridge, Mass., Nicholas Negroponte and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been chipping away at a long-held dream: producing a laptop so cheap that governments could afford to link every child in the world to the Internet.
Wednesday, that idea could be lifted to a whole new level.
Mr. Negroponte, chairman of MIT's Media Lab, will unveil his brainchild with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan at a technology meeting in Tunisia. The meeting of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society is aimed at beginning to put into effect its stated goals where "everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate" in the benefits of information technology.
To do that, MIT and other groups have been pushing hard to create a low-cost laptop.
For example, the Indian government in cooperation with the US-based Jhai Foundation, has plans for developing a $200 machine for rural villages.
Negroponte's goal is even more aggressive: a $100 computer.
So far, the MIT group has whittled production costs down to less than $130.
To save money, it will run off the free Linux operating system instead of a proprietary system like Microsoft Windows. But the proposed machine will be full-color, capable of wireless connection to the Internet, and rugged enough to survive getting dropped in the mud.
Five corporate sponsors, including Google and Advanced Micro Devices, have chipped in $2 million apiece to form a nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child, to oversee the project.
Nearly a half-dozen developing countries have expressed serious interest in ordering 1 million or more units, says Alexandra Kahn, spokeswoman for the MIT Media Lab.
Also, the UN Development Program has agreed to help distribute the machines, particularly to countries whose orders fall short of the million-unit bar Negroponte had originally set to help keep costs down.
American students could benefit, too.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has proposed a $54 million program to equip each of his state's 500,000 middle- and high-schoolers with the laptops, which the students would be allowed to keep. Other states may follow suit.
OLPC officials estimate they'll need another six months to complete development of the machine. Production will begin in the third quarter of 2006, with distribution late next year or early in 2007, says Ms. Kahn.
Ultimately, "this is not about machines," says Seymour Papert, a pioneer of childhood learning and a principal with Negroponte of the OLPC effort.
"It is the next big step toward a vision of learning being transformed as radically as medicine, communications, and entertainment," he says.

Republicans Want Answers, Too
By Dan FroomkinSpecial to washingtonpost.comTuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:42 PM
President Bush doesn't much like answering tough questions.
Faced with a profound souring of public opinion, Bush has held only one full-scale press conference since June. His press secretary won't give straight answers to even the simplest questions anymore. And Bush's aides continue to keep skeptics out of the Oval Office and away from his public events.


The president has refused to answer any questions about the recent indictment of a top White House aide. And most recently, his response to questions about his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq has been as unenlightening as it has been vitriolic.
Only Congress can legally demand answers from the President -- but with both Houses controlled by docile Republicans, that hasn't been a problem.
Until now.
Signs are that members of Bush's own party, at least in the Senate, are increasingly sick of the mushroom treatment -- particularly when it comes to the future of American involvement in Iraq.
What's the Strategy?
Carl Hulse writes in the New York Times: "In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war. . . .
"The proposal on the Iraq war, from Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require the administration to provide extensive new quarterly reports to Congress on subjects like progress in bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. The other appeals related to Iraq are nonbinding and express the position of the Senate.
"The plan stops short of a competing Democratic proposal that moves toward establishing dates for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But it is built upon the Democratic approach and makes it clear that senators of both parties are increasingly eager for Iraqis to take control of their country in coming months and open the door to removing American troops."
Chipping Away at Presidential Power
Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post: "A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise yesterday that would dramatically alter U.S. policy for treating captured terrorist suspects by granting them a final recourse to the federal courts but stripping them of some key legal rights."
That measure would likely be linked with the effort by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to ban torture and abuse of terrorism suspects being held in U.S. facilities, Weisman writes.
"Such broad legislation would be Congress's first attempt to assert some control over the detention of suspected terrorists, which the Bush administration has closely guarded as its sole prerogative. . . .
"As the president's approval ratings decline to record lows, Congress has become more assertive in areas of policy it used to steer clear of."
Divisions All Over
Zachary Coile writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that "less than a year into the president's second term, major divisions are appearing in the party that controls power in Washington.
"After failing to move the president's top priority, Social Security reform, and rebuffing his White House counsel for a Supreme Court seat, the GOP-controlled Congress is engaged in an intraparty feud over how deeply to cut federal spending, whether to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and how to pay for extending almost $70 billion in tax cuts."
Poll Watch
It's not a coincidence that all of this is happening as Bush's public approval goes south.
Susan Page writes in USA Today: "Americans' views of President Bush and his trustworthiness have hit new lows, a downturn that could make it more difficult for him to push his legislative agenda and to boost Republican candidates in next year's congressional elections. . . .
"Bush's job-approval rating sank to a record 37%, down from a previous low of 39% a month ago. The poll finds growing criticism of the president, unease about the nation's direction and opposition to the war in Iraq."
Here are the complete poll results .
Asked how they feel about Bush personally, 27 percent of those polled said they like him a lot; 21 percent say the like him a little; 17 percent said they dislike him a little; 33 percent said they dislike him a lot. A sizeable chunk of the 33 percent who dislike him a lot -- a total of 6 percent of all those polled -- went so far as to say they actually hate him.
CNN reports: "In the poll, 56 percent of registered voters said they would be likely to vote against a local candidate supported by Bush, while 34 percent said the opposite.
"Only 9 percent said their first choice in next year's elections would be a Republican who supports Bush on almost every major issue."
Which reminds me of an item I didn't have room for yesterday. Deborah Howlett and Joe Donahue wrote in the Newark Star-Ledger on Sunday: "Doug Forrester, in his first postelection interview, laid the blame for his loss in the governor's race last week directly at the feet of President Bush. He said the public's growing disaffection with Bush, especially after Hurricane Katrina, made it impossible for his campaign to overcome the built-in advantage Democrats have in a blue state like New Jersey."
Bennett Roth writes in the Houston Chronicle that the Gallup Poll "found that for the first time, more than half of the public thinks Bush is not honest and trustworthy -- 52 percent to 46 percent. . . .
"Experts say that regaining the public trust will require more than tougher rhetoric. They say Bush must show more progress on Iraq as well as receive some breaks on weather-related issues, including a moderate winter that would keep home fuel costs in check. . . .
"Pollster John Zogby said that experiences of previous presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, show that once the public has lost faith in its leaders, it is difficult for them to regain such trust.
" 'It's kind of like virginity,' said Zogby. 'It is hard to get back.' "
Fighting Back
Craig Gordon writes in Newsday: "It has been a long-standing tradition in America that politics stop at the water's edge - an adage that means domestic political fights are set aside to present a unified front while a president is traveling abroad.
"But despite that tradition, Bush used his last stop on American soil to give a slashing campaign-style speech and get in a parting shot. Democrats have stepped up their criticism that the White House manipulated intelligence in the lead-up to war and misled Americans about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein."
Here's the text of the speech, delivered at an Air Force base in Alaska, and which aside from a few notable exceptions was an almost word-for-word repeat of the speech he gave last Friday.
Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times about one new section: "He recited old quotes from three senior Senate Democrats -- John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, Carl Levin of Michigan and Harry Reid of Nevada -- without identifying any of them by name in his remarks. All three backed the war in 2001 and 2002 but have recently led the criticism that the White House misled the public when it tied Iraq to Al Qaeda and said that Saddam Hussein's regime had pursued nuclear weapons."
That replaced the portion in Friday's speech in which, as Wallsten notes, he had "singled out his 2004 reelection challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), for shifting his stance on the war. Kerry responded Monday with a fiery speech on the Senate floor, suggesting the president has failed to grasp that the chorus of criticism over his Iraq policy does not consist of Democrats alone.
" 'Does the president think that the many generals, former top administration officials and senators from his own party who have joined over two-thirds of the country in questioning the president's handling of the war in Iraq are all unpatriotic too?' Kerry asked. 'The president does not have a monopoly on patriotism, and this is not a country where only those who agree with him support the troops and care about defending our country.' "
Setting the Record Straight?
The White House also released another of its relatively rare Setting the Record Straight memos, this one in response to Senator Carl Levin's suggestion yesterday morning on CNN that Bush "tried to connect Saddam Hussein with the attackers on us, on 9/11, so often, so frequently and so successfully, even though it was wrong, that the American people overwhelmingly thought, because of the President's misstatements that as a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein had participated in the attack on us on 9/11. That was a deception. That was clearly misinformation. It had a huge effect on the American people."
But the White House memo doesn't actually dispute Levin's assertion -- it simply responds with old quotes from Levin and other Democrats. All those prove is that many Democrats were indeed mouthing many of Bush's talking points in the run up to war. It doesn't prove that what Levin was saying yesterday is untrue.
Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl write in the New York Times: "With Mr. Bush politically weakened, the Democrats emboldened and public support for the war ebbing, the White House is building two main lines of defense. It is asserting that many Democrats saw the same threat from Iraq as the administration did. And it is pointing to two government studies that it says found no evidence that prewar intelligence, while admittedly flawed, had been twisted by political pressure.
"The first is giving the White House some political protection, though not enough to deter Democratic attacks. The second addresses only part of the issue, because neither study directly addressed the broader question: whether the administration presented that intelligence to Congress, the nation and the world in a way that overstated what the intelligence said about the threat posed by Mr. Hussein's weapons programs and any links to terrorism."
Stevenson and Jehl conclude that "what Mr. Bush left unaddressed was the question of how his administration used that intelligence, which was full of caveats, subtleties and contradiction, to make the case for war."
The Powerline Perspective
Some conservative bloggers think Bush is doing exactly the right thing.
John Hinderaker writes in the Powerline blog: "Bush needs to keep giving this kind of speech every couple of days for the foreseeable future. There is a limit to the MSM's ability to censor his message by not reporting his speeches, as they have so often done throughout his Presidency. Sooner or later, if he keeps pounding away, the message will get through. And it is a powerful message indeed."
Hinderaker's fellow Powerline blogger Paul Mirengoff , incidentally, writes that my column yesterday was "deeply misleading."
Mirengoff, for instance, writes: "If the overwhelming intelligence consensus was that Saddam had WMD, then Bush did not mislead the American people in making that claim. On this crucial point, Froomkin shows himself to be more partisan and less honest than Milbank and Pincus ."
But it was not the existence of Iraqi WMD in general that the public is feeling so misled about. Their existence had, indeed, been suspected for a long time -- during which there was no serious talk of invasion.
More likely, it was the threat that Saddam might provide al Qaeda or other terrorist groups with nuclear weapons in particular -- hyped by the Bush administration despite the lack of reliable specific intelligence -- that launched the public stampede toward war.
Cheney Meets Chalabi
Charles Aldinger writes for Reuters that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, "once embraced and then shunned by the Bush administration," held a private meeting at the White House with Cheney yesterday. "Cheney's office would not provide details."
9/11 Commission Redux
Philip Shenon writes in the New York Times: "The members of the Sept. 11 commission charged Monday that the Bush administration had made 'insufficient progress' in trying to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons. They called on President Bush to make the issue 'his top national security priority and ride herd on the bureaucracy to maintain a sense of urgency.' "
White House Attacks Ginsburg
It can be hard to tell these days if what you read in ABC News's The Note is true or a failed attempt at parody. But let's assume that the quote they published yesterday from Steve Schmidt is accurate. In that case, here's what Schmidt, who is a vice presidential spokesman and is also running the "murder boards" for Supreme Court nominees Samuel Alito had to say yesterday:
"Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had served as general counsel of the ACLU and had advocated liberal political positions including the ideas that the age of consent should be 12, there was a right to prostitution and polygamy in the Constitution and Mother's Day should be abolished."
The Carpetbagger blog is outraged: "First, the attacks are not only offensive, they're false. The right has been using these myths as talking points, but they've been debunked over and over again. As a result, what we have here is a White House official telling a major national news outlet blatant and obvious falsehoods about a sitting high court justice.
"Second, I've seen the White House launch a broadside or two against the federal judiciary, and on more than one occasion, the Supreme Court as an institution. But I can't recall any White House ever attacking an individual justice like this."
Ruth Marcus has an op-ed in today's Washington Post all about "The Ginsburg Fallacy."
McClellan Watch
Mark Hand writes in PR Week that "Washington oddsmakers are now keeping a close eye on McClellan. . . .
"A White House correspondent, who asked not to be identified, predicts McClellan, who replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in summer 2003, will soon be leaving his post. 'I'm expecting very big changes,' the correspondent says."
Opinion Watch
The New York Times editorial board writes: "To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
"Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
"It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true."
E.J. Dionne Jr. writes in his Washington Post op-ed column: "By linking the war on terrorism to a partisan war against Democrats, Bush undercut his capacity to lead the nation in this fight. And by resorting to partisan attacks again last week, Bush only reminded us of the shameful circumstances in which the whole thing started."
James Fallows blogs for Huffingtonpost.com: "It would be nice if, even once, the Bush administration addressed the strongest version of the case against its Iraq-and-terrorism policy, rather than relying on bromides ('fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here') and knocking down straw men ('some say Iraqis don't deserve freedom . . . ').
"It probably won't happen.
"On available evidence, the President himself has not grasped the essential criticism of moving against Iraq when he did: that a war in Iraq undercut the broader and longer term war against Islamic terrorism. Not in one speech, not in one interview or off-hand remark, not in one insider account of White House deliberation has there been the slightest indication that President Bush recognizes this concept sufficiently to offer a rebuttal to it."
The Yellowcake Story
Peter Grier , in the Christian Science Monitor, exhaustively examines the genesis of the famous 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, and concludes: "If US intelligence agencies had spent more time studying the evidence in their possession, the president might never had said those words. Scooter Libby probably would be in his White House office today."
Plame Watch
Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is seeking a protective court order that would bar Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing 'all materials produced by the government.'
"Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, went to court yesterday to fight the proposal."
Asia Trip
Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush embarked on a week-long trip to Asia on Monday aimed at reasserting the U.S. role in a region where China has moved to expand its influence lately while the Bush administration was focused on the Middle East. . . .
"Stung by news reports focusing on the setbacks of the Latin America trip, White House officials tried to lower expectations this time.
" 'I don't think there are going to be any headline breakthroughs,' national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters on Air Force One. 'This is not a trip where the president has to come with a deliverable initiative.' The main goal, he said in a separate briefing last week, is 'to show the U.S. commitment to Asia as an area of our interest' and 'to indicate clearly that the president knows the United States has an important role to play in both the economic and security challenges in Asia and that he wants to play that role.' "
David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "Even inside the White House, some wonder whether the president, under renewed pressure to explain Iraq, will stay on message. As one of his aides noted recently, 'he doesn't even like to say the word 'globalization,' and rarely discusses its complex trade-offs."
New Yorker Humor
John Kenney claims to have uncovered some new notes to Bush from a slightly more bitter Harriet Miers.
"Hi! Just a quick note to say that you looked heavyish last time I saw you, which, come to think of it, was this morning, in the Oval Office, when you accepted my withdrawal (which you had secretly demanded) and ruined my life and dreams and spirit. I hope we can stay friends. And, again, I am sorry for vomiting on your desk. Best to your wife (Laurel??)."
Political Cartoon Humor
Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles on Bush: "I didn't mislead. You misfollowed."

FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN 11/14/05: This morning's NYT has an insightful op-ed on how the interrogation techniques now used by the U.S. were actually first developed by the Communist interrogators of the Soviet-controlled world. They were designed not to get actionable intelligence but to destroy a person's soul and enforce ideological conformity. In this "Animal Farm" moment, where the United States has literally adopted the immorality of its erstwhile enemy, it's hard to improve on this email:
The audacity of what the WSJ and the White House are trying to do is staggering. What they are attempting to do is one of the most profound moral outrages that Orwell (and myself) ascribed to the left, which is simply redefining a word and insisting on that redefinition in the political discourse, until that word has lost its original primary function. The academic establishment has gone a long way in changing the word "tolerance" to have overtones of being sympathetic to a thing, whereas it used to have a meaning similar to this: "In the use of torture, many people have a threshold of pain beyond which they cannot tolerate it and will give in to the demands of their captors." I will not be a part of this debate anymore, because anybody with an 8th grade education knows exactly what both "torture" and "tolerate" mean here. The president and his allies are (characteristically) pulling one out of the Orwellian left playbook to redefine the word into irrelevance. In other words, if "torture" means "organ failure" or "death" as the White House has argued (and let's open our eyes and notice that organ failure is a corrolary to death without immediate, radical medical treatment, e.g. a liver transplant or permanent dialysis), then the above statement becomes nearly nonsense, because dead people are by definition unable to give in to the demands of their captors. A good way to settle a dispute among rational parties is to find an impartial, mutually respected source to arbitrate. I often find that people go around spilling a lot of words in a discussion without resolution in cases where consulting the definitions of words provides so much clarity that people are rendered without argument. From the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary," torture:
A noun 1. Originally, (a disorder characterized by) contortion, distortion, or twisting. Later, (the infliction of) severe physical or mental suffering; anguish, agony, torment. b transf. A cause of severe pain or anguish. 2. The infliction of severe bodily pain as a punishment or as a means of interrogation or persuasion; a form or instance of this. b transf. An instrument or means of torture. B verb trans. 1. Subject to torture as a punishment or as a means of interrogation or persuasion. 2. Inflict severe mental or physical suffering on; cause anguish in; torment. Also, puzzle or perplex greatly. 3. figuratively, to force violently out of the original state or form; twist, distort; pervert. Also followed by /into/. 4. extract by torture.Torture is defined purely in terms of inflicted suffering. These people who want to argue the point in the face of the definition are not engaging in a rational discussion, and should be treated as such. I will point out that the one sense of torture here that is not referring to concrete torture describes their tactics. They are, in fact, attempting verb form number 3 of torture on the word torture. They are trying to twist, distort and pervert the word out of its agreed definition.Yes, they are. And they are doing so because what they have done and permitted to be done is so outrageous to civilized norms that they have no option but to destroy the very language that we use. We do not have to be a party to this. We have to expose it for what it is.

Read and weep!
Kansas State Board Votes to Teach Intelligent Design in Schools
Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Kansas State Board of Education approved a proposal to teach intelligent design along with evolution as a scientific explanation of how life began.
The board voted 6 to 4 in favor of the guidelines, which say schools should teach that doubt exists about the validity of evolution, a theory that originated with British biologist Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century.
The debate about teaching intelligent design, which says life is too complex to have happened through evolution, has led to a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania and the introduction of legislation in Michigan. President George W. Bush told a group of reporters visiting the White House on Aug. 1 that the theory should be taught alongside evolution, according to Knight Ridder.
Board Chairman Steve Abrams and members John Bacon, Kenneth Willard, Kathy Martin, Connie Morris and Iris Van Meter voted in favor of the guidelines, said Nicole Corcoran, a spokeswoman for Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. The issue was raised by these members amid an effort to overhaul the Kansas school system that began in February 2001.
Janet Waugh, Sue Gamble, Bill Wagnon and Carol Rupe opposed it. The board members didn't immediately return e-mail requests seeking comment.
The move drew immediate criticism from Sebelius, a Democrat.
``This is just the latest in a series of troubling decisions by the Board of Education,'' Sebelius said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. ``If we're going to continue to bring high-tech jobs to Kansas and move our state forward, we need to strengthen science standards, not weaken them.''
Opponents
Opponents of intelligent design, including the National Academy of Sciences and the National Association of Biology Teachers, say the theory is an offshoot of the Biblical story of creation in which God made the world in six days.
The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association said in a joint declaration on Oct. 27 that the Kansas board has specifically targeted evolution.
``The use of the word controversial to suggest there are flaws in evolution is confusing to students and the public and is entirely misleading,'' they said in a statement. ``While there may be disagreements among scientists about the exact processes, the theory of evolution has withstood the test of time and new evidence from many scientific disciplines only further support this robust scientific theory.''
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' office had no comment on the issue, said spokeswoman Susan Aspey. She said the board's decision was a local affair and the federal education department wouldn't get involved.
Setting Standards
The proposal before the Kansas board doesn't aim to promote intelligent design, according to documents on the education board's Web site.
``The curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticism of the theory,'' the proposal said. ``While the testimony presented at the science hearings included many advocates of Intelligent Design, these standards neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about this scientific disagreement.''
Wayne Carley, executive director of the 7,500-teacher National Association of Biology Teachers in Reston, Virginia, rejects the Kansas measure.
``They are undermining the education of their students,'' Carley said in a telephone interview. ``Intelligent design is a version of creationism and is clearly a religious doctrine and not a scientific principle, theory or even a hypothesis.''
The fight to inject intelligent design into science curriculum isn't going to stop in Kansas, said Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education at a press conference today in Topeka. The conference was sponsored by the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, which describes itself as a group with 25,000 members that wants to combat the religious right, spokeswoman Jessica Smith said.
``This action is likely the playbook of creationism for the next several years,'' Scott said. ``We predict this fight taking place not only on the state level but on the local level as well.'' To contact the reporter on this story:
Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 8, 2005 18:15 EST

Here's a different take on the riots in France.

(Copied without permission)
November 07, 2005
Why France is burning
Daily Mail, 7 November 2005
Night after night, France has been under attack by its Arab Muslim minority with the French authorities having totally lost control of the streets.
What started as an ugly localised disturbance in Clichy-sous-Bois — a grotty Paris suburb — after two Muslim youths were accidentally electrocuted has spiralled into an unprecedented national crisis. Extreme violent disorder has spread to cities such as Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, the cathedral town of Evreux in Normandy and even to the centre of Paris.
Thousands of cars have been set on fire and hundreds of people arrested across France. The rioters have torched post offices and fire stations, schools and synagogues, buses and warehouses, fired upon police, and doused a handicapped woman with petrol and set her alight.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-minded Interior Minister, has been blamed for inflaming the situation by his uncompromising language. French policy in general has been blamed for herding poor Arabs into suburban ghettoes where they have been left to fester in high unemployment and poverty.
The disturbances are thus being portrayed as race riots caused by official discrimination and insensitivity. But this is a gross misreading of the situation. It is far more profound and intractable. What we are seeing is, in effect, a French intifada: an uprising by French Muslims against the state.
When the police tried to take back the streets, they were driven out with the demand that they leave what the protesters called the ‘occupied territories’. And far from the claim that the disturbances have been caused by French policy of segregating Muslims into ghettoes, this is a war being waged for separate development.
Some Muslims have even called for the introduction of the ancient Ottoman ‘millet’ system of autonomous development for different communities.
The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, has previously suggested that France should be regarded as a ‘house of covenant’, by which he appears to mean that France should enter into an agreement with its Muslims to grant them autonomy within the state.
His response to the current violence is not to take steps to bring his own community under control but to suggest instead that the French government shows ‘respect’ and sends ‘a message of peace’.
But M. Sarkozy and the police are determined to take back the streets. The Muslims are equally determined to keep territory they feel they have conquered from the French state with which they feel no identification.
This crisis, however, did not start with the electrocution tragedy in Clichy-sous-Bois. It has been going on for decades. The scale of it is astonishing. Nine thousand police cars have been torched or stoned since the beginning of this year. The problem has not been M. Sarkozy’s tough approach. On the contrary — until now this permanent grumbling insurrection has simply been ignored.
For more than twenty years France’s Muslim areas have been out of control. Indeed, they only turned into Muslim ghettoes in the first place because Muslim violence and harassment forced everyone else out. And they became no-go areas for the police, seen by the Muslims as occupation forces entering their territory.
In schools in such areas, teachers trying to teach French or European history have been threatened with their lives by both pupils and their parents. In some cases young French people have converted to Islam just to escape the harassment.
Blaming an official policy of segregation is wide of the mark. The fact is that French Muslims want to be segregated. The ghettoes are a way of ensuring a separate Islamic existence without having to assimilate into French society.
The fact is that whatever policies different European countries have pursued to deal with minorities, they have not cracked this problem. France has enforced a rigid policy of state secularism and assumed that all minorities would adopt French values simply by being French.
By contrast, the British and other Europeans have adopted multiculturalism, which means giving minorities equal status to the majority, and have bent over backwards to be accommodating to them and not give offence.
Yet while France was burning, there were riots over several days in Denmark over the publication of cartoons satirising the prophet Mohammed. In the super-tolerant Netherlands, the film-maker Theo van Gogh was murdered exactly a year ago because he had made an ‘insulting’ film about Islam. The Dutch immigration minister has had to wear a bullet-proof vest after shots were fired into her office, and death threats have been made against other ministers who have spoken against Islamist violence.
In Britain, British Muslims turned themselves into human bombs last July to murder as many of their fellow citizens as they could. We are told this was because of the war in Iraq. But France was a principal opponent of that war, and yet it is now being torched from Normandy to the Mediterranean.
For every country, a different reason can be found to blame it for the attacks being mounted upon it. Yet the common factor is the hostility of Muslims to the countries in which they have settled.
Clearly, not all fall into this category. Thousands of British Muslims are highly integrated and live law-abiding and productive lives. But it is equally clear that across Europe, those moderates are either unable or unwilling to stop those who want to impose their values on the majority.
And European governments have played into their hands. As the writer Bat Ye’Or reveals in her book Eurabia, the European Union and the Arab League entered into a series of official agreements some thirty years ago guaranteeing that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled to adapt in any way ‘to the customs of the host countries.’
This is all bound up with the erosion of national identities across Europe. This has affected even France, once a ferocious proponent of French culture which was imposed through a centralised schools system, a strong police force and national military service.
But now the schools system and the police have been weakened and national service has gone. Banning the hijab (Islamic headscarf) in schools represented a flickering of the old national certainty as France sniffed the danger that had arisen in its midst. But it was too little, and maybe too late.
Even now Britain, France and the rest of Europe are still in varying stages of denial over Muslim unrest. Reluctant even to admit that religion is central to this phenomenon, they look instead for ways to blame themselves and use the insult of ‘Islamophobia’ to shut down debate.
The warning for us from the disturbing events in France could not be clearer. We must end the ruinous doctrine of multiculturalism and reassert British identity and British values — and insist that although Muslims are a valued minority, they must abide by majority rules.
But if France fails to hold the line, the fall-out will be incalculable for us and for all of Europe.

Posted by melanie at November 7, 2005
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Here is a perfect case of sophistry. Read carefully and you will realize Mr. Yoo is a Bush Defender and attemtps a backdoor rationale for torture.

Terrorists are not POWs
By John Yoo USA Today 11/3/05
Suppose that the United States captures a high-level al-Qaeda leader who knows the location of a weapon of mass destruction in an American city. Sen. John McCain's amendment would prevent the president from taking necessary measures — short of torture — to elicit its location. (Related: Our view)
To protect the United States against another 9/11-style attack, it makes little sense to deprive ourselves of important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks. Physical and mental abuse is clearly illegal. But should we also take off the table interrogation methods that fall short of torture — such as isolation, physical labor, or plea bargains — but go beyond mere questioning?
While the impulse behind the McCain amendment is worthy, it would not have prevented the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which were unrelated to interrogations. Those abuses resulted from sadistic behavior on the "night shift" and were illegal. The Geneva Conventions — which already prohibit the torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners — clearly apply in Iraq.
McCain's only real effect would be to limit the interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorists. They are not prisoners of war under Geneva, but a stateless network of religious extremists who do not obey the laws of war, who hide among peaceful populations, and who seek to launch surprise attacks on civilian targets. They have no armed forces to attack, no territory to defend, and no fear of killing themselves in their attacks.
Information is the primary weapon in this new conflict. Intelligence gathered from captured operatives may present the most effective means of stopping terrorist attacks. We should not deprive our military and intelligence agencies of the flexibility to prevent another attack, one perhaps using weapons of mass destruction, on an American city by a terrible and unprecedented enemy.
The Bush administration declined to provide an opposing view. John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, served in the Justice Department in 2001-03. He also is the author of Powers of War and Peace.

Brilliance in Kansas...
Damn alright
By William Ferleman,

Jayplay contributer Published: Thursday, October 20, 2005
Disregard the ill-informed unbelievers — the Rolling Stones pack more frenetic, demented energy into one show than most mere rocking (or otherwise) mortals could their in whole lives. With age, they’ve gained in passion and fine-crafted, raunchily-immoral showmanship. Now they’re no longer simply recycling “outdated” classic ditties, but also performing newer material. Four songs from their twenty-song set came from their recent album, A Bigger Bang. And these songs, including current single “Rough Justice,” garnered just as much reverence from attendees as tested the staples. Incredibly, the 43 year-old band remains deathless and relevant, defiant and experienced, now justifiably singing, “Hey, Hey, Hey, that’s what I say!”
With the uplifting opening riff to “Start Me Up,” still-breathing guitarist, Keith Richards, brightly kick-started the festivities with charismatic, hyper-caffeinated front-man Mick Jagger and the band in tow. Bedecked in tight black jeans and a faux, fancy, lips-logo Wonka coat, Jagger looked like the affable midnight rambler kissing off the fates.
Perennially raising his arms up and down, dancing in dizzying circles with saucily and Elvis-like hip gyrations, Jagger, 62, continues to be the model rock frontman and entertainer. His dictatorial, mesmeric sway over the audience seemed reminscent of a certain vegetarian mustachioed “leader,” or at least of Pat Robertson’s Jesus. Spouting the lyrics to hits like “Beast of Burden” and “Brown Sugar” was second-nature, but nonetheless cheerfully and honestly carried out. Despite eons of touring and onstage conventions, Jagger somehow managed to lay out the illusion of chastity and joyful spontaneity; at one point, even sticking his mic suggestively in his pants.
Drummer Charlie Watts continued to beat along nicely and rhythm guitarist Ron Wood grooved spiritedly with the Jagger-Richards alchemical, bluesy-rock machine. As for Richards, he’s still up to his old gamesome impishness, having arrived onstage wearing a black “Homeland Security” shirt, telling the crowd he’s not just glad to be in St. Paul, but “anywhere.” Richards’ work on the guitar couldn’t be better and his reclusive, resigned contrast to Jagger’s determined limelight-lust only italicized the performance’s stimulation and mystique. On the most well-received and potent number, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Richards emphatically and artfully slash-strummed his guitar. But most of the evening, he slyly maneuvered in the background.
For audience thrill, the band manned a portable stage, which jettisoned to the center of the complex. They played a four-song set which included their most popular hit, “Satisfaction (I Can’t Get No)” and also the new satiric “Oh No, Not You Again.” Jagger chatted briefly, stating that the new songs went over “damn alright.” The encore included the ballad “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
Jagger still struts like a rich player across the stage. And the rest of the band, including Richards, shows no signs of fading away.